The Washington Post National Weekly

Politics Whom can this county trust? 4

World Ultimatum to refugees in Israel 11

Science The sting of losing bees 16

5 Myths Late-night television 23

ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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IN COLLABORATION WITH

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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KLMNO WEEKLY

THE FIX

Could Iraq help GOP in 2016?

BY

Republicans regain advantage on foreign policy

S COTT C LEMENT

R

epublican presidential hopefuls are actively angling to turn Iraq — an unpopular war that sent George W. Bush’s approval ratings to record lows — into a winning issue for their party in 2016. And there’s reason to believe it just might work.

While the Iraq war continues to be unpopular, lukewarm or negative ratings for Obama’s handling of a variety of international issues have helped Republicans regain the advantage they lost to Democrats during the 2000s.

Buttressing Republican rhetoric, the party’s overall image on foreign policy has recovered.

A February Pew Research Center poll found 48 percent of Americans saying Republicans can do a better job making “wise decisions about foreign policy,” compared with 35 percent who preferred Democrats. That 13 percentage point Republican edge is similar to the party’s 10-point edge in the months before the Iraq invasion in 2003, after which Democrats gained a slight advantage.

Republicans’ advantage in dealing with the Islamic State insurgents in Iraq and Syria was similar in an October Washington Post-ABC News poll, where Republicans were trusted by 42 to 28 percent over Democrats.

Republicans’ comeback on foreign policy has developed even as most Americans have supported Obama’s major policies in the region. Washington Post-ABC News polls found nearly 8 in 10 supported Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq at the end of 2011 while 7 in 10 supported U.S.-led airstrikes against Islamic State insurgents last fall.

But the results of Obama’s policies have not been seen positively, with a majority saying the United States is less important and powerful in the world and saying Obama is “not tough enough” in his approach to foreign policy, ac-

KLMNO WEEKLY

Which party could do a better job in making wise decisions about foreign policy?

THE WASHINGTON POST

The Iraq war, begun under George W. Bush, hurt the GOP and has tripped up Jeb Bush, but Hillary Clinton is tied to President Obama’s foreign policies, which aren’t seen positively.

cording to Pew surveys.

The strong prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming the Democratic nominee may also help Republicans’ argument, with her role as secretary of state allowing for a clear connec-

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2015 The Washington Post / Year 1, No. 32

tion to Obama’s record on foreign affairs. In addition, Clinton may have difficulty casting blame for Iraq’s current troubles on Republicans since she voted to give Bush the power to use military force against the country in 2002.

(She has called that vote a “mistake.”)

Whatever the potential political benefit for Republicans focusing on Iraq’s troubles, it also poses particular challenges for candidates unwilling to criticize George W. Bush for launching the war in 2003. Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have struggled to explain whether they would have made the same decision, a question which will probably be revisited during upcoming debates over what action they would take in Iraq going forward. n

CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY TRENDS BOOKS OPINION FIVE MYTHS

4 8 10 12 17 18 20 23

ON THE COVER Michelle Obama at the White House. Photography by MARK WILSON, Getty Images.

CORRECTION An information box with a May 17 health article about salt incorrectly listed consumption in milligrams instead of grams.

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

‘They don’t trust anybody’

BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST

In 1992, Bill Clinton promised hope. Today, residents here doubt any politician can help.

J IM T ANKERSLEY Decaturville, Tenn.

BY

R

icky Mullins was sitting in his granddad’s living room, watching the World Series, when the station cut to commercial and his face popped up on the TV. There was a sign that said “Crafted with pride in U.S.A.,” and then there was Ricky, his head cocked, telling the camera, “That sign means nothing, really — not if the government’s going to take it away from you.”

It was 1992, and Mullins was a star of a campaign ad, cut by presidential candidate Bill Clinton, that lamented the closing of the textile

millwhereMullinsandhundredsof other residents of this rural Tennessee town had worked. Production from the factory had moved to El Salvador, the ad said, and President George H.W. Bush was to blame for the policies that let it happen. Clinton, the narrator concluded, was “ready to invest in America.”

Today, though, all traces of the Decaturville Sportswear plant, which once employed some 1,500 locals, have vanished, and nothing comparable has replaced it. The unemployment rate is higher in Decatur County now than it was when Clinton took office. One out of every four residents uses food stamps.

Now another Clinton is running

for president, offering more promises to revitalize the country and lift downtrodden workers. Where her husband kindled hope, Hillary Rodham Clinton will find cynicism and skepticism — an abiding sense among many blue-collar workers that no one in Washington can or will do anything to soothe the economic struggles that came after Bill Clinton and sometimes were caused by his policies.

Much of that cynicism flows from the expansion of global trade in recent decades. While trade deals open new markets for U.S. businesses and make goods cheaper for consumers, they can punish places like Decaturville with a de-

Decaturville, Tenn., has never fully recovered from the closing of a sportswear factory in 1991.

cades-long void where good jobs used to be. Trade already looms large over the 2016 election, especially for Hillary Clinton, who has declined to take a firm position on a new trade pact with Asia that President Obama is attempting to push through Congress.

No one expects Clinton to win Decatur County or carry Tennessee, as her husband did in 1992. But blue-collar voters could prove key to her chances, and her Republican opponents’, in swing states such as Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio.

Many of those workers have long grown tired of politicians promising relief from their trade-induced job losses but never delivering.

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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POLITICS “The working class,” the head of the Decatur County Chamber of Commerce, Charles Taylor, said on a drive past abandoned storefronts, “has gotten to the point where they don’t trust anybody.”

Bill Clinton expanded trade as president, but many folks in Decaturville fondly remember him as a candidate, including Mullins, who met then-Arkansas Gov. Clinton in Nashville. “He seemed to me to be a little bit more caring than some others,” Mullins said, and he plans to vote for Hillary Clinton this time around. He also said Bill Clinton’s economy, for all its growth, didn’t help him personally.

Mullins, a longtime Democrat who is now 60, worked 18 years at the sportswear plant before it shut down. He hasn’t found a comparable job since. He draws a disability check for the arthritis in his joints.

Some days he works a shift behind the register at a dockside grocery store on the Tennessee River, on Decatur County’s eastern edge.

He’d like to be more optimistic about the local economy, he said, but the plant closure just took so much money out of it. “It hurt us pretty bad,” he said. “I don’t know what would help.”

Decatur County’s losses Decatur County has just under 12,000 residents. About 800 of them live in Decaturville, the county seat. The county’s unemployment rate has doubled, to 9 percent, from where it was at the end of the Clinton administration.

Factory work has been cut in half since 2000. Fewer people held jobs in Decatur last year than in 2001.

Only recently have civic leaders begun taking steps to prepare the area for a more knowledge-based economy, and even then, many say they’re not sure why any college graduate would settle here. There just aren’t a lot of professional jobs that require a degree.

Decaturville has never been a wealthy place, but for a few decades, its economy hummed with the sort of assembly-line clothing production that hardly exists in America anymore. The largest local garment plant was Decaturville Sportswear. It rose in 1960 from the ashes of a high school gymnasium, which had burned 17 years after the federal Works Progress Administration built it during the Great Depression.

It was a plant where wives of hog farmers hunched over sewing

KLMNO WEEKLY

you those were some of the best years they had,” said Athalia Taylor, the town librarian, who worked six years at the plant before it closed, then went into nursing and eventually earned a college degree.

BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST

machines, their hair piled up in beehives; where young men fresh from high school could land jobs punching buttonholes and work their way into supervisory positions; where the beloved manager carved room in his budget to build a youth center in town with an outdoor pool and pay local students to lifeguard.

The pay was never high, but it was steady. Many people in town remember the 1960s and ’70s as their economic apex. A lunch counter sold hot bologna sandwiches to long lines of workers. There were three furniture galleries.

Plant employment began dropping in the 1980s, as lower-cost foreign competitors began to rise.

Decaturville Sportswear was sold, and in 1991, it closed. Unemployment in the county hit 20 percent shortly before the Clinton campaign sent its camera crew to Decaturville, on the heels of a “60 Minutes” report that said Bush administration subsidies helped move production to El Salvador.

The resulting ad opens with a Reaganesque proclamation — “It’s morning in Decaturville, Tennessee, but for 650 people who once worked here, there are no jobs” — and goes on to note that the United States had lost 117,000 textile jobs.

Since the ad aired, nearly 400,000 additional textile jobs have gone away nationally, along with more than 700,000 jobs in apparel manufacturing. Since Bill Clinton took office, the two sectors have lost a

combined 80 percent of their jobs.

Decatur County lost all its garment-making. After the sportswear plant closed, three of its former employees bought its equipment for $75,000, then opened a new facility called Triangle Sportswear, with 50 employees. One of the three was Collins Pratt, who started at the plant turning sewed clothes right-side out and worked his way up to become plant manager. Through a series of events that he attributes to the Lord’s grace, Pratt and his co-owners won several contracts and were making money, making clothes.

Then Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Suppliers began asking Pratt if he could beat price quotes from Mexico. Within a decade, Triangle shut down, along with the other remaining plants in the county.

Clinton, Pratt said, “didn’t do what he said he was going to do.

He said he was going to stop NAFTA.” Giving a man a job, he added, is like the old saying — you’re teaching him to fish, so he can eat for life. “What our country did, they took away our fishing ponds.”

The 1990s were nevertheless good for Pratt financially: He invested in a truck-and-trailer business that flourished. Even with its lost manufacturing jobs, Decatur County’s unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent at the end of that decade.

“The majority of people will tell

Paul Ivy, center left, and Fred Keeton, center right, talk with other regulars at the Diner in Decaturville.

“It hurt us pretty bad. I don’t know what would help.”

Ricky Mullins, on the impact of the closure of Decaturville Sportswear on the local economy. He had worked at the factory for 18 years and hasn’t found a comparable job since it shut down in 1991.

‘Everybody’s adjusted’ No one says that about the past 15 years. What civic leaders talk about, instead, is how workers have grown accustomed to earning less than they once did; the median income has fallen nearly 10 percent since 1999, after accounting for inflation. “Everybody’s adjusted how they’re living,” said Gerald Buchanan, the mayor of Decaturville.

Town leaders also fret over the people here who, having lost their routine jobs, now seem content just to go down to the mailbox and collect a government check.

The local bank president complains that Dodd-Frank financial rules are squeezing home lending in the community. Other folks complain about the lack of highspeed Internet access outside of Parsons, the largest city in the county.

Taylor, the Chamber of Commerce president, longs for a couple hundred acres of industrial park, wired for power and piped for sewage, to attract a supplier for one of the big auto plants in the state. He said Decaturville residents ask for something simpler: “Please, just get us a Sonic” drivein restaurant, they tell him. “A Sonic.”

