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RHETORIC unjust? comeback
Pages 14, 17 Paul p.6 p.15
Pelosi

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 Contents 3

Editor’s letter
The go-to tactic for downplaying political terrorism and mass
shootings is to blame the attackers’ violence on “mental illness.”
A person who would crack an 82-year-old man’s skull with a
hammer, or shoot up a supermarket, synagogue, or school, is
no doubt mentally unwell. But what triggers troubled people
to lash out violently? What determines their choice of targets?
Those questions become more urgent when you consider that
David DePape, the man accused of trying to kill Nancy Pelo-
si’s husband, shares a belief system with literally tens of millions
of Americans: The 2020 election was stolen, Covid vaccination
was tyranny, a Jewish cabal controls the world, legions of pedo-
philes are grooming children, and white men are now our soci-
ety’s most persecuted victims. “He really believed in the whole
MAGA, ‘Pizzagate,’ stolen election—you know, all of it, all the
way down the line,” said Frank Ciccarelli, a carpenter who em-
ployed DePape for six years. “He went down the rabbit hole.”
The rabbit hole of disinformation doesn’t lead everyone to po-
litical violence. But there is simply no way to know which of the
millions now marinating in lies and hate will confine their pro-
voked rage to obnoxious ranting, and which will be tipped over
the edge. And so it is that in our Land of the Free, schools and
synagogues now post armed guards at their doors. School, town,
and election board meetings are dominated by screaming citi-
zens threatening to “destroy” public officials. Militia members
had detailed plans to kidnap and likely kill Michigan’s governor.
Death threats fill the inboxes of public figures and journalists.
Armed men in tactical gear have tried to intimidate voters depos-
iting ballots at drop boxes. This is madness, but not just of lone
individuals. It is a mass derangement, rooted in the willful de-
struction of any standard for decency and truth, and it is likely
to get much worse before it gets better. William Falk
Editor-in-chief

NEWS
4 Main stories
Will Musk’s Twitter
be a lawless hellscape?;
promising midterm
prospects for the GOP
6 Controversy of the week
The looming end of
affirmative action
7 The U.S. at a glance
Voter intimidation in
Phoenix; parents of
victims decry Parkland
killer’s sentence
8 The world at a glance
Gang violence shocks
Ecuador; Russian
oligarch defects; Seoul’s
Halloween nightmare
10 People
Perry’s lifelong battle to
get sober; .Paak smiles
through adversity; Harry
Potter grows up
11 Briefing
Why restaurants are
struggling to recover
12 Best U.S. columns
The GOP will seek to
impeach Biden; Justice
Thomas’ conflicts of
interest
15 Best international
columns
Defeated Bolsonaro
causes trouble in Brazil;
why kangaroos are
hunted
16 Talking points
Reuters, 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: 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
In Brazil, Lula celebrates his victory and return to power. (p.15)
Group publisher: Paul Vizza
ARTS LEISURE
(paul.vizza@futurenet.com)
Account director: Mary Gallagher
23 Books 31 Food & Drink (mary.gallagher@futurenet.com)
Sam Adams, America’s The farm-to-table trend
Media planning manager: Andrea Crino
Direct response advertising:
first political impresario matures; flavored spirits Anthony Smyth (anthony@smythps.com)
worth trying
24 Author of the week
SVP, Women’s, Homes, and News:
A Booker Prize winner 32 Consumer
on Sri Lanka’s ghosts
Sophie Wybrew-Bond
Kitchen tools for preteen Managing director, news Richard Campbell
26 Art & Stage chefs; the best apps for SVP, finance: Maria Beckett
VP, Consumer Marketing-Global
Ralph Fiennes’ spin on online pet care
Superbrands: Nina La France
power broker Consumer marketing director:
BUSINESS Leslie Guarnieri
Robert Moses
Manufacturing manager, North America:
28 Film 36 News at a glance Lori Crook
Armageddon Windfall profits for oil Operations manager:
Cassandra Mondonedo
time for a companies; $10 billion
opioid settlement
New York
kid 37 Making money
A disastrous year for the
Visit us at TheWeek.com.
60/40 portfolio; ghost
For customer service go to
writers for LinkedIn TheWeek.com/service.
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pandemic learning loss (p.10) buck the U.S.
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
4 NEWS The main stories...
Musk’s tumultuous takeover of Twitter
What happened Musk’s Twitter takeover is a wel-
The fate one of the world’s most come development, said National
influential social media platforms Review. In recent years we’ve
was up in the air this week, as new been subject to an era of “pro-
Twitter owner Elon Musk plotted gressive censorship” that’s shut
changes to the platform, planned down discussion of topics such
major layoffs, and faced an exodus as Covid’s origins, vaccines, and
of top executives and anxious ad- the contents of Hunter Biden’s
vertisers. The world’s richest man laptop. Musk is “a champion of
last week completed his $44 bil- free speech in an age when pro-
lion takeover of the social media gressives associate free expression
site, after months of negotiations with harm and oppression.”
and legal skirmishing. “The bird is
freed,” he tweeted. In short order What the columnists said
he dissolved its board of direc- Musk is off to a rough start, and
tors, named himself CEO, and “things are only going to get
fired top officials such as the chief worse,” said Damon Beres and
executive and chief financial officer. Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic.
The self-described “free-speech Employees are jumping ship, and
absolutist” has excited conserva- Musk: Mixed signals on content moderation a flood of odious content will be
tives by suggesting he would loosen unleashed as fewer “operate the
Twitter’s content moderation rules and reinstate banned users, safety valves.” As a private platform, Twitter has no First Amend-
including Donald Trump. But to allay fears, he took a cautious ap- ment obligations; it serves mainly as an “amplification machine,”
proach, meeting with civil rights groups and saying he would form and Musk is about to give “racists and trolls” an even louder voice.
a council “with widely diverse viewpoints” to make decisions about
content moderation and reinstating barred users. He floated a plan Musk’s liberal critics are “hell-bent on crying catastrophe,” said
to charge verified “blue check” users $20 a month, then after an Elizabeth Nolan Brown in Reason. In their eyes he’s “a larger-than-
outcry on the site, quickly dropped the price to $8. “We need to life bogeyman” bent on “destroying democracy,” but conspiracy
pay the bills somehow!” tweeted Musk, who took on $1 billion a theories and offensive content have long thrived on Twitter. At
year in debt service to buy the site. worst, his rapid flip-flops on policy and content changes suggest
he’s “throwing things against the wall to see what sticks,” but
Musk moved to reassure skittish advertisers, posting a letter saying “a more charitable” reading is that he’s “willing to consider bold
he intends to build a “warm and welcoming” platform “where a ideas” and “to adapt to public feedback.”
wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” The site
“cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said Musk is running “headlong into reality,” said Chris Taylor in
with no consequences!” he wrote. But he prompted alarm when he Mashable. It didn’t take him long to “punt the content moderation
tweeted an article from a fringe website falsely suggesting that the question to a committee” or abandon his vow to fire 75 percent of
attacker of Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was a male prosti- Twitter staff. That’s because it’s dawning on him that he overlever-
tute invited into the home. “There might be more to this story than aged himself to buy an overpriced, money-losing platform and he
meets the eye,” wrote Musk, who later deleted the tweet. needs to increase revenues. That means “not spooking advertisers”
or running off users who don’t want
Several major ad firms, such as the to consort with far-right racists and
powerhouse IPG, reportedly recom- What next? loons. It’s also going to mean “play-
mended that clients pause their Twitter The biggest decision Musk now faces is “how ing nice with the European Union,”
spending, and General Motors tempo- he’ll handle moderation, ” said The Guardian. He which has far stricter laws governing
rarily suspended its ads, saying it was announced that he’ll turn the matter over to a social media content than the U.S.
trying “to understand the direction of council, but he’s given no details about who’ll be
the platform under their new owner- on it or how it will operate. A key matter is who’ll Elon, “you f----d up real good,
ship.” About 85 percent of Twitter’s be allowed back among banned figures, a group kiddo,” said Nilay Patel in The Verge.
revenues currently come from ads. that includes not only Trump but conspiracy theorist You can preach “free speech” all you
Alex Jones, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, and former want, but the only asset Twitter has is
What the editorials said Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Advertisers are its “hopelessly addicted” users, and it
So much for Musk’s vow to keep Twit- watching intently, said Tiffany Hsu in The New York turns out most of them “do not want
ter from becoming a “hellscape,” said Times. Many will be quick to pull their ads rather to participate in horrible unmoder-
the San Jose Mercury News. Two days than put them “in proximity to hate speech and ated internet spaces.” Advertisers
after making that pledge, he unleashed conspiracy theories.” While many companies feel a will vanish, too. That reality means
“one of the most irresponsible tweets presence on Facebook and TikTok is essential, with you’re going to need to police content
by a tech industry CEO in Silicon Val- its smaller reach Twitter is a different story, said like every other social media site, and
ley history.” His vile Pelosi tweet lent industry veteran Bob Hoffman. “If Twitter becomes the minute you do, your “right-wing
“credence to the widespread fear” he’ll the go-to platform for the knucklehead brigade,” he fanboys are going to viciously turn
let disinformation and hate speech run said, “advertisers will run, not walk.” on you.” So “welcome to hell. This
Getty

rampant on the site. was your idea.”

Illustration by Jason Seiler.
THE WEEK November 11, 2022 Cover photos from Getty (3)
 ... and how they were covered NEWS 5

Republicans optimistic as voting gets underway

What happened Yet the Democrats were bound to face an
Tens of millions of voters cast early ballots uphill battle, said the Financial Times.
this week in midterm elections that could Midterm voters almost always turn against
return control of both houses of Congress the party in power, and that cycle “is hard
to Republicans. With all 435 seats in the to buck.” A Republican win won’t neces-
House of Representatives up for election, sarily mean Democrats ran a bad cam-
Republicans need to gain only five to retake paign. But it will “change Washington.”
control, and they are widely expected to Some Republicans are talking of opening
succeed. The party also has a good shot at hearings into “Democratic scandals, real
taking the Senate, since control there is even- or imagined,” while others would like to
ly split between the parties, and the GOP cut aid to Ukraine. A Republican Congress
would need to gain just one of the 14 Demo- might even hold American credit hostage
cratic seats in contention. Several Demo- by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless it
cratic incumbents, including Sen. Raphael Voting early in Los Angeles can force through drastic spending cuts.
Warnock (D-Ga.) and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), face
tight races against their opponents. Democrats do have a chance What the columnists said
to snag a Republican-held seat in Pennsylvania, where Democratic “Americans are deeply concerned about the economy—every poll
Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is running against TV personality Mehmet indicates this,” said Jim Geraghty in National Review. Yet Biden’s
Oz. But Fetterman’s once strong lead in the polls narrowed this team has been pretending that the low unemployment rate should
week, after a recent halting debate performance revealed lingering somehow make up for skyrocketing food prices and overall
impairment from a stroke he suffered in May. inflation of more than 8 percent. If Democrats had “put as much
effort” into solving those problems as they did into glossing over
Polls showed that average voters were most concerned about infla- them, maybe the party wouldn’t have to worry about “a coast-to-
tion and the cost of living. Abortion, which dominated the debate coast midterm shellacking.”
several months ago following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, has
dropped on the list of concerns. After devoting much of their initial Other Democrats are already in “soul-searching” mode, said John
campaigning to threats to abortion access, Democrats pivoted in the Harris in Politico. Barack Obama has been touring the country
final weeks to attack Republicans on extremism, pointing out that urging fellow Democrats to abandon cultural wedge issues, imply-
more than half of GOP candidates refused to concede that President ing that the party is “too woke.” Strategist James Carville, though,
Biden won the 2020 election. They also highlighted Republican blames an excessive focus on abortion, while Sen. Bernie Sanders
proposals to reform Medicare and Social Security. The president laments the lack of “a strong, pro-worker” platform. If Democrats
seized on those themes as he campaigned this week in Florida, New do lose, we can expect plenty more infighting on whether the fault
Mexico, and Pennsylvania. “They’re coming after your Social Secu- lay with too much progressivism or “play-it-safe centrism.”
rity and Medicare,” he said, “and they’re saying it out loud.”
For now, though, we don’t know which way the vote will go, said
What the editorials said Jonathan Bernstein in Bloomberg. Polling accuracy has become
“Democrats are in trouble,” and they have only themselves to spottier as fewer people answer their phones, and “unexpected
blame, said The Wall Street Journal. The party made a “sharp left turnout, whether high or low,” could produce unanticipated
turn” during Donald Trump’s time in office, and it now has radical results “in either direction.” What’s alarming, said S.E. Cupp in
positions on a whole raft of issues, including immigration, climate, the Tampa Bay Times, is that “a full 60 percent” of voters have
gender, and gun rights. While Democrats have desperately tried to the option of voting for a Republican election denier somewhere
campaign against a Trump bogeyman, the former president isn’t on on their ballot. If enough of those candidates prevail, we will have
the ballot this time. Perhaps the coming “drubbing” will “jolt the state legislatures that are willing to dismiss “the will of the people.”
party back to reality.” So vote. Our future “as a functioning democracy” is at stake.

It wasn’t all bad
QTom Gibbs, a bison ranger in
southeast England, grew worried
when one of the females from his
herd went missing in September.
Days later, she reappeared with a
baby in tow—the first British bison
born in the wild in more than 6,000
years. “I wanted to scream it from
the rooftops,” Gibbs said. The
bison-conservation effort is part of
Getty, Silverton Medical Rescue
QA keen-eyed passenger QItalian immigrants Lena and
Yolanda became instant friends
spotted a hiker who had
gone missing near the on a 14-day voyage to Ellis Island
Animas River near Silverton, in 1947. But the pair lost touch
Colo., when the woman, soon after settling in America. Re-
whose leg was badly cently, Lena’s son Steve searched
broken after a 90-foot fall, for the whereabouts of her friend,
waved to the passing train. who was just 9 when they’d last
The passenger alerted the seen each other. He learned that
railroad, who got in touch A railroad-side rescue Yolanda lived just two hours
with Nick and Kylah Breeden, a married couple working as away in West Virginia. Yolanda’s
the engineer and fireman on the next train on the old-style son drove his mom to Lena’s

an initiative to reintroduce biodiver-
sity to rural areas of the U.K. Bison
help regulate the environment with
their nutrient-rich manure and by
using their large bodies to carve
new pathways into the forest.
steam-powered railway. The Breedens stopped their train, and Pennsylvania home, where after
their 327 passengers waited while the couple waded across 75 years apart the pair shed tears
the water to assess the hiker’s injuries. The Breedens then and shared stories. “Now that
coordinated with a helicopter team to airlift the 20-year-old to we’ve been reunited,” Lena said,
safety. “Those guys were the rock stars of this situation,” said “I am even more grateful to call
emergency-response spokeswoman DeAnne Gallegos. her my friend.”

THE WEEK November 11, 2022

6 NEWS Controversy of the week
Supreme Court: The end of affirmative action?
Get ready for another “national shock wave,” reflects “the moral necessity of ameliorat-
said Noah Feldman in Bloomberg. The ing the effects of centuries of discrimina-
Supreme Court heard arguments this week tion.” But what is “moral” about Harvard’s
in a pair of lawsuits—one against Harvard “deeply disturbing” practice of systemati-
University, the other against the University cally giving high-achieving Asian applicants
of North Carolina—alleging that both uni- low scores for “courage” and “kindness” to
versities’ consideration of race in deciding reduce their numbers in the student body?
which applicants to admit constitutes racial Even in the name of “racial justice,” racial
discrimination and is therefore unconstitu- discrimination is invariably “unjust.”
tional. Like Roe v. Wade, affirmative action
policies have been part of American life since A good alternative exists, said Richard
the 1970s and have repeatedly been upheld by Harvard Yard: A highly coveted space Kahlenberg in The Atlantic. If colleges
the Supreme Court. But based on the sharply started “zeroing in on economically disad-
skeptical tone of six conservative justices’ questions this week, it vantaged students” they’d be on solid ground legally, and given
seems certain that affirmative action will join Roe in the dustbin of the shameful “wealth gap between Black and white households,”
American history. The ruling would apply only to public colleges they’d admit just as many students of color. Colleges resist this
and those receiving federal funds, but could have “far-reaching solution only because lower-income students would require more
consequences” for the “ideology of diversity” guiding all colleges financial assistance, unlike the “upper-middle-class students of
and even private workplaces. We saw in the Dobbs ruling over- color” they disproportionately admit today.
turning Roe how little the court’s conservatives care about legal
precedent, said Elie Mystal in The Nation. They sounded no less Sorry, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, but race
disdainful this week of the evidence that every student, regardless does matter more than other factors. “Race has mattered mas-
of race, benefits from “a diverse environment.” Perversely, the sively, decisively, and tragically in this country since its founding,”
powerful “legacy” preferences for students of alumni and donors in ways that still cramp the dreams of millions of Black and brown
will continue, to the great detriment of Black applicants. But the children. Affirmative action is an attempt to make minimal restitu-
far-right justices will once again simply “do what they want,” mak- tion for centuries of injustice, and to scrap it is to “wish away our
ing “college admissions a little easier for mediocre white children.” history.” That was a persuasive “moral case for affirmative action”
in the 1970s, said Ross Douthat in The New York Times. Fifty
The court has little legal choice here, said David French in The years later, though, the system has become “a strange monster of
Dispatch. The plain text of the 1964 Civil Rights Act bans dis- elite self-interest”—effectively a fig leaf behind which universities
crimination “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.” favor the children of the rich, reap huge profits, and practice “anti-
Affirmative action policies admit some students and turn down Asian bigotry.” However noble its original intentions, affirmative
others based on skin color. Defenders insist that affirmative action action “probably deserves to fall.”

