Interesting link, Jake: "If you are ever in a committee meeting where Sting, Yoko Ono, and Madonna agree, back quietly out of the room and run until you’re out of breath." Funnily, that's kinda how I feel about reading a magazine whose masthead includes the names Jim Goad, Joe Bob Briggs and Patrick J. Buchanan. (I'm being cheeky; I haven't even though about any of those people since 1997, but one ad hominem deserves another.)

This article, from one of the founders of the ex-pate newspaper the Moscow Examiner, was interesting: http://nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/pussy-riot. There's an "It's impossible for any Westerner to truly understand how those crazy, naturally irrational Russians think" thing going on in Ames' piece which I find a touch problematic. But the point -- that Westerners don't have enough cultural context to know what's going on, and that making Pussy Riot a cause celebre might actually make things worse -- is well taken.

@CMcCurdy On a similar note, the Atlantic wrote an interesting piece about the "Kony-ification" of Pussy Riot:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/a…

And to think, Neo-Nazi bands and associated hooligans have been on the rise and running amok in Russia since the 1990's, - UNCHALLENGED! Had Pussy Riot been some fucked up WP band who's members aided in the racial murders of immigrants, they would NOT be facing prison today!