One of the web’s greatest pleasures is wading into public Facebook and local news media postings for football teams that aren’t doing so hot. Inside these poorly moderated halls is where you find the true fans of America, willing to set spelling and anything approaching grammar aside for that one shining overreaction. Each week, we present these social media scholars in ‘____ Fans React Completely Reasonably’, because there is no better institution for intelligent, even-tempered discourse than the internet. The rules are simple: Find an annoyed fan base every week and dig out the bestworst publicly-accessible takes. Feel free to laugh, but know always that your team will be next, because all fans are secretly awful.
The Pro Bowl is awful. I didn’t watch it. You (probably) didn’t watch it either. The idea of picking teams and playing against each other is fun in theory, or as a set up for a sports radio segment, but breaks down when you actually put people on the field. So instead of trying to mine fan reactions related to the most boring football game of the year, I decided to give myself a challenge: What other popular Sunday television show would be the hardest to find SCORCHING HOT TAKES for? It would need to be popular enough to actually generate comments, but benign enough to be a challenge. It suddenly dawned on me: CBS Sunday Morning. Bland, safe, human interest stories and relaxing nature clips. There’s no fighting, yelling, or made-for-TV drama. It’s functionally NPR. And the viewership is old enough that they probably wouldn’t post things to Facebook about it, right?
Ha
Ahahahahahahahahaha.
CBS SUNDAY MORNING FANS REALLY LIKE INA GARTEN
One of the stories last week was apparently about the Barefoot Contessa, and BOY DO PEOPLE WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. Most stories had about 50-100 comments per post, but this one had over a thousand. Most were boring, as would be expected. Some were not.
Obviously, this is a reference to fellow Food Network chef Giada De Laurentiis, but Peggy here seems like the kind of person who probably wrote a sternly worded letter to the FCC about Janet Jackson’s nipple and thus subjected us to years of (even more) abysmal halftime shows featuring eight hundred year old mummified corpses with guitars. Also it’s super cool to imply here that someone can’t be sexy and also focus on good cooking. Way to keep those stereotypes going, Pegz!
Food Network shows are militant snob-fests? Have you watched Food Network recently? It’s 50% Guy Fieri’s verbal flatulence eating octuple mooseburgers with sixteen pounds of bacongravy on it, and 50% Chopped. And, really, I don’t mind Chopped, but we’re not going to sit here and call it snobby foodie TV, right?
BEST MISSPELLING
The hidden gem here is that the comment has been edited. The editing process didn’t pick up on the “COKING” part, which means that I’m totally justified in believing that the entire Carter administration was a blur of mirrors and razor blades. This actually made me wonder just exactly how much cocaine has been done in the White House. I mean, it has to be a non-zero number, right? Maybe not by the President, but SOMEONE has done it, I’m sure – just to say that they did. I need to stop before I spend four hours looking all this up.
CLASS: NOT JUST FOR FOOTBALL ANYMORE
Yes we never seen anyone from a wealthy background show off their means via handcrafted meals on teevee these days. That never happens. ALSO: We need to ban the word “classy” in online discussion. It’s so infuriatingly predictable. Go into a comments section about Marshawn Lynch and Ctrl+F for “Classy”. You’ll have your eyes gouged out by lunchtime.
BEST COMMENT ABOUT STONEHENGE:
Oh okay. Sure. There’s an article about the mysteries of Stonehenge (which I assume involved underground scanning) and yep, Sandy’s first thought is “MAN I BET WE COULD FIND MEXICANS WITH THIS. LEMMEE JUST TAG HOMELAND SECURITY HERE AND…THERE WE GO”. Also, this comment was posted at five in the morning, so I assume Sandy bolted upright out of bed and shouted “IMMIGRANTS!” before commenting.
OH GOD PACKERS FANS ARE HERE TOO
I sort of assumed that the overlap on the Venn Diagram of FOOBAW and those who watch CBS Sunday Morning was slim. Nad (*snrk* “nad”) here is the exception. Also, you’ll have to excuse me for a moment as I am *SHOCKED* that a Packer fan would need open heart surgery. NAY, I AM APPALLED AT THE NOTION.
HEY LOOK, LIBERAL CITY ELITES CAN BE ASSHOLES TOO!
Like a lot of the internet, I tend to break liberal in online discourse. It would be unfair of me to not mock my own in these comments. So Candace, I’m going to have to call you out here. Beef Jerky is awesome. So are classical musicians and art museums, and you know what else? Monster trucks. You’re right about NASCAR though. Nascar is dumb as shit.
