New Republic, March 21 A package on Social Security reform pits N. Gregory Mankiw, the former chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, against the magazine’s Jonathan Chait. Mankiw defends Bush’s plan for Social Security. Arguing that the proposal is remarkably similar to Harvard’s retirement plan for its faculty members, he accuses Democrats of “opposing the spread of stock ownership” and “distrusting the public with its own money.” Chait doubts whether Social Security is on the brink of crisis; even if it is, he says, there’s no harm in waiting until 2042 to fix it. Pointing out that private accounts appear financially wise “only if you ignore the cost of trillions of dollars that must then be borrowed to pay off current Social Security obligations,” Chait criticizes Washington Democrats who prize bipartisan consensus. He urges them to defend Social Security from an “immediate and dire” assault and “drive a stake through privatization.”—B.B.
Economist, March 12 Revealing that “a computer is not useful if you have no food or electricity and cannot read,” the cover gushes about the growing economic importance of cell phones in poor countries, where cell phones are used very differently than in rich countries. They enlarge trade networks, make it easier for people to find jobs without traveling, and allow farmers and fishermen to figure out the best market prices. … Another story in this “technology quarterly” attributes a “spiritual or supernatural” dimension to cell phones. Noting that Alexander Graham Bell was deeply interested in using telephones to communicate with the dead, the piece points out that churches in the Philippines recently stopped people from confessing and receiving absolution via text message. But “teenage girls in Japan use them as lockets, sticking photographs of their friends into their battery compartments, and some Ghanaians even choose to be buried in giant mobile-phone coffins.”—B.B.
Rolling Stone, March 24”He was a careful, deliberate and calculating man, and his suicide was not careless, not an accident and not selfish,”argues Rolling Stone editor Jan Wenner in a tribute to Hunter S. Thompson. (He also denies the rumor that he has “7000 first editions of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas secretly warehoused, to be sold upon [Thompson’s] death.”) Historian Douglas Brinkley recounts how Thompson stole Hemingway’s elk horns while reporting a story about the author’s suicide, and how he almost accidentally killed his wife a few days before his own suicide. Marilyn Manson discloses that Thompson used to call him “Shit Eyes.” And William Greider forgives Thompson’s “repugnant” activities because, “He knew the world was big and bad and ugly, and he would take it on the way a little boy takes on a demon. Thompson’s family, and luminaries like Jack Nicholson, Anjelica Huston, Johnny Depp, and Pat Buchanan also pay their respects.—B.B.
Spin, March 2005
What if Styx, REO Speedwagon, and Journey were to play a show … on a cruise ship? A David Foster Wallace-esque story about a weeklong Caribbean cruise for which 1,000 aging fans paid $1,300-$3,000 answers that question. On this boat where “punk never happened and Nirvana never became famous,” the article ventures, “If you want to hear the songs you like, you have to pretend the band’s contemporary material still matters. It’s akin to sitting through a boring conversation with someone because you know you’re probably going to have sex when that person finally shuts up.” … Dave Eggers laments his own lazy lack of commitment to the bands he used to idolize. “People like me are the problem. We’re the reason so many midcareer musicians have trouble getting or keeping record deals, why they have to do reunion tours and sell their early hits to beer commercials.” —B.B.
GQ, March 2005
Tom Prince writes about the other women in his life in his feature on the phenomenon of “office wives.” An office wife is a platonic “confidante, a fellow corporate soldier to share the smirks, the laughs, the deep, plaintive groans of incredulity, and the rare moments of self-awareness,” explains Prince. Far from being illicit affairs, Prince says that office wives (or day husbands) usually meet with spousal approval, since they help deal with work-related stress. “If your wife is the girl you can bring home to Mom,” he writes, “your office wife is the woman you can bring home to your wife.” … Chris Heath has an in-depth interview with Russell Crowe, covering everything from the actor’s legendary perfectionism to his infamous fits of ill-humor and a little-known al-Qaida plot against him.—J.S.
New York Times Magazine, March 13 The cover story profiles the Palestinian “state-in-waiting” under newly elected leader Mahmoud Abbas. Many Palestinians believe Abbas’ clear but contested victory testifies to the dynamic strength of their democratic institutions. The article proposes an alternate thesis: that the electoral split reveals a deep political divide between those, like Abbas, who see “nation-building as the path to national liberation,” and those for whom liberation is the first priority, with violence against Israel a necessary tactic. … A story looks at economist David Cutler’s proposal to revamp health care by rewarding doctors for the quality of care they provide, rather than the volume. Though economists and reformist liberals are skeptical of the proposal, which accepts the formidable cost of health care, incentive programs like those Cutler advocates have radically improved quality of care in hospital trials across the country.—D.W.W.
