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OCTOBER 21, 2022 VOLUME 22 ISSUE 1101

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 Contents 3

Editor’s letter
Most Americans manage to cook and eat without thinking all
that much about where their food was grown. Our meat, in par-
ticular, usually comes packaged in styrofoam and plastic from
a grocery store. Each animal we eat, though, had a life before it
became our meal, and much of that life was unpleasant. A Cali-
fornia law before the Supreme Court would change that, at least
for pigs and chickens (see Best U.S. Columns, p.13). Most mod-
ern pigs are raised on factory farms, and the sows spend nearly
their whole life confined in narrow wooden crates where they
are artificially inseminated and then give birth, over and over
and over again. These pigs never breathe outdoor air or stand on
grass, or even on the ground at all, except when they are taken
to the slaughterhouse. The California law, approved by voters
in a referendum by 63 percent, requires pork sold in the state to
come from a sow who was given at least 24 square feet of liv-
ing space—more than twice the current norm in pig-producing
Iowa. Eggs must come from cage-free hens. Because the law af-
fects bacon and eggs, Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican,
has denounced it as a “war on breakfast.”
I love breakfast: It’s my favorite meal of the day. But after see-
ing images of those gestation crates for pigs, and after once driv-
ing behind a chicken truck that had hens smashed into tiny
boxes all squawking and sad, I swore off factory-farmed prod-
ucts altogether. Since I live in a rural area, it’s not difficult for me
to buy pasture-raised pork and eggs—there’s a farm not 15 min-
utes from my house where the pigs root around in the woods
and the chickens strut slowly in front of your car when you ar-
rive to pick up your order. This kind of farm-fresh food is, of
course, way more expensive than the standard grocery fare, as
much as three times more. But if paying ridiculous sums spurs us
to cut back on the bacon, well, isn’t that better Susan Caskie
for us anyway? Managing editor

NEWS
4 Main stories
Russia attacks civilians
after Crimean bridge
strike; Saudis flout U.S.,
cut production
6 Controversy of the week
Will state-level victories
by election deniers derail
the 2024 vote?
7 The U.S. at a glance
Racism at the L.A. City
Council; Oath Keepers
on trial; NASA celebrates
space-defense success
8 The world at a glance
Hijab protests in Iran;
pope weighs in on
migrants; a mass killing
of Thai children
10 People
Melinda Gates’ painful
divorce; Bridges gains
lessons about mortality
11 Briefing
Forcing books off school
library shelves
13 Best U.S. columns
A coming GOP split
over Ukraine; the cost
of Republican vaccine
denial; cruelty to pigs
14 Best international
columns
Brazil’s presidential
runoff; Quebec tries to
close itself off
16 Talking points
Walker’s abortion follies;
decriminalizing pot;
AP, Getty
Editor-in-chief: William Falk
Managing editors: Susan Caskie,
Mark Gimein
Assistant managing editor: Jay Wilkins
Deputy editor/Arts: Chris Mitchell
Deputy editor/News: Chris Erikson
Senior editors: Nick Aspinwall, Danny Funt,
Scott Meslow, Rebecca Nathanson,
Dale Obbie, Zach Schonbrun, Hallie Stiller
Art director: Paul Crawford
Deputy art director: Rosanna Bulian
Photo editor: Mark Rykoff
Copy editor: Jane A. Halsey
Research editors: Nick Gallagher,
Alex Maroño Porto
Contributing editors: Ryan Devlin,
Bruno Maddox
The aftermath of an attack on the bridge linking Crimea to Russia (p.4)
Group publisher: Paul Vizza
ARTS LEISURE
(paul.vizza@futurenet.com)
Account director: Mary Gallagher
(mary.gallagher@futurenet.com)
23 Books 31 Food & Drink
The role of Indigenous Cincinnati’s controversial
Media planning manager: Andrea Crino
Direct response advertising:
power in U.S. history chili; the growing rewards Anthony Smyth (anthony@smythps.com)
of dining in Boise
24 Author of the week
SVP, Women’s, Homes, and News:
Elissa Bassist discovers a 32 Travel
cure for her pain Exploring South Korea’s
Sophie Wybrew-Bond
Managing director, news Richard Campbell
quiet side; Jackie Robinson SVP, finance: Maria Beckett
26 Art & Home Media in full at a new museum VP, Consumer Marketing-Global
The self-taught artist Superbrands: Nina La France
who wowed Picasso Consumer marketing director:
Leslie Guarnieri
28 Film & BUSINESS
Manufacturing manager, North America:
Stage 36 News at a glance Lori Crook
Operations manager:
The brash A meltdown in Britain’s
Cassandra Mondonedo
social bond market; the demise of
comedy GloriFi
that 37 Making money
conquered The death of the new-issue
Cannes Visit us at TheWeek.com.
market; scammers steal For customer service go to
home nest eggs TheWeek.com/service.
38 Best columns Renew a subscription at
Melinda What a Musk-run Twitter RenewTheWeek.com or give a

investigating Hunter Gates will look like; the myth of gift at GiveTheWeek.com.
Biden; a Covid winter (p.10) a disaster dividend
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
4 NEWS The main stories...
Putin’s vengeance for Crimean bridge explosion
What happened of civilians will only “further stiffen
A barrage of missile strikes pound- Ukrainian resolve.”
ed civilian areas in Kyiv and at least
10 other cities across Ukraine this Putin’s targeting of civilians is
week, ordered by Russian President “the latest in the Kremlin’s grim
Vladimir Putin in retaliation for catalog of war crimes,” said the
an attack that damaged a strategi- Financial Times. It was also a
cally key bridge linking Russia to “militarily wasteful use of costly
the Crimean Peninsula. Ukrainian arms that are in short supply,”
authorities said at least 20 people especially since Ukraine claims to
were killed and 108 wounded in have intercepted more than half of
the initial round of strikes, which the roughly 85 missiles fired. Rus-
had panicked citizens diving for sia’s army is reportedly running
cover during morning rush hour. In low on munitions of all kinds, and
Kyiv, Russian missiles and drones sanctions on selling Moscow high-
struck apartment buildings, an tech parts have made it difficult to
office tower, a pedestrian bridge, Ukrainian firefighters battling blaze after Russian missile strike make new ones.
and a playground; power and water
were knocked out in numerous cities, including Lviv and Kharkiv. What the columnists said
Ukrainian officials condemned the targeting of civilian areas, which The bridge attack “hit Putin where it hurts,” said Clara Ferreira
follows weeks in which resurgent Ukrainian forces have reclaimed Marques in Bloomberg. The destruction of a “feat of engineering”
large swathes of territory in the south and east. “Your attacks pro- that a proud Putin once called “a miracle” is a stunning “embar-
voke only rage and contempt in us,” said Oleksiy Danilov, head of rassment” that underlines Russia’s vulnerability. It comes at a peril-
the national security council. “Not fear, not desire to negotiate.” ous moment when Putin faces growing anger from both Russian
hawks alarmed at his battlefield failures and citizens rattled by his
The revenge attacks came days after a massive explosion severely chaotic mobilization of army reserves.
damaged the Kerch Strait Bridge, a 12-mile span that is a vital con-
duit for bringing arms and supplies to Russian troops in southern “Putin is now trapped,” said Timothy Snyder in his Substack
Ukraine. Completed in 2018, the bridge is a source of deep pride newsletter. Ukrainians “have turned out to be stunningly good
for Putin, so the bomb blast—which Russia blamed on a truck warriors,” and Putin’s decision to invade has become such a visible
bomb—was seen in Russia as both a military and symbolic disaster. “disaster” that it threatens his rule. Using a tactical nuclear weapon
A single lane on the bridge was reopened, but experts said it would on an extended battlefield hundreds of miles long would be of little
take months to make the bridge fully operational. Ukraine did not military use, lead to the irradiation of Russian troops and of Russia
claim credit, but the blast brought expressions of glee from Ukraini- itself, and create a blowback of international rage. Putin’s only way
an officials and cries for retribution from Russian hawks. “It is time to survive the “internal struggle for power” that has begun may be
for fighting!” tweeted senior Russian legislator Sergei Mironov. to pull his army back into Russia to protect him from his rivals.
“Fiercely, even cruelly.”
With no realistic route to military victory, could Putin settle for “a
President Biden, who warned last week that Putin might create a political fig leaf” that would disguise his defeat? asked Dan Reiter
nuclear “Armageddon,” told CNN this week he believed the use of in the Los Angeles Times. Ukrainians have been adamant they will
nuclear weapons was a line Putin not surrender territory, and their
wouldn’t cross. “I think he is a successful counter-offensive takes
rational actor who has miscalcu- What next? that option off the table. Facing
lated significantly,” Biden said. In Ukraine’s NATO allies are “struggling to secure sufficient total defeat, Putin might settle for
response to pleas from Ukrainian air-defense systems” to fend off Russian missile attacks, Ukraine’s agreement not to join
President Volodymyr Zelensky, the said Henry Foy and Felicia Schwartz in the Financial Times. NATO. That small concession
White House promised to speed With Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky pleading for would be worth it, to “end this
the delivery of two advanced mis- help, officials from nearly 50 countries met in Brussels this war and stop the suffering.”
sile defense systems, and Germany week to “discuss how to keep meeting Kyiv’s needs. ” West-
delivered the first of four promised ern leaders are ready to oblige, but say supplying defense We Ukrainians are in no mood
systems. systems is a challenge at a time when production capacity to negotiate, said Margo Gontar
is limited and some NATO members are “facing years of in The New York Times. Putin’s
What the editorials said delays for their own air-defense platforms.” Meanwhile, a missile strikes “sent a message,
Putin’s bombardment of Ukrainian top British intelligence official says that Russia’s “supplies but not the one he wanted.” In
cities and civilians is a sign of “des- and munitions are running out,” said Adela Suliman in The Putin, we now see “a tired old
peration,” said The Washington Washington Post. Jeremy Fleming, head of the British intel- man” whose attempt to terrorize
Post. Russian “hard-liners” cheered ligence agency GCHQ, said that Russian forces are “ex- us smacks of futility and des-
the “aerial terrorism,” but “are hausted” and Putin’s “mobilization of tens of thousands of peration. In Ukraine, “there is an
deceiving themselves” if they think inexperienced conscripts speaks of a desperate situation.” almost palpable feeling that Rus-
it will turn the tide. Russia faces Ukraine’s “courageous action on the battlefield,” Fleming sia is losing the war”—and we
“defeat in the actual contest of said, is “turning the tide.” will keep fighting until the brutal
Getty

armies,” and the savage slaughter invaders are driven from our soil.
Illustration by Howard McWilliam.
THE WEEK October 21, 2022 Cover photos from Getty, AP, Getty
 ... and how they were covered NEWS 5

Ignoring U.S. pleas, Saudis slash oil production

What happened and trying to block offshore drilling.
The Biden administration and senior That has “made it even easier” for Gulf
Senate Democrats this week threatened nations to inflate the price of oil.
to punish Saudi Arabia after the OPEC+
oil cartel defied the U.S. and said it U.S. leaders must keep cool heads, said
would cut oil production. The Saudis The Washington Post. They should re-
coordinated with Russia and other sist restricting petroleum exports, which
oil-producing nations to reduce output will just punish our trading partners.
by 2 million barrels a day starting next Instead, they’ll have to play a long game
month, which will raise global oil prices to reduce dependence on foreign oil by
and boost the Russian economy. The “taking advantage of our domestic sup-
announcement juiced U.S. gas prices, plies of fossil fuels and green energy”
which were already creeping up after a and investing in energy infrastructure.
three-month decline, to more than $3.90 A knee-jerk response now “might make
Mohammed bin Salman: Sticking it to Biden matters worse.”
a gallon, with even higher prices likely.
President Biden warned of unspecified “consequences” for OPEC’s
actions, and White House spokesman John Kirby suggested that the What the columnists said
country should “continue to re-evaluate” its relationship with the “MBS has put a dagger into Biden’s back,” said Trita Parsi in
Saudis. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Menendez MSNBC.com. Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader has boosted the chances
(D-N.J.) went further, proposing the U.S. should “immediately of a red wave in November with higher oil prices that “could help
freeze all aspects” of U.S.-Saudi cooperation and pledging to block Russia finance its war on Ukraine.” A “mere fist bump” was not
weapons sales to the country. Saudi Arabia has been the lead im- going to change the Saudi preference for Republicans, said Dov
porter of U.S. weaponry, spending billions to buy 23 percent of all Zakheim in The Hill. Riyadh “had extremely close ties to the Trump
U.S. weapons sold between 2017 and 2021. administration” and was offended by Democratic criticism of its role
in Yemen’s civil war and its 2018 killing of Khashoggi. Biden’s push
OPEC’s cut was seen as a direct snub to Biden. He had once vowed to revive a nuclear deal with Iran “has not helped,” either.
to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for the murder of dissident Jamal
Khashoggi, but in a July visit to the repressive kingdom he fist- This is a “self-inflicted crisis” for Biden, said Matthew Continetti in
bumped Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and outright asked National Review. He wanted to placate both “the green crusaders”
for an increase in oil production. U.S. officials later lobbied Gulf who hate fossil fuels and the voters who are likely to punish Demo-
states to at least delay the cuts in production, warning that action crats for soaring gas prices. But he remains so stubbornly opposed
now would be seen as overt support for Russia in its war against to domestic drilling that he is reportedly exploring a possible oil
Ukraine. But Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan in- deal with Nicolás Maduro’s hostile regime in Venezuela.
sisted this week that the decision, which could drive oil prices up to
$100 a barrel, was made for “purely economic” reasons. “Pissed-off” Democrats want revenge, said Timothy Noah in The
New Republic. They are considering reviving “NOPEC,” a bill
What the editorials said that would let the Justice Department file antitrust lawsuits against
So much for Biden’s “begging-bowl diplomacy,” said National the oil cartel. But this is “the absolute worst moment” for such
Review. While the final cut will likely be short of 2 million barrels, a provocation. The time for NOPEC would be when there’s too
the decision to slash oil production as the U.S. holds its midterm much oil sloshing around to give the Saudis leverage over the U.S.
elections is still “a clear rebuff” to the president. The “most effec- Pushing it through at this moment of scarcity would only invite
tive” solution to keep prices from skyrocketing would be to increase OPEC to “retaliate by cutting production further, crippling Western
domestic production, but Biden has thwarted expansion efforts, economies.” We need to give the Saudis “a well-deserved slap
suspending oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge back”—just not yet.

It wasn’t all bad
QMeymuna Hussein-Cattan, the
daughter of a refugee from Ethio-
pia, has helped resettle thousands
of immigrants. She always felt
amazed by their generosity and
creativity. In 2020, to share that,
she launched a restaurant with a
rotating lineup of immigrant chefs
from places like Venezuela, Eritrea,
and Chechnya. Since its opening,
Flavors From Afar has garnered
rave reviews. Hussein-Cattan
believes refugees are “able to
start their lives over and transform
a sense of loss into something
Getty (2)
QChris Nikic weathered 90-degree heat, fatigue, and dehydra-
tion last week to become the first person with Down syn-
drome to finish the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii.
The triathlete celebrated his 23rd birthday by completing
the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, and 26.2-mile run in an
impressive 16.5 hours. He crossed the finish line to a cascade
of cheers from teary-eyed fans,
including his girlfriend, his
dad, and six-time winner Mark
Allen. Nikic finished his first
triathlon in 2020, earning the
World Championship invite;
he trained six days a week for
the championship. “I want
to open doors,” Nikic said.
“Anyone who sees people
with Down syndrome: Don’t
QIn August, Faith Bistline received
a startling Facebook message:
Her boyfriend of 18 months
was apparently dating another
woman. Bistline soon learned
that her partner’s secret girlfriend,
Emely Ortiz, had been blindsided
by his infidelities, too. As the pair
commiserated, Bistline asked Ortiz
if she’d want to join her in Costa
Rica for her 30th birthday—a trip
she’d planned with her ex. Three
weeks later, the duo took a plane
to Costa Rica and spent four days
exploring jungles and waterfalls,
and trading stories. “I don’t
remember the last time I was that

beautiful.” Nikic: Unstoppable walk away.” happy,” Bistline said.

THE WEEK October 21, 2022

6 NEWS Controversy of the week
Election denial: Can democracy survive?
As the November midterm elections loom,
“the truth is plain—and painful,” said
Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. If
Republicans take both houses of Congress next
month, it may mean the end of “democracy
as we know it.” That may sound like partisan
hyperbole, but a Post analysis last week found
that of the 569 Republican candidates for
congressional or key statewide offices this fall,
299—more than half—are on record supporting
Donald Trump’s Big Lie that Democrats used
massive voter fraud to steal the 2020 presiden-
tial election. With 60 percent of these election Lake: One of many Big Lie proponents
deniers running in safe Republican districts, it is all but certain
that in January a majority of a party’s congressional delegation
will reject the free and fair elections that are the foundation of the
“American experiment.” The GOP is also running election deniers
for key secretary of state posts in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and
other major battleground states, and at least two gubernatorial
candidates—Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania and Kari Lake of
Arizona—have pledged that the Republican nominee will “win”
their state in 2024, whomever voters may prefer. It’s “getting
harder to see how democracy can survive” Republicans’ lurch into
“fascism,” said Michael Tomasky in The New Republic. Our last,
best chance is to rebuke them next month by “margins so decisive
that they can’t plausibly challenge the results.”
To prevent that, Republicans are planning to discourage people
from voting, said The New York Times in an editorial. In their
“precinct strategy,” Trump allies have signed up thousands of the
MAGA rank and file to serve as poll workers and precinct officers.
They are being trained on how to harass and challenge voters at
polling places, and then to contact “an army” of Republican law-
yers who will help in the attempt to disqualify
them. There’s an even bigger threat to democ-
racy, said Steven Donziger in The Guardian.
The Supreme Court has chosen to weigh in on
the “independent state legislature” doctrine—
a crackpot theory that “could lock in right-
wing control of the United States for genera-
tions.” If the court upholds that theory, it will
give partisan majorities in state legislatures the
sole, unreviewable power to change election
districts and election laws, and even to disre-
gard the popular vote in presidential elections
in order to choose their preferred electors. That
would “put the U.S. squarely on the path to authoritarianism.”
There are glimmers of hope, even within the GOP, said The
Washington Post in an editorial. Eleven Senate Republicans, includ-
ing Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have already signaled sup-
port for the bipartisan Electoral Count Reform Act. This legislation
would clean up the “archaic” laws governing the selection of a new
president, “stitching shut many of the loopholes” Trump and his
cronies exploited in trying to overturn the 2020 election.
It’s only human to hope for the best, said Tim Alberta in The
Atlantic, and millions of Americans “can’t quite bring themselves
to face what’s happening.” But the mind-boggling reality is that our
democracy “is actively being sabotaged.” If most of the election
deniers now seeking power do not “lose, and lose badly,” they will
put us on a path to “national calamity.” The 2024 election may
decide America’s fate, said David Montgomery in The Washington
Post, especially if Donald Trump or one of his authoritarian aco-
lytes wins the Republican nomination. Only “vigilance and civic
engagement” can “prevent the nightmare from coming true.”

