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Why Are We in Colombia?

By Jeremy DerfnerUpdated Thursday, Nov. 23, 2000, at 2:30 AM ET

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Harper's, December 2000
The first-person cover story recounts the 2000 World Series of Poker, in which the author won $247,760. A weekend player, he trained intensely for a year to match up with the greats: T.J. Cloutier, a curmudgeonly former football player who wrote the poker bible; Steve Kaufman, a rabbi and professor of Semitic languages; and Jesus Ferguson, the inscrutable mystery man with the ZZ Top beard who secretly loves ballroom dancing and has a Ph.D. in computer science. The author is down to his last $2,200 in the early rounds before he storms back and finishes fifth, losing only because of an unlucky draw. … An article describes the folly of American involvement in the Colombian civil war. If intervention does hinder cocaine production in Colombia, then bordering countries will pick up the slack, and the guerrillas will respond to American efforts with more terrorism. Although they fight in the name of the Colombian people, the guerrilla armies make money by kidnapping hundreds for ransom, and now many Colombians openly support the peace movement, known desperately as "NO MÁS."

New York Times Magazine New York Times Magazine, Nov. 26
The cover story describes Otpor, the Serbian student movement that brought down Slobodan Milosevic. Otpor attracted huge numbers of young people by channeling their social isolation into protest. Using American money and advisers, the movement taught its members nonviolent resistance. When Milosevic used violence to repress Otpor, many of his former supporters turned against him. … A piece blasts the recent Grinch movie and Seussical musical for sapping the real Dr. Seuss of his nuance and wonder. Dr. Seuss captured the childhood struggle between freedom and reliance on parental control, between anarchy and morality. The new Hollywood productions turn children into saints, which is exactly what Dr. Seuss understood they are not. … An article profiles William Clay Ford Jr., the flaky environmentalist who also serves as chairman of Ford Motor Co. His willingness to work with environmental activists has angered old Detroit but earned rave reviews from the media. He even has plans to build a new plant with a 12-acre roof of native grasses where birds can nest. But his good-guy public image has suffered during the Firestone recall, a problem he mostly ignored, letting CEO Jacques Nasser take the fall.

Time and Newsweek, Nov. 27

Another pair of election covers. … Time contrasts how the candidates are dealing with the election struggle. Gore relishes the fight and has been organizing the Democratic strategy, converting his living room into a war room, and barraging aides with e-mail. Bush is letting James Baker and Dick Cheney handle it, and he checks in with them from his ranch a few times a day. … Newsweek notes the same lethargy in the Bush camp but points out that Republicans finally fought back over the weekend with their strong allegations about disenfranchising overseas military voters.

Newsweek revises the prevailing wisdom that the Israelis and Palestinians were close to peace at Camp David. In fact, the final status talks about Jerusalem showed how far apart the sides were. A proposal from Ehud Barak to build a small synagogue on the Temple Mount enraged Yasser Arafat and indicated that though Barak was willing to compromise, he did not truly grasp the sensitivity of the issue. … An article reports that the U.S. auto industry is preparing for a downturn. The Nasdaq plunge has made consumers nervous and less willing to buy new cars, and German and Japanese manufacturers are cutting into the SUV, minivan, and truck markets. Analysts worry that the auto slump could spark a recession.

U.S. News & World Report, Nov. 27

The cover story focuses on the more farcical aspects of the Florida chaos, calling Secretary of State Katherine Harris "either Joan of Arc or the Eva Peron of Florida" and comparing her makeup to Monica Lewinsky's beret. The media, continually flogged by watchdogs for focusing on the horse race instead of the issues, now have only the horse race to cover, and the ratings have never been better … A piece reports on a new survey showing that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons 281 times when repressing Kurds in 1987-88. The exposed Kurds suffer cancer rates 10 times the Middle East average, but U.N. sanctions prevent them from receiving adequate health care.

The New Yorker, Nov. 27

The Digital Issue contains the best piece ever about dot-com absurdity. The writer showed up one day at a New York startup, took a desk, claimed to be a "junior project manager," and spent three weeks pretending to work without anyone noticing he did not belong. His name got on phone lists, he held fake "meetings" with friends, and he survived a round of firings. … An article profiles Loch Ness Monster hunters. Bob Rines, an 80-year-old inventor and lawyer who claims to have seen the monster in 1972, has opened a permanent Loch Ness search station and over the years has tried to lure the monster with marine-animal sex hormones and camera-outfitted dolphins. Adrian Shine is a local who spent hours submerged in Loch Ness in a clear pod, only to become convinced that there was no monster after all. He organized a 30-boat search team to prove the monster did not exist, and though his expedition found what it was looking for—nothing—people like Rines still believe they have seen the creature. … A piece debunks the myth that computers are revolutionizing American productivity. In fact, people work more hours than ever before because they can take their work with them wherever they go, and the businesses that have invested most heavily in technology (wholesale and retail trade; finance, insurance, and real estate; and business services) have grown more slowly than the rest of the economy. And the computer leads to as much dawdling as productivity. A recent study of IBM workers showed word-processed letters are modified five times as much as handwritten ones, with no discernible difference in the quality of the product.

