I found myself surprisingly lukewarm about the series of articles on the issue’s theme of World Changers, though I appreciated “Out in Africa,” Alexis Okeowo’s illuminating article about Frank Mugisha and other courageous gay activists in Uganda, as well as Elif Batuman’s long article about an amazing all-female theater troupe in rural Turkey. I got drawn into Bill Wyman’s review of Randall Sullivan’s Michael Jackson biography Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson, which includes this remarkable assertion: “It’s an open question whether Jackson ever had sex with anyone — man, woman, or child. Sullivan believes the singer died a virgin.” Speaking of weird and self-destructive R&B singers, Sasha Frere-Jones writes an unusually unsparing essay about Rihanna and her relationship with Chris Brown, whom he describes as “an agile dancer, a better-than-average rapper, and a passable singer…also, by all appearances, a vile human being. ” A bunch of kinda great cartoons, though:
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