Slate.com
Table of Contents
foreigners
Breaking Away
foreigners
ad report card
"The Russians Moved Because They Know You Are Weak"
The Advertising Olympics
gabfest
books
The Olympic God Gabfest
The American John Milton
jurisprudence
chatterbox
Abortion Contortion
John Rumpelstiltskin McCain
jurisprudence
chatterbox
Script Doctors
I Still Hate Harry and Louise
moneybox
culturebox
Cold Cash, Not Cold War
Viz Whiz
moneybox
culturebox
The Great Lobster Mystery
The Deciders
moneybox
culturebox
Skirting the Issues
Was New American Review the Best Literary Magazine Ever?
movies
dear prudence
Save Faris
Unwedded Bliss
poem
dispatches
"Hermit"
Notes From a Failed State
politics
explainer
Hitting Him Where He Lives
Do White People Really Come From the Caucasus?
politics
explainer
Obama: the Pepsi Candidate
How Educational is Re-Education?
politics
explainer
After the Big Think
Beach Volleyball in Iran?
politics
explainer
Love You. Mean It.
Jamaican Me Speedy
press box
five-ring circus
Veep Creep
The Olympics Sap-o-Meter
press box
five-ring circus
Timely Ledes From This Summer's New Yorkers
Dispatches From Beijing
reading list
five-ring circus
What To Read About What To Wear
Remember When Decathletes Were Cool?
shopping
five-ring circus
What's the Buzz?
Newborn Demigod
technology
five-ring circus
Take That, Stupid Printer!
Like Regular Ping-Pong, With Concussions
technology
food
For Sale: Your Browser History
I'll Have the Banana Pancake Flambé Stonehenge
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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the green lantern
Is Red China Ever Green?
the spectator
Crossword, Sudoku Plague Threatens America!
today's business press
Russia's Defectors
today's business press
Lehman's Secret Talks
today's business press
Feels Like 1981
today's business press
any sort of enticement; they're the ever-present obstacle you
have to leap over (or zoom past on your DVR) if you hope to
stay awake long enough to see Michael Phelps beat some French
guys. Super Bowl ads, designed as standalone entertainments,
don't typically show anyone playing or talking about football.
Most Olympic commercials, sneakily trying to blend in with the
stuff we actually want to see, look and sound exactly like the
Olympics.
McDonald's, a longtime Olympic sponsor, is a master of the
form. Take the ad below, in which a thoroughly depilated
weightlifter, a Shawn Johnson-look-alike moppet, and an
Eastern European runner with gold-medal abs describe their
passionate, lifelong quest to secure … a Southern Style Chicken
Sandwich.
Fannie Whacked
today's business press
The Price Is Right
today's papers
Pullout Time
today's papers
Pervez Out
today's papers
Getting Closer
today's papers
Text Message Not Sent
war stories
Loud Voice, Tiny Stick
what's up, doc?
Cancer-Free Girls
xx factor xxtra
The Madwoman in the Blogosphere
ad report card
The Advertising Olympics
The best and worst commercials from the Summer Games.
By Josh Levin
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 4:11 PM ET
Super Bowl commercials—self-important, big-budget chunks of
pitchmanship—reflect the fact that people watch the game as an
excuse to watch the ads. The commercials we've seen on NBC
since Aug. 8, generators of more than $1 billion in revenues for
the network, reflect the fact that people watch the Olympics to
watch the Olympics. The Summer Games drag on for two weeks
and are broadcast for 8,000 hours a day. The commercials aren't
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Mickey D's shows clear command of the tone and content of
Olympics blather: "I've been dreaming about it since I was a
kid," say the chicken-starved athletes. Nevertheless, it's hard to
see this campaign—also featuring a spot in which smiley jocks
congregate to scarf down McNuggets in the "Athletes Village"—
as anything but a missed opportunity. Consider that Michael
Phelps loves McDonald's. Also consider Usain Bolt's claim that
on the day he preened his way to the 100-meter world record, he
ate nothing but chicken nuggets. Potential sales impact of
generic Russian lady saying she wants a sandwich: not
insignificant, because she has amazing abs. Potential sales
impact of most-decorated Olympian ever and fastest man in
world history revealing they're both fueled entirely by barbecue
sauce: much larger. Then again, perhaps McDonald's was wise
to play it safe. Tyson Gay regularly proclaims his love for the
company's products, and you saw what happened to him.
Not every mega-corporation is as lily-livered when it comes to
featuring real athletes. In its "Go World" spots, narrated by
Morgan Freeman, Visa spotlights Bob Beamon, Nastia Liukin,
Michael Phelps, and other Olympians past and present. Besides
the ads' regrettable color palette, which suggests that our heroes
are suspended in pools of urine, there's not much to quibble with
here, at least if you acknowledge that the goal of every Olympics
ad is to mimic the NBC style.
The quintessential Visa Olympics ad focuses on Derek
Redmond, the Brit who, assisted by his dad, dragged himself to
the finish line after pulling a hamstring in the 400-meter dash.
"He," says Freeman, pausing dramatically as violins groan
loudly in the background, "and his father"—another pause, with
the violins growing more insistent—"finished dead last"—pause,
two-second-long freeze frame on Redmond's agonized face—
"but he"—pause—"and his father"—pause—"finished." Al
Trautwig, you might want to start looking for a new gig.
Along with their generic, triumph-over-adversity message, the
"Go World" ads promote the idea that the Olympics are a time
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when "6 billion of us ... come together to stand and cheer and
celebrate as one." Coke's "Bring Home the World" ads, featuring
a cast of American Olympics stars that quaffs from "limitededition" collectible cans bearing the Coca-Cola logo in different
languages, peddle a similarly banal internationalism.
Where I'm from, Earth, the Olympics are about rooting for other
countries to lose so yours can win. There is one Coke
commercial that's honest about Olympian foreign relations.
In the animated spot above, Cartoon Yao and Cartoon LeBron
do battle by summoning cultural stereotypes: a dragon, a trio of
pandas, and some ninjas for Yao, a cowboy, brown bears
wearing sunglasses, and a marching band for LeBron. (Big
advantage: China.) In the end, the basketball superstars break the
tension by sharing a Coke and a smile. The spot is called
"Unity": May we do battle on the court, then come together to
sell sugar water.
The Olympics aren't just the perfect sales platform for
international stars like LeBron James. As this New York Times
article points out, the Summer Games is the rare sporting event
that isn't an exclusively male preserve. Nike, which has long
courted women with its ad campaigns, is one of many companies
using Beijing to reach female viewers. "We Have Softball," a
collection of slo-mo action shots of amateur and Olympic
athletes set to "The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA," serves as
a sort of elegy for the sport and the American team—after four
appearances in the Summer Games, softball has been excised
from the 2012 program.
While the ad is beautifully filmed and edited—and grew more
poignant on Thursday with the Americans' loss to Japan in the
sport's final gold-medal game—it's not exactly subtle. The
sneaker giant's market research must indicate that women cannot
resist visual metaphor. Last year's big Nike Women campaign
centered on athletes yelling stuff like "the half-pipe doesn't care
that I'm a girl" into a giant megaphone. At the end of this
summer's softball spot, a player smashes a bunch of trophies
with her aluminum bat as the screen reads: "We have softball.
You can have everything else." Take that, International Olympic
Committee! A second Nike ad, "A Dream Deferred," is far more
appealing. This spot, which sets a Sanya Richards training
session to the words of the Langston Hughes poem, doesn't rely
on over-the-top girl power rhetoric. It's a simple celebration of
the toils of a world-class athlete, one who, like the U.S. softball
team, didn't have the Olympics she was hoping for. (Yes,
Richards' figure is juxtaposed with an image of a white dove, but
let's ignore that.)
Nike's most-ubiquitous Olympics ad isn't designed to appeal to
women.
"Courage"—an ultraquick-cutting montage set to the "I've got
soul, but I'm not a soldier" refrain from the Killers' "All These
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Things That I've Done" that includes footage of Cristiano
Ronaldo playing soccer, Maria Sharapova playing tennis,
flowers blooming, a fetus, a pack of deer, the moon landing, a
marionette, geishas, Lance Armstrong in bed ravaged by cancer,
Lance Armstrong out of bed and winning the Tour de France,
and a pack of bison—seems niche-marketed to stock footage
archivists and amphetamine abusers. The only image in the
minute-long commercial that lingers for more than a nanosecond
is the closing shot of Oscar Pistorius, the runner with carbonfiber legs who tried and failed to qualify for the Beijing Games.
That isn't the only Olympic spot to feature a handicapped athlete.
A Home Depot ad that focuses on the Olympians who work for
the company to help make ends meet—"I care about rowing so
much that I spend my days helping middle-aged dudes find the
right-sized wing nut!"—features four separate shots that linger
on a Home Depot-employed high jumper's artificial leg. And
then there's the Chevy Silverado ad that closes with a
Paralympian in a racing wheelchair extolling the virtues of his
truck.
What's bothersome about these ads is that they use wheelchairs
and prostheses as a punctuation mark. You thought those regular
old Olympians were inspirational, well, get a load of the guy
with the artificial limb! Sure, the Paralympics is a fantastic
event, but it strikes me as disingenuous for Nike, Chevrolet, et
al. to use handicapped athletes as sentiment-generators when
they're really angling for the humongous audiences that watch
the Olympic Games. In 2004, no American broadcaster
broadcast live from the Paralympic Games. No plans for live
coverage have been announced for this year, either; a spokesman
for NBC Sports says there "may be a limited amount of live and
highlights coverage." The unintended message is that disabled
athletes are inspirational enough for a one-second clip in a
commercial but not worthy of carrying an entire broadcast. The
athletes here become cheap signifiers of adversity conquered, an
easy way to telegraph that your product is "inspirational." That
sound familiar, NBC?
books
The American John Milton
The poet and the power of extraordinary speech.
By Robert Pinsky
Monday, August 18, 2008, at 6:26 AM ET
Great art is great not because it enters an academic curriculum,
and neither is greatness affirmed by the awarding of prizes or
titles. But great is not necessarily a vague term. It can indicate
work that penetrates the shapes, feelings, ideas, and sounds of a
culture, as in the cadences of speech. Sometimes that kind of
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penetration is so deep, so transforming, that it is nearly invisible,
or barely acknowledged.
W.E.B. Du Bois, the American essayist and political leader,
begins the peroration of his great essay "On the Training of
Black Men" with a sentence like a symphonic chord, fortissimo,
compact, rousing:
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.
This statement, and the paragraph it introduces, come at the
climax of an argument against the idea of measured progress,
associated with Booker T. Washington: first training a
generation of freed slaves to be cooks and carpenters, then a
generation of clerks, then artisans, and, finally, in four or five
generations, doctors and judges and scholars. Du Bois, on the
other side of this famous and crucial American argument, had
emphasized individual qualities: "teach the workers to work and
the thinkers to think; make carpenters of carpenters, and
philosophers of philosophers, and fops of fools."
The power of "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not" may be
related in part to its form. Although it begins a prose paragraph,
Du Bois' sentence is a perfect line of blank verse: the measure of
Shakespeare's plays. The pattern of five iambs often appears in
prose when the writer wants a certain intensity; for example,
"We hold these truths to be self-evident" and "With malice
toward none, with charity toward all." In the example from Du
Bois, his topic sentence sets off a passage of high eloquence, all
of it close to blank verse, to reach another pentameter: "So, wed
with Truth, I dwell above the Veil."
It's not just the rhythm that gives a special—as if physical—
force to the words "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not."
The unusual order of the words, placing the negative at the end,
gives Du Bois' sentence a vocal emphasis. As in the slang habit
of a few years ago, but with a different order of meaning, the
delayed "not" has emotional color. The somewhat contorted
syntax creates meaning: defying the idiomatic arrangements of
English yet also refreshing them with a douse of Latin's
relatively free word order.
The writer of blank verse in English who exploited that way of
writing, influencing countless generations of poets and changing
the language itself forever, is John Milton, born 400 years ago.
His writing permanently saturated American culture and
discourse. Du Bois in this passage refers to Shakespeare
explicitly. Implicitly, he also echoes Milton, as have many
American writers and public speakers.
A political revolutionary, a radically anti-monarchist Protestant
and passionate small-R republican, Milton wrote a defense of
divorce and, in Areopagitica, a "Scriptural and Historical
Argument in Favour of Promiscuous Reading" and against
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
"Licensing" of publication that remains the most quoted and
admired argument against censorship. He also wrote
Eikonoklastes, an essay arguing against an immensely popular
book called Eikon Basilike: The Portraiture of His Sacred
Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings—a romanticized account
of the spiritual beauty of the deposed and executed King
Charles. Milton debunks the notion of a pious, saintly Charles
with the formidable, energetic scorn of an iconoclast who knows
he is right. No wonder the author of Paradise Lost and Paradise
Regained was such a formative American import.
In the days when the Fourth of July was celebrated on town
greens, the occasion was marked by fireworks, band music, and
speeches—speeches that almost invariably quoted John Milton,
the anti-Royalist and Protestant poet. Anna Beer, in the preface
to her useful new biography Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and
Patriot, points out Milton's considerable influence on the
Founding Fathers. English writer Peter Ackroyd published, in
the '90s, a novel called Milton in America, imagining the poet's
actual immigration—an outgrowth, in a way, of the more
remarkable, actual story of Milton's work in the American
imagination.
I once heard the great American poet and iconoclast Allen
Ginsberg recite Milton's poem "Lycidas" by heart. Nearly every
page of John Hollander's indispensable anthology Nineteenth
Century American Poetry bears traces of that same poem. In
Ginsberg's published journals from the mid-'50s, he assigns
himself the metrical task of writing blank verse (and succeeds
with subject matter including his lover Peter Orlovsky's ass: "Let
cockcrow crown the buttocks of my Pete," another perfect
pentameter).
Milton's genius, and his particular, infectious kind of eloquence,
combines two kinds of energy, seemingly alike but explosive
together: an individualistic ideal of freedom and the syntactical
variety of the Latin language. When Milton imposes that variety
on English, which lacks Latin's inflected endings, he introduces
new emotional registers, amazing patterns of repetition and
vocality. The most notable, and much-noted, embodiment of that
new range of feeling in poetry is Milton's Satan:
Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; my self am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n.
O then at last relent: is there no place
Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
...…………………………(Paradise Lost,
Book IV, 73-82)
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The expressive quality of the opening two words—"Me
miserable!"—as with the placement of Du Bois' "not," arises
from the bending and stretching of English idiom: The ideal is
not a poetry based on ordinary speech—which has been one
Modernist slogan—but extraordinary speech.
Is American speech plain, where Milton is fancy? Extraordinary
or unidiomatic language represents the quality Ezra Pound
denounces in ABC of Reading, where Milton exemplifies what
Pound says poets should not do. Deriding Milton's line "Him
who disobeys me disobeys," Pound says:
He is, quite simply, doing wrong to his mother
tongue. He meant:
Who disobeys him, disobeys
me.
It is perfectly easy to understand WHY he did
it, but his reasons prove that Shakespeare and
several dozen other men were better poets.
Milton did it because he was chock a block
with Latin. He had studied his English not as a
living language, but as something subject to
theories.
Here is an interesting, continuing conflict in American writing
and culture: the natural versus the expressionistic, or simplicity
versus eccentricity, or plainness versus difficulty. American
artists as different as Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams
belong more or less in the "ordinary speech" category. On the
other, "Miltonic" side of that division about word order in the
mother tongue, consider the expressive eccentric Emily
Dickinson, who in her magnificent poem 1068 ("Further in
Summer Than the Birds") writes this quatrain about the sounds
of invisible insects in the summer fields:
Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify
In these lines, the natural and the mysterious become one, an
effect arising not just from the words ("Canticle") but also from
their order.
A spiritualized quality in the natural world appears in the
morning prayer Milton gives Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost.
Their language is immensely different from that of Satan in
syntax and idiom. Here is part of that Edenic, celebratory
greeting to the day:
Till the Sun paint your fleecy skirts with Gold,
In honour to the World's great Author rise,
Whether to deck with Clouds th' uncolour'd
sky,
Or wet the thirsty Earth with falling showers,
Rising or falling still advance his praise.
His praise ye Winds, that from four Quarters
blow,
Breath soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye
Pines,
With every Plant, in sign of Worship wave.
………………................................………….(
V, 185-194)
Much of the word order here is fairly plain and idiomatic,
though Milton's muscular rearranging of the expected achieves
its incantatory effect in the last sentence. Emphasizing the
opening, ecstatic repetition—"His praise ye Winds"—and the
final imperative of "in sign of Worship wave," Milton places that
strong verb at the end of the line and sentence.
But up until that songlike moment, as Milton imagines his
characters in a new world, he has them speak with a rather direct
syntax. That appears to be a deliberate choice. In the lines
introducing their prayer, Milton writes that Adam and Eve praise
Their Maker, in fit strains pronounc't or sung
Unmeditated, such prompt eloquence
Flow'd from their lips, in Prose or numerous
Verse,
More tuneable than needed Lute or Harp
To add more sweetness ...
In Eden, "prompt eloquence" comes out of the humans
"Unmeditated" in prose or verse and so sweet it needs no
accompanying music.
The opposite is struggle. Post-Edenic struggle is the element in
Du Bois' assertive, conclusive "not" and in Dickinson's sense of
an unattainable, enigmatic presence in the sounds of nature in
August. A stylistic equivalent for the struggles of imperfect
mortals: That is part of Milton's still-accumulating achievement,
palpable in his work and pervasive in our world.
chatterbox
John Rumpelstiltskin McCain
Stronger evidence that McCain's dislike of Obama is personal.
By Timothy Noah
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 2:59 PM ET
……..Ye Mists and Exhalations that now rise
From Hill or steaming Lake, dusky or grey,
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
5/81
Ronald Brownstein's cover story in the September 2008 Atlantic,
"Reconcilable Differences," is a high-minded plea for
bipartisanship so tedious that I doubt very many readers made it
to the end. It pains me to say this because Brownstein is a gifted
political reporter and also a friend. It pains me also because,
buried inside the piece, Brownstein makes an important point:
McCain's dislike of Obama is personal.
This has been suggested before, especially in coverage of a
weirdly angry letter McCain wrote to Obama in February 2006
(after Obama broke publicly with McCain over the pace of
Senate ethics reform; click here to read the correspondence). But
I don't recall this previously being affirmed on a for-attribution
basis by anyone close to McCain. I refer here partly to
Brownstein himself (Brownstein's wife, Eileen McMenamin,
was until recently communications director in McCain's Senate
office) but mostly to John Weaver, McCain's chief political
strategist in 2000 and, at least initially, in 2008. Weaver left the
McCain presidential campaign after losing a power struggle to
the current campaign manager, Rick Davis, and lately Weaver
has expressed some dissatisfaction with Davis' strategy of
attacking Obama. But in Brownstein's piece, Weaver goes
further, criticizing McCain himself as hostage to a gut-level
resentment of the junior senator from Illinois. Weaver,
Brownstein writes,
says McCain "does lack respect" for Obama,
largely from the conviction that "he's not
ready, he's green." Weaver, like other
observers, thought McCain's attitudes about
Obama stood in contrast with his personal
respect for Hillary Clinton. "All campaigns
reflect the personality of the candidate,"
Weaver said. "The problem [our campaign]
had in 2000 is, we made emotional decisions.
Got wrapped up in the bubble. That's a
reflection of John. He at times makes
emotional decisions, and when he does, they
are almost always a mistake. That's what you
see right now. You've got to resist this
decision-making in a bubble, being angry at
Obama, or personalizing it. … That's a
danger."
Obama's task, then, is to provoke what late columnist Mary
McGrory once termed a "Rumpelstiltskin scenario," preferably
while TV cameras are rolling. That is, he must find a subtle way
to make McCain's anger seem personal and utterly out of
control. The best time to do this would be October, leaving
McCain insufficient time to recover.
chatterbox
I Still Hate Harry and Louise
The spoiled brats who killed Hillary-care return.
By Timothy Noah
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 7:08 PM ET
Harry and Louise staged a comeback this morning at
Washington's National Press Club. Where the hell were they
when we needed them?
Harry Johnson and Louise Caire Clark starred in a famous $14
million TV campaign sponsored by the Health Insurance
Association of America in 1993 and 1994 that helped kill off
Bill and Hillary Clinton's proposed health care reform bill. The
actors played an ordinary-looking married couple poring over
medical bills at the kitchen table. "I thought this was covered
under our old plan," Louise moaned in the best-known spot.
"Having choices we don't like is no choice at all."
"They choose," Harry agreed.
"We lose," replied Louise.
The most infuriating thing about this ad was its failure to
recognize that in a democracy, government is not supposed to be
a "we-they" proposition. If you feel it's become one, then you
have a responsibility to do more than piss and moan in your
kitchen. A better example of a "we-they" relationship would be
that of the medical patient to his health insurer. Indeed, if you
were to air this commercial today minus the voiceover ("The
government may force us to pick from a few health care plans
designed by government bureaucrats"), it would never occur to
TV viewers that Harry and Louise were talking about anyone
other than their health insurers.
The new ad, which will air during the conventions, puts Harry
and Louise back at the kitchen table, but this time, Harry begins
by complaining that rising health care costs have got small
companies cutting their plans. (They've got big companies
cutting plans, too, but this goes unmentioned.) "You know,
Lisa's husband just found out he has cancer," Louise says. Harry
looks shocked. "But he's covered, right?"
"No, he just joined a startup, and he can't afford a plan."
Harry shakes his head gravely. "Too many people are falling
through the cracks."
"Whoever the next president is, health care should be at the top
of his agenda. Bring everyone to the table. Make it happen."
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
6/81
Setting aside Harry's troubling lack of interest in the prognosis
for Lisa's husband, I find it hard to forgive these (admittedly
fictional) people for showing not the vaguest understanding,
much less regret, that they helped bring about the current health
care crisis. Nor has the couple any clue about how to fix it. They
talked a better game in 2000, when HIAA brought them back to
tout InsureUSA, a plan to extend coverage to the uninsured
through $30 billion a year in tax credits:
Harry: News on the Web?
Louise: Forty-four million Americans without
health insurance.
Harry: That's huge, an epidemic.
Louise: That only coverage can cure.
Harry: We can't leave working families and
kids without insurance!
"Uh oh," quipped CNN's William Schneider. "Sounds like Harry
and Louise have gone liberal on us." In truth, Harry and Louise
(i.e., the health insurers) had never opposed government
subsidies, which was what InsureUSA amounted to. What
industry in its right mind would refuse a government handout?
Rather, Harry and Louise had opposed government regulation.
They still did, the ad's conclusion made clear:
Louise: Well, someone actually has a workable
plan, called InsureUSA. It has tax relief for
workers and small businesses, and special help
for the working poor.
Harry: But not government-run health care.
Louise: I'm e-mailing this to the candidates!
Harry and Louise were more petulant than their creators in
refusing to accept responsibility as the price of privilege. By
2000, when this ad ran, the HIAA had given its support to a
Clinton proposal to expand coverage somewhat under two
"government-run" poverty programs, Medicaid and the State
Children's Health Insurance Program. It was a smart move,
earning goodwill from the public while sacrificing little or
nothing. The people to whom government insurance would be
extended were by definition too poor to become paying
customers. Even if they could scrape the money together for a
private policy, their low economic status made them relatively
poor prospects because they were likelier to experience bad
health than more privileged folks like, well, Harry and Louise.
Harry and Louise sat down at their kitchen table again in 2002 to
oppose the Bush administration's attempt to ban all forms of
human cloning. "One bill puts scientists in jail for working to
cure our niece's diabetes," Louise complained. (By now it was
clear that, for all their bitching, Harry and Louise had no
children of their own to worry about.) "So … cure cancer, go to
jail?" Harry replied. Even for a stem-cell supporter like me, this
discussion seems short on nuance. Perhaps you're wondering
why health insurers would go to bat for research that, if
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
successful, would likely increase medical costs (and, therefore,
spending by insurance companies). Answer: They weren't. The
ad was sponsored by a nonprofit group called CuresNow. Harry
and Louise were freelancing. HIAA, which didn't like losing
control over its favorite propagandists, sued but failed to halt the
ad campaign.
The newest Harry and Louise ad is another freelance job. This
time, the sponsor is FamiliesUSA, a nonprofit that has long
pushed for universal health care, in conjunction with the
American Hospital Association, the Catholic Health Association
of the United States, the American Cancer Society's Cancer
Action Network, and the National Federation of Independent
Businesses, which represents small business. The NFIB, which
in the past has opposed regulation more fervently than other
business groups—and which opposed Hillarycare in 1994—has
finally woken up to the fact that its members are far likelier to
consume health care than to provide it. Moreover, the new ad is
so deliberately platitudinous and vague about what health care
reform would actually be that it's hard to imagine what the
NFIB's right flank could possibly object to.
One might similarly wonder what HIAA's successor group,
America's Health Insurance Plans, could object to. AHIP's
president, Karen Ignani, was present at the press conference, but
her organization, which recently inaugurated its Campaign for an
American Solution (read: no single-payer, thank you very
much), is not a sponsor of the new ad. "We strongly support the
coalition's activities," Ignani said at the press conference. When
I approached her afterward, she upgraded that to "unequivocal
support." Then what kept the insurers from participating in the
new Harry and Louise ad? Ignani said it was "not a lack of
willingness on our part," which I took to mean that she hadn't
been asked. Perhaps there were worries that the health insurers
would want to assert too much control over fictional characters
they'd created. Or perhaps there were worries of an eventual
breakup once concrete proposals replace the platitudes.
Who would get custody of Harry and Louise? Whoever could
sell them on a solution that, like everything else they favor in
their oeuvre, is cost-free. That's why Americans identify with
them, and that's why I'd just as soon they found something else
to do for the next couple of years. Time to identify with someone
better.
culturebox
Viz Whiz
How artists are mining data sets to make you see the unseen.
By Amanda Schaffer
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 4:54 PM ET
7/81
Click here for a slide show about art that uses information
patterns as paint.
.
.
.
culturebox
The Deciders
Ted Solotaroff, Rust Hills, and the mysterious motives of fiction editors.
By Thomas Beller
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 11:27 AM ET
"Everyone interesting died this weekend," wrote Choire Sicha
recently. I thought he was writing about two of the more
prominent editors of fiction in the '60s and '70s, Ted Solotaroff
and Rust Hills, whose obituaries recently showed up days apart
in the New York Times. As it happens, he meant Isaac Hayes and
Bernie Mac. But I recognized the impulse to find meaning in the
arbitrary proximity of people's deaths.
There is something about two people in the same field dying at
around the same time that piques a morbid desire to make
posthumous comparisons. There may not be any reason to think
of the pair as a pair based on what they did in life, but if they die
around the same time, there is suddenly a reason to consider
them in light of each other.
This happened a few years ago when George Plimpton and
Edward Said died within a few days of each other. I wrote
something about Plimpton and got a note from a friend
remarking that Plimpton was not nearly as important a figure as
Said. It made me uncomfortable, partly because it might be true
but also for the slightly partisan feeling it aroused. I felt it
diminished both men to set them against each other as if in a
bracket in the NCAA tournament, with only one of them able to
advance toward the final four of the Important Death
tournament.
There is no need to set Rust Hills and Ted Solotaroff against one
another. They were both fiction editors, Hills at Esquire, on and
off, and Solotaroff, most famously, at the magazine he founded,
the New American Review, which was so popular that it's not too
difficult to come across it in used bookstores today, 30 years
after it ended its 10-year run in 1978.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Hills I met once, for drinks at his place in Key West. I wrote him
in advance of a trip I made down there, and he received me and
brought along Ann Beattie to sit with me and my friend on the
back patio by the pool. It was just the four of us and, if I recall, a
gallon-size jug of Scotch whose brand I did not recognize (and
not because it was some obscure single malt). He had a raffish
and full head of gray hair, and we all sat and talked until the
light was mostly gone from the sky. At the end, reluctant to
leave, I asked for one more drink. "All right, one more," he said
and then looked at my friend, "After that, he's your
responsibility."
His manner was smooth, droll, and faintly patrician. He was very
nice; I hardly knew him.
Solotaroff's smoldering presence is much closer to me. We had
lunch once, and he brought, as a gift, his essay collection A Few
Good Voices in My Head. It's an interesting book, but there is
one essay that stands out from the rest for its capacity to scare
the daylights out of any aspiring writer. That essay, "Writing in
the Cold," is a brutally honest assessment of the challenges
afflicting the young writer in today's culture—he wrote it in the
'80s, but it is timeless. Solotaroff belonged to the Joycean school
for which literary development was a process that could not be
rushed. Within that process is a period of isolation and doubt
that, he wrote, is all the more bitter and frightening for those
who think they have eluded that condition. I recommend the
essay as essential—if it doesn't petrify you with fear, then it is
bracing and, in a way, confidence-building to know what one is
up against.
I haven't looked at it for, probably, 10 years, but there is a line
that still rings out in my imagination: A young writer named
Douglas Unger has worked and reworked and reworked his first
novel, only to get it back from Solotaroff, who by then was an
editor at Harper and Row, with notes about the further rewriting
that was needed. "But I've already worked on it so much!" Unger
shouted. (Then—maybe I am embellishing here, but it's how it
lives in my memory—he threw the manuscript on the ground
and jumped up and down on it.)
This anecdote was a great plug for the novel, which Unger did
rewrite and see published—Leaving the Land. I ran out to buy it
and thought it was great, though perhaps my estimation was
lifted by knowing the ordeal of its composition.
What struck me most about the obituaries of both men was that
late in life, when they were no longer actively working as
editors, there remained an appetite for some flavor or enzyme
that was present in the act of editing. Richard Ford is quoted in
the Times obit saying that Hills would sometimes call him and
tell him to send a story. "Long after he was an editor," Mr. Ford
said, "he'd say to me: 'Send me a story you're working on, just
send me a story. I'd like to read it.' "
8/81
In Max Apple's piece on Solotaroff that appeared in the
Forward, he states that long after Solotaroff worked at a
magazine or publishing house as an editor, he continued to read
work by students and writers he met on his travels around the
country as a guest speaker at writing programs and literary
conferences. "Solotaroff would read and read and read what the
hopeful writers—young and old—submitted, not because he was
paid to do so, and not because he expected to find any literary
gems. He read on because he understood that those who were
not going to have writing careers still put writing at the center of
their lives, and they deserved to be taken seriously by 'someone
from New York.' "
I don't really believe that explanation of Apple's—or, at least, I
don't think that is all of it. There is something both exhilarating
and vexing about seeing writing in manuscript form (even if the
manuscript is on the screen). Editing is really about deciding—
you have to decide whether you like the overall voice and
content of what you are reading, and if you do, you have to make
certain decisions about the internal life of the piece. Editing can
be at its most profound when it involves making a vague, almost
aphoristic remark that might change a writer's entire focus, and it
can be most profound when it entails wrestling with minutia,
adding commas or subtracting them and, in this tiny way,
changing the whole style and feel of a piece of writing. The
malleability of a piece of writing as it is experienced by the
reader in draft form makes reading more taxing than it would be
on the printed page. But it also brings with it a bump of
excitement. It lends a feeling of power and adventure to the
reading experience. I assume that this feeling of power—and
also, if you are discovering a writer, the vicarious sense of
accomplishment and, finally, the bright moment of seeing
beyond what is there on the page to what could be there—is
what draws people to being fiction editors, especially fiction
editors for magazines, which is one of the strangest and hardestto-describe professions. There used to be so many of them!
Where have they gone?
This bump of excitement is something that is hard to let go of, to
judge from remarks about these two very different men who,
because of the arbitrary roll of the dice that had them die so
close together, have together shone a posthumous light onto the
mysterious motives, or maybe just the enduring habits, of fiction
editors.
culturebox
Was New American Review the Best
Literary Magazine Ever?
The recent death of legendary editor and critic Ted Solotaroff
brought back memories of being in thrall to his greatest creation,
the literary magazine New American Review (later simply
American Review). In 26 issues, from September 1967 through
November 1977, under the successive sponsorships of New
American Library, Simon & Schuster, and finally Bantam, NAR
reliably bottled the cultural lightning flashing about in those
thrillingly depressing years. James Wolcott, in his lovely post
"Last of the Literary Godfathers," calls it "a zeitgeist mixtape."
That's exactly what it was. As soon as NAR was launched, it
became the place where young readers hot for the newest new
things in literature and experience rushed to get The Word. Man,
did it deliver. I have just looked through the tables of contents of
my completist's collection of all 26 numbers, which only
confirmed my conviction that NAR was the greatest American
literary magazine ever. You might protest, but consider:
Its roster of fiction included work by Philip Roth (two pieces
from Portnoy's Complaint and "I Always Wanted You To
Admire My Fasting: Looking at Kafka"), Leonard Michaels,
Gabriel García Márquez, Max Apple ("The Oranging of
America"), John Barth, Tom Robbins, Susan Sontag, V.S.
Pritchett, Grace Paley ("Faith: In a Tree"), Robert Stone, Ian
McEwan (three of his earliest stories), Jorge Luis Borges,
Gilbert Sorrentino ("The Moon in Its Flight"), Brian Moore, J.F.
Powers, Cynthia Ozick, Stanley Elkin, Donald Barthelme
("Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowning"), Russell Banks,
Ralph Ellison, J.F. Powers, and William Gass ("In the Heart of
the Heart of the Country"). Do read that list again. It published
Harold Brodkey's notorious cunnilingual epic "Innocence," with
its immortal line "To see her in sunlight was to see Marxism
die." E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime and Robert Coover's The Public
Burning first appeared in its pages. Nonfiction works that
debuted in NAR included Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, Michael
Herr's Dispatches, A. Alvarez's The Savage God, and Marshall
Berman's lyric apologia for radical striving, All That Is Solid
Melts Into Air. Its brainy and ultraengaged essays included Gass'
"Fiction and the Figures of Life," Ellen Willis' "Lessons of
Chicago," Leslie Epstein's "Walking Wounded, Living Dead"
(an astonishing meditation on the return of the Living Theatre
from exile, and perhaps the most penetrating thing ever written
about the '60s crackup), Norman Mailer's "A Course in FilmMaking" (a chest-beating account of the making of Maidstone),
and superb work from Stanley Kauffmann, Richard Gilman,
George Dennison, Peter Handke, Wilfrid Sheed, Albert
Goldman, Paul Zweig, and Theodore Roszak. Its gilt-edged
roster of poets featured Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, John
Berryman, Richard Hugo, James Welch, Sylvia Plath, A.R.
Ammons , James Merrill, and W.S. Merwin.
Partisan Review partisans, start your engines!
I dare you to name a better one.
By Gerald Howard
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 11:50 AM ET
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
NAR was entirely the product of its editor's particular taste and
critical intelligence (with No. 16, the words "Edited by Theodore
9/81
Solotaroff" began to appear on the cover). It was also acutely
reflective of its time in respect to its contents, its overall stance,
and its unusual format as a mass-market paperback widely
available not only in bookstores but also in drugstores and candy
stores. A former graduate student of literature at the University
of Chicago in the '50s (where his long, complicated friendship
with Philip Roth began), he had honed his editorial skills at
Commentary under the tutelage of Norman Podhoretz and then
edited Book Week, the review supplement of the New York
Herald Tribune for a couple of years.
In 1967 Solotaroff moved to the giant paperback publisher New
American Library, where he launched the New American
Review. Unlike the small public to which most literary
magazines are addressed, NAR, with its mass-market format,
faced the challenge of attracting a sizable enough audience to
support a minimum printing of 100,000 copies. This seems like
the sheerest folly now, but in those days, the dual phenomena of
the paperback revolution and the explosion in college
enrollments had created the largest literate audience in American
history. It was—or as I really should say, "we were"—searching
for answers to the biggest questions and finding a lot of them in
paperbacks. So, the thing was thinkable, if not precisely doable.
Solotaroff kept this dubious economic proposition afloat for 11
years on sheer excellence, and none of the back-office strain that
eventually did in NAR showed in its consistently glittering
contents. In many senses a classic New York intellectual, with
all that implies, Solotaroff paired his highbrow tendencies with
the conviction that, as he put it, "Literature was too important a
democratic resource to be left to the literati." The country was in
more or less permanent crisis during NAR's years of publication,
and it engaged with the period's vertiginous sense of cultural free
fall in a fashion that exquisitely calibrated openness to the new
with old-school rigor. As he later wrote, "[O]ur purpose, as it
evolved in the late 1960s, was to apply the critical standards of
[the traditional culture] to the ideology and sensibility of [the
counterculture], and occasionally vice-versa." In fiction that
meant that such essentially countercultural sensibilities as
Brautigan, Robbins, Stone, and Apple cohabited with
Postmodernists Coover, Barth, Elkins, and Gass and more
traditional writers like Moore, Powers, and Pritchett.
Solotaroff's high-'50s intellectual inclination showed itself most
conspicuously in the sorts of essays that NAR favored, which
tended to be of the critical variety, bringing formidable
analytical powers to bear on the urgent, vexing issues of the day,
whether political, literary, sexual, cultural, or intellectual. Not
that those categories held very fast in the minds of NAR's
readers, who subscribed to the everything-is-everything ethos.
New American Review died, we can see now, a natural economic
and aesthetic death. The countercultural project dissipated, its
audience matured (and maybe lost energy and interest), the
accountants had their way. Literary Postmodernism gave way to
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Raymond Carver-style minimalism, and a more personal and
reportage-based style of essay came to the fore—two
developments that another editor of genius, Bill Buford,
championed when he grabbed the torch and launched the next
great literary magazine, Granta. But there are thousands of
people of a certain age, many of them in magazine and book
publishing, who still cherish the excitement that NAR reliably
delivered and had their sensibilities shaped and enlarged by its
mind-altering contents. Solotaroff wrote rather famously of "a
few good voices in my head" that inspired and guided his
editorial labors; he became one of those voices for many others.
I am one of that number, and in his various guises Ted was a
hero and a role model for me. It is a grace note of my career that
I became this peerless editor's editor for his fine family memoir
Truth Comes in Blows. At our first lunch I brought my copy of
NAR No. 1 with me for him to sign, which pleased him greatly.
He wrote on the inside cover, the front of which featured a
staggering list of contributors and a photo of five bearded
graduate students on the quad, doubtless discussing some new
breakthrough in consciousness or forthcoming anti-war rally,
"To Gerry, Thanks for asking. Best, Ted." I can't think of
anything I own that has more value to me.
dear prudence
Unwedded Bliss
After a 30-year marriage, I don't plan to get hitched again. Should I tell my
girlfriend?
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 6:52 AM ET
Get "Dear Prudence" delivered to your inbox each week; click
here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to
prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.)
Dear Prudence,
I'm a widower in my late 50s. After my wife passed away almost
seven years ago, I didn't date for four years. Everyone thought I
was mourning that good woman (and I did), but I discovered that
after 30 years of marriage I was free. I really like coming and
going as I please and answering to no one. I dated a couple of
women very briefly before I met my girlfriend. We've been
together for three years. She is close to my age and divorced. I
love her dearly, but I don't want to get married again (or even
live together). Lately, she's been commenting about our
relationship—asking where it's going and saying she wants to
see more of me. I believe she's hinting at marriage. I'm afraid if I
tell her I never plan to marry again that she will end things. (I
even promised my daughter we wouldn't wed, because she hates
any woman I date.) I like that we see each other only two or
three times a week and go home to our respective houses. I
would really miss her cooking, the sex, and the companionship.
Do I have to be honest about this with her, or is continuing the
status quo acceptable?
10/81
—Done With That
—Lady Sisyphus
Dear Done,
So nice to hear from you, finally, because I regularly get letters
from women who could be your girlfriend and are wondering
what in the bleep is going on with you. After years of providing
good meals, good sex, and good times (I particularly like the
order you've put this in), your lady can't take much more of
being in girlfriend limbo. But she also doesn't want to scare off a
decent man her age and start over, particularly since prior to you
she dated a string of alcoholics, lunatics, and nonbathers. She
will hang on for quite a while longer, dropping hints, while
feeling increasingly undermined and resentful. So, since you
know exactly what she's getting at, unless the prospect of
ordering carry-out seems worse than hurting someone you say
you love, the moral thing to do is tell her. And while you're
thinking through your relationship with your girlfriend, have a
look at your relationship with your daughter. There's something
deeply amiss with a grown woman extracting a promise from her
widowed father that he will never marry again.
Dear Lady,
If you feel that your family would be better off without you, you
need to get help. Right now. It is completely understandable that
you feel crushed and overwhelmed, but there are many steps you
can take to lift your burden. Cognitive therapy, with its focus on
changing your negative thoughts and giving you tools to
restructure your life could be ideal. The Beck Institute has a
referral list of practitioners. You also need to be in touch with
other parents of autistic children. Of course you adore your son,
but a diagnosis of autism is a blow, and raising an autistic child
asks a great deal from parents. This page lists some support
groups. Find one in your area and see if other parents can help
you with everything from feeling overwhelmed to finding a
qualified babysitter—getting time alone with your husband is a
necessity. He is right that you are too hard on yourself and that
you need relief. Go ahead and get your house cleaned
professionally, say, twice a month, to keep the chaos down.
Floor time with your son is essential, but rinsing out cloth
diapers and pureeing your own baby food are not. As author
Judith Warner described, demanding of yourself that you be the
perfect mother is a recipe for Perfect Madness. Maybe you need
a few days a week in which you have a block of time to work on
something in your field of graduate studies. Maybe you just need
to regularly have lunch with friends and go for a run. You can
decide what you most want to do for yourself once you get some
help, Lady Sisyphus, in putting down that boulder.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence Video: Sweat-Stained Butt
Dear Prudence,
I am in my late 20s, and my husband is a caring and attentive
man. He has happily supported me for several years while I
attended graduate school and now while I am a stay-at-home
mom. My problem is, I feel completely overwhelmed by our
daily life. Sometimes I feel resentful that he gets to go to an
office all day while I am stuck at home with an autistic
preschooler and a six-month-old baby, and other times I feel
horribly guilty that he works hard all day and I still ask him to
help with the housework at night. I'm at the point where it's
difficult to shower three times a week. My husband says my
standards are too high and that I expect too much of myself. I do
a lot of therapeutic "floor time" with my special-needs child,
which I consider vital. I use cloth diapers and make all my own
baby food. I just don't understand how a mother can justify
cutting corners when it comes to her kids. My husband is
worried about my inability to hold things together and says I
need more "time off," which is problematic with a nursing baby
and would put me even further behind with my housework. He
and I have not been on a date in months. It's hard to find a
babysitter able to watch an autistic child. My husband has also
suggested having a maid in once a week, but I don't believe that
we can afford it. He says he doesn't care if the house is messy, as
long as the kids are taken care of, but I know the constant chaos
of our lives bothers him. Sometimes I feel like I'd be doing my
family a favor by leaving and letting someone more capable take
my place, but I know I could never do that because it would
break my heart.
—Prudie
Dear Prudie,
My in-laws are financially clueless people who should be
starting to think about the greener pastures of retirement but
instead are headed into yet another foreclosed home. My
husband and I are not well-off and both work full time in
addition to raising two small children. We own our home and
cars and, in this economy, we consider ourselves very fortunate.
