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

Serving Up Democracy

By Julia TurnerUpdated Friday, May 16, 2003, at 2:16 PM ET

Economist, May 17
The Economist takes aim at peaceniks in its lead story, rejecting the argument that U.S. foreign policy aggravates Muslim hatred so much that it causes more evil than it prevents. While the article concedes that the alleged link between al-Qaida and Saddam is looking pretty shaky, it points out that Iraq's people are now free and hungry for democracy. There is also some obvious advice for Iraq's struggling nation-builders: Establish order, and bring in the United Nations, at least for weapons inspections. … Another article has some more Middle East peace hints for George Bush when Ariel Sharon visits him next week. For the road map to work, the United States must get the two sides to move in parallel and force Israel to end its ongoing settlement campaign.—E.F.

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New Republic, May 16
The cover stories draw a picture of an Iraq sinking into chaos and a Bush administration unwilling to deal with it. The first dispatch, titled "Beirut Redux," portrays Baghdad debilitated by anarchy, petty turf wars, religious fanaticism, and a U.S. military force reluctant to go outside its centralized cocoon; especially worrying is the report that Hezbollah may be opening an Iraqi branch. From Washington, Iraq hawk Lawrence Kaplan reveals the Bush administration's turf wars have subsided; both State and Defense agree that the best move in Iraq is to withdraw troops ASAP. Kaplan calls this decision an "enormous mistake," warning that the "United States may have to wave goodbye to its vision of liberalism in the Arab world" ... An article on America's new North Korea policy is equally harrowing. Bush's new approach favors using strict border controls to stop Kim Jong-il from exporting plutonim. The author calls this tack a "dangerous fantasy," pointing out the impossibility of sealing off a 780-mile border with China and the sheer lunacy of trying to interdict every departing flight.—A.Z.

New York Times Magazine New York Times Magazine, May 18
Architects tend to say charmingly mind-bending things like "I can't think flat." Comments like this—from a paper-eschewing designer—pepper the mag's architecture issue, which is well worth reading. … The kick-off essay points out that we live in architectural high times—these days, cutting-edge designs actually get built. Frank Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao is only the most notable of many avant-garde public buildings designed primarily to elicit "the gee-whiz response." Although Gehry moans, "You're too late!" and argues that the heyday of unorthodox edifices ended with the tech boom, the essay contends that the furor over plans for the World Trade Center site suggests otherwise. … What's it like to live, work, or study in one of these masterpieces? The rest of the issue seeks to answer this question. High points include the comments of Diamond Ranch High School students on the modernist "bravura" of their campus: "Like the whole building was straight, and then an earthquake happened."

Dwell, June 2003
This may be the least snooty architecture magazine in the world. (It certainly wants to be.) The NYT Mag wonders how people really live with whiz-bang designs, but Dwell regularly seeks out smart designs for real people, and its editor isn't afraid to admit that when she tried to give away her old couch, the Salvation Army wouldn't take it. (Of course, she doesn't include a photo of said sofa, which leads one to wonder whether she fears her design-freak readers' scorn, or whether it was stained-but-sleek Scandanavian beaut that would have belied her effort to seem down-to-earth.) Dwell is definitely for design freaks—one writer jokes about the heart-palpitating thrill of putting a sweaty glass on a "pristine 1937 Russel Wright dining table" sans coaster!—but it features a young Florida couple building their first, tiny home alongside a jetsetting pair with yin and yang apartments in Paris and Rome. One caveat: The writing can be flat—an analysis of home design TV shows should be hilarious, but "The Renovation Must Be Televised" is little more than a dull list.

Elle, June 2003
Is Teresa Heinz Kerry the John McCain of her husband John Kerry's presidential campaign? Political commentators are already sneering about John Kerry's tendency to equivocate and waffle, and they've long dismissed his outspoken wife—who famously still adores her dead first husband, fights with her second one, and fidgets and interrupts when Kerry's on the stump—as the potential Achilles heel of his campaign. But Lisa DePaulo argues that Teresa "may be mercurial and a little outré at times, but she's authentic. Voters like real, and that quality might just soften her husband's perceived arrogance." Plus, it would be fun to have a first lady who, when explaining why she's never worried about infidelity with either of her husbands, says things like: "What I expect of them, they have a right to expect of me. Maybe I'm into 18-year-olds." (Her press secretary, clearly no fun, quickly notes that Heinz Kerry is joking.)

The New Yorker, May 19
Zackie Achmat is HIV positive, but he won't take his medicine. The South African activist is staging a drug strike, refusing the anti-retroviral medicines he can afford until they are also available to even the poorest of the 5 million HIV sufferers there. But Achmat's antagonists, Samantha Power reports, are not pharmaceutical companies, which have actually offered their drugs to the South African government at reduced prices. Instead, it's President Thabo Mbeki's regime—astonishingly skeptical of the link between HIV and AIDS and the effectiveness of anti-retrovirals—that refuses to buy these drugs and distribute them at government clinics. … A "Talk of the Town" piece contests the notion that the winter's anti-war protests were all for naught. In fact, the Bush administration's current efforts to put Iraq's needs first—or at least to make it look that way to citizens at home and abroad—can be seen as a response to opposition concerns.

