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

Objectivism, SubjectivelyReason looks at the legacy of Ayn Rand.

By Bidisha BanerjeeUpdated Friday, Feb. 4, 2005, at 6:38 PM ET

Reason, March 2005
In time for the 100^th anniversary of Ayn Rand's birth, the cover article by Cathy Young assesses the legacy of the novelist/philosopher, whose glorification of selfishness and free markets continues to enthrall followers, even as analysis of Rand has become more "non-hagiographic." The piece appreciates Rand's early work before it "petrified into dogma," and points out the eccentricities of her character—including her refusal to publicly disclose that she had cancer, because she believed that "cancer was the result of philosophical and psychological errors." An accompanying Rand-O-Rama lists Rand references in pop culture, including author Nora Ephron's reaction to The Fountainhead. Ephron skipped the parts about selfishness and "spent the next year hoping I would meet a gaunt, orange-haired architect who would rape me. Or failing that, an architect who would rape me. Or failing that, an architect." … Nick Gillespie interviews Fox News Channel's senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano, whose new book severely criticizes the government for creating chaos by dispensing with constitutional rights and by holding itself above the law.

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New Republic, Feb. 14
If the United States wants a stable, democratic Iraq, even hawks should recognize the need to withdraw from Iraq by the end of this year, announces the cover story, which follows on the heels of last week's admission that the hope of a liberal Iraqi democracy has "evaporated." However, an editorial assessing the aftermath of last week's elections cautions against leaving Iraq prematurely and says that the U.S. might have to remain for "several more years." An article about Howard Dean's almost-certain victorious bid to lead the Democratic National Committee underscores "the diffusion of power away from Washington" and credits bloggers and state party leaders for this shift. The piece calls on Dean to heal his own creation: the party's "insider-outsider cleavage." … Stephen Pinker defends Harvard President Lawrence Summers' recent comments about gender and bemoans the "mentality of taboo" that hinders science and free inquiry. (Read Slate's William Saletan on Summers here and Megan O'Rourke here.)

Economist, Feb. 5
In the last five years, "antisocial behavior" has become a hot topic in British society. Crime has plummeted, freeing up resources to contend with litter, graffiti, and incivility. A companion piece about pre-1960s British children's literature salutes fireworks-toting, assault-weapon-carrying, baby-kidnapping naughty kids. … Noting that, between 1998 and 2001, shareholders lost about $134 billion due to mergers, the cover piece evaluates the recent rash of corporate marriages (most notably between Procter & Gamble and Gillette, and AT&T and SBC). Although corporations are being smarter about merging (a related piece points out that companies are consolidating a strong core of top-selling superbrands), the article hints that marital-squabbles and divorce may be inevitable. … Meanwhile, a state senator is trying to reverse Oklahoma's ban on cockfighting by suggesting that the roosters should "wear tiny foam-filled muffs on their spurs and protective sparring vests."

New York Review of Books, Feb. 10
Nicholas Kristof calls Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, a new book based on interviews with North Korean defectors, "simply the best book ever written about North Korea" and points out that North Koreans fight tooth-and-nail for the privilege of working in Siberian labor camps. "Westerners have assumed that the workers are slave laborers ... and they have demanded that Russia crack down on such abuses." But the comparably liberal atmosphere in Russia has provided lucrative jobs and allowed the workers to start questioning their regime for the first time. Kristof urges the United States to engage strenuously with North Korea. … A piece calls Mahmoud Abbas "the last Palestinian with national stature and historic credentials, the only one who can authentically speak on behalf of all" but notes, "should the prevailing mood change, the US fail to pressure Israel, or Israel fail to respond, the consensus that has swiftly formed around him will just as quickly evaporate." … And Michael Chabon scrutinizes Arthur Conan Doyle.

New York Times Magazine, Feb. 6
In his new column "The Security Advisor," Richard Clarke responds to Bush's inaugural address and his vow to spread democracy: "Beyond Iraq, in the greater Muslim world, opposing democracy is not uppermost in the mind of Al Qaeda or the larger jihadist network. (In Saudi Arabia, for example, Al Qaeda wants the monarchy replaced by a more democratic government.)" Clarke believes that NGOs and other countries can abate jihadist resentment better than the U.S. government. … A profile of earthworks artist Michael Heizer explains how the government's plan to move nuclear waste through the Nevada desert threatens the monumental "City" that Heizer has been building for almost 30 years. Heizer and his team of construction workers are creating a vast array of "mounds, prismoids, ramps, pits." Comparing the structures both to ancient pyramids and to airport hangars, the piece notes that "City" is one of the largest sculpture projects attempted by a modern artist.

