Search Results for: Vanity Fair

Scientology’s Vanished Queen

Longreads Pick

After the wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige disappeared from public view, in 2007, those who asked questions were stonewalled, or worse. Now interviews with former insiders provide a grim assessment of her fate:

This cryptic explanation only fueled the mystery. Had Shelly fled the church? Was she in hiding? Some Scientology defectors believe she was exiled to one of several secretive and heavily guarded bases the church owns in remote western locales. There, the sources say, those who are banned endure lives of isolation, menial labor, and penury. The reason, they claim, is simple. “The law [in Scientology] is: The closer to David Miscavige you get, the harder you’re going to fall,” says Claire Headley, an ex-Scientologist who, along with her husband, Marc, worked closely with the Miscaviges. “It’s like the law of gravity, practically. It’s just a matter of when.” (The church of Scientology declined Vanity Fair’s repeated requests to interview the Miscaviges. In so doing, church representatives dismissed most of V.F.’s sources as disgruntled apostates, and called V.F.’s questions “ludicrous and offensive.” Additionally, the representatives described Shelly Miscavige as a private person who “has been working nonstop in the church, as she always has.” They also point out that I have written critically about the church in the past.)

Author: Ned Zeman
Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Mar 1, 2014
Length: 21 minutes (5,446 words)

How to Write About Tax Havens and the Super-Rich: An Interview with Nicholas Shaxson

Longreads Pick

Last year Nicholas Shaxson published a Vanity Fair article, “A Tale of Two Londons,” that described the residents of one of London’s most exclusive addresses—One Hyde Park—and the accounting acrobatics they had performed to get there.

Shaxson’s piece was one of the best long-form pieces I read last year (I did in fact believe this before I met him, but you can take that with a grain of salt if you’d like), and last week I asked Shaxson to sit down with me for a proper conversation about how the story came about and whether it achieved what he wanted.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 12, 2014
Length: 7 minutes (1,938 words)

Mia’s Story (1992)

Longreads Pick

Following Dylan Farrow’s open letter detailing her sexual abuse allegations against Woody Allen, a look back at Maureen Orth’s original 1992 Vanity Fair report:

There was an unwritten rule in Mia Farrow’s house that Woody Allen was never supposed to be left alone with their seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan. Over the last two years, sources close to Farrow say, he has been discussing alleged “inappropriate” fatherly behavior toward Dylan in sessions with Dr. Susan Coates, a child psychologist.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Feb 1, 2014
Length: 42 minutes (10,618 words)

Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

***

Read more…

Famous Cases of Journalistic Fraud: A Reading List

Washington Post Investigation of Janet Cooke’s Fabrications

Bill Green | Washington Post Ombudsman | April 19, 1981

In 1980, Janet Cooke made up a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict, won the Pulitzer Prize for it, then, two days later, gave it back. Here’s the internal investigation of how the Post leaned on her to get her to admit she faked it.

[Cooke’s] new resume claimed that she spoke or read French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. Her original resume claimed only French and Spanish. The new form claimed she had won six awards from the Ohio Newspaper Women’s Association and another from the Ohio AP. […]

Janet was crying harder, and Bradlee began to check off her language proficiency. “Say two words to me in Portuguese,” he said. She said she couldn’t.

“Do you have any Italian?” Bradlee asked.

Cooke said no.

Bradlee, fluent in French, asked her questions in the language. Her answers were stumbling.

(The formatting is not that great, but if you save it in Instapaper and read it there, it’s easier to follow. Here’s a non-single-page link).

Read more…

A Brief History of Epic Parties: Reading List

The following reading list comes courtesy Michelle Legro, editor at Lapham’s Quarterly.

* * *

No doubt you are on your way to one right now: an epic party, a night to end all nights. But will your epic party be as legendary as those thrown attended by Truman Capote, Cher Horowitz, Jay Gatsby, Jordan Belfort, Silvio Berlusconi, or the kids from Saturday Night Fever?

1.  “The Great Fratsby” (Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, December 2013)

While Jay Gatsby may have spent lavishly, in the end he did it for love;  in Martin Scorese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort does it all for the money.

2. “Suck and Blow: The Oral History of the Clueless Party Scene” (Jen Chaney, New York magazine, December 2013)

Before we were rolling with the homies, director Amy Heckerling had to figure out if Cher Horowitz would totally gag if she had to go to a party in the Valley.

3.  “The Best Night $500,000 Can Buy” (Devin Friedman, GQ, September 2012)

The hottest club in Las Vegas has Italian princes, ten-thousand dollar tables, a champagne fairy, air of pure oxygen, and you’re not invited.

4. “Basta Bunga Bunga” (Ariel Levy, The New Yorker, June 2011)

The era of Berlusconi may be at an end, but the legend of this  Italian version of Benny Hill will never be forgotten, nakedly chasing after topless nymphettes while running the country into the ground.

5. “A Night to Remember” (Amy Fine Collins, Vanity Fair, July 1996)

Truman Capote kept telling people that he was going to invite everybody to his party at the Plaza Hotel in November of 1966. Guests were required to wear only two colors, black and white, to mirror the ascot races in My Fair Lady. Masks were to be worn by all upon entry and  removed only at midnight.

