Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
To a certain extent, we expected it from the men who wear lobster-printed pants, the men from Connecticut, the Young Republicans of America with their gelled and parted hair, their summers in Nantucket, their LL Bean slippers worn on the porches of fraternities, 2pm on a Monday. But when my friend pulls me aside in…
Kenneth Eng is on the other side of viral now, where it’s hard to see him. 11 years ago, in 2007, it was easy to see him. He achieved a brief burst of viral infamy for writing a column titled “Why I Hate Blacks,” inexplicably published by the now-defunct AsianWeek. He had every quality we…
Image by Jim Cooke, photo by Shutterstock The best thing to do when the dishwasher has finished running is to take out all the clean dishes and put them away. The worst thing to do is to take out just a few clean dishes, and then have someone else come along, get confused, and start…
All photos credit: Tom Scocca The question I had, as I picked up the 2016 Cadillac CTS V-Sport on a summer Saturday morning, was how a four-year-old might like it. My younger son, Dominic, was four at the time, counting down to his fifth birthday, and it was mostly for his sake that I had…
iStock Dear Chads and Beckys, I admit that I have been reluctant to write this letter. It has nothing to do with my dislike for you or your people. In fact, some of my best friends are white. Well … one of my best friends is white. OK, I’ll be honest, all of my best…
Ruling that graffiti — a typically transient form of art — was of sufficient stature to be protected by the law, a federal judge in Brooklyn awarded a judgment of $6.7 million on Monday to 21 graffiti artists whose works were destroyed in 2013 at the 5Pointz complex in Long Island City, Queens. In November,…
In street terms, what the Guggenheim just did — refusing an art request from the White House but offering instead the loan of a golden toilet — is a “sick burn.” According to Washington Post reporter Paul Schwartzman, the White House asked the New York museum if it could borrow a van Gogh painting, which…
The Illinois Republican Party is condemning the man poised to be its nominee for Congress in the state’s third congressional district as a Nazi. So how did he end up on the ballot? The answer points to failures of democratic safeguards on every level, from a state party unable to recruit an alternative candidate in…
Thanks to the breakneck pace of social media and a journalistic climate that favors insta-takes over measured analysis, the process of provocation, backlash, and counter-backlash can now be completed in record time. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane to last February, when Donald Trump’s steak preferences caused a national furor. A pointless International Journalism…
For three days during a humid stretch of July in Newton, North Carolina, cars lined up along the dirt road outside the home of Deloy and Kate Oberlin. Musicians and farmers and doctors came, and friends and family and neighbors. They showed up with their hands full. They carried homemade chicken potpie and sweet potato…