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

Twelve Wavering Men

By Julia TurnerUpdated Thursday, July 3, 2003, at 4:49 PM ET

New York Times Magazine, July 6
Anyone who has made it onto a jury in a capital murder trial has answered "yes" to the following question—"Could you vote to end someone's life?" Alex Kotlowitz examines why 12 pro-death-penalty jurors might decide to spare a proven killer's life, and argues that sitting in judgment—and hearing a defendant's carefully spun story—can make jurors less certain about capital punishment. Defense attorneys now hire "mitigation specialists" to help weave sympathetic tales. … Why is Madison the second most popular girl's name in America? It's more than a case of poor taste, writes Peggy Orenstein: Madison resulted from a kind of naming perfect storm: Popular culture put it on the map (it was mermaid Darryl Hannah's moniker in Splash) at the same time that surnames (think Morgan), androgynous names (think Taylor), and preppy names (think Kendall) were also on the rise. … Graphic novelist Joe Sacco offers his take on smuggling and demolition in the Gaza Strip border town of Rafah.

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The New Yorker, July 7
On reading John Seabrook's piece about aspiring pop star Cherie no-last-name, one begins to wonder whether record industry publicists have discovered a new angle—"I know, let's call up some big-name writer, see, and get 'em to do a think piece on our latest diva-in-training! 'Making the Next Britney,' they could call it!" Last summer, Lynn Hirschberg delivered a cuttingly entertaining piece in the New York Times Magazine about the manufacture of Amanda Latona, a singer now spurned even by YM readers. ("Amanda Latona has a voice, but she needs a sound," it began.) Seabrook's story, also amusing, is cut from the same cloth, although it spends rather more time keening over the impending demise of the recording industry thanks to Grokster et al. … Laura Hillenbrand writes a remarkable piece about the frustratingly unidentifiable illness that left her bedridden for years. In it, she recounts the ways in which being sick devastated her closest relationships.

Newsweek and Time Newsweek and Time, July 7
How big a victory was Lawrence v. Texas?
Opting for a split cover this week, Newsweek runs the headline "Is gay marriage next?" over two photos: One depicts a gay couple, one a lesbian pair. The piece inside highlights the broad nature of the court's reasoning in last week's decision, which argued that gays are "entitled to respect in their private lives" in ruling a Texas law against sodomy unconstitutional. Potential ramifications? Bans on gay adoption may be legally "vulnerable," but it will still take contentious fights in lower courts to advance gay marriage or abolish restrictions on gays in the military. … A sidebar notes another prickly area for gay couples: Because their unions go unrecognized by nearly all states, divorces can be tough to obtain. … Time also recaps the decision, and runs an acerbic sidebar: John Cloud sniffs that it was "sweet of Justice Kennedy" to make a case for the "dignity" of gay people, then argues that gay activists "should know that dignity is not the court's to give."

Did Ben Franklin really fly that kite?
Time runs a July Fourth package on Benjamin Franklin, much of it excerpted from a forthcoming biography by former Time editor Walter Isaacson. Declaring Franklin an appealing figure because he "has a chattiness and clever irony that is very contemporary, sometimes unnervingly so," the piece goes on to chronicle his writings, diplomacy, and love life. An article on Franklin's evening with the kite and the key in the rainstorm examines Bolt of Fate, a new book that contends Franklin may never have conducted the experiment in question. Time dismisses the book's claim, pointing up Bolt's argument that it's hard to fly a kite with a key attached to it as particularly flimsy. But Adam Gopnik also discussed Bolt of Fate in a piece on Franklin in last week's New Yorker and found a stronger bit of evidence: When Franklin finally described the experiment in the Pennsylvania Gazette, he wrote with a "conditional spirit," not a scientific tone: Franklin "doesn't say he did it; he says it can be done."

Weekly Standard, July 7/July 14
Reading the letters page this week is like watching a rhetoric tennis match. Thwok! The New Republic's Judis and Ackerman defend their Bush-lied-about-WMD piece from the Standard's recent attack: Before the war, the FBI and CIA found "no evidence" of an Iraq/al-Qaida tryst in Prague, but Bush officials called reports of the meeting "credible." Thwack! The Standard retorts that the intelligence community remained split on Prague, volleying that Dick Cheney called evidence of the meeting both "credible" and "inconclusive." Thwok! TNR Editor Peter Beinart defends his magazine's pre-war stance, noting that it is possible to "advocate a hawkish foreign policy and demand honesty on matters of war and peace" simultaneously. Thwack! The Standard argues that TNR's rationale for hawkishness has conveniently changed. … In all this niggling over minutiae, however, no one makes the obvious point: Intelligence analyses can be politicized by journalists and politicians alike. That's why the Ackerman/Judis allegation that the White House ordered the CIA not to show Congress evidence that weakened its case for war was the most serious; Congress should have had a chance to consider the full range of data itself. Follow-up, anyone? … The magazine issues its summer reading list: Michael Lewis' Moneyball "may be the best book ever written on business," and P.J. O'Rourke calls Hillary Clinton's book a "weapon of brutal dullness."

New Republic New Republic, July 7
Should Fareed Zakaria ever read "The Ungreat, Washed," Robert Kagan's review of his new book, The Future of Freedom, he might rue the day he decided to include the phrase "catering to the great unwashed" as a description of what democracy does. Kagan repeats it in merciless quotation marks throughout the review, banging it like a gong to emphasize his basic point: Fareed Zakaria is an arrogant snob. In his effort to debunk Zakaria's case that democracy is not good for development, Kagan also presents Zakaria as a loosey-goosey scholar, arguing that the countries he defines as "illiberal democracies" range widely, from Argentina to Belarus, and noting that Zakaria blames Indonesia's nascent democracy for fiscal woes that began under Suharto. Kagan concludes that it's "worse than arrogant" to tell the developing world tyranny is its best hope "when no scholarship backs this idea." … An editorial revisits the Texas Democrats who fled the state in an effort to prevent GOP gerrymandering, and the government agencies that may have helped Republicans track them down, noting that since independent counsel law expired, there's no one to investigate this scandal. The piece argues that "some other institution" should take up the slack.

Economist, June 26
The magazine also takes a crack at Zakaria, noting that his book "wrings its hands about illiberal democracy." The piece contends that "economic liberty"—opening economies to trade and foreign capital—is the most critical factor in raising a country's standard of living. It also argues that economic liberty can flourish under diverse governments, but notes that liberal democracy is on the rise worldwide and is compatible with development, despite Zakaria's concerns.