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.

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

Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Edith Piaf: they're all still practically household names.

The rom-com's worshipping of power and wealth comes with a gender twist.

Why should prostitution be illegal? And, more specifically why should male prostitution be illegal?

Their sexuality traps and destroys male innocence, as they grad hold, by the penis- the better to lead him to castration. Make no mistake that castration is greeted with fear, terror, and disgust—but also with glee. Women as super villains allow their characters to be super powerful; a force for evil is at least a force. In a media landscape where women are often rendered secondary, invisible, and passive, the femme fatale, in her icy violence, seizes female agency along with the phallus that she so efficiently cuts off.

Is the gender of the philosopher a marginal curiosity—or is it more central?

Irritation is the way of all flesh. The question is, if you're going to be annoyed for all of eternity, who do you want to be doing the annoying?

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

Art without politics actually results in a sweeping Puritanism. For art to have power, it needs to engage with power, with politics.