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Table of Contents
a fine whine
explainer
Explainer's Same-Sex-Marriage Roundup
explainer
The Evergold State
Thanksgiving? No Thanks!
ad report card
explainer
Explainer's Pirate Roundup
I Hate You, Blue-Tux-Wearing Viagra Guy!
Advanced Search
family
Why Is Obama Our First Black President?
books
fighting words
Florence Nightingale's Fever
Serving the Clintonian Interest
books
food
How To Read the Quran
Don't Wet-Brine Your Turkey. Do Stir-Fry Your Sweet Potatoes.
chatterbox
foreigners
Premature Reassurance
Can Hillary Clinton Succeed?
corrections
foreigners
Corrections
Obama's Next Arab Headache
culturebox
foreigners
I Vant To Upend Your Expectations
Still Waiting for Chinese Democracy
culturebox
foreigners
The J. Crew Catalog Destroyed My Spirit
War of Words
day to day
gabfest
A Dog's Life
The Quaker Meeting Gabfest
dear prudence
hot document
Fell in Love With a Girl
Eric Holder and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
dear prudence
human nature
The Devil, They Say
Running Hard
drink
human nature
The Long, Slow, Torturous Death of Zima
Return of the Neanderthals
drink
human nature
What To Drink on Thanksgiving
Children of the Clones
explainer
jurisprudence
Are Private Jets Safer Than Commercial Airliners?
Eat the Loan Sharks!
explainer
jurisprudence
The Turkey-Industrial Complex
Forgiving and Forgetting
explainer
jurisprudence
The Off-White House
I Beg Your Pardon
explainer
lifehacking
Explainer's Wildfire Roundup
Luddite in Chief
explainer
moneybox
The Globavore's Dilemma
Ills de la Citi
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
1/99
moneybox
shopping
Don't Get Depressed, It's Not 1929
Mmm … Turk'y
moneybox
slate v
The Un-Paulson
Dear Prudence: Manipulative Cashier
movies
slate v
Throw Another Cliché on the Barbie
Fowl Ball: The Palin Turkey-Farm-Interview Outtakes
movies
slate v
Twilight
Musical Numbers: Bonds
music box
sports nut
Doppelgänger Pop
In Praise of Kissing Your Sister
music box
technology
Welcome to the Jumble
Kill Your Telephone
other magazines
television
One Is Not the Loneliest Number
Most Viewed
other magazines
television
America's Checkup
18 Million People Watch NCIS
poem
the audio book club
"The White Skunk"
The Audio Book Club on The Great Gatsby
politics
the chat room
Do You Want Gravy on Your Palin?
iPhoning It In
politics
the green lantern
Charity Case
Trains vs. Planes vs. Automobiles
politics
today's business press
Obama's Reagan Democrats
Fed's License To Print Money
politics
today's papers
Obama's White House, Clinton's Team
Time To Help the Average Joe
politics
today's papers
Partners in Pink Underwear
Obama's Team Gets To Work
politics
today's papers
The Underminer?
Fight To Save Citi
politics
today's papers
Dingell Buried
Barack the Builder
recycled
today's papers
When Do Soldiers Face Execution?
Filling Up the Cabinet
recycled
today's papers
Doctors' Fees
Economy Crashes, Washington Watches
rural life
today's papers
Holy Cow!
Panic Grips Wall Street
Science
war stories
Honk if You Know Why You're Honking
Beware Rumsfeld's Snow Job
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
2/99
war stories
Serious People
well-traveled
Life Classes
xx factor xxtra
Lose-Lose on Abortion
a fine whine
Thanksgiving? No Thanks!
Why food writers secretly hate the November feast.
By Regina Schrambling
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 4:17 PM ET
As a food writer, I should never admit this, but I really hate
Thanksgiving. Not the day, not the food, not the cooking or the
shopping, not even the sappy reason Americans ostensibly
gather to gorge in late November. What makes me totally crazy
is the persistent pressure to reinvent a wheel that has been going
around quite nicely for more than 200 years. Every fall, writers
and editors have to knock themselves out to come up with a
gimmick—fast turkey, slow turkey, brined turkey, unbrined
turkey—when the meal essentially has to stay the same. It's like
redrawing the Kama Sutra when readers really only care about
the missionary position.
The first recipe story I ever sold, 25 years ago, was pegged to
Thanksgiving—a piece on ways to use cranberries besides the
inevitable sauce, as if anyone would want them anywhere near
steak or salad or anything but turkey. And it's been downhill
ever since. I've done a healthful Thanksgiving, budget
Thanksgiving, lavish Thanksgiving, ethnic Thanksgiving
(Chinese sausage in rice dressing, anyone?), even the "real" first
Thanksgiving (a re-creation of a Spanish event out in El Paso,
Texas). Just in the last six years, I wrote on turkey at 33 rpm
(ways to keep people at the table longer), turkey in a hurry (the
whole meal, supermarket to dishwasher, whipped up at the last
minute), turkey in a covered roaster (a revolution in
Speckleware), appetizers that won't spoil your appetite, and a
menu for an "after-party" using the turkey leftovers. I should
have known the well was dry when I was persuaded to write an
overwrought ode to the color of cranberries for the L.A. Times'
wannabe literary turkey section last Thanksgiving.
During my short time as deputy editor of the New York Times'
"Dining" section, the pain was different. Rather than writing the
damn stories, I had to help generate ideas for the poor reporters
to wrestle with. The general groaning started in early October as
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
we all contemplated the worst deadline of the year. Christmas
(and every other holiday) was a piece of fruitcake by
comparison. Even at Easter, cooks have a choice between ham
and lamb, and anything goes in the basket.
We whip ourselves into a lather trying to make Thanksgiving
trendy, but no one really wants to mess with the hoariest menu.
In a country that worships sickening candied yams under
marshmallows, I know that almost no one will try something like
sweet potatoes Anna—a gratin of thin slices layered with thyme,
Aleppo pepper, and lots of butter. I can angst over a new recipe
for shredded Brussels sprouts with fancy-pants pistachio oil and
know for certain that most tables will be disgraced by green bean
casserole with onions from a can. I can't begin to count the
number of alternatives to cranberry sauce I have developed—
salsa, chutney, whatever—yet most cooks will blithely follow
the recipe on the Ocean Spray bag (which is actually pretty hard
to beat). The more we make ourselves insane in mucking with
the classics, the nuttier we make our audience. Every story
purporting to take the stress out of the day actually reinforces the
notion that the easiest feast of the year is the most harrowing.
When you think about it, Thanksgiving is not so different from a
roast chicken dinner with sides. You can't screw it up; there are
too many saving graces for even an under- or overcooked turkey.
But that's not the message anyone absorbs from all the
magazines and newspapers with their absurdly perfect birds
garnished with overkill.
I guess I'm a total hypocrite, though, because I do the work I'm
assigned each year and then get up on Thanksgiving morning
and ignore everything I wrote. I make my stuffing as usual, roast
my turkey as always, whisk up the same pan gravy, peel and
mash potatoes, don't get fancy with the cranberry sauce, and
cook whatever green vegetable looks best at the farmers' market.
If I have time this year I'll make pumpkin-thyme dinner rolls and
the sweet potato-pecan pie I have baked 20 times before. It's
amazing how efficient you can be without new recipes. And if
I'm thankful, it's because it will be months before it's time to
tweak the turkey yet again.
ad report card
I Hate You, Blue-Tux-Wearing Viagra
Guy!
Web video ads are annoying and repetitive. Here's how to fix them.
By Farhad Manjoo
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 5:20 PM ET
Last week, I logged onto 60 Minutes' Web site to watch Barack
Obama's first post-election interview. About 20 minutes into the
show, the screen faded to a commercial: A middle-aged man is
digging through his attic when he comes across a box marked
3/99
"wedding stuff." A mischievous smile crosses his face, and next
thing you know he's decked out in his old powder-blue tuxedo,
skipping downstairs to present his still-dishy wife with a bouquet
of roses. Yes, this was an ad for Viagra. For the next 45 seconds,
the couple danced around their house while an announcer
warned of the dangers of drug interactions and four-hour
erections. While they engaged in safe-for-work foreplay, I
switched over to my e-mail.
The first problem is variety. Advertisers like to buy up a whole
show's worth of commercials (as Pfizer did with 60 Minutes),
but many times they don't produce enough different spots to fill
up the block. This is partly for budgetary reasons. The Web is a
new medium, and for many advertisers it's an afterthought to
TV. The ads that companies put up on the Web are
bastardizations—longer or shorter versions of 30-second spots
first created for the tube.
Eventually, Steve Kroft returned with 15 more minutes of the
Obama interview. Then another commercial: A middle-aged
man is digging through his attic when he comes across a box
marked "wedding stuff." Mischievous smile, powder-blue tux,
roses, dancing, four-hour erection. By now I'd committed some
of the ad's signature lines to memory, making a mental note to
ask my doctor whether my heart is healthy enough for sex.
Finally, 60 Minutes returned. A few closing thoughts from
Obama and then, just before Andy Rooney, one more ad break.
Mischievous smile, powder-blue tux, roses, dancing, four-hour
erection.
For instance, consider Research in Motion. The manufacturer of
the BlackBerry is a huge online advertiser, but the company has
produced only a handful of Web ads. In each one, various
unobjectionable pictures and logos depicting suburban life—kids
playing ball, dogs running, happy people on vacation—all meld
together to form a BlackBerry phone. What the announcer says
next should not really offend anyone; rendered in print, the
words look innocent: "Connect to everything you love in life
with BlackBerry." But trust me. Hear that phrase three or four
dozen times and it begins to take on an air of menace. You
become attuned to the precise, demonic intonation in the voiceover. Am I paranoid to think that the announcer is laughing at
me—is she having a good time taunting me with the same nearly
meaningless phrase over and over and over again? I think I've
seen this ad roughly 17,000 times; it ran relentlessly in an
episode of The Office I recently watched on Hulu. It does not
endear BlackBerry to me.
At this point, I hated everything about priapic blue-tux guy. I
hated his self-satisfied grin as he struck an Elvis pose for his
wife, I hated that she couldn't see him for the sex fiend he
obviously was (why had he taken the blue pill if he'd only been
planning on cleaning the attic?), and I hated that he'd helped
lodge a stupid erectile-dysfunction jingle in my brain ("Vivaaaaaa Vi-agra!"). Most of all, though, I hated Pfizer's sales
tactics. Why did the company believe that I was a ripe candidate
for Viagra? And worse, why did it think that the best way to sell
me the drug was to repeat the same ad three times, as if my real
problem weren't erectile dysfunction but, rather, some kind of
cognitive deficit that prevented me from understanding its
message the first time. By the time the announcer told me for the
third time that old couples "have a groovy thing goin' on," I'd
had enough. Next time I get aroused while cleaning the attic, I'll
reach for Cialis.
Pfizer and 60 Minutes aren't alone in this ad-repetition business.
More than a year ago, I canceled my cable subscription, figuring
I could get all the TV I needed through Netflix and the Web.
This has worked out well enough: These days, you can find just
about every prime-time show on Hulu or one of the networks'
Web sites. There's only one problem: The ads are driving me
crazy. Sure, I'm thrilled that there are fewer ads on the Web than
on television, where every hourlong program is padded with
about16 minutes of commercials. On the Web, I'm served only
two or three minutes of ads per show, but those few minutes are
often excruciating. Online video ads are repetitive, banal,
completely unsuited to the speed and tone of the Web, and—for
a medium rich with personalization—often clueless about my
interests and tastes. The ads haven't made me turn away from
Web video, but they do frequently sour me on the products and
services being advertised.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Some of this repetition is by design. Anthony Soohoo, CBS
Interactive's senior vice president for entertainment, told me that
advertisers choose to air the same ad many times during Web
shows in an effort to boost effectiveness. This logic sounds like
a holdover from the past: On TV, where any given spot is
squeezed in among other ads for different companies, repeating
a message may help break through the noise. But on the Web
you rarely see two different ads side by side—there's often just
one commercial per break. When an ad stands alone, everything
about it becomes more noticeable. And if the ad sucks, having it
stand out isn't a good thing. I'm sure I've seen commercials for
Totino's Pizza Rolls on TV and never scrutinized them closely.
But it took just two Web viewings for me to recognize that "The
pizza way to snack!" is perhaps the laziest ad copy ever written.
The shame about all this is that the Web should allow for much
more creativity than TV. The Internet lets advertisers track a
viewer like me over time, noting which programs and ads I
watch and which I ignore—technology that, in theory, should let
companies show me ads tailored to my general tastes.
Advertisers can also break with TV conventions. Instead of
running three minute-long Viagra ads during 60 Minutes, Pfizer
could have aired six 30-second spots in sequence, perhaps telling
a story—of desire, loss, sadness, epiphany, and finally
rejuvenation—over the course of the commercial breaks. If done
well, this conceit would keep people watching; for Viagra,
especially, advertising on the Web might be liberating, allowing
for messages that are more suggestive and risqué than Pfizer
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could ever get away with on TV. And such creativity doesn't
come at a steep price. Audiences on the Web are used to low-fi
video, found footage, and allusions to other stuff online.
Corporations might take a page from the Obama campaign,
which ran many cheaply produced Web ads that featured viral
videos, old movies, man-on-the-street interviews shot by handheld cameras, and sincere testimonials from real people. This
last method could be especially fruitful; the best Web videos
(think Numa Numa, the Star Wars kid, the laughing baby, or
Evolution of Dance) are those that seem authentically surprising.
Imagine a Viagra ad featuring real men talking about how
Viagra has changed their lives—wouldn't that get your attention
over blue-tux guy?
In addition to Obama's videos, I'd recommend that anyone
looking to produce ads for the Web consult the Onion's video
site. The satirical newspaper does two things well with the ads it
runs alongside its hilarious videos. First, it puts the ad in the
right place—they run after, rather than before, the Onion's own
content. Because the ad isn't standing in the way of your video, it
doesn't annoy you as much—which is not only good for you, but
good for the advertiser, too. The Onion can afford to do this
because the ads it runs are pretty good—many reflect the
Onion's sense of humor, and are almost as entertaining as the
videos themselves. This approach reflects how the Web works:
It's not important how many people see your ad, but how many
people like your ad. If people respond positively to what you're
shilling, they'll talk about the ad and pass it around; if people
hate it, they'll click away—or, worse, decide never to buy your
wares. On the Web, there's always something better to do than
watch an ad.
Fortunately, a few others in the online video business are starting
to figure this out. J.P. Colaco, Hulu's senior vice president of
advertising, told me that his company's main goal is usability—
the future of TV on the Web, he says, is fewer ads per show,
with each advertiser paying high rates in order to target a
compatible audience. Hulu is working with advertisers to reduce
repetition; the company even has an in-house creative
department to help advertisers come up with more Web-savvy
ads, including ads that tell a story over a series of commercial
breaks. Hulu is also developing algorithms to run ads that are
tailored to your taste. As of now, each ad on Hulu features
thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons. The buttons don't do much
now, but, in time, they will. If I click thumbs-down on every car
ad, Hulu will realize I'm not interested in cars—and I'm not
interested in that damned blue-tux guy, either.
Advanced Search
Friday, October 19, 2001, at 6:39 PM ET
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
books
Florence Nightingale's Fever
Diagnose this driven nurse at your own risk.
By Michael Chase-Levenson
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 6:30 AM ET
Last summer, the Florence Nightingale Museum in London
announced a holiday program for children. It ran like this:
"Daily-changing drop-in activities include crafting a pattern
lantern like the one made famous by the Lady with the Lamp,
designing a lace bonnet like Flo's, drawing a family portrait book
based on images of the Nightingale family on display in the
museum, and working with an artist to create a watercolour
picture of a germ." Meanwhile, across London the Serpentine
Gallery was hosting a retrospective of Richard Prince's avantgardist art, including recent work that repaints the covers of pulp
novels about nurses. In stiff white gowns and tidy caps, with
masks across their mouths and beneath their staring eyes,
Prince's nurses (appearing under such titles as "Student Nurse,"
"Mission Nurse," "Runaway Nurse," and "Dude Ranch Nurse")
are semi-lurid, often bloodied, and, above all remote, unsettled,
opaque. Who are these nurses? What are they after?
Between sweet sentimentality and strange opacity is where
Florence Nightingale lives today. Now, as back then, her
reputation is tended by devoted admirers, who esteem her as the
founder of modern nursing, a paragon of public service, the
exemplary heroine. But already in its mid-Victorian origins there
was a counter-mythology that grew and flourished in the 20th
century. It never got as edgy as Prince's nurses, but it was full of
subversive implication about her sexuality, her hypochondria,
her will to power. What did Nightingale want? And what did the
culture want with her? The subtitle of Mark Bostridge's new
biography is The Making of an Icon, and his book splendidly
charts the astonishing arc of her celebrity. Even more intently,
though, it follows Nightingale's passionate, obstinate selfmaking. The biographic record gives us no reason to believe she
set out to create a legend for herself or even to achieve
reputation on the small scale. Accidents of history placed her in
the hanging cage of celebrity.
The shelves are cluttered with biographies of Nightingale;
Bostridge's won't be the last, but for now it's surely the best. He
shows great care with the overwhelming mass of material (all
the published and unpublished writing, all the density of such a
long life), sorting subtle personal relationships tactfully, and
never pressing such a large and angular life into chewable tablets
of hypothesis. He knows that every surface of Nightingale has
been written up and covered over, but he efficiently steers free
from both the hagiographers and the cynics who preceded him.
Without straining for novelty or original synthesis, Bostridge
aims for (and achieves) accuracy, coherence, balance,
readability, and accumulating force. But what makes for
5/99
underground excitement in the book is that the subject, F.N.,
lives out the spectacle and excess of her life while the author
maintains the discipline of his equanimity. Her life pulls toward
grand gestures and eccentricity; his account stands for fairness
and sympathy. We should all be so lucky with those who think
about us.
Nightingale has been marked and branded as one of the
Victorians, furiously earnest and exhaustingly brisk. To open her
Notes on Nursing (1860) is to snap immediately to attention and
begin washing your hands. "Windows are made to open; doors
are made to shut"; "[a] dark house is always an unhealthy house,
always an ill-aired house, always a dirty house." She worked to
save wounded soldiers in the Crimean War (1854-1856), and
then the ambitions grew: to reform the management of health
throughout the army, to train professional nurses of the future
and domestic nurses in the present, to transform the architecture
of hospitals, to improve the health of those bringing empire to
the subcontinent and, finally, to all of India. She worked herself
into a frenzy, then into exhaustion, and then back to frenzy. (She
called her life "a fever.") A few close relatives and friends—
including an aunt, a cousin, and poet Arthur Hugh Clough,
whom she was accused of working to death—devoted
themselves to her causes and her campaigns, which in her last
four decades of life she largely directed from her bed.
But Nightingale should also be seen as one of us moderns.
Nothing is more striking than her contempt for the weight of
tradition and authority, her demand that we modernize our lives
and transform the social world at its roots. To be serious about
nursing is to consider all the circumstances that keep us from
flourishing, to preserve the health of families and cities, as well
as the health of the body. The goal of nursing is to heal the
world. Above this grand mission stands God, but a god of her
own compounding. His laws are the laws of science, and we can
only serve his purposes by working, working, working—
struggling without rest for the visible public good. The call is to
an endless labor that we must perform on our own with nothing
to sustain us but the rousing of our own conviction. The
exhaustion that Nightingale felt, and that her biography stirs in
us, is the modern exhaustion of the fully self-assigned life.
It's such a story, this life, and it comes in three oddly shaped
acts. For a long time, much too long, Nightingale struggled
against her family: its upper-middle-class complacency, its
conventionality. Music, needlework, drawing-room chatter, the
management of servants—these were the tasks for unmarried
daughters. And in the 1840s, just when the young Florence fixed
on nursing as her vocation, it was a deeply despised form of
labor, recently made grotesque (though hilarious) in the person
of Dickens' Sairey Gamp (Martin Chuzzlewit, 1844): the
illiterate, inebriated fantasist, the prattling night thief with an
imaginary friend. The genteel Nightingales could hardly
imagine, and certainly could not abide, their respectable
daughter stepping down the rungs of class to take up the mantle
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
of nursing. Florence could imagine almost nothing else. The first
long chapter in her life is a story of demand and resistance,
Florence intent to become a nurse and her family, especially her
sister (Parthenope) and mother (Fanny), refusing to unbend.
They discouraged her from visiting hospitals; they prohibited her
training; they called her back to the drawing room. But she was
unsubdued and unreconciled. The struggle continued for years,
until it became clear that the misery of the family would only
worsen if Florence were not somehow accommodated.
Chapter 2 then appears in a flash. In the spring of 1853, she at
last began work in London as superintendent in an institution
tending "elderly gentlewomen." By the fall of 1854 she was in
Turkey, leading a team of nurses at the war hospital at Scutari.
In February 1855, the Illustrated London News portrayed her as
the lady with a lamp, and by the end of the year her fame was an
avalanche, a torrent, an inundation. But then, soon after her
return from the war in 1856—when her "saintliness" was an
antidote to the embarrassment of an ill-managed war and when
her reputation was rivaling the queen's—the third chapter began.
Nightingale refused the apparatus of fame. She kept her distance
from the family, which now exulted in her success. ("They like
my glory. … Is there anything else they like in me?") Physical
collapse overcame her; she surrendered interest in her own
practice of nursing; she retreated to the Burlington Hotel, and
there, as at various other addresses, she lived mainly as an
invalid for the rest of her long life.
Bostridge's account is such a good one because it breaks the grip
of simplicity. Why did we ever want to keep Nightingale in a
box? Why was it so important to make her saintly? And why did
it feel amusing to call her a hypocrite? There were all those early
idolaters, those mid-Victorians who named their children
"Florence," who subscribed to the Nightingale Fund, who wrote
letters to thank her and poems to celebrate her, and who made
her an icon of all that was selfless in womanhood. Then there
were the mockers and insinuators of later decades, Lytton
Strachey above all, who in Eminent Victorians saw her as
twisted into the shape of her obsessions. But thanks to
Bostridge—to his unbroken nontendentious curiosity—we can
have a Nightingale of our own, a mixed life, too complicated for
veneration or satire.
The most memorable and indigestible thing about Florence
Nightingale is finally the ferocity of her self-determination. ("No
one has ever done anything great or useful by listening to the
voices from without"—"I can bray so loud.") No will could be
more concentrated or vehement or relentless. There in the
service of others—always writing and working for the public
good—she never broke free from self-assertion and selfrighteousness, but also never from a clawing self-laceration. Her
deepest motives? Do you really want to know them? Will we be
any clearer—about Nightingale or our own call to service—if we
settle questions of her desire, her ambition, her charity, her
cruelty, her energy? Precisely by not settling such questions,
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Bostridge has told the story well, so well that we know we'll
never be finished with Nightingale, not even when all the Dude
Ranch Nurses have gone home to mama.
books
How To Read the Quran
A new translation captures the confusion.
By Reza Aslan
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 3:03 PM ET
Reading the Quran can be a baffling experience. Unlike the
Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the Quran is not a collection of
books recounting the mythical history of a community of faith. It
is not, like the Gospels, a pseudo-biographical sketch of a
particular prophet in a particular time. It does not narrate the life
of Mohammed, nor does it chronicle the rise of Islam (indeed,
Mohammed is barely mentioned in it). Though the Quran is
divided into 114 chapters (called suras), these are arranged
neither thematically nor chronologically but rather from longest
to shortest, the lone exception being the first and most important
chapter, al-Fatiha, or "The Opening." The chapters are given
evocative titles like "The Cow" or "The Feast," but these have
almost nothing to do with the content that follows. The Quran
itself states that its verses have multiple meanings, some of
which are unfathomable to human beings and known only to
God. And yet, in both style and content, the Quran is unique
among scriptures.
The words of the Quran are thought to be infused with divine
power. Muslims believe it to be the actual speech of God handed
down through Mohammed between 610 and 632 CE. The
physical book—its cover and pages—is considered sacred and is
to be handled only in a state of purity. Its verses are inscribed on
buildings and tombs in order to sanctify them. They are placed
in lockets and worn as amulets to ward off evil. They are etched
into cups so that when one drinks from them one consumes
God's divine power. The mere act of writing out the words of the
Quran—the art of Islamic calligraphy—has been elevated into
the supreme artistic expression in the Muslim world.
The inherent sacredness of the Quran has historically created an
unusual problem for many Muslims. Since the end of the seventh
century CE, when its verses were collected into a single,
authoritative canon, the Quran has remained fixed in Arabic, the
language in which it was originally revealed. It was believed that
translating the Quran into any other language would violate the
divine nature of the text. Translations were done, of course. But
to this day, non-Arabic versions of the Quran are considered
interpretations of the Quran. Unless the original Arabic verses
are embedded on the page, it cannot technically be called a
Quran.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The consequences of this belief are obvious. For much of the last
14 centuries, some 90 percent of the world's Muslims for whom
Arabic is not a primary language had to depend on Islam's
clergy—all of them men, as women are not allowed to enter the
clergy—to define the meaning and message of the Quran for
them, much as pre-Reformation Christians had to rely on priests
to read them the Bible, which at the time was available only in
Latin. That is now changing. Over the last century, the Quran
has been translated into more languages than in the previous 14
centuries combined. A great many of these translations have
been done not by Muslim clergy but by scholars and academics,
by Muslim laity and non-Muslims, and, perhaps most
significantly, by women. (The first English translation of the
Quran by an American woman, Laleh Bakhtiar, was published in
2007.)
Arabic is a language whose words can have multiple, sometimes
contradictory, meanings, so how one chooses to render a
particular word from Arabic to English has a lot to do with one's
biases or prejudice. Take the following example from Sura 4:34,
which has long been interpreted as allowing husbands to beat
their wives: "As for those women who might rebel against you,
admonish them, abandon them in their beds, and strike them
(adribuhunna)." The problem, as a number of female Quranic
scholars have noted, is that adribuhunna can also mean "turn
away from them." It can even mean "have sexual intercourse
with them." Obviously, which definition the translator chooses
will be colored by whatever his or her preconceived notions are
about a husband's authority. The new crop of Quran translators
are brushing aside centuries of traditionalist, male-dominated,
and often misogynistic clerical interpretations in favor of a more
contemporary, more individualized, and often more genderfriendly approach to the Quran. In the process, they are not only
reshaping the way Islam's holy book is read; they are
reinterpreting the way Islam itself is being understood in the
modern world.
The latest entry into this cornucopia of Quran translations comes
from eminent professor of Islamic history Tarif Khalidi, who is
currently at the American University of Beirut. Written in what
Khalidi calls "measured modern English," his is an eloquent and
eminently readable translation, but one that does not stray too far
from other conventional English versions of the Quran. (Khalidi,
like the majority of his male predecessors, renders the word
adribuhunna as "beat them.") However, Khalidi's Quran is
unique in that it is divided not into individual verses, as is the
case with all other Qurans, no matter their language, but rather
into clusters of three, four, or five verses at a time. In other
words, he bundles the individual verses into lengthy paragraphs
that are rendered in both prose and poetry. This may perturb
those trying to pinpoint a particular verse (Khalidi does provide
occasional verse markers on the margins of each page to let
readers know where they are in the text), but the overall effect is
that Khalidi's Quran probably reads much closer to the way the
first Muslims originally experienced the Quran.
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The Quran literally means the recitation, an indication that this
was a text meant to be heard, not read. That may explain why the
Quran was never written down in Mohammed's lifetime. Instead,
the revelations were diligently memorized by a class of religious
scholars called the Qurra (or "Quran readers"), who then
disseminated God's words to the rest of the Muslim community
in short, easy-to-remember bursts of prophecy. A few of the
most important revelations—those dealing with legal or
economic matters—were preserved on bits of bone or scraps of
leather. But the bulk of the Quran was not collected into a single
volume until about 50 years after Mohammed's death. Only then
was the revelation divided into individual verses.
"If the issue was to ... get by the point where the market is rattled
wondering which big institution will go down next, I think on a
scale of one to 10 we are very close to 10."
This made it extremely difficult to place the Quran's verses,
which had been revealed to Mohammed over a 22-year span,
into historical context, much less chronological order. And so
the compilers of the Quran did not bother doing either. Instead,
they gathered up all of the revelations and recorded them in what
can be described only as random order. This was a deliberate
choice on their part. Muslims perceive the Quran as God's
dramatic monologue, recorded without a human filter.
(According to traditional Islamic theology, the Prophet
Mohammed was merely a passive conduit through which the
words of God flowed.) For the compilers of the Quran to have
provided any explanation or commentary to the text, for them to
have organized the verses in any deliberate way—whether
chronologically or thematically—would have, in their minds,
interfered with the direct revelation of God. As a consequence,
those who are unfamiliar with the early history of Islam, or who
may not recognize the historical allusions or contextual
references that assist scholars in their exegesis, can feel
rudderless trying to navigate through this challenging book.
"Fed Has More Ammuniton Afte Firing Rate-Cut Bullets"
In the introduction to his Quran, Khalidi admits that "the very
allusiveness of the text, its impersonality, its meta-historical
tone, seem almost deliberately to de-emphasize context." But he
also seems to imply that it is natural to be confused by what we
read. It is through the attempt to make sense of our confusions,
to work through them with reason and with faith, that the
Quran's dramatic monologue transforms into an eternal dialogue
between humanity and God. Indeed, of all the sacred texts of the
world, Khalidi argues that the Quran is perhaps the one that most
self-consciously invites the reader to engage with it, to challenge
it, to ponder and to debate it. After all, as the Quran itself states,
only God knows what it truly means.
corrections
—Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, quoted in the Nov. 24
Wall Street Journal, page R8
"Bailout Talks Accelerate for Ailing Citigroup"
—Banner Page One headline, same newspaper, same day
Bonus Contradiction:
—Headline for "Outlook" column, same newspaper, same day,
Page A2
"The Fed Is out of Ammunition"
—Headline for op-ed column, same newspaper, same day, Page
A19
"Fed Has .
.
.
Corrections
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 7:05 AM ET
In the Nov. 20 "Jurisprudence," Dafna Linzer mistakenly stated
that Ted Stevens has served in the Senate for 50 years. He has
served for 40 years. The article also misspelled Ted Olson's
name.
In a Nov. 19 "Explainer," Abby Callard stated that Michel
Martin was a correspondent for ABC News and NPR. She hosts
NPR's Tell Me More and is no longer affiliated with ABC News.
In the Nov. 18 "DVD Extras," Gary Giddins spelled Marion
Mack's name incorrectly.
chatterbox
Premature Reassurance
Memo to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: It isn't Thanksgiving just yet.
ByTimothy Noah
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 10:11 AM ET
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
In a Nov. 18 "Politics," Josh Levin incorrectly stated that Florida
State missed the BCS title game in 2000-01 despite beating
Miami. It was Miami that missed the title game despite beating
Florida State.
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If you believe you have found an inaccuracy in a
Slate story, please send an e-mail to
[email protected], and we will investigate.
General comments should be posted in "The Fray,"
our reader discussion forum.
culturebox
I Vant To Upend Your Expectations
Why movie vampires always break all the vampire rules.
By Christopher Beam
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 6:57 PM ET
There's a scene midway through Twilight, the new 'tween
vampire flick, in which the heroine, Bella, arrives at the vampire
Edward's house—a bright, spare, Modernist home that seems
stocked with Calphalon pans and furniture from Design Within
Reach. She looks around wonderingly. "What did you expect?"
he says. "Coffins and dungeons and moats?" It's a familiar scene
to anyone who knows vampire movies: the part where the
vampire (or vampire expert) turns myth-buster and explains
what vampires are really like.
A perfect example is this exchange from HBO's True Blood. "I
thought you were supposed to be invisible in a mirror," marvels
Anna Paquin's Sookie, reclining in a bathtub. Sorry, says her
vampiric love interest, Bill. "What about Holy water?" she asks.
"It's just water." "Crucifixes?" "Geometry." "Garlic?" "It's
irritating, but that's pretty much it." Irritating, indeed.
Vampire myth-busters are a cocky lot. Take this scene from
Blade, when vampire hunter Wesley Snipes explains "vampire
anatomy 101" to his new protégée. "Crosses and holy water don't
do d---, so forget what you've seen in the movies," he says. "You
use a stake, silver, or sunlight. You know how to use one of
these?" He shows her a gun. "Silver hollow point filled with
garlic. Aim for head or the heart. Anything else is your ass."
Or consider this exchange from the Twilight books: "How can
you come out during the daytime?" asks Bella. "Myth," says
Edward, her fanged paramour. "Burned by the sun?" "Myth."
"Sleeping in coffins?" "Myth." Being smug jerks? True!
The list goes on. In Interview With the Vampire, the bloodsucker
Louis corrects his interviewer on the rumor about vampires
being afraid of crosses. "That is, how would you say today … b------?" (Same goes for stakes through the heart.) In I Am
Legend, the vampire book on which the Will Smith movie was
based, the narrator dismisses Dracula as "a hodgepodge of
superstitions and soap-opera clichés." For example, vampires are
vulnerable to garlic and sunlight, but the mirror stuff is bunk. In
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
the Last Vampire book series by Christopher Pike, sunlight
doesn't kill the undead protagonist—it just makes her age at a
normal rate.
What's with all the rule-rewriting? And why are vampires always
crowing about it?
Vampire mythology has never been set in stone—nor has any
mythology, for that matter. The folklore that eventually became
modern vampire fiction varied even more wildly in past
centuries than in current-day stories. Ancient Greek mythology
features women who seduce men and drink their blood; in
southern Africa, there is the impundulu, a giant blood-sucking
bird that controls the weather; Latin American folklore has the
fanged chupacabra, a scaled reptile-kangaroo monster that
drains the blood from goats. It wasn't until the 19th century, with
the publication of stories like Polidori's The Vampyre, Le Fanu's
Carmilla, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, that vampire became
synonymous with "fanged, Euro, coffin-dwelling Goth." But
even in these books, the attributes vary—Polidori's Lord
Ruthven can go out during the daytime, but sunlight weakens
Count Dracula.
The modern reworkings of the genre are traceable to a few
different factors. For one thing, rewriting the rules is just good
storytelling. Upending conventions lets you surprise the
audience. You thought garlic was going to ward off the boss
vampire? Sorry. You planned to kill him with that little piece of
sharpened wood? Good luck. These days, you'll see vampires
slapping crosses out of the way more often than shrinking in
fear. Variations on the vampire rules also make for some clever
plot twists. For example (spoiler alert!), in 30 Days of Night,
Josh Hartnett notices that once bitten, victims become vampires
right away—but they don't become evil vampires for a few
hours. He therefore injects vampire blood into his veins so he
can fight them off and save his wife. True Blood also has a smart
twist on the myth-busting trope: The vampires started the myths
themselves. "If the humans thought they couldn't see us in a
mirror," explains vampire Bill, "it was another way for us to
prove we weren't vampires." Plus, tweaking the rules is part of
the appeal of genre fiction—authors have a template to play
with, so every minor variation they make becomes loaded with
meaning.
These expository scenes are also common because vampires are
so darn chatty. All monster myths vary, after all. Sometimes
zombies are fast, sometimes they're slow, and it always seems to
take a different tactic to kill them. But zombies can't talk, so they
can't haughtily explain to you why they're not like all the other
zombies. They just chomp your face. Vampires, on the other
hand, are the biggest self-promoters around: They can't stop
talking about themselves.
Another factor is changing censorship rules. Believe it or not,
vampires were not always sexy (although sexuality was part of
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the mix as early as Carmilla). The original Dracula film came
out in 1931, a year after the Hays Code was put in place. So they
shot two versions—one chaste English version for American
audiences and one Spanish-language version for distribution in
Mexico. The women in the foreign version wear lower-cut
dresses. Hot vampires really broke out in the 1950s in the British
Hammer horror films and finally made it to the United States
once the Hays Code was dropped in the late 1960s, clearing the
way for Andy Warhol's take on vampire sex.
Technology also plays a role in vampire transformations.
Vampire films got gorier once color film made it clear they were
drinking blood, not oil. Shoddy makeup on high-quality film
stock sometimes made fangs unconvincing. One director, Mario
Bava, decided to scrap them entirely—the vampires in the 1960
flick Black Sunday are, like the Hays Code at that time,
toothless. Technology within the films plays a role, too. In recent
vampire stories, science is the new magic. In I Am Legend, it's
the "vampiris germ" that causes vampirism. ("You see, the
bacillus is a facultative saprophyte," we're told, which is
supposed to explain why a stake causes a vampire to dissolve
into dust.) In Underworld, it's a genetic mutation. And as
technology evolves, so do vampire-slaying methods. Blade's
garlic-filled bullets are nothing compared with the bullets from
Underworld that are filled with—kid you not—daylight.
Other variations are introduced because, well, they're totally
sweet. The vampires in 30 Days of Night are more feral than
human, with their own creepy language and two rows of shark
teeth. Needless to say, they don't leave two dainty dimples in the
neck. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, meanwhile, features an
elaborate universe of humans, vampires, demons, werewolves,
slayers, and "watchers." (Sometimes, they sing.) Underworld
creates a deep mythology about a war between werewolves and
vampires. In Guillermo Del Toro's Cronos, the vampire isn't
human at all—it's a tiny mechanical beetle.
But the biggest reason for all the myth-busting has to do with
creating a believable world. It may seem odd to explode the
myth about crosses in one scene while positing that vampire
blood is a sex drug in the next—neither myth is believable, taken
alone. But stomping on old myths heightens the realism. It's a
way of acknowledging the silliness of most vampire stories
while distancing yours from the rest. We know vampire tales are
childish, it says. This one is not. That's why you'll always have a
character saying he doesn't believe in vampires—the filmmakers
know that's what you're thinking, too. The myth-busting scene is
therefore a necessary ritual. By rewriting the rules every time,
you ask viewers to invest themselves in this story, not in the last
vampire movie they saw.
All genres evolve, and in this respect vampire films are nothing
special. But vampires seem to relish deviating from their
conventions more than most. At the very least, it keeps the genre
fresh for Lesbian Kung-Fu Robot Vampire Killers From Space.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
culturebox
The J. Crew Catalog Destroyed My Spirit
Why mailmen give up.
By Paul Collins
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 6:59 AM ET
It's a discovery worthy of a murder mystery: In a parking lot in
the mountains outside Santa Cruz, Calif., a truck is found
abandoned, the keys still hanging in the door. Inside the police
find … a note? A body?
Not quite. Try 13,000 pieces of undelivered mail.
The recent discovery in Bonny Doon, Calif., of a former mail
carrier's old stash was not exactly unprecedented. There's also
the recent arrest of a Detroit postal carrier who squirreled away
9,000 pieces of mail into a storage locker, a work dodge worthy
of a Seinfeld plot. A week earlier, a postman was nailed for
hoarding 27,000 letters in Leeds, England; the week before that
revealed a postal hoarder with 20,000 letters in Frankfurt,
Germany. ("[He] didn't deliver mail addressed to himself either,"
a police statement dryly noted.) And all of them were dwarfed
by the North Carolina postman who admitted in August to filling
his garage and burying in his backyard nearly a tractor trailer's
worth of undelivered junk mail.
But the hoarding and abandonment of mail is a phenomenon that
extends at least back to 1874, when Providence, R.I., postman
Benjamin Salisbury was caught throwing mail into the ocean "to
avoid the trouble of delivery." Some things don't change much; a
Long Island postman used the same MO in 1954, when he
blamed a bum leg from the war for forcing him to dump his mail
off a local pier. The scheme kind of worked … until the tide
came in.
In 2006, the last year the U.S. Postal Service released figures,
there were 515 arrests and 466 convictions for "internal theft."
That figure includes abandonment and hoarding cases, where the
motive has remained constant since the days of penny postage:
A worker gets overwhelmed or simply disinclined to finish his
route. "It's not a huge issue," Agapi Doulaveris of the U.S.
Office of the Inspector General told me. "We work on referrals."
And there's the rub: For a referral to happen, first someone has to
notice.
The deliveries affected are often what the U.S. Postal Service
now terms "standard mail"—and what the rest of us call "junk."
With the railroad-driven growth in catalogs, postal abandonment
stories were already common by the 1880s. The New York Times
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complained of mailmen burning their bundles and in 1883 ran
the immortal headline "To Deliver His Letters Some Time" after
the discovery of a mailman's old stash in the basement of an
Upper East Side saloon.
For a mail-sack slacker, there's a dark allure to hoarding junk.
Think about it: If someone's first-class mail with paychecks or
credit card bills doesn't show up, they're liable to complain. But
if the umpteenth Eddie Bauer catalog doesn't arrive, well …
who's gonna notice?
So, who does notice? The discovery of hoards follows some
common narratives: They've been caught by meter readers, by
housesitters feeding a rabbit for a vacationing postman, and by
state troopers making traffic stops. A number of "dead-letter
cars"—old clunkers filled up like a junk-mail piñatas—have
been discovered by mechanics and used-car dealers. And a
number of cases are broken after the stashed mail catches fire: In
1974, back-to-back cases a week apart yielded 1,200 sacks of
mail in a Louisville, Ky., attic and another tractor-trailer load in
a burning attic in suburban Connecticut.
Discovery becomes more likely in cases where a rogue carrier
indiscriminately tosses both first-class mail and junk. In 1978,
the postmaster of Roxbury, Conn., was retired after postal
inspectors in a late-night raid found letters in the central office's
trash cans. Among the locals, both Arthur Miller and William
Styron were missing mail. "I have had over the years a large
amount of mail for a well-known writer—I guess that's the
term," Styron mused afterwards to the New York Times. "And in
the last year and a half I've been saying to myself, 'Well, is my
stock declining?' "
All these cases, however, bow before the Chicago mail scandals
of 1994. Ranked dead last among cities in postal customer
satisfaction, that year Chicago found itself on the receiving end
of hoard stories seemingly every week. Letters burning under a
railway viaduct, letters rotting under a porch, letters stuffed into
a dumpster: The stuff was even found hiding at the post office
itself. The post office, indeed, was as much a problem as the
individual carriers: "Complaint lines might ring as often as 85
times without being answered. …" noted reporter Charles
Nicodemus. "Mammoth mounds of undelivered mail were found
at several stations—including one pile 800 feet long, nearly the
length of three football fields."
paid less than 500 Ringgit?" He might have taken a lesson from
Italy, which gamed the practice to squeeze some money out of it:
In 1974, the Poste Italiane was caught selling new mail to paperpulp plants for $14 a ton. "Most of the mail has now been turned
into cheap cardboard suitcases," the Times of London reported.
Shamed by the resulting outcry, the postal service then resorted
to stuffing letters into unofficial "ghost trains" that circled the
country without any destination.
True to form, though, the most spectacularly eccentric cases
come from Britain, where in 2004 one Staffordshire carrier
achieved a monumental stash of 130,000 pieces of mail. Far
from simply being too tired to carry their mail, British carriers
have given excuses ranging from low blood sugar to the posttraumatic stress of having served in Northern Ireland. Most
memorably, last year a cross-dressing carrier in Leeds took
revenge on local yobs by tossing their mail after they made fun
of her newly acquired lipstick and heels.
But when one hears of a Yorkshire postman who filled every
room of his house with 35,000 undelivered letters, it's hard not to
find a more universal parable of the overwhelming reach of
modern communication and consumerism. The carrier, Rodger
Parkinson, seemed almost relieved that his mail stash was
discovered.
"I'm glad in a way," he told his judge. "It needs sorting."
day to day
A Dog's Life
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 4:41 PM ET
Friday, Nov. 21, 2008
Summary Judgment: Dogs and Superheroes Hit Movie
Theaters
Mark Jordan Legan takes us through reviews of the animated
film Bolt, about a dog who lives his whole life on the set of a TV
show; Twilight, about a teenage girl who falls in love with a
vampire; and Special, a superhero spoof starring Michael
Rapaport. Listen to the segment.
It seemed an almost inevitable coda when, five years later, a
final Chicago stash caught fire in a home and took down its
mailman with it.
.
To be fair, the problem is not peculiar to the United States.
Postal hoards turn up everywhere from Norway to Malaysia,
where a postal worker caught hoarding 21,255 letters
complained, "Why should I deliver the letters when I am being
.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
.
.
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—Prudie
dear prudence
Fell in Love With a Girl
Yes, we're young, but this is more than a crush. How do I tell her how I feel?
Wednesday, November 26, 2008, at 6:52 AM ET
Get "Dear Prudence" delivered to your inbox each week; click
here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to
[email protected]. (Questions may be edited.)
Dear Prudence,
I have not told anyone this, but I am in love. I am 17 years old
and a senior in high school. I have never had a problem talking
to girls, except when it comes to this one. When I first saw her in
the eighth grade, the first thought that came to my mind was, "I
would marry that girl." I know that this just sounds like a crush,
but the more I got to know her, the more I fell for her. Even
though I have been out with plenty of other girls, I still can't get
her off my mind. I feel nervous, shy, and unsure of myself when
I see her. Though we say "Hi" to each other just about every day,
I can't ever seem to get any further then that. I have lots of things
going for me: I'm an athlete, do well in school, and have plenty
of friends. I just can't find the words when I am around her. I just
don't want to graduate this year, never see her again, move on
with my life, and wonder "what if?"
—A Guy With a Girl Problem
Dear A Guy,
Every girl should be lucky enough to have a guy feel about her
the way you do about this girl. And you're right—you can't let
her get away without knowing whether she feels the same. It's
possible that all these years, every time you've said "Hi," she
senses the same spark but has had to conclude that you're really
not interested in her because she's seen you go out with plenty of
other girls. In my day, you actually had to screw up the courage
to speak, either in person or on the phone, to the object of your
desire. But your generation doesn't even have to do that. This
MacArthur Foundation study has good things to say about how
online communication allows teenagers to make romantic
overtures that are so casual that no one gets embarrassed if the
interest is not returned. It cites this successful opening e-mail
gambit: "hey…hm. wut to say? iono lol/well I left you a
comment…u sud feel SPECIAL haha." No, it's not "O, she doth
teach the torches to burn bright!" But it worked. And from your
letter, it is clear you are capable of writing a message that's
actually in English. So compose an e-mail—try asking what she
thinks about something that happened in school, for instance.
Then, after she answers you, and before the exchange peters out,
make your move and ask her on a date. And maybe someday you
will say to her, "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Dear Prudence Video: Manipulative Cashier
Dear Prudence,
When I was in the sixth grade and my sister in the eighth, my
parents divorced. My sister took it particularly hard, so my
mother sent her to the parish priest for counseling. At one (and
the last) session, my sister was crying, and he was standing
behind her with his hands on her shoulders. He then stuck his
hand down her blouse. My sister yanked his hand out and ran all
the way home. She never told my parents this and only shared it
with me in the last few years. Now 40, my sister teaches at a
Catholic high school. One of the things she does is take student
volunteers to poor areas to do cleanup work, pick up trash, and
paint houses. Another teacher at the school suggested that she
contact a priest in that district who organizes students from other
schools to do the same work. You guessed it: It is the same
priest from our parish years ago. My sister is understandably
disturbed that he is still working with kids. She doesn't know if
she should speak up after all these years, or how to go about it.
My sister is a strong woman who has no problem with
confrontation, but this scenario has her shaking.
—Protective Little Sister
Dear Protective,
I called the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests and
talked to Executive Director David Clohessy. He said even
though your sister was molested decades ago, since this priest is
still active—and possibly has been actively assaulting children
ever since—your sister should contact the police sex-crimes unit
and the district attorney. She should explain that she was
sexually assaulted by this priest years ago and recently
discovered he is still in close contact with children, and that he
needs to be investigated. This will obviously be a difficult
emotional step for your sister, made more complicated by the
fact that she works for the archdiocese. But silence is what
allows pedophiles to damage generations of children. Clohessy
says that sometimes investigators have a file on a suspected
abuser but simply don't have enough evidence to do anything,
and your sister's information could be crucial. He also says it is
highly unlikely your sister's experience was a one-time event.
The story fits the classic modus operandi of a serial predator:
ingratiate himself with the family, counsel vulnerable kids,
create opportunities to be alone with the child. Before your sister
takes action, she might want to call SNAP herself—there could
even be a chapter near her, and people there who could offer
advice, encouragement, and support.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence,
My husband and I moved to a new city three years ago. We
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hosted a party last year, and I clearly included a "please RSVP
by" on the invitation so that I could plan to have enough food
and drink for all attending. Less than half of the invitees
responded, and I assumed those who didn't weren't coming.
Then about two-thirds of the families who failed to RSVP
showed up on the day of the party! We're hosting a party again
this year, and again I clearly included RSVP information in the
invitation, but we've had a very low RSVP rate. It angers me that
these folks can't take one minute to call or send an e-mail just to
let us know if they're coming. I have two small children, so time
and money are at a premium. I don't want to buy too much food
and drink or have hungry and thirsty party guests. Is it impolite
to contact those who haven't RSVP'd and ask for a response?
Should I turn them away at the door if they show up without an
RSVP? (I would never do that.) Should I try "regrets only"
instead if we turn this into an annual event? Am I being
unreasonable in expecting to hear from these people?
Dear Flustered,
Perhaps you had one of those books of Greek myths when you
were a girl. Obviously you didn't spend enough time reading the
story of Pandora's box before your opened your mother's little
black bag. You're right—there's not much point in telling your
mother you now know her favorite brand of lubricant. But let me
assure you this will not cripple your own sexuality for life. First
of all, it's simply confirmation of what you already knew—your
parents have sex with each other, and that's actually a good
thing. Second, probably more people in human history have
witnessed their parents having sex than not, so just consider how
you've been spared that treat. After Pandora opened the box, she
closed it in time to keep hope contained in it. I have complete
hope that you will be able to push your discovery out of your
mind and that someday, when you recall this incident, you will
laugh about it.
—Prudie
—RSVP*ssed Off
Dear RSVP*ssed,
I'm afraid it's now become the host's obligation, after going
through the time, trouble, and expense of offering to entertain
your friends in your home with food and spirits, to hunt down
your potential guests like antelope on the veldt to find out
whether they actually intend to come. In the future, when you
send out invitations, you could strike a more insistent note:
"Please let us know if we will have the pleasure of your
company!" Whatever you do, you will regret going to "regrets
only" because then you will have no idea how to calculate the
silent majority. If you're willing to invest more time in your
guests, sure you can send a cheery e-mail saying you hope they'll
be able to attend and to let you know so you can plan the
evening. (E-mail invitations have, in a way, trained people to
expect to be begged and reminded about their social
obligations.) Then shop and cook for however many people have
replied. And if you have a bunch of people who two years in a
row won't let you know they're coming but then show up at the
door, do you really want to invite them for a third?
—Prudie
Dear Prudence,
I was recently helping my mom search for something in her
room when I came across a little black bag. My curiosity was
piqued, so I opened it up and looked inside. Big mistake! Inside
I found a vibrator, lubricants, and other sex stuff. I know my
parents have sex; I just don't like thinking about it. I can usually
talk to my mom about this kind of stuff, but when it has to do
with her and my dad, I really don't want to mention it to her (talk
about embarrassing). The problem is, I don't know how to get it
out of my head. I'm afraid this will haunt me for the rest of my
life.
dear prudence
The Devil, They Say
My family thinks an exorcism will cure my mental illness. How can I spend
Thanksgiving with them?
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 6:58 AM ET
Get "Dear Prudence" delivered to your inbox each week; click
here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to
[email protected]. (Questions may be edited.)
Dear Prudence,
Genetic predisposition and a traumatic childhood have led me to
develop debilitating mental disorders that I have spent years
working to manage. I'm now at a functional place. My parents
are divorced, and my mother's family has always been very
supportive. My father's family, by contrast, sees mental illness as
a stigma and has always disagreed with my approach to
treatment. Recently, they invited me to my grandmother's
birthday party. When I arrived, everyone was sitting solemnly
around the living room, and the local pastor was there. He
calmly explained to me that I was not actually mentally ill but
possessed by agents of Satan and in need of an exorcism. I
choked back tears as I explained to them that I did not need any
demons driven out, and the evening ended awkwardly. Now
they've invited me for Thanksgiving, and I don't know what to
do. I don't want to alienate them, but my symptoms are part of a
real disorder and can be treated by medication. How do I explain
to them that while I do want to spend time with them, it's not the
Middle Ages, and I don't want or need an exorcism?
