Home//The Week Magazine/September 20, 2019/In This Issue
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Editor’s letter“Take this job and shove it, I ain’t working here no more.” It may have been a tad inelegant, but Johnny Paycheck’s 1977 hit song expressed a sentiment that everyone who works for other people needs to keep on their playlist. Getting paid inevitably requires compromises, but if the boss demands a humiliating degree of subservience or issues orders that violate your conscience, it’s time to hit the Play button on Johnny and walk out. The alternative is on view every day in Washington, where proximity to power and fear of President Trump’s wrath have reduced legions of public servants to simpering sycophants. It’s deeply disturbing to see how easily this president has bent subordinates and acolytes to his will—compelling nodding affirmation of obvious untruths and complicity in words and…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Death and devastation in Bahamas after DorianWhat happenedMore than 70,000 Bahamians were left homeless and pleading for food, water, and other assistance after Hurricane Dorian’s Category 5 winds flattened two of the country’s islands, leaving them strewn with beached boats, splintered houses, and dozens, possibly hundreds, of bodies. Amid reports that Bahamians were not getting enough emergency aid and were trying to flee the Abacos and Grand Bahama islands, President Trump said the U.S. would not welcome evacuees without proper documentation, warning of the risk of admitting “very bad people,” including “drug dealers” and “gang members.” Hours earlier, Customs and Border Protection acting chief Mark Morgan blamed “confusion” after more than 100 survivors without U.S. visas were ordered off a ferry traveling to Fort Lauderdale. He said Bahamians could enter “whether you have travel documents or…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Good week/bad weekGood week for:Comebacks, with news that vinyl records are on pace to outsell compact discs for the first time since 1986. Fueled by hipsters and audiophiles, the vinyl resurgence coincides with a slump in sales of CDs, which are losing market share to online streaming services.Volunteerism, after a passenger on an EasyJet flight from England to Spain stepped up when the scheduled pilot failed to appear, and flew the plane himself. The un-uniformed hero, Michael Bradley, was an off-duty EasyJet pilot, and the substitution was “fully in line with regulations,” EasyJet said.Trump 2024, with a prediction by Brad Parscale, President Trump’s campaign manager, that “the Trumps will be a dynasty that lasts for decades.” Parscale said Don Jr., Ivanka, and Jared Kushner were “amazing people” with “amazing capabilities.”Bad week for:Drug…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Car bombing foiledLondonderry, U.K.Irish nationalists pelted Northern Irish police with Molotov co*cktails this week as officers attempted to cordon off a suspected car bomb in the city of Londonderry. The device is thought to have been planted by the New IRA—a splinter group of the disbanded Irish Republican Army. No officers were injured by the Molotov co*cktails, but two rioters suffered burn injuries. The car bomb was found two days after a suspected New IRA mortar bomb was discovered in nearby Strabane, aimed at a police station. Sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland have increased as the threat of Britain leaving the EU without a deal on Oct. 31 has become more likely; a no-deal Brexit could mean the return to a closed, policed border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, an EU member.Salvini…7 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Why Johansson sticks by Woody AllenScarlett Johansson has a complicated relationship with the #MeToo movement, said Rebecca Keegan in The Hollywood Reporter. Johansson was one of the first celebrities to join Time’s Up, an organization and legal defense fund created in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein revelations to help women combat sexual harassment and assault. “It was almost like you found something you didn’t even realize you needed,” she says of the movement. Johansson famously called out James Franco for wearing a Time’s Up pin to the Golden Globes just days before five women accused him of sexual misconduct. But she also stands by one of #MeToo’s biggest villains: Woody Allen, who has long been accused of sexual assault by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow. Much of Hollywood has distanced itself from Allen, but…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019The real price of Trump’s wallEditorialThe Washington PostNow we see the “collateral damage” of President Trump’s obsession with building a border wall, said The Washington Post in an editorial. Trump is seizing $3.6 billion in congressionally approved military construction funds to build 450 miles of wall in defiance of Congress, using the dubious national emergency he declared at the southern border as legal justification. That includes hundreds of millions of dollars allotted to build and renovate schools for children on American military bases. “Sorry, kids: Mr. Trump wants his wall—the one it turns out Mexico is not paying for.” Planned improvements at the U.S. Military Academy’s engineering center have also been scrapped. All told, 127 projects have been effectively defunded in nearly half the states. America’s overseas territories and bases have been hit the hardest.…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Viewpoint“The wartime atmosphere Trump has established encourages partisans to overlook faults with their own side. In the zero-sum logic of war, any dissent is seen as providing aid and comfort to enemies who would be worse if they gained power. When Stuart Varney of Fox Business recently refused to admit that Trump ever lies, it was as if he understood that once you pull that thread a little, there’s no telling where the unraveling will stop. It may be that once Trump is no longer the commander in chief in the war against Blue America, the ardor of his troops will give way to a better understanding of the price the GOP paid on his watch.”Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Why we’re angry at the ‘Ossis’GERMANYNikolaus BlomeBildWest Germans have every right to be angry with their “Ossi” neighbors in former East Germany, said Nikolaus Blome. In provincial elections in the eastern states of Saxony and Brandenburg last week, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party surged to second place, winning 27.5 percent and 23.5 percent of the vote, respectively. This is a party that “opposes foreigners and all things Western” and flirts with neo-Nazis and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The AfD has found success in the old East by openly stoking Ossis’ resentments, telling them that they remain second-class citizens in a nation that reunited nearly 30 years ago, when Communist East Germany merged with free West Germany. Never mind that the federal government has funneled trillions of dollars to the East since 1990 and…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Why we are worse than BrazilCANADAArno KopeckyThe Globe and MailEveryone has been shrieking about Brazil’s poor stewardship of the burning Amazon, said Arno Kopecky, but Canada deserves just as much ire. This country has the second-largest intact forest on Earth after the Amazon, and we are wantonly destroying it. The boreal, as it’s called, has been emitting more carbon than it absorbs since 2002. That’s partly because our logging industry chops down 990,000 acres of it each year, “mostly to supply the U.S. with Kleenex and toilet paper.” Worldwide, we place third for loss of intact forests, behind just Russia and Brazil—and if you calculate that loss per capita, “we lead them by a large margin.” But the main reason the boreal has turned “from carbon sink to source” is fire. Last summer, British Columbia…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019What’s new in techJeffrey Epstein’s secret MIT linksDamning revelations about ties to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have forced the resignation of the head of the MIT Media Lab, said Angela Chen in MIT Technology Review. The Media Lab is one of the top centers for the study of technology; an explosive report last week from journalist Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker found that its director, Joi Ito, accepted nearly $2 million from Epstein despite the university’s having listed him as a “disqualified” donor. Knowing this, Ito directed staff “to scrub Epstein’s name from donations” to avoid scrutiny. Ito’s ties to Epstein were “so widely known at the Media Lab that staff in Ito’s office began to call him ‘he who must not be named’ or ‘Voldemort.’” In addition to making his own…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Mystery illness: An e-cig reckoningA mysterious vaping-induced lung illness is proving that “safer than smoking cigarettes” does not mean “safe,” said Amanda Mull in TheAtlantic.com. Six people have died since August from this lung syndrome, which has severely sickened more than 475 Americans in recent months. Almost all patients have required hospitalization for severe shortness of breath, lung inflammation, fever, dizziness, and vomiting. Now federal health officials are warning people to avoid e-cigarettes, while scientists race to explain why “otherwise healthy” young people are falling ill. Officials say many patients were using bootleg marijuana vaporizers bought off the street, with “vape juice” diluted by vitamin E acetate, a popular skin-care oil that inflames the lungs when heated and inhaled. Some patients also used nicotine vapes, whose health risks are largely unknown despite 14 million…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Supreme Court: The Democrats’ threat“The Supreme Court as we once knew it died last year,” said Garrett Epps in TheAtlantic.com. The battle over what’s left of a once respected institution has now “spilled into public view,” with Democratic and Republican senators sending extraordinary messages to the justices about their political independence, or lack of it. First, five Democratic senators filed a “friend of the court” brief in a case about New York City gun laws, accusing the court’s conservative 5-4 majority of doing the bidding of “corporate and Republican political interests” on such issues as voting rights, partisan gerrymandering, dark money, and environmental regulation. “The Supreme Court is not well,” the Democrats’ brief stated, warning that the public may demand the court be “restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics”—a threat to…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019HRT and breast cancerNew research has concluded that the risk of developing breast cancer from hormone replacement therapy is twice as high as previously thought, reports The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). HRT is used by millions of women around the world to relieve the symptoms of menopause, which include hot flashes and night sweats, and scientists have known of the treatment’s link to cancer since the early 2000s. To better gauge that risk, researchers analyzed data from 58 previous HRT studies, which included more than 100,000 postmenopausal women with invasive breast cancer. The metastudy revealed that the general risk of breast cancer for women ages 50 to 69 who have not taken HRT is 6.3 percent. But for women on the most common form of HRT—estrogen and daily progestogen—the risk jumps to 8.3 percent,…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Tattoo needles in lymph nodesMore than ink enters your body when you get a tattoo—metal fragments from tattoo needles that can cause allergic reactions also get left behind. In a new study, researchers examined 12 new steel tattoo needles with a high-powered microscope, both before and after use, reports The New York Times. They found that chromium and nickel particles break off during the tattooing process and become embedded in the skin. Those metals can travel through the body and build up in lymph nodes, potentially triggering an allergic reaction. Interestingly, the needle didn’t fragment when black ink alone was used; the breakdown was caused by titanium dioxide, an abrasive chemical additive used to brighten colored tattoo ink. The research builds on earlier studies that showed pigments can leach from tattoo sites and accumulate…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Quichotte(Random House, $28)With his 14th novel, Salman Rushdie leaves no doubt: “He is a writer in free-fall,” said Parul Sehgal in The New York Times. Unable lately to do anything but imitate himself, the author of Midnight’s Children and other great early novels here gives us another flamboyant but unaffecting genre pastiche: A laid-off Indian-born pharmaceutical salesman assumes the role of a modern Don Quixote as he crosses Trump’s America with an imaginary sidekick in hope of winning the heart of a beautiful Indian-American TV hostess. Complicating matters, the whole story is presented as the invention of a middling crime novelist—and “I didn’t even mention the mastodon invasion. Or the rip in the cosmos. Or the character inspired