I got obsessed with Oz a few a months ago, when I rewatched the entire show as I was unpacking the house. If you don’t know it—I pity you— Oz , produced by Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson, is the fictional depiction of a prison and its inmates. It got decent reviews, but many critics were put off by the violence. “I am starting to think that some of the violence is excessive,” wrote the Baltimore Sun 's David…

So many reasons! Here are some.

A central fact about Ed Champion, the book blogger-turned-pariah, is that he lacked power within the publishing industry. He had access to writers, and over the course of nine years interviewed hundreds of them, and he got invited to parties, but his influence remained on the margins—among people who, like him, lived and breathed literature—it never bled into the mainstream. As Champion tweeted in June, "No money, no job, no gigs, no agent (a MS…