—It's the Schizophrenia, Stupid
—Flustered
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
13/99
Dear It's the Schizophrenia,
For Thanksgiving, please exorcise these people from your life.
Spend the holiday somewhere else, preferably with those who
love and accept you. Perhaps your mother's family is an option.
If not, maybe you can make your own gathering with friends, or
friends will extend an invitation to you after realizing you'll be
on your own. And if you're too uncomfortable searching for a
place to go, every city has shelters or nursing homes that
welcome volunteers willing to serve Thanksgiving dinner. What
your father's family did to you was appalling. You're very
generous not to want to alienate people who believe you are
possessed by Satan; I would have been tempted to threaten them
with my pitchfork. I suppose at some time less loaded than a big
holiday, you can get together with them to try to explain that you
have a medical condition that is being successfully treated. But
as you point out, this is the 21st century, and an unwillingness to
accept that mental illness is just that—an illness—seems an act
of willful bigotry not amenable to reason. Be proud of how
you've worked your way to a satisfying life, and don't let people,
just because they're relatives, do anything to undermine that.
choice you made and get back to living a normal life. That
means attending the holidays and welcoming a new member of
the family. It also means letting go of the fantasy that your
cousin has usurped the name for her child that you thought you
had somehow reserved for the child you didn't have. Lying about
a miscarriage seems exactly the wrong way to go. First, because
it is a lie; and, second, because it will only mean you have to
fight off a barrage of questions about your future marital and
procreative plans. If you feel so stuck that you plan to avoid any
event at which you will see your cousin and his baby, then you
should seek short-term therapy or join a support group to come
to grips with your decision. It's hard that you can't share your
sadness with your family, but leaving them baffled and worried
about your absence will surely only make you feel more isolated.
You also need to examine where your relationship is headed.
You say you want children, but given your age difference, you
need to face whether your boyfriend will be ready for fatherhood
in time for you to be able to be a mother.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence,
In the weeks following the presidential election, my e-mail
inbox has turned toxic with virulently nasty e-mails about our
new president-elect. The messages are harshly worded, patently
untrue rants. I read and delete. The problem is, I work as a
small-time entertainer, hosting events all over the country. My
politics, which I keep to myself, are very liberal. I do not host
political events of any kind because my business depends on as
many bookings as I can manage, especially in these hard times. I
don't want to shut off potential customers because of perceived
leanings. Lots of customers and their friends have my e-mail,
and because they have taken my political silence to mean I must
support their extreme views, I'm getting these truly distasteful
diatribes. What should I do? This is making me ill again about
my country.
Dear Prudence Video: Pack Rat on Steroids
Dear Prudence,
I'm 27 years old, and I've always wanted to be a mother. It's my
special dream to have a daughter someday. I'm crazy about the
man that I've been with for the past two years, and we have plans
for marriage and kids in the future. A few months ago I found
out that I was pregnant, even though I've been on birth control.
I'm in a very difficult three-year program at school. My
boyfriend is seven years younger than I am and is decidedly not
ready for kids. (He said having a baby now would ruin his life.)
So we made the difficult (at least for me) decision to end the
pregnancy. The problem is this: My cousin and his wife are
expecting their first child shortly. It's a girl, and the name they've
chosen happens to be the name that I have long wanted to give to
my own daughter. Even though I'm not especially close to my
family, it's expected that I see the baby when she's born and
attend Thanksgiving and Christmas with them as well. I'm happy
for them, but I don't think that I'll be able to do any of that. I've
cried a number of times about this and have decided to try to
avoid them at all costs for the time being. However, my family
will probably be very upset with me and demand to know why
I'm not around. I can't tell them that I had an abortion because
they believe that abortion is a sin. Would it be wrong for me to
tell them that I had a miscarriage and hope they understand why
I can't be around at the moment?
—Sad and Anxious
Dear Sad,
Yes, you are going through a painful time; and, no, nobody can
force you to attend a family event. But you need to accept the
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
—Prudie
—For Obama
Dear For,
Don't feel ill about your country—your guy won! It may be
distasteful and ridiculous that you're still getting invective-filled
rants and lies about Barack Obama, but you can chuckle to
yourself as you hit delete, because they lost and your guy won!
Aside from the e-mails, you say that when you get together with
these correspondents, you are providing entertainment for social
occasions, so it should be easy to put their political views out of
your mind. If politics does come up, make some noncommittal
sounds and happily think to yourself: My guy won! And, surely,
given the economic statistics, you will ultimately be doing more
for the fortunes of President-elect Obama to be a quiet,
employed supporter than a vocal, unemployed one.
—Prudie
14/99
Dear Prudie,
I have a friend whom I've seen through the best and worst of
times. She suffers from depression, and I've always tried to be a
good friend to her no matter what. When she is depressed, it can
be a real emotional workout to spend quality time with her, but I
do it because her friendship is important to me. About two years
ago, she started intense therapy and has made some real changes
in her life. She looks better than ever and is doing very well,
however she has become critical of me lately. I wear the wrong
clothes. I'm too heavy. I should work out every day. I should
wear different makeup. My husband told me that when I return
from my weekly outing with my friend, I'm very hard on myself.
It's true I don't feel good about myself, and occasionally I give
away clothing that she's insulted me about so that I don't have to
be reminded how bad I look. I've never been particularly
confrontational, so I tend to suffer her comments with a smile. I
do enjoy her 90 percent of the time. It's just her lingering hurtful
comments that leave me off balance. What do I do to save
myself without hurting her in the process?
—Stung
Dear Stung,
How thoughtful of your friend, now that she's feeling better, to
want you to understand what she was going through when she
felt worthless by making you feel that way yourself. I actually
doubt she feels as good as she says. What she's doing to you
sounds like a lot of projection—she's just off-loading the running
critical voice in her head onto you. Loyalty to a friend,
particularly a troubled one, is admirable. But your friend sounds
like a trial no matter what her emotional state, and loyalty has its
limits. Perhaps you should reconsider subjecting yourself to
weekly doses of this friendship. When you do get together, if she
starts in with her commentary on you, tell her that while you
know there are many things about you that could use
improvement, you don't want to focus on them during a pleasant
evening out, and say she needs to please drop the critique.
—Prudie
drink
The Long, Slow, Torturous Death of
Zima
Fourteen years after its heyday, Zima is finally at peace.
By Brendan I. Koerner
Wednesday, November 26, 2008, at 6:53 AM ET
There are a million ways to slight a rival's manhood, but to
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
suggest that he enjoys Zima is one of the worst. Zima was the
original "malternative"—a family of alcoholic beverages that
eventually came to include such abominations as Smirnoff Ice
and Bacardi Silver—and it has long been considered the very
opposite of macho: a drink that fragile coeds swill while giving
each other pedicures.
That stereotype has persisted despite the fact that Zima's brief
heyday came nearly 15 years ago. The brand was then hailed as
a marketing coup, an ingenious way to sell beer—or rather, a
clear, beerlike solution—to consumers who eschewed traditional
suds. But virtually overnight, Zima was done in by its medicinal
taste and girly-man rep: After selling an astounding 1.3 million
barrels in 1994, the year it went national, Zima's sales fell to just
403,000 barrels in 1996.
Many drinkers assume that Zima vanished shortly thereafter and
has since existed solely as a punch line. But Zima actually
survived for more than another decade, until MillerCoors pulled
the plug on Oct. 10. Rarely has such a famously maligned
product enjoyed such a lengthy run—a testament to its brewers'
Madonna-like knack for reinvention. The Zima that died a quiet
death last month bore little resemblance to the malternative that
swept the nation during President Clinton's first term.
Zima debuted in the midst of the "clear craze" of the early
1990s, when products ranging from Crystal Pepsi to Mennen
Crystal Clean deodorant sought to take advantage of a vogue for
(literal) transparency. Coors, then the nation's No. 3 beer-maker,
hopped on the bandwagon by devising a simple process for
making a clear brew—just filter your lowest-grade lager through
charcoal (a process that strips away both color and taste), then
make the liquid palatable by adding citrusy flavorings.
Miller, then one of Coors' chief rivals, mastered this technique,
too, creating Clear Beer, which failed miserably. Coors thought
it knew why: the presence of the word beer on the label. Clear
brews may have been beer-based, but they were bound to
disappoint true hops aficionados—there was no foamy head, and
the taste was sodalike rather than malty. So Coors decided to
pitch its see-through drink at male consumers who didn't love
beer but fancied themselves too macho for Boone's Farm. (Coors
pointedly instructed stores to never place Zima alongside wine
coolers, which male drinkers regard as effete.)
Coors threw $38 million into promoting Zima's nationwide
rollout in 1994, more than it spent hawking Coors Light that
year. The campaign's centerpiece was a series of TV
commercials starring a black-hatted pitchman who replaced his
S's with Z's and touted Zima as "zomething different." The ads
offered no inkling of what Zima was supposed to be, exactly, but
the mystery obviously intrigued the masses: In 1994, Coors
estimated that 70 percent of America's regular drinkers gave
Zima a try.
15/99
Unfortunately for Coors, most of those drinkers tried it only
once, since straight Zima tasted like tinfoil soaked in Fresca.
Some college kids mixed the drink with schnapps, creating a
head-splitting cocktail dubbed Nox-Zima, but few other drinkers
were so enterprising. To Coors' horror, Zima proved most
popular among young women—a demographic that, while
generally fond of getting tanked, just doesn't have the same thirst
for hooch as its male counterpart. And once the ladies took a
shine to the stuff, the guys avoided Zima as if it were laced with
estrogen. (Coors was also widely accused of marketing Zima
directly to high school students, many of whom were convinced
that Zima couldn't be detected by Breathalyzers.)
By the end of 1994, Zima had become a favorite whipping boy
of David Letterman, who regularly featured it on his nightly Top
Ten lists. (The No. 9 sign that your senator may be nuts?
"Breakfast, lunch, and dinner—Zima!") Coors tried to lasso male
consumers with new ads featuring pickup football, to no avail.
Then in 1995 it launched Zima Gold, a caramel-colored version
of the malternative that boasted high alcohol content (5.4
percent) and a bourbon-and-Coke tang. It barely lasted three
months on the market before it was pulled for lack of sales. It
was simply too late to salvage Zima's rep among men.
Coors was widely expected to kill the brand, as Miller had done
with Clear Beer. (Several me-too malternatives, such as Pabst's
Izen Klar and Stroh's Clash, had suffered similar fates.) But the
company instead chose to reinvent its once-proud brew. It
altered Zima's formula to make it taste even more like Sprite and
launched a new ad campaign touting Zima as the ideal thirst
quencher for oppressively hot days. Sales never came close to
reaching their 1994 levels, but they did rebound to a respectable
610,000 barrels by 2000. That's peanuts compared with a
flagship beer brand like Coors Light, which sold 16.6 million
barrels that year. But Zima was a high-margin product—
charcoal-filtered dreck that sold for superpremium prices. It
could still earn its keep on low-volume sales, most of which took
place in warm-weather states during summer.
Zima went through two more complete retoolings, the first in
2004 when it was transformed into Zima XXX. Coors pumped
up the alcohol content to 5.9 percent and introduced flavors such
as Hard Punch and Hard Orange. The move was made after
Zima had lost significant market share to Smirnoff Ice, which
benefits from confusion over whether it contains vodka. (It
doesn't, at least in this country.) Coors sensed that the only way
to compete was by hyping Zima as a drink worthy of daredevils.
The gambit failed. Three years later, Coors (on the verge of its
merger with Miller) reversed course and decided to embrace a
group of consumers it had once reviled—women in their 20s.
Zima was relaunched with less alcohol, fewer calories, and an
array of fruity flavors such as pineapple citrus. Going after
women wasn't a great way to grow the product's market, but
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Coors believed that today's young females could sustain Zima as
a niche product.
This last, dainty incarnation of Zima might still be with us were
it not for killjoy lawmakers in Utah and California. In the former
state, notorious for its tough liquor laws, Zima was one of the
few potent tipples available in grocery stores. (Most alcoholic
beverages are available only in state-controlled shops.) But
MillerCoors withdrew the brand from Utah in September, after
the state's legislature passed an onerous law requiring new labels
that indicate a malternative's alcohol content in bold, all-caps
letters. It didn't make economic sense for the brewer to print
Utah-only labels.
In California, meanwhile, the state's Board of Equalization
decided to tax malternatives as distilled spirits rather than beer
(the dubious rationale being that such an increase would
discourage alcohol abuse among cash-strapped minors).
MillerCoors could have challenged the $3.10-per-gallon tax hike
by submitting scientific evidence attesting to Zima's lack of
liquor. But for a brand that already had one foot in the grave,
that apparently seemed like more trouble than it was worth.
Shortly after the regulation kicked in on Oct. 1, MillerCoors
finally threw in the towel on Zima. California had been one of its
largest markets.
For a brand that was selling tens of thousands of barrels per year
up to the bitter end, Zima's demise has inspired surprisingly little
anguish among its fans.
This online petition aims to send 1 million signatures to
MillerCoors headquarters; as of this writing, it's just 999,947
names short of that ambitious goal.
There are surely more than 53 Zima lovers in America, and
many of them are doubtless male. But that's a love that dare not
speak its name.
drink
What To Drink on Thanksgiving
Zinfandels that won't overwhelm your turkey.
By Mike Steinberger
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 11:47 AM ET
Produced on these shores for nearly two centuries, zinfandel has
long been considered the all-American wine and the ideal choice
for those looking to drink domestically on Thanksgiving. Some
oenophiles even assumed that the zinfandel grape was
indigenous to the United States. Seven years ago, researchers
proved that it is actually Croatian in origin; what we (mercifully)
renamed zinfandel is an old varietal native to the Dalmatian
16/99
coast called crljenak kastelanski. However, this discovery has
done nothing to erode the link between zinfandel and the most
gluttonous of American holidays. But not all zinfandels are up to
the task of washing down the turkey. While zinfandels are by
nature rich, spicy, and mouth-filling, the market is flooded these
days with monster-truck zins—dense, high-alcohol wines that,
whatever virtues they may possess, tend to crush any food that
gets in their way. Happily, there are still some producers who
believe that table manners matter and who make zinfandels in a
more genteel style—wines that will flatter the bird next
Thursday rather than flatten it.
Zinfandel arrived in the United States in the 1820s and was first
cultivated along the East Coast. It was brought to California in
the 1850s and by the late 19th century was the state's most widely
planted grape. It was very popular with home winemakers
during Prohibition, but its reputation declined in the years
following repeal. Wineries like Souverain and Louis M. Martini
turned out good zinfandels, but the grape was generally
relegated to workhorse status. That began to change in the midto-late 1960s, when vintners like Joseph Swan and Bob
Trinchero started crafting ambitious, age-worthy zinfandels. But
it is Ridge Vineyards, founded in 1962, that gets most of the
credit for putting a serious face on the grape. Ridge's singlevineyard zinfandels, usually blended with small amounts of
petite sirah and carignane, were complex, elegant wines that
could last for years and improve with cellaring. They were often
described as "Bordeaux-like," which was a testament to their
path-breaking quality.
Despite the sensational wines produced by Ridge and a few
other estates, zinfandel's fortunes continued to ebb and flow.
Since the early 1990s, however, zinfandel has soared in
popularity, to the point that there was even an effort a few years
ago to designate it California's official grape. (Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger vetoed the measure—maybe the Austrian native
prefers grüner veltliner?) But the last two decades have also seen
the ascendancy of a particular style of zin—brawny,
Schwarzenegger-like wines that are very heavy on the alcohol.
Nowadays, zinfandels in excess of 15 percent alcohol (an
amount that can leave even seasoned drinkers in need of Tylenol
in the morning) are commonplace.
In fact, zinfandel has become so synonymous with "high-octane"
that it is now Exhibit A for a growing chorus of writers,
sommeliers, retailers, and vintners concerned about increased
potency in wines. With zinfandel, however, the alcohol issue is
more complicated than is often acknowledged. The zinfandel
grape is a thin-skinned one that tends to ripen easily if somewhat
unevenly; riper grapes contain more sugar, which makes for
more alcohol in the final product (the fermentation process
converts sugar to alcohol). According to Ridge's Paul Draper,
who is considered by many people (including yours truly) to be
the greatest vintner this country has produced, zinfandel grapes
usually can't reach full physiological maturity at less than 14
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
percent potential alcohol; Draper says that only if the grapevines
are truly old—at least 60 years of age—can maturity be achieved
below that threshold. The challenge with zinfandel, he explains,
is that it doesn't take much to push the alcohol into the eyebrowsingeing range; a few hot days just before or during the harvest
can send the sugar levels soaring. Draper says it is possible for a
zinfandel to tip the scale at 15 percent alcohol and still be
balanced, but he thinks that the ripeness of the fruit can
overwhelm the influence of the vineyard, which is why he
prefers his wines to be under that number.
For other producers, however, maximum ripeness is the aim;
they want their zinfandels to come in above 15 or even 16
percent alcohol. It is a stylistic preference for many of them, but
there are also commercial considerations: Heady zinfandels are
the ones that seem to score best with critics, and the wine-buying
public appears to really like them, too. A study released last year
by Zinfandel Advocates & Producers, an organization that
represents some 300 wineries, found that just 10 percent of
consumers surveyed felt that zins were too ripe and alcoholic.
The fact that demand for zinfandel remains strong clearly
suggests that elevated alcohol levels are not an impediment to
sales and may even be part of the attraction.
But at the risk of sounding like the persnickety, Eurocentric
oenophile that I am, the problem with these steroidal zins is that
they are tough to pair with any dish this side of woolly
mammoth. There just aren't many foods that marry well with
jammy, low-acid wines (and it doesn't help that many such zins
are also so excessively oaky that they can leave your tongue
feeling like a lathe). Fortunately, there are still zinfandels being
made with an eye to dinner, Thanksgiving or otherwise.
I long ago owned up to my fondness for Ridge, and the trio of
wines that I tasted this week did nothing to dull my enthusiasm.
The excellent 2006 Ridge Vineyards Sonoma County Three
Valleys ($22) is an impeccably proportioned wine redolent of
raspberries, leather, and licorice, and it is a good value, too. The
2006 Ridge Vineyards Geyserville ($35) sports a terrific
bouquet of crushed berries, flowers, cedar, and chocolate. It is a
full-bodied, energetic, but also very suave wine with enough
structure to carry it well into the next decade. The 2006 Ridge
Vineyards Lytton Springs ($35) is delicious; aromas of black
currants and roasted herbs float up from the glass, leading to a
wine of almost Zen-like poise that exudes completeness.
Mike Dashe worked as Paul Draper's assistant before starting his
own eponymous winery in 1996, and the Draper influence is
unmistakable in the restrained opulence of his zinfandels. The
2007 Dashe Cellars Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel ($24) is a
beautifully balanced wine, its lavish fruit parried by good acidity
and ripe, perfectly integrated tannins. The 2006 Dashe Cellars
Todd Brothers Ranch Zinfandel ($32) is big and lusty but with
just enough acidity to avoid sliding into flamboyance. I was
more impressed by the 2006 Dashe Cellars Louvau Vineyard
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Zinfandel ($32); a bouquet brimming with blackberries,
cherries, tobacco, cedar, and leather gives way to a graceful wine
that showcases zinfandel in all its palate-staining glory.
Like Ridge, Chateau Montelena is an iconic California winery;
unlike Ridge, Montelena's zinfandel has always been
overshadowed by its cabernet and chardonnay. But the 2005
Chateau Montelena—The Montelena Estate Zinfandel ($30)
is an outstanding wine, with succulent but nicely harnessed fruit,
fine structure and minerality, and a long, satisfying finish. Green
& Red Vineyard is a Napa winery that has long been recognized
for the quality of its zinfandels. The 2005 Green & Red
Vineyard Tip Top Vineyard Zinfandel ($28) is a superb,
mineral-inflected effort (with a great menthol note, too) that
seems to have a foot in both the New World and the Old,
combining California brightness with continental restraint. The
2006 Green & Red Vineyard Chiles Mill Vineyard Zinfandel
($25) is equally winning, although it moves at a slightly different
tempo. It is a peppery, creamy, richly flavored wine with
strapping tannins, but it flows harmoniously.
Celebrity wines are popping up everywhere; the 2005 Rubicon
Estate Edizione Pennino Zinfandel ($40) is one that is actually
worth drinking. Francis Ford Coppola owns Rubicon and
consistently turns out classically robust, peppery zinfandels. The
'05 is packed with lush, briary fruit, but there is ample acidity to
keep the wine from becoming pudgy, and it finishes with big,
ripe tannins and a nice lick of chocolate. Sonoma's Nalle
Winery, by contrast, has no claim to celebrityhood; it hardly
even gets mentioned in the wine press these days. Nalle makes
what have become truly anomalous zinfandels, ones that trade
on subtlety and finesse rather than power. The 2006 Nalle
Winery Zinfandel ($32) has the light complexion of a red
Burgundy and a gentle, inviting nose of cherries, flowers, cloves,
and black pepper. The first sip will not impress; the wine will
seem lean and lacking (especially next to other zinfandels). But
wash it around your mouth a bit—this is a charming zinfandel,
with plenty of concentration and flavor. It is a wine of hidden
depths and a timely reminder that not all zinfandels need to
smack you across the head to make an impression. The 2005
version, which goes for the same price, is equally lovely.
explainer
Are Private Jets Safer Than Commercial
Airliners?
The Big Three auto companies say they are.
By Juliet Lapidos
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 6:59 PM ET
At a hearing of the House financial services committee last
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
week, lawmakers scolded the CEOs of the Big Three auto
companies for flying private jets to Washington, D.C., before
requesting a bailout. A Chrysler spokeswoman responded that
"business travel requires the highest standard of safety for all
employees," and CNN noted that the Big Three "have policies
requiring their CEOs to travel in private jets for safety reasons."
Despite these concerns, General Motors announced yesterday
that CEO Richard Wagoner will not use a private aircraft when
he returns to the capital for another round of meetings next
week. (Ford and Chrysler have yet to announce their plans.) Are
private jets really safer than commercial airliners?
No. From Jan. 1, 2008, to Oct. 24, 2008, there were only 16
major accidents on commercial planes—including flights
carrying passengers and those carrying cargo. Seven of these
accidents resulted in zero fatalities while the biggest crash of the
year killed 154 people (Spanair Flight JK5022 on a Boeing MD82). During the same time period, there were 10 major accidents
on business jets. There were no fatalities on three of these flights
and eight (the largest number) on East Coast Jets Flight 81,
which crashed at Owatonna Airport in Minnesota.
Expressed in terms of flight hours, the accident rate is nearly
identical. According to the National Transportation Safety
Board, there were .135 accidents per 100,000 flight hours on
commercial air carriers in 2007. The NTSB breaks up business
flights into two categories—"corporate" (the aircraft must be
flown by a two-person, professional crew) and "business" (twoperson, professional crew not required). In 2007, the corporate
accident rate was .103 per 100,000 hours, and the business rate
was .72 per 100,000 hours.
Of course, the Big Three may be worried about more than
mechanical trouble or pilot error. When the Chrysler
spokeswoman said that "business travel requires the highest
standard of safety," she likely also meant security. It's true that,
if they travel on private jets, CEOs can bring along security
guards with handguns and get picked up in SUVs on the tarmac
instead of rubbing shoulders with disgruntled or recently laid-off
employees at the airport. But the risk level at, say, Reagan
National Airport is low for Richard Wagoner: Few people know
what he looks like, and American airports are patrolled by
police.
One way in which a private jet might be considered more safe is
in regard to information security. Even in first class there's no
real privacy. On a private aircraft, CEOs can discuss proprietary
information with colleagues or partners and keep in constant
contact with their headquarters.
The real benefits of a private jet, naturally, are convenience and
efficiency. Getting from Detroit to D.C. is pretty easy, but
getting from Detroit to a GM factory in Quito, Ecuador, could be
more of a hassle. If a senior executive needs to travel to a far-
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away affiliate in a town with little or no airline service or to
make multiple stops in one day, a private jet seems less
frivolous.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Dan Hubbard of the National Business
Aviation Association, Emily McGee of the Flight Safety
Foundation, and Kent Moyer of the World Protection Group.
explainer
The Turkey-Industrial Complex
How do farmers produce so many birds for Thanksgiving?
By Nina Shen Rastogi
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 6:04 PM ET
If last year's numbers are any indication, some 46 million
turkeys across America will be trussed up for Thanksgiving
dinner this Thursday. That's about 17 percent of all turkeys
raised in the United States in a given year. How do turkey
farmers meet the huge single-day demand for their birds?
They plan ahead. Major commercial turkey brands, like
Butterball, Hormel, and Cargill, produce two kinds of whole
bird: frozen and fresh. Turkeys destined for the freezer are
produced year-round—once these birds reach the proper size and
weight, they're slaughtered and blast-frozen at minus 30 degrees
Fahrenheit, at which point they can be stored all year in
preparation for the holiday poultry frenzy.
Producing fresh turkeys takes more planning. Market leader
Butterball, for example—which grows about one fresh bird for
every nine frozen ones—has already begun the production cycle
for next year's holiday season. Eggs for breeder birds have been
purchased from one of the world's two major genetic suppliers,
Hybrid and Nicholas. Those eggs will then be hatched and
placed in turkey farms so that they can grow and become
sexually mature during the winter. (Butterball needs roughly
28,000 laying hens and 1,700 "stud" toms each year to produce
the right amount of fresh turkeys.) Come springtime, these birds
will produce the eggs that are destined to become the turkeys we
actually eat. Hens produce eggs in 25-weeklong cycles: The first
five weeks' worth go toward fresh turkey production, the rest
toward the frozen turkey market. Breeder hens are normally used
for a single cycle before being slaughtered and processed
themselves.
The eggs laid next spring will be incubated for 28 days and then,
after they hatch, the resulting turkeys will spend about 10 to 18
weeks on a farm before they're brought into the processing plant
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
in late October and November. The birds are slaughtered,
quickly chilled to between 40 and 26 degrees Fahrenheit, and
then shipped out to retailers, usually all in the same day. (Some
fresh birds have to go to market a little early because the plants
can't process all of them in mid-November, even working at full
capacity.) Poultry companies can also shuffle their production to
meet increased demand, routing some of the birds that were
meant to be turned into lunch meats, fresh breasts and legs, or
ground turkey back into whole bird processing.
Bonus explainer: How do turkeys breed? With a little help from
their human friends. The vast majority of turkeys sold in the
United States are of the white broad-breasted variety. These
birds have been bred to produce as much white breast meat as
possible, resulting in males so large and unwieldy that they can't
properly mount the females. Toms therefore have to be manually
stimulated and "milked" for their semen, which is then inserted
into a hen using a syringe. Some have decried the assembly-linelike process as inhumane—at the very least, as chronicled in this
not-entirely-safe-for-work clip from Discovery's Dirty Jobs, it is
extremely messy. Farmers also use artificial lights to trick birds
into thinking that it's spring—their natural breeding season—all
year-round, thereby increasing their production.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks David Anderson and Kip Bodnar of Butterball
and Michael Davis of Texas A&M University.
explainer
The Off-White House
How much can an incoming president change the décor at 1600 Pennsylvania
Ave.?
By Juliet Lapidos
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 6:29 PM ET
Ever since Barack and Michelle Obama toured the White House
on Nov. 11, the press has been speculating about the couple's
redecoration agenda. On Thursday, the Associated Press asked
several interior designers to offer advice. Taniya Nayak of
HGTV's Designed To Sell said the "stone, fabrics, and flooring"
of the Green Room should be made from green products;
Charles B. Smith of Charles Smith & Associates thinks the state
dining room should glow "with soft colors" like "pale yellows,
'pêche,' creams and white." But how much control does the first
family really have over the appearance of the White House?
Quite a bit. Every four years, Congress appropriates money to
maintain and redecorate the 132-room executive mansion.
(George W. and Laura Bush were allocated $100,000 for the
president's second term.) For the living quarters, which are
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located on the top two floors, the first family has significant
leeway. It usually falls to the president's wife to supervise paint
jobs and to acquire new furniture, wall hangings, and bedding.
If, however, the president's family wants to alter the appearance
of historic guest suites (like the Lincoln Bedroom) or any of the
public spaces on the ground and first floors (like the Green
Room and the state dining room), they must consult the
Committee for the Preservation of the White House. (The
curator of the White House, the director of the National Gallery
of Art, and other luminaries belong to this committee, which
Lyndon Johnson established by executive order in 1964.) State
rooms are generally refurbished once a decade, often with funds
from the White House Historical Association.
Explainer thanks William Bushong of the White House
Historical Association.
For both public and private spaces, the president's family can
sort through first-rate spoils instead of relying on shopping trips.
There's a White House storage house with old furniture (like
four-poster beds) and an art collection with about 500 sculptures,
drawings, and paintings (including works by Norman Rockwell
and Georgia O'Keeffe*) obtained as gifts or by previous first
families and the White House curator. Traditionally, presidents
select portraits of their favorite predecessors to line the walls.
For the Oval Office, George W. Bush chose a painting called A
Charge To Keep. He often tells visitors that it depicts Methodist
circuit riders—missionaries who spread the Good Word across
the Alleghenies in the 19th century. It actually depicts a horse
thief fleeing a mob. Each president—or his wife—designs a rug
for the Oval Office bearing the presidential seal.
By Brad Flora and Sophie Gilbert
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 7:07 AM ET
*Correction, Nov. 24, 2008: This article originally misspelled
the name of the artist Georgia O'Keeffe. (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
explainer
Explainer's Wildfire Roundup
Your questions about the disaster in Southern California, with answers from
our archives.
Three wildfires have been moving through Southern California
in the past week, burning though 17,000 hectares of land,
causing "the worst loss of homes due to fire" ever in the city of
Los Angeles, and adding considerably to the state's financial
woes.
Among the fires burning in Southern California were the
Montecito Tea Fire, the Sayre Fire, and the Triangle
Complex Fire. Who picks these names?
First families may also choose to oversee large-scale home
improvements and structural changes. The Kennedys
commissioned a swimming pool; Nixon built a one-lane bowling
alley below the driveway leading to the North Portico. Obama is
thinking about constructing a basketball court. Jimmy Carter
famously installed solar panels on the White House grounds that
Ronald Reagan removed. George W. and Laura Bush added lowflow faucets and toilets, solar heating, and CFL bulbs.
In general, naming rights go to the group that makes the "initial
attack" on a fire, whether it's a squadron of local firefighters or a
team from the U.S. Forest Service. (In contrast, every tropical
storm in the Atlantic gets its name from a single organization.)
The commander on the scene often uses a nearby geographical
feature to describe the fire, but he's not bound by any official
rules. (For more on how a wildfire gets its name, read this
Explainer from 2005.)
All the original White House furnishings were destroyed in
1814, when the British set fire to the building. (The only object
from the earliest days of the republic that's still in the White
House is a portrait of George Washington.) Subsequently,
presidents and their wives furnished the residence according to
taste. James Madison favored French design; Martin Van Buren
decorated a room with silver wallpaper and light-blue satin. (It's
been called the Blue Room ever since.) Queen Victoria
presented Rutherford B. Hayes with a desk built from the
timbers of the HMS Resolute; most presidents since have sat
behind it in the Oval Office. FDR commissioned a modification
for the desk in 1944—a front panel to hide his wheelchair—and
Reagan raised it a couple of inches to accommodate his chair.
Officials have 100 percent "contained" two out of the three
fires. What does it mean to contain a fire, and how is the
percentage calculated?
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
To prevent a blaze from spreading, firefighters dig a "fire line"
around its circumference. If three miles of fire line have been
built around a fire that is 10 miles in circumference, then 30
percent of the fire is contained. Once a fire is fully contained,
firefighters work on "controlling" it by battling it inside the
containment line. A controlled fire is one that has no risk of
expanding beyond the fire line. (For more on how wildfires are
rated, read this Explainer from 2001.)
According to newspaper reports, 1,500 California prison
inmates are helping to put out the blaze. Why are prisoners
fighting wildfires?
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In California, some prisoners get transferred to a system of
"conservation camps," where more than 4,000 inmates are
housed and trained to fight forest fires. According to the
Department of Corrections, "assignment to a conservation camp
is a hard-won privilege" and provides the opportunity for
prisoners to live without gun towers or security fences and to
reduce the duration of their sentences by as much as two-thirds.
Spots at the camps are reserved for physically fit offenders with
no history of escape attempts, violent crimes, or—naturally—
arson. (For more on prisoners and disaster relief, read this
Explainer from 2005.)
Gov. Schwarzenegger's finance spokesman says wildfire
property damage will top $305 million. What about the
environmental damage from all the carbon being spewed
into the atmosphere? Do wildfires have a significant impact
on global warming?
A lot depends on what the fire destroys, as there is tremendous
variation among tree species in terms of carbon storage. If you
see a fire sweeping through an expanse of mighty evergreens,
the carbon emissions will be much higher than if the
conflagration were consuming wispier trees. You've also got to
factor in the composition of the ravaged soil. The fires that
swept across Indonesia in 1997 burned relatively thin tropical
trees. But the devastated forests were also covered in carbon-rich
peat. As a result, the Indonesian fires were estimated to have
released between 13 percent and 40 percent of the world's annual
emissions at the time. (For more on the environmental impact of
wildfires, read this article from 2007.)
Santa Barbara, Calif., Sheriff Bill Brown says one of the fires
was caused by a bonfire built by students, but the other two
are still under investigation. How do you examine a wildfire
for signs of arson?
First, figure out where it got started. The place where firefighters
first engaged with the blaze is a good place to begin, as are spots
where eyewitnesses say they first saw flames or charred ground.
Once there, investigators can lay down something like an
archaeological grid and start sifting through the debris. This
evidence might include the "puddle" burn patterns caused by an
accelerant—or the remains of a cigarette. Investigators also look
for footprints or tire marks, and they sometimes use magnets to
find stray bits of metal that might have been part of a timedelayed incendiary device. (For more on how investigators look
for signs of arson, read this Explainer from 2006.)
Just this week, a homeless man in California was sentenced
to four years in prison and ordered to pay costs of $101
million for setting fires that burned down 160,000 acres of
national forest. How's a guy who sleeps in a tent supposed to
pay $101 million?
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
He isn't. Instead, he's expected to pay a tiny bit every month
until he dies. The man, Steven Emory Butcher, currently
receives $1,000 a month in Supplemental Security Income,
which is basically welfare for the elderly, disabled, or blind. The
federal court ordered Butcher to pay $25 to Los Padres National
Forest four times a year while in prison, then $50 a month once
he's released. No one expects him to deliver the entire $101
million—even a spokesman for the prosecutor acknowledged
that the odds of Butcher paying it off were "extremely slim"—
but they do expect him to pay what he can. If Butcher gets a job
when he's out of prison, the probation officer can modify the
amount of monthly payments—the criminal equivalent of
refinancing your mortgage. (For more on why a homeless man is
given such an unrealistic fine, read this Explainer from 2008.)
Witnesses have described "thick clouds of gray-black
smoke" blotting out the sun. Others have seen "orange-white
plumes." What determines the color of smoke?
The type of fuel and how hot it's burning. A wildfire can produce
both colors of smoke. First, the hot, flaming combustion of dry
underbrush releases little particles of black soot into the
atmosphere. But the blaze also produces smoldering
combustion—think of the glowing logs at the bottom of a
campfire—which don't burn quite as hot. Big branches or tree
trunks that have a lot of moisture are more likely to smolder and
release white smoke. (For more on what determines smoke
color, read this Explainer from 2006.)
Reports have described wildfire flames as high as 100 feet in
some places. How high can a fire hose shoot?
Between 75 feet and 100 feet straight up, depending on water
pressure. In practice, though, firefighters on the ground rarely
attempt to reach higher than 40 feet with hoses. (For more on
how firefighters attack tall flames, read this Explainer from
2004.)
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
explainer
The Globavore's Dilemma
Your questions about food contamination, with answers from the archives.
By Noreen Malone
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 7:07 AM ET
The Food and Drug Administration opened a new branch in
Beijing on Wednesday in response to a spate of recent highprofile contamination scares. Meanwhile, the embarrassed
Chinese government has promised to tighten inspection
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standards in the wake of the ongoing poisoned baby formula
scandal. And last week, the United States implemented an
"import alert" for any food products made in China to be sure
they're both dairy- and melamine-free. Here's an Explainer
roundup of all the ways your food can make you sick.
So is China the world capital of contaminated food?
Britain seems to be giving it quite a run for its money. In recent
years, the country's cattle has fallen victim to mad cow disease,
bluetongue disease, and foot-and-mouth disease. In part, the
outbreaks are just bad luck. They also have something to do with
the country's status as a global hub: Heathrow Airport has the
most international traffic in the world, and airline-food waste is
sometimes processed into the food that's fed to cattle, posing a
massive risk for disease. (For more on Britain's meat problem,
see this Explainer from 2007.)
In 2007, workers at a U.S. pork processing plant all reported
troubling symptoms, including weakness and dizziness. All
were working in the area where the pig's brains were being
liquefied. Foodies everywhere wondered: Is it safe to eat
pork brains?
Yes. There's no evidence that the digestion of pork brains will do
you any harm, but the inhalation of them seems to be a different
story. Breathing in the brain tissue triggers an immune response
that leads to the sort of symptoms experienced by the factory
workers. Like all meat, pork brains can be contaminated in
various ways, but there's no evidence that the substance itself is
bad for humans. (For more on the innards-and-outs, see this
Explainer from 2008.)
To be on the safe side, I'll avoid dairy, meat, and other
animal products, but nothing's safer than a PB-and-J
sandwich. Right?
Nope. In 2007, ConAgra-made peanut butter, including Peter
Pan, caused an outbreak of salmonella, infecting hundreds of
people. Animal products are the most likely foods to harbor
salmonella bacteria. But vegetables and fruits can have it, too, if
they're not washed properly and infected manure makes it onto
the crop through water runoff or leaky waste lagoons—
remember 2008's salmonella-infected tomato scare? Peanut
butter isn't usually a high-risk food for salmonella outbreak,
since the peanuts are roasted at super-high temperatures, but the
germs can creep back in at the jarring stage of post-processing.
(This Explainer from 2007 and this one from 2008 have more
details on salmonella contamination.)
Will washing my fruits and veggies help cut down on
diseases?
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Yes, probably. A "thorough rinsing" can cut down on
microbacteria by as much as 90 percent—the remaining decile of
disease is lodged in grooves on the produce's surface or attached
to it by electrostatic charges. The longer the bacteria stay on, the
more attached they get. Washing is more helpful in getting rid of
"spoilage bacteria"—giving something a rinse before putting it
in the fridge might help make it last longer. (For more detail,
read this Explainer from 2006.)
The United States isn't the only place in the world to
snobbishly ban food imports. In fact, Europe won't let
American chickens across the pond. Are they unsafe?
No, they just taste funny to the European palate. American birds
are bathed in chlorine (or another bacteria killer), a stringent
regulation that was put in place after E. coli scares and
salmonella scares in the 1990s. That doesn't mean that they're
redolent of a swimming pool, though—tests have found that
chlorinated chicken doesn't begin to taste significantly worse
than its nonchlorinated counterpart until it's been reheated
several times. (For more on bad-tasting birds, see this Explainer
from 2008.)
Poisoned babies have been grabbing the headlines lately, but
last year the victims of contaminated Chinese imports were
American cats and dogs. It turned out that we were putting
bad wheat gluten from overseas into our pet food. Wait,
imported wheat products? Isn't America the breadbasket of
the world?
Yes, but other countries make cheaper gluten. Although we're
the world's largest consumer of wheat gluten, just a handful of
American companies produce it, and 80 percent of our supply
comes from abroad. Europe has a lot of extra gluten since they
use wheat starch (what's left over when you separate out the
gluten) to make sweeteners. They've also got wheat subsidies in
place, which lower the price still further. China has a smaller,
but growing, share of the market. (For more on wheat gluten,
check out this 2007 Explainer.)
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
explainer
Explainer's Same-Sex-Marriage
Roundup
Your questions related to California's Proposition 8 with answers from our
archives.
By Sophie Gilbert
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 6:38 PM ET
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On Nov. 4, voters in California approved Proposition 8 to adopt
a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. This
week saw the California Supreme Court jump back into the
debate with the news that it will review the legality of the ballot
measure.
Fervent campaigning by members of the Mormon church
may have pushed support for Prop 8 over the top. What,
exactly, do Mormons think about homosexuality?
That orientation is distinct from practice. The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints has issued several position statements
about homosexuality—or "same-gender attraction," as the
church calls it. One of its most recent publications, a 2007
pamphlet titled "God Loveth His Children," states: "If you avoid
immoral thoughts and actions, you have not transgressed even if
you feel such an attraction." Being a practicing homosexual can
be grounds for excommunication, but gay Mormons who remain
celibate can continue to be members in good standing, allowed
to worship in the temple and assume positions of leadership.
However, gay and lesbian Mormons who publicly acknowledge
their orientations—even if they don't act on them—may face
informal disciplinary measures from their congregation bishops.
(To read more on Mormon attitudes toward homosexuality, read
this Explainer from 2008.)
Help! There are so many things I don't understand about
this issue. What's the legal difference between a marriage
and a civil union?
It depends where you live. Vermont's statute provides a very
comprehensive set of legal rights to same-sex couples: "[T]he
same benefits, protections and responsibilities under law,
whether they derive from statute, administrative or court rule,
policy, common law or any other source of civil law, as are
granted to spouses in a marriage." Thus civil unions, as the term
has come to be understood in the light of Vermont's law, have all
of the same attending legal consequences as marriages; the only
difference is their name. (For more answers to your FAQs on
gay marriage, read this Explainer from 2004.)
The California Supreme Court has implemented a shortterm freeze on gay marriage while it considers the
constitutionality of Prop 8. If I get married in Canada, is it
legal here in the United States?
Probably not, at least until the newlyweds pursue the matter
through the courts. The United States recognizes most foreign
marriages because of "comity," the legal version of the golden
rule. The principle holds that lawful conduct in one jurisdiction
should be respected in another, lest travelers worry about their
marriages being invalidated as they cross borders. But comity is
more a custom than an obligation, and neither the states nor the
federal government are compelled to extend the courtesy to
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
every couple wed abroad. They can decline if the marriage in
question violates a jurisdiction's definition of an acceptable
union—say, if the bride is below the age of consent or if the
couple are close blood relations. Or, in the case of same-sex
marriages, if a local law explicitly defines marriage as a union
between a man and a woman. (To read more on the legality of
Canadian same-sex marriages, read this Explainer from 2003.)
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
explainer
The Evergold State
Are prospectors crazy to be dredging in Washington's rivers and streams?
By Jacob Leibenluft
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 6:36 PM ET
Gold prospectors in the state of Washington are up in arms about
new restrictions on when they can search for gold. The rules,
issued last week, are intended to limit digging and dredging in
streams, which may put fish eggs at risk. Just how much gold is
in those Pacific Northwest streams?
It's hard to know for sure, but don't expect a Washington gold
rush anytime soon. According to the most recent estimates
(PDF) by geologists with the U.S. Geological Survey, the
Evergreen State had about 519 metric tons of known gold
resources within its borders during the late 1990s; another study
guessed that there might be 2,100 tons worth of undiscovered
gold deposits throughout the Pacific Coast region. Washington
ranks among the top 10 states in its existing gold deposits, but it
is well outpaced by Nevada's 6,100 metric tons of gold deposits,
by far the largest in the nation.
With gold prices at about $747 an ounce on Thursday, 519 tons
is a significant haul. (It's $13.7 billion, to be exact.) But while no
one keeps exact figures, it's hard to imagine much of that gold
will show up in the pans of prospectors. Most gold that appears
in streams is placer gold, which refers to gold found in the sand
and gravel deposits of stream beds or beaches. (The word placer
comes from the Spanish for "sand bank"; by contrast, gold that is
still in solid rock is called "lode gold.") The USGS estimates
(PDF) that about 20 percent of U.S. gold deposits are placer
gold. But in most places—Alaska is a rare exception—placer
gold is not very economical to mine, so it accounts for a much
smaller percentage of gold produced nationwide. Indeed, even
for a small-scale prospector, mining in a stream can get rather
expensive: The suction dredges at issue in the new rules—
machines that pull up material at the bottom of streams and then
filter it—will set you back a few thousand dollars apiece.
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The best indicator of the amount of gold in Washington's
streams is probably the fact that according to the state's geology
department, there isn't a single commercial placer gold operation
in the state—the prospectors are all part-timers. Geologists don't
offer much encouragement about the prospects of striking rich
through prospecting, either. A USGS guide to prospecting notes
that "[t]he grizzled prospector with a burro is no longer a
significant participant in the search for mineral deposits, and the
small producer accounts for only a minor share of the total
production of metals including gold." Another primer from the
California Geological Survey (PDF) estimates that one in every
1,000 prospectors "will ever make a strike." And in
Washington—where an estimated 2,000 to 2,300 people might
call themselves prospectors—the miners say that half an ounce
of gold (or about $373 worth) is a pretty typical haul for a
season, and that many prospectors are lucky if they find enough
gold to cover their expenses.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Micheal George of the U.S. Geological Survey,
Dave Norman of the Washington State Department of Natural
Resources, and Bill Thomas of the Washington Prospectors
Mining Association.
tanker is being held captive for $25 million; a more typical
ransom for a captured ship is $1 million. (The United Nations
estimates that $25 million to $30 million has been paid out in
ransom to pirates this year.) Human captives are sometimes
taken for a less dramatic ransom, yielding tens of thousands
each. (For more detail on what modern pirates want from us and
how they get it, check out this Explainer from 2005.)
After the news broke of Saturday's oil tanker seizure, world
oil futures spiked briefly, with investors worried about the
impact such unpredictable factors could have on supply. If
you're in the commercial shipping business, what steps can
you take to pirate-proof your haul?
You should definitely invest in K&R insurance—that's
"kidnapping and ransom." Premium costs have increased as
much as tenfold over the past year, but if you're shipping
through the Gulf of Aden, it's worth it. You should also consider
hired muscle: Blackwater, of Iraq war fame, is offering a
protection package that includes an attack helicopter and escort
ships. (For more on how to cover your booty, see this article
from Slate's sister site The Big Money.)
Since August, anti-piracy patrols have had a few victories.
Earlier this week, the Indian navy sunk one pirate ship and
forced the crew to flee another, while last week a British ship
stopped a boat full of pirates and arrested eight people. How
exactly do you make an arrest at sea?
explainer
Explainer's Pirate Roundup
Your questions about pirates with answers from our archives.
By Noreen Malone
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 4:16 PM ET
Somali pirates seized a Saudi oil tanker worth $100 million on
Saturday, and attacks on Thai and Indian vessels followed on
Tuesday. So far, more than 95 ships have been attacked by
pirates near Somalia this year. It's been a while since the last
golden age of piracy, so the Explainer is here to get you up to
speed on all the most crucial information about these high-seas
renegades.
What's their motivation?
Booty, naturally. Pirates haven't changed that much. In the
middle of the 20th century, pirates tended to be merely thieves at
sea, climbing aboard commercial ships and making off with
whatever valuables they could grab. Some pirates are still
operating on this small scale, but they tend to pack more heat—
guns or even grenades. A typical yield for this sort of attack,
which often involves breaking into commercial safes onboard,
can range from $1,000 to $20,000. The really big bucks in
pirating come from ransom, though. For instance, the Saudi oil
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
First, try to contact the outlaw ship via radio or P.A. system.
Then board the vessel from helicopters or smaller ships, and
make a thorough search for lawbreakers and weapons. Prisoners
should be handcuffed and the seized ship steered to the nearest
port. If the pirates try to flee, you might try to shoot out the
ship's engine or "foul its propeller" with a netlike device
deployed in the water ahead of the ship. (For more detail on
maritime arrests, see this Explainer from 2005.)
So, do these modern-day pirates still say "Arrr"?
No, and the old-fashioned ones probably didn't, either.
Hollywood brought the phrase onto the scene in 1934, and it
stuck. Arrr, pronounced with the trademark burred accent,
became fixed in the popular consciousness when an actor from
Southwestern England used it to great effect playing Long John
Silver throughout the 1950s. Today's Somali pirates might be
likely to say something more along the lines of "is dhiib"
("Surrender"), "istaag ama waan ku tooganayaa" ("Stop or I will
shoot"), or perhaps one of these other useful Somalian phrases.
(For more on high-seas etymology, see this Explainer from
2007.)
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
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the larger question, especially for white families: When framing
the issue, do parents teach it as a triumph for African-Americans
or as a story about the capacity of evil in whites?
family
Why Is Obama Our First Black
President?
Kids' questions about his victory, and their parents' attempts to answer.
By Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 4:00 PM ET
Garth and Christy Ross supported Barack Obama from the start.
They raised money for him and knocked on doors to rally voters
in Northwest Virginia. They involved their 7-year-old son and 5year old daughter as much as possible, so when Obama won, it
was a family celebration. And then, after the election, their son
asked during dinner, "Why was he our first president with brown
skin?" For the next 45 minutes, the couple, who are white,
carefully described America's racial history, trying to add to
what they'd already taught them without giving their children
more of that history than they could handle. "We didn't want to
give them an explanation that was laden with all of our
baggage," says Garth.
For the Rosses, us, and we're sure other parents of young
children, the tension in describing Barack Obama's victory is not
whether to explain the racial context. If kids ask why Obama
looks different from the parade of presidents before him, there's
no sense pretending he doesn't. The challenge is just what to talk
about—how intensely to focus kids on the historic nature of this
moment and how deeply to delve into the legacy of racism that
preceded it.
The Obama victory is a teachable moment (to use a piece of
jargon we think Obama should outlaw if he's any kind of
president at all). It gives parents a chance to talk to their children
about judging people by the content of their character.
For older kids, there have been reports like this one that suggest
the election helped black and white eighth graders bridge the
racial barriers in a way countless talks on diversity never could.
For younger kids, though, or those who live largely segregated
lives, to make the lesson stick, parents might have to introduce
ideas about division and hatred that young kids so far haven't
confronted.
A lot of white parents aren't hugely comfortable in this terrain:
It's ugly, and sometimes we're not really sure of our own
relationship to this past. And even if the parents are more sure of
themselves, answering certain questions gets complicated
quickly. Obsessed with logistics, young kids may want to know
exactly how slaves were restrained and kept from escaping. Or
how long a sit-in actually lasted, or where black marchers slept
if they weren't allowed into white-owned hotels. And then there's
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The Ross kids go to class with kids of all different ethnic and
racial backgrounds and so far haven't much experienced racial
tension. Which is why their parents stepped lightly. Other
parents, nonblack and black, see no reason to talk about what's
been overcome, because their kids didn't frame Obama's victory
that way. "I'm pleased to see that they find the election of a black
president to be something that's not especially remarkable," says
D.J. Hoek, the white father of 5- and 7-year-old girls. "As my
daughters grow up and learn more, they surely will come to a
fuller understanding of what Obama's election represents. But
now, in their eyes, it's completely reasonable that an AfricanAmerican, or a woman, or anyone could become president, and I
can think of no better indicator of just how far our country has
come."
When we asked black colleagues and friends how they were
handling this with their kids, we got a similar response. And also
a desire to spare kids the anger and mistrust they grew up with.
"You don't have to have this conversation," said our colleague
Lynette Clemetson, whose older daughter is 4. "I don't think
black families are sitting around talking about how this is so
historic to their young kids. Part of what's amazing is that to
these kids, there's nothing odd about the picture of having kids in
the White House who look just like them." In the final days of
the campaign, Sen. Obama used this same image of his black
children playing at the White House to spur African-American
leaders to turn out the vote.
At the same time, when we talked about this issue on the Slate
"Political Gabfest," we heard from black listeners who said our
purported dilemma existed only for white parents because black
kids can't avoid learning about racism and their parents don't try
to shield them. "There was no reason to hide what happened
because our people were the victims," Aisha Taylor wrote to us.
