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Weekend Reads 6/1/19

The age of Kayfabe

This is why it’s not helpful to try to understand Fox News as the right-wing version of CNN. That’s not what it is. It’s the news-and-politics version of the WWE. It’s a form of theater pretending to be something else which its audience simultaneously knows and does not know is unreal. Enjoyment of the form requires this “meta suspension of disbelief” — requires both the knowing and the not-knowing.

One of the Earliest Memorial Day Ceremonies Was Held by Freed Slaves

But it was clear from the newspaper reports that a Memorial Day observance was organized by freed slaves in Charleston at least a year before other U.S. cities and three years before the first national observance. How had been lost to history for over a century?

From Defendant to Defender: Theo Shaw, Once Almost Railroaded by the Justice System as One of the Jena 6, Is Now Officially a Lawyer

Shaw, along with five other black teenage boys, became media sensations after they were charged in 2006 with attempted murder after getting into a fight with a young white man at their high school in the town of Jena, La. Supporters said the six young men were being overcharged, and noted that the fight came after a series of racially charged incidents at the school, including the hanging of nooses from a tree on the campus.

20 Years for Giving Water to Migrants? A Religious Freedom Case of Little Interest to ‘Religious Freedom’ Industry

On Wednesday, May 29, the trial of geologist Scott Daniel Warren began. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in a federal penitentiary. What heinous crime did Warren commit to warrant such severe punishment? He exercised his religious freedom to provide water, food, and clothing to those facing danger as they trekked across the desert.

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