Home//The Week Magazine/September 16, 2016/In This Issue
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Editor’s letterIt’s understandable to feel a little exhausted by this seemingly never-ending election season. As one political journalist put it this week, the contest for the White House feels as if it “has been going on since before rocks were invented.” The good news is that with Labor Day in the rearview mirror, the finish line is truly in sight. And later this month, voters will have perhaps the best opportunity yet to truly take the measure of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, at the first presidential debate on Sept. 26. Political scientists have long said that debates don’t move the needle all that much—serving mostly to solidify voters’ support for their preferred candidate. But this race has been anything but ordinary, and even in more typical election years, the debates…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016It wasn’t all badAshton White just kicked a hole in the glass ceiling. The seventhgrader from Wicksburg, Ala., recently made her debut as kicker on her high school’s otherwise allmale football team. Ashton started playing with the Panthers after their coach, Josh Cox, noticed her powerful punt on the soccer field. In this season’s opening game against Geneva County, she kicked six of seven extra points, helping her team to a 56-26 win. Ashton says she’s determined to raise her game even higher. “I want to make a 40-yarder by 10th grade.” Robert Morin worked for nearly 50 years at the University of New Hampshire’s library, where his colleagues knew him as a frugal man. He drove a ’92 Plymouth, rarely bought new clothes or went out, and ate frozen dinners. His coworkers…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016The world at a glance ...LondonExtremist imam jailed: Radical Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary, a thorn in the side of British authorities for decades, has been sentenced to 5½ years in jail for encouraging support of ISIS in a series of inflammatory YouTube lectures. Choudary, 49, was a leader of al-Muhajiroun, a now banned Islamist group that police suspected was the driving force behind the 2005 London bombings, which killed 52 people. One of the two men who hacked British soldier Lee Rigby to death in London in 2013 had attended protests organized by Choudary. Scotland Yard counterterrorism head Dean Haydon said the hate preacher had spent years “as spokesman for the extremists, saying the most distasteful of comments but without crossing the criminal threshold”—until he began praising ISIS.OsloKing defends immigrants: Norway’s King Harald V sought…7 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016The Philippines’ populist strongmanWhat’s Duterte doing?Since he took office at the end of June, President Rodrigo Duterte has unleashed the police and vigilante hit squads against suspected drug dealers. “My order is shoot to kill you,” he said. “I don’t care about human rights, you’d better believe me.” In just two months, more than 1,900 people have been summarily executed in the streets. Most of them were suspected low-level drug dealers, but some were bystanders caught in the crossfire; the youngest was a 5-year-old. Duterte, 71, has not only thumbed his nose at the Philippines’ rule of law, he has also threatened those who criticize his tactics. He’s fired thousands of government workers, saying they were all corrupt, and pledged to fill the jobs with his own loyalists. He has already insulted the…5 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016It must be true... I read it in the tabloidsA 63-year-old Japanese man used his black-belt karate skills to fight off a snarling black bear. Atsushi Aoki was fishing in a mountain stream when the 6-foot animal suddenly charged him, biting him and mauling him. Aoki clambered to his feet and adopted a karate stance. “I thought, ‘I kill him or he kills me,’” said the martial arts expert. He delivered several quick punches to the bear’s eyes, causing it to retreat. Bleeding from his head, arms, and legs, the fisherman hobbled back to his car and “drove himself to the hospital,” said a police officer. “He even remembered to grab the fish he had caught.” Tom Hiddleston and Taylor Swift have broken up, after the British actor insisted that she stop treating him “like a glorified escort,” said…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Best columns: InternationalPAKISTANThe U.S. has formed an axis with IndiaJalees Hazir The NationIt’s now clear that India is “an enlisted member of the hegemonic U.S.-led cabal,” said Jalees Hazir. For more than half a century, India has boasted about its role in founding the Non-Aligned Movement— a 120-strong group of nations that is not formally allied with or against any major power bloc. But last week, India and the U.S. signed a defense deal that will greatly increase Indian access to U.S. technology and contact between the two nations’ militaries. Coming on the heels of India’s designation as a “major defense partner” of the U.S., the agreement exposes New Delhi’s “multipolar pretensions” as a lie. This public embrace of America should help Russia and Iran “see through India’s deceptive engagement with them.”…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Trump: His ‘outreach’ to African-AmericansWhen Donald Trump came to Detroit this week to engage in “African-American outreach,” said Rochelle Riley in the Detroit Free Press, “he sat in a black church for the first time ever,” awkwardly swaying to the music. But “nobody was fooled.” After months of speaking to almost entirely white audiences, the GOP nominee visited Great Faith Ministries, run by televangelist bishop Wayne Jackson. The two engaged in a question-andanswer session that was scripted in advance, and then an unusually sedate Trump read a speech. He called for “a civil rights agenda for our time” that ensures the right to a quality education, jobs, and “the right to live in safety and in peace.” Did he really think that black voters—who now give him close to zero percent support in national…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Trump’s rise: Are Democrats to blame?