Good week for:

Only in America
QWorkers at “bikini barista”
coffee stands in Everett,
Wash., have a constitutional
right to wear G-strings and
“pasties” while serving
customers, a federal court
has ruled. A 2017 Everett law
barred revealing clothing in
such stores, on the grounds
that skimpily clad baristas
might elicit sexual harass-
ment or themselves engage
in “lewd conduct.” But the
court found the city had
unfairly targeted women in
its crackdown.
QActivists at the University
of Alabama want to remove
the word “Dixie” from the
school song, “Yea Alabama,”
because “the word is deeply
associated with the ‘Old
South,’ slavery, and racist
imagery.” Organizers of a
counterpetition argue that
“Dixie” is just “a synonym for
the South,” where Alabama
continues to be located.
Bees, after British researchers observed them rolling tiny wooden
In other news
balls around in what appears to be play. Researcher Samadi Travel, pills limit reach
of abortion restrictions
Galpayage said the “mind-blowing” discovery proves that despite
their “tiny brains,” bees “are more than small robotic beings.” Abortion in the U.S. dropped
Snubs, after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was not invited to former by about 2 percent in the first
two full months after the Su-
President Donald Trump’s rally for Sen. Marco Rubio in Miami.
preme Court overturned Roe
“This is big,” a source within the DeSantis camp told New York, v. Wade, according to a New
with another calling it “an elbow to Ron’s throat.” York Times analysis of two
Modernity, after organizers of FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 indi- studies released this week.
cated they will allow peaceful protests, rainbow flags, and other One study, led by the Society
symbols of LGBTQ rights and even kissing in public, all of which of Family Planning, which sup-
are usually banned in the repressive Arab emirate. ports abortion rights, found
that legal abortions fell by
Bad week for: roughly 10,000 a month after
Nose pickers, who may be at increased risk of dementia, accord- the Dobbs decision in states
ing to new research. Damage to the lining of the nose during the that banned or restricted abor-
tions, but increased by 5,000
picking process may allow viruses and bacteria to travel up the
a month in states where abor-
olfactory nerve to the brain.
tion is broadly legal. Abortion
Homes on the range, after neighbors had to rescue a trapped pills obtained from overseas
couple whose home in Fountain, Colo., was surrounded by a sea through organizations such as
of tumbleweeds. Homeowner Marlies Gross says so many tumble- Aid Access also reduced the
weeds continue to roll up to the home that she and her husband impact of stricter laws. A Jour-
“still can’t walk anywhere.” nal of the American Medical
Association paper found that
People who love people, after a multidecade analysis of
pill orders from Aid Access
150,000 pop songs showed that uses of the word “love” in top-100
jumped nearly 120 percent in
songs declined by 50 percent between 1965 and 2015, while the July and August.
incidence of “hate” and other negative terms rose sharply.
AP

THE WEEK November 11, 2022

 The U.S. at a glance ...
Chicago New York City
Halloween horror: Fourteen people Inside source: Allen Weisselberg, the
attending a street-corner vigil on Hallo- Trump Organization’s former longtime
ween night were shot in a drive-by chief financial officer, will give the “inside
shooting— story” of how the former president’s
one of nine company spent 15 years dodging taxes
mass shootings to boost executive pay, Manhattan pros-
nationwide ecutors said this week. Prosecutor Susan
to occur on Hoffinger promised that the fraud trial of
Halloween and the Trump Organization would demon-
the weekend strate a pattern of “greed and cheating.”
leading up to Although Trump himself isn’t accused of
Drive-by gunfire it. None of wrongdoing, Hoffinger invoked him more
the Chicago shooting victims have died, than a dozen times in her opening state-
although two were in critical condition. ment. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15
The victims included a 3-year-old boy counts for accepting off-the-books perks,
who was shot in both legs, an 11-year- such as apartment rent and his grandchil-
old girl who was shot in the leg, and a dren’s private-school tuition. Attorneys
13-year-old boy who was shot in the for the Trump Organization said Weissel-
torso and leg. All of the children shot berg was testifying only to avoid a
were in “serious” condition, police said, lengthy prison sentence. “You must not
adding that the two suspects who fired consider this case to be a referendum on
from a dark SUV were not in custody. President Trump or his politics,” defense
Police say the entire burst of gun- attorney Susan Necheles said.
fire took a mere three seconds.
Across the country, at least 12
people were killed and 52
people wounded in mass shoot-
ings over the holiday weekend.
Chicago police say that at least
35 people were shot in the city
over the weekend before the
drive-by attack at the vigil.
NEWS 7
New York City
Selling access? The trial of
billionaire investor Tom
Barrack, a onetime
confidant of Donald
Trump, concluded
this week, with
a jury deliberat- Barrack
ing the fate of the financier accused of
leveraging his access to secretly lobby
on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.
Barrack, 75, who served as chairman
of Trump’s inaugural committee, was
indicted last year on charges of being
an unregistered Emirati agent, obstruct-
ing justice, and lying to the FBI. Federal
prosecutors presented emails and text
messages that showed Barrack courting
UAE officials, with one proposal titled
“Gaining Influence in the United States.”
In return for a $374 million investment
in Barrack’s company, Colony Capital,
Barrack allegedly advocated for UAE
interests, arranged meetings in
the Trump White House, and
tweaked the official party
platform at the 2016 GOP
convention. “It is perfectly nor-
mal in business for a company to
both try to cater to your business
interests as well as your political
interests,” defense attorney Randall
Jackson said.

Phoenix Washington, D.C.

Ballot threats: A federal judge barred a
conservative group from carrying guns
near ballot boxes and photographing vot-
ers, ruling that their monitoring tactics
amounted to
voter intimi-
dation. The
group, Clean
Elections
USA, has
been congre-
gating near
Early voting in Arizona drop boxes,
purportedly looking for “mules” ille-
gally casting multiple ballots. The Justice
Department said their tactics could vio-
late the Voting Rights Act, and a Mesa
man testified that up to 10 people filmed
him and his wife voting, saying they were
“hunting mules.” A voting rights group,
the League of Women Voters, had asked
for a restraining order to block the group
from filming and from carrying guns
within 250 feet of drop boxes. The order
from Judge Michael Liburdi, appointed
by former President Trump, went beyond
Getty, AP (2), Getty
Fort Lauderdale
Seeking vengeance: Relatives of the 34
students and teachers Nikolas Cruz
murdered or wounded at the Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School repeat-
edly cursed him and expressed wishes
that he suffer in prison at his formal
sentencing this week. Cruz was sentenced
to life in prison without the possibility
of parole, rather than the death penalty.
“I hope your every breathing moment
here on Earth is miserable,” said Theresa
Robinovitz, whose 14-year-old grand-
daughter, Alyssa Alhadeff, was killed,
“and you repent for your sins and burn
in hell.” The killer, 24, stared back at
the speakers, showing no emotion. Max
Schachter, whose son Alex, 14, was mur-
dered, said he hopes “other prisoners
you will encounter in your new life will
inflict that pain upon you, hopefully 17
They knew better: The House Jan. 6
Committee obtained eight emails last
week that could
demonstrate that
former President
Trump and his legal
team advanced alle-
gations about 2020
voter fraud that they
knew to be false.
The emails, inad- Eastman
vertently turned over by Trump’s then-
attorney John Eastman, are a window
into discussions among Trump’s attorneys
about accusations that Fulton County in
Georgia had improperly counted 10,000-
plus votes from dead people, felons,
and unregistered voters. Federal Judge
David Carter ruled earlier this month
that the emails were not protected by
attorney-client privilege, falling under a
“crime-fraud exception” to the privilege
rules. Four of the emails reportedly show
Trump’s lawyers discussing plans to file
frivolous lawsuits to delay certification of
Joe Biden’s victory. One email states that

the request, also blocking Clean Elections
USA from posting photos of voters online
and spreading false information about
Arizona’s voting laws.
times over again, until you are screaming
for mercy.” Many of the speakers also
unleashed anger at the three jury holdouts
who refused to support a death sentence.
getting Supreme Court Justice Clarence
Thomas to consider an appeal of the
Georgia vote would “end up being key”
to the plot to overturn the election.
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
8 NEWS The world at a glance ...
London
Was Truss’ phone hacked? Spies suspected
of working for Russia hacked the phone of
recently ousted British Prime Minister Liz Truss
last summer when she was foreign minister, the
British tabloid Mail on Sunday reported this
Truss week. The report cited unnamed sources claim-
ing that hackers obtained “up to a year’s worth of messages”
from Truss’ phone, including “highly sensitive discussions with
senior international foreign ministers about the war in Ukraine”
as well as private conversations. No other newspaper has corrob-
orated the story, but opposition lawmakers this week called for an
investigation. The former head of British intelligence agency MI6,
Alex Younger, said all government ministers should be “properly
educated” on how to spot phishing attempts.
Kyiv
Russia batters civilian areas: Russian forces launched another bar-
rage of cruise missiles across Ukraine this week, damaging power
plants and other facilities and leaving most of Kyiv without water
for a day. Ukraine began rolling blackouts to save its remaining
energy resources, so the power grid won’t collapse in the winter,
and human rights groups said the deliberate targeting of heat and
water infrastructure could amount to war crimes. Russia said the
strikes were retaliation for a Ukrainian sea-drone strike that dam-
aged its ships in port in Crimea. Moscow also withdrew for sev-
eral days from a key agreement allowing merchant ships to leave
Ukrainian ports, temporarily blocking grain that was desperately
needed in African countries. It rejoined the pact after receiving
guarantees that Kyiv would not use the Black Sea grain corridor
to launch strikes against Russian targets.

Budapest
Mass teachers’ strike: Teachers
across Hungary have been holding
brief strikes on and off for more
than a month—and they are getting
mass support from parents and stu-
dents who have turned out for edu-
cation protests. Teachers make only
Teachers: Underpaid minimum wage in Hungary, about
$500 a month, and ever since Prime Minister Viktor Orbán came
to power in 2012 and nationalized the school system, they have
worked longer hours with greater course loads. Last week, some
80,000 people demonstrated in Budapest to support the teach-
ers, and earlier protests gathered similarly large crowds. Orbán
blamed the low salaries on the EU—Brussels recently blocked
Hungary’s access to EU funds because of Orbán’s authoritarian
clampdown on the media, judiciary, and opposition—but teachers
pointed out that their grievances long predated the sanctions.
Managua, Nicaragua
U.S. sanctions: The Biden administration last week expanded
the Trump administration’s sanctions on Nicaragua in response
to President Daniel Ortega’s escalating repression of democracy.
Biden’s executive order targets members of Ortega’s government
and bars American individuals and firms from doing business with
Nicaragua’s gold industry, a key source of funds for the regime.
It also paves the way for the U.S. to restrict investment and trade
with Nicaragua, which could resemble the punishing U.S. embargo
imposed in the 1980s during Ortega’s first stint as president. Ortega
said the sanctions would only cause more Nicaraguans to flee to the
U.S., calling Washington hypocritical for “causing extreme harm”
to other countries while “then complaining about immigrants.”
Guayaquil, Ecuador Amazon rain forest, Brazil
‘State of war’: Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso called Reprieve for the rain forest:
a state of emergency in two coastal regions this week after a Environmentalists this week
string of vicious gang attacks, including nine car bombings. The cheered the victory of Brazilian
violence ranged from prison inmates taking guards hostage to President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva [see
attacks on police that left five officers dead to the discovery of Best International Columns, p.15] as a win for
two headless bodies hanging from a pedestrian bridge. Saying the planet. When Lula was president before, Lula
the attacks amounted to “a declaration of open war,” Lasso from 2003 to 2010, deforestation of the Amazon plunged, but
ordered police to raid the prisons to seize weapons, ammunition, since current President Jair Bolsonaro took over in 2016, more
explosives, and phones. The surge than 2 billion trees have been cut down. Bolsonaro encouraged
U.K. Government, Getty (2), Reuters

Car bombing in Guayaquil
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
in violence is believed to be a
response to the transfer of some
gang members out of Guayaquil’s
Litoral Penitentiary. The prison
was the scene of a massacre last
year that left 119 inmates and
guards dead.
logging and mining in the rain forest, saying the natural resources
there should be monetized. At this point, some 17 percent of the
Amazon, known as the “lungs of the earth,” is gone. If the figure
reaches 25 percent, a feedback loop could begin that might oblit-
erate the entire rain forest. “Let’s fight for zero deforestation,”
Lula said in his victory speech this week. “The planet needs the
Amazon alive.”
 The world at a glance ...
Moscow
Putin rails at West: Russian President Vladimir
Putin last week blamed the decadent West with its
“gay parades” for many of the world’s ills, includ-
ing his own invasion of Ukraine. Much of his
speech at the Valdai discussion club in Moscow
focused on culture-war themes that seemed to be
aimed at currying favor with U.S. conservatives.
“There are two Wests: the traditional West, with Putin
Christian values above all, with which we share common antique
roots,” he said, “and the cosmopolitan West, which is a tool of
liberal elites.” But he also said NATO’s expansion eastward and
its overtures to Ukraine had forced Russia’s hand, and he denied
ever threatening to use nuclear weapons. U.S. intelligence sources
this week told The New York Times that Russian military leaders
had recently discussed ways to use tactical nukes in Ukraine.
Jerusalem
Netanyahu returns to power: Former Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was
projected the winner this week of Israel’s
fifth election in the past four years. His right-
wing Likud party and its allies were likely
to take 65 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, for
an outright majority, compared with just 50
He’s back.
for current Prime Minister Yair Lapid and
his unwieldy centrist coalition. Netanyahu, who is under indict-
Getty, Reuters, Getty, Reuters, Getty
ment for corruption, has been the central issue of all the recent
elections, with voters being asked again and again whether they
want him to lead Israel, and none of the resulting coalition gov-
ernments have been stable. This new coalition would be the most
right-wing of all, with the ultra-right Religious Zionist Party
doubling its presence from seven seats in the last election to an
unprecedented 15.
NEWS 9
Moscow
Russian oligarch defects: Calling Russia a “fas-
cist country,” Russian banking tycoon Oleg
Tinkov renounced his Russian citizenship this
week over President Vladimir Putin’s war
on Ukraine. “I hope more prominent
Russian businessmen will follow me,”
he said in a social media post show- Tinkov: Getting out
ing his renunciation document, “so
it weakens Putin’s regime and his economy.” Tinkov, whose net
worth was near $4 billion at the start of the year, was one of
the first prominent Russians to come out against the war, calling
it “unthinkable and unacceptable.” As a result, he was quickly
forced to sell his 35 percent stake in his digital Tinkoff Bank to
another Russian oligarch at a bargain price. He has property in
London and is believed to have dual citizenship in Cyprus.
Tehran
Beating up schoolgirls: As schoolgirls continue to join the anti-
government uprising in Iran, security forces have been violently
raiding classrooms across the country, and they have killed at
least one girl. In a raid in Ardabil a few weeks ago, police beat up
teenagers for refusing to sing a patriotic song; 15-year-old Asra
Panahi died of her injuries. The protests began in mid-September
after morality police beat to death Kurdish student Mahsa Amini
for failing to wear a hijab properly. They have yet to let up, and
Panahi’s death has now sparked further protests. Activists said at
least 700 minors, mostly girls, have been arrested since the unrest
began. “We don’t know where they are taking these children,”
said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam of the Norway-based NGO
Iran Human Rights, “or what is happening to them.”
Seoul
Halloween disaster: More than 150 people
were crushed to death and over 130 injured
last week when the crowds celebrating
Halloween in Seoul’s popular Itaewon night-
life district ballooned out of control. With
Street memorial
the annual festivities canceled the past two
years because of pandemic restrictions, as many as 100,000 cos-
tumed revelers thronged the neighborhood’s narrow streets. At
about 10 p.m., a huge crowd of mostly young people surged up a
steep alleyway barely 11 feet wide, crushing those in the middle.
Witnesses reported seeing people lose their footing on the sloping
street, creating a domino effect of falling bodies; some attempted
to scale the buildings to get out. “It was so horrible,” said sur-
vivor Angel Chiu. “I thought I was watching a disaster movie.”
Two Americans were among the victims.
Shanghai
Trapped at Disney: Visitors to Shanghai’s Disney resort became
the latest victims of China’s zero-Covid policy this week when the
park suddenly locked down, shutting its gates with thousands of
people still inside. The Shanghai government said a recent visi-
tor had tested positive and all parkgoers would need a negative
Covid test to leave. Millions of people in China are currently
under quarantine in at least 200 cities. The country of 1.45 billion
records some 1,000 Covid cases a
day, and a single case can prompt
the closure of an entire neighbor-
hood. Last week, video emerged of
an anti-lockdown protest among
migrant workers in the Tibetan
capital Lhasa, which has been under
lockdown for three months. Testing in the Magic Kingdom
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
10 NEWS People
Why .Paak can’t stop smiling
Anderson .Paak appears to be incessantly happy,
said Adam Bradley in The New York Times.
The singer and drummer, who forms half of the
Grammy-winning duo Silk Sonic with pop star
Bruno Mars, is known for his omnipresent ear-
to-ear grin, even if his music can be painfully
soulful. “I’ve always been a silly person who likes
to have fun and joke around,” says .Paak, 36. “My mom tells
me my dad was the same way. But he was from Philly, from one
of the hardest places, and I don’t see no pictures of them smil-
ing.” Born Brandon Paak Anderson in Oxnard, Calif., he was 7
when he witnessed his father confront his mother with a gun and
begin strangling her in the middle of the street. His father served
six and a half years in prison. His mother remarried and moved
the family to a sprawling home in Ventura, only to be busted
for securities fraud and serve seven and a half years. While she
was incarcerated, .Paak was homeless for a time. His mastery of
’70s-style funk and soul was his salvation. (The dot in his name,
he says, “stands for ‘detail.’”) Paak says his smile is both a genu-
ine expression of his joy in his success and a mask for his pain.
“Maybe those years of hard living from ancestors meant that I
could finally smile,” he says. “People died in order for my smiley
ass to come out here and carry a Gucci purse.”

Radcliffe makes peace with Potter Perry’s addiction anguish

Daniel Radcliffe knows there’s no escaping Harry Potter, said
Jeremy Gordon in GQ. He was cast as “The Boy Who Lived”
at age 11, and eight blockbuster films dominated a decade of
his life. At 33, he’s at peace with being recognized everywhere
he goes. “It took a long time,” he says. “My late teens or early
20s was where I was like, ‘You have to accept life is gonna be
different for you.’ And eventually it becomes easier to adapt
to.” Radcliffe admits it’s grating when pretentious sophisticates
stop him to say things like “Loved you in Extras, thought Harry
Potter was shit”—as if Radcliffe will find disdain for his most
famous role endearing. “It was 10 years of my life,” he points
out. The British actor now lives in New York City with his girl-
friend, and has adopted America as his home, even to the point of
obsessively watching pro football. His Potter wealth has enabled
Radcliffe to pursue eclectic film and stage roles without needing
to worry about making hits. “I had this awareness that people
expected we would do nothing after Potter—that we would fade
away,” Radcliffe says. “I really wanted to do whatever I have to
do to have a career with longevity.”
Matthew Perry has been to hell and back, said Elisabeth Egan in
The New York Times. The actor, forever remembered as Chandler
Bing on the NBC sitcom Friends, struggled with drug and alco-
hol addiction for decades, with 15 stints in rehab. “I’ve probably
spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” says Perry, 53.
Now 18 months clean, Perry is speaking candidly about the dark
places addiction took him. He was already struggling with alcohol
when he was cast on Friends, at age 24. After a Jet Ski accident,
he became addicted to painkillers, sometimes swallowing 55
Vicodin a day, while also drinking vodka by the quart. Like many
addicts, he thought he was fooling people. Jennifer Aniston once
came into his trailer and said the group knew he was drinking.
“We can smell it,” she said. “The plural ‘we,’” Perry said, “hit me
like a sledgehammer.” At the show’s height, he filmed the episode
in which his character marries Monica, and was immediately after
driven to a treatment center. In 2018, addiction led to pneumonia,
an exploded colon, a coma, nine months with a colostomy bag,
and more than a dozen stomach surgeries. Once, after biting into
a slice of toast, all of his top teeth fell out. “There is a hell,” he
says. “Don’t let anyone tell you different. I’ve been there.”

QBrazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen
filed for divorce last week from her hus-
band, Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback
Tom Brady, saying the couple had “grown
apart” after 13 years of marriage. Brady, 45,
called the divorce “painful and difficult.”
The two reportedly reached a confi-
dential settlement to divide their vast
fortune, as well as custody arrange-
retirement announcement and become the
oldest starting quarterback in NFL history.
The Bucs are reeling since Brady and Bünd-
chen split, losing three straight games.
QNBA star Kyrie Irving refused to apologize
after tweeting out a link last week to the anti-
Semitic documentary Hebrews to Negroes:
Wake Up Black America. The 2018 film
describes “Jewish slave ships” and includes
a fake quote from Adolf Hitler saying Ameri-
can Jews’ plan for “world domination”
based on a book full of anti-Semitic disinfor-
mation.” Irving defended the documentary,
saying, “The ‘anti-Semitic’ label that is being
pushed on me is not justified.”
QJulia Roberts has revealed that the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta
King paid the hospital bill for her birth. In
a recent interview with Gayle King, the
actress, 55, said her parents ran a theater
school in Atlanta and were contacted by
Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta King in
Jay Brooks/Camera Press/Redux, Getty (2)

ments for their two children, ages 12
and 9, along with Brady’s 15-year-old
son from a previous relationship. Both
Brady and Bündchen have completed
Florida’s mandatory course “Family
Stabilization” for divorcing parents.
Bündchen, 42, reportedly grew furious
over Brady’s decision to back out of his
won’t work if “the Negroes” know they’re
“the true Hebrews.” Irving, 30, missed much
of last season after refusing to get the Covid
vaccine, declared the earth was flat in 2018,
and recently posted a clip from right-wing
conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Brooklyn
Nets owner Joe Tsai said he was “disap-
pointed that Kyrie appears to support a film
the mid-1960s because they couldn’t find a
school for their children in the segregated
South. Coretta called Roberts’ mother, who,
Roberts says, replied, “Sure, come on over.”
The two couples became friends. When
Roberts was born, “my parents couldn’t pay
for the hospital bill,” she said, and the Kings
returned the favor by picking it up.

