Laundering Art · Climbing Denali · Suing Cos
And: all is not OK at the Exactly Right corral...again
the true crime that's worth your time
This is the last “regular” issue of Best Evidence for a couple of weeks! Oh, don’t worry: we’re still going to publish each day! (And it’s free for everyone throughout, so tell a friend!)
We just decided on a different framework for year’s end — soliciting colleagues and contributors to talk about the best true crime of 2022; the…less best (? hee) of 2022 in the genre; favorite “vintage” genre discoveries; what they’re most looking forward to in 2023, and more.
Starting Monday December 12, we’ll run everyone’s answers to a single question each day, along with some supplemental reading/reviews — as well as any capsule reviews or longreads that shouldn’t wait for the next “usual” edition.
For the week between Christmas and New Year’s, we’ll do some budget-sweeping and some paywall-dropping, and then it’s back to regularly scheduled programming in 2023 — but we hope you’ll keep it right here through December, and especially that you’ll chime in with your answers to our questions. We get underway next Monday with everyone’s favorite true-crime book in 2022!
But first: a “usual” edition! — SDB
“Courtroom Drama: New Legal Battle Over ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’” [New York Times] // When Aaron Sorkin’s version of Harper Lee’s (and…possibly Truman Capote’s? enh, let’s not open that can of worms today) summer-reading-list staple was headed to theaters a few years ago, that production tried to block stagings of an earlier adaptation.
Now the tables have turned: The publisher of the earlier adaptation is seeking to block the Broadway version from being staged at a wide variety of venues.
At stake is not only who will profit, long-term, from stage versions of the classic story, but also which dramatic interpretation will reach many audiences across the country. In one corner is the new Broadway script, which was written by Aaron Sorkin, with contemporary pacing, amplified roles for Black characters, and a complicating take on the small-town lawyer Atticus Finch; in the other corner is the traditional script, by Christopher Sergel, which has been staged for decades in schools and community theaters.
Off the top, this strikes me as a who-careser, or at least a problem with a fairly simple solution: give each iteration a name, a la the Gregorian and Julian calendars, and let the chips fall where they may.
There’s also the fact that I’ve never heard an anecdotal review of the Sorkin version that rose above “it tried XYZ but didn’t quite work,” so maybe the Sergelians should let the Sorkinites trip over themselves and stay out of it?
“Bill Cosby Sued By 5 Women for Sexual Abuse in New York” [Rolling Stone] // God bless Lili Bernard, who is not standing down in her efforts to bring Cosby to justice. Per the RS report by Jon Blistein, she’s joined in the suit by
Eden Tirl, Jewel Gittens, Jennifer Thompson, and Cindra Ladd. All five said they were “sexually assaulted and battered” by Cosby.
Some of the plaintiffs — including Bernard, Tirl, Thompson, and Ladd — have accused Cosby of sexual abuse in the past (Bernard is also suing Cosby in New Jersey). This new New York lawsuit was filed under the state’s new Adult Survivors Act, which suspends the statute of limitations of sexual assault cases for one year.
Along with Cosby, the new lawsuit names three companies as co-defendants for failing to intervene and protect the women: NBC Universal Media, Kaufman Astoria Studios, and the Carsey-Werner Company. NBC Universal and Carsey-Werner helped produce The Cosby Show, which was partly filmed at Kaufman Astoria Studios.
I am interested to see what precedent, if any, gets set by the naming of corporations as liable for alleged sexual assault and harassment. Companies’ fear of litigation could oblige them to do the right thing where common sense and human decency have consistently failed.
“Disaster at 18,200 feet: The story of what really happened when a mountaineer fell 1,000 feet while summiting North America's tallest peak, Denali” [Insider] // In a piece reminiscent of Krakauer’s Into Thin Air in the best ways, Kelsey Vlamis takes us through how bad decision-making thanks to oxygen deprivation became a matter for the courts.
There are specific skill sets climbers should have, like snow and ice climbing, glacier travel, cold-weather camping, and exceptional cardiovascular fitness. But even then, it is hard to gauge if a person is ready.
The most basic measure for whether or not a climber is prepared — physically, technically, psychologically — for a Denali expedition is straightforward: Would you attempt what you are doing if you were alone on this mountain?
If the answer is no, you shouldn't be there.
