Tracy Chapman

Monday

Alexander Larman

Duets, arrests, comebacks and snubs: inside the 2024 Grammys

The various film and TV awards ceremonies so far this year have been a predictable round; there have been few surprising winners, and the events both on-stage and off have largely been well-behaved and respectable. All hail, then, to the Grammys, which has managed to take conventional expectations of what an awards show should be and has subverted them considerably, combining everything from a transcendental comeback by one of music’s greatest stars to one of the night’s winners being dragged off by police in handcuffs. First things first though: the Grammys represented yet another victory for Taylor Swift, a woman who, at this rate, is going to become TIME’s person of the year for a second year in a row.

tracy chapman grammys

Wednesday

Amber Duke

Why the media despises country music

Cuss out a cop, spit in his faceStomp on the flag and light it upYeah, ya think you’re toughWell, try that in a small townSee how far ya make it down the roadAround here, we take care of our own That’s a sampling of the lyrics to “Try That in a Small Town,” the new Jason Aldean single that led left-wing Twitter trolls to try to “cancel” the country music star. Critics claimed the song was racist, particularly because the music video was filmed in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Tennessee (which was the site of a lynching back in 1927) and features news clips of BLM and antifa riots.

Friday

Cockburn

Revealed: who gets to ask the White House questions?

An official guide to covering the White House created by the White House Correspondents’ Association confirms that Karine Jean-Pierre is intentionally selective about which media outlets she calls on at White House press briefings. The document, last updated in March 2023, notes that “the current press secretary has indicated she prefers not to call on people who are standing.” Of course, the seats in the briefing room are assigned by the WHCA and mostly reserved for left-leaning legacy media outlets — particularly the first few rows. Anyone else looking to get a question in is probably better off staying home... Tucking in to Tucker Fox News may have gone cold on him, but Tucker Carlson’s biographer Chadwick Moore sure knows how to put on a spread.

white house