CONTROVERSY MAIN STORIES THE LAST WORD

A VERY When will The return

VISIBLE Trump go of medieval
MURDER on trial? combat
Pages 6, 14 p.4 p.40
Yevgeny Prigozhin

THE BEST OF THE U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Too late?
How the Republican alternatives
to Trump are trying
to open up the race
p.16

SEPTEMBER 8/SEPTEMBER 15, 2023 VOLUME 23 ISSUE 1147-1148

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS WWW.THEWEEK.COM

 Contents 3

Editor’s letter
When I first began writing in this little box, the Sept. 11 attacks
were five months away. The spring and summer of 2001 were
an idyll before a great storm; there was speculation that we’d
reached “the end of history,” with the Cold War receding, peace
prevailing, and Western democracy triumphant. The internet and
cellphones were just starting to transform our lives. The past 22
years have been a tumultuous, wondrous, and terrible time in
our history, and serving as The Week’s editor-in-chief has given
me the great privilege of trying in these pages to help readers—
and myself—make some sense of it all. After 1,148 issues, I have
decided to step down, and turn the magazine over to the skill-
ful stewardship of executive editor Theunis Bates, who will be
ably assisted by managing editor Susan Caskie and our other
fine writers and editors. I am not retiring, and will continue as
editor-at-large here while pursuing some other long-postponed
writing and editing ambitions. Endings are also beginnings.
I am deeply grateful to my current and past colleagues at
The Week, who’ve worked so hard and skillfully to make this
magazine successful. I also owe a great debt to you, the readers,
whose enthusiasm, loyalty, and feedback have fueled me through
many long days (and helped put my daughters through college).
Producing a weekly magazine is a relentless challenge; I have
often compared our jobs to the mythic labors of Sisyphus, who
was sentenced by angry gods to roll an enormous boulder up a
hill only to see it roll back down, and to start rolling his burden
up again, perpetually. In a compelling essay, the French existenti-
alist Albert Camus argued that Sisyphus’ defiant embrace of his
fate transformed his labors into a source of meaning—and even
joy. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy,’’ Camus concluded.
As I leave the boulder in good hands, I am happy. Thank you,
friends. See you somewhere down the road. William Falk
Editor-in-chief

NEWS
4 Main stories
Trump makes history
with a mug shot; Idalia
streaks through Florida;
a racist shooting
6 Controversy of the week
Putin gets his revenge for
Prigozhin’s mutiny
7 The U.S. at a glance
Pronouns and parental
notice; McConnell freezes
up; a shot across the
Mexican border
8 The world at a glance
Spain’s kissing coach
gets canned; a coup in
Gabon; rampant sexism
in Antarctica
10 People
Riley Keough’s Graceland
memories; Alice Cooper,
mythic bad guy; an alien
hunter at Harvard
11 Briefing
The pricy but promising
technology of carbon
capture
12 Best U.S. columns
An un-Christian view
of Christianity; Hunter
Biden’s influence peddling
15 Best international
columns
Mushroom poisonings in
Australia; Nigeria’s rush
to war
16 Talking points
A GOP debate without
Reuters, Getty
Hurricane Idalia hit Florida with catastrophic floods. (p.5)
ARTS LEISURE
23 Books 31 Food & Drink
A sports bettor’s rags-to- Sloshing gin on chicken;
riches-to-prison life pizza farms of the Midwest
24 Author of the week 32 Travel
A mother-to-be visits the Exploring 922,651 acres of
‘Doomsday Glacier’ Pacific coast wilderness
26 Art & Music BUSINESS
Six artists take over the 36 News at a glance
National Mall Drug price negotiations; a
28 Film & Stage $6 billion 3M settlement
High school 37 Making money
comedy goes The disappearing economy
gonzo in car; sleep-deprived nomads
Bottoms
38 Best columns
The epidemic of smash-
and-grab retail theft
Visit us at TheWeek.com.
For customer service go to
TheWeek.com/service.
Editor-in-chief: William Falk
Executive editor: Theunis Bates
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, Catesby
Holmes, 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: Alex Maroño Porto,
Emily Russell
Contributing editors: Ryan Devlin,
Bruno Maddox
VP advertising: Stevie Lee
(stevie.lee@futurenet.com)
Account director: Mary Gallagher
(mary.gallagher@futurenet.com)
Media planning manager: Andrea Crino
Direct response advertising:
Anthony Smyth (anthony@smythps.com)
SVP, Lifestyle, Knowledge and News:
Sophie Wybrew-Bond
Managing director, news Richard
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VP, Consumer Marketing-Global
Superbrands: Nina La France
Consumer marketing director:
Leslie Guarnieri
Manufacturing manager, North America:
Lori Crook
Operations manager:
Cassandra Mondonedo
Correction
An Only in America item in the
Sept. 1 issue about residents of a
North Carolina town expressing
concern that a proposed solar array
would steal sunlight was based on
a news event that actually occurred
in 2015. When the news story about
that event recently reappeared on-

you-know-who; Musk’s Riley Renew a subscription at line, we failed to detect that it was
many empires; tourist Keough RenewTheWeek.com or give a dated. The Week regrets the error.
misbehavior (p.10) gift at GiveTheWeek.com.

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023

4 NEWS The main stories...
Trump’s federal election-fraud trial set for March
What happened risks for the GOP,” which would be foolish
The judge overseeing the federal case to “roll the dice.”
charging Donald Trump with conspiring to
overturn the 2020 election rejected his bid Good for Chutkan for rejecting Trump’s
this week to postpone the trial until after “garbage” and insisting on a timely trial, said
the 2024 election, setting a trial date for the New York Daily News. As it happens,
March 4, 2024. That’s one day before Super March 4 has symbolic importance: Through
Tuesday, when 14 states will hold their much of U.S. history, it was Inauguration
presidential primaries. Special prosecutor Day. The peaceful transfer of power that
Jack Smith had requested a January trial; took place on that day was a sacred tradition
calling that time frame “absurd,” Trump “until Trump and his gangsters decided to
lawyer John Lauro asked for April 2026. launch a coup against democracy.” Holding
But U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan them accountable isn’t about politics, it’s
called that long delay “far beyond what was about upholding the rule of law.
necessary” to prepare a defense. She said
there’s “a societal interest to a speedy trial,” What the columnists said
and that “like any other defendant,” Trump “Trump’s path to the GOP nomination is
The first-ever mug shot of a former president littered with court dates,” said Kyle Cheney
cannot delay justice because of his “profes-
sional obligations.” Trump called Chutkan “a biased, Trump-hating in Politico. He’s a defendant in seven pending cases, including three
judge” and vowed to appeal, though trial dates set by federal judges lawsuits and four criminal prosecutions carrying 91 felony counts.
generally can’t be appealed. Starting next month, when Trump and his business organization
face trial in a civil suit filed by New York’s attorney general, he’ll
Last week, Trump surrendered at Fulton County Jail in Atlanta on face “a near-constant string of trials” even as he campaigns for the
racketeering charges connected to his efforts to overturn his 2020 presidency. The New York hush-money trial is set for March 25,
loss in the state. He had his mug shot taken—a first for a former while Smith’s classified-documents trial is scheduled for May 20.
president—and was released on $200,000 bail. Former Trump chief
of staff Mark Meadows, one of 19 co-defendants in the Georgia Putting Trump on trial before many of the primaries “is a big
case, testified for hours in support of an effort to convince a state mistake,” said Ross Douthat in The New York Times. Republican
judge to move his case to a federal courtroom. Meadows is arguing primary voters will have to cast ballots without knowing whether
that it belongs there because his attempts to challenge Trump’s elec- Trump will be convicted; in a recent poll, 45 percent of GOP voters
tion loss were part of his official federal duties. Meadows’ actions said they wouldn’t support him if he’s convicted of a felony. Con-
included traveling to and trying to gain access to a ballot audit in ducting trials during primaries will only serve to rally Republicans
suburban Atlanta and setting up the infamous call in which Trump around the candidate “perceived to be liberalism’s major target.”
asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find”
11,780 Trump votes. Trump’s scowling, instantly ubiquitous mug shot “will go down
in the history books,” said Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian. But
What the editorials said will it illustrate his “demise or his political resurrection?” Despite
“What a spectacular mess,” said The Wall Street Journal. Instead of Trump’s “bombast,” multiple felony trials won’t help his presiden-
“barnstorming” states on Super Tuesday, Trump may be stuck in a tial campaign, and as Trump’s legal woes mount, independents
federal courtroom, “and how the public will respond is anybody’s “are steadily turning against him.” It may seem “utterly implau-
guess.” Some Republicans will be inclined to vote for him just to sible” that this lawless, dangerous demagogue may return to the
give “a middle finger” to an establishment they think is railroad- White House, but 2016 taught us to “never say never.” He may yet
ing him. But they should recognize that “his legal risks are political “make mugs of us all.”

It wasn’t all bad
QWhen 9-year-old Tae Butler was
treated for acute myeloid leuke-
mia in a two-month hospital stay,
a young pediatric oncologist, Ted
Moore, gave her a stethoscope. This
gift, along with his care and empa-
thy, inspired her to become a doctor.
Seventeen years later and cancer-
free, Butler is a fourth-year medical
student at UCLA, and in July she got
to work as a primary intern with the
doctor who saved her life. And she
still keeps the cherished stetho-
scope. “He nurtured my creativity
and curiosity,” Butler said, “and that
QAmerican Airlines pilot James Danen learned from Facebook Note to readers
that a 9-year-old girl named Valentina Dominguez lost Beatrice, her
American Girl doll, on a plane trip. So he embarked on a hunt for The Week will not
the toy. Valentina’s family last saw the doll in Tokyo’s Haneda Air- publish an issue
port, where they stopped for a connecting flight from Bali. Danen
located the doll at the airport’s lost and found, then picked it up on for one week. Your
a trip to Tokyo. In August, three next issue will
weeks after the doll got lost, arrive in two weeks.
Danen—who lives just a few
miles from Valentina—drove to Our next edition will
her house in Plano, Texas with be dated Sept. 22,
her treasured possession, some and should begin
Japanese treats, and a map
with the places Beatrice had arriving on Sept. 15.
visited. “[Beatrice] means a lot The Week currently
to me. She brings me happi- publishes 48 issues
ness and she’s my best friend,”
AP, WFAA

resulted in me choosing this path.” Danen, Valentina, and Beatrice Valentina said. a year.

Illustration by Jason Seiler.

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023 Cover photos from Getty, AP, Alamy
 ...and how they were covered
Hurricane Idalia batters the Southeast
What happened
Hurricane Idalia barreled across Florida and
Georgia this week, turning streets into rivers
and ripping off rooftops on its way back out to
sea. Idalia made landfall as a Category 3 storm
at Big Bend, where the Florida panhandle meets
the peninsula, bringing with it 125 mile–per-
hour winds and an 8-foot storm surge. Tampa
and St. Petersburg saw near-record floods, while
the ocean essentially washed right over the
island town of Cedar Key. “My family has been
here for many generations,” said Cedar Key Thigh-high waters in Steinhatchee, Fla.
Mayor Heath Davis. “This storm is worse than we’ve ever seen.”
As the hurricane, which slowed to a Category 1, moved northeast,
floodwaters up to 5 feet deep submerged homes, while strong winds “We often speak of hurricanes in terms of the physical damage they
toppled trees and power lines, leaving more than 430,000 people
without electricity. At least two people died in separate, rain-related toll on residents’ psyches—and the stress they inflict may threaten
car crashes, and rescue workers fanned out across both states
searching for those stranded in flooded homes. Officials said nearly
1,000 bridges will need to be inspected for storm damage.
Another hurricane, Franklin, was also active out in the Atlantic,
producing life-threatening rip currents and intensifying Idalia’s
storm surge on the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. The
flooding was made even worse by this week’s supermoon, a full
moon that exerts a stronger-than-usual gravitational pull and causes Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, has
higher tides. President Biden said he had spoken with the governors often invoked his response to last year’s Hurricane Ian in his “pitch
of all three states and promised whatever federal aid was required.
“I don’t think anybody can deny the impact of the climate crisis
now,” Biden said.
A racist shooting spree in Jacksonville
What happened
The Justice Department opened a hate crimes investigation this
week after a white gunman using a swastika-adorned rifle shot
dead three Black people at a Dollar General in Jacksonville,
Fla. Ryan Palmeter, 21, fatally shot Angela Michelle Carr, 52,
as she sat in her car outside the store, before entering the build-
ing and killing AJ Laguerre Jr.—a 19-year-old Dollar General
employee—and Jerrald Gallion, 29. Palmeter then texted his
father and told him to go into his room, where he found a suicide
note and 20 pages of racist writings. The suspect’s family called
police; Palmeter was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound
when officers arrived at the store. Before the attack, the gunman
stopped in the parking lot of the historically black Edward Waters
University; he fled after being confronted by campus security. “He
targeted a certain group of people and that’s Black people,” said
Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters. “He hated Blacks.”
Palmeter bought his AR-15–style rifle and a handgun legally this
year, despite having been placed under a 72-hour psychiatric hold
in 2017 for threatening suicide. Under Florida law, such incidents
do not appear in background checks unless the person is subse-
quently committed. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called the gunman
a “major-league scumbag” at a Jacksonville vigil, adding, “We
are not going to let people be targeted based on their race.” The
crowd booed DeSantis—who has sought to curb discussion of
racism in public schools and colleges—and a subsequent speaker
responded to his remarks. “Respectfully, Governor, he was not a
scumbag,” said local pastor Jeffrey Rumlin. “He was a racist.”
AP
NEWS 5
What the columnists said
“In an age of sophisticated weather modeling,”
it feels like Idalia “snuck up on us,” said Jeva
Lange in Heatmap. Exacerbated by climate
change, average sea-surface temperatures ap-
proached 90 degrees in the Gulf of Mexico
ahead of the storm. These unusually warm
waters turbocharged Idalia through a process
called rapid intensification, in which wind
speeds can accelerate by 35 miles per hour in
a single day. Climate change may not make
hurricanes more frequent, but it does create the
conditions for storms that are “more intense, slow, and destructive.”
cause,” said Charles Passy in MarketWatch, but they also take a
Florida’s popularity. The state has the country’s third-largest popula-
tion, thanks to its reputation as an income tax–free paradise with “a
Jimmy Buffett–style leave-your-cares-behind vibe.” But as a warm-
ing world delivers ever more frightening storms, “one wonders if
Florida will be able to maintain that growth.”
All eyes will be on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the next few weeks,
said Steve Contorno in CNN.com. DeSantis, who is challenging
to voters.” Primary voters are watching his response to Idalia to see
whether he can “lead through difficult moments,” and “comfort the
aggrieved”—and, crucially, lay the groundwork for rebuilding.
What the columnists said
Authorities in Jacksonville claimed the shooter was a lone wolf,
said Juliette Kayyem in The Atlantic, but white supremacists do
“not act in isolation.” They are fueled by an online ecosystem
of far-right chat rooms, where angry young men study, glorify,
and seek to replicate past racist mass killings—in Norway, New
Zealand, Texas. “Like foreign terror groups,” they use violence to
publicize their message: that whites “are still in charge” and “will-
ing to kill to prove it.”
“DeSantis said the right things in the wake of the shooting,” said
the Miami Herald in an editorial. Yet the governor’s words ring
hollow after two years of pushing white-grievance politics. He has
“demonized an AP Black studies course, scared parents about criti-
cal race theory, and painted diversity, equity, and inclusion as anti-
American.” DEI, CRT and the “woke” teaching of systemic racism
“don’t kill people. White supremacy does, as it did in mass murders
in Jacksonville, Buffalo, Charleston, El Paso, and Pittsburgh.”
Meanwhile, the carnage continues, said Nicole Narea in Vox. So far
this year, America has suffered at least 476 mass shootings—a term
defined as attacks in which four or more people are killed, so Jack-
sonville is not included. Our gun homicide rate is 26 times that of
other high-income countries; our gun suicide rate nearly 12 times
higher. With guns present in 45 percent of U.S. households and “a
vocal Republican minority” opposed to commonsense firearms
regulations—including universal background checks—“there’s no
telling how many more people will die.”
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
6 NEWS Controversy of the week
Prigozhin: How his killing will affect Putin’s grip on power
The video of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private
jet tumbling from a summer sky like a shot
bird was “viscerally shocking,” said The
Guardian in an editorial, but his death last
week may be the “least surprising event” in
modern Russian history. The plane crash near
Moscow, probably the result of a bomb or
sabotage, came two months after Prigozhin,
the thuggish leader of the mercenary
Wagner Group that spearheaded the battle
of Bakhmut, staged a mutiny and led a col-
umn of tanks and soldiers toward Moscow
before suddenly accepting Vladimir Putin’s Prigozhin’s plane: Shocking, but not surprising
offer of a truce, a pardon, and safe harbor in
Belarus. Putin, of course, is denying he assassinated Prigozhin, said
Max Boot in The Washington Post. The Russian autocrat offered
“sincere condolences” to the families of those killed last week—
including six other Wagner leaders and three flight crew—while
faint-praising Prigozhin as “a talented man...with a complex fate”
who “made serious mistakes.” But while Russian authorities make
a show of “investigating” the crash, Prigozhin’s cause of death
couldn’t be more obvious “if he had been shot by a firing squad in
Red Square.” By exacting bloody revenge for his rebellion, Putin
has now reasserted “his stranglehold on power.”
Putin has “cleared the stage of an impudent rival,” said David
Ignatius, also in the Post, but his “aura of political mastery has
been tarnished, perhaps irreparably.” The two months it took Putin private armies—may decide “to strike first.” Putin could also face
to kill Prigozhin after a near-coup suggests “indecision,” and will
not erase the Wagner chief’s very public critique that the Ukraine
war was based on “a lie,” and “wasn’t worth the terrible cost the
nation was paying in blood and treasure.” The assassination also
further “undermines the notion that Russia is a regular state,” said
The Economist in an editorial. A nation
Putin vowed to restore as a great global
power has been exposed as a “mafia-like
enterprise driven by personal whim and
blood feuds.”
From Putin’s perspective, that’s no con-
tradiction, said Alexander Baunov in
Bloomberg. The killing of “disloyal” associ-
ates is a tradition dating back to Joseph
Stalin, whom a “growing number of
Russians regard with respect and even ado-
ration.” The brazenness of Prigozhin’s mur-
der may be a sign that Putin, a former KGB
officer, is ready to give up the “democratic window dressing” and
rule with a Stalin-like iron fist. It’s telling that Prigozhin didn’t “fall
out of a window” or get poisoned like so many of Putin’s foes, said
the Washington Examiner in an editorial. The choice to murder
him in such spectacular fashion—along with nine other people—
was Putin’s bloody “homage” to his ruthless KGB and Soviet roots.
For other members of Putin’s “inner circle” of oligarchs and
elites, said Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic, the assassination is
a reminder that they, too, could be eliminated by their paranoid
czar at any time. Some may try to flee overseas, rather than “wait
passively for violence to consume them,” but others—especially
those who have enough wealth to hire armed bodyguards and
revenge from Wagner fighters, or the ultranationalists for whom
Prigozhin was an icon, said Yulia Latynina in The Hill. Prigozhin’s
demise leaves potential challengers with two lessons. One: Putin’s
promises are worthless. “Two: If your tanks are 120 miles from
the Kremlin, don’t stop.”