County leaders say their best hopes for economic expansion lie along the Tennessee River, where a tourism industry is growing as more people buy weekend getaway and retirement homes, and in the University of Tennessee at Martin branch campus that opened in Parsons a few years back. Only 1 in 7 adults in Decatur County holds a bachelor’s degree or higher; prospective employers are always asking, “Where is your educated workforce?” said Tim David Boaz, the mayor of Parsons.

There are a few small manufacturers still scattered around, including one that makes freezers and one that makes pressure washers.

There is no sign of the old sportswear plant. It was knocked down several years ago. In its place sits a fortress of brick and wire: the new county jail. n

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

The GOP’s risky free-for-all

BY P HILIP R UCKER AND J ENNA J OHNSON

Des Moines

T

o take back the White House after eight years in the political wilderness, Republicans think they must soften their image and expand their appeal in particular to women and Latino voters. As Jeb Bush, a leading presidential contender, puts it, “We’re going to win if we show our hearts.”

But the GOP’s strategic imperative is running headlong into its structural reality.

Party officials are growing worried about a wide-open nominating contest likely to feature a historically large and diverse field. At best, they say, the Republican primaries will be a lively showcase — especially compared with the relative coronation taking shape on the Democratic side. But officials also acknowledge just how risky their circumstance is for a party that hasn’t put on a strong show in a long time.

With no clear front-runner and Bush so far unable to consolidate his path to the nomination — his fumbles over the Iraq war and his brother’s legacy further exposed his vulnerabilities — the GOP’s internecine battle could stretch well into the spring of 2016.

This could cost presidential aspirants tens of millions of dollars; pull them far to the right ideologically, from hot-button social issues to foreign policy; and jeopardize their general-election chances. And in such a muddled lineup — officials are planning to squeeze 10 or more contenders onto the debate stage — candidates will be rewarded for finding creative ways to gain notice.

“We’re in a danger zone,” said Doug Gross, a top Republican establishment figure in Iowa.

“When the party poobahs put this process together, they thought they could telescope this to get us a nominee who could appeal to a broad cross-section of people.

What we’ve got instead is a confederation of a lot of candidates who aren’t standing out — and in order to stand out, you need to

PHOTOS BY DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG NEWS

scream the loudest.”

Looming above the GOP show is Hillary Rodham Clinton, the dominant Democratic candidate whom Republican officials brashly dismiss as a scandal-plagued, out-of-touch relic of the past but whose early strength and political durability is nevertheless giving them a serious scare.

Republican officials are dismayed that months of relentless, negative press coverage of her use of private e-mail servers, foreign donations to her family’s charitable foundation and her six-figure paid speeches have done minimal damage to her favorability ratings.

At this month’s Republican National Committee meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., party leaders plotted their path back to power and confronted the demographic changes that have made the Electoral College more challenging for Republicans, with their heavily male, overwhelmingly white base.

“To win in a presidential election year, the Democrats have to be good,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said. “As Republicans, we need

to be about perfect in order to win.”

Perfection will be difficult to achieve, however. At the start of the year, Bush was seen as the most electable contender and a favorite for the nomination.

Thanks to his dynastic family’s deep network, Bush began building a juggernaut of a campaign.

But he has shown himself to be politically rusty, most acutely as he twisted himself into knots over the war started by his brother, former president George W. Bush.

Instead of a front-runner, Republicans have an array of candidates demonstrating strength.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker got off to a fast start in January and sits at or near the top in many polls, while Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) rose with a splashy April campaign launch that highlighted his charisma and youthful vigor.

Others have impressed, too, including Carly Fiorina, a former technology executive and the lone woman in the field, who is considered a long shot but wowed RNC members in Scottsdale with her substantive stump speech and

Party wants to soften its image, but primary battles may prove too costly Clockwise from top left, Carly Fiorina, Scott Walker, George Pataki and Ben Carson. All four are either in the race already or exploring a run to seek the 2016 Republican nomination for president, along with several others.

cutting attacks on Clinton.

Republican activists love that they have so many candidates to consider.

At Bush’s event, Darlene Block, 73, the party co-chairman in Jackson County, ticked through her short list: “Jeb’s on it. So is Dr. [Ben] Carson. And I like — I keep forgetting his name, but he’s the senator from Florida. Marco? Marco Rubio! I’m terrible on names. I’ve met Ted Cruz, I’ve found that [former Texas governor Rick] Perry was so much more sensible than I thought he would be. . . . And Rev. [Mike] Huckabee. . . . They all are so good.”

Party officials laud their deep field, drawing comparisons to the lengthy 2008 primary battle between Clinton and President Obama that ultimately worked to the Democrats’ benefit.

This time, argued Sean Spicer, the RNC’s chief strategist, “The attention’s going to be on our side, the horsepower’s going to be on our side, the enthusiasm’s going to be on our side.”

The downside is that with such stiff competition, there are incentives for candidates to make flashy moves that might stir the conservative base but turn off mainstream voters.

“If we go back to the old way of fighting amongst ourselves and saying, ‘You’re not righteous enough, you’re not perfect enough, you’re not this enough,’ we’re not going to win,” Bush said in a speech to RNC members this month.

This is particularly worrisome, considering the GOP is trying to shed its image as a retro party that protects the wealthy and project a more forward-looking vision by trying to demonstrate that Republicans care about the poor and disadvantaged and craft policies to lift them up.

“Anybody who doesn’t believe this hasn’t been paying attention the last few years,” said Matt Borges, the party chairman in Ohio, the quintessential general election swing state. “If our party isn’t seen as leading on these things, we’re running the risk of becoming a permanent minority.”

Borges said he sees only a few contenders developing that mes-

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

7

POLITICS sage: Bush, Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum.

Borges and other prominent Republicans said they fear if the primary campaign devolves into a purity test — or “a theology class,” as former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating put it — there could be trouble.

“To have a baker’s dozen and a few more as our candidates is impressive, enabling and exciting,” Keating said.

“But it’s problematical, because if it looks like total chaos, people will switch the channel.”

For now, the candidates say they want to avoid chaos.

“This whole process is to elect a Republican nominee,” Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, told reporters earlier this month in Scottsdale. “It’s not to provide a media circus. It’s not to provide entertainment to the masses and to create a show that would be delightfully pleasant for the opposition to watch.”

But they may not keep their word.

“You always hope that we follow what Ronald Reagan said about not criticizing each other, but that’s probably not the real world,” said Rob Gleason, chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

The month of May has brought a preview of the jousting to come.

As Bush struggled to talk about Iraq, many of his GOP rivals pounced to make unfavorable correlations between him and his brother, who left office with dismal approval ratings.

“There’s plenty of time for the Bush comparisons,” Santorum said, while Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) warned the country could get “George Bush 3.”

“I think, without question, the toppling of [Saddam] Hussein made the place less stable, more chaotic, more of the rise of radical Islam, more of the ascendance of Iran, and did no good for America,” Paul said in Iowa. “We should’ve never gone in.”

Campaigning in Iowa City, Bush was asked why he wasn’t better prepared for questions about Iraq and whether his fumbles are a sign of weakness.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” he told reporters.

“Look, we are all going to make mistakes. If you’re looking for a perfect candidate, he probably existed 2,000 years ago.” n

KLMNO WEEKLY

Skyrocketing prison costs have states changing course BY

R EID W ILSON

I

t is not often that the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center find common cause with conservative Republicans in Alabama. But this past week, both sides were celebrating when Gov. Robert Bentley (R) signed legislation that will cut the number of prisoners in state custody.

The legislation reflects a growing bipartisan consensus that a generation of tough-on-crime attitudes that dramatically increased the prison population has placed a burdensome strain on state budgets without actually achieving the goal of rehabilitating offenders. To reduce the number of offenders behind bars, both over the short and long terms, states like Alabama are reclassifying some minor crimes and spending more to make sure those who do wind up in prison don’t come back after their release.

“We’re finally seeing some recognition that mental health and drug abuse are a big part of the problem. And locking someone up and throwing away the key doesn’t solve that problem,” said state Sen. Cam Ward (R), sponsor of the bill.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) signed a similar measure this year. Legislators in Nebraska and Washington State are working on their own bills, both of which are likely to pass before legislative sessions end this year. Texas, North Carolina and Georgia have all passed similar reform measures in recent years.

In every case, criminal justice reform bills reduce the prison time for certain nonviolent crimes and create alternative programs aimed at dissuading young offenders from a life of crime.

Alabama’s law, for example, allows prosecutors to send more offenders to boot camps or to community corrections facilities.

It also reclassifies minor drug possessions as Class D felonies.

The ultimate goal is to reduce prison populations and, eventual-

ly, to close prison facilities to save costs. The rapid growth of the prison population has spurred an equal explosion in the amounts states are spending. Those who study corrections budgets say labor costs — for prison staff, pensions and health care — make up the vast majority of prison costs.

Those costs are rising, and fast, burdening states even further.

“Policymakers are not only concerned with the high current cost, they’re concerned about the bill that could come due,” said Marshall Clement, director of state initiatives at the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center.

Different labor laws drive grossly disproportional spending: Alabama shelled out an average of $17,285 per prisoner in fiscal 2010, according to the Vera Institute of Justice. New York, at the top end of the spectrum, spent $60,076 for each of its 59,237 inmates that year.

The political power of unions directly correlates to the amount states spend on their corrections employees, and thus the per-prisoner spending.

“Particularly in the Northeast, states that have more union presence, as opposed to right-to-work states, are going to have higher wages and benefits,” said Christian Henrichson, who conducted the Vera Institute study. “The surest and safest way to cut budg-

ets is to enact laws that reduce the prison population.”

In many states, the prison population is much higher than the capacity of the prison system A 2014 survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found 28 states holding more inmates than their lowest estimated capacity. Alabama’s 26,271 prisoners were nearly double the 13,318 the system was designed to hold. Delaware, Hawaii, Nebraska and North Dakota were operating at more than 150 percent of capacity.

A broad coalition of liberal and conservative groups have joined together to advocate for criminal justice reform, including George Soros’s Open Society Foundations on the left and Koch Industries on the right; together, the two are funding a $50 million eight-year campaign through the ACLU to push for reforms.

The tough-on-crime era of the 1990s and early 2000s has not wholly given up its hold on state legislators, some of whom see little political benefit, and potentially significant political risk, in releasing more prisoners. But, supporters say, the policy benefits, both budgetary and in reducing recidivism, far outweigh the risks.

“Nobody gets votes based upon fixing prisons,” Ward said. “But I think it’s something we should be proud of.” n

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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KLMNO WEEKLY

NATION

Rest easy, this doctor is a machine T ODD C . F RANKEL Toledo BY

T

he new machine that could one day replace anesthesiologists sat quietly next to a hospital gurney occupied by Nancy YoussefRingle. She was nervous. In a few minutes, a machine — not a doctor — would sedate the 59-year-old for a colon cancer screening called a colonoscopy.

But she had done her research.

She had even asked a family friend, an anesthesiologist, what he thought of the device. He was blunt: “That’s going to replace me.”

