Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore -- not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-'90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

The Lost Battalion

Personal Jan 22 2013, 12:27 PM ET

It's yours...

The American Case Against a Black Middle Class

National Jan 22 2013, 10:19 AM ET

I went on a Twitter rant yesterday because I'd finished Isabel Wilkerson's phenomenal The Warmth Of Other Suns. The book is a narrative history of the Great Migration through the eyes of actual migrants. Several points stick out for me.

1) The Great Migration was not an influx of illiterate, bedraggled, lazy have-nots. Wilkerson marshalls a wealth of social science data showing that the migrants were generally better educated than their Northern brethren, more likely to stay married, and more likely to stay employed. In fact, in some cases, black migrants were better educated than their Northern white neighbors.

2) In this sense, the migrants to Northern cities resembled immigrant classes to whom black people in these same cities are often unfavorably compared to. There's a quote in Wilkerson's book which I can't find where a supervisor basically says that blacks are the favored workers because they will work hard at the worst jobs for relatively little money. You would have thought the guy was talking about Hispanic farm-hands today.

3) The black migrants were not immigrants. They were citizens of this country who did not enjoy its full protection. Unlike other immigrant classes, blacks were never able to cash in on their hard work and middle-class values. For all of their work-ethic, education-valuing, and long-term marriages, they received the worst wages in the worst jobs, were limited to the worst housing, and stuffed in the worst schools.

4) What becomes clear by the end of Wilkerson's book is that America's response to the Great Migration was to enact a one-sided social contract. America says to its citizens, "Play by the rules, and you will enjoy the right to compete." The black migrants did play by the rules, but they did not enjoy the right to compete. Black people have been repeatedly been victimized by the half-assed social contract. It goes back, at least, to Reconstruction.

5) The half-assed social contract continues to this very day with policies under the present administration, like the bail-out of banks that left the homeowners whom the banks conned underwater. The results of the housing crisis for black people have been devastating. The response is to hector these people about playing video games and watching too much television. Or to tell them they've have "an achievement gap." It is sickening, dishonest, and morally repugnant.

6) America does not really want a black middle class. Some of the most bracing portions of Wilkerson's book involve the vicious attacks on black ambition. When a black family in Chicago saves up enough to move out of the crowded slums into Cicero, the neighborhood riots. The father had saved for years for a piano for his kids. The people of Cicero tossed the piano out the window, looted his home, torched his apartment and then torched his building. In the South, when black people attempted to leave to earn better wages, they were often forcibly detained, and thus kept in slavery as late as the 1950s.

On a policy level, there is a persistent strain wherein efforts to aid The People are engineered in such a way wherein they help black people a lot less. It is utterly painful to read about the New Deal being left in the hands of Southern governments which were hostile to black people, and then to today see a significant chunk of health care, again, left in the hands of Southern governments which are hostile to black people. At this point, such efforts no longer require open bigotry. They are simply built into the system.

7) "That the Negro American has survived at all, is extraordinary." That is from the Moynihan report, which neo-liberals are fond of touting, while ignoring the report's lengthy policy recommendations.

8) Get the book. Read it now. Today is too late.

Obama's Second Inaugural

Politics Jan 21 2013, 1:50 PM ET

You should read my colleague Jim Fallows's initial thoughts on Obama's speech over here. For my part, I thought the speech was today sort of great. I thought it was direct, pointed, and clear about which American political tradition Obama actually hails from:

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life's worst hazards and misfortune.

There's more throughout the speech -- I especially appreciated the riff on Seneca Falls, and I don't know that we've had a more full-throated defense of gay rights in an inaugural then the one the president offered.

I was tweeting some with Chris Hayes after the speech about the importance of rhetoric. Without relinquishing the importance of putting pressure on the president (drones!) I think that it's important to acknowledge the significance of speeches like this.

There was a time when merely stating the ideas Obama put forth would have gotten you killed. And we still live in a time where people gladly tell you that the Civil War was not whether we'd be "half-slave and half-free" but about whether we'd be "half-agrarian or half-industrial." Or some such. I don't think most Americans really understand the significance of say Seneca Falls or Stonewall. And I don't know that any president has actually lauded either of these publicly.

