"Average US Reading Level by Grade: Country 3.3, pop 2.9, rock �n� roll 2.9, R&B/hip-hop 2.6."

Dubious song lyric science. It irks me when that "reading level" nonsense is equated with intelligence. And having country come out on top and "R&B/hip-hop" on the bottom just seems racist.

Well, Country is the only genre generally devoid of words like �oh� or �yeah� repeated 20 times in a row. Sorry everyone else, but if you say it in the song, it�s counted as a �lyric.�

But it�s also about the syllables. Country music is full of words like Hallelujah, cigarettes, hillbilly, and tacklebox. Add to that long place names like Cincinnati, Louisville, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and Country has a serious advantage over the competition....

In 2007, Rock and R&B/Hip-Hop both plunged with the help of songs like �Buy U a Drank� by T-Pain (which just made it above a 1st grade reading level) and �I Don�t Wanna Stop� by Ozzy Osbourne (a more respectable 1.6 average grade level).

ADDED: Pride in long sentences is idiotic. From Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals":

But Hemingway had had the advantage of an excellent training on the Kansas City Star. Its successive editors had compiled a house-style book of 110 rules designed to force reporters to use plain, simple, direct and clich�-free English, and these rules were strictly enforced. Hemingway later called them �the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing.'...

On this journalistic basis, Hemingway built his own method, which was both theory and practice.... He once defined the art of fiction... as �find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too.� All had to be done with brevity, economy, simplicity, strong verbs, short sentences, nothing superfluous or for effect. �Prose is architecture,� he wrote, �not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

Taking ABBA as seriously as possible.

This essay � at NPR � is so over-the-top about ABBA that it's really very weird. I'll quote the last few sentences:

Gay people particularly respect entertainers who cloak suffering behind carefully constructed artifice because it's a skill most of us are still forced to learn. ABBA concealed the distress of their ditties with as many deliciously gaudy overdubs as the era's analog recording techniques could muster. Embedded in some of the brightest whiteness pop has ever known, ABBA invented their own blues, one that hasn't left the radio. They whispered private anguish in the midst of the party.

"Embedded in some of the brightest whiteness" refers to the fact that the members of ABBA grew up in 1950s Sweden, where you could only hear 2 hours of music on the radio each day and � amid the "classical music, jazz, Swedish folk, Italian arias, French chanson, German schmaltz and John Philip Sousa" � there might be one pop song but never any "American blues."

"So Disney's making a movie romanticizing the colonization of African land. #PrincessOfNorthSudan."

And: "White folks got til I wake up to make #PrincessOfNorthSudan disappear."

"Indeed, recent seasons of Idol were most defined by viewers hellbent on keeping a particular, and somewhat archaic, strand of pop alive..."

"... those who would, through hell or bad reception, unfailingly text their support for the most Jason Mrazian of the bunch, which led to Lee DeWyze�s unfortunate season-nine victory and a string of white dudes vanquishing any women or R&B-leaning males who dared reach the Top 4; last night�s elimination of Jax, the Jersey girl who sang Paramore and Evanescence before being sent home, set up yet another mano a mano finale."

Does this writer think mano a mano means man to man?

"To their credit, those dudes were at times mystified by their own success, but their worthier foes were unfairly vanquished all the same. (Crystal Bowersox, your earth-mother stylings and ability to stay on pitch will not be forgotten.) These singers got their very own acronym from Idol watchers�WGWGs, for White Guys With Guitars�and made the prospect of Another R&B Song Getting Covered In A Gimmicky, Overly Caucasian, YouTube-y Sorta Way grimmer and more inevitable by the week."

Is it okay to say "Overly Caucasian"? The writer is Maura Johnston, who, we're told, "teaches at Boston College... edits the culture periodical Maura Magazine... spins records at WZBC... writes for the Boston Globe and Rolling Stone." Photo here (in case answering my question makes you feel you need to look at a photo).

"Books That Literally All White Women Own: The Definitive List."

A hilarious list, put together by a Metafilter commenter in response to a post about an annoyingly clickbait-y thing at The Toast titled "Books That Literally All White Men Own: The Definitive List":
Click for more �

"Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday he had an 'honest, frank conversation' with Spike Lee to let the movie director know..."

"... that he doesn�t like, 'Chiraq,' the working title of Lee's coming movie on black-on-black violence based in Chicago�s crime-ridden Englewood community."

Emanuel didn�t say whether he asked Lee to change the name.... But the mayor made it clear that he had used the Hollywood pipeline provided by his brother, super-agent Ari Emanuel, to make his feelings known directly to Spike Lee. The face-to-face meeting took place in the mayor�s office prior to Wednesday�s City Council meeting....

In an apparent attempt to soften the blow of the title, "Chiraq," Lee... noted that gun violence is �not limited� to Chicago. It�s happening in Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York, where he�s from. He even talked about the derogatory name used to describe a part of Brooklyn where he�s from. He talked about how similarly insulting names applied to Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Well, apparently "Chiraq" is a great title. It's getting such high level attention. You can't buy that kind of PR. Obviously, it's also negative PR for the city, but Rahm is trying to squeeze good PR out of the bad (on the theory that Chicago isn't really that bad and even if it is, other cities are also bad... or worse).



ADDED: From a year ago: "How Chicago Became 'Chiraq'":

President Obama may have gotten our troops out of Iraq, but the gunfire in his hometown of Chicago is still earning it a searing nickname coined by young people who live there.

