Culture/Society

After heavily promoting on Tuesday the Ohio ballot initiative to legalize marijuana before the polls closed, NBC Nightly News offered an about-face of sorts on Wednesday and refused to acknowledge the fact that measure was soundly defeated. Hailing it as “high stakes” in the Buckeye State, anchor Lester Holt hyped in a tease on Tuesday’s newscast: “Legalized pot on the ballot tonight in the…

In what was already a big night for conservatives on Tuesday with election wins in Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, and Virginia to name a few, voters in Houston, Texas overwhelmingly rejected a pro-transgender measure dubbed “the bathroom ordinance.” Not surprisingly, that did not sit well with The New York Times as it lamented the loss for the “equal rights ordinance.”  

NBC's Today on Monday aired a sensationalistic report on the upcoming release of two books that are "exposing alleged corruption and infighting within the Catholic Church." Keir Simmons boosted a statement from one of the publishers involved, who claimed that "if the Vatican were a company they'd be in Chapter 11, and heads would be rolling from all the mistrust and financial abuses." Simmons…

Tuesday at Salon.com, Sarah Burris claimed that Stephen Colbert gave a "bombshell endorsement" to Black Lives Matter, when he talked about the “excessive force by police departments across the country.” In reality, Colbert gave a moderate response to the recent controversy. Salon evoked imagery and a message that Colbert never addressed in the segment. Colbert offered only comedic pandering on…

Tuesday's CBS This Morning zeroed in on "how a new generation of couples relies on the buddy system for the big day" of their weddings. Gayle King pointed out how a "decline in religious beliefs is changing the way many Americans are getting married these days." Correspondent Adriana Diaz spotlighted how "more and more Americans are asking their friends to do the honors" due to the significant…

CNN refreshingly spotlighted a teen model with Down syndrome on Wednesday's New Day. Dr. Sanjay Gupta reported that 18-year-old Madeline Stuart's "modeling career is taking off. She walked the runway during Europe Fashion Week this fall, and won a contract to be the face of lipstick company Glossigirl — all of which her mom says is giving hope to others with disabilities." Down syndrome people…

Grantland was one of ESPN’s affinity sites along with Nate Silver’s Five-Thirty-Eight, and the still yet to be fully developed Undefeated. But though we bury Grantland today, it actually died months ago when ESPN parted ways with its inspiration Bill Simmons.

A group of purported Catholic professors wrote an open letter on October 26, 2015 to "the editor of the New York Times" decrying a October 18 op-ed item about the Catholic Church by a conservative writer Ross Douthat. The letter, which was initially signed by 25 academics from Georgetown University, Villanova University, and other schools (the list has grown in subsequent days), claimed that…

What’s scarier than ghosts and vampires visiting your door this Halloween? How about liberals lecturing you about how offensive your “cultural appropriating” costume is?  

Campfires and strip clubs go hand in hand for an upcoming R-rated Boy Scout movie, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. This Friday “the Scouts honor” image will get an upgrade as three boys put their leadership to the test while fending off blood sucking zombies accompanied by a female stripper clad in daisy dukes and see-through shirt. The real Boy Scouts aren’t exactly happy campers about…

Chris Hayes made an inadvertent admission about the morality of abortion on his All In program on MSNBC on Monday. Hayes contended that in the case of Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, "It's very hard to get through an interview in which he doesn't compare something either to the Third Reich and Hitler or abortion, right? — the sort of, like, touchstones of human evil." The liberal…

In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, the cover story by Daniel Engber focused on the recent criminal proceedings involving Anna Stubblefield. Stubblefield has been charged of sexually assaulting a African-American disabled man. Anna Stubblefield, a philosophy professor at Rutgers, was accused of assaulting D.J., a severely disabled man she assisted with “facilitated communication.”

It’s a tall order for a black politician to become popular with “the de facto largest white identity organization in the United States,” but DeVega argues that Carson has pulled it off by “betray[ing] the Black Freedom Struggle and assault[ing] the truth in all its forms.” (As you probably assumed, “white identity organization” is DeVega’s description of the Republican party.) In a Salon article…

On Saturday, MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry scolded guest Alfonso Aguilar for using the term “hard worker” because it’s demeaning to slaves and working women: "I want us to be super careful when we use the language 'hard worker,' because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like."