Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Two days ago, Native American extras on Adam Sandler’s new Netflix movie The Ridiculous Six walked off the set due to the film’s portrayal of Native Americans. In response, Netflix defended the film as a “broad satire” in which those being made fun of are “in on the joke.” So, who’s right? Well, we got…
In Jon Ronson’s interview with “Mercedes,” a 4chan activist, for his controversial nonfiction book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, she offhandedly explains why controversial site operates the way it does: “On the Internet, we have power in situations where we would otherwise be powerless.” Ronson’s book and many similar inquiries into the social media hive mind are interested…
Eric Gaillard/Reuters Garry Trudeau, the Pulitzer Prize-winning satirical cartoonist behind Doonesbury, says his fellow satirists at Charlie Hebdo “wandered into the realm of hate speech.” Trudeau made the remark during his acceptance speech of the George Polk Awards in Journalism, according to Peter Bale, the head of the Center for Public Integrity. “Free speech… becomes its…
150 years after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Americans are still fighting over the great issues at the heart of the conflict. Wikimedia Commons On this 150th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox, Americans mark the end of the Civil War. The questions at the heart of the war, though, still occupy the nation,…
Steven B. Chesbro and John Garland say that African-American candidates for admission to the university as well as faculty positions were given preference. Alabama State UniversityScreenshot /sl-art-illo-cap /sl-art-illo-cntr Two white faculty members at Alabama State University have filed a lawsuit against the school in which they claim that ASU discriminates against whites in its hiring…
George Zimmerman Says God and Justice Are on His Side In a new video released by his law firm, Trayvon Martin’s killer says he feels no survivor’s remorse because it was God’s plan for the teenager to die. George Zimmerman Screenshot/Video from Ayo and Iken Law Firm /sl-art-illo-cap /sl-art-illo-cntr If the moral arc of…
Entry Text Recently, Lindsay Lohan made news for tweeting the n-word. I’ve been told that she was tweeting one of Kanye West’s lyrics. Madonna, whom I adored as my own personal cone bra’d freedom fighter since middle school, also had a similar social media debacle.Kanye using this word in a song doesn’t take away the…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Last year, a white male Princeton undergraduate was asked by a classmate to “check his privilege.” Offended by this suggestion, he shot off a 1,300-word essay to the Tory, a right-wing campus newspaper. In it, he wrote about his grandfather who fled the Nazis to Siberia, his grandmother who survived…
Silicon Valley Has Lost Its Way, the WIRED headline began. Sure, I’ll go with that. It continued, Can Skateboarding Legend Rodney Mullen Help It? And there it is: the idea that skate culture could energize a languid tech world. Is skateboarding the EpiPen the Valley needs? No. Please no. Not now. The last time skateboarding was a…
A bunch of 12-year-old kids had their hearts broken this week. Jackie Robinson West, a team from Chicago’s South Side, won the U.S. title at the 2014 Little League World Series. They achieved their dream in dramatic fashion. I remember watching their pitcher give up the go-ahead homer against Nevada in the title game and…