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2 NEWS
The main stories...
Iran nuclear talks go to the wire
What happened
one, so that if the regime reneges and tries to build weapons, we’ll have time to act. Still, Iran’s refusal to permit
Talks between Iran and six world powers continued
intrusive inspections at all nuclear sites “does not bode
beyond their deadline this week, as the two sides battled
well,” said The Economist. International inspectors are
over key details of a preliminary deal to curb the Islamic
sure that Iran did work on bomb development in the
regime’s nuclear capabilities. As The Week went to press,
past. Even if a tentative agreement can be reached, it will
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and representatives from
mean nothing if we cannot be sure Iran isn’t operating
Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia had decided
clandestine nuclear facilities.
to extend talks with Iranian negotiators in Lausanne, Switzerland, for a second day beyond the self-imposed deadline.
What the columnists said
Their goal was to forge the basic outlines of an agreement
The choice is not between a bad deal or
that could be hammered into a more detailed treaty at
war, said Jonathan Tobin in Commentary
the end of June. “I think we have a broad framework
Magazine.com. The “real alternative” to
of understanding,” said British Foreign Minister
caving in to Iran is to double down on tough
Philip Hammond, “but there are still some key
economic sanctions. That would bring Iran’s
issues that have to be worked through.” Iranian
economy to its knees, forcing the mullahs
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said that the U.S.
“to accept an agreement that, unlike the one
and other nations had to decide whether to
Khamenei: Does he really want detente?
currently being negotiated, would actually
engage with Iran “based on respect or whether
stop them from building a bomb.”
they want to continue based on pressure.”
What the editorials said
President Obama is pursuing “a mirage,’’ said The Washington
Times. He is convinced detente with Tehran will somehow “put
an end to the strife in the Middle East,” giving him the grand
foreign policy legacy to justify his unearned Nobel Peace Prize. So
he and Secretary of State John Kerry have offered concessions on
all the major issues, including allowing Iran to continue to operate
thousands of state-of-the-art centrifuges. Our feckless commanderin-chief’s foreign policy legacy will be “cheered only in Tehran.”
“No agreement can guarantee Iran doesn’t get the bomb,” said
BloombergView.com. But a reasonable goal is to keep Iran’s
nuclear program at least a year away from the capability to build
It wasn’t all bad
■ The owners of one Denver coffee
shop aren’t just talking about social issues, they’re actually doing something
about them. Co-founders Madison
Chandler and Mark Smesrud opened
the Purple Door two years ago with
the goal of hiring homeless young
adults, giving them one-year contracts
to help them get back on their feet.
Jenna Williams, a 23-year-old who had
been living on the streets since she
was 15, recently finished her stint at
the nonprofit shop and quickly landed
a full-time job at Starbucks. “This is
exactly what us ‘street kids’ needed,”
Williams said. “It’s all about love.”
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
What nonsense, said Roger Cohen in The New York Times.
Anyone who knows anything about Iran knows that it is a proud
nation that “would rather starve than cave.” Iran’s population is
largely young, aspirational, and eager to engage with the West.
It would be foolish to alienate them and empower “the most
radical factions in Tehran.” No deal will ever be good enough
for the Right, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. Conservatives
have angrily opposed “every major negotiation with an American
adversary since World War II,” including Richard Nixon’s opening
to China and Ronald Reagan’s nuclear arms agreements with the
Soviets. Ultimately, the Right believes that war is the only answer
to evil regimes and that all leaders are either Winston Churchill–
style heroes or Neville Chamberlain–style appeasers.
The great unknown is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Fred Kaplan
in Slate.com. Any agreement with Iran will require the Supreme
Leader’s approval—and no one knows where Khamenei really
stands. He said he wanted a deal and “to see Iran enter the global
economy,” yet “continues to spout anti-American slogans.” Iran’s
Islamic revolution was based on opposition to America, and he
has to fear that “excessive detente with the West” might trigger
“slow-motion regime change.” Is he willing to take that risk?
■ A former Navy SEAL is still fighting for his fellow soldiers.
Mike Day was shot 27 times by al Qaida gunmen in Iraq
in 2007, but the Silver Star recipient didn’t quit. After a
long recovery, Day will compete in his first triathlon—a 1.2
mile swim, 56-mile bike ride, and 13.1 mile run—later this
month, and he has
used his training to
raise nearly $80,000
for Carrick Brain Centers, a Dallas hospital
specializing in treating
vets suffering from
PTSD. “My life’s mission is now not about
me,” Day said. “It is to
care for and lead my
wounded brothers
and sisters.”
Day: A veteran fights on.
■ When Christine Royles of
Portland, Maine, learned that
she needed a kidney transplant,
the 23-year-old got creative,
putting a sign on the back of
her car asking strangers to
consider donating. When Josh
Dall-Leighton saw the sign in a
local mall’s parking lot, he told
his wife, “I have to try.” Remarkably, the 30-year-old proved
a match, and the lifesaving
surgery is scheduled for May.
“If someone needs help, you do
whatever you can to help them,”
Dall-Leighton said. “I have three
kids of my own. I want [them] to
know these aren’t just words.”
On the cover: Houthi leader Abdul-Malek al-Houthi, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, ISIS leader
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Illustration by Howard McWilliam.
Cover photos from Getty, NASA, Getty
AP, WTKR News Channel 3
Central among the unresolved issues was Tehran’s demand for
economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations to be lifted
immediately—a condition resisted by the U.S. and its European
partners, who wanted the sanctions eased gradually as Iran proved
its compliance. Other sticking points included constraints on Iran’s
nuclear research, the transfer of large stockpiles of its atomic fuel
to Russia, and limitations on production capacity at its heavywater reactor at Arak.
... and how they were covered
NEWS 3
The Arab world takes a stand in Yemen
What happened
This is all a consequence of President
Obama’s betrayal of our Sunni Arab alAs Iranian-backed Shiite rebels battle for
lies, said The Wall Street Journal. He recontrol of Yemen, Sunni Arab leaders
fused to help them depose Syrian dictator
from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other MidBashar al-Assad, gave air support to Iraqi
dle Eastern states this week agreed to form
Shiite militias, and is now trying to negotia joint military force that could be used
ate a flawed nuclear deal that might result
to combat jihadist insurgencies and counin Tehran getting the bomb. Riyadh no
ter Tehran’s growing influence in the relonger sees the U.S. as “a stabilizing force
gion. Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh elin the Middle East” and has decided that
Sissi said the force of 40,000 elite troops
An arms depot explodes near Aden.
Arab nations must stand on their own.
was needed to tackle the “immense” security challenges facing the Middle East, which is now roiled by mulWhat the columnists said
tiple civil wars and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s attempt to
Arab states’ willingness to “finally sacrifice blood and treasure to
establish a caliphate. But Iraq, whose Shiite-led government is aldefend the region” is a positive development, said David Schenker
lied with Shiite Iran, immediately declared that it wanted no help
and Gilad Wenig, also in the Journal. And it’s likely that Egypt and
from the new force in reclaiming central Iraq from ISIS. “We will
never allow the intervention of non-Iraqi forces on Iraqi soil,” said Saudi Arabia will soon deploy ground troops in Yemen. But while
both nations have the latest U.S.-made weapons, their untested solBaghdad’s foreign minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
diers probably can’t win this fight. Indeed, when the Saudis last
fought the battle-hardened Houthis in Yemen in 2009, they “withThe Arab League’s announcement came as warplanes from a
drew after three months when casualties started to mount.”
Saudi-led coalition pounded Houthi rebel positions in Yemen.
Washington said it was providing logistical and intelligence support for the operation. The intervention began last week after Shi- Still, there’s no good reason for the U.S. to come to the Saudis’
rescue, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. If Obama
ite Houthis and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah
Saleh—ousted amid Arab Spring–style protests in 2012—closed in deployed U.S. forces against the Houthis, we’d be battling the
“Yemeni faction that most implacably opposes” al Qaida in the
on the southern city of Aden, forcing Yemen’s U.S.-backed presArabian Peninsula—the Yemen-based terrorist group that has
ident, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, to flee the country. The airlaunched repeated attacks on the West. “Just stay out of it,” said
strikes appear to have slowed the advance of the Houthis, who
Adam Baron in Politico.com. Regardless of their foreign links, the
captured the capital, Sanaa, last September, but have caused
Houthis and their Sunni tribal rivals are primarily motivated by
scores of civilian casualties. A bombing raid that mistakenly hit a
local concerns. “Any nation” that aims to make Yemen’s fight its
Yemeni refugee camp killed at least 30 people, according to interown “is more than likely to come out on the losing side.”
national aid groups.
What the editorials said
Saudi Arabia has made a colossal mistake intervening in Yemen,
said The New York Times. Riyadh is understandably worried
about the emergence of an Iranian-client state on its southern border, but U.S. officials say Tehran has so far provided only limited financial aid to the Houthis. The Saudi-led offensive, though,
could lead Iran to increase support for its Houthi allies, turning
Yemen’s civil war into “a larger sectarian Shiite-Sunni war.”
For all the talk of Obama retreating from the Middle East, he
knows “there’s too much at stake to walk away,” said Fred Kaplan
in Slate.com. There’s oil, Israel, global terrorism—“if it all blew
up, there’d be catastrophe.” The only question now is how we play
the game. Do we stick with Obama’s realpolitik and support both
pro-Iranian and pro-Saudi factions when it supports U.S. interests?
Or do we take sides in the great Sunni-Shiite clash? “Whichever
way we go, there’s no way to avoid the mess.”
Reuters
THE WEEK
Here’s an apparent paradox: By a landslide margin of 59 to 31
percent, a new Washington Post/ABC News poll found, Americans
approve of making a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities. And
yet 59 percent of Americans also say they have little confdence a negotiated agreement will stop
Iran from eventually developing nuclear weapons. Why, then, do people prefer negotiating with
the mullahs, despite justifed skepticism that Iran will comply with its promises? Are we a nation
of weak-kneed Neville Chamberlains? Let me hazard an alternative hypothesis that begins with
two words: Iraq and Afghanistan. After the two longest wars in U.S. history, most Americans have
concluded there are limits on what U.S. military power can achieve. We can’t cure what ails the
Middle East, and our attempts to do so have produced terrible disappointment and terrible costs.
This doesn’t mean most Americans have become isolationists. Clearly, the U.S. cannot afford
to ignore Iran, or ISIS, or Syria, or the Sunni-Shiite war now igniting the region. But to a large
degree, the chaos there is an unintended consequence of the regime change we engineered in
Iraq (see Briefng). We’ve tried toppling dictatorial regimes, and have found that the “Pottery Barn
rule” applies: You break it, you own it. Americans aren’t eager to own any more broken countries.
Nor do most folks want to send brave young soldiers to fght in foreign civil wars, having seen far
too many return with limbs torn off by IEDs or their psyches scarred for life. Americans know that
trusting the Ayatollah is not a good option—but also that there are no good options. When all the
options are bad, you can only hope to pick the least worst.
William Falk
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THE WEEK April 10, 2015
4 NEWS
Controversy of the week
Indiana: Is ‘religious freedom’ an excuse to discriminate?
be used to justify almost any act of discrimination on
“Poor, misunderstood Mike Pence” never saw this coming, said
religious grounds, said Paul Waldman in WashingtonPost
Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. Indiana’s Republican governor
.com. If a restaurant owner’s religion teaches that homoinsists that when he signed his state’s new Religious Freedom
sexuality is an abomination, he could hang a “No Gays
Restoration Act last week, he never dreamed that the act might
Allowed” sign in the window. Muslim-owned stores
be interpreted as giving legal cover to anti-gay discrimination.
could refuse to serve unveiled women. Is it any wonder
The law, which states that the government may not
that people are outraged?
“substantially burden” the religious convictions of
any individual or business, was clearly a response
The liberal backlash is “a perfect storm of hysto the legalization of same-sex marriage—and
teria and legal ignorance,” said Rich Lowry in
it triggered a nationwide uproar. The CEOs
NationalReview.com. Indiana’s law merely
of huge corporations—including Apple, Eli
states that defendants can raise the issue of
Lilly, and Walmart—have denounced the law,
Pence: An uproar he didn’t expect
their religion in defending themselves from
and businesses, organizations, and liberal citlawsuits. It doesn’t mandate that they win, and in other states with
ies and states are boycotting Indiana. The NCAA has hinted it
similar laws, they often lose. The theatrical outrage over the law
may even stop hosting tournaments in the basketball-crazy state.
isn’t really rooted in fear of discrimination, said Jonathan Tobin in
Pence has since pledged to “fix” the vaguely worded law, said The
CommentaryMagazine.com. With gay marriage sweeping the land
Indianapolis Star in an editorial, but merely tweaking the legalese
faster than anyone expected, its supporters now demand uncondiwon’t be enough. The world needs to hear the clear message “that
our state will not tolerate discrimination against any of its citizens.” tional surrender. Observant Christians and Jews are being told to
abandon traditional sexual morality altogether—or be treated with
the same contempt as racists who fought for Jim Crow laws.
Pence knew exactly what he was signing, said Garrett Epps in
TheAtlantic.com. Defenders of the law protest that it’s modeled
In a rapidly changing society, “what kind of space, if any” will
closely on the federal religious-freedom law President Clinton
be left to religious conservatives now? asked Ross Douthat in
signed in 1993, and that similar laws exist in 19 other states, but
NYTimes.com. Will government seek to revoke the tax-exempt stathis is deeply disingenuous. Most of those other laws protect the
religious customs of individuals from intrusion by the government. tus of any church, religious school, or university that teaches that
homosexuality is sinful and that marriage is a sacred union of a
The Indiana law—which Pence signed before an approving crowd
of gay-marriage opponents—has been “carefully written” to enable man and a woman? Will society seek to punish and eradicate these
views, the way it sought to eradicate racial discrimination? These
businesses to claim a religious exception if accused of discriminaare not merely rhetorical questions. We Christian conservatives
tion by individuals. That would enable a Christian baker, say, to
want to know what comes next, “once the florists and bakers have
refuse to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, on the grounds
been appropriately fined and closed down.”
of religious freedom. The law is so vaguely worded that it could
■■■The principal of a Massa-
chusetts high school accused
one of her teachers of racism
for saying teachers and students there are “colorblind.”
English teacher Janice Harvey
had defended the urban
school in a magazine column,
saying there were no racial
tensions there. Principal Lisa
Dyer responded by asserting
that “colorblindness suggests
racism” because it denies students the right to “honor the
beauty of their complexions.”
■■■As the April 15 tax-filing
deadline looms, the IRS
is ignoring 60 percent of
taxpayers’ phone calls. Commissioner John Koskinen said
that budget cuts had resulted
in an “abysmal level of service” and long waits at IRS
offices. “You would think we
must be selling something
like the Apple watch when
you look at the lines.”
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Good week for:
Budding businesses, after country music legend Willie Nelson
revealed plans to open a line of legal marijuana stores featuring
his own artisanal brand of weed, to be called Willie’s Reserve.
Exculpatory evidence, after a UCLA researcher found that
despite persistent beliefs to the contrary, the phases of the moon
have no discernible effect on hospital admissions, births, or criminal activity. “The moon is innocent,” said the researcher.
Playing catch with your kid, after an analysis revealed that
the average salary for Major League Baseball players would be a
record $4.25 million on Opening Day 2015.
Bad week for:
Riding shotgun, after a Washington state motorist was busted in
the car pool lane alongside a cardboard cutout of Dos Equis beer’s
“most interesting man.” After issuing a citation, the state trooper
tweeted: “I don’t always violate the HOV lane law…but when I
do, I get a $124 ticket.”
Nervous late arrivals, after newly disclosed documents
revealed the TSA’s “checklist” for identifying potential terrorists.
Warning signs include excessive blinking and yawning, pale cheeks
because of a recently shaved beard, and arriving late for a flight.
Know-it-alls, after Yale researchers found that using internet
search engines leads people to believe they are much smarter than
they actually are. “When people are truly on their own,” said the
study author, “they may be wildly inaccurate about how much
they know and how dependent they are on the internet.’
Boring but important
Obama’s clemency push
A year after pledging to
review the harsh sentences
given to some drug offenders,
President Obama this week
commuted the sentences
of 22 federal prisoners—
doubling his total number of
such reprieves in one day. The
White House said that many
of the offenders would have
already served their time had
they been sentenced under
current drug laws, rather than
outdated legislation passed
in the aftermath of the 1980s
crack epidemic. One of the
offenders was serving a life
sentence for selling marijuana. Obama said that all
those granted reprieves had
demonstrated the potential to
turn their lives around. “I believe in your ability to prove
the doubters wrong,” wrote
Obama in a letter to those
he pardoned.
AP
Only in America
The U.S. at a glance ...
William DeShazer/The New York Times/Redux, Corbis, Getty, AP
Scott County, Ind.
HIV epidemic: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence
declared a public-health emergency last
week in Scott County, a poor county
of 25,000
people near
the Kentucky
border where
an HIV outbreak has
reached “epidemic proportions,” Pence
Dr. William Cooke
said. More
than 80 new cases of HIV have been
diagnosed in recent weeks—up from the
annual average of 5. Many of the newly
infected live in the small town of Austin,
which has just one doctor, William
Cooke, who is now spearheading an HIV
response effort. Nearly all of the infections have been caused by shared syringes
among abusers of Opana, a prescription
painkiller that can be ground up
and injected with liquid into a
person’s veins. Pence announced
he would temporarily drop his
opposition to needle-exchange
programs and authorize a
30-day measure that would
allow users to swap contaminated needles for new, sterile
ones. “This is all hands on
deck,” said Pence.
Sacramento
Water use cuts: With no end in sight to
a brutal statewide drought, Gov. Jerry
Brown this week ordered mandatory
water restrictions for the first time in
California’s
history. The
governor
instructed
cities and
towns across
California
to cut water
use by 25
Running dry
percent and
said cemeteries, golf courses, and other
“large landscapes” will have to cut back
on watering. “It’s a different world,” said
Brown. “We have to act differently.” This
year’s Sierra Nevada snowpack, which
melts and refills California’s reservoirs, is
just 5 percent of the state average—the
lowest since records began in 1950. That
means there will be almost no runoff this
spring when temperatures start to rise.
“This is sort of uncharted territory,” said
a spokesperson for the Department of
Water Resources.
Fort Meade, Md.
NSA shooting: A transgender prostitute
was killed this week when she and a
companion tried to drive into a restricted
area of the National Security Agency
campus in Fort Meade, prompting government agents to fire on their car. Police
believe Ricky Shawatza Hall, 27, and her
unnamed passenger were fleeing a nearby
motel in a car stolen from a 60-year-old
man with whom they’d spent some time
when they took a highway exit reserved
for NSA employees. Hall, who had a
lengthy criminal record, was fatally shot
after she accelerated toward a police car
and “failed to obey an NSA police officer’s routine instructions for safely exiting
the secure campus,” the NSA said in a
statement. Investigators speculated that
Hall simply took a wrong turn toward
the heavily guarded headquarters, and did
not heed warnings to stop because drugs
were in the vehicle.
Jefferson City, Mo.
Second political suicide: The recent suicide of Missouri auditor Tom Schweich
took on another layer of tragedy this
week, when police announced that
Schweich’s spokesman had also taken
his own life. Robert “Spence” Jackson
had served as the Republican auditor’s
media director since 2011 and had broken the news of Schweich’s suicide in
February. Shortly before fatally shooting
himself, Schweich had told an Associated
Press reporter that he planned to accuse
Missouri’s Republican Party chairman,
John Hancock, of spreading rumors that
Schweich was Jewish in order to ruin
the auditor’s planned run for governor.
Jackson had publicly pushed Hancock
to resign in the weeks after Schweich’s
suicide. The spokesman took a day off
work on the one-month anniversary of
Schweich’s death; he was found dead
from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in
his Jefferson City home days later.
