If your kid develops language skills at an early age, chances are he’ll also develop drinking skills at a much earlier age. Or so says the latest study that correlates early intellectual development with heavier drinking habits.

Troy Wolff, 46, a Shoreline Community College English professor and a resident of the Beacon Hill neighborhood in Seattle, died Saturday after being stabbed to death by a stranger. Wolff and his girlfriend Kristin Ito, 30, were walking home from a Seattle Sounders game Friday night around 10:30 p.m. when, according to officials, a man walked up, pulled out a small knife, and began to stab Ito repeatedly in the torso. According to the police report, Wolff “attempted to intervene and the suspect turned on him and began stabbing the male victim repeatedly in the neck and torso.”

Both were transported to Harborview Medical Center. Wolff died Saturday afternoon and Ito is still listed in serious condition. Detective Jeff Kappell of the Seattle Police Department said of the attacker, “There are indications that the suspect was operating at a diminished mental capacity.” The 44-year-old suspect was arrested on suspicion of murder and is currently in King County Jail.

Earlier that evening, Wolff had posted a photo of the game on his Facebook page with the caption: “Cheap seats, great match!”

Those in the neighborhood near the stadium, including Chris Lundgren who works in a nearby lighting store, say the neighborhood just isn’t safe at night. "I wouldn't leave my business at midnight," said Lundgren. "We close at 6, 5 o'clock on the weekends. That's a good time to get out of here."

[Image via KING5 News]

The Los Angeles Times has analyzed the Colorado flooding by numbers: 5 confirmed dead with one more presumed dead, 1253 people unaccounted for, 11,700 people evacuated, 30 bridges destroyed, over 2380 square miles affected, 15 counties have received presidential disaster declarations, and over 2,100 residents and 500 pets have been rescued by air.

As up and down the Mid-Atlantic the rampant, unchecked destruction of Alicia Keys' native habitat barrels on, Page Six brings us a cautionary tale from Flying Point Road in Southampton where, earlier this summer, a sleeping homeowner awoke to find Alicia Keys having a small party in her home.

According to the Post, the woman (speculated to be the wife of billionaire South African mining tycoon Ivan Glasenberg) initially assumed the ruckus that woke her up was that of her young daughter returning home from a cool night out at some of Long Island’s finest nightclubs. When she went downstairs to check, she discovered Alicia Keys, Keys' husband Swizz Beatz and what the Post describes as “a party posse,” hanging out in her kitchen.

A source reportedly told the paper that Keys, who was renting a home nearby, entered the stranger’s house because she was “confused.” Probably what happened is that Alicia Keys was standing the middle of the road eating acorns by moonlight, when an oncoming car frightened her with its headlights. Assuming a terrified Alicia Keys remained frozen in place, the bitter, half-chewed acorns falling from her mouth onto the sandy gravel—plop! ploppity plop!—the car would have had to swerve to avoid hitting her. The noise of the vehicle's squealing tires would likely have startled Keys, sending her (plus Swizz Beats, plus the rest of the "party posse") scrambling up the embankment into the nearest woods, all glass modern contemporary, or other safe space.

Page Six reports that “all parties saw the humor in the mishap,” which is great because if it had happened anywhere other than at this specific, evidently extremely chill residence in the Hamptons, it probably would have ended with multiple arrests and at least one fatality. Alicia Keys was later removed to her own Hamptons reserve, leaving her unwitting hostess with naught but one wacky home invasion story and a small pile of round little deer poops under her kitchen table.

[Image via Getty]

Police in South Carolina arrested a North Charleston woman Monday night after she allegedly stabbed her roommate multiple times for refusing to stop playing music by the classic rock band The Eagles.

According to the official report, Vernett Bader, 54, became irritated with her 64-year-old roommate (and one-time boyfriend) after he rejected her pleas to turn off the Eagles and told her to "shut up."

Bader then entered the kitchen and grabbed a serrated knife, which she subsequently used to stab her roommate several times in the arm, hand, and elbow.

The roommate and his brother managed to wrestle the knife away from Bader, but she quickly retrieved another from the kitchen.

All three were intoxicated at the time, per the report.