Weekly Standard, Nov. 27

The editorial—titled "The Gore Coup"—alleges that "Democratic ultraloyalists" padded Gore vote totals "in the middle of the night on November 8" so that the automatic recount would make the race close enough for more legal wrangling. … An article argues that Clinton fatigue cost Gore Florida (if indeed Gore winds up losing Florida). Across the country, Gore scored points on Social Security, but in Florida, voters 60 years old and older broke for Bush because they hate Clinton so much. Had those Florida voters joined the rest of the country in surging for Gore during the last week of the campaign, Gore would have been elected in Florida going away. … A piece says the Democrats' defamation of Katherine Harris combines the tactics they used to assault Kenneth Starr and Linda Tripp during Clinton's impeachment. Like Starr, Harris is accused of being a political hack who is abusing a government office for partisan advantage. Like Tripp, she is caricatured as an ugly and impossibly ambitious witch.

National Review, Dec. 4

The anti-Gore cover headline: "Thou Shalt Not Steal." A piece points out that Bush won 2,434 counties to Gore's 677 and 2,427,039 square miles to Gore's 580,134. It argues that true federalism, as the Founders intended it, would provide for an Electoral County College and calls the coastal metropolises where Gore performed well "debauched dystopias that the rest of us can visit for wild weekends every now and again before returning to our homes in solid, enduring, conservative … America." … A piece calls Jonathan Alter, the Newsweek writer and sometime NBC pundit, the "next Sid Blumenthal." Throughout the campaign he savaged Bush and treated Gore with kid gloves, and on Election Night he made a big deal out of Gore's popular vote victory even though it had no legal significance. … An article laments the loyalty of black voters to the Democratic Party. Gore won 90 percent of the black vote (compared to 84 percent for Clinton in '96) because he pandered to the black community's "victimology." Democratic candidates keep black voters placated by finding racism in everything Republicans do, and as a result blacks remain trapped in the "racism-forever view."

Atlantic Monthly, December 2000

A piece casts doubt on the theory that "crypto-Jews" of Spanish descent still live in New Mexico. Aided by the state historian in the early '80s, a few local Hispanos started collecting evidence of their Jewish heritage. (They played with dreidel-like toys as children and slaughtered animals in the kosher style, for instance.) But new research shows they are probably descended from members of the Church of God (Seventh Day), a Protestant sect that sent missionaries to Mexico City early in the 20^th century. … An article examines apotemnophilia, the phenomenon of physically healthy people who feel psychologically compelled to have their limbs amputated. Apotemnophilia is not as rare as it would seem, and several doctors believe in performing the amputations as a way to relieve inner pain. But it's possible that by recognizing apotemnophilia, doctors are inadvertently encouraging the spread of the condition.

New Republic, Nov. 27

The cover story explains how the Democrats won the recount war on the ground. They were prepared for a recount before Election Day and had a full staff in place Wednesday, training Democratic observers on the finer points of pregnant chad. … A piece urges the Supreme Court to stay out of the presidential fray. The last time it got involved with presidential politics, in 1876, its impartiality was tainted by the inherent partisanship of the two-party system. If the judicial system must intervene, then the Florida State Supreme Court is the only proper authority. … The "Notebook" section prints "separated at birth" photos: Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and rocker Ozzy Osborne.

Economist, Nov. 18

A piece argues that the cordial relations between France and Germany—the backbone of the European Union—are fraying over petty issues, such as whose general leads the EU rapid-response force and whether France will continue to treat German toxic waste. The squabbling could derail progress on significant matters, such as expansion of the EU east to Poland. … A piece suggests that bioterrorism is not a major threat. Alarmists call it the poor man's nuclear war, but only the most sophisticated terrorist organizations could master the complicated process of launching a biological weapons attack. Most countries that experimented with biological warfare in the 1970s eventually gave up because the results were discouraging.

Foreign Policy, November/December 2000

An article analyzes the world sushi market as an example of cultural and economic globalization. Bluefin tuna now links the economies of New England, Spanish fishing villages, and Tokyo. When the Japanese economy tanked in the early 1990s, sushi was popular enough around the world to save tuna-fishing New Englanders from ruin. … A piece debunks the myth of a global economy race to the bottom. NGOs and unions say globalization will encourage companies to pollute and to exploit workers in order to stay cheap and competitive, but the facts don't bear out their predictions. Companies keep standards high to woo the best workers in developing countries, and open markets, not closed markets, allow for the kind of global scrutiny that ensures decent working conditions.