by Elon Musk.” But while Quichotte “puts both Rushdie’s vices and virtues…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Malcolm Gladwell“Malcolm Gladwell is at something of a professional tipping point,” said Amy Chozick in The New York Times. Once nearly universally praised, the author of 2000’s The Tipping Point and four subsequent best-sellers is rolling out a new book to a divided audience. To his fans, he remains a brilliant explainer of human behavior; “to others, he is a faux intellectual.” So maybe it’s fitting that Talking to Strangers is about being misunderstood. Gladwell, a Canadian-born New Yorker writer, gets that his immense success might aggravate fellow writers. But he’s far more worried about misunderstandings that arise between strangers because of the way media shapes everyone’s presumptions. “On every level,” he says, “I feel like there is a weird disconnect between the way the world is presented to us in…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019The Goldfinch(R)A bombing and a priceless memento reshape a boy’s life.The new big-screen adaptation of Donna Tartt’s hit 2013 novel “tries hard to be a masterwork but ends up feeling more like a forgery,” said Brian Truitt in USA Today. Tartt’s 760-page Pulitzer winner recounted the coming of age of a boy who was 13 when he survived a museum bombing that took his mother’s life and prompted him to walk away with a priceless Dutch painting. But while the film “frequently looks amazing,” it plays as “a lot of soapy melodrama.” In at least one sense, “the spirit of Tartt’s book is honored,” said Richard Lawson in VanityFair.com. As we watch Theo both as a teenager shuttling between new homes and as a young adult drifting into crime, “we feel…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Movies on TVMonday, Sept. 16In a Valley of ViolenceEthan Hawke shares top billing with John Travolta in a bloody, dryly funny neo-Western. (2016) 6:15 p.m., CinemaxTuesday, Sept. 17They Shall Not Grow OldTechnical magic brings soldiers’ experience of World War I to vivid life in this gripping documentary from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson. (2018) 9 p.m., HBOWednesday, Sept. 18The Pink PantherPeter Sellers debuts the character of bumbling French detective Jacques Clouseau in a riotous comedy about the hunt for a gem thief. With David Niven and Claudia Cardinale. (1964) 8 p.m., TCMThursday, Sept. 19GloryDenzel Washington won his first Oscar for his portrayal of a soldier in an all-black Union Army regiment. (1989) 8 p.m., the Movie ChannelFriday, Sept. 20SerenityIntergalactic smugglers transport a psychic assassin aboard their spaceship in director Joss…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Three new chef-driven Italian favoritesRezdôra New York CityThis months-old trattoria doesn’t promote its tasting menu, but it doesn’t have to, said Pete Wells in The New York Times. Chef Stefano Secchi’s reputation preceded him, because food fanatics knew that he’d worked in Modena, Italy, under Massimo Bottura, creator of one of the world’s most celebrated restaurants. In New York, Secchi is “one of the most appealing new talents in years”; he cooks for both fanatics and ordinary diners who love the kind of hand-rolled pasta an Italian grandmother might make. A recent $90 five-pasta tasting took its inspiration from the Emilia-Romagna region and began with pork-filled tortellini doused in a complex reduced broth, followed by a “smooth, almost fluffy” tomato basil sauce over maccheroni al pettine. “If we are talking about Emilia-Romagna, we have…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019A perfect corner of rural PortugalMelides is a sleepy Portuguese village where the locals’ daily routines are “as well-worn as the cobblestone streets,” said Eric Lipton in The New York Times. But change is afoot, as you’ll notice by walking just a block from the town butcher to a string of boutiques selling designer swimwear to French-speaking visitors. Though the surrounding Alentejo region is largely unknown to Americans, it has been discovered by a wave of affluent Europeans. Local homeowners now include designer Philippe Starck and shoe magnate Christian Louboutin, who is working on opening the first hotel in Melides (pronounced Melidesh). Though a new day is clearly coming, “for the moment, Alentejo is a region of unparalleled beauty and authenticity,” home to vineyards, farms, and the last unspoiled stretch of Atlantic Ocean coast in…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Georgia’s adventure cityThe best place to catch a wave this summer isn’t an ocean, said Mary Ann Anderson in Forbes. It’s the Chattahoochee River, on the border of Georgia and Alabama. The ’Hooch anchors the city of Columbus, Ga., and one 2.5-mile stretch of rapids qualifies as the longest urban whitewater rafting course in the world. Adventure seekers can raft or surf right past downtown and even zip-line from one state to the other. Columbus itself “may well be the coolest cat in Georgia at the moment.” Once a Creek Indian village and then a frontier trading post, the city of 200,000 has a large historic district, a growing culinary scene, and a museum that’s home to the world’s largest collection of lunch boxes. For more child-friendly fun, visit the Coca-Cola Space…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019The 2020 Subaru OutbackThe Detroit News“The icon just got more iconic.” The car that saved Subaru in the 1990s and pioneered America’s crossover boom has just undergone a makeover that increases its appeal inside and out. No longer ungainly, the lifted all-wheel-drive wagon has been sculpted into a looker—especially in the rugged $35,000 Onyx model. A new chassis adds athleticism while a new transmission quiets the power train. The Outback has always attracted a range of buyers; this edition “blurs the luxury-mainstream line even further.”Automobile“It certainly rides and handles better,” and if shod with knobbier tires, it would be unstoppable on most off-road terrain. The four-cylinder base engine generates just 182 hp, but that should be more than adequate for most Outback drivers, while highway fuel efficiency should touch 33 mpg. The exterior…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Afghanistan peace talks crumbleWhat happenedNearly a year of negotiations to end the war in Afghanistan collapsed this week after President Trump canceled plans for a secret meeting with Taliban and Afghan government leaders at Camp David. Trump revealed on Twitter that he had invited both sides to the presidential retreat in Maryland in order to finalize a peace agreement to end the 18-year-long war, but