What Was Bill Maher’s Big Mistake?
Wesley Morris | The New York Times
“The insult to injury here involves the conflation of Mr. Maher’s transgression and the umbrage he feigned at being asked to work in the fields. As my sister might say: Oh, he fancy now. For a long time, black people have deployed slavery-derived hierarchies as a social and psycho-political sorting mechanism. A house assignment might have won a slave less arduous work but more suspicion and contempt from her counterparts in the fields. No one self-identifies as a house Negro—unless that person is making a joke. And even then that person probably shouldn’t be Bill Maher.”
In New Orleans, Party Busses Drive the Legacy of Bounce Music
Ben Dandridge-Lemco | The Fader
“A common cliché about New Orleans is that music emanates from every street corner. That’s not altogether wrong … New Orleans is a place of traditions, and its status as the birthplace of jazz is a constant point of emphasis at annual festivals and in tourism campaigns. But at today’s second lines, alongside the tuba and trumpet, another sound is just as prevalent—the unmistakeable samples, rapid drum patterns, and explicit chants of New Orleans bounce.”
Stranger Than Fiction
Siddhartha Deb | The Baffler
“If fiction has been unable to come to terms with our steadfast rapaciousness, it is because to truly represent the ravages of the carbon economy involves understanding capitalism, and even nationalism, as failures, and this is not something contemporary fiction is capable of doing.”
An Oral History of Reading Rainbow
Jake Rossen | Mental Floss
“Hosted by LeVar Burton, the show grew from modest trials at PBS affiliate WNED in Buffalo and Great Plains National out of Nebraska. It ran for 150 episodes and 26 years, making it one of the most enduring children’s shows to ever air on public television. If Sesame Street taught kids the alphabet, Reading Rainbow helped them develop a love of words, paragraphs, and narratives.”
What Is Going on With Universal’s ‘Dark Universe’?
Kevin Lincoln | Vulture
“With the Dark Universe, Universal essentially seems to be splitting the difference. It wants to make a movie universe that’s propped up by its shoo-in overseas appeal, pinned to the backs of [Tom] Cruise and [Johnny] Depp, that also allows it to push and prod the concept in a way that the more disciplined and consistent Marvel can’t. How broad can a cinematic universe be? How many different styles and diverging threads can it accommodate?”
Why Wonder Woman Is a Masterpiece of Subversive Feminism
Zoe Williams | The Guardian
“The fighter as sex symbol stirs up a snakepit of questions: Are you getting off on the woman or the violence? An unbreakable female lead can be liberating to the violent misogynist tendency since the violence against her can get a lot more ultra, and nobody has to feel bad about it, because she’ll win … This is tackled head on in Wonder Woman.”