To us, as white parents, it's reassuring to know that black parents
differ from one another on these questions—a reminder that race
doesn't dictate outlook. Surely some of the distinctions drawn
depend on the ages of the kids involved. But there is also
evidence that white and black kids tend to diverge in how they
develop consciousness about race. From 3 to 5, research shows,
kids start to notice race (or really skin tone) as a difference
among groups. At 5 and 6, they tend to start endorsing racial
stereotypes. If you ask them who is more likely to be the boss,
both black and white kids will choose the white person. At 7 or
8, kids start to understand that their own race will not change.
Some African-American kids start rejecting stereotypes and
express group pride.
"What's interesting is that this doesn't seem to be related to
parents' attitudes, as most people think it is," says Christia
Spears Brown, a psychology professor at the University of
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Kentucky whom we called for guidance. Instead, kids pick up on
cues from the segregation in their own lives, or stray comments,
or the ever-guilty media.
Just a couple of years ago, in 2006, there was also the disturbing
result of a study by psychologist Rebecca Bigler, in which 205
children ages 5 to 10 were shown a poster of all presidents and
asked why there were no African-American presidents. A
quarter said the reason was that it was against the law. One in
three children attributed the lack of female, African-American,
and Latino presidents to racial and gender bias on the part of
voters. Another third of the kids said people in the excluded
groups lacked the skills to hold the position.
The conclusion Brown draws from this is that "kids notice really
early, and the problem is that adults don't talk about what racial
differences mean, so kids draw their own conclusions, and their
explanations are often very flawed." Brown, who is white, gave
her almost-5-year-old daughter a simplified explanation about
why Obama is our first black president. African-Americans
didn't have as much money to run for president, Brown told her.
Also, before, some people thought that someone with darker skin
wouldn't be a good president. Now we know that's not true.
Maybe one of the most profound aspects of Obama's victory is
that in a year or two—or maybe even right this minute—kids
won't have to come up with a cockamamie reason to explain to
themselves why there have been no black presidents. They'll
have different facts from which to draw conclusions about the
meaning of race. And then they can teach their parents what they
know and see.
fighting words
Serving the Clintonian Interest
The last thing we need is a Clinton in charge of foreign policy.
By Christopher Hitchens
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 12:27 PM ET
It was apt in a small way that the first endorser of Hillary
Rodham Clinton for secretary of state should have been Henry
Kissinger. The last time he was nominated for any position of
responsibility—the chairmanship of the 9/11 commission—he
accepted with many florid words about the great honor and
responsibility, and then he withdrew when it became clear that
he would have to disclose the client list of Kissinger Associates.
(See, for the article that began this embarrassing process for him,
my Slate column "The Latest Kissinger Outrage.")
It is possible that the Senate will be as much of a club as the
undistinguished fraternity/sorority of our ex-secretaries of state,
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
but even so, it's difficult to see Sen. Clinton achieving
confirmation unless our elected representatives are ready to ask a
few questions about conflict of interest along similar lines. And
how can they not? The last time that Clinton foreign-policy
associations came up for congressional review, the
investigations ended in a cloud of murk that still has not been
dispelled. Former President Bill Clinton has recently and rather
disingenuously offered to submit his own foundation to scrutiny
(see the work of my Vanity Fair colleague Todd Purdum on the
delightful friends and associates that Clinton has acquired since
he left office), but the real problem is otherwise. Both President
and Sen. Clinton, while in office, made it obvious to foreign
powers that they and their relatives were wide open to
suggestions from lobbyists and middlemen.
Just to give the most salient examples from the Clinton
fundraising scandals of the late 1990s: The House Committee on
Government Reform and Oversight published a list of witnesses
called before it who had either "fled or pled"—in other words,
who had left the country to avoid testifying or invoked the Fifth
Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. Some Democratic
members of the committee said that this was unfair to, say, the
Buddhist nuns who raised the unlawful California temple dough
for then-Vice President Al Gore, but however fair you want to
be, the number of those who found it highly inconvenient to
testify fluctuates between 94 and 120. If you recall the names
John Huang, James Riady, Johnny Chung, Charlie Trie, and
others, you will remember the pattern of acquired amnesia
syndrome and stubborn reluctance to testify, followed by sudden
willingness on the part of the Democratic National Committee to
return quite large sums of money from foreign sources. Much of
this cash had been raised at political events held in the public
rooms of the White House, the sort of events that featured the
adorable Roger Tamraz, for another example.
Related was the result of a House select committee on Chinese
espionage in the United States and the illegal transfer to China of
advanced military technology. Chaired by Christopher Cox, RCalif., the committee issued a report in 1999 with no dissenting
or "minority" signature. It found that the Clinton administration's
attitude toward Chinese penetration had been abysmally lax (as
lax, I would say, as its attitude toward easy money from
businessmen with Chinese military-industrial associations).
Many quids and many quos were mooted by these investigations
(still incomplete at the time of writing) though perhaps not
enough unambivalent pros. You can't say that about the Marc
Rich and other pardons—the vulgar bonanza with which the last
Clinton era came to an end. Rich's ex-wife, Denise Rich, gave
large sums to Hillary Clinton's re-election campaign and to Bill
Clinton's library, and Marc Rich got a pardon. Edgar and Vonna
Jo Gregory, convicted of bank fraud, hired Hillary Clinton's
brother Tony and paid him $250,000, and they got a pardon.
Carlos Vignali Jr. and Almon Glenn Braswell paid $400,000 to
Hillary Clinton's other brother, Hugh, and, hey, they,
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respectively, got a presidential commutation and a presidential
pardon, too. In the Hugh case, the money was returned as being
too embarrassing for words (and as though following the
hallowed custom, when busted or flustered, of the Clinton-era
DNC). But I would say that it was more embarrassing to realize
that a former first lady, and a candidate for secretary of state,
was a full partner in years of seedy overseas money-grubbing
and has two greedy brothers to whom she cannot say no.
food
Does this sibling and fraternal squalor have foreign-policy
implications, too? Yes. Until late 1999, the fabulous Rodham
boys were toiling on another scheme to get the hazelnut
concession from the newly independent republic of Georgia.
There was something quixotically awful about this scheme—
something simultaneously too small-time and too big-time—but
it also involved a partnership with the main political foe of the
then-Georgian president (who may conceivably have had
political aspirations), so once again the United States was made
to look as if its extended first family were operating like a
banana republic.
It's already Christmas in print—this week, the mailman started
delivering frost-kissed, cookie-strewn, tinseled December issues
of my food magazines. But online, the media are content to let
November persist until at least Thursday with lavish guides to
the biggest eating holiday of the year. The Thanksgiving food
advice on the Web is plentiful, copiously illustrated with videos
and slide shows, and, best of all, free. I've sorted through the
avalanche of online guidance and compiled a digest of cyberThanksgiving with trends of note—and the recipes that stand out
as probable winners.
China, Indonesia, Georgia—these are not exactly negligible
countries on our defense and financial and ideological
peripheries. In each country, there are important special interests
that equate the name Clinton with the word pushover. And did I
forget to add what President Clinton pleaded when the revulsion
at the Rich pardons became too acute? He claimed that he had
concerted the deal with the government of Israel in the intervals
of the Camp David "agreement"! So anyone who criticized the
pardons had better have been careful if they didn't want to hear
from the Anti-Defamation League. Another splendid way of
showing that all is aboveboard and of convincing the Muslim
world of our evenhandedness.
In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again,
the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. A
president absolutely has to know of his chief foreign-policy
executive that he or she has no other agenda than the one he has
set. Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman
whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty
is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former
president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government
time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous
brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently
was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and
(in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy
qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew
about by way of sordid backstairs dealing. What may look like
wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like
foolhardiness and masochism to me.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Don't Wet-Brine Your Turkey. Do StirFry Your Sweet Potatoes.
Slate's guide to online Thanksgiving advice.
By Sara Dickerman
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 4:16 PM ET
The biggest turkey trend this year is a push-back against wet
brining, which the gastronomic press corps has promoted
enthusiastically for the past decade or so. (Food Network star
Alton Brown, for example, is a big fan.) Brining is the process of
soaking the raw bird in a bath of salty—and sometimes spicy
and/or sweetened—water in order to keep the breast meat moist
and counteract the turkey's fundamental engineering flaw: The
breast is done cooking long before the legs are. But this method
isn't hassle-free. It's hard to find room in an overcrowded
refrigerator for a bucketful of brine and bird. More important, as
food-science maven Harold McGee pointed out in the New York
Times this month, the extra salt in the turkey can botch the
gravy. McGee is joined by other brine-resisters, like
Thanksgiving guru Rick Rodgers, who, in Bon Appétit,
recommends dry-salting the turkey 18-24 hours before cooking
(which probably won't affect the gravy quite so much). Inspired
by legendary chef and pre-salter Judy Rogers, the Los Angeles
Times kvells over a similar technique. Saveur boasts a recipe
from New Orleans chef Leah Chase in which the turkey is
mostly cooked inside an aluminum foil packet, essentially
steaming it en papillote. Others, like the gang at Cook's
Illustrated, advise ditching the idea of a whole roast turkey.
They advocate cooking it in parts instead. So does Mark Bittman
of the New York Times, but he further thumbs his nose at
tradition by rejecting the roasting custom altogether and
recommending a braise.
As for gravy, Julia Moskin offers the eminently reasonable
suggestion that you make your gravy ahead of time, not in the
heat of the moment—"with gravy in your back pocket, so to
speak, all that last-minute messing around with a hot roasting
pan at the very moment when burner space is at a premium
becomes entirely optional." Latin spices are chic this year for
turkey marinades—I like the idea of a lemony Yucatan-style
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achiote rub offered up by Food and Wine while Gourmet
suggests an earthy chile adobo.
Non-meat-eaters can get short shrift on a day devoted to turkey.
Though Thanksgiving always provides lots of interesting
vegetable sides, vegetarians often suffer from a lack of gravity in
the main course. Take this Sunset magazine vegetarian menu,
which, as its centerpiece, has a vegetarian stew served atop
polenta. Though it looks appealing, it lacks the ceremonial tadah quality (not to mention the carving opportunity) that a big
roast bird has. Kudos to Gourmet, then, for providing the most
seductive vegetarian menu around, with a burnished farro and
mushroom tart as the headlining act whose lustrous puff pastry
crust recalls the sheen of a turkey roast. Though it's described as
a side dish, another vegetarian main course option is Susan
Spungen's gorgeous savory ricotta tart topped with pumpkin
seeds and scalloped circles of roasted squash. The only question
is, if the main course is a tart, will diners feel like pie for
dessert?
With stuffing you declare your allegiance to tradition. Are you a
Southern cornbread dressing traditionalist, an oyster stuffing
epicure, or do you love the native-foods appeal of wild rice?
Personally, I'm a stuffing bobo. I like the sweet-tart eclecticism
of a fruity stuffing like this one at Bon Appetit though I'd put
some nuts in it just for fun.
Cranberry sauce provides an essential tartness to the rich
Thanksgiving table, and it's perpetually being tweaked—
including a curious new inclination (in Saveur and the Food
Network site, for instance) to roast it rather than cook it
stovetop. As long as there's some sugar and citrus involved, it's
hard to go wrong with homemade cranberry sauce. Even radicalseeming additions—like dates, ginger, port, or kumquats—have
less impact on the finished product than you might imagine
because cranberries are so domineering. My family has long
gone with a raw version like this one, but cooked cranberries
offer a darker, candied charm.
like compromise—a casserole that's half marshmallowed and
half topped with a crunchy cashew streusel. Meanwhile, Bittman
rejects the candy-topped casserole altogether and offers up
several other options, including stir-fried sweet potato shreds
with sage and garlic.
For the most part, Thanksgiving focuses on lush autumnal
ingredients, so I've never understood the appeal of summery
green beans as part of the menu. Why not give a less mainstream
veggie a chance to shine in its place? The parsnip's stock seems
to be rising this year, as well it should. Though it may look like a
milquetoast carrot, the parsnip's flavor is surprisingly complex—
it can hold its own in a curried soup and adds depth and texture
to creamed spinach. Speaking of green, the Brussels sprout is
getting a lot of play this year, too. Rather than serving the
minicabbage whole, food writers recommend shredding it into
slaws or separating it into its cuplike leaves for a quick sauté.
While these recipes look good, keep in mind such niceties take
time. If you're pressed, you can make a lot of great dishes with
halved Brussels sprouts, as this Chow recipe for braised sprouts
suggests.
And, finally, there is dessert or, more accurately, pie. Even if I'm
drawn to an uncrusted dessert like poached pears, or a ginger
cake, I always give in to tradition and make a pie or two in the
end. Cook's Illustrated, which verges on obsessive-compulsive
when it comes to testing recipes, insists that pumpkin pie
(subscription necessary) is actually best with some canned
candied yams thrown in (and, while they're tinkering, with some
vodka in the pie crust). But I'm most fascinated by this Frenchy
tart from Saveur, which is riddled with boozy prunes. (Full
disclosure: I will eat anything that is riddled with boozy prunes.)
It would go nicely with a rustic apple tart like this one from
Gourmet's archives or these tartlets with a base of almond cream
beneath the apples. I also think the bracing taste of a Shaker
lemon pie made from whole lemons would be welcome at the
end of a long meal.
Slide shows of potato side dishes (like this one on Bon Appetit's
site) seem a little wan in comparison with ones of golden turkeys
or gleaming desserts, but there's no denying that potatoes are
delicious and comforting. There is always a place at my table for
buttery mashed potatoes. If you're looking for something a little
more charismatic, Gourmet renders one of my favorite Mexican
combinations—potatoes, cream, and poblanos—into a makeahead gratin while Martha Stewart's braised potatoes would add
great texture to a meal that boasts a lot of soft foods.
There is a balance to strike in preparing a Thanksgiving meal: It
should be neither too complex nor too complicated. If you take
on a turkey recipe that requires a lot of vigilance and
manipulation—say this delicious-sounding but hands-on
poached-then-smoked bird, you might want give yourself a
break and stick to easy sides. On the other hand, Domino tries to
simplify Thanksgiving a bit too much, promising that you can
make an entire feast in one pan. It's a nice vision, but why not
make dinner a little complicated at least once a year? Besides, I
know at my house there would be mutiny if we skipped mashed
potatoes and pie on turkey day.
Bronzed, fluffy, toasted marshmallows are very photogenic,
which is why I think so many publications still cling to one
version or another of the hypersweet sweet potato casserole. (If I
were going for sweet sweet potatoes, I'd skip all the way to
dessert, as in this mile-high meringue pie proffered by Bon
Appetit.) Perhaps for skeptics like me, Saveur offers a Solomon-
How, then, to deal with the pressure? Careful delegation. In the
Los Angeles Times, Russ Parsons explains how best to enlist
friends and family to help: "Everybody wants to make the showstopping centerpiece dish. But the plain fact is not everyone can
be a star, and the host has to be the grown-up who tells them
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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that." And if, in the end, it all goes to hell, the Oregonian has
gathered together a list of all the Thanksgiving help lines—from
Butterball to Land o' Lakes butter—each staffed with experts to
talk you down from your kitchen crises.
foreigners
Can Hillary Clinton Succeed?
Only if she can overcome a lot of problems.
By Shmuel Rosner
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 5:02 PM ET
She could be like Philander Knox, who served as secretary of
state from 1909-13 and returned to the Senate in 1917. Or she
could be more like Ed Muskie—the last senator to serve as
secretary of state. Muskie ended his political career in 1980,
when Jimmy Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan forced him out of
the position just seven months after he had accepted Carter's
offer.
But the closest parallel to someone like Hillary Clinton
becoming secretary of state is the case of James Byrnes.
Although he wasn't a senator when he was picked by Harry
Truman—he had served in the Senate earlier in his career—
Byrnes had been a close adviser to Truman's predecessor,
Franklin D. Roosevelt (not unlike Clinton to President Clinton),
and he was also Truman's rival, not for the presidency (as was
the case for Clinton and Obama) but for the VP slot.
As President Barack Obama's foreign-policy agent, Hillary
Clinton will have the problems all these secretaries faced—and
then some. Only a true believer can envision Obama and Clinton
making a good team. You have to believe in Obama's ability to
control Clinton's independence, believe in Clinton's capacity to
execute someone else's policies, believe in the ability of these
two rivals to suddenly become close, believe that knowledge and
experience are not crucial for the job, believe that the
complicated Clinton family drama will not be a problem, believe
that policy differences can always be bridged, and believe that
it's possible to be both an ambitious politician and an honest-toGod civil servant.
Most of all, you have to believe that "change" can come not to
nations alone—but also to people, even to politicians.
As Truman's secretary of state, Byrnes was not a great success.
"Maddeningly independent," as David McCullough described
him in Truman, Byrnes sometimes forgot that Truman was
president. He eventually resigned, clearing the way for the more
successful, more submissive George Marshall. Will Clinton
always remember that Obama is president and that she isn't? Can
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
she also forget, for a while at least, that she wants to return to the
White House someday?
It has been a very long time since an active politician was able to
overcome his ambition and become a truly effective secretary of
state. The last to make the switch successfully was Cordell Hull,
back in 1933, but Hull never returned to politics. It's doubtful
whether Clinton plans to follow that path, just as it's hard to
imagine her serving as secretary for 11 years, the way Hull did.
In four years, or even eight, Clinton will still have plenty of time
and energy. She'll want to do something with it.
Clinton might have more foreign-policy experience than Obama,
but her record is still skimpy. Her most impressive achievement
in this field may be the speech she gave in Beijing at the United
Nations' fourth world conference on women. That was in 1995.
In these days of celebrity culture, it's easy to forget that the most
successful secretaries of the era were either knowledgeable
experts (Henry Kissinger), experienced practitioners (James
Baker), or both (Marshall, Dean Acheson). And they all had one
advantage that Clinton will not enjoy: They served under
presidents (Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and especially
George H.W. Bush) whose keen interest in foreign affairs long
preceded their decisions to run for president.
Clinton is also unique because she has a husband with baggage
of his own. Earlier this week, Christopher Hitchens raised
important questions about the obvious problem of the Clinton
money machine—and the possible conflict of interest between
her role as secretary of state and his role as someone who has
spent the last couple of years raising funds in all kinds of
countries and from all kinds of people with all manner of
agendas. But while Hitchens focused on the past, it is worth
asking the same questions about the future: Will the Clinton
Foundation cease to exist when Hillary Clinton becomes
secretary of state? And if not, how likely is it that Bill Clinton's
future adventures will complicate Hillary Clinton's job?
But the most obvious downside to Clinton's selection is the
possibility that she will not be a close confidante of Obama's.
Two weeks ago, writing in the Los Angeles Times about the six
secretaries of state he worked under, former State Department
official Aaron David Miller noted that "only one—[James]
Baker—had a truly close relationship with his president." Not
surprisingly, Baker is one of two secretaries Miller considers
"great." The Lincoln-era "team of rivals"—popularized to
exhaustion by Doris Kearns Goodwin's book—might ring nicely.
But a long interval has passed since Lincoln's day, and the role
of secretary of state has changed a great deal. In today's world,
as Miller wrote, you "cannot expect to do serious diplomacy
abroad, or in the sometimes even more perilous world of
Washington, without knowing that the president has your back,
will not allow domestic interest groups to undermine you or
permit his other advisors to do so."
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Can you imagine a Clinton secretaryship that isn't undermined
by Obama advisers—or an Obama who isn't heavily pressured
by "interest groups" to rein in his secretary—unless you are a
true believer? And how can this work if we assume that the two
of them still disagree on many of the issues they debated during
the campaign?
Take Iran, for example. Obama wants to engage—as does
Clinton, though she is a latecomer to this view. But he was soft,
cautious even, when speaking about Iran, and she was forceful—
some even described her attitude as "saber rattling." Will she be
his emissary for preparatory work prior to a higher-level
meeting? Will he trust her to explore the possibilities for
negotiation the way he wants them to be explored? And how
long will it take for Obama's other supporters to start
complaining that it is her fault—not, say, the Iranians'—that the
talks have not succeeded?
According to his own testimony, Obama thinks the American
people—Clinton included, I presume—are "pragmatic." And in
selecting Clinton, Obama sends a signal that he wants a
pragmatic—not a "fundamentally ideological" type of foreign
policy. Of course, the assumption that there's a pragmatic
solution to every problem is quite absurd—but it tells us
something about Obama: He is not much different than the
Clintons. A year and a half ago, criticizing (in retrospect too
harshly) the appointment of Tony Blair to be Middle East peace
envoy, I wrote that Blair shares "the hubris of Clinton and the
Clinton era. The idea that all the Israelis and Arabs need to solve
their problem is a good-enough lawyer."
Now Obama is displaying the same hubris. With all the obvious
difficulties surrounding Clinton's appointment, with all the
baggage she brings, with all the clear disadvantages she will
have as secretary—Obama nevertheless wants her at his side.
They're both good lawyers, so clearly they believe that there's no
problem that doesn't have a "pragmatic" solution.
foreigners
Obama's Next Arab Headache
What to do with Guantanamo's Yemeni detainees?
By Ginny Hill
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 7:11 AM ET
Barack Obama's foreign-policy advisers must be hoping that
Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is ready to pull a rabbit
out of his mashadda. If Obama is determined to close
Guantanamo when he takes office, he'll have to strike a deal with
Saleh over repatriation conditions for dozens of Yemeni men
who are currently stuck in diplomatic limbo.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
More than 100 Yemenis have been detained at Guantanamo
since January 2002, and they now constitute the largest national
population group remaining at the camp. Only 14 Yemenis
(including the body of one detainee who committed suicide)
have been flown home. At least 11 other Yemenis have been
officially approved for release, and there are many more who are
unlikely ever to face trial.
President Obama could simply put the Yemenis on the next
flight home, according to Appeal for Justice's legal director,
David Remes. "If we want them to go home, we'll have to leave
it to Yemen to decide what to do with them when they get
there," says Remes, who represents 16 Yemeni clients in
Guantanamo. However, the U.S. government has been reluctant
to turn the Yemeni detainees over to a country that seems unable
or unwilling to control terrorism within its own borders.
Yemen is a weak, incomplete state on the southwestern tip of the
Arabian Peninsula. It's a sham democracy where the tribes are
heavily armed and power is brokered through personal ties and
patronage payments. Twenty million Arabs inhabit one of the
poorest nations on earth—a country of kickbacks and corruption,
with a highly factionalized elite and a head of state who belongs
to the longest-serving world-leaders club.
President Saleh has survived three decades at the top by striking
deals with tribal proxies, but his divide-and-rule strategy has
turned crisis management into a permanent condition. "Saleh is
dealing with an on-again, off-again civil war in the north,
economic and political unrest in the south, and al-Qaida in
between," says Remes.
Violent jihad has been increasing since 2003, when 26
prominent terrorist suspects escaped from a high-security
Yemeni prison by tunnelling their way into the bathroom of a
local mosque. Central courts have limited reach, so President
Saleh favors surrender-and-release deals, in which terrorist
suspects-turned-informers are set free on a promise of good
behavior. On Nov. 8, Yemen's appeal court halved the 10-year
jail term of convicted militant Jaber al-Banna, a U.S.-Yemeni
citizen who earned a place on the FBI's "most wanted" list for
providing material support to a terrorist organization.
Yemen's terrorist circus could be described as farcical if the
consequences weren't so tragic. In 1998, four Western tourists
were taken hostage by an Islamist group and killed in a bungled
rescue raid by Yemeni security forces. In October 2000, 17 U.S.
soldiers died in Aden harbor when the USS Cole was bombed
during a refueling stop.
As operating conditions become more difficult in Iraq and Saudi
Arabia, Yemen's jihadist networks appear to be growing. Eight
Europeans and four Yemeni drivers have been killed in
ambushes on tourist convoys during the last 18 months. In
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September 2008, twin car bombs exploded outside the gates of
the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana'a, killing six
attackers, a Yemeni guard, and 10 bystanders.
Washington is demanding a monitoring system for the
Guantanamo returnees and insisting on a rehabilitation plan,
according to several U.S. human rights attorneys involved in the
Yemeni cases. "From what I understand, the State Department
would even agree to pay, but the Yemenis have yet to offer a
satisfactory program," says one attorney. "I'm told that U.S.
officials laughed out loud when they saw one page of bullet
points, which the Yemenis submitted as an action plan."
Saudi Arabian border. Piracy and smuggling in the Gulf of Aden
would escalate—with implications for the security of shipping
routes and the transit of oil through the Suez Canal to Europe
and North America.
Let's hope Obama's foreign-policy advisers have a good
contingency plan, because President Saleh is unlikely to conjure
a solution off the top of his head.
If the United States has been demanding too much and Yemen
has been offering too little, how will President Obama break the
deadlock? Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations, says the impasse stems from the weak central
authority in Yemen and the Bush administration's narrow focus
on security. Obama's National Security Council should place a
higher priority on "whole of government" engagement with
fragile states, such as Yemen, that are incubators for organized
crime and terrorism.
sidebar
"The Bush administration had the right insight. The U.S. and the
international community are today threatened less by rivalry
among great powers (though it is not entirely absent) than by the
spill-over consequences of states that lack effective governance
structures," says Patrick, who co-wrote the Index of State
Weakness in the Developing World with Obama foreign-policy
adviser Susan Rice. "But we now need to recognize that
traditional instruments of military power are of limited utility in
correcting institutional shortcomings." Patrick says it's time to
elevate development as a core pillar within the U.S. foreignpolicy structure, alongside diplomacy and defense.
foreigners
World Bank officials and British diplomats have been trying to
prod Yemeni ministers along a path of root-and-branch reform
for the last few years. Billion-dollar pledges from the British
government and Yemen's Arab neighbors have created an
incentive for Yemeni officials to master the acronyms that
dominate discourse on international development. But elite
corruption has put the brakes on genuine progress, and the Bush
administration's Millennium Challenge program in Yemen was
suspended in 2007.
Obama's new secretary of state may sponsor fresh diplomatic
initiatives to kick-start Yemen's flagging reform efforts, but she
or he will struggle to finance any additional cash giveaways until
the U.S. economy recovers. In the meantime, Obama needs an
immediate solution to the Guantanamo problem.
With a rapidly growing population, falling water tables, and
dwindling oil reserves, Yemen is teetering on the brink of
failure. State collapse would create an ungoverned space on the
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Return to article
A mashadda is a traditional headdress worn by Yemeni men.
Still Waiting for Chinese Democracy
How long can Beijing resist political liberalization?
By Damien Ma
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 1:31 PM ET
Axl Rose understands, perhaps as well as the Chinese
Communist Party, that creating Chinese Democracy requires
patience. As Chinese Democracy hits stores in the United States,
democracy is far from rocking China. But Rose may be consoled
by the knowledge that in the 17 years it took the album to take
shape, rock 'n' roll has made a ripple in China—indeed,
"November Rain" can be found on the playlist of countless
karaoke bars. Guns N' Roses surely owes its rising popularity
with a new generation of Chinese to economic liberalization,
even as its latest album's title track bemoans the state of the
political system. As Rose wails that time's running out for the
Chinese government, evidence suggests that, in fact, time is very
much on Beijing's side.
Some in the United States were undoubtedly dejected when
Deng Xiaoping, who in 1978 inaugurated sweeping market
reforms of the Chinese economy, ultimately failed to deliver on
promises of political liberalization. Hopes for a democratic
China were violently quashed in Tiananmen Square in 1989,
only to be reignited when the Soviet Union disintegrated two
years later, leaving China the lone major power led by a wobbly
authoritarian government. Yet as Communist regimes toppled
around the world in short order, China proved immune to the
democratization wave washing from Moscow to Berlin.
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Expectations for Chinese democratization dimmed as time wore
on, and 30 years after Deng opened up the Chinese economy,
China's political system remains insular. The CCP has defied
predictions of its imminent collapse, and Western-style
democracy has not come to China. What gives?
It's clear that China is not lurching toward democracy.
Understanding why this is so requires poking some holes in
underlying Western assumptions. One of the dominant
assumptions is that economic liberalization will inevitably lead
to political freedoms, yet China has grown ferociously for 30
years without sweating such inevitability. Another assumption,
related to the first, is that China's 100 million strong and
growing middle class will demand political reforms once its
material wealth has been satisfied. But few signs point to
concerted political activism among Starbucks-drinking, BMWdriving, Guns N' Roses-listening Chinese yuppies. A more
recent assumption is that the Internet will act as a powerful tool
to circumvent China's ubiquitous censorship and organize
massive grass-roots movements against the status quo. Aside
from Internet-organized anti-Japanese demonstrations, the Web
has yet to prove its utility for fomenting serious political
opposition in China.
CNN's Jack Cafferty famously called the Chinese leadership the
same bunch of "goons and thugs" during the Tibet protests in
spring 2008, highlighting the static image of China in the West.
True, heavy-handed suppression of perceived threats to the
political regime is still in Beijing's arsenal of knee-jerk, reactive
policies and should not be condoned. But it is a mistake to view
the Chinese leadership as simply a ruthless dictatorial regime.
Mao Zedong would probably not recognize today's CCP, save
several of its more anachronistic elements. It has undergone
thoughtful introspection about its own legitimacy and potential
demise, recently prompting Vice President Xi Jinping, the frontrunner to assume the presidency in 2013, to state that the CCP's
survival is not inevitable. What's more, Premier Wen Jiabao, in
an unprecedented interview with Fareed Zakaria earlier this fall,
unflinchingly claimed that a democratic China will be the
endgame.
But the Chinese concept of "democracy" should not be conflated
with the Western idea of direct elections and using the rule of
law to constrain power. The utterance of the term democracy
among the Chinese elite has so far meant promoting government
transparency and accountability, village-level elections, rule by
consensus and consultation, expanding the public sphere, coopting entrepreneurs and intellectuals into the party—anything
but conceding ultimate power to the people.
In short, the CCP has nimbly adapted, is populated largely by
elites, and is essentially ruled by a nine-member oligarchy in the
Politburo, the fount of power in Chinese politics. Gone are the
days of a single strong man. More voices now participate in the
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
policymaking process, creating competing factions within the
party that vie for influence.
The party's subtle transformation is significant because its
retooling efforts have left it standing and turned previous
assumptions on their heads.
First, China's decision to attract foreign investment meant that it
had little choice but to create a legal environment that Western
businesses could tolerate. Its entry into the World Trade
Organization expedited the creation of a sound legal regime.
This has led top leaders to promote the rule of law (applicable to
everyone except the party itself, of course). As a result, lawyers
are proliferating and rising in rank in China, and citizens have
increasingly turned to legal channels to protect their rights.
Second, the Chinese middle class has benefited most from the
state's economic policies. It has few incentives to dismantle the
status quo. Third, far from being a liberator of thought, the
Internet has in many ways been manipulated by the party to
reinforce and shape its message. The Chinese state's reach at
every level of society has always been overestimated, and the
Internet has become a useful tool to gauge public opinion for the
purpose of better governance. On the one hand, the central
government has increasingly involved the public in the
policymaking process by inviting online comments on major
policy proposals. On the other, the CCP has cultivated a crop of
young, tech-savvy cadres in universities across the country—
known as the "50-cent gang"—to infiltrate online forums and
bulletin boards to counter criticisms of the government with proCCP propaganda. Incremental tweaks and improvements in
governance and public participation have apparently blunted the
urgency for full-fledged democracy.
So, Western democracy will not come to China anytime soon,
and, in fact, Beijing has increasingly spurned the Western model
of governance. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a
shell-shocked Beijing mustered enough reason to commission a
systematic study of the causes for the Soviet implosion, followed
by an assessment of the "color revolutions" in former Soviet
states and an examination of Western democracies. Ultimately, it
concluded that the U.S. style of democracy is unsuitable for
China and that political reforms must not be rapid. Instead,
Beijing appears determined to draw from various political
systems, adapting when warranted, conforming where
demanded, and rejecting when necessary.
For all the CCP's efforts at reinvention, it is still rarely confident
in its "mandate from heaven." It is a party plagued by endemic
corruption at all levels, unable to provide sufficient basic social
services, terrified of collective protests, and prone to suppression
rather than accommodation. Some China experts have argued
that CCP rule in its current form is not sustainable and that the
end is near. Another scenario, just as likely, is that piecemeal,
gradual political reforms could mean that democracy arrives in
China with a whimper instead of a bang. A third scenario is a
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CCP whose inchoate and improbable experiments with
governance eventually settle upon a unique formula that
satisfactorily addresses the monumental issues that China faces.
The party then accrues enough political capital and
overwhelming public confidence that it calls for a general
election, certain of victory. It would demonstrate its embrace of
democracy without actually abandoning single-party monopoly.
While it's impossible to predict with any accuracy the ultimate
fate of the Chinese polity, 30 years of evidence seems to indicate
that Beijing is willing to change only on its own terms. For
instance, the impressive stimulus package Beijing unveiled
recently was more an indication of the leaders' resolve to tackle
domestic anxieties than a sign of answering the global call for
stronger Chinese leadership. The stimulus is motivated as much
by gloomy economic forecasts as by politics. Emphasis on rural
development in the stimulus plan signals a recognition that the
CCP cannot simply be a party of elites and must "spread the
wealth" to the poor—the majority of China. Indeed, this has
been the focus of the current Hu Jintao administration.
Domestic dynamics consistently trump outside pressure, so any
potential for democracy will likely result from internal, rather
than external, factors. Democracy promotion may have long lost
its effectiveness on China, particularly since the nation is ruled
by leaders who have virtually discredited Western democracy as
a necessary, or even appropriate, end. Washington, the world,
and aging '80s rock bands may have to deal with an evolving,
but lasting, authoritarian government for quite some time.
foreigners
War of Words
The West must not be distracted by Russian—or Georgian—propaganda.
By Anne Applebaum
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 7:07 AM ET
The New York Times has now done it; so, recently, have
European cease-fire monitors, the BBC, and NPR. These
organizations, along with a whole host of other investigators,
have looked once again into the events surrounding Georgia's
Aug. 7 incursion into South Ossetia, the event that led, in turn, to
the massive Russian invasion of Georgia on Aug. 8.
Their most important conclusion? Georgia started it and killed
civilians in the process. My conclusion? We knew that already.
We also knew, and indeed have known for some time, that the
Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, is susceptible to
extreme bouts of criminal foolhardiness. A year ago this month,
he attacked demonstrators in Tbilisi with riot police, arrested
opposition leaders, and even smashed up a Rupert Murdoch-
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
owned television station—possibly not, I wrote at the time, the
best way to attract positive international media coverage. I'm
told Saakashvili—who did indeed overthrow the corrupt Soviet
nomenklatura that ran his country—has many virtues. But
caution, cool-headedness, and respect for civilian lives and
democratic norms are not among them.
We knew that about him—and so did the Russians. That was
why they spent much of the previous year taunting and teasing
the Georgians, shooting down their planes, firing on their
policemen, and attacking their villages, all in an attempt to
create a casus belli, either in South Ossetia or in Abkhazia,
another Russian-dominated, semi-autonomous enclave inside the
Georgian border. And when Saakashvili did what they'd been
hoping he'd do, they were ready. As one Russian analyst pointed
out, the Russian response was not an improvised reaction to an
unexpected Georgian offensive: "The swiftness with which large
Russian contingents were moved into Georgia, the rapid
deployment of a Black Sea naval task force, the fact that large
contingents of troops were sent to Abkhazia where there was no
Georgian attack all seem to indicate a rigidly prepared battle
plan." There was, it seems, one minor miscalculation. As a very
senior Russian official recently told a very senior European
official, "We expected the Georgians to invade on Aug. 8, not
Aug. 7."
No matter. Once the well-planned invasion had been launched,
the Russians rampaged across the countryside, systematically
destroyed Georgia's sea ports and factories, killed civilians, and
rolled their tanks into the middle of the country, as if preparing
to cut off Tbilisi. Though they didn't invade the capital in the
end, I have no doubt that their intention was to prove to the
Georgians that they could have done so if they had wanted to—
and that next time, they will. The operation succeeded: They
went home, declared themselves the defenders of human rights
in South Ossetia, exaggerated the number of Osettian civilian
casualties by a factor of 20, and denounced Saakashvili as a
"Soros paid, CIA/MI6 controlled puppet."
This is all old news, of course, but I'm repeating it because it is
important to focus, not just once but again and again, on the
nuances, complications, and layers of this story, since it is one
whose retelling has recently become an important propaganda
tool in an ongoing trans-Atlantic war of words. It is very
satisfying to describe Georgia as a tiny, brave, and innocent
democracy, proudly standing up to the evil Russian bear, and,
indeed, some did so at the time: "We are all Georgians," said
John McCain. It is also very satisfying, I have no doubt, to
describe Georgia as a tin-pot dictatorship, an evil Americanneocon lackey, and the personal fiefdom of a major war
criminal—and some are doing so right now. Indeed, for those
longing to go back to "business as usual" with Russia, I'm sure it
is extremely satisfying to discover, suddenly, that it was all
Georgia's fault in the first place.
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Unfortunately, neither cartoon version of events is accurate, and
no new "investigations" or "revelations" about the August war
will make them so. Saakashvili's attack on South Ossetia was a
disaster, made worse by the bizarrely boastful celebrations he
conducted afterward. The outrageous Russian response was also
horrific, both for the Georgians and for Russia, whose neighbors
(and investors) now know exactly what to expect from the
Medvedev-Putin regime.
The conclusions to be drawn from this unsatisfying, cloudy
picture are not simple, either—but then, they never were. In the
short term, the Georgians must ensure Saakashvili is not
murdered or ousted in a Russian-backed coup. In the long term,
the Georgians need to choose a leader who can promote true
political and economic stability. Until then, Western leaders
should support Georgian democracy—not particular Georgian
democrats—and prepare a unified response to the Russian
military escapades to come. And while the propaganda battle
rages, they must stay on the sidelines.
gabfest
The Quaker Meeting Gabfest
Listen to Slate's review of the week in politics.
By Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz
Friday, November 14, 2008, at 10:28 AM ET
Listen to the Gabfest for Nov. 21 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz talk politics.
This week, the Obama administration begins to take shape,
politicians jockey for position, and the Big Three automakers
come to Washington.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
Among the people mentioned as potential Cabinet members are
Sen. Hillary Clinton and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. Media
reports indicate that former Senate Majority Leader Tom
Daschle has been selected to become the next Health and Human
Services secretary.
There has been a great deal of discussion about the possible
nomination of Eric Holder as attorney general. One potential
pitfall for such a nomination is Holder's involvement in Bill
Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich.
John mentions the so-called "Team of Rivals" approach to
forming a Cabinet.
John talks about how President Bush's approval ratings continue
to be low, even after the election. He says this is not helping the
"Republican brand."
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is out, losing a squeaker to Anchorage
Mayor Mark Begich. His loss came the same week as his 85th
birthday.
California Democratic Rep. Henry A. Waxman has been voted
the incoming chairman of the House energy and commerce
committee, ousting Rep. John Dingell of Michigan.
Former Republican primary candidate Mitt Romney made
headlines this week with his New York Times op-ed, "Let Detroit
Go Bankrupt."
Emily chatters about a federal court ruling involving five
Algerian detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The judge, an appointee
of President George H.W. Bush, ruled that the five men have
been held unlawfully and should be released.
David discusses the real estate frenzy in Washington, D.C.,
brought on by the inauguration. Many D.C.-area residents are
renting out their homes and apartments for huge amounts to
people hoping to visit the capital for the festivities. By some
estimates, as many as 4 million people are expected to descend
on Washington.
John talks about the resurrection of photographs from Life
magazine. The photos are now being made available through
Google. Among them are shots of former NBC correspondent
Nancy Dickerson, John's mother.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
[email protected]. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Posted on Nov. 21 by Dale Willman at 11:27 a.m.
Listen to the Gabfest for Nov. 14 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
The group discusses what it calls the endless speculation over
Obama's Cabinet.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz talk politics.
This week, the election, how Barack Obama will fare as
president, and the future of Sarah Palin.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
[email protected]. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Posted on Nov. 14 by Dale Willman at 10:30 a.m.
Nov. 7, 2008
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
President-elect Barack Obama has the highest approval rating
going into office of any president over the past 25 years.
Outgoing President George W Bush, meanwhile, has the lowest
approval rating of any president since the beginning of such
polls.
It appears that the cautious tone of Obama's Nov. 4 acceptance
speech was an attempt to tamp down expectations.
A major question for Obama will be whether he should behave
like former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and work fast
to capitalize on his current popularity or whether he should
move more cautiously. John says he favors a bold approach,
similar to what Obama promised in the campaign. But he says
Obama's bold rhetoric does not match the more mainstream
policies he is championing. John says Obama will be able to
make some early choices that will be popular, including
reversing current policies on the State Children's Health
Insurance Program and stem cells.
The group discusses how to talk to children about the Obama
victory and its place in the racial history of the United States.
Since the election, Sarah Palin has been talking a great deal
about the campaign and her role in it, perhaps in an attempt to
rehabilitate her public image. Emily says the visibility campaign
may be an effort to become the national spokeswoman of the
conservative wing of the Republican Party.
David says Slate has received many inquiries following last
week's request for a Gabfest sponsor. He also chatters about a
New York Times story that says more and more women are
opting to give birth at home.
Emily talks about a Supreme Court argument on whether
forensic scientists working for police labs can be required to
testify in court about their findings in criminal cases.
John chatters about a 2004 interview in which Obama discussed
his views on religion. John says the interview occurred at a time
when Obama did not yet have all the filters in place that now
prevent him from speaking candidly.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Listen to the Gabfest for Nov. 7 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
John Dickerson, David Plotz, and Emily Bazelon talk politics.
This week, what happened, what's next, and what will become of
Sarah Palin?
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
This election is significant for many reasons, among them that
the voter turnout was the largest in 44 years.
Exit polls turned out to be pretty accurate predictors of the final
results.
Voter turnout in the District of Columbia was huge but caused
few voting glitches.
John discusses Barack Obama's final campaign rally in
Manassas, Va., which drew as many as 100,000 people. At the
end of that speech, Obama told the story of how, months earlier,
during a visit to South Carolina, one woman helped motivate
him by shouting out, "Fired up, ready to go!" That moment, he
says, shows how one person can make a difference. The phrase
itself became a rallying cry for the Obama campaign.
John also talks about Rahm Emanuel's appointment as Obama's
chief of staff. He says it shows Obama quickly moving from
election mode into governing mode. The group also discusses
the baggage Emanuel could bring to the Obama White House.
He is known for being ruthless and is often described as having
"sharp elbows."
One major question lingering after the election concerns the fate
of Sarah Palin. Some Palin supporters say she is now being
blamed for McCain's loss. Newsweek reported that McCaincampaign insiders are complaining that Palin spent thousands of
dollars more than previously disclosed buying clothes for herself
and her husband.
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David chatters about Curtis Sittenfeld's novel American Wife,
which is inspired by the life of first lady Laura Bush.
Emily talks about the passage of Proposition 8 in California, a
constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage in the
state. A number of lawsuits have already been filed in an effort
to overturn the measure.
John chatters about the holograms CNN used during its electionnight coverage.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
[email protected]. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Posted on Nov. 7 by Dale Willman at 12:30 p.m.
Oct. 31, 2008
Listen to the Gabfest for Oct. 31 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz talk politics.
This week, it's all about the last week of the presidential
campaign—with a shout-out to the Philadelphia Phillies.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
John says 10,000 Elvis fans can't be wrong.
John says the optimism in the McCain camp is likely misguided,
because there are too many data points favoring Obama—so
many red states seem to be leaning toward the Democrat or are
considered likely wins for Obama. He says Obama's early
strategy of challenging McCain across the country, rather than
focusing on primarily Democratic states, is now paying off.
David praises Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic Party,
who designed the so-called 50-state strategy after the
Democratic defeat in the 2004 presidential election.
Emily breaks the discussion of politics with her cocktail chatter,
in which she brags about her hometown Philadelphia Phillies
winning the World Series.
John chatters about the early vote in this election. As many as
one-third of all voters will have voted by Election Day, so it is
possible that the election will effectively be over by then, though
no one will know for sure.
David talks about Slate's effort to have staffers publicly state
who they will vote for next Tuesday. Of those who took part, the
count was 55 for Obama and just one for McCain. David claims
that almost all major news organizations would find similar
results.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
[email protected]. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Posted on Oct. 31 by Dale Willman at 10:41 a.m.
John writes this week about a sense of hopefulness that has come
over many of the people working for the McCain campaign.
Emily attempts to correct John's pronunciation of the word dour.
hot document
Emily suggests that John McCain is getting some traction with
his campaign's latest effort, which is to cast Barak Obama as a
socialist who wants to redistribute wealth in the country.
When Obama's pick for attorney general had to explain a pardon.
Eric Holder and the Terrible, Horrible,
No Good, Very Bad Day
By Bonnie Goldstein
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 3:46 PM ET
John talks about the size of the crowds at campaign rallies for
Obama compared with those for McCain.
The gang also discusses whether attacks on Obama's character
will appeal to undecided voters. John points out that undecided
voters typically vote for the challenger in a presidential race,
which should mean Obama, since the Republicans currently hold
the White House. One factor in McCain's favor is that during the
primaries, the undecided voters favored Hillary Clinton over
Obama.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
From: Bonnie Goldstein
Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 3:46 PM ET
Just before Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, he granted a
presidential pardon to the fugitive billionaire Marc Rich. Rich
had fled the country for Switzerland in 1983 after being charged
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(by then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani) with tax evasion and
the illegal purchase of Iranian oil during the 1980 hostage crisis.
He'd ended up on the FBI's "10 Most Wanted List." Clinton's
pardon created a furor because Rich was a fugitive, because the
pardon had been subjected to little formal review, and because
Rich's ex-wife had previously contributed a reported $1 million
to various Democratic candidates (including senator-to-be
Hillary Clinton) and to Clinton's presidential library. When the
Republican-led House government reform committee held its
inevitable hearings on the matter in February 2001, a star
witness was the man President-elect Barack Obama reportedly
has chosen to be his attorney general: Eric Holder. Holder's role
in the Rich pardon is certain to come up at his Senate
confirmation hearing.
Holder was deputy attorney general in Clinton's Justice
Department. In his prepared statement at the 2001 hearing
(below and on the following four pages), Holder told the
committee that he'd never heard of Rich when he was first
approached late in 1999 by Rich's attorney, former White House
Counsel Jack Quinn (Page 2). Holder said he contacted
Giuliani's successor as Manhattan U.S. attorney and asked her to
meet with Quinn about dropping the charges. She declined. A
year later, Holder met again with Quinn. This time Quinn said he
planned to circumvent the Justice Department's pardon office
and would instead submit a pardon application directly to the
White House. Holder testified that Quinn's plan struck him as
"unremarkable" (Page 3). Holder next heard about Rich on
President Clinton's last full day in office. Quinn phoned to tell
him to expect a call from his successor as White House counsel,
Beth Nolan, about Rich's request for a pardon. When she
phoned, Holder told Nolan he was "neutral, leaning toward
favorable." In retrospect, Holder told the committee, he wished
he'd "placed as much focus on the Rich case as I did on other
pardons" (Page 4).
Rich never returned to the United States, possibly because of tax
issues that the pardon never resolved. He currently runs the Marc
Rich Group investment portfolio and the Rich Foundations
philanthropic institutions.
Historic footnote: Another Washington lawyer called to testify
in that February 2001 hearing was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
who as a private attorney had represented Rich from 1985 until
the spring of 2000. At the time of the hearing, Libby was Vice
President Dick Cheney's newly appointed chief of staff. Eight
years later, Libby himself is considered a likely bet for a
presidential pardon, this time from President Bush, for Libby's
perjury conviction in connection with the Valerie Plame case.
(Bush has already commuted Libby's 30-month sentence.) Plus
ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Please send ideas for Hot Document to [email protected].
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 3:46 PM ET
Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 3:46 PM ET
Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 3:46 PM ET
Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 3:46 PM ET
human nature
Running Hard
Viagra as a performance enhancer … in sports.
By William Saletan
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 7:54 AM ET
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In its 10 years on the market, Viagra has earned a reputation for
enhancing performance. "When it comes to hardness, Viagra
delivers," says the pill's Web site. Thanks to the drug, the site
boasts, many previously flaccid men have "achieved grade 3 or 4
erections."
world record. He wasn't even close. Six of the fastest times in
marathon history were recorded this year, but they didn't happen
in Beijing. They happened in London and Berlin, which have
hosted the world's eight fastest marathon performances and, in
separate years, five of the last six record-breaking runs.
Now Viagra may be in trouble for delivering a different kind of
achievement. The World Anti-Doping Agency is funding studies
to detect whether the drug gives athletes an aerobic advantage. If
it does, it could be banned from future Olympics.
What do London and Berlin have that Beijing lacks? Clean air.
According to a 2006 World Bank study based on 1999 data,
Beijing's air had an estimated 106 micrograms of particulate
matter per cubic meter. Of the 200 American cities tested, none
reached even 50 micrograms. Los Angeles, the host of the 1984
Olympics, registered 38. Berlin had 25; London had 23. In a
Beijing marathon, you have to breathe air four times as polluted
as the air in London or Berlin. What chance do you have of
breaking the world record?
How could a drug for sex boost performance in sports? Simple.
As the video on its Web site explains, "Viagra works by
increasing blood flow to the penis." It's not a penis drug. It's a
blood-flow drug. By dilating vessels and increasing oxygenation,
it can improve athletic performance. Two studies have already
verified this effect in cycling and mountaineering. "It clearly
provides an unfair advantage, at least at altitude," an expert
leading WADA's research tells the New York Times. "I couldn't
imagine it not going down on the [prohibited drugs] list."
Note the caveat: at altitude. Only the cycling study tested Viagra
at sea level, and there, the drug made no difference. Even at
altitude, it improved performance only to standards normally
seen at sea level. In other words, it erased an externally induced
deficit. Was that an unfair advantage? Or was it just the
correction of a disadvantage?
Suppose the new studies find that Viagra cancels out pollution
just as it cancels out altitude. Suppose long-distance runners in
Beijing and other bad-air venues pop the little blue pill to give
themselves an even chance at beating records set in London or
Berlin. Are they tilting the playing field? Or are they leveling it?
human nature
Return of the Neanderthals
If we can resurrect them through fossil DNA, should we?
It's true that in any given race, contestants share the same
altitude. But the world's best athletes don't just compete against
their immediate rivals. In pursuing world records, they compete
against the greats of previous years, some of whom ran at higher
or lower altitudes. That's why the 1968 Mexico City Olympics,
held at an elevation of 7,500 feet, produced world records in
some events and debacles in others. According to the
International Olympic Committee, "The altitude was an
advantage in the events which needed a brief but intense effort
… but a handicap for efforts lasting longer than two minutes."
Advantage. Handicap. The unfairness, from a record seeker's
standpoint, could hardly be clearer.
Altitude hasn't been an issue lately, since the summer Olympics
have stayed closer to sea level. Pollution, however, has become a
serious problem, especially this year in Beijing. That's where
WADA's studies raise an interesting possibility. One of them,
according to the Times, "is measuring the potential effects of
Viagra as an antidote to air pollution," with 30 athletes assigned
to "ride exercise bikes in clean air and in a room with the air
polluted by the exhaust of leaf blowers and lawnmowers." The
hypothesis seems to be that air pollution, like altitude, can
constrict oxygen flow—and that Viagra might restore it.
If that proves true, it further complicates the debate. The top
finisher in the Olympic men's marathon in Beijing didn't set a
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
By William Saletan
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 7:57 AM ET
Here's the next question in the evolution debate: We know
roughly how the sequence of life ran forward in time. What
about running it backward? How would you feel about
rewinding human evolution to a species that's almost like us, but
not quite?
Last week in Nature, scientists reported major progress in
sequencing the genome of woolly mammoths. They
reconstructed it from two fossilized hair samples. One was
20,000 years old; the other was 65,000 years old. Now,
according to Nicholas Wade of the New York Times, biologists
are discussing "how to modify the DNA in an elephant's egg so
that after each round of changes it would progressively resemble
the DNA in a mammoth egg. The final-stage egg could then be
brought to term in an elephant mother."
Cool, huh? But that's not the half of it. Wade notes:
The full genome of the Neanderthal, an ancient
human species probably driven to extinction
by the first modern humans that entered
Europe some 45,000 years ago, is expected to
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be recovered shortly. If the mammoth can be
resurrected, the same would be technically
possible for Neanderthals.
human nature
In fact, Wade points out, there are good reasons to re-create a
Neanderthal: "No one knows if Neanderthals could speak. A
living one would answer that question and many others."