THE WEEK November 11, 2022

 Briefing NEWS 11

How dining out has changed

Restaurants are crowded again, but customers complain of high prices and spotty service. Is this a new normal?

What’s causing the change? data show. The restaurant industry

The pandemic and its continuing is still short about 500,000 work-
economic consequences have made ers, including waiters, cooks, and
eating out a costlier and often less dishwashers. Restaurant work often
pleasant experience. Covid was an entails physically demanding labor
unprecedented disaster for restaurants: for long, irregular hours and low pay
Between 2020 and 2021, the industry in crowded spaces where Covid can
laid off or furloughed 8 million work- easily spread. When their co-workers
ers and lost $280 billion in sales. At quit, those who remain face a vicious
least 90,000 eateries shuttered. Those cycle: heavier workloads, pressure to
that survived had to adapt with out- take on more hours, and even more
door dining and a greater reliance on irate customers grousing about longer
takeout and delivery, which accounted wait times. But workers also have
for 90 percent of all restaurant meals more leverage to demand a more
sold in 2020. Vaccination, a reduc- livable wage, benefits, and a more
tion in health risks, and the lifting of generous sick leave policy. While
some pandemic restrictions have sent a Restaurants are short about 500,000 workers.
those improvements increase costs for
flood of diners back—even more than restaurant owners, some acknowledge
in the pre-Covid era, according to data from reservation platform it has been an overdue industry-wide reckoning. “Should we be
OpenTable. But though the $898 billion in sales restaurants pro- so surprised that people are quitting,” former Chipotle co-CEO
jected for this year represents a $34 billion increase over 2019, Monty Moran said last year, “when mostly what we’re trying to
85 percent of owners say their business remains less profitable now do is manipulate them?”
than before 2020. In a May survey, 41 percent said they couldn’t
make rent. The average price of commercially prepared meals rose How have restaurants coped?
8.5 percent between September 2021 and September 2022. The Sixty percent have cut hours of operation, and 93 percent have
price of a McDonald’s Big Mac broke $6 earlier this year, and for raised or plan to raise menu prices. They’re offering smaller and
high-end burgers in major cities such as New York, diners are pay- fewer dishes, often sticking to those made with ingredients less
ing upwards of $30 (without fries or a drink) before tax and tip. likely to be affected by supply chain interruptions. More than half
Diners have also complained about shorter business hours, longer of restaurant owners have employed cost-cutting tech, such as
wait times, and less attentive service. “The industry is unlikely to automated self-service kiosks and digital kitchen displays that take
ever completely return to its pre-pandemic state,” said Hudson the place of physical order tickets. Digital QR code menus, popu-
Riehle of the National Restaurant Association. larized during the pandemic to reduce touching of surfaces, are
likely here to stay, mostly because they let restaurants easily change
Why are so many restaurants struggling? the price of menu options or delete them altogether.
The costs of doing business have soared. Overall food prices have
risen about 11 percent over the past year, and factors such as high What else can diners expect?
energy prices, drought, the war in Ukraine, and an ongoing out- Customers who prefer take-out or delivery from fast-food and bud-
break of avian influenza are pushing get restaurants may find themselves
the costs of some staples much higher. increasingly served by “ghost kitchens”
The USDA estimates the price of cook- The decline in tips without dining areas or storefronts.
ing oil, butter, and other fats will rise In the face of rising prices, American restaurant High-end restaurants, meanwhile, are
as much as 24 percent this year, and customers are becoming more miserly tippers. seeking new revenue by charging for
Nearly one-third in an August LendingTree survey
egg prices are expected to double. reservations and launching subscrip-
said that inflation has caused them to tip less
Availability of supplies and labor has when they dine out. In effect, they are punishing
tion services. Dame, a celebrated
also grown unpredictable. Supply chain the waitstaff for the increase in meal prices. That’s New York City seafood restaurant,
snarls delayed or created shortages of in sharp contrast to the sympathy diners felt asks diners to pay $1,000 a year for
needed ingredients for 96 percent of for restaurant workers at the height of the pan- the privilege of being able to book a
restaurant owners last year, forcing demic, when they were widely seen as “essential table once a week. Robotics startups
6 in 10 full-service establishments to workers” who risked their health to make and are developing AI chefs, cleaners, and
reduce menu options. And while the deliver meals. The average tip at a quick-service servers, though steep up-front price
nation regained 1.7 million food ser- restaurant rose from 19.6 percent to 23.5 percent tags and worries about scaring off cus-
vice jobs in 2021, 7 in 10 restaurants between March and April 2020. But now tips have tomers have made restaurant owners
do not have enough workers. fallen to pre-pandemic levels, and with all but slow to embrace them. Higher prices,
eight states allowing a “subminimum” wage for reduced portions, and spottier service
tipped workers, they’re feeling the pain. Chicago
Why not? bartender Stacy Donohue has made less in tips
appear to be here for the foreseeable
Many frustrated, burned-out employ- from two jobs this year than she used to earn in
future. Diners “want to get back to the
ees have handed in their aprons. one. If things don’t change by January, she plans old days,” said Pittsburgh-area restau-
The quit rate in the accommodation to leave the restaurant business. “I’m not making rant owner Ronald Sofranko. “They
and food services sector surpassed the money that I was making,” she said. “I have want to go out, they want to enjoy
10 percent last December, and remains to find another avenue.” themselves. [But] they’re not smiling as
Getty

over 6 percent, Labor Department much as they were.”

THE WEEK November 11, 2022
12 NEWS Best columns: The U.S.
“Eventually, Republicans will leave themselves little choice,” said Barton
Why Biden Gellman. If they win control of the House, they “are going to impeach It must be true...
will be Joe Biden.” The ramp-up will start with exhaustive investigations into
Hunter Biden’s high-paying foreign jobs, and as Fox News whips up
I read it in the tabloids
impeached the outrage, “the pressure from the MAGA base will build.” A recent
poll found that 68 percent of Republicans already believe Biden should
QA Russian startup is offer-
ing customers the oppor-
Barton Gellman be impeached. “Thwarting those expectations would be dangerous” for tunity to attend their own
The Atlantic Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who needs MAGA support to become funeral—and if they opt for
Speaker of the House. What charge will Republicans come up with? the deluxe package, to be
It could be related to Hunter, although that will require showing that temporarily buried alive.
Joe played an active role in his son’s foreign work, or was paid himself. Company officials said the
The GOP might claim Biden failed to enforce immigration laws, or ritual would help clients deal
come up with some other “high crime and misdemeanor.” Some Repub- with “fears and anxieties,”
and “close chapters” in
licans admit “the details won’t even matter.” The twice-impeached
their lives. To watch your
Donald Trump, who will have far more influence over the House than own online funeral costs
McCarthy, will insist on impeachment as a form of “retribution,” espe- about $15,000, while the
cially if he’s indicted. When that happens, “impeachment will become as “full immersion” funeral,
much a litmus test for Republican House members as the Big Lie.” which involves a full religious
ceremony and burial for up
to an hour, goes for around
Clarence Thomas “is thumbing his nose at the law,” said Laurence Tribe
Thomas’ and Dennis Aftergut. The conservative Supreme Court justice last week
$57,000. The client can keep
the coffin as a souvenir.
disdain for gave Sen. Lindsey Graham a temporary stay of a federal appeals court’s
order that he testify before a Georgia grand jury investigating efforts QA Belgian nonprofit is train-
ing rats outfitted with tiny
the law to overturn the 2020 election. The full court later ordered Graham
to testify, but Thomas still has a blatant conflict of interest. His wife, back-
packs
Laurence Tribe and Ginni, “has been a leading MAGA operative” promoting the Big Lie. to help
Dennis Aftergut She emailed Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, 29 times to search
Los Angeles Times urge that he fight what she called “the greatest heist of our history,” and for sur-
pleaded with state legislators in Arizona and Wisconsin to defy election vivors
results. She hasn’t denied discussing the subject with her husband, telling buried
the Jan. 6 committee he was too “stubborn” to be influenced. Still, U.S. under
law states that judges can’t participate in cases in which their spouses rubble after disasters. Work-
have “an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of ing in simulated disaster
the proceeding.” The law has no enforcement mechanism, but “any jus- zones, the rats, whose
tice in Thomas’ position who was concerned about the Supreme Court’s backpacks are equipped with
legitimacy—or his own integrity—would have recused himself.” video cameras and loca-
tion transmitters, are being
trained to locate survivors
“Recycling plastic makes no sense,” said John Tierney. That has been and then pull a switch that
The illusion clearly true for decades, but now even the environmental organization triggers a beeper. In addition
to being small and having
of plastic Greenpeace admits in a new report that plastic recycling “has largely
failed and will always fail.” Why? It’s virtually impossible to effectively an excellent sense of smell,
“rats are typically quite curi-
recycling sort and clean massive mounds of collected plastic, Greenpeace says,
and the recycling process itself is “environmentally harmful.” It’s also ous and like to explore,” says
project scientist Donna Kean,
John Tierney very labor-intensive and extremely expensive. To cut costs, the U.S. “and that is key for search
City Journal mostly shipped its plastic to be recycled in China, Indonesia, and other and rescue.”
countries, but most of that waste ended up “illegally dumped, burned
(spewing toxic fumes), or reprocessed at rudimentary facilities that leak QThe Nevada Athletic Com-
some of the plastics into rivers.” Studies have shown that virtually all mission has given the green
light to a new sports league
of the plastic in the oceans comes from developing nations that handle
in which competitors slap
their waste carelessly—not from Americans. If you want plastic bottles, each other in the head. In the
straws, and containers disposed of properly, put them in the trash, so Power Slap League, male
they can be “safely buried at the nearest landfill.” Recycling has always and female competitors are
been an impractical illusion; people performed “garbage-sorting as a not allowed to defend them-
ritual of atonement—a sacrament of the green religion.” Even Green- selves as their opponent
peace says you can stop now. smacks them as hard as pos-
sible. The slapping continues
Viewpoint “The hallucinatory claim that a grand if largely unnamed conspiracy man- until one is knocked out or
aged to snatch victory away from Trump and hand it to Joe Biden is not a withdraws. It’s “what you’d
trivial, stand-alone falsehood. Instead, it has become as central to the MAGA belief system as the get if you let 13-year-old boys
crucifixion of Jesus is to Christianity. In these fevered scenarios, Venezuela and South Korea have invent a new sport,” wrote
corrupted our electoral ballots, China has implanted Covid vaccines with mind-control devices, and one unimpressed sports
liberal Jewish billionaires like George Soros have underwritten acts of domestic terrorism. The cen- journalist. UFC officials, how-
tral premise is all-encompassing fraud: election fraud, medical fraud, monetary fraud, media fraud, ever, say “there’s massive
judicial fraud, religious fraud. Everything is suspect.” potential here.”
APOPO

Robert Draper in The Atlantic

THE WEEK November 11, 2022

14 NEWS Best columns: Europe
Here come the history police to ruin our fun,
UNITED KINGDOM said Lucy Ford. Season 5 of the historical drama
The Crown is dropping soon, and monarchists
Let us enjoy are “losing their minds” at the thought that real
events that many of us remember—such as Prin-
our royal cess Diana’s bombshell interview in which she told
of her husband’s infidelity and her own mental
soap opera health struggles—will be presented as soap opera.
The grande dame of British theater, Judi Dench,
Lucy Ford
said the season’s trailer showed “crude and cruel”
British GQ
scenes that were entirely made up, and she de-
manded that Netflix add language explaining that
the show is “fictionalized.” The right-wing press
agreed, asking whether Netflix had “gone too
far” in inventing conversations that didn’t really
happen. Yet they are missing the point. Netflix is
not being any more outrageous than the tabloids
have always been in reporting on the royals. And
“to suggest that the general public requires a dis-
claimer to distinguish between fiction and reality
fringes upon the absurd.” When viewers sit down
to a biopic about Elton John, or Stephen Hawk-
ing, or, indeed, former Prime Minister Tony Blair,
we well know “that what we watch will have to
be taken with a generous pinch of salt.” Royals
are not due more deference than anyone else.

ROMANIA It would be easy to blame our “incompetent”
defense minister for this latest embarrassment to
Where leaders Romania, said Ioana Ene Dogioiu. As a NATO
country that borders Ukraine, our duty is to sup-
behave like port our neighbor in its fight against an entirely
unprovoked Russian attack. Yet two weeks ago,
schoolboys our (now former) Defense Minister Vasile Dincu
defied NATO policy and, indeed, his govern-
Ioana Ene Dogioiu
ment’s foreign policy by saying Ukraine’s “only
SpotMedia.ro chance for peace” was to negotiate with its tor-
mentor and cede territory. The statement, which
made Romania look like a craven appeaser, had
to be quickly walked back. But I don’t condemn
Dincu—he was a fool with no military expertise
who never should have held his post. Instead, I
blame President Klaus Iohannis, the man who ap-
pointed him. After Dincu’s outrageous utterance,
Iohannis didn’t fire him but chose instead to “pub-
licly humiliate” him, saying Dincu should “read
the papers more closely” before speaking. So when
Dincu eventually did quit, it was with a public dis-
play of pique, complaining of the “impossibility of
collaborating” with the president. This “grotesque
show” took place just at the moment when Ro-
mania was trying to prove to the EU that we have
the maturity to join its visa-free zone and police its
eastern border. I wouldn’t blame Brussels if it now
decides we can’t be trusted.

How they see us: Will political violence engulf the U.S.?
A conspiracy theorist burst into House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home
late at night last week and bludgeoned her
elderly husband with a hammer. If such
“an assassination attempt” happened here,
said Kai Pfundt in the General-Anzeiger
(Germany), it would “send shock waves
throughout the entire country” and domi-
nate our cable news for weeks. Yet in the
U.S., the assault isn’t even the top story,
so commonplace has political violence
become. “Political rifts are getting deeper
by the day” as the midterm elections ap-
proach. “Right-wing agitators are openly Greene: Endorsed execution of political foes
calling for violence against opponents,”
while America’s “political institutions are being crushed in the
maelstrom of irreconcilable differences.” This is the legacy of
Donald Trump, said Heike Buchter in Die Zeit (Germany). His
presidency “made threats and calls for violence against elected
officials and civil servants socially acceptable” by calling for
protesters to be “roughed up” and refusing to condemn hate
groups. Republicans who support him echo that rhetoric, most
notably Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who actually
endorsed multiple social media posts calling for “Democrats
such as Pelosi to be executed.” In such an atmosphere, “further
blows to America’s democracy are to be feared.”
It’s getting scary over there, said Johanna Soll in the Frank-
furter Rundschau (Germany). In the five years since Trump was horse medicine and shun vaccines. Opioid deaths are also up,
elected, the number of threats against members of Congress shot because so many Americans are now addicts. These are “mark-
up “more than 10-fold.” Yet Fox News, the cable outlet that
operates as a propaganda arm for MAGA Republicans, is pre-
senting the Pelosi attack as just another
crime. Pundit Jesse Watters actually said
on air that “people are being hit with
hammers every day” thanks to a crime
wave he blamed on Democrats. America
has always been shockingly violent, said
Andrew Buncombe in the Independent
(U.K.). Four of its 46 presidents have
been assassinated, after all, compared
with but one British prime minister. Yet
it feels worse now, at a moment when
the debate is so “toxic” that Americans
“cannot even agree if the people who
attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 are he-
roes or seditionists.” Few other Western
countries have politicians who “encourage their supporters to
chant and boo, and to call ‘Lock her up!’”
The rise in political violence is just one of many symptoms of a
nation in decline, said Stéphane Foucart in Le Monde (France).
Emmanuel Todd, the French historian who predicted the col-
lapse of the USSR, did so by looking at the living conditions of
the Soviet people. The Soviet Union’s rising infant mortality and
suicide rates and its falling life expectancy, he said, foretold the
end of the empire. Now look at the U.S., which has similarly
dire indicators. Covid deaths have soared there because of the
atrocious American diet, the “dysfunction of the health system,”
and the tsunami of misinformation that drives Americans to take
ers of despair.” Coupled with the surge in violence, they show
that the U.S. is a fundamentally “damaged society.”
Getty

THE WEEK November 11, 2022

 Best columns: International NEWS 15

Brazil: Will Bolsonaro go quietly?

“Euphoria washed over the main avenue of roads “to defend the delusional idea
of São Paulo this week,” said Naiara that the result of the election could
Galarraga Gortázar in El Pais Brasil, as be reversed.” When he finally spoke,
the new president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula he implied but did not outright admit
da Silva, shouted to cheering crowds, that he had lost—nor did he explicitly
“Democracy is back!” Lula, a leftist who call off his loyalists, saying only that
started out as a union organizer, lifted he would “follow all the orders and
20 million Brazilians out of poverty dur- prescriptions of the constitution.” If his
ing his first stint in office, from 2003 conspiracy-minded backers continue to
to 2010, but later spent 19 months in cause nationwide chaos in the last two
prison on corruption charges (eventually months of his tenure, Bolsonaro may
overturned). In his stunning comeback at believe he has an excuse to call in the
age 77, he won the runoff with 2 million military. This sore loser is following the
more votes than the incumbent, making “ready-made sedition script” written
right-winger Jair Bolsonaro the country’s Blocking roads to demand the election be overturned by his “idol,” Donald Trump, said Igor
first sitting president to lose a re-election bid. Yet Lula’s victory Gielow in Folha de São Paulo. Just as Trump egged on his fanat-
isn’t an endorsement of a leftist platform. As he admitted, it was ics to try to stop the certification of the vote at the U.S. Capitol
“the victory of an immense democratic movement, formed with- in the Jan. 6 attack, Bolsonaro may try to disrupt Lula’s Jan. 1
out regard to parties, personal interests, and ideologies so that inauguration. Even if, by some miracle, he does not, his follow-
democracy might triumph.” Voters knew Brazil was in danger: In ers may take matters into their own hands.
Bolsonaro’s four years in office, he ignored the authority of the
Supreme Court and openly pined for the years of military dicta- They already are, said Paula Soprana and Renata Galf, also in
torship, packing the federal government with both active-duty Folha de São Paulo. “The radicalized militants” who have been
and retired officers. Many Brazilians were afraid that if Bolsonaro organizing roadblocks via social media heard in their hero’s
were re-elected, he would return the country to military rule. words an implied command to keep up the fight. By failing
to congratulate Lula and praising “peaceful demonstrations,”
And now, as predicted, Bolsonaro has refused to concede, said Bolsonaro’s speech is “serving as an accelerant” for the fanatics
Míriam Leitão in O Globo. We knew this would happen because who want a coup. “This is the signal he gave us,” reads a typical
he laid the groundwork for months, saying he didn’t trust voting message on Telegram. Bolsonaristas are now sharing addresses
machines and urging his supporters to protest if he lost. After of military barracks, “encouraging one another to go to them
the race was called for Lula, Bolsonaro sulked for more than a and ask for federal intervention.” There may be violence in our
day while his supporters took to the streets, blocking hundreds future. Brazilians can’t rest easy until Lula is sworn in.

When Australia’s tourism board chose a cartoon
AUSTRALIA kangaroo as the face of its new international ad-
vertising campaign, it certainly didn’t foresee con-
The ugly truth troversy, said Mick McIntyre. But the ads luring
tourists with a cuddly image of Australia’s iconic
about kangaroo animal have yielded a fierce “backlash from animal
advocates.” They point out that because farmers
slaughter see the native animals as pests that trample their
crops, we actually allow the killing of some 2 mil-
Mick McIntyre
lion kangaroos a year. The government-sanctioned
The Age
slaughter has long been “an uncomfortable truth
few people want to acknowledge,” but criticism is
now mounting, thanks to exposés about amateur
shooters who leave injured animals to die slowly.
The European Union is weighing a ban on imports
of kangaroo meat and skins due to “concerns over
how they are killed,” and the federal government
has been forced to concede that there’s “little mon-
itoring” of hunters—and no records kept on the
number of joeys killed. Those Australians who are
rightfully “appalled by Japan’s slaughter of whales
and dolphins or Canada’s killing of fur seals”
should recognize that what we inflict on our own
“international icons” is much worse. “It’s time to
get serious about their welfare, and not just use
them in tourism campaigns.”

