Search Results for: New York Times

1% Jokes and Plutocrats In Drag: What I Saw When I Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society

Longreads Pick

While reporting for The New York Times, Kevin Roose went undercover and snuck into an exclusive annual dinner party for Kappa Beta Phi, Wall Street’s Secret Society. [Excerpted from Roose’s book, Young Money]:

Bill Mulrow, a top executive at the Blackstone Group (who was later appointed chairman of the New York State Housing Finance Agency), and Emil Henry, a hedge fund manager with Tiger Infrastructure Partners and former assistant secretary of the Treasury, performed a bizarre two-man comedy skit. Mulrow was dressed in raggedy, tie-dye clothes to play the part of a liberal radical, and Henry was playing the part of a wealthy baron. They exchanged lines as if staging a debate between the 99 percent and the 1 percent. (“Bill, look at you! You’re pathetic, you liberal! You need a bath!” Henry shouted. “My God, you callow, insensitive Republican! Don’t you know what we need to do? We need to create jobs,” Mulrow shot back.)

Published: Feb 18, 2014
Length: 9 minutes (2,258 words)

Taking Care of Business: A Reading List

Longreads Pick

This week’s picks from Emily include stories from Orange Coast Magazine, The New York Times, Business Insider, and Bloomberg Businessweek.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 16, 2014

David Foster Wallace and the Nature of Fact

Josh Roiland | Literary Journalism Studies | Fall 2013 | 23 minutes (5,690 words)

Josh Roiland is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication & Journalism and a CLAS-Honors Preceptor in the Honors College at the University of Maine. Roiland is a cultural historian of the American news media, who researches and teaches classes on the cultural, political, and literary significance of American journalism. This piece originally appeared in the Fall 2013 issue of Literary Journalism Studies. Our thanks to Roiland for allowing us to reprint it here, and for adding this introduction:

David Foster Wallace saw clear lines between journalists and novelists who write nonfiction, and he wrestled throughout his career with whether a different set of rules applied to the latter category. In the years after his death, he has faced charges of embellishment and exaggeration by his close friend Jonathan Franzen and repeated by his biographer D.T. Max. Their criticisms, however, do not adequately address the intricate philosophy Wallace formulated about genre classification and the fact/fiction divide. This article explores those nuances and argues that Wallace’s thinking about genre was complex, multifaceted, and that it evolved during his writing life.

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Before he sat down with the best tennis player on the planet for a noonday interview in the middle of the 2006 Wimbledon fortnight, David Foster Wallace prepared a script. Atop a notebook page he wrote, “R.Federer Interview Qs.” and below he jotted in very fine print 13 questions. After three innocuous ice breakers, Wallace turned his attention to perhaps the most prominent theme in all his writing: consciousness. Acknowledging the abnormal interview approach, Wallace prefaced these next nine inquires with a printed subhead: “Non-Journalist Questions.” Each interrogation is a paragraph long, filled with digressions, asides, and qualifications; several contain superscripted addendums.  In short, they read like they’re written by David Foster Wallace. He asks Roger Federer if he’s aware of his own greatness, aware of the unceasing media microscope he operates under, aware of his uncommon elevation of athletics to the level of aesthetics, aware of how great his great shots really are. Wallace even wrote, “How aware are you of the ballboys?” before crossing the question out.

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The Eagle Has Landed

Longreads Pick

The behind-the-scenes story of how NFL prospect Michael Sam came out:

The plan was set. The story would break right after the NFL Combine simultaneously on ESPN, The New York Times and Outsports. There might be a couple interviews after that, but otherwise Sam would focus on football.

The timing, however, would quickly change. Even as the plan was being formulated, it was like outrunning an avalanche. Every day it became more apparent that too many people knew what was coming. While Collins had kept his coming out a secret held among just a few trusted confidants, Sam’s sexual orientation would soon become the worst-kept secret in the sports media.

Source: outsports.com
Published: Feb 9, 2014
Length: 14 minutes (3,583 words)

College Football Star Michael Sam on How He Was Treated After Coming Out to His Teammates

Mr. Sam played down any repercussions, saying he had the full support of teammates, coaches and administrators. One teammate, he said, accompanied him to a gay pride event in St. Louis last summer, and others went with him to gay bars.

