- By Anonymous - Slate Magazine

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

By AnonymousPosted Saturday, Sept. 21, 1996, at 3:30 AM ET

New Republic, Oct. 7
(posted Friday, Sept. 20)

The New Republic visits a favorite topic this week: affirmative action. In the cover story, Shelby (The Content of Our Character) Steele takes his usual position that racial preferences harm America by reinforcing black victimhood and white "deference." Steele then berates Clinton, Dole, and Colin Powell for ducking the issue. Another article condemns the Census Bureau's obsession with race. Also, TNR claims that Transportation Secretary Federico Peña ignored--or lied about--data showing that ValuJet was unsafe. And a reviewer napalms David Denby's Great Books, calling it "naïve, amateurish, and a folly." For SLATE's take on Denby, see "Stealing Beauty."

Economist, Sept. 21 and New York Times Magazine, Sept. 22
(posted Friday, Sept. 20)

Both magazines explore American foreign policy; the Economist is less enthusiastic. Its cover editorial smacks America for "its reluctance to engage" overseas. While the United States remains the globe's "chief knocker-together-of-heads," it has been too consumed by personal vendettas (against Castro and Hussein, principally), too distrustful of multilateralism, and too focused on economic issues to lead the rest of the world. A related article blasts Sen. Jesse Helms for hating foreigners. Also, an account of the "flourishing" world slave trade, and two features sure to fascinate American readers: a long article on the benefits of the European Monetary Union and a 26-page supplement on the state of British politics.
The Times Magazine profiles U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright. The article touts Albright's political savvy and belief in American interventionism, then boosts her as a leading candidate for secretary of state during Bill Clinton's second term. (The article completes a Clinton foreign policy trifecta: The magazine has also published recent cover stories about Richard Holbrooke and Anthony Lake.) The Albright puffer shares the cover with a story on why Bob 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."