HOME / other magazines: Summaries of what's in Time, Newsweek, etc.

Dark Forces

By Jeremy DerfnerUpdated Friday, Feb. 9, 2001, at 8:30 PM ET

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Time, Feb. 19
Yet another cover story on human cloning says biotechies think the first human clone will be born within a few years, or even months. (In the last month, Wired and the New York Times Magazine ran similar covers.) If that baby is defective, predicts author-professor Gregory Pence, "… cloning will be banned for the next 100 years." … A piece claims Clinton said that if anyone influenced Marc Rich's pardon, it was former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who also weighed in on convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard's pardon pleas. Investigators want to know if the $450,000 that Dem fund-raiser Beth Dozoretz raised from her ski buddy Denise Rich for the Clinton presidential library is connected to the pardon. … A piece on oil beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge explains that drilling might only yield enough to keep the United States in oil for six months.

Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, Feb. 19
Both covers use Reagan (circa 1981) as a foil to explore obstacles facing President Bush's $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax-cut plan. The U.S. News cover story posits that the plan's success is largely dependent on whether Americans feel they'll be getting enough back, no matter how much richer the rich become as a result. While Democrats prepare once again to stave off tax cuts, Hill vets say the real debate is how large the cuts should be. … Newsweek's cover story explains that the final Dem-GOP smackdown won't occur for months; further, Bush's cut wouldn't be fully effective for six years.

A piece in U.S. News alleges that the rate of new HIV infections might be increasing in the United States. One Bronx, N.Y., study suggests that safe sex behaviors adopted after a positive HIV diagnosis may not last. … An article outlines Ariel Sharon's peace offer to the Palestinians, on the condition that the violence stops: economic aid, an easing of daily hardships, but no more land for now.

A Newsweek article reports the growing threat of Osama Bin Laden. U.S. intelligence officials say he's forging ties with radical Palestinian groups operating in Israel. Though the Bush administration hoped to curtail involvement in the Middle East and has yet to proffer a counterterrorism plan, Colin Powell, sure to take an un-Clintonesque approach, visits the region later this month. … An article notes that of the 80 million singles in America who don't want to be alone on Valentine's Day, "the annual assault on their self-esteem," 5 million are choosing Web-based dating services to score date 1.0.

Esquire, February 2001
A piece profiles Greg Dark, the creepy-looking director who graduated from pornographic movies to Britney Spears videos. He became famous for making the filthiest of filthy adult films and for being able to convince his actors to do the unthinkable. He gets the same docile cooperation out of teenybopper pop stars, but his music videos are G-rated. … A Jewish author attends a Holocaust revisionist conference and comes away liking the deniers personally. Their obsession derives not from anti-Semitism but from the desire to rehabilitate Germany. Jews hate them more than they hate Jews, and in most countries, the deniers are legally prohibited from expressing their apostate views.

New Republic, Feb. 19
A piece about the evolution of Amazon.com says the New Economy, which was supposed to democratize the workplace, has turned out sadly similar to the Old. Amazon started with the idea that all its workers had talent and believed in the company and in their own mobility within it. Now Amazon outsources cheap labor in West Virginia and India, recruits upper management from outside the company, and intimidates employees attempting to unionize. … An article documents the developing struggle between John McCain and President Bush. Contrary to White House spin, their meeting about campaign-finance reform went poorly, and when McCain pledged himself to the patients' bill of rights, Bush strategist Karl Rove tried to convince other Republican backers of the legislation to withdraw their support. … A piece says the reason congressional Democrats are floundering is not President Bush's charm offensive but former President Clinton's absence. Democrats have lost the bully pulpit, the security of the veto, and the superior research that the executive branch produces.

New York Times Magazine, Feb. 11
The cover story examines post-Giuliani New York. Even the old Dinkins-era liberals now support quality of life initiatives and fiscal austerity, but most New Yorkers dislike Giuliani and hate that he hasn't done more for the 22 percent of them who are poor. The next mayor will try to channel Giuliani's policies but abandon his hard heart. ... A piece describes how Rick Ankiel, the best young pitcher in baseball, suddenly came apart at the seams and set a record for most wild pitches in an inning. Many great athletes fear the expectations that come with success, so they subconsciously fail on purpose. ... A profile explains how economist Richard Thaler has challenged the neoclassicist orthodoxy. By showing that people don't act rationally toward their finances—for instance, they'll mow their own lawn to save $10 but not somebody else's to make $15—he helped found a new field called behaviorism that could alter government policy and market analysis.

The New Yorker, Feb. 12
A piece tells how one man tore the packaged ice industry apart. Because ice cannot be transported very far, the industry historically has been a sprawling, friendly, un-cutthroat one. But Jim Stuart developed a machine that makes and bags ice on store premises, and it shook the ice industry to its foundations. He has since bought up about 200 ice companies and is now four times larger than his biggest competitor. … An article describes how blushing can ruin your life. Everybody blushes, though scientists still haven't figured out exactly why, but for a few "pathological blushers," turning red is a paralyzing cycle of embarrassment that prevents normal professional and social interactions. Swedish doctors have invented an increasingly popular surgery that stops blushing by severing fibers in the nervous system.

National Review, Feb. 19
A piece about liberal economist Paul Krugman calls him "the smartest man ever to have a regular column on the op-ed page of the New York Times" before blasting him for the "latent thuggishness" of his columns. Krugman caricatures his opponents and then pompously dismantles the arguments he says they make (but that they don't actually make). … A piece defends racial profiling on the grounds that it is more efficient for police to focus on minorities when, for instance, victims report that 60 percent of robberies are committed by blacks. Moreover, government has to "shed the idea that deference to the sensitivities of racial minorities … trumps every other consideration, including even the maintenance of social order."

The Nation, Feb. 19
The editorial delights in Democrats' recent disappointment with Alan Greenspan. During the Clinton years, he turned them into fiscal conservatives "promising to do little or nothing of significance while massive surpluses accumulated." Now that he seems to be on board with the Bush tax cut, Democrats are scrambling to develop their own tax-cutting strategy. The piece urges them to stand their ground on a progressive cut. … The cover story laments the increasing anti-secularism of the left. Many liberal theologians and politicians have bought into the right-wing idea that the rigid separation of church and state is based on anti-religious bigotry. They believed, for instance, that the infamous Piss Christ sculpture was an expression of hatred for religion, when in fact the artist meant to suggest that "bodily fluids are holy."