“Did Democrats cry wolf?” asked Frank Bruni in The New York Times. Political commentators on both the Left and Right have been warning for months that Donald Trump’s bigotry, nativism, and volatile personality make him a unique threat to the country—yet the tightness of the polls suggests many voters aren’t convinced. Maybe it’s because they’ve heard it all before. Four years ago, many liberals denounced the mild-mannered Republican nominee Mitt Romney as a “bloodsucking capitalist vampire whose indictment of Obamacare was ipso facto proof of his racism.” In 2008, John McCain was portrayed as a “combustible hothead who couldn’t be allowed anywhere near the nuclear codes.” When hyperbolic invective like this is deployed against decent politicians, how do you convince Republican voters that this year’s nominee truly poses a “much…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Commercial space travel: SpaceX’s fiery setbackA spectacular explosion on a Florida launchpad just threw a wrench into the ambitions of two Silicon Valley billionaires: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, said Samantha Masunaga and Jim Puzzanghera in the Los Angeles Times. A 604-ton Falcon 9 rocket built by Musk’s aerospace firm SpaceX was engulfed in flames last week during a prelaunch engine test at Cape Canaveral. Both the rocket and its cargo, which included a satellite that Facebook planned to use to beam internet to remote villages in sub-Saharan Africa, were destroyed in the blast, which was ”loud enough to be heard 40 miles away.” Fortunately, no one was injured, but the cause of the explosion is still unclear, and SpaceX’s plans for nine more rocket launches this year are now on hold’as…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Novel of the weekThe NixNathan Hill, the most buzzed-about new novelist of the fall, is clearly “the real thing,” said Dan Cryer in Newsday. Hill’s “great, sprawling feast of a debut novel” manages to be “both darkly satirical and uproariously funny” as it spins a decades-long story around a boy abandoned by his mother at age 11. Sam Andresen-Anderson is a sad-sack assistant professor when he’s yanked back to that traumatic memory by breaking news about a woman arrested for throwing stones at a right-wing presidential candidate. It’s Sam’s long-lost mom, a onetime ’60s radical, and soon Sam is coaxed into writing a tell-all about her so he won’t have to repay a big advance for the novel he’s failed to write. A third of this 600-page doorstop could have been pared away…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Also of interest...in America’s ailing heartlandHillbilly Elegyby J.D. Vance (Harper, $28)This best-selling memoir delivers a sobering message, said Emily Esfahani Smith in The Wall Street Journal. The author, a National Review contributor who works in Silicon Valley, grew up in a family whose problems with violence, addiction, and defeatism he attributes to their Appalachian background. J.D. Vance got out thanks to the advice of a grandmother who once lit her husband on fire. In the world he escaped, it’s not distant elites who make life a struggle. “It’s because of culture.”The Risenby Ron Rash (Ecco, $26)Ron Rash’s new murder mystery is one of his “strongest, most evocative novels to date,” said Gina Webb in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In a small town outside Asheville, N.C., the remains of a teenage girl are discovered decades after her…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Movies on TVMonday, Sept. 12A Most Wanted ManPhilip Seymour Hoffman was outstanding in his final leading role, playing a German agent who’s tracking a Chechen extremist. (2014) 11:20 p.m., EpixTuesday, Sept. 13First BloodSylvester Stallone plays a former Green Beret who wages war on a sad*stic small-town sheriff in the movie that launched John Rambo as an action hero. (1982) 8 p.m., SundanceWednesday, Sept. 14Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet FrankensteinThe inimitable slapstick duo goes up against classic ghouls in a horror spoof that features cameos by Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Vincent Price. (1948) 9:30 p.m., TCMThursday, Sept. 15St. VincentBill Murray is reliably Murray-esque in a dramatic comedy about a curmudgeon who endears himself to his Brooklyn neighbors. With Naomi Watts and Melissa McCarthy. (2014) 8:15 p.m., ShowtimeFriday, Sept. 16The French…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Recipe of the weekFried chicken with 11 herbs and spices2 cups flour • 2 tsp salt • 1½ tsp dried thyme • 1½ tsp dried basil • 1 tsp dried oregano • 1 tbsp celery salt • 1 tbsp ground black pepper • 1 tbsp dried mustard • ¼ cup paprika • 2 tbsp garlic salt • 1 tbsp ground ginger • 3 tbsp ground white pepper • 1 cup buttermilk • 1 egg, beaten • 1 chicken, cut up, breast pieces cut in half • expeller-pressed canola oil• Mix flour in a bowl with salt, herbs, and spices; set aside. Mix buttermilk and egg together in a separate bowl. Soak chicken in buttermilk mixture at room temperature, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove chicken from buttermilk, allowing excess to drip off. Dip chicken…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Hotel of the weekWhite DesertWhite Desert, AntarcticaAt Antarctica’s only fivestar lodging, “drama is in no short supply,” said Nikki Ekstein in Bloomberg.com. A camp composed of several fiberglass domes, White Desert sits at the heart of the continent between a frozen lake and towering