Whoa there, says Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops: "Catholic teaching opposes all human cloning,
and all production of human beings in the laboratory, so I do not
see how any of this could be ethically acceptable in humans."
Wade concedes that "there would be several ethical issues in
modifying modern human DNA to that of another human
species."
Note the qualifiers: modern human DNA. Another human
species. As this uncomfortable reality of the past becomes a
future prospect—transitional creatures between human and
nonhuman—the "human dignity" framework starts to look a bit
shaky. George Church, a leading geneticist, suggests (in Wade's
paraphrase) that scientists could "modify not a human genome
but that of the chimpanzee," bringing it "close enough to that of
Neanderthals, [with] the embryo brought to term in a
chimpanzee." No human clones or products involved. At least,
no "modern" humans. This leaves the question of whether we're
entitled to mess around in the lab with "another human species."
But it's hard to see how the bishops and other religious critics of
biotechnology can plunge into this area, having drawn a tight
moral line around our species.
Every serious scientist knows that we and other animals evolved
from the same ancestors. The real question today is whether to
put our DNA and theirs back together. Until now, that question
has been raised in the form of human-animal hybrids made in
labs for research. You can argue that these are somehow wrong
because they're newfangled and artificial. But what can you say
about Neanderthals? They were made by nature, not industry. In
fact, we're the industrial villains who apparently wiped them out.
They're as natural as we are.
If we do this Church's way, I don't see how conservatives can
object. They didn't object last year when scientists announced
the cloning of rhesus macaque embryos. That, too, was the
creation of nonhuman primate life. Follow the human lineage
three branches beyond the primate order, and the rhesus
macaques are still with us. Follow the human line two more
branches, and the chimps are still with us. One more branch, and
you're down to us and the Neanderthals. If it's OK to clone a
macaque and a chimp, it's pretty hard to explain why, at that last
fork in the road, you're forbidden to clone a Neanderthal.
Is the idea repugnant? Absolutely. But that's not because we'd be
defacing humanity. It's because we'd be looking at it.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Children of the Clones
When you get pregnant from your twin's ovary, who's the mom?
By William Saletan
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 6:39 PM ET
What's the next best thing to having your own baby? Having
your identical twin's baby.
A woman in England just did it. Her ovaries didn't work, but her
sister's did. So doctors transplanted an ovary from the fertile
sister to the infertile one. The result, announced a few days ago,
is the first baby verifiably born from a whole-ovary transplant.
The story raises a bunch of messy questions, starting with this
one: Who's the mom?
If you get pregnant with a donor egg, you're the gestational but
not the genetic mother. But what if the donor is your twin? It's
easier to think about this in the context of organ transplants we're
already familiar with. Suppose you get a kidney transplant from
your identical twin sister. Genetically, your new kidney is
(almost) the same as your old one. The new kidney wasn't born
in you, but you and it developed from the same embryo. Not just
the same womb, but same embryo. In that sense, it really is
yours.
Eggs and ovaries are more complicated. Your twin sister's ovary,
like her kidney, came from the same embryo that produced you.
Because of reproductive cell division, any one of her eggs would
differ genetically from any one of yours (though even that point
is quite complicated). But over time, her ovary and yours will
yield almost the same set of eggs, if not in the same order. It's as
though each of you rolled the same pair of dice a million times.
So when she gives you an ovary instead of an egg, the result will
be as though you were getting back your original ovary.
And that's the point. Doctors are choosing twins for these
pioneering ovary transplants not because it's cool or weird, but
because what's cool and weird about your twin—that she's
genetically identical to you and yet is a different person—is also
medically crucial. One reason it's crucial is organ rejection.
Ovaries, unlike kidneys, aren't necessary for survival. If you got
an ovary transplant from a random woman, you'd need serious
drugs to stop your body from rejecting it as foreign. The
rejection or the drugs could harm or even kill you. But if the
ovary comes from your identical twin, it's not foreign. Your
body accepts it. This is much safer.
The second reason is that your twin, while genetically identical
to you, is physically distinct. This is important because the
primary purpose of twin ovary transplants isn't to help twins
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(there aren't that many) or to advance toward ovary transplants
between strangers. The primary purpose is to perfect the best
kind of transplant: the kind you get from yourself.
At first glance, this sounds nuts. If your ovary works, why take it
out in the first place? There are two answers. One is that tens of
thousands of still-fertile women have to get chemotherapy or
radiation for cancer. They'd rather not nuke their eggs as part of
the deal. By removing an ovary, freezing it during cancer
treatment, and later restoring it, they stand a decent chance of
beating the cancer and still having kids.
The other answer is that millions of women would like the
freedom to delay motherhood beyond the years nature intended.
That's the ultimate market for ovary transplants, according to
Sherman Silber, the doctor who did the procedure on the woman
from England*. "Women have opportunities they didn't have
before, they do not want to commit to a relationship until they
are sure it is the right one, they want to get the degree, save a
little money and buy the nice flat," he told the Telegraph. Today,
these women risk losing their fertility. IVF is expensive and
uncertain. Donor eggs are hard to get, and the child isn't
genetically yours. A self-ovary transplant, Silber points out, is
"so much nicer and more convenient."
In fact, self-transplants of partial ovarian tissue have already
been done. The problem is that when the woman subsequently
gives birth, doctors can't be sure whether the egg came from the
reimplanted tissue or from tissue left behind. The only way to be
sure is to take out the whole ovary or, better yet, to get the ovary
from somebody else. Somebody else who matches you
genetically. Your twin. That's why doctors working on selfovary transplantation are so excited about the progress in twins.
It's a testing ground, says one, to see whether "the entire organ
can be successfully retransplanted."
Down the road, this research raises big questions. What's going
to happen to us as we detach motherhood from what were
known, back in the 20th century, as the fertile years? What
happens when we can put those years in a freezer and shoot
them into the future? It's great that women can have careers, take
their time finding the right person, and just be themselves before
starting a family. But if we think we've stopped the biological
clock, we're kidding ourselves. It's more like that time-travel
scenario where you send the astronaut into space at nearly the
speed of light and he comes back a year later to find that
everyone else has aged a decade. The clock in your frozen ovary
slows, but the clock in your body keeps on ticking. The ovary
comes back to an older, weaker host. Maybe you can still have a
baby. But can you raise it?
For now, we're still working on twins. By last year, Silber had
done ovarian tissue transplants between seven pairs of twins.
More whole-ovary twin transplants will follow this one. Three
years ago, the former procedure produced its first baby; now, the
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
latter procedure has done the same. Who exactly are the
biological parents of these children? "I haven't really spent any
time thinking about the idea that I am the genetic mother," says
the twin who donated the ovary for the child just born in
England. Is she the genetic mother? Or is it her sister, who
carried the child and came from the donor's embryo? Or is it
both?
We've heard of scenarios like this before, but in a different
context. Seven years ago, in his maiden speech on stem-cell
research, President Bush warned that human cloners might
"grow another you, to be available in case you need another
heart or lung or liver." Critics called this science fiction. But
such clones already exist. They're called identical twins. They've
given each other kidneys, liver tissue, even hearts. Now they're
giving each other babies. In this miracle of love and science, an
embryo that split in the previous generation reunites in the next.
"I always say she is the other half of me," the donor in the
English case says of her sister. And so she is.
Correction, Nov. 24: The article originally said the ovary
transplant was performed in England. Actually, although the
patient lived in and gave birth in England, the transplant was
performed in the United States. (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
jurisprudence
Eat the Loan Sharks!
Let's solve the subprime mess by going after lawbreaking lenders.
By Ray Brescia
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 6:32 AM ET
In early October, Bank of America quietly entered into the
largest settlement in history to make amends for predatory
lending, putting up more than $8 billion to rescue borrowers
with faulty loans from Countrywide Financial, a notorious
subprime lender recently purchased by the bank. As politicians
and regulators haggle over the best approach to modify perilous
mortgages and as millions of Americans fall deeper into
delinquency, the Bank of America settlement offers a clear path
out of the broader problem: Chuck the illegal loans and start
over again, making the lawless lenders foot the bill.
Part of the backdrop here is dismayingly familiar. Explosive
growth of subprime lending created perverse incentives that led
to fraudulently inflated loan terms. What's less known is that
some of these loans were priced higher based on the race of the
borrower, with African-Americans and Latinos paying more, in
secret, behind-the-scenes deals. Some of this activity will even
turn out to have been criminal. There are more than 1,500 open
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FBI investigations into mortgage fraud, much of it concentrated
in the subprime market.
At the same time, many delinquent borrowers don't know that
the terms of their home mortgages may have been the byproduct
of fraudulent, discriminatory, or criminal behavior by mortgage
brokers and lenders. Before we end up spending billions to
rescue subprime borrowers, we should figure out which loans
were the products of illegal behavior, rescind them, and rewrite
them on terms that are fair and legal. If there is a cost associated
with this process, let lenders pick up the tab, which is precisely
what Bank of America is doing. This would save taxpayer
money by reducing the number of loans that the government
would pay to modify. It would also help to stabilize the housing
market and lay the blame for much of the subprime crisis at the
feet of those most responsible: the lenders who acted like
predators.
What's the evidence that African-Americans and Latinos paid
more for loans in a way that's illegal? A study of lending data
from 2006 by the Federal Reserve estimates that roughly 18
percent of the loans made to white borrowers in that year were
subprime loans, compared with roughly half the loans made to
African-Americans and Latinos during that time. When the study
assessed borrowers of similar incomes, 30 percent of AfricanAmerican borrowers received subprime loans, compared with 18
percent of whites and 26 percent of Latinos. These discrepancies
aren't absolute proof, but they suggest that discriminatory
steering took place in which otherwise qualified borrowers of
color were directed to subprime, and substandard, loans. Federal
law makes it illegal to discriminate based on race in the terms
and conditions of a home mortgage loan. It would appear that
this is exactly what happened.
This discrimination is at the core of a number of lawsuits
advocates have filed across the country over the last year.
Several of the cases focus on a particularly devious practice:
Without borrower knowledge, many mortgage brokers received
a commission from the lender for persuading a borrower to
accept a higher loan interest rate than what the bank was
otherwise willing to offer. The lawsuits claim that such
commissions were paid more often in loans to AfricanAmericans and Latinos than in loans to whites, revealing, again,
that lenders often charged borrowers of color more than their
white counterparts. As these suits progress, and the groups suing
gain access to lenders' and brokers' records—e-mails, internal
memoranda, training materials, and other documents—we are
likely to learn more about the practices of the lenders who are
the defendants and about the industry in general.
Discriminating lenders were not the only problem with the
housing market that courts should now address. Mortgage
brokers rushed into poor communities with exotic subprime
loans during the early part of this decade, because these
communities were underserved by traditional banks. During the
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
height of the market, nearly half of all subprime loans went
through a broker, compared with only 28 percent of prime loans.
Brokers also dominated loans made to borrowers of color: 64
percent of African-American borrowers used a broker, compared
with only 38 percent of white borrowers.
The problem with this wasn't the mortgage brokers per se. It was
that many prospective borrowers wrongly assumed that the
brokers were working in the borrower's best interest. But in most
states, mortgage brokers do not owe any duty to the borrower to
find the best possible deal. Many brokers relied on borrowers'
ignorance of the mortgage market to pursue higher commissions
and other financial perks for themselves. In much of the country,
there's no legal remedy for this. But a few states require that
brokers avoid conflicts of interest and pursue the best deal for
the borrower. These states include California, home to about
one-quarter of the mortgages in the United States that are in
some stage of foreclosure. The Department of Justice, the state
attorney general, legal-services attorneys, volunteer lawyers, and
law students should all be poring over California loan documents
to smoke out the brokers who violated their legally mandated
duties to their clients. If a significant number of loans in
California alone could be altered, consistent with the borrowers'
abilities to pay, either through litigation or its threat, the federal
government wouldn't have to pay as much for a national bailout.
To date, none of the proposed homeowner-rescue plans
acknowledges that a significant number of the homeowners who
are in distress were the victims of predatory and illegal practices.
Opponents of the plans currently on the table raise three serious
objections: First, any massive loan rescue would be costly;
second, borrowers in good standing might intentionally default
on their mortgages to benefit from a bailout; and third, investors
holding securities backed by subprime loans will balk at loan
modifications that diminish their already depreciated
investments and will sue to stop such efforts.
Going after the lawbreakers helps to address these concerns. It
would not only lower the cost of the rescue plan by reducing the
number of borrowers needing help, it would also direct
assistance only to those people who were victims of illegal
conduct and insulate the loan modifications from litigation by
investors looking to preserve their investments. Investors won't
challenge loan restructuring when the underlying loans were
made on illegal terms. You don't lend your horse to Jesse James
and then sue the stagecoach he robbed to get it back. Investors
will have to redirect their fire from the borrowers to the brokers
and lenders who did the fancy loan footwork—and perhaps the
ratings agencies that blessed it.
Some investors will have to line up in bankruptcy court, since
more than 40 subprime lenders have gone belly up in the last
two years. But there are some still standing, like Wells Fargo
(already facing a discrimination lawsuit brought by elected
officials in Baltimore). And where federal and state
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investigations have already netted criminal indictments in cases
of broker and lender fraud, civil liability should follow. Lax
enforcement of the laws is clearly one of the many reasons we
find ourselves in the current mess. Strict enforcement of those
laws would help get us out of it.
jurisprudence
Forgiving and Forgetting
Eric Holder will have his hands full at the Justice Department.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Saturday, November 22, 2008, at 7:33 AM ET
The U.S. Justice Department faces an internal crisis in morale
and a public crisis in credibility. And while every Justice
Department pushes its political agenda alongside its lofty goals
of upholding the law, the Bush Justice Department sometimes
pushed its political agenda in direct violation of the law. The
question now is whether Eric Holder, Barack Obama's pick for
attorney general, can fix it.
Nobody knows better than Holder that the line between law and
politics at DoJ can be blurry. The one stain on his otherwise
gilded legal career was the role he played, as No. 2 in the
Clinton Justice Department, in the pardon of fugitive
commodities trader Marc Rich during Clinton's last hours.
Holder didn't give the pardon application much thought before
concluding that he was "neutral leaning towards favorable."
Clinton relied in part on that advice in granting the pardon.
Holder later testified before Congress that he'd made a mistake.
What Holder stands to inherit from Michael Mukasey and his
predecessor Alberto Gonzales is not a Justice Department that
was slightly confused about where the law began and politics
ended. If confirmed, he will take over an institution where, at
least in recent years, politics sometimes had no end. The
department became fodder for late-night TV monologues in
2007 when former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his
staff flimflammed their way through congressional hearings
about the partisan firings of eight U.S. attorneys. Those
independent prosecutors were let go for failing to be—in the
parlance of Gonzales' underage underlings—"loyal Bushies."
More than a dozen officials resigned in the wake of that scandal.
Things at Justice worsened with internal reports finding the
department had hired career civil servants, law student interns,
assistant U.S. attorneys, and even immigration judges based on
their loyalty to the GOP. Secret memos produced by the
department's Office of Legal Counsel authorized brutal
interrogation techniques and warrantless government
eavesdropping. The subordination of law enforcement to politics
led to the flight of career attorneys in the department's Civil
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Rights Division and especially the Voting Section, where by
2007 reportedly between 55 percent to 60 percent had
transferred or left the DoJ.
If the rot at Justice could have been cured by simply replacing
Gonzales, the appointment of Michael Mukasey, a respected
retired federal judge in 2007, might have been enough. It wasn't.
To be sure, Mukasey said noble things about the evils of torture
and made moves toward disentangling the department from the
White House. But more often than not, Mukasey declined to
lance the boil. He refused to call water-boarding torture. He
insisted no crimes were committed when department officials
violated civil service laws. And he criticized those seeking
accountability for the architects of the administration's torture
policy as "relentless," "hostile," and "unforgiving." Mukasey
collapsed while giving a speech this past week, but thankfully
the incident seems not to have been serious.
Perhaps the most important quality Eric Holder would bring to
his new position is his knowledge of the Justice Department and
Washington—he knows both inside and out. In addition to
serving as a judge in the District of Columbia, Holder was the
top federal prosecutor for the District and served in the DoJ's
Public Integrity Section, prosecuting government corruption.
Gonzales came to the job with no understanding of the
department. He seems never to have understood that at some
point along the way, he had to become the people's lawyer, as
opposed to the president's.
Everybody has advice for Holder, starting with shuttering
Guantanamo and repairing detention and interrogation policies;
recalibrating the legal limits on information-gathering by
intelligence agencies; doing away with provisions of the Patriot
Act that encroach on civil liberties; and restoring the integrity
and independence of the Office of Legal Counsel, which advises
the president on the lawfulness of a proposed action. At a speech
he delivered last June, Holder condemned the Bush
administration for abusing prisoners, violating the Geneva
Conventions, and authorizing warrantless surveillance on
Americans, promising that "we owe the American people a
reckoning."
That raises the dilemma Holder will face in overhauling the
Justice Department: Does the reckoning owed to the American
people come with investigations, retribution, and punishment for
those who authorized the lawbreaking? Holder faces tremendous
pressure from congressional Democrats and civil liberties groups
to go after those who authorized eavesdropping and torture. He
will face as much pressure from the other side to turn the page
and move on, letting bygones be bygones.
Members of Obama's transition team have recently suggested
that the new Justice Department may opt to do just that.
Presumably they will allow investigations to continue, and none
of this would foreclose a truth commission. And as professor
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Scott Horton noted last week, the new Justice Department
should probably not be investigating the old Justice Department
in the first place.
We've rated potential pardonees' chances from zero to four "Get
out of Jail Free" cards.
SPORTS
It should not surprise anyone if Eric Holder ultimately decides
that the best way to repair the Justice Department will be to look
beyond the folks who wrecked it. Former Attorney General
Robert Jackson famously told the nation's top prosecutors that a
great U.S. attorney was someone who "tempers zeal with human
kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law
and not factional purposes." The folks who want to condemn
Eric Holder based solely on a mistake over Marc Rich might
want to take Jackson's words to heart as well.
A version of this piece also appears in this week's issue of
Newsweek.
Marion Jones: unlikely. This disgraced Olympic gold
medalist returned five awards after she was sentenced to six
months in jail in January for lying to federal agents about using
steroids. She was released on Sept. 5. Jones' offense is
considered mild, and her sentence was brief, but the president
may not want to reward someone who cost the United States
Olympic gold.
jurisprudence
I Beg Your Pardon
The top prospects for a last act of Bush clemency.
By Dafna Linzer, ProPublica
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 7:00 AM ET
Attention, convicts: Time is running out to get applications to
the pardon attorney at the Justice Department if you're hoping
President Bush will be your decider. Few of you should get your
hopes up—Bush has rejected a record number of requests for
pardons and commutations. In the last eight years, he has
pardoned 157 people—a miserly sum compared with his
predecessors. But you don't have to give up entirely: More are
expected in the coming months, most notably for Vice President
Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Before President Clinton went on a pardon spree for wealthy
friends and campaign contributors at the end of his presidency,
pardons and commutations were traditionally bestowed on
average citizens who had successfully reformed their lives and
given back to their communities after completing lengthy
sentences. Pardon experts believe that of the Bush prospects, the
1980s junk-bond king Michael Milken best fits the rich-andfamous description.
Most of the other top prospects for pardon listed below have,
like Milken, been convicted and served prison time. But not all.
People who are merely charged could be eligible for pardons, as
Bush's father demonstrated when he pardoned former Defense
Secretary Casper Weinberger. And Washington is abuzz with the
prospect that Bush might issue pre-emptive pardons for
government employees who could face trouble in the future
stemming from their roles in his "war on terror."
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Michael Vick: no chance. The Atlanta Falcons' suspended
quarterback is serving a 23-month sentence in Leavenworth,
Kan., for criminal conspiracy relating to dog fighting. Yuck.
There just isn't much of a pro-dog fighting lobby to pull for
Vick.
Barry Bonds: unlikely. The former San Francisco Giants
superstar who holds the MLB all-time record for home runs
was indicted in November 2007 for lying about his
involvement in a steroids scandal. Bonds became a free agent
last year but has been unable to find a team willing to sign him
while under indictment. As a former baseball team owner,
Bush may be sympathetic to Bonds. But let's be honest—who
in baseball likes Barry?
TEXAS
Florita Bell Griffin: possible. As governor, Bush appointed
Griffin to the oversight board of the Texas Department of
Housing and Community Affairs. In 2000, she was convicted
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of bribery, theft, and money laundering. In 2003, a federal
appeals court overturned a separate conviction for mail fraud.
Griffin has two things going for her: Bush and Texas. Bush has
pardoned more of his fellow Texans than residents of any other
state.
Texas Border Patrol guards: good chance. Ignacio Ramos
and Jose Compean are serving sentences of 11 and 12 years,
respectively, for the nonfatal shooting in the back of an
unarmed Mexican drug runner in February 2005. A jury found
that the two border patrolmen then tried to cover up the
shooting. Their requests for pardons have won support from
numerous Republican congressmen, including Rep. Duncan
Hunter of California, who introduced the Congressional Pardon
for Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean Act. Bush left
open the possibility of pardons for both men during an
interview with a Texas TV station.
TEAM BUSH
Scooter Libby: You betcha! Cheney's former chief of staff,
who also served as assistant to the president, was convicted of
perjury and of obstructing the FBI's investigation of the leak of
former CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity. In June 2007, he
was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and ordered to
pay a hefty fine. Bush commuted the prison time, but only a
pardon will allow Libby to practice law again.
James Tobin: good chance. Tobin was Bush's 2004 New
England campaign chairman and raised more than $200,000
for the president's re-election bid. He was indicted in October
for making false statements to the FBI in connection with the
bureau's investigation of the plot to jam Democratic Party
phones in New Hampshire in 2002. Tobin was convicted in
2005 for his actual role in that scheme, but that conviction was
overturned on appeal in 2007. His fundraising prowess and the
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
overturning of his earlier conviction—in connection with the
same case—make him a good pardon candidate.
Tom Noe: unlikely. Noe was a prominent Ohio Republican
fundraiser for Bush-Cheney '04. He was sentenced to 27
months in a federal prison for illegally funneling money to the
campaign. Two months later, he was also found guilty of theft,
money laundering, forgery, and corrupt activity related to
Ohio's rare-coin investment scandal. Noe might have a shot if
his only offense were connected to campaign funding. But his
Ohio crime was one of a number of nasty Republican scandals
that badly damaged the party's standing in the 2006 midterm
election.
CONGRESS
Sen. Ted Stevens: possible. Now that the 85-year-old Alaska
Republican, who was found guilty last month of corruption,
has lost re-election, members of his party might push for a
pardon for him—after all, he spent the last 40* years in the
Senate. Stevens seemed to dismiss the need for a pardon while
the votes were being counted; late Tuesday, he was tight-lipped
about the whether he would ask Bush for clemency.
Bob Ney: no chance. The former Republican congressman
from Ohio was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after
he acknowledged taking bribes from convicted lobbyist Jack
Abramoff. Ney was on the Abramoff-sponsored golfing trip to
Scotland at the heart of the case against David Safavian, the
former White House procurement officer who was also caught
up in the scandal. A pardon of Ney could refocus public
attention on cushy relationships between Republicans and
lobbyists over the last eight years—relationships that a
humbled GOP would rather forget.
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Randy Cunningham: no chance. The former Republican
congressman from California pleaded guilty in 2005 to federal
conspiracy charges to commit bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud,
and tax evasion. He was sentenced to eight years and four
months in prison and ordered to pay $1.8 million in restitution
for all the fancy gifts he racked up from lobbyists. "The Duke"
has a pardon attorney, and a number of people have written to
the Justice Department in support of clemency. But
Cunningham's naked abuse of power tainted Republican rule
and contributed to steep party losses in 2006.
Others convicted in the Cunningham scandal:
Brent Wilkes: possible. Wilkes, a defense contractor, was
sentenced to 12 years in prison in February for furnishing
Cunningham with yachts, vacations, and other luxury items in
exchange for lucrative contracts. Wilkes cooperated with
federal investigators in the Cunningham case, and that could
help him win a pardon.
Kyle "Dusty" Foggo: possible. Foggo was Wilkes' childhood
friend before he rose to become executive director of the CIA,
the No. 3 position in the U.S. spy agency. He was indicted in
2007 on several counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money
laundering in connection with Wilkes and admitted to steering
a lucrative CIA contract to his pal. Foggo remains under
investigation by the CIA and other federal agencies. But his
cooperation with investigators and years of service in the
clandestine agency once run by Bush's father could make him a
good candidate for clemency.
TEAM ABRAMOFF
Jack Abramoff: no chance. The former Hollywood producerturned-Republican lobbyist was at the center of the largest
lobbying scandal in Washington, which erupted in 2005.
Abramoff was convicted of fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy
to bribe public officials. The sentence was reduced in
September to four years in recognition of Abramoff's
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
cooperation with investigators. That's all the break he'll get.
Abramoff was such a disaster for Bush and the GOP that the
White House refused to release any photos in which the
president and Abramoff appeared in the same room at the same
time.
J. Steven Griles: possible. Griles served as deputy secretary
of the Interior during Bush's first term. In March 2007, he
pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice charges in connection
with his 2005 Senate testimony regarding the Abramoff
scandal. Griles was sentenced to 10 months in prison and fined
$30,000. He was released this year. Griles' time served,
combined with his senior position in the administration, make
him a good candidate for a pardon.
David Safavian: unlikely. The senior White House
procurement officer in the Office of Management and Budget
was convicted in 2006 for concealment, making false
statements, and obstructing justice in the Abramoff
investigation. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but the
conviction was overturned in June. A retrial is set for
December.
WHITE COLLAR
Michael Milken: excellent chance. The junk-bond king
became the symbol of the '80s greed on Wall Street that led to
insider-trading scandals and a stock-market crash. Milken was
sentenced to eight years for conspiracy and fraud charges and
ordered to pay $200 million in fines. But he was released in
January 1993, after less than two years in prison. Milken, who
was diagnosed with prostate cancer that year, has since devoted
significant resources to philanthropy and has created several
foundations to support cancer research. Milken, who is
believed to be worth more than $1 billion, tried unsuccessfully
to secure a pardon from President Clinton. He is currently
represented by Washington powerhouse attorney Ted Olson,*
Bush's longtime friend and first-term solicitor general. Olson
also represented Armand Hammer, who received a pardon
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from former President George H.W. Bush.
The Smartest Guys in the Room: possible. Former Enron
executives Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow were convicted
of multiple federal felonies in 2006 in connection with Enron's
downfall. Skilling, who was Enron's CEO, is serving a 24-year
prison sentence at a federal penitentiary in Minnesota. Fastow,
the corporate CFO, is nearing the end of his six-year sentence.
Bush was friends with the now-deceased chairman, Kenneth
Lay of Enron, which, of course, was based in Texas. But the
president managed to distance himself from the company's
extraordinary collapse. A point against pardons for these guys:
Considering the current financial crisis, rewarding Enron's
failed leadership might not be smart.
Martha Stewart: Why not? Millions of glue-gun aficionados
would love to see a pardon for the domestic doyenne who was
convicted in 2004 of lying to investigators about a stock sale
and who served five months in a women's correctional facility.
Thousands of people have even signed a petition seeking a
pardon for Martha. It's hard to see what would be in it for
Bush. But Martha's spectacular book sales and daytime-TV
ratings are testament to millions of other Americans' ability to
forgive. Why not the president, too? (The question, of course,
that all pardon applicants ask.)
Correction, Nov. 20, 2008: The original sentence mistakenly
stated that Ted Stevens has served in the Senate for 50 years. In
fact, he has served for 40 years. (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
Correction, Nov. 21, 2008: The article originally misspelled Ted
Olson's name. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
lifehacking
Luddite in Chief
Why Barack Obama should keep his BlackBerry.
By Michael Agger
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 4:04 PM ET
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Imagine you're Barack Obama. You just ran "the most
technologically sophisticated presidential campaign in history."
Your operatives played social media like a fiddle while
coordinating field operations via text message, e-mail blast, and
iPhone app. You proved yourself to be a modern info-executive
with your 3 a.m. e-mails and your preference for reviewing docs
on your BlackBerry. (Sure, clipping the 'Berry to your belt was
lame, but I assume that you did this to signal your gotta-checkthe-inventory-back-in-Tucson regular-guy-ness. Nice.)
Now, you're preparing to enter the White House, and your
BlackBerry is about to be ripped from your clutches because of
privacy and security concerns. Savor the irony: You captured the
Oval Office by making technological history, only to find that
you're now required to govern like in the 19th century. Echoes of
Lincoln, indeed.
The rest of the White House will have e-mail, of course, and
Obama's aides will have BlackBerrys duct-taped to their
forearms, but the thought of an offline president gives pause. In
the working world, many of us have witnessed the moment when
the office e-mail system goes down. People emerge from their
offices looking dazed, spouting inanities—"There's nothing to
do!" Forced hallway conversations ensue. Others gather for a
premature visit to Starbucks. One determined soul shuts her door
and starts making phone calls. Underneath the vaguely partyesque air, there's a deep unease, a sense of being stranded.
Obama is about to find himself on an island—no more
congratulatory e-mails from friends, no texts from the kids, no
more advice from Scarlett Johansson (!). President Bush, for
one, looks forward to having this private channel back again: "I
can remember, as governor, I stayed in touch with all kinds of
people around the country, firing off e-mails at all times of the
day to stay in touch with my pals." Bush gave up e-mail when he
became president. Clinton preferred the cell phone for his late
night tête-à-têtes, and while e-mail was introduced to the White
House under George H.W. Bush, he did not use it. Now, though,
Poppy describes himself as a "black belt wireless e-mailer." He
likes friends to message him during Houston Astros games,
where he sits behind home plate, and waves back on TV when
he gets their note.
What about the rest of the world leaders? Putin, like the good
former KGB agent he is, rarely uses the phone, let alone e-mail.
The Brits recently had an embarrassing diplomatic episode when
an aide to Gordon Brown had his 'Berry filched by a woman at a
Chinese disco. And, last summer, the French security service
banned the French Cabinet from using BlackBerrys, partly for
reasonable security issues and partly for the oh-so-French reason
that "the BlackBerry system is based on servers located in the
US and the UK." Nicolas Sarkozy also has a BlackBerry
manners problem; the Telegraph reported that he "risked
offending the Pope" by sneaking a peak at his 'Berry during an
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audience with the pontiff. Sarkozy has cut down on his public
cell-phone and 'Berry use as part of a rebranding effort to
"presidentialize" himself. This seems right—checking your
'Berry during a face-to-face conversation suggests a twitchy
insecurity, while coolly placing it on the table and not looking at
it suggests connected command.
Members of Congress were given BlackBerrys after 9/11 when it
emerged that 'Berrys continued to work in the Twin Towers after
cell service failed. Presently, as Daniel Libit reported in Politico,
70 percent of the Hill has a BlackBerry, with various levels of
addiction. (Age isn't a predictor of 'Berry love: Sen. Ted
Stevens, 85, apparently wandered the halls of power in a 'Berry
daze.) Some congressmen love the buzz at their belts, while
others worry that D.C. is no longer a refuge from constituents.
The Politico article quotes Steve Frantzich, a professor of
political science, who fears for the future of George
Washington's "cooling saucer"—a metaphor the first president
used to describe the Senate as the place where the frothier ideas
of the House are tempered by deliberation. A Capitol Hill
hopped up on push e-mail endangers the Obama "change" ideal.
One of the chief appeals of e-mail, after all, is that you can avoid
a face-to-face conversation. It's much easier to be partisan and
dismissive with your thumbs.
On the campaign trail, Obama expressed frustration about his
overscheduled day and noted the importance of setting aside
time to think. So perhaps giving up the Blackberry won't be a
hardship but rather the first, greatest presidential lifehack.
Defeating your e-mail is the frequent dream of the productivity
nerds, who counsel checking e-mail only twice a day and turning
off new-message alerts. The unreachable lifehack ideal is an
information flow that interrupts you only when it's important and
necessary. We don't really want zero e-mail to get through—just
the crucial ones. To that end, the White House is already
designed (and perhaps best understood) as an information
filtration system, with only the best and most urgent reaching
Obama's desk. The success or failure of this system relies on the
judgment of those he surrounds himself with.
Still, there's something niggling about Obama surrendering the
'Berry. Being the leader of the free world might have its
compensations, but it has to be enfeebling to lack the power to
hit the send button. This techno-awkwardness in the highest
office brings up uncomfortable associations: an FBI with crappy
computers, a government that seems backward, remote, and
useless. You don't need to be a computer lover to see that
smooth information flow might be a help in tackling the
complexity of the financial crisis, Iraq, Afghanistan, education,
and health care. Tech policy starts at the top. Obama should set a
precedent by having the 'Berry at his side: Here is a government
that is accessible, capable, and efficient. Plus, a man's gotta have
BrickBreaker for all those long, boring meetings.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
moneybox
Ills de la Citi
Should the troubled bank cancel its $400 million sponsorship of the new Mets
stadium?
By Daniel Gross
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 6:25 PM ET
The giant bank now known as Citi bellied up to the bailout bar
again on Monday morning. Because Citi is such a huge bank and
one of the nation's largest advertisers, there will be great scrutiny
on how it spends the latest injection of taxpayer funds—some
$27 billion. And that scrutiny is well-deserved. We all have a big
stake now in how Citi manages its (our) resources. Cost-cutting
and parsimony should be in. Excess and profligacy should be
out. This can be a difficult lesson for a big-time Wall Street firm
to learn, so let's hope Citi executives have been paying attention
to how other bailed-out (or wannabe bailed-out) companies have
been behaving publicly.
For example, transport policy. As we saw in last week's
shambolic congressional hearings, in which CEOs of the Big
Three were chastised for flying their own planes to Washington,
jetting in to cry poverty isn't just expensive; it's bad form. Citi
should ground corporate jets and instead send execs on the Acela
train or the Chinatown Bus ($35 round-trip) when they go to
Washington to talk with their new stakeholders. The best option
for taxpayer-financed travel: a Joad-style flatbed (Americanmade) truck.
Companies like Citi also need to clamp down on the luxury
lifestyle that its top employees have come to expect. As AIG
showed, spending $400,000 on spa treatments, fancy hotel
rooms, and fine wine for agents at a time when you're burning
through $100 billion-plus in taxpayer loans is a really stupid
move. Citi is as well-known for its retreats as the French army.
(It has its own big center in Armonk, in Westchester County,
N.Y.) In August, it banned off-site meetings. The good news:
There are plenty of large venues right in New York City at
which employees can congregate, including on its own rapidly
depopulating trading floors. The software tools that companies
use to bar the use of foul language on internal e-mail should also
be tweaked to delete any mention of Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons,
Tiffany's, and the Caribbean. While they're at it, Citi should
cancel all Christmas parties loudly. It's unseemly for the
remaining employees to get hammered and enjoy canapés while
their erstwhile colleagues pound the pavement. Besides, parties
are a legal nightmare for Wall Street firms (lots of opportunities
for inappropriate comments and contacts). And everybody
secretly hates them.
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But there's a tendency for troubled companies to engage in
mindless cost-cutting, which I examined in a two-part series
back in 2006, here and here. Rather than focus on the things that
employees will complain about to reporters or, worse, to blogs—
clamping down on paper clips and Post-it notes—Citi should
take a hard look at a prominent item that's both symbolic and
financially meaningful: the dividend. No company that has
messed up its affairs so poorly that it needs to borrow money
from the taxpayers should pay a dividend to stockholders. And
here, Citi is failing. Monday's press release notes that Citi "also
has agreed not to pay a quarterly common stock dividend
exceeding $0.01 (one cent) per share for three years." Why 1
cent? As told to me by the CEO of a banking company that had
cut its dividend to a penny before being eaten by another bank,
there are lots of mutual funds that invest only in companies that
pay dividends. Eliminating the dividend entirely would force
those funds to sell shares immediately at a time when the stock
is already under stress. That makes sense, I suppose. But for Citi
over the next few years, a zero dividend is enough. A penny per
share per quarter works out to about $218 million a year, by my
calculations—money that would be better used to pay back debt.
Citigroup would also be well-advised to save a few tens of
millions of dollars by zeroing out compensation for the top
executives over the next several years, especially for CEO
Vikram Pandit. Pandit joined Citigroup when the bank bought
his hedge fund in April 2007 for a price reported to be $800
million in cash. Within a year, the unit exploded and was folded,
thus contributing to Citi's many losses. Shareholders shouldn't
have to pay anything to "Mr. Vikram," as Saudi investor Prince
Alwaleed Bin Talal referred to Pandit in an unintentionally
hilarious interview with Maria Bartiromo. (With the horses
behind him, the brown scarf, the worry beads, and the retro
hairstyle, the prince looks, as a colleague noted, like a cross
between Guido Sarducci and Frank Zappa circa 1979.)
But not every extra expense must be eliminated. How about
those full-page advertisements Citi has been running for the last
few days in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, touting
its diversification, expertise, and commitment to customers? I
actually think those expensive ads are fine. Citi is suffering as
much from a crisis of confidence as anything else. So the
company is spending a few million bucks on ads that hammer
home the notion that "Citi never sleeps." If Citi, a major
advertiser in a variety of media, were to withdraw entirely from
the field, people would begin to think that the Citi that never
sleeps is sleeping with the fishes. And the Times and the Journal
need all the ads they can get. [Editor's Note: Citi would be welladvised, however, to spread some of that love to Slate and
Newsweek while avoiding the properties of Time Inc.
altogether.]
Citi Field is also a tough one. In 2006, Citi signed a $400
million, 20-year deal to name the Mets' new stadium after the
company. It's hard to walk away from signed contracts. And if
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Citi manages to stick around for the next 20 years, this could
turn out to be a very good deal. The company's name will be
mentioned millions of times in a range of media—online,
television, radio, newspapers—over the next two decades. As a
gesture to the company's new partial owners, perhaps there could
be some tweaks: Paulson Park at Citi Field or the Ben Bernanke
Bullpen. And, of course, the field's tarp can just be called the
TARP.
moneybox
Don't Get Depressed, It's Not 1929
Why all those Great Depression analogies are wrong.
By Daniel Gross
Saturday, November 22, 2008, at 7:35 AM ET
It's difficult to avoid the comparisons between the current sad
state of financial affairs and the Great Depression. "This is not
like 1987 or 1998 or 2001," Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said
at a conference on Nov. 11. "We will in fact look back to the
1929 period to see the kind of slowdown we are seeing now."
Time depicted President-elect Barack Obama on its cover as
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And in Washington, the buzz is all
about what the new team will do in its first 100 days. What's
next? Show trials in Moscow?
All this historically inaccurate nostalgia can occasionally make
you want to clock somebody with one of the three volumes of
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s history of the New Deal. The credit
debacle of 2008 and the Great Depression may have similar
origins: Both got going when financial crisis led to a reduction in
consumer demand. But the two phenomena differ substantially.
Instead of workers with 5 o'clock shadows asking, "Brother, can
you spare a dime?" we have clean-shaven financial-services
executives asking congressmen if they can spare $100 billion.
More substantively, the economic trauma the nation suffered in
the 1930s makes today's woes look like a flesh wound.
"By the afternoon of March 3, scarcely a bank in the country was
open to do business," FDR said in his March 12, 1933, fireside
chat (now available on a very cool podcast at the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corp.'s Web site). In 1933, some 4,000
commercial banks failed, causing depositors to take huge losses.
(There was no FDIC back then.) The recession that started in
August 1929 lasted for a grinding 43 months, during which
unemployment soared to 25 percent and national income was cut
in half. By contrast, through mid-November 2008, only 19 banks
had failed. The Federal Reserve last week said it expects
unemployment to top out at 7.6 percent in 2009. Economists
surveyed by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank believe the
recession, which started in April 2008, will be over by next
summer. (Of course, back in January the same guys forecast that
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the economy would grow nicely in 2008 and 2009.) But don't
take it from me. Take it from this year's Nobel laureate in
economics. "The world economy is not in depression," Paul
Krugman writes in his just-reissued book The Return of
Depression Economics. "It probably won't fall into depression,
despite the magnitude of the current crisis (although I wish I was
completely sure about that)."
So what's with all the speakeasy-era speak? Financial executives
invoke distant history in part to make up for their own recent
shortcomings. If a force as powerful as the Great Depression has
been unleashed on the global economy, how can a mere mortal
like Merrill's John Thain be held responsible? The specter of the
1930s has also been deployed by political leaders to create a
sense of urgency. "We saw a lot of overblown analogies in the
run-up to the passage of the bailout bill," notes Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in
Washington, D.C. President Bush's Sept. 24 address to the nation
warned that "the entire economy is in danger," and that "without
immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a
financial panic, and a distressing scenario would unfold."
It's understandable that we make comparisons to the Great
Depression. Analogies help us place things in context. But very
few of us actually lived through the Depression. Studs Terkel,
the great chronicler of the voices of the Depression, died in
October at 96. The historical distance from today to 1929 is as
vast as the chasm separating 1929 from 1850. Dan Ariely, a
behavioral economist at Duke University and author of
Predictably Irrational, says, "The closer we are to something—
an event, a person, an object—the more nuances we see." By
contrast, the further away we are, the greater (and less accurate)
the generalizations we make. And so when comparisons to the
Great Depression are flashed on cable-news crawls, "it's all
about the desire to fit everything into a snapshot," Ariely says.
Ironically, the differences between the two eras can be summed
up in a few sound bites. The world of 1929-33 was one that
lacked shock absorbers such as Social Security and deposit
insurance to insulate people from economic disaster. In the
1930s, some of the world's largest economies—Germany, the
Soviet Union, Japan, and Italy—were run by leaders hostile to
the very notion of market capitalism. Today, U.S.-style market
capitalism is under assault from self-inflicted wounds, and
Germany, Italy, and Japan (Russia, not so much) are working
with the United States to cope with a common problem. Back
then, we were cursed with a feckless Federal Reserve, and a
wealthy Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon,* saw the downturn
as a force for good. "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate
the farmers, liquidate real estate," he said. "People will work
harder, live more moral lives." By contrast, today's Federal
Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, is a student of the Great
Depression, and the wealthy Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson,
wants to provide liquidity to stocks, farmers, and real estate. A
final difference: After the 1929 crash, the nation had to wait
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
more than three years for a president who simply wasn't up to
the job to leave the scene. This time, we've got to wait only two
more months.
A version of this article also appears in this week's issue of
Newsweek.
Correction, Nov. 24: This column originally misidentified
Hoover's Treasury secretary as Paul Mellon. In fact, it was
Andrew Mellon. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
moneybox
The Un-Paulson
Why Timothy Geithner is a strong choice for treasury secretary.
By Daniel Gross
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 5:25 PM ET
On Friday afternoon, the markets shot up nearly 7 percent
following the news that President-elect Obama was poised to
name Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal
Reserve, as the next treasury secretary. Why was this leak worth
several hundred billion dollars in market capitalization?
After all, our next treasury secretary won't be a guy who made a
fortune on Wall Street (like Robert Rubin or Henry Paulson), or
who served as CEO of a Fortune 500 company (like Paul O'Neill
or John Snow), or who's been a distinguished economist (like
Larry Summers), or who held high elective office (like Lloyd
Bentsen). Rather, Geithner has been an extremely effective
meritocratic bureaucrat for 20 years—a sort of community
organizer for the financial world.
At a time when the private-sector leadership, and Wall Street's
leadership in particular, has done a collective pratfall, it was
unlikely the treasury secretary would hail from a prominent
private-sector company. Early speculation, which began on the
eve of the election, centered on Larry Summers, the voluble,
brilliant Clinton-era treasury secretary, and Geithner, his onetime deputy. (Jacob Weisberg made the case for Summers last
week. And I will take this opportunity to note one of my few
accurate prognostications of this, or any other, millennium: On
Nov. 5, I predicted it would be Geithner.)
Geithner has a great deal in common with Obama. They're
almost exactly the same age. (Both were born in August 1961.)
They're both products of elite East Coast universities: Geithner
was a Dartmouth undergrad and has a master's degree from
Johns Hopkins. Like Obama, Geithner is a citizen of the world.
He spent a chunk of his childhood in Asia. (He has "lived in East
Africa, India, Thailand, China, and Japan," his résumé notes.)
49/99
Both are skinny, fit, high-energy guys with two children. And
like Obama, Geithner sometimes appears mismatched to the
majesty of his surroundings. Geithner has a quick laugh, a sense
of irony, and bounces in and out of rooms at the sedate New
York Federal Reserve, a grand fortress in Lower Manhattan.
One key difference: While Obama abandoned community
organizing for politics early on, Geither has stuck with it. Of
course, the community Geithner has been trying to organize—
with limited success—is the international and domestic financial
community.
Geithner worked his way up the ladder in the Treasury
Department. As a junior member of the Committee To Save the
World in the 1990s, he worked long nights alongside Treasury
Secretaries Robert Rubin and Summers to douse the economic
forest fires that arose in Mexico, Asia, and Russia. After a brief
sojourn at the International Monetary Fund, in 2003 he was an
unexpected choice for president of the New York Federal
Reserve. (Unlike most of his predecessors in that post, he lacks a
Ph.D. in economics.) For the last several years, he's functioned
as a sort of den mother for Wall Street. The New York Fed,
acting as the agent of the central bank, provides liquidity and
succor to financial systems and helps organize aid when a
community member fails. Geithner has played a crucial behindthe-scenes role in the bailouts (and, in the case of Lehman Bros.,
the nonbailouts). As the eyes, ears, and operating arm of the
nation's central bank in New York, he knows all the key players.
Geithner has a great appreciation for the sensitivities and
workings of capital markets.
Geithner, whom I've met briefly, is a creature of the
establishment. But he manages to be an establishmentarian
without exhibiting self-importance and arrogance. To a degree,
then, he's the un-Summers. And while previous treasury
secretaries drawn from Wall Street may have called their
colleagues for updates on business conditions, Geithner relies as
much on charts drawn from a Bloomberg machine. Which
makes him, to a degree, the un-Paulson.
So far, Geithner has been a valuable behind-the-scenes team
member. Now he's been hired to be a leader. Is he worth several
hundred billion dollars? We'll find out soon.
movies
Throw Another Cliché on the Barbie
Baz Luhrmann's Australia.
By Dana Stevens
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 12:37 PM ET
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
It's a mystery to me how Baz Luhrmann continues to be regarded
as a director worth following. A long time has passed since I've
regarded his lush, loud, defiantly unsubtle output with anything
but dread. In Australia, his new romantic-epic-Western-protestwar drama, Luhrmann's dedication to cliché has become so
absolute, it starts to verge on a kind of genius. There's not a
single music cue that isn't obvious (swelling strings to indicate
heartbreak, wailing didgeridoo to signal aboriginal nobility).
Nary a line of dialogue is spoken that hasn't been boiled down,
like condensed milk, from a huge vat of earlier Hollywood films
(Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Out of Africa, and
various John Ford cattle-drive pictures being the most obvious
referents). But to marvel at the purity of Australia's corniness
isn't to imply that the movie functions as so-bad-it's-good camp,
or guilty pleasure, or anything else involving aesthetic
enjoyment. Audiences without a vast appetite for racial
condescension, CGI cattle, and backlit smooches will sit through
Australia with all the enthusiasm of the British convicts who
were shipped to that continent against their will in the late 18th
century.
Nicole Kidman plays Lady Sarah Ashley, a tightly wound
British noblewoman who comes to Australia with the intention
of selling her philandering husband's remote ranch, Faraway
Downs. Upon arrival, she learns that Lord Ashley has been
killed—purportedly by an aboriginal "savage" but actually, as it
turns out, by a scheming local rancher (Neil Fletcher). To save
her farm from being seized by this mysteriously motivated
villain, Lady Sarah must oversee the drive of 1,500 distinctly
digital-looking cattle to the port at Darwin. To do so, she hastily
assembles an unlikely team of cowpokes, including herself, a
legendary local horseman known as the Drover (Hugh Jackman),
and an orphaned Aboriginal boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters, who
also narrates the movie as part of a framing device).
After their arrival in Darwin, the band is subjected to a fresh set
of indignities. Meddling missionaries seek to apprehend Nullah,
who's become like a son to Lady Sarah, and send him to an
isolated school for half-caste children. Sarah and the Drover
have fallen in love, but their relationship is showing the strain of
his long absences on yearly drives (or "droves"—if there's one
thing you learn in this movie, it's that Australians never use the
word "drive" in a cow-related context). And World War II looms
on the horizon as Japanese bombers approach the Australian
coast.
Hugh Jackman, with his Broadway-ready sincerity and bendable
plastic physique, has just the right level of fakeness for a part
like this (and I mean that in the best way; Jackman's synthetic
virility can be charming in the right role, and he seems perfectly
at home in Luhrmann's hokey universe). Kidman often shares
that curiously artificial quality, so you'd think the two would be
perfect as two action figures banged together in front of a scenic
backdrop. But Kidman's performance here feels tense and
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uncertain. She overacts in the opening, broadly comic scenes and
never finds the right tone thereafter. When she tries to comfort
the newly orphaned Nullah with a half-remembered version of
"Over the Rainbow," Kidman doesn't seem like a woman
struggling to liberate her long-repressed maternal feelings; she
seems like a genuinely cold bitch reluctantly attempting to feign
empathy. But the character's incoherence isn't all Kidman's fault;
the group-written script makes her conversion from effete
aristocrat to weather-beaten cowgirl happen virtually overnight.
I guess I don't know enough about Australian racial politics to
opine at length on this movie's vision of its aboriginal characters,
but I will say that if my people were subjected to this
simultaneously idealizing and condescending "magical Negro"
treatment, I would seriously consider aiming a boomerang at
Baz Luhrmann's head. All of the native characters, especially
Nullah's grandfather, King George (David Gulpilil, who played
the lead in the infinitely superior 1971 film Walkabout and who
has been seen in many roles since), are benevolent,
preternaturally gifted, and ultimately subservient to the white
leads. Though much is made of Sarah and Drover's all-butparental relationship to Nullah, he never stops calling them
"Boss" and "Mrs. Boss."
During the film's long and troubled production, Luhrmann shot
more than one ending and screened the results for Australian
focus groups before choosing which to use. (You can read more
here if you don't object to some minor plot spoilage.) But over
the course of its 165 minutes, the movie plods through at least
three apparent endings. (The first one comes one hour and 15
minutes short of the actual conclusion.) Had I been included in
that focus-group audience, I could have voted on my favorite
ending before the screening was even through. I'd have cast my
ballot for whichever one came sooner.
movies
Twilight
Cute vegetarian vampires in the Pacific Northwest.
By Dana Stevens
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 12:20 PM ET
The paperback cover of Twilight, the first of four best-selling
teen-vampire fantasy novels by Stephenie Meyer, shows a pair
of pale female hands in close-up, proffering the reader an
obscurely menacing apple. I haven't been able to make it through
that book's 500-plus pages of turgid vampire-ogling. ("He lay
perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted,
incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening,
pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn't sleep.")
But after seeing director Catherine Hardwicke's flawed yet
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
transfixing adaptation of the book, I can understand the appeal of
that poisoned apple, and I think I might want another bite.
The feminist critique of the Twilight phenomenon (see this astute
reading by Laura Miller in Salon) points, quite rightly, to all
that's reprehensible about the Twilight universe: the heroine's
passivity and masochism, her utter lack of grrl-power spunk.
Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is the anti-Buffy; she's a mortal
high-school girl committed not to slaying vampires but to being
slain by them. Make that one particular vampire: Bella's highest
ambition is to be snacked upon by the lavender-lidded,
incandescent-chested Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and thus
to join him forever in the realm of the permanently teenage dead.
As the movie begins, Bella has just relocated from Phoenix to
the remote, rain-soaked town of Forks, Wash., where she's
moved in with her father (Billy Burke), the small town's taciturn
chief of police. Her new lab partner, Edward, spends his days
glaring at her with Morrissey-like intensity, then suddenly saves
her from an impending car crash with what seems like inhuman
strength and speed, then returns to insulting and ignoring her.
