I don’t know what these emails are about but I’m certainly not going to wade through 100 of them. Not today. Not ever.
always said i’d avoid twitter when this day came
Did anyone ever do this?
What is the concrete difference between these two things: “contributing to society” and “being exploited by society.”
Have YOU heard of Food Not Bombs?
BEAR TRASH
CENTRAL ADIRONDACKS, NEW YORK
One of the many popular attractions throughout the Central Adirondacks has been visiting the Village Dumps to watch the Native Black Bear feeding.
We’re on vacation! Let’s go to the dump!
YM Upper Left Coast Corrinspondant looking over the Summer of Archives.
Once I was a skinny reporter-in-training. I smoked cigarettes. I wore smudged glasses. I got my breakfast from a street cart. When I wasn’t in the newsroom, I was either drunk at the Film Center Café on Ninth Avenue or asleep in a $90-per-month apartment in Union City, New Jersey. Now, 20 years later, I’m a veteran magazine writer. I’m 15 pounds overweight—O.K., 40—and I own a two-bedroom apartment on upper Broadway. Sometimes I think back on the hundreds of articles I’ve written, and it’s a blur, even to me. A nice piece here and there, but all of them forgettable. Somehow the time has gone by.
My father, on the other hand, was a substantial reporter, a bona fide newspaperman. He got his start, in 1953, after a year’s duty in Korea, at the New York Journal-American. From there he moved to The New York Herald Tribune. The bosses must have been grooming him:
Are We Friends Yet? with Tyler Coates, Drew Grant, and Andrew Krucoff:
Tyler Coates, Drew Grant, Andrew Krucoff, and maybe a guest get together
once a week(ish) to produce an ad-free “podcast” or something
resembling one. Why? We’re not sure. Hell, we’re not even sure we’re
friends. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a “private” link to listen to
it. It won’t be available on iTunes, that’s how low we’re setting the
bar.
An actor will seek revenge
I don’t know why and I don’t know when
There’ll be talk, there’ll be action
Boys demanding satisfaction from girls
Oh, you’d hate to be a girl!
An actor will seek revenge
Upon the ones who fed him those ridiculous lines
Saying, “What we really need now is an emotional history
Of the Lower Eastside, cause it was wild! It was wild!”
Oh no, here we go again…
YM PDX Intern retreat, juicy details.
Housing complex “Manhattan”, (Sedesowce)
4-16, Grunwaldzki Square,
Wroclaw, Poland,
built between 1968-1973.
Architect: Jadwiga Hawrylak-Grabowska. ©B.A.C.U.
Historical photo of the late Young Manhattanite.
If I wanted to write a truly epic, bruising, crushing, barnburning, paddywhacking, frankenfurter, Fahrvergnügen takedown of this frankly thin and tossed-off interview about Tom Cruise, I’d probably have to dip back into my copy of Going Clear and also google around a lot for responses by Cruise et al re: Going Clear. If anyone wants to pay me to do that, I will, but tumblr.com does not pay for these words, so I won’t.
I will say that this piece, which you can find by googling “tom cruise the awl” has stuck in my craw for a 24-hour period and then these awl editors or whoever they are’s responses have stuck in my craw for the better part of since I read them. My craw is getting too full of Tom Cruise shit!
I gotta get some of this shit out. To: “Matt Buchanan” and “Choire Sicha”, if you have google alerts set up, which for the former I doubt since that seems like a common name but whatever, feel free to respond to my response as you see fit.
Like most people on the internet, I’ll start my case by damning myself. I am not a journalist. I may not have a dictionary definition sense of what journalism is. From your comments, it seems that
>journalism is presenting raw interviews with which the editors disagree.
Do I have that right?
This interview on the awl, by an LA based entertainment journalist and an LA based film writer, is a few thousand word blowjob fest about how great and misunderstood Tom Cruise is. Tom Cruise is an evil person. Tom Cruise stars in a major motion picture coming very soon to a theatre near you. Connect the dots, reader, because journalistic outlet the awl has done all its journalism for you by commisioning and publishing this interview, which, see above.
If this is what journalism is, then I can see why it’s not been doing so good lately.
Tom Cruise, if Going Clear, a best selling, well sourced, turned into a nationally televised documentary film on HBO, is to be believed, has done the folowing:
- stole away Nicole Kidman’s children
- uses slave labor for construction and household purposes
- supports the terroristic activities of the church as a means to take money from American taxpayers
- was the best man, twice, to the leader of the church, David Miscavige, a man who is undeniably evil
There is so, so much more to Cruise’s involvement with the church, but see the first paragraph. Just read the book if you’re interested.
Some common counterpoints to the “Tom Cruise is evil” line of thinking:
“But all religions are evil to some extent or whatever, look at the crusades or 9-11.”
Yes, all religions have extremists and sometimes those extremists are in power, even. Yet we are not talking about religions over time; we’re talking about Scientology right now and for the last fifty or so years. All religions have extremists and they also have aherents who denounce those extremists, unless you’re saying all Muslims are terrorists ore all Christians hate gays. Scientology is by definition a fantatical, extreme religion and has built within, by nature, mechanisms for encouraging extremism and silencing (via kidnapping) dissenters.
“But Tom Cruise is probably just brainwashed.”
Holding a set of beliefs because of being brainwashed or suseptible to influence or whatever does not excuse culpability. If it did, we’d never see extremists as a bad thing. Tom Cruise, as a rich, powerful, public figure can disrupt, clean up, and/or redeem scientology if he chooses to, and he has chosen at every path to support it and its practices. He’s not an ignorant man. Cruise has traveled and met people and seen the world. All signs point to him fully supporting the church, despite (some? I guess? sort of) public criticism and much evidence of the church’s evil.
“Tom Cruise probably doesn’t really believe in all the extreme stuff, it’s just a celebrity thing.”
See the first two answers. He’s a powerful public figure who’s seen the evidence and chosen to support the church. He supports the church with his name and image and with his money. It’s not like he just wears a button or put a sticker on his car. Cruise stood up as best man, twice, for a man who I personally think of as one of the most evil people I’ve ever read about.
What was my point?
Oh yeah, journalism. Lawrence Wright, the guy who wrote Going Clear is a journalist. This amazing and thorough New York Times article about the unravelling of the Voting Rights Act is journalism. That interview on the awl is just some shameless (hopefully paid? I’m sure your John Herrman could explain the wonders of native advertising) plug for a pathetic, evil man who won’t go away.
We stopped reading Thought Catalog in the early aughts to.
Today’s August 4th. I tell the story every year, and like every story that gets told over and over, like my own love for DIY ethics and social justice, it’s always new and always the same… here’s to 30 years of Revolution Summer. Take it back.
Dear out-of-town friends, I get that events don’t usually sell out outside of New York, so if you’re coming here and want to see a show, know the rules and please plan accordingly.
We made tote bags for a team building activity at work.
I don’t know what these emails are about but I’m certainly not going to wade through 100 of them. Not today. Not ever.
My brother and nephew quit the Scouts in 2012 over the ban. Principles. Have them.