This is a great article.

I mean, it kind of is? Obviously Dostoyevsky wasn’t condoning murder by depicting it. But his deeper message was that Western-derived liberal individualism is bad, and that it leads people to engage in immoral behavior like murder. Whereas more traditionally Russian ideas about hierarchy and living within externally…

That’s a really good analogy, although I have to imagine Lorne is responsible for a lot less CTE from unprotected chair shots.

Not “no” CTE from unprotected chair shots, just less.

It seems that New York does not have a rape by fraud statute, and there have been at least a couple of published cases where a defendant was acquitted under that theory. So in descriptive terms, Paul the Wine Guy did not commit a crime.

It’s interesting though, because the main place rape-by-fraud tends to come up is…

I had this thought too, but the rapper spells it “Horovitz.”

I don’t think we’ll be seeing a M*A*S*H or I Love Lucy reboot, either.

That’s a funny way to spell Newsradio.

If the movie stinks, just don’t go!

If all you have is spice, you die.

I appreciate how non-white this casting is! Sure, the books consciously mixed up real-world ethnicities and cultures, but I wasn’t actually expecting that to come through on a tv adaptation. Pleasant to have my cynicism refuted.

I dunno, on the one hand I’m definitely going to watch this.  But on the other hand, given Fey’s poorly concealed contempt for everywhere that’s not New York, I’m hesitant to think she’ll do a good job with the LA-specific stuff.

There have been a shitload of Sun Wukong adaptations lately (some of them very good!) in China, I wonder if that’s the kind of “domestic equivalent of superheroes” that you’re talking about? Anyway Sun Wukong is in the public domain, Marvel should just have him start hanging out with Thor or something.

Cluster bombs?  Corn syrup?  Thinly disguised imperialist propaganda?

I disagree with this. Constraints on executive power aren’t toothless - they’re backed by Congress’ powers. The power of the purse, the power to declare war, the power to withhold consent from executive nominees, the power to impeach. The real problem is, Congress has deliberately given those powers away.

In a…

I don’t think it makes sense to cite Iraq as an example of English moral superiority over the US - among many reasons why he was shit, Tony Blair was an enthusiastic lapdog in that matter. Vietnam is also pretty iffy - while the US was clearly more involved there, there were British commandos and RAF bombing missions…

Here is my reading of Eleanor: the flashbacks to Earth never show her saying or doing anything that demonstrates an attraction to women.  She only does that after she dies.  I think she was just lowkey closeted on Earth, but is now expressing her sexuality more openly now that she’s dead (as part of/a parallel to her…

I don’t think “be fucking grateful that they are giving you a small chance to escape the death and poverty in the south” makes sense here. A lot (probably most?) of that death and poverty is directly or indirectly attributable to the US and its actions over the past couple centuries. There wouldn’t be cartels if the…

But I absolutely despise the incompetence of a critic who reviews themselves, which is what “boring” means. Being bored is a feeling, and criticism (honest criticism at least,) is about explaining why you think you’re bored.

I think maybe we’re arguing past each other a bit - I’m not saying that art criticism should be flattened into something like “this has bad politics, so it should be rejected.” Nor am I saying that the political reading should usually be the main lens that we use to look at a piece of art. Rather, my argument is that…

I never got this perspective. It seems to me that the point of art is to resonate with a viewer in some way, and so the point of art criticism is to examine how the art does or doesn’t accomplish that. A modern viewer of this movie/reader of this piece is going to have modern politics, and for better or worse that’s…