UNITED ARAB It was the moment “when 2 billion people stopped
EMIRATES talking,” said the Khaleej Times. Last week “the
virtual world almost stood still” when the social
App shutdown media messaging app WhatsApp went down for a
couple of hours. It was a moment to contemplate
brings life how much our lives are governed by our tech-
nological tools. The figures are “startling.” The
to a standstill Meta-owned messaging app has 2 billion users
Editorial worldwide. They fire off an unfathomable 1 mil-
Khaleej Times lion messages every second, more than 4 billion an
hour. In the UAE alone, more than 80 percent of
us rely on it. When the app disappeared, taking its
Getty
of communication protocol had broken down.”
Those two short hours felt “like eternity” for those
suddenly cut off from notifications from the out-
side world, including work, doctors, car services,
and loved ones. The hashtag #WhatsAppdown
“trended furiously on Twitter.” It makes you won-
der: How did we use to communicate with one an-
other? Before “ping me” became one of the most
common phrases in the language, “did we know
what ‘being communicative’ even meant?” We can
only hope that during that stretch of downtime
some of us found moments of introspection—or

omnipresent “pings” with it, it was as if “all forms maybe even a live person to talk with.
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
16 NEWS
Noted
QThis year’s flu season
has started early and is hit-
ting hard, with more hospi-
talizations so far than any
time since the H1N1 swine
flu pandemic in 2009. So
far there have been at least
880,000 cases, nearly 7,000
hospitalizations, and 360
deaths, according to the
CDC. The season usually
peaks in December and
January.
CNN.com
QFierce heat waves driven
by climate change have
cost the global economy
an estimated $16 tril-
lion over the past three
decades, says a new study
published in Science
Advances. That estimate,
based on analysis of
economic data and heat
waves, include the costs of
lost productivity, lower ag-
ricultural yield, and impact
on human health.
The Hill
QLaw enforce-
ment officials
in Texas cities
say a law al-
lowing adults
to carry hand-
guns without a license has
led to more spontaneous
shootings during argu-
ments over driving, park-
ing spots, loud music, and
love triangles. “It seems
like now there’s been a
tipping point where just
everybody is armed,” said
Harris County Sheriff Ed
Gonzalez. As of January,
half the nation’s states will
allow “permitless carry.”
The New York Times
QThe U.S. has released
the oldest prisoner held
at the Guantánamo Bay
detention center, who was
locked up there since 2005.
Once a wealthy Pakistani
businessman, Saifullah
Paracha, 75, was accused
of helping two 9/11 con-
spirators with a financial
transaction, but he said
he didn’t know they were
terrorists and was never
charged with a crime.
NBCNews.com
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
Talking points
Climate: A grim prognosis
Nations around the globe are
falling “pitifully short” of
pledges to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, said Sarah
Kaplan in The Washington
Post, and as a result, our
planet is headed for “cata-
strophic warming.” That’s
the conclusion of a new U.N.
report that warns that any
“credible pathway” to keep-
Melting glaciers in Greenland
ing the planet’s temperature
within 1.5 degrees Celsius of preindustrial levels
has vanished. Pledges to cut carbon emissions
made during last year’s global climate confer-
ence in Glasgow portend a world that’s at least
2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit)
warmer by 2100—and most nations are failing
to meet even those “lackluster targets.” Without
dramatic emissions cuts of 45 percent by 2030,
the report said, “humanity faces a hellish future
that will make today’s climate disasters seem mild
by comparison.”
The consequences of a hotter planet are already
staring us in the face, said Ishaan Tharoor, also in for fossil fuels. Though painful in the short term,
The Washington Post. A “devastating drought”
has gripped East Africa, with 40 percent of the
population of Somalia facing starvation. Last
summer, floodwaters covered a third of Pakistan, “the greatest threat to humanity,” and “the win-
while much of Europe was drought-stricken and
baked brown. The Colorado River Basin in the
Schools: The learning loss during the pandemic
The results of an “authoritative national exam”
measuring school performance are in, and they
offer “the most definitive indictment yet of the
pandemic’s impact on millions of schoolchildren,”
said Sarah Mervosh and Ashley Wu in The New
York Times. The National Assessment of Educa-
tional Progress, called the Nation’s Report Card,
shows that since the pandemic began, students
“in most states and across almost all demographic
groups have experienced troubling setbacks
in both math and reading.” The math results
were “especially devastating.” Math scores for
eighth-graders fell in nearly every state, with a
mere 26 percent showing proficiency, down from
34 percent in 2019. Reading scores declined in
more than half the states, with only 1 in 3 stu-
dents meeting proficiency standards.
For those who mandated “policies that kept
children out of school, the time to pay the piper
has arrived,” said Pradheep Shanker in National
Review. Remote classes might have made sense
in the pandemic’s early days, when the virus was
little understood. But Democratic officials kept
schools shuttered long after we knew children
were at very low risk of serious Covid illness,
ignoring the “damage that virtual learning was
Southwest is suffering its
worst dry spell in 1,200
years. The loss of more
than 5,000 gigatons of ice
in Greenland also offers “a
bracing corrective” to skep-
tics, said Bret Stephens in
The New York Times. For
years, I scoffed at the warn-
ing that climate change rep-
resents “a catastrophic threat
to the future of humanity,”
but data and visual evidence has made the phe-
nomenon hard to deny. I still reject the “mille-
narian fervor” of climate activists who demand
drastic government intervention with little regard
for the economy or Americans’ quality of life. But
it’s time for my fellow conservatives to recognize
climate stability as a “universally shared good”
and support investment in energy innovation and
market-based solutions.
“There are some grounds for optimism,” said the
Los Angeles Times in an editorial. Investments
in clean energy development now outstrip those
the war in Ukraine’s shocks to the energy market
could “speed up the global shift” from fossil fuels
to renewables. Still, it isn’t enough. We’re facing
dow is rapidly closing” on our chance to mitigate
its worst effects.
causing.” Don’t forget the role of teachers’
unions “in keeping so many schools closed to
in-person learning,” said Michael Petrilli in the
New York Post. They share the blame for these
“catastrophic” losses, which could leave many
children “economically scarred for life.”
Actually, the statistics don’t fit that narrative,
said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post.
Students in Florida and Texas, where Republican
governors reopened schools in the fall of 2020,
fared slightly worse in math than those in Cali-
fornia, which kept children home much longer.
Reading scores in those states fell by the same
small amount. It’s surprising that the decline in
scores wasn’t more severe, said David Wallace-
Wells in The New York Times. Critics gloss over it
Getty, Matthew Busch/The New York Times/Redux
now, but in 2020, kids faced “a brutal pandemic
that terrified the country and killed more than
a million of its citizens, upending nearly every
aspect of our lives.” Decisions to protect school-
children were made amid great uncertainty and
anxiety, and no one knows how many adults kids
would have infected had schools stayed open.
Kids lost ground in school because of “a genera-
tional and global public health trauma.” It’s easy,
and wrong, to blame schools or teachers.
 Talking points NEWS 17

Pelosi attack: Where conspiracy theories lead Wit &

Most Republicans “cannot
even manage ordinary decency
arrested outside the home
of Supreme Court Justice
Wisdom
anymore,” said Mona Charen Brett Kavanaugh. Sorry, but “A lawn is nature under
in The Bulwark. Last week, that’s “false moral equiva- totalitarian rule.”
Michael Pollan, quoted in
42-year-old David DePape lency,” said Max Boot in The The New Republic
broke into House Speaker Washington Post. Yes, there
Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco are violent left-wing extrem- “Forgiveness is the
home through a glass door, ists, but Republicans actually greatest gift you can give
carrying zip ties, rope, two encourage violence through yourself. It’s not for the
other person.”
hammers, and tape, and yelling “extremist rhetoric” and Maya Angelou, quoted in
“Where’s Nancy?” The House campaign ads showing them- Woman’s World
Speaker was in Washington, Targeted: Paul and Nancy Pelosi selves brandishing assault
“Men, it has been well
D.C., but DePape attacked her 82-year-old hus- weapons. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)
said, think in herds; it
band, Paul, fracturing his skull. In police inter- has said Nancy Pelosi “is guilty of treason” and will be seen that they go
views, DePape said he planned to hold Nancy deserves to be executed. Inciter-in-chief Donald mad in herds, while they
Pelosi hostage and break her kneecaps because Trump calls President Biden an “enemy of the only recover their senses
she is the “leader of the pack of lies told by the state” and says the U.S. is being taken over by slowly, and one by one.”
Democratic Party.” DePape’s social media history “communists.” Is it any wonder unhinged losers Charles Mackay, quoted in Yes!
is laced with conspiracy theories from QAnon, respond to this vitriol with violence? “I don’t approve of political
anti-vaxxers, and the Big Lie about the 2020 jokes; I’ve seen too many
election. Rather than expressing sorrow over the As a longtime conservative, said Nick Catoggio of them get elected.”
attack and denouncing violence, many Republi- in The Dispatch, I have reluctantly come to the Jon Stewart, quoted in
cans “loosed their inner Trump troll,” spreading conclusion that “populist authoritarianism poses What’s Up Newp
an invented claim that Paul Pelosi and DePape a special civic threat to America.” Trump has pro- “If we want the rewards of
were gay lovers having a quarrel. “What the hell moted “a culture of intimidation” in his MAGA being loved, we must first
is wrong with these people?” fan base and is now warning it will respond with submit to the mortifying
riots if he’s prosecuted. “There’s no comparable ordeal of being known.”
Writer Tim Kreider, quoted in
The attack was “sickening,” but blame doesn’t figure in the Democratic Party.” Republicans the Irish Examiner
rest solely with the right, said The Wall Street should not wave away the attack on Pelosi by
Journal in an editorial. In 2017, a Bernie Sanders claiming both sides are equally guilty. “The GOP’s “What matters in life is not
supporter shot Republican congressman Steve culture won’t change until right-wingers confront what happens to you but
what you remember and
Scalise, and earlier this year, an armed man was it instead of making excuses for it.”
how you remember it.”
Gabriel García Márquez,
quoted in Good Housekeeping
Inflation: What’s the Republican plan? “Oh, you hate your job?
Republican candidates are focusing their midterm- Office warning that “only about $400 billion” Why didn’t you say
so? There’s a support
election messaging “overwhelmingly on inflation,” was needed “to close the hole created by the pan- group for that. It’s called
said Paul Krugman in The New York Times. demic recession.” Flooding Americans with cash EVERYBODY, and they
But you probably haven’t heard many specifics led to what economist Milton Friedman warned meet at the bar.”
from their economic agenda—because the GOP about: “too much money chasing too few goods.” George Carlin, quoted in
“doesn’t actually have a plan to reduce inflation,” Facing a midterm bloodbath, Biden now claims ArtsHub (U.K.)
which is occurring globally. Republicans fixate on the economy is great, said the Washington Exam-
gas prices, now $3.75 a gallon on average, but iner in an editorial. But voters know the inflation
increasing domestic oil production likely would rate was at 2 percent when he took office and has Poll watch
have little impact on prices, which are set globally stood at 8 percent for months. They “are about
Q49% of voters say the
and are now inflated because of “Russia’s invasion to punish Biden and the Democrats accordingly.”
economy is an extremely
of Ukraine.” Republicans also promise to slash important factor in their
safety-net spending to cut the deficit, but they also If Republicans win control of the House and per- decision, the highest rate
want to extend the Trump tax cuts—which will haps the Senate, said The Philadelphia Inquirer in for a midterm since 2010.
increase the deficit. Republicans are playing a cyni- an editorial, they “will likely make things worse.” Abortion and crime are ex-
cal game, said Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles To reduce spending, they plan to raise the eligibil- tremely important factors
Times. They are counting on voters to “throw the ity age for Social Security and Medicare while for 42% and 40% of voters,
bums out” without telling them what they would at the same time giving corporations and the respectively. 38% consider
do differently. wealthy more tax cuts. Slashing taxes and spend- gun policy extremely im-
portant, down from 55%
ing to cure inflation is playing with fire—just look
in June, following the
Voters won’t buy Democrats’ “inflation globalo- at how that played out in the U.K., where conser- Uvalde, Texas, massacre.
ney,” said David Beckworth in National Review. vative Prime Minister Liz Truss recently proposed 49% of Democrats and 9%
Yes, prices are up everywhere, but the U.S. could “a similar economic plan.” In response, “Eng- of Republicans rate cli-
have been spared such prolonged, severe inflation land’s markets imploded,” and Truss was quickly mate change as extremely
had Democrats not overheated the economy with ousted. The Western world has inflation because important.
a $1.9 trillion stimulus package in early 2021, “the pandemic collapsed the global economy.” Gallup
Getty

despite the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Empty Republican rhetoric won’t fix it.
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
18 NEWS Pick of the week’s cartoons

THE WEEK November 11, 2022 For more political cartoons, visit: www.theweek.com/cartoons.
20 NEWS Technology

Commerce: TikTok has something to sell you

There’s a new, potentially viral phenomenon tions isn’t new, said Megan McCluskey in
coming to TikTok, said Mack DeGeurin Time. “Eight out of 10 social media users
in Gizmodo: shopping. TikTok’s Chinese in China use social commerce to make
sister app, Douyin, already sports a suc- purchases,” as apps there have become
cessful live-shopping feature. Now Tik the equivalent of what QVC is here. So
Tok appears to be bringing that to the far, though, U.S. and European consum-
U.S. The social media company has been ers haven’t bought in. TikTok already
quietly working on “an international e- launched Shop in the U.K., but it “strug-
commerce fulfillment system,” complete gled to gain traction” and “lost the sup-
with its own warehouses. TikTok job port of influencers.” TikTok must also
listings posted on LinkedIn last month compete with Meta, which has Facebook
included a logistics solutions manager for TikTok is looking to bypass the middleman. Marketplace and Instagram Shopping.
Seattle- and Los Angeles–based fulfillment centers as well as an
operation research engineer tasked with building out a “ware- TikTok’s different, said Shoshana Wodinsky in MarketWatch.
housing network.” According to one study, 56 percent of TikTok The billion-user platform “has shown an uncanny ability to drive
users “already turn to the platform to discover new products offline sales of anything from leggings to containers of feta cheese
and brands.” Why wouldn’t they be interested in purchasing and with the help of its viral videos.” The hashtag #tiktokmademe
receiving viral goods with a click? buyit helped the company pioneer the art of “viral commerce.”
Managing its own logistics operation should help the company
The shopping project is a sign TikTok’s owners are thinking long get a cut of those sales without falling prey to the quality-
term, said Dan Whateley in Business Insider, and “beyond quaint assurance problems that have been associated with Facebook
in-app shopping buttons and merchandise shelves touted by its Marketplace. “Social commerce’s biggest hurdle right now is
social media peers.” Other social media companies like YouTube trust—trust that the products you buy will actually be the prod-
and Facebook also offer in-app commerce “but require sellers ucts you receive.” TikTok also recently debuted its own trackers,
to handle details like warehousing and shipping.” By taking that which like those of Meta and Google follow users across the web
in-house and building out its logistics infrastructure, TikTok is and collect data from their activity. That data set becomes part
also enabling “overseas sellers to ship and deliver quickly to the of a tightly held equation that could enable TikTok to “gauge
U.S. market.” The idea of copying Asia’s e-commerce innova- whether you’re likely to buy just about anything.”

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

A French cargo ship will be par-
tially powered by wind, thanks to
the world’s first automated, fully
retractable sails, said Baba Tamim
in Interesting Engineering. Michelin
introduced its “inflatable wing sail”
in 2021 as a new spin on an old con-
cept to reduce fuel consumption and
emissions in shipping. The company
says its sails, which will be mounted
on the MN Pélican, a 500-foot-long
vessel that carries 12,000 tons of
cargo, can “reduce fuel use by
up to 20 percent per ship.” When
fully inflated, the sails harness the
wind as a source of propulsion. But
because the system is also retract-
able, the sails “can be mounted on
both commercial and recreational
vessels” and still allow “for simple
passage under bridges and into
ports.” Last year, Michelin commit-
Venture capitalists flock to AI startups of magnitude 4.5 or greater, “which is when
“Generative AI” startups are creating a new
gold rush among Silicon Valley venture capi-
talists, said Angus Loten in The Wall Street
Journal. Jasper, a company that programmed
its artificial intelligence platform to “auto-
generate promotional blog posts and other
marketing materials” from simple prompts,
recently announced a $125 million fundrais-
ing round, setting its private-market valuation
above $1 billion. This came on the heels of a
$101 million funding round by Stability AI,
the maker of Stable Diffusion, a new text-to-
image program. “At first glance, generative AI
might seem more like a curiosity,” but inves-
tors promise that as it develops there will be
more realistic business applications than that
shown off by the first batch of art generators,
which excel at “creating cute pictures of a
corgi in a house made of sushi.”
Cellphone alerts for earthquakes
More than 2 million Californians were alerted
by their phones last week about an impending
earthquake, said David Lumb in CNET. The
alerts were the first use of a statewide warn-
earthquakes start to become dangerous,” the
alerts go to phones that are in the affected
region, based on their real-time location.
The state partnered with Google in 2020 to
“integrate the alert tech into the operating
system,” so 2.1 million Android users in the
state received the alert. Alerts also went out to
95,000 iPhone owners who had downloaded
the state’s MyShake warning app.
A video to prove you’re real
Hinge will soon ask users to submit a short
“video selfie” for profile verification, said
Lauren Goode in Wired. The makers of the
dating app, which focuses on long-term re-
lationships and is owned by Match Group,
said the extra security measure was necessary
to battle “a proliferation of fake accounts”
created by scammers. Hinge “plans to use a
combination of machine-learning technology
and human moderators” to review the video
submissions and “compare facial geometrics
from the video selfie to photos on the user’s
profile.” If a video is confirmed as authentic,
a user gets a ‘Verified’ badge. In recent years,
Getty, Michelin