NEWS 5
Boston
Bombing defense
rests: Jurors in the
Boston Marathon
bombing trial will
begin deliberating
next week. Defense
attorneys for suspect
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
rested their case
Tuesday after calling
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
just four witnesses.
Having declared in opening statements
that Tsarnaev was guilty of planting a
bomb at the finish line of the April 2013
race, the defense focused on trying to
convince jurors that Tsarnaev, 21, was
bullied into carrying out the attack by his
older brother Tamerlan. Unlike Tamerlan,
said attorneys, Dzhokhar hadn’t carried
out bomb-making searches on his computer. Prosecutors concluded their 15-day
case with graphic testimony from medical
examiners detailing the injuries suffered
by the three people killed in the
explosions, including 8-year-old
Martin Richard. Among other
injuries, Richard was left with a
gaping 6-inch-by-6-inch wound to
his left abdomen, said Dr. Henry
Nields. “Overall, the injuries,” said
Nields, “would be painful.”
The scene of the devastation
New York City
East Village gas blast: Two people
were killed last week when a huge gas
explosion below a sushi restaurant in
Manhattan’s East Village caused three
apartment buildings to collapse. More
than 20 people were injured in the blast,
which quickly developed into a sevenalarm fire. Just before the explosion, the
restaurant’s owner reported smelling gas;
when the building owner’s son opened
a door into the basement to investigate,
the room blew up. “The concussion
bounced off the building across the street
and kind of hit me in the chest,” said
off-duty firefighter Mike Shepherd, who
raced to the scene to help the injured.
Authorities are investigating whether the
building’s owner illegally tapped into a
gas line to provide heat to her upperfloor tenants.
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
6 NEWS
The world at a glance ...
Isola del Giglio, Italy
Mafia using cruise ships: The
Costa Concordia, the cruise
ship that capsized off the coast
of Italy in 2012, killing 32 people, was carrying drugs for one
of Italy’s most feared mafias,
police said this week. Wiretaps
on the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta
Costa Concordia: Shipping drugs?
allegedly caught the crime
gang discussing smuggling cocaine onto cruise ships, including
one that had sunk—a reference, authorities believe, to the Costa
Concordia. “The same ship that made us a laughingstock around
the world took the p--- out of us, too,” ’Ndrangheta boss Michele
Rossi reportedly said to an associate. Police said the gang pays off
crew members to smuggle drugs on board cruise ships with the
catering supplies. With its ties to Latin American drug cartels, the
’Ndrangheta dominates Europe’s drug market, outpacing Sicily’s
more famous Cosa Nostra.
Le Vernet, France
Identifying remains: French rescue workers
have cut a new road through the Alps to
get to the site of last week’s Germanwings
plane crash, in which all 150 people on
board were killed. Workers are collecting human remains, and French President
François Hollande said that “it will be
possible to identify all of the victims,
Clearing a new road
thanks to DNA samples.” Paris Match
claimed that a cellphone memory card found at the site included
video of the flight’s last moments. The video reportedly captures
sounds of passengers screaming as the pilot tries to break into the
locked cockpit, where co-pilot Andreas Lubitz has set a suicide
course. Investigators denied any video has been recovered.
Rome
Knox, Sollecito to sue: Cleared of the 2007 murder
of British student Meredith Kercher, Amanda Knox
said she would return to Italy to write a book about
her legal ordeal and sue for wrongful imprisonment
for the four years she was jailed. The American and
her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted
in 2009, acquitted, and convicted again, before the
country’s Supreme Court last week exonerated them
both completely. Local criminal Rudy Guede, whose
Knox: Innocent
DNA was found all over the crime scene, is serving
a 16-year sentence for the murder; Knox and Sollecito had been
accused of being his accomplices in a bloody Satanic sex ritual.
Sollecito’s family said he, too, would sue.
Buenos Aires
Falklands dispute heats up: The Argentine government has officially protested to the United Nations over the U.K.’s “militarization” of the Falkland Islands. Last week British Defense Secretary
Michael Fallon said the U.K. would spend an extra $415 million
on military operations around the islands because of a “live threat”
of Argentine invasion. London has been alarmed by reports that
Russia has agreed to supply longrange bombers and attack jets to
Argentina. The Falklands, or Islas
Malvinas, as Argentina calls them,
have been British since 1833.
Argentina tried and failed to retake
them in a 1982 war and recently
began pressing claims of sovereignty again, after the U.K. started
Falklands: Disputed territory
oil exploration around the islands.
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
São Paulo
Yet another scandal: Officials in
the Brazilian government have
been implicated in a massive corruption investigation. Police said this
week they have evidence that 70 companies—including one U.S.
firm, Ford Motor Co.—allegedly bribed officials at the Finance
Ministry to cancel fines for unpaid taxes. Up to $6 billion in fines
and back payments were allegedly written off by corrupt officials,
including nearly $1.7 billion for Ford. This allegation of collusion
between officials and business leaders to defraud the state comes
after revelations of massive embezzlement at the partly stateowned oil company Petrobras, which investigators say involved
multiple lawmakers and government officials. “This latest development shows corruption here is a cultural problem,” said Gil
Castello Branco of watchdog group Contas Abertas.
Corbis, AP (2), Alamy
Lima, Peru
Mass-spying scandal: Peru’s intelligence agency has been spying for at least a decade on thousands of prominent Peruvians,
including opposition lawmakers, journalists, military officers,
and business leaders, according to an exposé in Correo Semanal
last week. The allegations have rocked Peru’s government. Prime
Minister Ana Jara immediately fired the top officials of the
National Intelligence Directorate, but she was forced to resign
this week following a no-confidence vote in Congress. The scandal long predates her yearlong tenure, but lawmakers said she
should have exerted more oversight.
The world at a glance ...
Moscow
Proof of troops in Ukraine: The report
about Russian troops in Ukraine that
slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was
working on when he was killed in
February will be finished and released
next month, his allies announced this
week. Nemtsov’s political associate
Nemtsov: Final report
Ilya Yashin said the report draws
on interviews with Russian soldiers’ families, who say troops
are being discharged on paper from the army and then ordered
to fight in Ukraine as “volunteers.” When the soldiers are killed
fighting there, the families get no pension—which is why they
are disgruntled enough to talk to the opposition. “The plan was
to conceal in this way the involvement of our army in military
action, presenting soldiers as volunteers,” Yashin said.
NEWS 7
Tikrit, Iraq
ISIS beaten back: Iraq says its
forces and allies have achieved a
“magnificent victory” over the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,
driving it out of Tikrit. “The enemy
has been defeated, and it has lost
all its capabilities,” said Interior
Minister Mohammed al-Ghabban.
U.S. officials disputed that asserIraqi troops and militiamen celebrate
tion, saying gains have been made
but fighting continues. The liberation of Saddam Hussein’s
birthplace could pave the way to an assault on ISIS-held Mosul,
Iraq’s second-largest city. But Tikrit’s mostly Sunni population is
wary of its rescuers. They fear that Iranian-backed Shiite militias,
which are helping Iraqi troops recapture the city, might take
revenge on ordinary Sunnis for ISIS’s massacre of 1,500 Shiite air
force cadets in Tikrit last year.
Reuters, AP, AFP Photo/Ilhass News Agency, Landov, Getty
Yangon, Myanmar
Peace in sight: The government of Myanmar has signed a draft
peace deal with 16 ethnic minority armed factions, potentially
signaling an end to almost 70 years of violence. “The seeds of
change in Myanmar are beginning to sprout,” said Vijay Nambiar,
the U.N. adviser on Myanmar. A partly civilian government took
power in the country in 2011 after decades of junta rule, and
President Thein Sein said his top priority was to negotiate a peace
with militias that have been fighting the government since independence in 1948. The draft still has to be presented to the ethnic
armed groups in each of their regions. It doesn’t include rebels in
the northern Shan state, who continue to battle security forces.
Abuja, Nigeria
Historic victory: Opposition candidate
Muhammadu Buhari unseated President
Goodluck Jonathan this week in Nigeria’s
first peaceful transfer of power from one
elected leader to another since independence
Buhari: He’s back
in 1960. A former general from the Muslim
north, Buhari, 72, ruled as a military dictator from 1983 to ’85,
and he campaigned on a promise to defeat Boko Haram, the
Islamist insurgency that has ravaged the northern provinces. Buhari
also benefited from a reputation for honesty in a notoriously corrupt country, and his supporters waved brooms as a symbol of his
promise to sweep away corruption. Jonathan, a Christian from the
south whose party has ruled since the end of dictatorship in 1999,
proved inept against the six-year Boko Haram uprising that has
killed 10,000 people and driven 1.5 million from their homes.
Istanbul
Prosecutor killed: A hostage drama
ended tragically this week when
two leftist radicals and the prosecutor they took hostage were killed in
a police rescue attempt. Militants
from the Revolutionary People’s
Liberation Party–Front burst into the
office of Mehmet Selim Kiraz, who
Kiraz: Hostage
had been investigating the death of
a teenage protester who died after being hit by a police tear-gas
canister during anti-government demonstrations in 2013. The
militants held Kiraz for hours, demanding that the police involved
in the boy’s death confess on camera. Police said they launched
the raid after hearing gunfire inside the room. But the head of
Turkey’s bar association said, “We don’t know who shot first.”
Cairo
Military aid resumes: The U.S. has ended its moratorium on weapons shipments to Egypt, which it put
in place after the country’s 2013 military coup.
President Obama telephoned Egyptian President
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi this week to announce
the resumption of shipments of fighter planes,
missiles, and tanks, and said he would ask
Congress to continue allocating $1.3 billion a year for military assistance to Egypt.
Sissi: U.S.-armed
Meanwhile, Egyptian authorities investigating
the January death of Shaimaa al-Sabbagh—an unarmed protester whose fatal shooting by police was captured on cellphone
cameras—have charged the witnesses to the killing with unlawful
protest. One officer has been charged with manslaughter.
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
8 NEWS
People
Flatley’s last dance
Michael Flatley is hanging up his dancing shoes
after 30 years on the stage, said Louise Gannon
in the Mail on Sunday (U.K.). The 56-year-old
Irish-American has made a $284 million fortune writing, choreographing, and starring in
blockbuster shows like Riverdance and Lord of
the Dance. But his success has come at a cost.
ÒPhysically, IÕm a mess,Ó says Flatley, whose athletic performances mix Irish traditional dance with tap and jazz. ÒI
have a recurring broken bone in my right foot which just spontaneously breaks itself. My hamstrings are ruined, my groin is gone,
and IÕve done irreparable damage to two points in my spine.Ó
Doctors repeatedly warned the dancer of the damage he was doing
to his body, but he ignored them and took cortisone injections to
help him cope with the pain. Now, he says, ÒI am always in pain.
Agony. Every morning my poor wife has to witness me spending
the first few minutes of the day trying to straighten my back and
push my legs to start working.Ó Flatley claims his latest show will
be his last. ÒI canÕt say I wasnÕt warned,Ó he says, Òand I canÕt say I
havenÕt loved every single minute of putting myself into this state.Ó
Hendrix’s foxy lady
■ The star of Woody
Allen’s 1979 movie
Manhattan has
charged in a new
memoir that the director tried to seduce
her when filming was
over. Mariel Hemingway was just 17 when
she played the girlfriend of Allen’s middleaged character, and she writes that their offcamera relationship was initially platonic.
“But I started to see that he had a kind of
crush on me,” she says of her director, then
44. Allen, who has also been accused of
sexually assaulting his adopted daughter,
subsequently flew to Hemingway’s family
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Rodriguez’s public breakdown
Michelle Rodriguez has finally come back down to earth, said Chris
Lee in Entertainment Weekly. In 2013, the actress’s co-star in the
Fast and Furious movie series, Paul Walker, died in a high-speed
car crash, and the shock of losing a close friend of 16 years caused
her to unravel. “I went on a bit of a binge,” says Rodriguez, wiping
away tears. “The stuff I did last year I would never do had I been
in my right mind.” Paparazzi photographed the bisexual actress
making out with supermodel Cara Delevingne, partying on a yacht
with Justin Bieber, and getting intimate with actor Zac Efron in the
Mediterranean. “I was traveling and having sex, and just trying
to ignore everything I was feeling,” she says. “I just kept pushing
myself.’’ Rodriguez says she had come to view Walker as a brother.
“I could see Paul once every two years [during filming] and know
there was another human on the planet who’s like me. When that
disappears, you wonder, ‘Wait a minute, what do I hold on to?
And why’d you leave without me?’” But earlier this year, Rodriguez
decided she’d had enough. “I said, “You know what, Michelle? Stop
hiding.” I just woke up with a profound respect for living.”
home in Idaho to ask the adolescent to
accompany him on a trip to Paris. Hemingway says she refused after realizing they
wouldn’t be staying in separate rooms.
■ Comedy Central defended its surprise
decision to hire Trevor Noah to replace
Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show
after the South African comic’s old tweets
revealed a string of jokes mocking Jews
and fat women. “Almost bumped a Jewish
kid crossing the road...would hav felt so
bad in my german car!’’ went one tweet.
“Behind every rap billionaire is a double
as rich Jewish man,” went another. Several tweets referred snidely to “fat girls.’’
Comedy Central responded to the backlash
by saying that to judge Noah “based on
a handful of jokes is unfair,“ while Noah
said the old Twitter jokes were “not a true
reflection of my evolution as a comedian.’’
■ A San Francisco judge this week gave
the widow and three children of Robin
Williams two months to settle their dispute
over the late comedian’s personal items
and memorabilia. Williams, who committed suicide by hanging himself in August,
left most of his belongings and $50 million
estate to his three children. But his third
wife, Susan Schneider, had signed a 2011
prenup granting her possession of his
Tiburon, Calif., marital home, and she has
accused Williams’ children of removing
the actor’s possessions from that property.
Williams’ children say that Schneider has
actually denied them access to the Tiburon
home and to memorobilia and photos
there that Williams “clearly intended for
his children.’’
Frazer Harrison/Getty, Getty, Everett Collection
Lithofayne Pridgon was Jimi HendrixÕs muse, said Chris Campion
in The Observer (U.K.). In 1963, Pridgon was backstage at
HarlemÕs Apollo TheaterÑwhere her lover, soul singer Sam Cooke,
was performingÑwhen she spotted Hendrix. Pridgon, now 74,
says she was instantly attracted to the Òrawboned, underfed-lookingÓ guitarist, and the two soon became an item. Hendrix wanted
her all to himself, but Pridgon refused to stop seeing Cooke and
her other lovers, who included singers Jackie Wilson and Little
Willie John. ÒI wasnÕt anybodyÕs old lady. My mother even told
Jimi, ÔPay Faye no mind because she falls in and out of love every
week.ÕÓ Hendrix left America for England, and rock stardom,
in 1966. But he kept wooing Pridgon, called her whenever he
returned to the U.S., and told her she had inspired several songs on
his debut album, including ÒFoxy Lady.Ó ÒHe was always saying,
ÔI wrote this about you.ÕÓ But HendrixÕs Òcrazy loveÓ scared her
and she kept him at armÕs length: ÒJimi was something, honeyÑa
force to be reckoned with.Ó After Hendrix died of a drug overdose
in 1970, his friends told her he might have lived if Pridgon had settled down with him. ÒIn other words, if IÕd stopped being me and
become someone else.Ó His death, she believes, Òwas just meant to
be. The light that shines the brightest burns out the fastest.Ó
Briefing
The grand Shiite-Sunni struggle
NEWS 9
With old regimes crumbling, Shiites and Sunnis are battling for dominance throughout the Middle East.
Reuters
Why is the Middle East in turmoil?
and helped to spark the ongoing war in
Syria. Unfortunately, these revolutions
In a half-dozen nations, tyrants who
did not lead to democracy and freeonce ruled by fear and repression have
dom, but instead to chaos, repression
been toppled, unleashing centuries-old
by new power brokers—and growing
sectarian rivalries and bloody struggles
influence for Iran.
for power. Syria’s horrific civil war is
spilling into Lebanon and threatening
What is Iran’s agenda?
Jordan and Turkey, while Iraq has effecSince the 1979 Islamic Revolution that
tively devolved into three nations—one
transformed Iran into a Shiite theocShiite, one Sunni, one Kurdish. In the
racy, the ayatollahs have sought to
chaos, a particularly malignant form of
strengthen Shiite minorities across the
radical Sunni Islam, the Islamic State
Arab world. Shiites make up only about
of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, has seized
15 percent of Muslims worldwide, but
large swaths of territory in Syria and
they are a majority in the oil-rich areas
Iraq (see box). Now Yemen has erupted
The bloodbath begins: A car bombing in Iraq in 2005
of Iran and Iraq and have significant
into yet another civil war that has
minorities in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Iran has
drawn in forces from the whole region. Each conflict has many
become a de facto partner of Iraq’s Shiite-led government, training
local causes—including complex tribal rivalries and a struggle
100,000 Shiite militiamen to defend against ISIS and Sunni insurover oil—but underlying them all is the new Great Game for
gents. Iran also is meddling in Syria, providing critical support to
dominance between the Sunnis and Shiites. The largest Shiite
buttress Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which is Alawite, a Shiite splinstate, Iran, is spreading its influence by funding and arming militer sect. And now Iran has encroached on Saudi Arabia’s backtias throughout the region, while the largest Sunni state, Saudi
yard, Yemen, by providing funding and other support to Yemen’s
Arabia, is now countering by organizing a joint Arab defense
Houthis, who are Zaydis, another Shiite splinter sect. Alarmed by
force of 40,000 elite troops from Sunni nations. “Since Israel’s
Iran’s advance, the Saudis last week intervened in Yemen’s civil
creation in 1948, the Arab-Israeli problem has almost been synwar, bombing Houthi positions and massing 150,000 troops on
onymous with the Middle East problem,” says political scientist
the border. “This is the first example of the Saudis pushing back
Michael Gunter. Now, though, “the Sunni-Shia split is the main
physically against a Shia insurgency and by extension Iran,’’ said
catalyst driving events.”
John Jenkins, the executive director for the International Institute
for Strategic Studies-Middle East.
Why is that rivalry raging now?
It has fueled conflict and repression since the dawn of Islam in
Who is the U.S. backing?
the 7th century, but was ignited into a bonfire in 2003. That’s
That depends on the venue. Saudi Arabia has long been a major
when the U.S. overthrew the Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam
Hussein in Iraq. Hussein had long brutally suppressed Iraq’s Shiite U.S. ally, and in Syria, the U.S. and the Saudis are on the same side,
majority, and his fall turned that power dynamic on its head. The providing some support to Sunnis rebelling against Assad. In Iraq,
though, the U.S. finds itself tacitly allied with Iran, as both supnew Shiite-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki marginalport the Iraqi regime in the struggle
ized Iraq’s Sunnis, denying them
against ISIS. The Saudis and other
any real voice in the new national
ISIS: A cult without allies
Sunnis are deeply worried by the
government. Sunnis rebelled, and
Though most Mideast rebel groups are allied with
Obama administration’s outreach to
al Qaida and other extremist Sunni
either Saudi Arabia or Iran, ISIS stands alone. The
Iran, especially if a nuclear deal leads
groups joined in the attempt to
self-proclaimed caliphate has embraced an extremto the lifting of sanctions. “A lot of
divide Iraq; in the ensuing bloodbath, ist, medieval form of Sunni Islam in which Shiites (as
the Gulf countries feel they are being
both Sunnis and Shiites committed
well as Yazidis, Christians, and all other “infidels”) can
be justifiably slaughtered. Shiite Iran, naturally, sees
thrown under the bus,” said Mishaal
scores of atrocities that killed tens of
ISIS as a direct threat. But even Sunni Saudi Arabia
Al Gergawi, a commentator in the
thousands and deepened animosity
is horrified by the jihadist group’s rise—a great irony,
United Arab Emirates. Saudi King
between the two sects. The Persian
given that the seeds for ISIS’s ideology were sown
Salman recently met with the presiShiites of Iran, meanwhile, seized
by the extreme, Wahhabi-Salafist form of Islam that
on the chance to ally with Shiites in
dents of Egypt and Turkey, the two
Saudi Arabia has supported, funded, and exported for
southern Iraq, and gained regional
Sunni states with the most military
decades. ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is no fan of
influence. All these events served as
muscle, to discuss uniting against the
the U.S.-allied Saudi monarchy, calling it the “head of
a powerful lesson for Iraq’s Arab
Iranian threat. The new Great Game,
the snake and stronghold of disease.” This gives ISIS
neighbors.
it appears, has just begun—and years
quite a list of enemies: the Saudis, Iran, Syria, Turkey,
of chaos and violent conflict appear
Egypt, the U.S., and the nations of the European
What did they learn?
inevitable. “In the 20th century, each
Union. ISIS, says F. Gregory Gause of the Brookings
They saw that even the most fearstate had its ‘one-man show,’” said
Institution, “has the unique ability to unite most of the
some dictators could be driven from
Uzi Rabi, an expert on the region
players in the new Middle East against it.” In the long
power. Beginning in 2010, the uprisat Tel Aviv University. “We are on a
run, that makes the terrorist group unlikely to survive
ings of the Arab Spring toppled dicjourney to an unknown chapter in
the struggle for control of the region.
tators in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt,
the Middle East.’’
