PEOPLE
CONTROVERSY
TRUMP’S ALLY IN MOSCOW Pages 5, 6 Vladimir Putin
When Bolt didn’t want to be a runner p.10
TALKING POINTS
Why Clinton picked Kaine p.17
THE BEST OF THE U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
The real Hillary? The Democrats’ attempt to give voters a glimpse behind the mask p.4
AUGUST 5, 2016 VOLUME 16 ISSUE 782 ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS
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Editor’s letter After more than a year of raucous debates, bruising primaries, and political shocks, the general election is officially underway, and it promises to be a race defined by loathing. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are two of the most reviled candidates in modern history; a recent Gallup poll found that they both provoke more negative feelings than any presidential nominee in the past 60 years. The depth of the disgust and hatred felt for them has been on vivid display in recent weeks, from the chants of “Lock her up!” at the Republican National Convention to the parade of speakers at the Democratic National Convention who said they’d been personally cheated or insulted by Trump. Half or more supporters of Trump and Clinton already say they will head to the polls in November primarily to vote against the other candidate, not for their nominee. And the tone of this cage match is about to get much, much uglier. Unlikely to change its own nominee’s negatives, each campaign will aim to exploit its opponent’s perceived
flaws. This election will be won not by the candidate who is more popular, but by whoever is slightly less detested. Stoking voters’ disgust and distrust might be a winning campaign strategy, but it surely has dangerous consequences for our already dysfunctional political system. Both candidates have been cast by their opponent as someone who must not be allowed to occupy the White House under any circumstances. Trump’s repeated references to “Crooked Hillary” and the “rigged system” have already laid the groundwork for his supporters to insist that the election was stolen. (See Best U.S. Columns.) Nearly half the country will wake up on Nov. 9 thinking the president-elect belongs in a jail cell, or is a proto-fascist who spells certain disaster for American democracy. Where does that lead? To more gridlock? To impeachment hearings? Carolyn O’Hara Managing editor Or to something uglier still?
NEWS 4 Main stories Hillary Clinton makes history as the first female presidential nominee; the fallout continues from the DNC hack
Managing editors: Theunis Bates, Carolyn O’Hara Deputy editor/International: Susan Caskie Deputy editor/Arts: Chris Mitchell Senior editors: Harry Byford, Alex Dalenberg, Richard Jerome, Dale Obbie, Hallie Stiller, Frances Weaver Art director: Dan Josephs Photo editor: Loren Talbot Copy editors: Jane A. Halsey, Jay Wilkins Chief researcher: Christina Colizza Special projects editor: Alexis Boncy Contributing editors: Ryan Devlin, Bruno Maddox
6
Newscom (2)
Controversy of the week Would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin’s puppet in the White House? 7 The U.S. at a glance Would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley Jr. to be freed; Virginia’s felon voting rights fight 8 The world at a glance ISIS slaughter in a French church; Turkey’s postcoup crackdown
Editor-in-chief: William Falk
10 People Why Mikhail Gorbachev regrets the fall of the Soviet Union; Usain Bolt’s slow start 11 Briefing North Korea is amassing a nuclear arsenal. How worried should we be? 12 Best U.S. columns Ted Cruz’s brave stand; Americans’ unrealistic expectations 14 Best European columns Germany struggles with a string of attacks committed by migrants 16 Talking points Trump’s campaign of fear; why Hillary picked Kaine; Ailes’ news legacy
VP, publisher: John Guehl
First lady Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention
ARTS 21 Books An ode to Florida, America’s weirdest state 22 Author of the week Heather Havrilesky’s existential advice 23 Art & Stage An overdue salute to great sports photography 24 Film Matt Damon reboots the Bourne franchise; a thriller about women and Wall Street
Usain Bolt
LEISURE 27 Food & Drink Three spots for open-fire cowboy cooking 28 Travel Seeking China’s rural soul in Yunnan province 29 Consumer Tips for lowering prescription drug costs BUSINESS 32 News at a glance McDonald’s comeback runs into trouble; LinkedIn skills no one needs 33 Making money How to resist splurging on impulse purchases 34 Best columns Why Verizon wants an ailing Yahoo; a dismal election for CEOs
VP, marketing: Tara Mitchell Account directors: Samuel Homburger, Steve Mumford Account manager: Shelley Adler Detroit director: Lisa Budnick Midwest director: Erin Sesto Northwest director: Steve Thompson Southeast director: Jana Robinson Southwest directors: James Horan, Rebecca Treadwell Integrated marketing director: Nikki Ettore Integrated associate marketing director: Betsy Connors Integrated marketing manager: Adam Clement Research and insights manager: Joan Cheung Promotions manager: Jennifer Castellano Marketing creative lead: Paige Weber Marketing coordinator: Reisa Feigenbaum Digital director: Garrett Markley Senior digital account manager: Yuliya Spektorsky Digital planner: Jennifer Riddell Chief financial officer: Kevin E. Morgan Director of financial reporting: Arielle Starkman EVP, consumer marketing: Sara O’Connor Consumer marketing director: Leslie Guarnieri VP, manufacturing & distribution: Sean Fenlon Production manager: Kyle Christine Darnell HR/operations manager: Joy Hart Advisers: Robert G. Bartner, Peter Godfrey Chairman: John M. Lagana U.K. founding editor: Jolyon Connell Company founder: Felix Dennis
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THE WEEK August 5, 2016
4 NEWS
The main stories...
Democrats make the case for Clinton A long lineup of speakers told Americans that Clinton is “an exHillary Clinton formally became the perienced, capable, and empathetic first female presidential nominee of a leader,” said the Los Angeles Times. major party this week, as the Democrats But speeches alone may not reverse sought to use their convention to alter voters’ deep-seated distrust of her, voters’ negative perceptions of the forespecially after the email scandal. mer secretary of state and senator. The A recent poll found that 68 percent four-day event in Philadelphia got off to of voters do not find her honest or a rocky start, as some of the frustrated trustworthy, and 56 percent view her delegates of Sen. Bernie Sanders booed unfavorably. Even many Democrats speakers, chanted, and staged demonare not enthused about her candistrations. But after Sanders gave Clinton dacy. “Clinton and her party have a full-throated endorsement and called their work cut out for them.” for unity, and Sanders delegates were given the chance to cast their votes, the What the columnists said rebellion quieted down. “Democracy is Hillary supporters on the convention floor Bill Clinton made a compelling case a little messy sometimes,” Sanders said. Meanwhile, a parade of high-wattage Democratic stars and celebri- for his wife, said Josh Barro in BusinessInsider.com. He humanized her with stories of her raising their daughter Chelsea, emphasized ties sought to humanize Clinton and paint Republican nominee her “often unglamorous work in the trenches of government,” and Donald Trump as a dangerous threat to the country. noted that she was able to work with Republicans to compromise and get things done. Above all, he portrayed her as a “committed Former President Bill Clinton gave a long, personal tribute to his progressive who has devoted her life to making the sorts of policy wife, rejecting Republicans’ “cartoon” depiction of her, highlighting her many years of advocacy for children, families, and the poor, changes people on the Left care about.” and calling her “the best darn change maker I’ve ever met.” MiClinton’s surrogates keep telling us we haven’t yet gotten to know chelle Obama delivered a widely praised, emotional address, hailing America’s racial progress and drawing sharp contrasts between the real Hillary, said Rich Lowry in the New York Post. Sure, the Clinton and Trump. “I wake up every morning in a house that was public may not know all the details of her early advocacy work, but after 25 years of her in the national spotlight, Americans have built by slaves,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you this country “an accurate enough picture.” They’ve seen “her smashmouth isn’t great.” The first lady said Clinton had spent her life doing partisanship, her grating insincerity, her gross money-grubbing, her “the thankless, relentless work to actually make a difference” in serial dishonesties, [and] her grind-out ambition.” The person who people’s lives, not insulting people or tearing them down. took $675,000 from Goldman Sachs to make three speeches, and set up a private email server as secretary of state to avoid public Several other high-profile politicians praised Clinton’s work in scrutiny? That was the real Hillary, too. behalf of Americans, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former President Jimmy Carter, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Michelle Obama made the best possible case for Clinton’s election, Albright. Among the many non-political speakers were a 9/11 survivor whom Clinton had visited in the hospital, an illegal immi- said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post. Calling Hillary “steady, measured, and well-informed,” Obama warned: “When you grant and her daughter, and the mothers of nine black people who died in racially charged incidents. Clinton herself—who along with have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have thin President Obama was scheduled to speak after The Week went to skin.” At the 2012 Democratic convention, Bill Clinton produced press—appeared via video feed after her formal nomination. “We the speech of his life to help Obama win re-election. Now the just put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet,” she said. Obamas—knowing their legacy will be torn apart if Hillary doesn’t win—are What the editorials said What next? “returning the favor.” They’ll play a For a while, the Democratic convenThe 2016 election is likely to “realign the states major role on the campaign trail. tion “seemed doomed to collapse into at the tipping point of American politics,” said hostility and chaos,” said The New York Ron Brownstein in TheAtlantic.com. In the six Clinton must now walk a tightrope, Times. But the unifying speeches helped presidential elections since 1992, Democrats have said Byron York in the Washington the party “rise above dissension.” Sandwon the five Rust Belt battleground states—Ohio, Examiner. She has sold herself as ers reminded his “dejected supporters” Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—in a safe pair of hands—a pragmatic that their campaign had succeeded in 27 of 30 races. Over the same period, they carried incrementalist who can preserve and shifting the party platform to the left, the five Sun Belt swing states—North Carolina, continue Obama’s legacy. But with while Michelle Obama recalled that Virginia, Florida, Colorado, and Nevada—only 70 percent of voters thinking the counafter Clinton lost the nomination to her 13 times. Yet this year, Clinton is gaining ground try is heading in the wrong direction, husband, Barack, in 2008, she didn’t she also wants to be seen as a “change in the Sun Belt states, where Hispanics and whiteget angry or sulk. Clinton certainly has maker”—hence her husband’s speech. collar Americans broadly oppose Trump, while her flaws, but she offers so much more Can Hillary sell herself as a steady than “the bleak extremism” and divisive losing support in the more blue-collar Rust Belt. If steward and a change agent? That will rhetoric of the Trump campaign, which the Sun Belt becomes the Democrats’ “firewall” take the kind of “magic” that even her threatens our country’s most fundamenagainst defeat, it’d “mark a major reversal.” husband didn’t have. tal democratic values. THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Illustration by Fred Harper. Cover photos from AP, Newscom, Getty
AP
What happened
... and how they were covered
NEWS 5
Signs point to Russia in damaging DNC leak What happened
Putin’s regime has repeatedly intervened in the internal politics of European countries, said The FBI was probing evidence this week that The Washington Post. “But the evident atRussia had tried to influence the U.S. presidentempt to meddle in a U.S. presidential election tial election by engineering a leak of almost is a first.” Clearly, the Kremlin believes that 20,000 hacked Democratic National Comit will “reap a geopolitical windfall” with the mittee emails, some of which suggested party NATO-bashing, strongman-admiring Trump in officials favored Hillary Clinton and sought to the White House. While some political analysts undermine Sen. Bernie Sanders. Released by doubt that “KGB-style tricks” could sway the WikiLeaks ahead of the Democratic convention, election, the fact that Putin is even trying “is the revelations forced DNC chairwoman Rep. remarkable and disturbing—as is the motivaDebbie Wasserman Schultz to resign and threattion Trump has given him to meddle.” ened fragile party unity as Clinton launched her general election battle against Donald Trump. Schultz: Toppled by WikiLeaks What the columnists said Cybersecurity investigators hired by the DNC concluded that two hacker groups working for the Kremlin had in- “What was so terrible about the emails?” asked Jeffrey Toobin in NewYorker.com. Nothing came of the proposal to make an issue of filtrated the organization’s network, and Clinton’s campaign manSanders’ religious views, or lack of them, and no dark conspiracies ager, Robby Mook, said the emails were leaked “by the Russians were launched to sabotage his campaign. Instead, DNC staffers were for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.” President Obama said just doing what people do on email. “They spout off, sound off, the motive for the leak was unclear, but noted that Trump “has write first, and think later.” Most of these emails contain harmless repeatedly expressed admiration” for Russian President Vladimir office chatter that has been inflated into a genuine controversy “by Putin. (See Controversy.) Trump said he “had nothing to do with people who already had axes to grind.” Russia whatsoever,” but invited hackers to find the “personal” emails Clinton deleted, saying, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” The Russian hack of the DNC “is Watergate, but worse,” said Franklin Foer in Slate.com. In an effort to game the 1972 election, President Nixon’s goons broke into the DNC’s offices; now, The email leak inflamed Sanders supporters who have long claimed Russian hackers have burgled the party’s virtual headquarters and the nominating process was rigged for Clinton. In one email, DNC committed “a breathtaking transgression of privacy.” Yes, it’s true chief financial officer Brad Marshall suggested that portraying the that so far the leaks have mostly revealed banal gripes and mussenator as an atheist “could make several points difference” in the ings. But those emails have disrupted a national convention—and Kentucky and West Virginia primaries. In other emails, Schultz our democratic process. A foreign power has launched “a strike called Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver a “damn liar,” and against our civic infrastructure,” and that should terrify everyone. when Sanders said he would replace her as DNC chair, she wrote, “He isn’t going to be president.” The big question now is whether another leak will give us the What the editorials said October surprise that could decide this election, said John Fund in NationalReview.com. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who de“Schultz represents what is wrong with insider politics,” said The spises Clinton as a “war hawk,” says more documents are coming. Dallas Morning News. As DNC chair, she “was supposed to call Some experts speculate that the next leak could reveal an unethiballs and strikes” and remain impartial in the primaries. Instead, the emails show that the Florida congresswoman was secretly plot- cal overlap between her work as secretary of state and the Clinton Foundation. Meanwhile, a federal government leak of Trump’s tax ting to aid Clinton, “her friend and political ally.” Such duplicity returns—which he still refuses to release—could expose potentially fuels the angry populism “that gives rise to insurgent campaigns damaging secrets about his financial dealings and the true scale of like Sanders’, as well as those of Trump and Ted Cruz. There’s a his wealth. “Anything is possible in this cutthroat year.” lesson here for all establishment institutions.”
AP, screenshot/Twitter
It wasn’t all bad Q After 72 years of service, South Dakota’s oldest nurse has finally put away her uniform. Alice Graber, 93, started nursing in World War II and found out just how many lives she’s touched over the decades when she recently retired. Some 150 people— including former patients, nurses she trained, and adults she helped deliver as babies—turned up for a ceremony at the nursing home in the small town of Freeman, where she’s worked for the past 20 years. “I was just flabbergasted,” said Graber, who plans to keep busy by volunteering at the home.
Q It’s a love story worthy of Charlotte Brontë—with a modern Twitter twist. In 2012, London-based writer Victoria Carlin was tickled by a joke on the Twitter account of a city bookstore and tweeted in response: “Well I’m in love with whoever is manning the Waterstones Oxford Street account.” A friend dared her to ask the store’s social media manager, Jonathan O’Brien, for a date, and the pair instantly hit it off. The couple got hitched in July, and the love story went viral when Carlin shared a photo of their wedding online, alongside her 2012 tweet and the caption “Dear reader, I Carlin and O’Brien: Twitter romance married him #noreally.”
Q An Indiana construction worker is brightening the days of the patients at a children’s hospital with a life-size game of “Where’s Waldo?” While working on the new wing of Memorial Children’s Hospital in South Bend, Jason Haney, 41, began hiding an 8-foot cutout of Waldo around the construction site and challenged kids to look out their windows and spot the elusive kids’ book character. The young patients love the game, says hospital spokeswoman Heidi Prescott. “It really helps take their mind off what they’re going through for a couple minutes,” she says. “It’s been very heartwarming.” THE WEEK August 5, 2016
6 NEWS
Controversy of the week
Trump: His deep ties to Putin’s regime aggressions be watered down to a meaningless promise The fear that a U.S. presidential candidate could be a secret of “appropriate assistance.” Putin must be even more agent of some enemy power “is an old theme in American delighted with Trump’s recent comments about NATO, pop culture,” said Anne Applebaum in The Washington said Noah Rothman in CommentaryMagazine.com. Post, but in 2016 the truth may be even “stranger Asked if the U.S. would fulfill its NATO obligations than fiction.” Republican nominee Donald Trump to defend the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and has never made a secret of his creepy admiration Lithuania from a Russian invasion, Trump said for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he he wasn’t sure, and it would depend on whether calls “a strong leader.” Putin, in turn, has used they have “fulfilled their obligations to us.” The his state-controlled propaganda network, RT, to invitation to Putin could not have been clearer. cheer on Trump’s candidacy and attack Hillary Clinton as a “warmonger.” And then, this The hysterical attempt to turn Trump into week, Democratic Party emails reportedly stoHe has a clear favorite in this election. a Russian agent is pure “McCarthyism,” len by Russian hackers were released with the said Paul Saunders in NationalInterest.org. In his NATO comexpress purpose of dividing the Democrats and hurting Clinton’s ments, Trump was clearly pressuring our allies to meet their treaty campaign. “If elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin’s requirements to spend 2 percent of their GDP on their own miliman in the White House?” asked Paul Krugman in The New York Times. It sounds like a ridiculous question, but the ties between the taries. That would make Baltic nations stronger, and would “be worse for Russia, not better.” As for the influence of Manafort and two go deep. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, previother aides, said Daniel Drezner in WashingtonPost.com, “if there ously helped Putin puppet Viktor Yanukovych become president is anything we have learned about the Trump campaign so far, of Ukraine. Carter Page, Trump’s foreign policy adviser, has close it’s that non-family underlings don’t matter.” More investigation, ties to and a huge financial stake in Gazprom, the Russian energy though, is needed. giant. After being shut out by U.S. banks, Trump has sought financing from Russian oligarchs; his son Donald Trump Jr. said This much is already clear, said Franklin Foer in Slate.com: If Putin in 2008 that Russian money makes up “a pretty disproportionate “could design a candidate to undermine American interests—and cross-section of a lot of our assets.” Now we know at least one advance his own—he’d look a lot like Donald Trump.” In Trump, reason why Trump refuses to release his tax returns. “Something he has a candidate with financial ties to Russia and pro-Russian very strange and disturbing is going on here.” advisers. Trump is a fellow authoritarian who would divide the U.S. along racial lines, alienate our allies in Europe and the Middle Proof of that came during the Republican convention, said JonaEast, and weaken our moral standing in the world. No doubt than Chait in NYMag.com. The Trump campaign showed little about it: Trump’s run for the White House is a “once-in-a-lifetime interest in the planks of the official Republican Party platform— opportunity” for Putin, said Max Boot in LATimes.com. Trump’s with one exception. Trump staffers insisted that a pledge to supcampaign slogan “might as well be ‘Make Russia Great Again.’” ply Ukraine with “lethal defensive weapons” to fend off Putin’s
Q A Florida elementary
school teacher who does not speak Spanish is suing the local school board after she was denied a job teaching recent immigrants in both English and Spanish. Tracy Rosner claims that she is “otherwise fully qualified for the job,” and that not hiring her amounts to “employment discrimination on the basis of race and national origin.” Q A Georgia appeals court
ruled that a man who took pictures up a woman’s skirt did not break any law. Brandon Lee Gary admitted to “upskirting” at a store, but the court ruled that a law that prohibits photographing people “in any private place” means a physical location, not a part of the body. A dissenting judge argued that a woman should be able to expect privacy “in the area under her skirt.” THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Good week for: Making everything better, after police said an 86-year-old
British woman fought off a would-be robber by “repeatedly hitting the offender over the head with a packet of bacon.” Bug juice, after a team of scientists in India found that the “milk” produced by the Pacific beetle cockroach for its offspring is a superfood with four times the nutritional punch of cow’s milk. They recommended that this “fantastic protein supplement” be reproduced in the lab for humans. Throwing a hat in the ring, after The Cat in the Hat announced his candidacy for president outside the Springfield, Mass., childhood home of Dr. Seuss. The Cat promised to release his tax returns, work with Red Fish and Blue Fish to clean up the oceans, and to appoint Sam I Am to battle hunger.