One day, maybe. For now, the Sedasys anesthesiology machine is only getting started, the leading lip of an automation wave that could transform hospitals just as technology changed automobile factories. But this machine doesn’t seek to replace only hospital shift workers. It’s targeting one of the best-paid medical specialties, making it all the more intriguing — or alarming, depending on your point of view.

Today, just four U.S. hospitals are using the machines, including here at ProMedica Toledo Hospital. Device maker Johnson & Johnson only recently deployed the first-of-its-kind machine despite winning U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in 2013. The rollout has been deliberately cautious for a device that hints at the future of health care, when machines take on tasks once assumed beyond their reach.

Everyone is watching to see how this goes.

“We’ve had a lot of anesthesiologists who’ve been dropping by to get a look,” said Michael Basista, the gastroenterologist who was about to work on Youssef-Ringle.

Then Sedasys did its job. And his patient was out cold.

Anesthesiologists tried to stop Sedasys.

They lobbied against it for years, arguing no machine could possibly replicate their skills or handle an emergency if something went wrong. Putting someone to sleep is an art, they said. Too little sedation, and the patient feels pain. Too

DUSTIN FRANZ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Can anesthesiologists be replaced by robots?

Some of the best-paid specialists hope not. much, and the patient dies. Anesthesiology requires four years of training after medical school, meaning careers might not launch until the doctors are in their 30s.

It’s one reason the profession’s median salary is $277,000 a year, according to research firm Payscale.

At first, the FDA rejected Sedasys over safety concerns. That was in 2010. But Johnson & Johnson, which began work on the device in 2000, won approval by agreeing to have an anesthesiology doctor or nurse on-call in case of emergencies and to limit use to simple screenings such as colonoscopies and endoscopies in healthy patients.

“The indication is very narrow, which is comforting to anesthesiologists,” Paul Bruggeman, Sedasys general manager for Johnson & Johnson, said in an interview.

But that comfort might be short-lived. More advanced machines are in the works. Researchers at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, are testing a device that can fully auto-

mate anesthesia for complicated brain and heart surgeries, even in children. Hospital administrators imagine the day when Sedasys or another device is used throughout their facilities for sedation.

“I dream about using it in bigger areas than endoscopy units,” said Joseph Sferra, vice president of surgical services at ProMedica Toledo Hospital, who had to overcome staff objections to get Sedasys into his medical center. “I’m sure this is very disconcerting to anesthesiologists.”

It is. But many have changed tactics. The American College of Anesthesiologists dropped its steadfast opposition as it became apparent Sedasys was going to get approved. The group instead pushed for restrictive guidelines.

Jeffrey Apfelbaum at the University of Chicago, co-chair of the professional group’s Sedasys committee, said he has doubts “about how it will pan out.”

“But is this a threat to a specialty?” he said. “Boy, I just don’t see it.”

The Sedasys machine delivers anesthesia to Lisa McLaughlin, 49, before her colonoscopy at ProMedica Toledo Hospital.

Colonoscopies are among the most common medical procedures, with about 14 million done annually. The screenings are often uncomfortable and sometimes painful.

Many patients would prefer to be knocked out, and in recent years anesthesia has grown more common for these procedures.

Sedation can cost even more than the colonoscopy, with anesthesiology fees adding up to $2,000. By contrast, Sedasys costs $150 to $200 each time.

In the Toledo hospital room, Basista told a nurse to begin. She pushed a button on the Sedasys machine, sending a measured dose of a sedation drug flowing into Youssef-Ringle.

The machine monitored her breathing, the oxygen levels in her blood and her heart rate. YoussefRingle also wore an earpiece, where a computerized voice periodically instructed her to squeeze a controller in her hand. The goal was to keep her in a period of moderate sedation — unaware but still responsive.

Before Sedasys, Basista had two options for sedating patients.

He could turn to an anesthesiologist, but finding one at his shortstaffed hospital was difficult.

He usually sedated patients himself with a drug such as midazolam. But the drug doesn’t work as well as stronger ones that are restricted to anesthesiologists.

Sedasys uses propofol, a powerful drug that works almost like flipping an on-off switch in patients. No hangover. Propofol’s quick action is ideal for colonoscopies, which usually take 20 to 30 minutes to complete. The drug’s reputation took a hit in 2009 after singer Michael Jackson overdosed on the drug at home and died. But when used properly, the drug is widely preferred by doctors as a sedative.

Youssef-Ringle called her experience “amazing.” She had gone into this with reservations. The machine seemed like just another way to cut costs, to remove the human factor. But now, after the procedure, she said she saw a potential upside, too: There was no human error, either. n

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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NATION

KLMNO WEEKLY

More violence feared after biker feud T IM M ADIGAN Waco, Tex. BY

L

ast Sunday’s bloodbath in this central Texas city laid bare the real-life world of biker gangs: testosteronefueled and honor-obsessed, a world where the patches on a vest take on life-or-death significance.

For nearly five decades, the Bandidos Motorcycle Club monopolized the Texas “bottom rocker,” a patch shaped like an inverted rainbow that states a biker’s claim to the Lone Star State.

Smaller clubs also wore the Texas patch, but only with the Bandidos’ blessing. Until another club, the Cossacks, slapped the bottom rocker on their vests without permission. In that shadowy world, it was an unforgivable provocation.

After a series of smaller skirmishes, law enforcement officials say, all-out war finally erupted between the Bandidos and the Cossacks in a shootout at a sports bar that left nine dead, 18 injured and over 170 behind bars. Waco police on Tuesday warned that the carnage was probably just beginning.

“In the gang world and in the biker world, that violence usually condones more violence,” Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said. “Is this over? Most likely not.”

A sense of threat continued to linger over Waco in the days after the battle, particularly among bartenders and waitresses who are constantly on the lookout for signs of gang affiliation. The shootout was the worst outbreak of violence in Waco since the FBI siege of the Branch Davidian compound in 1993.

In interviews and on social media, members of both clubs sought to deflect responsibility for the violence. One Bandido claimed in a statement that his club was attacked by the rival Cossacks. A member of the Cossacks said his club did no such thing.

“We just want to be left alone.

We just claim we’re from Texas.

Texas is our home. That’s all we do,” said the Cossack, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of becoming a target. “They have a problem with the fact that

ROD AYDELOTTE/WACO TRIBUNE-HERALD VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Police warn that deadly confrontation in Waco may lead to more battles between Texas rivals we won’t bow down,” but “we did not start this. We did not go down there to start this.”

For months, trouble seemed inevitable between the two clubs, even to Texas law enforcement officials. Last spring, two Bandidos were charged with stabbing two Cossacks at an Abilene steakhouse. And on May 1, the Texas Department of Public Safety issued a bulletin warning that FBI agents in San Antonio had learned that the Bandidos were discussing “the possibility of going to war with Cossacks.”

The bulletin, obtained by a Dallas TV station, detailed the reasons for the escalating tensions: “Traditionally, the Bandidos have been the dominant motorcycle club in Texas, and no other club is allowed to wear the Texas bar without their consent,” the bulletin said. “If the club refuses, Bandidos members will attempt to remove the vest by force from the member.”

That appears to have been exactly what happened in March, when a group of Bandidos confronted a Cossack rider at a truck stop in rural North Texas. When the Cossack refused to remove the Texas rocker from his vest, he was attacked with a hammer and the Bandidos made off with his vest, the bulletin said.

“People will die for that patch once they get it,” said one central Texas biker who arrived at the bar just after the melee. He does not belong to either of the rival gangs.

Wearing the Texas patch “was an outright provocation,” the biker said, adding that the Cossacks “were trying to buck the system that had been in place for 30 years.”

Whoever was to blame for the situation, the bulletin noted that “violence between members of the Bandidos and the Cossacks has increased in Texas with no indication of diminishing.”

The bulletin went on to describe

Men wearing Cossacks biker gang emblems gather Sunday near a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Tex. A shootout between rival groups left nine dead.

the Bandidos as “one of the largest outlaw motorcycle groups in the United States and the largest outlaw motorcycle gang in Texas.” It described the Cossacks as “a national club with members in the east, north and west Texas.”

A recent Justice Department report on outlaw motorcycle gangs also warned that the Bandidos “constitute a growing criminal threat.”

Last Sunday’s meeting of the Texas Confederation of Clubs and Independents at the Twin Peaks bar was the match that ultimately lit the dry kindling. Meetings of the confederation, ostensibly a lobbying and biker rights group, are held regularly in various spots around the state.

The confederation is dominated by the Bandidos; the Cossacks are not members. When the Bandidos insisted on holding Sunday’s meeting in Waco — a town the Cossacks consider their home turf — the stage was set for tragedy, gang experts and local bikers said.

Waco police said the Cossacks showed up “uninvited.” Both sides were armed with brass knuckles, knives, batons and firearms.

“If you know you are going into an area where another club has told you to [get out], do you want to go there with just your fists?” the central Texas biker said.

Days later, precisely what set off the fight remained unclear.

Johnny Snyder Jr. of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club in Waco, arrived at the packed bar just before 1 p.m. He didn’t sense any tension when he stepped outside for a smoke. Then, “while I was standing outside, I heard a shot,” he said. “I ran away until the gunshots got quiet. Then I was told to get down on the ground by the police. And that’s what I did.”

Bikers and police are bracing for what might come next.

“The police officers are probably right,” said the central Texas biker. “This is not over. Retribution will happen. It may not be a public display like what happened at Twin Peaks. But the issues at hand will be taken care of.” n Madigan is a freelance writer.

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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WORLD

Going for gold in a cesspool D OM P HILLIPS Rio de Janeiro BY

T

he site chosen for the finals of next summer’s Olympic sailing races could not be more spectacular. Located at the mouth of Guanabara Bay, at the foot of Rio de Janeiro’s Sugarloaf Mountain, in full view of the crowds on Flamengo Beach, it is one of the most scenic places on the planet.

But there is one not-so-little problem.

“It is dirty,’’ said Brazilian Olympic windsurfer Ricardo Winicki.

“It is one of the dirtiest places. And one of the most beautiful.’’

So notoriously grimy are the waters that Brazilian authorities are fighting to defend their selection of the site, which is polluted with raw sewage and garbage that floods into the 147-square-mile bay from open sewers and rain gullies — according to a 2014 report, 1.6 million homes in cities around the bay still lacked sewage collection.

When a top Brazilian government official recently staged a highly publicized swim to prove that the bay was safe, his televised stunt backfired — cameras on his boat captured scenes of floating garbage. An oceanographer explained that the official — Rio state environment secretary André Corrêa — had selected a point where the incoming tide offered the cleanest conditions in the bay. The pollution problems are just the latest facing Rio’s troubled Olympics.