walls of ice. And now that the 10-year-old camp has undergone a luxury overhaul, guests can finish a day of hanging with Emperor penguins by relaxing in a sauna, draping themselves in furs, and joining a communal feast in the dining pod. One challenge: The season lasts only from November to December.white-desert.com, from $72,000 per excursionNewscom, courtesy of White Desert…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016ConsumerThe Lotus Evora 400: What the critics sayJalopnik.comIt’s hard to describe this car’s performance “without sounding a bit like a teenage girl gushing over a pop star.” Capable of 400 hp and a 186 mph top speed, the first Lotus available in the U.S. market since 2013 “can hang with cars costing twice as much, both on and off track.” We drove this four-seat British import as hard as we could, and it’s “simply impossible to upset.” In every corner, it’s “a perfectly balanced ballerina.”Road and TrackThe agility of this car “inspires a sort of reckless confidence.” With its pitch-perfect steering and insane lateral grip, the Evora 400 will exhilarate, rather than intimidate, even a novice racetrack driver. For a mid-engine coupe, this Lotus is also “astoundingly easy to live…4 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016For-profit colleges: ITT Tech shuts downITT Technical Institutes, one of the nation’s largest forprofit-college chains, abruptly closed its doors this week, said Danielle Douglas-Gabriel in The Washington Post. The decision came after an “unprecedented move” by the U.S. Department of Education to bar the college chain from enrolling new students who rely on millions of dollars in federal loans and grants to finance their tuition. ITT Tech, which has more than 35,000 students at 137 campuses, has been dogged in recent years by allegations of “fraud, deceptive marketing, and steering students into predatory loans.” The nearly 50-year-old career school is currently under investigation by more than a dozen state attorneys general and two federal agencies.The “once high-flying” for-profitcollege industry has shriveled in recent years, said Melissa Korn in The Wall Street Journal. Enrollments at the…4 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Best columns: BusinessHow not to fix the pay gapCatherine Rampell The Washington PostA new idea for closing the gender wage gap seems sure to backfire, said Catherine Rampell. Last month, Massachusetts barred employers from asking job applicants about their salary history; Democrats in Congress hope to introduce similar national legislation. Because women consistently earn less than men, the thinking goes, using past salaries as a baseline for a new offer perpetuates inequity. But once “you think it through, this logic starts to unravel.” First, even brand-new workers face a gender gap in pay. Whether this is caused by discrimination or women’s reluctance to negotiate isn’t clear, but it seems unlikely those factors would disappear “in later job hopping.”Second, previous attempts to prohibit employers from asking certain questions have hurt the same applicants…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016The impresario who helped launch gangsta rapJerry Heller 1940–2016Things looked bleak for Jerry Heller in the mid-1980s. His glory days, managing and promoting music acts like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Pink Floyd, and Elton John, were long gone, and he was living with his parents outside Los Angeles. Then in 1987, Eric “Eazy-E” Wright, a diminutive Compton drug dealer looking to go straight, approached the 48-year-old Heller with a business proposition. Together, the two men launched the Ruthless Records label, and Heller began managing Eazy-E’s rap outfit, N.W.A. Using profanity-laced lyrics, the group—whose name stood for nigg*z With Attitude—depicted the inner city as a world of sex, violence, and explosive racial tension. “It was the most important rap music I had ever heard,” said Heller. “This was music that would change everything.” He was right. N.W.A’s debut…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016When Hillary was presidentIN THE FALL of 1968, in the wake of one of the most violent, volatile summers in American history, as young people clamored for an end to the war in Vietnam and for greater racial justice and women’s rights, the student body president at Wellesley College stood in front of the incoming freshman class and talked to them about the merits of conversation and committees.“Although we, too, have had our demonstrations,” not-yet-21-year-old Hillary Rodham, the future Hillary Clinton, told the approximately 400 newest students of the country’s preeminent women’s college, “change here is usually a product of discussion in the decision-making process.” She had just spent much of her summer in Washington, interning on Capitol Hill. At a historic juncture of acute anti-establishment fervor, she told them to trust the…10 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Clinton’s narrowing lead over TrumpWhat happenedHillary Clinton’s poll lead over Donald Trump continued to shrink this week, as both presidential campaigns kicked into high gear for the nine-week, post–Labor Day sprint to Election Day. The RealClearPolitics national poll average put Clinton’s head-to-head lead over Trump at just over 3 points, 46 to 43, down from 6 points two weeks earlier. But several polls produced even better news for Trump, with a four-way CNN/ORC poll of likely voters showing him ahead by 2 points, 45 to 43, and a Reuters/IPSOS poll finding him with a 1-point lead—a 9-point swing in just two weeks. Clinton still holds an advantage in the swing states, however: In RealClearPolitics’s four-way averages, she’s ahead in nine of the 11 key battleground races, including Pennsylvania (by 6 points), Florida (2 points),…5 