When we originally learned of my in-laws' latest money issues,
we talked about how we didn't want them to lose this home (as
that could have them sleeping in our basement), and we offered
them either a monthly stipend or help getting them a better
interest rate. Instead, my father-in-law would like to use my
husband's credit to start a company that specializes in fixing and
flipping homes. I am skeptical and livid about this for a number
of reasons, the main one being that this would put us $200,000
in the hole. My husband is slightly more lukewarm to it since
they are his parents, and the potential of this taking off is slightly
intriguing. How do we say no without burning the proverbial
familial bridge?
—Irked
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
11/81
Dear Irked,
It's time to douse that bridge with a jerrycan of gasoline and drop
a burning book of matches on it. Your in-laws are their own
personal economic downturn. Underwrite a business venture
with them, and you will be working yourself out of bankruptcy
long after the economy has turned around. You and your
husband need to draw clear financial boundaries with his
parents, or else they will eventually be living in your
basement—if you still have one. Consider offering to help them
find, and even to pay for, credit counseling—here's an article on
what to look for. But once you do that, you have to get your
husband to agree that they must take responsibility for their
financial situation. It is crucial that your husband not jeopardize
your future in order to bail out his feckless parents. Act out of a
misplaced sense of guilt, and soon everything you've earned will
be going over the edge of the bridge to nowhere.
dispatches
Notes From a Failed State
In Somalia, there is lots of talk but little hope.
By Emily Meehan
Friday, August 22, 2008, at 7:10 AM ET
From: Emily Meehan
Subject: Montagues and Capulets
Posted Monday, August 18, 2008, at 2:41 PM ET
HARGEYSA, Somalia—When I first decided to quit my job in
New York and head off to Somalia, I went out for drinks with a
friend who has an astute command of geopolitics.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence,
I am 25 and part of a very close-knit but large and everexpanding group of friends. I really enjoy them. However, there
is one issue that seems to consistently arise. Several times a day,
I am asked by certain friends what my plans are on a given
night. Oftentimes, I say what I am doing. Other times, I simply
don't want to share my plans or I want to do something on my
own. In these scenarios, I simply answer, "I'm busy" or "I have
plans." Usually, I will then be asked, "Oh. What are they?" This
irks me. I have tried to tell certain friends that I don't want them
to pepper me for details, but I have been told, "This is how
friendship works" or, once, "You have issues." Am I really being
a bad friend?
—Flustered Friend
Dear Flustered,
Since you are 25, you sound like a traitor to your generation if
you don't want to constantly share with everyone in your circle
your thoughts, your global positioning coordinates, and your
daily fiber intake. I am curious as to whether for people raised
on Facebook, et al., privacy is going to become an antiquated
notion, or if as they get deeper into adulthood, they will start to
feel, like you, that for no particular reason they simply don't
want everyone to know everything. Right now, in your group,
you are an outlier. But you are fully entitled to be politely vague
when you don't feel like telling. And it's your friends who have
issues when they don't understand that this vagueness is the
gentle way of saying, "It's none of your business."
—Prudie
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
"Somalia is at war, and nobody cares! Mogadishu sounds crazy!"
I told Mark.
"Nah. Somalia's OK," he replied. "They've got their clans—they
can sort it out."
This logic was lost on me. What could clans do to solve the war
in Mogadishu, and anyway, what's a clan?
Six months later, I am in Somaliland, a peaceful breakaway state
in the north of Somalia, five hours by air from Mogadishu. I
have come to learn the answers to my questions. I have heard
that clans did make peace in Somaliland.
I see that Somalis don't look the same. Some are as pale as
Saudis, others as dark as the blackest African. I meet people
from many different clans, but members of the same clan don't
necessarily look alike. An ad hoc council of five educated young
men tell me there are 13 Somali clans. They warn me not to
listen to confused officials who claim otherwise. Hawiye,
Darood, Rahanweyne, Issa, Gadabursi, Sheikhal, Isaaq,
Biyomal, Gaadsan, Yibro, Midgan, Tumal, and Gaboye are the
clans. They make up one tribe and speak one language, Somali.
The young men tell me that the father's lineage decides their
clan. This genealogy isn't written down. It's an oral society. The
clans might as well be like tribes—in fact, the people here call
them that—and you can go to town with your Rwanda and
Kenya comparisons, because warfare between rival clans
destroyed south Somalia after 1991.
There is a drought in Somaliland, so I go to the desert to
interview nomads who are living without water. I find a father
outside his home, a structure of sticks and mats of woven grass
covered with tin and colorful fabric. Ali Jama Odowa allows me
and my team of two soldiers, a guide, and a driver to sleep on
the ground outside his family's tent. Before we go to bed, and
after everyone has listened to the scratchy shortwave broadcast
12/81
of the BBC World Service, he tells me his problem: The drought
might kill his cows, and they hardly have enough water to bathe
with, cook with, and drink. The children look dangerously thin. I
ask if he can take his family and move to another region where
there's more rain. I have heard this is what nomads do.
"It's difficult for us to go where our clan doesn't live. We can't,"
he tells me.
"But there might be water there," I say, suggesting that he move
into a region where the Darood clan rules. Odowa is from the
Isaaq clan.
"There's no problem that would force us to go that far. We
haven't seen that kind of a drought yet," he says, flustered. "We
can travel inside Ethiopia where our clan lives, and we can wait
for Allah to bring rain."
My guide and translator, Mohamed Amin Jibril, reminds me that
Siad Barre, Somalia's dictator for 22 years, was Darood.
Somaliland is populated by the Isaaq clan. Barre killed more
than 50,000 Isaaqs in the Somali civil war of the late 1980s. In
one incident, his soldiers tied more than 1,000 Isaaq men and
boys to trees with barbed wire, pumped them full of bullets, and
then drove over them with tanks, burying them alive. Barre's
army bombed and razed Hargeysa, Somaliland's capital.
Isaaqs fled as refugees to Ethiopia or, if they were rich, to the
United States, Canada, or Europe. So, to ask Odowa if he would
move to a place where Daroods live is ridiculous, cruel even.
"You have made this man deny that there is even a drought!" my
guide says disapprovingly. Odowa would rather die of starvation
than travel inside the territory of an enemy clan, however lush.
Wandering around some more, we cross the unmarked border
with Ethiopia. We run into a small, smiling lady in threadbare
clothes; she has a dozen sheep. She and my guide speak in
Somali, and I see that she is mentally ill. My guide picks up one
of her sheep to joke with her, and she throws a stick at him and
runs away, bursting into tears.
"It is something from the war. Maybe her parents were murdered
in front of her," says Mohamed. "I asked her if she knew she was
in Ethiopia, but she doesn't know what Ethiopia is. She does not
know her own country even. She only knows her clan."
In the closest village, we learn that the woman's family was
killed in front of her; only one brother survived. He and their
extended family, the Isaaq subclan called Makahil, take care of
her. She knows only what's necessary to survive. In a pinch, clan
is more important than state. This may explain why Somalia
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
never unified as a nation-state until 1960 and why Somalia has
been a failed state since 1991.
Later, my guide explains how his clan protected him one night in
Djibouti. He was in the neighboring country on a work
assignment, but he had no money, so he slept on the beach. In
the middle of the night, Mohamed says he woke to hear three
Djiboutian soldiers discussing how they would drop a boulder on
his head. Why they wanted to kill him is a mystery, but it isn't
surprising in these parts. "I knew I had a relative who owned a
guest house in the town, so I went there," Mohamed continues.
"I woke him, and I said to him, 'I am your relative, I come from
such and such clan, and my uncle is so and so.' " The distant
relative was unmoved. "I told him, 'My security is threatened,
and I need a place to sleep. I can sleep inside on the floor if you
just let me in.' " Finally he agreed, and Mohamed slept safely.
I stay for three weeks in Hargeysa. It has been rebuilt since
Barre's bombardment and looks a lot like Tucson, Ariz. The
garden behind my hotel is the haunt of men with ideas. I meet
politicians, poets, activists, and businessmen. They drink tea and
converse in the style of many Italians I know. They're merry,
grave, or excited, and sometimes arguments flare. Many have
just returned to their country after fleeing in the 1980s. These
members of the Somali diaspora are invariably progressive, and
they don't speak of clans, except to complain.
"It's primitive gangsterism," says Ali Hassan Osman, a
businessman who settled in Toronto 20 years ago. He met a
white Christian woman there and married her. His son doesn't
speak Somali. When Osman is annoyed with the slow service, he
asks the waiters, "What is this, Jamaica?" He doesn't think
bloodlines should matter anymore.
Abokor is the hotel concierge. During my stay, his wife gives
birth to their first child, a son. "I have named him Jibril Abokor
Isaaq!" he tells me. "People can't believe it, because Isaaq is
really my last name, and it's also the main clan of Somaliland.
And Jibril Abokor is a subclan of Isaaq. So his name is after my
subclan and my clan!" It's like an American naming his baby
Cambridge Boston Ireland.
My friend Mark's claim that clans can work out their own
problems proves to be correct here. One of the regulars in the
hotel tea garden is Somaliland's only psychiatrist, Omar Dihoud.
He co-founded one of the rebel groups that ousted Siad Barre in
1991. Dihoud is a natural born storyteller and always has one
ready for me when we meet. The best is the tale of how he
helped to disarm his subclan after 1991. Somalilanders who had
fought against Barre turned against one another once the dictator
was gone. They were all members of the Isaaq clan but from
different subclans. "There were many young people armed with
Kalashnikovs," says Dihoud. "They used to shoot each other,
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and it was very dangerous to travel from place to place. There
were more than 30 checkpoints between Berbera and Hargeysa."
One day in the middle of this chaos, the elders of Dihoud's
subclan invited him to a brainstorming conference. One of their
boys had killed three men from another subclan, and the elders
from that subclan demanded justice. How would these elders
prevent such things in the future, and how could they convince
their violent young men to give up their arms? "I am a
psychiatrist," Dihoud remembers telling them. "And as I am a
psychiatrist, I know we are all paranoid after the war. We are all
traumatized. We had blood on our hands. We fought against a
dictator, and we killed each other. So everybody is paranoid that
somebody is following him. And we think that if we give up the
arms, other tribes will attack us. Let us disarm ourselves and
give the arms to the government."
The sultan of Dihoud's subclan, whose authority could be
compared to Native American tribal chiefs, ordered the boys to
join the army. Other sultans across the region issued the same
orders, and now Somaliland's small government has a huge,
unified army. (Click here to hear Dihoud tell this story.)
In matters of love, clan elders are less popular judges. One man
tells me he was never permitted to marry a Midgan woman
because his clan considered Midgans inferior. Somaliland's own
Romeo and Juliet is the legend of Hothan and Elmi Boderi.
Residents look to the sky with wonder in their eyes when they
speak these names, but no one could properly explain the tale to
me until, by chance, Hothan's son drove me to the coast.
Abdisalam Mohamed Shabeelleh says his mother was a member
of a noble clan. About 60 years ago, when the late Hothan was
12 years old, she went into a bakery in her village to buy
cookies. There she met the owner, a middle-aged man named
Elmi Boderi. It was love at first sight for Elmi, but because of
her youth and noble blood, he was not allowed to speak to
Hothan. For months he didn't eat or sleep; all he did was recite
mad love poems in the streets. And then he died.
Romance may not have changed with the times. I ask Abokor,
the new father, whether his family cared what clan his wife
belonged to. "If I bring to my family [someone from] some other
clan as a wife, they will not bother me," he says. "Although my
wife and I are in the same clan."
NAIROBI, Kenya—If you search for "Somalia parliament chair
fight" on YouTube, you will find a shocking video. In the clip,
old men in suits shout and beat each other with chairs. In one
astonishing sequence, two men observe the fracas, turn to look at
each other, pick up chairs in unison, and start slamming another
man on the head.
The way you react to this video is likely the way you would feel
if you met Mohamed Qanyare Afrah. He's a former warlord and
a member of Somalia's transitional parliament. He ran for
president in 2004 and came in third. He plans to run again next
year when the current transitional charter runs out.
We meet on the patio of Nairobi's Grand Regency hotel.
Qanyare—graying, jocular, handsome in a navy-blue suit and
red-and-white tie—remembers the day with a smile. "I was in
there!" he boasts. Qanyare says the fight was over President
Abdullahi Yusuf's decision to invite Ethiopian troops to
overthrow the Islamic Courts Union in Mogadishu, Somalia's
capital. Qanyare lives in Nairobi because the Islamists overthrew
the warlords two years ago, and he fled. But he's not satisfied
with the Ethiopian troops that then broke up the Islamist
government, and like most Somalis, he wants the Ethiopians to
leave. As far as Mohamed Qanyare is concerned, the only
acceptable leader of Somalia is Mohamed Qanyare. Until he gets
the job, he will contribute nothing to Somalia's nominal
government. "It's not functioning. It's nothing," he says of the
parliament. The European Union doesn't pay MPs enough, he
adds, only $1,100 a month. The parliament is supposed to be
meeting in Baidoa, Somalia, when Qanyare and I are talking in
Nairobi.
Very few people know what a warlord is. Qanyare doesn't call
himself one; his preferred term is faction leader. His faction was
Murusade, a family, or subclan, of south Somalia's powerful
Hawiye clan. With a lucrative transportation business that moves
cargo across Africa, the 67-year-old is also a wealthy
businessman. He launched the company in the 1970s while
living in exile from Siad Barre's regime.
From: Emily Meehan
Subject: America's Warlord
The "war" in warlord was Qanyare's competition with other
armed faction leaders for control of Mogadishu. Their rivalry
was born in the power vacuum after Barre's deposition in 1991.
The anarchy that resulted from this competition prevented
Somalia from becoming a functioning state for 15 years. From
the mid-1990s until 2006, Qanyare led a militia of about 2,000
young Murusade men. He controlled an airstrip that aid agencies
and khat dealers used to import their material from Kenya. He
controlled an area of Mogadishu. He had a lot of weapons,
makeshift tanks, and money.
Background on U.S. security concerns in Somalia.
"It was not a cool atmosphere politically, but that was between
me and the other faction leaders. Anyone who tells you my
militia was killing innocent people or making roadblocks, they
Posted Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 7:59 AM ET
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
14/81
must be cheating you," says Qanyare defiantly. Like feudal
lords, warlords in Africa are known for taxing people living in
their zones, and their soldiers, usually teenagers, are known for
setting up roadblocks and charging people to pass. "I only
defended myself," says Qanyare. He was also defending his
airport, which brought in $100,000 a month, he says. His
fundamental objective? "Ever since I returned to Somalia in
1991, I have been a political man," he says over a fourth cup of
chai tea. "I used to be a businessman, now I have only one goal."
That goal is to be president.
"I am the man who told the United States there was al-Qaida in
Somalia," says Qanyare. "They could not believe!" Eventually,
they did believe. After 9/11, the CIA recruited Qanyare and
other warlords to hunt down radical clerics and send them off for
interrogation at a U.S. base in Djibouti. As an aspiring president,
Qanyare had his own reasons for resisting Islamist revolution. In
2006, the warlords announced that they had forged an alliance:
the CIA-funded Alliance for Restoration of Peace and CounterTerrorism. The irony of warlords running a peace alliance was
not lost on Somalis.
Qanyare says the CIA didn't pay him. Somali journalists say he
was vastly enriched with cash deliveries. The counterterrorism
tactic was controversial, and U.S. diplomat Michael Zorick was
transferred from his post in Nairobi as a punishment for
speaking out against it. Zorick later won a "constructive dissent"
prize from the American Foreign Service Organization. Somalis
were horrified by the alliance, and many now consider the
United States their No. 2 enemy after Ethiopia. "One thing
people know is the warlords are the worst people in Somalia,
and the Americans are helping the worst people," Somali
politician Mohamud Uluso told me.
Ask ordinary Somalis about Qanyare, and without fail, the first
thing anyone who lived in Mogadishu back then will say is that
he kidnapped innocent Muslim clerics to make money from the
CIA. "Warlords were all kidnapping Muslim scholars and flying
them out of Somalia systematically, and Mohamed Qanyare had
his airport," says Hassan Mohamed, a 29-year-old who grew up
in Qanyare's Mogadishu territory.
Somalia's former colonizer. "Me? I think all roads lead to
Washington." On the topic of Islamist governance, he looks
disgusted. "I'm a secularist," he says. "I'm not the person sent
from God to regulate the peoples' religions. We must have a
multiparty democracy." Qanyare is a Muslim. He wakes up
every morning at 5 a.m. to pray—and to watch CNN.
Since 2006, Qanyare's relationship with the United States seems
to have deteriorated, and he's angry that Washington accepts the
Ethiopian occupation arranged by President Yusuf. "America is
the sick person," he says, referring to 9/11 and the U.S. Embassy
bombings. "They wanted to see the physician, and they are using
a witch doctor—Yusuf and Ethiopia. I used to give my advice to
the CIA. But I think nobody cares about American taxpayers.
Now everything is bad there [in Somalia]." The people fighting
Ethiopians in Somalia have a right to do so, says Qanyare,
expressing a sentiment echoed by most Somalis. "They have a
right to jihad with Ethiopia, because Ethiopia invaded a
sovereign country."
Our meeting is wrapping up, and several demure Somali ladies
are waiting for Qanyare in the hotel lobby. "Is one of those
women your wife?" I ask him. "I don't know those ladies—I
think they want my money," he says, dismissing them with a
harassed wave.
If Qanyare is elected president, he will move back to
Mogadishu. It's not in the state it was when he left in 2006. That
was anarchy. Today it's compared to Baghdad.
Is he scared to go back? "My dear," says Qanyare, "I only fear
God."
Abdiaziz Hassan Ahmed contributed to this article.
From: Emily Meehan
Subject: The Social Democrats
Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 11:17 AM ET
Qanyare says he wasn't very successful at catching terrorists, and
his militia caught only one, by accident. He says the man he
caught and flew out to Djibouti killed two British schoolteachers
in Somaliland. Somaliland's former interior minister, Ismael
Adam Osman, says the man who killed Richard and Enid
Eyeington in 2003 was caught in Mogadishu and handed over to
the CIA in Djibouti, but Osman doesn't know how he was
caught. Mohamed Ali Isey currently awaits the death penalty in
a Somaliland prison.
Qanyare's cooperation with the United States was a symptom of
his unusual American bias. "Some people, they believe all roads
lead to Rome," he says of elders who worshipped Italy,
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
HARGEYSA, Somalia—Two of the five presidential candidates
in the breakaway state of Somaliland have a Franklin D.
Roosevelt-style "new deal" as part of their campaign platform.
Roosevelt's popularity isn't a coincidence. As returning members
of the Somali diaspora, Faisal Ali Waraabe and Ahmed Hussein
Esa have taken elements from the societies where they took
refuge and remixed them with Somali politics, like a DJ playing
Marvin Gaye vocals over a hip-hop beat.
15/81
"Justice and Welfare is a centre left party which has many
similarities with Scandinavian social democratic parties,"
Waraabe's party brochure declares. "It is a reformist party
aiming at the practices of Fabians and the political philosophy
and morality of Islam and ethical socialism." Created in 2001,
Justice and Welfare now holds 21 of the 82 seats in Somaliland's
parliament. The other two parties, KULMIYE and UDUB, are
composed of former rebel leaders and war veterans who fought
Siad Barre, along with some former members of the Barre
regime, which lasted from 1969 to 1991. Waraabe's social
democrats claim to distance themselves from the bipartisan
establishment, which they describe as "a feature of
backwardness and a symbol of statelessness."
Waraabe and Esa are among more than 2 million Somalis who
have fled their collapsing country since the 1970s. Somaliland's
poorest refugees escaped the Somali civil war in 1988 and took
refuge in camps in Ethiopia. Having lost their livelihoods and
homes, many never recovered and now live in tents inside the
ruins of Hargeysa's bombed state house. They were privileged
when they left, but Waraabe and Esa are now among Somalia's
best-educated demographic, a group known as the "Western
intellectuals" or "the diaspora."
Waraabe, a former engineer, settled in Helsinki, Finland, where
he founded a nonprofit to support Somali diaspora members in
Scandinavia. Esa got his Ph.D. in immunology from Johns
Hopkins University and went on to teach in its medical school.
Both men still live with their families in Europe and the United
States, but they spend part of the year in Hargeysa. About onethird of Somali politicians come from the diaspora, including the
prime minister of Somalia proper, the recognized country
Somaliland broke away from. Prime Minister Nur "Adde"
Hassan Hussein was attorney general in Siad Barre's government
until it collapsed in 1991. Then he went to England, where he
became a British citizen.
Diaspora politicians have a bad rap with their peers in Somalia.
They're called "nobodies," because they didn't fight in the civil
war; "technocrats," because they hold advanced degrees; or
"puppets" of Western governments. Everybody wonders if
democracy can be implemented by part-time residents. But
they're quickly forgiven by the international governments that
influence and fund development in Somalia. Ahmed Hussein Esa
could pass for an American politician. When he's away from his
home in Takoma Park, Md., he runs a think tank in Somaliland
and drafts land-mine policy as a board member of the
International Campaign To Ban Landmines. Diaspora politicians
are people the West—and young Somalis—can relate to.
Waraabe brings the leader of Somaliland's youth lobby group to
our interview. The diplomatic young man coordinates with
NGOs working with Somaliland youth on education and
development issues and lobbies politicians to address them. He
smiles as Waraabe promises to create jobs for university
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
graduates; bulk up the proportion of women, young adults, and
handicapped people in his central committee; and devolve power
from Somaliland's capital to provincial districts. Waraabe's
eclectic ideas are ambitious. He says he will visit Turkey this
summer to learn more about their Justice and Development
Party, whose ideas and experience he'd like to borrow from "to
show the world the good face of Islam." He wants to change the
name of Somaliland. How about the Red Sea Republic?
Balding, with a light complexion and a brown mark on his
forehead from striking his head on the ground during prayer, he
looks and acts like my late Armenian grandfather, who also fled
war for a promised land. Had Waraabe gone to Minneapolis like
tens of thousands of Somalis, he would have fit in perfectly. He
might have joined the Rotary Club. Waraabe wants to lure
people home. He says only 10 percent of the people who fled
have returned to Somaliland because of slow economic
development that he blames on the ruling party.
The former diaspora members in Somaliland are a flashy
minority. The elite meet in a handful of hotel restaurants. At one,
I dine with Ahmed Said, the BBC's Hargeysa correspondent,
who brought his family back from England. Farhan Ali Ahmed
joins us, the founder of a new Somali TV channel. Ahmed tells
me about his gas station in Bellevue, Wash.; his ex-wife in
Portland, Ore.; his half-Mexican baby; and another ex-wife in
Minneapolis. Upheaval in Somalia produced a generation of
adults who have truly lived nine lives.
Amina Warsame presides over women's issues in Somaliland as
the executive director of Nagaad, a women's advocacy group.
She earned a master's degree in human development from the
Institute of Social Studies in The Hague and lived with her
family in Sweden after fleeing the Somali civil war. Warsame
says 98 percent of mothers in Somaliland still circumcise their
young daughters for fear of stigma, but members of the diaspora
in Europe and the United States can avoid the practice.
One of the most radical characters to return is Abdirahman
Ahmed Shunuuf. My 30-year-old guide in Somaliland,
Mohamed Amin Jibril, is swayed by Shunuuf's bold promise to
provide free education for all if he is elected president. The only
problem is that Somaliland's constitution permits only three
political parties, and he doesn't belong to any of them. The
renegade started out as a student activist at the University of
California-Berkeley, where he studied as a refugee. Recently
returned to Somaliland after three decades of civil rights
activism in the United States, Shunuuf and his brother are
building a public university in Hargeysa with a curriculum based
on that of Portland State University. I tried to interview him, but
he was arrested for attempting to create an unlawful political
party before our appointment.
Somalilanders often compare their unrecognized breakaway
state to Israel. One diaspora member, Omar Dihoud, even
16/81
founded the Somaliland-Israel Friendship Society. "Sometimes I
say Somaliland is the Israel of the Horn of Africa, because all
the surrounding Arab states hate it," my guide told me. Others
empathize with the Jewish culture of survival after being
persecuted by Siad Barre.
Now, south Somalia feeds the diaspora. According to the United
Nations, fighting between Ethiopian troops and Islamists in
Mogadishu has driven 1 million south Somalis from their homes
in the last year out of a population of roughly 3 million people.
In Nairobi, Kenya, BBC correspondent Yusuf Hassan
Moalimisak laments his family's displacement. His brother was
killed by Ethiopian soldiers while defending his home in
Mogadishu, and his sister-in-law lives now with five children in
a refugee camp that houses more than 200,000. Moalimisak's
own wife and children live in Toronto, and he has to cover
Somalia from neighboring Kenya.
I congratulate him for persevering.
"We have no choice!" he says unhappily. "We are like
wandering Jews."
From: Emily Meehan
Subject: Déjà Vu
Posted Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 6:55 AM ET
NAIROBI, Kenya—Somalia is on the brink of famine. There is
no end in sight to the war between Islamist guerrillas and the
Ethiopian soldiers supporting Somalia's feeble transitional
president. The June 2008 peace agreement between one Islamist
faction and Somalia's transitional government promised a ceasefire and the withdrawal of government-allied Ethiopians from
Somalia. But Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi promptly
derailed the arrangement when he refused to withdraw before
defeating the jihadists. The Islamist fighters say they will not
stop fighting until the infidels leave. Their powerful leader has
dismissed the peace agreement. The stalemate and contingent
humanitarian crisis are déjà vu for Somalia.
Almost 100 years ago, a Sunni sheik named Mohammed
Abdullah Hassan fomented an Islamist revolution against
colonial Italians and British in Somalia. Somalia's first
nationalist, "Mad Mullah," as he is known, allied with varying
clans and built a strong army called the Dervishes. In 1910, the
New York Times described the British response as the most
costly project in the annals of 10 Downing St. "It represents an
expenditure in the last eleven years of $50,000,000 and 5000
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
lives and a mortifying, humiliating failure without a jot of
compensation," Walter Littlefield wrote. Shortly after, one-third
of the inhabitants of British Somalia died in a famine.
Anthropologist I.M. Lewis says hungry Somalis resorted to
eating rats in a depraved period known as the "time of eating
filth."
Somalia's current Islamist leader, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys,
considers Mad Mullah a hero. "It is something existing in the
world, to name your enemy as a terrorist, as the British
colonialists called the Somali hero Mohammed Abdullah
Hassan," he told Newsweek in 2006. "For instance, the
[apartheid-era] South Africans said that [Nelson] Mandela was a
terrorist, and his people know him as a hero." Aweys, who now
lives in exile in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, denied my
interview requests. The U.S. State Department and the United
Nations have designated Aweys and his late apprentice Aden
Hashi Ayro terrorists, and Aweys could be targeted by U.S.
airstrikes if he were in Somalia. Ayro was a commander of
Somalia's radical Islamist militia, Al-Shabab, which translates to
"the Youngsters" in English.
Ayro was also a member of al-Qaida, a discovery former
warlord Mohamed Qanyare takes credit for. Qanyare says he
told the CIA, which in 2005 hired him to catch Ayro and deliver
him to the U.S. base in Djibouti. Qanyare's militia didn't succeed
in catching Ayro, but they did perplex him. Mohamed Uluso, a
political leader of the clan Ayro and Aweys both come from,
says he met with Ayro to chastise him right after Qanyare's
militia attacked Ayro's house. "He said to me, 'We never
committed any crime against Americans—why are they looking
for us?' " remembers Uluso. "We said, It's because you are
hiding the people who bombed the [U.S.] Embassies [in Nairobi
and Dar es-Salaam]." Five U.S. missile strikes later, on May 1,
2008, the U.S. Navy killed Ayro, along with 30 other people.
In 2005, journalist Massimo Alberizzi visited an Italian cemetery
in Mogadishu after Ayro desecrated the site so he could it use as
a militia training camp. Alberizzi says bones were removed from
a mausoleum and discarded all over the land outside. Since
2002, Ayro had been implicated in the killing of a British BBC
producer who was working in Mogadishu, a Somali peace
activist, a Swiss man working to build a chicken farm for the
poor in Somaliland, an Italian nun, two British schoolteachers,
and a Kenyan development worker. Somaliland authorities say
Ayro ordered terrorists to disrupt the 2005 parliamentary
election. Somaliland intelligence agents caught some men with
an arsenal of explosives and prevented the planned violence.
Aweys says these incidents are Somalia's internal affairs and
none of America's business. They are my business, however.
I was not able to go to south Somalia to report this series,
because the security that is recommended to prevent
assassination in Mogadishu costs $500 a day. That's two cars of
17/81
armed guards, in case one gets blown up and I'm stranded with
shrapnel wounds and no ride to the overburdened Medina
hospital. The attack could be meant for the car in front, or AlShabab youngsters could learn which cars were transporting me
and target them because I am an "infidel" whose country trains
and funds their Ethiopian enemies, whose CIA funded their
warlord enemies, and whose military targets their leaders, killing
random civilians in missile strikes. They might also target me if
Somalia's transitional government were somehow involved in
my security.
No insurance company would cover my trip for more than
$375,000 worth of injuries, and I couldn't afford the premium,
anyway. I tried to get around it by planning a visit to the Somali
countryside, which at the time was safer than the capital. Bad
idea.
One of my sources arranged for me to visit a town called
Beletweyne, where his childhood friend Daud Hassan Ali had
just built an English-language school. Daud and I exchanged
dozens of e-mails, and he insisted that Al-Shabab was not
operating in his region. He was 64 and had just returned to
Somalia after living in Birmingham, England, for four decades
where he worked as a school psychologist. I would stay for an
affordable rate in a local Save the Children guesthouse, and they
would provide my transport and security. I would not be able to
get out of the car, except within the school compound or the
NGO compound, nor could I take photographs while riding in
the car. For taking a picture of a bridge in his town, Daud told
me, he had been accused of being a spy and threatened by a local
Islamist.
In April, Islamist fighters captured Beletweyne, released some
prisoners from jail, and fought with Ethiopian soldiers who were
stationed nearby. On the night of April 13, Islamists went to
Daud's school and shot three of the teachers dead. They chased
Daud to a neighbor's house, were he hid for a short time before
he was dragged into the street and shot to death. The next
morning, Al-Shabab claimed responsibility, though it was
impossible to know if they organized the raid or if the killers
were local upstarts sympathetic to the revolution. Daud was a
Christian and a British citizen, and he taught English at his
school, possible explanations for his unpopularity among
jihadists. He made it clear in his e-mails to me that he considered
the Islamist uprising a crude and menacing development.
In 1910, Mad Mullah also killed British sympathizers among the
Somali population. "Mad Mullah Kills 800, Tribesmen
Slaughtered, Towns Razed, and Vast Areas Laid Waste" reads
one New York Times headline. He declared that any marriage
ceremony conducted by a subject of King Edward VII would be
null and void. His zeal developed after a visit to Mecca at age 20
where he studied under Sheik Sayyid Muhammed Salih, a Sufi
with his own mystical brotherhood called Salihiya.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
These days, the Arab influence comes from the long-passed
Sheik Muhamad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of Wahhabism.
Since the 1970s, hundred of thousands of Somalis have worked
or settled in Saudi Arabia, a country ruled by a Wahhabist
interpretation of Islamic law. One Somali visitor was Sheik
Aweys.
Aweys brought the militancy of Wahhabism back to moderate
Somalia. Other sheiks brought ideas from Egypt's Muslim
Brotherhood movement. Together, in 1982, they formed AlItihad, a Somali Islamist movement and militia that intended to
unite all Somalis living in Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti,
Somaliland, and Somalia under an Islamic rule that would
prohibit television, music, movies, soccer, and women's rights.
(Somali territory was doled out during late 19th-century
imperialism, so Somalis live in all these countries.) Al-Itihad
fought Somali warlords and made incursions into Kenya and
Ethiopia, but the militia was always defeated.
In the warlord-ruled anarchy of the 1990s, Mogadishu developed
a network of clan-based sharia courts meant to enforce law and
order. When these ad hoc units came together as the Islamic
Courts Union in 2000, Al-Itihad merged with the union. The
ICU militia, commanded in part by Aden Ayro, fought and
defeated Mogadishu's CIA-funded warlord alliance and came to
power in 2006. The Islamists brought peace, stability, and
punishing sharia law to the capital for six months. Mogadishu
had not been peaceful since 1989, so residents reveled in the
calm. The ICU gained immense popular support.
But Somalia's feeble transitional government was excluded from
the Islamist regime. After three meetings in Khartoum, Sudan,
neither the government nor the Islamists would agree on a
power-sharing deal. There was uproar, and Aweys threatened to
have the Islamists invade Ethiopia, the main backer of the
transitional government. President Abdullahi Yusuf then invited
Ethiopia's army to invade Somalia and defeat the Islamists,
which happened in December 2006.
Political leaders from the ICU, including Aweys, are being given
sanctuary in Eritrea, Ethiopia's great rival. The Islamists
remaining in Somalia are fighters, not philosophers. They want
the Ethiopians out, and they consider President Yusuf's
government a junta. Their ideological leaders say they are
nationalists fighting for Somalia's sovereignty. But their fight
causes massive collateral damage. Roughly 6,500 civilians have
been killed in the last year, and 3 million Somalis are starving,
according to the United Nations. That's one-quarter of Somalia's
roughly 10 million inhabitants.
If Sheik Aweys has his say, the Youngsters won't stop fighting
until all ethnic Somalis in the Horn of Africa are living under
one Islamist government. "We will leave no stone unturned to
integrate our Somali brothers in Kenya and Ethiopia and restore
their freedom to live with their ancestors in Somalia," Aweys
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told Mogadishu's Radio Shabelle in 2006. In other words, there
will be war, indefinitely.
From: Emily Meehan
Subject: The Transitional Government
Posted Friday, August 22, 2008, at 7:10 AM ET
NAIROBI, Kenya—That Somalia even has a government
surprises people who know only of the country's woes. But this
is understandable, because it's a transitional government. It
wasn't elected, it provides no social services, and the security
minister has been accused of kidnapping civilians for ransom.
President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed's authority comes from a
2002-04 conference held in Kenya, funded by Kenya and the
European Union, where 1,000 prominent Somalis were invited
by the host governments to write a constitution and pick a
parliament and president. Foreign governments fund their
salaries, the electricity in their offices, and flights back and forth
to regional government talks.
In early August, Somalia's transitional prime minister, Nur
"Adde" Hassan Hussein, fired the mayor of Mogadishu, a
warlord and friend of President Yusuf's. Yusuf revoked the
order, citing constitutional problems. In his support, 10 ministers
quit the Cabinet. Now the rift between the prime minister and
president appears to be causing a total collapse of the transitional
government.
Somalia is the world's worst failed state, according to a recently
released ranking by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for
Peace. The country doesn't have any banks—residents exchange
money with each other and the outside world via hawala, an
informal Islamic money-transfer system. That hasn't stopped
international donor powers from paying a minister of the central
bank. "There is no central banking system. The government just
wanted the titles to show that there was some system," says
Mohamed Uluso, a politician appointed to run the nonexistent
bank in 2002. "In the African system, they give you a letter
saying you are appointed as this, and you don't have [to do]
anything. The United Nations Development Program [which
distributes money donated by foreign governments] paid me
$500 a month."
Gaffes like this have been happening since 1991, when Siad
Barre, Somalia's dictator, was overthrown. There have been no
elections thus far. International donors can't know what's
happening with the money they give to Somalia's transitional
governments because they don't have embassies in Mogadishu.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
It's too dangerous to work in Somalia. Heavily invested
diplomats visit every couple of months, often finding fresh hell.
One diplomat found that the contents of a ministry his
government filled with office equipment had been stolen and
sold by the minister and his staff.
In four months of speaking to more than 100 Somalis, no one
told me he or she would have voted for President Yusuf. They
say he invited Ethiopian soldiers to invade Somalia and attack
those residents who don't support him; that he denies massacres,
rapes, and looting by Ethiopian soldiers; that he orders the
bombardment of civilians in a counterinsurgency strategy. Two
Somali witnesses to the 2004 conference where Yusuf was
appointed say he gave each member of parliament $1,500 to vote
for him.
"It's not a government," says former Mogadishu resident and
journalist Abdiaziz Hassan Ahmed. "If you could see Villa
Somalia [the president's headquarters] in Mogadishu, you would
see that it's like a corrupt NGO with Ethiopian troops guarding
it." Ahmed left Somalia for Kenya nine months ago because he
feared for his life. In 2006 and 2007, he says, the president's
spokesman would call press conferences and then imprison the
journalists who showed up. Ahmed received death threats from
anonymous callers who told him to leave the country if he
wanted to live.
Somalis like Ahmed want war-crimes tribunals. They compare
President Yusuf to Charles Taylor, the former president of
Liberia. (Taylor fomented tribal war in Sierra Leone and Liberia
in order to divide the population, thus maintaining his own
power.) Somalis see foreign governments and the United
Nations as culpable by association for President Yusuf's alleged
war crimes, and Islamist fighters punish anyone involved with
the government. That means kidnapping U.N. officials, even
those delivering food. Three food-aid workers have been killed
since July, as has the head of UNDP Somalia.
The U.N. special envoy to Somalia won't buy into this rhetoric.
"I think many countries, not only African countries, we don't
have the best presidents," says Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, a
Mauritanian. "I am sorry, we have to give them a break. Very
often I have tears in my eyes when I meet prominent Somalis.
We are just putting the blame on these unfortunate people, we
have to give them a hand." In June, Ould-Abdallah mediated a
peace agreement between Somalia's transitional government and
the Islamists fighting them. Since then, fighting in Somalia has
increased in pitch. The agreement was finally signed on Aug. 19.
Ould-Abdallah makes a sour face when asked about the April
19, 2008, massacre in Mogadishu's Al-Hidya mosque. Clerics
were beheaded, dozens of worshippers were killed by soldiers,
and children were abducted. Journalists in Mogadishu reported
that Ethiopian soldiers, backed by transitional government
forces, committed the crimes in an attempt to force radicals and
19/81
their young recruits from the mosque. Amnesty International
issued a statement asking Ethiopian soldiers to release 41
abducted children. President Yusuf accused the Islamists of
dressing up in Ethiopian uniforms and launching the attack. The
Ethiopian government issued a press release accusing Amnesty
of "publicizing deliberately invented stories about the activities
of Ethiopian troops." So, will the United Nations conduct an
investigation?
"To me, this is not a problem. I will not get into the name game,"
says Ould-Abdallah. He believes it's not possible to find out who
was responsible for the attack. "We have to look at the wider
picture."
The European Commission, a branch of the European Union, has
been the biggest donor to Somalia's transitional governments,
and it funds the current government. Since 1991, there have been
five transitional presidents and 17 failed peace conferences, one
of which cost $11 million and lasted two years. The European
Commission wants peace in the Horn of Africa for pragmatic
geopolitical reasons, but it gave no support for the Islamic
Courts Union when it took over Mogadishu in 2006.
"They had nothing to fund," says Walid Musa, a former political
adviser for the European Commission who now works for the
United Nations. "How can I fund a number of guys who created
a court, who refused to announce an administration, who refused
to subscribe to dialogue with the existing administration and
were totally hijacked by their extremists? No way." Musa says
that although the transitional government is not legitimately
democratic, it is legal, because it was brought about by Somalis
and signed off on by the United Nations, European Union,
African Union, Organization of the Islamic Conference, and
League of Arab States.
Musa, who is Sudanese, has worked as a political officer on
Somalia since 1991, first for the UNDP, then the European
Commission, and now under Ould-Abdallah in the U.N. Political
Office for Somalia. He says the biggest impediment to
democracy is Somali politicians' winner-take-all attitude.
Somalia's parliament is also funded by the European
Commission. It includes five warlords who nominated
themselves at the 2002-04 conference, and it recently tied with
Burma as the world's worst parliament in a parliamentary power
index compiled by University of California-Berkeley political
scientist Steven Fish.
Individual European governments have different strategies for
Somalia, some of which could be seen as conflicting with the EC
strategy they fund through their membership in the European
Union.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Great Britain is the second-biggest donor to Somalia's
transitional government, and it endorses President Yusuf's
administration, including its hated security minister, who used to
operate a forklift at a Leicester grocery store. "This government
is, from our point of view, a small shadow of light or a way out
of this hell that is modern day Somalia," Britain's minister for
Africa, Lord Malloch-Brown, told journalist Aidan Hartley. His
government raised their annual pledge to Somalia from £3.1
million in 2003 to a projected £25 million this year.
Italy funds three projects run by a Somali NGO to develop
district-based governance. Special Envoy Mario Raffaelli wants
to persist until the model spreads across the country, carving out
districts of peace amid war.
Raffaelli, a former senator, says he tried to persuade the
Islamists to negotiate with the transitional government in 2006,
before Ethiopia invaded. Raffaelli is known for his visit to Sheik
Hassan Dahir Aweys in a radical stronghold called Dhobley.
Other diplomats refuse to speak with Aweys because he has
been designated a terrorist.
"The U.N. Security Council would only allow the Islamic Courts
Union so long as they mediated with the [Transitional Federal
Government]," says Raffaelli. "We had to find a compromise.
The first one was a regular process through a formal conference.
You cannot play with democracy." Three formal conferences in
Khartoum, Sudan, failed to reconcile the parties. While President
Yusuf was in Khartoum, he arranged to have Ethiopian troops
enter Somalia and expel the Islamists. Raffaelli says
international donors were not happy about the Ethiopian
invasion but recognized that the Islamists' irredentist agenda
posed a "legitimate security risk" to the neighboring country.
The United States is a partner in Somalia only to the extent that
it trains Ethiopia's military and funds it with generous aid: $500
million in 2007.
Somalia's transitional government is meant to be a placeholder
until Somalis can vote democratically. The charter runs out in
2009. There is no general election in sight.
sidebar
Return to article
The 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania, sparked fear that Muslim Somalia's failed
state would provide safe haven to East African terrorists—and
breed new ones. The Pentagon believes the embassy bombers
20/81
have been using Somalia as an intermittent hideout. Two radical
Islamist militias have been born in Somalia since the 1980s,
although their ambitions have been limited to the Horn of Africa.
The U.S. military has had a hard time monitoring Somalia. After
the failed "Black Hawk Down" intervention in 1993, the
Pentagon decided to keep U.S. forces out of the country. A
military official at the Pentagon says they learned how quickly
Somalis would unite against any U.S. presence in their country.
"Any armed foreign forces are viewed as enemies. As soon as a
Somali sees one of our guys, that's it." The U.S. military has
several encampments along the Kenyan side of Somalia's border.
In neighboring Djibouti, there is a U.S. base focused on regional
counterterrorism, the Combined Joint Task Force—Horn of
Africa, which was set up in 2002.
explainer
Do White People Really Come From the
Caucasus?
How Caucasians got their name.
By Derek Thompson
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 7:22 PM ET
Russia continues to occupy the former Soviet state of Georgia,
despite agreeing to a cease-fire last week. "The Caucasus is a
difficult and complicated place," one Russian political scientist
told the Financial Times, referring to the small mountainous
region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea that
comprises Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Wait, do white
people really come from the Caucasus?
It's highly unlikely. There are scholarly disagreements about
how and when some of our dark-skinned ancestors developed
lighter skin, but research suggests humans moved across the
Asian and European continents about 50,000 years ago. Some
anthropologists think that natural selection would have favored
lightening mutations as humans moved away from the equator
and faced a diminished threat from ultraviolet exposure. In this
case, it's possible that light skin would have evolved in many
places independently.
