Noah Berlatsky

Action movies don't usually bother much with romance. The trailer for The Transporter: Refueled certainly doesn't. The hero is cool — sexy women, plural, throw themselves at him, or at least stand near him and things blow up; there are fights and revenge and high production values. Romance is, at best, a secondary concern.

"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.

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

As a parent, you tend to assume that you have some say in forming your child's mental landscape. Then Santa comes along.

Talking about race can get you into a lot of trouble . . . especially if you don't have a lot of class power or status.

Hating sex workers—and treating them as things—can get you money.

Did the classic Adam West Batman show strike a blow (Kerwhap!) for feminism?

Illicit passions aren't less enjoyable because they're illicit. Quite the contrary.

If you want America to relearn how to hate white Jews, the quickest way to do that is to associate them with black people.

Writing can be hard and uncomfortable and precarious—but it's hard and uncomfortable and precarious in the way that any job can be.