Good week for:

Only in America
QThe water superinten-
dent in Richmond, Vt., has
admitted to secretly lowering
fluoride levels in the town’s
water supply. Fluoridization
is credited with a 25 percent
national drop in tooth decay,
but superintendent Kendall
Chamberlin said he had
concerns about the use of
Chinese chemicals in fluoride,
and that “to err on the side of
caution is not a bad position.”
QNew York University has
fired a revered chemistry
professor after students com-
plained his course was too
hard. Maitland Jones Jr., 84,
wrote the seminal, 1,300-page
textbook Organic Chemistry,
but 82 students signed a peti-
tion complaining that their
low grades did not accurately
reflect “the time and effort
put into this class.” NYU
ended Jones’ contract, saying
his work “did not rise to the
standards we require.”
Endurance, after Irishman Damian Browne arrived in his native
In other news
Galway after rowing across the Atlantic from New York in 112 Biden mulls parole for
days. “It’s nice to be alive,” said Browne, 42, who capsized three Venezuelan migrants
times during the 3,450-mile voyage, and cannot swim. The Biden administration is
moving toward implement-
Starting fresh, after supermodel Gisele Bündchen was photo-
graphed having her SUV spiritually cleansed by a holistic practitio- ing a program that would
let Venezuelans come to
ner waving a stick of burning sage. Bündchen reportedly is seeking the United States legally
a divorce from NFL legend Tom Brady. for up to two years if they
Climate action, after New Zealand proposed taxing the burps, are supported by a relative
farts, and urination of its 36 million farm cows and sheep to or other financial sponsor.
reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The program, similar to one
offered to Ukrainians fleeing
Bad week for: Russia’s invasion, would
Bugs, with reports that the new Apple iPhone 14, which alerts allow paroled Venezuelans
911 if it detects the user has been in a car crash, is having trouble to work legally in the U.S.
distinguishing crashes from roller-coaster rides. One emergency- It is designed to stem the
services director in Ohio said her county has had at least six tide of Venezuelan migrants
coaster-triggered false alarms. crossing the border on foot.
Under the proposal, those
Zyeama Johnson, 27, who applied for a job with a New Jersey who cross the border ille-
law enforcement agency despite being wanted in Pennsylvania on gally would be immediately
fraud charges and 10 missed court appointments. Johnson was returned to Mexico under the
arrested at her job interview. pandemic-era Title 42 rule.
Renaissance men, after Elon Musk denied that he told political More than 150,000 Venezu-
scientist Ian Bremmer that he’d conceived his widely mocked, pro- elans fleeing political instabil-
Russia “peace plan” for Ukraine after speaking to Vladimir Putin. ity and poverty have been
apprehended at the border
Musk later said he spoke to Putin just once, 18 months ago, and
over the past year.
Getty

“the subject matter was space.”

THE WEEK October 21, 2022
 The U.S. at a glance ...
Minden, Nev.
Racist stereotype: Republi-
can Sen. Tommy Tuberville
of Alabama suggested
last week that descen-
dants of slaves are
predisposed to com-
mit crimes, saying
Democrats want
Tuberville
to pay out repara-
tions “because they think the people
that do the crime are owed that.” The
first-term senator made the remark at a
rally featuring former President Trump,
his close ally, and was seeking to paint
Democrats as soft on crime—a major
talking point among Republicans ahead
of the midterm elections. “They’re pro-
crime,” said Tuberville, a former football
coach at Auburn University. “They want
crime because they want to take over
what you got. They want to control what
you have.” Tuberville punctuated his
statement with “Bullshit,” draw-
ing cheers. Following Tuberville,
Trump himself accused of
Democrats of fomenting
crime in cities “drenched in
blood.” NAACP president
Derrick Johnson condemned
Tuberville’s claims as “flat-out
racist, ignorant, and utterly
sickening.”
Los Angeles
Council of slurs: A recording of racist,
profane comments uncovered this week
has led to the resignation of City Council
President Nury
Martinez and calls
for three other
members to resign.
During a conversa-
tion last October
about redistrict-
ing, Martinez was
De León (l.), Martinez recorded calling
another councilmember, Mike Bonin, “a
little bitch” and saying the white coun-
cilmember “thinks he’s f---ing Black.”
Councilmember Kevin de León said
Bonin flaunts his Black 8-year-old son
like a designer handbag; Martinez called
the child a changuito, Spanish for “little
monkey,” and said that the boy needed
“a beatdown.” Martinez also described
Oaxacan immigrants living in Koreatown
as “short little dark people,” adding in
Spanish, “they’re ugly.” She said District
Attorney George Gascón is “with the
Blacks.” Bonin called Martinez’s com-
Getty, AP, Getty, NASA
ments “vile, abhorrent, and utterly dis-
graceful.” Ron Herrera, a union leader
also in the conversation, resigned from
his post.
Washington, D.C.
The Trump files: The Justice Department
urged the Supreme Court this week to
reject former President Trump’s request
that the justices reverse an appellate
court’s decision to let the department
continue using 103 classified documents
seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar’s
34-page filing tore into arguments from
Trump’s lawyers, saying they haven’t
“even attempted to explain how he
is irreparably injured by the Court of
Appeals’ partial stay.” Prelogar said
Trump has no plausible claim of owner-
ship over the records, some of which
may concern a foreign government’s
nuclear capabilities. The New York
Times reported last week that the DOJ
believes Trump may still be withhold-
ing material, and has asked witnesses
whether Trump stored sensitive docu-
ments at Manhattan’s Trump Tower or
his club in Bedminster, N.J.
Uvalde, Texas
Still not getting it: Uvalde’s school dis-
trict superintendent, Hal Harrell, this
week announced plans to resign, and the
school district suspended its entire police
force, as parents blamed the district for
continued callousness. Parents were out-
raged when the district hired a school
police officer, Crimson Elizondo, who is
under investigation for her conduct as a
Texas state trooper during the May 24
massacre at Robb Elementary School.
Elizondo was the first trooper to enter
the school’s hallway after the shooter,
but did not bring her rifle or protective
vest; she was dismissed from her new
job the day after CNN reported her hir-
ing. In August, the school fired its police
chief, Pete Arredondo, who faced wide
criticism for not ordering officers to con-
front the shooter. As hundreds of officers
descended on the scene, the shooter was
allowed to remain inside a fourth-grade
classroom for more than 70 minutes, kill-
ing 19 children and two teachers.
NEWS 7
Washington, D.C.
Insurrection posse: Members of the far-
right Oath Keepers allegedly discussed
plans for an
“armed rebellion”
that could involve
“millions” dying to
prevent Joe Biden
from becoming
president, based on
encrypted messages
that federal pros-
ecutors presented Rhodes
in court last week. As Oath Keepers
founder Stewart Rhodes, 56, and four
other members stand trial for seditious
conspiracy, prosecutors cited messages
from Rhodes saying he had been pushing
for former President Trump to invoke
the Civil War–era Insurrection Act,
allowing the military and civilian militias
to use force to keep Trump in office.
Oath Keepers stockpiled weapons in an
Arlington, Va., hotel ahead of
the Capitol attack, and former
Oath Keeper Terry Cummings
testified, “I had not seen that
many weapons in one loca-
tion since I was in the military.”
Rhodes’ attorney said the weap-
ons were for providing security, and
that Rhodes “meant no harm to the
Capitol that day.”
Cape Canaveral, Fla.
A celestial bull’s-eye: A NASA test suc-
ceeded beyond expectations in altering
the orbit of an asteroid, raising confi-
dence in U.S. efforts to build a planetary
defense system. In a $325 million mis-
sion, a vending machine–size spacecraft
slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos
last month at 14,000 mph, carving a cra-
ter and divert-
ing its orbit
around a larger
asteroid, Didy-
mos. While
the 525-foot-
diameter
Dimorphos
posed no
threat, a similar
strategy could A trail of debris
be used to redirect an asteroid on a col-
lision course with Earth. This week,
NASA scientists were able to measure
the results of the test and found that
Dimorphos now takes 11 hours and
23 minutes to orbit Didymos—32 min-
utes less than before the collision, about
25 times NASA’s threshold for a success-
ful deflection. Amateur stargazers with
medium-size telescopes can observe the
debris trail caused by the collision.
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
 8 NEWS The world at a glance ...
Vienna
No greenwashing: Austria has filed a lawsuit
against the EU over Brussels’ classification of
nuclear power and natural gas as sustainable
forms of energy production. “What I am resist-
ing with all my strength is the attempt to
greenwash nuclear and gas through the back
door,” said Austrian Environment Minister
Leonore Gewessler. “Tying a green bow
Gewessler around polluting gas for electricity pro-
duction is misleading.” The European Commission last year des-
ignated as climate-friendly renewable electricity production meth-
ods such as solar power, hydropower, and wind power. Starting in
January, gas- and nuclear-powered facilities will also be classified
as sustainable, which allows them access to preferred-investment
status. Austria relies on hydropower for more than half of its
energy needs, but much of the rest of the EU uses natural gas.
Hamburg
Railway sabotage? Cables essential for railway
traffic in northern Germany were suddenly
damaged last weekend, and officials suspect
sabotage, possibly by Russia. The damage
halted nearly all trains in the states of Lower
Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg, and Schleswig- Trains canceled.
Holstein for hours. German officials began an
investigation and said that so far there was no sign of interference
by a foreign power, but experts cautioned that Russia was likely
to attack Western energy and trade infrastructure as its losses in
the Ukraine war continue to mount. “Uncertainty and unrest in
the West could now become Putin’s strategy for survival,” said
Mischa Hansel from the Institute for Peace Research and Security
Policy. Russia was blamed for sabotaging gas pipelines last month.

Vatican City
Pope lambastes Europe over migrants: Pope
Francis departed from prepared remarks this
week to slam Europe’s treatment of migrants as
“disgusting, sinful, and criminal.” He said that
migrants setting off from Africa often per-
ish during perilous sea crossings or are
turned back to Libya, where they wind Pope Francis
up in camps he referred to as Lager, the
German word for Nazi concentration camps. “They are left to
die in front of us, making the Mediterranean the largest cemetery
in the world,” the pope said. He was speaking at the canoniza-
tions of two new Italian saints who helped migrants and the poor.
More than 3,000 people, mostly from Africa and the Middle
East, died last year trying to reach Europe by boat, double the
figure of the previous year.
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
U.N. could send troops: The head of the United Nations has
backed Haiti’s request for the immediate deployment of mili-
tary troops to help the country take back control of its ports
from powerful gangs. In a letter to the U.N. Security Council,
Secretary-General António Guterres called for the quick deploy-
ment of a rapid-action armed force to Haiti to help the National
Police get fuel and water flowing—particularly so that an
outbreak of deadly cholera can be brought under control. Aid
workers in Haiti, though, denounced the plan. “Our immediate
reaction, as a medical organization, is that this means more bul-
lets, more injuries, and more patients,” said Benoît Vasseur of
Doctors Without Borders. “We are afraid there will be a lot of
bloodshed.”

Easter Island, Chile

Fire damages statues: At least 80 of the more than 400 Moai
sculptures on Easter Island have been irreparably damaged by
a fire that authorities believe was deliberately set. “This confla-
gration was caused by cattle farmers seeking pastureland,” said
Agriculture Minister Esteban Valenzuela. Pedro Edmunds Paoa,
the island’s mayor, said the damage could not be undone. “The
cracking of an original and emblem-
atic stone cannot be recovered,” he
said, “no matter how many millions
Kogi’s displaced
Anambra, Nigeria
Deadly floods: At least 76 people died in southern Nigeria this
week when their boat capsized in Anambra state as they tried to
flee dangerously high floodwaters. One man, Benard Achonu, lost
his wife and all three of his children in the accident. “My life has
fallen apart,” he told the BBC. Survivors are unable to bury their
dead because the ground is too saturated to dig. The boat tragedy
Getty, Newscom, Getty (2), AP

Moai sculpture: Scorched
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
of euros or dollars are put into it.”
The stone images were carved about
500 years ago by the Rapa Nui
people, a Polynesian tribe that still
makes up most of the population of
the Pacific island.
came after a flood swallowed the entire district of Ibaji in neigh-
boring Kogi state. Nigeria’s annual monsoon season has been
disastrous this year, with floods killing at least 300 people and
displacing more than half a million. More catastrophic flooding
is expected in states located along the Niger and Benue Rivers, as
three more reservoirs are ready to overflow.
 The world at a glance ...
Minsk, Belarus
Nobel Peace Prize to activists: Human rights
activists from Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia
won the Nobel Peace Prize last week, a
choice seen as a strong rebuke to Russian
President Vladimir Putin and his dictato-
rial ally, Belarusian President Alexander
Lukashenko. Ales Bialiatski, the only Bialiatski
named recipient, is a Belarusian activist jailed without trial
since last year for leading protests against Lukashenko’s rigged
2020 re-election. The other recipients were anti-Kremlin human
rights groups: Russia’s Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil
Liberties. Some Ukrainians bristled at the joint award. Activists
from Belarus and Russia are “fighting for the rights of people in
dictatorships,” said Ukrainian writer Anastasia Magazova, while
Ukraine’s group tallies “the war crimes of those dictatorships.”
Mount Draupadi, India
Dozens of climbers killed: An
avalanche hit an expedition
Crumbling peak of trainee mountaineers in the
Indian Himalayas last week, kill-
ing at least 26. The 41-member team was descending from the
18,600-foot summit of Mount Draupadi when the avalanche
suddenly “took everyone down,” survivor Sunil Lalwani told
the Hindustani Times. Heavy snow hampered helicopter rescue
Reuters, Getty, Twitter, Getty, Wikipedia
efforts, but Lalwani credited the group’s instructors for saving
many lives. “We were 50 to 100 meters from the summit with our
instructors ahead of us,” he said, adding, “It’s because of them
that we are alive today.” Indian instructor Savita Kanswal, who
recently set a women’s record by summiting Mount Everest and
Mount Makalu within a span of 15 days, was among the dead.
Climbers say climate change has been unsettling the peaks, with
crevasses widening from increased glacial melt.
NEWS 9
Moscow
Ukraine did it: Ukrainian officials approved the
Moscow car bombing that killed the daughter of
a Russian nationalist in August, The New York
Times reported last week, citing unnamed U.S.
intelligence sources. U.S. officials believe that
Daria Dugina, a TV commentator, was killed by
accident and that her father—prominent intel-
lectual Aleksandr Dugin, who agitated for more
intense Russian bombardment of Ukraine—was Dugina
the intended target. The officials said Americans
didn’t know of the attack ahead of time, didn’t provide help, and
admonished the Ukrainians afterward, but Ukraine continues to
insist it was not involved. U.S. officials told the Times they were
frustrated with Ukraine’s lack of transparency about its covert
operations on Russian soil and they fear that Russia will now
target Ukrainian leaders for assassination as payback.
Sanandaj, Iran
Hijab protests continue: Women-led
anti-government demonstrations contin-
ued across Iran this week, despite brutal
crackdowns by state security forces
that have left more than 180 dead.
The protests erupted in mid-September State TV hacked
after Mahsa Amini, 22, a student from
Iranian Kurdistan, was arrested for “immodest” dress and died in
the custody of Iran’s morality police; activists said she was beaten
to death. Women have been burning their headscarves and cutting
their hair in what’s become a mass anti-government movement,
with shouts of “Death to the dictator!” This week, oil workers
went on strike in solidarity with the protesters, and hackers inter-
rupted Iranian news with an image of Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei’s face in flames and images of dead protesters.
Uthai Sawan, Thailand
Day care massacre: A mass killing at a
Thai day care center last week left 37
people dead, including 22 children, putting
it among the world’s deadliest massacres
of children. Former police officer Panya
Khamrap stabbed dozens of toddlers who Little coffins
were sleeping at the nursery in Uthai Sawan
and shot several others before returning home to kill himself and
his wife and child. Thai officials blamed drugs, saying Khamrap
had been fired in January for methamphetamine possession and
was facing drug charges and family problems. Neighbors reported
troubling behavior of late, including shooting his 9mm pistol
in the yard at night. “How were we going to report him to the
police?” one neighbor said. “He was the police.”
Melbourne
Bank error in their favor: An Australian couple is standing trial
this week for spending some $6 million transferred to their bank
account in error by a cryptocurrency company. The company,
Crypto.com, meant to give a refund of 100 Australian dollars in
May 2021, but a Bulgarian data-entry worker mistakenly typed in
more than 10 million Australian dollars. When Jatinder Singh and
his partner, Thevamanogari Manivel, saw the massive sum, they
transferred half to a Malaysian bank account and then went wild
buying luxury goods, including four houses, with the rest. They
say it was an innocent mistake—Singh said he thought they’d
won a contest—and the trial will hinge on whether jurors believe
them. Manivel was arrested at Melbourne Airport in March with
a one-way ticket to Malaysia and about $7,000 in cash; she’s now
out on bail after surrendering her passport.
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
10 NEWS People
Why Bridges counts his blessings
Jeff Bridges has had a rough couple of years, says
Tom Lamont in The Observer (U.K.). First the Big
Lebowski actor got lymphoma. Then he became
so ill with Covid, it made the cancer “look like a
piece of cake.” Yet he has taken something posi-
tive from the ordeal. “Life is constantly giving us
gifts,” he says. “They may be gifts that we don’t
think we want. Who wants cancer? Who wants
f---ing Covid, man? Well it turns out, I did. Because dealing with
your mortality, it makes things more precious.” In particular, it
intensified his love for his wife, Sue. They met in 1975: He was
filming in rural Montana, and she lived nearby. “Love at first
sight. Boom. Hit me like a ton of bricks.” The couple, who have
three grown children, live quietly in Santa Barbara, Calif., where
every day ends the same way: “We sit and we eat dinner in front
of the TV. We’re always hooked on some new show or other.
Maybe we’re getting tired, maybe I have a wrestle with one of the
dogs on the carpet for a bit. I’ll say to Sue, ‘I’m goin’ up.’ And
she says to me, ‘OK.’ I get into bed while she does her teeth. She
comes in, too. We huddle with our dogs. We go to sleep.”

Goldberg’s refusal to compromise

Whoopi Goldberg isn’t going to change for anyone, said Jazmine
Hughes in The New York Times. The Oscar-winning star, now 66,
has been through three marriages—the first with the drug coun-
selor who helped her get sober at 25—and many more romances,
including with fellow actors Frank Langella and Ted Danson. But
these days, though you might occasionally find her children, grand-
children, and great-grandchild milling around her summer home
on the Italian island of Sardinia, virtually everyone else is relegated
to the guesthouse. Whoopi now lives alone and likes it that way. “I
don’t want somebody in my house,” she has famously said. “I’m
not looking to be with somebody forever or live with someone.”
The kitchen is decorated with pop-culture artifacts, including some
racist depictions of Black people from the 19th century. “I love it
because I don’t ever want to forget what it looked like, and what
it is,” she says. “We can do a better job, but this was the norm.
People are willfully ignorant now.” Her fierce independence and
unconventional fashion choices have limited her career, because
Hollywood hasn’t always known what to do with her. She refuses
to be anything less than herself—either for casting directors or sig-
nificant others. “Compromise? What is compromising?” she says.
“Compromising for what? Compromising for what reason? To
compromise? For what?”
Melinda Gates’ painful split
Melinda Gates’ life was turned upside down by her divorce, said
Michal Lev-Ram in Fortune. In 2019, a Microsoft engineer alleged
that she and company co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates
had once had an affair; two years later, amid reports he’d made
overtures to other female employees and maintained a friendship
with sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Melinda, now 58, decided to
end their 27-year union. “I just couldn’t stay in that marriage any-
more,” she says. “There just came a point in time where there was
enough there that I realized it just wasn’t healthy, and I couldn’t
trust what we had.” The process was “unbelievably painful,” and
she made it a priority to shield their three grown children from the
fallout. She actually found the pandemic helpful, because it gave
her “the privacy to get through it.” Still, there were days she lay
flat on her carpet weeping and thinking, “How can this be? How
can I get up? How am I gonna move forward?” She and Bill final-
ized the divorce in August 2021, but still work together on their
philanthropic organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“I might be crying at 9 a.m. and then have to be on a videoconfer-
ence at 10 a.m. with the person I’m leaving,” she says. “I need to
show up and be my best self every day.”