Bad week for: Family ties, after Barack Obama’s half brother said he was voting
for Donald Trump. Malik Obama, who lives in Kenya but is a U.S. citizen, said he was unhappy with Hillary Clinton’s record as secretary of state and her support of gay marriage. Branding, after drug dealers in Brazil were busted selling bags of cocaine labeled “Rio 2016” and emblazoned with the Olympic rings. The bags also said, “Don’t use near children.” Revisionist history, after Fox News host Bill O’Reilly responded to Michelle Obama’s comment that she was proud to see her African-American daughters grow up “in a house built by slaves.” O’Reilly said that while that was historically accurate, the slaves were “well fed and had decent lodging.”
Boring but important Heat wave forecast for entire U.S. For the first time on record, every square inch of the U.S. is forecast to experience above average temperatures for the next three months, according to a new report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center. Warmer-than-normal temperatures for August, September, and October are particularly likely in the Northeast, South, and Western states—as well as Alaska. Dan Collins, a meteorologist with the climate center, attributes the heat wave to unusually warm ocean temperatures, which will keep the atmosphere hotter than normal over much of the country into early fall. This year is on track to be Earth’s hottest year since record keeping began in the late 19th century.
AP
Only in America
The U.S. at a glance ... Washington, D.C. Hinckley to be freed: John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, will be released from a government psychiatric hospital as soon as Aug. 5, a federal judge ruled this week. Hinckley, 61, Hinckley: Going home no longer poses a threat to himself or others, U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman ruled, and will be allowed to live full-time with his mother in Williamsburg, Va., so long as he undergoes regular psychiatric treatment and submits to monitoring for one year. Hinckley was confined to St. Elizabeths hospital in 1982 after he was found not guilty by reason of insanity for shooting Reagan and three others outside the Washington Hilton. The would-be assassin claimed he had hoped to impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had become obsessed after repeated viewings of Taxi Driver. Beginning in the 1990s, Hinckley was allowed to make brief, supervised visits to his mother’s house while being monitored by Secret Service agents.
AP, Newscom, AP, screenshot
Baton Rouge Klan candidate: Former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke announced last week that he’s running for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana as a Republican, citing Donald Duke: Inspired by Trump Trump’s presidential campaign as his inspiration. “I’m overjoyed to see Donald Trump and most Americans embrace most of the issues that I’ve championed for years,” said Duke, a former state representative who has previously launched unsuccessful bids for Louisiana governor, the U.S. Congress, and the White House. State and national Republicans denounced Duke’s candidacy, with a spokeswoman for Trump saying, “Mr. Trump has disavowed David Duke and will continue to do so.” Trump drew fire earlier this year for not immediately repudiating the white nationalist’s endorsement of his campaign. Duke is running to succeed Republican Sen. David Vitter, who is stepping down.
Baltimore Gray charges dropped: Prosecutors in Baltimore this week dropped all remaining charges against the three police officers awaiting trial for the death of Freddie Gray, ending one of the most closely watched police prosecutions in the country without a conviction. Gray, 25, died in April 2015 from severe spinal cord injuries sustained while he was being transported in the back of a police van. His death triggered days of violent protests and became a focal point in the national debate on excessive police force. Of the six officers charged in connection with Gray’s death, three were acquitted in bench trials; another faced a retrial after a hung jury. State’s attorney Marilyn Mosby said it had been an “agonizing” decision to drop the charges, which her critics had called politically motivated. “We do not believe Freddie Gray killed himself,” she said, but “the judge has made it clear he does not agree with the state’s case.”
Fort Myers, Fla. Nightclub slayings: Two teenagers were killed and at least 18 people wounded this week when gunmen opened fire on a crowd gathered outside a Fort Myers nightclub where a party for teens was drawing to a close. Police, who have arrested three people in connection with the shooting and are searching for additional suspects, said the attack was not an act of terrorism but refused to discuss a possible motive. The gunfire erupted shortly after midnight as parents arrived to pick up partygoers filing out of Club Blu. Witnesses said panicked people dived behind cars to escape the “nonstop spraying” of bullets. A post on the venue’s Facebook page apologized to the victims, but said that “there was nothing more we could have done,” adding that the club had armed security inside and out. Police identified the dead as Sean Archilles, 14, and Stef’An Strawder, 18, both aspiring basketball players.
NEWS 7
Richmond, Va. Felon voting rights: Days after the Virginia Supreme Court struck down Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s blanket order to restore voting rights to more than 206,000 felons, a defiant McAuliffe this week promised McAuliffe: Still signing to sidestep the ruling and individually sign the hundreds of thousands of restoration orders. The Democrat infuriated his political opponents in April when he circumvented the GOP-led legislature and issued an executive order giving felons who had completed their sentences the right to vote. Republicans accused him of trying to expand the Democratic electorate in the potential swing state ahead of the November elections. The Virginia Supreme Court struck down McAuliffe’s order last week, saying he had overstepped his legal authority and could only restore voting rights on a case-by-case basis. McAuliffe responded by saying he would use an autopen to sign all 206,000 orders in the next several weeks.
North Miami, Fla. Controversial police shooting: Two police officers have been suspended without pay in the wake of the shooting of an unarmed black man who was lying on the ground with his hands up, trying to protect a young autistic man at Kinsey and his patient his side. Police were responding to a 911 call about a suicidal man with a gun last week when they found Charles Kinsey and a young man in the street; Kinsey, a behavioral therapist, was trying to guide the 23-year-old autistic patient back to the assisted living facility where he worked. Cellphone footage showed Kinsey, lying on the ground with his arms up, telling the officers that his autistic patient was only carrying a toy truck; after the recording stopped, Jonathan Aledda, a four-year veteran of the North Miami police department, fired three shots, hitting Kinsey in the leg. Aledda has been placed on leave, as has Cmdr. Emile Hollant, who authorities say gave “conflicting statements” about the shooting to investigators. THE WEEK August 5, 2016
8 NEWS
The world at a glance ...
Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, France President François Hollande met with religious Slaughter in church: France was left reeling in horleaders of all faiths after the attack and called for ror again this week after Islamist militants brutally unity. Pope Francis condemned Hamel’s murder murdered an 85-year-old Catholic priest, raising as “barbarous,” and Mohammed Karabila, the fears of a religious war in the country. Armed with imam of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray’s mosque, said knives, two jihadists burst into a church in northhe was “appalled by the death of my friend.” western France during a weekday Mass, forced Hollande promised better security for houses of Father Jacques Hamel to his knees, and slit his worship. ISIS “has declared war on us,” he said. throat. A parishioner, 86, was seriously wounded. “We have to win that war.” But his political Mourning Father Hamel Police shot dead the killers as they left the church opponents charged that Hollande’s government shouting “Allahu akbar” and pushing three hostages ahead of has failed to adequately respond to the wave of terrorism, includthem. ISIS claimed responsibility for the atrocity, calling the ing last November’s rampage in Paris and the recent Nice truck knifemen its “soldiers.” One of the attackers, Adel Kermiche, attack. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy called for the electronic 19, was under police surveillance and wearing an electronic tagging of all of France’s 10,500 suspected or aspiring jihadists. monitoring tag because he had repeatedly tried to go to Syria to join ISIS. The attack was carried out during a daily four-hour window when Kermiche’s tag was deactivated and he was allowed to leave his parents’ home. San Juan Chamula, Mexico Mayors assassinated: Mexican mayors are demanding protection after two of their number were killed this week in apparent crimegang assassinations. Domingo López González, mayor of San Juan Chamula, was meeting with residents in the town square when armed men opened fire, killing him, his vice mayor, and three other people. That same day, gunmen López González ambushed and killed Ambrosio Soto Duarte, mayor of Pungarabato, a small town in Guerrero state, as he rode in a car surrounded by federal police bodyguards. Soto had said that a criminal gang had threatened him after he refused to pay them off and allow them veto power over official appointments.
São Paulo Formula One ransom: The mother-in-law of billionaire Formula One racing boss Bernie Ecclestone has been kidnapped in São Paulo, further raising concerns about safety in Brazil ahead of August’s Rio de Janeiro Olympics. The crooks snatched Aparecida Schunck, 67, from her home last week and are now demanding a ransom of $36.5 million—a record amount for a ransom in Brazil, according to the magazine Jeja. Ecclestone, 85, is one of the wealthiest figures in the sport of motor racing and is estimated to be worth more than $3 billion. He met his third wife, Fabiana Flosi, 38, at the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2009. The couple wed three years later, after Ecclestone divorced his wife of 25 years, Croatian model Slavica Radic. Ecclestone and his wife, Flosi THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Rio de Janeiro No blanket ban for Russia: The International Olympic Committee ruled this week that it would not ban the entire Russian team from the Rio Summer Games, ignoring the recommendations of anti-doping officials, sports authorities, and athletes from around the globe. Instead, the IOC said it would let individual sports’ governing bodies decide if Russian athletes are clean and should be allowed to compete. The announcement comes after a recent report by the World Anti-Doping Agency alleging that Russia had operated a state-sanctioned doping program and helped athletes cover up failed drug tests. Travis Tygart, head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said the IOC’s decision was “a significant blow to the rights of clean athletes.” Russia’s entire track-and-field contingent has already been banned from Rio, and hundreds more athletes are expected to be disqualified.
Reuters, Newscom, screenshot, Getty
Panama Canal Chinese ship hits wall: A Chinese container ship smashed into a wall of the Panama Canal this week, the third such accident since a new lane of the waterway opened in June. The Xin Fei Zhou suffered a large gash in its side and is now undergoing repairs. Panama spent $5.25 billion and eight years expanding the canal to allow the passage of The damaged Xin Fei Zhou so-called superships: hulking vessels that can hold up to three times as much cargo as ordinary container ships. Industry groups say the new lane was poorly designed, with locks barely wide enough for the massive ships and no room for error.
The world at a glance ...
NEWS 9
Ankara “What documents do you need, when 265 peoMassive crackdown: President Recep Tayyip ple [were killed in the attempted coup], bombed Erdogan is demanding that the U.S. hand over the from jets, and run over by tanks?” Pennsylvania-based Turkish imam he claims masTurkish authorities have arrested about 15,000 terminded the recent coup attempt against him, as alleged Gulenists, including some 9,000 soldiers authorities rounded up thousands of the cleric’s and many of the country’s highest-ranking alleged supporters in Turkey. Fethullah Gulen, military officers. Tens of thousands of civil a moderate imam who has millions of followers servants—mostly teachers and judges—have there and around the world, was long an ally of been fired, and scores of journalists detained. So Police guard suspected plotters. Erdogan. The two split in 2013, when Erdogan many people are in custody that they are being accused Gulen of using his followers in the judiciary to pursue a held in sports centers and stables. Amnesty International said that damning corruption investigation into Erdogan’s allies and family many detainees had been tortured, beaten, and raped. Lawyers members. The U.S. says it won’t hand over Gulen—who denies for the accused said their clients were being hauled before the involvement in the coup—without a formal extradition hearing; courts with their shirts covered in blood. “The grim details that Turkey has not yet made an official request. “America keeps we have documented are just a snapshot of the abuses,” said asking us for documents,” said Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. Amnesty International’s Europe director John Dalhuisen. The Turkish government denies the abuse allegations. Sagamihara, Japan Massacre of the disabled: Nineteen people were knifed to death at a Japanese care home for the disabled this week, the worst mass killing in the country since World War II. Satoshi Uematsu, 26, who used to work at the center, broke into the facility at night, tied up two employees, and then went from room to room knifing the sleeping residents. He turned himself in to police shortly after, telling them he felt no remorse and smiling broadly for the TV cameras. Uematsu was fired from his job in February after he tried to hand deliver a letter to Parliament outlining a plan to attack care homes and calling for all disabled people to be euthanized. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital but discharged after 12 days when a doctor decided he was not a threat to others.
Getty, AP, Reuters, screenshot
Wellington, New Zealand Death to invaders: New Zealand plans to kill every last one of the wild invasive mammals that are eating its native birds. New Zealand has no native land mammals except bats, but Maori settlers and then European colonists brought pigs, opossums, rats, and weasels, which now Save the kiwi! gobble up tens of millions of flightless kiwis and other rare birds every year. The government estimates that invasive species cost the country more than $2.3 billion a year. Eliminating them by 2050, said Prime Minister John Key, will be “the most ambitious conservation project attempted anywhere in the world.” The program will use a combination of traps, poison, and hunting. Residents are urged to keep their pet cats indoors and not replace them when they die.
Kabul ISIS is here: ISIS has struck Burying the jihadists’ victims the Afghan capital for the first time, killing at least 84 people and injuring hundreds more in a multi-attacker suicide bombing of a protest march. It was one of the worst attacks on civilians in Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion in 2001. The victims—mostly young men and women, many of them students and activists—were ethnic Hazaras, a Shiite minority group, who were demanding that the route of a major new electric power line include their poverty-stricken province. ISIS has its Afghan stronghold in Nangarhar, a region near the border with Pakistan, and it has carried out attacks there since 2014, when most foreign forces left the country.
Berrimah, Australia Children hooded, shackled: Australia has ordered an inquiry into the treatment of juvenile offenders after a news program exposed abuses at a Northern Territory detention center. The Four Corners show aired footage of teenage boys being stripped naked, sprayed with tear gas, and kept in solitary confinement. One inmate, then-17-year-old Dylan Voller, was shown strapped to a restraint chair while wearing an Abu Ghraib–style hood. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he was “shocked and appalled” at the mistreatment. Youth detention rates in the Northern Territory are three times higher than in any other Australian state or territory. Voller: In the chair THE WEEK August 5, 2016
10 NEWS
People
Swimming from Cuba to Florida Diana Nyad isn’t one to give up, said Carole Cadwalladr in The Guardian (U.K.). The New Yorker first tried to swim unassisted from Cuba to her native Florida in 1978, at age 28. When that failed, she retired from competitive swimming and became a sports broadcaster. But in 2010, at 60, Nyad tried again. “I just didn’t want to have any regrets,” she says. “My mother had died at 82 and I realized I might only have 22 years left.” She abandoned that second attempt when she suffered an asthma attack. A third try later that year failed after she was stung by a box jellyfish, one of the most venomous creatures on Earth; a fourth try was stymied by more jellyfish and a storm. Nyad’s friends begged her to give up, but she refused. And in 2013, at age 64, she finally succeeded, swimming nonstop for 53 hours through 110 miles of shark-infested waters. By the time she emerged from the sea, Nyad could barely walk or talk. “I remember seeing the faces of the crowd on the beach, [they were] just so emotionally wrought,” she says. “I realized afterwards they weren’t weeping because somebody set some sports record. They were weeping because they saw someone who refused to give up. And everyone has experience of that, whether it’s fighting cancer or raising a difficult child.”
Gorbachev’s regrets
Q Lindsay Lohan had an emotional
meltdown last week when the troubled actress appeared on the balcony of her London flat in the wee hours to scream that her Russian boyfriend, 22-year-old Egor Tarabasov, had attacked her. “He just strangled me, he almost killed me!” yelled Lohan, 30. Apparently addressing Tarabasov, she added, “You sick f---. It’s my house, get out of my house. I’m done, I don’t love you anymore.” Residents of Lohan’s quiet Knightsbridge district called the police, who broke down the door, only to find that Lohan had left. “She woke our whole house up with her screaming,” one neighbor said. “I was really concerned about her safety.” The THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Bolt’s slow start Usain Bolt didn’t want to be a runner, said Mick Brown in The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Growing up in Jamaica, the world champion sprinter preferred other sports. “I was so in love with cricket, I didn’t want to do anything else,” he says. “Track was just something I was doing because I was good at it.” At 15, he became the youngest-ever world junior gold medalist and decided to focus on running. Scholarship offers flooded in from U.S. colleges, but he turned them all down to stay in Jamaica. “They wanted me to go to some cold state. I [said], ‘Nah, can’t do the cold.’” At the start of his professional career, the 6-foot-5-inch Bolt didn’t train hard; at the 2004 Athens Olympics, he was eliminated in the first round of the 200m. But a new coach helped him adjust his attitude, and at the 2008 Beijing Olympics he became a global superstar by dominating every race and setting new records in the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay. Bolt, now 29, repeated the feat in London four years later, and is hoping to complete an unprecedented “triple-triple” at this summer’s Rio Olympics. “When [people] talk about greats it’s always Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Pelé,” he says. “I want to be a part of that conversation.”
meltdown came a day after Lohan took to social media to accuse Tarabasov of cheating on her with a “Russian hooker” and to claim, “I am pregnant!!” She later tweeted her apology for exposing “certain private matters,” saying, “I was acting out of fear and sadness. We all make mistakes.” Q Lamar Odom’s family last week staged an unsuccessful intervention after he was kicked off a Delta Airlines flight for showing up drunk and vomiting on the plane, UsWeekly.com reports. The former NBA player’s ex-wife, Liza Morales, and other close relatives tried in vain to persuade him to fly to retired baseball star Darryl Strawberry’s Florida treatment center; Strawberry, a recovered addict, joined the intervention via Skype. Odom was hospitalized last year after a near-fatal overdose at a Nevada
brothel. His estranged second wife, Khloé Kardashian, helped him through recovery, but he has since relapsed. “It’s really sad,” an insider says. Q Singer Ariana Grande lost out on a White
House appearance because of her infamous doughnut-licking episode, hacked Democratic National Committee emails released last week by WikiLeaks revealed. Security cameras last year caught Grande, 23, tonguing merchandise at a California doughnut shop, where she also declared, “I hate America.” When DNC finance chair Zachary Allen asked staffers to vet Grande for a White House gala, the emailed response detailed the doughnut incident. Though Grande had apologized and wasn’t charged, White House staffer Bobby Schmuck nixed her with a terse “Nope, sorry.”
Getty, Newscom, AP
Mikhail Gorbachev still laments the collapse of the Soviet Union, said Mark Franchetti in The Sunday Times (U.K.). It has been 25 years since Russian President Boris Yeltsin exploited Gorbachev’s reforms and political chaos to grab power and dissolve the Soviet Union. “I regret it enormously,” says Gorbachev, 85. “I regret that a great country with huge possibilities and resources vanished. My intention was always to reform it, never to destroy it.” Today, Gorbachev is deeply concerned about the erosion of RussianAmerican relations under Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It was so hard to achieve mutual cooperation with the U.S.,” he says. “How did we get to the edge of the abyss?” He has been fiercely critical of Putin for staying in power so long and rolling back democratic reforms; the two are no longer on speaking terms. But Gorbachev doesn’t blame the strongman alone for Russia’s strained relationship with the West. He also faults American triumphalism. “They thought, ‘We’re victorious, we won the Cold War,’ instead of accepting the huge role we played in ending it. They weren’t genuinely interested in helping Russia develop into a stable and strong democracy. They thought they’d cut Russia down to size. In the process, they’ve squandered the trust we’d built.”
Briefing
NEWS 11
North Korea’s nuclear threat Kim Jong Un’s ‘Hermit Kingdom’ is amassing a nuclear arsenal that could reach South Korea, Japan—and even the U.S.
