Who Are the Hos Here?

Transcription

In this issue Edition: U.S.
Vol. 169 No. 17
Bill Clinton fought could split the Democratic
Party
COVER
Who Can Say What? (The Well / Society)
When Don Imus used a racial slur against a
college basketball team, it was clear he
crossed the line. What's unclear is, Where's the
line, and who can cross it?
Eight Again
There's nothing sweeter than seeing your kid
win. So why do we feel so guilty?
No More Imus for Me (The Well / Society)
On his show I felt like a member of an élite
club, but now I realize the dues have always
been too high
Who Are the Hos Here? (The Well / Society)
Makes Me Wanna Holler (The Well)
President Fuhgeddaboutit (Commentary)
Giuliani's creative incivility helps him as a
candidate but it's of little use on the world
stage
NOTEBOOK
Overturning Convictions (Dashboard)
Walls (Briefing / The Moment)
Bush faces, and builds, tough barriers in trying
to pass immigration reform
What I Meant Was ... (The Well)
Remarks that have drawn condemnation--or
laughs
Russian Crowd Control (Dashboard)
WORLD
Postcard: Saint-Gilles (Postcard: Saint-gilles.)
For tourists, it is a perfect town of southern
France. But for the French, Saint-Gilles is
better known for its identity politics. Welcome
to France's nationalist heartland
Feeding the Troops (Briefing / Dashboard)
Clean-skin terrorist (Dashboard)
Newsreel (Dashboard)
Milestones (Briefing)
Insurgents vs. al-Qaeda (Dashboard)
Where Iraq Works (The Well / World)
Kurdish Iraq is a largely peaceful corner of a
nation devastated by war. But its desire for
independence could make it the next
battleground
Land Of Chains And Hunger (The Well /
World)
In a harrowing eyewitness account, the author
comes face to face with the misery of Robert
Mugabe's Zimbabwe
ESSAY
The Kosovo Conundrum (Commentary)
How the legacy of the war that Tony Blair and
People (People)
The Score
Numbers
A Confederate Campaign Issue (Dashboard)
Viral Video (Dashboard)
Verbatim
SOCIETY
Hollywood's
Smoke
Alarm
Law-education-fashion-business-life
Work / Health)
(Life:
After
Onscreen puffing
generation of kids
is
recruiting
a
new
Where Have We Gone, Mr. Robinson? (The
Well / Society)
Sixty years after Jackie Robinson broke the
color barrier, only 8% of major league players
are black. What that says--and doesn't
say--about America
In the Footsteps of a Legend (The Well)
Jackie Robinson's historic feat paved the way
for a generation of African-American baseball
greats. In a new book, they recount with
startling candor their struggle to win
acceptance
Looking Like a Million Dollars (Life /
Fashion)
Superluxurious haberdashery is the latest
status symbol for really big spenders
Homeward Bound (Life / Life After Work)
Baby boomers' parents who fled south at
retirement are coming back to the family nest
Student-Loan Shenanigans (Life / Education)
Allegations of kickbacks to colleges could
spur Congress to rein in the $85 billion
industry
Voting Block (Life / The Law)
Most noncitizens can't cast a ballot, but a
move is afoot to give them the right to vote.
Would they use it?
Word on the Street (Life / Business)
Psst ... your friends may be shilling for a soap
company. Why people love marketing by
word of mouth
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
The Impermanent Collection (Art)
As art prices soar, more institutions trade in
their treasures
Looking for Mr. Adorkable (Arts:
Movies-art-downtime / Movies)
Modern heartthrobs need fewer muscles and
more comic books. Hello, Adam Brody
Cheat Sheet (Downtime)
What you won't be able to avoid, what you
should see--and what you should skip
PEOPLE
10 Questions
The comedian who became a household name
on Saturday Night Live is telling all in a new,
authorized biography, I'm Chevy Chase ... and
You're Not. Chevy Chase will now take your
questions
SPECIAL SECTION
On the Road with Martha Stewart (Global
Business)
The original domestic goddess is exploring
new territory, endorsing sewing machines that
don't have the Martha brand. How her empire
is expanding
Member of the Club (Global Business / Golf)
Ten years ago, Nike didn't even make golf
balls. How it broke into the insular world of
golf gear
Back to School (Global Business / Education)
Poorly educated workers are hurting Brazil's
competitiveness, and businesses are stepping
in to help them
LETTERS
Inbox
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Thursday, Apr. 12, 2007
The Imus Fallout: Who Can Say
What?
By James Poniewozik
Say this for Don Imus: the man knows how to turn an economical phrase. When the radio shock jock
described the Rutgers women's basketball team, on the April 4 Imus in the Morning, as "nappy-headed
hos," he packed so many layers of offense into the statement that it was like a perfect little diamond of
insult. There was a racial element, a gender element and even a class element (the joke implied that the
Scarlet Knights were thuggish and ghetto compared with the Tennessee Lady Vols).
Imus was a famous, rich, old white man picking on a bunch of young, mostly black college women. So it
seemed pretty cut-and-dried that his bosses at CBS Radio would suspend his show — half frat party, half
political salon for the Beltway elite — for two weeks, and that MSNBC would cancel the TV simulcast. And
that Imus would plan to meet with the students he offended. Case closed, justice served, lesson —possibly
— learned. Move on.
But a reasonable person could ask, What was the big deal? And I don't mean the
lots-of-black-rappers-say-"hos" argument, though we'll get to that. Rather, I mean, what celebrity isn't
slurring some group nowadays?
I exaggerate slightly. But our culture has experienced an almost psychotic outburst of -isms in the past year.
Michael Richards and "nigger." Isaiah Washington and "faggot." Senator George Allen and "macaca." Mel
Gibson and "f__ing Jews."
But we also live in a culture in which racially and sexually edgy material is often — legitimately —
considered brilliant comment, even art. Last year's most critically praised comedy, Borat: Cultural
Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, won Sacha Baron Cohen a Golden
Globe for playing a Kazakh journalist who calls Alan Keyes a "genuine chocolate face" and asks a gun-shop
owner to suggest a good piece for killing a Jew. Quentin Tarantino has made a career borrowing tropes
from blaxploitation movies. In the critics-favorite sitcom The Sarah Silverman Program, the star sleeps
with God, who is African American and who she assumes is "God's black friend." And the current season of
South Park opened with an episode about a Michael Richards-esque controversy erupting when a character
blurts the word niggers on Wheel of Fortune. (He answers a puzzle — N-GGERS — for which the clue is
"People who annoy you"; the correct answer is "naggers.")
This is not to say that Borat made Imus do it or to make excuses for Imus. Even in the midst of his apology
tour last week, Imus did enough of that for himself, citing his charity work, his support of black Senate
candidate Harold Ford Jr., even his booking the black singing group Blind Boys of Alabama on his show. (He
didn't mention how, last fall, he groused about persuading the "money grubbing" "Jewish management" to okay
the booking.)
But in the middle of his stunning medley of sneer, apology and rationalization, Imus asked a pretty good
question: "This phrase that I use, it originated in the black community. That didn't give me a right to use it, but
that's where it originated. Who calls who that and why? We need to know that. I need to know that."
So let's ask.
Imus crossed a line, boorishly, creepily, paleolithically. But where is that line nowadays? In a way, the question is
an outgrowth of something healthy in our society: the assumption that there is a diverse audience that is willing
to talk about previously taboo social distinctions more openly, frankly and daringly than before. It used to be
assumed that people were free to joke about their own kind (with some license for black comedians to talk about
how white people dance). Crossing those lines was the province of the occasional "socially conscious artist," like
Dick Gregory or Lenny Bruce, who was explicit about his goals: in Bruce's words, to repeat "'niggerniggernigger'
until the word [didn't] mean anything anymore."
Now, however, we live in a mash-up world, where people — especially young people — feel free to borrow one
another's cultural signifiers. In a now classic episode of Chappelle's Show, comic Dave Chappelle plays a blind,
black white supremacist who inadvertently calls a carload of rap-listening white boys "niggers." The kids'
reaction: "Did he just call us niggers? Awesome!" The country is, at least, more pop-culturally integrated — one
nation under Jessica Alba, J. Lo and Harold & Kumar — and with that comes greater comfort in talking about
differences.
But that's a harder attitude for older people — who grew up with more cultural and actual segregation — to
accept or to mimic. Part of the problem with Imus' joke was that it was so tone-deaf. "That's some rough girls
from Rutgers," he said. "Man, they got tattoos ... That's some nappy-headed hos there." The joke played badly in
every community, raising memories of beauty bias (against darker skin and kinkier hair) that dates back to
slavery. Tracy Riley, 37, of Des Moines, Iowa, who is of mixed race, said the incident was among her four kids'
first exposures to overt racism. "Our kids don't see color the way we do," she said. "They don't see it as much.
'You're my friend or not,' but it's not about race.'"
The line was as damning as anything for what it suggested about Imus' thought process: a 66-year-old white
male country-music fan rummaging in his subconscious for something to suggest that some young black women
looked scary, and coming up with a reference to African-American hair and a random piece of rap slang. (Maybe
because older, male media honchos are more conscious of — and thus fixated on — race than gender, much of the
coverage of Imus ignored the sexual part of the slur on a show with a locker-room vibe and a mostly male guest
list. If Imus had said "niggas" rather than "hos," would his bosses have waited as long to act?)
So who gets to say "ho," in an age when Pimp My Ride is an innocent car show and It's Hard Out Here for a
Pimp is an Oscar-winning song? As even Essence Carlson, one of the Rutgers students Imus insulted,
acknowledged at a press conference, black rap artists labeled young black women as "hos" long before Imus did.
And while straight people may not be able to say "faggot," Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Will & Grace
helped mainstream the nonhostile gay joke for straight people. But all this reappropriation and blurring —
distinguishing a good-natured "That's so gay!" from a homophobic one — has created a situation in which, when
Richards went off on his Laugh Factory rant, it was possible to wonder if he was playing a character.
The license to borrow terms other people have taken back can worry even edgy comics. A few months ago, I
interviewed Silverman, who argued that her material was not racist but about racism (and I agree). But she
added something that surprised me, coming from her: "I'm not saying 'I can say nigger because I'm liberal.'
There is a certain aspect of that that I'm starting to get grossed out by. 'Oh, we're not racist. We can say it.'"
Comedians work through these danger zones in the presence of other comics. In a comedians' get-together or a
TV writers' room, nothing is off-limits: without airing the joke that goes too far, you can never get to the joke that
flies in front of an audience. Trouble might come if material meant for that smaller audience went public, as in
1993, when Ted Danson got in trouble after word got out of a Friars Club routine he did in blackface, though his
jokes were defended — and reportedly written by — his then girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg.
Today, because of cable and YouTube, because of a media culture that rewards the fastest, least censoring mouth,
we are all in the writers' room. (Friars Club roasts are now televised on Comedy Central.) Punditry and gonzo
comedy have become less and less distinguishable. (And I'm not talking here about The Daily Show, whose host
Jon Stewart is, ironically, one of the most conservative defenders of the idea of sober, evenhanded news — see his
2004 tirade against Tucker Carlson.) Got something on your mind? Say it! Don't think about it! If you don't, the
next guy in the greenroom will! C'mon, it'll kill!
Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter is probably the best example of this, playing a constant game of "Can you top
this?" with herself, as in March, when she told the Conservative Political Action Conference that she would have
a comment on Senator John Edwards, "but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word faggot."
Coulter is only the most egregious example — from Bill O'Reilly on Fox to Glenn Beck on CNN, offense is the coin
of the cable realm.
The flip side of the instant-attention era is the gotcha era. We may be more inured to shock than ever, but when
someone manages to find and cross a line, we're better able to generate, spread and sustain offense. You get
eaten by the same tiger that you train. Imus got special love from the media over the years because his show was
such a media hangout. But when the controversy erupted, it snowballed in part because the media love to cover
the media.
Every public figure — athlete, pundit, actor — now has two audiences: the one he or she is addressing and the
one that will eventually read the blogs or see the viral video. A few have adapted, like Stephen Colbert, whose
routine at last year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner was decried by attendees as rude and
shrill — but made him a hero to his YouTube audience. Imus, a 30-plus-year veteran of radio shock, seemed to
underestimate the power of the modern umbrage-amplification machine. The day after his remarks, Imus said
dismissively on air that people needed to relax about "some idiot comment meant to be amusing." Shockingly,
they did not, and by the next day, Imus had tapped an inner wellspring of deepest regret.
As in so many scandals, the first response may have been the most authentic — at least we're inclined to take it
that way because the contrition cycle has become so familiar. You blurt. You deny. You apologize. You visit the
rehab center or speak with the Official Minority Spokesperson of your choice and go on with your life. Although
— or maybe because — it's so easy to get caught today, it's also easier to get forgiven. In 1988 Jimmy (the Greek)
Snyder was fired by CBS for saying black athletes were "bred" to be better than whites. In 1996 CBS golf analyst
Ben Wright was suspended indefinitely after he was quoted as saying that lesbians had hurt the sport.
To his credit, Imus never played the "I'm sick" card. Perhaps he felt confident because he had been legitimized by
his high-profile guests. Imus could have made a remark just as bad years ago and suffered few if any
consequences. Scratch that: Imus did make remarks as bad or worse for years. Speaking about Gwen Ifill, the
African-American PBS anchor who was then White House correspondent for the New York Times, he said, "Isn't
the Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House." He called a Washington Post writer a
"boner-nosed, beanie-wearing Jewboy" and Arabs "towelheads."
Yet politicians and journalists (including TIME writers) still went on his show to plug their candidacies and
books because Imus knew how to sell. "If Don Imus likes a book," says Katie Wainwright, executive director of
publicity at publisher Hyperion, "not only does he have the author on, he will talk about it before, during and
after, often for weeks afterwards." The price: implicitly telling America that the mostly white male Beltway elite
is cool with looking the other way at racism. They compartmentalized the lengthy interviews he did with them
from the "bad" parts of the show, though the boundary was always a little porous. And evidently many still do.
"Solidarity forever," pledged Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant in a phone interview with Imus on April 9.
Senator John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani said they would return to the show. "I called him a little while ago to
talk to him about it personally," Giuliani told the New York Times. "And I believe that he understands that he
made a very big mistake." (Senator Barack Obama, who appeared on the show once, has said he will not go back;
other politicians have hedged.)
In fact, while there might be more media and blogger scrutiny of Imus' future guests, his suspension may have
inoculated them — if his radio show survives. The show draws 2 million daily listeners, and it's a more valuable
property on radio than it was on TV. (It brings in about $15 million annually for CBS Radio compared with
several million for MSNBC.) But the show has already lost advertisers, including American Express, Staples and
Procter & Gamble.
Imus argued repeatedly that his critics should consider the "context" of his larger life, including the formidable
work for sick children he does through his Imus Ranch charity. But it's not Imus Ranch he broadcasts from 20
hours a week. You can't totally separate the lives of celebrities from their work — it didn't excuse Gibson that he
attacked the Jews in his free time — but finally what determines who can make what jokes is the context of their
work: the tone of their acts, the personas they present, the vehicles they create for their work.
That context is not as kind to Imus. He comes out of the shock jock tradition, but all shock jocks are not created
equal. If Opie & Anthony or Mancow had made the "nappy-headed" comment, it wouldn't have been a blip
because future Presidents do not do cable-news interviews with Opie & Anthony and Mancow.
Then there's personality, or at least persona. Compared with Imus, for instance, his rival Howard Stern may be
offensive, but he's also self-deprecating, making fun of his own satyrism, looks and even manly endowment.
Imus doesn't take it nearly as well as he dishes it out. His shtick is all cowboy-hatted swagger, and his insults set
him up as superior to his targets and the alpha dog to his supplicant guests.
Imus uses jokes to establish his power, in other words. He's hardly the only humorist to do that. But making
jokes about difference — race, gender, sexual orientation, the whole list — is ultimately about power. You need to
purchase the right to do it through some form of vulnerability, especially if you happen to be a rich, famous white
man. But the I-Man — his radio persona, anyway — is not about vulnerability. (The nickname, for Pete's sake: I,
Man!) That's creepy enough when he's having a big-name columnist kiss his ring; when he hurled his tinfoil
thunderbolts at a team of college kids, it was too much. "Some people have said, 'Well, he says this all the time,'"
Rutgers' team captain Carson told TIME. "But does that justify the remarks he's made about anyone?"
Of course, assessing Imus' show is a subjective judgment, and setting these boundaries is as much an aesthetic
call as a moral one. It's arbitrary, nebulous and, yes, unfair. Who doesn't have a list of artists or leaders whose
sins they rationalize: Elvis Costello for calling Ray Charles a "blind, ignorant nigger," Eminem for peppering his
lyrics with "faggot," Jesse Jackson for "Hymietown," D.W. Griffith for lionizing the Klan or T.S. Eliot for
maligning Jews?
You might say that there's no excuse and that I'm as big a hypocrite as Imus' defenders for suggesting that there
is one. Which may be true. That's finally why "Where's the line?" is a misleading question. There are as many
lines as there are people. We draw and redraw them by constantly arguing them. This is how we avoid throwing
out the brilliance of a Sacha Baron Cohen — who offends us to point out absurdities in our society, not just to
make "idiot comments meant to be amusing" — with a shock jock's dirty bathwater. It's a draining, polarizing but
necessary process.
Which may be why it was such a catharsis to see the Rutgers players respond to Imus at their press conference in
their own words. "I'm a woman, and I'm someone's child," said Kia Vaughn. "I achieve a lot. And unless they've
given this name, a 'ho,' a new definition, then that is not what I am." She stood with her teammates, a row of
unbowed, confident women. For a few minutes, anyway, they drew a line we could all agree on and formed a line
we could all get behind.
With reporting by Jeremy Caplan, Lina Lofaro and Andrea Sachs/New York and Betsy Rubiner/Des Moines
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An Imus Guest Says No More
By Ana Marie Cox
Every time I've been on Don Imus' show, he has reminded listeners that he "discovered" me. It's not exactly
hyperbole. He first invited me on when I was just a foulmouthed blogger who ran the gossipy political site
Wonkette. As I recall, my first on-air conversation with him was about the Bush twins, or, as I called them,
"Jenna and Not-Jenna." Last fall I became a regular guest and took up slightly more serious topics (on my
last appearance we talked about Senator John McCain's Baghdad trip and Republican presidential
candidate Rudy Giuliani's lack of social graces), but the subjects hardly mattered. I had been invited inside
the circle, and to be perfectly honest, I was thrilled to be there.
