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Editor’s letter It was an accident of history. On election night in 2016, Donald futilely try to fill his bottomless pit of narcissistic need. Trump’s victory came as a shock even to him. As results came in, It hasn’t been good for the brand. In exile at Mar-a-Lago, adviser Steve Bannon said, Trump was speechless and “horrified.” he faces the real possibility that disgusted Republicans might Don Jr. said his father looked like he’d “seen a ghost.” Like mil- convict him at a second impeachment trial. He may soon be hit lions of Americans, Melania was crying, and they were not tears with a barrage of state and federal criminal prosecutions for a of joy. Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, later said his myriad of potential crimes. His business empire lies in ruins, longtime boss had told him the presidential run would serve as with massive debts coming due. Former aides and allies, includ- “the greatest infomercial in political history”—a way of pro- ing his once loyal Vice President Mike Pence, now shun him. He moting his real-estate and reality-TV brand. Breaking news: can’t even tweet anymore—oh, cruel fate! In a perverse way, says Trump did not grow into the job. He tweeted, watched Fox, and Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio, “this is the end that he golfed, turning the presidency into just another show. He used would have scripted for himself.” Trump has always seen himself his platform and power to sow chaos, spout lies and disinforma- as “a lonely hero” in a ruthless, Darwinian world, surrounded tion, poison our politics, defy norms and laws, pander to despots, by enemies and backstabbing friends—besieged, betrayed, a alienate allies, downplay and actually worsen a raging pandemic victim fighting everyone to the bitter end. Donald Trump created that’s killed 400,000 Americans, encourage and embolden white his own dystopian reality, and we can now leave William Falk supremacists, incite an insurrection to overturn an election, and him to it. Editor-in-chief

NEWS 4 Main stories President Biden Editor-in-chief: William Falk inaugurated; Covid death Managing editors: Theunis Bates, toll tops 400,000 in U.S. Mark Gimein Assistant managing editor: Jay Wilkins 6 Controversy of the week Deputy editor/International: Susan Caskie How will history judge Deputy editor/Arts: Chris Mitchell Senior editors: Chris Erikson, Danny Funt, President Trump? Michael Jaccarino, Dale Obbie, Zach Schonbrun, Hallie Stiller 7 The U.S. at a glance Art director: Dan Josephs Prosecutors weigh Photo editor: Mark Rykoff charges against Trump; Copy editor: Jane A. Halsey Researchers: Joyce Chu, Alisa Partlan indictments over the Flint, Contributing editors: Ryan Devlin, Mich., water scandal Bruno Maddox Chief sales and marketing officer: 8 The world at a glance Adam Dub Migrant caravan stopped SVP, marketing: Lisa Boyars in Guatemala; Alexei Executive account director: Sara Schiano West Coast executive director: Tony Imperato Navalny jailed in Russia The 46th president taking the oath of office (p.4) Director, digital operations & advertising: Andy Price 10 People Manager, digital campaign operations: Jamie Dimon’s brush ARTS LEISURE Andrea Crino with death; Francis Ford 23 Books 28 Food & Drink North American CEO: Randy Siegel Coppola’s regrets about Chief operating & financial officer: The benefi ts of learning Flammekueche, the Kevin E. Morgan The Godfather Part III for learning’s sake Alsatian spin on pizza; three Director, financial reporting: delightful boxed wines Arielle Starkman 11 Briefi ng 24 Author of the week VP consumer marketing: Yanna Wilson- How psychedelic therapy Fischer Actor Gabriel Byrne 29 Consumer Consumer marketing director: could transform the reckons with his Ford’s electric Mustang; Leslie Guarnieri treatment of depression, childhood sexual abuse fi ve of the best work-from- Senior digital marketing director: addiction, and trauma Mathieu Muzzy home desk chairs Manufacturing manager, North America: 25 Music & Stage 12 Best U.S. columns Lori Crook Why sea shanties HR manager: Joy Hart Executing mentally ill have taken over BUSINESS Operations manager: Cassandra Mondonedo prisoners; why aren’t we TikTok Chairman: Jack Griffin wearing better masks? 32 News at a glance Dennis Group CEO: James Tye 26 Film & Home Netfl ix stock surges on Group CRO: Julian Lloyd-Evans 15 Best international subscriber growth; China’s U.K. founding editor: Jolyon Connell columns Media economic boom Company founder: Felix Dennis The debate over Israel Carey Mulligan and apartheid takes revenge 33 Making money x in Promising u How businesses are d e

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THE WEEK January 29, 2021 4 NEWS The main stories... Asking for unity, Biden unveils ambitious agenda What happened With most Americans craving “an Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was sworn end to the furious rancor of recent in as America’s 46th president this years,” the measured, bridge- week, pledging to bring civility and building Biden “could be the man for unity to a nation reeling from a deadly this moment,” said The Wall Street pandemic and deeply divided after Journal. But his success will depend four tumultuous years under Donald on resisting “the divisive progressive Trump. “This is our historic mo- domination sought by his party’s ment of crisis and challenge,” he said. left.” Buoyed by “the Democratic “Unity is the path forward.” Kamala media complex and Silicon Valley,” Harris was sworn in as vice president, the party’s left wing aims to “use the the first woman and person of color to federal government as a battering hold that position. After an insurrec- ram to drive economic and cultural tion that saw pro-Trump rioters storm ‘transformation.” To succeed in heal- the U.S. Capitol exactly two weeks ing divisions, Biden must tune them earlier, the nation’s seat of power was Undoing Trump: Biden signs executive orders on his first day. out and not use “the rhetoric of transformed into a veritable fortress, crisis” to pursue “radical change.” ringed by fences and patrolled by 25,000 National Guard members and hundreds of active-duty troops trained to handle chemical, What the columnists said biological, and explosive weapons. In place of a crowd, a sea of Biden’s pandemic stimulus plan is downright “Rooseveltian,” said flags representing the more than 400,000 Americans killed in the Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. Like FDR, he’s fighting pandemic filled the National Mall, as Biden spoke of a need to end an economic crisis by trying “to address long-neglected problems” our “uncivil war” and “restore the soul” of America. “We can do of inequality. Poverty-fighting measures include food assistance, this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts,” he said. measures to prevent homelessness, and an expansion of the child “Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.” tax credit that could cut child poverty by nearly half. In a nation that is struggling with hunger, disease, and broken communities, Facing challenges greater than any new president since Franklin such bold action is “thrilling to see.” Roosevelt in 1933, Biden, 78, immediately began work on an ag- gressive agenda to combat the pandemic and reverse a long list of The stimulus bill is “a Trojan horse for a sweeping liberal agenda,” Trump policies. He planned to sign 17 executive orders, proclama- said Brad Polumbo in WashingtonExaminer.com. Supposedly tions, and memorandums, whose aims included rejoining the Paris focused on pandemic relief, it’s larded with “blatant partisan climate agreement, halting border wall construction, and rescind- priorities” like bailouts for “badly managed blue states” and a $15 ing rollbacks to vehicle emissions standards. He promised within minimum wage that would push small businesses “past the brink” days to send an immigration reform package to Congress that and erase up to 3.7 million jobs. This is a “massive expansion of would ease the pathway to citizenship the welfare state,” not pandemic relief, for millions. And he vowed to push and Republicans “shouldn’t feel guilty” for passage of his $1.9 trillion pan- What next? about voting against it. demic stimulus plan, whose provisions The first major legislative initiative Biden is send- include federal unemployment supple- ing to Congress will address “the long-elusive This is no time for moderation, said ments, a round of household stimulus goal of immigration reform,” said Cindy Carcamo Robert Reich in The Guardian. Talk of checks, state and local aid, rent assis- in the Los Angeles Times. Its centerpiece is “a governing from the “center” is meaning- tance, and child-care subsidies. pathway to citizenship” for the nation’s estimated less at a time when the Republican Party 11 million illegal immigrants that would offer resides in “a counterfactual wonderland What the editorials said legal permanent resident status after five years of lies and conspiracies.” Instead, Biden Biden takes office at “an extraordi- and citizenship three years after that. It would must chart a bold course: “advancing narily tense and uncertain moment in also offer an expedited route to citizenship for the needs of average people over the American history,” said the C hicago some, including frontline essential workers and plutocrats and oligarchs” and embracing Tribune. He faces a rampaging the “Dreamers” whose migrant parents brought both “racial justice” and “the struggle of pandemic that’s filling hospitals and them to the U.S. as children. The bill will “restore blue-collar workers whose fortunes have cemeteries, a battered economy, and humanity to our immigration system,” said chief been declining for decades.” deep racial and political divisions. But of staff Ron Klain. But it will face strong pushback he brings with him reason for opti- from “immigration hard-liners” in the GOP. Biden Biden could be a transformative presi- mism. A man of “voluminous experi- is also poised to take unprecedented action on dent, said Seth Cotlar in USA Today, ence,” he’s assembled a seasoned team climate change, said Lisa Friedman in The New but first he must overcome Americans’ and laid out thoughtful and detailed York Times, with the help of “the largest team “anti-government cynicism.” The New economic and pandemic plans. Instinc- of climate-change experts ever assembled in Deal belief in “the federal government as tively empathetic, Biden is a “sober the White House.” A primary goal will be “re- a positive force” in Americans’ lives hit a realist” who “promises to neutralize establishing scientific integrity in federal decision brick wall in the Reagan years. But after some of the bitter animosity that has making” and quantifying the high costs carbon suffering through a pandemic worsened poisoned our politics” during the dioxide emissions impose on society, to make by federal inaction and ineptitude, the s regulation “more economically appealing.” public may be ready for “a more proac- r Trump years. “Every American should e t u e hope for his success.” tive federal government.” R Illustration by Howard McWilliam. THE WEEK January 29, 2021 Cover photos from AP, Getty, AP ... and how they were covered NEWS 5 A new strategy to fight the pandemic

What happened More bureaucracy isn’t the answer, said With more than 400,000 Americans dead NationalReview.com. The U.S. has from the coronavirus and the national distributed more than double the number vaccine rollout sputtering, President Biden of doses administered, and vials are sit- was racing this week to implement his new ting in freezers “not for lack of funding, strategy to rein in the pandemic. Following but thanks to burdensome rules” about his inauguration, Biden signed a flurry of who is eligible and which doctors can executive actions that, among other things, administer shots. Some states are debating will require masks to be worn on federal whether to give priority to at-risk em- property and reverse the Trump adminis- ployees, such as farm laborers and transit tration’s effort to pull the U.S. out of the workers, but doing so would only create World Health Organization. Calling the more “bureaucratic hurdles.” The best 15.7 million Covid vaccines administered thing governors and the Biden administra- to date in the U.S. “a dismal failure,” Biden A health-care worker gets inoculated in Los Angeles. tion can do is get out of the way. pledged to deliver 100 million doses in his first 100 days. As part of his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief proposal to What the columnists said address Covid and the ailing economy, the president has asked Con- The new administration should be careful about blaming Trump gress to allocate $20 billion for a national vaccination program that for all “the assorted failures” of the federal government’s pandemic would establish mass vaccination centers in cities and mobile clinics response, said Yuval Levin, also in NationalReview.com. Some issues in rural areas, and $50 billion to scale up diagnostic testing. are deeply rooted, like the CDC making one “mind-boggling mistake after another,” from giving inconsistent advice about masks to failing New White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Biden is “inherit- to deploy effective testing early in the crisis. Still, Biden seems to ing a huge mess” when it comes to vaccine distribution. Biden’s recognize the constraints he’ll face based on his goal of 100 million team was stunned by the Trump administration’s revelation last shots by April 30—a target the U.S. is already on pace to hit. week that despite announcing that it would meet surging demand by releasing all doses being held in reserve, it had no such vac- “If we keep doing what we’re doing now to prevent infections,” cine stockpile. Shortages of shots are now being reported across said Julia Belluz in Vox.com, “we’re screwed.” The new U.K. vari- the U.S.: New York City canceled tens of thousands of inocula- ant, expected to be the dominant strain in the U.S. by March, might tions this week because of a lack of supplies. While a post-holiday cause sick people to emit “particles laden with even more virus into spike in cases appears to be leveling off—new cases in the U.S. the air.” Faced with a higher chance of infection, Americans should fell 11 percent this week to about 201,000 a day—health officials recalculate the risk of indoor activities, possibly even avoiding the warned that the rapid spread of a more contagious variant from supermarket and switching to curbside grocery pickup or delivery. the U.K. could again cause numbers to skyrocket. “Things will get worse before they get better,” said Biden. Among Biden’s biggest challenges in the coming months will be per- suading enough Americans to roll up their sleeves and get a Covid What the editorials said shot, said Frank Luntz and Brian Castrucci in RealClear Politics “Biden’s good ideas must be executed with the urgency of a fire bri- .com. In a recent poll, 32 percent of Republicans ages 18 to 49 said gade responding to a house in flames,” said The Washington Post. they will “definitely not get vaccinated.” In Ohio, up to 60 per- The Trump administration sensibly bought hundreds of millions cent of nursing-home workers offered a vaccine have refused to be of doses of vaccine but then left the task of administering them to inoculated. Lecturing these people about how getting a vaccine is “overstretched and underfunded” states and localities. Biden’s plan “the right thing to do” simply won’t work. Instead, our leaders need would fix this massive error; the only question is whether Congress to emphasize that these shots are the fastest road to “a return to nor- can act fast enough “to brake the out-of-control pandemic.” mal,” something Americans of all stripes are desperate to achieve.

It wasn’t all bad QLast week Hong Kong watched breathlessly as Lai Chi- QAfter canceling a pizza party at wai scaled a skyscraper. The 37-year-old champion rock the beginning of the pandemic, QChef Valerie Musser needed a climber became paralyzed from the waist down after a Ben Berman had to decide what quarantine project after her catering car accident nine years ago. Since then, he has climbed to do with the ingredients. “I business shut down last year. She by attaching his wheelchair to a pulley system and using didn’t think it was a good idea to was working on a cookbook, and one his upper-body strength to eat 16 pizzas all by myself,” said day she involved her bearded dragon, haul himself upward. On his the University of Pennsylvania Lenny. “He actually loves wearing hats 10-hour ascent, Lai reached a grad student. So he put the pies and posing for photos,” she says, so height of 820 feet before dan- in a box attached to a string and she found him a tiny chef’s hat and gerous winds forced him to lowered them from his second- made miniature versions of recipes, stop. “Some people think that story window to friends on the posting photos on Instagram. The we are always weak, [that] we street below. Soon, Berman positive response was overwhelming. need people’s pity,” he said. began regularly dropping pizzas One hundred and thirty-four pages “It doesn’t have to be like to strangers, asking only that later, lizard and human published their that. If a disabled person can they donate to a good cause in book, in which Chef Lenny serves up shine, they can at the same return. He’s now raised more than ) 2

( $32,000 for charity, and plans to dishes such as chicken pot pie, biscuits time bring about opportunity, s r e t and gravy, and blueberry muffins. Ascending by force of will hope, bring about light.” continue for years to come. u e R

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 6 NEWS Controversy of the week Trump: The worst president ever?

