What Rebekah Brooks really needs to worry about is the message her hair sends

There’s a time when a wild mane of wavy auburn hair sends just the right message of breezy nonconformity and proud individuality, but when you’re trying to convince the world that you’re an aboveboard, by-the-rules, straitlaced sort of manager—who’s done nothing illegal—boho hair plays to your disadvantage.

The hair in question belongs to Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News Corp.’s News International who resigned in the midst of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. That controversy, for anyone who has been otherwise distracted, has Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct London-based tabloid under investigation for systematically and illegally gaining access to the voicemail of both public and private citizens. Brooks, who oversaw the conglomerate’s U.K. news division, was called to testify before the British Parliament to answer the usual litany of scandal-related queries: What did she know? When did she know it?

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Brooks’ hair was a distraction because it was a ballsy rebuke of our expectations governing how people on the defensive are supposed to tread. There was no suggestion of humility, timidity, or caution. There was no attempt to disappear into doleful anonymity.

That was look-at-me hair—stare at me, remember me. Me, me, me. Read more...

...the fuck?

Rant: Dear New Yorkers, Los Angelenos and Chicagoans...

Ya'll are about to get on my last Hoosier nerve.

This may come as a shock, but people who hail from big cities can be just as provincial and ignorant of other cultures as their counterparts in minor metropolises and tiny burgs. Most people I have encountered in small cities are aware of their homes' limitations. They understand that they will have to look beyond their borders for some things. By contrast, many big city dwellers I've encountered believe everything exists where they are (the smartest people, the best food, the best art, etc.) and that there is no need to look beyond their borders for anything. And so there arises this idea that everything between coastal urban centers is a sea of lack and strangeness. And, for Chicagoans, the same goes for anything beyond the approved (white, wealthy) suburbs of the Windy City.