HELLO and welcome to the 27th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about sex on anti-depressants and Noomi Rapace!! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.
The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.
Also! I imagine many of you have read the New York Magazine story S/He and might wonder if I’ve seen it — I have indeed read it, but I’m not including it here because Morgan is writing about it for Monday!
Tourist Snapshots (May 2012), by Rolf Potts for Design Observer – I found this so beautiful. “When I recall my visit to Ford’s Theater, I don’t think of Civil War intrigue: I mainly remember the sight of other junior high kids in the queue outside; I remember thinking, “Maybe people would like me more if I, too, wore white Reeboks.”
True Stories: Still Medicated After All These Years (May 2012), by Jeremy Glass for Nerve.com – Relevant to my interests.
Ink, Inc (March 2012), by Alex Halperin for Guernica – “It’s getting harder to distinguish between tattoo culture and the mainstream. In the last decade there have been at least five tattoo reality shows and a 2010 Pew Research Center study found that 38 percent of 18 through 29-year-olds have tattoos, compared to 15 percent of baby boomers.”
The 1 Percent’s Problem (May 2012), by Joseph E. Stiglitz for Vanity Fair – “Put sentiment aside. There are good reasons why plutocrats should care about inequality anyway—even if they’re thinking only about themselves. The rich do not exist in a vacuum. They need a functioning society around them to sustain their position. Widely unequal societies do not function efficiently and their economies are neither stable nor sustainable. The evidence from history and from around the modern world is unequivocal: there comes a point when inequality spirals into economic dysfunction for the whole society, and when it does, even the rich pay a steep price.”
Young, Privileged and Applying For Food Stamps (May 2012) by Karina Briski for The Billfold – “… a woman seated next to us leaned forward, her words darting out faster than we could dodge them. “Excuse me, but you’re all disgusting. And if I had time to spare, I would report you.'”
The Meme Generation (June 2012), by Matt Labash for The Weekly Standard – A skeptical writer visits ROFLCon, which is this weird convention about memes. It’s really weird. You should read it.
Believing the Children (March 2009), by Jordan Smith for The Austin Chronicle – “In 1992, Fran and Danny Keller were convicted of multiple counts of child sexual abuse at their Oak Hill day care center and sent to prison for 48 years. It’s likely they were innocent. Indeed, it’s very likely that no crime ever occurred – except an absurd and overzealous prosecution.”
The Week in Greed: The Money Shot (May 2012), by Steve Almond for The Rumpus – Steve Almond on that gross picture of Mitt Romney and his cronies with all that money all over themselves.
Two stories about the same event:
Yiddish, Translated on a Jumbotron by Micah Stein for Tablet Magazine – “A few rows down from me, a man was chatting on his iPhone. “I’m at the ballpark, it’s Jewish heritage day!” he laughed. “I could use a cold beer.””
You Get On the Internet and Pretty Soon You’re Drunk, by Sean Patrick Cooper for The Awl – “In a general way, the ironies and contradictions of the event seemed almost too obvious to point out: the organizer’s use of modern technology to transmit each speaker’s critiques of modern technology to audiences around the world.”
Two stories about beautiful women:
Noomi Rapace Arrives in Hollywood, by Way Of Outer Space (May 2012) by Karen Olsson for The New York Times Magazine – Lisbeth comes to America!
Snow White & The Hunstman and Kristen Stewart (May 2012), by Zach Baron for Grantland – “But the character of Kristen Stewart is a fascinating one; she holds your attention on-screen, even when she’s just sort of being herself. I hope they keep making movies about that person, whoever she is.”
Whee!
I was so pleased with that Kristen Stewart article because she’s always being bashed in the media for her awkwardness. It was so nice to see her being appreciated for her realness. But then I read the comments below and I just deflated. I don’t know how it is that Kristen Stewart still gets roles in movies when so many people hate her. I feel like she has more haters than fans.
That article about the daycare was disturbing. Its impossible to know how much truth there was in those children’s allegations. Obviously some of the things they said were unbelievable but is there something that they still stand by what they said many years later? I don’t know.
While it’s true that many children are abused and we need to make it safe for them to talk about it, these events took place during the heydey of recovered memory therapy which has been proven to be bogus. The fact that these kids made up so many events suggests their testimony is unreliable. If a friend or a child I knew told me someone had assaulted them, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt. If they then claimed that that person ritualistically killed a baby in front of them without any evidence (reports of a baby going missing, discovery of a baby’s body or DNA) I’d begin to question their original story. The sad part is that cases like this only empower those who are skeptical of people who seek refuge from real abuse.
I see several possible explanations for standing by the original story.
1. People who’ve developed false memories in therapy have the potential to truly believe them. Such patients are able to be traumatized without actually having been abused in a satanic ritual. They could be confused.
2. They can’t handle the shame of confessing that they told lies that ruined other people’s lives or being sued for it.
3. They could see a revelation of the truth as a betrayal of the adults who pressured them into telling the stories in the first place (parents and the therapist) or fear that those people would be sued.
yeah i didn’t leave that story feeling like there was truth to what the children had said… i too would give the abused people the benefit of the doubt, but as the above poster said, they were accused of doing completely batshit crazy stuff that really is out there.
This is why I respect and love Noomi Rapace, “I don’t have this crazy dream about going to Hollywood,” she says in the video, “because I really love to watch movies and do movies that are complicated, and I want more strange things and complicated things.”
I saw this interview awhile back and I think she did an incredible job playing Lisbeth Salander, as I could easily relate to that characters personality. She’s truly an artist and to see someone create via film, the way she does, is quite amazing. Here’s hoping to see more movies of her doing more strange and complicated things because I love that stuff too. The more weird, eccentric, out the box, and strange it is, the better it is, in my book, plus I’m attracted to shit like that.
…and ROTFL@ROLFcon, wow, just wow.
The problem with getting my celebrity gossip from gay websites is that inevitably I end up forgetting that a substantial group of people believe that Bella/Edward is actually a real relationship.
The most exciting thing about buying an iPhone was knowing that I could add all the Things I Read That I Love articles to my Instapaper queue and read endless fascinating Riese-curated articles on my commute to work every morning.
Re: I saw Goody Keller with the devil
The title ‘Believing the Children’ doesn’t seem fitting considering that in cases like this the children’s tall tales are manufactured with the help of credulous therapists and other adults, as the author explains. A better title might be ‘Unwittingly Manipulating the Children’. Not only did the adults who handled the case likely wrongfully imprison 2 innocent people, they also scarred some of those kids by drawing them into confusing and disturbing narratives they will remember for the rest of their lives. The girl who made the claim isn’t even the problem, she was a toddler with aggression issues who clearly wasn’t properly nurtured by the adults around her. Those adults didn’t do her any favors by allowing her to drift away from reality with fantastical tales of graveyard rituals and plane rides to Mexico.
The title irks me because it implies the children are responsible for this shitshow of a justice system or disastrous therapy that induces false memories. Those professionals have only worsened things for the scores of children who are actually abused and then disbelieved by adults.
yes, this
“Young, Privileged and Applying For Food Stamps” was thought-provoking. We need to challenge our perception of what “poor” looks like.