Good week for:

Only in America
QUnder a new “parents’
rights” law, Iowa teachers
must seek parents’ per-
mission to use children’s
nicknames. The law requires
teachers to alert parents if a
student asks to be addressed
by “a name or pronoun” that
differs from school records.
In emails, schools are alert-
ing parents that Kimberly
is going by “Kim,” and that
“today, Joseph requested
that he be called Joe.”
QBlack students at Florida’s
Bunnell Elementary were
called into a special assembly
and warned they “could end
up being killed or go to jail”
if they get low test scores.
Superintendent LaShakia
Moore says “there was no
malice” behind the presen-
tation but concedes it was
inappropriate. “Sometimes,
when you try to think ‘outside
the box,’” Moore said, “you
forget why the box is there.”
In other news
Golfing, after former President Donald Trump self-reported his
McCarthy signals Biden
weight as 215 pounds while surrendering to authorities in Fulton impeachment inquiry
County, Ga. This is down 24 pounds from 2018, when his White
House physician claimed the 6-foot-3 Trump weighed 239 pounds, House Speaker Kevin Mc-
Carthy said this week that an
coincidentally just 1 pound shy of technical “obesity.”
impeachment inquiry into
Smiles, after Japanese scientists announced they will conduct President Biden “is a natural
clinical trials for a pioneering drug that can regrow human teeth— step forward” when Congress
which one researcher called “every dentist’s dream.” returns from its summer
break. Three House GOP-
Hans Niemann, a U.S. chess grandmaster accused of cheating,
after the website Chess.com lifted its ban on his participation, and led committees have been
looking for evidence that the
world champion Magnus Carlsen agreed to play him. Some specu-
president profited from his
lated Niemann was using vibrating “anal beads” to get messages.
son Hunter’s foreign business
dealings and also interfered
Bad week for: in a federal investigation of
Getting dirty, after 112 participants in a “Tough Mudder” obsta- Hunter. Those probes have
cle race in California contracted infections whose symptoms include yet to find any evidence of
wrongdoing by the president,
fever, muscle pain, and boils. “Anywhere on my body that touched leading some swing district
the ground had red spots,” said participant Chris Palakos. Republicans to worry about a
Endorsements, after convicted felon O.J. Simpson announced political backlash to impeach-
that he’s very impressed thus far by GOP presidential candidate ment. But McCarthy has re-
Vivek Ramaswamy. “This guy’s onto something,” said Simpson, 76. portedly told colleagues that
Neurotics, who would fare poorly as members of a human settle- he hopes to start an inquiry
ment on Mars, according to a new computer simulation. Those by the end of September in
hopes of dissuading hard-
who were insecure, inflexible, and unable to cope with boredom liners from shutting down the
and change not only kept the colony from thriving but also tended government in October.
Getty

“to die at a much higher rate.”

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
 The U.S. at a glance ...
Chino, Calif. Covington, Ky.
School fight: California Another freeze: Senate Minority Leader
Attorney General Mitch McConnell froze for nearly 30 sec-
Rob Bonta sued onds while fielding questions from report-
a Southern ers this week, the second time in as many
California school months that the 81-year-old has become
district this week unresponsive during a press conference.
in a bid to Asked about his plans to seek re-election,
Bonta: No ‘forced outing’ block a new the Republican stared into the distance
policy that requires parents to be notified before an aide joined him at the lectern
if their child changes pronouns or gender and told assembled journalists, “We’re
identity. Since July, Chino Valley Unified going to need a minute.” McConnell
School District has required teachers to eventually resumed the press conference
inform parents if their child asks to use a but required an aide to repeat questions.
name or pronoun different from what is In July, McConnell became unresponsive
on their birth certificate, or seeks to use a during a gaggle with reporters on Capitol
bathroom assigned to a different gender. Hill and needed to step away before
Three other California school districts returning and joking about the incident.
are considering similar measures. Bonta McConnell was away from the Senate
said the policy amounts to the “forced for six weeks earlier this year after falling
outing” of transgender students, violating and suffering a concussion. He’s report-
their rights to education and to privacy edly fallen at least two other times this
under the California constitution. Chino year—raising questions about his fitness
Valley school board president Sonja for office and that of the elderly leader-
Shaw has accused the policy’s ship in both parties.
critics of “pushing perversion
on our children.” In response
to Bonta’s suit, Shaw said,
“Parents have a constitutional
right in the upbringing of their
children. Period.”
El Paso, Texas
Cross-border shooting: The
Texas National Guard has
opened an investigation after one
of its members allegedly opened fire
across the border last week, striking
and wounding a man on the Mexican
side of the Rio Grande. The soldier was
deployed as part of Operation Lone Star,
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s $4.5 billion Chapel Hill, N.C.
border security program aimed at reduc- Campus shooting: A University of North
ing illegal Carolina graduate student accused of
migrant killing his faculty adviser at a chemistry
crossings. A lab on the Chapel Hill campus was
U.S. Customs charged with first-degree murder this
and Border week. The school was locked down for
Protection three hours after Tailei Qi, a second-year
official grad student, allegedly used a 9mm pistol
told The to fatally shoot Zijie Yan, an associate
On guard at the border Washington professor in the Department of Applied
Post that the soldier pulled the trigger Physical Sciences. Qi, 34, was arrested
after three men started attacking a group near his home soon after. Police said
of migrants with a knife. Mexican news they had yet to determine a motive for
outlets reported that the wounded man the attack. Qi, a Chinese citizen with
was a 37-year-old Mexican national who a visa to study in the U.S., had previ-
told police he’d been trying to cross into ously expressed anger in social media
the U.S.; the man later told reporters posts about women and his faculty
he was shot in the leg while practicing adviser. “Bully in America seems to be a
a sport near the border. He is in stable problem,” he wrote. Professor Yan had
condition. The Department of Justice is recently expressed concern to a colleague
AP (2), Getty (2)
investigating alleged civil rights violations about an unnamed grad student who
under Operation Lone Star, which has was struggling with mental illness and
seen the border lined with razor wire. delusions.
NEWS 7
Huntington, W.Va.
Abortion ruling: West Virginia can
restrict the sale of the abortion pill
mifepristone, a federal judge ruled last
week, even though the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration has approved the
drug as safe. District Court Judge Robert
C. Chambers said
the state’s near-
total ban on abor-
tions, signed last
September, takes
precedence over
decisions by federal
regulators. The
Supreme Court has Mifepristone: Blocked
“made it clear” that states “may appro-
priately exercise their police power” in
regulating abortions, Chambers wrote.
The ruling could complicate efforts by
abortion rights proponents to protect
access to abortion drugs—which account
for a majority of terminations in the
U.S.—in states that restricted abortion
access following the overturning of
Roe v. Wade. A legal challenge to
mifepristone’s FDA approval is
likely headed to the Supreme
Court; in West Virginia,
Chambers allowed a challenge to
proceed concerning whether the
drug can be prescribed via telemedicine.
Alexandria, Va.
Schlapp scandal: Matt Schlapp, the
influential chairman of the American
Conservative Union, made a six-figure
offer to settle a multimillion-dollar sexual
battery lawsuit filed against him by a
male GOP strategist, The Daily Beast
reported this week. Carlton Huffman—
who accuses
Schlapp of grop-
ing his crotch
after a night of
drinking last fall—
reportedly made
a larger counter-
offer, which
Schlapp rejected. A Groping accusation
Schlapp spokesman denied that a settle-
ment was ever proposed, a statement
that Huffman’s attorney called “categori-
cally false.” Schlapp, 55, has denied any
wrongdoing and rejected calls for an
internal investigation by his organization,
which hosts the annual CPAC confer-
ences. The ACU’s vice chairman, Charlie
Gerow, resigned last week and urged
the organization’s board to investigate
Schlapp, who reportedly faces at least
two other allegations of sexual miscon-
duct. In one incident, Schlapp allegedly
tried to drunkenly kiss a male staffer after
a 2017 CPAC event.
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
8 NEWS The world at a glance ...
Madrid Loch Ness, Scotland
Soccer’s Kissgate scandal: The president of Spain’s Monster hunt: The biggest coordinated
soccer association, Luis Rubiales, was asked to search in decades for the fabled Loch Ness
resign this week after a torrent of criticism over Monster ended this week without finding
his kissing of midfielder Jenni Hermoso on the “Nessie.” Some 200 enthusiasts armed with
field after Spain won the Women’s World Cup. sonar, microphones, and drones scoped the Show yourself, Nessie
Hermoso said afterward that the kiss—on the 23-mile-long lake for signs of the creature,
lips, on live television—was unwanted. Rubiales and when one team heard “four distinctive gloops” underwater,
Unwanted
insisted that only “idiots” would object to “we all got a bit excited,” search leader Alan McKenna told The
“a peck between two friends,” and soccer authorities initially Telegraph. Alas, the sounds likely came from ducks. The Loch Ness
defended him. But as the backlash continued, with both progres- Monster has been drawing people to the Highlands since Robert
sive Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the conservative opposi- Wilson released his famous photograph of a dinosaur-like beast in
tion criticizing Rubiales’ behavior, the federation first suspended 1934. The photo was later exposed as a hoax, but the myth per-
him, then called for his resignation. The team says it won’t play sisted, and Nessie tourism now generates $52 million a year.
again until he’s gone. Rubiales’ mother, meanwhile, has gone on a
hunger strike to protest her son’s “inhumane hounding.”
Guatemala City
Threats against Arévalo: There are at least two plots to kill
Guatemalan President-elect Bernardo Arévalo and his run-
ning mate, Karin Herrera, the Organization of American States’
human rights arm said in a rare warning last week. Saying the
plots involve “state and private agents,” the group called on the
government to give the two more police protection and bullet-
proof vehicles. Arévalo, a progressive outsider,
defeated establishment candidate Sandra Torres
in a landslide two weeks ago, but his victory is
being challenged on several fronts. Torres has
alleged fraud, while the Electoral Tribunal has
suspended Arévalo’s party, the Seed Movement,
potentially threatening the transfer of power.
“No one can impede me from taking office on
Jan. 14,” Arévalo said. Arévalo

Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Vigilante justice backfires: A church pastor attempting to rid a
neighborhood of gang members inadvertently led his parishioners
to their deaths last week. Marcorel Zidor assembled hundreds
of his church members, armed with sticks and machetes, and
marched them into the lawless shantytown of Canaan to battle the
criminals who controlled it. As journalists livestreamed the event
online, the gang opened fire with machine guns, killing at least 10
people. Canaan is one of the makeshift settlements that sprang
up on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince after the 2010 earthquake
and are now controlled by gangs that kidnap and extort residents.
Desperate Haitians have resorted to vigilantism to protect them-
selves. But Zidor’s attempt was “irresponsible,” said Haitian
human rights activist Gédéon Jean. “You grab machetes to go
attack an armed gang? The police should have blocked them.”
Libreville, Gabon
Tripoli, Libya Military seizes power: Gabonese
Foreign minister flees: Libyan Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush President Ali Bongo was over-
fled to Turkey this week after protests erupted over revelations thrown in a coup this week just
that she’d quietly met with her Israeli counterpart last week in minutes after election results showed he’d
Rome. Israel has been pushing to normalize relations with the won a third term. Appearing on state TV in New junta in town
Arab world, and Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced fatigues and berets and calling themselves
the meeting proudly, saying the two discussed preserving Libya’s the Committee of Transition and the Restoration of Institutions,
ancient synagogues and possible Israeli humanitarian aid. That rebel army officers said the vote was not credible and that they’d
went over poorly in Libya, which doesn’t recognize Israel and “decided to defend peace by putting an end to the current regime.”
has a population devoted to the Palestinian If successful, Gabon’s coup would be Africa’s eighth since 2020
cause. Demonstrations broke out in sev- and the second this year, coming weeks after a coup in Niger. It
eral cities, and protesters burned Israeli would also mark the end of the Bongo dynasty. Ali’s father, Omar
flags. Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Bongo, ruled oil-rich Gabon from 1967 until his death in 2009.
BBC, Getty (4)

Dbeibah blamed Mangoush and suspended Celebrations erupted across the capital, Libreville, after the coup.
her, but other officials said he had approved “I am marching today because I am joyful,” said resident Jules
Mangoush the sit-down to curry favor with the U.S. Lebigui. “After almost 60 years, the Bongos are out of power.”
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
 The world at a glance ...
Paris
Wine down the drain: Facing a wine
surplus that has caused prices to
plummet, France is paying farmers
to turn their unbottled barrels into
distilled alcohol for use in clean-
A sad waste ing products and perfume. The
government earmarked some $44 million last week on top of
$172 million from the EU to compensate French winemakers for
destroying nearly 80 million gallons of wine. Thanks to a growing
taste for beer, coupled with the closure of many wine bars during
the pandemic, wine consumption is down 15 percent so far this
year. “We’re producing too much, and the sale price is below the
production price, so we’re losing money,” said winemaker Jean-
Philippe Granier. France has also begun paying vineyards to rip
out their vines and find more profitable uses for the land.
Mnangagwa, again
Harare, Zimbabwe
Fraud accusations: Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa,
80, was re-elected last week for another five-year term, but
allegations of election interference, biased media coverage, and
other irregularities cast doubt on the integrity of the vote. “We
are rejecting the election as a sham,” said Nelson Chamisa,
Mnangagwa’s main opponent, who took 44 percent of the vote
to Mnangagwa’s 52 percent. He called the election “a blatant and
gigantic fraud,” noting that Mnangagwa’s Zanu-PF party controls
Getty, Reuters, AP, Reuters, AP
the judiciary, the security agencies, and the electoral commis-
sion. Election observers found that in Chamisa strongholds, like
the capital, many polling centers lacked ballots, while elsewhere
Chamisa supporters were harassed and intimidated. Zanu-PF has
ruled for more than four decades, most of them under autocrat
Robert Mugabe; Mnangagwa ousted Mugabe in a 2017 coup.
NEWS 9
Moscow
Drone attacks: Ukrainian drones rained down
across six Russian regions this week in the
biggest attack on Russian territory since the
war began 18 months ago. The drone assault
damaged at least four Russian military planes
and forced airport closures across the country.
Russia countered with a sustained barrage of
missiles aimed at Kyiv. On both sides, most of
the drones were shot down, but two Ukrainian
security guards at a factory were killed. Also Moscow damage
this week, Russia released footage of impris-
oned American Paul Whelan—a former U.S. Marine detained
since 2018 on espionage charges he strongly denies—in his prison
camp. “It was good to see the fight remains in his eyes,” said
Whelan’s brother David.
Kobe City, Japan
Death from overwork: A young doctor
was driven to suicide after working 207
hours of overtime in a single month, his
family said last week. Takashima Shingo,
26, a medical resident at Konan Medical
Center in Kobe City, hadn’t taken a day
off in three months, including weekends. Shingo’s mother mourns.
Driven to desperation, he told his fam-
ily before his death in May that “it was too hard” and “no one
would help him.” The hospital denied the accusations, but a
government probe ruled Shingo’s death a work-related incident.
Brutal hours are such a problem in Japan that there’s a word for
“death by overwork”: karoshi. A recent report found that 20 per-
cent of Japanese doctors work more than 80 hours of overtime a
month, the threshold for risk of karoshi.
Tiwi Islands, Australia
Marines die in crash: Three U.S. Marines died this week when
their Osprey aircraft crashed during a military exercise in
Australia. Cpl. Spencer R. Collart, 21; Capt. Eleanor V. LeBeau,
29; and Maj. Tobin J. Lewis, 37, were killed in the crash; 20
others were injured. They were taking part in a joint exercise
involving forces from Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and
East Timor. It’s the latest in a series of deadly crashes involv-
ing the Osprey. The dual-rotor, helicopter-like aircraft has been
used for ship-to-shore military transport since the 1990s but has
been plagued with mechanical problems. In March, the Pentagon
quietly stopped buying Ospreys, but spokesperson Liz Mildenstein
told Military.com that existing aircraft would continue to “serve
through the 2050s.”
McMurdo Station, Antarctica
U.S. outpost rife with sexism: Women at a
U.S. scientific research center in Antarctica
face persistent, sometimes violent sexual
harassment, an Associated Press investiga-
tive report found this week—and manage- Monahon
ment has ignored their complaints. One
woman at McMurdo Station was fired after she reported being
sexually assaulted; another was made to work alongside her
attacker. Liz Monahon, a mechanic, said she was stalked and
threatened by one man, and when authorities did nothing, her
immediate superior sent her on a dangerous, eight-day resupply
journey across the ice just to get her away from him. Women
make up 30 percent of workers at the remote outpost, and the
National Science Foundation, which oversees the U.S. Antarctic
Program, found in its own report last year that more than half
of them had reported harassment or assault.
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
10 NEWS People
Why Cooper played the villain
Alice Cooper understands the importance of
mythmaking, said Will Hodgkinson in The
Times (U.K.). His reputation as a rock ’n’ roll
bad guy—the type of dangerous influence that
parents would warn their kids about—exploded
in 1969, when the singer was reported to have
bitten the head off a chicken during a live show
in Toronto. “The great thing is that it never hap-
pened,” says Cooper, 75. “I’m up there on stage and I look down to
see a chicken. I have no idea where it came from. I picked it up and
threw it into the audience, thinking someone would take it home,
call it Alice, and make it their pet. Instead, the people in the front
row, who were all in wheelchairs, tore it to pieces before throwing
it back on stage.” News outlets reported that Cooper, the son of an
evangelical preacher, had killed the chicken. “Frank Zappa called
up and said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t deny it.’ That’s when I knew:
Rock needed a villain.” The press continued to embellish his theatri-
cal stunts, making him more appealing to teenage audiences. “If I
had a 4-foot snake on stage, by the following day it was a 9-foot
snake that tried to kill me. We got into town and people said, ‘You
can’t set any German shepherds on fire tonight.’ What?”

Harvard’s extraterrestrial outsider

Avi Loeb might be the world’s most famous alien hunter, said Seth
Fletcher in The New York Times Magazine. A theoretical physicist
at Harvard, he has made thousands of news media appearances
in recent years calling for scientists to take seriously the possibility
that extraterrestrial life has visited Earth. That argument has earned
him the scorn of skeptical colleagues, but he believes researchers
have a duty to investigate UFO sightings and astronomical oddities.
“Two-thirds of the public believes there is extraterrestrial life,” says
Loeb, 61, “more than the 56 percent that believes in the God of the
Bible.” His fascination with all things ET began around 2017, when
a Maui telescope detected a football field–long interstellar object
zipping through our solar system. Named Oumuamua, the cigar-
shaped object appeared to accelerate in a way that defied the laws
of gravity; Loeb posited that it was an alien-built “light sail” that
used sunlight to generate propulsion. Earlier this year, a team of sci-
entists offered a more straightforward explanation: Oumuamua was
a comet propelled by trapped hydrogen. Loeb insists the research-
ers’ math is off. He’s now seeking funding for a global network of
telescopes and sensors that will scour the skies for signs of extrater-
restrial technology. Criticism of such projects, he says, only fuels his
efforts. “I’m putting my body on the barbed wire.”
Keough’s weighty inheritance
Riley Keough has a painful relationship with Graceland, said
Britt Hennemuth in Vanity Fair. Her grandfather, Elvis Presley,
died before she was born. But as a child the actress would visit
his Memphis home turned museum with her siblings and their
mother, Lisa Marie Presley. They would stay at the official hotel, but
sometimes slept over at Graceland. “The tours would start in the
morning, and we’d hide upstairs” says Keough, 34. “Security would
bring us breakfast. We’d order sausage and biscuits and hide until
the tourists finished.” Following her mother’s death in January at
age 54, Keough became sole custodian of Graceland and the fam-
ily’s stake in Elvis Presley Enterprises—which together are worth an
estimated $500 million. That inheritance sparked a legal fight with
her grandmother, Priscilla Presley; Keough reportedly paid $1.4 mil-
lion to settle the case. “Things with Grandma will be happy. She’s a
beautiful woman, and she was a huge part of creating my grandfa-
ther’s legacy.” She expects that her mother will one day be buried at
Graceland, alongside Keough’s late brother, Benjamin, who died by
suicide in 2020. “I always had beautiful memories and associations
with Graceland. Now a lot of my family’s buried there, so it’s a place
of great sadness at this point in my life.”

QA man accused of stalking Drew Barry-
more was arrested near the star’s Long
Island home last week, just days after he
crashed a panel event she was host-
ing. Chad Busto, 43, was taken into
custody after he rode a bicycle into
private driveways in Southampton
and told residents he was looking
for Barrymore’s home. Busto
pleaded not guilty to stalking and
was released on condition that
he stay away from Barrymore and
wear a tracking device for 60 days.
A few days earlier, Barrymore was
speaking at a Manhattan theater
event when a man identifying him-
and shouted, “You know who I am. I need
to see you at some point while I’m in New
York.” Barrymore was whisked off stage.
QBritain’s disgraced Prince Andrew
appears to be inching back into the good
graces of his older brother, King Charles III.
The monarch invited Andrew to join the
royal family at Balmoral Castle in Scotland
last week, and while there Andrew was
driven to church by Charles’ son Prince
William—in full view of the paparazzi.
Accused of sexually assaulting a teenager
who was trafficked by financier Jeffrey
Epstein, Andrew, 63, was booted from
the ranks of working royals by the late
Queen Elizabeth II. He denies any wrong-
doing. “Andrew won’t ever have the same
ceremonial role within the family,” a source
ing it clear that he won’t turn his back on
his brother.”
QConvicted fraudster Billy McFarland is
hoping to stage a sequel to 2017’s disastrous
Fyre Festival, the Bahamas music event that
landed him in prison on charges of bilking
$26 million from investors and customers.
That con job—in which ticket buyers prom-
ised luxury accommodations and perfor-
mances by major artists ended up stranded
on an island with no running water and no
entertainment—was documented in Netflix
and Hulu documentaries. McFarland, 31, is
now hawking Fyre Festival II, which he says
will take place in the Caribbean next year.
Promising “the island adventure of a life-
time,” he released the first 100 festival tickets
last week. McFarland said the tickets, which
Getty (3)

self as Busto approached the stage told The Daily Beast. But “the king is mak- cost $500 apiece, sold out in a day.