Let’s all note that PACKER FAN NAD has rightly chimed in to defend beef jerky as a contribution to mankind, because Wisconsin. You proudly wave that banner, Nad.
WHERE ELSE WOULD MY FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GRANDDAUGHTER FIND OUT ABOUT PENISES
Hey Gayle. Gayle, we need to have a chat. Yes, those ads are kinda weird and uncomfortable, but your granddaughters probably already know all about it from this magical place called school. Does the fifteen year old have a phone? Does that phone have an app called Snapchat? Did she tell you it was for sending her friends hilarious yet wholesome pictures of silly faces and Bible verses? Gayle – it’s…it’s not. it’s for dicks. I don’t want to break the world for you but…Snapchat is a social media empire built around the idea of anonymous penises. I’m sorry. Your daughter has probably seen more dicks than you have at this point. And if the seven year old asks, then just crotch chop and walk away. It’s what the responsible parent would do.
OH NO SOMEONE ALERT GAMERGATE
MOM: Hello, I have a question
FAMILY VIDEO STORE EMPLOYEE: *wakes up from twenty year slumber* buh
MOM: Yes, is this the video game with the *hushes down to whisper* the sexing
EMPLOYEE: Ma’am that’s RBI Baseball ’94
*Ken Caminiti hits a home run*
OH HEY CRAZIES, THERE YOU ARE!
For context, this was a piece on a Muslim American playwright working in the US who struggles with the negative stigmatism of the religion in this country. WAY TO PROVE HIS POINT, TIM. I HOPE YOU STUMBLE AND FALL INTO A VAT OF CANCER.
People had A LOT TO SAY about the Bill Cosby accusations too. A lot of it was awful. There was also a post about campus sexual assaults that featured comments from men’s rights activists too abhorrent to post here. So, congratulations, assholes, you’ve turned what I thought would be the nicest, flame-free page on the internet into the same shit-filled heap we always see everywhere else.
THE OBLIGATORY
I love when old people assume that Facebook is a direct conduit to whatever producers or content executives lurk on the other side, and not just some feces-laden sandbox full of other idiots. “BLAH MY BLENDER DOESN’T WORK. LET ME JUST TYPE IT ON THE KITCHENAID FACEBOOKS. OH IT SAYS HERE THE PROBLEM IS OBAMA AND THE NEGRO”
TAKE OF THE WEEK
HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS I FOUND A DICK JOKE ON THE CBS SUNDAY MORNING FACEBOOK PAGE.
This is the third time they've done this sketch , and it is somehow not yet completely tiresome. This latest edition is aided by the presence of a few guest stars.
At least 40 dogs have mysteriously gone missing since November in a small North Texas town, but authorities say they have no idea who is taking them or why.
Seems like bay scallops get kind of a raw deal, doesn't it? At my local purveyor of seafoods, the big honkin' fist-sized sea scallops get a place of honor in the glass display case, while the bay scallops are stuck over in the freezer across the way, packed by the dozens into grim plastic bags, frozen, largely forgotten. I feel bad for them! Because I am a creepy weirdo who anthropomorphizes dead mollusks, but also because this is just a wildly undeserved station for the bay scallops, who never hurt anybody, who never wanted anything but to love and be loved, who like foot rubs and traveling and meeting new people.
A pregnant woman I didn't know struck up a conversation with me at a party recently. We chatted amicably about the weather (bad), the Golden Globes (fine) and the food at the party (great) before the conversation turned—inevitably, it felt—towards birth (hers). She told me she was nervous but excited, that she could not stop Googling, and how glad she was to be out of the infamously uncomfortable first trimester. "I know what you mean," I said. "When I was pregnant I was so tired I could barely move." Her eyes brightened. "You've got kids?" "No."
The folks at Bad Lip Reading are back with their take on the 2014-2015 NFL season. If you’re new to Bad Lip Reading, boy are you in for a special treat. Dare I say this one’s even better than last year’s (if that’s possible).
PARIS — Last Wednesday, one week after the attack on Charlie Hebdo devastated France, around 40 people, most in their late teens and twenties, crammed into a small room filled with books to hear a lecture. Albert Salon, a former French diplomat who is an ardent defender of the French language, was holding forth on the importance of preserving French in the face of English. The rapt audience asked questions like “How should we react to the Americanization of the culture?” On a table next to Salon lay bumper stickers and flyers with slogans like “No to colonial English!” and “In France, we speak French!” A poster on the wall depicted Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic.
The headquarters of the Paris branch of the National Front, France’s ascendant nativist party, hosts these meetings every Wednesday, and each week features a different speaker or debate. Sometimes top party officials come. After Salon finished his nearly two-hour-long lecture, most of the crowd stuck around having a drink or leaning out the door to smoke. Three school friends — Eve Froger, 18, Margaux Leborgne, 19, and Paola Mangano, 18 — milled about. You might not guess from looking at them, but all three young girls are frontistes.
“I’ve always had these ideas,” Froger said. The Front National gave her somewhere to fit them. At first, when Leborgne got to college she didn’t admit openly that she was a member. “I didn’t say I was, because I was afraid they would react badly,” she said, referring to other students. “But when I said it, nothing changed.”
“I think it’s totally normal” to be a member of the party, said Marie-Anaëlle Pampouille, 26, a nanny who is running for a local office on a National Front ticket and who said she registered as a member of the Front a year ago. “Young people have less and less shame about it.”
These young people are the future of a movement that, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 17, could be on the verge of bursting out of the fringe of French politics and into the mainstream. The leaders of the National Front (Front National in French) — founded in 1972 by the far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, and today led by his charismatic daughter, Marine Le Pen — feel vindicated by the events, having warned for years about Islamist terror in France. The National Front advocates a strict anti-immigration border policy and argues that it’s impossible to assimilate new immigrants in a climate of continuing mass immigration. It does this so vehemently that many in France and beyond view the party as simply xenophobic and anti-Muslim. Jean-Marie Le Pen has a long history of offensive and provocative statements, from calling the Nazi’s gas chambers a “detail” in the history of World War II to advocating that people with HIV be imprisoned in special facilities.
Now, the image of the National Front is starting to change. Marine Le Pen has largely avoided the kind of forthrightly intolerant comments her father is famous for, and she is a savvy public figure, the Rand Paul to Jean-Marie’s Ron. The party has seen some of its positions leaking into the mainstream, and even into the left. For example, after the Charlie Hebdo attack, Socialist politician Jean-Marc Germain said that France must re-examine the Schengen zone — the policy of border-free travel within most of Europe, a position that the Front, which wants to remove France from the Schengen area of border-free travel entirely, has held for years. Le Pen has deftly kept herself in the center of the French political conversation during the crisis, announcing that she would not attend the massive unity rally in Paris after French President François Hollande did not invite her. On Sunday night, the New York Times published an op-ed by her, both in English and French, slamming the French government for what she perceives as its unwillingness to clearly name radical Islam as the reason for the attack. “Now the French people, as if a single person, must put pressure on their leaders so that these days in January will not have been in vain,” Le Pen wrote. “From France’s tragedy must spring hope for real change.”
Electorally, the Front has seen concrete successes, taking 25% of the vote for the European Parliament elections last year, claiming 12 mayoralties in last year’s municipal elections, and gaining two seats in the Senate this past year. Marine Le Pen doesn’t poll like an oddball fringe candidate either. A much-cited poll from February showed that 34% of French people agree with the National Front’s ideas, and the numbers indicated that more and more people have started supporting the Front since Marine took over. The number of people who say they share the Front’s ideas has shot up since Marine took charge; polls showed that only 18% responded that way in 2010, the year before her election. Twenty-nine percent of respondents in a November poll said they would vote for Le Pen if the election were held that week, putting her ahead of former President Nicolas Sarkozy and current President Hollande. If these numbers hold up, Le Pen is likely to make it to the second round of the 2017 presidential election, like her father did in 2002.
Encouraging poll numbers, a changing, more youthful image, and a fearful political and economic climate: These are the ingredients the National Front needs for a breakout moment. And it has them.
Gaetan Dussausaye
Alexia Luquet/BuzzFeed
“First, we’re very sorry about these events,” Wallerand de Saint Just, the National Front’s treasurer and a member of its executive bureau, told BuzzFeed News in an interview last week at his office in the party’s Paris branch. “Second, we predicted them. We’ve said that this was going to happen.”
Saint Just said that the party had seen an explosion of interest in the days following the attacks on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher market.
“We think that, naturally, the French are going to turn to us,” he said. “Since Wednesday, the number of requests to join the Front National has exploded. Since Thursday, it’s three times as many as usual. We had to have a whole team during the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, for answering the phone and registering new members, while normally they don’t work [on weekends].”
