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Strong LanguageA cover story on Cheney spices up its prose with four-letter words.

By Josh Levin
Updated Friday, Nov. 21, 2003, at 6:12 PM ET

New Republic, Dec. 1 and 8
The much fussed-over Dick Cheney gets the cover treatment from Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman. Since the piece's thesis—Cheney distorts the truth by fixating on the intel he wants to believe—has been covered elsewhere, the story is most notable for its profligate anonymous source sniping and cursing: The Office of the Vice President thinks the CIA are "fuckers," the CIA hates "that fucking John Hannah" and "[t]hat fucking Bill Luti," and Cheney himself "would just bitch and moan about the CIA and various parts of the world that they didn't know shit [about]." … Joshua Hammer's Baghdad dispatch offers a fascinating portrait of the terrorist rumor and innuendo floating around the city, and the private security firms that are cleaning up on the fear. The colorful details in the short piece—machine-gun-wielding Nepalese Gurkhas stand sentry over Kellogg, Brown & Root employees—deserve a lengthier presentation.

Economist, Nov. 22
The cover story on President Bush's meeting with Tony Blair dares to defend "those oh so guilty men." Protesters who demonize the leaders for disavowing the United Nations are nostalgic for an international order that never existed, and those who knock over effigies of Bush in imitation of the felling of Saddam belittle the suffering of the Iraqi people. … As the shopping season approaches worldwide, the department store is at a crossroads. Facing increased competition from discounters and the Internet, the Macy's and Bloomingdale's of the world are trying new strategies: creating their own brands, streamlining inventory, selling milk and juice. Selfridges, a London store, demonstrates the "showcase model." The store's promotional gambits include an in-store performance art piece called Body Craze "in which 600 naked people rode up and down its escalators." Sales are up 10.6 percent this year.

New York Times Magazine

New York Times Magazine, Nov. 23
Jennifer Egan's cover story cannily bypasses the typical pitfalls in articles about online dating: No anecdotes about neighbors meeting serendipitously online, no teeth-gnashing about security, and best of all, no sociologists discussing what we've learned about the habits of the young people. The details Egan does include—her main subject is a raffish Brooklyn hipster who has lots of sex; worried-over profiles evoke "the velvety, dogeared texture of beloved children's books"—evince a knowingness about the sleazy sincerity of it all. … Matt Bai's backstage hangout with the John Edwards debate team reveals a dour candidate, depressed about the pointlessness and vacuity of the sound bite circuit. That is, until he gets a really good sound bite. When Edwards pounces on Howard Dean for his Confederate flag remarks, the candidate seems so guilelessly happy that he comes off less hypocritical than, well, cute.

Weekly Standard

Weekly Standard, Nov. 24
Stephen F. Hayes says there's irrefutable evidence that Saddam and Osama were, at least at one time, brothers in arms. The Standard spills the beans on the beans spilled to them—a 50-point memo from Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Among the items: a 1993 ban on al-Qaida operations against Iraq, bomb-making training that Bin Laden received from an Iraqi expert in 1995 and 1996, and the 1998 recruitment of al-Qaida members by the Iraqi government "to sabotage U.S. and U.K. interests." Hayes reports that there's conflicting evidence as to whether they kept in touch after 1999, but he makes an unconvincing argument that the cloak-and-dagger nature of the Saddam-Osama connection means there's likely more evidence to be found. The fact that liquid paper covers Bin Laden's name on internal Iraqi intel, for example, doesn't necessarily reveal the abject secrecy of their contacts.

The New Yorker

The New Yorker, Nov. 24
A long, entrancing feature by George Packer offers a survey of postwar Iraq from multiple perspectives. There's an American captain who resolves petty disputes over fuel in the morning and searches for Fedayeen at night; an Iraqi student who wears a veil in fear of being murdered by fundamentalists; and a U.N. envoy killed by a car bomb soon after meeting the writer. The gestalt is one of gaping power vacuums, with neither Americans nor Iraqis sure what to do or whom to ask for help. The piece's most striking use of imagery: The briefly refurbished Baghdad Zoo, which sits in desolation two months after a drunk American soldier shot a Bengal tiger, combines "the cruelty and injustice of the old regime with some of the stupidity and carelessness of the new."

Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report

Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report, Nov. 24
Re-rebuilding Iraq: Everybody writes up the demand to hasten the transition to an Iraqi-led government. With U.S. credibility on the wane, Time reports that the message from the Bush administration to proconsul L. Paul Bremer was a curt "Let's get on with it." U.S. News plays a word association game: "Iraqification" calls to mind a word almost as loaded as quagmire—"Vietnamization." Newsweek notes that the shift to an "Afghan model" of government, which entails selection of delegates to a governing council by "notables" in 18 Iraqi provinces, is what neocon golden boy Ahmad Chalabi has wanted all along.

Parting shots: U.S. News marks the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination with an unenlightening Nov. 22, 1963, timeline. The president? Charismatic. The bullets? Sounded like a car backfiring. The first lady? Sad. Newsweek's JFK coverage includes the perennial call for the CIA to declassify all assassination-related documents, and the start of the fifth decade of Ben Bradlee's Camelot maintenance. The former Washington Post editor and Kennedy neighbor argues that the president's affair with a gangster's moll "doesn't have anything to do with who he truly was."

Long live Ned Ludd: Newsweek's stories on the frontiers of computing are strikingly less dewy-eyed than the typical newsmag tech wrap-up. A photo montage of a PC graveyard comes 10 pages after a story that presents, but ultimately discards, the unconvincing premise that we're in the "twilight of the PC era." And though cover boy Bill Gates is especially bullish on Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn operating system, he admits that the software giant erred in letting Google become associated with Web searches. (Microsoft is Slate's corporate parent.)

Career fare: Time haltingly announces that though not yet in boom times, America is in a "job thaw." The anecdote-driven cover package suggests that jobseekers consider nontraditional maneuvers like a move to Fayetteville, Ark., or starting up an online baby-stroller business. The page of suggested "cool gigs"—private investigator, video game tester, production assistant—seems like it sprung from the mind of an MTV-watching 60-year-old guidance counselor.

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Josh Levin is a Slate associate editor. You can e-mail him at .
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