Right-Wing Media and the Death of a Pastor

Bubba Copeland was the heart and soul of his community—mayor, businessman. When a website exposed his deepest secrets, his life wasn’t the only thing that was destroyed. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( [Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor: An American Tragedy]( Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor: An American Tragedy Bubba Copeland had many secrets. And as a servant to both God and man, the judgments of heaven and earth were the alpha and omega of Bubba’s existence. What God thinks of anything, much less any of us, is difficult to discern, if we are honest. But the people of the First Baptist Church of Phenix City, Alabama, unabashedly adored Bubba. He was empathetic and industrious and always seemed to be doing something for somebody. By last fall, he had been the senior pastor at First Baptist for four years and the church’s youth minister for fifteen years before that. Bubba was not seminary trained and was not what you might call an intellectual from the pulpit, but what he lacked in academic theology he made up for in his eagerness to answer to the spiritual and material needs of others, no matter the time or expense. According to the people in his church family who knew him best and loved him most, Bubba possessed an enormous capacity to serve, and his sermons were personal, compassionate, and often funny. As a Christian and as a pastor, he thought that in a pinch the Sermon on the Mount was just about all the Bible a man would ever need, and his favorite verse was Matthew 7:1—“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( [A Case for Replacing Your TV]( A Case for Replacing Your TV It's been three years since I've had a TV in my home, which says a lot coming from someone who reviews tech gadgets for a living. Like most people, when I moved to New York City I left behind memories of an old life and my TV. I thought I would buy a new one eventually, but as fate would have it, shortly after moving into my apartment, I was offered to test out a smart projector. Sure, what have I got to lose? A different way of life, it turns out. All this time later, I'm still sans a black screen hanging from my wall. Since entering the projector world, I've tested not just one but six projectors. All these models have ranged from short throw to long throw. Some weighed three pounds; some weighed 30 pounds. One cost $599, and one cost $10,000. I'd say this qualifies me as a projector expert in my own right. I've written about them at length and even awarded them. And in the end, there's no model I'd recommend more than the Hisense PL1 Ultra Short Throw. [Read the Full Story]( [Five Fits With: Larry Gashi, Whose Music (and Style) Defies Categorization]( Five Fits With: Larry Gashi, Whose Music (and Style) Defies Categorization When I ask Larry Gashi, this week’s subject, about his background, he tells me he’s Albanian, born in Africa, raised in Brooklyn. “A lot of people don’t talk about where they were born, so I don’t know why I should,” he says. But the reason Larry mentions his Albanian roots first thing is that they are ever present in his mind, and his family comes before everything. I learned this after spending a few hours with him and hearing about the impact his family and their sacrifices had on him, both as a person and as an artist. In fact, he was a refugee who lived in twenty-four countries before settling in New York at the age of eleven. You can find a lot of colorful language online describing him—“Brooklyn Cowboy” and “Trap Phil Collins” are standout nicknames. A few weeks ago, he released a new single called “Midnight Sun,” which takes his music in a new direction yet again. He’s known for switching it up from project to project, unconfined by genre. Here Gashi and I discuss how he found a love for music as a kid without a television, his evolving style from high school to now, his fateful run-in with a psychic in Nashville, and plenty more. [Read the Full Story]( [What It's Like Being an Oysterman (The Pay Sucks But You're Saving the Planet)]( What It's Like Being an Oysterman (The Pay Sucks But You're Saving the Planet) For seven seasons I have worked as a commercial oysterman along the waters of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Current mapping shows that there are 4,664 acres of wild oyster beds that grow between the limits of high and low tide here. I am responsible for 4.8 of them. I have managed the same oyster beds now for six of my seven seasons. Every season, I understand more of the nuances of the place I husband—how the waters flow, where the sediment moves after a storm, where the oysters grow fast and thin and where they grow slow and thick, and even the patterns of the migratory birds that pass through these parts. As storm events become more frequent, as coastal communities become more developed, and as our nation’s infrastructure continues to degrade underground, the waters where we swim and fish and where we harvest oysters will increasingly come under threat, as will the livelihoods that rely on clean water. [Read the Full Story]( [The Backpack That Made Me Love Backpacks]( The Backpack That Made Me Love Backpacks I’ve always been anti-backpack. What’s to like about one? Sure, you have the hands-free aspect, but you can get that with a cross-body bag or a tote. And sure, they have plenty of storage space (sometimes), but is it worth it for the lumpy, bulky, overstuffed look and the inevitable hunchback and achy shoulders? I think not. Or rather, I thought not. Recently, I took a two-week trip to India, and I needed a carry-on bag that was up to the task. It was then that I realized that a backpack can be a necessity. Because I wanted something sleek and unobtrusive but also capable of carrying all the things I would need for a 22-hour journey (snacks, chargers, devices, and toiletries aren’t even half of what I bring on planes), and after doing some research, it seemed that only one bag made the cut: the Tumi Bradner backpack. Now I’m pro-backpack—but only if it’s this one, the backpack that converted me, the one that’s now my favorite travel companion. [Read the Full Story]( [Watch the Family Guy Cast Celebrate Their 25-Year Anniversary]( Watch the Family Guy Cast Celebrate Their 25-Year Anniversary Don't look now, but Family Guy is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. (Yes, it has really been that long.) The long-running animated series, which just concluded its 22nd season, debuted in 1999. With the help of subversive humor from creator Seth MacFarlane, the series about a Rhode Island family and their talking dog continues to feature big musical numbers, whip-smart satire, and downright hilarious jokes. Family Guy's main voice cast, which consists of MacFarlane, Seth Green, Mila Kunis, and Alex Borstein, recently sat down with Esquire to reminisce about a quarter of a century of TV greatness. "When I started in the business, I thought that if I could create something that people either fall asleep to or get high to, then I would really feel like a writer," MacFarlane says. "Like Hemingway." 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