Michael Mechanic

Senior Editor

Michael landed at MoJo after six years as an award-winning features editor at the alt-weekly East Bay Express. He's written for numerous publications, including The Industry Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and Wired. Father of two usually charming kids and a striped cat named Phelps (okay, not the father), he lives in Oakland, California, where he raises four chickens, plays his guitar, and is lately attempting to teach himself fiddle and mandolin.

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Michael landed at MoJo after six years as an award-winning feature editor at the alt-weekly East Bay Express. He's written for numerous publications, including The Industry Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and Wired. He set out to be a scientist, and as an undergrad spent a year or so in an organic chemistry lab at UC-Berkeley trying to synthesize natural poisons found in the skin of certain tropical frogs. He later earned a masters degree in cellular and developmental biology from Harvard University, and another one in journalism from UC-Berkeley. In 2009, he was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for public service, as one of five writers in MoJo's "Torture Hits Home" package. The father of two usually charming kids and a striped cat named Phelps, Michael lives in Oakland, California, where, after years of classical piano and raucous punk-rock drumming (and putting out more than a dozen CDs on his former DIY label, Bad Monkey Records), he has retired to old-time and traditional American music, blues-guitar fingerpicking, and lately fiddle and mandolin. His family's chickens are named Lucia, Podge, Cat, and Weed Whacker. The goldfish have no names, because the family plans to eat them someday.

Time-Lapse Video of Photographer's 24 Hours in Isolation

—By Michael Mechanic

| Tue Jun. 4, 2013 10:41 AM PDT

The acclaimed photographer Richard Ross, whose Juvenile-in-Justice project (and photo book) chronicles the lives of children in prison, recently decided to put himself in the shoes of his young subjects by spending 24 hours in isolation. With permission from the head of an unnamed youth facility in the Midwest, he set up a camera to take a photo every seven seconds. The result is this time-lapse video:

Here's more from Wired's Jakob Schiller:

Ross chose 24 hours because that’s the typical amount of time a juvenile offender spends in isolation at the facility when they’re first admitted. It’s not punishment for some aggressive or egregious behavior, just a matter of procedure while the bureaucracy "evaluates" them. Sometimes children are put in isolation because they are low-level offenders and should not be housed with the more serious offenders in the general population. Isolation can also be used for disciplinary action, however, and Ross has interviewed many kids who have spent weeks alone.

"It was unbelievably dehumanizing [in the cell], and I'm an adult and I knew that I had 24 hours," he says. "Then you have these kids who are used to sleeping in their beds, some of whom have never been away from home."

For a good longread on the subject, check out "The Lost Boys" by David Chura, who spent a decade teaching English to kids in an adult lockup. He chronicles what happens when they are transferred into the prison's new security housing unit. (It isn't pretty.) Also see our recent special report on solitary confinement, which includes an award-winning feature story by former Iran hostage Shane Bauer and a piece I wrote about early experiments in what extreme isolation does to your mind.

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Why the Producer of "The Hangover Part III" Spends So Much Time in Prison

Scott Budnick, the man behind the blockbuster comedy franchise, is a tireless advocate for incarcerated kids.

—By Michael Mechanic

| Thu May. 23, 2013 2:19 PM PDT

Budnick with actor Ed Helms at the premiere of "The Hangover Part II." Courtesy Scott Budnick.

The past few weeks have been particularly busy ones for Scott Budnick, the 36-year-old executive producer of the hilarious, cringe-inducing, and incredibly lucrative Hangover film franchise. In case you hadn't noticed, this is opening weekend for The Hangover Part III, starring Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms. It is almost certain to kick ass at the box office—at least so long as they didn't let Mike Tyson sing again.

Yet even as Budnick prepared for his big premiere, the ink was still drying on the incorporation papers of his other major launch this month. Unlike the comedies he produces—Starsky & Hutch, Project X, and Due Date are also among his babies—the Anti-Recidivism Coalition is serious business. It's a nonprofit whose task is neither glamorous nor lucrative, and whose payoff will be measured not in ticket sales and licensing deals, but in bills passed, lives saved, futures salvaged, and families reunited.

"He's the real deal," says Alex Busansky, president of the National Council on Crime & Delinquency.

ARC is just the latest of Budnick's efforts to ensure a second chance for young California prisoners who have shown the will and the desire to make something of their lives. It's partly a support network for high-achieving former prisoners—many of whom have Budnick to thank for the education they managed to get behind bars. But it's also an advocacy group that uses the kids' turnaround stories to convince jaded state legislators that rehabilitation is possible, if only they would enable it. His kids have already managed to restore $1.8 million in state cuts to prison college programs. In recent weeks, they have been rallying behind SB 260, a bill that guarantees a sentencing review after 10 years for prisoners who committed their crimes as minors. If a young offender has taken serious steps toward rehabilitation, the judge could reconsider his sentence.