As the invites kept coming, I found myself succumbing to the clubhouse mentality that Imus both inspires
and cultivates. Sure, I cringed at his and his crew's race-baiting (the Ray Nagin impersonations, the Obama
jokes) and at the casual locker-room misogyny (Hillary Clinton's a "bitch," CNN news anchor Paula Zahn is
a "wrinkled old prune"), but I told myself that going on the show meant something beyond inflating my
precious ego. I wasn't alone. As Frank Rich noted a few years ago, "It's the only show ... that I've been on
where you can actually talk in an informed way — not in sound bites." Yeah, what he said!
I'm embarrassed to admit that it took Imus' saying something so devastatingly crass to make me realize
that there just was no reason beyond ego to play along. I did the show almost solely to earn my media-elite
merit badge. The sad truth is that unless you have a book to promote, there's often no other reason any
writer or columnist has to do the show. If Rich wants to "talk in an informed way," I'm sure there's an open
mike at C-Span Radio, and if there's really a hunger for such adult dialogue, does it really have to be
accompanied by childish crudeness? Actually, don't answer that. In any case, the media figures and
politicians who clown around with Imus can pretend that the show is really about informed conversation or
pop sociology or anything except junior-high-level teasing, but its true appeal for them lies in the seal of
approval Imus bestows.
Of course, having a venue where one can speak frankly — talk in the way everyone does privately — about
political figures can be liberating. I have said things on his show that cannot be printed here. But do I really
want to give my tacit approval to someone whose greatest gift to public discourse could be fairly described
as allowing pundits to get potty-mouthed?
My giving up the show, I acknowledge, is too little and too late. I doubt that I'll be missed. It's depressingly
easy to find female journalists who will tolerate or ignore bigotry if it means getting into the boys' club
someday. (If only I were the only one.) And I'm not so vain that I think I brought something unique to the
airwaves. In fact, I assume that one reason he had me on was the tantalizing prospect that I might say something
scandalous or racy. That, and he and his cronies seemed to enjoy having the occasional guest they could leer at.
Once, after I was on, he and his gang proceeded to discuss my "creamy" skin and compliment my nice pair of ...
"eyes." I later asked the producer to remind him that as far as I knew, my father was listening. Now I'm going to
ask my dad not to anymore.
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Who Are the Hos Here?
By Cynthia Tucker
What does it take for Imus to see a group of distinguished college athletes as something other than "hos"?
When two blond teenagers were accused of robbing a bank in suburban Atlanta on Feb. 27, the delighted
national media dubbed them the "Barbie Bandits." Read that as "cute and white." But when the Scarlet
Knights pushed their Cinderella season all the way to the championship game, Imus trashed them.
I've grown accustomed to an undercurrent in public policy debates that blames black women for an array of
social and cultural failures. Without making distinctions, that racist sentiment casts us all as lazy and
drug-addled welfare queens, thoughtless breeders of criminals, and unwed heathens who are sacking the
sacred institution of marriage. The obverse, of course, is the black woman who presumes to move into the
American mainstream. That woman is not successful. She is uppity.
Imus' attack on the Scarlet Knights was was just as vile as his insult directed years ago at distinguished PBS
broadcaster Gwen Ifill. When the New York Times assigned Ifill to cover the Clinton presidency, Imus
remarked, "Isn't the Times wonderful? It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House." As far as Imus is
concerned, a black woman like Ifill should be emptying the President's trash cans, not interviewing him.
That casual slander reminded me of an e-mail I once received from a reader who asserted his view of a
black woman's proper place. "I have floors that need to be mopped," he said, and--more crudely than I can
dare repeat--a sexual organ that needed to be serviced. He would have been happier, apparently, if I were a
ho.
I'm not much troubled by ignorant e-mailers or radio-active racists. My parents taught me to ignore them.
But I am surprised that Imus continues to enjoy the support of so many political and entertainment
celebrities. They were not offended enough by his racial stereotypes to turn down a little airtime. I think I
know hos when I see them.
Tucker is editorial-page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Makes Me Wanna Holler
By Debra Dickerson
What I find most disturbing about the Imus affair is the reaction of black women. Our plentiful public
response has been almost entirely angry. My inbox seethes with articles with titles like "No Apologies:
Notes from a Nappy Headed Sister." But I find no comfort in this reaction, because I'm not angry. I'm
deeply, deeply hurt.
Imus targeted the greatest vulnerability of black women--our non-European looks--with the express
purpose of reminding us that we are not, and can never be, beautiful. Feminine. We had to be put back in
our place, demoted to sex objects, but we couldn't even do that properly with all those braids and broad
noses. So we had to be made into men. Criminals and freaks of nature. Makes me wanna holler.
Imus' words keep repeating in my head, like a violent, midday mugging. One minute, you're putting gas in
your tank. The next: BANG! A gun in your face. Your response to being violently blindsided is not anger but
a debilitating sense of violation and helplessness. If Imus is fired tomorrow, I won't feel any better. I'll still
be wondering who else sees a "jigaboo" in me.
The reality of racism and sexism pulsing behind Imus' words is what matters. Those of us in black public
life who try to stay focused on the opportunities rather than the obstacles, those of us who most often
proffer intracommunal critique, well, let's just say it'll be a while before I'll be criticizing my own again.
Why bother? I'll get over it, but till then ... why bother?
The only upside in all this has been the chivalry with which black men have rushed to defend us. Thank you,
brothers. You've made me feel like a lady again.
Dickerson, a columnist for Salon.com is the author of The End of Blackness
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What I Meant Was ...
"Are there any niggers here? ... Seven niggers, six spics, five Micks, four kikes, three guineas and one Wop."
LENNY BRUCE, as part of his routine in the '60s AFTERMATH: Bruce was considered avant-garde rather
than hateful. OUTRAGE FACTOR: 3
"The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way." JIMMY (THE GREEK)
SNYDER, sports commentator, in a 1988 television interview AFTERMATH: Snyder, who was well liked,
apologized but was later fired by CBS. OUTRAGE FACTOR: 7
"She gave me some of that monkey love she's so famous for." TED DANSON, in blackface, describing then
girlfriend Whoopi Goldberg in a 1993 Friars Club routine laced with racial humor AFTERMATH: Opinion
was divided, with some viewing the comment as appropriate for a roast and many more condemning it.
Goldberg was said to have co-written the gags. OUTRAGE FACTOR: 5
"Lesbians in the sport hurt women's golf." BEN WRIGHT, CBS golf commentator, who added that women's
swings were hampered by their "boobs" AFTERMATH: He was suspended indefinitely. OUTRAGE
FACTOR: 7
"It turns out you have to go to rehab if you use the word faggot." ANN COULTER, explaining why she didn't
have anything to say about Senator John Edwards in March this year AFTERMATH: Politicians from both
parties condemned her. OUTRAGE FACTOR: 4.5
"F___ing Jews ... the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Are you a Jew?" MEL GIBSON, to a
police officer in Malibu, Calif., as he was being arrested for drunken driving AFTERMATH: Huge. Gibson
apologized, offered to meet with Jewish leaders and checked into alcohol rehab. OUTRAGE FACTOR: 9
"This fellow here ... macaca, or whatever his name is, he's with my opponent." GEORGE ALLEN, about S.R.
Sidarth, who was following him with a camera for Democratic candidate Jim Webb AFTERMATH: The clip
was posted on YouTube, and Allen apologized. But he lost the election. OUTRAGE FACTOR: 8
"So move bitch, get out the way ho/ All you faggot mother-f___ers make way ..." LUDACRIS, rapper, in his
2001 song Move Bitch AFTERMATH: Oprah and others have criticized him, but his albums continue to sell
well. OUTRAGE FACTOR: 3
"In China it's like, 'Ching chong. Danny DeVito, ching chong, chong, chong, chong.'" ROSIE O'DONNELL, on
The View AFTERMATH: After viewer protests, she apologized on the show. OUTRAGE FACTOR: 4
"You can talk ... You're brave now, motherf___er. Throw his ass out. He's a nigger." MICHAEL RICHARDS,
comedian, to a heckler AFTERMATH: Cell-phone video of the tirade was posted on TMZ.com and Richards
apologized but became the object of many protests and jokes. OUTRAGE FACTOR: 8.5
"I love chinks. And who doesn't?" SARAH SILVERMAN, explaining to Conan O'Brien why she didn't write "I
hate chinks" on a form to avoid jury duty AFTERMATH: NBC and O'Brien issued an apology, but Silverman did
not. OUTRAGE FACTOR: 3
"You know the worst thing about niggas? Niggas always want credit for some s__ they supposed to do. A nigga'll
brag about some s___a normal man just does." CHRIS ROCK, in his HBO special Bring the Pain AFTERMATH:
None. OUTRAGE FACTOR: 0
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Postcard: Saint-Gilles
By Bruce Crumley
Tourists have long admired Saint-Gilles for its ancient center: narrow streets, tightly packed stone buildings
and 12th century monastery ruins. Its more recent political history, however, has given this Languedoc
town a kind of ill fame across France. In 1989, Saint-Gilles became the first town to elect a mayor from the
extreme-right National Front party. The National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a perennial loser in
presidential elections, has consistently placed first in Saint-Gilles. In short, the town has voted for the kind
of xenophobic zealotry that for many years was disavowed by polite French society. But the first round of
presidential voting, on April 22, may finally find Saint-Gilles in the political mainstream, not because
Saint-Gilles has drifted left but because France has veered right. And the front-running conservative
candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, has built his lead in part by moving in the same direction, even co-opting some
of the positions that have made Le Pen so popular here.
For years, many Saint-Gilles residents have been transfixed by a central issue: immigration. In the 1960s
and '70s, Saint-Gilles's agricultural sector recruited armies of foreign workers until the growth boom went
bust in the early 1980s. Jobs here and across France have been in short supply ever since. Nearly 20% of
Saint-Gilles's residents are jobless, and practically all of those live on state assistance. Roughly 25% of the
town's population of nearly 12,000 are immigrant or first-generation French citizens--virtually all of North
African origin. Most live in the Sabatot housing projects uphill from the town's center and are frequently
reviled by older Saint-Gilles inhabitants as disorderly, uncivil and crime prone.
"Before, immigrants like the Spanish and Portuguese worked hard and integrated, but that's just not
happening with the Arabs," says Yvonne Bovetto, 87, a retiree and native of Saint-Gilles. "Sabatot is the
biggest problem for us today. Lots of people just feel overrun, fed up or both." As if in reply, Morit (who
would give only his first name), an 18-year-old first-generation Saint-Gilles citizen of Moroccan descent,
says, "We feel the racism and scorn everywhere."
Similar tension is evident far beyond Saint-Gilles. In the wake of the 2005 riots in suburban projects and
pitched battles between police and immigrant youth last month in Paris' Gare du Nord train station, more
French are gravitating toward hard-line positions. Sarkozy, the former Interior Minister, is a natural
law-and-order candidate who spent his time in office noisily battling crime and deporting illegal aliens. But
even some of his allies have questioned his campaign pledge to create a "Ministry for Immigration and
National Identity"--a linkage many decry as a Le Penesque invocation of a creeping foreign menace to
France. However controversial, the moves have helped "Sarko" win over some Le Pen loyalists. "The true
racists will never abandon Le Pen," says Nicolas Rullier, 29, summarizing what he hears at his newsstand
beside the sun-washed medieval Benedictine abbey. "But I think lots of regular people here who voted for Le Pen
in the past to voice their fears and anger are seriously thinking of voting for Sarkozy this time."
A recent national poll gave Sarkozy 31.5% backing, against 24% for his Socialist rival Ségolène Royal (who,
sinking in the polls, took her own stab at identity politics, suggesting in March that all French citizens should
learn La Marseillaise). To some in Saint-Gilles, Sarkozy's allure is in his electability. "I'm voting for Sarkozy not
only because I think he truly believes these policies are necessary," confides a retired Saint-Gilles farmer and
past Le Pen voter who identifies himself only as André, "but also because Sarkozy has a far better chance of
winning and applying them than Le Pen ever will." If that prediction is correct, this town so reviled for its politics
in the past may turn out to have been simply ahead of its time.
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Where Iraq Works
By Andrew Lee Butters / Arbil
Like residents of Berlin during the airlift, inhabitants of Arbil--capital of the Kurdish enclave in northern
Iraq--get a little flutter in their hearts when they see a plane coming in to land. Built after the fall of
Saddam Hussein's regime, Arbil's international airport is a symbol to Kurds that their years of isolation as
an oppressed ethnic minority are over and that the Kurdish region, unlike the rest of Iraq, is open for
business. Passengers flying into Baghdad have to endure a corkscrew landing to avoid possible
surface-to-air missiles. But a trip to Arbil is so safe that on my flight I was the only passenger packing body
armor. When I arrived, my biggest problem was the $50 fare charged for a 10-minute cab ride by the
drivers of Hello Taxi--and finding a room at one of the city's packed hotels.
Such is life in Iraqi Kurdistan, the last beacon of stability amid the wreckage of the U.S. enterprise in Iraq.
Of course, stability is a relative term. True, the airport is putting in a runway long enough to accommodate
jumbo jets, but for now it will be used mainly for U.S. military flights. That's because only one Western
carrier--Austrian Airlines--is brave enough to land there. Other flights are run by off-brand charters with
names like Flying Carpet and Middle Eastern carriers like Iraqi Airways. And even those are unreliable.
Many of the officials at Iraqi Airways are former Baathists who deliberately try to delay flights. Flights from
Turkey often get canceled when there's a public dispute between Kurdish and Turkish politicians. And all
flights in and out of Kurdish Iraq still have to receive clearance from both the civil-aviation authority in
Baghdad and the American air base in Qatar.
Iraqi Kurds have been in control of their region since 1991, when, with the help of the U.S.-enforced no-fly
zone, they drove Saddam's forces out of northern Iraq. But now, four years after the liberation of the rest of
the country, Kurdish Iraq is undergoing an identity crisis. On the one hand, it is a rare success story in the
Middle East: a stable territory run by a secular leadership committed to economic and political reform and
sitting on a huge pool of oil. On the other hand, it is tiny and landlocked, uncomfortably attached to a
war-ravaged nation and surrounded by unfriendly neighbors. Despite the region's outward signs of
tranquillity, the fate of Kurdistan--whether it will continue as an inspiring example of what the rest of Iraq
could look like or become engulfed by the country's violence--remains unresolved, dependent as much on
what happens to the barely functioning Iraqi state as on the Kurds.
For the Bush Administration, the central question is how long the Kurds can be persuaded to remain part of
a united Iraq. The overwhelming majority of Kurds would like to break free of Iraq and form an
independent nation. So far, Kurdish leaders have been a constructive force in holding Iraq together, helping
to write and adopt a national constitution that, although it gave great powers to the regions, has kept Iraq
intact as a federal state. Kurds are serving at the highest levels of the Iraqi government, including as President,
Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.
But it's doubtful that spirit of cooperation will last. The further that Iraq slides into civil war, the more the Kurds
will want to insulate themselves from it, by carving out more political and economic autonomy. Even if they stop
short of outright secession, the Kurds could still unleash new conflicts in Iraq if their impatience with the
fecklessness of the Baghdad government prompts them to take action on their own. The most explosive
flashpoint is Kirkuk, the disputed oil-rich city that the Kurds lay claim to. As Iraq's Kurdish President, Massoud
Barzani, said on March 22 during the farewell visit of departing U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, "Our
patience is not unlimited." So what happens to Iraq when it runs out?
WHEN I FIRST TRAVELED TO THE KURDISH north in August 2004 to escape the heat and violence of
Baghdad, the so-called Switzerland of Iraq was disappointing in one respect: summers on the high plains of Arbil
are almost as scorching. Otherwise, Kurdistan was a refuge. In Baghdad, journalists had begun hiring security
entourages and erecting guarded compounds. To the north in Arbil, as a visiting American, I was practically
given the keys to the city. I did my reporting by foot or hailed taxis from the street, spent my evenings in beer
gardens or pizza parlors, and slept on the roof of the house, with the sound of crickets rather than Kalashnikovs
in the cooling night air.
Since then the differences between Kurdistan and Iraq proper have become even more dramatic. The plains
around Arbil--once a glaring semidesert wasteland--are exploding with luxury housing developments. They have
names like British Village, which resembles a gated California suburb, and Dream City, which supposedly will
have its own conference center, supermarket and American-style school. The Turkish developers of Naz City, a
high-rise condominium complex, are trying to sell house-proud Kurds on modern apartment living. An American
company wants to build Iraq's first ski resort in the mountains near the Turkish and Iranian borders. While
citizens in Baghdad struggle to survive, a sign in Arbil declares that the city is "striving for perfection."
The Kurds' most important achievement has been to keep their region free of Iraq's insurgency and sectarian
warfare, thanks to their army of 70,000 peshmerga soldiers. Not a single American soldier has been killed in
Kurdistan since the start of the war in Iraq, and there hasn't been a major terrorist attack in Arbil since June
2005.
Take a walk, however, in any of this city's safe and prosperous neighborhoods, and you will quickly see that the
other Iraq isn't so far away. Some 150,000 displaced Iraqi Arabs have taken refuge in Kurdistan from the conflict
in the central and southern parts of the country. Kurdish officials require Iraqi Arabs trying to enter Kurdistan to
have a Kurdish resident vouch for their character. As a result, the Arab refugee population is largely middle class,
with a preponderance of doctors, lawyers and other professionals.
But as the number of newcomers swells, tensions are rising. Not many Kurds have forgotten the years of
repression by Iraq's Arab majority, and many now blame Arabs for rising home prices. While I was waiting to
speak to the president of Salahaddin University in Arbil, which has added some 200 Arab professors to its
faculty, a visiting Kurdish archaeologist offered his expert opinion on the subject. "From Muhammad until now,
Arabs are rotten to the bone," he said, "even when they are being friendly to you." Non-Kurdish Iraqis, for their
part, resent being treated as second-class citizens in Kurdish Iraq. "Why do I need permission to live in my own
country?" said Walaa Matti, an Assyrian Christian who fled his home in Mosul and works in the business center
of a hotel in Arbil. "I'm Iraqi, and this is my country, but I feel like a stranger."
