Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Photo: AFP
Muhammad Ali Evolved From a Blockbuster Fighter to a Country’s Conscience – by Wesley Morris, The New York Times
“It wasn’t just the matches that were blockbusters. It was Ali himself. He was the most important political-cultural figure to survive the deadly tumult of the 1960s and flourish in the 1970s. Ali licked Liston, Frazier, Foreman and dozens of other men. But he was at the center of American culture in part because he had turned boxing into a condition of the American self: Punch or be punched. With him, boxing wasn’t just a sport but a referendum on the state of the country.”
A will stronger than his skill – by T.J. Quinn, The Undefeated
“He had to absorb a mythic left hook from Joe Frazier, fall, and rise, only to lose that first fight. He had to come back to beat Frazier. He had to beat George Foreman, hulking, brooding, unlovable George Foreman (who would later become lovable and sell electric grills). He had to prove that his bravura was backed by a toughness that even skeptics couldn’t deny. But he had to be punished before he could be loved.
In Brock Turner’s home town, we’re raising kids who are never told ‘no’ – by Kate Geiselman, The Washington Post
“Communities like this one have a dark side, though: the conflation of achievement with being “a good kid;” the pressure to succeed; the parents who shrug when the party in their basement gets out of control (or worse yet, when they host it) because “kids are gonna drink;” the tacit understanding that rules don’t necessarily apply. The cops won’t come. The axe won’t fall. Yet now it has.”
Don’t Tell Me What Happens. I’m Recording It. – by Chuck Klosterman, The Ringer
“We don’t need television to accurately depict literal life, because life can literally be found by stepping outside. Television’s only real-time responsibility is to entertain. But that changes as years start to elapse. We don’t reinvestigate low culture with the expectation that it will entertain us a second time — the hope is that it will be instructive and revelatory, which sometimes works against the intentions of the creator.”
The Felon Is Hot – by Jessica Pressler, The Cut
“But as the internet giveth, the internet also taketh away. Since the beginning, Meeks has had his detractors: people perhaps too small-minded to partake in Jordan’s Vision. “You know he’s a felon, right?” one employee of the City of Stockton asks when I call to inquire about its most famous resident. “Like an actual criminal who is in prison?””
'He's had everything stripped from him' – by Kirsty Johnson, NZ Herald
“The room measures about three by four metres. There is a plastic-covered mattress on the linoleum floor, some papers, piles of clothes, a couple of Garfield comics, a bottle for urine, and nothing else. The door is heavy and the walls are thick, but not thick enough to block out the sound of a person in the next room screaming. Ashley sleeps there, and when staff order it, he is locked in. At one point, he did two-and-a-half years straight, his only respite a daily 30 minutes outside.”