QTom Brady and Giselle Bündchen have
each hired divorce lawyers as their rift ap-
pears to be irreparable, but Brady doesn’t
want their split “to be ugly,” a source tells
People. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ star
quarterback, 45, and the super-
model, 42, reportedly had “an epic
fight” over his decision to un-retire
from the NFL, but sources said the
own career ambitions, “I would like him
to be more present.” The source said “she
is the one steering the divorce,” and that
for Brady, “this really, really hurts.” Brady
and Bündchen own $26 million in homes
and property together, and each is worth
hundreds of millions of dollars.
QKanye West was suspended from Twitter
this week after he tweeted that “I’m
going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.”
he suffers from bipolar disorder and was
hospitalized in 2016, has not been sleeping
and may be having a mental breakdown.
QElon Musk last week shrugged off his
transgender daughter’s decision to publicly
disown him, saying, “You can’t win them
all.” In June, Musk’s 18-year-old daughter
changed her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson
and stated in court “I no longer live with or
wish to be related to my biological father
Nigel Parry/The Licensing Project, Getty (2)

couple—who share two children
and co-parent a third from Brady’s
previous relationship—have been
fighting over his career and other
issues for years. In a recent inter-
view, Bündchen called football
“a very violent sport,” and she
said that as a mother with her
Just days earlier, West was booted from
Instagram for telling rapper Sean Combs
(also known as Diddy) he was controlled
by “the Jewish people.” These anti-Semitic
outbursts came after West—who now
goes by “Ye”—fired the publicist for his
Paris fashion show and created a new,
“White Lives Matter” theme. Friends tell
the New York Post that West, who has said
in any way, shape, or form.” In an interview
with the Financial Times, the CEO of Tesla
and SpaceX said he believes his daughter
hates him because he’s rich, and blamed
liberal education for distorting her values.
“It’s full-on communism,” he said. He said
he has “very good relationships with all the
others [children].” Musk is known to have
nine children with three women.

THE WEEK October 21, 2022

 Briefing NEWS 11

Battling over books

Conservative groups and Republican officials are campaigning to ban books from schools and libraries.

Is this campaign new? kids’ hearts and minds from this,”

Attempts to ban books have gone on said Jennifer Adler, a mother of
for decades, but free-speech advo- five in Katy, Texas, referring to It’s
cates say the scale of the current Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts)
effort is unprecedented in this coun- by Lev A.C. Rosen, a graphically
try. In many states, angry parents sexual book about a cross-dressing
have filled school board meetings gay teen. But others say the main
with lists of dozens of books and objection to such books is discus-
demands they be purged from class- sion of LGBTQ matters that, as
room and libraries. Most deal with Amber Kaul, a bisexual student in
racial issues, homosexuality, and Katy, put it, shows gay, trans, and
gender. A report by PEN America nonbinary kids that their feelings
found 2,532 instances of book ban- “are valid and OK.” Some of the
ning in 32 states during the past most frequently targeted books
school year. The American Library have no sexual content but draw
Association (ALA) counted nearly fire for their discussions of racism.
Books banned by a school district in Walton County, Fla.
1,600 different books—most dealing
with race and LGBTQ issues—targeted for bans or restrictions last How often is race the issue?
year, the most in the 20 years they’ve tracked such efforts. PEN One in five challenged books falls into this category, according to
counted more than 50 groups fighting to ban books, including PEN. Books in conservative crosshairs include Ruby Bridges Goes
Moms for Liberty, which since its founding in 2020 has grown to to School, a child’s book about the first Black child to integrate a
nearly 100,000 members in 38 states. Governors, state legislatures, new school, biographies of Nelson Mandela and Duke Ellington,
and local officials have joined in the effort. and How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi. One of the
most-banned books last year, according to the ALA, was Angie
Where has that happened? Thomas’ The Hate U Give, about a Black teen whose friend is shot
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has called for criminal charges against by a police officer during a traffic stop. The list made by Krause,
school staffers who allow children access to books deemed “por- the Texas state representative, targets any books that might “make
nographic”; Oklahoma passed a law removing protection against students feel discomfort...because of their race,” including William
prosecution for teachers and librarians who distribute “obscene Styron’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 1967 novel The Confessions of Nat
material.” In March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law Turner and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, a criti-
that bans schools from using books that are “pornographic” or cally lauded book on Coates’ struggles with racism, written as a
age “inappropriate” and expands parents’ ability to challenge letter to his 15-year-old son.
books used in classrooms or available in school libraries. In
San Antonio, school administrators had librarians pull more than Is there pushback on the bans?
400 titles dealing with race, sexuality, and gender off the shelves Yes, and the battle over books is heating up. Last month a House
after a Republican state representa- committee held a hearing where
tive, Matt Krause, made a list of 850 witnesses included librarians, teach-
objectionable titles and asked school Librarians in the crosshairs ers, and students. Committee chair
districts to investigate whether their When Martha Hickson, a high school librarian in Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) called
libraries stocked them. Ban opponents Annandale, N.J., tuned in to a school board meet- book bans “a hallmark of authoritar-
say that’s part of a growing trend of ing where parents were demanding the removal ian regimes.” In some communities,
“soft censorship”—administrators and of several LGBTQ-themed young-adult books with parents and students have mobilized
librarians quietly removing books they explicit sexual content, she was left “absolutely to fight bans. In York, Pa., a coali-
stunned.” A woman in the angry crowd called her
fear might draw conservative scrutiny. tion successfully fought back after
out personally, branding her a “pedophile” and
“a pornographer,” said Hickson, 62. She’s one of the school board banned numerous
What books are being targeted? a growing number of librarians dismayed to find books dealing with racial matters,
About 40 percent of banned books themselves personally targeted amid battles over including children’s books about civil
address LGBTQ themes or have promi- books. They’re being harassed on social media, rights icons Rosa Parks and Martin
nent LGBTQ characters, according to publicly named and attacked by conservative offi- Luther King Jr. Similar efforts have
PEN. The most-banned books include cials, and even reported to law enforcement; some succeeded in Annandale, N.J., Round
Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, a fear it’s just a matter of time before a local police Rock, Texas, and Milford, Ohio.
graphic novel about a nonbinary teen, department arrests a librarian or teacher. Some Free-speech advocates say that a silent
and George M. Johnson’s All Boys have quit under the strain; others say they’ve majority does not agree with censor-
Aren’t Blue, a memoir about grow- removed books or chosen not to order certain ship, and they must speak up or a
ing up Black and queer. Those books titles that might draw scrutiny—an invisible form loud minority will dictate what books
of censorship. Librarians and teachers are “making
include passages about masturbation, and ideas are off-limits. “Now is
decisions out of fear,” said Sarah Chase, a veteran
oral and anal sex, and sexual assault. librarian in Southlake, Texas, who took early retire-
the time to start building those com-
Opponents say such content is inap- ment last year. “Who wants to be accused of being munities,” said Round Rock parent
propriate for young people, and that a pedophile or reported to the police for putting a Natosha Daniels. “You’re going to
access should be a matter of parental need to band together to fight what is
Reuters

book in a kid’s hand?”

choice. “I would like to protect my coming down.”
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
 12 NEWS Best columns: The U.S.
“The Republican civil war” over Ukraine is coming, said Nick Catoggio.
Ukraine Though polls indicate that the U.S.’s $67 billion in aid to Ukraine thus It must be true...
may split far still has bipartisan support, “hairline cracks” within the GOP are wid-
ening. Polls indicate only a slim majority of Republicans—51 percent—
I read it in the tabloids
the GOP think the U.S. should maintain support until the Ukrainians reclaim all
their territory. And 43 percent say the U.S. has already given Ukraine
QA suitor’s marriage pro-
posal at a Toronto Blue Jays
Nick Catoggio too much aid. In Congress, establishment Republican hawks are being game went painfully wrong
The Dispatch challenged by an isolationist, “America First” wing that “punches above when, as fans watched, his
its weight.” Rep. Roger Williams of Texas, for example, contends that girlfriend angrily rejected
the military equipment being sent to Ukraine “should be down at the his joke presentation of a
border,” repelling Venezuelans and Central Americans; some MAGA toy ring and slapped him.
Republicans view Vladimir Putin sympathetically, as a white Chris- “What the f--- is wrong with
tian nationalist fighting “Western decadence.” If Republicans take the you?” asked the would-be
betrothed to the man, who
House and/or Senate, the isolationists will try to force the U.S. to curtail
was on bended knee hold-
support. They will have an uphill fight, especially if Ukraine continues ing a Ring Pop. Some who
its successes: In the Senate, Democrats need only about 10 Republican watched a viral video of the
hawks to filibuster any attempt to cut aid. But in January, the battle incident questioned whether
over further assistance to Kyiv could begin “in earnest.” it was a publicity stunt, but
the suitor appeared to have
another, smaller box in his
The proof is in: “Republicans have indeed been more likely to die be-
A partisan cause of Covid” than Democrats, said Donald Moynihan. A new study
left pocket, presumably
containing the real engage-
gulf in by Yale researchers examined “excess deaths” in Ohio and Florida
before and during the pandemic—deaths that exceeded demographic
ment ring.

Covid deaths and historical trends for these areas. They then matched 577,659 of the
deceased to their party registrations. Correcting for age, the researchers
Donald Moynihan found that in 2020 and 2021, the excess deaths among Republicans
Slate were an astounding 76 percent higher than those among Democrats.
Tellingly, the big gap opened up “only after vaccines became widely
available.” That’s because right-wing politicians and media chose to
cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and disdained other
mitigation measures such as masking and social distancing. “Once Joe
Biden became president, Republicans amplified the claims that vaccines
posed a threat to freedom and aligned themselves with anti-vaccine QAn artist in Kent, England,
activists.” Fox News and GOP politicians began mainstreaming con- has spent two years blanket-
spiracy theories about vaccines and fringe nonsense about alternative ing his 13-room mansion in
treatments. This deadly disinformation gave these cynics “votes and rat- doodles—and says the end
ings,” but cost tens of thousands of Republicans their lives. result is “paradise.” Sam
Cox, known as Mr. Doodle,
used paint and markers to
“Pig farming doesn’t have to be this cruel,” said Mark Essig. The adorn virtually every surface
Do pigs Supreme Court will soon hear a case in which the National Pork within the $1.5 million home,
from the pillowcases to the
deserve Producers Council is challenging California’s constitutional right to set
humane standards for how pigs are raised, which is likely to affect pig toilet seats. “It’s living as an
artwork,” he explained. “You
better? farming throughout the nation. In a 2018 referendum, 63 percent of
California voters approved a proposition “which effectively bans the might think it would give
you a headache,” he said, but
Mark Essig sale of pork from farms that use gestation crates”—tiny wooden pens
“it’s really relaxing.”
The New York Times that leave sows “unable to even turn around.” In modern, industrial pig
farms, pigs—which are “intelligent, social creatures”—are condemned QA California woman was
from birth to a miserable existence in these crates, with no dirt to root shocked when a beloved cat
in, no straw bedding, no access to the outdoors, and endless pregnancy that disappeared nine years
ago turned up more than
through artificial insemination. The California law will require farmers
1,000 miles away in Idaho.
to provide sows with nearly double the amount of space they have now Susan Moore was “very dis-
so they can turn around, move, and interact—“modest requirements for traught” when tabby Harriet
a sentient mammal.” Most pork consumers would be horrified if they disappeared from their ranch
saw industrial hog farms, and “if we had a chance to look pigs in the in Clovis, assuming her pet
eye, we might have trouble looking ourselves in the mirror.” had been eaten by a coyote.
But she recently got a call
from a shelter worker in
Viewpoint “Today’s Democrats have a bit of a problem with patriotism. It’s kind of hard
Hayden, Idaho, who identified
to strike up the band on patriotism when you’ve been endorsing the view that
America was born in slavery, marinated in racism, and remains a white supremacist society, shot Harriet via microchip after
through with multiple, intersecting levels of injustice. Progressive activists’ attitude toward their she was found wandering the
own country departs greatly from not just that of average Americans but from average nonwhite town. “I wish she could talk,
Americans. Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans, in fact, are highly likely to say they would still because I’d like to know how
choose to live in America if they could choose to live anywhere in the world.” the heck that cat got all the
Political scientist Ruy Teixeira in his Substack newsletter way to Idaho,” Moore said.
Alamy

THE WEEK October 21, 2022

14 NEWS Best columns: International

Brazil: Could Bolsonaro still pull out a win?

The race for president in Brazil shouldn’t cronies would ensure that a contested
be nearly this close, said The Economist election would be decided in his favor,
(U.K.). Despite President Jair Bolso- which is “step number zero in the
naro’s “manifest unfitness for high of- model of every autocrat.” Yet this pro-
fice,” his main rival, the leftist former posal to destroy judicial independence
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, nar- has already produced a backlash,
rowly beat him in the Oct. 4 first round, said Valdo Cruz in O Globo (Brazil).
48 percent to 43 percent, and failed to Bolsonaro’s own advisers seem to
muster the majority that would avoid a think it was a “serious political error.”
runoff. A second Bolsonaro term would Privately, one of his aides told me that
be a disaster: The right-wing incumbent Bolsonaro can’t win unless he manages
is a “crass” authoritarian populist who to capture “the vote of the moder-
“lies as easily as he breathes,” encour- ates, who take a stand against threats
ages the destruction of the Amazon rain to democracy and institutions”—the
forest, and “openly incites violence.” Bolsonaro, Lula: The first round was close. very voters he just alienated. As for the
Fortunately for Brazil, Lula remains the front-runner, and both of Supreme Court, that longtime bogeyman of Bolsonaro’s adminis-
the other candidates from the first round have endorsed him. To tration has lectured the president that he “just needs to follow the
clinch the win, though, he’ll have to move to the political center constitution, and everything will be calm.” If only.
and convince voters that Bolsonaro’s wild accusations, such as
that Lula would close all the churches, are fiction. Lula will also Lula brings his own political liabilities to the runoff, said Joel
have to reassure Brazilians that the economy—which boomed Pinheiro da Fonseca, in Folha de São Paulo (Brazil). The once-
during his presidency in the early 2000s—will once again be safe popular president and former union leader served two years in
in his far-left hands. prison for taking bribes before his conviction was ultimately
overturned. That scandal turned some voters against Lula and
Even if Bolsonaro does lose the runoff, he may not accept defeat, his Workers Party, while many others were “apprehensive to
said Matheus Leitão in Veja (Brazil). He has already sown doubts see Lula supporting leftist dictatorships” such as Venezuela and
about Brazil’s electronic voting system, saying the only way he’ll Cuba. Still, Lula “never attempted to replicate” those leaders’
lose is if the vote is rigged, and he’s hinted at a Jan. 6–style coup undemocratic methods. Instead, it is Bolsonaro, with his unceas-
in emulation of his hero, former U.S. President Donald Trump. ing assaults on government institutions, who threatens to lead
But the greatest danger may come from Bolsonaro’s latest gambit our country back to dictatorship. Lula may not be a perfect can-
to stay in power: a plan to leverage his Senate majority to stack didate, but the only “threat of the Venezuela-ization of Brazil”
the Supreme Court. Expanding the court to add more of his comes from Bolsonaro. We have to hope for Lula to prevail.

Far be it from me to engage in Quebec bashing, or
CANADA “as it’s known in French, le Québec bashing,” said
Andrew Phillips. But the French-speaking province
Is Quebec seems to be pursuing policies destined to doom
it to recession. This week, Quebec voters “gave
trying to be an overwhelming majority” to a party, François
Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec, that “openly
a backwater? played on fears about immigration.” Legault said
allowing too many non-Francophone immigrants
Andrew Phillips
would be “suicidal” for the French character of
Toronto Star
the province. The problem, of course, is that Que-
bec needs workers. Companies there are refusing
contracts for lack of labor, so Legault has already
caved and issued a raft of temporary work visas.
“You can call that pragmatic or you can call it
hypocritical,” but at least it is an acknowledge-
ment of reality. His colleagues, though, seem ready
to consign Quebec to the status of “low-growth
backwater” as long as that means it retains cul-
tural purity. They should rethink their priorities:
The province is projected to dip below 20 percent
of Canada’s population by 2043. The rest of
Canada might then balk at continuing to subsidize
the minority or continuing to require French pro-
ficiency for federal jobs. To stay relevant, Quebec
must grow—and that means immigrants.

AUSTRALIA Australia is prosecuting the wrong people, said
David Estcourt. Not the ones in our government
Where the who are doing terrible things, but the whistle-
blowers who call them out. Richard Boyle, a for-
whistleblowers mer worker in the Taxation Office, is facing jail
time for exposing the predatory practices at his
are prosecuted office. Tax agents were instructed to reach first for
wage garnishment, snatching Australians’ savings
David Estcourt
to pay off back taxes. The office routinely siphoned
The Age thousands of dollars out of citizens’ bank accounts
all at once, leaving them unable to pay rent. Su-
pervisors, Boyle says, were heartless: One of them
payers threatening suicide.” Boyle tried to report
through the proper channels, and when rebuffed
went to the press. He is now charged with phone
recording and passing sensitive information, and
Attorney General Mark Dreyfus stubbornly refuses
to drop those charges. Meanwhile, military whistle-
blower David McBride is also in the dock, for
alerting the press to war crimes allegedly commit-
ted by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan—in fact,
he’s “the only individual being prosecuted over
those alleged killings.” Clearly, Australia needs to
rethink its priorities. Right now, “the battle for in-
Reuters

actually said, “For f---’s sake, I am sick of tax- tegrity in Australian politics” is being lost.
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
 Best columns: Europe
“He came from the U.S. full of enthusiasm,” said
KOSOVO Shkumbin Sekiraqa. An émigré since the 1980s,
Dr. Rifat Latifi was a big-name surgeon in New
American York, a professor at New York Medical College
and head of surgery at Westchester Medical
fails to solve Center. The Kosovar Albanian thought he could
remake Kosovo’s flailing health ministry and halt
health crisis the brain drain that has sent our best doctors
abroad, where they earn vastly more money. His
Shkumbin Sekiraqa
approach to his new job as health minister was to
Koha Ditore
treat the post as more of a “travel minister,” fly-
ing off to the U.S., Austria, and Greece as often
as possible in an effort to round up doctors and
NEWS 15
tout opportunities in Kosovo. Yet all those confer-
ences he attended and meetings he chaired made
not a jot of difference on the ground back home.
Our clinics still lacked basic supplies, while our
patients waited months for surgeries or borrowed
money to seek care in Germany. Solving our
health crisis would have taken a lot of money in
an environment where, as Latifi himself admitted,
“even Greek doctors are leaving practice”—but
the government didn’t come through. Latifi aban-
doned his post, defeated, after just 11 months.
“How ironic that this minister not only failed to
stop the brain drain but in the end also ran away.”

CZECH REPUBLIC We have met the Russians’ preposterous claims
on four Ukrainian territories with our own land
The joke that grab, said Tobias Eish. Why not split the Russian
exclave of Kaliningrad between Poland and the
didn’t amuse Czech Republic, and “finally give the Czechs ac-
cess to the sea?” The territory, a little spit of land
the Russians currently wedged between Poland and Lithuania
and bordering the Baltic Sea, was founded as
Tobias Eish
Königsberg in 1255 in honor of Bohemian King
Landesecho Premysl Otakar II. That means the Czech claim on
it goes back much farther than the Russian (the
Soviets captured it at the end of World War II). It
makes so much sense, in fact, that what started
out as a gag on Czech Twitter—“Make Kalinin-
grad Czech again!”—spread quickly to become a
nationwide game. A travel agency began offering
seaside tours, and Lithuania’s foreign ministry an-
nounced it was “a great relief to no longer share
a border with Russia” and said it was “looking
forward to our new Czech neighbors.” Russians,
though, actually fell for the joke and were not at
all amused. Military analyst Mikhail Tymoshenko
“immediately declared that Russia would never
give up Kaliningrad,” and Russian sites denounced
the scheme as revanchist. Of course, by doing so,
Moscow has also inadvertently indicted itself on
the same charge—and exposed the “absurdity of
its great power fantasies.”