“We will be back in some form. Have a good life.” Through denialism and sheer incompetence, he so With that “melancholy farewell,” delivered to a horribly mismanaged the pandemic response that modest group of supporters, President Donald J. the U.S. has by far the most cases and deaths in Trump this week turned and boarded Air Force the world. And when he lost in November, Trump One for the final time, said Philip Rucker in The “mounted the first effort by a defeated incumbent” Washington Post. A president once “omnipresent to overturn a fair election, inciting an assault in American life” spent the last week of his single on Congress that nearly got his vice president term “effectively in hiding,” reportedly “brooding and many legislators killed. Trump appealed to over imagined injustices” and insistently repeat- America’s “ugliest impulses,” said Paul Waldman ing the Big Lie that November’s presidential elec- in WashingtonPost.com. He leaves the country tion was “stolen” from him. With his Twitter filled with “misery and despair,” and with “our feed permanently suspended, Trump’s petulance divisions seeming more intractable than ever.” found an outlet in a series of petty snubs to the ‘We will be back in some form.’ incoming president: Trump not only skipped Joe Before his “disastrous end,” Trump did have Biden’s inauguration, he refused to even use his name in a scripted “a remarkable set of accomplishments,” said Byron York in farewell address. Fittingly, he issued a final raft of 143 presidential WashingtonExaminer.com. His judicial appointments put a conser- pardons to fraudsters, corrupt politicians, and cronies such as Steve vative stamp on federal courts that will last for decades. He curbed Bannon, the architect of Trump’s unlikely rise to power. Trump’s illegal immigration. With tax cuts and de-regulation, he boosted the graceless departure was like that of a “failed coup leader in a U.S. economy. Trump’s “lasting legacy,” though, will be the politi- banana republic who has negotiated his exile but leaves at the point cal mobilization of America’s tens of millions of “forgotten men of a bayonet,” said Ed Kilgore in NYMag.com. Facing a second and women,” said David Bahnsen in NationalReview.com. The impeachment trial, this one for inciting an insurrection, the 45th conservative movement needs to find leaders who can fight for the president flew out over a national capital bristling with barricades working class’s interests with Trump’s “energy, force, and boldness, and 25,000 National Guard troops protecting his successor. yet without the self-defeating traits of ego and childishness.” Clearly, Trump was “the worst president in the 232-year history If the GOP is to have a future, said Rick Wilson in TheDailyBeast of the United States,” said historian Tim Naftali in TheAtlantic .com, it first needs a reckoning for those who “empowered, .com. He was worse than Richard Nixon, worse even than Warren enabled, and normalized” that grotesque man for four wretched Harding, James Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson. Before he was years. At the end, many Republicans joined Trump in dragging the elected, Trump welcomed and amplified a Russian disinforma- nation “to the edge of a conspiracy-driven insurrection” that would tion plot against his opponent. In office, he shamelessly abused have ended our democracy. Unless Republicans tell the truth about his power to enrich himself and to ensure his re-election; his ham- who Trump was and what he did, my old party will either be taken fisted extortion of Ukraine’s president led to his first impeachment. over by QAnon lunatics or “go the way of the Whigs.”

Good week for: Only in America In other news Pandemic relief, after a Tennessee law firm announced it would QA thief who stole an Ore- Biden names picks to celebrate Valentine’s Day by offering a free divorce to whoever head finance agencies gon woman’s SUV with her submits the best rationale. “After we’ve endured the coronavirus 4-year-old child inside drove pandemic,” explained paralegal Timothy Sexton, “some people President Joe Biden tapped back to criticize her parenting. may have reached their breaking point.” two veteran financial regula- The unnamed woman left tors to lead the Securities and the vehicle idling outside a Speaking truth to father, after James Murdoch, son of Fox Exchange Commission and store while she ran in to buy News owner Rupert Murdoch, said he hoped the Capitol insurrec- Consumer Financial Protec- milk. The suspect stole it and tion would persuade certain “media property owners” to “repu- tion Bureau this week. Gary drove off, but briefly returned diate the toxic politics they have promoted.” Gensler, his pick to run the to demand the woman Specimens, with the discovery by British paleontologists of the SEC, served as head of the remove her child. Police said first fully preserved dinosaur anus. “It does look a bit like the Commodity Futures Trading “he actually lectured the back opening on a crocodile,” said researcher Jakob Vinther, but Commission from 2009 to mother for leaving the child “shaped in its perfect, unique way.” 2014. The ex– Goldman Sachs in the car and threatened to investment banker, 63, played call the police.” Bad week for: a major role in the Obama QAs the Covid-19 death Cancel culture, after the Michigan Republican Party sought to administration’s response to the 2008 banking crisis toll continues to mount, Los replace Republican election board official Aaron Van Langevelde, Angeles air-quality regula- and its crackdown on banks’ who cast the deciding vote to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the manipulation of Libor, a crucial tors have lifted a cap on the state. “My conscience is clear,” said Van Langevelde. number of daily cremations. interest rate benchmark. Biden The cap is in place to limit Goop, with a British woman’s claim that one of Gwyneth Paltrow’s also chose Rohit Chopra, 38, the toxic fumes produced by famous “vagina-scented candles” exploded in her living room. to head the CFPB. Chopra has burning the mercury fillings There were “bits flying everywhere,” said Jody Thompson, 50. “We served on the Federal Trade in corpses’ teeth. But officials eventually got it under control and threw it out the front door.” Commission for the past three years. He helped launch the deemed the current backlog The Republican Party, after The Wall Street Journal reported of some 2,700 dead bodies CFPB in 2011 and worked as its that the embittered former President Trump is discussing the possi- deputy director and “student an even greater “threat to bility of starting a new political party for his loyal followers, which public health.” loan ombudsman.” P

he may call “the Patriot Party.” A

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 The U.S. at a glance ... NEWS 7

Kenosha, Wis. Lansing, Mich. New York City Rittenhouse restrictions: Ex-governor charged: Nine former state Police account- The Kenosha County and local officials, including former ability: New York District Attorney’s Gov. Rick Snyder, were slapped with a State Attorney Office sought to alter raft of state criminal charges last week General Letitia Kyle Rittenhouse’s related to their handling of the Flint James sued New bond agreement last water crisis. Snyder, 62, faces two counts York City’s police week, after he alleg- of willful neglect of duty. Michigan department last edly flashed a white Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud said week over its Brooklyn Bridge standoff Rittenhouse power symbol and was Snyder should have declared a state of heavy-handed “loudly serenaded” by emergency in Flint earlier, and exercised tactics during last summer’s Black Lives a group of men singing the Proud Boys’ greater oversight afterward. A lawyer for Matter protests. James’ investigation cited anthem at a bar. Prosecutors want to Snyder called the charges “bogus.” Nick instances in which cops beat protesters restrict Rittenhouse, 18, from fraternizing Lyon, the former state health department with batons, rammed them with bicycles, with white supremacists, drinking alcohol director, faces nine counts of involuntary and arrested people indiscriminately, at bars and restaurants—and displaying manslaughter for allegedly dragging his including legal observers and medics. In white power symbols. According to a heels on advising Flint’s populace of a all, cops arrested 2,000-plus protesters. court motion, he wore a “Free as F---” possible Legionella outbreak connected to James said officials did not supervise or T-shirt during a 90-minute visit he made the city’s 2014 switch from Detroit drink- stop officers who engaged in misconduct. to Pudgy’s Pub in nearby Mount Pleasant ing water to the Flint River. Dr. Mona She asked the court to appoint a monitor with his mother. During the visit, which Hanna-Attisha, a Flint pediatrician who to ensure that changes are implemented. was caught on surveillance cameras, sounded the alarm over lead in Flint’s Despite the lawsuit, city police arrested at Rittenhouse flashed the “OK” sign— water early on, called the charges “a least 28 activists who shut down traffic which has been linked to white salve” but not “the end of the story.” on the Brooklyn Bridge and then supremacist groups. Rittenhouse marched on City Hall on Martin was freed on $2 million bond Luther King Jr.’s birthday. after fatally shooting two peo- NYPD Commissioner Dermot ple and wounding a third dur- Shea defended cops’ response to ing the protests that rocked the City Hall protest. “This is our Kenosha after the Aug. 23 city,” he said, accusing marchers of shooting of African-American seeking to “burn our city down.” resident Jacob Blake in front of his children. Alexandria, Va. Cease and desist: Lawyers for Atlanta and New York Dominion Voting Systems accused Trump investigations: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell of a “vast Prosecutors in Georgia and concerted misinformation campaign appeared to be inch- to slander” the company and demanded ing closer to opening a that he preserve communications with criminal investigation members of former President Trump’s of former President Washington, D.C. campaign as a prelude to litigation. In Trump last week, Revisionist history: An education commis- a letter sent this week, Dominion said while a New York Vance sion formed by the Trump administration that Lindell, a frequent guest on Fox City prosecutor expanded an inquiry after last summer’s Black Lives Matter News, repeatedly peddled a conspiracy into his finances. Sources close to Fulton protests issued a report this week equat- theory that it rigged the election against County District Attorney Fani Willis ing progressive politics with fascism and Trump, without “a scintilla of credible told The New York Times that Willis accusing American educators of brain- evidence.” Two weeks ago, Dominion, is considering hiring an outside counsel washing kids. The “1776 Report” pre- which sells voting machines and software, to probe a call Trump made to Georgia pared by the 18-member commission— sued former Trump attorney Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. with no professional historians—called Sidney Powell for $1.3 billion for During the call, Trump told Raffensperger for “patriotic education,” blasting educa- groundlessly maintaining that the to “find 11,780 votes” and suggested tors for highlighting the nation’s “sins.” Canadian company was funded he might face prosecution if he didn’t. The commission decried the notion that by Venezuelan communists. Separately, Manhattan District Attorney George Washington and Thomas Jefferson Last week, Lindell met Cyrus Vance Jr. subpoenaed a slew of were hypocrites for owning slaves, saying briefly with Trump and documents related to Trump’s 213-acre that slavery “has been more the rule than was photographed carrying Seven Springs estate north of New York the exception throughout human history.” notes into the Oval Office City. Trump pegged the estate’s value at The report, which President Biden plans that referenced “election $291 million in 2012 on official docu- to rescind, also claimed that the civil rights issues” and “martial law ments that authorities say were later sent movement “almost immediately turned if necessary.” Lindell )

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THE WEEK January 29, 2021 8 NEWS The world at a glance ...

Edmonton, Alberta Berlin Fight for Keystone: The Canadian province of Alberta this week Merkel’s replacement? Germany’s ruling Christian threatened to take legal action if the Biden administration cancels a Democratic Union has picked a new party leader, crucial permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, as it has pledged to do. tapping Armin Laschet—the centrist choice of The province has sunk some $800 million into building the 1,200- Chancellor Angela Merkel—over Friedrich mile pipeline, which would carry up to 830,000 barrels of crude a Merz, a candidate further to the right. It’s day from Alberta’s tar sands to Nebraska, where it would join with unclear whether Laschet, the premier of existing pipelines linked to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. The North Rhine– Westphalia, will win the chan- Laschet project has sparked fierce opposition from environmentalists and cellorship in the September elections, because polls show that many U.S. indigenous rights groups. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said Germans who voted CDU in recent years support Merkel more his administration believes there is a “very solid” legal basis to seek than her party. Merkel took office in 2005 and said two years ago damages under international free trade agreements if the pipeline that she wouldn’t seek a fifth term as chancellor. The CDU tried to is killed. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his govern- pick a new Merkel in 2018, selecting Annegret Kramp- Karrenbauer ment is “making sure that Canada’s views are heard and considered as party leader. But she failed to unite the CDU’s center and right by the incoming [U.S.] administration at the highest levels.” wings and announced her resignation in February. Chiquimula, Guatemala Migrants turned back: Guatemalan secu- rity forces have stopped a 9,000-strong group of migrants who marched from Honduras to the Guatemalan border in the hope of continuing north to the U.S. Had the caravan made it to Mexico, it would have become an early challenge for President Biden, who is eager to reverse the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies. The Hondurans were fleeing a homeland that was devastated by twin hurricanes last fall, Heading north and they were buoyed by hopes that a new U.S. president would accept them. But Guatemalan security officials broke up the crowd, sending most people back home on buses, and only a few small groups managed to continue toward Mexico.

Paris Incest scandal: The publication of sexual abuse allegations against a top French political pundit has led thousands of people to take to social media and share testimonies of abuse by relatives alongside the hashtag #MeTooInceste. In a new book, lawyer and academic Camille Kouchner recounts how her stepfather, Olivier Duhamel, abused her twin brother for years starting at age 14; other family members have supported the accusation. Duhamel immediately resigned as head of the National Foundation of Political Sciences, which oversees the prestigious Sciences Po university, and called the allegations “personal attacks.” In a matter of days, tens of thousands of French people posted their own tales of abuse by family members. “Victims’ voices are getting louder,” said Patrick Loiseleur, vice president of the French NGO Facing Incest.

São Paulo Vaccinations begin: With its hospitals running out of oxygen and new strains of the coronavirus ripping across the country, Brazil Kampala, Uganda this week slowly began vaccinating its citizens against Covid-19. Strongman claims win: Ugandan Brazil failed to place orders early with major vaccine makers, President Yoweri Museveni, 76, because President Jair Bolsonaro has consistently downplayed the declared last week that he had won pandemic and has ignored his scientific advisers. The government a sixth term in office with 59 percent of now has only 6 million doses on hand for a nation of 213 million the vote, shrugging off widespread allegations people. Bolsonaro’s political rival, São Paulo state governor João of election rigging. Opposition candidate Bobi Doria, has procured several million Wine—a popular singer turned lawmaker— Cheering Museveni doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine— was placed under house arrest ahead of the vote, and the internet which is about 50 percent effective— was shut down across most of the country. The U.S. has called and those are now being distributed. for an investigation into the election. Wine, 38, said he intends to Two new variants of the coronavirus challenge the results of the vote in court, and criticized interna-

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THE WEEK January 29, 2021 The world at a glance ... NEWS 9

Moscow Moscow Navalny defiant: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned Epiphany dip: Russian President to Moscow this week from Germany—where he had been recuper- Vladimir Putin braved minus 4 ating after being poisoned last summer by suspected degree temperatures this week to Kremlin agents—and was arrested at the airport, submerge himself in icy water three as he had expected. Navalny remained defiant in times for the Russian Orthodox the face of his 30-day prison sentence for violating Christian tradition of the Epiphany parole. On his first full day in jail, his anti- corruption dip. In a video released by the group released a video accusing President Vladimir Kremlin, the 68-year-old takes off a Putin of building himself a massive $1.3 billion long sheepskin coat to reveal swim Putin takes the plunge. palace. The video features drone footage of Putin’s trunks, then descends into a cross-shaped pool ornamented with a Black Sea estate, which boasts a wine cave and an crucifixion statue carved from ice. Epiphany Day commemorates ice rink. “There are impregnable fences, its own the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, and Putin crossed him- port, its own security, a church, its own permit self before each plunge. Russian social media quickly lit up with system, a no-fly zone, and even its own border commentary on Putin’s blue swim trunks, noting their similarity checkpoint,” Navalny explains in the video. “It is to opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s blue boxer shorts, which Detained absolutely a separate state within Russia.” Kremlin operatives dosed with poison in last summer’s failed hit. Tokyo Will Olympics go on? Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga insisted this week that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, postponed last year because of the coronavirus, would begin in July as scheduled—even though Covid cases are spiking in his country. Japan is in the midst of its third coronavirus wave, with a record 7,883 new infections being recorded on Jan. 8. We will “build watertight anti-infection measures and hold an event that can bring hope and courage to the world,” Suga said. The latest polls show that more than 80 percent of Japanese citizens think the Olympics should be post- poned. “I would be making plans for a can- cellation,” said Keith Mills, chief executive of the London 2012 Olympics. Because of the delay, the official cost of the Tokyo Games Games unlikely in 2021 has climbed 22 percent to $15.4 billion.