Reuters
How large is Kim’s nuclear arsenal?
Would sanctions stop them?
They haven’t so far. The U.N. Security His tyrannical regime now has an estiCouncil has just passed the toughest mated 20 nuclear warheads—and is addsanctions in two decades, however— ing a new weapon to that stockpile every banning the export of coal, iron, six weeks or so, experts believe. North and other minerals that provide vital Korea has also been steadily upgrading its funds for the government’s nuclear ballistic missiles. It has already successprogram. The success of the sancfully mounted a small nuclear warhead tions will depend almost entirely on on a 1,500 km–range Rodong missile that China—Pyongyang’s most influential can reach South Korea and Japan—and ally, and the nation with which it does is on course to develop 13,000 km–range 90 percent of its trade. Beijing officially intercontinental ballistic missiles targetopposes Kim’s bid to become a serious ing the continental U.S. by early next nuclear power, and is becoming more decade, according to observers at Johns frustrated by the belligerent ruler every Hopkins University. President Obama and day. But China’s leaders will never risk his predecessor, George W. Bush, allowed punishing North Korea so severely North Korea’s nuclear escalation to take a A test launch of a North Korean ballistic missile that its regime would collapse, sparkbackseat to other threats, like Iran, largely ing regional chaos and sending millions of North Koreans fleeing dismissing Kim’s threats to burn Seoul and Manhattan “down to ashes” as bluffs and posturing. But the U.S. ignores North Korea’s across the border into China. (See box.) growing nuclear arsenal—and the instability of its erratic leader— at its peril, says Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute What else can the U.S. do? for Strategic Studies. “Just because Pyongyang wants us to pay Not a lot, except strengthen its missile defense systems at home attention,” Fitzpatrick told The Economist, “that doesn’t mean and abroad. Last week, the Obama administration announced we shouldn’t.” it would deploy the new Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea, to reduce the chance of an attack from Kim’s regime. “But that doesn’t mean you just build When did North Korea go nuclear? more missile defenses and walk away,” says former White House Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, made the nuclear program central to nuclear adviser Gary Samore. The THAAD system can destroy the dictatorial regime’s identity in the early 1990s, as a way of about 90 percent of what is fired toward South Korea, but if just unifying the country after a devastating famine. President Bill one nuclear warhead slips through that net, it could kill and injure Clinton tried to check North Korea’s nuclear ambitions in 1994 an estimated 420,000 people in Seoul. “We need some kind of with the Agreed Framework, a pact that exchanged economic aid process to begin to freeze what [the North Koreans] are doing,” for the freezing of the country’s nuclear program. But Pyongyang says Samore. But nothing, including positive inducements to negocontinued to provoke the West with rocket tests, and after Bush tiate, has served to restrain Kim’s reckless behavior. was elected in 2000, talks broke down when Pyongyang failed to provide verification of its compliance. In 2003, North Korea quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty and announced it had nuclear weap- What are Kim’s intentions? ons, carrying out its first nuclear test three years later. Under the His primary goal is to stay in power, but otherwise, he’s a mysleadership of 33-year-old Kim Jong Un, who came to power upon tery. Kim’s former classmates at his Swiss boarding school have his father’s death in 2011, the pace of nuclear and missile tests has described him as “unpredictable” and “prone to violence.” South accelerated dramatically—culminating Korea’s intelligence agency recently with a fourth nuclear test, of a supposed reported that he’s obsessed with the Regime collapse: The aftermath hydrogen bomb, in January. fear that he will be overthrown, and One of the biggest dilemmas China faces is trythat the 5-foot-9-inch dictator has ing to rein in its North Korean ally with economic swollen to 285 pounds because he How worried should we be? sanctions—but without tipping Kim Jong Un’s copes with his anxiety by bingeing It’s difficult to say, given the secrecy surregime over the edge. If the regime collapses, on food and alcohol. In his paranoia, rounding the Hermit Kingdom. Many of experts agree, there will be absolute chaos. There Kim has presided over several brutal its missile and nuclear tests have failed would be widespread looting by the country’s purges in his military; in 2013 he or been hyped. In January, for example, starving citizens, and violence in the gulags executed his uncle, Jang Song Taek, Pyongyang claimed to have detonated holding the country’s 120,000 political prisoners. calling him a traitor and “despicable its first hydrogen bomb, but experts said Millions of people would rush the border into human scum.” International security the tremors were smaller than expected China, and South Korean and U.S. troops would analyst Alexandre Y. Mansourov of for an H-bomb. Nevertheless, the Kim be forced to occupy a devastated and dysfuncthe Nautilus Institute warns that if regime appears to be compiling all the tional country. In his final days, Kim might choose the volatile tyrant believes he’s about pieces for a deliverable atomic device. to pass the nuclear weapons under his control to be attacked, he could do the Kim recently posed with a miniaturized to terrorists—or even launch them himself, as a unthinkable. “Pyongyang will likely atomic warhead supposedly light enough final act of suicidal revenge. The regime’s colassume the worst,” Mansourov says, to ride atop a rocket that could span lapse would probably spark a brutal civil war with “and rush to use the nuclear weapthe Pacific. “Their systems never work very high stakes, says North Korea expert Andrei ons out of fear of losing them to first time,” says aerospace engineer John Lankov—like “Syria with nukes.” allied preemption.” Schilling, “but they persevere.” THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Best columns: The U.S.
By telling Republicans to “vote their consciences” at the Republican National Convention, said Jonathan Tobin, “Ted Cruz gave us one of the most memorable moments in modern political history.” The Texas senator could have played it safe and given nominee Donald Trump a bland, perfunctory endorsement, thereby avoiding blame for hurting his chances of beating Hillary Clinton. Instead, Cruz used his nationally Jonathan Tobin televised address to give his tacit blessing to true conservatives who “reCommentaryMagazine.com fuse to vote for a racist, protectionist, and isolationist bully.” Even if his motive was calculated and at least partly political, Cruz deserves credit for his chutzpah. “When other Republicans were drinking the Trump Kool-Aid, he refused to bend the knee to someone who is unworthy of the presidency.” Trumpists, of course, are livid, calling Cruz a selfish sore loser for violating a pledge by all the Republican candidates to back the eventual nominee. But Trump went far outside the boundaries of normal politics by insulting Cruz’s wife as ugly and trying to link his father to the assassination of President Kennedy. In the long run, “history will judge Republicans on whether they had the intestinal fortitude to stand up to Trump.” Cruz will not be counted among the cowards.
Cruz’s gutsy snub
Planting the seeds of rebellion David Corn
MotherJones.com
Longing for a golden decade Robert Samuelson
The Washington Post
Viewpoint
By threatening to jail the leader of the opposition party, Donald Trump and his followers have crossed an important line, said David Corn. At the Republican National Convention last week, they not only urged that Hillary Clinton be defeated in November—“they were demanding she be treated as a criminal” and sent to jail. “Lock her up, lock her up!” they repeatedly chanted. Chris Christie, reported to be Trump’s choice for attorney general, pronounced her “guilty” of numerous crimes and later said he might indeed prosecute her. Trump himself railed against Clinton’s “terrible, terrible crimes” and said FBI Director James Comey had participated in a huge cover-up. On the convention floor, “Hillary for Prison” T-shirts and buttons were visible everywhere. A prominent Trump supporter, Al Baldasaro, took the Hillary hatred even further, declaring that she should be “put in the firing line and shot for treason.” What all this signals to millions of Americans is that if Clinton wins, a criminal who belongs in jail has stolen the presidency through a “rigged” system. “How could any patriot stand by and allow such a travesty to occur?” This is very dangerous talk, and lays the foundation “for delegitimizing an election”—and worse. Why are so many Americans angry? asked Robert Samuelson. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders rode a wave of populist disgust with the status quo this year, with polls showing 73 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. But on paper, the U.S. seems to be doing quite well. The economy has largely recovered from the 2008 crash, creating 14 million new jobs; we’re almost at full employment. Crime is at a historic low. Our military is no longer mired in a massive ground war. But something’s missing: “the sense of boundless optimism and national superiority that characterized the boom years” of the 1990s. In that decade, the internet fueled the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. The Soviet Union had collapsed, making us the world’s only superpower. America was at peace, and terrorism was somebody else’s problem. But in 2000, the stock market bubble burst, and 9/11 shook Americans’ confidence in their safety. The Great Recession brought widespread financial insecurity, while Russia and China challenged American dominance. What angry voters want today is not “change,” but a repeal of all the changes of the past 16 years. That’s a longing no one can fulfill.
“Since Sept. 11, 2001, fewer than 100 people have died in jihadist attacks in the United States, according to the New America Foundation, a think tank. That’s about the same number of deaths from motor-vehicle accidents every day. But terrorism feels menacing and personal in a way that even a six-car pileup does not, and so it receives disproportionate coverage. In December 2015, Americans named terrorism the country’s most important problem. The media’s emphasis on tragedy and calamity has no obvious solution. Should NPR’s Morning Edition begin every hour by reading the names of Americans who died in car accidents the previous day?” Derek Thompson in TheAtlantic.com THE WEEK August 5, 2016
It must be true...
I read it in the tabloids Q A Colorado man got into a wrestling match with a young black bear when he tried to remove a bucket stuck on the creature’s head. Jim Hawkins, 66, realized the 2-year-old bear could die of hunger and thirst if he remained stuck in the empty cheese-ball jug. So he whipped out a rope and lassoed the 100-pound bruin, which fought him and scratched his forearms. “I knew the second I got the rope on him, I knew it was going to be a rodeo,” Hawkins said. After a brief tussle, he tied the bear to a tree, and wildlife officers later sedated the animal and cut the bucket off. Q Dorothy Stein bites famous people for a living, says The Hollywood Reporter. Kanye West, Katy Perry, Eminem, and other musicians have all paid up to $250 an hour to be gnawed by the celebrity masseuse, who offers a unique style of deep tissue massage that involves sinking her teeth into clients’ backs. Stein, 48, began applying the biting technique professionally in the 1980s, massaging rock groups such as Def Leppard. Not all of her clients are willing to be bitten, though. “Mariah Carey didn’t want Carey: Unbitten it,” says Stein. “She’s a germophobe.” Q A New York preacher is spreading the word of God— by riding his motorbike through fire. John “Mercury” Morgan, a former circus performer, last week wowed his Rochester congregation by jumping his bike over a line of cars and through a burning wall. Morgan, 51, believes his death-defying stunts powerfully illustrate his religious message. “The jump is actually symbolic,” he explained. “The burning wall represents what waits for you at the end of your life if you don’t know the Lord.”
Newscom
12 NEWS
The 23 Greatest Solo Piano Works
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14 NEWS TURKEY
No longer oriented westward Ugo Tramballi
Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy)
IRELAND
Why the North won’t be joining us David Quinn
The Irish Independent
Best columns: Europe Turkey is just laughing at the European Union now, said Ugo Tramballi. When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began rounding up tens of thousands of peaceful political opponents in the wake of the recent failed coup attempt, Brussels reached for its only weapon. The EU warned that if Erdogan restores the death penalty—as he is threatening to do—then long-running talks on Turkey joining the union would be axed. But Erdogan doesn’t care! He has already pivoted Turkey away from the West and toward the Middle East, Central Asia, and Russia. Erdogan has only been keeping the EU discussions going because they are “economically advantageous,” as evidenced
by the $3.3 billion the bloc is paying Turkey for housing Syrian refugees. Obviously, Erdogan planned his purge long ago. It would have been impossible for his administration to draw up lists of tens of thousands of judges, teachers, professors, journalists, policemen, and civil servants in a matter of days. Had the coup not happened, “Erdogan would have found another pretext” for his power grab. The Turkish president is turning his country into a satrapy, just as it was in the days of the sultans. Whether Erdogan resumes executions or not, his country isn’t democratic. To keep EU membership discussions alive under these circumstances is farcical.
Excited that Britain’s impending departure from the EU will result in a united Ireland? Sit back down, said David Quinn. In the Brexit referendum, Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU, which it could still do if it broke away from Britain and joined the Republic of Ireland. The question is, What do the people want more, “to be part of the EU or part of the U.K.?” About half of the North’s population are Unionists, remember, and are more loyal to the Union Jack than to the EU banner. And we Irish may not be so keen on reunification either, especially if it involves compromise. The Northerners might demand that
we agree to join the Commonwealth, for example, or even accept the British monarch as our head of state, like Australia and Canada. “I doubt if many people down here would wear that.” And think about how adding the North would change our political balance of power. The “fantasy used to be that a united Ireland would be more liberal,” because Protestants are supposedly more progressive than Catholics. But a united Ireland would have a “genuinely socially conservative” party, the North’s Democratic Unionists, and that alone would make many Irish balk. The chance of a united Ireland anytime soon is “absolutely negligible.”
Germany: When refugees become terrorists
AP
ing in the wave of refugees we’ve Everyone’s greatest fear about miaccepted. Some new arrivals might grants has just come true, said Dirk be terrorists posing as refugees. But Schümer in Die Welt. We now know far more of them are likely “deeply for certain that some of the 1 million– traumatized people who experiplus refugees Germany has taken in enced brutal violence before they over the past year are Islamic terfled” and who may now lash out rorists. A 27-year-old Syrian asylum violently at German citizens. seeker who was about to be deported this week blew himself up outside a Fear is ruling the country, said music festival in the Bavarian town Peter Huth in B.Z. “Social media of Ansbach, injuring 15 people in this has become a battlefield” where country’s first jihadist suicide bombangry populists shout down pleas ing. In a video found on his phone, for tolerance and reason. It is all the bomber pledged allegiance to ISIS, German police outside the suicide bomber’s house against all. Migrants fear being and with his death he has advanced scapegoated, right-wing Germans fear the migrants, and leftthe terrorist group’s goals. Now we’re afraid of the Muslims wingers fear right-wing violence. Everyone is calling for more among us, and “that’s exactly what the Islamists want.” But and tougher policing. “In this way a community is destroyed.” what else can we do? We don’t want to be racist, “and yet we If we continue wallowing in primitive emotions, we will end up natives cannot simply keep our welcoming arms thrown open” “trading away our rights for a false sense of security.” There and defend the refugee policy out of political correctness. should be no rush to change our asylum policy until we have had a calm national conversation. “We seem to be safe nowhere,” said Lutz Heuken in the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. The suicide bombing came after It’s true that the German reaction to this onslaught has been a string of attacks over the past two weeks by people with an immature, said Peter Pauls in the Berliner Zeitung. We’ve had immigrant background. An Afghan refugee wounded five train numerous false alarms and plenty of unfounded speculation, inpassengers in an ax attack. A Syrian migrant killed a pregnant cluding from politicians who should know better. That’s because co-worker with a machete. And an Iranian-German teenager, born and raised in Munich, shot dead nine people at a McDon- we Germans are new to mass attacks; we’re not like Americans, ald’s in his hometown. Ali Sonboly, 18, was a bullied loner who who are inured to bloodbaths, or “Israelis, who face ongoing terror threats with cool serenity.” But it’s clear that as the threat modeled himself on Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011. While Sonboly was not a continues, our society will evolve. We will become “more professional” in dealing with attacks—for better and for worse. migrant, the other attacks show the dangers that could be lurkTHE WEEK August 5, 2016
Best columns: International
NEWS 15
How they see us: Trump undermines the NATO alliance sible partner for the Kremlin. He Donald Trump has “practically invited might cave to Russia, but he might Russia to invade” the Baltic States, also push for war. “A lunatic with said Hubert Wetzel in Süddeutsche nuclear warheads at his fingertips, Zeitung (Germany). The Republican confident he’s capable of solving presidential nominee “tossed six deevery international issue, would be cades of U.S. policy out the window” a nightmare” for Putin as well as and destabilized the European order for the rest of us. Everyone needs last week by casually announcing in to calm down, said Karlis Dauksts an interview that if elected president in Latvia’s TVNet.lv. Right now, he might not rush to the defense of “Trump is just being a presidential other NATO members. Presented with candidate” and is tossing out “empty a hypothetical Russian invasion of the phrases” that he knows will motiBaltic nations—tiny NATO members vate his more isolationist supporters. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania— Should Trump actually win, then the Trump said he would only come to Lithuanian troops take part in a NATO exercise. demands of realpolitik will almost their aid if he felt that they had “fulcertainly force him to reverse course and get tough with Russia. filled their obligations to us.” With that statement, he turned NATO’s central principle of mutual defense, that an attack on But we can’t risk NATO becoming a political football, said one member is considered an attack on all 28 members, “into Alvydas Medalinskas in Lithuania’s Lrytas.lt. Moscow is eager to a quid pro quo transaction.” Trump says he’s upset that many European nations are skimping on defense spending, leaving the regain control of the Baltic nations, which broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991, and our safety “entirely depends on U.S. forU.S. to pick up the tab for the Continent’s security. But his plan eign and security policy.” Trump doesn’t listen to diplomats or for economizing is “as stupid as it is dangerous” and will only experts, but he does want power, so he might listen to voters. We embolden Vladimir Putin. must call on descendants of Eastern European immigrants who The Russian president would be foolish to root for a Trump win can vote in the U.S.—Lithuanian-Americans, Polish-Americans, in November, said Bartosz Kunatowski in Gazeta Wyborcza (Po- and so forth—to make their voices heard before November. land). Sure, President Trump would probably gut NATO to save When the USSR annexed the Baltics in 1940, Lithuanian-Americans “bombarded Congress with letters, telegrams, phone calls, a few pennies and might stand on the sidelines as Russian tanks statements, and petitions,” and as a result the U.S. government rolled into the neighboring Baltic States. But the Republican has refused to recognize the Soviet occupation. We must use our inalso shown himself to be unpredictable, sensitive to slights, and fluence again; our very survival could depend on it. prone to waging petty feuds, and that makes him the worst pos-
CANADA
You can’t be Santa Claus forever Jeffrey Simpson
The Globe and Mail
MEXICO
We, too, have a Trump in the wings Juan Manuel Asai
Getty
La Crónica de Hoy
What will happen when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stops giving out candy and ice cream? asked Jeffrey Simpson. The handsome and charming Liberal Party leader has been soaring along in his first nine months in power, buoyed by his popularity at home and abroad. One “masterstroke” was making his cabinet 50 percent female, creating a “new standard by which gender composition will be judged” in governments to come. Since then, the gifts to various interest groups have kept flowing. He jettisoned his promise to balance the budget within four years and instead opened a “spending spigot.” He has promised a new health
plan, a new pension deal for the provinces, and billions in spending on infrastructure and programs for aboriginal communities. But “at some point, the government will have to say no.” Then what? Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien used to say that the best way to govern was “to underpromise and overdeliver.” Trudeau, though, has “overpromised, or at least promised an enormous number of changes.” And these changes aren’t minor—they are huge and expensive. Will he underdeliver, and crush the hopes of those he led to expect so much? If he does, his telegenic looks won’t be enough to protect him from the backlash.
Mexico has its own Donald Trump problem, said Juan Manuel Asai. I don’t mean that Mexico would suffer if Trump were to win the U.S. presidential election—although that’s certainly true. Rather, we have our own homegrown Trump: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as AMLO. López Obrador started out as an environmental activist and rose to become Mexico City’s mayor in 2000; he lost presidential elections in 2006 and 2012, and plans to run again for the position in 2018. This time, horrifyingly, he is leading in the polls. What does he have in common with Trump? “Populism and hate speech.”