Europe: Reaching out to the U.K. and beyond

The EU has “its mojo back,” said Simon sia’s invasion of Ukraine than anything
Kuper in the Financial Times (U.K.). The imposed by Macron. This “normally
shock of Brexit “killed off other exit move- divided continent suddenly discovered
ments,” and the EU has now found that it’s how much it had in common, as nation
much easier to act without the Brits block- after nation offered to take refugees and
ing Brussels’ every move. Smaller states send weapons to Kyiv”—even at the cost
“have learned that Brussels will stand with of far higher fuel bills. Crucially, Macron
them against big outsiders: with Ireland has realized he “also needs Britain,”
versus the U.K., with the Baltics versus as Europe’s “only meaningful military
Russia.” And indeed, Russia’s attack on partner for France.” But the unity only
Ukraine did a great deal to concentrate went so far, said Natasha Stasinou in
minds and force unity. Last week in Naftemporiki (Greece). German Chan-
Prague, French President Emmanuel cellor Olaf Scholz refused to sign on to a
Macron convened a mass meeting of all the Macron: Bringing the continent together European price cap for energy—instead,
leaders on the Continent, save from Russia he announced a massive energy bailout
and its handmaiden Belarus. The resulting 44-country European just for German businesses. What he has overlooked is that he
Political Community is “a de facto friend request to Britain,” is not just leader of Germany but also leader of Europe’s largest
but also to the EU’s other neighbors, including Turkey, the Cau- economy, and he must defend the interests of Germans “without
casus countries, and most of all Ukraine. President Volodymyr undermining the interests of everyone else.”
Zelensky, attending virtually, set the tone for a gathering aimed
at countering the Russian threat. “Let today be the starting Still, the massive summit went a long way toward realizing
point,” Zelensky said, “the point from which Europe and the Macron’s vision of a Europe in continent-wide dialogue, said
entire free world will move to guaranteed peace.” Anne Rovan in Le Figaro (France). All of Europe is now work-
ing together to protect European pipelines, cables, and satellites.
Macron knows this is “a motley bunch,” said Fraser Nelson in Macron managed to broker a meeting between longtime enemies
The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Armenia and Azerbaijan have been Armenia and Turkey, and he even got Britain’s gruff new prime
at each other’s throats since independence from the Soviet Union minister, Liz Truss, to concede that France is a friend, not a foe,
30 years ago, while the Serbs and Turks are traditionally sympa- of the U.K. This huge group will now meet every six months,
thetic to Moscow. But “if dinner in Prague Castle” moves these and the next stop is Moldova, a former Soviet state that even
neighbors “even a few inches away from Moscow’s orbit and now harbors unwelcome Russian troops. The choice of tiny
toward the West,” that would be worthwhile. And indeed the Moldova as host will “send a strong message to Putin.” The
grouping is more of a spontaneous, bottom-up reaction to Rus- continent stands united against him—at least for now.
Getty

THE WEEK October 21, 2022

16 NEWS
Noted
QThe U.S. national debt
has topped $31 trillion for
the first time, a milestone
that comes amid rising
interest rates that will in-
crease the cost of carrying
that debt. America’s debt
climbed $7.9 trillion during
the Trump administration,
and has increased another
$3.3 trillion during the first
two years of the Biden
administration.
CNN.com
QCovid-19 vaccines
prevented up to 370,000
Covid deaths and 700,000
hospitalizations last
year, a new Department
of Health and Human
Services study found. Vac-
cines saved the country
more than $16 billion in
medical costs.
CBSNews.com
QMore than 150,000 Ven-
ezuelans have arrived at
the southern U.S. border
this year after a trek of
over 2,500 miles. Although
more than 6.8 million
people have fled Venezu-
ela since 2015, only about
100 per year came to the
U.S. border. The severing
of U.S.-Venezuela diplo-
matic relations in 2019
meant migrants could not
be sent back, and word
spread that they could
apply for asylum and
enter the U.S.
The New York Times
QForty-four percent of
women ages 18 to 29
identify as liberal, while
only 25 percent of men in
the same age group do,
according to an analysis
of Gallup Poll data. The
share of young women
who call themselves liber-
als has been steadily ris-
ing for about 20 years, the
analysis found, creating
“a growing political rift”
between young women
and men.
The Hill
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
Talking points
Walker: The GOP’s abortion hypocrisy
A scandal engulfing U.S. Sen-
ate candidate Herschel Walker
of Georgia has exposed the
GOP’s moral rot, said Arwa
Mahdawi in The Guardian.
Last week, The Daily Beast
revealed conclusive evidence
that the former college football
star—who has likened abor-
tion to murder and backs a
ban with no exceptions—paid
for a former girlfriend’s abor- Walker: Paid for an abortion
tion. After Walker denied knowing the woman, it imperfect.” It’s not that personal failures don’t
was reported that she’s the mother of one of his
four children—and that he’d lobbied her to abort But “ideological indecency matters more.”
that pregnancy as well. But instead of recoiling
in disgust from Walker’s astounding hypocrisy,
Republicans desperate to regain the Senate rallied abortion hypocrisy, said Andrew Sullivan in his
around their candidate. The party that “likes to
preach about family values” is actually guided by possibly brain-damaged moron whose only
one principle: “gaining power” by any means nec- qualifications are football celebrity and Trump’s
essary. “No one should be surprised” that even
Walker’s evangelical supporters excused him as a
reformed sinner, said Anthea Butler in MSNBC
.com. As proven by their embrace of Donald
Trump, these so-called Christians care less about
their candidates’ morality than about legislating
“morality for others.”
Walker’s hypocrisy may rankle conservatives,
said Henry Olsen in The Washington Post, but
it makes perfect sense that they still support him.
Marijuana: Biden’s push for decriminalization
A “seismic shift” on drug policy is underway, said
Joey Garrison in USA Today. Last week, Presi-
dent Biden announced he was pardoning most
past federal convictions of “simple possession”
of marijuana. Only 6,500 people of the millions
with marijuana-possession arrests on their record
will immediately benefit, since possession is most
often prosecuted at the state or local level. But
Biden also called on state governors to use their
own pardon power similarly and asked federal
agencies to “expeditiously” review marijuana’s
Schedule I classification, which categorizes it
(along with heroin and LSD) as a drug with no
legitimate medical use and “a high potential for
abuse.” Though nearly three-quarters of states
now permit medicinal or recreational use of can-
nabis, it remains illegal at the federal level. Biden’s
big step toward eliminating that discrepancy
could be calculated to “energize” young, Black,
and Latino voters just before the midterms.
Both Biden and the country have undergone
a major transformation on weed, said David
Graham in The Atlantic. Support for legalization
has doubled over the past 20 years, to 68 percent.
As for Biden, he’s “an unlikely stoner hero” who
helped author multiple tough-on-crime drug laws
The choice between Walker
and Democratic opponent
Raphael Warnock is still
an easy call. Warnock is a
staunch pro-choicer who’s
all in on his party’s leftist
agenda, while Walker can be
relied on to cast votes backing
conservative goals, including
banning abortion. “Elections
are about choices, and those
choices are often decidedly
matter, said David Harsanyi in The Federalist.
The problem runs far deeper than Walker’s
Substack newsletter. He’s an incoherent, quite
backing. He’s a “serial liar” who’s concocted a
host of academic and career achievements, and an
accused spousal abuser who abandoned four kids
by four different mothers. One of his disgusted,
neglected kids last week tweeted his denunciation
of his father as a liar, abuser, and hypocrite. For
Republicans to disregard all this shows “how
degenerate” they’ve become. There’s “no principle
they will not jettison, no evil they will not excuse,
no crime they won’t ‘whatabout.’” Take a hard
look at Walker. “That’s what the GOP now is.”
as a U.S. senator in the 1980s and ’90s. Biden
now seems to realize that the failed “war on
drugs” approach wound up “demonizing entire
generations of Black and brown people,” said
Nayyera Haq in MSNBC.com. In 2020, Black
people were nearly four times more likely to be
arrested for marijuana possession than whites,
despite similar rates of use. Biden’s new policies
“don’t undo” the racist legacy of U.S. drug policy,
but they’re a start.
They also risk reinforcing “the myth that mari-
juana is totally safe,” said Leana Wen in The
Washington Post. For children and teens, “abun-
dant research” links the frequent use of cannabis
to cognitive impairment and a higher prevalence
of mental illness. Daily use of the highly potent
marijuana now available in legal shops, according
Getty, Federico Rios/The New York Times/Redux
to one study, “increased the chance of develop-
ing psychosis by nearly five times.” The right
legal balance might be to treat marijuana “as we
do tobacco”—legal, but regulated heavily and
restricted by age. Still, Biden made the right call,
said The Washington Post in an editorial. Wide-
spread marijuana use is “a public health chal-
lenge,” but one that “the criminal justice system
cannot solve—and should not be asked to.”
 Talking points NEWS 17

Hunter Biden: Will he be indicted? Wit &

“What’s the holdup in pros-
ecuting Hunter Biden?” asked
reasonable doubt that defen-
dants “knew their conduct
Wisdom
former IRS supervisory agent was illegal.” This is why “If you’ve lived all your life
Martin Sheil in The Hill. The many tax cases are settled in a prison camp, when
Department of Justice has without criminal charges. you are let out, you do not
become free. That’s not
been investigating President But Weiss faces an additional
what freedom is. You’re
Biden’s son since 2018, exam- requirement: “to treat Biden just in another space.”
ining if he violated tax and no better or worse than Nobel laureate Svetlana
lobbying laws in his lucrative other offenders” because Alexievich, quoted in the Los
business relationships with he’s the president’s son. That Angeles Review of Books
foreign countries, includ- puts the prosecutor in an “The whole point of art
ing Ukraine and China. He Hunter: State of mind will be critical “unenviable position,” and is to ask, Are you seeing
already paid $1 million in “regardless of his decision, what I’m seeing?”
back taxes to help decrease his chance of being he can expect an outcry.” Writer Nada Alic, quoted
prosecuted, but last week, federal agents leaked to in The Millions
The Washington Post that they believe they have Weiss should go ahead and indict Biden, said Jim “The older we get, the
enough evidence to indict Hunter for alleged tax Geraghty in National Review. “It will send a more we appreciate the
fraud and lying about his drug history when pur- welcome message that no one is above the law.” continuity of friendship—
chasing a gun. That decision, however, is up to Sure, it will create some “headaches for the presi- the fortunate gift of
David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney dent,” but that will happen anyway: If Repub- sharing the present with
in Delaware. Attorney General Merrick Garland licans win the House in November, they plan to the nostalgia.”
Artist Helen Frankenthaler,
has said he won’t interfere with Weiss, who faces investigate Hunter as a national security threat. quoted in LitHub
“a very difficult issue” that will set a precedent Prosecuting him will prove that the DOJ “follows
for future cases: “Can an alcoholic drug addict” the facts and evidence, without fear or favor.” “Nobody drowns
possess the necessary state of mind “to intention- That might come in handy if the department ever in sweat.”
Coach Dick Vermeil, quoted
ally commit tax fraud?” charges President Trump with crimes, said Jack in Profootballhof.com
Shafer in Politico. Garland “will have already
For that reason, this case “is anything but simple,” proven his commitment to the rule of law.” That “Patriotism is supporting
your country all the time,
said Barbara McQuade in MSNBC.com. The won’t stop MAGA diehards from accusing him
but your government only
DOJ has an unusually high standard—prosecutors of bias, but “swing voters would probably be when it deserves it.”
only indict if they are confident they can “obtain persuaded.” So “Hunter Biden’s bad news” might Mark Twain, quoted in the
and sustain a conviction” and prove beyond a actually be good news for Democrats. New Hampshire Union Leader

“Education should not be

Covid: New variants may fuel a winter surge
“Big Covid waves may be coming,” said Gretchen
Vogel in Science. Several “new and highly
immune-evasive strains” that have evolved from
the Omicron variant have scientists fearing
another big Covid surge as winter approaches.
While new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths
have plateaued in the U.S., cases are once again
rising in Europe—usually a harbinger of things to
come on this side of the Atlantic. Early testing has
provided troubling evidence that two emerging
subvariants, BA.2.75.2 and BQ.1, have “a striking
ability to evade antibodies” from vaccination and
previous infections. This potential new wave is
building even as only 4 percent of eligible Ameri-
cans have gotten the new, bivalent booster, which
should provide some protection against whatever
is circulating this winter. “Once more people
become infected with the new strains” in Europe
and the U.S., scientists will have a better idea of
how effective the new boosters are—and how bad
the coming wave may be.
“The pandemic appears far from over,” said Troy
Farah in Salon. Given that Covid “has essentially
been given free rein” with minimal pandemic
restrictions, it’s no wonder that it “mutated and
Getty
intended to make people
comfortable, it is meant to
make them think.”
acquired through vaccination and/or infection. Historian Hanna Holborn Gray,
BA.2.75.2 and BQ.1, which are proliferating in quoted in RealClearPolitics
parts of Europe and Asia, appear to be more
“The trouble with being
immune-evasive than any previous strain. The punctual is that nobody is
extremely contagious BQ.1 has already made it there to appreciate it.”
into the U.S., and “could be dominant globally in Franklin Jones, quoted in
short order.” Scientists are warning that “what- The Knowledge
ever this winter throws at us, we’re going to need
all the tools at our disposal.”
Poll watch
The new bivalent booster is the most critical of
Q60% of Democrats
those tools, said William Haseltine in Forbes.
and 36% of Republicans
Immunity to the coronavirus wanes after four
say they’re unlikely to
months, and people who were sickened by the blame election fraud if
huge Omicron wave or its BA.5 subvariant in their party does not win
2021 will be vulnerable to the new subvariants. control of Congress in the
So will people who got their last shot more than midterms.
four months ago. The new booster is tailored to Axios/Ipsos
BA.5, and since the new subvariants evolved from
BA.5, “it is very likely that the additional dose Q90% of Americans
of the vaccine will strongly increase protection believe the country is fac-
ing a mental health crisis,
against severe disease and death.” With Covid
and about half say they’ve
“rapidly mutating worldwide” and restrictions
experienced a severe
“at their most relaxed since before the pandemic mental health crisis in
began,” vaccines and boosters are critical if we their family.
want to protect ourselves and one another from CNN/Kaiser Family Foundation

evolved” to evade the immunity people have this dangerous, shape-shifting enemy.
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
18 NEWS Pick of the week’s cartoons

THE WEEK October 21, 2022 For more political cartoons, visit: www.theweek.com/cartoons.
Pick of the week’s cartoons NEWS 19

THE WEEK October 21, 2022

20 NEWS Technology

Meta: Doubling down on virtual reality

When Facebook founder Mark Zucker- love it, how can we expect our users to
berg changed the name of his company love it?” Horizon World’s graphics “pale
to Meta, he promised billions of people in comparison with some of its non-VR
would soon be spending many hours competitors like Fortnite.” And the ex-
immersed in his “Metaverse,” said Ryan perience is made even worse by “stability
Mac in The New York Times. So far he is issues and bugs.” The main lesson that
nowhere close. Though Meta this week the Metaverse is teaching early users is
introduced a new, more advanced virtual that “VR is lame,” said Adario Strange in
reality headset, the total of 300,000 daily Quartz. The toughest part for Meta may
users of Horizon Worlds, the company’s be that Zuckerberg himself has insisted
flagship VR game, “is minuscule in com- on being the face of the product. He lacks
parison with Facebook’s more than 2.9 charisma and has suffered repeated blows
billion monthly active users.” Horizon to his credibility, so few people are look-
Worlds remains “buggy and unpopu- Betting the company on a virtual reality gamble
ing to follow him into “the leaps of faith
lar” despite a spectacular expenditure inherent in adopting VR.”
of resources; Meta’s virtual reality division lost $10 billion last
year. Zuckerberg hasn’t even been able to sell his own staff on I spent more than 24 hours in the Metaverse, said Kashmir
his vision. When he asked Meta employees to hold meetings Hill in The New York Times, and while much of it was an ex-
in Meta’s virtual reality spaces, many “had to scramble to buy ercise in annoyance, I did find some true believers. There were
and register devices before managers caught on.” Zuckerberg, children swinging around superhero hammers and full-grown
though, hasn’t let up, giving employees a clear message: “Get on adults throwing virtual paper airplanes. Users have built 10,000
board or get out.” virtual worlds, and they do seem to enjoy spending time in
them. “Imagine waking up in the most amazing place in the
Even the people building Meta’s virtual reality apps don’t seem universe,” one woman said to me, explaining why she slept in
to be using them, said Alex Heath in The Verge. “Why don’t we her VR headset. She suggested I do the same, and when I told
love the product we’ve built so much that we use it all the time?” her that I liked waking up in my real-world bedroom, she said I
Vishal Shah, Meta VP of Metaverse (yes, really his title) said last should “aspire to better things”—probably as good a motto as
month in a memo to his team, “The simple truth is, if we don’t Zuckerberg could hope for.

Innovation of the week Bytes: What’s new in tech

Robotics engineers have found the
perfect solution to make tiny sen-
sor devices mobile, said Pranshu
Verma in The Washington Post:
Madagascar
hissing cock-
roaches.
Japanese
researcher
Kenjiro Fukuda
has strapped
sensors to the
backs of the
insects, with “a Bluetooth sensor
for remote control and special-
ized computers that connect to the
cockroach’s abdomen and send
tiny shocks to direct it left or right.”
Fukuda envisions cockroaches
Amazon pulls back on delivery robots
After three years of testing, Amazon “is shut-
ting down tests of its home-delivery robot,”
said Spencer Soper and Matt Day in Bloom-
berg. The 400-person team that had been
working on the slow-moving, “cooler-size”
bot, called Scout, will be broken up and of-
fered other jobs in the company. A “skeleton”
crew will “continue to consider the idea of an
autonomous robot,” but Amazon has decided
“the current iteration isn’t working.” The
robots were designed to eventually roll to a
customer’s front door, but in tests they were ac-
companied by human minders. Scout was one
of several “radical experiments”—including
cashier-less stores and delivery drones—that
Amazon has backed with the expectation they
that rely on U.S. tools will not be allowed to
sell chips to China unless they receive a spe-
cial U.S. license. “Most of those licenses will
be denied.” The framework is “similar to the
Trump administration’s crackdown on the
telecom giant Huawei,” although “the new
rules are far wider in scope, affecting dozens
of Chinese firms.” Top U.S. toolmakers KLA,
Lam Research, and Applied Materials have
been required to halt shipments of equipment
to Chinese chip factories.
Sending hard drives to the shredder
Tech companies are unnecessarily shredding
millions of data storage devices a year, said
Anna Gross in the Financial Times, contrib-
uting heavily to electronic waste. “When
Reuters, Kenjiro Fukuda/RIKEN Thin-Film Device Laboratory