So why do we call white people Caucasians? The term was
popularized by the German scientist Johann Friedrich
Blumenbach, who in 1795 divided the human species into five
races: Caucasian, the "white" race; Mongolian, the "yellow"
race; Malayan, the "brown" race; Ethiopian, the "black" race;
and American, the "red" race. He considered the Caucasians to
be the first race on Earth, consistent with the common
conception of the Caucasus as a place of human origin. The
Bible describes Noah landing his ark at a place called Mount
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Ararat, which was thought by Europeans of Blumenbach's time
to be on the modern Turkish-Armenian border. (Ararat is still the
name of the largest mountain in Turkey.) In Greek mythology,
Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock in the Caucasus.
Blumenbach considered the skulls of the Georgians to be the
epitome of the white race, and he named the first class of
humans after the country's home in the Caucasus Mountains.
Blumenbach's class of Caucasians included most Europeans,
Northern Africans, and Asians as far east as the Ganges Delta in
modern India. As more scientists pursued racial classification in
the 1800s, they relied on Blumenbach's nomenclature, cementing
the region's legacy in anthropology.
Americans still use the word Caucasian to mean "white" despite
the fact that they haven't always been synonyms in the eyes of
the law. In U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), the Supreme
Court argued that although Asian Indians were technically
Caucasian, they couldn't be U.S. citizens because they weren't
"white." That decision was reversed with the Luce-Celler Act of
1946, which made naturalization legal among Filipinos and
Indians.
Bonus Explainer: Does the Caucasus have anything to do with
political caucuses? Almost certainly not. The word caucus
appeared in New England in the 1760s; some suggest it comes
from the Algonquian word caucauasu, meaning "counselor."
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Damon Dozier and Joseph Jones of the
American Anthropological Association. Thanks also to reader
Eric Ekvall for asking the question.
explainer
How Educational is Re-Education?
What you learn, or don't learn, at a Chinese labor camp.
By Jacob Leibenluft
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 4:32 PM ET
Two women in their late 70s were sentenced to "re-educationthrough-labor" by the Beijing police after they applied
repeatedly for a permit to hold a protest. How much education
actually happens at these re-education camps?
Not much. The emphasis in re-education-through-labor is on the
labor: People sentenced to so-called laojiao may spend as much
as 12 to 14 hours a day, according to some accounts, doing work
like construction, making bricks, or mining. (U.S. Customs
investigations have also implicated Chinese prison labor in the
21/81
production of binder clips and diesel engines.) That work serves
as both a means of punishment and as a major source of revenue
for a camp.
By Kara Hadge
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 6:34 PM ET
Since the re-education-through-labor camps were created in the
late 1950s, they have—at least in theory—been oriented toward
"rehabilitating" inmates both politically and morally. Over time,
however, the emphasis on political study sessions appears to
have declined. Some laojiao camps do have rules requiring
inmates to study two hours a day, although one in-depth report
on a camp in southern China found that sessions occurred only
when there was a lull in production. (When the province tested
whether the education was working, inmates were fed
examination questions in advance.)
Yesterday in Beijing, Roqaya al-Gassra of Bahrain won her heat
in the second round of the women's 200-meter dash while
wearing long pants, long sleeves, and a head covering, in
keeping with her practice of Islam. Many female Olympians
wear athletic clothing that does not cover their bodies; are their
events broadcast in conservative countries?
Re-education-through-labor provides local authorities with a
way to detain citizens without filing criminal charges. (China's
larger "reform-through-labor" system houses criminals who have
actually faced a trial.) As a result, it has been used as an easy
means to imprison political dissidents, Falun Gong followers,
and petitioners who have been accused of disturbing the social
order. But a large percentage of those in re-education-throughlabor camps—most estimates put the total inmate population in
the hundreds of thousands—are accused of more mundane vices
like prostitution or drug addiction. Inmates can be sentenced to
up to three years, although they can be kept for a fourth year for
failing to admit their guilt or violating camp rules. Sentences can
be appealed, but they are reviewed by the same Public Security
Bureaus that handed them down.
Several proposals have been discussed in recent years to modify
the re-education-through-labor system, which has received
criticism from legal experts both inside and outside China. Aside
from abolishing it altogether, reformers (PDF) have advocated
allowing inmates weekend visits home and making it easier for
them to get legal representation. (There has also been talk of
changing the name of the system to something along the lines of
"correctional centers," which might be less evocative of the
system's origins under Mao.) Another possible modification
might actually be to increase the amount of education at the
camps, with more training given to inmates in preparation for
work after their release.
Yes, for the most part. Regional and foreign networks are
broadcasting the Games, including Al Jazeera, the BBC, and Al
Arabiya, as well as local channels. The foreign broadcasters are
not altering their content to reflect local customs, but certain
countries with legal dress codes for women might be censoring
footage on state-operated channels. (Only a small proportion of
the Muslim countries where women tend to dress modestly have
compulsory dress codes; in Bahrain, for example, women are
allowed to wear whatever they want.)
Government-owned television networks in Saudi Arabia and
Iran will show women who are not wearing the hijab as long as
they are not too scantily clad. In Iran, shorts seem to be OK, but
swimsuits and leotards are out. (That means no swimming,
gymnastics, or beach volleyball.) Events in which the athletes'
bodies are mostly covered—such as horseback riding and judo—
are always acceptable. (The networks are also likely to be
covering the three events in which Iranian women are
competing: rowing, tae kwan do, and archery.) In Saudi Arabia,
most people watch Olympics coverage on satellite TV, which is
fully legal and carries no government restrictions.
Even though not all women's events are broadcast on TV in Iran
and Saudi Arabia, there are other ways to watch them. YouTube
is broadcasting footage from the IOC in 77 countries across the
Middle East, Africa, and Asia, including Iran and Saudi Arabia,
where no other entity holds exclusive digital-broadcasting rights.
Some Internet-service providers in Iran block YouTube, but
some Iranians with a broadband connection could watch footage
online. Although the devices are illegal, several million Iranians
have satellite dishes and could pick up uncensored Olympics
coverage on Al Jazeera and the BBC.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Sharon Hom of Human Rights in China and Fu
Hualing of the University of Hong Kong.
explainer
Muslim women can also watch female athletes compete at the
Muslim Women's Olympics, an event first held in Iran in 1993.
Photography and filming are banned in the sporting arenas, men
are not permitted inside, and the athletes are allowed to compete
without a hijab. The last set of games was in 2005 and featured
athletes from 25 countries competing in 15 sports.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Beach Volleyball in Iran?
How do conservative countries handle scantily clad Olympic athletes?
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
22/81
Explainer thanks Aisha Shaheed and Rochelle Terman of
Women Living Under Muslim Laws, Dawn Arteaga and Natasha
Tynes of the International Center for Journalists, Majid Joneidi
of the BBC, and Nail Al-Jubeir of the Royal Embassy of Saudi
Arabia.
explainer
Jamaican Me Speedy
Why are Jamaicans so good at sprinting?
By Nina Shen Rastogi
Monday, August 18, 2008, at 6:57 PM ET
Jamaicans dominated the Olympic 100-meter sprint this
weekend, with Usain Bolt setting a world record and his
teammates taking all three medals in the women's event. Jamaica
is a poor, tiny nation about half the size of New Jersey. What
makes its people such champion sprinters?
A combination of nature and nurture. Runners of West African
descent—which includes Jamaicans as well as most AfricanAmericans—seem to be built for speed: In 2004, they held all
but five of the 500 best times in the 100-meter dash. (East
Africans, such as Kenyans and Ethiopians, rule the long-distance
field.) Several biological factors may be coming into play here.
One study conducted in Quebec in the 1980s found that black
West African students had significantly higher amounts of "fasttwitch" muscle fibers—the kind that are responsible for short,
explosive bursts of action—than white French Canadians did.
(So far, there is no evidence that even extensive training can turn
slow-twitch muscles into fast-twitch ones, though moving in the
other direction is possible.)
Exercise physiologists at the University of Glasgow and the
University of the West Indies are currently researching the
genetic, nutritional, and sociological factors behind West
Africa's sprinting success. The team has just begun to analyze
the genetic data it has collected, but preliminary findings suggest
that 70 percent of Jamaicans have the "strong" form of the
ACTN3 gene—which produces a protein in their fast-twitch
muscle fibers that has been linked to increased sprinting
performance. That's a significantly higher percentage than in the
United States, where about 60 percent have the gene variant. A
further 28 percent of Jamaicans are heterozygous for the gene—
which has the same effect, but to a lesser degree—compared
with about 20 percent of Americans. The rest, by contrast, have
the "null" form of the gene that produces no protein at all,
apparently making for lousier sprinters but perhaps better
endurance runners. (Ironically, a sample of Kenyans showed a
lower incidence of the null form than Americans.)
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Of course the vast majority of Jamaicans with active ACTN3
genes don't go on to become world-class athletes. Cultural
factors are likely to contribute to the success of Jamaican
sprinters. For example, track and field has historically held a
high place of honor in Jamaican culture. The annual high school
Boys and Girls Athletics Championships—known simply as
Champs—is a major national event the importance of which to
Jamaicans rivals that of the Super Bowl to Americans. A long
history of high-profile accomplishments at Champs—plus the 45
Olympic medals Jamaicans have now won in track—helps
inculcate a deep sense of national pride in the sport.
Some have pointed to improved training over the past 30 years
as an explanation for Jamaica's medal haul. Star athletes once
had little opportunity to train and compete at the post-highschool level, but the country's University of Technology has
since become a premier training center for track and field.
Nevertheless, four-fifths of this year's Olympic team trained
overseas.
Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Anthony Davis of the University of Technology
and Rachael Irving of the University of West Indies, Mona
Campus.
five-ring circus
The Olympics Sap-o-Meter
By Josh Levin, Derek Thompson, and Chris Wilson
Friday, August 22, 2008, at 11:00 AM ET
On a day when America's relay teams both dropped the baton,
the Sap-o-Meter had a drop of its own. After a week of sap
scores in the mid-50s, NBC's commentators dialed down the
schmaltz Thursday evening. The minuscule total: 35 Sap Points.
The night's most-sentimental figure was Cuba's Dayron Robles,
whose gold in the 110-meter hurdles gave NBC its second
deceased-parent narrative in as many nights. But just as one-time
sprinting stud Tyson Gay bobbled the baton for the Americans,
both stars from the sap list, mom and dream, had nights to forget.
The maudlin pair scored two mentions each—their lowest
combined score in Sap-o-Meter history. Fittingly, on a night
with disappointments in track and field and a hard-fought gold in
men's beach volleyball, battled (six mentions) and challenges
(four mentions) combined to keep the sap from dipping to record
lows.
Sappiest Line of the Day: NBC's Tom Hammond: "This race
no doubt dedicated to his late dad." Bob Costas: "And if that's
23/81
the case, doing his father and his country proud."—On Cuban
Dayron Robles' victory in the 110-meter hurdles.
year-old man who stabbed two Americans and their Chinese
guide over the weekend? Todd Bachman, the father-in-law of
the U.S. men's volleyball coach, was killed in the attack.
The Sap-o-Meter Tag Cloud
adversity
battled cancer challenges courage cry death
dedication determination
dream emotion
glory
golden hardship heart hero inspiration inspire journey magic memory
miracle
mom
proud sacrifice
mother Olympic-sized overcome passion
spirit tears tragedy triumph
For a primer on how the Sap-o-Meter works, check out our
first entry. Did we miss your favorite moment? Send your
Sappiest Line of the Day suggestions to sapometer@gmail.com.
Sap-o-Meter History
(click on any bar to read that day's entry)
five-ring circus
Dispatches From Beijing
The science of DJing an Olympic beach volleyball match.
By Jacob Leibenluft, Tom Scocca, June Shih, and Tim Wu
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 4:48 PM ET
From: Tim Wu
Subject: An American Tourist Is Murdered, and Conspiracy Theories Abound
Posted Monday, August 11, 2008, at 12:22 PM ET
What would make you stab a 62-year-old tourist to death in the
middle of the day and then leap off a 150-foot tower? That's a
question you can't help puzzling over if you're in Beijing. What
on earth was going on in the mind of Tang Yongming, the 47-
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
To be sure, the most probable explanation is that Tang was
simply insane, or extremely frustrated for his own reasons, and
somehow snapped, making the whole thing what officials call an
"isolated incident." That's the official story—that Tang "was
distraught over family problems," including two divorces and a
son who was in trouble with the law. Yet the timing (the
Olympics), the victims (foreigners), and the location (the ancient
drum tower) have certainly left plenty of room for Beijing's
residents and resident foreigners to speculate that something else
was afoot. Here are the theories (from the partially grounded to
the ridiculous) that I've been hearing.
The murderer wasn't Chinese. This idea reflects on somewhat
understandable disbelief that a Chinese person would want to
ruin a time of national pride by killing a foreigner for no good
reason. When I told the owners of a store in an alley near the
drum tower about the murderer, they concluded, immediately,
"He wasn't Chinese." They suggested that he was perhaps
Malaysian, because Malaysians often look Chinese. When I
insisted he was Chinese, their theory was that he probably wasn't
Han Chinese (i.e., that he was an ethnic minority of some kind).
The Americans got involved in a Chinese fight. At a
foreigner's party, I heard it suggested that the murderer knew the
Americans' tour guide and was perhaps even a jilted lover. He
confronted her, the Americans heroically intervened to defend
their guide, and in a fit of rage, out came the knife. Afterward,
when Tang realized that he'd been possessed, so to speak, he
leapt off the tower to his death.
This explanation does make the event something like a mixture
of United Flight 93 and the climax of The Exorcist, but it doesn't
really explain why Tang was carrying a knife or what about the
Americans prompted him to use it.
An enemy of the party. A Chinese friend, last name Yang, who
did graduate studies in New York, suggested early on that the
killer could be an enemy of the Communist regime—like
someone from the Falun Gong religious movement. The idea
here is that killing a foreigner is about the best way to weaken
the party—by making it look bad during the Olympics. The
killing, therefore, would be a rather extreme form of protest.
There's no evidence, however, of any such ties. What's
interesting about this theory is the extent to which the Falun
Gong is made out to be the Knights Templar or Freemasons of
China—that is, an exaggerated bogeyman sometimes taken as
the source of all evil, a group vicious enough even to endanger
the good image of the Olympics. In response to my doubts, Yang
replied that the Falun Gong is capable of doing extreme things,
24/81
such as persuading beautiful young women to set themselves on
fire.
An angry migrant (non min-gong). I heard early speculation
that the killer was non min-gong—one of the generally
mistreated peasant laborers who do manual labor for very little
money. These fellows have been treated somewhat poorly as the
Olympics have arrived, along the lines of "Thanks for building
the stadiums—now get lost."
The notion that Tang was an aggrieved laborer may represent
some guilt the Chinese feel about the treatment of migrant
workers. (A Chinese acquaintance also commented, rather
unfairly, I thought, that a peasant laborer would be incapable of
even understanding the idea that murdering a foreigner would be
a way to send a message.) The idea was upended, though, when
Tang turned out not to have been a peasant at all. Nonetheless,
scaled down, the general idea that the killing was motivated by
the frustrations of contemporary life has a ring of truth.
(Another, quasi-related rumor that I heard: Tang was depressed
because he lost all his money in the stock market.)
A Neo-Boxer movement. In 1899, a secret cultlike group
known as the Righteous Harmony Society, or the Boxers, began
a campaign to purify China from all foreign influence, ultimately
murdering more than 200 foreigners and thousands more
Chinese Christians. For several months in 1900, the expats of
Beijing and Tianjin were not to be found drinking in bars—as is
today's tradition—but were holed up in fortresses holding out
against the Boxers, until a wholesale foreign invasion saved their
bacon.
The Boxers were somewhat like a Chinese Ku Klux Klan, and so
it seemed to me that a residual anti-foreigner movement might
still be around. However, no one I talked to seemed to consider
this remotely plausible. My friend Yang, for one, pooh-poohed
this idea, reminding me that "we don't hate Westerners anymore;
we hate the Japanese."
A Cultural Revolution holdout. While we're in the realm of
implausible theories, Dai, a young member of the Communist
Party whom I've befriended, speculates that—while it's highly
unlikely—Tang could have been protesting the general
abandonment of socialism over the last few decades or could
even be an extremely rare holdout from the Cultural Revolution.
While the latter seems unlikely, there are definitely those who
think China has gone too far toward capitalism, said Dai, and the
Olympics are something of a symbol of this.
A classic conspiracy. Classic conspiracy theories don't take
much skill to make up, because they aren't required to follow the
usual rules of logic. Take, for example, this Internet idea that the
murderer was a paid CIA agent, ordered to kill Americans to
create trouble for China. Yes, that makes so much sense.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
From: Tim Wu
Subject: Are the Media Being too Mean to China?
Posted Monday, August 11, 2008, at 7:59 PM ET
To say Beijing is eager to welcome foreign guests to the
Olympics may be the understatement of the century. The new
airport terminal features a welcome robot, there are "welcome
booths" on just about every downtown street, the names of the
Olympic mascots spell "Welcome to Beijing" in Chinese. If
you're not careful, you may be walking down a normal street
only to find yourself surrounded by eager volunteers clad in blue
shirts who point out everything you ever wanted to know about
Beijing and plenty more you didn't. In the Olympic Village,
where the athletes live, friends say that the enthusiasm and
attentiveness of the volunteers borders on harassment.
The enthusiasm is understandable. Everyone keeps talking about
the "100-year dream," and in a sense, Beijing has been waiting
to host this—its international coming-out—since 1842 or so.
That's the year China lost the Opium War and started a 160-yearlong search for respect. Much to the country's chagrin, it still
isn't getting any.
The Western media have arrived en masse to China's ball: lots of
senior journalists, in sloppy dress, interested either in their own
athletes or in writing their own big "China piece." (Foreign
guests are here, too, but fewer than Beijing had hoped for,
thanks in part to self-defeating visa policies.) Not surprisingly,
the stories written about China by foreign journalists are rarely
on topics China might have hoped for.
The Western press is fascinated with the two P's: pollution and
protests. For dessert, anything to do with Tibetan independence,
censorship, or foreign visitors is also welcome. Sometimes all of
these issues converge, like last Wednesday, when a gaggle of
Americans put up a "Free Tibet" banner in Tiananmen Square on
what happened to be a very smoggy day. Now that's a story.
So are the media just being a little mean to China? It does at
times feel akin to if coverage of the Atlanta Olympics were
focused on the failings of the U.S. health care system and the
plight of the American Indian. One foreign correspondent for a
major American newspaper agreed, telling me, "In Athens the
traffic jams were presented as the outgrowth of a hip
Mediterranean lifestyle. Here they become yet another product
of state repression."
Chinese friends and strangers I've been chatting up on the street
complain that the coverage is unfair or biased. "Maybe it's just a
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kind of cultural difference between Eastern and Western
peoples," said Liu Shudi, a student I talked to in a cafe in
downtown Beijing. She concedes that it's hard to get her hands
on much Western media, but what she has seen (mainly CNN)
seems "biased." "We worked so hard. Maybe we didn't do
everything right, but we really did work hard. It's unfair."
The cultural difference she's talking about is reflected in
fangwen culture, which translates as "official visit." If you've
ever done business in China, you know what fangwen is all
about—a kind of formal tour that is meant to show how great the
host's facility is, while the guest says admiring things. China was
hoping the Olympics would be a nationwide version of fangwen.
Instead, it is mostly getting fangs.
Another theme that you hear is how much "hard work," or nuli,
went into getting the city ready for the Olympics, which makes
all the criticism more painful. Here is a Chinese commenter
online reacting to the American cyclists who wore masks in the
Beijing airport: "You are guests, you come to someone's home
that has, through lots of hard work [nuli], been cleaned up, and
who welcomes you very warmly. At this time, shouldn't you
show friendliness and kindness?"
But when I ask most of my reporter friends—that is, the Western
media who live here—if the foreign press is being too mean,
they say no, that China deserves the scrutiny it is getting. As one
longtime resident said about the pollution, for instance, "China
just blew it." In his view, China is backsliding on all kinds of
promises it made, but the IOC "is down on its knees giving
China a blowjob."
A second theory put forward by reporters is that criticism of
China is simply the kind of news an American audience is
interested in—criticism sells. A third is that the whole point of
giving China the Olympics was to subject it to foreign scrutiny
that, for once, it might have to listen to. Reporter and food writer
Jen Lin-Liu, who lives in Beijing, wrote in the New York Times
that the whole project is backfiring—that "as China projects a
new air of openness and tolerance as it rolls out the welcome
mat for Olympics visitors, the government is cracking down on
citizens."
Lin-Liu is getting at the real paradox here. China's idea of what
makes for a better Olympics for foreign consumption—tightened
security and cleaning up marginal elements—is exactly what
makes Western reporters crazy. If you're showing off for the
fangwen, you want to clean things up, but the West wants to see
the dirt, not the rug it was swept under. It's the dishonesty, as
much as the substance of what's wrong in China, that seems to
get under the skin of Western reporters.
Yet there may be something at the core of the Chinese
complaint. It's a sense that no matter what China does, it won't
really be accepted as an equal on the world stage, that it will
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
always be left cleaning the toilet at the OECD country club. It
might be that China is perceived as an economic and political
rival to Europe and the United States, so that the old Cold War
reporting instincts come out. But there's also the fact that China
doesn't have the manners and grace of the richer countries, even
if it has increasing economic and political clout. The question,
then, is whether the negative coverage of China is completely
rooted in substance or reflects something like class disdain for
its uncouth ways.
Beijing itself is an expression of the problem. With the exception
of a few neighborhoods, the city is dynamic, but, frankly, not
charming. It suffers from the current obsession with fazhan
("development"), which in urban-planning terms replicates the
"giant soulless block" development style of Robert Moses and
the American 1950s. Authenticity, which Western culture
valorizes, isn't something that Chinese people or planners go for
right now. There's a tendency to either modernize or tear down
old structures, instead of trying to preserve their decay in the
way Westerners like. It's all just a little too nouveau riche to get
much respect.
None of this is to trivialize the issues the media raise about
human rights abuses, censorship, or the situation in Tibet and
Xinjiang. For the most part, I happen to agree with the Western
critics. But perhaps the key is the difference, as one longtime
foreign correspondent puts it, between stories that are
appropriately negative and coverage that's just downright
cynical. There's no question that this cynicism is compounded by
China's stiffness and eagerness to please. Right now, China is an
awkward place that just wants to be loved—and that makes it
particularly easy to kick around.
From: June Shih
Subject: You Think NBC Is Bad? You Haven't Seen CCTV.
Updated Thursday, August 14, 2008, at 1:15 PM ET
To say that the airwaves are saturated with Olympics coverage
here doesn't quite capture the feeling. Several of China Central
Television's channels, as well as the local Beijing and other
provincial channels, have given themselves over to 24/7
coverage of the games. Weeks before Friday's Opening
Ceremony, we'd already seen endless rebroadcasts of the
monthslong torch relay. Watch Torchbearer 61, a pudgy local
government official, pass the torch to Torchbearer 62, a tall
gangly European man from the United Nations! See the torch in
the streets of Chengdu! And Tianjin! And in the outer Beijing
Suburbs! And in Tianjin—again!
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Now that the games have actually started, a viewer can find live
broadcasts of everything from archery to volleyball all day long.
Television anchors are endlessly cuing up musical montages of
Chinese gold medal performances in weightlifting, shooting,
gymnastics, and diving. When not broadcasting events, Chinese
programmers are filling the airwaves with features such as
"Mothers Who Are Also Olympic Competitors" and "Kids Who
Have Shaved the Olympics Logo Into Their Heads." Enthusiastic
coverage is of course not unique to the Chinese—I remember
watching my share of slo-mo U.S. medalist montages set to
Whitney Houston's "One Moment in Time." But what's on
television in China right now shows what happens when you
combine tight state control with typically overwrought, patriotic
sports coverage. CCTV is like NBC on steroids … and growth
hormone, and EPO, and albuterol.
Having come to Beijing with my reporter husband (who's been
scrambling from venue to venue, pulling stories together), my
elderly, mobility-impaired parents, and a toddler who takes long
naps in the afternoons, let's just say that I've had a lot of
downtime in front of my Beijing boob tube. If you're going to
rely on CCTV to bring you your Olympics, you've got to care
about the Chinese teams. This, actually, is not a huge problem
for me. I am an American, but I've rooted for the Chinese in
Olympic sports since I was 12, when China sent its first full
team to the Los Angeles Olympics. (Please don't revoke my
citizenship.) I like to root for the underdog, and in 1984, the
Chinese were the underdog against the dominant Americans,
who racked up gold medal after gold medal in the wake of the
Soviet boycott and were breathlessly lionized for it. As a
Chinese-American kid, seeing people who looked like me win
gold was inspiring. I fell in love with Li Ning, the gymnast who
took home six medals that summer, so I was thrilled to see my
seventh-grade crush, still looking fit and adorable at 45, flying
around the circumference of the Bird's Nest to light the Olympic
cauldron last week.
The other morning, even though we had beach volleyball tickets,
the entire family decided to stay in and watch the men's
gymnastics finals. The Chinese men were heavily favored—we
didn't want to miss it. A few minutes in, we began to wish we
were watching back home. "Where are the up-close-andpersonal segments?" my sister asked. Sure, there was a bit of
commentary, but none of the polish and packaging that you'd get
from the folks at NBC. Not much history or background on the
contestants beyond where in China they were born. And
certainly no visits to hometowns and no proud, teary-eyed
parents. Sure, these stories of sacrifice, injury, and adversity are
cheesy, but they serve a necessary function, allowing you to
identify with athletes whom you've never heard of before and
probably won't hear from again. To find out more about China's
top gymnast, Yang Wei, I had to go to the U.S. news sites for a
biography.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Instead of soft-focus profiles, what you get from CCTV is raw,
one-sided footage. Predictably, the cameras were trained
exclusively on the Chinese gymnasts. During the early rotations,
when the Chinese unexpectedly found themselves in fifth place,
CCTV broadcast little or no footage of the teams in first, second,
third, and fourth. Instead, even as the Chinese gymnasts waited
for their scores, which often took several minutes, and other
competitors were performing, the CCTV cameras stayed with
them as they sat doing nothing. To fill the air, commentators
offered thoughts such as "the team seems really tight. They
really need to open up 100 percent. If they open up 100 percent,
they will perform better." But we had no idea how well the other
teams were performing. "Let's see some Americans!" my sister
yelled.
It was frustrating. While NBC is almost always U.S.-focused,
they at least know that minutes spent focusing on an athlete
waiting for a score does not make for good TV. They know how
to tell a story, and that a competition needs competitors. That's
the problem with taking away the free market: Any selfrespecting, ratings-oriented broadcaster would have cut away to
fit in somebody else's vault.
But CCTV couldn't bear to look away from its own team
yesterday. It was a reminder that, at the end of the day, it's still a
large cog in a giant propaganda machine. NBC is patriotic
because patriotism sells; CCTV is patriotic because patriotism is
the law. Telling a story is not CCTV's priority; it's conveying the
glory of China and the Chinese regime. That's a lot less fun to
watch than a sporting event.
Frustrations aside, the propaganda machine does kick up some
more benign kitsch. My easy-listening heart warms each time I
see "Beijing Welcomes You," a seven-minute song that seems to
play on a continuous loop at certain times of the day. The video
shows 100 of Greater China's pop stars singing a slightly
saccharine, yet totally infectious, song celebrating the arrival of
the games—who wouldn't be moved by the great Jackie Chan,
standing on the Great Wall, turning to face the camera and
reaching out his arms as he belts in Mandarin, "Beijing
welcomes you. We've opened up our world to you."
From: Jacob Leibenluft
Subject: I Saw Michael Phelps Win His Eighth Gold Medal
Posted Monday, August 18, 2008, at 7:13 AM ET
Somewhere in the lower stands of Beijing's National Aquatics
Center, right around where Debbie Phelps and Kobe and LeBron
were sitting, it was probably very obvious that something
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historic was happening here Sunday morning. But from Section
202 of the Water Cube, where I was lucky enough to win a seat
in a ticket lottery last fall, it was sometimes hard to tell whether I
was at the Olympics or a high-school swim meet.
As Phelps' race for eight approached, the PA announcers inside
the building never mentioned what he was trying to accomplish.
Blame the overwrought sense of decorum and fair play that
permeates the Olympics—heaven forbid the International
Olympic Committee acknowledge that the crowd might care
more about Michael Phelps than a backstroke specialist from
New Zealand. As a consequence, while viewers at home were
reminded of Mark Spitz, we were watching inflatable Friendlies
gyrate to the Hamster Dance. The result was a surprising
lifelessness in the stands, even though a Phelps victory was not a
foregone conclusion. There was also the strange fact that tickets
to watch Michael Phelps swim were among the toughest to get in
town—I heard stories of people paying nearly $1,000 for views
no better than mine—and yet, as has been the case throughout
the Games, more than a few seats went unfilled.
Within the Games, there's wide variance in the degree to which
the crowd gets involved. Beach volleyball—with its cheerleaders
and MCs—is at one extreme. (And it's not just that Phelps isn't
Chinese: On Sunday night, the atmosphere at an Australia-Brazil
beach volleyball quarterfinal match was more electric than the
Water Cube's had been 11 hours earlier.) Even the organizers of
an archery final I went to Friday did a better job creating a sense
of drama.
Why was Sunday morning's swimming session so lacking in
tension? It didn't help that the events started at 10 a.m. The
biggest problem, though, was the bizarre pacing. First came the
50-meter women's freestyle, which was over in less than 25
seconds. That was followed by the men's 1,500-meter freestyle,
an event so long that what sounded like elevator music played
throughout the first dozen or so laps. Then there was a long wait,
which included the medal ceremonies for the first two events
and a rendition of "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi. Finally, the two
medley relays began—with just a few minutes between the end
of the women's race and the moment when Phelps finally
stepped onto the deck.
On TV, all of the pre-race bluster helps build suspense. The
elements that are usually so annoying about televised sports—
the bombastic in-studio introduction, the amped-up scene-setting
by the announcers, even the cut to commercial—do a pretty
good job of creating anticipation for a three-and-a-half-minute
race. In the Water Cube, by contrast, the closest thing to a
dramatic build-up was a Microsoft Windows-style hourglass on
the Jumbotron informing us that there were only 10 minutes to
go before the session started. Except at the finish of the first
three races, the crowd around us was oddly calm for most of the
morning.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Of course, if the crowd wasn't up to the occasion, it was partly
my fault—or, at least, the fault of people like me. Like most
Americans (or Chinese, for that matter), I pay attention to
swimming only every four years. And yet because of the
vagaries of the Olympic ticketing system—if you're an average
fan, you basically apply for dozens of tickets and take what you
get in a lottery—my brother and I got very, very lucky. Sure,
there were a few "super fans," including the families and friends
of the athletes and other devotees who follow these sports during
non-Olympic years. (The loudest cheers in the building probably
came from other swimmers who packed the stands.) But the
aquatics center wasn't filled with swimming junkies ready to
cheer themselves hoarse; these were fans who would have been
equally content to watch badminton.
When Phelps got into the pool, I finally felt as if I was
witnessing history. I have Kosuke Kitajima to thank for that: The
breaststroker, who claimed a sort of parallel dominance to
Phelps at these Games, managed to claim the lead for Japan by
the end of the medley's second leg. By the time Phelps began his
swim, it became clear to us—even without the benefit of any
commentary—that there was a decent chance the Americans
wouldn't win.
Viewers at home saw the race from two vantage points: a bird'seye view of the eight swimmers in the pool and a closer shot of
the swimmers from above the water. Watching in person, you're
mostly confined to that first view—albeit with a better angle
than the one usually shown on NBC, and with a sense of
distance that emphasizes just how unnaturally fast the swimmers
move through water. After Phelps retook the lead and Jason
Lezak tried to hold onto it, my mind was able to focus on just
one thing: the slim margin between the swimmers at the front of
the pack. As Australia's Eamon Sullivan swam just fast enough
to suggest he might catch Lezak, I forgot even to look at Phelps
cheering his team on.
When Lezak touched the wall and the American celebrations
began, the crowd finally began to acknowledge what had
happened. And, in its own weird way, so did the swimming
federation responsible for running the event, giving Phelps a
"certificate of recognition" that seemed more appropriate for a
Little League awards dinner. A few minutes after the race was
finished and the results had been certified, the PA announcer—
in the same tone he used to admonish the crowd not to use flash
photography—said that the "Beijing Olympics has witnessed the
greatest Olympian in history—Michael Phelps of the USA."
Everyone in the building already knew that, but it was still nice
to hear someone say it out loud.
From: Tim Wu
Subject: An Ode to Weightlifting, My New Favorite Olympic Sport
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Posted Monday, August 18, 2008, at 12:15 PM ET
I've been lucky enough to attend many of the events at the
Beijing Olympics. The woman's all-around finals in gymnastics
were particularly thrilling, and I wasn't above taking a picture of
Michael Phelps in a medley heat. I can even brag that I managed
to snag a front-row press-box seat for Usain Bolt's dancing 9.69.
But none of this, for me, can compare to attending my new
favorite Olympic event: weightlifting. That's the sport I keep
going back to with the enthusiasm of a recent convert. I realize
that this puts me at odds with several billion members of the
viewing public other than those in Iran and Kazakhstan. But if
you enjoy suspense, strategy, and aesthetic purity of action,
there's nothing better than an Olympic weightlifting final.
I have felt my fair share of sports-related suspense, particularly
from baseball. But weightlifting has a particularly intense flavor,
especially when you're in the audience. The bar lies there, loaded
with what looks like an impossible amount of weight—often
more than 400 pounds. The lifter slowly pads over, sometimes
letting out a roar in anticipation. As the athlete crouches before
the bar, all is silent—the whole room focuses with the lifter. I
am reminded of that moment, if you've ever felt it, before you go
diving off a tall cliff—am I really going to do this? Then the
incredible act of will. The bar is grasped and thrown overhead.
The results are never ambiguous. Triumph is complete; failure is
total.
It is true that many Olympic events are similarly dramatic. But
there is something pure and clean about the physical act at the
center of weightlifting that is incredibly satisfying. You can't
squeak by with a victory on points, outlast the clock, or bribe the
referees. (You can cheat by taking performance-enhancing
drugs, but let's leave that aside for now.) Unlike in gymnastics,
there is no such thing as scoring a 14.575.
The simplicity of the lift also differentiates the sport from
boxing and judo, which have moments of absolute glory but also
have lots of mess in between. Real boxing isn't like Rocky,
where every punch is perfect and lands with a satisfying thud.
Even a beautiful sport like soccer has its share of ugliness
(sometimes 89 minutes' worth). But real weightlifting is perfect.
Either there's a gigantic amount of weight over your head or
there isn't.
Some of my introduction to the sport's finer points came from
Vivian Lee, a member of the Australian national team. Tiny (4foot-11) but powerful, she's a former gymnast and martial artist
who turned to lifting two years ago and now holds the Australian
record in her weight class (48 kilograms). As Vivian explains,
lifting is "the most mentally challenging sport I've done. Once
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
your hands touch the bar, you cannot hesitate. You have to
decide you're going to do it. You only have that split second.
You either get it, or you fail completely."
"Fail completely" is the best way to put it. It's important, I think,
that failure in weightlifting is magnificent. One thing I dislike
about gymnastics or diving is that so much of it comes down to
small flaws—a stumble, or a tiny slip—in otherwise perfect
routines. At its worst, commentators and spectators forget the
big picture and end up fixated on "the dismount" and whether
there was an "extra step." The flaws are so superficial that the
judging is more like gossip than sport.
In weightlifting, failure is not about deductions; it's about
complete meltdown. It is about huge muscles failing to do what
they are told, a breakdown in the connection between body and
mind. Success consists of beautiful, measured movements, while
failure is sudden and catastrophic. In Japanese, this aesthetic is
called mono no aware, the contrast between extreme beauty and
perfect death. In weightlifting it lies in the difference between
the perfect lift and the giant thud of the unlifted weight that
announces the death of a dream.
Beyond the aesthetic and emotional pull of lifting, I suspect what
really got me hooked is the strategy, discussed in detail in this
recent New York Times piece. The key point is that the
weightlifters (in fact, usually their coaches) choose how much
they plan to hoist. Their "bids," so to speak, are all displayed on
a giant board, like a bizarre stock market that trades in kilograms
instead of dollars.
The order of lifting goes from lightest to heaviest: If you plan to
lift, say, 180 and your opponent wants to start at 170, you can
watch and laugh as he or she plays around with lighter weights.
The strongest lifters put up huge bids to intimidate their
opponents. At one event I went to, the North Korean competitor,
a ferocious-looking woman, chose the Olympic record (135
kilograms in the clean and jerk) as her first lift. Now, that takes
guts. Or, rather, it takes absolute faith in the coach's decisions.
As Lee says, "If my coach believes I can lift the weight, I can. In
a competition I don't think [about] what is on the bar."
The strategy of starting high, however, carries a big risk of
"bombing." If you can't lift your weights at all (you get three
chances) you get a big fat zero and are effectively eliminated.
The North Korean, who went for the Olympic record on her first
attempt, couldn't get the weight over her head on her first two
tries. All seemed doomed for the people's republic. But then, on
the last lift of the day, she hoisted it—barely, but distinctly. With
that one lift, she walked away with the gold medal and a
changed life. That's what I mean by drama.
The drama is obvious and appreciated by the audience, which is
what makes weightlifting the best live show in town. The dirty
secret is that the crowds at some Olympic events get bored,
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especially in the big stadiums. Watching swimming heats or the
women's heptathlon can consist of squinting at tiny dots moving
far below—and, unlike on TV, there's no commentator to help
you out. At worst, spectators are reduced to cheering dutifully
when they notice their nations' athletes doing something,
replacing true fandom with blind nationalism. Weightlifting is
just different. Success and failure are obvious even to a layman,
and it's easy to root for any athlete who's willing to challenge the
laws of gravity that are, in a sense, a universal human burden. At
the 85-kilogram final, I found myself, along with much of the
Chinese audience, screaming encouragement at a plucky
Kazakhstani lifter. We were cheering on a fellow human, not a
flag.
Then there are the athletes themselves. Guy Trebay recently
wrote that much of the appeal of the Olympics comes from
watching the athlete's bodies—that "a viewer is permitted and
even encouraged to ogle an ongoing parade of muscled and lithe
and rippling and toned and occasionally highly perplexing
bodies." OK, so weightlifting is rarely about sex appeal in a
classic sense. But the power that these athletes emanate is
palpable. These are the strongest men and women in the world.
It's impossible to look away.
And what's a sport without the unexpected? Last Thursday, I saw
a burly Frenchman, Benjamin Hennequin, successfully throw
450 pounds over his head. He held the bar in triumph, let it drop,
turned, and collapsed. I thought for a moment he might be dead.
Rather, he had blacked out—as Lee tells me, probably because
the barbell, when he put it on his chest, blocked an artery to the
brain. "Sometimes," she added, "you lose vision." In a more
gruesome incident here in Beijing, a Hungarian managed to turn
his elbow completely backward during a lift. Afterward, instead
of bending toward his shoulder, his arm was now bending away,
as if God had cursed him with the front leg of a horse. Please tell
me: When's the last time you saw that in women's gymnastics?
Bolt stopped running, though in that brief interim he ended up
all the way down the far end of the track. Then came a sort of
confused mass hypnosis, 91,000 minds staggering together
toward the same conclusion. He is ... he just ... the clock ... nine
point what? Point SIX??
Sometimes the hardest achievements seem deceptively simple.
Getting the tickets to watch the men's 100-meter finals, for
instance. Last year, when the Beijing Organizing Committee
opened its first round of ticket sales, I picked out the men's 100
on the track calendar and submitted a request for good seats. A
few hundred dollars on the credit card, a long and occasionally
anxious wait through the winter and spring, a trip to the pickup
site, and the tickets were in hand.
By the time the Olympics began, though, I was hoping to see
more than just track. And getting into other events requires more
hustle. Finding tickets in Beijing during the Games means a hunt
through a retail and barter netherworld of friends, kindly and
unkindly strangers, and predatory Web sites. If I really want to
see synchronized swimming, I might eventually need to
impersonate a Kazakh.
Officially, as you may have heard, the Olympics are sold out.
But that long-ago lottery was the first stage in a convoluted and
obscure ticket-distribution process—one that, if anyone ever
fully understands it, could become the definitive case study in
how not to distribute tickets.
The first-round lottery allowed buyers to apply for up to eight
different sets of event tickets, with multiple fallback options in
each slot. This was an invitation to brokers and other hoarder
types to load up, while ordinary customers held back for fear of
"winning" several thousand dollars' worth of tickets at once.
Then, with the horse out of the barn, the organizing committee
tightened the rules for the next lottery: only two events, no
alternative choices, no chance to shop for an array of events.
From: Tom Scocca
Subject: Liverpudlian Scalpers, Scam Web Sites, and Other Highlights of an
Olympic-Sized Ticketing Fiasco
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, blocks of tickets were being set
aside for corporate sponsors and VIPs who might or might not
use them. The result is that would-be spectators are scrounging
for seats, even as organizers bus in squadrons of schoolchildren
and volunteers to pack bodies into underfilled arenas.
The world's top sprinters and I had this in common Saturday
night: We all had a great view of Usain Bolt running away from
us. My wife and I were in Section L of the National Stadium, at
the head of the stretch, in Row 28 of the bottom deck. From
there, Bolt was an imposing sight even before the men's 100meter race began—towering over the other finalists, his gold
shoes gleaming in the stadium lights. Then came the part where
Bolt started running, which was very soon before the part where
This is not Athens, where an apathetic populace didn't care to
buy sports tickets. The Chinese public may be narrowly
nationalistic in its rooting interests—witness the mass walkout at
the National Stadium after hurdler Liu Xiang was injured—but
between China's huge field of athletes and the allure of seeing
the fancy new arenas, demand was overwhelming. When tickets
went for sale online on a first-come, first-served basis—this took
place between Lottery 1 and Lottery 2—the system crashed
irretrievably (and the head of ticketing vanished from the job).
When walk-up windows opened to sell the last round of tickets,
the lines stretched two miles and riot cops were deployed.
Updated Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 12:40 PM ET
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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In Beijing, there was no clear way for the demand—now
augmented by Olympic tourists—to meet and do business with
the supply. The thousands of Americans and other foreigners
who got fleeced by a fake ticketing Web site were in the
vanguard of a customer base that's been cut off from reliable
information. (Remember: Officially, all the tickets are sold out.)
A Chinese friend told me that a friend of his bought tickets to the
U.S.-China men's basketball preliminary for 3,000 RMB
($437)—a bargain, given that some sellers were asking for
10,000 or 20,000 RMB. The day of the game, though, the tickets
never appeared. I'd given up on the U.S.-China game after an ad
on Craigslist led to an offer of a ticket for $600, from a seller
who said he had the tickets with him "in London/United
Kingdom" and that we could do the sale "via TNT total safe and
secure for both of us."
I originally had visions of avoiding the scramble. For the games,
I am registered with the Beijing International Media Center, the
uncredentialed reporters' off-site press center. Besides good
deals on Baxi ice cream bars and screenings of Chinese movies,
the center has a ticketing office—but after I'd prepared a
conservative list of events I might like to see, the center
announced that reporters could buy only one ticket for the whole
Olympics, from a limited daily supply.
I decided to try for men's basketball. On the evening of Aug. 6,
the next day's inventory sheet listed one seat for the Aug. 14 late
session, when the U.S. would be playing. The office would start
handing out numbers to journalists at 8:30 in the morning.