called off talks after a suicide car bombing in Kabul that killed 12 people, including a U.S. soldier. Even some of the president’s Republican allies were shocked by the invitation. “Camp David is where America’s leaders met to plan our response after al Qaida, supported by the Taliban, killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11,” said Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. “No…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Trump pushes out national security hawk John BoltonWhat happenedNational security adviser John Bolton was forced out this week after repeatedly opposing President Trump’s overtures to American adversaries such as North Korea, Russia, Iran, and the Taliban. Trump said Bolton was “way out of line” with the administration’s foreign policy goals and had made “some very big mistakes.” For his part, the 70-year-old former ambassador to the United Nations insisted he’d offered Trump his resignation without prompting. “I will have my say in due course,” Bolton said. His ouster comes after he earned Trump’s ire for backing a failed effort to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, opposing direct talks with North Korean despot Kim Jong Un, lobbying European allies against readmitting Russia into the G-7, and pushing for a military strike on Iran. The national security adviser’s dissent…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Only in AmericaAfter consulting with Vatican exorcists, the pastor of St. Edwards Catholic School in Tennessee has banned the Harry Potter books from the school library. “These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true,” the Rev. Dan Reehill wrote to parents. He warned that “the curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells” and risk “conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.”A Tennessee man is suing Popeyes for $5,000 for running out of chicken sandwiches. Craig Barr claims that he has wasted “countless time driving” between Popeyes franchises searching for the elusive sandwich and has suffered mockery from friends. “I can’t get happy, I have this sandwich on my mind,” Barr said. “It just consumes you.”Fewer Americans insured…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Pitt’s road to sobrietyBrad Pitt needed a wake-up call about his drinking, said Kyle Buchanan in The New York Times. It came in the form of his split from Angelina Jolie in 2016, when the couple had a bitter fight during a private flight from Nice, France, to Los Angeles. Jolie filed for divorce days later. After the divorce, Pitt joined Alcoholics Anonymous and spent the next year and a half attending meetings to solidify his sobriety. “I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privileges,” Pitt says. The setting gave the normally taciturn star permission to be vulnerable. “You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard,” he says. “It was this safe space where…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019In the newsTodd Palin filed for divorce from Sarah Palin last week, citing “incompatibility of temperament” with the former Alaska governor. The Palins, both 55, “find it impossible to live together” after 31 years of marriage, the filing said. The couple and their five children were featured on a reality TV show in 2010, two years after Sarah Palin emerged as the out-of-nowhere GOP vice presidential nominee. Their personal lives have been troubled ever since: Daughter Bristol, an advocate for abstinence, had two children out of wedlock. In 2017, Track Palin was arrested after he broke into his parents’ home and left Todd bleeding from the head.President Trump launched a late-night Twitter tirade this week on “boring musician” John Legend and his “filthy mouthed wife,” Chrissy Teigen. Trump was enraged by Legend’s…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Warren’s nonsensical fracking banAriel CohenForbes.comIn a Democratic primary season that has produced a blizzard of far-left ideas, said Ariel Cohen, Elizabeth Warren has just come up with one of the wackiest of all. Last week, Warren vowed to use an executive order to impose a nationwide ban on fracking on her first day in office—a “harebrained scheme” that would backfire badly. Over the past 15 years, the fracking revolution has been “one of America’s greatest success stories.” It’s helped the U.S. lower its carbon emissions by providing abundant, relatively cheap natural gas for electrical generation, driving dirty coal into steep decline. In addition, the gas and oil produced by fracking have reduced U.S. energy imports from 60 percent in 2005 to 11 percent today, freeing us from dependency on the likes of Saudi…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019I read it in the tabloidsA maid of honor who was told she could “wear anything” to her sister’s wedding in Nebraska showed up in a giant inflatable Tyrannosaurus rex costume. Christina Meador, 38, said she was “not a big fan of wearing formal dresses,” so she took her sister’s green light literally. During the outdoor ceremony, she waddled down the aisle inside the T. rex costume while clutching a bouquet in her inflatable claws. “I regret nothing,” Meador said later. Her sister, Deanna Adams, 40, said she was not bothered by her sister’s choice. “I genuinely was not kidding when I said she could wear whatever she wanted.”A French men’s club employed two pole-dancing robots to help commemorate the fifth anniversary of its opening. SC-Club owner Laurent Roue said the two humanoids won’t replace…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019United Kingdom: Parliament defies Boris on Brexit“Rarely has a U.K. prime minister’s strategy imploded so rapidly,” said the Financial Times in an editorial. Boris Johnson entered office in July with a pledge to get Britain out of the European Union by Oct. 31, with or without an exit deal to govern trade and our myriad entanglements with the bloc. Johnson hoped that his no-deal threat—which would cause backups at ports and force a hard border between EU member Ireland and the U.K. province of Northern Ireland—would frighten the EU into offering last-minute concessions. But his hard-line tactics have backfired spectacularly. In a single week, he has “collapsed his own working majority from 1 to minus 43” by expelling from the party the 21 principled Conservatives who voted in favor of legislation barring a destructive no-deal Brexit,…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Telling lies about the haredimISRAELDov LipmanThe Jerusalem PostIsrael’s ultra-Orthodox Jews have become a punching bag in the run-up to next week’s election, said Dov Lipman. Opposition leaders Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party and Avigdor Lieberman of the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu are trying to win the anti–ultra-Orthodox vote by claiming that the haredim—who make up 12 percent of the population—receive an unfairly large slice of the federal budget, depriving schools and hospitals of much-needed cash. They’re even warning that the haredim want rabbis to rule in place of legislators. None of this is true. The budget for the Religious Services Ministry, which funds synagogues, is just 0.14 percent of the national budget, while religious seminaries cost another 0.25 percent—and not all of that money goes to the ultra-Orthodox. And while I disagree…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Innovation of the weekA “Fitbit-style” wristband could help people with hearing impairments experience sound through vibrations, said Darryn King in The Wall Street Journal. Those who tested the Buzz device from Palo Alto, Calif.