POLI-TRICKS: Confederacy, If Merc Was President, and More...

HBO is fighting to keep Confederate alive amid intense media backlashfrom people like New York Times columnist Roxanne Gay, who described the premise of the show as “slavery fan fiction.”“My exhaustion with the idea of Confederate is multiplied by the realization that this show is the brainchild of two white men who oversee a show that has few people of color to speak of and where sexual violence is often gratuitous and treated as no big deal,” Gay wrote, referring to the lack of diversity criticism often lobbed at Game of Thrones.“I shudder to imagine the enslaved black body in their creative hands,” she added.Husband and wife co-executi