A year after International Olympic Committee Vice President John Coates slammed late preparations, Rio 2016 is back on schedule but under attack for failing to meet promises to clean up Olympic waters. Work to depollute a noxious lagoon in front of the Olympic Park is held up in a legal dispute, unlikely to be ready for the start of the Games. Officials have admitted that a target to treat 80 percent of the sewage flowing into Guanabara Bay by 2016 will not be met, and garbage-picking “eco-boats” have been suspended pending new bids for the contract.

Three of five Olympic racing lanes are inside the mouth of

BUDA MENDES/GETTY IMAGES

Sailors competing in a bay filled with sewage threaten to tarnish the 2016 Rio Olympics Guanabara Bay. The other two are in open sea. Debris streaming from the bay regularly streaks the waters of Copacabana Beach, just outside the opening of the bay.

Flamengo Beach has been judged safe to swim only four times this year. Critics say successive governments have repeatedly failed for decades to clean up the bay.

The authorities argue that bacteria levels meet government standards and that a ramped-up eco-boat operation and 17 new “eco-barriers” to block garbage on rivers will resolve floating debris problems. A test competition staged last August was hailed as a success. Regattas have always happened here.

“The races are going to happen with the same safety levels we had last year,” said Rio 2016’s Executive Director of Sports Agberto Guimarães, adding that a chemical agent helped clean the sea water.

“The photos that we are going to have of the athletes competing in the bay with the Sugarloaf [in the

background] are very beautiful.”

But in April, Alastair Fox, head of competitions for the International Sailing Federation, ISAF, the world’s governing body for sailing, told the Associated Press all races could be moved outside the bay if it wasn’t cleaned up.

The organization is worried about water quality and hazardous floating debris that could interfere with a race or injure sailors. “If the bay is polluted and it becomes obvious that the racing will be unsafe and unfair, then we have to consider that. We are dearly hoping that won’t happen,” said Scott Perry, an ISAF vice president and technical director.

More likely is an option to switch a third lane to the open sea.

“This is a Plan B,” Perry said. “The organizing committee does not have the power to go there and resolve this problem,” Guimarães said. “If the eco-boats and the ecobarriers don’t work,” he added, “I take the three lanes and put them outside.”

A man walks along the shore of Guanabara Bay last July in Niteroi, across the water from Rio de Janeiro. The bay has been chosen as the site of sailing events in the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Despite promises to clean up sewage and debris, pollution remains a major problem.

At the test event last August, the right conditions — a South wind and no rain — meant conditions were “perfectly acceptable,” Perry said. A concentrated effort by ecoboats reduced floating garbage. “I saw a window frame that was about two meters by one meter one day, floating,” Perry added. “That was rather scary.” But conditions vary.

“If there is a lot of rains and winds from the north, the bay tends to get full of debris,” Perry said.

The highway from Rio’s international airport, Galeão, eight miles inside the bay, roars over the Fundão Canal, past vast favelas; $106 million was spent on a 2009 project that included a road bridge, cleaning up the canal, and planting and recuperating mangrove trees on its banks. On a recent morning, there was little evidence of the cleanup. The canal’s stinking, brown water bubbled with toxic gases. Banks beneath the trees were carpeted with garbage — plastic bottles, yogurt containers, clothes. A sodden, filthy sofa sat near a plastic toilet seat squashed into the dirt.

“The majority of the rivers that arrive in the Guanabara Bay are dead . . . due to the dumping of sewage and the presence of garbage,” said Mario Moscatelli, the biologist responsible for planting the mangrove trees.

The problem is nationwide: half of the Brazilian population does not have sewage collection, said Édíson Carlos, president of Trata Brasil, a nonprofit organization of sanitation companies that listed sanitation problems in the bay in a 2014 report. In Duque de Caxias, on the bay’s west coast, just 7 percent of sewage is treated.

“The conditions of the bay are the result of years and years of lack of investment,” Carlos said.

For many, the failure to clean up the bay is a lost opportunity. “I always believed in the project Rio 2016 as something good for Rio. But the way things happen, the delay in things, the bureaucracy, these things mean that Brazil does not go forward,” said Brazilian Olympic team sailor Isabel Swan, who won a bronze at the 2012 Games. “This is my sadness.” n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

Israel wants migrants out. Now. W ILLIAM B OOTH Holot, Israel BY

A

s Europe struggles to stem a spring flood of migrants from Africa and the Middle East trying to cross a deadly Mediterranean Sea, Israel has begun to toughen its stance toward refugees, telling unwanted Africans here they must leave now or face an indefinite stay in prison.

Israeli authorities are sending letters to the first of 45,000 Eritrean and Sudanese refugees, informing them they have 30 days to accept Israel’s offer of $3,500 in cash and a one-way ticket home or to an unnamed third country in Africa, or face incarceration at Saharonim prison.

Israeli leaders have proclaimed that their tough approach — building a fence along the country’s border, denying work permits for illegal migrants, forcing them into a detention center in the desert — may ultimately save lives by dissuading migrants from attempting a perilous journey. Critics of the Israeli policy counter that a country built by refugees should be more accepting of those fleeing war, poverty and oppression.

But these days, even liberal Europe is considering a more muscular approach. The European Union this past week voted to deploy military force in the Mediterranean to stop smuggling ships.

The new measures to press the Africans to leave Israel come at a time of heightened fear among the refugees, who were stunned last month by a widely circulated video allegedly showing three Eritreans who left Israel killed by Islamic State militants in Libya. Friends and relatives said they had traveled there in a bid to reach Europe.

“We saw the video, but we thought maybe it wasn’t true, maybe it was just a hoax,” said Aman Beyene, an Eritrean asylum seeker who has spent 14 months at an Israeli detention center.

“Then we spoke to an Eritrean boy who had witnessed the killings, and we knew it was true,” Beyene said.

The 38-year-old Eritrean accountant sat at a picnic table in the

DAVID VAAKNIN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Refugees from Eritrea and Sudan are offered cash, a ticket and 30 days. Otherwise, it’s prison. dirt parking lot of the Holot detention facility, a compound of singlestory cement-block dormitories housing 2,000 Africans, surrounded by a fence spooled with razor wire in the Negev desert.

Beyene recalled watching the video showing a man thought to be his friend Tesfay Kidane, 29, beheaded in Libya by Muslim extremists. He said Kidane felt despondent being cooped up at the Holot facility, so he took Israel’s offer to be flown to a third country — likely Uganda or Rwanda — and moved on to Libya, where he was kidnapped by the Islamic State.

Though the detainees at Holot are free to leave the compound during the day, the nearest city is an hour’s bus ride away and the men are forbidden to work. If they fail to return by nightfall, they are sent to a prison across the street.

Interviews with Eritreans and Sudanese at Holot suggest that many are still dreaming of reaching Europe through the chaos of

Libya — despite knowing that more than 1,800 Africans have drowned in the Mediterranean this year and others have been taken captive by the Islamic State.

Before Israel began cracking down on African migrants a few years ago, the Africans were highly visible in bustling cities, working in kitchens and doing menial labor. There are still neighborhoods in south Tel Aviv filled with Africans. Many Israelis complained they were being “invaded.”

Israel is a nation built by Jewish refugees, and those with Jewish ancestry are encouraged, even courted, to move here and provided wide-ranging assistance. A million Russian speakers came in the 1990s, and Jews from Ethiopia continue to arrive each month.

But fearful that a wave of impoverished Africans, mostly Muslims from Sudan and Christians from Eritrea, would overwhelm the Jewish nature of the state, Israel spent more than $350 mil-

Holot is a sprawling compound of singlestory, cement-block dorms. Detainees can leave during the day, but men are forbidden to work.

lion to build a 140-mile fence along its entire border with Egypt. Undocumented migrants to Israel are called “infiltrators” by the Israeli government.

The steel barrier, completed in 2013, stopped illegal entry cold: More than 10,000 Africans arrived in 2012; today almost no one attempts the trip.

The fence also shut down human traffickers in the Sinai Peninsula who had become increasingly sadistic, with refugees describing how they were imprisoned in “torture camps” where the Bedouin smugglers raped women and burned captives with molten plastic to extort relatives to send more money to free them.

As they’ve watched Europe being hit by a wave of African refugees, Israeli leaders say their policies are fair.

“While there are differences between us — the migrants traveling to Europe must cross a sea while those heading for Israel have a direct overland route — you can see the righteousness of our government’s policy to build a fence on the border with Egypt, which blocks the migrant workers before they enter Israel,” wrote Israeli Transportation Minister Israel Katz on his Facebook page last month.

Yonatan Jakubowicz of the Israeli Immigration Policy Center, a think tank aimed at promoting “a coherent immigration policy for Israel,” pointed out that many countries simply jail illegal migrants or deport them immediately, which Israel did not do to the Africans.

He said the new measures are designed to help those who have been denied asylum or have not applied for asylum to be returned home or to third countries.

“What we are saying is that Israel is not sending anyone by force to a third country,” he said.

Over the past two years, more than 9,000 Africans have accepted the Israelis’ offer and departed.

“It is a form of coercion, but it is not forced deportation,” said Sigal Rozen, public policy director of an Israeli human rights group called Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, which has taken up the cause of the African refugees. n

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COVER STORY

Active role

BY KRISSAH THOMPSON AND TIM CARMAN

The legacies of other first ladies

Lady Bird Johnson helped to enact the Highway Beautification Act, seen as embodying the foundational principles of conservation of public space.

First lady Michelle Obama, center left, with “So You Think You Can Dance” members at the White House Easter Egg Roll in April.

F

ive years after she launched Let’s Move, Michelle Obama’s willingness “to make a complete fool” of herself is the most visible part of her campaign to end childhood obesity. She’ll dance with a turnip or Big Bird or Jimmy Fallon. ¶ Behind the scenes, however, she has cultivated partnerships with big business to cut salt, sugar and fat from food. This network of corporate relation­ ships is unlike that of any previous first lady and has helped her sidestep a Republican Congress resistant to the adminis­ tration’s public health policies. ¶ The corporate allies she has sought may in some cases share her views, or, at least, see gains for themselves in their public association with her mission. ¶ Her tactics are controversial — to what extent should a first lady lend her status and imprimatur to com­ mercial enterprises? — but also strategic. She and her aides hope they yield lasting results. ¶ Congress has some sway over how Americans eat. But the nation’s food purveyors, includ­ ing Wal­Mart, the biggest of them all with $206 billion last year in food sales — and one of Obama’s key partners — continues on next page

Percentage of obese children, by age group

Pool photograph by OLIVIER DOULIER via European Pressphoto Agency

2-5 years

12-19 years

8%

2011-2012 2003-2004

18% 14

1988-1994 1971-1974

6-11 years

19

7 5

21% 17

11 4

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

11 6

THE WASHINGTON POST

Betty Ford is credited with ending the taboo on discussion of breast cancer.

Laura Bush founded book festivals in Texas and in the District that continue to draw tens of thousands of visitors each year.