As surely as it has always mattered to homophobes, white supremacists, and chauvinists what was and wasn't said in the public, it should matter to those of who seek to repel them. What ideas do and don't get exposed in the public square has to matter to any activist, because movements begin by exposing people to ideas. "I Have a Dream" is not simply important because of whatever civil-rights legislation followed, but because it put on the big American public stage a notion that was long held as anathema -- integration. The idea extends beyond legislation.

Obama's speech is different. To some extent it exposes people to new ideas. But to a greater extent, perhaps, it shows how movements which only a few years ago were thought to be on the run have, in at least one major party, carried the day. This is not a small thing.

The NFL's House of Pain

Entertainment Jan 21 2013, 1:00 PM ET

I think everyone should read Tom Junod's piece on how pro football players relate to injury. I don't know that it's very surprising, but it is illuminating. I think this section says a lot:

"I'm going to tell you something," says PJ. "Anybody who tells you that they feel bad causing an injury is probably lying. How can you feel bad? You're going up against a guy who is just as big and strong as you are. Your coach tells you to go kick his fucking ass. Your teammates tell you to go kick his fucking ass. Your father and your brother tell you to go kick his fucking ass. The media tells you to go kick his fucking ass. Before the game, your wife tells you to go kick his fucking ass. So you go and you kick his fucking ass. And if he gets hurt, how can you go back and say, 'I didn't mean for you to get hurt like that.' You're taught to hurt people. How can you say you didn't mean to?"

Ed Reed says he didn't mean to. "This year, I took out an offensive lineman against Philly. It was bad technique on my part, and I took out the center's knee. Our coach talks to [Philadelphia coach] Andy Reid all the time, so I told Coach to send my respects for the center and let him know I didn't mean to hurt him, man. It was just the second game of the year, so he lost his whole season. That one preyed on me, man. I didn't know him personally, but I wanted to let him know that I had the utmost respect for him."

At first I had a hard time reconciling these two thoughts, but as I turned them over, it made a lot of sense. What Ed Reed feels bad about is the fact that he has endangered someone's livelihood. Had Jason Kelce (the injured center) played the very next week, I doubt Reed would have felt bad.

When I watched football, I loved watching Ed Reed. Great safeties (like, say, Rod Woodson) are some of the most beautiful athletes in sports. They often combine the ability to inflict great violence with the ability to turn a sturdy defensive stand, effectively, into kick return. The latter is a beautiful thing to see. Reed has these long legs and takes these great strides. It's awe-inspiring watching him play. When I watch Ed Reed, I feel like I am watching a master artist at work. But the craft is wholly premised on great--life-altering--violence. What tangled Junior Seau's brain and ultimately ended his life, is what Ed Reed--and all players--actually do. There's just no way to escape that.

My President Is Whack

Entertainment Jan 21 2013, 11:37 AM ET

Via Vulture, here's video of rapper Lupe Fiasco--who like the president is from Chicago--being run off stage for an anti-Obama song that went on for 30 minutes.

Separate and Unequal in the U.S. Military

National Jan 20 2013, 2:52 PM ET

The New York Times has a deeply revealing story up on same-sex married couples and the difficulties they're encountering:

Gay marriage is now legal in nine states and in Washington, D.C. But because same-sex marriages are not recognized under federal law, the spouses of gay service members are barred from receiving medical and dental insurance and surviving spouse benefits and are not allowed to receive treatment in military medical facilities. Spouses are also barred from receiving military identification cards, which provide access to many community activities and services on base, including movie theaters, day care centers, gyms and commissaries.

Gay service members who are married are not permitted to receive discounted housing that is routinely provided to heterosexual married couples...

Sgt. Karen Alexander, a chemical and biological specialist at Fort Bragg, said that she and her wife, Allison Hanson, were receiving about $1,300 a month less than they would be if they were a heterosexual married couple. Ms. Hanson said she had to drop out of college last year to find a job to help pay their bills.

Bobby McDaniel, the husband of a lieutenant colonel stationed in Central America, had to cover his own airfare when his spouse was stationed there. The military also declined to support his request for a diplomatic visa, a privilege typically granted to heterosexual spouses, so he has to leave the country where they live every three months to apply for another visitor's visa. It is a financial hardship.

But he said the psychic toll was greater. "It just kind of eats away at you," Mr. McDaniel said. "It makes you feel like you're not a complete person."