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Trump: Doubling down on immigrationSo much for the “pivot,” said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. After Donald Trump’s visit to Mexico last week, where he did “his best to sound sober and statesmanlike” in a meeting with President Enrique Peña Nieto, it looked as though Trump’s promised “softening” on immigration had finally arrived. Later that day, however, the old Trump resurfaced with a vengeance in Phoenix. At a raucous rally for supporters, the GOP nominee reiterated his pledge that our southern border will be secured by an “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful” wall, while also promising to hire 5,000 new border patrol agents and create a “special deportation task force.” On “day one” of his presidency, Trump shouted, his administration will start deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes in this country—a number…5 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016PeopleQuincy’s gangster rootsQuincy Jones has had some wild experiences during his long life, said Stephen Smith in The Guardian (U.K.). The legendary music producer, 83, has played Vegas with Frank Sinatra, vacationed on David Bowie’s yacht, and, as the son of a carpenter employed by the Chicago mob, hung out with some of the city’s most notorious gangsters. “All I saw were dead bodies, tommy guns and stogies, and piles of money in back rooms,” Jones says. “I had my hand nailed to a fence with a switchblade when I was 7. When you’re a kid, you want to be what you see, and I wanted to be a gangster till I was 11.” But then Jones discovered music, and went on to produce some of the industry’s biggest hits—notably…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Best columns: The U.S.Will Trumpism last after the election?Jonathan Tobin CommentaryMagazine.comIs the Trump movement here to stay? asked Jonathan Tobin. If the Republican presidential nominee triumphs in November, his unique brand of populist, white-identity nativism could well develop into a formidable force for years to come. But if, as many expect, he comes up short, there’s little to suggest Trumpism has any staying power. In recent weeks, “Trump wannabes” have been badly beaten in primary races by establishment Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio in Florida, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and House Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin. In each race, Trump failed to endorse or work for the candidates who claimed him as an inspiration, because he’s only concerned with his own success. His supporters, in turn, only care about electing Trump. The former…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Best columns: EuropeGERMANYFar right embraces a culture warHannah Beitzer Süddeutsche ZeitungThe populists are on the march, said Hannah Beitzer. The Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, this week shot ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats in local elections in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The AfD took second place behind the center-left Social Democrats, with the Christian Democrats suffering their worst ever result in the state. Pundits tried to rationalize the upset by pointing to economic factors—the state’s high unemployment and low salaries—but the truth is staring us all in the face. This is “a culture war.” Just look at the slogans on AfD supporters’ banners, such as “Lying press” and “USA war criminal No. 1.” Look at the billboards plastered all over the state, telling people to vote AfD…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Mexico: Fury over president’s meeting with TrumpMexico is humiliated, said Raúl Rodríguez Cortés in El Universal. Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for U.S. president and a man who has smeared Mexican immigrants as rapists, criminals, and drug dealers, visited our capital last week as a personal guest of President Enrique Peña Nieto. During a joint press conference with our president, Trump did not offer a single word of apology for his anti-Mexican insults, “the minimum required from this incomprehensible, unworthy, and useless” visit. Only when the trip was over did Peña Nieto stand up for Mexico’s honor. Trump told the American media that the subject of his planned wall along the southern U.S. border didn’t come up during the meeting, leading Peña Nieto to write on social media that he had explicitly informed Trump that Mexico…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016The debates: A potential game changer“Circle Sept. 26 on your calendar,” said Chris Cillizza in WashingtonPost.com. On that Monday night, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will face off in the first general-election debate—and “it’s going to be must-see TV.” Last week the moderator lineup for the three debates was announced: NBC’s Lester Holt will oversee the first clash; ABC’s Martha Raddatz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper will host the second; Chris Wallace from Fox News, the third. And unless the polls shift dramatically, Trump will go into that first debate needing a “major moment” to turn his campaign around. He might just go “bananas.”Clinton is taking no chances, said Patrick Healey and Matt Flegenheimer in The New York Times. The Democratic nominee has buried herself in briefing papers, and studied a “forensic-style analysis” of the Republican…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Wit & Wisdom“Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.”Marc Chagall, quoted in Bustle.com“The best things in life are free. The second best things are very, very expensive.”Coco Chanel, quoted in the Financial Times“To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.”George Santayana, quoted in The Wall Street Journal“Cocaine is God’s way of saying that you’re making