–based NeoSensory were able to “recognize noises like oncoming vehicles, crying babies, barking dogs, opening doors, guitar music—even the high-pitched ‘ding!’ of a toaster oven” through haptic pulses. Created by neuroscientist David Eagleman, the device works by picking up sound waves via microphone before an embedded chip “breaks the frequencies into 128 bands.” Four small motors then stimulate the wrist in distinct patterns for “pronounced, localized sensations that stick out in a user’s perception.” The device also has “noise-canceling algorithms” that make cacophonous noises such as the whir of an air conditioner fade into the background.…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019NotedAt least 276,000 women had abortions outside their home state between 2012 and 2017, as some states have passed stricter abortion laws and the number of clinics has declined. In New Mexico, the number of out-of-state women who had abortions doubled over that period, while Missouri women had almost half the abortions performed in Kansas.Associated PressSince President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran and announced new sanctions in May 2018, oil exports from the Middle Eastern nation have plunged from 2.5 million barrels of oil a day to about 200,000. The Iranian economy is expected to shrink 6 percent this year.The Wall Street JournalSixteen of the 20 deadliest mass shootings in modern history occurred in the past 20 years, with eight of them happening in the past five…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Going blind from a bad dietA teenage “fussy eater” who subsisted on junk food went blind and partially deaf because of his terrible diet, according to a new study. The unnamed British teen ate nothing but French fries, Pringles, sausages, processed ham slices, and white bread for the past decade, and first visited a doctor at age 14 complaining of “tiredness,” reports The Washington Post. He was given B12 shots and dietary advice and sent home, but by age 15 was starting to suffer from hearing and vision loss—symptoms that mystified doctors. At 17, he was declared legally blind, and doctors discovered that he still had a B12 deficiency, as well as low levels of copper, selenium, and vitamin D. The teen was diagnosed with nutritional optic neuropathy, a disorder of the optic nerve that…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019The Testaments(Nan A. Talese, $29)“Praise be,” said Ron Charles in The Washington Post, “Gilead will never be the same.” In a 400-page new novel that ranks as “one of the most anticipated sequels of the modern age,” Margaret Atwood has re-established control of the near-future American theocracy she conjured in 1985’s The Handmaid’s Tale, using it as the setting for a brisk thriller featuring, quite ingeniously, “the narrator we least expect.” Fifteen years have passed since the events of Atwood’s dystopian classic. The former United States is still a patriarchal Christian regime where environmental stresses have drastically reduced the birth rate and the few remaining fertile women are forced to be sex slaves who bear children for the elite. But now readers are seeing this world through the eyes of a…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019By Samantha PowerSamantha Power, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a Harvard Law School professor and author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning history A Problem From Hell. Her memoir, The Education of an Idealist, has just been published.The Second Bill of Rights by Cass Sunstein (2004). A never-more-relevant exploration of one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1944 “Economic Bill of Rights” address. In connecting the defeat of fascism with economic security and independence, FDR highlighted the link between global peace and the individual longing for dignity. I liked the book so much that I married its author.Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi (1947). Levi’s searing account of the Nazis’ “demolition of man” raises often unanswerable moral questions. I read this memoir in my early…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Gordon Parks: The Flavio StoryThe J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, through Nov. 10In the late spring of 1961, a photo essay in Life magazine “landed like a lightning bolt,” said Carolina Miranda in the Los Angeles Times. Renowned photographer Gordon Parks had traveled to Rio de Janeiro to document poverty in Latin America, and his images of 12-year-old Flavio da Silva made the rail-thin favela resident an instant icon. The oldest of eight children in a family packed into a hillside shack, Flavio was shown hauling water, feeding beans to an infant sibling, and enduring a fierce asthmatic attack. And he was quoted saying he didn’t fear death, only how his family could survive without him. Donations poured into Life, enabling the magazine to buy the family a house and shuttle Flavio to…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019The HighwomenAt a moment when women are struggling to secure equal time on country radio, The Highwomen is potent protest music, said Craig Jenkins in NYMag.com. But the album—the product of a four-woman Nashville supergroup—is also more than that: “It’s a dream team-up by turns uplifting enough to elicit good-spirited chuckles and gutting enough to bring you to tears, sometimes in the space of a single song.” Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, and Amanda Shires all bring unique gifts as singers and songwriters; they “sound great on their own and transcendent together,” delivering harmonies that honor a long musical lineage that includes the 1980s Highwaymen supergroup led by Johnny Cash. The record’s title track, which relates the tales of four ambitious women who died too young, is “as powerfully primal…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019It Chapter Two(R)Old friends reunite to kill a monster once and for all.“Less is definitely more,” said Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. That’s the lesson to be learned from comparing 2017’s horror hit It with its nearly three-hour sequel. The first film pitted a group of Maine teenagers against an evil force that took form as a child-eating clown who scared moviegoers in record-setting numbers. Though the follow-up is just as faithful to Stephen King’s 1,000-page novel, reuniting the so-called Losers Club 27 years later for a second encounter with the malevolent shape-shifter, the parade of flashbacks and scares simply runs too long. “It certainly helps that the sequel cast the likes of James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, and Bill Hader,” said Miles Surrey in TheRinger.com. But having the lovable kids of the…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019UndoneIn a TV era that has seen a series about a cartoon horse outclass the best live-action sitcoms, Undone feels like another expansion of what TV can be. Animated in the rotoscope style popularized by Richard Linklater’s Waking Life, the show follows an aimless 28-year-old whose hold on reality begins to slip after a car crash. Her deceased father, played by Bob Odenkirk, begins appearing to her, teaching her to time-travel to investigate his death. Rosa Salazar stars in another rule-breaking series from two of the masterminds behind Bojack Horseman. Currently available for streaming on Amazon…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Summer squash chowderThough it’s often the season’s also-ran vegetable, “summer squash deserves better,” said Ben Mims in the Los Angeles Times. This wonderful late-summer soup, inspired by corn chowder, “brings out the surprising sweetness in the gourd,” while bacon, garlic, onion, and a splash of vinegar add savory heft.Summer squash chowder• 8 strips bacon, roughly chopped • 4 tbsp unsalted butter • 1 tbsp finely chopped thyme • 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped • 2 celery ribs, finely chopped • 1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped • 1 bay leaf • 8 yellow summer squash (4½ lbs), quartered lengthwise and cut crosswise into ½-inch pieces • 6 cups whole milk • 3 tbsp cider vinegar • kosher salt and black pepper • 2 pattypan squash (optional) • ¼ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley•…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019SoCal’s desert graffiti“The Valley of the Names isn’t a place you stumble upon,” said Jennifer Nalewicki in SmithsonianMag.com. “It’s a place you have to want to find.” Many who do arrive in their 4x4s carrying dark rocks, because this stretch of the Sonoran Desert in California’s southernmost corner is known for a graffiti tradition that has no other way to grow. Back in the 1940s, when the site was part of a desert military training compound established by Gen. George Patton, soldiers began arranging lava rocks atop the packed white sand to spell out names and messages; imitators have since expanded the graffiti across 2,100 acres. The federal Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 1.4 million surrounding acres, asks visitors to just look—neither moving the rocks nor bringing in new ones that…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Lodge at Blue SkyPark City, Utah“The real magic of Blue Sky doesn’t reveal itself immediately,” said Lila Battis in Travel + Leisure. The landscape at this 3,500-acre ranch outside Park City isn’t showy, so its beauty might strike you only after you throw open a 14-foot window to smell the sagebrush and hear the rushing creek. Fishing, trail riding, skeet shooting, and heli-skiing were offered here even before the June opening of a 46-room lodge that “cocoons you in the comfort of little luxuries.” Now you can also book a heli-wedding, said The Wall Street Journal, and exchange vows anywhere in the surrounding mountains.aubergeresorts.com, doubles from $850Last-minute travel dealsNew Zealand holidayTake in breathtaking scenery at Matakauri Lodge or relax on a private beach at Kauri Cliffs. New Zealand’s Robertson Lodges is offering a…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019The return of cardigansSchool Boy Cardi from Free PeopleFree People has a handful of affordable cashmere cardigans for fall, including this slouchy school boy that can be worn open or closed, and will be a standby once the temperatures dip. With cashmere, any option under $200 is “kind of unbelievable.”$168, freepeople.comSource: PopSugar.comEileen Fisher Long Cardigan“Cashmere is even more luxurious in a beautiful creamy white color,” which is why buying a long cardigan like this one could be a smart investment. It has an open front (no buttons) and a shawl collar.$498, eileenfisher.comSource: CNN.comEverlane Cashmere Crew CardiganEverlane’s classic cut might take you back to the 1990s, when Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz helped launch a cardigan revival. Another cashmere option, it’s a sweater you can tie over your shoulders or wear alone over jeans.$140,…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019It wasn’t all badWhen the Celebrity Equinox set sail from Florida last week, the cruise ship’s 3,000 passengers expected to enjoy a week of relaxation in the Caribbean. Then Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas. The vessel changed course to Grand Bahama Island and became a floating aid station. Kitchen staff prepared some 10,000 meals for storm-struck Bahamians, which passengers plated and packed. Guests and crew also donated clothes for victims. Guest Jessica Russell fully supported the cruise’s rerouting. It’s the “least that we can do,” she said.For the first time in the U.S. Army’s 244-year history, two sisters have attained the rank of general. At a historic promotion ceremony in Arlington, Va., Maj. Gen. Maria Barrett—already a two-star general—presented her younger sister Brig. Gen. Paula Lodi with a beret bearing her new one-star…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019‘Sharpiegate’: Is Trump at war with reality?Every day the president supplies fresh evidence of “how spectacularly ignorant, vainglorious, and obsessive he can be,” said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. But Trump’s Sharpie-doctored map of Hurricane Dorian’s path should make it “into the Smithsonian.” The saga began last