Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is the quintessential Star Wars prequel. Finally, after stalling for two movies, George Lucas delivers on all his promises. However, in true prequel fashion, he does it in a wildly uneven way. Welcome to our Star Wars movie rewatch! Basically, Revenge of the Sith is the movie…
“These girls have to deal with men in their lives every day…they don’t listen to them, they don’t even ask them what they want. All we have to do is ask them what they want. And when they tell you, it’s a beautiful thing, man. We’re like healers or something.” — Donald Glover in Magic Mike XXL There’s…
This year, I’m spending Thanksgiving in Kuwait. The House of Sabah requested my presence for advice on Syria, Turkey, and the logistics of a “Marquis De Sade”-themed dinner event. However, I’ve had my fair share of Turkey Days. Since my column in Cafe usually concerns the hard and cold business of war, I thought I’d…
A suspect is in police custody following an hours-long shooting standoff at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, where at least one police officer and two civilians were killed Friday. “The perpetrator is in custody,” Mayor John Suthers declared just after 5 p.m. Mountain time — more than five hours after an active shooter…
Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea Clinton embrace as they attend the 2015 meeting of Clinton Global Initiative University in Coral Gables, Florida.Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images Politico’s chief White House correspondent Mike Allen, one’s of the publication’s most prominent ambassadors, has been caught committing a serious journalistic faux-pas. On Tuesday, Gawker, which has…
Submitted by Justin King via The Fifth Column, Those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it, those that do understand are doomed to watch in horror while everyone else repeats it. The run up to overthrowing President Assad of Syria was occurring before The Fifth Column existed. I covered it when I wrote daily…
Netflix’s Jessica Jones is one of the most complex treatments of agency in the wake of victimhood that the small screen has seen yet seen. A grim show, shadowy and hopeless and unlikeable, it’s finally less about trauma than it is a murky contest between revenge and rehabilitation and the term that floats between those:…
Paris is once again in tumult on the eve of the COP21 climate summit, a series of negotiations that activists hope will achieve significant strides where past gatherings have failed. On Sunday, protesters clashed with police in the Place de la Republique as thousands more marched in the city to demand meaningful political action on…
After what was likely a heated debate around the editorial desk, The New York Times decided to rework a story that described Robert Lewis Dear, the man who killed three people and wounded nine others at a Planned Parenthood clinic on Friday, as “gentle.” A story published on Saturday about Dear’s background used that adjective,…
The New York Times this morning has an op-ed by Al Jazeera host Mehdi Hasan, whom I regard as one of the world’s best television journalists. Its primary point is one that has been recently promoted by others such as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes: namely, that in the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush diligently avoided,…