too much money.”Robin Williams, quoted in NYMag.com“Truth uttered before its time is always dangerous.”Mencius, quoted in The_Economist’s Twitter feed“If God wanted us to vote, He would have given us candidates.”Jay Leno, quoted in the Utica, N.Y., Observer-Dispatch“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in The New York…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Health & ScienceThe Milky Way’s ‘dark twin’Astronomers have spotted a “dark twin” of the Milky Way, a discovery that blows apart their already patchy understanding of dark matter. Located 300_million light-years from Earth, Dragonfly 44 is about the same size as our own galaxy, but contains a tiny fraction of its stars. Only about 0.1 percent of the newly discovered galaxy is made up of ordinary, visible matter like stars—100 times less than the Milky Way. The rest apparently consists of dark matter, the elusive, mysterious substance that astrophysicists believe makes up 80 percent of the matter in the universe. Scientists have never actually seen dark matter; its existence is predicated on the theory that without its gravitational effect, stars and other celestial objects would drift apart rather than clump together in…5 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016The Hero’s BodyThink of this often fascinating memoir as “the work of an admirable man striving mightily to make sense of his past and almost succeeding,” said Michael Lindgren in The Washington Post. William Giraldi, a novelist and critic, grew up in a working-class New Jersey town where the cult of machismo was so strong that when he was 15, he was propelled by his anxiety about being a bookish weakling into a short, steroid-boosted career in competitive bodybuilding. But while he eventually recognized the hazards of that masculine ethos, his stoic single father never abandoned it, and at 47, the older Giraldi was racing a motorcycle down a winding road when he skidded, crashed, and died. The author wisely links his father’s story with his own, yet unfortunately never finds the…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Author of the weekIan McEwanBritain’s leading novelist is currently enjoying a short vacation from reality, said Decca Aitkenhead in The Guardian (U.K.). Ian McEwan, who has been widely celebrated for the meticulous verisimilitude he achieved in novels like Atonement and Amsterdam, has created for his latest work a narrator who’s a fetus, and an erudite one at that. This unborn homunculus is a regular listener to public radio broadcasts, which explains his political outlook. But he has immediate concerns too, like the fact that his mother is carrying on an extramarital affair with his uncle and that the pair are plotting his father’s murder. The first line of Nutshell—“So here I am, upside down in a woman”— came to McEwan even before he’d hit on the book’s concept. “The idea struck me as…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016The Week’ s guide to what’s worth watchingFrontline: A Subprime EducationTrump University isn’t the only for-profit college deserving closer scrutiny. In the first of two half-hour documentaries running back-to-back, Frontline looks at a corner of the education industry that’s been making empty promises, soaking up government funding, and miring students in heavy debt—like the 16,000 Americans left high and dry by the recent collapse of the Corinthian Colleges network. The film will be followed by The Education of Omarina, about a Bronx high schooler’s journey through an elite prep school to college. Tuesday, Sept. 13, at 9 p.m., PBS; check local listingsAmerican Horror StoryHorror and mystery go hand in severed hand. So it’s only fitting that details about the sixth season of Ryan Murphy’s super-creepy anthology series are being kept secret. Neither a plot nor full cast…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Wine: High-end malbecMalbec is no longer just a “slack-jawed big red” that stands up well to steak, said Elin McCoy in Bloomberg.com. Many winemakers in Argentina are planting the grape in high-altitude vineyards that yield wines worthy of collectors’ pricing. The intense flavors of the three below “unroll on your tongue in layer after layer.”2013 Altos las Hormigas ($40). A medium-bodied Gualtallary malbec devised by Italian vintners, this is “a very serious wine for the price.”2013 Bodega Noemia de Patagonia ($90). From a 90-year-old vineyard comes a wine with rose and violet aromas and layers of spicy, savory, chalky flavors that “get more seductive with time.”2012 Bodega Colomé Altura Maxima ($125). The world’s highestaltitude vineyard produces this “intense, mineral-tinged” wine and its “super-polished” texture.…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Getting the flavor of...Kansas’ last great prairieIt takes a sense of adventure—and a quality raincoat—to appreciate Kansas’ Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, said Kathleen Stoehr in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. My husband and I got caught in more than one torrential downpour while out on the prairie. But when the sun was shining, the 10,894-acre preserve was “a space so capacious and a sky so vast that a sense of peace, solitude, and the ability to truly breathe permeated my being.” Wading through the Indiangrass, switchgrass, and big bluestem, we chased after chattering dickcissels, one of the prairie’s 150 bird species. Coneflowers and gayfeather “added pops of color along the path,” and when a thunderstorm rolled in, I stopped to savor the soaking rain and watch the lightning. But a bolt soon struck so…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Best properties on the marketThis week: Best of car-free livingSteal of the week…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Making moneyWhat the experts sayHow Airbnb complicates