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

Will Iraq Go to Shiite?

By Julia TurnerUpdated Friday, April 25, 2003, at 2:01 PM ET

New Republic, May 5
The magazine's primary concern this week is the Shiite clerics now filling the power vacuum Saddam's overthrow has left in Iraq. … Peter Maass reports from the Shiite neighborhood formerly known as Saddam City; it's now called Revolution City or Sadr City, after the cleric who advocated an Iraqi Islamic state and was killed at Saddam's behest in 1999. In Sadr City, Karbala, and Najaf, Maass writes, "the imams are in control. The gunmen are theirs, the hospitals are theirs, the banks are theirs, the streets are theirs." … Peter Beinart's "TRB" slams the Bush administration for casually describing Iraqis as "free"; Saddam may be out, but "freedom is more than the absence of centralized dictatorship," and many Iraqis are now beholden to local clerics. The United States must make "a serious commitment to nation-building" before Iraqis will truly be free. … And Kanan Makiya reports from last week's conference of 80 Iraqis at Ur. In Iraq, he reports, the people fear anarchy above all.

RSS

Economist, April 24
The lead story asks a provocative question: Chernobyl forced a new openness and accountability on the Soviet regime and led to sweeping reform; could SARS do the same in China? The resignation of China's health minister hints at similar responsiveness, but the country's booming economy makes reform less likely. … There's a growing furor over the prevalence of spitting in English and Scottish soccer leagues. Players are occasionally prone to spit at opponents, refs, and fans. But it seems that when foreign players let fly, they receive censures and fines. But when a young British star recently hocked a good one at the crowd, he received only a talking-to from local police.

New York Times Magazine New York Times Magazine, April 27
Mike Paterniti profiles a handful of teenage North Korean refugees now living in South Korea. These unaccompanied young refugees are called kotchebi, or "fluttering swallows," a phrase Paterniti returns to as he describes how the kids assimilate—using their government stipends to purchase cell phones and designer clothes, going ice skating, playing video games—and how they don't. When the swallows visit a shooting gallery, they know their weapons and how to shoot; when they visit the border with North Korea, they are filled with rage and homesickness for the privation they left. … A profile of John Malkovich presents a fastidious man of particular tastes: He longs to design a suit for Dr. Dre and has commissioned a living-room stove that's a replica of the Chrysler Building. Not explained: What "dispute with the French government" may force Malkovich and his family to leave their home near Provence. … Empire's Niall Ferguson on the problem with U.S. imperialism: America's "best and brightest" aren't willing to move to putative colonies and run them, as the Brits did.

Lifetime, May-June 2003
There should be a women's magazine that focuses on "real life" and "real women," but Lifetime—the new magazine that trumpets those phrases in script on its cover and hails from the TV channel of the same name—isn't it. … Got no weekend plans? Lifetime proposes that you "Hit Sam's Club on an empty stomach, circle the cinnamon bun and flank steak samples, and taste-test your way through lunch." … Got no self-esteem? Lifetime offers seven ways to get some. Step 4: "Find meaning every day." … The surest way to make someone feel like a loser is to assume they need an insipid "key to self-confidence." And supermarket samples may be one of the sidelong pleasures of modern life, but eating them is a marquee event for no "real woman" I've met.

Believer, March 2003
When the new magazine from the folks who brought you McSweeneys came out, most critics focused on editor Heidi Julavits' essay about the state of the modern book review. While her repudiation of snark is worth a look, it's Marc Herman's story on the coalitions in the anti-war movement that activists and others should find and read before the magazine leaves the newsstand. In it he asks a question no one else has touched, namely, Why didn't the growing anti-war movement get anything done? Couldn't they have just hired a decent PR rep? Herman quotes the head of ANSWER, who proposed no coherent alternative to war in Iraq. He notes that marchers in Martin Luther King's day dressed alike and weren't allowed to make their own signs, which kept the civil rights march relentlessly on point. And he quotes a journalist who said an anti-war leader "who comes across as credible and—not angry—hasn't emerged."

Time, U.S. News & World Report, and Newsweek Time, U.S. News & World Report, and Newsweek, April 28
Time becomes the first newsweekly to run a non-war cover since the conflict in Iraq began; this week, it scares readers not with tales of violence in Baghdad but with news that "one out of three women will die of heart disease." The piece inside notes that women are as susceptible to heart trouble as men, but there's been less research on how to treat women with the disease. One bright spot: Heart disease starts 10 years later in women than in men, so they have more time to start exercising, quit smoking, and take other preventative measures.

U.S. News and Newsweek run similar cover stories contrasting the glitzy excesses of Saddam Hussein's regime with the torture and corruption he fostered. Newsweek bases some of its report on a sheaf of papers obtained at secret police headquarters in Baghdad and cites the incompetence of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (agents made prank calls to homes with caller ID), the torture imposed on reputed army deserters (doctors were forced to cut their ears off), and the bounties paid to Baath Party members for turning in deserters ($10 per person jailed). The piece also has obligatory "Jeez-those-palaces-were-opulent" details and notes that a grizzly bear had escaped its cage at one of Saddam's Tikrit homes. The U.S. News piece focuses primarily on the luxurious Tikrit palaces and offers a list of Odai's DVDs.

In its war lead, Time details the current hunt for weapons of mass destruction and quotes a State Department official who says "The White House is screaming, 'Find me some WMD.' " Another source points out that if no weapons are found, the United States loses its credibility, and any weapons that do exist may still fall into terrorist hands. ... U.S. News says that Kurdish leaders near Kirkuk are issuing protection slips to Arabs who have been kicked off their land by returning Kurds. The problem: Those protection slips are not honored by local Kurdish authorities.

A Time piece reports that officials at one Beijing hospital trundled SARS-sick workers into vans and drove them around during a visit from WHO officials. … In Newsweek, Howard Fineman notes that Karl Rove, incensed about the Senate's halving of the president's tax cut, gave Majority Leader Bill Frist a serious dressing-down and blamed him for letting the measure go through.

Weekly Standard, April 28
To read this issue, you'd think the United States fought the war in Iraq simply to prove that the Standard's standard punching bags are worth pummeling. The lead story loftily proclaims that victory has brought about a "shift in moral hierarchy." Going down? "Freeze-dried radicals," "campus postmodernists," "the prestige media," and "Hollywood." … David Brooks—who has apparently spent so much time reporting on the mores of college students that he feels qualified to invent their sentiments out of whole cloth—chips in with a piece explaining how "Joey Tabula Rasa," who has hazy political opinions at the war's outset, will be politicized by the war. He'll find neocons and hawks progressive, with their optimism about the American capacity to effect change. It's John Kerry and other multilateralists who will seem conservative, with their caution about such sweeping initiatives. … Syria may not be next, but Assad should get out of Lebanon, and the United States should cut off Syria's oil until he does.