INTERNATIONAL
HOW WORLD LEADERS HIDE THEIR WEALTH p.15
CONTROVERSY
Facebook’s toxic algorithms
King Abdullah II of Jordan
p.6
PEOPLE
How Smith survived his midlife crisis p.10
THE BEST OF THE U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Not so fast Will Democratic centrists Sinema and Manchin block Biden’s social spending? Pages 4, 16
OCTOBER 15, 2021 VOLUME 21 ISSUE 1049 ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS
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Contents
3
Editor’s letter In the chaotic days after the 2020 election, Facebook employees warned CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the platform was being used to promote bogus claims of massive election fraud. With then-President Trump whipping up fury over a “rigged” election, Zuckerberg ordered that Facebook give new weight to existing “news ecosystem quality” scores, so that mainstream sources like major newspapers had priority in newsfeeds over extremist websites such as Breitbart.com. But the platform soon reverted to its old algorithm, spewing out election disinformation like a sewage spill. As former Facebook employee Frances Haugen told the world this week, the tech behemoth knows that outrage, anger, and conspiracy theories—what it internally calls “bad for the world” content—generate more emotion, engagement, and dopamine hits. “If they change the algorithm to be safer,” Haugen said, “people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money.” (See Controversy.)
This simple, amoral calculation explains why Facebook has enabled QAnon to infect millions, white supremacists to glorify mass shootings, and Burmese to massacre the Rohingya. Through Facebook, anti-vaxxers have spread lies that have caused hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. Teenage girls use Facebook and its Instagram app to swap tips on cutting and starving themselves. Zuckerberg invariably expresses dismay when these horrors come to light, but his fixes have been limited and temporary. Facebook has made him the global emperor of a supranational realm of 3 billion users; shutting off the “bad for the world” firehose would diminish his creation’s audience and influence. He’s incapable of self-regulating, just as Purdue wouldn’t stop pushing opioids and Big Tobacco wouldn’t stop selling cigarettes. Regulating social media to minimize divisive and dangerous disinformation will be fiendishly difficult. But if we wait for William Falk Editor-in-chief Facebook to fix itself, we’ll keep waiting.
NEWS 4 Main stories Democrats battle over infrastructure, social spending bills; has the Delta surge peaked in the U.S.?
Managing editors: Theunis Bates, Mark Gimein Assistant managing editor: Jay Wilkins Deputy editor/International: Susan Caskie Deputy editor/Arts: Chris Mitchell Senior editors: Nick Aspinwall, Chris Erikson, Danny Funt, Scott Meslow, Dale Obbie, Zach Schonbrun, Hallie Stiller Art director: Dan Josephs Photo editor: Mark Rykoff Copy editor: Jane A. Halsey Researchers: Joyce Chu, Ryan Rosenberg Contributing editors: Ryan Devlin, Bruno Maddox
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Controversy of the week Just how damaging is Facebook to society? 7 The U.S. at a glance A massive oil leak off California; the fight over the debt ceiling 8 The world at a glance A damning report on sexual abuse in the French Catholic church; Russians make a movie in space 10 People Will Smith’s midlife crisis; Stanley Tucci’s love of food
Editor-in-chief: William Falk
11 Briefing Iran is getting closer to an atomic bomb. Is a new nuclear deal possible? 12 Best U.S. columns Judicial activism at the Supreme Court; how the migrant crisis could boost Donald Trump in 2024 15 Best international columns Hidden fortunes exposed by the Pandora Papers 16 Talking points The riddle of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema; Covid vaccine mandates are working; an epidemic of “climate anxiety”
Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin (pages 4 and 16)
ARTS
LEISURE
22 Books Faith, family, and affairs in Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads
27 Food & Drink A hearty, tangy pork soup from Romania; gins that go easy on the juniper 28 Travel The “overlanders” who are going far off-road; reliving the Woodstock festival
23 Author of the week Wole Soyinka on his first novel in nearly 50 years 24 Art & Music Hollywood’s new shrine to the cinematic arts 25 Film Daniel Craig’s last outing as James Bond in No Time to Die
Will Smith (p.10)
BUSINESS 32 News at a glance Facebook goes dark; Donald Trump out of the Forbes 400 33 Making money Are tech-driven iBuyers such as Zillow fueling home-price inflation? 34 Best columns The rise and fall of Ozy Media; when AI just isn’t intelligent enough
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THE WEEK October 15, 2021
4 NEWS
The main stories...
The Democrats’ internal fight over social spending USA Today. They can help rescue Democrats tried to negotiate a path the climate, cut child poverty, “and forward this week for President Biden’s improve the lives of lower-income and $3.5 trillion social-spending bill, workmiddle-class Americans.” They can’t ing toward a scaled-down package blow this landmark opportunity by that can win the backing of both the squabbling and letting “the perfect party’s progressive wing and Senate become the enemy of the good.” centrists Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The Democratic Party’s “hubristic An interparty rift over the size of the left” needs to “face reality,” said the Build Back Better Act—also called Chicago Tribune. With the slimmest the “human-infrastructure” bill—led grip on both the House and Senate, House progressives to block a vote on they and Biden want to enact historic a second, traditional infrastructure bill social legislation on the scale of FDR’s with bipartisan support, which would New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society— spend $1.2 trillion on rebuilding roads, Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi huddle over the bills. but without those presidents’ decisive bridges, and public transit. The promandates and large majorities. Last gressives are demanding that the Build Back Better Act pass first so year’s election results show voters want “a disavowal of ideological that they do not lose their leverage over Sinema and Manchin, who extremism on both sides,” not “a socialist America” where high strongly support the smaller infrastructure bill but want the socialearners are robbed of “the fruits of their labors.” spending bill pared way back. The sweeping human-infrastructure What the columnists said package would expand Medicare to include vision, hearing, and dental coverage; provide funding for day care and universal pre-K; Sinema and Manchin are often called “moderates,” but they’re the allow Medicare to negotiate prescription-drug prices; invest in clean real “extremists,” said Kate Aronoff in NewRepublic.com. They energy; and extend to 2025 the child tax credits for low-income are standing in the way of a bill whose provisions enjoy wide public and middle-class families that were in this year’s Covid relief plan. support. The climate measures are a case in point. In what universe It would seek to pay for the new benefits through tax increases on is it “moderate” to block modest spending to speed the transition to corporations and the wealthy. green energy at a time when Americans are already being battered by wildfires, drought, excessive heat, and more-powerful storms? Acknowledging an impasse, Biden put a hold on both bills and agreed to a “two-track process” tying an infrastructure vote to While Democrats horse-trade, “those who believe in fiscal and passage of the larger bill. His concession to progressives angered personal responsibility” have already lost, said Nolan Finley in The moderates, but House progressives said they were salvaging Biden’s Detroit News. The social-spending plan would accelerate America’s legislative ambitions. “If we pass the infrastructure bill alone, we transformation into “a European-style socialist welfare state,” with are not even accomplishing 10 percent of his agenda,” said Rep. free elder care and state-funded pre-school. Liberals claim the cost Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. will be covered simply by making the wealthy and corporations “pay their fair share.” But we’ll all pay a “steep price” when the The progressives now face hard choices about how to scale back “burden on investors and job creators stalls the economy.” the sprawling bill. Manchin has floated a $1.5 trillion ceiling, a figure that “is not going to happen,” said Congressional Progressive To get their social-spending bill passed, Biden and the DemoCaucus leader Rep. Pramila Jayapal crats “need to make hard spend(D-Wash.). In a meeting with progresing choices,” said John Cassidy in What next? sives, Biden told them to expect a bill NewYorker.com. Rather than squeeze While anything could happen, “a deal this month between $1.9 trillion and $2.2 trillion. as many programs as possible into a seems possible, ” said Ryan Lizza in Politico A key point of debate was whether reduced bill and rely on “accounting .com. Oct. 31 has become “a new deadline for a to cut some initiatives entirely or to ploys,” Biden should focus on adcomprehensive deal” on both bills, and Senate maintain broader provisions by letting dressing climate change, raising taxes Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said the “goal them expire sooner or limiting their on corporations and the wealthy, and scope, such as through means testing for is to get both bills done in the next month.” The “strengthening working families” with benefits such as free community college. subsidized child care. Biden has taken two biggest things to watch are how Democrats “Nobody is going to get everything they opt to reduce the size of the social-spending bill, “a gamble,” said Jonathan Weisman want,” said Senate Majority Leader and Jonathan Martin in The New and whether either the moderate or progressive Chuck Schumer. Biden vowed to get York Times. He had “a bird in hand” camp makes “a new hostage-taking demand.” The both bills across the finish line. “It with the popular, bipartisan infrastruc“mystery of Kyrsten Sinema’s motives” may hold doesn’t matter whether it’s in six minture bill but gave it up to rescue his the key to unlocking trillions in “infrastructure and utes, six days, or six weeks,” he said. ambitious spending bill. Now we’ll see social spending,” said Charlotte Alter in Time.com. “We’re going to get it done.” whether that big bet “will pay off”— The Arizona senator’s approval of any comproor if he’ll be left with “a protracted mise deal is crucial, but she’s keeping mum on What the editorials said standoff, or nothing at all.” The exactly what she wants. (See Talking Points, p.16). Even with a slimmed-down bill, outcome “could determine Democrats’ To their immense frustration, “many congressioDemocrats “have a chance to implefate in the midterms and the success of nal Democrats remain in the dark.” ment sweeping historical changes,” said his presidency.” THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Illustration by Fred Harper. Cover photos from Getty, Alamy, Getty
Reuters
What happened
... and how they were covered
NEWS 5
Covid cases drop as Delta surge wanes What happened
Molnupiravir could be a Covid game changer, said The Wall Street Journal. The most effective post-infection treatment in our arsenal, monoclonal antibodies, are “difficult to produce and distribute.” But production of molnupiravir can be scaled up quickly, and the pills can be easily distributed in poorer countries. The Biden administration has ordered 1.7 million courses of the drug. “Critics of Big Pharma” might grouse about the $700 price tag for a five-day course of molnupiravir, but Merck deserves to be rewarded for taking on the risk of developing this treatment.
There were glimmers of hope in the fight against Covid-19 this week, even as the U.S. reached the grim milestone of 700,000 coronavirus deaths, with data indicating that the country’s Delta surge is subsiding and with the release of promising clinical trial results for a new Covid treatment. The U.S. is now recording some 102,000 new Covid cases daily— down 24 percent in two weeks. The steepest drops have occurred in Southern states hit hard by the Delta variant, such as Florida and Alabama. Hospitalizations A memorial to America’s Covid dead in Washington have dropped 20 percent nationwide in two weeks and deaths 12 percent. But with some 1,800 AmeriWhat the columnists said cans still dying each day, and Northern states experiencing rising Positive pandemic news tends to “get buried behind other stories,” caseloads as the weather cools, some health experts warned that infections could spike again. Others suspect that enough Americans said Oliver Darcy in CNN.com, but there’s plenty to be optimistic about right now. Covid cases are plummeting, “the number of vacnow have immunity through vaccinations and previous infections to prevent another big surge. “Barring something unexpected,” said cinated adults continues its march north,” and next week the FDA will start discussing whether to authorize Pfizer’s shot for children former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, “I’m of the opinion that ages 5 to 11. This all deserves wider attention. this is the last major wave of infection.” In what could be a breakthrough in the treatment of the coronavirus, the pharmaceutical firm Merck announced last week that its experimental antiviral pill cuts the risk of hospitalization or death in people with mild to moderate Covid by 50 percent. The drug, molnupiravir, works by interfering with the virus’ ability to replicate inside the human body. Only one antiviral, remdesivir, has so far been approved to treat Covid. That drug is given intravenously to very sick patients, but infected people could take molnupiravir pills at home before they become seriously ill. The results from the trial have yet to be peer reviewed; molnupiravir could be authorized by the end of the year.
What the editorials said Our 18-month “deadly roller-coaster ride” of Covid peaks and valleys could soon be over, said the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Vaccines deserve most of the credit for that possibility, along with the 77 percent of eligible Americans who have rolled up their sleeves and got a shot. But if we really want to curb the chance of “another major wave engulfing the country” this fall and winter, we will need more Americans to get inoculated.
Getty, ABC
It wasn’t all bad
We should also acknowledge that the coronavirus will always be with us in some form, said infectious-disease specialist Dr. Monica Gandhi in The Wall Street Journal. The goal of “zero Covid” simply isn’t realistic; in all of history we’ve eradicated only one viral disease, smallpox. But we can make Covid endemic, meaning it can be managed without putting undue strain on health services, through vaccinations and new treatments. If we can make Covid no more dangerous than “other respiratory viruses over which we have control,” such as the seasonal flu, that will be a victory. When the pandemic finally wanes, let’s be patient with one another, said Michele Norris in The Washington Post. The cycle of false dawns and the often unclear messages over how to stay safe have “understandably fried a lot of mental circuitry.” Zoom-overloaded children have “zoned out of school,” overstretched health-care workers are suffering from exhaustion, and many employees have struggled with “the stress of ever-shifting return-to-office plans.” We should “assume that anyone who lived through this strange and surreal era is standing in need of support” as they re-enter normal life.
Q When Jasen Bracy lost his sight at 7 to retinal cancer, he
refused to give up on his dream of playing football. Bracy, 15, Q Students at Casa Grande High started calling coaches in the area until the Modesto Raiders School in Petaluma, Calif., have resagreed to take him on. He memorized every play and where cued some 4,000 endangered salmon each player was supposed to be, impressing his coach from the state’s drought. The school so much he was named the team’s starting quarterback. has an on-campus fish hatchery that With the help of his dad, students usually use to raise steelhead who guides him from the trout. But last month, when conditions sidelines with a walkie-talkie at nearby Lake Sonoma deteriorated, to a speaker in his helmet, wildlife officials moved some of the Bracy recently led his team state’s last remaining coho salmon to a win over a team that into tanks at the school. It’s given had turned him down. “It’s students a chance to get hands-on exall memory. It’s all about perience in conservation—a relief after having trust in the player, a year and half of distance learning. the receiver, and the team,” “It’s right here, it’s tangible,” said one Bracy said. “I have to trust Casa Grande science teacher. Playing with 100 percent trust them 100 percent.”
Q At the start of the pandemic, Maryland teenager Elise Chang would bake cookies and drop them off at her friends’ houses along with a stuffed animal. Her friends loved the gesture and sent her photos of themselves with the stuffed animals. “That’s why I wanted to continue doing it, because of those small but really meaningful reactions,” Chang said. She decided to launch the Tough Cookie Service Project, in which she delivers cookies to 20 neighbors each month and leaves a note encouraging them to do something kind for someone else. “I love random acts of kindness,” she said. THE WEEK October 15, 2021
6 NEWS
Controversy of the week
Facebook: Is it time for Congress to act? pany that regulators need to rein in, said Adrienne LaFrance Finally, she “has a name,” said Parmy Olson in Bloomberg in TheAtlantic.com. The impact of this global monopoly .com. Frances Haugen, 37, this week outed herself as a on our society has been so devastating, and so intentional, former employee whose leak of reams of internal docuthat Congress should consider Facebook a “hostile foreign ments could “turn out to be the most important act in power” and act accordingly. So should all of us. Facebook’s corporate history.” In a 60 Minutes interview followed by televised Senate testimony, Haugen—an Let’s all take a breath, said Alex Beam in BostonGlobe algorithm specialist with a Harvard MBA—confirmed .com. The fact that Facebook commissioned research what many “long suspected but couldn’t prove”: that into the harmful effects of its algorithms suggests a Mark Zuckerberg’s trillion-dollar company knows its good-faith effort to assess costs and benefits. products cause immense social harm. Facebook’s own Haugen’s documents also show that Zuckerberg research revealed that its popular Instagram photoplanned to have Facebook lead the charge to sharing platform has a devastating impact on the vaccinate the world against Covid-19, before mental health of teenage girls. After Facebook “anti-vaxxer trolls” overran his platform adopted a 2018 algorithm tweak designed to Haugen: Anger is the algorithm. with misinformation. The documents also increase adult users’ engagement with the site, reveal why Facebook has been frantically tweaking its algorithms, and thus its advertising revenue, Hausen says, it quickly learned said Robby Soave in Reason.com. For all his success, Zuckerberg that “it’s easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions.” The result was the torrent of inflammatory misinformation knows he’s fighting a “losing battle” to stay culturally relevant, and conspiracy theories that has so divided our society, said Aaron as young people shun Facebook for shiny new platforms like Snapchat and TikTok. “Government force is absolutely not necesMak in Slate.com. Ironically, though, this week’s Senate hearing sary to constrain” a company already in decline. had a strikingly bipartisan tone, with Republicans and Democrats agreeing that “this is a real issue that Congress should do someWe can’t wait years for Facebook to fade, said Eugene Robinson thing about.” The question now is what. in The Washington Post. Haugen said that before the 2020 election, Facebook did “tighten its policies against incendiary political Haugen herself “doesn’t have the solution,” said Ali Breland in misinformation”—but only briefly. Congress should require the MotherJones.com. She suggested that Congress could set up a company to make its algorithms public and transparent, so we all federal agency, staffed by former employees like herself, to review know what it’s feeding us. Facebook’s domination isn’t inevitable, Facebook’s algorithms and its content—a proposal so unlikely said Christine Emba in WashingtonPost.com. The tobacco giants to produce fundamental reform that it may as well have come once had more than 42 percent of Americans addicted to cigafrom “Facebook’s own lobbyists.” New privacy laws that forbade rettes, but that began to change when whistleblowers leaked interFacebook’s massive harvesting of users’ data to facilitate manipunal research. It is “now evident that the harms of Facebook have lating them would be a start. Breaking up the company should begun to outweigh the benefits of whatever it’s selling.” also be on the table. Facebook isn’t just another greedy U.S. com-
Q Indian Trail High School in Wisconsin went into activeshooter lockdown after a student’s frisbee struck a gunshot detector in the gym. The errant flying disc triggered an automated system, which instructed all staff and students to barricade doors or flee the school. A school official conceded the incident was “frightening,” but that “it is important to note that the students and staff did a great job implementing the practices and procedures they have been taught.” Q A judge has ruled that the Arkansas State Police cannot filter out the words “pig,” “jerk,” and “copper” from comments on their official Facebook page. Judge D.P. Marshall Jr. wrote that while there is an undeniable “antipolice bent” to these terms, “the First Amendment protects disrespectful language.” THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Good week for: Beaming up, with the announcement that Star Trek icon William
Shatner, 90, would fly to the edge of space on Oct. 12 aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin spacecraft. “I’ve heard about space for a long time now,” said Shatner. “I’m taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle.” Coming out as nonbinary, after Andrew Yang, former candidate for president and New York City mayor, announced he is leaving the Democratic Party and rebranding as an independent. “Polarization,” Yang said, “is getting worse than ever.” Due diligence, after a Maryland couple bought a bungalow in Cottage City, Md., at a bargain price, and then discovered it’s the site of the demonic possession that inspired the 1973 horror classic The Exorcist. “The first thing I thought was, ‘Oh, God, this is going to tank our resale value,’” said homeowner Danielle Witt.
Bad week for: Crossing the line, after members of a progressive organization
followed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema into an Arizona bathroom stall, berated her for blocking the Democrats’ human-infrastructure bill, and then proudly released a video of the ambush. Attention whores, after Donald Trump asked a federal judge to restore his Twitter account as clicks on stories about him continued to decline, dropping another 37 percent in August and September. Kids today, after a Wall Street Journal report that old-school mafiosi are complaining that younger mobsters are “soft” and spend too much time texting. “Everything is on the phones with them,” said a former member of the Colombo crime family.
In other news FBI called in over school board threats Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the FBI this week to work with local leaders nationwide to address a “disturbing spike” in harassment and threats of violence against educators and school board members over mask mandates and claims that schools are teaching “critical race theory.” Garland’s order came after the National School Boards Association pleaded with President Biden for assistance, noting more than 20 recent instances of threats or intimidation in California, Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, and Georgia. Republicans criticized FBI intervention; Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri called it an “attempt to chill parents from showing up at school board meetings,” and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said his state “will not allow federal agents to squelch dissent.”
AP
Only in America
The U.S. at a glance ...
Getty, AP (3)
Huntington Beach, Calif. Oil spill: Up to 144,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the Pacific Ocean last week, threatening sensitive wildlife and closing popular beaches. Investigators found a 13-inch split in a steel pipe that lies 98 feet underwater along the ocean floor, and believe a Cleaning up the mess cargo ship’s anchor—which can weigh up to 10 tons— might have accidentally ruptured the pipe about 5 miles offshore and yanked it. “The pipeline has essentially been pulled like a bow string,” said Martyn Willsher, CEO of Houston’s Amplify Energy Corp., which operates the pipeline. “At its widest point, it is 105 feet away from where it was.” Fisheries were closed and local beaches could remain off limits for weeks, but rescue workers were relieved to find few birds drenched in oil. An alarm went off at 2:30 a.m. in an Amplify control room, but the company waited three and a half hours to shut down the pipeline and another three hours to notify the Coast Guard.
Moab, Utah New footage: Utah police faced criticism last week for the way they handled a suspected domestic violence incident on Aug. 12 involving Gabby Petito, about a month before the 22-year-old was found dead in a Wyoming campground. Petito and her now-missing fiancé, Brian Laundrie, 23, were stopped during their Petito cross-country road trip after 911 callers reported seeing Laundrie slap Petito. Newly released body-camera footage shows officers interviewing Petito and Laundrie separately: A sobbing Petito said she hit Laundrie first, causing him to grab her face and scratch her. “When I touch it, it burns,” she said. Laundrie appeared relaxed despite visible scratches on his arm and face, leading police to deem Petito the perpetrator. Officers opted against filing charges, convincing the couple to separate for the night. Ruth Glenn, president of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said Petito’s distress while taking blame should have been a “prominent red flag.”
Las Vegas ‘Vile’ harassment: A GOP donor accused former President Trump’s longtime aide Corey Lewandowski last week of making intimidating sexual advances at a Las Vegas charity dinner. Trashelle Odom, who was seated next to Lewandowski, told Politico.com that he “repeatedly touched me inappropriately, said vile and disgusting things to me, stalked me, and made me feel violated and fearful.” She also made a statement to police “for purposes of prosecution.” Four witnesses corroborated her allegations. Odom says Lewandowski touched her leg and backside, bragged about his penis and sexual prowess, and threw a drink at her when she rebuffed his advances. Lewandowski declined to comment. Odom also reportedly told police that Lewandowski boasted of killing two people. He was removed from his role at a pro-Trump Super PAC, and a Trump spokesman said he “will no longer be associated with Trump World.”
Austin Not a hoax: Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, founder of the Austinbased Infowars site, was held responsible for damages in two defamation suits stemming from his claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a “giant hoax” carried out by “crisis actors.” Travis County Judge Maya Guerra Gamble issued default judgments against Jones, citing his “flagrant bad faith” in not turning over documents. A jury in March will decide damages; last year, Jones was ordered to pay nearly $150,000 in legal fees to Sandy Hook families. Gamble’s rulings come in lawsuits from parents of Noah Pozner and Jesse Lewis, both 6, who were among 20 first-graders and six adults killed in Newtown, Conn. In 2015, Jones showed viewers where Noah’s father, Leonard, lived, forcing his family to go into hiding following death threats. Jones, who in 2019 blamed his Sandy Hook statements on a “form of psychosis,” said that Gamble’s ruling “crucified” the First Amendment.
NEWS 7
Chicago Gang shootout: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot slammed Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx this week for declining to bring Foxx: Still investigating charges against gang members arrested after their brazen mid-morning shoot-out was caught on camera. Chicago police sought to charge five suspects with murder and aggravated battery after four men pulled up to a West Side house and began firing. People inside the house allegedly returned fire, killing Devlin Addison, 32. Two other men were wounded before police arrived and found more than 70 shell casings. A SWAT team responded after alleged shooters inside the house refused to come out. But prosecutors rejected charges because the shootout involved “mutual combatants” and detectives couldn’t determine who might have acted in self-defense. If gang members aren’t held accountable, Lightfoot said, “we’re going to see a level of brazenness that will send this city into chaos.” Foxx said Lightfoot was putting improper pressure on an active investigation.
Washington, D.C. Short-term fix: Democrats and Republicans in the Senate appeared ready to agree on a compromise in the debt-ceiling fight this week, staving off the immediate prospect of a U.S. default. After twice blocking bills to raise the limit on the national McConnell debt, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) offered to back an extension sufficient to keep the government solvent into December. Democrats had warned that without a resolution, the U.S. could default on Oct. 18, with catastrophic consequences for the economy. The debt limit was suspended for two years in 2019 in a bipartisan budget deal. With that suspension expired, McConnell has tried to pressure Democrats into using the Senate’s complex budget reconciliation process to raise the limit without GOP votes, effectively taking sole political responsibility for additional spending. Democrats have said there was not enough time to raise the debt ceiling through reconciliation; extending the timeline to December lets Republicans argue that the problem is back in Democratic hands. THE WEEK October 15, 2021
The world at a glance ...
Ottawa Pipeline showdown: The Canadian government this week raised the stakes in its ongoing clash with Michigan over a major oil-exporting pipeline. Line 5 is operated by Canadian firm Enbridge and carries some 540,000 barrels a day from Superior, Wis., to Sarnia, Ontario. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered Enbridge to stop using the pipeline by May, warning that a catastrophic leak could develop in a 4-mile section under the Great Lakes. Enbridge refused to halt the flow, and the Canadian government this week invoked a 1977 treaty with the U.S. that calls for direct negotiations to resolve pipeline disputes. Enbridge says a Line 5 shutdown would cause gas prices to spike by limiting the supply of crude to refineries in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ontario, and Quebec. The two pipes that make up Line 5 have spilled 33 times since 1968. Paris Church abuse scandal: An investigation of the Catholic Church in France has found that up to 330,000 children were sexually abused by priests, church employees, and volunteers over the past seven decades. The report, compiled by an independent commission at the request of church officials, estimates that there were Sauvé: Reform is needed. over 3,000 perpetrators—most of them priests or clerics. About 80 percent of the victims were boys. “There was a whole bunch of negligence, of deficiency, of silence, an institutional cover-up,” said commission head Jean-Marc Sauvé. Until the 2000s, the church showed “deep, total, and even cruel indifference” toward victims. He called on the church to overhaul its treatment of abusive clergy and to compensate the victims, who in many cases now can’t get justice in the courts because of statutes of limitations.
London Army delivers: About 100 British soldiers received a crash course in tanker-truck driving this week before being deployed to deliver fuel to gas stations across the country. About 20 percent of gas stations in London and southeast England are currently out of fuel because there are not enough truckers to transport gas from refineries. The British Troops head to work. Medical Association warned that without gas, ambulance drivers will not be able to respond to patients, even as the U.K. reports 33,000 new Covid cases every day. The truckdriver shortage is a result of the pandemic—which delayed the issuing of new licenses—and Britain’s exit from the European Union, which caused thousands of foreign workers to leave the country.
Rossiglione, Italy Unprecedented deluge: A complex of thunderstorms dumped nearly 2 ½ feet of rain on an Italian town in just 12 hours this week, the most intense rainfall ever recorded in all of Europe. The 29.2 inches that fell on Rossiglione is about 60 percent of its typical annual rainfall. The town was left caked in After the deluge mud, while landslides all around it destroyed homes and cars and blocked roads. “This calamity has brought us to our knees,” said Mayor Katia Piccardo. “Without immediate emergency funding, Rossiglione will not be able to get back on its feet.” Towns across the northwest region of Liguria were battered by the storms, and dozens of stranded people had to be rescued from attics or rooftops. Human-induced climate change is believed to be causing heavier storms in many parts of the world, because Buenos Aires warmer air can hold more moisture. WhatsApp emergency: Latin Guayaquil, Ecuador America was hit hard by FaceBloody prison riots: Ecuadoran authorities have deployed 3,600 book’s six-hour global outage police and military personnel to a prison complex in the city of this week, because the company’s Guayaquil, after a series of riots over the past week left at least 118 WhatsApp messaging service is by inmates dead and more than 80 wounded. Prisoners from rival far the region’s dominant form of digital gangs set off explosives and attacked one another with knives and communication. Some 93 percent of Argen- Not getting the message guns. At least five people were beheaded, a govtines ages 16 to 64 use WhatsApp, as well ernment official said, and an “extensive” number as 92 percent of Colombians and 91 percent of Brazilians. Many were mutilated. Violence between Ecuadoran Latin Americans have prepaid cellphone plans that charge them gangs has intensified in recent years as rival outto send and receive text messages. But WhatsApp lets users evade fits have forged closer links with Mexican cartels. those fees by sending all messages—including photos, video, and The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels text—via data or Wi-Fi. Many small-business owners in the region both use Ecuador’s Pacific ports to traffic drugs. use the service to manage day-to-day operations. The stoppage was “It’s unfortunate that prisons are being converted “catastrophic,” said José Caparroso, a Forbes editor in Bogotá. into territories of power struggles for criminal “Latin America lives on WhatsApp.” The outage also caused probgangs,” said Ecuadoran President Guillermo lems for the many doctors in India who use WhatsApp to coordiKilled in the riots Lasso. “The Ecuadoran state needs to act.” nate schedules and share patient scans. THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Reuters, AP (2), Reuters, Getty
8 NEWS
The world at a glance ... Tbilisi, Georgia Saakashvili arrested: Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was arrested last week in his home country after returning from eight years in exile to campaign for the opposition. Coming home to jail The U.S.-educated Saakashvili swept to power after the country’s Soviet-era leadership was ousted during the 2003 Rose Revolution. But following a disastrous five-day war with Russia in 2008 and growing discontent with Saakashvili’s increasingly autocratic style, he was voted out of office in 2013 and fled to Ukraine. The new ruling party, Georgian Dream—led by anti-reform oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili—brought charges against Saakashvili that he said were politically motivated. He was convicted of abuse of power in absentia and sentenced to six years in prison. Saakashvili’s return did little to help the opposition, which lost decisively to Georgian Dream in last week’s elections.
NEWS 9
Baikonur, Kazakhstan A real space odyssey: After blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a Russian actress and director this week arrived at the International Space Station, where they will spend 12 days shooting scenes for the first-ever movie made in orbit. The Challenge, directed by Klim Shipenko, will feature actress Yulia Peresild playing a surgeon who is sent to the ISS to save a Peresild enters the ISS. cosmonaut. The cosmonauts currently on the station are helping with the project—they held the camera to shoot Peresild entering the ISS. Tom Cruise announced last year that he was working with NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX on a movie to be filmed in space, but the Russians beat Hollywood to it. Russia takes pride in its space firsts: The Soviet Union put the first satellite, animal, and human into orbit.
Reuters (2), Getty (2)
Taipei Chinese invasion feared: Taiwan’s president and foreign minister warned allies this week that China was planning to invade their nation, after Beijing flew a record number of fighter jets and bombers into Taiwan’s air defense zone. Over four days, China—which regards Taiwan as a renegade province—sent at least 150 military aircraft through the island’s airspace. “We are very concerned that China is going to launch a war,” Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told Australian TV. Meanwhile, President Tsai Ing-wen wrote in Foreign Affairs that “if Taiwan were to fall, the consequences would be catastrophic for regional peace and the democratic alliance system.” Following the Chinese incursions, the U.S. demanded that Beijing “cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure and coercion against Taiwan.” State Department spokesman Ned Price described U.S. support for Taiwan as “rock solid.”
Bamako, Mali Welcome, Russian mercenaries: Mali summoned the French ambassador this week to register its “indignation” at French President Emmanuel Macron’s criticism of the country’s militaryled government. Tensions between France and its former colony have been high since May, when the West African country had its second military coup in a year. In June, France announced plans to halve its 5,000-strong military contingent in Mali, leading Malian Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga to accuse France of abandoning his country “mid-flight” in the battle against Islamist militants. Macron called the comment a disgrace that “dishonors what isn’t even a government.” Mali has now reportedly negotiated a contract with Russia’s Wagner Group to send 1,000 mercenaries. U.S. Defense Department spokeswoman Cindi King said this week that the mercenaries would “likely exacerbate an already fragile and A French soldier in Mali unstable situation.”
Manila Duterte dynasty? With his approval rating slumping, the Philippines’ strongman president, Rodrigo Duterte, has announced that he won’t seek the vice presidency in next May’s election. Duterte, who is term-limited from running for re-election, had planned to be the running mate of his close ally Sen. Christopher Lawrence Go. But last week Go submitted papers to run for the vice presidency, and Duterte said that he would act “in obedience to the will of the people” and retire rather than pursue public office next year. That clears the way for Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, the mayor of Davao City, to run for president. Duterte-Carpio, 43, has said she is seeking re-election as Davao mayor, but she has until Nov. 15 to withdraw her candidacy and register to run for a different office. Wellington, New Zealand Accepting Covid: New Zealand has abandoned its attempt to keep the country completely Covid-free. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had early success with her “Covid-zero” policy, using quarantines and testing to identify and isolate carriers of the virus. Only 27 New Zealanders have so far died of the disease. But after seven weeks of lockdown in Auckland failed to stop the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant—and after about 1,000 people broke restrictions to protest last weekend—the government has now switched strategies to containing, rather than eliminating, the virus. “Long periods of heavy restrictions have not got us to zero cases,” Ardern said. “What we have called a long tail feels more like a tentacle that Ardern: No more ‘Covid-zero’ has been incredibly hard to shake.” THE WEEK October 15, 2021
People
10 NEWS Tucci’s love of eating
For Stanley Tucci, food is stuffed with meaning, said Polly Vernon in The Times (U.K.). The actor’s childhood in an Italian-American family in the town of Katonah, N.Y., was an endless feast: There were home-cooked meals with multiple courses, dinners in and dinners out for celebrations and holidays, and a year in Italy—a sabbatical for his art-teacher father—where young Stanley’s taste buds were delighted daily. Tucci returned to Italy for his TV show, Searching for Italy, and it’s something of a miracle that the actor has kept his svelte form. “I’m blessed with a fast metabolism,” says Tucci, 60. “I was always thin, but after I went through cancer treatment three years ago, I lost 30 pounds.” Doctors had discovered a huge tumor at the base of his tongue, which was successfully treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy. It was a cruel experience, because it left him temporarily unable to eat, and because cancer had killed his first wife, Kate, in 2009. A year after her death, Tucci was at the wedding of actors Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, when he was struck by the sight of Blunt’s sister, Felicity, scarfing a huge plate of food. They got engaged a year later and married in 2012. “It was astounding,” he says of that first encounter. “I thought she was so charming, funny, hungry.”
A daredevil couple’s brushes with death
Q Katie Couric’s upcoming memoir Go-
ing There should be called “Burning Bridges,” a source tells the Daily Mail (U.K.). The former NBC and CBS anchor, 64, skewers many former colleagues and industry luminaries, writing that failed Today host Deborah Norville turned off viewers with her “relentless perfectionism” and that Martha Stewart needed the “healthy humbling” of going to prison. Couric describes her resentment of tall, blond rival Diane Sawyer, saying she loved “getting under Diane’s skin.” She writes that Larry King once made a clumsy pass at her, and that when THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Smith’s pursuit of happiness Will Smith is emerging from a midlife crisis, said Wesley Lowery in GQ. The rapper turned actor was for decades driven by a desire to become the world’s biggest movie star, a focus that exacted a toll on his relationships and on his own emotional health. That began to change following the death of his father, Willard, in 2016. His father was an inspiration, he says, “and also one of my greatest sources of pain.” Smith recalls how he watched silently, at age 9, as his dad punched his mother in the head. After Willard’s death, Smith finally told his mother, Caroline, about those emotions. “It was really cathartic,” he says, and “brutal.” Turning 50, in 2018, inspired Smith to confront his unhappiness. He rented a house in Utah and sat in solitude for two weeks. He visited Peru for more than a dozen ayahuasca rituals, despite having never done drugs before. “I opened myself up to a fresh sampling of the fruits of human experience.” With his intimacy coach, Smith confessed that he dreamed of having a harem of 20 girlfriends. Upon reflection, he realized this would be “horrific.” The process “let me realize that my thoughts were not sins.” The new Will goes off script. “I tell the truth, even when people don’t like it. And Will Smith doesn’t.”
she met the young, single Prince Harry, the stench of booze and cigarettes seemed to “ooze from every pore.” Couric says she was aware that her former Today co-host Matt Lauer pursued women and had affairs, but was shocked when he was accused of assaulting a colleague and fired. Couric admits she gave the cold shoulder to NBC up-andcomer Ashleigh Banfield because it felt like “self-sabotage” to help a woman who might take her job. “I’m just gobsmacked,” said Banfield, adding that she now knows why her career suddenly imploded. Q Britney Spears has no plans to return to performing now that her father’s 13-year conservatorship is over, TMZ.com reported last week. Spears, 39, said this summer that she felt “enslaved” and forced to perform under Jamie Spears’ control, and her ex-
manager says the pop star plans to “officially retire.” Spears posted a series of nude photos on Instagram from her tropical vacation with fiancé Sam Asghari, and wrote, “I still have a lot of healing to do.” Q Five-time Olympic swimming medalist Klete Keller pleaded guilty last week to a felony for taking part in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot while wearing the U.S. Olympic team jacket. Keller, 39, admitted to trying to obstruct the counting of electoral votes, and to pushing away officers who tried to remove him from the Capitol as he yelled profane comments about Democratic officials. Keller, who competed in the 2000, 2004, and 2008 Summer Games, could avoid prison time after agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors. “He’s obviously trying to make amends for the terrible decision he made,” his attorney said.
Getty, AP, Getty
Steph Davis and Ian Mitchard live life beyond the edge, said Lois Smith Brady in The New York Times. The Utah-based couple are wingsuit-flyers, sky divers, and BASE jumpers—an extreme sport that involves jumping off bridges, cliffs, and buildings and then deploying a parachute. Death “is in our face all the time,” says Mitchard, 40. This is Davis’ third marriage; her first two husbands died in wingsuit accidents. “I know things aren’t permanent,” says Davis, 48. Two months after the couple married, Mitchard went paragliding alone and crashed, breaking his back and ankles, as well as his tibia, calcaneus, and navicular bones. Doctors thought they might have to amputate his feet, and after two surgeries determined that he might be in a wheelchair for life. Mitchard found new ways to exercise, such as kayaking, and after six months began walking with crutches and an exoskeleton brace, then without, going hiking and even rock climbing. Mitchard continues to endure daily pain, but in late 2019 he performed his first BASE jump since the crash, walking off a sandstone cliff. The sport is “an expression of freedom,” Mitchard says. “People think of it as an adrenalinseeking sport, but a lot of it is finding a community that rejects the way the world tells you what you can and cannot do.”
Briefing
NEWS 11
Iran’s revived nuclear program Iran is closer to a bomb than ever before. Is a new nuclear deal possible?
AP
What is Iran’s nuclear status?
with the Obama administration as well as the U.K., France, Russia, China, and Germany. American conservatives denounced the deal as too lenient, and even though U.N. inspectors confirmed that Iran was complying, then-President Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the six-party pact and imposed the most debilitating sanctions yet in a “maximum pressure” policy. In just two years, Iran’s inflation rate soared to 40 percent and the poverty rate doubled, to 30 percent.
Iran doesn’t have nukes yet, but it is close to being able to build them. Since the Trump administration withdrew in 2018 from the 2015 nuclear deal—which brought U.N. nuclear inspections in exchange for sanctions relief—Iran has drastically increased the pace of its pursuit. It is currently about a month away from producing enough fuel for a weapon, although constructing a warhead and mounting it on a missile would take much longer. Some experts believe the country may be trying to become Centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility What effect did that have? a “threshold state,” able to build It actually strengthened the power of the Islamic Revolutionary nukes whenever it decides to go all-out, while others think it is Guard Corps, a military body that answers directly to the merely seeking leverage in negotiations to force the U.S. to return Supreme Leader and has championed the nuclear program. The to the deal and lift sanctions. The original pact, between Iran and Revolutionary Guard has clashed with Iran’s pro-democracy a group of world powers, restricted Iran to enriching uranium to reformers for decades, but the reformers have had enough popular just 4 percent potency, enough to run a nuclear power plant but support to win parliament seats and even the presidency, acting far from the 90 percent required for a bomb. Now it has reportedly reached 60 percent, even as new President Ebrahim Raisi says as a check on the Supreme Leader’s extremism. Trump’s sanctions undermined the reformers, by proving that the U.S. was not a his administration is willing to negotiate. reliable negotiator and by making Iran desperate for international financial outlets. Through its front companies, the Revolutionary Who is Raisi? Raisi, 60, is an ultra-conservative protégé of 82-year-old Ayatollah Guard bought up financial and oil contracts that were used to evade sanctions. The Guard then controlled Iran’s ability to sell oil Ali Khamenei, and a top candidate to succeed him as Supreme under the table, enhancing its own power and status. That paved Leader. His black turban signals that he is a descendant of the the way for an anti-U.S. hard-liner, Raisi, to take the presidency. Prophet Mohammed. A student protester when the Islamic Revolution broke out in 1979, he rose quickly to become a Tehran What has Biden done? prosecutor and served on one of the four-judge panels, known as President Biden is seeking to revive the agreement, promising “full Death Committees, that retried several thousand dissident prisoners and condemned them to execution. Raisi took office in August compliance” from the U.S. if Iran does the same. But he’s also ratcheted up the pressure by imposing new restrictions, blockafter a low-turnout election heavily rigged in his favor, in which ing Iran from using its assets held in reformist candidates were barred from South Korean and Japanese banks running. He immediately took a tough Ramifications of a nuclear Iran to buy Covid vaccines, and pressurline against the U.S., saying at the U.N. If Iran were to become a nuclear state, or even ing the U.K. to halt repayment of old last month that the “U.S. hegemonic hover at threshold status, the entire Middle Iranian debt. At this point, the Iranians system has no credibility” and that East could be destabilized. Some analysts think no longer trust America’s word. And U.S. sanctions against Iran amount to that Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and the chaotic pullout from Afghanistan “crimes against humanity.” the United Arab Emirates, which see Shiite Iran damaged the U.S.’s image as a nation as a dangerous rival, would likely seek nukes if whose military might is to be feared, What are the sanctions? Iran got them. Others argue that this “nuclear and created doubt about its willingness The U.S. has laid various economic domino theory” isn’t plausible, because it to intervene abroad. sanctions on Iran since 1979, when would require the Saudis to defy and even Islamic-radical students overthrew the alienate its U.S. ally, and even Russia would What’s the next step? U.S.-supported shah and took U.S. be hesitant to see a nuclear arms race in the Raisi insists that Iran will resume Embassy workers hostage. At that time, region. There’s no doubt, however, that Israel, multination nuclear talks in Vienna the U.S. froze $12 billion in Iranian which itself has unacknowledged nuclear weap“soon,” but has not given a date. Yet assets. Over the years, the sanctions ons, sees a nuclear Iran as an existential threat with every passing month, the counhave been increased many times by both because of Ayatollah Khamenei’s repeated calls try gets closer to achieving breakout the U.S. and the U.N. Security Council for the annihilation of the Jewish state. Over capability. Some believe Tehran is just to punish Tehran for pursuing nuclear the past decade, Israel has repeatedly sabostalling until it’s capable of building a weapons technology, and by the 2010s, taged Iranian computer systems and assasbomb. “We really don’t have the level the Iranian economy was suffering sinated Iranian nuclear scientists to set back of deterrence we need, whether on the severely. In 2015, desperate to get an the program. But if Iran gets further down the nuclear issue or in the region,” U.S. international ban on selling Iranian oil road this time, Israel may be tempted to prediplomat Dennis Ross told Foreign lifted, the administration of President emptively attack sites where uranium enrichPolicy. “The Iranians are clearly not Hassan Rouhani clinched the Joint ment and bomb development are underway. afraid of us any longer.” Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
THE WEEK October 15, 2021
How far right will Supremes go this term? Donald Ayer
The New York Times
Biden’s agenda on the ballot in Virginia James Hohmann
The Washington Post
How to help Trump return to power Andrew Sullivan
AndrewSullivan .substack.com
Best columns: The U.S. Supreme Court conservatives are embracing the kind of judicial activism conservatives once fought against, said Donald Ayer. As the 2021–22 term begins with abortion, gun rights, religious freedom, and other explosive issues on the docket, the court’s majority seems ready to “cast aside long-established precedents” to significantly reshape the law. Last term, its six Republican-appointed justices oversaw “a number of radical departures from precedent” on issues such as voting rights, union organizing, and religious exemptions from public health rules and discrimination laws. Recently, the court conspicuously “twiddled its thumbs” as Texas enacted an abortion law that deliberately flouts Roe v. Wade, suggesting a majority could overturn Roe altogether in an upcoming case on Mississippi’s law banning abortion after 15 weeks. When I was part of the Reagan administration’s Justice Department, we sought to correct the “judicial meddling” of the liberal Warren Court. But now court conservatives seem eager to throw out decades of settled precedent. No wonder that a recent poll found public approval of the court has plummeted to 40 percent. If justices consistently render decisions that one party wants, Americans will see them as partisans in robes—and they will be right. Virginia’s heated governor’s race is starting to look like “a referendum on Biden’s agenda,” said James Hohmann. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee and the state’s former governor, is locked in a toss-up race with Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin “in a state President Biden carried by 10 points.” McAuliffe has tried to tie his opponent to Donald Trump, but this strategy hasn’t gotten much traction, because Youngkin “comes across as an affable suburban dad” closer in temperament to Mitt Romney than to Trump. Polls show Youngkin is making gains among independent voters, including the “suburban women who historically voted Republican but loathe the ex-president.” Democrats are very worried that polls—which had McAuliffe comfortably ahead months ago—show the race tightening, indicating that many independent voters are unhappy with the Biden presidency. When Youngkin blasted Biden’s handling of Afghanistan and the southern border, McAuliffe “didn’t come to the president’s defense on either issue.” Instead, he distanced himself by criticizing the cost of the $3.5 trillion human infrastructure/social spending bill. It’s been 12 years since Republicans last won a major statewide race in Virginia, and Democratic strategists privately worry a loss there “could be a harbinger of a disastrous midterm cycle.” If Joe Biden and the Democrats can’t stop the mounting influx of migrants at the southern border, said Andrew Sullivan, Donald Trump may win the 2024 election “in a romp.” The hard reality is that “the cold civil war now raging in this country is fueled by rapidly changing demographics,” with the percentage of foreign-born people in the U.S. now higher than at any time in a century. More than a million migrants were intercepted at the border in the first six months of the year, including people from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, and Romania. You need not be a white supremacist touting “Replacement Theory” to believe that enforcing borders “is a core function” of any government. Biden “is in a terrible spot,” with a broken immigration system and far too few immigration courts, judges, and detention centers. But Biden made a major mistake when he ended Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy and began admitting thousands of migrants while they await asylum hearings. That told legions of desperate people it was worth traveling hundreds of miles to try their chances at the border. If Biden doesn’t get control of the chaos, it may enable “an unhinged authoritarian” to return to power.
Viewpoint
“Americans tend to valorize being driven and ambitious, so letting work take over virtually every moment of your life is concerningly easy. I know many people who talk of almost nothing besides their work; who are saying, essentially, ‘I am my job.’ Love and fun are sacrificed for another day of work, in search of a positive internal answer to the question ‘Am I successful yet?’ The great irony is that by trying to be special, we end up turning ourselves into cogs in a machine of our own making. You are not your job, and I am not mine.”
Arthur Brooks in The Atlantic THE WEEK October 15, 2021
It must be true...
I read it in the tabloids Q A Turkish construction worker who was reported missing in a forest ended up joining the search party looking for himself. Beyhan Mutlu, 50, was drinking with his friends when he wandered off into the woods; his wife reported him missing after he didn’t answer cellphone calls. A search party gathered, and when Mutlu saw them, he joined in. But when the searchers started shouting his name into the forest, he became confused, and asked who they were looking for. “I am here,” he told them.
Q A Danish artist who was given $83,000 worth of Danish kroner by a museum to use in an artwork pocketed the cash and submitted two blank canvases titled Take the Money and Run. For an exhibition on labor and money, the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art commissioned artist Jens Haaning to re-create a previous work featuring real bank notes. After submitting the cashless canvases, Haaning explained, “The artwork is that I have taken the money. It’s not theft, it is a breach of contract, and the breach of contract is part of the work.” Q A British man has turned his ability to fart at will into a livelihood as the entertainer Mr. Methane. Paul Oldfield, 55, discovered his superpower as a teen when he realized during yoga he could suck in air on both ends of his body. He travels the world to showcase his unusual talent and is known for performing popular songs by altering the tone and pitch of his farts. One of his most popular parodies is Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.”
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14 NEWS GERMANY
Incompetence that damages democracy Verena Mayer
Süddeutsche Zeitung
SPAIN
Separatists have led our youth astray Eduardo Goligorsky
LibertadDigital.com
Best columns: Europe The chaos at Berlin polling places during last month’s election was inexcusable, said Verena Mayer. Germans are known for running things efficiently. But the capital is undermining that reputation with its chronic municipal mismanagement, which has resulted in a housing crisis, stubborn poverty, and yearslong delays to vital infrastructure projects. During the federal and municipal vote, problems were reported all day, all over the city. “Ballot papers were missing or incorrectly sorted,” and when couriers were sent to fetch more, they got stuck in traffic jams caused by the Berlin Marathon—absurdly held on the same day as the
vote. Some poll workers resorted to photocopying ballots to have something to give out; at least one reportedly asked voters if they wouldn’t mind skipping voting for city races and just mark the federal ballots that were available. The mayhem could well have affected the outcome of the election. Klaus Lederer, a candidate for the Left party, is already demanding a recount for his seat, which he lost by a mere 30 votes. Berlin’s incompetence plays into the hands of conspiracy theorists, who, echoing former U.S. President Donald Trump, spread fake news about election fraud. “It won’t be long before someone claims this election was stolen.”
The violent street parties held in Barcelona and other cities in recent weeks aren’t political events, said Eduardo Goligorsky, but they can still be traced to one particular politician: Carles Puigdemont. Wanted in Spain on charges of rebellion and sedition, the leader of Catalonia’s separatist movement “plays an active role as a model for misguided young people.” Puigdemont fled to Belgium in 2017 after illegally declaring his region to be an independent republic, and since 2019 has served as a member of the European Parliament. The ongoing failure to extradite him to Spain shows Catalan youth “that a traitor to his homeland can violate the law and break the peace
and go unpunished.” They have learned this lesson well. Over the past month, numerous street and beach parties—finally allowed after 18 months of pandemic lockdowns—have degenerated into riots. Vandals have set trash cans ablaze and destroyed public property, and some 40 people have been wounded, many in knife fights between rival gangs. These young hedonists aren’t separatists: They are “devoid of ideology and saturated with liquor.” But Puigdemont fed their “apolitical barbarism” by encouraging roadblocks, occupations, and attacks on federal police stations during the illegal 2017 independence referendum in Catalonia. Lawlessness is now the norm. “What a great role model!”
us to question the officer’s credentials, The murder of Sarah Everard has laid demand to use his radio, or even bare the “inherent misogyny in police cul“dash into the street for the purpose ture,” said Julie Bindel in The Spectator. of ‘waving down a bus.’” The advice Everard was walking to her south London is ludicrous. It suggests that all police home on the evening of March 3 when are suspect and that “it’s fine to ignore she was stopped by Wayne Couzens, an them or run from an arrest, when it is officer with the city’s Metropolitan Police. not.” And how would asking an officer Pretending to be working undercover, to prove his identity help? Couzens was he showed his warrant card and told not an imposter but an actual bad cop, Everard to get in his car, accusing her of one who put a woman in handcuffs breaking Covid lockdown rules. Couzens and then “strangled her with his police drove the 33-year-old marketing worker belt.” Commissioner Dick further says to a wooded area, where he raped and A memorial to Everard in south London she’s stationing 650 more officers in killed her. No one in the Met should have public places to help protect women from potential attackers. Yet been surprised by this gruesome crime. Among his colleagues, the problem is not on the streets, but in precinct buildings. Couzens was notorious for watching violent porn, using drugs, and frequenting prostitutes. He made women officers so uncom“The case for sacking Cressida Dick is compelling,” said Mutaz fortable that he was nicknamed “the Rapist.” And in the weeks Ahmed in The Daily Telegraph. Since becoming Met combefore the killing, Couzens repeatedly flashed the employees at a missioner in 2017, she has presided over a series of scandals, McDonald’s drive-through. His car was identified, but he wasn’t including the violent arrest of peaceful women at a vigil for arrested. Couzens was sentenced last week to life in prison, and Everard and the shocking rise in the use of stop-and-frisk on the Met is trying to pretend he was an aberration. Met CommisBlack men during lockdown. Dick, the first female and first gay sioner Cressida Dick actually dismissed him as “a bad ’un.” Yet Couzens, 48, shared explicit sexual and racist material with fellow Met chief, was hired only because of political correctness, said officers in a WhatsApp group. None of them reported him, which Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday. Of course she should go—and so should the rest of the lot. The police these days are means such behavior was seen as normal. more interested in politics than crime stopping. When they aren’t Now authorities are blaming the victim, said Camilla Long in The “enforcing politically correct speech codes,” they are ticketing people for Covid infractions such as “having picnics.” MeanTimes. A regional police commissioner suggested that Everard while, “vandalism, burglary, car theft, and general disorder should have been more “streetwise” and defied Couzens’ order to get into the car. Then “a bizarre set of instructions” for dealing proceed unhampered.” The Met is unsalvageable. It “should be disbanded and replaced by something entirely new.” with solo police officers appeared on the Met’s website, telling THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Reuters
United Kingdom: The rot in the Metropolitan Police
Best columns: International
NEWS 15
Pandora Papers: Exposing world leaders’ hidden fortunes economic aid, Abdullah was using The biggest leak of offshore financial shell companies to snap up luxury data in history has exposed the “secret homes. Among them is a $23 mildeals and hidden assets of some of lion California oceanview property, the world’s richest and most powerbought in 2017 through a British ful people,” said Simon Goodley in Virgin Islands firm. Abdullah has The Guardian (U.K.). The Pandora done his best to hide these revelaPapers—a trove of 11.9 million files tions. The website of the Internafrom 14 legal and financial services tional Consortium of Investigative firms operating in the British VirJournalists—a group of 150 media gin Islands, Panama, Belize, and outlets in 117 countries that examelsewhere—show how 35 current and ined the papers—has been blocked former world leaders and hundreds in Jordan, and local media has made of public officials in more than 90 no mention of the scandal. At least countries have hidden billions of dolJordan’s King Abdullah II: Secret property magnate 19 Russians are named in the data lars from the public and from tax dump, said Vladimir Vasiliev in IA Krasnaya Vesna (Russia). authorities. They include King Abdullah II of Jordan, who has They include Peter Kolbin, a childhood friend of Putin who the secretly built a “$100 million property empire spanning Malibu, U.S. claims is holding hundreds of millions of dollars for the Washington, and London.” Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, up for re-election this week, is facing questions over why he used president. The Kremlin has shrugged off the report, saying “the a Panamanian investment company to buy a $22 million chateau reliability of the information is questionable.” in the south of France in 2009. “Numerous close associates” of Ignoring the allegations isn’t an option for most of the politicians Russian President Vladimir Putin—including a suspected former named, said Jan Martínez Ahrens and Javier Lafuente in El País girlfriend—appear in the documents. In most cases, the arrange(Spain). The revelations “are particularly earth-shattering in Latin ments aren’t illegal; they are just not transparent. So voters have America,” where about $40 billion a year flows to tax havens. no idea what conflicts of interest their leaders may be hiding. Three sitting heads of state—Chile’s Sebastián Piñera, Ecuador’s Guillermo Lasso, and the Dominican Republic’s Luis Abinader— The Pandora Papers are an especially “embarrassing blow to appear in the Pandora Papers, as do 11 former presidents, along King Abdullah,” said Haaretz (Israel). The Jordanian king has with Brazil’s current economy minister and the president of its tried to portray himself as the devoted father of a struggling nacentral bank. Too many members of the elite “keep a substantial tion, which now has a 25 percent unemployment rate. But the portion of their assets from public scrutiny.” It’s time to let in the leaked documents reveal that even as he was asking Jordanians light—and over the next few months, the details will all come out. to embrace austerity, and for the World Bank to provide more
ALGERIA
Macron has abandoned basic courtesy Hassane Ouali
Liberté
CHINA
Kill a cat to save many humans Yu Meng
Reuters
Global Times
Now we know what the French really think of us, said Hassane Ouali. At an informal meeting last week with the descendants of the Harkis—Muslim Algerians who fought on the French side during Algeria’s 1954–62 war for independence—President Emmanuel Macron was blunt. Algeria, he said, is ruled by a “political-military system” that has rewritten the country’s history as “a discourse of hatred toward France.” Macron even questioned whether an Algerian nation existed before French colonial rule. This diatribe came just two days after France reduced the number of visas available to Algerians, Tunisians, and Moroccans, claiming that
our nations had failed to repatriate citizens found to be in France illegally. Macron’s “radical change of tone” spells the end of cordial relations between our two countries. A “diplomatic and psychological barrier has been crossed,” and the “unspoken crisis” in French-Algerian relations is apparent to all. Already, Algeria has recalled our ambassador from Paris and closed our airspace to French military flights. It’s quite clear that Macron, who is seeking re-election next year, is pandering to a French electorate that has been “made hysterical over the immigration question.” At least until the election, expect “a long and difficult period of tension.”
How dare Westerners criticize China for euthanizing pet cats that test positive for the coronavirus, said Yu Meng. After three house cats owned by a Covid patient in Heilongjiang province were put down last week, Americans on social media “blasted the decision as an act of cruelty.” They claimed that China was overreacting and “fearmongering”—to which we can only say, “Are you serious?” More than 700,000 Americans have died so far of Covid-19, surpassing the toll of the devastating 1918 flu pandemic. This appalling loss of life stems from the U.S.’s lax approach to testing and quarantining, and it means Americans “are in
no position to preach to China about how to treat life.” True, a few Chinese social media users also protested the decision to euthanize the cats. But the vast majority of Chinese—including the pet owner in question—understand that such measures are necessary to keep the disease under control and to protect both human and animal life. And this isn’t a uniquely Chinese policy: domestic cats and dogs in other countries, and even a tiger in a Swedish zoo, have been euthanized after testing positive. China has been a global leader in controlling the pandemic. In the U.S., meanwhile, an animal’s life seems to hold greater value than any human’s. THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Talking points
Noted
Sinema: The Democrats’ sphinx
Q Americans in rural counties are currently dying of Covid at more than double the rate of city dwellers. Low vaccination rates, high rates of spread, and poorer overall health are to blame, say health officials. “We’ve turned many rural communities into kill boxes,” said Alan Morgan of the National Rural Health Association.
needs support from “persuadSen. Kyrsten Sinema has rapable moderates” and some idly become the most disliked Republicans to be re-elected in Democrat in the Senate, said 2024. By “holding the line on Sahil Kapur in NBCNews.com. excessive spending and opposThe enigmatic Arizonan “sits ing repeal of the filibuster,” at the center” of an intraparty Sinema sacrifices some fans on stalemate over President Biden’s the Left to win over indepenagenda, with House progresdents. Her net favorability ratsives refusing to vote on the ing sits at “plus-7.” A bisexual traditional hard infrastructure triathlete with a daring, bill Sinema co-sponsored Sinema: She’d rather not say fashion-forward wardrobe, until she and fellow centrist Sinema idolized the “maverick” ways of fellow Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia support a Arizonan Sen. John McCain, said Mark Barabak larger “human infrastructure”/social spending in the Los Angeles Times. But while McCain was bill to be passed through the reconciliation proconsistent in his traditional conservative views and cess. Sinema attacked progressives last week for hawkish foreign policy, Sinema entered politics as that “stunt,” but despite Biden saying he’s spent a “left-leaning Green Party activist.” So, it’s fair to “tens of hours” speaking with her, she refuses to wonder what she actually believes as she builds a specify exactly what she will and will not accept “contrarian, buck-the-party reputation.” in the social spending bill. By playing games with such important legislation, said Greg Sargent in Being “a sphinx” certainly given Sinema a lot WashingtonPost.com, Sinema is displaying “epic of power and attention, said Maureen Dowd in levels of bad faith.” The social spending bill will provide a New Deal–like expansion of child care, The New York Times. After receiving donations from Big Pharma and private-equity executives, health care, and education for middle-class and poor Americans; if it goes down to defeat, so will she reportedly opposes raising corporate taxes and installing reforms to lower prescription drug Biden and the Democrats. prices—two of the most popular proposals in the Biden human infrastructure bill. But she has Actually, Sinema is handling her tricky “politiremained publicly mum about her demands. cal situation” deftly, said Josh Kraushaar in “What does Kyrsten Sinema want?” It’s the bigNationalJournal.com. Biden won Arizona last gest question in Washington, and she isn’t saying. year “by a single point,” and Sinema knows she
NBCNews.com
Q The group America’s Frontline Doctors, which has aggressively promoted distrust in the Covid-19 vaccine, has generated at least $15 million from tens of thousands of patients paying affiliated doctors for consultations and unproven, potentially dangerous medications, including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. TheIntercept.com
Q The ivory-billed woodpecker was one of 23 plant and animal species that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared extinct last week. Pollution, development of habitats, climate change, and other human activities caused the extinctions, scientists say, with flora and fauna now disappearing at 1,000 times the historical rate. Associated Press
Q Police killings of civilians have been undercounted by more than half over the past four decades, according to a new study by University of Washington researchers. Medical examiners who have attributed many such killings to another cause may be facing pressure “to not classify a death as related to police violence,” said the study’s co-author. The study found Black Americans were 3.5 times as likely as whites to be killed by the police. The New York Times THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Covid: Vaccine mandates are working Employer vaccine mandates “are working,” said Tommy Beer in Forbes.com. When some companies, hospitals, and local governments began requiring workers to get vaccinated or face termination, they were met with warnings of widespread, fierce resistance. Instead, reports nationwide show the mandates have “accomplished their objective of quickly increasing inoculation rates.” In New York City, a mandate for publicschool teachers has propelled vaccination rates to 96 percent. In California, which issued a mandate for health-care workers, rates among the 300,000 workers at the managed-care company Kaiser Permanente soared from 78 percent to 97 percent. United Airlines announced last week that a vaccine requirement has been met by 99.5 percent of its workers; at Tyson Foods, more than 90 percent of workers have been vaccinated weeks ahead of the deadline, up from 50 percent two months ago. The numbers show us something about “the real nature of vaccine resistance,” said Paul Krugman in The New York Times. Most refusers don’t really believe the vaccines are harmful or implanted with microchips. Like people who screamed “tyranny” when seat-belt laws and indoor-smoking bans went into effect, they just don’t like “being asked
to accept what they imagine to be a cost or inconvenience on behalf of the public good.” As soon as “the calculus of self-interest reverses,” they fold. Encouraging vaccination is one thing, said Michael Brendan Dougherty in NationalReview .com, but depriving the unvaccinated of their livelihoods is just another form of liberal cancel culture. By now, widespread vaccination and natural immunity from prior infections should provide ample protection to us all. Avoiding serious illness doesn’t require “your co-workers getting fired.” “The real battle over vaccine mandates might lie ahead,” said Aaron Blake in The Washington Post. Last week Gavin Newsom of California became the nation’s first governor to say he’d mandate vaccines for schoolkids after the FDA gives emergency approval for vaccines for children ages 5–11; sooner or later, a Covid shot will join the required childhood immunization schedule in all states. Vaccine-hesitant parents, however, are even more protective of their kids than of themselves, and a recent Axios/Ipsos poll found that 40 percent of adults said they were unlikely to have their children vaccinated against Covid. When school mandates roll out, “it’s difficult to imagine something stirring more emotions.”
Newscom, Getty
16 NEWS
Talking points Climate: Anxiety and gloom among the young generation, and older generaA growing number of young tions, had, that gave them people are suffering from resilience?” The willingness “climate anxiety,” said Kate of two-fifths of today’s young Yoder in Grist.org, and people to “surrender hope are sinking into a gloomy in the future” is evidence of outlook about the future. a deep spiritual impoverishWith extreme heat, wildment. Throughout history, fires, droughts, storms, and said Bjorn Lomborg in The flooding visible all over the Wall Street Journal, innovaglobe, a recent global survey tion, technological progress, of 10,000 people ages 16 to California wildfire: Is pessimism warranted? and wealth creation have 25 in 10 countries, includ“saved humanity from much greater dangers.” It’s ing the U.S., detected “widespread psychological “what will help us now.” distress” over climate change. Three-quarters of respondents to the poll called the future “frightening,” and 56 percent agreed with the claim that “I can certainly understand” why young people are pessimistic, said Noah Smith in Noahpinion “humanity is doomed.” A startling 39 percent .Substack.com. The world’s chance of fulfilling the said that climate change has made them hesitant Paris Agreement pledge to keep warming down to have children. This “birth strike” isn’t primarily driven by fears of adding to humanity’s carbon to 1.5 degrees centigrade now looks “very slim footprint, said Liza Featherstone in NewRepublic indeed,” and most Americans polled in 2019 by .com. Young people in both rich and poor nations The Washington Post opposed climate-change proposals that would raise their taxes or costs. But “just don’t want to inflict the climate crisis on “even if the public doesn’t take the climate probtheir kids.” That’s “a sign of pain and distress— lem seriously enough, scientists and engineers do.” and a call for help.” Their rapid development of cheap solar, wind, “What has happened to us?” asked Rod Dreher in and other green energy sources is starting to make decarbonization both possible and “an attractive TheAmericanConservative.com. Previous generaeconomic prospect.” So let’s not succumb to pestions faced existential threats such as two world simism and despair. “Climate change is beatable,” wars, the Depression, and the nuclear standoff of and in coming decades, human ingenuity and the Cold War, but they started families anyway. “What have we lost that the people of my father’s determination can—and will—save our planet.
National divorce: Should red and blue split?
AP
Americans are so bitterly divided that many are “willing to break up the country,” said Henry Olsen in The Washington Post. A new poll by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics found that 41 percent of Biden voters and 52 percent of Trump voters believe their political opponents are so dangerous that blue or red states should secede from the union “to form their own country.” The poll found that Americans in both parties have come to “view the other party with fear and contempt.” The idea of a “national divorce” in which the U.S. would be split into a freedom-loving heartland and a bicoastal progressive utopia—already being proposed in the MAGA-friendly Claremont Institute—may seem far-fetched. But history has shown that countries can break apart “if enough people want it.” “It’s a fantasy that could never work,” said Karol Markowicz in The New York Post. Think of the millions of conservative voters in blue states; in New York, Trump won 3.2 million votes in 2020—more than five times the number of people living in deep-red Wyoming. Would conservatives “surrender” these people in the divorce, or do they move elsewhere? Who would get swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wiscon-
sin? And would red states like Florida and Texas, worried about an influx of Democrats seeking warmer weather and lower taxes, “give ideological tests before letting someone in?” Some progressives may be happy to let conservatives go, but “count me out,” said Ed Kilgore in NYMag. com. It would hardly be safe to live next to “a carbon-mad country” devoted to denying climate change. And I could never accept “the accelerated subjugation of women and people of color in a new, adjacent Red America.” With “a whiff of civil war in the air,” Americans need a reality check, said David French in The Dispatch.com. Our divisions are not as deep as we might believe. The University of Virginia poll, for example, revealed that most Trump voters support most aspects of Biden’s human infrastructure plan. The real problem is the “malice and misinformation” perpetrated by social media and partisan websites and networks, which leave wellmeaning Americans believing they have nothing in common with the other tribe and that people who disagree with them are hellbent on stealing elections and destroying the country. “American radicalism has now filtered down into the ranks of the ‘normal’ folks.”
NEWS 17 Wit & Wisdom “It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another—it’s one damn thing over and over.” Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, quoted in The Washington Post
“The great do not stay great, nor do the small stay small.” Bertolt Brecht, quoted in Project-Syndicate.org
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Hunter S. Thompson, quoted in the Newport, R.I., Daily News
“The human imagination cannot be programmed by a computer. Our imagination is our greatest hope for survival.” Artist Keith Haring, quoted in Artsy.net
“All progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.” Novelist Samuel Butler, quoted in Lapham’s Quarterly
“If one sticks too rigidly to one’s principles, one would hardly see anybody.” Agatha Christie, quoted in INews.co.uk
“Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer relevant.” French Prime Minister Henri Queuille, quoted in the Montreal Gazette
Poll watch Q 43% of Americans said they worry about climate change “a great deal.” But 57% do not think it will pose a serious threat in their lifetime. Gallup
Q 34% of Americans said “it might be better to do away with the Supreme Court altogether” if it makes rulings that “most Americans disagreed with.” 38% said that if the court overturns popular laws, Congress should bar the court from further rulings on that issue. Annenberg Public Policy Center THE WEEK October 15, 2021
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THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Pick of the week’s cartoons
For more political cartoons, visit: www.theweek.com/cartoons.
Pick of the week’s cartoons
NEWS 19
THE WEEK October 15, 2021
20 NEWS
Technology
Siri: Will Apple ever really understand us? on having Siri push its other prod“Happy birthday to Siri,” said ucts. “Apple uses Siri to herd people William Gallagher in AppleInsider back to its own inferior apps like a .com. As of this month, Apple’s shepherd directing sheep off a cliff voice assistant has been listening face.” When I ask for directions, Siri to us—and frustrating us—for a prompts me to reinstall Apple Maps, decade. When Apple unveiled Siri in and when I try to send an email (I October 2011, executives bragged use Outlook instead of Apple’s mail that they’d turned the science-fiction program), all I get is an “I can’t do dream of simply talking to machines that.” Siri can still be your go-to into reality. “The more you know voice assistant, said Jennifer Pattison about voice recognition, or even just Tuohy, also in TheVerge.com, just the more you think about it, the more as long as you know its strengths incredible Siri is today.” Siri has to and limitations. On the iPhone, Siri’s take what you say, send it around the Siri can be supremely useful—or utterly perplexing. “lagginess is legendary.” But use it to world to Apple’s servers, interpret it, control your home devices—lights, television, speakers—and its and send an answer back, in just a fraction of a second. If only “snappiness will floor you.” it could do it more consistently. “Ask Siri on your Apple Watch to set an alarm for 6 p.m., and it will commonly complain, sayWhatever you think of Siri, there’s one big group whose lives ing that there isn’t an alarm for 6 p.m.” Which is why you are trying to set one in the first place, isn’t it? If Apple just fixed the have been truly transformed by voice assistants, said Abrar AlHeeti in CNET.com: people living with disabilities who can’t little things, this marvel of technology would be so much better. easily get around or use a keyboard and screen. The actor Susan Bennett was the original voice of Siri. The big surprise for her The glitches are just the start of it, said James Vincent in The Verge.com. When Apple arrived a decade ago, it had an unbeat- when she revealed herself in 2013 was the “tons of mail from people who were blind or had other disabilities saying they used able “wow factor.” Since then, though, it’s been matched or beaten repeatedly. Siri is “inferior to Google Assistant on mobile Siri all the time.” Apple replaced Bennett’s voice in 2013, but you can still hear it now in public-service ads advocating for and outmaneuvered by Amazon’s Alexa in the home.” Meangreater web access for the disabled. while, as it squandered its first-mover advantage, Apple insisted
Bytes: What’s new in tech Bing can’t catch a break
An 11-foot-tall 3D printer is creating a new village from scratch in Mexico, said Debra Kamin in The New York Times. Like other 3D printers, the Vulcan II from Austin-based construction technology company Icon “builds objects layer by layer from a digital file.” In this case, a massive printer pours “lavacrete, a proprietary concrete mix,” in long swirls one after another, “like a massive softserve ice cream cone.” Controlled by a tablet or smartphone, the printer can complete a home with “two bedrooms, a finished kitchen and bath, and indoor plumbing” in less than 24 hours. In the southeastern Mexican state of Tabasco, where about half the residents live in poverty, the Vulcan II has now printed 10 new homes on site. THE WEEK October 15, 2021
It’s hard to escape the power of Google, said Mitchell Clark in TheVerge.com—even on Bing. According to the search-engine analytics firm Ahrefs, the most-searched term “by far” on the Microsoft-owned Bing is “Google.” Google referenced the data in its effort to get a $5 billion antitrust fine from the European Union overturned, saying it was evidence that “people use Google by choice, not force.” Because Bing is the default search engine on Microsoft browsers, typing “Google” into the search bar will take you to Bing’s search results page. Many people then get to Google by clicking on Bing’s first link. Googleowned YouTube and Gmail also make Bing’s top five. Perhaps even more surprising: The No. 7 search term on Bing is...Bing.
The worst risks of ransomware A newborn in Alabama may be the first person in the U.S known to have died as a result of a ransomware attack, said Kevin Poulsen in The Wall Street Journal. Teiranni Kidd is suing Springhill Medical Center following the death of her daughter, Nicko Silar, nine months after she was born unresponsive in 2019 “with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.” The condition usually
“triggers warning signs on the heart monitor when the squeezed cord cuts off the supply of blood and oxygen to the fetus.” But when Kidd was admitted, Springhill was in the midst of a ransomware attack that had knocked out computer systems, including the real-time reading of vital signs on a large monitor at the nurses’ station. Because of the chaos created by the hack, “fewer eyes” were on the bedside fetal heart monitor that “spooled out paper” showing the fetus was in distress.
YouTube culls anti-vax channels YouTube took down channels of prominent anti-vaccine activists, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., last week as it expanded a ban on Covid misinformation to cover other vaccines, said Gerrit De Vynck in The Washington Post. Vice president of global trust and safety Matt Halprin said the company decided on the move after “it noticed that incorrect claims about other vaccines were contributing to fears about the coronavirus vaccines.” Misinformation researchers have criticized YouTube for years for hosting popular anti-vaccine content and “contributing to growing skepticism of lifesaving vaccines,” such as those for measles and chicken pox.
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Innovation of the week
Health & Science
NEWS 21
Fossilized footprints of the first Americans A new study of fossilized footprints found in New Mexico indicates that humans were living in North America some 23,000 years ago—millennia earlier than most scientists once believed. Researchers have long debated when humans first arrived in the Americas after spreading out from Africa and Asia. Many believe the first Americans’ ancestors migrated as recently as 13,000 years ago, by crossing a now submerged land bridge that connected Siberia to Alaska during the last ice age. Others say they arrived about 16,000 years ago, or even up to 30,000 years ago, though there is little evidence in the fossil record to support such claims. But the
Dueling giraffes: Honor among combatants
Giraffes like a fair fight
AP, Alamy, ESO
When male giraffes battle over territory or mating rights, things get nasty fast. The animals batter each other with their long necks and slash and stab—often fatally—with the hornlike ossicones on their heads. But new research shows that when giraffes spar as a way of establishing social hierarchies, they adhere to a strict code of ethics much like that of boxing. The bigger ones don’t pick on smaller rivals. Each giraffe has a preference as to whether it swings its neck left (southpaw) or right (orthodox), and they position themselves during sparring so that neither fighter has an advantage: For southpaw vs. orthodox they go head-to-head; for two of the same it’s head-to-tail. Sometimes older males even act as referees, stepping in to separate the youngsters—though they may just be trying to consolidate their own social standing. The authors note that their study covered only a small number of giraffes, at the Mogalakwena River Reserve in South Africa. “I can’t speak for all giraffes,” study author Jessica Granweiler, from the University of Manchester, tells The Times (U.K.). “Maybe there is more respect in my population because they see each other quite often.”
Coronavirus and air travel With a few simple policy changes, commercial airlines could better protect their pas-
new footprints, preserved in an ancient lakeshore in what is now the arid White Sands National Park, show that humans were living in the American Southwest at a time when colossal ice sheets would have blocked the path of migrants from Asia. “A footprint is a really good, unequivocal data point,” lead author Matthew Bennett, from Bournemouth University in the U.K., tells NBCNews.com. “That’s the importance of this site—we know they were there.” Precisely dating fossilized footprints is exceptionally difficult, but these 61 trackways were interlayered with sediment containing the seeds of plants that once grew along the lake. Radiocarbon dating of
sengers from catching Covid, new studies have found. Thanks in part to highly effective ventilation systems, the chances of viral spread aboard planes remains low. But the risks go up when passengers take off their masks and tuck into in-flight meals. A team at the University of Greenwich in London modeled aerosol dispersion in aircraft and found a 59 percent higher risk of viral transmission during a one-hour meal service on a 12-hour flight compared with staying masked the whole journey. The researchers suggest a possible remedy: staggering meal service so that one passenger eats while the person in the next seat stays masked. For now, reports The Wall Street Journal, airlines say they’re sticking with traditional meal-service patterns. Other research has shown that transmission risk is higher during boarding and deplaning, rather than when the plane is in the air. That’s because people cluster together and breathe on one another when they’re hauling bags in and out of overhead bins. Limiting the amount of carry-on baggage would reduce transmission risk by about 75 percent.
Traces of steps taken 23,000 years ago
the seeds revealed that the footprints were 21,000 to 23,000 years old. The researchers determined that the prints belonged mostly to children and teenagers, who would have walked among mammoths, giant sloths, and camels on the lakeshore.
Covid-like virus found in Laos Researchers have discovered three viruses in bats in Laos more closely related to the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, than any known viruses, reports Scientific American. The finding, which hasn’t yet been peerreviewed, lends weight to the argument that the virus behind Covid-19 originated naturally rather than being created in a Chinese laboratory. But it also highlights the danger of other coronaviruses crossing over to humans: The new viruses contain the same binding structure that allows SARS-CoV-2 to enter human cells. For the study, the researchers took saliva, feces, and urine samples from 645 bats in northern Laos. In three horseshoe bat species they found viruses that are more than 95 percent identical to SARS-CoV-2. When the scientists tested how well these newly discovered viruses could bind to human cells, they found that the germs were as efficient as early strains of SARS-CoV-2. David Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow in the U.K., calls the findings “fascinating, and quite terrifying.”
after modeling the GW Ori system in much greater detail, the best explanation Astronomers say they have is indeed a new planet—one found the first planet to as gassy and massive as orbit three stars at the same Jupiter. Some astronomers time, reports The New aren’t convinced: They think York Times. GW Ori, a star the gap in the disk was system 1,300 light-years caused by the stars rather from Earth, is surrounded than a planet. But if the by a massive disk of dust theory is confirmed, it would and gas, something that suggest that exoplanets will typically happens when form in circumstances sciplanets are developing. entists previously thought to And the disk is split in two, be almost impossible. “What with the outer ring tilted we’ve learned,” says Sean GW Ori: Unusual rings at a different angle to the Raymond, an astronomer inner ring—unusual features that scienfrom the University of Bordeaux, who tists haven’t yet been able to explain. In wasn’t involved in the study, “is any time the new study, the researchers say that planets can form, they do.”
A planet with three stars?
THE WEEK October 15, 2021
ARTS Review of reviews: Books across as “incredibly well-constructed pieces moved through the novel’s equally wellconstructed world.” Granted, Franzen has said that Crossroads is just the first novel in a planned trilogy, “but what to make of the presumption that the reader will keep returning to a project that hasn’t yet shown it knows how or where to land?”
Book of the week Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30)
Put aside whatever baggage you might bring to a new Jonathan Franzen novel, said Laura Miller in Slate.com. Crossroads, Franzen’s “superb” new tale about another middle-class American family, affirms that the award-winning author of The Corrections is capable of greatness. Stripped of the “showy writing” and “curmudgeonly social commentary” that have marred Franzen’s two most recent efforts, Crossroads lets its characters pull us in and carry us along. In 1971 suburban Chicago, each member of the Hildebrandt family is presented at some point in the novel with a dark bargain. Will Russ, the assistant minister at a Presbyterian church, cheat with a parishioner? Will Russ’ wife, Marion, forgive herself for a past affair of her own? Three of their children also take turns at center stage, and the power of this enveloping novel “resides in how uncannily real, how fully imagined these people feel.”
Novel of the week Bewilderment
Faith, family, and so many hidden flaws
“Franzen’s breadth remains extraordinary,” said Lynn Steger Strong in the Los Angeles Times. Across this novel’s 592 pages, “the world he builds is lush and complicated, immersive and alive.” But he has a tendency to move at too stately a pace. “One wonders, Why these seven good-to-great sentences, when one or two sharper ones could have held them all?” A little past the halfway mark, the plot picks up, and “my skin got that proper prickle.” Still, by the final pages it “felt like the story was just barely getting off the ground,” while the characters, far from seeming fully human, come
The Family Roe: An American Story by Joshua Prager (Norton, $35)
by Richard Powers (Norton, $28) Richard Powers’ first novel since 2018’s Pulitzer-winning The Overstory is “a smaller, less complex book,” said Heller McAlpin in NPR.org. Rather than spanning centuries, Bewilderment focuses on a widowed father and 9-year-old son who are both uneasy with the world and who take camping trips to seek solace. The boy, who has anger issues, soon will begin an experimental form of neurobiological therapy. But he and his father are also both deeply troubled by society’s failure to address the gathering climate crisis. After all, “it wouldn’t be a Powers novel if it didn’t sound the alarm for necessary change.” Unlike certain other Powers novels, this one has “a raw, resonant core,” said Ian Battaglia in the Chicago Review of Books. How does a parent guide a child past grief without changing something fundamental inside? Beneath some “clumsy writing” and some questionable plotting choices that transform the boy’s journey through therapy into a national story, that intimate drama never fully disappears. Unfortunately, “it’s spread too thin and buried too deep to be worthwhile.” THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Joshua Prager’s latest book may make you see Roe v. Wade in a whole new way, said Mindy Jane Roseman in The Washington Post. “Through rigorous reporting and sensitive portrayals,” the former Wall Street Journal writer casts new light on the leading figures in the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case. At the story’s heart is Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff known as “Jane Roe.” Far from an ideal flagbearer for the pro-choice cause, the poor, undereducated Texan lied about how she became pregnant in 1969 and never took much interest in other women’s reproductive rights. Later in life, she even joined the anti-abortion cause. But the daughter she delivered in 1970 because she was unable to obtain an abortion inspired Prager to view McCorvey as part of a longer, more instructive story. “Prager got an astonishing array of people
“Look, even a so-so Jonathan Franzen novel is better than most novels,” said Molly Young in NYMag.com. Crossroads has two half-loony central characters, and they’re memorable. Unfortunately, the other three are “boring in exactly the same way: stubborn, narrow, flummoxed, risk averse.” What’s more, in this Franzen novel, “the ratio of breathtaking to inert sentences is not favorable.” But readers face a dilemma here: If they skip Crossroads, they may well spend the next 20 years “wandering in a Franzen-less desert” while his more faithful readers get to move on with him into the trilogy’s later volumes and discover whether he can produce at least one more novel as grand as his ambitions. “Even when Franzen misses, he takes a big swing—and not a lot of other novelists can say the same.” to talk to him,” said Margaret Talbot in The New Yorker. The son of the Dallas district attorney who defended Texas law in the original trial reveals that his father was pro-choice himself. Linda Coffee, the attorney who filed McCorvey’s suit, was living on food-bank provisions when Prager sat with her. “The book is most compelling, though, when it’s relating the personal saga of a woman and her family caught in the gears of history.” McCorvey was, when she turned to Coffee for help, a broke, divorced, gay 22-year-old who was carrying the child of a married man. She had three daughters, each put up for adoption, and Prager befriended them all. Each has lived an up-and-down working-class life. Notably, all three are pro-choice. No one should pick up The Family Roe expecting simple affirmation of their abortion views, said Anand Giridharadas in The New York Times. “If you want an honest glimpse into the American soul,” however, Prager’s reporting can provide it. Though he gives too much space to some secondary characters, another writer wouldn’t have discovered that both McCorvey’s mother and grandmother had unplanned pregnancies. More to the point, he has tied those stories into “a sweeping, century-deep case for women’s sovereignty over themselves.”
Alamy
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The Book List Best books…chosen by Susan Orlean New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean is the best-selling author of The Orchid Thief and 2018’s The Library Book. Her newest work of nonfiction, On Animals, gathers 16 stories and essays, and inspired her to recommend six other books for animal lovers. Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry (1947). Marguerite Henry’s children’s book about two kids living on an island alongside the Chincoteague wild ponies is probably responsible for my passion for animals, and horses in particular. The story was written more than 70 years ago but it’s absolutely timeless. My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerley (1956). Another older book that has aged gracefully, this memoir is about resisting, and then completely surrendering to, the love of a dog. There are aspects of the book that are very sad, and some that are a bit strange, but it stands as one of the models for writing about the human-animal relationship. Unlikely Friendships by Jennifer Holland (2011). I originally bought this book, subtitled 47 Remarkable Stories From the Animal Kingdom, to read to my son. But soon I was enthralled as well. All of its stories are about cross-species relationships, and it’s just wonderful. H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (2014). In this gorgeous memoir, Helen Macdonald, a
naturalist and falconer, describes making peace with the grief of losing her father while she trains a young goshawk. The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery (2015). This is the only one of these books that completely changed my attitude toward a species. In this case, I went from being neutral about octopuses to being awed by them and their remarkable, sophisticated intelligence. I never imagined I would feel so moved by an eight-legged creature! Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851). I had to save the best for last, of course. Also, it seemed only fair to save the book that is the counterexample to the rest of the list; it doesn’t celebrate animals and it doesn’t marvel at our relationship to them. It rages madly against them, or at least against the ultimate antagonist, the dread white whale Moby Dick. All the while, it confirms the potency of our connection to animals. Whether we fear them, eat them, train them, or dream about them, they’re central to our lives.
Gasper Tringale, AP
Also of interest...in medical marvels The Sleeping Beauties
Pump
by Suzanne O’Sullivan (Pantheon, $28)
by Bill Schutt (Algonquin, $27)
Think of Suzanne O’Sullivan as “a globe-trotting disease detective,” said Emily Eakin in The New York Times. In her “fascinating” new book, the Irish neurologist hops from Colombia to Sweden to Kazakhstan to examine illness outbreaks that she suspects are more rooted in sociopsychology than local doctors can see. All illness has a psychosocial element, she argues, with a “sleeping sickness” her prime example. Though she can’t prove certain of her hypotheses, “O’Sullivan’s logic is, well, infectious.”
A natural history of the heart “might seem a forbidding premise for a book,” said John Ross in The Wall Street Journal. Fortunately, zoologist Bill Schutt “turns it into surprising entertainment,” mixing dad jokes in with the science as he surveys the many cardiovascular systems nature has devised. He can explain why squid have three hearts and why insects have none, and “he is at his most engaging when discussing the weird and spendthrift ingenuity of evolution.”
You Bet Your Life
The Genetic Lottery
by Paul A. Offit (Basic, $28)
by Kathryn Paige Harden (Princeton, $30)
Paul Offit’s new history of medical progress “couldn’t be more timely,” said Hannah Wunsch in Nature.com. Offit, a vaccine expert, highlights how often how the road to a life-enhancing breakthrough has been strewn with mistakes and casualties. Whether his focus is surgical anesthesia, heart transplants, or chemotherapy, “the stories are riveting and filled with fascinating details.” When he reaches his specialty, he stresses that many lives have been lost because people hesitated to accept safe, effective vaccines. “Sadly, medical history is repeating itself.”
This provocative new book “risks leaving the reader dangerously confused,” said Brenna Henn in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Kathryn Paige Harden is a behavioral geneticist and avowed liberal who argues that cutting-edge research is revealing that random genetic variations correlate meaningfully with differences in individual educational and career attainment. Though she dreams of a world in which we recognize such luck of the genetic draw and yet work to equalize individual outcomes, she makes genes seem to matter more than they do.
ARTS 23 Author of the week Wole Soyinka When you’re reading Wole Soyinka’s first novel in nearly 50 years, said Neil Munshi in the Financial Times, “it’s hard to miss the fact that the old man is having a blast.” From its facetious title to its last page, Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth is a whodunit that doubles as a devastatingly satirical portrait of his native Nigeria today. The corruption and ethnic-religious violence that the 1986 Nobel laureate sees everywhere dishearten him, and he has populated the novel with monstrous leaders who are barely disguised versions of those in the news. He hopes the book helps at least one or two recognize, he says, “how much I despise them.” But Soyinka doesn’t place all blame on Nigeria’s rulers. “It is meant,” he says, “to indict us also, the governed, as a people who have jettisoned the humane values that that same society impressed on my upbringing.” You might wonder why the 87-year-old playwright and poet doesn’t leave Nigeria while he can, said Ruth Maclean in The New York Times. He has fled several times before, when his activism put him in danger, and once was charged with treason in his absence. But ever since returning from exile in 1998, he’s been hard to uproot for long from his sanctuary-like house in his hometown. One day, he hopes, he will even be able to stay quiet, and let younger people take the lead, when injustices arise. “I know, I know,” he says. “I’ve announced a number of times I’m withdrawing from public life. And I meant it! For about 24 hours. I’m never going to say it again. I’m just going to sneak out quietly—and nobody will see me again. You wait.” THE WEEK October 15, 2021
24 ARTS
Review of reviews: Art & Music
Exhibit of the week
ing regimen of pills and was later accused of harassment. To see such harsh details included in a major display “feels significant, adding to the sea change of how American culture treats these narratives.” At a time when the Academy’s signature event, the Oscars, is under fire for being insufficiently inclusive, the museum provides the Academy with something “it could sorely use”: a new platform from which to broadcast more modern values.
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Los Angeles
Brandi Carlile
Billy Strings
Nao
In These Silent Days
Renewal
And Then Life Was Beautiful
++++
++++
++++
Brandi Carlile has been busy, said Ben Salmon in PasteMagazine.com. Since she released 2018’s By the Way, I Forgive You—a breakthrough album that won three Grammy Awards and ventured beyond country into “symphonic” pop and rock—the singersongwriter co-founded the Highwomen, wrote a best-selling memoir, and just last week, at 40, won Artist of the Year at the 2021 Americana Awards. Carlile’s seventh album “reins in the grandeur a bit, but still manages to wring big moments out of a leaner sound.” Joni Mitchell’s influence “looms large,” especially on the strummy “You and Me on the Rock,” said Jon Freeman in Rolling Stone. These 10 tracks “don’t always reach bone the way Carlile’s best work can.” Mostly, she’s offering “subtle refinements of the strengths, particularly as a vocalist, that led to her breakout.” Her lyrics hit home “when she leads with empathy and self-awareness,” though. The spare closing track, for one, ends with “the kind of vulnerable, complicated statement that has made her such a relatable artist.”
In the world of bluegrass, “Billy Strings is an unparalleled talent,” said Matt Ruppert in NoDepression.com. On his third album, the 28-year-old guitarist, who won a 2021 Grammy for his previous record, “continues to show the direction bluegrass can go, offering multiple paths full of promise, beauty, and explosive joy.” Fans already know that Strings brings jam-band energy to his live shows, and this collection of 16 songs displays touches of psychedelia and indie rock as the band—banjo, mandolin, bass, and Strings’ guitar—remains anchored in bluegrass tradition. “The songs themselves, built around Strings’ yearning vocals, stand up to and even match the exploratory music.” Strings wasn’t supposed to make it this far, said Marisa Whitaker in Spin.com. Raised among addicts in small-town Michigan, he quit high school at 14 but pulled himself together. Today, “few people in music can pluck strings like Strings; his fingers are like cheetahs sprinting up and down the neck of his guitar with the appetite of a forest fire.”
“Nao’s voice glows even in her darkest moments, radiant as a sparkle of fireflies,” said Dylan Green in Pitchfork.com. Across two previous albums, the 33-year-old Grammy-nominated British R&B singer “has channeled love and affection in nearly all its forms,” including every stage of romance. Her new album delivers more of the same, but with new confidence and fewer synthesized beats. “At its best, Beautiful is a kaleidoscopic testament to the pains and pleasures of love,” one that explores “a bolder sonic palette.” The warmer, more organic music complements “the appealing weightless quality of Nao’s voice,” said Alexis Petridis in TheGuardian. com. There’s “something otherworldly about her unaffected high tone,” and its frequent pairing here with fuzzed-out guitar “lends the whole album a hazily sunny early-autumn feel.” Often Nao sounds grateful for just being where she is, yet “the mood never feels trite.” In fact, “it would take a pretty flinty character not to come away feeling buoyed.”
THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Getty
“The conversation about Hollywood history in all its complexity is officially on,” said Rebecca Keegan in The Hollywood Reporter. For nearly a century, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has dreamed of opening a museum devoted to moviemaking, and after decades of false starts and The curators were “unimpeachsetbacks, a $484 million shrine to ably shrewd” when they decided to the cinematic arts has finally rolled A visitor studies the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. honor directors Spike Lee, Pedro out its carpet. Designed by star Almodóvar, and Hayao Miyazaki architect Renzo Piano, the museum “Perhaps the biggest trick the Academy with stand-alone exhibitions, said Justin repurposes downtown Los Angeles’ conMuseum pulls off is that it is not overly Chang in the Los Angeles Times. Elsewhere, verted May department store building and nostalgic for cinema’s past,” said Jackie Citizen Kane is presented in conversation pairs it with a new giant glass orb that Mansky in Smithsonian. Wherever you with Patricia Cardoso’s underappreciated houses a 1,000-seat theater. The gestation look, there’s evidence of a determination to 2002 indie drama, Real Women Have period was lengthy in part because the confront troublesome aspects of moviemak- Curves—“a playful yet pointed juxtamuseum “has had to tread between entering history. An exhibit on hair, makeup, position meant to turn our sense of the tainment and scholarship in a way that American film canon on its head.” Clearly, most museums don’t.” Many of the exhibi- and costumes showcases the bathrobe Jeff Bridges wore in The Big Lebowski, but also the Academy Museum “isn’t afraid to be tions aim squarely at the average movie80-year-old tins of pancake makeup labeled smarter than the Oscars,” which bodes goer: The giant shark from Jaws greets “Minstrel” and “Chinese.” The gallery well for its future. “The more it grapples visitors in the atrium, for example, while with the imperfect legacy of the institution the third floor is full of recognizable props, dedicated to The Wizard of Oz showcases it represents, the more genuinely insightincluding E.T. the Extra-terrestrial. “At the Dorothy’s ruby slippers but also displays text reporting that studio chief Louis B. ful about the greatness of this still-young same time, there are deep cuts for serious Mayer kept star Judy Garland on a punish- medium it will become.” students of cinema.”
Review of reviews: Film & Stage No Time to Die Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (PG-13)
++++ A fond farewell to another James Bond
Titane Directed by Julia Ducournau (R)
++++ A merging of woman and machine
ARTS 25
retired in Jamaica and about to “Welcome back, Mr. Bond. This be coaxed into helping recover is your most important mission a stolen bioweapon from Rami yet,” said Jill Lawless in the Malek’s “rather anodyne” Associated Press. Or maybe it evildoer. The women around only feels as if the new James Bond are finally professional Bond adventure is the movie co-equals, with Lashana Lynch that Hollywood is depending stepping in as the agent who’s upon to lure viewers of all ages inherited the 007 number and back to theaters for good. “A protracted but pacey thriller Craig and de Armas sample the martinis. Ana de Armas dazzling in a too-brief appearance as a new with a plot that twists like a but hypercompetent CIA officer. Eventually, unfordouble helix,” No Time to Die covers the Bond tunately, this 165-minute Bond outing “bends the bases: dazzling locales, gorgeous women, cool yet world of the character into something unrecogniz“faintly ridiculous” technology, and a villain who ably sodden,” said Richard Lawson in VanityFair prowls “a lair that Dr. No would be proud of.” Because this 25th Bond film also caps Daniel Craig’s .com. After its limber first half, the film bogs down in regrets and existential anxiety. But the ending successful 15-year run in the title role, said Jessica feels perfect for Craig’s Bond—the greatest Bond Kiang in the Los Angeles Times, “it’s more about ever, said Stephanie Zacharek in Time. The film’s aging than about Aston Martins with headlampfinale, “a whirlpool of romantic tragedy so intense mounted machine guns, though it has those too.” it could be opera,” sends Craig’s Bond off with such After a flashback that explains why Bond has split grandeur “that the movie’s flaws fall away.” from Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann, we find him singular vision of lives and bodJulia Ducournau’s new arties in transition.” Titane is “so house horror film “should have self-consciously transgressive,” cinemas thinking about flavorthough, that it’s hard to know ing their popcorn with smelling who it’s for, said Ann Hornaday salts,” said Phil de Semlyen in The Washington Post. Alexia, in TimeOut.com. The French having been impregnated by the director, whose cannibalism car, “suffers grotesque physidrama, Raw, caused faintcal changes” while also forging ing spells, has doubled down an odd bond with an older with her Palme d’Or–winning Rousselle: Driven to extremes firefighter. In the end, the film sophomore film. Newcomer “shapeshifts into a modern fable about how badly Agathe Rousselle is “astonishing” in the lead role: people just need someone to take care of them,” said a car show dancer named Alexia who has had a David Ehrlich in IndieWire.com. Whatever your titanium plate since childhood. Early on, she has mileage, “there’s no denying that Titane is the work sex with a Cadillac and begins a killing spree. The rest is an “occasionally baffling” but “always wildly of a demented visionary.” (In theaters only)
Fire Shut Up in My Bones
MGM/Everett, Neon/Everett, Sara Krulwich/The New York Times/Redux
The Metropolitan Opera, New York City ++++ Opera in America has just experienced a watershed moment, said Michael Andor Brodeur in The Washington Post. Last week, for the first time, an opera written by a Black composer was performed by the country’s premiere opera company, and that two-and-a-half-hour piece turned out to be “a vital work of art” that “feels like a starting point for something new.” Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones was met on opening night with thunderous ovations, none louder than when a dozen Black performers dressed like fraternity brothers opened the third act with a rousing step dance. At the Met, the storied dance tradition “felt anything but traditional,” but kicked open the door to a potential new era of innovation. “I cannot emphasize how unforgettable an experience this was,” said David Salazar in OperaWire.com. I doubt even Maria Callas
but his story doesn’t ask us to applaud a quest for vengeance. Instead, it calls into question a masculine ideal that’s as prevalent in opera as in American culture, and Kasi Lemmons’ “nuanced” libretto reminds us how fruitless violence can be.
Latonia Moore, with two versions of Charles
ever earned a showstopping ovation at the Met, and this one showed that opera audiences crave surprise. But Fire is more than a trailblazer; “in my mind, it is a masterpiece.” Based on a memoir by journalist Charles Blow, the opera opens with its enraged protagonist waving a gun. Blow was sexually abused as a boy in Louisiana,
Blanchard’s music, despite its jazz colorings, isn’t revolutionary, said Justin Davidson in NYMag.com. A jazz trumpeter and veteran film composer, he has written “an old-fashioned opera opera,” making full use of the form’s proven excitements: “voices rising on thermals of melody” and “lush chords seasoned with piquant sevenths and ninths.” His brassy orchestral writing sometimes drowns out the singers, but he “knows how to hold an audience’s attention.” For all its newsworthiness, Fire doesn’t break much china. Instead, it “makes a persuasive case for the endurance of an old-fashioned genre.” THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Movies on TV Great feats in personal filmmaking...
Nuclear Family Born in 1981 to lesbian parents, Ry Russo-Young grew up in a loving household that even made room for her sperm-donor father—until he sued for custody rights. Russo-Young’s new threepart series, which uses video she shot as a child, relives the rupture while celebrating the resiliency of family love. HBO Max
Time Fox Rich’s husband, Rob, was sentenced to 60 years in prison after the couple foolishly attempted a bank robbery in 1997. The home movies she made for him as she raised their sons become the heart of this 2020 film about a marathon quest for redemption. Amazon Prime
Stories We Tell Actress Sarah Polley learned young that she was possibly the product of an affair her late mother had had while raising four other children. In this powerful 2012 film, Polley put most of the family on camera to untangle the mystery. Amazon Prime
Tarnation Jonathan Caouette’s film about life with his mentally ill mother was made with old video clips and just $200. It wowed 2004 festival audiences and remains a heartbreaking look at one man’s attempt to save the people he can. Kanopy
Shirkers Sandi Tan was only 19 when she shot an ambitious feature film about a road trip across Singapore. But then her mentor vanished with all the footage. Years later, it returns to her, with the sound lost, and she weaves it into an engrossing tale of dreams deferred. Netflix
Television The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching Chucky A season of horror movie remakes and sequels gets underway with the return of the foulmouthed murderous doll of the Child’s Play franchise. Chucky begins a new life chapter when Jake, a lonely 14-year-old, buys him at a yard sale. From there, it’s pretty much a slash-fest with superfluous plotting mixed in. Across its eight episodes, Chucky will run out of batteries, but it’ll be good throwback Halloween fun for a spell. Tuesday, Oct. 12, at 10 p.m., Syfy/USA Network Dopesick Dramatizing the full scope of the opioid crisis is an ambitious undertaking. This eight-episode series runs best when the camera is on Michael Keaton, playing a doctor in a Virginia mining town who lives to regret buying into Purdue Pharma’s lies about the painkiller OxyContin. But Keaton isn’t the whole show. Dopesick also has Kaitlyn Dever as a young addict, Michael Stuhlbarg as a Purdue executive, and Rosario Dawson as a driven DEA agent. Available Wednesday, Oct. 13, Hulu The Sinner Another season, another sinner. The acclaimed crime anthology series starring Bill Pullman launches a new story with Pullman’s now-retired detective Harry Ambrose swearing he witnessed a young woman walking off an oceanside cliff in Maine. But then where is the body? And if Percy Muldoon isn’t dead, why has no one seen her since? Alice Kremelberg steps in as Pullman’s new foil. Available Wednesday, Oct. 13, USA Network The Velvet Underground In an era of out-there rock music, the Velvet Underground was really out there. Lou Reed and John Cale’s seminal New York band, which briefly supplied the house sound of Andy Warhol’s Factory scene, has needed a strong documentary. Director Todd Haynes doesn’t capture the band’s full arc, but his collage-like assemblage of old footage evokes the atmosphere
THE WEEK October 15, 2021
from which the Velvets emerged, and he has the chug of the guitars, the drone of Cale’s viola, and the street poetry of Reed’s lyrics to fuse it all together. Available Friday, Oct. 15, Apple TV+ You Penn Badgley’s Joe Goldberg has become, across two seasons, TV’s most popular serial killer since Dexter. Seeking yet another new chance, he’s now settled in Northern California, with his current love, Love, and their son, Henry. But then Joe spots an attractive neighbor, and the stalking renews. Available Friday, Oct. 15, Netflix Other highlights The Baby-Sitters Club Kristy, Claudia, and the girls return for another round of babysitting adventures in this smart adaptation of Ann M. Martin’s YA novel series. Available Monday, Oct. 11, Netflix Halloween Kills Michael Myers is back for the 12th installment of the Halloween franchise. This time, he’s being hunted by a gang of his survivors that includes Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode. Available Friday, Oct. 15, Peacock I Know What You Did Last Summer The 1997 slasher flick also gets a reboot—a series treatment with a young new cast. Available Friday, Oct. 15, Amazon Prime
Show of the week Succession
Sherman’s March Ross McElwee was making a Civil War documentary when his girlfriend broke up with him. Somehow, both subjects merge in this 1986 documentary classic. Kanopy
The Velvet Underground’s string section
Strong’s Kendall Roy, walking the gauntlet
A full-blown family war has broken out among the Roys as a third season of this Emmy-winning drama begins. Middle son Kendall, having been instructed to take the fall for a major scandal involving the family’s cruise ships, flipped the script in Season 2’s finale, publicly pinning the blame on his media mogul father, Logan. For Jeremy Strong’s Kendall, it’s now time to complete the corporate patricide without fumbling away family control of the company. He has triggered a scramble on all sides for allies, and Brian Cox’s Logan, seeking revenge, is sure to bring the big guns. Sunday, Oct. 17, at 9 p.m., HBO
• All listings are Eastern Time.
AppleTV+. HBO
26 ARTS
LEISURE Food & Drink
27
Romanian soup: Pork, white beans, and a pleasing tang often, until vegetables begin to brown, 5 to 8 minutes. Add beans, ham hock, ribs, tomatoes with juices, caraway, broth, and 1 qt water; stir to combine. Bring to a boil over high, then cover, reduce to medium and cook, stirring occasionally and adjusting heat as needed to maintain a simmer, until beans are tender and a paring knife inserted into meat between the rib bones meets no resistance, about 2 hours.
In Romania, most family meals feature a hearty soup with a pleasantly sour edge, said Albert Stumm and Diane Unger in Milk Street magazine. The tang might come from fermented wheat bran, sour pickling brine, sour plum juice, or simply vinegar, and in a soup like this one, the broth’s resulting acidity balances the richness of the smoked pork and the starchiness of the beans. Our version was inspired by a recipe from the recent cookbook Carpathia, by Irina Georgescu. “A hearty, subtly smoky potful of pork and beans in a tomatoey broth,” it’s “scented with caraway” and finished with fresh dill. Be sure to start soaking the beans at least 12 hours before cooking begins. And plan to start pickling the red onion garnish when the soup starts simmering.
Connie Miller, Daniel Krieger/The New York Times/Redux
Recipe of the week Romanian pork and white bean soup Kosher salt and ground black pepper 1 lb dried great northern beans 2 tbsp grapeseed or other neutral oil 2 medium yellow onions, chopped 2 medium celery stalks, chopped 2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped 1 medium red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and chopped 1 smoked ham hock (1 lb) 1½ lbs pork baby back ribs (½ rack), cut between the bones into 3 sections
Onions brighten the whole experience.
28-oz can whole tomatoes, finely crushed by hand 2 tsp caraway seeds 1 quart low-sodium chicken broth 3 tbsp finely chopped fresh dill ¼ cup white wine vinegar Pickled red onion (recipe below) In a large bowl, combine 3 quarts water, 1½ tsp salt, and beans. Stir until salt dissolves, then soak at room temperature for at least 12 hours and up to 24. Drain and set aside. In a large pot over medium-high, heat oil until shimmering. Add onions, celery, carrots, and bell pepper, then cook, stirring
Remove pot from heat. Using tongs, transfer ham hock and ribs to a large plate. When cool enough to handle, remove meat from both and shred into bite-size pieces; discard bones, fat, and gristle. Return meat to pot and bring to a simmer over medium, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, then stir in dill and vinegar. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with the pickled red onions. Serves 4 to 6. Pickled red onion 1 medium red onion, halved and thinly sliced • ½ cup white wine vinegar • 1 tbsp white sugar • 1 tsp kosher salt In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients; stir until sugar and salt dissolve. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. Makes about 1½ cups.
Eleven Madison Park: Veganism’s fallen temple?
Gins: Beyond juniper
For one of the world’s most celebrated restaurants, the flight from meat is very suddenly nosediving, said Harriet Alexander in the Daily Mail (U.K.). New York City’s Eleven Madison Park, named the best restaurant on the planet just four years ago, was roasted by its hometown’s most prominent food critic last week. The New York Times’ Pete Wells warned readers against paying $335 a head to join the waiting list of diners eager to sample the presumed wonders that chef Daniel Humm had devised since the kitchen’s widely The restaurant’s grand dining room hyped turn to a fully plant-based menu. Referring to a showpiece beet dish that takes days to prepare and is served in a clay pot that’s broken at the table, Wells said the result “tastes like Lemon Pledge and smells like a burning joint.” Humm, he said, routinely forces vegetables to be something they’re not. “Time and again,” he wrote, “delicate flavors are hijacked by some harsh, unseen ingredient.”
A style of gin called New Western has been spreading quickly, said Kara Newman in Winemag.com. The name, coined around 2006, describes any gin that departs from the tradition of London Dry gins by foregrounding botanicals other than juniper. Though Oregonbased Aviation gin jump-started the movement, New Western gins now hail from all over the world. Salcombe Gin Rosé Sainte Marie ($40). Strawberries add a “fleeting berry sweetness” to this brisk, citrusy rosé-inspired gin from Devon, U.K. Listoke 1777 ($39). “Gingerbreadlike aromas” introduce this Irish gin, which offers notes of lemon verbena and pine forest before a warm finish that evokes anise and shortbread cookies. Yu Gin ($32). Produced in France and made with yuzu and Sichuan pepper, this spirit “shouts” lemon peel but adds “a hint of mandarin-orange sweetness” and a peppery, gingery finish.
It gets worse, said Emma Orlow in Eater.com. Just before Wells weighed in, our own critic labeled Eleven Madison Park’s new direction a failure, dismissing early raves. And though the insults in Wells’ review drew a lot of attention, “the real golden nugget from the piece” was its revelation that Eleven Madison Park, despite Humm’s claims that meat-based cuisines have become unsustainable, secretly serves beef to customers who book a private dining room. Though a spokesperson later announced that meat would be phased out completely by early 2022, the damage was done. “It’s some kind of metaphor for Manhattan,” Wells wrote, “where there’s always a higher level of luxury, a secret room where the rich eat roasted tenderloin while everyone else gets an eggplant canoe.”
THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Travel
28 LEISURE
This week’s dream: Trading home life for boundary-free roaming Not all road trips require roads, said Andrea Chang in the Los Angeles Times. Since the pandemic began, interest has exploded in “overlanding”—venturing out into rugged terrain for extended periods of time in vehicles built or customized for the job. “Not quite #vanlife (which is more bohemian) or touring in an RV (cushier and confined to paved roads),” overlanding is a way to be self-reliant while exploring or dwelling in remote places. “Some enthusiasts consider overlanding a long-weekend hobby; others orient their personal lives— and now, thanks to policies allowing remote work, their day jobs too—around chasing the next epic adventure on wheels.” Tom Standish and his wife, Meghan, became overlanders a year ago. Despite having a toddler and a newborn, they put their belongings in long-term storage, rented out their suburban Oregon home, and hit the road in a used EarthCruiser FX—a boxy expedition vehicle that retails for more than $400,000 and packs
Four-wheel drive changes everything.
premium accommodations into 88 square feet. They’ve since logged 10,000 miles while exploring the Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, and British Columbia, and their snapshots from the journey “look like something out of a Patagonia catalog.” Every morning, the young family hikes, paddles, or swims before climbing back into the FX and moving on. And Tom,
Getting the flavor of... The Great Plains, by foot
The mansion and the tower
La Colombe d’Or Houston “Strolling into this boutique hotel is an aesthetic experience quite like walking into an internationally renowned art gallery,” said Alison Medley in the Houston Chronicle. Some 350 pieces of art adorn the walls of the 32-room property, which has recently expanded from a 1920s Beaux Arts mansion to include a group of garden bungalows, a tower with a rooftop pool, and an outdoor plaza. The bungalows are “reminiscent of midcentury Parisian apartments,” and while there are amenities galore—a sculpture garden, a fitness center, a new restaurant, a “cool, moody” cocktail bar—the appeal is “all in the exquisite details.” lacolombedor.com; bungalow suites from $600 THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Top-of-the-line overlanding rigs can cost $2 million. But many enthusiasts simply modify four-wheel-drive pickups or SUVs, lifting the suspension and adding rooftop tents, solar-powered refrigerators, and portable Wi-Fi hotspots. “Customization is a big part of the culture,” says Lindsay Hubley, who helps to run the Overland Expo, an event series that will draw an estimated 57,000 attendees this year to shows in Colorado, Arizona, and Virginia. A little more than a decade ago, total attendance was only 500. But times have changed. “People have decided, more and more, that life is short,” says EarthCruiser CEO Lance Gillies. “Covid really brought that home—our time is really not ours the way we thought it was.”
Reliving Woodstock
“Few events in the history of humankind have “Could the Great Plains Trail become America’s altered the course of reality in quite the way next great long-distance trail?” asked Jacqueline that the Woodstock festival did,” said James Kehoe in National Geographic. Slightly longer than the famed Appalachian Trail, the 2,200-mile Sullivan in The Boston Globe. At least Baby Boomers seem to think so, which explains why route is a work in progress, knitting together an augmented reality tour has been developed legitimate footpaths, backcountry roads, and unmarked traverses of open public land. But as it that enables all of us stuck in 2021 to relive the winds from West Texas up to and across Canada’s iconic 1969 countercultural happening. The site of the three-day concert event, which drew border, it passes through six national parks and half a million people to a dairy farm in Bethel, monuments and 10 national forests and grassN.Y., has been home since 2008 to a museum lands. “Not for the faint of heart,” the trail requires map-reading skills and “serious stamina.” that displays Woodstock photos and artifacts alongside more state-ofSo far, only one person, the-art exhibits. The latest The best fall foliage map a young Minnesotan, has attraction at the Bethel hiked the entire route. With the help of SmokyMountains.com, Woods Center, though, is fall 2021 could be “your most colorCertain segments are ful autumn ever,” said Cailey Rizzo in the tablet-aided walking currently more easily TravelAndLeisure.com. The website, tour. Designed by a comnavigated than others. created by the founders of a Tennesseepany that created similar The 350-mile Pilot Trail, based travel-booking company, is home experiences for the Louvre the most developed secto an unusually useful U.S. foliage map and the Vatican, it encourtion, has its northern that lets you pinpoint when every county ages self-guided strolls terminus in South Dakota in the country will peak. Like a weather across pretty farmland that and tracks southward forecast, the map (smokymountains.com/ in 1969 was “covered in through ponderosa-pine fall-foliage-map) will never be perfectly mud and discarded clothaccurate, but its predictions derive from forests. When it reaches the compilation of a large body of data, ing.” Archival footage and Nebraska, it “meanders including forecasts from the National a 3D virtual model of the across canyons and open Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. stage help make it all more ranchlands to old railThis year, the creators updated the data at real. As two ex-attendees road towns.” Hiking just midseason for the first time, making the reassure you at the start, one section “would be predictions even better for regions that “If you get lost, don’t an up-close education in tend to peak later, such as North Carolina worry. That’s part of the America’s lesser-known and Washington state. experience, too.” public lands.”
Roofnest
Hotel of the week
who at 36 has already started and sold a manufacturing company, says the plan is to cruise all the way down the Baja Peninsula by the end of the year. “The whole outside world is our bedroom,” says Tom. “We’re going as far as we can with this.”
Best properties on the market
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This week: Single-story homes
1 W Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. High ceilings and large windows light this four-bedroom Mediterranean in the Old Palm Golf Club community. The newly renovated open-plan house has a chef’s kitchen and a living room with walnut-clad fireplace and patio views. The property includes mature palms, brick walks and patio, pool, spa, pergola, and garage; ownership confers option to join the golf club. $2,599,000. Debra Dytrych, William Raveis Real Estate/Luxury Portfolio International, (561) 373-4758 2 X Greenville, Ala. Pine Top, on one of the county’s
highest points, was designed for panoramic views. The four-bedroom house features cypress floors, exposed-beam ceilings, a sunroom, a covered porch, and a living room and study with floor-to-ceiling windows. The 28-acre property has white oak and old-growth pine, a creek attracting deer and wild turkey, 8 landscaped acres surrounding the house, fruit trees, and vegetable gardens. $850,000. Tim James Jr., Jon Kohler & Assocs., (334) 652-4517
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3 X Santa Fe This three-bedroom 2019 home was designed by Hoopes & Assocs. The open layout integrates indoor and outdoor spaces, with stacked sliding doors, bedrooms with private portals, and mountain and golf-course views; details include a Sonos sound system and Hunter Douglas remote blinds. The 1.2-acre lot features an outdoor kitchen with grill and pizza oven, a pebble garden with sculpture, and a one-bedroom casita. $2,975,000. Shelley Blyth, Sotheby’s International Realty–Santa Fe, (505) 516-6019 THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Best properties on the market
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4 X Los Angeles The layout
of this mid-century home features three separate bedroom suites and three flexible bonus rooms. The house has tile and stone floors, three fireplaces, French windows and doors, and an updated kitchen and bathrooms. The gated property includes a circular driveway, garden landscaping, and a backyard swimming pool with spa and waterfall, outdoor bar, and stage; Los Feliz Village, tennis courts, golf, and Griffith Park are all nearby. $3,295,000. Jeffrey Young, Sotheby’s International Realty–Los Feliz, (213) 819-9630
Steal of the week
6 S Scottsville, N.Y. This 5 S Charleston, S.C. Built in 1955, this open-plan home
includes multiple living spaces for entertaining. The threebedroom house has a renovated kitchen, a dining room, a sunroom, and a living room with brick fireplace and exposed-beam ceiling. The lakefront property, 2 miles from downtown Charleston and with access to the Ashley River, features front and back yards landscaped with mature oaks, an expansive lawn, a brick patio with gas grill hookup, a firepit, storage buildings, and water views. $935,000. Jane Dowd, William Means Real Estate, (843) 224-2788
three-bedroom home once belonged to businessman and conservationist Robert Wehle. The house features pegged oak and walnut floors, three fireplaces, wood-burning stove, built-in cabinets, cedar linen closet, Adirondack great room with trussed beamed ceiling, updated kitchen with butler’s pantry, and wood-paneled den. The grounds include a large greenhouse, koi pond with waterfall, lotus sculpture pond, and garden with specimen shrubs, perennials, and mature trees. $499,900. James Blaine, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, (585) 794-8991 THE WEEK October 15, 2021
The bottom line Q Thanks to its App Store, Apple earned $8.5 billion in profits from video games in 2019, more than Microsoft, Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, and Sony. Globally, customers spent a total of $45 billion on mobile games through the App Store in 2020. Almost 31 percent of that money was spent in China, while 26 percent was spent in the United States.
The Wall Street Journal Q South Korea’s Squid Game is on course to become the most popular show ever on Netflix, after it soared to No. 1 in 90 countries. The show is on pace to be seen by more than 82 million subscribers worldwide in its first month. That’s more than the number of 18- to 49-year-olds estimated by Nielsen to have watched the 40 highest-rated broadcast and cable shows of the past year put together.
Fortune.com
Q United Airlines said 593 employees faced termination for failing to comply with the carrier’s Covid-19 vaccination mandate. Replacing those workers shouldn’t be an issue: The company received 20,000 applications for 2,000 open flight-attendant positions.
NBCNews.com Q The International Air Transport Association said the global airline industry’s losses in 2021 will be worse than originally thought, totaling $51.8 billion. That’s still less than half of the $137.7 billion in net losses for 2020. The IATA expects the industry to remain in the red by close to $12 billion next year.
BUSINESS The news at a glance Network crash: The day without Facebook We just learned “how essential Facebook and its sprawling family and how inessential Facebook of apps went dark for hours this is all at once,” said Molly week after experiencing the worst Roberts in The Washington Post. outage since 2008, said Mike Since acquiring Instagram and Isaac and Sheera Frenkel in The WhatsApp, Facebook has delibNew York Times. The company erately entangled its services to offered few specifics about the make it harder for regulators to cause of the crash but said the break it up. The interconnections routers that coordinate network of Facebook, Instagram, and traffic were unable to communicate with the outside internet. A worst-case outage for Facebook WhatsApp make the Facebook empire appear inescapable. The The results of the disruption were widespread: Facebook employees even “had trou- impact was greatest in countries “where citizens depend almost exclusively on those apps for comble making calls from work-issued cellphones,” and at one point its domain name, Facebook.com, munication and commerce.” But for the most part appeared to be available for sale. Facebook said it the world chugged on. And “in this country, it is did not suspect malicious activity, but it took more now obvious that Facebook isn’t the internet.” Facebook no longer looks so invincible. than five hours to restore service.
Federal Reserve: Supply bottlenecks drive inflation Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last week that supplychain bottlenecks could keep prices elevated for longer than anticipated, said Nick Timiraos in The Wall Street Journal. A recent reading of the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, which “excludes volatile food and energy prices,” showed that core prices were up 3.6 percent in July from a year earlier. Powell said pandemic-related supply disruptions were to blame— but instead of clearing up, the bottlenecks are getting worse. Retailers are already warning consumers to prepare for potential shortages and price hikes come Christmas.
Energy: OPEC refuses to boost production Oil prices have climbed to their highest level in nearly seven years after OPEC and its allies declined to ramp up production, said Matt Egan in CNN.com. U.S. crude was trading above $79 a barrel this week, a spike of 63 percent since the start of the year. “Prices at the pump remain elevated as well,” with the national average for a gallon of regular gas at $3.20. The Saudi Arabia–led oil group said this week it would “stick to its plan to boost production modestly,” resisting calls from the Biden administration to restore pre-pandemic production levels.
Autos: Tesla sales grows despite microchip shortage “Tesla has weathered the chip crisis better than rivals,” said Hyunjoo Jin in Reuters.com. The electric-car maker reported this week it made 241,300 global deliveries in the third quarter, crushing expectations and representing a 20 percent surge “in the July to September period from its previous record in the second quarter.” Tesla has escaped the struggles of other automakers, which have been plagued by a prolonged shortage of semiconductor chips. General Motors said its “third-quarter sales fell nearly 33 percent to their lowest level in more than a decade.”
CNBC.com
Wealth: Donald Trump drops off Forbes 400 list
Q A federal jury ordered Tesla
Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, and Ted Turner are no longer among the very richest people in America, said Forbes this week. Trump’s net worth “is down $600 million since the start of the pandemic,” which has hurt his real estate holdings. With a fortune estimated at $2.5 billion, “he fell $400 million short of the cutoff” for the Forbes 400 list—out of the club for the first time since 1995. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, with a fortune of $201 billion, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, worth $190.5 billion, led the list. New entrants include the 29-year-old founder of a cryptocurrency exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, with $22.5 billion.
to pay nearly $137 million to a Black elevator operator who accused the carmaker of ignoring racial abuse, including swastikas and racial epithets, at its Fremont, Calif., factory. The New York Times THE WEEK October 15, 2021
A bond baron’s war against his neighbors Onetime “Bond King” Bill Gross and his wife were held in contempt of court in a longrunning property dispute that involved “weaponizing” the Gilligan’s Island theme song, said Laurence Darmiento in the Los Angeles Times. Gross, a legendary bond fund manager, apparently hasn’t settled “a feud that started in 2019 when Gross put a $1 million lawn sculpture on his property” in Laguna Beach, Calif., and installed 12-foot netting to protect it. Neighbor Mark Towfiq complained the netting blocked his ocean view. Gross and his wife allegedly “retaliated by playing loud music” on an endless loop. Judge Kimberly Knill issued a three-year restraining order, but Towfiq complained about loud music again in July. In an unusual move, Knill even visited the homes to listen “while the Gross sound system was played.” She handed the Grosses five-day jail sentences, but suspended them, citing the pandemic.
Reuters, AP
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Making money
BUSINESS 33
Real estate: Are iBuyers fueling home-price inflation? houses. Some research supports this: Tech-driven ‘iBuyers’ make it easier iBuyers paid a median price of less than than ever to sell your home, said Patrick 99 percent of a home’s estimated worth Clark and Noah Buhayar in Bloomberg in 2019, but several were paying more Businessweek—but their presence in the than 100 percent this year, according to housing frenzy isn’t entirely welcomed. the property data firm Attom. (OpenFor a while now, Opendoor and Zillow door has been paying nearly 108 perhave “invited homeowners to request an cent.) It’s not surprising that Gotcher’s offer on their house” based on algorithms criticism struck a nerve. “How am I that come up with a price—for Zillow, supposed to buy a house to live in when that is the well-known “Zestimate.” The I’m competing against a multibillioncompanies pay a little less than the maxidollar corporation doing it for profit?” mum a seller can get, then try to quickly asked one of Gotcher’s fans on Twitter. flip the home. Owners who sell to them An offer on your home, sight unseen get the convenience of an instant deal, potentially “solving a timing problem” for those who have already To put this in perspective, the causes of the housing crunch are “much larger than the business dealings of companies like Zilpurchased a new home. These iBuyers have been ramping up low,” said Jacob Passy in MarketWatch.com. iBuyers imagine their activity this year and creating unease about firms “backed they can become “the Amazon of real estate,” but their business by Wall Street cash and vast troves of data” piling into what had been a “mom-and-pop affair.” The four largest iBuyers still models haven’t been tested long-term. If it were easy to make a profit by manipulating the market, “realtors would have done it only account for 1 percent of U.S. home purchases today, but years ago,” said Wharton professor Gilles Duranton. Still, “the they have been far more active in certain markets, such as the greater hand iBuyers have in local market transactions, the more Sun Belt and Las Vegas. consumers are likely to feel their effects,” said Laura Forman in The Wall Street Journal. And iBuying can “be beneficial to One Las Vegas realtor recently went viral with a video about housing turnover,” bringing inventory to market without “the iBuyers’ “nefarious business strategies,” said Amy Poulter time and energy required to host open houses.” These aren’t in Yahoo.com. Real estate agent Sean Gotcher suggested in private-equity landlords; iBuyers are also sellers. “One day you a TikTok video that has since garnered more than 3 million might benefit from such a service; another day you might pay views that an unnamed iBuyer was manipulating home-market some of the tab for your neighbor’s convenience.” values by targeting certain neighborhoods and overpaying for
What the experts say Hyperinflation at Disney World The cost of a Disney World vacation has soared more than 3,000 percent since 1971, said Jacob Passy in MarketWatch.com. When the Florida theme park first opened 50 years ago, a one-day admission pass cost $3.50. Today, that same pass ranges from $109 to $159, depending on the popularity of the park you wish to visit. The increase is more than five times that of the consumer price index. “The costs of other aspects of a trip to Disney World have risen” as well. Rooms at the Polynesian and Contemporary Resorts (the two original Disney hotels) cost $453 to $921 a night, up from $29 to $44 in 1970. Disney also used to offer free resort parking and complimentary shuttles from the airport, but those perks have been eliminated.
Discharging student loan debt One woman showed how it’s possible to discharge nearly $350,000 in federal student loan debt after filing for bankruptcy, said Kelly Anne Smith in Forbes.com, but it’s not easy. Melissa Loe wrote her own 504-page initial complaint against the Department of Education, and it took her “eight weeks to gather all of the documents requested during the discovery process.” In order to get student loans dis-
Charity of the week charged, borrowers usually have to prove that the loans cause “undue hardship,” a nebulous definition that courts have interpreted in different ways. At one point, the DOE suggested Loe “purposefully entered graduate school with the intention of filing for bankruptcy.” Loe, who represented herself, said that if she had been that clever, she “would have saved for a lawyer.”
Maybe it’s just very good luck Some top corporate insiders are so brazen in timing their trades that the TipRanks newsletter has made a business of tracking the most successful so other investors can copy them, said Liam Vaughan in Bloomberg Businessweek. Near the top: “Steve Mihaylo, the CEO of telephone services company Crexendo Inc., where he owns a $60 million stake. Mihaylo has turned a three-month profit on 83 percent of his trades over the past five years.” Snehal Patel, the CEO of the pharmaceutical Greenwich LifeSciences, has bought stock in his company five times—earning an average 488 percent profit. Wharton professor Daniel Taylor has found widespread evidence that corporate insiders’ trades “accelerated in the crucial weeks after an audit report had been relayed to the board but before it was made public.”
Radio producer Dave Isay started StoryCorps (storycorps.org) in 2003 by inviting people to come inside a booth at Grand Central Station in New York City to record a conversation with someone important to them. Since then, StoryCorps has recorded the stories of more than 600,000 participants from across the country using recording booths and digital platforms to preserve their voices, which are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Following the great oral-history tradition of Studs Terkel, StoryCorps has created a tapestry of American life. Special projects have involved collecting stories commemorating the lives lost during 9/11 and an initiative to bring people with opposing political views together through facilitated discussion. 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 October 15, 2021
Best columns: Business
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Ozy Media: After the hype, a very sudden fall multiracial optimism.” But numerous The buzzy online media brand Ozy former staffers described the workplace Media was supposed to be a Silicon as “abusive and cultlike.” Watson was Valley “disrupter,” said Anna Nicolaou “running around telling advertisers that in the Financial Times. It always seemed Ozy had tens of millions of readers.” to have “little to back up its assertions,” But “staffers knew the truth.” aside from the magnetism of its highprofile founder, Carlos Watson. Then The bigger question is why “seemingly last week it all came apart. First New sophisticated people fell for a company York Times media reporter Ben Smith that every social media intern in wrote about how an Ozy co-founder America had questions about,” said tried to impersonate a YouTube executive Ben Smith in The New York Times. Ozy to trick Goldman Sachs into a $40 milCEO Watson drove Ozy’s publicity machine. “strongly appealed to the elites” because lion investment. More allegations arose about how the company had inflated viewer metrics and even lied it offered “diversity without conflict.” It was heavy on “earnest about an investment from the homophonic-named rock star Ozzy stories about young people who wanted to change the world and celebrities being their best selves.” This “low-conflict, low-news” Osbourne and his wife, Sharon. As some of Ozy’s high-profile journalism with little real content but lots of talk about “lofty backers sought to distance themselves, Watson announced that Ozy was shutting down. But days later he reversed course, saying ideas” never appealed to the bipartisan audience it claimed to be reaching. But it was “catnip to brand managers.” “this is our Lazarus moment” and insisting Ozy could survive.
AI is turning out to be not so smart Parmy Olson
Bloomberg.com
‘Renewable’ gas is not clean energy Michael Hiltzik
Los Angeles Times
THE WEEK October 15, 2021
The “fake it ’til you make it” attitude has become a hardened Silicon Valley ethos, said Robert Hackett and Declan Harty in Fortune.com. We’ve seen too many entrepreneurs, “drunk on a dream, attempt to manifest success by any means necessary.” Theranos “deluded itself into alleged fraud as it quested to solve health care.” WeWork provided “rosy financial projections that were pure insanity.” And Trevor Milton, the founder of overhyped electric-truck startup Nikola, was recently indicted for criminal fraud. It may seem that only rich investors bear the brunt of the damage done by this magical thinking. But “businesses that deceive investors, customers, even their own employees, direct attention, energy, and effort away from more valuable pursuits.”
What do Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have in common? asked Parmy Olson. Besides being among the world’s richest men, they are both “grappling with big problems that stem, at least in part, from putting faith in artificial intelligence systems that have underdelivered.” As the head of Facebook, Zuckerberg has often touted the company’s machine-learning algorithms before even mentioning its army of human moderators. But humans have proven adept at outwitting the system, using constructions like “va((ine” to avoid detection. Musk, the CEO of Tesla, likewise keeps making premature AI promises. After saying Tesla would have 1 million driverless robotaxis on
the streets by 2020, Musk has at least “conceded that self-driving technology is ‘a hard problem.’” Today, Tesla customers pay an extra $10,000 for software that enables cars to “park, change lanes, and drive onto the highway by themselves with the occasional serious mistake.” AI is falling short in other areas too. A study in the British Medical Journal earlier this year found that “94 percent of AI systems that scanned for signs of breast cancer were less accurate than the analysis of a single radiologist.” We can forgive the machines if they mess up our movie recommendations. But in high-stakes situations, it’s becoming clearer that “AI is not ready for prime time.”
Don’t be fooled by “renewable natural gas,” the latest energy spin by fossil-fuel companies, said Michael Hiltzik. “It’s a sham.” Renewable natural gas, or RNG, is really methane gas that isn’t obtained by underground extraction. “Rather, it’s captured from ground-level methane-producing sources such as organic material in landfill, wastewater, and manure from dairy cattle.” Expensive equipment then “conditions” this gas “to a point where it’s chemically indistinguishable from traditional natural gas.” Oil and gas companies love to describe this product as “clean,” but it’s not. It may produce less carbon dioxide than natural gas, “but it’s still methane,
which has more than 80 times the warming power of CO2 when it reaches the atmosphere.” That hasn’t stopped companies like Chevron, which is under massive shareholder pressure to reduce emissions, from plugging RNGs as part of the “primary focus” of its low-carbon strategy. Another of the leading RNG promoters is Southern California Gas, facing “what could be a major decline in gas demand” as state policies favor electrification. Fossil-fuel companies are desperate to “chart a new course” in the face of the consequences of global warming. This desperation is all that is driving the campaign “to make natural gas look green.”
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This “will go down as one of the most sudden media collapses of all time,” said Sara Fischer in Axios.com—but there were plenty of clues. “Ozy Media was built on years of lies that together created a woefully false narrative about its business, financials, and culture.” The Goldman episode was just the tip of the iceberg. “The company bought most of its social media following,” including its flagship YouTube program, The Carlos Watson Show, which got more than 95 percent of its viewers through paid promotions. When Ozy launched in 2013, it seemed like “an oasis in a media industry that for years had been shedding jobs,” said Jeff Wise in New York magazine. Watson was a “charismatic salesman” who offered generous salaries and “Obama-era
Obituaries The Disney star who was fired for being gay Tommy Kirk was one of Disney’s most bankable stars as a child 1941–2021 and young man—but then real life got in the way. By his early 20s, he had appeared in 11 Disney films in eight years, proving he could handle everything from the wrenching drama of 1957’s Old Yeller to comedies such as 1961’s The Absent-Minded Professor. His movies were so popular that Walt Disney once introduced Kirk to a reporter by saying, “This is my good-luck piece here.” But Kirk’s stellar run came to an end in 1964, after the studio discovered he was gay and canceled his contract. Kirk wasn’t surprised. “When I was about 17 or 18 years old, I finally admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to change,” he said in 1993. “I had the definite feeling that it was going to wreck my Disney career and maybe my whole acting career.” Tommy Kirk
Kirk was born in Louisville to “strict Baptist parents” who moved to California during World War II, said The Washington Post. At age 12, he was performing in a play at the Pasadena Playhouse when he was noticed by an agent. Kirk was soon appearing on TV in Gunsmoke and The Loretta Young Show and as the crime-solving
youngster Joe Hardy in two Hardy Boys serials. In 1957, he was cast in Old Yeller, playing a boy on the Texas frontier who befriends the titular canine. Kirk claimed to have cried real tears during the movie’s famed “no-nonsense ending,” in which his character is forced to shoot Yeller after the dog is exposed to rabies, said The New York Times. Lighter material followed, with Kirk transforming into a sheepdog in The Shaggy Dog (1959) and playing a teenage genius in The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964). While filming that movie, “Kirk, then 21, started seeing a 15-year-old boy he had met at a swimming pool,” said The Hollywood Reporter. Disney learned about the relationship and Kirk was quietly let go. Relegated to parts in schlocky movies such as The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and Blood of Ghastly Horror, he sank into drug addiction. In the 1970s, Kirk “got his life back on track” and for years ran a carpet and upholstery cleaning company. He remained friends with other former child actors, including Donna Reed Show alum Paul Petersen. “Please know that Tommy Kirk loved you, his fans,” Petersen wrote in a Facebook post last week. “He was not bitter.”
The nurse who became an autism advocate When Ruth Christ Sullivan’s then-3-yearold son Joseph was 1924–2021 diagnosed with autism in 1963, her doctor gave a harsh prognosis: “He will always be odd.” The doctor offered her no assistance or guidance. At the time, the prevailing wisdom was that the disorder was caused by uncaring “refrigerator mothers.” A former Army nurse, and a loving mother with six other children, Sullivan knew the theory was bunk. So she started reading—and organizing. Sullivan went on to become a pioneering advocate for people with autism, co-founding what is now the Autism Society of America in 1965. As the organization’s president, she lobbied for autistic people’s right to public education and spoke on autism globally. Sullivan founded an autism-services center in her hometown of Huntington, W.Va., and worked to create group homes and a jobs-training program. “She changed the landscape fundamentally for families,” said John Donvan, co-author of a 2016 history of autism, In a Different Key.
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Ruth Christ Sullivan
The oldest of seven children, Sullivan was “raised on a rice farm in Louisiana,” said the Huntington, W.Va., Herald-Dispatch. After serving as an Army nurse during World War II, “caring for soldiers at Fort Sam Houston” in Texas, Sullivan
studied public health at Columbia University on the G.I. Bill. She accompanied her English professor husband to teaching posts around the U.S. before settling in Huntington. Joseph, her fifth child, was born in 1960, said The New York Times. “He started speaking early but began to withdraw at 18 months.” By his second birthday, she wrote in her journal, Joseph “could say only eight words” and “would indicate what he wanted by grunts.” Sullivan “juggled parenting and advocacy,” said The Washington Post. For years she ran an information and referral service out of the family home, fielding calls at all hours from desperate parents. When she couldn’t afford a ticket to fly to Washington in 1975 to lobby for what became the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, she canvassed the local airport for a pilot who’d take her for free. In 1988 she worked on the movie Rain Man as a consultant to Dustin Hoffman, who based his character in part on Joseph. Today, Joseph works at the Autism Services Center in Huntington, and lives in one of the group homes that serves as a testament to his mother’s tenacity. “Many people will tell you,” said center president Jimmie Beirne, “that it was hard to tell Ruth Sullivan no.”
35 The jazzman who helped shape the sound of funk Saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis took James Brown’s grunts and turned them into a whole new genre. After a 1967 show at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, the soul legPee Wee end called Ellis—his Ellis bandleader— 1941–2021 into his dressing room and grunted a bass line: “Uh. Uh-uh-uh. Uh.” Ellis blended Brown’s idea with Miles Davis’ “So What” and came up with “Cold Sweat.” With its powerful pulse, scratchy guitars, and wild horn solos, the six-minute single quickly became an R&B No. 1 and is now recognized as one of the first funk songs. A self-declared “jazz head,” Ellis said he was inspired by Brown’s motto: “If it sounds good, don’t analyze it, just do it.” Alfred Ellis spent much of his childhood in Lubbock, Texas, said The Guardian (U.K.). “Nicknamed Pee Wee because of his small stature”—“I grew bigger, but the name stuck,” he said—Ellis began playing jazz in high school. In 1955, he was shaken by tragedy: His music-promoter stepfather was fatally stabbed by a racist who objected to him dancing near a white woman. Ellis’ family moved to Rochester, N.Y., and in 1957 he bumped into jazz star Sonny Rollins in a Manhattan music store and asked for sax lessons. To his surprise, Rollins agreed. Ellis was performing at a Miami motel when he was hired by the Godfather of Soul, said The New York Times. He would write dozens of songs with Brown, including the 1968 civil rights anthem “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud.” Tiring of Brown’s domineering ways, he returned to jazz in the 1970s and went on to work as a musical director for Van Morrison. He was happiest while collaborating. “Part of the magic,” he said, “is joining forces and making something happen from nowhere.”
THE WEEK October 15, 2021
The last word
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Drinking alone For centuries, Americans have used alcohol to enliven social gatherings, said journalist Kate Julian in The Atlantic. But now we’re increasingly drinking to numb our anxiety and loneliness, often without joy or company.
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EW THINGS ARE more American than drinking heavily. But worrying about how heavily other Americans are drinking is one of them.
get worse: During the pandemic, the frequency of drinking rose, as did sales of hard liquor. By this February, nearly a quarter of Americans said they’d drunk more over the past year as a means of coping with stress.
The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock because, the crew feared, the Pilgrims were going Explaining these trends is through the beer too quickly. hard; they defy so many recent The ship had been headed for expectations. Not long ago, the mouth of the Hudson River, Millennials were touted as the until its sailors (who, like most driest generation—they didn’t Europeans of that time, preferred drink much as teenagers, they beer to water) panicked at the poswere “sober curious,” they were sibility of running out before they so admirably focused on being got home, and threatened mutiny. well—and yet here they are dayAnd so the Pilgrims were kicked drinking White Claw and dying ashore, short of their intended of cirrhosis at record rates. Media destination and beerless. Before coverage, meanwhile, has swung long, they were not only making Americans flip-flop between binge-drinking and abstemiousness. from overselling the (now distheir own beer but also importing puted) health benefits of wine to screeching wine and liquor. Still, within a couple of that no amount of alcohol is safe, ever; it IGHT NOW WE are lurching into generations, Puritans like Cotton Mather might give you cancer and it will certainly another of our periodic crises over were warning that a “flood of RUM” could make you die before your time. What most drinking, and both tendencies are “overwhelm all good Order among us.” of us want to know, coming out of the on display at once. Since the turn of the pandemic, is this: Am I drinking too much? George Washington first won elected office, millennium, alcohol consumption has risen And: How much are other people drinking? steadily, in a reversal of its long decline in 1758, by getting voters soused. He is And: Is alcohol actually that bad? throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Before the said to have given them 144 gallons of pandemic, some aspects of this shift seemed alcohol, enough to win him 307 votes and OR THE PAST 25 years, archaeologists sort of fun, as long as you didn’t think a seat in Virginia’s House of Burgesses. have been working to uncover the about them too hard. In the 20th century, He used the same tactic to keep his troops ruins of Göbekli Tepe, a temple in eastyou might have been able to buy wine at happy, and later became one of the counern Turkey. It dates to about 10,000 B.C.— try’s leading whiskey distillers. But he none- the supermarket, but you couldn’t drink making it about twice as old as Stonehenge. it in the supermarket. Now some grocery theless took to moralizing when it came to It is made of enormous slabs of rock that stores have wine bars, beer on tap, signs other people’s drinking, which in 1789 he would have required hundreds of people called “the ruin of half the workmen in this inviting you to “shop ’n’ sip,” and carts to haul from a nearby quarry. As far as with cupholders. Country.” archaeologists can tell, no one lived there.
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What’s distinctly American about this story is not alcohol’s prominent place in our history (that’s true of many societies), but the zeal with which we’ve swung between extremes. Americans tend to drink in more dysfunctional ways than people in other societies, only to become judgmental about nearly any drinking at all. Again and again, an era of overindulgence begets an era of renunciation: Binge, abstain. Binge, abstain. THE WEEK October 15, 2021
Actual bars have decreased in number, but drinking is acceptable in all sorts of other places it didn’t use to be. Salons and boutiques dole out cheap cava in plastic cups. Movie theaters serve alcohol, Starbucks serves alcohol, zoos serve alcohol. Moms carry coffee mugs that say things like “This might be wine,” though for discreet day drinking, the better move might be one of the new hard seltzers, a watereddown malt liquor dressed up—for precisely this purpose—as a natural soda. Even before Covid-19 arrived on our shores, the consequences of all this were catching up with us. From 1999 to 2017, the number of alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. doubled, to more than 70,000 a year—making alcohol one of the leading drivers of the decline in American life expectancy. These numbers are likely to
No one farmed there. What people did there was party. “The remains of what appear to be brewing vats, combined with images of festivals and dancing, suggest that people were gathering in groups, fermenting grain or grapes,” writes Edward Slingerland in Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization, “and then getting truly hammered.” Over time, groups that drank together would have cohered and flourished, dominating smaller groups—much like the ones, says Slingerland, that prayed together. Moments of slightly buzzed creativity and subsequent innovation might have given them further advantage still. But this rosy story about how alcohol made more friendships and advanced civilization comes with two enormous asterisks: All of that was before the advent of liquor, and before
Alamy
Hypocritical though he was, Washington had a point. The new country was on a bender, and its drinking would only increase in the years that followed. By 1830, the average American adult was consuming about three times the amount we drink today. An obsession with alcohol’s harms understandably followed, starting the country on the long road to Prohibition.
The last word humans started regularly drinking alone. Distilled alcohol is recent—it became widespread in China in the 13th century and in Europe from the 16th to 18th centuries. As the Industrial Revolution raged, alcohol use became less leisurely. Drinking establishments suddenly started to feature the long counters that we associate with the word bar today, enabling people to drink on the go, rather than around a table with other drinkers. This short move across the barroom reflects a fairly dramatic break from tradition: According to anthropologists, in nearly every era and society, solitary drinking had been almost unheard of among humans.
children entered school, it was everywhere. A growing class of merchandise now helps women carry concealed alcohol: There are purses with secret pockets, and chunky bracelets that double as flasks, and— perhaps least likely of all to invite close investigation—flasks designed to look like tampons. Almost all of the heavy-drinking women Glaser interviewed drank alone— the bottle of wine while cooking, the Baileys in the morning coffee, the Poland Spring bottle secretly filled with vodka. They did so not to feel good, but to take the edge off feeling bad.
Americans may not have invented binge drinking, but we have a solid claim to bingeing alone, which was almost unheard of in the Old World. During the early 19th century, solitary binges became common enough to need a name, so Americans started calling them “sprees” or “frolics”—words that sound a lot happier than the lonely one- to three-day benders they described.
Men still drink more than women, and of course no demographic group has a monopoly on either problem drinking or the stresses that can cause it. The shift in women’s drinking is particularly stark, but unhealthier forms of alcohol use appear to be proliferating in many groups. Even drinking in bars has become less social in recent years, or at least this was a common perception among about three dozen bartenders I surveyed while reporting this article.
In his 1979 history, The Alcoholic Republic, the historian W.J. Rorabaugh calculated the stunning amount of alcohol early Americans drank on a daily basis. In 1830, the average adult was going through more than 9 gallons of spirits each year. Most of this was in the form of whiskey (which, thanks to grain surpluses, was sometimes cheaper than milk), and most of it was drunk at home. And this came on top of early Americans’ other favorite drink, homemade cider. Many people, including children, drank cider at every meal; a family could easily go through a barrel a week.
“I have a few regulars who play games on their phone,” one in San Francisco said, “and I have a standing order to just refill their beer when it’s empty. No eye contact or talking until they are ready to leave.” Striking up conversations with strangers has become almost taboo, many bartenders observed, especially among younger patrons. So why not just drink at home? Spending money to sit in a bar alone and not talk to anyone was, a bartender in Columbus, Ohio, said, an interesting case of “trying to avoid loneliness without actual togetherness.”
Rorabaugh argued that this longing for oblivion resulted from America’s almost unprecedented pace of change between 1790 and 1830. Thanks to rapid westward migration in the years before railroads, canals, and steamboats, he wrote, “more Americans lived in isolation and independence than ever before or since.” The resulting epidemics of loneliness and anxiety, he concluded, led people to numb their pain with alcohol.
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After Prohibition’s repeal, the alcohol industry refrained from aggressive marketing, especially of liquor. Nonetheless, drinking steadily ticked back up, hitting pre-Prohibition levels in the early ’70s, then surging past them. It peaked in 1981, at which point—true to form—the country took a long look at the empty beer cans littering the lawn, and collectively recoiled. What followed has been described as an age of neo-temperance. Taxes on alcohol increased; warning labels were added to containers. The drinking age went back up to 21, and penalties for drunk driving finally got serious.
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The temperance movement that took off in the decades that followed was a more rational response to all of this than it tends to look like in the rearview mirror. However, temperance and Prohibition, which went into effect in 1920, cleaved the country into tipplers and teetotalers. Drinkers were on average more educated and more affluent than nondrinkers, and also more likely to live in cities or on the coasts. Dry America, meanwhile, was more rural, more southern, more Midwestern, more churchgoing, and less educated.
Drinking to avoid pandemic loneliness
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the current lurch upward. Around the turn of the millennium, Americans said To hell with it and poured a second drink, and in almost every year since, we’ve drunk a bit more wine and a bit more liquor than the year before. But why? ND THEN BEGAN
One answer is that we did what the alcohol industry was spending billions of dollars persuading us to do. In the ’90s, makers of distilled liquor ended their selfimposed ban on TV advertising. They also developed new products that might initiate nondrinkers—think sweet, pre-mixed drinks like Smirnoff Ice and Mike’s Hard Lemonade. But this doesn’t explain why Americans have been so receptive to the sales pitches. Some people have argued that our increased consumption is a response to various stressors that emerged over this period. This seems closer to the truth. It also may help explain why women account for such a disproportionate share of the recent increase in drinking. In the 2013 book Her Best-Kept Secret, an exploration of the surge in female drinking, the journalist Gabrielle Glaser recalls noticing, early in this century, that women around her were drinking more. Alcohol hadn’t been a big part of mom culture in the ’90s, when her first daughter was young—but by the time her younger
As the pandemic eases, we may be nearing an inflection point. My inner optimist imagines a new world in which, reminded of how much we miss joy and fun and other people, we embrace all kinds of socially connecting activities, including eating and drinking together—while also forswearing unhealthy habits we may have acquired in isolation. But my inner pessimist sees alcohol use continuing in its pandemic vein, more about coping than conviviality. Not all social drinking is good, of course; maybe some of it should wane, too. For example, some employers have recently banned alcohol from work events because of concerns about its role in unwanted sexual advances and worse. And yet, if we use alcohol more and more as a private drug, we’ll enjoy fewer of its social benefits, and get a bigger helping of its harms. Adapted from a story that originally appeared in The Atlantic. Used with permission. THE WEEK October 15, 2021
The Puzzle Page
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Crossword No. 619: Genius at Work by Matt Gaffney 2
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Glenda Mulqueen, Centennial, Colo. SECOND PLACE: “The Fishicians” Phyllis Klein, New York City
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THIRD PLACE: “Fins and Needles” Mimi Geller, Ashburn, Va.
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ACROSS 1 Insignificant 7 Experts who need your SSN 11 Finger or tail movement 14 State of tranquility 15 Clickable web address 16 Judge in 1990s news 17 Stamped From the Beginning author who was awarded a 2021 MacArthur “genius grant” on Sept. 28 19 Burglarize 20 Start for ops or war 21 “Eureka!” 22 First name on the Supreme Court 24 Three of the 25 new MacArthur fellows, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Nicole Fleetwood, and Desmond Meade, work with this category of person 28 Concert ticket info 31 Lacks other options 32 Thespian Pompeo 33 Dinghy mover 34 The Civil ___ (Ken Burns miniseries) 37 Awesome-sounding job title of 2021 MacArthur winner Taylor Perron, who studies landforms on Earth and other planets 42 NC State is part of it 43 Goddess of the dawn 44 Examine, as a sentence 45 He plays Neo in The Matrix Resurrections 48 German conglomerate THE WEEK October 15, 2021
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Last week’s contest: A devoted British pet owner sprang for a $400 surgical procedure to remove a growth from the mouth of Bluebell—a 17-year-old goldfish—that required special fish anesthesia and a team to keep her wet on the operating table. If a TV network were to make a medical drama about the exploits of a team of fish surgeons, what should the series be titled? THE WINNER: “S*P*L*A*S*H”
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This week’s question: A Danish artist who was given $83,000 by a museum to use in an artwork pocketed the cash and submitted two blank canvases titled Take the Money and Run. “The breach of contract is part of the work,” explained artist Jens Haaning. If a museum were to put on a show of blank canvases by modern artists, what title could it give the exhibition?
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50 “I am a choreographer, teacher, performer... and person who sees the ___ through all of these mediums” (career-summarizing quote of 2021 winner Jawole Willa Jo Zollar) 53 The Hot Zone virus 54 De Armas of Blade Runner 2049 55 Cutter with teeth 58 Sound receiver 59 “I love building and imagining cool technologies for ___” (career-summarizing quote of 2021 winner Joshua Miele) 64 “I await an update about this,” briefly 65 0, at Wimbledon 66 Manuscript mistakes 67 “___ in ‘Stephen’” (clarifying phrase when spelling) 68 Past flames 69 Dentist’s target DOWN 1 Lose your balance 2 Halloween party decorations 3 Tennessee theater 4 Powerful snake 5 School of thought 6 Gas station with a star logo 7 Unambiguous 8 Wrestling win 9 “Additionally...” 10 They’re going downhill fast 11 Leading the entire race
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12 Make up (for) 13 Turn, like milk 18 Pakistani prime minister and cricket star Imran ___ 23 Calif. paper 24 Object 25 Boy with a tilde 26 Elaine who was transportation secretary from 2017 to 2021 27 ___ Grey tea 28 Tokyo-based game maker 29 Part of GE 30 Internal mechanisms for wristwatches 33 Cries of surprise 35 Part of NBA 36 AAA recommendations 38 City that rhymes with “casino” 39 Comfy footrest 40 Petroleum-centered grp. 41 Willing to play along 46 Sushi fish in a brown sauce 47 Like good farmland 48 Volleyball court surface, often 49 Sulking 50 Prepares to eat, as a banana 51 46 was his vice president 52 Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s people 55 Kerfuffle 56 Utah resort 57 Have on 60 Some salmon 61 “So ___ heard!” 62 Notable period 63 Bobby who was a Bruin
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 “Blank art” in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, Oct. 12. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page next issue and at theweek.com/puzzles on Friday, Oct. 15. In the case of identical or similar entries, the first one received gets credit.
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