Monday Morning Linkage

22 April 2013, 0500 EDT

The_10_Greatest_Slacker_Duos_On_Film_08Good morning…  These aren’t the linkages you’re looking for…

  • Owen Jones reviews the hierarchy of death in the wake of the Boston bombing or what Judith Butler, in Frames of War, might call (un)grievable lives.
  • Deepak Sarma at Racialicious writes about “Being Brown After the Boston Bomb Blast.” (Hey the dudes who did it turned out to be white.  Brown and black people can chill now right? right?? Those false early reports about “dark skinned” suspects were just an honest mistake… Yeah, let’s move on…)
  • Tom Scocca at the Gawker asks, “Is the New York Post Edited by a Bigoted Drunk who Fucks Pigs?”  (I dunno… but while we’re talking about racism in America…)
  • Why does the one with the most melanin always seem to die first in American horror flicks?  And if that’s the case, why are these movies apparently popular with minority audiences?  Joshua Alston at the Feminist Wire explains why the American horror genre typified by Evil Dead is a race-reversed minstrel show.
  • Speaking of minstrel shows, has the desi coolie evolved into the nebbish and accentless “American” who fills the minority quota on ‘Merican tee-vee? Is “the most successful minority in US history” the beneficiary of pervasive anti-black racism?  Have DuBois’ fears of Indians’ allegiances come true? And is this new found “acceptance” being translated into refashioning US foreign policy?  In other words is IACPA becoming the new AIPAC? (Not quite…)
  • Spencer Kornhaber trashes Tom Cruise’s latest sci-fi flick, Oblivionfor failing to ask any serious moral or ethical questions, particularly about weaponized drone warfare.  (By the way, when did the Pakistani tribal belt become our vision of the future?)
  • Nobel Prize winner, Muhammed Yunnus, asks why there isn’t social fiction to imagine a ways to end poverty.  (Isn’t that what micro-credit was?)
  • Anil Kapoor will be the new Jack Bauer in the Indian version of 24.  (Maybe instead of chasing terrorists they could chase a more immediate threat to human security in India: gang and child rapists?)


Image: Harold & Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay
Source: CL Atlanta