Tuesday, January 07, 2014

GQ pieces - Drew Magary on Phil Robertson & Jason Kersten on drug smuggling

The Jan 2014 issue of GQ Magazine had two fascinating pieces of feature writing to note here.

The more talked about of the two was "What the Duck?" by Drew Magary on Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the A&E TV show Duck Dynasty. It was fascinating reading in that while it would be easy to disagree with many of the views that Robertson expresses, it didn't seem that any of them surprising to someone who has watched the show. It felt hypocritical of A&E to suspend Robertson from the show after the story published and, whether someone likes Robertson or not, made perfect sense when the suspension then lifted.

The other remarkable story from this issue of GQ was "Inside the Incredible Booming Subterranean Marijuana Railroad" by Jason Kersten. Written about the drug tunnels underneath the border between the U.S. and Mexico, it concludes with fascinating detail about a whole new method of tunneling and smuggling drugs into the U.S.