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Obama’s
‘earthquake’
on Israel
Jackson Diehl
The Washington Post
License plates
shouldn’t be
for sale
Susan Milligan
USNews.com
‘Foodies’ reach
new level
of absurdity
Phoebe Maltz Bovy
NewRepublic.com
Viewpoint
Best columns: The U.S.
President Obama may have given up on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Jackson Diehl, but he hasn’t given up on accelerating the timetable for Palestinian statehood. Obama is now considering triggering “an earthquake” in U.S.-Israeli relations by submitting
to the U.N. a resolution declaring Palestine a state. The resolution,
which has already been drafted but has not been publicly released,
“would probably stipulate that Palestine’s territory be based on Israel’s
pre-1967 borders,” with some land swaps in the West Bank for existing Jewish settlements. Jerusalem would be declared the capital of
both nations. But the U.S. would also stipulate that Israel remain “the
homeland of the Jewish people”—a concession that Palestinian leader
Mahmoud Abbas has refused to make. “Why go forward with a text
that both sides would spurn?” Obama hopes it would win unanimous
support from the Security Council, and stand as a framework for a future settlement years from now. Being remembered by history as “the
grandfather” of that breakthrough would give Obama “the Mideast
legacy he has craved since his first day in office.”
Should Texas issue vanity license plates to motorists who want to feature a Confederate flag? asked Susan Milligan. That question recently
came before the U.S. Supreme Court, which must now decide whether
vanity plates bearing controversial political messages or obscene words
are “private, protected speech,” which governments can’t censor, or
government-sanctioned speech on license plates bearing a state’s name.
The solution to this legal conundrum is simple: States should stop
“vacuuming in dollars” by issuing vanity plates in the first place. These
personalized plates were created by states as a gimmick to raise revenue
without raising taxes. In return for a fee, citizens get to use government property to send some kind of message, whether it’s their dog’s
name, favorite football team, or the Sons of Confederate Veterans’
logo, which many find offensive. But what if the motorist wants to use
his state-sanctioned plate to say “Al Qaida” or “KKK”? How do you
distinguish between acceptable messages and unacceptable ones? You
can’t. Let’s stop “commercializing the basic work of government,” and
tell motorists to save their personalized messages for bumper stickers.
Food writers have gone completely off the tracks, said Phoebe Maltz
Bovy. The high priests of the foodie movement used to pretend that
they were offering useful dietary guidance for “anyone with ordinary,
or even better-than-ordinary, grocery options.” But whereas the advice
used to be to adopt a healthy diet rich in fruit and vegetables, food
writers now insist that all produce also has to be both locally sourced
and seasonal. Proud “locavores” like New York Times writer Mark
Bittman haughtily denounce the consumption of out-of-season greens,
insisting that in winter months we should all rely on “long-keeping
foods like grains, beans, and root vegetables.” You’re not “entitled” to
eat Peruvian asparagus and Mexican broccoli! Bittman lectures, while
jetting to Spain to explore local fare with Mario Batali or to Berkeley,
Calif., to sample 40 kinds of lettuce. He and the foodie elite now insist
that we all take the time to research where every item we buy comes
from, and shun supermarkets altogether. This kind of dietary advice is
not only useless to people in the middle and working classes, it’s useless to all of us “who aren’t elite food writers.”
“Americans should be careful before they try to mimic Asian educational
systems, which are oriented around memorization and test taking. I went
through that kind of system. It has its strengths, but it’s not conducive to thinking, problem solving,
or creativity. Since 1964, when the first [international] exam was administered to 13-year-olds in
12 countries, America has lagged behind its peers, rarely rising above the middle of the pack and
doing particularly poorly in science and math. And yet over these past five decades, that same laggard country has dominated the world of science, technology, research, and innovation. America
overcomes its disadvantage—a less technically trained workforce—with other advantages such as
creativity, critical thinking, and an optimistic outlook.”
Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
It must be true...
I read it in the tabloids
■■A German undertaker
passed out in shock when a
coffin lid at his funeral parlor
slid open and the supposedly dead woman inside
asked, “Where am I?” The
92-year-old woman had
been pronounced dead just
hours earlier after staff at her
retirement home found her
unresponsive, apparently not
breathing. When the undertaker eventually woke from
his swoon, he approached
the casket and saw the
woman lying inside, groaning, and with both eyes open.
An ambulance rushed her to
hospital, where she actually
did die the following day.
■■Britney Spears, who
made $50 million
last year from her
recordings and live
Las Vegas performances, has gone
back to school, said
People. The 33-yearold singer is taking
math classes so
she can help her
sons—Sean, 9, and
Jayden, 8—with
their homework.
“They go to a really hard
school,” said Spears, who
dropped out of high school
in ninth grade to focus on
her pop career. “Some of it is
hard for me. Next year when
[Sean’s] in fifth grade, he’s going to be doing pre-algebra,
and I’m taking classes so I
know how to do it.”
■■A Russian businesswoman
has been jailed after she tried
to organize a hit on her son’s
wife, who had irritated her by
making nonstop mother-inlaw jokes. Tatiana Kudinova,
50, began feuding with her
daughter-in-law, Roxanne,
over who should pick up the
tab for a family party. After
that argument, Roxanne kept
on joking about her “skinflint
mother-in-law,” and Kudinova hired a hitman to kill her.
But the hitman turned out to
be an undercover policeman,
and she was sentenced to
nine years in prison.
AP
10 NEWS
Best columns: Europe
12 NEWS
UNITED KINGDOM
Where foxes
are still being
torn apart
Lee Moon
The Guardian
ITALY
Knox’s saga
shames our
legal system
Gianni Riotta
La Stampa
Most people assume fox hunting ended when it
was outlawed a decade ago, said Lee Moon. Not
so. The hunt clubs have simply ignored the ban.
Every week, horse riders dressed in ridiculous
red coats and beige breeches gallop through the
countryside, following packs of hounds that are
trained to chase down foxes and rip them apart
alive. Police and prosecutors simply can’t be
bothered to interrupt these upper-class brutes in
their bloody pleasure. That’s why I, and others
like me, devote our weekends to sabotaging the
hunts. “Sabs,” as we’re known, use “nonviolent
direct action” such as blowing horns or spread-
ing false scents to disrupt the hunts. Contrary to
the crazy propaganda that some hunters put out,
we don’t spray chemicals at the dogs, or stab the
horses, or string piano wire between trees to slice
the riders. We don’t want anyone to be hurt, including the hunters—even though they often meet
us with violence. “I have been punched, kicked,
spat on, and beaten with sticks while sabbing.”
If Prime Minister David Cameron holds a parliamentary vote to repeal the ban, as he claims he
will if re-elected in May, our numbers will only
increase. “As long as people kill for sport there
will be saboteurs.”
The final verdict in the murder of British exchange
student Meredith Kercher “obliterates the credibility” of Italy’s justice system, said Gianni Riotta.
American student Amanda Knox and her Italian
boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were arrested days
after Kercher’s brutal 2007 slaying and convicted
two years later—even though a local criminal had
been found guilty of the murder in 2008. Knox
and Sollecito were acquitted in 2011, but that decision was overturned in 2013 and they were convicted again in 2014. Last week, Italy’s Supreme
Court threw out all charges against the pair, ending
their courtroom drama. If they are truly innocent,
why did Italy jail them for four years? And if they
are guilty, why couldn’t eight years of trials prove
that? Only one thing is clear: Italian justice is an
oxymoron. Our system of “atrocious delays,” appeals, and retrials “is one of the main reasons why
international capital markets shun us: too much
randomness in court.” Sollecito’s own lawyer
was reportedly shocked to discover that her client
would face no new trial. “If a veteran lawyer can
be flabbergasted by a ruling,” there’s no hope for
ordinary citizens. The government has promised to
reform the judicial system. For Italy’s international
reputation, that overhaul can’t come soon enough.
“regimes that do not share our fundamental
So this is what an ethical foreign policy looks
values.” Keeping a dialogue open with these
like, said Richard Milne in the Financial Times
unpleasant governments is the best way to
(U.K.). When the leftist Margot Wallstrom was
bring about change. Our biggest achievements
named foreign minister last year, she said she
come “not through loud screaming but from
planned to push Swedish diplomacy in a more
quiet and purposeful diplomacy.”
feminist, humanitarian direction. Now the
fallout from that policy is raining down. A few
So we’re just supposed to kowtow to barbarweeks ago, Wallstrom denounced Saudi Araity? said Jan Guillou in Aftonbladet (Sweden).
bia’s repression of women—they are banned
Flogging writers, beheading criminals, and
from driving in the kingdom and can’t leave
oppressing women are not Swedish values,
home without a male guardian—and conand Wallstrom was right to condemn those
demned the sentencing of Saudi blogger Raif
practices. Indeed, the biggest damage to our
Badawi to 1,000 lashes as “medieval.” Worse,
foreign policy wasn’t inflicted by Wallstrom’s
she said it was unethical for Sweden, the
condemnation of Saudi Arabia, but rather “by
world’s 12th-largest arms exporter, to keep sellall those gloating bullies who want Sweden
ing weapons to the kingdom. Riyadh promptly
to turn its back on its foreign minister.” We
recalled its ambassador and quit issuing visas
should champion her—and so should all who
to Swedish businessmen, and called on its Gulf
believe in freedom.
allies to do the same. Alarmed Swedish business
Wallstrom: Few fans in Riyadh
leaders protested Wallstrom’s stance, with executives from H&M, Volvo, Ericsson, and other firms signing an And yet Wallstrom’s European colleagues are silent, said Nick
open letter that said Saudi Arabia was Sweden’s “most important Cohen in The Spectator (U.K.). Sweden is facing “sanctions,
accusations of Islamophobia, and maybe worse to come” for
trade partner” in the Middle East. Riyadh eventually ordered its
ambassador back to Stockholm after Sweden’s prime minister ex- the simple crime of telling the truth, and its neighbors have
pressed his “deep sorrow and regret” over the incident and Swed- nothing to say. Why so craven? It’s basic economics. The continent’s recession-battered governments need investment from
ish King Gustaf wrote a fawning letter to the Saudi monarch.
oil-rich Gulf states and can’t risk losing a valuable export
market; Sweden alone sells some $1.3 billion worth of goods
Let’s hope that the diplomatic damage from Wallstrom’s tanto Saudi Arabia every year. “A Europe that is getting older and
trum isn’t permanent, said Anna Kinberg Batra and Karin
poorer is starting to find that moral stands in foreign policy are
Enstrom in Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden). Mouthing off may
luxuries it can no longer afford.”
be satisfying in the moment, but we still have to deal with
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Landov
Sweden: Speaking truth to Saudi Arabia
Best columns: International
NEWS 13
How they see us: Naming Venezuela as an enemy
“excluding those fired by the National
South America is uniting behind VenBolivarian Police against opposition
ezuela in the face of U.S. aggression,
protesters.” But Maduro can use
said Eduardo Paz Rada in Bolpress
the White House’s decision to label
(Bolivia). “The U.S. imperialist policy
Venezuela a threat to rally his people
has revealed itself” through President
against Yankee imperialism—and furObama’s recent decision to label Venther crack down on the opposition.
ezuela an official “threat to U.S. security.” Obama put sanctions on seven
Actually, Venezuela is a threat to U.S.
Venezuelan officials, absurdly accusing
security—but not for the reasons
them of human rights violations, and
listed in Obama’s executive order, said
wider economic sanctions are sure to
Carlos Alberto Montaner in El Diario
follow. The 12-country Union of South
Exterior (Spain). The president cited
American Nations immediately and
human rights abuses and repression of
unanimously called for the measures
the political opposition, but those sins
to be revoked. The late Venezuelan
were “just the excuse” for the sancleader Hugo Chávez predicted this day
Anti-American graffiti on the streets of Caracas.
tions. The real problem is the Maduro
would come, and fortunately he laid the
regime’s involvement in drug smuggling and money laundering,
groundwork for Venezuela’s defense that his successor Nicolás
and reports that some of its ill-gotten cash is being funneled to
Maduro is now following. Venezuela is undergoing a massive
military mobilization, and it will not stand alone. Bolivia, Argen- Islamic militants backed by Venezuela’s ally, Iran. “The White
House knows all this in detail.”
tina, and other nations across the continent are ready to “demonstrate solidarity with and support for the Venezuelan people.”
So where do we go from here? asked Américo Martín in Tal
Cual (Venezuela). Maduro “preaches war” but nobody seriIt looks like “Venezuela is the new Cuba,” said Gina Montaner
ously believes that the U.S. Marines are about to land on our
in El Mundo (Spain). At the very moment when the U.S. is rebeaches. Even Maduro must not believe it, because instead of
jecting the old Cold War model for relations with Havana, it is
rallying the troops to take up arms, he has ordered them to sign
applying that model to Caracas. And the Venezuelans are milka petition calling for the repeal of the sanctions. He intends to
ing their newfound status for all it’s worth. Maduro railed that
deliver this frightening document to Obama next month, at
the sanctions were “the most aggressive, most unjust, and most
the Summit of the Americas. “Ink yes, bullets no!” This is no
terrible” action the U.S. has taken, and warned his citizens that
drama, “this is a sitcom.”
invasion was imminent. Of course, not a shot has been fired,
RUSSIA
The real
reason Putin
took Crimea
Andrei Lipsky
Novaya Gazeta
AUSTRALIA
Afraid
to say no
to America
Alan Ramsey
Reuters
Sydney Morning Herald
The international isolation Russia has suffered
since its annexation of Crimea is a feature, not a
bug, said Andrei Lipsky. Yes, President Vladimir
Putin’s meddling in Ukraine has done Russia
more harm than good “in almost all areas of
foreign relations.” It reinvigorated NATO, got us
kicked out of the Group of Eight industrialized
nations summit, and caused all of our neighbors
to mistrust us. But on the domestic front, all is
now well—and that was Putin’s aim. Remember,
the Kremlin was “terribly frightened” by the mass
demonstrations against Putin’s rule in 2011 and
2012. Ever since then it has smeared all of his op-
ponents as “agents of the West” trying to thwart
the will of the Russian people. The Kremlin’s
propaganda worked pretty well, but it failed to
do one important thing: “rally the population
around the current government.” The return of
Crimea generated that needed surge of patriotism.
And the accompanying international isolation
fulfilled another part of the plan: limiting “harmful contacts” with Westerners and Western democratic thought and uniting the nation in outrage
over U.S. and European economic sanctions.
Putin’s Russians are feeling both victimized and
righteous—and that’s just how he wants them.
Why is Australia still doing America’s bidding?
asked Alan Ramsey. It started during World
War II, when Australian Prime Minister John
Curtin was so spooked by Japan’s relentless advance across the Pacific that he pronounced us
vassals. “Without any inhibitions of any kind,”
he declared, “I make it quite clear Australia
looks to America”—not Britain. Since then, every
prime minister has made at least one “trek to
Washington to pay court” to the U.S. president
of the day. Any time some intrepid Aussie suggests that maybe we “could do something less
cringing, even independent, such as say ‘no’ on
military or security matters,” the idea is sneered
at as daft. It’s got to the point that nobody even
questions our slavish devotion. A few years ago,
when President Obama announced plans to start
rotating Marine contingents from Okinawa,
Japan, to Darwin, Australia, there was no debate
in Parliament whatsoever. For the first time since
World War II, “we have opened our doors to
foreign troops to be based here,” and “nobody
says boo.” We now house more than 1,100 U.S.
troops for half of every year. How many more
will invade? “You can have no doubt Australia is
losing its future as an independent nation.”
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
14 NEWS
Talking points
Germanwings crash: The tortured mind of a suicidal pilot
“A cruel irony” enabled Lubitz to carry out
Germanwings Flight 9525 took off from Barcehis heinous crime, said Eugene Robinson
lona at 10:01 a.m., bound for Düsseldorf, said
in The Washington Post. After terrorists
Mariano Castillo in CNN.com. The plane’s
hijacked planes to commit the 9/11 attacks,
captain, Patrick Sondenheimer, hadn’t had
commercial airlines fortified the cockpit doors
time to use the bathroom before the flight, so
of their aircraft so they were impregnable.
when the plane reached cruising altitude, SonPilots who left the cockpit could only re-enter
denheimer left the cockpit to relieve himself.
using a special code, and the person left in the
“You can take over,” Capt. Sondenheimer is
cockpit could override this code if they susheard telling his co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, on
pected a potential hijacker was trying to force
the cockpit’s voice recorder. Moments after the
his way in. When Capt. Sondenheimer left the
door clicks shut, Lubitz directs the plane to
cockpit, Lubitz used this anti-terrorism device
rapidly descend from 38,000 feet to 100 feet.
to carry out his own form of terrorism—
“Next comes the banging,” as a locked-out
making the passengers belated victims of
Capt. Sondenheimer hammers on the door
9/11. There’s only one way to ensure this
and begs Lubitz to let him back into the cockdoesn’t happen again, said William Saletan in
pit. “For God’s sake, open the door!” shouts
Slate.com. “No one should ever be left in the
Sondenheimer, over the sounds of passengers
cockpit alone.” That policy—already in force
screaming with terror. Minutes later, the plane
in U.S. airliners—doesn’t depend on “astute
slams into the French Alps, killing all 150 passhrinks, candid pilots, or perfect technolsengers and crew on board. What possessed
ogy.” It just means that whenever one pilot
Lubitz to apparently “fly the plane into a
Lubitz during a 2010 half-marathon
leaves the cockpit, a second person—a flight
mountainside”? said Nicholas Kulish in The
attendant or off-duty pilot—steps in until he returns. Fortunately,
New York Times. German investigators are focusing on several
clues: Lubitz, 27, had a history of serious depressive episodes and European airlines are now adopting that rule, too.
suicidal tendencies, and he may have experienced recent prob“We need our own heads examined if we think that will really
lems with a longtime girlfriend. Discarded notes in his apartment
solve the problem,” said Clive Irving in TheDailyBeast.com. “A
indicated that two doctors recently told him he was unfit to fly,
second person in the cockpit—especially a flight attendant—could
and Lubitz may have feared he would lose the career as a pilot
quite easily be taken out by a rogue pilot who planned for just
he’d always dreamed of. One flight attendant who says she had
such an adversary.” Nor would the psychological testing of pilots
an affair with Lubitz told a German newspaper he often woke at
night, screaming, “We’re going down!” He once told her, she said, weed out every potential threat, since they might just lie. You
that he would someday “do something that will change the entire could take humans out of the equation altogether, of course, by
putting computerized autopilots in full control of airliners from
system, and everyone will know my name.”
takeoff to landing. But even after this horrific murder-suicide, no
sane person is going to call “for the cockpit containing no humans
Don’t blame this crash on Lubitz’s depression, said Russell
at all.” Let’s remember that every day, 100,000 commercial flights
Saunders in TheDailyBeast.com. As a doctor, let me tell you
take off and land without incident all around the world, said
this: “Depression does not make someone murder 149 people.”
