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

On Radar

By Julia TurnerUpdated Friday, April 18, 2003, at 6:13 PM ET

Economist, April 17
Ripping a page from the Racing Form, the Economist predicts the outcome of upcoming elections worldwide. … Internationally, Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been slammed for his cavalier attitude about human rights—he's cracked down on drug trafficking, and 1,500 suspected dealers have been summarily killed during his rule. But at home, the mag reports, Thaksin is popular because he followed through on campaign promises to make health care cheaper and to funnel money to Thailand's rural areas. His challengers don't stand a chance. … Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez withstood last year's coup attempt and this year's general strike, but that economic slowdown has put a major crimp in the Venezuelan economy, and if the downturn devastates the working class—typically Chávez supporters—he'll be in trouble. … And in the United States, some speculate that George W. Bush's presidency may follow the course of his father's: high popularity, war in Iraq, a troubled economy, and no re-election. The Economist thinks Karl Rove's politicking will prevent a rerun.

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Radar, May 2003
Editor in Chief Maer Roshan has modest ambitions for his new magazine: "By tapping into the voice of an ascendant generation," he writes in the editor's note, "Radar aims to be one of those rare titles—like Rolling Stone in the '60s, Spy in the '80s, and Vanity Fair in the '90s—that captures a cultural moment by getting there first." Hmph. A close reading of the first issue never makes clear which generation is ascending nor what moment is being captured, but Roshan's smarty-pants tabloid is (if a bit self-conscious) a pretty good read. … High-concept front-of-book pieces are fun: Did you know that Barbie is an outlaw in Russia? There's map detailing which U.S. products are banned where. … The cover feature on American monsters reveals—among many, many other things—that Michael Moore once "scoffed when students asked if a waiting limousine was his—then hopped in after they left." The package also knocks Bonnie Fuller for dumbing down US Weekly, but Radar reads more like Fuller's mag than anything else. … If the magazine really wants to appeal to cultural omnivores, it could stand to amp up its political coverage: The profile of Howard Dean is entertaining—note the charming transcript of a phone conversation with his son—but doesn't say anything new.

New York Times Magazine, April 19
In the future, will America still need soldiers? "Maybe not!" says a piece on the military use of unmanned vehicles. Drones and such are increasingly popular with Donald Rumsfeld and his buddies, who envision the possibility of war without (American) casualties. But GIs, who tend not to trust new equipment, are unconvinced: They think such vehicles—which may one day include land-based machines that climb trees and buildings "like predatory orangutans"—won't be able to counter creative enemies. … "Definitely," says Peter Maass in a grimly deadpan evocation of the Marine ethos on the front lines in Baghdad, where killing enemy soldiers—and anyone else who doesn't surrender—is still what warfare's all about. … Who's right? Maybe someone should ask George Friedman, who runs an independent intelligence forecasting service, accurately predicted the start of this war, and whose Web site is considered the "Drudge Report of global analysis."

New York Review of Books, May 1
Tony Judt appraises a spate of new French books that either examine anti-Americanism or else further its cause. They range, he says, from "elegant, learned, witty" (in the case of Philippe Roger's erudite history) to "drivel" (a distressingly popular book that claims an airplane never plowed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11) … Ian Buruma evaluates neoconnish Paul Berman's book Terror and Liberalism. Berman thinks America is fighting a righteous battle for freedom in the Middle East; Buruma agrees that sometimes might makes right, but he worries about the United States undertaking "messianic project(s)." … Elizabeth Drew reviews two biographies of Karl Rove. While both detail the "boy genius's" longtime indulgence in "dirty tricks" politics, one of the books (titled Bush's Brain) paints a darker picture of the aide as a ruthless political machine who actively gives dangerous presidential advice founded on grudges—also called "policy by snit."—S.G.

