Sidebar: Pop Culture Roundup: Muppet Christmas Carol, Later Daters, and Samantha Irby Playlists

This Week in Pop Culture: Nikki Giovanni, Fat Talk, and Weird Christmas Tunes

This is my weekly roundup of links and recommendations. If we talked IRL, I’d likely derail our entire conversation with “Sidebar, have you read | watched | listened | deep dived on this?”

Have you watched?

With the passing of Nikki Giovanni this week, I returned to “A Conversation” featuring Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin from 1971. Decades before we had language for intersectional analysis, Nikki offered Baldwin (by then, a giant in his own right) a reminder that though black men are the victims of violence in the street, they also enact violence on black women in domestic (often unseen) spaces.

I am planning on gearing up to watch some Christmas movies. Muppet Christmas Carol is my number 1, followed by White Christmas (I will stan Rosemary Clooney for life). What is your favorite holiday movie?

I am midway through Later Daters, the show that is like Golden Bachelor but on Netflix and produced by Michelle Obama. This is not a great show, but good enough to have on while you’re half paying attention or doing other things.