The Kurds' tenuous relationship with Arab Iraq is even more combustible some 47 miles south, in Kirkuk. The
city is less than a two-hour drive from Arbil, but the road trip into the other Iraq is a spooky one. To the left,
there's a chain of forts left over from the Iran-Iraq war, crumbling masonry monsters that look as if they were
built to World War I specifications. The Hamreen Mountains to the right are practically deserted save for a series
of sentry posts silhouetted along the ridge line. And waiting straight ahead at the gates of Kirkuk is a natural-gas
flare, an eternal flame that the locals call Babagurgur, which is the symbol of this oil-rich city.
Kirkuk, with its mixed population of Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans, has long had the potential to be a sectarian
powder keg. Under Saddam's Baathist regime, the Iraqi government forced out a large number of the city's
majority Kurdish population and resettled the city with Arabs from the south. Now ethnic tensions are erupting
as Kurds demand the return of Kirkuk to their control. The day I visited in March, a series of two car bombs and
three roadside bombs killed 18 people. On April 1, at least 15 people, including eight schoolchildren, died in a
suicide truck bombing.
The violence in this city of about 1 million people hasn't reached a level comparable to that in Baghdad.
Infrastructure and services in the city are functional by Iraqi standards despite the central government, which
delays projects by sheer inertia, say U.S. and Kurdish officials. Such neglect may soon reach a crisis point in
Kirkuk. The Iraqi constitution calls for the city to hold a referendum by year's end on whether it should remain
under the control of the central Iraqi government in Baghdad or become part of Iraqi Kurdistan.
A growing number of voices outside Iraq--including the Baker-Hamilton commission--have called for the
contentious issue to be shelved. But Kurdish leaders say further delay only increases the chance that the political
process for settling the Kirkuk issue will turn into an ethnic struggle. Kirkuk is a major staging ground for Arab
insurgents trying to infiltrate Kurdistan, and Kurds say they could do a better job than the Iraqi government of
maintaining security there. "If we had control of Kirkuk, we could clean it out in two months," said Abdullah Ali
Muhammad, head of Kurdish security forces in Arbil. Other Kurdish officials warn that if the referendum is
delayed, Kurds forced out of Kirkuk by the old regime's ethnic-cleansing program would try to return on their
own. If that happens and if the Iraqi government hasn't moved out the "new" Arabs transplanted there under
Saddam, "there will be civil war," according to Kamal Kirkuki, vice president of the Kurdistan Parliament and
head of a committee overseeing territorial disputes. Delay would give insurgents that much longer to set off car
bombs and push the city closer to Baghdad-style sectarian revenge killings.
And that's just the beginning. U.S. officials and Kurdish leaders know that unilateral moves by Kurds--to take
Kirkuk on their own or drop out of the Iraqi government--would not only provoke the ire of Iraq's Arab majority
but also risk intervention by Iraq's neighbors, such as Turkey, Iran and Syria, which all have restive Kurdish
minorities of their own. Turkey, for instance, would likely shut the borders with Kurdistan and stop all flights
coming in from over its airspace. Of all the problems that would follow, the most ironic could be that a newly
independent oil-rich Kurdistan, without any refineries or pipelines, would run out of gas. Falah Mustafa Bakir,
head of the Kurdish government's office of foreign relations, told me that declaring independence would be
"political suicide."
But even that worst-case scenario might not be enough to dissuade the popular clamor inside Kurdistan for more
assertive action. Just four years since the fall of Saddam, most Kurds may be willing to remain a part of Iraq for
now, but few want their destinies to remain tied to a poor, failing state beset by sectarian carnage. Over time, the
push for a free and independent Kurdistan may become irresistible. In a bid to manage expectations, the Kurdish
leadership is putting out a new party line, echoed in mosques and newspaper editorials: "Be grateful." But as
Americans have learned in Iraq, gratitude is a wasting asset.
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Land Of Chains And Hunger
By Alex Perry / Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
A bad jail wastes a body quickly. When I entered Cell 6 at Gwanda police station, I was fit. After five days in
a concrete and iron-bar tank, with no food and only a few sips of water, my skin was flaking and my clothes
were slipping off. A prison blanket had given me lice. The water I had palmed from a rusty tap in the
shower had given me diarrhea. Under a 24-hour strip light, I hadn't slept more than a few minutes at a
time. And I stank. So many men had passed through Cell 6 that they had left their smell on the walls, and
while I was making my own stink, the walls were also passing theirs onto me.
It took 22 hours to get arrested in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. On March 28, I flew into Zimbabwe's
second city, Bulawayo, with the intention of reporting on the ruinous policies that have turned Zimbabwe
into one of the poorest and most repressive countries in the world. Foreign journalists are routinely refused
permission to travel to Zimbabwe, so I entered the country as a tourist and drove south from Bulawayo to
the goldfields of the Great Dyke. I was following tens of thousands of Zimbabweans who, as the economy
collapsed, headed to the gold-mining region of Matabeleland, hoping the red hills might give up something
to live on. My goal was to get a firsthand look at the misery facing ordinary people in Zimbabwe today. But I
had little notion of just how close I would get.
TO MAINTAIN MY PRETENSE AS A TOURIST, I would have been safer staying north, near the game
parks and Victoria Falls. But Matabeleland is a microcosm of Zimbabwe's implosion. Thousands in the
region are dying of malnutrition. Hundreds of thousands survive by trapping wild animals or bare-handed
mining. When I arrived in the gold-rush town of West Nicholson, I met with a local miner in his bungalow.
Several times during our 10-minute chat, he would step out for a few moments. It soon became clear why.
When I emerged from his house, two plainclothes officers were waiting to detain me.
In the 1980s, Zimbabwe was the second largest economy in southern Africa. Millions of tourists visited
each year to see hippos, lions and the awesome drama of Victoria Falls. And Zimbabwe--a nation of 11
million to 13 million people (nobody knows the precise number, partly because so many have fled) gave
black Africans the best education and health care on the continent. But over the past two decades, Mugabe's
single-minded protection of his power has devastated the economy and turned the country into a police
state. Unemployment is at 80%, living standards are back to their 1953 levels, and the World Health
Organization says life expectancy is 34 for women and 37 for men--the lowest in the world. Inflation hit
1,792.9% in February and is predicted to reach 3,700% by year's end. (A currency free fall of that magnitude
means, for instance, that in nominal terms, a single brick today costs more than a three-bedroom house
with a swimming pool did in 1990.)
Arriving in the country is like touching down the day after a cataclysm--a place where the clocks have stopped.
There are roads but few cars, and roadside railings are torn up at the stumps. The shops feature bare shelves and
price boards for imaginary products that are changed three times a day. Telephones don't work, the power is out,
and blackened factory stacks spew no smoke. People loll in the streets with nothing to do and nowhere to go,
even if there were a way to get there. "What do people eat?" I asked a lawyer I met. "Good question," he replied.
The one thing Zimbabwe is in no danger of running out of is pictures of "Comrade" Robert Gabriel Mugabe. He
looks down from framed photographs in every store, gas station and government office, a small man in gold
glasses. When I landed in Zimbabwe, he was front-page news in every newspaper, railing against the West, which
could "go hang" for plotting "monkey business" against his country, and members of the opposition, who "will
get bashed." A few weeks earlier, I caught a television interview on his 83rd birthday. "Some people say I am a
dictator," he said at his 25-bedroom villa in the capital, Harare, complete with Italian-marble bathrooms and
roof tiles from Shanghai. "My own people say I am handsome."
MY 10-MINUTE CONVERSATION WITH THE miner in West Nicholson turned out to be my last interview. The
plainclothes officers brought me to the West Nicholson police station, where I spent the night. The next day I was
driven north to the provincial police headquarters at Gwanda. My escorts accused me of planning to write
"negative" stories about Zimbabwe--as if arresting me would dispose me to more positive stories--and carried
with them a report from West Nicholson's police chief describing me as a "dedicated journalist on a clandestine
mission."
At Gwanda, I was interrogated by a series of detectives and was denied a lawyer and a phone call. Officers
crowded in to see me. They were excited. One said he wanted to "manhandle" me. Two others grinned and
bounced before me, trying to make me flinch. The detective in charge of my case introduced himself as "Moyo"
and disclosed that he approved of a beating if the crime warranted it. I was driven to the prosecutors' office and
charged with breaching sections 79 and 80, Chapter 10: 27, of the Access to Information and Protection of
Privacy Act, "working as a journalist without accreditation." The maximum sentence was two years.
"Do you think I can just come to your country, start asking questions and write anything I want?" demanded an
officer. Nobody knew I was here, I replied. Nobody knew what was happening to me. I didn't know what was
happening to me. Could I call someone? Moyo ignored me. His officers expressed outrage at my nerve.
The only feature in my cell aside from walls and bars was an iron shackling ring in the floor. Prisoners at Gwanda
are paraded every morning before the station's officers and, one by one, interrogated and slapped, humiliated.
Some of my fellow prisoners had been arrested for trapping porcupines in the forest, selling gasoline,
stealing--petty offenses committed in desperate efforts to feed their families. A piece of graffiti on the wall read,
P. MOYO WAS HERE FOR STANDING.
The prisoners weren't the only ones living in fear. Junior officers barely opened their mouths. Ranking officers
like Moyo would not grant me permission to visit the toilet or brush my teeth without approval from their
superiors. "I am just a worker," I heard the police-station chief say. "There are people above me." The jailers'
anxiety about their bosses made them even more determined to demand respect from their prisoners. Moyo
considered my demand for a lawyer insulting. "I am educated," he said. "And you do not cooperate." The walls of
his office made clear that the regime saw the opposition less as a threat than an affront. The top crime on a list
hanging above Moyo's desk was "insulting or undermining the authority of the President."
In truth, Zimbabwe's opposition remains weak. The main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic
Change (M.D.C.), peaked in 2002, when leader Morgan Tsvangirai polled 42% to Mugabe's 56% in presidential
elections. Since then the anti-Mugabe movement has foundered because of infighting and intimidation. Mugabe
has unleashed a campaign of beatings, mass arrests and shootings of his political opponents. On March 11, state
police attacked a joint M.D.C.-Christian march. Tsvangirai was taken into custody and beaten savagely. Since
2000, Mugabe has also encouraged mobs to invade farms owned by the country's remaining white residents,
who number in the tens of thousands and mainly back the opposition. The M.D.C.'s principal base is in the urban
slums, so Mugabe destroyed many of them, forcing millions of shanty dwellers into the streets or exile. The
opposition called a general strike on April 2, but it's hard for a strike to have much impact when many of its
potential supporters are outside the country.
Mugabe has also targeted some longstanding foreign adversaries. The West, particularly Britain and the U.S., is
plotting to recolonize Zimbabwe, he says. That paranoia courses through every level of the country's security
apparatus. A large map in Inspector Moyo's office highlighted in red "areas of political activity"--which turned
out to be every town or large village. A directive on the wall reminded him his job was to "investigate all cases of
a political nature, suppress all civil commotion and gather political intelligence." There was even a detailed
procedure in case the station ever came under attack. Fear and vigilance combined in an obsession with
paperwork. Every remark I made was typed in triplicate. I was fingerprinted five times.
Moyo seemed to realize he was working for the bad guys. "The country is ruined," he said one day. Shame fueled
his need for respect. He was haunted by the prospect of someday being called to account for the abuses he has
overseen. "You cannot say anything against me," he would say. Mugabe's greatest trick is to make sure people
fear him more than they hate him, and hate themselves most of all.
For all of Zimbabwe's privations, Mugabe's hold on power seems unlikely to slip anytime soon. On my first day in
jail, a heads-of-government Southern African Development Community summit met in Tanzania. In its ranks
were other veterans of the fight against colonialism, like South African President Thabo Mbeki, many of whose
supporters sympathize with Mugabe's demonization of the West as racist. Despite worldwide calls for censure,
the conference refused to condemn Mugabe's leadership and affirmed Zimbabwe's right to noninterference.
Mbeki was asked to act as mediator between the government and the opposition, but Mbeki told the Financial
Times, "Whether we succeed or not is up to the Zimbabwean leadership. None of us in the region has any power
to force the Zimbabweans to agree." The next day Zimbabwe's ruling party, the Zanu-PF, endorsed Mugabe as its
candidate for the 2008 presidential election.
I STUDIED THE MAPS ON MOYO'S WALLS FOR escape routes into South Africa or Botswana. What
encouraged me was that I would hardly be the first to flee Zimbabwe. There are no reliable estimates of how
much of the original population has left. Some estimates range from 2 million to 4 million; South Africans
reckon they host 1 million to 2 million refugees. Shantytowns with names like Little Harare and Zimtown have
sprung up outside cities across Africa. The stories their inhabitants tell--of risking crocodiles in the Limpopo
River and lions in South Africa's Kruger National Park in their bid to escape--speak of desperation. They also
illuminate why any recovery in Zimbabwe will be a long time coming. "It's a brain drain," says Archbishop Pius
Ncube, a prominent government critic based in Bulawayo. "All the intelligent people--the doctors, the lawyers,
the teachers--have left." Through the bars of my cell, wardens would quietly ask if I could help them find jobs in
London.
I began to see my captors as victims as much as persecutors. Many had not been paid. A drive to Bulawayo,
ostensibly to search my hotel room, became a shopping trip as five officers crammed the car and spent the day
hunting roadside stalls for cheap tomatoes, queuing at gas stations and ATMs, seeking out a country butcher
with a reputation for value. "I cannot lie to you. The situation is very bad," said Moyo. "You can see for yourself."
On my fifth day in detention, I was taken to court. En route, Moyo took me to a café for my first meal since my
arrest. I was amazed to see an English breakfast on offer: sausages, eggs, toast, coffee. I hungrily ordered and sat
down--only to see Moyo sit at an adjacent table. I beckoned to him, but, head down, he demurred. A man asked
to share my table and introduced himself as a manager for the Christian relief organization World Vision. I asked
him about this year's harvest. "There's zero," he said. "No crop. Millions of hungry people, and just our maize
sacks to feed them."
Court took 10 minutes. I pleaded guilty and was fined 100 Zimbabwean dollars--at present values, half a U.S.
cent. Outside, two men in suits and sunglasses, possibly secret-service agents, watched as I left court. Though the
local authorities had let me go, there was no guarantee I would avoid being interrogated again by Mugabe's
secret police. I jumped in my rental car and, calculating that the authorities would expect me to head south to
South Africa or west to Botswana, drove 373 miles north to Zambia. An hour after nightfall, the road became
muddy. It seemed to be raining. A rumbling filled the air. I looked left, and there, silver in the moonlight, framed
between two cliffs, was Victoria Falls. I was out.
My last night in jail was a Sunday. I was falling asleep on the floor when I felt a low harmony echoing up through
the concrete of the cell next door. There was bass, tenor and rhythm. For two hours, prisoners filled the jail with
music. These were songs of suffering and acceptance, of beauty and soul undiminished.
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The Kosovo Conundrum
By Peter Beinart
At first glance, the Democratic presidential front runners look like foreign policy clones. Hillary Clinton,
John Edwards and Barack Obama all want to get out of Iraq. They all want to double down in Afghanistan.
And they're all for a diplomatic deal with Iran. To find someone who sounds really different, you have to
scroll down--past Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd--all the way to Dennis Kucinich, near the rock
bottom of the 2008 field.
But it's an illusion. The Democrats just look unified because the press isn't asking the right questions. It's
comparing the candidates with George W. Bush--who inhabits a different ideological universe--when it
should be comparing them with another world leader, Tony Blair. Viewed through that lens, the Democrats
aren't so united at all. In fact, a deep foreign policy division runs through the party, not between the major
campaigns but within them.
To understand it, start with Blair--not the Blair of today, but the Blair of 1999. Back then, the British leader
was supporting the U.S. in a different war, in Kosovo. Remember Kosovo? It was fought without U.N.
approval against a dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, who, while slaughtering his own people, posed no direct
threat to the U.S. Had NATO's campaign failed, it would have been Clinton and Blair who looked like
reckless ideologues. But it worked. And Blair made it the centerpiece of a new foreign policy creed, which
he called the "doctrine of international community."
That vision, which Clinton largely shared, summed up Democratic foreign policy at the turn of the
millennium. In a globalized world, bad things that happen in other countries spread more quickly to our
shores. Genocides spawn refugees, who destabilize their neighbors. Corruption sparks financial meltdowns,
which rock the world economy. Pandemics hopscotch across the globe. Blair's answer was for Britain and
the U.S., working through international institutions, to intervene more aggressively in the domestic affairs
of other nations: to strengthen their financial and public-health systems, to push them toward capitalism
and democracy, and in cases of extreme neglect and abuse, to take over the nation-building process by
force.
For much of the democratic foreign policy establishment, that's still the prism--look at Obama's push for
U.N. or even NATO intervention in Darfur, or Edwards' tough talk about Vladimir Putin's rollback of
democracy in Russia. Blairism, at its heart, is optimistic. It assumes that the U.S., working with its allies,
can make other countries freer, healthier and richer. It assumes those countries will generally want our
help. Above all, it assumes that the key to U.S. security is building a world that looks more like us. Blairism
may be less militaristic than neoconservatism, but it's still a missionary creed.
Grass-roots Democrats, however--the people who will actually vote for Clinton, Edwards or Obama--are not in a
missionary mood. In a June 2006 German Marshall Fund survey, only 35% of Democrats, compared with 64% of
Republicans, said the U.S. should "help establish democracy in other countries." While that response was colored
by Iraq, most Democrats opposed even nonmilitary efforts such as supporting dissidents and imposing political
sanctions. Blairites are big fans of foreign aid. But according to a 2005 Security and Peace Institute study, only
38% of Democrats said the U.S. can afford it. (The Republican number was 20 points higher). Almost two-thirds
of Democrats (compared with less than one-third of Republicans) told CBS in December, "The United States
should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along as best they can." That's about as
direct a refutation of the Blairite creed as you can get.
At the heart of anti-Blairism is a convergence between antiwar doves and realists like Virginia Senator James
Webb, a former Reagan Administration official who believes the U.S. should "send American forces into harm's
way only if the nation is directly threatened." Webb and his allies don't oppose all military action, but they
vehemently oppose efforts to forcibly remake the world. In Iraq's wake, one of the core anti-Blairite arguments is
that real internationalism means understanding what other societies want for themselves, rather than seeing
them as clay waiting to be molded in the U.S.'s image.
So which vision will prevail? If a Democrat wins the White House, Blairites will claim most of the top foreign
policy jobs. But without the support of people like Webb, they won't get much done. The U.S.'s interest in how
other countries govern themselves hasn't changed, but our capacity to influence them has. Blairism still has a lot
to recommend it, but when it comes to foreign policy, Democrats can no longer party like it's 1999.