What's going on with Edward and his four impossibly attractive
foster siblings? They never seem to eat or sleep, and they
fraternize only with one another, floating through the school day
in a pale, silent pack. Oh, and in an apparently unrelated
development, Bella's dad is investigating some mysterious
deaths outside of town—it's almost as if people were being eaten
by some strange bloodthirsty animal. ...
This early part of the movie, in which we wait for Bella to
discover what any consumer of pop horror already knows, is
static and at times unintentionally funny. Pattinson, a British
actor chosen for his sculpted face and gazellelike physique,
doesn't seem to have been given much direction beyond "melt
the camera with your eyes." But despite his studied gaze, the
lens remains stubbornly at room temperature, and this opening
act could have been cut by half an hour. What finally convinces
Bella isn't the weeks of glaring but a few minutes of Googling:
The Cullens, she realizes, are a family of "vegetarian" vampires,
forcing themselves to subsist on animal blood as they chastely
coexist with delicious, delicious humans. Bella's blood is
especially tempting to Edward, for some reason—who can
explain the vicissitudes of young love?—and he's been keeping
his distance all this time for her safety. But when Edward
confides his secret and starts spiriting Bella to the tops of giant
pines for moony dream dates, the movie takes on a pulp
immediacy that somehow draws you in, even if century-old guys
with ice-cold, glittering skin are totally not your type.
The director, Hardwicke, began her career as a production
designer, and that shows in the convincing texture and detail of
the world she's created. The Pacific Northwest locations (with
Oregon standing in for Washington) are eerily lovely, and the
understated costume design by Wendy Chuck manages to make
weatherproof parkas look Goth. Bella's schoolmates—the
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nonvampiric ones—are convincingly sketched characters,
vulnerable and goofy, like real high-school kids rather than
readymade archetypes.
Hardwicke, whose first film was the harrowing mother-daughter
melodrama Thirteen (2003), has a keen sense memory for
female adolescence—not just the social insecurity of that time
but the grandiosity that can make self-destructive decisions feel
somehow divinely fated. Unwholesome, sure, but arguably no
more so than Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, two better-written
Gothic romances about young women in thrall to a remote,
charismatic, often cruel hero. And while Pattinson's Edward is a
bit of a vain prig, no one you'd want to risk your immortal soul
for, his worthiness doesn't really matter. Twilight is a story about
pining for the one person you can, and should, never have, and
who among us hasn't at least once experienced that vampiric
craving? As a life lesson for teenage girls, Twilight (excuse the
pun) sucks. As a parable for the dark side of female desire, it's
weirdly powerful.
Slate V: The critics' take on Twilight, Special, and Bolt
music box
Doppelgänger Pop
Does Beyoncé Knowles really need an alter ego?
By Jonah Weiner
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 7:15 AM ET
The best proof available that Beyoncé Knowles is not a cyborg
came in September of 2006. It was late, outside a club, when
paparazzi caught the R&B titan slumped woozily in a Maybach
sedan with her hair and dress disheveled—a party girl, it seemed,
after one cosmo too many. On the spectrum of celebrity gotchas,
this was no Amy Winehouse moment. But it involved a star
famous for her impenetrable poise—it's hard to imagine
Beyoncé scratching an itch without undergoing a little media
training first—so the photo dominated gossip blogs for a cycle.
The picture is most revealing, though, for how unrevealing it is.
Beyoncé's hair is tousled, yes, but it also hides her face; her
dress is mussed, but mostly because she's tugging the hem
downward, covering herself up. Beyoncé doesn't speak in the
contemporary celebrity vernacular of meltdowns, nip slips, and
crotch shots. In the nothing-is-private era of TMZ, she still
believes there's such a thing as TMI.
Her third solo album, I Am … Sasha Fierce, is loosely built
around the theme of public facades and private truths. The first
half of the disc is devoted to songs by the "real" Beyoncé, a
woman, promo materials inform us, we've never heard from
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
before. The second half showcases songs by Sasha Fierce, the
flamboyant alter ego Beyoncé says she employs to armor herself
against the perils of fame. In her video for "Single Ladies," a
Sasha track, she dances Fosse-style while wearing a bionic hand.
We aren't watching Beyoncé, it turns out, but her fembot replica.
The pop doppelgänger is not, of course, Beyoncé's innovation.
Mariah Carey has Mimi, Eminem has Slim Shady, David Bowie
had Ziggy Stardust, to name only a few. The impulse among
musicians to create doubles—call them poppelgängers—is
decades old, and it highlights one of pop music's basic
contradictions: the way every performer, to some degree,
becomes another person in order to express something true about
himself.
In 1950, Hank Williams, already an established country star,
began recording music under the name Luke the Drifter. Luke
was a rambling man who performed good deeds from town to
town, spreading the Lord's word as he went. In part, this split
was therapeutic—Hank Williams sang about the travails of a
lovelorn tippler with wandering eyes; in Luke the Drifter songs,
he could reimagine himself as an upright Christian soldier.
Another reason for the split was Williams' uncertainty about how
audiences and radio programmers, accustomed to a certain base
line of grit in his music, would take to his Ned Flanders
fantasies. (The persona didn't damage his career, as he feared,
but it never rivaled Hank-proper's popularity, either.)
Luke the Drifter gets at something essential about musical alter
egos. Williams was grappling with the disorienting experience of
being watched by millions, of being subject to a clumsy, mass
gaze that doesn't see a person in full, but rather a distortion of
him. When Beyoncé talks about Sasha, she's trying to own this
distortion rather than let it own her. (The case of the late Russell
Jones, the brilliant, X-rated hip-hop jester better known as Ol'
Dirty Bastard, offers a poignant example of the latter. Friends
interviewed before and after his 2004 drug overdose say that
audiences expected insanity from the Ol' Dirty Bastard persona
and that Jones went around the bend trying to satisfy them.)
In hip-hop, most poppelgängers—as opposed to aliases, which
abound—crop up on the genre's weirdo margins: Kool Keith
recording as Dr. Dooom and Dr. Octagon; RZA recording as
Bobby Digital; MF Doom recording as Viktor Vaughn. Eminem
and T.I., though, have taken the tradition into the mainstream.
T.I.'s 2007 album, T.I. vs. T.I.P., contrasted the Atlanta MC's
pop-crossover and unreconstructed-gangsta sides, a duality that
speaks to the fundamental paradox written into gangsta rap—
namely, that real gangstas don't rap.
Eminem is the most fascinating persona factory in recent pop
history. The way he splinters himself into different characters
suggests Peter Sellers or an angrier Andy Kaufman: His identity
play is anarchic, screwball, infinitely slippery. Roughly,
Marshall Mathers is the real guy, and Eminem and Slim Shady
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are different parts of his id. They allow him to rap about
murdering his wife while claiming ironic distance from the
fantasy, to revile his needy fans one moment and sympathize
with their obsessions the next. Eminem provoked pop music's
last great parent-group outcry, and in part, his identity play
explores the limits of artistic responsibility: I didn't say it, an
imaginary character did! On "Ass Like That," one of the most
dazzlingly layered songs on his last album, Marshall Mathers
rapped as Eminem rapping as Robert Smigel rapping as Triumph
the Insult Comic Dog rapping as a pedophiliac Michael Jackson
rapping as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Exhilarating and
destabilizing, it was a madcap, atomized vision of the self as
puppet show.
There can be something self-indulgent, low-concept, or stuntlike
about many pop alter egos. Garth Brooks will never live down
his silly incarnation as rocker Chris Gaines. Mariah Carey's
Mimi helped her to move from the girly devotionals of her
Rainbow- and Butterfly-era career to her current hot-pants
hypersexuality—but her characterization of this as some great
personal awakening was comically solipsistic. And Beyoncé's
poppelgänger move on I Am … Sasha Fierce is, in the end, a
huckster's feint: The so-called unguarded tracks offer us no
deeper understanding of Beyoncé, unless you count the
revelation, on the shivering power ballad "If I Were a Boy," that
this booty-shaking, beauty-shop feminist has feelings, too, and
that they that can be hurt. Beyoncé's personality split, at least as
it's explored here, comes off like a talking point.
Ultimately, the poppelgänger is redundant, because all pop
artists present a persona to the world. Robert Zimmerman
became Bob Dylan. Louise Ciccone became Madonna. These
are two of pop's biggest shape-shifters—different people, it can
seem, from one album to the next—but the same principle holds
true with the most transparent, reliable, and sincere of singersongwriters. The moment John Mayer approaches a microphone,
in other words, he becomes "John Mayer." It was this tension
between being and performing that Kurt Cobain—as sincere a
voice as you'll find in pop—found especially tough to reconcile.
It contributed to his feelings of self-alienation, his fears he'd sold
out. The catch is that, in pop, being is performing. Realizing this
can be liberating (I'm anyone I say I am!) or something like
getting lost in a hall of mirrors. So there's a scary subtext to
Beyoncé's patently unrevealing "revealing" new album—is it
that she won't take off her mask or that, after so many years in
the spotlight, she can't?
music box
Welcome to the Jumble
Axl Rose and the epically messy Chinese Democracy.
By Jody Rosen
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 11:38 AM ET
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The news lede is simply: OMG. It's actually here. After 17
years, a reported $13 million, and countless rock critic
invocations of Howard Hughes, white whales, and Fitzcarraldo,
a new Guns N' Roses record will be released on Sunday.
Chinese Democracy's album credits reflect the epic slog that
brought it into existence, listing 14 recording studios, five
guitarists, and multiple "digital editors." (British record producer
Youth is cited for the "initial arrangement suggestion" on the
song "Madagascar.") But the telling liner note detail is the
absence of all but one of Guns N' Roses' founding members.
There is no Slash, no Izzy Stradlin, no Duff McKagan. The last
time a collection of original Guns N' Roses songs was released,
it was 1991. Barack Obama was graduating magna cum laude
from Harvard Law; GNR was the biggest rock band on earth. In
the years since, Axl Rose has dithered, tinkered, and obsessed;
feuded with Kurt Cobain and Tommy Hilfiger; appropriated
Christina Aguilera's cornrow extensions; and watched the
zeitgeist, and his band mates, leave him behind.
So make no mistake: Chinese Democracy is an Axl Rose solo
record. The surprise, given Rose's reputation for volatility, is
how buttoned up it is. From the first moments of the title track—
an eerie swirl of siren peals and chattering voices that gives way
to brutish power chords—Chinese Democracy is slick and
airtight, with production values that are up-to-the-minute. The
sound is heavily compressed in the contemporary style, and the
music's frayed edges have been smoothed away; every kickdrum thump and keyboard tinkle gives off the glint of a thousand
mouse clicks. Those digital editors earned their paychecks.
It's ultra-professional, yes—but oh my, is it busy. Guns N' Roses
always mixed up its hard rock with other stuff: pop-metal,
boogie-blues, Queen-inspired glam, schmaltzy piano pop in the
Elton John mode. But Chinese Democracy ups the fussiness
factor a hundredfold—call it hard rococo. By the sound of it,
Rose simply dumped every musical idea he'd ever had, every
genre he'd ever heard, into his Pro Tools. And stirred.
The result is songs like "If the World," which starts with
Flamenco guitar noodling and segues into a desultory '70s funk
groove, before piling on strings, wailing guitars, and a variety of
showy digital effects. "Madagascar" has more orchestral strings,
and brass fanfares, and drum loops, and ripping guitar solos, and
drifting cloudbanks of industrial rock noise. Did I mention the
samples from Cool Hand Luke? And the snippets of Martin
Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech?
What Rose is trying to express with this excess is unclear. It is
tempting to read a song like "Catcher in the Rye" as a statement
about Rose's own Salinger-like artistic stagnation and reputation
as a recluse. ("If I thought that I was crazy/ Well, I guess I'd
have more fun," Rose sings.) But several songs suggest that
Chinese Democracy is first and foremost a record about the
torment of making Chinese Democracy. In "This I Love," a
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chiming ballad that boasts the album's most shapely melody,
Rose pleads: "It seemed like forever and a day/ If my intentions
are misunderstood/ Please be kind, I've done all I should."
"Sorry" is more defiant: "You thought they'd make me behave
and submit/ What were you thinking .../ You don't know why/ I
won't give in/ To hell with the pressure/ I'm not caving in."
That's an Axl that Guns N' Roses fans know well: paranoid and
spitting mad. But another Axl has gone missing on Chinese
Democracy. In his heyday, Rose was a classic sex-symbol
frontman, dreaming of a utopian Paradise City populated by
babes, commanding "feel my-my-my-my serpentine," stalking
arena stages in serpentine-strangling spandex biker shorts. The
members of Guns N' Roses were not just archetypal rock
Dionysians, they were the last great rock Dionysians—the end of
a dynastic line stretching down from the Rolling Stones, Led
Zeppelin, and Aerosmith.
For those of us who will accept no substitutes, there is hope.
Rumors have flown for years about the original GN'R lineup
reforming; Stradlin and McKagan have mentioned the possibility
in recent interviews. Given the money involved, it may
eventually prove too tempting to pass up. At the very least, a
shotgun reunion is certain to take place at the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2012, Guns N' Roses' first
year of rock-hall eligibility. That's just three years away, a blink
of the eye in Axl time. As a philosopher once said—way back
when, in the heady days of the first Bush administration—all we
need is just a little patience.
other magazines
One Is Not the Loneliest Number
New York on the myth of the lonely New Yorker.
Of course, cock rock is not unproblematic, and its problems—
musical, political, and, God knows, sartorial—are epitomized by
the skeezy silliness of the '80s hair metal scene that produced
GN'R. But listening to Chinese Democracy, and to the earlier
Guns N' Roses records, one is reminded how much pure fun was
sucked out of rock circa 1992, when the last poodlehead packed
away his phallus and shuffled off of the Sunset Strip,
surrendering the limelight to a succession of sad sacks: grunge
rockers, post-grunge rockers, and the current crop of Radioheadand Coldplay-influenced bands, whose whimpering falsetto
vocals rather pointedly dramatize the music's reduced, um,
virility.
Rose is 46 years old now, so diminished libido may be par for
the course. On Chinese Democracy, his voice is still an amazing,
bludgeoning instrument, rising from demonic low rumble to
piercing banshee wail. But listen to the words he is singing:
"Sometimes I feel like the world is on top of me/ Breaking me
down with an endless monotony." "Don't ever try to tell me how
much you care for me/ Don't ever try to tell me how you were
there for me." "I've been brought down in this storm/ And left so
far out from the storm/ That I can't find my way back/ My way
anymore." The priapic rock god has become just another
bummed-out white guy, bellowing his angst over noisy guitars.
Of course, in rock, the sexiness starts with sound, and spreads.
There's no gainsaying the skill of the L.A. studio musicians
whom Rose has been touring with in recent years. (Chinese
Democracy is full of virtuoso shredding sure to please the Guitar
Player magazine subscribers.) But the songs lack the rugged,
sexy swing of the original GN'R. It was a band par excellence:
Lead guitarist Slash was Rose's sidekick and foil; rhythm
guitarist Stradlin was the hook-savvy secret songwriting
weapon; bassist McKagan gave the music its fearsome thrust. I
can't help wondering what, pardon the expression, a real Guns N'
Roses record would sound like in 2008.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
By Marc Tracy
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 6:14 PM ET
New York, Dec. 1
Manhattan isn't as lonely a place as people think, the cover story
argues, despite having the highest proportion of singleindividual households of any U.S. county. Not feeling alone—as
opposed to less significant distinctions like objectively not living
alone—extends life expectancy. Like spending time on the
Internet, living alone in New York may seem to promote
alienation but in reality facilitates more dynamic and wider
interaction. The article is a paean to cities—"the ultimate habitat
in which to be ourselves"—and to one in particular. ... An article
explains why Barack Obama selected Hillary Clinton for
secretary of state and why she's inclined to accept. Several
appointments of close associates show that "the 'team of rivals'
meme is vastly overdone." The author argues that this pick
reinforces, rather than undermines, the president-elect's
dominance over the former first lady—and her husband.
The New Yorker, Dec. 1
A valuable 12,000-word profile traces pro-free-market Federal
Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's unlikely new role as activist
regulator. As a professor, Bernanke supported Alan Greenspan's
"benign neglect" of the tech bubble; as head of the Council of
Economic Advisers, he was sanguine about the emerging
housing bubble; for his first year as Fed chair, he continued
Greenspan's policies of cheap money and light regulation. Still,
the downturn is "more a reflection of the limits to the Fed's
power than of Bernanke getting it wrong," says former Princeton
colleague Paul Krugman. "And things could have been much
worse." ... An author checks in with former Republican
presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. "I was scratching my
head," he remarks of the Sarah Palin pick, "saying, 'Hey, wait a
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minute. She's wonderful, but the only difference was she looks
better in stilettos than I do, and she has better hair.' "
Newsweek, Dec. 1
The cover story, "What Michelle Means to Us," ponders how
Michelle Obama's stint as first lady may improve Americans'
negative perception of black women and black women's
ambivalent perception of themselves. The author says that Mrs.
Obama has successfully navigated the line between timidity and
Angry Black Womanhood. The essay also examines how Mrs.
Obama's "Mom in Chief" role will play in the mommy wars and
celebrates the fact that, unlike most African-American models—
who tend to be light-skinned and have European features—Mrs.
Obama is unequivocally "brown." ... Jonathan Alter, who wrote
the book on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's famed 100 Days, says
Obama is already emulating the 32nd president's moves. FDR
conditioned thousands of patronage gigs on passage of his
legislation; Obama made Rahm Emanuel, who got many
congressmen their jobs, his chief of staff. FDR exploited the new
medium of radio to build support for his proposals; Obama has
turned to the new medium of YouTube.
Weekly Standard, Dec. 1
One author concludes that Obama's plan to shutter the prison at
Guantánamo Bay will prove overhasty at best and, at worst,
detrimental to national security. Included among the roughly 250
detainees are 14 of "high value," some of whom helped plan and
execute the 9/11 attacks. The anti-Gitmo backlash is partly the
fault of the Bush administration's "strange failure to make its
case to the public," its "rightly questioned" interrogation
techniques, and the incompetence of its military commissions.
That said, without its detention policy, the author asserts, "many
more Americans surely would have perished." ... An editorial
laments Obama's "neither conservative nor Clintonite" economic
agenda. Sure, the Bush administration may have intervened to
save the banking industry. But that was necessary because
"[b]anks are the economy's circulatory system." The same
cannot be said of the auto industry, which Democratic legislators
will be "more than happy" to bail out in January, according to
the author.
GQ, December
A profile in the "Men of the Year" issue follows Gen. David
Petraeus during the last days of his stint in Iraq before his
transition to U.S. Central Command. A close associate
summarizes the general's innovative counterinsurgency strategy:
"You have to find other kinds of ammunition, and it's not always
a bullet." When Petraeus' father died earlier this year, he did not
attend the funeral stateside, saying, "Our soldiers make all the
same sacrifices." Petraeus' son has earned his parachuting wings
and could be deployed to Iraq. ... It turns out that "Icon of the
Year" Philip Roth is fairly unexciting, and nobody finds him less
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
exciting than he does himself. "[Sabbath's Theater] would be
kind of marvelous with Jack Nicholson," Roth says in reference
to one of his several novels featuring aging, libidinous male
protagonists. "He would understand it."
other magazines
America's Checkup
Time on how to fix the health care system.
By Sonia Smith
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 12:38 PM ET
Time, Dec. 1
The cover story performs a "collective physical" of the
American public and finds many in need of a salad. "By too
many measures, America is a lot less healthy than a developed
nation has any business being." The health care system needs to
be retooled to focus on prevention, the author argues. … When
Barack Obama takes office, the time will finally be right for
health care reform, an article argues. Fifteen years after Hillary
Clinton's failed effort to overhaul the system, the issue is no
longer "politically toxic." … As rumors swirl about Obama
picking Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, some are calling the
move shrewd, while others grumble about the new
administration being filled with too many Clintonites. "Would
this move, if it happens, be just the first manifestation of that
new kind of politics that Obama was promising in his
presidential campaign? Or proof that he understands the oldest
kind all too well?"
Economist, Nov. 22
An editorial argues the world must deal with Somali pirates, who
are currently holding about a dozen ships for ransom, by
addressing the anarchy that has been strangling Somalia since
2006. "This includes establishing stability inside Somalia itself,
depriving the pirates of a sanctuary, and preventing the jihadtinted anarchy there from spilling over Somalia's borders." …
Where it had been the fashion for companies to keep as little
cash on hand as possible, in the wake of the financial crisis,
companies are scrambling for it, an editorial finds. "What was
once seen as evidence of corporate fitness for the moment looks
like anorexia." … Local governments across America are taking
steps to tamp down the predatory cash advances of payday
lenders by capping interest rates and establishing zoning
ordinances against them. Consumer advocates find the practices
of payday lenders akin to "financially knee-capping their
customers without providing a crutch."
New York Times Magazine, Nov. 23
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In a special "Screens" issue, A.O. Scott ponders how movies
have fared in a world where everyone's a multitasker. Where
movies once were a full-immersion experience, today people
watch them on laptops and iPods, pausing periodically to check
an e-mail or text message. Scott concludes that movies will
prevail, as they did against the rise of television and home video.
"While both of those developments appeared to threaten the
uniqueness of film, they also extended the power and
pervasiveness of the movies, which never surrendered their
position as the highest common denominator of the popular
culture." … Clive Thompson looks into the "Napoleon Dynamite
problem" of Netflix's "recommendation engine." Len Bertoni,
one of the computer scientists competing to write a better
algorithm, is frustrated by the different ratings people give to the
film; the public can't figure out whether it's a "masterpiece or an
annoying bit of hipster self-indulgence."
Portfolio, December
In the cover story of what might be called Portfolio's "doomand-gloom issue," Michael Lewis examines a Wall Street
cluttered with fallen investment banks and tries to figure out
how the collapse happened. He profiles Steve Eisman, a hedgefund portfolio manager and one of the few people who
understood how the "doomsday machine" of subprime
mortgages turned into collateralized debt obligations. … An
article chronicles the woes of the Blackstone Group, which has
seen its stock hit bottom after it acquired Hilton's 4,000-hotel
empire for a pretty $26 billion in October 2007. "BlackstoneHilton was the last big deal of this noisy bonanza, the collision
point of leveraged-buyout fever and the hyperinflated real estate
market." … Mayor Michael Bloomberg's eponymous company
is facing a class-action lawsuit claiming the company's managers
discriminate against pregnant women. More than 70 women
have signed up, claiming their salaries and responsibilities were
slashed once they became pregnant.
Texas Monthly, December
A tale of a family torn apart during the fed's April raid on a
meat-processing plant in Mount Pleasant, Texas, confronts the
human costs of immigration policy. One woman, disheartened
by the prospect of raising six kids alone on her $30,000 salary,
may return to Mexico to rejoin her deported husband. "But just
to think about it, my stomach hurts," she says. "My kids, they
don't speak the Spanish they're supposed to speak in Mexico." …
Someone in a University of Texas cap lobbed a Molotov cocktail
at the 152-year-old Texas governor's mansion when it was under
renovation this summer, torching it. The arsonist has yet to be
found, but authorities suspect he could be one of the anarchists
from Austin arrested during the RNC.
Must Read
Michael Lewis provides critical insight into the irresponsible
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Wall Street wheeling and dealing that brought about the current
crisis.
Must Skip
A Newsweek piece comparing Obama with Lincoln is
meandering and unfulfilling.
Best Politics Piece
Elizabeth Kolbert's comment in The New Yorker is a bleak look
at the federal regulations President Bush could push through in
his last 60 days in office.
Best Culture Piece
The review of "Prospect 1," the first New Orleans Biennial,
tempts you down to the 9th Ward to see it for yourself.
Late to the Party
A few weeks after other magazines did the same, Time comes
out with prescriptions for the Republican Party to regroup in the
wake of its Nov. 4 defeat.
poem
"The White Skunk"
By David Ferry
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 6:59 AM ET
Click the arrow on the audio player to hear David Ferry read
this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to
Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.
That glorious morning late in August when
The rosy-fingered dawn had scattered shadows
Away from the dreams I had dreamed the night before,
I looked out the back door of my condo, seeing
The parking lot we share, the cars we own,
And the houses all around, an embracing scene,
And there was Manfred and his small child Julia,
And, I thought for a moment, a little white toy
Trundling along behind her on its wheels.
But something was wrong with this. Julia, though little,
Wasn't so little as to be trundling such
A toy as what I thought I was seeing there,
On that glorious morning late in August when
The rosy-fingered dawn had scattered shadows.
And then I saw that the toy I thought I saw
Was not a toy but a little white skunk intently
Following Julia's legs and studying them,
And then, of course, her father had snatched her up
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Into his arms, and was backing away from the skunk,
And kicking at it to get it away, but the skunk
Kept following, it seemed for a very long time,
As the three of them kept on this way on their way,
Julia crying now, a piercing cry,
And Manfred perplexed, a father protecting his child,
Backing away and saying, in a voice
Carefully calm and maybe pretending to be
Almost amused, "What should I do about this?"
Holding his child in his arms, having to keep
Backing away, unable to turn his back
On this bizarre studious creature following them.
Transfixed in the doorway of the place I live in
I stood there out of time, watching them go.
But then, as they were halfway down the driveway
The creature turned aside and disappeared
Into the tall grass alongside the driveway,
And Manfred, carrying Julia, was able to turn
And quickly make his way away from there
To the preschool across the street from the end of the driveway.
A moment later the skunk appeared again
And ran across the lawn beside our house,
Intently studying the ground, near-sighted
Creature reading the ground for information,
Moving about the yard between our house
And the kindred house next door, purposeful, wandering.
What was it trying to find? Where was it going?—
A reader of the ground as if it were
The walls of the facility at Mount Auburn
Where she kept wandering the halls, reading blank walls
To see if there was an exit there, or maybe
A bulletin board telling her what to do,
Telling her how to be there, or where to be,
Or what she was trying to find, or where she was going,
Intently studying where it was she was.
The skunk was white where a skunk is normally black,
And striped black where it's normally striped white.
Was it transmogrified? Come up from down there
In the Underworld where it could have been changed like that?
It came back over across the lawn toward where
I was standing transfixed in the doorway of my dwelling,
Its eyes still intently studying the ground,
Close reader of the text whose narrative
Or whose instruction it was following.
Orpheus, I, stepped back in nameless fear,
As it looked as if the skunk was reading its way
Toward the back porch steps up into my condo,
Coming toward me as if it were coming home.
And then the skunk ran past my back porch steps
Reading the ground, paying no heed to me,
And disappeared in the ground cover we planted
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
To ornament the dooryard of our dwellings
In the world the strange white skunk had disappeared from.
The township animal-control man said
The skunk's behavior probably meant it was rabid
And that it was probably looking for some place to die.
politics
Do You Want Gravy on Your Palin?
Ammunition for your holiday political spats.
By John Dickerson
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 7:49 PM ET
It happens every year, and this Thanksgiving will be no
exception. Someone in the family will start talking politics.
(Given the historic, wacky, pervasive nature of the campaign just
past, this time it may not even be your blowhard know-it-all
uncle.) And since politics is a volatile subject and family
gatherings are fraught with tension, the ensuing discussion will
lead to discord.
If you want to avoid such conflict, you may want to inquire after
the young ones, busy yourself with doing the dishes, or ask the
host about his grill or golf swing—topics that will tie up
conversation until daybreak. But if you can't shake free of a
political debate, you may find yourself embracing Loudon
Wainwright's Thanksgiving prayer: "If I argue with a loved one,
Lord, please make me the winner." In that case, here's some
help: Slate's guide to this year's political arguments.
The Election
Obama won: He played a great hand well. He was disciplined,
focused, and turned the Internet into a fundraising and voterorganizing machine.
McCain lost: So long as it didn't have an (R) after its name, a
wooden post could have won this election. Bush was unpopular,
the Iraq war was unpopular—and yet McCain was nearly even in
the September polls. Despite the hype, Obama didn't raise any
more from regular folks who gave small donations than Bush
did. If it hadn't been for the financial crisis, McCain might have
won.
The Financial Mess
Blame the Democrats: Robert Rubin started the deregulation that
led to this mess. Bill Clinton supported and signed key banking
deregulation, and Obama's incoming economic adviser, Larry
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Summers, was also a big champion. Democrats were relentlessly
blind to the dangers at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Blame the Republicans: Bush and the Republicans deregulated
even more than Rubin did. Greenspan played a role, too, pushing
the deregulation of derivatives. Their response has been
indecisive at best and ineffective at worst.
Bonus argument: The party is clearly beholden to Wall Street.
He's the change: Change comes from the leader. He's picking
competent people to execute change. His economic team is not
excessively ideological, and he's likely to keep current Defense
Secretary Robert Gates.
Hillary at State
Great idea: She knows the issues, won't be afraid to tell Obama
what she thinks, and is the perfect embodiment of American
ideals of opportunity and service.
The Detroit Bailout
Help 'em: Sure, the auto companies screwed up, but the economy
can't afford to lose so many jobs right now. You can bail them
out and make them restructure.
Horrible idea: Drama! She'll put her interests above the
president's. Bill's conflicts of interest will be impossible to
overcome. Powerful women don't do well in the Middle East.
The New Congress
Screw 'em: Did you see that the Big Three CEOs all flew private
planes to testify in Washington? As for restructuring, it will
happen only if they know they won't get any help; as for the job
losses, those workers will be better off in more viable industries.
Did you see that the Big Three CEOs all flew private planes to
testify in Washington?
Economic Stimulus
Against it: Our deficit will go through the roof, which will make
us beholden to foreign creditors. A stimulus plan will delay
needed behavioral changes among both individuals and
companies. We're becoming a socialist country.
For it: Most economists say it's essential. Yes, the deficit will
grow, but the alternative is widespread business failure and job
loss. Here's the definition of socialism.
Obama's Mandate
Yes, he does: He won the biggest share of the popular vote of
any Democrat since LBJ. He won nine red states, four of which
a Democrat hasn't won since 1964. With seven new Democrats
in the Senate and 24 in the House, it's the largest partisan
mandate since FDR.
Not so fast: They might have elected the man, but there's no
evidence people signed up for his policies. A lot of voters picked
him because he wasn't Bush. (See McCain lost, above.)
Obama's Cabinet
No change: It's all Clinton people. The lobbying rules aren't as
restrictive as he promised. He's hiring a replacement for Karl
Rove.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Get ready for left-wing madness: Congress dominated by
Democrats is going to run roughshod over Obama and push
crazy liberal policies, which will lead to even bigger deficits and
big losses for Democrats in the midterm. How reckless will they
be? Listen to what House ways and means Chairman Charlie
Rangel said: "Don't ask me where the money will come from.
I'm going to the same place Paulson went."
We're all incrementalists now: Eighty-one Democrats were
elected in districts George Bush won in 2004. One-third of
Democrats hold seats that have Republican leanings. So nothing
too crazy will happen. With such low approval ratings, Congress
needs to, you know, actually pass a few bills, which means
they'll need bipartisan support.
Obama Surge in Black Voters Killed Proposition 8
No, they didn't: There's no evidence that new black voters
inspired by Obama made the difference on the measure reversing
the California Supreme Court allowing gay marriage. New
voters actually voted against the measure.
Yes, they did: How new voters behaved is not at issue. Seventy
percent of African-Americans voted against Prop 8. Ninety-four
percent of black voters supported Obama. The increase in
turnout among African-Americans supporting Obama made the
difference.
Will a Woman Ever Become President?
Sure: Hillary's campaign was a thorough mess, her husband was
off message constantly, and yet she still almost beat Obama.
Not for a while: Geraldine Ferraro was right—in politics, it's
harder to be a woman than a black man. It's still a sexist world.
Just look how terribly everyone treated Sarah Palin.
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Young Voters Decided the Election
Wrong, Sonny: They didn't turn out in greater numbers than
before.
politics
Charity Case
It's true, Pops: Yes, but they gave a big share of their vote to
Obama.
How Bill Clinton's donors pose a conflict of interest for Hillary.
By Christopher Beam
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 4:24 PM ET
The Republican Party Is Dead
Call the coroner: Demographically, Democrats are winning
larger shares of growing populations: Latinos, unmarried voters,
and those with college degrees. All Republicans have is the
South.
It's just resting: Pundits declared Democrats all but dead in both
2004 and 1994. Parties don't die; they restructure. (See Detroit
Bailout, above.) Historical patterns suggest a pickup in House
and Senate seats in 2010.
Palin Ruined McCain's Chances
No, She Didn't: Look, just because she doesn't visit the Met and
drink microclimate wine doesn't mean she's not smart. McCain
lost for other reasons in a bad year for Republicans. McCain's
problem with the base would have been worse without her. Exit
polls showed that a majority of voters who cared about the Palin
pick went for McCain.
Yes, She Did: Please keep believing she's a viable candidate.
Keep her on the campaign trail. She's so entertaining. An
interview while a turkey is being slaughtered? She's not fodder
for a Saturday Night Live skit. She is an SNL skit. But on the
merits, 41 percent of those voters said she was an important part
of their voting decision, and McCain just barely won among
those voters (51-48). A vice-presidential pick is supposed to
really help a ticket, not be a wash.
Bush Is the Worst President of My Lifetime
Born before 1932: Son, let me tell you about a man named
Herbert Hoover.
Born between 1932 and 1974: You think he was worse than that
paranoid liar Nixon? There have been no attacks since 9/11. Iraq
is turning around and may become a beacon for democracy in
the Middle East. Bush is like Truman: unpopular now, but
history will vindicate him.
Born after 1974: No need to elaborate. Use the time to get a
second helping of pie.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Now that Barack Obama's selection of Hillary Clinton as
secretary of state is pretty much set, all that remains is the small
print about office décor, letterhead font … and her husband's
continued solicitation of millions of dollars from foreign
business interests.
Bill Clinton resisted pressure before and during Hillary's primary
campaign to release the names of the 208,000 donors to the
Clinton Foundation. Now Bill is cooperating with the Obama
transition team by giving them the foundation's donor list. But
that won't be enough. The only solution may be for the former
president to dissolve his foundation entirely.
When public officials face conflicts of interest, there are two
standard remedies: disclosure and recusal. But—to the former
president's credit—the Clinton Foundation has larger array of
activities and programs in more nations than any other
presidential foundation. For Clinton's post-presidency, as for his
presidency, the usual rules don't apply.
Clinton's position as head of the foundation is similar to that of
secretary of state—he travels the world, schmoozes foreign
leaders, talks global economics. But instead of advocating U.S.
interests, he asks for money for his foundation. If he were in
charge of the foundation while Hillary served as secretary of
state, donors might assume that giving money to the foundation
would buy them Hillary's ear—or, at least, an ear that rests on
the same pillow as Hillary's.
Bill could, and undoubtedly would, do his best to disabuse them
of that assumption. And he can be very convincing. But the
assumption of influence would persist—and no amount of
persuasion or disclosure could ever erase it. Disclosure, after all,
does not eliminate conflict of interest. It merely exposes it.
People would still give to the Clinton Foundation because they
think they're buying influence.
It's not a crazy supposition. In 2005, Canadian mining executive
Frank Giustra gave the foundation $31 million a few months
after Bill Clinton helped facilitate a lucrative deal with the
government of Kazakhstan. All told, that arrangement was
relatively benign: Clinton was simply using his influence as an
ex-president, as many ex-presidents do. If Clinton's wife were
secretary of state, though, the exercise would be less innocent.
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Financial scandal—or what passes for it with the Clintons—
would be inevitable. The only variable is how hard it will be to
unearth. If the foundation discloses the donors, potential
conflicts of interest will be a Google search away. If it doesn't,
they will dribble out one leak at a time. But, you say, the donors
haven't leaked so far. Well, some have. And that was before
reporters had much incentive to dig. Every foreign government
or business with interests in U.S. policy would have reason to
give to the Clinton Foundation. And every donation—even wellmeaning ones—would therefore be suspect.
Another option is to have a third party vet the foundation's
donations for conflicts of interest. Stephen Gillers, who teaches
legal ethics at New York University, suggests that Obama set up
an independent commission to be run out of the White House,
perhaps reporting to the White House ethics officer. If a
contribution is deemed too large or too sensitive—say, $1
million from a donor in Iran—the office could veto it. The
trouble here is where to set the bar. Most countries do have some
interest or another in U.S. policy. And as anyone familiar with
accounting scandals can tell you, it's not the amount that
matters—it's the fact of it.
The last option is for Bill Clinton simply to recuse himself from
any official role with the foundation. Or he could stay out of its
international transactions and focus on the domestic side. But
these arrangements would be legal fictions. Presumably some
portion of the Clinton Foundation's donors gives money to that
charity, as opposed to any other, to curry favor with the former
president. Others may donate because they believe a former
president will have the clout to make a difference with their
favored cause.
Either way, the involvement of a former president is what
matters. So long as the foundation retains Clinton's name, many
prospective donors will see it as a way to win favor—or at least
notice—from world's most influential former president. Plus,
Clinton is the foundation's top fundraiser. (The charity raised
$124 million in 2007.) Who is going to fill his shoes? Chelsea?
If Obama wants to avoid awkward associations, the Clinton
Foundation effectively has to close shop. This isn't an attempt to
be holier than the pope. It's a recognition that given Clinton's
broad pool of foreign donors, there's a chance—a likelihood,
even—that some of them will look, and potentially be, very bad.
Nor, it should be noted, is Bill to blame. Trawling for global
cash is his job now, and his intentions are good. But there's real
room for actual influence-peddling. Giustra has pledged to give
half of his profits to the foundation. If foreign governments think
they can win Clinton's favor by helping Giustra, they will. There
are ways around it—for example, Giustra could pledge a flat
amount instead or give to a different charity. But then multiply
the problem by 208,000.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Obama's campaign mantra—"no drama"—has so far carried over
into the transition. No administration can be expected to avoid
drama entirely. But by picking Clinton as his secretary of state
and allowing her husband to keep the Clinton Foundation alive,
Obama ups the chances of drama.
politics
Obama's Reagan Democrats
They weren't crazy about Obama, but they voted for him anyway. Now what
do they want?
By John Dickerson
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 7:26 PM ET
The key to Barack Obama's success may lie with his least
enthusiastic supporters. On Saturday, while the rest of America
raked leaves and watched college football, 12 of them gathered
in a windowless conference room to talk about the election.
The group (six men and six women, all from Virginia) had voted
for Barack Obama but were, to varying degrees, late converts—
some literally did not decide until they entered the voting booth
on Election Day. They included former Bush voters, people who
seriously considered supporting John McCain, and Hillary
Clinton supporters who did not immediately back Obama. They
were there at the invitation of Peter Hart, who has conducted a
series of such focus groups with the Annenberg Public Policy
Center. He wanted to know how they'd reached their decision
and what their expectations were for Obama's presidency. These
are the kinds of voters that Obama is going to need to govern
effectively.
About half the group had voted against McCain as much as for
Obama. They voted against the Republican because they wanted
a break from the Bush years or because they could not support
his choice of Sarah Palin. Nine of the 12 said McCain could
have won their vote. Mark Parowski, who described himself as a
"hard-core Republican," didn't pick Obama until the moment he
was in the election booth. His wife had been to Obama's last
rally in Manassas, Va., the night before, along with 90,000
others, and said it sounded as if Obama was talking right to her
in her living room. His disgust with Republicans was a big factor
in his vote, Parowski said, but he also saw backing Obama as a
chance to make a generational change.
During the campaign, the McCain team tried to make Obama's
celebrity status a negative. Yet all the press attention clearly
helped him: Several in the group said they first heard about
Obama through news reports. No one thought he was an elitist
celebrity. Several mentioned that he'd once been so poor he
owned a car with a hole in the floor. Two women (both of whom
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voted for Bush in the last two elections) had been impressed by
Oprah's endorsement, which was when they first heard about
Obama.
These were not low-information voters—nearly all said they
used the Internet to research the candidates—and, perhaps
unsurprisingly, they were a gloomy bunch. When Hart asked
them to describe the country's condition in meteorological terms,
among the terms they used were "hurricane" and "perfect storm."
One woman worried about having enough money to buy her
children presents for Christmas. Several worried whether they'd
have jobs. When asked whether they thought America was in
decline, nearly everyone raised their hands.
At the same time, they weren't gloomy about Obama. The word
hope cropped up so often that they might have been Obama
volunteers rather than late-deciding voters. But they were very
patient. Obama has been careful to say change is going to come
slowly, and they agree. Asked what they thought the weather
would be like in a year, they had low expectations. "Hurricane
cleanup," said one.
Their priorities were predictable—they want the government to
help improve the economy and fix the health care system. Iraq
did not come up very much at all. They do set a high bar,
however, for Obama in one area: tone. They were willing to put
up with slow progress on specific reforms, they said, so long as
he ran a post-ideological, pragmatic, and honest White House.
They are watching him not just because they want the kind of
White House Obama promised. They also think it will give them
cues about whether he'll make good on his other promises.
"We're expecting him to be a Reagan in a way that makes
everyone proud to be an American," said John Bray. "And if he
doesn't do that, people will lose faith in him."
Obama has already delivered on one promise along these lines.
The group was unanimous that Obama's election had improved
the country's image overseas. Unprompted, several said that his
election meant that they no longer had to feel ashamed to be
American. "We're not as racist as everyone thinks we are," said
Ron May. He was one of several in the group who had not only
voted twice for George W. Bush but who also backed
Republican George Allen against Jim Webb in Virginia's 2006
Senate race.
The final question Hart asked was what each participant would
tell Obama if he called to wish them a happy Thanksgiving.
Their thoughts were predictable—keep your promises, etc.—but
none of them argued with the premise, which is to say: They all
could imagine speaking easily to their new president. And it was
clear from their remarks that they are listening to what he says.
They think he is one of them, which suggests Obama has a
reservoir of trust that might allow him to do the kind of bold
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
things he says he wants to do, including asking Americans to
sacrifice, but they don't want him to lose touch with his own
past—and, by extension, with people like them. As one woman
advised the president-elect: "Just don't forget what life was like
when your car had that hole."
politics
Obama's White House, Clinton's Team
Who's (loyal to) who in the Obama administration: an interactive chart.
By Chris Wilson
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 1:25 PM ET
As President-elect Obama forms his administration, he's
including a lot of familiar faces. Many of Obama's picks—for
his transition team, his staff, and his Cabinet—are people who
worked in the Clinton administration. Where else is a
Democratic president going to find people with executive branch
experience?
The following chart displays Obama's choices for his team
according to their Clinton or Obama bona fides (the horizontal
axis) and their tenure in Washington (the vertical axis). An
appointee's position along the horizontal axis is determined by
the individual's service to the Clintons before or during their
time in the White House, endorsements in the Democratic
primaries, ties to Chicago and Obama's early political career, and
anything else that hints at their loyalties. Some, like John
Podesta or Valerie Jarrett, are clearly tied to one camp. Others,
like Gregory Craig, are trickier; Craig is a longtime friend of the
Clintons but endorsed Obama in the primaries. Mouse over any
image to get details. The vertical axis defines "Washington
experience" broadly, including time in the private or nonprofit
sector in addition to government service.
This chart will be updated each time Obama announces a highprofile pick for his White House. Got a suggestion? E-mail me.
Update, Nov. 20, 1:15 p.m.: Added senior adviser David
Axelrod and secretary of Homeland Security pick Janet
Napolitano.
Update, Nov. 21, 4:55 p.m.: Added Treasury secretary pick
Timothy Geithner and secretary of state selection Hillary
Clinton.
Update, Nov. 24, 1:15 p.m.: Added Commerce secretary pick
Bill Richardson.
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politics
Partners in Pink Underwear
Janet Napolitano's embarrassing history with Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
By Tom Zoellner
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 6:33 AM ET
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, President-elect Barack Obama's
apparent pick for Secretary of Homeland Security, has been
praised as "smart, tough and funny" and "exceptionally
talented." She has a record as a pragmatist on immigration and
solid legal credentials as a former U.S. attorney and state
attorney general. But Napolitano has also looked the other way
on police excess when political calculation demanded it, as well
as tolerated the questionable use of local sheriff's deputies to
serve as a roving immigration patrol.
All of this can be traced to her friendship with the mediaobsessed Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., who
would consider it his own personal failing if you haven't yet
heard of him. He is "America's toughest sheriff," a man who rose
to prominence in the 1990s with such newsmaking stunts as
feeding his inmates green bologna, clothing them in pink
underwear, housing them in surplus Army tents behind barbed
wire in the desert, and putting them to work on chain gangs. This
punishment is inflicted equally on convicted criminals and those
who have been convicted of no crime at all but are awaiting trial
and unable to afford bail. Inmates who assault guards are put on
rations of water and fortified bread.
The public devours it, and Arpaio has consistently enjoyed some
of the highest approval ratings of any elected official in Arizona
(Maricopa County includes Phoenix). That inmates have a way
of getting killed in Sheriff Joe's jails, costing Maricopa County
millions of dollars in lawsuits, has not dimmed his star. Nor has
a federal judge's order that he provide a constitutionally
mandated minimum level of food and health care, an order that
said Arpaio had inflicted "needless suffering and deterioration"
on the mentally ill.
More than a decade ago, Napolitano was in a position to help
curb Arpaio's excesses. As a U.S. attorney in 1995, she was put
in charge of a Justice Department investigation into atrocious
conditions in Arpaio's "tent city." Napolitano carried out her task
with what can best be described as reluctance, going out of her
way to protect Arpaio from flak almost before the probe had
started. "We're doing this with the complete cooperation of the
sheriff," she told the Associated Press. "We run a strict jail but a
safe jail, and I haven't heard from anyone who thinks that this is
a bad thing."
"Anyone"? Maybe Napolitano needed to get out of her office a
little more.
The Justice Department's final report, issued about two years
later, confirmed a list of disgraces, including excessive use of
force, gratuitous use of pepper spray and "restraint chairs" (since
blamed for at least three inmate deaths), and hog-tying and
beating of inmates. It also said Arpaio's staffing was "below
levels needed for safety and humane operations."
The Justice Department filed suit and settled with the sheriff the
same day after Arpaio agreed to administrative changes,
including limiting the use of pepper spray and improving inmate
grievance procedures. Napolitano stood with Arpaio at a press
conference in which she, according to the Arizona Republic,
"pooh-poohed her own lawsuit as 'lawyerly paperwork.' " Arpaio
called the result a vindication.
"Let me say this for the people of Maricopa County," he told the
Republic. "The chain gangs stay. The tents stay. The pink
underwear stays. All my programs stay. … This has nothing to
do with my policies and programs."
Arpaio, a Republican, later appeared in a television ad
supporting Napolitano's 2002 run for governor, which she won
by a tiny margin, fewer than 12,000 votes. His intervention was
undoubtedly one of the deciding factors in her election.
Napolitano's hands-off policy toward Sheriff Joe's constabulary
antics continued in her tenure as governor, even as Arpaio
started pulling his deputies away from local crime investigation
and to checking vehicles and making sweeps for illegal
immigrants—a policy denounced by the mayor of Phoenix,
among others. Napolitano did little to rein in the sheriff, refusing
to say anything about the controversy for months. She finally
drew his ire last spring by denying him a portion of state funding
that was to have been spent on roundups of suspected illegal
aliens, instead ordering that it be used to catch felons.
Of course, few governors arrive at their offices without having
made a few malodorous alliances. And Arizona is one of the
most conservative states in the nation, where a tough stance on
immigration is necessary even to get elected dog catcher. Still,
when presented the opportunity to challenge a law-enforcement
practice that was splashy and crowd-pleasing but ultimately
cruel and futile, Napolitano declined.
Her history with Arpaio isn't necessarily a disqualifying factor.
But it is something to consider. The secretary of the Department
of Homeland Security cannot be reluctant to stand up and speak
out against excesses in law enforcement.
politics
The Underminer?
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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Could Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama disagree without
creating a Washington melodrama?
By John Dickerson
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 4:58 PM ET
The New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton has said yes.
She will be President Barack Obama's secretary of state. The
Clinton selection will occasion another 10 rounds of discussion
about the wisdom of no-drama Obama bringing all the Clinton
troubles into his house. Will Hillary Clinton undermine him to
keep her political options open? What about Bill's flair for
controversy? And how's that first meeting going to go between
Hillary Clinton and Obama's White House Counsel Greg Craig,
who claimed during the campaign that Clinton exaggerated her
foreign-policy experience?
By picking Clinton, Obama may be making some kind of special
political play, removing one of his rivals to protect himself from
political harm, but I think he's more serious than that. There's
been no evidence over the last two years that he engages in this
kind of overly clever bank shot. It's more likely he's picked
Clinton because she's smart and because he wants to surround
himself with people who will challenge him.
During the presidential campaign, he regularly attacked
President Bush for surrounding himself with people who only
told him what he wanted to hear. He promised that he wouldn't
do that. Every president says he's going to foster this spirit of
candor (George W. Bush often said it), and we'll see if Obama
really wants the kind of free-flowing dialogue he claims to. But
the Clinton pick suggests that at least Obama is trying to make
good on the promise. Obama is, in a way, courting drama.
What Obama wants from Clinton is the candor that can only be
delivered by someone of her stature. It's what he said he wanted
from Joe Biden, too. The problem for Clinton is that when the
time comes for her to deliver her opinions to Obama directly and
candidly and to fight for those opinions, it's going to look to
those on the outside as if she's undermining her boss. The heated
conversations might stay in the Oval Office, but it's hard to keep
secrets in Washington, as Obama is learning. When a Cabinet
secretary really believes in something, she tends to translate that
passion to her staffers, who often talk to the press.
As long as Obama knows that Clinton is loyal, it may not matter
how the chattering classes interpret any disagreement between
them. Then again, it may. Secretary of state is an unusual
position. Diplomats in Washington and foreign capitals believe a
secretary of State based on how much weight they think the
secretary carries with the president. If Clinton is viewed as
operating on her own—even when she's being the kind of candid
diplomat Obama wants her to be—it might send confusing
signals.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The perception of conflict may, of course, be avoided if Clinton
and Obama see things the same way for the duration of his
presidency. Though this appointment may seem like the
fulfillment of Obama's promise to name a team of rivals, as
President Lincoln did, Clinton was merely a political rival, not
an ideological one. During the campaign her views—particularly
on foreign policy—were nearly identical to Obama's. Yes, they
had that spat about how and when to meet with rogue leaders,
but by the time they had both tweaked their positions, they were
pretty similar. Maybe she'll completely agree all the time. But if
she does, she probably won't be doing her job.
politics
Dingell Buried
Henry Waxman's victory is the biggest gift Obama could have asked for.
By Christopher Beam
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 7:08 PM ET
Out: Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the tough, cantankerous
eminence grise of the House Democratic caucus (he's 82), who
was so deferential to Detroit as chairman of the House energy
and commerce committee that Lee Iacocca once said he "stood
up for the auto industry beyond the call of duty." In: Rep. Henry
Waxman of California, the tough, mustachioed eminence slightly
less grise of House Democrats (he's 69) known for his relentless
investigations and aggressive proposals for combating climate
change. Waxman's mustache—it even has a nickname—haunts
Rick Wagoner's dreams.
Barack Obama's own transition team could not have hoped for a
better outcome. In fact, there are signs it did more than just hope.
Dingell's ouster came after the Democrats' Policy and Steering
Committee voted 25-22 in favor of Waxman's candidacy. In
charge of the steering committee is Waxman's fellow California
Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And ousting the leader
of the House's most powerful panel—environmental issues,
health care, and consumer protection all fall under commerce's
purview—is generally not done without permission from the top.
Of course, Waxman and Dingell did their part. As early as the
1980s, Waxman was fighting the attempts of then-Chairman
Dingell, working with the Reagan administration, to weaken
auto-emissions standards. Dingell, meanwhile, quashed
Waxman's acid-rain legislation. More recently, Dingell's 2007
pro-coal, anti-regulatory energy independence legislation
prompted Waxman to circulate a letter signed by 11 fellow
committee members: "We have serious concerns about the
direction the Committee is heading."
