1/ I’ve bitten my tongue for a while on this page because I never wanted Standing For Stephen to become about anything other than Stephen. Watching everything that’s happened lately has honestly been deeply disappointing. Standing For Stephen was never about book deals, TV shows
In Texas they told me to stop at Buc-ee's for gas.
I have been to shrines. I have stood in temples that took two hundred years to build.
I was not prepared for the gas station.
There were one hundred and twenty fuel pumps.
I counted them because I did not believe them.
A man beside me was filling a truck the size of my first apartment, and he was not filling it because it was empty.
He was filling it because he was here, and here is where a man fills things.
Inside was a hall so vast I lost the horizon.
A wall of jerky. A wall of fudge I did not know the country produced.
A brisket sandwich handed to me by a man in a beaver costume.
And I want to be clear, the beaver is not a mascot.
The beaver is a saint.
The people speak of him the way my grandmother spoke of the mountain behind her house.
And the bathrooms.
I had been warned about the bathrooms and I had dismissed the warning as the pride of a loud people.
I was wrong to dismiss it.
The bathrooms are famous across the whole state and they have earned it.
I have slept in worse hotels. I nearly bowed upon entering.
A janitor was polishing the floor with the devotion of a man tending a garden he loved, and when I thanked him he said "welcome in," which I have since learned is what Texas says instead of hello, and also instead of I am glad you exist.
I went in for gas. I was inside for ninety minutes.
I came out with fudge, a shirt printed with a joke I do not fully understand, forty dollars of jerky, and a feeling I can only describe as having been to church.
I did not need any of it.
I needed all of it.
I have walked through the great cathedrals of the old world. I lit no candle there.
I lit no candle at Buc-ee's either.
But I did fill the truck.
And I understand now that in Texas, this is the same thing.
And I keep seeing people parroting that her deposition “wasn’t even needed.” Matney and Farrell are somehow involved in the history of the sizzle reel. The map of that history will continue to come out.
Matney decided along with her partner Liz Farrell to release the “sizzle reel” link to the public, despite the harm that might cause the Beach family. She did not want to be questioned about how she was made aware of or where she got the link to those images. She thought she could opt out of her deposition. 😏
For years, Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell built a brand accusing everyone else of exploitation and ignoring the Beach family’s wishes. This new court filing shows they did the exact same thing behind closed doors. Hypocrisy at its finest. 📄👇 #Murdaugh
Something that seems to have been lost in the media coverage of the #Murdaugh case is how important it is to ensure that a defendant’s Constitutional rights are preserved in a high profile trial because it is often these trials that shape the viewpoints of future juries.
New trial for Alex #Murdaugh. SC Supco places responsibility on Becky Hill:
"Hill's shocking jury interference was accomplished outside the presence and knowledge of the outstanding trial judge and superbly competent and professional counsel for the State and the defense."