Back with five more. I make no promises to select articles that were published in the last week, just those I found interesting. Sort of an edited Instapaper liked feed, if you will.
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Stephen King: Tax Me, for Fuck’s Sake!
Stephen King, yes that Stephen King, writes a damned-fine essay scolding the superrich, including himself. > (The superrich)… were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-fucking-American is what it is. I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.
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If your website’s full of assholes, it’s your fault
One of my favorite writers – Anil Dash – weighs in on why it’s so important for newspapers, blogs and all editorial websites to place a strong emphasis on curating the discussions on their site. I’ll never turn on comments for this site, but that’s just because I don’t have the resources to properly moderate them.
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When the NBA was Young
Sports Illustrator writer Frank Deford chronicles his days of being a beat reporter in the the early days of the NBA. I’m a huge NBA fan, and it’s hard to imagine the league being like this especially in the age of Lebron James.
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I meant this, not that. But yeah, I meant it.
One of the best thing I’ve read in quite awhile. The creator of The Wire explains his comments about “criticizing” some viewers of The Wire, while deftly taking down Bill Simmons for wimping out during his interview with President Obama: > If he were a hectoring asshole, an argumentative scold, a fucking killjoy, he might realize that he has The Man right there, and that he is at the end of the day acting as, well, a journalist. So if anything is to be said about that show, well, here is a rare chance to break some ground. He might swallow hard, seize the moment and say something along the lines of, “Mr. President. I know you’ve said you’re a fan of The Wire. Well, one of that show’s basic critiques is that the drug war is amoral. More Americans are now in prison than ever before, and the percentage of violent offenders in prison is lower than ever. We are now the jailingest society in the world, incarcerating more of each other than even totalitarian states. How can we go on supporting this?” > Balls out like that. Truth to power, brah. Get some.
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Wendell E. Berry’s award-winning 2012 Jefferson Lecture.
Way too many things to quote in here. Make sure you have 30 - 45 minutes, grab a cup of coffee and read the hell out of this, dammit.