Trump’s vitriol is more blatant, while “AMLO throws a stone and then quickly hides his hand.” But both men clearly “seek to divide their respective electorates into good and evil.” For Trump, the enemy is the foreigner and he alone can keep bloodthirsty immigrants out. For AMLO, “everything is the fault of the ruling mafia,” who can be vanquished only by sending him to the national palace. Both are protectionist and isolationist. A Trump win could make an AMLO victory more likely. Were the two of them to attain power at the same time, we’d see “a perfect storm” of rage on the North American continent. THE WEEK August 5, 2016
16 NEWS
Talking points
The GOP convention: Trump’s dystopian vision “It’s tempting to dismiss Trump’s speech as Forget about making America great again, fearmongering,” said Leon Neyfakh in Slate said Ezra Klein in Vox.com. What Donald .com. But although violent crime has been Trump really wants to do is to “make Amerin long-term decline since 1991, he was in ica afraid again.” The Republican nominee fact correct when he said there had been a used his prime-time speech at the party’s recent spike in crime. Homicides in America’s convention last week to portray his country 50 biggest cities really did rise between 2014 as a “dangerous, besieged hellscape”—and and 2015; in Washington and Baltimore, they proclaimed, “I alone can fix it.” Echoing went up by 50 and 60 percent respectively. Richard Nixon’s promise to restore “law Those numbers are “legitimately scary,” and order,” the real estate mogul warned of which is why many Americans are open to illegal immigrants streaming across the borTrump’s message. So much of politics is about der and “roaming free” to threaten citizens; ‘I alone can fix it.’ “gauging the emotional state of the country railed against a “rigged” political system and economy; and claimed that Democrats had left a legacy of “death, and matching it,” said Kyle Smith in the New York Post. In 2012, when Americans were mostly concerned about the economy, Presidestruction, terrorism, and weakness.” As president, he said, he dent Obama “trounced” Romney on the crucial question of “Does would “liberate our citizens from the crime and terrorism and lawlessness that threatens their communities”—without explaining he care about people like me?” This year, voters have watched how. Trump’s speech was “the darkest piece of rhetoric spoken by with horror the atrocities in Orlando, Dallas, Baton Rouge, and elsewhere. Irrationally or not, they’re feeling scared. Trump has a major political figure in modern American history,” said Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. He clearly believes the best way made himself the “I feel your pain candidate” of this election cycle. to win the presidency is to panic voters and convince them they Liberals should not delude themselves—Trump has positioned himneed a “classic strongman” to restore order. self with a real chance to win, said Chris Cillizza in Washington Post.com. The electoral map clearly favors Clinton, and she has The whole convention distilled every aspect of “the Trump phefar more money and a superior organization. But Trump’s victory nomenon into four strange days of drama,” said Ross Douthat in the GOP primaries, despite his blatant, white-identity mesin The New York Times. We saw bitter party division when trasage, shows that American politics has “fundamentally changed.” ditional conservatives tried—and failed, dismally—to block his Indeed, post-convention polls show Trump surging into the lead, nomination. The division was laid bare again in Sen. Ted Cruz’s by 0.2 points in the RealClearPolitics poll average. Next week’s dramatic prime-time speech, when he was loudly booed by delpolls will be more telling, but Clinton “is a uniquely flawed candiegates for refusing to endorse his former presidential rival. There date,” distrusted by a majority of Americans, and “all assumptions was more chaos when Trump’s campaign somehow allowed his have to go out the window in an election like this one.” wife to give a speech that had been plagiarized from first lady Michelle Obama. Trump capped it all off with a speech that promised quick fixes to all problems, and was “delivered with a strong- Don’t forget that the pundits have been wrong at every stage of this election, said Sean Trende in RealClearPolitics.com. During man’s permanent shout.” Trump made no attempt to expand his the primaries, we thought Trump would lose ground when other voter base from the primaries, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag candidates dropped out, or after any of his many outrageous com.com. Instead, he doubled down on his anti-immigrant, anti-trade ments. When he won the nomination, the conventional wisdom platform, targeting the same angry, white, working-class voters who took him to the nomination. He specifically blamed President was that he’d fall far behind once Democrats united behind Clinton. Now that Trump’s numbers are still holding up, some people Obama for dividing the nation along racial lines and encouraging the recent rise of violence and attacks on cops, and offered himself are pinning their hopes on Clinton’s post-convention bounce, or on the debates, or last-minute soul-searching among voters. That as the messiah who would return white America to its rightful may or may not happen, but “if you still don’t believe Trump has place atop the social order. “Beginning on January 20 of 2017,” Trump stated with authoritarian menace, “safety will be restored.” a very real chance of winning this, you are deeply in denial.”
Noted
The New York Times
Q Applications to the Dallas Police Department have more than tripled since the July 7 shooting that killed five officers and injured another nine. In the aftermath of that tragedy, Police Chief David Brown THE WEEK August 5, 2016
challenged protesters to “get off the protest line and put an application in.” The department is currently receiving an average of 40 applications per day. Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Q More Millennials recognize Pikachu than they do Joe Biden, according to a new survey. When shown an image, 98 percent of Millennials polled were able to identify the yellow Pokémon character; only 61 percent recognized the vice president. Vox.com
Q The Middle East had the hottest temperatures ever recorded in the Eastern Hemisphere last week. In Mitribah, Kuwait, the thermometer soared to 129.2 degrees, while in Basra, Iraq, it hit 129.0 degrees. WashingtonPost.com
Q Out of the 17 Muslim-majority nations in the Middle East and North Africa, only Tunisia is rated as a “free” democracy by the organization Freedom House. That’s the worst record on democracy for any region. The Wall Street Journal
AP (2), David Lienemann
Q About 32 million American TV viewers watched some or all of Donald Trump’s 75-minute acceptance speech at last week’s Republican National Convention—1.9 million more than watched Mitt Romney’s address four years ago. Overall, viewership throughout the GOP convention week was about the same as in 2012.
Talking points Kaine: Clinton’s safe choice stuff,” because it keeps the “Tim Kaine was a smart president from “not doing choice” as Hillary Clinstuff that’s stupid not to ton’s running mate, said do.” Sorry, but Kaine is “a historian Larry Sabato horribly uninspired choice,” in The Washington Post. said Melissa Warnke in the By selecting the Virginia Los Angeles Times. This senator last week, Clinton year, Americans aren’t votprobably put his swing ing on experience or policy. state firmly in the DemoThey’re voting on “a gut cratic column. Kaine, a feeling of, ‘Hell yes, this former mayor of Richis my person.’” I lived in mond and Virginia goverVirginia when he was govnor, has government expeClinton, Kaine: ‘A male version of herself’ ernor, and if Kaine “ever rience on every level, “all the while never losing an election.” As vice presi- inspired a ‘Hell yes, this is my person’ feeling in a voter, I haven’t yet met him or her.” dent, he can do some “heavy lifting,” and can also step into the presidency if needed. Passionate Kaine fills a different need—he “was picked Bernie Sanders voters are disappointed, because they had hoped Clinton would pick an outspoken to shore up Clinton’s trust issues,” said Glenn Thrush in Politico.com. In Virginia, he earned liberal like Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But though Kaine is no firebrand, he’s a true progressive—he “a clean-hands reputation,” and you can’t get a Senate colleague in either party to say a nasty spent a year teaching kids at a Catholic mission in Honduras; worked as a civil rights lawyer; and thing about him. He’s also a white male, a group Clinton struggles with, yet he also can appeal to compiled a strong record on LGBT issues, gun the African-American and Hispanic base. Kaine control, and climate change. speaks fluent Spanish, belongs to a primarily black Catholic church, and in the right setting Clinton “has chosen a male version of herself,” shows “uncommon sensitivity to the tone of consaid Peter Beinart in TheAtlantic.com. Like her, versation in minority communities.” He may not Kaine is a wonky, cautious centrist with relatively be the liberal attack dog and class warrior some hawkish foreign policy views. He backs a no-fly zone in Syria and has criticized President Obama’s Democrats wanted, but Kaine won’t hurt Clinton, and will probably help her. cautious foreign policy credo, “Don’t do stupid
Ailes’ exit: Will Fox change?
Getty
Everyone at Fox News always assumed that Roger Ailes would not leave as the network’s CEO until the day he died, said Brendan James in TheGuardian.com. But last week Ailes, 76, saw his “legacy turned to ash,” as a growing sexual harassment scandal forced him to accept a multimillion-dollar severance package from the network. Now the question is, “How will Fox survive the ousting of a man who has defined the channel—and much of U.S. media—for close to 20 years?” Since the Clinton era, the former Republican strategist has micromanaged the network’s daily narratives and crafted the broader memes of conservative dialogue—from Monica Lewinsky to the Iraq War to Benghazi. With splashy graphics and colorful, game show–like sets, he hooked its older, mostly white audience on “apocalyptic fearmongering” about black radicals, shrewish feminists, and villainous Muslims, building Fox into a ratings behemoth that generated more than $1 billion in profits a year. Ailes didn’t just create Fox News. “He is Fox News.” “Cable news will be a better place without Ailes,” said David Zurawik in The Baltimore Sun. No man has done more to foster “a rhetoric of derision and division” in our nation—or to create a
toxic environment in which women were routinely objectified on- and offscreen. Ailes set the lockerroom tone himself, selecting the network’s blonde, leggy anchors and placing them in short skirts behind translucent desks. Since former Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Ailes, at least 25 women have claimed he groped, kissed, and propositioned them behind the scenes. Whether or not that’s true, said Kurt Schlichter in Townhall.com, conservatives should now rally around Fox News. It’s the one network that doesn’t serve as a “dull, goose-stepping transcriptionist for the coastal liberal elite.” The Left is hoping Fox collapses because it “can’t tolerate any dissent.” Whatever happens to Fox, Ailes’ demise “marks the end of an age,” said David Greenberg in Politico.com. The average Fox News viewer is 68. Owner Rupert Murdoch might be persuaded by his sons to broaden the network’s appeal to younger viewers, who are less socially conservative. The network’s “macho, anti-feminist conservative populism” may also have to go, along with those translucent desks. Even in the conservative kingdom Ailes built, he could not escape “the triumph of liberal ideas on gender equality.”
NEWS 17 Wit & Wisdom “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” William James, quoted in The Wall Street Journal
“A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and then we know how to meet him.” Aesop, quoted in The Washington Post
“I have discovered that even the mediocre can have adventures and even the fearful can achieve.” Explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, quoted in The Daily Telegraph (U.K.)
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” John F. Kennedy, quoted in Alternet.org
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn, quoted in The Richmond Times-Dispatch
“To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, the ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control that can lead you to be shattered.” Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, quoted in The New Yorker
“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.” Katharine Hepburn, quoted in Bustle.com
Poll watch Q 55% of Americans believe that restrictions on gun ownership do not infringe on the constitutional right to bear arms. 43% say they do. 57% favor a nationwide ban on assault weapons, while 25% are opposed. 73% favor universal background checks. AP/GfK Poll THE WEEK August 5, 2016
18 NEWS
Technology
Social media: Twitter struggles with hate campaigns “The abuse problem is hardly new for Twitter,” The reign of one of Twitter’s most notorious trolls said Davey Alba in Wired. Unlike Facebook or is over, said Mike Isaac in The New York Times. Snapchat, where interactions are mostly between Last week, the social network permanently banned friends, anybody can connect to anybody on TwitBreitbart.com technology editor Milo Yiannopouter. That openness is what makes Twitter unique, los after the right-wing provocateur “rallied and but also a haven for would-be abusers. For years, directed” a campaign of racist and sexist harassusers have been pleading with the social network ment against Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones. Ghostfor better tools to fight abuse. But Twitter has busters’ all-female reboot has been the target of dragged its feet, hesitant to ban users from the online vitriol for months, but Jones, who is black, site because it desperately needs to keep growing. has been singled out for particularly vicious attacks Now the company is promising to step up its antiin recent weeks. Egged on by Yiannopoulos, hunharassment efforts. If it doesn’t, “Jones isn’t likely dreds of anonymous Twitter accounts recently bomYiannopoulos: Banned for life to be the last high-profile user threatening to quit.” barded Jones with vile tweets, as well as violent and pornographic images, comparing her, for instance, to Harambe, “There’s no universal human right to own a Twitter account,” the gorilla shot dead this year at a Cincinnati zoo. said Robby Soave in Reason.com. But banning Yiannopoulos just “Twitter has had an eye on Yiannopoulos for a long time,” said makes him look like a martyr and adds to his case that Twitter is hostile territory for conservative voices. Predictably, #FreeMilo Jesse Singal in NYMag.com. Going by the username @Nero, started trending on Twitter almost immediately after the ban the blogger has amassed a huge following of garden-variety became news. That “seems like a worse result than simply letting internet trolls, as well as “hardened Nazis and white nationalists.” This isn’t the first time Yiannopoulos has unleashed them him tweet his offensive remarks.” If anyone deserves to be banned from Twitter, it’s @Nero, said Adi Robertson in TheVerge.com. for sustained hate campaigns, but most of his past targets have had only a “fraction of the fame and following that Jones has.” That being said, Twitter won’t say exactly what Yiannopoulos did this time to deserve his punishment. Was it a specific tweet? It didn’t take long for other celebrities to see the abuse leveled Or was it posting Jones’ name with the tacit understanding that at Jones and join with her to beg Twitter to do something. others would do the harassing for him? “If Twitter wants to fight After Jones threatened to quit the service and the bad publicity mounted, the social network had little choice but to finally pull abuse, it should tell us” exactly what standards of speech and behavior will get a user booted off the platform. the plug on @Nero.
A new device will tell you exactly which appliance is sucking up all your electricity, said David Talbot in TechnologyReview .com. Sense is an orange box about the size of an eyeglasses case that connects to your home’s electrical service panel. The device reads incoming power levels a million times per second, allowing it to identify the distinct power “signature” of appliances like garage door openers, toasters, and microwaves. Sense sends the data it collects to the cloud for analysis, and then displays it on a smartphone app. Eventually, the company hopes to use that information to make personalized energyuse recommendations as well as sell anonymized data to utilities. Right now, it’s handy for identifying sneaky drains on your power, like an old ceiling fan, or the cost of “always on” appliances like internet routers. Sense can be pre-ordered for $249. THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Bytes: What’s new in tech Another Obama alum to Silicon Valley down a human associate. The app is already Airbnb has recruited former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to help the company curb discrimination, said Alex Schiffer in the Los Angeles Times. Holder will help the San Francisco–based company “craft a world-class anti-discrimination policy,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky wrote in a blog post last week announcing the hiring. Airbnb has been under pressure to combat bias on the site “since a Harvard Business School study revealed that guests with traditionally black names are more likely to be denied a booking than others.” Holder is the latest Obama administration alumnus to join a high-profile Silicon Valley firm. That list includes former press secretary Jay Carney, who is now at Amazon, and senior adviser David Plouffe, who works for Uber.
Watson goes shopping Macy’s is teaming up with IBM’s artificially intelligent computer Watson to help guide shoppers through its stores, said Madeline Farber in Fortune.com. Watson’s software powers the retail giant’s new mobile-shopping assistant “Macy’s on Call,” which launched in 10 stores last week. Customers can ask the app’s virtual assistant where departments, brands, and services are located instead of having to hunt
programmed with the most frequently asked questions, but will be able to answer more over time “as it begins to learn more about each store’s customers.” The biggest impact could ultimately be on customer service jobs. Retail salespersons have a 92 percent chance of their jobs being automated over the next 20 years, according to a recent Oxford study.
RIP, the VCR “The world’s last producer of home-use video cassette recorders is ending production at the end of the month,” said Elizabeth Weise in USA Today. Facing declining sales and difficulty finding parts, Japan’s Funai Electronics announced last week that it will stop making the “once revolutionary machines.” During the VCR’s heyday, Funai sold up to 15 million units annually. By 2015, that number had shrunk to 750,000 after years of decline, following the introduction of the DVD in 1997. VHS tapes, short for “video home system,” debuted in Japan in 1976, arriving in the U.S. the next year. For the first time ever, customers could watch movies at home, or break free from network television schedules by recording shows for later, “laying the groundwork for today’s streaming media.”
Newscom, courtesy of Sense
Innovation of the week
Health & Science
NEWS 19
To stay slim, eat more ‘good’ fat Americans have long viewed fat as a dietary enemy in the waistline wars, instead filling their shopping carts with all manner of fat-free fare. But a new study is turning conventional wisdom on its head, suggesting the key to keeping thin is eating more fat. The researchers analyzed 56 past studies investigating the link between diet and chronic diseases often tied to obesity. They found that people following a Mediterranean diet—rich in “healthy” unsaturated fats like olive oil, nuts, fatty fish, and avocados, along with other fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains—had a 29 percent lower
Dealing with record heat in New Delhi
Hottest. Year. Ever. Just halfway through 2016, sweltering June temperatures all but guaranteed that this year will surpass 2015 as the hottest ever recorded, according to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “2016 has really blown that out of the water,” NASA’s Gavin Schmidt tells Scientific American. Last month, the world was 1.62 degrees hotter than the average June in the 20th century. It was the 14th consecutive month of record heat for the planet—the longest streak of record-breaking temperatures since people began keeping records in 1881. The Earth’s average global temperature for the first six months of 2016 was also 2.4 degrees warmer than it was in the late 19th century. A powerful El Niño was partially responsible for recent increases, but NASA says that rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are fueling a long-term warming trend. “We are in a neighborhood beyond anything we had seen before early 2015,” says NOAA’s Deke Arndt. “We’ve left the 20th century far behind. This is a big deal.” Getty, Newscom, NASA
Discovering new galaxies A South African supertelescope has discovered 1,300 galaxies in a tiny corner of the universe where only 70 had previously been detected, The Guardian (U.K.) reports. Based northwest of Cape Town near
risk for heart disease and stroke. The risk for breast cancer also dropped 57 percent, and the chances of developing type 2 diabetes fell by 30 percent. The researchers argue that when it comes to obesity and related diseases, processed carbohydrates and sugar, not fat, are the real culprits. So, how much fat is good for you? It depends on the fat. “If you are eating healthy fats that are monounsaturated fats like olive oil or canola oil, you don’t necessarily have to limit them,” study author Hanna Bloomfield of the University of Minnesota tells The Washington Post. These good fats make
Carnarvon, the MeerKat radio telescope captured detailed images of the far-flung galaxies, many of which contain massive black holes—regions where the gravitational pull is so strong, no matter inside them can escape. Astronomers point out that MeerKat is still under construction, and the telescope’s initial images were produced by just 16 of its 64 receptors. “We can now expect when the 64 dishes are in place next year, it will be the best telescope not only in the Southern Hemisphere, but in the world,” says Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s minister of science and technology. MeerKat’s receptors will be integrated into a massive multination radio telescope project, known as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). Some 10 years from now, SKA will comprise 3,000 dishes spread across remote terrain in South Africa and Australia. The project will allow astronomers to peer deeper into space and survey the skies about 10,000 times faster than ever before.
NASA’s eyes—and ears—on Mars Save the date: NASA has revealed plans to land its Mars 2020 rover on the Martian surface by February 2021, where the spacecraft will carry out a data-collecting mission that should pave the way for a future manned mission to the Red Planet. If all goes well, the six-wheeled probe will launch in August 2020 and spend at least two years on Mars hunting for signs of life, analyzing the rocks and dusty surface in unprecedented detail. Mars 2020 was modeled after its predecessor, Curiosity, which has explored the planet since 2012, but with notable tweaks, includ-
Yum: Avocado on toasted whole wheat
people feel full, she said, helping them avoid too many carbohydrates.
ing better cameras and microphones, so astronomers will not only see the Martian landscape but also hear it, reports the Los Angeles Times. Fueled by a nuclear power source, the new rover is equipped with ground-penetrating radar capable of detecting subterranean features, like ice. Mars 2020 will also assess the weather on Mars and test methods of producing oxygen from the planet’s thin atmosphere in preparation for an eventual deep-space Martian colony. Says NASA’s Matt Robinson, “We’re taking the important first step scientists have wanted to take for a long time.”