“Some people actually just couldn’t believe I was actually gay,” Mr. Sam said. “But I never had a problem with my teammates. Some of my coaches were worried, but there was never an issue.”

One lingering issue, Mr. Washington said, was trying to get players to change their casual language in the locker room. Loosely lobbed homophobic remarks suddenly had a specific sting.

Mr. Sam played down that, too. For him, coming out to his football team was a positive step, on a path that seems as if it will lead to the N.F.L.

In The New York Times, John Branch reports about college football star Michael Sam, who came out as gay to his teammates at Mizzou. Sam is on track to become the first publicly gay player in the NFL. See also: “Chris Kluwe Takes a Stand.”

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Photo: Komunews

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Being Gay in Russia Today: A Reading List

Longreads Pick

This week’s picks from Emily include stories from n+1, GQ, and The New York Times.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 9, 2014

Being Gay in Russia Today: A Reading List

Unfinished hotel rooms, terrorist threats, egregious human rights violations and thrilling athletic feats: Sochi’s got it all. But Russia’s dangerous, government-sanctioned homophobia precedes and extends far beyond this year’s Olympic games.

1. “Closed, Destroyed, Deleted Forever.” (Dmitry Pashinsky, n+1, February 2014)

Incredible interview with Lena Klimova, founder of Children 404, a social networking resource for the oppressed LGBTQ community in Russia. As a result, Klimova has been accused of disseminating “gay propaganda.” Now, Children 404 faces deletion and Klimova faces thousands of dollars in fines, all for attempting to create a supportive community of teenagers, parents, psychologists and other advocates.

2. “Inside the Iron Curtain: What it’s Like to be Gay in Putin’s Russia.” (Jeff Sharlet, GQ, February 2014)

The police bring cages to Pride parades. The right-wing fringes have their children beat LGBT activists. Violence is acceptable, even appreciated. Homophobia is sanctioned by the government and the Orthodox church. One gay man compared Russia today to Germany in the 1930s.  (I wept while reading this story.)

3. “On Holding Hands and Fake Marriage: Stories of Being Gay in Russia.” (David M. Herszenhorn, The New York Times, November 2013)

Heartbreaking, powerful personal testimonies from LGBTQ folks living in Russia today.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Philip Seymour Hoffman: 1967-2014

Longreads Pick

Here is Lynn Hirschberg’s 2008 New York Times Magazine profile of the actor, who was found dead Feb. 2 in Manhattan:

“In my mid–20s, an actor told me, ‘Acting ain’t no puzzle,’ ” Hoffman said, after returning to his seat. “I thought: ‘Ain’t no puzzle?!?’ You must be bad!” He laughed. “You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to.”

Published: Feb 2, 2014
Length: 29 minutes (7,250 words)

Philip Seymour Hoffman: 1967-2014

“In my mid–20s, an actor told me, ‘Acting ain’t no puzzle,’ ” Hoffman said, after returning to his seat. “I thought: ‘Ain’t no puzzle?!?’ You must be bad!” He laughed. “You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to.”

Philip Seymour Hoffman, to Lynn Hirschberg, in a 2008 New York Times Magazine profile. Hoffman was found dead Feb. 2 in Manhattan.

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Photo: justinhoch, Flickr

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The Truth About What Goes On at the 'SNL' After-Party

“If you had a good show you’re on cloud nine,” said Jon Lovitz, who had a lot of them in the mid–1980s. On the other hand, Mr. Lovitz recalled the forlorn night when he had appeared in only one sketch, and was sitting at the party with Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey and Mike Myers.

“It feels like your career’s over,” Mr. Lovitz said. “Honestly, they call it the after-party. In my mind, I only know one time when it actually felt like a party.” (That was in 1990, he said, when Technotronic played their hit “Pump Up the Jam” there.)

Paul Brownfield, in The New York Times, investigating Saturday Night Live’s legendary after-party—and whether it’s actually fun. Read more on SNL in the Longreads Archive, or check out the Live from New York oral history.

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