equipped with cameras and carbon
dioxide sensors searching for survi-
vors after disasters. Other scientists
are also drawing inspiration from
insects. An MIT professor, Kevin
Chen, is working on tiny robots
that “mimic the ways lightning
bugs move, communicate, and fly.”
Chen says the “complex structures”
scientists can now create at insect
scales would have been dismissed
as science fiction just 10 years ago.
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
could take years to deliver viable results. But
the company now appears to be “starting to
wind down experimental projects.”
New chip rules strike at China
The Biden administration tightened its restric-
tions against selling chip technology to China,
said Ana Swanson in The New York Times.
The package of new guidelines, released last
week by the Commerce Department, repre-
sent “the broadest export controls issued in a
decade.” Companies anywhere in the world
companies decide they want to upgrade” their
server equipment, “which usually happens
every three to five years, data-storing devices
are routinely destroyed.” One estimate put the
number at 20 million hard drives per year “in
America alone.” The shredding is done largely
for PR purposes: Experts are “adamant that
conventional drives can be securely wiped
and reused.” Some tech recycling firms, like
Techbuyer, are offering to pay for used drives.
But “most customers still see the risk as out-
weighing the potential benefit.”
22 NEWS
The best time to eat is early in the day
If you want to stay healthy and lose
weight, eat your meals relatively early
and keep them within a 10-hour window.
That’s the conclusion of two new stud-
ies into how timing affects metabolism,
reports NBCNews.com. The first involved
16 people, all either overweight or obese,
who tried two different eating regimens
for one day each: eating their first meal
an hour after they woke up and waiting
for about five hours before tucking in.
Even though the meals were identical,
the delayed eaters had lower levels of
leptin—a hormone that helps people feel
full—and were more likely to feel hungry
A viral challenge that did some good
Ice bucket challenge drug
You may remember the 2014 Ice Bucket
Challenge, a craze in which people filmed
themselves having a bucket of ice water
poured over their head before challenging
another friend to do the same. That was a
fundraising campaign in the fight against
ALS, the neurological disorder once known of sperm that swam poorly or not at all.
as Lou Gehrig’s disease—and last week the Both issues can lead to infertility, rates of
Food and Drug Administration approved
an experimental treatment funded by the
money raised. The new drug, which will
be sold under the brand name Relyvrio,
is designed to slow the disease by protect- pital tells The Guardian (U.K.). “The more have a much more positive climate impact
ing damaged nerve cells in the brain and
spinal cord, reports The Washington Post.
The FDA acknowledged in its ruling that
there was “residual uncertainty about the
evidence of effectiveness” for the treat-
ment. But the regulator decided that this
uncertainty was acceptable “given the seri-
ous and life-threatening nature of ALS.”
The disease paralyzes patients, preventing
them from walking, talking, and eventually
breathing; death typically comes within
three to five years, though some patients
can survive much longer. “Anything that
shows any amount of efficacy is impor-
tant,” says Sunny Brous, 35, who was
diagnosed with the condition seven years
ago. Even a small change “might be the
difference between signing my own name
and someone else signing it for me.”
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
Health & Science
and crave unhealthy foods. In the sec-
ond study, 137 firefighters in San Diego
were told to follow a Mediterranean diet
for 12 weeks. About half ate their meals
within a 10-hour window—typically
between 8 or 9 a.m. and 6 or 7 p.m.—
while the rest spread them out over about
14 hours. The time-restricted firefighters
showed several signs of improved health,
including lower levels of blood pressure,
blood sugar, and cholesterol. These ben-
efits appeared to come with no decrease
in energy levels or other side effects. The
findings of both studies add to evidence
that there are optimal times in the day
Forever chemicals and fertility
A mother’s exposure to toxic “forever
chemicals” during early pregnancy may
increase the chances of her son having a
lower sperm count and diminished fertility
in later life. PFAS, or per- and polyfluo-
roalkyl substances, are a class of about
12,000 chemicals used in thousands of
everyday products to make them resistant
to water, stains, and heat. These com-
pounds do not naturally break down, and
have been linked to health problems includ- tion, and that in many cases the flares are
ing cancer, birth defects, and liver disease. extinguished but not reignited—meaning
For the study, researchers examined the
semen and reproductive hormones of 864
young Danish men, along with blood
samples taken from their mothers in the
first trimester. The men whose mothers had estimate that improving the efficiency of
higher exposure to seven PFAS chemicals
had lower sperm counts and higher levels
which have been rising worldwide. “The
results of our studies are an important piece Kort from the University of Michigan, the
in that puzzle,” co-author Sandra Sogaard
Tottenborg of Copenhagen University hos-
we know, the more we can prevent.”
Europa’s icy ocean
New photos of Europa, Jupiter’s moon,
add to evidence that it has an ocean
under its icy surface—meaning it could
harbor life. The close-up images were
taken by NASA spacecraft
Juno, which has been orbit-
ing Jupiter since 2016. One
photo shows long fractures
crisscrossing the surface—
fractures that may have been
caused by rising and fall-
ing tides in a subterranean
ocean. This adds to other
data, such as magnetic field
measurements indicating the Cracks could be tides. global or regional picture.”
Keep your meals within a 10-hour span.
to eat, says Courtney Peterson, from the
University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“You have this internal biological clock
that makes you better at doing different
things at different times of the day.”
Methane threat from flares
The oil industry’s practice of burning off
unwanted methane to prevent it from leak-
ing into the atmosphere is much less effi-
cient than previously assumed, a new study
has found. Researchers examined flaring
at three of the largest oil and gas basins
in the U.S., reports NPR.org. They found
that the practice often doesn’t completely
burn off the methane, a potent greenhouse
gas sometimes emitted during oil produc-
all the gas escapes into the atmosphere.
Based on these findings, the researchers say
the practice releases about five times more
methane than previously thought. They
the burning process, and making sure the
flares remain lit, would result in annual
emissions reductions equivalent to taking
nearly 3 million cars off the road each
year. In some respects, says co-author Eric
findings are encouraging. “If we clean up
our act with these flares, we actually will
than we would have realized initially.”
presence of salty water, that suggest
that Europa is indeed home to liquid
water. As such, it remains one of the
most likely candidates to harbor life in
our solar system, along with some of
Jupiter’s other moons and those orbit-
ing Saturn. “I would not say
there was some feature that
we were like, ‘Oh, my God,
that’s new,’” Candice Hansen-
Koharcheck, from the Planetary
Science Institute in Tucson, tells
The New York Times. Rather,
the images help fill in gaps in
our existing understanding of
Getty (2), NASA
the surface, providing “a more
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
Indigenous Continent: The Epic
Contest for North America
by Pekka Hamalainen
(Liveright, $40)
Finnish historian Pekka Hamalainen aims
in this book “to do nothing less than
recast the story of Native American, and
American, history,” said Jennifer Schuessler
in The New York Times. The University of
Oxford professor, who previously wrote a
prize-winning history of the Comanche, has
now synthesized growing recent scholarship
to make a surprising claim: In his version of
North America’s past, Indigenous peoples
were not doomed victims quickly overpow-
ered by European colonizers. Instead, he
writes, the clash was “a four-centuries-long
war” in which Native peoples strongly
shaped the course of events because they
“won as often as not.” Even many of the
violent attacks on Native Americans by
white forces—such as the 1890 massacre of
some 300 Lakota at Wounded Knee—are
best understood, he says, as manifestations
of white weakness and fear.
Novel of the week
Shrines of Gaiety
by Kate Atkinson
(Doubleday, $29)
Kate Atkinson’s latest “casts a jaundiced
eye at one of London’s historic heydays
while slipping the reader a flask full of
Jazz Age thrills under the table,” said
Laura Miller in Slate. In this “big, reward-
ing” puzzle of a novel, nightlife impre-
sario Nellie Coker runs a series of shady
but thriving clubs in post–World War I
London. But Coker, rather than being a
standard protagonist, “serves as the hub
for a collection of fascinating spokes.”
The tale spreads out to include 15 points
of view, including those of two runaway
girls, a former combat nurse trying to
find them, and a detective investigating
a murder spree. This “rather Dickensian”
novel is “filigreed with the improbable
coincidences of a Victorian serial,” said
Leah Greenblatt in The New York Times.
Yet it also “vividly conjures the London
of a century ago, a vast stinking metrop-
olis still teetering between the old world
and the new.” Though Shrines is un-
likely to add major prizes to Atkinson’s
crowded shelf, it “lands as light refresh-
ment; a cocktail of fizz and melancholy,
generously poured.”
Getty
A 19th-century depiction of a 1675 clash
The story of America that we’re usually
told leaps quickly from the first European
explorers to a young nation’s march west-
ward to the Pacific, said Kathleen DuVal
in The Wall Street Journal. “It can all
feel inevitable—manifestly destined.” But
Native Americans outnumbered people of
European descent throughout the 16th,
17th, and most of the 18th century. And
when Native nations weren’t forcefully
checking colonists’ ambitions, such as by
launching a 1622 war that killed a quar-
ter of Virginia’s small settler population,
they compelled the newcomers to abide
by Native standards for land use, trade,
Getting Lost
by Annie Ernaux
(Seven Stories, $19)
The affair described
in Annie Ernaux’s
Getting Lost, like
those in Anna
Karenina and
Madame Bovary,
“should be counted
as one of the great
liaisons of liter-
ature,’’ said Ankita
Chakraborty in The
Guardian. Ernaux,
who last week was
awarded a Nobel
Prize for her full body of work, wrote about
the relationship in her heralded 1991 novel,
Simple Passion, and followed it up with
this even more interesting account. Ernaux
was 48 when she and a married 35-year-old
Soviet diplomat began sleeping together in
1988, and Getting Lost, which is newly
translated into English, consists entirely of
her contemporaneous journal entries. This
is not a love story; it’s a portrait of the
author consumed by desire. “She is on her
knees from the first page, in the throes of a
lust she wants to cultivate and grow.”
23
and diplomacy. Well into the 18th century,
Plains peoples including the Comanches
and Lakotas ruled a large swath of the
continent, aided by a new economy they
developed that was centered on horses
introduced by Spanish colonizers.
“In a rush to overturn many historical
fallacies, the book unfortunately ends up
reaffirming several of the very myths it
aims to contest,” said Ned Blackhawk
in The Washington Post. Hamalainen is
so intent on emphasizing the persistence
of Indigenous power that he winds up at
once relating a story of decline while often
downplaying the devastation wrought by
colonizers through disease, war, forced
relocations, and imperial thinking. He
also closes his narrative in 1890, devot-
ing only a few late sentences to the trea-
ties, court rulings, and Native activism
that have ensured the survival through
today of several hundred Native nations.
“With its crude celebrations of Indigenous
agency, Indigenous Continent offers a lim-
ited entryway into a historical landscape
marred by violence. In the great recalibra-
tion of American history now underway,
more textured methods are needed.”
“I don’t think it’s crass to acknowledge the
thrill of reading Ernaux’s frank accounts
of sex,” said Mariah Kreutter in Astra.
“Nothing about them feels fake, and
therefore nothing about them feels embar-
rassing.” Her lover, identified only as S, is
described as repulsive in certain ways: He’s
misogynistic and status obsessed, for start-
ers. But Ernaux’s desire for him rules her
days for 18 months, keeping her from other
writing. “Entry after entry describes Ernaux
waiting for S to call. Entry after entry
recounts her fear that the affair will end.”
Ernaux is alert to the repetition, though,
making it hypnotic. She’s also “incapable
of writing a bad sentence.” Ever lucid and
witty, she at one point dismisses her story
as “just a layer of egocentric suffering.”
Fortunately, “the book’s greatest
weakness—its self-indulgence—is also its
greatest strength,” said Brianna Di Monda
in the Chicago Review of Books. Ernaux’s
careerlong project has been to connect to
readers by candidly documenting her own
life, and with Getting Lost, she is bravely
detailing how lust temporarily wrecked her.
At its heart, said Dwight Garner in The
New York Times, “it’s one of those books
about loneliness that, on every page, makes
you feel less alone.”
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
24 ARTS The Book List
Best books…chosen by Gregory Maguire
Gregory Maguire is the author of Wicked, the revisionist Wizard of Oz tale adapted
into a long-running Broadway musical. His new novel, The Oracle of Maracoor,
continues the adventures of Rain, granddaughter of the Wicked Witch of the West.
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
(1958). In the 1970s, teen geek readers swore
either by J.R.R. Tolkien or T.H. White. I chose
White’s tragicomedy of the education, rise, and
death of King Arthur. The story is audaciously
retold, as if the Arthurian cycle were not already
one of our foundational myths. It probably
inspired me to risk my own appropriation of Oz.
Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be
More to Life by Maurice Sendak (1967). A
Sealyham terrier, Jennie, adventures into the
trippy afterlife to find that mortal appetites are
eternal after all. The gray-tint, cross-hatched
drawings evoke George Cruikshank and Samuel
Palmer, but the mordancy is vintage Sendak.
Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara (1964). Before
text messaging was invented, O’Hara reveled in
staccato rhythm with immediacy and delight.
Single phrases can sting with accuracy: “the
smog of desire”; “democratic and ordinary and
tired”; “a dead dog bloated as a fraise”; “all I
want is a room up there / and you in it”; “joy
seems to be inexorable.”
Also of interest...in new short fiction
Bliss Montage
by Ling Ma (FSG, $26)
The stories in Ling Ma’s collection
“use fantastical situations to address
the absurdity of being confined
by labels,” said Michele Filgate in
The Washington Post. One of her
female protagonists lives with 100
exes. Another takes cigarette breaks by stepping
through a closet into another dimension. Ma’s hit
apocalyptic office novel, Severance, did something
similar: The concepts are surreal, but “the genius
of Ma’s stories is in how she stretches the bound-
aries of the world while zooming in on the details
that matter most.”
I Walk Between the Raindrops
by T.C. Boyle (Ecco, $29)
“Few authors can match T.C. Boyle’s
ability to nail humanity’s talent for
scuppering itself,” said Christian
House in the Financial Times. His
12th story collection once again fea-
tures clashes between the male ego
and forces beyond control. As the characters con-
tend with the effects of climate change and iden-
tity politics, “thorny humor lightens the worst of
circumstances.” The centerpiece, about a couple
stuck on a cruise ship as the pandemic hits, is “a
mini-masterpiece of claustrophobic comedy.”
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane
Gardam (1991). Gardam’s novels only get
richer with rereading. The queen of unreliable
narrators, an expert in denial, narrates this
wrenching—and wrenchingly funny—tale of the
mental collapse and recovery of a matron in a
prosperous London suburb.
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (1964).
Harriet taught me how to write. I launched my
own spy notebook in middle school; 55 years
later I am still at it, snooping to see how life
works. Eleven-year-old Harriet is bright, edgy,
uncompromising, and driven—like nearly every-
one else we want to hang out with.
The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M.
Boston (1954). Set in a Cambridgeshire manor
house surrounded by a flooded river, this gentle
novel of a haunting dating from the Great
Plague was my first experience of literary
atmosphere for its own sake. I read it at age 8.
Twenty-five years later the author served me
tea in the garden of her home, the setting of her
transporting fantasies. I’m still haunted.
Natural History
by Andrea Barrett (Norton, $27)
Henrietta Atkins, a beloved science
teacher in a small New York town,
is “perhaps the most enduring
character Andrea Barrett has ever
created,” said Christoph Irmscher in
The Wall Street Journal. She returns,
and takes center stage, in Barrett’s latest book,
an “imaginative miracle woven of complexly
connected stories.” As Henrietta counsels
neighbors, inspires students, and starts worthy
projects she never finishes, we deduce that “what
matters most is that one keeps asking the right
questions.”
Two Nurses, Smoking
by David Means (FSG, $26)
David Means “has never shied from
the larger issues,” said David Ulin in
the Los Angeles Times. His “beautiful
and complicated” new book tackles
grief from many angles, including
with an opening story told from the
perspective of a dachshund belonging to a wid-
ower. Another tale centers on a support group for
parents of dead children. In these stories, “trag-
edies take place, people die. Loss is insurmount-
able and lasting. Yet Means’ characters also man-
age, generally speaking, to survive.”
Author of the week
Elissa Bassist
For Elissa Bassist, learning to
speak out was a cure in itself,
said Megan Broussard in
NYMag.com. In late 2016, the
essayist, humor writer, and
Rumpus editor began experi-
encing a debilitating headache
that triggered
a two-year
ordeal during
which she
saw 20-plus
medical pro-
fessionals
and was sub-
jected to misdiagnoses, mis-
guided medication regimes,
and many rude dismissals.
“Communicating with doctors
often felt like a bad date,” she
says. Finally, an acupuncturist
suggested that the spread-
ing pain might be caused by
“caged fury”—and Bassist
bought in. She began writ-
ing about the many ways in
which she’d been cultured as
a young American woman
to choose silence rather than
ever risk being considered
annoying, belligerent, emo-
tional, or uncool. As she
wrote, the pain lifted. And a
book was born.
Bassist’s debut, Hysterical,
answers a challenge that
best-selling memoirist Cheryl
Strayed put to her years earlier,
said Brooke Knisley in Paste.
Strayed was then an advice
columnist, and in a celebrated
response to a 2010 letter about
crippling self-doubts, Strayed
advised Bassist to just write—
“Not like a girl. Not like a boy.
Write like a motherf---er.”
Bassist believes that her book,
which blends memoir, humor,
and a critique of rape culture
writ large, wouldn’t have got-
ten done if she hadn’t endured
the health crisis that nearly
cost her her life. It put liter-
ary ambitions in perspective.
“Once I survived, I was like,
I’m never going to complain
about writing again,” she says.
So she wrote not the book she
thought was what the market
wanted but the one she felt
she had to write. “Speaking,”
she says, “is so much healthier
than repressing.”
Getty
26 ARTS Review of reviews: Art & Home Media
Exhibit of the week that critics snootily rejected. “This
was a tragic moment in gatekeeping,”
Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered as “ossified criteria of prestige inter-
American Folk Art Museum, New fered with critics’ ability to see what
York City, through Jan. 29 was right before their eyes.” Alfred
Barr, MoMa’s founding director, lost
Nearly 80 years after his death, Morris his job. The museum meanwhile
Hirshfield’s “brash and slightly con- terminated its commitment to cele-
frontational” paintings can still take brating the work of self-taught artists,
some getting used to, said Roberta and Hirshfield fell into obscurity.
Smith in The New York Times. The
Polish immigrant, a “self-taught tailor This new retrospective “gives him the
turned shoe designer turned artist,” respect he deserves,” said Mira Fox
was briefly championed by Pablo in The Forward. Seeing his striking
Picasso and Marcel Duchamp before paintings today, “it seems unlikely
returning to obscurity after a 1943 that his work was as ‘primitive’ as
solo show at the Museum of Modern his contemporaries believed.” He
Art was savaged by critics. But the invokes Judaism in his choice of
American Folk Art Museum’s “extrav- ‘Angora Cat’: The house pet that wowed true modernists subjects and symbols. His rich tex-
agantly orchestrated” new retrospec- tures and patterns reflect his career
tive, one of the best exhibitions of this fall, in the Financial Times. Born in 1872, he in garment work. “Even his distinctively
reintroduces his offbeat self-styled paintings immigrated to New York City at 18 and stylized animals—dogs with oddly elon-
featuring animals, women, and “mesmer- worked for decades in the clothing trade, gated snouts, flat-faced cats, strange bodily
izing patterns, textures, and colors.” Some, then as a footwear entrepreneur. But after proportions—evoke medieval illuminations
like the “sublime” Girl With Pigeons, poor health pushed him into retirement and reveal a familiarity with art history.”
“shock with their absolute perfection.” and left him broke, he turned to art at His animals are “irresistible,” said Karen
Others “challenge or even repel with 65. He spent the next two years labor- Wilkin in The Wall Street Journal. His
their weirdness.” But “even off-putting ing on his first two paintings, Angora Cat nudes are “strange and fascinating,” so
Hirshfields often have wonderful, welcom- and Beach Girl, which were discovered bending the rules of anatomy that his crit-
ing details that can grant you entry.” at a gallery by collector and tastemaker ics derided him as “the Master of the Two
Sidney Janis. But after MoMA acquired Left Feet.” Not since 1979 has a museum
“It took Hirshfield a lifetime to become them and Picasso sang their praises, the gathered so many works by this singular
an overnight success,” said Ariella Budick museum mounted a 30-painting solo show painter. “Don’t miss it.”

The Dahmer backlash: True crime reaches a crossroads

“America is obsessed with serial killers,
but we need to be honest about the conse-
quences,” said Evette Dionne in MSNBC
.com. Netflix recently achieved its most-
watched series debut ever with its new,
10-part drama about the cannibalistic
murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, and relatives of
Dahmer’s victims have been calling out the
streaming service and the show’s produc-
ers for forcing them to relive the trauma of
their losses without ever seeking their input.
Netflix isn’t alone in pushing the true-crime
craze into uncomfortable territory. Over the
past several years, notorious killers have
been “widely romanticized and fetishized by
Hollywood.” But Netflix also isn’t new to
the game, either. Before Evan Peters was cast
as Dahmer, Zac Efron, another handsome
actor, played Ted Bundy in a Netflix movie.
Predictably, young fans of the Dahmer series
are taking to TikTok to publicly confess
crushes on the show’s central fiend.
will realize there is a way to tell these kinds
of stories with more sensitivity and care.”
Dahmer co-creator and showrunner Ryan
Murphy promised to focus more on the
victims than the show’s title figure, but even
when he does “exactly that,” for most of
Episode 6, he fails. The episode puts viewers
inside the silent world of deaf, gay aspiring
model Tony Hughes only to eventually depict
him crossing paths in 1991 with Dahmer,
who in the final scene is shown eating one of
Hughes’ organs. “Honestly, no one, least of
all the friends and family of Hughes, needs to
witness that moment.”
“Could the fever of our true-crime obses-
sion be at the breaking point?” asked Sara
Stewart in CNN.com. It’s possible that the
Dahmer backlash will push the average
viewer into “full-blown serial killer fatigue.”
Peters as Dahmer: Too much the star? But “I’m a longtime true-crime fan,” and
“I’m sure I won’t give it up anytime soon,” because disturbing
Estate of Morris Hirshfield, Netflix

fact-based human drama is “usually riveting.” Still, it is worth

The parade of such dramas isn’t likely to end anytime soon, said talking about the inherent flaws of the genre so that we can
Jen Chaney in NYMag.com. Netflix did almost nothing to pro- draw lines that take into consideration its effects on the crime
mote Dahmer before viewers turned it into a hit, so audiences victims’ survivors. “If we’re going to continue to consume
haven’t tired of such content. All we can do is “hope creators trauma as entertainment, we owe them at least that much.”