Urumqi, China Uighur genocide: The U.S. has officially determined that China is committing genocide against Uighur Muslims in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. On his last full day in office, outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used the word “genocide” in describing “the systematic attempt to destroy Uighurs by the Chinese party-state.” Antony Blinken, President Biden’s nominee to be secretary of state, said in his Senate confirmation hearing that he agreed with the genocide determination. Up to 2 million Uighurs have been impris- oned in re-education camps, where they are subjected to food and sleep deprivation while undergoing political indoctrination meant to Mekele, Ethiopia erase their religious and cultural identity. Uighur women have been Starvation sets in: Ethiopians in the forcibly sterilized. At the same time, China has encouraged Han war-ravaged northern region of Tigray are Chinese to settle in Xinjiang to dilute the Uighur population. dying from lack of access to health care, food, and fresh water. The federal govern- Haridwar, India ment launched an offensive on Tigray in Massive religious festival: Kumbh Mela, the Hindu religious festival November, accusing the local ruling party of that draws tens of millions of pilgrims to four Indian riverbank sites insurrection. Thousands of people died about every 12 years, has begun amid fears it could be a Covid in the fighting, and some 50,000 fled superspreader event. Authorities had intended the three-month affair to Sudan; the roughly 4.5 million to start later this year, in mid-February instead of mid- January, but who remain in Tigray are in desperate Abiy Ahmed some 700,000 people showed up last week anyway, many of them need of humanitarian aid. Children wading into the Ganges River for a ritual are dying from diarrhea after drinking from rivers, and with bath. At the last Kumbh Mela, 55 mil- almost no health care available, people are dying from pneumonia lion people visited the four sites. Even ) 2 (

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THE WEEK January 29, 2021 10 NEWS People

Coppola’s obsession with Part III Francis Ford Coppola still has regrets about The Godfather Part III, said Bilge Ebiri in New York magazine. After pulling off a rarity in filmmaking—directing a sequel considered as good as the beloved Godfather original— Coppola sought to turn the saga into a trilogy in 1990 with what was received as a stain on the franchise. “At that point, I had been through a bankruptcy,” Coppola, now 81, says. “Frankly, I had a family to support” and needed the money. When Winona Ryder backed out of playing Mary Corleone, daughter of Al Pacino’s Michael, in Part III, Coppola turned to his daughter Sofia, who at the time had minimal acting experience. (She later became an acclaimed director and screenwriter.) Critics savaged her performance and Coppola’s casting decision. “Of course, Sofia went on to have a wonderful career,” Coppola says, “but it must have hurt her ter- ribly to be told, ‘You ruined your father’s picture.’ I felt I did this to her.” In the film, an assassin out to hit the Don accidentally kills Mary. “[Critics] came after Sofia so much that it was just like the story,” Coppola says. “The bullets that killed the daughter were really meant for the father.” Perhaps to seek penance, Coppola last month released a substantially recut version of Part III, in which Michael Corleone doesn’t die, but must continue suffering for his sins. “He has to pay for them,” says Coppola, “and he does.” Why Robin Williams’ widow is on a mission Dimon’s brush with death Susan Schneider Williams wants people to know why her late hus- Jamie Dimon came very close to death last year, said David band, Robin Williams, committed suicide, said Hadley Freeman Benoit in The Wall Street Journal. On March 5, the CEO of in The Guardian (U.K.). When Williams killed himself in 2014 JPMorgan Chase—a bank that serves nearly half of U.S. at age 63, media reports speculated that the comic and actor was households—woke up at 4 a.m. at his Manhattan home, jolted depressed over his fading career or had succumbed to his alcohol by fear of what the emerging pandemic would do to the bank, addiction. His autopsy, however, revealed that he had suffered from the stock market, and the economy. He felt an intense pain in his severe Lewy body dementia, a rare form of dementia that brings chest, as if something were tearing. “I thought I heard it,” Dimon, on anxiety, memory loss, paranoia, and hallucinations. “The fact 64, says. With his right arm aching and the vision in his right eye clouding, Dimon took a cab to the hospital and learned that the that something had infiltrated every part of my husband’s brain part of the aorta closest to his heart had burst. While surgeons made perfect sense,” Schneider Williams says. She had witnessed spent seven hours rebuilding the artery, JPMorgan’s board of him struggling with terrible insomnia, delusions, and trembling; on directors implemented their “Jamie got hit by a bus” plan—an a movie set, he confided in the director, “I’m not me anymore.” He emergency succession protocol. “I knew I might not make it,” agreed to go to a neurocognitive testing facility, but a week before Dimon says. But after a week, Dimon was able to go home with a the visit Williams killed himself. “I think he thought, ‘I’m going to zipper-like scar down his chest. Doctors don’t know why his aorta get locked up and never come out,’” his widow says. Lewy body burst, and Dimon wonders if he had Covid-19 in late February, dementia was diagnosed only posthumously. People who admired when he had a bad fever. For now, Dimon is too focused on the him “deserve to know the truth,” Schneider Williams says. She still economic recovery to think about retiring. “We have to get out of feels his joyful presence “when I need him. I miss him.” Covid before anything else,” he says.

a recent ex-girlfriend, Courtney Vucekovich, Trump and Kushner denied there was a said Hammer “said to me he wants to break bathroom ban, and the Secret Service said it Q Actor Armie Hammer dropped out my rib and barbecue and eat it.” Hammer voluntarily made other arrangements so as of an upcoming movie last week previously said in interviews that he’s a to have “minimum impact.” “dominant lover” who likes “grabbing after an anonymous Instagram user Q Minnesota Timberwolves all-star Karl- claimed Hammer confided in her women by the neck and hair.” Anthony Towns tested positive for Covid-19 about his sexual fantasies of rape Q Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump refused last week, after the NBA big man lost his and cannibalism. Hammer’s unveri- to let Secret Service agents use any of the mother and six other family members to fied text messages, purportedly sent six bathrooms in their Washington, D.C., the disease last year. “I have received yet from 2016 to 2020, include Hammer home, The Washington Post reported another awful call,” Towns, 25, said. “I pray saying he wanted to “bite pieces off last week, forcing agents to rent a nearby every day that this nightmare of a virus will of” the recipient and cut off her toes. apartment in part for its toilet. After agents subside, and I beg everyone to continue to Another text reads, “I am 100% can- initially used a porta-potty and a bathroom take it seriously.” Towns’ mother, Jacqueline nibal. I want to eat you.... That’s scary at Barack Obama’s nearby home, the agency Cruz, a nurse, died April 13 after being put to admit.” The Call Me by Your Name decided to rent a basement studio apart- in a medically induced coma. “I’ve seen a actor, 34, said he was “not responding” ment in President Trump’s daughter and lot of coffins in the last seven-eight months,”

to the claims but called them “vicious son-in-law’s ritzy neighborhood for $3,000 Towns recently said. Addressing his niece ) 2 (

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THE WEEK January 29, 2021 Briefing NEWS 11 Psychedelics as therapy Research shows that hallucinogens can be highly effective treatments for anxiety, depression, addiction, and trauma.

Aren’t psychedelic drugs illegal? Why does the ego disappear? Under federal and most states’ laws, they Experiments have shown that psyche- are, but a push to legalize or decrimi- delics diminish blood flow and oxygen nalize the drugs is gaining momentum. consumption in an area of the brain On Election Day, Oregon voters made called the default mode network, or their state the first to legalize the active DMN. The DMN, which scientists have ingredient in “magic mushrooms”— nicknamed the “me network,” acts as psilocybin—for mental health therapy a gatekeeper for consciousness, filtering in a controlled setting with a thera- out information so that the brain can pist. Washington, D.C., voters passed operate more efficiently. As the DMN Initiative 81, making the city at least the gets turned off, people experience a sud- fifth to decriminalize magic mushrooms. den opening of the gates of perception, Similar legislation has been proposed ideas, and visions, with vivid hallucina- in California, Vermont, and Iowa. Last Harvesting psilocybin mushrooms in Colorado tions that give participants new insights summer, Canada issued four terminally into themselves and into life itself. ill patients exemptions to take psilocybin for end-of-life anxiety and depression. British Columbia resident Mona Strelaeff, 67, got What are the benefits? an exemption for treatment for trauma, addiction, depression, and Researchers say they can be profound and wide-r anging. One anxiety. “All the unresolved trauma,” Strelaeff said, “it came back 2014 Johns Hopkins study found that 80 percent of smokers who and I was beyond terrified, shaking uncontrollably, and crying.” underwent psilocybin- assisted therapy reported that they remained She said that psilocybin therapy helped her conquer “those tough smoke-free six months afterward. “The universe was so great, and memories” and today she “ain’t afraid of jack (s---).” there were so many things you could do and see in it that killing yourself seemed like a dumb idea,” one smoker told Pollan. A How does psychedelic therapy work? 2016 study reported that 83 percent of cancer patients with depres- Participants usually take psilocybin or LSD in a relaxing setting, sion and anxiety enjoyed profound increases in life satisfaction or lying down with blindfolds and headphones on, listening to music. well-being from a single psilocybin dose. About two-thirds of study Trained supervisors encourage them to “go inward and to kind of participants ranked the therapy among the “top five spiritually sig- experience whatever is going to come up,” said Alan Davis, who nificant” events in their lives. One professed atheist recalled feeling studies psychedelics at Johns Hopkins University. Bad psilocybin “bathed in God’s love.” Fear of death often disappears. trips are rare—Johns Hopkins and NYU researchers conducted 500 sessions without observing any “serious adverse effects”—but Why are these drugs illegal? they can occur. Advocates say careful During the 1950s, some psychologists dose control, supervision, and controlled Studying MDMA and DMT thought psychedelics could revolution- settings are very important. Psilocybin Other psychedelics besides LSD and psilocybin ize mental health treatment. But when sessions typically last between four and have shown therapeutic promise. MDMA, long recreational use of these powerful sub- six hours, while LSD sessions go on for known as the club drug “ecstasy,” or “molly,” stances became popular among hippies 12. Robin Carhart- Harris, who runs interacts with many of the same neurotransmit- in the 1960s, it sparked a backlash, the Centre for Psychedelic Research at ters in the brain as conventional anxiety drugs. with tales of bad trips and psychotic Imperial College in London, theorized Studies show it inspires feelings of “empathy and breaks. In 1965, the federal govern- that such sessions can “reboot” the bonding” that can be incorporated into everyday ment banned psychedelic drugs, and brain in a way similar to a near-death or life with the help of a therapist. Researchers at the companies stopped producing them intense spiritual experience. the Santa Cruz, C alif.–based Multidisciplinary for research. Timothy Leary, the rebel Association for Psychedelic Studies have already psychologist who encouraged young- What’s the neuroscience? concluded Phase 2 trials of MDMA-a ssisted sters to “turn on, tune in, and drop Psychedelics have been shown to stimu- psychotherapy for use in treating PTSD, and out,” was branded “the most danger- late new brain cell growth and create are planning Phase 3 trials. Studies have found ous man in America” by President more complex connections that enable that ayahuasca, a psychoactive brew of several Richard Nixon. But after decades of various far-flung areas of the brain plants from the Amazon, can also have beneficial underground use, research into their effects. Imperial College is studying how DMT, to communicate with one another. value has experienced a renaissance. or dimethyltryptamine, known as the “spirit Habitual, rigid patterns of thinking are molecule,” can help patients suffering from In 2018, the FDA designated psilocy- broken. At the same time, these drugs depression and anxiety. During the very intense bin as a “breakthrough therapy” for temporarily dissolve the ego—the sense 20- minute sessions on the drug, “[patients] depression and anxiety. A year later, of separation of the self from everything kind of go on a journey into themselves,” said Johns Hopkins University launched else—and produce an “oceanic” feel- Dr. Carol Routledge. “Sometimes it can be a bit the Center for Psychedelic and ing of oneness with the universe, which traumatic.” Painful, repressed memories and Consciousness Research—the same is why many indigenous societies have their connection to current problems can be year that Imperial College in London used them in spiritual practices. “I didn’t revealed. Routledge and other therapists strongly launched its center. “The hoary ’60s know where I ended and my surround- advise against experimenting with psychedelic platitude that psychedelics would help ings began,” one patient told Michael substances outside of a controlled setting, warn- unlock the secrets of consciousness,” ing that the experiences can be overwhelming. y Pollan, author of a book on psychedelic Pollan says, “may turn out not to be so t t e

G therapy, How to Change Your Mind. preposterous after all.”

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 12 NEWS Best columns: The U.S.

On its way out the door, the Trump administration went on a spree of Executing “lame duck executions” of chilling “injustice and inhumanity,” said It must be true... Austin Sarat. The administration killed three federal prisoners last week I read it in the tabloids mentally ill alone, for a total of 13 since July—triple the number of federal execu- prisoners tions over the past six decades. The “overwhelming majority” of state- QA British Céline Dion fanatic sanctioned killings are of people suffering from intellectual disabilities, got drunk and legally changed Austin Sarat severe mental illness, and/or “a disabling history of childhood abuse his name to Céline Dion. Slate.com and trauma.” Consider Lisa Montgomery, executed this month: She The former Thomas Dodd was gang-raped at 11 by her stepfather and his friends, brain damaged said the idea came to him by severe beatings, and trafficked by her mother to pay bills. She was after having spent much “delusional throughout her life.” Executed prisoner Daniel Lewis Lee of the pandemic at home, also suffered severe childhood abuse that left him mentally ill. Wesley watching video concerts of Purkey, executed in July, was sexually abused by his mother and had the Canadian crooner. “I do schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Judges and juries often discount the bloody love her,” he said. After a night watching Dion role of severe childhood abuse and mental illness in serious criminal be- while drinking champagne, havior, viewing disturbed and delusional people as more dangerous and he impulsively applied for deserving of execution. It’s unconscionable—and it’s one more reason the name change online. He President Biden should “end the federal death penalty and lead a cam- has since embraced what paign for nationwide abolition of capital punishment.” he initially regarded as a drunken mistake, even call- Liz Cheney has made a momentous “career gamble,” said Joshua ing himself “Mr. Céline Dion.” Liz Cheney’s Just thinking about Dion, he Green. Last week, the No. 3–ranking House Republican not only voted said, makes “my heart race with nine of her GOP colleagues to impeach President Trump but also and my eyes water.” high-stakes laid the blame for the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill insurrection squarely at his feet. “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the gamble United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution,” the Wyo- Joshua Green ming representative said. Cheney, 54, has framed her vote as a “matter Bloomberg.com of conscience,” but it wasn’t “entirely unexpected.” She and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, have feuded with Trump over his coddling of foreign dictators and his botched handling of the pandemic. Trump loyalists immediately called for Cheney’s ouster from House QA Vermont home listed for GOP leadership; her once bright future as a party leader is imperiled. sale has an unusual feature: She could even face a primary in 2022 in her deep-red home state, a dungeon. The 2,200-square- which went for Trump in November by 43 points. But if the GOP can foot, four-bed, two-bath “break free of Trump’s grip,” Cheney “will have staked out a position home served as both the for herself as a leader for the party’s future.” That’s “a bold and risky” Essex County jail and the jail- wager that “few other Republicans have been willing to make.” er’s residence until 1969. The prison cells are still located in the basement and include the “Why aren’t we wearing better masks?” asked Zeynep Tufekci and Jer- barred doors and windows The tragic emy Howard. In the early days of the pandemic, Americans began wear- and rusty toilets and sinks. ing cloth masks to reduce the chances they would spread or be infected The ad for the home, which shortage of with the coronavirus. At the time, there was a dire shortage of N95 and is selling for $149,000, urges other high-grade masks, so those were reserved for health-care workers. potential owners to dream good masks But “not all masks are equal.” While cloth masks are effective in block- up new uses for the prison. ing exhaled droplets and in reducing overall transmission rates, they “Bring your own ideas on Zeynep Tufekci and what this 28’ x 40’ wing could Jeremy Howard lack the tight fit and highly protective filters of medical-grade masks. be,” it says. TheAtlantic.com U.S.-made N95s and KN95s from China screen out 95 percent of tiny, virus- carrying droplets called aerosols, and thus provide strong protec- QA neighborhood in Queens, tion to the wearer. At the start of the pandemic, Taiwan, Singapore, N.Y., is under siege from a and Hong Kong all vastly scaled up their manufacture of medical-grade band of savage squirrels. Residents of the Rego Park masks and have been distributing them to everyone. Not incidentally, area say the bushy-tailed Taiwan’s Covid-19 per capita death rate is 1,000 times lower than the rodents leap on people, crawl U.S.’s. Tragically, the Trump administration made no effort to produce up their bodies, and bite and high- filtration masks for the general public. The Biden administration scratch them. Some wary should “provide simple, clear, actionable, and specific information” residents are now leaving about masks, and make medical-grade masks easy to get. their homes armed with shovels. Micheline Frederick, 56, tried to fight back against Viewpoint “There’s no Republican politician who can carry Trump’s mantle. Perhaps the a squirrel who attacked her— next Trump, if there is one, will be another celebrity. Someone with a power- a battle that she described as ful and compelling persona, who traffics in fear and anger and hate. Someone who ‘triggers the libs’ and puts on a show. Someone who already has an audience, who speaks for the Republican an “MMA cage match.” “The base as much as he speaks to them. Republican voters have already put a Fox News viewer into the squirrel didn’t care,” she said. m

“It just wanted something—it o c

White House. From there it’s just a short step to electing an actual Fox News personality.” . r o t

wanted blood.” l

Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times a e R

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Raffinato™ 14101 Southcross Drive W., Ste 155, Dept. RFJ28-01, Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 www.raffinatoitaly.com A collection of impeccable design & craftsmanship from Italy. 14 NEWS Best columns: Europe

Will Italy ever be able to govern itself? asked the coalition, leaving the multiparty government ITALY Mario Deaglio. In the middle of a pandemic, with teetering without a majority. He announced the countless citizens sick or out of work, our elites pullout just as the government was due to begin Infighting is have abruptly decided to collapse the government. distributing $270 billion in grants and loans from The instigator is Matteo Renzi, the brash former the EU—money desperately needed to prop up the a luxury we prime minister who seems to crave attention at Italian economy. It’s as if Renzi is floating above any cost. Renzi, 46, split from Italy’s Democratic us all, watching Italy’s suffering “from a spaceship can’t afford Party last September and founded a splinter party thousands of miles away.” His fake crisis stands in called Italia Viva, which became a junior member contrast to the very real “crises of millions of citi- Mario Deaglio of the ruling coalition headed by Prime Minister zens awaiting relief measures.” If our leaders don’t La Stampa Giuseppe Conte. Then last week, saying Conte “get off the spaceship immediately” and return to was mismanaging the pandemic and the economy, earth, Italy’s e conomy—and their own political Renzi yanked his two cabinet ministers from fortunes—will be beyond saving.