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At the same time, Dingell could have been helpful to Obama as
chairman on some issues. He's been a stalwart liberal almost
across the board. He helped to pass Medicare in 1965 and has for
years supported a national health insurance system. He and
Waxman teamed up to produce the 1990 Clean Air Act. Other
accomplishments he touts are the Endangered Species Act and
the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
But on climate legislation, Dingell would not have been a help.
Obama has pledged to make addressing climate change a
priority—a commitment he reiterated in a video address this
week. And some Senate Democratic leaders, normally moderate
checks on their wild-eyed House counterparts, appear eager to
take on clean energy and fuel efficiency.
Dingell isn't opposed to all energy regulation. In his proposed
fuel efficiency legislation in 2007, he supported "incentives" for
auto manufacturers but opposed forcing them to adapt. He
supports cap-and-trade, but his version is more industry-friendly
than Waxman's, which would actually put the Environmental
Protection Agency in charge. The difference between Dingell
and Waxman is best captured by the fear struck in the hearts of
energy sector sympathizers: Dingell's plan would "dramatically
raise energy prices," according to the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, while Waxman's "would send us back to the Stone
Age."
Stylistically, Waxman is a better fit for an Obama-led
Democratic charge. He's crazy, but unlike Dingell, he's happycrazy. Dingell's craziness is darker. He was known for strongheaded, Lyndon Johnson-style political arm-twisting. He leaked
dirt about his enemies and fed the news cycle to keep favorable
coverage alive. He sometimes went overboard, as with his
hearings alleging scientific fraud against Nobel Prize-winner
David Baltimore, who was later exonerated, and AIDS
researcher Robert Gallo, whose allegations were also dropped.
Waxman is tough, too, but in a matter-of-fact, bury-you-withevidence kind of way. He's a famed tightwad with a righteous
streak, but he's not a drama queen. As head of the House
oversight committee, he earned the moniker the "Mustache of
Justice."
Waxman's rise has broader implications, too. He's just the latest
combative Democrat to rise in the Obamaverse. Like incoming
Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Waxman is a partisan. He also
represents coastal creep in the legislative branch—the influence
of the West and East over industrial Middle America. (Between
Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, and now Waxman, the power
of pro-regulation liberals over hands-off Blue Dog Democrats is
rising. And no, Chicago is not Middle America, although
Obama's deference to coal could be a problem for the bicoastal
mafia.) Lastly, Waxman's victory coincides with the failure (so
far) of Detroit's Big Three to win a federal bailout. Dingell may
have been the industry's last best hope to stave off profit-
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
narrowing regulation. (His wife, Debbie Dingell, is an executive
at General Motors.)
This doesn't mean Waxman can snap his fingers and make cars
more efficient or carbon emissions more costly. As always, the
question looms: Will he change the committee, or will the
committee change him? He will have to twist arms and make
compromises to win votes, and Dingell is not vanishing into the
ether (he's now "chairman emeritus"). Meanwhile, congressional
Republicans won't easily forget Waxman's grillings.
But signs suggest House Democrats are ready to be led; more
than half of them voted for him. And unlike Dingell in the
1980s, Waxman will have the backing of an ambitious
administration. So maybe it won't be just his fingers doing the
snapping.
recycled
When Do Soldiers Face Execution?
When they commit one of the military's 15 most serious crimes.
By Brendan I. Koerner
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 6:18 PM ET
On Dec. 10, America's first military execution since 1961 will
take place in Terre Haute, Ind. Pvt. Ronald Gray has been on
death row since 1988 for rape and murder. In 2003, Brendan I.
Koerner explained the history of military executions in the
United States and the circumstances under which they happen.
The article is reprinted below.
Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi, the Air Force translator
charged with espionage and aiding the enemy, could face the
death penalty if convicted. Coverage of the case has mentioned
that the last military execution took place in 1961. What were
the circumstances of that case, and what military crimes are
punishable by death?
John A. Bennett, an Army private, was hanged on April 13,
1961, at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. In December of 1954, while
stationed in Austria, he had raped and attempted to drown an 11year-old girl. The execution was carried out despite pleas for
clemency from the victim and her family, who opposed the death
penalty on principle. President John F. Kennedy, however,
ignored their entreaties, as well as a last-minute telegram from a
frightened Bennett. According to a 1994 Los Angeles Times
recap, the soldier's last words, directed toward the small
gathering of witnesses who braved a downpour, were "May God
have mercy on your souls."
There are currently seven men on the military's version of death
row, a high-security unit nicknamed "The Castle" at Fort
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Leavenworth's U.S. Disciplinary Barracks. All the condemned
were convicted of murder. The closest to execution is Dwight J.
Loving, convicted in 1989 of murdering two cab drivers in
Killeen, Texas. Before the sentence can be carried out, however,
Loving's death warrant must be personally reviewed by the
commander in chief. His decision is supposed to be informed by
a special Department of Defense recommendation, although the
Uniform Code of Military Justice does not specify how that
recommendation should be prepared.
The military death penalty was temporarily scratched in 1983,
when the Armed Forces Court of Appeals ruled that judicial
guidelines did not adequately define the aggravating factors that
might justify a capital sentence. The penalty was reintroduced a
year later, after President Ronald Reagan issued an executive
order detailing exactly how capital courts-martial should proceed
and listing 11 aggravating circumstances (such as killing for
monetary gain) that can qualify a defendant for a death sentence.
The UCMJ lists 15 offenses that are potentially punishable by
death, though the majority of the crimes must be committed
during wartime in order to carry the maximum penalty. In
addition to espionage, aiding the enemy, and murder, soldiers
can also be executed for "misbehavior before the enemy"
(including cowardice or throwing down one's arms), "improper
use of countersign" (giving away a secret password), and, of
course, mutiny. Military crimes not on the capital list: dueling,
maiming, and "improper hazarding of vessel."
Popular lore holds that the first American soldier to be executed
was Thomas Hickey, a personal guard of George Washington,
who was convicted of plotting to kill the general and was put to
death in 1776. (There's a myth that Hickey planned to poison
Washington's green peas.) The last soldier to be executed during
wartime was Pvt. Eddie Slovik, shot for desertion in 1945. He
was later portrayed by Martin Sheen in a made-for-TV movie.
Explainer thanks the Death Penalty Information Center.
recycled
Doctors' Fees
Can you trust the medical advice you hear on the radio?
By Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 3:38 PM ET
The New York Times reported Thursday that over the past eight
years, Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, who hosts the public-radio
series The Infinite Mind, received at least $1.3 million for giving
marketing lectures for drug companies that could have benefited
from preferential treatment on his show. In a "Medical
Examiner" published earlier this year, Shannon Brownlee and
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Jeanne Lenzer detailed the profitable connections Goodwin and
other doctors in the media have to the pharmaceutical industry.
The article is reprinted below.
A few weeks ago, devoted listeners of National Public Radio*
were treated to an episode of the award-winning radio series The
Infinite Mind called "Prozac Nation: Revisited." The segment
featured four prestigious medical experts discussing the
controversial link between antidepressants and suicide. In their
considered opinions, all four said that worries about the drugs
have been overblown.
The radio show, which was broadcast nationwide and paid for in
part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, had
the air of quiet, authoritative credibility. Host Dr. Fred Goodwin,
a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health,
interviewed three prominent guests, and any radio producer
would be hard-pressed to find a more seemingly credible quartet.
Credible, that is, except for a crucial detail that was never
revealed to listeners: All four of the experts on the show,
including Goodwin, have financial ties to the makers of
antidepressants. Also unmentioned were the "unrestricted
grants" that The Infinite Mind has received from drug makers,
including Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of the antidepressant
Prozac.
We don't know just how much funding or when the show last
received it, since neither Goodwin nor the show's producers
responded to repeated requests for interviews. But the larger
point is that undisclosed financial conflicts of interest among
media sources seem to be popping up all over the place these
days. Some experts who appear independent are, in fact, serving
as stealth marketers for the drug and biotech industries, and
reporters either don't know about their sources' conflicts of
interests, or they fail to disclose them to the public.
Take the November 2006 NBC Nightly News story that asked,
"Can lung scans really prevent cancer death?" Reporter Mike
Taibbi, a former smoker, underwent scanning by Dr. Claudia
Henschke, a professor of radiology at Weill Cornell Medical
College in New York. Henschke claimed on the show that early
detection with lung scans could prevent 80 percent of deaths
from lung cancer. Although Taibbi included another expert who
said that Henschke's claim was "outrageous," viewers were left
with little way to evaluate the two conflicting viewpoints. And
Taibbi himself concluded that early detection was his "best
chance." At no point did viewers learn that Henschke's research
was funded by a tobacco company, which has an investment in
making the risks of smoking appear to be manageable—or that
many experts warn that more research is needed to determine
whether the potential benefits of scanning outweigh its harms.
How frequently are journalists glossing over such conflicts?
Gary Schwitzer, a professor of journalism at the University of
Minnesota, is the publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, a Web
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site that reviews health care news for balance, accuracy, and
completeness. Schwitzer and his team of reviewers have looked
at 544 stories from top outlets over the two-year period from
April 2006 to April 2008. Journalists had to meet several criteria
in order to receive a satisfactory score, among them: They had to
quote an independent expert—someone not involved in the
relevant research—and they had to make some attempt to report
potential conflicts of interest. Half the stories failed to meet
these two requirements, Schwitzer says.
Conflicts of interest abound even in unexpected places. A recent
survey of academic medical centers published in the Journal of
the American Medical Association found that 60 percent of
academic department chairs have personal ties to industry—
serving as consultants, board members, or paid speakers, while
two-thirds of the academic departments had institutional ties to
industry. Such ties can be extremely lucrative. And according to
these articles in the medical literature, researchers who receive
funding from drug and medical-device manufacturers are up to
3.5 times as likely to conclude their study drug or medical
device works than are researchers without such funding.
An equally clever way for companies to get out their marketing
messages is to go through a consumer group. Drug companies
often seed "pharm teams," consumer groups that start out as
legitimate advocacy organizations and are subtly manipulated by
funding from pharmaceutical companies to convey the desired
talking points. Unless reporters ask where groups and individual
researchers get their money, they have no idea that their sources
may be biased—and neither do their readers, viewers, and
listeners.
Which brings us back to The Infinite Mind and "Prozac Nation:
Revisited," a show that may stand in a class by itself for
concealing bias. In addition to the show's unrestricted grants
from Lilly, the host, Goodwin, is on the board of directors of
Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, an industry-funded
front, or "Astroturf" group, which receives a majority of its
funding from drug companies. CMPI President Peter Pitts was
one of Goodwin's three guests for "Prozac Nation." We don't
know which companies fund his group because when we asked
him, Pitts said, "I don't want to go into that." But CMPI took in
more than $1.4 million in 2006 and, according to its tax forms,
spent $210,000 to influence the media through a large
conference, a blog the group maintains, op-eds published in
major newspapers, and multimedia programs and podcasts. Pitts
has another title that might have been relevant to The Infinite
Mind; he is the senior vice president for global health affairs at
the PR firm Manning Selvage & Lee, which represents Eli Lilly
Inc., GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and more than a dozen other
pharmaceutical companies. Yet on the show, Pitts was identified
only by his title as "a former FDA official."
The second guest on "Prozac Nation," Andrew F. Leuchter, is a
professor of psychiatry at UCLA who has received research
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
money from drug companies including Eli Lilly Inc., Pfizer, and
Novartis. The third guest, Nada Stotland, president-elect of the
American Psychiatric Association, has served on the speakers'
bureaus of GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer. None of Leuchter and
Stotland's ties to industry was revealed to listeners—instead,
each was introduced as a prominent academic.
The Infinite Mind's Web site states, "Our independence is
perhaps our greatest asset." Perhaps, indeed. Neither Goodwin
nor the show's producers responded to our repeated requests for
interviews and queries about their funding. Pitts, who to his
credit did give us an interview, said he didn't know why his ties
to industry weren't revealed on the show. Curious, we tried to
learn more about the funding for The Infinite Mind—and could
discover only that the show's award-winning production
company, Lichtenstein Creative Media, was dissolved by the
state of Massachusetts on March 28 for failing to file a single
annual report since its establishment in 2004.
Some reporters and producers argue that they can't be expected
to ask every source whether he or she gets money from the drug
industry. But there are obvious first steps to take. A list of
academic researchers who are known to have financial ties to the
drug and medical-device industries is available through the
Center for Science in the Public Interest. (Yes, the name is a lot
like the Astroturf group we mentioned earlier—coincidence?) To
be fair, the list is inevitably incomplete, and Astroturf groups
and academics with undeclared financial ties can make it
difficult to ferret out their financial conflicts.
In hopes of making reporters' jobs a little easier, we've created
for journalists an international list of prestigious and
independent medical experts who declare they have no financial
ties to drug and device manufacturers for at least the past five
years. We have nearly 100 experts from a wide array of
disciplines. E-mail us at [email protected], and we'll
be happy to name names.
Correction, May 9, 2008: After this piece first appeared, Slate
posted a correction saying that the piece had incorrectly stated
that The Infinite Mind is carried on National Public Radio,
rather than public radio stations. We now understand from
NPR's ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, that it was the correction
that was wrong. In fact, NPR has a contractual relationship with
The Infinite Mind to run the show on two Sirius channels. The
show also runs on NPR member stations. Return to the corrected
sentence.)
rural life
Holy Cow!
What my 3,000-pound steer has taught me about faith.
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By Jon Katz
Wednesday, November 26, 2008, at 6:55 AM ET
I've attended churches, Quaker Meetings, synagogues, and
Buddhist temples. I've taken yoga and read Joseph Campbell,
Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis, St. Augustine, and the Bible. I pray
often. But I had an unsettling realization recently, which is that
my steer Elvis already has the spiritual equanimity I have been
seeking. He is comfortable within himself, has no discernible
anxiety, rolls with life as if it were a gentle wave, is
uncomplaining, generous and loyal to his mate, and trusts and
accepts people.
Cold, rain, snow, flies, ticks, mud, and muck—none disturbs
him. He is as peaceful covered in ice as he is taking in the sun
with the Guernsey steer, and his pal, Harold.
Elvis is affectionate in his own way. He eats hats and loves
doughnuts, he drools generously on my head and shoulders, and
his tongue is impressive. Once, he licked me and sucked the
scarf right off my shoulders, just before he ate it.
Elvis, who weighs 3,000 pounds, is the size of a small mobile
home, a vast sea of brown with big, soulful brown eyes that
suggest, perhaps misleadingly, sadness and wisdom. I need a
wide-angle lens just to take a decent photo of him, and more
than once, he has swung his head toward me in a burst of
affection and sent me flying. He is always puzzled by this,
obviously having no idea of his size or strength.
He loves to have his nose and ear scratched and will lower his
head, rub against me, and nearly purr if I brush his neck. I am
the only person he will permit to get close for bug-spraying and
medications. If Elvis does not want you to come near him, you
will not.
I once tried to tie him to the side of the barn so that the vet could
examine a wound on his leg, and he pulled the side of the barn
about three feet into the pasture before I panicked and cut the
rope. Elvis goes where he wants to go. In the days before I got
the cow Luna to keep him company, he would routinely walk
right through my expensive fences to visit me, pulling up stakes
one by one like a cartoon character and dragging hundreds of
yards of fence easily behind him. I have electrified the fence,
and the high-voltage shocks seem to annoy him mildly, but not
so much that he won't graze right underneath them.
Elvis is as smelly as he is big, and he travels in a cloud of bugs,
waste, dust, and drool, punctuated by grunting, belching, and
various emissions of gas that literally do take your breath away
if you are downwind. When he is wet, he is especially game and
raunchy. He has peed on my shoes and taken a staggeringly
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
impressive dump right in the middle of a conversation. When
Elvis runs to say hello, you have to be alert, because he usually
can't stop, and you have to make sure there is room to step aside
while he lumbers to a halt. Once he swiveled his butt into a
small tree and knocked it over with a crack. Then he ate the bark
and the leaves.
I have trained him to slow down, and to "stay" briefly, but Elvis
is not really into training. And why should he be? He pretty
much does what he wants.
I am finding in Elvis the spiritual life I have been searching for
myself. A few months ago, I brought Elvis a volume of W.B.
Yeats poems. I don't like poetry much, but I often read poems to
Elvis, as he seems to love them, swishing his tail to keep the
flies off his gargantuan butt. Elvis has his own rhythms. He is
usually in the same place at the same time doing the same
thing—eating, mostly—every day. I've read St. Augustine's City
of God to him, some James Herriott, Merton, and Carl Sandburg,
to appeal to his masculine side. I've read from C.S. Lewis' The
Problem of Pain, and more recently, I climbed to the top of the
hill and read from an anthology of haiku, which seemed
appropriate for such a centered, easygoing creature.
I read two or three Yeats poems to him and put the book down,
and Elvis ate the paperback, almost inhaled it, really, and
enjoyed it as much as any donut. Then he looked up at me, as if
to say, "What's next, bub?"
What was next was my sitting down next to him and the two of
us spending a lovely hour chewing our respective cuds and
staring meaningfully at nothing in particular. I enjoyed it. Elvis
is a contemplative, capable of long hours of meditation and
observation. Sometimes, it rubs off on me.
I'm a bit jealous. I got these books for me, of course, and I
suppose the drive to share them with Elvis comes from my
dawning realization that he naturally embraces so many of the
traits I have been looking for so long and often with such
difficulty. It occurs to me that the price of such equanimity is
that you have to be a cow and that to be a human means you
struggle to find these things but know in your heart that this is an
uneven struggle, filled with successes and victories, ups and
downs, crooked lines and gates and fences.
Thomas Merton wrote that one of the most important and
neglected elements in the beginnings of an authentic and interior
life is the ability to see the value and the beauty in ordinary
things. Elvis seems to have that. I do not. When I take photos or
write, I struggle to see how light and color suffuse our world and
sometimes rise above myself to capture the beauty in ordinary
things. But much of the time, I'm on the phone, trying to
convince some disembodied computer or human that I do, in
fact, exist and did, in fact, order those HDTV channels.
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Elvis is beyond this. He doesn't have to work at acceptance, or
retrain his mind to accept the bad with the good.
Science
Honk if You Know Why You're Honking
The car horn is beeping useless.
One afternoon recently, I was rattled by the drumbeat of grim
and contentious news pouring out of Wall Street and
Washington, first from the car radio, and then from shouting and
hysterical commentators on cable news channels. "We are going
over the cliff," one said, as a means of offering perspective. I
went out to the pasture with an apple and sat down next to Elvis.
"We are going over a cliff, it seems," I said. He turned his
enormous brown eyes upon me and looked back to the fence,
back at the pastures beyond, back at less fortunate cows who
lived in barns, ate silage instead of fresh hay, slept on mats on
concrete, and would shortly go to market.
It does not really matter, he seemed to be saying, and I agreed.
This, I think, is the spiritual center of animals like Elvis, the
thing that they can teach us and show us.
Elvis is not, to my knowledge, self-aware. He has no
consciousness that I can see. He eats, rests, and stares out at the
world, content to observe it.
When things are bad or I am nervous, I sometimes have fantasies
of killing Elvis, of sending him to another farm or off to market,
as it is tough to justify spending so much money on so much hay
for a steer.
But I even when I have these bad dreams, I doubt I will ever kill
Elvis, because I have been oddly blessed in life to see that
creatures like him have lives, just as I do. It is sometimes
difficult for me to justify the idea of keeping such a creature as a
pet and spending so much money on his feed and care.
Elvis does not know, and will not ever know, that he should be
on the menu at McDonald's by now and is destined for a short
life, as few steers see their fifth birthdays because their legs are
not designed to carry such massive weight for too many years.
There are few ways to treat such a massive and powerful beast if
he gets sick, so when he does, it will almost surely be the end of
him.
Sometimes this makes me sad, even as I grasp the irony: It will
never bother him.
By Dave Johns
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 7:06 AM ET
My mom is not much of a honker. You know what I mean when
I say that: If a driver in front of her fails to hit the gas when the
light turns, she simply waits. Time passes, and the green light
glows. Eventually, the driver notices the signal change, or the
cars behind begin to lay on their horns. Traffic proceeds. But no
thanks to my mom; she's just not much of a honker.
For years I've been telling my mom that she ought to learn to
honk a little more. After all, honking is a venerable automotive
tradition. Just over a century ago, Henry Ford's first Model T
rolled off the production line. Inside, near the driver's side
window, was a grapefruit-sized squeeze bulb affixed to a twicelooped brass trumpet. It was a horn—one of only a few basic
amenities that came standard. Thus, the car that "put the world
on wheels" also gave the world a way to complain about it: a
horn for the great honking masses.
And honk we have. No one keeps official tallies, but with nearly
1 billion cars on the roads, there is no doubt that worldwide
honking is on the rise. In dense cities in places like India and
China, where hordes of new drivers are now navigating ancient
tenement districts, horn-honking is so constant that it is a major
noise problem. In July, traffic police in Mumbai launched a "No
Honking Movement" led by taxi drivers who took an oath not to
toot. Last year, Shanghai banned honking downtown, with the
prohibition set to expand to the entire city. Dhaka is a riot of
honking. Cairo is the unofficial honking capital of the world.
Islamabad, Ho Chi Minh City, Lima, Katmandu, Accra, and
New York have issues. Even the virtual world is getting into the
act.
In theory, the horn is a safety device; it might rightly be called
the world's first "collision-avoidance system." But exactly how
many collisions it serves to avoid has never been clear. From its
earliest days, some observers wondered whether the horn wasn't
actually facilitating certain road mishaps by shifting the burden
of evasion from the honker to the honkee. A Londoner argued
this case in a 1912 letter to the Times: "Drivers have escaped
punishment because they hooted loudly just before killing an
aged and deaf colonel, or an elderly woman, deaf, and blind of
one eye, or capsizing another car and injuring three or four
persons … Ordinary care and precaution would have prevented
each of such accidents. Hooting, however, is counted a sufficient
set-off against the lack of such care and precaution."
By the 1930s, this judgment was gaining converts. First Paris
and then London outlawed horn-honking at night. In 1935, New
York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia kicked off a nighttime honking
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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ban with a radio address in which he praised the English antihorn effort: "The results have been so good that there is no
demand from any quarter for their return. Automobile accidents,
fatalities, and injuries have been reduced to an appreciable extent
merely because the campaign against horns there has caused
drivers to drive more carefully." He said deaths were down 17
percent and injuries 7 percent since the ban had taken effect. A
New York Times article from the same year documented new
horn restrictions in Rome, Stockholm, Vienna, and Berlin, under
the headline, "Honking Autoist a World Problem; Every Nation
Seeks to Curb Him; Horns Viewed as Contributing Cause of
Accidents Rather Than Aid to Safety—Campaign On Here to
Curb Drivers Who Depend on Blasts Instead of Brakes."
This assessment of the horn—that it is not in fact an instrument
of safety but something else entirely—has not been refuted.
Most honking research has examined the relationship between
horn use and aggression. People honk more when it's hot than
when it's cold, more on weekdays than on weekends, more if
they are male than if they are female, more at beaters than at
Benzes, more if they feel they can do so anonymously (PDF),
and more in the city than in the country. My mother is a classic
nonhonker: She is female, suburban, patient, and climatecontrol-oriented. Still, it would be nice to know whether her
anti-honk bias poses a risk to society. A spokesman for the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Jose Ucles,
could not point to any studies on safety and the car horn. "It's
sort of like brakes," he said. "Everyone's just always thought it
was a good idea."
Jeff Muttart, a traffic-accident reconstructionist, has pored over
hundreds of surveillance videos of real-life car crashes and nearcrashes. In 2005, he concluded that emergency horn use is not
associated with decreased accident involvement. He found that
drivers never steered and honked at the same time, and usually
they didn't honk at all. About half of emergency honks were
meant to chastise and came only after the danger was over. The
other half were just preludes to a crash. "It really didn't serve any
purpose at all. It was just, Hey, by the way, I'm going to hit
you."
Also: We stink at honking. A 2001 survey for the U.K. Institute
of Traffic Accident Investigators shows that most people take
two to three times as long to honk as they do to brake or steer.
Professional drivers, like cabbies, are a bit quicker—they
practice. (Now that automakers are getting over the whole tinyhorn-buttons craze, honk times may improve.)
Muttart explains this honking deficiency by the fact that many
people view the horn as a tool for scolding rather than safety. So
when we want to avoid a crash, we don't think to use it. (You
don't look for a phone when you need a fire extinguisher.) It's
possible honk speeds are better in India, where no one overlooks
the horn, and the honking is more existential than aggressive. Of
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
course, the street noise there can be literally deafening, and
India's roads have one of the highest death rates in the world.
Perhaps the world just needs more standardized honking
education. Here are some tips from AAA on how to use the horn
to warn a child cyclist: "Ideally, you should sound the horn when
you're about a half-block away … If you blast the horn at close
range, you'll startle the cyclist. He may look over his left
shoulder in surprise and steer inadvertently into your path.
Worse, he may lose control and fall directly in front of you."
In other words: If you see a kid on a bike and he's at least a halfblock away (the block being the standard unit of distance used
by AAA's honking scientists), then give a toot. But take care: If
you screw up, you may crush his tiny body beneath your wheels.
This kind of messaging hardly helps: Instead of teaching us good
behavior, it makes us afraid of the horn and takes the joy out of
honking.
The truth is, many cities have already ruled out all the
lighthearted, benign uses of the horn—rolling up to a girlfriend's
house with a cool beep-beep, practicing Morse code in the
grocery store parking lot … S-O-S … Saaaaave Ouuuur Shiiiiip!
Even honking to celebrate Obama can get you a ticket. All that's
left now are the aforementioned and ineffective "emergency"
hoots. If that's the case, maybe we should eliminate honking
altogether.
In Berlin in 1936, the Nazis put yellow spots on the cars of
people who honked unnecessarily. The honking ceased.
Memphis in the 1950s was called "the quietest city" thanks to a
tough horn law. But horn bans are hard to enforce and maintain.
In Cairo, drivers outmaneuvered an ordinance by reverting to
squeeze horns. Shanghai's ban last year reportedly inspired one
driver to install a custom horn that played a recording: "Please
mind the car, we are making a turn." New Yorkers honk
unflinchingly in the face of the city's many silly "Don't Honk"
signs. Hey, man, free speech!
New weapons are joining the War on Honking. The Automobile
Horn Audit System could track honk rate and location and
transmit data to a state-run central computer. Australia is
deploying "noise cameras." And in a nod to the Nazis, some
Manhattanites want to fit cabs with lights to identify deviant
honkers. Others say, Let's turn up the honk volume inside cars.
The boors among us prefer eggs, or Taliban-style hand
dismemberment. A more modest proposal, made by psychologist
Charles Spence, is to replace the horn with a sharp spike
protruding from the steering wheel. The spike would make
driving "feel more dangerous," so people would go slower.
Last summer I was in Colombia on vacation, and one day I
visited downtown Medellin. I was sporting sunglasses, short
pants, and dirty white flip-flops. Near the Botero sculpture
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garden, after checking my map, I stepped into the road. A spray
of honks ensued. Cars and motorbikes buzzed past. I felt as if I'd
been Tased. But I was alive: a well-timed honk had saved my
life.
Or maybe it hadn't. It felt like a near-miss, but the driver had
seen me several seconds earlier, in time to honk me out of the
way. Maybe he didn't even need to honk. Maybe he could have
braked instead. That's what my mom would have done. Or what
if his car had been equipped with the spike?
two of which can be ordered online and all of which can be
found at Whole Foods throughout the holiday season.
It's been nine years since I last ate meat, so I've developed strong
opinions about what makes a good substitute. But asking a
committed vegetarian to evaluate fake meat is like asking
someone who's colorblind to comment on a landscape
painting—she can say whether she likes it but not whether it's an
accurate representation. So I recruited meat-eaters to serve as cojudges.
Horns don't honk at people. People honk at people. Whatever
legislative remedies or gadgeteer fixes we can invent, I'm
counting on one fact: We won't give up our horns until they're
pried from our cold, dead, honking hands.
Each fake turkey could score a possible 25 points, with either 5
or 10 points assigned in the following categories:
shopping
Meatiness (10 points)
Some vegetarians turn up their noses at imitation meat,
preferring less aspirational fare—like carrots. But those who
miss turkey as the centerpiece of the meal have a right to expect
a convincing impression. The key to meatiness is texture. Fake
turkey should be tender, not rubbery or spongelike.
Mmm … Turk'y
The search for a palatable vegetarian bird.
By Juliet Lapidos
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 4:19 PM ET
For America's 7.3 million vegetarians, Thanksgiving is a day of
thanks but no thanks. On this holiday built around meat-eating,
it's difficult to avoid niggling questions about your diet from the
cousin you've never met, the uncle who doesn't approve, or the
grandmother who just doesn't understand. (For the last time: If
you cook the vegetarian stuffing inside the turkey, it's no longer
vegetarian.) Try as you might to enjoy your green-bean salad in
peace, you end up spending half the meal explaining why you
refuse even to try the bird that your selfless mom spent all
afternoon preparing.
Under such intense pressure, convictions can crumble like an
apple crisp. Years ago, when I was still new to the no-meat
game, I gave in to the siren song of flexitarianism and helped
myself to a drumstick. But I came to regret making this
exception. Turkey is a gateway meat, and during a tryptophaninduced nap I dreamed of bacon.
Appearance (5 points)
The Thanksgiving spread, with its autumnal colors, can be as
beautiful as it is tasty. Would the ersatz bird fit right in, or would
it be an eyesore?
Overall Taste (10 points)
Overall taste encompasses not just consistency but seasoning.
This category comes down to a simple multiple-choice
question—would I, or my fellow-tasters, be a) unwilling, b)
willing, or c) eager to eat the un-beast again?
The results, listed from "Please pass the squash" to "Hands off,
Grandma, you've got your own bird."
Field Roast Stuffed Celebration Roast, $8.99
This year, to withstand the seductive bird at the center of the
table, I decided I need more than a steely will or a tasty side—I
need a turkey substitute, a main course to call my own. I
resolved to find the best faux turkey on the market.
Appearancewise, the Celebration Roast can't quite pass for
turkey, but it might be mistaken for a small ham. The stuffing
had a mashed, canned-cat-food quality, but my meat-eating
friend and I agreed that the tawny brown, corrugated sheath
coating the roast did look rather like crispy animal skin, while
the wheat-protein-based "meat" resembled pâté. All told, it was
easy on the eyes.
Methodology
I had a simple but strict litmus test in putting together a list of
products. Most families cook a whole turkey on Thanksgiving,
so I decided to test imitation roasts rather than sampling
vegetarian deli slices or ground meat. After perusing sites like
VeganEssentials and the Vegan Store, I picked out four brands,
Our opinion of the Celebration Roast diminished rapidly,
however, when we started eating it. The stuffing, ostensibly
made from butternut squash, apples, and mushrooms, tasted like
soggy breadcrumbs. The "meat" was pleasantly chewy, and, in
that sense, turkey-ish, but it was too savory. I felt as if I were
biting into a vegetable bouillon cube—onion, garlic, and salt
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
70/99
were the dominant flavors. My test partner said it "tasted like
smoke." To find out what we were eating, I peeked at the
ingredient list, which read like an Army recipe for gussying up
not-quite-USDA-prime meat: garlic powder, onion powder,
garlic, natural liquid smoke (!), Irish moss extract (!!), and
unspecified spices. If my Thanksgiving host had Celebration
Roast on offer, I'd stick to the green beans.
Appearance: 4
Meatiness: 6
Overall Taste: 2
Total: 12
"meat" (wheat gluten and tofu) was a little rubbery and had a
disconcerting Asian tang—no doubt a result of the recommended
basting concoction: soy sauce and olive oil. The meat-eaters and
I agreed, however, that it was perfectly palatable and might even
work well in a sandwich the next day.
Appearance: 5
Meatiness: 7
Overall Taste: 7
Total: 19
Gardein Stuffed Veggie Turkey Roast, $7.99 per pound
Quorn Turk'y Roast, $6.99
Uncooked, the Turk'y Roast looks like raw dough. Cooked, it
resembles spam—a beige, tubular monstrosity. Determined to
judge the Turk'y Roast not by the color of its skin but by the
content of its character, I cut myself a slice. To my pleasant
surprise, I didn't gag. The meat-eaters, for the most part, also
overcame their initial prejudice. All but one conceded that, just
like real turkey, the mycoprotein (read: fungus) roast was
springy and pleasant to chew. Unfortunately, it was a bit too
much like real turkey: It was dry and rather bland. Of all the
fakes, the Turk'y Roast best captured the experience of biting
into a bird prepared by a less-than-expert chef. It deserves high
marks for mimicry but falls short in overall taste.
Appearance: 1
Meatiness: 9
Overall Taste: 6
Total: 16
Tofurky Roast, $15.69
What Kleenex is to tissues, Tofurky is to faux turkey. It's also
the most aspirational brand. Quorn offers an unadorned loaf,
Celebration Roast comes with stuffing, but Turtle Island Foods,
maker of Tofurky, is big on trimmings. There's Tofurky Wild
Rice Stuffing, Tofurky Giblet and Mushroom Gravy, even
Tofurky Jurky Wishstix (imitation wish bones), all of which you
can purchase together in a maroon box labeled "Vegetarian
Feast." The company also provides customers with a
promotional postcard depicting a happy interspecies family (that
is, humans and turkeys), digging into a Tofurky Roast.
Tofurky gets full credit for appearance. Like the Celebration
Roast, it closely resembles a small ham. In the oven it develops a
brown sheen and the "meat" takes on a turkey-ish golden-brown
tone. The wild rice stuffing looked not only edible but appealing.
At a school with moderate grade inflation, the Tofurky would
earn a B for taste. While the stuffing was genuinely good, the
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Perhaps it's unfair to compare Gardein's roast with the products
above, because I found it in the hot foods section at Whole
Foods, meaning I didn't have to prepare it myself. Whether the
Whole Foods chefs or the culinary artists at Gardein deserve
credit for the final product, I can't say, but the Veggie Turkey
Roast was certainly the best fake of the batch.
Shaped like a Twinkie, with a crispy bread-crumb coating,
Gardein's imitation bird doesn't resemble a roast, but it won't
elicit any boos around the dinner table, either. And the "meat"
itself (soy, wheat, peas, beets, and carrots) really does have the
color and texture of a turkey. After my first bite, I felt a little
anxious—I wondered briefly whether I'd mistakenly bought real
turkey and glanced at my taste partner to see whether she, too,
had a "Wait a minute" look on her face. She didn't. While she
conceded that the Veggie Turkey Roast had a meaty quality, she
argued that it wasn't, in fact, as convincing as Quorn's Turk'y
Roast.
In evaluating the un-beast's taste, however, we had no
disagreement. The Celebration Roast, Turk'y Roast, and Tofurky
were all quite dry, but the Veggie Turkey Roast could almost
pass for succulent. It wasn't too rubbery or too porous, too salty
or too bland. If, come Thanksgiving, you place a Gardein roast
next to the turkey, you may not win any converts, but you won't
be tempted to defect.
Appearance: 4
Meatiness: 8
Overall Taste: 10
Total: 22
sidebar
Return to article
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Actually, I'm not technically a vegetarian—I still eat fish. But
"non-meat-eater" is a clunky handle, and I refuse to call myself a
"pescatarian."
slate v
Dear Prudence: Manipulative Cashier
A daily video from Slate V
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 11:15 AM ET
slate v
Fowl Ball: The Palin Turkey-FarmInterview Outtakes
What you didn't see on YouTube.
By Bill Smee
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 10:39 AM ET
Someday, we may all tire of Sarah Palin, but we're nowhere near
that point yet. Last Wednesday, the Alaska governor visited a
turkey farm in Wasilla to grant a pre-Thanksgiving pardon to
one lucky Tom. She was borrowing a White House tradition
that's the equivalent of a political layup. But she managed to
blow the shot.
After issuing the reprieve, Palin took questions while standing in
front of a farm worker who was preparing other turkeys for
slaughter. You have to see the interview to believe it, and thanks
to YouTube, you can.
Only here, though, can you see the outtakes Slate V has
uncovered.
slate v
Musical Numbers: Bonds
A daily video from Slate V
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 11:38 AM ET
sports nut
In Praise of Kissing Your Sister
Why I love tie games.
By Edward McClelland
Wednesday, November 26, 2008, at 6:53 AM ET
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
After the gun sounded to end this month's 13-13 tie between the
Eagles and the Bengals, Donovan McNabb looked stunned. He'd
thought the teams were going to keep playing until someone
scored. "I've never been a part of a tie," McNabb said in his
postgame press conference. "I never even knew that was in the
rule book."
Bookwormy sportswriters who have read the rule book mocked
McNabb as a clueless jock. But, as the Eagles quarterback
pointed out, the tie has almost disappeared from football. Only
the NFL still allows them (at least in the regular season), and
then after a 15-minute overtime. The Eagles-Bengals push was
the league's first tie in six years. "In college, there are multiple
overtimes," McNabb noted, "and in high school and Pop Warner.
I never knew in the professional ranks it would end that way."
Thanks to that Cincy-Philly deadlock, newspapers have been
forced to add an extra column to the football standings,
reminding me of the pleasing symmetry of college football's preovertime era, when teams could end the season 8-0-2. As George
S. Patton put it, "America loves a winner." And fans pay to see
one. But nothing's more memorable than a great tie, even if
Navy football coach Eddie Erdelatz did, in 1954, say that a
deadlocked game is "like kissing your sister." (The Washington
Post's deadpan next line: "No one asked the mild spoken Navy
coach to explain.") Unfortunately, college football and the NHL,
the last bastions of tiedom, have both instituted ridiculous
overtime schemes in recent years. Now, all we tie aficionados
have left is soccer. And does anyone really care one way or the
other when Real Salt Lake and D.C. United draw nil-nil?
Here's where I stand on ties: If a game can't be decided by the
regulation rules, it shouldn't be decided at all. That's why the
NCAA's system, instituted in 1996 in Division I-A, is such a
tacky tack-on to 60 minutes of hard-fought football. Each team
gets a chance to score from its opponent's 25-yard line. If the
game is still tied, they line up again at the 25 and keep doing it
until someone comes out ahead. That leaves out only such
essential elements of football as punting, deep pass patterns, and
long-distance field goals. Hockey shootouts, which became
inevitable once Disney was granted an NFL franchise, are even
worse. They dispense with defense all together. It's like settling a
basketball game with H-O-R-S-E.
But ties are on a winning streak lately, which is restoring my
equanimity. The same week as the Bengals-Eagles tie, the
documentary Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 had its premiere. In
1968, both Harvard and Yale entered The Game (as only Ivy
Leaguers call it) with undefeated records. But Yale was ranked
16th in the entire nation and had Brian Dowling at quarterback, a
future NFL scrub who hadn't lost a game since he was in sixth
grade. As the Yale Daily News put it, "God Plays Quarterback at
Yale." Cartoonist Garry Trudeau immortalized him as the
helmet-wearing B.D.
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Considering we know that no one will win, Harvard Beats Yale
is an incredible piece of sports drama. Ever since The Bad News
Bears, there have been countless of movies about scrappy
underdog teams. But those guys are always playing against rich,
good-looking jocks. This movie turns the difficult trick of
making you root for Harvard (a Harvard team that included
Tommy Lee Jones, no less).
With two minutes left, Harvard was down 29-13, with the ball
on its own 15-yard line. Yalies were chanting, "You're No. 2."
The Yale band was playing The Mickey Mouse Club theme. But
a holding call against Yale and a forward fumble by Harvard's
second-string quarterback Frank Champi advanced the ball to
the Yale 15. Champi threw a touchdown pass with 42 seconds to
go. Harvard then recovered an onside kick, and a facemask
penalty put them in the red zone. On the final play, Champi
threw for another touchdown. A two-point conversion made it
29-29.
Harvard fans mobbed the field. The Crimson players ran to the
locker room, waving their helmets. The Elis slumped away,
having blown a 16-point lead and a perfect season. That's the
beauty of a tie. With no winner and no loser, each side has to
provide its own resolution. The reactions of the players, 40 years
later, validate the Harvard Crimson headline that gave the movie
its title. Interviewed in their offices or their kitchens, the grayed,
softened men—all big winners in life—recall the one event in
their lives that was never decided, and never will be. A tie game
never really ends. It's only suspended, to be taken up again as a
perennial debate over how each team might have broken the
deadlock.
Jones, who speaks laconically, as though he's reciting Cormac
McCarthy, recalls a missed extra point in the first half. "I can't
help but think of how everyone's lives would be different if we'd
made that extra point," he says. For most Harvard players, The
Game was a moral victory. For Yalies, a disgraceful defeat.
Champi sees it differently. "I think the Yale players will admit
to, if it wasn't for that game, they wouldn't be remembered
today," he says. "By losing, sorry about that, by tying, by not
winning or routing poor Harvard, both teams have a small place
in football history, especially Ivy League football. It's a win-win
for everyone."
Since this is an article celebrating nonvictory, I hate to declare
that two teams ever tied better than Harvard and Yale. But two
teams did. One was my alma mater, Michigan State. In 1966, the
Spartans met Notre Dame in East Lansing for a matchup hyped
as the Game of the Century. Both were undefeated. Notre Dame
was No. 1 in the UPI poll, Michigan State No. 2. If it didn't turn
out to be the Game of the Century, it was undoubtedly the Tie of
the Century.
Dick Kenney. Notre Dame tied the game with a fourth-quarter
field goal. With 1:10 left, the Fighting Irish had the ball on its
own 30-yard line. A team with less to lose would have mounted
a touchdown drive. Instead, coach Ara Parseghian decided to run
out the clock, unwilling to risk a turnover that would give
Michigan State a chance to win.
After 60 minutes—the natural life of a football game—the two
best teams in the country had achieved perfect equilibrium. It
was the most significant tie in sports history. Not only did it fail
to resolve the game, it failed to resolve the national
championship. Both the Spartans and the Fighting Irish were
awarded that year's MacArthur Trophy. (Notre Dame preserved
its top ranking in the UPI poll.) Sports Illustrated put the game
on the cover with the tag line "Furor Over No. 1." Inside, Dan
Jenkins wrote that Parseghian had disgraced the legacy of Knute
Rockne by changing the school's fight song to "Notre Dame will
tie over all."
Parseghian didn't see it that way. At least that's what he told his
players. "We didn't win, but, by God, we did not lose," he said in
the locker room afterward, according to Notre Dame's Rocky
Bleier. "They're crying about a tie, trying to detract from your
efforts. They're trying to make it come out a win. Well, don't you
believe it. Their season is over. They can't go anywhere. It's all
over and we're still Number One."
Outside the military, there is no more black-and-white world
than football. It's the game that gave us "Winning isn't
everything. It's the only thing." If that's true, then a tie means no
one gets nothing, but no one gets anything, either. Was the tie
eliminated to spare players and coaches from pondering this Zen
koan?
Like the Harvard-Yale game, the Tie of the Century never
ended, either. It inspired a book, and Rocky Bleier and Michigan
State's Bubba Smith got together for a TV special on The Tie.
Forty years later, Parseghian was still defending his strategy, and
the two schools played their annual game in throwback jerseys,
commemorating 1966 in a way that would have been impossible
had either school won.
Obviously, not all ties are memorable. No one deserved to win
that Eagles-Bengals thing. (Which is why it's so nice that no one
did.) But it's a shame that the Harvard-Yale and the Michigan
State-Notre Dame ties couldn't happen today. Tommy Lee Jones'
Harvard roommate Al Gore, you might recall, was once involved
in a close competition that required a winner. "You know you
win some, you lose some," he said about the outcome. "And then
there's that little-known third category." Just more proof that
wins and losses are forgotten, but a tie is argued about forever.
The Spartans took a 10-7 halftime lead on a touchdown by
fullback Regis Cavender and a field goal by barefoot kicker
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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technology
Kill Your Telephone
A step-by-step guide to Skype, the cheapest and easiest way to make a phone
call.
By Farhad Manjoo
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 4:32 PM ET
Earlier this year, I called my phone company to talk about my
bill. For years, I'd been paying about $25 a month for a land line
arrayed with a panoply of services that I rarely used—unlimited
local calls, cheap long distance, call-waiting, and several other
fancy options. I wanted to cancel all of it. I've long used my
mobile phone as my primary line; I'd only kept the land line
because I get poor cellular reception in my house. A year ago,
though, I switched over to Skype. It beats cell phones and land
lines in both price and quality. Best of all, it's portable: I can use
the same phone plan to make calls from home, from the office,
and even from hotels around the world—again, for very little
money.
Skype isn't new—it launched in 2003*, and millions of people
around the world use it. But because Skype is so unbelievably
cheap, I've run across lots of people who still consider it some
kind of Internet dark art—a service with mysterious inner
workings, one that requires some kind of special equipment or
technical know-how to get it up and running.
This isn't so. Skype, which routes your calls through the Internet,
is easy to set up and pretty hassle-free to use. Unlike Vonage or
other Internet phone services, it requires no contract or
installation; you can set it up yourself and use it as often as you
like, and you can use it to supplement (rather than replace) your
normal phone if you prefer. It's also completely legal and here to
stay—eBay bought the company in 2005, and you don't have to
worry about the Feds shutting it down. You do need to buy some
equipment to use Skype, but none of it is exotic or expensive.
And once you're using it, it feels no different from an ordinary
phone. (Do note, though, that Skype doesn't do emergency calls;
if you need 911, use a real phone.)
I've put together a primer (below) on how to get started with
Skype. Follow these simple steps, and soon you, too, will be
calling your phone company to cancel everything.
What you need: There are two ways to run Skype—from your
computer or from a phone equipped with Skype's software.
Starting with your computer is easier. For this you need a
machine capable of running Skype's software (something made
within the last five or so years), a broadband Internet connection,
and a USB headset and mic, which should set you back about
$25 to $30. (Your laptop's built-in mic will work, but a headset
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
sounds sound better. If your computer has a Bluetooth chip, you
may be able to use the Bluetooth headset you use for your cell
phone.)
After you connect your headset, download and install Skype and
create a free user account. That's it—now you can make Skype
calls from your computer. (To test out your setup, type echo123
into Skype's address bar and press Call. This will give you a
prompt asking you to say something. Skype will then play back
what you said—if you can hear yourself, your setup is working.)
I make most of my Skype calls through a headset attached to my
computer. But if you'd prefer to use your home phone to make
calls, you can buy an adapter that turns any ordinary phone into
Skype's mic and speaker. Plug the adapter into your computer,
then plug your phone into the adapter—now all your Skype calls
will be routed through your home phone. I've found this works
pretty well; you can even use a cordless phone to roam around
the house.
Both those options require that your computer be turned on
when you're using Skype. If that's too much of a burden, you can
buy a special Skype phone with a built-in Wi-Fi radio. These
phones connect directly to your wireless network, bypassing
your computer altogether. They're slightly expensive, running
between $120 and $200. On the other hand, they're very
portable, allowing you to use Skype wherever you've got WiFi—very handy if you're traveling internationally and want to
call home for cheap. A word of caution, though: Despite telecom
company objections, more and more new cell phones are capable
of running Skype. If you wait a while, your iPhone or Google
phone may get Skype capabilities, and then you won't need a
dedicated Skype phone.
Calling other Skype users: How cheap is Skype? If you want to
talk to other Skype users, it's free. If you're in a long-distance
relationship or have grandkids on the other side of the country,
you should get your chatting partner on Skype immediately.
(The software also does video—buy two webcams, and you're
up and running.)
Calling people who don't use Skype: Skype is an Internet
app—it works by streaming your calls over the network on a
peer-to-peer protocol. (The software's inventors are peer-to-peer
devotees, having developed the file-sharing program Kazaa and
the TV-streaming app Joost using the same principles.) But
Skype's magic is that it connects to the phone system, too, letting
you talk to people who have no interest in any of this computer
mumbo jumbo.
Calling people's phones isn't free: To get started, you've got to
give Skype your credit card number (or your PayPal account).
Then type in the phone number and press Call.
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You can pay for your Skype calls on a per-call basis or through a
subscription. Skype's pay-as-you-go rates are very good. You
can talk to most people in Asia, Europe, and North and South
America for about 2 cents a minute. (Calling mobile phones in
some countries costs a bit more; every time you make a Skype
call, you'll see your current rate on the screen.) If you install
Skype on your laptop, you've now got an international roaming
phone—go to a hotel in London, and you can call New York for
a few cents a minute.
Skype's subscriptions are an even better deal: You can get
unlimited calling in the United States and Canada for $3 a month
and unlimited calls to 36 counties around the world for $10 a
month. If you subscribe, you also get a free online voice
mailbox.
Receiving calls: If you want to switch over to Skype
completely, you need to pay for a service called SkypeIn—a
dedicated Skype phone number that allows people to call you
from their phones. When someone dials your SkypeIn number,
your Skype device—your computer or your Wi-Fi phone—will
ring.
Skype numbers are available in area codes across the United
States and 21 other countries. You can even buy multiple
numbers in different countries. This way, your friends in London
can call your U.K. Skype number while your friends in New
York call your Manhattan number; each of them will pay only
the cost of a local call.
SkypeIn numbers cost $60 a year or $18 for three months. (You
get a discount if you subscribe to one of Skype's calling plans.)
Other stuff you can do with Skype: Making calls through the
Internet rather than the phone network brings all kinds of
advantages. Because your phone is a piece of software, you can
tweak it in many ways—for instance, use Skype recording
software to save all your calls or use a digital voice modulator to
make prank calls. One add-on claims to analyze the other
person's voice to detect whether she really loves you. You can
also run a baby monitor (or a nanny cam) through Skype: Attach
a webcam to one computer, then Skype in to it from another
machine—you'll see everything come in live.
Even with all these bells and whistles, the best thing about
Skype is still the price. If you're already paying for Internet
service, there really is no need to pay for phone service, too. The
Internet is already your phone. Use it.
Correction, Nov. 24: This piece originally misstated the year
when Skype launched as 2005. (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
television
Most Viewed
The stars of YouTube gather for a terrifying live show.
By Troy Patterson
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 12:21 PM ET
Guff goes around about the future of show business, namely:
The democratic Web video will displace the monarchs of the TV
networks and film studios. Some apostles of the digital age point
to the fact that anyone with a camera and a high-speed
connection can distribute a piece of entertainment to be
consumed by millions, and they prophesy that the corporate
showbiz establishment as we know it, with its crummy sitcoms
and wooden movies, will wither. Others foresee home-schooled
talent surging forth to compete with the polishing pros,
imagining a day when, say, Magibon displaces Miley Cyrus in
the world's heart and frontal lobe. All of that is nonsense, it's
clear, after Saturday's presentation of YouTube Live—a variety
show, a branding event, a minor atrocity.
The "show" spewed fitfully into existence to frame some of
YouTube's flashiest talent as pop-culture champions and idols of
mainstream youth culture. If I were in the business of producing
crummy sitcoms, I would take it as a signal that the Internet
poses no immediate threat and that I could feel secure in the
crumminess of my product. But the show drew a decent
audience; at its peak, 700,000 viewers watched what a press
release promised would be "a celebration of the vibrant
communities that exist on the site including bedroom vloggers,
budding creatives, underground athletes, world-famous
musicians, gut-busting comedians and more." To some of them,
this must have looked as sweet as a pep rally or as spirited, in its
somewhat homely way, as Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland
puttin' on a show.
It all went down in a venue in San Francisco, warm within the
radius of Silicon Valley's vibe. The opening act was Katy Perry,
who now qualifies as a world-famous musician partly because
her summer hit "I Kissed a Girl," that synthetic tribute to
recreational lesbianism, has been viewed on YouTube more than
12 million times. "Ladies and gentleman, it's time to turn off
your televisions and turn your computers on," she said at the
start of the show. Got-up like a Varga girl, she took a
roundabout route to the stage, pausing to flirt with
representatives of the vibrant communities. These included
black-helmeted Chad Vader, the protagonist of a comedic Web
series about Darth's supermarket-manager younger brother, and
the "Free Hugs" guy, a hippie long-hair who has even made it to
Oprah's set with an act about bringing kindness to strangers.
(You can click here to delve into the Free Hugs oeuvre. The
clips are safe for work, though perhaps not for diabetics.) This
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prologue, with the YouTubers fixed in a tableau fit for an awards
show at a second-tier music-video channel, set the tone for the
evening. Grass-roots hustlers met glossy spectacle and arrived at
the definition of mundane.