THE WEEK October 21, 2022

28 ARTS Review of reviews: Film & Stage
Triangle Ruben Ostlund’s latest social
satire is “one of the liveliest and
mood we’re all in that explains
the film’s Cannes victory, said
of Sadness most provocative films of the Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.
Directed by year,” said Kyle Smith in The “Dismayingly deficient in genuine
Ruben Ostlund Wall Street Journal. The mis- laughs,” Triangle is interesting for
(R)
chievous Swedish writer-director only 10 minutes before it resorts
who lampooned the art world to “tired second-hand satire” to
++++ with 2017’s The Square pokes attack the easiest targets. Using
A boat full of billionaires is fun at Instagram influencers and a howitzer to shoot fish in a bar-
shipwrecked. the über-rich with his “savagely Model passengers Dean and Dickinson rel must make some lazy view-
entertaining” new comedy. ers feel better about themselves.
Though Triangle of Sadness won the top prize at What’s lazy, though, is dismissing Triangle as a
this year’s Cannes film festival, “don’t go in expect- simple eat-the-rich takedown, said Tomris Laffly in
ing art-house intellectualism.” The first act, which The A.V. Club. “Ostlund’s genius lies in his refusal
establishes two models, played by Charlbi Dean and to be didactic,” instead making sure our sympathies
Harris Dickinson, as the central couple, “plays like a regularly shift, as when the yacht runs aground and
deadpan version of Zoolander.” The second, set on a the Filipina toilet cleaner assumes dictatorial power
superyacht helmed by a drunk captain (a “hilarious” because she alone has survival skills. The result is a
Woody Harrelson), culminates with a bunch of 1 film that “hits a rare sweet spot as both mainstream
percenters projectile vomiting when the ship hits entertainment and an incisive piece of cultural
rough seas. Maybe it’s the “cynical and exhausted” commentary.” In theaters only

To Leslie Andrea Riseborough’s perfor-

Directed by Michael Morris
(R)
++++
A lottery winner barrels
toward rock bottom.
mance in this small-budget
drama is “nothing short of spec-
tacular,” said Owen Gleiberman
in Variety. The British actress
plays a single mother who six
years after winning $190,000
in the lottery has drunk away
her winnings, chased away her
son, and now haunts the bars
Riseborough: A captivating addict
of her West Texas hometown.
It’s a “torn-from-the-gut” portrayal of addiction in
working-class America, and Riseborough “doesn’t
hold back.” Most impressively, she also captures
“the woman the drinking covers up.” The movie is
largely shapeless until Marc Maron appears, said
David Ehrlich in IndieWire. Playing the ornery yet
empathetic motel manager who
offers Leslie a job and a place to
stay, the comedian and podcaster
“leverages his personal experience
with loss and addiction into the
best performance of his career.”
Though the writing is thin, it’s
“deeply touching” to watch these
two lost souls warm up to each
other. This “heart-wrenching”
character study “probably could
have left 15 more minutes on the cutting room
floor,” said Beandrea July in The New York Times.
“But its intermittent lags don’t diminish the overall
satisfaction one feels in the film’s final act, when
Leslie’s rocky road settles into something believably
triumphant.” In theaters or $7 on demand

1776
American Airlines Theater, New York City ++++
In its new Broadway revival, the musical To me, the show is, against long odds,
1776 “looks markedly different than it “an absolute blast,” said James Frankie
did more than 50 years ago,” said Leah Thomas in NYMag.com. “If you’re going
Greenblatt in Entertainment Weekly. to do 1776, you couldn’t do it better,” so
Though the Tony Award–winning 1969 the real question is whether it should have
musical still dramatizes the Founding been revived. After all, “the problem with
Fathers’ debate surrounding the writing of 1776 is also the problem with the found-
the Declaration of Independence, the actors ing of America: It’s actually a tale about
are all either female or nonbinary and also slavery”—a terrible story. To its credit,
bring to the staging “a panoply of ages, 1776 “grapples with this reality much more
Crystal Lucas-Perry’s John Adams
abilities, and skin tones.” Perhaps there was head-on than Hamilton ever did,” devot-
no other way to resurrect 1776 in our post- ing its entire second act to dramatizing
Neon/Everett, Momentum Pictures, Joan Marcus

The New York Times. Unfortunately, co-

Hamilton era, yet the casting succeeds on
its own, adding “warmth and sweet imme-
diacy” to a show that, though often “very
funny,” is also a three-hour history lesson.
The gender, race, and ethnicity swaps
add a double-vision effect that makes
the debates about equality and slavery
all the more striking, said Jesse Green in
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
directors Diane Paulus and Jeffrey L. Page the Founders’ debate about the issue. But
don’t seem to appreciate what they have the play also presents Thomas Jefferson,
in Peter Stone’s script—“a masterpiece of enslaver of hundreds, as a likable hero, and
condensation” that’s “remarkably sophisti- even putting a pregnant Elizabeth A. Davis
cated” in its handling of complex historical in the role can’t make the characterization
dynamics. Almost every moment of this pro- less disturbing. Still, I’m glad to have seen
duction is “overpumped and overplayed,” this 1776. It left me “deeply moved by the
while the attempts to modernize Sherman collective work to bring out the beauty in
Edwards’ songs only muddy them. such a fundamentally corrupted musical.”
30 ARTS
Streaming tips
On the witch watch...
You Won’t Be Alone
This thought-provoking, hal-
lucinatory debut feature from
director Goran Stolevski is a
singular work of folk horror.
In 19th-century Macedonia,
a mother promises her child
to a witch who returns when
the girl is 16. Transformed,
the girl discovers she can
inhabit the bodies of others,
and does so, discovering
what it is to be human. $6 on
demand
Hellbender
It’s a good year for new witch
movies. This lo-fi offering, a
2021 festival release made
by an upstate New York
family, is the spellbinding
deep-woods tale of a teen-
ager who discovers that her
mother has been concealing
that both of them are crea-
tures who thrive on other
beings’ blood. Shudder
Hocus Pocus 2
Maybe something lighter?
Almost three decades after
the campy original, Bette
Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker,
and Kathy Najimy return
to delightfully ham it up as
17th-century witch sisters re-
vived once more in modern
Salem. Disney+
The Witch
No cinephile should miss
Robert Eggers’ horror
masterpiece from 2015. Un-
nervingly assuming a 17th-
century mindset, it follows
a god-fearing Puritan family
that is shaken by the disap-
pearance of an infant child
and directs its paranoia at a
teenage daughter. HBO Max
Suspiria
Skip the polarizing 2018 re-
make to Dario Argento’s 1997
cult classic, which proves
that terrifying witch stories
can be packed with ballet
dancers and Technicolor
pinks. Tub
Häxan
This 1922 silent film is part
documentary, part dramatiza-
tion, and feels like a work of
sorcery of its own as it charts
the history of witchcraft and
Western fears about the
practice of it. HBO Max
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
Television
The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching
Mama’s Boy
If Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screen-
writer of Milk, can get past his differences with
his mother, there’s hope for us all. This documen-
tary, based on Black’s 2019 memoir, recounts his
growing up gay in a Mormon household and fac-
ing condemnation from his mother when he came
out at 21. Fortunately, their love turned out to be
more durable than the beliefs that divided them.
Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 9 p.m., HBO
The School for Good and Evil
Move over, Hogwarts. In this new show drawn
from a young-adult book series, two best friends
see their paths diverge after they enroll at an
enchanted institution that trains its students
to become the heroes and villains of enduring
fairy tales. Sophie is drawn to evil; Agatha must
hatch a plan to save her. Charlize Theron, Kerry
Washington, and Laurence Fishburne oversee
the students. Broadway’s Sophia Anne Caruso
and Disney’s Sofia Wylie co-star. Available
Wednesday, Oct. 19, Netflix
From Scratch
It’s arguably standard romantic fare: A young
American woman moves to Italy to study art and
falls for a handsome Italian chef. But this limited
series, based on a memoir, has a little more on its
plate than good food, great scenery, and love’s
first spark. To build a long-term relationship,
Zoe Saldaña’s Amy and Eugenio Mastrandrea’s
Lino must navigate the culture clash between his
Sicilian family and her Black Texan family, and
when Lino confronts a health crisis, both clans
have to rise to the challenge. Available Friday,
Oct. 21, Netflix
The Peripheral
The next wild sci-fi ride is here. Westworld cre-
ators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have applied
their talent for trippy world-building talents to
adapting a 2014 novel by William Gibson, who
has been writing about cyber dystopias since
before they were cool. Chloë Grace Moretz
stars as Flynne Fisher, a young woman whose
enervating life gets a jolt when her brother intro-
duces her to a VR game that turns out to be a
Raniere, before his 120-year prison term
‘School’ chiefs Theron and Washington
portal into a dire future reality. Available Friday,
Oct. 21, Amazon Prime
The Hair Tales
Can we talk about Black hair? In this six-part
series executive-produced by Oprah Winfrey,
Tracee Ellis Ross sits down with prominent
women such as actress Issa Rae, pop singer
Chloë Bailey, congresswoman Ayanna Pressley,
and Winfrey herself to share personal defining
moments involving their hair and the social
expectations about how it should be worn.
Those tales become gateways to explorations
of deeper social history. Available Saturday,
Oct. 22, Hulu
Other highlights
Frontline: Michael Flynn’s Holy War
PBS’s news program examines Michael Flynn’s
transformation from decorated Army officer to
Christian nationalist and right-wing conspiracy
monger. Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 10 p.m., PBS;
check local listings
American Horror Story: NYC
Ryan Murphy’s horror anthology series returns
for Season 11, about which little is known
beyond its New York City setting and its new
characters’ predilection for leather and chains.
Wednesday, Oct. 19, at 10 p.m., FX
Inside Amy Schumer
Schumer’s Emmy-winning sketch series unveils
its season premiere, ending a six-year hiatus.
Available Thursday, Oct. 20, Paramount+
Show of the week
The Vow Part II
The highly effective first season of this docu-
mentary series taught viewers how easy it is
for intelligent people to be scammed. NXIVM
(pronounced “nexium”) looked like a self-help
group but turned out to be a cult whose leader,
Keith Raniere, lured heiresses and prominent
actresses into sustaining his practice of holding
women as sex slaves and even branding them.
The six-episode sequel provides a deeper under-
standing of NXIVM’s inner workings, aided by
co-founder Nancy Salzman, who testified against
Netflix, HBO
Raniere, and by prison phone interviews with
Raniere himself. Monday, Oct. 17, at 9 p.m., HBO
• All listings are Eastern Time.

Cincinnati chili: The most hated cult dish in America?
Cincinnati chili is often insulted by outsid-
ers, but “I will tolerate no slander of it,”
said Kat Kinsman in Food & Wine. Yes,
no other place in the country favors a thin
chili sauce made with nutmeg, cinnamon,
and clove, but “to those of us who grew
up in the Greater Cincinnati area, this stuff
is mother’s milk.” And when it’s served on
spaghetti and topped with grated cheddar
cheese (and perhaps some chopped onion),
it’s “a perfect food.”
Credit for creating the local obsession goes
to the two brothers from Macedonia who
founded Empress Chili Parlor in 1922.
Patrons loved the taste, and several equally
esteemed purveyors (such as Skyline, Dixie,
and Gold Star) joined the tradition over the
decades that followed. All of them, counter-
ing myth and various published adaptations,
deny using unsweetened chocolate in the
sauce. But Food & Wine has included it
in the recipe below for its added richness.
Leave out the kidney beans and onions if
you want what we locals call a “three-way.”
A “five-way” order gets you a version of the
dish below: chili, spaghetti, beans, onions,
and a “nimbus of shredded cheddar.”
Recipe of the week
Cincinnati chili
2 lbs 80 percent lean ground beef
2 cups beef broth
LEISURE 31
Food & Drink
1 (15-oz) can red kidney beans, drained
and rinsed (optional)
4 oz cheddar cheese, shredded (optional)
2 tsp grated orange zest (from 1 orange)
(optional)
Place ground beef, broth, and water in a
large, heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven.
Bring to a boil over high. Using a wooden
spoon, break beef up into small pieces.
Reduce to a simmer over medium-low.
The oyster crackers add a finishing touch.
Stir tomato sauce, onions, garlic, chili
2 cups water powder, cocoa, Worcestershire sauce,
1 (15-oz) can tomato sauce salt, cumin, cinnamon, allspice, cayenne,
3 cups finely chopped yellow onions (from black pepper, nutmeg, and cloves into beef
2 small onions), plus more for serving if mixture in pot. Return to a simmer over
desired medium-low. Simmer, uncovered, until
2 tbsp minced garlic (from 6 large garlic beef is very tender and mixture reduces to
cloves) a thick consistency, about 1 hour. Remove
2 tbsp chili powder from heat. Let cool to room temperature,
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder about 30 minutes. Cover and refrigerate
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce until flavors have melded, at least 12 hours
2 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste or up to 2 days.
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground cinnamon Skim fat from chili and discard. Bring chili
½ tsp ground allspice to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer,
½ tsp cayenne pepper stirring occasionally, until warmed through,
½ tsp black pepper about 10 minutes. Season with additional
¼ tsp ground nutmeg salt to taste. Spoon chili over cooked spa-
¼ tsp ground cloves ghetti. If desired, top with beans, cheddar,
12 oz spaghetti, cooked according to and orange zest; garnish with additional
directions on package onions. Serves 6.

Dining out: What’s new in Boise, Idaho Beverages: Greens powders

There are significant culinary advantages to being one Don’t overthink the details with greens
of the fastest-growing cities in the country, said Scott powders, said Ali Francis and Aliza
Ki and Scott Wink in Eater.com. Though traffic is up in Abarbanel in Bon Appetit. For anyone
Boise, the influx of new residents “has also brought ready to join the health trend and start
diversity and excitement to the area’s restaurants.” If stirring powdered greens into a glass of
you visit, you’ll find that the city of 230,000 still offers water or morning smoothie, “we’d ar-
easy access to mountains, rivers, and forests. What’s gue that the best greens powder is the
changed is that you’ll also find creative tacos, lamb one that you’re actually going to drink.”
grinders, Southern barbecue, booze-infused craft ice Below, some taste-test findings.
cream, plus these three standouts. Chorizo king Dan Antsotegui AG1 ($99 for 30 servings). This “nutri-
Kin James Beard–nominated chef Kris sages and small plates. Highlights include tionally dense” powder from Athletic
Komori specializes in seasonal, locally motzak chorizo with roasted garlic, and Greens is “a little bit sweet” and “a little
sourced dishes “cooked with precision roasted pepper pork belly with a chorizero bit earthy and grassy.” Its graininess is
and flair.” If you’re not ready to commit (Basque pepper) rub. 560 W. Main St. less pleasant.
to the $95 prix fixe, grab a seat at the Sunshine Spice Bakery & Café The four Amazing Grass Greens Blend ($40 for
bar for a craft cocktail and a house-made Shams sisters, led by James Beard semi- 60 servings). Though one of the sweet-
frankfurter or Idaho sturgeon sandwich. finalist Khatera, are bringing a taste of est powders we tried, tasters
999 W. Main St. Afghanistan to Boise at this spot that takes liked this powder for its “hints
Greg DuPree/Food & Wine, Instagram

Ansots Basque Chorizos Boise’s large
population of residents with roots in
Spain’s Basque region dates to the late
1800s, and chef Dan Antsotegui’s down-
town ventures have been keeping the ties
strong for decades. His latest, near the
so-called Basque Block, focuses on sau-
its name from a sobriquet for saffron.
Sweet and savory creations dazzle, from
the pistachio opera cake to bright saffron
pudding and “pillowy” steamed mantoo,
dumplings filled with spiced ground
beef and topped with garlic sour cream.
6911 Fairview Ave.
of matcha” and “raspberry iced-
tea vibe.”
The Beauty Chef Cleanse Inner
Beauty Powder ($65 for 30 serv-
ings). More subtle than the
others, this powder offers “hints
of kale, broccoli, and sesame.”

THE WEEK October 21, 2022

32 LEISURE
This week’s dream: The slower side of South Korea
“The secrets of rural Korea are not
widely known, even to many Koreans,”
said Adam Graham in The New York
Times. Half of South Korea’s population
of 52 million resides within Seoul’s “neo-
Brutalist sprawl,” and 92 percent of the
bustling country lives in an urban area.
But there’s a quieter side to the Land of the
Morning Calm, as the Korean peninsula
once was known. When I recently spent
two weeks roaming South Korea’s coun-
tryside, “I lost myself in tranquil thatched-
roof hamlets, peaceful Buddhist temples
clinging to mountains, glittering dark-sky
reserves, and unhurried towns where a gen-
eration of women over 60 are preserving
the country’s culinary heritage.”
Gangwon, South Korea’s beautiful
northernmost province, makes “a sensible
first stop.” I made a point of hitting both
its renowned beaches and its mountains.
Rather than committing to a long hike, I
visited Seoraksan (Snow Rock Mountain),
a national park, and rode a cable car up to
Travel
A hiker in Seoraksan national park
a rocky summit where a 13th-century for-
tress once stared down Mongolian invad-
ers. At many stops, I was the only non-
Asian, and when I arranged for a temple
stay at Samhwasa, a 1,000-year-old com-
plex in Muneung Valley, I had the place
to myself except for Bubchang, a “sweet,
wiry” Buddhist monk. Bubchang guided
me through a Buddhist ritual that involves
chanting 108 mantras and performing
108 deep bows. At the golden hour one
evening, we walked though mossy woods
“awash in pink wildflowers.”
Temple stays can be “slightly austere,”
though. Another way to experience Old
Korea is by lodging at the traditional
guesthouses known as hanoks. In Andong
Hahoe, a finely manicured riverside village
in Gyeongsangbuk province, I stayed in a
family-run hanok created from a lovely,
terrace-wrapped home built in 1811 for a
noble family. In Jeonju, a city on the south-
ern coast whose traditional cuisine is cel-
ebrated by slow-food enthusiasts, I awoke
one morning to a breakfast prepared and
presented by an older woman who was the
great-great-granddaughter of the house’s
founder. There were 25 meticulously
arranged dishes in all, including pink-dyed
lotus root slices, a vegetable medley made
with julienned lilies, and “gloriously ten-
der” grilled Korean beef.
The Seoul-based tour operator Wow Corea
(wowcoreatour.com) can book hanok and
stays and provide guides.

Hotel of the week Getting the flavor of...