Beinart is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
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Eight Again
By BRUCE HANDY, Glynis Sweeny
[This article consists of several illustrations. Please see hardcopy or PDF.] Guess what? You can live
vicariously through your children. Especially if, like me, you stank at sports when you were a kid. And
especially if, like me, you have kids who don't.
Yes, yes, YES! Take that, Reed Vickers!
*Reed Vickers--the kid who scored five times on me the day Coach Verwest forced me to play goalie in
seventh-grade P.E. and who once pinned me in 10 seconds in wrestling.
O.K., I'm exaggerating for comic effect, I hope. I'm not really a horrible soccer parent. I've never even
punched another dad. Or mom. But I have been surprised at how my ego can get wrapped up in my kids'
successes. And not just in sports ...
Very nicely played, sweetheart!
Warm glow of parental pride undercut by hyper-self-awareness.
The issue came to a head--did I mention my son is also an avid chess player?--at a national chess
tournament we attended recently. (His idea.) It was the last match in a three-day tourney. My son was
paired against a cocky-looking kid from Wisconsin.
My name is Lars Andersen.*
I'm in second grade, but I do math with fifth-graders.
*Not his real name, but it was something Swedish-y.
The games were played in a big hotel ballroom. The parents had to wait outside. One of the moms at my
son's school, who was paying attention to the pairings, realized that Lars Andersen had already beaten two
other kids on my son's team.
That means if your son wins, there'll be a BIG SWING in the standings ...
The pressure! Not only was the team's fate in my kid's hands, but so was my ego vis-à-vis the other parents, who
could probably smell it on me. If he won, I'd accept their congratulations with the easy grace that comes from
siring a champion. If he lost ...
Palpable anxiety spiked with shame for being so anxious in the first place.
The wait was agonizing. Finally I saw Lars Andersen leaving the ballroom, ahead of my son. I could tell
immediately from the look on his face that my son had won. Yes, yes, YES! Of course, my kid had way more
equanimity about the whole thing than I did. And I was instantly ashamed of having taken so much pleasure in
Lars' visible pain. After all, he was only 8. And after all, I knew that face. It had been mine often enough when I
was his age.
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President Fuhgeddaboutit
By Joe Klein
As a New Yorker born and bred and vehement about my city, I thought Rudy Giuliani was a terrific mayor.
He was a breath of fresh air after the dismal liberal hackery of his predecessor, David Dinkins. Giuliani
made the city safer. He was an avid, detail-oriented manager, although he couldn't dent the city's school
bureaucracy. He was an inspiring leader when the crisis came. He spoke his mind and did not suffer fools
even a tiny bit--but then, creative incivility is part of the job description for a successful mayor of New York.
I'm not sure, though, that incivility, no matter how creative, is what we want in our next President,
especially when it comes to foreign policy.
On the stump, Giuliani says "the fact that there are terrorists around the world that are planning to come
here and kill us ... is something I understand better than anyone else running for President." And that may
well be true. To the extent that counterterrorism requires intensive police work, Giuliani certainly has the
skills and experience to do the job. He would undoubtedly clean up the mess in the Department of
Homeland Security. He might be bullheaded enough to prevent Congress from buying more of the cold war
weapons systems that the Pentagon doesn't want, and redirect the money to the spies and surveillance
needed for the long-term struggle against al-Qaeda. He might even be more judicious about the use of force
than the Bush Administration has been.
But the next President will have to be a skilled diplomat as well. And when it comes to Rudy and diplomacy,
fuhgeddaboutit! Two incidents from his mayoralty are illustrative. The first came in 1995, when he
unceremoniously kicked Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat out of a U.N.-related concert for world leaders at
Lincoln Center. The ejection came just after Israel agreed to Palestinian self-rule. The Clinton
Administration was hoping--in vain, it turned out--that treating Arafat with respect might grease the path
to peace. But Giuliani said, "I would not invite Yasser Arafat to anything, anywhere, anytime, anyplace. I
don't forget ... He has never been held to answer for the murders that he was implicated in."
The second incident occurred just after the Sept. 11 attacks. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal handed
Giuliani a check for $10 million to help with relief efforts, but the check was accompanied by a press release
in which the Prince said it was time to get to the roots of the problem in the Middle East, which included
Palestinians "slaughtered" by Israel "while the world turns the other cheek." Giuliani refused to accept the
money. "There is no moral equivalent for [the 9/11 attacks]," he said. "And to suggest that there's a
justification for it only invites this happening in the future. It is highly irresponsible and very, very
dangerous."
Now, you might reasonably ask, What did Rudy do wrong? Giuliani was right about Arafat, who proved the most
unworthy recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in history. And the nerve of that Saudi, in effect blaming the U.S. for
9/11--a month after 15 Saudi terrorists were involved in the attacks, directed by the Saudi Osama bin Laden!
Thomas Friedman, no hothead, wrote a column offering "three cheers for Mayor Rudy Giuliani" for stiffing the
prince. At the time, I was cheering too. But there is a difference between what is appropriate for a mayor and for
a President. "I don't forget" is not a sufficiently flexible foreign policy doctrine. The next President is going to
have to be a nimble diplomat, willing to talk to countries we don't like and leaders we find abhorrent. Peeling
Syria away from its alliance with Iran would be extremely helpful, even it means we would have to "forget" that
Bashar Assad's government might have planned the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. It is also in the world's best
interests for the U.S. to act as an intermediary between Israel and Hamas, which will require speaking directly to
both sides, dealing with people who are perfectly comfortable issuing pro forma statements about Israeli
"atrocities." Actually, President Giuliani would be ideally positioned, in a Nixon-to-China way, to broker a
Middle East peace deal. The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently told me that he considers Giuliani a
trusted friend. If Rudy said, "Ehud, time to talk," could Olmert say no? But would Giuliani ever have the patience
to stow his combative moral absolutism and do the diplomatic dance?
We probably won't learn the answer to that question during this campaign. Diplomacy may be subtle, but politics
ain't, and in that arena, Giuliani's creative incivility is likely to be a major advantage--not just in the Republican
Party primaries. This is a nation that has grown tired of having to figure out the difference between Sunnis and
Shi'ites, impatient with our disastrous involvements overseas. It's a terrifying thought, but fuhgeddaboutit! may
be the foreign policy most Americans want.
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ESSAY
Eight Again
There’s nothing sweeter than seeing your
kid win. So why do we feel so guilty?
BY BRUCE HANDY AND GLYNIS SWEENY
Guess what? You can live vicariously through your children.
Especially if, like me, you stank at sports when you were a kid.
And especially if, like me, you have kids who don’t.
Yes, yes, YES! Take that,
Reed Vickers!*
*Reed Vickers—the kid who scored five times on me the day Coach Verwest forced me to play goalie in seventh-
O.K., I’m exaggerating for comic effect, I hope. I’m not really a
horrible soccer parent. I’ve never even punched another dad. Or
mom. But I have been surprised at how my ego can get wrapped
up in my kids’ successes. And not just in sports .. .
Very nicely played,
sweetheart!
Warm glow of parental pride undercut by hyper-self-awareness.
grade P.E. and who once pinned me in 10 seconds in wrestling.
The issue came to a head—did I mention my son is also an avid
chess player?—at a national chess tournament we attended
recently. (His idea.) It was the last match in a three-day tourney.
My son was paired against a cocky-looking kid from Wisconsin.
The games were played in a big hotel ballroom. The parents had
to wait outside. One of the moms at my son’s school, who was
paying attention to the pairings, realized that Lars Andersen had
already beaten two other kids on my son’s team.
My name is Lars
Andersen.*
I'm in second grade,
but I do math with
fifth-graders.
That means if your son
wins, there’ll be a BIG
SWING in the standings . . .
*Not his real name, but it was something Swedish-y.
The pressure! Not only was the team’s fate in my kid’s hands, but
so was my ego vis-à-vis the other parents, who could probably
smell it on me. If he won, I’d accept their congratulations with
the easy grace that comes from siring a champion. If he lost .. .
The wait was agonizing. Finally I saw Lars Andersen leaving the
ballroom, ahead of my son. I could tell immediately from the
look on his face that my son had won. Yes, yes, YES! Of course, my
kid had way more equanimity about the whole thing than I did.
Palpable anxiety spiked with shame for being so anxious in the first place.
And I was instantly ashamed of having taken so much pleasure
in Lars’ visible pain. After all, he was only 8. And after all, I knew
that face. It had been mine often enough when I was his age.
92
time April 23, 2007
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Walls
By NANCY GIBBS
President Bush tried once more to show that compassion and conservatism can speak the same language,
as he reopened the debate over immigration reform. First he had to reassure conservatives that he's still the
sheriff, and so his trip to the Yuma, Ariz., borderlands included a dedication of a new border-patrol station
and an inspection of the Predator, an unmanned plane used to track incursions. Deterrence is working, he
said; arrests are down 68% here, which must mean people have given up trying to get in.
And indeed, the South looks North and sees the U.S. growling: the Wall rises in Arizona. Eagle Pass, Texas,
adopts a zero-tolerance policy called Operation Streamline, in which border agents stop sending migrants
home and send them to jail instead. Colorado proposes paying prison inmates 60¢ a day to pick the peppers
once harvested by undocumented workers. If Bush's hard line can persuade enough Republicans to
embrace "comprehensive" reform--a balance of tough enforcement and some eventual reckoning with the
12 million illegal immigrants already here--then he can test whether, on this one issue at least, he can find
common ground with Democrats, who have a 700-page bill of their own.
But he's already lost some Republican allies, such as anyone running for President, and he can't count on
conservative Democrats going along with anything that even whispers of amnesty for illegal workers.
Meanwhile, liberals deplore his harsh approach, with its $10,000 fines and $3,500 fees for temporary work
visas. Thousands of protesters threaded through the streets of L.A. carrying signs saying LOVE THY
NEIGHBOR, DON'T DEPORT HIM. Their champion, Senator Edward Kennedy, whom Bush will need in
his corner to get anything passed, is still fuming after the March raid of a Massachusetts factory, in which
agents swept up undocumented workers and shipped them to detention facilities halfway across the
country, leaving children stranded at school and a baby, cut off from a nursing mother, hospitalized for
dehydration.
Bush set August as a goal for getting something done--a nod perhaps to the political calendar and to the fact
that in Washington, at least, his own guest-worker visa will expire soon.
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Russian Crowd Control
Moscow is gearing up for the upcoming national elections, Soviet style. Under a new law, ostensibly to ease
traffic problems, rallies in the capital are banned in front of historical monuments, ruling out much of the
city center. Demonstrators also have to maintain a density of two protesters per square yard. And at indoor
events, there must be a seat for every attendee. "The law is ridiculous," says Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of a
liberal opposition party in the Moscow duma. "If you have five full chairs and someone arrives late, you are
not allowed to let them in."
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Clean-skin terrorist
DEFINITION clean-skin ter•ror•ist n. A potential attacker with a spotless record whose documents don't
arouse suspicion
CONTEXT U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a British newspaper that the U.S. fears
its next major terrorist attack could be carried out by "clean-skin terrorists" in Europe who feel they are
treated as second-class citizens. He warned that the visa-waiver program, which allows citizens from some
European countries to enter the U.S. without a visa, could be an open door for the terrorists.
USAGE The term clean-skin, once used to describe drug traffickers without a record, morphed in the late
1990s to characterize potential terrorists who weren't on any watch lists. But several have already proved
their deadly capabilities: the British government classified the four July 2005 London train bombers as
clean-skins. Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber, was a clean-skin as well. Following the London
transit attacks, Britain began to crack down on the threat by doubling its élite police antiterrorist squad and
stepping up efforts to recruit spies within Muslim communities.
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Feeding the Troops
By James Carney
Budget showdowns have a way of inspiring leaders to predict national calamity should their side not
prevail. In 1995, some Clinton allies warned that the elderly would be forced to eat dog food if the
government shut down. Now President Bush and Republicans warn that troops are at risk of assorted
deprivations because Democrats passed House and Senate funding bills tied to withdrawal from Iraq in
2008. Bush is sure to veto them. He's right that without congressional funding, military operations would
eventually have to be scaled back. But calamity is not exactly imminent. The nonpartisan Congressional
Research Service recently found that the Pentagon could finance the war at least through the end of June by
shifting existing funds. Then there's the so-called "Feed and Forage" Act, a Civil War--era law that lets the
President incur debt, without congressional approval, for such wartime troop expenses as "clothing,
subsistence, fuel, quarters, transportation and medical supplies."
And yet the Democrats' strategy is politically risky. Bush is deeply unpopular, and so is the Iraq war. But
Americans remain understandably sensitive to troop needs. Which is why experts at the Center for
American Progress (CAP), a liberal-leaning think tank, are busy supplying congressional leaders with ideas
for a postveto compromise. The most promising notion--funding the war in three-month tranches, no
withdrawal timetables attached--would allow opponents of Bush's policy to "gradually ratchet up the
pressure" on Bush, says CAP senior fellow Brian Katulis, while avoiding an all-or-nothing showdown. After
all, the Feed and Forage Act can provide only so much political cover. "We have some time," says a
Democrat involved in the search for a legislative strategy. "But we can't be in the position of defending
ourselves with a law that dates back to 1861."
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Newsreel
CHIVENOR, ENGLAND
Story-selling dustup follows Brit sailors' return
SANTORINI, GREECE
Two tourists missing after cruise ship sinks
NAJAF, IRAQ
Anti-U.S. protests on anniversary of Baghdad's fall
JERUSALEM
Celebrating Passover in the Old City
HUDSON, OHIO
Frosty weather chills country on Easter
ALGIERS, ALGERIA
Al-Qaeda takes responsibility for bomb killing 30
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Milestones
By Camille Agon, Harriet Barovick, Brian Bennett, SCOTT BROWN, Kristina Dell,
Sean Gregory, Jeninne Lee-St. John, Joe Lertola, Elisabeth Salemme, Carolyn Sayre,
Nathan Thornburgh
DIED
A brutal assault when he was 26 broke his neck and put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It also
helped spark a shift on the professional football field, where New England Patriots receiver Darryl Stingley
took the intentional hit from Oakland Raider Jack Tatum during a 1978 exhibition game. Tatum, who
defended his play, saying "My best hits border on felonious assault," was not penalized, never apologized
and later wrote books billing himself as an "NFL assassin." Stingley visited paralyzed players, started a
nonprofit group for inner-city kids and forgave Tatum. "It was only after I stopped asking why," he said,
"that I was able to ... go on with my life." He was 55 and suffered from numerous ailments related to his
quadriplegia.
• For four decades he directed a range of horror films (Black Christmas), stories of teen angst (Porky's) and
bad musicals (Rhinestone, starring Sylvester Stallone). But the cinematic gift Bob Clark will be
remembered for is A Christmas Story, a warm and playful tale of the holiday-time highs and lows of a
'40s-era boy intent on receiving an "official Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot, range-model air rifle."
Clark, whose cult classic is now shown annually around the clock on TBS, was 67, and was killed, along with
his son Ariel, 22, when a drunken driver struck his car head on on a Los Angeles highway.
• The characters in B.C., the Stone Age comic strip created in 1958 by Johnny Hart, made readers laugh by
pondering naively the wonders of fire, stone and the wheel. (A prehistoric dictionary defines rock as "to
cause something to swing or sway--by hitting them with it!") More controversial were the religious panels
Hart occasionally drew after he converted to evangelical Christianity. A 2001 Easter strip of a menorah
slowly transforming into a cross led several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, to drop B.C.
Hart, who told a reporter that "Jews and Muslims who don't accept Jesus will burn in hell," insisted that
the Easter strip was meant to celebrate both faiths. He was 76.
• He was the other Ronald Reagan--the one whose thick hair and dead-on delivery of lines like "Well, there
you go again" entertained fans in film (Hot Shots! Part Deux!) and politics for 25 years. Jay Koch, a Reagan
supporter and former police officer, embarked on his second career in 1980 after his wife submitted his
photo, without his knowledge, to a National Enquirer look-alike contest. Koch won and went on to appear
on TV, in ads and at many venues, including the Reagan library. He was 81.
• In wartime India, en route to Britain from naval duty, British architect Laurie Baker met Mahatma
Gandhi, who challenged him to return after the war to help house India's poor. In 1945, Baker did. Using mud,
brick and other local materials, he engineered innovative, exuberant structures, many with pierced brick screens
that dappled light and cooled rooms with natural air movement. Baker's low-cost, eco-friendly style, which
became known as the "Baker method," inspired an organization of younger Indian architects that has, since the
'80s, built homes for more than 10,000 poor families. He was 90.
CHARGES DROPPED
For more than a year, David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, who were indicted for rape,
kidnapping and sexual offense in the Duke lacrosse case, maintained their innocence following a woman's claims
that they attacked her at a 2006 team party. The woman changed key parts of her story, and Durham, N.C.,
district attorney Mike Nifong--who recused himself amid state charges of ethical misconduct--dropped the rape
charges. After reinvestigating the case, state attorney general Roy Cooper, rebuking Nifong's "overreaching"
"rush to accuse," cleared the men of all charges.
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Insurgents vs. al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda may be overstaying its welcome in Iraq. A powerful Sunni insurgent group, the Islamic Army in
Iraq, has posted an open letter on an affiliated website demanding that none other than Osama bin Laden
intervene to bring his Iraq-based followers "in line." Al-Qaeda, which is primarily a non-Iraqi Sunni group,
had long teamed up with Iraqi Sunni insurgents. But tensions between the two camps escalated in the fall,
when al-Qaeda created a new jihadi supergroup called the Islamic State of Iraq to unite the disparate cells
fighting the U.S. and Shi'ite militias. Al-Qaeda demanded that all insurgent groups swear loyalty to the new
organization, but some of the most active Iraqi nationalist networks, like the Islamic Army, refused.
According to the Islamic Army's letter, al-Qaeda "went too far" and retaliated "by killing 30 mujahedin
brothers."
Though more tribal violence seems an odd solution for war-torn Iraq, the U.S. is hopeful that Iraqis will
finally rise up against al-Qaeda outsiders. In Anbar province, a U.S.-backed council of Sunni sheiks has
made it its mission to force al-Qaeda out of the area. On April 6, the council announced it had killed four
al-Qaeda operatives. "Our work," read a statement from the sheik heading the council, "continues until we
finish them all."