Chiraq.

"The Problem Isn�t That Trevor Noah Is Offensive. The Problem Is That He�s a Giant Dope."

Headline at Slate.

The problem is not that Trevor Noah tells offensive jokes. It�s not even that he routinely breaks The Daily Show's covenant of speaking truth to power in favor of speaking truth to fat chicks or Thai hookers or, as the Washington Post�s Wendy Todd points out, black Americans who give their kids names that Noah disapproves of. The problem is that Noah�s jokes are so annihilatingly stupid.

Jeez, they're swarming this poor man. A giant dope? Isn't that insult dopey? I read the article, and it seems that Noah's problem is he needs better joke-writers. I'd say: He's getting "The Daily Show"'s joke-writers, so the question is only how he looks, how he delivers the jokes, and how he manages the interviews. If you're not going to rest on the ground that his old jokes were so offensive that he can't be the face of the brand, what's the problem? He's a giant dope? That makes zero sense. It's as if the writer � Jessica Winter � doesn't know that there are writers. That's annihilatingly stupid.

Now, the Wendy Todd article (linked above) makes a much stronger point: It seems that "The Daily Show" may be installing Noah because he's been getting away with mocking black people. Todd, who is black, says:

[On "The Tonight Show"] Noah joked that black people are misidentified as African Americans. �They�re not African, but we�ll play along,� he said, adding, �Many of them really try to connect with Africa, you know? Some of them have these African names. They�ll be like, �Yeah, yeah, that�s my girl Wanda, yeah, yeah. Yeah that�s right, that�s Dashiqua, or dat�s Taniqua.� Noah emphasized all this �hilarity� by using stereotypical B-Boy hand gestures to drive it home � because this is how all black people communicate, obviously. Leno�s predominantly white audience ate it up....

Not only did Noah get away with these routines, now he�s being rewarded for them. And the sadder thing is that the next time we have this �there aren�t enough people of color in the late night arena� conversation, people will point to Noah and say, �See, we gave you another one.�

"The Daily Show" chooses Trevor Noah, a South African, to replace Jon Stewart.

The NYT observes that Noah is "nonwhite," but that there's a question "why the network did not choose a woman to crack the all-male club of late-night television hosts."

[Noah] grew up in Soweto, the son of a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father, whose union was illegal during the apartheid era. �My mother had to be very clandestine about who my father was,� Mr. Noah said. �He couldn�t be on my birth certificate.�

By the time he started performing stand-up in his 20s, Mr. Noah said he had long been taught that �speaking freely about anything, as a person of color, was considered treason.�

According to the NYT, Michele Ganeless, president of Comedy Central, "said that Comedy Central... drew up 'a shortlist' of possible successors 'and Trevor checked off every box on that list and then some.'" That doesn't make sense. If the "list" is a list of "possible successors," how could one person on that list check off "every box on that list and then some"? Obviously, there's some other list. Presumably, it's a list of things Comedy Central thought would be plus factors. I guess being female wasn't one of them. Ganeless seems to have unwittingly stated that Comedy Central really wasn't hoping to put a woman in the anchor seat. Either that or gushy puffery about Noah caused her to say something she didn't mean to say.

Why is Ganeless president of Comedy Central? Perhaps she was promoted beyond her appropriate level.

Anyway, I'm not sold on Noah. I watched the clip of him that was linked at the beginning of the NYT article � I sat through the Coke-and-Pepsi commercial for "Mixify" � which shows him in a colloquy with Jon Stewart. Noah began with what seems to be the old joke "I just flew in and boy are my arms tired." When the predictable groans ensued, Noah held his arms up in the Ferguson hands-up-don't-shoot position and said:

"No, seriously, I've been holding my arms like this since I got here. I never thought I�d be more afraid of police in America than in South Africa. It kind of makes me a little nostalgic for the old days, back home."

So, get ready for jokes against America told in a not-American accent. I guess, not American was on the Comedy Central checklist of plus factors that Noah checked off (and then some).  Yeah, I know, you don't have to get ready because you don't watch "The Daily Show." I don't either anymore. I used to watch every day. I still record every show, but I can't remember the last time I felt like clicking on the recording. Maybe I got tired of Jon Stewart's incessant yelling in disbelief. How could America be so awful? But does that mean I want to hear Noah's mellifluous murmuring about how awful America is?

I know, I'm old. The show is not intended for me. I saw the commercial for Mixify. Coke and Pepsi's effort to get people to "mix" their soda-drinking with nutritious food was, to me, a ludicrously transparent effort to fend off government regulation, not what they want you to think it is:

#Realtalk: Coke, Dr Pepper and Pepsi understand that balancing your mix of foods, drinks and physical activities can get a little tricky. And since our products can play a part in that equation, we�ve teamed up to help make it easier to find a balanced mix that feels oh so right. That�s where Mixify comes in. It�s like a balance wingman.

Bringing you new combinations to keep your mix fresh and your body right. Like mixing lazy days with something light, following sweaty workouts with whatever you�re craving, and crossing cats with dragons. Because at the end of the day, finding balance keeps you feeling snazzier than the emoji of the dancing lady in red. Balance what you eat and drink with what you do. That�s how you Mixify.

Hashtag Realtalk? A balance wingman? A little tricky? Actually, it's not tricky at all. Don't drink soda. It's not tricky to me, that is, but I take it Coke and Pepsi are trying to trick teach tricks to people who are not me. And maybe those kids will love Trevor Noah.