Nobody Trusts The Process More Than America's Most Prominent Young Socialists<em></em>
In April of last year, Philadelphia right-wing talk radio host and Daily News columnist Dom Giordano cooked up a hot take comparing now former Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie to Bernie Sanders. It ended with an almost Breitbartian non sequitur: “Hinkie robbed area basketball fans of th...
How Sports' Idiotic War On Drugs Might've Helped Give Us President Trump<em></em>
It begins with the cyclists, of course. Just before the 1998 Tour de France, a Belgian trainer named Willy Voet was arrested while crossing the border into France because his car was filled with a tremendous amount of performance-enhancing drugs. The subsequent investigation (which became known as t...
Villanova's Title Win Was Beautiful, Quiet, And Weird As Hell
I got to my seat for Monday’s college basketball national championship game with 14 minutes left in the first half like a classic harried nerd, carrying a pair of binoculars that it turned out I didn’t need. I was worried about watching a basketball game from the sixth floor of a football stadium, b...
Happy 20th Birthday To <i>This American Life</i>, Which Is Way Darker Than You Think
Halfway through the second episode of the third season of Girls, Lena Dunham’s character has one of her signature meltdowns and is left alone in the woods by her friends. When the camera cuts back to her later, she’s lying on the ground in the fetal position with her headphones in, and we hear the d...
Hurricane Katrina Anniversary Pieces: An Exhaustive Guide
Journalists are inherently sick fucks. Of course, we need to be—that’s how we get the news, and telling the stories of disadvantaged, voiceless people is just about the best reason to get into this racket. But there’s still something gross at the heart of the impulse to turn Tragedy into Content—eve...
U.S. Steeplechase Runner Evan Jager Eats It, Triumphs
On the Fourth of July in Paris, Evan Jager did something perfect. The 26-year-old American lined up for a 3,000-meter steeplechase against nearly all of the best steeplers in the world, and over the first five minutes of the race, he joined Kenyan stud Jairus Birech in running away from the entire f...
Justin Gatlin Doesn't Owe You Anything
Imagine if David Ortiz were briefly suspended for doping in the minors, let off after it turned out that he had a convincing excuse, and then suspended again for four years after testing positive in November 2007, just after winning the World Series. Imagine that Papi came back a little rusty, but w...