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023

 Briefing NEWS 11

Capturing carbon
The U.S. is investing in technologies that keep CO2 out of industrial emissions—or that remove it from the atmosphere.

What is carbon capture? World Resources Institute estimates

With greenhouse gas emissions continu-
ing to rise, politicians and scientists are
looking at capturing carbon dioxide as a
potential solution to help reach net-zero
emissions. The Biden administration just
announced a $1.2 billion investment in
two carbon-capture projects in Texas
and Louisiana, its first major invest-
ment in the burgeoning carbon-removal
industry. Carbon capture aims to trap
the CO2 released by power plants and
factories and keep it from reaching the
atmosphere, either by sequestering it
underground or recycling it in the plants. A new plant in Iceland that scrubs CO from the air
For most of human history, nature has
provided its own form of carbon capture: Trees absorb carbon
dioxide through the process of photosynthesis. But human civili-
zation is now producing far more CO2 than trees can handle.
that direct air capture costs from $250
to $600 per metric ton of CO2. But
even at $100 per metric ton, it would
cost about $780 billion to lower the
atmospheric concentration of CO2
by just 1 part per million. The atmo-
sphere’s CO2 concentration is now
about 420 parts per million—well
past 350, the level at which scientists
think we can hold global average tem-
perature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So
major technological breakthroughs are
needed for carbon capture to become
a truly useful tool. Scientists at the
2
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
recently discovered a new technique for capturing the carbon
produced in power plants that costs only $39 per metric ton—the
cheapest ever reported in a peer-reviewed journal.

Is carbon capture new? What are the downsides?

The idea has been around since at least the 1980s, but it’s not yet Some scientists and environmentalists argue that carbon capture
done on a large scale. That would require a steep rise in govern- may distract from the goal of reducing emissions and offers an
ment funding. A recent report found that carbon removal technol- “out” to energy companies that want to continue burning fossil
ogies would need to increase by a factor of 1,300 by 2050 to limit fuels. Oil and gas companies actually lobbied for carbon-capture
global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial funding to be included in the 2021 infrastructure bill. Plus, the
levels. (The Paris Climate Agreement’s increasingly unlikely target carbon-capture process itself produces emissions. A 2019 study
is 1.5 degrees.) “No matter how fast we decarbonize the nation’s found that widespread carbon capture would lower Earth’s net
economy, we must tackle the legacy pollution already in our emissions by only 10 to 11 percent once the energy used to cap-
atmosphere to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” said ture the carbon was taken into account. There are also environ-
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. mental and safety risks that come with
The potential of geoengineering building new pipelines to transport
How does it work? Two other geoengineering ideas are attract- CO2. “If you’re doing too little on
There are two types of carbon capture: ing attention: weather modification and solar the emissions mitigation side,” said
post-combustion and direct air. The radiation modification. Weather modification, Glen Peters of Norway’s Center for
former is the primary method currently also known as cloud seeding, involves injecting International Climate Research, “then
used in the U.S. It takes emissions microscopic particles of silver iodide into the there is no point of carbon dioxide
from smokestacks at power plants and atmosphere to prompt snow and rain, easing removal.”
factories and separates out the CO2. severe droughts. Over 40 projects are already
Direct air capture instead uses a machine operating in the U.S., and another 200 are in So why do it?
that sucks in vast amounts of air like a the works. In the solar radiation model, reflec- Most scientists agree that reaching a
tive aerosols could be sprayed into the upper safe level of carbon in the atmosphere
vacuum and then extracts the carbon
atmosphere as “a reflective blanket” to reduce
with chemicals. The CO2 then gets pres- the amount of radiation that hits the earth by
will be incredibly difficult without
surized into liquid form and transported about 1 percent. This technique, which would using carbon capture. Transitioning
by pipelines to be used or stored. It mimic what happens when major volcanic to renewable energy sources alone
can go toward commercial purposes— eruptions cool the planet, hasn’t been tried may not be enough. The two proj-
carbonating drinks, for example—or get yet. Skeptics warn that artificially reducing ects funded by Biden’s investment
recycled back into the energy industry. If sunlight reaching the ground risks trigger- are expected to capture more than
sequestered, the carbon is injected into ing unforeseen consequences, such altering 2 million metric tons of CO2 annually,
a dense rock layer at least 2,600 feet precipitation patterns or causing unwelcome equal to eliminating almost 500,000
below ground so that the CO2 doesn’t weather changes in other parts of the world. gas cars. The International Energy
leak out. There are also national security concerns: A Agency says that carbon capture could
government could weaponize the technology eventually lower global CO2 emissions
to alter an adversary’s climate. Still, scientists
Is this process expensive? by almost a fifth and decrease the
are studying it. “We just need to be really open
Very. Direct air capture is currently overall cost of minimizing climate
to recognizing that some kinds of approaches
too expensive and energy-intensive to that are fraught with downsides might still change by 70 percent. “There is no
work on a large scale—there are only deserve to be considered,” said Chris Field of 100 percent solution,” said Howard
18 direct air-capture plants currently Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Herzog of Massachusetts Institute of
operating in the world. But the Biden Environment, “just because the alternatives are Technology’s Energy Initiative. “We
administration plans to invest $3.5 bil- so serious.” need a lot of 10 and 20 percent solu-
Reuters

lion in direct air-capture hubs. The tions, and this is one of them.”
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
12 NEWS Best columns: The U.S.
Christians Christianity is being distorted into a justification for hatred and vio-
lence, said David French. The man who shot and killed California shop It must be true...
who love owner Laura Ann Carleton last month for displaying a rainbow Pride
flag frequently reposted online messages about calling on Jesus “when
I read it in the tabloids
to hate your heart is hurting” and “the tears fall.” He mixed his messages about
Christianity with images of burning Pride flags and denunciations of
QMartin Shkreli, the
“Pharma bro” who in 2015
David French LGBTQ people as “literally demonic.” As an evangelical Christian, I was dubbed “the most hated
The New York Times found this juxtaposition “chilling,” especially because I hear the shoot- man in America” after he
er’s hatred of LGBTQ people from right-wing Christians “all the time.” raised the price of a common
In the Trump era, many evangelicals have embraced a form of political drug by over 5,000 percent,
Christianity that “bears little resemblance to the faith as described in the has let it be known that he
Bible.” This “religiously flavored authoritarianism” focuses on attack- will “consider dates from
ing external enemies and celebrates threats and violence. The teachings exceptional candidates.”
The convicted felon, 40, who
of the New Testament and Jesus were clear: “Beware the hateful, the
now lives with his sister,
people drawn to strife; embrace those who are kind and peaceful. Love asks hopefuls to complete
our neighbors as we love ourselves.” But “American political Christian- an application asking for
ity” is angry and punitive, and “positively delights in strife.” This “reli- their measurements, last
gious war” is pushing our national divide “to the boiling point.” book read, and whether you
“f--- on the first date.” He
described himself as “out
Legal or not, Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings may not have been “techni-
cally illegal,” said Sarah Chayes, but they were profoundly unethical.
of shape,” with “very little
time and less patience for a
Hunter’s acts President Biden apparently disagrees, insisting, “My son’s done nothing
wrong.” That defense may not hold up as the newly appointed special
relationship.” No word yet
on how many have applied.
were wrong counsel’s investigation of Hunter’s tax evasion expands and stretches
into the election year. Hunter joined the board of directors of Ukrai-
Sarah Chayes nian energy company Burisma in 2014, when Vice President Joe Biden
The Atlantic “had just taken on the task for the Obama administration of pressing
Ukraine to tackle its endemic corruption.” Devon Archer, Hunter’s busi-
ness partner, told Congress that Hunter brought Joe to dinners or put
him on speakerphone with shady foreign business associates. Asked if
Hunter offered influence over U.S. policy, Archer said, “He would not
be so overt. It’s pretty obvious if you’re...the son of a vice president.”
Now, there’s “absolutely no evidence” that Joe Biden made any policy QFirefighters responding
decisions to help Hunter’s partners, but it’s not plausible he didn’t know to a report of a car crashing
about his son’s highly lucrative influence-peddling schemes. The presi- into a Pennsylvania house
dent’s “unconditional public support for everything his son has done were amazed to find the
serves to sanitize and reinforce” that pervasive brand of corruption. vehicle embedded in the
second floor. “This is the
stuff you see in movies,”
American air travel has become “shockingly safe,” with no fatal com-
Near misses mercial airline crashes since 2009, said Dan Kois. But “the next big
said Sam Baumgardner of
the Junction Fire Company

at the crash is coming.” A New York Times report revealed last week that
near-miss incidents at airports and runways have doubled over the past
in Lewistown. Responders
believe the driver—who

airports decade, with three in July alone. One database identified 300 reported
incidents “of near collisions involving commercial airlines” over the
they think struck the home
intentionally—hit a culvert
and was “propelled into the
Dan Kois past year, with some planes passing within feet of each other on over-
air.” It took rescuers and a
Slate.com crowded runways. Pilots and air traffic controllers say that everyone’s towing company three hours
bracing for catastrophe. With 3 million people flying in the U.S. every get the car down. They “had
day, 310 of the nation’s 313 air traffic control facilities are understaffed, to think outside the box,”
and controllers are “hideously overworked.” Many work six-day weeks. Baumgardner said.
Pilots are in short supply, too, after airlines offered buyouts during
QA teen fishing in a Minne-
the pandemic, and they’re hiring newcomers with less flight experi- sota lake hooked an unlikely
ence. Only 43 of the nation’s more than 500 commercial airports have catch: a wallet holding
surface-detection systems to alert controllers that planes are on collision $2,000 in cash. Connor Halsa,
courses. As a result, near-crashes are becoming “frighteningly common- 14, of Moorhead, found a
place.” The FAA and the airlines “have been pushing their luck,” and if business card inside that
nothing changes, “it won’t be long until that luck runs out.” led him to owner Jim Den-
ney, an Iowa farmer who’d
Viewpoint “American politics is now the land of make-believe. Democrats make believe dropped it on a fishing trip
that President Joe Biden’s daily lapses are mere gaffes and not signs of a a year earlier. “The odds
steadily worsening condition. And Republicans can’t cop to the unprecedented transgressions of of ever hooking a billfold
Junction Fire Company

Donald Trump. We muddle on in a political season that seems unreal because it is unreal. The 2024 in 20 feet of water—I don’t
election is 439 days away. That’s a lot of make-believe still to go. Will reality assert itself before then? think there’s a number,” said
It may seem impossible at the moment, but the safe bet is yes. It has a historical tendency to do so.” Denney, whose offer of a
Abe Greenwald in Commentary cash reward was refused.

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023

14 NEWS Best columns: Europe
The British Museum can no longer be trusted to
GREECE protect Greek treasures, said George Tsoukalis.
As a private detective who has devoted his life to
Elgin Marbles hunting down plunderers, I was “outraged and
incensed” to learn last week that ancient Greek
are not safe jewelry and coins were among some 2,000 items
stolen from the museum since 2016. In a shock-
in Britain ing display of “impunity and laxity,” the museum
did nothing when dealers warned it years ago that
George Tsoukalis
items from its collection were turning up on eBay.
Zougla.gr
The museum is now blaming a curator—“a world
expert on ancient Greece”—for the thefts, but he
seems to be just one cog in a trafficking ring that
smuggled the objects to black-market dealers and
sold “faithful forgeries” online as decoys. We may
never recover those artifacts, but it’s not too late to
save the Elgin Marbles, the sculptures that a bra-
zen British ambassador chiseled off the Parthenon
two centuries ago. For decades, Greece has pres-
sured Britain to return the marbles, but the Brits
refused, claiming that preservation and display
facilities at the British Museum “were of a higher
standard than anything our country could offer.”
That excuse was always offensive; now it’s laugh-
able. It’s time to go the international court and
demand that the looters return what they stole.

UNITED KINGDOM A “secret cabal” controls British politics, said
Robert Colvile, but it’s not some shadowy net-
A country work of global elites—it’s “your nan’s bridge club.”
Time and again, on “decision after decision, our
ruled by politicians put the elderly first.” While the country
suffers through inflation and a recession, older
grannies Brits keep getting handouts, from “gold-plated
pension increases” to subsidies for their winter
Robert Colvile
fuel bills. Their Millennial grandchildren, mean-
The Sunday Times while, are crushed by student loans and some of
the world’s highest child-care costs, and shut out
from homeownership by “hilariously unafford-
able housing.” The explanation for this disparity
in treatment is obvious: “It’s the elderly who vote.”
Politicians have little incentive to push for more
housing or cheaper child care if their constituents
don’t demand it. But we ignore these problems at
everyone’s peril. The Office for National Statistics
recently announced that the fertility rate for
British-born women plunged 22 percent in the past
decade, an “astonishing decline.” Young people
apparently feel so glum about their prospects that
they are delaying starting families or dropping the
idea altogether. Such pessimism presents a “slow-
moving disaster” for the country. Without new
youngsters to enter the workforce and pay into
pension funds, “we risk the whole generational
Ponzi scheme toppling over.”

Russia: With Prigozhin dead, can Putin control Wagner?

Hard-line Russian nationalists are in Putin’s priority is assuming control of
mourning for mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s forces in Africa, said Max
Prigozhin, said Sergey Zhitnikov in Seddon in the Financial Times (U.K.).
Novaya Gazeta (Russia, in exile). Wagner is “a crucial plank in Russian
Prigozhin’s private jet crashed north power projection in Africa,” lend-
of Moscow last week, killing the Wag- ing muscle to regimes from Mali to
ner Group boss and nine companions. Libya. But Prigozhin “was the only one
Within hours, camo-clad former fighters crazy enough to make it work,” one
were laying candles and flowers outside Prigozhin associate told me. “That’s all
Wagner’s St. Petersburg headquarters and going to go to shit” now. Wagner is not
drowning their sorrows in vodka. “Men a corporation you can simply hire a
approached the spontaneous memorial, new CEO to run, said Denis Korotkov
fell to their knees, banged their heads on in Meduza (Russia, in exile). It is a
the asphalt, and sobbed.” Prigozhin was Impromptu shrine to Prigozhin sprawling mercenary network that
“the only one of all those Kremlin riffraff runs on a web of illicit, personal ties
who told the truth,” one man said—a reference to Prigozhin’s and pays its debts with “bags of cash.” The hierarchical Russian
withering criticism of Russian military failures in Ukraine. That military can’t replicate that nimble structure. If the Kremlin tries
discontent fueled Wagner’s brief uprising against Putin in June to somehow resubordinate Wagner fighters in Africa, it will fail.
that ended in its commander’s apparent assassination. Its roughly
50,000 men are now scattered and leaderless, their future unclear. Still, someone will be named the new head, said Sergei Derkachev
in Don News (Russia), and it’s likely to be Anton “Lotus” Elizarov,
About 5,000 Wagnerites fled to Belarus, and that’s making a Russian military veteran who has commanded Wagner opera-
Belarus’ European neighbors nervous, said Friedrich Schmidt in tions in Syria, Ukraine, and all over Africa. He has pledged to
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany). Poland, Lithuania, follow Prigozhin’s brutal example of “victory, no matter what.”
and Latvia were already concerned that Moscow would use In intelligence circles, said Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy) in an unsigned
Wagner’s presence in Belarus to menace NATO’s eastern frontier. article, “rumors are circulating” that Putin has secretly tapped
With Prigozhin out of the way, fears that Putin will “hatch a notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout to lead Wagner. Bout, who
plan” have only grown. Leaders in Warsaw, Vilnius, and Riga de- once smuggled weapons to terrorists and insurgents across Af-
manded the immediate removal of the mercenaries this week and rica and the Middle East, served 10 years in a U.S. federal prison
threatened to close their countries’ borders with Belarus, while until being traded back to Russia last year in exchange for U.S.
Belarus’ dictator, Kremlin ally Alexander Lukashenko, insists that basketball player Brittney Griner. His ascension “could indicate
Wagner is welcome to stay. But to do what, and for whom? an important turning point in the evolution of Wagner.”
Getty

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023

 Best columns: International NEWS 15

Australia: Was mushroom poisoning really an accident?

An ill-fated family meal in rural Aus- Rumors and mushrooms thrive in
tralia in late July has captivated the the same conditions: “They must be
nation—and much of the world, said kept in the dark and fed bulldust,”
Marta Pascual Juanola and Ashleigh said John Silvester in The Age. We’ve
McMillan in The Age. Erin Patterson, heard plenty of gleeful gossip about
48, invited her estranged husband’s par- this case. Neighbors said Patterson
ents, Gail and Don Patterson, for lunch was an accomplished forager who
at her home in the town of Leongatha, owned books on mushroom identifica-
Victoria. They were joined by Gail’s tion. A journalist snapped photos of
sister, Heather, and her husband, Ian Patterson’s property showing bright-
Wilkinson, a Baptist pastor. The occa- orange mushrooms (could they be
sion was intended as mediation between death caps?) clustered around a tree.
Patterson and her husband, Simon, who And her husband, Simon, is said to
Patterson: ‘Devastated’ over the deaths
was supposed to be present but begged have almost died twice last year from
off at the last minute. Patterson served beef Wellington, a dish gastric-related complications after eating food that she prepared.
that conceals mushroom paste under a layer of puff pastry. Days Yet “while we all love a mystery,” we need to take a step back
later, three of her guests were dead, while the fourth, Wilkinson, and guard against indulging in trial by media.
remains hospitalized. They are believed to have ingested poison-
ous “death cap” mushrooms. Homicide detectives are treating That’s a particular danger for Australians, said John Ferguson in
Patterson as a suspect, but she maintains her innocence. “I’m so The Australian, given that we have a history of falsely accusing
devastated about what’s happened,” she said. people. The case of Lindy Chamberlain—wrongly convicted of
murdering her baby girl, who was carried off by a wild dingo
Patterson’s story was riddled with “inconsistencies,” said Michael in central Australia in 1980—“still resonates.” Pundits at the
Giles in the South Gippsland Sentinel-Times. Why was she the time were all too eager to paint Chamberlain the villain, mock-
only person at the meal who didn’t become seriously ill? (She ing her Seventh Day Adventist beliefs as cultish and saying she
claimed that she’d “scraped off” the mushrooms for her children, seemed insufficiently distraught. Years later, her conviction was
who ate the leftovers.) She also claimed that she had bought the overturned after her child’s bloody clothing was found near a
mushrooms at a small Asian grocery in Melbourne “but couldn’t dingo lair; by then, she had spent three years in prison. In the
recall which one”—a dubious story, given that grocers don’t mushroom case, police are still waiting on the toxicology report
stock the most poisonous mushrooms known to man. And why and have not yet determined whether a crime was committed.
did she suddenly take a food dehydrator—a device often used to Patterson herself said she “can’t fathom what happened.” The
dry mushrooms—to a local dump the day after the meal? truth is that, for now, nobody can.

Nigeria’s “new and sophomoric president” wants
NIGERIA to plunge us into a foreign war, said Olu Fasan.
Bola Tinubu took office in May, but his victory
War is in the election was disputed, and he apparently
thinks he needs to make an impression of tough-
no fix for ness. Ever since last month’s coup in neighboring
Niger, where the military deposed the democrati-
Niger coup cally elected government, Tinubu has been swag-
gering about, threatening to use “all means to
Olu Fasan
restore constitutional order in Niger.” He already
Vanguard
asked the Senate for permission to send in troops,
but it refused, knowing that invading a majority-
Hausa neighbor would inflame the Hausa ethnic
group here at home. So now he’s trying to do the
same thing under the aegis of ECOWAS, the 15-
member Economic Community of West African
States. He’s had the bloc ready a “standby force”
and is “said to have agreed a D-Day for military
action!” Such an invasion would be overwhelm-
ingly Nigerian, since most bloc members are too
poor and tiny to provide many soldiers. What does
Tinubu have to gain from his “warmongering”?
Could it be that he wants an excuse “to declare a
state of emergency” so he can squash the ongoing
legal challenges to his election? Because otherwise
this “strongman, macho” act makes no sense.