ted to using carbon-free shipping
alternatives for its products.
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
ing system that analyzes seismic activity and ‘romance scams’ have multiplied on dating
“predicts which areas could be affected.” If sites, and a recent Wired article highlighted
the system’s algorithm predicts an earthquake the flood of fake Hinge profiles.
22 NEWS
Kids threatened by ‘tripledemic’
A trifecta of respiratory ailments is
expected to make this winter particularly
dangerous for kids. Respiratory syncy-
tial virus, or RSV, has already filled up
children’s hospitals across the country,
leaving few beds available for children
with other ailments or injuries, reports
NBCNews.com. RSV, which can cause
pneumonia in babies and toddlers, nor-
mally peaks in winter, but this year cases
started climbing in summer and never
stopped. Some 75 percent of pediatric
beds are already occupied—in some
states, more than 90 percent. Full hospi-
tals are ferrying sick toddlers to faraway
Fossilized tracks of two co-existing hominins
How humans evolved walking
The “March of Progress”—the image
showing human evolution from knuckle-
dragging apes to a series of ever more
upright forebears—may be entirely false,
reports Scientific American. New fossil
evidence shows that millions of years ago
there were several different hominin spe-
cies in Africa at the same time, trying out
various adaptations for walking. That sug-
gests our modern stride wasn’t the result of
each successive generation becoming more
upright, but was simply the option that
won out. Researchers who studied all the
foot fossils available in African museums
noticed five different foot shapes, suggest-
ing five distinct ways of walking upright.
Separately, they found fossils from apes
during the Miocene epoch (23 million
to 5.3 million years ago) indicating that
those animals didn’t knuckle-walk like a
chimpanzee. This raises the possibility that
the ancestor from which humans descend
was not a knuckle-dragger at all, but a
more upright creature that used its arms
to help it “walk” among trees and across
boughs. If so, the trait that made Homo
sapiens unique was not bipedal walking,
but bipedal walking on the ground rather
than in the trees. In other words, says
Dartmouth College anthropologist Jeremy
DeSilva, “the evolution of upright walking
was a lot less linear, more complex, and
more interesting than we once thought.”
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
Health & Science
hospitals with beds, while older kids end
up in adult wards. Given the new Omicron
variants that are circulating and the
forecast of a particularly bad flu season,
doctors fear that the convergence of RSV,
Covid, and flu could overload the pediatric
health system with a “tripledemic.” Young
children are always vulnerable to respira-
tory viruses, because mucus can easily
clog their tiny airways. But they are at
even greater risk now, since many spent
months social distancing, which reduced
their immune exposure. “What we lacked
is a couple of years of little kids develop-
ing the immunity that’s needed to keep
Put on a happy face
Faking a smile can lift your mood, new
research shows. In a study involving 3,900
people from 19 countries, each participant
tried one of three techniques to activate
smile muscles. The first group lifted the
corners of their lips toward their ears, the
second held a pen in their teeth without
letting their lips touch it, and the third
group mimicked the expressions of smiling
actors. Half the volunteers performed the
task while looking at cheerful images on
a screen, while the other half saw a blank
screen. They then watched the same images
or blank screen while holding a neutral
expression. Each time, the participants
filled out questionnaires assessing their
mood. As expected, seeing happy images
made participants happier—yet so did mim-
icking the smiling photographs and pulling
the mouth toward the ears. (There was no
mood boost for the pen-in-mouth tech-
nique). “The stretch of a smile can make
people feel happy,” lead author Nicholas
Coles, from Stanford University, tells The
Times (U.K.). “The conscious experience of
emotion must be at least partially based on
bodily sensations.”
The social lives of reptiles
Reptiles aren’t really cold and unfeel-
ing, says The New York Times. New
research has found that some live in
family groups and care for their young.
Shingleback lizards, for example, often
form long-term bonds, returning to their
partners year after year: One couple
paired up for at least 27 years.
And when one dies, the other
sometimes sits alongside
the corpse and nudges it—
perhaps suggesting some sort
of grieving. Reptiles’ courting
rituals are also more sophisti-
cated than generally thought. Shingleback love
Hospitals are full of sick toddlers.
these colds at bay,” says Buddy Creech,
from the Vanderbilt University Medical
Center in Nashville. “We may be in for a
rough six or seven weeks.”
Skipping breast cancer surgery
Surgery to remove the tumor is often con-
sidered crucial to fighting breast cancer.
But a small new study suggests an opera-
tion may not be necessary for all patients,
reports ScienceDaily.com. Scientists enrolled
50 breast cancer patients over age 40 who
had two types of breast cancer and early-
stage disease. All of the patients underwent
chemotherapy and then had their tumors
biopsied. Thirty-one, about 60 percent of
patients, responded so well to the chemo
that they were able to forgo surgery and
follow up with radiation alone. And all
patients were still in remission after a
follow-up period of about two years. The
research adds to evidence supporting a
new trend in cancer treatment toward de-
escalation, in which care is individualized to
minimize the interventions required. Because
surgery can lead to medical complications
and in some cases change the shape of the
breast, avoiding unnecessary operations
could result in better health outcomes. Lead
author Henry Kuerer, from the University
of Texas, says the findings add to “grow-
ing evidence showing that newer drugs can
completely eradicate cancer in some cases.”
Central American whiptail lizards, for
example, have been seen offering a
potential partner a tasty dead frog to eat
before mating. Pregnant rattlesnakes,
meanwhile, prefer to associate with
Getty, Science Source, Jesse Taylor Smith/Museums Victoria
their kin, suggesting they recognize fam-
ily, while pygmy rattlesnakes are more
responsive to threats if their offspring
are nearby. Finding ways for humans to
relate to reptiles is important,
says Julia Riley, a behavioral
ecologist at Mount Allison
University in Canada, because
“we don’t conserve what we
don’t care about.” And 1 in 5
of all reptile species are threat-
ened with extinction.
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
The Revolutionary:
Samuel Adams
by Stacy Schiff
(Little, Brown, $35)
Who was Samuel Adams? asked Mark
Spencer in The Wall Street Journal.
“Finding an answer is not easy,” it turns
out. The Founding Father who is today best
known as the face of a craft beer brand
burned his letters and papers and was
more often written about by his political
enemies than by his discreet fellow colonial
rebels. But there was a reason Adams was
as celebrated during his lifetime as George
Washington, and Stacy Schiff has pushed
past the silences in the historical record to
create an “enthralling” new biography that
positions Adams (1722–1803) as a failed
Boston businessman who emerged as the
savvy stage manager of a world-shaking
independence movement.
“To read this book is to immerse oneself in
a very particular and thrilling time,” said
Chris Vognar in USA Today. The Boston
in which Adams emerged as a politician
Novel of the week
Demon Copperhead
by Barbara Kingsolver
(Harper, $32.50)
“Of course Barbara Kingsolver would
retell Dickens,” said Molly Young in
The New York Times. Her ninth novel,
Demon Copperhead, makes explicit the
connection between her “unblushingly
political” fiction and Dickens’ own by
riffing on David Copperfield. But where
Dickens’ young hero navigated bleak
Victorian England, Kingsolver’s Damon
Fields is a child of 1980s rural Virginia.
Damon’s unstable childhood, poor edu-
cation, and later opioid addiction make
the novel “a relentless chain of tragedies
interrupted sporadically with minor vic-
tories.” But Kingsolver “hasn’t merely
reclothed Dickens’ characters in modern
dress and resettled them in southern
Appalachia,” said Ron Charles in The
Washington Post. She has “effectively
reignited the moral indignation of the
great Victorian novelist” to spotlight
child poverty in our time. Fortunately,
the “grim melodrama” of Damon’s life
is leavened by his droll voice. The result
is Kingsolver’s “best demonstration yet
of a novel’s ability to simultaneously en-
tertain and plead for reform.”
Getty
Adams: A master manipulator
and political writer was “a wild and often
dangerous city, with violent protests and
raucous meetings of the people.” Adams
made himself a nuisance to colonial admin-
istrators by sensationalizing the affronts
to liberty he perceived in the 1765 Stamp
Act and the 1773 Tea Act. He also orga-
nized protests, and the Boston Massacre
of 1770 played right into his hands. Schiff,
who “has a gift for converting exhaustive
The Escape Artist: The Man
Who Broke Out of Auschwitz
to Warn the World
by Jonathan Freedland
(Harper, $29)
Walter Rosenberg,
who was 17 when he
was sent to Auschwitz,
“survived horrors
that most of us can
barely imagine,” said
Dominic Sandbrook
in The Sunday Times
(U.K.). Assigned,
among other jobs, to
help unload prisoners
sent by train to the
death camp, the young Slovak witnessed at
least several hundred thousand fellow Jews
ushered into gas chambers. He saw a friend
who whispered a warning led away to be
shot. He saw failed escapees hanged. But
Rosenberg, who later changed his name to
Rudolf Vrba, decided that the killing might
end if he himself could escape and reveal
Auschwitz’s horrors to the world. He suc-
ceeded in doing his part against all odds.
Yet he has never been widely celebrated.
Finally, with Jonathan Freedland’s “incred-
ibly moving” account, this brave man has
“the biography that he deserves.”
23
research into propulsive narrative,” puts
Adams in or near the action at numerous
tide-turning events. He was an agitator
playing a long game, and “when the time
came to strike, his partners and followers
were more than ready.”
There’s no obvious reason why Adams so
despised British rule, said Adam Gopnik
in The New Yorker. Apparently, “he just
didn’t like being told what to do,” and as
an idealist who’d studied political science
at Harvard, he was fluent in revolutionary
thinking about individual rights. He paired
that knowledge with a “genius” for political
theater and for leveraging the media tech-
nologies of the day to spread his complaints
across all 13 colonies. Adams’ commitment
to what we’d call publicity stunts gets due
attention from Schiff, and “it is a reminder,
to those who preach the necessity of real
political work over empty theatricalized
protest, that empty theatricalized protest
set the stage for the American Revolution.”
Fortunately, Adams wasn’t just a showman
or propagandist. “However flawed,” he
and the other Founders “really were driven
by ideas, and the ideas they were driven by
were mainly good ones.”
The book’s first half is “not an easy read,”
said Laurie Hertzel in the Minneapolis
Star Tribune. We know about the evil of
Auschwitz, but Freedland’s telling “makes
us feel it,” supplementing his depiction
of the massive killing operation with
anecdotes about isolated cruelty that are
“almost harder to take.” Vrba memorized
every detail, even reciting intake numbers to
himself daily until April 1944, when he and
fellow prisoner Fred Wetzler hid in a trench
under a stack of lumber for 72 hours,
slipped away, trekked 75 miles to Slovakia,
and assembled a 32-page report that even-
tually prompted the first newspaper reports
about the death chambers.
It’s “horrifying” to learn how many recipi-
ents of the report failed to act quickly, said
Ruth Franklin in The New York Times.
Anti-Semitism was partly to blame, but The
Escape Artist also “teaches us to be aware
of the human mind’s propensity to allow
itself to be deceived, when confronted by
facts that seem too horrible to believe.”
Perhaps 200,000 lives were saved when
Hungary’s regent finally ended the deporta-
tion of Jews in July 1944, but he had by
then allowed tens of thousands more to die.
“The next time an abyss yawns before us—
whether it be in Kyiv or in Washington,
D.C.—we owe it to them to stare into it.”
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
24 ARTS The Book List
Best books…chosen by Ross Gay
Ross Gay is the author of the best-selling essay collection The Book of Delights and
the award-winning poetry collection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. His new book
of essays, Inciting Joy, explores the power of pursuing shared pleasures.
Benito Cereno by Herman Melville (1855).
Melville’s novella, ostensibly about an insurrec-
tion of enslaved Africans, is equally a story about
well-meaning liberal Americans who can’t tell
their asses from their elbows but sure think they
can. As sophisticated a use of perspective, and
irony, as I’ve ever read.
The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison
(2017). Beloved is one of my very favorite
books, as is Morrison’s slim book of literary
criticism, Playing in the Dark. But her best book
for this moment may be her next-to-last work,
The Origin of Others, which considers how we
invent “others,” to whom we feel we can do
anything—how we’re all susceptible to doing it,
and how we’re doing it right now.
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
by Saidiya Hartman (2019). A historical con-
sideration of young Black women living in
Philadelphia and New York between the 1890s
and the 1940s. Hartman shows, through amaz-
ing and intense archival research, how these
young women invented all kinds of radical
modes of life infrequently attributed to them. It’s
Also of interest...in newly translated fiction
Is Mother Dead
by Vigdis Hjorth (Verso, $27)
In this “harrowing and propulsive”
Norwegian novel, a woman’s bid
to reconcile with her mother “esca-
lates alarmingly,” said Naomi
Huffman in The New York Times.
The pair haven’t spoken in so long
that Johanna, a painter newly returned to Oslo,
doesn’t even know if her mother is still alive when
she reaches out by phone and hears nothing back.
Soon she is behaving like a stalker, sifting through
her mother’s trash, following her on foot. “Too
late, Johanna grasps how little she really knows.”
Canción
by Eduardo Halfon (Bellevue, $18)
“How to build a book around a bit
of history you didn’t witness, one
shrouded in mystery?” asked David
Ulin in the Los Angeles Times. Taking
the murky circumstances of his
grandfather’s 1967 kidnapping and
spinning it into autofiction, Guatemalan writer
Eduardo Halfon delivers a digressive tale that
spans multiple decades and continents. “He does
not seek a definitive story because he understands
no story can be definitive; each is influenced by
who we are and what we wish to know.”
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
Author of the week
Shehan Karunatilaka
For Shehan Karunatilaka, the
only way to capture the Sri
almost a poem, and one of the most beautiful Lanka he once knew was to
books I’ve ever read. tell a ghost story, said Lisa
Allardice in The Guardian.
Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo The Seven Moons of Maali
Galeano (1995). I’m not a soccer person, but this Almeida, winner last week of
is one of the best sports books I have ever read. the 2022 Booker Prize, is set
It’s effectively a history of men’s soccer—offered six years into
in brief vignettes, some of them only a paragraph the coun-
or two long—from the perspective of one of our try’s brutal
great, incisive, searing writers on empire. 1983–2009
civil war and
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca narrated by
Solnit (2005). In this lyrical book, Solnit consid- the spirit of a
ers the virtues, the necessities even, of being lost. war photog-
A book I often share with writing students, and rapher who
return to again and again for sustaining guidance has seven
on how to be a writer, and how to be a person. days to figure out who killed
him. The whodunnit aspect
Fatheralong by John Edgar Wideman (1994). allowed Karunatilaka, 47,
Fatheralong, a prequel of sorts to Wideman’s to introduce readers to the
astonishing Writing to Save a Life, follows a war’s multiple factions. The
trip Wideman took with his father, with whom setting allowed him to revisit
he had a complicated relationship, to South a time when his mother
would instruct him to avert
Carolina. If you’re interested in relationships
his eyes as they passed
between fathers and sons, by one of our very dead bodies in the streets of
best writers, you might love it. Colombo. “Those who have
memories don’t talk about
it,” he says. “We should
write about it and try to make
sense of it, because we don’t
Seven Empty Houses tend to do that in Sri Lanka—
by Samanta Schweblin (Riverhead, $25) we tend to just move on.”
“Bizarre behavior abounds” in Karunatilaka would like to see
Samanta Schweblin’s new story col- Sri Lanka move on quickly
lection, said Cory Oldweiler in The from its current problems,
Washington Post. Each tale features said Armani Syed in Time.
a woman adrift. There’s a mother The country, owing in part to
who repeatedly throws her dead son’s mismanagement, is enduring
clothes over a neighbor’s fence. Another compul- its worst economic crisis in
sively adjusts details at other people’s homes. The seven decades. But at least
book, a National Book Award finalist, showcases free speech is flourishing—
Schweblin’s “ability to upend readers’ emotional for once. Protests have
forced a leadership change,
stability with a single phrase,” It may be the
and Karunatilaka reports
Argentine writer’s “most unsettling” work yet.
that Sri Lankans are “slay-
The Pachinko Parlor ing” the ruling party with
jokes on social media. Asked
by Elisa Shua Dusapin (Open Letter, $17) what he hopes the fate of his
Like her award-winning debut, Elisa novel will be, he notes that
Shua Dusapin’s second novel is “a a return to the suppression
masterclass in narrative subtlety,” of speech could always bury
it. His fondest hope, though,
said Madeleine Feeny in The
is that his ghost story about
Guardian. Claire, a Korean-Swiss
a bloody civil war will seem
grad student, spends an alienating so strange that it will be
summer visiting her Korean grandparents in filed in the fantasy section.
Tokyo. Dusapin’s command of mood is striking, “Twenty years from now, if
but for readers of her Winter in Sokcho, it may we’re still in the same place,”
Wikipedia, Getty
be too familiar. The Franco-Korean author is “an he says, “that will be quite
exceptional writer—sharply focused, delicate— tragic for me.”
but she could shake things up next time.”
26 ARTS Review of reviews: Art & Stage
Exhibit of the week
Edward Hopper’s
New York
Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York City, through
March 5
Edward Hopper was “a tried-
and-true New Yorker,” but
never before have museum-
goers enjoyed such an opportu-
nity to walk the city with him,
said Veronica Esposito in The
Guardian. The great realist
(1882–1967) left more than
3,000 works to the Whitney
Museum upon his death, and
the institution has gathered
dozens of other paintings,
watercolors, prints, and draw-
ings to create a 200-work
‘New York Movie’ (1939): Two moods in close proximity
survey that ranks as its larg-
est Hopper show in years. Born across the
Hudson River in 1882, the artist settled
in Manhattan in his mid-20s and lived on
Washington Square in Greenwich Village
for decades with his wife, fellow painter
Josephine Nivison Hopper. By staying
so close to the couple’s home, the show
“succeeds at revealing a different side of
Hopper.” The images on display highlight
his prowess as a visual innovator while giv- just a short walk from his home and studio. absences.” He puts us on empty rooftops,
ing New Yorkers and tourists alike cause
to “refresh their eyes and rediscover a city
that they thought they knew.”
If you’ve muscled through Robert
Caro’s 1,000-plus page biography The
Power Broker, you know that Robert
Moses’ life contained plenty of drama,
said Charles Isherwood in The Wall
Street Journal. So it’s “bewildering” that
the celebrated British playwright David
Hare has turned the same material into
“an information-shoveling talkathon.”
Straight Line Crazy dramatizes the
exploits of Moses, a hubristic 20th-
century New York urban planner whose
highway, bridge, and “slum”-clearing
projects exemplified a top-down
approach to modernization that remade,
and arguably warped, the lives of millions.
“Even with Ralph Fiennes, one of our fin-
est stage actors, portraying Moses,” this
London import never lifts off. Instead, “it’s
mostly a staged debate about the pros and
cons of Moses’ achievement.”
“The play is still a pleasure,” largely
because Fiennes’ portrayal of Moses is so
“gloriously entertaining,” said Jesse Green
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
Hopper’s New York City proves “often
moody” but “always exhilarating,” said
Natasha Gural in Forbes. If you’re a New
Yorker, “you’ll want to linger, looking
deeply into the multitudes of personas and
situations that we encounter in everyday
life.” One standout 1937 painting, The
Sheridan Theatre, depicts the interior of
one of Hopper’s beloved haunts, a cinema
With another, 1939’s New York Movie,
we’re “transported back to the grandeur
and solitude of watching a film from
Straight Line Crazy
The Shed, New York City ++++
Fiennes: ‘Wit and pith personified’
in The New York Times. “Melodramatic
in the old-fashioned sense, a hero or villain upper-middlebrow intellectualism to satisfy
from an operetta or Ayn Rand,” Fiennes
“crows his lines like a rooster,” making
Moses a man brimming with confidence
that he knows better than anyone above
or below him how best to build the future.
Never mind that Moses was less charismatic might have admired. Sadly, contemplating
in history’s portrayals, “here he is wit and these ironies “ends up being more interest-
pith personified,” and when he faces off
red velvet seats in a nearly
empty theater.” Except that
Hopper bifurcates the image
so that we also see a “blasé yet
elegant” female usher, modeled
after Josephine, who leans
against a side wall alone in her
own thoughts. The moment is
both time-stamped and timeless,
revealing the “immortality” of
a certain kind of urban scene or
experience.
Hopper’s perspective was
incomplete, of course, said
Hilton Als in The New Yorker.
He painted only the world he
knew—“which was, for the
most part, a white world.”
Still, “it’s amazing to see how
he mined his relatively narrow
experience to produce work
that still feels wide-ranging and universal,
if only because loneliness is universal,
and, for Hopper, what unites us as human
beings.” He began sketching city scenes as
soon as he arrived in New York, and even
though the city became his primary muse,
“it took him a long time to figure out what
he loved most about her: not what was
visible but what wasn’t revealed, her many
on quiet streets at dawn, or just outside a
window where the life unfolding inside is
lush briefly visible yet unknowable.
in Act I with Al Smith, New York’s
popular street-taught 1920s governor,
Fiennes and a hilarious Danny Webb
achieve a Mutt and Jeff–like comic
chemistry. Even when Hare’s drama-
turgy goes “uncharacteristically soggy”
in Act 2, “Fiennes never falters.”
His star power clearly fills seats, said
Jackson McHenry in NYMag.com.
Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/ARS, Sara Krulwich/The New York Times/Redux
Straight Line Crazy is already sold
out for its full run, which will only
encourage the scheduling of more
plays like this one. “The whole pro-
duction feels like a safe bet, relying
on pedigree with just enough of a whiff of
but not challenge a ticket-buying audience.”
It’s fitting that it’s being staged at the Shed,
a performance space at Hudson Yards, a
new and “icily luxurious” high-rise water-
front neighborhood that Moses himself
ing than the play itself.”
28 ARTS Review of reviews: Film
Armageddon James Gray’s latest film is an
“uncommonly tough-minded”
Time coming-of-age drama, said Justin
Chang in NPR.org. Set in 1980
Directed by James Gray
Queens, N.Y., and inspired
(R) by Gray’s own upbringing, it
++++ focuses on 11-year-old Paul, who
A sixth-grader discovers notices that whenever he and his
that the world isn’t fair. best friend, Johnny, make some
trouble in school, it’s Johnny,
Grandpa Hopkins with Paul
who’s Black, who is punished
more severely. But Gray, the acclaimed director of
We Own the Night and Ad Astra, “has no interest
in dispensing uplift.” Instead of telling a reassur-
ing story about a boy like himself attaining social
enlightenment, “he’s made an angry, despairing
movie about one boy’s disillusionment with the
injustice of the world and his own silent complic-
ity.” Paul comes from a middle-class Jewish family,
and the film’s portrayal of the household is “both
Aftersun “Charlotte Wells’ tender feature
debut is the kind of revelation
Directed by that movie fans dream of find-
Charlotte Wells ing,” said Joshua Rothkopf
(R) in Entertainment Weekly.
The movie revisits a weeklong
++++ holiday that a troubled 31-year-
A daughter grasps at old Scottish wanderer and his
memories of her father. 11-year-old daughter, Sophie,
spent at a budget beach resort
in Turkey, and it “aches with a Mescal and Corio: The last good time understand, said David Ehrlich
feeling that’s hard to pin down.”
Paul Mescal’s Calum “ping-pongs between fun-dad we intuit that she is haunted by the feeling that
engagement and a complex distance,” and when
you realize that Sophie is reviewing camcorder
video clips of the trip 20 years later, you sense that
the pair must have lost something there that they
never recovered. Aftersun evolves into “one of the
best movies of the year,” but “it damn well makes
you work for it,” said Alison Willmore in NYMag
Call Jane Sometimes it’s not enough that a
movie relates a “politically and
Directed by Phyllis Nagy culturally urgent” true story, said
(R) Katie Walsh in the Los Angeles
Times. In the late 1960s, before
++++ Roe v. Wade made abortion legal
A 1960s housewife turns everywhere, women in greater
abortion activist. Chicago created an underground
network to assist one another
in ending pregnancies safely, Team Jane’s Banks and Weaver
and this widely released period tale dramatizes
that effort. But the “largely talented” cast, led by
a “stealthily effective” Elizabeth Banks, struggles
throughout against a thin script, the dialogue often she and the rest of the group debate their mission
“landing like talking points rather than authentic
human discussion.” But let’s talk about Banks,
said Sheila O’Malley in RogerEbert.com. Known
initially for her roles in comedies, she’s been doing
“good, eclectic work for almost two decades,” and stakes.” Mildly engaging but “oddly inert,” Call
here, as a roughly 40-year-old suburban housewife
who turns to the Jane Collective after learning that opportunity. (In theaters only)
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
affectionate and critical,” said
A.O. Scott in The New York
Times. Paul’s parents, played
by Anne Hathaway and Jeremy
Strong, are liberals, to a point:
They insist they’re not racist,
yet they transfer Paul to a pri-
vate school after concluding
that Johnny is a bad influence.
A “swirl” of mixed messages
“defines Paul’s emerging sense
of the world and his place in it.” In this “quietly
extraordinary” film, it’s Anthony Hopkins, playing
Paul’s grandfather, who articulates the story’s central
message, said Stephanie Zacharek in Time. In the
end, Armageddon Time underscores the importance
of speaking up to bigots, and the agony that results
from not doing what’s right when it matters. “The
idea is that our moral turning points are mostly
small moments, not big ones.” (In theaters only)
.com. Its “deliberately oblique”
narrative approach initially
comes across as an affectation
before you realize that Sophie,
in looking back, is “trying to
square the intimacy of being
cared for as a child with the per-
spective that comes with being
an adult.” It’s not just her father
the adult Sophie is trying to
in IndieWire. “As if by osmosis,
some ineffable part of herself will always remain
just out of reach,” and that she can find it in the
camcorder footage. Frankie Corio, a newcomer, is
“remarkable” as the young Sophie. She and Mescal
“make it tempting” to try to see beyond the visual
evidence we’re given and know both Calum and
Sophie more fully. (In theaters only)
an unexpected pregnancy may
cost her life, she builds “a very
satisfying character arc.” We
see her Joy Griffin as a woman
“waking up, not just to her own
strength” but also to the fact
that it’s time to reach out and
help others—which she does by
becoming an active member of
the collective. Sigourney Weaver
brings “palpable pluck and world weariness” to
Focus Features, A24/Everett, Roadside Attractions
the role of the collective’s tough-love founder, said
Thomas Floyd in The Washington Post. But as
and ferry blindfolded women to the secret location
where the abortions are performed, first-time direc-
tor Phyllis Nagy “only occasionally imbues the
proceedings with urgency befitting the life-or-death
Jane winds up feeling like a “disheartening” missed
30 ARTS
Streaming tips
New reality shows...
The Mole
This revival of the early-
2000s reality competition
delivers an addictive combi-
nation of intellectual puzzles
and nail-biting physical chal-
lenges. Players perform tasks
such as recovering cargo
from the ocean floor and
robbing a moving train, all
while wondering who in their
group is a saboteur. Netflix
The Big Brunch
Stock up on eggs, because
this is a show that is going
to make you hungry. Dan
Levy of Schitt’s Creek hosts
as 10 chefs demonstrate why
they’re passionate about the
midday weekend meal and
compete for a $300,000 prize
that will help jump-start the
winner’s dream venture.
HBO Max
Save Our Squad With
David Beckham
Imagine you’re a 14-year-old
boy from East London with
big soccer dreams. Then
imagine David Beckham
shows up to help turn around
your abysmal team. The teen-
agers’ initial reaction alone
is worth seeing. But there’s
so much more to this series,
and Beckham proves to be a
true inspiration. Disney+
Old Enough!
This Japanese series has
a jaw-dropping premise:
Children ages 2 to 5 are sent
out into the busy world to
perform adult tasks such as
grocery shopping and pick-
ing up dry cleaning. The re-
sulting adventures are often
wild, anxiety-inducing, and
ultimately comforting. Netflix
Making Fun
This series asks kids to pro-
pose the wackiest inventions
they can imagine. A team of
builders, headed by Making
It’s Jimmy DiResta, then turn
one whim into reality. Netflix
Queer Eye: Germany
The German version of the
hit makeover show nicely
tweaks the formula. Less ex-
ploitative and bombastic, this
series’ “Fab Five” steer their
subjects toward life changes
that feel more genuine and
substantive. Netflix
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
Television
The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching
The English
Emily Blunt as the lead in a way-out-there
Western? The former Mary Poppins is fabulous
in this new series as an Englishwoman who trav-
els to the American West seeking revenge on the
man she believes killed her son. Circumstances
pair her with a Pawnee native who’s an ex–U.S.
cavalry scout, and the pair bond as they cut a
bloody trail to Hoxem, Wyo. Chaske Spencer co-
stars. Available Friday, Nov. 11, Amazon Prime
Is That Black Enough for You?
Until the 1970s, Black heroes were rarely seen
on the silver screen. In this documentary from
Elvis Mitchell, the veteran film critic reviews the
history of Black representation in the movies and
argues that the Blaxploitation movies that arrived
in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assas-
sination powered a broader remapping of the
stories told by Hollywood. With input from stars
of the era and stars of today, he finds surprising
import in details as subtle as the lighting on Billy
Dee Williams in Lady Sings the Blues. Available
Friday, Nov. 11, Netflix
Mythic Quest
The third season of Apple’s terrific office comedy
begins with the team behind the world’s largest
online role-playing game largely divided between
rival firms. Rob McElhenney’s Ian and Charlotte
Nicdao’s Poppy have left Mythic Quest to launch
another startup and watch helplessly from afar
as their former baby—now a colossus—plows
forward under the leadership of David, who’s not
quite the sap they remember. In the season’s early
episodes, every member of the family returns in
a new role, including Danny Pudi’s Brad, now
out of prison and working at Mythic Quest as a
custodian. Available Friday, Nov. 11, Apple TV+
Rogue Heroes
Peaky Blinders fans, here’s a potential new obses-
sion. Another period piece from Peaky creator
Steven Knight, this series parachutes into World
War II and North Africa to track the creation of
the Special Air Service, a unit thrown together on
the fly that somehow turned the war around for
the British Army. The series has an Inglourious
Staunton’s Queen Elizabeth
Allen, Swindell, and Collins in ‘Rogue Heroes’
Basterds feel, embraced by a cast that includes
Dominic West, Jack O’Connell, Sex Education’s
Connor Swindells, and Game of Thrones’ Alfie
Allen. Sunday, Nov. 13, at 9 p.m., Epix
Yellowstone
Owning the largest ranch in Montana wasn’t
good enough for John Dutton. In the fifth season
of Taylor Sheridan’s smash modern Western,
Kevin Costner’s imperial rancher ascends to
the state’s governorship. Just don’t assume that
Dutton will be putting the people’s interests
ahead of those of his family. And it won’t take
long for him to turn his new powers on his
enemies. Sunday, Nov. 13, at 8 p.m., Paramount
Other highlights
Say Hey, Willie Mays
A fantastic documentary pays tribute to the
24-time All-Star, gathering family members,
other baseball greats, and the 91-year-old Mays
himself. Tuesday, Nov. 8, at 9 p.m., HBO
My Father’s Dragon
Nora Twomey, the director of Wolfwalkers,
returns with a new animated fable, this one about
a boy who travels to a mysterious island to rescue
a dragon. Available Friday, Nov. 11, Netflix
Tulsa King
In a new Taylor Sheridan series, Sylvester Stallone
plays a New York City mafia don who’s been
dispatched to Tulsa after a long prison stay.
Available Sunday, Nov. 13, Paramount+
Show of the week
The Crown
In light of recent events, anticipation for The
Crown’s new season might be even higher
than the U.K.’s inflation rate. Not that the series
would have lacked an audience absent the death
of Queen Elizabeth II or Dame Judi Dench’s
complaint that show is taking “cruelly unjust”
fictional liberties with the royal family’s dramas.
After all, Season 5 finally arrives at the tumult
of the 1990s, brandishing another astounding
cast. Imelda Staunton takes over as Elizabeth II,
Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip, Dominic West as
BBC, Netflix
Prince Charles, and Elizabeth Debicki as Princess
Diana. Available Wednesday, Nov. 9, Netflix
• All listings are Eastern Time.