DENMARK Leave it to Denmark to spark controversy even in though it has what almost appears to be a serpent’s children’s programming, said Catherine Bennett. head. The penis is always getting John into comic Kids don’t The country’s public broadcaster recently began trouble, but also, somehow, always saves the day. airing a new cartoon aimed at the 4-to-8-year-old Irate Danes complained that in the #MeToo era, a need a set called John Dillermand, which loosely trans- wayward penis is hardly a good role model. The lates as John Penisman. The title character is “a programmers retorted that they could just as eas- phallic hero faintly creepy, blubbery cartoon man” of middle ily have made the show about a woman with an age who lives with his great-g randmother, but his unruly vagina. So why didn’t they? “Given the Catherine Bennett prehensile and “heroically extensible” penis— historic shortage of cruel vaginocracies and vagino- The Guardian (U.K.) which has a mind of its own and can etch murals, crats, and of relentless real-life assaults by contem- hoist flags, and even conduct rescues—is really the porary vaginas,” such a show could not have been star of the show. Dillermand prances about in a criticized as reinforcing the patriarchy. And the last red-and-white-striped onesie, and when his man- thing little girls—or boys—need to learn is that a hood unravels it is similarly striped and clothed, poor hapless man simply can’t control his genitalia. Netherlands: Government resigns over welfare scandal The Dutch state has mercilessly per- But he only did so after opposition secuted some of its poorest citizens, Labor Party leader Lodewijk Asscher, said Marcel ten Hooven in De Groene a former social affairs minister who Amster dammer. A new parliamentary re- oversaw the early stages of the welfare port, titled “Unprecedented Injustice,” de- crackdown, shamed him by resigning tails how over the past eight years Dutch first. And anyway, given that we are tax officials wrongly accused more than in the midst of a pandemic and only 26,000 parents of fraudulently claiming two months away from a scheduled child welfare benefits to which they were, election, the current government is in fact, entitled. In some cases, a missing going to stay on in a “caretaker” signature on a single document was all it role. So nothing really changes: Rutte took to ignite the wrath of tax officials, has simply been “put in the corner who branded parents criminals, slapped by the teacher.” His People’s Party them with fines, and demanded they Rutte: Still likely to win re-election for Freedom and Democracy is still immediately repay tens of thousands of on track to win the March elections, euros in benefits. Some families became homeless as a result of the meaning Rutte will likely serve a fourth term as prime minister, persecution; others shattered under the strain. One now divorced said Johan Fretz, also in Het Parool. Neither he nor anyone in father of two said authorities seized his refrigerator and his car his government gives the impression that they know they “failed and then garnished 40 p ercent of his salary. “In all its guises—as morally.” If voters re-elect Rutte, we will all be just as culpable. legislator, enforcer, and judge—the state abandoned” the people who most needed its protection. Whistleblowers in the tax agency To truly make amends, said Pieter Anko de Vries in Friesch told higher-ups about these “innocent victims,” yet the campaign Dagblad, we must uncover how it happened that Dutch citizens continued. The committee that drew up the report said that as its with “ foreign- sounding surnames” were singled out for the members discovered more and more appalling tales of injustice, strictest scrutiny. In one instance, a woman of Turkish descent they reacted with “astonishment and then deep indignation.” lost her house, car, and business. In another, a mother of three with an Arabic name was evicted and her possessions were Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his entire cabinet resigned last confiscated. For many of these families, the $37,000 the govern- week over the scandal, said Theodor Holman in Het Parool, but ment is offering doesn’t begin to cover even their material losses, don’t be fooled into thinking that is a fitting punishment. Yes, much less their trauma. The “trust between government and Rutte admitted culpability, saying that his center-right govern- citizens” has been broken. If we are to repair it, we must deter- ment was taking “full responsibility” for the injustice and that mine exactly how racist our tax-a uditing policy was—and who y

each affected family will receive about $37,000 in compensation. designed it to be that way. t t e G

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 Best columns: International NEWS 15

Israel: Homegrown accusations of apartheid Israel is not a democracy, but an Netanyahu “to enshrine Jewish apartheid state, said Hagai El-Ad in supremacy in law and openly The Guardian (U.K.). As executive state their intentions.” Such hid- director of B’Tselem, Israel’s largest eous accusations are simply anti- human-rights group, I have come to Semitism internalized, said Amir the realization that this bitter truth Avivi in Israel Hayom. The Israeli can no longer be avoided, and my state’s “core founding principle” organization has released a report is to be “the democratic home of detailing the reasons why. “There the Jewish people.” It is a place is demographic parity between the where Jews can finally be safe two peoples living here,” but life is after millennia of persecution, managed so that one half holds “the Israeli and Palestinian activists protest in the West Bank. but it is also a land where Arab- vast majority of political power, Israelis have equal rights. Why land resources, rights, freedoms, and protections.” Everything is every other nation allowed its national identity, but when the the government does works to perpetuate “the supremacy” of Jews assert theirs they are accused of racism? The Palestinian ter- Jews like me over Palestinians in the occupied territories. “That is ritories are governed and administered by Palestinians, not Israe- apartheid.” Of course, Israel learned from South Africa not to be lis, and what goes on there is separate from Israel. too blatant about discrimination: There are no “Jews only” signs here like the “whites only” signs that dotted apartheid-era Johan- It’s not news to Palestinians that they’ve been living under apart- nesburg. Instead, our state has pursued the “patient, quiet, and heid, said Ali Syed in Al Binaa (Lebanon). Consider how Pales- gradual accumulation of discriminatory practices” to the same tinians are treated in the occupied West Bank: Jewish settlers have end. Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza is a farce the “right” to use 2,400 cubic meters of water a year, Palestinians when all matters of import are decided in Israel, where most just 50. Jewish settlers may come and go at will; Palestinians are Palestinians have no vote. It is time for Jews to recognize the in- trapped. “The system of apartheid is not peace, and will not bring justice we perpetrate, “name it without flinching, and help bring peace.” It’s the same situation with the coronavirus vaccine roll- about the realization of a just future.” out, said Al Sharq (Qatar) in an editorial. Israel leads the world in inoculations. Yet Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank go B’Tselem makes a strong case, said Ilana Hammerman in without, and Israel only began giving shots to the 4,400 Palestin- Haaretz (Israel). Palestinians quite obviously lack equal rights— ians in its prisons this week, after an outcry from human rights but that’s been the case since the establishment of Israel in groups. If Israel still claims to be an occupying power and not an 1948. So why point the finger now? What has changed is the apartheid state, why is it not fulfilling the duty of such a power “willingness of Israeli officials” such as Prime Minister Benjamin “to provide for the medical treatment” of the occupied?

Americans now understand what it’s like to be a the terrifying truth that people who look and wor- PAKISTAN Pakistani, said Rafia Zakaria. Before thousands ship just like them are actually terrorists—and that of white extremists stormed the U.S. Capitol on their security agencies have been shockingly lax in When the Jan. 6, killing and injuring police officers and identifying and monitoring them. The helplessness threatening lawmakers, many Americans believed that Americans feel—“wanting to do something terrorists that terrorism was an inherently “Muslim prob- but not knowing what”—“is the helplessness that lem, inextricably tied to something about the Pakistani citizens felt” when Islamists were bomb- are among you faith.” So deep was American denial that even ing our cities and overrunning our schools. If we when a conspiracy theorist exploded a truck bomb were following the U.S. playbook, we would label Rafia Zakaria outside a Nashville AT&T building—possibly the U.S. a “safe haven” for white-supremacist Dawn because he thought 5G networks were somehow terrorists, and “Canada or Mexico would be well being used to kill people—their analysts refused to within their rights to attack and take over.” Per- call him a terrorist. Now Americans are faced with haps now the Americans will learn a little humility.

CANADA The U.S. isn’t the only country struggling with home for a nonessential activity can be fined thou- white supremacy and tone-deaf politicians, said sands of dollars or face up to a year in prison. But Police will Shree Paradkar. Here in Canada, we, too, had Ford “refused to get specific about what could get a “summer of reckoning of anti-black racism.” people into trouble.” Home Depot is open, so does choose whom There were calls to reallocate police funding, buying plant seed count as “essential”? The vague- and 39 percent of Canadians agreed there was a ness of these rules places tremendous power in the to punish “serious problem with the way police interact with hands of the police. Academics have already docu- black, indigenous, and other nonwhite people.” At mented how Canadians of color are being dispro- Shree Paradkar the time, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said that he portionately targeted and fined for Covid-related Toronto Star stood by his black constituents. But last week, he offenses. Dark-skinned Canadians are scared not “drastically scaled up police powers” by declaring of the white supremacist, anti-democratic mobs

y a new Covid lockdown that will be enforced by that black Americans fear, but a different “form of t t e

G the cops. For the next month, anyone who leaves white supremacy”: our own police.

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 16 NEWS Talking points Capitol Hill riot: Violent extremists from the middle class Lawyers. Doctors. Nurses. Realtors. Fire- evangelicals caught up in “Trump fanati- fighters. Current and former members of cism” blasted Christian pop music as the military. More than two dozen police they took over the Capitol, kneeled in officers. A woman in a Louis Vuitton sweater. prayer after sacking the House chamber, A CEO of a data analytics firm, and numer- and chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.” After ous prosperous business owners. Even a the riot, a shocked conservative preacher, state legislator. All were among the hundreds Jeremiah Johnson, apologized for having of Americans who invaded and sacked the supported Trump. He said he was then U.S. Capitol last week in a violent insurrec- barraged with thousands of emails from tion that killed a Capitol Police officer and fellow Christians “saying the nastiest and left four others dead. “It’s an uncomfortable most vulgar things I have ever heard.” truth for white America to acknowledge”: the Most evangelicals are from the South, said mob that terrorized Congress in support of Praying for insurrection at the Capitol David French in TheDispatch.com, and “a white supremacist agenda” was not limited to neo-Nazis and what’s driving their Trumpist rage is the “Southern shame/honor toothless rednecks. In the Trump era, people who deeply believe culture” that dates back to the Confederacy. These people deeply in conspiracy theories and would happily overturn an election believe Trump’s demagogic warning that they’re “losing” their “are indistinguishable from the rest of us.” Indeed, a YouGov poll country to secular, urban progressives. Their desperate fury and found that 45 percent of Republicans approved of the assault on “culture of grievance” is poisoning both evangelical Christianity the Capitol. We all saw the images of bearded, tattooed men from and the Republican Party. Dogpatch and bare-chested nuts wearing animal skins, said Jack Shafer in Politico.com. But many of the rioters, we now know Indeed, “vast majorities” of Republicans still support Trump— after their arrests, “are solidly middle class,” and were drawn from even after an insurrection he clearly incited, said Mike Allen and “the Republican professional and political classes.” Dismissing Margaret Talev in Axios.com. A poll taken after the Capitol siege them as a bunch of delusional barbarians only increases “the great found that 64 percent of Republicans support Trump’s “recent difficulty we will have in nullifying their violent brand of politics.” behavior” and 57 percent of Republicans think he should be his party’s presidential candidate in 2024. While 10 House Republi- There were definitely some hardened extremists in the crowd, said cans voted for impeachment, 93 percent of their Republican col- Devlin Barrett and Spencer Hsu in The Washington Post. “Dozens leagues didn’t. Many Republicans fear that convicting Trump in of people on a terrorist watch list” came to Washington, D.C., the Senate would only “make him a martyr” and further cement that day, and the FBI is investigating the roles of violent right-wing his hold on millions of people. Even after last week’s debacle, “it’s groups like the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers. still Trump’s party.” Prosecutors charged Robert Gieswein, 24, an alleged member of the Three Percenters from Colorado, with breaching the Capitol in The GOP “faces a choice,” said Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of a military vest and goggles, brandishing a baseball bat, and fighting Nebraska in TheAtlantic.com. We can “repudiate the nonsense with police. Guy Reffitt, a Texan and alleged member of the militia that has set our party on fire” or we can be “a party of conspiracy group “Texas Freedom Force,” allegedly joined the riot and threat- theories, cable-news fantasies, and the ruin that comes with them.” ened to shoot his children if they became “traitors” and turned him Many of the insurrectionists believe the QAnon conspiracy theory in. These organized domestic terrorists may have planned and led that there is network of “cannibalistic pedophiles” supported by the actual assault on the building, with hundreds of MAGA fans “deep state” intelligence officials and senators like me. Among then joining in. The FBI has arrested dozens of accused rioters and QAnon’s ranks is Marjorie Taylor Greene, “a cuckoo” fresh- says it’s seeking more than 200; charges may include seditious con- man House member from Georgia. Last fall, the GOP could have spiracy, which carries a potential 20-year prison sentence. decided to “disavow her campaign and potentially lose a Republi- can seat,” but instead decided to bless Greene’s “ludicrous ideas.” Many Christians “have been shaken to the core” by what they In coming months, we must choose whether to side with reality or saw that day, said David Brooks in The New York Times. Some with deranged, violent thinking. “We cannot do both.” Noted

QCapitol invaders came within seconds the end of 2020, the gross national debt pandemic-related anarchy, an estimated of seeing Vice President Mike Pence as stood at $27.5 trillion— nearly $7.8 trillion 5 million Americans bought their first gun he was rushed into hiding by his security higher than when former President Trump last year. detail, according to video footage and was sworn in. Axios.com accounts from law enforcement officials. The Wall Street Journal QMisinformation on social media about Pence wasn’t evacuated from the Senate QNearly 40 million firearms background election fraud plummeted after President chamber until 14 minutes after the violent checks were processed in 2020—a 40 per- Trump was banned from Facebook and mob broke into the building, many of cent increase over Twitter. In the week after Trump’s Twitter them denouncing Pence as a traitor and 2019 and by far feed went dark on Jan. 8, conversations shouting, “Hang Mike Pence!” the most since the about election fraud dropped 73 percent The Washington Post FBI began tracking across a number of social media sites, QThe federal government ran a $3.3 tril- such checks in 1998. from 2.5 million to 688,000 mentions, ac-

lion budget deficit during the 2020 calen- Amid fears of po- cording to the analytics firm Zignal Labs. P A

, y

dar year—triple the amount from 2019. At litical violence and The Washington Post t t e G

