The Grammys Are Built on a Delusion by Spencer Kornhaber

It’s been ages since I cared about the selections made for the Grammy Awards (my obsessive tendencies are directed at a different showbiz trophy), but even I can acknowledge that there’s something pretty unseemly and embarrassing about the voters behind music’s top honor continually bypassing Beyoncé in the Album of the Year category in favor of white-skinned and white-bread mediocrities. Following this year’s ceremony, Beyoncé has won more Grammys than any other individual, practically none of them outside of R&B categories. Spencer Kornhaber writes about what the confined nature of the veneration communicates and how it reflects damning problems with the music industry as a whole. This article is published by The Atlantic.

Biden’s Abortion Aside by Jessica Valenti

During the year or so sine the Supreme Court of the United States made it abundantly clear that the half-century settled and previously reaffirmed precedent of Roe v. Wade was as discardable to them as a saturated paper towel, Jessica Valenti has been a reliable source of informed rage on the subject. In this article, she furiously addresses President Joe Biden’s decision to make no more than a glancing reference to abortion in this week’s State of the Union address, an especially baffling tactic given the the consensus view that reproductive rights was a significant factor in the Democratic party over-performing in the midterm elections (and they sure as hell were happy to expound on the issue when they were fundraising for that election). This piece is published at Valenti’s own newsletter, which is required reading.