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People
GOOGLE NEWS HITS + GOOGLE BLOG HITS = THE SCORE 1
Photographer Larry Birkhead's DNA beat out the laggardly genes of lawyer Howard K. Stern to win
paternity of late maybe-billionaire Anna Nicole Smith's daughter Dannielynn. Reported TMZ.COM: "Stern
said Birkhead was welcome to come to the house and spend as much time with Dannielynn as he wanted."
SCORE: 3,997
2
It's the calamity that launched a thousand Ring of Fire jokes: Johnny Cash's 13,880-sq.-ft. lakeside house
has burned down. It's a loss to music history and a blow to the renovation plans of the house's new
owner--the Bee Gees' Barry Gibb. But Cash's neighbor, Oak Ridge Boys singer Richard Sterban, sees a
higher power behind the disaster, telling the AP, "Maybe it's the good Lord's way to make sure that it was
only Johnny's house." SCORE: 872
3
Did you know Kevin Costner had a band? Probably not. That's why Costner is suing his music promoter for,
well, nonpromotion. "The lawsuit should have profound implications ... leaving promoters leery of ever
taking on another [celebrity band]," notes blogsite DEFAMER, "lest Richard Gere and the Dolly Llamas sue
them." SCORE: 314
4
CNN talk-o-saurus Larry King has nominated the man he thinks could take over the reins: Ryan Seacrest,
the well-coiffed host of American Idol. "He's the classic generalist," King tells the NEW YORK TIMES. "The
only thing I don't know ... is how versed he is in politics, world affairs. Does he read the paper? Is he
interested in Iraq? Because if he is, he's going to be very good." SCORE: 62
5
George Lucas was delighted with the Star Wars--themed dance routine performed by former 'N Sync-er
Joey Fatone on Dancing with the Stars. But he shared some Forceful costume tips with PEOPLE.COM: "He
should have had a little Jedi outfit on." SCORE: 23
TIMELINE
KITT, the car from Knight Rider, is up for auction. Bids on the '82 Trans Am (one of four used on camera) start
at $150K. But what of its '80s TV brothers in Armor All?
"THE GENERAL LEE" The original '69 Dodge Charger used in The Dukes of Hazzard made only one jump
before heading to a Georgia junkyard (the fate of over 300 such cars). Rescued and restored in 2001, it was
auctioned to an Ohio man for $20,000.
MAGNUM P.I.'S FERRARI 308 AND THE A-TEAM'S GMC VAN Their glory days as mustache-delivery system
and crack-commando conveyance behind them, these '80s alpha sleds now gather dust on the Universal Studios
back lot, posing for tourist photos.
AIRWOLF Not an automobile, Airwolf was, like KITT, a product of SDI-era techno-lust. "The Lady," a civilian
Bell 222, was later sold to a German firm and used as an air ambulance. It crashed in 1991, killing three
passengers.
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Numbers
MILITARY
$196,000
Estimated amount paid by a British paper and TV station to Leading Seaman Faye Turney, held in Iran last
month, to tell her story. Shortly after Turney made the deal, Britain put a stop to military-service members
accepting money for future interviews pending a rule review
$58,200
Top annual salary for a leading seaman in the British navy
WORLD RECORD
3,274
Miles a Slovenian man swam in 66 days to become the first person to swim the entire length of the Amazon
River
20
Different species of piranhas that inhabit the Amazon River
EDUCATION
6 million
Children returning to school in Afghanistan for the start of the new school year
60%
Percentage of Afghan schoolchildren who attend classes in tents and damaged or destroyed school
buildings. This hits girls particularly hard as parents want them to study in more protected areas. Only 4 in
10 Afghan girls attend primary school
JUSTICE
9
Months that David Hicks will serve in an Australian prison, after being held for five years without trial at
Guantánamo Bay. He pleaded guilty before a U.S. military commission of providing material support to
terrorism
20
Years American John Walker Lindh is serving in federal prison for working with the Taliban army in 2001.
Lindh's lawyers are requesting reduced time behind bars in the wake of the Hicks decision
Sources: Guardian (2); BBC (2); UNICEF; BBC; CNN; ABC News
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A Confederate Campaign Issue
The battle-flag primary has officially begun. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that flying the
Confederate flag was a states' rights issue at an Alabama campaign stop, while John McCain expressed
regret on 60 Minutes about past flag flip-flops. South Carolina was the last state to fly the flag atop the
statehouse, and McCain's on-again, off-again condemnation helped cost him that state's primary in 2000.
The flag later came off the S.C. dome, but it remains a powerful political symbol. With G.O.P. front runners
scrambling to establish conservative credentials, look for the issue to leave other '08 candidates whipping
in the political wind.
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Viral Video
Sure, YouTube is user generated, but Big Brother can still cut off the clips. Around the globe, nations have
begun to censor the popular site, proving there may be no such thing as truly open access.
THE KING AND THAI Thailand recently cut off access to the site after someone posted a 44-sec. video
depicting King Bhumibol Adulyadej with clown features and feet pasted over his head.
SEX CARNAVAL In January, a Brazilian judge ordered that risqué footage of supermodel Daniela Cicarelli
cavorting with her boyfriend in the sea off Cádiz, Spain, be blocked from YouTube.
NO WEST In December, Iran blocked YouTube and other popular websites like Amazon.com fearing that
Western films and music would corrupt its citizens.
GRECO-TURKISH TENSIONS Turkey banned the site for three days after a Greek user allegedly posted a
clip calling the founder of modern Turkey--Mustafa Kemal Ataturk--a homosexual. The stir caused a virtual
video war to break out, as Greeks and Turks posted YouTube clips insulting one another.
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Verbatim
'With great pride, I announce that as of today, our dear country, Iran, is among the countries of the world
that produces the industrial level of nuclear fuel.'
MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, Iranian President, announcing an increase in the amount of uranium his
country is enriching
'I think it was a major mistake. It would be like me saying I've been a lifelong golfer because I played
putt-putt when I was 9 years old and I rode in a golf cart a couple of times.'
MIKE HUCKABEE, former Arkansas Governor and Republican presidential candidate, on rival Mitt
Romney's claim to be a lifelong hunter although he has been on only two hunting trips
'He should become in tune with the fact that he is President of the United States, not king of the United
States.'
HARRY REID, Senate majority leader, on George W. Bush. Reid and the President have been sparring over
a range of issues, most notably funding for the war in Iraq
'The ride was excellent.'
MARTHA STEWART, about a camel ride she took in Kazakhstan before watching the launch of a Russian
rocket ship carrying her friend, billionaire Charles Simonyi, and two cosmonauts into orbit on a 13-day
journey to the International Space Station. For Simonyi's trip, Stewart packed meals that included quail
roasted in Madiran wine, duck breast confit with capers and shredded chicken parmentier
'He has degenerated as a political leader and as a human being.'
MICHAEL THELWELL, professor of African-American studies at the University of Massachusetts, on
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe; the university is considering a request to revoke an honorary degree
awarded to Mugabe in 1986
'They say a giant has to fall at some point.'
ZACH JOHNSON, who won his first major golfing title by beating world No. 1 Tiger Woods at the 2007 Augusta
National Masters Tournament
'You can't make fun of everybody, because some people don't deserve it.'
DON IMUS, radio host, in one of many apologies for calling members of the Rutgers University women's
basketball team "nappy-headed hos" after they lost the national championship; MSNBC and CBS radio
suspended the shock jock for two weeks
''I know that my Spanish is not perfect, but I am studying so it will be better.'
NEWT GINGRICH, former Speaker of the House, in Spanish, in a videotaped olive branch to Spanish speakers.
He said his recent critique of bilingual education was a "poor word choice"
Sources: CNN; AP; MSNBC; AP (2); Newsday; AP; CNN
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Hollywood's Smoke Alarm
By Jeffrey Kluger
The American screen has long been a smoky place, at least since 1942's Now, Voyager, in which Bette Davis
and Paul Henreid showed how to make and seal a romantic deal over a pair of cigarettes that were
smoldering as much as the stars. Today cigarettes are more common onscreen than at any other time since
midcentury: 75% of all Hollywood films--including 36% of those rated G or PG--show tobacco use,
according to a 2006 survey by the University of California, San Francisco.
Audiences, especially kids, are taking notice. Two recent studies, published in Lancet and Pediatrics, have
found that among children as young as 10, those exposed to the most screen smoking are up to 2.7 times as
likely as others to pick up the habit. Worse, it's the ones from nonsmoking homes who are hit the hardest,
perhaps because they are spared the dirty ashtrays and musty drapes that make real-world smoking a lot
less appealing than the sanitized cinematic version.
Now the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)--the folks behind the designated-driver campaign--are
pushing to get the smokes off the screen. "Some movies show kids up to 14 incidents of smoking per hour,"
says Barry Bloom, HSPH's dean. "We're in the business of preventing disease, and cigarettes are the No. 1
preventable cause."
If there's one thing health experts know, it's that you don't influence behavior by telling people what to do.
You do it by exposing them to enough cases of people behaving well that it creates a new norm. What made
the designated-driver concept catch on in the 1980s was partly that Harvard and the ad agencies it worked
with persuaded TV networks to slip the idea into their shows. There's a reason a designated-driver poster
appeared in the bar on Cheers, and it's not because it made the jokes funnier.
"The idea appeared in 160 prime-time episodes over four years," says Jay Winsten, HSPH's associate dean.
"Drunk-driving fatalities fell 25% over the next three years."
Harvard long believed that getting cigarettes out of movies could have as powerful an effect, but it wouldn't
be easy. Cigarette makers had a history of striking product-placement deals with Hollywood, and while the
1998 tobacco settlement prevents that, nothing stops directors from incorporating smoking into scenes on
their own.
In 1999 Harvard began holding one-on-one meetings with studio execs trying to change that, and last year
the Motion Picture Association of America flung the door open, inviting Bloom to make a presentation in
February to all the studios. Harvard's advice was direct: Get the butts entirely out, or at least make smoking
unappealing.
A few films provide a glimpse of what a no-smoking--or low-smoking--Hollywood would be like. Producer
Lindsay Doran, who once helped persuade director John Hughes to keep Ferris Bueller smoke-free in the 1980s
hit, wanted to do the same for the leads of her 2006 movie Stranger Than Fiction. When a writer convinced her
that the character played by Emma Thompson had to smoke, Doran relented, but from the way Thompson hacks
her way through the film and snuffs out her cigarettes in a palmful of spit, it's clear the glamour's gone. And
remember all the smoking in The Devil Wears Prada? No? That's because the producers of that film kept it out
entirely--even in a story that travels from the U.S. fashion world to Paris, two of the most tobacco-happy places
on earth. "No one smoked in that movie," says Doran, "and no one noticed."
Such movies are hardly the rule, but the pressure is growing. As Harvard closes in from one side, a dozen health
groups including the American Medical Association are calling for reduction of smoking in movies and on TV,
and 41 state attorneys general have signed a letter seeking public-service ads at the beginning of any DVD that
includes smoking. Like smokers, studios may conclude that quitting the habit is not just a lot healthier but also a
lot smarter.
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Where Have We Gone, Mr.
Robinson?
By Gerald Early
In 1964, at the height of the civil rights movement, Jackie Robinson published a compilation of interviews
with major league players and managers about the state of integration of the game. Robinson concluded
that baseball had achieved considerable progress. Less than two decades after Robinson became the first
black player in the major leagues, African Americans made up close to 20% of professional baseball players.
The name of Robinson's book was Baseball Has Done It.
So what would Robinson make of the relationship between the game he loved and African Americans
today? He would find reasons to be encouraged: baseball is more diversified and more international than
ever, racism is considerably lessened, and there are nearly twice as many teams as when Robinson first
broke in 60 years ago. But African Americans are disappearing from baseball. Blacks make up 8% of major
league baseball players today and only 3% of players on NCAA Division I baseball teams. In coming days,
you will probably hear sociologists and sports pundits cite those figures as evidence that baseball is turning
its back on Robinson's legacy. And so the questions arise: Why are there so few black ball players today?
Should there be more?
Let's examine the second question first. The percentage of black ballplayers is in decline. And yet it's still
roughly what blacks represent in the population as a whole. So they aren't significantly underrepresented.
In the mid-1970s, when nearly 1 in 3 major league players was black, many people, including some liberals
and some blacks, complained that they were overrepresented. The argument was that too many blacks were
being steered into sports, distorting the young black male's sense of ambition.
Many people said that blacks' being overrepresented in sports like baseball was bad; now they say that
blacks being underrepresented is bad. Well, which is it? Black Americans are far more underrepresented
among people who win the science Nobel Prizes, but that's rarely treated as a national crisis. Winning the
Nobel Prize for Medicine would do more for the group's image than winning the MVP or a Cy Young Award,
which black Americans have already proved they can do.
Still, there's no denying that fewer and fewer black youths are taking up the sport. One reason commonly
offered is that black neighborhoods lack the necessary equipment and facilities--bats, gloves, green
fields--to train children to play. In sociology, this is called deficit theory, the idea that one group does not
do what another group does because it lacks the resources. Deficit theory is often used to explain the
behavior of black Americans. But it is almost always wrong. If lack of green spaces and the cost of
equipment explain why black Americans don't play baseball today, then how does one account for the fact
that they played it and even organized their own leagues in the early 20th century--when they had less money,
less access to space because of segregation, fewer resources, and faced more rigorous racism? And blacks make
up about 70% of players in the NFL, even though football requires just as much green space, organization and
uniforms.
The real reason black Americans don't play baseball is that they don't want to. They are not attracted to the
game. Baseball has little hold on the black imagination, even though it existed as an institution in black life for
many years. Among blacks, baseball is not passed down from father to son or father to daughter. As the sports
historian Michael McCambridge points out, baseball sells itself through nostalgia--the memory of being taken to
a game by your father when you were a child. But for blacks, going back into baseball's past means recalling
something called white baseball and something else called black baseball, which was meant to exist under
conditions that were inferior to the white version. Even the integration of baseball, symbolized by Robinson,
reminds blacks that their institutions were weak and eventually had to be abandoned. As the controversies over
reparations for slavery and the Confederate flag have shown, it is difficult to sell African Americans the American
past as most Americans have come to know it.
Perhaps Jackie Robinson would be disappointed to know that a relatively small number of blacks still remain
drawn to the game he transformed. But he would be far more determined that all Americans acknowledge the
complicated history of race in this country and how it continues to influence our mores and conversations today.
The fact that many of us blacks have become strangers to baseball has a lot to do with the fact that we have
developed a better, clear-eyed understanding of our experience as a people. And that is something Jackie
Robinson would be proud of.
Gerald Early is the Merle Kling professor of modern letters at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.
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Looking Like a Million Dollars
By Kate Betts
Blame it on Wall Street's astronomical bonuses. When you have the Gulfstream 550, the Maybach and the
Warhols, what else do you need? The answer is your very own tailor--a place where you can go to get the
perfect suit while being cared for with the ultimate service. That may be one reason made-to-measure
menswear--or couture menswear, as it is often called--is the new must-have for the hedge-fund set.
With the income line between the rich and the super-rich becoming sharper and more and more individuals
gaining access to run-of-the-mill luxury, the gilded class is looking for ways to set itself apart. Luxury
brands are responding with exclusive products that offer a personal touch. "We are so inundated with
luxury right now that the guy who once bought three Zegna suits is upgrading to something even more
luxurious," says Michael Macko, men's fashion director at Saks Fifth Avenue.
Even men who cannot afford couture prices want to look more like Daniel Craig or Sean (Diddy) Combs
than a casual-Friday holdover from the 1990s. "People want to dress up now," says Jarret Kerman, director
of clothing at Ermenegildo Zegna Couture. "Our best-selling suits are in dark, dressy fabrics." He adds that
Zegna Couture, with the price of an average suit running from $3,200 to $4,000, has been growing
exponentially in the past few seasons, its wholesale business quadrupling in the past year.
Labels such as Zegna, Hugo Boss, Brioni and Ralph Lauren have been serving the upscale-menswear
market for years. And überexclusive brands like Kiton, along with London's Savile Row tailors, have long
catered to the customer who wants a suit made from scratch--a process that involves a muslin sample,
several fittings and lots of cash. Now fashion-forward designers are refitting this service-oriented market.
Last year Giorgio Armani introduced a couture collection of made-to-measure suits called Giorgio Armani
Fatto a Mano su Misura (Handmade to Measure). And on April 12 on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Tom
Ford opened his first namesake boutique, a 1930s-style haberdashery, where shoppers can find such
luxuries as $5,000 bespoke three-piece suits, 18-karat-gold and ebony sunglasses, and dressing gowns cut
from 19th century jacquard fabrics.
Also reaching for the top shelf, Brooks Brothers, that classic bastion of off-the-rack suits, will introduce in
the fall a special collection created by New York City-- based designer Thom Browne. The starting price for
a three-piece suit will be $3,000. And these suits cut a strikingly different figure from the run-of-the-mill
boxy gray Brooks Brothers fare. Browne, who is known for his extreme silhouette of tight-fitting shoulders
and cropped cuffed pants, delved into the archives and came up with astrakhan-trimmed tattersall coats
and gray flannel pants embroidered with fleece, the house's insignia. Claudio Del Vecchio, the Italian-born
chairman and CEO of Brooks Brothers, says he plans to sell the line, Black Fleece, in 30% of the clothier's U.S.
stores and at eight more in Europe and Asia.
Why the rush on custom haberdashery now? Ford sees it as a reaction to too much technology and information.
"I think we've lost the human touch a bit in fashion," says Ford, "I go into stores, and there's nobody to help me. I
get recorded voices on the end of the phone. I see this as a throwback to something that we have lost."
That something could be the idea, as Ford has imagined it, of walking into a store as though you're walking into a
home. Real luxury, as he sees it, is service, not status. And Ford's store has been lovingly crafted as if it were a
private residence with fireplaces, a macassar ebony staircase, a bar, butlers and even works of art from the
designer's personal collection. Downstairs are a fragrance den, a room filled with floor-to-ceiling shelves of shirts
(there are 340 color choices) and a salon that Ford says is an exact copy of the living room in his house in
London. Upstairs, two master tailors and five seamstresses are available for any task from creating a handmade
suit to making sleeve adjustments on a cashmere sweater. One of Ford's favorite details is the label inside the
jackets, which is 100% silk, hand-sewn and placed just above the pocket especially designed for a BlackBerry.
The idea for the line and the store came to Ford after he left the Gucci Group in 2004. "I started buying clothing
for myself, but everything was too trendy or the fabric or the cut wasn't right, so I had things made in London,"
he explains. But Ford found the Savile Row experience "too dry" and "not what I imagine men fantasize about
when they fantasize about luxurious clothing."
