Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Ira Madison III discusses Moonlight and the black male queer narrative on MTV this week. Photo: MTV
Moonlight and the Preservation of Black Manhood, by Ira Madison III, MTV
“The first time I became aware that it was dangerous to be gay as a black man was when watching a news broadcast. In my hometown of Milwaukee, I lived perilously close to the dwelling of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The knowledge that he killed young men who were not white, young men whom he also had sexual relationships with, was enough to scare me from admitting my own sexual attractions. And then my uncle died.”
Finding Rosemary: In search of the unsung hero who invented Kiwi Onion Dip, by Hayden Donnell, The Spinoff
“Look to your own history. How many of your defining culinary experiences do you owe to Rosemary Dempsey? Your most memorable birthday: the dip was there. Your wedding: the dip was there. Your funeral: the dip will be there. Kiwi Onion Dip has been with us through the best of times and worst of times. While people fail, the dip stays true.”
I Was a Muslim in Trump's White House, by Rumana Ahmed, The Atlantic
“The days I spent in the Trump White House were strange, appalling and disturbing. As one staffer serving since the Reagan administration said, “This place has been turned upside down. It’s chaos. I’ve never witnessed anything like it.” This was not typical Republican leadership, or even that of a businessman. It was a chaotic attempt at authoritarianism––legally questionable executive orders, accusations of the press being “fake,” peddling countless lies as “alternative facts,” and assertions by White House surrogates that the president’s national security authority would “not be questioned.”’
On the Milo Bus With the Lost Boys of America’s New Right, by Laurie Penny, Pacific Standard
“It seems perfunctory to point out the hypocrisy of building a movement and a career on the back of insulting people — Muslims, migrants, women, people of color — while nursing a hair-trigger sensitivity to any personal attack you haven’t pre-approved. That hypocrisy, though, does not appear self-evident to anyone within this movement, because a fundamental tenet of far-right pro-trolling is that it’s only other people’s feelings that are frivolous.”
Killer, kleptocrat, genius, spy: the many myths of Vladimir Putin, by Keith Gessen, The Guardian
“At no time in history have more people with less knowledge, and greater outrage, opined on the subject of Russia’s president. You might say that the reports of Trump’s golden showers in a Moscow hotel room have consecrated a golden age – for Putinology.”
Recapping the 1997 Academy Awards, by Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
“Imagine having your category presented by Beavis and Butthead, and then you actually win and have to act like you haven’t just endured some indignity? Terrible! People laugh, though. Back then, Beavis and Butthead were the height of comedy. Anyway, here’s a reminder that Butthead once said, “The Ghost and the Darkness.” Which wins!”
