David Hume Kennerly’s photo essay about the final days of Vietnam. (Politico)
‘The Marshall Mathers LP’ 15 Years On: How Eminem’s Stark, Violent Portrait Of American Life Shook the Mainstream. (NME)
Far From Home: A brief history of Central American immigration to the U.S. (Global Post) Full Disclosure: I am a graduate of the USC Annenberg School, which contributed to this project.
Stephen Curry’s next stage: MVP has Warriors closing in on the NBA Finals. (Sports Illustrated)
60,000 Irish expats traveled home to vote on same sex marriage ballot initiative. (Vox)
Entrance to Auschwitz concentration camp, August 2008
The Atlantic just published my story about Witold Pilecki, a member of the Polish resistance during World War II who volunteered for an assignment inside Auschwitz. Check it out.
Also, I would highly recommend buying a copy of The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, an English translation of Pilecki’s report about his time in the camp.
The National Archives has put together this blog post and a video about its Pearl Harbor-related documents and records:
A bit of sad news on this anniversary… According to the New York Times, the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association will disband at the end of the year, faced with the realities of the passage of time and the dwindling health and numbers of its members.
Great find from NIN collaborator Rob Sheridan: the immigration forms filled out by the Apollo 11 crew after they returned from the moon. That must have been a lot of fun to explain to the customs agents.
By now, most of you have seen or heard about this clip:
PALIN: He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed.
To his credit, Chris Wallace followed up with her on this question on “Fox News Sunday”:
CHRIS WALLACE: I gotta ask you about that real quickly, though. You realize that you messed up about Paul Revere, don’t you?
PALIN: You know what? I didn’t mess up about Paul Revere. Here’s what Paul Revere did. He warned the Americans that “the British were coming, the British were coming.” And they were going to try to take our arms so got to make sure that, uh, we were protecting ourselves and, uhm, shoring up all of our ammunitions and our firearms so that they couldn’t take them.
But remember that the British had already been there — many soldiers — for seven years in that area. And part of Paul Revere’s ride… And it wasn’t just one ride. He was a courier. He was a messenger. Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there that, “Hey. You’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to take American arms. You are not gonna beat our own well-armed, uh, persons, uh, individual private militia that we have. He did warn the British.
And in a shout-out, gotcha type of question that was asked of me, I answered candidly. And I know my American history.
I was a history major in college – having gone to a school in the Boston area – so the story of Paul Revere was pretty well known to me at the time. Palin can continue to make mistakes and choose to repeat or refuse to acknowledge them – politicians do this all the time – but my big problem here is this:
Her fans are apparently editing Paul Revere’s Wikipedia page to make it more in line with her version. Longfellow may be no match for Sarah Palin.
Icepicks and Nukes 