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 Talking points NEWS 17

Impeachment: The coming GOP schism Wit & Now that the House has only way for the party to impeached Trump for incit- move forward, said David Wisdom ing the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, French in TheDispatch “If we winter this one out, a number of questions loom, .com. Sadly, his core sup- we can summer anywhere.” Seamus Heaney, said Andrew Desiderio and porters have become an quoted in The Times (U.K.) Kyle Cheney in Politico .com. insurrection movement It’s unclear when House with Trump as its “spiritual “As often as not, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will and operational leader.” we are homesick most transmit the impeachment His hold on that move- for the places we have never known.” article and a Senate trial ment is largely built “on Carson McCullers, quoted in might begin. Some Repub- the perception that he wins, the Mooresville, N.C., Tribune licans claim that the Senate Paul: Impeachment will ‘destroy the party.’ time and again, against the can’t impeach an ex-p resident, most hated enemies of the “Having your book turned but courts are likely to leave that decision up to Right.” That narrative “has to shift, dramatically, into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned the Senate itself. When the trial does begin, will once and for all.” A Senate conviction and then into bouillon cubes.” Trump find a lawyer to defend him? Then there’s prosecution for a host of crimes will reveal him to John le Carré, quoted in the most pressing question: “How likely is a be a “con man” and a loser. The Economist conviction?” This time, a two-thirds majority of “Never trust the teller, the Senate—67 votes—is a real possibility, given The stakes for the GOP are high, said Chris Cil- trust the tale.” the “markedly different posture” of Minority lizza in CNN.com. Republican Sen. Rand Paul D.H. Lawrence, quoted in the Leader Mitch McConnell, who’s furious at Trump warns that impeachment will “destroy the party,” Los Angeles Review of Books and said this week the mob “was fed lies” and splintering it between establishment and Trumpist “Calamities are of two “provoked by the president.” If McConnell turns wings. Given how many Republicans still defend kinds: misfortune to thumbs down on Trump, “it’s easy to see at least Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, that ourselves and good for- 16 other Republicans joining him.” rupture is necessary, said Kevin Williamson in tune to others.” NationalReview.com. Perhaps one of the “surviv- Writer Ambrose Bierce, quoted Republicans have a “clear and obvious moti- ing halves would be worth joining, worth voting in Lapham’s Quarterly vation” to impeach, said Aaron Blake in The for, worth trusting.” Republicans who are “cling- “A ship ought not to be Washington Post: to take the chaos-creating ing to Trump” are making “a titanic mistake, and held by one anchor, nor Trump out of the running for 2024. But they I am rooting for the iceberg.” For the good of the life by a single hope.” have to decide whether neutering him is “worth party and the country, Trumpism must “go down Ancient Greek philosopher the immediate pain” of enraging his base. It’s the with the ship.” Epictetus, quoted in Forbes.com “We look at the world once, in childhood / The rest is memory.” Republicans: Did they aid and abet the rioters? Poet Louise Glück, quoted in House Democrats suspect the Capitol Hill insur- Reps. Lauren Boebert (R.-Colo.) and Marjorie The Washington Post rection was “an inside job,” said Roger Sollen- Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) have praised the unhinged berger in Salon.com. Last week, 30 of them called QAnon conspiracy theory, and that Boebert has for an investigation into what they described as bragged of carrying a gun. Several Republicans, Poll watch an “extremely high number” of suspicious groups including Boebert, refused to pass through a QAs Trump left office this roaming the Capitol on the day before the riot. metal detector after the insurrection, until House week, only 34% of Ameri- The building has been closed to outsiders since Speaker Nancy Pelosi imposed a $10,000 fine cans gave him a positive the pandemic began, but Rep. Mikie Sherrill on members who didn’t comply. During the riot approval rating, the lowest (D-N.J.) said she saw unnamed House lawmakers itself, Boebert tweeted that Pelosi had “been in his term. His average giving “reconnaissance” tours on Jan. 5. Some- removed” from the chamber. approval rating over four how, the mob found and ransacked the Senate years was 41%, lower than parliamentarian’s office—a space deep in the It’s not just Democrats who are afraid right now, any other president’s. building where the Electoral College votes had said Paul Waldman in The Washington Post. Gallup been stored until staffers whisked them away. The Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) said Republicans Q39% of Americans think rioters, said Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), “knew were afraid to impeach Trump because of what that Trump’s social media where to go.” There’s evidence for this claim, said his armed supporters might do to their families. ban was “exactly right,” Brittany Bernstein in NationalReview.com. Ali Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said other House and 50% think it should Alexander, a “Stop the Steal” organizer, said in a Republicans were “paralyzed with fear,” and have happened sooner. video that he was working with Reps. Paul Gosar more than a few “broke down in tears” discuss- But 69% of Republicans (R-Ariz.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Mo Brooks ing the vote. Republicans have a stark choice, believe Twitter’s actions (R-Ala.) on a plan to apply “maximum pressure said Daniel Drezner, also in the Post. With demo- went too far. 56% think on Congress while they were voting.” graphic trends against them, the Trumpist wing social media’s role in no longer believes in democracy and is willing to spreading conspiracy Democrats’ suspicion of their Republican col- use the threat of violence—or actual violence—to theories like QAnon is “a leagues now runs so deep, said Benjy Sarlin in get what it wants. Mainstream Republicans must major problem.” NBCNews.com, that they’re afraid GOP lawmak- either discipline or eject their insurrectionists, or Morning Consult P

A ers “might kill them.” They’re keenly aware that see their party become “an American Hezbollah.”

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 THE WEEK | SPECIAL REPORT: MARKET 2021

drop in striking fashion; 2020 actually ended up being one of the five best years in NASDAQ history. Last year, the value of just five companies—Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Facebook—came to make up roughly 25 percent of the benchmark S&P 500 stock index. In other words, a lot of the market’s growth was driven by a handful of tech giants, while much of the market stagnated. However, with recent news around vaccines and an increasing sense that 2021 will at some point see the end of the pandemic, inves- tors have moved toward sectors that were pummeled in 2020, such as banking and small-cap stocks.

So, is the economy reopening good news for the stock market? The economy and the It would make sense that as many U.S. markets are not the same. businesses reemerge from their pandemic- induced hibernation, the stock market would follow. But the economy and the markets are not the same thing—2020 proved that, once Understanding the market in 2021 and for all. And because markets generally look ahead, What you need to know to build your stock portfolio unforeseen bumps in the road can do some damage. A slower and more-chaotic-than-expected vaccine rollout, How does government spending move markets? for example, could result in continuing bad numbers for The main goal of an economic stimulus package—such as the businesses that had expected to roar back to life in 2021. Similarly, $2.2 trillion CARES Act, which passed in March 2020, during there are few things markets hate more than political uncertainty. the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic—is to get much-needed Many forecasters assumed that with the end of the 2020 election funds to businesses and citizens, who will then presumably put that some sense of calm would return, but the events of the past several money back into the economy by spending it. The stock market weeks suggest that the ongoing political upheaval will continue for is speculative in nature—it’s always looking to the future—which some time. Further turbulence could deal a blow to both the U.S. is why any serious hint of a stimulus package on the horizon can economy and the markets. wind up boosting stocks. This is also why stocks sometimes rise on bad economic news: That raises the chances, and potentially the What about the IPO frenzy? size, of a new stimulus package. Last year, stocks frequently jumped Last year was one of the biggest ever in terms of money raised when monthly unemployment claims rose, because to investors, the through initial public offerings (IPOs), as companies such as dismal jobs numbers implied more government aid was likely. DoorDash and Airbnb made their stock-market debuts. That fueled a lot of growth in 2020, and it may well do so in 2021, What’s the role of the Fed and ultralow interest rates? which also looks to be a busy year for IPOs. Putting money in In times of economic crisis, the U.S. Federal Reserve takes action IPOs can be tricky for average investors, however. Individual to keep interest rates low, as a way of encouraging borrowing, investors typically pay a substantial premium over the price insti- spending, and investing. You’re more likely to buy that car or tutions pay for shares in an IPO, and often the stocks make big get that mortgage when rates are extremely low. One of the big- initial splashes only to settle down or even drop precipitously. It gest economic stories of 2020 was Fed activity. The Fed not only took years for Twitter, for example, to return to the highs of its lowered the rate that banks pay it to borrow money to near zero, 2013 debut. On the other hand, Facebook, which has turned out but also indicated that it will remain extraordinarily low for sev- to be a much bigger success story, languished for more than a year eral years. The Fed generally starts to raise rates when it senses after its 2012 IPO before starting a fairly steady advance. inflation might be on the horizon, but this recent guidance sug- gests that they will hold off on doing so until the economy has Are the trade wars over? fully recovered and the unemployment rate (which remains very During the Trump years, the U.S. experienced a variety of trade ten- high, market gains notwithstanding) has significantly improved. sions—with China, Europe, Mexico, and even Canada—and there’s Rock-bottom interest rates mean that investors get lower returns good reason to believe that some of those conflicts will subside, from bonds—which are essentially loans to corporations or to the as the incoming Biden administration will probably be less adver- government itself—and so they tend to move their money into the sarial toward the rest of the world. China, however, will remain an stock market, raising share prices across the board. economic rival, and U.S. companies could face headwinds there. Analysts, for instance, are closely watching to see if Apple will be Is Big Tech fueling the market boom? able to maintain sales in China or will be pushed aside by domes- Yes and no. One of the most notable phenomena of the pandemic tic competitors. Investors have been eager to put their money into y r e

was the powerful rise of a handful of tech giants. The wild swings China’s growing economy, but China’s c ompanies—even including k a B

a in the market last spring saw the NASDAQ, which reflects the the e-commerce giant Alibaba—have found themselves subject to i d e performance of technology shares, rebound from the February Beijing’s unpredictable whims. M

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Technology NEWS 21

Parler: A Twitter alternative gets shut down When Twitter and Facebook banned Amazon was well within its rights to Donald Trump and cracked down on boot the right-wing social network Parler conspiracy theories, Parler was sup- off its cloud service, said Jonah Goldberg posed to be the social network to step in TheDispatch.com. Parler was “used into the void, said Gilad Edelman in by jackasses to foment violence and ha- Wired.com. It had, after all, “billed it- tred” in the days leading up to the riot at self as a free-speech paradise, a haven the U.S. Capitol. “The First Amendment, for conservative users who believe Big like the rest of the Bill of Rights, con- Tech is out to silence them.” But it strains what the federal government can turned out there was no haven from do.” But it also gives the “right (and ob- Big Tech after all. Not only did Apple ligation) to private institutions, and even and Google kick Parler out of their some public ones,” to say, “We want app stores—last week Amazon cut off no part of this” behavior. Parler is now Parler’s access to its web services. That A ‘free speech paradise’ still dependent on tech giants suing Amazon for forcing its website to meant Parler “vanished from the inter- go dark. But that suit is “bound to fail.” net,” said Joseph Menn in Reuters.com. It has “partially returned” Just as any restaurant can say, “‘No shirt, no shoes, no service,’ with only a bare-bones website, hosted by a Russian company that Amazon can say, ‘No calls for civil war or genocide.’” has worked with racist, far-right, and conspiracy sites. If it’s really that simple, it’s strange that even Twitter CEO Jack Apple, Google, and Amazon say Parler didn’t do enough to mod- Dorsey “has second thoughts,” said The Wall Street Journal in erate its content, said Rachel Bovard in Newsweek.com. “This an editorial. We rarely find ourselves on the same side as him on is rich,” coming from companies that have never had a problem speech controls. But we give him credit “for at least reflecting with Facebook and Twitter. Last year, representatives of the major on his decisions and the new world the tech titans are creat- tech companies “sat on stage at a Department of Justice work- ing.” In a series of Twitter posts, Dorsey said that his company shop” and insisted that what circulates on social media isn’t their always told users they can “go to another internet service,” but responsibility. They said if you don’t like the existing social media that principle is challenged if companies like Amazon won’t host companies, go ahead and build your own. It turns out that was what they find dangerous. Continuing down this path means the “really nothing more than a s logan”—or a rationalization. “erosion of a free and open internet.”

Innovation of the week Bytes: What’s new in tech Snapchat’s $3 million teen instance, features seven branded shortcuts. Teens are discovering ways to “strike internet Streaming services have long paid roughly “$1 gold” on Snapchat, said Taylor Lorenz in The per remote to put their brand closer to a con- New York Times. In November, Snapchat in- sumer’s fingertips.” Now, though, the battle troduced Spotlight, a blatantly TikTok-i nspired for clicker space is intensifying, especially since section devoted to short videos. Spotlight TV makers like LG and Samsung also want promotes “the same things that are popular to “feature dedicated buttons for their own on TikTok,” namely “dancing videos, prank ad- supported streaming services.” Another General Motors unveiled renderings videos, challenges, and tutorials.” To build emerging battleground: the microphone. The of a future Cadillac that could take remotes for LG’s newest smart TVs will in- to the skies, said Chris Paukert in up content, Snapchat is enticing video makers CNET.com. The automaker stunned with outsize bonuses. Cam Casey, “a TikTok clude both an Alexa button and a separate attendees of the virtual Consumer star with over 7 million followers,” decided Google Assistant button. Electronics Showcase last week by to try posting one of his TikTok videos, a sci- producing a virtual demo of its first ence experiment with an exploding Coca-Cola China sanctions create chip gap eVTOL, or battery- powered “verti- bottle, on Snapchat. When it proved popular, A worldwide chip shortage has forced several cal takeoff-and- landing” air taxi. he started adding more v ideos—as many as major automakers to idle assembly lines, said The Cadillac- branded, four- rotor 120 in a day. In less than three months, he’s Ben Klayman and Stephen Nellis in Reuters aircraft “looks like a s ingle-seat been “paid nearly $3 million by the company .com. Car manufacturers such as Ford, drone, presumably for short urban hops.” It’s powered by a 90-kWh for content that went viral.” Subaru, and Toyota rely on chips to power everything from driver- assistance programs to battery— smaller than the battery used by other eVTOL s tartups—that Advertising right under your fingers brake systems, which pits them against “the can “deliver speeds up to 56 mph.” Your remote control has become the latest sprawling consumer electronics industry” for Beyond that, however, “details were battleground in the streaming wars, said Janko supplies. Their supply problems have “been scarce.” Last week, Fiat Chrysler Roettgers in Protocol.com. Ever since “Net- exacerbated by the Trump administration’s ac- announced a partnership with flix first partnered with makers of streaming tions” in the China trade war. One key factor: electric aircraft designer Archer to devices and smart TVs to add a dedicated Net- When the White House banned Huawei from develop air taxis. But GM appears buying chips made with American technology, intent on going it alone to build its flix button to their remote controls,” in 2011,

y such shortcuts have become “ ubiquitous—and the Chinese telecoms giant “stockpiled chips to t t own “aerial mobility” business. e

G are multiplying.” Vizio’s 2021 remote, for keep building what products it could.”

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 22 NEWS Health & Science

Evidence of long-lasting Covid immunity Most people who survive Covid-19 retain reappeared. Because the immune system a robust immune response to the disease targets hundreds of different parts of the for at least eight months, and potentially virus, the findings should apply to the new, much longer, a new study has found. Since more transmissible coronavirus variants the start of the pandemic, there have been that first appeared in the U.K. and South isolated reports of people being reinfected Africa. “There’s a lot of different arms of with the coronavirus. But a new study of the immune system recognizing the virus,” blood samples from 188 Covid patients co-author Daniela Weiskopf, from the suggests that about 90 percent of people La Jolla Institute for Immunology, tells The who recover from the disease retain stable Washington Post. “If you have a mutation, A Californian Covid survivor leaves the hospital. immunity. This is in part because antibod- it wouldn’t evade all these different arms.” ies aren’t the only weapon in the immune The researchers believe immunity likely of people see their immune response system’s arsenal: The samples revealed lasts longer than eight months, because at degrade. Given that uncertainty, says co- that T cells and other defensive elements the time of the study it had shown no signs author Alessandro Sette, “if I’d had Covid, I were ready to pounce on the virus if it of decay. They are unsure why 10 percent would still not throw away my masks.”