I want to drill down on that last point. Reading this in concert with Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns (which you should read) is disconcerting. During segregation, what you effectively had was every avenue of society angled toward telling black people, "You're not a complete person." That message is surely, on some level, received -- and it most certainly was received by black children.

I don't know how you measure the effects of such messaging on a populace. But I have to believe that it has a corrosive effect on the bonds between the recipient and their country. I can't think of any worse place to broadcast such a message than in our defense forces. Telling people to put their lives on the line for a country that regards them as a kind of pariah is just a bad idea.

Chris Christie on the NRA

Politics Jan 18 2013, 10:25 AM ET

Here are some words from Chris Christie that will probably hearten conservative moderates. I don't think this means much for 2016, however. The core of the Republican Party is Southern white populism. There's no real way around that. Leadership might talk of moderation, but they didn't build a party for moderation. The occasional act of heterodoxy can't change that.

Lena Dunham and Democratic Nudity

Entertainment Jan 16 2013, 2:10 PM ET

I finished watching and live tweeting Girls last night. I thought the first season was very good. I didn't much like the dark turn in the last two episodes--we somehow got more of Adam, and not enough of Adam--but overall I really enjoyed the show and look forward to watching Season Two a year from now.

It's worth comparing the first season of Girls with the first seasons of other HBO comedies like Entourage and Sex and the City. I would go so far as to say Girls was better than both of those first seasons, better than anything I ever saw on Entourage in any season, and perhaps better than anything I saw on SATC at any point too. Girls has no real need to sugar-coat Hannah's self-esteem issues or make us think that she actually, deep down, loves Adam. Hannah is a predator--as we all are predators--and she isn't asking us to admire her. I always felt SATC (and certainly Entourage, which was a much worse show) was trying to convince me of their awesomeness or the awesomeness of New York or L.A. Girls just wanted to tell me a story. I love the modesty of the task.

I didn't really understand how often Lena Dunham was nude on screen, or how often she did sex-scenes. If you take that in with the sex scene between her parents, what you have is one of the most democratic--and everyhuman--depictions of sex to ever exist in pop culture. The more I thought about this, the more important it became to me.

We should not deceive ourselves: We enjoy sex scenes because we enjoy seeing people whom some critical mass would like to fuck, fucking each other. And this is not an egalitarian phenomenon--Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry are much more common than the opposite. (Talking gender here, not race, which is another convo.) Occasionally a sex scene advances narrative, but mostly it's there for us--and mainly us dudes.

What Girls says is "Fuck the gaze." Lena Dunham ain't really performing for you. She's saying people like me--which is most of you--like to fuck. And in a real narrative of real life, the people who do most of the fucking don't actually look like Victoria Secret models. Your expectations for what fucking should look like are irrelevant. Here is how it looks like to the narrator. I kind of love that. In this (perhaps limited) sense, I can understand the "For Us, By Us" acclaim. The show's disregard for male notions of sex is pretty profound. And it achieves this while still giving us a fairly interesting cast of male characters.

The show ain't perfect. I found the occasional elements of black culture more jarring and unfortunate ("Hey, we're white. Look how lame we are. And look how lame we are when we act black.") than any lack thereof. But in general I came away genuinely impressed with the artistry.

Fear of Flying

National Jan 16 2013, 10:41 AM ET

During my spring break, I'm going to Switzerland for a week. I'll be staying with a host family and doing a fairly intense week of French stufy. I'm hoping to build in a couple of days to get into France also and see some things. This summer I hope to go back and take my son (who just started back studying French) for a few weeks and some of the same.

But something occurred to me the other day when I put down my deposit -- I am afraid. Like really afraid. I've never been in a country where English wasn't the dominant language. I've never been anywhere -- save a few neighborhoods in New York -- where English wasn't all around me. I've been studying French for about a year and a half now, and the experience has been so much more than conjugations and vocabulary. All around me I now hear people speaking the language which I recognize, but do not understand. I was sitting in a cafe in Cambridge last semester and the couple next to me were arguing in French. It was terrifying.

Studying a second language is like very slowly absorbing the notion that intelligent life exists on other worlds. And that scares me because I don't know who these people are. I don't know if they're going to laugh at me. I don't know if I'm going to offend them. I don't know if the Swiss like black people. (I have homeboy who went to Barçelona and his tales still scare me.) I don't really know anything beyond, "Je suis Américain."