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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COVER STORY Advocating for healthier food policy After planting a vegetable garden at the White House in 2009, Michelle Obama pushed for food policy changes to address childhood obesity and promote healthier eating. Here are nutrition initiatives and alliances influenced by the first lady’s office:

2010

on an issue as fundamental as certainly have more influence eating. and will respond more nimbly to “This is as controversial as you consumer demand. can get. We were not surprised at Like the president, Michelle all by the pushback,” said Sam Obama has less than two years to Kass, a friend of the Obamas who secure the gains she has made worked as their chef while they Launch of the Let’s Move campaign and her legacy as a first lady who lived in Chicago and became the The first lady started the program to promote healthier accomplished work more subadministration’s top aide on nueating and physical activity among children and helped to stantive than driving fashion trition policy and executive direcform the Partnership for a Healthier America, which supports choices and YouTube traffic. tor of Let’s Move.

Let’s Move by securing commitments from businesses — Obesity rates for children beWith the blessing of Obama, including Wal-Mart, Disney and Reebok — to require tween the ages of 2 and 5 dewho declined to be interviewed healthful changes of products they sell, sponsor or advertise. creased between 2003 and 2012, for this article, Kass negotiated according to the Centers for Diswith Wal-Mart, the world’s largPartnership with food and beverage manufacturers ease Control and Prevention, and est retailer, on a plan to reduce The first lady endorsed a pledge made by large food and some states recently have reportsalt, sugar and fat in its products. beverage manufacturers of the Healthy Weight Commitment ed making progress against The first lady publicly praised Foundation, whose members pledged to create lower-calorie, obesity in disadvantaged kids. for-profit chains of day-care cenlower-sodium products and smaller-portion packaging.

What hasn’t budged in ters that agreed to abide by 20 years is this: 1 in 3 American guidelines for improved nutriEnactment of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act children are overweight or obese, tion in after-school programs, Michelle Obama pushed for legislation to fund child nutrition a public health crisis projected to brokered deals to market vegetaand free lunch programs in schools. The act strengthened deprive a generation of potential bles to children and pushed lunch nutrition standards and removed junk food from and to generate trillions of dollars Americans to drink more water schools. President Obama signed the bill into law. in health-care costs. as part of an initiative with To combat that, Obama has American Beverage Association 2012 championed sweeping changes, members looking to increase Support of community gardens some encoded in law and some bottled water sales as soft-drink Michelle Obama publishes “American Grown: The Story of the imposed through federal regulaprofits fall off.

White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America.” tory powers, with a focus on both Those efforts — forged outObama pledged that proceeds from the book would go to the personal responsibility and helpside the White House through National Park Foundation to help support the White House ing the poor. Chain restaurants, the nonprofit Partnership for a garden and community gardens across the country. movie theaters and pizzerias are Healthier America — have met required to list calories on menus with modest results, and by the end of the year; many have Obama’s appearances with com2014 started doing so. The Food and pany heads have raised quesOverhaul of nutrition labels Drug Administration is finalizing tions among public health exHer office supported new Food and Drug Administration the broadest update to grocery perts who have wondered labeling guidelines that emphasize calories and added nutrition labeling in 20 years. whether she has given cover to sugar on food labels, giving the nutrition panels their first The change that has provoked an industry that is lagging bemakeover in 20 years. the most backlash is also the one hind and dragging its feet. mandated by a 2010 federal law Pamela Bailey, president of THE WASHINGTON POST Source: Staff reports that passed with bipartisan supthe Grocery Manufacturers Asport. The school lunch program, sociation, said Obama has been which provides free and resomeone the industry could duced-price meals to more than 21 million provides supplemental nutrition to low- work with, in part because she occupies a low-income children, now requires more fruit, income women and children under age 5. A middle lane. “She’s not trying to be the food vegetables, whole grains, lean protein and lowfuture Congress or White House could unravel police. She brings people together,” Bailey said. fat dairy products. the rest.

“Her role and her interest in this topic accelerConservative commentators, some lawmakObama knew from the beginning that she ated our work.” ers and some school lunch professionals have would encounter a political buzz saw in taking Her first partnership with the industry was derided the new guidelines as imposing one up the issue of childhood obesity, aides said, to tout a 2010 pledge by food and beverage diet on all children and increasing food waste. and insisted her staff work on fixes that would manufacturers to cut 1.5 trillion calories out of Students have been posting pictures of the stay fixed after she was no longer first lady. the food sold in the United States by the end of lunches they don’t like on social media, using By keeping her critiques of the health crisis 2015, via lower-calorie products, altered recithe hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama. Confocused on helping children and engaging the pes and reduced portion sizes. Michelle Obama gress has edged back some of the changes to food industry and public health advocates, stood beside the head of Kellogg’s, maker of school lunches and to the federal program that Obama found that the middle ground is narrow Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops cereals, and

from previous page

Improvements to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Michelle Obama and her team pushed for more vegetables in the federal program that provides food for poor women and children.

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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COVER STORY

KLMNO WEEKLY

claimed a victory against childand city neighborhoods where hood obesity with “a major there were no large grocers and agreement on the part of the adding a “great for you” label private sector corporations to that would make it easy for cusimprove the nutrition of the food tomers to spot which of the comthat we put on the table or that pany’s store-branded products we grab on the run.” were most nutritious.

By joining with the PartnerBut the idea that most excited ship for a Healthier America, an Michelle Obama’s office was a independent nonprofit group pledge by the company to reduce that works with Michelle Obama, the amount of sugar, salt and fat the Healthy Weight Commitin the food it sold. ment Foundation — a big-food Wal-Mart finally settled on a alliance — could score political goal of eliminating trans fats, points for just doing what it had reducing sugar across the store MANUEL BALCE CENETA/ASSOCIATED PRESS already planned: reformulate by 10 percent and reducing salt products and create smaller by 25 percent, compared with Michelle Obama, with Assistant White House Chef Sam Kass, plants in packages for consumers who items stocked in 2008. the White House kitchen garden with Girl Scouts in 2012. were demanding such foods.

Such changes have the potenBy last year, the companies tial to reverberate throughout announced they had beaten the grocery industry because of their goal and removed 6.4 trilthe company’s massive scale. lion calories from their sales, Reaching the salt goal has four times as many as promised been a slower road. The bread it and ahead of schedule. sells now has 16 percent less salt, During the same time period, the company has reported. Torticonsumer demand for organic llas have 9 percent less sodium. food pushed sales up 10 percent But low- sodium varieties of over the previous year, to $36 bilsome products, such as soup, lion, according to the Organic Trade Association. ing with a turnip to the beat of the hit song have been failures at the cash register and “The industry, if you’d like to be a skeptic, “Turn Down for What,” it was unexpected but scrapped. Fewer than 6 percent of the products could have just projected the way the market seemed wholly authentic for her. it sells contain trans fats. was going and then promised that as the outThe clip has been viewed more than 44 milIn the next two years, Michelle Obama will come and wanted to score good-guy points lion times on Vine since it was posted in early have to remain involved in food policy to from it,” said Kelly Brownell, an obesity expert October. Obama has said, “I’m pretty much preserve the gains. As the celebrations for the who serves as dean of the Sanford School of willing to make a complete fool out of myself to fifth anniversary of Let’s Move continue, the Public Policy at Duke University and has conget our kids moving.” administration is girding for challenges to the sulted with the White House. “If you’re less The long view of history has a way of revaluHealthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, the law behind skeptical, you say the industry is making a real ing the causes of the women who served with the first lady’s anti-obesity campaign. The effort to improve their foods.” their presidential husbands. The Highway White House expects Congress, the food indusJeff Stier, a senior fellow at the conservative Beautification Act that Lady Bird Johnson try and the School Nutrition Association to take National Center for Public Policy Research, helped enact now is seen as embodying the another swing at school lunch standards, initially thought the first lady had staked out a foundational principles of conservation of pubwhich opponents say are expensive, drive kids middle position on food policy but now says the lic space. Betty Ford is credited with ending the away from the meal program and lead to more campaign has become “rudderless” and is veertaboo on discussion of breast cancer. Laura food waste. ing toward the nanny state.

Bush founded book festivals in Texas and in the Obama has put in place measures to ensure “Maybe the American people aren’t behind a District that continue to draw tens of thouher work is sustained. The Partnership for a strong government campaign telling us what to sands of visitors each year.

Healthier America will continue to operate eat,” Stier said.

There are no reliable data analytics to assess when President Obama is no longer in office.

Michelle Obama has seen her job as supportthe power of the bully pulpit in real time, no The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recenting her husband’s administration — which way to count the number of preschoolers perly committed an additional $500 million to the means trying to have some influence while suaded by Obama on TV to eat their spinach or effort to end childhood obesity. avoiding political risk. Her immense value to parents who see her on the cover of Cooking In recent months, the first lady has vowed to the White House is as the charming face of her Light and start cooking better meals. keep at it. family’s brand, a term her aides have uttered Scientific certainty on declining obesity “We all know that for everyone in this country over the years, and healthy eating and fitness rates and calories cut from the food supply also who has stepped up to champion this issue, are the issues Obama has come to embody. is difficult to establish. there are plenty of other folks just waiting for us She works out at least five days a week, InObama’scase,hercloserelationshipwiththe to get bored,” she said at a Let’s Move event in slipping out of the White House to Solidcore American food-selling titan Wal-Mart may lead to February. “They’re just waiting for us to declare and SoulCycle classes. She has put her family on the biggest changes propelled by Let’s Move: victory and turn our attention to other matters.” a weekends-only dessert diet and showily healthier packaged food sold to consumers.

It was both an acknowledgment that her munches on carrots while hosting groups of Wal-Mart came to the White House with a set legacy is not yet secure and a warning that she kids for lunch. When she created a video dancof goals, including opening stores in rural areas will not go away until it is. n

Wal-Mart’s changes have the potential to reverberate throughout the grocery industry.

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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KLMNO WEEKLY

SCIENCE

We’re all getting stung O

n Tuesday, the Obama administration launched a national campaign to protect bees, other pollinators and their breeding grounds.

Honeybees are critical to our food supply. One of every three bites of our food originates from bees pollinating the flowers that produce many of our fruits, nuts and vegetables. Last June, President Obama established a Pollinator Health Task Force to focus federal efforts to stem pollinator loss. The USDA announced incentives to farmers and ranchers in five states who establish new habitats for honeybees. The chart below shows honeybee stressors. Studies show no links between colony collapse and either cellphone-tower radiation or genetically modified crops. n

PATTERSON CLARK/THE WASHINGTON POST

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

17

TRENDS

Millennials don’t want to get hitched BY

B RIGID S CHULTE

M Other groups see a rise The U.S. Wedding Report notes that weddings for college-educated women rose from 30 percent in 2008 to 36 percent in 2015.

illennials are poised to become the nation’s largest living generation this year. As they grow as a percentage of the population, more of them will reach the age at which Americans historically have gotten married. And many baby-boomer parents are probably eagerly anticipating the big day when their son or daughter walks down the aisle (and the grandkids that will follow).

