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Editor’s letter It can be exhausting to be a politically aware consumer in modern America. Progressive activists want fellow liberals to shun an ever-growing list of Trump-affiliated products and companies. Obviously, no progressive can stay in a Trump hotel, tee off at a Trump golf course, or put on a pair of Ivanka Trump–brand shoes. But that’s just the start. As the Boycott Trump smartphone app explains, progressives can’t wear Gucci (it has a store in Trump Tower), shop at Barnes & Noble (it carries the president’s books), or snack on Cheetos (a former sponsor of Celebrity Apprentice). Meanwhile, conservative activists are rapidly adding names to their own boycott list. They want consumers to shun Nordstrom, because it recently dropped Ivanka’s product line, and to refuse to patronize Disney, because its new Beauty and the Beast film features an openly gay character (see Talking Points). They’ve even called on conservative vacationers to stay away from Hawaii after a federal judge there blocked the president’s second travel ban.
Politics-driven boycotts are, of course, nothing new. In the 1960s, the United Farm Workers organized a grape boycott to stop California farmers from hiring low-paid, nonunion workers. Three decades later, Nike faced a boycott because it used foreign sweatshops to make its sneakers. But those economic protests were aimed at changing specific corporate practices. In our tribal political climate, the new wave of consumer activism is a statement of identity: You are what you buy—and a traitor if you spend dollars on the enemy’s products. For retailers, this is a no-win proposition, because any action they take to please one side inevitably enrages the other. Kellogg’s recently pulled advertising from the far-right news site Breitbart.com after complaints from liberal groups, only to find itself the target of a conservative boycott. Oh, for simpler times, when Americans could eat Corn Flakes while watching a Disney movie without taking Theunis Bates Managing editor sides in a national civil war.
NEWS 4 Main stories The Senate grills the president’s Supreme Court nominee; the FBI confirms it’s investigating Trump’s Russia ties
Editor-in-chief: William Falk Managing editors: Theunis Bates, Carolyn O’Hara Deputy editor/International: Susan Caskie Deputy editor/Arts: Chris Mitchell Senior editors: Harry Byford, Alex Dalenberg, Richard Jerome, Dale Obbie, Hallie Stiller, Frances Weaver Art director: Dan Josephs Photo editor: Loren Talbot Copy editors: Jane A. Halsey, Jay Wilkins Chief researcher: Christina Colizza Contributing editors: Ryan Devlin, Bruno Maddox
6 Controversy of the week Trump’s proposed budget takes a cleaver to many government programs. Will Congress enact it?
VP, publisher: John Guehl
7 The U.S. at a glance Ivanka Trump gets a White House office; 9/11 families sue Saudi Arabia 8 The world at a glance Deadly attack outside U.K. Parliament; Brazil’s rotten meat scandal 10 People Hoda Kotb’s adoption joy; Kirk Douglas’ many, many love affairs 11 Briefing North Korea is building a nuclear missile that can reach the U.S. Is it too late to stop Pyongyang?
Getty, AP
12 Best U.S. columns Opioids are devastating rural America; how Trump is succeeding 14 Best European columns Germany bemused by Trump-Merkel meeting 16 Talking points The president’s preference for hard power; the decline of men; a furor over Disney’s gay moment
FBI boss James Comey and NSA head Michael Rogers testify. (p.5)
ARTS 22 Books Should Christians retreat from the modern world? 23 Author of the week Jami Attenberg resists the urge to get sensible
LEISURE 26 Food & Drink Three unconventional takes on Japanese cuisine 28 Travel A tasting tour of Colombia’s coffee belt
24 Art & Music Drake’s new album offers a transatlantic tour of black music
29 Consumer Problem-solving gadgets to help out at home
25 Television How World War II changed five Hollywood directors
BUSINESS 32 News at a glance Tough trade talk from the U.S. at G-20 summit; executives flee Uber 33 Making money What the Fed’s rate hike means for you 34 Best columns Trump moves to roll back fuel efficiency standards; insurers’ Obamacare boom
Hoda Kotb (p.10)
VP, marketing: Tara Mitchell Sales development director: Samuel Homburger Account director: Steve Mumford Account managers: Shelley Adler, Alison Fernandez Detroit director: Lisa Budnick Midwest director: Lauren Ross Northwest director: Steve Thompson Southeast director: Jana Robinson Southwest directors: James Horan, Rebecca Treadwell Integrated marketing director: Nikki Ettore Integrated associate marketing director: Betsy Connors Integrated marketing managers: Matthew Flynn, Caila Litman Research and insights manager: Joan Cheung Marketing designer: Triona Moynihan Marketing coordinator: Reisa Feigenbaum Digital director: Garrett Markley Senior digital account manager: Yuliya Spektorsky Digital planner: Jennifer Riddell Chief operating & financial officer: Kevin E. Morgan Director of financial reporting: Arielle Starkman EVP, consumer marketing & products: Sara O’Connor Consumer marketing director: Leslie Guarnieri Production manager: Kyle Christine Darnell HR/operations manager: Joy Hart Adviser: Ian Leggett Chairman: John M. Lagana U.K. founding editor: Jolyon Connell Company founder: Felix Dennis
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THE WEEK March 31, 2017
4 NEWS
The main stories...
Gorsuch eases through Senate hearings judges make their rulings based on the rule of law, “not which side is bigger or richer.” This is a “mainstream” judge Judge Neil Gorsuch emerged largely with a “stellar record,” and he deserves to be confirmed. unscathed from Senate hearings on his Supreme Court nomination this week, “Under other circumstances, Gorsuch would be a legitimate after dodging most of the pointed quesnominee,” said The New York Times. But he is only in tions from Democrats still seething over this position because of Republicans’ “outrageous the Republicans’ refusal to consider and unprecedented blockade of Merrick Garland.” President Obama’s nominee for the By refusing to even meet Garland, “let alone give vacant seat last year. In an assured, often a hearing or a vote,” Senate Republicans upended folksy performance in front of the Senate the norm that a sitting president chooses a reJudiciary Committee, the 10th U.S. Circuit placement when a Supreme Court vacancy arises. Court of Appeals judge from Colorado The GOP’s reward for this cynical exercise in stressed his judicial impartiality and said pure power? The chance to confirm a 49-year-old he would never be swayed by political pressure. He judge with Scalia-like conservative views, who insisted he would have no qualms about standing up to “will be driving decisions into the middle of the President Donald Trump—“no man is above the law,” 21st century.” he said—and responded to a question about Trump’s recent attacks on federal judges by saying he found What the columnists said any such criticism “disheartening” and “demorGorsuch: ‘No man is above the law.’ Can we dismiss this canard that Republicans alizing.” Gorsuch, a consistently conservative “stole” a Supreme Court seat? said Dan McLaughlin in National judge, refused to offer his views on landmark Supreme Court rulReview.com. Before last year, four presidents had put forward ings on issues including Second Amendment rights, abortion, and a Supreme Court nominee during their final year in office to an campaign finance. But Gorsuch assured senators he had given “no opposition-controlled Senate—and on three of those four occapromises on how I’d rule in any case to anyone.” sions, the nomination process was delayed until after Election Day. Is that partisan behavior? Yes. But the GOP “acted in accordance Several Democrats accused Gorsuch of consistently favoring with the dominant Senate tradition.” businesses at the expense of workers, including a case in which he sided with a company that fired a trucker for abandoning his Gorsuch is being hailed by conservatives as an originalist in the broken-down rig in freezing temperatures. Sen. Al Franken called same mold as Scalia, said Noah Feldman in Bloomberg.com. But that opinion “absurd,” but Gorsuch said there were plenty of this high-sounding judicial philosophy—which holds that the cases “where I’ve ruled for the little guy, as well as the big guy.” Democrats also used the hearings to criticize Republicans for refus- Constitution should be interpreted only as its writers meant it at the time—is nonsense. Much of that document’s wording is vague and ing for 10 months to consider Judge Merrick Garland, President antiquated—what does “well-regulated militia” mean in modern Obama’s nominee. Within hours of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death terms, and how does it govern the sale of assault weapons? James last February, the GOP said it wouldn’t hold a vote on a replacement until after the election. “Your nomination,” Sen. Dick Durbin Madison, the Constitution’s lead architect, later said “the general will of the nation” should determine its interpretation. (D-Ill.) told Gorsuch, “is part of a Republican strategy to capture our judicial branch of government.” Democrats simply have no basis to reject Gorsuch, said Jennifer Rubin in WashingtonPost.com. He has been endorsed by “both A committee vote is expected on April 3, and the nomination will liberal and conservative judicial colleagues,” and showed throughthen go to a full Senate floor vote. Republicans, who control the out his confirmation hearings that he is an “eminently qualified, Senate 52-48, lack the 60-vote filibuster-proof majority required temperamentally impressive individual.” Democrats should swalto confirm Supreme Court nominees. But the GOP leadership low their pride, lick their wounds, and support his nomination. has promised that if Democrats try to block Gorsuch’s nomination, they will change Senate rules to The reason this nomination is so eliminate the filibuster for Supreme What next? politically fraught, said Brian Leiter in Court nominees, as Democrats did for The Democrats’ dilemma is “pretty simple,” said The Washington Post, is that Sulower-court judicial appointments in Michael Tomasky in TheDailyBeast.com—“to preme Court justices are not impar2013. “Gorsuch will be confirmed,” said filibuster or not to filibuster.” There’s a very tial arbiters of laws and facts. The Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConslim chance some Republicans wouldn’t vote to country’s highest court has essentially nell. “I just can’t tell you exactly how eliminate this check on majority power, knowing become a “super-legislature,” with the that will happen yet.” they’ll be in the minority someday. But if McConpower to strike down laws based on nell gets the votes for the rule change, he may its members’ “own moral and politiWhat the editorials said choose to “dump the filibuster” on all matters, cal values.” That’s why Republicans Democratic opposition to Gorsuch’s not just court nominations. That would allow were so desperate to keep the seat nomination is just “political theater,” Republicans to “shove through” all manner of vacant until after Election Day—and said The Wall Street Journal. Their only conservative legislation on the environment, lawhy Democrats were so infuriated. It’s real attack line was that Gorsuch has bor laws, and the tax code that Democrats could time we acknowledged the power these ruled in favor of big companies. “So otherwise block. For now, “the filibuster is the unelected officials wield—and had what?” Nearly 90 percent of Gorsuch’s Democrats’ last line of defense.” They should be “honest hearings about the moral and labor and employment cases were wary of giving it up. political views of the nominees.” unanimous decisions, and besides, good THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Appeals court judges Merrick Garland and Neil Gorsuch, and late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Illustration by Howard McWilliam. Cover photos from Newscom, AP, Newscom
Reuters
What happened
... and how they were covered
NEWS 5
Comey reveals Trump-Russia probe What happened
Times. Now the top priority must be to shield the agency’s inquiry “from meddling by the Trump President Trump’s ties to Moscow were thrust administration, which has shown a proclivity to back into the spotlight this week after FBI Direclie, mislead, and obfuscate with startling audactor James Comey confirmed that the agency is ity.” An independent prosecutor must be apinvestigating whether members of the president’s pointed and a bipartisan select committee tasked campaign colluded with Russia to influence with finding ways to protect our democratic the 2016 election. Testifying before the House institutions from foreign interference. Intelligence Committee, Comey said it was unusual for the FBI to disclose an investigation’s What the columnists said existence, “but in unusual circumstances, where Democrats have found their Joe McCarthy, said it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate Holman Jenkins in The Wall Street Journal. Schiff to do so.” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top is everywhere touting “circumstantial evidence Democrat on the panel, recounted reports of the of collusion,” because Democrats believe a Trump team’s connections to Russia, noting that Trump-Putin link is “their ace in the hole” that the president’s former campaign manager, Paul Comey: ‘Unusual circumstances’ will destroy the president. But “even if Trump Manafort, had worked for pro-Russian figures associates colluded with Russia,” there’s no evidence they affected in Ukraine and that adviser Roger Stone had communicated with the election’s outcome, said David Harsanyi in TheFederalist.com. Guccifer 2.0—the Twitter account believed to be a front for the The idea that “the proletariat in Pennsylvania” cast their votes for Russian group that hacked top Democrats’ email accounts. Schiff Trump after reading the hacked emails of Clinton campaign mansaid that if Trump associates did collaborate with Russia, it would ager John Podesta “is a fantasy”—and a sad attempt to cover up be “one of the most shocking betrayals of democracy in history.” Hillary Clinton’s many failures. Comey declined to reveal details of the ongoing investigation.
In another blow to the administration, Comey said he’d found no evidence to support the president’s tweeted allegations that former President Obama ordered surveillance on Trump Tower during the election. But after the hearing, committee chairman Devin Nunes (RCalif.) claimed he’d seen intelligence reports that agencies may have “incidentally” intercepted communications by Trump or members of his transition team during surveillance of foreign nationals. The president said he felt “somewhat” vindicated by Nunes’ revelation.
What the editorials said Trump is eroding public trust with a seemingly endless stream of exaggerations and falsehoods, said The Wall Street Journal. “A parade of intelligence officials, senior Republicans, and Democrats” have refuted Trump’s wiretap claims, yet he clings to them “like a drunk to an empty gin bottle.” Two months into Trump’s presidency, Gallup has his approval rating at 39 percent. No doubt he “considers that fake news, but if he doesn’t show more respect for the truth, most Americans may conclude he’s a fake president.” Comey’s acknowledgment that the FBI is investigating Trump’s campaign “is a breathtaking admission,” said The New York
AP, screenshot: NBC Bay Area News
It wasn’t all bad Q It took several surgeries and months of therapy, but Melissa Dohme was able to smile on her wedding day. The 26-year-old Floridian was left with severe facial injuries when her ex-boyfriend attacked her in 2012, stabbing her 32 times. Dohme ended up falling for Cameron Hill, the first responder who saved her life—and Hill was at her bedside again in 2015 when she underwent an eight-hour surgery to restore a damaged facial nerve ahead of their big day. “He’s the one I’ve been waiting for,” says Dohme, who wed Hill this month.
Democrats reasonably ask why Comey waited until now to disclose an investigation that began last July, said Noah Feldman in Bloomberg.com. After all, he seemed eager to discuss the FBI probe of Clinton’s private email server at the height of the presidential campaign. But if Comey made a “historic error” in October when he announced the reopening of the Clinton email inquiry, a “fall announcement of the Russia investigation would’ve been just as bad.” FBI directors should reveal investigations when they’ve had time to develop, or when Congress demands it. “None of these conditions existed when Comey threw Clinton under this bus.” In an era of hyper-partisanship, “our political system isn’t prepared for this kind of thing,” said Zack Beauchamp in Vox.com. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) spent substantial time in the hearing insinuating that Obama officials illegally leaked classified intelligence about contacts between Russia’s ambassador and Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, “to gin up controversy about Trump.” Republicans don’t seem to realize that this hearing was convened to discuss possible collusion between Trump’s team and a hostile foreign power. “Partisanship may well be destroying our ability to get the bottom of an issue of vital national concern.”
Q One Apple engineer is using his own ingenuity to help Santa Cruz’s homeless population. Ron Powers spends his evenings and weekends driving around in his mobile Laundromat, a van that he outfitted with two washers and two dryers, offering to do strangers’ laundry for free. For many people on the streets, Powers “Loads of Love” initiative is a blessing. Homeless individuals, he says, often throw away socks and other clothes when they get dirty because they can’t afford to pay for laundry and buy food. “I want to restore dignity to people,” says Powers. “I want to improve health.” Powers and his clean machine
Q A McDonald’s in Doral, Fla., is serving up lifesaving care along with its Big Macs. Pedro Viloria, 22, was working at the drive-thru window when he noticed that his customer— an off-duty policewoman with her two children in the backseat—had passed out at the wheel. As the car slowly rolled away with the children screaming, Viloria leapt through his window and gave chase. Luckily, a curb stopped the car—allowing Viloria and another McDonald’s employee to administer CPR before professional help arrived. “If I would have had to die to save that woman, I would have,” says Viloria. “My brain was on hero mode.” THE WEEK March 31, 2017
6 NEWS
Controversy of the week
Trump’s budget: Fulfilling his promises? interest groups that populate Washington.” The pushback So much for that return to Greatness, said Eugene from those groups, the welfare state, and the liberal media Robinson in The Washington Post. If the budget plan has already begun, but fiscal conservatives “couldn’t be President Trump released last week is any guide, his more pleased.” new goal is to make the nation “dumber, dirtier, hungrier, and sicker.” Predictably titled “America First,” What cuts? said Nick Gillespie in Reason.com. Yes, this this brutal document calls for a 9 percent boost in budget “takes a hacksaw if not a chainsaw to annual defense spending, paid for with deep cuts to various federal departments.” But “overall almost everything else. Trump is proposing federal spending will still come in around a staggering 31 percent cut in funding to $4 trillion,” roughly the same as in President the Environmental Protection Agency and Obama’s last budget plan, and with nearly a 28 percent cut to the State Department the same deficit: $559 billion. Worse, for (see Talking Points), and would also deeply Same deficit, different priorities those of us who actually care about our spislash funding for foreign aid, medical and raling national debt, Trump’s budget does nothing to curb spending scientific research, and anti-poverty programs that provide free on Medicare, Social Security, and the other entitlement programs, meals to schoolchildren and the elderly. Trump would entirely which everyone knows are where the real money is. Trump promeliminate funding for National Public Radio, the Corporation for ised during his campaign to completely wipe out the national debt, Public Broadcasting, and the National Endowment for the Arts, but “he hasn’t even really thrown a good first punch.” thus sticking it to those “fancy-dancy ‘elites’” that Trump and his supporters so despise. The good news, said Michael Cohen The goal of this budget is not to wipe out the deficit, said in The Boston Globe, is that Trump’s “dystopian budget is going WashingtonExaminer.com in an editorial. Nor is Trump saying nowhere.” Congress, the Senate in particular, will never approve that medical research is a bad thing, or that children should go such “cataclysmic” cuts to popular programs. But this is a useful hungry. He’s just establishing the conservative principle that some document nonetheless. It tells us “everything we need to know activities are better handled by the private sector, or by “a level of about the cruel, heartless man sitting in the Oval Office.” government closer to the individual.” That’s giving Trump far too much credit for having a guiding philosophy, said Doyle McManus Spending cuts are always painful, said Ed Rogers in Washington in LATimes.com. This hastily written budget is just a list of cuts to Post.com, but what choice do we have when every man, woman, programs Trump doesn’t like, with plenty of funding for ones that and child in the nation is currently on the hook for $166,000 of he does, including $2 billion to start building his unnecessary borour $19 trillion national debt? The reality is that “we just can’t der wall. With Congress in Republican hands, Trump has a golden afford to keep spending at the rate that we are.” Trump’s budget opportunity to downsize federal spending and make it more effiis “a gutsy document,” said Stephen Moore in Spectator.org. He cient. This incoherent budget, however, would suggest that it’s “an wants to “surgically remove trillions of dollars of wasteful spendopportunity Trump is determined to miss.” ing,” knowing it will make him a target of the “hordes of special
Q Latino students at Pitzer
College in California have set off a furor by accusing their white classmates of “cultural appropriation” for wearing hoop earrings. Latina students said that “ghetto” styles like oversize hoops arose as an act of resistance to “a historical background of oppression and exclusion,” and asked, “Why should white girls be able to take part in this culture?” Q A group of fourth-graders was told to “go back to Mexico” after winning a robotics competition in Indianapolis. The Pleasant Run Elementary School team, which consists of three Latino and two black students, was showered with racist slurs by rivals and parents after being awarded first place at a science fair. “I’m not surprised,” said winning-team member Elijah Goodwin, 10, “because I’m used to this type of behavior.” THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Good week for: Natural remedies, after European researchers found that people
who live near trees and green spaces are happier, healthier, and less likely to be dependent on antidepressants. “We all need nature in our lives,” said the group that commissioned the study. The odor of submission, after a perfume for women who admire Russian President Vladimir Putin went on sale in Moscow. “Russia, as woman, is standing behind her leader,” said the head of the fragrance company. “This was the idea that inspired the creators.” Stephen Hawking, after the cosmologist announced he plans to realize his dream of traveling into space by getting a ride aboard a Virgin Galactic flight. “I thought no one would take me,” Hawking said. “But Richard Branson has offered me a seat.”
Bad week for: Being haunted, after researchers at the University of Michigan found that 80 percent of college students experience “phantom buzzing” on their cell phones, prompting them to check their devices even though no one is calling or texting. Token memories, after the makers of Monopoly announced they were replacing the top hat, wheelbarrow, and thimble tokens with a T. rex, penguin, and rubber ducky, following an international poll. “The next generation of tokens clearly represents the interests of our fans around the world,” said the company president. Hiring American, after Eric Trump’s Trump Winery applied for permission to hire 29 more foreign workers to plant vines and pick grapes for $10.72 an hour at its Virginia plantation. “It’s difficult to find people,” an attorney for the winery explained.
Laptop ban on flights The U.S. and U.K. banned electronic devices larger than a cellphone on flights originating in 10 Muslimmajority countries this week, after intelligence indicated that ISIS is trying to develop a bomb that could be hidden in a computer. Intelligence officials said the jihadists were perfecting techniques to place explosives in laptop batteries and battery compartments. The U.S. and U.K. also banned passengers from taking iPads, cameras, and portable DVD players on flights from airports in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Morocco, and five other countries. Authorities maintained there was no credible, specific threat of an imminent attack. A bomb hidden inside a laptop last year blew a hole in a flight that left from Mogadishu, Somalia.
AP
Only in America
The U.S. at a glance ...
Newscom (2), Brandon Thibodeaux/The New York Times/Redux, AP
Philadelphia No Cinco de Mayo: Organizers of Philadelphia’s Cinco de Mayo festival have canceled this year’s celebrations amid fears that federal immigration officials might target the event’s undocumented attendees. El The festival: Not this year Carnaval de Puebla usually attracts as many as 15,000 revelers, many of whom travel from other American cities. But event organizer Edgar Ramirez said many immigrants are worried they could be swept up by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who have adopted a more aggressive attitude under President Trump. ICE agents detained 700 people in one week during nationwide raids in February, after Trump broadened deportation guidelines to include those with minor offenses. “There’s a little bit of fear in the community,” Ramirez said. ICE said its enforcement was “lead driven” and that “ICE does not conduct sweeps or raids that target aliens indiscriminately.” Dallas Tweet charge: A Twitter troll was charged with assault with a deadly weapon this week after allegedly sending a seizureEichenwald: Assaulted inducing GIF to a journalist with epilepsy. The incident occurred in December, shortly after crusading journalist Kurt Eichenwald appeared on Fox News. Eichenwald has been one of President Trump’s most outspoken critics, and clashed with host Tucker Carlson during the segment. Afterward, John Rayne Rivello, 29, allegedly sent a tweet containing flashing images to Eichenwald under the username @jew_goldstein, along with the message “You deserve a seizure for your post.” The tweet induced an eightminute fit; Eichenwald’s wife eased him to the floor of their Dallas home and then alerted police. When authorities searched through @jew_goldstein’s account, they allegedly found direct messages about Eichenwald, reading, “I know he has epilepsy,” and “Let’s see if he dies.”
New York City Saudi lawsuit: The families of 2,350 people killed or injured in the 9/11 attacks sued Saudi Arabia in Manhattan court this week, accusing the country of “knowingly providing material support and resources to the al Qaida terror organization and facilitating the September 11 attacks.” The lawsuit came months after Congress overwhelmingly overrode a veto by President Obama, and allowed Americans to take legal action against countries that support terrorism. Obama argued the law could lead to retaliatory lawsuits by other nations against American citizens and corporations. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who carried out the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., were Saudi Arabian. A section of the 9/11 Commission Report declassified last year outlines ties between the hijackers and associates of Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar. The families are seeking unspecified monetary damages.
Washington, D.C. Ryancare vote: House Speaker Paul Ryan made several last-minute changes to his bill to repeal Obamacare this week as he and President Trump scrambled to woo reluctant Republicans ahead of a looming vote, scheduled to take place after The Week went to press. During a summit on Capitol Hill, Trump warned GOP lawmakers to back the legislation or face defeat in the 2018 midterms— telling them, “a loss is not acceptable, folks.” The vote would fail with just 22 Republican defections in the House. Ryan and Trump faced resistance from both House conservatives who said the bill didn’t go far enough, and more moderate senators concerned about constituents losing their insurance or paying much more for it. Ryan’s revisions beefed up tax credits for people over 50, and gave states greater flexibility in cutting Medicaid.
NEWS 7
Washington, D.C. Gorka’s Hungarian past: Three Democratic senators called for an investigation into White House national security adviser Sebastian Gorka last week after a newspaper reported that the intelligence analyst had taken a “lifelong oath of loyalty” to a far-right Hungarian organization linked to the Nazis. The article, published in the Jewish newspaper Forward, claims Gorka was a “sworn member” of the Gorka Historical Vitezi Rend, which honors Admiral Miklos Horthy. Horthy cooperated with the Nazis during World War II in deporting hundreds of thousands of Jews. Gorka, who was born in London to Hungarian parents, was seen at President Trump’s inaugural ball wearing a medal linked to Vitezi Rend. Sens. Richard Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, and Ben Cardin urged the government to investigate whether Gorka lied about his membership on his 2012 application for American citizenship. Gorka, who professes to be an expert on radical Islam, said he never belonged to Vitezi Rend, and that he wore the medal as a tribute to his father’s “struggle against totalitarianism.” Washington, D.C. Ivanka’s role grows: Ivanka Trump acknowledged this week that there was “no modern precedent” for her Ivanka: A key adviser role in the White House after she was given her own West Wing office and top security clearance. Trump, 35, has no formal White House job and so is not officially bound by the usual ethics rules placed on government employees. But she said she would voluntarily follow those guidelines to prevent conflicts of interest with her businesses. President Trump’s eldest daughter has already sat in on White House meetings with several other world leaders. Her husband, Jared Kushner, holds an official role as a senior White House adviser. Federal anti-nepotism law prohibits the president from hiring relatives, but cannot stop him from bringing them into unpaid roles. President Obama’s former ethics czar, Norman Eisen, said Trump’s assurances weren’t enough. “If she can voluntarily subject herself to the rules, she can voluntarily un-subject herself to the rules.” THE WEEK March 31, 2017
8 NEWS
The world at a glance ...
Paris Terrorist suspect killed: A French Muslim man known to security agencies attacked a soldier on patrol at Orly airport this week, putting a pistol to her head and shouting “I am here to die for Allah!” After Ziyed Ben Belgacem wrested the soldier’s assault rifle On guard after the attack from her, two other soldiers shot him dead. Earlier that day, Belgacem, 39, had shot at a police officer after being stopped for speeding and had stolen a car at gunpoint to escape. Authorities said Belgacem had been radicalized while in prison for robbery, and his house was among scores searched in November 2015 after terrorists killed 130 people at Paris’ Bataclan music venue and around the city. Police are investigating whether Belgacem’s attack was linked to any terrorist group.
Belfast Statesman dies: IRA terrorist turned peacemaker Martin McGuinness, 66, died this week of a rare genetic disease. In his younger years, McGuinness was a commander in the Irish Republican Army, which terrorized the U.K. for decades, killing 1,800 people. Later he became chief negotiator for Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political arm, during the peace process that led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and a Northern Irish government in which Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists shared power. He memora- In mourning bly called dissident IRA members who continued to bomb “traitors to the island of Ireland.” For the last decade of his life he served as Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister.
Cancún, Mexico Americans behaving badly: A Mexican news site has denounced American college kids on spring break for chanting “Build that wall!” while partying in Cancún. Mexican tourists, some of them honeymooners, asked the youngsters to stop the chant, which they took as a reference to President Trump’s proposed wall on the U.S.Mexican border, but the Americans refused. TheYucatanTimes.com said the chant was just one of many “acts of xenophobia and discrimination against Mexicans within their own country” by young Americans this year. It said there was a “growing number of complaints from tourism sector workers” that “spring breakers have been offensive, rude, and haughty toward Mexican people.” Havana Christian dissident jailed: A Cuban dissident was sentenced this week to three years in prison for assault, charges that Amnesty International says are fabricated. Eduardo Cardet, a physician who heads the Christian Liberation Movement, was arrested in late November a day after returning from the U.S., where he had criticized the legacy of former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Witnesses said government agents pushed Cardet off his bicycle and then detained him, accusing him of assaulting one of them. “The way [the government] manipulated the case is absolutely shameless,” said Cardet’s wife, Yaimaris Vecino. The founder of the Christian Liberation Movement, Oswaldo Payá Sardinas, died in a single-car wreck in 2012; disCardet: Locked up sidents have accused the government of foul play. THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Brasília Rotten meat: A new corruption scandal—this one a threat to public health—is roiling Brazil. Investigators said last week that at least 21 meat companies had bribed government inspectors to approve sales and exports of expired meat and poultry, some of it spoiled. China and Safe to eat? the European Union quickly banned imports of Brazilian meat. Eager to protect one of his nation’s biggest industries, President Michel Temer said this week that all bad meat had been recalled, and he invited a group of foreign diplomats to dinner at Brasilía’s Steak Bull restaurant to showcase the safety of Brazilian beef. Employees there, though, say they actually served the diplomats Australian beef, which they’ve been buying since the scandal broke. Brazil accounts for 20 percent of global beef exports and almost 40 percent of chicken exports.
Newscom (2), AP (2), Flickr: HazteOir.org/CCBY SA-2.0
Athens Explosive mail: Someone is sending parcel bombs to Greece’s creditors. Last week, rudimentary explosives were mailed to the German finance minister in Berlin and to the Paris offices of the International Monetary Fund; one mail room worker was slightly injured. This week, Greek authorities intercepted at least eight more explosive packages before they left the country. Various names were listed on the bombs as senders, including two former Greek finance ministers who took part in international bailout negotiations and two lawmakers who support stringent economic reform—implying that the real sender was angry over the harsh tax hikes and benefit cuts that the IMF and EU forced Greece to impose in exchange for a multibillion-dollar bailout. An anarchist group called Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire claimed responsibility for Athens’ central post office one bomb, but police are still investigating.
The world at a glance ... London Attack at Parliament: At least three people were killed this week when a suspected terrorist launched a deadly attack outside the Houses of Parliament. Witnesses reported that the bloodshed began when a car rammed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing at least Trying to save the wounded two people and injuring 20 more— including several French children on a school trip in the British capital. The car drove on and crashed into a fence outside Parliament; witnesses said a knife-wielding man emerged from the vehicle and fatally stabbed a policeman before being shot dead by armed officers. The attack came shortly after Prime Minister Theresa May’s weekly question time, when she and all top lawmakers were in Parliament. May was evacuated and the building locked down.
NEWS 9
Moscow Manafort worked for Putin ally: President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Associated Press said in an explosive report this week. In the mid-2000s, Manafort signed a Aide to an oligarch $10 million–a-year contract to work as a consultant for Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate and close Putin ally. In a strategy document for Deripaska obtained by the AP, Manafort said he would influence politics, business deals, and news coverage in the U.S. and in former Soviet republics to “greatly benefit the Putin government.” The document appears to contradict claims by the Trump administration and Manafort that he never worked for Russian interests. Manafort said he worked only for Deripaska, not Russia, and that he was the victim of a “smear campaign.” Moscow Suspicious accident: A lawyer representing the family of a dead Russian whistleblower fell from the fourth story of a Moscow apartment building this week—a day before he was due to appear in court for a key hearing. Nikolai Gorokhov, 53, had been working to launch a probe into the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after alleging massive tax fraud by Russian officials. Gorokhov is now in the hospital with a severe head injury. U.S.-born hedge fund boss Bill Browder, the man Magnitsky was working for when he uncovered the fraud, tweeted that Gorokhov had been thrown from the building; Russian media reported that he fell while trying to hoist a bathtub to his apartment. Gorokhov had been scheduled to appear in front of the Moscow City Appeals Court to push for a new hearing into Magnitsky’s death.
Newscom (4), AP
Lucknow, India Hindu nationalism: Hindu hard-liner Yogi Adityanath, a priest who once urged his followers to kill Muslims, was named governor of India’s most populous state this week and immediately began imposing Hindu nationalist policies. Police in Uttar Pradesh closed slaughterhouses suspected of killing cows, which are sacred animals to Hindus, and set up “anti-Romeo squads” to arrest young men loitering near girls’ schools. The appointment came as a shock to many political pundits in India who thought that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had moderated his own Hindu nationalist Adityanath beliefs since taking office in 2014. “Keep watching. A lot of things are going to shut down,” Adityanath said. “Uttar Pradesh will be Prime Minister Modi’s Land of Dreams.” Mogadishu, Somalia Famine spreads: More than 20 million people across four African and Middle Eastern countries are facing starvation in what the United Nations is calling the worst humanitarian crisis to hit the planet since World War II. “Without collective and coordinated global efforts, people will simply starve to death,” said U.N. humanitarian coordinator Stephen O’Brien. “Many more will suffer and die from disease.” In Somalia, hunger is already claiming lives, while Yemen, South Sudan, and Nigeria are on the verge of famine. This will be Somalia’s third famine in 25 years of civil war and anarchy. The U.N. said it needs at least $4.4 billion by July to prevent “a catastrophe.” Starving to death
Jerusalem Israel vs. Syria: Israel threatened to destroy Syrian air defense this week, after Syria launched an anti-aircraft missile at Israeli jets that were bombing Hezbollah militants. The Syrian missile was intercepted by Israel’s missile defense system. “The next time the Syrians use their air defense systems against our airplanes,” said Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, “we will destroy all of them.” Israel said it had been targeting weapons that were being transported from Syria to Lebanon by Hezbollah—the Iran-backed, Lebanon-based militant group that has been fighting in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad. Russia, an Assad ally, summoned Israel’s ambassador in Moscow to explain the strike. An Israeli missile defense system THE WEEK March 31, 2017
10 NEWS
People
A century of Kirk Kirk Douglas is so old that Woodrow Wilson was president when he was born, said Hadley Freeman in The Guardian (U.K.). The world was embroiled in “the Great War,” and women didn’t yet have the vote. A century later, Douglas is still walking the earth—a fact that surprises the Hollywood legend himself. “I never, ever thought I would live to be 100,” says Douglas. “That’s shocked me, really. And it’s sad, too.” At this point, most of Douglas’ friends are gone. “I miss Burt Lancaster—we fought a lot, and I miss him a lot. And John Wayne, even though he was a Republican.” But Douglas has made the most of his 100 years— particularly when it came to women. He famously seduced a long line of actresses, including Rita Hayworth and Marlene Dietrich, and admits he cheated on both of his wives, including Anne, to whom he’s been married for 62 years. “I was a bad boy,” he admits. “But Anne knew how to handle me.” Douglas says he once complained to his analyst about failing to perform in bed after having sex every day for a month. The doctor replied, “Kirk, even God rested on the seventh day.”
Life as the former world’s fattest man
Q The FBI this week recovered quarterback Tom Brady’s stolen Super Bowl LI jersey in Mexico, TMZ.com reports. Investigators used security video from the Patriots’ locker room to identify the suspected thief as Mauricio Ortega, the director of the Mexican newspaper La Prensa, and an avid memorabilia collector. Valued at some $500,000, Brady’s number 12 jersey went missing shortly after he led the New England Patriots to a dramatic 34-28 victory over the Atlanta Falcons in Houston. Security cameras captured Ortega— who had press credentials—as he entered the locker room behind Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick and left THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Hoda’s baby joy Hoda Kotb had almost given up on the idea of becoming a mom, said Charlotte Triggs in People. Ten years ago, the Today show host discovered that breast cancer treatment had left her unable to conceive. She tried to resign herself to a life without children. “Sometimes, things just don’t work out for whatever reason. So you say, ‘Well, I wasn’t meant to have that.’” But Kotb, 52, continued to “ache” for children, and last year filed adoption papers— leaving her live-in boyfriend, financier Joel Schiffman, off the paperwork to keep things simpler. “I didn’t know what to expect. The process can take two weeks, two months, two years, never!” Just months later, Kotb got a call. “The adoption agent said, ‘She’s here.’”Kotb flew to another city to pick up her baby. “You’re standing in a room waiting, and somebody walks in holding your daughter. I was exploding in tears. I thought they were going to take her away and say, ‘No, we have a hysterical freak here, get that baby back!’” As she settles into motherhood, Kotb feels enormously grateful. “I guess if you’ve been waiting this long for something, and you wish for it, wonder if it will ever be, and then it happens, nothing’s more real. Nothing.”
14 minutes later with an object tucked under his arm. Authorities confronted him in Mexico City, where he reportedly turned over a stash of memorabilia that also included the jersey Brady wore in Super Bowl XLIX. Q Katy Perry revealed last week that she explored lesbian relationships as a teenager, which put her in direct conflict with her evangelical Christian upbringing, CBSNews.com reports. While accepting a human rights award, Perry, 32, said her 2008 hit single, “I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It” was based on personal experience, adding, “Truth be told, I did more than that.” As the daughter of two pastors, Perry said, she was raised to see homosexuality as “synonymous with the word ‘abomination,’” and tried to pray “gay away at my Jesus camps.” But when she came to know gay people, she found they “were nothing like what I had been taught to
fear. They were the most free, strong, kind, and inclusive people I have ever met.” Q Three years after Richard Simmons van-
ished from public view, his family is denying rumors that he is either being held hostage by his housekeeper, ailing, or transitioning into a woman. “My brother is fine,” Lenny Simmons tells People. “My wife, Cathy, and I spent five days with him and I can assure you, he’s not transitioning into anything but himself.” Speculation about Simmons, 68, has been stoked by a podcast called Missing Richard Simmons, and by his hospitalization last summer for dehydration. Some friends say they haven’t been able to contact him. But his brother says the fitness guru has withdrawn from the spotlight voluntarily. “After 40-some-odd years, he just decided that he wants to rest,” Lenny says. “He’s in good health, but he just wants time for himself.”
Chris Sorensen/Redux, Newscom, AP
In 2010, Paul Mason was hoisted into a supersize ambulance and driven to the hospital, said Justin Heckert in GQ. The 980pound Brit had hit breaking point: trapped in his bedroom, his life revolving around the 20,000 calories a day he consumed as the world’s biggest man. He spent all his money on food, and ate around the clock—mounds of bacon, fish and chips, 40 bags of potato chips, and 20 chocolate bars a day. “I had a waistline of 8 feet,” says Mason. “I was permanently lying down. I was 6-foot-4, so my stomach was wider than I was high.” But he didn’t care. “I let all my dignity go. I was focused on food.” Gradually, though, his obsession became suffocating. Mason tried to commit suicide, taking enough codeine to kill two people, but his massive body absorbed the drugs. Mason finally decided to take the risk of bariatric surgery to shrink his stomach to the size of an egg, although doctors warned him that an operation on someone of his mammoth girth could kill him. Seven years and 700 pounds later, Mason, 55, is free for the first time in years. He still suffers from the aftereffects of his extreme obesity, including arthritis, but he’s moved to Massachusetts, where he’s able to walk in the woods and take photos of flowers. “It was such a horrible life, really,” he says. “Now I look back on it, I don’t know if I can relate to the person lying on the bed. I’m a different person.”
Briefing
NEWS 11
The growing threat from North Korea Kim Jong Un is building a nuclear missile that can reach the U.S. Can he be stopped?
Reuters
What’s North Korea’s goal?
Right now, North Korea has neither a reliable intercontinenThe tyrannical Kim dynasty has tal ballistic missile (ICBM) nor been pursuing nuclear weapons a nuclear device small enough since the end of the Korean War. to mount on one. But it appears The current leader’s father, Kim to be working strenuously to Jong Il, made the nuclear program achieve both. “North Korea the centerpiece of his regime’s is on the verge of a strategic identity, to rally the starving, breakout,” says Robert Litwak isolated country around a nationof the Wilson Center, “that alistic goal and to extort aid from would enable its leadership to worried Western nations. Over strike the United States with a the past two decades, the Clinton, nuclear-armed ICBM.” Many Bush, and Obama administraanalysts believe North Korea is tions all brokered pacts requiring up to its old tricks: acting belPyongyang to give up various ligerently to pressure us into nuclear programs in return for Kim (center) celebrating his latest missile test this week negotiations. “What North aid or sanctions relief. But North Korea cheated on every deal. First, it violated the 1994 agreement Korea wants,” says Philip Coyle of the Center for Arms Control, “is for us to stop threatening them and to talk with them.” freezing its development of nuclear reactors. In 2003, Pyongyang announced it had nuclear weapons; after the resulting “six-party What about missile defense? talks”—among the U.S., Russia, Japan, China, and North and A U.S. missile-defense system known as THAAD, due to be South Korea—North Korea agreed to shut down its program in deployed in South Korea this year, has run into political complicareturn for aid. But it reneged once again. When Kim Jong Un tions. South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who clinched that came to power after his father’s death in 2011, the pace of tests deal, was removed from office this month for corruption, and and bomb building accelerated dramatically. The Trump adminher likely successor, Moon Jae-in, wants to delay deployment; he istration last week ruled out another round of talks. “The policy favors easing tensions with Kim. China, too, opposes THAAD; it of strategic patience has ended,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the array could be used against its own missiles, thus undersaid. “It is clear that a different approach is required.” mining the principle of mutually assured destruction. Angering China is a problem, because it’s the only country with significant What has Kim been doing? influence over North Korea. While it long resisted U.S. pleas to Threatening his neighbors and the U.S. with nuclear destruction. Over the past 16 months, his regime has tested two nuclear bombs cut trade with Pyongyang, it was sufficiently alarmed by the recent missile tests to halt purchases of North Korean coal. If THAAD and more than 30 missiles. It claims the most recent bomb tests goes ahead, China could lift those sanctions, because Beijing sees involved hydrogen devices, which are much more powerful than simple fission weapons. It’s not clear that this claim is true, but the “the U.S. response, not North Korean provocations, as the primary threat to its security,” says political explosions were nearly twice as strong scientist Minxin Pei. as the one that destroyed Hiroshima. Kim’s murderous paranoia Experts now estimate that North Korea Kim Jong Un has proved to be as much a Can Kim’s weapons be destroyed? has built up to 20 nuclear bombs. Just threat to members of his own regime as he The U.S. and South Korea frequently as worrisome is that Kim’s regime has is to neighboring countries. In five years in war-game a strike on North Korea, openly boasted it is preparing to attack power, he’s ordered the execution of more and Tillerson said last week that if Kim other nations. It called one missile launch than 100 top politicians and military officers, keeps ratcheting up his threats, “military late last year a dry run for “preemptive including his powerful uncle, Jang Song action” would be an option. But the Thaek. Jang was executed by Kim’s preferred strikes at ports and airfields” in South method: A powerful anti-aircraft gun blasted risks are high. North Korea’s full miliKorea. And this month, it launched four his body into bits, and then flamethrowers tary capabilities can’t simply be bombed ballistic missiles simultaneously that fell incinerated the scattered remains. Paranoid away. Western intelligence doesn’t know into the sea near Japan, in a test of a and unpredictable, Kim is quick to turn on where most of the regime’s weapons “saturation attack” to overwhelm missile people in his inner circle. He has already systems are concealed, and some are hiddefenses. It said the unit that fired those den underground or inside mountains. was “tasked to strike the bases of the U.S. replaced his defense minister five times, after having several of them killed. Last month But even if a pre-emptive strike someimperialist aggressor forces in Japan.” at a Malaysian airport, his half-brother, Kim how took out all the nukes, it could Nam, was assassinated in a chemical not immediately destroy the thousands Would it launch a preemptive strike? Jong attack that undoubtedly was ordered by Kim. of artillery units. North Korea could Only if Kim feels certain that North North Korea’s highest-ranking defector, Thae still retaliate by firing tons of shells and Korea is about to be attacked the way Yong Ho, warns that Kim feels his grip on chemical weapons into the center of Iraq was in 2003. But Kim’s primary goal power is slipping, and he is more dangerous Seoul, killing hundreds of thousands is regime survival, not suicide, and he for that reason. “Kim Jong Un’s capability to of people. “There is no South Korean knows any nuclear attack would result in wreak harm, not only to America, but also leader,” says South Korean analyst Suh his annihilation. So the real value of his to South Korea and the world, should not be Choo-suk, “who thinks the first strike nuclear program is as a form of blackunderestimated,” Thae said. by the U.S. is OK.” mail, to prevent an attack on Pyongyang. THE WEEK March 31, 2017
The invisible plague of rural America Andrew Sullivan
NYMag.com
Best columns: The U.S. “The opioid epidemic is this generation’s AIDS crisis,” said Andrew Sullivan. In the 1980s and ’90s, those of us in the gay male subculture lived in “a medieval landscape of constant disease and death,” largely invisible to the larger society. The same is true of the working-class communities in rural and small-town America now ravaged by the opioid/heroin/ fentanyl epidemic. The scope of the carnage is staggering: 52,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2015, even more than the peak year for AIDS, which took 51,000 lives in 1995. One tragic difference between the two crises is that while “AIDS was eventually overcome by innovation by pharmaceutical companies,” the opioid epidemic was created by the very same companies. Their aggressive and deceptive marketing of opioid painkillers set up millions for a terrible addiction. Effective AIDS treatments were developed only because of intense political pressure by advocacy groups such as ACT UP, which forced the rest of America to see our suffering. But today, the Trump administration is embracing a health-care plan that would severely cut Medicaid funding for addiction treatment. “Where, one wonders, is the ACT UP of the red states?”
“Perceptions matter,” said Michael Barone, and in much of the country, the perception is that “President Trump’s policies are working.” During Trump’s first full month in office, in February, the economy added 235,000 jobs—more than expected. More importantly, most of the jobs were in the private sector, with construction jobs up 58,000 and manufacturing jobs up 28,000. At the same time, the stock market has broMichael Barone ken records, with the Dow near 21,000. It sure looks as if job creators WashingtonExaminer.com are feeling optimistic because of the president’s plan to eliminate regulations and cut taxes. At the southern border, meanwhile, apprehensions of people crossing illegally in February dropped 36 percent from the previous year. Why? The northward flood from Central American nations of children and some adults seeking asylum has slowed dramatically, because people from these countries know that “things are different now.” Under President Obama, people caught at the border were usually released, pending further legal action. But Trump has told immigration officials to send people caught at the border back quickly. It’s still very early, but so far, the “wisdom of crowds” suggests that Trump is a far more effective president than his critics would insist.
How Trump’s policies are succeeding
Steve King, mainstream Republican Max Boot
ForeignPolicy.com
Viewpoint
Racists like Steve King used to be “pushed to the fringes” of the Republican Party, said Max Boot. But in the Trump era, “they’re in charge.” King, an Iowa congressman, recently praised far-right Dutch leader Geert Wilders and echoed his statement that “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” In the past, King stated that “no ‘subgroup’ other than ‘white people’ has done more for civilization,” and smeared Mexican immigrants as “drug mules” with “calves the size of cantaloupes.” House Speaker Paul Ryan waved off King’s latest outrage as unimportant, saying he probably “misspoke”; at the White House, key presidential adviser Steve Bannon actually shares King’s hateful worldview. In 2015, Bannon praised King “as a great mentor to all of us” and “a true warrior.” Both Bannon and King recently recommended an astonishingly racist 1973 French novel, The Camp of the Saints, which depicts France’s white Christians being overrun by hordes of impoverished Indians. “This is ugly stuff,” but under Bannon and President Trump, white nationalism has gone mainstream. The GOP is no longer the party of Ronald Reagan, who once described the U.S. as a “brotherhood of man” whose citizens came from “every corner of the Earth.”
“Immigration does change a nation’s culture. Fifty years ago, only about 5 percent of the U.S. population was foreign-born. By 2010, immigrants made up about 13 percent of the population, and nine of 10 were coming to America from outside Europe. These Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Hispanic immigrants bring rich diversity to American music, architecture, cuisine, and sports; they contribute mightily to growth and innovation in science, technology, medicine, and other sectors of the economy. They have also forced us to revise our thinking about what it means to become American. Gone is the ‘melting pot’ idea, with its assumption that immigrants can become indistinguishable from natives.” Tom Gjelten in The Washington Post THE WEEK March 31, 2017
It must be true...
I read it in the tabloids Q A New Jersey woman says her life is a “waking nightmare” because her name— Alexa Seary—sounds identical to the two most popular virtual assistants: Amazon Echo’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. For years, says Seary (pronounced SEER-ey), 21, co-workers and friends have been ordering her around as if she were a soulless machine. The joke got old in a hurry. “It would be, ‘Siri, do this, Siri do that,’ and now they do the same thing with Alexa,” she says. While Seary has Siri on her iPhone, adding Alexa at home “would be a complete disaster. I would scream back every time someone said ‘Alexa’ automatically or vice versa.” Q A Latvian model
has gone 20 years without a haircut to make herself into a real-life version of her favorite fairy-tale character, Rapunzel. Alia Nasroya, 27, now boasts a 90-inch-long brown mane, which requires an hour to comb and a full day to air-dry after washing. She once had to snip a few locks when someone stuck chewing gum in the tresses at the movies. “It was a tragedy,” Nasroya says. “I had to cut out a clump of hair to get rid of the gum.” Her husband, Ivan, contorts himself in bed to avoid disturbing the hair. “I always talk to the braid respectfully,” he says. “Sometimes I ask it to move a bit.” Q Now you can wear a scent that makes you smell like a cuddly kitten. The Demeter Fragrance Library says its “Kitten Fur” has the “olfactory essence” of “that purrfect spot, just behind kitten’s neck.” For non–cat persons, Demeter offers a selection of other offbeat fragrances, including “Popcorn,” “Earthworm,” and “Fuzzy Balls”— which smells like “the woosh of a freshly opened can of tennis balls.”
Barcroft Media
12 NEWS
AN ICON JUST GOT LARGER
THE NAVITIMER 46 mm
14 NEWS NETHERLANDS
How Wilders’ loss is still his gain Ulko Jonker
Financieele Dagblad
UNITED KINGDOM
How Trump treats his friends Editorial
The Guardian
Best columns: Europe Anti-immigrant populist Geert Wilders didn’t win last week’s Dutch elections, said Ulko Jonker in the Financieele Dagblad, but his xenophobic message still triumphed. Wilders, the wild-haired firebrand who wants to close mosques and ban the Quran and the hijab, fell short of expectations but nevertheless emerged as the second-largest political force in the country—his Freedom Party went from 15 to 20 seats in the 150-seat parliament. Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy remained the largest group in parliament, but lost eight seats, taking 33. Rutte only won re-election by peppering his
stump speeches with dog whistles about a “silent majority” that would no longer let immigrants come here and “abuse our freedom.” Rutte brags that he has saved the Netherlands by stopping “the wrong kind of populism” from taking over. But that implies there is “a right kind of populism,” which is dubious. Wilders forced Rutte to tack right and embrace a populist-lite position, focusing his campaign around refugees and integration. The default narrative now is that the Netherlands is a nation besieged by Muslim immigrants. “Nuance has long disappeared from the public domain,” as an us-versus-them mentality takes over.
President Trump’s false allegation that British intelligence bugged Trump Tower has upended the U.K.’s primary alliance, said The Guardian. It all started with a series of typically ill-reasoned, “offthe-cuff tweets” from Trump earlier this month in which he claimed that he’d been wiretapped by former President Obama. After the entire political establishment said the allegation was without merit, Trump should have apologized, or at least kept silent. Instead, he had spokesman Sean Spicer double down. Spicer repeated an unfounded assertion by a Fox News commentator that Obama had Britain’s GCHQ spy agency eavesdrop on Trump, bypassing the U.S. chain of command.
Given that a cornerstone of the U.S.-U.K. alliance is an agreement not to spy on each other, the outrageous charge provoked GCHQ to make “an unprecedented break with its normal refusal ever to comment.” It said the claims were “nonsense, utterly ridiculous, and should be ignored”—strong words from a country long obsessed with being “America’s obedient ally.” Clearly, “Trump doesn’t do alliances,” and that is grim news for post-Brexit Britain. Prime Minister Theresa May has promised Britons that after our split from the EU we will be an internationalist country, which means we will need allies. Yet she “spurns good ones in Europe while trusting an unreliable one in Washington.”
Germany: Merkel’s bewildering meeting with Trump
AP
his obvious “deep-rooted phobia of German Chancellor Angela Merkel mature women.” His body language shone in her meeting with President with Merkel was that of humiliaTrump last week, said Franz Josef tion, suggesting that, on some level, Wagner in Bild (Germany). Not that he “appreciates how desperately out the White House visit can be called of his depth in such company he a success—during the photo op folis.” She is a scientist with a Ph.D., lowing their summit, the two clearly pragmatic and self-contained—the had no rapport. “Never have I seen opposite of the incurious and untwo people more alien or estranged.” controlled Trump. They didn’t appear to interact at all. Trump was simply rude, refusing eye Merkel seemed “gloomily fascicontact and staring into his lap like nated” by his ignorance and willful a sulky child. When a reporter called duplicity, said Julian Reichelt in for a handshake, Merkel asked quiBild. Trump used their press conferetly, “Do you want to have a handThe chancellor and the president disagreed on facts. ence to repeat the false allegation shake?” Trump ignored her. Merkel that he had been wiretapped by President Obama, and joked to sat back stoically, a tiny, sardonic smile on her face. “The whole the chancellor—whose phones were tapped by the U.S.’s National world praised the chancellor for her statesmanlike manner.” She was “ironic and cool,” yet without sneering. Score one for Merkel. Security Agency under the previous administration—that “at least we have something in common.” She looked stunned at the comment. Almost everything else Trump said was “somewhere beTrump was unprepared for forthright questioning from German tween false, untrue, and a lie.” He claimed that German trade nereporters, said Felix Haas in Stern (Germany). Kristina Dunz gotiators were doing a better job than their American opposites. of Deutsche Presse-Agentur asked the president why he labeled In fact, negotiators from the European Union, not Germany, are media reports “fake news” when he himself routinely “asserted now discussing a trade pact with America. Then he accused Gerthings that cannot be proven.” A flustered Trump sarcastically many of owing “vast sums” to the U.S. for NATO, when in fact called Dunz a “nice, friendly reporter.” The U.S. and German there are no NATO dues. Each member nation has pledged to press praised Dunz for her toughness, but she said she was simspend at least 2 percent of its gross domestic product on national ply asking the questions that her U.S. colleagues couldn’t. In defense by 2024, and Germany, while it spends only 1.2 percent Germany, the reporters choose among themselves who will ask today, is on track to hit that target. Merkel is now grimly aware questions, while in the U.S., the president decides—and Trump how “the most powerful man in the world has declared war on favors friendly media. Merkel also seemed to upset Trump, said the concept of facts.” Matthew Norman in Independent.co.uk. It was more than just THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Best columns: International
NEWS 15
How they see us: Trump’s China policy still unclear ington is asking Beijing to help alChina feels encouraged after the visit leviate a U.S. security concern while by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tilsimultaneously “putting Beijing in lerson, said Yang Sheng in the Global harm’s way.” China has identified Times (China). Officials here had the U.S.’s THAAD anti-ballistic been alarmed by President Trump’s missile defense system as a security first actions in office, when he threatthreat that could blunt China’s own ened a trade war and questioned the nuclear deterrent. Yet the U.S. is “One China” policy, under which deploying that very system in nearby the U.S. recognizes the self-governing South Korea. Meanwhile, Trump island of Taiwan as part of China. is “reportedly plotting a new, bigBut this week in Beijing, Tillerson ger arms sales package to Taiwan.” told President Xi Jinping that the None of that sounds like respect for U.S. wanted a relationship based China’s core interests. Does Tillerson on “mutual respect” and “win-win Tillerson and Xi: Seeing eye to eye? even speak for Trump? cooperation”—phrases that, Chinese analysts say, mean the Trump administration has “implicitly Maybe not, said Ankit Panda in the South China Morning Post. endorsed the new model of major power relations.” Under the During his six-day Asian tour, Tillerson was supposed to reasObama administration, the U.S. had refused to use the term “mutual respect,” because it implied acceptance of China’s defi- sure South Korea and Japan that Washington remained committed to protecting its allies. But South Korean media said the nition of its core interests—including dominion over the South China Sea and free rein to do what it sees fit in restive provinces secretary “cut short” meetings with officials in Seoul because he was suffering from fatigue—a claim Tillerson denies—and then like Tibet and Xinjiang. “I appreciate your comment that the Tillerson’s boss undercut his efforts in China by tweeting durChina-U.S. relationship can only be defined by cooperation and ing his visit. For now, Tillerson seems like an irrelevant outsider friendship,” Xi told Tillerson. in the Trump administration. His words carry little weight, so The secretary’s boss apparently does not agree, said China Daily “U.S. allies and adversaries in Asia will remain uneasy” about the president’s hazy plans for the region. We’ll know more next in an editorial. While Tillerson was in Asia, Trump tweeted that month when Trump and Xi meet at the president’s Mar-a-Lago North Korea was “behaving very badly” and that Beijing had “done little to help” stop Kim Jong Un’s regime from developing estate, said Ni Feng in the Global Times. Until then, nobody should panic about minor fluctuations in U.S.-China diplomacy. new nuclear weapons. Trump wants China, which accounts for “Time is needed for the two countries to strengthen coordina90 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade, to use its economic leverage to punish Pyongyang for recent missile tests. But Wash- tion for the new type of great-power relations.”
BOLIVIA
Let farmers grow more coca leaf Editorial
La Razón
AUSTRALIA
Why the world is heading Down Under Peter Hartcher
Newscom
The Sydney Morning Herald
The expansion of coca planting in Bolivia is long overdue, said La Razón. The infamous Law 1008, passed at the behest of the U.S. in 1988, severely limited Bolivian farmers’ ability to grow the traditional crop, which people here chew or use in teas to combat altitude sickness. The unjust law equated coca leaf with the processed cocaine that Americans were snorting in vast quantities. In classic colonialist fashion, the U.S. war on drug traffickers became a Bolivian “war against coca cultivation, against the farmers.” The punitive restrictions were maintained through two decades of right-wing governments and even a full decade
under our leftist President Evo Morales, himself a former coca farmer who rose to power pledging to abolish the law. Finally, he has made good. Morales recently signed a law nearly doubling the size of the country’s authorized coca plantation zones, from 30,000 acres to 55,000 acres. The new law simply legalizes what has been going on all along: In 2015, the United Nations found that Bolivian farmers had planted some 50,000 acres of coca, nearly all of which has gone to the local market, for rituals and infusions. Andes residents have chewed coca leaf for centuries. We should never have allowed foreigners to tell us what to do with our own farmland.
It’s been quite a month for VIP visits to Australia, said Peter Hartcher. The country has hosted not only Benjamin Netanyahu—the first serving Israeli prime minister ever to set foot here—but also the head of the world’s biggest Muslim-majority state, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia. The latter is only the fourth Indonesian leader to visit Australia in the 72-year history of his country, “even though the distance from Indonesia to Australia at its closest is only a quarter the distance from Sydney to Melbourne.” Both Netanyahu and Widodo had their own reasons for making the trip, but there is a wider context to their visits: global uncertainty.
Like the leaders of many other countries, they’re alarmed by the apparent breakdown in the global order. “Russia is increasingly aggressive, China coercive, Britain pointless, Europe unpredictable, and the U.S. unreliable.” Iran and Saudi Arabia are vying for “ascendancy in the Middle East.” Global trade has stalled, and President Trump “threatens to clog growth routes further.” Nations are desperate for stable allies to team up with and sell stuff to. It’s a tumultuous time, and “when the earth starts to shudder, you grab any support you can find to keep your balance.” The result? Australia “has never been so popular.” THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Noted Q Norway is now the world’s happiest country, according to the 2017 World Happiness Report. Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland closely followed, based mostly on subjective evaluations of life quality by people in 155 countries. The U.S. dropped to 14th, largely because of poor social support and cohesion. The New York Times
Q In 2014, 7 percent of all U.S. births—about 275,000 babies—were born to parents who were in the U.S. illegally, according to the Pew Research Center. The Washington Post
Q Sales of poster boards, markers, and other signmaking supplies jumped more than 30 percent in the week before Donald Trump’s inauguration and the Jan. 21 Women’s March. That week, Americans spent an estimated $6 million on such supplies, not insignificant considering that many of the items cost $1 or less. Bloomberg.com
Q Downtown Detroit is undergoing gentrification. About 2,000 luxury apartments are under construction, 99 percent of existing apartments are being rented, and average rental costs have climbed to $2,000 a month. The Wall Street Journal
Q The Trump administration has asked for contract proposals to build a 30-foot-high concrete or see-through wall at the Mexican border that is sunk 6 feet into the ground and would require at least an hour to cut through using power tools. Associated Press THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Talking points Trump’s budget: Hard power, not soft principle. Look at what It was Winston Churchill who Obama’s refusal to interdeclared that “to jaw-jaw is vene in Syria has wrought, always better than to warand the renewed need to war,” said Zack Beauchamp protect South Korea from in Vox.com. Even Britain’s Kim Jung Un’s threats. In resolute wartime leader knew a dangerous and unstable that diplomacy and negotiaworld, hard power can tion are preferable to going prevent wars. True, but cutto war. But President Trump ting the State Department’s apparently disagrees: His foreign aid to allies would first budget plan calls for Launching a U.S. fighter jet at sea be counterproductive, a 9 percent, or $54 billion, said Max Boot, also in CommentaryMagazine boost in annual defense spending, while slash.com. The largest recipients are “clearly of major ing the State Department’s funds by a whopping 28 percent. The budget has “virtually no chance” strategic importance”: Afghanistan is leading the fight against the Taliban and al Qaida; Egypt, of passing through Congress in its current form, Iraq, and Jordan are battling ISIS; African states but it makes clear Trump’s intention to shift U.S. are up against Boko Haram, al-Shabab, and other foreign policy away from the “soft power” of diplomacy and toward the “hard power” of mili- dangerous terrorist groups. Giving these countries financial aid means “we don’t have to put U.S. tary might. That would be a grave mistake, said Caitlin Talmadge in The New York Times. While troops on the front lines.” the armed forces are vital to national security, the Let’s face it: This is really just a “Viagra budget” soft-power tools of diplomacy and foreign aid for Trump, said Nina Burleigh in Newsweek.com. help “prevent wars and crises from arising in the first place.” Military force—and the mass casual- The U.S. already spends “more on our military than the next seven nations combined,” and ties it brings—should always be a “last resort.” accounts for “34 percent of the entire world’s total military spending.” An extra $54 billion In the real world, “peace is maintained through deterrence,” said Noah Rothman in Commentary wouldn’t change the balance of power one bit. It would be nothing but a “Big Blue Budget Pill” Magazine.com. After eight years of President that would make Trump and his “insecure fanObama’s naïveté, it’s good to have a president boys” feel bigger, stronger, and tougher. who understands that ancient, time-proven
Social change: The decline of men Men without college degrees are in big trouble, said Thomas Edsall in The New York Times. Lower-income men of all races and ethnicities are “dropping out of the workforce, abusing opioids, and falling behind women” in education. Females now make up 56 percent of undergraduate enrollees, compared with 44 percent for males. While more women than men with middle-skill jobs lost their positions to offshoring and automation in recent decades, most of those women upgraded to high-skilled work; more than half of the men slipped into lower-paying jobs in retail and fast food. Others chose to give up work entirely. The divorce rate among non-college-educated men has climbed to nearly 51 percent, while many never marry, because most women don’t see them as good prospects. For tens of millions of blue-collar men, “the scaffolding that underpinned their fathers’ lives has been torn down.” The loss of manufacturing jobs was a staggering blow, said Alana Semuels in TheAtlantic.com. When factories abandoned rural and small-town America, they stripped workers of their comfortable, middle-class wages—and caused a cascade of severe social problems. A new study shows that when plants closed, many single men fled their
communities to join the Army or move to cities with more jobs. Women were left with very few “‘marriageable’ men—men who are not drinking or using drugs excessively and who have a job.” Marriage rates declined, while the number of births to single moms soared—reshaping the very “structure of the American family.” “Enter the outlandishly male Donald Trump,” said Steven Watts in NationalReview.com. Trump’s macho persona “resonated” deeply with many workers during the 2016 election, coming during “a great spasm of cultural anxiety about masculine decline.” Trump promised a remedy for their plight—vowing to renegotiate trade deals, smack down smug big-city liberals, and restore blue-collar men to their former status and paychecks. Sadly, it’s an impossible mission, said Stephen Marche in TheGuardian.com. Automation is now coming for the predominantly male truck-driving industry, which employs 3.5 million Americans; a self-driving truck recently delivered 50,000 cans of Budweiser. By 2050, a third of all men under 54 could be unemployed, according to one estimate. The situation is truly “disastrous”—“for them, for women, and for the wider economy.”
Petty Officer 3rd Class Devin M. Langer, AP
16 NEWS
Talking points Beauty and the Beast: Disney’s gay moment White in NationalReview Trigger warning for homo.com. The whole remake is phobes: Disney’s new Beauty laden with political correctand the Beast has “an obviness and leftist propaganda. ously gay character,” said Emma Watson’s Belle “is not Kevin Fallon in TheDailyBeast a love-starved innocent but .com. The remake of the ania feminist standard-bearer” mated classic uses real actors, who scorns Gaston’s invitaand has sparked a “global tion to become a traditional cultural crisis” by portraying wife. The Beast is reduced LeFou, the chubby, ingratiatto a “crude chauvinist” who ing sidekick of the hunky needs to be tamed and made villain Gaston, as a closeted LeFou, left, with Gaston more sensitive to others. gay man struggling with his feelings. LeFou gives Gaston a back rub and lingering gazes, serenades his masculinity, and in the Lighten up, said David Benkof in DailyCaller.com. When you consider that the plot revolves around movie’s climactic ballroom scene is briefly seen waltzing with another man. Russia’s homophobic a “Stockholm Syndrome romance” between a woman and a beast with horns, “a bit of chaste censors have prohibited under-16s from watchhomosexuality seems rather tame.” It’s still a ing it; an Alabama movie theater has banned the movie; and over 50,000 people have signed a peti- rich, enchanting film—despite the bestiality and tion by a Christian group in support of a boycott. gay in-jokes. Besides, LeFou is hardly Disney’s first gay character, said Kristen Page-Kirby in What’s so wrong with that? said Margot CleveWashingtonPost.com. Older Disney films have land in TheFederalist.com. Some of us have featured plenty of “coded gay” characters, includyoung children, and “just want to enjoy a couple ing The Little Mermaid’s drag queen–esque Ursula of hours of entertainment that doesn’t necesand The Lion King’s fiendishly camp Scar. Their sitate a follow-up three-hour lesson on sexual sexuality was “given a wink and a nod,” but they morality.” Disney isn’t exactly subtle about the were never allowed an object for their affections— gay theme: LeFou sits on Gaston’s lap, leans into until LeFou. The code was a way of making gay his neck, and says teasingly, “Too much?” Yes, characters “safer.” By breaking it, Disney has it is too much for young children. It’s not just emphasized Beauty and the Beast’s main lesson: the “unnecessary gay subplot,” said Armond “looking past differences and celebrating love.”
Travel ban: Will Trump win in the end?
Laurie Sparham
President Trump’s incendiary rhetoric has “come back to bite him yet again,” said Derek Hawkins in The Washington Post. Two federal judges last week ordered a halt to the president’s revised executive order banning travel from parts of the Muslim world. The new, pared-down version, which would temporarily prohibit the issuance of visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries, was designed to avoid the legal problems faced by his first travel ban. But “in his blistering opinion,” U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson of Hawaii deemed the order a transparent and unconstitutional attempt to bar Muslim immigrants and travelers. Watson cited Trump’s remarks on the campaign trail—such as “Islam hates us”—and his call “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S.” as “significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus.” Another federal judge in Maryland also cited Trump’s rhetoric in branding the new order a “Muslim ban.” The rulings were wrong—and will be overturned, said Hans von Spakovsky in NationalReview.com. In “a stirring dissent” from previous rulings filed last week, Judges Jay Bybee and Alex Kozinski of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pointed out that Trump’s order “was well within the statutory
powers of the presidency.” To reject the president’s authority to make national security decisions based on an interpretation of his motives, the judges said, was an absurd judicial overreach. Trump’s order also makes no specific reference to religion, said Danny Cevallos in CNN.com, so how can judges “be so sure about the underlying discriminatory motivation?” Should courts weighing cases involving Trump review everything he said before being elected, including his quotes in “Page Six” and on The Howard Stern Show? Constitutional analysis cannot be “psychoanalysis,” said Alan Dershowitz in TheHill.com. If Trump’s motives were the major defect in his travel ban, then an identical order by President Obama “would have been constitutional.” The order is constitutional or it isn’t—you can’t have it two ways. That’s why Trump may win in the Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds, said Richard Hasen in Slate.com. The 9th Circuit dissent suggests that citing Trump’s past statements could “chill campaign speech,” which “is just the kind of argument that the Supreme Court’s conservatives like,” including swing justice Anthony Kennedy. If Neil Gorsuch is confirmed, the argument “will likely resonate with him too.”
NEWS 17 Wit & Wisdom “If a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work.” Jonathan Swift, quoted in TheDailyBeast.com
“Fate is a rat.” Baseball legend Leo Durocher, quoted in The Wall Street Journal
“Break a vase, and the love that assembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.” Poet Derek Walcott, quoted in the Los Angeles Times
“Don’t trust a brilliant idea unless it survives the hangover.” Jimmy Breslin, quoted in the Oklahoma City Journal Record
“When old dreams die, new ones come to take their place. God pity a one-dream man.” Rocket scientist Robert Goddard, quoted in The New York Times
“Work is the least disappointing relationship you can have.” Bette Davis, quoted in VanityFair.com
“I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.” Novelist Jim Harrison, quoted in PasteMagazine.com
Poll watch Q 60% of Americans think that the government’s top immigration priority should be to develop a plan to “allow those in the U.S. illegally who have jobs to become legal residents.” 90% would support offering legal status to immigrants who hold a job, speak English, and pay back taxes. 26% think that the top priority should be to “develop a plan to stop illegal border crossings.” 13% want deportation to be the first priority. CNN/ORC THE WEEK March 31, 2017
18 NEWS
Technology
Wearable tech: Is ‘smart’ clothing ready for the streets? hear an ETA on your destination, swipe the Wearable technology is becoming “more chic opposite direction to skip a song, or double and less geek,” said Hayley Tsukayama in The tap to play or pause your music. But it’s also Washington Post. That was the big takeaway a classic, stylish Levi’s coat. “In other words: from the annual South by Southwest festival It doesn’t scream, ‘Ask me about my technolin Austin, where Google and Levi’s last week ogy!’ like a smartwatch does.” Google’s jacket showed off a new joint project: a high-tech fulfills the central promise of wearable tech: denim jacket. The $350 Commuter jacket, “to take us away from our phones and to imwhich is aimed at people who bike to work prove our lives in subtle but powerful ways,” and which should be in stores this fall, is said Nick Statt in TheVerge.com. Apple’s woven with touch-sensitive fibers that let wearWatch failed to do that: I find it takes more ers “take phone calls, get directions, and check time to interact with the device’s tiny screen the time by tapping and swiping their sleeves.” than to just pull out and use my phone. The A Bluetooth-enabled cuff link transmits those Commuter coat does less than the Watch, but gestures to the wearer’s smartphone, which delivers the requested information to the user’s The $350 jacket puts tech on your sleeve. that simplicity makes it feel “like one of the first truly practical pieces of wearable tech.” headphones—allowing bicyclists to “keep their eyes on the road without having to fiddle with a screen.” What This smart jacket isn’t the future, it’s “really just a large remote” makes the coat stand out from other wearables, like the Apple for your phone, said Scott Stein in CNET.com. And there’s nothWatch and Fitbit’s fitness trackers, is that it doesn’t make its tech ing new about that. Burton started making ski jackets with em“its main feature, but rather uses it to solve problems that everyday people have.” With the smartwatch market saturated, analysts bedded iPod controls 14 years ago. If the new coat flops, it’ll be now believe that fashionable, tech-equipped clothing will drive the because it shares the same flaw as nearly every other wearable— it “must be tethered to a cellular phone,” said Haniya Rae in wearables sector, which is expected to hit $19 billion next year. Forbes.com. The Apple Watch never took off because consumers didn’t need a smaller version of the device already in their “I’ve worn sensor-filled clothes before, and they end up being pocket. How many people really want a $350 jacket that lets more gimmicky than practical,” said Caitlin McGarry in PC them do exactly the same things—skip songs, get ETAs—as their World.com. But after trying on the Commuter jacket, “I’m a smartphone’s hands-free digital voice assistant? believer.” For one thing, it works. You can brush your cuff to
Surgeons have a new helper: a robot that’s been “perfectly designed to drill tiny tunnels in your skull,” said Rachel Feltman in Popular Science. Each year, some 65,000 people with hearing difficulties receive cochlear implants, devices that transmit sound from an external microphone to the patient’s auditory nerve. To install an implant, surgeons must drill “a 2.5-millimeter-wide tunnel through a chunk of skull surrounded by facial and taste nerves,” a risky procedure that often results in patients losing some residual hearing. To minimize accidental damage, researchers at Switzerland’s University of Bern have developed a robotic surgical assistant that can drill with remarkable accuracy, straying as little as 0.4 mm off target during 99.7 percent of procedures. The bot has assisted with four implant operations since last summer; with more fine-tuning, doctors say, it could potentially be used in brain surgery. THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Bytes: What’s new in tech Game streaming’s fatal attraction Questions are being raised about the health risks of video gaming’s live-streaming culture after a Virginia man died following a marathon 22-hour session, said Daniel Slotnik in The New York Times. Brian C. Vigneault, 35, had been broadcasting himself playing the game World of Tanks when he took a break and collapsed near his Virginia Beach home. The cause of death hasn’t been released yet, but several gamers in Taiwan and South Korea have also died during or after long streaming sessions. Some professional game streamers make a living off sites like YouTube or Twitch, a video game broadcasting site that has nearly 10 million visitors a day, through advertising or subscription payments. “Yet would-be professional streamers typically endure a relentless grind to build an audience.” The resulting lifestyle is often unhealthy, requiring long sedentary periods with little sleep, which can result in exhaustion and cardiovascular problems.
Facebook bars police ‘surveillance’ “Facebook is cutting police departments off from a vast trove of data that has been increasingly used to monitor protesters and activists,” said Elizabeth Dwoskin in The Washington Post. The social media giant knows a lot about
its users—their locations, friends, birth dates, political affiliations—and some of that data is shared with developers, most of whom use it to target advertising. But the American Civil Liberties Union revealed last year that one firm, Geofeedia, had used Facebook data to help law enforcement surveil activists protesting police violence in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore. Facebook updated its policies last week to ban developers from using its data to create “tools that are used for surveillance.” The ACLU praised Facebook’s move as a “first step.”
Phone kill switch for moms and dads Google is releasing “the most comprehensive set of parent tools for the internet yet,” said Wilson Rothman in The Wall Street Journal. The company’s new Family Link software, which launched in beta last week, lets children use an Android device just like their mom or dad, but with features such as Google search and YouTube programmed to show only kidappropriate content. Using an administrative app, parents can locate their child’s phone on a map, adjust account settings, and set screentime limits and off-limits hours. The trade-off for these features, “as always with Google,” is that the technology giant gets access to data about your kids’ online habits.
Levi’s, screenshot
Innovation of the week
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20 NEWS
Health & Science
Dental plaque reveals Neanderthals’ secrets at all, subsisting instead on moss, pine nuts, and fungi. “It is very indicative of a vegetarian diet,” study co-author Laura Weyrich, from the University of Adelaide, tells NPR.org. “Probably the true paleo diet.” The DNA analysis also suggested that one of the El Sidrón Neanderthals may have consumed poplar tree bark— which contains salicylic acid, one of the ingredients in aspirin—to treat pain from a diarrhea-inducing gut parasite and a tooth abscess. The same hominid’s dental plaque also contained traces of the mold used to make penicillin. Another surprising finding was that Neanderthals had mouth bacteria that was acquired from
are storing 13 percent more heat than previously thought. Since 2000, about 3,800 free-drifting “Argo” floats have been deployed throughout the world’s oceans, reports The Washington Post. These hightech devices, which profile conditions at depths of up to about 6,500 feet, have enabled researchers to improve assessments of ocean warming over the past 55 years. (Measurements were previously based solely on temperature readings recorded Pan: A bulge at the equator along major shipping routes.) In a new Saturn’s ‘ravioli’ moon study that used data from the Argo system, A piece of ravioli? A hamburger? Tortellini, government teams from the U.S. and China perhaps? A NASA spacecraft has gotten its found that the seas are storing much more energy, in the form of heat—and that most best-ever look at one of Saturn’s moons— of this change has occurred since 1980. and its flying-saucer shape has drawn Warming oceans affect weather patterns, comparisons to all manner of foodstuffs. triggering more powerful storms and floodFirst discovered in 1990, the 21-mile-wide ing, and can lead to ocean acidification Pan orbits Saturn deep within the planet’s and “dead spots” inhospitable for marine rings. Its striking appearance is the result life. Because the seas absorb more than of a bulge around its equator, which prob90 percent of the heat trapped in Earth’s ably formed over time as the moon’s gravatmosphere by greenhouse gases, says study ity attracted icy particles from the rings. Scientists believe the same process may have co-author Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, water taken place on another of Saturn’s moons, Atlas, which has a similar equatorial bulge. temperatures are important barometers of global warming. “The ocean is the memory The new high-resolution images—which of all of the past climate were taken from about 15,000 miles away change,” he said. by Cassini, a probe that has been buzzing around Saturn for 13 years—should shed new light on Pan’s shape and geology. Vitamin C targets cancer NASA’s Carolyn Porco admits she initially mistook the new photographs for an artMost people take vitaist’s rendering. “They are real!” she tells min C to fend off a cold, NationalGeographic.com. “Science is better but new research suggests than fiction.” Saturn’s moons are potenit could also be a possible tially habitable—before Cassini runs out of weapon in the fight against fuel later this year, it will be sent deep into cancer. A team of researchSaturn’s upper atmosphere so that it doesn’t ers at the University of crash into any of them. Salford in England evaluated seven substances— Oceans warming faster vitamin C, two natural products, and four experimenScientists have developed more accurate tal cancer drugs—on their ability ways to measure changes in Earth’s ocean to block the growth of cancer stem temperatures—and they believe the seas THE WEEK March 31, 2017
A Neanderthal’s upper jaw
Homo sapiens, which suggests the species were either kissing or sharing food. The discovery, Weyrich says, indicates that relations between modern humans and Neanderthals were probably “much more friendly than anyone imagined.”
cells, which inhibit chemotherapy and help tumors spread throughout the body. They found that vitamin C did block the growth of cancer cells; in fact, it was 10 times more effective than one of the pharmaceuticals, although it was outperformed by two experimental drugs. The finding adds to previous research indicating that highdose vitamin C treatments could slow the growth of cancer cells in the prostate, liver, and colon. “Vitamin C is cheap, natural, nontoxic, and readily available,” study coauthor Michael Lisanti tells ScienceDaily .com. “To have it as a potential weapon in the fight against cancer would be a significant step.”
Health scare of the week Gluten-free diets and diabetes Gluten may have surpassed carbohydrates as public enemy No. 1, but new research suggests diets lacking in the protein could increase the risk for diabetes. Researchers at Harvard evaluated dietary surveys completed by about 200,000 people over three decades, reports ScienceDaily.com. They found that nearly 16,000 of those surveyed had developed type 2 diabetes—and that those who ate the most gluten had a 13 percent lower risk of developing the disease than those who ate the least. It’s unclear why gluten intake affects diabetes risk, but the study’s authors suggest people who eat glutinous grains—such as wheat, barley, and rye— also consume more fiber and other micronutrients, which could have a protective effect against the disease. Study author Geng Zong said the findings suggest that “people without celiac disease [should] reconsider limiting their gluten intake.”
Paleoanthropology Group MNCN-CSIC/AP, NASA, Alamy
Neanderthals are generally portrayed as simpleminded carnivores. But a groundbreaking new study of hominid teeth has found that some of them were dedicated vegetarians and may even have used certain plants as painkillers. Researchers analyzed DNA that had been preserved in dental plaque from three Neanderthals that lived between 42,000 and 50,000 years ago—two from El Sidrón Cave in Spain and one from Spy Cave in Belgium. They found that while the hominid from the grasslands of Spy ate mostly meat, including woolly rhino and wild sheep, some of the inhabitants of the dense forests of El Sidrón probably ate no meat
Pick of the week’s cartoons
For more political cartoons, visit: www.theweek.com/cartoons.
NEWS 21
THE WEEK March 31, 2017
ARTS Review of reviews: Books people as it is about affirming the tenets of Christianity.” To a point, “I admire Dreher’s willingness to say what he thinks about these fraught issues,” said Paul Baumann in Commonweal. But Christians have preserved their ethos in the face of threats far graver than the gay rights movement—and mostly by engaging the world rather than turning away. “After all, when Christ was born into the world, it was not into a gated community.”
Book of the week The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher (Sentinel, $25) Rod Dreher’s new best-seller “does not lack for ambition,” said Peter Wehner in the National Review. The American Conservative columnist has delivered “a searing indictment of modernity and American culture,” and the remedy he proposes is radical in its potential impact. To Dreher, the decline in the West of the family and faith-based morals has reached such a level that believers must recognize they cannot arrest the rot. Citing the example of St. Benedict, who responded to the collapse of the Roman Empire by creating monastic communities to fortify the faithful, Dreher recommends that today’s believers pull their children out of public schools, limit household exposure to popular culture, and cluster around their churches in insular communities. Though Dreher’s level of alarm feels unjustified, “much of what he says is wise and worth considering.”
Novel of the week White Tears
Benedict of Nursia: A modern role model?
But is he right to feel so alarmed? asked Emma Green in TheAtlantic.com. At a moment when the political influence of conservative Christians is resurgent, Dreher is predicting that traditionalists will soon be chased from whole realms of professional life—including law and medicine—because the decades-old sexual revolution has rendered them pariahs. The recent legalization of gay marriage and court-ordered protection of LGBT rights so unsettle him that “at times, it seems the Benedict option is just as much about getting away from gay
Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel by John Stubbs (Norton, $40)
by Hari Kunzru (Knopf, $27)
Hari Kunzru’s stunning new novel is “part thriller, part literary horror novel, and completely impossible to put down,” said Michael Schaub in NPR.org. In contemporary New York, two white hipsters obsessed with old blues discs make a street recording that picks up the voice of an unseen singer, then doctor the audio and release it as the work of a forgotten blues master. They soon learn, though, that a singer of the same name once existed, and the mystery of the song’s origin deepens when one of the friends is brutally attacked. The story’s experimental touches eventually breed confusion, said Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal. Once the narrator’s hunt for truth heads down South, it is often hard to know when we’ve drifted back to the Jim Crow era and when we’re in the present. But White Tears climaxes in “a startling and memorable comeuppance.” Kunzru is suggesting that fetishizing the blues is a way of enjoying the fruits of suffering without acknowledging the suffering. “This ghost story is about balancing the ledger.” THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Jonathan Swift’s work needs no defender—but Swift himself might, said Matthew Adams in The Washington Post. One of greatest satirists of all time, the author of Gulliver’s Travels is also widely remembered as a worldclass grump. Even George Orwell, who adored that 1726 work, called Swift a “diseased” writer consumed by “a general hatred of humanity.” Fortunately, that’s not the Swift we meet in John Stubbs’ new biography. A cynic who treated his servants kindly, an Anglican priest who could be cuttingly rational, a writer disdainful of his native Ireland but often moved to defend it, Swift comes across here as a profoundly divided soul. Across 700 pages, Stubbs examines every facet, and “does so with insight, intelligence, and an appealing commitment to seeing his subject whole.”
Of course, the Benedict option doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition, said Ross Douthat in The New York Times. If every megachurch became 10 percent more theological and if every Christian became 10 percent more devoted to prayer, community, and service, “both the churches and the common culture would be better for it”—and other faiths could be similarly reinvigorated. But the Benedict option is still a call for building worlds set apart from the larger culture, said Christine Rosen in Commentary. At heart, it’s “a philosophy of ‘Let many bubbles bloom’”—a philosophy that could generate real benefits at a local level, “but with potentially ruinous cost to a broader sense of civic responsibility.” “If there can be a definitive life of Jonathan Swift, this is it,” said John Gray in the New Statesman (U.K.). Born in 1667 Dublin months after his father died, Swift was semi-abandoned by his mother to a wet nurse who bundled him off to England, and he spent much of his life shuttling between the two lands. Ordained in Ireland, he rose in London politics to become, in his 40s, the chief propagandist of the Tory government. A Tory defeat forced him to grudgingly return to Dublin to serve as dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Still to come were A Modest Proposal and Gulliver’s Travels, works that defended Ireland against exploitation and exposed the disgust he felt for his fellow humans for their failure to live by the light of reason. Rejecting the commonplace that life is a farce, Swift labeled it “a ridiculous tragedy—the worst kind of composition.” Dementia eventually overcame Swift, but he died a hero to the Irish. Readers of Stubbs’ “painstaking” history may be put off by its length—and surprised that a few simple errors have slipped into its detailed account of the political turmoil that defined its subject’s life, said The Economist. “That said, Stubbs’ work is a magnificent achievement.” It “will surely represent the last word on its subject for many years to come.”
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The Book List Best books...chosen by Bassem Youssef Bassem Youssef is a former heart surgeon and the onetime host of a satirical news show that was, before it shut down under pressure, the most popular TV program in Egypt. His new book is Revolution for Dummies: Laughing Through the Arab Spring. 1984 by George Orwell (Signet, $10). This is the “duh” choice. It’s everyone’s favorite book. But for me it is even more special. What I have seen in Egypt and how the media manipulated people on a daily basis might be a chapter out of Orwell’s book—a chapter that is not even well written. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (Harper Perennial, $20). It always fascinates me how some people choose to stand for truth in the face of organized, deeply rooted propaganda. I come from a region where questioning the “official history” of our region, our religion, and our countries is frowned upon. Propaganda serves many purposes, one of which is making people falsely feel good about themselves. That’s why a book like this is not welcomed by many. Forcing God’s Hand by Grace Halsell (Amana, $15). This 1999 book opened my eyes to how religion and Rapture theory ran deep in the rhetoric and ideology of right-wing America. In a country that has a constitution separating church and state, religion had a much deeper impact
than I’d thought. Using scripture to steer national policy? Sounds very familiar to me. America by Jon Stewart (Grand Central, $20). Watching Stewart’s show was something, but reading this textbook-spoofing history of the United States reveals just how hilarious and twisted were the minds behind the show. God and the Fascists by Karlheinz Deschner (Prometheus, $22). A must-read book about the religious support given by the Vatican to Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Croatia’s Ante Pavelic prior to and during World War II. The rhetoric that was used then is no different from what we are hearing now. The China Study by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II (BenBella, $18). This is the only nonpolitical book on my list, but it changed my life. The book, based on a twodecades-long study, busts common myths about food, making the case that humans do not need meat or other animal products. The argument is all built on sound research and medical testing, not fake science.
Mustapha Azzab, Zack Smith
Also of interest...in introverts speaking out Dear Friend
The Idiot
by Yiyun Li (Random House, $27)
by Elif Batuman (Penguin, $27)
Yiyun Li’s “arrestingly lucid” essay collection is the sound of a fiercely private person choosing to open up, said Laura Collins-Hughes in The Boston Globe. Written during a two-year period when the novelist was battling suicidal depression, it weaves together appreciations of other authors with meditations on identity that eventually find resolution. Li writes in language “as pristine as sun-bleached bone,” and a reader “can’t help developing an affection for the woman who emerges on these pages.”
Elif Batuman’s first novel toys with self-parody, said Heller McAlpin in the San Francisco Chronicle. Its narrator, following Batuman’s own footsteps, is a child of Turkish immigrants who enters Harvard in 1995. She’s also an “often laughably earnest overthinker.” When she falls for a senior from Hungary, she’s tongue-tied face to face but eloquent in their elaborate email correspondence, and she brings to the absurdities of college life “a humor so dry it calls for olives.”
Shrinking Violets
The Stranger in the Woods
by Joe Moran (Yale, $26)
by Michael Finkel (Knopf, $26)
Cultural historian Joe Moran “knows what a quietly radical proposition it is to celebrate shyness,” said Megan Garber in The Atlantic. His “wonderful” new book assembles an honor roll of the timid—Charles de Gaulle, Alan Turing, Susan Sontag, and many more—to push back against the still-common notion that shyness should be corrected. The shrinking violets we meet here are often acutely sensitive to the needs of others. They are “frequently thoughtful and occasionally brilliant.”
The man known as the North Pond Hermit has found an ardent admirer in GQ writer Michael Finkel, said Stephanie Bouchard in the Portland, Maine, Press Herald. Finkel’s “fascinating and, at times, disturbing” account of how Christopher Knight lived alone for 27 years in the central Maine woods is built on deep reporting. But Finkel is too quick to believe Knight’s description of how he lived, to discount the effects of his burglary activities, and to see deep wisdom in Knight that a reader can’t.
ARTS 23 Author of the week Jami Attenberg Jami Attenberg would make an interesting life coach, said Dylan Foley in LitHub .com. In 2010, the suburban Chicago native refused to get sensible when her publisher dropped her after a third novel that earned fine reviews but few sales. Not that the 38-year-old didn’t have doubts. “I thought, ‘Oh, man, I have to go get a real job,’” she says. Instead, she doubled down, sleeping on friends’ couches and sinking deep into credit card debt as she labored on her next novel. That book, 2012’s The Middlesteins, became an instant hit, a best-seller soon sold in 10 countries. Success jolted Attenberg. “I didn’t really know how bad my career was until it became good,” she says. And yet she’s still not ready to follow a conventional path. She has that in common with the narrator of her new novel, All Grown Up. “She’s not me,” Attenberg says. But like circa-2010 Attenberg, Andrea Bern is a single woman in Brooklyn who’s approaching 40 and still interested in her art, not security, and in men, not marriage. And because Attenberg intentionally wanted to break with storytelling custom, there’s no special romance at the tale’s end, even in an offhand coda. “That’s the thing that annoys the hell out of me, where they sneak that in,” she says. Attenberg has recently made one concession to convention: buying a small house in New Orleans, said Julia Feisenthal in Vogue.com. Of course, New Orleans doesn’t exactly encourage settling down. “When I’m 60, I’m probably going to be doing Jell-O shots,” Attenberg says. “I want to keep having fun.” THE WEEK March 31, 2017
24 ARTS
Review of reviews: Art & Music
Exhibit of the week
bologna, each bearing a photographic portrait. Pope.L, who is African-American, claims the dots reference the percentage of New York City’s population that is Jewish—a deliberately bonkers concept that slyly points out the absurdity of policing the diversity of a show like this by assigning individuals to ethnic categories.
Whitney Biennial 2017 Whitney Museum of American Art, through June 11
Drake
Spoon
Laura Marling
More Life
Hot Thoughts
Semper Femina
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Drake can call his latest release a “playlist” if he wants, said Justin Charity in TheRinger .com. In truth, it’s “the biggest, most ambitious Drake album since 2011’s Take Care.” Leaving behind the embittered persona he projected on last year’s top-selling Views, the Toronto-based star has created a record convivial enough to be one of the soundtracks of summer. Singing as often as he raps and dipping freely into cheesy R&B, Jamaican dancehall, and British grime music, he has delivered “a grand tour of black music and culture in the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean, and the U.K.” That’s what makes the “playlist” concept apt, said Eleanor Halls in GQ-Magazine.co.uk. Most of the 22 tracks feature a guest artist— Kanye West and 2 Chainz among them. But Drake gives lesser-known British artists like Sampha and Skepta turns too, and he adapts to their sounds, rather than vice versa. More Life, in the end, reveals more of Drake than Views ever could: “What’s more representative of the marrow of an artist than his musical taste?”
Just when it seemed this band could only do reliable, Hot Thoughts “turns out to be that rare thing in Spoon’s catalog: a big changeup,” said Spencer Kornhaber in TheAtlantic.com. Sure, the Austin rockers have for 20-plus years been “sneaking small innovations into taut, orderly rock songs.” But never before have they made such “a tricky, moody, downright weird album”—an album that indulges an interest in trippy atmospherics even as it never ceases orbiting the band’s radio-friendly core. Put another way, “Hot Thoughts is Spoon’s take on a dance record,” said Andrew Harrison in DrownedInSound.com. For some longtime fans, the “24-karat dance-pop” of “First Caress” will be a leap too far, but Spoon shows some of its old edge on the “razor-sharp” title track and “Do I Have to Talk You Into It,” a “throbbing, jagged piece of electronic rock.” Hot Thoughts will be polarizing, but “rarely does a band this far into its career, with such an established and celebrated sound, pull off a risk as well as this.”
Laura Marling isn’t widely known in the U.S., but “she may be the most significant artist to emerge from the folk scene since Joni Mitchell,” said Jim Fusilli in The Wall Street Journal. On her sixth album— a paean to female friendship and all its complexities—the 27-year-old Brit is homing in on her ideal sound, “though an artist of her caliber can never be content with a single mode of communication.” Marling keeps an acoustic guitar in hand, but she’s playing over “snappy” drums and bass along with “color-adding touches” of rock and electronica. Still, the focus remains on her sweet, melodic voice and poetic storytelling. The track “Soothing,” built on an angular bass riff, is the record’s “only really ambitious composition,” said Jazz Monroe in Pitchfork.com. “Next Time” and “Don’t Pass Me By,” meanwhile, exhibit an understated melancholy that recalls Elliott Smith. Like Smith, Marling comes across as “a vulnerable individual anchored by a preternatural understanding of melody,” a person “using compassion to navigate horror.”
THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Matthew Carasella
Welcome to “the first, last, and only Hillary Clinton biennial,” said Jerry Saltz in New York magazine. Largely organized before November’s expectations-defying presidential election, the Whitney Jordan Wolfson’s short video Real Museum’s latest snapshot of the Violence wins the prize for “the state of American contemporary work most likely to make it onto art feels slightly out of sync with Fox News,” said Andrew Russeth the creative community’s current in ArtNews. Once viewers don mood—and that’s a good thing. Stained-glass panels and beaded figures by Raúl de Nieves headphones and VR goggles, they Though visitors will come across a handful of direct references to Donald media, a few “big, obvious set pieces,” plus witness the artist picking up a baseball bat and using it to apparently beat a man to a Trump, mostly they’ll encounter heartening quieter works that “reward deeper looking pulp on a city street—all to a soundtrack evidence that “artists are always addressand deeper thought.” Lyle Ashton Harris’ of Hebrew prayers. The victim is actually ing and channeling issues of the day—with Once (Now) Again, a slideshow of “bracan animatronic doll, but the video was too gravitas, grace, intensity.” To those viewers ingly personal” photographs of black gay appalling to watch, said Brienne Walsh in I overheard grumbling that the show lacked life, is unabashedly tender, while Anicka Forbes.com. Much of the other work proved sufficient political edge, I say look at Henry Yi’s The Flavor Genome, a 3-D video Taylor’s The Times Thay Aint a Changing, about a journey into the Brazilian Amazon, just as emotionally affecting, but in very different ways. The light that pours through Fast Enough!—a heart-stopping painting provides one of the Biennial’s “gee-whiz of 2016 police-shooting victim Philando wow” moments. Though the show perhaps Raúl de Nieves’ floor-to-ceiling wall of stained glass “may make you believe in God Castile—“then try to call the Biennial soft.” “errs on the side of seriousness,” 61-yearagain.” Carrie Moyer’s abstract paintings are old William Pope.L contributes a high“orgasmic bursts of pure joy.” You will find You can’t fault the exhibition for imbalconcept lark. On the museum’s fifth floor, something that entrances you here. If anyance, either, said Ben Davis in ArtNet.com. visitors come upon a freestanding room one can tell me I was wrong, “I’m willing to “There’s enough cool painting to satisfy whose walls are covered in a grid of 2,755 watch the Wolfson video in its entirety.” that crowd,” but there’s also plenty of new dots that turn out to be slices of rotting
Television Movies on TV Monday, March 27 Blow Johnny Depp plays a smalltime 1970s drug dealer who happens into a partnership with drug lord Pablo Escobar. With Penélope Cruz. (2001) 9:55 p.m., Starz Tuesday, March 28 Dances With Wolves Kevin Costner hit a career high directing and starring in this Oscar-winning Western about a Union Army officer who befriends a Sioux tribe. (1990) 11 p.m., Ovation Wednesday, March 29 The Sixth Sense Haley Joel Osment plays a boy who “sees dead people” in M. Night Shyamalan’s twisty horror thriller starring Bruce Willis. (1999) 4 p.m., HBO Thursday, March 30 Spaceballs In Mel Brooks’ goofy sendup of Star Wars, a rogue hero does battle with Dark Helmet and Pizza the Hut. With John Candy, Rick Moranis, and Bill Pullman. (1987) 7:25 p.m., Starz Friday, March 31 Winchester ’73 Jimmy Stewart portrays a frontiersman who goes on a quest for his coveted repeater rifle, in the first of Stewart’s collaborations with director Anthony Mann. (1950) 8 p.m., TCM
Smithsonian Channel, Netflix
Saturday, April 1 Rocky A streetwise Philly pugilist goes from punching sides of beef in a meat locker to a shot at the heavyweight title. Young screenwriter Sylvester Stallone also stars. (1976) 9 p.m., Encore Sunday, April 2 The Manchurian Candidate A U.S. war hero returns from Korea programmed by Chinese Communists to disrupt American politics. With Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury. (1962) 8 p.m., TCM
• All listings are Eastern Time.
ARTS 25
The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching Pocahontas: Beyond the Myth She was a Native American princess, but not the one we’ve come to know from movies. On the 400th anniversary of her death comes a nuanced portrait of a woman who acted as a bridge in England’s early encounter with America’s indigenous people. The name we know her by means “playful one,” and she was still a child when she met John Smith at Jamestown, Va. She would be dead by 21—apparently from an illness contracted while she was being feted in London— but not before marrying tobacco pioneer John Rolfe and bearing him an heir. Monday, March 27, at 8 p.m., Smithsonian Channel Rock and a Hard Place With recidivism rates at 70 percent nationwide, one boot camp–style facility in Florida is proving that criminals can be set straight when given a second chance. Screen star Dwayne Johnson champions the program, serving as executive producer on this documentary because he sees in the inmates a bit of the young man he was before he stopped racking up arrests and was saved by football. Monday, March 27, at 10 p.m., HBO Harlots In 18th-century London, one in five women worked in prostitution—in part because the trade was a path to independence. In this boisterous series produced and directed by women, Samantha Morton plays a madam at war with a rival, and Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay is the most desired of the city’s courtesans. The show’s creators promise a concubine’seye perspective on the sex industry and equal shares of male and female nudity. Available for streaming Wednesday, March 29, Hulu Disgraced Scandals in college sports are commonplace, but rarely does murder figure in the story. In 2003, Baylor University basketball star Patrick Dennehy was shot dead by his teammate Carlton Dotson, and the criminal investigation uncovered corruption that ran rampant in the program. This riveting documentary revisits the story, resolving lingering mysteries and delivering a shocking new interview with former head coach Dave Bliss,
Beyond the Myth: A new Pocahontas
whose reprehensible early response to the tragedy served to deepen the scandal. Friday, March 31, at 9 p.m., Showtime The Discovery Robert Redford has discovered proof of the afterlife in this new feature film best watched for what the production might have been. Redford plays a neuroscientist who’s worked in seclusion since announcing his discovery and triggering a global explosion in suicides. Jason Segel, playing the mad scientist’s son, winds up allied with Rooney Mara as he journeys to his father’s island lair and tries to persuade him to reintroduce some mystery into our passage from life. Available for streaming Friday, March 31, Netflix Other highlights Rebel A new series, from Boyz N the Hood director John Singleton, follows a former Oakland police officer who starts investigating dirty cops after her peers in blue kill her brother. Danielle Monè Truitt stars. Tuesday, March 28, at 10 p.m., BET Impossible Engineering A new season arrives for this earnest docuseries, beginning with a look at a radio telescope in China that’s the largest in the world. Thursday, March 30, at 9 p.m., Science Channel 52nd Academy of Country Music Awards Luke Bryan and Dierks Bentley co-host an affair that will include performances by Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris, and Florida Georgia Line. Sunday, April 2, at 8 p.m., CBS
Show of the week Five Came Back
The Army’s motion picture unit
In the 1940s, five accomplished directors—John Ford, Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Huston, and George Stevens—risked their lives to capture World War II on film as it unfolded. Camera crews in tow, they joined the military and began producing combat reports and exposing the scale of the Axis threat. This three-part documentary series, which pairs stunning period clips with commentary from top contemporary directors, reveals how Hollywood changed America’s understanding of the war, and how the war changed the five directors. Available for streaming Friday, March 31, Netflix THE WEEK March 31, 2017
26
LEISURE Food & Drink
Critics’ choice: Intriguing twists on Japanese dining yam puree and dill, they come partially submerged in katsuobushi broth and Welcome to the future of Japanese dinare perfect for sharing. The kitchen’s ing in America, said Bill Addison in black-sesame pudding topped with Eater.com. Shibumi, which roughly orange zest and ricotta cake is argutranslates as “quiet refinement,” is a ably “the best kind of happy ending.” kappo restaurant, meaning it falls in 466 Eddy St., (415) 441-4987 the Japanese hierarchy between the meticulous formality of kaiseki dinRuka Boston ing and the pub-style izakaya. Neither At the restaurant inside the new ramen nor sushi is served at Shibumi, Godfrey Hotel, “the food is unusuwhere the emphasis is on seasonal small ally complicated,” said Mat Schaffer plates and where chef David Schlosser, in The Boston Globe. There’s arguwho previously cooked at Kyoto’s threeably no other way to do nikkei—the Michelin-starred Kitcho, “maintains seafood-heavy Japanese-Peruvian Shibumi’s Schlosser bears down on a plate of sea bream. an unwavering emphasis on Japanese fusion cuisine that got its start a cenflavors.” While sitting at the 15-seat tury ago when Japanese began migrating named after the many natural hot-spring counter watching Schlosser work, savor a to Peru. Nikkei is obviously going over bathhouses scattered throughout Japan. cured cucumber slice that has been cored big in downtown Boston, because this and stuffed with bonito, salty pickled plum, At Onsen, guests arriving for tea or dinner beautiful room bedecked with murals and can first indulge in a sauna, a massage, or and shiso leaf: “It’s an eccentric, narcotic dragon pillars is always crowded. Though a soak in an eight-person hot pool. Each umami salvo that snaps the palate to atten“most everything from the sushi bar tastes space in the converted Tenderloin District tion.” You’ll want one of the unusual cockas good as it looks,” the rest of the food, auto shop was designed and built by the tails, though the fizzy ciders “taste exactly though “chockablock with spices, fruit, and husband-and-wife co-owners, who have right” in the middle of the meal, which may vegetables,” is more hit-or-miss. Whereas artfully juxtaposed polished concrete, redventure to seafood fermented in its own wok-based offerings are underwhelming, wood, and tile to create a soothing urban innards (aka shiokara) before closing with the seafood dishes are often wonderful, refuge. The dining room’s compact menu “easygoing pleasures” like koji-marinated including a Lima-meets–New England-clamoffers reason enough for regular visits, pork loin, or grilled beef with grated fresh shack treat of shrimp and cucumbers tossed because “from start to finish, every dish is wasabi. If kappo counters are the new in a vinaigrette and topped with fried clams. fully realized.” After soft custard topped sushi bars, “Schlosser may well lead us.” The tea-smoked Long Island duck makes a with crab and shiitake mushrooms, you 815 S. Hill St., (213) 265-7923 “spectacular” meal for a group, the breast might try a skewer of braised lamb, or perfectly roasted and ready for assembly another of pumpkin chunks drizzled with Onsen San Francisco as sandwiches with a tangy slaw, pickled shiso verde. Mushroom dumplings are a “How civilized—a bath and then dinner,” Amazonian peppers, and steamed Chinese staple among the changing main dishes, said Michael Bauer in the San Francisco buns. 505 Washington St., (617) 266-0102 and “for good reason.” Dotted with Chronicle. That’s the concept at Onsen,
Shibumi Los Angeles
THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Recipe of the week This attractive side dish is “as easy to whip up as it is versatile,” said Kristina Preka in TastingTable.com. In her new cookbook, Dinner: Changing the Game, The New York Times’ Melissa Clark calls it one of her go-to moves when she’s cooking to impress. It “pairs with just about every protein.” Eggplant gratin 3 small eggplants, sliced in ¼-inch rounds • 4 medium tomatoes, sliced in ¼-inch rounds • 1 tsp lemon zest • 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves, inely chopped • 1 garlic clove, minced • ¼ cup plus 2 tbsp olive oil, divided • kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper • 4 oz soft goat cheese, crumbled • ¹∕3 cup panko bread crumbs • Preheat oven to 400. In a large bowl, gently toss eggplant rounds, tomatoes, lemon zest, thyme, garlic, and ¼ cup olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. • In a 9-inch gratin dish, arrange vegetables in shingled layers while tucking crumbled goat
cheese underneath each round. Drizzle with 2 tbsp oil and sprinkle panko on top. Season with salt and pepper. • Bake gratin until tender and golden brown, 50 minutes to 1 hour. Serve hot directly out of the baking dish. Makes 4 to 5 servings.
David Schlosser/Los Angeles Times, Rachel Vanni/Tasting Table
Wine: Napa goes white When at least one Napa Valley sauvignon blanc is selling for $4,650 a bottle, you know red is no longer the only game in town, said Elin McCoy in Bloomberg .com. “Dozens of top-end wineries are bringing the same kind of everydetail-matters approach to whites that they’ve long lavished on their more prestigious reds,” and the proof is in more-attainable wines like these: 2013 Matthiasson White Wine ($42). “The poster wine for Napa’s new whites,” this blend combines “zingy” acidity with lavors of citrus and bitter almond. 2014 Enfield Wine Co. Haynes Vineyard Chardonnay ($45). Old-vine Napa grapes yield a lush chardonnay with “layers of minerality.” 2013 Arietta on the White Keys ($65). Sauvignon blanc and sémillon blend to create “a superb mix of candied lemon, mint, and slate notes.”
70% off ER
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Taught by Professor Pamela Bedore UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
LECTURE TITLES
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Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature
1.
Utopia: The Perfect Nowhere
2.
Thomas More and Utopian Origins
3.
Swift, Voltaire, and Utopian Satire
4.
American Dreamers: Hawthorne and Alcott
5.
Samuel Butler and Utopian Technologies
6.
Edward Bellamy and Utopian Activism
7.
H. G. Wells and Utopian Science Fiction
8.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Gendered Utopia
9.
Yevgeny Zamyatin and Dystopian Uniformity
10. Aldous Huxley and Dystopian Pleasure 11. George Orwell and Totalitarian Dystopia 12. John Wyndham and Young Adult Dystopia 13. Philip K. Dick’s Dystopian Crime Prevention 14. Anthony Burgess, Free Will, and Dystopia 15. The Feminist Utopian Movement of the 1970s 16. Ursula K. Le Guin and the Ambiguous Utopia 17. Samuel Delany and the Heterotopia
Is Nineteen Eighty-Four Still Fiction? Dystopian novels of the late 20th century have experienced a recent resurgence of popularity as we embark on an era more socially divisive than any known to modern U.S. history. We seek an answer to the question that plagues our nation now—which has been a prevalent theme found in utopian and dystopian worlds for years: Who do we want to be and who are we afraid of becoming? Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature delivers 24 illuminating lectures, led by Pamela Bedore, Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, attempting to answer that very question. From Thomas More’s foundational text Utopia to the phenomenon of The Hunger Games, dive into stories that seek to find the best—and the worst—in humanity, with the hope of better understanding ourselves and the world. Especially pertinent to modern times, you’ll explore the “Big Three Dystopias” of the 20th century— Zamyatin’s We, Huxley’s Brave New World, and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four—in a whole new light to see how they impacted both modern writing and modern thinking. Travel centuries into the past and thousands of years into the future, through worlds that are beautiful, laughable, terrifying, and always thought-provoking.
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18. Octavia Butler and the Utopian Alien 19. Octavia Butler and Utopian Hybridity 20. Margaret Atwood and Environmental Dystopia 21. Suzanne Collins and Dystopian Games 22. Cyberpunk Dystopia: Doctorow and Anderson 23. Apocalyptic Literature in the 21st Century 24. The Future of Utopia and Dystopia
Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature Course no. 2341 | 24 lectures (30 minutes/lecture)
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Travel
28 LEISURE
This week’s dream: Exploring Colombia’s coffee belt Coffee occupies the very heart of life in Jardín, Colombia, and it’s “easy to see why,” said Gustave Axelson in The New York Times. My love of a good brew was what had brought me to the mountain village four hours outside Medellín, and my first 25-cent café tinto of the day did not disappoint. Here in the northern Andes, in a region that produces more coffee than any other in the nation, I sat in a bustling pastel-splashed plaza in the shadow of a double-spired basilica, lifted a demitasse of black coffee to my lips, and was instantly astonished by the bold, clean flavor that seemed to flow directly from the beans. Looking up, I noticed that the locals talking and laughing all around me were of similar mind. “No one was taking their coffee to go. Everyone was sitting, sipping, enjoying.” Before the morning was over, I was riding on horseback to a mountaintop coffee farm, or finca. The guide I’d hired had arranged my whole itinerary, and our trek
The village from afar
Cerdeira Village Centro, Portugal Thank sculptor Kerstin Thomas and 30 of her friends for turning this oncedesolate mountain village into an “enchanting” visitor haven, said Jeanine Barone in The Washington Post. The surrounding region is scattered with other formerly abandoned schist villages that have been converted into lodgings, but Cerdeira stands apart because its eight guest cottages are each decorated by one of the artists who remade the car-free community into a vibrant art center, complete with workshops, a gallery, and a café with a wonderful goat cheese and vegetable pie. From $74 per cottage, breakfast included, cerdeiravillage.com THE WEEK March 31, 2017
At the next finca we visited, I was the first North American the family had ever hosted. The young farmer told me that he cultivated a variety of coffee bean that his grandfather had grown a century earlier but that had all but disappeared before he tracked down the seeds at abandoned farms. I ate dinner with the whole family, relying on my guide, José Castaño Hernández, himCoffee grows on the hillsides surrounding Jardín. self the son of coffee farmers, to transup the mountain on a cobblestone path was late. The meal ended with a “gorgeous” “a series of pinch-me moments—glorious midnight-black coffee, a final reminder that vistas of the northern Andes,” with rays coffee from this region is a family affair. of sun shooting through fluffy clouds, and “And if you slow down, sip, really savor, occasional sightings of “ridiculous-beaked” you can taste earnest endeavors and lifetoucans. We were greeted with an authentic times of devotion.” finca lunch, another astonishing café tinto, José Castaño Hernández (josefc11@gmail and a “million-dollar view” of a dozen .com) offers all-inclusive tours of Jardín Andes peaks with bushy coffee plants coffee farms from $180 a day.
Getting the flavor of... Texas’ fairly grand canyon
Edgy San Diego
Driving across the Texas Panhandle, you see little but flatlands, said Dan Leeth in The Dallas Morning News. Almost hidden, though, is Palo Duro Canyon—“an 800-foot-deep abyss that could have been stolen from Utah.” At 6 miles wide and 120 miles long, Palo Duro is America’s second-largest canyon, and it’s spectacular. Camping on the canyon floor during a recent visit, my wife and I watch roadrunners strut through the brush as the “flutelike” call of a canyon wren echoes off the cliffs. Coyotes begin to howl as the terraced sandstone blushes in the setting sun, but we sleep well. Come morning, we hike to the Lighthouse, a 300-foot pillar of rock, passing buttes ribboned in white and rose. At the Pioneer Amphitheater, which hosts performances every summer, we enjoy a different kind of show: a high plains thunderstorm, seen from afar. “Falling rain washes the desert, turning the air into a sage-scented, spa-worthy delight.”
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the best part of San Diego is Tijuana, said Maya Kroth in Thrillist.com. Plenty of visitors come for the beaches or golf courses, but the city is most interesting as a close twin to its cross-border neighbor. Though a wall separates San Diego from Tijuana, people and ideas “flow back and forth every day, no more contained than air.” Both cities have thriving art scenes, each informed by the other, which is why you can see a Rembrandt in the morning at the Timken Museum, soak in a gallery’s worth of murals at Chicano Park, and then, if you’ve hired a tour guide, catch the sunset from Tijuana inside a 60-foot concrete statue of a naked woman that’s also the home of the architect who built her. Yes, the beaches of San Diego really are beautiful, and the burritos worthy of worship. “But if you’re willing to search out the region’s rich and varied cultural side,” you’ll find it has far more to offer than it gets credit for.
Last-minute travel deals From China to Tibet Save $800 on a 13-day China and Tibet package tour, panda visit included. World Spree Travel’s offer starts at $3,399 per person, double occupancy, and includes round-trip airfare, most meals, and private sightseeing tours. Book by March 31.
Bajan bliss Port Ferdinand, a luxury resort in Barbados, is offering 45 percent off 2017 stays if you book by March 31 using code PF45. A one-bedroom harborside “villa residence” starts at $739 a night with the discount; breakfast and water-taxi service are included.
Easter in Rome Perillo Tours has knocked $250 off the price of its April 13 Vesuvius Tour. The eight-night journey, which includes Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square, is now $2,745 per person, double occupancy. Other stops include Florence and Sorrento.
worldspree.com
portferdinand.com
perillotours.com
Federico Rios Escobar/The New York Times/Redux, Jeanine Barone/The Washington Post
Hotel of the week
climbing every flank. I tried my hand at picking coffee berries, and bagged about 50 in 30 seconds. The pros can easily get 200.
Consumer
LEISURE 29
The 2018 Lexus LC: What the critics say New York Daily News Judging by the looks of its newest fourseater, Toyota’s luxury division ”wants to make sure the words ‘boring’ and ‘Lexus’ are never again used in the same sentence.” A concept car that actually made it to production, the Lexus LC rolls into showrooms as “one of the boldest-looking cars on the planet.” Fast, stylish, and luxurious, this rear-wheel-drive coupe is the “lustworthy” lagship Lexus has always needed. Autoweek Out on the road, “nothing about the LC jumps out as bad, underdeveloped, or even awkward—and we don’t say that about too
many cars.” Two power trains are available, including a 5.0-liter V-8 that generates 471 hp and “sounds fabulous.” The more eficient LC 500h is a hybrid with a V-6 and “feels nearly as quick” up to about 90 mph. In both models, steering is “linear and sharp” and body roll minimal. Automobile The LC is a heavy beast, though—more a grand tourer than a sports coupe. So “dial back a bit,” enjoy the lovely V-8, the “punchy” 10-speed transmission, and the “effortlessly cool” interior. If tested, the LC wouldn’t be able to hang with a Porsche 911 Carrera S, but it’d dust a BMW 650i. It
The new face of Lexus, from $92,000 represents a compromise—“but maybe, just for once, for the good.”
The best of...problem-solving appliances
Urban Cultivator
Instant Pot
Zera Food Recycler
Martha Stewart swears by hers—which she uses to give her summer garden a head start. Programmed to supply plants with light, water, and a steady temperature, it can be used to grow herbs and microgreens year-round.
It’s no wonder this pressure cooker has inspired a craze: “It’s as user-friendly as a slow cooker—except that it gets dinner on the table a day or so faster.” Think spare ribs in 20 minutes and fork-tender lamb shanks in 40.
It looks like a “very classy” kitchen garbage can, but the Zera is more like a miracle in-home composter: It turns food scraps— including meat—into garden-ready fertilizer in just 24 hours. It’s due to ship in October.
$2,499, urbancultivator.net Source: Wall Street Journal
$77, amazon.com Source: New York Times
$1,199 for preorder, zera.com Source: CNET.com
Panasonic FlashXpress
Samsung AddWash
This “groundbreaking” toaster oven remains unique in its use of both quartz and ceramic heating elements. The instant infrared heat ensures even browning and reduces cooking time on mufins or frozen pizzas.
Don’t you hate it when you start a load and then ind an extra sock? A hatch door on this washer makes late additions easy. An “excellent” machine all around, it’s “loaded with features,” including a speed-wash option.
$150, shop.panasonic.com Source: Consumer Reports
$1,499, samsung.com Source: Consumer Reports
Tip of the week... Nutrition fails you want to avoid
And for those who have everything...
Best sites... For buying jewelry online
Q Taking supplements with coffee: Caffeine hinders your body’s ability to absorb certain vitamins and minerals. If you take a multivitamin in the morning, take it with water an hour after you’ve enjoyed your java. Q Refusing salad dressing: Key nutrients in salad vegetables can’t be absorbed by the body unless accompanied by fat. To benefit from vitamins A, E, and K, eat your greens with either an oil-based dressing or additions like nuts, avocado, or seeds. Q Buying the wrong yogurt: Yogurt that’s been heated or pasteurized lacks probiotics, the beneficial bacteria that aid digestion and the immune system. To get the right stuff, look for the words “live active cultures.” Q Eating whole flaxseeds: A whole flaxseed can pass through you undigested, so grind them before consuming them to enjoy the benefits of the seeds’ fiber, omega-3 fats, and antioxidants.
Maybe you’ve tried to stay strong, but “there’s nothing shameful” in admitting you wish you had a robot to clean out your cat’s litter box. The Litter Robot III Open Air is easily the most praised of today’s self-cleaning options. As sci-i in its looks as in its concept, the Litter Robot waits until your cat has exited, then rotates its spherical chamber so that clumps are screened out and fall into the closed drawer below. An “extremely durable” machine, it “does wonders for reducing waste odor,” and it even has a night-light to aid older cats with vision problems. $449, litter-robot.com
Q Ylang23.com was one of the first online retailers of fine jewelry. It offers “everything from simple jewels to one-of-a-kind statement pieces.” Q ExperienceMemo.com, a new site, gives you three days with each piece before the sale is made final. Q 1stDibs.com has “an incredible selection of both vintage and contemporary jewels,” including many rarities. Q ModaOperandi.com hosts trunk shows from various designers, letting you buy new pieces before they’re in stores. Q Beladora.com specializes in curated estate jewelry. Videos let shoppers see each piece being worn and in motion. Q StoneAndStrand.com features contemporary designers and has a diamond program that sets it apart. The “find your match” tool lets shoppers sort items by the stone’s cut and a favorite metal.
Source: The Washington Post
Source: Catalogical.com
Source: TownAndCountryMag.com THE WEEK March 31, 2017
30
Best properties on the market
This week: Homes in Wisconsin 1 X Trego This fourbedroom log house on 2.7 acres lies along a dead-end road. The home features hardwood floors, vaulted ceilings, three fireplaces, a chef’s kitchen with white ash cabinets, and custom leaf-patterned support posts. The exterior has a large back porch and a front deck with views of Trego Lake. $849,000. Mike Lynch, Lakes Sotheby’s International Realty, (612) 619-8227
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Wisconsin 2 3
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2 W Oshkosh This six-bedroom home was built in
1890 on Lake Butte des Morts. The 9,392-squarefoot house has recently been renovated and includes a first-floor master, a new kitchen, a hearth room, and a lower-level theater. The 3.3-acre property boasts 300 feet of waterfront, a boathouse, a hot tub, and a fenced tennis court with lights. $1,750,000. Kurt Penn, Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty, (773) 206-0302 3 X Mequon Renowned
Milwaukee architect John Randal McDonald built this six-bedroom house in 1958 out of stone, glass, and mahogany. The interior features an oversize master suite with a two-way glass fireplace, clerestory windows, and a large bathroom with a soaking tub that looks out on Lake Michigan. The 2-acre property has an outdoor living room area, a fire pit, and an expansive lawn. $1,799,000. Falk Ruvin Team, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, (414) 688-3935 THE WEEK March 31, 2017
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Best properties on the market
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4 X Verona Sitting on 21.6 acres, this passivesolar home was built with sustainable materials in 2008. Interior details include eucalyptus floors, a metal roof, a gourmet kitchen, and abundant light that flows throughout. Outside are multiple terraces and a patio adjacent to Flynn Creek. $1,500,000. Shelly Sprinkman, (608) 220-1453
Steal of the week
5 S Lake Geneva Built in 1901, this Bavarian Tudor
sits on 1.6 acres along the edge of Lake Geneva. The eight-bedroom house has hardwood floors, crown molding, a library with built-in shelves, a floor-toceiling stone fireplace, and a master bedroom with a spa bathroom. The property features a pool, a tennis court, and a deeded boat slip. $1,679,000. Michael Balestrieri, Keefe Real Estate, (262) 423-4969
6 S Beloit This Greek Revival home two blocks from Beloit College and
the Rock River in the Near East Side Historic District was built circa 1850. The four-bedroom home includes hardwood floors, 10-foot ceilings, and a kitchen with marble radiant floors. The master suite has a jetted tub and dual closets. $175,000. Neil Kerwin, Kerwin’s Real Estate Agency, (608) 365-7791 THE WEEK March 31, 2017
BUSINESS The news at a glance
The bottom line Q Female financial advisers and brokers are 50 percent more likely to be fired for misconduct than their male colleagues, according to a new study, even though men are more than twice as likely to engage in bad behavior.
Financial Times Q Of the 270 occupations listed in the 1950 U.S. Census, only one has been completely eliminated by automation: elevator operator. Another 32 jobs, including boardinghouse keeper, were done in by loss of demand.
FoxNews.com Q Record rainfall
during California’s winter growing season has damaged crops, causing shortages and soaring prices for leafy greens and other vegetables. Cauliflower prices have spiked to $48 a case from $13, while romaine lettuce is selling for $50 instead of $12. The Wall Street Journal Q The number of Americans quitting their jobs rose to a seasonally adjusted total of 3.2 million in January, more than at any point since February 2001. Economists view a rising quits rate as a sign that workers are feeling more confident about their finances and the economy, including their ability to find a new job.
Yahoo.com Q There are currently about 530,000 computing jobs open in the U.S., but only 60,000 students graduated with bachelor’s degrees in computer science in 2015. A government study predicted that by 2020, there will be 1.4 million computer science– related jobs available, but only 400,000 graduates with the skills needed to fill them.
Qz.com THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Trade: U.S. takes hard line at G-20 meeting “Investors should start to take the President Trump’s “America First” possibility of higher trade tensions foreign policy is already shaking up more seriously,” said Anjani Trivedi the global consensus on trade, said in The Wall Street Journal. So far, Jack Ewing in The New York Times. markets have mostly ignored the At last week’s Group of 20 meeting tough trade rhetoric coming out of of international finance ministers Washington, but Mnuchin sent an and central bankers, the U.S. rejected unambiguous message to the G-20 language in the body’s traditional that its anti-protectionist stance joint statement that would have con“wasn’t relevant anymore.” The demned protectionism—“repudiating word “trade” was mentioned just decades of free trade doctrine.” Mnuchin: Protectionist? twice in this G-20’s communiqué, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, down from 40 at the group’s last gathering, six attending his first major international gathering, apparently started the closed-door meeting by tell- months ago. Protectionism looks increasingly ascendant around the world. Some 2,200 antitrade ing ministers that existing trade deals are unfair to the U.S. and could be renegotiated—a sign that measures, like higher tariffs and industry subsidies, are now in place globally, a fourfold increase since the Trump administration is serious about fulfill2010, according to the World Trade Organization. ing the president’s campaign promises.
Tech: Executives flee Uber Uber’s president is leaving the controversy-battered company, said Steven Overly in The Washington Post. Jeff Jones announced his departure this week after just six months at the firm. It’s the “latest sign of tumult” at the ride-hailing service, which has faced allegations of widespread sexual harassment and intellectual property theft. Jones told news site Recode .net that the beliefs that have guided his career “are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber.” Jones’ departure comes amid a “larger exodus of executives” at Uber, including several vice presidents.
Markets: Trump rally hits a speed bump U.S. stocks suffered their worst losses since the election this week amid fears that President Trump’s agenda is stalling in Congress, said Paul La Monica in CNN.com. The Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 fell more than 1 percent early in the week. Neither index had ended a day “with a 1 percent drop since mid-October.” Stocks have soared since the election, spurred by Trump’s promises of big tax cuts and less regulation. But with Republicans’ Obamacare replacement in jeopardy, investors are now wondering “how quickly things can actually get done in Washington.”
Economy: Home construction surges February was the strongest month for homebuilding in nearly a decade, with unseasonably warm weather and a strong job market boosting construction, said Lucia Mutikani in Reuters.com. Housing starts for single-family homes, the largest part of the residential housing market, increased 6.5 percent to an annualized rate of 872,000 units, “the highest level since October 2007.” Additionally, homebuilder confidence jumped in March to its highest level since June 2005. But that’s “unlikely to translate into a homebuilding boom,” with builders complaining about rising mortgage rates and labor shortages.
Tech: Google bows to advertising boycott Google is pledging to overhaul its advertising policies in response to an advertiser boycott, said Jessica Guynn in USA Today. The tech giant was recently “read the riot act” by British officials after it emerged that U.K. government ads had “appeared alongside YouTube videos of U.S. white supremacists and Islamist hate mongers.” The revelation led major brands, including Toyota, L’Oréal, and Volkswagen, to boycott Google and demand that the firm do more to keep their ads away from offensive content. Google said this week it would pull online ads from controversial content and deploy more people to enforce its ad policies.
Newbie traders are causing headaches Wall Street veterans who moan that their industry is being ruined by an influx of 20-somethings might be onto something, said Lananh Nguyen in Bloomberg.com. Rookie traders could be partly to blame for a series of flash crashes that have rocked the $5 trillion–aday currency market in recent years, according to a new report by the Bank for International Settlements. The bank notes that an October incident in which the pound suddenly plunged 9 percent was likely “amplified” by inexperienced traders. As banks have cut costs in the wake of the financial crisis, younger, lower-paid employees have come to dominate trading desks. Up to 75 percent of currency desk openings now require only three to five years of experience. But “when extraordinary things happen,” said Michael Melvin, a former BlackRock managing director, “it really is useful to have some seasoned old hands around.”
Newscom (2)
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Making money
BUSINESS 33
Interest rates: What the Fed hike means for you the most recent rate increase, up from “Get ready to pay more to borrow,” 4.21 percent the week before, and said Nelson Schwartz in The New from 3.68 percent a year ago. Those York Times. The Federal Reserve numbers will keep rising after the raised its benchmark short-term interFed’s vote of confidence in the econest rate by a quarter-point last week, a omy. Home equity lines of credit, like decision consumers will feel immedicredit cards, are tied to the prime rate, ately in the form of higher credit card which in turn is linked to the federal payments. Rates on auto loans, home funds rate. So expect borrowing from equity loans, and mortgages “will also your house to get pricier as well. creep higher” over time, especially if the Fed follows through on plans to “At some point, the Federal Reserve’s raise rates two more times this year. rate increases will trickle down to But for now, the impact of a quartersavers, who have been getting next to point rate hike will be relatively small. nothing on their deposits for years,” Credit card costs move in tandem Consumers will pay more in credit card interest. said Christina Rexrode in The Wall with the federal funds rate, which Street Journal. Just don’t hold your breath. The last two rate means the typical credit card holder will see his or her annual increases had very little impact on deposit rates for checking interest charges rise to 16.75 percent from 16.5 percent. That and savings accounts. That’s because deposit rates mostly reflect amounts to paying about $42 extra per year on the typical balwhat banks are “willing to pay.” Deposits at U.S. banks totaled ance of nearly $17,000. $12.9 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2016, up 65 percent from a decade ago. As most banks don’t need more deposits, “they don’t Mortgage rates are a different story, said Gail MarksJarvis in feel compelled to rush to pay more for them.” It’s a pretty grim the Chicago Tribune. “They do not move automatically based picture for savers, said Ben Popken in NBCNews.com. If the on what the Federal Reserve does, but when the Fed is sounding optimistic about the economy, mortgage rates tend to move up.” national average savings interest rate increased from 0.11 percent Mortgage rates have already climbed steadily in the months since to 0.15 percent, a person “with $1,000 in the bank would earn the election, because investors believe that President Trump’s pol- 40 cents more in compound interest over the year.” But hey, at icies will boost the economy and that the Fed will raise rates. The least it’s something. “The third of people in a recent survey who reported having $0 in savings will of course see no benefit.” average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage was at 4.3 percent before
What the experts say A credit score jubilee Millions of consumers’ credit scores could get a boost this summer, said AnnaMaria Andriotis in The Wall Street Journal. In response to regulatory concerns, the three major creditreporting agencies are changing their standards for two pieces of negative information: tax liens and civil judgments. Around July 1, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion will remove those data points from reports if they don’t include a person’s name, address, and either a Social Security number or date of birth. “Many liens and most judgments don’t include all three or four.” About 12 million people will see a slight increase to their credit score, typically of less than 20 points, but 700,000 people will get a rise of at least 40 points. “In many cases, that can mean the difference between getting approved for credit or denied it.”
AP
Foil car rental tricks When you turn up at the car rental desk, it pays to be on guard, said Christopher Elliott in USA Today. Faced with razor-thin profit margins, rental companies are increasingly using “questionable tactics” to extract extra cash from customers. Representatives sometimes push customers to upgrade their auto, without explaining how that might add hun-
Charity of the week dreds of dollars to their bill. So read the rental agreement carefully before you sign it. Some rental companies may also try to hawk insurance you don’t need—your personal auto insurance or credit card will often cover a rental car—or even refuse to rent to you if you don’t buy their policy. Put a stop to this trickery by presenting a copy of your car insurance policy or evidence of credit card coverage.
Our retirement delusions More than 40 percent of Americans are woefully mistaken about their retirement preparations, said Walter Updegrave in Money.com. That’s the finding of a new study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, which compared people’s assessment of their own retirement savings plans with their actual finances. They found that only 57 percent of households “had a realistic idea” of their retirement readiness. Of those who got it wrong, 19 percent believed they were on track for a secure retirement, but “were actually at risk of having to lower their standard of living after they retired.” And 23 percent were “too worried” about their savings plan, even though they were actually on target. Keep yourself informed by using an online retirement calculator to “periodically gauge your progress.”
Fifty years ago, the peregrine falcon was on the brink of extinction in the U.S. The soon-tobe banned chemical pesticide DDT had built up in the food chain, with deadly consequences for the apex predator. But a recovery effort was hatching at the Peregrine Fund (peregrinefund.org). Founded in 1970 by Tom Cade, then a Cornell University ornithologist, the nonprofit developed a captive breeding program that resulted in thousands of peregrines being released into the wild. In 1999, the bird was taken off the U.S. endangered species list. Today, the Boise, Idaho–based fund uses its experience and understanding to support raptor conservation and research efforts in some 30 countries, including programs to save the American kestrel and endangered vultures in Asia and Africa. 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. THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Best columns: Business
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Issue of the week: Putting the brakes on fuel standards countries are imposing tough emissions President Trump is granting automakers regulations, making them unlikely to “their top wish,” said Bill Vlasic in The buy gas-guzzling American autos. “If New York Times. While visiting Detroit the U.S. relaxes the standards, autolast week, Trump pledged to reopen a makers could quickly get lapped by government review of the strict fuel efmore innovative global players.” ficiency standards set by the Obama administration in 2012. The rules, “a pilRather than rolling back fuel standards, lar of President Obama’s climate change Trump should scrap them entirely, said legacy,” require automakers to almost Virginia Postrel in Bloomberg.com. double the average fuel economy for new Fleetwide fuel economy standards “are cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon a terrible way to achieve either fuel by 2025. The Environmental Protection Trump has vowed to roll back auto regulations. savings or lower carbon emissions.” Agency affirmed those standards in JanuThey make newer vehicles more expensive, which means drivers ary, wrapping up a midterm review of the agreement in the final hold on to gas-guzzling older autos longer. Fuel standards also days of Obama’s presidency. But automakers complain that the meddle in corporate strategy by compelling companies “that are review didn’t give them enough time to contest the government’s good at making and selling larger vehicles to make and sell little fuel targets, which they say are too ambitious. Now they’ll get a cars as well.” Forcing General Motors to churn out Chevy Cruzes chance to argue their case before an administration that’s vowed “doesn’t do much for the environment.” “to remove the shackles of regulation” from industry.
The economy needs more Teslas Timothy Lee
Vox.com
Insurers’ fake Obamacare complaints Jeff Sommer
The New York Times
THE WEEK March 31, 2017
Detroit shouldn’t expect any regulatory relief soon, said Aarian Marshall in Wired.com. A new EPA review will take months, and California—the nation’s largest car market—has the authority to set its own tailpipe standards under the Clean Air Act. California helped develop the Obama-era rules, and its more stringent standards are followed by 13 other states and Washington, D.C. That means automakers will either have to build different cars for different markets, which is “untenable businesswise,” or stick to the old standards. Trump could take the unprecedented step of trying to revoke California’s special status, but that would trigger a massive legal battle. “In summation, buckle up.”
For the U.S. economy to thrive, we need more firms like Tesla and fewer like Uber, said Timothy Lee. Both companies have raised billions of dollars from investors in recent years, but for very different reasons. Tesla has to spend huge amounts of cash to build factories, warehouses, and robots that will help it meet the surging demand for its electric vehicles, including hundreds of thousands of preorders for its upcoming Model 3 car. Most other Silicon Valley companies “have the opposite problem.” They have plenty of spare capacity and are spending billions to buy customers. Uber, for example, is using its $11 billion cash pile to wage a war on
competitors like Lyft as well as local taxi firms. The company “hopes that if it offers a customer a below-cost taxi ride now, it will develop a customer relationship that will produce a profit over the long run.” Of course “there’s nothing wrong with companies trying to expand their market share,” but spending investor dollars to buy customers doesn’t create new jobs. “Investments in new factories, equipment, and technologies are a major way that advanced economies grow.” The fact that so many companies are trying to be the next Uber, and not the next Tesla, is “an ominous trend for Silicon Valley and the broader American economy.”
Big managed-care companies like UnitedHealth Group have fed anti-Obamacare arguments in recent years by claiming that big chunks of the law “are fundamentally flawed,” said Jeff Sommer. But the Affordable Care Act “hasn’t been a curse” for health insurers. In fact, “it has been something of a blessing.” Since Obamacare was signed into law in March 2010, the stock of managed-care companies on the S&P 500—UnitedHealth, Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Humana, and Centene—has outperformed the stock index overall. “This is no small matter.” The S&P 500 has returned 136 percent over the past seven years, “a performance that we may not see again in our lifetimes.” Yet health insurers’ stocks
are up nearly 300 percent; the biggest of the bunch, UnitedHealth, climbed 480 percent. It’s true that these firms have suffered some losses selling insurance to individuals on public exchanges. But their core businesses have “done extremely well under Obamacare.” Companies have booked profits from the expansion of Medicaid and services aimed at cutting medical costs, and have diversified into new areas like data management and surgical services. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan has repeatedly claimed that Obamacare is in a “death spiral.” That’s debatable. “But it seems irrefutable that the big managed-care stocks are in a different kind of spiral—a profit spiral—that is twirling upward.”
AP
Automakers say they want fuel standards “that recognize today’s market realities,” said Brent Snavely in the Detroit Free Press. The Obama administration initially estimated the new standards would save drivers $1.7 trillion in fuel costs over the life of the vehicles, while costing the auto industry roughly $200 billion over 13 years—costs that car makers say would be passed on to consumers. The new rules were supposed to encourage automakers to build more electric and hybrid vehicles. But since then, gas prices have plummeted and consumers have once again started “craving fuel-thirsty SUVs.” The U.S. auto industry might regret getting what it wants, said Joann Muller in Forbes.com. Right now, other
Obituaries
35
The rock ’n’ roll pioneer who started it all Chuck Berry was rock ’n’ roll’s greatest architect. His guitar lines on 1950s hits like “Johnny B. 1926–2017 Goode,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” and “Maybellene” fused the bite of the blues with the twang of country, creating a set of riffs that remain at the core of rock music. He paired those licks with an unrelenting R&B backbeat and sly, smart lyrics about fast cars, young love, dance parties, and rebellion, laying a template that’s still influencing pop musicians today. “If you tried to give rock ’n’ roll another name,” John Lennon once said, “you might call it Chuck Berry.” Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards offered similar high praise, saying, “I’ve stolen every lick he ever played.” Berry shrugged off this adoration, and offered a more pragmatic view of his work. “I wrote about cars because half the people had cars, or wanted them,” he said in 2002. “I wrote about love, because everyone wants that. I wrote songs white people could buy, because that’s nine pennies out of every dime.” Chuck Berry
Charles Berry was born into a middle-class family in “segregated urban St. Louis,” said TheAtlantic.com. He was 14 when he started playing guitar and performing at parties, but his musical career was interrupted four years later when he was sent to a reformatory after being convicted of attempted robbery. Released on his 21st birthday, he worked on a car assembly line while training as a hairdresser and beautician; on weekends, he played music in local bars and clubs. “In 1955, Berry headed to Chicago to meet one of his heroes, Muddy Waters,” said the Los Angeles Times. After a show, he asked the blues great for advice about cutting a record—Waters told him to visit the city’s famous Chess Records. He did, and ended up recording a rocked-up version of the folk tune “Ida Red,” which the label renamed “Maybellene.” “The record came out in July 1955, and reached No. 5 on the pop singles chart.” More hits followed, and “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “School Day,” and “Johnny B. Goode” “became essential pillars of the rock ’n’ roll canon.”
The musician “went through a rough stretch in the early 1960s,” said CNN.com. Convicted in 1961 of transporting a 14-year-old across state lines for immoral purposes—“it was a tangled tale, involving a runaway”—he spent 20 months in jail. “Upon his release in 1963, Berry found his music had reached a new generation.” The Beach Boys reworked “Sweet Little Sixteen” as “Surfin’ U.S.A.”—he sued and won a songwriting credit— and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones covered his songs. His career rejuvenated, Berry recorded a string of new hits, including “No Particular Place to Go” and “Nadine.” In 1972, he had the biggest smash of his career with “‘My Ding-aLing,’ a double-entendre novelty song,” said The New York Times. It was Berry’s only No. 1 pop single. “It was also his last hit.” Still, Berry kept busy. He toured constantly and in July 1979 performed for President Carter at the White House. Three days later, he was sentenced to 120 days in federal prison for tax evasion. Berry had more legal troubles in 1990 when police raided his home and found 62 grams of marijuana and videotapes from a camera inside the women’s room of a restaurant he owned. He agreed to a misdemeanor count for the former and settled out of court on the latter. By the late 1970s Berry “had stopped bothering to make new records and made his money from touring,” said The Times (U.K.). He “became infamous for checking his watch in midsong” to avoid performing any longer than contracted, and rather than having a permanent backing band, he used a “cheap pickup group at each venue.” Despite his decline in output, Berry’s legacy was secure. In 1977, a recording of “Johnny B. Goode” was among the cultural artifacts blasted into deep space aboard the two Voyager space probes. A new album—Berry’s first since 1979—is set for release in June. He hadn’t produced anything before that, he said, because “I felt it might be ill-mannered to try to top myself.”
The streetwise columnist who spoke truth to power Jimmy Breslin was the voice of New York City, a gruff megaphone for millions of ordinary people scrapping and 1928–2017 scraping to get by. With scathing wit and bare-knuckle prose, the Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist bedeviled the powerful and championed the underdog. Breslin mastered the art of illuminating large events with poignant human-interest stories, a template set when he covered the assassination of John F. Kennedy by profiling Clifton Pollard, the $3.01-an-hour cemetery caretaker who dug the president’s grave. Breslin’s 50-year career had one animating force. “Rage,” he said, “is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”
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Jimmy Breslin
Born in Queens, N.Y., “Breslin was about 6 when his father, an alcoholic piano player, abandoned his family,” said The Washington Post. His mother “was given to drunken spells of depression”; as a child, Breslin “once wrested away a pistol she was holding to her head.” After breaking into journalism as a copy boy, he covered news and sports for several papers until his 1963 book on the then epically inept New York Mets, Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?, won him a job at The New York Herald Tribune. There and
later at the New York Daily News, Breslin chronicled world events, local scandals, and “a stable of New York characters, real and loosely based on reality,” said The New York Times. There was Mafia boss Un Occhio, arsonist Marvin the Torch, and Fat Thomas the bookie. But “Breslin’s greatest character was himself: the outer-borough boulevardier of bilious persuasion.” In 1969, he ran for city council “on a wacky, wildly unsuccessful ticket that included Norman Mailer for mayor.” Breslin’s coverage of the 1977 Son of Sam murders drew national attention; he won a Pulitzer in 1986 for exposing the stun-gun torture of drug suspects by police and for his eloquent writing on the AIDS epidemic. Breslin’s rumpled, everyman persona “masked a self-made scholar known to read Dostoyevsky in his spare time,” said the Daily News. He wrote more than 20 books, including The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, a Mafia satire, and The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutiérrez, about a Mexican construction worker killed because of shoddy building practices. But at heart Breslin was always a shoe-leather reporter. “Climb the stairs,” he advised. “There are no stories on the first floor. Anything you’re looking for is four and five flights up.” THE WEEK March 31, 2017
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A tale of two countries The gap between America’s vibrant cities and its struggling rural regions is growing, said writer Alana Semuels. A close look at two Indiana communities explains why cities are flourishing, and small towns are hurting.
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SHLEY GABBERT AND Dan Dark are both white Indiana residents in their early 30s, but their lives look nothing alike. Gabbert, 32, lives in Connersville, a town in one of the state’s poorest counties, where she works the night shift—10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.—for an automotive parts manufacturer. Her life now is a step up from the decade she spent working in fast food, which wasn’t “much of a career,” she told me. Working in fast food, she’d frequently encounter drug users as they pulled up to the drive-in window, needles alongside babies in the backseat of their cars. Like 80 percent of people in rural America, Gabbert doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree.
This divergence in fortunes for those with and without higher education has coincided with another divergence— that between America’s growing cities and its struggling rural regions. For a century leading up to 1980, poorer regions of the U.S. were catching up to richer regions in terms of wages, as an oversupply of workers in Dark, 33, lives in the increasingly metroricher regions drove politan city of Indianapolis, where he runs wages down, while a creative consultancy doing videos and an undersupply in marketing work for a variety of clients. poorer regions drove Dark, a college graduate, works when he One of many shuttered warehouses in Connersville chooses, often from his downtown home or wages up. But this from the coffee shops and bars springing up convergence petered different the winners are becoming from the out with the rise of computers. Beginning downtown. He loves to travel—he recently losers,” said Moretti, who has studied this in the 1980s, as computers made certain returned from Iceland—and goes out to phenomenon. “The wage gap, the human meet friends almost every night of the week. people more productive and valuable in the capital gap, the gap in type of employers labor market and made other people obsoThe same night Gabbert was prepping for lete, wealthy regions with educated workers have been growing at a fast pace.” the night shift by dropping her 11-year-old began to do better and better. FEW DECADES ago, Connersville daughter off with her mother, Dark was was a manufacturing powerhouse. cooking a venison stew for a meat-andToday, people with a college degree are Known as “Little Detroit” for the bourbon potluck dinner thrown by a friend. more likely than they used to be to move volume of cars and auto parts it produced, “I’ve built my life around flexibility,” he to metropolitan regions with good jobs told me. and other people like them, and this means it was a key link in the Midwest’s auto supply chain, and was at one time the world’s In some ways, the lives of Gabbert and Dark both that those regions do better over top producer of dishwashers. At its peak in time and that the return on that educarepresent the diverging fates of two parts of 1980, Fayette County, of which Connersville tion is even greater. Almost half of college America in the past two decades. Half a cenis the county seat, had around 28,000 peograduates move out of their birth states by tury ago, economic opportunity and upward ple and 12,000 manufacturing jobs. age 30, according to Enrico Moretti, an mobility were available to many white economist at the University of California, Connersville today is a small hamlet of Americans, regardless of where they lived Berkeley. Only 27 percent of high school single-family homes interspersed with and what kind of education they had. They graduates do. As booming cities draw in boarded-up buildings, fast-food restaucould graduate from high school and find a new college-educated workers, employers rants, and low-cost chains like Family job in a factory and make a good wage, or seeking these workers follow, and cities Dollar. Fayette County’s population is now graduate from college and sit behind a desk continue to gain strength like magnets. 18 percent smaller than it was in 1980. Its and make a slightly better wage. This improves the prospects of everyone unemployment rate is 6.1 percent, one of About 90 percent of kids born in the 1940s in the region, including those without colthe highest in Indiana. Its residents report earned more than their parents did. But lege degrees. higher numbers of poor mental health beginning in the ’80s, the returns on a coldays than residents in other parts of the The working-class strongholds that once lege education started growing, and more prospered, meanwhile, are doing worse and state, and they have among the shortest life of the benefits of economic growth started worse, as computers and robots replace the expectancies. Like many of Indiana’s more accruing only to those with an education, as workers whose jobs haven’t been sent over- rural regions, Fayette County is facing a those without an education saw their opporseas, and as a result, an oversupply of labor growing opioid epidemic. “What’s haptunities shrink. People with a college degree pened to Connersville is that the jobs came brings down wages for everyone still there. or better now earn 50 percent of aggregate out and heroin came in,” said Ron Corbin, U.S. household income, up from 37 percent What this means is that people like Dark a former resident. and Gabbert are having increasingly differin 1991, while people with less than a high ent experiences of America. “What has been This decline began in the 1980s, Dan school degree earn 5 percent, down from Parker, executive director of the Economic 12 percent in 1991, according to census data. striking over the past two decades is how THE WEEK March 31, 2017
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Development Group of Connersville and Fayette County, told me, as big manufacturers started to downsize or move overseas. The last big employer, the auto parts supplier Visteon, laid off its remaining 890 employees in 2007. That closure
the town got more depressed, he decided he didn’t want to raise his children there. “Once-nice neighborhoods have turned into Section 8 hubs,” Corbin told me. “People are just stuck in despair.” Recently, when he was taking his 8-year-old son to school, Corbin saw an addict overdose. It was the last straw; he decided to leave Connersville and move to a suburb of Indianapolis. Many of the jobs being created in Indianapolis are high-paying ones in sectors like tech or medicine. The biggest employment sector is professional and technical services, in which employees make an average of $73,000. It includes firms like SalesForce, as well as pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and the online Booming downtown Indianapolis is attracting high-paying employers. consumer-ratings and the ones before it had a ripple effect on company Angie’s List, both of which employ other businesses, like gas stations and dry large numbers of college-educated people. cleaners, as people in the community were These companies are an example of the thrust out of work. “A lot of the momgrowing piece of the U.S. economy that and-pop shops just evaporated when those is focused on innovation and knowledge, corporations folded,” Parker said. rather than on producing physical goods. As big employers left, it became increasingly After all, firms that produce only physical difficult for people to do better than their goods can send those jobs overseas or autoparents did—economists’ go-to measure mate them. But that’s harder to do for comof economic mobility. Ashley Gabbert’s panies that rely on highly skilled workers to mother worked at the Visteon plant, makcreate new ideas and customized goods. ing radiators, until she got laid off when In some ways, the divergence between the plant closed. Gabbert has fewer options places like Connersville and Indianapolis than her mother did: There are only two is a tale of the Americans who are benefitmanufacturing firms left in Connersville, ing from globalization and those getting and because there are so many more workcrushed by it. Educated workers in cities ers available relative to the number of jobs, produce work that requires innovation and they can pay less than the big companies new ideas, work that isn’t easily replicated once did. Gabbert was lucky to find a job in and can’t be outsourced. Less educated manufacturing at all; Justin Williams, 24, is workers in struggling regions are competworking at a bar where he depends on tips. ing with people and machines around the He’s also had stints at a call center in town, globe, and their wages are the worse for it. which paid $9 an hour, and at a restaurant But the divergence is more than just between that closed down for lack of business. His mother worked for the Visteon plant, where workers who benefit from globalization and those who don’t. It’s also between the she made $25 an hour. “The money is difplaces those two groups tend to live. That’s ferent nowadays,” he said. because of something that economists refer People who have the resources to leave to as the agglomeration economy. Comdepressed American towns tend to do so. panies want to locate near other innovative Corbin, 39, wanted to stay in Connerscompanies so that they can find skilled ville, where he was born and raised. He has workers, which in turn makes those comtaken a handful of college classes, though panies even more productive. They want he does not have a degree, and for a few to be near specialized services, like venture years lived in Connersville and did freecapital firms or banks, that can help prolance video production from there. But as vide funding.
37 This concentration of good jobs in a few hubs creates more opportunity for everyone there, not just people with college degrees. With their higher salaries they eat out more, go shopping, spend on entertainment, and pay for services like dry cleaning, house cleaning, and child care. All of this spending creates more jobs. “A city that has a lot of college grads also tends to have a different economic ecosystem,” Moretti said.
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NE WORRYING ASPECT of this trend is how the divergence will grow over time. Cities with strong industries and good jobs will attract more of the same kind of companies and a growing share of workers. Places with manufacturing jobs and other work that doesn’t require a college education will continue to struggle. “It’s a process where the winners get stronger with time,” Moretti said, “and the losers get relatively weaker.”
There are not very many solutions to closing the gap between the two Americas. Although some onetime manufacturing hubs have been able to recruit new companies or find a new industry, they’re in the minority. After all, there are lots of Connersvilles out there, and they’re essentially competing with one another in their efforts to boost their economies. Focusing on one type of industry could be a successful strategy. Warsaw, Ind., a relatively small town in the northern part of the state, is the orthopedic capital of America, with dozens of orthopedic device companies located there and a bustling economy as a result. Elkhart, Ind., is the epicenter of the recreational vehicle industry, creating good jobs when the economy is doing well. “Every place has to look at its comparative advantage, and find a niche,” said Ross DeVol, chief research officer at the Milken Institute, an economic think tank. Still, it’s going to be much more difficult for the Connersvilles of the world to find a path forward than it will be for cities like Indianapolis. That’s partly because in today’s economy, people like Dan Dark have many more options than people like Ashley Gabbert do. The president has pledged to bring jobs back to our nation’s Connersvilles. He may manage in a few lucky areas, but it’s unrealistic to think he can pull this off across the country. That doesn’t mean anyone should give up on America’s struggling regions, whose residents are going to have a harder time succeeding in today’s economy. But what will help them is far from clear. Excerpted from an article that originally appeared in TheAtlantic.com. Reprinted with permission. THE WEEK March 31, 2017
The Puzzle Page
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ACROSS 1 Twisted 5 Desert-like 9 Soccer scores 14 “Hmm...” 15 Hunted animals 16 Buddy of TV 17 “Nature-loving, adventure-seeking travelers” will love this island chain, which made Lonely Planet’s recent list of Top 10 spring break destinations 19 Bing alternative 20 Holbrook of Into the Wild 21 Fool 22 “Who’s there?” answer 24 Skedaddles 26 Lugs 29 “Longer days, clear skies, and a good snowpack” put this Canadian resort on the Lonely Planet list 33 Type 34 Fragrant trees 37 Backstab 38 Use a cover story 39 No base 40 Unsubtle type 41 Squander 42 [It was like that!] 43 Shuts loudly 44 Homer and such 45 Bagged leaves 46 “35-plus miles of dune-dotted, pristine white beach” got this stretch of Florida onto the list
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This week’s question: Our culture is more sexualized than ever, but new research has found that Americans are having sex significantly less often than they did in the 1990s—perhaps because we’re so distracted by our digital devices. What would be a suitable sociological or medical term to describe this phenomenon? Last week’s contest: Two Brazilian researchers have created a special recipe as a possible solution for future food shortages in a more populous world: bread made out of ground-up-cockroach flour. If they were to set up a bakery showcasing this unusual ingredient, what would it be called? THE WINNER: From Floor to Table Bruce Carlson, Alexandria, Va. SECOND PLACE: Cinnabug Janine Witte, New Hope, Pa. THIRD PLACE: Au Bug Pain Steven Hoffer, New York City For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest@theweek.com. Please include your name, address, and daytime telephone number for verification; this week, type “No fooling around” in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, March 28. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page next issue and at theweek.com/puzzles on Friday, March 31. In the case of identical or similar entries, the first one received gets credit.
W The winner gets a one-year subscription to The Week.
Sudoku Fill in all the boxes so that each row, column, and outlined square includes all the numbers from 1 through 9. Difficulty: super-hard
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