Critics’ choice: An update on farm-to-table dining
Okta McMinnville, Ore.
When chef Matthew Lightner first gained
national attention, he was constructing
“a nervy, nature-based cuisine somewhere
between James Beard and the outer rings
of Saturn,” said Karen Brooks in Portland
Monthly. He then took his ideas to New
York City, where he created Atera and
earned two Michelin stars. But he has now
returned to the Pacific Northwest with a
26-seat eatery that “landed like a friendly
alien spaceship” in the small-town heart of
Oregon wine country. Lightner’s vision has
shifted. Pairing with farmer Katie Boeh and
fermentation whiz Larry Nguyen, he seems
intent on capturing, with his cooking, “the
soul and biology of the Willamette Valley.”
Lightner’s $165 midweek tasting menu thus
might feature sea urchin in a creamed haze
of the farm’s yellow peppers and a tamari
sauce crafted in the lab. Or coffee-rubbed
ribeye topped with shavings from the
farm’s first wine cap mushrooms. Though
Lightner’s cooking isn’t as bold as before,
he’s turning out “some of the best and most
refined dishes in Oregon.” And what he’s
doing so far feels like “only a glimmer” of
what’s to come. 618 NE 3rd St.
Sylvan Table Sylvan Lake, Mich.
It’s not every day you come across “a farm
oasis” in the middle of metro Detroit,
said Dorothy Hernandez in Hour Detroit
LEISURE
Food & Drink
Manina’s Benkert tops a wood-fired pizza.
magazine. To create their first restaurant,
Tim and Nicole Ryan, who are build-
ers, purchased a 5-acre lot, imported and
reconstructed a 300-year-old barn from
Maine, installed two wood-fired ovens,
and added three greenhouses to help grow
all manner of produce. The barn, although
massive, is “homey and inviting” inside,
with a bar at its center that’s often lined
with cocktail sippers buzzing about the
beet-infused tequila. Maybe the best seats,
though, reside in the barn’s loft, or in the
adjoining solarium. Chef Chris Gadulka’s
cooking lets the ingredients shine, using the
wood fires to create such “instant classics”
as local trout with ginger black rice, leeks,
shitake, and baby beets. His chicken under
a brick—done simply with lemon, salt, and
fresh herbs—is “charred to perfection” and
served with seasonal sides. Though few
31
people are aware Michigan is America’s
second most agriculturally diverse state,
Sylvan Table is helping to spread the word.
1819 Inverness St.
Manina Frederick, Md.
The arrival of Manina may signal that
the farm-to-table craze is finally matur-
ing, said Tom Sietsema in The Washington
Post. “A model of restraint,” the sole
independent restaurant tucked into a new
shopping center in suburban Frederick
feels “almost Nordic in its design,” with
sunlight dappling the tables and little to
draw the eye beyond a brick hearth and a
semicircular central bar. Self-taught chef
Paul Benkert, who created Manina with his
wife, Caroline, has created a simple menu
that celebrates the bounty of the region
without fetishizing that commitment. You
may notice, however, that your cocktail fea-
tures smoked apple brandy from Baltimore
Spirits Co. You might be inspired by a small
plate that pairs ricotta with a cornucopia
of local beets, apples, plums, and red bell
peppers. Crab cakes? They’re too expensive.
Benkert prefers to use blue catfish from the
Chesapeake. And besides the thin, crisp,
and chewy pizzas he makes with local flour,
he serves just two entrées: cast-iron skillet
chicken and a comforting lasagna. What’s
the theme, then? “‘Lovely’ pretty much
nails it.” 3290 Bennett Creek Ave.

Recipe of the week Spirits: The flavor kings

You haven’t really tried halloumi if you haven’t had it pan-fried or grilled, said Andrea Some flavored vodkas or whiskeys taste
Geary in Cook’s Illustrated. The firm white cheese from the island of Cyprus doesn’t so sweet and artificial that even memo-
melt when heated. Instead, when dropped on a hot skillet, it acquires a “delectably” ries of them “send chills down one’s
brown crust that “rivals that of a well-seared steak.” Try it alone and in a salad or sand- spine,” said Tyler Zielinski in Punch. But
wich. It “makes an excellent hors d’oeuvre,” especially in this treatment—combined the ongoing premiumization of cocktail
with lemon juice, honey, minced cherry peppers, and “a fragrant shower of mint.” ingredients has touched this category
Pan-fried halloumi with cherry pepper glaze too. Sugar is out. Natural ingredients are
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil • 8 oz halloumi cheese, sliced crosswise ½-inch thick • in. And options like these are becoming
3 tbsp honey • 3 tbsp minced jarred hot cherry peppers • 2 tbsp lemon juice • bartender favorites.
1 tbsp chopped fresh mint Plantation Stiggins’ Fancy Pineapple
Rum ($30). “Sublime” in a pineapple
• Heat oil in a 10-inch to skillet. Cook over low daiquiri, this blend of two pineapple-
nonstick skillet over heat, stirring occasionally, infused Plantation rums offers “notes of
medium-high heat until until syrupy, about 1 min- caramel, clove, and baking spices.”
shimmering. Arrange ute. While glaze cooks, Ketel One Botanical Peach & Orange
halloumi in even layer in cut cheese into bite-size Blossom Vodka ($30). “Bursting with
skillet and cook, flipping pieces. Return cheese to notes of candied white peaches and
frequently, until deeply skillet and increase heat floral orange blossom,” this “fresh,
browned and crisp to medium. Continue to clean” spirit elevates a vodka soda.
on both sides, about cook, stirring gently, until Sipsmith Zesty Orange Gin ($29).
Getty, America’s Test Kitchen

6 minutes. Transfer cheese glaze coats cheese, 4 to This London dry gin “dials up the
to cutting board. Wipe out 6 minutes longer. Transfer orange flavor” with an infusion
skillet with paper towel. to a platter and sprinkle of orange peels and bergamot
• Add honey, cherry with mint. Serves 6 as an zest. It’s nice in a coffee negroni or
peppers, and lemon juice appetizer. floral martini.

THE WEEK November 11, 2022

32 LEISURE
The 2023 Ram 2500 HD Rebel: What the critics say
Car and Driver
“Ram can’t get enough off-roaders in its
lineup of trucks.” Up until now, the 410-hp
Power Wagon has been the brand’s “burly
off-road king,” but fans wanted a diesel
option. They also wanted a heavy-duty rock
crawler that could tow a whole lot more
than the Power Wagon’s 10,520 pounds.
Enter the Ram 2500 Rebel, a “massive hunk
of steel” that offers nearly as much off-road
capability but can carry nearly double the
Power Wagon’s payload and tow a “granite-
crushing” 16,870 pounds.
Autoblog
Of course, “there is a price to pay for opting
Consumer
for a heavier-duty truck.” The 2500 Rebel will
never be as comfortable a daily driver as a
Rebel 1500, and because it has stiffer rear
springs and lacks a lockable front differen-
tial, it can’t quite match the Power Wagon’s
footing over wildly uneven terrain. If you
opt for Ram’s 6.7-liter Cummins turbo-
diesel engine, the extra torque will cost
you $9,600. The heavier engine also drops
towing capacity a ton. A heavy-duty off-roader, from $67,045
Motor Trend though, the Ram 2500 Rebel is “a compel-
The diesel, a “mixed blessing,” does provide ling package,” an off-road–ready workhorse
significantly better fuel economy than offering ride quality that’s “quite a bit more
the roughly 12 mpg of the gas-powered tolerable” than the competition’s, and a
410-hp V-8. Whichever engine you choose, cabin that’s “a lovely place to be.”