James Fallows in TheAtlantic.com. Air travel is incredibly safe.
Indeed, a study of 47,000 people in Sweden found that only
Last year, not a single person died in a commercial crash in the
3.7 percent of men and 0.5 percent of women diagnosed with
depression went on to commit a violent crime. Lubitz’s mental ill- U.S. Most of the recent crashes abroad have involved serious pilot
error, and when that error is deliberate, as in the Germanwings
ness, whatever it was, led to a “monstrous capacity for depraved
disaster, it’s deeply disturbing. But “it’s worth resisting the temptaindifference” to the lives of everyone on that plane, including
schoolchildren and babies. “Some acts are so horrifying they beg- tion to think that some new regulation or device can offer perfect
protection against calculated malice. Unfortunately, none can.”
gar any attempt to fully comprehend them.”
Noted
WashingtonPost.com
■■The number of people seeking
asylum worldwide has hit a 20-year
high, in part because of the four-yearold civil war in Syria. About 866,000
people sought asylum in 2014, up
45 percent from the previous year, and
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
one in fve of these refugees was Syrian.
The New York Times
■■Canada is the foreign nation we like best,
scoring 92 percent favorability in
a recent U.S. poll. Great Britain
and France were second and
third, scoring 90 percent and
82 percent, respectively.
North Korea was at the
bottom of the list,
scoring just
9 percent
favorability.
Kim Jong Un: Not popular here
Gallup
■■The top 15 contenders for the Republican presidential nomination own at least
40 guns among them. Only two GOP hopefuls don’t own any frearms: New Jersey
Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov.
Jeb Bush.
The Washington Post
■■California’s death row has run out of
space for new inmates, because the state
has not carried out any executions in nearly
a decade and more condemned prisoners
keep arriving. There are 751 inmates on California’s death row, the largest in the country.
Los Angeles Times
Getty, Reuters
■■Almost 80 percent of people who commit
a murder-suicide experience a crisis within
two weeks of the incident, according to data
maintained by the Centers for Disease Control. More than 70 percent of cases involve
problems with romantic partners. In 93 percent of cases, the perpetrators are men.
Talking points
Harry Reid: Hanging up his gloves
has used the Senate floor to “personally
“Nobody ever thought Harry Reid would
defame enemies,” railing against the conretire,” said Molly Ball in TheAtlantic.com.
servative Koch brothers and smearing
Most people assumed that the ferociously
Mitt Romney with a lie that he’d paid
hardworking Democratic minority leader
no taxes at all. Most damagingly, Reid
“would only ever leave the Senate feet
also unilaterally changed Senate filibuster
first.” But last week the Nevada lawmaker,
rules so he could “jam through” Pres75, announced that during his recovery
ident Obama’s federal judicial
from a freak workout accident in
nominations without RepubliJanuary, he had decided not to
can support. Nobody will miss
seek re-election next year. Reid’s
this “obstructionist-in-chief,” said
retirement will end a phenomNationalReview.com
in an editorial.
enally successful career powered
A fiercely partisan pugilist
Reid stalled almost every piece of
by an iron will. Raised by alcoholic parents in an impoverished Nevada mining legislation passed by the GOP-controlled House.
town, the onetime amateur boxer rose to become A “dishonest, sanctimonious, unscrupulous charlatan,” this political pugilist is “one of the worst
one of the longest-serving Democratic leaders in
things about American government.”
history. In public, he was crusty and uncharismatic, but behind the scenes, he was a political
Reid has long been a “favorite bogeyman for
“mastermind.” Reid’s achievements when the
Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress Republicans,” said Lexington in The Economist. “An outrageous partisan,” he once called
were “extraordinary,” said Ezra Klein in Vox
.com. He somehow united the entire Democratic President George W. Bush a “loser” and a “liar”
and often delivered low blows to his opponents.
caucus to push through a raft of progressive
legislation, from ending “don’t ask, don’t tell” to But the GOP cannot reasonably claim that Reid
enacting the Affordable Care Act. “What we call “has single-handedly broken the Senate.” Yes, he
blocked countless Republican amendments and
Obama’s legacy is just as much Reid’s legacy.”
votes, but it was the GOP who first ground Congress to a halt by using the filibuster at unprecGood riddance to him, said Jennifer Rubin in
edented levels. Reid is a symptom, not the cause,
WashingtonPost.com. Reid has done more than
of runaway Washington partisanship, and “his
any other recent congressional leader to “poison
retirement may not change very much.”
the political debate.” Like Sen. Joe McCarthy, he
Bergdahl: Was it a mistake to buy his freedom?
AP
In just 10 short months, said Nancy A. Youssef
in TheDailyBeast.com, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl
has gone from “being heralded at the White
House to facing prison for life.” The former
POW, who was freed by the Taliban in May in
exchange for five high-level Taliban commanders
at Guantánamo Bay, was charged last week with
desertion and “misbehaving before the enemy.”
Bergdahl, the Army says, walked off his base
in the middle of the night, without his gun and
gear, only to be quickly captured, said the Chicago Tribune in an editorial. He now claims that
he was trying to reach another U.S. outpost to
report unethical behavior among his own unit’s
commanders. “Seriously?” Whatever his intentions, he clearly put his comrades in needless
danger by triggering a large-scale manhunt inside
hostile territory. “If Bergdahl ends up spending
the rest of his life behind bars, he has no one to
blame but himself.”
The Army should never have made Bergdahl
a soldier in the first place, said The New York
Times. In 2006, he was discharged from the
Coast Guard less than a month into basic training “because of concerns about his psychological
state.” But in its desperation for recruits willing
to go to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army granted
him an eligibility waiver. Once Bergdahl was
deployed, it quickly became clear to both his
family and his fellow soldiers that he was “emotionally distressed and at times delusional.” In
the Taliban’s hands, Bergdahl was beaten and
starved for years, said John Knefel in Rolling
Stone.com. How could the White House just
leave a U.S. prisoner of war to die like that?
“The swap was still the only moral choice the
Obama administration had.”
Obama may indeed have had a “sacred obligation” to bring Bergdahl home, said The Wall
Street Journal. But the elaborate Rose Garden
ceremony announcing Bergdahl’s return was
a profoundly cynical political stunt. National
Security Adviser Susan Rice even claimed at the
time that Bergdahl had served “with honor and
distinction.” That lie has now been exposed, said
Jonah Goldberg in NationalReview.com. And yet
this White House is still insisting that trading a
deserter for five enemy commanders was “a winwin.” What a slap in the face to every soldier who
actually has “served with honor and distinction.”
NEWS 15
Wit &
Wisdom
“Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since
it consists principally in
dealing with men.”
Joseph Conrad, quoted in
The Wall Street Journal
“You may not be able
to change the world,
but at least you can
embarrass the guilty.”
Jessica Mitford, quoted in
The New York Times
“The life of a person is not
what happened, but what
he remembers and how
he remembers it.”
Gabriel García Márquez,
quoted in the Financial Times
“To belong nowhere is a
blessing and a curse, like
any kind of freedom.”
Novelist Leah Stewart, quoted
in BuzzFeed.com
“The workaholic colonizes
his own despair at the perceived emptiness of life by
filling it in with work.”
Philosopher Mark Kingwell,
quoted in The New Republic
“There is enough in the
world for human need, but
not human greed.”
Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in
the Providence, R.I., Journal
“Practical men, who
believe themselves to be
quite exempt from any
intellectual influences, are
usually slaves of some
defunct economist.”
John Maynard Keynes, quoted
in The Boston Globe
Poll watch
■■Just 38% of Americans
approve of President
Obama’s handling of
relations with Israel, and
only 37% approve of
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s handling of
relations with the U.S.
Washington Post/ABC News
■■Democrats’ opinion of
Hillary Clinton remains
highly positive: 79% view
her favorably, up from
77% during her 2008
presidential campaign.
Gallup
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Technology
16 NEWS
Mobile video: The rise of live streaming
Yes, amateur live streaming has “a dubious
“Today, I saw the future,” said Owen Wiltrack record,” said Will Oremus in Slate
liams in TheNextWeb.com, and in it, “ev.com. If the ’90s webcam craze proved
erything can be broadcast at any moment.”
anything—before “ultimately devolving
A pair of brand-new apps—Periscope, by
into a porn-industry gimmick”—it was that
the folks at Twitter, and Meerkat, a more
“people get enough mundane, unfiltered reupstart rival—give users the power to stream
ality in their own lives that there isn’t much
live video of themselves and their surroundincentive to seek it out online.” But “what
ings from their smartphones, while followers
if the problem with webcams was simply
on social networks watch and comment on
that webcams don’t move?” Smartphone
the broadcasts in real time. Unsurprisingly,
cameras aren’t “tethered to your living
these apps have already “begun to transform
room”—they’re in your pocket, ready to
the way that news can be accessed and conBroadcasting events as they happen
“whip out the second things get interestsumed.” After a building collapsed in New
ing.” Perhaps going mobile is the thing that will bring “live
York City last week, live feeds of the scene started popping up
streaming back into fashion.”
on Periscope within seconds. That kind of immediacy, which
gives viewers “a whole new level of access to the events unfoldThat’s assuming people can afford it, said Jason Abbruzzese in
ing on the ground,” is simply “unprecedented.”
Mashable.com. Even if live streaming from a phone proves to
be fun, users will probably think twice after they get their first
Count me unimpressed, said Annie Lowrey in NYMag.com.
data bill. Sending a tweet is cheap, but broadcasting or streamPeriscope and Meerkat might be “all the rage” among techie
first-adopters, who also obsessively post to Facebook, Snapchat, ing video racks up the megabytes—fast. Wireless providers,
which “stand to make more money as users upgrade to more
Vine, and Twitter in order “to share every last detail of their
expensive data plans,” will probably be thrilled, and power users
lives.” But I doubt the apps will find much of a wider audience.
might happily absorb the extra fees. But more wallet-conscious
The harsh truth is that most people’s lives just aren’t that excitadopters would be advised to limit their live streaming to Wi-Fi
ing. During my time tooling around with the apps’ offerings, I
hot spots, “removing much of the spontaneity” that makes these
saw a lot of people preparing dinner, commuting, and playing
apps attractive in the first place.
with their dogs. “It’s not terribly interesting.”
Bytes: What’s new in tech
Google personalizes TV ads
A
high-tech
frying
pan
could
save
you from
burning your next meal, said J.D.
Harrison in The Washington Post.
New York City–based brother-sister
duo Rahul and Prachi Baxi recently
unveiled a Bluetooth-enabled frying
pan called SmartyPans, which can
connect to recipe apps and provide
step-by-step cooking instructions for
even the least kitchen-savvy cooks.
The pan “warns you if you need to
adjust the temperature,” Prachi says,
and it uses built-in sensors to track
the weight and temperature of your
dish’s ingredients. The pan’s companion app uses that information to
“show you caloric information in
real time,” and the data can then be
logged in your choice of nutritional
tracking apps, such as MyFitnessPal,
to track your calorie and nutrient
intake. “It’s like GPS for cooking,”
Rahul says.
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
“Thanks to Google, TV ads are about to start
watching you,” said Klint Finley in Wired
.com. The search giant is launching a small
trial of targeted spots with subscribers of its
high-speed Fiber internet and television service
in the Kansas City area, matching ads to viewers based on “geography, the type of show
being watched, and the viewer’s history.” This
is, of course, “how advertising has worked on
the web for at least 15 years.” But it’s a new,
data-rich world for TV broadcasters, who
have long relied on projections of the kinds of
viewers who watch specific shows to buy and
sell ads. Soon, “your TV is going to know as
much about you as your web browser.”
Jay Z’s new streaming service
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, said Ben Sisario in The New York Times. Rap star and
entertainment mogul Jay Z has unveiled plans
to relaunch the subscription streaming-music
service Tidal, which he recently bought for
$56 million, “as a home for high-fidelity
audio and exclusive content” by his famous
friends. Unlike Spotify, Tidal will have no free
version. “Instead, it will have two subscription
tiers defined by audio quality: $10 a month
for a compressed format (the standard on
most digital outlets) and $20 for CD-quality
streams.” But what’s perhaps most notable
about the new Tidal is that “a majority of the
company will be owned by artists”—including
Coldplay, Rihanna, Daft Punk, Arcade Fire,
and Jay Z’s wife, Beyoncé—who will provide
exclusive music to subscribers.
Hackers attack Slack
The hot workplace-collaboration startup Slack
just got hacked, said Greg Kumparak in Tech
Crunch.com. The company, which helps business teams collaborate through “superslick”
chat room software, said last week that cyberattackers invaded its main database for up to
four days in February. The hackers had access
to usernames, email addresses, and encrypted
passwords, as well as additional information,
such as phone numbers or Skype IDs, that
users added to their profiles. On the plus side,
no financial data was exposed, and Slack,
which was recently valued at $2.8 billion,
said there’s no evidence the hackers pried into
users’ messages or files. To deter future breakins, Slack has added two security features:
two-factor authentication and a “password
kill switch,” which lets team administrators
“boot everyone out of the Slack room and
force them to reset their passwords.”
Alamy
Innovation of the week
Health & Science
NEWS 17
Jupiter’s path of creative destruction
Earth may owe its existence to the planet
Jupiter. New research suggests that the
giant, gaseous planet played a key role in
the formation of the solar system by barreling through it like a cosmic wrecking
ball, destroying existing planets and creating debris that coalesced into new ones,
including ours. Astronomers began developing this theory after finding that virtually all of the solar systems they observed
around other stars have giant rocky
planets orbiting their suns at very close
range—closer than Mercury is to our sun.
“Our solar system is looking increasingly
like an oddball,” study co-author Gregory
A new low for winter sea ice
Shrinking Arctic ice
It may have been bitterly cold in much of
the U.S. this winter, but not in the Arctic.
The cap of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean
appears to have hit a record seasonal
low, The New York Times reports. Each
year, polar ice coverage typically peaks in
mid-March before slowly receding to a
minimum in September, but researchers at
the National Snow and Ice Data Center
found that this year’s peak—slightly more
than 5.6 million square miles—was roughly
50,000 square miles less than the prior low
maximum recorded in 2011. This year’s
maximum was reached on Feb. 25, roughly
two weeks earlier than the average peak
date seen over the past three decades. The
finding supports mounting evidence that
climate change is causing declines in sea ice
across the globe, a trend that could result in
a catastrophic rise in coastal sea levels.
NASA, Arctic Photo, Alamy
A double punch from space
Scientists have found telltale evidence that
an asteroid twice as large as any previously
known smashed into Earth about 300 million years ago. Previously, the largest asteroid impact was believed to have occurred
66 million years ago, when a massive space
rock hit what is now the Yucatan Peninsula
in Mexico, causing such havoc that it led to
the extinction of the dinosaurs. But scien-
Laughlin tells NationalGeographic.com.
His team modeled a scenario in which
our solar system originally had giant
planets close to the sun, with Jupiter a
bit further out than it is today. The model
showed that the sun’s gravity would have
pulled Jupiter into closer orbit, causing
it to collide with other planetary bodies,
resulting in a “collisional cascade” that
eventually obliterated the other giants.
Jupiter’s inward path was eventually
reversed by the formation of Saturn,
which had sufficient gravity to pull the
gas giant back away from the sun. The
planetary debris left in Jupiter’s wake
tists conducting geothermal drilling below
the surface of Central Australia recently discovered two vast underground scars of an
even more massive asteroid, which broke in
two and blasted into Earth from 300 million to 600 million years ago. Testing
revealed that the two impact zones—now
19 miles below the surface—were actually
caused by the same meteorite. At more
than 250 miles wide, the combined size of
the craters suggests that the asteroid was
some 12 miles wide—perhaps double the
size of the dinosaur-killing asteroid—before
it broke in two. The double punch should
have raised so much dust that it darkened
the skies for years and wiped out most living things, but scientists have no evidence
of that. “It’s a mystery,” lead researcher
Andrew Glikson tells BBC.com. “We
can’t find an extinction event that matches
these collisions.”
Opossum’s natural antivenom
Scientists have known for decades that
opossums are largely immune to snakebite.
Now they know why, and the discovery
could help save thousands of snakebite victims every year. Opossum blood contains a
peptide scientists are calling Lethal Toxin
Neutralizing Factor (LTNF). Scientists
isolated the peptide and injected it into
mice exposed to several venomous snakes,
including the deadly diamondback
rattlesnake. In all cases, the treatment protected the mice from
the venom. Researchers speculate
that the peptide works by binding
to a toxic protein in the venom,
rendering it harmless. “It
is almost not reasonable
that the peptide alone
neutralized rattlesnake
venom,” study
author Claire
Komives
A cosmic wrecking ball?
served as the building blocks for Earth,
Mercury, Venus, and Mars. Laughlin concedes that his theory is unproven, but
says it could explain why the inner part of
our solar system “is just missing.”
tells NationalGeographic.com, “but that
is what happened.” Opossum antivenom,
which could be produced at low cost and
in large quantities, also protected against
venomous scorpions and some toxic plants
without negative side effects. Komives says
the peptide works so well against all natural poisons that it’s “like a miracle.”
Health scare of the week
The price of cheap wine
Over the past decade, Trader Joe’s has sold
about 600 million bottles of its discount
wine, affectionately dubbed “Two Buck
Chuck.” But a pending class-action lawsuit now alleges that drinking the bargain
brand and others like it may come with
serious health risks. The suit, naming more
than two dozen California winemakers,
alleges that several inexpensive varieties of wine contain up to five times the
amount of arsenic that the Environmental
Protection Agency allows in drinking
water. About 1,300 bottles of wine of all
kinds and prices were tested, and just 83
had high arsenic levels. “The lower the
price of wine,” lawsuit sponsor Kevin
Hicks tells CBSNews.com, “the higher the
amount of arsenic.” Why would that be?
Most of the lower-priced wines are made
from grapes grown in California’s Central
Valley, instead of Napa or Sonoma; in
the hot valley, they have to be irrigated
with a lot of water, which contains
arsenic. Winemakers named in the
suit say the findings are misleading,
and accuse Hicks of a conflict of
interest because his company tests
wines for purity. Since people drink
far more water than wine, says a
spokesman for the Wine Group,
“it would not be accurate or
responsible to use the water
standard” to judge arsenic
levels in wine.
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
18 NEWS
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Pick of the week’s cartoons
For more political cartoons, visit: www.theweek.com/cartoons.
ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
“The hype about the wolf-dog is fun stuff,”
but Shipman is at least as good at making
humans’ rapid dominance of that landscape
vivid and at drawing parallels with the
impact that another alpha predator—the
gray wolf—has had since its recent reintroduction into Yellowstone National Park.
Our appearance collapsed hyena and wildcat populations in Europe; the gray wolf
has had a similar effect on Yellowstone’s
own second-tier predators.
Book of the week
The Invaders: How Humans
and Their Dogs Drove
Neanderthals to Extinction
by Pat Shipman
(Belknap, $30)
Paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman may
have solved “one of evolution’s most
intriguing mysteries,” said Robin McKie
in The Observer (U.K.). Before Homo
sapiens arrived some 45,000 years ago,
Neanderthals had flourished in Europe
for 200,000 years. But the land’s original
biped inhabitants soon vanished, and “the
question is, What finished them off?” Some
scholars blame a climate event; others posit
that humans, with their superior weaponry, outcompeted the Neanderthals for
resources. Shipman falls into the latter category, but “adds a twist.” She proposes that
it was by allying ourselves with wolves that
we became the world’s dominant hunters.
Don’t presume that the domestication of
dogs provides the central drama in The
Invaders, said Barbara J. King in NPR.org.
