When I used to teach The Crucible, I would inevitably have at least one student who was aghast that John Proctor let himself be taken into custody at the end of Act 3 when he knew that he would be executed. “I’d never let that happen to me,” the kid, who is almost always a… Read More Brief Thoughts on Firearms in America
As anyone who has ever taken a high school French class knows, French high school functions differently from American high school. There’s more emphasis placed on a single test in France than there is in the U.S. (here we tend to spread our attention around to about a dozen), and students get part of their… Read More How to Make College Football and Basketball Work: A Series of Options
If you have just one white liberal friend on Facebook, you’ve already seen the image that says while Hillary Rodham was campaigning for Barry Goldwater, Bernie Sanders was a significant activist in the Civil Rights movement, marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. For these same white liberals, it is inconceivable that Bernie Sanders should be… Read More Black Lives Matter and Bernie Sanders
In August 2001, my family and I visited the Statue of Liberty. It was a deeply influential day in my life, mostly because I was very interested in Americana at that point in my life. History interested me, and the symbols of America (such as they were in the eyes of a white boy) were… Read More Arthur S7E10, “April 9th”
When I say that I chose not to key your car, what I mean is that I chose not to key your car. I walk past dozens of cars every day, and I drive past hundreds. I had never before walked past a car with my keys in my hand, thinking to myself, “Should I… Read More To the Person Whose Car, Despite the Several Confederate Flags Which It Bore, I Chose Not to Key
https://twitter.com/mallelis/status/614830229240950784 Like Mallory Ortberg, I just woke up and found out. Bree Newsome, who appears to have skipped the sugary cereal and cartoons this Saturday morning and went straight to acts of marvelous civil disobedience, went up a flagpole and came down a hero. Nikki Haley, who apparently was waiting on more Fortune 500 CEOs… Read More June 26, 2015
“As I wandered through the salon, I played a little game with myself. This man had written his first concerto at the age of four. His first symphony at seven, a full-scale opera at twelve! Did it show? Is talent like that written on the face?” –Salieri, in Amadeus “Take a good look, my dear.… Read More Brief Thoughts on Bob Jones III
On December 1, 1963, Malcolm X gave one of his most famous interviews, in which he stated that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was an example of “chickens coming home to roost.” At the time, Malcolm was still the most visible member of the Nation of Islam, and it was this incident which signaled… Read More Blackfish (2013)
Yesterday, Alex Rodriguez’s suspension was, per ESPN, “cut down” to 162 games. Ian O’Connor, writing for ESPN, talked about Rodriguez’s “legacy” and how it would suffer in the years to come. Anyone with a finger on the pulse of the BBWAA knew already that Rodriguez would never make the Hall of Fame despite having all… Read More Snowden and A-Rod: Partners in “Crime”
Monsters University was greeted the same way that Brave was by critics and moviegoers alike: “It was cute. It would’ve been really good for a Disney movie, but it wasn’t what we expected from a Pixar movie.” The statement is, of course, doubly patronizing, and rather more unfair to one than the other. As hard as it is… Read More The Sorrows of Aging Pixar
Seeing Things Secondhand 