The New Yorker, Aug. 25 An article on Burma traces the cycles of oppression and uprising since the country came under the control of a military junta in 1962, giving historical perspective to last September’s monk riots and this spring’s devastation by Cyclone Nargis. Recently, “millions of Burmese have responded to the country’s seemingly incurable condition by fleeing.” Those who remain may endure the junta because they are “too gentle to rebel.”… A piece considers the effects of the foreclosure crisis on Greenwich, Conn., as the town tries “to maintain, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that they are immune, more or less, to the ravages of the credit crisis.” Given the economic downturn, Greenwich real-estate developers who “made a great deal of money buying up empty lots or teardowns and building enormous speculative ready-to-occupy mansions” cannot find buyers for the luxury houses.
New York,Aug. 25
In the fall fashion issue, an article on Project Runway judge Nina Garcia, formerly of Elle, blames reality TV for her feud with colleague Anne Slowey and Garcia’s split with the magazine. It’s an outcome no one at Elle could have predicted: At first, the magazine’s staff was ” utterly indifferent … to the show, and to reality TV in general.” The article comes two months before Elle “debut[s] a new reality-television series on the CW Network, featuring a different fashion editor, Anne Slowey, as its star.”… Complementing an item on Rafael Nadal’s tennis fashions is a feature that uncovers the United States Tennis Association’s quest “to restock the pool of American tennis talent” and find an American answer to the Spanish sensation. The USTA has begun a training program “to find a new symbol to inspire younger players, a PR-friendly hero who can win the big points in big matches and has a good story to tell.”
New York Review of Books, Aug. 14 An essay examines the relationship between 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt and the Jews. Despite attempts by the Third Reich to portray the artist as “a true Aryan and German,” in Hitler’s words, the Dutchman “was popularly and enduringly remembered as a friend of the Jews.” Recent exhibitions and a book by Steven Nadler have explored the portrayal of Judaism in Rembrandt’s art, but in doing so curators have determined that not all of the portraits of Jews long thought to have been painted by Rembrandt can be attributed to the artist. … In another essay, Jane Mayer reflects “that what began on Sept. 11, 2001, as a battle for America’s security became, and continues to be, a battle for the country’s soul.” Since then, the Bush administration’s efforts to fight terrorism have employed “policies [that] were unlawful and counterproductive,” she argues.
Weekly Standard, Aug. 25 A feature story disproves the post-Cold War prediction that “nations would pursue economic integration as an alternative to geopolitical competition.” According to Francis Fukuyama, the “end of history” after the Cold War was supposed to mark the demise of “ideological competitors left to liberal democracy” and autocracies. Instead, Russia and China have created an imbalance in which “the United States and the world’s other democracies need to begin thinking about how they can protect their interests and advance their principles in a world in which these are once again powerfully challenged.”… An article compares the China-Taiwan relationship to that of Russia and Georgia and suggests that the war in Georgia is a positive sign for China. The piece notes that the West’s delayed response “during the invasion of an upstart democracy must have provided comfort to those in China who want to settle the Taiwan issue by force.” American support for Taiwan is dangerous because “authoritarian China sees a democratic, pro-American Taiwan as a gaping wound on its periphery.”
Paste, September 2008 The cover package introduces the “26 Emerging Artists You Must Know,” musicians who have “made some shockingly great music right out of the gates.” The magazine’s picks include Bon Iver, who holed up in a cabin in his native Wisconsin for a winter, “finding his muse, finding himself, finding some peace of mind,” and writing an album that maintains “the purity of a fresh blanket of overnight powder,” and the Bridges, four siblings and their cousin, who “construct some of the most addictive folk-pop revelry since Joni Mitchell and Fleetwood Mac.”… Another feature profiles comedian Zach Galifianakis, whose humor is “a mix of the hyper-intelligent and the low-brow—blink-and-you’ll-miss-them absurdist nuggets.” Galifianakis, who began his career on TV and has since acted in films and performed stand-up comedy, has achieved a “cult-comic hero status” despite “an admittedly shaky start.”