The in-house café
The Quoin
Wilmington, Del.
Delaware’s largest city already
has small-town charm, and
its new boutique hotel “will
certainly add to its allure,” said
Dobrina Zhekova in Travel
+ Leisure. Housed in a 19th-
century Romanesque Revival
brownstone, the 24-room
property “layers modern
interiors and minimalist
Shaker-style furniture over
a Victorian-inspired ambi-
ence.” The Quoin feels homier
than many new hotels, as
each guest room has unique
features, “such as arched win-
dows, vintage rugs, custom
furniture, and a curated col-
lection of artwork.” The hotel’s
restaurant serves wood-fired
New York’s Jackie Robinson museum The rise of oyster tours
Jackie Robinson was more than the man who “The oyster tour is becoming the new wine tour,”
broke major league baseball’s color barrier said Jon Marcus in The Boston Globe. “From
75 years ago, said Bill Shaikin in the Los Angeles central California to Maine, the Gulf Coast to the
Times. An “inspirational” new museum in down- Pacific Northwest,” oyster farms have recently
town New York City honors Robinson’s athletic begun drawing crowds of curious foodies. “One
achievements, but fittingly, it also celebrates reason is that people have become more sophis-
Robinson’s “amazing life off the field.” The first ticated about oysters,” and more eager to distin-
guish them by region or brand. But people also
room provides an overview of his many non-
baseball roles: Army officer, civil rights activist, simply have greater interest in where their food
screen actor, entrepreneur, and more. The muse- comes from. “It’s pretty cool to eat something
um’s 4,500 artifacts include a bat and Brooklyn that’s just been pulled out of the ocean and sit
next to that seashore while you’re eating it,”
Dodgers jersey from his 1947 rookie season, as
well as the typewritten testimony he delivered on says Gary Fleener, who leads tours at Hog Island
Capitol Hill in 1949 when called upon to speak Oysters, north of San Francisco. Tour operators
about the appeal of have created boat
communism to Black Time to book for the holidays outings that stop at
America. Another “The best holiday present you can give yourself one or more oyster
exhibit lays out his is to book flights immediately, ” said Allison Pohle farms. Several states
contributions to vari- in The Wall Street Journal. After a rocky summer, have established
ous causes—fair hous- “airlines have pared their schedules” in order to “oyster trails” to
meet travel demand this holiday season, and as a encourage road trips.
ing, equal pay, drug
result, the average price for domestic flights this
policy reform, ending Fortunately, oysters
Thanksgiving and Christmas is roughly 50 percent
police brutality— higher than it was last year. Worse, “already-high flourish in beautiful
then tells visitors prices will likely rise significantly in the coming coastal regions. “You
how to further his weeks.” To save, consider new budget airlines such smell the tide and you
legacy. “That is the as Avelo and Breeze. “Be flexible on timing,” and hear the birds,” says
ultimate mission of if you think you overpaid, “continue to track prices Julie Qiu, founder of
the museum—not in the days and weeks after booking. ” Depending the website In a Half
Alamy, Matthew Williams

Mediterranean dishes, and
the rooftop bar offers views of
Wilmington’s downtown.
thequoinhotel.com; doubles
from $297
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
simply to share how on your fare class, you may be able to cancel your Shell. “It’s a natural
reservation and rebook using a travel credit. Lastly, connection between
Robinson made a
look into point.me before you spend reward points
difference but also to the things you eat and
or miles. The service tries to get fliers the best
encourage that you do exchange rate per point redeemed. the places that you
the same.” want to go.”
34 Best properties on the market
This week: Homes for less than $1 million
1 Fort Thomas, Ky. The French
Colonial–inspired Shaw House
stands in a leafy neighborhood
15 minutes’ drive from downtown
Cincinnati. Built in 1856, the reno-
vated four-bedroom home has 12-
foot ceilings with medallions and
crown molding, built-ins, decora-
tive fireplaces, and original wood
floors; a new chef’s kitchen; an adjacent dining area with drinks refrigerator;
and a second-floor balcony overlooking a green front yard. The property
includes a back parking lot with development potential. $789,000. Jeffrey
Hartman, Sibcy Cline/Luxury Portfolio International, (513) 673-3756
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
2 Woods Hole, Mass.
This cedar-clad contem-
porary Cape Cod was
built in 1973. The two-
bedroom house features a
main living space with cathedral ceilings, shiplap walls,
built-in bookshelves, and gas fireplace; a primary suite
with koji-screen doors to a deck; a gourmet galley
kitchen; and a loft. The 0.24-acre wooded lot has a
Japanese garden; southwest Cape amenities, Nobska
Beach, and the Martha’s Vineyard ferry are minutes
away. $995,000. Kerrie Marzot, Sotheby’s International
Realty–Falmouth Brokerage, (508) 274-2236
3 Seattle Two blocks from Woodland Park’s zoo
and rose garden, this three-bedroom townhouse is
also a short drive from the university. The three-story
home, built in 2017, is anchored by an open main
living space with wide-plank floors, floor-to-ceiling
windows, floating steel staircase, and kitchen with
eat-in quartz island; other features include an en suite
primary bedroom and a laundry room. The roof
deck has a firepit and views of the city, Puget Sound,
and the Olympic Mountains. $920,000. Diane V.
Ellis, Coldwell Banker Danforth, (206) 730-0123
 Best properties on the market 35

4 Austin This
renovated 1980
ranch home is in
old south Austin,
walking distance
from a nature
preserve. The
three-bedroom
house features a living room–kitchen-
dining space with a large maple ceiling
beam, light wood floors, and stucco
fireplace with grooved wood panels; a pri-
mary suite with oversize window and glass
slider to the covered patio; and a main
bath with terrazzo wall tile. Outside are a
landscaped front yard and grassy fenced
backyard with mature trees. $919,000.
Austin Stowell, Compass, (512) 294-8468

3
5 1
2

5 Forest Park, Ill. Near Oak Park and the Des Plaines River, this
three-bedroom townhouse also offers a quick commute by car
or transit into Chicago. Built in 2018, the home has three floors
of open-plan space with 9.5-foot ceilings and oversize windows;
a chef’s kitchen with quartz counters, eat-in island, and drinks
refrigerator; a dining area with balcony; a living room with
fireplace; and a ground-floor garage. Restaurants and shops are
within walking or short driving distance. $544,000. Johnathon
Sciberras, Coldwell Banker Realty, (312) 890-9922

Steal of the week

6 New York City The land-

marked 1927 Prospect Tower
in Tudor City Place stands a
block from United Nations
Plaza. This west-facing one-
bedroom co-op unit features
NYC STEAL images are virtually staged

casement windows with

park views; refinished oak
floors; an open kitchen with
a new granite counter; and a stone-clad bathroom. Building
amenities include a doorman and shared roof deck, and a
gym for an extra fee; Grand Central Station, the East River,
and Bryant Park are nearby. $450,000. Dorothy Zeidman,
Corcoran SoHo, (917) 912-8006
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
36
The bottom line
QMore than 2,600 officials
who worked across 50 fed-
eral agencies between 2016
and 2021 disclosed stock
investments in companies
while those same companies
were lobbying their agencies
for favorable policies. Over
1,800 federal officials re-
ported owning or trading at
least one of four major tech
stocks: Facebook, Google,
Apple, and Amazon.
The Wall Street Journal
QTikTok is facing questions
about how much it takes
from gifts donated through
its platform. As a test, BBC
staff in London sent digital
gifts worth $106 to a reporter
based in Syria through his
TikTok livestream. At the
end of the livestream, the
balance of the Syrian test
account was $33. TikTok had
taken 69 percent of the value
of the gifts.
BBC.com
QThe average
starting salary
of workers who
graduated with
a bachelor’s
degree in 2021
was $58,862,
while those with a master’s
degree earned $72,105—
about 22 percent more,
according to the National
Association of Colleges and
Employers. That’s the small-
est gap since NACE started
collecting the data in 2015.
Bloomberg
QForty-four percent of job
candidates’ searches in Sep-
tember were for “fully re-
mote” positions, down from
60 percent in August, accord-
ing to a new analysis by job
directory Flexa Career.
Fortune
QNew data from the
National Research Group
found that while 44 percent
of consumers have tried
to cut back on spending
at the grocery store amid
ongoing high inflation, only
18 percent did so with their
streaming subscriptions.
But 76 percent of dating-app
subscribers say they are
likely to cut back on those.
The Hustle
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
BUSINESS
The news at a glance
Banking: A bond panic in the U.K.
In a “head-snapping turn of A “government in a hurry”
events,” the Bank of England in the U.K. decided to “go all
expanded its emergency bond- out” and promised to cut taxes,
buying program and almost while covering the costs of rising
simultaneously underlined its energy prices, all as the cost of
impending end, inciting a new borrowing is increasing drasti-
market panic, said Andrew cally, said Mohamed El-Erian in
Ross Sorkin in The New York Bloomberg. That’s exactly what
Bank of England: Mixed signals
Times. Britain’s central bank had makes investors lose confidence,
launched the program to stop a fire sale of British and the U.K. turmoil is the predictable result.
government bonds, known as gilts, by investors Unfortunately, the same patterns will be repeated
spooked by rising rates and the prospect of deficit in other countries, “including those tradition-
spending. Bank of England Governor Andrew ally viewed as the strongest, such as Germany.”
Bailey “bluntly told British pension funds” they Investors will aggressively pull money out of
might need to sell bonds urgently, warning, countries that are seen as free-spending, punish-
“You’ve got three days left.” Bailey’s words sent ing governments for fiscal “irresponsibility”—at
bond markets into a tailspin; one research firm a cost to financial stability, and sometimes to
called them “the shortest suicide note in history.” citizens’ well-being.
Urgent headline:
Economy: Job market still running at full speed Pls fix now thx
Job growth fell slightly in September but remains too hot for inves-
Few things panic young
tors’ comfort, said Sydney Ember in The New York Times. The Labor professionals like a
Department said last week that “employers added 263,000 jobs on a “pls fix” email, said
seasonally adjusted basis,” the lowest monthly total since April 2021.
Lindsay Ellis in The
However, the figure was “still solid by pre-pandemic standards,” and Wall Street Journal.
the unemployment rate dipped to 3.5 percent. While this may sound The text may vary and
like good news, the market fell sharply because it “increases the pros- the notes sometimes
come with instructions.
pect” that the Federal Reserve’s effort to cool the economy and subdue
“But the message
inflation “will be more extended.”
generally translates to:
Reversals: More layoffs as Peloton restructures Stop what you’re doing
Peloton laid off 500 more workers last week in what the struggling fit- to send the 39th ver-
ness brand and pandemic favorite said was the end of its restructuring, sion of a PowerPoint
said Mike Calia in CNBC.com. In a memo to employees, CEO Barry slide to your boss.” The
McCarthy walked back comments that the company had six months to phrase has become
prove the business can be “sustainable.” He also dismissed speculation such a phenomenon
in fields like finance
of a sale. But its stock has fallen 95 percent from its peak—a dive so
and consulting that it
steep that, according to The Wall Street Journal, co-founder John Foley has been enshrined in
has faced repeated calls for additional collateral for loans backed by his
“pls fix” merchandise,
Peloton shares. including baby onesies.
Young workers “share
Autos: Rivian recalls nearly all its vehicles snapshots and stories
Rivian issued a recall of nearly all its electric vehicles last week, said
of receiving ‘pls fix’
Akash Sriram in Reuters. The carmaker, backed by Amazon and Ford, emails at all hours and
has delivered 13,198 trucks since last year but recalled about 13,000 of on vacation.” There’s
them “due to a loose fastener that could cause the driver to lose steering even a podcast called
control.” Rivian’s value fell by more than $2 billion because of “con- Pls Fix Thx!, which talks
cerns that the company may not be able to meet its 2023 production about “modern-day
target.” The company already cut its 2022 production target by half. trends that leave us
feeling overwhelmed,
Un-woke: Stumbles at a bank with a mission drained, and burned
It’s been a rocky launch for a banking startup aimed at customers “who out.” Co-host Sanchit
see Wall Street as too liberal,” said Rachel Louise Ensign in The Wall Wadhawan, a 25-year-
Street Journal. GloriFi initially planned to launch in April “with bank old consultant, thought
accounts, credit cards, mortgages, and insurance, while touting what of the show after an
it called pro-American values.” The idea attracted “an A-list group urgent email from his
manager on a Friday
of financial backers,” including Peter Thiel, and involvement from
evening demanding
Reuters, Getty
numerous right-wing celebrities. But by this week investors’ money was that he fix the fonts in
“nearly gone,” and questions have swirled about GloriFi’s volatile and
his PowerPoint deck.
reputedly hard-drinking CEO, Toby Neugebauer.
 Making money BUSINESS 37

IPOs: An awful time for a market debut

The IPO market has vanished, said Drew
Singer in Bloomberg. So far this year, total
proceeds from U.S. initial public offerings
have fallen more than 95 percent. And the
drought is worsening. “Just 64 companies
filed for potential initial public offerings dur-
ing the third quarter, the fewest in any quarter
since 2009.” After “record levels of IPO ac-
tivity” last year, “many of the companies that
were planning to go public in 2022,” includ-
ing big names like Reddit, ServiceTitan, and
Chobani, have “shelved the idea.” In the past
three months, “new issues raised just $2.7 bil-
lion, the lightest third quarter since 2008.”
A big reason is that U.S. tech listings have
dried up, said Gaurav Dogra and Patturaja
Murugaboopathy in Reuters. “Only 14 tech
companies have floated their shares on stock
exchanges so far this year,” the fewest since
2009. And the amount they raised ($507 mil-
lion) was the lowest since 2000. Analysts Porsche: Rare success in a choppy market
say “poor after-market performance of 2021 IPOs” is largely
to blame. The Renaissance IPO index, which follows the largest
U.S. IPOs of the past two years, is down 50.4 percent this year.
Dealmakers have hinged their hopes on a 91-year-old German
car company, said Nicole Goodkind in CNN.com. A debut by
Porsche, the shares of which are being sold by parent company
Volkswagen, raised about $9.1 billion on the Frankfurt stock
exchange at the end of September, and inves-
tors are hoping that might “boost IPO senti-
ment.” Though shares have since dropped
slightly, Porsche raised far more money than
any U.S. IPO listing has this year. The U.S.
is losing its listing luster, said Julia Fioretti
in Bloomberg. New York has handled “just
14 percent of the $153 billion fetched glob-
ally this year, the lowest ever for what has
traditionally been the busiest listings market
in the world.” On the other hand, Asia has
assumed 68 percent of the volume, mostly
from Chinese IPOs, “which have continued
to come thick and fast.”
The big test coming up will be Instacart, said
Berber Jin and Corrie Driebusch in The Wall
Street Journal. The food-delivery platform,
which is still targeting a fourth-quarter list-
ing, is reportedly generating enough cash to
keep going and doesn’t especially need to
raise money. But employees of the company, founded in 2012,
have been waiting a long time to cash out their shares and op-
tions. The bulk of Instacart’s offering “will come from employee
shares that will be sold directly to new investors.” Nonetheless,
the planned IPO will be watched closely by other private firms,
who will be looking to see if the public markets will value Insta-
cart at the nearly $40 billion that private investors believed it was
worth when a sale was discussed in 2021.

What the experts say Charity of the week

Wire-transfer real estate frauds
Potential homebuyers have a new scam to
worry about, said Natalie Wong in Bloom-
berg Businessweek: hackers stealing their
down payments. Real-estate wire fraud is on
the rise, with hackers targeting “random play-
ers involved in any real estate transaction—
lawyers, brokers, title agencies, mortgage
lenders.” Once inside a company email sys-
tem, thieves may “monitor correspondence
about a specific transaction for months.”
When it’s time for, say, an eager homebuyer to
wire a down payment, the thief will send “a
fraudulent email to the buyer, pretending to
give official instructions from the real estate
or title agent.” Danny Gonzales, a home-
buyer in Texas, mistakenly wired $123,500
to thieves who had accessed his title agent’s
system. The thieves’ email, which came from
a Gmail account, “looked identical to hers,
except for an ‘e’ that was changed to a ‘c.’”
The burnout-relief industry
“Quiet quitting” has already spawned a
cottage industry of workplace consultants
pledging to “pump up employee enthusi-
asm,” said Callum Borchers in The Wall
Street Journal. “If you’re running a company
Reuters
sages from experts claiming they can goose
morale, foster connection, (and) boost buy-
in.” Of course, gurus have always pitched
their techniques for solving burnout, but
the viral “quiet quitting” meme—referring
to workers doing only what’s in their job
description—seems to have “intensified the
sense of urgency.” One start-up, Rising Team,
even closed a second venture-capital round for
“camaraderie-building software.”
Jail for breaking security rules
Senior security managers are worried they
could face prison time for security breaches,
said Jacob Carpenter in Fortune. Federal
jurors last week found Uber’s former chief
security officer, Joe Sullivan, guilty of “two
felonies related to concealing a massive hack
of customer data from federal regulators.” It’s
“believed to be the first time that prosecutors
have charged a tech security executive” for
failure to disclose a corporate breach. Sullivan
handled the incident using “a somewhat com-
mon security practice”—paying the hackers
through the company’s “bug bounty” program
to keep it quiet. But he later “intentionally hid
the hack” from investigators and lied about
Uber’s security protocols. So fears of “rampant
Southwest Florida has begun the work
of recovering from one of the worst hur-
ricanes in recent American history, and
Mercy-USA (mercyusa.org) is already
bringing relief to stricken residents of
affected areas. Last week, it began deliv-
ering urgently needed supplies, including
clothing, diapers, and wheelchairs, to the
hard-hit community of Fort Myers, work-
ing with local shelters for those whose
houses have been destroyed. Flood
response is at the center of Mercy-USA’s
mission, and it has cooperated with local
organizations all around the world, from
Kentucky to Pakistan. In 2021, Mercy-
USA provided more than $58 million
in food and shelter alone. It has also
engaged in longer-term projects, such as
irrigating farmland in Kenya and building
a secondary school in Pakistan.
Each charity we feature has earned a
four-star overall rating from Charity
Navigator, which rates not-for-profit
organizations on the strength of their
finances, their governance practices,
and the transparency of their operations.

Four stars is the group’s highest rating.

now, chances are your inbox is full of mes- prosecutions” are “a bit exaggerated.”
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
38 Best columns: Business

Elon Musk: Will the meme lord burn down Twitter?

Being on Twitter “is like staying too late the ‘woke left,’” and his takeover
at a bad party full of people who hate will make Twitter “a friendlier
you,” said Michelle Goldberg in The platform for right-wing voices.” He
New York Times. And it’s about to get could bring “a host of right-wing
worse. Last week, tech titan Elon Musk culture warriors” back to the service.
seemed to have capitulated in his efforts But don’t discount the possibility
to cancel his deal to buy Twitter, agree- that ultimately Republicans could
ing to close the deal at the $44 billion “stake out extreme positions on
price he offered in April. If he owns Twitter that end up backfiring on
Twitter, Musk will be the ultimate troll- them at the ballot box.”
in-chief, and he is “likely to make the
site a more congenial place for racist Twitter’s value, both as a cultural
demagogues and conspiracy theorists.” barometer and as a business, often
Already, he’s promised to reinstate gets overstated, said Peter Kafka
Donald Trump, and “other far-right Musk, a reluctant owner for a troubled social network in Vox. With 238 million monthly
figures may not be far behind, along with Russian propagandists, users, it’s dwarfed in size by Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and
Covid deniers, and the like.” Maybe the best thing to hope for is TikTok. Yes, Trump could command the “world’s news cycle”
that Musk will make Twitter so awful that “users will flee.” But through Twitter, but that’s because he was the president of the
I’m skeptical. Twitter is addictive, particularly for people who live United States. Twitter’s 280-character tweets are losing their
in the world of breaking news, like journalists and politicians. appeal to young people “when much of the world is embracing
images and video.” Indeed, Musk will be taking over a damaged
Sorry, said Rich Lowry in Politico, “at the end of the day, the business, said Jack Shafer in Politico, and at the beginning he’ll
biggest problem Musk’s critics have with him is that he is a damage it even more. Musk “shoots off his mouth regularly,
threat to their de facto control of Twitter.” Since its founding, fails like clockwork, and overpromises like a confidence man.”
Twitter’s “workforce of hyper-online progressive employees His Twitter will probably explode on liftoff, like Musk’s first
overwhelmingly living and working in a deeply blue jurisdiction” tries at launching a rocket. The thing to watch for is what hap-
has been calling the shots. By contrast, Musk holds the classical- pens afterward. Musk’s ambitions for Twitter are grand—one
liberal view that “false or unwelcome speech is best combated by option is to turn it in to a “super-app,” along the lines of China’s
more speech.” That feels radical only to those who favor speech WeChat. To make that work, though, Twitter can’t reward only
suppression. Whatever you think of Musk, buying Twitter will the ugliest and loudest. Look for him to find his way there,
make him a critical force in the 2024 election cycle, said Kevin because if Musk is forced to spend $44 billion on Twitter, he
Roose in The New York Times. Musk “often crusades against won’t want to see that money disappear.

