This feminist football fan will be hoping for a Patriots win, not least to honor the memory of Myra Kraft, who vetoed the team’s draft of a serial abuser of women, made her husband promise that buying a football team wouldn’t mean they’d cut down on their charitable work (they increased it, giving to causes that included closing the gap on health disparities and women’s health), and awesomely, proposed to Bob herself—on their first date.

That said, I remain anxious about Rob Gronkowski, and about history repeating. What are your predictions? Whoever’s closest on final score and throwing yards for the winning Super Bowl quarterback gets to make me write a post on a question or work of their choice.

So, um, this is the origin story for the Beast in one of the two, count ‘em, two, Beauty and the Beast shows in development:

Vincent worked as a doctor at the New York University hospital – and was working On September 11, 2001 when the towers came down. Long story short, a wounded Vincent ends up in a medical clinic where he’s injected with a DNA-changing drug. The drug turns him into an unstoppable soldier type that is used in Afghanistan. Think ‘Captain America’ or a ‘Universal Soldier’. Unfortunately, the strength and stamina comes with a price…it also changes Vincent’s look — in particular, hair sprouts hair everywhere. When he returned from Afghanistan, looking like he is, he hid himself away.

That’s a way of integrating fairy tales into our self-mythology of our actions after September 11, I guess? There are certainly real side effects of the way we treat our veterans, including a dramatic overprescription of really powerful painkillers that are more serious than a lot of body hair. But I have to say that I think Sherlock has done a better job of linking an old story to a new Afghan war.

And I’m actually more interested in the way in which Beauty and the Beast narratives intersect with our schlub-gets-the-girl trope popularized by Judd Apatow’s movies. There have already been some feints in mashing up those movies with superhero or secret identity narratives, most notably Kick Ass. But it’s one thing to take a guy who’s always been a schlub and putting him in the path of a gorgeous, talented woman, and another to take a guy who’s been popular and attractive, strip him of his physical assets, and then put him in the path of the kind of woman he’d be able to conquer easily were he his old handsome self. That whole breaking a main character down before he can be built back up thing sounds suspiciously like what we so often do to female characters.

One of the biggest assumptions about Huffington Post’s merger with AOL was that the move essentially confirmed something that had been under way for a long time: that Huffington Post was no longer a progressive news and blogging outlet. Now that the company’s announcing a new streaming news channel with a full-time staff of 100 people and a commitment to start with 12 hours of programming a day during the week, it’s worth asking that question again.

In recent years, politics has largely been the way that news channels have defined themselves. Fox News’ brand is built on being a conservative attack machine; MSNBC’s become the home of wonky, enthusiastic liberalism; while Current TV is trying to market itself to a new generation of viewers as an aggressively progressive alternative to MSNBC and CNN worth seeking out affirmatively. If Huffington Post went progressive, it might be smart: it could snag those viewers that Current TV thinks is theirs, but in a model that acknowledges that those same young viewers are also the cord-cutters whose reluctance to pay for cable has an entire industry jittery. Politics could also be a wedge, a way to attract a certain core of viewers who are looking for something specific in their news coverage while HuffPo Streaming Network builds out its strength in other market areas.

But Huffington Post may not actually have to do that, at this point. Now that it’s done consolidating its channels with AOL, Huffington Post has a ton of disparate reader streams in place, reading about everything from the 2012 election cycle, to divorce, to celebrity crotch shots. HPSN can embed relevant programming on the relevant Huffington Post channels, pulling those readers seamlessly over to the programs that their reading habits suggest they’ll like, and hoping those reader/viewers will stick around for the next hour of programming as well. If they didn’t have to explicitly establish a political point of view, that could be a strength in terms of audience development. But it would be too bad from a progressive thinking point of view. If Current TV is going to be tied to the airwaves, it would be great to have progressives working on a new kind of cable news for an audience more dedicated the cords into their routers than the ones into their televisions.

It strikes me as unpromising for Roseanne’s new recession-themed sitcom, Downwardly Mobile, that the comedienne is splitting time between it, and pursuing the Green Party’s nomination for president. I’d be happier with a world where I thought the woman who gave us Roseanne was seriously focused on giving us the show the networks haven’t in difficult economic times. But seeing her step in a disorganized fashion into Ralph Nader’s vacated shoes seems of a piece with her self-aggrandizing, un-self-aware and now-cancelled show about running a macadamia nut farm: scattershot, arrogant, and not particularly attuned to what’s meaningful. Plus, it means NBC has yet another equal time problem on its hands. Per Deadline:

