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Newsweek and Time, May 31
Newsweek’s cover story on the future of technology forecasts a post-PC world where household appliances are connected to the Internet and each other. Your sprinkler will check with the weather service before it waters the lawn, your refrigerator will order more milk when your carton expires, and your toilet will test your emissions and notify your health-care provider when you’re out of sorts. … Bill Gates, by contrast, envisions a PC-plus future, where the PC will remain the primary computing tool but will be integrated with other smart devices.
Time’s cover package on troubled teens includes a poll showing that 20 percent of teens were evacuated from their schools because of post-Columbine bomb threats. A piece argues that smaller schools might be an antidote to the gargantuan high schools where adolescents anonymously drift into deep trouble and despair.
Newsweek reveals that President Clinton has approved a CIA plan to destabilize Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic: Kosovar rebels will be trained to commit acts of sabotage such as cutting telephone wires, ruining gas reserves, and launching cyberattacks against secret bank accounts where Milosevic has stowed millions of dollars, presumably pilfered from his people.
Time says that evangelical youth gained a martyr when the Columbine shooters killed Cassie Bernall as she affirmed her faith in God. Post-Littleton, campus Christians are more organized and energized about their evangelizing.
U.S. News & World Report, May 31
The cover story recounts the story of a black World War II hero later refused re-enlistment by the Army because of trumped-up charges of Communist activity. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor two years ago, but his family still awaits an apology. … A piece describes the fervent campaigning for this summer’s Iowa straw poll. Underdog Republican presidential candidates are seizing it as their chance for a breakthrough. Frontrunner Gov. George W. Bush faces a dilemma: If he participates, he risks losing to the social conservatives who dominate GOP straw polls; if he skips the poll, Iowans may spurn him in February’s all-important caucuses. … Parents are abandoning the PTA in droves for groups that are more local and hard-hitting, says a report. The PTA’s reformist mandate–it pioneered libraries, hot lunches, and kindergartens–has degenerated into mere boosterism.
The New Yorker, May 31
The magazine gleefully anticipates a Senate race between Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani: “It feels like a government subsidy for wayward journalists.” … In a piece about Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish film director attributes both his psychologically probing cinematic style and his tumultuous love life to his emotionally frigid parents. … An article defends Chai Ling, who led the Tiananmen Square protests and now runs an American Internet start-up, from charges of selling out and, more gravely, of guiding the protests with naive extremism.
Weekly Standard, May 31
The cover package forecasts Al Gore’s electoral strategy. One piece says the veep is likely to take credit for wiring school and libraries to the Internet–even though this wiring is subsidized by a “universal service charge” on everyone’s phone bill. Another article admits that Tipper Gore is a political asset but warns darkly of her agenda. She appears to be an apolitical soccer mom, but she’s actually a liberal do-gooder and her advocacy of mental-health issues threatens to increase health-care costs for most Americans. … The Standard rejects the line that Treasury Secretary-designate Larry Summers is a Robert Rubin clone. Unlike Rubin, Summers believes in lots of government intervention in the economy and does not trust Wall Street.
Economist, May 22
The cover story protests the Fed’s failure to hike interest rates despite early signs of inflation. Alan Greenspan’s laxity is encouraging “speculative excesses.” Since higher interest rates take months to restrain economic expansion, postponing a hike is like waiting “to brake a runaway car until it is a few feet from the cliff’s edge.” (For a dissent, see last week’s New Yorker.) … The magazine instructs new Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak “to note what the previous government did and do the opposite.” First priorities: negotiating deals with Syria and the Palestinians. … An editorial berates the British government’s proposal to eliminate trial by jury for several crimes including theft and weapons possession. (The home secretary asserted that most defendants demand jury trials “for no good reason other than to delay proceedings.”)
New Republic, June 7
The cover story argues that Hillary Clinton’s senatorial run would harm Democrats whether she won or lost. She would “divert resources from other candidates, politicize their races in ways that don’t play well beyond the Upper West Side, and become a rallying point for conservatives still itching to exploit anti-Clinton sentiment,” thus thwarting Democratic efforts nationwide. … The ” TRB” column tells readers not to fret over the rising cost of health care. The expenditures are worth it because the care they fund is state-of-the-art, and nothing’s more important than health.
New York Times Magazine, May 23
A writer visits the designers of the bloodthirsty, hyper-realistic, and immensely popular video games blamed for the Littleton shootings. They are indifferent to charges of inciting violence (“Why would I care about that?” one sniffs). … A novelist criticizes the editing of Juneteenth, Ralph Ellison’s soon-to-be published unfinished novel. Ellison’s manuscript was more convoluted draft than coherent novel. The radical surgery performed by his literary executor may have removed Ellison’s vision from the work. … A piece alleges that New York state’s services for the mentally ill have deteriorated under Republican Gov. George Pataki. An example of the tragic consequences of Pataki’s neglect: A demented man, refused care by several overcrowded health care facilities, recently killed a woman by pushing her under a subway train.