week, when Trump tweeted that Alabama and four other Southern states “will most likely be hit (much) harder” by the hurricane than previously forecast. Dorian, by that point, was already veering north, and the Birmingham branch of the National Weather Service quickly reassured residents that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.” Being constitutionally “incapable of admitting even the slightest error,” Trump produced an official NWS map of Dorian’s likely route onto which someone—he said he didn’t know who—had drawn a crude loop in black Sharpie that…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Tragedy at seaSanta Barbara, Calif.Federal agents served search warrants this week at the offices of Truth Aquatics, the company operating a scuba-diving vessel that erupted in flames last week, killing all 33 passengers and one crew member. No criminal charges have been brought, yet an initial probe found serious safety issues on the 75-foot boat, where a fire started below deck in the early hours of Labor Day. The boat reportedly lacked a crew member tasked with staying awake to alert passengers in the event of a fire—and it’s unclear whether the crew was adequately trained or the passengers adequately briefed on safety. Five crew members who were above deck escaped, saying the fire was too intense to rescue anyone below. The Conception, anchored off the coast of Santa Cruz Island when…4 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Video games and violenceRecent mass shooters gunned for ‘high scores.’ Are violent video games to blame?Why the focus on gaming?As the country struggles to find an explanation for mass shootings, many elected officials have pointed a finger at violent video games. One of the top video game genres is “first-person shooter,” where players get points for stalking and slaughtering other people; terminology from these games is being used by some of the angry young men who have perpetrated the waves of massacres that have stunned Americans. In April, after a 19-year-old indicated on the message board 8chan that he was going to shoot up a synagogue in Poway, Calif., another 8chan user urged him to “get a high score”—as in, kill a record number of people. Many recent shooters have idolized Anders Breivik,…5 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Driving racists out of conservatismTimothy CarneyWashingtonExaminer.comDespite what liberals snidely contend, most conservatives are not racists, said Timothy Carney. But we need to do a better job on the Right of creating “a conservative ecosystem that doesn’t welcome racists.” The urgency of that need was highlighted by a recent exposé in SplinterNews.com, which unearthed an email network of mostly young right-wingers in conservative media and institutions who secretly expressed “pro-Hitler, nakedly anti-Semitic, and plainly racist” sentiments. It’s horrifying that the alt-right has made such inroads with young conservatives, and these bigots must be driven out. Conservatives need to make “elevation of African-Americans, immigrants, and religious minorities so central to conservatism that all dedicated racists will be thoroughly repelled.” This doesn’t mean accepting the charge that America is a white supremacist nation, but the undeniable reality…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Tear down monuments to Soviet thugsCZECH REPUBLICJana MachalickaLidove NovinyA statue to a Soviet war hero doesn’t belong in Prague, said Jana Machalicka. The statue of Marshal Ivan Konev, the Red Army general who liberated the city from the Nazis in 1945, has been vandalized multiple times over the years, most recently when someone splashed red paint on the bronze and wrote on its base “No to the Bloody Marshal! We will not forget.” After World War II, Konev led the brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution and helped plan the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of then-Communist Czechoslovakia to put down the Prague Spring democratic uprising. That’s why so few Czechs feel any gratitude toward Konev. Because of the constant vandalism, Prague authorities now want to move the statue to the National Museum, and that’s…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019South Africa: An explosion of xenophobic rageBlack foreigners have once again become targets of xenophobic violence in South Africa, said Sabelo Skiti and Thanduxolo Jika in the Mail & Guardian (South Africa). For more than a week now, mobs of black South Africans have attacked and looted foreign-owned shops, cars, and homes; foreign truck drivers have been pulled from their cabs and beaten. At least 12 people have been killed and more than 640 people arrested. The riots began in Pretoria following the alleged murder of a local taxi driver by a Nigerian drug dealer, and the mayhem quickly spread to Johannesburg and other cities. Intelligence agencies believe the violence may have been orchestrated by a truckers’ union that accuses foreign drivers of stealing jobs, or possibly by a political faction eager “to embarrass and ultimately…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Relationships: Facebook’s love algorithm“Are Americans ready to trust Facebook with their dating life?” asked Sarah Perez in TechCrunch.com. The social media giant launched its online dating platform, Facebook Dating, last week to “leverage the company’s deep insight into people’s personal data to deliver better matches than rival dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble, Match, and others.” Creating a Dating profile will be “an opt-in experience,” and your Dating activity won’t appear in the News Feed. But Facebook will use the preferences, interests, and other background info it can gauge from your activity on the site to find matches, although its recommendation algorithm remains a secret. And what you do on Facebook’s sister site, Instagram, also becomes part of the equation, with Dating pulling in Instagram photos and stories.This sounds like a useful service,…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Gun control: Walmart takes a standWalmart just put Washington’s response to gun violence to shame, said Patricia Murphy in RollCall.com. With lawmakers “missing in action,” the nation’s largest retailer is taking concrete steps to protect the public in the aftermath of last month’s horrifying mass shooting at its El Paso, Texas, store. The company announced that it will stop selling ammunition for handguns and assault-style rifles. Walmart had already taken assault-style weapons and handguns off its shelves, and now will sell only long-barreled rifles and shotguns, which are mostly used for