But, according to new research, millennials are not showing many signs of interest in getting hitched as they get older, and, as a result, the marriage rate is expected to fall by next year to its lowest level to date.

That is a finding by Demographic Intelligence, a forecasting firm with a strong track record. “Millennials are such a big generation, we’re going to have more people of prime marriage age in the next five years than we’ve had at any time in U.S. history. For that alone, we’d expect an uptick in marriage rates,” said Sam Sturgeon, president of Demographic Intelligence. “That’s not happening.”

In the firm’s new U.S. Wedding Forecast, compiled from demographic data, Google searches and a host of other variables, Sturgeon projects that by 2016, the marriage rate will fall to 6.7 per 1,000 people, a historic low. That includes people getting married for the second or third time.

In 1867, the first year for which national marriage statistics were recorded, the marriage rate was 9.6 per 1,000 Americans. It peaked in 1946 at 16.4 per 1,000 as men were returning from World War II, and it bounced around from 8.5 in 1960 to a high of 10.8 in the mid1980s. Starting in the 1990s, it began a long and, in the 1990s, precipitous drop.

In fact, in 1984, when baby boomers were at prime marrying age, a total of 2.48 million marriages were recorded, the highest

number the country had seen. In 2013, the most recent year for which there is data, the number of marriages had dropped to 2.13 million.

“We won’t get anywhere close to that high number of marriages again,” Sturgeon said.

Demographers cite several reasons reason for the massive generational shift in marriage trends. l Millennials continue to delay marriage because of economics, education and preference. In 1960, fewer than 8 percent of women and 13 percent of men married for the first time at age 30 or older, University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen has calculated. Now, nearly one-third of women and more than 40 percent of men who marry for the first time are 30 or older.

Cohen, who has tracked falling marriage rates around the world, has projected that, if the current pattern continues, the marriage rate will hit zero in 2042. l The United States continues to become more secular and less religious. The Pew Research Center reported recently that the share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians dropped from 78 percent to 71 percent between 2007 and 2014, while the number of atheists, agnostics or those of no faith grew from 16 percent to 23 percent. l Millennials have alternatives. In the past, living together or having children “out of wedlock” was met with severe social stigma, but no longer. Cohabitation rates are on the rise — 48 percent of women interviewed between 2006 and 2010 for the National Survey of Family Growth cohabitated with a partner as a first union, compared with 34 percent in 1995.

Births to unmarried women also are on the rise. Forty-one percent of all births are now to unmarried women, 2.5 times as high as was reported in 1980 and 19 times as high as in 1940.

Marriage rate poised to hit its lowest as cohort breaks with saying ‘I do’

KLMNO WEEKLY

“Marriage is, in some ways, in the worst place it’s ever been,” said W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, director of the National Marriage Project and founder of Demographic Intelligence. “I don’t think we’re ever going to see a major upswing.

But we may have reached a plateau. The numbers suggest we may be touching bottom.”

Hopeful signs, Wilcox said, are rising rates of marriage among the educated. The U.S. Wedding Report notes that weddings for college-educated women rose from 30 percent in 2008 to 36 percent in 2015. And middle-class desires for two parents to be involved in the lives of children bode well for stable marriages, he said.

In addition, the growth of the Hispanic population should propel the percentage of Hispanic brides from 15 percent in 2008 to 18 percent this year, according to Demographic Intelligence.

Monitoring the Future, an ongoing survey of youths, further reports that 80 percent of female high school seniors and 72 percent of males in 2006 to 2010 said marriage and family are “extremely important” to them — numbers that have remained consistent since the mid-1970s.

That shows a strong marriage norm in the United States, Sturgeon said. But whether millennials will follow it is anyone’s guess. “We kind of hope we’ve reached a floor,” he said, “but we really aren’t sure.”

Brit Bertino, a wedding planner in Las Vegas and vice president of the Wedding Industry Professionals Association, is seeing the trends firsthand. Despite record tourism in the past year, and Las Vegas’s reputation as the “Wedding Capital of the World,” the number of marriage licenses issued there has dropped nearly 40 percent in the past decade.

“My business is definitely down. I’m seeing a 50 percent drop just from last year,” Bertino said.

“Las Vegas is definitely hurting.”

But Bertino also understands why. At 31, she, is a millennial, too.

And though she’s in the wedding business and said she would like to marry someday, she is in no rush.

“I’m not very traditional, so I wouldn’t mind having a child before marriage,” she said. “Like a lot of people, I’m holding off on marriage until I’m sure I’ve found the right person.” n

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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BOOKS

A new look at the day of the Dead N ON-FICTION

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REVIEWED BY

R YAN L ITTLE

T SO MANY ROADS The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead

By David Browne Da Capo. 482 pp. $30

oday, “Truckin’ ” sounds like pure hippie nostalgia: a bluesy, shuffling nod to the romance of the road and to perseverance in the face of drug busts and changing times. But the Grateful Dead’s self-referential 1970 song — now recognized by the Library of Congress as a national treasure — was more prescient than the band could’ve imagined. Fifty years after its inception, and 20 years after founder Jerry Garcia’s death, the surviving players continue to sell out arenas and win new converts as they embark on a farewell tour. Other ’60s-era acts, including the Rolling Stones, became almost entirely retrospective, but members of the Grateful Dead kept pushing their material in new directions, preserving the adventurous spirit they’ve always embodied.

In doing so, they’ve created an enormous, living body of work ripe for scholarship and obsessive fandom. The music itself, along with visual elements, business models and the vibrant subculture surrounding it, provides enough substance for endless consideration and analysis.

Thanks in part to the tape-trading culture encouraged among fans and in part to the band’s own documentation, about 2,200 of the Grateful Dead’s 2,300-plus live shows were recorded, and most of them are now online at sites such as Archive.org. Pulled from the band’s own vault, an immense trove of press clippings, fan mail and memorabilia is housed in the library of the University of California at Santa Cruz, much of it posted online at GDAO.org. Perhaps most tellingly, well over 100 Dead-related books have been published since the early ’70s; at least three are slated for release this year.

In light of so many existing resources, what does David Browne’s “So Many Roads,” a fairly broad overview of the group’s career, add to the canon?

1987 PHOTO BY ROBERT TONG/MARIN INDEPENDENT JOURNAL VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

The book traces the arc of the Grateful Dead, from the band’s early days to the death of revered lead guitarist Jerry Garcia and beyond.

For a band whose songs evolved with every show, there are as many ways to tell each tale as there are tales to tell. Browne admits to having encountered a “rock ’n’ roll Rashomon” of conflicting memories, and he acknowledges help not only from the band and its associates but also from seminal Dead historians Dennis McNally and Blair Jackson. To set up a different take on the band, Browne anchors each chapter of his book to a precise gig in the band’s career.

Like a live bootleg, each chapter digs deep into the band’s state of mind during one particular moment, and Browne enriches that moment with broader context and significance.

It’s a clever format: In the best chapters, it creates an extended sense of hanging out amid the haze and noise, watching ramshackle stoner heroes hone their craft and interact with the pecu-

liar crowd they cultivate. The meandering form suits the bespeckled legend of the subject.

However, it’s less suited for individual back stories. In early chapters, pegged to pre-Dead show dates in California, where Garcia is coping with his fears of a seemingly apocalyptic Cuban missile crisis, the book suffers from messy chronology. Browne mingles the personal histories of several musicians, early collaborators as well as Dead members, with future events in the chapters’ wavering present tense. With so many characters inhabiting the world of the Grateful Dead — friends, management, lovers and more — it’s easy to get lost in the foggy lack of structure. Thankfully, once the core of the group forms, Browne’s approach shines.

From Garcia’s early love of bluegrass — “I don’t know if you’ve spent time with someone rehearsing ‘Foggy Mountain

Breakdown’ on a banjo for eight hours,” said one of his colleagues, “but Jerry practiced endlessly” — to the band’s later experiments with jazz, garage rock, folk, funk, pop and disco (among other styles), Browne attentively traces a broad aesthetic arc. It’s a wild trajectory, perhaps unrivaled by that of any of their contemporaries. He follows the initial flower-power generation into what became a self-defining Deadhead culture, noting the increasing challenges posed by overcrowding, recklessness and major police conflicts, as greater fame brought less familiar, less considerate party enthusiasts to parking lots once populated by more community-minded Deadheads.

If anything’s missing, it’s perhaps a moral reckoning with some of the band’s darker proclivities. Accounts of band and crew members dosing promoters and venue staffers without their consent are offered up as lighthearted, no judgments made. Occasionally, nameless women are mentioned as mere sexual conquests, as another part of the “rock ’n’ roll lifestyle” that simply isn’t questioned. There’s no substantive reflection on the band’s raucous ways, how they affected people around them or how they contributed to the deaths of several members. It’s a common trope in rock histories — a vague, hands-off treatment of lurid behavior — but it’s one worth challenging.

How did the Dead manage to carry on after Garcia’s death in 1995? Speaking with Browne in 2013 about Garcia’s absence, guitarist Bob Weir explained: “His hand is still there. I can hear him out of the corner of my ear. . . . It never went away. It just became a little more ethereal. I don’t mean to wax hippie metaphysical, but that’s how it is for me. It always has been.” n Little is a writer and musician living in Washington.

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KLMNO WEEKLY

A disease he kept out of the news

A fictional mystery amid real horror

N ON-FICTION

F ICTION

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REVIEWED BY

G WEN I FILL

om Brokaw readily acknowledges that he’s lived a pretty charmed life. He drops boldface names with force, in part because his is one of them.

Brokaw quickly acknowledges what could be the most alienating part of his new memoir: that he is a man of privilege and has lived the cloistered life of the square-jawed, well-compensated network anchorman for decades. If this book were about that life, I would have found it quite easy to put down.

Instead, “A Lucky Life Interrupted” reminds us forcefully how cancer can level life’s playing field, as Brokaw comes face to face with the one thing most of us dread — the prospect of sudden mortality.

Full disclosure: Tom Brokaw was the anchor of “NBC Nightly News” during the five years I worked there in the 1990s. During that period, he was a larger-thanlife figure at the top of his game.

He owned every room he entered and always had the last word.

He was America’s favorite newsreader, the man who had clambered atop the Berlin Wall as it fell, grilled diplomats and dictators, and written a string of immensely popular “Greatest Generation” books. You could be forgiven for imagining that he would outlive us all. Imagine his shock when he realized that the timetable was not up to him.

In 2013, what started as a sore back turned into a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a cancer that eats and weakens cells and bones.

It was a rude disruption that he kept mostly to himself for some time and that turned out to be far more serious than he admitted (when he finally did admit it) to viewers, many friends, colleagues and fans.