Alamy
A dog and hunter in a prehistoric rock painting
Shipman gets two-thirds into her story
before she begins detailing her arresting
claim about our canine accomplices. And
she acknowledges there are holes in the
theory, including the absence—thus far—of
hard evidence that Neanderthals were still
roaming the earth when humans bred the
first “wolf-dogs.” But not only might she
be right, she also spends most of the book
building “a compelling case” that modern
humans should be regarded as an enormously successful invasive species that triggered an ecosystem-wide crash in Eurasia.
by James Hannaham
The Battle of Versailles: The
Night American Fashion
Stumbled Into the Spotlight
and Made History
(Little, Brown, $26)
by Robin Givhan (Flatiron, $28)
Novel of the week
Delicious Foods
Though there’s nothing sincere about
the title, “you will devour this book,”
said Ron Charles in The Washington
Post. Just weeks after T. Geronimo
Johnson’s Welcome to Braggsville took
up the odd permutations of contemporary racism, James Hannaham’s novel
has done the same, with similar results.
Both men “bounce off the page with
some of the wittiest, most unsettling
cultural criticism I’ve read in years.”
Hannaham proves the “more propulsive” storyteller, in an opening that
joins a young black man who is driving
through darkness just after his hands
have been cut off. Soon, we learn that
he’s on the run from a farm called Delicious Foods, where the promise of
free crack lures laborers into bondage.
Crack cocaine narrates every other
chapter, and with a compelling swagger, said Roxanne Gay in Bookforum.
But while such absurdist touches
sometimes distract from the headlong
narrative, Delicious Foods remains a
“grand, empathetic” work. It “tells a familiar story in a most unfamiliar way.”
19
Robin Givhan’s
account of a pivotal
moment in fashion history “plays
out like a scene
from Rocky,” said
Anne Bratskeir in
Newsday. In one
corner stood five
haughty French
masters: Givenchy,
Pierre Cardin,
Emanuel Ungaro, Yves Saint Laurent, and
Christian Dior’s Marc Bohan. In the other
gathered a handful of American upstarts,
including Halston, Bill Blass, and Anne
Klein. The scene was a 1973 fundraising
event at Versailles that the press was promoting as a trans-Atlantic fashion war, and
the French had a home-crowd advantage
and a huge edge in spending. Two hours
into the showdown, tepid clapping marked
the end of the extravagant French presentation. About 35 minutes later, the audience
of 800 erupted.
Shipman “never proposes that the alliance of humans and dogs alone led to the
extinction of Neanderthals,” said Toby
Lester in The Wall Street Journal. But she
makes a strong case that the two species
made a killer partnership, and she “gets
imaginative” when trying to explain why
dogs and Neanderthals didn’t form a similar bond. Using a recent study that showed
humans to be the only primates with
whites around their irises, Shipman proposes that our edge in being able to point
and otherwise communicate with our eyes
made all the difference. “Once we teamed
up with dogs, we were unstoppable.” The
Neanderthals “didn’t stand a chance.”
The frocks that the Americans paraded out
that night “were not the history-making
element,” said Christopher Muther in The
Boston Globe. Rather, the energetic spirit
that the visiting team exhibited carried the
night. While the French had incorporated a
live orchestra and a dance featuring Rudolf
Nureyev, the Americans had three dozen
models who danced and spun their way
across the stage in ready-to-wear pieces
that boldly embraced the era’s dramatic
social changes. Givhan, the only fashion
critic ever to win a Pulitzer, helps us see
the sexual hedonism in Halston’s tunics
and the “black is beautiful” message in the
decision to include 10 African-American
models. The Battle of Versailles becomes
“multiple books under the same cover.”
“Perhaps, as with all great parties, you
just had to be there,” said Joanna Scutts
in The Washington Post. No true cultural
revolution could possibly unfold during a
“single, lavish, rather absurd evening”—and
even Givhan is unable to pretend Paris
still hadn’t woken up to the ready-to-wear
future in late 1973. The Battle of Versailles
“vividly evokes a host of fascinating characters” but appears unsure which dramas
to bring out. Unfortunately, “detail alone
doesn’t make a story, any more than a pile
of sequins makes a ball gown.”
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Author of the week
Thomas McGuane
“Thomas McGuane is the
greatest writer of American
loneliness we have,” said
Gabe Habash in Publishers
Weekly. Across a long career
that’s produced both the
ribald comedy of 1973’s
Ninety-Two in the Shade and
the quieter
fumblings of
a shunned
Montana
doctor
in 2010’s
Driving on
the Rim,
McGuane
has made psychological isolation a connecting thread.
“It’s the underlying condition
of being human,” says the
author, now 75. “You never
entirely cure that.” His new
story collection, Crow Fair,
tills the same soil. “Weight
Watchers,” the first of its
17 tales, focuses on a man
whose wife of four decades
has thrown him out of the
house for being too fat. “I’ve
been married for 40 years,”
says McGuane. “What’ll happen quite regularly is you’ll
notice things about your
spouse that make you understand you really don’t know
that person entirely.”
McGuane himself has
evolved over time, said
Melissa Block in NPR.org.
He acknowledges that his
comic sensibility was more
active when he wrote his
first books. But then his
parents and a sister died in
quick succession. “After that,
I lost quite a bit of my sense
of humor; there was a time
when I didn’t think things
were funny anymore. I kind
of think they’re funny again.”
That may explain why most
of the characters in Crow
Fair are discontented, trying
to effect changes in their
lives, and prone to making
things worse. “I am drawn
to the idea of people drifting into the worst mistakes
of their lives,” he says, “and
the inability to identify their
approach.”
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
The Book List
Best books...chosen by T.C. Boyle
T.C. Boyle’s 15th novel, The Harder They Come, probes an explosive strain of
American idealism, in a story culminating in a manhunt in the California woods.
Below, Boyle recommends six works that also explore man’s inherent violence.
Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone (Mariner, $20).
My favorite of this ultrahip, bad-boy writer’s
novels. A drug deal goes wrong (do drug deals
ever go right?), and one of our recent literature’s
hardest hombres, Ray Hicks, picks up his rifle
and takes on all comers just to feel the sharp
edge of the world rubbing up against him. A
beautiful, tense, Vietnam-haunted book.
Deliverance by James Dickey (Delta, $15). I
recently revisited this 1970 novel and found it
even better than I’d remembered. Dickey’s lineto-line writing is sublime without ever getting in
the way, and his depiction of four men reverting
to the primitive while on a Georgia canoe trip
is telling and well measured—Lord of the Flies
peopled with adults.
Black Robe by Brian Moore (Plume, $16).
Moore was a real magician, capable of writing
exquisite character-oriented books. This 1985
novel is as powerful an evocation of crazed fortitude and American frontier savagery as I’ve ever
come across, James Fenimore Cooper notwithstanding. The title refers to the term the Iroquois
applied to the French priests come among them
to bring the word of an alien god. Yes, and God
help the priests.
Sanctuary by William Faulkner (Vintage, $15).
Dickey might not have existed if it hadn’t been
for Faulkner—maybe none of us would. This
1931 novel about the consequences of entering
the feral world of the moonshiner still brings
chills to me no matter how many times I read it.
Temple Drake: Do not get off that train.
First Blood by David Morrell (Grand Central,
$8). The first iteration of John Rambo, a
Vietnam vet who doesn’t really like to be pushed
around. A fierce and surprising page-turner, even
after these many years.
Far Tortuga by Peter Matthiessen (Vintage,
$18). One of the most astonishing re-creations of
nature in our literature. A boat in the Caribbean.
Turtles. The patois of the crew that becomes
a kind of poetry lived in the moment. And the
violence at the heart of it that seems as natural
as pegging a leatherback out in the sun. This is a
book so powerful it makes me weep.
Also of interest...in engrossing underworlds
World Gone By
Master Thieves
by Dennis Lehane (Morrow, $28)
by Stephen Kurkjian (PublicAffairs, $26)
This final novel in a historical crime
trilogy “bursts at the seams with
great stories,” said Peter Swanson in
The Boston Globe. Former Boston
gangster Joe Coughlin has carved out
a halfway-legit existence in 1940s
Tampa before he learns of a contract on his life,
and every other character “who floats through
this saga” arrives bearing another “astonishing”
tale. Take the contract killer who murdered her
husband with a croquet mallet: “I could have easily spent an entire novel in her wicked company.”
Boston Globe reporter Stephen Kurkjian has been tracking the story of
the famous Gardner Museum heist
for years, and he “clearly knows how
to work his beat,” said Art Taylor in
The Washington Post. He gets lost in
the details of his reporting here, but not before
fingering a probable suspect and showing how
Boston’s gang wars might have prompted the
1990 caper. “Has ‘Boston’s last best secret’ finally
been explained?” Not necessarily, but Kurkjian’s
work could hasten a resolution.
Blood Runs Green
Blood Brothers
by Gillian O’Brien (Univ. of Chicago, $25)
by Ernst Haffner (Other Press, $15)
Gillian O’Brien’s account of a murder that transfixed 1889 Chicago
“leaps off the page like the best fictional murder mystery,” said Sharon
Wheeler in Times Higher Education
(U.K.). The victim, an Irish-born doctor, appeared to have been killed by erstwhile
allies in a group pressing for Irish independence,
and the crime caused an international scandal.
Five Irish nationalists went on trial, and O’Brien
recounts the court drama “with a verve that
would make John Grisham green with envy.”
The Berlin revealed in this long-lost
novel is “a playground and a cesspit,”
said Amanda DeMarco in The Wall
Street Journal. Author Ernst Haffner
was a journalist, and his only known
work of fiction plunges readers into
the world of the city’s 1930s homeless-youth
gangs, whose members stole, scrounged, and
prostituted themselves to survive. While Blood
Brothers isn’t high literature, it’s full of compelling characters, and “a chill shadow” creeps in
each time Haffner hints of the boys’ grim future.
Jamieson Fry, Bruce Weber
20 ARTS
Review of reviews: Art & Music
Exhibit of the week
ARTS 21
her suffering because her hospital
bed is set against the city’s skyline. Rivera, an avowed communist, was meanwhile producing
a series of murals that celebrated
the work being done at Ford’s
largest plant. He was mistaken
in thinking that with such imagery he could advance the cause
of workers who’d fought and
bled for their rights, but “the
thrill of his murals, like the
gritty thrill of everything about
Detroit, is its lingering appeal to
the conscience.”
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo
in Detroit
Detroit Institute of Arts, through July 12
It’s “strangely fitting” that Detroit’s
greatest art museum should reintroduce itself to the world with a major
Diego Rivera–Frida Kahlo show, said
Laura C. Mallonee in Hyperallergic
.com. The Mexican couple spent a
year in Detroit at the height of the
Depression, and their experiences
in America’s industrial Midwest
“proved transformative for them
both.” In the early 1930s, Detroit
Even so, the murals represent
was in crisis, just as it is now. The
A fresco in Rivera’s ‘Detroit Industry’ mural cycle (1932-33)
“a very public cop-out,” said
city had cut the museum’s budget
Ben Davis in ArtNet.com. Rivera began
45, was at the peak of his fame when he
by 90 percent, and there was talk of selling
working on them just weeks after police
arrived in 1932 to paint a mural series
off the collection. Late last year, as part of
and Ford security fired on demonstrators,
a deal that lifted Detroit out of bankruptcy, financed by Henry Ford’s son, Edsel, then
killing four. Soon, the Ford family precipipresident of the Ford Motor Co. Kahlo,
city officials ended similar talk by agreeing
tated a statewide banking crisis by refusing
his wife, was just 24, but about to assert a
to transfer ownership of the museum to a
to put any of its fortune at risk. But while
separate artistic identity born of personal
charitable trust backed by state and private
Kahlo mined the personal to express her
funding. For two artists heading in different trauma and her disdain for industrialradical politics, her husband was creatism’s promises. Fortunately, “neither artist
directions, said Noelle Bodick in ArtInfo
ing a utopian image of laborers of mixed
can be reduced to a formula,” said Philip
.com, Detroit once again offers the perfect
Kennicott in The Washington Post. Kahlo’s races working side by side in harmony.
stage—“because it polarized them.”
“It is a bravura work,” but it is also an
greatest work in this show is a bloody self“It was in Detroit that Diego Rivera and
image that could serve in any corporate
portrait that commemorates a miscarriage
Frida Kahlo established themselves as a
she endured at the Henry Ford Hospital, yet PR pamphlet—which is more or less how
power couple,” said The Economist. Rivera, the surrealist painting implicates Detroit in
it has functioned ever since.
Courtney Barnett
Earl Sweatshirt
Sufjan Stevens
Sometimes I Sit and Think, and
Sometimes I Just Sit
I Don’t Like S---, I Don’t Go Outside
Carrie & Lowell
For a 21-year-old
who’s in a foul mood,
Earl Sweatshirt “sure
has been busy,” said
Randall Roberts in the
Los Angeles Times. The
L.A. rapper has been
lying “real, real low”
since the 2013 release of his acclaimed
debut studio album and a more recent
breakup, and that’s the wounded state of
mind he conveys in 10 new tracks here.
“With these sparse, Rothko-esque works,
the artist dedicates deep, unflinching energy
to documenting and hopefully exorcising
his woes, delivering lines with wondrous
cadence” and “relentless insight.” The
album “will come as a letdown” to those
fans who’ve valued his “Eminem-esque
title-fight motormouthing,” said Winston
Cook-Wilson in Pitchfork.com. Often, Earl
is rapping here at about half his optimum
speed over “the ambling beats, messy synth
counterpoint, and off-jazz chording” of other
artists affiliated with the hip-hop collective
Odd Future. He “sounds deadly serious and
self-effacing at the same time,” though, and
his delivery is “lethally effective.”
In his first studio album
in five years, Sufjan
Stevens has delivered
“an incredibly beautiful, simple document
of impossibly ugly,
complex feelings,”
said Chris DeVille in
Stereogum.com. Carrie & Lowell reckons
with the 2012 death of the songwriter’s
mother, who walked out on the family
when Stevens was a toddler, then many
times again while she battled substance
abuse and schizophrenia. The lyric “How do
I live with your ghost?” could be the thesis
statement of the record, a collection of 11
“celestial” folk songs, each one stripped
down to evocative poetry, Stevens’ whispery voice, and keyboards and guitar. You
“have to be careful” while listening, said
Spencer Kornhaber in TheAtlantic.com.
“One minute, the lullaby vocals blend pleasingly into the background. The next, you
might catch a line of lyrics and realize he’s
singing about his mom’s corpse. Or about
slitting his wrists.” Certain albums aren’t
made for everyday listening. They’re “there
for times when you really need them.”
★★★★
It’s impossible to listen
to Courtney Barnett’s
exhilarating debut
album “without getting
gobsmacked by something,” said Andrew
Unterberger in Spin
.com. “There might
not be a more exciting sound in 2015 rock
music than her voice,” and not just because
of the way she combines throaty belting
and “disaffected sing-speaking.” More to the
point, “her songs are page-turners, like the
best literary fiction.” You thrill just waiting to
hear what this articulate, relatable 27-yearold Australian is going to say next. When
she straps on a guitar, “her minimalist style
nicely counterpoints the maximalist wordplay,” said Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune.
“The amiable stomp of ‘Elevator Operator’
creates a template for everything that follows,” because it’s a short story crammed
into a three-minute song and the offhand
lyrics “can turn razor-sharp in the middle
of a run-on sentence.” From start to finish, Sometimes I Sit is “a great record that
doesn’t try too hard.”
★★★★
★★★★
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Furious 7
Directed by James Wan
(PG-13)
★★★★
A band of thrill seekers
loses a brother.
Welcome to
New York
Directed by Abel Ferrara
(R)
★★★★
A U.S. sex scandal
topples a French
presidential candidate.
White God
Directed by Kornel
Mundruczo
(R)
★★★★
The dogs of the world
fight back.
Review of reviews: Film
Alex Abad-Santos in Vox.com.
Behold the latest installment
It doesn’t matter that the writin “the greatest action-movie
ing is flabby and the acting
franchise on the planet,” said
often silly. Viewers just want
Bill Hanstock in SBNation.com.
several over-the-top car-chase
Furious 7 stands out from the
sequences, minimal stitching,
six previous Fast and Furious
and evidence that co-stars Vin
movies in part because leading
Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez,
man Paul Walker died in a realLudacris, and the rest of the
life car crash halfway through
gang are enjoying themselves.
filming. But it’s also the third
Fallen star Paul Walker
Even as the franchise bids adieu
consecutive Furious that shows
to Walker, said John DeFore in The Hollywood
how this series about a crew of hot-rod enthusiasts
Reporter, the whole affair proves “as stupendously
“just gets action movies on a level that no one else
seems to.” Jason Statham joins the cast and “proves stupid and stupidly diverting as it could have hoped
to be had everything gone as planned.”
to be the franchise’s most lethal villain yet,” said
arrives bearing a new controAbel Ferrara’s thinly veiled
versy of its own, said Richard
dramatization of the 2011
Brody in NewYorker.com. To
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
avoid an NC-17 rating, the U.S.
sexual-assault scandal presents
distributor cut 17 minutes, and
“a shadowland vision of hell,”
Ferrara—who also directed
said Ignatiy Vishnevetsky in the
Bad Lieutenant—argues that
A.V. Club. French screen legend
the edited version absolves
Gérard Depardieu plays a superDepardieu’s character. The
star economist based on the
filmmaker “has every right to
former International Monetary
Depardieu with a few paid companions
be upset,” but the cuts do little
Fund chief, and even before
harm to this terrifying movie. Jacqueline Bisset
the brute is arrested and interrogated for allegedly
abusing a New York City hotel maid, he moves in a co-stars as the protagonist’s wife, and the “combustible” scenes that she and Depardieu share, said
world of dark, claustrophobic rooms you wouldn’t
Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com, prove “worth the
want to live in. “Maybe it’s the world money creprice of admission by themselves.”
ates for itself.” This “fierce, deeply moving” film
Labrador, half James Cagney,
This Hungarian import has
I would guess,” said Anthony
just set “the new gold standard
Lane in The New Yorker. After
for nature-bites-back movies,”
being captured, mistreated, and
said David Edelstein in New
trained to fight, he leads an
York magazine. A “cunning,
insurrection in which hundreds
nimble” thriller in which the
of dogs begin attacking every
stray dogs of Budapest turn on
human they encounter. Hagen’s
their human abusers, White
former human companion, Lili,
God works both as a parable
has by then endured comingabout how society mistreats its
Lili outpedals the hordes.
of-age rites of her own, but
most vulnerable members and
“ultimately the film’s human characters aren’t that
as a B movie “with A-plus direction.” The film’s
interesting,” nor are they meant to be, said Tim
canine protagonist is cast out in the street early
Grierson in PasteMagazine.com. “White God is a
when the 13-year-old girl who loves him is forced
dark twist on the underdog story,” and we root for
to move in with her father, who lives in a building
that frowns on dogs. Hagen is a crossbreed—“half the sharp-fanged rebels.
New on DVD and Blu-ray
A Most Violent Year
Sonic Highways
Grantchester
(Lionsgate, $20)
(HBO, $30)
(PBS, $35)
This recent crime drama set in 1981 New
York City offered “the most welcome kind
of throwback,” said the Los Angeles Times.
Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain play a
couple that has cut corners while building a
heating-oil business, and as the stakes rise,
the story “captures us and doesn’t let go.”
This recent series sprang from a great idea,
said The Village Voice. Dave Grohl of the
Foo Fighters wanted to record an album
of songs inspired by various cities’ distinct
music cultures. Yes, we’d prefer “less Foo
Fighters stuff,” but some of the history
Grohl digs up proves “entirely worthwhile.”
This “glorious” PBS mystery series “offers
respite from the world around us” while
“revealing how little ever changes about the
human heart,” said The Wall Street Journal.
James Norton stars as a vicar in rural 1953
England who partners with a policeman to
solve local murders.