Saint Just, who wore a chèvaliere ring signifying that he comes from a noble family, bemoaned the “bourgeois” nature of the unity march that drew millions to the streets the weekend after the attacks. “The working classes of France didn’t come to this demonstration, neither in Paris nor in the other cities of France.” An estimated 3.7 million people marched all over France that Sunday.
(Just a few months before the march, in September, Saint Just was in Moscow to get a nearly 10 million euro loan from a Russian bank. Saint Just defended the loan, pointing out that the party needs money and saying he had no idea if the Russian government had been aware of the loan. “In any case, why not?” he said. “If you know a bank in Washington that can give me a loan, I’ll borrow right away.”)
Louis Aliot, a vice president of the National Front and Marine Le Pen’s partner, agreed. “There are more calls, more visits to the site. For example the video that Marine Le Pen did the day of the attacks was viewed more than 2 million times, and that had never been the case.”
For Aliot, a native of the south of France where support for the Front is strongest, the increased interest is even more remarkable considering the “anti-National Front propaganda” that he thinks is regularly distributed in the French press. Part of this, he said, is how the party handled the days after the attack, including choosing not to go to the unity rally where Le Pen was not invited.
“We made the right decision and we handled the events with sangfroid and with respect for the victims,” he said.
“The telephone is ringing all day at Front National,” said Florian Philippot, the party’s vice president in charge of strategy and communication and one of Le Pen’s closest deputies.
Philippot, a graduate of France’s elite HEC business school who began his political career on the left working for the 2002 presidential campaign of Eurosceptic former Socialist Jean-Pierre Chevènement, thinks that now is the moment when French people will blame their mainstream political parties for the tragedy and turn toward the Front.
He called it a “huge error” that France’s two main parties, the center-right Union Pour Un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) and the Socialist Party (PS), “refuse to talk about Islamism and Islamist terror.”
“You have to call things what they are,” he said. “We’re now a big party in the government. We’re the only real alternative for changing politics.”
The Front’s ideas, once deemed extreme, are now even appearing in the French political mainstream, which has by and large not confronted problems of immigration and assimilation head-on.
Aliot cited a Socialist party politician, Malek Boutih, who recently declared that corrupt local politicians had sided with the “Islamo-Nazis” and were allowing them to continue unchecked. “These are things we’ve been saying for 30 years,” Aliot said. “And yet we’re called racists because of that.”
That doesn’t seem to be a charge that many inside the party fear. Saint Just said other parties “try to take our measures” but “each time they want to take these actions, they are accused of racism. They’re very afraid of this accusation — that’s what’s preventing them.”
Now, the movement is looking to grow.
Attracting young people has been essential in making over its image as a reactionary party of old men. It also provides it with thousands of activists — the French word for them is “militants” — who are energetically engaged.
"I’ve been receiving an enormous amount of messages from young people who want to meet us."
The leader of the Front’s youth movement, Gaëtan Dussausaye, is a clean-cut 20-year-old who has his own office at the Front’s national headquarters in Nanterre, west of Paris. If it weren’t for the Gauloises he smoked, Dussausaye would seem like a college Republican. His explanation of how he ended up in the Front recalls the criticisms that American conservatives make of college campuses. “I didn’t necessarily want to participate in a political party; I was more interested in the debate of ideas and philosophy,” Dussausaye said. “What happened is that I arrived at university and realized that this democratic debate couldn’t happen." Dussausaye blamed a "left-extreme left syndicate" for the fact that "debate didn’t exist.”
“When I understood that in France and particularly in French universities there was no longer the possibility to have and participate in a democratic debate, I said to myself that’s too bad, I’m going to join a political party,” he said. “I was already a big sympathizer of the National Front.”
Dussausaye worked his way up the ranks of the Parisian branch of the National Front de la Jeunesse (FNJ), the youth movement, and became the leader of the whole organization in October.
Today, Dussausaye says he helms an organization that has 25,000 activists, and that more are joining up.
“I’ve been receiving an enormous amount of messages from young people who want to meet us, who want to know our project and program, and who want to be activists on our side,” he said.
Dussausaye argues that it’s now become socially acceptable to support the Front, and that people are no longer afraid of being open adherents, whereas before people might have been scared of being labeled a fascist or a racist during the tenure of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has often shocked France during his decades in politics.
“Already there’s been this process of de-demonization that was started by the election of Marine Le Pen to the presidency of the movement” in 2011, he said. “The de-demonization, it’s not changing our ideas, it’s just insisting to the media to look at us as we are, not as they want us to be.”