INDONESIA Jakartans are choking under filthy skies, said Atiek
Ishlahiyah Al Hamasy, and we need a better solu-
Factories, tion than just “work from home.” For months, the
Indonesian capital has had the world’s worst smog,
not cars, with particulate matter measuring 17 times the
safe level. To cut down on vehicle emissions, Presi-
clog the air dent Joko Widodo has decreed that half of all civil
servants should work from home. But early results
Atiek Ishlahiyah Al Hamasy
of that effort are underwhelming. Last week, only
Kompas about 13 percent of eligible civil servants telecom-
muted, while the Jakarta sky was “still shrouded
in pollution haze.” The problem is that our pollu-
Reuters
burning trash. We should have realized that two
years ago during the pandemic lockdown, when
commuting disappeared but the smog did not. We
need bigger ideas: better public transit, cleaner
fuels, and tighter industrial standards. Widodo
could have started such investments in 2021, when
a court ordered his government to clean up the air,
but he chose to appeal rather than comply. Indeed,
he’s only decided to take this half-measure now
because he has had a persistent cough for the last
month. Blaming commuters, though, won’t help
his lungs. At this point, only a whole-government

tion comes mostly from coal plants, factories, and effort has any hope of clearing the smog.
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
16 NEWS Talking points
GOP debate: An elephant in the room
The winner of the first GOP primary debate New York Times. The 38-year-old Yale Law
was “a no-show,” said Scott Jennings in the School grad smugly dismissed climate change
Los Angeles Times. Last week’s debate left as “a hoax,” said the U.S. should stop send-
“conservatives like me” wondering if these ing weapons to Ukraine, and promised to
eight candidates have any realistic plan to dismantle much of the federal government.
take down former President Trump, who He came off as “an exaggerated version” of
said he has no intention of lowering himself a familiar type: “the callow and condescend-
to spar with contenders he leads in polls by ing nerd who assumes that skill in one field
40 points. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “may translates to aptitude in all others.” So why
have stabilized” his foundering campaign with is this smug political neophyte now enjoy-
prepackaged tough talk about shooting drug ing a “bizarre surge” to third place in GOP
smugglers “stone-cold dead” at the border, but Ramaswamy and Haley slugging it out polls? As an Indian-American, Ramaswamy
he didn’t produce the breakout performance he needed “to con- delights “older white conservatives” by telling them the only
solidate the non-Trump field.” Former Vice President Mike Pence remaining racism in America “comes from the Left.”
offered “an energetic and feisty performance aimed squarely at the
Christian conservatives of Iowa,” and former South Carolina Gov. Sadly, my party has now adopted “a culture that rewards and
Nikki Haley “supplanted a listless Chris Christie as the principal incentivizes Trumpian behavior,” said Matt Lewis in The Daily
anti-Trump foil on the stage,” warning voters the multiply-indicted Beast. Candidates who get noticed “have no sense of shame.” Traits
MAGA king was “the most disliked politician in all of America.” like “decency, merit, and consistency become liabilities”: Former
Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy was a slick-talking atten- Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson “is too decent (read boring) to
tion hog, leaving viewers either energized or appalled with his win,” but the “cocky” and “fast-talking” Ramaswamy “is perfectly
insistence that fixing a broken America “isn’t complicated, guys.” suited to thrive.” Haley was an exception, said Noah Rothman
The ensemble performance was surreal, said Dana Milbank in The in National Review, making the “genuinely courageous decision
Washington Post. Trump’s rivals mostly dodged questions about to treat Republican debate watchers like adults.” She advocated
the heavy favorite and, instead, chose to emulate him—five candi- finding a “national consensus” on abortion, noting that Republi-
dates “even wore matching Trump-red ties.” If the viable alterna- cans will never achieve a filibuster-proof Senate majority to pass a
tives “are all Trump cheerleaders,” why wouldn’t voters “just go federal abortion ban. She criticized Trump administration spend-
with the genuine article rather than one of his sycophants?” ing that added $8 trillion to the national debt, and vigorously
defended U.S. support for Ukraine and condemned Vladimir Putin
DeSantis epitomizes “this problem,” said Philip Klein in National as a “thug” and “murderer.” Finally, she warned Republicans that
Review. Post-debate polls showed him and Ramaswamy get- Trump is “going to spend more time in a courtroom next year
ting small bumps, but not nearly enough to make Trump sweat. than he is campaigning,” weakening his chances of beating the
DeSantis came across as way too “calculating” and “cautious.” incumbent, Joe Biden. But “it remains to be seen whether there is a
When the candidates were asked if they’d support Trump as the market” for sanity and realism in today’s GOP.
nominee if he’s convicted of a crime, six of the eight candidates
raised their hands. “DeSantis looked around” for a few seconds I doubt it, said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. “The GOP has
“before half-raising his hand.” When the candidates were asked mutated from a political party into an angry, unfocused, some-
whether they would oppose future Ukraine aid, “DeSantis’ hand times violent countercultural movement.” Members signal “tribal
went up partially.” He dodged a question about Pence’s role on solidarity by hating” whatever progressives and Reagan conserva-
Jan. 6 and chided the Fox News moderator for asking candidates tives like me support. “Ukraine? To hell with them! Government
to take a clear stance on climate change. With such a huge deficit agencies? Disband them! Donald Trump? Pardon him!” With a
to overcome, “DeSantis does not have the luxury to play it safe.” few exceptions, the debate was an exercise in “moral cowardice.”
But it probably doesn’t matter. It seems increasingly inevitable that
Ramaswamy’s “cocky, know-it-all” persona pushed the robotic “Trump will be the GOP nominee, and none of the people at the
DeSantis into the background, said Michelle Goldberg in The debate in Milwaukee had a clue what to do about that.”

QDonald Trump’s campaign raised
$7.1 million in the first 48 hours after
he was booked in an Atlanta jail. That
includes $4.18 million raised the day
after the booking, the highest one-day
total for the campaign, which is market-
ing shirts, bumper stickers, and beverage
coolers adorned with Trump’s mug shot
and the tagline “Never Surrender!”
Politico
QThe number of “gender-affirming” sur-
geries performed in the U.S. nearly tripled
from 2016 to 2019, according to a new
Noted
about 13,000. About 56 per-
cent of the surgeries were for
the breast or chest area, and
35 percent for genital recon-
struction. About 7.7 percent of
the surgeries were performed
on people 12 to 18.
CNN.com
QThe expiration of pandemic-era child-
care funding on Sept. 30 will cause more
than 70,000 facilities to close and more
than 3 million children to be dropped
from child care, the Century Foundation
Virginia, West Virginia, and the
District of Columbia could lose
at least half of their licensed
child-care programs.
The Washington Post
QOf people convicted of traf-
ficking fentanyl in 2022, 89 per-
cent were U.S. citizens, according to a
Cato Institute analysis. The vast majority
of fentanyl and other drugs is smuggled
in vehicles at legal checkpoints. Just
0.009 percent of migrants apprehended
at the border were carrying any fentanyl.
Getty (2)

study, rising from about 4,550 a year to estimates. Arkansas, Montana, Utah, Politifact

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023

 Talking points NEWS 17

Musk: His growing power over government Wit &

The U.S. government is danger-
ously beholden to Elon Musk,
for $44 billion last year, he has
alienated advertisers and users
Wisdom
said Ronan Farrow in The New by letting hate speech flourish “The most exciting
Yorker. The billionaire’s rocket and by firing staffers respon- phrase to hear in science,
company, SpaceX, is currently the sible for maintaining critical the one that heralds
sole means by which NASA can infrastructure. Could drug new discoveries, is not
get astronauts into space from use be responsible for Musk’s ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s
funny.’”
U.S. soil. Another venture, Tesla, increasingly bizarre behavior? Isaac Asimov, quoted
controls the country’s biggest asked Jonathan V. Last in The in Universe Today
network of electric-vehicle charg- Bulwark. Musk associates
ing stations, giving it an outsize suggested to Farrow that the “In Hollywood, an
say in transportation and energy An influential billionaire billionaire—a workaholic who equitable divorce
settlement means each
policy. Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service, struggles with loneliness and stress—has upped party getting 50 percent
meanwhile, is crucial to defense policy. Pentagon his use of ketamine in recent years. A depression of the publicity.”
officials were forced to plead with the tech mogul treatment and a party drug, ketamine can feed Lauren Bacall, quoted
last fall after some Ukrainian units lost access to impulsiveness and feelings of grandeur. So, U.S. in Forbes
Starlink—their main battlefield communication policy is heavily dependent on a man “who may
“A person doesn’t know
tool—while fighting Russian forces. Musk had or may not have his judgment heavily influenced how much he has to be
earlier demanded that the U.S. pay for Ukraine’s by pharmaceuticals. Cool, cool.” thankful for until he has to
discounted Starlink service and had started push- pay taxes on it.”
ing a pro-Russia peace plan, apparently dreamed For now, the government is stuck with Musk, said Ann Landers, quoted in
up after one-on-one talks with Russian President Tim Fernholz in Quartz. It has spent billions of U.S. News
Vladimir Putin. The U.S. later struck a deal on dollars trying to build Boeing and Blue Origin into “Where they burn books,
Starlink, but officials remain uneasy about their “private alternatives to SpaceX,” but those firms they will ultimately
reliance on Musk. “We are living off his good have “repeatedly failed to deliver.” But relying on burn people.”
graces,” said a Pentagon official. “That sucks.” a one person with “erratic behavior and connec- Heinrich Heine, quoted in
tions to authoritarian foreign governments”— The Florida Star
Musk has unprecedented power in his hands, said Tesla produces half its cars in China—is a real “News is what someone
Peter Csathy in The Wrap, and “those hands seem problem. “SpaceX is dependent on government wants suppressed.
shakier and more erratic each day.” Look at his funding,” and officials should be bolder in using Everything else is
disastrous efforts to remake X, formerly known that as leverage. Still, until a serious rival to Musk advertising.”
as Twitter. Since buying the social media company emerges, this risky codependency will continue. Publisher Katharine Graham,
quoted in Jewish News
Syndicate

Travel: Why tourists are behaving badly “Politicians are the same
all over. They promise to
“This feels like the summer of bad tourists,” said behaviors such as parading through the historic build bridges even when
Natalie B. Compton in The Washington Post. city center in bathing suits and dragging wheeled there is no river.”
Across Europe and beyond, entitled travelers have suitcases across cobblestone streets—which gener- Nikita Khrushchev, quoted
gone rogue, grabbing headlines with their “vandal- ates a “click-click-click” noise that torments locals. in the Boston Herald
ism, tantrums, and narcissism.” There’s the woman In picturesque Portofino, Italy, selfie-taking tour- “Whatever you do, always
who shocked Romans last month by climbing ists who obstruct traffic are subject to fines. Some give 100 percent. Unless
across the venerated Trevi Fountain to fill her destinations “have taken more creative measures,” you’re donating blood.”
water bottle; the Bulgarian man who scratched his said Chris Livesay in CBSNews.com. In Spain, Bill Murray, quoted in
girlfriend’s name into the 2,000-year-old Colos- locals have posted signs at beaches warning “of The Knowledge
seum, and the two drunk Americans who recently fake dangers like jellyfish and falling rocks.”
slept off a heavy night in Paris’ Eiffel Tower. Visi-
tors have “damaged unique geological landforms” A number of forces are at work here, said Larry Poll watch
in China, belly-flopped into Venice’s canals, and Bleiberg in BBC.com. Tourists eager to make up
horrified locals in Bali by “getting drunk, naked, for lost pandemic years are deluging cities with Q77% of Americans say
and violent.” Tourists acting out is nothing new, a “revenge travel” mentality, dictating that no that Joe Biden, 80, is too
old to effectively serve
but many behaviorists and travel industry veterans whim should be denied. Desperation for social
another four years as
think things are getting worse. More travelers feel media likes leads some people to extreme behav- president, including 69%
“they should be able to do whatever they want,” iors, such as stripping down in public. But social of Democrats and 89%
said cultural studies researcher Kirsty Sedgman, media is also a vehicle for calling out problem of Republicans. 51% of
never mind “manners, rules, and social norms.” travelers—and that’s a good thing. “With each Americans think that the
new report of cringeworthy, tone-deaf, or just 77-year-old Donald Trump
Fed-up tourist hot spots “are pushing back,” said plain disrespectful behavior, our collective out- is too old to serve an-
Lebawit Lily Girma in Bloomberg. Bali has closed rage seems to be rising,” creating “a moment of other term, including 71%
off some sacred sites to tourists and ramped up reckoning for bad tourists.” This shaming drives of Democrats and 28% of
deportations, sending hundreds packing this home an important message we should all heed: Republicans.
summer. Officials in the overrun Croatian city “International travel is a privilege,” and “privilege AP/NORC
Getty

of Dubrovnik started a campaign to discourage brings responsibility.”

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
18 NEWS Pick of the week’s cartoons

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023 For more political cartoons, visit: www.theweek.com/cartoons.
Pick of the week’s cartoons NEWS 19

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023

20 NEWS Technology

Back-to-school: The chatbot invasion

Teachers should go into this school year
“assuming that 100 percent of their
students are using ChatGPT and other
generative AI tools on every assignment,”
said Kevin Roose in The New York Times.
Last year was a rude awakening. “In
the middle of an academic year, with no
warning, teachers were forced to confront
the new, alien-seeming technology” that
could almost instantaneously produce
college-level essays. Some schools re-
sponded to the threat of chatbot-enabled
cheating by banning ChatGPT altogether.
Entering year two, “there is a fair bit of Students in Palo Alto, Calif., work with Khanmigo. better.” I asked the chatbot to write my
curiosity” and even excitement over’s
AI role in the classroom.“Last year, many schools tried to scare
students away from using AI by telling them that tools like
ChatGPT are unreliable, prone to spitting out nonsensical an-
swers and generic-sounding prose.” But AI has improved, and
teachers need to use it themselves to understand what it can do.
Thinking you can bring AI into the classroom is naïve, said
English professor Mark Massaro in The Hill. AI is “corrupting”
education. Students are “taking AI-written essays and running
them through a ‘rephrasing’ generator, which rewords the up-
loaded essays with synonyms to mask the original computerized
nature of the product.” How are we supposed to counteract that? to divide 10,332 by 4, then told me my (accurate) answer was
Today, “the subjective process of critical and logical thinking is
a more important skill than ever.” But
AI removes the struggle or engagement
with information. Few of us in the faculty
room are responding to this threat with
the appropriate fear. AI has “infected
higher education like a deathwatch beetle,
hollowing out sound structures from the
inside until the imminent collapse.”
I am using ChatGPT in my classroom,
said Elizabeth Blakey in the Los Angeles
Times—to teach my students that “any-
thing that chatbots can do, they can do
lecture on the history of broadcast media.
“Unsurprisingly, the text it generated was horrible.” So I’ll have
my students write a better one, “turning each cliché into original
imagery and poor word choices into something more precise.”
Tech companies, naturally, want to bring AI into the classroom
quickly, said Nadia Bidarian in CNN.com. The results so far,
though, are not encouraging. Khan Academy is testing its “AI
tutor” with 8,000 students and educators this fall, where stu-
dents can “chat with a growing list of AI-powered historical
figures, from George Washington to Cleopatra.” Sounds great in
theory, but there’s plenty of work left to do. Khanmigo asked me
wrong—three separate times.

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

The Maldives is constructing a city
that can float on the sea, said Der
Spiegel (Germany). “The Maldivian
government and Netherlands-based
real estate developer Dutch Dock-
lands have joined forces to design
and finance the project,” which
eventually is expected to encom-
pass streets, playgrounds, schools,
restaurants, and “enough housing
for 20,000 people.” All the build-
ings will spring up from “floating,
interconnected platforms” being
manufactured individually and
then “assembled like a puzzle.”
The Maldives is an Indian Ocean
archipelago of more than 1,000
islands, but more than 80 percent of
the land in it sits less than a meter
above sea level. Climate change
has given the project increasing
urgency, and it’s scheduled to be
completed in 2027.
For teens, the iPhone rules
Teens must think Android phones are for old
people, said Magdalene J. Taylor in The Wall
Street Journal. A survey of 7,100 American
teens found that 87 percent of respondents
currently have an iPhone. Even though An-
droid phones often boast better cameras and
battery life, a stigma has developed—at least
among American teens—that “associates
Androids with older technology, and older
people.” Teens have also complained about
being shamed by “the big green bubble” on
text messages when they’re exchanged across
Apple’s iMessage platform. “You’re telling me
in 2023, you still have a ’droid?” said 20-year-
old Abdoul Chamberlain in a video posted
in April to his 3.4 million TikTok followers.
“You gotta be at least 50 years old.”
Digital war games in a real war
A mobile video game about war has found a
big audience of actual soldiers on Ukraine’s
front line, said Thomas Gibbons-Neff in The
New York Times. “Somewhere along the sev-
eral hundred miles of front line in Ukraine, a
Ukrainian soldier is probably playing World
of Tanks—the video game.” The multiplayer
game pits teams of tanks “and other killing
battlefield. It may sound odd for soldiers to
want to devote their downtime to a game
that carries “an eerie echo of the actual war
unfolding around them,” but soldiers say it
boosts camaraderie and helps them practice
teamwork. War is also “often marked by long
stretches of boredom,” and video games help
pass the time. There is internet access, thanks
to Starlink’s satellite networks, and soldiers
today carry smartphones.
Europe starts tech transparency push
Europe’s sweeping Digital Services Act went
into effect last week to regulate Big Tech plat-
forms, said The Economist. “The DSA will
apply to all online businesses, but bigger ser-
vices, defined as those with more than 45 mil-
lion users in the European Union, will have to
follow extra rules.” Those include increased
transparency with regulators over “how they
moderate content, decide what users see, and
use artificial intelligence.” Social media plat-
forms will have to “make it easy for users to
report” unwanted content, and must have to
act fast to remove illegal posts. There are also
restrictions around targeted ads and the use of
personal data. The changes will be significant
for Europeans; however, a global impact from
Getty

