HELLO and welcome to the 285th 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 Fox News! 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.
The Making of the Fox News White House, by Jane Mayer for The New Yorker, March 2019
Fox News was bad before Donald Trump became President — we all know that. But now it’s… even worse, and not just because of what gets said on the channel, but because of the kinds of Murdoch-friendly deals being orchestrated by the government. It’s awful all over!
Outdoor Voices Blurs the Lines Between Working Out and Everything Else, by Jia Tolentino for The New Yorker, March 2019
Is being gay how I somehow completely miss like 75% of the apparent trends sweeping the nation’s women, do you think?
A Life in Motion, Stopped Cold, by Sarah Lyall for The New York Times, May 2015
First of all, the Olympic skiing-related competition area of “aerials” sounds TERRIFYING. Second of all, I was re-alerted to this piece by an excellent twitter thread calling for recommendations for profiles. I’d read most of them already, of course, but I recognized this one as a frequent recommendation that never really interested me, so finally I went for it and was SUCKED RIGHT IN!
This is what it’s like waking up during surgery, by David Robson for mosaic, March 2019
THIS WAS ALSO TERRIFYING.
Unmasked: The Depravity Within, by ? for The Hartford Courant, December 2001
I cannot imagine this story would not have made the national news in a very delightful way had it come out in the internet era, or maybe just not in the latter months of 2001. Also shocking as I read it was my reaction to the subject’s antics were not so much “oh, he’s gonna lose his job” as they were “he’ll probably get away with this,” which is 100% because Trump has changed my view of the world. Also a note that this was written in 2001, so the way the author talks about sex workers and drug addicts is very uncool! (this was another one from the profiles thread.)
In Bad Taste, by John Birdsall for Topic, March 2019
Really good food writers are just really truly so good.
“I came to see beauty in a bowl of blood and offal stew—the way a handful of economical cuts from a butcher’s market stall can transcend utility, honor an animal gone to slaughter by elevating its twistiest parts, and express an immigrant’s longing for a place on the other side of the world. A dish that looks, smells, and tastes like a crime can merely be misunderstood, evidence of an accusing prosecutor’s failure at grasping meaning or context.”
Toward My Own Definition of Disability, by Ashley P. Taylor for Hazlitt, February 2019
For most of my life, I’ve operated not with an official definition of disability but with an unspoken personal one. Something like: A disability is something that makes the activities of daily life, developed by and for people who are mobile, have all five senses, and are of average intellectual abilities, difficult or impossible without help. Given my prejudices, by that definition, I didn’t consider myself to have a disability.
How rats became an inescapable part of city living, by Emma Marris for National Geographic, March 2019
I HATE RATS but this was enlightening!
Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor, by Caitlin Flanagan for The Atlantic, September 2001
“…when the sting of a Bowdoin rejection was lessened (the same day) by the salve of a Colby acceptance, when a rejection from Dartmouth meant the student would be off to Penn—where was the horror? If a family had the wherewithal to send a beloved and supremely well prepared child off to one of the hundred or so first-rate colleges in America, the resources to offer a semester abroad, the connections necessary to facilitate a wonderful summer internship in New York or Hollywood or Costa Rica, and the ability to bankroll, without blinking, all of graduate school, then what was the source of these unstoppable tears?”
The Teen Idol Vanishes, by Soraya Roberts for Longreads, March 2019
Our collective public mourning for Perry unites us in a shared nostalgia for an imaginary past, staving off our increasing sense of alienation.
Thank you for the link to the Hazlitt article!
It was difficult to read it, because it felt like it described my own struggles with my disability word by word.
Great links as usual. This is one of my favorite columns.
Jia Tolentino somehow continues to speak to me more and more no matter what she’s writing about.
Thank you for the great links. I love this column so much.