It's unclear which of the band's songs drove Bader over the edge, but police have narrowed down the possible suspects to "Witchy Woman," "Take It Easy," "Peaceful Easy Feeling," "Take It to the Limit," "One of These Nights," "Tequila Sunrise," and "Hotel California" on repeat.

Bader confessed to the crime, but claimed it was an act of self-defense to counter her roommate's choking.

Investigators say Bader did not have any visible marks on her neck.

Police charged Bader with criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature and she was booked into the Charleston County jail, where she remained held as of this afternoon.

[H/T: Dangerous Minds, screengrab via ABC 4]

Yesterday, Madonna experienced the great modern celebrity rite of passage into the illusion of tech-savvy by participating in an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. She was often very sassy. She answered "send photo" over half a dozen times. In lowercase with sparing punctuation, she was just revealing enough to remain worth reading. She spoke of a dream in which, "Brad Pitt and I were living together and there was a small blonde child in the bed." She added, "Sorry Angelina, it was only a dream." Later she said that this made her laugh.

Madonna shared that she plucks her eyebrows both when indulging in "me time," and when procrastinating. (And yet, she remains a Frida Kahlo devotee.) She feels that her quintessential album is 1998's Ray of Light, and her favorite video to shoot was "Justify My Love." Erotica, according to Madonna, is a "great record." She enjoys dirty martinis, Jay Z and Frank Ocean's song "Oceans," and she is waiting for Daft Punk to call her back so that they can work together. She used the phrase "tired ass."

Speaking of Frank Ocean, Madonna named him when asked "Can you name one gay guy you wish you could turn straight?" (Frank Ocean has never come out as "gay," per se.) Disappointingly, Madonna answered very Kathy Griffinly when asked, "if you were a gay man, would you be a top or bottom." "i am a gay man," she said. It was a stupid answer to a stupid question — every one knows Madonna is a top, regardless of her sexuality or gender identity.

Madonna, of course, takes herself very seriously. "Have you ever considered going into politics?" someone asked. "i have gone into politics. my work is political," Madonna answered. She prefers Jung to Freud, whom she finds "too cerebral and a misogynist." Madonna is studying the Quaran.

Madonna says she keeps her awards in an award closet. The best birthday present she received is a penis-shaped bong. She didn't say what she is smoking out of it, but whatever it is, it's probably too expensive for you to even imagine how it feels. Someone asked, "Why u do not have any pet at home?" "i have fish and some cockroaches," Madonna answered. Her roaches were probably expensive, too.

My takeaway, my a-ha moment (if you will) resulting from reading Madonna's AMA, is the knowledge that one can make out while wearing a grill. "Have you tried making out with the grills on?" said someone. "yup it works," is how Madonna imparted her experience and wisdom.

Oh, and at least one person did, in fact, send photo, as requested.

[Madonna pic via her Instagram]

Now that New York Fashion Week is over, we've crunched the numbers. Of the 142 shows out of the 184 that showed at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week for Spring/Summer 2014*, there were 4637 looks. Of those close to 5,000 looks, around 80 percent were modeled by white women. (80 percent. That's a number that, if you look at the charts, we're growing familiar with.) Fewer than 1,000 looks were given to women who were not white, mostly black and asian women, with some non-white Latina women sneaking in there. Women of other ethnicities, like Middle Eastern women, were barely seen.

Some of the designers whose casts featured a respectable roughly 30 percent or more models of color or more were Anna Sui, Pamella Roland Jeremy Scott, Dennis Basso, Vivienne Tam, KaufmanFranco, Rachel Comey, Alice + Olivia, Ohne Tietal, Tracy Reese, Thom Brown, Diane Von Furstenberg and Zac Posen.

Calvin Klein, which notably had no models of color walk during the last New York Fashion week, upped the number from zero to five this season. But Calvin Klein still paled in comparison to its contemporaries (like Diane Von Furstenberg, who is has an equally huge legacy brand with a similar "American" aesthetic). Others that went from zero to slightly more than zero: Belstaff and Gregory Parkinson.