Esquire, June 2003
The best men's magazine around has always seemed loath to look too much like its lower-brow brethren—that's why it usually tucks the not-quite-naked women on its covers into small boxes at the edges of the page, rather than letting them romp all over it. Not so this month, when Carrie-Anne Moss' artfully tousled hair and insouciant cleavage take center stage while Ronald Reagan (fully clothed, thank you!) grins from the inset. … Reagan's mug is the only vaguely political item on the cover, which is disappointing; the monthlies are about due to catch up and start offering smart, considered takes on the war, and it seems strange that Esquire is not among them. The Reagan piece inside turns out to be personal—a Father's Day memoir from Ron Jr. about beating his dad in a swimming race for the first time. … Worth reading, as always, is David Sedaris' piece: the tale of his first sleepover, where he reduced neighborhood boys to their skivvies in a game of strip poker.

Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report, May 19
Yet another open memo to the woebegone Democrats on how to revive their party. Tucker Carlson weighed in this January, and this week, Time's Joe Klein repeats several of his suggestions: Dems need to articulate a smart alternative to Bush's pre-emptive foreign policy and quit listening so closely to political consultants. … U.S. News' cover story contends that you can learn much about a president from his life on Air Force One: For example, "Jimmy Carter was a man of righteous ideals, but his often-distant manner on the plane made him unpopular with many of those who served him there." … Should this lame cover choice make your head pound, Newsweek offers an update on pain. One highlight: Women with higher levels of estrogen seem less likely to feel pain acutely.

The newsmags on the paper of record: Time and Newsweek both report on advance copies the Jayson Blair investigation that ran in the New York Times Sunday, but Newsweek's Seth Mnookin raises smarter questions, noting that the "unflinching" piece contained omissions: the details of Blair's "close mentoring relationship with Times managing editor Gerald Boyd," and the larger questions the incident raises about Executive Editor Howell Raines and his management abilities. … U.S. News columnist John Leo didn't wait to see the Times article to call the incident a "reminder that diversity programs can undermine the standards that made great institutions great."

Who killed moderate Shiite Abdel Majid al-Khoei? When the New York Times Magazine's Peter Maass interviewed Muqtada al-Sadr, the Iraqi Shiite cleric pushing hardest for an Islamic state, he asked whether al-Sadr had instigated the murder of al-Khoei, the moderate Shiite cleric who had American support and was mobbed and killed at a shrine in Najaf on April 9. Al-Sadr denied the claim: "[Our enemies] can't fight directly, so they fight by spreading rumors in order to bring about the downfall of great leaders who can rule this society correctly. They fabricate rumors and accusations of being a murderer or being against religious scholars. All of these are lies." But Newsweek argues that Shiite infighting may indeed have played a role in al-Khoei's death. Among other things, the magazine notes that al-Khoei had tried to meet with al-Sadr but canceled when al-Sadr demanded the keys to a local shrine, and that al-Khoei was carrying $100,000 in cash, possibly from the CIA.

Weekly Standard, May 19
The editorial relishes the prospect of future Democratic filibusters intended to thwart confirmation of Dubya's judicial nominees: "The vote-blocking Democrats are not only hurting their own party's chances of recapturing the Senate but also handicapping their presidential nominee," the piece gleefully notes. … Bruce Bartlett argues that the Bush administration, by clinging to its proposed dividend tax-cut plan in the face of congressional compromises that would pare it down, "is in danger of becoming fanatical." Bush would be better off with a plan like the House's—which sacrifices the dividend tax cut but would stimulate the economy—than with a hollow legislative victory that would preserve his original ideas without kick-starting growth. (Interestingly, an April Standard piece argued that Bush should fight for a tax cut that could be key to re-election.) … A Scrapbook piece reports that—in an ill-timed move—the American Historical Society announced it will stop investigating any claims of plagiarism reported to it.

New York Review of Books, May 29
Michael Massing appraises the media coverage of Gulf War II. Resolutely chipper and "on message," the U.S. press's massive ignorance of local history and inability to speak or understand the language meant it ended up eating the foreign press's dust. … A dismissive assessment of Sidney Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars reckons that despite some glimmers of insight, mostly vis-à-vis Hillary, there's very little here that's "telling and fresh"; the book "feels at once very long and very thin." … A rave review of Anthony Swofford's Jarhead deems it "one of the best" war stories ever. It's also a chilling portrayal of the seductive "aphrodisiac" qualities of killing. … Slate contributor Jim Holt details the convoluted history of one of math's great unsolved problems—the four-color conjecture, which postulates that four colors suffice for the making of any conceivable map. Sounds reasonable, but it's damnably hard to prove.—S.G.