Josh Levin posts his first dispatch in Slate here. It’s hilarious:

A little bit after 1 p.m., the blinds are drawn and the lights go down. For the jury, there’s a giant screen on wheels in front of the jury box. For the press, there’s a Sony flat screen, lashed to an A/V cart with thick orange straps as if it’s a flight risk. The VHS tape starts to roll, and the first voice I hear belongs to Hall of Fame Baltimore Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer, the one-time spokesman for the Money Store.  As Palmer explains how you can easily lower your monthly payments, a guy with a shaved head who looks a lot like R. Kelly hands a young woman a folded-up stack of cash. “Thank you,” she says softly. He pulls down his pants. Fellatio ensues. A few seconds later, a sitcom laugh track kicks up. He goes off-camera and turns off the television, perhaps fearing that canned laughter isn’t an appropriate backing track for a taped sexual performance.

And it’s the first time I’m aware of since the original stories in the Chicago Sun-Times that readers have been given a true accounting of what the man police say is R. Kelly actually does in the video:

Kelly’s lawyers tried, exhaustively but futilely, to prevent the jury from seeing the video. This is understandable—when you’re defending an accused child pornographer, it’s best not to have the jury hear a man who looks just like your client refer to himself, on tape, as “daddy” as he begins to have intercourse with the alleged victim. (The girl’s answer when he asks her to initiate sex: “Yes, Daddy.”) There’s also the matter of his prolonged urination on the girl’s face and breasts, which stops and starts, and stops and starts, for what seems like minutes on end. It’s excruciating to watch.

The Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune are both covering the trial as well, but the quality is spotty.

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Previously in Hitsville:

The NYT and R. Kelly: Curiouser and curiouser.

The NYT finally notices R. Kelly isn’t a nice guy

R. Kelly and the NYT: The Freaky Defense

Tribune, Sun-Times protest closed hearings in R. Kelly case

Secret hearings in the R. Kelly case

The Godfather Who Shagged Me: The complete R. Kelly SexFacts™—Everything you ever wanted to know about the R. Kelly case

R. Kelly’s Publicist: He slept with my daughter!