Unfortunately, there were plenty of designers who featured a distressingly low number of models of color, like Marchesa, Joie, Kate Gallagher, Sass & Bide, Wes Gordon, Assembly, Theyskens' Theory, Yigal Azrouel, Band of Outsiders, Victoria Beckham, Jen Kao, Jill Stuart and Lacoste. These designers often had models of color showing between zero and three looks a presentation. Many boosted their numbers only because of a select black or asian model who wore more than one look.

From left to right: Isabella Melo for Vivienne Tam; Juana Burga in Ralph Rucci; Lais Ribeiro at Badgley Mischka; Daiane Conterato for Vera Wang

Additionally, only roughly a dozen models of color opened or closed shows this season, notably Joan Smalls opening at DKNY and Altuzarra, while Diane Von Furstenberg made a splash with Naomi Campbell.

From left to right: Cora Emmanuel walks Peter Som; Grace Mahary in Suno; Naomi Campbell closes Diane Von Furstenberg; Joan Smalls at DKNY

The problem is that while there might have been nominally more models of color this season than last, all of the same models were booking the shows, a problem we've noted before that seems to have gotten worse. Which is great for those particular workers but indicates a reliance on the same faces over and over again, and an inability to open the doors to all models of color. Some of the top models of color this season worked a shockingly impressive number of shows for a week-long event; Latina model Isabella Melo walked in 17 shows, as did black models Grace Mahary, Jasmine Tookes and Maliaka Firth. Other popular models: black model Cora Emmanuel was seen in 13 shows, Joan Smalls did 11 and Roberta Narciso, Veridiana Ferreira, Nykhor Paul all tied at 10.

From left to right: Liu Wen walks Jason Wu; Ji Hye Park walks in Nicole Miller; Tian Yi in Monique Lhuillier; Yumi Lambert at Y-3

The same pattern was seen among asian models as well. Tian Yi walked 15, Yumi Lambert was seen in at least 13 and Ji Hye Park and Liu Wen walked 12 shows. Are designers choosing to diversify their shows by relying on a small pool of diverse women? And if that's the case, should we chastise them for their lack of creativity or the offerings their getting from agencies?

It's impossible to find the designers entirely at fault; agencies in the past have admitted to not taking on women of color because they claim it's not what designers want. But it's also boring to see many, many different white women and the same black, white and Latina faces over and over again. It indicates a lack of creative thinking on the part of the designers, who perhaps are feeling pressure to cast more diverse models but reluctant to create diversity by giving out chances to "fresher" faces that are less well-known. It's possible that instead, they're convinced that it's only more established models of color who have earned a spot on their runways. If that's the case, that's a whole other problem for models of color to face, one that indicates that though the fashion world might be more accepting of them, there's still an equally steep mountain for them to climb in their quest to find consistent work.

As always, we are fully aware that race is a construct. The point of this is not to dissect and label the women hired to work the shows. And our methods are admittedly flawed; we can't delve into every model's ethnic background. We're mostly concerned with visuals: Is there an array of skintones? Does the cast of the show look ethnically diverse? When the entire world has its eye on New York Fashion Week, when there are international media outlets with cameras capturing designs from brands like Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs and Diane von Furstenberg — companies with global influence — it's important to question what message is being sent down the runways along with the clothes. Fashion is often about luxury and exclusivity. But when that exclusivity comes in the form of an all-white cast, it certainly looks like discrimination and racism, which should never be in style.

Research conducted by Phoenix Tso, Callie Beusman and Tanisha Love Ramirez. Additional reporting by Dodai Stewart.

Previously:

Fashion Week's Models Are Getting Whiter
New York Fashion Week Is the Most Diverse in Ages
Exclusive: New York Fashion Week Was The Whitest In Years
Fashion Week Diversity By The Numbers

*For the most part, we didn't include collections that were presented as presentations or through lookbooks that featured just a few models. All menswear was excluded.

Images via Getty

Gwyneth Paltrow likes Chick-fil-A, go figure.

Guess who used to own this attractive and abandoned bit of Newark, New Jersey?

