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The PR Guru Behind the Pope Who Is Charming the World

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Greg Burke, the Pope's PR chief, speaking at the World Communications Day Lecture and Mass (photo via Catholic Church England and Wales)

On Wednesday, Pope Francis interrupted his general audience in St Peter’s Square to kiss and bless a severely disfigured man. The subsequent photos of his eyes clenched tightly in prayer and his hands around the ailing man’s face have gone viral. “Many saw echoes of Jesus’s healing of the leper,” reported the Washington Post that day.

Just another fine move from the Pope who keeps on giving. Over the last few months, Pope Francis has nabbed headlines for cold-calling worshippers; launching Vatican sports teams; joking around in a red clown’s nose (and also a firefighter’s helmet); allowing a small child to hug him for the duration of a pilgrims address; and promising to personally baptize the baby of a woman who refused pressure from her partner to have an abortion. Breaking rank with his stiffer-lipped co-workers, Francis has recently suggested that “even the atheists” can be saved and affirmed that he is totally not about to judge gay and lesbian Catholics. Last month, Pope Francis hit 10 million Twitter followers, which placed him just behind Kanye West.

Far and wide, observers speak of a “Francis Effect.”

But every modern-day media darling needs a PR machine, and Pope Francis is no exception. Enter Greg Burke: the 53-year-old Fox News correspondent turned Holy See handler (officially, Senior Communications Adviser to the Vatican’s Secretariat of State) who is quietly changing the way things are done in Vatican City.

To some, Burke may have seemed an unlikely candidate for papal spin-doctor. He’s a layman without PR experience: a cheery newscaster with a penchant for sports analogies. He’s also a member of the controversial Catholic order Opus Dei: a traditionalist and a celibate whose spiritual practice reportedly involves self-flagellation. But after a year and a half on the job, Burke is credited with helping to open up and rejuvenate the Holy See. Of course, Burke would say it’s all Francis’s doing. “I’m going to kick the ball to the Pope,” Burke explained at a recent lecture in London. “I mean, the Pope scores goals, you know? The Pope scores goals for us... The people are just eating this stuff up.”

Flash back a few years to the reign of Pope Benedict XVI: The Catholic Church was awash in scandal. In 2006, Benedict gave his now infamous “Regensburg lecture,” in which he quoted a brutal critique of Islam and irked Muslims the world over. Three years later, he left many aghast with his decision to reverse the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop. In 2010, the Church was slammed with a new wave of paedophilia allegations, then the Vatican Bank controversy, and then “Vatilieaks.” Added to all that, the people didn’t seem to take much to Pope Benedict. “Benedict doesn’t smile,” a young Italian woman working at a tourist shop by St Peter’s Square told me earlier this year. “He is too much German!”

In June 2012, the Vatican poached Greg Burke when he was still a Rome-based reporter for Fox News. Burke’s job would be to manage “communications issues” and to integrate the Vatican’s many media organs, explained a Vatican official. Burke himself said he was hired “to formulate the message and try to make sure everyone remains on message.”

“I know what journalists are looking for and what they need,” Burke told reporters, “and I know how things will play out in the media.”

Old Vatican hands were optimistic. “Everyone thinks the Vatican is like the NSA or the CIA or something,” David Gibson, a reporter at Religion News Service, and an acquaintance of Burke’s, told me recently. “They think it’s an efficient, well-run place. But basically it’s an Italian village [with] all these little fiefdoms... It’s a very sclerotic, tradition-bound system that barely qualifies as a system. I think someone like Greg can help.”

Burke declined my request for interview, which I faxed (yes, really) to the Holy See last month: “I can’t do the interview, as my job is primarily behind the scenes, and I am trying to keep it that way.”

Greg Burke grew up in St Louis, Missouri as a “meat and potatoes Catholic”: the son of a paediatrician and the middle child of six. Church was within walking distance of Burke’s house and a big part of his upbringing. Entering St. Louis University High School where “the Jesuit influence was very strong,” Burke thought he might be destined for the priesthood; “but I didn’t feel the pull.”

After college, Burke studied at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Later, he covered the police beat for a small newspaper in Port Chester, New York, and then worked as a weather reporter in Chicago. In 1988, he moved to Rome and started writing for National Catholic Register. That led to a stint at TIME magazine, and then a decade of on-air work for Fox. Burke covered the Vatican, but also travelled on assignment throughout Europe and the Middle East.

As a reporter, Burke revealed a shrewd understanding of papal politics, even though he sometimes missed the mark. Shortly before then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger was selected as pope (he became Pope Benedict XVI), Burke reasoned that Ratzinger wasn’t even a candidate. “He’s considered too conservative,” Burke explained, noting that Ratzinger was called “the ‘Panzer Cardinal’ because he took so many hits for the pope.”

Today, even though he is one of the Vatican’s most public faces, Burke retains his all-American vibe. He is also active on Twitter:

He's also good with one-liners. “I actually thought I’d leave Fox [to] go work for a football club,” he told an auditorium full of reporters this year. “Ended up in the Vatican. No free tickets to football matches, but really good seats at Christmas and Easter.” [Pause for laughter.]

This jockish humor covers Burke’s deeply-rooted faith. As an 18-year-old, Burke joined the controversial Opus Dei movement and later became an Opus Dei “numerary”: taking a vow of celibacy and singledom and eventually moving into an Opus Dei spiritual center. Opus Dei numeraries traditionally have normal jobs, as Burke did, but give a great chunk of income to the organisation. “Am I being hired because I’m in Opus Dei,” Burke mused, in 2012. “It might come into play.”

Indeed, Opus Dei is said to be gaining influence in the Vatican. Non-Catholics perhaps know it best from Dan Brown’s bestselling Da Vinci Code, in which the movement is depicted as shadowy and nefarious. But the real organization was controversially founded in the 1920s: to push the idea that everyone (not just the priesthood) is called to holiness and can “find God in daily life.” It took several decades for the group to gain approval from the Catholic Church, but Opus Dei now is now an official Catholic “prelature,” and boasts about 90,000 members.

“Opus Dei is great at communications,” Religion News Service’s David Gibson explains, pointing out that Pope John Paul II’s longtime spokesman was also of Opus Dei. “They did a great job during the Da Vinci Code thing.”

Things have been slowly changing since Burke was put at the PR helm. The Holy See Press Office is said to be more open. It now puts out English-language newsletters for journalists and makes spokespeople more available for media comment. Burke dreams of a Vatican with a United Nations-like structure, whose website lists “a spokesperson on every continent with cellphone numbers in case you need an interview and free video footage,” although, as it stands, the Holy See Press Office often closes at 3 PM.

The Vatican has also inched its way towards a digital media strategy. Pope Benedict first began tweeting (@Pontifex) a few months after Burke’s hiring. “He will tweet what he wants to tweet,” Burke said, when the account was launched. But “the Pope is not going to be walking around with a Blackberry or an iPad.”

For the Vatican, this modern turn has been a long time coming. As early as 2002, the Pontifical Council for Social Communication began producing reports on how to use the Internet according to Catholic tradition. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholics to enter the “digital continent” and launched a Vatican YouTube channel. A year later, at the US bishops’ Fall General Assembly, Bishop Ronald Herzog of Louisiana instructed his colleagues in the use of new media. “He started by proving that New Media is a powerful force, not a fad,” wrote one Cardinal of the presentation. Not long ago, Pope Francis gave his first English-language address in which he proclaimed that “Jesus be known in the world of politics, business, arts, science technology, and social media.”

Under Burke’s tutelage, the Vatican has also gone on the PR offensive: hawking positive news bites instead of waiting to do disaster control. In recent months, Burke has mastered the ability to combine doctrine with Buzzfeed-like spin. Last month, his “ten things to know” about Pope Francis made the popular media rounds. Pope Francis’ picture “should have one of those warning labels,” Burke enthused. “Danger: This man could change your life.”

As with the best of spin-doctors, it’s hard to tell just how much of this is the man himself (the “Francis Effect”) and how much is public relations. “I would not call Pope Francis a great communicator,” Burke has mused. “I consider that slightly pejorative... I’d call him a great Christian.”

@katieengelhart

Related:

Pope Francis Is Shockingly Good at Social Media

I'm OK, You're OK, the Pope's OK

Are We There Yet? - The May/June Issue of 'Endtime Magazine'

 

 


The VICE Reader: What Your Favorite Writers Listen to When They Sweat

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Photo via Flickr user Bigbadvoo
 
I’ve often wondered what other writers do for exercise—and what music they listen to when they do. Does a topless Salman Rushdie orgasm-face his way through pull-ups, while listening to Drake? Does Don DeLillo own a running mix titled “Rise & Grind,” consisting of only chains hitting water?  It’s very easy for me to imagine Murakami, out for his morning jog along the edge of some lush Japanese forest, listening to the type of music he so worships—jazz.  
 