Part of the reason he kept the dire nature of his illness mostly to himself, he writes, is that he was in denial. Plus, he was one of the most famous men in the world. “I did not want to become a photo on the Internet: Tom Brokaw, cancer

victim,” he writes.

But it was Brokaw’s fame that, in many ways, kept him lucky. He was swept into the most high-end precincts of Cancer World — to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., (where he served on the board) and to Sloan Kettering in New York.

Born in 1940, Brokaw writes that he grew up with a father “for whom pain was a personal burden,” and he learned how to keep discomfort to himself. But it becomes clear that he was gobsmacked by the diagnosis, the treatment and the clear limits the disease placed on his life — the places he couldn’t go, the noticeable weight loss, the times when he was unable to walk unaided. At one point, he writes, 60 percent of his blood was polluted by the myeloma. “Cancer is running my life,” he writes.

Brokaw is clear about his many advantages in life. Yes, he had access to excellent care and a generous insurance plan to manage costs that might have crippled other patients. He also had a physician daughter, Jennifer, to manage his case, and a tough and loving wife, Meredith, to manage him.

This is unlike Brokaw’s other books, which are largely about other people’s glories. And it is not self-pitying in the least. But the experience has clearly opened his eyes to a different set of challenges — especially for those in need of health care and for people who struggle to get through every day without benefit of family or finances. Brokaw, ever the cleareyed newsman, does not campaign for fixes in this book. But he bluntly points out societal shortcomings that make it so much easier for those with so much.

Brokaw doesn’t paste a smiley face on his story. Again and again, the book returns to stories of loss but also of grace, luck and the beauty of having another swing at bat. n Ifill is co-anchor of the PBS NewsHour and moderator of Washington Week.

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REVIEWED BY

“T A LUCKY LIFE INTERRUPTED A Memoir of Hope

By Tom Brokaw Random House. 230 pp. $27

THE LADY FROM ZAGREB

by Philip Kerr Marian Wood/Putnam.

421 pp. $26.95

P ATRICK A NDERSON

he Lady from Zagreb” is Philip Kerr’s 10th Bernie Gunther novel, and if you’re already a fan, that should be enough to send you scurrying to your bookstore. If you’re not a fan, maybe you should take a look, because this is one of the finest series in progress. Bernie started as a Berlin cop in the 1930s, but by the time this story unfolds, in 1943, he is reluctantly working as an investigator for the Nazis; he despises them but can never quite escape them. (If he does, there’s no series.)

The Nazis tolerate his stubborn independence because he’s smart and therefore useful, and also — because most of them hate each other — he’s relatively non-threatening. If he stops being useful, they can always kill him.

Besides being expertly written, the Gunther novels possess a special dimension because they don’t offer make-believe evil, but rather a fact-based portrait of the real thing — evil as bad as the world has ever known. At different times, Bernie has worked closely with the mass murderer Reinhard Heydrich (and rejoiced at his assassination) and with Hitler’s loathsome minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Some people may not want to read about these creatures, but for many they hold a sinister fascination. Beyond that, we need reminders that evil is ever with us, even though Berlin is no longer its epicenter.

In this new novel Goebbels again summons Bernie, this time for a very different assignment — one involving a woman, the lady of the title.

Goebbels, who was relatively well-read for a Nazi, controlled the German film industry. He has fallen in love with a young movie star named Dalia Dresner, who the author says was suggested by Pola Negri and Hedy Lamarr. Goebbels wants her to star in a new movie, but the actress is resisting, all too aware of his designs on her (he was a notorious womanizer), and it’s

Bernie’s job to persuade her.

The rumpled, 47-year-old Bernie is soon in bed with the gorgeous actress, knowing full well that he’s a dead man if Goebbels finds out.

The actress tells Bernie that he’s wonderful and she seeks only to please him: “All that you’ve ever wanted from a woman is exactly what you’re going to get.” Bernie believes her, although we readers suspect that, as Sam Spade would put it, she’s playing him for a sap.

In books that contain so much horror, Kerr must from time to time offer readers some relief — romantic, comic or otherwise. Bernie’s romps with the accommodating movie star are one example, as are his bitter wisecracks about the Nazis. Beyond that, Kerr also dramatizes not only some of the war’s well-known moments — the Katyn Forest killings, the Russian front — but atrocities we may have missed. In one episode, Goebbels sends Bernie to find Dalia’s father in what remains of Yugoslavia, where Serbs and Croats are busily massacring each other.

Dalia flees to Switzerland, where she lives with her older, endlessly forgiving husband. Bernie follows her, only to be almost killed by American spies even as we learn about the precarious Swiss neutrality.

Countless histories of the Third Reich exist, but there can be few more palatable ways than these novels to take a look at its horrors, its leaders and the mood in Germany before, during and after the war. The 10 books don’t relate Bernie’s story in chronological order, but it’s probably best to approach them in their order of publication.

You could certainly start with this one, but after that you would do well to return to the first three — the celebrated Berlin Noir trilogy of “March Violets,” “The Pale Criminal” and “A German Requiem.” It’s an agonizing story, exceptionally well told. n Anderson regularly reviews mysteries and thrillers for The Washington Post.

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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OPINIONS

Save your sanity. Drop Grandma from your feed.

REBECCA S. FAHRLANDER is an adjunct professor of sociology and psychology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

It started with my cousin’s Facebook friend request. I accepted, and then I friended other cousins, nieces and nephews. It would be a great way to stay in touch, I figured.

Instead, my Facebook feed became a bad family reunion, but without the hot dogs, hamburgers and ugly T-shirts. My cousin (we’re both baby boomers) constantly posted on my page images of dead family members, which also arrived in my e-mail. It was like getting a huge box of family photos in the mail each week. When I asked her to remove me from her list for these photos, she said she was “speechless.”

Instead of bringing us together, social media created a rift between us.

My younger relatives posed different problems on Facebook. I knew very little about these family members, but I generally thought of them as nice college kids or recent graduates. So when I saw them posting tasteless photos and sharing links to offensive Web sites that used profanity, I was quite surprised. At least one of the posts was insensitive toward cancer survivors like me: a cartoon about “mammo-grahams” (picture “breasts” made of frosting between two graham crackers) during Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

In an earlier era, I never would have known these odd bits of unflattering information, and now I viewed those relatives less favorably. After a while, I unfriended a few relatives. One unfriended me after I commented negatively on one of her posts.

If I was unfriending my family members, what was happening in other families? I put the question to my university students and found that they, too, have odd or uncomfortable relationships with their relatives on social media.

There were photos of parties and events they weren’t invited to — and way too much information about their siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. My students unfollowed relatives who constantly posted about their political and religious views.

Some complained that older relatives didn’t understand the norms that discourage posting about matters, such as religion,

that they would not discuss face to face with most family members. One of my students also hesitated to add Grandma as a Facebook friend because she could see some unconventional or deviant content, such as profane rap lyrics — and, more shockingly, she could click “like.”

Who would have guessed that Grandma would enjoy this stuff?

Social media is supposed to unite people by fostering regular communication across generations and distance. But it can also divide families by making relatives more aware of differences and stirring up fights, as when several relatives argue over another’s stream of postings from a politician’s Web site, asking for support. Then there was the student’s ex-husband and his new girlfriend, whom the former wife did not want to know anything about but was forced to see regularly on Facebook. Even when she unfriended her ex, other family members remained friends with him, so the photos and postings were still a constant irritant.

Social media can also blur relatives’ roles. For example, a grandmother’s role in a family member’s life is different from that of a friend, but that distinction gets lost on social media. Suddenly, we’re hanging out together, all the time. Having Grandma on Facebook is sort of like taking Grandma to your fraternity party.

In the real world, for example, a grandmother and grandson

might talk about certain topics, such as school, but not others, like those profane lyrics. The grandson would carefully edit, for an audience of one, what he shares with his grandmother. But on Facebook, the grandson shares the same things with Grandma that he shares with his 795 other friends. This broadcaststyle approach changes the way family members see each other and, therefore, changes their relationships. One of my students, for example, said that now, every time he sees his uncle in real life, he thinks of all the uncle’s political postings on Facebook, and he views him in a more negative light.

There may be such a thing as too much contact with and information about our distant relatives.

Before social media, we saw our extended family members infrequently: at reunions, weddings, holidays. We might receive an occasional written letter, deliberate and carefully crafted in its tone and content. A phone call might reveal unusual interests and activities, but it served to bond family members together — not so much through what was said as through the human contact, the warm, familiar voice, the shared problems. People knew that they had to be sensitive to each other’s

feelings. Most communication was fairly upbeat and cordial, and rarely risked sharing too much information.

Uncles’ or cousins’ political and religious affiliations, as well as health conditions, may have been known in a general way — such as who was a Democrat or a Republican, and who had been in the hospital recently. But unless I happened to visit a relative during election season and saw a candidate’s sign in his yard, I would not have known whom he was voting for.

Knowing a little bit of filtered information about our distant relatives, we were able to maintain an ideal in our minds of who they were as individuals and in relation to us. There was a secretive quality to some aunts and cousins, but we knew enough about them for our relationships to flourish. The boundaries of social roles were maintained.

One of my young relatives recently referred to me as the “mysterious aunt” because she rarely saw me but heard about how I had a PhD and had traveled to all seven continents, destinations such as Timbuktu, Marrakesh and Tahiti. To be mysterious, information must be edited and withheld. On social media, the oversharing removes the mystery — and some of the family harmony, as well. n

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

The fall of Ramadi was avoidable KIMBERLY KAGAN AND FREDERICK W. KAGAN Kimberly Kagan is president of the Institute for the Study of War. Frederick W. Kagan is director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.

The seizure of Ramadi one week ago leaves President Obama’s strategy against the Islamic State in ruins not only in Iraq but also throughout the Muslim world. It means that the Iraqi security forces will almost certainly not be able to recapture Mosul this year and, therefore, that the Islamic State will retain its largest city in Iraq. Worse, it gives the group momentum again in Iraq even as it gains ground in Syria and expands in the Sinai, Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere. This defeat was avoidable. Neither the Islamic State nor any other al-Qaeda offshoot has ever taken a major urban area actively defended by the United States in partnership with local forces. This is what happens when a policy of half-measures, restrictions and posturing meets a skillful and determined enemy on the battlefield. If the president does not change course soon, he will find that his legacy is not peace with Iran and ending wars, but rather the establishment of a terrorist state with the resources to conduct devastating attacks against the United States and a region-engulfing sectarian war.

Obama reacted slowly and reluctantly to the initial Islamic State surge last June from Syria into Mosul and then down the Tigris toward Baghdad. He authorized U.S. air support to assist the defense of the Kurdish capital of Irbil in August and eventually deployed first a few hundred and then a few thousand

U.S. advisers. He did not allow those advisers to fight alongside the Iraqi units they were assisting. U.S. airstrikes have destroyed many fixed Islamic State targets and killed its fighters by the thousands since then, mainly in Iraq, but have allowed the group to retain a haven in Syria and even to maneuver freely within Iraq.

