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New York Times Magazine, Sept. 22
(posted Thursday, Sept. 19)
Having published recent cover stories about Richard Holbrooke and Anthony Lake, the Times Magazine completes its Clinton foreign-policy trifecta with a gushing profile of Madeleine Albright. The article touts the U.N. ambassador's political savvy and belief in American interventionism, then boosts her as a leading candidate for secretary of state during Clinton's second term. Albright shares the cover with a story on Dole's foreign-policy pragmatism that argues that Dole--steady, skeptical, and hardheaded--would be a vast improvement on the vacillating Clinton. Also, a report from Ross Perot's solipsistic presidential campaign. And a curious proposal for curing academia's sclerosis: Scrap dissertations (no one reads them anyway), and limit doctoral programs to three years.
This week also brings the Men's Fashions of the Times supplement: Tweeds and uniforms are hot.
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Time, Sept. 23
(posted Monday, Sept. 16)
A week after Newsweek's celebration of testosterone, Time counters with its cover story on the wonder diet pill Redux. It gushes that the drug, approved by the FDA in April, can help dieters shed 20 pounds in a few weeks. Only later in the article does it warn that Redux can cause diarrhea and fatigue, raise twentyfold the risk of a dangerous lung disease, and that it was approved only after a bitter regulatory struggle. Also, the magazine describes the Cleveland school-voucher program that funds parochial schools, predicting that with Supreme Court approval, such programs are "sure to spread fast." And an article explains an experimental turbo-flywheel car engine that could double fuel efficiency and all but eliminate pollution.
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Newsweek, Sept. 23
(posted Monday, Sept. 16)
In August, Dole's selection of Kemp as running mate booted the Mars rock off the news weeklies' covers. Because the story has legs, Newsweek puts "Mission to Mars" on the cover, claiming that a manned mission to the red planet could cost as little as $5 billion. The magazine speculates about technology both reasonable (a spacecraft that produces its own fuel from Martian carbon dioxide) and far-fetched (the colonization and "terraforming" of the Martian surface). Also, Newsweek suggests that Death Row Records' chief Suge Knight may retaliate for rapper Tupac Shakur's murder. Two articles explore the sad legacy of wartime rapes in Bosnia and Rwanda. And political consultant Ed Rollins advises Bob Dole on how not to be Walter Mondale.
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U.S. News & World Report, Sept. 23
(posted Monday, Sept. 16)
U.S. News' muckraking cover story exposes the exploitation of illegal immigrants in an Iowa meat plant. The meatpacking business is just one of many U.S. industries (construction, agriculture) that relies on illegals, but pretends that it obeys labor laws. Also, an article describes the management style of twenty-something entrepreneurs as fun, anti-bureaucratic, and "humanitarian." (One Gen Xer assures U.S. News that this decency is not a passing phase: It "comes from the heart.") And the magazine follows up last week's college issue with a frightening essay on how to pay for college. The basic answer: Save every penny; invest it; pray for a bull market.
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Weekly Standard, Sept. 23
(posted Monday, Sept. 16)
The cover story portrays the American Trial Lawyers Association as "the most powerful special-interest group in American politics." By investing $100.4 million in state and federal campaigns between 1990 and 1995, the trial lawyers have purchased enormous influence over Democratic politicians (especially Bill Clinton), the Standard asserts, shielding themselves from laws limiting their raids against American business. Also, the editors urge Bob Dole to campaign on his opposition to partial-birth abortion, a "practical and morally consequential difference" between him and Clinton. And the Standard becomes the latest publication to write about the "Year 2000 Crisis" faced by computers, but the first to blame it on the shortsighted, immediate-gratification-seeking Me Generation. The pioneers, it suggests, would not have made such a mistake.
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The New Yorker, Sept. 23
(posted Monday, Sept. 16)
An extremely long article about Nicaragua dominates the issue. "In Search of Ben Linder's Killers" investigates the 1987 murder of a pro-Sandinista American by the Contras and, in the course of the probe, reviews the last 20 years of Nicaraguan history. Author Paul Berman finds that the Sandinista-Contra war was crueler than Americans ever knew, that both sides preferred swords to plowshares, and that the fighting continues six years after it supposedly ended. The opening editorial wonders if next month's Nicaraguan elections will cement democracy there. "The Last Days of Armand Hammer" reveals that the oil tycoon was a paranoid, deceptive monster. And Salman Rushdie muses about incomprehensible movie titles in a piece titled "Reservoir Frogs."
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New Republic, Sept. 30
(posted Friday, Sept. 13)
The New Republic's response to the Iraq strike: bewilderment. The opening editorial asks why the United States has extended the no-fly zone in southern Iraq to punish Hussein's attack in northern Iraq. The bombing--a mere "pinprick"--reflects America's "strategic incoherence." Another article argues that the United States should mend fences with Iran: It may be a devil, but at least it's a devil we can negotiate with. In the cover story, Michael Lewis travels from suburban Chicago to Tupac Shakur's hospital room to Don King's house to his own Manhattan street, then reaches a conclusion that may horrify TNR readers: Neither the rich nor the poor care about politics. Also, an article contends that the U.S. government should guarantee an hourly wage of between $7 and $8 to American workers by giving a tax break to employers: The subsidy would pay for itself by reducing crime, unemployment, welfare dependency, etc.
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Economist, Sept. 14
(posted Friday, Sept. 13)
The Economist endorses free will. The lead editorial bemoans the renewed popularity of genetic determinism, contending that DNA predisposes, not predestines: "For now, there is no reason to abandon the belief that people control their own actions--and should be held responsible for them." The accompanying cover story on the human genome project declares it a triumph of human knowledge, even though it hasn't yielded the gene-therapy breakthroughs that were expected. Also, British Labor Party leader Tony Blair writes a long essay on why Britain needs constitutional reform. And the magazine's monthly "Review" critiques four books about neoconservatism, five books about baseball, and several French novels, among other works.
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