1. Revisiting how I worked for months last year on a piece The New Yorker commissioned about seeing my Black queer therapist. They ultimately said it wasn't right for them and paid me a kill fee. I later published it for them.us...
them.us/story/why-i-se… 2. It is interesting to reflect on how my piece—in which I was asked to personally dig deep into my therapy & spent dozens of hours trying to address my editor's notes—wasn't ultimately right for The New Yorker.

But Steve Bannon WAS right for the New Yorker in Remnick's eyes.

It is increasingly obvious that a good chunk of our last year at NYU is going to be taken up by this case—it’s in the air at Washington Square & on everyone’s mind as campus comes back to life. @KathaPollitt’s @thenation column has a few gems...thenation.com/article/power-… @KathaPollitt @thenation First, this: That academics thought they were above leaking—people who make our livings reading documents and who usually hail the likes of Chelsea Manning!—speaks to a feeling of exceptionalism not unlike Hollywood & Harvey Weinstein & the US govt protecting violent secrets

1. THREAD I wanna share with y'all what it's like as a Black scholar to try to point things out to white ppl. @prose4321 wrote a piece in the NYT today which incorrectly said the crisis of AIDS in America was over. @Blaqueer & tried to point some thing out.

It didn't go well. 2. Dr. @Blaqueer (a PhD who has also done important clinical work in the field) & I tried to point out how 1/2 Black gay men become HIV+. @Blaqueer pointed out methodological responses, quite kindly.

The response "fuck off."

Jimmy Carter remains the one & only interesting post president from a social justice angle. Obama would have turned Habitat for Humanity into an app or a "public-private partnership with Home Depot, designed to foster innovation & inspire for the next generation of homeowners!" He'd start a student worker program by placing Starbucks in charter school cafeterias, "staffed, and managed, by students, to inspire the next generation of baristas and foster innovation in management!"

Disinterested parties in the slaughter in Gaza should pay attention for its horror but also out of self interest: Israel used drones to gas people. Colonial powers (US, Apartheid SA, Israel) test weapons of war on colonial subjects before bringing them home to the metropole. Drones are sold/used/propagated in Israel as weapons of war while they're being sold as toys & as deliverers of consumer goods in the U.S. But watch how (US backed) Israel is using them on Palestinians: drones will be used on rebellious PoC in the US soon enough.

I'm really disappointed in how many of y'all are so uncritical of seeing Brooklyn Nine-Nine for what it is: an interracial police buddy comedy meant to make white & Black cops seem like your friendly neighborhood jokesters (& to culturally gentrify "Brooklyn" as sitcom fodder). I've only seen it a couple of times, but damn: that was some GOOD propaganda. The messages I took out of it:

— White cops like Andy Samberg & Chelsea Peretti are funny & kind!
— Black cops like Andre Braugher & Terry Crews are funny!

Why can't we all get along just like them?

Historians are important to keep one's head in the face of hagiography. I was already angry about Barbara Bush's racism getting a pass when Prof. @nomimurphy posted these wise insights into the harms she, the Bushes & their veneer of respectability waged on HIV/AIDS. I find it weird Barbara Bush is being hailed for "literacy" when she did nothing to address racial inequality in literacy. (This news is parroted by a news media which often seems to have little sense of historic literacy.)

BTW that BuzzFeed piece on Grindr selling users' HIV status to 3rd parties is by @azeen & @sricola.

As we often are, queers are the canary in the tech/health coal mine.

What's a world where Facebook/Google could sell *your* health info look like? buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi… This is really important work @azeen @ @sricola which brings up a lot of important Qs about the stigma of HIV (which we have been covering by way of the #TigerMandingo/Michael Johnson case at BuzzFeed for 4 years) and about the merging of health, tech & the state broadly.

Bodies are socially constructed: "The new organ, he explained, was a thin layer of dense connective tissue throughout the body, sandwiched just under our skin and within the middle layer of every visceral organ." thedailybeast.com/meet-the-inter… For those asking, what do I mean that bodies are socially constructed? Not that bodies don't exist only as ideas, but how we imagine them to exist is socially constructed.

What IS an organ?

How many organs are there?

Why am I a body or why do I have a body?

Most of the NYT columnists are not particularly smart, have no idea what's going on in the world, and are irresponsible shepherds of the power of their platforms & should turn their platforms over to people who are smart and do know what's going on in the world. Most (not all) of the NYT columnists operate from a similar place of white supremacy as Trump does when—despite having access to so much information—they willfully remain ignorant. Just because they can. Because, white men.

1. THREAD—Jamie Schwartz and Leonard Lopate suspended at WNYC, after Hockenberry out. I have important new context to report presently. 2. Here's the context you need to know about Schwartz and Lopate.

Yesterday, employees of WNYC confronted management about the Takeaway, the sidelining of people of color/women/women of color.

After @lwalker's on air stint with @BrianLehrer. WNYC employees weren't happy.

Some thoughts on WNYC, the Takeaway and John Hockenberry...

First of all, I love Adaora Udoji, @farai Celeste Headlee.

AND I AM LIVID–LIVID!!!!–about WNYC's complicity and shame in the sexual harassment and racism the women and people of color employees have endured. This story is OUTRAGEOUS.

The Takeaway was supposed to address WNYC's all white programming. Years ago, I applied for jobs in the opening crew. Never got one, but was a guest on the show many times.

Somehow, the diversity show became about one white man: JOHN HOCKNEBERRY.

A few words on my history with Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegone and A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION which may surprise you...

I grew up LOVING A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. I grew up listening to it bc my parents were from the Midwest, it spoke to our protestant background (especially on the white side of my family), and I LOVED radio.

And for years, my favorite way to spend Saturday nights was cooking dinner to A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION.

But...