At 4:30 a.m., I crawled out of bed and hailed a cab in the dark.
Only a skeleton crew of volunteers was at the media center, most
of them dozing. But two bleary-eyed Chinese reporters were
sitting outside the office, a young man and a woman. What were
they there to buy? I asked. Swimming, the woman said.
Basketball, the young man said.
When did you get here? I asked. Three a.m., he said.
Well, there were always the less glamorous events. A friend had
bought extra tickets to the rowing preliminaries, far out in the
countryside in Shunyi District, where we spent the first
afternoon of Olympic competition squinting at a hazy stretch of
water that resembled a parking lot. Another friend had extras for
women's soccer, a Nigeria-Brazil/Canada-Sweden doubleheader,
so close to the action that our view of the far goal was partly
obstructed by the canopy over the teams' benches. The media
center announced a backup program to sell remainders of its
remainders, which allowed me to buy a pair of tickets to a men's
field-hockey match between China and Korea. (Connoisseurs of
the amateur competitive spirit take comfort: Men's field hockey
is one event in which the Chinese sports machine has not built
up a merciless gold-medal-quality program.)
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Another reporter with a BIMC credential told me he'd found a
Liverpudlian scalper outside the boxing site at Workers'
Gymnasium. He'd bought a ticket that day and gotten a number
to call for more.
Workers' Gymnasium is a short hop from home, so I tried my
own luck on the next free afternoon. A thick-necked tout with
receding ginger hair—the very same scalper, to go by the
description—found me as soon as I stepped out of the cab. His
friend had a ticket to the current session for 500 RMB, he said. I
told him that sounded too high, and we talked shop for a while.
There were dozens of scalpers in town for the occasion, he said,
and the resale market was busy. The cops were no trouble at all.
Swimming was tough to get, he said, as was anything with a lot
of Aussies in it. It was important to get good seats, he said,
because some of the upper-level stuff was terrible.
We settled on 300 RMB, and another Brit swung by and handed
over the ticket. This was, I discovered, a 900 percent markup
over face value. Inside the arena, ushers and signs directed me
up and up again—to a seat in the second row from the top,
literally behind the ring of national flags hanging from the
arena's upper rim. When I lifted my eyes from the ring far
below, I was staring at the bottom halves of the flags of Ireland
and, unsettlingly, Georgia. The video screen was up there, too.
On it, a boxer's uniform read ENIARKU, because I was seeing
the back side of the projection.
Through the grapevine, word was spreading of another option: a
Web site called CoSport that was an authorized reseller for
bodies including the United States and European Union. People
had bought tickets through it, and they'd actually arrived. I
logged onto the site on a day that China's best boxer, Zou
Shiming, had a bout scheduled. The layout was primitive, the
language was shaky, and my browser warned me that the site
certificate might not be valid. I called someone who had told me
about CoSport—it had really worked? She had gotten into an
event with the ticket? It had; she had. There was a ticket
available for Zou's session. I typed in my credit-card information
and crossed my fingers.
The extent of the scam appeared to be the $30 service charge on
an $18 ticket. My seat was low down in the first section, by the
red corner. I could see everything. If I turned my head and
squinted way up, I could even see my previous seat.
But CoSport presented less a solution than a new variant of the
same struggle. Tickets would appear in the inventory, then
disappear when I clicked on them. Events would switch from
unavailable to available to unavailable again. For hours, the site
would announce that it had reached the "maximim number of
users" and freeze me out. But then one morning, after I had all
but given up on the site, I was suddenly able to rack up single
tickets for three straight days: Chinese men's basketball, Chinese
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women's basketball, and a full day of the elusive Ping-Pong.
Ping-Pong!
"It's the Olympics," Geeter explains. "I'm not going to run on the
court every five seconds, you know what I mean?"
And for those who dread e-commerce, there is always charity.
Thanks to the botched, apply-for-everything lottery system, lots
of people have more tickets than they can use. While I waited for
a friend to join me at field hockey, I slouched in the sun on a
block of concrete near the gate. Two separate passers-by took
pity and offered me their extras.
In comparison with, say, the public-address person at the Bird's
Nest, Geeter is not anywhere close to subdued. My best
approximation of the contrast between their announcing styles:
The hobo technique is less likely to work for the popular venues.
But I still have hope for getting into the Water Cube. One of my
wife's co-workers discovered that our neighborhood hotel is an
authorized ticket reseller for Kazakhstan's Olympic committee
and was somehow able to buy aquatic event tickets there. After
Ping-Pong, I think I'll swing by and see if the Kazakhs have any
to spare.
From: Jacob Leibenluft
Subject: The Science of DJing an Olympic Beach Volleyball Match
Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 4:45 PM ET
Attending beach volleyball matches in Beijing raises a few
inevitable questions: How is it possible for the wave to circle an
arena five full times? Where do all those perky, underdressed
Chinese cheerleaders come from? Did I really just hear "Pretty
Fly (for a White Guy)" at the Olympic Games?
To solve these mysteries, I turned to a man named "Geeter." If
you've watched any of NBC's beach volleyball coverage, you've
probably heard Geeter, who in civilian life goes by the less
dude-tacular name of Chris McGee, shouting in the background.
During matches featuring American teams, Geeter serves as the
emcee—a role he often plays on the U.S. professional tour—
introducing the players before the games begin and pumping up
the crowd once play is underway.
Geeter isn't a typical Olympic announcer. For one thing, he is
unabashedly partisan: Although he tries to appeal to fans of both
teams, he's close friends with most of the Americans in the
tournament. (He was one of the first people Misty May-Treanor
and Kerri Walsh hugged after their semifinal victory Tuesday.)
Although I've yet to hit rhythmic gymnastics, it's also safe to say
that he's the only announcer in Beijing who does the worm as
part of his official duties. He has done the worm less frequently
than usual in Beijing, however, prompting some friends to ask
whether he is being "subdued."
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Bird's Nest guy (speaking in clipped tone): In
Lane 4, a semifinalist in the 2007 World
Championships, Nevin Yanit of Turkey.
Geeter: And now. (Dramatic pause.) Please
welcome. (Longer dramatic pause.) The firsttime O-o-o-lympian R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-en-a-a-ta-a-a.
At the Olympics, Geeter has been forced to adapt to a nonManhattan Beach audience. The Chinese have become
something of a beach volleyball powerhouse in the past few
years, particularly in the women's game, where two of the top
four teams in the world are Chinese. But the sport was birthed in
California, and every Olympic gold medal has been won by a
team hailing from Australia, Brazil, or Southern California.
Beijing, on the other hand, doesn't have a beach and didn't have
a stop on the sport's international tour until 2004.
Of course, novice fans aren't unique to Beijing or to beach
volleyball: It's not like there was a huge handball fan base in
Atlanta. In fact, during every Olympics since beach volleyball's
debut at the 1996 Games, there have been wide-eyed news
stories (like this one, I suppose) about fans' reactions to this
strange new sport. The game's perpetual newness makes sense,
though. As opposed to every other Olympic sport, beach
volleyball imposes its peculiar style and culture—the California
slang, the skimpy uniforms—on the Games rather than
succumbing to the Games' own austere, self-important ethos.
In Beijing, Geeter has proved willing to meet the Olympic spirit
halfway. When a point ends, he speaks for only half as long as
usual—maybe five seconds instead of 10—to give his Chinese
counterpart the chance to rile up the crowd as well. (The two
announcers tend to say roughly the same thing, although Geeter
gets a little more animated.) In this brief window, Geeter says
something, anything to get the crowd cheering. ("This is a tough
ticket to get! Let me hear you enjoy yourselves!") In a nod to the
audience's unfamiliarity with typical beach volleyball parlance,
he's cut down on AVP lingo—you don't hear much talk of a "UC
state" or a "Kong." Rather, he ingratiates himself by dropping in
the omnipresent Chinese cheer jia you—literally, "more fuel"—
several times a match.
And then there's the music, which fills any time that's left over.
The song selection at Chaoyang Park suggests that the DJs have
ransacked a teenager's Case Logic from 1998. Reel Big Fish,
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Blink-182, and Smashmouth are in heavy rotation, along with
"Uptown Girl" and (strangely) John Philip Sousa marches. (Most
out-of-place song: "Sweet Home Alabama.")
The man who picks the music is an Austrian named Michael
Staribacher, who goes by DJ Stari. Compared with Geeter, DJ
Stari is an Olympic veteran—he worked the Athens Games after
his efforts at a tournament in Klagenfurt were deemed a huge
success. (You can check out the Klagenfurt playlist here.)
Staribacher acknowledges that other DJs might look down on his
Olympics gig as insufficiently "artistic," and he confesses he
isn't playing his personal favorite tunes. Back home in Vienna,
he works gigs like MTV's Spring Jam, and his own tastes run
toward punk and hip-hop. (Check out "DJ Stari's persönliche
Top 10.") But as DJ Stari tells it, there's science behind his
selections.
First, cast aside any concerns about whether a song is hopelessly
dated. (Case in point: "Who Let the Dogs Out?") All that matters
is that the tune has a beat that can attract the crowd's attention in
fewer than six seconds. Next, choose a few songs that reflect
what's happening on the court. An ace is followed by "U Can't
Touch This"; a block gets a remix of the German rap "Mein
Block." Star players also get their own songs: Big plays by Kerri
Walsh are occasionally followed by a clip from the power ballad
"Carrie." (Tom Bläumauer, an Austrian who serves as the event's
other emcee, has compiled a list of 1,100 or so beach volleyballappropriate songs.) Finally, DJ Stari relies heavily on songs
filled with nonsense language that can be picked up just as easily
by Brazilians or Beijingers. Hence the popularity of the "hi de
ho" sequence of "Minnie the Moocher" or the "yeah-eah-eahs"
of "Shout."
During longer timeouts, DJ Stari is at the mercy of the Beach
Babes. The cheerleading troupe, the result of an unlikely
collaboration between China and the Canary Islands, plays
whatever tunes they've selected for their routines, irrespective of
the Stari seal of approval. The cheerleaders are typically joined
by inflatable Fuwa, who seem to specialize in four different
moves: shimmying, pelvic thrusting, walking around aimlessly,
and falling over helplessly. For all the attention they've received,
the reaction the cheerleaders get isn't all that different from your
typical NBA dance team: a combination of leering, bemusement,
and apathy. In fact, they appear to be at their most effective in
encouraging propagation of the wave—or, as venues in Beijing
insist on calling it, the "Mexican wave"—fostering levels of
participation that would make Krazy George proud.
The cheerleaders, the Fuwa, the '90s music, and Geeter's
exhortations combine to create an environment that seems bestsuited for a hyperactive 12-year-old. Still, it seems to work,
though the crowd is admittedly far more responsive at the 9 p.m.
matches than at the 9 a.m. contests that are closing out the
tournament. In my brief experience, the beach volleyball venue
is one of the few settings where the crowd gets loud even when a
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Chinese team isn't competing. Maybe the fans really love Blink182. Or maybe it's because the beer costs just 75 cents.
five-ring circus
Remember When Decathletes Were
Cool?
Why the world stopped caring about track and field's most grueling event.
By Robert Weintraub
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 4:16 PM ET
Once upon a time, no greater authority than King Gustav of
Sweden proclaimed Jim Thorpe "the world's greatest athlete"
after the Native American superjock won the decathlon in the
1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. In the middle of the 20th
century, decathletes such as Bob Mathias and Rafer Johnson
became superstars after winning the gold medal. And who could
forget—although, given his recent reality-show foray, we might
wish to—Bruce Jenner pounding down the home stretch in
Montreal in all of his red-white-and-blue glory?
But in the last few decades, the decathlon has lost its spot as the
Olympics' glamour sport. It's now in the middle of the pack,
somewhere between synchronized diving and the women's air
rifle. Quick, can you name the American who won silver in
Athens and is favored to win gold in Beijing? Thought not. His
name is Bryan Clay, and despite his presence in a Morgan
Freeman-narrated Visa ad, he's pretty far down the list of
athletes NBC wants you to care about, behind several beach
volleyball players and about 800 gymnasts.
What explains the decathlon's precipitous fall? Along with every
event in track and field, there's a one-word reason for the decline
in popularity: drugs. Clay, like most track stars—and pretty
much any athletic overachiever, for that matter—is tainted by
the cheating of others, from Ben Johnson to Marion Jones. (To
wit: Slate's Jacob Leibenluft reports from Beijing that mere
seconds after Usain Bolt's latest record-setting track
performance, fans at the Bird's Nest were openly speculating
about whether he's a product of doping.) Frank Zarnowski, a
decathlon historian and blogger, told me that everyone in the
sport believes Clay is clean as a whistle, and he offers himself up
for aggressive testing. Nevertheless, track and field is, like the
Tour de France, forever sullied, carrying a "yes, but" after every
world record and gold medal.
But what about the decathlon specifically? Certainly, the specter
of 1992 looms over the event. That year, Reebok's Don Drapers
decided to spotlight a pair of American decathletes, Dan O'Brien
and Dave Johnson, building up their rivalry with a series of ads
that promised the pair would "battle it out in Barcelona for the
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title of world's greatest athlete." Unfortunately, the ads started
running before the U.S. Olympic Trials, where O'Brien blew the
pole vault and didn't make the team. The ads instantly became a
national joke, giving a legion of bad stand-ups the opportunity to
yelp, "Who are the ad wizards who came up with that one?"
O'Brien rebounded to win the gold in Atlanta, but the damage
had been done—he'd be forever known as the guy who screwed
it up in 1992.
Back in Bruce Jenner's day, Olympic stardom came more
organically. The 1976 decathlon champ appeared on the front of
a Wheaties box a year after he won gold, not as part of a
marketing campaign in the run-up to the games. These days,
stars are made before the Olympics even begin. In the 16 years
since O'Brien's flameout, sponsors have backed away from a
sport with so much opportunity for failure. A gymnast can miss
out on gold if she falls off the beam. A decathlete can lose if he
makes one tiny error in any of 10 different events.
Another reason for the sport's declining Q rating, according to
Frank Zarnowski, is that fans like to see world records get
smashed. On account of the size of the field and the event's
grueling schedule, breaking the decathlon world record is
virtually impossible at the Olympics. With approximately 40
entrants, the two days of decathlon competition are a grueling 9
a.m. to 9 p.m. slog, with the occasional burst of activity. The
Olympic champion is the athlete who best manages the endless
waiting for his next jump, throw, or run—in other words, the
world's greatest athlete needs to have the world's greatest iPod
playlist.
Compare that with the conditions under which Roman Šebrle of
the Czech Republic set the current world record in 2001. At a
meet featuring only a dozen entrants, Šebrle was asked by the
meet director how long he needed before he was ready for the
next event. Šebrle replied, "90 minutes," and it was granted.
Needless to say, the Olympic decathletes won't be competing
under such boutique circumstances. (One oft-cited reason for the
sport's decline is the spectacularly confusing scoring system.
That rationale is completely bogus. For one thing, the point
system was just as arcane when the sport was at its zenith. For
another, gymnastics just introduced an impossible-to-follow
scoring methodology, and that hasn't seemed to hurt Shawn
Johnson and Nastia Liukin's popularity.)
Bryan Clay in particular has another huge problem. His worst
event is the 1,500 meters, the decathlon's 10th and final discipline
and the one performance guaranteed to be shown in its entirety
by NBC. Viewers who tune in to get a look at this incredible allaround athlete will see him loping through the four laps like a
weekend jogger. Mind you, this will still be good enough to
bring home the gold, should Clay be leading after nine events.
But it will hardly be an inspirational sight, a la Jenner, who ran
across the finish line and into the warm embrace of an American
flag.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
If Clay does break through, it will likely be thanks to the futility
of his teammates. One of the keys to Jenner's popularity was the
fact that the U.S. team had a poor meet, until Bruce came along
with a sterling performance that earned him a career as the star
of cheesy commercials. Just as in Montreal, the U.S. track team
is so far "getting its ass handed to it," as Zarnowski delicately
puts it. If this keeps up, perhaps Clay will get some honors by
default—and a larger commercial presence than a single, lightly
rotated Visa ad. Sure, that's a backhanded way to gain
recognition as the world's greatest athlete, but at this point the
decathlon will take anything it can get.
five-ring circus
Newborn Demigod
Contemplating the media presence of Michael Phelps.
By Troy Patterson
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 8:06 PM ET
Earlier this week, in the immediate wake of Michael Phelps' gold
rush, Today host Matt Lauer sat the swimmer down for a chat.
This was a conversation between a newsreader recently named
to the International Best-Dressed List and an athlete so singleminded in his pusuit of greatness that he never fails, when
wearing anything other than a swimsuit, to look notably awful.
All the American media have their eyes on a newborn demigod,
and he drapes himself iin garments best suited for a quick hop to
7-Eleven.
That Phelps cannot dress himself is part of his gentle charm. He
is not your average sloppy 23-year-old. Rather, he seems to have
stopped developing, in some respects, at about the age he started
training seriously and thus resembles a sloppy 11-year-old
superhuman. Not without poise, Phelps has declared events
related to his record-breaking string of performances "cool,"
"very cool," "neat," and "really neat." In the glow of his triumph,
he faces the camera with something more interesting than real
humility (which is pious) or false modesty (which is dull). He's
working a kind of confounded ecstasy, ducking his head as if
he's slightly shy to feel so good about himself, easing his way
into the idea of not trying to stifle his grins.
Matt (loafers, no socks) said to Michael (flip-flops): "She seems
to be the perfect combination of raw emotion and quiet
strength." He was speaking of Debbie Phelps, from whose loins
the hero sprang. Where in the world did Lauer develop his
control of tone? He was speaking in a way that implied he felt a
fellow parent's admiration in his heart and yet also intimated
dollar signs in his company-man's eyes.
What a mother! Up in the stands, huddled with the interviewers,
wherever she reared her bangs, you could count on Debbie
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Phelps to bubble without burbling over. She simmered low and
steady all week, the anti-stage mom. Johnson & Johnson,
recognizing the marketing potential of the woman's off-the-chart
huggability, has named her the official "Baby Mom" of the
Games, and today's papers find endorsement consultants floating
the idea that mother and child would be well-equipped to do a
Campbell's Chunky soup deal.
The Wall Street Journal reports that that swimmer's agent has
thus far fielded offers for movies, books, bobblehead dolls,
commemorative coins, and car rims—though, strangely, the
Journal thinks it odd that a man in Omaha "offered to sculpt a
statue of the chiseled swimmer." Isn't our admiring his body half
the point of his celebrity? Does not his Sports Illustrated cover
shot—which dares the viewer to resist imagining where Phelps'
pubic hair should be—suggest that SI wants to put him out to
stud? And what about the most important endorsement a citizen
can make? Elsewhere on NBC, looking like crap opposite Brian
Williams—we could see up Phelps' shorts as far as the upper
thigh—the well-trained golden boy resisted committing to a
presidential candidate: "Ah, ah, dn, dah—I'm I'm not getting into
either side. ... Y'know, personally I do, but y'know, I just sort of
keep that to myself." His media-trained mind short-circuited for
a second there, but the message was clear: Michael Phelps is
selling himself as a superstar so apolitical as to make Tiger
Woods look like Cassius Clay. U-S-A!
five-ring circus
Like Regular Ping-Pong, With
Concussions
In praise of doubles table tennis.
By Robert Weintraub
Monday, August 18, 2008, at 4:18 PM ET
As the creator and producer of The Asian Basketball Show, The
Asian Football Show, and The Asia Sport Show, I spent a large
chunk of my life watching sports in China. Naturally, that meant
an undue amount of table tennis, or, as us less highfalutin types
call it, Ping-Pong. Despite being around the sport quite a bit, I
remain unable to explain its appeal or, for that matter, to execute
a spin serve.
One thing I do know is that I've always preferred doubles to
singles. Doubles table tennis is so entertaining because it defies
the laws of geometry. As anyone who's played in a rec room
fully understands, a Ping-Pong table simply isn't big enough to
accommodate four people. The key skill that every doubles team
must master has nothing to do with shot-making or defense.
Rather, it's having the agility to get the hell out of the way of
your partner.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
In doubles table tennis, partners must alternate shots. That means
the goal of any team is to sow confusion in the enemy—to make
it so the player whose turn it is to hit has to get through his or
her partner to do so. The highlight of a doubles match is when
partners kick, trip, or smash into one another. I once saw a
Malaysian duo knock heads so hard the match was delayed
nearly half an hour. Also fun: when one player swings for the
ball and hits his or her partner instead.
Sadly, at the Olympic level, the players are too accomplished for
this to happen. Maybe it's just as well, then, that doubles has
been eliminated as an Olympic event. In its place this year is a
team format pitting different countries against one another; just
as in Davis Cup tennis, there's only one doubles match involved.
(I got a long explanation from the International Table Tennis
Federation explaining the reasoning behind the switch, but it
seems to boil down to ensuring that other nations besides China
win some medals for a change.)
In search of my doubles fix, I tuned in to Sunday's women's
team final. (You can watch it online here—fast-forward to
around the 1 hour, 25 minute mark to see the doubles.)
Unsurprisingly, China was the winner, devouring Singapore 3-0
for the gold. One reason that China is so strong doubleswise is
that its players are quick enough to play side by side. The
women's team of Zhang Yi Ning and Guo Yue (ranked No. 1
and No. 2 in the world in singles) is a righty-lefty combo. The
two move in unison with such precision that they're seldom
caught in a poor position. Most other teams, including
Singapore, use a circular (or "stack") formation, with one hitter
stepping forward as the other circles back and away from the
table. Against the Chinese, the stack toppled, with the women
from Singapore forced to lunge futilely from side to side as
Zhang and Guo lorded over the table.
Note that the Singapore duo of Wang Yue Gu and Li Jia Wei
isn't actually from Singapore—they're both Chinese nationals
who were recruited to play abroad. The $500,000 they'll earn for
delivering the island nation's first medal since 1960 should ease
the pain of losing. Since the Chinese—the ones who haven't
been exiled from the mainland, at least—are so much better than
everyone else, doubles in particular can take on a metronomic
feel. In the men's gold medal doubles match, the German duo of
Timo Ball and Christian Suss frustrated the Chinese pair of
Wang Liqin and Wang Hao for a while with excellent returns
and aggressive shots. But Wang and Wang soon began ruthlessly
aiming at the player who had just hit the ball, leaving the
Germans with far too much ground to cover.
Zhang and Guo and Wang and Wang are so far ahead of the
pack because they've lived nothing but Ping-Pong their entire
lives. Imagine the kid down your block who played every day in
his basement, then multiply that by 100 billion. As is well
known by now, China's centralized sports system identifies
players with talent from a young age and sends them away to
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train. Table-tennis players in particular live Spartan existences
that make them robotically good. But the lifestyle they lead
leaves little room for enjoying their success.
The expectation of unbroken Chinese success makes the sport's
stars unusually dour, even in victory. The only smile I saw
crease the Chinese women's faces came after Singapore was
dispatched and the gold medal secured. Should anyone stumble,
the repercussions will be great. As China Daily, Beijing's
English-language newspaper, opined, "With four gold medals on
offer in China's de facto national sport, table tennis, any man or
woman who fails to live up to expectations on the blue tables
will have to endure some degree of private, or public,
humiliation." Now go out there and have fun!
The Chinese have left little to chance in their quest for tabletennis glory. Think of the NBA banning Yao Ming, Dirk
Nowitzki, and Pau Gasol to ensure the United States a basketball
gold, and you get a sense of the paranoia that shapes Chinese
table tennis. Indeed, the national team has been in seclusion for a
year—no foreigners have even been allowed to play in the
Chinese SuperLeague for fear of intelligence-gathering. That
ban on foreigners probably didn't upset Germany's Ball—
according to the MSNBC commentators, his one year in the
SuperLeague was marked by 1,000-mile train rides for matches
and coaches who wouldn't let him drink water during games.
Zhang, who speaks her mind far more than the average Chinese
athlete, has said that if she had to do it over again she wouldn't
have taken up the sport, such is the pressure to succeed. While
this nationwide obsession sounds crazy to our nation of beerpong players, one benefit of covering sports abroad is learning to
be open-minded about what other cultures deem important.
China got so hard-core about table tennis because the ITTF was
one of the first international sporting bodies to recognize
Communist China in the early 1950s. So even though my
preferred brand of demolition-derby doubles isn't on display, and
the Chinese are making a mockery of the competition, there's
something remarkable about watching a standing-room-only
crowd go nuts for its favorite sport. It would be a lot more fun,
though, if I could see just one big smashup ...
food
I'll Have the Banana Pancake Flambé
Stonehenge
The creepy joy of cooking with Vincent Price.
By Paul Collins
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 10:21 AM ET
innocuous. What's frightening about noodle casserole? Why,
nothing ... except when it's cooked by Vincent Price.
For those who know Price from classic 1950s horror films like
The Fly and The House of Wax—or who were imprinted with his
Batman cameos and Saturday-morning commercials for Stay
Alive and Hangman—it's odd to discover that he and his wife,
Mary, were also gourmets. Thanks to tutorial LPs from the
1970s, you can still find clips of Vincent discoursing upon
Viennese stuffed eggs floating about online; and the inevitable
Youtube mashup assures that you'll never hear the words chunky
peanut butter the same way again. But the Prices' culinary fame
rests primarily upon their 1965 collection, A Treasury of Great
Recipes, which culled recipes and reproduced menus from top
restaurants around the world. Everyone who owns this volume
swears by it for one reason above all others: The Treasury is a
shockingly (terrifyingly?) good example of 1960s cuisine.
Not the tastiest era for cooking, you say? Perhaps. But the charm
of old cookbooks is that while only die-hards would seriously try
cooking from Fanny Farmer or Mrs. Beeton, or even a first
edition Larousse, each remains a perfect time capsule of its era.
When Hannah Glasse tells you in 1747 how to prepare Pigeons
Transmogrified, how can one not conjure up a scene of ginsoaked cooks and crooked alchemists? It's that same sense of
time travel that jacks up the price of Treasury to $40 or $50 a
copy. Thrill to kodachromes of Vincent brooding in a wine
cellar, having bricked a victim alive in its walls! Scream to the
exquisite kitsch of the Prices in formal wear, serving champagne
in their RV: The campy meets the campsite!
Flipping through illustrations will, of course, take you only so
far. To truly travel back requires a day at home of cooking à la
Vincent. My wife and I—she being the Mary to my Vincent—
began our day of all-Price cooking with one of his great culinary
loves: pancakes. They'd already come a long way from the days
of a 1935 cookbook like Someone to Dinner, where the recipe
for crêpes Savannah reads, in full, "Pancakes, the ordinary size,
served with hot maple syrup." No such fainthearted stuff for
Vincent: The name Banana Pancake Flambé Stonehenge alone
murders all culinary competitors. You wrap sautéed bananas into
crêpes, vigorously stab strips of bacon atop them, and flambé it
all in banana liqueur. It's a dish that rewards sleepy
incompetence: If you don't flambé it properly, the pancakes
immediately soak up copious amounts of hooch, leaving you
woozily imitating lines from The Abominable Dr. Phibes while
you twirl a villainous moustache and choose your victims for
lunch.
And lunch was easily plotted. As it turns out, Price was rather
partial to ballpark hot dogs, and the full-page photo of the horror
icon at Dodger Stadium is all the reason you need to fire up the
grill. "There is nothing more soul-satisfying than the first
succulent bite into the juicy frankfurter," he writes—and if you
A cookbook titled A Treasury of Great Recipes sounds
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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can read that without hearing it in Price's most fey voice, you're
beyond hope.
His own recipe for stuffed frankfurters is straightforward—slit
franks down the middle, lay on "sharp cheese" and sautéed
onions, and then wind around a strip of bacon. Price is on the
mustard side of the great condiment schism, so in the interest of
period detail, we sampled franks with the holy mustard trinity of
1965: French's Yellow, Gulden's Brown, and Grey Poupon. And
while our other period choice of oily melted cheddar didn't quite
work—you might as well use a more complex melting cheese
like aged Gruyère—Grey Poupon was clearly the right choice in
condiments. Plus, you get to imagine Vincent Price asking for it
between limousines. (And if you can't imagine Price asking for
mustard, Stephen Fry will do it for you quite brilliantly.)
As we paged through the Treasury and sought out our dinner, we
drank Price's recipe for the Hotel Hana-Maui's Hanaho rum
punch. A mix of lime juice, pineapple juice, crushed ice, and
dark rum, topped with a maraschino cherry, it's to be served in
zombie glasses. (Need you ask why?) It's refreshing, if lacking
in the blandishments that our appletinied era has come to expect.
The presence of an orange wedge somehow gives it less the feel
of the tropics than that of a late breakfast gone to alcoholic
dissipation.
A dinner of Tagliatelle Verdi Gratinate al Prosciutto proved to
be a period piece indeed. It's a green noodle casserole recipe that
Price procured from Harry's Bar in Venice, and though the
prosciutto cuts through the heavy sauce with a savory saltiness,
it's still an exceedingly rich dish. Price's sauce essentially calls
on you to make béchamel and then add an unhealthy dollop of
cream. Putting away an entire portion of this gives you a sense
of utter satiety that says: I will die of a heart attack during the
Ford administration.
But then, each era, I suppose, has it own concept of richness.
These days we pack away more calories than Price's generation
did, but to our tongues it is their food that feels decadent and
heavy-handed. Nowhere is this paradox better demonstrated than
the recent BBC series Supersizers Go ..., which marches
television presenters Giles Coren and Sue Perkins through seven
days of period food. Watching them stagger through an
Elizabethan week in a haze of alcoholic hippocras, overdose on
mutton, and nearly become diabetic on marchpane—all while
suffering crushing coffee-deprived headaches—is a joy that
American audiences can still see hints of only online. But the
joke's on us: At the end of the week, both hosts were several
kilos lighter.
We finished the day, inevitably, with our own era's dietary
weakness: dessert. A Treasury recipe for Scandinavian fruit soup
sounds promising in the abstract; closer inspection, however,
reveals that it consists of stewed prunes and apricots with a
ladling of thick cream. I don't know how Scandinavians occupy
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
themselves after dinner, but traditionally stewed prunes and
cream were served in brothels. The ghastly little fruit was
considered efficacious against syphilis. Alas, these days the only
thing eating a prune prevents is the desire to eat more prunes.
Yet the accompanying Swedish cream, a slightly lumpy eggbased concoction that lands somewhere between English custard
and rice pudding, was simply lovely. Served over fresh plums
and apricots, it would be just right.
After a day of Price cuisine, I'll admit I was left with a nagging
question that cookbooks rarely produce: Where's the horror?
Where's the Vincent Price in this Vincent Price cookbook?
Beyond a pressed duck worthy of the "The Pit and the
Pendulum"—it involves, if you must know, pressing a duck—
the Treasury gives off a luridly convivial glow. Like Price
reciting from Edgar Allen Poe, I'm afraid that for really
horrifying stuff you must resort to reading the Victorians. My
personal favorite, What To Do With Cold Mutton (1867),
includes such recipes as Green Pea Soup Without Peas and a
hashed calf's head that instructs: "Dish your hash nicely, and
garnish round the edge with brain-cakes."
Brain-cakes, dear reader: Imagine crab cakes, but made with
brains. Now there's your Vincent Price recipe.
foreigners
Breaking Away
Looking for the next South Ossetia.
By Joshua Kucera
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 6:55 AM ET
Late one Saturday night last month, I found myself in a
Greenland bar conversing with an extremely drunken member of
the Royal Danish Navy. When he found out I was American, he
lurched over and shared his belief that the United States was
preparing to invade and annex Greenland, which currently
belongs to Denmark, though it is peacefully moving toward
independence. Washington, he explained, was worried about its
key missile-defense radar site in far northern Greenland and
didn't trust politicians in Denmark or Greenland to guarantee
continued American access.
"Of course, we know that the Danish military is a lot weaker
than the U.S. So you know who we'll have to call? Russia.
They're the only military that can stand up to the U.S. Think
about it," he said leaning into me, his breath reeking of Tuborg.
"Think about it." I thought about it, and it seemed like a pretty
improbable scenario. But back then, so did the return of the Cold
War over South Ossetia, a tiny separatist enclave in Georgia that
almost no one had heard of. After the events of the last two
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weeks, it behooves us to take another look at those obscure
regions around the world that could also explode into global
conflicts. Here's a list—in no particular order—of some of the
most dicey:
Nagorno-Karabakh: The former Soviet republics of the South
Caucasus—Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—lead the world
in separatist enclaves per square mile. Georgia has South Ossetia
and Abkhazia and only regained control of Adjara, on the
Turkish border, in 2004.
Nagorno-Karabakh (population 192,000, capital Stepanakaert) is
legally part of Azerbaijan, but in the early 1990s, ethnic
Armenians wrested control of the territory in a bloody war and
now retain de facto power, propped up by funds from Armenia.
No one recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh as a country, and
Azerbaijan—which has been getting rich on oil and natural gas
and now has a military budget three times the size of
Armenia's—sees the loss of its territory as a national humiliation
and often acts like it's spoiling for a fight. In March 2008, after a
skirmish between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces, Azerbaijan's
president said, "We are buying military equipment, aircraft,
ammunition, to be ready to liberate our territories. Our military
budget has reached $1.3 billion and will continue to grow. Force
is the decisive factor."
A resumption of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh could draw in
the United States and Europe, which have significant petroleum
interests in Azerbaijan: A Western consortium led by British
Petroleum developed the rich oil and gas fields in the Caspian
Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan. The presence of Western oil
companies rankles Russia, which sees the Caspian as its sphere
of influence. Further, the gas and oil are shipped through
Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean Sea and Europe via
pipelines that were built—with strong backing from the Bill
Clinton and George W. Bush administrations—for the exclusive
purpose of bypassing Russia.
Armenia, on the other hand, has been an ally of Russia for
centuries, and today the Armenian military relies heavily on aid
from Moscow. Russia—rightly—sees the U.S.-backed pipeline
as an attempt to weaken its thriving oil and gas business and
would certainly have an interest in disrupting it.
Transdniestria: This thin slice of Moldova (population 550,000
out of a total of 4.1 million, capital Tiraspol) broke away during
the chaotic last days of the Soviet Union and is home to a
majority of ethnic Russians. Moldovans, who are closely related
to neighboring Romanians, form a majority in Moldova proper.
As in South Ossetia, Russia uses Transdniestria to retain a little
bit of its empire as an outpost of authoritarianism and antiWestern politics. Transdniestria is home, for example, to the Che
Guevara School of Political Leadership, which the Economist
calls "a youth movement that aims to funnel Transdniestria's
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
young people into constructive activities such as NATObaiting." The territory hosts about 1,200 Russian troops.
Meanwhile, Moldova has been inching closer to the West,
expressing an interest in joining NATO and sending a handful of
troops to Iraq. The International Crisis Group sniffs that
"Moldova's relatively new commitment to a Western-oriented
policy is opportunistic rather than deep-rooted," but you can
make the same argument for Georgia, and that didn't stop it from
becoming Washington's best friend in the former Soviet Union.
The conflict in Transdniestria has been frozen for some time,
and there's not much at stake in Moldova, but if the situation
heated up, the United States and Russia would definitely take
opposing sides, and in the post-South Ossetia world, who
knows?
Xinjiang and Tibet: Both these provinces on China's western
border (population 19.6 million and 2.6 million, capitals Urumqi
and Lhasa, respectively) are home to ethnic minorities who are
becoming increasingly resentful of Beijing's attempts to
"develop" them by moving in ethnic Han Chinese and
suppressing separatist political activity.
Xinjiang is populated primarily by Muslim minorities, mainly
Uighurs, who have long had a contentious relationship with the
Chinese government. Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the
U.S. State Department put a shadowy Uighur nationalist group
on its official list of terrorist organizations, signaling support for
China's crackdown in Xinjiang. But since then, Uighur human
rights issues have become a cause célèbre in Washington. In the
last year, President Bush has met twice with Rebiyeh Kadeer, a
prominent Uighur activist. Like many Uighurs, Kadeer
advocates an independent Uighur state to be called East
Turkestan.
The situation in Xinjiang has gotten hotter recently, with attacks
against police and other security forces increasing over the last
few months. Presumably, the Afghanistan experience has soured
Washington on trying to undermine rival superpowers by
backing Muslims who may have Islamist sympathies. But
coming out on the side of the Uighurs in a more serious conflict
could be seen as a way to prove to the world that the United
States isn't anti-Islam, so you can't count it out.
Even the peaceable Tibetans have lately become more restive,
and it's hard to imagine more sympathetic freedom fighters.
Although most influential voices in the Pentagon advocate
engagement with China rather than confrontation, there is almost
certainly an anti-China Charlie Wilson wannabe somewhere in
Congress plotting to send weapons to the Tibetans.
Somaliland: Somalia has vexed the United States ever since
1993, when the U.S. military was kicked out of the country, tail
between its legs. Washington has long been concerned that the
world's most failed state could be harboring Islamist terrorists
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and has not been shy about getting involved again. The United
States established a base in neighboring Djibouti soon after Sept.
11 with the aim of keeping an eye on Somalia and trying to
minimize the chaos that it could spread around the region. When
Islamists with ties to al-Qaida took over Mogadishu in 2006,
Washington backed an Ethiopian invasion intended to restore a
feckless, but secular, government and conducted airstrikes
against al-Qaida suspects.
Lately, the Pentagon has bandied about the idea of using
Somaliland (population 2 million, capital Hargeysa), a relatively
stable breakaway territory on the northwestern tip of Somalia, as
a sort of foothold into the country. Somaliland is just one of
several breakaway territories in Somalia with its own
government, currency, and flag. Its friendly government and
relative stability have appealed to some in the U.S. military, who
argue that Washington should offer security assistance—i.e.,
training for its military—as a bulwark against Somalia proper.
The Pentagon believes that "Somaliland should be independent,"
one defense official told the Washington Post in December
2007. "We should build up the parts that are functional and box
in" Somalia's unstable regions, particularly around Mogadishu,
the official added. It's not clear that any other big power thinks
Somalia is worth the trouble, but we've seen before that Somalia
doesn't need help to cause problems for Washington.
Southern Sudan: This majority-black, Christian, Texas-sized
part of Sudan (population 7.5 million, capital Juba) won
substantial autonomy from the Arab Muslim-dominated central
government in 2005, ending a 22-year civil war. Darfur gets the
headlines, but Southern Sudan now has its own government,
calls itself New Sudan, and plans to hold a referendum in 2011
to decide whether to secede. To complicate matters, Southern
Sudan and Sudan proper don't agree on the border between the
two entities. Naturally, this border area is where a large portion
of Sudan's oil is buried. Southern Sudanese leaders accuse
Khartoum of cheating it out of oil revenues the two governments
are supposed to share and of taking too long to withdraw its
military from the border areas.
China's ties with the Sudanese government are notorious, and the
government of Southern Sudan is friendly with Washington.
There is internal dissension within Southern Sudan about
whether to seek independence or participate in the central
government. It's not clear if the United States would support
independence for the south, but there are enough points of
contention for this to get messy again and draw in the United
States and China.
Of course, this is only a partial list. It doesn't include Taiwan,
Dagestan, the Basque region, Catalonia, Gorkhaland, eastern
Bolivia, or Kurdistan. Not to mention disputed territories like
Gibraltar and Kashmir; peaceful independence movements like
those of Flanders, Scotland, or Vermont; or disputed sovereignty
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
over unpopulated territories like the Spratly Islands, the Hanish
Islands, Perejil, or Aksai Chin.
And then there's Greenland (population 56,000, capital Nuuk).
On Nov. 25, voters are expected to approve a referendum to
redefine the island's relationship with Denmark, its colonizer,
most likely leading to eventual independence. That will have
implications for the U.S. missile-defense site, as well as the
substantial oil and mineral reserves that are only just starting to
be exploited with the help of foreign companies. There's a lot at
stake. Think about it.
foreigners
"The Russians Moved Because They
Know You Are Weak"
The last two weeks have been a disaster for U.S. foreign policy.
By Daniel Benjamin
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 2:24 PM ET
Through the first days of the crisis in the Caucasus, all eyes have
been on the suffering of the Georgians and barbarism of the
Russians. Both are indisputable. But now it is also time to
recognize that the events of the last two weeks have been a
disaster for U.S. foreign policy.
Russia's invasion of its neighbor is a clear demonstration that the
United States-led effort to integrate post-Soviet Russia into the
West has failed. Whether the process can be restarted remains to
be seen, but in light of the events since Aug. 8, doing so soon
would be indecent.
Some will say that failure was inevitable. Great empires, the
argument goes, cannot suffer historic calamities, as the Soviet
Union did, and then quietly settle into the second rank of world
powers without further spasms of misbehavior. But three
successive U.S. administrations clearly maintained it was
possible.
Others will also argue that failure was due to a chronic inability
to recognize that America's post-Cold War aims and Russian
integration were irreconcilable. Specifically, the Russians could
never live with a post-Soviet settlement that saw most of their
satellite nations and many of the USSR's former republics enter
NATO and the European Union, and no amount of engagement
with Russia was going to make this pill digestible.
This is debatable but not provable. What is indisputably true is
that both the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations
worked to give the Russians a place at the table. The first
President Bush pledged no more NATO enlargement after a
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reunified Germany took its place in the alliance and went to
great lengths to avoid any post-Cold War triumphalism. Clinton
may have caused damage by reneging on the assurance of no
further NATO enlargement, but he more than made up for it
with the NATO-Russia Founding Act; the denuclearization of
Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus; the creation of the GoreChernomyrdin Commission, which created a forum for ongoing
close government cooperation; the invitation to join the G-7; and
vast amounts of time in close consultation with Boris Yeltsin.
Helping Russia in the 1990s was no easy task given the country's
internal chaos. There was also estrangement as the Kosovo crisis
unfolded in 1999. But that was nothing compared with the anger
that Moscow developed over its treatment at the hands of the
current Bush administration, which has long seemed to be
sending the message that Russian interests were simply of no
importance in Washington. To be fair, Russia wasn't being
singled out. The treatment of Russia was a piece of U.S. foreign
policy that appeared to be based on the notion that we would
reap better outcomes by pursuing what might be called the
diplomacy of no diplomacy.
With Russia, the story had its own distinctive twist, in which the
administration's remarkable inability ever to follow through on
anything was in high relief. There were numerous contacts at the
highest levels—Bush and Putin have met at least 25 times—but
the results were quite obviously nugatory. (What other
conclusion can one draw from the television images of Bush
chummily securing "assurances" from Putin at the Beijing
Olympics, only to have the Russian prime minister then show up
to direct the forces in Vladikavkaz?) The relationship
commenced with a blizzard of promises of ambitious common
effort, beginning with Bush's June 2001 first meeting with Putin.
There would be joint work on missile defense, energy, and
economic cooperation, and that would just be the start.
But as U.S. diplomats sought to put flesh on Bush's words and
build a better United States-Russia relationship, they found a
White House that could not be moved to do even the smallest
things. A case in point, they thought, was making good on the
promise to exempt Russia from the Cold War Jackson-Vanik
legislation.