hunting. Walmart is also asking customers not to openly carry firearms in its stores, even in states where it’s legal to do so. CEO Doug McMillon called on Congress to pass “commonsense” gun legislation, and at least debate banning assault weapons. If only Congress…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Corruption: How Trump pockets public fundsPresident Trump’s corruption has reached “absurd and Veep-esque” proportions, said Tim Miller in TheBulwark.com. The latest example of his brazen grifting was his “suggestion” that Vice President Mike Pence and his retinue rent rooms at Trump’s golf resort in Doonbeg, Ireland, while attending official meetings in Dublin—more than three hours away. Recently, the president proposed his resort in Doral, Fla., as the site of next year’s G-7 summit, and he’s spent upwards of $100 million in taxpayer money on 200-plus golf outings to his properties. That’s all on top of the “tens if not hundreds of millions” corporate executives, evangelical organizations, and at least 22 foreign governments have spent at his Washington, D.C., and other hotels “to curry favor.” Do Americans understand what their president is doing? “Trump is taking…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019There is no ‘gay gene’ to predict sexualityThe largest-ever study into the link between sexuality and genetics has found that there is no “gay gene” that determines a person’s sexual orientation. Instead, same-sex attraction appears to be driven by a complex mix of genetic, cultural, and environmental influences—just like many other human traits. “It’s effectively impossible to predict an individual’s sexual behavior from their genome,” co-author Ben Neale, from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, tells CBSNews.com. hom*osexuality and bisexuality are a “normal part of variation in our species.” The researchers examined the genetic profiles of nearly 480,000 people in the U.K. and U.S.—about 100 times more than any previous study into genetics and same-sex attraction—who were also asked whether they had ever had a same-sex partner. The scientists identified five specific genetic variants associated with…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Urban crows’ burger habitCrows in towns and cities have higher cholesterol than their country cousins, thanks to their fast food–heavy diet, a new study has found. These clever corvids are experts at raiding trash cans. To discover the effects of the half-eaten cheeseburgers and fried chicken they scavenge and scarf, researchers measured the cholesterol of 140 nestling crows in urban, suburban, and rural areas in and around Davis, Calif. The more urban the surroundings, they discovered, the higher the birds’ cholesterol. The scientists then ran a “cheeseburger supplementation experiment,” reports the New Scientist, in which they dropped McDonald’s burgers near crows’ nests in rural Clinton, N.Y. Sure enough, the junk food–munching birds’ cholesterol levels were about 5 percent higher than those of nearby crows that hadn’t been fed burgers. Whether that extra cholesterol…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession(Scribner, $26)Don’t look to this “necessary and brilliant” book for easy answers as to why women are the main consumers of true-crime stories, said Ilana Masad in NPR.org. There aren’t any easy answers, as author Rachel Monroe surely knows, because her nuanced study “refuses to sit inside binaries of good vs. evil, victim vs. perpetrator.” Monroe explicitly rejects the popular idea that women’s interest in books, TV shows, and podcasts about murder is mostly practical, a means of self-preservation. She instead provides portraits of four real-life women whose attraction to violent crime manifested in ways that might shed light on the nature of the universal attraction.Monroe’s first subject is the tamest of the four, said Kaitlin Phillips in The New York Times. Frances Glessner Lee, an heiress who built elaborate…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Hustlers(R)Strippers run a scam on their Wall Street patrons in the wake of the Great Recession.“A giddy, gaudy blast of a movie,” the new strip-club crime caper starring Jennifer Lopez might be the perfect segue from summer to fall, said Benjamin Lee in TheGuardian.com. Based on a true story about strippers who take revenge on the Wall Street goons who brought on the Great Recession, it “matches the immediate gratification of a summer movie with the artful substantiveness of an awards contender—yet remains not quite definable as either.” Lopez, with an assist from a stripper’s pole, delivers “one of the most memorable screen entrances in recent cinema history,” then commands the story as the club’s alpha performer, a veteran who takes Constance Wu’s newbie under her wing and eventually teaches…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019The Week’s guide to what’s worth watchingThe American Game and The GreatestCollege football has now been with us for 150 years, and ESPN is marking the occasion with a pair of season-long documentary series. The American Game will air Tuesdays and offer a history of the sport organized by theme. The Greatest, which will air Thursdays, will ask an 11-member panel to hash out the game’s greatest rivalries, uniforms, personalities, and much more. Begins Tuesday, Sept. 17, at 9 p.m., ESPNAmerican Horror Story: 1984It’s probably a good thing that summer is all but over, because the ninth season of Ryan Murphy’s horror anthology will follow several teenagers to a summer camp for a multipart tribute to such 1980s slasher franchises as Friday the 13th. Series regulars Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters have stepped aside for this…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 20, 2019Spirits: Aged white rumIt’s time to rethink white rum, said Jim Vorel in PasteMagazine.com. Though many budget options are unaged, some white rums rest in oak barrels for years before the resulting color is filtered out. Still, the benefits of aging show. Aged white rums like these make “wonderfully characterful daiquiris.”Angostura White Oak ($14). This bargain option “possesses a friendly sweetness and lightly creamy texture, with a noticeably spicy profile that hints at black and pink peppercorn.”Denizen Aged White Rum ($20). A “substantial upgrade” for just a few extra bucks, this “lovely little spirit” ought to be the go-to white rum for most home co*cktail bars.Diplomático Planas ($33). Aged six years, this richer, sweeter, more decadent rum has a “pronounced nuttiness” and offers “unexpected impressions of chocolate and oak.”Colin Clark/The New York Times/Redux,…1 min
