Here’s a Must-Read Tale of Quiet Suburbia

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


My quiet little hometown of Irvine has been the site of a truly bizarre little scandal for the past few years. I’ve followed it off and on the entire time, and it’s an object lesson in how a seemingly ordinary couple can go completely off the rails and try to frame a neighbor over a slight so small most people would have forgotten it by the next day.

Anyway, now that it’s basically over, Christopher Goffard of the LA Times has written the definitive series about it. I was going to wait until it was done to recommend it to you, but the damn thing is six parts long. We’re up to part 4 today, so you might as well go ahead and start reading it now. There’s no political lesson here, but it’s one of those riveting tales that’s so creepy and outlandish you don’t want to miss it. It turns out that fictional suburbia is nowhere near as interesting as the real thing.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate