"Who Is This Objectively Badass Attorney Running The Freddie Gray Investigation?"

Headline at a Huffpo article that's teased on the Huffpro front page with "BALTIMORE BADASS":



If the question is the abuse of government power in the form of the police, the answer is not mindless cheerleading for another form of government power, a prosecutor.

Objectively Badass...

Yeah, let's be objective. Let's be level-headed and demand that all government power � police, prosecutors, the lot � operate within the bounds of the law.

My criticism is of the headline and the front-page teaser. The article doesn't contain the word "badass" or present Marilyn Mosby as anything that warrants the use of the word "badass." She herself is saying appropriate things like "I uphold the law" and "At the end of the day I�m here to do my job. It�s about applying justice fairly and equally to those with and without a badge. Did I treat this case any different in the pursuit of justice? No, I didn�t."

I wonder what pushed Huffpo to use that word "badass." I doubt if the word would have been chosen if Mosby were a white male.

"Charles Barkley Says Paying NCAA Athletes Is A Turrible Idea, And Americans Still Agree."

Can someone explain to me why the Huffington Post used that "turrible" spelling? Is it mocking Barkley's speech? It it mocking the idea?

The idea sounds right to me, by the way:

"There�s only a couple of players on the college team that actually can really play in every sport, so sometimes you have to look at the big picture... All of those kids are getting a free education. But let�s say we do it your way � we have to pay the diving team, the swimming team. That�s crazy. Less than 1 percent [of college basketball players] are going to play in the NBA... What about the other 99 percent that are getting a free education? Think about it."

I'm looking at the comments now and see that the top-rated comment is:

The spelling of terrible in the article title ("Turrible") diminishes both the point of Mr. Barley's opinion and his education. Further, given how some in his country have worked to to portray African American men, it can also be interpreted as racist.

That gets the response "but that's how he says the word" � which is something I wondered about, but didn't know � and the original commenter comes back with "And in how many instances have journalists used regional accents when writing on a commentary's opinion?" � which is exactly how I would have responded to the assertion that Barkley happens to pronounce "terrible" like that. I mean, he'd have to be awfully famous for that word, pronounced that way before it wouldn't seem disrespectful and a cheap way of discounting what is a damned good argument. He's not famous enough for saying "turrible" that I knew it. Are there any other cases of famous people so famous for a way they pronounce a word that the respelled word would be used like that in a headline? The only thing I can think of is a bunch of dumb old headlines about Ed Sullivan and his "really big shew."

"Woman Slaps Period Pads All Over Her Town For A Very Important Reason."

A HuffPostWomen headline.

1. I'm telling you � and I've told you before � the job of cranking out one "feminist" post after another is not easy. And isn't it just what you'd expect in a phallocracy? � that they'd relegate this job to women. How I pity the slaving female scribes of HuffPostWomen.

2. Great name, by the way: Elon� Kastratia.

3. Is "period pads" really an expression? Never heard it, perhaps because I've sojourned scantily in Europe.

4. Here's a better story about sanitary napkins: "How do you cut the school dropout rate for girls in a remote pocket of Uganda? And how do you create jobs for village women? The answer to both questions: sanitary pads. The story begins in 2009, when 26-year-old Sophia Klumpp and her husband-to-be Paul Grinvalds � she's from the U.S., he's from Canada � began working for a nonprofit group in a rural village in Uganda. Klumpp saw that many of the teenagers in school used threadbare rags or tufts of mattress stuffing as sanitary pads. The embarrassment and the fear of an accident kept many of them away from school for the four or five days of their period each month...."

5. Great name, Klumpp. Good work. Much better than protest-littering in Europe.

"Wednesday Addams would have killed these men. It would have been a horrible, comical double murder. But murder nonetheless."

"She wouldn't waste that much time talking. She'd burn their house down."/"And end their suffering so soon? Doesn't sound like the Wednesday I know."/"Classic Addams are more about slow torture than quick killing."

Comments at a HuffPo/Women piece titled "How Wednesday Addams Would React To Catcalling."

How grim it must be to have the assignment to crank out one pop-culture feminist item after another. The mind turns to dark places.

ADDED: I should say that I did not watch the video, which could possibly be funny in a way that doesn't require us to laugh at torture and murder.  Metafilter has some background about the actress in the video and the Metafilter folk seem quite enthused about her grown-up Wednesday routine.

UPDATE: I've watched it, and I don't think it was particularly good or funny.