The New Yorker The New Yorker, April 21 and 28
The annual money issue is filled with figures: Amount migrant workers in Florida are paid for picking 2,000 oranges, $7; average cost of an American wedding, $22,000; money cleared in 2002 by a California bail-bond agent, $200,000; amount New York City paid out in civil damages in 2001, $557 million. … Tad Friend's profile of Mackenzie Green—the California bail-bond agent—reads like a movie pitch. She's 5 feet tall, she dotes on her dogs, she was once photographed kicking down a door in a "floral-printed shoe," and if you skip bail, she'll lie to your family, bribe your friends, and rummage through your trash until she finds you. … Another piece argues that slavery is alive and well in Florida, where migrants are routinely forced to work off trumped-up debt and threatened with violence if they attempt to leave. But U.S. law holds only the workers' immediate employers accountable; since Congress scrapped a provision of the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act that dealt a prison sentence to those who profit "knowing, or having a reason to know" that workers face involuntary servitude, these workers have no legal recourse against the larger corporations that buy the produce they pick.

Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report, April 21
The Newsweek and U.S. News covers feature headlines about "winning the peace" and photos of Iraqis bestowing kisses of gratitude upon American GIs; Time reprises a May 1945 cover that featured Hitler's face crossed out with a bloody "X." Saddam gets the stylish deposed-dictator treatment this week, but an editor's note inside handwringingly dithers about the connotations of comparing Gulf War II to World War II: "The two dictators belong in separate leagues of cruelty and terror. But like Hitler, Saddam became the target of a U.S.-led war, and like Hitler, he had a reign that collapsed before the exact circumstances of his downfall became known."

Newsweek's cover story takes a military angle, arguing that psy-ops and special forces were key to the quick coalition victory. One psy-op tactic: Loudspeakers atop U.S. vehicles blared that Iraqi men were impotent; the accusation served to flush Iraqi soldiers from their hiding places and into the range of coalition fire. … But while Newsweek lauds the nimble force that won the war, the U.S. News cover story frets that far more ground troops will be required to gain control of the looting-ravaged cities. … In Newsweek, an excerpt from Fareed Zakaria's new book argues that the United States must do more than establish order, call elections, and get out, since elections alone do not a democracy make. In order to "win the peace" in Iraq, the United States will have to stick around long enough to "play the role of honest broker among the various factions" vying for power in Iraq.

But first, the mags note, someone will have to broker a peace among factions in the U.S. government: A Time story and the U.S. News lead both note that the Pentagon airlifted Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi into the country in the face of opposition from the State Department and the CIA, which U.S. News notes has circulated indications that Chalabi's Free Iraqi Forces are allied with Iran's Revolutionary Guard. (Slate assessed Chalabi last week.) ... Newsweek's Melinda Liu, who's still in Baghdad, reports word that Iran is also actively working to revive the Iraqi Hizbullah, a dormant Shiite opposition group. … As for the rest of the factions in Iraq, Newsweek offers a handy map detailing the distribution of the country's ethnic groups, but none of the mags can offer much more at this point than a roundup and a sage "This matter bears watching."

One last question snags passing notice: What about those sought-after weapons of mass destruction? Time's sidebar is most informative, quoting "military sources" who think fierce resistance at the town of Qaim, on the Syrian border, indicates that some of Saddam's suspected illicit arsenal may be hidden there.

Weekly Standard, April 21
Now that the war is pretty well won, the editorial claims, birds of all feathers will argue that Bush should get out of Iraq quickly, tiptoe around its neighbors, urge Israel to back a Palestinian state, and make nice with France and its allies. Don't listen, the piece warns. It'll take at least a year to get the country in shape, and when it comes to Iraq's neighbors, invasion would be hasty, but Bush should be loath to waste the "psychological leverage" gained by success in Iraq. … A profile of John Kerry cites his call for "regime change" at home and argues that his pivoting rhetoric on the war points up a larger problem for the Democratic Party: Its core voters (read: the ones who turn out for primaries) register way left of the rest of the party, and the country itself. As a result, primaries may not leave Dems with the most electable nominee.