While Ford admits his $5,000 suits may not be for everyone, he is planning accelerated distribution for his line,
with more stores in a year's time opening in such cities as Tokyo, Milan, Paris and Dubai--a response to the
increased desire for luxurious menswear. "When I was growing up in Texas, you couldn't buy arugula in the
supermarket. Now you can buy it everywhere," he says. "The more you learn about things like functional
buttonholes, the more you want them."
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Homeward Bound
By Dan Kadlec
When Karen Fisher's mother passed away 11 years ago, her father, then 72, began to spend nearly all his
time traveling or staying at a second home in Brownsville, Texas. "He wasn't the kind of guy you worried
about being alone at Christmas," says Fisher, 49, who lives in Grand Rapids, Mich. But in January, her
father fell seriously ill. Eighty-three and infirm, he has returned to Michigan, where Fisher, after cutting
her work hours and income, helps care for him. Her husband, she says, "has been supportive. But you sort
of ask, 'How many years can we do this?'"
The Fishers are not alone. Baby boomers' parents who took up travel or fled to the Sun Belt a decade or two
ago are coming home. Nearly 18% of people over 60 who moved across state lines say they are returning to
their hometown, according to the Census Bureau. Demographers Christopher Briem of the University of
Pittsburgh and Peter A. Morrison of the Rand Corp. found that more than one-third of the elderly who
moved to Pittsburgh from 1995 to 2000 had relocated from Florida.
There are a number of reasons for the reverse migration. Some retirees simply miss their favorite
restaurants and familiar surroundings. But generally, most return because they've lost a spouse or are no
longer mobile and need the support a family can provide. And while families welcome returning seniors, it's
not always easy. Fisher, for example, already had her hands full with work, her own retirement planning
and an autistic son. Retirees who leave and return also "put an increasing burden on their community's
infrastructure," says Sandy Markwood, CEO of the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging.
A study by Markwood's organization found that fewer than half of all communities in the U.S. have begun
to plan for the social groups, caregivers and physical facilities they will require as the population ages.
There is a good chance, says Markwood, that the inevitable ramp-up in "aging preparedness" will be too late
to fully meet the need.
The countermigration of elderly retirees offers some important lessons for those just embarking on their
youthful retirement years--roughly ages 60 through 72. Yes, we're living in a time of unprecedented
longevity and health, and there is nothing wrong with planning to spend 10 to 20 years in the sun. But we
all grow old, and then our values can change in a hurry. Some things to consider before picking up stakes
and heading where it's warm:
Family ties. Even if you have plenty of money, eventually you are going to want the support of the people
you know best. The longer you've been away, the more likely those connections are to have eroded. Don't
wait until you're desperate. Leave time to rebuild relationships.
Rent, rent, rent. If you move away, consider renting out the house you're leaving and renting the one into which
you move. That makes returning easy if, after a year or two, you realize you've made a mistake.
Future mobility. One of the main things young retirees overlook is what life will be like after they no longer drive.
On average, women outlive their driving ability by 10 years, men by eight. The availability of mass transit and
help from family come in handy.
Out of the woods. That two-story house you bought in a remote setting may look good to you at 70. But how will
you feel about it when getting upstairs isn't so easy? "It's hard for us to admit that one day we won't be as
healthy," says Elinor Ginzler, director of livable communities at AARP. But it happens; when it does, it's nice to
know that your journey into independent retirement came with a return ticket.
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Student-Loan Shenanigans
By Julie Rawe
April may indeed be the cruelest month. Families of college-bound students go hunting for financial aid at
the height of tax season, and this year the money crunch is particularly vexing as headline after headline
describes schools and lenders playing footsie over federal student loans. In an especially twinge-inducing
bit of irony, at the same time that Columbia University is trying to help make higher education more
accessible to low-income students--it's set to host a conference that addresses the topic this month--word
broke that a financial-aid officer at the school, as well as at least two counterparts at other colleges,
allegedly owned stock in the parent company of a lender they had been recommending to students. The
officials were placed on leave pending internal investigations. Meanwhile, financial-aid directors at three
more schools were accused of getting consulting fees and other payments from the same lender, which they
too had been touting to their students.
Mixed in with these scandals are revelations that dozens of universities have inked deals with various
lenders to route a percentage of revenue from student loans back to the schools, with the funds often
explicitly directed into financial-aid coffers. Congress and at least two states are looking into these
inducements, which New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo calls "kickbacks"--a label that seems a tad
unfair if the money helps cash-strapped students rather than enrich officials. But with the spotlight now on
student loans, critics are clamoring to reform what has become an $85 billion industry.
The roots of today's intrigue date back to 1965, when Uncle Sam began guaranteeing loans to needy
students and paying the interest while the borrowers were in college. Because the private sector was still
leery of loaning money to kids with no credit history or collateral, the government sweetened the deal by
promising lenders a specified interest rate regardless of what student borrowers pay. Add low default rates
(due in part to such dire consequences as garnisheed wages and torpedoed credit ratings) as well as soaring
tuitions, and--voilà!--lenders are fighting one another to dole out $17 billion in supplemental loans that
aren't backed by the government.
The feds tried to cut out the middlemen in 1994 by letting students at participating schools borrow directly
from the Treasury. But private lenders have held on to nearly 80% of the market by improving service and
offering discounts for such things as on-time repayment. Knowing that many students choose the first entry
on a school's list of "preferred lenders," lots of colleges have used these lists to get lower rates for more
borrowers, and some lenders have tacked on revenue-sharing deals. "We believed it made good sense to use
money that would otherwise go into Citibank's pockets to give more financial aid to N.Y.U. students," New
York University spokesman John Beckman said in a statement. His school and five others agreed this
month to swear off revenue sharing and repay students nearly $3.3 million.
Other industry tactics also need policing. "I have an invitation in my drawer here to go to the Caribbean for four
or five days with my wife, all expenses paid, just to go listen to a student-loan lender," says Dan Davenport,
financial-aid director at the University of Idaho, which remains dedicated to direct lending. "There's such big
money at stake that people are willing to do many different things to get that piece of the pie."
Now Cuomo and others are working to rein in private enterprise. The White House wants to cut interest
subsidies to lenders 0.5%, which should save $12.4 billion over five years and leave the industry with less funny
money. But lenders claim such a move could force them out of the market. "We make less than half a percent on
a guaranteed loan," says Tom Joyce, spokesman for Sallie Mae, the nation's largest student-loan company. "You
do the math." And there is a renewed effort to get more schools into direct lending, which costs taxpayers an
estimated $7.50 less for every $100 disbursed, compared with private loans. Massachusetts Senator Edward
Kennedy is pushing a bill that rewards colleges for switching to the cheaper of the two lending systems by giving
them additional need-based aid--a setup, many in higher education note, that is strikingly similar to the ones
schools are in hot water for having negotiated with individual banks.
Competition from direct lending should lead to greater efficiency overall, but it won't close the gap families face
between what college costs and what aid is available. One short-term effect of the current scrutiny is that schools
may be too afraid to try to broker better deals for students. "So you're on your own, parents, on finding that extra
$4,000 you need this year beyond the federal limit," says an executive at an association of private colleges. But,
alas, dear readers, the question of why college costs so much in the first place is another story for another day.
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Voting Block
By Reynolds Holding
Earlier this year, Takoma Park, Md., A suburb of Washington with a liberal tilt, held a special election to fill
a vacant city-council seat. It was the town's latest contest under a 1992 law that allows any adult
resident--including noncitizens--to vote for local offices. And since the election occurred at an odd time of
year, officials took extra steps to get the word out. They mailed a notice, in Spanish and English, to every
home. They sent a second notice to every registered voter. Yet when Election Day came, turnout was light,
especially among noncitizens: not one of them cast a ballot.
A single election may not be the fairest test. But as New York, Boston and several other cities consider
allowing noncitizens to vote, the benefits of doing so are murky. Immigrant-rights advocates insist that
giving newcomers a voice in local government integrates them quickly into their communities--and
encourages them to become citizens. Opponents say that's backward: voting means little to an immigrant
who hasn't earned citizenship. It's a divisive debate, and in a nation grown chilly toward immigrants,
supporters of noncitizen voting have a tough case to make.
It wasn't always so. The U.S. Constitution leaves voting rules up to states and cities, and from 1776 to 1926,
40 states and territories allowed noncitizens to vote in local and even federal elections, according to Ron
Hayduk, a co-founder of the Immigrant Voting Project. Anti-immigrant sentiment put an end to that, and
the aftermath of World War I created a mistrust of foreigners that led all states to make voting the sole
privilege of U.S. citizens.
The rules started changing again in the late 1960s, when New York City decentralized its school system and
allowed all parents--including illegal immigrants--to vote in school-board elections. (The practice ended
with the dissolution of school boards in 2003.) Any parent in Chicago can still vote for local school-council
members. The city doesn't track noncitizen voting, but a district spokesman says turnout is low.
In the early 1990s, immigrant protests in Washington and New York City caused activists to argue that
giving noncitizens the vote would help quell unrest. The idea fizzled everywhere but in Takoma Park and
five smaller suburbs of Washington. For the 1993 election, noncitizens voted in Takoma Park at a 35% rate,
better than the 30% for citizens. But the noncitizen figure plummeted over the following seven elections.
City clerk Jessie Carpenter speculates that "early on, there was more interest because [voting] was new."
She doesn't believe that resurgent concern over illegal immigrants has driven noncitizens from the polls.
In fact, Hayduk says, measures like the 2005 Sensenbrenner bill, which would have increased penalties for
illegal immigration, prompted activists to offer the current voting proposals so that politicians would be more
responsive to noncitizens' concerns. The proposals are narrower than past ones. New York City's bill, for
example, would apply to some 1.3 million people who have been in the U.S. legally for at least six months on a
green card or long-term visa.
Still, the measures provoke strong opposition. Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity,
argues that "we need more--not fewer--incentives for immigrants to assimilate and become full-fledged
American citizens." Unfortunately, the immigrants of Takoma Park don't offer much of a rebuttal. If noncitizens
truly want to vote, they can't blow off elections.
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Word on the Street
By Barbara Kiviat
The next time someone you know raves about a dish detergent or motor oil, consider this: you might be on
the receiving end of a clever marketing campaign. It's a brave new world for people whose job it is to sell
you things, what with consumers' TiVo-enabled ability to skip over ads they don't want to see, and their
Internet-empowered freedom to find out all the stuff left out of a cheery 30-sec. TV spot. That's driving
marketers to all sorts of new places, including your circle of friends--a trend that has produced some
surprising intelligence on how word-of-mouth communication really works.
Procter & Gamble, a pioneer in the field, has been taking control of word of mouth for six years through its
Tremor division, which has enlisted 225,000 teenagers to tell their friends about brands like Herbal
Essences and Old Spice. Last year, figuring the strategy could be just as effective with adults, P&G signed
up 500,000 volunteers, all mothers, for Vocalpoint, a program in which the moms evangelize about pet
food, paper towels and hair color. P&G gives the women marketing materials and coupons, but they are free
to say whatever they like (or nothing at all) about the products. BzzAgent, a firm that specializes in
word-of-mouth marketing, has its 260,000 volunteers submit detailed profiles about their habits and
interests, which BzzAgent uses to match them to word-of-mouth campaigns for products made by
companies such as Nestlé, Arby's, Philips, Kraft and BP. The so-called agents are provided with information
about the clients' products and in return give detailed feedback about the conversations they have.
This unscripted strategy might sound like a big risk--there's nothing stopping the volunteers from saying
they hate a product. But despite the conventional wisdom that consumers are much more likely to voice
complaints than praise, recent research finds the opposite. In one study, Andrea Wojnicki, an assistant
professor of marketing at the University of Toronto, looked at self-styled experts and found that they were
likely to keep negative experiences to themselves, lest their skill--at, say, picking a restaurant--be called
into question.
And why are these citizen marketers so willing to shill for free? "It gives people social currency," says
Walter Carl, an assistant professor of communication studies at Northeastern University. Inside access to
products and the feeling that companies care about what you and your friends think are such strong
motivating forces that other forms of compensation pale in comparison. BzzAgent's members earn reward
points, which they can cash in for prizes like DVDs and books--yet 87% of them never do.
Word of mouth has been around for ages--"Try the apple," said Eve--and it continues to prove resilient.
Even in the era of MySpace, some 90% of word of mouth still happens off-line, according to research by
both P&G and the consultancy Keller Fay Group. Breaking it down, Keller Fay found that 18% of word-of-mouth
marketing took place on the phone, and 72% face to face, despite the ubiquity of electronic communication. Or
perhaps because of it. Inundated by marketing messages, says Tremor CEO Steve Knox, "consumers have gone
back to their most trusted source--family and friends."
Naturally, some people aren't happy about marketers' following them there. In 2005 the advocacy group
Commercial Alert asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate company-fed word of mouth and other
buzz tactics, which the group says take authentic relationships and unduly commercialize them. Not all firms ask
word of mouthers to disclose their corporate connection, but the Word of Mouth Marketing Association requires
its 400-odd members to do so as part of its ethics code. There might also be a business case for disclosure,
according to Northeastern's Carl. Working with BzzAgent data, he found that agents actually gain credibility by
mentioning their affiliation. Word of mouth is built on trust, explains Gerald Zaltman, a sociologist and
professor emeritus at Harvard Business School. Fessing up reinforces that.
But perhaps the biggest lesson companies can learn from word of mouthers is that there's an unmet social need
among consumers to feel that their opinions matter. "They care what you have to say," says Carol Engels, a
Vocalpoint mother in suburban Chicago. "That's what I like most." Smart companies find that when they listen,
they also get a shot at steering the conversation.
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The Impermanent Collection
By Richard Lacayo
When he died in 1946, Alfred Stieglitz, the great photographer and tireless promoter of modern art, left his
estate to his wife, the painter Georgia O'Keeffe. His work as a photographer she shrewdly distributed to the
large American museums that could be counted on to secure his reputation. But a sizable part of his art
collection O'Keeffe deposited in a less predictable place. At the urging of a friend, the Harlem Renaissance
writer Carl Van Vechten, she gave 97 works to Fisk University, the historically black school in Nashville.
And she threw in a few of her own. One of those was Radiator Building-- Night, New York, 1927, a painting
we now recognize as a key moment in her career.
Years passed, during which Fisk's endowment dwindled while the art market went into warp drive. In 2005
the school's president, Hazel O'Leary, came up with an idea that could not only pay to renovate the frayed
campus gallery where the Stieglitz Collection has languished but also pump millions of dollars into Fisk's
general budget. Why not sell off just a bit of that famous art? But when the school moved to bring Radiator
Building to market, it triggered what became a lawsuit by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M.,
which moved to block the sale on the grounds that it violated the terms of the painter's bequest. In
February the museum offered Fisk a deal. It could sell Radiator Building, but only to the museum, and for
$7 million, a price much below what it would go for in the current art market. If Fisk said yes, the museum
promised not to block the sale of another painting from the collection, a Marsden Hartley, on the open
market. Fisk said yes.
That was where things stood until April 5, when Tennessee attorney general Robert Cooper, whose office
has the power to approve or disapprove charitable arrangements, rejected the arranged sale because of the
difference between $7 million and what Fisk could get on the open market. Now lawyers for both sides plan
to sit down in a judge's chambers to see if a new deal can be worked out. Eventually, Fisk fully expects to be
taking something to market.
Money has always been an obsession in the art world, but lately it's at the heart of constant disputes over
"deaccessioning"--what museums and other institutions do when they liquidate part of their collections.
Though as a practice deaccessioning is nothing new, the outlandishly overheated art market of recent years
has made it newly irresistible. At a time when a Jackson Pollock or a Gustav Klimt can go for about $140
million, it's no surprise that one institution after another has begun to see its "permanent collection" as just
so much movable merchandise. But art is no ordinary inventory. Briskly disposing of it doesn't always sit
well with people who like to visit the art, to say nothing of the people who donate it and who like to suppose
that their gifts won't be swept out the door a few years down the road.
So the sales are controversial, but they go on. In recent weeks Sotheby's has been bringing down the hammer on
scores of works from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y. The museum is shedding older pieces, like a
Shang Dynasty bronze vessel that went for $8.1 million, to fatten its endowment for the purchase of
contemporary art. In recent years its fund for that purpose has hovered at about $1 million annually--chump
change in the current market. For Louis Grachos, director of the Albright-Knox, the sale simply allows the
museum to focus on its chief purpose. "Our core mission is to collect and to preserve contemporary art," he says.
And he insists that in Buffalo, a Rust Belt city of dwindling wealth, there are not enough big-money donors to
enlarge the acquisition budget by other means.
All the same, while the Albright-Knox is mainly a contemporary collection, it's also the only significant art
museum in Buffalo. The local Museum of Science also has examples of Greek, Roman and Egyptian artifacts, but
for anyone in that city hoping to see a range of art, the Albright-Knox is pretty much the only game in town. So
its deaccession plan led to an angry public meeting in March at which Grachos was confronted by residents
insisting he could have done more to find other sources of money.
There was another kind of uproar in Philadelphia in November when Thomas Jefferson University announced it
was going to sell--for $68 million--one of the touchstones of 19th century American painting, The Gross Clinic by
Thomas Eakins, who spent nearly all of his turbulent career in Philadelphia. It didn't help that one of the buyers
was Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, who wanted it for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which she's
bankrolling in Bentonville, Ark. This would be the same Alice Walton who paid the New York Public Library
about $35 million two years ago for Asher B. Durand's 19th century landscape Kindred Spirits, a local icon that
nobody seemed to remember was a local icon until the trucks arrived to take it away. Walton proposed to buy the
Eakins jointly with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, then have the two museums shuttle it back and
forth. (So that's what they mean by bankrolling.)
At the prospect of having their cultural patrimony carted off to Arkansas, the good people of Philadelphia reared
up like Italians hearing that plundered Roman marbles were being earmarked for Malibu. By the end of January
they had cobbled together enough real or potential financing to keep the Eakins at home in a joint purchase by
the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the much smaller Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), with the
same kind of back-and-forth lending between the two institutions. Then came the next shock. To defray its part
of the purchase, PAFA announced it was selling a lesser but still important Eakins, The Cello Player. One Eakins
saved, one lost.
In its defense, Jefferson University can offer that it's a university, not an art gallery. Its first responsibility is to
the needs of its medical college. Fisk president O'Leary argues something similar. "The major collection we're
investing in," she says, "is our students." Still, channeling any money from art deaccessioning into a school's
general revenue is a violation of the guidelines of the American Association of Museums. Those hold that such
money should always be plowed back into the art collection. But the association has no real enforcement powers.