That’s right: Social media whiz Cory Booker. New Jersey Republican Steve Lonegan, who's running against Booker (who is, in addition to his tweeting duties, mayor of Newark) for a seat in the U.S. Senate, held a press conference on Tuesday afternoon in front of this abandoned Newark building—which Lonegan calls a “crack house”—that Booker bought in 2009 for $175,000 and later donated to (his own) charity. Here’s Lonegan stumping on a street corner in front of the house, located in Newark’s Central Ward:

.@lonegan starting press conference now outside boarded-up Newark house purchased by @CoryBooker #NJSen pic.twitter.com/5aOVJvF1kv

— Michael Linhorst (@MichaelLinhorst) September 17, 2013

Lonegan’s press conference followed numerous reports accusing Booker of neglecting the property. The media-loving mayor apparently neglected to deal with squatters, trash, and open drug use nearby. Still, a sizable number of Newark residents appeared to protest the event:

You can inspect Booker’s former abode on Google Maps, or in person at 130 Court Street in Newark. (Watch out for Rob Ford if you venture the latter.)

[Talking Points Memo | Image credit: Google Maps]

There's a brief and enraging—to New York City's renting class, at least—aside in Constance Rosenblum's Sunday New York Times Real Estate piece about committed couples who live apart. In describing Michael Kenny and Ingrid Doyle's two-apartment love affair, Rosenblum mentions that Kenny, a 62-year-old "lawyer with Citigroup," has for years held on to his "rent-stabilized two-bedroom in a rehabilitated tenement on West 116th Street in South Harlem...for which he pays under $2,000 a month." Let me put that in context.

1) "Under $2,000 a month" is a very, very low rent. The median rent in Manhattan is more than $3,000 per month. The average two-bedroom apartment in Harlem is $2,539. Michael Kenny pays a below-market price for his housing.

2) Rent stabilization is a very complex and arbitrary set of codes in New York City that, among other things, prevents landlords from sharply increasing rents on certain qualified units. It was explicitly designed in the 1960s to ensure a stock of affordable housing in the city for working families.

3) Michael Kenny is a senior vice president at Citigroup. He attended Harvard Law School and graduated from Brown University. According to GlassDoor.com, Citigroup pays its senior vice presidents in the New York City area anywhere from $114,000 to $280,000, with an average annual compensation of $184,511.

Michael Kenny does not need rent stabilization. The median income in Manhattan—the number that half of Manhattan's workers are above, and half are below—is $67,000. Michael Kenny's compensation exceeds that by a minimum of 70 percent, and perhaps by more than 300 percent. Given his occupation as a corporate lawyer for a $155 billion global banking conglomerate and his pedigree as a graduate of two Ivy league schools, he is by any measure a verified member of the city's elite.

And yet he pays less than $2,000 per month by virtue of a set of regulations designed to prevent landlords from sharply raising rents on people who are, by birth or by circumstance, excluded from that elite. There are 1,025,214 rent-stabilized units in New York City, constituting nearly half of available renting stock. While there are no reliable numbers on vacancy rates or turnover among rent-stabilized units, we know that Manhattan's overall vacancy rate is between 1 percent and 2 percent, and that tenants in rent-stabilized units hold onto their apartments, on average, for twice as long as occupants of non-stabilized apartments (they'd be stupid not to; Kenny has been in his since 1997).

All of which means that there is fierce competition for the apartments specifically designated for people who would otherwise be priced out of the market. Last year, the Times reported on how difficult it is to find one:

“I have people all the time who come to me and ask me to find them a rent-stabilized apartment,” said Alexis Fleming, a broker at Citi Habitats. “I tell them good luck. It is a needle in a haystack.”

In seven years, she said, she has rented just seven stabilized apartments.

More than 10 years ago, New York magazine chronicled some of the more egregious injustices the rent-stabilization scheme promotes:

A not uncommon story is that of the couple who live in a brownstone on East 87th Street owned by a client of real-estate lawyer Howard Stern. The couple maintain a rent-stabilized one-bedroom for $821 a month — which has allowed them to purchase a spacious retreat in Columbia County. "The wife keeps her driver's-license address and car registration upstate to take advantage of lower insurance rates," Stern says. "The husband maintains his driver's license and makes sure he votes in Manhattan to take advantage of rent regulations." They're the archetypal Manhattan couple, fingerpicking the system with the delicacy of a Segovia. "And the law permits it," Stern adds. "Holidays and weekends, they go up to their country home, which is in effect subsidized, because their rental is nowhere near what the market rate would be."