You had to admire each of the amateurs for putting on a smile,
giving it a shot, sallying forth in the name of greater fame. Those
with clear skills—such as Funtwo, the virtuoso guitarist who
plays a metal version of Pachelbel's "Canon in D" and who here
played alongside Joe Satriani—radiated the charge of ingénues
bursting onto the stage of Carnegie Hall. Those lacking skills—a
"vlog squad" of unaccountably popular video bloggers, four
persons pressed into service as a supergroup of shtick and
snark—warmed themselves in the crowd's gaze. No, the
embarrassment was all on the viewer's end. YouTube Live took
a broad sample of cultural detritus and shaped it into an
awkward monument to populist entertainment and popular
triviality.
television
18 Million People Watch NCIS
Should you?
By Troy Patterson
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 6:59 AM ET
By some thermometers, NCIS (CBS, Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET) is
the hot show of the moment. Last week's installment played to a
record-high 18.8 million viewers—"more than any other show
on television for the week," the New York Times reported on
Monday, further noting that it's also been a smash in Fridaynight repeats and cable-network reruns. The Los Angeles Times
cocked an eyebrow at those numbers the same day, likewise
observing that the six-year-old series has achieved its success in
the absence of any industry accolades, critical praise, or rousing
racket of buzz: "The media try very hard to ignore the show." On
that last point, I demand a correction. Until this week, ignoring
the show hasn't required the slightest effort.
Now, having taken a breather from not even bothering to snub
the program, I can report that NCIS—amiable, unpredictable,
and no more outlandish than any other prime-time fantasy about
battling evil—gives you a lot for your 44 minutes. Mingling
elements of a hardy cop show with those of a svelte espionage
drama, segueing from macabre moments at the autopsy table to
small giggles of office comedy, it's lively with variety. Last
week, the heroes, solving a murder, nabbed a gang of jewel
thieves; this week, in spy mode, they apprehended a mole
threatening national security. The formula is so elastic that it
doesn't resemble a formula.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The show follows a team of federal agents employed by the
Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and team is the operative
concept. Many a TV crime-fighting unit offers the audience an
idealized vision for its daily life between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.,
transforming the pressure and drudgery and compensating
camaraderie of the workplace into a spectacle of valor, and this
one does, too. But something here indicates that the NCIS agents
are further bound together like a squad of athletes. Maybe it's
their solidarity in the face of frequent turf wars with a haughty
FBI. Maybe it's the jockish jocularity they show when huddling
in surveillance vans or shooting the breeze by the office snack
machine. Perhaps it's all in their frequent donning of ball caps
and windbreakers bearing the horsy initialism of the show's title.
In any event, on last night's episode, the character Tony
DiNozzo—one of those perennial frat boys with a mouth for
bold flirting and a head full of pop culture—rhapsodized about
the NBA great Bill Russell, encouraging fans in the belief that
this group is analogous to the Boston Celtics of yore.
Their Red Auerbach would be Leroy Jethro Gibbs—not, as his
name might suggest, an early-modern agriculturalist or some
session musician who once played slide guitar with Skynyrd—
but a special agent from the school of crisp, taciturn, stoic-butsensitive bosses. There has been an effort to make the actor in
the role, Mark Harmon, look awful, and it has succeeded. The
choppy haircut, the noxiously patterned sport coats, the
perpetual wedge of white undershirt under his floppy open
collar—these all communicate that the man's lack of polish is
proof of his trustworthiness.
Gibbs commands the loyalty of subordinates whose determined
quirkiness never quite undermines their integrity as characters.
The forensic specialist, a perky woman in dour garb, is a Goth
girl whose pallid neck will forever be ringed by some velvet
choker or studded dog collar. In turn, the fussy British medical
examiner will never be seen without a bow tie. The babe on the
unit is a former Mossad agent; in keeping with a recent tradition
of chick investigators on conservative-leaning shows, she often
wears low-slung trousers.
DiNozzo recently explained to a new recruit that "bad guys
would rather confess than be interrogated by" Gibbs. He was
joking but not really kidding, it seems, as the producers' every
choice endorses the sentiment. Where Jack Bauer and the boys
on 24 fairly revel in resorting to torture, Gibbs can make a
suspected terrorist come clean simply by slapping his palm
against the interrogation-room table and shooting rays of
resolution from his pale blue eyes. Though a man's man, he
never threatens to overdose on his own testosterone—a
disposition in keeping with the show's gender-balanced
sensibilities. Its warmth keeps its gung-ho instincts in check, as
on a rerun that aired last Monday on USA. There, a female Navy
pilot faced the wrath of al-Qaida assassins—and also, it turned
out, a soccer-mom neighbor with designs on her husband. At
some point, in between images of exploding minivans, the pilot
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shared her troubles as a working mother (and her qualified
remorse about having bombed civilians in Afghanistan) with the
female agent protecting her. They both stood around a handsome
living room holding their coffee cups with two hands, as if this
were a commercial advertising human sympathy, the war on
terror, and instant cappuccino to boot. The moment suggested
that NCIS has thrived by crafting its own genre: action
melodrama.
The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
Independence Day, by Richard Ford
The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud
The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Everyman, by Philip Roth
Saturday, by Ian McEwan
The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
Questions? Comments? Write to us at [email protected]. (Emailers may be quoted by name unless they request otherwise.)
the audio book club
The Audio Book Club on The Great
Gatsby
Our critics discuss F. Scott Fitzgerald's American classic.
By Stephen Metcalf, Troy Patterson, and Katie Roiphe
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 10:15 AM ET
To listen to the Slate Audio Book Club discussion of F. Scott
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, click the arrow on the player
below.
You can also download the audio file here, or click here to
subscribe to the Slate Audio Book Club feed in iTunes.
This month, the Audio Book Club revisits F. Scott Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby. Our critics try to discover what it is about this
book—so much about insubstantiality and itself quite
insubstantial—that gives it such a permanent and undisputed
place in the American canon. How does it work so well when the
plot is ridiculous, gimmicky, and almost incidental? The 45minute conversation explores these and other questions.
If you'd like to get an early start on the next book-club selection,
we've chosen David Foster Wallace's massive novel Infinite Jest.
Watch for—and listen to—our Audio Book Club about Infinite
Jest in December.
You can also listen to any of our previous club meetings through
our iTunes feed or by clicking on the links below*:
The Night of the Gun, by David Carr
American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Beautiful Children, by Charles Bock
All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert
Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson
The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
* To download the MP3 file, right-click (Windows) or hold down
the Control key while you click (Mac), and then use the "save"
or "download" command to save the audio file to your hard
drive.
.
.
the chat room
iPhoning It In
Farhad Manjoo and Chris Thompson take your questions about the mobile
devices of Apple, Google, and BlackBerry.
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 5:24 PM ET
Slate columnist Farhad Manjoo and The Big Money blogger
Chris Thompson were online at Washingtonpost.com to chat
with readers about the iPhone features borrowed by Google's
Android, and BlackBerry's Storm. An unedited transcript of the
chat follows.
Farhad Manjoo: Hi everyone. Chris Thompson and I are ready
to answer your questions about Google, Apple and BlackBerry
and their smartphones. Let's begin!
_______________________
New York, N.Y.: Not a question about the Google phone, but
the new Blackberry Storm. It seems to be relatively close to the
iPhone and as someone who needs a new phone and wants an
iPhone but doesn't want to leave Verizon, would you
recommend this as an alternative?
Farhad Manjoo: That's the big question. It does look pretty
good, and paired with Verizon's excellent network, it may indeed
be a viable alternative. I haven't had a chance to review it yet,
though, and I haven't seen many reviews. I'd suggest waiting a
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few weeks or even a couple months for the verdict to come in.
Also, for prices to drop over the holidays!
Other smaller features that the G1 has but the iPhone lacks
include copy and paste and MMS (short messages that can
include multimedia, like pictures).
_______________________
Arlington, Va.: What are you hearing about the G2? Is it worth
it to wait until next summer to buy the updated model? Are any
other cell providers coming out with their version of the Google
phone soon? I really want one but I don't want a superior product
to come out two months later.
Chris Thompson: Motorola is scheduled to have an Android
phone on the market sometime next year, built around social
networking sites. No one yet knows how it will do with users.
_______________________
Idaho Falls, Idaho: Will these new phones have the ability to
copy and paste, so one could forward a text message, edit a
Word Document, modify an Excel spreadsheet, etc.?
Farhad Manjoo: Both the G1 and the BlackBerry Storm have
copy and paste functions. The iPhone, notoriously and
annoyingly, does not—though everyone suspects that at some
point, Apple will add that (and when it does, the update will be
through software, meaning that older current phones will also
get those capabilities).
_______________________
New York, N.Y.: How many municipalities does the Google
phone have in comparison to the iPhone? How is T-Mobile's
service rating these days against AT&T's? (Personally, I'm quite
unhappy with AT&T but I've never used T-Mobile.) Thanks.
Chris Thompson: As I understand it, T-Mobile's 3G service is
fairly limited and very much a work in progress; the company
just got 3G coverage for the Washington D.C. area a little over a
week ago.
_______________________
Adamstown, Md.: Let's start with the best feature the Google
Phone has that the iPhone does not. (along with what they
"borrowed")
Farhad Manjoo: There's one main feature: A physical
keyboard. There are some people—or perhaps many people—
who can't stand Apple's on-screen keyboard; for these folks, the
G1 will always be superior.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
But there are also features that the iPhone has that the G1 lacks.
The most annoying, for me: The G1 does not have a headphone
jack—it comes with a special earbud set that plugs into its USB
port.
_______________________
N.Y.: So, what's going to win out? How viable is Android?
Chris Thompson: In theory, Android is as viable as the
developers make it, although Farhad's pointed out plenty of
advantages to the iPhone's closed app model. Maybe in the end,
China Mobile will win out; it's the largest cell phone service
provider in the world with 436 million subscribers, it's planning
to roll out its own version of the Android phone, and it just
announced plans to open its own mobile applications store. With
hundreds of millions of potential Android users, that kind of
market power could set the tone for future mobile applications.
_______________________
Silver Spring, Md.: Hello, I am a Verizon customer and I like
the idea of the BBstorm but I'm wondering why Verizon chose
not to include a WI-FI service on the phone? Do you think future
generations of the BB will have WI-FI, or any Verizon phone for
that matter? Also, I heard about the new applications that they
BB would be able to download, would that be for free or at
additional cost? Thanks a bunch!
Farhad Manjoo: Nobody quite knows why the Storm doesn't
include Wi-Fi (both the iPhone and the G1 do), but according to
at least one report, it's Verizon's doing: That is, the phone is
technically capable of handling Wi-Fi, but Verizon crippled it
for business reasons (presumably because when you're using WiFi, you're not using Verizon's network).
Research in Motion, BlackBerry's manufacturer, plans to launch
an app store for the phone next year. Like on the iPhone's App
Store, third-party developers will be able to set their own prices
for their apps.
_______________________
Falls Church, Va.: Please help me avoid hours of internet
research! My phone contract is up and I want to upgrade from
my current phone to either a Blackberry Pearl (for the small size)
or an iPhone. My main goals are to be able to check email, get
directions, look up movie times ... and of course make calls and
text message. Which one would you recommend? I think the
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monthly plan costs are similar, but which one is more user
friendly and reliable? Thanks!
Farhad Manjoo: Alas, you really should do your own Web
search! Both phones have received high marks and can handle
what you're looking to do, but your choice will likely depend on
a number of personal factors—how much you use your phone
(and thus which service plans are better), which networks are
strongest in your area, and whether you're switching over to a
new plan or staying with your current provider.
Here's one thing I will say: If you plan to use the Web a lot, go
with the iPhone.
Whether Yahoo is a harbinger for the rest of the tech sector is an
interesting question. In a way, the real question is: just how
badly will Google do in the downturn? For years, Google has
suggested that it's impervious to recessions, precisely because its
text search ads are cheaper than display ads. During a downturn,
as companies scale back their advertising budgets, we can expect
Yahoo's display ads to take a hit. But in theory, Google will
clean up, because everyone will flock to its relatively cheaper
ads. On the other hand, Google's stock is less than half what it
was a year ago, so investors are clearly feeling a little jumpy.
_______________________
_______________________
Norfolk, Va.: It may not have phone capabilities but the Kindle
does have some music and Internet capabilities. Have you heard
anything about a 2.0 of the Kindle? New features? Release date?
Baltimore, Md.: Does the Storm have auto-text correction that
is anything like the iPhone? If so, does it work as well, and as
unobtrusively, as the iPhone? BTW, iPhone's come with keyclicks, as in the Storm's TV ad. It was one of the first things I
turned off on mine. Annoying! I'd much rather have the visual
feedback of the key getting bigger.
Farhad Manjoo: There have been many rumors about this, but
the only news that Amazon has confirmed is that it's working on
new versions, one of which will be targeted to the student
textbook market (which would presumably have a bigger screen
than the current version).
Farhad Manjoo: The Storm does include a predictive text-entry
system, and early reviews have called it pretty good.
I'd say it's a stretch to expect a Kindle cell phone.
_______________________
The Storm also features an innovative "tactile feedback"
mechanism that's meant to make typing on its screen something
like typing on a physical keyboard. When you press down on the
glass, its surface depresses a bit, as if you're pressing a real
button. But reviews of this feature have been mixed. PC Mag
says the system "ends up feeling like a lot of work in a way that
typing on a hardware keyboard (or on the iPhone's software
keyboard, for that matter) never did."
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: Chris, this question is for you. In your blog
you talk about Yahoo's 20 percent loss. What do you think their
next move will be? Can we expect other corporations to fall
during these depressing times?
Chris Thompson: Once they find themselves a new CEO,
Yahoo will get down to the pleasant task of wondering just what
they'll do next. There's been some talk that Yahoo will rebrand
itself as a email and news platform, the default starting point for
users logging in to check their mail and scan the news each
morning. Yahoo is also thinking about setting up an open-source
network, allowing developers to write apps to customize the site
and make it more interesting. But the company's got a long way
to go before it figures out its next move; outgoing CEO Jerry
Yang put the company through a lot of turmoil by playing hard
to get with Microsoft and then rolling the dice with the GoogleYahoo search deal that Justice just killed.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Nashville, Tenn.: I realize this is a little outside the topic, but
how does the LG Dare stack up to the other phones?
Farhad Manjoo: I haven't used the Dare, but here's CNET's
review. They liked that it was packed with features, but thought
it wasn't great for browsing the Web.
_______________________
Farhad Manjoo: Well, thanks everyone! Chris and I are
hanging up. Happy phone calls with whatever devices you
choose.
the green lantern
Trains vs. Planes vs. Automobiles
Is it always greener to take public transportation?
By Jacob Leibenluft
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 7:02 AM ET
On Wednesday, I'm heading back to my grandparents'
house for Thanksgiving via Amtrak. (They live near
Philadelphia, I live in Boston.) Compared with the
alternatives—either flying or braving the holiday-weekend
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traffic—I imagine this is the greenest way to go, since the
trains will be packed. But it got me thinking: A few weeks
from now, the train will have many more empty seats. Will it
still be a more eco-friendly way to travel?
option, producing fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than even the
average train per passenger mile. At off-peak hours, a bus looks
a lot worse, performing even more poorly than a gas-guzzling
pickup truck.
Last year, the Lantern pondered how you could make your
turkey dinner greener—and even contemplated the heretical idea
of eating Thanksgiving chicken instead. But while cooking a
more carbon-conscious meal is a good step, the steps you take to
get to the table in the first place can have a much greater
environmental impact.
Does that mean we shouldn't run buses or trains during off-peak
hours? No. If you want people to ride public transportation at
rush hour, you need to make it possible for them to get around
the rest of the day, too. (Not to mention the fact that some
people—for either physical or economic reasons—simply can't
drive.) And as long as those buses and trains are kept running,
it's better—environmentally speaking—to take public
transportation, since the marginal impact of your trip will be
very low. (For more on this point, click here.)
To answer the question of how to best make your trip home, the
Lantern calls your attention to a recent study conducted by
Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath, researchers at the
University of California-Berkeley. When we typically think of
the environmental impact of driving, we focus on the energy and
emissions associated with moving a car, say, 30 miles. In reality,
that sort of analysis is incomplete: How the car is made, how the
road is built, and even whether the roads have been salted
because of ice all have some effect, too. And while those effects
are spread out over many cars and many different trips, they still
take a toll. When we start thinking about train travel, the
infrastructure matters even more, since getting a rail line up and
running requires enormous amounts of construction and
manufacturing.
The UC-Berkeley analysis tries to get a more complete picture
of how we travel by taking all these variables into account—
down to the impact of planting grass on the side of the road.
Chester and Horvath's data suggest that riding in the average
train is a significantly greener choice than the average car or
plane. For example, they find that Caltrain (a system similar to
Amtrak, averaging 155 passengers per train) produces less than
half as many greenhouse-gas emissions or particulate matter per
passenger mile compared with driving a sedan (average
passengers: 1.58).* (The sedan comes out better when it comes
to sulfur dioxide but much worse on volatile organic
compounds.) And on Thanksgiving weekend, when trains are
certain to be full and cars are likely to spend a long time idling
in traffic, rail is easily a better option.
But you can come up with examples in which driving a car looks
better. A train produces more emissions per trip than any car,
bus, or truck; it makes up for that fact environmentally because
it carries a lot more people. It stands to reason, then, that if you
ride in a full sedan on a day when the train is pretty empty—and,
in particular, if you are in a fuel-efficient car—the car could
conceivably be greener per passenger mile. (The study says a car
would need to have about three passengers—double the
average—to break even environmentally with the typical train.)
The numbers are even more striking for buses, which can
experience extreme variability in ridership between peak and
nonpeak hours. At peak hours—with 40 riders onboard—the
Berkeley researchers find that buses often look like the greenest
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Like any sophisticated environmental accounting, these
evaluations have pitfalls. They rest on a lot of uncertain
assumptions—how long a vehicle will last, for example—and
require using data from a wide range of sources that may not
always be reliable. (It's also worth noting that the Berkeley
center where this research was conducted is sponsored by a
Volvo-funded foundation, although that funding isn't directed
toward specific projects.) Depending on the assumptions you
make, similar data can be used to make contradictory
arguments—see, for example, these arguments for (PDF) and
against expanding rail systems.
But the Lantern thinks there are a few basic lessons that these
life-cycle analyses can teach us. First, no matter what data you
use, two very simple variables make a big difference: how far
you travel and how many passengers are in your vehicle. Air
travel is much maligned as a source of CO2 emissions, and the
Berkeley research confirms that airplanes do emit more than
trains or buses per passenger mile. But the differences aren't as
large as you think, and the real reason air travel contributes so
much to our collective carbon footprint is that we use planes for
longer trips. That's not to say you shouldn't go to your
Grandma's house for Thanksgiving, but if she lives across the
country, any means of getting over the river and through the
woods is going to have a hefty carbon footprint. Likewise,
designing bus routes and train schedules that fit rider demand—
along with encouraging urban development that gives transit
more appeal—makes a big difference, owing to the
environmental downsides of traveling alone.
Secondly, you can't discuss the environmental impact of getting
around without considering the infrastructure that makes travel
possible. We have a tendency to focus on the environmental
impact of the things that move—the cars, trains, and planes we
see getting from point A to point B. But Chester and Horvath
found that in some cases, construction is the biggest polluter.
Roads were responsible for more particulate matter than
tailpipes, for example. For rail travel, operating the trains
actually accounts for less than half of a system's greenhouse-gas
emissions. The implication: Making concrete and asphalt in a
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more environmentally friendly way can be just as important as
getting vehicles to run more efficiently. In other words, it's not
just the road you take, but what it's made out of, too.
today's business press
Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at
night? Send it to [email protected], and check this
space every Tuesday.
*Correction, Nov. 25, 2008: This article originally misstated the
relationship between the emissions produced by Caltrain and
those produced by a sedan. The train generates less than half as
many greenhouse-gas emissions or particulate matter per
passenger mile as a sedan, not less than twice as much. (Return
to the corrected sentence.)
sidebar
Return to article
It's possible to figure the environmental impact of public
transportation in two different ways. So does it make more sense
to focus on the average environmental impact of an additional
rider (which basically entails dividing the total impact of public
transportation by the number of riders) or the marginal
environmental impact (which would mean calculating how much
more energy is required or pollution is created when one more
person gets on the bus)?
Often, the Lantern makes the case—as do many "cradle-tograve" environmental analyses—that we should look at the
average. (Consider, for example, last week's discussion of
takeout, in which we were talking about averaging out the
energy use of the restaurant across every meal.) Here's why: In
many cases, looking at the marginal environmental burden of
one consumer gives you a value close to zero. For example, as
long as a plane has an empty seat, you aren't responsible for any
of its emissions when you fly. So fly all you want! But in truth,
each consumer contributes to the demand for a new restaurant or
a new flight. With that in mind, it seems to make sense to focus
on the average.
But in the case of public transportation, the Lantern makes an
exception. We've already made the case that it's necessary to run
off-peak buses and trains if you also want people to use public
transportation at rush hour. If that's the case, then those off-peak
buses will run whether there are five passengers or 25. It
certainly makes sense to have these lonely buses run as
infrequently as possible. But as long as some need to stay on the
road to keep a public transit system functioning, you might as
well hop aboard.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Fed's License To Print Money
By Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Wednesday, November 26, 2008, at 7:01 AM ET
today's papers
Time To Help the Average Joe
By Daniel Politi
Wednesday, November 26, 2008, at 6:41 AM ET
Everyone leads with the latest efforts by the federal government
to thaw frozen credit markets, hints of which had already
appeared in some of the papers yesterday, most notably the New
York Times. The government announced it will pump up to $800
billion into credit markets to make it easier for Americans to get
loans, with a particular focus on residential mortgages. Most of
the money will come directly from the Federal Reserve and will
make the central bank "a lender to almost every corner of
American life," points out the Wall Street Journal. The new
massive commitment of taxpayer money is essentially divided
into two programs. The Federal Reserve will purchase up to
$600 billion of debt issued or backed by government-sponsored
lenders, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in an effort to
make mortgages cheaper. Separately, the Fed and Treasury
Department will create a $200 billion program to lend money
against securities tied to car loans, student loans, credit card
debt, and small-business loans. The program, which aims to
make consumer loans more readily available, "comes close to
being a government bank," notes the NYT.
In addition to making loans more readily available, USA Today
points out that a "secondary effect of the programs" is that cash
will be injected into the financial system, which could "help
inflate the economy at a time when officials are increasingly
worried about possible deflation." The Los Angeles Times notes
that by getting involved in consumer debt, the government is
making it clear that it's willing to "adopt strategies carrying
greater risks." In a sign of just how quickly the financial crisis
has progressed, the Washington Post points out that the new
program will commit the Fed to "spend nearly 100 times as
much to buy mortgage-backed securities as the government
envisioned in early September."
The mortgage program announced yesterday is the easiest to
understand since it's pretty straightforward. The Fed will buy up
to $100 billion of debt issued by government-sponsored lenders.
In addition, the central bank will buy up to $500 billion of
mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie
Mac, Ginnie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Banks. The
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response from the mortgage market was almost immediate. The
NYT points out interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages
plunged "almost a full percentage point, to 5.5 percent, from 6.3
percent." In a separate front-page piece, the WSJ points out that
the announcement quickly led to a huge "burst of refinancing
activity" across the country. The mere action of refinancing
helps the economy because it gives consumers more cash to
spend elsewhere, but economists also predict that in time these
lower interest rates will also lead to at least a modest increase in
home sales.
As encouraging as these signs were, it's important to note that
this new program will do little to prevent foreclosures since
they're mostly tied to high-risk mortgages that aren't linked to
government-sponsored lenders. As the WSJ points out, lower
mortgage rates won't help the estimated 11.8 million
homeowners who aren't able to refinance because they owe more
than their homes are worth.
The consumer loans program announced yesterday involves up
to $200 billion. It's a rather complicated program, but essentially
what could be characterized as the new government bank would
lend money against securities backed by highly rated consumer
and small-business loans. Part of the reason why it has been
difficult for consumers to borrow money lately is because few
investors have been willing to buy these securities. The program
will be run by the Fed, but the Treasury will cover the first $20
billion in losses, which would come out of the $700 billion
bailout package. As the LAT clearly explains this is potentially
perilous territory for the government in part because credit card
debt and student loans are often unsecured, "unlike home loans
or auto purchases, which have tangible assets behind them,"
which means there's a higher risk they won't be repaid.
Besides the danger that taxpayers could suffer huge losses, there
are plenty of other risks in these new programs. "The long-term
risks are enormous but difficult to estimate," summarizes the
NYT. The most obvious one is that it could cause inflation after
the economy recovers. Some are also worried that once the Fed
has made use of these unprecedented powers it could be hard to
turn back. "Now that it has used those levers, don't you think
Congress will want it to start using them again? The Fed could
become the go-to place for bailouts," a former Fed official tells
the NYT.
There's also the clear risk that this program might not work or
that more money could be needed in the future. Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson hinted as much yesterday saying that
the new program was just a "starting point." In the future it could
be expanded to include other types of assets, such as commercial
real estate. After hinting last week that the Treasury wouldn't
start any new programs until the next administration, Paulson
made it clear yesterday that he won't shy away from new
initiatives in the coming weeks. "Well, I tell you, I am going to
run right to the end, OK?" Paulson told reporters. "And we're
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
going to continue to develop programs, deploy them when
they're ready to go and work on having a very seamless, very
seamless transition here."
Despite all the potential risks, most agree that they pale in
comparison to what could happen if the government failed to do
anything. "They're not messing around here," an economist tells
the Post. "This is a very aggressive effort. They're not going to
prevent a recession, it's too late for that, but they're trying to
prevent a catastrophe." Trying to prevent a catastrophe isn't
cheap. The NYT highlights that over the last year "the
government has assumed about $7.8 trillion in direct and indirect
financial obligations," which is "equal to about half the size of
the nation's entire economy."
In a sign of how much Americans are hurting during the
economic downturn, the WP fronts word that the number of
people on food stamps is set to pass the 30 million mark for the
first time this month. "If the economic forecasts come true, we're
likely to see the most hunger that we've seen since the 1981
recession and maybe since the 1960s, when these programs were
established," the president of an anti-hunger policy organization
tells the Post.
Moving on to transition news, the NYT, LAT, and WP front, and
everyone mentions, word that President-elect Barack Obama
will keep Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his current position.
The news is hardly surprising as the possibility has been floating
around for a while, but everyone notes the decision could
disappoint some in the Democratic Party who want a clean break
from the Bush era. The NYT notes it would mark the first time an
incoming president has kept a defense secretary from a
predecessor of a different party. Everyone notes it looks like
Gates will stay on for about a year, though the WP does have
sources who say he could stay indefinitely. The WP says most of
the deputies under Gates would be replaced, while the LAT
highlights that issue hasn't been resolved yet. "The real issue is:
Who does Gates keep, and does Obama have a say in what team
is there?" one official tells the LAT. But no one actually thinks
that would derail his appointment.
Obama is expected to make the Gates appointment official early
next week, when he will also name other members of his
national-security team. Everyone says it seems almost certain
that Obama will name Gen. James Jones, a retired Marine
commandant and onetime NATO supreme commander, as his
national-security adviser.
The NYT points out Democrats are no longer using the word
stimulus. And it's no accident. Democratic leaders and members
of Obama's team are pushing members of their party to use the
words economic recovery program when they're talking about
the stimulus package they want to push through Congress early
next year. The public apparently responds to it better, and
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Democrats want to emphasize that turning the economy around
is going to take time.
In an op-ed piece in the WP, Karl Meyer and Shareen Blair
Brysac write that New York Gov. David Paterson should send
former President Bill Clinton to the Senate. If, as expected, Sen.
Hillary Clinton becomes secretary of state, Paterson would be
faced with "the agonizing dilemma" of choosing someone from
around 20 candidates. But by picking the former president,
Paterson would not only appoint someone who could be a great
asset to New York in a time of crisis, he would also "offer a
refreshing reverse twist on a tradition whereby deceased male
senators, representatives or governors are succeeded by their
widows."
today's papers
Obama's Team Gets To Work
By Daniel Politi
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 6:24 AM ET
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the
Wall Street Journal's world-wide newsbox lead with Presidentelect Barack Obama making it clear that he plans to be ready to
tackle the nation's economic woes from his first day in office. At
a news conference, Obama instructed his economic team to
come up with the details of a new stimulus package large enough
to "jolt the economy back into shape." Obama noted that he
wants to create 2.5 million jobs and spend big on infrastructure
as well as clean energy projects. The incoming and outgoing
president both took pains to emphasize that they'll be working
together in the coming weeks. "It's important for the American
people to know that there is close cooperation," President Bush
said. The NYT says the Fed and Treasury will be announcing a
new plan today that aims to get the loan markets moving again.
The Washington Post leads with an inside look at the Citigroup
bailout that highlights how the three men who got the deal
moving "have for years followed one another in and out of jobs."
The paper points out that Timothy Geithner, president of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was deeply involved in
formulating the rescue package but took a step back from
dealing with Citigroup's leaders after it became clear that he
would be Obama's nominee to head the Treasury Department.
As part of the package, Citigroup would be forbidden from
paying dividends of more than a penny a share to common
shareholders for the next three years, while the government's
preferred stock would get a dividend payment of 8 percent.
The NYT points out the new program that will be announced by
the Fed and Treasury will essentially "create a government bank
to finance hundreds of billions of dollars in commercial debt."
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Although there had already been some talk about doing
something for consumer loans, the program would go beyond
that to also include business debt. The program would get started
with an infusion of $10 billion to $20 billion, which would come
out of the $700 billion bailout package, and the Fed is prepared
to lend "as much as 20 times that amount" toward the effort. As
designed, the Treasury money would take the hit for most of the
losses, while the Fed funds would be used to purchase relatively
safe assets. So, for those keeping track at home this marks yet
another trackback from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's
announcement less than two weeks ago that the Troubled Asset
Relief Program wouldn't be used to purchase troubled assets. If it
works as expected, the new program should make it cheaper to
borrow money.
While Obama had previously been careful to say the country has
only "one president at a time" he seems to have realized that at a
time of crisis he doesn't have the luxury of staying behind closed
doors until he's actually sitting in the Oval Office. Indeed,
everyone points out that yesterday seemed to mark a new phase
in the transition process where Obama will be more visible.
Bush appears to have accepted this new reality and emphasized
that "anytime we're to make a big decision during the transition,
[Obama] will be informed, as will his team." Bush also said he
wouldn't shy away from considering new bailouts before he
leaves the White House.
At his news conference, Obama was careful not to attach a
desired dollar figure to his stimulus package and declined to
state whether he would seek to repeal Bush's tax cuts as soon as
he takes office or just wait until they expire at the end of 2010.
The WSJ highlights that if there's one thing that's clear, it's that
Obama plans to kill two birds with one stone and include several
of his campaign spending promises in the stimulus package.
"Not only do I want the stimulus package to deal with the
immediate crisis, I want it also to lay the groundwork for longterm sustained economic growth," Obama said.
Obama officially introduced his economic team to the nation
yesterday. As expected, Geithner was selected to lead the
Treasury Department, Lawrence Summers will head the White
House Economic Council, and Christina Romer will serve as
chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Geithner is
expected to sail through confirmation hearings (Romer must also
be confirmed), but, as the LAT points out, senators might raise
questions about his role in developing all the financial rescue
packages in the last few months.
In a piece inside, the NYT's Andrew Sorkin says "a number of
Wall Street chieftains" are quietly wondering whether Geithner
is really the best choice to deal with the current mess. Of course,
Geithner has the advantage that he won't have to be briefed on
everything that has happened recently, and no one doubts that
he's a "a 47-year-old wonder boy," but some wonder whether his
ties to the mistakes of the past shouldn't disqualify him from the
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position. "We have only two things to say about Tim Geithner,
who we do not know: A.I.G. and Lehman Brothers," one analyst
said. "Geithner, in our view, deserves retirement, not
promotion." Geithner was the leader in putting together the
American International Group rescue package, and appears to
have been Paulson's strongest backer in the decision to let
Lehman Bros. fail, a move that is widely seen as a mistake now.
The Obama team and the New York Fed are working hard to
distance Geithner from these decisions, but executives who
participated in the frantic meetings the weekend of Lehman's fall
aren't buying it.
These Wall Street skeptics appear to be in the minority though
because the Obama announcement, coupled with news of the
Citigroup rescue, sent the stock markets soaring for the second
day in a row. Between Friday and Monday the market increased
891 points, which made up the largest two-day surge in
percentage terms since October 1987. Citigroup shares soared 58
percent yesterday but, as the WSJ points out on its front page,
that hardly means the financial giant's troubles are anywhere
near over. Executives at Citigroup said the government wants
the financial institution to reduce risk and give serious
consideration to a restructuring that could include breaking up
the company. There are ongoing talks among executives about
the possibility of merging with other financial institutions or
selling off major parts of the operation.
The WP off-leads word that Osama Bin Laden's former driver
will soon be transferred from Guantanamo to Yemen, his home.
The Pentagon has decided to allow Salim Ahmed Hamdan the
remainder of his prison sentence in Yemen's capital, where he's
expected to arrive within the next two days. The Bush
administration has long described Hamdan as a dangerous
terrorist, but a military commission found he was a minor player
and set Dec. 27 as his release date. The Bush administration had
said that regardless of the military commission's decision
Hamdan could be held indefinitely. By sending him to Yemen
the Pentagon not only avoids what would surely have been "a
sticky diplomatic situation," as the Post puts it, but also helps
Obama since he won't have to make any decisions about the
detainee's fate in the first days of his presidency.
The LAT fronts a startling look at how some injured veterans are
falling victim to a "little-noticed regulation change" that took
place earlier this year that amended the military's definition of
what constitutes a combat-related disability. The regulation
seems nothing short of nonsensical, not to mention cruel. The
Pentagon now differentiates between those injured during actual
combat and service members who are wounded in other
situations. So someone who is injured by a roadside bomb in
Iraq while not participating in actual combat would be entitled to
smaller disability payments. Veterans' groups are lobbying to get
the rule changed and are getting some support from lawmakers.
"I was blown up twice in Iraq, and my injuries weren't combatrelated?" said a Marine who estimates he was denied about
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
$16,000 in benefits before he fought the Pentagon and won a
change of his designation. "It's the most imbecile thing I've ever
seen."
In the NYT's op-ed page, Daniel Kahneman and Andrew
Rosenfield write that while bankruptcy protection can work well
for certain companies, it would likely prove to be disastrous for
U.S. automakers because of the "uncertainty and stigma" that it
would produce with consumers. Businesses have a natural
propensity to fight until the bitter end, but the writers suggest
that they should give up this instinct and all three companies
should file for bankruptcy protection simultaneously. This would
send the signal that "the problem is systemic" and that an
industrywide solution is in the works. Of course, such
coordinated action would have to be facilitated by the
government. "Any other form of bailout for Detroit would likely
require a long political process, and that would only worsen the
economic destruction."
today's papers
Fight To Save Citi
By Daniel Politi
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 6:21 AM ET
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street
Journal lead with the late-night announcement of a plan to
rescue ailing banking giant Citigroup. Under a plan that the NYT
describes as "radical" and "complex," the federal government
will protect Citigroup from potential losses on a pool of troubled
assets worth around $306 billion. On top of that, the Treasury
Department will inject $20 billion into the company—in addition
to the $25 billion the financial institution has already received
from the department's Troubled Asset Relief Program. The LAT
highlights that this is "the largest single rescue effort thus far in
the current financial crisis."
The Washington Post off-leads the Citigroup rescue but leads
with word that President-elect Barack Obama and Democratic
leaders are considering a huge fiscal stimulus plan that could
total $700 billion over the next two years. Transition officials
aren't confirming that something of that magnitude is being
considered, but more Democrats are raising it as a possibility.
USA Today leads with a look at how those who will be flying
over the Thanksgiving holiday have a better chance of making it
to their destination on time this year. Efforts to decrease
congestion at New York airports coupled with the schedule
cutbacks by financially struggling airlines have cut down on
traffic and have decreased delays.
After Citigroup's stock plunged about 60 percent last week when
it became engulfed in a crisis of confidence, executives and
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federal officials began intense negotiations to try to prevent the
problem from spreading to other big banks. "This time … the
company in jeopardy is truly gigantic," notes the WP. Citigroup
is the largest U.S. bank by assets. It is involved in so many
aspects of the financial system—and in more than 100
countries—that it seems to fit the very definition of "too big to
fail."
Under the plan, the government will protect Citigroup from
losses on a $306 billion portfolio of assets mostly made up of
loans and securities that are backed by residential and
commercial real estate. Citigroup will be responsible for
covering the first $29 billion in losses. (The LAT says $36
billion, because, it specifies, the $29 billion would be on top of
approximately $7 billion already in a rainy-day fund.) After that
threshold has been reached, the Treasury Department, the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the Federal Reserve will
absorb 90 percent of any further losses.
For its trouble, the government will receive $7 billion in
preferred shares—on top of the $20 billion of preferred stock it
will get for its additional cash infusion. The government didn't
mandate any changes to the company's leadership, but the
banking giant did agree to grant the government power over its
operations. The LAT notes that the government can now
"effectively prohibit stock dividends for the next three years"
and everyone says Citigroup had to accept limits on executive
compensation and agree to implement a plan to modify
mortgages to avoid foreclosures.
Of course, no one knows whether it will be successful. The NYT
highlights that this will be the "government's third effort in three
months" to stabilize the markets and could be used as a
precedent to rescue other financial firms. To recap: First, the
government said it would buy troubled assets, then scrapped that
plan in favor of injecting money into financial institutions. Now
it's made it clear that it's ready to try a mixture of the two for
certain institutions. The previous efforts led to a bit of optimism
in Wall Street, but that optimism has always proved short-lived.
The WSJ points out that the portfolio involved in this rescue is
really only a drop in the bucket for a company that has $3 trillion
in assets, including $667 billion in mortgage-related securities
alone.
In a separate piece inside, the NYT points out that this new plan
"raises about as many questions as it answers," particularly if it's
seen as a model for an industrywide rescue. How does the
government decide which assets to include? How would
potential losses be calculated? Has it even considered all the
assets that could lead to losses in the future? Even if this helps
the market as a whole, there's no guarantee that it will pervent
problems in financial institutions further down the road.
It's unclear how influential President-elect Barack Obama's pick
for Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, was in the weekend's
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
negotiations. The WP and LAT both say that as president of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Geithner was involved and
kept Obama updated. The NYT agrees Geithner was critical to
the negotiations on Friday, but says he backed away a bit after
news began circulating that he would be appointed.
The WP adds a little historical gem by pointing out that Citi's
origins can be traced back to a firm called First National City
Bank that, in the 1920s, repackaged and sold bad loans from
Latin America and billed them as safe securities. After the
scheme collapsed, it became Citibank. Decades later,
repackaging bad loans as safe securities is at least part of the
reason why Citigroup is suffering so much heartache. Curious
about how Citigroup got into the predicament it's in today? If so,
be sure to read yesterday's detailed NYT piece that explains how
the company went from being worth $244 billion two years ago
to $20.5 billion today. The story is particularly interesting,
considering that Robert Rubin, Treasury secretary under
President Clinton and an economic adviser in Obama's transition
team, plays a starring role in the saga.
Speaking of Rubin, the NYT takes a look at how Obama is
creating "a virtual Rubin constellation" in his economic team.
Obama's three top economic advisers "are past protégés" of
Rubin, who also has ties to other members of the presidentelect's transition team. But even though the three advisers once
shared Rubin's formula of favoring balanced budgets, free trade,
and financial deregulation that was so popular in the 1990s, they
all recognize that times have changed. They're now following
Obama as he promises to increase regulation and plans to take
the country deeper into debt.
While the WP says the next fiscal stimulus package could
involve as much as $700 billion, the real number could prove to
be even greater. The LAT says "congressional allies" are talking
about a program that could total as much as $900 billion of new
spending and tax cuts. Whatever the exact number may be,
everyone says Democrats in Congress want to pass legislation at
the beginning of the new year so Obama can sign the new
stimulus package quickly. Besides the obvious point that such
huge amounts of spending will dramatically increase the national
debt, there's also concern that it could prove too much stimulus,
which would create massive inflation once the economy
recovers. But many seem to agree the real risk is doing not
enough rather than too much.
The WSJ also notes Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is
considering asking for the second half of the $700 billion bailout
package to implement new programs, which would mark a
reversal from what he said last week. Paulson apparently would
use the funds to make it easier for households to borrow money
and to reduce foreclosures.
The WP takes a look at how the Federal Reserve has been
playing a relatively quiet role in the crisis. Even as the
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Treasury's every move is analyzed and debated, the Fed has lent
$893 billion to a variety of institutions that are having trouble
getting a hold of cash to continue operating. In some ways, it's
carrying out the original goal of the TARP program by allowing
financial institutions to put up troubled assets as collateral for
the loans. But it's doing it all out of public view, as the Fed is
refusing to reveal not only which companies are asking for
money but what collateral they pledged. The Fed insists this type
of secrecy is necessary to avoid creating a stigma for the firms
that ask to borrow money, which would make the program much
less effective, because companies would be reluctant to seek the
central bank's help.
In other news, the LAT takes a look at how there's growing
concern in Iraq that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is setting
himself up to become "a benevolent Shiite Saddam." Once
dismissed as a weak leader without real power, Maliki has been
able to navigate his relationship with the United States and
stands to gain if the security agreement is approved this week as
expected. He would then officially become the man who brought
an end to U.S. occupation, which could help him consolidate
power in January's provincial elections. Supporters dismiss the
suggestion that Maliki could become a dictator but say that Iraq
needs strong leadership in order to move forward. "In some
ways, we are seeing a return to traditional Iraqi political culture,
where authority is centralized in the person of the leader in
Baghdad," a U.S. official said.
The NYT points out that after preaching to his 20,000-member
congregation that they should strengthen their marriages through
Seven Days of Sex, the Rev. Ed Young told the couples
yesterday to keep going. "We should try to double up the amount
of intimacy we have in marriage," Young said. "And when I say
intimacy, I don't mean holding hands in the park or a back rub."
Young insists this is not a publicity gimmick but rather a simple
way to feel closer to a spouse and to God. "If you've said, 'I do,'
do it," he said. What about singles? "I don't know, try eating
chocolate cake."
today's papers
Barack the Builder
By David Sessions
Sunday, November 23, 2008, at 4:23 AM ET
The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times
all lead with President-elect Barack Obama's announcement
Saturday of a sweeping stimulus plan designed to create 2.5
million jobs by spending billions on infrastructure, education,
and alternative energy. The plan is more expansive than
anything Obama proposed during his campaign and eclipses the
last stimulus proposal attempted by President Clinton in 1996.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Front page and A-section stories also analyze Obama's
relationship with Hillary Clinton, who is all but guaranteed to
become his secretary of state.
The LAT sees Obama's two-year job proposal as "the latest
indication that the president-elect has decided to use the
transition period to influence events at a time of crisis, when the
current administration appears powerless to stop a slide." All
three papers highlight the fact that Obama's new plan is more
aggressive and expensive than the one he proposed during the
campaign, though the WP notes that Obama's address was vague
on specifics and price tags. (The Post also projects that the
package will cost "well over" $200 billion, which would be
"bold" compared to previous presidents' similar plans.) The NYT
and WP both consider the possibility that Republicans could
block such an ambitious deficit-spending measure.
The papers all report that Obama is considering allowing the
Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010, rather than roll them back
immediately. To do so would be to renege on a campaign
promise, the NYT notes, but it's also a no-brainer considering
how the economic crisis has brought bipartisan agreement that
the government should be pulling out all the stops to spur
economic growth. Obama has scheduled a Monday press
conference to introduce his economic advisers. The team will be
led by Timothy Geithner, currently the president of the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York, who Obama has selected for
treasury secretary.
The NYT fronts a story about the "strategic courtship" between
Obama and Hillary Clinton, who reportedly agreed to be
Obama's secretary of state late Friday. Their relationship first
thawed, the soft-lede anecdote suggests, when Clinton gave a
passionate speech asking voters to support Obama—a move that
caused Obama's senior aides to give her a standing ovation.
Democrats close to the senators say the two got past their bitter
campaign fight long before their party did, and Clinton's tireless
work on the campaign trail has proved her loyalty. The story's
final paragraph reports Clinton has also spoken to Michelle
Obama several times recently about raising a family in the White
House.
The WP reports nervousness in the Arab world that Clinton, the
"most reliably pro-Israel" contender for secretary of state, will
continue what they see as a lack of balance in the United States'
refereeing of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Clinton has made
hawkish statements against Iran and has always spoken
favorably of Israel, though supported the creation of a
Palestinian state in 1998. Democratic senator Evan Bayh says
Clinton is, above all, a "pragmatist" who will be most interested
in a workable solution to Middle East conflicts.
The LAT fronts the post-election ire "liberal Hollywood" is
feeling for supporters of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that
banned same-sex marriage in California. Activists "continue to
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comb donor lists and employ the Internet to expose those who
donated money to support the ban." Prominent artists and
companies have been "outed" by activists, including California
Musical Theater director Scott Eckern, the Mormon director of
the company that puts on the L.A. Film Festival, and the
Cinemark theater company. A lone gay rights supporter in the
story expresses reluctance at the notion of firing someone for
their beliefs.
A profile of Michael Eisner in the NYT finds the ex-Disney chief
"much happier" outside of the company he led until the "bitter,
public fight" that ended his tenure. Eisner now hosts a talk show
on CNBC and dabbles successfully in new media ventures that
include a video site and a video production company.
An NYT review describes Guns N' Roses' first album in 17 years
as "outsize, lavish, obsessive, technologically advanced and, all
too clearly, the end of an era." Chinese Democracy, which
features front man Axl Rose as the only original member,
belatedly comments on eras that passed while his band was off
the stage, from Metallica to Nine Inch Nails to U2. Full of
Rose's famous indulgence, the record is a "letdown" that "leaves
his worst impulses unchecked."
A pair of reviews in the WP "Book World" section ponders the
stunning achievement that is the modernization of the Hebrew
language. Hebrew has developed a "new vibrancy" in less than a
century, but is now, one author argues, "messy, boisterous, even
chaotic."
The WP "Style" section previews tomorrow night's two-hour
"prequel" of the 24 season that begins in January, in which ironfisted counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer has moved on to
humanitarian missions. The show still looks to be packed with
sometimes-gruesome action, but has clearly entered a new, postBush administration paradigm: "Torture has been discredited and
abandoned as official policy. 24 seems to have gotten that
memo."
today's papers
Filling Up the Cabinet
By Ben Whitford
Saturday, November 22, 2008, at 5:34 AM ET
Transition is in the air: the Wall Street Journal, the Washington
Post and the Los Angeles Times all lead with reports that Barack
Obama, under pressure to fill a perceived leadership vacuum in
the face of the global financial crisis, is to appoint Timothy
Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York, as his treasury secretary. Obama's pick of a technocrat
with a background in crisis management was welcomed by Wall
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Street: After reports of Geithner's selection, the Dow rallied in
the final hour of trading to end up almost 500 points in a strong
finish to an otherwise wretched week.
Today's other big story also comes courtesy of the Obama
transition team: The New York Times leads, and the Post and
LAT off-lead, reports that Hillary Clinton now seems likely to
accept a job as Obama's secretary of state. Leaks suggest that the
Obama camp is now confident that Clinton's nomination will not
present any conflicts of interest and that—according to Clinton
"confidants"—the New York senator is now willing to give up
her seat and join Obama's star-studded Cabinet.
In the absence of action from Congress or the White House,
Obama's rapid selection of Geithner as treasury secretary
appeared intended to reassure jittery investors and provide a
sense of direction. In that sense, analysts tell the NYT, the speed
of the decision mattered more than the specific merits of the man
Obama tapped to run the Treasury. "The most important thing
for the market and for the economy is that these decisions are
made and uncertainty is removed," noted one relieved investor.
Still, there's a broad consensus that Geithner has the chops for
the job. He's something of a crisis-management specialist,
having worked in the 1990s on bailouts of Mexico, South Korea,
and Indonesia. More recently, he was an early critic of the
arcane financial instruments at the heart of the current crisis, and
worked closely with current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on the Bear Stearns and AIG
bailouts, as well as on the controversial decision to hang Lehman
Bros. out to dry.
An IMF alumnus who once worked for Henry Kissinger,
Geithner doesn't have close ties to Obama and is seen as
politically independent. His appointment was welcomed by
conservatives, and viewed with slight concern by some union
leaders. Still, Geithner is perceived as the product of Clinton-era
economic centrism, having worked closely with Clinton-era
Treasury Secretaries (and Obama economic advisers) Lawrence
Summers and Robert Rubin.
The NYT notes that Rubin protégés are likely to dominate the
Obama economic team, which is expected to be rolled out in full
on Monday: Rubin ally Peter Orszag is expected to become
budget director, while Clinton-era budget director Jacob Lew is
likely to head up the White House's National Economic Council.
Summers—once seen as a front-runner for the Treasury job —is
likely to stay on as a senior White House adviser, perhaps
foreshadowing a promotion to chairman of the Federal Reserve
when Bernanke's term ends in 2010, while Gov. Bill Richardson
will become commerce secretary.
Obama is also moving to pin down the details of his security and
diplomatic team —and it's looking increasingly likely that
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former rival Hillary Clinton will head up the State Department,
becoming Obama's public face on the international stage. The
pair spoke by telephone Thursday, reports the NYT. Obama
reportedly assuaged Clinton's lingering concerns about access
and personnel, leaving her inclined to accept the position. A
Clinton spokesman said discussions remain "very much on
track," although a formal announcement isn't expected until
sometime after Thanksgiving.
The WSJ eyes the diplomatic problems Clinton would face in her
likely new role; in an editorial, the paper calls Clinton's
nomination "a clever, interesting choice", but says Obama's team
of rivals could prove more trouble than it's worth. The Post notes
dryly that installing Clinton at Foggy Bottom suggests the
president-elect has "a tolerance for drama," but argues that the
pick also speaks to his confidence and his determination to
assemble an experienced, smart, and pragmatic group of
advisers. The NYT argues that the appointment—along with
Geithner's appointment to the Treasury and former NATO
commander James Jones' likely selection as national security
adviser—suggests that Obama will be a pragmatic, center-right
president. "This is the violin model: Hold power with the left
hand, and play the music with your right," notes one former
Clinton official.
In other news, things are looking bleak for General Motors: The
WSJ fronts word that some members of the company's board
would be willing to consider filing for bankruptcy, a measure
opposed by the automaker's chief executive. The NYT turns its
attention to the Chevrolet Volt, which GM is currently touting as
evidence that a federal bailout would be a sound investment: The
plug-in hybrid is scheduled to hit showrooms in 2010, but some
industry analysts say the expected $40,000 price tag means the
vehicle will have only a niche appeal.
And finally … could piracy on the high seas help to rehabilitate
neoconservatism? In an essay for the WSJ, historian Michael
Oren compares the pirates currently wreaking havoc off the
Somali coast to the Barbary buccaneers who attacked American
merchants two centuries ago, and concludes that only U.S.
military might can restore order to the world's shipping routes.
"Addressing the threat of Somali pirates must be made a national
priority while there is still time," he writes. "Much like
terrorism, piracy, unless uprooted, will mushroom."
today's papers
Economy Crashes, Washington
Watches
By Daniel Politi
Friday, November 21, 2008, at 6:20 AM ET
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and
Wall Street Journal lead with yet another horrible day for stocks
that sent one clear message: Investors are freaked out. Another
grim milestone was reached yesterday as the broad Standard &
Poor's 500-stock index plunged 6.7 percent and reached its
lowest level since 1997. The NYT puts it in context and reminds
readers that 1997 was "before the dot-com boom, the Nasdaq
market bust and the ensuing bull market that drove stocks to
record heights." The WP highlights that this latest downward
spiral comes after a few weeks when it looked like things could
get better, but now there are fears that the recession will be
longer and deeper "than even many pessimists had expected."
