The New Republic, Dec. 22 Three pieces on gay marriage focus on how judicial rulings affect public opinion and vice versa. … Jeffrey Rosen says the Massachusetts court decision that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry may “provoke an unnecessary political backlash.” The only way to avoid a constitutional same-sex marriage ban may be a retreat to Vermont-style civil unions. … Cass R. Sunstein argues that the court didn’t stray too far into activism, as “the ruling does not foreclose continuing debate within the state.” If the ruling holds up, and a constitutional ban fails, it will be because “Massachusetts voters do not fundamentally object to gay marriage.”… In a review of Evan Gerstmann’s Same-Sex Marriage and the Constitution, Judge Richard A. Posner says that rulings in Vermont and Massachusetts will allow public opinion to form based on “social experimentation,” far preferable to ” judicializing the issue” in a Supreme Court case.
Economist, Dec. 13 Obesity may be “the world’s biggest public health issue,” but that doesn’t mean governments should regulate what people eat. Taxing fatty foods might discourage consumption, but it would represent “an intrusion on liberty.” One potential way to relieve the state of the burden of fat: Make it legal to charge overweight people more for health insurance. … The Dominican Republic, which saw strong economic growth in the 1990s, lost 12 percent-15 percent of its GDP this year when the nation’s third-largest commercial bank came up $2.4 billion short on funds. The International Monetary Fund, though, shouldn’t dole out $600 million in loans to the inflation-ravaged country: Unpopular President Hipólito Mejía would only squander the money on trying to get himself re-elected.
Sports Illustrated, Dec. 15 Introducing the magazine’s stupendously boring choices for sportsmen of the year: Tim Duncan and David Robinson, NBA champions of six-months-ago. The selection of the towering Spurs, rivaled in milquetoastness only by 1987’s “athletes who care,” makes one wonder if a Jack McKeon, Dick Vermeil “rise of the old coaches” spread was rejected for generating too much excitement. The only possible explanation for the yawn-inducing picks: In June, Robinson was named the magazine’s “ambassador of sports.”… While baseball’s Negro Leagues have been well-documented, Daniel Coyle’s story on the New York Brown Bombers offers a rare look at segregation-era football. The Bombers, formed after a 1934 “gentlemen’s agreement” by NFL owners to not sign black players, took on all comers in Harlem’s Dyckman Oval, the first New York stadium to hold night games. By 1938, the field was a parking lot and the players had dispersed. The color barrier was finally broken eight years later.
New York Times Magazine, Dec. 14
The third annual “Ideas” issue parcels the latest tech marvels, political trends, and vicissitudes of pop culture into 67 bite-size chunks. Some observations are dubious—“young rock bands got critical points for aggressively copying styles” this year, but not in Strokes-era 2001?—and some have been covered ad nauseum. More interesting than pieces about Al Franken and Friendster, though, are the short profiles of “lone-wolf thinkers,” who the magazine claims were disproportionately influential in 2003. The highlights: a guy who flew over the English Channel wearing a 6-foot pair of carbon-fiber wings; a farmer who invented a “tornado in a can,” a mysterious contraption that can grind rocks and waste into fine powder; and an engineering professor who added pneumatic cylinders to his kid’s see-saw so he could harvest the energy.
National Review, Dec. 22 Richard Lowry thinks George W. Bush fans should beg the Democrats to “please nominate” the angry Howard Dean, who grimaces on the magazine’s cover. While the “hot, hot, hot candidate” has galvanized the party’s Bush-hating base, Dean is nothing but “sheer SOB-ness,” as seen in the “belligerent and irritated” mug on the candidate’s campaign signs and the “manic” tone of his stump speeches. The fiery ‘tude, while genuine, masks the candidate’s lack of substantive policy, which Lowry believes will bring about his downfall. Another bonus: Dean’s social skills represent the diametric opposite of GOP nemesis Bill Clinton—“If Clinton pledged to feel our pain, Dean promises to inflict some.”
Fortune, Dec. 8 Google is “a talented company facing trouble,” writes Fred Vogelstein. While it dominates Internet search, its corporate philosophy, to “make money without doing evil,” may backfire. Because it lacks “customer lock-in”—that is, there’s nothing to keep users from defecting if a better tool comes along—competitors like Yahoo! and Microsoft think there’s an opening for their upcoming search rollouts. Another potential bugaboo: Google’s corporate bureaucracy is indecipherable to potential investors—everyone seems to be a “project manager”—but CEO Eric Schmidt is loath to reorganize right before what could be a $2 billion IPO, the biggest in high-tech history. (Microsoft is Slate’s corporate parent.)
