HOME / other magazines: Summaries of what's in Time, Newsweek, etc.

Homeland Insecurity

By Julia TurnerUpdated Friday, Feb. 28, 2003, at 11:52 AM ET

New Republic, March 10
Labeling Bush "the September 10 president," the cover story takes him to task for failures on homeland security, including stifling a carefully vetted, bipartisan request for $10 billion in additional security upgrades and other proposals. … Ryan Lizza's "Campaign Journal" asks what many pundits have been quietly wondering: When did long-shot candidate Howard Dean get so damn impressive? It may just be that the anti-war candidate (at least for now) plays well in the historically pacifist state of Iowa, but when Lizza describes how Dean fillets his Democratic rivals, you wonder if the former Vermont governor's appeal might carry. After Edwards slammed Bush for killing the patients' bill of rights, Dean slammed the bill itself: "Democrats say you ought to sue your HMO. The Republicans say you shouldn't. Who cares? ... Do you think one more person is going to have insurance if it passes?"

RSS

Economist, Feb. 27
The cover story notes that Jacques Chirac has painted himself into a corner. If Saddam can't be disarmed through inspections, France says it will support war, and the peaceniks will slam Chirac's about-face. If France vetoes a Security Council resolution, but a war takes place and is even a remote success, Chirac will have made the council—which gives France what international clout it has—seem obsolete. … A piece says that Mexico's decision about how to vote on the second U.N. resolution on Iraq isn't a foregone conclusion. Though the United States is Mexico's biggest trade partner and helped the country secure its seat on the Security Council, Mexican President Vicente Fox hasn't forgotten how fast the Bush administration scrapped plans for an immigration accord after Sept. 11, "when America began to distrust all brown-skinned incomers."

New York Times Magazine, March 2
The cover story examines the likelihood of democracy in postwar Iraq and the people who hope to determine the outcome. Might we really see a postwar shift to the West in the gulf region? "It's called magical realism, Middle East-style," one source says. … Judith Shulevitz argues that the Sabbath should make a comeback, even for the least God-fearing folks in the land. Her idea is to schedule in days of "organized nonproductivity" because, like line breaks in a poem, they force us "to return to what came before to find its meaning." (She also fesses that keeping the Sabbath will be easier for her if we all play along.) … An example of diplomacy in action, from an interview with the International Atomic Energy Agency's Mohamed ElBaradei: Q: "Whom would you rather have coffee with, George Bush or Saddam Hussein?" A: "I really don't drink coffee."

The New Yorker The New Yorker, March 3
Philip Gourevitch profiles the "smooth" and "sphinx-like" Kofi Annan, raising old questions about Annan's degree of culpability for—and remorse about—the United Nations' failure to avert the Rwandan genocide, and concluding that Annan has "strengthened the U.N. by diminishing its pretensions and ambitions to exercise the sort of powers that sovereign states exercise." … Frances McDormand describes "turning into a woman as an actor" and choosing more sexual roles of late. … Elizabeth Kolbert visits the Indian Point nuclear power plant to examine its security measures. These seem vague, at best, but Kolbert's attempts to hang sources in ropes of their own quotes are off-putting. At one point, the plant's director of emergency programs says "without a trace of irony" that despite the disaster at Three Mile Island, its "reactor design was successful." The quote tolls ominously as she launches her next paragraph, but she never gives him a chance to explain why he made the assertion.

Sports Illustrated, Winter 2003
Number of nipples visible in the swimsuit issue this year: 0. Maps of South America painted on Rachel Hunter's nether regions: 1. World-champion female athletes posing in bikinis: 2 (Serena Williams and Ekaterina Gordeeva). Swimsuit-themed mysteries loosely based on the works of Joseph Conrad: 1.

Time Time, March 3
At some point, "In Other Magazines" hopes mags will stop recycling the image of Uncle Sam waggling his index finger in our faces. Time runs a particularly nonsensical version this week: Dubya, in lush watercolor top hat and goatee, over the cover line "Do You Want This War?" There is no record inside of Bush asking anyone that question. … Time and CNN, however, kindly polled the populace: 54 percent of Americans are pro, 38 percent are against. Also, the poll notes, younger demographics are more pro-war than their elders, but the piece never explores why 63 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds support military action, while only 40 percent of those over 65 agree. … In an interview, Hans Blix says that the Iraqis "have no credibility." … Also this newsflash: "Quirky" Craig's List is a popular Web site with a devoted following.

Newsweek, March 3
Giving its readers a break from breathless "war's-on-the-way" reporting, Newsweek reports on the rapid rise of black women in American schools and workplaces. They earn more college degrees and hold down more professional and managerial jobs than black men, but thanks to this "black gender gap," many African-American women say they have trouble finding black men to marry, and many don't wed at all. Though the social impact of black women's economic advancement is certainly worth covering, the photos of forlorn-looking black women seem a bit much in light of their newfound success. … A piece on Donald Rumsfeld's attempt to transform the slow-moving Pentagon into a nimble and responsive organization adds little to Time's January report on the same subject. … A story on Iran's ties to al-Qaida notes that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, Powell's putative al-Qaida/Iraq link, took refuge in Iran when the United States attacked Afghanistan.

Weekly Standard, March 3
The cover asks: Are Bush and Co. "doing the right things" about homeland security? Yes and no. … "Yes" when it comes to John Ashcroft's efforts at the Justice Department. Although everyone from Bill O'Reilly to the ACLU has reviled a draft of Ashcroft's office's "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," an editorial argues, the critics have ignored the details of the proposal itself. Claims that the proposed legislation resembles "instruments of repression used by totalitarian states" are unwarranted. … "No" when it comes to expenditures on homeland security. A piece says that even though many state governors are mismanaging "whiners," Bush should award states money earmarked for training and hiring more emergency personnel. … A story urges anyone worried that the Atlantic alliance is headed for splitsville (including the Economist of Feb. 15) to "calm down," because Chirac's disregard for Eastern Europe will make him "more unpopular" than Bush.