Other Magazines

Scolding Congress

The Economist condemns Iraq troop-withdrawal deadlines.

Economist, March 31 The cover article advises the U.S. Congress to keep its hands off Iraq policy. The piece argues that the congressional desire to impose a withdrawal deadline would amplify the Shiite oppression of Sunni civilians while eliminating the possibility that Bush’s surge strategy could prove effective. “That could lead to a dreadful outcome in Iraq, make Iran bolder in pursuit of its nuclear ambitions and delight anti-Americans everywhere,” the article concludes. Another piece examines the enduring rule of Robert Mugabe. Despite being Zimbabwe’s “near-parody of an African dictator,” his paradoxical combination of violent repression and a strong educational system has left Zimbabweans too intimidated and admiring to oust him from office. “Though the country is ruined, Zimbabwe’s streets still throng with boys and girls in neat school uniforms,” the article observes. However, the end may be near for Mugabe, as his continued violence against political opponents makes it “difficult for the region’s leaders to sit on their hands.”— S.W.

Time, April 9 The cover piece surveys the worldwide reaction to global warming. A consensus has emerged that the planet’s mercury is rising, and even global-warming critics’ “last good position is to debate the difference between certain and extra certain.” The United States plans to increase ethanol production and research injecting atmospheric CO 2 underground, corporations are investing in green-friendly buildings, and states want to control industrial emissions. Even burgeoning fossil-fuel consumers India and China are looking for energy alternatives. An article observes the shifting medical response to cancer. Rather than attempting to cure terminal cancer with “older drugs [that] were like heavy artillery—obliterating cancer cells but causing lots of collateral damage,” doctors now treat the disease as a chronic illness whose “wayward cells may not necessarily have to be destroyed.” Quality-of-life-minded researchers focus on “torturing cancer cells, and getting them to confess to us which pathways they are dependent on.” Consequently, “there is no better time to be living with the disease.”— P.G.

New York, April 2 The cover story highlights twentysomethings who eschew the monthly fees of health insurance in favor of betting on reaching financial stability without a scratch. Since “the strivers and thrivers [are] encouraged to jump from one company to the next,” young adults face prohibitively expensive plans that their employers won’t sponsor. Consequently, they shirk preventative tests and treatments and then wind up footing stratospheric emergency-room bills that plunge them into debt, force hospitals to swallow costs, and jack up premiums for everyone else. An article profiles charter school entrepreneur Courtney Ross, whose ventures—Ross School in East Hampton and Ross Global Academy in New York City—emphasize exposure to cultural diversity and put to work such principles as “beauty in the classroom affects the quality of the lesson.” But the scope of Ross’ vision often leads to clashes with architects, city officials, and school administrators, and some of the schools’ “proggy ideals have been flung on the pyre as Ross comes under pressure to teach to the test.”— P.G.

New York Times Magazine, April 1 The cover piece discusses changing views of education in China. The Chinese government has expanded its education system over the last few decades, but some believe the boom has favored the “stressed-out, test-acing drone” instead of teaching “the skills—creativity, flexibility, initiative, leadership — said to be necessary in the global marketplace.” “American high schools are more colorful, more like real life … more complicated,” says one student who participated in a program modeled on Western systems. “… [Y]ou feel like you’ve somehow grown to be a more mature person.” A piece profiles David Axelrod, the Democratic political consultant who has advised Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and now, Barack Obama. Alexrod believes marketing a candidate’s personality is more important than ideology or a set of policies: “I think that in a sense Barack is the personification of his own message for this country, that we get past the things that divide us and focus on the things that unite us. He is his own vision.”— C.B.

New Republic, April 2 The cover piece probes the origins of Hillary Clinton’s hawkish foreign-policy views. Many observers interpret her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war as political opportunism. But, Michael Crowley asks, “what if she really believed in the war?” She supported intervention in Haiti in 1994, then again in Bosnia in 1995, and once again in 1999, when she urged Bill to use force against Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo: “What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?” She insists she voted to authorize force in Iraq only after the administration reassured her it would make a “good-faith effort at diplomacy”—a stance some regard as naive. A piece bemoans the rise of “Freakonomics” as an intellectual fad. This approach, popularized by the 2005 book, looks for real-world instances of ” ‘clean identification’—a situation in which it’s easy to discern the causal forces in play”—and often “value[s] ingenuity above usefulness.” But the popularity of “cute-o-nomics” may come at the expense of more serious inquiry.— C.B.

Weekly Standard, April 2 The cover piece analyzes the surge of protests that paralyzed the deaf-oriented Gallaudet University last September and October, ending with the resignation of President Jane K. Fernandes. During the protests, activists shifted from accusing her of being “not deaf enough” (Fernandes was deaf from birth but learned American Sign Language at age 23) to denouncing her strictness. But the anti-Fernandes attitude seems to have stemmed from the “clannish exclusiveness” that arose with a Deaf activist movement whose members consider themselves “members of a linguistic minority that had been oppressed and marginalized by the speaking majority.” A feature contends that pro-marriage advocates cannot also support same-sex marriage. Two global surveys found that responses disagreeing with traditional marriage correlate strongly with the presence of same-sex marriage in a given country. Furthermore, many scholars who back same-sex marriage do so in appeals against the institution of marriage, suggesting to the author that “gay marriage goes along with the erosion, not the shoring up, of the institution of marriage.”— P.G.

The New Yorker, April 2 A feature examines Wal-Mart’s efforts at a public-relations revival. The retail leader has hired Edelman, a firm known for “reputation management,” to repair Wal-Mart’s employee-unfriendly image. Aside from training executives “on how to speak like risk-averse politicians,” Edelman specializes in “Astroturfing”—supporting grass-roots organizations that favor its clients. But the PR whitewash comes with a bright side: An energy-efficiency campaign aims to cut back the fuel use of the second-largest truck fleet in America. An article assesses the debate over Capt. John Smith’s depictions of early Jamestown as a failed settlement that only he could save. A 19th-century historian made a career out of ferreting political motives from Smith’s historiography, and a more recent study accuses scholars who believed the doom-and-gloom accounts of mining Smith’s work “for pithy quotes.” The author supports a middle ground: While current scholarship suggests “Jamestown wasn’t really that bad,” Smith can be “rehabilitated as an astute, if biased, ethnographer.”— P.G.

Newsweek, April 2 The cover piece introduces a collection of letters from fallen American soldiers in Iraq. Deeming the war a “strangely contextless conflict” with “no consistent narrative,” the article presents the letters to give readers an understanding of the military experience. Jon Meacham, Newsweek’s managing editor, says that the purpose for this collection is to convey an apolitical sense of the “humanity of the warrior, and the pain of those left behind, who reach for hands they can no longer touch and listen for voices they can no longer hear, except in the words you are about to read.” An update on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ involvement with the controversial firings of several U.S. attorneys stresses the importance of his upcoming appearance before the Senate judiciary committee. As an attempt to “change the subject,” Gonzales has expanded his plans to publicize his Project Safe Childhood program, which targets online sex predators. Though President Bush expressed support for Gonzales last week, “things remain tense between the White House and Justice over the firings.”— S.W.