The New Yorker, Dec. 15 Seymour Hersh says a special forces group hunting insurgent Baathists evokes the Vietnam War’s Phoenix Program, in which thousands of supposed Viet Cong were assassinated based on the personal vendettas of informants. A special forces official warns that the freshly minted Task Force 121, conceived as U.S. firepower backed by Iraqi intel, must make sure it’s not “doing hits on grudges.”* Along with the potential for killing the wrong people, there’s also the possibility that a relaunched Iraqi intelligence network may not know anything about decentralized, tribe-based insurgencies. … Chuck Hoberman, inventor of engineering marvel-cum-best-selling-plaything the Hoberman Sphere, is the old-timey hero in John Seabrook’s tale of the decline of simple, inventive toys at the expense of microchip-enabled baubles. Though he’s seduced by the dark side, Hoberman redeems himself by rejecting the opportunity to create some kind of collapsible sphere in the visage of SpongeBob SquarePants.
Weekly Standard, Dec. 15 The magazine surprises itself—and an American public fired up by Newsweek’s anti-tort cover —in its defense of trial lawyers. Well, it’s actually a “sort of” defense. William Tucker says despite traditional alignment with the Democrats, anti-elitist, socially conservative litigators embody modern Republican values. Tucker’s counterintuitive analogy: Anticorporate trial attorneys resemble the robber barons who “made America into a healthier, safer, fairer place to live” yet “may require public restraint” on account of a tendency toward greed. … The editorial susses out which party is least patriotic. While Democrats chide President Bush for labeling the opposition unpatriotic, the president has “never uttered the word ‘unpatriotic’ in public in any context.” But, among other Dems, Al Sharpton has questioned Bush’s patriotism for putting “troops in harm’s way on a flawed policy,” and John Kerry has flown the P-flag regarding the administration’s permissiveness of offshore tax shelters.
Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 15 The war and the war on terror: U.S. News investigates the $70 billion that the Saudi government spent to spread Wahhabism, a fundamentalist brand of Islam. While much of the money went to salutary endeavors, state-sponsored charities also funneled hard-to-trace cash to terrorist groups. U.S. intelligence knew as much by 1996, the magazine reports, but Saudi contributions to influential government officials led to “a virtual embargo” on investigating these terror connections. … Time reporters ride along, often blindfolded, as Iraqi insurgents launch rockets at American helicopters and then scatter into fields. One guerrilla fighter brandishes what he identifies as a chemical-filled mortar, the stench of which “burns the nostrils,” according to one reporter. Though loose coalitions are growing more organized, it’s unclear how long Islamic fundamentalists and the more secular Fedayeen can get along. … Although Time says it’s unclear whether al-Qaida is involved in Iraq, Taliban sources tell Newsweek that Osama Bin Laden plans to divert men and materiel from Afghanistan to Iraq. Bin Laden, who reportedly believes Iraq represents the better opportunity to kill infidels, is quoted as saying, “I’m giving men who are thirsty a chance to drink deeply.”
Snake charmers:Newsweek’s cover story finds the threat of frivolous lawsuits hanging over Americans like an “anaconda in the chandelier.” The examples presented—sex offender gets frostbite while on the lam, threatens to sue police for not catching him fast enough—attempt to inspire outrage at society’s litigiousness but really just illustrate the extraordinary idiocy of certain sue-happy individuals. … And the positioning of John Edwards’ pro-trial companion essay after nine pages of pro-tort-reform rhetoric makes the trial lawyer and presidential candidate come off like a greedy dupe.
Boxing days:Newsweek reports on the latest Howard Dean mini-scandal: the 140 boxes of sealed records from his tenure as Vermont governor. To head off any potentially embarrassing findings, Dean had Ace Smith conduct a “vulnerability study” similar to one the researcher did for Bill Clinton in 1990. No word on whether either of Smith’s searches turned up anything on Gennifer Flowers.
Rolling Stone, Dec. 25 And for the latest John Kerry mini-mini scandal: the senator’s use of salty language in a Rolling Stone interview. But far more disturbing than Kerry saying he didn’t “expect George Bush to fuck [the Iraq war] up as badly as he did” are the other words the senator throws in to spice up conversation: “man” and “dude.” Man, your candidacy is going nowhere fast, dude.
Correction, Dec. 9, 2003: Originally, in The New Yorker item, Josh Levin attributed the quote, “doing hits on grudges,” to William Colby. A special forces official actually said that. (Return to corrected sentence.)