refinancing“Airbnb is causing headaches for some homeowners looking to refinance their mortgages,” said Peter Rudegeair in The Wall Street Journal. Big banks, including Bank of America and Wells Fargo, are subjecting people who rent out rooms through the site to extra scrutiny, rejecting some of their applications for certain kinds of loans or charging them higher interest rates. The reason is that short-term rental services blur the line between residential and commercial property, and lenders see the latter as a riskier investment. Many lenders find out about homeowners’ Airbnb activity through income-tax returns. But you may not have to report rental earnings to the IRS. If your home is rented out for fewer than 15 days a year, “the tax code allows that income…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Issue of the week: Apple’s $14.5B EU tax billSorry, Apple: “The jig is up,” said Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times. After years of “playing international tax rules like an orchestra,” the technology giant has been ordered by European regulators to pay Ireland $14.5 billion in back taxes, plus interest. The European Union says Apple struck an illegal sweetheart deal with Dublin to pay as little as 0.005 percent in corporate taxes between 2003 and 2014. For Apple, the bill itself is chump change: The company could easily settle the tab with some of its $215 billion in overseas cash reserves. Of greater concern is that EU regulators appear determined to stop “U.S.-based international tax dodgers” from manipulating the Continent’s loophole-ridden tax system. As one corporate tax expert put it, the EU just served notice that “the…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016The WWII fighter ace who battled racism in MississippiJeremiah O’Keefe 1923–2016On April 22, 1945, Lt. Jeremiah O’Keefe’s fighter squadron was guarding U.S. ships off Okinawa when 80 Japanese kamikaze planes began racing toward the flotilla. It would be O’Keefe’s first aerial battle—but he didn’t show it. The 22-year-old pilot shot down five enemy planes in an hour, earning immediate ace status and helping to repel the attack. One crippled Japanese plane tried to ram O’Keefe, but the Marine Corps pilot pulled back hard on his stick, narrowly avoiding a collision. “I guess he realized that he was gone and wanted to take me with him,” said O’Keefe. “And I didn’t want to go.”Born in Ocean Springs, Miss., O’Keefe “enlisted in the Navy immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,” said The New York Times. He secured a…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016The Puzzle PageACROSS1 Pipe cleaner6 Norse thunder god10 Green stone14 Red-vested flier15 Optimism16 Imaginary line17 Smart ___18 Some are pale19 Julia Louis-Dreyfus show20 Albanian canonized as a saint by Pope Francis on Sept. 423 Peeper24 Branch25 Take down the aisle28 Easily fooled people31 School org.34 Leave36 Numbers cruncher, for short37 Saturday Night Live great who grew up in an Albanian-speaking family in Chicago39 Without authority41 Where Katie Ledecky won four golds42 Uses a wall, maybe43 Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress—who also directed the 2012 documentary Dear Albania46 Tiny amount47 Pacific phenomenon48 Ending for ranch49 Photo album fillers, for short50 Fetch player51 Fanatic53 Show set in Nevada55 Daytime talk great whose mother was an Albanian-speaking immigrant61 Newman’s Own rival64 Ontario or Okeechobee65 Clearing in the woods66 Apple rectangle67 Song for one voice68 Berry…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Clinton on the defense after FBI email reportWhat happenedDemocratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton faced renewe d scrutiny of her judgment and honesty this week, after the FBI released a detailed report on its investigation into her use of private email as secretary of state. The heavily redacted 58-page report—which includes notes from Clinton’s interview with investigators— reinforced FBI director James Comey’s assertion that Clinton and her staff were “extremely careless” with sensitive information. It revealed that Clinton told investigators that she considered emails about planned drone strikes “routine,” and that she didn’t realize emails marked “(C)” were confidential, assuming the letter merely signified an alphabetizing system. At least 39 times in her FBI interview, Clinton she said she couldn’t recall specific email exchanges, and partly blamed a concussion and a blood clot in her head she suffered…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016The U.S. at a glance ...MinneapolisCold case closed: A 27-year-old cold case that led to the creation of a national sex offenders registry was finally solved this week, after a man led police to the body of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling. Danny Heinrich, 53, later admitted in court to abducting, sexually assaulting, and murdering the boy. Jacob was cycling home from a video store in 1989 with his younger brother and a friend when they were stopped by a masked gunman. The man ordered the other two boys to run; Jacob was never seen again. Heinrich was one of the first people questioned in Jacob’s disappearance, and last October was arrested on child p*rnography charges. He agreed to lead police to Jacob’s body as part of a plea deal allowing him to avoid state murder charges.