No doubt, the temptation offered by the hypertrophic art market can also promote institutional laziness. Why
come up with other ways to raise money when whatever paintings you have in hand are a potential and easily
accessed gold mine? Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery, says Fisk could have explored
other ways to keep or share the entire collection and still make some money from it. "Why not look into
co-ownership with Mrs. Walton?" he asks. "Or they could offer the collection under some kind of partnership
arrangement to another historically black university."
But in today's market, it will always be tempting to cash out. In March, just as Philadelphia was congratulating
itself for managing to keep The Gross Clinic at home, Jefferson University dropped the other shoe. It abruptly
announced it would also be selling its two remaining Eakinses, both of them portraits of 19th century physicians
who were once on the school's faculty. The weary and tapped-out locals have made no significant move to save
those.
Meanwhile, the Albright-Knox auctions will continue over the next several weeks. At least some of what's sold in
them will go back up on public display, though not in Buffalo. The buyer of a circa 10th century granite statue of
the Hindu god Shiva that went for just over $4 million was the Cleveland Museum of Art, which, unlike the
Albright-Knox, already has a substantial Asian collection. But much of the rest will disappear into the possession
of dealers and private collectors. In the way of such things, in due time some of it may well make its way back
into the public domain. It's the fate of art to circulate. But make no mistake, due time could be quite a while.
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Looking for Mr. Adorkable
By Joel Stein / Los Angeles
If Adam Brody had been around 20 years ago, I would have done a lot better with girls. Here's a guy doing
the same nerdy, sarcastic, obscure-reference-laced Jewy thing, only instead of it just impressing friends'
moms, as mine did, it puts him in PEOPLE magazine's Sexiest Man Alive issue and makes him the first boy
ever on the cover of Elle Girl. What James Dean did for inarticulate antisocial depressives, Brody has done
for dorks.
He even broke the cardinal rule of teen soaps; he hijacked school-locker-heartthrob status from the
troubled, handsome blond lead character on Fox's The O.C. I couldn't figure out how, until I met Brody.
He's not really a nerd. He's tall. He's good-looking. He surfs. He's a drummer in a band. He's got passable
scruff. He's from San Diego. He dropped out after a year of community college to move to Los Angeles to
try acting for the first time in his life because, you know, he really liked movies.
"I'm a fake intellectual," he says while wearing giant sunglasses and eating his first meal of the day--a
cheeseburger--at 1 p.m. "I'm not that well read. Which I'm insecure about since I've gotten the [intellectual]
niche." He's not even sure how he pulled off the fake-nerd scam. "Maybe the sarcasm reads a little bit as
intellect, even if it's not," he says. "My best jokes are so cheap. All I do is say things sarcastically. I just say,
'Yeah. Cool.'" As he says this, I feel the confusing disappointment that I imagine young women painters feel
when they find out Joan Miró is a man.
So he's not really a nerd, whatever, guy's my hero. He played one on The O.C. and redefined the type. As
Seth Cohen, he was into comic books and erudite references and pushing Chrismukkah onto the national
calendar, but he owned it. None of that David Schwimmer cautiousness, that Tom Hanks self-mockery, that
Rainn Wilson hipster alternative cluelessness--not even the John Cusack exasperation at the idiots running
everything. Brody's nerdiness was unapologetic, So Cal slow and so self-assured, the network let his
character have a hot girlfriend. His new archetype was successful enough that two years into the show, he
started seeing scripts for pilots describing characters as "an Adam Brody type."
And now, at 27, after playing a teenager for four years, Brody plays the leading-man version of that guy in
the $10 million picture In the Land of Women, which opens April 20. As a pouty, heartsick soft-porn
screenwriter who moves to Michigan to take care of his grandmother, Brody winds up making out with both
the hot mom across the street (Meg Ryan) and her teenage daughter (Kristen Stewart). And somehow he
does something that creepy while still seeming like a really nice guy. The same innocent charm made him
an US magazine fixture as The O.C's breakout star: the sarcastic but decent one. "Adam is the funniest guy
you still want to see get the girl," says O.C. creator Josh Schwartz, 30, who patterned Brody's character after
himself. "He's able to attract neurotic Jewish writers to write for him, but he's definitely cooler in real life than
the characters he's provided. He can be really sweet and adorkable, but there's some anger there. He was able to
give the character some dignity. Seth Cohen was a guy who had no friends, but it was almost as much his choice
as the Newport Beach water-polo players'." In other words, he's the first nerd to tell the cool kids that giving
noogies is lame.
Brody does, in fact, have a kind of geeky weirdness, a slight awkwardness on top of his mellow self-deprecating
charm that Schwartz says manifests itself, for instance, when he transforms, as he does often, into a
"monologuist movie reviewer." Or you can see it in his thwarted dream to produce a remake of Revenge of the
Nerds. Or, as the neurotic Jewish first-time writer-director of In the Land of Women, Jon Kasdan (son of Big
Chill director Lawrence Kasdan), says, "He's a new kind of nerdy Jewish guy: both self-deprecating and
self-possessed. He's taken the New York thing and moved it over to the West Coast--not a bad role to carve out
for yourself."
Plus, as Brody points out, his nerdiness didn't hold him back because even nerdiness isn't so nerdy anymore.
"Comic books aren't nerdy. You'd have to be an idiot to think computers are nerdy. The nerd now is the Bush
Administration--supporting, anti-intellectual dumb ass." Whether that's true or not, it's clear the once desirable
macho-jock type hasn't got such pull. There's a reason the Rock and Vin Diesel haven't filled the gap left by
Schwarzenegger and Stallone: nobody minds the gap. And in a world without heroes, as the movie trailer
voice-over guy might say, the slightly awkward can be slightly cool.
Though he embraces the lovable-loser persona, Brody realizes he escaped a life of typecasting when The O.C.
took an unpredicted sharp downward ratings turn two years ago. "We were very fortunate that we got to be on a
hit show and not be on it for 10 years. I can't imagine Year 7 being the glory year of a teen soap," he says. He
thinks the show's demise was due to stories that moved too quickly ("On other shows, they don't let people kiss
for years") and an overreliance on the clever, self-knowing jokes the show was loved for but that came to serve as
cover for absurd story lines or clichéd characters. Although he's glad it ended, he still considers The O.C. his
college, and had lunch the day before with co-star Benjamin McKenzie (who played the aforementioned blond
lead). Even the breakup of his much chronicled, sickeningly cute romance with co-star Rachel Bilson (they share
custody of two dogs: Penny Lane and Thurmen Murmen) was a good experience. "I wouldn't date someone who
would turn into a psycho," he says. Again, there's the lovable naiveté.
Given, then, the unexpected opportunity to redefine himself when The O.C. went off the air in February, Brody
has been carefully waiting for good scripts with a character close enough to himself to be believable and not, at
27, another teenager. Instead of taking the big parts in horror movies or teen comedies that TV stars are always
offered, he took small roles in Thank You for Smoking and Mr. & Mrs. Smith and then the lead in In the Land of
Women. He wants to prove himself movieworthy, within limits. "I'm not going to rob banks and smoke crack to
prove how not-television I am," he says. He's just going to smoke cigarettes, write soft porn and make out with
moms and their daughters. Baby steps.
Still, Warner Bros. is confident enough about Brody's image as a teen heartthrob that it is tricking people with
trailers and posters that make a movie that's actually about an adulterous flirtation with a cancer-plagued Ryan
look instead like a love story between him and Stewart, an actress who was 15 when it was filmed. "I don't know if
it's going to work," Brody admits. "I have my doubts."
And while he waits to find out where the film--and small roles in two indie films coming out later this year, The
Ten and Smiley Face--will place him in the film-actor hierarchy, he's getting anxious. He's worried about the fact
that he hasn't worked since The O.C. wrapped. (Women was filmed in 2005.) "I feel like I haven't really tried
hard in two years. I don't even know what I'm capable of," he says. Meanwhile, he's hanging out with his friends,
writing songs and screenplays, seeing nearly every movie that comes out and avoiding malls and other places
swoon-prone teenage girls hang out, since he finds being swarmed with cell-phone cameras incredibly
embarrassing. These are things Urkel did not have to worry about.
And even though--in a moment of pretentiousness that he precedes with two minutes of apology--he says he has
started to consider himself an artist, he seems like a pretty commercial one. Most of his movie ideas are action
films, and his band plays the kind of pleasant, fake-disaffected pop that might appear on an episode of The O.C.
"I wish I came from a more pure place," he says. "I don't have something to say from the bottom of my soul. I just
know how to take stuff I like and repackage it in a slightly different way." In fact, he says when he has to hit a
joke in a script, he decides whether to deliver it like Matthew Perry, Ben Stiller or Will Ferrell. "There were two
years before The O.C. when I was doing a Vince Vaughn impersonation in everything I did. Luckily, I wasn't good
enough that anyone caught me at it."
But however he's done it, he has made an impression, created that "Adam Brody type." And what he really wants
to do is to take that type and put him in an action movie--something, he says, like Dustin Hoffman's character in
Marathon Man. Or like the lead in the Wachowski brothers' Speed Racer, which he lost to Emile Hirsch. Or, and
this is when his nerdiness does finally, yes, reveal itself, the kind of action comedies that Harrison Ford did.
"Like when he's talking to Princess Leia--that Han Solo attitude!" he says. "Like 'Listen, sister: Stop bitching!'"
I'm a little afraid he's going to wave a fake light saber at me. And, worse yet, that I'm going to wave one back.
But then I realize that quoting Star Wars hasn't been uncool for at least a decade. That the semiotics of dorkdom
have become wonderfully unclear, and that the teenage social world might be a tiny bit less stratified than it used
to be. That things are so mixed up, a cool guy can become a matinee idol by pretending to be a nerd. And if Adam
Brody helped make that change, by appearing in the same media that cover Paris and Britney and Lindsay, then I
hope he does become an action hero. That's got to help me somehow.
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Cheat Sheet
By RICHARD CORLISS, Lev Grossman, James Poniewozik
UNAVOIDABLE
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND On DVD April 17
Everyone saw Forest Whitaker win the Oscar for Best Actor, but few saw his performance onscreen. Now, at
home, viewers can see what all the fuss was about. They'll find that Idi Amin Dada, the Ugandan dictator
Whitaker plays with charismatic power, is a secondary character in this fact-based drama about a Scottish
doctor (James McAvoy) testing his scruples against the seductions of power. The film replays the old
Graham Greene trope of Europeans acting out their fascination and guilt amid Third World chaos. In this
case, that makes for a tepid and implausible sideshow to the immense horror of Amin's genocidal rule.
UNNECESSARY
'TIL DEATH DO US PART Court TV, Mondays, 10 p.m.
A married couple falls out of love--and one spouse gets killed--in each of these dramatized deadpan
docufarces, with bad-taste maven John Waters hosting as the "Groom Reaper." The tacky milieu, high
emoting and lowlife venality may trick you into thinking you're watching one of those good-bad John
Waters movies. Alas, you're just watching John Waters watching a not-so-good TV show. Sorry.
UNMISSABLE
NOTES ON A SCANDAL On DVD April 17
Star quality, or startling beauty, can be an affront to the rest of us, stirring envy and rancor. That may be
what drives Barbara (Judi Dench), a drab, old teacher at a London school, to latch and leech onto a new
instructor, the stunning, vulnerable, morally floundering Sheba (Cate Blanchett). Sad meets bad--or is it
mad?--in this knowing, brutal comedy. Dench has maybe her best-ever movie role: a queen bee who deals
in the honey of treachery.
CATCHING UP WITH ... Con Air
"A good lawyer makes you believe the truth," says attorney Doug Rich (Eddie Izzard) in THE RICHES, FX,
MONDAYS, 10 P.M. E.T. "A great lawyer makes you believe the lie." Doug knows whereof he speaks because he's
not actually a lawyer. And he is not actually Doug Rich. He is con man Wayne Malloy, who with wife Dahlia
(Minnie Driver) and kids have taken over the swellegant life of a man who died en route to his new suburban
home. As Wayne tries to scam his way through corporate law, Dahlia adjusts to straight suburban life and the
kids try to fit in at private school, the series shows that social mobility isn't as easy as advertised in America and
that identity is less a constant than a performance. Everybody feels like a fraud, says The Riches. Some of us just
happen to earn a bigger prize for it.
WHEN A CROCODILE EATS THE SUN By Peter Godwin 344 pages
REVIEW Kicked Out Of Africa
Jambanja is a word the Shona people of Zimbabwe use to mean "to turn everything upside down, to cause violent
confusion." Of late it has come to refer to the practice of running white Zimbabwean farmers, many of whom
have been there for generations, off their land. Peter Godwin, a white Zimbabwean, has observed quite a bit of
jambanja at uncomfortably close quarters, and he has meticulously recorded his outraged, torchlit impressions
in this remarkable memoir: the harassment, the chanting mobs, the beating of the elderly, the pointless
destruction of food-bearing land, all the smashed crockery of a peaceful, genteel microculture destroyed by greed
and ignorance with the blessing of Zimbabwe's monstrous President Robert Mugabe.
But no African story is simple, and the current violence has its roots in older injustices. "Colonialism lasted just
long enough to destroy much of Africa's indigenous cultures and traditions," Godwin observes, "but not long
enough to leave behind a durable replacement." Godwin's own story lends another layer of historical irony. In
2001 he learned that his father was not, as he had always believed, an English immigrant. He was a Polish Jew
who had fled the Holocaust. "Being a white here," Godwin's father observes, dismayed at the rising chaos, "is
starting to feel a bit like being a Jew in Poland in 1939."
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Wednesday, Apr. 11, 2007
10 Questions: Chevy Chase
Why have you disappeared from the movie screen for so long? Do you plan to direct? —Brock
Thorson in El Cajon, Calif.
Good question. I have been asked to direct many times and usually said no. As is described in the new book,
one of the reasons I moved East [to Bedford Corners, N.Y., in 1995] was because my daughters were about
to reach puberty and I wanted to get them out of L.A. I had a great 20 to 25 years, and I figured I would
come back later, which is happening now. But it was time to be a dad and do it the right way.
Of all the movies you appeared in, which is your favorite? —Kerri Reed, San Bernardino, Calif.
It is a very difficult question, but I think the answer has to be Fletch, because it allowed me to be myself.
Fletch was the first one with me really winging it. Even though there was a script, the director allowed me
to just go, and in many ways, I was directing the comedy.
If you had it to do again, would you have left Saturday Night Live after only one year? —Steve
Hurd, Oakland, Calif.
No, I would not. It has been portrayed over the years as there being "lucrative deals" awaiting me in
Hollywood. But if you look at the record, I didn't make a movie for two or three years. There were no
lucrative deals awaiting me. I left because I was in love with a girl in L.A. I missed it very much. I should
have hung around for years. And I feel bad about it now.
What's your reaction to Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night
Live, a book that describes you picking on a gay member of the cast? —Paul Dillon, Spokane,
Wash.
It is totally untrue. I have letters from people like Will Ferrell and Colin Quinn apologizing profusely for
what they "said" in that book. I've had gay friends all of my life and have never been a bigot. There have
been so many books about me. None of them are true.
Were you surprised by the success and longevity of the Vacation movies franchise? —Andrew
Berry, Henderson, Nev.
No. But I only thought the first one and the Christmas Vacation were the good ones. There were good parts
of European Vacation, and Vegas was O.K. People to this day keep saying "When is the next Vacation movie?"
Why do you only play a buffoon? I'd like to see you as a bad guy. —Brian Powell, Houston
I just did that with Law and Order. I played a bigot who commits a murder. It was a darker role, and I actually
enjoyed it. But once you are pegged as a comedian, you are going to be used as that. It's not a choice one makes
as much as one the studio makes.
Would you agree your talk show was not a career high point? —Tracy Romine, Mckinney, Texas
The talk show [The Chevy Chase Show] that I went to Fox with was an entirely different concept than what was
pushed on me. I would never do it again. What I wanted had a whole different feel to it, much darker and more
improv. But we never got there.
What do you think of political comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert? —Crystal Bruneau,
Los Angeles
I think we need it. My ego tends to think that, you know, I started it with my Weekend Update. But things are
eclectic and come together from people without you ever knowing it.
Are you friends with Bill Clinton? Do you support Hillary or Obama, and why? —Harriet James,
Orlando, Fla.
I am as close as one can say they are to a President. We formed quite a nice friendship, and I have tremendous
feelings for him and his family. I find that there are three incredible Democratic candidates, but we could
certainly use a woman in the White House.
When can we expect a challenge between you and Tiger for a blindfolded putting contest? —Cody
Salinas, Reno, Nev.
[Laughs]. I would love nothing better than to meet Tiger Woods. I am not a golfer. I played with Bill Clinton a
couple of times. At Camp David, I was hitting the ball all over the place in the woods. He has never asked me to
play golf since.
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On the Road with Martha Stewart
By Lisa McLaughlin
Martha Stewart has made a career out of trumpeting the joys of long-abandoned homemaking skills like
gathering eggs from Araucana chickens you've raised yourself. So it shouldn't come as too much of a
surprise to learn that she made her own wedding dress. The embroidered Swiss organdy gown and
matching hat she wore to her 1961 nuptials were the culmination of years of practice. "I learned to sew as a
little girl," Stewart says. "My mother made our clothes--every year we had a new Easter coat--and taught
me the basics of sewing at a young age." Stewart admits that she hasn't sewed her own clothes in years, but
she still makes the occasional dust ruffle and says her skills remain sharp. Gesturing to her spring jacket,
she says, "This coat, I must tell you, I did not make. But I could."
Her long love of the craft has led her to her latest venture, a partnership between Martha Stewart Living
Omnimedia and the sewing machine company SVP Worldwide, which Stewart announced on April 3 in
New York City. Stewart will endorse SVP's Singer, Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff lines of sewing
machines--the first time she has endorsed a product without the Martha brand. Why is she flogging another
company's goods? "I learned to sew on a Singer machine," she says, adding that she still has a 1901 Singer
in working condition. And this was a rare moment when Stewart didn't think she could improve on the
original. "These are simply the best machines out there," she says. The devices have come a long way since
1901. As we talked, the Pfaff Creative 2170, completely unattended, embroidered intricate monograms onto
napkins as if by magic.
Stewart's high-profile endorsement will give these venerable sewing-machine brands that have been around
for more than 140 years another way to reach the generation of young women who are embracing sewing.