get the treatment early. Under pressure Apathy a sign of dementia? from President Trump, the FDA approved Apathy in middle age could be a predic- blood plasma as a Covid treatment five tor for some forms of dementia, reports months ago, despite a lack of evidence ScienceDaily.com. While easily mistaken for about its effectiveness. The new study, laziness or depression, a loss of motivation from Argentina, found that patients who and interest in life has long been associated received an infusion within three days with frontotemporal dementia, an often of symptoms starting had a 48 percent genetic condition that is typically diagnosed lower risk of developing a severe case of between the ages of 45 and 65. Researchers Covid, compared with a control group at Cambridge University for several years who received a saline solution instead. tracked 304 healthy people who carried the The plasma recipients were more vulner- An artist’s impression of ID2299 ejecting gas gene that causes frontotemporal dementia, able to serious sickness than the general and 296 of their relatives who did not. Watching a galaxy die population: They were all at least 65 years None began with dementia. The researchers Astronomers have for the first time wit- old, and half had pre-existing health con- looked for signs of apathy and conducted nessed a distant galaxy in the process of ditions. Such speedy treatment may be memory tests and brain scans. People with dying, reports CBSNews.com. Located difficult to deliver in hospitals, because the gene were more apathetic than fam- about 9 billion light-years from Earth, many patients don’t seek medical help until ily members without; their apathy grew as galaxy ID2299 is spewing out vast amounts their symptoms have worsened. Other time went on and proved a predictor for of the cold gas it needs to forge new stars. trials have found that plasma does little cognitive decline. MRI scans showed brain Images of these death throes were captured to prevent death or speed up recovery in shrinkage in areas supporting motivation by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submil- sicker patients. The University of Alberta’s and initiative. “Treating dementia is a chal- limeter Array of telescopes in Chile. ID2299 Ilan Schwartz, who wasn’t involved in the lenge,” says senior author James Rowe, “but is ejecting 10,000 suns’ worth of gas every research, tells The New York Times, “The the sooner we can diagnose the disease, the year; it’s also forming stars at a rate hun- study looks solid, but not necessarily prac- greater our window of opportunity to try to dreds of times faster than the Milky Way, tical in the real world.” intervene and slow or stop its progress.” further depleting its gas supply. Relatively speaking, the galaxy is not long for this The new technique, observed in brown universe. It will likely stop producing stars Snakes ‘lasso’ up trees tree snakes, is called “lasso locomotion.” within the next few tens of thousands of An invasive species of The snake forms one years, at which point it will be classified as snake on Guam has loop around the trunk, dead. Curiously, the galaxy’s cause of death developed a smart hooking its tail around appears to be a result of its creation: ID2299 and surprising new its body in a knot. It then was formed when two galaxies violently method of climbing squeezes tight and uses collided and joined together. “Our study trees, researchers have small bends in its body suggests that gas ejections can be produced discovered. Snakes to slowly climb upward. by mergers,” says study co-author Emanuele typically scale rough- Because it only has to Daddi. “This might lead us to revise our surfaced tree trunks by Brown tree snakes are master climbers. wrap itself around the understanding of how galaxies ‘die.’” tensing their muscles trunk once, the snake to grip tiny bits of bark and then slithering can scale much wider trunks—allowing it straight up. For smoother trunks, snakes to reach high-up bird nests. “Lasso loco- Blood plasma vs. the coronavirus deploy the same method a human might motion is just from outer space, compared a A small study has confirmed that an infu- i use to climb a rope: They grip two spots with all of the other variations,” co-author d e p i k sion of antibody-rich blood plasma taken with S-shaped bends in their body and pull Bruce Jayne, from the University of i W

, from recently recovered Covid-19 patients themselves up between the bends. But Cincinnati, tells ScientificAmerican.com. “I O S E can prevent some people from getting seri- this can only be done with narrow trunks. , was just absolutely stunned.” y t t e ously ill with the disease—but only if they G

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 ARTS 23 Review of reviews: Books

of other cognitive abilities that peak Book of the week much later. Self-consciousness turns out Beginners: The Joy and to be a major obstacle for an adult to overcome, as the author discovers while Transformative Power of being checkmated by an 8-year-old and Lifelong Learning wiping out time after time on his surf- by Tom Vanderbilt (Knopf, $27) board. Eventually, he learns to enjoy the ways he grows, and “this is Vanderbilt’s “What’s the point of starting something great revelation,” that instead of regard- new when you know you’ll never be ing all learning as a form of work, “we much good at it?” said Margaret Talbot should enjoy the process more and in The New Yorker. Consciously or worry less about the product.” unconsciously, many people develop that mindset by the time they reach middle Our Covid times lend Beginners unex- age. Tom Vanderbilt realized this when Forward always: The novice’s edge pected poignancy, said Jennifer Szalai he accompanied his daughter to weekend in The New York Times. Vanderbilt chess tournaments. He noticed that most There is “a certain bittiness” to the book, did his research before the pandemic, of the parents passed the time staring at said Joe Moran in TheGuardian.com. Each and he acknowledges that he had other their phones, and wondered, as he writes, skill gets its own section, and the sections advantages that made his adventurousness whether grown-ups were “imparting a sub- don’t always build toward the broader possible, including a supportive wife and tle lesson: that learning was for the young.” lessons. Still, Beginners is “a pleasure to enough financial stability to devote time to That thought inspired him to take up chess read,” in part because it’s fascinating to nonremunerative activities. “But for all the himself, and then drawing, singing, jug- learn about the mistakes that are common inward focus,” he writes, “these activities gling, and surfing. In his book chronicling among beginners in each pursuit and how actually brought me outward. One of the the experience, “Vanderbilt is good on the those mistakes can be corrected. Along greatest joys in being a beginner, it turns specific joys and embarrassments of being the way, Vanderbilt “doesn’t try to gloss out, is meeting other beginners.” Though a late-blooming novice.” Meanwhile, he the hard facts about learning and aging.” heartening, “that lesson, alas, will remain entertainingly argues the benefits of learn- Our brain’s processing speed begins declin- on hold for the rest of us, until a time when ing for learning’s sake. ing in our twenties, but we’re reminded we can meet other people in other rooms.”

Icebound: Shipwrecked at the O’Donnell in The Wall Street Journal. Novel of the week Edge of the World Barents died on the third journey, and the survivors’ writings tell us nothing about his Outlawed by Andrea Pitzer (Scribner, $29) personality. As a result, Icebound “lacks the by Anna North (Bloomsbury, $26) human element of the greatest adventure A summary of Anna North’s third novel The North Pole has a tales.” But Pitzer finds plenty of drama, “can make it sound gimmicky,” said magnetic pull in more first by situating the action in the context Maureen Corrigan in NPR.org. In an alter- ways than one, said of the imperial ambitions of the Dutch native 1894 America where women are David Shribman in Republic shortly after its liberation from ostracized and imprisoned if they bear The Boston Globe. Spain. Barents believed the ancient myth no children, a young runaway bride joins “Generations of that an oasis of warmer, open water lay a multiracial group of bandits who iden- explorers and adven- at Earth’s upper reaches, but twice got no tify as female or nonbinary. For all the turers have sought farther than an icy island jutting out from ways North “ingeniously” stretches the an arctic passage,” limits of the Western, though, “she’s also central Russia. Pitzer writes vividly about and their quest has the “unnerving isolation” of venturing into clearly a fan,” relishing the genre’s gun- often led to doom. fights and dramatic landscapes. “Never uncharted waters, and ahead await encoun- once does the story feel weighted down This was the case ters with polar bears and sightings of carved by its subject matter,” said Alicia Lutes for William Barents, a Dutch cartographer idols on distant shores. in USA Today. The gang and its enig- who attempted to find an arctic passage to matic leader are curiously well-versed in the Far East centuries before Robert Peary The third voyage yielded discovery of the feminist theory, but they also ride horses and Frederick Cook staged their race to Svalbard archipelago, but at a lethal cost, and rob banks, and are generally “the the North Pole. Journalist Andrea Pitzer said Richard Schiffman in CSMonitor.com. sort of mythologized Western badasses resurrects Barents’ three late-16th-century Barents’ ship collided with an ice floe, and the men alone often get to be.” North expeditions, drawing on accounts left by his the crew was forced to dismantle it to build misses an opportunity to do more with shipmates. The result is “a gripping adven- a makeshift hut. Some men succumbed indigenous communities and their tradi- ture tale that deserves an honored place in to the cold or to scurvy, and Barents died tional openness to gender fluidity. Still, the long bookshelf of volumes dealing with during the crew’s “astonishing” journey she has c reated a captivating group of arctic shipwrecks, winter ordeals, and sur- home in two small skiffs. Pitzer labels him characters and a story that’s hard to put vival struggles.” “the patron saint of devoted error,” but y down. “It’s The Handmaid’s Tale meets r e k her book honors his fortitude, becoming a True Grit in the best sense, but also B a i The book “faces limitations due to its “a tribute to the seemingly limitless human d something wholly its own.” e

M very old source material,” said Michael capacity to confront darkness and endure.”

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 24 ARTS The Book List

Author of the week Best books…chosen by Angie Thomas Angie Thomas is the author of The Hate U Give, a young-adult best-seller since Gabriel Byrne its 2017 release. Below, she names six books that were touchstones as she wrote Gabriel Byrne might have a Concrete Rose, a prequel featuring Starr Carter’s father when he was only 17. few more books in him—if he can avoid the delete key, The Rose That Grew From Concrete Long Way Down b y Jason Reynolds (2017). said Sarah Lyall in The New by Tupac Shakur (1999). This is a collection of Long Way Down is a masterpiece from one of York Times. The actor’s poetry written by Tupac before he became a star. the best authors that children’s literature has ever new memoir, Walking With The autobiographical title poem, which inspired seen. Told in verse, it follows a young boy, Will, Ghosts, has already won my novel’s title, movingly describes the beauty as he takes an elevator ride on his way to avenge praise from literary stars and resilience that can be found in so many his brother’s murder. But over the course of the and fellow young Black men; beauty and resilience that are ride, he encounters the spirits of those he’s lost to Irish natives often overlooked. gun violence. Haunting but necessary. Colum McCann, The Autobiography of Malcolm X a s told Between the World and Me b y Ta-Nehisi Edna O’Brien, to Alex Haley (1965). Malcolm X’s biography Coates (2015). Although Coates wrote this book and Colm shares his beginnings as a hustler known as as a letter to his Black son, it is also a letter to all Tóibín. But Byrne almost Detroit Red and his rise as a civil rights leader Black boys, and to all of us, about what it truly blew his who despite his early death continues to influ- means to be Black in America. chance at having any read- ence movements for social justice. ers. About a year ago, Dear Justyce b y Nic Stone (2020). Anyone he was finishing up the Monster b y Walter Dean Myers (1999). I am who follows me on social media knows that Nic manuscript when one false able to write the young adult novels that I write Stone is one of my best friends, but she’s also keystroke made his laptop only because of Walter Dean Myers. Monster one of my favorite authors. Her phenomenal go blank. “It was kind of dev- is a modern classic. Through a combination of follow-up to 2017’s Dear Martin tells the story astating,” he says. “I went screenplay excerpts and diary entries, it tells the of Quan, a young man incarcerated and accused to the store where they have story of 16-year-old Steve Harmon as he awaits of murder. More than that, it’s a story of Black the geniuses, and I said, trial for murder, and shows us the dehumaniza- boyhood, the ways in which the system fails ‘I want your most genius tion that Black boys often endure, especially boys like Quan, and how we can create a better genius.’ And he said, ‘Unless within the justice system. world for them. you can get some kind of spy agency involved in this, it’s gone.’” Fortunately, Byrne, now 70, had enough of it in Also of interest...in literary rediscoveries his head to quickly rewrite it. W-3 Tomorrow Will Be Better The focus of the book is the by Bette Howland (A Public Space, $26) by Betty Smith (Harper Perennial, $17) actor’s Irish childhood. The eldest son of a Guinness How fortunate that this “remarkably “There’s usually a reason the forgotten barrel maker, Byrne aspired perceptive” 1974 memoir was recently work of a prominent author has been to be a priest. But after he found in a dollar bin by a savvy lit- forgotten,” said Maureen Corrigan in left Dublin at 11 for a semi- erary editor, said Katy Waldman in The Washington Post. But the novel nary in England, a friendly NewYorker.com. Its author, a onetime Betty Smith wrote after A Tree Grows priest there groomed and Saul Bellow protégée, spent time in a in Brooklyn is a forgotten treasure. molested him. Decades Chicago psych ward after a 1968 suicide attempt, Unlike Francie Nolan, this book’s heroine is later, Byrne tried to confront and her account of that stay feels both “startlingly mostly past dreaming and soon in a marriage the priest over the phone, unmediated” and meticulously composed. The that’s sexually unsatisfying. The book’s cynicism but the older man claimed ward comes to feel totalitarian, “a place that takes about the American dream cost it readers in 1948 no memory of Byrne. That over one’s identity so completely that it can seem but “makes it a more intriguing novel now,” and experience, said Karl Geary to predict one’s every move.” its snapshots of 1920s Brooklyn are priceless. in LitHub.com, confirmed for Byrne that life often The Hearing Trumpet The Copenhagen Trilogy resists the tidiness of fiction. “There’s an idea, which I by Leonora Carrington (NYRB Classics, $16) by Tove Ditlevsen (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30) don’t subscribe to, that you In this “mind-flaying masterpiece” Tove Ditlevsen was, before her 1976 face the problem, you find from 1974, artist Leonora Carrington suicide at age 58, “one of Denmark’s closure, and you move on,” showed what a surrealist novel ought most famous and extravagantly he says. “I realized that there to be, said Blake Butler in The New tortured writers,” said Liz Jensen in doesn’t have to be a resolu- York Times. A 92-year-old who has TheGuardian.com. But her “mordant, tion.” Having finished one book, he’s now working on been sent to a cultish retirement home vibrantly confessional” autobiographi- another, this time a novel. “I winds up resisting complacency, and unlocks a cal work also feels perfectly contemporary. She would hesitate to call myself passage to landscapes “populated with orgies, wrote about her unhappy working-class child- m a

riddles, doppelgängers, and stairways to hell.” hood, her early career, and her warped fourth y a writer,” he says. “But some y a h K

The tale upends expectations about time, space, marriage and addiction in three late books, and kind of an instinct is saying i n a

and the psyche, and Carrington’s “gifts of wit, that trilogy, though only a small part of her leg- m

to me, Do it.” I

, P

imagination, and suspense” hold it all together. acy, is “a masterpiece in its own right.” A

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 Review of reviews: Music & Stage ARTS 25 Sea shanties: Why TikTok has gone mad for whaling songs If you’ve been hearing old-time mari- huge group of people into one col- time songs resounding across social lective body,” and they perfectly fit media, “you might be wondering what, the mood of many of us. Yes, it is exactly, has happened to the teens,” odd that a song from 19th-century said Kyle Piscioniere in Slate.com. For New Zealand, one that takes its title the past two weeks, TikTok’ers have from a provisions supply company been donning Shetland sweaters and called Weller Bros., should light up belting out sea shanties about butcher- the internet in 2021. Then again, ing whales or reuniting with brown- “‘Wellerman’ is a great, boisterous haired maidens. The craze ignited in bop of a song in any century.” late December, when Nathan Evans, a 26-year-old Scottish mailman and “TikTok’s functionality deserves some aspiring musician, logged into TikTok credit,” said Travis Andrews in The to post his rendition of “Soon May the A ‘Wellerman’ chorus assembled on TikTok Washington Post. The app has a Wellerman Come.” Before long, salty recently updated “duet” feature that a point on it, very white.” That’s why a dogs around the world began adding har- encourages users to incorporate exist- key boost to the TikTok trend was a short monies, creating a cache of shanty videos ing clips in their videos. That has enabled reaction video posted by Promise Uzowulu, that has collectively racked up more than strangers to harmonize with Evans and a young black man from Houston who 74 million views. “Part of the joy comes with other users who’ve already done so initially displays disgust when his brother in the self-aware absurdity of the trend.” until the result is an a cappella choir or, if plays “Wellerman” on their car stereo, then But the outpouring of enthusiasm for they play an instrument, a choir with an softens and enthusiastically joins the sing- #ShantyTok is not entirely ironic. orchestra. Ultimately, the appeal of shan- along. Despite how white they sound, shan- ties is not so different from what it was for Not that shanties could ever be cool, said ties are closely related to African-American the seamen who first sang these tunes, said Kathryn VanArendonk in NYMag.com. field songs: Shanties were sung by crews on Angela Watercutter in Wired.com. “At a These tunes “sound the way a bowl of ships to coordinate the work of unfurling time when people have to be far apart, join- New England clam chowder looks: impre- sails and hauling nets. “They are unifying, ing together in song—even over TikTok— cise, sort of lumpy, and, not to put too fine survivalist songs, designed to transform a feels like a moment of togetherness.”

Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side A new oldest animal painting ++++ This one is “not just another pig,” said Maya Wei-Haas in NationalGeographic the monologist’s grasp of reality. Her story .com. In a paper published last week, spills forth in disordered impressions, “the archae- way one might break open a piggy bank ologists and watch the coins scatter across a table.” presented evidence You can understand why Kennedy’s work is that the widely revered but not often produced, said portly hog Maya Phillips in The New York Times. Her found on a way of addressing the experience of being cave wall in black in America is to create black charac- Indonesia ters who “never simply exist in one place is at least Sulawesi’s prize swine or in one moment.” Her plays are “full of 45,500 Clay: Our twice-unreliable narrator years old, making it the world’s oldest leaps in time, rapid shifts in setting, con- known work of figurative art. Though it One of the benefits of encountering a stantly changing perspectives, and characters probably isn’t dramatically older than new Adrienne Kennedy play online, said who embody disparate identities at once.” other cave images also found on the Peter Marks in The Washington Post, “is Etta and Ella is one of four works featured island of Sulawesi, the dating of the that you can watch it more than once.” in a current online festival of Kennedy plays, image adds to recently growing evidence The remarkable playwright, now 89, has and even at 32 minutes, it ranks as “the that complex art arose independently in been crafting challenging work since her most enigmatic of the bunch.” Such are Europe and Asia or that humans were 1964 debut, Funnyhouse of a Negro. the risks in the playwright’s ongoing bid to already painting animals before migrat- Her latest work, moreover, is “quintes- present blackness as a splintered, untenable ing out of Africa. This particular warty t r e

b sential Kennedy: fragmentary yet coher- identity built on a foundation of violence. pig seems to have been facing others in a u A

e ent, blisteringly visceral yet enigmatically Often the result is “a bold rendezvous with scene obscured by flaking of the cave wall, m i x a unique.” Actress Caroline Clay, playing truth.” At other times, “it’s a bramble.” said Brian Handwerk in Smithsonian M

, e Mag.com. Until human remains that date r one of two accomplished twins, delivers Either way, said Vinson Cunningham in The t a e h New Yorker, she remains “one of our great- from the same period are found nearby, a

T a seated monologue recounting a lifelong e s possibility exists that the artist belonged to u rivalry that has culminated in dual mania est and least definable living playwrights.” o H a different hominid species. d and a violent encounter. But Clay is the $17.50, roundhousetheatre.org or mccarter n u o

R other twin as well—if we can even trust .org, through Feb. 28

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 26 ARTS Review of reviews: Film & Home Media

barrels toward a shock ending, it “starts to The New Yorker, “is its fusing of the feel at odds with itself, as if it were trying impassioned and the grimly palpable.” A to make you cackle and weep at the same gamble on romance throws the protago- time.” Director Emerald Fennell’s “glibly cyn- nist into a bleak and bewildering new life. ical” script is largely held together, though, Given the setup’s allure, “it comes as a by Mulligan’s wrenching performance, said genuine disappointment when the puzzle Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. “The argu- of the plot is solved.” In select theaters or ments you may have after the lights come via virtual cinemas. (Not rated) up will be well worth having. But it’s the sadness behind Cassie’s practiced smile, the Our Friend wildfire fury behind the sadness, and the Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, and Jason reasons for that fury, that may haunt you Segel’s new cancer drama should be about Mulligan and Burnham: An unlikely connection when the arguments are over.” (In theaters the ugliness of dying, said Peter Debruge or $20 on demand) R in Variety. That’s what magazine writer Promising Matthew Teague wanted to put across after Other new films his wife died at 34 and he wrote the essay Young Woman Acasa, My Home this movie is based on. But while the per- ++++ This “complicated, bittersweet” Romanian formances are “top notch,” the screenplay documentary about a family living off the “doesn’t have the nerve to do what Teague Watching Carey Mulligan in Promising grid “taps into something primal in the did,” instead presenting a sentimental story Young Woman, “all I felt was exhilaration,” human condition,” said A.O. Scott in The of friendship and a “dishonest, sanitized, no- said Alex Abad-Santos in Vox.com. The New York Times. After raising nine children help-to-anyone TV movie version of death.” actress deserves an Oscar for her perfor- in a marshland within Bucharest, moody In theaters or on demand. (R) mance in this “blistering” revenge thriller, in patriarch Gica Enache is forced to relocate which she plays a med school dropout who the entire clan and adapt to city life. Their Notturno devotes her life to punishing date rapists story underscores the conflict between Gianfranco Rosi’s portrait of civilian life like the “nice guy” who destroyed her best our desires for freedom and for the secu- amid the ravages of ISIS “finds an awful friend’s life. On nightly prowls, Mulligan’s rity of community. In theaters and via poetry in that rubble and darkness,” said Cassie feigns drunkenness, baiting men into KinoMarquee.com. (Not rated) Steve Pond in TheWrap.com. The Italian bringing her home before turning the tables filmmaker shows “an exquisite eye for com- on them. But Cassie isn’t just the embodi- Preparations to be Together for an position” in this documentary made up of ment of a female power fantasy; “she’s a Unknown Period of Time vignettes of people trying to go about their tragedy.” We’re meant to glimpse her inner In Hungary’s evocative Oscar submis- lives in war-racked Iraq, Syria, Kurdistan, struggle when, unexpectedly, she falls for sion, a neurosurgeon moves to Budapest and Lebanon. “It’s hard to watch Notturno an actual nice guy, played by Bo Burnham, only to be told by the man she relocated at times, but to the director’s credit, it’s also said Justin Chang in NPR.org. But the wild for that he’s never met her. “What sets impossible to look away.” In select theaters tonal shifts continue, and as this movie this film apart,” said Anthony Lane in or via virtual cinemas. (Not rated)

New and notable podcasts Archewell Audio In Strange Woods Anything for Selena (Gimlet) (Atypical Artists) (WBUR) “If there was one “There might be The legend of Selena good thing to come another fictional docu- Quintanilla-Pérez, out of 2020, it was series musical out recently named by that Meghan Markle there, but I certainly Billboard as the great- and Prince Harry haven’t heard it,” said est female Latin artist became podcasters,” Rob Herting in The Wall of all time, is “still said Julia Marzovilla Street Journal. Lauren growing 25 years in MarieClaire.com. Shippen, who produced after her death,” said Several months after they distanced the hit 2015 podcast The Bright Sessions, PodcastReview.org. This new podcast from themselves from the British royal family, shows her talent for fiction again with this radio journalist Maria Garcia covers the the duke and duchess of Sussex signed a ambitious tale. It initially unfolds in true- Tejano pop star’s musical legacy, her com- multimillion-dollar contract with Spotify, crime fashion as an 18-year-old disappears plex family life, and her murder at 23. But it and this nascent series is the first fruit of in a Minnesota forest, and when his body is, above all, a meditation on what Selena that partnership. In the debut episode, is found, his death is partially attributed to has meant to fans, and Garcia is “wise the famous co-hosts don’t interview their a lack of survival training. Within minutes, to always return to the personal.” Both guests, said Nardine Saad in the Los though, “any question of vérité is com- subject and host struggled with a sense Angeles Times. Instead, the now California- pletely removed when the characters break of not belonging. Garcia, who was born in based couple offer commentary while into song,” said Phoebe Lett in The New Mexico and raised in El Paso, was made to sharing prerecorded reflections on 2020 York Times. The focus turns to the victim’s feel like a foreigner in both countries until from friends such as Elton John, tennis star sister, played by Lily Mae Harrington, who the rise of the crossover singer gave her a Naomi Osaka, and activist Stacey Abrams. decides to study wilderness survival with role model. Garcia works to correct certain Given the political nature of some of the a hermit played by Patrick Page. Listeners misconceptions, including that Selena’s conversation, some U.K. critics argue that who dislike musicals may not love the mix father was a villainous tyrant, said Nicholas Harry and Meghan need to renounce their of genres, but “the vocal performances are Quah in NYMag.com. Already more prom-

titles to carry on. But really, “there’s noth- beautiful,” the songs heighten the drama, ising than Netflix’s recent Selena series, s e r u t

ing to frighten the horses here,” said Fiona and the sister’s perilous trek toward the Anything for Selena is also studded with a e F

Sturges in the Financial Times. Better yet, truth about her brother’s death “makes for evocative descriptions of the borderlands. s u c o

“there are moments of genuine poignance.” a compelling story.” “I highly recommend it.” F

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 Television ARTS 27

Streaming tips The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching

Memorable thieves... POV: The Mole Agent Cinema has never had a spy quite like Sergio Lupin Chamy. An 83-year-old widower in ill-fitting Omar Sy could be the next tweed, the retiree agreed to go undercover in James Bond. In this five-part a nursing home while documentary cameras French series, he plays a gentleman thief who steals tracked his every move. Sergio never uncovered a necklace from the Louvre elder abuse, but director Maite Alberdi followed to exact revenge for the his lead and let her film become a poignant drama death of his Senegalese im- about a largely female community and a real migrant father. The clever catch: the kind of man who truly listens. Monday, twists keep coming, many Jan. 25, at 9:30 p.m., PBS; check local listings inspired by the protagonist’s love of French crime fiction’s Resident Alien Arsène Lupin. Netflix If the new doctor in town seems a little creepy, that could be because he’s an extraterrestrial. In The Long Song: Lawrance with Hayley Atwell White Collar this dramedy series, Alan Tudyk has fun playing Speaking of dashing an alien who’s struggling to pretend he’s human But life is not so simple, as we’re reminded by thieves, they don’t come after a crash landing gives him no better option. the narrator of this striking three-part drama more charming than Matt Having assumed the form of a doctor and then series based on Andrea Levy’s 2010 novel. Bomer’s Neal Caffrey. Caf- learned to speak English by watching crime Tamara Lawrance stars as July, a former slave frey is a crook and con man shows, he’s weirdly thrilled when the local sheriff recruited by an FBI agent to looking back years later on how, after being help solve high-price crimes, asks him to assist in a murder case. Wednesday, snatched from her mother and trained as the and his exploits hold interest Jan. 27, at 10 p.m., Syfy personal maidservant to a frivolous mistress, through six seasons. Hulu The Dig she found ways to exercise power in the face of Shortly before World War II, a widow curious cruelty. Sunday, Jan. 31, at 10 p.m., PBS, check The Heist local listings Think you’ve got what it about the earthen mounds scattered about her takes to pull off the big job? English estate called in a local archaeologist Other highlights This British reality show to start shoveling. Carey Mulligan and Ralph Snowpiercer puts 10 ordinary folks in the Fiennes co-star in this gorgeously shot drama A few cars are missing from the Snowpiercer as cat burglar’s seat, dangling based on the true story of one of Britain’s great- Season 2 begins for the series adaptation of the 250,000 pounds in front of est archaeological finds. Available for streaming sci-fi thriller about a train circling a frozen globe, them and challenging them Friday, Jan. 29, Netflix carrying all of humanity’s survivors. Monday, to execute a heist. If they Jan. 25, at 9 p.m., TNT manage to keep the loot hid- Palmer den from detectives for two Maybe Justin Timberlake can do drama. In We Are: The Brooklyn Saints weeks, the money is theirs. this affecting though sometimes affected movie In a four-part docuseries, black Brooklyn comes Amazon Prime from director Fisher Stevens, the pop star and together to field a youth football program that sometime actor plays Eddie Palmer, an ex-con teaches boys how to win on the field and off. Dirty Money who works as a janitor at his old high school Available for streaming Friday, Jan. 29, Netflix Not all thieves plunder banks and happens into the role of father figure to The Little Things and art museums. Docu- a young boy who’s bullied for being gender- mentarian Alex Gibney’s In a movie that will be in theaters simultaneously nonconforming. Available for streaming Friday, multipart series jumps from with its HBO Max release, three Oscar-winning Jan. 29, Apple TV+ payday-lending schemes actors—Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and to maple syrup cartels to Masterpiece: The Long Song Jared Leto—team up for a thriller about the hunt the boardrooms of major In 1831, freedom seemed near at hand for the for an L.A. serial killer. Available for streaming automakers to find common slaves who worked Jamaica’s sugar plantations. Friday, Jan. 29, HBO Max threads among scammers. The Trump Organization gets an episode, too. Netflix Show of the week Good Girls The Lady and the Dale A strong cast can take a The auto industry has seen its share of rene- show only so far. Christina gades and con artists, but none compares with Hendricks, Retta, and Mae Liz Carmichael. In the mid-1970s, Carmichael, Whitman are dynamite as a charismatic trans woman, arrived out of suburban moms who turn nowhere to promote the “Dale,” a $2,000 to crime to help pull their three-wheel car that Carmichael said was built families out of debt. But it of “rocket structural resin” and capable of an takes a full season for Good unheard-of 70 mpg. As authentic as it looked in Girls to find its edge. Once it game-show appearances, the car turned out to P

A does, the series becomes a

, be phony—no more than a shell. As this lively n o i smart, gutsy surprise—more s i docuseries reveals, the walls started closing v e l Breaking Bad than Desper- e

T in when one of Carmichael’s employees shot y a ate Housewives. Netflix d A Cinderella story, pumpkin included another. Sunday, Jan. 31, at 9 p.m., HBO y e H

• All listings are Eastern Time. THE WEEK January 29, 2021 28 LEISURE Food & Drink Flammekueche: The way to send your pizza night to Alsace This gorgeous dish, an emblem of Alsatian cover pan, and set in a warm spot (68 to cuisine, is the Franco-German answer to 70 degrees) until solids separate from whey, pizza, said Susan Herrmann Loomis in Plat about 3 hours. Add salt to taste. Tip solids du Jour (Countryman Press). It springs from into a cheesecloth-lined strainer set over a farm tradition, when a single farmer typi- bowl to drain, until texture resembles very cally baked bread for the village and made a soft goat’s cheese. flammekueche at the moment when the fire in his wood-burning oven was hottest. Prepare dough: In a large mixing bowl, whisk together yeast, 2 cups very warm tap A flammekueche comes together quickly, water, and ½ cup flour. Let mixture sit just but you may have to make the fromage until it begins to bubble, then add sea salt blanc if your store doesn’t carry it, or use and stir. Gradually add 2 cups flour, then extra crème fraîche as a substitute. The stir in the olive oil. Add enough of remain- flammekueche should be burnt at the ing flour to make a dough that’s firm but edges, the rest “baked to a creamy tender- not at all dry. Knead until smooth and sat- ness.” Serve it with a riesling or pinot gris iny, 5 to 6 minutes. Place in a bowl, cover and a big salad. And make at least three at The name means ‘burnt tart,’ so go for a char. with a dampened tea towel, and let rise at a time, “because all will disappear.” room temperature until doubled in bulk, For each flammekueche: about 1 hour. Recipe of the week 1 medium onion, sliced paper thin Flammekueche (tarte flambée) ½ cup fromage blanc Preheat oven to 450. Combine onion, To make 2 cups fromage blanc: ½ cup crè me fraî che cheese, creme fraîche, nutmeg, and salt and 1 qt whole milk Generous pinch of freshly ground nutmeg pepper to taste. Let sit for 15 minutes. ¹∕³ cup heavy cream Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice 6 oz bread dough Punch down dough, form into three balls, 8 drops rennet (available online) Semolina for dusting (optional) and roll one onto a lightly floured surface 1 tsp fine sea salt 6 oz slab bacon, cut into matchsticks into a 10½-inch circle. Place on a baking sheet lightly dusted with flour or semolina. To make dough for 3 crusts: Prepare fromage blanc: In a medium Spread onion mixture over dough right to 1 tsp active dry yeast saucepan, whisk together milk, cream, edge. Sprinkle bacon on top. Bake until 3 to 5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour and lemon juice. Place over low heat dough is crisp and bacon is browned, about 2 tsp fine sea salt until mixture reaches 100 degrees (do not 20 minutes. Serve immediately, dusted with 3 tbsp olive oil boil). Remove from heat. Whisk in rennet, more pepper, if you like.

