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10 Thoughts on What the Popeye’s Chicken Sandwich Craze Says About Black People and Our Misplaced Priorities
1. Zip 2. Zilch 3. Zippo 4. Zero 5. Nada 6. Nathan 7. Nothing 8. Naw 9. Naught 10. Nigga?
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I Will Never Forgive America for Trying to Convince Me That Richard Spencer Is ‘Dapper’
The pathologically un-rewatchable Joker has become the highest-grossing R-rated movie in history, surpassing Deadpool 2. I am not surprised by this, as the audience for depictions of maladjusted and sexually frustrated white men finding catharsis in violence is, well, bottomless. Add a mundane mythos, a late-’70s/early-’80s NYC aesthetic, a refried casserole of important seeming themes…
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If Everything Is a Lynching, Nothing Is a Lynching
I’m reminded, today, a day after Donald Trump called his impeachment inquiry a lynching—and an hour after reading that good ole’ Uncle Joe Biden once made the same analogy about Bill Clinton’s impeachment—of last week’s round of “So, Who Doesn’t Want to Be a Nigger But Wants to Say Nigga?” Specifically, my thoughts are centered…
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The Emperor Has No Jokes: How Come None of Y'all Told Me That Joker Was So Damn Boring?
Mostly, Joker was what I expected it to be. I’d read and heard enough about it in the past several weeks that I knew what to anticipate. I knew it’d be a goulash of loud and important-sounding themes— “mental health!” “economic anxiety!” “capitalism!”—without actually saying much about any of them. Ellipses on a neon billboard.…
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There Are No Good Apples
It was somewhat disconcerting for my cousin, a cop in Washington, D.C., to attend my book event at Politics and Prose in March. Not really for me, since I knew he was coming. But when he walked in towards the end of my talk—in full vested, booted and armed cop gear—the atmosphere shifted, and I…
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Black Man With (Possible? Probable?) Hair Plugs Complains That Black People Care Too Much About Our Hair
Perhaps the most telling aspect of thrift shop fedora repurposed as a strip club daytime shift buffet tray with sentience Jason Whitlock’s continued descent into Take Perdition is that there’s no variance with him. For someone who frequently decries SJW groupthink, he’s as predictable as a burp after a sip of soda. If a black…
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Uber Driver, The Equalizer, a Home Depot Manager and More Things Joe Biden Should Be Instead of President
Joe Biden has settled into the BarcaLounger and Burn Notice phase of his life. Which is fine! My dad is there too, and in a slightly less-imperfect world, they’d be going on adventures to the mall and linen-soaked jazz cruises together. Instead, Joe Biden is running for president of the United States. And, well, here’s…
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I'm Sorry Y'all, But I Just Can't Find a Shit to Give About Donald Trump's Impeachment
So before I write this thing, I have to admit that, right now, I’m about to do a version of a thing that deeply annoys me. Someone will write a thing. (Let’s say about libertarian marsupials.) And the people who care deeply about libertarian marsupials will respond to that thing. Maybe they’ll leave comments on…
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18-Year-Old Brandt Jean’s Hug of Amber Guyger Made Me Sick. But It Ain’t About Me, Though
The conversation about Brandt Jean’s hug of convicted murderer Amber Guyger has mostly cannibalized both the news of the (still surprising) conviction and the (not surprising at all) sentence. The image of the act is both explosive and saccharine; a molotov cocktail dipped in high fructose corn syrup. It’s impossible to see that and not…
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I Just Binged Season 1 of Succession and It Feels Like I Was on a White People Safari
I don’t remember exactly what Kotaku staff editor Natalie Degraffinried said a month ago when attempting to convince me to watch Succession. But knowing Natalie, I’m certain it involved some combination of “these white people” and “wild.” What I do remember was that she was the fourth or fifth black person in the last two…
