Sports Illustrated, April 19
FormerNew York Times reporter Rick Bragg resurfaces with a literary profile (gray border around story = literary) of Mississippi State’s Sylvester Croom, the first African-American head football coach in the Southeastern Conference *. Bragg travels back and forth in time, interweaving praise for Croom from Mississippi white folks with the indignities he suffered in integration-era Alabama. Though Croom first insists that he doesn’t see his hiring as a landmark of the civil rights movement, he cries when recalling traumatic events in 1965 Selma. “And suddenly it very much matters that a black man is the head coach …” Bragg concludes with a flourish. “Because if it doesn’t matter, then what was all that suffering for?” (Read Slate’s Jack Shafer’s take on the “dateline toe-touch” that led to Bragg’s departure from the Times.)
The Economist, April 17
Wal-Mart’s behemoth superstores are spreading across the United States—and that’s a good thing for bargain-loving American consumers. “Wal-Mart did not single-handedly create out-of-town shopping, or America’s growing trade imbalance with China,” it just did a better job of taking advantage of market conditions than other corporations did. The only roadblocks in the company’s path: international expansion, and the diversion of resources to fighting litigation. … India may be on the verge of an AIDS epidemic—with 4.58 million people infected, it ranks second only to South Africa. The government’s commitment to public health must increase—most of India’s anti-AIDS funding comes from foreign governments and charities—and politicians must overcome their skittishness about promoting condom use.
New Republic, April 26
Reporting from Najaf, Joshua Hammer writes that the uprising by Shiite followers of Muqtada Sadr started because the coalition waited too long to defuse the radical cleric’s outsider appeal. After the 2003 murder of cleric Majid Al Khoie, which many blame on Sadr, the CPA could have defused his power or taken him into custody. Instead, they did nothing and watched his popularity and militia grow with discontent over the occupation. … Robert S. Leiken says al-Qaida is stepping up recruitment of fair-haired Western Europeans to evade post-9/11 surveillance of first-generation Arab immigrants. One French scholar says the subclass of converts who embrace extremism are part of “a very European tradition of identifying with a Third World cause.” Or they may just want to “stick it to their parents.”
New York Times Magazine, April 18
A piece on health-care reform by Hillary Rodham Clinton fronts a special medical issue. After starting with self-deprecation—“I know what you’re thinking. Hillary Clinton and health care? Been there. Didn’t do that!”—she argues, without offering much in the way of details, that savings wrought from information technology could start the U.S. on the road toward universal coverage. And while she says patients should keep their own medical records, Clinton dismisses individual health-care savings accounts as a “nationwide health-care casino in which you win or lose should illness strike you or someone in your family.”… Another article focuses on a 10-year-old Illinois girl who contracted monkeypox, a close relative of smallpox, in 2003. The response to the mini-outbreak—many doctors and nurses, especially those with children, demurred from treating the contagious patient—shows that the country could face a dearth of first responders in the event of a real public health crisis.
The New Yorker, April 19 and 26 The spring humor issue runneth over with entertainment: a long story on the depressing lives of aspiring stand-up comics, a profile of The Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder, a piece that reveals the secret lives of greeting-card writers, and a David Sedaris essay on how the Anne Frank house would make the perfect apartment. … Another article reveals the Farrelly brothers’ quest to create a feature-length Three Stooges movie. The Dumb and Dumber auteurs agonize over how to stay true to the spirit of the shorts and hold the audience’s attention and whether a wishbone should lodge in one or both of Larry’s nostrils. There’s also the chore of convincing Russell Crowe to play Moe. … Slate’s Jim Holt relates the history of blue humor and the academics who collect it. Gershon Legman, perhaps the most prodigious 20th-century dirty-joke scholar, collected 60,000 jokes and sorted them into categories like “the nervous bride,” “phallic brag,” and “water wit.”
New York Review of Books, April 29 Thomas Powers writes about the Iraq intelligence failures. Powers suggests inquiries focus on our secretive relationship with Britain; communications intended to skew intelligence to support the war; and the origins of the Iraq obsession. … Max Rodenbeck looks at new books on reformist Islam and finds the non-fundamentalist changes in the tradition are weak and transitional at best. The most open-minded intellectuals have little sway in the heartland because they write in English. … An essay on Palestine paints a wretched picture of conditions for Nablus residents—70 percent unemployment, random brutality at the hands of Israel’s army, simmering rage everywhere. The prospects for change, with Sharon intransigent, are grim unless Bush enthusiastically endorses the compromise-heavy Geneva Accord, which would establish a Palestinian state and force Palestine to recognize Israel’s right to exist.— S.G.
Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report, April 19
George Bush’s Vietnam? Last week’s escalation of the insurgency puts Iraq back on the front of all three newsweeklies. (Time and U.S. News use the same, if differently cropped, image of U.S. soldiers.) Newsweek’s cover story looks for parallels between the wars in Iraq and Vietnam. While Iraq has become an “open-ended war for vague or shifting strategic aims on behalf of an ungrateful, if not incomprehensible people,” the U.S. lost up to 500 soldiers a week in Vietnam, while since major combat operations ended last May 1 less than 500 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq. A better comparison may be Israel’s protracted engagement in Lebanon in the 1980s, which featured religious factionalism, bombings, and kidnappings. … Time says U.S. troops have had to recalibrate for city combat: Communication is tougher and unmanned drones and low-flying helicopters can provide only nominal support. The magazine also reports that the U.S. fears that Iran’s al-Quds security force will join the insurgency.
The young one: U.S. News finds similarities between radical cleric Muqtada Sadr, who fomented last week’s Shiite rebellion, and Saddam Hussein. Sadr, who “prides himself on being a thug,” built a militia from the “lowest of the low,” the poor, disaffected Shiites of Sadr City, just as Saddam stocked the Baath Party with the rural poor. … Time compares Sadr’s “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” to the Taliban’s strictures against alcohol, music, and Western clothing. … A source tellsNewsweek thatthe “relatively unimportant but noisy junior cleric” Sadr may be 25 rather than 31 and “just trying to pretend he’s older.” The piece also notes that Sadr has actively cultivated the media by sending out press releases.
Painful operations: Time asks whether expectant mothers are becoming “too posh to push.” One in four American children are now born via C-section, the highest number ever recorded, and 22 percent of those operations are elective. Obstetricians are divided over whether women should have the right to choose a C-section when it’s not medically necessary, but many are opting for the surgery because a vaginal birth carries a higher risk of a malpractice suit. …U.S. News follows The New Yorker and National Review in spotlighting the Republican senatorial primary in Pennsylvania, where moderate Arlen Specter is facing a strong challenge from conservative Rep. Pat Toomey. All of the magazines peg the race as an important indicator of whether the GOP will be a “big tent” party with room for the pro-choice, anti-Bork Specter or whether the early success of the antitax, antispending Toomey augurs a return to steadfast conservative principles.
Correction, April 19, 2004: In the original version of the write-up of Sports Illustrated, the word “football” was omitted in the discussion of Mississippi State’s Sylvester Croom. Croom is the first African-American head football coach in the Southeastern Conference. Return to the corrected sentence.
—Sian Gibby also contributed to this column.
