What rap needs more than a glossary is a case for its intellectual importance as something neither alien nor off-limits to unhip white people, something whose rewards can be approached and discussed on whatever terms, and in whatever language, best suit us.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of American sports from a European perspective is that for all their consumerist glitz, the leagues themselves are exemplary not of capitalism but its seeming opposite: socialism.

This is the new porn debate, circa 2011—one that’s only nominally about keeping sex sacrosanct. When intellectuals and moralists decry its perversity or its vulgarity, they’re actually decrying the greater societal reality that porn is everywhere.