I’m off work today and on a library computer (damn AT&T is taking forever to set up at my house), so it’s a short one this week. Feel free to post more in the comments!

The Good:

Kartina Richardson, a great film critic, uses Boardwalk Empire as a great example of how to tackle race in historical art. Mad Men, you’ve run out of excuses. (Ms. Richardson blogs at http://mirrorfilm.org.)

A California judge imposed a ban on “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The Bad:

Oh but Obama didn’t mean it, apparently, when he said he was for ending “don’t ask, don’t tell,” because he’s ok with the Justice Department challenging Judge Philips’ ban.

Glenn Greenwald, bless ‘im, takes on Andrew Sullivan’s absurd defense of widespread, secret, and presidentially approved assassinations. Do people really want to live on the show 24? (Via.)

And of course there has been a lot in the past few weeks about this sudden increase in children and teens committing suicide after being bullied, specifically being bullied for being gay or being perceived as gay. I don’t know that it’s an actual increase so much as people are paying a little more attention, but regardless, we need to be paying attention. We need to have strong anti-bullying policies that actually get enacted. We need to reject this BS notion that teachers can have a “neutral” stance on whether kids can torment one another — there is no neutral stance when kids are in danger. We need to stop teaching kids that hate is ok.

The Silly

Sessily sent me the link to this great flowchart of female tropes in movies/TV. Tell me someone who doesn’t fit on here!