Indeed, property records show that, as of two years ago, a Michael A. Kenny who lives on 116th St. in New York also owned a (relatively modest) 4,270 square-foot bungalow in Chicago.

Michael Kenny should live where he wants, and pay whatever is required. (Check that: He, like all Citibank executives, should be housed on Randall's Island for re-education after their bank is nationalized and returned to THE PEOPLE.) But any system of rent regulation that affords a Citigroup senior vice president 16 years of artificially cheap housing while throwing people who make far less money at the mercy of the market is perverse, backwards, and hopelessly out of date. Whatever scant, ham-fisted, bureaucratically fucked up help this city is willing to help people who aren't rich and powerful should be directed exclusively at the people who aren't rich and powerful.

Nine and a half million American families are living in poverty. Four out of five 18-24-year-olds did not have a full time job last year. At a time like this, we must be brave enough to ask ourselves: Will New York City's next mayor attend our glamorous charity ball??

That, you see, is the real question, haunting the minds of our city's 1%—the job creators, the role models, the good rich, who bear the burden of wearing designer ballgowns and fancy jewelry to star-studded events in Manhattan's most exclusive venues, all in the name of charity. With Mayor Mike leaving, are either of the two schlubby class warriors set to succeed him really ready to take on the challenges that face our metropolis: the challenges of going to parties thrown by the ultrarich? The Wall Street Journal digs in:

"I have a lot of concerns," said Jamee Gregory, a philanthropist and the author of the coffee-table book "New York Parties: Private Views." "Will [Mr. Bloomberg's successor] be doing the sort of things the mayor was, or will he think it's not socially correct? Some of the candidates say, 'These are things that rich people do,' as though it's not having a positive impact. I am perplexed."

One publicist explains, "Big donors need to feel that they are in the right place."

Bill de Blasio, please hold a 2014 fundraiser on Riker's Island.

[WSJ. Photo: Getty]

A group of Ohio State University students who joked around about their off-campus housing being haunted recently learned that they were not that far off: It seems a strange man had been occupying a "secret bedroom" inside the students' house for months.

OSU's student paper The Lantern reports that a man named Jeremy, allegedly an OSU student himself, was let into the house by his cousin who lived there last year, and never left.

Students recalled hearing "weird noises like dings and alarms" emanating from behind a locked door in the basement that they believed was utility closet, but chalked it up to supernatural phenomena.

It wasn't until maintenance workers opened the door that they found "a bedroom complete with framed photographs and textbooks."

Later, house resident Brett Mugglin remembered running into an unknown man in the basement during the summer, and now believes that man was Jeremy.

"He was a nice enough guy," Mugglin told The Lantern. "He just wasn’t supposed to be there."

The uninvited houseguest was allowed to retrieve his stuff before being formally evicted.

A few of the students plan to take legal action against NorthSteppe Realty, the firm that provides OSU with property services.

"It's funny now, but it potentially could have been extremely dangerous given that some random guy had a key to our house and was just living in our house without anyone knowing," said Mugglin.

[screengrab via The Lantern]

One of the more obscure institutions to emerge from Edward Snowden’s NSA campaign is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (also known as the FISA court) which, operating in total secrecy, reviews and approves countless secret government orders to monitor and record the communications of Americans — often in tandem with publicly-traded telecommunications firms like AT&T and Verizon. Now that we know the extent to which the FISA courts rulings govern the behavior of telecommunications behemoths, we took a look at the extent to which the court's judges are personally invested in those very same behemoths. The answer is a lot.

Like all judges, each of the surveillance court’s 11 members, plus the 3 judges who sit on its Court of Review, are required to file an annual financial disclosure where they catalog their income and investments in hopes of diminishing the appearance of a conflict of interest. The most recent available disclosures for all 14 judges, collected over the years by Judicial Watch, indicate plenty of potential conflicts.

Judge Thomas F. Hogan, for example, disclosed stock valued between $15,000 and $50,000 in AT&T stock, and between $15,000 and $50,000 in Verizon, in a 2011 disclosure filed more than two years after his FISC appointment in 2009. (The disclosure forms require ranges, not exact amounts.)

