New Republic, Sept. 24
An article examines how the policy choices of Sarah Palin, supermom though she may be, hurt other working mothers. Palin embodies a Republican brand of feminism: If she can balance parenting five children with her gubernatorial responsibilities, other working mothers shouldn’t carp about handling their less-demanding desk jobs and smaller broods. “Palin’s brand of up-by-your-bootstraps feminism allows the McCain campaign to appear to support working moms—plus hockey moms, team moms, soldiers’ moms—while rejecting the policies that would actually make their lives better.”… Peter Bergen offers a slate of policy options to quell the rising violence in Afghanistan. Among his suggestions: sending in more U.S. Special Forces and top civilian advisers, bringing high-level Taliban leaders into the political fold, and focusing on infrastructure projects. American policy in Afghanistan needs “the kind of strategic reset that helped the U.S. military to dampen down the violence in Iraq.”
Weekly Standard, Sept. 15
They might as well call it the “Sarah Palin Issue.” The cover depicts John McCain as an old West sheriff and Palin as his bonnet-wearing, shotgun-toting assistant while a piece deconstructs why the left finds the pick so offensive. The “simple fact of her being a pro-life married mother of five with a thriving political career was … enough for the left and its outliers to target her for destruction,” the author concludes. Palin’s existence contradicts the left’s central narrative that, to succeed professionally, women must not have “the temptation to be with and enjoy several children.”… A “how-to guide” to punishing Russia argues that Putin should pay a price for his August military incursion into the separatist enclave of South Ossetia, Georgia. Providing aid to Georgia without censuring Moscow, the author writes, will not deter Russia from future invasions into other former Soviet states. One solution: moving the 2014 Olympics from the Black Sea resort town of Sochi would “put a big wet cloth over Putin’s neofascist strongman strut.”
The New Yorker, Sept. 15
A profile of Cindy McCain contrasts the wealthy, globe-trotting humanitarian with the birdlike stay-at-home mother who does not seem to be relishing her time in the campaign spotlight. While she “prides herself on being traditional,” Ariel Levy writes, she has often left her husband in the dark: She surprised him by adopting a daughter from Bangladesh and did not tell him about her painkiller addiction until the DEA was investigating it.… A piece re-examines the death of James Zadroga, the 34-year-old NYPD homicide detective who toiled for three weeks at Ground Zero and died of a mysterious lung ailment in 2006. Results of a 2003 biopsy obtained by the reporter show that his lungs did not contain the talc, cellulose, and other particles found in his autopsy. The discovery supports the theory he had a habit of injecting crushed pills. “Sometimes it’s necessary to slay a beautiful theory with an ugly fact,” a medical examiner said.
New York, Sept. 15
A piece finds that John McCain’s pick of “Saracuda” for veep has recalibrated the presidential race and left Barack Obama’s campaign unsure of how to deal with her. Sarah Palin, with her “hard-right views … contained in a disarming, charismatic package,” will be sent out to rev up the Republican’s conservative Christian base, allowing McCain “to ignore the wingnuts and sprint hard toward the center.”… A photo essay chronicles the reinvention of New York City, which has seen 76,000 new buildings spring up in the last 15 years. “The city is sprouting a hard, glistening new shell of glass and steel,” the author writes, offering side-by-side photos of the old and the new. New York is, overall, better for these changes. Attempts to preserve old buildings instead of replacing them “would have created a museum of shabbiness.”
Newsweek, Sept. 15
Reporters trek up to Wasilla, Alaska, to unearth more details about Sarah Palin. While she grew up attending the Assembly of God church in town, she did not speak in tongues, according to her childhood pastor. Like George W. Bush, she “is not regarded as an introspective or intellectual type—not the sort who likes to mull the deepest nuances of every issue.”Newsweek unearths a 2000 recommendation letter she wrote in support of her future brother-in-law Mike Wooten, whom she later allegedly had fired. … Dealing with rising fuel costs, school districts across the country are looking for alternatives to the school bus. Some students now walk to school in groups while schools in rural areas have cut back to a four-day week. “If every formerly bused student begins hoofing it to school, it’s a environmental win—but if too many of their parents decide to drive them instead, the overall carbon footprint can grow.”
Wired, September 2008
The cover story profiles Shai Agassi and his push for low-cost, rechargeable electric cars. The charging stations, still in development, “will be much more than dumb sockets; they have to carry the charge, sure, but they also must withstand being dinged by cars, vandalized by thieves, and subjected to the heat and cold.” Agassi’s startup, Project Better Place, has lured Israel and Denmark to try out the technology. … A dispatch from Russia’s Star City follows Richard Garriott, a “very wealthy geek” who has paid $30 million to live in a Soviet-era dormitory and endure eight months of “remedial cosmonaut training” to spend a week and a half at the International Space Station this October. Garriott’s poor vision prevented him from following in his astronaut father’s footsteps, but his online gaming fortune reopened the door. Real cosmonauts tend to scorn the “thrillionaire wannabes.” “Better to send monkey” in their places, they say.
