The Academy Awards are a cultural phenomenon. . . . They are not so much a barometer of quality but a barometer of what the many-faced mirror of the film business is interested in, and according to the last couple of years, it is interested in emphasizing the status quo.

“Derailment and posturing from the Right will meet with self-sabotaging and posturing on the Left, and both sides will shadowbox over gun control while favoring magical thinking over an acknowledgement of the horizon of possibility.”

I am jealous of Paris and of Charlie Hebdo. The world mourns their losses and pledges to defend their freedoms, as it should. I only wish that St Louis . . . could have inspired a more perceptive cartoon to match its homegrown hybrid of Hebdo-Hoosier satire.

There is a WORLD of difference between ‘I know you want it,’ and ‘I know you wanted it.’ If when Beyoncé or Rihanna say ‘I know you want it,’ they’re seen as strong, empowered, independent sexual beings rightfully expressing their desires, why, the second a man says it, do we equate him to a rapist?

But more importantly, it’s our fault — the audience — for falling into the trap so obviously set for us: rather than taking time and thinking critically about the images we are delivered on a mass scale, we’ve accepted that a knee-jerky, short-form response is more suitable and more powerful.