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Scott Garfield, Nicole Rivelli, Magnolia Pictures
22 ARTS
“First Republic knows how to work with familyowned businesses. Tey remove all of the stressors
so I can focus on my business.”
E A R L “ B U T C H ” G R AV E S , J R .
President and CEO
Black Enterprise
(855) 886-4824 or visit www.frstrepublic.com New York Stock Exchange Symbol: FRC
Member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender
Movies on TV
Monday, April 6
The Station Agent
Peter Dinklage plays a misanthropic train enthusiast
who reluctantly befriends
a food-truck operator and
a grieving artist. Bobby
Cannavale and Patricia
Clarkson co-star. (2003)
8 p.m., the Movie Channel
Tuesday, April 7
Good Night, and Good Luck
George Clooney’s second
directorial effort garnered
six Oscar nominations,
including one for its star,
David Strathairn, who’s
riveting as TV news legend
Edward R. Murrow. (2005)
7:15 p.m., HBO
Wednesday, April 8
La Strada
Federico Fellini’s tragic
masterpiece casts Anthony
Quinn as a circus strongman who mistreats the
peasant girl he purchases
for a wife. (1954) 8 p.m., TCM
Thursday, April 9
Full Metal Jacket
The members of a Marine
platoon suffer through
basic training and combat in
Stanley Kubrick’s eccentric,
excellent take on Vietnam.
(1987) 6:25 p.m., Cinemax
Friday, April 10
Test Pilot
Clark Gable plays a harddrinking daredevil flyer who
meets his future wife when
he makes an emergency
landing. Myrna Loy sparkles
as an unusually sophisticated farm girl. (1938)
8 p.m., TCM
Saturday, April 11
127 Hours
James Franco has never
been better than he was
as a hiker who must take
drastic measures after he’s
pinned by a falling boulder.
(2010) 11:45 p.m., Sundance
Sunday, April 12
Behold a Pale Horse
Gregory Peck plays an
exiled Spanish rebel lured
into a deadly journey
home. Anthony Quinn and
Omar Sharif co-star. (1964)
9:15 p.m., GetTV
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Television
The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching
Frontline: The Trouble With Chicken
Americans love their chicken, consuming an average per person of more than 80 pounds a year.
Few diners realize, though, that one in four pieces
of raw chicken sold contains salmonella, and that
some strains of the bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics. This Frontline investigation
probes the rise in multistate outbreaks of salmonella poisoning, asking whether agencies like the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are
adequately protecting our food supply. Tuesday,
April 7, at 10 p.m., PBS; check local listings
Louie
Last season was a doozy for Louis C.K.’s
award-winning series. As its star and mastermind, the current king of American comedy
used his power to push the show in daring new
directions, and the experimentation generated
controversy, critics’ praise, and plenty of complaints that the show was getting too serious.
C.K. is now promising that the seven-episode
fifth season will focus on old-fashioned laughs.
Thursday, April 9, at 10:30 p.m., FX
Marvel’s Daredevil
Marvel Comics continues its push to colonize
every available picture screen with a dark action
series built around one of the brand’s minor
heroes. Charlie Cox of Boardwalk Empire stars
as Matt Murdock, a blind New York City attorney who slakes his thirst for justice by transforming at night into a masked vigilante. Co-star
Scott Glenn shines as Stick, Murdock’s martial
arts mentor. Begins Friday, April 10, Netflix
Nurse Jackie
As this show begins its final season, Edie Falco’s
Jackie Peyton has landed in rehab and is facing
divorce following the exposure of her affair with
the pharmacist who was feeding her painkillers.
Bobby Cannavale, who won an Emmy for his
work on Boardwalk Empire, joins the cast as
the new director of All Saints Hospital. Sunday,
April 12, at 9 p.m., Showtime
Veep
Don’t change the show’s name to POTUS just
Our dangerous poultry, in The Trouble With Chicken
yet. When the president unexpectedly resigned
at the end of last season, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’
Selina Meyer pratfalled into the Oval Office, fulfilling a dream she’d chased avidly for years. Her
stay at the top might be temporary, however,
unless she can convince voters that her narcissistic bumbling is just what the country needs.
Sunday, April 12, at 10:30 p.m., HBO
Other highlights
The 2015 NCAA Men’s Basketball
Championship Game
Maybe, just maybe, this year’s edition of the
most thrilling fortnight in college sports has
one more upset or buzzer-beater left in its tank.
Monday, April 6, at 9 p.m., CBS
The Comedians
Can onscreen chemistry be faked? Billy Crystal
and Josh Gad play fictionalized versions of
themselves in a series about a late-night comedysketch show featuring the forced pairing of a
showbiz veteran and a younger, edgier funnyman. Thursday, April 9, at 10 p.m., FX
Premier Boxing Champions
Boxing is back on network television. For the
second of five prime-time fight cards, the headline bout will be a junior welterweight matchup
between undefeated Danny Garcia and the
savvy Lamont Peterson. Saturday, April 11, at
8:30 p.m., NBC
Show of the week
Game of Thrones
Headey’s Cersei Lannister
It’s time to regroup as a fifth season begins.
With winter arriving in Westeros, the most
powerful woman in the Seven Kingdoms
(Lena Headey) is becoming undone by her
own scheming. Her younger brother (Peter
Dinklage) is drinking heavily after killing their
father. The so-called Mother of Dragons
(Emilia Clarke) is struggling to control her firebreathing progeny. Expect new alliances, deviations from George R.R. Martin’s best-selling
book series, and plenty of skin and bloodshed.
In other words: business as usual for a GOT
curtain-raiser. Sunday, April 12, at 9 p.m., HBO
• All listings are Eastern Time.
Credit: Courtesy of iStock.com, HBO
24 ARTS
LEISURE
Food & Drink
25
Taiwanese beef noodle soup: The pride of an emerging culture
8 small heads gently blanched baby
bok choy or another leafy green
(optional)
Anyone who travels to Taiwan must
give the local beef noodle soup a try,
said Cathy Erway in The Food of
Taiwan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
“There is nowhere else a noodle soup
quite like it,” and many inhabitants
of the island consider it the unofficial
national dish.
You can read much of modern
Taiwan’s history in the soup, also
known as niu rou mian. It is said to
have originated in the temporary military villages erected in the 1950s after
Mao Zedong’s Communist forces
triumphed and 2 million mainland
Chinese retreated to Taiwan. The
mainlanders brought a taste for wheat
noodles, and because families from various
Chinese provinces mingled in the camps
and cooked for one another, the soup
wound up borrowing its peppercorns and
chili bean sauce from Sichuan cuisine—
which has no comparable dish. Don’t
worry if you can’t procure every ingredient
listed. Substituting in local ingredients has
long been a Taiwanese tradition.
Pete Lee, courtesy of Macchialina
Recipe of the week
Taiwanese beef noodle soup
2 to 3 tbsp vegetable or peanut oil
2 lbs beef stew meat, preferably boneless
shank, cut into 2-inch cubes
In a large pot or Dutch oven, heat
1 tbsp oil over medium-high heat.
Add as much beef as will fit in one
layer without crowding. Cook,
turning occasionally, until lightly
browned, 5 to 6 minutes. Transfer
to a dish; repeat with the remaining
beef, adding more oil as needed.
A happy meeting of multiple provincial cuisines
6 thick slices peeled fresh ginger
6 garlic cloves, smashed
3 scallions—2 coarsely chopped, 1 thinly
sliced
2 to 3 small fresh red chilies
1 large plum tomato, coarsely chopped
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp chili bean sauce
1 cup rice wine
½ cup light soy sauce
¼ cup dark soy sauce
1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
½ tsp five-spice powder
2 whole star anise
2 lbs Asian wheat noodles (any width)
In the same pot, heat another
1 tbsp oil. Add ginger, garlic,
chopped scallions, chilies, and
tomato. Cook, stirring occasionally,
until vegetables are softened, 3 to 4
minutes. Stir in sugar; cook until dissolved
and mixture is bubbling. Return beef to
pan. Stir in chili bean sauce and rice wine.
Bring to a boil for 1 minute, scraping bottom of pot to release any browned bits.
Add soy sauces, 2½ quarts water, and
spices. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a
simmer. Skim off any scum that rises to
top. Cover and simmer for at least 2 (but
preferably 3) hours.
Cook noodles according to package
instructions. Divide among bowls. Ladle in
soup and top with sliced scallion and bok
choy, if desired. Serves 6 to 8.
Miami: Three standard-bearers of the latest boom
Beer: ‘A lager renaissance’
Change might be the only constant in glamorous
Miami, said Galena Mosovich in Saveur.com.
After a century of booms and busts, the South
Florida city is again riding high, with “cranes
crowding the skyline both near the water and inland,” often making room for another chef-driven
restaurant. Below are three places at the center of
the current surge.
Seagrape Chef Michelle Bernstein was already
“the darling of Miami’s culinary scene” before
opening this “exquisitely decorated” FloridaCasual Italian at Macchialina
focused brasserie at Thompson Miami Beach, a
new deco-inspired hotel. Whether you sit inside or out, order a cardamom-lemongrass
daiquiri before diving into Bernstein’s “spectacular” menu, which features local ceviche
and lamb chops with crispy sweetbreads and a lemon confture. 4041 Collins Ave.,
Miami Beach (786) 605-4043
Macchialina Reservations are a must at this “rustic-chic” tavern—“a haven for authentic
house-made pastas, fne salumi,” and plenty of other dishes drawn from chef Michael
Pirolo’s memories of childhood in Italy. On Sundays, Macchialina now offers a brunch
“sure to cure any South Beach hangover.” 820 Alton Rd., Miami Beach, (305) 534-2124
NIU Kitchen At this pocket-size hangout, “the thoughtful list of made-to-order dishes is
constantly changing,” but every choice delivers “the kind of Spanish cooking that makes
Catalan guests cry.” Don’t miss the cold tomato soup, topped with mustard ice cream
and a dollop of manchego pesto. 134 NE 2nd Ave., (786) 542-5070
To many beer connoisseurs, “plain old
lager may not seem particularly exciting,” said Eric Asimov in The New York
Times. But the beer that made Milwaukee famous is diffcult to make well, so
craft breweries are only now producing
lagers in numbers. When our tasters
sampled 20 such beers, old standbys
from Brooklyn Brewery and Anchor
Steam fnished in the top three. Still,
newbies like these below “point toward
a lager renaissance.”
Session Premium Lager This “clean,
crisp, and refreshing” beer from
Oregon’s Full Sail Brewing was
our panel’s No. 1 pick.
Atlas Brew Works District Common This “pleasantly bitter” and
“deliciously refreshing” amber
lager hails from Washington, D.C.
Ninkasi Brewing Venn
Dortmund-Style Lager Thank
Eugene, Ore., for coming up with
this “malty, hoppy” beer.
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Travel
26 LEISURE
This week’s dream: Discovering South America’s own Middle Earth
On Chile’s Chiloé Island, “every day
brings a new surprise,” said Anne Z.
Cooke in the Chicago Tribune. By an
accident of history, this verdant land
was shut off from the world for centuries, and it’s “a true one-off,” unlike
any other place I’ve ever visited. Chiloé
and the 39 smaller islands in the Chiloé
Archipelago look nothing like most of
the rest of the long, arid, rocky tail of
South America, but my husband and
I didn’t trust what we’d heard about
it until our cab pulled up at our hotel.
Beyond the windows of the Parque
Quilquico lay a wonderland of rolling
hills, grassy meadows, leafy trees, and
half-hidden vales sloping down to the sea.
If someone had told me we’d landed in
Middle Earth, I’d have believed it. “Only
the hobbits were missing.”
So how did this stretch of rich farmland
surrounded by a sea full of fish go unnoticed for so long? We soon learned that
Stately New England comfort
White Hart Inn
Salisbury, Conn.
Describing this 16-room hotel
as a work in progress “would
be unfair,” said The New York
Times. Located in “one of
the most picturesque towns
in the Berkshires,” it had
been around for 200 years
before a group that included
Redbook’s editor and author
Malcolm Gladwell reopened
it last fall. But the new team
aims to restore the inn’s role
as a cultural center, and that’ll
take time. Meanwhile, chef
Annie Wayte is flashing her
talents in an in-house restaurant that’s already a draw,
and the walls are adorned by
so many works by area artists that the inn feels “like a
warm, well-curated museum.”
Whitehartinn.com, off-season
doubles from $175
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
The rolling hills of Chiloé’s Tenuan Peninsula
Chiloé had served as a refuge for Spanish
settlers in the late 16th century, when
the conquistadores were defeated as they
attempted to colonize the continent’s entire
Pacific coast. The settlers intermarried with
the native Huilliche and began building
a singular culture. Jesuit priests arrived
early in the next century and encouraged
converts to build wooden churches—about
17 of which rate today as the archipelago’s
Castro, the island’s main city, features
another signature building style: ancient
wooden homes raised on stilts over the
bay. The tides vary by as much as 23
feet in this section of the Chilean coast,
creating thousands of shallow wetlands
that attract a huge variety of birds.
But the most unusual stretch of land in
Chiloé dates from another eon entirely.
During the last ice age, all but one strip of
the island was raked by a glacier, and that
patch of indigenous rain forest now sits in
a national park. The undergrowth there “is
so tangled and thick that bushwhacking is
impossible,” but anyone can stroll a long
loop of raised boardwalks, for a peek at
“the way it used to be.”
At the Hotel Parque Quilquico (hpq.cl),
doubles start at $202.
Getting the flavor of...
Mount McKinley’s wacky base camp
A gator park in northern Florida Talkeetna, Alaska, takes a perverse pride in
century-old rumors that President Warren
Harding’s visit to the town caused his death a few
days later, said John Flinn in the San Francisco
Chronicle. But what else would you expect from
the quirky settlement (population 876) that
served as the model for the fictional town in the
hit 1990s TV show Northern Exposure? For the
past 17 years, the town’s mayor has been a cat
named Stubbs. Moose really do wander down
Main Street, and residents use the local radio
station to share poetry with homesteaders living
off the grid. There’s still an active airstrip in the
center of town, but most pilots—including the
ones who offer sightseeing flights around nearby
Mount McKinley—now operate from a tarmac
on Talkeetna’s outskirts. If you’re not ready to
climb the 20,237-foot peak, you should save up
for one of the flights. “They’re one of the grandest adventures you can have in Alaska.”
Florida’s first state preserve puts on quite a show,
said Melanie D.G. Kaplan in The Washington
Post. Along a single trail in Payne’s Prairie State
Park, we counted 33 alligators and saw more of
the park’s 270 bird species than I could tally. We
stopped at one point and listened to the cacophony of “squawks, squeaks, caws, and chattering”
as birds waded, frolicked, and “landed on the
water like water skiers.” Lying just 10 miles outside Gainesville, the park encompasses an 8-milewide prairie that was a lake until the water
suddenly drained into an underwater aquifer
a century ago. Today, it’s home to wild horses,
cattle descended from those brought to Florida
by Spanish settlers, and 50 bison. The landscape
made me think of the Great Plains, except for
the Spanish moss that hung from the trees and
those large reptiles. “A few times, we wouldn’t
see an alligator nestled in the grasses until we
were nearly on top of it.”
Last-minute travel deals
A royal taste of Scotland
Take a five-day tour of Scotland
and save $1,300. The $3,995
package includes castle tours,
daily Scottish breakfasts, a
whisky tasting, and a royal dinner prepared by the former chef
to Prince Charles and Princess
Diana. Departs May 24.
A Greenland cruise
Explore the peaks of western
Greenland during a seven-night
cruise aboard a 32-passenger
schooner. A May 12 sailing with
Adventure Life costs $1,800 a
person—a 40 percent savings.
The offer includes shore excursions and snowshoe hikes.
A global Sofitel offer
Through May 19, almost 100
Sofitel hotels around the world
are offering 30 percent off stays
of at least five nights. With the
discount, doubles start at $52
a night in some participating
hotels. The package includes
French-style afternoon tea.
backroadstouring.com
adventure-life.com
sofitel.com
Alamy
Hotel of the week
most visited sites. They’re constructed
like upside-down boats, because boat
building was the type of construction
the locals knew best.
Consumer
LEISURE 27
The 2015 Ford Edge: What the critics say
Consumer Reports
With its second go at the Edge, Ford “might
have knocked one out of the park.” Gone
are all traces of the “noisy, clumsy, and
unrefned” midsize SUV that the automaker
has been peddling for the past eight years.
Because this second-generation Edge was
built on the platform created for Ford’s outstanding Fusion sedan, it exhibits “an agile,
light-on-its-feet demeanor” and delivers
a “remarkably” quiet ride. More sophisticated both inside and out, the 2015 Edge
“makes one heck of a frst impression.”
Car and Driver
The new Edge may look more than a little
familiar. Its “sculpted sides and straked
hood” were borrowed from Ford’s Escape
and its grille from the Taurus. But “higherquality ingredients abound,” especially in
the slightly roomier cabin, which can be
outftted with such advanced technologies
as blind-spot monitoring, hands-free parking, and a 180-degree front-view camera.
New York Daily News
The new base engine—a turbocharged,
2-liter four-cylinder—proves “more than
adequate for daily driving,” but the Edge
is “certainly not an athlete,” and you have
to spend at least $38,100 to get the Sport
edition and its V-6. No matter. Ford deserves
A subtly reinvented fve-seater,
from $28,100
to keep selling 10,000 Edges a month. The
2015 is “defnitely greater than the sum of
its incrementally improved parts.”
The best of…foreign beauty products
Madina Milano
Chic & Shine Stick
Foundation
Innisfree Jeju Volcanic
D.J.V. Beautinizer
Blackhead Out Balm
Fiberwig Mascara
This thick, white cleans-
Estelle & Thild
Micro Scrub
Makeup artists buy this
“cultiest of cult beauty
products” in bulk every
time they go to Milan.
Simply swipe the Italianmade highlighter along
the cheekbones and
nose bridge for a perfectly radiant glow.
ing balm, from a South
Korean natural cosmetics brand, “melts on contact with skin.” Massage
it into your face for a
few minutes and oilabsorbing volcanic-clay
particles will loosen and
clear any blackheads.
The No. 1 mascara in
Japan, Fiberwig “coats
your lashes,” then “dries
in little tubes” that won’t
fake, clump, or smudge.
At night, no makeup
remover is necessary.
Just add warm water and
the tubes slide right off.
Sweden’s Estelle &
Thild have developed
a cult U.S. following
with certifed organic
skin-care products made
from “only the purest”
extracts and oils. This
lily-scented exfoliant
“will keep your complexion dewy all year round.”
$29, amazon.com
Source: Refnery29.com
$12, amazon.com
Source: Allure.com
$27, amazon.com
Source: Vogue.com
$29, estellethild.com
Source: TeenVogue.com
Joëlle Ciocco
Lait Onctueux
Capital Sensitive
Cleansing Milk
The cleanser from
French skin guru Joëlle
Ciocco softens, smooths,
and oxygenates. It is
designed to eliminate
toxins and reinforce the
skin’s natural defenses
against pollutants.
$98, isabellebellis.com
Source: Vogue.com
Tip of the week…
How to eliminate clutter for good
And for those who have
everything…
Best apps…
For live-streaming video
■ Visualize the results. Do nothing until
you’ve pictured the life you hope to live
after the clutter’s gone. A more creative life?
A more social life? You’ll be making room
for that with every item you discard.
■ Keep only things that ‘spark joy.’ In her
best-seller on defeating clutter, organization
guru Marie Kondo stresses the importance
of truly liking the things you hold on to. So
pick up items one at a time and study each
one. Keep it if it stirs strong positive feelings. Let go of “someday” items—things
kept because you think you might someday
need them.
■ Sort by category. Lay out all your books,
or shoes, or shirts where you can see the
whole category at once. Start thinking of
the keepers as living things, so you’ll give
each one the space and care it deserves
every time you put it away.