machines” against each other on a virtual the legislation is “far from guaranteed.”
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
22 NEWS
Covid has long-term effects on most
Even if you don’t think you are suffer-
ing from long Covid, the effects of the
infection could be lingering years after
recovery, The Washington Post reports.
An analysis of Veterans Administration
records shows that the nearly 139,000 vet-
erans who tested positive in 2020—before
vaccines—still had higher-than-normal
risk for conditions such as fatigue, dia-
betes, blood clots, and lung and kidney
dysfunction two years later, compared
with the much larger control group of VA
patients who didn’t test positive. They
also had a 250 percent higher risk of los-
ing their sense of smell and 27 percent
X on the left; Y is smaller but more complex
Y chromosome sequenced
When the Human Genome Project con-
cluded in 2003, it still had a big Y-shaped
gap. The Y chromosome, which along with
X is one of the two sex chromosomes,
is generally handed down from father
to son. The smallest of the 24 human
chromosomes, it was the most daunting
for geneticists to sequence, with millions
of repeated, seemingly interchange-
able patterns of DNA. Now, though, a
team of 100 researchers has completed
it. “We didn’t even know if it could be
sequenced, it was so puzzling,” study co-
author and University of California, Santa
Cruz researcher Monika Cechova tells
The Telegraph (U.K.). “This is really a huge
shift in what’s possible.” In sequencing the
missing half of the chromosome’s 62 mil-
lion base pairs—the rungs on the ladder of
DNA strands—the team discovered 41 new
protein-coding genes. Loss of Y chromo-
somes in the cells of older men is linked to
cancer, so scientists hope the breakthrough
will lead to new cancer treatments. And
because Y controls the production of sperm
and semen, the genome could point to new
infertility treatments as well. “We now have
a recipe on how to assemble the Y chromo-
some fully, which, while expensive at the
moment, can translate into personalized
genomics in the future,” Cechova said.
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
Health & Science
higher risk of stroke. Those whose Covid
cases landed them in the hospital were
even worse off, with a nearly 30 percent
higher risk of dying over the next two
years and dramatically elevated risks for
developing diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and
memory loss. That’s “a staggeringly high
burden,” says study co-author Ziyad
Al-Aly of Washington University School of
Medicine in St. Louis. The sample size of
veterans skewed elderly and was 90 per-
cent male. Further research is needed to
determine whether newer variants, in
vaccinated people, cause similarly long-
lasting effects. But it’s likely that “Covid
Regaining a voice through tech
Brain implants hooked up to AI large-
language models could help some paralysis
victims speak again. A team of Stanford
researchers implanted two small electrode
grids into the brain of Pat Bennett, 68,
whose degenerative amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis had left her unable to move her
mouth. They instructed her to mentally
repeat certain phrases to train the AI system
to recognize phonemes, or units of spoken
sound, and translate them into vocal
speech. After 100 hours of practice, the sys-
tem had a bank of 125,000 words, which
let Bennett communicate at 62 words per
minute—about a third as many as in natu-
ral conversation. The system has a nearly
24 percent error rate, and it is not yet
mobile. But “this is an encouraging proof
of concept,” Jaimie Henderson, the implant
surgeon, tells NPR.org. A similar prosthesis
developed at the University of California,
San Francisco also includes a screen avatar
that does the speaking. Bennett, who can
still type, is excited about the developments.
“For those who are nonverbal,” she wrote,
this could mean the chance to “continue to
work, maintain friends.”
A fish that sees with its skin
The color-shifting hogfish can look at
itself from the inside out to see what
shade it has achieved, Scientific American
reports. A native of Atlantic Ocean reefs
from the Carolinas to Brazil, the
fish is capable of
camouflage, chang-
ing from orange to
white to a variety of
patterns, thanks to
skin covered with
chromatophores—
cells with pigment
packets. When Uni-
versity of North Carolina Sensing its color
Treating lingering lung damage
did not forget about you,” Al-Aly says.
“It’s still wreaking havoc in your body.”
Babies need faces, not screens
The American Academy of Pediatrics rec-
ommends zero screen time for babies. A
new study strengthens that case, linking
daily screen time for 1-year-olds to delayed
development in toddlerhood. The Japanese
survey followed more than 7,000 new
mothers for four years, asking them about
their babies’ daily exposure to screens—TV,
video games, tablets, and smartphones—
and the children’s developmental milestones.
About 51 percent said they allowed their
1-year-olds one or up to four hours on
screens; the following year, those children
were more likely to struggle with com-
munication and problem-solving skills. The
children of the 4 percent of mothers who
allowed babies more than four hours of
screen time a day were nearly five times as
likely to experience communication delays.
In-person parental or caregiver interaction
imparts crucial information about language,
expressions, and the physical environment
to babies that “doesn’t happen when you’re
watching the screen,” Yale developmental
psychologist David J. Lewkowicz tells
The New York Times. “Talk to your child
as much as you can, face-to-face.”
Wilmington biologist Lorian Schweikert
examined hogfish skin under an electron
microscope, she also expected to find
opsin, a light-sensing protein. But she
was surprised to discover it not in the
chromatophores, but underneath them.
That suggests hogfish “could be using
it to view themselves,”
she says. This system is
nowhere near as sophis-
ticated as an eye, which
senses more than color
Getty, Science Source, Alamy
changes. But it serves an
important function for the
hogfish, which can’t bend
its head to look at itself.
For a sea creature that needs to
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
Gambler: Secrets From
a Life at Risk
by Billy Walters
(Avid Reader, $35)
“Billy Walters is a complicated character,”
said Rick Maese in The Washington Post.
“Regarded as perhaps the most successful
sports bettor the country has known,” the
humbly born 77-year-old Kentucky native
is also a convict, a philanthropist, and a
friend to celebrities, billionaires, and politi-
cians. In his best-selling new autobiography,
he maintains that he was innocent of the
insider-trading charges that in 2018 put
him in prison for 31 months. “He has
spent a lifetime among pool hustlers, card
sharks, down-on-their-luck gamblers, and
desperate addicts.” He was also chased
for decades by prosecutors who suspected
his gambling operations were criminal but
failed to prove it. But he appears to be
singularly disappointed in golf legend Phil
Mickelson, a former friend and gambling
partner whose name has won the book
most of its headlines.
Novel of the week
Bridge
by Lauren Beukes
(Mulholland, $29)
From start to finish in her latest novel,
“Lauren Beukes is on authorial fire,”
said Daneet Steffens in The Boston
Globe. The author of The Shining Girls
has devised “a heart-stopping plot”
about a 24-year-old named Bridge who,
by eating a psychotropic left behind by
her neuroscientist mother, travels to
alternative realities seeking one where
her mom hasn’t yet died. The book is
billed as a work of suspense “for good
reason.” It also leaps from Portland,
Ore., to Haiti, and beyond. “But it’s the
plethora of engaging characters,” start-
ing with Bridge’s nonbinary best friend
and a reality-hopping villain, “that adds
real substance and immersive texture.”
As the novel zips between universes,
“Beukes’ plotting is tight and the pacing
never falters,” said Ainslie Hogarth in
The New York Times. Even when she
leaves her heroine’s motives unclear,
“you can tell she’s having a blast put-
ting words on the page.” And she revels
in storytelling while probing “one of
life’s most tantalizing questions: How
do we become the people we are?”
AP
Walters on the links: Sports gambling’s GOAT
Walters’ life makes for “an extraordinary
rags-to-riches tale,” said Tom Kershaw in
The Sunday Times (U.K.). He was 9 when
he made his first all-or-nothing bet, a $125
wager on the 1955 World Series that he
lost. But the kid, who’d been raised in a
home without running water, was hooked
on the thrill. He became a top car salesman
at 19, was known as the biggest gambler in
Louisville by 20, and was busted for book-
making in his 30s, forcing a move to Las
Vegas. There, he joined a betting syndicate,
the Computer Group, that used analytics to
identify favorable betting odds and raked
Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s
Invisible Life
by Anna Funder
(Knopf, $32)
“I’ve never read
anything like
Wifedom,” said
Chris Hewitt in
the Minneapolis
Star Tribune. At
once “a biography,
a critique of the
art of biography, a
witty essay, and an
act of rescue,” this
“dazzling, infuriat-
ing” book calls
attention to George
Orwell’s mistreatment of his first wife to
expose how, for any woman, being a wife
can equate to being erased. Eileen Blair,
who was married to Orwell in 1936 at age
30 and died during a surgery nine years
later, supported her husband financially,
worked as a spy during the Spanish Civil
War, edited Orwell’s work, likely came up
with the premise of Animal Farm, and once
even saved his life. But you wouldn’t know
that from reading Orwell, and “it gets
worse.” Blair probably died because Orwell
skipped town while she was fighting cancer.
23
in tens of millions in annual winnings. In
his account of the journey, the confessed
former problem drinker “doesn’t attempt to
varnish all his own flaws.” Yet Mickelson
comes off worse.
Walters’ chief gripe against Mickelson is
that the golfer passed up an opportunity to
testify on his behalf in the insider-trading
trial, said Andrew Beaton in The Wall
Street Journal. Two of Walters’ adult chil-
dren died during their father’s subsequent
brief prison stay. But news outlets have
taken more interest in Walters’ claims,
thus far undisputed, that Mickelson bet
more than $1 billion on sports in the past
30 years, probably endured losses above
$100 million, and once even tried to place
a $400,000 wager on a Ryder Cup tour-
nament he was playing in. “Shockingly,”
Walters also devotes several chapters to
explaining his own gambling methods,
said Ryan D’Agostino in Men’s Health.
But don’t get too excited about that. Once
amateur gamblers see “the sheer number
of data points” and the complex computa-
tions behind Walters’ bets, “most will come
away with the crushing realization that
they could never, ever do it themselves.”
“Considering how little information
Funder has to work with, Wifedom is a
spectacular achievement of both scholar-
ship and pure feeling,” said Jessica Ferri
in the Los Angeles Times. Where she finds
facts elusive, she brings “the imagina-
tive force of a novelist” to passages that
are presented as the fiction they are. And
while Funder adores Orwell’s work, she’s
unafraid to expose how cruel he was to
women. He betrayed Blair by sleeping with
her friends and is alleged to have commit-
ted multiple sexual assaults.
Orwell has had help in effecting Blair’s
erasure, said Stephanie Merritt in The
Guardian. In the six major biographies of
the English novelist, journalist, and essayist,
all written by men, Blair’s contributions are
“consistently downplayed or omitted.” To
make up for that silencing, Funder goes so
far as to write speculative passages in Blair’s
own voice, and “her prose is most alive
in these fictional sections.” Unfortunately,
“you close the book wondering how much
of what you just read was true.” But, as
Funder helps us see, that is part of the cost
of “wifedom” and the erasures it produces.
“So much of what Eileen thought and felt
can never be known, and informed specula-
tion is all we have.”
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
24 ARTS The Book List
Best books…chosen by Paul Murray
Irish novelist Paul Murray is the author of An Evening of Long Goodbyes and Skippy
Dies, a 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. His new novel, the tragi-
comic family saga The Bee Sting, has been longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (1997).
Written in rhapsodically gorgeous 18th-century
prose, with cameos from George Washington,
Samuel Johnson, and a robot duck, Pynchon’s
novel is a touching story of friendship, as the
titular surveyors battle wilderness, slavers, and
the sinister forces of history in a nascent, already
blood-soaked America.
Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
(2013). This kaleidoscopic account of the fall of
the Soviet Union consists entirely of stories told
to the author by quote-unquote ordinary people.
An unsurpassable view of a civilization collaps-
ing from the inside. It’s the warmth of the story-
tellers’ voices, however, that’s unforgettable.
The Complete Eightball by Daniel Clowes
(2015). I was first drawn to Clowes’ Eightball
comic by its rabid short satires, like “Art School
Confidential.” But this collection reveals how
astonishing his range is, shifting from blisteringly
funny one-pagers to surreal epics to short stories
that rival anything in the American canon. The
centerpiece, Ghost World, captures teenage ennui
and alienation better than anything else I’ve read.
Also of interest…in school dramas
Learned by Heart
by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown, $28)
“Emma Donoghue is among the
most fearless contemporary novel-
ists we have,” said Chris Bohjalian
in The Washington Post. The author
of Room also writes “outstanding”
historical fiction, though, and her lat-
est is a chronicle of a frenetic early-1800s affair
between two girls at a Yorkshire boarding school.
The story is fact-based, and Donoghue’s dramati-
zation serves as a reminder that “teenagers in love
200 years ago were every bit as randy and reck-
less as teenagers today.”
Pet
by Catherine Chidgey (Europa, $18)
This sly new psychological thriller
“saves its most sinister twist for the
end,” said Hephzibah Anderson in
The Guardian. Its narrator is look-
Author of the week
Elizabeth Rush
Elizabeth Rush has seen
the effects of global warm-
Essays by Michel de Montaigne (1580). A ing as few people have,
16th-century polymath who wore a medallion said Eliot Stein in BBC.com.
inscribed “What do I know?” Montaigne more Four years ago, the author,
or less created the essay form. Some are frivolous whose first book, Rising, was
(“On Thumbs”); some get as close to heart of a Pulitzer finalist, joined an
things as anyone ever has (“On Experience”). unprecedented expedition to
Antarctica’s
Milkman by Anna Burns (2018). How do you Thwaites
tell the story of a place where nobody says what Glacier.
they’re thinking? Burns’ novel attacks the prob- Sometimes
lem by leaning into ambiguity—removing all called the
the names, so the cast is made up of Somebody Doomsday
McSomebody, Third Brother-in-Law, etc. The Glacier,
result is as labyrinthine and tense, and as hysteri- Thwaites is
cally funny, as Belfast itself. so large that
its complete melting would
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust cause a 2-foot rise in ocean
(1913-27). Roll your eyes if you want to, but levels, and no human had
reading this is one of the most profound experi- ever seen the glacier’s calv-
ences you’ll ever have in life. I brought a copy ing edge before the scientists
onto a plane full of skinheads who were on their and crew Rush traveled with.
way to a stag party. As I opened the book, the “It looked like arriving at the
noise fell away and I was in turn-of-the-century Wall in Game of Thrones,”
Paris. I’d like to say the skinheads asked what I she says. “It was unlike any-
was reading and really got into it, but they stuck thing I’d seen before.” More
to their own thing. astonishing, it was collapsing
before her eyes, succumbing
to climate change. “You feel
like you’re as far away from
human beings as you possi-
bly can be,” Rush says. “And
Never Enough to imagine that our actions so
by Jennifer Breheny Wallace (Portfolio, $29) far away are literally causing
this epic wall to fall apart, it
Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s book is gives you goosebumps.”
“at once a description of an insidi-
ous problem and a call to arms,” said In her new book, The Quick-
Meghan Cox Gurdon in The Wall ening, Rush shares a parti-
Street Journal. “A timely exploration cular personal concern she
of adolescent achievement culture,” brought with her, said Julie
Never Enough profiles young people whose suc- Depenbrock in NPR.org.
cess in the climb to elite universities left them She and her husband had
empty. The author, a journalist and mother, decided to have a child, and
admits her own parenting errors while bringing she was forced to postpone
pregnancy to make the trip.
“warmhearted enthusiasm” to describing how all
“I carried my desire to have a
parents can prioritize children’s well-being.
child onto the boat with me,”
Empire of the Sum she says. “And that felt sort of
terrifying, because I thought I
by Keith Houston (Norton, $32.50) might see this massive glacier
The story of the pocket calculator break apart and that could
is one of innovation and obsoles- do something to my desire
cence, said Alexander Nazaryan in to have a child.” Witnessing
such evidence of growing
The New York Times. Author Keith
crisis didn’t change her mind,
Lee Pellegrini, Stephanie Alvarez Ewens

ing back to 1984, when she was 12,
grieving her mother’s death, and sud-
denly showered with attention by a manipulative
new teacher. Despite many hints of what’s to
come, “the darkness of the novel’s denouement is
hard to fully anticipate,” and because the narra-
tor’s memory is clouded, the story’s power lingers
“long after the final page has been turned.”
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
Houston, who delights in trying to
make the arcane accessible, details
how the abacus and slide rule gave way to direct
precursors of the chunky TI graphing calculators
toted by generations of calculus students. “There
are thorny stretches in Empire of the Sum. It is,
after all, a book about math.” It’s also a tale “full
of oddballs, many of them brilliant.”
and she now credits her son’s
birth to a lesson learned from
sharing her two months at
sea with just 57 other people.
“On the boat I helped other
people,” she says, “and they
helped me.”
26 ARTS Review of reviews: Art & Music
Exhibit of the week
Beyond Granite:
Pulling Together
National Mall, Washington, D.C.,
through Sept. 18
Public monuments rarely succeed
on all levels, said Blake Gopnik
in The New York Times. “A piece
might succeed as a monument
but fail as fine art; another might
please the public but fail to com-
memorate; a third might satisfy
an art critic but leave the public
yawning.” For the first time,
though, the National Mall in
Washington is hosting a curated
group exhibit, and the monthlong
Ramirez Jonas’ bell tower: A chance for visitors to chime in
open-air show tests ways that
monument making might achieve happier
results. The six artists invited to partici-
pate were encouraged to call attention to
American stories not yet addressed on the
grand formal public space that’s home to
the Washington Monument and Lincoln
Memorial. None of the temporary works
prove to be unmitigated triumphs, but their during and after America’s war in Vietnam. more conceptual work,” but this “smart
failures are instructive, imbuing the exhibi- Wendy Red Star’s The Soil You See... is a
tion as a whole with “the flexible meaning
we want from good art.”
Because of the artists’ use of nontraditional between 1825 and 1880. Other works in
materials, “the resulting works stand out
Zach Bryan
Zach Bryan
++++
Zach Bryan’s latest
album “feels raw and
alive the way a mid-
’70s Neil Young record
would,” said Andrew
Sacher in Brooklyn
Vegan. In the year
since Bryan’s major-
label debut, American Heartbreak, went
platinum, the 27-year-old U.S. Navy veteran
has become one of the most popular acts
in country music even while pursuing his
own path. Across 16 tracks, the new record
“ranges from bare-bones folk to fiery
Southern rock to sparse piano balladry,”
and “nothing about it sounds like the work
of a typical mainstream country star.” By
and large, “it’s the same kind of intimate
country rock that Bryan was making last
year,” said Tom Breihan in Stereogum.
The catharsis the music achieves isn’t in
the arrangements. “It’s in Bryan’s battered
baritone, and it’s in the words.” He hit it big
because he’s “a hell of a writer,” capable
of making “personal, often deeply sad”
writing sound “relatable enough for mass
sing-alongs.” Like his past work, this power-
ful album is “full of lyrics that thousands of
people will soon scream as one.”
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
from the sea of granite, marble, and lime-
stone fixtures across Washington,” said
Tariro Mzezewa in NYMag.com. Tiffany
Chung’s For the Living is a world map
drawn out on a patch of lawn that shows,
in hundreds of lines of colored rope, the
routes taken by displaced Southeast Asians may be some scratching of heads at the
7-foot-tall red thumbprint etched with the
names of the 50 Apsáalooke chiefs who
signed treaties with the U.S. government
the exhibit were designed to be interactive.
Victoria Monét
Jaguar II
++++
Victoria Monét has the
makings of a true star,
said Mankaprr Conteh
in Rolling Stone. “A
charming vocalist and
cunning lyricist,” the
34-year-old R&B singer,
songwriter, and dancer
wrote pop hits for Ariana Grande, Chloe x
Halle, and Blackpink before renewing her
solo career with Jaguar, a “swoon-worthy”
2020 EP. Its follow-up, her first full-length
album, employs live instrumentation for
most of its run, and it is “lush without being
boisterous,” enlivened by dashes of brass
that feel regal. Clearly, “her skill is nothing
to play with.” The 11-track album “flows like
warm molasses,” said Arwa Haider in the
Financial Times. Monét has a “sweet and
mellow” voice that rides as confidently atop
the funk groove of “Smoke” as it does the
dancehall reggae of “Party Girls.” The single
“On My Mama” is another standout, “a
radiant melody that mixes brassy flourishes
and a sense of fun.” Monét’s music borrows
mostly from 1990s and early-’00s R&B. But
Jaguar II adds “elements of Deep South hip-
hop and West Coast soul.” In every setting,
Monét sounds “entirely in her element.”
Inspired by the court-ordered 1955
desegregation of public playgrounds,
Derrick Adams created a functional
playground divided in two—one
half gray, the other brightly colored,
with the wall between displaying a
photograph of Black and white chil-
dren playing happily together. And
Paul Ramirez Jonas’ Let Freedom
Ring, a 22-foot tower of bells, plays
the tune to “My Country ’Tis of
Thee”—except that the melody isn’t
complete until a viewer rings a large
bell at the sculpture’s base to sound
the last note.
The temporary presence of these
works “has had a happy side
effect,” said Philip Kennicott in
The Washington Post. The show “offers a
vision of the Mall as a much more agree-
able, livable, and urban space”—it pro-
vides human-scale attractions that make
the usually barren promenade a genuinely
pleasurable place to spend time. “There
and well produced” display sponsored by
the National Park Service and two non-
profits proves that the Mall should not be
treated as a finished work of public art that
should never be altered. “Exhibitions like
this one should be an annual endeavor.”
Buck Meek
Haunted Mountain
++++
Buck Meek’s solo career
“deserves to be more
than a sideline,” said
Marcy Donelson in
AllMusic. The 36-year-
old Texan best known
as the guitarist of Big
Thief emerged as a
noteworthy singer-songwriter with 2021’s
Two Saviors, and his “slightly more ambi-
tious” follow-up is “an album of many
strengths—poetic yet folksy lyrics, charming
melodies, an A-plus band, and disarm-
ing sincerity.” Located somewhere near
the “good-natured, rustic” intersection of
alt-country and indie rock, “it’s marked by
Meek’s trademark sweetness and yodel-
inflected phrasing.” Many of the songs on
the album are “about getting lost and find-
ing yourself, about the pleasure of disorien-
tation and the new perspective reorienta-
tion can bring,” said Stephen M. Deusner in
Pitchfork. With a few love songs, “sweet yet
overly scripted” sentiments “make it hard
AJ Mitchell Photography
to get truly lost in his music,” but he’s capa-
ble of delivering hard truths. Most often,
said Maeri Ferguson in No Depression,
“Meek has a way of making the details of
an experience sound like poetry.”
28 ARTS Review of reviews: Film & Stage
“Bottoms is unlike any high- Stephanie Zacharek in Time. But
Bottoms school comedy you’ve ever as Bottoms serves up its blend
Directed by seen,” said Owen Gleiberman of violence, raunchy humor, and
Emma Seligman in Variety. Critics loved 2021’s over-the-top female horniness, “it
Shiva Baby, the first comedy works so hard at delivering shock
(R)
feature written by director value that its calculation becomes
++++ Emma Seligman and starring wearying.” As “messy and imper-
Two gay misfits start a actress Rachel Sennott, but this fect” as the movie may be, said
fight club to get lucky. “brazenly gonzo” follow-up is Katie Walsh in the Los Angeles
funnier. Sennott and Ayo Edebiri Times, it gets “two of the fun-
Comedy rebels Edebiri and Sennott
of The Bear co-star as PJ and niest performances of the year”
Josie, two lesbian best friends who, in the tradition from its co-stars while taking “a big, wild swing”
of the guy-centric Superbad and American Pie, are at dramatizing women’s quiet fury about the nor-
desperate to lose their virginity before senior year is malization of the sexual violence they endure from
over. Bizarrely, in an attempt to draw the attention an early age. “It’s been a long time since a movie
of their cheerleader crushes, they start a self-defense has been this hilariously vicious in satirizing the
program that quickly devolves into a fight club for heteropatriarchy of high-school hegemony.” If here
raging teenage girls. From there on, “it should all or there a narrative turn feels forced, “you forgive it
be hilarious, bloody, sweet, transgressive fun,” said because Bottoms is just so audacious.”

