New Yorker magazine alert thread

anybody read that (long) piece on art pope and the influence of money in north carolina state politics?

i think i almost finished it and then got distracted. iirc it was v depressing? i maybe mentioned it upthread bc i needed to repeat the line about "mucho taxo adios senor!" that was up on a shopped poster of a dem opponent.

i read it -- was kind of curious what aero thought of it

fucken tar heels amirite

noticed him popping up in the news a bunch after that. was very happy to see that most of the wake county school board members he was backing were recently voted out:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-carmichael/populist-backlash-crushes_b_1006307.html

you seem to be a few weeks behind too, what's your excuse?

Most of my (dwindling) free time reading has been focused (or focussed, going by TNY's style guide (blah)) on catching up on ASOIAF, which means I'm piling up my issues in my room. Also, I think my delivery is now a full week behind -- the one with the Wall Street fat cats occupying Wall Street on the cover only arrived on Monday.

anybody read that (long) piece on art pope and the influence of money in north carolina state politics?

Yeah, finished that last week (hah), imo vital companion piece to her article on the Kochs. But yeah, maddeningly depressing -- Pope is supposed to be wonkish and well-lettered, yet he can't resist throwing around indisputable falsities and fallacies (lol Republicans).

favorite part of the art pope one was where he's saying he's not an heir, he just happened to buy out his dad's equity at the company after working there for his whole adult life. clearly something anybody who was as smart and hard working as he was could have done.

i thought the short lethem piece this week was really strong

some historical dynamite in this planned parenthood piece

did anyone read the mindy kaling thing serialised a few weeks back, btw? i'm kinda behind & need an endorsement before tracking down & uncrumpling whichever issue it was in

it was a shouts and murmurs, right? i remember enjoying it but it was pretty light and i don't remember anything about it today

idk, i just saw her on the daily show & realised i'd missed an issue. i'm really behind though generally, i shamefully couldn't motivate myself to engage with the money issue, which is deeply shallow of me & apparently meant i missed out on that article about maybe an indian guy, i forget

the money issue was great! from it i'd recommend, if memory serves, the article you mentioned, the bitcoin piece, the piece on keynes, and (i think) atul gawande's piece on coaching

ty man. am going away for a couple of weeks & will pack a couple to catchup, will def make a concerted effort with it. the bitcoin one sounded amusing.

the pp article i mentioned before is good, btw; better historically then on the present (which it depicts as a kind of doubly partisan gridlock, which i don't think is totally accurate). i kinda "met" c3cil3 r1chard5 once, she talked to a bunch of us in ny, she was v inspirational

the bitcoin piece was really really good

kaling is super light just in general. her ny piece was wafer thin.
i'll also cosign on the money issue, it was fucking great front to back. The cattle broker! Bitcoin! The Carolinian powerbroker!

well boy is my face red

Loving Elif Batuman's article on Turkey; it's all over the place but I love her storytelling.

the money issue was great! from it i'd recommend, if memory serves, the article you mentioned, the bitcoin piece, the piece on keynes, and (i think) atul gawande's piece on coaching

― MODS DID 10/11 (k3vin k.), Monday, November 7, 2011 11:00 AM (9 hours ago)

and duh didn't this one have the art pope story too?!

still have not seen the inside of my mailbox in 3 weeks btw

fwiw, the money issue also had the taylor swift piece!

ha, I must've put a dent in it if it had the Art Pope & Taylor Swift, both of which I read. I've straightened out some crumpled issues I was carrying around for awhile, anyway - kinda ashamed I haven't read the recent Batuman piece - so am all set.

also nb taylor swift's mom is weird

kinda makes me mad to think how much gladwell got paid to write that jobs piece

i thought the mindy kaling excerpt was about exactly as funny as youd expect it to be which is at least 100x funnier than almost anything else printed in shouts & murmurs this year

No wai I read something really funny in shouts n murmurs a while ago, don't recall what it was

im p sure that was my twitter you reading, you were confused because my profile pic is me wearing a monocle

Oh right my b

shouts + murmurs more like hooch + turner amirite?

idrk what that means

dirk, what that means?

http://jocksandstilettojill.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Dirk-Nowitzki1.jpg

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/19000/19019/dirk_19019_md.gif

The New Dirker

mindy kaling new yorker piece ruled fuiud

why are people pretending mindy kaling is funny is what i wanna know
she's cute and seems nice but she's really not funny except in a loose kind of hipster nora ephron way which is nagl imo

i am seriously going to kill you

http://www.the3rdfloormovie.com/app2/img/593x385xS/scet/photos/22/6291/017_NUP_141812_2334.jpg
come at me bro

horseshoe you are arguing with someone who is well known to have the worst sense of humor on this board

Truly, my lack of respect for a writer on that effervescent gem that is the post carrell office speaks volumes to my deeply flawed humo(u)r

nov. 14 issue has two really good long articles (planned parenthood + murder/DNA/court martial stories) but the sasha frere-jones piece on the fall was annoyingly simplified/condescending. i know he has to write to his audience but he keeps talking about how mark e. smith writes nonsense lyrics - even if i don't know what he's singing about, i'd never assume it's intended to be nonsense.

I'm always impressed when people decipher them. It's all got meaning, even if I'm not smart enough to parse it.

And the Mindy piece was very funny.

food issue!

No wai I read something really funny in shouts n murmurs a while ago, don't recall what it was

The Mike Bloomberg snowstorm diary was pretty funny:

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/01/17/110117sh_shouts_kenney?currentPage=all

food issue not looking terribly appetizing (...) - i really want to read last week's issue once (1) my mail situation is sorted out and (2) my tests are over

i'm not done with the food issue yet but so far the article about apples was kinda interesting and i'm a sucker for calvin trillin pieces, even when they're totally unfocused. the ones about trying to recreate medieval meals and foraging were pretty dumb.

The review of the George Kennan bio is terrific.

i get my issues so late and then take an additional 4 - 8 weeks to get to them that i wish ppl would post "the one with the picture of ____ on the cover" when talking about issues :-[

food issue also has a decent shouts and murmurs from eric idle (can't tell if it's really "funny" or if it just caught my attention by at least varying from the typical S&M style) and a short story by sam lipsyte (which i haven't finished but i'm actually reading it, unlike most NYer short stories).

that bloomberg diary is awesome -- reads a bit like a more pointed barthelme.

oh hey, new-ish george saunders story?

I thought the Planned Parenthood and DNA/double jeopardy articles were good, but both sort of buried the lead. Like, the PP one was a solid history that concluded with a rushed bit on how abortion became the prime Republican boogeyman; I would have preferred a whole article on this. Same thing with the very entertaining/interesting DNA/murder story, which is detective fiction-fascinating, but only closes with the historic import of the double (triple?) jeopardy nature of the case. Both pieces were good, really well written - made me want to donate immediately to PP - but their stories curiously composed.

I really liked Jon Lee Anderson's Libya piece. It made me wish we could bring Qaddafi back to life just to have someone kill him in cold blood all over again. It's a shame these dictators design their rule so that the only way to take them down is in essence to destroy the country with them.

how was the menand essay a couple weeks ago?