I think about this and begin to understand the ethic of staying in the hood -- wherever your hood may be. I understand people who want English to be our official language. They are afraid. They don't know what might happen. And neither do I. Please don't try to reassure me. I suspect that being afraid is part of it. And I know that the fear isn't very rational. Let me be scared. It's not like I can turn back. I'm out on the ledge now. Time to jump.

The Small, Petty, Fraudulent Vendettas of Lance Armstrong

Entertainment Jan 15 2013, 4:00 PM ET

Dan Wetzel has a (partial) list of people Lance Armstrong tried to ruin after they accused him of doping. For those living under a rock, Armstrong has now confessed that the accusations were true. Here are two examples:

Let's talk Betsy Andreu, the wife of one your former teammates, Frankie. Both Andreus testified under oath that they were in a hospital room in 1996 when you admitted to a doctor to using EPO, HGH and steroids. You responded by calling them "vindictive, bitter, vengeful and jealous." And that's the stuff we can say on TV.

Would you now label them as "honest?"

And what would you say directly to Betsy, who dealt with a voicemail from one of your henchmen that included, she's testified, this:

"I hope somebody breaks a baseball bat over your head. I also hope that one day you have adversity in your life and you have some type of tragedy that will ... definitely make an impact on you.."

What do you say to Emma O'Reilly, who was a young Dublin native when she was first hired by the U.S. Postal team to give massages to the riders after races?

In the early 2000s, she told stories of rampant doping and how she was used to transport the drugs across international borders. In the USADA report, she testified that you tried to "make my life hell."

Her story was true, Lance, wasn't it? And you knew it was true. Yet despite knowing it was true, you, a famous multimillionaire superstar, used high-priced lawyers to sue this simple woman for more money than she was worth in England, where slander laws favor the famous. She had no chance to fight it.

She testified that you tried to ruin her by spreading word that she was a prostitute with a heavy drinking problem.

"The traumatizing part," she once told the New York Times, "was dealing with telling the truth."

I'm not sure what I think about drugging when everyone else around you is drugging. I don't think lying is a very good idea. I think trying to destroy people for telling the truth is a good deal worse. It's that all-out war that really sets Armstrong apart. This isn't just a "doping scandal." It's something much creepier.

H/T Mike & Mike.

A Word on Our Bad Reputation

National Jan 15 2013, 12:20 PM ET

Yesterday The Atlantic ran an advertorial on Scientology. It caused a small scrum (as it should have) on Twitter. Last night the advertorial was taken down. Here is the company's statement on the matter:

We screwed up. It shouldn't have taken a wave of constructive criticism -- but it has -- to alert us that we've made a mistake, possibly several mistakes. We now realize that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way. It's safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand. In the meantime, we have decided to withdraw the ad until we figure all of this out. We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge--sheepishly--that we got ahead of ourselves. We are sorry, and we're working very hard to put things right.

I think what made this episode particularly ill-considered was the fact that Lawrence Wright's reporting (some of it done for the New Yorker) on Scientology was about to be released in book form. With that said, I fully agree with this statement. I think the fact this troubled so many people is actually evidence of The Atlantic's brand strength. And I think the swift and candid response is evidence of how much we treasure the name.

People screw up. I think that's fairly natural. But I also think it's important to respond honestly and directly when you are confronted with your screw-up.

On the Radicalism of Leaving

National Jan 15 2013, 11:20 AM ET

Early in her epic tale of the great migration, The Warmth Of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson quotes the social scientist John Dollard:

Oftentimes to just go away is one of the most aggressive things that another person can do, and if the means of expressing discontent are limited, as in this case, it is one of the few ways in which pressure can put.

I'm relatively early in Wilkerson's book. Already it strikes me as a marvelously written, deeply engrossing, thick depiction of pre-Civil Rights, post-Civil War black America. It's the kind of book which those of us who are always saying "Why isn't their movie about..." should immediately purchase. Several times over. Give a copy to your uncle, your kid, your mother.

At any rate, what impresses me about this quote is Wilkerson's attempt to argue that the Great Migration was not just thing that happens, but was a kind of resistance -- a "folk movement," she calls it -- with no need for figureheads and leaders. Booker T. Washington opposed it. As did Frederick Douglass, who died a few decades before the deluge but was familiar with talk of abandoning the South.

