Link Salad, the Marginalized Edition
-- When Women Become Men at Wellesley - Ruth Padawer, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 15, 2014
"In some ways, students are already having that conversation, though perhaps indirectly. Timothy ended up easily winning his seat on the student government last spring, capturing two-thirds of the votes. Given that 85 percent of the student body cast ballots in that race, his victory suggests most students think that transmasculine students - and transmasculine leaders - belong at Wellesley."
-- The Other Side of the River - Stephen Knox, SBNation, Oct. 15, 2014
"But the real fruit of Rebirth can be seen and heard in the jokes and the easy banter back and forth between staff and students. Growing up in East St. Louis, the kids have had little to no contact with white people, just as many whites, have little interaction with blacks. Yet in a very short while, the students in the Rebirth program have grown to where they stop by just to say hello to Fast and the others on the way to summer football practice. And in the process, Fast has found himself a new place to call home."
-- The Shonda Rhimes Revolution: Finishing What ‘The Sopranos’ Started - Mark Harris, Grantland, Oct. 16, 2014
"Should we see (or hear) Rhimes when we look at her characters? I’m sensitive to the glib offense of assuming that, as NPR’s Linda Holmes wrote dryly, “everything women write is really journaling.” But male show creators transmute their best and worst qualities into their protagonists all the time. Josh Lyman, swinging through the West Wing and charming the ladies with banter, always felt like Aaron Sorkin’s self-idealizing surrogate, just as Toby Ziegler was his leave-me-alone-I’ll-do-it-myself dark mirror. The Don Draper who thinks his subordinates can’t ever quite nail it the way he can surely possesses some of Matt Weiner’s DNA. And there’s a lot of David Simon in Jimmy McNulty and every other know-it-all bastard on The Wire who is better and wiser than the morally stunted bosses who get in his way. It’s no insult to suggest that Rhimes’s many years as one of the only women of color in her field, rising to the top by learning to handle dolts who thought they knew better without alienating them, feels like it informs her characters (especially Miranda and Olivia, who must manage both up and down)."
-- Steve Cunningham: Fighting for Her Life - Jordan Ritter Conn, Grantland, Oct. 16, 2014
"Steve Cunningham never should have gone ahead with that fight. Not then, the first week of April. His opponent, Amir Mansour, was from Delaware but trains in Philadelphia. Cunningham hated fighting other Philly guys. Their city was supposed to conquer the boxing world, not get mired in civil wars. Also, Mansour was a true heavyweight who would enter the ring close to 20 pounds heavier than Cunningham, who was 37 at the time and had spent most of his career below 200 pounds at cruiserweight. Since coming up, Cunningham had struggled to keep the weight on. He’d been the smaller man in every bout. He’d taken hits - brutal, dirty hits, the kind of blows no cruiser can deliver. He’d lost. Twice. And now, here in Philly, he was about to lose again."
"In some ways, students are already having that conversation, though perhaps indirectly. Timothy ended up easily winning his seat on the student government last spring, capturing two-thirds of the votes. Given that 85 percent of the student body cast ballots in that race, his victory suggests most students think that transmasculine students - and transmasculine leaders - belong at Wellesley."
-- The Other Side of the River - Stephen Knox, SBNation, Oct. 15, 2014
"But the real fruit of Rebirth can be seen and heard in the jokes and the easy banter back and forth between staff and students. Growing up in East St. Louis, the kids have had little to no contact with white people, just as many whites, have little interaction with blacks. Yet in a very short while, the students in the Rebirth program have grown to where they stop by just to say hello to Fast and the others on the way to summer football practice. And in the process, Fast has found himself a new place to call home."
-- The Shonda Rhimes Revolution: Finishing What ‘The Sopranos’ Started - Mark Harris, Grantland, Oct. 16, 2014
"Should we see (or hear) Rhimes when we look at her characters? I’m sensitive to the glib offense of assuming that, as NPR’s Linda Holmes wrote dryly, “everything women write is really journaling.” But male show creators transmute their best and worst qualities into their protagonists all the time. Josh Lyman, swinging through the West Wing and charming the ladies with banter, always felt like Aaron Sorkin’s self-idealizing surrogate, just as Toby Ziegler was his leave-me-alone-I’ll-do-it-myself dark mirror. The Don Draper who thinks his subordinates can’t ever quite nail it the way he can surely possesses some of Matt Weiner’s DNA. And there’s a lot of David Simon in Jimmy McNulty and every other know-it-all bastard on The Wire who is better and wiser than the morally stunted bosses who get in his way. It’s no insult to suggest that Rhimes’s many years as one of the only women of color in her field, rising to the top by learning to handle dolts who thought they knew better without alienating them, feels like it informs her characters (especially Miranda and Olivia, who must manage both up and down)."
-- Steve Cunningham: Fighting for Her Life - Jordan Ritter Conn, Grantland, Oct. 16, 2014
"Steve Cunningham never should have gone ahead with that fight. Not then, the first week of April. His opponent, Amir Mansour, was from Delaware but trains in Philadelphia. Cunningham hated fighting other Philly guys. Their city was supposed to conquer the boxing world, not get mired in civil wars. Also, Mansour was a true heavyweight who would enter the ring close to 20 pounds heavier than Cunningham, who was 37 at the time and had spent most of his career below 200 pounds at cruiserweight. Since coming up, Cunningham had struggled to keep the weight on. He’d been the smaller man in every bout. He’d taken hits - brutal, dirty hits, the kind of blows no cruiser can deliver. He’d lost. Twice. And now, here in Philly, he was about to lose again."