Health scare of the week Rampant road rage Four out of five U.S. drivers experienced road rage over the past year, a new AAA Foundation study shows, and 90 percent feel threatened by such aggression. Based on a survey of 2,705 licensed drivers, researchers estimate that more than 50 percent the nation’s 210 million drivers holler at other motorists or purposefully tailgate them, while 45 percent honk out of fury or frustration. Drivers also admit to cutting people off or preventing other cars from changing lanes. The survey also shows that about 4 percent of all drivers—roughly 8 million people—have gone so far as intentionally ramming other cars or leaving their own vehicle to confront another driver. Road rage also inspires more than a few obscene gestures—a practice 30 percent more common among drivers in the Northeast. The risks are significant: The study showed that 56 percent of fatal car accidents—which typically kill 40,000 Americans each year—involved aggressive driving. Researchers advise motorists to find their happy place behind the wheel. “Be tolerant,” AAA’s Jake Nelson tells NBCNews.com. “Don’t engage; focus on getting to your destination safely.” THE WEEK August 5, 2016
20 NEWS
THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Pick of the week’s cartoons
For more political cartoons, visit: www.theweek.com/cartoons.
ARTS Review of reviews: Books
to embrace totalitarian regimes and turn a blind eye when host cities purged their streets of undesirables. Coubertin’s most formidable successor, U.S. athlete turned businessman Avery Brundage, resisted commercialization, even barring the televising of Melbourne’s 1956 games. By the 1980s, though, the Olympics were big business, and “hypocrisy was replaced by venality.”
Book of the week The Games: A Global History of the Olympics by David Goldblatt (Norton, $30)
Capturing the full 120-year history of the modern Olympic Games is “a challenge worthy of a marathoner,” said Mary Pilon in The New York Times. Because each quadrennial staging of the games was shaped by larger geopolitical forces, “a thorough Olympic history must also be something of a world history.” To manage the task, British historian David Goldblatt has chosen, “like a disciplined distance runner,” to hold a steady pace through all 30 Olympiads, resulting in a sturdy account that adds welcome realism to the “platitudeladen” tale the International Olympic Committee tells. Goldblatt shows that the organization was slow to fully embrace women competitors and athletes of color. And corruption was part of the Olympics story long before Rio. “It all began with good intentions,” said
AP
American Olympians in 1896
Nick Pitt in The Times (U.K.) The founder of the games, a minor French nobleman named Pierre de Coubertin, hoped to create a celebration of sport that would unite gentlemen amateurs of all nations. But Coubertin also labeled women’s sport “the most unaesthetic sight human eyes could contemplate” and laid the groundwork for much future hypocrisy. Instead of celebrating Jim Thorpe, one of the greatest athletes in the games’ history, the IOC stripped him of his 1912 medals because he once made a few dollars playing baseball. The committee’s apolitical pose, meanwhile, allowed it
Novel of the week Heroes of the Frontier
Oh, Florida! How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country
by Dave Eggers
by Craig Pittman
(Knopf, $29)
(St. Martin’s, $27)
Dave Eggers’ freewheeling new novel “feels like life,” said John Freeman in The Boston Globe. Its heroine, an Ohio woman reeling from a lawsuit that shuttered her dental practice, takes off with her two children to make a fresh start in Alaska. As the trio’s RV propels them from place to place and mishap to mishap, the book starts to feel like “a more domestic On the Road.” But the presence of the children also helps make this a tale about parenthood’s universal anxieties. Eggers, whose 2012 novel, A Hologram for the King, also featured a midlife crisis, fails to give this protagonist “the same depth of intimacy,” said Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times. Still, Eggers’ “clear-eyed portraits” of 8-year-old Paul and 5-year-old Ana—who relish the adventure even as their mother, Josie, suffers pangs of guilt for uprooting them—lend the story authenticity. Eggers brings “bonedeep” knowledge to his depictions of the parent-child interactions, creating “by far the strongest parts of this absorbing if haphazard novel.”
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“When it comes to craziness, you can’t compete with Florida,” said William McKeen in the Tampa Bay Times. Where else would a guy be arrested for beating up his girlfriend with a banana? Or would a driver explain a crash by saying she had been shaving her pubic hair? Craig Pittman, who in his spare time is an award-winning environmental reporter, has been collecting such gems since he was a kid, and he started sharing them in a Slate .com column a few years ago. But in his new book, Pittman “doesn’t just toss out the wild and wacky for a good laugh,” said Beth Kassab in the Orlando Sentinel. He also “makes a convincing case” that Florida’s rich, sometimes weird, history should be better known nationwide.
“It has not all been doom and gloom,” said David Runciman in The Guardian (U.K.). Barcelona’s 1992 stint as host “did a lot to turn the city into a global destination,” and London 2012 “was fun while it lasted.” But the Olympics have generally been better for rehabilitating the image of a nation (think 1960 Rome and 1964 Tokyo) than for projecting global ambitions, as Rio had hoped to do. Looking ahead, Goldblatt worries that Tokyo 2020 will be a bloated celebration of tech-industry wealth, and he may be right. Still, said Tim Lewis, in The Observer (U.K.), a reader finishing the book is left with the impression that the Olympics aren’t truly doomed. The event instead will continue to be “chaotic, inspiring, incomprehensible, and unmissable— much as it has been since 1896.” “A lot of Florida’s weirdness can be chalked up to simple geography,” said Nick Moran in TheMillions.com. Cram 19 million residents and 100 million annual visitors onto a hot, narrow peninsula crawling with alligators, and a few people are bound to get unhinged. In a more serious mode, Pittman points to the long coastlines that invite drug trafficking, to the large share of residents without steadying roots, and to poor mental health care. Yet his “Unified Theory of Florida” would be even better if it highlighted how the state has attracted a large population of poor people who engage in the desperate acts that become tabloid fodder. Still, “there’s a lot to like” in his storytelling, and “the book should be required reading for outsiders cracking jokes about the state’s foibles.” Some of Pittman’s hilarious anecdotes “can lapse into the type of avuncular zinger that is as endearing as it is groan-inducing,” said Kent Russell in The New York Times. To punctuate a tale about an alligator mauling a fugitive, he writes: “Talk about taking a bite out of crime!” His Unified Theory of Florida is also a little half-baked. Then again, my home state “never will be fully captured.” It’s a place that’s always in a state of becoming—“so long as we keep persuading suckers to move here.” THE WEEK August 5, 2016
The Book List
22 ARTS
Heather Havrilesky Heather Havrilesky might be the world’s most effusive advice columnist, said Estelle Tang in Elle.com. In “Ask Polly,” her immensely popular weekly online column, the counsel Havrilesky typically dispenses “reads like pottymouthed, bracing, BFF-level cheerleading,” because the North Carolina native knows no other way than to throw herself into every response. To a recent lovelorn writer who called herself “Trainwreck,” she wrote, “You are broken. But I’m broken, too! Almost everyone is broken in one way or another.” Havrilesky doesn’t have to fake such empathy. “I’m a tortured person myself,” she says. To her, the column has meant much more than a regular paycheck. “I finally have a way,” she says, “of letting all these very heavy and intense emotions out.” Havrilesky’s new book, How to Be a Person in the World, raises her advice game at least another notch, said Christine Friar in Vogue.com. A collection of 32 mostly previously unpublished columns, it takes on big topics—love, infidelity, death, becoming a parent—and builds toward a complete philosophy of life. “By the end of the book,” she says, “I want readers to feel like they’ve been through a really rigorous group-therapy session.” Much of her advice boils down to accepting one’s own flaws and uncertainty, though Havrilesky generally avoids bland therapyspeak. “I want a response that feels like a really good song—clear theme, clear points, buoyant notions,” she says. And the more instinctive and spontaneous it is, the better: “If I’m crying while I’m editing my own answer,” she says, “that’s a good sign.” THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Best books...chosen by Bill Streever Biologist Bill Streever is the author of the best-seller Cold, its 2013 follow-up, Heat, and now And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind, a natural history of moving air. Below, he recommends six works that influenced his thinking about science writing. The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin (Modern Library, $13). Written well before The Origin of Species, Darwin’s narrative account of his landmark voyage to the Galápagos Islands conveys not only the excitement of observing and thinking about nature, but also a sense of shipboard life in the 1830s.
Stiff by Mary Roach (Norton $16). Few readers would have listed human cadavers among their top 10 interests before Mary Roach explored the topic in a book that combines interviews, site visits, and humor. After Stiff’s 2003 publication, the science of the dead suddenly showed up in cocktail-party conversation.
Weather Prediction by Numerical Process by Lewis Fry Richardson (Forgotten Books, $13). Here’s a book filled with equations and unbearably tedious details, but also with scattered passages of unforgettable prose. It’s a firsthand account of the very beginnings of modern weather forecasting, and Richardson did a good share of his research while serving as a World War I ambulance driver near the front lines in France.
The Control of Nature by John McPhee (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, $16). Those who read McPhee’s science books may not even realize they are reading about science, yet they invariably walk away with a deeper understanding of technical concepts and of the inner workings of our sometimes mysterious world. In this 1989 book, they learn about collective human efforts to tame flooding and other natural processes.
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $15). Books about science can contribute to important social and political change. This one, published in 1962, challenged pesticide use. Today Carson’s enormously influential study reminds us how bad things were before her book helped prompt the environmental regulations we depend upon today.
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean (Back Bay, $17). Often, important and interesting science is branded with one word, in capital letters: BORING. Take, for example, the periodic table, an apparently complicated map of the elements. Sam Kean’s tour of those elements, and of the people who discovered and exploited them, turns boring into gripping.
Also of interest...in foodways high and low Ingredienti
Finding the Flavors We Lost
by Marcella Hazan (Scribner, $20)
by Patric Kuh (Ecco, $27)
Marcella Hazan, who “pretty much introduced America to traditional Italian home cooking,” left us a “wonderful, practical, and deeply poignant” parting gift, said Amy Scattergood in the Los Angeles Times. In a book she began before her death two years ago, the revered author teaches the reader how to choose, prepare, and store the ingredients essential to Italian cookery. Her husband, Victor Hazan, compiled her notes, and his occasional asides read “like beautiful footnotes to their long life together.”
Food critic Patric Kuh might be a little too enamored of the word artisanal, said Colman Adams in The Wall Street Journal. His fun, informative new book profiles chefs, farmers, vintners, and other pros whose work is remaking food and beverage production across America, but at times all that connects them is the “artisan” label. Not that Kuh, who writes for Los Angeles magazine, needs a theme. “He’s literate and readable,” and his “deep subject knowledge” makes him an enjoyable travel companion.
Hot Dog Taste Test
Famous Nathan
by Lisa Hanawalt (Drawn & Quarterly, $23)
by Lloyd Handwerker (Flatiron, $27)
Lisa Hanawalt’s collection of comic strips, one-panel gags, and illustrated essays is “a takedown of foodie culture as well as a celebration,” said Chris Hampton in the Toronto Star. The frequent Lucky Peach contributor brings “a naïve sense of wonder” to the culinary world, even while mocking it. One minute, she’s offering a tongue-in-cheek guide to how different wines make a drinker feel; the next minute, she’s trailing chef Wylie Dufresne in awe of his molecular gastronomy experiments.
The story of Coney Island’s most famous hot dog stand is also “the story of America writ large,” said June Sawyers in the Chicago Tribune. Nathan Handwerker, a poor Jewish immigrant, scrounged up $300 to start selling franks in 1916. By the 1950s, his hot dogs were praised by movie stars and celebrated nationwide. His grandson, Lloyd Handwerker, allows space for family feuds too, and he recounts the whole saga “with great verve and storytelling skill.”
Lisanne Aerts, courtesy of the author
Author of the week
Review of reviews: Art & Stage Exhibit of the week Who Shot Sports: A Photographic History, 1843 to the Present Brooklyn Museum, New York City, through Jan. 8
Anyone who’s ever flicked through an issue of Sports Illustrated can understand the drama and power of sports photography, said Taylor Dafoe in ArtInfo.com. So it’s no surprise that the Brooklyn Museum’s new exhibition, “Who Shot Sports,” teems with gorgeous photos of athletes and fans. But Daniel Rodrigues’ Football in Guinea-Bissau (2012) do the 230 images really belong Some of the photographs change the way in a museum? “The answer is yes”: They we think of our sports heroes, said Ian expand and enrich photography’s canon. Blair in The Nation. In one black-andMany major technological advances in white 1922 image, taken by an unknown photography, we’re reminded, are linked photographer, boxer Jack Dempsey and to sport. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge Yankees slugger Babe Ruth sit at a small gave birth to cinema when he developed a table eating breakfast in their bathrobes. freeze-frame technique to prove there is a The intimacy of the setting (Ruth’s New moment when a galloping racehorse has all four hooves off the ground. The best images York apartment) and the two icons’ expressions of surprise serve to humanin this exhibition also do everything we’d ize them: “This is who they are when we expect of fine-art photography. Some, like aren’t looking.” Sometimes, an unconan overhead shot of Michael Jordan soarventional angle produces a particularly ing for a slam dunk, are elaborately staged. striking image, as happened when Sports Others, like Neil Leifer’s iconic 1965 photo Illustrated photographer Peter Read Miller of Muhammad Ali standing over a fallen Sonny Liston, capture the decisive moments chose to shoot gymnast Gabby Douglas from above during her balance beam of deeply layered dramas.
War Paint Goodman Theatre, Chicago, (312) 443-3800 ++++
they developed a fierce antipathy while competing to get their products on the faces of Manhattan’s elite. A musical about the women who created the modern makeup industry might seem unlikely, but War Paint tells their story “with surprising elegance.”
Joan Marcus (2)
Lupone’s Rubinstein
Naturally, the two stars of this new musical “look marvelous,” said Peter Marks in The Washington Post. Playing the rival cosmetics empresses Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole are swathed throughout in midcentury couture. And the “all-but-certainlyBroadway-bound” show sounds as good as it looks, with the co-leads selling every note of a score that “rings with the kind of exhilaratingly brassy notes that match the chutzpah of their characters’ ambitions.” Though Rubinstein, a Polish immigrant, and Arden, a Canadian native, never met,
If only it went more than skin-deep, said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. The show’s script smooths over what was surely a “jagged and unpredictable” rivalry. It hammers home the point that, in spite of their mutual hostility, Arden and Rubinstein had to overcome similar obstacles at a time when female CEOs were extremely rare. The two women even meet their downfall in the same manner, by refusing to advertise on TV in the 1950s, a decision that forces them to cede ground to media-savvy Revlon. But a more fascinating question—whether these proto-feminists rose to power by exploiting other women’s insecurities—is only hinted at. Though the pleasure of seeing LuPone and Ebersole belting out songs that celebrate female ambition is considerable, War Paint isn’t yet “fully made up.”
ARTS 23
routine at the 2012 U.S. Olympic trials. “The symmetry of Douglas’ body is arresting: She splays out evenly like a weather vane, looking upward, her head centered over the 4-inch beam.” The chalk-dusted blue mat below adds a surreal touch. “It’s as if we are staring upward at Douglas pirouetting under a cloudy sky.” Of course, the art world usually ignores sports photographers— “unless they are moonlighting artists of the camera,” said Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker. This show includes a few big names: Henri Cartier-Bresson is represented by his “cunningly poetic” coverage of a 1957 Paris bicycle race; Leni Riefenstahl contributes a series of 1936 portraits that make German athletes look like Greek gods and thus “both awe and sicken.” The work of the full-time sports photographers “can be every bit as brilliant.” But normally when we encounter an arresting image in the sports pages, like Barton Silverman’s 2010 image of the Yankees’ Derek Jeter sliding headfirst into third base in a spray of dirt, we sigh contentedly, and move on without giving the artistry of Silverman and his colleagues a second thought. “‘Who Shot Sports’ offers a chance to show them some penitent tribute.”
On other stages... Privacy The Public Theater, New York City, (212) 260-2400
++++ It’s clear from the very start that Privacy will be no ordinary play, Radcliffe on the couch said Frank Scheck in The Hollywood Reporter. Members of the audience are instructed to defy normal theater protocol and keep their cellphones on. Soon they’re introduced to the drama’s protagonist, played by Daniel Radcliffe, who has been dumped by his lover and is using social media to re-enter the dating world. That simple plot allows for some “alarming” revelations, generated by an onstage researcher who mines the audience’s personal data, and lets the performers weave his discoveries into the show. The play is “neither as profound as it aspires to be nor even entirely cohesive,” said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. But it’s a very good magic trick. “It dazzles and baffles by seeming to know exactly what selected audience members are thinking.” THE WEEK August 5, 2016
24 ARTS Jason Bourne Directed by Paul Greengrass (R)
++++ The CIA turns its guns on its whistleblowers.
Equity Directed by Meera Menon (R)
++++ Women vie for Wall Street dominance.
Don’t Think Twice Directed by Michael Birbiglia (R)
++++ A comedy ensemble begins to unravel.
Review of reviews: Film no one, including his would-be If the Jason Bourne franchise bosses, as he becomes entangled was ever going to forge a lasting in a global conspiracy. Here, he’s comeback, “something drastic drawn out of retirement when a had to be done,” said Stephen former associate, played by Julia Whitty in the New York Daily Stiles, hacks into some CIA files News. Unfortunately, Matt to expose dark agency secrets, Damon appears to be merely making both Bourne and herself coasting in his return to the into agency targets. Arguably, title role after nearly a decade it’s “the most unsettling movie off, while the story feels like Damon: Back on the hot seat in the series.” Alicia Vikander merely an excuse to stage a leads the agency’s high-tech hunt for Bourne, and string of fights and chase scenes “only occasionally between her cat and his mouse we sense “the interrupted by a few lines of dialogue.” Still, until makings of a spark,” said Peter Bradshaw in The a silly final chase, this globe-hopping, fast-paced thriller resurrects what worked about the franchise, Guardian (U.K.). Really, though, Damon should just hand over the franchise. Vikander “deserves a said Peter Debruge in the Boston Herald. Damon, go at being an action heroine.” appealing as an amnesiac CIA operative, can trust Naomi Bishop won’t even risk It turns out the she-wolves of her own standing to help a Wall Street “can be just as coldfemale underling move up the heartedly corrupt as the boys,” ladder, and when a potential said Guy Lodge in Variety.com. insider-trading scandal draws In this financial thriller directed, the interest of a female state produced, and funded by prosecutor, the drama “plays women, Breaking Bad’s Anna like an old-school noir with the Gunn finally gets a featured sexes casually reversed,” making movie role that “capitalizes on Bishop’s duplicitous boyfriend her hot-wired intensity”: She Gunn: A role long since earned the veritable “homme fatal.” plays an investment banker with Gunn creates a few indelible moments when her only self-interest in mind when she backs a techcharacter is allowed to unleash her pent-up rage, firm IPO that turns into a potential career killer. said Yohana Desta in Mashable.com. Too often, “Perhaps the most winning thing about Equity,” though, Equity feels too constrained. It “lacks a lot said Leslie Felperin in Hollywood Reporter, “is of the punch, dramatic heft, and thrilling pacing that it’s not some kind of worthy empowerment drama about sisters doing it for themselves.” Gunn’s required to keep the audience motivated to care.” in The New Republic. Jacobs “I don’t know how Michael manages “a tricky assignment”: Birbiglia pulled it off,” said Her character is an undeniable David Edelstein in NYMag.com. talent with a pathological need The stand-up comedian has to sabotage herself. Key meanmade a movie about a comedy while plays a budding celebrity troupe that’s at once “funny and who realizes his friendships inspiring and harsh and depresswon’t ever be quite the same. ing.” Birbiglia plays an improv This role’s a challenge, too, but teacher who leads the six“Key can do anything.” The performer ensemble. The group A six-way trust game heart of the story, even so, is has been together for years, about the four performers getting left behind, said making magic onstage, but when two members get Devan Coggan in Entertainment Weekly. “The a call from a network sketch show, everyone else result is a bittersweet story that feels a lot like what smiles but then plunges into states of existential it’s like to be in an improv troupe: occasionally dread. Gillian Jacobs and Keegan-Michael Key play the rising stars, and they both shine, said Will Leitch heartbreaking, but frequently hilarious.”
