James Watson is a Startling Douchebag

And the world has finally woken up to that fact. The Double Helix pissed me off more than almost any other book I’ve read. (Still champion: Bobos in Paradise. Die in a fire, David Brooks.) The whole story of Watson’s life is like if Tucker Max won a Nobel Prize. He’s a terrible person with one lucky break, and he somehow coasted off of it for the rest of his life. And this particular situation is one of those weird things where outrageous misogyny is somehow acceptable, but outrageous misogyny combined with racism pushes it over the edge.

Apparently I’m in a bad mood today.

Why is this Kidnapped Girl “British”?

So this morning I was doing some research on the story about the kidnapped three-year-old in Nigeria. Something that strikes me as odd is that this girl is referred to in most of the stories as a “UK girl” or “British girl,” yet according to the stories, she seems to have been born in Nigeria, her British father has lived there for ten years, and her mother is Nigerian. So how is she universally agreed to be British? My guess is that, in this case, “British” is code for “at least partially white,” which is also why this story is getting worldwide attention. Two other toddlers have been kidnapped in the Niger Delta in the past month, but they were “Nigerian” toddlers, so they don’t get the attention that poor Margaret Hill does.