On HU
Featured Archive Post: Travis Reynolds on comics gutters.
Kinukitty on bisexuality, reading yaoi, and the closet. (Part of our ongoing reposting of the Gay Utopia.)
I asked folks to list the best music of the year so far, a request that was for the most part met with indifference. Oh well; they can’t all be gems.
Ng Suat Tong on David B’s “Incidents in the Night” and the dream of books.
Osvaldo Oyola tells me why I should like the Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil more.
Kailyn Kent on service and Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel.
Michael A. Johnson on Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?, Almodavar’s All About My Mother, and weeping at comics.
Me on fantasy dragons and real romance in Laura Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Atlantic I wrote about:
— students who do sex work, and how they’re not all the same.
— Ms. Marvel and the tradition of superhero assimilation fantasies.
At the Dissolve I wrote about the vile misogynist pile of crap that is How To Be a Man.
At Salon I had a list of songs for the coming nuclear apocalypse.
At Splice Today:
— I argue that sexuality can sometimes be a choice.
— I sneered at Jonathan Chait for kicking his less fortunate colleagues.
The study guide I worked on for Rick Riordan’s Lost Hero is online at Shmoop.
Other Links
Ta-Nehisi Coates is skeptical of liberal outrage at Paul Ryan.
Alyssa Rosenberg kicks off her blog at the Washington Post with a statement of purpose re: writing about pop culture.
Tucker Stone lists the 25 best albums of 2013.
Standardized tests are an off-shoot of eugenics.
Julia Carrie Wong on journalists mining the twitter accounts of Women of Color.
A$AP frickin Rocky? I swear to god I will never understand why otherwise perceptive people’s taste turns so shitty when it comes to hip-hop music. (I guess this is me trolling here, but, man, A$AP frickin Rocky?)
Is that on Tucker’s list? I wasn’t that into a lot of his picks. I really wish the Dawn Richard album was good, for example, but I can’t manage to convince myself that it is.
Ugh. The comments on your Ms. Marvel article. . . ugh.
Heh…I think I’m inured to the Atlantic. I didn’t think they were that bad (relatively at least.)
I remember reading the Chait article at Splice when you linked to it a few days back. If RT is Russian propaganda, then surely the same can be said for the BBC, CNN and much of The Guardian (that most liberal of mainstream papers). I mean, I’m really used to watching propaganda considering where I live and the BBC/CNN foreign policy stuff basically has the same flavor. It turns the stomach but I force myself to watch it.
I think the papers/organizations Chait writes for are way more slick in their propaganda and hence more dangerous than RT. He has nothing to be proud about.
Isn’t this the same guy who has demented ideas about the bombing of Libya?
I’m probably just a delusional Westerner, but I do think there’s a difference between RT, which actually appears to be censored by the Russian government, and the BBC/CNN which are independently run. There’s propaganda and propaganda, I guess is my feeling. It seems like the distinction matters, at least a little.
Having said which — yeah, I”m sure Chait was all for bombing Libya or wherever. He’s totally a hawk, and unrepentant even after his judgment was shown to be ludicrously idiotic in Iraq. You’d think after that you might just shut up about foreign policy for the duration. And yes, he’s got way more influence than the folks at RT, so his fuck ups are a lot more consequential.
I often like him on most domestic issues. Except for education, where he’s awful.
Noah, I enjoyed your article on Ms. Marvel on the Atlantic and felt compelled to join the comment thread. I agree with Osvaldo on the quality of a lot of the commentary, though.
Not indifference Noah. ‘t been impressed by 2014 much musicaly. Leyla McCalla’s album Vari-Colored Songs; A Langston Hughes tribute is very good. So that I guess.