Mixed Media

From left: Zero Dark Thirty, Gangster Squad.

If there were ever a weekend for someone like Glenn Greenwald to avoid going to the movies lest he risk vomiting and seething with self-righteous indignation in the theater, this would be that weekend.

With Gangster Squad (Warner Bros., 113 minutes), we get a pulpy endorsement of extrajudicial killing, made all the more palatable by Ryan Gosling's roguish charms. Meanwhile, Zero Dark Thirty (Columbia Pictures, 160 minutes) delivers a history lesson in how America conquered Bin Laden through the sheer force of torture, with feminist overtones. Both films, which open on Friday and are rated R for "strong violence," are inspired by actual events, both are tied to delays and real-life controversies, both features scores of composite characters, and both have acclaimed directors.

First off, I'd like to point out that I do not believe that movies or any other works of art should be condemned—or properly assessed, for that matter—purely through the prisms of moral questions. That is a lousy and dull way to consume popular culture, and if I were to adhere to such a stringent code, it would be extremely difficult to appreciate films like D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, which is widely acclaimed for legitimate, non-white-supremacist reasons.

Having said that, you're in for a fairly decent and reasonably engaging time at the multiplex this weekend, whatever the premium you place on human rights.

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Jamie Foxx as Django in the new Quentin Tarantino flick

WARNING: This post contains multiple spoilers.

Every time Jamie Foxx’s character Django rides into town in Quentin Tarantino's new spaghetti Western Django Unchained, set against the backdrop of American chattel slavery, someone asks some variation of the question, "What is that nigger doing on a horse?"

This is as much a threat as an inquiry. Almost every character who asks it is involved in trying to tear Django off the horse, because a black man on a horse is a threat to a strict racial hierarchy that even those who cannot afford a horse hold dear. It's a question that Tarantino might even assume his own audience members are asking, since the iconic American gunslinger is nearly always white. It's also a question that might well have been asked by the protagonists of America's classic Westerns, from Rooster Cogburn to Ethan Edwards to Josey Wales—all former Confederate soldiers who committed treason in defense of slavery.

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The conventional wisdom claims that people won't read lengthy magazine stories online, but our readers regularly prove otherwise. Many of our top traffic-generating stories have been the deeply researched investigations and reported narratives—and we find that plenty of readers stick with them to the bitter end. Our readers also comment, tweet, Facebook, and Tumble enthusiastically, citing details found deep within these stories. So here, for your New Year's pleasure, is a selection of 10 of our best-loved longreads from 2012. (Click here for last year's list.)

The Silent Treatment
Imagine serving decades in prison for a crime your sibling framed you for. Now imagine doing it while profoundly deaf. By James Ridgeway

How a Bunch of Scrappy Marines Could Help Beat Breast Cancer
Exposed to poisoned water at Camp Lejeune, these vets may hold the key to a scourge that kills some 40,000 American women—and a few hundred men—per year. By Florence Williams

Follow the Dark Money
The down and dirty history of secret spending, PACs gone wild, and the epic four-decade fight over the only kind of political capital that matters. By Andy Kroll

"It's Just Not Right": The Failures of Alabama's Self-Deportation Experiment
What happens when outside agitators work with state politicians to pass the nation's most draconian anti-immigrant law? By Paul Reyes

Black Gold for the GOP
Trevor Rees-Jones made his name as a Dallas fracking pioneer. So what's he doing bankrolling political attack ads halfway across the country? By Josh Harkinson

I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave
My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine. By Mac McClelland

The Frog of War
When biologist Tyrone Hayes discovered that a top-selling herbicide messes with sex hormones, its manufacturer went into battle mode. Thus began one of the weirdest feuds in the history of science. By Dashka Slater

The Dog That Voted, and Other Election-Fraud Yarns
The GOP's 10-year campaign to gin up voter fraud hysteria—and bring back Jim Crow at the ballot box. By Kevin Drum

Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons.
We throw thousands of men in the hole for the books they read, the company they keep, the beliefs they hold. By Shane Bauer

Big Sugar's Sweet Little Lies

How the industry kept scientists from asking: Does sugar kill? By Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens

Click here to browse more great longreads from Mother Jones.

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Twitter has become a comedic haven for role players and impostors posing as politicians, celebrities, and inanimate objects. Behold a few of our faves.

Miami fun day w/ Kanye. A boundless sea of pleasure. I feel the sort of meretricious ecstasy he is capable of producing, but also the ennui.

— KimKierkegaardashian (@KimKierkegaard) October 8, 2012

Guess who has two thumbs and is excited for church in four days... THIS MOTHER FUCKER! (I'm pointing to myself)

— Tim Tebow (@Faux_TimTebow) October 11, 2012

Mars is the happiest planet, because if you cry your eyeballs boil away. And also you freeze and suffocate and death.

— SarcasticRover (@SarcasticRover) December 18, 2012

21,567 days without a pregnancy scare. I hope tweeting it doesn't jinx it.

— Betty F*ckin' White (@BettyFckinWhite) September 26, 2012

Visiting the second cabinet of the day: the gin cabinet.

— Elizabeth Windsor (@Queen_UK) December 18, 2012

DO YOU WANT TO RECEDE DEEPER INTO THE COMFORTS OF THE STATUS QUO OR DO YOU WANT TO BE A BIG GIRL?

— Jenny Holzer, Mom (@JennyHolzerMom) October 4, 2012

Hugo Chavez is holding an election to decide whether he stays in power.Pussy.

— KimJongNumberUn (@KimJongNumberUn) October 7, 2012

Joe goes to the hair salon every week. He doesn't get his hair done, he just really likes gossip.

— Dr. Jill Biden (@JillBidenVeep) November 11, 2012

Where is that last stronghold? Where the idealized past is safe from the looming tomorrows? Deep. Deep and away. (struggling on marshmallow)

— Self Aware ROOMBA (@SelfAwareROOMBA) September 7, 2012

Don't trust anyone over 3 billion years old.

— Jesus Christ (@Jesus_M_Christ) October 7, 2012

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