Noah Berlatsky

"The look on Miley's face during Nicki Minaj's savage, expletive-laden rant says it all," Salon tweeted the day after the VMAs. Less than 140 characters, but still enough to link a black woman to a longstanding racial slur.

Sex and bodies don't clarify gender; they confuse the issue.

With the prospect of another Bush/Clinton presidential contest looming as ominously as Donald Trump's hairpiece, the word "dynasty" seems to be frothing off of many a pundit's keyboard. "Clinton, Bush struggle to shed dynasty labels," a Washington Post headline declared.

For once, central character Andrew's flaws are tied up in the fact that he is—wait for it—fundamentally decent.

In the U.S., anti-Semitism is universally condemned. This means that, effectively, anti-Semitism doesn't exist.

David Ress' Aphexswift is genius precisely because it's so unlikely.

For a second, it looked like the rabid hordes of gamergaters would be joined by metalheads. But #metalgate was never meant to be.

Country music is an overwhelmingly heterosexual endeavor. The LGBTQ community certainly listen to, and perform, country, but in terms of lyrical content and themes, country has been focused on male-female romantic love.

As a white woman, Swift can afford to celebrate carelessness. Beyoncé, though, knows that even her casualness has to be perfect.

Who is memorialized in death has everything to do with race, class . . . and who you were in life.