The New Yorker The New Yorker, Feb. 7
The tsunami relief effort provides a chance for the Navy to test out its new plan—"for a day when America might find itself without allies." A piece follows an Expeditionary Strike Group—"small fleets built around amphibious assault ships stuffed with [M]arines and helicopters … ready on a few days' notice not only to put [M]arines ashore anywhere in the world but to support them for as long as they need to be there"—on a mission to Banda Aceh. There, the Marines proceed with extreme caution because of the delicate nature of U.S.-Indonesian relations. An admiral says, "We've talked about this idea of sea-basing for several years, of being able to project power anywhere in the world without asking permission. What we're doing here validates the beauty of it." … David Remnick, after visiting Israel and Palestine during the recent elections, suggests that new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas could prove more effective than Yasser Arafat: "The Arafat style was one of bluff, drama, flattery, purposeful contradiction, mystery, fog. Abbas is a logician, stern, arid."

Weekly Standard, Feb. 7
An article examining the legacy of 19^th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli calls him the "inventor of modern conservatism." Comparing Disraeli to John Milton and William Blake, the piece paints him as a "Jew for Jesus" and claims his "over-the-top pride [in his Jewish heritage], set against widespread Jewish self-hatred of the sort embodied by (for example) Marx or (nowadays) Noam Chomsky," is "intensely refreshing." … An online-only piece weighs in on a new Spider-Man series that recently debuted in India. It recasts "Spider-Man's powers as the worldly incarnation of a purposeful, mystical force" rather than an experiment gone wrong.… Stephen Schwartz declares that, "Islamic pluralism is not a new idea dreamed up in the West and offered as a helpful cure for Muslim rage. It is a longstanding reality." Pointing out that Sufism, which stresses "inter-Islamic dialogue," and "respect for all believers," is emerging in Saudi Arabia, Schwartz claims that the West can't afford to keep ignoring this tradition.

Time Time and Newsweek, Feb. 7
Inside the insurgency. Calling "an arc of Sunni tribal lands" near Baghdad the "true heartland of the resistance," Time follows a group of U.S. and Estonian soldiers as they uncover one of the largest weapons caches found in Iraq last year. The riveting piece underscores the "diverse and fractured nature of the Iraqi insurgency" and shows "Al-Zarqawi's cells, mostly directed by non-Iraqi jihadis, often don't know where the arms caches are and so cannot function without the support of Iraqi nationalists … who do." … Meanwhile, Newsweek covers a 21-year-old suicide bomber who survived his strike, and was subsequently picked up by the Iraqi police. The bomber revealed that, last October, the Iraqi police had Zarqawi surrounded in Fallujah but let him go (a claim an Iraqi government minister supports). Declaring that, long before the U.S. invasion, "Saddam had put aside hundreds of millions of dollars … and enormous weapons caches to support a guerilla war," the piece analyzes U.S. mistakes in dealing with insurgents and suggests some ways out.

Inside the sex trade. Time reports on the first chart that "maps the sexual geography of a U.S. high school" (from a study published recently in the American Journal of Sociology). "Researchers tried to document every romantic and sexual liaison among high school students over an 18-month period. … An astonishing 288 students were linked together in an elaborate network of liaisons," making it very easy for most students to contract STDS "from everyone in the chain." Newsweek focuses on a Russian mail-order bride who was beaten by her American ex-husband. She not only sued her husband successfully, but recently became "the first to win a case against an Internet bride service." The court's decision blamed the bride service for failing to tell the bride about "a provision in the immigration law that protects foreign women from deportation if they leave abusive husbands."

Inside Christian conservatism. Prompted by yet another trial about how evolution should be discussed in public schools, Newsweek takes a look at "Intelligent Design"—a theory that, like creationism, says life was started by a supernatural force. Couched in scientific language, I.D. attacks two of the premises underlying evolution: universal common descent, or "the idea that every living creature can trace an unbroken lineage back to the same primitive life forms;" and natural selection. … Time's cover profiles 25 of the nation's most influential evangelicals and asks what President Bush owes the Christian conservatives who helped re-elect him. It asserts that Bush's decision to focus on the Middle East and Social Security might "make him more cautious about overreaching on social issues like gay marriage and abortion." It also emphasizes the recent broadening of the conservative agenda regarding humanitarian causes: "Working with liberal groups, religious conservatives forced the Bush Administration to intercede in the Christian-Muslim civil war in Sudan" and in global AIDS funding, sex trafficking, and Third World debt.

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