Reading List: The Dissonance Between The Tweets And These Longreads Is Especially Unsettling Today
Hey, strangers! It’s been a week since we’ve said hello, and I’ve very much missed our little coffee chats. I spent the weekend playing tourist in SF and the week playing business traveler in LA, so there was hardly any time to rest let alone string cogent thoughts into internet words.
Before we dive into the current political and/or media and/or tech industry maelstrom du jour, I have a request for y’all. I spend a decent amount of time reading and editing work from folks younger than me, and I sometimes get the question “how can I become a better writer?” And while I have a series of books and exercises I recommend, and often insist on the simple act of finding great writers (often shared here) and reading them every day, I know that I am blessed with some pretty talented subscribers of this here newsletter.
So I put to you, dear friends of the Missive: How can someone become a better writer? Please reply with your tips and tricks, and let me know if I can compile them here for all of us to have!
So anyhoo, TO THE LONGREADS!
Rev. Jacqui Lewis, How Lil Nas X Is Reclaiming Queerness to Proclaim His Own Blessedness (Harper’s Bazaar) - Driving around SF with my parents, conversations turned—as they blessedly often do—to profound topics like hypocrisy in religion and the weaponization of divinity to oppress (what can I say, I’m a lucky daughter to have the parents I have.) And this piece by a pastor from an NYC church so beautifully illustrates what we described true Christianity to be, pulling from traditions built on kindness and a requirement to cultivate “boundless love we’re called to share with others”. As Rev. Lewis writes, “Generations of kids entered churches asking to be loved, and we offered them chains,” so she names the stone throwers using the “holy text as a blunt instrument” and exposes them for what they are: bigots. And this line just got me: ”His agenda is freedom; his intention is liberation. And though he might articulate it in a way that ruffles cultural feathers, proclaiming liberation for all people—including queer people—is holy work.”
Eugene Robinson, Opinion: Dropping the creator of ‘Dilbert’ is free speech at work (The Washington Post) - I wonder if we’ll ever get to the point where the trolling right understands that Americans do not have a constitutional right to have well-past-their-prime comics nationally syndicated in newspapers.
Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Harper’s Magazine) - If you’re interested in learning about some of what led us into the Q swamp of the last few years, I highly encourage listening to the Behind the Bastards series on the foundations of Illuminati myths and how they came to undergird the current Q swamp we find ourselves entangled in, as long as you’re OK with NSFW language and off-color jokes made to lighten the emotional load of our current political state. In the series, Robert Evans often references this 1964 essay on how paranoia fuels American political discourse, so I gave it a read. TL;DR, none of this nonsense is new, and it sure doesn’t do much to alleviate my concerns about the state of our national mental health.
And I haven’t read the below closely, but saw these both on memorandum this morning and think we should all take heed:
Alice Miranda Ollstein, Walgreens won’t distribute abortion pills in some states where they remain legal (POLITICO) - To every person who claimed that the repeal of Roe wasn’t that big a deal: GFY.
NIKKI MCCANN RAMIREZ, Texas GOP Bill Gives Tax Cuts to Heterosexual Parents (POLITICO) - The Texas GOP wants people to have babies, but only if they are heterosexual, never divorced, and their children born or adopted after their date of marriage.” Oh man, so so so glad we’ve regressed to every part of the 1950s, including where people were ostracized from societal benefits because they dared to end a marriage. I look forward to leaning even further into my evil feminist divorced banshee persona.
Oof, not a fun one to end on. So, um, go grab a caffeinated beverage of your choice and get outside? Then make sure to drink water? And, of course, be kind to each other.
Xoxo
Amy