Fewer than half of the writers I emailed asking for the songs they listen to while exercising responded. I’d guess that 1) most writers don’t in fact exercise, 2) if they do exercise, they don’t listen to music, or 3) they don’t care about me and my strange obsession with their workout music.  
 
Victor LaValle, author of The Devil in Silver: 1) “Raining Blood,” Slayer 2) “Devil's Island,” Megadeth 3) “Blasteroid,” Mastodon. 
 
Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries: 1) “Pretty (Ugly Before),” Elliott Smith 2) “California,” Joni Mitchell 3) “That's Not Me,” the Beach Boys.
 
Tao Lin, author of Taipei: 1) “In The Same Room,” Julia Holter 2) “I Agree,” Thee Oh Cees 3) “Anonymous Collective,” Stereolab.
 
James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces: “Most of my exercise these involves my kids. Going to the playground with them, riding bikes with them, coaching their soccer teams. Not much music-listening going on during these activities. I do, though, listen to music with my six year old boy on the way to his soccer games. He loves tunes before the game. As soon we're in the car he says, “Let's listen to some rock, Dad.” His three favorites pregame tunes, which I also happen to love, are: “Back in Black” by AC/DC, Rocking in the Free World by Neil Young, Over the Hills and Far Away by Led Zeppelin.”
 
Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State: “My Ultimate Workout mix has 244 tracks. My favorites are “Guilt” by Nero, “Pressure” by Nadia Ali & Starkillers, and “Turbulence” by Steve Aoki and Laidback Luke. 
 
Michael Kimball, author of Big Ray: “I don't listen to music when I ride my bike because I want to hear that car that is going to run me over before it runs me over. And I don't listen to music when I'm playing softball unless somebody has a Boombox and, if they do, I have no control over that. But I do yoga at home before heading out to my softball games and there are three songs that are always in that mix: “In the Air Tonight,” the Tupac remix (featuring Phil Collins, “Sabotage,” the Beastie Boys, and “Let's Go Crazy,” Prince.
 
Dave Hill, author of Tasteful Nudes: “Headmaster Ritual,” The Smiths, “Fuck Your Enemy,” Superjoint Ritual, “No Scrubs,” TLC.
 
Laura Hemphill, author of Buying In: “The songs I listen to the most while running are “Jacqueline,” by Franz Ferdinand, “Bruises,” by Chairlift, and “Angeleyes,” by Melody Club.” 
 
Ben Brooks, author of Lolito: “The only exercise I do is walking up and down the landwehr canal most days. The songs I listen to most often are “If I should fall from grace with Bod,” by the Pogues, “All skreets,” by kool ad, “Kate Boosh,” by Hems.
 
Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Book of My Lives: “I am writing to you as Aleksandar Hemon's assistant, Catharine. In answer to your question, while exercising, Aleksandar favors ‘Natural's Not in It,’ ‘At Home He's a Tourist,’ and ‘I Found That Essence Rare,’ all by Gang of Four.”
 
David Shields, author of Reality Hunger: "I Wanna Destroy You," by the Soft Boys, "A Milli," by Lil Wayne, "North American Scrum" by LCD Soundsystem.
 
Justin Taylor, author of The Gospel of Anarchy: I never listen to music when I exercise. When I used to run outside I liked being able to hear what was going on around me. When, owing to a minor but pesky knee problem, I switched to an elliptical at a gym, I tried to listen to music but I always managed to pick music that was exactly wrong: it would invariably be too slow or weird or a live bootleg of something that I'd pick because I'd think, Well I want to run for 30 minutes and this song is 30 minutes long so I'll just run until the song is over and that'll be that, forgetting that the middle 20 minutes of said song are mostly arrhythmic feedback or a drum solo or whatever. So now I read a magazine, or force myself to confront my own boredom and pass through it, some kind of low-budget zen thing, maybe.
 
Karolina Waclawiak, author of How To Get Into the Twin Palms: “Nylon Smile” by Portishead, “Signs of Life,” by Jon DeRosa, and “California” by EMA.
 
Blake Butler, author of There Is No Year: “Str8 Slammin’,” by Freddie Gibbs featuring Juicy J, “Who Da Neighbors, “ by Juicy J, and “Money Habits” by Gucci Mane. “But lately I've just been listening to Death Grips.”
 
Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins: “I'm too old to exercise with shit in my ears. And you can't wear earbuds and play basketball, which supplies almost all of my exercise (and much of my humiliation). But sometimes, I have to admit, when I make a shot, I will hear—as if straight from God's iPod—the chorus to Basketball Jones.”
 
Mitchell S. Jackson, author of The Residue Years: “Niggas in Paris,” by Kanye and Jay-Z, “Started From The Bottom,” by Drake, and “I'm On One” by DJ Khaled.
 
Laura van den Berg, author of Isle of Youth: “I’m addicted to Jillian Michaels’s DVDs, but I like to mute the volume and listen to music now because I have seen them enough to know what Jillian is going to yell when. Right now my top three songs are “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence & the Machine, “Bone Machine” by the Pixies, and “Bizarre Love Triangle” by New Order.
 
Kate Bernheimer, author of Horse, Flower, Bird: “Uberlin” by  R.E.M., “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts,” by X, and “The Boyfriends” by Richmond Fontaine. 
Gene Gregorits, author of Dog Days: “I jog and kayak. My most frequent songs lately are ‘On the Ocean’ by Guster, ‘Shoot Out the Lights’ by Richard and Linda Thompson, and ‘Anchor’ by Alejandro Escovedo.”
 
Ken Baumann, author of Solip: “I do not exercise regularly. (Clearly.) BUT. When I used to train four times per week in a boxing gym—i.e. when I paid to get punched in the face by an angry 250+ lb TV writer while being yelled and laughed at by a professional fighter and former Army Ranger who got shot six times in Iraq with an AK-47—we all listened to a lot of rap. Three songs that were on heavy rotation: “Back then” by Mike Jones, “Down for My Niggaz” by C-Murder, and “Millenium” by OutKast.
 
Adam Robinson, author of Adam Robison and Other Poems: I don't exercise except for playing softball and I don't listen to music while playing softball but I do often go out and sing karaoke with the team and the songs I most often sing are Nazareth's version of "Love Hurts" and Crash Test Dummies’ weird-ass song, "Mmmmm Mmmmm Mmmmm."
 
More from The VICE Reader
 
 
 
 
 

Why Is the Canadian Media Still Referring to Sex Workers as Prostitutes?

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Rob Ford handling the media after telling the world he likes to smoke crack here and there. via Twitter.

Media organizations worldwide have been busy crucifying Rob Ford for his alleged crimes and intoxicated buffoonery—to which he has offered several, largely insincere apologies—but mainstream outlets in Canada have their own apology to make. They need to apologize for repeatedly presenting Ford’s crimes in conjunction with allegations of “prostitution,” a word they shouldn't even be using in the first place.

Having sex for money is not a crime in this country. Even though many activities associated with it remain illegal, having sex for money in this country is a job. Many people choose the line of work, and enjoy providing a much-needed service to their clients. Others wind up having sex for money out of necessity. Neither of these camps need to be further stigmatized, so why are journalists painting Ford’s alleged association with sex workers as a criminal act, when having sex for money has been legal in Canada since the 70s?

Every major mainstream media source in the city latched onto the “hanging out with suspected prostitutes” allegations. And in the coverage, they conflate law with ethics, sandwiching judgment of what they clearly see as Ford’s shoddy morals beside allegations of his crimes, which should be dealt with as two separate issues. Surprisingly, the Star used some of the worst language: in an article published last Wednesday, a reporter lumped “a hooker visiting city hall” in with “calling a taxi driver ‘Paki’” and “drinking and driving” in his lede. Are sex workers not allowed to visit city hall? Should they get back out on the street where they belong? And what makes someone a “suspected prostitute,” anyway? Fishnets?

I get that there are reasonable arguments to be made for being angry with Ford if he was, in fact, spending time with sex workers on St. Patrick’s Day, 2012. He is a married man, and his honesty, integrity, and general caliber of character could be called into question for being unfaithful to his now much embattled wife. And two: someone ostensibly so concerned with saving the public dime should likely not be having sex on it. Or—provided the allegations are true—on city hall furnishings. Fair enough. But that is a moral issue, not a legal one.

Another headline, posted four days ago on the National Post’s website, blares this accusation: “Rob Ford court documents reveal staffers thought prostitute was in his office, mayor was driving drunk.” Note that the presence of the prostitute is positioned before the drunk driving. Even our national broadcaster hopped on board: a CBC article says Ford was alleged to have “hung around with a suspected prostitute.”

