Cultural Commentary

“Above all, I fought the fuck back.” It was Feb. 2, 2019, and Jussie Smollett, the most talked-about celebrity of the moment, was performing at a sold-out show at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Days earlier, the young, Black, queer star of Empire had told police he’d been assaulted on …

The scene that unfolded on Thursday morning in Beijing during the Women’s Figure Skating competition — watching Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old thrust into the center of Russia’s doping scandal, struggle so publicly — was disheartening on many levels. It also capped off a terrible week for the sport of figure …