The Lobotomy Files
This story pick comes from our featured Longreader, Nicole Greenfield, who writes:
I must admit it was the photo of 90-year-old Roman Tritz, clear blue eyes and a blank stare to the camera’s side, that initially drew me into one of my favorite longreads of the week. But the photo didn’t prepare me for the truly harrowing nature of Tritz’s story, a deeply personal look into one of the thousands of forced lobotomies the U.S. government performed on World World II veterans, the details of which are uncovered for the first time in this multimedia feature. The in-depth, but straightforward reporting of such a horrendous trend, performed in the absence of answers, begs all kinds of questions. How could this happen? And, importantly, could it happen again? For it’s impossible not to connect Tritz’s struggle and the stories of veterans today also suffering from PTSD, also without adequate assistance, also afraid, also wondering, as Tritz himself did pre-operation, “Does anybody really care?” This is one that will stick with me for a while.
Prison Break
A visit to the “longest continuously running prison rodeo in America”:
To run their maximum-security prison at near capacity, warden Burl Cain and his staff have to be able to inspire hope and put a measure of trust in their charges. Begun as a source of in-house amusement in 1964 and opened for public consumption in ’67, the rodeo is crucial to that effort. The revenue it brings in supplies and maintains on-site trade schools and re-entry programs, pays inmate teachers and funds improvements to Angola’s infrastructure—and the opportunity to rub shoulders with people outside their usual social circle is something inmates look forward to year round.
Longreads Best of 2013: The Best Story About Storytelling
Nicholas Jackson is the digital director at Pacific Standard, and a former digital editor at Outside and The Atlantic.
The Missing American, on an Unapproved Mission for the CIA
An Associated Press investigation reveals that Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran and has become the longest-held American hostage, was working for the CIA at the time of his disappearance, despite denials by the U.S. government. The full story of how it all happened:
In an extraordinary breach of the most basic CIA rules, a team of analysts — with no authority to run spy operations — paid Levinson to gather intelligence from some of the world’s darkest corners. He vanished while investigating the Iranian government for the U.S.
What Does It Mean to Have a ‘Good Death’?
A neurologist helps watch over her patient as she dies at home, and wonders: Do we ever not die alone?
In twenty-first century America, there is no such “how to” manual on dying. Nor does our state-of-the-art modern medicine offer much help.
Fact: Seven out of ten Americans wish to die at home, die the Good, the Valid, Death.
Jane abhorred whispering, so Steve and I included Jane in our discussion of the mechanics of her death.
Fact: Seven out of ten Americans die in institutions, intubated, infiltrated, invalidated.
“This is a treatable problem,” Steve said.
“Yes,” I said, “but she is going to be worse off afterward.”
Longreads Best of 2013: Boycotts, Death Threats and a Rolling Stone Cover Story
Janet Reitman is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone.
The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack
On Nov. 22, 1987, a Chicago television station was hacked, broadcasting a strange suited figure wearing a rubbery mask and sunglasses to viewers for a brief moment. The story behind the hack and the hunt to figure out who was behind it:
In some corners of the Internet, the story of how Max Headroom infiltrated two Chicago TV stations, just a few weeks after the show was canceled, has reached almost mythic proportions. When the tale is retold every now and then, it’s often received with incredulity by newbies, or with a shock of recognition by Chicagoans who remember watching it as kids, and being terrified, confused, and dazzled.
“I thought it was the coolest thing since WarGames,” said Rick Klein, a Chicagoan who serves as founder and curator of the Museum of Classic Chicago Television, and its website, fuzzymemories.tv. Klein, who was thirteen when it happened, didn’t catch the intrusion live, but he knew that his friend’s father recorded Dr. Who every Sunday night on VHS.
Longreads Best of 2013 Postscript: Monica Potts on the Homeless Families of ‘The Weeklies’
Monica Potts is a senior writer for The American Prospect.
After the Fall
An Indiana University freshman dies at her first college party, and a student journalist explores who she really was:
In the days before they buried her, no one knew how not to come undone. Her roommate dropped out of school. Her father kept abruptly needing to leave the room. And her mother, who looked so much like her already, started wearing her daughter’s clothes. In the news and on campus, Rachael Fiege became known as the IU freshman who died at her first college party. The one who never even made it to her first class.
In the Belly of the Beast
Animal rights activists uncover the dark underbelly of factory farming:
Carlson’s secretly recorded footage, compiled over more than a month, triggered a cruelty indictment and cost the dairy a major buyer. The takedown, in 2008, was Carlson’s first assignment. Hired out of college by Kroll Advisory Solutions to gather business data, he left to find work at a nonprofit firm devoted to social justice. Neither the Polaris Project nor the Environmental Investigation Agency called back, but Mercy for Animals did. After several weeks of training, he hired on at Willet, a giant dairy in Locke, New York, that churned out 40,000 gallons of milk a day. So damning was his footage of standard factory-farming practice – chopping the tails off calves without anesthesia; gouging the horns off their heads with hot branding irons, also without anesthesia; punching cows, kicking calves, beating desperately sick downers – that Nightline ran it on national TV, confronting Willet’s CEO on camera. “Our animals are critically important to our well-being, so we work hard to treat them well,” droned Lyndon Odell of the 5,000 cows standing in lagoons of their own shit. Shown tape of the tortured calves, and pressed on whether a cow feels pain, he rolled his shoulders and mumbled, “I guess I can’t speak for the cow.” It bears saying here that nothing would have come from the tape if left to the whims of Jon Budelmann, the Cayuga County DA. “We approached him with our evidence and he told us to fuck off – he wasn’t going to take on Big Dairy,” says Carlson. “It was only after we went to the media with the tape that he got off his ass and brought charges.” (Budelmann later cleared Willet of any wrongdoing, telling the Syracuse Post-Standard that while Willet’s practices might seem harsh to consumers, they’re “not currently illegal in New York state.”)
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