The term “prostitute” is outdated. Following many years of misogyny and anti-sex attitudes, it has collected an unfortunate sheen of dishonour. It connotes an immoral, shameful way of life. Sex workers have been arguing this for quite a while, like this blogger, who chooses to remain anonymous, makes her living having sex, and is determined to reclaim the word “whore.”

“If you are referring to another sex worker, you should use sex work unless told otherwise,” she says. “Sex worker is the preferred language because it places sex work clearly as work. It doesn’t hold any connotations and it doesn’t make any judgments. It includes all of our community in all our diversity and shows respect to our stated wishes. Basically, you should call us sex workers because we said so, and you don’t need a better reason than that.”

The word "prostitute" is reductive to the point that it hisses when we say it aloud. Interestingly enough, when mainstream Canadian journalists needed to interview Terri-Jean Bedford of the now-infamous Bedford v Canada case, they used “sex worker” in their headlines. But now, given that Rob Ford’s story is salacious, they go right back to tawdry, outdated, dirty old terminology. This is a problem. By colouring sex work in this manner, journalists are only serving to further stigmatize a group which needs it least.

Aside from the crack scandal and the other alleged crimes surrounding it, members of the mainstream media have repeatedly lambasted Ford with numerous allegations of misogyny. As they should. The accusations range from domestic violence to the ass-grabbing of former mayoral candidate Sarah Thompson. But is it not hypocritical for them, then, to turn and sneer about so-called prostitutes visiting city hall?

Lizzie Smith, a research officer at The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health, and Society at La Trobe University, summed up the problem of chosen media terminology perfectly following the murder of Melbourne sex worker Tracy Connelly last summer:

“The term ‘prostitute’ does not simply mean a person who sells her or his sexual labour (although rarely used to describe men in sex work), but brings with it layers of ‘knowledge’ about her worth, drug status, childhood, integrity, personal hygiene and sexual health… When the media refers to a woman as a prostitute, or when such a story remains on the news cycle for only a day, it is not done in isolation, but in the context of this complex history.

This stigma is far-reaching and arguably does more damage to women who work in sex work than the actual work. This stigma feeds into understandings of women that are violence-supporting and referring to victims of violence as ‘prostitutes’ continues to ‘other’ these women…”

Issues with language aside, I do understand why people are angry about Ford fraternizing with sex workers. If he can’t keep a promise to his wife and be honest with her, what does that say about his relationship with the city? And how can Ford be saving the “taxpayers” money if he is allegedly on hot pursuit to get laid when he should be taking care of city business? These are fair arguments, but most of the coverage reeks of judgment for the company he keeps, rather than dissecting those points.

My concern here is that much of the reporting fails to separate sex work from criminal behaviour. Ford is the one to be blamed, but journalists come across as if they are directing blame at the sex workers themselves when they use hateful words like “hooker” and “prostitute.” To lump the act of engaging with a sex worker in beside rampant sprees of alleged, actual crime, is to enforce the moral purview of some onto the sensibilities of everyone else—and that is not the intended role of a journalist.

What I want to know is, why have Canadian journalists reverted to using “prostitute” in this case? Are they trying to further sensationalize a situation that is already an international circus, in order to gain a higher rate of readership? Did they skip sensitivity training? Or were they never offered sensitivity training?

Perhaps these journalists are simply just absorbing police lingo. The original court documents use the word “prostitution,” but the police also spell marijuana, “marihuana” in those same documents—so why should journalists use the same, comically outdated lexicon? When you use police lingo as a journalist, as opposed to dissecting the situation and using your own wording, you’re failing.

Ford may have committed a string of crimes. So far, he has admitted to crack cocaine use, drinking and driving, and purchasing illegal drugs during his tenure as mayor, among a litany of other grave blunders. None of these actions were laudable. But fraternizing with sex workers does not belong in that summary of crimes. The sex workers (provided they were actually sex workers) have done nothing wrong, legally or ethically, by being in Ford’s company on that fateful St. Patrick’s Day. Ford did something wrong from the ethical standpoint of some, in that he is a married man—but ethical judgments should not be stirred up in crime coverage.  

In many ways, Rob Ford is a gift to the journalists of Toronto who now have an incredible amount of salacious material to work with—but the basics of good reporting should not fall by the wayside as a result. The public editors, or their equivalents, in the mainstream media need to offer up their own mea culpa for dragging a group of women into this conversation when they’re simply not a part of the problem. It would be a small, welcome victory in the midst of their regularly scheduled “Rob Ford is out of control” programming.



Previously:

Why Doesn't the Justice System Take Rape Cases Seriously?

The Exposure Project Is Putting Cameras in the Hands of Sex Workers

When Selfies Kill

Peter Beste Put the Houston Rap Scene Into a Book

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Mike Jones, Northside, 2008

Back in 2008, VICE released Peter Beste's photo book, True Norwegian Black Metal. Thanks to Satan, the book was a runaway success. So much so that we asked Peter to help us make a film of the same name about Norway's "most hated man," Gorgoroth frontman, Gaahl. Having documented the insular black metal scene with more honesty and access than anyone before or since, Peter started up another long-term project—the documentation of Houston's similarly tight-knit hip-hop community.

After nine years of work, his project is now a book called Houston Rap. We called Peter to talk about Houston, the media misrepresentation of hip-hop culture, Black Power, and just how much the black metal scene has in common with the guns, sizzurp, and DIY ethics of the Texas rap world.

Papa Screw, South Park, 2009

VICE: Hi, Peter. I remember seeing some of the photos from Houston Rap years ago. This must have been a really long-term project for you, right?
Peter Beste: It's been really long. I started shooting in 2004 and have been planning it since about 2000. The book was originally going to come out a few years ago, but there were a variety of holdups with the publishing process. Having to wait allowed us more time to get deeper into the community, and in retrospect I'm really glad that we did have that extra time. The book would have been more surface level if we released it early, and I think this extra time allowed us to get much deeper into the topics and release a truly unique book.

South Park, 2005

Was it difficult to gain trust and get access? Did it contribute to how long the book took to make?
That was a small factor, but I was really fortunate because I was immediately introduced to the right folks back in 2004, like Dope E from the Terrorists, K-Rino, and members of Street Military. These guys have immense respect in the hood and were willing to bring me around, introduce me to people, and essentially vouch for me.

How did the project change over all that time?
As the project progressed we expanded our concept. It became less about who’s who in Houston rap, and more about an anthropological picture of an important time and place in American history. We got into more juicy topics, like spirituality, the deliberate targeting of the hood by government entities, gentrification, and lots of personal stuff.

Martin Luther King Boulevard, South Park, 2006

Most of our readers probably haven't seen the book yet, so I feel I should mention that the title is almost misleading. I mean, there are rappers in it, but it’s not really about rap music. It’s broader than that—it's about the city and community. Was that an organic shift from what you initially set out to do?
It was organic. I grew up on a lot of this Houston rap. In the early 90s I was mystified and really blown away by early Rap-A-Lot artists, like the Geto Boys, Ganxsta N-I-P, and stuff like that. Years later, getting into photography, it seemed like a perfect project for me, so I decided to track down these more obscure characters and try to photograph them in their personal environments. The focus was initially on that, but over time—as I got to know these guys better—we started asking the right questions and steering away from the stereotypes and typical bullshit that is covered in mainstream rap media. 

I mean, that stuff is in the book: women, cars, and over-the-top materialism—there's no doubt that's a part of the community. But it goes so much deeper than that. As we all know, however, the media primarily focuses on those aspects. We ended up making it more of a sociological or anthropological study of this rich Southern culture.

Houston was, for the most part, overlooked by the mainstream. Historically, if you weren’t from New York or LA, you were more or less ignored by the rap community—aside from the Geto Boys. Because of that feeling of being sidelined, a lot of these guys had to develop their own musical styles, their own CEOs, distribution networks—even their own style of drugs, with the sizzurp and so on. They didn’t have the major labels interfering and telling them what to produce. Of course, initially it wasn’t their choice to be ignored, but over time I think that became a positive thing. They realized that rather than signing to a major label and making 50 cents per CD, they could produce and manufacture their own albums, sell them through their own networks, and end up making $7 or $8 per album while maintaining their independence.

Duke of Herschelwood Hardheadz, South Park, 2006

That sort of reminds me of the old independent soul labels of the 1960s—the idea of just setting up a label in a small or overlooked town, recording, cutting it all in that one place and releasing it, irrespective of being overlooked by Motown or whatever.
Yeah, that DIY ethic gives me enormous respect for them. I come from a punk rock background, so it’s something I really admire and connect with.