The Islamic State maneuver that led up to the fall of Ramadi was sophisticated and many weeks in the making, as a recent publication from the Institute for the Study of War shows. It entailed diversionary attacks in Baiji and Garma, a prison break in Diyala, attacks against pilgrims in Baghdad and raids near Ayn alAsad air base west of Ramadi, a major hub of U.S. forces and Iraqi training. It was accompanied by a

coordinated offensive around Deir ez-Zor, in Syria, that could give the group the ability to operate all along the Euphrates and toward Damascus as well.

Numerous Islamic State fighters moved across Iraq and Syria.

Although they leveraged poor weather that impedes U.S. reconnaissance, such activity must have created a signature that a properly resourced U.S. force in the region would have detected, and it certainly created a proliferation of targets on the ground for combinations of attack aviation and ground maneuvers — had those resources been available and allowed to operate freely. U.S. military power, properly employed and resourced, can thwart these kinds of maneuvers. The fall of Ramadi was unnecessary and avoidable.

It is also a major strategic setback. The president’s strategy has been to support the Iraqi security forces in retaking territory lost to the Islamic State last summer and then, in some unspecified manner, turn to confronting it in Syria (probably in the next president’s term).

Statements by U.S. and Iraqi leaders this spring made it clear that their plans involved holding in Anbar while focusing on a major operation to retake Mosul sometime this year. The disaster

in Anbar, along with the fight for Tikrit precipitated by Iranianbacked Shiite militias that ultimately required the diversion of U.S. and Iraqi assets, has certainly derailed any campaign aiming at an early reconquest of Mosul.

Even at this stage, however, the Islamic State remains unable to stand against even a limited deployment of U.S. military forces if those forces are properly resourced and allowed to operate against the enemy. A few thousand additional combat troops, backed by helicopters, armored vehicles and forward air controllers able to embed with Iraqi units at the battalion level, as well as additional Special Forces troops able to move about the countryside, would certainly prevent further gains. They could almost certainly regain Ramadi and other recently lost areas of Anbar, in cooperation with local tribes. They might be able to do more.

The choice facing Obama is not between a massive deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops and a tightly constrained mission of under-resourced forces. It is, rather, between the serious application of a limited amount of U.S. military power and the establishment of a terrorist state. n

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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OPINIONS

BY CLAY BENNETT FOR THE CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS

Hillary Clinton’s hypocrisy DANA MILBANK writes about political theater in the nation’s capital. He joined the Post as a political reporter in 2000.

In a private meeting last week with 200 of the Democratic Party’s top financiers, Hillary Clinton drew vigorous applause when she said any of her nominees to the Supreme Court would have to share her desire to overturn the Citizens United decision.

Clinton also, as reported by my Post colleagues Matea Gold and Anne Gearan, put in a plug with the fundraisers (all of whom had hauled in at least $27,000 for her) for a constitutional amendment overturning the ruling, which allows unlimited spending by super PACs. Nice sentiments, to be sure, but the fact that she was unveiling her Citizens United litmus test with party fat cats at an exclusive soiree (four days later, she mentioned it to voters in Iowa) tells you all you need to know about Clinton’s awkward — and often hypocritical — relationship with campaign-finance reform.

Even as she denounces super PACs, she’s counting on two of them, Priorities USA Action and Correct the Record, to support her candidacy — a necessary evil, her campaign says. She’s also chin-deep in questionable financial activities, ranging from the soft-money scandals of her husband’s presidency to the current flap over contributions to the Clinton Foundation. Then there’s the matter of her plans to continue President Obama’s policy of opting out of the public-

finance system; Obama’s abandonment of the system did as much as the Citizens United ruling to destroy the postWatergate fixes.

Her advisers claim campaignfinance reforms will top her agenda, a sensible choice because of resentment in the populace toward a political system rigged in favor of the wealthy. But she gives supporters little evidence that she’s genuine. Asked last month about the role of the proClinton Priorities USA Action, Clinton shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t know.”

If she really thinks money is corrupting politics, she can take concrete steps right now. She could pledge to return immediately to the public finance system and call on pro-Clinton super PACs to cease and desist — if her Republican opponents will

BY LISA BENSON

do the same. The Republicans won’t, of course, but then Clinton would have gained the moral high ground she now lacks.

She could also vow to enact four pieces of legislation if elected: reviving the publicfinance system with matching funds for small contributions; curtailing candidate super PACs by drafting strict rules prohibiting coordination; forcing the disclosure of anonymous “dark money” contributions; and creating a new enforcement agency to replace the impotent and perpetually deadlocked Federal Election Commission.

“We have a history of candidates making commitments to campaign finance reform during the campaign and then walking away from it, in particular with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama,” says Fred Wertheimer , a longtime reformer. “We’re going to need a lot more than what Mrs. Clinton has said in order for this to be treated seriously.”

There’s a chance she’ll find some Republican support for legislation to restore public financing of elections — if only because the absence of such a system effectively means presidents are elected to eightyear terms, because of their ability to raise virtually unlimited

sums as incumbents.

Stuart Stevens, who ran Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, notes that only one incumbent president in the past 125 years who was not in the public-finance system lost his bid for reelection — and that was Herbert Hoover.

Stevens says the 2016 winner, Democrat or Republican, “is going to be almost impossible to defeat” in 2020. (Super PACs won’t completely offset that incumbent advantage, he figures, because the funds are at least theoretically outside the candidate’s control.)

If she’s serious in her commitment, Clinton doesn’t have to wait. Stevens suggests she challenge her GOP opponents to join her in opting into the moribund public-finance system (though its matching funds would be absurdly low). To keep the super PACs from filling the void, she could propose both sides disavow them, as Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Elizabeth Warren did in their 2012 Massachusetts Senate race.

Such an arrangement is probably unworkable, even in the unlikely event Republicans took her up on it. But this and other tangible steps could reduce the gap between Clinton’s professed commitment to clean elections and her dubious record. n

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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FIVE MYTHS

Late-night television BY

J ON M ACKS

In honor of David Letterman’s final show this past week, here are five myths about late­night TV that it’s time we debunk.

1

Celebrities are good guests.

Late-night shows have long followed a formula established by the great Carson. (For those under 40, that’s Johnny Carson, not Carson Daly.) There’s a monologue, a sketch or two, a music act and, of course, celebrity interviews. In two decades of writing for Jay Leno, I was asked countless times about the “fascinating” stars I met. Let me set the record straight.

First, writers were too busy pounding out jokes to meet the celebs at the studio. But the truth is that the vast majority of celebs who come on these shows are not the best conversationalists. Less politely, they are boring. Asked what they think of the latest trade agreement, they’d freeze up more than Tom Brady when he’s asked about deflated footballs.

There are exceptions, including Tom Hanks, Dame Helen Mirren, Emma Stone and Hugh Jackman, but generally the celebs are duds.

Comics, on the other hand, make great guests. Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Roseanne Barr — they’re used to being themselves, they prepare, and they always kill on late night.

2

Women can’t host late night.

This pernicious myth appears to be held most tightly by the TV executives who refuse to appoint a woman to a prime late-night hosting gig. After Trevor Noah was named Jon Stewart’s heir on “The Daily Show,” Comedy Central President Michele Ganeless was asked why a woman wasn’t selected. She said:

“We talked to women. We talked to men. We found in Trevor the best person for the job.”

Remarkably, every other network has also found that a man is best for the job of hosting its marquee late-night program.

And they’re wrong. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were in essence late-night hosts on “Saturday Night Live.” Chelsea Handler and Wanda Sykes both had great latenight shows. “Daily Show” alumna Samantha Bee is getting a gig at TBS. And Amy Schumer is terrific at 10:30. So come on, network executives: The next major late-night job should go to one of the female stars out there.

3

Late night goes easy on President Obama.

When Barack Obama was campaigning in 2008, the New York Times suggested writers were “favorably disposed toward Mr. Obama, to a degree that perhaps leaves them more resistant to jokes about him than those about most previous candidates.”

He’s tougher to make fun of than some presidents, as he hasn’t gotten caught with his pants around his ankles or invaded Iraq on bad information, but each and every late-nighter has poked fun at him: for his golfing, his drones, for being second in command to Valerie Jarrett, for Obamacare.

Hosts with a political ideology front and center are comics first.

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Some subjects are out of bounds.

Are there things we should

BOB GALBRAITH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

David Letterman, left, with Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show” in 1991. Letterman’s last show was Wednesday.

never joke about? Sept. 11. O.J. Katrina. After each of those, curmudgeons told us nobody could ever joke about them.

You never want to joke about the tragedy itself. But late-night hosts have always found a way to put those untouchables into the monologue. The key is to find the right way in, which means waiting until the surrounding players surface. With O.J. Simpson, it was the cast of clowns at the circus of his trial. With Katrina, it was the incompetence of FEMA. The Sept.

11 jokes hit on the tangential topics and subsequent scares: Duct tape stopping anthrax — really? The TSA and the underwear bomber.

Osama bin Laden himself. I love this joke: Bin Laden is the 27th of 51 brothers and sisters. See, it’s always the middle child who is the problem.

How do hosts fill up the monologue until they can make the untouchable topics touchable? They use these stories: people doing silly, harmless things (thank you, man in Florida who had sex with a tree); the never-ending supply of politicians saying dumb things (thank you, Ben Carson);

celebrities doing dumb things (thank you, Lindsay Lohan).

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The golden age of late night is dead.

For Carson fans, it died in 1992.

For Jay fans, in 2014. For Dave fans, in 2015. Here’s the truth: Late night is not dead, it’s not in a coma, it doesn’t even have a cold.

Yes, it’s not your grandfather’s late-night show. Fifteen million of us don’t have an appointment at 11:35 p.m. with Carson. Instead, we have a lot of choices, all of them good, and we can watch them anytime, anywhere.

The king may be gone (and I became a comedy writer because of Johnny), and the two immediate heirs to the throne have left the castle, but there a lot of princes out there who are making sure that late night is alive and does more than survive, it thrives. To quote Bruno Mars: Don’t believe me, just watch.

Jon Macks wrote for Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” for 22 years.

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2015

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GREAT WINE. GREAT FOOD. GREAT FUN.

It’s the largest gathering of wineries in the region, and the only professionally-judged wine event dedicated to wines produced in Chelan, Douglas, Grant and Okanogan counties. And this year it’s bigger than ever—more food, wine, beers, ciders, distilleries and eateries.

Saturday, August 22

6pm to 9pm

Town Toyota Center, Wenatchee

Tickets $45 each • A limited number of VIP tickets available for $65 each Available online at wenwineandfood.com Presented by Foothills Magazine

oothills

WENATCHEE ❆ LEAVENWORTH ❆ CHELAN AND ALL OF NORTH CENTRAL WASHINGTON

Interested in having a booth at this event?

E-mail us at info@ncwwineawards.com