Reading List: December 26, 2016

A few quick jabs for Boxing Day.

Dave Wiegel reports on the cancellation of white supremacist comedy show “World Peace” by Adult Swim. Wiegel’s piece, in The Washington Post, is well worth the read.

Every recap of the events surrounding the cancellation took on the same theme: liberal culture cops portrayed “World Peace” as a Trojan horse for the alt-right, a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state. If a show was endorsed by the men’s rights website Return of Kings, if its star appeared in photos flashing a Nazi salute, it had no place on TV.

MDE’s following reveled in comedy that mocked political correctness, the traditional media and liberals who expected to be sheltered by both. One sketch, “The Wall Show,” had Hyde and co-star Nick Rochefort grilling women about what they would settle for before they turned 30 — i.e., hit the wall. Another was set at a wine party, where Rochefort tripped Hyde’s “field hockey wife” into a glass table, and quickly convinced him that the woman was to blame.

At The Guardian, Simon Hattenstone remembers George Michael, who died on Sunday.

When I’d interviewed him four years earlier, much of the discussion was about death (he felt he was cursed following the death of his mother and boyfriends; even the puppy he bought to replace his dead dog had drowned), and his inability to write. He was haunted by his creative block, though he always insisted he was one chorus away from a purple patch.

George was a complex man. What had been so private in his life (his sexuality) became an open book. What had been so public (his music) became strangely private. He told me he was in the studio writing new songs, but when I asked about them he became coy and embarrassed.

And Andrew Quemere writes about Massachusetts Public Records Law.

The system is a mess and could use streamlining. One solution would be to have the AGO handle appeals and remove the secretary’s office from the process entirely. But this would have drawbacks since, as the late Alan Cote, the former head of the Public Records Division pointed out, the AGO is also responsible for defending state agencies in court. As he put it: “You’re really asking the attorney general to call her client, who she just represented last week or last month, and say, ‘We’re going to take you to court and we’re going to sue you to give this record up.’ It really is a strange setup that we have. The way to solve it is to give [the secretary’s] office more power.” Indeed, removing the AGO from the equation and giving the secretary’s office the power to sue is another option.

See you tomorrow.