You shot London grime MCs and the grime scene in its heyday, or at least before it gained any real mainstream weight. Do you feel there are similarities between these two scenes? The somewhat overlooked, insular, commercially unviable scenes making do themselves and building an industry?
Well, I was only working on the grime stuff for a comparatively short time, but yes. It was back in 2005 in London, and I didn’t get nearly as deep into that community as I did in Houston, but I was attracted by their similar ethic and ability to make something unique while telling you stories about where they're from and what they have to go through. One big similarity grime has to Houston rap is that it was produced and promoted within the community with this internal support network of the pirate radio stations and so on—the way DJ Screw made his tapes and the way that spread and multiplied. That DIY Screw network is in some ways comparable to the pirate radio stations of London grime, where they spread their music on their own terms with little outside influence or support. 

Z-Ro, Missouri City, 2006

To compare this with another niche scene you worked in, I'd imagine there are pretty limited cultural crossovers between the Houston rappers and the people in True Norwegian Black Metal. Is that right?
Ironically, I grew up outside of Houston and I found that I fitted in more—at least physically—halfway around the world in Norway than I did in my own backyard in Houston. There are similarities: they're both fringe musical subcultures with their owns sets of ethics and aesthetics, and their own sets of rules. In that regard, they are similar. But of course those sets of ethics are very different. I wouldn’t lump them in together in any other ways. The problems I faced were similar, too—I had to earn the respect of both communities over time. I did this by having a humble attitude, taking some photos, and coming back months later and showing them a spread in a magazine that they were receptive to. Over time, relationships grew and it snowballed from there.

South Park, 2008

You mentioned how your book includes images of some of those mainstream ideas about the hip-hop lifestyle, but they're often starkly contrasted with images of poverty and the difficulties of daily life that affect a lot of Americans. Did your view of the rap lifestyle change after seeing the two worlds intersect? 
One of my main goals with both projects was to show the façade the communities present and contrast it with more real and human elements that are revealed after digging a bit deeper—whether it be metal guys in makeup or rappers in expensive cars with women and guns. For many of these guys, that is the image they project. For every 50 pictures I took like that, I can manage to get one picture with that façade down, something more real and personal. 

And those images will communicate to more people who see them, as there are only so many people who care about tough guy rapper photos. If that was as deep as it went, I wouldn’t have spent this much time on the project. Same for Norway—if it was only guys holding upside down crosses in the forest then I would have gotten bored quickly. With both cultures, the deeper you get into their histories, belief systems, families, and so on, the more universal it gets. It was a thin line to walk, between showing the façade and showing the true person behind all of that.

There was no formula to how I did that, either. It had a lot to do with having a really good editor, Johan Kugelberg, who was able to help my co-author Lance Scott Walker and I zoom out to see the bigger picture and select a group of images and text that show a fuller spectrum that will ultimately communicate to more people. We were so far immersed in the scene it was difficult to edit objectively. We had to tread lightly and try to produce a nice art book while keeping the subjects of the book happy and representing their scene to their satisfaction.

Dope E of the Terrorists, Third Ward, 2004

A few people in the book are proponents of black power movements and similar philosophies. Did that create an extra layer of difficulty for you as far as access and gaining trust were concerned?
Most of the guys with this philosophy didn't hold our skin color against us, because they could tell we had honest intentions and were aware of the issues they were passionate about. For example, Dope E of the Terrorists—the guy holding the gun out of the Black Panther window—turned out to be one of our best friends in the scene and opened many doors for us. I think the bottom line is their rebellion against the proverbial "white man" is not so much about skin color, but rather it’s against the oppressive power system. That was something I don’t think I fully understood at the beginning of this project.

Arcade Fire's "Afterlife," Produced by The Creators Project

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Arcade Fire's "Afterlife," Produced by The Creators Project

New York State of Mind: Double Trouble in Little China

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Hip-hop is having a renaissance right now in the city of New York, where it seems like every other day a new MC rises up out of the five boroughs with an even more unique style and approach to the music than what we thought was possible before. Motley crews like the A$AP Mob, the Beast Coast, and World's Fair have given us a reason to love rhymes again. We've written a lot about this stuff, but sometimes words don't do it justice. So, we've linked up with scene insider Verena Stefanie Grotto to document the new New York movement as it happens in real time, with intimate shots of rappers, scenesters, artists, and fashion fiends.

This week Verena spent a day around New York City’s Chinatown shooting A$AP Mob affiliate Ian Connor and model Danii Phae. The shoot was inspired by the 1986 film, Big Trouble in Little China, directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrell. 

Photographer Verena Stefanie was born and bred in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. The small town is not known for hip-hop, but they do make a very tasty grape-based pomace brandy there called grappa. Stefanie left Bassano del Grappa at the age of 17 to go and live the wild skateboarding life in Barcelona, Spain, where she worked as the Fashion Coordinator for VICE Spain. Tired of guiding photographers to catch the best shots, she eventually grabbed the camera herself and is now devoted to documenting artists, rappers, style-heads, and more. She recently directed a renowned documentary about the Grime scene in UK and has had photo features in GQ, Cosmopolitan, VICE, and many more. 

Check out her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

@VerenaStefanie

Previously - The Wu-Tang Clan Swarm London

Cayman Jack Presents: Travel Week: Far Out - Agafia's Taiga Life

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Just in case you're craving another Siberian adventure, here's a piece one of our documentary crews from New York made when they traveled out to meet a woman named Agafia Lykov, who was born in the Siberian wilderness in 1944 and still lives there to this day. It's hard to imagine a more remote or desolate lifestyle than the one Agafia lives, and it's a real marvel to witness it through the eyes of our fancy New York cameras. Hope you enjoy it. Travel doesn't get much more drastic than this.


I Went to the Yeezus Tour Two Nights in a Row and It Took Me Into the Twilight Zone

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I Went to the Yeezus Tour Two Nights in a Row and It Took Me Into the Twilight Zone

Exploring the Depressing House of Michael Jackson's Disgraced Dermatologist

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Having visited a handful of them (and never, mind you, under positive circumstances), I can confidently state that the homes of Hollywood's countless hangers-on are all the same. The following ratio, seemingly without exception, dictates the dispersion of their possessions: 60% sun-bleached photos of them with former celebrities, usually dating from the 1980s and 1990s; 10% formerly modern furniture, usually dating from the 1980s and 1990s; 10% formerly modern art, usually created by equally sycophantic succubi like Andy Warhol and David LaChapelle in the 1980s and 1990s; and 20% what can kindly be described as "complete and utter fucking garbage," usually acquired in the late 1990s (what I like to call the "wild card.”)

The wares currently being peddled at the bankruptcy-forced estate sale of Dr. Arnold Klein, much-maligned former dermatologist to the stars, are no exception to this rule.

In happier times, Liz Taylor, Cher, Dolly Parton, Lady Gaga and, rather infamously, Michael Jackson were regulars at his Beverly Hills practice; a solid decade of lawsuits, criminal investigations, and embarrassing press appearances, however, have irreparably tarnished the legacy of the man once hailed as the "Father of Botox." Miscellaneous effects from the estate of the good bad doctor, infamous enough to have his own "Saga" page on TMZ's website, are shamelessly being hawked in his seized Hancock Park mansion through Saturday.

In order to enter the house, which is currently in shambles and in escrow (its listing describes it as a "rare yet tarnished treasure"), I had to sign a waiver. The company putting on the sale (probably rightfully) feared I'd fall into a gaping, construction-related hole and decide to get litigious. I understand their desire to cover their own asses; those unfortunate enough to still be affiliated with Klein already have enough problems.

As a dermatologist, Klein provided a much-needed, God-like service to his famous clients, all of whom required aesthetic perfection in order to hold on to whatever modicum of stardom they possessed. His pal Elizabeth "Eighth Time's a Charm" Taylor, in a book she once gifted to Klein, tellingly inscribed, “My beloved Arnie. I love you more than I can tell. I feel you have saved my fading life.”

Klein's love of and obsession with his celebrity clientele is still evident in his social media presence; the majority of his Twitter feed is devoted to links to his Quora profile. On it, he answers dozens of questions about celebrities, all of which he purports to know intimately. In a series of grammatically incorrect answers to queries that were not specifically asked to him, he describes Cary Grant as "a dear friend" and declares Michael Jackson "the Mona Lisa of Performance Art."

On his practice's website, he brags about being mentioned in films like Postcards from the Edge; a leather-bound, signed copy of the movie’s script, written by client Carrie Fisher and tagged with the ridiculously exorbitant price of $350, was up for grabs. Even Fisher, the pride-deficient former alcoholic/Jenny Craig spokesperson, has cut ties with him at this point.

The wealth of Star Wars-related paraphernalia (action figures, light-sabers, Jabba the Hut and Slave Leia statues ensconced in plastic cases) on sale in his former Xanadu harkens back to simpler, more successful times. A delightfully sacrilegious, life-sized David LaChappelle photo of Jesus Christ holding what appears to be the corpse of a burdened Michael Jackson is prominently featured in the center of the house’s epic staircase, on sale for $6,500.