The best of...cooking with kids

Little Partners
Learning Tower
This sturdy stool “gives
young children a secure
spot at the counter so
they can help in the
kitchen or just be a part
of what’s going on.”
Designed for ages 2 and
up, it adjusts to four
heights and comes in six
colors.
$200, littlepartners.com
Source: Wirecutter
Opinel
Le Petit Oxo
Chef Peeler Hedley & Bennett Good Grips
The French Dream First Apron Eggbeater
knifemaker Opinel A proper apron will Chef’n Mortar and Another fun job: mixing
offers several child- help budding cooks to Pestle up batters and dress-
friendly kitchen tools, feel the part. Hedley Measuring and crushing ings. Oxo’s kid-friendly
including a small chef’s & Bennett’s internet- spices is a good daily (though not kid-specific)
knife and this vegetable famous cotton coveralls task for any small kitch- eggbeater is just the
peeler. The red ring on are popular among en helper. This granite right size for small
the beechwood handle pro chefs, and its kids’ mortar and pestle has a hands. The beaters pop
“helps to position aprons are just as stur- grippy silicone base, “so out of the dishwasher-
fingers.” dily stitched. The proof: a it won’t slip and tip over, safe base for easy
$18, opinel-usa.com lifetime guarantee. or fall off the counter.” cleaning.
Source: San Diego Union- $65, hedleyandbennett.com $45, food52.com $23, oxo.com
Tribune Source: NYMag.com Source: NYMag.com Source: Serious Eats

Tip of the week...
Choosing a drugstore hearing aid
QUnderstand the pricing. Hearing aids
became far more affordable on Oct. 17, when
a federal regulation change allowed them
to be sold without a prescription. Prices for
the over-the-counter options now sold online
and at drugstores range from $200 to $2,000
a pair. The cheapest offer several preset am-
plification levels, while pricier models can be
individually fine-tuned, usually via an app.
QCompare customer service. Consider both
the product and the brand, because “it’s
important to find out exactly what level of
support you’ll have access to.” A hearing aid
is complex tech, and every person’s hearing
is different. Eargo offers among the best
customer service, with on-call audiologists
who can tweak settings remotely.
QPlan ahead. Return policies are crucial, be-
cause it often “takes a couple of weeks to get
used to a hearing aid.” A one-month policy
should be enough; two months is better.
Source: Consumer Reports
And for those who have Best apps...
everything... For online veterinary care
Could cold-plunge QTeleVet makes it easy to speak to the
tubs rival hot tubs? veterinarian your pet already sees, assum-
Celebrities and ing your vet is in-network. Simply set up a
wellness enthusiasts profile and schedule an appointment. Blood
have lately been work and physical exams will require an
spending small in-person visit, but your vet can do a lot over
fortunes on prod- the phone or by video chat.
ucts such as the QPawp provides continuous care. It’s a
BlueCube Mini-Me, $99-a-year service that offers unlimited,
a dedicated ice bath on-demand consultations between in-person
for invigorating appointments. “You can follow up on gen-
plunges into frigid water. There’s no need for eral health concerns, ask basic questions, or
bags of ice: The refrigerated tank filters and call up a vet in case of an emergency.”
chills the water, keeping it between 36 and QAskVet likewise offers 24/7 support to
60 degrees. Advocates claim that exposure cover emergencies. The $10-a-month service
to icy cold has health benefits—pain relief, connects you to a vet in less than a minute,
mental clarity, weight loss—but currently, and “chat sessions can go as long as you
“there are few scientific studies on the prac- need.” AskVet takes a holistic approach—
tice.” Some data suggest that ice baths “can training and wellness coaching are options—
at least help with muscle soreness.” and its vets also field less urgent questions,
$16,000, bluecubebaths.com such as “What’s normal litter box behavior?”
Source: The New York Times Source: Wired

THE WEEK November 11, 2022

34 Best properties on the market
This week: Homes in the desert

1 Las Vegas From 2 Scottsdale, Ariz. This

Mesa Ridge this three- four-bedroom contempo-
bedroom villa offers rary’s organic materials
sweeping views of the and extensive windows
city and surrounding reflect and let in the desert
terrain. Designed for landscape. The open-plan
indoor-outdoor living, house features retractable
the house has a great glass walls in the great
room with fireplace and room and primary suite; multiple fireplaces; a chef’s kitchen;
glass pocket doors to the covered patio and pool deck; adjoining din- and an office with a private patio. Outside are a pavered
ing room and eat-in chef’s kitchen; and a primary suite looking out on court, cactus gardens, a guest casita, and a patio with pool,
pool and mountains. The lot includes desert gardens, a pool with a hot spa, grill, stack-stone firepit, and sunset views; golf, trails,
tub and a waterfall, and an outdoor fireplace. $2,295,000. Ivan Sher, and a national forest are nearby. $3,500,000. Dan Wolski,
Forbes Global Properties, (702) 400-2400 Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty, (480) 266-7557

3 Tubac, Ariz. The decks of this four-bedroom smart home

overlook the San Cayetano and Santa Rita mountains. The
house has a 23-foot-high main room with walls of windows;
a gourmet kitchen with butler’s pantry; an owners’ suite with
fireplace; and a theater with a wet bar and a popcorn machine.
The 72-acre property includes a saltwater pool, outdoor kitchen
with fireplace, and garage wired for EV; Tubac’s golf, dining,
and arts scene are minutes away. $2,100,000. Michael Connelly,
Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty, (520) 268-2288

THE WEEK November 11, 2022

 Best properties on the market 35
4 Joshua
Tree, Calif.
This three-
bedroom
home is sur-
rounded by
Joshua trees
and other
desert flora,
and the
mountains.
The remodeled 1958 house features an open lay-
out, beamed ceilings, polished concrete floors and
counters, white-oak cabinetry, wood-burning fire-
place, renovated kitchen and bath, and primary
bedroom with floor-to-ceiling Fleetwood doors
to the yard. The 1.25-acre parcel includes its
own Joshua tree, saguaro cacti, and a side patio;
shopping, dining, and Joshua Tree National Park
are close by. $649,000. Angela Gollan, Sotheby’s
International Realty–Los Feliz, (310) 344-6970

6
4

1 2 3

5 Rancho Mirage, Calif. Rancho Mirage lies between Palm

Springs and the Coachella Valley, ringed by desert and three
mountain ranges. This five-bedroom home has floor-to-ceiling
windows, detailed high ceilings, living and dining rooms joined
by a double-sided fireplace, a primary and four guest suites, a
professional office, and a gym. The 1.39-acre landscaped lot
includes gardens, lawns, modern statuary, an infinity pool and
spa, a pavilion with a built-in kitchen, a tennis court, and pan-
oramic views. $5,350,000. Bob Greenbaum, Douglas Elliman–
Palm Springs, (760) 861-5502

Steal of the week

6 Las Cruces,
N.M. The patio
of this three-
bedroom home
offers sunset
views of the
mountains. Built
in 2021, the
house features oversize windows, carved interior doorways,
and granite countertops; an open kitchen with a breakfast
island; a living room with a vaulted ceiling, ceiling fan, and
fireplace; and an insulated garage. Outside are a desert front
garden and a Zen-landscaped backyard bounded by a stone
wall; the Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks National Monument
is 15 miles away. $446,900. Libna Camarena, Select Realty
Group, (575) 543-5436
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
36
The bottom line
QIn October, auto buyers
paid an average of about
$45,600 for a new car or
truck, down from a peak
of $46,173 in July. It’s still
33 percent higher than before
the pandemic, according to
research firm J.D. Power.
The Wall Street Journal
QNASA,
which had
19,000
employees
and a fed-
eral budget
of $23.3 bil-
lion in 2021,
estimates the total economic
output linked to its missions
and research at $71.2 billion,
supporting about 340,000
jobs in all 50 states and
Washington, D.C.
CNBC.com
QForty-six percent of Black
Americans lived in homes
they owned in 2021, com-
pared with 75 percent of
white Americans. That gap is
wider than it was in 1960.
The Washington Post
QIn a dramatic return
from pandemic lows, Uber
has reported a 72 percent
increase in revenue for the
third quarter compared with
last year. There were 1.95 bil-
lion trips completed during
the period, up 19 percent, and
124 million monthly users of
the app.
CNBC.com
QFor 2017 through 2019, the
annual net tax gap—the dif-
ference between taxes owed
and collected—was $470 bil-
lion, according to the IRS.
That suggests a decade-long
tax gap exceeding $5 trillion,
including missing revenue
from those who fail to file
returns and those who admit
owing but don’t pay.
The Wall Street Journal
QThe Miss Universe Orga-
nization was bought this
week by Thai entrepreneur
and transgender activist
Anne Jakapong Jakrajutatip
for $20 million. It was once
owned by Donald Trump,
who sold it in 2015 to events
marketer IMG Worldwide.
The Hustle
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
BUSINESS
The news at a glance
Energy: Biden threatens tax on oil profits
An earnings windfall for Big That was a policy disas-
Oil stirred condemnation from ter, said David Fickling in
the Biden administration this Bloomberg, but don’t worry
week, said Peter Baker and too much about the warn-
Clifford Krauss in The New ings of a repeat. The 1980
York Times. “The president tax “was a direct excise levy
lashed out against the giant on production” that predict-
firms as several of them ably deterred investment.
reported the latest surge in An income tax on “excess”
profits.” Exxon Mobil brought Wartime profiteering? profits—one proposal would
in a record $20 billion in profits and then raised calculate that by subtracting a “normal” 10
its dividend, “citing a commitment to ‘return percent return on expenses from oil-company
excess cash’ to shareholders.” Chevron reported earnings—would mostly be “a boon to accoun-
$11.2 billion in profits. President Biden called the tants.” But it also won’t stir up more production.
figures an “‘outrageous’ bonanza stemming from Oil companies see a recession coming with weak-
Russia’s war on Ukraine,” and threatened a tax ening demand, so they are putting their money
on oil-industry profits, last tried in 1980 follow- into “stock buybacks, rather than production
ing the OPEC embargo. increases.” A new tax won’t change that.
Pharma: Drugstores reach $10 billion opioid deal It’s less easy to make
CVS and Walgreens agreed to pay more than $10 billion to resolve money on Yeezys
opioid lawsuits, said Sharon Terlep in The Wall Street Journal. The Sneakerheads are wor-
“landmark settlement” proposed this week would bring an end to ried about the value
“more than 3,000 lawsuits by governments, hospitals, and others” of their Yeezys, said
against the pharmaceutical companies for “not doing enough to stem Vanessa Friedman in
the flow” of addictive prescription painkillers. The money will be paid The New York Times. “In
out over the next 15 years. chat rooms on Discord
and Reddit,” collectors
Inflation battle: Fed raises key interest rates again of pricey sneakers are
The Federal Reserve continued its assault on inflation this week, said debating “about what,
Jeff Cox in CNBC.com, approving a fourth consecutive three-quarter- exactly, the fall of Ye,
point interest rate increase. The “well-telegraphed move” brought the as Kanye West is now
known, means for the
Fed’s short-term borrowing rate to a target range between 3.75 per-
future” of a popular
cent to 4 percent, “the highest level since January 2008.” In its policy “alternative asset class.”
statement, the Fed indicated it would consider whether to begin to
West’s sneakers, called
slow down the pace of monetary tightening beginning in December. Yeezys, were some of
However, private payrolls still showed robust growth in the job market the best-selling shoes
in October, which continues to challenge the Fed’s efforts. on the market; one
pair sold at auction
Books: Court blocks publishing merger
last year for $1.8 mil-
A federal judge blocked Penguin Random House’s bid to acquire lion. But “as West’s
rival publisher Simon & Schuster this week, said Alexandra Alter corporate partnerships
and Elizabeth Harris in The New York Times, siding with the Justice have evaporated” in the
Department, which argued that the merger would “harm competition wake of his anti-Semitic
in the market for U.S. publishing rights.” The government’s case was statements and bizarre
supported by high-profile writers, including author Stephen King, who behavior, Yeezys are
testified in the trial. Following numerous deals in recent years, includ- being taken off store
ing Penguin’s merger with Random House in 2013, “the number of shelves. On resale sites
like StockX and eBay,
major publishing houses has shrunk to five.”
“hundreds of pairs can
Markets: Big gain for Dow with danger still ahead still be found.” Some
October was the best month for the Dow since 1976, said Matt buyers believe “the end
of the Adidas-Yeezy
Grossman in The Wall Street Journal—but don’t assume that means the
partnership will make
year ahead won’t be rocky. The 30-stock index rose 14 percent, outpac- the shoes more collect-
ing the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, both of which also had strong returns.
ible.” Others, however,
Some investors have noted, however, that 1976 “wasn’t exactly the fret that the shoes have
start of a great year on Wall Street.” Its January rally “looked like the “become associated
beginning of a convincing rebound” following the deep bear market of with a toxic viewpoint,”
Getty (2)
1973-74. “Instead, more pain was ahead.” The Dow remained mainly tanking their value.
flat for the next 11 months, then fell by 17 percent in 1977.
 Making money BUSINESS 37

Investing: An awful year for the balanced portfolio

A classic formula for building a and bonds tend to go in cycles,
stable investment portfolio has fallen said Lauren Solberg in Morningstar
badly short this year, said Akane .com. For the past 20 years, their
Otani in The Wall Street Journal. relationship “has been almost
“Investors with a 60/40 portfolio— exclusively negative: When stock
who put 60 percent of their money prices fall, bond prices rise, and
into the stock market and 40 percent vice-versa.” However, for the
into bonds—are down 34 percent 30 years before that, until the late
for the year, according to Bank of 1980s, “the correlation between
America,” marking the worst perfor- stock and bond prices had actu-
mance for the traditional asset allo- ally been positive.” Some analysts
cation in 100 years. For generations warn that another period of high
of savers, “the appeal of the 60/40 inflation could make the 60/40
Inflation has made stocks and bonds fall in lockstep.
portfolio is that when stocks have a portfolio obsolete.
bad year, bonds usually deliver some relief.” The arrangement
was criticized as overly conservative during the bull-market run “When inflation takes off,” stocks and bonds “rise and fall
of the past decade, but a 60/40 split has delivered on average a together,” said Edward Chancellor in Reuters Breakingviews.
9 percent annual return since the early 20th century. But in this “After a decade of dismal performance from bonds and equities”
year’s sell-off, the bond market has fallen in tandem with stocks, in the 1970s “there was no shortage of advice.” One popular
something that has happened only a few times in recent memory. book, Inflation-Proofing Your Investments, recommended port-
folios allocate 40 percent to gold and silver, with just 5 percent
The S&P 500 is down 24 percent, while the U.S. bond bench- in long-dated bonds and 15 percent in the stock market. “This
mark index is down about 16 percent. “That’s not how a mixed turned out to be terrible advice.” Don’t upend your investing
portfolio is supposed to work,” said Ryan Ermey in CNBC.com. plans and drop the 60/40 balanced portfolio based on one bad
Why is it happening? Fear about an oncoming recession has year, said Giulio Renzi-Ricci in the Financial Times. Historically,
caused the stock market to dive this year, while the Federal Re- “once the market has had time to adjust,” we’ve seen the rela-
serve’s interest-rate hikes have “had a material effect on bonds.” tionship between bonds and stocks go back to normal. In fact,
When rates rise, it reduces the value of older bonds, causing in a time of financial upheaval, the longer trouble drags on, “the
prices to fall on the bond market. Correlations between stocks more likely bonds are to play a stabilizing role.”

What the experts say Charity of the week

Your LinkedIn stunt double
Aspiring LinkedIn influencers are hiring ghost-
writers to craft their self-promotional posts,
said Rebecca Jennings in Vox. LinkedIn has
positioned itself mainly as a social network
“geared toward white-collar professionals
seeking job opportunities or a talent pool to
hire from.” But this year, company has gone
all-in on “creators,” or users who hope to
use LinkedIn “to build a personal brand by
spouting entrepreneurial advice or nuggets
of wisdom.” There are currently 13 million
users with “creator mode” turned on, “a set-
ting that expands the kinds of features users
can deploy to grow their audience.” Many are
turning to ghostwriters for their content. One
said she charges $2,500 per month for her
services—which include helping clients “game
the algorithm” for the most engagement.
Gloom rises for middle class
The middle class is more nervous about the
economy than it has been in years, said Shawn
Donnan in Bloomberg. According to econo-
mists at the University of California, Berkeley,
“in March, the average real wealth of the
American middle class—including home equity
and other physical assets as well as retire-
Getty
the highest it’s ever been.” Since then, it has
“fallen by about 7 percent, or by more than
$27,000.” It marks the end of “a five-year
period of accumulation” that saw the average
middle-class adult gain more than $120,000
in wealth, much of it tied up in property. But
many of the beneficiaries of the bull market
and rising home values have now turned pes-
simistic about their personal finances.
Sharp drop in home sales
The housing slowdown is speeding up, said
Gabriella Cruz-Martinez in Yahoo Finance.
There were 130,000 fewer new homes sold
in September than the same time a year ago,
a drop of 17.6 percent. “Sales of newly con-
structed homes dropped 10.9 percent from
August.” At the same time, “the median
sales price of newly constructed homes was
$470,600,” up nearly 14 percent from a year
ago. That’s contributing to a “triple whammy”
facing homebuyers, who have to contend with
inflation, elevated home prices, and rising
mortgage rates, which last week topped 7 per-
cent for the first time since 2002. The inven-
tory of previously owned homes for sale has
fallen for eight consecutive months, and new
single-family home starts dropped in Septem-
With record numbers of migrants arriv-
ing at the southern border, driven by
political turmoil, climate disaster, and
economic collapse in Venezuela, the
Human Rights Initiative of North Texas
(hrionline.org) provides social and legal
services to asylum seekers and undocu-
mented immigrants. Established in 1999,
the Dallas-based organization recruits
pro bono attorneys to represent migrants
in legal proceedings. With the help of
volunteer physicians, psychologists, and
counselors, it also offers psychological
evaluations as well as medical and den-
tal care, helping the migrants cope with
the trauma of a harrowing trip. HRI also
focuses on immigrant victims of traffick-
ing and domestic violence, providing
legal services to assure that they are
afforded the protections they are entitled
to under U.S. law.
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.

ment and other savings—peaked at $393,300, ber to their “lowest point since May 2020.”
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
38 Best columns: Business

Meta: Zuckerberg’s grand bet goes badly wrong

For Facebook, things have gone from over his actions. “Zuckerberg owns or
bad to worse, said Edward Ongweso controls about 90 percent of the com-
in Vice, and it’s “imploding before our pany’s unlisted Class B shares, which
eyes.” The much-hyped pivot to the have 10 votes versus one vote each” for
“metaverse”—complete with a name publicly traded Class A shares. How-
change to Meta—has turned into a di- ever, Zuckerberg’s huge stake means he
saster. Last week, Meta chief executive has lost $100 billion in 13 months.
Mark Zuckerberg said the company lost
$9.4 billion just in the most recent quar- Just don’t dance on Facebook’s grave
ter, while he was building out his “soul- yet, said Ben Thompson in Stratechery.
less” vision of a virtual world. “Zuck- Facebook is not losing to TikTok nearly
erberg’s obsession with the metaverse is as badly as the critics would have it.
one major problem, but there are fun- Its short-video feature Reels is grow-
Zuckerberg is finding few takers for his vision.
damental issues plaguing the company’s ing rapidly, and while it may not “be
core business,” Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, as well. surpassing TikTok anytime soon,” that undermines the narrative
“Facebook’s revenue has declined for two consecutive quarters,” that TikTok is dominating. Meanwhile, Facebook “is still adding
and by many metrics, it “is getting its ass kicked by TikTok.” users: The company is up to 2.93 billion Daily Active Users,”
Meta’s stock plunged another 24 percent last week and is down a bump of 50 million in the past three months. The metaverse
about 70 percent on the year. Just 16 months ago, Facebook was “may be a speculative boondoggle, but that doesn’t change the
among the five most valuable companies in the U.S. It has since fact that the old Facebook is still a massive business,” and a lot
shed nearly $800 billion in value. of Meta’s indicators are still pointing upward.

The metaverse sounded like a bold bet a year ago, said Rachel
Metz and Clare Duffy in CNN.com. Now, it sounds “border-
line unhinged.” The pace of spending on the project is outra-
geous “even by Silicon Valley standards,” and it’s still “not clear
whether consumers actually want to work or play in it.” But
Zuckerberg has positioned it “as a sort of existential imperative
for the company,” which doesn’t want to have to rely on an app
store to survive. Zuckerberg is increasingly seen as “an obstacle
to the stock’s recovery,” said Ryan Vlastelica in Bloomberg. Yet
the company’s structure leaves shareholders with little influence
Actually, the indicators for all of Big Tech may be pointing down,
said Richard Waters in the Financial Times, and Meta’s troubles
are a “warning” to the industry. “Growth in digital advertis-
ing, e-commerce, and cloud computing has slowed more than
expected as economic conditions worsen,” dealing hits to “the
profit margins of some of the most profitable groups on the
planet,” such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Though their
mistakes may not be as high-profile as Zuckerberg’s, all of them
are still taking a big risk, spending mightily in the belief they are
“on the cusp of a new era of growth.”

Last week’s “Davos in the Desert” revealed an
The Saudis emboldened Saudi Arabia, said Javier Blas. Wash-
press their ington believes it was duped by the kingdom, which
voted along with other OPEC+ members to slash
advantage oil production earlier this month. But the Saudis
see a change in the alliance with the U.S. that goes
Javier Blas beyond a single oil-price hike. The kingdom’s annual
Bloomberg Future Investment Initiative highlighted what I’d call
a “‘Saudi First’ energy, economic, and foreign policy
agenda” that’s “unshackled” from the constraints
of the kingdom’s almost 80-year relationship with
the United States. China, India, Japan, and South
Korea now account for 65 percent of Saudi Arabia’s
oil exports, so it’s much less reliant on Washington.
In the past Riyadh was willing to accept lower oil
prices for the benefit of the U.S., which in return
“provided regional security, deploying its military
might if needed, and diplomatic support, largely
ignoring human rights abuses.” The Saudis no lon-
ger seem convinced that the oil-for-security bargain
is working, especially when it comes to Iran, their
chief regional rival. “If Washington wants Riyadh to
keep oil prices down, it will have to deliver the other
side of the bargain.” To Saudi Arabian officials,
that’s “simply doing what others inside the G-20
were—looking after themselves.”