Golda Despite Helen Mirren’s best

efforts, the new Golda Meir
trays U.S. Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, speaking in “a seductive,
Directed by Guy Nattiv biopic “never quite catches fire,” diplomatic rumble” as he agrees
(PG-13) said Mike Scott in the New to supply arms for Israel but holds
Orleans Times-Picayune. The back on further engagement for
++++ Oscar winner proves “extraor- fear of angering the Soviets. The
A wartime leader faces dinary” in the role of Israel’s screenplay is “overly on-the-nose,”
impossible choices. first female prime minister, as though, and at times Mirren seems
the so-called Iron Lady navi- to be suffocating from all the ciga-
gates 1973’s Yom Kippur War, a rette smoke she exhales and all
19-day conflict in which Israel Mirren transformed the prosthetics she wears to play a
fought for its survival after simultaneous invasions role that some critics say should have been given to
by Egypt and Syria. But while director Guy Nattiv a Jewish actress. But if it was Mirren’s goal to dis-
has made a serious film, “one of gravity and, occa- appear into the role, “the mission is accomplished
sionally, power,” it “feels too small,” so confined and then some,” said Kyle Smith in The Wall Street
to a few rooms and a few repeated story beats Journal. Her “marvelously self-effacing” perfor-
that it might as well be a TV movie. Golda “does mance perfectly suits Golda, a film that “eschews
have its moments,” said Michael O’Sullivan in The heroic posturing in favor of fog-of-war minutiae,
Washington Post. The best scenes feature back-and- showcasing how leaders in Meir’s position often
forths between Mirren and Liev Schreiber, who por- find themselves with no good options.”

The Writer
The Edge Theatre, Chicago ++++
“Ella Hickson’s The Writer offers a graphic that you’re sometimes seeing a play within
crash course in the perils of playwriting a play, “you may have trouble figuring out
while female. And, for that matter, existing how the pieces fit.” Still, the play features
while female,” said Catey Sullivan in the “some sizzling exchanges” and fine per-
Chicago Reader. “Sometimes more didactic formances from Lucy Carapetyan and her
than dramatically sound,” this import from peers. “If you care about theater, you will
London blasts away at the distorting effect want to see it.” After unfolding for a time
of men’s continuing dominance in writing in a naturalistic vein, Hickson’s creation
and staging theater, focusing on a female “sets a grenade and lets it explode,” shatter-
Orion, Bleecker Street Media/Everett, Randall Starr

playwright who struggles with the problem
every day. But she’s not alone here. The play
opens with a second aspiring female theater
practitioner berating an older male artistic
director for the sexism of his latest produc-
tion. That’s the man’s world that Lucy,
the titular writer, is battling, and Hickson
“doesn’t let you look away,” even putting
Lucy in a “cringe-inducing” sex scene in
which her own boyfriend “treats her alter-
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
Krystal Ortiz comforts Carapetyan.
nately like a cash cow and a blow-up doll.”
The Writer is righteous in its choice of tar-
gets, said Nancy S. Bishop in Third Coast
Review. “Whether it’s good theater or not is
another question.” Even once you’re aware
ing the drama’s structure, said Chris Jones
in the Chicago Tribune. Like the London
production, which divided theatergoers, this
U.S. premiere seems destined to provoke
both takedowns and ringing endorsements.
“I thought the show lost its way toward the
end, but then, as a white, aging, male critic
imbued with how drama always has been
written, mostly by men, that point of view
will be a surprise to no one.”
30 ARTS
Streaming tips
A tour of global cinema...
El Conde
For Chileans who lived
through it, the reign of
Augusto Pinochet felt never-
ending. This 2023 satire from
director Pablo Larraín imag-
ines Pinochet as a 250-year-
old vampire reflecting on his
legacy and wishing to finally
die. Netflix
Alcarràs
In rural Catalonia, a family
faces the demise of its
peach farm when the land-
owner chooses to erect
solar panels on the property.
Carla Simón’s wistful drama
catches the disruptions to the
farm’s rhythms as the family
detaches from the land. Mubi
The Five Devils
Vicky is a girl with a super-
natural sense of smell. When
troubled Aunt Julia turns up,
Julia’s scent plunges Vicky
into vivid visions of Julia’s
past. French director Léa
Mysius’ drama plumbs that
dizzying space within child-
hood where adult actions
sometimes carry otherworldly
mystery. $5 on demand
Kill Boksoon
Boksoon is a single mother
and deadly assassin who
becomes a target when she
attempts to quit contract
killing. It’s a familiar setup,
but this Korean thriller distin-
guishes itself with inventive
action sequences and its
willingness to invest in its
mother-daughter plot. Netflix
Ashkal: The Tunisian
Investigation
This haunting procedural
follows a female detective
in Carthage who’s investi-
gating a series of apparent
self-immolations—grim
echoes of the suicide that set
the Tunisian Revolution in
motion. $4 on Prime
Scarlet
Pietro Marcello’s unpredict-
able drama often suggests
an oil painting as it tells
of a girl raised by her war
veteran father in pastoral
1920s France. Actress Juliette
Jouan steps in as the girl
reaches adulthood, and she’s
mesmerizing. $5 on demand
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
Television
The Week ’s guide to what’s worth watching
Scouts Honor: The Secret Files of the
Boy Scouts of America
For more than a century, the Boy Scouts of
America presented itself as an institution that
cultivated moral living. In the past decade, count-
less reports have emerged of scouts being sexu-
ally abused by their troop leaders, resulting in
lawsuits that pushed the organization into bank-
ruptcy. This enraging new documentary argues
that leadership covered up its pedophilia problem
for generations and is still doing too little to pro-
tect the youngsters who pledge oaths to the scout
way. Wednesday, Sept. 6, Netflix
Wrexham caretakers Reynolds and McElhenney
Spy Ops
The top-secret missions dreamed up by novel- Season 2 picks up the story as the revitalized
ists and screenwriters are great entertainment, town and its revitalized club welcome a visit
but the real stories can be even better. In this from King Charles and enter 2022-23 play
new docuseries, real-life Jack Ryans and George on a do-or-die quest to win promotion to the
Smileys share details as each episode revisits one English Football League. Tuesday, Sept. 12, at
of eight of the most dangerous and storied intel- 10 p.m., FX
ligence operations in history. Missions include The Morning Show
Operation Jawbreaker, the CIA’s campaign in
Like the fictional news program at its center,
Afghanistan launched immediately after the 9/11 The Morning Show has been, at times, a bit of a
terror attacks, and Operation Pimlico, MI6’s dar-
mess. After devoting its first season to a MeToo
ing 1985 exfiltration from Moscow of a Soviet scandal, it lurched into melodrama in Season 2.
double agent. Friday. Sept. 8, Netflix But Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Billy
Dreaming Whilst Black Crudup, and the rest of the deep cast are given
Adjani Salmon may be Britain’s answer to Donald some great dialogue and have been fun to watch.
Glover. The Jamaican-born polymath created and Jon Hamm joins the fun in Season 3. Wednesday,
stars in this six-episode series that debuted on the Sept. 13, Apple TV+
BBC, playing an aspiring filmmaker who quits his
Other highlights
corporate post to pursue his dream. But breaking
I Am Groot
into the business isn’t so easy when you’re inexpe-
The lovable, mischievous young version of
rienced, cash-strapped, and Black. Salmon keeps
Guardians of the Galaxy’s tree-like alien is back
viewers on their toes by mixing in a rom-com
for another round of delightful animated shorts.
subplot, surreal touches, and plenty of scenes that
Wednesday, Sept. 6, Disney+
turn out to be his character’s daydreams about
Predators
what he should do or should have done. Sunday,
Sept. 10, at 10 p.m., Showtime Tom Hardy narrates a well-shot nature series
focusing on cheetahs, polar bears, and other
Welcome to Wrexham
alpha predators. Wednesday, Sept. 6, Netflix
Everything was looking great for Wrexham in
2022, until a tough semifinal loss put the rebirth Football Night in America
of the storied Welsh soccer club in jeopardy. The Patrick Mahomes and the defending Super Bowl
first season of this hit reality series chronicled the champion Kansas City Chiefs take on the up-
turnaround of the sorry team after its purchase and-coming Detroit Lions in the first game of the
by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. NFL season. Thursday, Sept. 7, 8 p.m., NBC
Show of the week
The Changeling
Fairy-tale characters always ignore warnings
about supernatural dangers. In this new series
based on a Victor LaValle novel, a New York City
love story turns irrevocably toward nightmare
with the snip of a red string said to grant its
wearer three wishes. LaKeith Stanfield stars as
Apollo Kagwa, a bookseller who unwittingly
jeopardizes his happy life as a husband and
father when he cuts the string on the wrist of
Emma, his beloved. An act of horrible violence
follows, and Emma disappears. But Apollo’s
FX, Apple TV+
dark journey is just beginning. Clark Backo co-
Stanfield and Backo: A doomed New York romance stars. Friday, Sept. 8, Apple TV+
• All listings are Eastern Time.

Chicken and gin: Surprising sophistication from simple parts
“If someone were to stand over a pan of
sautéing chicken holding a martini and
happen to slosh it into the pan,” it might
just produce the sauce that distinguishes
this dish, says Amy Thielen in Company:
The Radically Casual Art of Cooking for
Others (Norton). Spiked with gin and sage,
the jus requires a bit of craft, because noth-
ing can be allowed to burn. As delicious
as the resulting light gravy will be, “it’s the
crumbly fried sage leaves that make this
dish fit for company.”
Recipe of the week
Crispy smashed chicken breasts with
gin-and-sage jus
24 sage leaves
3 large skin-on chicken breasts
6 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
½ tsp fine sea salt
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp butter, cold
¼ cup gin
¾ cup chicken stock, preferably homemade
1 to 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice (to taste)
Lemon wedges for serving
Rinse sage leaves and dry them thoroughly
with a towel.
If chicken breasts have rib cage attached,
remove it, and any other bones, with a
LEISURE
Food & Drink
Not quick, but worth it
sharp knife. Don’t trim off any skin or fat.
Set each breast skin side down on a cutting
board and pound with a meat mallet to
flatten to an even thickness.
Put chicken in a bowl and add garlic cloves,
12 sage leaves, salt, and pepper. Cover and
marinate for at least 1 hour, and up to 6,
refrigerated.
Over medium-low heat, heat olive oil and
1 tbsp butter in a very large stainless-steel
sauté pan. When butter melts, add remain-
ing 12 sage leaves and fry, moving and
flipping them with a fork, until crisp, about
3 minutes. Remove sage to a plate.
Turn up heat slightly and add chicken, skin
side down, along with its marinade aromat-
31
ics. Slowly and gently cook over medium
heat, taking care not to burn oil, until skin
crisps and turns a deep caramel color, 25 to
30 minutes. (Be prepared to stay stoveside,
moving chicken, pressing on it to force
contact with pan, and moderating heat as
necessary, until the white sign of doneness
creeps two-thirds up the breasts.) As you
sauté, remove any garlic cloves that threaten
to burn and save them for the sauce. When
chicken skin has turned dark amber, flip
chicken, lower heat, and cook until internal
temperature reaches 140 on an instant-
read thermometer. (It will rise to 150 once
chicken is removed from pan.)
Transfer chicken to a platter and, off the
heat, add gin to pan. Return pan to burner
and simmer for 30 seconds to burn off
sharpness, then add chicken stock and cook,
scraping at residue in pan to loosen it, until
liquid has reduced by half. Add lemon juice,
any reserved garlic, and remaining 2 tbsp
cold butter; remove from heat and swirl
pan to emulsify butter.
Move chicken breasts to a clean cutting
board and slice crosswise, then return
chicken to platter. Pour sauce around perim-
eter of platter (not over the chicken) and
top with crisped sage leaves. Garnish with
lemon wedges and provide guests with both
a serving spoon and fork. Serves 6.

Pizza farms: A growing Midwestern tradition Wine: Mount Etna finds

“There’s nothing like stretching out on a picnic “Sicilian wines were once thought of as
blanket, watching the summer sun dip low behind funky, rustic wines, but that’s no longer
a farm field, and feasting on pizza fresh out of a the case,” said Arielle Weg in Wine
roaring brick oven,” said Eater. Pizza farms are Enthusiast. Elegant wines from Mount
popping up all across the Midwest, as residents Etna, prized for their earthiness and
of Minnesota’s Twin Cities could tell you. If you’re minerality, have led the ongoing renais-
visiting the region, plan for a day in the Missis- sance. Below are three to seek out.
sippi River Valley, and pack wine and a picnic 2018 Palmento Costanzo Mofete
blanket. Plenty of the area’s picturesque barns and ($21). In this red blend dominated
outbuildings are now serving wood-fired pizzas by the nerello mascalese grape,
topped with farm-fresh meats, herbs, and veggies. Music and dinner at Pleasant Grove lively acidity complements red
Pleasant Grove Pizza Farm Waseca, Minn. There’s berry notes before a finish that
regular live music at this bucolic spot where the pizza menu includes a dessert version evokes espresso, dark chocolate,
that mimics blueberry cheesecake. “Veggie lovers should try the Buster, made with and orange zest.
wild mushrooms and sage olive oil.” Open Friday through Sunday through October 2017 Cusumano Noà ($30).
Winghaven Pizza Farm Galesville, Wis. Across the Mississippi in a small lakeside Another red blend, this one
town, fifth-generation farmers Rob and Sarah Grover have turned their family’s apple tastes of dark berries and mint
Chris Simpson/The New York Times/Redux

orchard into a pizza haven, with all ingredients harvested from the “breathtaking” chocolate, with taut tannins
local landscape. Occasional live music is offered, and visitors are encouraged to bring and a “peppery heat.”
both lawn chairs and lawn games. Open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday 2020 Palmento Costanzo
Two Pony Gardens Long Lake, Minn. This organic farm just west of Minneapolis is Bianco di Sei ($28). Citrus
so popular that reservations for spots in the yard or meadow are often sold out in meets the “toastiness” of
advance. The farm specializes in heirloom tomatoes, brilliantly colored dahlias, gentle cooked apples, pears, and pas-
animals, and a limited selection of delicious hand-crafted pizzas. Open on select week- try in this white blend, which
end dates through October features the carricante grape.

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023

32 LEISURE
This week’s dream: The wild beauty of Olympic National Park
“In Olympic National Park, transcen-
dent moments abound,” said Michael
J. Bailey in The Boston Globe. The
922,651-acre preserve “packs many
ways to steal your breath,” whether
you choose to hike its rugged Pacific
coast, plunge into its unique old-
growth rainforest, or climb craggy
mountains “glistening with glaciers.”
The park occupies much of the
broad peninsula west of Seattle, and
it demands ample time: Even the
10 days I spent exploring weren’t
enough to reach all its top attractions.
It’s that big—about the size of Rhode
Island, but with a mountain range in the
middle that’s taller than Vermont’s Green
Mountains.
Following a path through “massive sword
ferns and moss-cloaked Sitka spruces,”
I hear a foghorn from a Quileute tribal
island. As I crest a ridge and descend to
Second Beach—one of the farthest western
reaches of America’s Lower 48—the sound sea stacks rise through the fog, and a few
Travel
Backpackers watch the sunset from the park’s Pacific coast. views thrilling.” A pre-dawn hike up
of the Pacific’s crashing waves washes
over me. “To walk here is to meditate.”
Hundreds of massive tree trunks uprooted
by heavy rainfall and glacial meltwater
have washed ashore as driftwood. At
daybreak, the sun-bleached spires “form a
ghostly threshold from the forested path
to the beach and to the dawn’s mingling
of surf, light, and mist.” Offshore, jagged
scrubby conifers cling to the vertical
columns of wave-eroded rock.
High in the mountains to the east stands
Hoh Rain Forest, which harbors not
tropical plants but massive firs, pines,
and spruces, many of them draped
with mosses. Nearly 140 inches of rain
fall here each year, and the canopy is
so dense that in some places, sunlight
can’t reach the forest floor. If you’re
seeking an alpine experience, drive the
“harrowing” dirt road up to Deer Park.
There, “the campsites are spacious, the
Blue Mountain will be worth the effort,
especially in the fall, when the sun rises
above the Cascade Mountains across Puget
Sound. “Some precious times, a fog bank
will sheath the sound, creating a carpet of
clouds extending from the black stiletto
spires of Blue Mountain’s tree line to the
coral-hued Cascades.”
At Lake Crescent Lodge (olympicnational
parks.com), doubles start at $154.

Hotel of the week Getting the flavor of...

The bar in the Club Room
Life House, Berkshires
Lenox, Mass.
“Lit majors, nature lovers, and
art fiends alike will feel more
than at home in this stylish
lodge,” said Devorah Lev-Tov
in Condé Nast Traveler. A
former motel that has been
transformed into an affordable
writer’s sanctuary in the heart
of the Berkshire Mountains,
Life House has a small library
lounge with floor-to-ceiling
bookshelves, a club room that
serves breakfast in the morn-
ing and craft cocktails at night,
and 65 guest rooms whose
furnishings “evoke a mountain
retreat.” The rooms’ “subtle
literary touches” include
secretary-style writing desks
and lampshades made with
the marble-patterned paper
used as backing in old books.
lifehousehotels.com; doubles
from $179
Storybook Carmel-by-the-Sea A trove of shark teeth in Texas
California’s Carmel-by-the-Sea is a town straight “North Texas is a fossil hunter’s paradise,” said
out of a fairy tale, said Erika Mailman in The Rose Cahalan in Texas Monthly. During the
Wall Street Journal. The pretty coastal enclave Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs roamed the
sits at one end of the Monterey Peninsula’s scenic earth, a shallow sea covered much of the Lone
17-Mile Drive, “which everyone must do once Star State, and today it’s easy to find the fossil-
in his or her life.” But Carmel also draws day- ized remains of ammonites, sea lilies, and other
trippers for its collection of buildings that “make ancient life in Texas’ public streambeds. “You just
the hamlet look like a place where Hansel and have to know where to look.” Recently, a Google
Gretel might buy a rustic loaf to render into Maps pin simply labeled “Shark Teeth” led my
bread crumbs.” Such “Storybook-style” architec- husband and me to Post Oak Creek, a modest
ture originated in 1920s Hollywood, with the waterway north of Dallas. Using a homemade
so-called Witch’s House in Beverly Hills being a sieve, we sifted through wet sediment. “The rou-
tine was calming, even med-
prime example. Carmel
joined the trend with A talking cure for aerophobia itative: scoop pebbles in,
20 or so residences and If you suffer from a fear of flying, there are shake the sieve, sift through
a couple of shops that many remedies to try, said Andrea Sachs by hand, dump it all out,
also evoke witches’ in The Washington Post. The newest is Dial repeat.” Downstream, chil-
abodes and have influ- a Pilot, a fee-based service that lets pas- dren splashed around as
enced the town’s design sengers pose questions directly to a pro- they searched for the fangs
ever since. Examples fessional who flies commercial planes. For of prehistoric predators
you can visit include me, “signing up was a snap.” I paid the with genus names such as
$50 fee for a 15-minute chat, and when Galagadon and Squalicorax.
the Cottage of Sweets, the scheduled time arrived, my phone
a mossy-roofed candy rang and I was greeted by the “sunny,
Eventually, I spotted a ser-
store, and the Tuck Box, easygoing” voice of a pilot named James. rated 1½-inch specimen,
a 1927 teahouse that Drunken pilots are my personal phobia, and our sifting quickly
resembles a Hobbit’s and James reassured me that airlines are turned up another 20 teeth.
home. Carmel is also very strict about alcohol usage, and that Back home, we marveled
renowned for its galleries co-pilots would notice if a colleague were at our haul. “It’s mind-
and restaurants, and “if overtired or unwell. Turbulence? Engine boggling to hold in your
you need to step away failure? James cheerfully addressed those hand a tooth from around
issues, too. The Dial a Pilot pros are ready 100 million years ago
from the cuteness, the to talk through most any flight scenario,
beach lies a few blocks “no matter how improbable.”
and imagine a world that
Getty

from the town center.” looked utterly different.”