Estate sales are always a depressing affair; Klein’s has malaise in spades, mostly because he’s still alive to witness it. His garage is filled with wheelchairs, tattered pillows, Bentley rims, bedazzled Ed Hardy candles, ostentatious ski outfits and Disney paraphernalia. Plastic bags filled with correspondence from satisfied customers like Brett "Grace Under Fire" Butler and Barbara "Meet the Fockers" Streisand can be procured for the right price.

Greeting cards from the Clinton White House are also available. Arnie appeared to have a thing for the administration, owning tchotchkes like sax-playing Clinton dolls, Hillary nutcrackers and ancient photos of him with both politicians. A salmon-hued suite off the main staircase, which hand-written signs state was "Michael Jackson's Bedroom," is filled with mediocre art and a Versace dinner table.

Jackson returned to the doctor's fold in 2009, after having lived overseas for a handful of years. The delighted Klein went out of his way to roll out the red carpet for him, neglecting other clients and maintaining a steady stream of Demerol for the Gloved One until his untimely demise later that year. Debbie Rowe, Jackson's ex-wife and mother of his kids, was Klein's medical assistant for decades. Having met Jackson after he burned his scrotum bleaching it under Klein’s care in 1993, she was the sweet, selfless soul who assisted in his rehabilitation process, and love (or something akin to it) bloomed. After Jackson's death, Klein tried unsuccessfully to be involved in the lives of Rowe and Jackson's children; he publicly alleged to be the sperm donor responsible for their existence. This explained why the children’s surgical masks were available at the sale.

Klein’s hero worship, however, was for naught; in the end, all he got was a shit-stained reputation, a collection of laughably dated Versace housewares and a crumbling estate filled with cautionary tales. If you have the cash, and the inclination, you can own them. But why would you want to?

@Bornferal

More on celebrities:

Celebrity Obsession With Roseboy and Friends

Celebrity Wining

It's Lavish, Bitch: The Internet's Celebrity Bashing Brat King

 

Epicly Later'd - Season 1: Geoff Rowley - Part 2

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In part two of the Geoff Rowley series, he talks about moving to California with the Flip team, skating with the Tempster, shooting pics with Sturt, and how slamming is almost as good as the make.

More Epicly Later'd:

Eric Dressen

Arto Saari

Antwuan Dixon

Remembering Nic Mevoli

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Nic (center) with Esther Bell at the Rotterdam Film Festival, 2004.

I met Nic Mevoli on a film set in Philadelphia. We remained friends for years, later living in the same Brooklyn neighborhood until I moved across the country to Portland, Oregon, losing touch with him and most everyone in New York. I knew Nic was kind of a jock, but had no idea of his newfound passion for freediving until this past Sunday, when news of his death off the coast of the Bahamas broke. I found out through a Facebook message from filmmaker Esther Bell: “Nic Mevoli passed away today- imso destroyed.” Esther is Nic’s ex-girlfriend, but she’s also how we met, as actors in her 2004 film Exist. Attached was a Daily Mail story detailing Nic’s death, brought on by lung compression after a record-breaking free dive to a depth of more than 200 feet into the Bahamian sea.

Like anyone else who’s read the coverage, I was shocked by Nic’s fast ascent into the top tier of the sport within the short span of two years. But while writers and commenters both seemed to express surprise and confusion as to why Nic would have chosen such a risky and physically demanding new career (not to mention the fact that he lost money in the process), I didn’t share their bafflement.

The Nic I met years ago had not yet become a diving superhero—rather, he was a butcher’s son turned vegan who lived in a South Philly squat and ferociously pedaled his bicycle everywhere out of concern for his carbon footprint. As young activist punks who spent our teen years living in abandoned buildings and raging against the machine, risky behavior (and how to live off stuff we found in the trash) was all we knew.

In 2001 I was living at (k)Not Squat, a West Philadelphia haven for anarchist punks where the door was always open and a pot of something stinky and bizarre was always on the stove. It was here that my housemate Chris “Spam” White and I first encountered a handwritten casting call, stuck to our front door with masking tape. A filmmaker was in town shooting a movie about activist collectives and was apparently hitting up all the punk houses in the neighborhood to get people to audition. While most of our neighbors scoffed, Spam and I decided, along with a third housemate, April Rosenblum, to check it out.

April, Spam, and I ended up landing minor parts in the film, possibly because we were among the only real-life squatters to show up. By the time we began shooting, Bell had scrapped the script in favor of collective writing and improvisation, letting the subject and material define the process—a modernist film technique if there ever was one. By the end of edits, the storyline had changed drastically and Nic, who had started the film in the supporting role of an inconsequential housemate named Top, had come through as the star. He was so quiet during filming at the “squat” (a dilapidated apartment decorated by Spam, April, and myself with fliers and other items from (k)Not Squat) that he barely registered as part of the cast. During the initial rehearsals I was taken aback when he spoke his lines—I’d become accustomed to his silent, muscular presence. He was the guy in the corner who listened, with eyes cast sideways, then paced around in circles as if his energy were too much to be pinned into one space and time.

Nic on the Exist set with (L-R) production assistant Kim, director of photography Tracey Gudwin, and director Esther Bell, 2001.

During the course of filming Nic and Esther had begun dating, and I have to admit I was a little peeved that the director’s boyfriend had been given one of the two starring roles. Was it nepotism? But after watching the finished product I agreed it made sense to cast Nic in one of the leads. He had a classically handsome actor face and was almost too model-like to play a West Philly bike punk, but somehow he pulled it off flawlessly. His big eyes, big lips, and angular bone structure are a close-up’s dream.

It wasn’t until a year later, when I fled Philly and returned to Brooklyn, that I got to know Nic and Esther better. They’d become a couple, and lived above the notorious former Williamsburg bar Kokie’s, a somewhat scary dive with a curtained-off back room for cocaine orgies that had the audacity to name itself after its most sought-after product. I came over for vegan dinner parties at which Nic would display his feats of vegetarian magic. The relationship with Esther had transformed him: no longer the quiet shadow in the corner of the set, Nic was ebullient, cracking jokes and offering a warm hug to everyone who walked into the apartment. The natural anarchist punk’s suspicion I initially held had worn off. Nic wasn’t some kind of ambitious actor jerk, using Esther to get ahead. He was just a genuinely nice guy: loving and open, with a simplicity and contentment in his manner that always left me—a neurotic—secretly envious.

That’s where Nic always stood out. He was able to be still in the eye of the storm. We all lived chaotic lives and none of us ever had any money, but where I was constantly wailing about the stress of such a life, Nic just seemed cool with it. Even when five of us later traveled to Rotterdam and Berlin to premiere the film, squeezing everyone into a single tiny hotel room where we all fought over who got the bed, Nic just took the floor without a word.

Like a lot of other urban East Coast kids, Nic had always pushed it to the limit. There’s a certain love of adventure, a recklessness and joy, that drives a young person to choose the thankless and underpaid life of an actor over, say, a job as an executive assistant or an office temp. We felt that manic bliss while spitting at cops in Philly and dancing at all-night film festival after parties in the Netherlands, jobs that we scrounged and saved for just to feel a fleeting moment of adrenaline. All of us, like Nic, were holding our breath under water for a dream. Maybe we were poor and unstable, but for a moment here and a night there, we were happy.

The Alleged Founder of the Silk Road Is Staring Down Four New Contract-Killing Charges

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The Alleged Founder of the Silk Road Is Staring Down Four New Contract-Killing Charges

Soju Is Responsible for South Koreans Passing Out in the Streets

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Drunk man in Seoul via

Soju doesn’t waste time. It cuts straight to the point and gets you drunk very quickly. This is something I’ve known since I was 16, when I was an underage drinking Korean-American teen growing up in Queens. But this concept didn’t fully register until I moved to Seoul for a short stint three years ago. It was my first night in South Korea’s capital city. I tagged along with my cousin and his crew of hard-drinking buddies to hit the crowded streets that surround Kang-Nam Station. One of Seoul’s most frequented subway stops, the area was packed with bars filled with endless herds of partygoers who assemble there to partake in one of Korea’s national pastimes—getting sauced.

It was a sober hour in the early evening when our group hatched a plan for the drunken night ahead of us. Shortly before 7 PM, the sun was still out and the streets were teeming with thirsty imbibers, the cramped packs of competition in our race to grab a table at the closest bar. I took a moment to soak up my environment. For the first time, I was living in my parents’ homeland, where everyone looked like me and I was naturally supposed to blend in. This was the place where I was supposed to feel as one with my fellow Koreans, who I could connect with if we all sang Arirang in a made-for-TV moment in my imagination. But the reality was a lot of drunk-ass people roaming the streets. 

The excitement of Friday night was palpable. Seoul revelers seemed giddy. Young Koreans greeted friends with warm hugs, standing in small circles scheming about which bar to hit up in the long night that lay ahead. Others were on to destination round three. 

But there were outliers, like the middle-aged man I noticed sprawled out on the street. He was passed-out-wasted with an empty green bottle that lay as evidence beside his body. Snoring, he reeked of soju as we walked past him. Nobody seemed to notice or care about this plastered man lying awkwardly on his side. Without flinching, people stepped over and around him, like a fresh pile of dog shit marked on the sidewalk. Shortly after, I began to notice the overwhelming mounds of fresh vomit that dotted the concrete every few blocks—piles that were completely disregarded. These streets and their obstacles didn’t seem to phase anyone. So this was Seoul. Everyone had more important things to worry about at 7 PM. I wasn’t wasted yet.

As the world’s leading consumer of hard spirits, South Koreans love to drink. Hard. According to the World Health Organization, South Korea is the leading country in heavy spirits consumption. Soju, the country’s unofficial national alcohol, is the best-selling sprit worldwide, outselling vodka, whiskey, and rum with a commanding lead of 90 million cases sold every year. Soju is typically served chilled and taken in shots. It’s most commonly distilled from rice, but it can also be made from other ingredients like wheat, barley, tapioca, and sweet potatoes. Korean marketing campaigns go hard, slapping A-list Korean celebrities or some attractive Korean model flashing her bare midriff or legs on the front of the bottle. 


Photo via

Korea’s soju market has a variety of brands whose popularity varies by region, but there are two that dominate the palate of Korean consumers and global drinkers alike: Chamisul and Cheoeum Cheoreom. Chamisul classic stands at 20.1 percent alcohol, and is manufactured by Hite-Jinro, the leading seller of alcohol on the planet. If you’re the only one in the crew looking to dodge tying one on, Hite-Jinro also produces Chamisul Fresh, which has a slightly lower alcohol content level at 19.5 percent. Chamisul’s only comparable competition is Cheoeum Cheoreom, which contains an alcohol level of 19.5 percent, manufactured by Lotte. Just like the cola wars, these two brands define soju and can be ordered at almost any Korean bar or restaurant without checking for them on the menu. 

In 2012, 3 billion bottles of soju were sold in South Korea. Drinking alcohol—soju in particular—is so ingrained into Korean culture that any celebration, wake, or Korean drama—insert ubiquitous scene of depressed, crying person sitting alone in the middle of the street, downing an entire bottle of soju with synthesizer music here—just wouldn't be the same without it. It’s cheap—a little over $1 in any supermarket or convenience store—and sold 24/7. In a country where illegal drugs are fairly impossible to source, Korean soju addicts and alcoholics band together in a communal love for a drug that comes in bottle form.

When I think back on that passed out drunk from my first night in Korea, it makes sense that none of us acknowledged his presence. If we had, it would’ve caused us to turn around and stay home for the night. To me, soju has been like that good friend you go to whenever you’re in need of something. It can elevate your mood and help enhance a celebration. It’s also going to be there like a shoulder to cry on after a bad breakup. That sentence is probably mentioned in AA meetings, but soju is the truth serum that takes you straight to where you want to be, even if it’s passed out in the middle of the street.

Read more from Tae Yoon at Thwany.blogspot.com.

More alcohol:

The Real Drunk History

Oktoberfest in Palestine

Katy Red's Guide to Daiquiri Drinking 

Cayman Jack Presents: Travel Week: Fashion Week Internationale - Jamaica

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The Caribbean is an amazing, vibrant placeso what better way to showcase it than through the wildness of Jamaica's fashion week? Here, our UK fashion guru Charlet hangs out with Elephant Man, learns about the infectious dancehall culture, and peaks behind the curtain to figure out why people in Jamaica bleach their skin. This is more than just a fashion piece, and it's a must-watch if you're interested in the culture of the islands. Enjoy.


Congress’s Drug Problem

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Trey Radel holds a press conference at his district office in Florida hours after pleading guilty to possession of cocaine and getting sentenced to a year of probation. Photo by Reuters/Steve Nesius

On October 29, a 37-year-old Republican Congressman named Henry "Trey" Radel fucked up. He bought $260 worth of coke while at a restaurant in DC’s trendy Dupont Circle neighborhood, but the guy selling it turned out to be an undercover cop who was part of a targeted sting operation. When news of the “cocaine Congressman” was reported by Politico this week, a predictable sequence of events played out: a guilty plea, probation but no prison time, and an announcement that he has a drug problem and plans to take a leave of absence from his job while he seeks treatment for it. Presumably he’ll come back eventually, tell the press that he’s in recovery thanks to his family and the grace of God, and the Tea Partiers who elected him in Florida may even love him all the more for having faced down his demons so publicly.

Radel is hardly an important DC figure—he only got elected last year, and before this coke incident he was most known for loving hip-hop and making his own beats. His personal drama is mostly a sideshow, a story that will be forgotten then occasionally brought up as a funny anecdote: “Hey, remember that Tea Party dude who loved Tupac and got caught with cocaine?” It’s not even a story that lends itself to puffed-up allegations of Republican hypocrisy, since Radel has been broadly in favor of reforming failed drug war policies. (Though he did support drug testing for food stamp recipients, so maybe he’s into some icky poor-people-shouldn’t-do-drugs-but-rich-folks-can shit.) But one thing this incident shows is just how strangely the legal system works when it comes to drugs.

Congressmen have been using drugs casually for centuries. Not necessarily illegal drugs, but drugs all the same. Like most rich men of their era, the Founding Fathers took snuff—or snortable powdered tobacco—which sounds fucking disgusting. Then there was the rich tradition of power brokers in Washington being Mad Men–level alcoholics. In an long interview published this week by Politico Magazine, Bobby Barker, who was a political fixer on Capitol Hill in the 50s and 60s, tells countless stories of drunks with power: There was Senator Burnett Mayback, a Democrat from South Carolina who “had to have about a half a tumbler of bourbon when he woke up in the morning”; Senator Everett Dirksen, an Illinois Republican who had a full bar in his office; Senator Herman Tallmadge, a conservative Democrat from Georgia with a “monumental alcohol problem” who once got so drunk he couldn’t show up at an event in support Lyndon Johnson… The list goes on.

Those were the days of more or less condoned alcoholism and sometimes insane levels of debauchery. Barker also talked about the time Ellen Rometsch, a suspected East German spy, went to the White House and gave JFK “the best head-job he’d ever had.” But it’s not like we’ve elected a bunch of choirboys since then, it’s just that now we live in a world where the media is expected to report on every facet of every public figure’s life, and the consequences of misbehavior are terrible and swift. That might explain why Radel is the first member of Congress ever convicted of cocaine use. It’s not that politicians don’t have a bipartisan inclination toward drugs, but they know that if they ever got caught there’d be hell to pay. So they avoid illegal drugs, or they’re just really careful, which isn’t to say they don’t still party—there’s that story about members of Congress reeking of alcohol while working on the eve of the government shutdown, and all the rumors of John Boehner being a boozehound.

Maybe unsurprisingly, there are a fair number of recovering addicts in Congress. Yet the criminal justice system, which presumably legislators have some control over, has treated addicts incredibly poorly. Despite some reforms, including a law reducing the disparity between sentences for crack and coke users that came into effect in 2011, you can still be sent to prison for simple possession. Radel was trying to buy 3.5 grams from the cop—under federal law he could have gone to prison for a year and been hit with a $1,000 fine for possessing that amount. Instead, the judge gave him straight probation, either because the judge was having a good day or because Radel is an elected official and an upstanding citizen. If he had been black, had bought crack instead of powder cocaine, and was in a rougher part of DC, I wonder if the authorities would have been so lenient.

Radel’s story seems to have a mostly happy ending—he says he’s getting treatment for his problem, he’s not in prison, and I haven’t seen any antidrug screeds alleging that his cocaine use makes him unfit to be a Congressman or a decent human being. But his case underscores the basic fact that everyone does drugs; what happens to you afterward depends on what drugs you were doing and who you are.

@HCheadle

More on cocaine:

Please Snort Me

The Trickle-Down Economics of Nicaragua’s Drug Trade

A Year of Unreplied Texts from My Coke Dealer

Thank You

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All artwork by Tara Mizner.

