A Handshake Perceived As An Assault, And Other Great Long Reads
Every week, we highlight the longform articles from recent days that we think you shouldn't miss. Here are this week's picks:
The Handshake
In December 2015, Hal Howard and Yousef Muslet had a short conversation in front of Muslet's house and then shook hands. Howard is a Fox News-watching Southern Baptist who thinks God is "going to hurt me if I don't do what He says." Muslet is a devout Muslim who proselytizes to everyone he meets and who believes that America will voluntarily adopt Sharia law by 2064. The story of the arrest and trial that followed the men's brief encounter will trouble and astonish you.
Struggling Americans Once Sought Greener Pastures — Now They're Stuck
With economic opportunities dwindling in small towns, it would make sense for rural Americans to move to where the jobs are, but many don't. Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg interview a number of small-town Americans who haven't made the move to a big city and uncover a number of economic and cultural reasons for America's inability — or sometimes refusal — to move.
Inside The Fearless Bike Movement Tearing Up London
London, like many American cities, is home to a community of working-class, mostly black teens who ride around in groups performing death-defying stunts on their bicycles. Many people see them as "marauding gangs of 'feral youth' on bikes," but this article by Alex King proves otherwise: The Bikelife movement, as it's called, is an exuberant celebration of courage, freedom and survival.
[Huck]
Fired/Rehired
In an impressive feat of investigative reporting, Kimbriell Kelly, Wesley Lowery and Steven Rich filed FOIA requests with 55 police forces and got records of 1,881 police officers who were fired for betraying the public trust since 2006. Four hundred fifty-one of them later won their jobs back, thanks to police union contracts that allow officers to appeal any disciplinary action. This article goes deep on eight of those cases, which reveal that even when police chiefs want to punish misconduct, they can't always succeed.
Jon Ronson On Bespoke Porn: 'Nothing Is Too Weird. We Consider All Requests'
If you're worried this article will contain graphic descriptions of weird, gross sex stuff, rest assured: Most of the bespoke porn films described within are shockingly banal. One man paid for a film to be made of a woman chasing a fly with a flyswatter, another commissioned a scene in which towels fall off women's heads, and a third simply wanted to be told that his life is worth living. Ronson's article is a surprisingly sweet ode to the inexplicable desires and affinities that make life interesting.
Losing It In The Anti-Dieting Age
Taffy Brodesser-Akner traces the fall and rise of Weight Watchers, which rebranded itself in 2015 with a program endorsed by Oprah called "Beyond the Scale." There's clearly something paradoxical at play when a company with "weight" in its name distances itself from the act of weighing oneself, and Brodesser-Akner does a beautiful job of exploring that paradox in this funny, poignant essay.