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
 34 Best properties on the market
This week: Homes in converted buildings

Tim Lee Photography

1 Hudson, N.Y. The Abbey 2 Rifton, N.Y. Built

was a 1933 Romanesque Cath- in 1876 above the
olic church turned antiques Wallkill River, this
storage turned chocolate fac- four-bedroom home
tory. A 2016–2021 gut renova- was a church, then a
tion retained the pendant lights, town hall, then duck
stone and wood columns, and housing. The house features historic stone walls, wide-
reinforced stained glass while plank pine floors, and exposed beams; a second-level
creating a living-bedroom loft with 30-foot ceilings and a river-view balcony entertaining area with 30-foot ceilings and stone-and-steel
and a downstairs chef’s kitchen and living-dining space. The 0.88-acre firepit; and a spiral-staircased, five-story tower topped by
property has a vegetable garden, brick terrace, and mature trees; downtown a steeple. The grounds have wild and perennial gardens
and the train are walking distance. $2,900,000. Chris Getman, Houlihan and lounging-dining areas connected by stone pathways.
Lawrence/Luxury Portfolio International, (203) 554-5032 $2,250,000. Angelica Ferguson and Annabel Taylor, Four
Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty, (917) 767-7705

3 Great Barring-
ton, Mass. Part
of the Berkshires’
historic mill
area, this 1900
building on the
Housatonic
River was once
a textile factory.
The multizoned,
13,350-square-foot structure has a first-
floor kitchen, bath, and recording and
art studios, second-floor gallery and two
bedrooms with baths, and third-floor
loft; original details include wood floors,
gridded windows, and lofted ceilings. The
0.43-acre lot has walled landscaped gardens
and raised vegetable beds; downtown
Great Barrington is a 10-minute drive.
$3,750,000. Selina Lamb, Birch Properties,
(413) 331-7483
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
 Best properties on the market 35

4 Newtown,
Pa. Built circa
1800, this six-
bedroom former
barn features the
original vaulted
ceilings, posts, and beams along with modern radiant-heated
floors. The house has an open main living area with clerestory
windows and a Rumford fireplace; a French Country–style
kitchen; a primary suite with a marble bath with exposed-stone
Juan Vidal Photography

walls; and a private apartment with an elevator entrance. The

2-acre landscaped property includes gardens, a koi pond, a pool,
a tennis/pickleball court, and an outdoor kitchen. $4,350,000.
Caryn Black, B&B Luxury Properties, (267) 614-6484

2 1
3

4
5

5 Los Angeles This one-bedroom condo in downtown’s 1930

art deco Eastern Columbia Building is housed in the former ship-
ping department of a furniture and clothing company. The home
has high ceilings, walls of windows, and distressed-hardwood
floors; built-in desk, cabinets, and drawers; Lutron system and
Nuvo audio; a chef’s kitchen; dining and living areas; and a pri-
mary suite featuring a steam shower with marble surround. Build-
ing amenities include a pool, spa, gym, and garden. $1,150,000.
Bill Cooper, Coldwell Banker Greater Valley, (310) 721-2455

Steal of the week

6 Hereford, Colo.
Noted prairie-
home architect
and Frank Lloyd
Wright assistant
John S. Van Bergen
designed this 1921
former school-
house in northern
Colorado. Now
a three-bedroom, two-story open-plan home, it features high
ceilings, wood floors, French doors, wood-framed windows,
exposed ducts, clawfoot tubs, two antique coal stoves, an eat-in
kitchen, and sweeping views. The 3-acre property’s meadows
abut farmland; Grover, Colo., is five minutes by car and
Cheyenne, Wyo., is half an hour. $522,500. Koa Schumann,
LIV Sotheby’s International Realty, (970) 310-9045
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
36
The bottom line
QBetween the pre-pandemic
month of January 2020 and
July 2023, the immigrant
labor force grew by 9.5 per-
cent, compared with just
1.5 percent growth rate in
the U.S.-born workforce.
Axios
QIn July, Microsoft’s
Bing had 3 percent of the
search-engine market share
worldwide—the same share
it had in January, the month
before the launch of an AI-
powered Bing.
The Wall Street Journal
BUSINESS
The news at a glance
Pharma: Medicare drug price negotiations
The Biden administration this
week released a list of the first
10 prescription drugs subject
to price negotiations with
Medicare, said Rachel Cohrs
and Matthew Herper in Stat
News. The drugs were “chosen
from a list of 50 treatments
that cost Medicare’s pharmacy
drug benefit the most,” and they
include blood thinners Eliquis Drug price cuts were a Biden priority. much, if at all, lower than what
and Xarelto and the diabetes drug Jardiance.
Eventual discounts on drugs could range “from
25 percent off to 60 percent, depending on how
long they’ve been on the market.” Drugmakers
have no choice but to accept the government’s
price or face penalties that include losing Medicare ing the prices of drugs with fewer rebates, like the
and Medicaid coverage for all their medications.
The government might not save
that much initially, said Caitlin
Owens in Axios. The 10 drugs
cost Medicare more than $50 bil-
lion last year, “but that’s before
accounting for rebates already
negotiated by Part D plans” and
other discounts. “That means
the negotiated prices on several
drugs may not end up being
the government currently pays on net for them.”
But any discount would help seniors contend with
soaring drug prices. The savings from the new
rules, part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act,
will really kick in “once Medicare starts negotiat-
cancer drugs Xtandi and Ibrance.”

Nvidia: AI pacesetter beats profit estimates Rejuveniling in your

QMichael Jordan’s sale of
his stake in the Charlotte
Hornets this month cement-
ed his net worth at an esti-
mated $3.5 billion. Last year,
the Jordan brand recorded
$5.1 billion in revenue, rep-
resenting almost 11 percent
of Nike’s total sales.
Bloomberg
QThe Department of Trans-
portation fined American
Airlines a record $4.1 million
for keeping passengers on
board during lengthy tarmac
delays. In the longest of
the 43 incidents noted by
the agency, passengers sat
aboard a plane in Texas in
August 2020 for 6 hours and
3 minutes.
CNN.com
QAccording to Redfin, 38 per-
cent of homebuyers under
the age of 30 either used a
cash gift from a family mem-
ber or an inheritance to afford
their down payment.
Fortune
QIn most of the country,
only about half of office
visits now last for at least six
hours at a time, according
to WiFi data from Basking, a
workplace occupancy ana-
lytics firm. That is in stark
contrast to visits before the
pandemic, when a majority,
84 percent, lasted six hours
Nvidia keeps riding the AI wave to record heights, said Don Clark in
late adultescence
The New York Times. The chipmaker said last week it had doubled its Kids aren’t the only
sales of GPU processors, which “are used to create the vast majority of ones driving a come-
back in global toy
AI systems, including the popular ChatGPT.” It made $6.2 billion in sales, said Jennifer A.
profit in the past three months alone. The figures were “even better than
Kingson in Axios. A
what Nvidia had projected in May,” when investors pushed Nvidia’s July survey by The Toy
market value above $1 trillion. Nvidia projected that third-quarter chip Association found that
sales would grow to $16 billion, “nearly triple the level a year ago.” 41 percent of parents
“have bought toys for
Litigation: Beleaguered 3M settles earplug lawsuits themselves in the past
3M agreed to pay $6 billion to settle more than 300,000 claims over 12 months,” and 43 per-
defective military earplugs, said Aaron Gregg and Eli Tan in The cent plan on doing so
Washington Post. This week’s deal “resolves one of the largest mass this year. Toymakers are
torts in U.S. history” from plaintiffs who say that the earplugs left banking on “a retro toy
soldiers “vulnerable to hearing loss or tinnitus.” The U.S. military pur- craze among adults”
chased the earplugs from 2003 to 2015. “The typical plaintiff would after the success of
receive $25,000 unless they can prove they suffered serious injuries.” Barbie and the new
The earplug settlement helps 3M chip away at a mountain of litigation, Transformers movie.
adding to a recent $10.3 billion settlement over “forever chemicals.” They’ve also seen how
many “kidults—also
The Fed: Powell warns of continuing inflation fight known as rejuveniles
Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell signaled to the markets that the and adultescents”—are
inflation fight isn’t over, said Jeff Cox in CNBC.com. At the Kansas embracing their inner
child. Lego has for
City Fed’s annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last week, Powell said
years catered to an
the central bank is “prepared to raise rates further if appropriate” in adult audience with
order to get inflation back down to 2 percent. The Fed chief also said products like a $680
policymakers intend to keep rates high, if not higher, “until we are con- Titanic set. These
fident that inflation is moving sustainably down.” Inflation has dropped Peter Pans have also
markedly, but Powell suggested it is still “too soon to declare victory.” “prompted McDonald’s
to introduce limited-
Bitcoin: Court loosens crypto investing rules time Happy Meals for
A federal appeals court ruled in favor of a crypto asset manager’s bid adults.” Toys and games
to launch the first Bitcoin ETF, said Sabrina Willmer in Bloomberg. The geared toward senior
judgment this week against the Securities and Exchange Commission citizens, or “eldertain-
“represents a watershed moment for the largest cryptocurrency” and ment,” make another
opens the door for the introduction of exchange-traded funds that track emerging category that
Bitcoin’s current price. The SEC “has thus far only allowed crypto ETFs includes “updated ver-
sions” of the Game of
Reuters, Getty

based on futures.” Last year, it rejected a spot-price ETF application by

or more. Grayscale Investments, which manages a Bitcoin trust. The court called Life and Trivial Pursuit
The Washington Post with bigger fonts.
that denial “arbitrary and capricious.”
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
 Making money BUSINESS 37

Auto inflation: The end of the economy car

“Just five years ago, a price-conscious Street Journal. “For the average
auto shopper in the United States American, paying off a new car at
could choose from among a dozen current prices demands 42 weeks
new small cars selling for under of income, according to Cox, up
$20,000,” said Tom Krisher in the from 33 before the pandemic.” The
Associated Press. Today, there’s just average new-car loan exceeds $750
one: the Mitsubishi Mirage, selling per month with an interest rate of
for an average of $19,205 last month, 9.5 percent. Worryingly, the pace at
according to Cox Automotive. That’s which defaults and missed payments
about as much as “a four-year-old are occurring on auto loans is be-
Chevy Cruze or Mazda 3” is going ginning to match or exceed 2008’s.
for on the used market. The average Meanwhile, automakers, who
price on a new car today is just above “leaned into their pricing power
Automakers have largely abandoned compact cars.
$48,000, a difference of 25 percent during the pandemic” when inven-
from before the pandemic. Small, affordable cars just don’t exist tory was scarcer, have made dealerships big profits.
anymore. Detroit’s Big Three automakers, along with Toyota
and Honda, “began to jettison the compact and subcompact You can’t overestimate the demand for big cars, said Ana Teresa
car business about five years ago” in favor of SUVs and trucks Solá in CNBC.com. “During the second quarter, more than 1 in
that promise better profit margins. Even six digits isn’t such a 4 vehicle shoppers in Texas and Wyoming committed to paying
premium price point anymore: There are now 32 new-vehicle more than $1,000 a month” for a new car, typically a full-size
models in the U.S. with a retail price above $100,000. In 2018, pickup truck. Such trucks, costing close to $100,000, made up
there were only 12. 14.5 percent of the total market in 2022, driving up the aver-
age price of all cars. Cheap cars should still exist, said Jason
Sticker shock isn’t hitting just new-car buyers, said Brenden Torchinsky in The Autopian. “The Mirage knew what it was
Rearick in Money. Four years ago, nearly half (49.3 percent) and lived up to that role: cheap. But it worked.” Now it, too, is
of the entire used-car market in the U.S. was made up of cars rumored to be disappearing soon. Meaning more people who
priced under $20,000. Today, “the share of cheap used cars” has just need “decent, honest transport are going to be shoved into
dropped to a meager 12.4 percent. It means cars are becoming big expensive vehicles that will feel cramped because they’re
unaffordable for more Americans, said Ben Foldy in The Wall loaded up with debt.”

What the experts say Charity of the week

The 1 percent down mortgage journeys to the land of sleep deprivation.” A The St. Bernard Project
Forget 20 percent. Zillow is offering some lot of them have already thrown in the towel, (sbpusa.org), a non-
homebuyers a 1 percent down payment, said saying that navigating the time zones was too profit named after an
Matthew Fox in Business Insider. For now, challenging and left little energy to enjoy travel. area in Louisiana dev-
astated by Hurricane
the hefty financing option is “only offered Marketing tech specialist Therese-Heather Katrina, is committed to
to eligible borrowers in Arizona, though the Belen is still “living the dream” traveling helping disaster victims
company intends to expand the program to abroad, but it comes with “many, many alarms clear debris, rebuild
other states.” As part of the program, Zillow, set for random hours” to jump on to meetings. their homes, and apply
for and negotiate their
which started its lending unit in 2019, will FEMA assistance. SBP
contribute an additional 2 percent of the pur- The best age for financial choices has regularly responded to hurricanes
chase price at closing to bring the total down You tend to make your smartest financial and floods since their founding in 2006.
payment to 3 percent, the minimum allowed decisions when you turn 53 or 54, said Clare The group rebuilt more than 400 homes
in Texas after Hurricane Harvey in 2017
by mortgage backer Freddie Mac. According Ansberry in The Wall Street Journal. A study and donated more than 45,000 volunteer
to Zillow’s analysis, it would take less than by ARC Centre of Excellence in Population hours to Hurricane Fiona relief in Puerto
a year for a person making 80 percent of Ageing Research in Australia found that Rico the following year. Currently, the
the Phoenix median income to save enough “financial literacy, which is the ability to un- organization is raising funds to respond
to the Maui wildfires. SBP also focuses
money for a down payment of 1 percent on a derstand financial information and apply it to on helping the survivors of natural disas-
$275,000 home. managing personal finances,” typically peaks ters navigate the daunting aid bureau-
at age 54 and then declines. That correlates cracy. In recent years, it has helped
The sleep-deprived nomadic life with other studies that have found age 53 people whose homes were destroyed
by natural disasters increase their FEMA
Digital nomads have experienced some trouble to be the age “when adults make the fewest awards by an average of 64 percent.
in paradise, said Jo Constantz in Bloomberg. financial mistakes, related to things like credit-
During the pandemic, U.S. office workers and card use, interest rates, and fees.” That’s not to
Each charity we feature has earned a
freelancers relocated to inexpensive and idyllic say you can’t make prudent financial choices four-star overall rating from Charity
settings on the Pacific rim. But for many of in your 20s or your 60s. But the early 50s are Navigator, which rates not-for-profit
them, it’s not been a picnic. Many have had to a sweet spot because you “have accumulated organizations on the strength of their
adjust to the graveyard shift in order to keep knowledge and experience about money, finances, their governance practices,
and the transparency of their operations.
connecting with U.S.-based colleagues in meet- spending and saving, but haven’t begun losing Four stars is the group’s highest rating.
ings, and their idylls are “becoming hellish key analytic cognitive skills.”
AP

THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023

38 Best columns: Business

Locked down: Stores struggle to deter rising thefts

Retailers are blaming rampant shop- aren’t helping when they refer to this
lifting for their shrinking bottom lines, problem with jargon like “shrink,”
said Hamza Shaban in Yahoo.com. said The Wall Street Journal in an
“In waves of earnings calls” last week, editorial. “Plain language about theft,
major store chains like Dick’s Sporting rather than the euphemism,” would
Goods, Target, Macy’s, Home Depot, make the public better understand
and Dollar Tree took pains to mention how bad the problem is and build
“the theme of missing merchandise” in support for “policies that would do
hits to their quarterly profits. Videos of something about it.”
brazen smash-and-grab looting opera-
tions, sometimes involving hundreds of “Shrink” is a purposely vague term,
masked individuals, appear in the news said Gabrielle Fonrouge in CNBC
almost weekly, adding to the sense of .com. Companies say repeatedly that
lawlessness. Retailers lost $94.5 billion Surveillance video of a Target store smash-and-grab “organized theft drove shrink” with-
in 2021—nearly double the amount from 2018—to “inventory out explicitly breaking down “how much of the inventory loss is
shrink,” an industry term that refers to lost or stolen merchan- due to crime” or how it has changed over time. Shrink can just
dise. More retailers are responding by putting items in locked as easily be explained by “employee theft, administrative error,
cases, and even taking often-stolen items out of stores. and inventory damage.” In fact, internal pilfering has tradition-
ally been the largest contributor to shrink, since retail employees
These attacks aren’t carried out by small groups of petty crimi- “have access to entire cases of merchandise in backrooms” or
nals, said Steven Malanga in City Journal. There is a sophisti- warehouses. But it’s easier to blame gangs of criminals than to
cated, illicit infrastructure underpinning this activity that’s all admit to having internal challenges or poor hiring practices.
about “reselling stolen items for profit.” The merchandise “is
sold by operators online—where they are hard to detect or track Shoplifting hurts more than just profits, said Stacy Torres in the
down.” Often it winds up on large, anonymous marketplaces Los Angeles Times. Shopping at Target or the supermarket used
like Amazon and eBay. The illegal industry includes “‘cleaners,’ to be “my happy place,” but “locked glass cabinets safeguarding
who strip goods of security devices, and money launderers, who merchandise are now ubiquitous.” It’s “demoralizing” to have to
process the transactions.” But enabling this behavior are the states ask clerks to retrieve your deodorant. At my local Safeway, you
that have decriminalized low-level shoplifting under the miscon- have to enter through an automatic gate rigged with alarms if
ception that most thieves “have turned to stealing to put food on you try to exit the same way. Companies say these measures are
the table.” More than two-thirds of states now treat shoplifting as there to make us all feel safer. But to me, they make it “feel like
a misdemeanor if the value boosted is less than $1,000. Retailers visiting a prison.”

Silicon Valley For years, landowners have wondered about the

plans for its
perfect city
Conor Dougherty
and Erin Griffith
The New York Times
secretive buyer that’s been scooping up thousands of
acres of farmland, “paying several times the market
rate,” outside San Francisco, said Conor Dougherty
and Erin Griffith. Was it Disney? Or China? Turns
out, the mysterious business, disguised by the name
Flannery Associates, is the brainchild of a 36-year-
old former Goldman Sachs trader. He has courted
“some of the tech industry’s biggest names” to
fund a $900 million plan to build an entire city
from scratch. This ex-urban utopia would form a
metropolis “as walkable as Paris,” where “construc-
tion methods and new forms of governance could be
rethought.” If, that is, the local residents are willing
to rezone land that’s given over largely to “ranches,
windmills, and power lines.” The vision has been
catnip to a who’s who of Silicon Valley elites. The list
of backers includes superstar venture capitalist Marc
Andreessen, Laurene Powell Jobs, and LinkedIn co-
founder Reid Hoffman. Longtime VC heavyweight
Michael Moritz, who has helped recruit investors
to the project since 2017, said the new city would
“relieve some of the Silicon Valley pressures we all
feel,” such as congestion and homelessness. And one
more plus: If the plan succeeds, for Moritz and other
investors “the financial gains would be huge.”

