OH MY GOD NO ONE IS SAYING MUSTAINE DOESN'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXPRESS HIS OPINION BUT HIS OPINION IS TRASH AND WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO SAY SO jesus christ.

I would say it's fair for a critic to say that racism and xenophobia are bad full-stop. It's pretty easy to find more elaborate critiques elsewhere. Look, imo, this isn't a good piece of music writing. But why its bad are more or less unrelated to what people have been objecting to in the comments. This is a review of…

Foreigner is a very slippery term with a lot of connotations (as in, foreign from *what*? Our country? Culture? Race?).

Okay, who is he referring to, in your reading?

Are you not keeping up with the refugee crisis? How are Middle Eastern refugees pouring into Europe to seek asylum there and in the US not referenced? This sounds exactly like what people were saying after the San Bernardino shooting, saying that America should lock down its border. It sounds like Donald Trump calling…

Brazilians aren't from the Middle East, breh.

Copied from my reply to critical_thinker, I hope you don't mind, although You Can't Stop Thabeet is correct in a way that hardly merits anything more:

Let's assume that the reviewer is basically intelligent. Given that, either the lyrics are xenophobic, or they are so poorly modulated that it's hard for a basically intelligent audience to know if they are xenophobic. That sort of irony is phony-baloney, politically, allowing the widest possible appeal across the…

I agree that the relationship of politics and art is knotty, and I definitely consume a ton of art that is, uh, "problematic" (what art isn't?). But I try to understand how/why it's problematic, and people seem weirdly resistant to that, as though coming to the conclusion that something is problematic means that you…

"The Threat is Real" with the lyrics, "The messiah or mass murderer / No controlling who comes through the door" is very racist.

He wrote a whole review! He clearly states the quality of the music and his ambivalent reception due in part to its politics. What exactly do you want?

People are really leaping to criticize this review for not reviewing the music? The lyrics are there! J.J. didn't just make a bunch of stuff up. And isn't racism bad? I always sort of thought so, maybe I'm wrong.

Why are politics less germane to artistic quality than its "aesthetics"? I don't think these are separable factors, and I don't see why racist bullshit isn't something that can make music horrible. It's not a matter of "objectivity," because the xenophobia is as objectively there as the guitar. Politics is not…

Brody was definitely including Hateful Eight, and its reviews in general have been deeply ambivalent. Nobody really seems to have a good handle on it.

Richard Brody said that this was the best Western of the season, although given its competition i don't know how good that really means. The Western revival has produced its first total clunker (Diablo) but nothing has been particularly widely praised, except the doc Western.

The only thing that bugged me about this episode was that Jess's cup of herbal tea was clearly empty. I don't understand why tv shows and movies don't put like water or something in cups. Every coffee cup on Gilmore Girls was so empty.

Whoa they're remaking Sleepless Night? I really dug that movie. Weird choice for a remake though.

That's the problem with being a copyeditor: I don't actually care that much, but I'm so used to professional compulsion that I can't un-wince until I correct it. SORRY DOWD!

Bought pants.

"less tickets"