Today, Other Magazines scans through Newsweek, New York, The New Yorker, and the Weekly Standard to find out what’s worth your time—and what’s not.
Must Read
An article in TheNew Yorker searches for the answers to why some Republican presidential candidates are campaigning on a strongly anti-immigration platform. The piece, which includes casual interviews with all of the major candidates, discovers who is following the polls at the expense of their party’s image and who is trying to take a principled stand.—D.S.
Worst Cover Story
Newsweek’s cover story frets over “Holy War” in Iowa, where Southern Baptist Mike Huckabee and Mormon Mitt Romney are battling for the GOP nomination. Doing little to convince that the intensity of rhetoric registers as “war,” the article can’t decide if it’s between Mormons and Evangelicals or believers and atheists.—J.M.
Best Inside Politics
The Weekly Standard checks in on John Kyl, the junior senator from Arizona with a Dick Cheney-like reluctance for public appearances whose successful backroom machinations have earned him the nickname “The Operator.”—B.F.
Best Quote
In Newsweek’s interview of GOP presidential contender Ron Paul, answering a question about the limits of the Second Amendment, Paul goes obvious: “If you live next door to me and I thought you were working on a 500-ton bomb, I would say there’s a clear and present danger.”—J.M.
Best Culture Piece
TheNew Yorker charts the downfall of Getty Museum curator Marion True, who once spoke at archaeology conferences about museum trafficking. When True found herself accused of participating in “one of the greatest thefts against the Italian state ever recorded”—tens of millions of dollars in ancient artifacts—her life changed forever.—D.S.
Most Comprehensive End-of-Year Culture List
New York’s cover story extensively documents what its critics deem the best and worst in 2007’s architecture, art, books, dance, movies, theater, and TV.—M.S.
Best Public-Service Piece
Newsweek tells the stories of American families “overwhelmed” after adopting foreign children whose histories of violence, abuse, and neglect have left them unable to bond with their new parents. A combination of adoption agency chicanery and uninformed parents leads many to adopt “problem children” without knowing the risks.—J.M.
Best Crime Piece
New York profiles in detail the charges against mogul Jeffery Epstein, who is rumored to have paid barely legal (and some not-so-legal) girls to “massage” him in his Palm Beach, Fla., mansion. The piece speculates on Epstein’s lifestyle: “His wealth seems to have endowed him with utter shamelessness, the emperor’s new clothes with an erection.”—M.S.
Best Web Feature
Newsweek publishes a slide show to accompany its piece about an attic in a former asylum in upstate New York. The slide show shows images of patients’ belongings as it tells the story of early-20th-century mental-illness treatment.—J.M.
Best Humor Piece
The Weekly Standard’s back-page parody serves up Mitt Romney’s notes on an early draft of the “religious rainbow” section of his address last week, highlighting how bad it could have been—and just how bad it really was.—B.F.
Best Line
In TheNew Yorker, David Sedaris recalls, “I don’t know why it was, exactly, but nothing irritated my father quite like the sound of his children’s happiness.”—D.S.
Best Seasonal Piece
New York explains why the strong Canadian dollar means hiked-up prices for New York Christmas tree buyers.—M.S.