Le Pen’s policy of dédiabolisation, or “de-demonization,” is a conscious effort to spruce up the party’s image, giving it a friendlier, more politically correct face than the one shown by the old guard.
Frontistes’ politics can be confusing from a U.S. perspective. While the party is lumped on the “far right” vis-à-vis Europe as a whole, economically some of its ideas mirror those of U.S. liberals, and individual members can often express views that seem rather left wing. At a bar after the youth meeting at the Paris office, Charles and Arthur, two twentysomething Front members, peppered BuzzFeed News with questions about U.S. politics. They found the Monica Lewinsky scandal mystifying and expressed a reverence for Americans’ patriotic nature. They proudly stated that they’re fans of the anti-Semitic French comedian Dieudonné, who they don’t view as a true bigot. But they also expressed concern about the influence of lobbies in American politics, particularly AIPAC, viewing money in politics and the concept of lobbying in general as anti-democratic. The movement has an uncomfortable history with anti-Semitism, with Jean-Marie Le Pen’s statements about the Holocaust, or when he accused Jacques Chirac of being on the payroll of Jewish organizations. But a focus on getting money out of politics and reducing Israel’s influence is something one hears in the U.S. all the time — from progressives.
The party’s positions are a mix of issues that would be considered conservative in the U.S., like increasing the defense budget and building more prisons, and some that would be considered left, like being against the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
“There are many people who were extreme left who left to join the FN,” said Raphael Liogier, a French academic who is the author of a 2013 book Ce populisme qui vient (“The coming populism”) that takes a critical look at the Front and other populist parties in Europe.
The Front “are not crazy and they’re very rational people. They became rational with people like Florian Philippot,” said Liogier.
In Liogier’s view, the National Front’s focus on cherished French precepts like laïcité, or the French notion of secularism, is hollow: “It’s part of our patrimony to defend, but [Le Pen] doesn’t care about what’s inside it. It’s like defending the castle of Versailles or the virginity of Joan of Arc. You need to defend it but don’t care about what’s inside it.”
Still, it’s working, in part because Europeans are being hit by an identity crisis and an economic crisis at the same time.
“It’s not just an economic crisis; it’s like in the ‘30s in Germany,” Liogier said. “The economic crisis of ‘29 existed everywhere, even in the U.S. But Hitler was only in Germany. Why? Because there was the war before and the complete humiliation of Germany, and people felt humiliated and inferior. And Europeans feel that at the moment.”
"She wants to distinguish herself from her father,” Checcaglini said. “But she’s much more dangerous than her father.”
I labored over that headline for a good ten minutes, and there's really no better way to describe this series of images. I fully expect that the images you're about to see will ultimately be made into a major motion picture entitled Kvshton's Excellent Adventure.
Like most other men, you might someday find yourself standing in the glow of flickering department-store lights, tempted by the prospect of wearing jewelry. "Jewelry would make me look powerful—masculine, but sensitive," you might reason, fingering an especially resplendent wallet chain. "Ryan Gosling does it."
It looks very likely that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will strike down the same-sex marriage bans in its jurisdiction. This isn't surprising. Yet, Texas has decided it will throw a temper tantrum. House Bill 623 would take away the salary of any clerk attempting to comply with court rulings striking down the bans.
Real Housewives of Miami cast member Joanna Krupa is suing Brandi Glanville of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills for claiming on live television that Joanna broke up a marriage and has a smelly pussy. Yep.
Nick Santora stopped by the Nerdist Writer’s Panel podcast in November (can a podcast queue ever truly become diminished?) and the outspoken writer and executive producer (Prison Break, Scorpion) had a lot of interesting things to discuss, including how he’s able to work in so many mediums. Santora spoke abut the complexity of Prison Break‘s narrative and described the difficulty of writing the show, eventually comparing it to Lost. To say Santora is critical of Lost is an understatement.
We had an expression in the room and which was, “No Polar Bears,”which was a reference to Lost. I had friends that were writing on Lost, I can’t say who they were. And I was watching football with one of them and I was telling them how much I loved the show…and I’m like, “How are you going to pay all this stuff off?” And he looked at me and goes, “We’re not.” And I go, “What do you mean you’re not?” He said, “We literally just think of the weirdest most f*cked up thing and write it and we’re never going to pay it off.” And I look at him and I’m like, “That’s such bullshit! You are completely f*cking with the audience.” I want to bring a class-action lawsuit on behalf of everyone who watched Lost all those years. Nina Hartley jerked people off less that Lost did.