The Federal Reserve’s fight isn’t close to finished, said
The Fed economist Lawrence Summers. Now that the central
can’t waver bank has sharply raised interest rates, people who
want it to steer clear of recession say it can “relax.”
on inflation Some of the same prognosticators who insisted that
inflation would be “transitory” say that while infla-
Lawrence Summers tion is still high, “expectations appear contained,”
The Washington Post and we should see it subside as the Fed’s moves work
their way through the economy in 2023. “I find that
absurd.” A more realistic argument may be that
“preventing an overly deep recession is so important
that it’s worth abandoning the Fed’s inflation target.”
continued inflation will erode wages down the road.
The most important objective of monetary policy is
to ensure “that the maximum number of Americans
who want to work are able to work at as high an
income as possible, now and in the future.” The
U.S. is currently facing “as complex a set of macro-
economic challenges as at any time in 75 years.” It
cannot contend with these difficulties without first
re-establishing “a foundation of price stability.” The
more confident workers, businesses, and markets are
that the Fed will “follow through” in its battle with
inflation, “the less painful the process” of navigating
Getty

Unfortunately, that ignores the devastating way that through this period of economic upheaval will be.
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
 Obituaries
The rock ’n’ roll original who was wild onstage and off
Jerry Lee Jerry Lee Lewis lived and died
Lewis untamed. Nicknamed The Killer,
1935–2022 the Louisiana-born rock ’n’ roll
pioneer sang with a swaggering leer
and hammered his piano with frenzied energy,
pounding out boogie rhythms with his left hand
and slashing glissandos with his right. As per-
formances gathered steam, he’d kick away his
piano bench, his pomaded curls collapsing into a
dangling mop as he battered the keys and fixed
the audience with a defiant glare. For a stretch
in the mid-1950s, Lewis was the biggest star in
rock ’n’ roll, topping the charts with the singles
“Great Balls of Fire,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’
On,” and “Breathless.” But his stardom was soon
eclipsed by a private life as wild and unrepentant
as his stage act. A bigamist while still in his teens, at 22 he took
for his third wife his 13-year-old cousin, a scandal that derailed
his career. Subsequent decades were marked by personal tragedy,
substance abuse, and arrests on charges including assault. Raised a
Pentecostal, the God-fearing Lewis had an explanation for the tur-
bulence that followed him. “I have the devil in me,” he said.
Lewis was born in Ferriday, La., where his father farmed cotton
and did time for bootlegging, said the Los Angeles Times. From a
young age he was captivated by music, listening to country radio
and sneaking into a local roadhouse to hear the blues. Recognizing
his talent, his father mortgaged their house to buy a used upright,
and he began to play at church, dances, and eventually clubs in
nearby Natchez, Miss. Expelled from the Texas Bible college his
mother sent him to—he’d boogied up a gospel song—he returned
home and kept playing clubs. His life changed, said Rolling
Stone, when he drove with his father to Memphis’ Sun Records,
demanded an audition, and was promptly signed by awestruck
label head Sam Philips. His first single, “Crazy Arms,” was a
regional hit. When he followed it with “Whole Lotta Shakin’” in
early 1957, “the song exploded,” and Lewis shot to international
stardom. “Great Balls of Fire” provided a second smash hit.
The Holocaust survivor who shared Anne Frank’s story
Hannah Hannah Pick-Goslar remembered
Pick-Goslar the exact moment that her child-
1928–2022 hood friend Anne Frank received her
diary. It was at Frank’s 13th birth-
day party, in 1942 Amsterdam, when the girls were
inseparable. Soon, though, the Franks went into
hiding from the Nazis, and Pick-Goslar’s family
was arrested. Frank wrote entries about “Hanneli,”
hoping she was safe, and in 1945, the girls had a
grim reunion in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Housed in
different sections, they would press their cheeks against a barbed-
wire fence to speak. Frank died of typhus after just a few months
in the camp, but Pick-Goslar survived, and she later dedicated
her life to preserving the memory of the Anne Frank she knew.
“Today, everyone thinks she was someone holy,” she said in 1998.
“But this is not at all the case. She was a girl who wrote beauti-
fully and matured quickly during extraordinary circumstances.”
Hanneli Goslar was born into a prominent Jewish family in Berlin,
said Taz (Germany), where her father headed the German Press
Getty, Imago
Bureau and helped found the Hapoel Mizrahi movement to settle
Jews in the Holy Land. When the Nazis started to gain power in
39
It ended as quickly as it began, said New York
magazine. During a tour of England in 1958, the
rapacious British press learned of his 13-year-
old bride, Myra Gale Brown, and “his career
imploded” in scandal. Clubs canceled his book-
ings and blacklisted him; radio stations refused to
play him. “Reduced to performing in small clubs
for a few hundred dollars a night,” said The New
York Times, Lewis eventually “found redemp-
tion in country music.” He scored his first top-10
country hit, “Another Place, Another Time,” in
1968, and some two dozen more followed over
the next 13 years.
But Lewis “grew addicted to pills and alcohol,”
said The Washington Post, and his life seemed to
be “bedeviled by tragedy.” His 3-year-old son, born when Myra
was just 14, drowned in a swimming pool, and later an adult son
died in a car wreck. In 1976, Lewis accidentally shot and injured
his bass player during “drunken target practice” with a .357
Magnum, and that same year he was arrested for waving a loaded
gun outside Elvis Presley’s mansion Graceland. His estranged
fourth wife drowned in a swimming pool in 1982, while the next
year his fifth wife died in their home under mysterious circum-
stances. An investigative report later “highlighted discrepancies”
between the police account and his version of events, but Lewis
was never charged. In and out of rehab for much of his life, he
suffered persistent health ailments, including a torn stomach lining
and a bleeding ulcer.
Still, “against all odds,” Lewis continued to perform into his sev-
enties, said The Telegraph (U.K.). In 2020, after suffering a stroke,
he recorded a still-unreleased gospel album; last month, he was
inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. The honor was
“humbling,” said the bedridden Lewis—an uncharacteristic senti-
ment for a man who never shied from proclaiming his own great-
ness. “When it comes down to it, it’s Jerry Lee Lewis,” he once
said. “I could never find anybody that was better than me.”
the 1930s, the family fled to London and then
Amsterdam, where they lived “right next door”
to the Franks. Hannah’s mother died in childbirth
a year before the rest of the family was arrested
by the Gestapo in 1943, and only Hannah and
her younger sister lived to see the end of the
war. In 1947, “after a period of convalescence in
Switzerland,” Pick-Goslar emigrated to Israel, said
The Jerusalem Post. There she became a nurse,
married, and had three children, 10 grandchildren, and 31 great-
grandchildren. “That’s my answer to Hitler,” she said.
Over more than seven decades after the war, Pick-Goslar worked
to share her experience of the Holocaust, said the NL Times
(Netherlands). The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam could
“always call on her” for appearances, and she traveled to many
countries to give lectures. A 1997 biography of her, Memories of
Anne Frank: Reflections of a Childhood Friend, became a Dutch
film last year, and this year, at age 93, she met virtually with stu-
dents in Germany and France to discuss the values of tolerance
and respect. Pick-Goslar saw such work as her personal responsi-
bility because, as she once said, “I survived—and Anne didn’t.”
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
40
An imported teacher’s lessons
U.S. schools are turning to star teachers from the Philippines to fill a shortage of educators, said
Eli Saslow in The Washington Post. The new arrivals had no idea how hard it would be.
C
AROLYN STEWART HAD
spent the past five months
trying to find teachers for
the Bullhead City School District,
and now she walked into the Las
Vegas airport holding up a sign
with the name of her latest hire.
The 75-year-old superintendent
wandered through the interna-
tional baggage claim, calling out
a name she had just learned to
pronounce. “Ms. Obreque?”
she said. “Teacher Rose Jean
Obreque?”
Stewart raised the sign above her
head and took out her phone to For Obreque, a U.S. middle school class presented serious culture shock.
check in with her office 100 miles
south in Bullhead City, Ariz. The 2,300 stu-
dents in her district had been back in school
for several weeks, but she was still missing
almost 30 percent of her classroom staff.
The principal of her junior high had sent a
message with the subject line “venting.”
“The first two weeks have been the hard-
est thing I’ve ever faced,” he wrote. “My
teachers are burnt out already. They come
to me for answers and I really have none.
We are, as my dad used to say, four flat
tires from bankruptcy, except in this case
we are one teacher away from not being
able to operate the school.”
Arizona had dropped its college-degree
requirement, but Stewart was still strug-
gling to find people willing to teach in a
high-poverty district for a starting salary
of $38,500 a year. She’d sent recruiters to
hiring fairs across the state, but they had
come back without a single lead. “Basically, Bullhead City, when the school district
we need bodies at this point,” she’d told
her school board, and they’d agreed to
hire 20 teachers with master’s degrees to
move from the Philippines to the desert of
rural Arizona.
“Excuse me, Dr. Stewart?” She turned to
see a young woman whom at first glance
Stewart mistook for one of her students.
She was less than 5 feet tall, wearing a
backpack, hauling two large suitcases, and
pointing at Stewart’s sign. “That’s me,”
she said.
“Ms. Obreque!” Stewart said, pulling her
into a hug. “Your suitcases are bigger than
you. Let me help.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Obreque said, “but I said Sheena Feliciano, whose father drove a into a name tag, write their first name in
can handle it. I am very determined.”
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
The last word
They looked at Obreque and
waited for her answer. “It’s OK
if you’re too embarrassed to
tell us,” Cuevas teased. “Most
Outstanding Teacher,” Obreque
said. “Last year, I ranked first of
42 teachers at my school.”
Her seventh-grade students there
were the children of fishermen
and sugarcane farmers. They
called her “ma’am.” They wrote
thank-you notes at the end of
each week. They aspired to
become engineers or doctors or
teachers like her, and they vol-
unteered to stay after school for
extra lessons rather than return-
O
BREQUE, 31, LEFT the airport in a car ing home to work in the sugarcane fields.
with three other Filipino teachers Obreque started an after-school program for
and pressed her phone against the struggling readers. She led the school’s inno-
window to photograph the casino hotels, vations club to a regional first-place finish.
the downtown high-rises, the glistening She recorded daily video lessons during the
pools of the suburbs, and the neat rows pandemic and hiked to remote villages to
of palm trees on the outskirts of town. make home visits, until her ambition landed
Civilization began to give way to red dirt her at the top of the teacher rankings and
and jagged rock formations. The car’s ther- she began to hear from recruitment agencies
mometer showed an outside temperature of around the world.
114 degrees. Obreque put away her phone
“Teach the World’s Best in America!” read
and watched heat waves rise off the desert. the brochure from one international teach-
“I imagined it would be greener,” she said.
ing agency. Obreque had talked it over with
“This isn’t like America in the movies,” said her husband and agreed that the possibility
Anne Cuevas, a Filipina who’d already been of a raise of more than $30,000 over her
teaching in Bullhead City for four years and $5,000-a-year salary in the Philippines was
worth the hardship of living apart. She’d
had traveled to greet the new teachers in
interviewed over Zoom with schools in
Las Vegas.
New Mexico and Arizona and then received
Cuevas had been hired before the pandemic an offer to teach in Bullhead City under a
as one of the first foreign teachers in J-1 visa, which granted her permission to
live in the United States for three years.
began to recognize signs of an impending
teacher shortage. Most Filipino teachers She’d taken out $8,000 in high-interest
have master’s degrees or doctorates. In the loans to pay for the agency fees, a plane
Philippines, teaching is considered a highly ticket, two new teaching outfits, and the
competitive profession, with an average first month’s rent on a two-bedroom apart-
of 14 applicants for each open position, ment she planned to share with five other
foreign teachers.
and teachers are constantly evaluated and
ranked against their peers. “What were
T
WO DAYS LATER Obreque stepped in
your ratings?” Cuevas asked her passengers,
front of an eighth-grade English class
all of whom had arrived in the United States
and clasped her hands together to
for the first time earlier that afternoon.
stop them from shaking. “Let’s start with
Joshua Lott/The Washington Post (2)
“I was rated Outstanding Teacher—top something easy,” she told the students, as
five in my school,” said Vanessa Bravo, a PE teacher sat in the back of the room
a seventh-grade math teacher who’d left in case she needed help. She handed out a
behind her husband and three sons, ages 15, blank sheet of paper to each student and
12, and 10. “Outstanding Teacher as well,” explained their first task: to fold the paper
bicycle taxi in Manila. large letters and copy down a few classroom

rules. “See? Simple,” she said, as she held
up her own paper and demonstrated folding
it into thirds. “Any questions?”
A student in the front row raised her hand:
“Can I go to the bathroom?” she asked.
“Of course,” Obreque said, and then
another student stood from his desk. “Me
too. Bathroom,” he said.
“Next time, please raise your hand,” she
said. “But yes. Go ahead.”
The students began to fold their papers
as Obreque walked around to check on
their work. There were 24 students in the
room—half the size of her typical class in
the Philippines. They had backpacks and
proper school supplies. They had a class-
room with state-of-the-art technology and
air-conditioning. Obreque circled toward
the back row, where a group of boys were
huddled in a circle. “Let’s see your prog-
ress,” she said. One boy held up a name
tag that read “Donut Man,” as the others
laughed. Another student had folded
his paper into an airplane. Another
had dropped his paper on the floor and
was stabbing his pencil into the side of
his desk.
“Is everything all right?” Obreque
asked. “Why aren’t you participating?”
“’Cause my pencil’s broken,” he said,
banging it harder against the desk until
it snapped. He picked up the two bro-
ken pieces and held them out to her as
proof. “What do you want me to do?”
he asked, smiling at her, and Obreque
looked at him for a moment and then
decided that his behavior was her fault.
Maybe she hadn’t communicated the assign-
ment properly. Maybe, instead of beginning
the class by making name tags, she should
have started with the rules so they knew
how to behave.
She walked back to the front of the room.
“Eyes up here,” she said, as several of the
students continued to talk. “Five, four,
three...” she said, as the students shouted
over her, until finally the PE teacher blew
his whistle. “Hey! Try doing that to me and
see what happens,” he said. “Be quiet and
listen to your teacher.”
Obreque nodded at him and then continued.
“I want this class to be systematic,” she
said. “We are not animals. We are not in the
jungle. We should be guided by rules, or we
will not be successful in our learning, right?”
“Yeah, guys. We’re not animals,” one stu-
dent said, and then a few boys began to
make jungle noises until the PE teacher blew
his whistle again.
“If you want to be respected, show me
respect,” Obreque said. “Human beings
The last word
are supposed to be able to follow simple
instructions. You come to school to learn,
right?”
“Nah, I come because my parents make
me,” one student said, turning to smile at
his seatmate.
“Yeah, and because somehow you
haven’t gotten expelled yet,” his seatmate
responded, shoving his friend in the shoul-
der. “And ’cause the girls here are fine as
hell,” the student said, punching his friend
back in the arm.
“Enough!” Obreque shouted, using a
voice louder than she’d ever used in seven
years of teaching in the Philippines. “What
is an example of behaving with dignity
and respect? Please, answer and raise
your hand.”
A boy in the front row raised an arm
that was covered with tic-tac-toe games
played out in marker. “Yes,” Obreque said.
“Thank you for volunteering.”
Signing a lease with fellow Filipino teachers
“Can I go to the bathroom?” he asked.
After the bell finally sounded, the class
rushed out, and the PE teacher left, Obreque encountered in the Philippines.
stood alone in the room, still trying to make
sense of what had just happened. Sixteen
bathroom trips. Seven completed name tags. ing,” she said, and because of that she’d
S
HE WANTED TO quit. She wanted to
leave Bullhead City, travel back across
the desert to Las Vegas and fly to La
Carlota City, but she was $8,000 in debt
and 7,000 miles from the Philippines, and
instead the only safe place she could think
to go was a few doors down the hall, into
Cuevas’ empty classroom at the end of the
school day. Three of the other new foreign
teachers were already seated around the
room, recovering from their days. Obreque
dropped her bag on the floor.
“I don’t know how to handle them,”
Obreque said. “I can’t connect. I can’t
teach.” She looked at Cuevas. “I’m sorry
if I am a disappointment, ma’am. What
could be a bigger failure than crying on my
first day?”
“Oh, I did that every day for six months,”
41
she said, and the other teachers looked at
her in disbelief, because they knew Cuevas
as the model of Americanized self-assurance,
with her own YouTube channel to share
teaching tips. “I was the worst teacher here
for a whole year,” she told them. “The stu-
dents ran all over me. I lost my confidence. I
wanted to go home.”
She told them that it had taken her a year to
pay off her debts to the international teach-
ing agency, two years to get her Arizona
driver’s license, and three years to move out
of a bedroom she’d shared with other inter-
national teachers and into her own apart-
ment. She’d applied for an extension on her
J-1 visa to stay in Bullhead City for two
extra years as she continued to figure out
how to build strong relationships with her
students.“You have to prove that you really
care about them,” she said, so she’d gone
to the dollar store, spent her own money on
art supplies, and redecorated her classroom
into a movie theater on premiere night, with
a red carpet and a VIP door and a ban-
ner that read “Every Student Is a Star.”
She watched every one of the Marvel
movies they talked about during class.
She called their parents not just with
concerns but also to share praise each
time a student impressed her.
She gradually moved beyond her
Filipino instinct for classroom formality
and began asking her students about
their lives, and they introduced her to
a version of America much different
from what she’d first expected: abusive
families, homelessness, surging drug
overdose deaths, conspiratorial ideolo-
gies, loneliness, suicide, alcoholism, and
poverty every bit as bad as anything she’d
“In a lot of ways, they are broken and hurt-
come to admire her colleagues for their ded-
ication and appreciate her students for their
resilience, their irreverence, their bravado,
their candor, and, most of all, for their vul-
nerability. She’d turned herself into one of
the most beloved teachers in the school, and
yet she would be required to return to the
Philippines when her visa expired in eight
months.
“The students here are difficult, but they
need you,” Cuevas told the other teachers
now. “Maybe you can do something to
motivate them, to give them more hope.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to
help them,” Obreque told her.
“There is literally no one else,” Cuevas said.
Adapted from a story that first appeared in
The Washington Post. Used with permission.
THE WEEK November 11, 2022
42 The Puzzle Page
Crossword No. 671: I’ll Be Back by Matt Gaffney The Week Contest
This week’s question: A 15-year-old tabby cat named
Larry has outlasted four British prime ministers during
his time living at 10 Downing Street. Please come up
with an appropriately British-sounding honorific title for
this stalwart feline-in-residence.
Last week’s contest: Two young activists in a London
museum recently threw a can of tomato soup at a
Van Gogh painting to protest climate change. Come up
with a warning sign that the museum can use to dis-
courage food-flinging attacks.
THE WINNER: “Please Don’t Feed the Paintings”
William S. Michaels, North Canton, Ohio
SECOND PLACE: “Splattery Will Get You Nowhere”
Jeff Vaughn, Bremerton, Wash.
THIRD PLACE: “Don’t Make Us Cut Off Your Ear”
Ken Kellam III, Dallas
For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go
to theweek.com/contest.
How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to
contest@theweek.com. Please include your name,
address, and daytime telephone number for verifica-
tion; this week, please type “Cat title” in the subject
line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday,
Nov. 8. Winners will appear on
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theweek.com/puzzles on Friday,
Nov. 11. In the case of identical
or similar entries, the first one
received gets credit.
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