6. “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night” (Nik Cohn, New York magazine, 1976)

By day, Vincent sold paint in a Bay Ridge hardware store; by night he was the best disco dancer in all of New York City. And in 1977, he would be played on screen by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Cohn, meanwhile, later admitted to making most of the story up.

Longreads Best of 2013: My Favorite Stories About Taxes (and Twist-Ties)

Photo: 59937401@N07, Flickr

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is a writer and an editor.

Taxes aren’t boring—they’re just supremely difficult to write about in a compelling way. These three stories stand out because they illustrate the far-reaching consequences of different countries’ tax policies through a few very influential people:

1. “Marty Sullivan figured out how the world’s biggest companies avoided billions in taxes. Here’s how he wants to stop them” (Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, 2013)

In his affectionate profile of tax expert Marty Sullivan, Steven Pearlstein breaks down everything that’s wrong about the US tax code in Sullivan’s nonpartisan, almost technocratic view—and goes on to explain why politics make it so hard to alter, let alone fix, the system. Not exactly action-movie material, but it’s handled so deftly that I couldn’t put it down.

2. “A Tale of Two Londons” (Nicholas Shaxson, Vanity Fair, 2013)

In Vanity Fair, longtime tax writer Nicholas Shaxson shows how the City of London became a hub for tax-free global capital through the story of One Hyde Park, the world’s most expensive residential building, its fabulously wealthy and faceless owners, and the offshore accounts they used to buy and register the properties anonymously.

3. “Man Making Ireland Tax Avoidance Hub Proves Local Hero” (Jesse Drucker, Bloomberg, 2013)

Finally, Bloomberg’s Jesse Drucker profiles Feargal O’Rourke, the man who helped transform Ireland into a “hub for tax avoidance” for multinationals like Apple and Facebook. Drucker withholds judgment (this is Bloomberg, headline and all) but O’Rourke’s mercenary wiles shine through a few well-chosen anecdotes. Choice quote, on Breaking Bad: “I don’t know what it says that we can be rooting for a guy on the dark side of the law.”

Bonus Pick: Most Fascinating Thing I Learned from a Story This Year

Twist-Ties vs. Plastic Clips: Tiny Titans Battle for the Bakery Aisle” (Paul Lukas, Bloomberg Businessweek, 2013)

My favorite business stories are the ones that reveal how much time, energy and thought goes into seemingly mundane consumer goods. This Businessweek article about the ‘bakery bag closure and reclosure market’ is a great example of that. Did you know bag closures generate about $10 million in sales per year? That studies have failed to resolve whether consumers prefer clips or twist-ties? And that there are people whose job it is to sell commercial bakeries on the virtues of these objects? All of this makes perfect sense, of course (hi, capitalism!) but it takes a story like this one to get you thinking.

***

“All this infrastructure was forced underground not through some grand plan that can easily be sorted out but rather through two centuries of competition and compromise as the value of New York’s surface space increased and the streets grew more crowded. Taken as a whole, underground New York is an incoherent three-dimensional space that defies simple visualization—a single understanding, at least somewhere in someone’s mind. When I mentioned this to Steve Duncan, who is one of underground New York’s most persistent explorers, and who would have such a visualization if anyone could, he said, ‘Yeah, you’re right. I used to think there’s gotta be someone who knows what’s going on, but more and more it seems like the answer is no.’”

-What lies beneath New York City? William Langewiesche explored for Vanity Fair. Read more on New York from the Longreads Archive.

***

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

We need your help to get to 5,000 Longreads Members.

Join Longreads now and help us keep going.

Reading List: The Political Mistress

 image

From Monica to the D.C. Madam, some of my all-time favorite stories on politics, sex and power:

1. ‘The Gary Hart Story: How It Happened,’ by Jim McGee, Tom Fiedler and James Savage (The Miami Herald, May 10, 1987) and ‘The Gary Hart Story: Part Two’

Gary Hart was frontrunner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination when rumors of an extramarital affair began to swirl. He responded to the rumors with a strong denial and a dare: “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.” Unfortunately for him, the Miami Herald had already been doing just that. Their intrepid reporting not only uncovered an affair between the senator and a 29 year-old model, but also rewrote the rules of political reporting.

Bonus: “Those Aren’t Rumors” (Dick Polman, Smithsonian Magazine 2008) on how the Gary Hart affair changed the political reporting game.

2. ‘No Way to Treat a Lady,’ by Vicky Ward (Vanity Fair, May 2008)

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the “D.C. Madam,” delivered high-end escorts to Beltway elite, until the whole thing came crashing down with a fiery conviction, suicide and media spectacle.

3. ‘Til Death Do Us Part: A New Look at Hitler’s Mistress Eva Braun,’ by Klaus Wiegrefe (Der Spiegel, February 2010)

An evil dictator and a pretty blonde from Munich, whose official title was “private secretary,” and who was famously jealous of the Führer’s dog.

