Economist, Nov. 15 The cover story issues doctor’s orders for spreading democracy in the Middle East: “first do no harm.” President Bush must take heed that a reactionary regime could take over Saudi Arabia if the conservative House of Saud falls, and any change in government in countries like Egypt or Syria would face resentment if tainted by the scent of American approval. … A profile of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the left-leaning mayor of Mexico City and early front-runner for the 2006 presidency, describes a workaholic pol renowned for his scruples, but critics say his expensive public works aim to increase approval ratings, not improve infrastructure.
New Republic, Nov. 24 Erin Brockovich-Ellis’ latest lawsuit has a script tailor-made for Hollywood: government sits on hands while toxic oil wells imperil Beverly Hills High. The story, alas, is too good to be true, reports Slate’s Eric Umansky. The strong evidence contradicting Brockovich-Ellis’ claims of environmental contamination fits in her larger pattern of crying foul based on sketchy sampling. That includes the case that inspired the Oscar-winning Julia Roberts movie. … John Edwards and condescension police take note: Jason Zengerle scours the flea markets and trailer parks of rural North Carolina in search of Howard Dean’s “guys with Confederate flags.” After one flag-waver says of Dean, “He done offended me,” Zengerle educates him and a friend about Dean’s policies then asks whether they’d consider voting for the Vermonter. “He’s got about a snowball’s chance in Alabama,” the friend says.
Atlantic Monthly, December 2003
The cover story is a heaping bowl of Kerry puffs—an account of the presidential candidate’s stint in Vietnam. Douglas Brinkley excerpts John Kerry’s journal and letters home to reveal a thoughtful, valorous lieutenant who can’t help but vent his spleen over an unjust war. While lying in a ditch, Kerry wonders whether across the world “some fat little old man who made another million in the past months off defense contracts was charging another $100 call girl to his expense account.” … Samantha Power offers readers a tutorial on the governing style of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe: How to destroy a prosperous country in “ten easy steps.” Mugabe’s repressive tactics may be, as Power argues, “testament to his frustration with the resilience of civil society.” Her portrait of a country ravaged by hyperinflation, food shortages, and the AIDS virus is convincing enough, though, to leave that resiliency in doubt.
New York Times Magazine, Nov. 16 In the cover story, Deborah Sontag pleads the case of Loeun Lun, one of 67 Cambodian-Americans deported after Cambodia agreed to repatriate former refugees convicted of felonies while permanent residents in the U.S. The very American deportees, many of whom haven’t been to their birth country since infancy, struggle to adjust to their new, strange home. The unemployed Lun plans his days around trips to town to call his wife in Tacoma, Wash.; others pass time watching soap operas in a house set up by a sympathetic American. … According to a lengthy tech package, with CPUs now “cheap like borscht,” “smart devices”—like refrigerators that catalog their own contents—are creeping into our homes. One flummoxed microchip-saddled homeowner longs for simpler times: He no longer flips light switches for fear that he’ll screw up the preprogrammed lighting scheme.
The Nation, Nov. 24 Rebecca Perl stumps for “the last disenfranchised class,” the close to 5 million Americans who can’t vote because they’ve been convicted of a felony. One sociologist posits that if felons could vote, there would have been 60,000-80,000 more Gore supporters in Florida in 2000. But despite potential electoral gains, Democrats are loath to launch a suffrage campaign, lest they be perceived as soft on crime. (Read Slate’s Steve Chapman’s take.) … Though he’s a Kucinich fan, Ralph Nader is still considering a third-party bid for the presidency, says Micah L. Sifry. Most Greens, who prefer to focus on winnable local elections, think fielding any 2004 presidential candidate, much less the divisive Nader, would demoralize—and potentially destroy—the party. “It is the Greens’ Jonestown,” says one melodramatic activist.
Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report, Nov. 17 Private enterprise: Just in time for Veterans Day, Time offers 22 pages of Jessica Lynch coverage, including a profile, a Q and A, and an excerpt from Rick Bragg’s quickie biography. Nominal “is she a hero?” hand-wringing is swiftly undercut by the package’s monstrous girth and apple-pie photo spreads. One surprising note: Though Donald Rumsfeld came to visit, President Bush hasn’t called. … In Newsweek, the families of Lynch’s fellow soldiers talk about the coldness in her shadow. “It seems like after a soldier is dead, they’re forgotten,” says the widow of Sgt. Donald Walters, who was killed in the ambush on Lynch’s company.
Vice squad:Newsweek’s assessment of Dick Cheney sounds the same notes as Seymour Hersh’s piece in The New Yorker last month. The hawkish Veep, “who may be too powerful for his own good,” is essentially acting as national security adviser in place of an asleep-at-the-switch Condoleezza Rice. The mag criticizes Cheney for “cherry-picking” often unvetted intelligence, searching for details that support his worst-case scenarios on Iraq and the war on terror.
Houston Texans: A U.S. News profile of President Bush that focuses on the commander in chief’s “audacious” style notes similarities to the subject of Bush’s favorite biography, Sam Houston. Like Houston—who after the iconic defeat at the Alamo secured Texas’ independence by defeating Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto—Bush headed up the Texas government, “gave up drinking, found God, and has become a moralist who sees the world in black and white.”*
Apple of its eye: Despite glowing coverage in both Newsweek and Time, which hands it “invention of the year,” Steve Jobs doesn’t seem bullish on Apple’s iTunes music store. “Between the license fees and the credit-card charges, there’s no money in online music,” the CEO tellsNewsweek, explaining that the 99-cent-per-track store is merely a content provider for the highly profitable iPod.
Weekly Standard, Nov. 17 Presidential candidate Howard Dean’s opinion of the Weekly Standard? “Yeccch.” That, at least, is the noise Dean made when Standard reporter David Tell told the candidate where he worked. The Democratic front-runner seems to induce similar nausea in Tell, who investigates Dean’s predilection for “powerful narratives” that may or may not be true. Dean, arguing against abortion laws that require parental notification, has told pro-choice audiences differing versions of a story about a 12-year-old patient he thought might have been raped by her father. Tell wonders what happened to this patient, and whether Dean Dean fabricated aspects of the story. … Matt Labash, at last week’s Rock the Vote debate, skewers the jacketless candidates for pandering to college students, then argues that efforts to motivate voters by age rather than ideology are necessarily doomed. Despite Rock the Vote’s 13 years of celebrity-studded organizing, youth voting rates are still on the decline.— J.T.
The New Yorker, Nov. 17 The Cartoon Issue is packed with page upon page of talking dog, businessman, and married couple unfunniness. Even the ever-reliable Roz Chast strikes out with a below par two-pager about a stressful family trip to Vegas. … The mag makes some laffs DIY. In the cartoon crossword, 10 clues correspond to punch-line-less panels; the caption contest adds a design element—readers are invited to “make your own cartoon” by cutting out potential patients to place across from a note-taking therapist. Predicted most popular selection: the anthropomorphic screwdriver. … From a Susan Orlean piece, some of American Humane’s guidelines for the ethical treatment of animal actors: “no snakes being milked,” “no six-horse hitches in front of cannon fire,” and “no apes being asked to perform near an animatronic object or a costumed person such as a clown to which the apes had not been first allowed to become accustomed.”
Correction, Nov. 11, 2003: The article originally and incorrectly identified Sam Houston as an “Alamo hero.” Houston, in fact, was not at that battle. (Return to the corrected item.)
—Julia Turner also contributed to this column.