“Unarmed and Dangerous” [Princeton Alumni Weekly] // Finally, a high-profile Princeton grad who makes me proud to claim the joint: recent PAW cover woman “Alinor Sterling ’89 is winning judgments for Sandy Hook families and changing the gun-violence debate.” Sterling is co-counsel for the Sandy Hook plaintiffs in two cases; not sure whether non-Tigers can access the PAW, so here’s a snip about the thinking behind Soto, et al. v. Bushmaster, et al. — the suit confronting the manufacturer of the Sandy Hook gunman’s chosen weapon, the AR-15.
“The accepted view was that it was an absolute nonstarter,” says Sterling, who likened the circumstances to taking on the big tobacco companies. The overwhelming sentiment among legal pundits, Sterling adds, was that “this case is doomed.”
…
“At the time we brought the case, there was an immunity for the gun industry. The industry felt it was a perfect protection for them,” says Sterling, referring to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), passed in 2005. The law prohibits individuals from filing suit against gun manufacturers, dealers, distributors, and firearms importers due to “misuse of their products by others.”
Sterling says the gun industry and the insurance companies asserted that PLCAA provided a shield against victims of mass shootings and their families.
“That was certainly a challenge, but it also felt like, ‘What an opportunity,’” says Sterling. “To be the lawsuit, like the first cigarette lawsuit, that actually succeeds in taking discovery from an industry that has shielded its secrets, my thinking was, ‘I want to do that.’”
“Exactly Right Media Axes Another Partnership Without Explanation” [The Squeeze] // Our esteemed colleague Skye Pillsbury has the 411 on yet another sketchy ERM cancellation, this one of the Sounds Like A Cult podcast (which made Nick Quah’s best-of-the-year list at #10). This parting of ways doesn’t feel as tone-deaf and cloaked in denial as the Billy Jensen misadventure, but the bizarre, un-elaborated-upon “welp, take care!”-ness of the situation smells familiar. Skye has more, including a deep-background Redditor source on alleged cults’ notorious litigiousness, but I think we’re in agreement that Exactly Right doesn’t know what they’re doing…or care to learn:
In midst of all this, the personal Twitter account for one of the co-hosts of Sounds Like a Cult was deleted, while the other went on lockdown (both remain open in Instagram).
Regardless of the particulars of this situation, it’s notable that Exactly Right Media has had to drop two shows without warning in less than six months. “We don’t care,” they say. “We really don’t care.”
Very possibly it’s exactly that: they don’t care, they haven’t cared for a while, MFM started out as a lark and now it’s an albatross…but I suspect it’s a bit more nuanced. Is anyone else getting a strong whiff of depressive paralysis, followed by semi-destructive knee-jerk “action” for the sake of ending conversations, from ERM in both these instances?
“How the Denver Art Museum became a ‘laundromat’ for stolen Asian relics” [The Denver Post] // Emma C. Bunker, whose “gifts are featured in nearly every Asian art exhibit” at the Denver Art Museum and who has a gallery named in her memory (she passed last year at age 90), relied heavily
on one disgraced dealer in particular, Douglas Latchford, [a relationship which] led the museum to acquire pieces that had been pillaged from Cambodia’s sacred temples. And now artifacts from Thailand in the museum’s collection are under scrutiny.
Connections with museums were a crucial piece of Latchford’s long-running illicit antiquities scheme, investigators and experts in the art trade say: The Thailand-based collector and dealer spent decades loaning and gifting prized artifacts to prominent museums like Denver’s, which he used to legitimate his collection. With items behind glass cases, Latchford could tell prospective buyers that his goods were clean — and worth big money.
This is an endemic problem in museum collections, I’d wager, whether the patrons in question merely don’t know any better or, as Bunker is alleged to, actively assist in “cleaning” stolen works by writing “scholarly articles” and zhuzhing provenances.
The Museum declined to participate in Sam Tabachnik’s story, and Bunker’s surviving family wasn’t exactly forthcoming either, but it’s still a multi-part series that should make for a solid weekend longread.
Me? I’ll be continuing to putter through Taxay’s guide to counterfeit coins, which is maaaaaaybe a little more instructional than is strictly appropriate under the circs? But as I often am with con/counterfeit tales, I’m struck by how much work it is! (My dad, a longtime collector, when I brought this up last night: “Right? ‘Second prize is TWO pounds of fake quarters!’”) Maybe just get a straight job? I also got Jack Dunphy’s weird memoirvel about life with Capote, so I’m hoping to get into that. What’s on your true-crime docket this weekend? — SDB
Coming up on Best Evidence: The year in review!
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