Chloe Angyal

What’s frustrating about this ad — beyond the fact that it contradicts pretty much everything Amy Poehler appears to stand for — is that there are tantalizing glimpses of how good it could have been.

This is a new historical moment, but not a unique one. Hunger is central to many pivotal moments in American history.

We need to think about what we really mean when we use the word “fat,” and start divesting it of its value judgments.

For my part, I don’t think I’d be the vocal and public feminist that I am today were it not for single-sex education.

You’re smarter than that. You’re perceptive enough to understand that this particular instance of alleged sexual violence has huge ramifications.

When you insist that he’s innocent until proven guilty, which must mean that she’s are lying until proven otherwise — and why would we trust a liar? — you’re wounding their mothers, and their daughters, and their brothers and sisters, and their husbands and their friends.

Granger is the kind of person you want running your world, magical or Muggle: someone smart, thoughtful, and hardworking, with a knack for leadership, a commitment to social justice, and the courage of her convictions.

To believe that rape is something that just happens to women, that it’s inevitable, that there’s nothing we can do about it, and to resist any challenge to that narrative requires you to believe so many awful things about human beings.

If it’s not these Olympics, it’s Apple, or Amazon, or America itself, with its drones and its racism and its myriad other violations of our principles.

The international community is familiar with the frequent shirtlessness of Vladimir Putin, whether he’s shirtless on horseback, or shirtless holding a fishing rod, or shirtless wrestling a bear made out of semiautomatic rifles (I made one of those up). But few people abroad are familiar with Australia’s new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, the leader of the newly-in power Liberal Party, who ascended to the top spot last September.

So this book. Why this book? Why this YA book for so many of my friends and relatives, none of whom are in the YA target audience?

Welcome to the misery of effortless perfection, boys. We’ve been expecting you.