Racist policing in McKinney, TX, like the history of black kids trying to use swimming pools isn’t already fraught with white people losing their shit.
It seems to me that at least once a week I send myself an email with the name of a POC who has met a tragic and untimely death at the hands of law enforcement, so when I wake up I can include them in the link roundup, and today that kid was Kalief Browder. What a horrible, horrible thing. If you don’t want to read about the final days of his life, I would recommend the New Yorker piece that first brought him to the public’s attention:
Browder’s family could not afford to hire an attorney, so the judge appointed a lawyer named Brendan O’Meara to represent him. Browder told O’Meara that he was innocent and assumed that his case would conclude quickly. Even the assistant district attorney handling the prosecution later acknowledged in court papers that it was a “relatively straightforward case.” There weren’t hours of wiretaps or piles of complicated evidence to sift through; there was just the memory of one alleged victim. But Browder had entered the legal system through the Bronx criminal courts, which are chronically overwhelmed. Last year, the Times, in an extended exposé, described them as “crippled” and among the most backlogged in the country. One reason is budgetary. There are not nearly enough judges and court staff to handle the workload; in 2010, Browder’s case was one of five thousand six hundred and ninety-five felonies that the Bronx District Attorney’s office prosecuted. The problem is compounded by defense attorneys who drag out cases to improve their odds of winning, judges who permit endless adjournments, prosecutors who are perpetually unprepared. Although the Sixth Amendment guarantees “the right to a speedy and public trial,” in the Bronx the concept of speedy justice barely exists.
Did you see Elinor Burkett’s bad op-ed in the NY Times? It’s pretty standard issue about she feels bad for trans women but they can never understand being real women, etcccccc. INCLUDING (this killed me) that trans women can never truly GET what it’s like to be afraid you’ll be too weak to fight off rape, like trans women are somehow not at an INCREDIBLY high risk of sexual/physical assault in their daily lives! It was no good. It’s also the sort of thing designed to appeal to a certain group of feminists who want to feel like Realer women than Fake women, and does nothing other than alienate and denigrate trans people.
this is where you can talk about the Tonys
ugh i want a gushy read about Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge but i hate that i want it, you know? Also, DEEP SPRINGS is in this piece.
Yet, in the space of two and a half years, the glitter has dulled. The Daily Beast in one article called Hughes and Eldridge “America’s Worst Gay Power Couple.” In another, focusing on Hughes’s recent actions at The New Republic, where he had abruptly replaced the editor, Franklin Foer, and thereby caused most of the top writers and editors to leave, the Daily Beast Photoshopped a picture of Hughes’s face onto the body of Prince Joffrey from Game of Thrones—immature, incompetent, deadly, and a king too young. For his part, Eldridge had run for Congress in upstate New York, losing badly and, in the process, acquiring a reputation as a carpetbagger. Hughes and Eldridge had been lucky beyond any reasonable expectation, and had worked very hard. They had seemed destined to become one of those Washington couples whose dinner table drew a diverse array of the best and the brightest (not that they voiced such an ambition). But inexperience and a high profile are a chancy mix, and the two young men were now widely viewed as entitled brats.
I know you’re all bored about soccer by now, but this puffy heroic movie they made about Sepp Blatter sounds HILARIOUS:
Mr. Auburtin said he would have preferred to delve deeper into the FIFA darkness. “But I accept the job,” he said. “I know FIFA is producing the film. As we say in France, don’t be more royalist than the king: Don’t be the king if you are not the king.”
ORALLLL HISTORYYY OF CLUUUUEEELESS
AMY: While we were in production and editing I had to do the voiceover, before Alicia filled in, There are some very wacky versions where there’s this pretty young blonde girl with this depressed Jewish woman in her head. So that’s kinda weird.
TWINK (as reported by Entertainment Weekly in 1996): There was a line, said by Cher, who refers to a faded romance as “Gone. Completely gone. Like a Chevy Chase film after one weekend. ”Sherry said: ‘Oh, Amy, he’s a good guy. Please don’t use that’. It was removed.
I DO want to know what it felt like to catch a fish this size:
As far as what it feels like to fight it: I’d say take your biggest fishing pole and put a 20-pound test line on it, tighten it down as far as you can, then hook it to the biggest dog you can find and throw a ball.
Piers Morgan writes that I didn’t recognise him in a restaurant in New York.I did.I just didn’t want to speak to someone I truly detest
— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 5, 2015
My toddler is obsessed with “City of New Orleans,” bc great taste:
