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On riots and race. What has changed, and what’s still bubbling under the surface, 20 years after the riots in South Central Los Angeles:

The L.A. Riots (or uprising, civil unrest, or rebellion, depending) are often considered the first ‘multiethnic’ riots. As a pivot point of race and urban relations, they constitute a resonant moment for immigrant America. Korean Americans living on the West Coast at the time remember the first day, 4-29, or sa-i-gu, with time-freezing clarity.

For many of us, the riots were a schooling in color and class. Our household, run by two working-class parents, was consumed by frantic arguments and phone calls about race, cities, and the distribution of wealth. There was talk of structural, large-scale discrimination, not merely individual prejudice or circumstance, which shaped the course of my life. Last summer, approaching the riots’ twentieth anniversary, I sought out the lessons of 1992. I was drawn in particular to the riots’ crucible in South Central, since refashioned as ‘South L.A.,’ though its infamy and boundaries–set by highways and thoroughfares–remain unchanged.

“South L.A., Twenty Years Later.” — E. Tammy Kim, Guernica Magazine

See more #longreads about L.A.

[Not single-page] The departing congressman reflects on what’s wrong with Washington, and how his coming out in the 1980s was first received by his Democrat and Republican colleagues: 

Robert Bauman had written a book in which he outed me. He incorrectly referred to somebody as my boyfriend—he wasn’t; he was a close personal friend—but he referred to me as gay. The press didn’t pick it up, but I thought, I’d better tell Tip. So I went to Tip. We were sitting on the floor, it was a bad day, we were losing the vote on the Contras, and I sat next to him. I said, ‘Tip, I’ve got to tell you something. Bob Bauman is coming out with a book that says I’m gay.’

‘Awww, Bahney, don’t listen to that shit. You know they say these things about people.’ I said, ‘Well, Tip, the point is it’s true.’ He said, ‘Oh, Bahney, I’m so sad.’ That’s when he told me he thought I was going to be the first Jewish speaker. He acted as if it was the end. But he was wonderfully supportive.

“In Conversation: Barney Frank.” — Jason Zengerle, New York magazine

See also: “The One-Man Political Machine.” Scott Turow, New York Times, Feb. 17, 2011

The untold story of George W. Bush’s service in the Air National Guard. Hagan revisits the mystery that led to the downfall of CBS’s Dan Rather—with new details on what may have really happened when Bush suddenly stopped flying in the spring of 1972:

The CBS documents that seem destined to haunt Rather are, and have always been, a red herring. The real story, assembled here for the first time in a single narrative, featuring new witnesses and never-reported details, is far more complex than what Rather and Mapes rushed onto the air in 2004. At the time, so much rancorous political gamesmanship surrounded Bush’s military history that it was impossible to report clearly (and Rather’s flawed report effectively ended further investigations). But with Bush out of office, this is no longer a problem. I’ve been reporting this story since it first broke, and today there is more cooperation and willingness to speak on the record than ever before. The picture that emerges is remarkable. Beyond the haze of elaborately revised fictions from both the political left and the political right is a bizarre account that has remained, until now, the great untold story of modern Texas politics. For 36 years, it made its way through the swamps of state government as it led up to the collision between two powerful Texans on the national stage.

“Truth or Consequences.” — Joe Hagan, Texas Monthly

See also: “Dear President Bush,” — Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic, Oct. 1, 2009

[Not single-page] John Friend created a yoga empire with Anusara, which grew to 600,000 students and made him one of the most popular yoga teachers in the United States. It all unraveled following a scandal involving sex with students and financial mismanagement: 

Sex with employees and marijuana in the mail is garden-variety stuff, hardly scandalous in many contexts—but the site brought to light other, more outlandish features of Friend’s secret world. Specifically, it said that he had established a Wiccan coven with six women, some of whom were Anusara teachers and a few of whom were married, as a way to raise ‘sexual/sensual energy in a positive and sacred way.’ As proof, there was a letter that Friend had written to the coven, in which he apologized for attracting a former member ‘into my life, into our lives, by vibrating in my mind-body with a frequency of deception and lack of integrity.’ This woman hadn’t left quietly, Friend wrote: Her ‘vampire novel imagination conjured JF … as the next Aleister Crowley or Pierre Arnold Bernard! The Texas Tantric guru is the Big Bad Wolf in magick cloaks taking innocent girls from their faithful husbands and wrecking families to drink the juice of innocent Little Red Ridinghoods—Wow!’

“Karma Crash.” — Vanessa Grigoriadis, New York magazine

See also: “Blindsided: The Jerry Joseph High School Basketball Scandal.” — Michael J. Mooney, GQ, June 30, 2011

A strange real-life murder inspires a new film starring Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine. How does the victim’s real family feel about being the subject of a black comedy?

I was living in Los Angeles when Aunt Marge was murdered in 1996 and hadn’t been to Carthage, where I was born, in quite a few years. I went back for the trial in 1998 because, let’s face it, it’s not often that someone in your family becomes the focus of a sensational murder case, on the local news for weeks at a time, the circumstances of her demise so tawdry and bizarre that the story appeared in People magazine, on ‘Hard Copy’ and, eventually, on the guilty-pleasure pinnacle of true-crime cable-TV programs, ‘City Confidential.’ And there was something about Aunt Marge’s ending up in a freezer that seemed appropriate. She’d always been kind of coldhearted. It was not an unfitting end.

“How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze.” — Joe Rhodes, The New York Times

See also: “The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist.” — Wired, Dec. 27, 2010

How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze

Longreads Pick

A strange real-life murder inspires a new film starring Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine. How does the victim’s real family feel about being the subject of a black comedy?

“I was living in Los Angeles when Aunt Marge was murdered in 1996 and hadn’t been to Carthage, where I was born, in quite a few years. I went back for the trial in 1998 because, let’s face it, it’s not often that someone in your family becomes the focus of a sensational murder case, on the local news for weeks at a time, the circumstances of her demise so tawdry and bizarre that the story appeared in People magazine, on ‘Hard Copy’ and, eventually, on the guilty-pleasure pinnacle of true-crime cable-TV programs, ‘City Confidential.’ And there was something about Aunt Marge’s ending up in a freezer that seemed appropriate. She’d always been kind of coldhearted. It was not an unfitting end.”

Author: Joe Rhodes
Published: Apr 13, 2012

La Moretta

[National Magazine Awards finalist] [Fiction] A honeymoon set in Eastern Europe in the 1970s:

Since the beginning of their honeymoon, whenever something went wrong she had been eager to remind him. Is this enough of an adventure for you? Aren’t adventures fun? But here they were, in Bucharest, sitting on the edge of a fountain and looking at an elegant, dormered building that could have been in Paris except for the soldiers standing guard in ill-fitting green uniforms.

“La Moretta.” — Maggie Shipstead, VQR

See more #fiction #longreads

La Moretta

Longreads Pick

[National Magazine Awards finalist] [Fiction] A honeymoon set in Eastern Europe in the 1970s:

“Since the beginning of their honeymoon, whenever something went wrong she had been eager to remind him. Is this enough of an adventure for you? Aren’t adventures fun? But here they were, in Bucharest, sitting on the edge of a fountain and looking at an elegant, dormered building that could have been in Paris except for the soldiers standing guard in ill-fitting green uniforms.”

Source: VQR
Published: Sep 1, 2011
Length: 33 minutes (8,259 words)

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: The American Prospect, Outside Magazine, New York Magazine, The Awl, McSweeney’s, a fiction pick, plus a guest pick from Krysti Lesch.

[National Magazine Awards Finalist] [Fiction] A tattoo artist meets a middle-aged mom:

The woman stood in the doorway, twisting her head at odd angles like a goddamn owl to see our designs on the walls, before walking up to the counter.

‘Sure you’re in the right place?,’ I asked. ‘This ain’t no nail salon.’

‘Is Nate here?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘what’s up?’

‘Marion,’ she said, reaching her hand over the counter. I took it and shook. ‘You came highly recommended by my niece, Janice. You tattooed a rose on her hip.’

She looked at me like she expected me to remember. Shit, if I could remember every rose I tattooed on some girl’s hip, I’d be in the Guinness World Records for the best fuckin’ memory.

“Scars.” — Sarah Turcotte, The Atlantic

See more ASME finalists