Call it the Project Runway effect. Inspired by the reality TV show, in which aspiring designers compete for
an entry into the fashion world, young people in growing numbers are trying their hand at wielding needle
and thread. The Home Sewing Association estimates that there are about 35 million sewing hobbyists in the
U.S., up from roughly 30 million in 2000, and annual sales of machines have doubled since 1999, to 3
million. Since the seamstresses in this new generation are less likely to have learned at their mother's foot
pedal, they are looking for guidance. Stewart launched Blueprint magazine last year for them. The women's
lifestyle magazine will publish six issues in 2007, up from two in 2006, and reaches a total audience of
250,000. While the flagship Martha Stewart Living magazine features sewing projects for the home,
Blueprint is targeted at a younger audience. Fashion editor Katie Hatch's frequently innovative projects,
from a swirling microsuede skirt to lace appliqués on a plain, white button-down shirt, are featured in each
issue. Stewart calls Hatch over and asks her to show off what she's wearing--a dove gray dress with delicate
embroidery that she made in a day. "Many of the staffers at Blueprint make their own clothes--beautiful
things," Stewart says proudly. "I think sewing is such an important thing to know and especially to teach kids."
She adds, without a hint of irony, "It's important to be thrifty."
Can a famous multimillionaire really be a spokeswoman for the down-home art of making your own clothes?
Stewart does, at least, understand the impulse driving so many young women to assert their individuality with
one-of-a kind, homemade clothes. In 1961 Stewart was named one of Glamour's 10 Best Dressed College Girls.
"One of the reasons I stood out," she recalls, "was because I sewed all my own clothes." Now that's an
endorsement.
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Member of the Club
By Alice Park / Fort Worth
In 1996 a group of Nike marketing executives gathered in a fourth-floor conference room on the company's
Beaverton, Ore., campus and looked into the future. On the whiteboard were the names of five possibilities
for the company's next big sponsorship push. Two of them, the NFL and the NBA, were in sports where
Nike was well established, but the other three represented worlds where Nike was all but unknown: the
Brazilian soccer team, the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team and a teenage golfing phenom named Tiger
Woods. Wall Street was waiting to see what Nike would do to follow up Michael Jordan and the enormously
successful Air Jordan line of footwear. When the company announced that it had signed a multiyear,
multimillion-dollar deal with Woods, the reaction was swift--Nike stock fell 5%. Says Bob Wood, one of the
officials in that room: "They thought we had overpaid for him."
Investors had good reason to be skeptical. Golf is a notoriously hermetic industry, dominated by a handful
of top clubmakers with the advantage of years of tradition and a loyal customer base. Nike signed Tiger
Woods before it had so much as a golf ball to put into his hands. But over the past decade, Nike Golf has
introduced 10 lines of clubs, 10 series of balls, several styles of golf shoes, and an array of course-worthy
golf apparel worn by the 22 swoosh-wielding players on the tour. With the number of golfers in the U.S. flat
over the past several years, the only way for equipment makers to increase revenue is to grab market share
from rivals. While still small, Nike Golf is one of the fastest growing brands in the sport, with an estimated
$600 million in sales. With the introduction of its revolutionary square-headed driver, Sumo2, Nike
grabbed 17.5% of the market for drivers in February.
Even more surprising, Nike's all-out effort has produced some genuine innovation--including the Sumo2,
which capitalizes on something called the moment of inertia; the geometric shape minimizes the twisting of
the club head during an off-center ball strike, translating into a straighter, longer stroke off the tee. "Nike
timed it so well that when they decided to get serious and get into golf equipment, they had the ultimate
endorser in Tiger Woods," says Marshal Cohen, chief analyst at NPD Group. "Then they introduced new
technology into the marketplace and really rejuvenated the golf industry."
Golf and Nike were not obviously made for each other. Indeed, everything about the golf business was
contrary to Nike's corporate DNA. Its core business was footwear and apparel, but golf was driven by
equipment. Nike distributed to large national accounts such as J.C. Penney and Foot Locker, while golf
products were sold in pro shops and specialty retailers that did nowhere near the volume of business that
Nike was used to handling. "The only way to run golf successfully was to run it totally separate from the rest
of the company," Nike's Wood says.
In 1998 he set up a separate unit, Nike Golf, with its own staff and, by the happy accident of construction on
Nike's main campus, its own rented building a mile from corporate headquarters. It would then take Nike Golf
two years to produce something that Woods could use, the Tour Accuracy golf ball, which Woods promptly teed
up to post victories at the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championships in 2000.
Still, one golf ball does not a golf-gear maker make, so in 2001 Wood hired Tom Stites, a soft-spoken,
well-respected club designer. On a wall in Stites' small office at the Research and Development Facility in Fort
Worth, Texas, the message "Innovate or Die" headlines the whiteboard that serves as Stites' cocktail napkin of
ideas. "I keep my blinds closed," he says with a smile, to keep that valuable piece of wall decoration away from
prying eyes. Stites learned his craft from tour-champion Ben Hogan, and when he joined Nike, he arrived armed
with a box full of prototype clubs that he was eager to make.
For his debut at the new division, he deliberately chose to craft a set of high-performance tour clubs to gain the
trust of the world's best players, learn what they wanted and build Nike's reputation in the golf world. Nike Golf's
first line of clubs, the ProCombo irons, were targeted at the top 2% of the 27 million golfers hitting the links each
year. "We wanted to establish that we could make a product for the best-performing athlete and the best
players," says Cindy Davis, U.S. general manager for Nike Golf. "Starting at the top of the pyramid allowed us to
draft off that credibility to appeal to other golfers." Nike followed that line with the more forgiving Slingshot
series, which again innovated blade design and accommodated the imperfect swings of the average duffer.
Sustaining that appeal will only get harder, but Nike's mass-marketing prowess and global reach could give it an
advantage over its golf-only competitors. Nike Golf is already well represented in major retailers, including
sporting-goods chains, and is steadily adding accounts in golf-course pro shops, where its market penetration is
about 50%. Nike Golf has opened 75 stores in China, and it has its eye on South Korea as well. To show that it can
compete with the high-end service of its competitors, Nike plans later this year to provide custom fitting, a
feature that had been available only on a limited scale.
Nike's great golf experiment has had its share of hiccups. Just three weeks after the company released the Sumo2
in February, a competitor reported to the U.S. Golf Association that the club exceeded specifications on
something called characteristic time, a measure of the head's springlike bounce, which translated into an extra 1
to 2 yds. off the tee. Nike quickly recalled the drivers and is offering to exchange them for USGA-approved clubs
by April 30.
The bigger challenge for Nike will be figuring out where to make its next big bet, now that Tiger Woods has more
than proved to be a smart investment. It won't have to look further than the fastest growing segment of the sport,
female golfers. Nike Golf signed Michelle Wie to a reported $4 million to $5 million deal in 2005, and is
launching a line of women's clubs next fall. "It's a dogfight," says Wood. "But in five years, we should be the
leader in the business. I don't see any reason why we can't do that." That kind of brash talk may not play too well
in the clubhouse--but then again, Nike didn't get inside the door by being polite.
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Back to School
By Andrew Downie / Rio de Janeiro
After finishing their shift at Petrobras' Reduc refinery on the edge of Rio de Janeiro one recent spring night,
dozens of workers sprinted through the rain toward the company's cavernous canteen. After sandwiches
and soft drinks, they sorted themselves into small groups and got down to work. In one corner, an elderly
woman hunched over a book trying to figure out whether 99¢ was more than or less than 69¢. In another,
three men helped one another with composition exercises. And in a third, workers slapped down dominoes
marked with letters in place of dots. "You can see people who have never learned anything learn something
every day," says Maria Cristina Marcelino, who oversees the employees' lessons. "It is very gratifying."
Petrobras started this free after-work program to teach reading, arithmetic and elementary science in 2005
after officials noticed an unusually high number of accidents occurring on the shop floor because laborers
could not read warning signs. More than just the workers' safety and Petrobras' productivity is at stake. The
woeful state of education in Brazil, the world's fifth largest country, is compromising productivity and
competitiveness and acting as a brake on the country's development, according to economists,
businesspeople and educators. With the economies of China and India surging ahead, thanks in part to
their large pools of educated workers, the issue has become an urgent one for Brazilian business.
"India and the Asian tigers are places that have educated populations, and that has been the basis for their
economic explosions," says Edward Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard who studies the
relationship between education and national prosperity. India and China may have illiteracy rates that are
higher than Brazil's, but they also have much larger populations of educated, skilled workers. "Brazil's poor
economic growth over the past few years is associated in part with the low level of education," Glaeser says.
Certainly, something has held Brazil back. Brazil grew an average of 2.6% from 2000 to 2005--less than
half the rate of Russia, South Korea and India and less than a third that of China. Such disparities have
convinced many Brazilian business leaders that if their government does not invest in education, then they
must assume the responsibility themselves. By offering lessons in everything from basic literacy to
aeronautics, "companies are taking on the role of the state," says Fernando Guimarães, director of SESI, an
industrial organization that coordinates adult-education programs at big companies.
That education takes many forms. At Embraer, the world's fourth largest commercial aircraft manufacturer
and the pride of Brazil's export industry, directors realized that the company faced a shortage of aerospace
engineers because the advanced training they needed wasn't available in Brazil. In 2000 the company set
up an 18-month-long postgraduate course to train its engineers in aerodynamics and flight mechanics. So
far, nearly 800 people have taken the course. "We create from inside, and we are now delivering engineers with a
specialist aerospace background," says Peter Clignett, a Dutch lecturer in Embraer's program. "The better the
engineers, the better the finished product."
At Zanzini, a furniture maker in rural São Paulo, managers found that even employees with a high school
education could not interpret graphs or follow the manuals they needed to manufacture furniture. The company
set aside a room on its shop floor to use as an impromptu classroom whenever a worker on a shift needs help. "It
is common to see people who can't read or write or fill in forms," says Zanzini's human-resources director,
Leandro Mangili. "They have finished secondary school, but they can't add without a calculator." The most recent
study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that exactly half the country's
15-year-olds failed even the most basic level of math proficiency. In reading, 74% of Brazilian students could not
demonstrate detailed understanding of texts, and a quarter to a third could not read even simple sentences.
As a result of its educational failings, Brazilian companies are struggling to find qualified workers, and even
those they do hire often lack the necessary savvy to contribute to the companies' long-term success. "There are
two conceptual frameworks to understand innovation," says Alberto Rodriguez, author of a soon-to-be-released
World Bank study on how better education spurs growth. "You have the high-tech, frontier innovation, and you
have the adaptation and improvement of technology that happen day to day in firms." Economists call that
everyday improvement total factor productivity. It is the x factor that allows an economy to operate more
efficiently, producing greater output with the same people and resources.
Having access to technology and workers with the skills to use it determine a country's total factor productivity
and, in the end, its wealth. In 1960 South Korea and Brazil had about the same per capita income. Today South
Korea's per capita income is five times Brazil's. "Most of the growth in Korea in this period can be attributed to
improvements in total factor productivity," Rodriguez says. "And that is what Brazil needs."
But companies alone will not be able to provide it. Improving education will take a commitment from Brazil's
leaders. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently admitted that Brazil was "the worst in the world"
when it comes to education. A former union leader who quit school to sell peanuts and shine shoes, Lula told
teachers in a speech March 15 that the old methods had clearly failed. "I don't think Brazil will be able resolve the
problem of the stock of people who were left on the margins of the educational process using the normal
traditional means," he said. "We need to think of something new."
Just what that new strategy might be, he didn't say. Lula's vague promises are frustrating to Brazilian businesses,
but his move to put education on the agenda gives them reason for optimism. "We still lack a clear program, but
that seems to be changing," says Guimarães. "I am hopeful."
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Inbox
As the World Warms
While the ugly fact of global warming may strike a blow to our self-esteem as a species, you have put
together a guide to keep us from descending into negative, cynical despair [April 9]. This
roll-up-our-sleeves attitude may yet find America at its best. And thank you for keeping this overarching
issue from political partisanship. Global warming is bigger than Al Gore, the Democrats and the
Republicans. It is larger than all of us.
Jon Deak, NEW YORK CITY
What's the one thing we can do as a nation to help turn the tide on global warming? We can give up the
feeling of entitlement that pervades our society. We feel entitled to use a disproportionate amount of the
world's resources, live in larger homes and drive larger cars, always thinking that bigger is better. The
American Dream has become an environmental nightmare. As the greatest nation on earth, we should be
leading by example.
Bob Tiedeken, WAYNE, N.J.
Re your advice to "Skip the Steak": Thank you for including switching to vegetarianism as an excellent way
to help the environment. As you noted, it's even better than trading a standard car for a hybrid. Your
"feel-good factor" was pretty high, and rightly so. We vegetarians know that we are helping save not only
the environment but animals as well. Not to mention the health benefits!
Melodie Moore, MESQUITE, TEXAS
Some say global warming is killing the planet, but it is not a question of whether we will kill the planet. It is
a matter of maintaining a survivable habitat for ourselves. Thousands of species are already in danger of
extinction, which raises the question, Will we be able to adapt, or are we just another soon-to-fail genetic
experiment?
Andrew L. Brown, JESSUP, MD.
Cutting Carbon Emissions: Idea No. 52
You listed "51 Things We Can Do" to make a difference [April 9]. In my workplace, a green proponent started a
campaign to do away with paper cups and get everyone to use coffee mugs. While convenience will take
precedence over environmental correctness more often than not, it is heartening to see such issues come to the
fore. There will come a day when TIME insists that letters to the editor be sent only by e-mail.
Vivek Mehrotra, SANTA CLARA, CALIF.
The biggest way to reduce carbon emissions wasn't listed: don't have more than two children. Although the
impact is very high, the feel-good factor is very low. Overpopulation is the biggest factor contributing to
greenhouse gases, but nobody likes to point it out. How much carbon can one person generate in a lifetime?
Quite a lot--especially if you're American. If we don't reduce our population now, nature will do it for us, whether
we like it or not.
Adam Kim, REDMOND, WASH.
You neglected one simple way to help curb emissions: don't drink bottled water. Think of all those millions of
plastic bottles. Most municipal water in the U.S. is safe and can be made palatable with inexpensive filters. The
water is transported to its final destination largely using gravity, which creates no emissions. And the feel-good
factor? A friend of mine figured that over the course of a year she saved almost $1,000--enough to take herself on
an environmentally friendly vacation.
Darien Werfhorst, SAN FRANCISCO
Walk to the grocery store. Living a 10-min. walk from a supermarket, I make the trip three or four times a week,
taking home a bag weighing about 10 lbs. I can eat all that food without getting fat.
Jeff Fritz, LAKEWOOD, OHIO
Safety in Numbers?
Your story on U.S. troops fighting insurgents in the Iraqi village of Qubah [April 9] appeared to be a routine
report on the war--that is, until I saw the pictures of soldiers writing identifying numbers on an Iraqi woman's
hand and an Iraqi man's neck. Those pictures not only symbolized an evil from times past but also underscored
the direction this war has taken since the day when an Iraqi finger dipped in ink symbolized freedom.
David Habecker, ESTES PARK, COLO.
Numbering Iraqis seems like branding to me. Actions like this can't win the hearts and minds of the people. U.S.
forces should respect Muslim religious and cultural tenets prohibiting men from touching women. If the troops
need to write numbers on women, they should have female soldiers do so.
Mohammed Shariff, CHARLOTTE, N.C.
Fighting to Live
After reading that Elizabeth Edwards is living with metastatic breast cancer, I have to warn women that cancer
still kills [April 9].While treatments have improved greatly, without early detection of the first onset or of
recurrence, cancer remains deadly. I urge all women to listen to the subtle messages your bodies send. Challenge
your doctors, and do not be too afraid or too busy to make an appointment for an examination. Fund-raising
commercials and cancer-center advertisements show smiling, apparently healthy patients who seem to have
beaten the disease. We are still engaged in battle. Early diagnosis and detection are what will keep you smiling,
improve statistics and keep you alive.
Valerie Mehta, LANSDALE, PA.
Thank you for your excellent article. I have been a cancer survivor since March 14, 2005. After completing
chemotherapy, surgery and radiation treatments, cancer survivors have critical needs. Far too many of us are left
on our own. In too many instances, the physician says, Come back and see me in a year. We all need accurate and
up-to-date information as we move forward with our lives.
Mervyn Kopp, THOUSAND OAKS, CALIF.
In the Footsteps of R.F.K.?
The Democrats' heir to Robert Kennedy's legacy is Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, contrary to what William
Kristol argued [April 9]. Both candidates have idealism and charisma, but only Clinton has Kennedy's toughness
and commitment to economic and social justice as well as political savvy and leadership skills. In her appearance
with Obama and other Democratic candidates at the March 24 health-care forum in Las Vegas, Clinton was by
far the most presidential, demonstrating poise, policy expertise and political realism. And she concluded her
speech with an inspiring and emotionally charged appeal. Kennedy would have been proud.
Horace Newton Barker Jr., HIXSON, TENN.
Fast Food from Afar
Re Joel Stein's "The Hungry American" [April 9]: I doubt that the Filipino Jollibee franchises in the U.S. are
really meant to cater to the American palate. They are simply a response to Filipinos in the U.S. who have grown
tired of eating bland burgers and fried chicken in American fast-food restaurants. The Yumburger and
Chickenjoy are made to suit Filipinos' taste buds. These mimeographed restaurants you referred to actually have
something better-tasting to offer. And if the hungry American likes it too, then I've proved my point.
Shinar Pablo-Lumahan, NORWALK, CALIF.
I am a trends forecaster for the food industry, and what I find interesting is that fast food is not new at all. It
simply acquired a name in recent history. But people have been able to buy gyros outside the Sorbonne in Paris
for many years, and satay sticks have been served from mopeds and in markets in Thailand forever.
Suzy Badaracco, TUALATIN, ORE.
An Optimist's Vision
In his essay "A Can-Do Nation" [April 9], Bill Bradley rightly described the American character as "open,
generous, expansive, forward looking, creative, egalitarian and optimistic." His article should be required
reading for each and every presidential candidate. Enough with the gloom and doom!
Nelle Lucas, IDAHO FALLS, IDAHO
In his "Can-Do" essay, Rhodes Scholar, noninhaler and basketball star Bill Bradley showed he can still hit
three-pointers at will. I'm going to get his book.
John S. McCurdy, KILLINGWORTH, CONN.
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Who Are the Hos Here?

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