Democracy, What does Olive Garden do better than every other

business? asked Catherine Rampell. It brings people
fast-casual together. Seriously. A new working paper by Maxim
Massenkoff of the Naval Postgraduate School and
edition Nathan Wilmers of the MIT Sloan School of Man-
agement analyzed “a massive trove of geolocation
Catherine Rampell data to assess where and when Americans come into
The Washington Post contact with people of different income classes than
themselves.” In general, the paper finds that people
at the very top and the very bottom of the income
distribution are the least likely to mingle with people
in other classes. But whether you’re rich, poor, or in
between, there is surprisingly little socioeconomic
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
cross-pollination. Even a drug chain like CVS mostly
gets customers shopping “at the branch within their
own neighborhoods—where they might encounter
only people who look like themselves.” The same
thinking falls across public institutions, like parks,
libraries, churches, and—especially—schools. So
where are Americans most likely to bump into
someone different? At Applebee’s or Olive Garden.
The researchers found that “full-service, affordable
restaurant chains are the most socioeconomically
diverse places in America.” This, in a way, represents
an unsung achievement of capitalism. We can all
appreciate a plate of moderately priced nachos.
 Obituaries 39

The host who invited us to ‘Come on down!’ The conservative

everyman known as
When he stepped host of an audience participation
Bob ‘Joe the Plumber’
Barker down after 18 show failed to show up, Barker
1923–2023 years as host of the filled in and “found his calling,” Samuel Joseph Wurzel-
game show Truth working at stations in Florida bacher hadn’t expected to
or Consequences in 1975, Bob and L.A. The producer of Truth become a right-wing folk
Barker was recognized by Guinness or Consequences soon heard hero. The Toledo native and
as television’s “most durable per- him on the radio and invited Air Force veteran was play-
ing foot-
former.” That was just a warm-up. him to audition for television.
Samuel ball with
He shredded that record in his next “Barker charmed audiences with Wurzelbacher his son
role, spending 35 years as host of his quips and plainspoken style,” 1973–2023 in 2008
the CBS game show The Price Is said CBSNews.com. Offered the when he
Right. With his resonant baritone host job on The Price Is Right noticed a nearby campaign
and perpetual tan, the affable host in 1972, he did both shows for event for then–Sen. Barack
was a daytime TV institution, exhorting genera- two years before Price became his focus. In 1996, Obama. Wurzelbacher
tions of contestants to “Come on down!” to he impressed a new audience with a memorable confronted the Democratic
guess the prices of cars, appliances, and groceries. scene in Happy Gilmore in which, playing him- presidential candidate, say-
ing he planned to buy the
By his retirement in 2007, Barker had presided self, he beat up Adam Sandler’s character.
$250,000-a-year plumb-
over more than 6,500 episodes, won 19 Emmys, ing business he worked
In later years, Barker “gained national atten-
and become a master of banter. “Can I kiss you?” for and asking if Obama’s
tion for his animal rights activism,” said The
a woman on the show once asked. “No, I’m plan would raise his taxes.
Washington Post. A vegetarian, he unfailingly
working,” he deadpanned. “Meet me in the park- Obama acknowledged that
closed The Price Is Right by asking viewers to
ing lot later.” it would but said he would
spay and neuter their pets, and he quit his gig give small-business owners
Born in Darrington, Wash., Barker was raised hosting the Miss USA pageant after 21 years tax credits. That exchange
on a South Dakota Indian reservation, where because producers refused to stop giving fur turned Wurzelbacher into
his widowed mother taught school, said The coats as prizes. “Trim and fit well into his senior a media darling as “Joe
Hollywood Reporter. He trained as a Navy years,” he finally retired at 83. “TV hosts are the Plumber,” the quintes-
fighter pilot and married his high school sweet- like pies, and some people like apple and some sential overtaxed American.
heart before studying economics at Drury College cherry,” he said in 2009. “I’m just very fortunate Obama’s Republican oppo-
in Springfield, Mo. To pay his way, he read news that they liked me well enough to invite me into nent, Sen. John McCain,
mentioned him 21 times
and sports on a local radio station. When the their homes for 50 years.”
in a debate. Wurzelbacher
enjoyed his fame. “It’s my
discretion who I want to
The Dallas creator who livened up evening TV give my money to,” he often
repeated. “It’s not for the
David Jacobs everything from children’s ency- government to decide.”
David
Jacobs brought the soap clopedia entries to biographies. Yet he proved to be an
1939–2023 opera to prime time. After a divorce, he moved to unpredictable GOP ally,
When the screen- Los Angeles, and began writ- said The New York Times.
writer developed Dallas in the ing on shows, and an executive He spoke well at Tea Party
1970s, evening TV shows were offered him a deal to create his events, but his reputation as
made up of self-contained episodes own series. By its second season, an “iron-jawed John Doe”
that wrapped up neatly each week. Dallas was “a certified smash” dimmed when it emerged
Dallas, though, borrowed a format and a “cultural phenomenon,” he was not a state-licensed
plumber and owed more
from daytime soaps, using multi- said Deadline. At the end of the
than $1,200 in back taxes.
episode story arcs that required a third season, the “Who shot Wurzelbacher later accused
loyal audience to tune in for each installment. J.R.?” plotline transfixed the nation for months, McCain of exploiting him.
When it premiered on CBS in 1978, it quickly and betting parlors worldwide took wagers on
hooked viewers on the trashy saga of Texas oil the identity of the shooter. In 2012, he launched his
baron J.R. Ewing and his scheming family, as own congressional cam-
After Dallas and its spin-off, Knots Landing, con- paign, said The Washington
they double-crossed one another in a world of
cluded in the early 1990s, Jacobs created more Post. The Republican nomi-
wealth and power. For three years, Dallas was nee in a blue district, he
shows, but he “never equaled the success” of his
No. 1; it ran for 14 seasons. The show depicted called for border police to
early series, said The Guardian. He disclaimed
a time when American values were “terribly shoot migrants and lost
responsibility for what fans always called the
screwed up,” Jacobs said. “I think Dallas was heavily. He later became a
show’s biggest blunder: resurrecting the charac-
trying—at least in my head and heart—to show fervent supporter of Donald
ter of Bobby Ewing—J.R.’s brother, who’d been Trump. “Political correct-
that. It was never trying to glorify that world.”
killed off in Season 8—by retconning the entirety ness is a huge issue,”
Born in working-class Baltimore to a cabbie of Season 9 as one long nightmare of Bobby’s Wurzelbacher said in 2016.
father, Jacobs studied art in college but “recog- wife. “I thought it was a terrible idea,” Jacobs “People are afraid to speak
nized that he wasn’t talented enough to make a said. “I thought that it would negate the emotion their minds. They are afraid
living as a painter,” said The New York Times. of Bobby’s death. People have a very willing sus- of being labeled a racist or
pension of disbelief, but I don’t think they want a homophobe.”
Getty (2)

He moved to New York in hopes of becom-

ing a novelist, spending over a decade writing to be jerked around too much.”
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
40
‘I’m just here for the violence’
In the sport of ‘buhurt’—medieval-style armored combat—competitors go at each other with deadly
weapons, said David Kelly in the Los Angeles Times. It’s brutal, fast, and satisfying.
L
OVELAND, COLO.—Pinned
against a wooden rail, bat-
tered with axes, the knight
staggered. Two attackers, clad
in armor from head to toe, tried
to kick his legs from under him.
There was a flash of steel, and out
of nowhere, 280 pounds of man
and metal smashed into the sur-
prised assailants, collapsing them
in a clanking heap.
The audience howled.
This is the world of modern medi-
eval battle, a human demolition
derby in which men and women
wearing up to 100 pounds of
armor slash and hammer one
another with blunted steel swords,
axes, and maces—until someone
goes down, gives up, or loses
Buhurt combat is so fierce that most rounds last just a minute or two. background or you’re a nerd into
on points. “Think of it as a car
wreck that goes on for 90 seconds,”
said David Arditi, a member of the Dallas
Warlords team.
“Or a meat grinder,” fellow fighter Vince
Verheyden offered.
“Yeah, that’s the word,” Arditi said. “Meat
grinder.”
The next team marched into the arena for
another five-on-five melee. The marshal, or
referee, yelled “Fight!” and they charged,
hacking with axes and swords. Shields col-
lided with helmets. Poleaxes—long poles
topped with axe heads—thundered down
on shoulders with loud clangs, muffled
thuds and sharp thwacks. A few fight-
ers dropped immediately. A couple were
thrown to the ground. It ended quickly.
Cheering his teammates from the sidelines,
then embracing them with his massive
arms and praise—“I could kiss you!”—
red-bearded Ian Webb waited for his
match. The 6-foot-7, 300-pound member
of the Colorado Wardens is a formidable
opponent with an axe or sword—a WMD,
weapon of medieval destruction. And he
was looking for a fight.
T
HIS IS NOT role playing or reenact-
ment. The armored combat sport
of “buhurt”—from an old French
word meaning “to wallop”—delivers
adrenaline and raw violence that easily
surpasses the bashing found in hockey
and football. The weapons are blunt; the
pain, often sharp. Buhurt developed in the
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
The last word
13th century as a way for knights in feudal Spence Fasching, 51, captain of Minnesota’s
Europe to hone their combat skills while
putting on a public spectacle.
The sport, kept alive in Russia and Ukraine, and a jock my whole life, so this scratches
underwent a resurgence in the 1990s. The
first “Battle of the Nations” was held in
Ukraine in 2010, sparking global interest.
Governing bodies such as the International
Medieval Combat Federation set rules for
the fighters. No stabbing, no chopping the
back of necks, no hitting feet, no striking
behind the knees, no groin shots—similar
to the 13th century but with 21st-century
nods to safety like helmet padding to
decrease concussions, and medical care that
relies more on physicians than barbers.
Most rounds—whether in group battles
called melees or one-on-one duels—usually
last only a minute or so. Melees can range
from bouts of two versus two up to 150
versus 150, where scads of knights engage
in brutal battles that, to the untrained
eye, resemble attempted murder or at
least assault and battery. “Once you learn
to trust your armor, a whole new world
of possibilities opens up,” said Garret
Skovgard of the Colorado Wardens.
If three points of contact touch the ground
in a melee the fighter is out. The team with
the last knight standing wins the round.
Duels are won by the number of strikes on
an opponent. Each strike is a point. The
winner takes the best of three rounds.
Over the past few years, new teams have
emerged across the U.S. with
diverse memberships. There are
Pacific Islander, Asian-American,
Arab-American, and Latino fight-
ers. There are all-women’s teams
and teams such as the Knights
of Wakanda, a group of Black
fighters across the country who
come together for tournaments.
Fighters say interest has been
driven by the popularity of the
knight battles on social media
channels such as YouTube, fanta-
sies like Game of Thrones, pent-
up energy from the Covid-19
pandemic, and a hunger for ever
more full-body contact sports.
“Two common threads run
through those who do this
sport—you have a combat sports
Dungeons and Dragons,” said
Twin Cities Wyverns, who were fighting
at the Colorado event. “I have been a nerd
both itches for me.”
Some participants acknowledge a different
motivation: “I’m just here for the violence,”
said Blade Pool (his real name, he said) of
the Corpus Christi Rust Knights, a 28-year-
old blacksmith’s son who drove about
17 hours from Texas for the tournament.
Armor, which can cost between $1,500 and
$15,000, protects against most injuries,
but not all. A weapon can sometimes find
a small gap. A loose chin strap can send a
helmet crashing into the nose or teeth. And
illegal strikes can be crippling.
During a 2016 fight, Simon Rohrich, a pio-
neer of the sport in the U.S., was hit in the
head with an axe just as his helmet fell off.
A nickel-size piece of skull was driven a few
millimeters into his brain. That nearly cata-
strophic failure gave birth to the “Simon
strap”—Rohrich calls it the “me strap”—
which better secures helmets to fighters.
R
OHRICH, 48, MADE a comeback,
earning a reputation as one of the
hardest-hitting fighters in the world.
A fellow fighter described his strength as
“almost villainly.” Based in Tempe, Ariz.,
the 6-foot-1, 280-pounder began fighting in
Mike Barry (2)
2012 when there were nearly 30 knights in
the U.S. Now he estimates there are roughly
300 active fighters. Internationally, he said,
 The last word 41

there are probably about 3,000. Rohrich, a someone help me get this helmet off,” said swung his axe into Webb’s gut. The audi-
high-tech inventor and entrepreneur, travels Colorado Warden Paxton Smith, 25, who ence gasped. Ben Splitter of the Wardens
the country giving seminars on armored sustained a large cut above his eye. rushed headlong into Pool, jamming him
combat he dubs “Simonars.” Helmets, which can weigh 16 pounds, pro- up against the fence in a mighty collision of
vide critical protection. The trade-off is that metal on metal.
“I shouldn’t say this, but you should swing
hard enough at someone that it would kill many offer a narrow window on the world, Keegan Kropf of the Wyverns, who has a
them if they didn’t have armor,” he said. maybe an inch high. Fighters struggle to boxing and wrestling background, leveled
“This is essentially a baseball bat fight while see what’s coming at them. And they speak opponents with a great falchion, a beefy-
playing rugby, while wearing 80 pounds of darkly of “helmet horrors,” when they edged chopping sword. He advanced on
steel, while breathing through a snorkel.” hyperventilate and feel close to suffocation. Webb, who bent under the blows. A team-
Support staff circled fighters like pit crews, mate charged Kropf but was quickly beaten
He calls his fighting style “nerd rage,” to the ground. That left just Webb, facing
inspired, he says, by unresolved issues from swiftly removing helmets, repairing but- three opponents. Melees are stopped when
a rough childhood in rural North Dakota. tons and leather straps and hydrating
it’s three or more against one, so the mar-
Taking the occasional blunt axe to the face exhausted knights. A sweaty fighter flipped shal ended the fight, giving the win to the
helps. “You feel alive. You feel exhilarated. open his visor. “Water! I need water!” he
shouted. Webb, the towering Colorado other team.
It’s very therapeutic,” he said.
Warden, charged through the congested Fisher, a schoolteacher and cross-country
Whereas melees bring the crushing vio- tent. “Someone give me a weapon,” he coach, observed from the sidelines,
lence, duels are more heavy metal ballet demanded. “I need a weapon.” He grabbed impressed by the turnout. He could mus-
with occasional sparks flying from helmets an axe lying on a table. ter only five people to fight at the festival
struck by swords. Fighters have reported a last year. This time there were nearly 30.
faint burning smell. “Sword fighting,” said “We need five!” said Greg Fisher, the
Wardens captain, calling for the team to get “Interest has increased exponentially,” he
Aly Le, a dueler on the Colorado Wardens said. “We’d like to start a women’s team
team, “brings out primal things I feel a lot back on the field. Webb huddled with his
and maybe an armored-combat school.”
of people suppress. We all have problems... teammates. “Push them all the way to their
The point is to find a healthy outlet for rail, then push over to the other side,” he Many of the fighters—engineers, elec-
them, and that’s why I am here.” said. “Try to cause a lot of chaos, alright?” tricians, auditors, software developers,
supplement salesmen, military veter-
About five years ago, Le, 33, found ans, and machinists—bonded during
herself drawn to weapons training and the tournament. Many were tall and
martial arts; then she discovered sword stocky, reminiscent of earlier days as
fighting. She was so taken with medi- high school wrestlers, football play-
eval dueling that she sold her nail salon, ers, or boxers. One would bludgeon
vehicles, and house and moved in with another with a mace, help him up and
her partner to start Synergy Sword Arts, then compliment him on his technique.
a sword-fighting school in Colorado When a fighter accidentally delivered
Springs. “It took over my life,” Le said. an illegal hit, he swiftly apologized and
She routinely practices duels with male took a knee to indicate his mistake.
teammates but will find a women’s As the tournament ended, the fight-
team if she wants to melee. “Dueling ers changed up the traditional melee.
one on one, oh man, it’s a dance to the Rather than clock each other with axes
death,” said Le, who wasn’t fighting and swords, they belted one another
because medication for a recent injury with frying pans, golf clubs, and metal
had sapped her strength. “I tell people chairs—an homage to professional
Helmets offer protection, in exchange for a limited view.
to first learn your weapon—which is wrestling. It was all in good, clattering
you—and then learn your sword.”

T
WO TEAMS OF five rolled out and fun, showcasing the protective qualities of
The recent three-day tournament took faced each other. They wore brightly armor.
place at the Colorado Medieval Festival, colored outer garments called sur- Afterward, the knights relaxed in the tent,
which spread over a lush green field lined coats over their armor. Each had a different riding a wave of combat-fueled endorphins
with vendors selling everything from elf role: Strikers hack at opponents, checkers they say can last for hours. Webb said he
ears to leather-bound books of magic spells. run into them and knock them down, grap- tends to bottle up a week’s frustration, then
Beer and mead flowed freely. A smiling plers throw them to the ground. blow it off in melees. “We are all here beat-
mermaid flapped her tail and waved from ing the crap out of each other, and when
a square pool near a sign warning “Beware “Fight!” the marshal commanded. it’s over you are all friends,” he said. “Once
of Siren Song.” They advanced warily. Given his height and you get started, what really hooks you in is
The tranquility, along with the sounds of 400-pound weight in armor, Webb was a the community.”
the Stubby Shillelaghs Celtic folk band, was big but dangerous target. Two teammates
punctured by the roar and crash of battle in front tried to fend off attackers while he “Violence has a really weird way of bring-
delivered heavy blows. ing people together,” added Pool, who
rising from the roughly 30-by-55 fenced walked in carrying a hefty executioner’s
arena—called a list—on the edge of the But Webb was quickly mobbed and bat- sword, a favorite.
field. Between rounds of mostly five-on-five tered from every direction. Corpus Christi’s
and 10-on-10 melees, fighters staggered Blade Pool punched him in the face, then This story was originally published in the
into a tent for quick breaks. “I’m bleeding, kneed him. Webb punched back. Pool Los Angeles Times. Used with permission.
THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023
42 The Puzzle Page
Crossword No. 711: We’ll Soon Be Landing At... by Matt Gaffney The Week Contest
This week’s question: “Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, the
convicted fraudster who astronomically hiked the price of
a drug often used by HIV patients, is seeking applications
from “exceptional candidates” who want to date him.
What would you call a dating app for the world’s most
despised people?
Last week’s contest: A quickly retracted email release
from a California congressional candidate announced
he was suspending his campaign due to a “lack of joy.”
Create an honest campaign slogan for a candidate who
actually hates running for office and would prefer to lose.
THE WINNER: “Yes We Can, But I’d Rather Not”
Hunter Burgan, Los Angeles
SECOND PLACE: “Ask Not What I Can Do”
Larry Rifkin, Glastonbury, Conn.
THIRD PLACE: “If I Win, I’ll Demand a Recount”
Philip Barnett, Bronx, N.Y.
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, type “Despicable
suitors” in the subject line. Entries
are due by noon, Eastern Time,
Tuesday, Sept. 12. Winners will
appear on the Puzzle Page next
issue and at theweek.com/puzzles
on Friday, Sept. 15. In the case
ACROSS 48 Green org. 23 Commodores hit of
1 Build up over the 49 2020 Christopher 1979
of identical or similar entries, the
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grammatically 53 Continues is named for this
WThe winner gets a one-year
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soon be renamed after 64 Brewing coffee has 32 Italia’s continent each row, column,
this Englishwoman, one 33 Inland water route and outlined
who vacationed at 65 “___ Alice” 38 They spin on Rolls- square includes
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26 Nostalgia-evoking 2 French for “bad” 50 “That’s enough,” in
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airport in Tirana, 5 Skis between flags 53 Donate
Albania, is named for 6 Dutch artist Mondrian 54 Hamper emanation
this Nobel Peace Prize 7 Poker table money 55 “Agree”
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31 Deck foursome 9 Deli tool 59 “___ may I help you?”
Find the solutions to all The Week’s puzzles online: www.theweek.com/puzzle.
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THE WEEK September 8/September 15, 2023

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