- By Anonymous - Slate Magazine

Summaries of what's in Time, Newsweek, etc.

By AnonymousPosted Saturday, Oct. 12, 1996, at 3:30 AM ET

Vanity Fair, November 1996
(posted Friday, Oct. 11)

Madonna on the cover, her endless diary inside. Hooked to the release of Evita, the diary chronicles filming in Buenos Aires, her pregnancy, her dreams about Sharon Stone, and much, much, much more ("[t]oday I died a thousand deaths. Take after painful take. I was a wreck, even off-camera"). Many tender pictures accompany. Marjorie Williams profiles Dick Morris, taking the (now-standard) line that Morris' amorality enabled Clinton to find his own moral center. A Vanity Fair without O.J.? Impossible. "O.J.'s Ghost" recounts the weird career of Larry Schiller, a photographer/media promoter who has insinuated himself with Jack Ruby, Gary Gilmore, and now Simpson. And in a book excerpt, actress Claire Bloom describes the loathsome behavior of her ex-husband, novelist Philip Roth.

The Economist, Oct. 12
(posted Friday, Oct. 11)

The Economist speculates about post-Mandela South Africa. The cover story, "How Wrong Is It Going?" warns that South Africa's economy is struggling, its crime rate is skyrocketing, and its political system is unsteady. South Africa will probably avoid "stagnant African disappointment," though it won't become the economic tiger it was expected to be. A related editorial, "After He's Gone," argues that the ANC government needs to do a better job accommodating Zulus and whites. Also, an article claiming that China's economy is much smaller, and its poverty rate much higher, than has been reported. And a 32-page special on Mercosur, a small island republic in the Indian Ocean--oops, we mean the South American common market. It's doing very well, thank you.

The New Republic, Oct. 28
(posted Friday, Oct. 11)

Joe Klein dismisses William Julius Wilson's new book, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, calling it "tortured" and "unconvincing." Wilson is wrong to blame urban misery on economic stagnation and job loss in the inner cities, writes Klein, who subscribes to the neo-con view that urban poverty persists because the underclass lacks the social skills and discipline to join the labor force. (The poor are not like us. They're worse.) An article untangles the arms-to-Bosnia mess, suggesting that the Clinton administration let Iran ship weapons to Bosnia because it didn't trust the CIA to do it. "TRB" decries the "outrages" hidden in the minimum-wage bill: Favors to big corporations may "more than negate" the benefits to workers from the wage hike. And a story regrets the demise of Minnesota liberalism.

New York Times Magazine, Oct. 13
(posted Thursday, Oct. 10)

A cover profile of Gen. Alexander Lebed asks whether he's Russia's savior or a dictator-in-waiting. Echoing earlier assessments of Lebed, the magazine admires his bravery, integrity, and willingness to end the Chechen war, but frets about his three-second attention span, peasant ignorance, and contempt for democracy. (Biggest revelation: Lebed doesn't drink.) A profile of Elizabeth Dole also treads familiar ground: It marvels at how this childless, power-hungry, careerist woman has trumped Hillary Clinton in the hearth-and-home category, and wonders--without answering the question--if Dole will run for president herself. Also, a columnist advises Bill Gates on charitable giving. And novelist John Le Carré compares Britain's government--unfavorably--to Panama's.

New Yorker, Oct. 14
(posted Monday, Oct. 7)

A long article charts the tortuous history of Israel's negotiations with the PLO, making it sound like a Realpolitik soap opera: Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin were a "bad marriage" of passion and pragmatism; Yasser Arafat is sometimes a savvy negotiator, sometimes a batty old man; Benjamin Netanyahu is a cold egotist. Its implicit conclusion is that the new Likud government lacks the passion for peace and the personal ties with Palestinians that led Peres and Rabin to the Oslo accords. Also in The New Yorker, a John Updike essay on the meaning of the Titanic, and a story about why former New York Mayor Ed Koch hates current Mayor Rudy Giuliani. (The answer, more or less: Because Giuliani has succeeded.)

Newsweek, Oct. 14, and Time, Oct. 14
(posted Monday, Oct. 7)

Both magazines hold the presses for coverage of the presidential debate, but only Newsweek gives it the cover. The 10-page Newsweek package asks, "Is It Over?," and concludes that it probably is. Clinton won the debate by not losing it: "[Bob Dole] had to dramatically turn the presidential race upside down. He didn't." A Newsweek poll and focus group concur that Dole is dead. (Newsweek's other political coverage is not so timely: It runs a column about Gore's and Kemp's pet ideas that The New Yorker reported several weeks ago.)
Time agrees that Dole didn't win the big victory he needed: "Getting the laugh lines isn't the same thing as defining yourself." Time's cover story is on swing voters--actually, on one particular swing voter: Lori Lucas, a 35-year-old working mother from a Missouri suburb. Following conventional wisdom, Time claims that Midwestern moms like Lucas have replaced blue-collar men as the critical constituency in presidential campaigns. After following Lucas around for a few days, the magazine concludes that she is too busy to care about politics--bad news for democracy, but not for the president. Lucas voted Perot in '92, but she is leaning toward Clinton this year.
The magazines offer ditto accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian summit: It failed, and the Israelis did not negotiate in good faith. Time features a sidebar interview with Benjamin Netanyahu--he reveals nothing.
Also in Time, an article deplores attempts by several Democratic candidates to out GOP opponents. And a story reviews logging battles in Alaska, California, and Maine. Also in Newsweek, more Internet hype, including an excerpt from Dave Barry's new book about cyberspace and a column about the ongoing encryption flap.

Weekly Standard, Oct. 14
(posted Monday, Oct. 7)

The Standard's cover story mocks political focus groups. Even more pernicious than polls (which at least rely on large-scale random sampling), focus groups give the "veneer of pseudo-science" to the complaints of a few irritable cranks. The article argues that focus groups also dumb down political rhetoric (if such a thing is possible). The Standard's editors reject the conventional wisdom that the 104th Congress was a failure: Citing welfare reform, telecom reform, and the line-item veto, among other accomplishments, the Standard labels it "an impressive ideological--even political--triumph." Charles Krauthammer calls the fighting in Israel a "war," and says that Arafat started it.

U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 14
(posted Monday, Oct. 7)

Newsweek celebrated anti-aging hormone therapy last month. This week, U.S. News presents a darker view of baby boomers' quest for the fountain of youth. The cover story details the perils of cosmetic surgery with gory photographs (a face lift, four days post-op) and gorier anecdotes (death by tummy tuck), but provides no convincing evidence that plastic surgery has become more dangerous. The magazine also reveals "Bob Dole's Secret Plan" for victory: Sit back, relax, and wait for a late October surge. An article on old CEOs is pegged to the Dole campaign. And another demolishes the Clintonian idea that government should subsidize employers to hire welfare moms: Federal aid, it says, stigmatizes recipients more than it helps them.

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