Jackson-Vanik requires the government to certify to Congress
that Russia is allowing people to emigrate freely; in return,
Russia enjoys "most favored nation" trade status. The issue had
been all but a dead letter for years, since Moscow had long since
stopped regulating emigration, but the Cold War relic still
irritated the Kremlin. With no domestic opposition to removing
the annoyance of annual certification, all that was needed, State
Department and NSC officials determined in 2002, was four
phone calls to congressional leaders to make it happen. But they
found that getting the president to schedule the calls was
impossible, no matter how hard they tried. Now, 17 years after
the death of the Soviet Union—and 12 years after a wave of
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
750,000 Russian Jews moved to Israel—Jackson-Vanik lives,
and, extraordinarily, U.S. officials talk about it as something that
will be left in place to punish the Russians.
The Jackson-Vanik story is small and symbolic but typical of the
Bush administration's treatment of Russia. The landmarks were a
series of blows that convinced the Russians that their mighty
country was of piddling significance to Washington. When the
Bush administration unilaterally withdrew from the Antiballistic
Missile Treaty in 2001, the message to the Russians was that
their concerns were of no concern. When the United States went
ahead and, in the view of most of the world, invaded Iraq
without the endorsement of U.N. Security Council, the Russians
had to take this as a sign that the administration didn't give a
damn about the Security Council or Russia's status as a
permanent, veto-wielding member. The politicking over
independence for Kosovo, in which Russia demonstrated an
increasing cussedness in its refusal to deal with this obvious
inevitability, underscored that Russia's role in the global security
architecture was derisory.
The Bush administration may have thought the relationship with
Russia was important, but it never seemed to think that letting
the Russians win an issue, or even achieve a real compromise,
was a price worth paying. The final straws, it appears, were last
spring's headlong rush to offer Georgia and Ukraine each a
Membership Action Plan for NATO and the agreement to put
anti-missile-system components in the Czech Republic and
Poland, which Russia took to mean that it also had no say in the
evolution of the European security system. The NATO effort, in
particular, was hastily conceived, involved little consultation,
and was carried out without any thought for Russia's reaction.
The entirely justifiable rule that no outside party should have a
veto over another sovereign country's decision to join NATO
had morphed into a belief that no other nation's concerns (or at
least not Russia's) should receive a hearing or play any role in
the deliberations.
NATO enlargement has had a powerful, positive impact on
Europe's new democracies. But as one round has succeeded
another with seemingly diminishing forethought, it has also
become the crack cocaine of White House politics: There is
nothing like presiding over the entry of a new batch of young
republics into the world's most successful alliance to make a
chief executive look again like the Leader of the Free World.
The architects of the process in the Clinton administration
understood that each step forward required deeper engagement
with Russia—and Clinton himself spent long hours with Boris
Yeltsin, explaining, reassuring, and finding compensatory
avenues of cooperation. Since 2001, that recognition has melted
entirely. The White House's effort to get the action plan for
Georgia and Ukraine started in earnest just three weeks before
the Bucharest Summit began.
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The whole affair was so hastily concocted that it resulted in a
showdown between Germany and France on one side and the
United States and a bevy of eastern European countries on the
other. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who felt that Bush
had reneged on a pledge not to push for MAPs at Bucharest,
ultimately signed onto a communiqué that bizarrely specified
that the two applicants would not get MAP now but that "these
countries will become members of NATO." (A MAP, NATO has
always been at pains to emphasize, does not necessarily mean
that a country will become a member.) So the document sent two
messages. American officials delighted in this stronger-thanexpected signal to Georgia and Ukraine. Yet two months ago in
Moscow, Russian officials told me that they saw the
communiqué as demonstrating that their pressure on the
Europeans had worked and NATO had backed off.
As others have pointed out, the sad fact is that the administration
haphazardly started discovering the virtues of diplomacy in the
last two years—think of the turnarounds on Iran, North Korea,
and the Middle East peace process. In the relationship with
Russia, that has also been evident in the efforts to ameliorate
concerns over the Central European missile-defense program.
But the last quarter of an administration is the wrong time to
discover statecraft. And we are very far from the foreign policy
envisioned by Condoleezza Rice in her 2000 Foreign Affairs
manifesto for candidate Bush's foreign policy, which promised a
new focus on "comprehensive relationships with the big powers,
particularly Russia and China, that can and will mold the
character of the international political system." As Rice wrote
then but quickly seems to have forgotten, "These states are
capable of disruption on a grand scale, and their fits of anger or
acts of beneficence affect hundreds of millions of people."
There is another aspect of the current crisis that is made in
America. It was summed up by a European diplomat who told
me last week, "The Russians moved because they know you are
weak." He hardly needed to explain. With the U.S. military
overstretched and publicly complaining about not having enough
troops for Afghanistan, Moscow knew it had a propitious
moment. Had we not been so bogged down in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the White House—which has been watching this
crisis build for months—might have left a thousand or so troops
in Georgia after our last joint exercise or sent more warships for
a visit to the Black Sea. Few would argue that we should get into
a shooting match with the Russians over Georgia. But the
presence of U.S. forces on the ground, or even the knowledge
that there was a significant reserve available in Europe, might
have given the Russians pause or at least a healthy fear of
miscalculation. As it was, they had a perfect set of circumstances
for their strike.
Chalk it up as another indirect cost of the U.S. engagement in
Iraq—of the fact that for most of Bush's tenure in office, we
have had an Iraq policy, not a foreign policy. Dick Cheney often
repeats the platitude that "[t]errorist attacks are not caused by the
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness."
Too bad that Cheney and the administration could only think
about terrorists—of whom there were virtually none in Iraq—
and not all the other American interests that would be
undermined by palpable evidence of our weakness.
Now it will be left to Bush's successor to pick up the pieces. This
will be a challenge of contradictory imperatives. On the one
hand, the solution for a Russia that is insufficiently integrated
into the global system is one that is more integrated. On the
other, what Russia has done is obscene and cannot go
unpunished. Reconciling those two needs or handling them in a
sequence in which the first step doesn't doom the second will
require enormous deftness and diplomacy, if it is at all possible.
gabfest
The Olympic God Gabfest
Listen to Slate's review of the week in politics.
By Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz
Friday, August 22, 2008, at 12:01 PM ET
Listen to the Gabfest for Aug. 22 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
John Dickerson, David Plotz, and special guest Terence Samuel
talk politics. This week, the presidential race tightens going into
the Democratic Convention, chaos continues in the Caucasus,
and the Olympic Games wind down.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
The presidential race has tightened this week, with John McCain
moving within three points of Barack Obama in some polls for a
statistical tie. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows Obama
slightly ahead while the latest Reuters/Zogby poll shows
McCain taking a lead over his Democratic rival.
McCain provided an opening for Obama this week when, during
an interview, McCain could not remember how many houses he
owns.
David points out that one of the big questions for the Democratic
Convention, getting underway on Monday, is how the Clintons
will behave. The convention presents a major opportunity for the
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Obama camp to show party unity heading into the November
elections.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
This week, President George W. Bush began talking about
removing Russia from the so-called G-8. His call comes
following Russia's invasion of Georgia. David mentions Daniel
Gross' piece outlining the strong economic ties Russia has with
Western nations and how this diminishes the possibility of a
violent confrontation with the United States.
Barack Obama is being attacked by some Republicans, and even
Democrats, for taking his vacation in Hawaii.
David mentions that he has watched the 1984 movie Red Dawn a
number of times recently; he finds interesting parallels between
the movie's Cold War paranoia and the current situation in
Eastern Europe.
The just-released New York Times best-selling book The Obama
Nation attacks Barack Obama and his presidential candidacy.
Critics have leveled charges that the book is a political hatchet
job on Obama and is full of errors.
David insists that books critical of Barack Obama are not a
major concern but simply a part of a political campaign. And he
says all politics is dirty, so such things should just be expected.
The three discuss the amazing performance of athletes from
Jamaica, who have struck gold in this year's Summer Olympics.
In particular, David says seeing sprinter Usain Bolt run is like
watching a god, while Terry says watching Shelly-Ann Fraser
run is more like watching someone fly.
John McCain has been talking tough concerning the recent
military skirmish between Russia and Georgia. He says
European NATO members should reconsider Georgia's
admission to the alliance as a way to stop Russian aggression.
John remembers an argument between William F. Buckley and
Gore Vidal at the 1968 Democratic Convention. The discussion
took place during a series of debates between the two men
carried by ABC television.
David talked about the Russian-Georgian conflict in terms of the
Olympics. The two countries have met in several events at the
Games, including in women's beach volleyball, which was won
by Georgia. David pointed out that the players for Georgia were
not even native-born (although they are from Brazil and not
Argentina, as David said).
Terence discusses a speech given by Sen. Hubert Humphrey at
the 1948 Democratic Convention. He says that, in some ways,
Humphrey's speech on civil rights started a process that has led
to Obama's nomination.
David chatters about a battle underway in San Francisco over the
installation of dedicated roadway lanes for bikers.
Emily chatters about the conviction of Osama Bin Laden's
driver, Salim Hamdan, by a U.S. military jury and remarks on
the government's statements that even after Hamdan has
completed serving his term, he may still be held as an enemy
combatant.
Posted by Dale Willman on Aug. 15 at 4:22 p.m.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
gabfest@slate.com . (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Aug. 8, 2008
Posted by Dale Willman on Aug. 22 at 12:13 p.m.
Listen to the Gabfest for Aug. 8 by clicking the
arrow on the audio player below:
Aug. 15, 2008
Listen to the Gabfest for Aug. 15 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, and Josh Levin talk politics. This
week, Obama is in Hawaii, the Russians are in Georgia, and
politics is dirty.
You can also download the program here, or you
can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed
in iTunes by clicking here.
Emily Bazelon is on vacation, so John Dickerson and David
Plotz talk politics with Will Saletan. This week, it's the
presidential race, the Beijing Olympics, and the end of the
anthrax case.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
42/81
The trio discusses the latest on the death of the government's
prime suspect in the anthrax attacks of September and October
2001.
David and John both mention a "fifth column" in their discussion
of the anthrax scare.
This week, Obama and McCain continue to spar about oil as
Republicans try to use the issue to attack Obama.
The Beijing Olympics open on Friday amid concern about
politics and pollution.
John chatters about his growing role as a lifehacking coach.
Will expresses dismay at California's regulation of trans fats in
restaurants.
David is hooked on America's Best Dance Crew.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Posted by Dale Willman on Aug. 8 at 11:15 a.m.
Aug. 1, 2008
Listen to the Gabfest for Aug. 1 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
The inspector general of the U.S. Justice Department testified on
Capitol Hill this week, telling a Senate committee that Bush
administration appointees politicized the hiring process at the
DoJ.
John chatters about a new book that explains all the policy
decisions the next president will face.
David talks about a new study that shows it might one day be
possible to take a pill to increase your athletic endurance without
exercise.
Emily discusses LifeStyles Condoms' offer to teenage singing
star Miley Cyrus to become the company's spokeswoman in
return for $1 million.
David and Emily speculate about how much money it would
take for Cyrus to promote condom use, comparing it with the
hypothetical posed in the overrated 1993 movie, Indecent
Proposal, starring Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore, and Robert
Redford.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Posted by Dale Willman on Aug. 1 at 12:23 p.m.
July 25, 2008
Listen to the Gabfest for July 25 by clicking the arrow on the
audio player below:
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe
to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.
Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, nad David Plotz talk politics.
This week, John McCain accuses Barack Obama of playing the
race card, Obama's law school exams are under review, and the
Justice Department faces charges of illegal hiring.
Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz talk politics.
This week, it's Barack to Iraq, the state of the presidential race,
and John Edwards vs. the National Enquirer.
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
McCain accused Obama of "playing the race card."
David says McCain can win the presidency only by scaring
people into voting for him.
This week, the New York Times put class materials from
Obama's time as a law professor at the University of Chicago
Law School on its Web site.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned
in the show:
Sen. Barack Obama completes a trip to the Middle East,
including Iraq. It was considered a major success. However, he
has not done so well in talking about his Senate vote against
supporting President Bush's surge strategy. When asked if he
would still vote the same way today, he said that he would.
John reminds critics of Obama's trip to Iraq that they should also
remember John McCain's visit there in 2007. McCain said Iraq
was safe enough that "there are neighborhoods where you and I
could walk through those neighborhoods, today." It was later
43/81
revealed that during his stroll, McCain wore body armor and was
accompanied by U.S. soldiers and that several attack helicopters
were flying overhead.
McCain, meanwhile, continues to criticize Obama's trip as well
as his position that the troop surge was not the only reason for
recent success in Iraq, saying it is "pretty obvious he [Obama]
took this position in order to secure the nomination of his party
by taking the far-left position and being dictated to by
MoveOn.org and others.''
There are conflicting public-opinion polls. According to a poll
from Quinnipiac University, McCain is gaining ground in three
key states—Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota—despite the
positive coverage of Obama's Middle East swing. Yet polling by
the Gallup organization finds Obama's lead growing in a number
of key swing states.
The Gabfest goes nuclear over a story in the National Enquirer
alleging that John Edwards recently met with a mistress in a Los
Angeles hotel.
John chatters about political columnist Robert Novak, who
struck a pedestrian while driving on a Washington, D.C., street
earlier this week. Novak drove on after hitting the 66-year-old
man, only to be stopped a short time later by a witness to the
accident. Novak said he was listening to National Public Radio
at the time.
Emily talks about a release on Thursday of three more
documents pertaining to the Bush administration and torture.
The documents were obtained by the American Civil Liberties
Union under the Freedom of Information Act.
David is frustrated with a series of books he is reading with his
daughter. Called Percy Jackson and the Olympians, they are
suspiciously similar to the Harry Potter series.
The e-mail address for the Political Gabfest is
gabfest@slate.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the
writer stipulates otherwise.)
Posted by Dale Willman on July 25 at 1:25 p.m.
jurisprudence
Abortion Contortion
John McCain bets the farm that women aren't listening.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 7:28 PM ET
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
John McCain is trying to pull a Jessica Seinfeld. Few Americans
(less than 20 percent) want to return to an America in which
abortion is almost always illegal, and if they knew McCain's true
views on the subject, most would not vote for him. So the
candidate is doing exactly what Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld did in her
popular cookbook, Deceptively Delicious. He's sneaking a little
of his bad-tasting reproductive rights stance into the meatloaf of
his candidacy—not by hiding it, but by trading on his reputation
as a maverick. Seinfeld's contention was that if your kids don't
like asparagus, you should just whirl it up in the blender and
bake it into some meatloaf. The children won't know the
difference until it's too late.
Now, McCain isn't as attractive as Mrs. Seinfeld, and Americans
are much savvier than their children when it comes to faux
asparagus. A quick look at the polls reflects McCain's problem:
He's running behind Obama with women voters. A poll released
yesterday by Emily's List has Obama beating McCain by a 12point margin among all registered female voters and by 30
points among registered female voters ages 18 to 27. A February
Planned Parenthood poll of 1,205 women voters in 16
battleground states found that 49 percent of women who backed
McCain did so despite being pro-choice, and 46 percent backing
him also wanted Roe v. Wade to remain the law of the land. It's
clear that once these voters find out McCain's real record on
reproductive rights, they flee. The problem, as Sarah Blustain
points out in this great piece, is that voters don't seem to be
finding out.
McCain needs these pro-choice women, but every time he tries
to reach out to them, he gets smacked upside the head by his
base. When he floated the notion of naming a pro-choice vice
president last week—either former Pennsylvania Gov. and
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge or Connecticut Sen.
Joe Lieberman—Rush Limbaugh snarled that "if the McCain
camp does that, they will have effectively destroyed the
Republican Party and put the conservative movement in the
bleachers." Limbaugh also pledged that tapping Lieberman or
Ridge would "ensure [McCain's] defeat." So McCain needs to
keep his base happy—and the rest of us in the dark.
Cue the mystery meatloaf. John McCain is banking on his
reputation as an independent maverick to snooker voters into
thinking that his abortion views are centrist, no matter what he
actually says. It's a risky strategy: Don't believe what I say.
Believe what you used to believe before I opened my mouth. But
that's where the Jessica Seinfeld trick comes in. Your kid eats
the meatloaf because it looks like a meatloaf. And voters
continue to think McCain is a maverick because he looks like
one.
Voters, and especially women voters who want to make their
own reproductive decisions, need to wake up and smell the
asparagus. In July, for example, a Pew poll showed that 56
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percent of the electorate didn't know where McCain stood on
abortion. Listen up, because he's telling us now. To the extent
McCain was ever independent-minded at all on reproductive
rights, he's not anymore. In 2000, McCain begged Bush to
amend language in the GOP platform, which calls for a humanlife amendment banning all abortions and provides no
exceptions for rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother.
This week he indicated that he won't work to change that
platform. That's a position espoused by fewer than 20 percent of
the electorate. In the religion forum last weekend at Saddleback
Church in California, McCain announced that life begins "at the
moment of conception" and promised, "I will be a pro-life
president, and this presidency will have pro-life policies." In
April he told Chris Matthews that "the rights of the unborn is
one of my most important values." He has bragged about his
consistent zero rating from NARAL. He has explicitly said that
his Supreme Court choices will be animated by his desire to
overturn Roe.
Now, Barack Obama has taken some flak for his "above my pay
grade" response to the question of when life begins at
Saddleback. It was an artless attempt to connect with the 60
percent of Americans who believe that the abortion issue is
simply too complicated for a five-word answer. John McCain
really wants you to know that his answer is very, very simple.
So much of the abortion debate involves treating women like
children. It was bad enough when Justice Anthony Kennedy told
women last year that we are too unstable to be trusted with
decisions about what to do with our own bodies. It is an outrage
that physicians in South Dakota are being instructed to lie to us
for our own good. But we have a candidate for president who is
actually telling women the truth: He wants to do away with our
right to choose in all but the most dramatic of circumstances. He
won't change his party platform to protect rape victims. This
issue will be a defining factor in his selections for the Supreme
Court. If John McCain respects us enough to tell us directly that
there's asparagus in that meatloaf, let's do ourselves a favor and
tell him no thanks.
jurisprudence
Script Doctors
The dilemma facing South Dakota's abortion providers: Mislead your patients
or break the law.
By Emily Bazelon
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 6:20 PM ET
Last month, doctors who perform abortions in South Dakota had
to start reading a state-mandated script to their patients.
Supporters of the state law that gives these marching orders,
which went into effect in July after a court ruling, say it's about
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
informed consent. Misinformed consent might be more like it.
The law requires doctors to describe "all known medical risks"
of abortion, including "increased risk of suicide ideation and
suicide." The doctors must also give patients a written statement
telling them that "the abortion will terminate the life of a whole,
separate, unique, living human being," and that the patients have
"an existing relationship with that unborn human being" that is
protected by the U.S. Constitution and the laws of South Dakota.
It's fallen to Planned Parenthood, which runs South Dakota's
only abortion clinic, to figure out how to follow these directives.
On the one hand, the organization doesn't want to put abortion
providers in legal jeopardy, since failure to follow the law can be
punished as a criminal misdemeanor. On the other hand, doctors
have an ethical responsibility to give patients accurate medical
information. The mandatory statement linking abortion to an
increased risk of suicide isn't supported by reliable medical
evidence. And the statements about the fetus as a human being
are moral or philosophical rather than scientific at heart, in
Planned Parenthood's view. So what's an abortion provider in
South Dakota to do?
When I wrote about South Dakota's abortion law in July, several
astute readers wrote in to suggest that Planned Parenthood
doctors could say to their patients: Here's what South Dakota
requires me to tell you. But I think that's wrong. Here's what the
medical evidence says. Medical ethics would seem to require
such a stance, if doctors think their patients would otherwise be
misled. And doctors' First Amendment rights should easily
protect them here. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992
decision that upheld the core right to legal abortion in Roe v.
Wade, the Supreme Court said that states can require women to
receive "truthful, nonmisleading information" about abortion.
Several states responded by passing laws that require doctors to
lay out for their patients the stages of fetal development. But
South Dakota's law has an entirely different effect: To warn
women about an unproven heightened risk of suicide is hardly to
speak the truth to them.
Planned Parenthood agrees that its doctors can't be muzzled.
"Our position is that so long as we provide the information that's
mandated by the statute, we're free to say anything else we want
to say so long as we don't dispute objective scientific facts," says
Roger Evans, one of the lawyers handling the case for the
organization.
But Evans didn't want to go on the record about exactly what
doctors are reading to patients and asking them to sign—Planned
Parenthood's rendition of the state-ordered script. Yes, the
organization is trying to comply with the law without making its
doctors feel like liars, he said. But South Dakota's attorney
general hasn't seen or signed off on the language the
organization has come up with in interpreting the statute and the
court ruling. The discussions haven't even gotten off the ground.
Plus, Planned Parenthood's challenge to the law is back in court:
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The ruling that led the statute to take effect merely scuttled a
preliminary injunction that had been in place since the law was
passed in 2005. And that preliminary injunction rested only on
the fetus-as-human-being parts of the law; no court has ruled on
the suicide provision. So now Judge Karen Schreier of federal
district court has the whole statute back before her, to decide
whether it can stand or whether it's impermissibly coercing
doctors' speech and thus in violation of the First Amendment.
Schreier's eventual ruling will undoubtedly be challenged by
whomever loses and wind up back at the 8th Circuit Court of
Appeals—the court that lifted the preliminary injunction and put
the law into effect.
Larry Long, the attorney general of South Dakota, wasn't eager
to talk specifics, either. When I asked him whether abortion
doctors could tell patients they think the information South
Dakota is making them give out is wrong, he said, "I have no
idea. It's very difficult to answer your question without first
determining whether they are complying with the statute." I
asked him how he was planning to enforce the law. "I'm not sure
I want to share that information with you," Long said. He did
offer the following shot across the bow at Planned Parenthood:
"If I was a lawyer representing one of these doctors, I'd offer the
following sound legal advice: Read the statute to your patient.
It's like the police issuing a Miranda warning."
That's not the same position that the state took before the 8th
Circuit, according to Evans, when the attorney general's office
said it could accept variations on the statutory language as long
as the basic meaning was preserved. And so whether Planned
Parenthood must follow the statute's script precisely will be one
of the fights waged before Judge Shrier, who will probably hear
the case this fall. (Also on the fall calendar: a November
referendum in South Dakota that would ban almost all
abortions.)
While the parties parry and feint and wait for their next day in
court, the American Psychological Association is trying to put to
rest the unsupported claim that abortion causes mental-health
problems. The area of controversy is broader than suicide:
Researchers who are abortion opponents have also claimed that
the procedure is linked to heightened risk of depression and drug
abuse. In the last few years, some of their work has been
published in peer-reviewed medical journals. The APA assigned
a task force to review all the relevant scientific literature and
assess "the relative risk of mental health problems associated
with abortion compared to its alternatives."
The APA task force report, published last week, concluded that
"the majority of studies suffered from methodological problems,
often severe in nature." One large and recurring flaw: Studies
often fail to compare women who have abortion with women
who keep unplanned pregnancies. That's the proper control
group, the task force said, because women who plan to give birth
differ from those who don't in ways that bear on mental health.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Women whose pregnancies are unplanned tend to be poorer, as a
group, and they are more likely to engage in risky behavior.
The task force authors conclude, "The best scientific evidence
published indicates that among adult women who have an
unplanned pregnancy the relative risk of mental health problems
is no greater if they have a single elective first-trimester abortion
than if they deliver that pregnancy." There is evidence that lateterm abortions because of birth defects are understandably hard
on women. And in general, the task force recognized that
women who have abortions sometimes feel "sadness, grief, and
feelings of loss." Some also experience depression and anxiety.
But the authors found no evidence that abortion causes those
reactions, any more than giving birth does. Postpartum
depression, after all, is real and relatively common.
The task force report ends with a call for well-designed research
that would settle the question of abortion's mental-health
implications "once and for all." That would be nice. But in the
meantime, the APA report probably won't persuade the South
Dakota legislature to change its mind about ordering doctors to
march their abortion patients through made-up mental-health
risks. The right attacked the APA task force as biased and
dismissed its work right from the start. Those critics are no
happier now that the report is out. It's a truism that when science
and politics tangle, facts often don't much matter. At the
moment, women getting abortions in South Dakota are caught in
that snarl.
moneybox
Cold Cash, Not Cold War
How Russia's new economic ties to the West diminish the possibility of a
violent confrontation with the U.S.
By Daniel Gross
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 3:41 PM ET
Russia's occupation of Georgia and the U.S. signing of a missiledefense deal with Poland have grizzled Cold Warriors partying
like it's 1979. Once again, hard-liners are ratcheting up rhetoric
and threatening sanctions because the Russian bear has stomped
on one of its freedom-loving neighbors. But don't go dusting off
your copies of George Kennan's "X" Foreign Affairs article and
NSC 68 just yet. It's going to be a lot harder to have a Cold War
between Russia and the West in 2008 than it was in 1948.
During the Cold War (this is for all the under-40 set), the world
was to a large degree divided between the Communist world—
the Soviet Bloc and China—and the free world. And while there
were exchanges and a limited amount of trade (in the 1970s,
Pepsi began bartering Pepsi-Cola for Stolichnaya vodka, and the
United States exported grain to the Soviet Union), commercial
46/81
ties between the Eastern Bloc and the West were extremely
limited.
Aspen, Colo., beachfront properties in Palm Beach, Fla., and
townhouses and condos in New York.
Today, nearly 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia
may not be a free-market paradise. But it has evolved into an
important part of the global trading system and has built deep,
enduring, and significant economic ties to the West. As a result,
the implications of increasing tensions are as much economic as
they are geopolitical. And a renewed chill between Moscow and
Washington will trouble the sleep of CEOs as much as it will
agitate peaceniks. On the other hand, the close economic ties
make it less likely that political tensions will erupt into actual
warfare since the executives in Moscow and New York (and
London, and Frankfurt, and Milan …) will be lobbying for
peace.
Oh, and since Russia's exports of oil and other commodities have
allowed it to pile up huge foreign currency reserves, Russia has
been a significant buyer of American government paper. Last
month, the Russian finance minister said that the Russian central
bank held some $100 billion in U.S. agency debt—i.e., bonds
issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. On Wednesday, the
New York Times reported that the bond markets were looking for
assurance to Moscow, of all places. "The Russian finance
minister, Alexei Kudrin, told reporters in Moscow on Tuesday
that Russia was still buying debt issued by Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, but on a smaller scale."
The economic connection between Russia and the West begins
with energy. Post-Soviet Russia has become a huge exporter of
hydrocarbons, and Western European countries are some of its
biggest customers. According to the Energy Information
Administration, Germany is second only to the Ukraine as a
destination for Russian natural gas exports. (Germany relies on
Russia for about 36 percent of its natural gas.) A robust network
of pipelines connects Russia to Western Europe. After leaving
office in late 2005, former West German Prime Minister
Gerhard Schroeder went to work for one of those pipeline
companies. Italy and France are Russia's fourth and fifth largest
natural gas customers, respectively. Russia is also a significant
exporter of oil. Commerce Department data show that in the first
half of 2008, the United States imported 17.5 million barrels of
oil worth nearly $2 billion from Russia. Russian oil is just part of
a larger trade flow between the two frenemies. According to the
Commerce Department (see Part B, Exhibit 14 of the full release
available here), in the first half of 2008, U.S. exports to Russia
were $4.66 billion, and imports were $13.3 billion.
The trade data don't come close to telling the whole story of
U.S.-Russian financial relations. U.S. companies have been
finding new markets in this rapidly growing economy with a
population of about 142 million. When Ford Europe reported its
July European sales on Tuesday, Russia was one of the few
bright spots. In the core Western European markets, sales fell 6.6
percent from 2007, but sales in Russia rose 26 percent to 19,100.
In July, Ford sold more cars in Russia than it did in France and
almost as many as it did in Germany.
Meanwhile, Russians have been investing heavily in the United
States. This year alone, Russian steel giant Severstal has
acquired the Sparrows Point plant in Maryland from ArcelorMittal, Esmark Inc.,and WCI Steel. Severstal's U.S. operations
make it the fourth-largest steelmaker in the country. As I noted
last year, Russian oil giant Lukoil, which acquired Getty in
2000, has transformed hundreds of Northeast outlets into Lukoil
stations. And moneyed Russians have emerged as saviors of the
high-end real-estate market, snapping up trophy ranches in
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
So, two ironies: 1) Financially speaking, the United States needs
Russia a lot more than Russia needs the United States, and 2) it's
likely the subprime mess will inflict greater economic damage
on Russia than any coordinated Western sanctions could.
moneybox
The Great Lobster Mystery
Food prices are soaring. So why are prices for the delicious crustacean falling?
By Daniel Gross
Monday, August 18, 2008, at 3:54 PM ET
Thanks to rampant inflation, this has been a summer of
discontent for foodies, who have been forced to swap precious
imported cheeses for Monterey Jack and to downscale barbecues
from sirloin to skirt steak. But as I discovered on a recent Maine
vacation, there's at least one high-end food product whose price
is falling this year: lobster.
Based on my intensive investigations, it seems that prices for
both the commodity (lobsters sold on the docks) and the finished
product (steamed lobsters sold at dockside restaurants) are lower
than they've been in past years. In a seafood store in downtown
Portland, a pound of lobster ($5.49) went for pretty close to what
I had paid for a gallon of gas in Connecticut the day before
($4.30). A few years ago, the pound-of-lobster-to-gallon-of-gas
ratio would have more like 4-to-1. Our hosts welcomed us with
two-pound lobsters that cost less than a pound of steak.
Deciding that this economic anomaly needed more hands-on,
butter-dipped research, I headed farther north to Mount Desert
Island. And as the population density and temperature fell, so
too did the price of lobster. At Thurston's Lobster Pound
restaurant—OK, a shack with tubs of lobsters, a big steamer, and
a rickety wooden deck—shedders (soft-shell lobsters) went for a
mere $7 a pound while hard-shell lobsters were $9—a buck less
47/81
than at restaurants nearer Portland. For the price of a Quarter
Pounder, large fries, and a Coke at McDonald's, you could get a
one-pound lobster, accompanied by a quarter-pound of butter.
What explains this crustacean mystery? Food inflation derives
from several sources. The price of food can be driven upward by
consumer and commercial demand, by speculation in the futures
markets, and by producers successfully passing on the higher
costs they incur (for gas, fertilizer, labor, processing, packaging,
distribution) to buyers. The longer and more complex the supply
chain (i.e., olives that are picked in Tunisia, shipped to Italy to
be turned into tapenade, and then shipped to Dean & DeLuca to
be turned into hors d'oeuvres for yuppies), the greater the
opportunities for marking up prices and passing along costs.
At root, the global forces that are driving up the price of food
don't significantly affect the vacation lobster business in Maine.
Commercial and consumer demand doesn't vary much for offthe-boat lobster. Sure, many lobsters are sold to processing
plants. But unlike other seafood products—think of canned tuna,
or clam sauce, or frozen fish fillets—lobster is not produced or
marketed on a mass global scale, which also means there are no
speculators trying to make a killing on lobster futures. The fact
that people are eating more and better in China and India isn't
much boosting the demand for lobsters from Maine. Even in the
United States, lobster remains to a large degree a regional
product. While you can find lobster on the menu at better
restaurants in the Midwest, or, heaven help you, at Red Lobster,
you're unlikely to find live lobster tanks in Meijer stores in
Michigan or Wal-Marts in the Ozarks. In addition, lobster is a
luxury, discretionary food product that requires special
equipment and extra fortitude to cook at home. (I watched in
sympathy as one of our hosts, a Maine resident for two decades,
winced in horror as she plunged the living creatures into a
boiling cauldron.)
With demand down, and with distributors facing higher costs,
there has been significant pressure on lobster producers to keep
costs low. Wayne Seavey, a lobsterman who tends 600 pots in
the frigid waters around Mount Desert Island, told me that he's
getting about $3.50 a pound for lobsters this year, down from
about $4 a pound last year. The reason, he says: Distributors
seeking to maintain their margins are cramming down the
fishermen. And with limited local outlets (even swelled by
summer visitors, the population of coastal Maine is relatively
small), lobstermen can't hold out for higher prices.
Finally, lobsters remain cheap in Maine because of their
simplicity. Raising them isn't a particularly energy-intensive
business. Lobstermen have to gas up their boats, but they don't
have to pay for fertilizer or feed. On the coast of Maine, lobsters
are simply removed from their traps and put into tanks at
dockside restaurants or sold directly to home cooks, so there are
precious few distribution, processing, or packaging costs to pass
on. The only ancillary costs associated with getting lobsters from
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
the dock to the table are 1) butter and 2) the statins that
subsisting on a diet of rich lobster meat dipped in butter will
require many consumers to take.
moneybox
Skirting the Issues
Reading between the economic hemlines of September's fashion mags.
By Lauren Sandler
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 5:49 PM ET
Amid reports that retail sales are getting pummeled, the
September fashion magazines have hit newsstands in the past
week. We all know that hemlines tend to drop along with the
economy, and it's no surprise that (thankfully) upper thighs are
about as rare in these issues as robust mutual funds. Fashion
mags have long walked the line between presenting themselves
as shopping guides of wearable trends and offering glossy
spreads of five-figure frocks. But do women in today's economy
want to confront pages of $1,000 shoes when they are struggling
to pay the rent? Or do they prefer practicality over fantasy in
these trying times? We looked at six magazines to see how
editors responded to the current economic waist-cinching and
whether ads—not hemlines—are up or down from last year.
Here, from Elle's reaction of What recession? to the recessionary
lack of glamour at Glamour, are the results.
Elle
Attitudinal hemline: Micro-mini
Ads: Up 7 percent
Perhaps we can credit Elle's September spike with a presence in
television—Stylista, this fall's real show set in fake Elle offices,
and, on Project Runway, Nina Garcia's "at-large" position with
her ex-employer. Last month, the magazine commissioned a
study that found that 8 percent of American women are
recession-proof shoppers. Ladies, this mag's for you. In its
pages, we meet a law student in $1,375 Giuseppe Zanoti boots
and learn that the accessories editor "jetted to Tokyo for the
Prada fete." One feature on jewelry's "major fashion moment"
names "designers within reach" like Lanvin, for the design
house's $2,000 art deco cuffs. (Yes, they are lovely.) Need office
supplies? Pick up a $90 sterling paperclip—why not get a whole
box? —or a $160 cell phone strap. "Must-haves" include a
$2,100 Malo flared miniskirt and $2,960 Givenchy pants. This
month's advice column soothes the relationship woes of a 23year-old with a boyfriend who won't commit but offers her a
"comfortable" life "complete with private jets and superyachts."
(Is that even a word?) Elle's next co-branded show might just be
a remake of Fantasy Island.
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Vogue
Attitudinal hemline: Midthigh
Ads: Down 7 percent
Anna Wintour wants her reader to know she's sensitive to their
slimmer wallets: The cover beckons with "value conscious chic"
while her editor's letter solemnly acknowledges that "in putting
together these stories, we were always conscious that fashion
may not be, in this period of economic and political uncertainty,
at the front of our readers minds." Yet one of the magazine's
features stories is on a mink and lambskin coat that has been
misted with 24 karat gold—to the tune of $100,000. Because
"fur is glamorous, but sometimes it's not enough. It needs to be
supercharged." It looks like we'll also be supercharging our
credit card: A feature advising ladies how to dress for less
instructs, "This is the season to adopt a strict, limited uniform of
staples—Prada, Chanel, and Oscar de la Renta to name a few."
And, wait, here's a relatable fashion pictorial featuring women
combing supermarket freezer cases for bargains in a spread titled
"2-for-1 Special." But of course, they're wearing exquisitely
tailored $2,300 Bottega Veneta dresses. (Don't you?) It seems
Vogue has created a new editorial category for these trying
times: aspirational frugality.
W
Attiudinal hemline: Lace bloomers
Ads: Down almost 18 percent
W's response to its own relative free fall is positively tongue-inchic. "What Recession? The New $1,000 Skin Cream" is the
cover tease to a piece on La Prairie moisturizers loaded with
actual platinum particles. "Can a Bentley be micronized?"
wonders the author, reflecting the issue's tone. While the issue
kicks off with a feature on otherwise-inaccessible Rei
Kawakubo's new collection for mass-market giant H&M, the rest
of the issue is 100 percent glamazon—with a wink. Like the 40
pages of photographs of Tilda Swinton and friends clad in highend collections as outrageous as their poses and settings: at the
plastic surgeon's, in a bouffant and red nails behind a giant
executive desk, gathering canine waste in a plastic bag in front a
massive gold door. It practically cries out, Who buys these
fabulous things?
Harper's Bazaar
Attitudinal hemline: Knee length
Ads: Up 3 percent
Even the mastheads and editor's notes are framed in ornate,
glittering necklaces, like a $9,875 Balenciaga number. That price
tag is nothing compared with a spread on furs—PETA is so
surplus era—most of which you couldn't get out of layaway with
the average American's salary. This is a magazine refusing to be
anything other than it is—and yet is equally unwilling to play
coy to our sinking dollar. A feature titled "Gucci or Gas:
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Recession-Proof Your Wardrobe," grants that "the notion of
staring down the barrel of a wicked winter without Balmain
booties, Prada lace, or Balenciaga's sleek silhouettes is
depressing."
*Bazaaro-world: Apropos of not much—economic policy?—
Tyra Banks poses as Michelle Obama in this issue, in the Oval
Office, curled up next to a fake Barack in bed—both sporting
Harvard sweatshirts—and flashing a perfect Barbie smile in a
purple inauguration gown.
Marie Claire
Attitudinal hemline: Midcalf
Ads: Up 6 percent
Q: "What stresses us out now?" asks Marie Claire. A: Only one
Prada sheath? Right. How about "widespread layoffs, housing
foreclosures, and record-high gas prices." The economy is
clearly heavy on the minds of the editors churning out pithy
headlines for this relatively light issue—at under 300, pages it's
easily the thinnest of the weighty bunch. "Recession jitters?
Stash your cash in a hardware-fastened top-handle bag,"
recommends one perky page. But the best venue to address those
jitters isn't the mall, the magazine suggests, but in your cubicle,
dressed in "ladder-climbing accessories" and "401K traditional
pieces," and aided by the gleanings of several office-related
advice features. Of course, if you're one of those ladies stressed
by layoffs, consider the following Jane Birkin quote,
accompanying a model in a $1,675 Blumarine top and $305 Just
Cavalli jeans: "When you've got nothing left, all you can do is
get into silk underwear and start reading Proust—"or your
horoscope.
Glamour
Attitudinal hemline: Ankle-length
Ads: Down 10 percent
Does Louis Vuitton make a life vest? If they do, you can't afford
it! The magazine's "Life & Happiness" section offers
suggestions for "10 jobs that need you now … you'll never be
out of work until you want to be," and how to deal with creditcard interest. (We're tanking, girls, tanking!) The alarm rings on
in the fashion spreads. Victoria Beckham advises readers to
invest in a good pair of jeans, not because they're fabulous, but
because they'll last. Nicole Richie, in a pair of Anna Sui
sunglasses, is effusive instead about her $3 pair at home, "from
the gas station." And a drugstore-vs-department store beauty
roundup recommends a $10 Bath & Body Works body lotion
because it "smells like a $60 perfume"—and those perfume
inserts smell like panic.
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movies
Save Faris
When will someone give Anna Faris the role she deserves?
By Dana Stevens
Friday, August 22, 2008, at 12:06 PM ET
The House Bunny (Columbia Pictures), a wobbly little comedy
with a faux-feminist pretext for existence—a Playboy bunny
ejected from Hugh Hefner's mansion finds meaning in her new
life as a sorority house mother—is worth seeing for one petite,
blond, enormously gifted reason: Anna Faris. Here's an actress
who's been at the edge of stardom for years: She delivered a
savage sendup of a Cameron Diaz-like starlet in Lost in
Translation and submitted herself to countless lowbrow
indignities as the indestructible heroine of the Scary Movie
slasher-spoof franchise. On Entourage, she played herself in a
memorable three-episode story arc (memorable because she
cracked actual jokes on a show where pretty girls generally just
strip and smile). And, in the barely seen comedy Smiley Face,
Faris did a female take on the stoner odyssey that I'm probably
alone in remembering as one of the funniest performances of
2007. Through all of this, Faris has remained an
epiphenomenon, a welcome face in supporting roles rather than
a headlining star in her own right. But unless the Hollywood
establishment is as dumb as the centerfold Faris plays in The
House Bunny, this movie will get someone to write her the role
she deserves.
hotties with logic-defying speed (and making McPhee's
character visibly pregnant without providing any back story is a
tad disconcerting). But there's real pathos to a scene in which
Shelley trots out all her porn-based seduction tricks on a date,
only to discover that she's grossed out her man and made a fool
of herself. The House Bunny can go only so far in satirizing the
Playboy empire though, since it's clearly been approved by
Hefner (who plays himself in scenes that take place inside the
real mansion). But its founding premise—that the laws of soft
porn translate poorly to the real world—is as close to a female
empowerment message as you can expect in a movie like this.
The movie also has some embarrassing laugh-free stretches, but
Faris holds everything together with bubbly intelligence,
unexpected line readings, and a few deft pratfalls. The film's
most random joke is also its funniest: Shelley has a habit of
breaking into a hoarse Exorcist-like voice as a mnemonic device
for remembering people's names. Even the fifth time it happens,
this gets a big laugh from the audience, perhaps because it hints
at a well of anarchic, defiantly ungirly humor that Faris' career
thus far has barely begun to tap. The House Bunny wants us to
believe that its message is to look past appearances and
appreciate inner beauty. Let's hope Anna Faris' next project
looks past her outer beauty and unleashes her inner weirdo.
poem
"Hermit"
Until then, we'll have to content ourselves with Faris as Shelley
Darlingson, an orphan who's spent her adult life in the Playboy
mansion as one of Hef's favorites. The morning after her 27 th
birthday, Shelley is kicked out of the mansion for being too old.
Wandering the streets in heels and pastel hot pants, she
eventually winds up as a live-in housemother to the girls of the
Zeta Alpha Zeta sorority, an outpost for boyfriendless misfits.
(They don't wear makeup! They have piercings! Some of them
are smart!) In the grand frat-movie tradition, the Zeta girls are in
danger of losing their charter and thus their house if they don't
start recruiting pledges. So Shelley coaches the Zetas in the fine
arts of flirting, primping, and throwing rad parties, while they
help her win the heart of a nerdy campus do-gooder (Colin
Hanks) by teaching her to dial back the bunny act and be herself.
I don't want to even think about what all this means as a feminist
allegory. Like Grease and The Breakfast Club, The House Bunny
all but announces that lip gloss and tarty outfits pave the way to
female self-actualization. And unlike those movies, it doesn't
make the makeover process look particularly fun (though I did
love a mascara-tutorial scene in which Shelley lectures the girls,
"Remember, the eyes are the nipples of the face"). The Zetas—
played by an odd lineup of newcomers that includes American
Idol contestant Katharine McPhee and Rumer Willis, Bruce and
Demi's daughter—go from stereotyped losers to stereotyped
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
By Gail Mazur
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 7:52 AM ET
Listen to Gail Mazur read .
In ancient Greece, a man could withdraw into the desert
to praise his God in solitude—
he'd live out his days by himself in a cave of sand.
Eremos—Greek for desert, you could look it up.
Hermit crabs live mostly alone
in their self-chosen hermitages, they learn young
to muscle their soft asymmetrical bodies
into abandoned mollusk shells.
Without shells, those inadequate bodies
wouldn't have survived the centuries,
so they tuck their abdomens and weak back legs
inside the burden they'll carry on their backs.