I don't know how well Wilkerson ultimately argues this point. But I look forward to finding out. As it stands, I'm tearing my way through the book. This is what I mean about a book where the work is done in the thinking, not the reading.

*Painting by Jacob Lawrence from his series on Harriet Tubman

Kendrick Lamar's Forever War

Entertainment Jan 15 2013, 9:50 AM ET

Last week Alyssa made a point I've been thinking a lot about, in relation to some of the art that really has affected me over the past few months:

If there's one thing that marks our current era of popular culture, it's an obsession with cool of the kind exemplified by Quentin Tarantino's movies, or with transgressive badassery, of the sort that's characterized so many anti-hero dramas. And the way most people achieve that cool or badassness? The deployment of violence.

For me this goes back to Wolverine (who I loved as a kid) and mohawked Storm knocking Scrambler's teeth out during the Mutant Massacre, or Colossus snapping Riptide's neck. For those of who came up in the relentless violence of the Crack Age, there was the sense that all the nonviolent pieties of Martin Luther King, Jr. were totally irrelevant. (Bizzy Bone had it about right "Beg your pardon to Martin / But we ain't marching we shooting.") The point was that we lived in a time of great violence and what was needed was more violence wielded by a noble hand. What I didn't realize then was this idea--a Champion of Noble Violence--is probably as old as humanity.

Hip-hop, if not always premised on nobility, is certainly premised on transgressive violence. I loved the music, but (with some exceptions) that basic premise is why the music always felt a little off to me. I mean this about even my own favorites. I eventually wrote this need to always be badass Superman as simply what the music was, as something that could never really be any other way. As I got older the Champion pose became harder for me to take--not just in my music, but in movies, in comic books, and maybe (not sure) even in video games. Consequently, I moved away from a lot of things I loved as a kid.

A few weeks back, I went on at some length about Joe Haldeman's Forever War, and I think it was largely because I was happy to read a fantastic adventure story where the protagonist survives not because of great brawn, superpower, or even superior intellect. Mandella is smart, but far and away his greatest attribute is his sheer, dumb-ass luck. In that way, There was something refreshing about a hero greatest power amounts to not getting shot in the head. As virtually all of Mandella's comrades are killed off he seems to saying "I am glad it was not me." But behind that is something else--"that very easily could have been me."

That same kind of everyman vibe runs through Kendrick Lamar's Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City. "The Art of Peer Pressure" has a series of great lines ("I hope the universe love you today.") but my favorite is one of the simplest, "Look at me," raps Lamar before pausing and continuing. "I got the blunt in my mouth."

It's such a simple line but there's something about his phrasing that abandons the superhero pose, that takes off the mask and reveals that dumb, ordinary black boy that so many of us have been. Good Kid is the first album I've heard that drops the Batman pose, and yet remains trapped in Gotham. Much like how Mandella is not some ace star-fighter pilot, Lamar is not Compton's Most Wanted, he is "Compton's Human Sacrifice." And he carries that vulnerability throughout the album. The fact is that most black boy's in Lamar's world are more human sacrifices than badasses. And even if some are truly the latter, all contain a portion of the former.

Perhaps this aesthetic is a bit conservative, but this is the art I love. I understand that there are drug-lords who double as soccer moms. I get that there are serial killers who kill serial killers, and worlds premised on big men with big swords and other worlds where being good at your job but horrible to your wife makes you noble. But then there are the normal people. And they have stories too.

More Guns, Less Crime: The Switzerland Example

National Jan 14 2013, 3:16 PM ET

In this rant last week, Alex Jones cited Switzerland as one of the last remaining redoubts of gun culture. This post by Ezra Klein, in which he talks to Janet Rosenbaum about her research, does a good job examining that claim, but the Wikipedia article is also pretty informative:

The Swiss army has long been a militia trained and structured to rapidly respond against foreign aggression. Swiss males grow up expecting to undergo basic military training, usually at age 20 in the Rekrutenschule (German for "recruit school"), the initial boot camp, after which Swiss men remain part of the "militia" in reserve capacity until age 30 (age 34 for officers).

Each such individual is required to keep his army-issued personal weapon (the 5.56x45mm Sig 550 rifle for enlisted personnel and/or the 9mm SIG-Sauer P220 semi-automatic pistol for officers, military police, medical and postal personnel) at home. Up until October 2007, a specified personal retention quantity of government-issued personal ammunition (50 rounds 5.56 mm / 48 rounds 9mm) was issued as well, which was sealed and inspected regularly to ensure that no unauthorized use had taken place.

