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

Long GoodbyeSpalding Gray's troubled years before his disappearance.

By Josh LevinUpdated Friday, Jan. 30, 2004, at 2:14 PM ET

New York Magazine, Feb. 2
Alex Williams' cover story documents what are likely the final years in the life of actor Spalding Gray, who disappeared this month after last being seen on the Staten Island Ferry. After an incapacitating car accident in June 2001, Gray became chronically depressed and often talked of suicide. Friends say it wasn't always easy to tell when Gray was delusional—his monologues included tales of "having a psychic surgeon pull porcupine needles out of your eyes"—but once doctors discovered brain trauma that had been masked by the depression, his prognosis seemed to improve. Gray's wife thinks Big Fish, the movie about a yarn-spinning, dying father that Gray saw with his sons on the day of his disappearance, may have given him "permission to die."

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New Republic, Feb. 9
The cover story is a slightly tweaked version of Ryan Lizza's online Campaign Journal. … Masha Gessen says that American journalists are taking Russia's state-controlled news at face value and missing the real story—that the country's democratic principles are slowly eroding. The latest treacherous step: December's iffy elections that saw United Russia, a party that harbors "extreme nationalists and bigots," gain two-thirds of the seats in the Duma. … John Kerry claims that he foresaw 21^st-century terrorism in his 1997 book The New War are hogwash, says Michael Crowley. While Kerry did say that "one mega-terrorist event in any of the great cities of the world [will] change the world in a single day," he was warning about the perils of international criminal networks like the Japanese yakuza rather than Islamic fundamentalism and Osama Bin Laden, who doesn't merit a mention.

Economist, Jan. 31
As with TNR, John Kerry makes the cover for the second week in a row. Kerry "not only looks the part of a president, with his lanky frame and Mount Rushmore profile. He acts like one as well." The Dems' best bet: a Kerry-Edwards ticket, with the "southern populist balancing the Yankee patrician." … Mongolia's Eastern Steppe, a "remarkable place of birch forests, river-willows, the rare Eurasian otter and the Urassian moose," is now being threatened by a proposed bridge for "eco-tourists." Baloney, say environmentalists: "The busiest users of a bridge are likely to be Chinese poachers." … The most popular selection in southern Sudan's only bookshop: Jerome K. Jerome's 19^th-century British farce Three Men in a Boat. Why would a region scarred by civil war embrace a "comedy about chaps in red-and-orange blazers"? Probably because the selection-starved store got 20 copies of the novel from its Ugandan supplier.

New York Times Magazine, Feb. 1
Roger Lowenstein blames the collapse of cable conglomerate Adelphia on banks and lenders that looked the other way as the Rigas family, including the founder and the CEO, used company funds as "a sort of A.T.M." But for all the complicity of financial institutions, the family is probably at fault for diverting millions to a golf course and the Buffalo Sabres hockey team. … David Rieff's piece on the political consequences of a Shiite-dominated Iraq offers a good companion to Jon Lee Anderson's story in this week's New Yorker. Though "a slow-motion Islamicization" is taking root in the Shiite south, "Khomeinist" calls of radicals like Moqtadah al-Sadr for clerical rule have so far been largely rejected. The wild card: the typically moderate and pro-American cleric Ali al-Sistani, who stepped out of character by calling for protests against the coalition's indirect caucus plan for Iraqi elections.

The New Yorker, Feb. 2
Jon Lee Anderson says Shiite cleric Abdulaziz al-Hakim could be "Iraq's next President—if he survives that long." Hakim is backed by Shiite Badr brigades, local coalitions of armed men who have assumed a pre-eminent role in local defense since the Iraqi army was disbanded. Anonymous Sunni insurgents disagree on whether they would oppose a democratically elected Shiite government, but Anderson—and Hakim—believe antipathy for the coalition occupation "transcends ethnic and religious loyalties." … Amy Wallace pens a fun profile of Larry Cohen, Hollywood's "king of high-concept." He's the polar opposite of fellow scribe Robert McKee, the screenwriting guru lampooned in Adaptation: While Cohen has sold hundreds of shlocky scripts, he hasn't gotten much acclaim for his talents. His latest ideas: a "supernatural drama" about a hospital for witches and werewolves and a show about an ex-boxer who solves crimes, but will be killed instantly if he gets punched.

