Here are today's must-reads:
1. The Photo the Obama Campaign Almost Used for Its Victory Tweet:
Slate: How did you choose the Obama hug photo for the victory tweet?
Laura Olin: This was a decision made in the space of about half an hour, around 9PM Chicago time. We'd long had a photo choice lined up for a "thank you" post to put up around 10PM, operating under the assumption that the race wouldn't be called until 2AM or 3AM, if then. I was a bit resistant to thinking about victory posts until more results came in, but my boss, our digital director, Teddy Goff, said it was time. One of the members of my team, Jessi Langsen, remembered that one of our campaign photographers, Scout Tufankjian, had taken a great photo a few nights before, of the president and first lady hugging at the president's final campaign rally in Des Moines. Teddy liked it but thought we should go with a photo where you could see the president's face—in the Des Moines photo, her face was to the camera rather than his. It was also pretty dark, as it was a nighttime rally. I remembered that Scout had taken another great hug photo in Dubuque over the summer. The first lady had been wearing a red-checked dress that day. I asked our photo editor, Mary Hough, if she remembered it, and she did. Teddy liked it, I wrote a few captions and we chose one. Later, I posted it to Twitter and Facebook as soon as Ohio was called for the president. I didn't realize that we'd likely broken records until the next morning.
2. Why Trevell Coleman Charged Himself With Murder:
Late on the night of December 15, 2010, Trevell Coleman stepped out of the subway station at East 116th Street. The evening was bitterly cold, down to almost 20 degrees. He wore a North Face parka and a scarf wrapped around his head like a hoodie. He’d told nobody where he was going—not his mother, not his friends, not his relatives—because he knew they’d try to stop him.
With his hands jammed into his pockets, he began walking up Lexington Avenue toward East 119th Street. For years, he had been contending with flashbacks, nightmares, and intense feelings of guilt. The only way to stop them, he now thought, would be to talk to the police. And at this point, what did he have to lose? He was 36 years old and had almost nothing—no job, no money, and no apartment of his own.
All he really had was a rap moniker—“G. Dep”—left over from his days as a member of Puff Daddy’s Bad Boy crew. Earlier that night, he had been playing the role of G. Dep once again, taping a public-access TV show in the back seat of a car. It was a far cry from 2001, when he’d been in regular rotation on MTV with “Let’s Get It,” the video that turned the Harlem Shake into a dance craze.
But now none of that seemed important. All that did matter was what he’d done half a lifetime ago, in the fall of 1993, when he approached a man late one night, fired a gun, then fled. He never knew where the bullets landed or what became of the man. And after seventeen years, he decided he needed to find out exactly what he’d done.
3. Gay marriage ballot measures 2012: Why did same-sex marriage opponents lose all four referenda?:
Until this year, opponents of same-sex marriage had never lost a statewide referendum. They’d won 32 straight times. Two weeks ago, the tide of public opinion finally overwhelmed them. They lost all four measures on the November ballot—one to ban gay marriage in Minnesota, and three others to permit gay marriage in Maine, Maryland, and Washington.
Are they humbled? Shaken? Worried that the country might be turning against them? Not a bit. The leading conservative lobby on this issue, the National Organization for Marriage, has cooked up a handy set of post-election excuses. Here’s the list.
These are some of the other things I've been tweeting about today:
- "How goatse.cx went from shock site to webmail service" http://pjblack.me/RS9rx3
- "10 of the Greatest ‘Life’ Magazine Covers of All Time" http://pjblack.me/USlysC
- "The Bolt Report: Andrew Bolt beating Insiders" http://pjblack.me/Y1TxoL
- "Meet the Young Soldiers Who Pushed the IDF's Social Media Strategy" http://pjblack.me/RS8PaL
- "Is Hamas's Twitter Account Illegal?" http://pjblack.me/RS9n0g
- "Why Trevell Coleman Charged Himself With Murder" http://pjblack.me/Wj6VQ5
- "The 9 Most Popular Thanksgiving Pies Pie Chart" http://pjblack.me/RS9kl9
- "Five Myths about the Chinese Internet" http://pjblack.me/Wj6XHT
- "The Infographic Forefather (1842)" http://pjblack.me/USmPjq
- "Telstra nears 1 million 4G devices sold /read" http://pjblack.me/TXb0cP
- "The Skinny on ‘Modern Family’ Cast’s Hollywood Weight Makeover" http://pjblack.me/Y0FUGq
- "Mitt Romney's Surprisingly Unbusinesslike Campaign" http://pjblack.me/XYMmxK
- "Gay marriage ballot measures 2012: Why did same-sex marriage opponents lose all four referenda?" http://pjblack.me/UQIKrl
- good question: "Why Do British Singers Sound American?" http://pjblack.me/UQHrsi
- "Romney Likely to End Up at 47%" http://pjblack.me/UhATEO
- "Sources: Lawrence Kasdan, Simon Kinberg Lock Deals to Write and Produce 'Star Wars' Installments" http://pjblack.me/UhqR6x /via @mpesce
- "Robert De Niro on the Art of the Long Career" http://pjblack.me/XYDN5V
- "Slate Scales. But Is It Too Late to the Game?" http://pjblack.me/XYxhfm
- "The Meanest Microsoft Surface Review Yet" http://pjblack.me/UU6mRx
- "Embargoes, NDAs, and tech journalism’s way of doing business" http://pjblack.me/XYx0cA
- "New frontier for scaling up online classes: credit" http://pjblack.me/XYa4do #highered
- "The Photo the Obama Campaign Almost Used for Its Victory Tweet" http://pjblack.me/Y0Ddoc
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And you can get my latest links anytime on my Rebelmouse social media front page.