The ammunition was intended for use while traveling to the army barracks in case of invasion. In October 2007, the Swiss Federal Council decided that the distribution of ammunition to soldiers shall stop and that all previously issued ammo shall be returned. By March 2011, more than 99% of the ammo has been received. Only special rapid deployment units and the military police still have ammunition stored at home today.

When their period of service has ended, militiamen have the choice of keeping their personal weapon and other selected items of their equipment.[citation needed] In this case of retention, the rifle is sent to the weapons factory where the fully automatic function is removed; the rifle is then returned to the discharged owner.[citation needed] The rifle is then a semi-automatic or self-loading rifle.

There's a lot more in the article, but what became clear to me is that Switzerland does have a gun culture -- one that is heavily regulated by the government, right down to counting your bullets. Leaving aside that Switzerland has a fraction of America's population, leaving aside that gun ownership in Switzerland is still much lower than here in America (29 percent of households to 43 percent, respectively), this Swiss model strikes me as the kind of governmental intrusion that someone like Alex Jones is in no hurry to invite.

In our gun culture, as in so much else, we are unique. There's just no comparison.

Tips for Autodidacts and Gamers With Jobs

Entertainment Jan 14 2013, 2:18 PM ET

I don't know if there's anyone else out there whose on the same path as me in terms of learning a language. But if you are on that path, and if you enjoy video games, I'd encourage you to try playing them in a different language. Against my better judgement, I use Steam to purchase most of my games these days. One feature I love is how you can change languages for Steam, and thus all the games that support your language.

Alors maintenant je joue mes jeux videos en français, toujours.

Last night I booted up Mass Effect, and I only have sliver of an idea of what's going on. Enough to know that Nihlus is awesome--"Je travaille seul." I feel like if I can't get to France just yet, I'll lifehack my way as far into the Atlantic as possible. The effect of changing languages differs with each genre and each game. The language barrier doesn't mean much in strategy. But it means a lot in RPGs.

For me, the feeling of being lost is one of the best things about learning a new language. As someone told me on twitter this weekend--you are left with toddler ears. And that's just it. This is really the only time you get to be a kid again.

On Being Your Authentic Self

Entertainment Jan 14 2013, 9:31 AM ET

I watched the first half of Season One of Lena Dunham's much discussed series Girls last night and generally found it to be a riot. I think the best thing you can say about a comedy is that it's really, really funny. I'm a little sad that Girls never was allowed to be just that. When the PR people roll out a show they're generally trying to get as much bang as they can, and being dubbed the "voice of your generation" is quite a bang. But as an artist, I doubt that this the sort of weight you want.

Subjectively speaking, it seems like Girls got way more shine than say, Louie, Mad Men, The Wire, or even Sex and the City. The result was that all of those shows were allowed to blossom in the first few episodes away from the critical din, a benefit Girls never enjoyed. I don't know how much should be made of that--again, this sort of impact is exactly what PR people at HBO want.

But it's been good to watch the show away from controversy, and away from the discussion. This clip is the funniest scene I've seen on television in a long, long time. ("I'm going to have the last word in this situation." "It was nice to see you. Your Dad is gay.") Just judge Girls as a show--which is the way it should be judged, PR aside--it is really, really good.

Circling back to that the most cringe-worthy moments actually come when there are people of color on screen. I won't be watching Season Two for another year or so, and I am hoping that the Donald Glover thing works out. I have never met a black Republican in all my time in New York. And I'm black. So I have trouble believing that Hannah is found that one black dude in Brooklyn who is anti-marriage equality, anti-abortion, pro-guns, and anti-health care.

It feels like both an answer and a middle-finger to Dunham's critics. I would just prefer she plug her ears and keep moving. We must tell our stories. And others must tell their's. It may well all be great, but it takes me back to my initial thought that white people who know few, if any, black people should write that way. The first rule is to write what you know. More next year--along with that review of Django.

Growing Up in the Caves of Chaos

Entertainment Jan 11 2013, 9:11 PM ET

I think I was seven when I started playing Dungeons & Dragons, though that feels like too young. I think I started reading Choose Your Own Adventure at six, and D&D was like right behind. It was a natural transition. I learned the game from my brother Malik. Malik works at Dreamworks. (I'm very proud. Can you tell? If you look at this post, Malik is second row, far right.) I work as a writer. I like to think it helped introduce us both to the powers of imagination.

