Vox Sentences: Dearly beloved…

Prince's giant footprint on the 20th century; the first open(ish) election for UN secretary general; Maine's governor literally wants heroin addicts to die sooner.

TOP NEWS

Portrait of The Artist

Prince doing his thing in 1986 (Michael Putland/Getty Images)

• Prince Rogers Nelson — The Artist Formerly Known as Prince — died Thursday at 57. He was one of the true musical icons of the 20th century.

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• Prince's influence on culture went beyond his musical genius. The baroque androgyny and sexuality of his persona, as Vox's Michelle Garcia wrote, "gave black kids permission to be weirdos."

  [Vox / Michelle Garcia]

• In the midst of the sex-fearing, AIDS-panicked 1980s, the Nation's Richard Kim writes, Prince was a lifesaver.

  [The Nation / Richard Kim]

• He is, after all, literally the reason that Parental Advisory stickers exist on explicit albums and singles (remember those?).

  [Slate / Jordan Weissmann]

• Of course, Prince wasn't an uncomplicated hero of the sexual revolution — after converting to the Jehovah's Witnesses, he frowned on homosexuality and some of his own past lyrics.

  [Entertainment Weekly / Gary Susman]

• Prince's control over his own music was legendary. You might see this as the success of one man against the record companies…

  [BuzzFeed News / Nicolas Medina Mora]

• …or you might see it as compulsive litigiousness over copyright (which is also the reason Prince has fewer songs available on YouTube than other artists).

  [Wall Street Journal / Jacob Gershman]

• The world could soon learn the truth about Prince's long-rumored "vault" of never-released recordings.

  [BBC / Mobeen Azhar]

The unprecedented race for UN secretary general

Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images

• The UN is having relatively open elections for its next secretary general, who will be elected this year to succeed current SG Ban Ki-moon (who's stepping down after two terms).

  [BBC / Nick Bryant]

• Last week, each declared candidate met for questioning with the UN General Assembly (and civil society groups), as well as participating in live town hall meetings.

  [The Guardian / Julian Borger]

• The playing field isn't exactly level. There's an unofficial regional rotation among UN heads, and it's generally considered Eastern Europe's "turn" — and Russia is especially keen on seeing that through.

  [FT / Geoff Dyer]

• Many civil-society groups, meanwhile, are calling on the UN to elect its first woman to run the organization.

  [Quartz / Ellie Kaufman]

• One of the presumed frontrunners, Bulgarian Irina Bokova (current head of UNESCO), checks both these boxes. But some officials found her performance last week unimpressive, and she might be losing ground to two non-Eastern Europeans: former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark (Dylan's favorite).

  [Reuters / Michelle Nichols]

• The relatively-open process has its drawbacks. Richard Gowan complains that the desire to be as broadly appealing and inoffensive as possible has made the candidates boring.

  [World Politics Review / Richard Gowan]

• And ultimately, the next UNSG will still be chosen by the five permanent members of the Security Council — which means it could very easily come down to a backroom deal, same as always.

  [Reuters / Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau]

• If you're interested in following the race more closely, this podcast episode — and UN Dispatch generally — is a great resource.

  [UN Dispatch / Mark Leon Goldberg]

A softer war on hard drugs?

John Moore/Getty Images

• Maine Gov. Paul LePage vetoed a bill that would make it easier to obtain naloxone — which can counteract fatal heroin overdoses.

  [Portland Press Herald / Kevin Miller]

• Naloxone is one of the most effective tools policymakers have to stop heroin deaths right now. Vox's German Lopez explains.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Gov. LePage vetoed the bill because saving the life of a heroin addict apparently "perpetuates the cycle of addiction." That is horrifying. But his veto should also be a reminder that despite the popular narrative that the whiteness of the heroin epidemic has led to a softer policy response, the reality is complicated.

  [NYT / Katherine Q. Seelye]

• Yes, President Barack Obama's proposal to address the opiate epidemic focuses on treatment and services rather than incarceration.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• But several states — most recently Indiana — have increased their mandatory minimum sentences for heroin dealers as a result of the epidemic, which is War On Drugs 101 stuff.

  [The Indiana Lawyer / Marilyn Odendahl]

• And some enterprising prosecutors are going so far as to charge heroin dealers with murder if their clients end up dying of overdoses.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Ultimately, argues Maia Szalavitz, the idea that addiction is a "disease" won't gain traction in policymaking as long as possession of drugs is illegal. Addicts will always be seen as criminals first.

  [The Influence / Maia Szalavitz]

MISCELLANEOUS

The rise of "juice crawls" — like bar crawls except not fun at all — is the clearest sign to date that American society is hopelessly decadent and on the verge of collapse. [The Guardian / Angelina Chapin]

• Men are twice as likely as women to say that they say "fuck" at least once a day.

  [Washington Post / Jeff Guo]

• A thoughtful meditation on artistic theft versus inspiration, on the transmission of ideas through social media, and how funny it is to Photoshop Kanye's face onto Kim's so that it looks like he's making out with himself.

  [BuzzFeed / Jen Lewis and Rachel Zarrell]

• Someone making $1 million a year, someone making $250,000, someone making $53,000, and someone making $7 an hour plus tips compare how they budget.

  [Esquire / David Walters]

• Florida is overrun with giant lizards and it's only getting worse.

  [The Atlantic / Ed Yong]

VERBATIM

"Suicide in Greenland, I heard over and over, is normal. People don't mean it's OK, just that it's been so common for so long that the next death almost seems inevitable. By 1985, suicide was killing more people than cancer." [NPR / Rebecca Hersher]

• "I must however challenge the assertion at the end of his review that I 'believe in brunch.' There is nothing in my book to support that claim, and minimal fact-checking would have confirmed that I hold no such belief."

  [The Atlantic / AO Scott]

• "It’s basically saying to fraternities, 'Just make sure you commit rape at the fraternities and not on campus.'"

  [Adele Kimmel to NYT / Stephanie Saul]

• "It is virtually impossible to criticize a system as generous as Austria’s … But the result of these laws is that early parenthood here is particularly gendered."

  [NY Mag / Abigail Rasminsky]

• "For those in need, we support providing supplementary income, health insurance, educational support, and other social welfare programs—and then we erase their value by making our cities too expensive for those most in need of these benefits."

  [Better Institutions / Shane Phillips]

WATCH THIS

Why you're safer on a bike share than a regular bike [YouTube / Gina Barton, Johnny Harris, Joe Posner, and Liz Scheltens]

Vox / Gina Barton, Johnny Harris, Joe Posner, and Liz Scheltens