Sing Street
Pioneers of African American Cinema
Miles Ahead
(Anchor Bay, $30)
(Kino Lorber, $100)
(Sony, $26)
Fedria Walsh-Peelo and Lucy Boynton are terrific in this recent musical romance set in 1980s Dublin, said the St. Louis PostDispatch. The story of a teenager who starts a rock band to get a girl, it’s “the best film about being young, gifted, and Irish since The Commitments.”
This five-disc collection of early-20thcentury films by black directors is “one of the year’s most exciting archival projects,” said the Los Angeles Times. Its 20 hours of features and shorts include work by Paul Robeson and Zora Neale Hurston—artifacts of a “truly independent” cinema.
In this recent Miles Davis biopic, Don Cheadle delivered “one of the best performances of his career,” said the New York Post. Directing for the first time, Cheadle struggled to tell a coherent story, but his portrayal of Davis “makes the film worth seeing despite its flaws.”
THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Universal Pictures, EPK, Jon Pack
New on DVD and Blu-ray
Stephen Sondheim Theatre 124 West 43rd Street BeautifulOnBroadway.com
OFFICIAL AIRLINE
Photo: Zachary Maxwell Stertz
The musical of a lifetime.
Movies on TV Monday, Aug. 1 Magnolia Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a rain of frogs give star turns in Paul Thomas Anderson’s multistrand L.A. drama. (1999) 7:50 p.m., Cinemax Tuesday, Aug. 2 Mississippi Burning Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe star as FBI agents investigating the 1963 murder of three civil rights activists in a rural town. (1988) 8 p.m., the Movie Channel Wednesday, Aug. 3 The Country Girl Bing Crosby plays an alcoholic trying for a Broadway comeback while his wife gets under the skin of the show’s director. With William Holden and an Oscar-winning Grace Kelly. (1955) 10:15 p.m., TCM Thursday, Aug. 4 The Naked Gun Leslie Nielsen deadpans his way to comedy immortality playing a bumbling detective trying to quash a plot against the visiting British queen. (1988) 6 p.m., IFC Friday, Aug. 5 A Streetcar Named Desire Marlon Brando became a screen star playing the menacing Stanley Kowalski in this classic adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ play. Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter all won Oscars. (1951) 10 p.m., TCM Saturday, Aug. 6 The Peanuts Movie Computer animation does little to dim the charms of Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang in this recent feature-length riff on Charles Schulz’s comic strip. (2015) 7 p.m., HBO Sunday, Aug. 7 Drive Ryan Gosling is a Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver in this stylish neo-noir. With Bryan Cranston and Cary Mulligan. (2011) 11:30 p.m., Sundance THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Television The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching Meet the Donors: Does Money Talk? Much is made of megadonors and their outsize influence on American politics, but rarely do we hear from members of the donor class themselves. Filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi—Nancy Pelosi’s daughter—knocked on the doors of some of the people who give millions and gained surprising access, learning what the big givers think they get for their money, and what they don’t. Monday, Aug. 1, at 9 p.m., HBO American Experience: The Boys of ’36 As the Olympics open in Rio, tales of perseverance and unexpected triumph are again waiting to be told. None will likely match the story of the 1936 U.S. men’s rowing team, eight secondstringers from the University of Washington who beat the best of the Ivy League before grabbing gold in Berlin, thwarting an elite German eight assembled to win one for Hitler. Tuesday, Aug. 2, at 9 p.m., PBS; check local listings Spillover: Zika, Ebola & Beyond The diseases’ mere mention can send the most rational minds into paroxysms of paranoia. But what’s behind the recent outbreaks of Ebola, Nipah, Zika, and other animal viruses that are spilling over into the human population, and how bad could the trend get? In this sometimes reassuring, sometimes frightening documentary, scientists and public-health experts discuss the threat posed by zoonotic viruses. Wednesday, Aug. 3, at 10 p.m., PBS; check local listings Killing the Colorado Could 40 million Americans soon have too little water to meet their daily needs? The Colorado River, which supplies water to seven Western states and sustains farms that feed the rest of the nation, is nearly tapped out, and not because of drought. This documentary, based on a hardhitting report from ProPublica, explains how a century of growth, poor planning, and shortsighted laws have put the future of California and the Southwest in jeopardy. Solutions are possible, though—if huge policy shifts happen soon, or if Wall Street comes to the rescue. Thursday, Aug. 4, at 9 p.m., Discovery Channel
The Little Prince: The wisdom of youth
The Little Prince “Grown-ups never understand anything,” wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince. But grown-up director Mark Osborne got much right when he adapted the beloved 1943 children’s book, rendering the world of the title character in arresting stop-motion animation. The movie nests those scenes in a CGI-animated drama about a modern girl who learns about the Little Prince from an eccentric neighbor. That tale, though less enchanting, proves likable too. Available for streaming Friday, Aug. 5, Netflix Other highlights Killer Hornets In a one-hour documentary, giant killer hornets, yellow jackets, and honeybees engage in a military-style battle in a Japanese forest. Wednesday, Aug. 3, at 8 p.m., Smithsonian Channel Inspector Lewis The most intrepid sleuth in Oxford, England, begins a final season of crime solving. Sunday, Aug. 7, at 9 p.m., PBS; check local listings Guns on Campus: Tamron Hall Investigates A half century after 46 people were killed or wounded during a mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin, students have been granted the right to carry concealed firearms by a new state law. Tamron Hall visits the campus to hear from all sides. Sunday, Aug. 7, at 10 p.m., Investigation Discovery
Show of the week The 2016 Olympics
Pool shark Katie Ledecky
Ready or not, Rio is about to play host to one of sport’s grandest gatherings—asking the athletes to take the spotlight off Brazil’s Zika epidemic and economic crisis. Supermodel Gisele Bundchen will serve as host of the Aug. 5 opening ceremony, adding to the Carnival air generated by other Brazilian stars like musician Gilberto Gil. Once the competition begins, the Americans to watch in Week 1 include gymnast Simone Biles and returning gold-medalist swimmers Michael Phelps, Missy Franklin, and Katie Ledecky. Prime-time coverage begins Friday, Aug. 5, at 8 p.m., on NBC.
• All listings are Eastern Time.
Netflix, Newscom
26 ARTS
LEISURE Food & Drink
27
Vitello tonnato: A summer favorite in Italy heat so liquid is barely simmering; cover and cook 1 hour.
American home cooks can be remarkably unimaginative at the butcher counter, said Anya Fernald in Home Cooked (Ten Speed Press). Even foodies tend to order only prestigious prime cuts from a steer’s rib section— chuck, flank, sirloin—which means they’re overlooking 80 percent of the animal.
Brown W. Cannon III, Kenny Braun
Before co-founding Belcampo, a Northern California–based sustainable meat company, I worked in Italy for several years and learned from farmers how to coax deep beefy flavor from inexpensive cuts— like eye of round. Slice the roast thinly before plating.
I use it for vitello tonnato, an “unfussy” dish often served in Italy during the summer, when a cold main course is welcome— and so are leftovers that last a week. “The finished product is a platter of very tender, thinly sliced boiled meat covered in a flavorful tuna-caper sauce.” I like serving it as a first course before a nonmeaty main, such as pasta with spring vegetables.
12 salt-cured anchovy fillets 2 tbsp salt-packed capers 4 eggs 12 oz olive oil–packed tuna 2 tbsp white wine vinegar Juice of 1 lemon ¼ cup plus 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil Fresh Italian parsley, for garnish
Recipe of the week Vitello tonnato 2½ lbs beef eye of round, in one piece 750 ml (1 bottle) dry white wine 1 celery stalk, cut into thirds 2 dried bay leaves 5 fresh sage leaves Kosher salt
Trim exterior white fat or silver skin from eye of round; place in a large, heavy pot. Add wine, celery, bay, sage, and a healthy pinch of salt. Meat should be fully immersed; add wine as necessary to cover. Let sit at room temperature overnight. Remove bay and sage; transfer pot to stove top. Bring to boil over high heat, then lower
Meanwhile, put anchovy fillets in a small bowl and cover with cold water. Let soak 30 minutes; set aside. Put capers in a separate bowl, cover with warm water, let soak 15 minutes, then drain, rinse in cold water, and set aside. When beef has cooked for an hour, uncover pot, add soaked anchovies, and increase heat so liquid simmers more vigorously. Cook 30 minutes more, until liquid is halved. Transfer beef from pot to a rimmed baking sheet; cool to room temperature. With a slotted spoon, remove anchovies from broth; set aside. Save cooking liquid. While beef cools, put eggs in a medium saucepan. Cover with cold water; bring to boil. Remove pan from heat, cover, let stand 9 minutes, then transfer eggs to ice-water bath. When cool, peel eggs and remove yolks. In a food processor, combine reserved anchovy fillets, egg yolks, tuna, soaked capers, vinegar, lemon juice, and olive oil. Process until sauce has consistency of softly whipped cream, adding a bit of reserved cooking liquid as necessary to achieve fluffy texture. Season to taste with additional salt. Thinly slice cooked beef and transfer to platter. Drizzle the beef with sauce and garnish with parsley leaves. Serves 6 as a main course.
Cowboy cooking: Three destinations for great open-fire grub
Spätburgunder: A value pinot
Most of this nation’s landmark barbecue joints swear allegiance to the trinity of smoke, low temperatures, and slow cooking, but a few “very notable” exceptions defy that tradition, said Larry Olmsted in USA Today. Though the practice of cooking meat over an open fire is rare among pitmasters, it’s just as quintessentially American—a throwback to wagon-train cooking and how cowhands once prepared their meals. The delicious results suggest those boys were onto something. Dreamland BBQ Tuscaloosa, Ala. East of the The fire pit at Salt Lick BBQ Mississippi, there’s arguably no more famous rib joint than the original Dreamland, and those ribs are cooked in about an hour above the flames of a hickory fire. They’re not as tender as slow-cooked ribs, but they’re “really meaty, satisfying, juicy, delicious, and addictive.” 5535 15th Ave. E., (205) 758-8135 Salt Lick BBQ Driftwood, Texas. There’s seating for 800 at this celebrated operation outside Austin, and it all revolves around a circular stone fire pit. The chefs, “in defiance of Southern barbecue tradition,” sear brisket, ribs, and other meats over the open fire before finishing them off in a slow-cooking smoker. 18300 Farm to Market Road 1826, (512) 858-4959 Hitching Post II Buellton, Calif. If you’re seeking Santa Maria barbecue—sometimes called America’s fifth regional barbecue style—there’s no better source. Central California’s vaqueros, or Mexican cowboys, pioneered the form. Here, steaks, chops, and tri-tip roasts are seasoned with a spicy dry rub and cooked over a fire burning native California red oak. 406 E. Highway 246, (805) 688-0676
Until about a decade ago, Germany’s everyday pinot noirs were “pretty ghastly,” said Elin McCoy in Bloomberg .com. But the grape has thrived in the slightly higher temperatures brought on by global warming, and smarter viticulture has made a typical German pinot the equal of a Bourgogne rouge— at nearly half the price. Many are now labeled “pinot noir,” while a few retain the centuries-old German name for the same grape: spätburgunder. 2013 Anthony Hammond Pinot Noir ($17). This pale “fruit-driven” wine is “a perfect casual summer sipper,” one that tastes of dark red berries. 2012 Becker Estate Pinot Noir ($20). This full-bodied wine, from one of Germany’s best pinot noir producers, bursts with ripe dark fruit. 2014 Meyer-Nakel ‘Blauschiefer’ Spätburgunder ($50). Produced by an estate that makes prizewinning $100 pinots, this silky, cherry-tinged wine “reminds me of a premier cru Volnay.” THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Travel
28 LEISURE
This week’s dream: Seeking the heart of rural China I had seen smog-choked skies in China before I landed in the city of Dali, said Horatio Clare in Travel + Leisure. “To be met off the plane by sunshine, birdsong, and butterflies seemed unbelievable,” and yet that’s how my journey to locate China’s rural soul began. My plan was working: I had chosen to tour Yunnan, a southwestern province that borders Myanmar, because I suspected that somewhere outside China’s teeming metropolises lay “the spiritual, the beautiful, and the true.” I intended to trek from the flat farmlands near Dali up to the high plateaus of the eastern Himalayas. I hoped to connect with the region’s many ethnic-minority cultures. To meet priests, shamans, and wise women. To tap “the ancient currents of belief” they keep alive. Riding in a car along Erhai Lake, “I felt as though I had woken into a dream.” Three slender white towers, the San Ta Si pagodas, rose high over the water like pale
The Garden Court
The Palace Hotel San Francisco An overnight at this centuryold landmark can be “a oncein-a-lifetime experience,” said Nina Burleigh in The New York Times. A major renovation, finished last year, modernized the guest rooms but left the grand neoclassical public rooms intact. You’ll therefore want to plan for cocktails in the paneled Pied Piper Room and breakfast the next morning in the Garden Court, with its soaring marble columns and crystal chandeliers. If you crave quiet time before your coffee and eggs, get to the “heavenly” fourth-floor pool while the sun is still rising over its arched glass roof. sfpalace.com; doubles from $225 THE WEEK August 5, 2016
In the Wenhai valley, my guide brought me to a shaman who blessed my travels as we sat together in his tranquil courtyard. While following a perilous Himalayan road in Tibet, I felt thankful Fishing boats near an island temple on Erhai Lake for that blessing, but arrived safely at my ghosts. Those 9th-century towers were built Shangri-la: the Ganden Sumtseling Buddhist by the forebears of the million Bai people monastery, where I made the monks chuckle who still live in the region and are famous by choking on their salty, sour yak-butter for creating ornate carvings, like the ones tea. At a secluded farmhouse nearby, I gazed that adorned the walls of my hotel, the out on the ethereal beauty of the frigid Linden Centre, in nearby Xhizhou. I was plateaus and mountains while listening to welcomed by neighbors there to join a sup- the tinny clang of cowbells. “There was no per of spiced pork, noodles, and winter sign of any habitation—only the indifferent greens. The next day, I drove to Lijiang, wilderness.” a town nestled below Jade Dragon Snow At the Linden Centre, doubles start at $150.
Getting the flavor of... Long Island’s quiet summer refuge
The Jersey Shore’s doo-wop capital
Forget the Hamptons, said Noora Raj in Departures. Vacationers looking for a quieter New York–area shore getaway should head to Bellport, an “idyllic” Long Island village of 2,000. “A large part of the area’s appeal is its pastoral, overgrown quality,” a legacy of the wealthy families that put a lot of land aside in nature preserves. A quick ferry ride across Bellport Bay taxis sunworshippers to quiet Ho Hum Beach, out on the ocean. Bellport has always attracted creative types from New York City—Vogue editor Anna Wintour had a home here, and actress Isabella Rossellini is a longtime resident. But unlike “the calculated chic” found in the swankier Hamptons, Bellport conveys “an instant ease” and a smalltown camaraderie. Take part in the sociability at the Bellport Playhouse, a small theater where locals convene for shows. “Someone always seems to be having a dinner party,” so don’t hesitate to smile at strangers. “You might just get an invite.”
The nighttime boardwalk in Wildwood, N.J., “takes tacky to unrivaled heights,” said Gretchen McKay in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. But kitsch is what makes the seaside town and its neighbors special. Scores of stylized, candy-colored motels were built in the area during the 1950s and ’60s, and the dozens still standing in the landmark Doo-Wop District continue to flaunt neon signs, plastic palm trees, and heart-shaped pools. Only Atlantic City attracts more Jersey Shore tourists than the Wildwoods, and the frenzy is part of the fun. Grab a funnel cake or a bucket of curly fries as you stroll the boardwalk, where there are four amusement parks and fireworks each Friday night. “You can’t help but love the beaches, which are so insanely wide that it takes a good five minutes to walk to the water.” For seafood, head to Schellenger’s or Dog Tooth Bar & Grill. Wildwood isn’t luxurious, but “it’s quaint and quirky, like a vacation into the past.”
Last-minute travel deals Cruise the ancient world Book a couples cruise from Greece to Israel and get half off for the second guest. For a nine-night journey through the Greek isles, Azamara Club Cruises is offering staterooms for $6,494 a couple, a savings of $2,050. Book by Aug. 31.
The sweet life in Antigua Save more than 65 percent when you stay at the allinclusive Pineapple Beach Club resort in Antigua this fall. A four-night stay in a courtyard room with a queen bed costs $1,172, down from $3,992. Book by Aug. 31.
Affordable Myrtle Beach From Aug. 14 to Sept. 1, the Bay View on the Boardwalk, a casual condo resort tower in Myrtle Beach, S.C., is offering 40 percent off its “sunsetview,” or west-facing, suites. The suites start at $125, down from $208.
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pineapple.eliteislandvacations.com
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eStock Travel, courtesy of Starwood Hotels
Hotel of the week
Mountain, a “ferocious peak” of spined rock and ice. The indigenous Naxi people, who are animists, hold the mountain sacred. In Lijiang, I explored 800-year-old streets and a maze of canals and passageways. At a falcon market, men held fearsome hunting birds on their fists.
Consumer
LEISURE 29
The 2017 Porsche 718 Cayman: What the critics say Road and Track The new Porsche Cayman is “an almost perfect car.” If you’ve never driven the previous Cayman—and heard its engine’s throaty roar—you might even skip “almost.” Though last year’s six-cylinder has been swapped out for a more efficient turbocharged four, the new engine actually delivers more power. In fact, the base-model Cayman, for the first time, feels “strong, lusty”—like a Porsche should. It bests the prior model in all but engine sound. “Power or personality: Which camp are you in?” CNET.com Truly, it’s “a hateful noise” this Cayman
makes—all clatter and no bass or crescendo. Otherwise, it’s “a fantastic car, a brilliant one, even,” with a comfortable cabin, a fast, intuitive infotainment system, and just enough cargo space to be a practical everyday driver. Steering is “phenomenal,” the optional manual transmission is the best Porsche has made, and, especially in the 345-hp Cayman S, the punch of the new engine feels “utterly fantastic.”
Nearly sports-car nirvana, from $53,900
Car and Driver “The smarter choice,” if you won’t be running your Cayman on a track, is to pocket the extra $12,400 you’d spend on the S and just order the base model. Yes, it’s “frac-
tionally slower” in response time at low engine speeds, but it has a beefy mid range. Besides, an entry-level Porsche that can go from 0 to 60 in 4.9 seconds seems “worth celebrating.”
