Your week in review, in haiku.
1.
And now we tell you
openly: We were all such
fools for you. Sweet (D)reams.
2.
I feel no need to
comment in any way on
the whole Tide pods thing.
3.
Beltway shut-down? Stand
up Dreamers! Showtime, Bannon?
Fake news crashes hard.
4.
Don’t know why…there’s cash
and legal stuff for you to
sign…Stormy Daniels.
5.
Dreams restored, lives saved,
angel in America,
hope. Mathilde Krim.
Wishing you a dreamy weekend.
On Point
| A top official at AmeriCorps forced to resign after racist comments revealed |
| Carl Higbie, a former Navy Seal and conservative commentator has resigned his post at AmeriCorps, the nation’s volunteer organization working in poor communities. A CNN investigation revealed that Higbie had a history of making racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT comments on the radio starting in 2013. Most of the comments occurred when he was the host of an internet talk show called “Sound of Freedom.” It was not subtle. "Go back to your Muslim shithole and go crap in your hands and bang little boys on Thursday nights," he said. Also, black women think "breeding is a form of government employment." Kudos to CNN for the investigation, which consisted of listening to the words Higbie spoke aloud for years and pointing them out to the world. |
| CNN |
| White supremacists are responsible for the majority of extremist-related deaths |
| According to a new report released by the Anti-Defamation League, white supremacists were responsible for the majority of homicides that occurred during violence related to political extremism in 2017. While the number of extremism-related deaths are low overall, right-wing affiliated people accounted for 20 of the 34, says the ADL. Other groups noted in the report were Islamist extremists, black nationalists, and a variety of “alt-right” groups. The Las Vegas shooting was not included because the motive of the gunman is still unknown. |
| CNN |
| Fans panic as Tracee Ellis Ross wonders if she’s working too much |
| Evidently Ross, the beloved co-star of Blackish is paid less than her male counterpart, Anthony Anderson. With negotiations for the fifth season currently underway, insiders say that Ross is asking for her pay to be brought to parity. Part of the issue is that Anderson has a bigger role on the show, but pay equity experts know how to analyze and bridge any gap, am I right? |
| Madam Noire |
The Woke Leader
| Life in the #MeToo era: What kind of man do you want to be? |
| Writer Ijeoma Oluo gets to the essence of #MeToo queasiness, recounting a conversation with a male friend who disappointed her in an all too familiar way. When commenting on an article that talked about men feeding women alcohol to coax them into sex, “[h]e sat in my living room and told me that he took issue with the essay’s insistence that this behavior was predatory or abusive.” First, I was shocked by his obtuseness; if you’re in Oluo’s living room, you must be close enough to understand her unwavering heart on matters of feminism, boundaries, and truth. But as she unpacks their exchange, she frames a serious question. What kind of man do you want to be? “Men who believe that victory lies not in the enthusiastic consent of their sexual partners, but in the tired, resigned, and often scared surrender of unwilling partners[?]” |
| The Establishment |
| How a romantic notion of military might is keeping the country divided |
| Writer and broadcaster Chris Hayes, working with graphic novelist Mike Dawson, has published a searing comic-essay exploring the toxic brew of nationalism, militarism and America-first sentimentality that erupted after 9/11. They claim it was a return to a ‘good versus evil’ posture after the interminable 90s, a time when “the country faced no overarching enemy for the first time in decades…seemingly possessed of no greater national purpose than making money.” It’s a fascinating argument that wends its way back to our cultural habit of romanticizing World War II and military service. “To reinforce the cult of the soldier – is to reinforce the same set of oppositional culture war clichés that undergird our current political discourse,” they say. Food for thought, particularly if you think about all the issues that lay fallow in the 1990s, without a great enemy to give us purpose. |
| The Nib |
| Lupita Nyong’o will single-handedly save book publishing |
| Well, maybe not. But the Academy Award winner is set to publish her first children’s book, about a 5-year-old Kenyan girl with very dark skin, who goes on an adventure with the help of her mother to understand and claim her beauty. Like her protagonist, Sulwe, which means "star" in Luo, Nyong’o struggled with colorism and her self-image as a child. As an adult, she has become an advocate for representation in Hollywood and beyond. She hopes the story will plant a seed of understanding in 5-7-year olds, a time when “you learn all the things that you spend the rest of your life trying to unlearn.” |
| New York Times |
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