Now all the discussions and arguments can be put to rest. Lost’s writers gave no f*cks about paying off all the mysteries it posited, so you can stop trying to apply logic to every single weird thing that happened on the island. The flash forwards were still a nice surprise, though.
Back in November, Kurt Busch's ex-girlfriend Patricia Driscoll accused him of smashing her head into a motorhome wall three times, and filed for a protection order. The first two days of a hearing regarding the order were held in Kent County (Del.) Family Court in December. According to ESPN, Driscoll testified that Busch was "unstable and struggling with alcoholism and depression," among other things. The second two-day portion of the hearing concluded today, and Busch dropped a bombshell with his testimony: he claimed Driscoll is a trained assassin.
While it is a very exciting day that will surely end up in all of our gurnals, there is no complete cast list or release date yet. But we do know that it’s going to be a prequel series, so we’ll probably find out what kind of action this guy saw.
Established in 2012 Ownitt Technologies is a start-up based in Austin, TX, focusing on a mobile app called Grabbitt. It allows clients like music concerts, marathon races, festivals, and other events to offer merchandise, downloads, or the ability to make donations so that users can "grab" whatever they want with their phone and not worry about lugging it around during the event or even in travel with the option of having things shipped. A new identity for the service and company has been designed by New York, NY-based DIA.
With any technology company we want to make sure the identity is simple, scalable and intuitive. Grabbitt's core idea is acquisition, so we created a personified logotype where the i is grabbing the tt. This ligature and ownable naming device will unify all their future products. The iconography helps illustrate the different acquisitions and also adds playfulness to the brand's voice.
The old logo already had the ligature idea in place but was very haphazardly done and had a very weird F1-racing-like icon above. The new logo is a very nicely typeset wordmark in — you betcha — Lineto's Circular that features a properly drawn ligature. Perhaps it's the animation that sells it so well but it's a deceptively simple wordmark that looks great in light or dark backgrounds while the "itt" appendage can be applied easily to any word.
Icon set.
Fun icons. Particularly that walking dot thing.
Icons on a folder.Various materials.Letterhead.Business cards.Packs.
In application, the identity is vibrantly limited to black, white, and bright green, giving it a techie vibe, and unadorned, letting the wordmark and Circular typography do all the attention-grabbing.
According to Sarah Koenig and her producer Julie Snyder, attempts were made to contact Urick to participate in the podcast. But Urick says only one email was sent just before the podcast concluded to ask about Don’s (victim Hae Min Lee’s boyfriend from LensCrafters) allegation that Urick lashed out at him for not making Adnan seem “creepy” enough on the stand (Urick denies the claim).
Here are some other interesting tidbits from Urick’s interview:
Urick says it’s not uncommon for accomplices to changes their stories, as Wilds did, and that it would be more suspicious and “rehearsed” if his story never changed. He says to focus on the shifting testimonies is missing the point. “We did not pick Jay to be Adnan’s accomplice,” he said. “Adnan picked Jay.”
He calls the case against Syed “pretty much a run-of-the-mill domestic violence murder.”
He calls Koenig’s focus on doubting the cellphone records “sleight of hand,” saying technology today is different from technology in 1999.
He goes on to talk about how he would have questioned Syed if he’d taken the stand, and addresses Asia McClain’s redacted statement (she was the one who said she saw Syed in the library, then redacted her statement saying she’d been forced to provide it and finally told Koenig she stands by her original statement).
The first part of The Intercept’s interview with Kevin Urick can be found here. They will post the second part tomorrow.
This is Joan Didion, author of Goodbye to All That, Slouching Toward Bethlehem, The Year of Magical Thinking, and a slew of other fantastic books and essays.
Read them all. Really.
The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Julian Wasser
She's also basically the original Cool Girl.
Those sunglasses! That searing gaze!
The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Julian Wasser
The one-time Vogue editor honed her classic look as a reporter in the '60s and '70s.
It's also when she famously developed her simple but ridiculously effective packing list, which she catalogued in her collection of essays, The White Album.
Opinion/Notes: Maybe because I'm a local I like this. Or maybe it's because it's actually really good. With Austin being the capital of Texas, this works quite well and I really like how they've built the "T" into the state shape. My only complaint is that the state's corners are too rugged and corner-y in contrast to the rest of the graphics, which are smooth and curve-y. Ordering the t-shirt in 3, 2, 1…