Weekly Standard, March 14”Lebanon has never been fully of the Arab world—it is historically, religiously, culturally, and geographically a special place—and the idea of a democratic Lebanon probably isn’t nearly as scary to the Middle East’s despots as is the idea of a democratic Iraq or Egypt,” says a piece, part of a package on Lebanon and Syria, that argues that the Bush administration should try to “encourage or coerce” regime change in countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iran “sooner, not later.”… A profile of farmer-cum-classics professor Victor Davis Hanson explicates Hanson’s ideal of the “citizen-soldier, a humble creature of the land who puts down his hoe and takes up the rifle.” A registered Democrat, Hanson now defends President Bush vigorously. After attending a White House meeting alongside Charles Krauthammer, Elliott Abrams, Fouad Ajami, and John Lewis Gaddis, Hanson says, “Everyone I met in D.C. was gossiping about this important guy they met and that guy they met,” he tells me. “Me? I spent yesterday negotiating with a Sikh farmer who was renting some of my land.”—B.B.
The New Yorker, March 14 A profile of Jean-Claude Ellena examines how the French perfumer devised a new scent for Hermès. (It involved going to Egypt, sniffing around, and settling on the scent of green mangoes.) Ellena can sniff jasmine solutions and “tell you not only the flower’s country of origin but what kind of machine distilled it—stainless steel, aluminum, or steel.”… And Calvin Trillin says that he started crying after he heard a brief NPR segment about the death of National Guardsman Brian Slavenas, whose helicopter was shot down in Iraq in 2003. A year later, Trillin traveled to Illinois and spoke with Slavenas’ divorced parents. His mom opposes the war and says that Slavenas tried to get out of serving; his dad honors Slavenas as a war hero. … And, according to a “Talk of the Town” piece, New York City is employing grad students to go undercover as homeless people for a night in order to get a more accurate count of the city’s homeless population.—B.B.
Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report, March 14 Peace in the Middle East? In an interview with Time’s Joe Klein, Syrian President Bashar Assad pleads, “Please send this message: I am not Saddam Hussein. I want to cooperate.” Noting that Assad seems like a very worried man, one who lacks “sociopathic cool” and other dictatorlike traits, Klein concludes that Syria’s tense political climate makes Assad’s cooperation with the United States unlikely. … In U.S. News, Fouad Ajami salutes Bush’s Middle East policy and writes, “[T]hey hang on Bush’s words, in Damascus and Beirut, and in Cairo as well.” Another piece suggests that the United States didn’t cause the Middle East’s turn toward democracy; rather, Arafat’s death caused the Palestinian elections, Lebanese protesters were influenced by Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, and the Iraqi election happened “almost despite U.S. plans.”… And Newsweek carries a letter from Ayman Nour, the Egyptian opposition leader whose arrest for supposedly forging documents related to his political party has sparked worldwide outrage.
The simple life:U.S. News’ cover argues that cell phones, computers, and other gadgets have gotten way too complicated and frustrating. But now, inspired by Apple’s success with the user-friendly iPod, “cellphones, consumer electronics, and, yes, even computers—seem to be shifting back to basics.” …Newsweek has a piece about Motorola’s new line of cell phones, which will play Apple’s iTunes. The rounded “Pebl” was inspired by glossy river stones, while “Rockr” “might recognize songs being played in a club, let users download them to their phones and then send them home to their cable boxes and stereos.” … Newsweek also announces that environmentally friendly fashion is “in.” A piece claims that clothing designers are increasingly turning to materials like bamboo threads, corn fiber, and recycled soda cans. …Time describes wunderkind author Jonathan Safran Foer as “so buttoned-down and serious he makes Philip Roth look like Andre 3000.”
Odds and ends: Time’s cover is an excerpt from celebrity economist Jeffrey Sachs’ new book, The End of Poverty. Sachs writes, “Every morning our newspapers could report, ‘More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.’ ” He insists that extreme poverty can be ended by 2025 and calls on the United States to give more foreign aid. He goes on to claim “geographic isolation, disease and natural hazards” and not “laziness and corruption” are the main causes of poverty. … Another piece in Time points out that gay writers—like the creators of Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, Nip/Tuck, and Six Feet Under—”are behind the TV shows that are most provocatively defining straight relationships.” While these shows aren’t stereotypically campy, they exhibit a “subtler sensibility … ‘difference exists but doesn’t matter, that there’s no such thing as normal even when a majority of people think so.’ “—B.B.