The best of…coolers for every occasion
Coleman Xtreme Marine Cooler
Igloo Trailmate
Pelican Elite
AO Canvas Series
Yeti Hopper Flip
A “tremendous value,” this 70-qt Coleman fits 100 cans and holds ice for a full week—a day longer than many pricier coolers. Its Havea-Seat lid supports 250 lbs, yet when it’s full, “you can still carry it with relative ease.”
“The luxury SUV of mobile refrigeration is here.” Perfect for the beach, the Trailmate rides on 10-inch wheels and comes with a butler tray, cup holders, bottle openers, and an umbrella stand. The telescoping handle ensures easy hauling.
This heavy-duty, 65-qt cooler is certified to be bear-proof, making it ideal for camping, hunting, and fishing trips. It can fit “all the beer a guy could want,” and with its 2 inches of polyurethane insulation, ice will last in it a good 10 days.
A quality 24-can soft cooler will keep food and ice only about 24 hours, but this one handles the job well and at a good price. It folds down, it’s solidly made (with a nylon shell, despite its name), and the fabric doesn’t leak or sweat.
Yeti makes the toughest soft coolers, and the Flip is the company’s new 12-can soft cube. Available Aug. 25, it’s made from the same material as whitewater rafts, and its rugged, big-tooth HydroLok zipper won’t let water in or out.
$60, amazon.com Source: TheSweethome.com
$300, igloocoolers.com Source: Outside
$300, homedepot.com Source: HiConsumption.com
$60, aocoolers.com Source: TheSweethome.com
$280, yeti.com Source: GearJunkie.com
Tip of the week... How to lower prescription costs
And for those who have everything...
Your phone... Four ways to make it a better camera
Q Talk to your doctor. Generic drugs can cost up to 90 percent less than their brandname counterparts, and your doctor can also consider “therapeutic substitution”— a different drug that does the same job. Your doctor can also appeal to your insurance company for an exception if it reduces or ends coverage of a particular drug. Q Search online. If you pay out of pocket, check GoodRx.com to see if you’re paying the going rate. Online pharmacies, like HealthWarehouse.com, often offer the best prices, but avoid scam websites by checking for the VIPPS symbol, used only by Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites. Q Shop around and negotiate. “Retail drug prices can vary widely, even within the same ZIP code.” They’re also not set in stone. Asking your pharmacist the simple question “Is this your lowest price?” sometimes can secure you a discount.
If your wish to give your child a fairy-tale bedroom has no price ceiling, here’s your chance. The Fantasy Air Balloon Bed and Sofa turns bedtime into a joyride and dreams into fanciful journeys. Created by a Portuguese company that also manufactures beds shaped like seashells, rockets, and 1960s VW Microbuses, this piece features a fabric top that appears to be a balloon rising through the ceiling, plus a base made from a solid wood frame wrapped in hand-woven wicker. The bed includes a remote-controlled light and sound system that can generate additional magic.
Q Adjust focus and lighting. While framing a photo, tap the screen anywhere to shift the focus to that spot. The camera will adjust the exposure level to that spot, too, offering a handy way to brighten or dim an image. Q Use the shutter button. Pressing the shutter button at the bottom of the display screen can cause your camera to wobble, so don’t forget that you can also squeeze a physical button on the side of the phone. Q Shoot photos in bursts. Don’t give yourself just one shot at perfection. When you press and hold the shutter button, the camera records a rapid series of images, from which you can later choose the keepers. Q Enable Auto HDR. In this mode, the camera app applies a high dynamic range filter when suitable. The setting, which requires a longer exposure, reduces the contrast between the scene’s darkest and lightest areas, usually bringing out detail in both.
Source: Consumer Reports
Price $25,100, circu.net Source: TrendHunter.com
Source: Gizmodo.com THE WEEK August 5, 2016
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Best properties on the market
This week: Homes for pool parties 1 X West River, Md. This four-bedroom house on 116 acres lies one hour east of Washington, D.C. Built in 1989, the home boasts six fireplaces, a gourmet kitchen, and a sunroom that opens onto the pool area. The brick patio has a pool house and gardens. Other buildings include a caretaker’s cottage, stables, and an equipment barn. $3,995,000. Mark McFadden, Washington Fine Properties/Top Agent Network, (703) 216-1333
2 W Pasadena, Calif. Built in
1976, this four-bedroom home underwent a major remodeling in 2013. Details include a chef’s kitchen, 15-foot ceilings, and two fireplaces. The house has floor-to-ceiling glass doors that lead to the infinity pool’s patio, which features a bar, an outdoor living room, and a kitchen area. $3,280,000. Georges Rouveyrol, Sotheby’s International Realty, (626) 676-5368
3 X Sarasota, Fla. This five-bedroom house
was built on 1.5 acres overlooking Little Sarasota Bay. Interior features include a gourmet kitchen, an elevator, a wine cellar, a 1,600-square-foot gym, and a theater. The home has 7,500 square feet of patios with three Jacuzzis, a custom pool, a waterslide, and a waterfall cave with a theater inside. A 275-foot pier leads to a boat dock with a lift. $5,500,000. Klaus Lang, Michael Saunders & Co., (941) 320-1223
THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Best properties on the market
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4 W Symmes Township, Ohio The five-bedroom
Zinc House was built in 2009. The interior includes floor-to-ceiling windows, concrete floors, automatic blinds, and two fireplaces. The 1.4-acre property has a three-car garage and a pool area with a pool house and a fire pit. $1,999,000. Mike Hines, Coldwell Banker/West Shell, (513) 260-0424
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5 S Bar Harbor, Maine This seven-bedroom home sits on 5 acres overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The contemporary cottage-style house has wraparound decks, a master suite with a balcony, and floor-to-ceiling glass windows with views of Frenchman Bay. French doors open onto stone steps leading to the pool and patio area. $5,300,000. Kim Swan, The Swan Agency, (207) 288-5818
6 W Charlotte, N.C. This six-bedroom Tudor home was
built in 1915. The house features high ceilings, a kitchen with a breakfast room, a master suite with a sitting area, and a sunroom that leads to the pool patio. The 0.76-acre property has a two-story pool house with a kitchen, a living room area, and an exercise room. $2,995,000. Patty Hendrix, HM Properties, (704) 577-2066
Steal of the week
7 S Palm Springs, Calif. This three-bedroom house is set on a cul-de-sac in the community of Sun Villas. The living room has a fireplace and a picture window with mountain views. The en-suite master bedroom provides direct access to the pool area and spa. $360,000. Marc Lange and Carl Blea, HOM/Sotheby’s International Realty, (760) 834-5484 THE WEEK August 5, 2016
BUSINESS The news at a glance
The bottom line Q Workers who found their job through a personal or professional friend earn 6 percent more on average than those who did not have a referral, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
WSJ.com Q Two-thirds of households in 25 advanced economies, including the U.S., the U.K., France, Italy, Sweden, and the Netherlands, earned the same—or less—in real income in 2014 as they did in 2005, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute.
BuzzFeed.com Q Audiobooks are the fastestgrowing format in the book business today, with sales in the U.S. and Canada jumping 21 percent in 2015 from the previous year, according to the Audio Publishers Association. Revenue from audiobook downloads in the U.S. grew 38 percent last year from 2014, while revenue from e-books actually declined by 11 percent.
The Wall Street Journal Q On average, chil-
dren now get their first smartphones at around age 10, down from age 12 in 2012, according to the research firm Influence Central. The New York Times Q Job satisfaction
hit a 10-year high in 2015, according to the Conference Board. Even so, just under half of U.S. workers (49.6 percent) said they felt satisfied with their jobs. Fortune.com Q Higher-paid CEOs under-
perform compared with their lower-paid counterparts, according to a study of 429 public companies by research firm MSCI. The average shareholder returns for firms with the lowest-paid CEOs were 39 percent higher over a 10-year period than those for firms with the highest-paid CEOs. Marketplace.org THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Food: McDonald’s comeback runs into trouble McDonald’s disappointing McDonald’s is the biggest comearnings are the latest sign that pany yet to feel the burn of a U.S. restaurants are bracing for national restaurant slowdown, the worst, said Shelly Banjo in said Samantha Bomkamp in the Bloomberg.com. One analyst this Chicago Tribune. The fast-food week downgraded 11 restaurant behemoth, which launched a comestocks, including Chipotle and back last year with the introduction Panera, saying their decelerating of an all-day breakfast menu, this sales were the “canary that lays week reported a meager 1.8 percent the recessionary egg.” After years rise in sales, “far slower” than the 5 percent–plus gains over the past Slowing sales: A recession signal? of growth, restaurant earnings several quarters. McDonald’s is “far from alone.” appear to be approaching their peak as worried Both Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts also reported consumers pull back on spending. McDonald’s even admitted this week that it isn’t expecting slower growth for the second quarter, alarming analysts, who think it could be a sign of economic much sales growth in the short term and will fight to steal customers away from competitors instead. trouble ahead. Experts say “dining out is one of the first things people give up when they’re feeling “It’s a pretty telling admission from the world’s largest fast-food chain, but a realistic one.” uncertain about the future.”
Finance: Goldman Sachs’ double-whammy week “Goldman Sachs is having a rough week,” said Portia Crowe in Business Insider.com. On Monday, it was revealed that the Federal Reserve will likely fine the investment bank in connection with the leak of confidential government information to one of its employees in 2014. Goldman has already paid a $50 million fine to New York state regulators over the leak. On Tuesday, a private equity firm sued Goldman for conflict of interest for allegedly not disclosing its ties to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak while advising one of its clients. Razak is accused of embezzling billions of dollars from a Malaysian investment fund.
Economy: Bright signs in housing, retail “New single-family home sales hit their highest level in nearly 8½ years in June,” said Lucia Mutikani in Reuters.com. The data, released this week, joined a slew of recent reports that “paint a bright picture of the economy,” including an improved forecast for retail sales and encouraging surveys of the manufacturing and service sectors. The closely watched consumer confidence index held steady this month at 97.3, virtually unchanged from June’s reading of 97.4. Economists had expected it to drop in the aftermath of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.
Airlines: JetBlue mulls European expansion JetBlue is considering whether to add flights to Europe in the next few years, said Susan Carey in The Wall Street Journal. The budget airline touted the possibility of European routes as a “promising opportunity” this week as it reported second-quarter results that beat Wall Street expectations. More than 85 percent of trans-Atlantic capacity is controlled by major airlines whose close ties “keep fares high,” leaving an opening for discount carriers. The airline’s “immediate” focus is expanding its premium-service Mint routes, which have boosted perseat revenue by as much as 20 percent on some flights.
Tech: iPhone sales down, but better than expected Apple’s quarterly earnings this week “felt like déjà vu,” said Jon Swartz and Jefferson Graham in USA Today. Weaker demand for new iPhones sent company sales down for the second straight quarter, falling 15 percent to $42.4 billion. Nevertheless, Apple beat analysts’ expectations, sending its stock up. Overall, Apple shares have been hammered since the company reported its first-ever downturn in iPhone sales last quarter, after more than half a decade of “nearly unbounded revenue and stock momentum.” Apple has lost about a third of its value since mid-2015.
LinkedIn skills no one needs LinkedIn endorsements started as a feature “intended to highlight laudable skills.” Then the internet got involved, said Zolan Kanno-Youngs in The Wall Street Journal. Alongside old standbys like “marketing” and “data analysis,” varied talents such as “foosball,” “hugs,” and “cheese” have cropped up on profiles, thanks to friendly pranksters. The aim of “endorsement bombing” is to tag connections with random or irrelevant skills from LinkedIn’s 35,000 available options. The skills list is generated from LinkedIn’s 444 million users. Because 19 companies list “sword fighting” on their profile pages, even that is an endorsable skill; many people approve these plugs without a second glance. Rhys Wilson, a manager at a software startup, said he was recently touted for his fly-fishing skills as payback from a friend he endorsed for “lubricants.” “You want it to be as weird and abstract as possible,” he said.
AP, Getty
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Making money
BUSINESS 33
Budgets: How to resist impulse spending questions: “How much did it cost? “There’s nothing wrong with the occaAre you replacing something you sional splurge as long as it doesn’t get already own? Why do you think it’s in the way of your financial goals,” amazing? And if it’s food, are you said Kristin Wong in LifeHacker.com. sure you’ll eat it?” We subject potenTrouble is, many of us spend lavtial purchases to a “seven-day menishly without really thinking, racking tal quarantine” before deciding to up debt and busting budgets in the buy—especially those that cost more process. To separate truly rewarding than $50. “Anything that you’re purchases from mindless extravagance, considering ought to sit in your head get into the habit of “spending with a for at least a week.” purpose.” Setting ground rules helps. One idea, outlined by the Financial If impulse spending is wrecking your Samurai blog, is to set a “responsible attempts at budgeting, try a differspending” ratio. For example, for ent approach, said Trent Hamm every $1 you want to spend on someTry to set ground rules to keep splurging in check. in USNews.com. “Traditional thing you don’t need, “you should first spend $2 on something financially responsible, like getting out of budgets tend to work best for those who thrive on organization and planning.” If that’s not you, try imposing “budget-like debt or saving for an emergency.” That might be paying down constraints” on your spending without an actual budget. For $1,000 in mortgage principal before spending $500 on concert example, use a prepaid credit card you load up at the start of tickets. Or try asking yourself this before buying something: each month for impulse purchases, or open a separate check“How will the purchase improve [my] life?” ing account for occasional spending. “Then just pull out that card when you’re buying a coffee or a book or a new sweater.” “Look, I know that buying things feels good,” said Carl Richards in The New York Times. “But wouldn’t it feel so much bet- If you’re overspending, you’re not alone, said Jonnelle Marte in The Washington Post. Some 18 percent of consumers said ter to spend that time and money on something you’ll actually they spent more than they earned in 2015, according to a reuse or enjoy instead?” To keep our house from filling up with cent study by the FINRA Investor Education Foundation. Only stuff we don’t need, my wife and I think of our driveway as a 40 percent had money left over at the end of the year. “It turns customs screening station. We have to justify each purchase before it comes through the front door by answering the following out some bad habits are hard to break.”
What the experts say Keeping cool on the cheap Power bills are expected to soar amid the above-average temperatures forecast for much of the country this August, said Athena Cao in USA Today. “But you can save money in two ways: Use electricity more efficiently and pay at a lower rate.” In 15 states and Washington, D.C., consumers have the option of shopping around for the cheapest rate, because retail electricity providers are allowed to compete with utilities. If you don’t have a choice of power providers, you can save money by enrolling in various incentive programs. Some utilities will lower your bill if you reduce your electricity usage during peak hours, for instance, or conduct an energy efficiency assessment on your home. Adding a few “smart” devices like connected thermostats and lightbulbs can also reduce your home’s energy use.
Media Bakery
How to set up a scholarship You don’t need to be extravagantly wealthy to fund a college scholarship, said Caitlin Kelly in Reuters.com. “Have a pen and several thousand dollars? It is as easy as that in most cases.” Filling out a simple gift agreement form from the college or university is often all it takes; some forms are even available online. The “going rate” for an endowed
Charity of the week scholarship—one with annual funds created from the interest on the initial gift—is at least $10,000, but preferably $25,000, according to Christian Vaupel, a vice president at Adelphi University in New York. The latter sum would fund a scholarship of about $1,250 a year to a needy student. The same tax rules apply as for other charitable donations, with a scholarship considered a charitable donation if the fund it goes into is tax-exempt.
When weddings crash your budget “Engaged couples aren’t the only ones facing big wedding bills,” said Kelli Grant in CNBC .com. The average wedding guest can expect to spend $703 per wedding this year, according to American Express. Millennial guests can expect to pay $893 per wedding. With three weddings to attend on average, that’s roughly 5 percent of the mean income for people ages 25 to 34. Guests should budget carefully for the entire year before saying “I do” to invitations, factoring in considerations like travel, dress code, and child care for events where kids aren’t allowed. “Don’t let smart shopping strategies go out the window,” either. Gifts can often be purchased more cheaply outside the wedding registry website. As for lodging and airfare, the normal rules apply: Book early.
Founded in 1985, the International Wolf Center (wolf.org) works to advance the survival of wolves through interactive education, public outreach, and scientific research. The Ely, Minn.–based center is home to several adopted-wolf packs, which live in a 1.25-acre wooded enclosure. This access gives the staff an invaluable opportunity to observe the animals’ behavior, and helps guide the center’s recommendations on the conservation and management of wolves across the country. The center offers specialized field trips and adventure programs to school groups, as well as daily programs and outdoor activities for the visiting public, so that people can learn about wolves firsthand. 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 August 5, 2016
Best columns: Business
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Issue of the week: Why Verizon wants an ailing Yahoo to staunch the bleeding of talent and revYahoo, “the front door to the web for enue. Soon, the company was worth “less an early generation of internet users,” is than the sum of its parts.” finished as an independent company, said Vindu Goel and Michael de la Merced So what could Verizon possibly want with in The New York Times. The struggling this ailing dinosaur? asked Brian Barrett Silicon Valley pioneer agreed this week to in Wired.com. Oddly enough, buying sell its core internet business to Verizon Yahoo is the telecom juggernaut’s “best Communications for $4.8 billion. The sale shot at staying relevant.” Despite Yahoo’s punctuates a stunning fall from grace for flagging fortunes, it is still “a surprisingly Yahoo, which at its peak in January 2000 popular content company,” drawing was valued at more than $125 billion. It’s roughly 1 billion users every month to its also the likely end of the road for CEO search engine, email portal, news sites, Marissa Mayer, who is widely expected to and services like Flickr and Tumblr. Veribe shown the door when the deal is finalMayer: Yahoo’s final CEO zon, with its vast mobile network, already ized in early 2017. The former Google controls some of the “pipes” through which a great deal of online wunderkind, who was brought on four years ago to revive Yacontent flows; owning Yahoo will now give it control over what hoo’s fortunes, stands to receive about $57 million in severance comes out of the faucet too. for her failed turnaround efforts.
A dismal November for CEOs William Galston
The Wall Street Journal
To be happy, do what you love Robert Frank
The New York Times
THE WEEK August 5, 2016
Verizon plans to pair Yahoo’s assets with those of another web trailblazer, AOL, which it bought last year for $4.4 billion, said Steve Mollman in Qz.com. Verizon hopes to mesh Yahoo’s content with AOL’s ad technology to challenge Google’s and Facebook’s dominance in online advertising. But “Verizon has a long way to go.” AOL holds just 1.8 percent of the $69 billion digital ad market, while Yahoo’s share is about 3.4 percent. “Google and Facebook together claim about half of it.” Color me skeptical, said Erin Griffith in Fortune.com. Both Google and Facebook are incredibly profitable because they’ve figured out how to make money on digital content “without actually getting into the messy, expensive business of producing it.” Sorry, but “combining two internet has-beens doesn’t make a Facebook-killer.”
“We may not know who will win the 2016 presidential election, but we already know who has lost it: corporate America,” said William Galston. By nominating Donald Trump, the Republican Party has emphatically rejected top business leaders’ belief in fostering free trade and welcoming immigrants. But big business can hardly turn to Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Party, which increasingly “sees large firms as a principal source of the ills of working- and middle-class Americans.” Corporate America’s “political homelessness” is the inevitable consequence of “alienating huge numbers of Americans.” As recently as 1999, 73 percent of the public held “very” or
“mostly” favorable opinions of corporations, according to the Pew Research Center. By 2008, that share had declined to 47 percent, and it bottomed out at 38 percent in 2011. Many CEOs insist they have to make difficult decisions, like moving jobs overseas, in order to stay competitive in a global market. That may be true in some cases, but Americans aren’t blind to record corporate profits and soaring executive paychecks. Meanwhile, “they see that their household incomes are no higher than they were in the late 1990s.” Until Americans feel that corporations have more than the bottom line at heart, they will fight back “with the only weapon they have—their vote.”
