IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
1. The North Atlantic is in a bad way
Puffins are disappearing from the North Atlantic and Rowan Jacobsen says it’s just one sign that the ocean is “in a bad way”.
(MotherJones, approx nine minutes reading time, 2,681)
Life would go on without puffins. Unfortunately, these clowns of the sea seem to be the canaries in the western Atlantic coal mine. Their decline is an ominous sign in a system that supports everything from the last 400 North Atlantic right whales to the $2 billion lobster industry.
2. Monica Lewinsky: Shame and Survival
(Vanity Fair, approx 17 minutes reading time, 5,175 words)
Monica Lewinsky addresses the question (again): How does it feel to be America’s premier blow-job queen? in a self-penned profile now available online at Vanity Fair – and muses about what life would have been like if the question was asked in the social-media age.
…this wasn’t the first time I’d been stigmatized for my affair with Bill Clinton. But never had I been so directly confronted, one-on-one, with such a crass characterisation. One of the unintended consequences of my agreeing to put myself out there and to try to tell the truth had been that shame would once again be hung around my neck like a scarlet-A albatross. Believe me, once it’s on, it is a bitch to take off.
Had that awkward moment at Cooper Union aired only a few years later, with the advent of social media, the humiliation would have been even more devastating. That clip would have gone viral on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, TMZ, Gawker. It would have become a meme of its own on Tumblr. The viralness itself would have merited mention on the Daily Beast and Huffington Post. As it was, it was viral enough, and, thanks to the all-encompassing nature of the Web, you can, 12 years later, watch it all day long on YouTube if you want to (but I really hope you have better things to do with your time).
Starting with one man’s experiences, Ta-Nehisi Coates draws out his fascinating argument on why America should deal “compound its moral debts” with reparation for the descendants of black slaves.
(The Atlantic, approx 53 minutes reading time, 15,900 words)
Liberals have found themselves on the defensive. In 2008, when Barack Obama was a candidate for president, he was asked whether his daughters—Malia and Sasha—should benefit from affirmative action. He answered in the negative.The exchange rested upon an erroneous comparison of the average American white family and the exceptional first family. In the contest of upward mobility, Barack and Michelle Obama have won. But they’ve won by being twice as good—and enduring twice as much. Malia and Sasha Obama enjoy privileges beyond the average white child’s dreams. But that comparison is incomplete. The more telling question is how they compare with Jenna and Barbara Bush—the products of many generations of privilege, not just one. Whatever the Obama children achieve, it will be evidence of their family’s singular perseverance, not of broad equality.
4. Nerdy guys aren’t guaranteed to get laid
Arthur Chu was going to write his much-rehearsed rant about The Big Bang Theory but then the Santa Barbara shooting happened “the weekend just generally went to hell”. He then began to think about everything he was fed by television during his childhood, growing up as ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’ character. Finally, he concludes what is actually going on. Our rape culture.
(The Daily Beast, approx eight minutes reading time, 2,333 words)
But the overall problem is one of a culture where instead of seeing women as, you know, people, protagonists of their own stories just like we are of ours, men are taught that women are things to “earn,” to “win.” That if we try hard enough and persist long enough, we’ll get the girl in the end. Like life is a video game and women, like money and status, are just part of the reward we get for doing well.
5. Remembering New York’s AIDS epidemic
Decades on, New York Magazine’s Tim Murphy spoke with seven New Yorkers about the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
(New York, approx seven minutes reading time, 1,936 words)
I was talking with a group of guys from Boston, and one of them said that a friend of his had just died from “that new gay cancer.” None of us had heard of it, and we asked for more details. “He got sick, went to the hospital, and was dead in a few weeks,” we were told. At that time we were always hearing of gay men’s diseases, but they were almost always STDs. We just didn’t know how to get our heads around “gay cancer.” It was a few months before I heard about a second case, then the floodgates opened and it was all we could talk about.
6. Portrait of a Serial Winner
If you’re a football fan, you’ll probably have had conversations with yourself to try and work out your feelings about Luis Suarez, introduced here as “the most beautiful player in the game – when he’s not biting opponents”.
Wright Thompson describes his epic journey to find the real Luis Suarez.
(ESPN, approx 19 minutes reading time, 5,660 words)
Reporters only come to Uruguay to find out why Suarez bites people because, to be fair, that is a damn interesting question. Pirez knows and loves Suarez, so he is both the best and worst person to ask. He’ll never believe that perhaps it isn’t a completely bad idea to define someone by a few major events. Extreme moments can reveal us as we truly are. So although there is a case to be made that Suarez cannot be reduced to the bites and headbutts, there is an equally compelling case that those few seconds are the most authentic he’s ever been. Suarez wears many masks, each of them true in the moment he puts them on, but perhaps nothing reveals his truest self like the mask he wears when he’s threatened, for that is the one that shows all the hurt he wants to hide.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
The world mourns one of its greatest teachers this week following the death of author, poet and activist Maya Angelou. She gave this in-depth interview – in front of a live audience in Manhattan – in the autumn of 1990.
(Paris Review, approx 22 minutes reading time, 6,825 words)
I know when it’s the best I can do. It may not be the best there is. Another writer may do it much better. But I know when it’s the best I can do. I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, “No. No, I’m finished. Bye.” And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.I know many think that writing sort of “clears the air.” It doesn’t do that at all. If you are going to write autobiography, don’t expect that it will clear anything up. It makes it more clear to you, but it doesn’t alleviate anything. You simply know it better, you have names for people.
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