"I was very skeptical when I first met him," recalls Julio Marcial, who oversees violence prevention programs for the California Wellness Foundation, one of Budnick's primary funders. That introduction took place at the Sylmar branch of LA County's juvenile hall, circa 2003. Budnick was volunteering at the time (and still does) with InsideOUT Writers, a Hollywood nonprofit that brings journalists and creative types into juvie to help incarcerated kids find positive ways to express themselves. "I've seen Hollywood folks come and go. I've seen people do this to make themselves feel better," Marcial says. "But when I asked the kids why this program was so important to them, they said Scott was the consistent adult in their lives. He became a fatherlike figure to them."

[Read the full article]

Psychiatry's New Diagnostic Manual: "Don't Buy It. Don't Use It. Don't Teach It."

That's what psychiatrist Allen Frances, chair of the DSM-IV task force, has to say about DSM-5.

—By Michael Mechanic

| Tue May. 14, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

I happen to know this guy who knows a lot about mental-health policy. And, well, okay, he happens to be my father. So my ears perked up recently when my dad mentioned that the DSM-5, the latest in a series of diagnostic manuals soon to be published by the American Psychiatric Association, is something of a disaster.

Indeed, at the end of April, the National Institute of Mental Health (the branch of the NIH that funds mental-health research) took the drastic step of renouncing the latest DSM (short for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in advance of its publication—renouncing the whole DSM system, really—and replacing it with something called Research Domain Criteria.

"Basically, they said they would no longer use it as a main test in grant requests," explains psychiatrist Allen Frances, who chaired the task force that produced the prior version, DSM-IV (past editions used roman numerals), during the 1990s. "They made it sound like DSM-5 and all the DSMs were invalid, and that we should wait for the new discoveries that were going to come from scientific endeavors."

"Pretty soon everyone's going to have a mental disorder or two or three, and it's time we reconsider how we want to define this."

Frances considers the NIMH's move misguided, but he's no fan of the DSM either. That much is clear from his new book, Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life. (The New York Times reviews it here.) Given the current upheaval in psychiatry, and the impending release of the new diagnostic manual, Frances seemed like the man to bring us up to speed on how the DSM got so bloated, and why so many Americans are popping uppers and antidepressants that we don't need.

Mother Jones: What you mean by "saving normal"?

Allen Frances: There's been a rapid diagnostic inflation over the course of the last 35 years, turning problems of everyday life into mental disorders resulting in excessive treatment with medication. Pretty soon everyone's going to have a mental disorder or two or three, and it's time we reconsider how we want to define this and whether the definitions should be in the hands of the drug companies, which is very much what's happened in recent years.

MJ: To what degree has this trend accelerated lately?

[Read the full article]

Quick Reads: "You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack"

—By Michael Mechanic

| Mon Apr. 15, 2013 4:00 AM PDT

Courtesy Drawn & Quarterly

You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack
By Tom Gauld
Drawn & Quarterly

Readers of the Guardian and the New York Times Magazine may recognize the poignant and often dark humor of Tom Gauld, whose new collection of mostly unpublished cartoons pokes fun at literature and media of all stripes—a Beckett spin on Tintin, a Bronte sisters video game!—not to mention futurism, religion, modern art, and the hubris and frivolity of humankind in general. In one strip, a pretentious worm reproaches his unseen inquisitor for asking, "Are you happy?" So the questioner instead turns to a bird that has just swooped in to devour the worm. Answer: "Yes." Ideal for your coffee table—or that rack by the shitter.

Bruce Molsky Is Not Fiddling Around

How a Bronx "street urchin" bailed on college, quit his day job, and took the Appalachian music scene by storm.

—By Michael Mechanic

| Mon Apr. 15, 2013 2:30 AM PDT

Bruce Molsky on stage in Norway. Knut Utler

If you haven't heard of Bruce Molsky, one of America's premier fiddling talents (as well as an accomplished guitarist and banjo player), it's probably because old-time musicians, like do-it-yourself punk rockers, are not given to self-promotion. "I was one of those people who should have had the bumper sticker that says, 'Real Musicians Have Day Jobs,'" Molsky recalls.

Indeed, the Bronx-raised fiddler didn't quit his day job until he was 40, married, and settled into a comfortable career as a mechanical engineer. Nowadays, when he's not running fiddle workshops or teaching classes at Boston's Berklee College of Music, he tours the world performing Appalachian gems mined from scratchy archival recordings, which he revives with his distinctive bowing and clear, droning voice. Some of the tunes are joyful, others hauntingly sorrowful—but all evoke stories of simpler times.

[Read the full article]