Alejandro Zambra is one of our favorite living writers. His first book, Bonsai, won the Chilean Critics’ Award for Best Novel of the Year in 2006. We first read his work when Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Ways of Going Home in 2013. What distinguishes Alejandro from his contemporaries is the sweetness and intimacy of his writing, and his confidence in letting himself be as he is. As you read his work, there’s never the impression that he is second-guessing himself, thinking, “So-and-so would do it this way,” or “Such-and-such editor would say that.” He exhibits this remarkable confidence on the page, one that allows him to be himself and to speak, a special kind of generosity. It feels like knowing and speaking to a sweetheart—it never feels like he’s an author who pretends, or tries to teach, or falls into egotistical traps. Flaws in writing often come from flaws in character. Alejandro doesn’t seem to have any of those. He’s just a lovely, special, strange person who seems to look at his actual world and describe it in his actual, natural voice, and he leaves it at that. He has the authority that J. M. Coetzee, V. S. Naipaul, and Bret Easton Ellis have all identified as the writer’s bedrock.
 

"I got a feeling you two are together and you’re keepin’ it a secret”—“No we’re not,” they answer in unison, and it’s the truth: for a little over a month now they’ve been sleeping together, they eat, read, and work together, so that someone with a tendency to exaggerate, someone who watched them and carefully parsed the words they say to each other, the way their bodies move closer to each other and entwine—a brash person, someone who still believed in these sorts of things, would say they really loved each other, or that at least they shared a dangerous and generous passion; and yet they are not together, if there is one thing they are very clear about it is precisely this, that they are not together. She is Argentine and he’s Chilean, and it’s much better to refer to them like that, the Argentine woman, the Chilean man.

They’d planned on walking, they’d talked about how nice it is to go long distances on foot, and they even reached the point where they were dividing people into two groups: those who never walk long distances and those who do, and who they believe are, because of that, better. They’d planned on walking, but on a whim they hailed a taxi, and they had known for months, even before they’d arrived in Mexico City, when they’d received a set of instructions that was full of warnings, that they should never hail a taxi in the street, and up till then it had never occurred to them to hail a taxi in the street, but this time, on a whim, they did it, and soon she thought the driver was going the wrong way and she said as much to the Chilean in a whispered voice, and he reassured her out loud, but his words didn’t even get to take effect because right away the taxi stopped and two men got in and the Chilean reacted valiantly, recklessly, confusedly, childishly, stupidly: he punched one of the bandits in the nose, and he went on struggling for long seconds while she shouted, Stop it, stop it, stop it. The Chilean stopped, and the bandits let him have it, they showed him no mercy, they may have even broken something, but this all happened long ago, a good ten minutes ago. By now they’ve already given up their money and their credit cards and they’ve already recited their ATM PIN numbers and there’s only a little time left that to them seems like an eternity, during which they ride with their eyes squeezed shut, “Shut your eyes, pinches cabrones,” the two men tell them.

And now there are three men, because the car stopped a few minutes ago and the taxi driver got out and a third bandit who’d been following behind them in a pickup truck got behind the wheel. The new driver hits the Chilean again and feels up the Argentine, and they accept the punches and the grabbing hands with a kind of resignation, and wouldn’t they like to know, as we know, that this kidnapping really will be over soon, that soon they will be walking silently, laboriously, with their arms around each other, down some street in La Condesa—because the bandits had asked them where they were going and they replied that they were going to La Condesa and the bandits said, “Well, we’ll drop you off in La Condesa then, we’re not so bad, we don’t want to take you too far out of your way,” and a second before letting them out, incredibly, the bandits handed them a hundred pesos so they could take a taxi home, but of course they didn’t go home by taxi, they got on the subway, and at times she cried and he held her close and at other times he confusedly held back his tears and she moved her feet closer to his the way she had in the taxi, because the kidnappers had made them keep their distance but she had kept her right sandal on top of the Chilean’s left shoe the whole time.

***

As often happens in the Mexico City subway, the train stops for a long time, an inexplicable six or seven minutes, at an intermediate station, and that quite normal delay nevertheless makes them suffer, it strikes them as intentional and unnecessary, until eventually the doors close and the train moves off and they finally reach their station and then go on walking together until they reach the house where she lives. The Argentine and the Chilean don’t live together, he lives with an Ecuadorian writer and she lives with two friends—one Spanish and one Chilean, another Chilean—and they aren’t really friends, or they are but that’s not why they live together, they are all just passing through, they’re all writers and they are in Mexico to write thanks to a grant from the Mexican government, although the thing they do the very least is write, but oddly, when they arrive and open the door, the Spaniard, a very thin and cordial boy, with eyes that are maybe a bit too large, is writing, and Chilean Two isn’t there (there’s no way around calling him Chilean Two; this story is imperfect because it has two Chileans in it when there should only be one, or even better, much better, none, but there are two). Chilean One and Chilean Two are not friends, really they’re more like enemies, or at least they were in Chile, and now they’re both in Mexico and they are both, each in his own way, aware that it would be absurd and unnecessary to go on fighting, and moreover their fights were tacit ones and nothing was keeping them from trying out a kind of reconciliation, although they also both know that they will never be friends, and that thought is, in a way, a relief, and there is one thing that unites them, in any case: alcohol, since out of the whole group the two of them are without a doubt the biggest drinkers, but Chilean Two isn’t there when they come home after the kidnapping, only the Spaniard is there, at the table in the living room, concentrated, writing, beside a bottle of Coca-Cola—you might say clinging to a bottle of Coca-Cola—but when they tell him what has happened he puts his work aside and he seems shaken and he comforts them, invites them to talk, eases the mood with some well-timed and lighthearted joke, he helps them look for the phone number they need to call to block their credit cards—the thieves had taken 3,000 pesos, two credit cards, two cell phones, two leather jackets, a silver chain, and even a camera, because the Chilean had gone back to get the camera—he wanted to take pictures of the Argentine, because she is really beautiful, which is also a cliché, but what can you do, the fact is she’s beautiful, and of course he has thought that if he hadn’t gone back to get the camera, they wouldn’t have taken that particular taxi, the same way so many other things that would have sped them up or slowed them down could have spared them from the kidnapping.

The Argentine and Chilean One tell the Spaniard what happened, and as they tell him they relive it, and for the second or third time, they share it. Chilean One asks himself whether what has just happened is going to bring them closer or drive them apart, and the Argentine wonders exactly the same thing, but neither of them asks it out loud. Just then Chilean Two returns, he’s coming back from a party, he sits down to eat a piece of chicken and right away he starts talking without realizing something has happened, but then he sees that Chilean One’s face is very swollen and he’s holding a bag of ice to it to try to bring the swelling down, and only then does Chilean Two realize—maybe at first it seemed perfectly natural to him that Chilean One would have a bag of ice on his face, maybe in his singular poet’s universe it is normal for a person to pass the night with a bag of ice on his face, but no, it’s not normal, so Chilean Two asks what happened and when he finds out he says, “That’s horrible, the same thing almost happened to me this afternoon,” and he sets off talking about the possible attack of which he was almost the victim, but from which he had saved himself because he made a split-second decision to get out of the taxi. While they talk the Chileans are taking long pulls from a bottle of mescal, and the Spaniard and the Argentine are smoking a joint.

***

Now someone else arrives, maybe a friend of the Spaniard’s, and they go over the story once again but mostly the last part, the final half hour in the taxi, which for them is a kind of part two, because the kidnapping had lasted an hour and for the first half of it they feared for their lives and for the second half they didn’t fear for their lives anymore; they were terrified but they vaguely intuited that, however long it lasted, the bandits weren’t going to kill them, because their words weren’t violent anymore, or they were violent but in a calm and terrible way: “We’ve held up Argentines before but never a Chilean,” says the one in the passenger seat, and he seems like he is truly being curious, and he starts to ask Chilean One about the situation in his country and the Chilean answers politely, as if they were in a restaurant and they were waiter and customer or something, and the guy seems so articulate, so used to that kind of conversation that Chilean One thinks that if he ever tells this story no one will believe him, and that impression only grows over the next few minutes when the bandit riding with them in the backseat, the one holding the gun, says to them, “I got a feeling you two are together and you’re keepin’ it a secret,” and they respond in unison that no, no, they aren’t. “And why not?” asks the bandit—“Why aren’t you together, he’s not so ugly,” he says. “Ugly, but not that ugly, and you’d look better if you cut that hair, it’s straight outta the 70s, no one wears their hair like that anymore,” he tells the Chilean, “and those giant glasses, too, I’m gonna do you a favor,” and he takes the glasses off the Chilean’s face and throws them out the window. For a second the Chilean thinks about a Woody Allen film he saw recently where the protagonist gets his glasses smashed over and over, and the Chilean smiles slightly, maybe he smiles to himself, he smiles the way we smile in panic, but still, he smiles.

