Incredible article in the Ottawa Citizen by a reporter looking back on the Montreal Massacre, and how she and her colleagues participated in sanitizing the misogyny of the killer and erasing feminist anger (if you’re not following, we are STILL watching this massacre being spun to this day):
When I review the stories I wrote, I almost never used the word feminist; I never profiled the achievements of one of the slain engineering students or the obstacles she’d toppled. I never interviewed a single woman who was angry, only those who were merely sad. Why? No one told me what not to write, but I just knew, in the way I knew not to seem strident in a workplace where I’d already learned how to laugh at sexist jokes and to wait until a certain boss had gone for the day before ripping down Penthouse centrefolds taped on the wall near his desk.
My stories were restrained, diligent and cautious. For years, I remembered one of my sentences with particular pride. Reading it now, it shows everything that was wrong with how I covered the event:
They stood crying before the coffins of strangers, offering roses and tiger lilies to young women they never knew.
I turned the dead engineering students into sleeping beauties who received flowers from potential suitors.
I should have referred to the buildings they wouldn’t design, the machines they wouldn’t create and the products never imagined.
They weren’t killed for being daughters or girlfriends, but because they were capable women in a male-dominated field.
Why the poor stay poor (you think everyone knows this shit but APPARENTLY NOT, because “buy in bulk!” is still something people utter like it’s a silver bullet for food costs):
One time I lost an apartment because my roommate got a horrible flu that we suspected was maybe something worse because it stayed forever–she missed work, and I couldn’t cover her rent. Once it was because my car broke down and I missed work. Once it was because I got a week’s unpaid leave when the company wanted to cut payroll for the rest of the month. Once my fridge broke and I couldn’t get the landlord to fix it, so I just left. Same goes for the time that the gas bill wasn’t paid in a utilities-included apartment for a week, resulting in frigid showers and no stove. That’s why we move so much. Stuff like that happens.
Wonderful interview with Jenny Diski.
Emily Nussbaum on last night’s CAMPUS RAPE-THEMED episode of The Newsroom (scorn tone IN PLACE):
After the Amtrak scene, I turned downright mellow, even fond of the series, the way you might cherish an elderly uncle who is weird about women and technology, but still, you know, a fun guy. My guard went down. So when I watched Sunday’s infuriating episode, on screeners, I wasn’t prepared.
Mark Wahlberg is the worst, and he is guaranteeing that people will now have to stop ignoring his violent racial hate crimes.
To be honest, I do not know what to link to in re: the Rolling Stone fiasco, so I am open to suggestions.
too excited about this to function
Amazed by how entertaining the oral history of “The Right Stuff” is, since I had it open in a tab for over a week without getting to it:
BARBARA HERSHEY (GLENNIS YEAGER): Chuck was so warm and incredibly generous. He even started calling me Glennis, which really meant a lot to me. One of the terrible things about the poor wives of the test pilots was that, when they said good-bye to their husbands in the morning, they didn’t know if they’d see them again that night. I would look at photos of these women and they all looked like they’d been snowed in for the winter.
YEAGER: Barbara Hershey was the spittin’ image of Glennis.
HERSHEY: I asked Chuck, “Is Glennis going to come to shooting?” And he said, “Oh no, no, no, she is never going to come to Edwards again.” And I asked him, “Did it ever get to her, this terrible waiting?” And he said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, did she ever get emotional?” And he said, “Oh no, no, no, not emotional. She’d throw things, but she wouldn’t get emotional.”
sarah koenig’s voice is hella fucking soothing. the first night we tried to listen to the shit i fell asleep halfway through it. that NPR flow just gets me, bro. that’s why i don’t know shit about world events, because every time i try to listen to morning edition it knocks me right out. i don’t know how you people listen to that shit in your cars. i would drive through the front of a building. hot damn those gentle inside voices are all i need to lapse right into a coma. it took me four tries to get through the first episode. zzZzzZz
I’m right down the road from one of the old Utah Jeffs compounds (now an exciting real estate opportunity!) and a second, active polygamist compound, and have a morbid fascination with all things FLDS, so this incredible piece on a non-polygamous couple moving back to the husband’s Short Creek roots GOT ME:
When Jinjer did run into townsfolk, she felt a chill, even at city offices. She and Ron applied for water, sewer, and electricity soon after their arrival — a simple request that would reshape their lives. They said they didn’t anticipate a fight; their neighbors already had service, indicating there were lines nearby. But summer cooled to fall, and the Cookes still had no utilities. Officials said the towns had been grappling with a water shortage since the summer before, when a pump briefly failed, and had placed a moratorium on new meters — though, strangely, reconnecting a pre-existing hookup was allowed.
Frustrated, Ron wrote a letter describing his medical woes. He realized the towns were parched, but a few houses had recently burned down — perhaps that freed up a meter? He gave the letter to his brother-in-law, who showed it to David Zitting, then the mayor of Hildale. If the Cookes were FLDS, Ron’s brother-in-law recalls Zitting saying, they’d have service by next weekend. (In a deposition, Zitting later said he did not recall the conversation.)
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