Weekly Standard, Feb. 2
William Tucker argues that while John Edwards took on some important cases as a trial lawyer, his prior career taught him that "large institutions can be blamed for everything" and will leave the Democratic candidate without a "recipe for dealing with the larger world." … Andrew Ferguson mocks pretty boy Edwards (he's waiting for someone to compare the senator to "Timmy in Lassie") and his "search for ballast" in his hometown of Seneca, S.C. The campaign shoots a commercial at the candidate's shabby childhood home, but neighbors say the Edwards clan only lived there for a year before relocating to "a nice house up by the hospital." … Stanley Kurtz says Scandinavia is the test case that proves same-sex marriage weakens heterosexual bonds. Since Denmark, Sweden, and Norway legalized gay marriage, increased rates of cohabitation by unmarried couples with children show "the belief that individual choice trumps family form."

GQ, February 2004
In a similar fashion to George Packer's long New Yorker piece of two months ago, Devin Friedman takes a four-part look at the American occupation of Iraq. Though a section on Paul Bremer falls flat, Friedman's flashy prose better serves the madcap tenor of the piece's other segments. One strand features jaded National Guardsmen—they were supposed to leave in July but got lost in the bureaucratic shuffle—who save digital pictures with names like "another dead guy.jpg" to document their brief engagements with the enemy. Two members of the battalion are forbidden from talking to the media or using the Internet because they married Iraqis. Another episode covers enterprising businessmen who came to Baghdad with $30,000 in cash and have made over a million dollars in three months by becoming, among other things, "the Kinko's of Baghdad." Then there's the story of a young, heavy-metal-loving Iraqi who joins up with American troops as a translator and gets murdered for being a collaborator as his father stands a few blocks away.

Vanity Fair, February 2004
While a recent U.S. News profile claimed that John Ashcroft is "not the guy everyone thinks he is," Judy Bachrach says the CW on the attorney general pretty much hits the mark—he's an evil religious zealot. While U.S. News claimed that colleagues "have never even seen him pray," Bachrach sets the scene at a "devotional gathering" attended by several Justice Department employees where the pious Ashcroft announces that his wife got a free airline ticket because "God is working for her." Another contrast: U.S. News criticizes those who fold all of the AG's policies into the Patriot Act; Bachrach, on the other hand, pretty much does just that, reserving special animus for the use of the act in non-terrorism cases. Possible explanation for the difference in tone: Ashcroft sat for an interview with U.S. News but rebuffed VF.

U.S. News & World Report, Time, and Newsweek U.S. News & World Report, Time, and Newsweek, Feb. 2
Eye on November: All three newsmagazines come to the epiphany that Democratic voters "just want somebody who can win." But what, exactly, is "electability"? "I am more electable because I know what it's like to grow up in a working-class family," John Edwards tells Newsweek, while John Kerry, whose campaign was "anesthetized by his lordly demeanor" in 2003, counters that great presidents like FDR and JFK came from upper-class backgrounds. … Time notes that for Kerry, whose motorcycle riding, guitar playing photo-ops reek of fake fun, the "consolation out of Iowa was that maybe it didn't matter if he wasn't all that likable if he's what voters think they need."

Eye on next week: The newsmags also note that Feb. 3's South Carolina primary (with apologies to D.C.) is the first to feature a substantial African-American electorate. Al Sharpton, whose retail politicking in the state has been unmatched by the other candidates, might do well in the state. … Potential Kerry roadblocks: a limited presence in Oklahoma and South Carolina, where a phone message in his HQ highlights a fund-raiser from last year. … Potential Dean boosts: his campaign claims 21,000 Arizona Deaniacs requested ballots before his recent dive, and "teams of laptop-toting union reps" have been signing up voters in Michigan, the only state with online primary ballots.

Terror, terror, everywhere: Newsweek says the insurgency in Iraq "is self-replicating, like a virus, through the vengeance of brothers, sons, cousins and nephews." Troops in one battalion, experienced in domestic squabbles, now call the raids "Jerry Springers." … The "megadatabase" of terrorist names, due in December, is only 20 percent complete, according to U.S. News. Many IT experts wonder what's the holdup since the list, with information from multiple intelligence agencies, could be created with off-the-shelf software.

Pills, pills, pills: Time's cover story says powerful Washington lobbyists have made big pharma America's most profitable industry. Because of a ban on negotiating for better deals, Medicare pays $761 million more per year on prescriptions than wholesale prices. The magazine also blames the FDA for warning about the safety of cheaper Canadian drugs when there's been no evidence that medication from north of the border is a health hazard.