…4 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016GossipThe lawyer for Chris Brown says the allegations that led to the rapper’s arrest last week were “not just false, but fabricated.” Model Baylee Curran, 25, said she was visiting Brown’s Tarzana, Calif., mansion and admiring one of his friends’ diamond necklaces when the man allegedly yelled at her to get away from the jewelry. Brown then entered the room, she claims, “pulled out his gun and said, ‘I’m getting so sick of you people,’ pointed the gun at me, [and told me] to get the f--- out.” Curran left and called 911; police arrived and surrounded the house, where Brown remained for some 14 hours while authorities secured a search warrant. Brown’s attorney, Mark Geragos, says “nothing was found that corroborated [Curran’s] statement”—including any “gun or guns.” Geragos released…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Viewpoint“I don’t wish I was a Baby Boomer. I don’t pine to be a member of Generation X. I can say this much for sure, though: Being a Millennial is the worst. Why? Because even though many of us are adults now, the world is still talking down to us. Millennials are actually pretty grown-up now. Many of us have graduated from college. Lots of us are engaged, married, or expecting a first or second child. We might live at home, choose not to get married, or participate actively in the sharing economy, but none of these decisions means a stunted state of growth or intellect—just an evolving culture and worldview.”TheWeek.com…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016United Kingdom: Were Brexit fears overhyped?The sky did not fall, said Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph. The dreaded Brexit economic shock is here, but it has hit Europe, not the U.K. In the buildup to the June referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union, scaremongers in the Remain camp warned of apocalyptic consequences should voters choose Leave. But now, nearly three months after Britons opted to exit the bloc, economic data is trickling in and the U.K. looks to be “in much better shape than generally anticipated.” Yes, the pound has suffered a sharp devaluation. But manufacturing output surged in August—sterling’s depreciation made our exports more affordable for buyers in the U.S., China, Europe, and the Middle East—and British consumers spent the summer on a shopping spree. While the British economy sails on…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016NotedDonald Trump’s campaign has seven policy proposals listed on his website, totaling 9,000 words. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has 65 policy fact sheets, with detailed proposals totaling 112,735 words. Associated Press When it touched down last week as a Category 1 storm, Hurricane Hermine was the first hurricane to hit Florida in 11 years. USA Today Before passing a new voter ID law in 2013, North Carolina Republican officials asked the board of elections for “a breakdown of the 2008 voter turnout by race and type of vote (early and Election Day)” and a breakdown by race of “registered voters in your database that do not have a driver’s license number,” recently released records show. State Republican consultant Carter Wrenn said the GOP was trying to suppress black votes “because they…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Internet p*rn: When men can’t stopIf anyone doubts the dangers of p*rnography addiction, consider Anthony Weiner, said Pamela Anderson and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in The Wall Street Journal. The disgraced ex- congressman’s “repeated, selfsabotaging sexting” shattered his career and his marriage to Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, a sad lesson in “p*rnography’s corrosive effects on a man’s soul.” With the internet bringing sexual imagery and adulterous temptations into every home, “this is a public hazard of unprecedented seriousness.” The American Psychological Association reports p*rnography consumption rates between 50 and 99 percent among men, and many men report that constant online sexual behavior leads to a loss of interest in their wives and girlfriends. Children raised amid “wall-to-wall digitized sexual imagery,” meanwhile, are growing up as “the crack babies of p*rn”—incapable of real intimacy. We must…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016TechnologyInnovation of the weekA “seriously intimidatinglooking” robotic tractor has been drawing crowds at Iowa’s annual Farm Progress Show, said George Dvorsky in Gizmodo.com. Unlike a conventional tractor, this futuristic piece of farm equipment— called the Autonomous Concept Vehicle—doesn’t have a cabin for a driver. Instead, the tractor, built by agricultural equipment firm Case IH, finds its way using built-in cameras, radar, and GPS. A farmer can program and control the machine using an app on a tablet computer, and once the tractor gets its orders, it sets to work “without any further human intervention.” The bot can operate day or night, and is designed to plant seeds and harvest crops, among other tasks. Because of legal concerns, such as the fact that the self-driving tractor will sometimes cross public roads…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Book of the weekThe Kingdom of SpeechTom Wolfe’s very short new book is both “a gas to read” and “a little bit bonkers,” said Charles Mann in The Wall Street Journal. Taking a harshly skeptical look at prevailing theories about the origin of language, the 85-year-old author of The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities paints Charles Darwin and the linguist Noam Chomsky as frauds who’ve hoodwinked us all into accepting that language is a product of the impersonal forces of evolution rather than an innovation wholly attributable to human ingenuity. “WTF?” I wrote in a page margin at about this point. Sure, I laughed out loud at the “gleeful” insults Wolfe flings at Darwin and Chomsky, both of whom are portrayed as elitist twits. But neither of those two hugely…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Best books...chosen by John LahrElia Kazan: A Life by Elia Kazan (Da Capo, $33). All the forces in American show business and politics come together in Kazan. An outsider’s rage stoked his furious energy and rapacity. Nobody else in the 20th century had Kazan’s career on stage or screen, and no memoirist has left a deeper, more unabashed witness to the brilliant tumult and barbarity of his time.Lives of the Poets: A Selection by Samuel Johnson (Oxford, $25). Johnson is my literary hero. He was the first to attempt to bring the artist’s life and work together in order to suggest the synergy between them. This book is a masterpiece of criticism: erudition and wit served up with the memorable sonorous music of Johnson’s neoclassical prose.Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (Penguin, $14).…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Critics’ choice: Fresh perspectives on Mediterranean cuisinesTawla San Francisco“There’s something revelatory about a restaurant like Tawla,” said Michael Bauer in the San Francisco Chronicle. The realization of a dream for former Google engineer Azhar Hashem, it celebrates the food of her native Jordan, and the passion she brings to the project “helps bridge cultures and build understanding.” You won’t find falafel, hummus, or other familiar staples of Levantine cuisine here. Hashem and her chef, Joseph Magidow, have instead focused on homey regional dishes executed with a precision appropriate to a handsome restaurant where a cauliflower appetizer costs $16, gratuity included. Two shared plates appear on the menu, a rockfish stuffed with spiced walnuts and a $140 whole leg of lamb, and “the latter alone is worth a visit.” Covered in a thick spice rub, “roasted to…3 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016This week’s dream: Communing with the wildlife of Borneo, by land and seaTravelers to Malaysia hoping to glimpse the region’s astonishing wildlife “must only decide which world to visit first—the jungle or the ocean,” said Will Ford in The Washington Post. My girlfriend is a birder; I’m not, which is why we chose to take up scuba diving at the outset of a recent holiday in the Malaysian half of Borneo. As novices, we had to enroll in a three-day certification course, but diving for the first time in the waters near the fishing town of Semp*rna was “rather like trying chocolate for the first time in Belgium.” The east coast of Borneo lies in the Coral Triangle, one of the most biodiverse marine regions on Earth. Each dive “felt like floating through a living jewelry shop.”We next flew across Sabah province…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016Last-minute travel dealsSafari sightsBook a Tanzania Adventure package this month with Great Safaris and a companion gets half off. The 10-day trip, with stops in Serengeti National Park and Lake Manyara National Park, starts at $4,895 a person before the discount. greatsafaris.comSeptember in SavannahSave up to 30 percent this month on suites at the 145-room Brice Hotel in Savannah, Ga. With the hotel’s Sweet Suite package, prices start at $230, down from $329, with chocolates and a bottle of Champagne included. bricehotel.comA Dominican getawayRelax at an all-inclusive resort in Punta Cana next month with a six-night package starting at $869 per person. The offer includes airfare from some East Coast airports and a room at Riu República, a 1,007-unit beachfront property. applevacations.com…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016The bottom lineAfrican-Americans owned just 2.1 percent of the nation’s companies in 2014, despite making up 12 percent of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But nearly half of those blackowned firms were launched in the past five years. The Wall Street Journal Women ask for raises about as often as men, according to new study of Australian workplaces that upends conventional wisdom that female employees are less aggressive about seeking pay increases. But men in the study were 25 percent more likely to receive a raise when they asked for one. Qz.com Eight years after the housing crash drove an estimated 30 percent of construction workers into new industries, homebuilders are struggling to find workers to serve a newly resurgent housing market. There are some 200,000 unfilled construction jobs…1 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016College: Money lessons for freshmenHey, incoming college students, “your finances could use a freshman orientation, too,” said Erin Lowry in USNews.com. Between the stresses of making new friends and attending all those parties, getting your financial house in order is probably the last thing on your mind. But plenty of college graduates wish they could go back in time and tell their 18-year-old self to take better care of the bank balance. Keep financial regrets to a minimum by setting a monthly budget, which will help prevent overspending and “expensive and annoying overdraft fees.” Even students who use loans to cover living expenses should set budgets “in order to take on the minimum debt necessary.” And while it may seem “absolutely insane to tell a cash-strapped college student” to save money, “it’s an important…2 min
The Week Magazine|September 16, 2016ObituariesThe conservative activist who battled feminismPhyllis Schlafly 1924–2016In 1972, Phyllis Schlafly went to war against the Equal Rights Amendment. The 52-word constitutional measure, intended to prohibit gender discrimination, was coasting toward passage, but Schlafly, a conservative activist, saw it as a fullscale assault on the American family. She formed a grassroots organization called Stop ERA—later the Eagle Forum—and began mobilizing stay-athome moms and religious conservatives to protest an amendment that she claimed would lead to same-sex marriage, the conscription of women into the military, and the displacement of men as breadwinners. “What I am defending is the real rights of women,” she said, “the right to be in the home as a wife and mother.” The ERA was defeated in 1982, falling three states short of the 38 it needed…2 min
