Mariah... but not like Mariah Carey

During CNN’s coverage on Monday, Anderson Cooper noted that a BOLO (a police term for “be on the look out”) had been issued for a “person of interest,” this vague new term that allows us to forget about civil liberties as law enforcement officials try to ferret out criminals.

This time, the BOLO was issued for someone dark-skinned, maybe a black man, maybe with a foreign accent, wearing a black backpack and black hoodie. The description was damning, vague, and eerily reminiscent of too much. The description was broadcast, over and over, to millions, many people on edge, worried, newly suspicious, now armed with an overly broad racial profile of someone onto whom they could focus their new suspicions, confusion, and fear.

In major cities across the country, because this kind of suspicion spreads like cancer, men who fit this vague profile are going to pause before they leave their homes or walk down certain streets while the rest of us are blithely exempt.

There are many kinds of terror in this world.

It was a rare, rare moment when the city seemed truly whole; when people came together—for free—to watch an event, and they cheered the back-of-the-pack plodders as enthusiastically as they did the whippets who led the way. I was so moved by it that I was choked up for most of the twenty-six miles, seeing this crazy display of community and generosity… The special thing about big-city marathons, like New York and Boston, is that they are occasions when the clashing and whirring of urban life quiets, and everyone stands together to see a bunch of people trying to do something very simple that is also very hard. It’s marvellous… If the explosions were purposeful, whoever did it knew that it would catch people at an exceptional, joyous moment, when they come together in the sweetest way, helping each other fly.

If guys were as mad about rape as they are duck face we wouldn’t have a rape culture problem.

So remember: 12:01 a.m., May 26. The schedule after that will be approximately as follows: the first animated GIFs from the first episode will appear at 12:01 and a half, people will complain that Netflix is down at 12:02, spoilers will begin appearing on Twitter at 12:03, angry tweets about spoilers at 12:04, think pieces about how this distribution model affects spoilers at 12:05, think pieces about how this distribution model might result in the return of Firefly at 12:06, listicles of 10 more shows that Netflix should revive at 12:07, complaints that these episodes “suck” at 12:08, complaints about haters at 12:09, questions about why people who are so into Arrested Development refuse to watch Community at 12:10, and 25 pictures of cats watching Arrested Development at 12:11.

The most insidious cruelty of rape is that still, in 2013, if you are the victim of a sexual assault, you carry a stigma. Too often you have to prove that no, you did not do anything to deserve it and no, you didn’t just “change your mind” after and no, men are not entitled to a women’s body just because. And if you don’t think that those are actual things that people believe well, then, you aren’t paying attention. Because those are exactly the sort of things that people have said in the aftermath of Steubenville.