Invariably after any terrible disaster “experts pop up
There is no to label it an economic boon,” said Jeff Jacoby. Since
hurricane Hurricane Ian hit the Florida coast, there has been
no shortage of such experts. The Wall Street Journal
dividend promises it will “nudge up economic output.” That’s
right in line with the journalists who promised that
Jeff Jacoby Hurricane Sandy would spur a “huge economic
The Boston Globe boom” and the economists who called California
wildfires a “stimulus.” Don’t believe any of it. This
old canard has been with us since the 19th century,
and it was already expertly demolished in 1850.
The French economist Frédéric Bastiat wrote about
what happens when a shop window gets broken.
“As the merchant sweeps up the shards of glass,
dejected over his loss, onlookers attempt to console
him by observing that the loss is actually a gain.”
The money he pays for a new window will go to the
glazier, who in turn will spend it and drive more eco-
nomic gains. What can be wrong with that? Plenty.
The shopkeeper would have spent that money
anyway—on shoes, books, or at any rate something
better than restoring the very same window he al-
ready had. The same rule applies now. Catastrophe
is never an economic blessing.

It turns out Americans aren’t ready to do all our
A surprise shopping online after all, said Matthew Townsend.
return to In the first waves of the pandemic, when physical
stores shut down, the almost universal assump-
the mall tion was that having gotten used to the ease of
online shopping, consumers were ready to perma-
Matthew Townsend nently change their habits. That was wrong. The
Bloomberg Businessweek “e-commerce wave has receded,” and in some
categories, such as clothing, online’s share of sales
is back to what it was before the pandemic. That
has devastated businesses who relied on the convic-
tion that shopping had changed forever. “Amazon is
scaling back its sprawling delivery operation”; other
public mea culpas” for projections that proved to be
way off. Overall online sales growth has “reverted
back to pre-Covid levels.” Shopify, an e-commerce
software company, is laying off 1,000 workers
after bulking up in the pandemic. Perhaps most
surprisingly, “millions of Americans have returned to
malls.” That’s why Warby Parker, an eyeglass seller
that started online, plans to have 200 physical stores
by year-end. “When social distancing eased,” old
habits “came roaring back.” The consumer mindset
now, says one retail analyst, is “I want to get out
of my house.” Shopping in stores offers “the social
interactions humans crave”—and the pandemic may
Getty

companies, such as Shopify and Wayfair, are “issuing have reminded us of how much we need them.
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
 Obituaries 39

The coal miner’s daughter who rose to stardom
Loretta Loretta Lynn rose
Lynn from rural poverty
and teen motherhood
1932–2022
to become one of the
biggest names in country music—
and a groundbreaking voice for
women. The coal miner’s daughter,
as her 1970 signature song proudly
proclaimed, scored dozens of hits
with plainspoken, assertive songs
that addressed the tribulations
of blue-collar womanhood. The first female
country star to write some of her own material,
she told off a would-be homewrecker in “You
Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” and
warned a carousing husband not to expect a car-
nal nightcap in “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’
(With Lovin’ on Your Mind).” She celebrated
liberation by birth control in 1972’s “The Pill”
and demanded equality in 1979’s “We’ve Come
a Long Way, Baby.” “I didn’t write for the men;
I wrote for us women,” she said in 2016. “And
the men loved it, too.”
Lynn grew up in Kentucky coal country, in a
cabin “with no plumbing or electricity,” said
the Nashville Tennessean. The second of eight
children, she attended a one-room schoolhouse
before dropping out in elementary school. At 13
she met Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, a 21-year-old
The ‘Love Goddess’
who crashed comedy’s
Army vet with “a reputation for boys’ club
wildness.” They married two
years later, and by age 16, she Judy Tenuta preferred to be
carried on stage, ideally by
was pregnant. The pair moved
a bodybuilder or atop the
to Custer, Wash., where “Doo” shoulders of a few men. A
did farmwork and she picked 1980s stand-up comedian
berries while raising six children. who wore Grecian gowns,
Hearing her sing around the played the
house, Doo “became convinced Judy accordion, and
Loretta had genuine talent,” said Tenuta referred to
The Telegraph (U.K.). He bought 1949–2022 men as “pigs,”
her a $17 guitar and pushed her to sing in tav- she’d intro-
duce herself as a wallflower
erns. In 1960, she released a single, “I’m a Honky
before yelling, “Let’s party!
Tonk Girl,” which led to a well-received appear- You know you’re begging
ance on the Grand Ole Opry radio show; a deal for abuse from the Goddess
with Decca followed. She had her first Top 10 hit, of Love.” With a combina-
“Success,” in 1962, and by the next year “was tion of physical humor and
established as a force in country music.” piercing wit, she insulted
celebrities of the age, from
Her popularity “reached its zenith” when she was Vice President Dan Quayle
portrayed by Sissy Spacek in the hit 1980 biopic to Yoko Ono. A two-time
Coal Miner’s Daughter, said The Washington Grammy nominee, she
Post. After Doo died in 1996, she continued to promoted a religion called
“Judyism” in her act. “In my
perform and record into her 80s, and in later
years racked up a string of honors, including a religion, I’m the only one that
Presidential Medal of Freedom. She dismissed gets to complain,” she said.
“The really nice thing about
with characteristic bluntness, though, the sugges-
my religion is you can forget
tion that she’d made a singular mark on the cul- all about your problems and
ture. “Cultural contributions? What’s that?” she think about mine for a while.”
said. “I was just sayin’ it like I was livin’ it.”
Tenuta grew up in the Chi-
cago suburbs with a Polish

The prima ballerina who set The Firebird alight
Stephanie Stephanie Dabney’s
Dabney gift for movement
1958–2022 transcended bound-
aries. As a principal
ballerina for the Dance Theatre of
Harlem, she regularly wowed audi-
ences and critics—but never more
so than in The Firebird. She was
the first Black ballerina to dance
the title role in the Stravinsky bal-
let, and her soaring, passionate portrayal of a
mythical red bird who protects a prince from evil
vaulted her to fame. One New York Times critic
called her “the most incandescent Firebird imag-
inable,” adding, “one knew that this was a wild
bird.” And in 1988, when the Dance Theatre of
Harlem became the first American company to
perform in the glasnost-era Soviet Union, Russian
audiences were no less rapt. “The woman who
Getty, Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times/Redux
the teenage Dabney hope that
she could make dance her career.
She received a scholarship to
study with Alvin Ailey but “real-
ized that she preferred traditional
ballet to Ailey’s jazzier contem-
porary style.” She switched her
sights to the Dance Theatre of
Harlem, which accepted her into
its main company in 1975, when
she was just 16. Dabney “built an impressive
repertoire,” said Youngstown’s WKBN. In addi-
tion to her signature role, she earned praise for
her performances in George Balanchine’s Four
Temperaments and Frederic Franklin’s Creole
Giselle. She also danced part of The Firebird in
the opening ceremonies for the 1984 Summer
Olympics in Los Angeles.
Dabney “continued to receive laudatory reviews”
mother, an Italian father,
and eight siblings. After a
Catholic upbringing that
taught that women should
be subservient to men, she
became the first person in
her family to graduate from
college, studying theater
at the University of Illinois.
She then joined Chicago’s
Second City comedy troupe
and “went on to subvert
traditional gender roles,”
said The Washington Post,
through a raunchy stand-up
act that often roped in audi-
ence members.
In the late 1990s and 2000s,
she stopped doing X-rated
comedy and appeared on
children’s TV shows, in addi-
tion to collaborating with
her friend Weird Al Yankovic.

danced your Firebird,” Mikhail Gorbachev’s wife Tenuta often performed in

Raisa told the company’s artistic director, “she
was wonderful, as if created for this role.”
The daughter of an osteopath and a housewife,
Dabney was raised in Youngstown, Ohio, and
began dancing at age 4, said The New York
Times. She loved performing, but “being Black
limited her opportunities, even in school recit-
als.” Seeing a performance by the mostly Black
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater troupe gave
after testing positive for HIV in 1990, said gay bars, and she “counted
TheBody.com, but “the virus took its toll, and members of the queer
she was eventually diagnosed with AIDS.” She community as enthusiastic
retired in 1996 and taught ballet at Spelman fans,” said NBCNews.com.
College; health problems eventually put her in She even officiated same-
a wheelchair. The Firebird, though, was always sex weddings. “My mother
part of her. “This is a role where you get to always told me I wouldn’t
amount to anything because
really dance and be the music,” she once said. “It
I procrastinate,” she once
pushes you and fills your insides, and it makes joked. “I said, ‘Just wait.’”
your emotions come out.”
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
40 The last word
Path of destruction
Fort Myers Beach was ground zero for Hurricane Ian, said Linda Robertson
in the Miami Herald. In the aftermath, rescuers searched for survivors—and bodies.

F
ORT MYERS BEACH, “My house is completely
Fla.—Pasco, a young gone,” he said, breaking
black Labrador into tears. He was wearing
retriever on his first a T-shirt that said ‘Blessed
search-and-rescue mission, and Highly Caffeinated.’
quickly picked up the “See these stakes and con-
scent on Anchorage Street. crete slab? That’s my three-
He led a Miami firefighter bedroom house. See that
to the top of a rubble pile bunch of sticks down the
and jumped down the street? That’s my house.
other side. I’ve got nothing but the
clothes I’m wearing.”
“Confirmed!” the fire-
fighter shouted over Yet Critser was most
the din of a helicop- concerned about “my
ter passing overhead. people”—his ministry for
“One deceased.” the town’s homeless peo-
ple. He was trying to find
Pasco is trained to find transportation for three
live humans. Other dozen to a downtown Fort
dogs are trained to find Myers shelter.
human remains. But

48 hours after Hurricane
Ian attacked this mellow
beach town, emergency
crews were discovering
more dead people than they A member of the Task Force 2 search-and-rescue team hunts through the rubble.
were saving trapped people.
As bright sunshine lit up the clear blue
sky Friday, the firefighter grabbed a rain-
soaked maroon bedspread and covered the
body slumped on lumber from what used
to be a bedroom or kitchen or bathroom.
It was impossible to tell where in the house their condo under the roof of a hotel. They girlfriend, MacKenzie Hood, worked at the
the victim may have tried to seek shelter
when an 8- to 10-foot storm surge sub-
merged the barrier island on Wednesday
afternoon.
The firefighters of Squad 6, Florida Task
Force 2, radioed a medical unit to pick up
the fourth body they’d found on their sec-
ond day of searching, tied pink plastic tape could to keep afloat.”
around a palm tree and walked down the
block to probe more ruins.
Most of Fort Myers Beach, a town on
Estero Island that swells to four times its
year-round population of 5,600 during
snowbird and tourist season, was razed
when Ian crashed ashore packing 150 mph up under all this debris and on the other
winds. There were multiple eyewitness
accounts of horrifying fates.
“We’ve seen bodies everywhere,” said
John Galatro, who rode out the storm in
the Leonardo Arms condo. “We counted
10 people in our building who died trying
to climb to the roof during the height of
M
ATTHEW STOHR
saw a corpse in
the wreckage of
Times Square, the town’s
core of quaint or kitschy—
depending on personal
some away. I personally covered one with taste—beachwear shops, bars, fried-fish
a blanket. We made ‘Deceased’ signs so the joints, souvenir stands, and tattoo and ice
helicopters could see them.” cream parlors.
Galatro, his girlfriend, and his daughter “I’m going to have nightmares,” Stohr
were resting with a tearful woman from said. He worked at the Tropical Grill. His
were pushing luggage carts filled with Lighthouse resort, where they and other
their belongings toward the Matanzas Pass employees took refuge on the second floor
bridge to the mainland. “Everyone on this during the storm.
island is going to need a lot of therapy,” he
said. “We rescued an old couple who had “The storm was so nasty and the water
to tread water for hours. We pulled them was so high we’re lucky we survived,”
out of a flooded laundromat where they Hood said. “It was scary. We drank a lot.”
said they were holding onto whatever they Along the town’s main drag, Estero
Boulevard, dazed residents trudged through
Pastor Forrest Critser wept as he recounted slippery gray muck, dragging suitcases or
what happened to his church and his neigh- pushing shopping carts full of whatever
bors. “We found a dead lady with her two they could salvage. They were making an
dogs by her side. They were dead, too,” exodus—police closed off the island to
he said. “The paramedics found a dead visitors and cars—and weren’t sure when
couple. I’m sure more are going to turn or if they were coming back to their slice of
heaven known for its sunsets, seashells, and
islands.” Rum Runners. Business owners assessed
damage and debated whether to rebuild.
Critser and his co-pastor son Kevin Shawn No one ventured a guess as to when power,
said their Beach Baptist Church was
water, and cell service would be restored.
“totaled.” Two white crosses were intact,
but the interior was a mess. Also destroyed, Scattered around the apocalyptic landscape
the adjacent food pantry that provided was the flotsam of their everyday lives
1,200 meals per week and a 62-bed retreat. turned upside down—ovens, air condition-
Getty (3)

the surge. That water was raging and swept And Critser’s home. ers, stairways to nowhere, beer kegs, mat-
THE WEEK October 21, 2022

tresses, toilets, a Peloton, a wedding album,
a lawnmower, cars with shattered wind-
shields, lonely sandals missing their mates.
All that remains of the popular pier are
skeletal slats and pilings. Most stunning
was the sight of houses washed inland.
Like a supersize tide driven by Category 4
winds, the water ripped buildings off their
foundations and carried them 50, 100, even
300 yards as they were moved around like
Monopoly pieces. Picturesque old wood-
frame cottages were particularly vulnerable.
“The destructive power of the surge made
this hurricane equivalent to 200 mph
winds,” said Miami Mayor Francis Suarez,
who was in Fort Myers Beach on Friday.
“How would Miami deal with 10 feet of
storm surge? Is any city on the planet capa-
ble of dealing with it? When you consider
the loss of life and the billions
of dollars at stake, our priority
needs to be investing in methods
for blunting storm surge.”
T
HE DISORIENTING DIS-
placement complicates the
job of rescuers. Addresses
and maps become useless.
They’re not only searching for
people but for remnants of the
places where those people lived.
”The difference between flooding
is that during surge, structures
slam into each other,” said Iggy
Carroll, executive director of
Miami’s Fire Rescue department,
describing the bowling-ball effect
of storm surge. “At the location
where we’d expect to see a house
there is no house. We have to
follow the debris path to find it.
Conversely, here’s a house that
wasn’t here before.”
Miami Lt. Peter Darley said first
responders have to act as detec-
tives when time is of the essence.
“We received a head’s up that
a neighbor was missing. Fourth
house down on Anchorage. But
there is no house here. They told
us to look for a blue roof. But Devastation from Ian, the deadliest U.S. hurricane since Katrina in 2005
there is no blue roof here. We found it on
the next block,” he said. “We were looking Carroll was driving one of the city’s jacked- are the lifeblood of the local economy.
for two bodies on Andre-Mar Boulevard.
We had to hunt for clues—the color of the
paint, a house number, the make of the car earth movers, and dump trucks, when he
that used to be in the driveway. We found
them 200 yards from where the house had
stood.”
During their first 24 hours in the area,
Florida Task Force 2 members—among
1,000 rescue personnel dispatched across
the state—rescued 60 people. They will
The last word
transition to the next phase of their opera-
tion, which entails rigorous searches.
“First we’re doing a primary search of rub-
ble and conditions, and we’re looking for
people who are in distress and need help,”
Lt. Jennifer Arguello said. “That gives
us a game plan on where to concentrate
searches for human remains. We rely a lot
on neighbors, friends, and relatives to track
who is where.”
T
HROUGH YEARS OF experience
with disasters, including last year’s
Surfside condo collapse that killed
98, Task Force 2 has developed specialists
in search and rescue, structural engineering,
hazardous materials, medicine, and canine.
They’ve modified vehicles to maneuver
through deep water and challenging terrain.
up SUVs down Estero Boulevard, navigat-
ing past a growing fleet of ambulances,
was stopped by an 84-year-old man who
was trying to walk off the island but had
become exhausted. Carroll called a ride
for him.
Later, Cigar Hut owner Steven Light flagged
Carroll down, and Carroll drove him to
his girlfriend’s apartment on Lovers’ Key,
41
where they were reunited. He also made
sure an elderly man in a wheelchair
received treatment, and touched base with
paramedics who rescued four immobile
people from the Pointe Estero condo.
Back with Squad 6 on Anchorage Drive,
Carroll, Darley, and Arguello checked
on Emiliano “Emmy” Crespo, who was
splattered with mud and wore bandages
on his legs. He was relieved to see the
Miami crew. “I survived Andrew, too, from
Perrine,” Crespo said of the 1992 hurricane
that devastated south Miami-Dade County.
“Half my house was destroyed and my car
was found 13 blocks away. You’d think I’d
have learned my lesson and evacuated.”
“The water’s what did it this time. I didn’t
think the water would come that high,” he
said, pointing to a 9-foot-tall water line in
his garage. “Andrew was a lot of
wind and plain old rain. This was
like a tidal wave.”
Brad Evans and wife Regiane are
also complacent hurricane veter-
ans who regretted not evacuating.
Ian squatted over Southwest
Florida and pounded it for hours.
“It’s the most frightening thing
we’ve been through. We’ve done
Category 5 whitewater rafting
and it was way worse than that.
It looked like the inside of a
washing machine,” Evans said.
“It came up to 8 or 9 feet very
fast, peaked at 4:45 p.m. and
receded within 90 minutes.
“We went through all the hur-
ricanes when we lived in South
Florida and we thought 3 to 4
feet of storm surge, yeah, yeah,
we can handle that. We were
wrong. This is what we’re going
to get from now on with climate
change.”
After their traumatic experience,
Matthew Stohr and MacKenzie
Hood remained shaken. They
have mixed feelings about leaving
the beloved island. They’ve heard
nothing about their restaurant
and hotel jobs, service jobs that
Stohr struggled to find the right words to
describe nothingness. “It’s gone. It’s all
gone. Just gone,” he said.
Then he raised a fist.
“We f---ing made it,” he whooped. “We
made it out alive.”
This story was first published in the Miami
Herald. Used with permission.
THE WEEK October 21, 2022
42 The Puzzle Page
Crossword No. 668: You Win Again by Matt Gaffney The Week Contest
This week’s question: The joint winners of an Ohio bass-
fishing tournament were stripped of their prizes when
the bass they caught were found to have lead weights
inside their stomachs. Please come up with a name for a
true-crime film about these fishing fraudsters.
Last week’s contest: A Welsh woman who was jilted by
her boyfriend of four years on her wedding day cheered
herself up by going through the whole ceremony and
reception without him. Please come up with a name for
an unexpected wedding for one.
THE WINNER: “Better Halved”
Martha Herp, Cocoa Beach, Fla.
SECOND PLACE: “Near Mrs.”
Phyllis Klein, Forest Hills, N.Y.
THIRD PLACE: “The Princeless Bride”
Jay Detweiler, Goshen, Ind.
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contest@theweek.com. Please include your name,
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issue and at theweek.com/puzzles
on Friday, Oct. 21. In the case of
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Nobel in physics in sequencing this 30 Part of Caesar’s boast Fill in all the
and the 1911 prize in 61 John Bardeen won 31 Camera or clock, on a boxes so that
chemistry two Nobels in physics; phone’s screen each row, column,
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K. ___ became the fifth for co-creating this 33 Skin issue square includes
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medium
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