In May 2011, three years after his appointment to FISC, Judge James Zagel disclosed investments in AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and AOL — each worth “less than $15,000” — plus a larger investment in the computer firm Oracle worth between $15,000 and $50,000. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison recently defended the NSA’s surveillance capabilities as “absolutely essential” after arguing, counter-factually, that such capabilities could have stopped the Boston Marathon bombings. After the Guardian and Washington Post disclosed the NSA’s PRISM Internet surveillance programs, authorities in China reportedly launched a probe into whether Oracle was installing NSA-friendly backdoors in its hardware.

Most current FISC judges do not directly own stock in telecommunications companies, and those that do tend to own stock in large companies like AT&T and Verizon, whose massive customer bases make for both fairly solid investments and obvious targets of governmental surveillance. But smaller companies popped up in some disclosures, too. For example, in his 2011 disclosure, Judge Martin L.C. Feldman disclosed an investment worth between $1,000 and $15,000 in a California company called Shoretel, which specializes in enterprise-level VoIP technology: precisely the sort of the company that would be vulnerable to, and inclined to obey, a secret FISA order.

None of this to suggest that these judges are corrupt, or that any of the companies were implicated in an order granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. (For one, it would be illegal for those companies to acknowledge the order’s existence; the only firm concretely known to have been ordered to hand over bulk data to the NSA so far is Verizon.) But financial disclosure laws are useless when evaluating judicial officers who convene and rule in secrecy, as the FISA judges do.

There’s no way to assess a potential conflict of interest when you don’t even know what a judge, or an entire court, is ruling on. Indeed, nobody actually knows whether a FISA court judge has ever recused himself. And it’s unclear whether any of the telecommunications firms under the NSA’s thumb are compensated for their cooperation — and, if so, by how much.

The aforementioned disclosures are just a small peek, however. We’ve requested the latest disclosures, filed in spring 2013, for each FISC judge. And one of those judges, F. Dennis Saylor, just ordered the White House to release additional FISA court opinions by October 4. The first such opinion, incidentally, was published today.

Email the author at trotter@gawker.com

[Photo credit: Associated Press]

Sometimes, apparently, according to the Spokane, Wash., Spokesman-Review's Paul Turner. Something about digital alarm clocks?

Two days before he allegedly shot 12 people to death at the Washington Navy Yard, Aaron Alexis purchased a shotgun and ammunition at the Sharpshooters Small Arms Range in Lorton, Virginia. Alexis also used the store’s rifle range for practice. The store ran a federal background check on Alexis, which was approved.

There is nothing I hate more than when an Indian person does well at something.

It's not some sort of innate self-loathing (well, not for that reason anyways) or jealousy, but because news reports of any noteworthy South Asian achievement are immediately followed by texts from friends of "Did you see? S/He's INDIAN." It's as if this stranger's victory is all the more palpable to me by some grace of shared concentration of melanin, and I never know how to respond. "Great"? "Can't hold down that brown"? "I think that's my cousin"?

I understand why it's a big fucking deal that an Indian-American woman won Miss America for the first time. It's just as important as when Rima Faikh became the first Lebanese-American, and first Muslim, to win Miss USA in 2010. I find beauty pageants moronic (the title is a meaningless honor, 35 percent of which can be attributed to how good she looks in different articles of clothing and zero percent to her ability to grasp a basic concept of percentages), but I'm aware that these victories can shake up and change previous models of "All-American." I'm glad that we're moving toward a future where beauty queens of color are normal and not exceptional. It's just that every time an Indian achieves something big—a beauty pageant, a huge spelling bee, majority ownership in a major sports franchise—I feel like my excitement for my brown brethren is less actual excitement, and more just something I'm supposed to say.

Two nights ago, when Nina Davuluri became the first Indian American to be crowned Miss America, I got another flood of texts, and the cycle started all over again.

