(To be fair, Southerners holding an unhealthy dedication to peculiar southern institutions centered around exploiting the unpaid physical labor of young black men have been calling Knoxville residents traitors to said institutions since 1861)

I was literally thinking the same exact thing and almost wrote that.

“Why you just standin’ there?? Pick up my hoverboard, dog!”

Morris actually had to jump off his hoverboard when he approached a bump in the ground.

He’ll soon wonder Wall will ever pass to him.

If you want to write a story about how a convicted criminal is actually innocent, you need to provide actual evidence to support it. And you need to actually explain the evidence that led to the conviction. This piece basically said “Well his friends and family don’t think he did it and the victims were poor black…

The story is a failure not just because of its almost pornographic recounting of his football career (against a cursory recounting of his crimes) but because it never answer its premise. We end 12,000 words not knowing any more about why he did what he did than we do at the start. The author talks to a couple of…

It’s like anti-complexity. Holtzclaw is actually the sort of worst stereotype of both college football players and police officers.

My take is that there’s already an existing narrative that the victims are liars, deserved it, or both. Instead of adding any sort of valuable insight into who Holtzclaw is, the piece adds to that narrative without any evidence beyond witness statements. Also, problematically, it adds to this idea that if someone is…

That whole story was a massive awkward dump, like dropping a huge deuce at a stranger’s house party. “His body, which had been conditioned for football over the years — first as a high school All-State linebacker two hours away in his hometown of Enid, Oklahoma, and then again as a four-year starter in college at…

Making a Murderer provides an (arguably) credible alternative narrative to a story told by prosecutors. It was presented as a divisive issue deliberately. It hooked viewers and kept them talking about the show.

Making a Murderer isn’t about murder or rape apology, it’s about the specific way in which a case against an individual unfolded?

Thank you. Maybe he figured if he buried the dippiest of dipshit ideas in that comma orgy, no one would notice how nanners it was.

I don’t think this article is saying that. Making a Murderer is about a relatively powerless individual who was railroaded by the justice system at least once, and which presents credible evidence it happened again. It is one-sided to be sure, but there is at least a plausible basis for that.

“If your sentence has five commas and no lists, write new sentences.”

If you want to write a long story that paints a complex portrait of a villain, it is adivisable to first find a villian with some degree of complexity. Former college football player turned cop who likes to rape women ain’t exactly Richard III.

Right? I kept reading and reading, then eventually skimming whole chunks at a time, waiting for some kind of kicker - the “and then he was found innocent on appeal” moment, or the “and then I went to Oklahoma City to hear from his victims”, something to give the whole mess a point - but holy shit, it just kept going…

Count the motherfucking clauses in that sentence. Forget the horrifying shit show that was the topic, any editor who let that damn clusterfuck out the door should be fired on the spot for that alone.

I was reading it, thinking “so ok when are they going to say anything at all other than just that everyone who knew Holtzclaw seven years ago thinks he couldn’t have done this.” The last sentence was like the writer thought to himself, “wait oops I can’t sound too much like I’m supporting this guy, throw in a sentence…

I think some stories are OK by not having video accompaniment. I need to feel a little brighter after this story — thank goodness this wasn’t worse — so here’s Cookie Monster trying to tap out John Cena. I’m glad she’s OK.