“I can’t cut your hair ’cause we don’t have any scissors,” the gunman says, “remind me to bring some good scissors tomorrow so I can cut the Chileans’ hair when we hold ’em up, ’cause from now on we’re only holding up Chileans, we haven’t been fair up to now, we’ve held up lots of Argentines but only this one motherfucking Chilean de la chingada, and from now on we’ll specialize in long-haired Chileans. I got a knife but you can’t cut hair with a knife, knives are for cutting off the balls of pinches Chileans, your boyfriend’s got balls but the ones with balls sometimes gotta lose ’em, tell your boyfriend not to be so ballsy anymore, ’cause I was just about to wanna fuck you, little Argentine, because of this one’s balls, and if I don’t fuck you it’s not ’cause I’m not into you, you’re real hot, of all the Argentine chicks I’ve ever met you’re the hottest, but I’m working now and when I fuck I’m not working, ’cause if fucking was my job then I’d be a whore and even though you can’t see my face you know I’m no whore, and I wish you could see my face so you’d know I’m one pretty crook who also knows how to cut hair, even though I don’t have any scissors and I sure can’t cut your hair with this knife, Chilean—I can cut off your dick but you need that to fuck this Argentine hottie, and I can’t cut your hair with this gun either, or maybe I could, but I’d lose the bullets and I need them in case you get your balls back, and then I would fuck the Argentine hottie, after I killed you, my Chilean friend, I’d fuck your girlfriend, I didn’t plan to kill you but I would kill you and I didn’t plan to fuck her but I’d fuck her, because she’s really hot, she looks like she’s straight outta the best whorehouse in the city. I’d sure choose you, my little Argentine, tomorrow I’m gonna get a hooker and I’ll pick the one who looks the most like you, my Argentine hottie.”

The driver asks the Argentine if she’s a Boca fan, and though it would have been more opportune to say yes, she goes with the truth and says no, she’s for Vélez. The Chilean doesn’t have this problem, since he’s for Colo-Colo, which is the only Chilean team the bandits know. Then they ask about Maradona and the Argentine says something in reply and then the driver comes out with something crazy: he says that Chicharito Hernández is better than Messi, and then he asks them which of Mexico’s teams they’re for, and the Argentine says she doesn’t really know much about soccer—which is a lie, she knows a lot, she knows much more than that poor bandit who thinks Chicharito Hernández is better than Messi, and the Chilean, rather than resorting to a similar lie, gets nervous and thinks hard for a long second about whether the bandits would be for Pumas or for América or Cruz Azul or maybe for Chivas de Guadalajara, since he’s heard there are a lot of people in Mexico City who root for Chivas, but in the end he decides to tell the truth and he says that he follows Monterrey because that’s who Chupete Suazo plays for, and the driver doesn’t like Monterrey but he loves Chupete Suazo and then he says to his companions, “Let’s not kill them, in honor of Chupete Suazo we’re going to spare their lives.”

***

“Who’s Chupete Suazo?” asks Chilean Two, who surely knows but feels obliged to demonstrate that he doesn’t care about soccer. Chilean One was going to answer him, but the Spaniard knows a lot about soccer and tells him he’s a Chilean center forward who looks fat but isn’t, who plays for the Rayados in Monterrey, and who had a successful season when he was lent to Zaragoza, but then he went back to Mexico because the Spaniards couldn’t afford him. Chilean Two replies that the same thing happens to him, that he’s actually skinny but people think he’s fat.

Chilean One and the Argentine are still sitting very close together, but they keep a prudent distance, since even though everyone knows or guesses there’s something going on between them they still pretend and develop strategies to keep from being found out, and it’s not exactly out of modesty, more like desperation, or maybe because the time is gone when things were so simple as to just be together or not, or maybe everything is still that simple but they haven’t accepted it, and it really is absurd that they don’t live together because they always sleep together—it’s almost always him who sleeps over at her place, but sometimes the Argentine stays over at the apartment the Chilean shares with the Ecuadorian girl. What the Chilean and the Argentine really want is to be alone, but the night draws out in the eternal retelling of the kidnapping story, in the search for details they hadn’t remembered and that, when they do remember, bring them a new and renewed complicity. Finally he says he’s going to the bathroom and instead goes into the Argentine’s bedroom; she stays a little longer in the living room and then she slips away, too.

She takes a long shower and makes him take one too, to wash the kidnapping off of them, she says, thinking of the groping she’d been subjected to, groping that was in any case minimal, for which she is thankful. That is, in fact, what she said to the bandits when she got out of the car: “Thank you.” She’s said it many times over the course of the night: “Thank you, thank you, everyone.” To the Spaniard who comforted them, to the Chilean who ignored them but in some way also comforted them, and to the bandits, too, again, it’s never a bad idea to repeat it: “Thank you,” because you didn’t kill us and now life can go on.

She also says thank you, in the end, to Chilean One, after long hours spent caressing each other knowing that tonight they won’t make love, that they will spend the hours very close, dangerously, generously close, talking. Before going to sleep she says thank you to him, and he answers a little late but with conviction: “Thank you.”

They sleep badly, but they sleep. And they go on talking the next day, as if they had their whole lives in front of them and were willing to work at love, and if someone were observing them from afar, someone brash, someone who believed in these kinds of stories, someone who collected them and tried to tell them well, someone who believed in love would think that the two of them will be together for a very long time.

Translated by Megan Mcdowell.

More from this issue:

Did Robotraders Know the Financial Crisis Was Coming?

Physical Singularity

Afternoon Delight

Cry-Baby of the Week

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Cry-Baby #1: Tierra Antigua Elementary School


KOB TV via Reddit

The incident: A woman developed a bad smell as a side effect of her cancer treatment.

The appropriate response: To not be a dick about it. 

The actual response: The woman was banned from being in or near her daughters' school. 

Kerri Mascareno is a mother of three daughters in Alburquerque, New Mexico. She currently has stage-four breast cancer and is in chemotherapy. 

Her daughters, who she referred to as "the fuel that keeps me going," are students at Tierra Antigua Elementary. Last week, she was called in for a meeting with Robert Abney, the school's principal.

“He just said he knows this is going to hurt my feelings and he understands where I’m coming from because his mother had breast cancer and she had the same exact smell,” Kerri told KOB TV, in the above news report which is fucking BRUTAL“I can no longer be in the school and that with me being in the school, that I made his employees ill.” 

The smell that the principal was referring to is a side effect of the chemotherapy Kerri is getting to treat her breast cancer. The chemo smell, which only affects some patients, smells like "moth balls and bad men's cologne," according to this website.

But even standing outside the school wasn't good enough for principal Rob, "He said that he would have to ask me to sit in my car because he could smell me through the window," said Kerri.

Kerri was also told in an email that she would only be allowed to attend the school's annual parent/student Thanksgiving meal if she agreed to eat in an isolated room, away from the other parents and students.

However, after being contacted by the news station that broke the story, the school changed their mind and invited Kristina to eat with everyone else. 

Kristina has not yet decided whether or not she will attend the dinner, given the circumstances under which she was invited. 

Cry-Baby #2: James Collins


H/t Patrick Johnson

The incident: A guy's neighbors wouldn't drink with him on his birthday. 

The appropriate response: Finding someone else to drink with you/moving somewhere with cooler neighbors/maybe developing a better personality, there could be a reason they don't want to drink with you. 

The actual response: He called the cops on them. 

Earlier this month, James Collins (pictured above) of Fort Pierce, Florida, was celebrating his 56th birthday. 

According to police, James called 911 at 8:35 PM.

The 911 dispatcher he spoke to, not fully understanding what James was telling her, thought he was calling to report a domestic disturbance. Several officers were dispatched to James' house. 

When the officers arrived, James told them that he'd called 911 because his neighbors were being "mean and would not drink with him."

An officer explained to James that 911 isn't used to report people who aren't fun. They decided not to arrest James, though, and let him off with a warning. 

After the police had gone, James called 911 for a second time to report that his neighbors STILL wouldn't drink with him. 

The officers returned and arrested James. According to the police report, which was written by a true master of the English language, "the smell that is commonly associated with that of an alcoholic beverage emanated from his mouth and face area."

He was charged with disorderly intoxication and misuse of 911. The police report states that, at the time of his arrest, James had a can of Blue Ice in his pocket. 

Which of these guys is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A guy who killed five puppies because one bit him Vs. A woman who threw away a kid's breakfast because he was 30 cents short

Winner: The puppy killer!!! (obv.)

@JLCT

The US Is Droning Pakistan's Populated Areas (Again)

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The US Is Droning Pakistan's Populated Areas (Again)

Munchies: Lee Tiernan

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Lee Tiernan is head chef of St. John Bread & Wine, East London's little sister to the world-famous St. John Bar & Restaurant, in Smithfield. Once he was done cooking up some pig's head blood cakes, he took us to Tooting's finest curry house, Lahore Karahi, where we were nearly set on fire by the open-flame stoves in the kitchen. Then we drank Breton cider and Jameson at Lee's local pub, the Golden Heart. That culminated in Lee moonwalking his way down Brick Lane to pick up some fresh bagels that he stuffed with ox heart and Sriracha.

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