Facing a barrage of racist tweets that ranged from calling her an Arab and a terrorist to correlating her victory with a potential decline in gas prices, Davuluri hasn't had it easy. But is being lauded for her race by those decrying the racist tweeters any better? Those that have come to her defense have chosen to mainly focus on her race as well, not just as a reason to celebrate her victory, but as the reason. Maybe I'm just looking to pick a fight with my white-hating coworkers, but where I find the racist drivel on Twitter offensive, I also find the uplifting blog posts on race condescending. Writers have done a marvelous job defending Davuluri, but in doing so, they've focused the entire conversation on just one facet of her life: her race.

A lot of the problem lies with Davuluri herself—who, despite not being the only "diverse" contestant in the the group, ran and wowed the judges on the platform "Miss Diversity." While I don't blame her for picking an angle, the self-adopted title will never sit well with me. What makes her more diverse than any of the other many non-white contestants? And why is she willing to marginalize and tokenize herself as a justification for her win?

I grew up in a family that has always been proud of its Indian heritage. My parents emigrated from India to Indiana in the 70s (not because they just got confused, despite my insistence), and I was born and raised in California—specifically, in a model-minority suburb where my Indian background gave me no specific advantages over my many other other Asian and South Asian classmates.

It's not that I'm color blind. I'm aware that I've been given jobs in part because people look at my skin color and think: Hard working and smart. I know this because bosses have said it to me, more than once. (I'm not sure they know I graduated college with a 2.7 GPA and rarely had the discipline to attend lecture.) I've been out with many a guy who has crowed to me proudly of his love of Indian girls—but I've never continued to date someone who bragged about it. I don't want to be anyone's fetish. Or their quota.

I'm proud of Davuluri for breaking new ground, but not because she's a fellow Indian. I'm proud because that's how the U.S. grows. But I can't reconcile her willingness to put an asterisk on her own victory. Mindy Kaling was once asked by New York Magazine what it was like to be an Indian female show runner: “I never want to be called the funniest Indian female comedian that exists. I feel like I can go head-to-head with the best white, male comedy writers that are out there. Why would I want to self-categorize myself into a smaller group than I’m able to compete in?"

I understand that my views might not be reflective of my fellow Indians. I could have it wrong. Perhaps I'm just an ornery ex-pageant contestant myself, bitter that Davuluri succeeded where I couldn't. (In all fairness, my program didn't have a beauty component—it was a stage show for the uglies!) Maybe I should be happy that Indian kids here can feel less left out now that one of their kind has been accepted and lauded by one of the most conservative and traditionalist institution in the U.S. There's no shortage of role models for Indian-Americans in this country and around the world—both of the "looks good" and the "does good" variety. I'm happy to accept one more. But until we can accept these role models without a racial modifier preceding their accomplishments, please don't ask me to be proud.

To contact the author of this post, please email beejoli@gawker.com.

[Image via Getty]

One of the reasons America's idiotic war on drugs has existed as a punitive project rather than a therapeutic one is because it's easier to write off drug addicts as losers with no self-control instead of damaged people deserving of sympathy. The nation is a rat race for money, and the fewer people competing for that money the better, so who cares if some sad guy addicted to crack gets thrown in jail for years on end? More for me.

It becomes harder to hold onto that kind of wrongheaded selfishness the more you discover that "scary drug addicts" might actually just be human beings who are down on their luck and need some help, not solitary confinement. We now have decades of research that suggests America's drug problem could be better handled with treatment programs than jails. Today comes another study that puts forth the notion that, in a clinical environment, people who continually use harmful drugs—meth, crack, etc.—will frequently stop doing the drugs if you offer them opportunities for economic advancement.

This is from a New York Times article about Dr. Carl Hart, a psychologist studying drug abuse at Columbia University:

At the start of each day, as researchers watched behind a one-way mirror, a nurse would place a certain amount of crack in a pipe—the dose varied daily—and light it. While smoking, the participant was blindfolded so he couldn’t see the size of that day’s dose.

Then, after that sample of crack to start the day, each participant would be offered more opportunities during the day to smoke the same dose of crack. But each time the offer was made, the participants could also opt for a different reward that they could collect when they eventually left the hospital. Sometimes the reward was $5 in cash, and sometimes it was a $5 voucher for merchandise at a store.

