WCS 10 Giving the best of the worst their due

The subject could be hoops. Or maybe unions. What if I was, say, talking about... an unexplored corner of your Netflix queue. Could be anything. That's the beauty

Gonna be brief here, because in a hot minute I gotta burn some time bragging.

It’s always been beyond me that professional team sports’ Most Valuable Player awards go to the best squads’ standout player. The award could just as easily be awarded to the top player for a bad team that’s gone farther than it could have gone without them.

If it’s value that we’re measuring, the NFL MVP trophy should be named The Myles Garrett Award, for the Cleveland Browns’ relentless defensive smoke show.

Fundamentally, defensive play is as important as offense, but we don’t behave as though this is the case. The last defensive player to win MVP was Lawrence Taylor, in 1986.

Offensively, the Browns ain’t it. But why should their superstar be marginalized because his team’s management went all-in on a distracted and embarrassed perv who has predictably lost his sense of infallibility? Myles Garrett might not be as all-time great as LT, but he’s keeping in contention a team that would be nowhere without him.

Your MVP vote can also go to Pittsburgh’s TJ Watt, but not Dallas’ Micah Parsons. That dude has too much help.

Alright then. Let’s summarize and illuminate some early November narratives!

10 …and then Jezebel birthed online identity emotionalism

A slow-moving and fancy argument not unlike a media jazz funeral is playing out in the pages of the NYT and The New Yorker, essentially about the website Jezebel’s role in unleashing emotional identity politics onto the Internet. In May, big-time internet thinker Ben Smith (Buzzfeed, Semaphore) laid blame in the shape of credit for ending an era at the former Gawker site’s feet.

From Los Angeles on Saturday, founding editor Anna Holmes responded to the essay with an exchange between her and Smith.
NYT/The New Yorker

• “The media is still grappling with what Jezebel’s creators helped unleash,” Smith wrote in May. In a word, what Smith is calling the product the media’s allegedly rasslin’ with is shrillness. Shrillness about identity politics and one’s noisy hurt. He claims many readers are turning to “calmer voices.”

• Holmes writes that she doesn’t “see Jezebel as the beginning of the end of the digital-media era but as a moment—a spark—within an ongoing discussion about gender politics.”

Lil Hit

• If you’ve ever tasted the goodies from Magnolia Bakery, you have to assume that the cannabis-infused Red Velvet cake that they’re doing is transcendent. Strangely, you’ll only be able to order one from a Magnolia Bakery in Nevada, Illinois, or Massachusetts.
  Gothamist

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In lieu of humble-bragging…

One of my longest and most regular publishing partners is Raw Story, whose mother is Roxanne Cooper. My relationship with Roxanne Cooper goes back past LA Weekly to the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Roxanne was in sales, but always made a point of connecting with me.

This weekend, Raw Story was named Best News / Political Site at The Eppys, the journalism awards put on by Editor & Publisher. I’m pretty amped for the company and Roxanne and my editor Dave Levinthal. He’s the guy who welcomes the idea when I outta nowhere say I want to cover the Oscars from a hyper local Hollywood perspective. Or that I absolutely have to shoehorn my World Baseball Classic take into a politics website.

In addition to the Raw Story glory, I got a lil bit o’ shine for myself:

This recognition feels meaningful, coming on the heels of May’s California Newspaper Publishers Association’s Depth Reporting award for my fairness in legal weed series. Back in the day, my top editors used to pretend to send my shit in for competition and then shake their heads in disappointment when my work didn’t win.

Not to jinx anything, but I’ve got another good joint drying out back right now. Make sure you’re subscribed or—better yet, upgrade to paid—and I’ll get the new shit straight up in your mailbox.

Until the next hit, enjoy this quote from Jalen Rose’s Instagram page. Newly freed from the invisible manacles of ESPN, he’s got great things to say about racialized structures of basketball and football.

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9 Legal weed biz still bankrupting farmers as sales boom on. Neat trick!

My guess is that the governor’s office is where the latest Chronicle piece touting a new optimism among cannabis farmers originates. Last week in Oakland, where rents are high and profit margins are slim, I walked out of a Telegraph Avenue store with a quarter ounce for $26. That can’t be fantastic for business.

Awesome for me, shitty for entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, up in Humboldt County, one of the most institutional events on the West Coast cannabis circuit, the Harvest Ball, has been cancelled.
SF Chronicle/MJ Biz Daily