At any rate, Malik was always the DM when we played. The video below is from the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary. I had the luxury of being interviewed for this. In fact, the guys invited me to a game, which I hope I can still take them up on once I know out this book.

Anyway, in the video I talk about the first time Malik led me into the Caves of Chaos, a scenario from the awesome Keep on the Borderlands module. Actually, I think I'm talking about the second time. The first time I rolled a magic-user who had one hit point. He was punched to death by the Mad Hermit. Fun times.

Martin Luther King Makes Everything Better

National Jan 11 2013, 4:11 PM ET

Even Gun Appreciation Day:

"I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country's founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history," Ward said.

Of course the denial of that right was actually part of what it meant to be slave. The right of gun ownership is wholly connected to the notion of "free men." A slave, by the very American definition of the word, wouldn't generally have the right to bear firearms.

So I guess it's true that blacks wouldn't have been slaves if they had guns, much like it's true that blacks wouldn't have been slaves if there was no such thing as American slavery.

An Open Thread

Personal Jan 10 2013, 4:21 PM ET

@kalbelgarion Yes.
-- Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisi) January 10, 2013

Toward a Moral Professional Football League

Entertainment Jan 10 2013, 2:47 PM ET

Horde legionnaire David White has offered up some interesting suggestions about how to reform the game. I don't know if any of this is possible. But I think that's also beside the point. Brainstorming is a particular challenge. Making it happen is another. On that note, in addition to critiquing it'd be nice if you guys throw out ideas on your own:

I don't intend to stop watching. I could go into a lot about my thinking, but it essentially comes down to the my belief that these players are making the same Achilles bargin that young men have been making for eons, and I'm comfortable accepting that.

The game will never be "safe," but that doesn't mean that changes can't be made to make the game safer. Some changes I would like to see (some of which may have already been started):

1) Off field changes

-- Move to fully guaranteed contracts and expand rosters. Players would be more willing to sit if they know they won't be cut off/replaced after being injured. And a larger roster would make it easier for a team to keep an injured players on the payroll.

-- Full health coverage for players who played more than 3 years or suffered a career-ending injury.

-- Robust mental therapy program for players transitioning into retirement (possibly make it a requirement for retired players seeking health care coverage).

-- Doctors work for the league, not for the teams. And each doctor has a clear checklist on the sideline that a player must pass if they're suspected of being concussed.

-- Brain function tests at the start and end of every season, which are shared with the players at the start of training camp every year. Make sure their choice is as well-informed as possible.

-- If a player suffers a concussion, they're not allowed to play in the following week. If they suffer a second concussion, they have to skip two games. Any more, they're forced to sit out the rest of the season.

-- Add another bye week to the season, and either end Thursday night games, or schedule them in such a way that teams only play them when coming off of a bye week.

2) On field changes

-- Make every offensive player an eligible receiver. Over the long term, I think this would reduce the size of linemen to TE sized players, and it'd eliminate a lot of the "in the trenches" hit a player takes over his career. It would also make the game more strategically complex, as defenses would have to guess who's going out to receive and who's staying to block. It's a big break from tradition, but ironically, it'd make the sport much more similar to the way that it's played by ordinary people in backyards around the country.

-- Ban the 3-pt and 4-pt stance. Instead of firing into each other in a way where it's impossible to avoid head-to-head contact, make offensive lineman line up in the way they often do already for pass plays, and make defensive linemen line up more like linebackers. There'd still be head to head contact, but it wouldn't be as natural and inevitable.

-- Experiment with different helmet materials. The history of the sport proves that helmets are needed (players regularly died on the field back before helmets were used), but they should experiment with materials that make leading with the head less likely. Maybe something closer to the leather helmets of old, or like the headgear boxers use when sparring.

(To fantasize for a moment about helmet technology: I don't think they'll ever be able to create a helmet to stop concussions, despite what NFL PR tries to tell us. But I'd like to see something that registers the amount of force taken by a player over the course of a game. And once it reaches a certain threshold, a player has to leave the game. Like it slowly turns red the more hits it takes, and once it's glowing red, the player has to leave the game.)

What do you guys think of these ideas? What ideas do you suggest?