For the time being, Barr’s presidential run does not pose a problem for NBC as the project, which she co-created and stars in, is in a pilot stage. But things will get dicier if NBC picks it up to series in May and Barr ends up as the Green Party presidential nominee as the campaign doesn’t wrap until the November election, well into the fall season, which starts in September. According to FCC’s equal-time rule, which applies to “all legally qualified candidates” who have “substantial showing” in the campaign, TV and radio stations are obligated to offer equivalent time to competing political candidates if one gets free airtime. While the rule’s application to entertainment shows featuring candidates is more ambiguous than when the candidates do news programs, networks err on the side of caution. For example, when Fred D. Thompson entered the race for the Republican nomination in 2008, he quit NBC’s Law & Order and NBC stopped rerunning episodes of the show that he was featured in. Last year, NBC also indicated that The Apprentice star Trump would be recast if he chose to run for President. Similarly, Alec Baldwin of NBC’s comedy 30 Rock toyed with the idea of leaving the show in order to run for office. (Isn’t it strange that its always talent on NBC shows that have political aspirations?) Barr is known for outrageous moves, including her recent plan to behead bankers who don’t return profits. Still, the timing for her presidential run is strange as it comes just as the actress signed a seven-year deal with 20th Century TV for Downwardly Mobile.

If only NBC would get all creative on us and solve the equal time problem Roseanne presents by casting Barack Obama and Mitt Romney as antagonists on Parks and Recreation. Mitt could team up with Marcia Langman to complain that the Parks Department’s programs are inculcating the very poor with the wrong values, or something, and Barack could represent the Parks Department pro-bono when they get hit with a Mitt-funded lawsuit. Huzzah for aligning the interests of quality television and legal doctrines. In reality, what NBC should and probably will do is not go forward with Downwardly Mobile if Roseanne, unlike Donald Trump, sticks with the campaign. Which, if its star is spending more time stumping than thinking intelligently about how to develop her show, might be the right thing to do creatively anyway.

I’m really glad to see Susan G. Komen for the Cure reversing its decision to deny funding to Planned Parenthood on the specious grounds that the organization is under investigation—by a politician scrounging for votes. Nancy Brinker and the Komen board said, among other things, in their statement announcing the reversal, that “It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women.”

I think that “how grants can most effectively and directly be administered” is an important phrase. I wrote yesterday that I thought the controversy had been valuable because it got the wheels turning on a conversation about whether Susan G. Komen for the Cure was the best place to give money if you want to fund research or treatment directly—especially if you don’t want to contribute to a pink-saturated culture of response to cancer. And I still think that’s an important conversation to be having. It would be great if Decemberists, or other celebrity Komen supporters who spoke up for Planned Parenthood—including Ellen Barkin, John Legend, Dana Delany, and Lance Armstrong—decide to continue that support in a public way even though Komen is now doing the right thing.

This could be a real turning point in the conversation that’s inaccurately portrayed Planned Parenthood as an abortion factory franchise and ignored the organization’s wide-ranging commitment to women’s health. Part of the reason that Komen’s withdrawal of funds from Planned Parenthood mattered so much is that it left a recurring funding hole in the organization’s budget that would have to be filled year after year. Unless Mayor Bloomberg or some other rich person was going to step up and fill that gap permanently, or Planned Parenthood was able to generate repeated outrage about the funding it’d lost, the organization could have been in trouble after an initial surge of protest support evaporated. This should be a moment when advocates of all types, particularly celebrities with credibility on women’s health and reproductive rights issues, work to build a bigger long-term base of donors for Planned Parenthood and all of its health programs, so the organization will be less dependent on grantmakers like Susan G. Komen for the Cure in the future.

The bridge is yours.

-Fans of Lizzy Caplan should be happy to hear this.

-Bad news for Egyptian comedians under the new regime.

-It’s so weird to me that Dave Grohl will be more identified with the Foo Fighters in history than he is with Nirvana.

-Taxing violent video games to pay for programs to combat childhood obesity and bullying.

-Kanye West will dispel your stereotypes about the Middle East.

-M.I.A. has a new video out:

This trailer for Paul the Male Matchmaker, the latest in Hulu’s lineup of announced original programming and its second scripted down, is pretty horrifying:

On the other hand, this is a blunt example of what Hollywood thinks is successful: men who essentially despise women and aren’t interested in getting to know them lecturing said women about what it takes to get and keep a man and insisting that they’re worthless without a relationship. I really hope the show is a parody that’s going to aggressively push back on Paul’s condescension, ignorance, and hatefulness. It would be a shame to see a new media venture like Hulu get its original content business off the ground with programming that doesn’t repudiate Hollywood’s worst impulses, and instead, doubles down on them.

Over the past week or so, I’ve gotten more and more irritated by the indiscriminate use of the word “controversial” to describe art and pop culture. It’s a classic case of a word not meaning what the people who use it seem to mean. And in some cases, deploying it can be actively unhelpful in communicating to an audience what’s actually interesting or moving about a piece of art.