When the dose of crack was fairly high, the subject would typically choose to keep smoking crack during the day. But when the dose was smaller, he was more likely to pass it up for the $5 in cash or voucher.

When meth started tearing up American communities the way crack had, Hart replaced crack with meth and got the same results—"similarly rational decisions," as the New York Times put it. Furthermore, when the financial incentive was raised from $5 to $20, every single drug addict, on crack and meth, took the money over the drugs. Lest you should think choosing the money was merely a cash grab to rush off and buy more substances that night, anyone participating in the study had to agree to live in a hospital ward for several weeks and have their substance abuse tracked. They could also only collect their cash and gift certificates after the completion of the study.

Hart, who grew up in a crack-addled community, says 80 to 90 percent of people who use crack and meth don't even get addicted in the first place. "And the small number who do become addicted are nothing like the popular caricatures," he adds.

Those caricatures, of course, are of the dead-eyed crack zombies Americans saw depicted throughout the '80s and '90s, people who, no matter what, were irrationally lost to their addiction and were incapable of making the choice to not smoke crack. Hart says drug treatment and providing economic opportunities are not a panacea, but he says, "If you’re living in a poor neighborhood deprived of options, there’s a certain rationality to keep taking a drug that will give you some temporary pleasure."

Yesterday, sulking fame heir Willow Smith performed her song "Summer Fling" on the first episode of the new Queen Latifah Show. If you saw the official video for this song that can't decide if it wants to be a ballad or an uptempo (not that it has to decide anything since it is millennial), you probably noticed that Smith breaks into a British accent for no good reason during the song's few spoken lines. She sounds extremely stupid, which I guess makes sense since she is 12. She did the same thing during her performance, but the accent was more pronounced and the lines were different. In the interview that followed the performance, Smith did not speak in a British accent, which also makes sense, since she isn't British.

(Also during that interview, Latifah spoke of a summer fling that the song reminded her of. "His name was Haneef, I'll keep it real with you," she said in her hetero accent.)

Why did Willow Smith do this? Why does Britney Spears speak in an English accent throughout her single "Work Bitch!" which was released on Sunday, just as she did in her previous will.i.am collaboration, "Scream and Shout?"

Is this a symptom of attempting to escape one's existence after being pushed into fame by overbearing stage parents? Do these young stars think they're Madonna? Or Nicki Minaj and/or Mariah Carey? Will another person who became famous at an early age also speak in a British accent this week, bringing the number up to three and thus qualifying this phenomenon as a trend? Miley? Lindsay? Drake? Anybody?

A political ad produced by a Massachusetts state rep is getting national attention today thanks to its universal message: Parents just don't understand.

The openly gay liberal lawmaker Carl M. Sciortino, Jr., who is running to replace now-Senator Ed Markey in next month's special primary election, appears in the ad opposite his dad, Carl M. Sciortino, Sr. — a staunch Tea Party Republican.

"I’ll never forget that conversation with my dad, where I had to come out and tell him..." the younger Sciortino says at the start of the ad.

"Wait for this," the senior Sciortino interjects.

"That I was a Massachusetts liberal," continues the candidate.

It only gets better from there.

The 60-spot is getting unusually rave reviews on YouTube, where the top comment calls it "hands down the best political ad I've seen."

[H/T: Political Wire]

Whether you're happy for Nina Davuluri — the first Indian-American to be crowned Miss America — or not, you can at least agree that she isn't a terrorist.

That fact was apparently lost on many Americans, who took to their Twitter feeds in blind rage following Davuluri's to decry her as an Un-American Muslim terrorist — three things she just so happens to not be at all.

Much has been said about the knee-jerk reactions of the xenophobic multitude to any non-Norman-Rockwell contestant winning, well, anything, but, as always, Stephen Colbert gets the last word.

In case you missed last night's show, Colbert summed up the argument against Davuluri in a single sentence: "705 people [who tweeted the phrase "Miss America Terrorist"] saw a woman in a bikini and thought, 'Muslim Extremist.'"

Boom.

Even Colbert couldn't keep himself from cracking up.

Watch the whole segment below (starts around the 2:30 mark).

[screengrab via Colbert Nation, animated gif via Tumblr]