Money is nice, but finding a career you love is priceless, said Robert Frank. Social scientists have demonstrated repeatedly that “more money doesn’t provide a straightforward increase in happiness.” That’s why, when students ask me for career advice, I ask whether any activity has ever absorbed them so completely that they lost track of time. Happiness researchers call this “flow,” and it’s “one of the most deeply satisfying human psychological states.” Workers whose jobs allow them to experience substantial periods of flow are already “among the most fortunate people on the planet.” But there’s also an economic reason to embrace flow. The very best jobs, with good pay and
attractive working conditions, go to experts in their field. Because “many thousands of hours of difficult practice are required for true expertise at any task,” you’re unlikely to attain mastery of something unless it’s a task “you love for its own sake.” Over the years, workers who experience flow are more likely to develop deep expertise in whatever it is they’re doing, increasing the odds of a bigger salary, greater autonomy at work, and, ultimately, deeper job satisfaction. There’s no guarantee this will happen, of course, but in the meantime, “you’ll enjoy the considerable proportion of your life that you spend at work, which is much more than billions of others can say.”
Ramin Rahimian/The New York Times/Redux
Founded in 1994, Yahoo was once the tech world’s brightest star, but it “fell behind the fast-moving internet economy it helped create,” said Jack Nicas in The Wall Street Journal. The onetime pacesetter found itself overtaken by nimbler competitors like Google and Facebook, as users moved away from web portals to apps and social networks. In its bid to adapt to the changing times, Yahoo developed a kind of split personality, said Timothy B. Lee in Vox.com. Mayer tried to reboot Yahoo as a tech innovator, spending more than $2 billion acquiring some 50 startups. But she also “doubled down” on efforts to build a top media company, hiring Katie Couric, for a reported $10 million a year, and other well-known journalists. This bifurcated strategy only amplified the confusion about the company’s identity, and failed
Obituaries The director who made feel-good comedies Garry Marshall was responsible for a lot of laughs. In 1934–2016 the ’60s, he wrote scripts for TV comedies, including The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Lucy Show. He made the Broadway hit The Odd Couple into a much-loved sitcom for ABC in 1970, and four years later created Happy Days, a gentle parody of Middle America in the rock ’n’ roll era. After turning to movies in the 1980s, he directed box office smashes like Pretty Woman (1990) and The Princess Diaries (2001). Critics often complained that Marshall’s work was unchallenging, but he understood what his audience wanted. “Families were inviting us into their living rooms every Tuesday,” he once said of Happy Days, “and I felt we had an obligation to be not only entertaining but also kind.” Garry Marshall
Born in the Bronx, Marshall learned much of his humor from his mother, “who doled out advice in joke form,” said The Washington Post. He recalled how she once told him that the worst sin was to be boring. “I said, ‘What is boring, Ma?’ And she said, ‘Your father.’” After studying journalism at Northwestern University, he played the drums at comedy clubs, tapping out a rim shot—ba-dum-tss!—after each joke. In 1959,
he made his breakthrough into TV as a writer for The Tonight Show With Jack Parr, and two years later moved to Los Angeles, where he worked prolifically as a scriptwriter. But it was The Odd Couple, on air for five seasons, that launched his “TV sitcom empire,” said the Los Angeles Times. By 1979, “Marshall had three of the top five comedies on the air”: Happy Days, which ran from 1974 to 1984, and its spin-offs Laverne and Shirley (1976–83) and Mork and Mindy (1978–82). After shifting to movies, Marshall directed a string of comedies “that dealt with mismatched pairs,” said The New York Times. There was Nothing in Common (1986), a reconciliation story with Jackie Gleason and Tom Hanks as grumpy dad and resentful son; Overboard (1987), in which Goldie Hawn’s mean-spirited heiress with amnesia falls in love with Kurt Russell’s widowed carpenter; and, most famously, Pretty Woman, about a kindhearted hooker (Julia Roberts) and a ruthless financier (Richard Gere). “I like to do very romantic, sentimental type of work,” he said as Pretty Woman was being released. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.”
The singer who became Hollywood’s unseen star Marni Nixon spent her career being heard but not seen. The 1930–2016 versatile soprano was Hollywood’s leading “ghost singer” in the 1950s and ’60s, providing vocal performances for actresses with underwhelming voices. It’s her crystalline soprano that pours from the mouths of Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. Sometimes she filled in parts of songs, such as the high notes on Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The job required Nixon to embody the stars and seamlessly mimic their speech patterns. “You have to know how they feel,” Nixon said, “as well as how they talk, in order to sing as they would sing—if they could sing.”
Everett Collection, Getty
Marni Nixon
Born in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena, Nixon “found her true calling” at age 11 after winning a singing contest at a county fair, said The New York Times. She began taking vocal lessons, and at 17 appeared as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. To cover the cost of her singing classes, Nixon took a job as a mes-
senger at MGM studios. One day, composer Bronislau Kaper “stopped her in the corridor and challenged her to sing a song in Hindi,” said BBC.com. Nixon obliged, and Kaper hired her to sing a lullaby for child actress Margaret O’Brien in The Secret Garden (1949), launching her as a ghost singer. Because Hollywood didn’t want audiences to know its stars couldn’t sing, Nixon’s contributions went uncredited. When she dubbed The King and I in 1956, she recalled, studio bosses threatened that she’d never work in town again if she revealed her role. After receiving just $420 for The King and I soundtrack album, Nixon campaigned for royalties. Composer Leonard Bernstein offered her “a sliver of his royalty share” for West Side Story, said the Associated Press. “It amounted to a major payday for her, given the album’s huge sales.” Nixon only sang on screen once—as a nun in 1965’s The Sound of Music—and over time came to regard her ghosting career as something of a curse. “I’d lent my voice to so many others that I felt it no longer belonged to me,” Nixon said in 1981. “I had lost part of myself.”
35 The evangelical leader who co-authored an apocalyptic smash The Rev. Tim LaHaye was flying home from a convention in 1981 when he noticed a married pilot flirting with a younger, unmarried flight attendant. The recently retired evanTim gelical pastor LaHaye started to 1926–2016 wonder what would happen if the Rapture occurred right then, leaving the sinful pilot behind while his Christian passengers ascended to heaven. The result was the 16-volume Left Behind series, which LaHaye co-authored with Christian writer Jerry B. Jenkins between 1995 and 2007. Their thriller-like End Times books would sell more than 65 million copies worldwide and spawn spin-off movies and video games, making Left Behind perhaps the most successful work of Christian fiction in publishing history. Born in Detroit, LaHaye studied theology after serving in World War II, said The New York Times. He was appointed pastor at a church in the San Diego suburbs in 1956, and became active in conservative politics in the 1970s, promoting Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition of America and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. LaHaye had already authored dozens of books on Christian topics when he met Jenkins in 1992 “and proposed that they turn biblical prophecies into futuristic thrillers.” Some critics praised Left Behind’s fast pace, noting how it mixed elements of horror, romance, and spy novels with Scripture, said NPR.com. Others objected to the way the books seemed to “revel in the doomsday suffering of the unsaved,” especially the fiery deaths of millions of Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and atheists. But LaHaye insisted that his vision of the Rapture was one of grace and mercy. “If you only look at the people who defy God, it’s a negative time,” he said. “But if you look at the whole population, it’s a blessed time.” THE WEEK August 5, 2016
The last word
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Simone Biles’ gymnastics revolution The 19-year-old gymnast from Texas is by all accounts in a league of her own, flying higher, spinning faster, and landing cleaner than anyone before her, said journalist Dvora Meyers. In Rio, she looks unstoppable.
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a Wednesday in January, Simone Biles was dancing in the middle of World Champions Centre in Spring, Texas, but no music was playing. Clad in black spandex shorts and a hoodie—all Nike, her corporate sponsor—the three-time world gymnastics champion was going through the motions of her new floor routine, while Dominic Zito, the national team choreographer, stood on the sidelines watching her as she sashayed across the mat.
In March 2000, Ron flew up north to bring them down temporarily. It would take a few more years for their mother’s parental rights to be terminated and for the four children to be permanently resettled in Texas; the older two were taken by Ron’s older sister, while the younger ones went to Ron and Nellie. It wasn’t until 2003 that Simone and Adria were formally adopted. Simone, by then, was 6 years old.
Since the adoption, the girls have Zito hit play on his laptop, and had minimal contact with their Brazilian music blared from speakbiological mother. Simone admiters. The selection was the first ted that it is strange for her to be indication that the long-awaited asked about that period in her Olympic year had finally arrived. life. “It’s just kind of thrown at Since she aged into the senior me and it’s weird to talk about ranks in 2013, 19-year-old Biles because I don’t know much has broken or tied every record in about it,” she said. “All I know women’s gymnastics and has been is Texas.” called the “most talented gymnast ever.” In 2015, she became the Biles is joyful in competition, which makes her feats appear effortless. Texas is where the life Biles first woman to win three consecuremembers started. It’s also tive world all-around titles. That was also extraordinarily rambunctious, climbing and where she was introduced to gymnastics, the year she broke the record for most jumping off everything. “I remember when by chance, when she was 6. She went on gold medals won by a female gymnast in a she was in foster care, I would go in the a day-care field trip to a gym and came world championship competition. For Biles, house to visit them,” her father, Ron Biles, home with a note for her parents that going to the Olympics is not so much about told me at the family home, surrounded by said she was talented and suggested they winning as it is about not losing the gold. their four friendly German shepherds. “You enroll her in lessons. I have no doubt that had to walk up three steps into the house those coaches noticed her innate gifts— Biles is frequently compared to the likes of fearlessness, coordination, strength— Michael Jordan or Michael Phelps: all-time and Simone would jump from the top of the steps into your arms.” though Nellie surmised that the note was greats whose legacies transcend their indiprobably sent home with all of the kids vidual sports. This is unusual for gymnasAt that point, Ron and his wife, Nellie, tics, which is typically treated as separate weren’t yet Simone’s parents. They were her who tried gymnastics that day. from the rest of the sporting world, as an grandparents; Simone’s biological mother, Biles was soon thereafter pulled into the athletic sideshow with uniquely young and Shanon, is Ron’s daughter from his first optional training program at Bannon’s small athletes and nebulous rules and cormarriage. Shanon’s four children had been Gymnastix. “We said, ‘This kid’s got talent rupt judging. But Biles’ superiority is so taken from her and placed in foster care and we believe she’s going to learn things plain to see that even the uninitiated can because of her substance abuse problems— really fast,’” said Aimee Boorman, Biles’ understand it. something the family rarely talked about longtime coach. But her ability to learn publicly until Simone’s career took off. high-level skills quickly didn’t translate Today, she and her coaches are trying to immediately to strong competitive results. crack an impossible-seeming question: How Ron first learned about the situation Biles, for all of her strengths, had some do you end the floor routine of one of the when a social worker reached out to him notable weaknesses. She isn’t naturally flexgreatest athletes of all time? What pose can in August 1999. Simone was 3, and her ible and couldn’t find the right shapes on possibly say all of that? younger sister, Adria, was just 13 months her leaps and jumps. She also didn’t know old. He told the social worker to send the OST OLYMPIC GYMNAST origin how to control her immense power, often kids from Columbus, Ohio, to his home stories sound something like this: bounding up and back several feet after in Texas. He then had to speak to Nellie Little Sarah had so much energy, landing tumbling passes. And on bars— about changing the composition of their so she was enrolled in gymnastics class. family. He and Nellie had two high school– the most technical event in the women’s Fast-forward 10 years and she’s on the repertoire—she lacked finesse. age boys of their own; Ron asked her if Olympic team. Biles’ ambitions were quite modest at first. they could bring his grandchildren into When she and her mom sat down in 2009, Biles’ background hews to this narrative— their home. “I needed to pray about it,” when she was 11 and at the top level in for the most part. As a youngster, she was Nellie said, but she eventually agreed. THE WEEK August 5, 2016
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The last word the Junior Olympic system, all she wanted to do was qualify for regionals. “That was her big goal,” Nellie recalled. Biles made it to the regional championships, where she placed 14th in the all-around. She did very poorly on bars, but won floor and placed fourth on vault. Biles’ aspirations escalated incrementally. After making it to the final rung of the Junior Olympic program, she wanted to make the leap to elite, which is the level you watch at the Olympics. And once she was elite, she wanted to qualify to compete at the national championships. She was finally named to the U.S. junior national team when she was 15 and in the last few months of her junior eligibility. According to Biles, her career really took off in 2012 because she increased her training time. Unlike many of her peers, Biles had been enrolled in public school and only trained five days a week for approximately four hours per session. Her 20 hours per week paled in comparison with other elites, who typically squeeze in two workouts on most days, for a total of 32 hours a week. But before starting high school, Biles made the call to homeschool so she could spend more time training. “My hours ramped up,” she said matterof-factly, dispelling the idea that any sort of miracle had taken place at the end of her junior career that led to her sudden rise. To Biles, it was simple math: More hours in the gym meant better outcomes in competition. Biles’ first foray into international competition came in March 2013, at the American Cup in Worcester, Mass. I hadn’t heard much about Biles before this. But after the vault, the first event, the focus in the arena shifted to her. She rocketed into the lead by performing the most difficult vault of the meet. Biles stayed in the lead until the balance beam, when she fell and Katelyn Ohashi edged ahead of her. After beam, Biles almost charged back into the lead, showing the powerful tumbling that would become her trademark. Ohashi, however, also hit floor and stayed in first. Biles finished in second. Biles’ placement in her first senior international meet, however, was not what impressed me. When she did her doubletwisting double somersault on floor, she finished the twists and rotations so high above the mat that you started wondering if she could stash an extra twist in there. Biles made you think that the crazy skills gymnastics-happy kids dream up while playing “the Olympics” with dolls in their bedrooms—elements like triple-twisting double somersaults—are actually possible.
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between 2013 and 2014: Biles went from being a contender for the title to being the inevitable winner. No other gymnast need apply for gold; the rest of the field had all but ceded the title to her. I was at the 2014 world championships in Nanning, China, and I watched Biles win the all-around in person. Nearly everyone I spoke to while I was there—from officials to judges to OMETHING CURIOUS HAPPENED
37 four points. Ditto in 2015 where she fell again and won by almost five points, ahead of her close friend and national teammate Maggie Nichols, who went eight-for-eight at the competition. What makes these victory margins possible is how cleanly she executes her routines (not counting the falls, of course). When she tumbles, she rotates easily, landing with her chest up and her arms overhead. On vault, she twists cleanly. She does her fulltwisting double back dismount from the beam with her knees together instead of pulling them apart for ease as other former champions have, and even nails handstands on bars, her weakest apparatus. When you add her above-average difficulty to her tidy execution, you get the two-, three-, four-, even five-point margins she’s been winning by since 2014.
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that everyone is keenly aware of is the so-called world champion jinx. There’s enough anecdotal data to suggest that making the leap from world to Olympic champion is difficult; in fact, the last female gymnast to do so was Ukrainian Lilia Podkopayeva in 1996. NE POTENTIAL ROADBLOCK
Biles excels even on bars, her weakest event.
coaches, regardless of nationality—wanted to talk about the teenage Texan. They were flabbergasted by her abilities, by the seeming ease with which she performed the most difficult elements. What else can she do? Is there any way to stop her? Short answer: No. Biles can’t be beaten. She often has more than a full point advantage over her nearest competitors. That’s because, since 2006, gymnasts receive two scores: one for how well they do their routine (a score out of 10) and another that determines how difficult the routine is by adding up the values of the skills. The two scores are then added together, so you end up with scores like 14.667 instead of 8.9 or 9.5 or 10.
Biles, for her part, seems less worried, at least outwardly, about the media attention and pressure. In a conference call in March, she told reporters, “I’ve never been to the Olympics, so I don’t know what to expect. It’s better for me, just like my first worlds.... My third worlds, I knew what it was like, so I was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ But this is my first Olympics, and not knowing what to expect is good for me.” It’s a neat little mental trick. It seems to be working. At the Pacific Rim Gymnastics Championships, her 2016 debut, Biles was absolutely stellar. She showed an upgraded vault, which will probably assure her the vault gold in Rio. Her bar routine—once her worst event— was effortless; her beam sure-footed.
Biles boasts the highest start values on three of the four events. On vault, she’s usually up by half a point. Same for floor. And depending on the kind of day she has on beam—if she moves swiftly between elements, which boosts her bonus points—she can accumulate close to another half point.
Then there was her floor, the sambainspired routine she first learned back in January. It had all of her trademark moments: the stratospheric tumbling, the stuck landings, the playful Marilyn Monroe–style femininity when she mimes an “Oh!” with her hand over her mouth. The edges of the routine had been smoothed out. Biles hadn’t quite yet reached Carnival-dancer levels of sultriness, but maybe you can only truly become one when you’re dancing in Brazil.
But this start-value advantage she has over the best gymnasts in the world doesn’t fully account for the point spread in her victories. After all, at the 2014 national championships, she fell and still won by
Excerpted from an article that originally appeared in BuzzFeed. Reprinted with permission. Meyers’ The End of the Perfect 10 was published by Touchstone in July. THE WEEK August 5, 2016
The Puzzle Page
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DOWN 1 Blvd. crossers 2 Excessively 3 Tempe sch. 4 “Go for it!” 5 Goalie Oliver or comic actress Madeline 6 Fill the tank 7 More frosty 8 Train stop: abbr. 9 Yank 10 Unreliable, as internet access 11 Neighbor of Ukraine 12 Military flags 13 Civil War weapons 18 ___ Secy. of State 22 Used to be 23 Emitting little light 24 “Kiss Kiss Kiss” singer, 1980 25 Gobble up 27 “Bye!” 28 Knitting need
30 Blur in a photo of the sky, often 33 Cruz heckled at the Republican National Convention 34 Equipment in the band’s van 37 Door opener 38 0.00, for John Belushi’s character in Animal House 39 Ex from way back 40 45-degree sections of a circle 41 It’s often painful to hear 42 Annoying piece of code 45 Unnecessary delay 46 Dec. 31, for short 47 “Help!” 49 Key near the 1 50 Sunday singers 51 “I dare you!” 53 Au pair 54 144 of something 58 Not very many 61 ___ Te Ching 62 Transgression 63 So cool 64 Paying job 65 “I’m impressed!”
This week’s question: Silicon Valley startup Nootrobox has implemented a 36-hour “starvation period,” in which employees eat nothing from Monday night to Wednesday morning, to boost focus and concentration. If the company were to publish a business book that explained why denying lunch breaks and food to employees makes them more productive, what title should it have? Last week’s contest: Pokémon Go players have become so absorbed in the smartphone game, which uses the device’s camera to make cartoon monsters appear to be in the real world, that they have fallen into lakes and off cliffs. If the pharmaceutical industry were to create an antidote for Pokémon-induced stupor, what would it be called? THE WINNER: Pik-adieu —Ivan Kershner, Salem, S.C. SECOND PLACE: Fadderall —Phyllis Klein, New York City THIRD PLACE: Nintendon’t —Jay Ripps, Mill Valley, Calif. 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 “Hungry work” in the subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, Aug. 2. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page next issue and at theweek.com/puzzles on Friday, Aug. 5. In the case of identical or similar entries, the first one received gets credit. W The winner gets a one-year subscription to The Week.
Sudoku Fill in all the boxes so that each row, column, and outlined square includes all the numbers from 1 through 9. Difficulty: medium
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