The Mercury V-Neck from Ministry of Supply
is not just a sweater. It’s a thermoregulatory
sweater that uses a NASA spacesuit technology to adjust to changing temperatures. The
Mercury is made from a moisture-wicking
wool-acrylic blend, and paraffn is embedded in each fber. When you heat up, the
waxlike paraffn softens and lets warmth escape; when you’re cold, it solidifes and traps
heat. The full-phase
change takes about
seven minutes, but letting your sweater adapt
to a warm room proves
“much easier than
opening a window.”
The robots that knit it
even include ventilation
panels at the armpits.
■ Meerkat became the app of the season in
mid-March, but it quickly drew competition
from another app that makes it easy for any
Twitter user to broadcast live video from
a smartphone. Touch a button and you’re
shooting, and the app will send out a tweet
to let followers know you’re live-streaming.
In turn, they can tweet comments or questions that you’ll see as you shoot. And it’s
all about live-streaming: No video is made
available to followers for later viewing.
■ Periscope —Twitter’s own live-streaming
app—was rush-released after Meerkat took
off. So far, it can’t shoot in landscape mode,
but it’s otherwise “more polished,” and it
stores videos for 24 hours. Its comment
functions differ slightly. Still, the choice of
which app to use will “likely come down to
the community: Which lets you reach the
people you care most about?”
Source: MarthaStewart.com
$168, ministryofsupply.com
Source: Popular Mechanics
Source: Recode.net
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
28
Best properties on the market
This week: Homes with military history
1  Princeton, N.J. This 1811 stone-and-clapboard house
sits on the property where the first shots of the Battle of
Princeton were fired in 1777. The four-bedroom home
includes seven fireplaces, hand-blown glass windows, the
original pine flooring, and a kitchen hearth. The 2-acre
property features a two-bedroom renovated stone barn
built in 1741 along with milk, ice, and smoke houses.
$1,997,000. Susan Cook, Callaway Henderson/Sotheby’s
International Realty, (609) 577-9959
5
4
6
3
1
2
2  Sullivan’s Island, S.C. Built in 1894, this four-bedroom home was
used as junior officers’ quarters by soldiers at Fort Moultrie and was
owned by the federal government until 1950. The house has hardwood floors, upper and lower porches, and central air. The 0.3-acre
fenced property is within walking distance of the Atlantic Ocean.
$925,000. Cary Walker, Carolina One Real Estate, (843) 345-7150
3  Rockport, Mass. William Francis Gibbs, who designed
ships for the Navy during World War II, and later built
the USS United States, purchased this 2-acre peninsula in
Rockport Harbor. The four-bedroom house, built in 1960,
has been renovated and features a chef’s kitchen, a firstfloor master suite, and a floor-to-ceiling granite fireplace.
Outside, there are two decks, a Jacuzzi, and a covered patio
area. $3,900,000. Lanse Robb, Landvest, (617) 357-8996
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Best properties on the market
29
4  Castleton-on-Hudson,
N.Y. Vandenburgh Hill was
constructed in the 1700s
and then rebuilt in 1812
as a five-bedroom Greek
revival house. Features
include nine fireplaces, a
winding staircase, multilevel porches, and a kitchen
with marble counters and
terra-cotta floors. The
property, once owned by
the same family for over
300 years, was the site of
battles with the Mohicans and provided shelter
during the Revolutionary
War. $1,900,000. Nancy
Felcetto, Halstead Properties, (212) 381-6554
Steal of the week
5  Tacoma, Wash. This seven-bedroom house has views of Commencement Bay. During World War II, the Civil Air Defense used a
lookout tower on the top floor. Interior details include an elevator,
a gourmet kitchen
with a Viking stove,
and a master suite
with one of seven
fireplaces. The
property features
formal landscaping, a sports court,
and a two-car
detached garage.
$1,595,000. Grace
Hudtloff, John L.
Scott Real Estate,
(253) 581-1100
6  Great Diamond Island, Maine This four-bedroom brick
home once housed officer’s quarters at Fort McKinley, which
served as a key military base during the Spanish-American War.
The interior has tin ceilings, a movie room, and handcrafted
woodwork throughout. The property lies across from the
parade grounds and offers water views from the back and side
yards. $450,000. Amy Farrell, Diamond Cove, (207) 233-0033
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
BUSINESS
The news at a glance
The bottom line
■ Americans bought less
soda for the 10th consecutive
year in 2014, thanks to growing health concerns about
sugary and artificially sweetened drinks. But the overall
volume of soda consumption
dropped just 0.9 percent last
year, compared with a 3 percent decline in 2013.
Fortune.com
■ At least 80 of the U.S.’s
100 largest law firms have
experienced some kind of
cybersecurity breach. Experts
say most of the cyberattacks can be traced back to
Chinese hackers, especially
when the affected firms work
on government contracts or
mergers and acquisitions.
Bloomberg.com
■ A new study suggests
that people in communities
with high levels of income
inequality have a shorter life
expectancy than those in
communities where income
is distributed more evenly.
The New York Times
■ Nearly 500 workers
contacted employment law experts to
request compassionate leave after
news broke that
singer Zayn Malik
was leaving the
boy band One
Direction.
NYDailyNews.com
■ More than two-thirds of
Americans who land new
jobs weren’t even looking for
one, according to labor-data
analysis from the San Francisco Federal Reserve, which
suggests that recruiters and
employers who reach out to
candidates play a huge role in
helping Americans find work.
Vox.com
■ A quarter of middle-class
households earning between
$50,000 and $75,000 each
year sock away more than
15 percent of their income
annually. Only 8 percent of
lower-earning households
and 17 percent of wealthier
households save that much
of their earnings.
Bankrate.com
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Retail: Amazon unveils instant ordering
Dash essentially turns your
Amazon wants you to never
entire house into “a shopping
run out of toilet paper or
cart,” said Josh Lowensohn
coffee again, said Elizabeth
in TheVerge.com. A total of
Weise in USA Today. The
255 products from 18 brands
online retailer unveiled a
are available, including Gerber
new product this week called
baby formula, Kraft Macaroni
Amazon Dash, “a small oval
& Cheese, and Glad trash bags.
electronic device about the
For now, Dash is available
size of a pack of gum” that
only to select Amazon Prime
can be affixed around your
house for instant ordering
Push-button substitute for a store run subscribers by invitation. But
Amazon is also pushing for
of basic household needs.
manufacturers to “bake this technology into
Each Wi-Fi–enabled Dash “comes emblazoned
their own hardware,” so that new coffee makers
with the name of a different, frequently usedand laundry machines have built-in restocking
up,” product, like laundry detergent, razors, or
functions. “The future where you can just be
diapers. When you press the order refill button,
Amazon sends a message to your phone, “giving lazy and spend money with a push of a button
from Amazon is here, and it’s very real.”
you a 30-minute window to cancel.”
Media: Charter’s $10.4B bid for Bright House
Another big cable merger is underway, said Emily Steel and David
Gelles in The New York Times. Charter Communications said this
week it plans to buy Bright House Networks in a $10.4 billion deal
that will create the second-largest cable company in the United States,
with about 10 million subscribers. Charter, which is backed by John
C. Malone’s Liberty Media, tried to acquire Time Warner Cable last
year in a hostile bid—just before Comcast stepped forward with a stillpending $45 billion merger offer.
Autos: Volvo plans to open U.S. factory
Volvo has a plan to shore up its sagging U.S. sales, said Elisabeth
Behrmann in Bloomberg.com. The Swedish automaker announced this
week it will spend $500 million building its first factory in the United
States in order to reverse “a plunge in U.S. demand” for its cars over
the past decade. The company sold just 56,000 vehicles in the U.S. last
year, “less than half the brand’s peak in 2004.” The location of the
new plant, which will be Volvo’s fifth worldwide, has not yet been set,
but the company plans to break ground on it in 2018.
Food: Some McDonald’s workers to get pay hikes
McDonald’s is bowing to workers’ demands for higher wages, said
Annie Gasparro in The Wall Street Journal. The fast-food chain
announced this week it will pay at least $1 more per hour than
the local minimum wage and provide benefits like paid vacation at
roughly 1,500 restaurants it owns in the U.S. But the pay hike will not
affect workers at the company’s franchises, which make up “nearly
90 percent of the 14,350 U.S. McDonald’s.” The chain will also test
an all-day breakfast menu, much requested by customers, in San Diego
stores as a possible way to reinvigorate sagging sales.
Health: UnitedHealth buys drug-benefit business
The nation’s largest health insurer is bulking up in the “fight against
rising prescription drug costs,” said Tom Murphy in the Associated
Press. UnitedHealth will spend $12 billion to buy Catamaran Corp., a
pharmacy benefits manager that negotiates drug prices for employers
and health plans. The insurer hopes the deal will give it more leverage
over prices for costly specialty drugs that treat conditions like cancer
and hepatitis C. The new company will fill about 1 billion prescriptions in the U.S. annually.
This is your brain
on money
“An expanding wallet may expand your
baby’s brain,” said
Geoffrey Mohan in the
Los Angeles Times.
Though it’s no secret
that being born into a
wealthier family can
give kids a leg up in life,
a new study in Nature
Neuroscience says
that parents’ income
may correlate with the
actual surface area size
of a child’s brain. The
study’s lead investigator,
neuroscientist Elizabeth
Sowell, said money’s
effect on brain size
might be thanks to the
“enriched experiences”
of children in wealthier
families, including better
education, health care,
nutrition, and extracurriculars like music
lessons. Those experiences, researchers said,
“physically reshape the
brain over time” and
improve brain function.
But that doesn’t mean
we’re “damned by
our parents’ income.”
Researchers said that
“small investments at
critical periods” during
childhood can still “have
big effects.”
Amazon, Landov
30
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32 BUSINESS
Making money
Taxes: Last-minute tax moves for 2014
income. Generally speaking, taxpayers younger
“The heat is on,” taxpayers, said Laura Saunders
than 50 can contribute up to $5,500, while those
in The Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, even
50 and older can add up to $6,500. But some
though tax day is around the corner, Americans
caveats apply, and “your deduction will be limare likely to have a hard time getting help from the
ited based on income and whether you or your
IRS on last-minute questions this year. Thanks to
spouse has a retirement plan at work.”
staffing and budget cuts, the agency is currently
“answering only 43 percent of phone calls.” That
But “grabbing that last-minute tax deduction
means it’s especially important to “make every efwith a traditional IRA” isn’t always the best
fort to prevent tax problems before they occur.”
move, said Dan Caplinger in DailyFinance.com.
One of the biggest points of confusion will be
If you earn a lot now but expect to be in a lower
the Affordable Care Act. You’ll have to note on
tax bracket by the time you retire, stick to a
your 1040 whether you had health coverage last
traditional IRA. Taxpayers whose incomes have
year, and “about half of tax-credit recipients will
nowhere to go but up might be better off with
need to make a repayment that averages $794 for
a Roth IRA, which collects after-tax dollars so
2014.” Another one: If you sold certain employee
your withdrawals are tax-free later, “potentially
stock options, it could be reported to the IRS
There’s still time to save.
saving you a bigger tax bill in retirement.”
twice—once by your employer and again by your
brokerage firm under a new requirement. And if you’re claiming
Then there are the “fly-under-the-radar tax breaks,” said
a charitable deduction of $250 or more, “get proof.”
Marisa Torrieri in LearnVest.com. Parents can potentially
write off school and camp costs, and self-employed workers
There’s still time to lower your 2014 tax bill with last-minute
can write off parts of their home office—although more record
savings contributions, said Tobie Stanger in ConsumerReports
keeping is required these days—along with business travel and
.com. If you opened a health savings account last year, you
health premiums. Homeowners should look into tax breaks for
can make tax-deductible contributions to it until April 15—up
property damage, mortgage points, and “earth-friendly home
to $3,300 per individual or $6,550 for a family, plus another
improvements—like buying energy-efficient windows or install$1,000 if you are 55 or older. Adding to an IRA (individual
ing more insulation.”
retirement account) by April 15 can also lower your taxable
What the experts say
It’s time to take company stock off the 401(k)
menu, said Ron Lieber in The New York
Times. While such arrangements are less common than they used to be, 39 percent of companies in 2013 offered their stock as an option
in workers’ retirement plans, and 12 percent
made their matching contributions in firm
stock. But peddling company shares through
401(k)s—instead of, say, offering them as
stock grants or bonuses—“is incredibly risky.”
That’s because “when you’re getting your income from an employer—and your livelihood
literally depends on that company—it makes
little sense to make a big bet on the company
stock with money that you’ll need if you ever
want to stop working.” So, consider offloading that stock as soon as you can. That way, if
the company goes under, you won’t lose your
paycheck and your retirement fund.
Financing a vacation house
It might be time to snap up a second home,
said Anya Martin in The Wall Street Journal.
Vacation-home sales jumped more than 50 percent last year and “are expected to continue
climbing,” because of a healthy stock market
and the aging generation of Baby Boomers.
Lenders are taking note. Today, many have
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
reduced the down-payment requirement on
second-home jumbo mortgages to 20 percent
and offer interest rates that match those on
primary homes. But buyers should know that
“credit-score requirements may be higher when
financing a second home,” and they will need
to prove they can handle both mortgage payments. Owning a second home can pay off in
the long run, though, since the mortgage interest “is tax-deductible up to the first $1 million
of financing.”
How to resist impulse buys
It’s easier than ever to spend money on the
fly, said Vera Gibbons in MarketWatch.com,
thanks to mobile payment systems and sites
that store your credit card info. So if you want
to “keep more money in your pocket,” you
have to “identify—and eliminate—triggers.”
Be aware of your habits, such as whether you
tend to make impulse purchases when you’re
happy or sad. Be wary of retailers’ tricks, including sales and even “how the store smells,
the music that’s playing, and the location of
certain items.” And try being patient. If you
see something you like, “make yourself wait.”
Take a walk and see how you feel about it in
20 minutes when your “emotions have cooled
and you’re thinking more rationally.”
Every three minutes, a food allergy sends
someone in the U.S. to the emergency
room. Food Allergy Research & Education
(FARE) (foodallergy.org) works to improve
quality of life for the roughly 15 million
Americans with food allergies by funding
research and educating families about
life-threatening reactions. As the largest private source of funding for food
allergy research, FARE helps develop new
therapies that protect individuals against
dangerous reactions and investigates the
causes of different allergies. It also hosts
the SafeFARE online resource center,
which helps families find restaurants that
can accommodate food allergies and educates restaurant personnel on safe practices. FARE has supported legislation in
46 states that encourages public schools
to stock epinephrine and know how to
administer it for an allergic reaction.
Each charity we feature has earned a
four-star overall rating from Charity
Navigator, which rates not-for-profit
organizations on the strength of their
finances, their governance practices,
and the transparency of their operations.
Four stars is the group’s highest rating.
Media Bakery
Beware employer stock for 401(k)s
Charity of the week
Best columns: Business
33
Issue of the week: Facebook’s plan for web domination
app developers working on “smart” devices,
Facebook wants to take over the news busisaid Ben Popper in TheVerge.com. The softness, said Ravi Somaiya in The New York
ware will push data from connected devices
Times. The social network, with 1.4 billion
like smart locks and lightbulbs “into the soglobal users, has “already become a vital
cial network, so you can be easily notified in
source of traffic” for news organizations
your news feed or on Messenger when your
struggling to make money in the internet age.
garage door opens or your connected flower
But Facebook now wants to be more than a
pot is running out of water.”
middleman. It has been quietly negotiating
with several media companies—including
Clearly, “this isn’t your older sister’s” social
BuzzFeed, National Geographic, and The
network, said Jon Swartz in USA Today.
New York Times—about hosting news
Over the past three years, Facebook has
content “inside” Facebook, so that users
Owning your online experiences
been on an “acquisition spree,” spendwouldn’t have to tap often slow-loading links
to read or watch an outlet’s content. You might ask why news or- ing $25 billion on more than two dozen companies—including
ganizations would go along with such a “Faustian bargain,” said mobile-messaging service WhatsApp, virtual-reality startup OcuWill Oremus in Slate.com. Well, they’d “be foolish not to.” Face- lus, and photo-sharing app Instagram—in order to transform
itself into a “multiplatform social-media powerhouse.” It wants
book is already the place where many mobile-savvy Millennials
to be a “portal or gateway” to users’ entire web experience, said
get their news, and companies that play ball with Facebook’s
Julie Ask in HuffingtonPost.com. Look closely, and those acquisiplans will probably enjoy “huge growth” in traffic. Sure, there’s
tions have simply been “filling in the gaps.”
a risk news outlets are “mortgaging their long-term futures for
short-term gain.” But that’s a risk many appear willing to take.
Watching Facebook debut its new features, I couldn’t help but
think of AOL, said Owen Williams in TheNextWeb.com. Back
News is just the beginning, said Kevin Kelleher in Time.com. At
in the 1990s, that company similarly “fought tooth and nail to
its developer conference last week, Facebook unveiled several
contain your internet experience inside its walled garden.” But
other offerings that suggest its ambitions for web domination
where AOL failed, Facebook might actually succeed. It has a
go far beyond the media business. Most impressive is a retooled
huge audience in the U.S., and in emerging countries it’s already
Messenger platform, which is already used by hundreds of milpractically synonymous with “the internet.” If it can become the
lions of people to communicate with friends. Now they can use
web gateway it hopes to be, it could soon control “what you see
it to pay and receive money within their network, and to chat
and when” online. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems like a “terwith e-commerce sites and other businesses about the status of
rifying” amount of power “to put in a single place.”
their online orders. Facebook also rolled out new software for
The sexism
you can’t
quite prove
Annie Lowrey
NYMag.com
Google gets
cozy with
Obama
Tammy Bruce
Reuters
The Washington Times
“It happens all the time,” said Annie Lowrey.
My husband and I, both journalists, will be at a
work event, and Cocktail Party Guy will ask my
husband about his news site. Then Guy will turn
to me and “ask me how our dogs are.” It’s not
impolite or inappropriate, but it is a kind of “soft
discrimination,” all too familiar to many professional women. Such sexism was at the heart of
Ellen Pao’s failed gender-bias suit against her former employer, Silicon Valley venture capital firm
Kleiner Perkins. Pao’s much-watched case, which
she lost last week, was never going to be “cut
and dried.” Much of it centered around “those
Cocktail Party Guy moments,” where the sexism
is anything but overt or outright distasteful. But
that’s the thing about workplace sexism today:
“It’s subtle, and that makes it all the more difficult
to identify and root out.” It’s not your boss making a pass at you or asking you to make the coffee.
It’s him “describing your assertiveness as too assertive and suggesting you might be better suited for
an operational role.” That kind of discrimination
remains “pervasive,” and it carries a huge cost for
women—in performance, future opportunities,
and compensation. And if we ever hope to stamp
it out, we first need to begin calling it out.
Some revelations out of this White House “would
make even Richard Nixon blush,” said Tammy
Bruce. Thanks to a secret report the Federal Trade
Commission accidentally sent to The Wall Street
Journal, we now know just how friendly Google
and President Obama were while the FTC was
investigating the search giant for antitrust violations. Since Obama took office in 2009, Google
employees and lobbyists have visited the White
House for meetings an average of “once a week.”
Could that be why, when FTC staff recommended
filing a lawsuit against Google in 2012, FTC commissioners shot the idea down? Or was it because,
just weeks before the suit was abandoned, former
Google CEO Eric Schmidt “personally handled
the custom voter-turnout software” for Obama’s
re-election campaign? “Special relationships are
one thing,” but working directly on the president’s
campaign “only to have a federal agency walk
away from a federal lawsuit that same month is
quite another.” Google and the White House deny
any wrongdoing, of course, and the FTC won’t
cough up the rest of the secret report. But even
this “incomplete picture” suggests “that if you
help Barack Obama with what he wants, the rule
of law will bend, or even break, for you.”