Take Compliance, one of my favorite feature films out of Sundance. The subject of the movie, the detention and sexual assault of a young fast-food restaurant worker named Becky, is undoubtedly uncomfortable viewing for some people. The first time it aired at the festival, some members of the audience by images of star Dreama Walker underdressed or nude and being mistreate (and in proof that being a rich progressive doesn’t make you classy, some creep decided to shout things about how hot Walker is in the midst of that discussion). But the subject matter of the movie isn’t actually controversial: nobody thinks that the things that happen to Becky should have happened, and the movie makes it clear that they’re awful. And the making of the movie itself doesn’t seem to be the source of the controversy. As director Craig Zobel told me, he worked with Walker both to make sure she felt she wasn’t being exploited as an actress, and to make sure she felt like the movie would be something audiences would walk away from having absorbed the messages that Zobel intended to send. There may be a controversy over whether artists should portray bad things happening to women at all, but our culture seems to have settled on an agreement that it’s generally fine as long as you’re not making snuff pornography. Compliance is challenging, uncomfortable, and deeply moving. It is not controversial.

The Los Angeles Times does a nice job of fisking another occurrence of the phenomenon, this time NPR describing the long-dead and long-canonized artist Jackson Pollock’s work as controversial. There are controversies adjacent to Pollock, of course: if a toddler does the same thing, but without intention, is it art? Is the painting authenticator Paul Biro claims to have verified as the work Pollockreal or part of a scheme by Biro to pass off fakes? But Pollock’s work itself is not the subject of a genuine controversy: describing it that way is just a way to gin up pageviews.

Or worse, alleging controversy where there is none is a way of indicating false equivalence in an attempt to avoid charges of bias. The claim of false equivalency is one of the biggest debates in journalism right now, the source of the debate over whether the New York Times should “fact-check” (probably the wrong term for it) politicians’ claims. But art, even more so than politics, is an arena where writers should feel comfortable making judgements and refusing to pretend there’s an equal debate, or a debate at all, where there isn’t. Labeling something controversial or treating it as dangerous when it’s merely challenging is a way of keeping people away from art rather than getting them to engage with it.

This post contains spoilers through the February 2 episode of Parks and Recreation.

As much as I’m a little sorry that Parks and Recreation stepped away from Leslie’s campaign just as the show was figuring out how to handle that change in dynamics, I really appreciated that the show decided to spend some time with its other characters. It’s been good to see Chris come to terms with aging and heartbreak, to see Ben, Andy, and Ron have an adventure, and most of all, to see April figure out how to be a grown-up.

April actually reminds me of the characters on Glee, when that show is having actual, coherent character moments. She’s stuck in Pawnee, “a small loser town with loser people,” but despite occasional jaunts to South America, April doesn’t necessarily appear to have the educational or professional tools—or perhaps the emotional resources—to leave for good. Throughout the series, she’s shown gradual signs of turning from a petulant child into someone with adult instincts, if not always adult reactions. As Chris dates Millicent, April’s alternately tried to ease Jerry’s discomfort and to find something nice to do for Chris when Millicent breaks up with him. Despite being a goofball during the actual Model United Nations match, April’s the person who talkes Leslie down and gets her in a room with Ben, de-escalating their fight. Tonight, she actually finds it in herself to be kind to Ann. We’ve seen her and Andy venture out into the wider world to finish Andy’s bucket list. The question is whether they will, or if they’ll want to, leave Pawnee on a more permanent basis, or if like Tom, they’ll find an outlet for their still-developing talents and happiness in their hometown. And I think it remains to be seen if April will grow past Andy, who is older than her, and more settled in his childlike lack of ambition: his Mouserat dreams seem more easily satisfied by compromise than April’s unarticulated dissatisfaction.

Speaking of Ann, given that the show spends a lot of time showing Leslie imposing on her best friend, it was nice to see Leslie give some sugar back to the infinitely loyal Ms. Perkins. “Oh, beautiful spinster. I will find you love,” Leslie murmurs. And if she doesn’t quite succeed, she is the best advertising agency in town. “Alex gives my campaign legal advice, and Ann is the greatest human being ever invented,” Leslie introduces Ann to one potential suitor. And in the name of bucking Chris up, she reminds him that what Millicent did to him, he did, in some form to Ann: “Look at her. She’s a perfect human specimen and you tossed her out like day-old chowder.” These kinds of things might sound hollow if the show didn’t spend a lot of time showing us that they were true: Ann is every bit as good to Leslie as Leslie describes her being.

The dance itself was a wonderful bit of Pawnee, a valentine to the show’s long-time viewers. There’s the return of the town’s most notable creep—”Anne is not some morose mummy,” Leslie protests when April brings Orrin as a potential date for Ann. “Offense intended!” Later, we see him rapt by Chris’s DJing of music that Tom describes as “like the end of a movie about a monk who kills himself,” only to be informed by Chris that “it is!” There’s Ron’s manful handling of being ogled at The Bulge. There’s a welcome addition to the roster of Pawnee attractions: on Valentine’s Day, a Snow Globe Museum staffed by Martin Starr is pretty much exactly where I want to be, too.