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It was Aristotle who first observed
they could move from one shell to another.
According to Tarot, the hermit has internalized
life's lesson to the point where he is the lesson.
But sometimes a hermit crab is social—
sometimes a sandworm, a ragworm,
And you, Gail, though you seem almost frozen,
are you sure you won't abandon
will live with it inside a snail shell.
And sometimes when the crab outgrows its shell
the crowded, calcified armor of your story,
of what was given, what freely chosen—
it will remove its odd companion
and bring it along to a new larger shell.
(The Greeks who taught the Western world
what could be achieved by living together
were also the first in that world to work out
a philosophical justification for living alone.)
If the home it chooses isn't vacant
it will use its large pincer claw to extract
the old inhabitant—usually a dead, or dying,
or less aggressive hermit crab.
Then it drags its spiral shell, its adopted history,
sideways, scrabbling across the wet sand.
That's where you see them,
when the tide is out, on the flats.
At high tide, the weight of the shell
is lessened by the upward pressure of water,
so he can forage for plankton, algae,
sea morsels on the ocean floor.
Actually, he neither "chooses," nor "inherits,"
the mollusk's shell, he has no choice
but to live in it, to lug it with him
everywhere until it's his time to move again.
No shell he inhabits will be his home forever.
Restless, driven, Darwinian,
where he lives today might not please
or fit him tomorrow. I could tell you more,
the flats are seething with unlikely creatures
and remnants of life where life's been unfastened.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
politics
Hitting Him Where He Lives
The fight between McCain and Obama over their respective houses signals a
whole new level of nasty.
By John Dickerson
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 7:35 PM ET
Anyone who has watched rivals needle each other in a pickup
basketball game will recognize what is happening right now
between Barack Obama and John McCain. It starts with bumps,
shoves, maybe a few elbows—and then suddenly it's a windmill
of fists, torn shirts, and a lot of bad words about mothers. On
Thursday, the presidential race reached a whole new level of
nasty.
Like many such fights, it all started with a principled debate over
competing formulas for calculating tax revenue. Excuse me, I'm
sorry: That's in an alternate universe. Like all such fights, this
one was about symbolism and positioning. The subject of this
spat—stay with me here—is how many houses McCain owns. In
an interview with Politico, McCain could not remember how
many houses he has. (In fairness, it does seem complicated! He
owns none. They're in his wife's name, and he only shares four
with her; she has at least three other properties.)
The Obama campaign recognized this gaffe for what it was: The
number of Americans who do not know how many houses they
own is so small they could probably fit in a golf cart. It is not a
problem that afflicts the average American family. The
campaign rushed to make an ad showing McCain as out of
touch, but it strays into even more radioactive territory by
making a subtle dig at McCain's age. (Listen to the narrator's
tone when he says of McCain: "He lost track, he couldn't
remember.") Obama brought the house business up on the
stump. His surrogates romped around on cable TV declaiming
against McCain.
So much for Obama's aspirations about lifting our politics out of
the gutter. Those promises are easier to keep when you're ahead
in the polls, and Obama's double-digit lead has disappeared.
McCain has run a string of ads attacking Obama's record (often
by misrepresenting it), and his good friend Joe Lieberman has
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questioned Obama's patriotism. We have officially reached the
"all's fair" stage of the campaign.
And to be fair, Obama's ad was a legitimate shot, as these things
go. Up till now, Obama has had to selectively edit McCain's
comments on the economy to paint his rival as out of touch.
Here, he didn't need to edit anything.
The McCain team wasted no time in its response, saying it was
now free to talk about Obama's various questionable
associations: Tony Rezko, William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright.
Why were they now fair game? Because Obama had attacked
McCain's wife.
sooner or later, but now they've been fully unleashed. One thing
is for sure: The game has gotten uglier, and it will likely stay
that way.
Correction, Aug. 22, 2008: This article originally and
incorrectly said that John McCain's aide claimed Barack
Obama's house was worth $4 million. His charge was that
Obama had earned $4 million last year. (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
politics
You may find that hard to follow. Here's how it goes: Every
marriage has its power-sharing aspects. My wife remembers the
names of our friends' kids, and I fix the sink when it leaks. In the
McCain household, Cindy McCain, an heiress to a beerdistributing fortune, owns the houses, and McCain does the
running for president. Ergo, an attack on McCain's houses is an
attack on Cindy. In a campaign that has turned umbrage-taking
into a high art, this would get at least a 16 from the judges (or, if
you prefer the old system, a 9.8).
A McCain spokesman fired back, calling Obama "pointyheaded" and reminding people that he had once said poor folk in
Pennsylvania clung to their guns and religion out of bitterness.
He also pointed out that Obama lived in "a frickin' mansion,"
which he "bought in a shady deal with a convicted felon," and
earned $4 million last year.*
The campaign then issued an ad linking Obama's home purchase
to Tony Rezko, the aforementioned convicted felon (on fraud
and bribery charges, for those of you scoring at home) whose
wife purchased land next to Obama's when the senator bought
his current house. Letting the influence-peddler help him, says
Obama, was one of his greatest lapses in judgment.
Who wins? Who knows. Certainly McCain's remarks make him
look out of touch. But the fight may have also focused his base:
Before all this, Rush Limbaugh was predicting a revolt if
McCain picked a pro-choice vice president. But Obama's attack
on McCain caused Rush to redirect his fire. McCain and his wife
"did not get a sweetheart deal from a fraud embezzler like Tony
Rezko to buy their houses," he said. "But the Messiah"—
Limbaugh's favored term for Obama—"did." Meanwhile, a
third-party group announced an ad linking Obama and former
Weather Underground member Ayers.
McCain responded so violently because the attack is potentially
devastating in an election that is likely to be all about economic
issues. But merely engaging in such a fight is also a threat to
Obama's brand. He's the candidate of change, and this is politics
as usual. Ayers, Rezko, and Wright were going to come out
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Obama: the Pepsi Candidate
The Democratic presidential nominee and the soft drink have strong affinities.
By James Ledbetter
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 6:56 AM ET
It is oddly fitting that the convention that will give Barack
Obama the Democratic nomination for president will take place
in Denver's Pepsi Center. During the primaries, some bloggers
argued that Obama's insurgent campaign made him Pepsi to
Hillary's establishment Coke. An eagle-eyed observer (who
happens to work for Pepsi's P.R. firm) noticed that during the
primary debates, Obama could be seen refreshing himself with
Aquafina water—a Pepsi brand—while Hillary Clinton drank
Coke's Dasani. In addition, Wonkette and others have noted that
the round "Obama '08" logo is similar to the red and blue yinyang-like symbol that Pepsi-Cola has used since 1991.
Of course, the connection between Obama and Pepsi is largely
accidental. In early 2006, when Denver began lobbying the
Democratic National Committee to host the convention, very
few would have predicted that Obama would be the nominee.
And PepsiCo Inc., the $40-billion-a-year food conglomerate
headquartered in Purchase, N.Y., does not manage Denver's
Pepsi Center; it bought the arena's naming rights for 20 years in
1999.
But while the connection may be arbitrary, the Obama-Pepsi
affinity is strong. Last month, when Obama assembled a team of
financial heavyweights for a summit to discuss economic issues,
one of the most prominent corporate leaders in attendance was
Indra Nooyi, the Pepsi CEO whose Indian heritage makes her,
like Obama, one of the few nonwhites to reach the highest levels
of power in her profession. Although Nooyi hasn't endorsed
Obama—few CEOs make explicit endorsements—it's hard to
imagine that she doesn't support him; she and her husband gave
$27,000 to John Kerry's campaign in 2004. (A spokeswoman
says that no comparable appearance with John McCain has been
scheduled, though she's not aware of any Nooyi donation to
Obama.) According to the database operated by the Center for
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Responsive Politics, Pepsi employees have given $39,700 to
Obama's campaign, compared with a meager $6,000 from CocaCola employees.
Perhaps more significant, the prevailing theme of Obama's
campaign meshes well with Pepsi's corporate messaging. Pepsi's
marketing has for decades tried to exude youthful energy, from
the early '60s attempts to adopt baby boomers as the "Pepsi
generation" to the '90s fantasy commercials depicting Pepsi as a
veritable soda fountain of youth, transforming nursing-home
residents into skateboarders. Pepsi's advertising slogan not too
long ago was "The Choice of a New Generation," which could
almost be Obama's. Certainly his strategy in the general election,
as it did in the primaries, will rely on youth support that is
almost as fanatical and fantastic as the fictional version in
Pepsi's ads.
Actually, Pepsi's appeal to the young has a corporate rationale
and goes back to the beginning of its modern history. (After a
bankruptcy, the company was reborn in the 1930s.) In order to
build market share against the incumbent Coca-Cola and smaller
rivals, Pepsi offered 12 ounces of cola for a nickel—6-ounce
bottles were the standard at the time—and held fast to the 5-cent
price for several years even as rising sugar prices during and
after World War II compelled others to go to 6 cents and more.
(This was the origin of Pepsi's renowned jingle: "Pepsi-Cola hits
the spot/ Twelve full ounces, that's a lot.") As a result, Pepsi's
customer base skewed very young.
It also skewed black, which is the source of Pepsi's unusually
close relationship with the African-American community.
Beginning in 1940, Pepsi was almost alone in the corporate
world in hiring African-American salesmen and in specifically
targeting the African-American consumer, about whom there
was very little reliable data. This was a risky strategy, as any
company seen as overtly trying to appeal to blacks could well
have found itself boycotted by Southern whites.
printing soda labels in Mexico that contain lead. Pepsi also pays
close attention to anti-obesity regulations—in addition to "sugar
water," as Steve Jobs memorably described it to John Sculley,
then president of Pepsi, it also sells potato chips and Cheetos—
and keeps tabs on local prohibitions against bottled water. And
one of the company's most high-profile executives is General
Counsel Larry D. Thompson, who was deputy attorney general
in the Bush administration and is co-chair of the lawyers'
steering group for McCain.
As for Obama, for all of Pepsi's positive associations with youth
and African-Americans, there are nonetheless disadvantages to
being a Pepsi candidate. The soda is a perpetual runner-up, like
Avis or Burger King. Moreover, Pepsi does not lose out to Coke
because its product is inferior. For decades, participants in blind
taste tests—the "Pepsi Challenge"—have preferred Pepsi's
sweeter, citrusy, slightly less-carbonated flavor. Yet consumers
consistently choose Coke in larger numbers, an anomaly usually
attributed to Coke's marketing and packaging. But another
theory, argued by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink, is that Pepsi's
sweetness appeals more in a sip than over the course of a whole
can.
For a candidate who earlier this year lost several primaries in
states where opinion polls showed him ahead, that is a
worrisome analogy. And perhaps that's why, on the day Obama
is scheduled to make his acceptance speech, he's moved the
proceedings out of the Pepsi Center and into Invesco's Mile High
Stadium. Accepting the nomination in a football stadium named
after a wealth management firm ... now that's the choice of a new
generation.
politics
After the Big Think
What Barack Obama learned on his vacation.
And indeed, Pepsi's strategy created friction internally.
According to Stephanie Capparell's 2007 book, The Real Pepsi
Challenge, even Pepsi President Walter Mack—who was
responsible for hiring the African-American sales team—seemed
conflicted about it. At a 1949 company event at New York's
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, he told the crowd: "[W]e're going to
have to develop a way whereby [Pepsi] will no longer be known
as a nigger drink," causing at least one African-American
salesman to walk out of the meeting. Nevertheless, the company
continued to foster a strong relationship with African-Americans
in its marketing and in its employment practices.
Pepsi's political and marketing agenda these days is much more
complex. In recent years, Pepsico and others in the food and
beverage industry have tried to persuade Congress to pass a
"uniformity for food" law, whose main effect would be to nullify
tough California labeling regulations, which forced Pepsi to stop
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
By John Dickerson
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 6:56 PM ET
During Barack Obama's vacation, we got a chance to see him eat
shave ice with his daughters, play golf and body surf. But did he
get a chance to think? Did he reacquaint himself with the "big
picture" he worried he'd lost on the campaign trail? In short, did
he heed this wise advice?
The short answer is, I don't know—especially to that last
question. But I have discovered a few things about what he
appears to have learned while on vacation.
1. Keep it big: According to aides, Obama returned from
Hawaii resolved to put even more emphasis on an earlier theme:
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This is a turning-point election. Big issues are at stake. By
stressing the enormity of the problems the nation faces, Obama
hopes to show Americans that he understands how unhappy they
are with the country's direction. But he also hopes to rebuild an
appetite for change, the strongest element of his brand. Only
through a wholesale rethinking of the current political system—a
rethinking that Obama has promised—can such large problems
be solved. One of the campaign's main messages has always
been "change vs. more of the same." Now we're going to hear it
even more.
2. Show them how you feel: Speaking in Albuquerque, N.M.,
Monday about equal pay for women, Obama said that he didn't
want his daughters "to ever confront a situation where they are
disadvantaged because of their gender. The thought of it makes
my blood boil." Really? Perhaps he watched Jack Cafferty while
on vacation, because that's not the way the senator usually
speaks, and you won't find that kind of language on his Web
site. When he's spoken about pay equity before, he's mentioned
his daughters, but he hasn't reached even a simmer.
This little rhetorical flash of passion connected with something
I've been hearing from Obama aides lately. One of the
challenges for the Obama campaign is showing that a man of his
unusual background shares the values and concerns of "regular
Americans." (Mark Penn focused on this difficulty in his famous
strategy memo that argued Obama wasn't "fundamentally
American.") The campaign has tried various ways to show
Obama's core. They've used ads in which he's said the word
"values" a lot, and they've highlighted his biography.
But talking about the temperature of his blood is a whole new
way for Obama to connect with voters. He's showing that he can
get emotional about the same things everybody gets emotional
about. He's not just saying he's going to solve their problems,
he's showing voters he's as impatient with them as they are. It's a
quality he wants in his vice president, too. "I want somebody
who is mad right now, that people are losing their jobs," Obama
said Tuesday in North Carolina, "mad right now that people have
seen their incomes decline." Says a senior Obama aide: "The
values argument is best conveyed by showing people what he'll
fight for." If the strategy sounds familiar, that's because Hillary
used it, too.
3. Stay in McCain's face: Obama has been going after John
McCain since before he won the Democratic nomination. It was,
for a time, part of the compulsory primary exercises to show that
he was tough enough to handle the Democratic nomination.
Before he left for vacation, he was hitting McCain on energy
policy and, more pointedly, suggesting that McCain was trying
to use his race against him.
regular people. In perhaps the most aggressive attack on his
opponent's values, he raised questions about McCain's honor. "I
have never suggested, and never will, that Sen. McCain picks his
positions on national security based on politics or personal
ambition," he said. "I have not suggested it because I believe that
he genuinely wants to serve America's national interest. Now,
it's time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same."
Barack Obama probably won't get another chance to have a big
think until his next vacation. Then he'll either be resigning
himself to a few more years as a book-writing senator or
puzzling over how to set the course for the most powerful nation
on the planet.
politics
Love You. Mean It.
Actual sincerity might be on display at the Democratic convention.
By John Dickerson
Monday, August 18, 2008, at 2:00 PM ET
It's going to be hard to watch the political conventions after the
Olympics. We'll have to switch from events with real drama and
results to pageantry with neither. This is the political equivalent
of hours of Michael Phelps celebrations with no actual
swimming. Plus, there's the fakery. The crowd shot of the
audience at the GOP convention may look racially and ethnically
diverse, but we know the party is less so. Barack Obama may
promise not to engage in old-style politics, but we know he's not
lived up to his own standard all along the way and isn't likely to
in the future.
And yet at this year's Democratic convention, one of the key
dramas—the multiday Clinton-Obama reconciliation play—will
require genuine acts of sincerity. Or, at least, as close to genuine
acts of sincerity as we're likely to get at a political convention.
Without that, Obama will have to spend precious postconvention time—time he should spend engaging with John
McCain—addressing this weakness in his coalition and
distracting press stories examining it.
Here is how the sincerity exchange must play out: Barack
Obama must make a sincere show of respect for Hillary Clinton
so that she and her husband will make a sincere appeal to bring
along those supporters of theirs who are still reluctant about
Obama. There are hurdles. Bill Clinton clearly is still ticked that
Obama's allies painted him as a racist. Many in the Obama camp
(including, perhaps, the candidate) think the Clintons have
forgotten that they actually lost the primary.
But in the last few days he's made his attacks even sharper,
emphasizing the link between McCain and Bush and portraying
McCain as a poll-driven Washington insider out of touch with
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
54/81
There's a premium on sincerity because Obama needs the votes
of the wary Clinton supporters, and he needs the image of a
unified party for the fall campaign. Hillary Clinton so clearly
meant what she said about the unique strength of her own
candidacy during the primaries that some of her supporters are
pretty sure she can't be sincere now when she says "elect
Obama." A recent Pew poll showed that 28 percent of Clinton
supporters say they will not back Obama (18 percent intend to
vote for McCain). As Leon Panetta, the former Clinton
administration official asked by the Obama campaign to help
with the reconciliation, put it to the Times of London: "There is a
sense of entitlement that almost seems to be inbred. They are
convinced Hillary is the one who should be assuming the mantle
and it's tough to crack that."
While I still think the group Clinton needs to convince won't
have the impact on Election Day some would suggest, they are
enough of a concern that Obama has gone out of his way to
accommodate Clinton by allowing her name to be put in for a
roll-call vote. Whether or not the so-called PUMAs ("Party
Unity, My Ass") reconcile Clinton loyalty with pulling the lever
for Obama, or at least keeping quiet, the reconciliation must be
ratified as sincere—by the press, anyway—so that the Obama
team can get back to putting forward its message.
Conventions are usually concerned with an idealized
presentation of the candidate. And there will be plenty of focus
on the buff and shine applied to Obama. But this is the first
convention since 1980 in which that can't be the only show
because a political party must add a cease-fire ceremony to the
balloon drops. What does Clinton need to do to quell the doubts,
given that she has been working hard to show her support for
Obama—as yet to no real avail? It's probably going to take more
than raising her arms in unison with her former rival. In 1976,
Gerald Ford made a show of unity with his former rival Ronald
Reagan by interrupting his own acceptance speech. Ford spoke
and then invited Reagan from his skybox down to the podium.
That was clever, though, in the end, Ford didn't pull through.
This time around, as in any good family-therapy session, each of
the participants will have to do something that makes him or her
uncomfortable. That's often what it takes to make others think
you're sincere. Bill Clinton will have to behave, which means
staying out of the spotlight and ceasing to seem so reluctant to
say that Obama is prepared to be president. Mrs. Clinton will
have to turn around women who see Obama as the man who
waltzed in and took the prize from the hardworking, betterqualified woman. There are other reasons her supporters may not
like Obama, but he has the potential to fix those—the
unfair/sexism charge is one Hillary is best positioned to
confront. Sen. Obama, for his part, could declare that he never
thought the Clintons used his race against him. And Michelle
Obama, who will play a central role in the convention, will have
to find a showy way to embrace the former first couple, too.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Despite these challenges, my guess is that it'll all work out. The
Democratic Party wants to move forward to take the White
House back. This gives the base good reason to bless a plausible
show of sincerity as real. The Clintons can be good political
performers, and they'll know what to do. The former president
knows that his apparent reluctance until now will make his
endorsement of the heir apparent seem all that much grander—
burnishing his image as well. He might even turn the charges of
race-baiting that have been used against him on their head by
heralding Obama's candidacy as the final blow to the segregation
he witnessed as a boy in the South. Barack Obama knows that he
needs the Clintons, so he'll do what's necessary to earn the
declaration that he was "gracious" and "magnanimous." It will
be in everyone's interest to give a hug at the end of the Denver
therapy session. Then we'll just have to wait to see whether the
voters buy the pledge of a new relationship.
press box
Veep Creep
The long, drawn-out faux drama of picking a running mate.
By Jack Shafer
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 5:29 PM ET
Back when the American automobile industry rode high, its
marketers worked the press for months on end to create a false
sense of suspense about what the new Belchfires would look
like. While Detroit may have lost its knack for product
introduction, the presumptive presidential nominees have gotten
sharper at manufacturing anticipation about who they'll pick for
the bottom of their tickets.
Today's New York Times contains a classic of the genre: "Obama
Nears No. 2 Pick, Aides Say." Powered by more heavy breathing
than an obscene phone call, the article's lede sources to Barack
Obama's aides that he "has all but settled on his choice for a
running mate and set an elaborate rollout plan for his decision,
beginning with an early morning alert to supporters, perhaps as
soon as Wednesday morning." Five paragraphs later, the article
attributes to Obama advisers that their man "all but reached his
decision while on vacation in Hawaii."
The key phrase, used twice in the Times story, is "all but," and it
provides Obama's advisers the vast wiggle room in which they
can simultaneously assert that he has made up his mind and that
he hasn't made up his mind. In other words, the Times has no
news to report—only a higher octane of speculation it expects its
readers to swallow until Obama does make his announcement.
If Obama is guilty of gaming the press to sustain interest in his
campaign, his partner in crime is John McCain, who as early as
55/81
May 21 was auditioning potential vice presidents and continues
the tease this week. Politico's Mike Allen reported yesterday that
McCain will name his running mate on Aug. 29 at a rally in
Ohio. But he hasn't made up his mind, either. Allen writes,
"Friends say [McCain] has yet to make a final decision, and is
not expected to do so until after Sen. Barack Obama announces
his choice."
Another way candidates exploit the process is by floating the
names of individuals they would never actually choose. Take,
for example, the trial balloon the Obama camp sent up in July
for Ann Veneman, a Republican and secretary of agriculture in
George W. Bush's first administration. Obama is as likely to pick
Funshine Bear from the Care Bear family as his running mate,
but the Veneman balloon gives him a way to look more openminded than your usual Democrat.
Conducting an endless veepstakes isn't all about the campaigns
controlling mind share. By hinting to reporters the names on
their short lists, the presumptive presidential candidates can get
the press to save them time and energy by vetting their potential
veeps for them. After all, it was reporters Clark Hoyt and Robert
Boyd—not campaign aides—who discovered that vicepresidential nominee Tom Eagleton neglected to tell George
McGovern that he had been treated with electroshock therapy,
forcing McGovern to dump Eagleton after 18 days and find
another running mate.
Nor are the candidates always the worst perpetrators. You're
nobody in political Washington unless the press has assessed
your veep quotient, so some of the malarkey about who is on the
short list comes directly from the politically vain. The press
corps shares blame, too, knowing that all of the names are pencil
strokes until the presumptive nominee actually throws the
switch. But they write their veep speculation stories because no
reporter ever got pulled from the campaign beat for filing a story
filled with the name of preposterous "candidates."
While the Times places its veep speculation on the inside today,
the Washington Post files its on Page One above the fold,
treating the story as part of a national parlor game ("Who's No.
2? Obama Keeps Everybody Guessing"). The Post's news is that
there is no real news. Nobody "outside Sen. Barack Obama's
inner, inner circle knows—that sometime before next week the
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee will announce his
running mate," the paper reports. "Beyond that, the political
world is in a zone of fevered speculation," the Post continues,
before dutifully handicapping the possible veeps.
Both the Times and the Post acknowledge that the timing of
Obama's decision is all about "rollout"—that is, extracting the
"maximum publicity going into the convention" (Times) and to
provide "a big boost before the convention opens Monday in
Denver" (Post). But generating a spectacle upon which a ticket
can ride to November victory is almost always illusory. The
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
selection and the baptism of a veep candidate doesn't contain
enough juice to power a night light, let alone a political
campaign.
Candidates and the reporters who cover them share a problem
from the time the campaigns begin until the voters cast their
final ballots: how to keep the story alive. Why do reporters abet
the orchestration of this media event every four years, fighting
like wolverines to claim a "scoop" that's so meaningless that
nobody can remember a month (a week?) after the fact who
scored it? Is it evidence of their cynicism or of their credulity?
******
Nelson Rockefeller was my favorite veep. Never nominated,
never elected, never above flipping off voters he didn't like. Who
is yours? Send nominations to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (Email may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers'
forum; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer
stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by
the Washington Post Co.)
Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time
Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of
errors in this specific column, type the word veep in the subject
head of an e-mail message, and send it to
slate.pressbox@gmail.com.
press box
Timely Ledes From This Summer's New
Yorkers
They're all dated for your reading safety.
By Jack Shafer
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 5:56 PM ET
Upon becoming editor of The New Yorker, Tina Brown dredged
from its harbor tons of silt deposited there by the magazine's
longtime chief, William Shawn, during his 36-year reign. Brown
decreed that stories be newsy and that cover illustrations be
relevant. She introduced photography and adrenalin to the
magazine's pages, hired new blood, and proclaimed the end of
The New Yorker's traditional "50,000-word piece on zinc."
But one New Yorker tic endures: The lede weighed down by a
date. The purest expression of this New Yorker tradition came in
a June 18, 1984, feature titled "The Staffs of Life: 1—The
Golden Thread," by E.J. Kahn Jr., which commences:
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When the New England famer and botanist
Edward Sturtevant retired, in 1887, as head of
the New York Agricultural Experiment
Station, in Geneva, he left behind a bulky
manuscript that was published in 1919,
twenty-one years after his death, as
"Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants."
Peeved by the date bloat, Michael Kinsley wrote at the time,
"Even supposing we need to know about Dr. Sturtevant's book,
when it was published, and when the good doctor died, why do
we need to know when he retired?"
Defenders of the dated lede say that such time markers provide
readers with an anchor to help them weather the whirl of data
about to wash over them. The date pileup assures readers that
there will be no narrative surprises, that all to be revealed will
first be foreshadowed. Plus, it gives the fact-checking
department something to check! Detractors heave phooey on the
magazine's devotion to straight chronology and dismiss the dated
lede as "once-upon-a-time" hackwork. They yearn for magazines
that refuse to script linear TripTiks.
Setting all editorial preferences aside, here are nearly two dozen
dated ledes from this summer's New Yorkers for your inspection.
And to think that summer isn't even over. ...
In 1835, Georg Büchner, a young sometime
medical student, began to write "Lenz," a story
that inhabits the schizophrenic breakdown of
the eighteenth-century poet Jakob Michael
Reinhold Lenz.
—"She's Not Herself: A first novel about
marriage and madness," by James Wood, June
23, 2008
The Presidential flight of Hillary Rodham
Clinton, which had been aloft for nearly a
year, began its descent stage on January 3,
2008, somewhere over Iowa.
—"Exhillaration," by Hendrik Hertzberg, June
23, 2008
On March 16, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy
announced his candidacy for President.
—Short uncredited review of The Last
Campaign, June 23, 2008
It was nearly midnight before Keith
Olbermann left the NBC News election studio
on May 13th, having spent five hours on the
air, co-anchoring coverage of the West
Virginia Democratic primary.
—"One Angry Man; Is Keith Olbermann
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
changing TV news?" by Peter J. Boyer, June
23, 2008
On October 7, 2002, in Cincinnati, Ohio,
George W. Bush delivered the defining speech
of his Presidency.
—"Barack Obama: What's The Big Idea?" by
Dorothy Wickenden, June 30, 2008
In July, 1820, John Keats published his third
and final book, "Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of
St. Agnes and Other Poems."
—"Cloudy Trophies: John Keats's obsession
with fame and death," Adam Kirsch, July 7,
2008
When Janet Hamlin first went to Guantánamo
Bay to work as a courtroom sketch artist, in
April of 2006, she was forbidden to draw the
faces of detainees in any detail, as part of the
Pentagon's efforts to comply with the Geneva
Conventions.
—"By a Nose," by Ben McGrath, July 7, 2008
Last October, Sheldon Adelson, the gaming
multibillionaire, accompanied a group of
Republican donors to the White House to meet
with George W. Bush.
—"The Brass Ring: A multibillionaire's
relentless quest for global influence," Connie
Bruck, June 30, 2008
In February, 2007, when Barack Obama
declared that he was running for President,
violence in Iraq had reached apocalyptic
levels, and he based his candidacy, in part, on
a bold promise to begin a rapid withdrawal of
American forces upon taking office.
—"Obama's Iraq Problem," by George Packer,
July 7, 2008
In 1841, Andrew Jackson Downing published
the first landscape-gardening book aimed at an
American audience.
—"Turf War: Americans can't live without
their lawns-but how long can they live with
them?" by Elizabeth Kolbert, July 21, 2008
Anne Carroll Moore was born long ago but not
so far away, in Limerick, Maine, in 1871.
—"The Lion and the Mouse: The battle that
reshaped children's literature," by Jill Lepore,
July 21, 2008
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One day in 1995, Barack Obama went to see
his alderman, an influential politician named
Toni Preckwinkle, on Chicago's South Side,
where politics had been upended by scandal.
—"Making It: How Chicago shaped Obama,"
by Ryan Lizza, July 21, 2008
In 1861, the year Tsar Alexander II freed the
serfs, Elena Molokhovets published her
domestic bible, "A Gift to Young Housewives,
or the Means of Lowering Household
Expenses."
—"Soup to Nettles," by Julia Ioffe, Aug. 4,
2008
In June, 2007, a thirty-nine-year-old
unemployed physicist named Garrett Lisi
arrived at a professional conference in
Morelia, Mexico, to give a twenty-minute talk.
—"Surfing the Universe: An academic dropout
and the search for a Theory of Everything," by
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, July 21, 2008
On May 3, 2005, in France, a man called an
emergency hot line for missing and exploited
children.
—"The Chameleon: The many lives of
Frédéric Bourdin," by David Grann, Aug. 11,
2008
In September, 1922, after the Turkish forces of
Mustafa Kemal defeated a Greek army that
had recklessly occupied the Anatolian city of
Smyrna, members of Smyrna's Greek,
Armenian, and expatriate communities were
killed, raped, and robbed.
—Short, uncredited review of Paradise Lost,
July 28, 2008
One Sunday last February, a young woman
named Kristen Smith left the parking lot of
Bethany Baptist Church, in Plant City, Florida,
and drove along a two-lane country road with
a large gold crown on the seat beside her.
—"The Strawberry Girls," by Ann Hull, Aug.
11, 2008 (abstract)
In August, 2000, Dr. Roger Wetherbee, an
infectious-disease expert at New York
University's Tisch Hospital, received a
disturbing call from the hospital's
microbiology laboratory.
—"Superbugs: The new generation of resistant
infections is almost impossible to treat," by
Jerome Groopman, Aug. 11, 2008
On the morning of April 15th, a short video
entitled "2008 China Stand Up!" appeared on
Sina, a Chinese Web site.
—"Angry Youth: The new generation's neocon
nationalists," by Evan Osnos, July 28, 2008
The summer of 1949 was long and dry in
Montana.
—"The Eureka Hunt: Why do good ideas
come to us when they do?" by Jonah Lehrer,
July 28, 2008 (abstract)
In April of 1862, Emily Dickinson wrote to a
stranger, initiating a fervent twenty-four-year
correspondence, in the course of which they
managed to meet only twice.
—"Her Own Society: A new reading of Emily
Dickinson," by Judith Thurman, August 4,
2008
In a handwritten letter to himself, dated
December 13, 1990, Specialist Alan Rogers, a
twenty-three-year-old African-American
chaplain's assistant, grappled with the issue of
fear as he prepared for his first combat tour.
—"A Soldier's Legacy: Don't ask, don't tell,
but Alan Rogers was a hero to everyone who
knew him," by Ben McGrath, Aug. 4, 2008
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
On a bright September day in 1993, not long
before he ended his two decades in exile,
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered a rare public
address in Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein.
—Boundary Issues," by David Remnick, Aug.
25, 2008
******
What was it that the Chambers Brothers said? Time has come
today? Send your favorite dated ledes to
slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name in
"The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a future article; or
elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent
disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)
Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time
Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of
errors in this specific column, type the words New Yorker in the
subject head of an e-mail message, and send it to
slate.pressbox@gmail.com.
58/81
reading list
What To Read About What To Wear
transformations—from clumsy teen to grieving daughter, from
dancer to writer. Kendall understands the particularity of our
relationships with individual items of clothing and the
alchemical power that can lie in an object as humble as a "navy
blue A-line drip-dry skirt."
The best books, magazines, and Web sites about fashion.
By Julia Turner
Saturday, August 16, 2008, at 6:45 AM ET
When word came that Vogue's reliably hefty September issue
would have 51 fewer ad pages this year than it did in 2007, the
fashion and advertising industries shuddered. The news sounded
better to those of us who simply enjoy the August ritual of
basking in hot sunshine while poring over photos of models
swathed in fur-trimmed wool: Our beach bags instantly became
a bit more manageable.
Of course, the glossies are indispensable if you want to see the
latest in luxurious "necessities." (Elle recommends that we
purchase a coat the color of a Jordan almond; Vogue would have
us dressing like Jane Fonda in Klute.) And it's amusing to watch
as these bastions of luxe attempt to accommodate an economic
downturn: Replace the gold band on your Cartier with one of
white alligator, says Vogue, and voilà! You have "a new watch
for a fraction of the price."
But if Vogue, Elle, and W are still worth a gander, they no longer
stand alone. A host of blogs and Web sites now cover high
fashion with the same encompassing scrutiny that ESPN brings
to sports. The Business of Fashion keeps tabs on the latest
industry headlines while offering thoughtful comment on new
developments. Fashionista has the air of a bored teen—many of
its posts are written in marker on ruled notebook paper and then
scanned for posting on the Web—but don't let the attitude fool
you: Its proprietors keep a bemused eye on the latest trends
(exhibiting reassuring skepticism about animal prints in bright
primary colors). What's more, they're so well-versed in brands
high and low that they regularly catch the fast-fashion copycats
at Forever 21 and Topshop in the act. If you're inclined to
forgive the fakers—after all, everyone needs clothes, and the $29
version of a dress can't possibly exhibit the subtlety and fine
cutting of its $2,900 cousin—take a look at the "Adventures in
Copyrights" tag for a spate of breathtaking ripoffs. For the latest
on the legal skirmishes between the designers and their
imitators, check out Counterfeit Chic, a lively blog by a law
professor with her eye on the clone wars.
Although anyone can enjoy the spectacle of these megabrands in
battle, the best writing about clothing explores how we feel—
and what we mean—when we wear it. Autobiography of a
Wardrobe (a slim volume that probably weighs only a mite more
than Vogue's missing ad pages) is an exemplar of this sort of
sartorial anthropology. Elizabeth Kendall writes her life story in
the voice of her wardrobe, allowing her clothes to describe her
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
You can see more of these humble items on display on Flickr's
"Wardrobe Remix" pool, where amateur fashionistas post
regular photos documenting their latest looks. Outfits both
dowdy and divine are submitted for public inspection, and the
images have a yearning quality that somewhat dulls their chic.
(After all, a true glamourpuss doesn't wonder what other people
think.) Nonetheless, the photos are mesmerizing. Remixers
(mostly women) stand in their hallways, doorways, or yards, in
skirts and cardigans, with briefcases and shower-wet hair,
waiting to be noticed. That's no surprise, given that normal
people are the new fashion celebrities. One much-beloved
fashion blog at the moment is the Sartorialist, which celebrates
impossibly fashionable laymen; New York magazine's popular
Look Book takes a similar tack. But without the sharp
photography of these sites, the Wardrobe Remixers on Flickr
seem more exposed, honest, and interesting. Perhaps because of
that vulnerability, the tone of the comments is refreshingly
uncatty: "Love this!" wrote one Remixer to another. "The scarf
individually is a gorgeous pattern and I really like the shoes too."
shopping
What's the Buzz?
Morning Spark oatmeal, Jolt energy gum, and the search for the perfect
caffeine-infused snack.
By Mason Currey
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 7:58 AM ET
Recently, while taking a lunch-break stroll near my office, a
woman handed me a free bag of a new snack food: Engobi
Cinnamon Surge Energy Go Bites. "Infused with caffeine" the
bag boasted, alongside some sparkly graphics that seemed to
imply the process of infusion happening to what looked like a
pork rind. Obviously, I had to try them. Back at the office, I
opened the bag of chemical-smelling crisps and prepared, as the
packaging suggested, "to get wired. I mean really wired."
I also did some poking around on the Web and discovered 1)
that I had met a real, live Engobi Girl in the midst of their East
Coast van tour; and 2) that the snack food is the creation of
Ohio-based Rudolph Foods Co., the world's largest manufacturer
of pork rinds. With Engobi—which are not actually pork rinds
but kind of sugary puffs—Rudolph claims to have introduced the
market's first "caffeine-infused munchie," but it is not the first
company to have added caffeine to snack foods and candy.
Sluggish shoppers can also purchase caffeinated gum, mints,
chocolates, jelly beans, sunflower seeds, and even instant
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oatmeal. (Other products have come and gone: For a while,
Snickers was offering the limited-edition Charged bar stocked
with caffeine.)
Intrigued, and already starting to feel wired-I-mean-really-wired
from the Engobi, I resolved to test this bounty of artificially
caffeinated prepackaged foodstuffs. Sure, they had silly names
and were marketed mainly at teenagers—but I could imagine
them serving a useful purpose for the average working stiff.
Could a piece of gum be a reasonable substitute for a hot,
unwieldy cup of coffee when you're running late to work? Might
popping a mint before a long meeting help you stay alert and
focused? Would munching some sunflower seeds satisfy an
afternoon snack attack and provide a pleasant jolt to help you get
through the rest of the day? I was determined to find out.
Methodology
I tested seven products, each on a weekday afternoon around 4
o'clock. This has always been the time that I hit a wall at the
office, succumbing to a host of productivity-draining symptoms:
mental fogginess, heavy limbs, the need to check e-mail at 90second intervals. On test days, I ate a normal lunch and avoided
any other snacks or caffeinated beverages during the afternoon. I
evaluated each product using four criteria:
Taste (10 possible points)
All of the products, I discovered, had either a chemical flavor or
medicinal aftertaste—apparently an unavoidable consequence of
infusing caffeine. So an important consideration was: How well
did the product mask this flavor? Did the palate adjust to any
bitter off-notes, or did they become increasingly unpleasant the
more you ate? Overall, were the flavors balanced, or was there
an excess of salt, sugar, or artificial flavoring? Caffeine content
aside, would anyone actually want to eat this?
Convenience (10 possible points)
Is the snack portable? Easy to eat? Does it make a mess? Could
you consume it in the car or on the subway? Just as important:
Would you be embarrassed if your friends or co-workers saw
you eating it?
Value (10 possible points)
Is the cost similar to other, noncaffeinated competitors? How
much caffeine are you getting for your money? Would a simple
cup of coffee deliver more buzz for your buck?
Efficacy (10 possible points)
Does a normal serving provide a noticeable jolt of caffeine? To
compare the products, I devised a reading test. After consuming
each food, I tried to plow through a dense, 530-page history of
the relationship between architects and engineers that I had been
meaning to read for work. Doing such serious reading in the late
afternoon has always been difficult for me; I would require a
significant chemical boost to buckle down and focus on this
daunting tome.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Here are the results, from nauseating to euphoria-inducing:
Morning Spark Cranberry Apple Natural Energy Instant
Oatmeal
Price: $2.99 for a box of eight single-serve packets
Caffeine: 50 mg per packet
Warning: "Not recommended for children or those sensitive to
caffeine."
The packaging touts two natural sources of energy—guarana and
yerba mate—but I can't imagine a more artificial flavor: Every
spoonful tastes like it has a shot of cough syrup mixed in (which
is confusing for those of us who associate that flavor with
sedating cough suppressants). Even for instant oatmeal, Morning
Spark is terrible. The bitter, medicinal taste seems to be
concentrated in the desiccated cranberries and slimy apple
slivers, which I avoid. Still, I have to fight back the gag reflex
with every spoonful.
Even if the taste were bearable, oatmeal requires more prep work
than most snack foods—you need a bowl, a spoon, and hot
water. As for its efficacy, Morning Spark did give me a boost,
but it also left me feeling woozy and nearly spoiled my appetite
for dinner. In the reading test, I got through five pages, then
skimmed a few more before a headache set in. The reasonable
price tag can't save it: This is definitely the worst product of the
bunch.
Taste: zero (out of 10)
Convenience: 2 (out of 10)
Value: 6 (out of 10)
Efficacy: 5 (out of 10)
Total: 13 (out of 40)
SumSeeds Energized Sunflower Seeds
Price: $4.95
Caffeine: 140 mg
Warning: None
Right away, I remembered why I don't like whole sunflower
seeds—you know, the kind that require you to shuck the seeds in
your mouth, like an insouciant major leaguer. (Indeed, the seeds
are endorsed by Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn.) Call me
fastidious, but I don't like to spit out my snack foods, particularly
at the office. Throughout the test, I was terrified someone was
going to barge into my cubicle and catch me dribbling a wad of
mangled wet shells into the manila envelope I commissioned as
a spittoon.
That wasn't the only problem. The seeds are extremely salty,
probably an effort to cover up the still-discernible chemical
flavor. Efficacywise, they were a bust—chewing the seeds
60/81
required so much concentration that I barely made any progress
on my book (reading a mere four pages). After almost half an
hour of effort, I gave up without finishing the bag. Ultimately, I
got a lift about equal to a few sips of coffee—which,
incidentally, would have been cheaper. Recommended for sleepdeprived baseball players only.
Taste: 4 (out of 10)
Convenience: 3 (out of 10)
Value: 3 (out of 10)
Efficacy: 4 (out of 10)
Total: 14 (out of 40)
Jelly Belly Cherry Extreme Sport Energizing Jelly Beans
Price: $22.50 for a 24-pack
Caffeine: 50 mg per packet
Warning: "Not recommended for children, teens, or pregnant or
nursing women."
In 1976, Jelly Belly scored a major marketing coup with its
invention of the "gourmet" jelly bean, now the world's No. 1
seller. (Ronald Reagan, famously a fierce Jelly Belly partisan,
sent some along with the astronauts of the 1983 Challenger
shuttle.) But it's hard to know what the company was thinking
with its Extreme Sport line, which sacrifices flavor for, I guess,
performance—the bag touts the presence of not only caffeine but
carbs, electrolytes, and vitamins B and C. That's right, athletes:
Why reach for a tired sports drink when you can slam a bag of
Jelly Belly?
Not surprisingly, the beans are terrible—they taste like
chewable, past-their-expiration-date cough drops. The bright
side is that it only takes a handful to get all 50 mg of caffeine,
which does provide a mild buzz. Still, I read a mere three pages
of my book, perhaps because I was mentally kicking myself for
spending more than $20 on a box of crappy jelly beans. Maybe I
can donate them to NASA.
Taste: 3 (out of 10)
Convenience: 7 (out of 10)
Value: 3 (out of 10)
Efficacy: 4 (out of 10)
Total: 17 (out of 40)
Buzz Bites Chocolate Energy Chews
Price: $3.99 for a tin of eight chocolates
Caffeine: 100 mg per piece
Warning: "Not recommended for children and persons who may
be caffeine sensitive."
I was pleasantly surprised by my first few bites of one of these
small chocolates—it tasted like … chocolate! There was little or
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
no unpleasant bitter flavor. "This could be our winner," I
thought, but was soon punished for my rush to judgment with a
long, lingering chemical aftertaste that completely ruined the
initial pleasure. Each chocolate contains a wallop of caffeine—
about the same amount as one cup of coffee—yet I experienced
a smooth, mellow buzz, which was pleasant. Somehow, it wasn't
enough juice to dig into my engineering history, though—I
skimmed seven pages and read only three.