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
Obituaries
The director who mastered Neil Simon’s plays
Artistically, Gene
Saks and Neil Simon
were the perfect
1921–2015
partnership. Saks’
snappy directing and Simon’s
comic writing produced a string of
award-winning Broadway hits and
Hollywood adaptations, including
The Odd Couple and Brighton
Beach Memoirs. On a personal
level, though, the men were never
close. When Simon replaced the
three-time Tony award-winning
director for his musical The
Goodbye Girl in 1993, the two New Yorkers
fell out so spectacularly that they never worked
together again. “I have enjoyed conversations
with him,” Saks said of Simon. “But I have not
enjoyed his friendship, because I didn’t have it.”
Gene
Saks
Raised in Hackensack, N.J., Saks joined the
Navy in World War II and “landed at Normandy
during the D-Day invasion,” said the Los
Angeles Times. He studied drama after leaving
the service and won small roles in a number of
smash Broadway shows, including South Pacific.
Saks made his directing debut with the 1963
showbiz-coming-of-age tale Enter Laughing, a
hit play that established him as the go-to director
for Broadway comedies and musicals. In 1966,
Simon asked him to helm the
movie adaptation of his Broadway
show Barefoot in the Park. The
film, which starred Robert Redford
and Jane Fonda, was a box-office
success and marked the start of
“the Simon-Saks collaboration,”
said the Associated Press. Over the
next quarter-century, Saks directed
eight of Simon’s Broadway plays—
winning Tony Awards for Brighton
Beach Memoirs in 1983 and Biloxi
Blues in 1985—and four more film
adaptations. “We both come from
middle-class, first-generation Jewish families,”
Saks said of the partnership. “Our humor springs
from the same roots.”
But Saks’ success wasn’t limited to his work
with Simon, said The New York Times. His first
Tony Award was for the 1977 musical spoof
of the sexual revolution, I Love My Wife, and
he directed the stage and film versions of the
acclaimed musical Mame. He fit in the occasional acting job alongside his directing work
but always knew which he preferred. “As a
director you lose your subjectivity, your selfconsciousness,” he said. “Instead of just your
role, it’s the life of the whole play that becomes a
reflection of you.”
The musicologist who sparked the blues revival
In 1959, just as rock
’n’ roll was poised to
take over America’s
1929–2015
airwaves, Samuel
Charters introduced a new generation of musicians to a largely forgotten art form: Southern rural blues.
His first book, The Country Blues,
profiled neglected black musicians
like Robert Johnson, Blind Willie
McTell, and Bukka White and
was accompanied by an album of
extremely rare recordings from the
1920s and ’30s. Bob Dylan would include a version of White’s “Fixin’ to Die Blues” on his 1961
debut album, and within a decade bands like the
Rolling Stones, Cream, and the Allman Brothers
were incorporating blues numbers uncovered
by Charters into their repertoires. “I wrote the
books as I did to romanticize the glamour of
looking for old blues musicians,” he said. “I
really exaggerated this, but it worked.”
Samuel
Charters
Growing up in Pittsburgh and later Sacramento,
Charters “recalled a childhood immersed in jazz
and classical music,” said The New York Times.
After serving in the Army during the Korean
War, he traveled to New Orleans, where he
played clarinet, banjo, and washboard in bands
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
“while researching that city’s rich
musical history.” Uncovering the
life stories of obscure early blues
artists “could be a challenge,” said
the New York Daily News. But
he located some of the performers and tracked down friends and
family who knew others. He found
the widow of Delta blues guitarist Charley Patton “working in a
thrift shop in Chicago.”
Following the success of The
Country Blues, Charters produced
a compilation of contemporary electric blues
and later published books on New Orleans jazz
and the blues’ African roots. But his ears “were
equally attuned to frequencies other than jazz and
blues,” said The Guardian (U.K.). He produced
several records for the psychedelic rock band
Country Joe and the Fish, including their Vietnam
War protest song, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die
Rag.” A published poet and novelist, he didn’t
want to simply preserve the music he studied, he
wanted to spread it. “For me, writing about black
music was my way of fighting racism,” Charters
said. “That’s why my work is not academic; that
is why it is absolutely nothing but popularization:
I wanted people to hear black music.”
The audacious pilot
who survived Japanese
imprisonment
When Lt. Col. Robert L. Hite
volunteered to take part
in the first U.S. bombing
raid on Japan in 1942, he
knew the mission would be
dangerous.
The operaRobert
tion, led by
Hite
Col. Jimmy
1920–2015
Doolittle,
would see 16 B-25 bombers
take off from an aircraft carrier in the Pacific with only
enough fuel to reach their
targets in Tokyo and then
land at airstrips in eastern
China. Hite, the co-pilot of
the 16th bomber, was captured by Japanese soldiers
when his plane ran low on
fuel, forcing the crew to bail
out over occupied China. He
spent the next 40 months in
a Japanese jail—38 in solitary confinement. The 6-foot
airman weighed 175 pounds
when he took off in 1942;
he weighed just 76 pounds
when he was freed by U.S.
troops in 1945.
The son of tenant cotton farmers in Texas, Hite
“enlisted as an aviation
cadet in 1940, flunked the
physical, passed a do-over
the next day, and was certified an Army Air Corps pilot
in 1941,” said The New York
Times. He was eager to take
part in the Doolittle raid,
which he saw as payback
for Japan’s attack on Pearl
Harbor. “I had people offering me $500 for my place,”
said Hite. “I said, ‘No way.’”
The Doolittle raid boosted
“American morale while
shaking Japan’s confidence,”
said the Los Angeles Times.
Hite, though, knew nothing about the raid’s consequences until years later. He
was taken to Japan, where
three fellow airmen were
executed as war criminals.
Hite was subjected to water
torture and jailed, and
remained in prison until
Japan’s surrender in 1945.
Hite’s son Wallace said his
father never claimed to be a
war hero and would always
tell him “he was just doing
his job.”
Everett Collection, Sylvia Pitcher Photo Library
34
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The last word
36
The lasting price of shame
Monica Lewinsky barely survived her humiliation, said Jessica Bennett. Now she’s teaching what she learned.
M
ONICA LEWINSKY
was sitting in a
Manhattan auditorium several weeks ago
watching teenage girls perform a play called Slut. She
was wiping away tears.
someone I didn’t recognize.
And I lost my sense of self,”
she told the crowd.
She just took that declaration
one step further last month
on the main stage at TED in
Vancouver, British Columbia,
where she issued a biting cultural critique about humiliation as commodity. The title
of her 18-minute talk (and,
perhaps, the line that best
sums up her experience),
which received a raucous
standing ovation, was “The
Price of Shame.”
In the scene, a young woman
was seated in an interrogation room. She had been
asked to describe, repeatedly,
what had happened on the
night in question—when, she
said, a group of guy friends
had pinned her down in a
taxi on the way to a party
and sexually assaulted her.
HIS IS NOT Lewinsky’s
She had reported them. Now
first attempt at reineveryone at school knew;
vention. She’s also not
everyone had chosen a side. Who hasn’t done something that “they regretted at 22?” Lewinsky asked at TED.
the Lewinsky of more than a
“My life has just completely
decade ago, the one who created a handbag
London, and said it’s been hard to find
fallen apart,” the girl said, her voice shakline and tried her hand at reality TV.
work.
Mostly
she
has
embraced
a
quiet
ing. “Now I’m that girl.”
existence: doing meditation and therapy,
This iteration is a bundle of contradictions.
The play concluded, and Lewinsky fumbled volunteering, spending time with friends.
Warm yet cautious. Open yet guarded.
through her purse for a tissue. A woman
Strong but fragile. She is likable, funny, and
But the quiet ended last May, when she
came and whisked her to the stage.
self-deprecating. She is acutely intelligent,
wrote an essay for Vanity Fair about the
something for which she doesn’t get much
aftermath of her affair with President Bill
“Hi, I’m Monica Lewinsky,” she said, viscredit. But she is also stuck in a kind of time
ibly nervous. “Some of you younger people Clinton. In this essay, which was a finalist
warp over which she has little control.
might only know me from some rap lyrics.” for a 2015 National Magazine Award, she
declared that the time had come to “burn
At 41, she doesn’t have many of the things
The crowd, made up largely of high school the beret and bury the blue dress” and
that a person her age may want—a perand college women, laughed. “Monica
“give a purpose to my past.”
manent residence, an obvious source of
Lewinsky” is the title of a song by rapper
That new purpose, she wrote, was twofold: income, a clear career path. She is also very,
G-Eazy; her name is a reference in dozens
very nervous. She is worried about being
it was about reclaiming her own story—
of others: by Kanye, Beyoncé, Eminem.
taken advantage of, worried her words will
one that had seemed to metastasize—but
“Thank you for coming,” Lewinsky said,
be misconstrued, worried reporters will
also to help others who had been similarly
“and in doing so, standing up against the
rehash the past.
humiliated. “What this will cost me,” she
sexual scapegoating of women and girls.”
wrote, “I will soon find out.”
She is prepared, almost always, for doomsAsked later about the play, Lewinsky said,
day: the snippet of a quote that might be
It hasn’t appeared to cost her, at least not
“It’s really inspiring to hear people bring
taken out of context; questions about the
yet. In fact, the opposite has occurred.
awareness to this issue. That scene in the
Clintons, whom she declines to discuss.
interrogation room was hard to watch. One Over the past six months, she has made
“She was burned ... in myriad ways,” said
appearances
at
a
benefit
hosted
by
the
thing I’ve learned about trauma is that when
her editor at Vanity Fair, David Friend.
Norman Mailer Center (she and Mailer had
you find yourself retriggered, it’s helpful to
been
friends),
at
a
New
York
Fashion
Week
Lewinsky wouldn’t call this a reinvention.
recognize when things are different.”
dinner presentation for designer Rachel
This, she says, is simply the Monica who—
LOT IS different for Lewinsky these
Comey, at the Vanity Fair Oscar party, and despite the headlines, despite the incessant
days, starting with the fact that until as her friend Alan Cumming’s date at an
paparazzi-style coverage—“was seen by
last year, she had hardly appeared
after-party for the Golden Globes.
many but truly known by few,” as she put
publicly for a decade. Now 41, the former
it on the TED stage. “This is me,” she told
Perhaps most interestingly, in October,
White House intern, once famously disme. “This is a kind of evolution of me.”
onstage at a Forbes conference, she spoke
missed by the president as “that woman,”
out for the first time about the digital
I had approached her after the Vanity
holds a master’s degree in social psychology
harassment (or cyberbullying) that has
Fair essay in part because I was intrigued
from the London School of Economics.
affected everyone from female bloggers
but also because I had a tinge of guilt. I
She splits her time between New York City to Jennifer Lawrence to ... her: “I lost my
had come of age in the Lewinsky era. I
reputation. I was publicly identified as
and Los Angeles, where she grew up, and
distinctly remember my high school self,
T
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
James Duncan Davidson/TED
A
The last word
wide-eyed, poring over the soft-core Starr
report with friends. None of us had the
maturity to understand the complexities,
or power dynamics, of the president’s affair
with a young intern. When I was 16, one
dominating image of Lewinsky seemed to
overshadow all others: slut. Of course, that
22-year-old intern was only a few years
older than I was.
And so I emailed her. I told her I was interested in her effort to re-emerge and had
been particularly fascinated by the reaction
to it, as if there were a kind of public reckoning underway. Feminists who had stayed
silent on the first go-round were suddenly
defending her, and using terms like “slut
shaming” and “media gender bias” to do it.
she said. “Listen to my sometimes catty,
sometimes churlish, sometimes silly self,
being cruel, unforgiving, uncouth...”
“Listen, deeply, deeply ashamed, to the
worst version of myself.” She paused. “A
self I don’t even recognize.” Lewinsky
doesn’t have a speechwriter; she wrote the
speech herself.
She went back and forth over the opening,
a joke about a man 14 years her junior,
who hit on her after she spoke at Forbes.
“What was his unsuccessful pickup line?”
she would ask rhetorically. “He could make
me feel 22 again. Later that night, I realized: I’m probably the only person over 40
who would not like to be 22 again.”
Late-night host David Letterman was on
the air expressing remorse over how he had
mocked her, asking, in a recent interview
with Barbara Walters, “With some perspective, do you realize this is a sad human
situation?” Bill Maher said of reading
Lewinsky’s piece in Vanity Fair, “I gotta tell
you, I literally felt guilty.”
“However you felt about the actual event,
the way it played out was pretty grotesque,” said Rebecca Traister, a senior editor at The New Republic who was just out
of college when the Clinton scandal broke
and who wrote about it later.
Traister said she was taken aback when
she reread her own 2003 article, “Get Off
Your Knees, Monica.” “Whether it’s guilt,
or sophistication, or thinking a little harder
about sexual power dynamics, I think
people have started to think: ‘Oh, right, she
probably does have a right to tell her story.
And that’s a good thing.’”
This time, Lewinsky appears determined
to tell it on her terms. She has a P.R. agent
screening requests and approaches media
as one may expect: with the caution of a
woman who has been raked over the coals.
I
MET LEWINSKY at her apartment, where
she was rehearsing her TED speech in
front of a small metal music stand.
She handed me a script. “It’s changed a bit,
so you can follow along,” she said. (By the
time she appeared onstage at TED, in front
of a packed room, she was on Version 24.)
Newscom
She was working through the middle of the
speech, where she would describe her questioning by investigators. It was 1998, and
she had been required to authenticate the
phone calls recorded by her former friend
Linda Tripp. They would later be released
to Congress.
She glanced at the script, and then looked
forward. “Scared and mortified, I listen,”
37
T
HE WAY LEWINSKY tells it, she was
Patient Zero for the type of internet
shaming we now see regularly. Hers
wasn’t the first case ever, but it was the
first of its magnitude. Which meant that
virtually overnight, she went from being a
private citizen to, as she put it, a publicly
humiliated one.
“She couldn’t go to a restaurant and order
a bowl of soup—literally—without it
being reported the next day,” said Walters.
The story was the perfect combination
of politics and sex. “It was like reading a
really wonderful dirty book,” Walters said,
“except it was her story.”
It was before the days of the internet sex
tape, but barely. Princess Diana had been
photographed with a hidden camera while
working out at the gym; Pamela Anderson
and Tommy Lee’s honeymoon sex tape was
stolen from their home and bootlegged out
of car trunks. “It was at the tip of the spear
of this invasive culture,” said David Friend.
Lewinsky was quickly cast by the media as
a “little tart”—as The Wall Street Journal
put it. The New York Post nicknamed her
the “Portly Pepperpot.” She was described
by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times
as “ditsy” and “predatory.”
‘The most humiliated person in the world’
“Can I see a show of hands,” she would
ask, “of anyone who didn’t make a mistake
or do something they regretted at 22?”
TED approached Lewinsky about speaking
at the conference, whose theme this year
was “Truth and Dare,” after watching her
Forbes speech. The speech’s theme had been
marinating for years. In graduate school,
Lewinsky had studied the impact of trauma
on identity.
Then Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers freshman,
killed himself after being recorded by his
college roommate being intimate with a
man. It was 2010, and Lewinsky’s mother
was beside herself, “gutted with pain,” as
Lewinsky said onstage, “in a way I couldn’t
quite understand.”
Eventually, she said, she realized that to
her mother, Clementi represented her. “She
was reliving 1998,” she said, looking out
over the crowd. “Reliving a time when she
sat by my bed every night. Reliving a time
when she made me shower with the bathroom door open.”
And other women—self-proclaimed
feminists—piled on. “My dental hygienist pointed out she had third-stage gum
disease,” said Erica Jong. Betty Friedan dismissed her as “some little twerp.”
“It’s a sexual shaming that is far more
directed at women than at men,” Gloria
Steinem wrote me in an email, noting that
in Lewinsky’s case, she was also targeted
by the “ultraright wing.” “I’m grateful to
(her),” Steinem said, “for having the courage to return to the public eye.”
Earlier, I had asked Lewinsky what she
hoped to accomplish with a platform like
TED. She asked if I had read David Foster
Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous
Men. In it, there is a chapter about suffering
and the story of a girl who survives abuse.
What the young woman endures is horrific,
said Lewinsky, but by going through it, she
learns that she can survive.
She paused, becoming emotional. “And
reliving a time both my parents feared that
I would be humiliated to death.”
“That’s part of what I thought I could contribute,” she said. “That in someone else’s
darkest moment, lodged in their subconscious might be the knowledge that there
was someone else who was, at one point
in time, the most humiliated person in the
world. And that she survived it.”
“It was easy to forget,” she said, “that ‘that
woman’ was dimensional, had a soul, and
was once unbroken.”
Excerpted from an article that originally appeared in The New York Times.
Reprinted with permission.
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
The Puzzle Page
Crossword No. 304: Taxing Situations by Matt Gaffney
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The Week Contest
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ACROSS
1 Far from pleased with
6 “Which is to say...”
11 Drinking binge
14 2009 Grammy winner
for Best New Artist
15 Shore who sure could
sing
16 Antonym for “none”
17 IRS regulations
devised by a Masonic
conspiracy?
19 Schwarz of toys
20 Depressing music genre
21 Flying off the shelves
22 Comes closer
24 What a chameleon
who works at the IRS
might do?
29 Pacing pair
31 Basque delicacy, when
fried in olive oil
32 “My thoughts
exactly!”
33 Arkansas Gov.
Hutchinson
34 Shot that should land
near the baseline
37 What Yoda files every
April?
42 Tokyo’s old name
43 Put away
44 Chance encounter
45 Shoot the breeze
47 2008 Olympics city
49 Fail to claim a child tax
credit?
53 Senator who
announced in January
that she won’t seek
re-election in 2016
THE WEEK April 10, 2015
60
61
54 Animal that uses
echolocation
55 WSJ rival
58 He’s up all night
59 Tax strategy for a
money-losing movie
producer?
64 General buried in
Lexington, Va.
65 Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?
playwright
66 Mexican chicken
67 Pacino and Franken
68 Has the most points
so far
69 In a sneaky way
DOWN
1 Like some mafiosi
2 Silly Sandler
3 Deeply in love with
4 Cosell often joked with
him
5 Perfect score,
sometimes
6 Turns of phrase
7 Orders from on high
8 Brian who has
produced seven U2
albums
9 Down
10 Its commissioner is
Roger Goodell
11 Aladdin bad guy
12 Dream ender
13 Lip stuff
18 “Just Like Jesse
James” singer
23 Goddess of the dawn
62
63
25 1994 NL Manager of
the Year
26 Dullea of 2001: A
Space Odyssey
27 High home
28 “Uh-huh”
29 Have the nerve
30 Like pawn shop items
33 Toward the receding
shoreline
34 With kid gloves
35 He rides an eightlegged horse
36 Google competitor
38 Without ice
39 Swear words?
40 Goddess of discord
41 West African witchcraft
45 3-5 of a set
46 Like some tea
47 Slants
48 Old Testament bk.
49 Disease that
reappeared in Liberia
in late March
50 One of three in
Oregon
51 Pontiac’s pair
52 Went back
56 Holler
57 Iliad setting
60 “Good work!”
61 Wharton deg.
62 JPEG or TIFF
alternative
63 Texting phrase often
not literally true
This week’s question: Kraft Foods and H.J. Heinz Co.,
two giants of the U.S. dinner table, are merging in a
blockbuster $40 billion deal. If the companies tried
to create “synergy” by also merging some of their
unhealthiest, most highly processed food items, what
would they call the resulting product?
Last week’s contest: Researchers say that children
whose parents constantly tell them they are “special”
and better than other kids are more likely to grow up
to be narcissists. If you were to write a parenting book
that instructed moms and dads on how to avoid raising
a self-centered brat, what would it be titled?
THE WINNER: “Parenting on Less Than Five Trophies a Day”
Kristen Pavlik, Eldersburg, Md.
SECOND PLACE: “The Most Unremarkable Baby on the
Block” —Lauren Papp, Middleton, Wis.
THIRD PLACE: “You Can’t Throw, Your Drawing Sucks, and
Other Truisms” —Annette Entin, North Caldwell, N.J.
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