4. ‘The Scandal That Rocked Britain,’ by Clive Irving (Newsweek, April 2013)

One of the great scandals in British political history, the Profumo Affair—which paired then War Secretary John Profumo with a teenaged former showgirl—had it all: sex, drugs, photographs, spies and a proto-Clintonian denial.

5. ‘The Dark Side of Camelot,’ by Kitty Kelley (People Magazine, February 1988)

Judith Exner wasn’t just JFK’s mistress, she was also his conduit to the mob.

6. ‘Clinton and the Women,’ by Marjorie Williams (Vanity Fair, May 1998)

On Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, and what the lack of protest reveals about feminism today (or, more accurately, in 1998).

7. ‘Monica Takes Manhattan,’ by Vanessa Grigoriadis (New York Magazine, March 2001)

Of course Vanessa Grigoriadis would write the perfect early-aughts New York magazine piece on Monica Lewinsky’s post-scandal second act as a Manhattan twenty-something.

8. ‘Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster,’ by John Heilemann & Mark Halperin (New York Magazine, January 9, 2010)

“My friends insist you’re John Edwards,” Rielle Hunter said. “I tell them no way—you’re way too handsome.”

Yes, that Game Change excerpt. When was the last time you re-read it?

Are we missing anything? Share your story picks in the comments.


Get the Top 5 Longreads free every week

5 Stories on What Happens to Whistleblowers After They Speak Out

Above: Mark Felt

Julia Wick is a native Angeleno who writes about literature, Los Angeles, and cities. She is currently finishing an Urban Planning degree at USC.

With Chelsea Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison and Edward Snowden’s future still uncertain, it seems a pertinent time to look at what becomes of our whistleblowers after the initial flurry of publicity fades. On the public stage and popular culture, whistleblowers are both celebrated and reviled, categorized as snitches and traitors, and heroes and martyrs. They are almost always seen as symbols, but they are also often people whose lives are shattered. The U.S. has had some version of whistleblower protection laws on the books since 1778, but whistleblowers themselves have still often faced reprisal, have been left jobless and hounded, personally attacked and professionally discredited. Here are the stories of six famous whistleblowers, and their lives long after the press has picked up and left town.

1. “Anatomy of a Whistleblower,” by Laurie Abraham (Mother Jones, 2004)

Jesselyn Radack is a “Lifetime TV writer’s dream”—the mother of two young children and pregnant with her third who had privately struggled with MS since college. She was a government lawyer with the Justice Department’s ethics unit when a colleague asked her to look over the FBI’s interrogation of the John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban” captured during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. She spoke up about the impropriety of Lindh’s being questioned without a lawyer present, and quickly became emblematic of the Ashcroft-era treatment of whistleblowers, her life turned upside-down. And then she did the most unlikely thing of all—became an activist for whistleblowers across the nation. She is currently the National Security & Human Rights Director of the Government Accountability Project.

2. “Serpico on Serpico,” by Corey Kilgannon (New York Times, January 2010)

The cinematic version of Frank Serpico’s life—Serpico, starring Al Pacino in the title role—begins with Serpico being shot in the face during an attempted drug bust and ends with closing credits saying he is “now living somewhere in Switzerland.” Kilgannon’s profile of the honest cop who exposed NYPD corruption picks up four decades later, long after Serpico’s lost years in Europe. Bearded, bitter, and in his early seventies, this Serpico lives a monastic life along the Hudson, just a few hours north of his former city. Perhaps the most poignant scene involves a rewatching of the famous film, which Serpico has never seen in its entirety, on the reporter’s laptop in a small town public library, where “the real Mr. Serpico stared out the window, unable to watch—too painful, he said.”

3. “The Whistle-Blower,” by Pamela Colloff (Texas Monthly, April 2003)

Pamela Colloff’s character-driven profile of Enron whistleblower Sherron Watkins is a reminder of why fans of longform journalism love Texas Monthly. This is a deftly drawn and richly layered narrative of what life is like for a whistleblower who, despite being nationally-lauded, still finds herself rejected by the high-rolling Houston society set to which she once belonged.

4. “I’m the Guy They Called Deep Throat,” by John D. O’Connor (Vanity Fair July 2005)

No collection of whistleblower stories would be complete without a mention of Mark Felt, née Deep Throat, the source who leaked the details of Watergate to the Washington Post. Felt, who was ultimately responsible for the downfall of an American president, could easily be considered the ur-whistleblower of the last century. Written nearly three decades after the fact, O’Connor’s story finally exposed Felt’s identity.

5. “The Secret Sharer: Is Thomas Drake an Enemy of the State?” by Jane Mayer (New Yorker, May 23, 2011)

Long before Snowden made headlines, Thomas Drake had grave doubts about the NSA’s use of domestic surveillance. Drake, then a senior executive at the NSA, to The Baltimore Sun and was ultimately indicted under the Espionage Act. Mayer uses Drake’s story as a lens to explore the larger issues of warrantless surveillance in post–9/11 America, and though the piece itself is more than two years old and dealing with a case that has now been dropped, it is still relevant, perhaps unsettlingly so.


Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Get the Top 5 Longreads free every week