Taste: 3 (out of 10)
Convenience: 7 (out of 10)
Value: 7 (out of 10)
Efficacy: 7 (out of 10)
Total: 24 (out of 40)
Jolt Spearmint Energy Gum
Price: $2.49 for a pack of 12 pieces
Caffeine: Undisclosed. Two pieces are said to contain as much
as a typical energy drink.
Warning: "Not a substitute for sleep. This product is as safe as
coffee or energy drinks."
I have fond teenage memories of Jolt Cola, which achieved a
kind of cult status for its extravagant levels of caffeine. (Its
slogan was marketing genius: "All the sugar, twice the
caffeine.") So I had high expectations for Jolt gum, which were
largely met. The gum does taste more bitter than a typical
variety, but not enough to be off-putting—the spearmint flavor
remains dominant. I could see chewing a piece on the way to the
subway, but I wish it were a little more potent. Two pieces are
supposed to equal one energy drink; I had three pieces and still
felt lethargic—"not a substitute for sleep," indeed!—although
my six pages of reading was above average. This could be good
for a quick pick-me-up—but it's no Jolt Cola.
Taste: 6 (out of 10)
Convenience: 7 (out of 10)
Value: 7 (out of 10)
Efficacy: 6 (out of 10)
Total: 26 (out of 40)
Engobi Cinnamon Surge Energy Go Bites
Price: $1.29
Caffeine: 140 mg
Warning: "Not recommended for children, pregnant or nursing
women, or those sensitive to caffeine."
I don't know if it's the result of their mysterious infusion process,
but the Engobi snacks gave me the biggest buzz by far. After
eating most of the bag, I felt like my eyes had been hooked up to
tiny batteries. Something in my neck twitched violently. My
reading test was productive—I sped through 10 pages and felt
focused and engaged—but afterward I felt jumpy and slightly ill.
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That didn't prevent me, however, from going home and
immediately cleaning my entire apartment, a rare feat indeed.
Flavorwise, these puffs taste, at first, almost exactly like Taco
Bell's Cinnamon Twists dessert: addictively crispy vehicles for
liberal servings of cinnamon and sugar. Engobi, unfortunately,
does have a prolonged and unpleasant aftertaste, enough so that I
would never normally choose to eat them as a snack—although
they very nearly win this contest for sheer potency.
Taste: 4 (out of 10)
Convenience: 5 (out of 10)
Value: 9 (out of 10)
Efficacy: 10 (out of 10)
Total: 28 (out of 40)
Penguin Caffeinated Peppermints
Price: $2.99 per tin, which contains about 25 mints
Caffeine: Undisclosed. Three mints are said to contain as much
as one cola beverage.
Warning: None
These mints were similar to the Jolt gum, but they get extra
points for workplace convenience—chewing gum in the office
strikes me as borderline déclassé—and for flavor. This was the
only product I tested whose medicinal taste could be considered
agreeable, or at least not offensive: The mints had a mineral
aftertaste that reminded me, pleasantly, of those zinc tablets that
are supposed to ward off colds. The caffeine content is relatively
light, but that just makes it easier to achieve your own ideal
dosage. After two mints, I didn't notice much of a difference, but
after four I found myself tapping my foot rapidly while reading.
In that test, I got through nine pages and was interested enough
to stop and look up fenestration and postulant in the dictionary.
Well, not in an actual dictionary—but, at 4 o'clock, even clicking
my way to Merriam-Webster.com seems like an insane burst of
productivity. We have a winner!
Taste: 7 (out of 10)
Convenience: 9 (out of 10)
Value: 6 (out of 10)
Efficacy: 7 (out of 10)
Total: 29 (out of 40)
technology
Take That, Stupid Printer!
How to fight back against the lying, infuriating, evil ink-and-toner cabal.
By Farhad Manjoo
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 3:21 PM ET
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
I bought a cheap laser printer a couple years ago, and for a
while, it worked perfectly. The printer, a Brother HL-2040, was
fast, quiet, and produced sheet after sheet of top-quality prints—
until one day last year, when it suddenly stopped working. I
consulted the user manual and discovered that the printer
thought its toner cartridge was empty. It refused to print a thing
until I replaced the cartridge. But I'm a toner miser: For as long
as I've been using laser printers, it's been my policy to switch to
a new cartridge at the last possible moment, when my printouts
get as faint as archival copies of the Declaration of
Independence. But my printer's pages hadn't been fading at all.
Did it really need new toner—or was my printer lying to me?
To find out, I did what I normally do when I'm trying to save
$60: I Googled. Eventually I came upon a note on
FixYourOwnPrinter.com posted by a fellow calling himself
OppressedPrinterUser. This guy had also suspected that his
Brother was lying to him, and he'd discovered a way to force it
to fess up. Brother's toner cartridges have a sensor built into
them; OppressedPrinterUser found that covering the sensor with
a small piece of dark electrical tape tricked the printer into
thinking he'd installed a new cartridge. I followed his
instructions, and my printer began to work. At least eight months
have passed. I've printed hundreds of pages since, and the text
still hasn't begun to fade. On FixYourOwnPrinter.com, many
Brother owners have written in to thank OppressedPrinterUser
for his hack. One guy says that after covering the sensor, he
printed 1,800 more pages before his toner finally ran out.
Brother isn't the only company whose printers quit while they've
still got life in them. Because the industry operates on a classic
razor-and-blades business model—the printer itself isn't pricy,
but ink and toner refills cost an exorbitant amount—printer
manufacturers have a huge incentive to get you to replace your
cartridges quickly. One way they do so is through technology:
Rather than printing ever-fainter pages, many brands of
printers—like my Brother—are outfitted with sensors or
software that try to predict when they'll run out of ink. Often,
though, the printer's guess is off; all over the Web, people report
that their printers die before their time.
Enter OppressedPrinterUser. Indeed, instructions for fooling
different laser printers into thinking you've installed a new
cartridge are easy to come by. People are even trying to sell such
advice on eBay. If you're at all skilled at searching the Web, you
can probably find out how to do it for free, though. Just Google
some combination of your printer's model number and the words
toner, override, cheap, and perhaps lying bastards.
Similar search terms led me to find that many Hewlett-Packard
printers can be brought back to life by digging deep into their
onboard menus and pressing certain combinations of buttons.
(HP buries these commands in the darkest recesses of its
instruction manuals—see Page 163 of this PDF.) Some Canon
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models seem to respond well to shutting the printer off for a
while; apparently, this resets the system's status indicator. If you
can't find specific instructions for your model, there are some
catchall methods: Try removing your toner cartridge and leaving
the toner bay open for 15 or 20 seconds—the printer's software
might take that as a cue that you've installed a new cartridge.
Vigorously shaking a laser toner cartridge also gets good results;
it breaks up clumps of ink and bathes the internal sensor in toner.
its low ink costs. Kodak claims that its cartridges last twice as
long as those of other printers and sell for just $10 to $15 each, a
fraction of the price of other companies' ink. When my Brother
finally runs dry, perhaps I won't replace the toner—I'll replace
the printer.
These tricks generally apply to laser printers. It's more difficult
to find ways to override ink-level sensors in an inkjet printer,
and, at least according to printer manufactures, doing so is more
dangerous. I was able to dig up instructions for getting around
HP inkjets' shut-off, and one blogger found that coloring in his
Brother inkjet cartridge with a Sharpie got it to print again. But I
had no luck for Epson, Lexmark, Canon, and many other brands
of inkjets. There are two reasons manufacturers make it more
difficult for you to keep printing after your inkjet thinks it's out
of ink. First, using an inkjet cartridge that's actually empty could
overheat your printer's permanent print head, leaving you with a
useless hunk of plastic. Second, the economics of the inkjet
business are even more punishing than those of the laser
business, with manufacturers making much more on ink supplies
than they do on printers.
technology
Inkjet makers have a lot riding on your regular purchases of
ink—and they go to great lengths to protect that market. In 2003,
the British consumer magazine Which? found that inkjet printers
ask for a refill long before their cartridges actually go dry. After
overriding internal warnings, a researcher was able to print 38
percent more pages on an Epson printer that had claimed it didn't
have a drop left. Lawyers in California and New York filed a
class-action lawsuit against Epson; the company denied any
wrongdoing, but it settled the suit in 2006, giving customers a
$45 credit. A similar suit is pending against Hewlett-Packard.
There's also a long-standing war between printer makers and
third-party cartridge companies that sell cheap knockoff ink
packs. In 2003, Lexmark claimed that a company that managed
to reverse-engineer the software embedded in its printer
cartridges was violating copyright law. Opponents of
overbearing copyright protections were alarmed at Lexmark's
reach; copyright protections have traditionally covered
intellectual property like music and movies, not physical
property like printer cartridges. A federal appeals court
dismissed Lexmark's case, but manufacturers have recently been
successful in using patent law to close down third-party cartridge
companies.
In the long run, though, the printer companies' strong line
against cartridge makers seems destined to fail. Buying ink and
toner is an enormous drag. Having to do it often, and at terribly
steep prices, breeds resentment—made all the worse by my
printer's lying ways. Some companies are realizing this. When
Kodak introduced a new line of printers last year, it emphasized
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
For Sale: Your Browser History
Behavioral ad targeting, Web companies' favorite new way to invade your
privacy.
By Farhad Manjoo
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 4:08 PM ET
In May, Charter Communications, one of the nation's largest
Internet service providers, sent letters to hundreds of thousands
of its customers promising "an enhancement coming soon to
your Web browsing experience." This was a heroic bit of
corporate doublespeak—Charter planned to "enhance" its service
by installing software on its Internet lines to scrutinize its
customers' browsing habits. The company's aim: to sell lucrative
ads tailored to users' interests. For instance, if Charter saw that
you'd been reading lots of auto reviews, it might show you spots
for new cars. The company described the plan as a benefit for
users. "You will not see more ads—just ads that are more
relevant to you," it said.
Charter's proposal drew an immediate outcry from customers
and privacy watchdogs. In June, the company announced that it
would suspend its traffic-monitoring plan. Charter's effort also
sparked a wide-ranging congressional inquiry into how Internet
companies are profiling users for marketing purposes. Congress
has turned up an unsurprising trend: Charter is far from the only
company that wants to collect and analyze your surfing habits.
Though they're all approaching it in different ways, a bunch of
large Internet firms—including ISPs like Charter and AT&T and
Web companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, and perhaps even
Google—are crawling toward adopting "behavioral targeting"
systems. Predictably, privacy advocates are pushing lawmakers
to outlaw or significantly limit this sort of invasive advertising.
Proponents of behavioral targeting defend the practice in much
the same way Charter did—Web surfers will benefit from close
monitoring of our habits because we'll soon be getting more
"relevant" ads. Considering the large networks that Web
companies now manage and the money they can make by selling
ads tailored to your surfing habits, it seems obvious that
behavioral targeting will soon rule the Internet ad market. As the
targeted-ad boom approaches, we Web surfers need to prepare
ourselves—and think of how we might be able to take advantage
even as we have targets on our backs.
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Most ads you encounter online on a daily basis are already
"targeted" to you in some way. Graphical ads—like the ones you
see on Yahoo, NYTimes.com, or Slate—are often served up
based on guesswork about your demographic profile. The ad
sales department at Slate knows the age, sex, and affluence of
the magazine's readership, and it sells ads to companies that
want to attract people who fit this profile. Google and other
search companies, meanwhile, make billions through keyword
and contextual ads, two far more precise ways to target ads. On
its search engine, Google runs ads based on your search
queries—type in Wii, and you'll see a paid text ad urging you to
buy Nintendo's console at Amazon. On third-party sites, Google
serves up ads that match text on the pages where the ads are
placed. For instance, look at the copious kitchen-countertoprelated spots on this Ask the Builder page about granite
countertops.
But when you searched for Wii, were you looking for a new
Nintendo game system, or did you want games for the Wii
console you bought last week? And did you visit that page about
kitchen countertops because you're thinking about remodeling
your kitchen—or was it because you're looking to buy a new
house? These questions get to your deeper intentions, and if Web
companies could answer them—perhaps by looking at your
browser history—they'd likely be able to sell ads at much higher
rates. That's the idea behind behavioral targeting: By gathering
and studying your actions over an extended period of time,
advertisers will get a much clearer picture of what might interest
you.
How might marketers get this info? For Internet service
providers like Charter, the obvious method is something called
"deep-packet inspection." Just about everything you do online—
surfing the Web, sending and receiving e-mail, buying songs
through iTunes—involves the transfer of "packets" of data
between your computer and some other machine somewhere on
the Internet. On their journey, all these packets must travel over
Internet lines provided by your ISP. When Charter decided to
start doing behavioral targeting, it contracted with a Silicon
Valley startup called NebuAd, which installs an "appliance" on
the ISP's network to inspect your packets.
NebuAd says that it safeguards your privacy as it collects these
data—it doesn't save personally identifiable data like your name,
e-mail, or street address—but its monitoring apparatus is
nevertheless staggering. NebuAd knows every Web page you
visit, how long you spend on those pages, every keyword you
search for (on any search engine), and which ads you click on
and which you don't. NebuAd allows you to opt out of its
targeting system, but it won't tell you whether your ISP uses its
service. Several small ISPs told Congress that they'd already
tested NebuAd's system, giving only minimal, fine-print notice
to their customers before doing so. (Among these was Cable
One, a subsidiary of the Washington Post Co., which also owns
Slate.)
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
In its letter to Congress (PDF), AT&T, the largest Internet
provider in the country, said that it is "carefully considering"
ways to implement deep-packet inspection, though it wants to
"do so the right way." The company said that if it does go to
DPI, it would use an opt-in system, requiring customers'
affirmative sign-off before it looks at their traffic. AT&T also
pointed a finger at Google and other Web companies, which told
Congress that they didn't engage in DPI. That's true: Microsoft,
Yahoo, AOL, and Google aren't (at least primarily) ISPs, so they
can't inspect traffic going across Internet lines. But they all run
massive advertising networks that combine search engines,
content sites, and ad-serving companies, a combination that is
certainly capable of tracking people's actions on the Web. (You
can read more than 30 Web companies' responses to Congress
here.)
Indeed, Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL have acknowledged that
they do save and collect some information about how people
move through sites in their ad networks. Google, the Web's
most-profitable advertising company, said that while it does not
currently conduct behavioral targeting, it believes there are
"responsible" ways of doing so. Google, of course, rivals your
ISP for intimacy with your online behavior. As Danny Sullivan
of Search Engine Land told me, not only does the company
conduct 70 percent of all searches online, it also runs the Web's
biggest advertising network—a huge swath of pages across
which the company can monitor your behavior. If you use its
toolbar, you can turn on Google's Web History feature, which
logs every site you visit and every keyword you search for.
Google does not tie these services together in order to serve ads,
but its recent acquisition of the advertising giant DoubleClick
and changes to its keyword search algorithm suggest that it's
considering doing so.
Privacy advocates are asking Congress to make all behavioral
targeting opt-in—Google, your ISP, or any other company
wouldn't be able to trade on your online actions without asking
for your permission first. But marketers balk at this suggestion.
Surveys show that most of us would refuse to sign away our
Web history to marketers in return for nothing more than bettertargeted ads.
How's this for a compromise: If Web companies want to sell my
personal information to advertisers, they ought to pay me for it. I
don't want more-relevant ads, but I might be persuaded to sign
away my Web history to my ISP in return for, say, $10 a month
off my Internet bill. Google is a free service, so it can't really
give me a discount. But Jeffrey Chester, director of the Center
for Digital Democracy, notes that there might be other incentives
for us to turn over our search history. Targeted advertising could
be just the thing that some Web sites—newspapers, for instance,
or social networks like Facebook—need to thrive. Under an optin regime, Google could let you direct your search history to
specific sites in order to give them access to profitable ads.
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Sure, this plan seems a bit pie in the sky, and as Chester notes,
the ISPs and Web companies are preparing a huge lobbying
effort to stop any legislation barring their behavioral targeting
plans. But it's nice to dream, at least, about a universe in which
we're in control of which sites make money off the hours we
spend goofing off on YouTube.
the green lantern
Is Red China Ever Green?
Are all products "made in China" equally bad for the environment?
By Jacob Leibenluft
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 12:02 PM ET
Everyone is talking this week about the smog in Beijing,
which got me wondering: Many of the things I buy, from my
kids' toys to my washing machine, come from China. Am I
responsible for the dirty air in Beijing?
The Lantern is on the scene at the Olympics, and he'll start with
the good news: Compared with a year ago, the city's air does feel
cleaner, and newly planted trees and shrubs line the streets. (It
certainly helps a bit to shut down production in local factories
and keep 1 million cars off the street.)
Beijing's air pollution has still been recorded at levels above
World Health Organization standards, and as China's
environmental challenges go, that's just a small part of the
problem. Last year, the World Bank calculated that air pollution
was responsible for at least 350,000 premature deaths in China
each year—and that may be a low estimate. Over half the water
in China's seven main rivers has been deemed unsafe for
consumption (PDF), and its sources of clean water are at a major
risk of running dry. Meanwhile, China has already overtaken the
United States as the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide,
by some calculations, with its carbon footprint still growing
rapidly.
The Lantern believes the Chinese government is sincere in its
desire to clean up; for example, it is one of the few countries to
try to produce a Green GDP calculating the costs of its pollution.
But efforts to make China greener often conflict with the
country's desire to maintain its rapid economic growth. That
economic growth has been driven, in part, by the rest of the
world's desire for inexpensive Chinese products.
That's where your washing machine comes in. Although reliable
statistics are hard to come by, recent estimates suggest that about
a quarter to a third of China's carbon emissions and water
pollution are linked to the country's exports. Of course,
manufacturing your new toaster is going to require energy and
produce waste wherever those products are made. (It's greener to
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
design a product than to manufacture it, so it isn't quite fair to
blame China for polluting just because American companies
have chosen to send the dirty work abroad.)
All things being equal, though, a factory in China is likely to
have a larger carbon footprint and release more pollution than a
plant making the same product in the United States. On average,
Chinese factories tend to be less energy-efficient, and they rely
heavily on energy sources like coal that produce more CO 2 and
have a greater impact on air quality. Some estimates (PDF) have
placed the annual carbon burden of shifting production from the
United States to China as high as 500 million metric tons of
CO2—an amount equivalent to the total emissions of Italy. The
fact that these Chinese products must be shipped overseas to
consumers might add another 10 percent or so to the total.
So what's an American consumer to do? It's difficult to avoid
buying products made in China, as many American-made
products contain Chinese parts or are crafted with Chinese
machines. Not all Chinese products are equally bad: There's
evidence that China's exports are getting cleaner over time, and
there's reason to believe foreign investment into China is
bringing cleaner technologies into the country. But American
consumers don't have any good way to determine which
products are best to avoid. Each step in the Chinese
manufacturing process may be the responsibility of a different
and more or less anonymous company, making it all but
impossible to determine the exact carbon footprint of any given
product. Unless a parent company pushes them, there can be
little incentive for Chinese suppliers to promote sustainable
practices: Few people, if any, would even know about their
accomplishments. (This brings us to one of the Green Lantern's
golden rules: The more you know about who makes what you
buy, the more likely they are to be environmentally friendly.) To
make matters more obscure, there is wide variation among
factories in China—even within the same industry. The older
plants are still very inefficient, while many of the newer ones are
using imported state-of-the-art technology.
You can still make an educated guess about how to buy green
from China. Here's a decent rule of thumb: High-tech products
like electronics usually aren't so bad, while products like leather
and glass tend to be associated with a lot more pollution.
Chinese textiles—which might go into making the linens or Tshirts sold by your favorite brands—have also been fingered as a
major environmental culprit, with several companies blamed for
depositing dangerous levels of wastewater into local rivers.
We may have better information in the near future. Several
companies that do much of their manufacturing in China are
beginning to talk more seriously about evaluating the "life cycle"
of their supply chain. That would let consumers and investors in
the United States reward greener practices. Even then, it's worth
remembering that for all of China's environmental problems,
Americans still emit about four times more carbon dioxide per
65/81
person. The world may be focused on Beijing's smog this week,
but our efforts are probably still better spent worrying about
what we do at home.
Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at
night? Send it to ask.the.lantern@gmail.com and check this
space every Tuesday.
the spectator
Crossword, Sudoku Plague Threatens
America!
The puzzle of puzzle people.
By Ron Rosenbaum
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 11:49 AM ET
Someone once said the world can be divided into two kinds of
people: The kind who say "the world can be divided into two
kinds of people" and the kind who don't.
I'm the first kind, a divider rather than a uniter, and this morning
another two-kinds-of-people-in-the world bifurcation occurred to
me: The world is divided between those who willingly waste
precious moments, hours, weeks, years of life doing crosswords,
double-crostics, sudoku, and other word and number puzzles—
and those (like myself) who are virtually allergic to them. (The
puzzles, not the people.)
I'm not claiming any superiority for those who share my allergy.
(Well, that's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.) I just
think our brains are wired differently. Really differently.
Try this experiment at a dinner party (if you want to ruin it).
Mention a frequent obsession of puzzle people, the NPR "news
quiz" show, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me! (Or, as I call it, "Wait
Wait ... Please Kill Me!") About half the attendees will exhibit
violent, often physical reactions ranging from cringing to
shuddering. Meanwhile, the other half will have sublime selfsatisfied smiles. They sometimes get the answers before the
guests! The show is so mentally stimulating!
What always gets to me is the self-congratulatory assumption on
the part of puzzle people that their addiction to the useless habit
somehow proves they are smarter or more literate than the rest of
us. Need I suggest that those who spend time doing crossword
puzzles (or sudoku)—uselessly filling empty boxes (a metaphor
for some emptiness in their lives?)—could be doing something
else that involves words and letters? It's called reading.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
But somehow crossword types think that their addiction to this
sad form of mental self-abuse somehow makes them "literary."
Sorry: Doing puzzles reflects not an elevated literary sensibility
but a degraded letter-ary sensibility, one that demonstrates an
inability to find pleasure in reading. Otherwise, why choose the
wan, sterile satisfactions of crosswords over the far more robust
full-blooded pleasures of books?
But, again, let's try to take seriously the self-image of puzzle
people as brainiacs. (Come on, try!) Isn't it a tragedy, then, a
criminal shame, that all their amazing brainpower gets wasted on
word games? If they're as smart as they think they are and there
were some way to channel their alleged brainpower to something
other than word games, we could cure cancer in a month!
Seriously, if their awesome problem-solving brainpower were
somehow harvested like wind energy (maybe they could wear
little beanies on their heads?) they could solve all the world's
problems and have time left over to do an extra double-crostic.
Indeed, if all the scientists who are also puzzle people would put
their puzzle time in service of humanity rather than Will Shortz
(the New York Times guru), I bet there'd be a cure for at least a
minor disease that real people are suffering from. OK, the
beanies were a joke, but I see something like The Matrix,
eventually (a crossword is a matrix, right?), where the brains of
crossword types are harvested for their hyperactive but
otherwise pointless synaptic flickering.
What are some of the other defenses of the puzzle people? "It
trains the mind." No, sorry; it only trains the mind to think in a
tragically limited and reductive fill-in-the boxes way. I'd say that
instead it drains the mind. Drains it of creativity and imagination
while fostering rat-in-a-maze skills.
But, alas, more and more people are succumbing to box-brain
syndrome. Isn't it sad the way so many people who otherwise
look normal have become sudoku zombies? Sudoku has been
turning ordinary humans into pod people for less than a decade.
It's grown so fast its depredations have flown beneath the radar
of economic indices—its matrix has escaped our metrics—but I
think a serious case can be made that the decline in the
American economy can be blamed on the sapping of the mental
energy and productivity of the American workforce that sudoku
addiction alone has wrought. It's a terrible thing to behold: on
commuter trains, in Starbucks, in offices, the Slaves of Sudoku
hunched over their puzzle books, addicted to the mind-numbing
hillbilly heroin of the white-collar class.
Just one indication of the scope and consequences of the
epidemiclike spread of the puzzle-brain disorder: I just went
down to my local Barnes & Noble megastore and found they had
six full-sized floor-to-ceiling columns of shelves devoted to
nothing but crossword-puzzle and sudoku books.
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And I made another discovery: Nearly every major metropolitan
daily newspaper puts out a line of crossword-puzzle books.
None is as prolific as the Times and its crossover crosswordsudoku master, Mr. Shortz, but the Los Angeles Times, the
Washington Post, and the Boston Globe each had their own row
for their crossword puzzle collections.
It suddenly occurred to me that things must be even worse for
the newspaper business than I had imagined. Crosswords and
sudoku may be all that holds up the bottom line. Truly, the last
days are upon us: People apparently now buy the newsprint
editions only because you can do the puzzles in them.
You would think these newspapers might try to put together
collections of their great reporting and photography. No, easier
to cater to the crossword crazies. Penny-wise, pound-foolish.
Newspapers sealed their fate once they let the anti-reading
puzzles into their pages, and sudoku is the death knell. Pretty
soon they're going to find their readership deserting them for the
puzzle books. Forget the eight-part series on hunger in
Appalachia.
The other thing you discover at the Barnes & Noble wall of
shame is that Will Shortz is the anti-Christ. Or Satan. One of
those very, very bad—biblically bad—guys. He's got his name
on what seems like hundreds, thousands of books of mindnumbing, self-lobotomizing crossword and sudoku puzzles. He's
a one-man brain-drain.
I have to say my favorite Shortz book featured him dressed up in
a Baron Samedi top hat and tails holding a Hula-Hoop. It was
entitled: Will Shortz's Funniest Crossword Puzzles and it
promised "his top picks for the most side-splitting puzzles."
That's right, "side-splitting." They will "make you chuckle,
chortle, groan or moan."
And let me tell you, does this book deliver! The unbridled
hilarity starts on Page 1 with a puzzle titled "Double Indemnity."
I'll just give you a sample of the first five "down" clues, and you
can see why his admirers must be rolling on the floor, splitting
their sides.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Low Islands
Baseballer Matty or Felipe
Prune, formerly
Highly ornamented style
Tell ___ glance.
Whoa, dude, you're killin' me! Prunes are always comedy gold,
aren't they? No wonder they call this book his "funniest." They
don't get better than this, do they?
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Then, just to prove my theory that puzzle people's brains are
hardwired really differently, I bought a copy of Sudoku for
Dummies. I got as far as Page 9, a section titled "Looking at the
(slightly) bigger picture." Here it is, in all its revelatory
simplicity, for us dummies:
" 'Well,' you might say, 'looking at one column solves nothing.'
But wait ... By revealing the next column, as in Figure 1-4, you
expose a 9 in row 6. Obviously, with a 9 in this row, the option
of 9 in box 4 at row 6 has been disproved, and the option can be
erased. The 9 has to go in the only other available square at row
4, column 1 (or square 4, 1). This is our first solved number.
Whew! That wasn't so difficult was it?"
Well, yes. Yes, actually, it was. It didn't make the slightest bit of
sense, and even if it did, I wouldn't care. Who could possibly
care? So, yes, I'm too dumb for Sudoku for Dummies (maybe I
need Sudoku for Dummies for Dummies), even though, and I say
this only to make the sudoku zombies crazy, I was Phi Beta
Kappa at Yale. (Whew, I knew I'd find a rationale for working
that in eventually.)
What gets me is the dumbing down, the narrowing of the notion
of "puzzle." People, there are real puzzles out there ranging from
the metaphysical ("Why is there something rather than
nothing?") to the physical (How did consciousness arise from
unconscious material?) to the moral (When do human rights
begin—at conception, birth, or somewhere in between, and
why?) and historical (Was CIA counter-spy James Angleton
right about the "mole" who may or may not have changed
history?), the geopolitical (NATO membership for Ukraine?)
and the cultural (Why did they cancel Mystery Science Theater
3000, the smartest show on television?).
I know that I'm a partisan divider, but to me it seems that puzzle
people are fleeing from real puzzles—fleeing the complexity,
the fear of the unknown, fleeing from the messiness of life that
cannot be contained in a box, fleeing to an illusion of mastery
and control. They're control freaks seeking control of something
worthless: "I can fill in a bunch of boxes with letters!"
Those little crossword-puzzle boxes serve as the fragile
containment structures for their darker fears, cells they lock
themselves into in order to hide from the world. Hide from the
fact that there are so many things they will never find answers
for. There are so many things that will never be solved. But 21
Down—got that covered!
(By the way, I don't include games like Scrabble or charades on
my list of trivial pursuits. Nor Trivial Pursuit. Some of these are
loved by people not for the intellectual self-abuse they offer but
for the social interaction—you know, the fun with other
humans!—that can be generated by the competition. These
games, and others like them, are not as isolating and reductive as
word and number puzzles done in solitary.)
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Maybe it will help solve the puzzle of puzzle people—and offer
them some consolation for all this (good-natured) abuse—if I
explain the "inciting incident" for this column, an experience at
what I call the Starbucks of Tears.
It's located across the street from my apartment building but,
more importantly, a block away from a megahospital. So in
addition to the usual Starbucks crowd of laptop hustlers, one can
often find people quietly sobbing, or trying not to sob, or staring
into space over their lattes. A loved one they've just visited,
perhaps for the last time, a terrible diagnosis, a shadow on an Xray that means a recurrence.
Anyway, one morning I was sitting at the counter reading. (For
you puzzle people: Reading is a seven-letter word for what
you're depriving yourself of every sad minute you're spending on
your empty boxes.) To the left of me, there was a sudoku woman
and to the right of me there was guy who was working on a New
York Times crossword puzzle. Not the puzzle in the actual
paper—he didn't have the paper itself—just what looked like a
carefully clipped out and photocopied version of the crossword
puzzle.
Anyway, this was a sane, intelligent-looking, even imposing guy
in his 40s, wearing a dark suit in the August heat. The
newspaper that morning was filled with world-shaking news,
and yet this guy's brow was furrowed with concern over such
challenging clues as "18 Across: Mauna _ _ _."
Whew, tough one, dude. It's true not all the clues were as
difficult as that, but some were even harder. But there was help
available. You know the expression used about some people,
"Can't buy a clue"? Well with the Times not only can you buy a
clue, you know exactly how much it costs: $1.49 a minute at 1900-289-CLUE. But couldn't it be said that even people who
don't have to buy a clue, but spend their time pursuing clues to
the meaningless puzzles, are clueless?
My critique is really a bit hyperbolic, I know. I'm not that harsh.
De gustibus and all that. Live and let live. These people just
practice another religion, pray to another god (this one called
Shortz). So why should I care that the puzzle people will die
missing some of the high points of the human spirit to be found
in reading, just so they can get their sudoku time in? It's their
loss. And I hear girls really go for guys who do sudoku.
And, as I said, it may just be that they can't help it. That there are
two kinds of brains. Those hardwired to obtain deep pleasure
from arranging letters in boxes and those hardwired to get the
creeps from the process.
But that same morning when I felt myself despair at the sudoku
slaves and the crossword-crazed, I also realized that there was a
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
dimension to it, at least here in the Starbucks of Tears, that I
wasn't recognizing.
That sometimes one only wants numbness. One doesn't want to
be reminded of the full-blooded life that one can find in reading.
That full-blooded life can only make one think of the death that
awaits you or someone you love.
In that case, one wants to avoid the kind of opening up to the
world that reading threatens. One wants to close it off and
prevent it. One wants a dimmer switch. One wants crosswords or
sudoku to block out thought. It can serve a consolatory function,
like religion.
I was reminded of one of my favorite compressed expressions of
despair, from the great 17th-century prose stylist Sir Thomas
Browne: "For the world, I count it not an Inne, but an Hospitall
..." And it's true that this world is not an "Inne" but a Starbucks
of Tears, and sometimes, I admit, I wish I could understand the
rules of sudoku.
today's business press
Russia's Defectors
By Bernhard Warner
Friday, August 22, 2008, at 6:13 AM ET
Investors are pulling out of Russia in record
numbers following the Russian invasion of Georgia
this month, the Financial Times reports Friday.
Citing Russian central-bank data released
Thursday, the FT says foreign currency reserves
fell $16.8 billion in the week beginning Aug. 8, one
of the largest pullouts since the Russian ruble
collapse of 1998. Gennady Melikyan, the central
bank's deputy chairman, acknowledged it is the
"political situation" that has triggered the mass
capital flight. But, Melikyan cautioned, "I think we
have come close to the bottom now."
The FT, however, points out that the Russian stock
market is down 6.5 percent since tanks started
rolling into Georgia and that the debt market, too,
is going through wild fluctuations in price in the
perceived political risk. The Russian newswire
paints a rosier picture. "Russia's net capital inflow
to $30 bln in Jan.-July," a headline in RIA Novosti
reads, emphasizing Russia's impressive prewar
foreign investment record. The wire buries the poor
August figures in the last paragraph.
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Perhaps Russia can make up the difference in oil
revenues. Yes, oil prices spiked again on Thursday,
topping $121 a barrel. "Fears of a new cold war
between Russia and the West" triggered the crude
comeback, the Guardian says. The Houston
Chronicle says it is Russia's bellicose objections to
a planned U.S.-Poland missile installation that has
revived oil futures. Of course, the resurgent oil
price forced the dollar down again, but the markets
nudged higher on the strength of energy stocks,
the New York Times points out.
This week's rebound in oil prices, though, should
not be misinterpreted as a sign of further economic
pain, the NYT advises. "Analysts cautioned against
reading too much into a single day's session. The
dollar has climbed to a six-month high against the
euro. Oil prices have tumbled nearly 18 percent
since reaching a record high on July 11," the
newspaper reports. Others see it differently.
Expensive oil is here to stay, CNNMoney.com tells
us. The oil bulls are back, grumbles Forbes. Any
hope of oil dropping below $100? CNNMoney.com
says, don't count on it. "Once you go down too
low, you'll shut down new production, and prices
will go right back up," Christopher Ruppel, an
energy analyst tells CNNMoney.
The impact of inflation hits Americans more than
their counterparts in Europe, a cringe-worthy
report in the Wall Street Journal says. That is
because in Europe, home to traditionally stronger
unions, wages and salaries tend to follow the
inflation rate more closely, as they did in the first
quarter of this year, WSJ notes. Conversely, "in the
U.S., where unions are weaker and wages aren't
often indexed to inflation, workers fell behind," the
WSJ says. U.S. salaries and wages increased 3.3
percent in Q1 this year while consumer prices
jumped 4.1 percent, a higher disparity than in the
euro zone. The lag could get worse as prices
continue to rise in the U.S. But before you pack
your bags for Europe, please note: The European
Union's higher clout over wages can very easily
have an inflationary effect of its own. There exists
"the added danger in countries where wages are
formally indexed to inflation ... an inflationary
spiral that's hard to tamp down," the WSJ adds.
The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China has
been crowned "the most profitable bank in the
world" after it blew away analysts' estimates with a
$9.4 billion first-half profit, the BBC reports. It
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
beats out HSBC, which clocked in with a $7.7
billion net profit over the same period, the Beeb
adds. ICBC is not alone in China. "Chinese banks
are benefiting from little exposure to US sub-prime
loans and the booming domestic economy," BBC
reports. The FT called ICBC a trendsetter for the
rest of the Chinese banking sector, predicting
"stellar profit growth is expected to be reported
across the Chinese banking industry, with some
smaller institutions preparing to announce profit
jumps of as much as 150 percent." Ah, but what's
this? Trouble so soon? On Friday morning, ICBC
announced it's short the funds needed to finance
its aggressive expansion. The bank announced "it
needs to issue up to 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion)
worth of bonds to boost its capital," Forbes reports
(with help from Reuters).
Chinese women gymnasts underage? That's what
half the world has been wondering since seeing the
pint-size athletes tumble to a team gold last week,
helping China to a TV ratings boom for state
broadcaster CCTV, the NYT reports. On Friday
morning in Beijing, the International Olympic
Committee dropped a bombshell, saying "more
information has come to light" and that the
Chinese women's team will be investigated to see if
any members are under 16. The Times of London
says gold medalist He Kexin is at the center of the
probe. The whiff of foul play has, not surprisingly,
triggered an emotionally charged response. "Glitter
and Makeup Cannot Cover Up Age Issue," a
headline blares from the normally subdued
Reuters. But by Friday evening in Beijing, the
controversy seemed to be all wrapped up. The IOC
says there is still no proof China cheated and that
it would like to see the controversy "put to rest,"
AP reports.
today's business press
Lehman's Secret Talks
By Bernhard Warner
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 6:23 AM ET
Is Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. plotting a Far East bailout?
The Financial Times believes so. On Thursday it breaks the
news that the troubled investment bank held separate secret
negotiations in the first week of August to sell half its
shares to Chinese and Korean investors, but the
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deal soured over price. Citing "New York-based
people familiar with potential buyers," the FT
reports Lehman approached the governmentowned Korea Development Bank and China's Citic
Securities. The talks went further with the South
Koreans but ultimately collapsed over a price tag
that amounts to 50 percent above Lehman's fastdwindling book value, FT contends. The bank is not
talking.
The FT piece sent news wires scrambling on
Thursday morning. Both Dow Jones and Reuters
shot down the China angle. "We had no such talks
as far as I know," Citic Securities Board secretary
Tan Ning told Reuters. Neither wire was able to get
KDB to comment on the record. And Lehman, as is
to be expected, wouldn't shed any light on the
speculation, either. With the shares in Lehman
already down 79 percent this year, any market
rumors about the troubled invesment bank have
become a sensitive topic for traders. The Federal
Reserve Bank, too, is keeping a close watch on idle
Lehman chatter, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Last month the Fed called around to verify rumors
hitting the street that Credit Suisse Group had
pulled a line of credit for Lehman. It is "an
apparent attempt [by the Fed] to prevent a repeat
of the cascading rumors that helped sink" another
troubled firm, Bear Stearns, earlier this year, WSJ
says.
Customers of the failed lender IndyMac learned on
Wednesday that the federal regulators now in
charge will allow them to take out lower-priced,
fixed-rate loans to avoid defaulting on their
mortgages, the Los Angeles Times reports. The
plan, introduced by new IndyMac administrators at
the Federal Deposit Insurance Co., is aimed to
support about 25,000 mortgage holders on the
brink of defaulting by offering interest rates as low
as 3 percent, LAT writes. This is by no means an
open-ended ticket out of debt. As part of the FDIC
arrangment, IndyMac mortgage holders "would
have to share the future gains in their home prices
with the government," NYT points out. The lifeline
buys the FDIC time to sell off IndyMac assets by
mid-October, the Washington Post adds.
Chinese consumers in July became Japan's best
customers, sparking a healthy rebound in Japanese
exports, new government data show. "China
displaces U.S. as Japan's Biggest Customer,"
blared the headline on MarketWatch. Japanese
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
shipments to the United States fell 11.5 percent
month-on-month, the 11th straight decline,
Marketwatch points out. Exports to China,
meanwhile, were up 16.8 percent to $11.8 billion,
nudging out the United States for the first time
ever.
The BBC reads the numbers a different way,
reflecting on Japan's declining trade surplus, which
now stands at $830 million. It is the weakness in
U.S. demand, plus stubbornly high oil prices, that
is chipping away at Japan's trade surplus and has it
on the verge of a recession, the BBC points out.
The outlook for the Japanese economy "essentially
hinges on a recovery in the US economy,"
JPMorgan analyst Masamichi Adachi told the BBC.
Germany is one step closer to introducing a
controversial bill that would protect strategic
national industries and companies from unwanted
foreign investors. It wasn't easy. The government
on Wednesday "braved hefty protest from
business" in approving the draft legislation, the FT
reports from Berlin. The fear is that a more
protectionist regime could scare off foreign
investors, which have already injected $644 billion
into the economy and employ 2 million people, the
FT points out, citing a German labor official.
Germany's economics minister, Michael Glos,
defends the measure to the Guardian. Glos says,
"[M]ost overseas investors would be unaffected by
the 'foreign economy law' and Germany 'is and
remains open' to them."
China's Xinhau news agency points out that the
German foreign funds cap is actually based on a
"U.S. model"—others peg it as modeled on the U.S.
Committee on Foreign Investments—and that it
"could lead to further attempts across the 27member EU aimed at blocking foreign investment
incursions into sensitive industries." Perhaps.
German labor officials tell the FT they believe the
law, which would allow Germany to veto any
foreign acquisition that amounted to more than 25
percent of a German company, violates EU trade
laws.
Can a comedy team of Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates
help Microsoft steal a bit of hip cachet from Apple?
The Redmond-based software giant hopes so, as it
plans next month to roll out a massive $300 million
ad campaign featuring Seinfeld. The ads will carry
the tag line "Windows, not walls," to "stress
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breaking down barriers that prevent people and
ideas from connecting," the WSJ reports. Seinfeld
will appear alongside Gates and will get paid $10
million for his work. Apple may already have
Microsoft beat on the "cool" front, however. Some
American universities, including the University of
Maryland and Oklahoma Christian University, this
fall will be giving incoming students new iPods and
iPhones as a way to show off their high-tech chops
with the new recruits, the NYT reports. For Gates
and Seinfeld, talk about a tough crowd.
"unusually rich terms" to investors in the
auctioning off of $3 billion in debt to raise muchneeded funds. The Financial Times pointed out it
was the "highest risk premium yet" Freddie was
forced to shell out, though not quite as bad as a
recent Fannie auction. The newly minted Freddie
notes carry a yield that is 113 basis points above
comparable Treasuries, FT says; Fannie's bond
auction from a week earlier weighed in at 122 b.p.
more dear than comparable Treasuries. For those
keeping score: Just as Bear Stearns was collapsing
in March, it succeeded in selling off notes at a more
respectable 105.5 b.p. more than Treasuries, the
FT points out.
today's business press
The New York Times reports that the steep
borrowing premium Fannie and now Freddie face is
stoking fears that a government bailout is looking
more likely. The bailout chatter sent shares in both
Fannie and Freddie tumbling yet again on Tuesday,
triggering a broad sell-off across all U.S. indices.
"The markets are acting like a bailout is
inevitable," Sean Egan, managing director of EganJones Ratings, an independent credit ratings firm,
told the NYT. And how much would an aid package
cost taxpayers? A cool $20 billion for each
company should do it, Egan estimates. For bailout
watchers, WSJ's "Heard on the Street" delivers an
interesting trigger to look out for: If the stubborn
30-year mortgage rate fails to come down, expect
the Treasury Department to step in with help for
both borrowers and lenders like Fannie and
Freddie.
Feels Like 1981
By Bernhard Warner
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 6:16 AM ET
A sky-high producer price index, which hit its
highest point in 27 years last month, is the
centerpiece of today's NYT business coverage. With
businesses paying more for raw materials,
commodities, and oil, the inflationary impact can
be felt across the economy. "There is virtually
nothing that we have touched in the last six
months that hasn't increased," Gary O'Neal, a
division manager at Central Plains Steel in Wichita,
Kan., complained to the NYT. Ever-increasing food
and energy costs are, yet again, the big culprit, the
Labor Department's data from Tuesday reveal. It's
a worrying sign as it "shows inflation is still running
high even as the U.S. economy slows," the Wall
Street Journal reports, before adding another
worrisome statistic: The PPI is up 9.8 percent since
July 2007, also the biggest 12-month price spike
since 1981.
There is some hope the worst of the inflation is
behind us. "It's likely that this increase does reflect
the peak given that energy costs are coming off
now," Bank of America senior economist Peter
Kretzmer told the WSJ. If that silver lining fails to
materialize, however, expect the Federal Reserve
Bank to step in, the newspaper suggests.
