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TNR Left Speechless

By Jeremy Derfner
Updated Friday, Nov. 10, 2000, at 9:00 PM ET

New York Review of Books

New York Review of Books, Nov. 30

A review examines the childlessness trend. Birthrates have plummeted since the 1960s as women have gained access to abortion and contraception. Many mothers decide to stay in the workplace and therefore tend to have fewer children. More adults remain unmarried and childless, largely because gays and lesbians who used to marry and raise families can now live openly as homosexuals. … A review blasts Arthur Herman's new Joe McCarthy biography, which attempts to rehabilitate the demagogue. Like McCarthy himself, Herman substitutes baseless attacks on his enemies (liberal historians) for well-considered argument. … An article advocates maintaining the strictest ethical standards in medical research abroad. A growing number of scientists want to loosen guidelines that require treating research subjects with the highest standards of care, even if those standards are unavailable in the country where the patient lives. Such guidelines reduce the effectiveness of studies and slow the development of treatments and vaccines, but others worry about the moral consequences of having two standards, one for Americans and one for, say, Ugandans.

New Republic

New Republic, Nov. 20

TNR is left speechless: a giant question mark on the cover. A piece wonders why Al Gore is such a bad campaigner. An earnest man, he cannot pretend to be normal under extremely abnormal circumstances. He especially hates the amateur psychoanalysis the press performs on his relationship with his father. … A piece describes how Democrats turned out the black vote in New Jersey. Black turnout has exploded in the 1990s and been decisive in many races. A small group of black political operatives has combined scientific targeting of low-turnout black Democratic voters with old-fashioned "knock and drag" tactics to draw blacks to the polls. … An article explains the symbolic significance of sovereignty over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. As Israelis and Palestinians move toward reconciliation on most of the practical issues that separate them, each side clings to the Temple Mount as the symbol of its historic right to Jerusalem. As the peace process moved forward generally, the sides moved further apart on this last-ditch sovereignty issue.

Economist

Economist, Nov. 11

An editorial calls for the preservation of the Electoral College system because "there is no such thing as a perfect electoral system" and the college "has mostly stood the test of time rather well." It also suggests that the upshot of the electoral uncertainty could be a "flowering of bipartisanship," as whoever is president seeks to bolster his legitimacy. … A piece reports that President Vladimir Putin has succeeded in repressing autonomous regional authority in Russia. He has appointed seven federal district envoys to seize power from the 100-odd local governors, and he has ended the automatic right of governors to sit in Russia's upper house of parliament.

New York Times Magazine

New York Times Magazine, Nov. 12

A special issue of behind-the-scenes Hollywood photographs. The highlights: Fifteen old casting-call Polaroids of future stars such as Ben Stiller, Jason Priestley, and a particularly unnerving Billy Bob Thornton; a series of snapshots of Kate Hudson getting gussied up for the New York premiere of Almost Famous; and a picture of a porno movie shoot.

Time and Newsweek

Time and Newsweek, Nov. 13

Variations on a theme. Time fronts the foster care crisis; Newsweek goes with the prison crisis. In the last five years, says Time, the number of kids in foster care has doubled to 550,000. Every year, about 7,500 are tortured by their foster parents. The bureaucracy is too small to run the necessary checks on foster parents, and the annual turnover of social workers tops 70 percent in some states. … Newsweek's counterintuitive conclusion: So many Americans are imprisoned that communities are actually less safe. When the imprisonment rate in a community tips past 1 percent, crime rates increase because family and social structure break down. Many young men view prison as a normal part of their lives, and some even enjoy it because it gets them back in touch with old friends.

A Time campaign piece calls presidential advertising bad television. With cheesy graphics, bad music, and terrible scripts, political ads pale next to the lamest sneaker commercial. The only new development in ads this year was the anti-negative negative spot, in which candidates blast their opponents for blasting them.

Newsweek criticizes Bush for being evasive about his DUI conviction but blasts those responsible for leaking the story. Bush has always told the story of his redemption but left out the details of his wild youth. Even so, last-minute dirty tricks don't belong in American elections. A Newsweek investigation finds no evidence that the Gore campaign had anything to do with the leaks. … A piece reports that Israel may increase the scale of violence in the occupied territories to force Yasser Arafat to rein in Palestinian militants. Israel was prepared to step up its attacks before it agreed to a cease-fire, a halt to violence that was promptly broken by a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem. Two unanswered questions: Is Arafat interested in stopping the violence, and could he stop it even if he wanted to?

U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News & World Report, Nov. 13

The cover story says Mormonism is one of the richest and fastest-growing religions in the world. Last year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opened 31 temples and won more than 300,000 converts. The reasons for its success: aggressive use of missionaries and a focus on family and the afterlife. If current trends continue, Mormonism will be the second-largest Christian denomination in the world by 2080. … An article describes the marketing dilemma facing Harley-Davidson: How does the company attract young buyers without ruining its hard-earned bad-boy reputation? It has launched a new brand, Buell, which it hopes will attract the younger, un-tattooed set without softening the classic Harley brand. So far, sales are up. … A piece examines the culture of martyrdom among young Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority encourages rock throwers to go to the front lines because they are good for PR when dead or wounded. Many families quietly try to keep their children home, but the Palestinian security apparatus denounces them as traitorous.

The New Yorker

The New Yorker, Nov. 13

An article visits the ground zero of Washington punditry, an office building on North Capitol Street where MSNBC, Fox News, C-SPAN, and the COX network have offices. Being a pundit is as close as journalists get to fame. A journalistic pecking order determines who goes on which shows. Stars can double and even triple up networks. … An article by a Peace Corps volunteer describes teaching British lit to Chinese college students. Despite their tendency to view the stories through the lens of Maoism (seeing Hamlet as a spokesman for the proletariat), they were in many ways better students than American undergraduates. They appreciated books for their literary beauty, which should be a lesson to analysis-obsessed American undergraduates. … A profile of 96-year-old George Kennan claims that in 50 years he will be known not as the father of containment but as the father of "tragic realism." He believes that geopolitics runs on humankind's baser passions and that it is dangerous for the United States to get involved in international conflicts. Kennan's legacy are his 18 books, which forcefully lay out a pessimistic vision for foreign policy that may prove sadly prescient.

Weekly Standard

Weekly Standard, Nov. 13

An article calls the Washington Post's Herblock the worst political cartoonist in America. He cannot draw caricatures, his politics are knee-jerk left, and he's not funny. He is revered only because Richard Nixon once admitted that Herblock's cartoons got to him. … A piece accuses Bill Clinton of selling out House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer on Social Security reform. He constantly assured Archer he would twist Democrats in line if only Archer took the lead on the issue. Clinton never did his part even though Archer was willing to face down his party.

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Jeremy Derfner is a former Slate editorial assistant.
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