The LAT points out that those who followed the all-too-common
advice of not selling when the market is down have continued to
lose money at a terrifying rate, and now many are throwing up
their hands and giving up before they lose more.
USA Today leads with a look at how states are being forced to
impose higher taxes on employers and reduce benefits as the
number of people filing for unemployment has reached a 16-year
high. Funds to pay for these benefits were down in 32 states
compared with last year. Yesterday, Congress passed an
extension of unemployment benefits after it became clear the
White House would support such a measure.
The S&P 500 is down 52 percent from its high reached a little
more than a year ago, which marks the "sharpest decline since
the Great Depression," notes the LAT. The WSJ points out that if
the index were to finish the year with yesterday's numbers, it
would mark "the worst annual percentage drop in its 80-year
history." The Dow Jones industrial average is a bit more
insulated from financial stocks, so it didn't plunge as far, but it
still fell 5.56 percent to close at its lowest level since March
2003. The credit markets continued to suffer a thrashing as
investors ran as far away as possible from corporate and
mortgage bonds. Investors continued to seek safety in the warm
embrace of ultra-safe U.S. government securities. Demand for
short-term Treasury bonds was so high that investors were, once
again, essentially paying the government to hold onto their
money, and the LAT notes that the yield on two-year Treasury
notes fell below 1 percent for the first time. Commodity prices
responded in kind, and crude oil closed below $50 a barrel for
the first time since 2005.
There was some fresh grim economic data yesterday, including
news that weekly unemployment claims reached a 16-year high.
But as the WP highlights, "[T]he misery on the financial markets
had no single cause." Investors are quite simply in full panic
mode because they don't know when the pain is going to stop,
and many have decided it's better to just watch from the sidelines
rather than see their entire wealth disappear. "We'll have a whole
generation of people whose retirement plans have been wiped
out," one expert tells the LAT, which points out economists are
worried that the market losses have been so great that it virtually
assures a long and painful recession is ahead. As people see their
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nest eggs disappear, they're likely to cut back on spending and
fuel the vicious cycle.
Investors are also panicking because of the uncertainty of how
much the government can do to solve the problem. The WSJ
points out that since the government decided to pump money
into nine major financial companies, their stocks plunged an
average of 46 percent. There's no better example than banking
giant Citigroup, which received $25 billion from the government
last month but saw its stocks plunge 26 percent yesterday, its
worst one-day percentage decline ever. Citigroup shares have
lost half their value this week, and its board of directors will
have a meeting today to discuss the company's condition.
Executives are apparently considering auctioning off pieces of
its business or perhaps even just selling the whole company,
notes the WSJ in a separate front-page piece.
Most important of all, though, investors are wondering: Who's in
charge here? As markets plummet, unemployment increases, and
those close to retirement wonder how they'll make ends meet
during their golden years, lawmakers in Washington spent the
day bidding farewell to the longest-serving Republican senator,
and Democrats devoted time to an intraparty leadership scuffle.
At the same time, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson basically
implied a few days ago that further action would have to wait
until President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. Yes, it's
transition time, but apparently no one got the memo that a
financial crisis can't be put on hold until all the pieces of the new
administration and Congress are in place.
Things are developing much more rapidly than anyone thought
possible. As a separate front-page piece by the NYT's Floyd
Norris points out, in late October the Federal Reserve thought
the unemployment rate could rise to as high as 6.5 percent this
year, and a few days later it turned out that rate had already been
reached. And think about everything that has happened since
Lehman Bros. collapsed. Now, investors are looking to
Washington for answers, and all they get back is a message to
wait. The NYT's Norris says that "Obama may have missed an
opportunity to exert leadership" when he resigned from the
Senate so soon after winning the presidency.
The NYT's Paul Krugman takes up this issue and points out that
"the emergence of a power vacuum at the height of the crisis" is
one disturbing way in which 2008 is starting to look like 1932.
Although the deterioration of the economy appears to be picking
up speed, "economic policy, rather than responding to the threat,
seems to have gone on vacation."
That's not to say everything that has been going on in Congress
has been insignificant. The LAT and NYT front news that House
Democrats ousted Michigan Rep. John Dingell from the
chairmanship of the House energy and commerce committee and
installed Rep. Henry Waxman of California. Dingell is the
longest-serving member in the House, and removing him from
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
his favored post after an intense two-week campaign by
Waxman was highly unusual for a place that usually values
seniority above all. The news was a clear blow to Detroit's Big
Three, as Dingell was a reliable ally who has long been
criticized for blocking regulatory efforts. Having Waxman at the
head of such a critical committee will in all likelihood make it
easier for Obama to get his energy agenda through Congress.
Speaking of seniority, one of the reasons that Sen. Hillary
Clinton is allegedly interested in leading the State Department
under Obama is frustration at her relatively junior status in the
Senate. But Democratic leaders may be trying to work around
that, notes the NYT. Senate leaders are apparently ready to give
the former first lady some sort of leadership role in the Senate,
which is part of the reason why she hasn't decided whether she
will, in fact, join the Cabinet. An Obama adviser said that
Clinton's nomination is "on track" and that the announcement is
expected after Thanksgiving. Still, the Senate majority leader is
apparently looking for a leadership position that Clinton could
take on in the Senate that would have enough stature to appeal to
the former first lady.
The NYT is alone in fronting news that for the first time a federal
judge ordered the release of a group of prisoners from
Guantanamo. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said five
Algerian detainees have been held illegally for seven years
because the government's evidence in the case was extremely
weak. The judge did rule that one other Algerian prisoner
shouldn't be released because the government presented enough
evidence that he worked for al-Qaida. Leon urged the men be
released "forthwith" and also said the government should "end
this process" and not appeal the decision. "Seven years of
waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to a
question so important is, in my judgment, more than plenty," he
said.
Nobody fronts the results of an internal CIA inquiry that
revealed the agency purposefully misled Congress and
investigators during inquiries relating to the 2001 shooting of an
airplane carrying American missionaries in Peru. One of the
missionaries and her 7-month-old daughter were killed. While at
the time the CIA insisted it was one mistake in an otherwise
successful anti-narcotics program, the new report reveals that the
agency repeatedly failed to make sure that sufficient care was
taken to identify and warn the planes before calling on Peruvian
fighter pilots to shoot down the target.
Remember that WP story from earlier this month about Eugene
Allen, the African-American butler who worked at the White
House for 34 years? Sony Pictures plans to turn it into a movie.
In a Page One piece, the NYT looks into how superstar Angelina
Jolie has been able to shape her public image like few other
celebrities. She has been able to successfully change from one of
Hollywood's wildest figures into someone who focuses on
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charity work and her family, all through a cunning ability to
control her image and demand certain concessions from the
media that can't get enough of her. Jolie now "expertly walks a
line between known entity and complete mystery," notes the
NYT. And most impressively of all, she doesn't do it through
huge teams of publicists that are so common in Hollywood.
Although Jolie does rely on a longtime manager, not to mention
her partner, Brad Pitt, the "keys to her public image belong to
her alone."
today's papers
Panic Grips Wall Street
By Daniel Politi
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 7:09 AM ET
The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Wall
Street Journal lead with yet another terrible, horrible, no good,
very bad day at the stock market. The Dow Jones industrial
average plunged 5.1 percent and closed below the 8,000 mark
for the first time since March 2003. The market is now down
43.5 percent from a high point hit a little more than a year ago.
USAT notes that the market has "wiped out nearly $10 trillion in
wealth since the October 2007 peak," and the WSJ highlights
that the recent plunges have nearly wiped out "all the gains from
the last bull market, which lasted from October 2002 to October
2007." Optimists who had hoped the market had nowhere to go
but up after the lows of last month were hit with a cold dose of
reality by a string of grim economic news that made it clear the
pain is far from over.
The Los Angeles Times gives big play to the stock market woes
but leads with news that the California Supreme Court has
agreed to review legal challenges to Proposition 8, the voter
initiative that banned same-sex couples from getting married in
the state. The court's move suggests that it wants to resolve all
issues relating to marriage between two people of the same sex
in one ruling. The court refused to allow the marriages to
continue until a decision has been made, but legal experts warn
this shouldn't be read as a sign that the court is ready to uphold
the ban.
Investors looking for reasons to be anxious about the economy's
future didn't have to look far. The leaders of Detroit's Big Three
were grilled for a second day by skeptical lawmakers who made
it pretty clear the U.S. auto industry shouldn't be expecting a
bailout. The Federal Reserve's leaders warned that they expect
the economy to be in a recession through the middle of next
year, if not longer; new data showed that builders started fewer
homes last month, marking the fourth straight month of declines
to reach the lowest level in at least the 49 years since the
government has kept track. And those weren't the only data to
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
reach a record. Perhaps most worrying of all, the Consumer
Price Index fell 1 percent in October, its biggest one-month drop
in the index's 61-year history.
While the average consumer is likely to welcome a decrease in
prices, the decrease can be disastrous for an economy and has
brought back the much-talked-about fears of deflation, a
prolonged period of falling prices. The NYT focuses on
deflation—"an economists' nightmare"—in its lead story, while
the WSJ devotes a separate front-page story to the issue.
Deflation was "a hallmark of the Depression and Japan's socalled lost decade," notes the NYT. Everyone still thinks the
chances of deflation are extremely slim but the fact that it's even
a concern ramps up the pressure on President-elect Barack
Obama and lawmakers to pass a new fiscal stimulus package.
"Whatever I thought that risk was four or five months ago, I
think it's bigger now, even if it is still small," Fed Vice Chairman
Donald Kohn said. Even talking about deflation now marks an
amazing turn of events considering that this summer the big
concern was inflation and many economists openly worried
about the prospects of stagflation, the simultaneous increase of
inflation and unemployment.
The only reason people aren't more freaked out at the recordbreaking price decline is that it was mainly due to falling energy
prices, which is good for consumers and is generally seen as a
bad indicator of long-term trends. Excluding energy and food,
prices fell 0.1 percent in October, which is far more modest but
hardly insignificant since, as the WSJ notes, it marked the first
decline since 1982. The WP points out that broadly speaking,
economists worry that "businesses are losing any ability to set
prices because demand for their goods has dried up." Due to all
the depressing economic news, more consumers are choosing to
play it safe and save what they have. Or as one economist
succinctly puts it: "People are scared to death." The LAT points
out that this decline in spending suggests that the only way the
economy will get a boost is through increased government
spending. Indeed, the NYT points to a number of statistics that
make it seem "clear that the nation is entering a more frugal era
after several years of conspicuous consumption."
The nervousness over the economy's future could clearly be seen
in the markets, where, as the WSJ points out, investors seem
once again to be willing to accept nearly no returns in order to
sink their money into the safe haven of short-term Treasury bills.
The pain wasn't isolated in stocks. The WSJ highlights that by
some measures, "bonds were hit harder than stocks." The WP
points out that this anxiety in the bond markets makes it difficult
for companies to raise money.
In the WSJ's op-ed page, Andy Kessler says that while investors
are taught that they should listen to the stock market, right now
you should "stick wax in your ears and don't listen to the market
until February." When it's working properly, the market can be a
good indicator of the economy as a whole, but due to the credit
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crisis, Kessler is "convinced the stock market is at its least
efficient today," and investors shouldn't read too much into the
declines that are sure to come in the next two months.
While investors have lost trillions in the stock market over the
past year, many top officials at companies that are at the heart of
the current crisis managed to make a pretty penny over the past
five years, reveals a WSJ analysis. Fifteen leaders of large homebuilding and financial firms made more than $100 million in that
time period, for example. Among the 15 are the heads of
Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns. This is hardly a new
phenomenon as periods of economic booms usually translate
into astronomical paychecks for those who participated in the
bubble. During the technology bubble of the late 1990s, more
than 50 people made more than $100 million right before the
crash.
The LAT and NYT front, and everyone mentions, the latest news
from the presidential transition. President-elect Obama has
decided to nominate Tom Daschle, the former Senate
Democratic leader, as secretary of Health and Human Services.
Everyone sees the nomination as a sign that Obama plans to
aggressively tackle health care since Daschle is an experienced
legislator who wrote a book about the issue. Apparently, Daschle
made it clear he would only accept the Cabinet position if
Obama also named him the administration's point man to
develop a health care plan. "Being a Cabinet secretary is a car
and driver and you get to go to the head of the line at the airport,
unless you're Defense or State," a Daschle associate tells the WP.
"This was key for Tom to have that White House connection." In
other transition news, Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona appears
to be Obama's choice to become homeland security secretary.
Daschle's selection not only provides another example of how
Obama is filling his administration with Washington veterans,
but also promises to test his strict ethics rules. Daschle's wife is a
registered lobbyist whose list of clients might provide conflicts
of interest for her husband, but her focus is in the aerospace and
military industries. And, as the NYT details in a piece inside,
Daschle himself is also open to examination. Since leaving the
Senate, Daschle has been a board member of the Mayo Clinic as
well as an adviser to a law and lobbying firm. Although this
might not prevent his appointment, Daschle might have to recuse
himself from issues that relate to his former employers, "a
potentially broad swatch of the health secretary's portfolio," says
the NYT, which notes the lobbying firm has dozens of health
care industry clients, including pharmaceutical companies and
health care providers.
The LAT fronts an interesting interview with a senior officer,
"Zimbabwe's version of the KGB: the Central Intelligence
Organization." The meeting between journalist and spy, which
was carried out in the utmost secrecy, reveals how a group of
people who could once be counted on to be the most loyal to the
president have become disenchanted. The senior officer
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
estimates that 60 percent to 70 percent of CIO officers no longer
back President Robert Mugabe. "That the dark heart of Mugabe's
web of fear is abandoning him underscores how tenuous his grip
on power has become," writes the LAT's Robyn Dixon.
In the WP's op-ed page, Slate founder Michael Kinsley writes
that Americans may have just elected a president who is part of
the one group that suffers from socially sanctioned
discrimination in the United States: smokers. Although Obama
claims to have quit smoking, "the evidence is ambiguous."
Regardless, if he hasn't quit, "we should forgive him" because
his "good habits outweigh his single bad one." And perhaps his
failure to quit is part of the reason why he's been able to
maintain his now-famous calm demeanor. "If he needs an
occasional cigarette to preserve it," writes Kinsley, "let's hand
him an ashtray, offer him a light and look the other way."
war stories
Beware Rumsfeld's Snow Job
The former defense secretary's revisionist op-ed.
By Fred Kaplan
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 5:55 PM ET
Donald Rumsfeld is writing his memoirs, and if his op-ed in the
Nov. 23 New York Times is any preview, it should be a classic of
self-serving revisionism.
On the surface, the former defense secretary's piece seems to be
a warning—sound, if unoriginal—that merely sending more
troops to Afghanistan won't fix that country's problems or win
the war.
But his real intent is clearly to justify his own policies on the war
in Iraq, to refute the (properly) widespread idea that he
committed serious errors, and even more to deny that he held the
views that he actually did hold.
The first eyebrow-raiser comes in the second paragraph, in
which he writes, almost in passing, "As one who is
occasionally—and incorrectly—portrayed as an opponent of the
surge in Iraq. …"
Let's stop right there.
From beginning to end—from the preparations for the invasion
in the summer and fall of 2002 until his (forced) resignation was
announced in November 2006—Rumsfeld consistently opposed
all proposals to send more troops to Iraq.
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The quarrels between Rumsfeld and the generals over how many
troops to send at the outset of the war have been welldocumented. It turned out that Rumsfeld was right about how
few troops would be needed to overthrow Saddam Hussein—and
very wrong about how many would be needed to impose order
afterward.
That is to say, he understood (as many of the Army's senior
officers did not) that the new GPS-guided "smart bombs"—
which could destroy enemy tanks and troop formations from the
air with extreme accuracy—meant that massive artillery units,
with their heavy weapons and long logistical lines, were no
longer necessary. However, he did not understand (as those
officers did) that when it comes to postwar "stability operations,"
the key ingredient is boots on the ground—and lots of them.
Rumsfeld saw the Iraq war primarily as a showcase for a new
style of warfare known as "military transformation"—the idea
that, in the post-Cold War world, America could project power
and topple rogue regimes with a small number of troops (backed
by high-tech air forces) and that, therefore, we could do so
repeatedly, anytime, anywhere, at low cost and with little effort.
The Pentagon laid out no official plans for post-Saddam Iraq
because Rumsfeld wasn't interested in the subject. To him, Iraq
wasn't what the war was about.
He felt confident in his views because of the lightning victory in
Afghanistan, where a very small contingent of Special
Operations forces, backed by smart bombs and indigenous
guerrilla fighters, ousted the Taliban regime from Kabul in a
matter of weeks—much more rapidly than the year or two that
many Army generals guessed it would take. But Rumsfeld erred
here, too. He thought that the war was over when Kabul fell and
the Taliban retreated. At that point, according to Sean Naylor's
excellent book Not a Good Day To Die, he issued orders that no
more ground forces could be deployed to Afghanistan—not even
an individual soldier or Marine, much less a battalion or
brigade—without his explicit approval. It was a few months after
this decision that U.S. forces fought their toughest battle, in
Operation Anaconda (made all the tougher because they were so
short on troops), and when Osama Bin Laden escaped into the
mountains.
In his memoirs, Rumsfeld will no doubt reprint a memo that he
wrote in November 2006 in which he supported the surge in
Iraq. (A former official who took part in these deliberations tells
me that such a memo does exist.) However, it is worth noting
that he wrote the memo after the midterm elections—that is,
after President George W. Bush forced him to resign. The policy
was moving in the direction of a surge and Bush was about to
sign on, so Rumsfeld went there, too. This isn't necessarily a
cynical interpretation; he may have supported the surge not so
much to give the appearance that he was on "the right side" as
simply to support the president's policy. In any case, two points
should be kept in mind: He did so without enthusiasm, and the
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
policy went totally against the spirit and substance of his
positions up until then.
Later in the Times op-ed, Rumsfeld argues that the surge was a
matter of timing—that had he sent more troops sooner, they
would not have accomplished anything. The implication is that
Rumsfeld was right when he decided not to send more troops—
and he was right toward the end, when he had no choice and
signed on.
Rumsfeld notes that the surge improved Iraq's security only
because it coincided with other developments. These included
the "Anbar Awakening," in which Sunni insurgents formed
alliances with U.S. troops against the larger enemy of al-Qaida
in Iraq; the improvement of Iraq's own security forces; and the
cease-fire called by Shiite militia leader Muqtada Sadr. The
surge wouldn't have worked earlier, he writes, "because large
segments of the Sunni population were still providing sanctuary
to insurgents, and Iraq's security forces were not sufficiently
capable or large enough."
He's right, but the real meaning of what he's saying—though he
wouldn't put it so starkly—is that an earlier surge wouldn't have
had much effect because the U.S. military (i.e., Secretary
Rumsfeld) had no counterinsurgency strategy to go with it. In
fact, until very late in the game, Rumsfeld refused even to call
the enemy "insurgents"—because if he did, he would have had
to mount a counterinsurgency strategy, which would have
required more troops, and he had no interest in that.
A few field officers pursued a strategy on their own, to the
extent they could. Early in the occupation, David Petraeus, who
was then a lieutenant general commanding the 101st Airborne
Division, carried out such a strategy in Mosul, facilitated in large
part by a huge stash of Saddam's cash, which Petraeus and other
commanders were permitted to spend on restoring basic services
and paying off tribal leaders who cooperated. (When the money
ran out, Mosul started to fall apart.) H.R. McMaster, who was
then a colonel commanding the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment,
ran a similar, more comprehensive strategy in Tal Afar.
The problem was not that Iraq wasn't ready for a surge before
2007; it was that Rumsfeld and his top generals at the time
weren't doing anything that might make Iraq ready. They were
very slow and unimaginative at training the Iraqi army. And they
had no ideas about how to convince the Sunnis to stop sheltering
insurgents, besides banging down doors and shooting people
without thinking first—a practice that created more insurgents
than it killed.
Another misleading claim in Rumsfeld's op-ed: "During my last
weeks in office, I recommended to President Bush that he
consider Gen. David Petraeus as commander of coalition forces
in Iraq."
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This may be true. Again, Rumsfeld has no doubt rustled up a
memo in which he said just that. However, note that he writes
that he made this recommendation "during my last weeks in
office." He left the job, and Robert Gates took his place, on Dec.
18, 2006. The timing is unclear, but it may well be that by the
time Rumsfeld "recommended" him, Petraeus was already the
all-but-certain pick.
One thing is clear: In November, just a month earlier, in one of
his final official acts, Rumsfeld blocked Bush's chief of staff
Josh Bolten from appointing Petraeus to chair a White House
review of Iraq policy. "Rumsfeld loathed Petraeus," one officer
who worked high up in the Pentagon at the time recalled in a
phone conversation this week.
Is Rumsfeld lying in this op-ed? No. He did support the surge—
after (or perhaps just before) Bush put it in motion and after
firmly opposing anything like it for the previous three years. He
did recommend Petraeus to be commander of multinational
forces in Iraq—after the appointment was in the cards and after
blocking him from a crucial position on Iraq a few weeks earlier.
During his six years as defense secretary, Rumsfeld famously
wrote hundreds, maybe thousands, of memos to subordinates—
they fell so rapidly from on high that his aides called them
"snowflakes." According to several officials, many of these
snowflakes contradicted one another; he seemed to be staking
out several positions on key issues so that he could later claim
that he'd taken the right side. In his forthcoming memoirs, he
will no doubt quote chapter and verse from just the right
snowflakes. Readers, be forewarned—he's blotting out the full
storm.
war stories
Serious People
A guide to Obama's national-security transition team.
By Fred Kaplan
Tuesday, November 25, 2008, at 6:14 PM ET
Looking over the list of top players on President-elect Barack
Obama's transition team, one gets the sense that serious people
are coming back to power. On the national-security team in
particular, they're professional, thoughtful, cognizant of the
world's complexities, engaged with cutting-edge ideas but not
dogmatic about them. This may not sound exciting, but those
who think it doesn't constitute "change" haven't paid enough
attention to these last eight years of Jacobin zeal and blundering.
Let's look at a few of these players:
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Sarah Sewall, director of Harvard University's Carr Center for
Human Rights Policy and deputy assistant secretary of defense
for peacekeeping during the Clinton administration, was a
member of the panel that Gen. David Petraeus assembled a few
years ago to write the U.S. Army's field manual on
counterinsurgency. She also wrote an insightful foreword to the
book version of the manual (published by the University of
Chicago Press), in which she grasped the truly radical nature of
the strategy, the overhaul in tactics, training, and weapons
procurement that its full adoption would require, yet also the
risks that it entails—the danger of becoming enmeshed in
endless, unnecessary wars—and the still greater demands that it
places on informed civilian control.
Michèle Flournoy, another former deputy assistant secretary of
defense during the Clinton administration, is president of the
Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank
that in its mere two years of existence has emerged as a magnet
for innovative strategic thinkers. When John Nagl and Nathaniel
Fick, two of the military's most creative officers, quit the Army
and the Marines, respectively, they came to CNAS—not
Brookings, as might have been the case a decade ago—or, more
to the point, CNAS reached out to them. Richard Danzig, a
member of the center's board, is said to be a strong candidate for
Obama's secretary of defense (or deputy secretary if Robert
Gates is asked to stay on for a while). Flournoy's papers on the
Iraq war call for gradual troop withdrawals and a policy of
"conditional engagement," in which the United States agrees to
maintain any troop presence only if the Iraqis hammer out their
political differences. This may seem tepid in light of the current
debate over the Status of Forces Agreement—which will almost
certainly demand a total U.S. pullout by 2011—but at least her
views are grounded in an understanding of war as a political
instrument with, in Iraq's case, a goal of stability, not some
utopian dream.
Wendy Sherman, a former assistant secretary of state, played a
big role in negotiating the nuclear accord with North Korea
toward the end of the Clinton years. The accord had its
imperfections (it was called an "Agreed Framework," which is to
say, it was meant to have a sequel, which Clinton lacked the
time to complete and George W. Bush lacked the slightest
interest in so much as beginning). But it did keep the Yongbyon
nuclear reactor's fuel rods locked up and thus kept Kim Jong-il
from building an A-bomb. (Bush's moralistic refusal to hold
talks left Kim an opening to do just that.)
.
Rand Beers, a counterterrorism specialist in the National
Security Council under Presidents Clinton and George H.W.
Bush, resigned in protest during George W. Bush's
administration, stating that the latter's policies—particularly the
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war in Iraq—strengthened al-Qaida and exacerbated the threat to
America.
.
Clark Kent Ervin used to be inspector general in the
Department of Homeland Security, until he was canned by
George W. Bush after complaining about incompetence in the
department's intelligence-gathering divisions.
Judith "Jami" Miscik was a longtime analyst at the Central
Intelligence Agency—rising, in 2002, to be the agency's deputy
director for intelligence—who resigned in 2005, along with
many career veterans, during the short-lived, scapegoat-hunting
tenure of Porter Goss. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq,
Miscik came under sustained pressure from the White House—
especially from aides to Vice President Dick Cheney—to find
links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. According to Ron
Suskind's book The One Percent Doctrine, Miscik came back
from one such meeting "shaking with rage" and telling thenDirector George Tenet that she would not put up with any more
pressure. (Tenet backed her up, at least for a while.)
In other words, the appointments of Beers, Ervin, and Miscik in
particular send a signal that Obama may be more willing to hear,
and possibly heed, uncomfortable dissents from men and women
of principle. This alone is comforting news.
well-traveled
Life Classes
Changing society through culture and literature, philosophy and conversation.
By Peter Terzian
Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 6:56 AM ET
From: Peter Terzian
Subject: Learning To Take Photographs the Martin Parr Way
Posted Tuesday, November 18, 2008, at 9:00 AM ET
Martin Parr is taking a picture of my breakfast.
With an impish smile, he glides behind our chairs, leaning over
our shoulders to neatly frame pale yellow eggs, fat sausages,
grilled tomatoes, and racks of thin, evenly toasted slices of
bread. The 12 photographers gathered in the dining room of the
Northbank Hotel—eight men, four women; some professionals,
some enthusiasts—study him eagerly. We are on the Isle of
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Wight, a roughly diamond-shaped piece of land in the English
Channel, for an educational weekend with Britain's pre-eminent
documentary photographer. Occasionally Parr discusses
technique and technology with individual members of the group,
but mostly we learn by watching him. The lesson is simple:
Photograph what you love.
In Parr's case, this means traditional breakfasts, seaside resort
towns, dazed tourists, English people caught being their
unguarded English selves. Parr's photos are suffused with
nostalgia for the postwar country that he grew up in, a make-do,
working-class world of garish entertainments, greasy meals, and
unapologetically frumpy homes that he captures in brilliant,
saturated color. (Often, he adds a blast of flash in broad daylight,
making his subjects paler than usual.) At times, his pictures veer
toward the grotesque, and he has been accused of misanthropy.
His career is bigger in continental Europe than in his home
country; with Brits, he says, "I can confirm all their worst
nightmares." In a recent monograph, a critic writes that Parr's
work betrays "amused disappointment" and calls his subject "the
human effects of globalized corporate culture"; his depictions of
English food are "close to hatefulness." But on the Isle of Wight,
I detect more amusement than disappointment—he seems to be
perpetually smiling—and he tucks into a glistening rasher of
bacon, cooked on the Northbank's Aga stove, with gusto.
Our weekend with Martin Parr is one of the inaugural events of
London's new School of Life, the brainchild of Sophie Howarth,
formerly a curator of public programs at the Tate Modern.
Howarth's mentor and collaborator is writer Alain de Botton,
whose books, such as How Proust Can Change Your Life and
The Art of Travel, invented their own genre: literary self-help.
The school's courses—on such broad-stroke subjects as "Love,"
"Work," and "Family"—encourage enrollees to seek selfimprovement in the writings of Plato and Rousseau rather than
the pages of Real Simple. But the organization's brightest idea
might be its "holidays," which pair marquee-name writers,
artists, and scholars with weekend destinations that complement
their chosen trades. Howarth asked Parr to lead the school's first
holiday to the location of his choice. The quintessentially
English Isle of Wight, with its taffy-colored towns and seasonal
vacationers, was a natural fit. Parr and his wife, Susie, take a
yearly trip here—"usually on a bank holiday," he says.
The Northbank Hotel is located in Seaview, a small village on
the northern coast of the island. "Remember," Parr tells us on
Friday evening as we gather in the nautically themed hotel bar,
"we're back 20 years. You think it's 2008, but it's 1988." A short
distance away—out the sliding doors, over a canted green lawn
with a flapping Union Jack and tables shaded by umbrellas
marked with the Pimm's logo, across a thin stretch of shingle—is
the Solent, the branch of the English Channel that separates the
island from the mainland. (A 20-minute ferry ride connects
Portsmouth and Ryde, the nearest large town to Seaview.) Day
and night, ocean liners and shipping vessels glide past the hotel.
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Most of the clocks in the Northbank Hotel have stopped. In the
lobby, a framed portrait of Winston Churchill sits atop a table
next to a rotary telephone and a particularly large marrow, a type
of gourd that seems to be the island's signature crop. On the side
lawn of the hotel, inexplicably, is a weather-warped piano.
Everyone remarks on the sunshine—after a cold, wet summer,
England is experiencing an unusually warm September—but the
inside of the hotel has the legendary briskness of English hotels.
We wear our jackets. Before going to bed, I turn on the heater in
my room, an electric grate with glowing-red coils and fake coals
that light up. In the morning, I stand before the tap with my little
pink stick of Pears soap, waiting for the water to run lukewarm.
Parts of the Isle of Wight haven't escaped modernization—on a
bus ride inland, I spot a Staples, a Tesco supermarket, and a few
other chains. But Seaview is seemingly untouched by time.
Walking up the high street, past a tea shop and a small store that
sells "provisions," I think of Marianne Moore's poem "The
Steeple-Jack":
Dürer would have seen a reason for living
in a town like this …
… with the sweet sea air coming into your
house
on a fine day, from water etched
with waves as formal as the scales
on a fish.
On the ferry from the mainland, a video plays commercials for
some of the island's attractions. There is a castle in Carisbrook
where Charles I was imprisoned. Osborne House, Queen
Victoria's magisterial summer residence in East Cowes, is open
to the public. But Parr stresses at the beginning of the weekend
that we won't be going anywhere near these tourist sites. I ask
him if we're going to see the Needles, three mountainous rocks
that jut into the ocean and are the island's primary postcard
fodder. Nope—too obvious, too overdone.
Instead, our group spends the weekend crisscrossing Wight in a
minivan, in search of what Parr calls "Britain at its absolute
best." The Brighstone Holiday Centre, for example, is pure ParrWorld, a self-catering campsite on the southwest coast of the
island (otherwise known as "the back of the Wight"). When we
arrive, a silent culture clash takes place. The photographers,
bulky cameras swinging from their necks, fan out to take
pictures of the camp's rows of miniature chalets with their
Mondrian-esque, primary-colored doors. The campers, resting in
folding chairs on a perfectly green blanket of lawn, watch the
photographers skeptically. Two chickens dart around the site,
ducking under mobile homes—or "caravans," as they're called
over here—to escape the pursuing camera lenses.
are judged by such criteria as condition and uniformity. (To taste
them would mar their appearance.) Potatoes, apples, raspberries,
shallots, cranberry beans, cabbages the size of human heads, and
marrow—marrow is everywhere—are embossed with prize pins
and displayed on paper plates on tables that run the length of the
church hall. Cameras at the ready, Parr and his acolytes dart up
and down the aisles, snapping both the carefully arranged
vegetables and the crowd, who stand in clusters and contemplate
the harvest. One might wonder, judging from the median age of
the horticulturists—a man in his '90s, a regular contestant since
1978, won prizes this year for 20 of his 24 entries—if this is an
English tradition on the verge of extinction. But I'm betting that
the Haylands Horticultural Show will live on for years to come.
The Isle of Wight seems quite un-self-conscious of its
eccentricities and fogeyisms. It's quite happy being its
changeless self.
From: Peter Terzian
Subject: Welcome to Parr-World
Posted Wednesday, November 19, 2008, at 7:04 AM ET
In Sandown, a working-class resort on the Isle of Wight with a
wide, golden beach, the members of Martin Parr's photography
class shoot a miniature golf course, a rinky-dink amusement
park, and a cricket field. I notice that my vision has taken on a
Parr-like cast. Looking over the railing of the elevated main
street, I get an aerial view of a beachside cafe, where a family,
their ample flesh roasted red, savors slick plates of sausage and
beans. Meanwhile, Parr spies a "car boot sale"—a flea market
where vendors sell goods from their car trunks and hatchbacks—
and we follow him there. The merchandise forms a capsule
history of 20th-century British culture: Rupert Bear books, Cliff
Richard DVDs, the self-published first and second editions of
The History of the Sandown Conservative Clubs.
As we gather back at the van, seven air force jets blaze down the
strand in formation, leaving red, white, and blue smoke trails
that form a cloud like a melted Bomb Pop. The moseying
pedestrians come to a standstill. It's the Red Arrows, someone
says—the RAF's aerobatic team, which performs displays of
synchronized flying around the United Kingdom. Children,
grannies, young couples with spiky gelled hair, all look up at the
sky, shading their eyes from the sun, oblivious to the
photographers capturing their open-mouthed poses. The planes
swan and pirouette, break apart and reshuffle themselves like a
deck of cards. Parr looks as pleased as if he had organized the air
show for our pleasure.
A little while later, Parr directs us to the Haylands Horticultural
Show, an annual event held at a church in Ryde. Local farmers
have displayed their largest and most shapely products, which
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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Parr has invited a friend, Jem Southam, whom he calls "Britain's
greatest landscape photographer," to be a co-instructor for the
weekend. Southam is gentle and earnest where Parr is puckish.
His dense, painterly images of English forests, ponds, fields, and
rock falls offer a different kind of sublime than Parr's witty
documentation of English society. Often, Southam photographs
the same location over months or years, illustrating the effects of
time and fate on the countryside.
Southam directs our minivan to Whale Chine, a breathtakingly
steep ridge of coastal cliffs that he has been photographing since
the 1990s. Dressed in cargo shorts, hiking boots, and a corduroy
blazer with a map sticking out of the pocket, he looks like a
traditional British explorer-gentleman. He handily balances a
large-plate camera—the kind that 19th-century photographers
used—as he leads us to the edge of a cliff and onto a wooden
staircase that plunges into a deep ravine. The staircase halts
abruptly midway down; after that, we shin along a rope and hop
over dirt paths and stone ledges to the beach, 140 feet below the
cliff top. The photographers scatter along the shore, taking
pictures of the sea, the piles of garbage that have accumulated at
the foot of the cliffs, the silver and rust horizontal lines that
rivulets of water have painted down the rock face. Southam sets
up his camera on a tall tripod and aims the lens at a rock fall—
rain regularly chips away at the cliffs. These rocks weren't here a
month ago, he tells us, and at the current rate of erosion, the Isle
of Wight will disappear in 8,000 years. We watch Southam
climb up a stepladder to the viewfinder and duck in and out from
under a large black cloth. After much preparation, he takes
precisely one exposure. "This is going to cost me 15 quid," he
explains, "so you don't exactly go bang-bang-bang."
At the beginning of the weekend, Parr sets out two challenges
for the group. Prizes—signed Martin Parr books—will go to
whoever takes the most interesting photograph of the hotel and
whoever finds the best postcard of the Isle of Wight. He doesn't
define what he means by "best," but an evening slide
presentation makes clear that his own taste leans toward kitsch.
In addition to postcards of shopping malls, holiday camps,
highways, postwar German housing projects, and other
mundanities, he hoards—"perversely"—Margaret Thatcher
plates, Spice Girls chocolate bars, Lawrence Welk trays, and
other junk-culture souvenirs. ("If I didn't collect Saddam
Hussein watches," he says, "no one would.") Parr's massive
collections will one day be inherited by the Victoria and Albert
Museum.
We find the most fruitful postcard shopping in Ventnor, another
quaint seaside town, with Victorian-era residences skirting a
steep hill. It's Sunday, and the antique shops on the high street
are closed; there is a foot race today, and a scant few halfmarathoners run their final miles through the quiet city. The
photographers scout the souvenir shops along the beachfront
street. Martin and Susie Parr rest outside a Victorian bathing hut
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
on rented deck chairs made from brightly colored, mismatched
fabrics.
Back at the Northbank Hotel, over a cream tea, the group gathers
for a collective vote. (Parr refrains from casting a ballot in either
contest.) A young art school student wins the postcard contest
for a weird, blurry card of a collie running along the shore. Each
photographer displays his or her pictures of the hotel—some
chintz drapes, the moldering piano, the telephone table
marrow—before we elect one of the Union Jack framed by a
hotel window and surreally reflected in a wardrobe mirror. It's
appropriately Parr-ish.
From: Peter Terzian
Subject: The Importance of Being Earnest
Posted Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 6:56 AM ET
The School of Life is housed in a sleek storefront on Marchmont
Street in London's Bloomsbury neighborhood. The ground-floor
shop, painted in cool gray with bright yellow signage, reflects
the school's tongue-in-cheek approach to its own mission.
Aphorisms are typeset on large sheets of paper and suspended in
the street-facing window; a quotation from Emerson was on
rotation the week that I visited. ("All my best thoughts were
stolen by the ancients.") Clusters of cedar trunks rise from floor
to ceiling. A carefully curated selection of books is shelved by
the reader's immediate need rather than by subject: books for
those in love or for those worried about death. If you stand
looking out through the window at the street, you can watch the
faces of the passers-by as they try to puzzle out what kind of
establishment the School of Life is. A jar of free candy bars on a
front counter is popular with local children.
The school's single classroom is downstairs in the basement—
and when I use the word basement, I don't mean to imply a dark,
cement-walled room. Around the School of Life's cellar walls
runs an illustrated mural by artist Charlotte Mann that depicts
the sort of cheerful cultural clutter you might find in the world's
best rec room: bookshelves crammed with art books, great
novels, and DVDs of classic films; paintings by Picasso and
Breugel; a guitar and a copy of Bowie's Aladdin Sane; a soccer
game on the television—all drawn in a loose, squiggly freehand.
There's no sign of the chalk-dusted desks and humming
fluorescent lights typically found in a continuing-education
classroom. Instead, chairs are arranged in semicircular rows. The
room is softly lit; during classes, a table is set with hummus and
pretzels, and the wine flows freely, symposium-style.
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On a Monday evening in September, the school launched its
"Work" course.
Roman Krznaric, a self-described "writer and teacher on creative
thinking about the art of living and social change," gives us
colored pens and large sheets of paper and asks us each to draw
a "career map." Make yourself comfortable, he tells us, feel free
to sprawl out on the carpet. The members of the class—who
seem to be in their late 20s and 30s and who range from a
barrister to a cheese monger—giggle nervously. Yet there we
are, our pens swirling and dipping across our papers as we
excitedly cast our employment histories into geographical form.
Taped onto the basement walls are quotations about work, from
Thomas Carlyle and Mark Twain down the cultural high-low
scale to Rosanne Barr; we break off into clusters in front of our
favorites and discuss them. We watch a slide presentation on the
history of work from Egyptian slavery to the rise of women in
the paid economy. We sketch out our family trees, with an
emphasis on the roles that choice and fate have played in our
forebears' work lives and ours, and we pair up to chat about our
work histories. Krznaric—an Australian with thick, curly hair
and an appealingly open, stubbly face—explains that over six
weeks, we will be "trying to discover a way of working that's
more interesting, more creative, more adventurous." In future
sessions, students will take to the Bloomsbury streets to
interview passers-by on their work lives; have the option of
participating in a job swap with fellow classmates; and query
diversely employed visitors to the course, including a hedgefund manager and a druidic bard. The first evening's session runs
well over its two and a half hour time slot, but the students are so
energized, no one seems to notice.
In one corner of the room is a plush Victorian divan, scrolled at
one end, of the type that Freud used. I lie upon it the next day
while Susan Elderkin leads me through a one-on-one
"bibliotherapy" session. Elderkin asks me about my reading
history and habits (where do I read? what books figured largely
in my childhood?) and delves into personal issues that might
affect my choice of reading material (what do you feel is missing
from your life?) before coming up with a list of suggested titles.
Elderkin, who has published two novels, was awarded a place on
Granta magazine's best of young British novelists list in 2003,
and her therapeutic prescriptions lean heavily toward fiction. I
admit that I'm a tough nut to crack—I'm an ardent fiction reader
who once worked for the book review section of a New York
newspaper. Nevertheless, she suggests some titles that I've heard
of but haven't read, and afterward, I head down to Foyles on
Charing Cross Road to seek out Shirley Hazzard's Transit of
Venus and Helen Garner's The Spare Room.
The list of School of Life events and programs goes on. Group
meals, where perfect strangers gather to share food and practice
the art of conversation at Bloomsbury's Konstam restaurant, are
scheduled for January and February. (Two meals held around
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Valentine's Day have a matchmaking theme; one is for straight
singles and the other is for single gay men.) A Sunday morning
lecture series of "sermons," as the school cheekily calls them,
features well-known writers and artists on what Sophie Howarth,
the founder and director of the School of Life, describes as
"rather ungroovy virtues." Writer Alain de Botton will speak on
pessimism, popular scientist Robert Winston will extol curiosity,
and Sam Roddick, founder of "erotic emporium" Coco de Mer
and daughter of Body Shop entrepreneur Anita Roddick, will
discuss seduction. Future holidays include a "Sky Holiday" in an
observatory, led by cloud expert Gavin Pretor-Pinney, and an
"Austerity Holiday," featuring Krznaric and Sara Maitland, a
writer at work on a book about silence, in Northumberland, near
St. Cuthbert's home on Lindisfarne Island. Not all of the
programs are of the so-crazy-it-just-might-work variety: Good
old-fashioned psychotherapy with licensed psychotherapists is
available for individuals, couples, and families.
Howarth is a London native with a shock of straight hair and the
energy of a Superball. For seven years, she developed
educational programs at the Tate Modern—"the most dreamy
job," she says—before hatching a plan to create a space where
people could meet for culture and conversation. She flirted with
various concepts, including a philosophical cooking school,
before settling upon "a kind of ideas store." ("Every little girl
wants to have a shop," she says.) Friends ribbed her that she
wanted to develop a "university of life." She protested before
realizing that that was indeed what she wanted to do. "And what
would they teach at the University of Life?" she asks. "They'd
teach how to die well, how to raise children, how to enjoy your
job. Through a lot of conversations with different people, I
began to think it would be better if we just had a very few
subjects, and they were big subjects, and they were totally
enduring. And we didn't change them a lot, because then we
could really do the research."
The School of Life's course programs were developed over a
year and a half with the help of various experts, many of whom
are now on the school's faculty. Actors and performers were
called in to help choreograph classes; picture researchers created
audio-visual programs. Along the way, de Botton served as a
tutelary spirit, helping to set the intellectual agenda and structure
curriculum. Indeed, the school might be seen as a natural
extension of de Botton's books, which address contemporary
issues using the teachings of Greek philosophers or
Enlightenment thinkers. "I'm interested in how culture can
inform our lives and be of assistance to us by echoing and
enhancing our own dilemmas and life challenges," de Botton
says. "We feel less alone—we feel that we have thousands of
years of reflection and responses to things."
From the beginning, seducing a potentially doubtful public with
good design was an important consideration. Everything about
the School of Life, from the shop layout to the Web site to the
stationery letterhead, is art-directed to the teeth. "I don't see why
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education should always have such bad design," says Howarth.
"If it's about communication, which it is, then communication
means good fonts, inspiring graphics, strong pictures—
obviously." Howarth and de Botton were careful to build in a
healthy dose of humor. "We've had to pedal extra hard to embed
within our offering certain things to reduce British anxiety," he
says. "We are dead earnest, but in order to be earnest in this
culture, you have to joke along. You have to work extra hard
against an audience that can very easily think it's pretentious or
American—an insult."
One of Howarth's inspirations is indeed American: Dave Eggers'
826 National, a quirky, nonprofit chain of tutoring and writing
centers that fosters literacy among young people. Each branch is
fronted by a kid-friendly shop. One sells pirate supplies; another,
robots; another, Sasquatch paraphernalia. The School of Life,
says Howarth, "takes a bit of the openness of America, a bit of
the intellectual and philosophical culture of France, and perhaps
some of our British reticence as well." She hopes to eventually
open up more schools, perhaps even in the United States.
"Because we're concerned with the big ideas and enduring
themes," she says, "they're pretty culturally exportable. They're
the same things people worry about all over the world."
It's easy to get sniffy about Howarth and de Botton's ambitious
project. And yet their meticulous organization and rigorous
quality control have turned what might have been pie in the sky
into a very inspiring reality. I visited the School of Life at a time
when personal circumstances had laid me low. I came back to
America with a wholly different attitude. The School's Isle of
Wight holiday had expanded my horizons by taking me to a
place of great natural beauty where I might never have gone on
my own. It forced me to mingle with total strangers from other
fields and walks of life. I began to take pictures again and to
think about photography in new ways. I only had the chance to
attend one session of the school's "Work" course, but it
encouraged me to think about my career path in relation to my
parents' and grandparents' and to better appreciate the freedoms
and opportunities they had given me.
Howarth and de Botton's idea—to change society, one life at a
time, through culture, literature, philosophy, and conversation—
is quixotic. The thing about quixotic ideas is that, every so often,
they work.
xx factor xxtra
Lose-Lose on Abortion
Obama's threat to Catholic hospitals and their very serious counterthreat.
By Melinda Henneberger
Monday, November 24, 2008, at 6:56 PM ET
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
When I saw the Catholic bishops had declared war on Presidentelect Obama at their semiannual meeting in Baltimore two
weeks ago, my first reaction was pique: Gosh, guys, it isn't even
parade day yet, and here you are, all dressed up and ready to rain
on it.
Were they in spasm because Obama had won Catholics by nine
points? (Nine! A landslide compared with the five by which my
co-religionists had favored Bush in '04.) Peeved because even
some of the most ardent pro-lifers had broken ranks? (In
Colorado, where Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput called
Obama "the most committed 'abortion rights' presidential
candidate of either major party since the Roe v. Wade abortion
decision in 1973,'' it was Catholic voters who turned the state
from red to blue.) Obama and Biden won 63-36 in
Pennsylvania's heavily Catholic Lackawanna County, home to
Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino, who seemed beside himself
over the pro-choice position taken by Vice President-elect Joe
Biden, a Catholic: "I cannot have the vice president coming to
Scranton and saying he learned his values there, when those
values are utterly against those of the Catholic Church," Martino
said in Baltimore.
In a speech at Catholic University, Cardinal Frank Stafford
almost sounded like one of those people who thinks Obama is
the Antichrist, referring to the president-elect as "apocalyptic."
Stafford told his audience, "For the next few years, Gethsemane
will not be marginal," comparing Christ's agony in the garden to
the suffering of Catholics under Obama. "On Nov. 4, 2008," he
added, "America suffered a cultural earthquake." Oy.
What in the world were these bishops talking about, claiming
that religious freedom in America was under attack? Keep up the
hysterics, boys, I thought as I scanned the latest story, and this
will be birth control all over again: Your lips are moving but no
one can hear you. And the most ludicrous line out of them,
surely, was about how, under Obama, Catholic hospitals that
provide obstetric and gynecological services might soon be
forced to perform abortions or close their doors. Auxiliary
Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago warned of "devastating
consequences" to the health care system, insisting Obama could
force the closure of all Catholic hospitals in the country. That's a
third of all hospitals, providing care in many neighborhoods that
are not exactly otherwise overprovided for. It couldn't happen,
could it?
You wouldn't think so. Only, I am increasingly convinced that it
could. If the Freedom of Choice Act passes Congress, and that's
a big if, Obama has promised to sign it the second it hits his
desk. (Here he is at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund event in
2007, vowing, "The first thing I'd do as president is, is sign the
Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing I'd do.") Though
it's often referred to as a mere codification of Roe, FOCA, as
currently drafted, actually goes well beyond that: According to
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the Senate sponsor of the bill, Barbara Boxer, in a statement on
her Web site, FOCA would nullify all existing laws and
regulations that limit abortion in any way, up to the time of fetal
viability. Laws requiring parental notification and informed
consent would be tossed out. While there is strenuous debate
among legal experts on the matter, many believe the act would
invalidate the freedom-of-conscience laws on the books in 46
states. These are the laws that allow Catholic hospitals and
health providers that receive public funds through Medicaid and
Medicare to opt out of performing abortions. Without public
funds, these health centers couldn't stay open; if forced to do
abortions, they would sooner close their doors. Even the
prospect of selling the institutions to other providers wouldn't be
an option, the bishops have said, because that would constitute
"material cooperation with an intrinsic evil."
The bishops are not bluffing when they say they'd turn out the
lights rather than comply. Nor is Auxiliary Bishop Robert
Hermann of St. Louis exaggerating, I don't think, in vowing that
"any one of us would consider it a privilege to die tomorrow—to
die tomorrow—to bring about the end of abortion.''
Whatever your view on the legality and morality of abortion,
there is another important question to be considered here: Could
we even begin to reform our already overburdened health care
system without these Catholic institutions? I don't see how.
People on both sides of the abortion argument have told me that
despite a clear pro-choice majority in Congress, it's not clear the
Democrats have the votes to pass this particular bill. It hasn't
been put forward in a serious way—with any real chance of
passing—in 15 years, and many members have never cast a vote
on it. Some of the newly elected Democrats are pro-life—backed
by their party for seats that would otherwise have gone to prolife Republicans—and others are in the center on the abortion
issue, meaning that they favor keeping it legal but with some
limits. There are also serious questions about whether FOCA as
currently drafted exceeds congressional authority. But when
Obama was campaigning on FOCA, he didn't say anything about
wanting to change it.
And those who argue that FOCA poses no actual threat to
Catholic hospitals are not so laid back when it comes to
assessing the threat that conscience laws supposedly pose to
clinics. Whenever I see conscience laws written about in—even
in print, I have to sigh before saying this—the mainstream
media, they are always framed as Italianate laws that would
force unsuspecting abortionists to hire kooks who would then
crow, "Ha! Gotcha, I'm a pro-lifer, so I'm going for coffee now.
See ya on payday.''
seen a variety of efforts to force Catholic and other health care
providers to perform or refer for abortions and sterilizations."
This is why the Bush administration is trying to rush through a
new Health and Human Services regulation that the New York
Times said would grant "sweeping new protections'' to health
care providers opposed to abortion on moral grounds.
If Bush's HHS does manage to push through the proposed
changes before Tom Daschle takes over there, Obama has
promised to rescind the new regulation. The president's
supporters say it merely implements existing legal protections
for conscientious objectors (much like abortion-rights supporters
say FOCA only codifies Roe).
So where does all this leave us? On the one hand, I agree with
Bishop Blase J. Cupich of Rapid City, S.D., who reminded his
brother bishops in Baltimore to "keep in mind a prophecy of
denunciation quickly wears thin, and it seems to me what we
need is a prophecy of solidarity, with the community we serve
and the nation that we live in."
And as I think I have made clear—here, here, here, and here—I
have high hopes for President Obama, I was so looking forward
to dancing at this party. Yet, although abortion was not a major
issue in the race, the pro-life argument that he was the candidate
most likely to decrease the need for—and number of—abortions
did make it easier for many Catholics to cast their votes for him.
I think we should hold him to that commitment now.
At the very moment when Obama and his party have won the
trust of so many Catholics who favor at least some limits on
abortion, I hope he does not prove them wrong. I hope he does
not make a fool out of that nice Doug Kmiec, who led the prolife charge on his behalf. I hope he does not spit on the rest of
us—though I don't take him for the spitting sort—on his way in
the door. I hope that his appointment of Ellen Moran, formerly
of EMILY's List, as his communications director is followed by
the appointment of some equally good Democrats who hold prolife views. By supporting and signing the current version of
FOCA, Obama would reignite the culture war he so deftly
sidestepped throughout this campaign. This is a fight he just
doesn't need at a moment when there is no shortage of other
crises to manage.
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Even without the passage of FOCA, conscientious objectors are
already feeling pressure to provide services they don't believe in.
Sister Carol Keehan, a former hospital administrator who runs
the Catholic Health Association, told the Times that "we have
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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