The Journal leads off its business coverage with
still more ominous news about the sorry state of
lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Freddie's prospects in particular look bleak, WSJ
reports, after it was forced on Tuesday to pay
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
In case you needed any reminding, WSJ informs us
today that the late-1990s tech boom was a long
time ago. Why so nostalgic? It's the most vivid way
to bring perspective to the slowdown of the oncemighty Indian technology sector that, 10 years on,
struggles with dwindling growth rates, fierce
competition from Eastern Europe and Vietnam, and
penny-pinching U.S. clients. "The first round of
growth is always easier," Som Mittal, president of
the Indian tech industry's trade group, Nasscom,
told WSJ. "The next 10 years is going to be
different." Don't feel too bad for Indian tech firms,
though. Yes, the sector's growth rate is expected
to halve—but to between 20 percent and 25
percent.
A rare bit of upbeat news emerged from tech
bellwether Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday as it
reported better-than-expected third-quarter
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earnings on Tuesday that included a 14 percent
jump in profits, according to an Associated Press
report carried on CNNMoney. The Wall Streetdefying numbers sent HP shares up 3 percent in
after-hours trading as it solidified its position as
the world's top-selling computer maker. But don't
read into this a sign for a larger U.S. tech
resurgence. "Revenue from outside the US
accounted for some 68% of the total, with
particular strength in Asia," the BBC points out.
For Cubs fans this summer, all is right in the world:
They're tied for the best record in baseball. And
though it will be weeks before the Cubs clinch a
pass to the postseason, that's not stopping fans
from ponying up serious money on futures options
for seats to playoff and even World Series games
at the home ballpark, Wrigley Field. According to
Marketwatch.com, options on seats for anticipated
Cubs postseason games are fetching as much as
$1,750 online. All the Cubs have to do now is make
it to the Series. It last happened in 1945.
today's business press
Fannie Whacked
By Matthew Yeomans and Bernhard Warner
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 6:26 AM ET
"Fannie, Freddie Shares Battered" cries CNN Money
this morning; "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Are
Pounded," booms the Wall Street Journal—both
publications reporting on Monday's trading that
saw shares in the beleaguered mortgage giants
drop 22 percent and 25 percent, respectively. The
catalyst? A report in Barron's that "a government
takeover of the troubled companies is inevitable,"
writes CNN Money, and "could wipe out the value
of common shares in Fannie and Freddie," adds the
WSJ.
Despite the massive relief effort mobilized by the
Bush administration, investors remain spooked that
any capital intervention/infusion by the Treasury
Department in the form of purchasing preferred
stock would come at a heavy price for other
investors. And though both companies insist they
have capital reserves above the minimum required
by their regulator, investors and analysts fear
those funds are not enough to withstand further
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
losses and that the "two companies may not be
able to raise more capital by selling shares, amid
gloom over the huge losses they face on mortgage
defaults," says the WSJ.
The New York Times leads its business coverage
with a vision of long-term woe for big oil, and it's
not because crude prices closed yesterday at
$112.87 and fell further this morning in Asia,
marking a three-and-a-half-month low. Despite
raking in record profits over the last two years, oil
production at all the Western majors is falling as
the Seven Sisters and their offspring find
themselves "being squeezed out of resource-rich
provinces" in the Caspian and South America by
governments with a nationalizing bent. Even in
regions where politics aren't at play, oil fields are
close to peaking or the companies are forced to
undertake exploration in farther-flung and harder
to exploit parts of the world. "This is an industry in
crisis," Rice University's Amy Myers Jaffe tells the
NYT, adding, "They are like a deer caught in
headlights. They know they have to move, but they
can't decide where to go."
The troubled Lehman Brothers is looking for a
buyer for all or part of its asset management
business, the WSJ reports. The cash-strapped
investment bank is dangling the units to privateequity heavyweights Carlyle Group, Hellman &
Friedman LLC, General Atlantic LLC, and
Blackstone Group LP, WSJ writes. The NYT adds
still more names, saying Kohlberg, Kravis &
Roberts, J. C. Flowers, and Apollo Management
also received solicitations from Lehman in the past
week. It's unclear if Lehman's once prized
investment management unit Neuberger Berman is
on the table. The WSJ's sources say it is. The NYT
says it could be part of the package, while
Bloomberg reports Lehman "will likely keep"
Neuberger Berman. According to Reuters, the
entire unit could fetch Lehman $8 billion. They
could use the money, as analysts predict the firm
will report a quarterly loss of $1.8 billion in
September.
Fears of a post-Olympic downturn sent shares in
China's Shanghai Composite Index tumbling to a
20-month low to start the week, the Guardian
reports. Investors bailed on the index on Monday,
punishing the airlines and oil refiners in particular,
after it became evident a government bail-out for
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the oversubscribed market was not forthcoming.
The authorities "would not take any move to save
the poor market," Zhai Peng, a strategist at Guotai
Junan Securities in Shanghai, soberly remarked.
Meanwhile, Japan's Nikkei fared little better, sliding
2.7 percent in a broad sell-off on Monday as
investors braced for more Fannie and Freddie
gloom, according to a Reuters report carried on
NYT. "Investors who bought stocks yesterday after
coming back from summer holidays are dumping
them on the disappointing notion that U.S. financial
fears are continuing," said Kenichi Hirano,
operating officer at Tachibana Securities. In early
Tuesday trading, the Nikkei continued to fall while
the Shanghai Composite nudged up slightly,
Thomson Reuters reports on Forbes.com.
Finally—pinch yourself now—Cuba is having a hard
time justifying its social welfare programs. Alfredo
Jam, head of macroeconomic analysis in the
economy ministry, tells the FT "that Cubans had
been 'over-protected' by a system that subsidized
food costs and limited the amount people could
earn, prompting labor shortages in important
industries." Says Jam: "We can't give people so
much security with their income that it affects their
willingness to work."
today's business press
The Price Is Right
By James Ledbetter
Monday, August 18, 2008, at 5:37 AM ET
The Wall Street Journal offers two seemingly contrasting stories
about prices. On Page One, a well-reported story details the
effects of a recent Supreme Court decision that has effectively
relegalized a form of price-fixing in the United States. It
reversed a decision from 1911 saying that manufacturers cannot
punish retailers for selling products below the suggested retail
price, and now some manufacturers have begun doing precisely
that. The paper quotes a manufacturer arguing that "[w]e don't
want consumers to think we're the cheapest guys in the world,"
but notes that critics maintain this interferes with the free market
and may lead to inflation.
On Page A2, the Journal seems to take some solace from recent
dips in commodity prices. Oil, rice, palm oil, wheat, and copper
have all seen major drops in prices, the paper notes, "providing
welcome relief for the fragile global economy." The Journal
seems to think that the worst is over, at least for now. "With
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
economic growth slowing across the world, including in China,
and demand for raw materials easing, many analysts believe it is
unlikely the commodity-market highs of earlier this year will be
tested again soon," it says.
Of course, even with dropping prices, many basic things are still
relatively expensive; "[a]t its current price, rice is still nearly
twice as expensive as in 2007," says the paper. And the London
Times points out that rising prices have contributed to the worst
hunger crisis in East Africa in eight years, with 14 million
people at the risk of malnutrition. But the recent easing should
help most governments and might prevent central banks from
raising interest rates, "a move that would have slowed economic
growth further," says the WSJ.
The New York Times examines the effect that young people's
interest in the presidential race is having on the TV-news
business. The paper reports that "[a]bout 6.5 million people
under 30 participated in the primaries and caucuses this year,
almost double the number that turned out in 2000." The
challenge for TV networks is translating that increased
engagement into viewers: CNN has created a "League of First
Time Voters," and Fox News has assigned a full-time
correspondent to cover the youth vote. The networks are hungry
to capture younger viewers to offset their traditional, much older
audiences; the Times notes that the median age of Fox News'
audience is 63.9 years. So far, though, it doesn't appear that the
efforts are yielding much; NBC Nightly News, "the most popular
of the three newscasts, has added 200,000 viewers this year over
the same period last year, but only 2,000 of those new viewers
are between 18 and 34," reports the Times.
BusinessWeek serves up a double issue devoted to the
workplace, "the first issue of BusinessWeek created in
collaboration with readers," according to the magazine. The
biggest problems identified by readers are mostly wellestablished—work-life balance, staying entrepreneurial,
negotiating the bureaucracy, toxic bosses—but one possible
surprise is "generational tensions." To aid the situation, the
magazine offers a "Boomer's Guide To Communicating with
Gen X and Gen Y." Sample advice: "Gen Y started online social
networks. Think about how you can leverage them in the
workplace to encourage team collaboration and knowledge
sharing."
Finally, Bloomberg has an unusual analysis of the side effects of
the burst in strength of the Brazilian real, which has risen 83
percent in four years. This currency increase has allowed
Brazilian advertising agencies to be able to hire onceunaffordable Hollywood celebrities—including Sarah Jessica
Parker, Sylvester Stallone, and Richard Gere—to appear in ads.
"There was a time when hiring a Hollywood star was
unthinkable,'' an ad agency tells the wire. "Now they are not only
affordable, they are actually cheaper than the locals." Still,
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Bloomberg's survey of economists indicates that the currency
will fall before the end of the year.
to Obama. The NYT takes a comparatively stodgy, no-fun tone
with the whole thing, withholding the funny zingers so
abundantly provided by the Post and the LAT to report instead
that both candidates are "searching for ways to connect with
voters on the economy."
today's papers
The WP fronts news that the Bush administration yesterday
announced its plans to implement a regulation that allows federal
health officials to yank funding from any health care providers
that don't allow employees to refuse services offensive to their
personal beliefs. Critics and supporters of the regulation agree
that it covers not just abortion but contraception as well, a point
left weirdly ambiguous by an administration official quoted in
the story.
Pullout Time
By Arthur Delaney
Friday, August 22, 2008, at 5:59 AM ET
The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles
Times, and the Wall Street Journal all front news from Iraq:
Iraqi and U.S. negotiators have agreed to a timetable that has all
U.S. combat forces withdrawing from Iraqi cities next year and
from the country by the end of 2011. The agreement must still be
approved by the Iraqi prime minister and parliament. Both the
U.S. and Iraqi governments must sign off on the accord before
the U.N. mandate for the occupation expires at the end of this
year. USA Today only teases the story, devoting its entire front
page instead to the U.S. presidential race.
The papers agree that recent security gains have made possible a
pullout agreement that was unthinkable just months ago. The
WSJ reports that the rise of the Iraqi army is the chief reason for
the improved security. Iraqi forces, largely without help, now
control 10 of Iraq's 18 provinces. The WP focuses on the tricky
question of whether U.S. troops will be granted immunity from
Iraqi law if accused of committing crimes. The NYT says that if
it's approved in its current form, the agreement will become a
central issue in the U.S. presidential race. Republican John
McCain has suggested withdrawing by 2013, the Times reports,
while Democrat Barack Obama wants withdrawal by mid-2010.
The LAT notes that being seen as going along with what the U.S.
wants is politically unsavory to Iraqi prime minister Nouri alMaliki and that some Shiites protested the agreement in Najaf.
The NYT leads today with word that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi
government is growing increasingly hostile to the leaders of
U.S.-backed Sunni guerrilla forces known as the Awakening, a
movement that began in 2006. The American military contends
that driving out the Sunni citizen patrols could bring renewed
violence. The Times reports that some American officers
attribute to the Awakening the decline in violence that has
enabled yesterday's pullout agreement.
The WP, NYT, and LAT all front coverage of a nasty back-andforth between McCain and Obama yesterday, triggered by
McCain's failure to remember how many houses he and his wife
own. The WP says that the gaffe immediately overtook the
veepstakes as the political story of the moment and that it
jeopardized the McCain campaign's efforts to paint Obama as an
out-of-touch elitist. The LAT declares house-gate the "biggest,
nastiest mud fight of the presidential campaign" and a godsend
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
Sixty-four people were killed in a suicide bombing at a
government weapons factory in Pakistan, reports the NYT in its
off-lead story. The Taliban said the attack was in response to a
fierce military campaign waged by the Pakistani military against
it in a tribal region. The Times says the bombing signals that, in
the wake of president Pervez Musharraf's resignation this week,
the Taliban hopes to intimidate the new civilian government,
which the U.S. hopes will take an anti-Taliban stance.
The WP fronts a very long story plumbing the connections
between the Obama campaign, the University of Chicago
Medical Center (where Michelle Obama worked), and David
Axelrod.
Russia can cause lots of problems for the United States,
according to a front-page analysis in the NYT, by selling missiles
to countries like Syria, by vetoing stuff in the U.N. Security
Council, and by manipulating oil and natural gas supplies,
among other things.
The LAT fronts a four-clicker questioning the legal status of an
old version of Mickey Mouse as Disney's intellectual property.
Readers beware—the story is utterly laden with gags like this
one: The idea of an un-copyrighted Mickey Mouse is "about as
welcome in the Magic Kingdom as a hag with a poisoned apple."
Fishy Friday! The NYT reports that a handful of New York
sushi restaurants and seafood markets are selling bogusly labeled
fish, according to an investigation by two high school kids. And
the WSJ offers a Page One story on the controversial practice of
"yo-yoing," or putting lead weights in bait fish, in striped-bassfishing competitions.
Dude. Airlines are charging $300 fees for boarding with a
surfboard, according to the LAT. The extremely high fee is
causing an uproar in the surfer community. One pro surfer tells
the Times that he's had to cut back on partying while chasing
waves on tour.
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the Post and the LAT to report instead that both candidates are
"searching for ways to connect with voters on the economy."
today's papers
Pullout Time
By Arthur Delaney
Tuesday, August 19, 2008, at 5:51 AM ET
The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles
Times, and the Wall Street Journal all front news from Iraq:
Iraqi and U.S. negotiators have agreed to a timetable that has all
U.S. combat forces withdrawing from Iraqi cities next year and
from the country by the end of 2011. The agreement must still be
approved by the Iraqi prime minister and parliament. Both the
U.S. and Iraqi governments must sign off on the accord before
the U.N. mandate for the occupation expires at the end of this
year. USAToday only teases the story, devoting its entire front
page instead to the U.S. presidential race.
The papers agree that recent security gains have made possible a
pullout agreement unthinkable just months ago. The WSJ reports
that the rise of the Iraqi army is the chief reason for the
improved security. Iraqi forces, largely without help, now
control 10 of Iraq's 18 provinces. The WP focuses on the tricky
question of whether U.S. troops will be granted immunity from
Iraqi law if accused of committing crimes. The NYT says that if
it's approved in its current form, the agreement will become a
central issue in the U.S. presidential race. Republican John
McCain has suggested withdrawing by 2013, the Times reports,
while Democrat Barack Obama wants withdrawal by mid-2010.
The LAT notes that being seen as going along with what the U.S.
wants is politically unsavory to Iraqi prime minister Nouri alMaliki, and that some Shiites protested the agreement in Najaf.
The NYT leads today with word that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi
government is growing increasingly hostile to the leaders of
U.S.-backed Sunni guerrilla forces known as the Awakening, a
movement which began in 2006. American military contends
that driving out the Sunni citizen patrols could bring renewed
violence. The Times reports that some American officers
attribute to the Awakening the decline in violence that has
enabled yesterday's pullout agreement.
The WP, NYT, and LAT all front coverage of a nasty back-andforth between McCain and Obama yesterday, triggered by
McCain's failure to remember how many houses he and his wife
own. The WP says the gaffe immediately overtook veepstakes as
the political story of the moment and that it jeopardized the
McCain campaign's efforts to paint Obama as an out-of-touch
elitist. The LAT declares house-gate the "biggest, nastiest mud
fight of the presidential campaign" and a godsend to Obama. The
NYT takes a comparatively stodgy, no-fun tone with the whole
thing, withholding the funny zingers so abundantly provided by
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
The WP fronts news that the Bush administration yesterday
announced its plans to implement a regulation that allows federal
health officials to yank funding from any health care providers
that don't allow employees to refuse services offensive to their
personal beliefs. Critics and supporters of the regulation agree
that it covers not just abortion, but contraception as well, a point
left weirdly ambiguous by administration official quoted in the
story.
Sixty-four people were killed in a suicide bombing at a
government weapons factory in Pakistan, reports the NYT in its
off-lead story. The Taliban said the attack was in response to a
fierce military campaign waged by the Pakistani military against
it in a tribal region. The Times says the bombing signals that, in
the wake of president Pervez Musharraf's resignation this week,
the Taliban hopes to intimidate the new civilian government,
which the U.S. hopes will take an anti-Taliban stance.
The WP fronts a very long story plumbing the connections
between the Obama campaign, the University of Chicago
Medical Center (where Michelle Obama worked), and David
Axelrod.
Russia can cause lots of problems for the U.S., according to a
front page analysis in the NYT, by selling missiles to countries
like Syria, by vetoing stuff on the U.N. Security Council, and by
manipulating oil and natural gas supplies, among other things.
The LAT fronts a four-clicker questioning the legal status of an
old version of Mickey Mouse as Disney's intellectual property.
Readers beware--the story is utterly laden with gags like this
one: The idea of an un-copyrighted Mickey Mouse is "about as
welcome in the Magic Kingdom as a hag with a poisoned apple."
Fishy Friday! The NYT reports that a handful of New York
sushi restaurants and seafood markets are selling boguslylabeled fish, according to an investigation by two high school
kids. And the WSJ offers a Page One story on the controversial
practice of "yo-yoing," or putting lead weights in bait fish, in
striped bass fishing competitions.
Dude. Airlines are charging $300 fees for boarding with a
surfboard, according to the LAT. The extremely high fee is
causing an uproar in the surfer community. One pro surfer tells
the Times that he's had to cut back on partying while chasing
waves on tour.
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today's papers
Getting Closer
By Ben Whitford
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 5:14 AM ET
With everyone still waiting—and waiting, and waiting—for
veep announcements, the Wall Street Journal tops its online
newsbox with a new poll that puts U.S. presidential hopefuls
Barack Obama and John McCain in a statistical dead heat. The
Washington Post leads with a report on Obama's efforts to break
the tie by appealing to voters' pocketbooks; the Democratic
nominee lamented U.S. job losses while on the stump in
southern Virginia yesterday. The Los Angeles Times leads with a
look at the candidates' tax proposals; economists say that both
candidates' plans would likely add trillions to the national debt.
The New York Times leads with word that a confidential
government report undermines recent claims by Medicare
officials that they had slashed fraud and saved the agency
billions of dollars in false payouts. According to a leaked draft
of the report, senior Medicare officials told auditors not to bother
comparing sales invoices with doctors' records; that meant that
the audit failed to pick up on at least $2.8 billion in improper
spending. USA Today leads with a report on a jet crash at a
Madrid airport that killed 153 people, littering nearby woodlands
with bodies and charred wreckage.
Echoing yesterday's LAT poll, the WSJ fronts national numbers
suggesting that Barack Obama's lead over John McCain has
dwindled to the point where the two candidates are statistically
tied. The new poll puts Obama at 45 percent, three points ahead
of his Republican rival. Obama's biggest problem, it seems, is a
hangover from the primary battle: Only half of Hillary Clinton's
supporters are backing the Democratic nominee, and one in five
says he or she supports McCain. The NYT also has new poll
numbers, in which voters say that neither candidate has made
clear what he would do as president. Respondents trusted Obama
more than McCain to manage the economy, their top overall
priority. For foreign policy, however, McCain came out ahead.
Obama tried to press home his apparent economic advantage
yesterday in Virginia's economically distressed southside. As the
Post notes, that wouldn't normally be fertile ground for a
Democrat, but with popular former Gov. Mark Warner at his
side, Obama did his best to win over voters by attacking the
Bush administration's economic failings. The NYT sees Obama's
renewed economic focus as an attempt to shift from the
sweeping oratory of his primary campaign to a more human
level. That could help him in Pennsylvania, the paper notes in an
off-lead report, where neither candidates' campaign has so far
struck a chord.
is making an unusually concerted effort to rain on the
Democrats' parade, with Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and Tim
Pawlenty all heading to Denver to jeer from the sidelines. On the
WSJ's edit page, Karl Rove provides a glimpse of the GOP's plan
of attack, arguing that Obama's convention speech will be
judged on how well it counters "the impression that he's more of
a rock star than a person of serious public purpose." Any
balloons, ticker-tape, or cheering crowds, in short, will likely be
considered fair game.
A Spanair MD-82 passenger jet, packed with holiday-makers
bound for the Canary Islands, crashed on takeoff at Madrid's
Barajas airport yesterday. At least 153 of the 172 passengers and
crew on board were killed, which the Post notes makes the
incident the worst European air disaster in two decades. The LAT
reports that passengers had phoned relatives to report technical
problems before the attempted takeoff; it's likely to be several
days, however, before there's a clear picture of what went wrong.
The crash will likely feed scrutiny of MD-80 series planes,
which have a solid safety record but, as the WSJ notes, are under
investigation by U.S. regulators following an emergency landing
earlier this month at JFK.
The WSJ fronts word that after five months of negotiations, U.S.
and Iraqi security forces have agreed to a deal that would see
U.S. troops leave Iraq by 2011. That marks a major shift from
just a few months ago, when many Republicans routinely
dismissed the possibility of setting deadlines for troop
withdrawals. The AP reports that the deal, which still requires
formal approval from President Bush and Iraqi leaders, would
see U.S. forces leave Iraqi cities by June 30 next year and would
likely provide U.S. troops with immunity from prosecution
under Iraqi law.
Reporting inside, the NYT doesn't mention specific deadlines,
noting only that the draft would provide a legal framework for
the United States to maintain a military presence in Iraq beyond
2008. The NYT also carries an interview with David Petraeus, in
which the general—looking "drawn, exhausted and more than a
few years older" than when he took command—argues that
while substantial gains have been made in Iraq, much more work
is needed. "It's not durable yet," he said. "It's not selfsustaining."
Russia shows no sign of relinquishing its grip on Georgian roads
and ports, despite a pledge to withdraw forces by Friday. The
Post reports that Russian troops were yesterday digging new
trenches in the port city of Poti and tightening access to the
central city of Gori. The WSJ speculates that growing resentment
among local residents could lead to guerilla resistance if Russia
does not withdraw. The NYT reports that unexploded cluster
munitions have been found in several areas attacked by the
Russians. Moscow continues to deny having used the weapons.
The McCain camp, meanwhile, is warming up for next week's
Democratic National Convention. The WSJ reports that the GOP
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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The United States and Poland signed a new missile defense
agreement yesterday, angering Russian officials, who fear the
deal could pave the way for an anti-missile network intended to
neutralize Russia's nuclear deterrent. The NYT reports that
Russia's military action in Georgia appears to have boosted
Polish support for the missile deal, although some residents
remained queasy at the prospect of provoking Moscow.
Finally, the headline of the day, courtesy of the NYT: "Distraught
Elephant To Remain in Dallas." An elderly, depressive, panicattack-prone elephant named Jenny is to remain at the Dallas
Zoo after a plan to ship the 10,500-pound pachyderm to new
digs in Mexico met with an outcry from local residents. Zoo
officials now plan to find Jenny a companion and build her a
new 15-acre compound in which to enjoy her dotage.
today's papers
Text Message Not Sent
By Ryan Grim
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 6:01 AM ET
The Washington Post and New York Times lead with dual
Taliban assaults, one that killed 10 French soldiers and another
on a NATO base, as the death toll continues to climb in
Afghanistan; the Times New York City-edition headline
highlights the base assault while the Post singles out the attack
on the French. USA Today leads with a piece on how record
government spending on construction is helping prop up the
economy. The Wall Street Journal gives its lead space to fears of
Freddie Mac's stability and tops its world-wide newsbox with a
NATO call for Russia to withdraw from Georgia, though Russia
seems only to be showing signs of staying. The Los Angeles
Times leads with a poll showing Barack Obama and John
McCain in a statistical tie. Nine percent of voters said they
would be "uncomfortable" voting for a black candidate. Obama
still led McCain 45-43, within the margin of error.
The NYT generally makes a PDF image of its national edition
available by 4 a.m. Eastern time, but by 6 a.m., TP's deadline,
the only version available was the New York City one, fueling
TP's speculation, entirely unfounded, that the Times was holding
out as long as possible for a potential morning text message from
Barack Obama—the method he has said he will use—
announcing his running mate. By TP's deadline, Obama had yet
to hit send.
The LAT fronts the feel-good story—though perhaps not for
some of that 9 percent—of Henry Cejudo, the son of illegal
immigrants who won a stunning upset to take Olympic gold in
wrestling. Cejudo, in tears and clutching the American flag, is
splashed above the fold. Cejudo, who didn't have his own bed
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
until his late teens, said he considered sleeping with the flag, not
wanting to let it go. His mother could not attend the bout to
watch her son as she couldn't obtain a passport.
The federal effort to prop up Freddie Mac has had a paradoxical
impact, reports the Journal, as investors "are unlikely to buy
new Freddie shares if they fear the government might mount a
rescue that would hurt the value of those shares." A debt auction
cost Freddie much more than it would have hoped, raising
"concerns about the health of the mortgage giant."
The Times calls the Taliban assaults the "most serious attacks in
six years of fighting in Afghanistan," reporting that at least 10
suicide bombers attacked one of the country's largest bases, and
about 100 insurgents killed 10 elite French paratroopers, known
as some of the world's best fighters. The Post reports that fears
of the Taliban plotting an assault on the capital have increased.
Just a few years ago, private spending on construction roughly
doubled that of government kick-downs. In what USA Today
calls a "dramatic reversal," all levels of government, taken
together, now spend more than the private sector on building
roads, bridges, college buildings, airports, and other long-term
projects. Don't expect it to last, though. The paper reports that
government borrowing fell 9 percent over the first six months of
the year; much construction is financed by government debt.
The federal government has been collecting extensive data on
American travel habits, creating a massive database that records
each time a citizen crosses the border by land. The U.S. has long
kept such data regarding air travel, but adding ground travel
greatly expands the depth of the database. "Critics," reports the
Post's Ellen Nakashima on A-1, see it as part of an
"unprecedented expansion of data gathering for national security
and intelligence purposes" on the part of the exiting Bush
administration.
Obama is playing good cop/bad cop with his advertising
message, reports the NYT. While his national television spots,
such as those airing during the Olympics, take a positive
approach, he has begun to hit hard at McCain in swing states
with negative ads painting the Arizona senator as "disconnected
from the economic struggles of the middle class." Timesman Jim
Rutenberg says Obama has eschewed the modern campaign
technique of sharing the negative ads with national media to earn
free publicity.
For the first time in decades, the Democrat doesn't need the free
media, as Obama has outpaced McCain's fundraising by wide
margins. Obama plans to exploit that advantage. "It's 'game on,
the money's in the bank, we're going to have a huge financial
advantage, let the McCain campaign chase us around the
country, if they can find us,' " Steve McMahon, a Democratic
advertising strategist, tells the Times.
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The LAT fronts what it calls a so-far "quixotic" effort by some
academics to subvert the ruling textbook paradigm. "Anything
that stands in the way of the dissemination of knowledge is a
real problem," says Caltech economics professor R. Preston
McAfee, a self-described "right-wing economist." McAfee has
written a free online textbook to counter the ever-so-expensive
publishing-house textbooks that can now cost students four
digits per semester.
The Post fronts a look at the next potential bubble—commodity
prices. Business reporter Neil Irwin travels to Nebraska and
finds high commodity prices keeping the regional economy
humming along. Truck sales are up, banks are lending money,
land values continue to rise, and farmers are heavily investing in
new equipment.
If the choice of kicker is any guide, however, the Post isn't
confident the good times will continue to roll. "There are no
straight-line graphs," a local tells Irwin. "Things just don't go up
forever. I don't know when this will end, or whether it will be
bad when it does, but this will go the other way."
And Ralph Nader thinks Obama will choose Hillary Clinton as
his running mate; TP dreamt last night that he'd already done so.
In the ongoing speculation into the tightly guarded veep
selection process, that kind of sourcing is about as tight as you're
gonna get.
war stories
Loud Voice, Tiny Stick
Trying to make sense of Condoleezza Rice's latest statement.
By Fred Kaplan
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 5:39 PM ET
Condoleezza Rice has said many strange things as secretary of
state, but few stranger than this remark at an Aug. 18 press
conference onboard her plane en route to Brussels, Belgium:
Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the
one tool that it has always used … when it
wishes to deliver a message, and that's its
military power. That's not the way to deal in
the 21st century.
It would have been mere hypocrisy if Rice had said, as President
Bush did in the wake of the assault on Georgia, that invading a
sovereign country is "unacceptable in the 21st century." It would
have been too clever by at least half had she repeated U.N.
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's protest that the "days of
overthrowing leaders by military means in Europe—those days
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
are gone." (It took Jon Stewart to italicize the phrasing's
loophole, which implies that coups in other regions may proceed
as usual.)
But for America's top diplomat to say that "military power" is no
way to deal or deliver messages in the 21st century is simply
perplexing. Military power has always been used for these
purposes and, alas, always will be. That is, in part, what military
power is for. This is International Relations 101.
Rice, who has a Ph.D. in international relations, surely knows
this. And the Russians, Georgians, Iraqis, Iranians, Afghans,
Pakistanis, Israelis, Lebanese, Iranians, Syrians, North
Koreans—all the world leaders whose armed forces have (or
have been) shot, strafed, or bombed (or have issued or received
threats of such violence in recent years)—know that she knows
this, too.
And that's the problem. Bush and most of his top officials have
now reached the point, if they haven't raced past it long ago,
where nobody can afford to believe a single thing they say.
Imagine that you are the foreign minister of a NATO nation, and
you're trying to devise a response to Russia's aggression against
Georgia, some action or warning that has credibility and
potency—that the Russians would have reason to take seriously
and find worrisome. Then you hear Secretary Rice's remark
about military power in the 21st century, and you realize that, if
Vladimir Putin heard it, too, he must be laughing, wondering
only if it reflected duplicity or naiveté. And then you realize that,
if you did come up with a plausible response to the Russians, it's
probably now doomed to failure, because the United States
would have to be involved in putting it on the table and
enforcing its terms if necessary, and therefore Putin would feel
safe in ignoring it.
The Bush administration tarnished its credibility still further
Wednesday when Rice signed an agreement in Warsaw, Poland,
that allows U.S. ballistic-missile-defense batteries to be
deployed on Polish territory. For more than a year, ever since the
issue arose, Bush and Rice have tried to assure Putin that a BMD
system in Eastern Europe is meant to counter Iran's missiles, not
Russia's. However, the rush to an accord in the wake of
(justifiable) nervousness about Russia's move on Georgia—
combined with Bush's pledge to send Poland conventional airdefense weapons for the explicit purpose of staving off a
Russian attack—seems only to confirm Putin's suspicions.
(Putin, I think, is silly to regard 10 anti-missile missiles, each of
dubious effectiveness, as a threat to Russia's vast nuclear
deterrent, but that's another matter.)
Rice was asked about this possibility—that an agreement with
Poland now might seem to prove the Russians right—during the
same airborne press conference in which she made her remark
about military power. Her reply was curious. "Well, quite the
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contrary," she began, noting that the system is intended to shoot
down Iranian missiles. Then she added, "But what we are saying,
and what I am going to do by going to Poland, is to demonstrate
that the kind of language that Russia uses about Poland isn't
tolerable. When people reach out in a hand of friendship, it's
really not responsible language to threaten them with a nuclear
attack."
The middle sentence in this reply ("But what we are saying …")
certainly sounds like she sees the missile-defense agreement as a
signal to Russia—which suggests first that military power is an
instrument for sending signals in the 21st century, and second
that the agreement is, at least in part, directed at Russia.
As for her next sentence ("When people reach out …"), it
certainly was irresponsible for a Russian general to warn Poles
that Moscow might launch a nuclear attack against missiledefense sites installed on their territory. But the first clause of
that sentence is puzzling: Who extended "a hand of friendship"
to whom?
In any case, if Bush were interested in winding down the crisis
so that Russian troops might pull out of Georgia, or at least let
Western aid and reconstruction funds flow in, it might have been
a shrewd "signal" to delay the missile-defense agreement—and
to point out, behind the scenes, that he was delaying it—even
while restating the West's commitment to the security of Poland
(a NATO member, after all) and sending Warsaw conventional
air-defense missiles. (Delaying an accord wouldn't matter, as the
BMD interceptors in question wouldn't be fully tested, much less
ready to deploy, for several years anyway.) Pointedly not signing
the accord might have reinforced Bush's long-standing message
that he is not threatening Russia—that, in fact, he's going out of
his way to avoid threatening Russia—even as he restated
concerns about Georgia's fate and NATO's cohesiveness.
Again, that might have been a smart thing to do if Bush wanted
to wind down the crisis with Russia. If he wanted to escalate the
crisis, he would have done what he sent Rice to do—sign the
agreement in Warsaw. Does that mean that he does want to
escalate the crisis? It's unclear. If he does, he doesn't seem to
have laid out the next move. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has
firmly stated that the administration is not going to get involved
in a military conflict. The U.S. Air Force has flown C-17 cargo
planes to Georgian airfields. The U.S. Navy has sent ships to
Georgian ports. But here, too, officials have made it clear that
the ships and planes are there strictly to provide humanitarian
aid. The U.S. military personnel will defend their own assets, but
their mission does not even include defending the airfields or
ports, much less helping the Georgian army beat back the
Russian bear.
The more likely explanation of what Bush and Rice are up to is
that they don't know what to do. Not just in Georgia but around
the world, they are floundering. Bush suddenly turns pragmatic
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
diplomat with the North Koreans (though only after they
successfully test an atomic bomb), but he remains ideologically
opposed to negotiations with the Syrians and Iranians. He urges
the Israelis and Palestinians to talk, but he gives them no
incentives, nothing to talk about. He and his aides and
ambassadors tell the Russians their behavior in Georgia is
"unacceptable," that they've "crossed the line," but no
consequences are spelled out, in part because there aren't any
good ones available.
Great powers, and even not-so-great shrewd powers, are known
to speak softly and carry big sticks (or offer big carrots). The
Bush administration is talking very loudly and dangling nothing.
what's up, doc?
Cancer-Free Girls
Why don't moms give their daughters the HPV vaccine?
By Sydney Spiesel
Thursday, August 21, 2008, at 5:01 PM ET
Question: One of the decisions confronting the parents of young
teenage girls is whether to agree to give them the vaccine for
human papillomavirus, which prevents cervical cancer. (One
brand also prevents genital warts.) To me, the question is almost
a no-brainer, because this is an extremely effective vaccine, and
the first one specifically intended to prevent cancer. It's been on
the market for more than two years now. Though the vaccine is
expensive, many insurance plans and federal and state programs
cover the cost. If my daughter were in the eligible age range, I'd
be beating down her doctor's door to arrange for the series of
shots. Yet only about one in five eligible girls has been
immunized against this terrible disease. Why?
Rationales: Many reasons have been suggested. Some parents
fear that giving a vaccine that makes sexual activity a bit less
risky will increase the likelihood of teen sex. Others can't
imagine their teen daughters in a sexual situation in which they'd
need the vaccine's protection. Some could be put off by the
potential pain of the shots or their children's fear of pain. And
other parents are worried that the vaccine might be harmful.
New study: Now a recent study points to additional factors.
Mothers are more likely to vaccinate their daughters early, the
authors found, if the mothers have a history of sexually
transmitted disease and if they see themselves as closely
monitoring their daughters' behavior. Mothers' expectations
about whether their children will mind the shot also matters. And
when mothers are worried about the safety of the vaccine, they're
less likely to use it.
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Safety: This is the factor I think plays the strongest role in
discouraging HPV vaccine use. Recently, rumors and news
reports have called into question the safety of the vaccine,
leading the Centers for Disease Control to restudy the question.
The CDC's recent report is quite reassuring. Of 16 million doses,
there have been 21 reported deaths following the shots. I always
like to remind people that just because one event follows
another, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are related. So far,
the CDC hasn't established a causal relationship between
immunization and a death, though they are still looking.
Additionally, Guillain-Barré syndrome, in which spinal-cord
damage may follow HPV immunization (it follows the
administration of other vaccines and can also occur
spontaneously), has been reported 44 times after the HPV
vaccine was given (with some of those reports not confirmed).
The CDC is investigating here as well, but the number of cases
is pretty much what might be expected in the general population,
with or without the vaccine.
Age: At what age should girls receive the vaccine? Between 9
and 12. The immune response to the vaccine is exceptionally
strong when administered to girls this young. Also, the vaccine
is pretty much worthless if given after HPV exposure has
already occurred, and few girls will have had a sexual exposure
to HPV this early. Parents who choose to delay giving the
vaccine because they don't think girls this young need it are
entirely missing the point. It's precisely because their daughters
are not yet sexually active, and also have such powerful immune
responses, that this is the ideal age. If we had better data on
long-term protection, and knew that the effects of the vaccine
don't fade, we might give this vaccine to younger children, so as
to shift our thinking about its link with early sexual activity. I
don't have anything printable to say to parents prepared to risk
their children's health in the hopes that they will be scared away
from bad behavior or, if that doesn't work, punished for it.
Conclusion: So where do we stand? The vaccine seems quite
safe and very effective—especially when compared with the
risks of not immunizing. I wish it were a lot cheaper. I also wish
it could be given to younger children and to both boys and girls
(both would get some benefit, though girls more).
sidebar
Return to article
In the United States last year, more than 11,000 women
developed cervical cancer and 3,600 women died of it. All of the
cases were caused by HPV infections. In addition, some cases of
five other kinds of cancer are also caused by HPV and could be
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
prevented. The HPV vaccine, if given to girls or young women
before exposure, offers virtually complete protection from
infections by the two varieties of HPV that account for 70
percent of cases of cervical cancer in the U.S. Does blocking the
infection actually prevent the development of cervical cancer?
There is every reason to expect that it will, and it's already been
shown to prevent certain precancerous conditions. But cancer
develops slowly, and it's possible that vaccine immunity will
fade. We won't know for sure until we've had time for long-term
observations. But the likelihood seems so great that holding back
seems to me horribly unfair to the many women who would die
if we waited for perfect results.
sidebar
Return to article
The hepatitis B vaccine also prevents cancer, since perhaps 20
percent of patients who develop chronic hepatitis B because they
were not vaccinated die of liver cancer.
sidebar
Return to article
People hostile to immunization in general or to this one in
particular make a big deal about other side effects. Almost all of
these are minor. As with most vaccines, there is sometimes a
little muscle pain at the site of the injection, and sometimes kids
who are anxious or prone to fainting will feel faint (or even pass
out) following the shot. This reaction can follow any kind of
shot or perception of physical or psychological intrusion on the
body.
xx factor xxtra
The Madwoman in the Blogosphere
The disturbing rise of the "Hillary Harridan."
By Dahlia Lithwick
Wednesday, August 20, 2008, at 6:49 PM ET
You know her. She's got wild eyes and rumpled hair. At some
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point she stopped caring about the stains on her blouse. She's
hurt, angry, rejected, and she's willing to take the whole damn
place down with her. She is Lady Macbeth. She is Jane Eyre's
deranged pyromaniac Bertha Mason. She is Cruella DeVil and
the biblical Lilith. She is Snow White's wicked stepmother, Miss
Havisham, and Emily Bronte's ghostly Catherine Earnshaw. She
is the oldest literary type around—the bitter madwoman,
hellbent on revenge and willing to act against her own interest to
win some respect. And now, to hear the media tell it, she is a
Hillary Holdout; she's a PUMA (Party Unity My Ass); and she
belongs to 18 Million Voices.
Political campaign coverage is always driven by stereotypes.
Blue-collar men, soccer moms, and latte-sipping liberals are the
blocks on which election stories are built. But the rise of the
"Hillary Harridan" is a disturbing development. It unearths a
creepy literary type that harms women a lot more than it helps
them. The suggestion that irrational, emotional, self-referential
women are swinging the election is not a theme any woman
should endorse.
In their groundbreaking work of literary feminism, The
Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the NineteenthCentury Literary Imagination, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan
Gubar looked at the relationships between female Victorian
novelists and the female lunatics who pervaded their fiction.
Gilbert and Gubar argued these writers were psychologically
forced to create their own "mad doubles." At a time when
women were seen as either angels or monsters, these decorous
literary women would "obsessively create fiercely independent
characters who seek to destroy all the patriarchal structures."
The vengeful madwoman is the author's secret double, the
representation of her own unspoken frustration and rage.
A few months ago, Linda Hirshman wrote that media attacks on
Hillary Clinton as an unstable hysteric had a long and
undistinguished literary and psychological pedigree. Men have
basically been calling strong ambitious women insane for
centuries. But the intriguing new twist is that long after Clinton
conceded the primary race to Barack Obama, some of her
supporters have willingly embraced this same media image of
the irrational madwoman and attached it to themselves. It was
sexist when Chris Matthews called Clinton a she-devil. But in
allowing themselves to be portrayed—over and over—as
petulant harridans, unable to "heal" from the wounds of the
primaries, these Clinton supporters are embracing the same shedevil stereotypes they once claimed to resent. Today's PUMA
blog hisses "NO MORE MS GOOD GIRLS!!"
The media have been complicit in lapping up the tales of bitter
old women. Any story erected around a pre-literary archetype of
the destructive power of a woman scorned is destined to be hit
candy, whether or not it represents any statistical reality. It's
hardly clear that Team Hillary is as vast or as powerful as it
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
claims. Polls suggest there isn't a deep pool of Obama-hating
women who could derail his election.
These disgruntled women—whether they plan to vote for John
McCain, sit out the election, or simply gobble up airtime—are
tacitly working toward electing McCain; a candidate who
claimed last week at a presidential forum at Saddleback Church
that life begins "at the moment of conception" and who voted
against legislation ensuring equal pay for women. These women
must be well aware that a vote for McCain is a vote to overturn
Roe. I assume they don't care. But my real problem with the
Hillary Harridans—and the media's relentless focus on them—is
that they give new life to Paleozoic stereotypes about irrationally
destructive older women.
None of this has anything to do with the legitimate outrage most
of us felt about sexism in the coverage of the Clinton campaign.
Women have many reasons to be angry in America, and I am not
suggesting that all political discourse must happen in hushed
voices and bowties. It is not insignificant that Hillary supporters
felt disrespected, shut down, and unheard in the primary process.
But as Taylor Marsh has pointed out, they've now become
victims of the same sexist media machine that turned Clinton
herself into a parody of a madwoman. They have fallen prey to
an "echo chamber that promises hope, but only delivers deceit by
offering claims of something that will not come." They are given
unlimited airtime, so long as they continue to threaten to topple
the entire edifice of the Democratic Party in pursuit of some
ephemeral, unreachable sweet revenge.
The 2008 election has offered an object lesson in the need to
open up our political discourse to include different voices and
styles and beliefs. Everyone is entitled to speak and be heard, but
there is a cost—a tangible cost—for women who insist on
speaking in the irrational, angry, and vengeful voice of an
outdated literary archetype. Particularly in 2008, when we don't
need to invent "mad doubles" in order to topple the patriarchy.
We can do that just by showing up.
Yet somehow, in the waning days of August, and in the interest
of achieving their unachievable ends, some disgruntled Hillary
fans are willing to pander to the same media sexism they decried
in the primary campaign; willing to stamp their feet and shake
their fists and holler, "Out damned spot!" long after it's clear the
spot was imaginary and that women's political power is finally
very real.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC
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