Wine: Box scores Home cooking: The joy of following recipes to the letter The world can always use more high- Once you gain confi dence as a home cook, and you’re quality boxed wine, said Dave McIntyre cooking every night, “it’s diffi cult to stray from the in The Washington Post. Boxed wine is steadiness you know,” said Genevieve Ko in The New not exposed to air, so it stays fresh for York Times. But I made a resolution to try something weeks, and it’s far more Earth-f riendly different in 2021: seeking out new recipes and follow- than wine in a bottle. Still, being selec- ing them to the letter. There are obvious benefi ts, of tive pays, and these three wines are “not course, to “eating something delicious and learning just drinkable, but delicious.” something new.” But following a precisely composed Domaine Bousquet Natural Origins recipe precisely also is a way to taste the passion and Malbec ($20 for 3 liters). The math tells experience of another person and perhaps of another you this organic wine from Argentina place. I call it “cooking with empathy,” and I like to It starts with close reading. would be $5 a bottle. That’s one reason think it’s a way to promote greater unity and under- it’s a remarkable value. The standing. It’s also a way to travel beyond your own kitchen. Below, some tips: other: “It’s freaking delicious.” Seek recipes that demand precision. “No-recipe recipes” are all the rage these days, and 2019 Nik Weis Mosel Urban are highly useful. But look instead for recipes developed by someone with a passion for Riesling ($35). This off-dry the dish, someone who’s precise in explaining technique and the reasons for it. To help German riesling “makes a weed out recipes that are only half-c onsidered, choose cookbooks in which testers are great everyday white wine thanked in the acknowledgments. as well as a nice match with Track down every ingredient. When you’re trying to learn about other cuisines, the hunt y r

slightly spicy stir-fries, funky for even hard-to-fi nd ingredients is part of the process. Internet shopping simplifi es the e k a B

cheeses, or charcuterie.” task, but also consider nearby ethnic markets you’ve not visited before; “it’s a way to see, a i d

I Am Pinot Grigio ($20). Re- smell, and hear the world.” e M

,

member this Romanian white Read the whole cookbook. You know to read the whole recipe before starting. You’ll d n o

come June. It’s “simple, crisp, often learn even more if you also read at least the top notes and introductory material to m m a

refreshing—just what you understand the dish in context. Finally, resist the temptation to alter the method because H

s i want from a summer wine.” it’s not your norm. “What makes cooking exciting is how much more there is to discover.” c n a r F

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 Consumer LEISURE 29

The Ford Mustang Mach-E: What the critics say The Detroit News Mustang. But even the slowest Mach-E can Detroit has finally gotten smart. Ford’s first reach 60 mph in 6.1 seconds, and driving mass-market EV turns out to be “a Model it “feels great,” the vehicle’s easy speed Y doppelgänger” that goes “spec to spec” complemented by its airy, “smartly ap- with Tesla’s compact SUV instead of trying pointed” cabin. Its only performance flaw to be different. Delivering “torque-tastic” seems to be a “slight touchiness” in the acceleration, a range of up to 300 miles in braking system. premium models, assisted driving, and such niceties as a panoramic sun roof and 15.5- Autoblog.com inch touchscreen, the first plug-in Mustang Tesla maintains a few advantages. Though makes comparison shopping easy: “Yes, the its range numbers are similar, the Model Y Ford’s Y: From $42,895 before tax credits Mustang Mach-E is as good as a Tesla.” burns 30 percent less energy per mile, and Ford’s network of public charging stations for the $7,500 federal tax credit that Model The Wall Street Journal “remains a fraction of the size of Tesla’s.” Y buyers no longer receive. “Among the Only “creative laziness” can explain why this Ford has many more dealerships to turn to reasons to choose the Ford, those 7,500 high-sitting four-door hatchback is called a for service, though, and the Mach-E qualifies may end up the most compelling.”

The best of...work-from-home desk chairs

Herman Miller Aeron Steelcase Leap HON Ignition 2.0 Staples FlexFit Laura Davidson Soho The gold standard for Steelcase’s “supremely This mesh-back budget Hyken Task Chair Management Chair ergonomic office chairs comfortable” throne fea- option “offers the best Don’t sleep on Staples, At under $300, this “may be the symbol tures a “live back” that lumbar support of any whose own mesh task style-first chair “almost of dot-com excess, but flexes around the con- chair under $500.” It chair is surprisingly feels like an unfair there’s a good reason for tours of the user’s spine. also offers many of the comfortable. “It isn’t the secret.” It lacks full that: It is damn comfort- You can adjust the seat adjustments provided pinnacle of luxury, com- adjustability, but its able.” After years of fine depth, tilt resistance, by premium chairs, and fort, or style, but it’s a leatherette cushions tuning, the Aeron is “a and lumbar support, its smooth-rolling cast- perfectly good option for come in seven different marvel of material engi- and once you’re dialed ers and firm armrests most people,” especially colors and the alumi- neering”; even the fabric in, “the initial comfort are uncommon at this anyone trying not to num arms can easily be tension is adjustable. doesn’t wear off.” price point. spend more than $200. detached or reattached. $1,445, hermanmiller.com From $772, steelcase.com $350, wayfair.com $170, staples.com $295, lauradavidsondirect.com Source: TomsGuide.com Source: BusinessInsider.com Source: TheWirecutter.com Source: Wired.com Source: GQ.com

Tip of the week... And for those who have Best apps... Pro painters’ trade secrets everything... To make the workday a little easier QBuy extra buckets. Pros don’t wipe their Cut down on trips to the dry QYac lets you replace impersonal text mes- brushes on the lip of the can as they paint; cleaner with the LG Styler, saging with “good old-fashioned voicemail.” they pour paint into a container that lets an app-controlled smart On a phone, laptop, or desktop, you simply them tap the sides lightly after loading the closet that’s capable of tap to record and send a voice clip. Each clip brush tips with paint. Pouring between “some seriously high-tech is also transcribed and made searchable. buckets is also the best way to mix paint— clothing care.” The slim, QPencil Planner is an iOS app that lets you including for color consistency. stand-alone appliance uses take notes, jot down appointments, and QAdd paint extender. Lap marks on a wall steam to refresh, sanitize, check off to-do lists with an Apple Pencil. are “the telltale sign that a room has been and remove wrinkles and “It’s not the only app that tries to emulate painted by a novice.” Additives such as Flo- odors from suits and other paper planners, but it’s the best-executed.” etrol slow drying times and level the applied delicate garments. The QOh Bother, another iOS app, can reduce paint, “virtually eliminating brushstrokes.” Styler also houses a low- tensions between housemates working in QRewash each roller. To keep a new roller temperature dryer, meaning separate rooms. Too busy to be interrupted? cover from leaving fuzz in the painted you won’t have to air-dry Set your status to “unbotherable” for an hour. surface, wash it off, using a touch of dish your delicates anymore. It can even put a QReclaim.ai is a scheduling assistant for soap. It can be used while still damp. crease in pants. This robo-closet isn’t just for Google Calendar that can help with work/ QOne wall at a time. Don’t tackle the entire the business crowd, though: Its sanitizer set- life balance. Users create flexible windows room at once. Brushed sections and rolled ting can freshen pillows, sportswear, bath for personal activities (such as lunch or a sections “blend together beautifully” if af- mats, children’s plush toys, and other items daily walk), and Reclaim shuffles the time ter cutting in the corners you switch to the that shouldn’t be machine-washed often. blocks around when you shift to more roller before the brushed paint dries. $1,200, lg.com pressing tasks. Source: Popular Mechanics Source: Esquire.com Source: FastCompany.com

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 30 Best properties on the market This week: Homes for book lovers

1 X Boulder This 2019 four-bedroom home has an open-plan great room with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and rolling library ladder. The house blends Scandi- navian and Japanese design and features polished wood floors, artisanal tiles, and oversize windows with views of the Flatirons. The 5-acre Wildflower Ranch property includes land- scaped grounds, a barn, a pasture, a seasonal pond, water rights, and a three- car garage. $6,900,000. Carliss Erickson, LIV Sotheby’s International Realty, (303) 249-8384

2 W New York City Nobel Prize– winning author and previous owner Toni Morrison converted the third bedroom of this 1901 Tribeca loft into her library and writing room. The two- bedroom home features a living- dining area with gas fireplace; an open-plan kitchen; a master suite with dressing area, walk-in closet, soaking tub, and glass rain shower; and sweeping city views. Building amenities include a residents’ library/media room, fitness center, garden courtyard, and rooftop terrace. $4,250,000. Amanda S. Brainerd, Brown Harris Stevens, (917) 494-8858

3 X Montecito, Calif. The second bedroom of this two- bedroom Tudor features a wall-to-wall alderwood bookcase. The house also has a built-in bookcase on the stairs; a main suite with fireplace, soaking tub, and deck; and a chef’s kitchen with alderwood cabinets and tiled counters. The cul-de- sac lot has a patio, lawn, and gardens and is part of a gated community with a pool, tennis courts, and beach access. $4,200,000. Jason Siemens, Sotheby’s International Realty, (805) 455-1165

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 Best properties on the market 31

4 X Litchfield, Conn. Built in 1856 as a boys’ boarding school, this Colonial-style home has a large library with 9-foot ceilings, floor-to- ceiling bookcases, and four oversize windows. The six- bedroom house retains original carved- wood details, crown mold- ings, and five fireplaces, and includes a chef’s kitchen, butler’s pantry, and formal living and dining rooms. The 2.6-acre property in historic Litchfield features mature trees and a backyard lawn, pergola, terrace, and heated lap pool. $1,350,000. Jane Hinkel, William Pitt/ Sotheby’s Interna- tional Realty, (860) 459-0718

1

4 2

3

5 6

5 W Santa Fe The library of this five-bedroom contemporary home features wall-to-wall bookshelves, a skylight, and recessed lighting. The house includes a gourmet kitchen, a great room with stacked- sandstone fireplace, a main suite with walk-in closet and walk-in shower, and an attached guesthouse. The half-acre landscaped property on the edge of historic Santa Fe has lawns, a multilevel patio, a koi pond with waterfall, a hot tub, and views of the Sangre de Cristo and Pecos Mountains. $2,150,000. Darlene Streit, Sotheby’s International Realty, (505) 920-8001

Steal of the week

6 X Oxford, Miss. This 1991 Greek Revival stands in the center of a town famed for its connections with William Faulkner and John Grisham. The four- bedroom house has a wall-to-wall bookshelf in the game room and also features a living room with fireplace and an eat-in kitchen with hardwood floors and cabinetry and decorative tilework. The 1.1-acre lot is landscaped with trees, lawns, and a wraparound terrace. $399,900. Harry Alexander, Cannon Cleary McGraw, (662) 801-5621

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 32 BUSINESS The news at a glance

The bottom line Video: Netflix’s big bet on content pays off QBill Gates is now the top Netflix’s pandemic-fueled run Call it “a bit of luck,” but private-farmland owner shows no signs of slowing Netflix’s strategy left it “uniquely in America, with more down, said Dan Gallagher in prepared for the Covid-19 than 242,000 acres across 18 states. Cable billionaire The Wall Street Journal. The crisis,” said Tara Lachapelle in John Malone is still the coun- streaming giant said this week Bloomberg.com. For a long time, try’s biggest landowner, with that it topped 200 million the frequent criticism of Netflix 2.2 million acres of ranches subscribers for the first time was that “the business can’t and forests. Amazon’s Jeff after adding 8.5 million cus- sustain itself.” The company Bezos is also investing in land tomers in the fourth quarter, “burned so much cash in 2019— and owns more than 420,000 besting “its own projections more than $3 billion—that its acres, mostly in West Texas. by 42 percent.” The company Well-positioned for the pandemic logo should have been a flame.” Forbes.com acknowledged this torrid pace of growth is “very But when the pandemic shut down Hollywood in QThe average price for a one- unlikely to continue.” But after spending billions the spring, Netflix was ready with “hit after hit,” way domestic flight dropped “in a race to build up exclusive content,” Netflix from Tiger King to The Queen’s Gambit. The to $135 last summer, includ- ing taxes and fees, its lowest stunned investors by unexpectedly breaking even streaming wars have taught us that “continued level in at least two decades. this year, and says it may “no longer need to raise success will only be as strong as the content.” But That represents a 32 percent external financing for its day-to-day operations.” for now, “Netflix co-CEOs Reed Hastings and decline from the $198 average Shares surged on the news. Ted Sarandos get to say, ‘We told you so.’” in the summer of 2019. The New York Times The hottest thing QIn 2019, China: Economy grows despite pandemic in gaming tech Americans China, where the worldwide pandemic started, was also the only major spent economy to report economic growth in 2020, said Finbarr Bermingham Gamers and others $13.5 billion and Orange Wang in the South China Morning Post. China said this who have souped-up computers in their liv- more on week that its gross domestic product expanded by 2.3 percent last year, ing rooms have found their pets a remarkable turnaround “361 days after those i nitial lockdowns” to than on alcohol: $90 billion an unexpected cold- stop the spreading Covid-19 virus. Following a sharp contraction in the weather bonus, said to alcohol’s $76.5 billion. We first quarter, China’s economy had begun growing again by June “as also spent more than twice as Sarah Needleman in much on our pets as we did its industrial engines fired up to meet surging demand for exports.” Its The Wall Street Journal: on major appliances, fresh GDP is expected to “continue to outpace global peers.” “the more they use fruit, or tobacco products. their machines, the The Washington Post Amazon: Facing a union drive in Alabama more heat the devices QNestlé recalled more than Workers will vote on whether to form the first-ever union at an Amazon give off.” Rebecca 762,000 pounds of pepperoni facility in the United States, said Jeffrey Dastin in Reuters.com. An offi- Ratchford “hasn’t had Hot Pockets after receiving cial at the National Labor Relations Board last week rejected Amazon’s to raise the tempera- four complaints of “extrane- request for an in-person election and will allow mail-in balloting for ture this winter in her ous” materials in the frozen almost 6,200 workers at a fulfilment center in Bessemer, Ala., to take three-bedroom Cary, sandwiches, including pieces place in early February. Amazon “has long avoided unionization” and N.C., home,” thanks of glass and hard plastic. has not held an organized election in the U.S. since 2014. The company to her custom-built Associated Press has created a website, doitwithoutdues.com, that discourages Bessemer computer, which gets QA survey from E-Trade Fi- employees from joining the union. especially toasty “dur- nancial found that 29 percent ing intense battles in of investors with $1 million or Banking: Less need for emergency funds Destiny 2, the science- more in the market think it is Wall Street’s biggest banks are releasing some of their “rainy-day funds” fiction shooter game.” approaching a stock bubble, as the economic outlook brightens, said Emily Flitter in The New York How hot a system can get “depends on the and 16 percent believe we are Times. “JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. bank, released $2.9 billion already in one. Still, 59 per- type of cooling and cent expect to see another from an emergency stockpile,” helping to push the fourth-quarter profit other components in gain in the S&P 500 in the it reported last week 42 percent above last year’s. Citigroup and Bank it”; as a stunt, fast-food first quarter. of America also released a combined $2.3 billion from their loan-loss company KFC “recently CNBC.com reserves, which the banks had built up as a pandemic buffer. But bor- co-developed a gam- QThe U.S. Postal Service rowers “have been better at keeping up payments than expected.” ing computer with a delivered only 64 percent chamber for keeping its of first-class mail on time Autos: Microsoft joins GM’s self-driving effort chicken warm.” A pho- around Christmas. Perfor- Microsoft joined forces with General Motors this week to accelerate the tographer in California mance was much worse for development of self-driving cars, said Jamie LaReau in the Detroit Free who mines for Bitcoin other mail, with only one- Press. The software giant teamed with Honda and other investors to funneled heat from tenth of marketing materials pour more than $2 billion into Cruise, GM’s self-driving electric vehicle his computer through and periodicals arriving on subsidiary. GM says Cruise cars can be “safer than vehicles with human a tube “to maintain a )

time in some parts of the 2 small greenhouse in his ( drivers and eliminate traffic congestion by using technology to commu- m

country. garage” and grow heir- o c

nicate with one another.” Microsoft will also help GM scale and stream- s

The New York Times w

loom cherry tomatoes. e

line operations to get Cruise’s fleet launched by 2022. N

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 Making money BUSINESS 33

Vaccinations: Employers consider incentives, mandates Businesses and hospitals are faced with That attitude could change, said Liz a precarious balancing act, said Arielle Goodwin in The Boston Globe. The Equal Mitropoulos in ABCNews.com: “Ensuring Employment Opportunity Commission their workplaces are safe without infring- has said that workplaces can mandate ing on employees’ personal medical rights.” the Covid-19 vaccine, just as it did in Many Americans “remain hesitant to take 2009 with the swine flu vaccine, “as long the vaccine,” so hospitals and other insti- as some exemptions were included.” It’s tutions that have begun offering the first possible that “a bevy of lawsuits would inoculations have “resorted to creative accompany any decision by a private sec- solutions” to get more people to buy in. tor company,” but some might feel man- Houston Methodist, a large hospital in datory vaccination is needed to get the Texas, for instance, recently began offer- economy back on track. Even if we could ing a $500 “hope bonus” to any of its A work requirement? resolve the murky legal issues, that’s still a 26,000 workers who got vaccinated. The Los Angeles Fire De- questionable idea, said Stephen Carter in Bloomberg.com. Busi- partment is even offering its firefighters “prizes such as Canary ness and society would be better off choosing “persuasion over home security cameras, Google Nest entertainment systems, punishment.” In addition to objections on religious grounds, there Aventon fixed-gear bicycles, and gift cards for Airbnb and Lyft.” are “well-known historical reasons for racialized mistrust,” going back to “the testing of risky medical procedures on the South’s Dollar General last week became the first major retailer to in- enslaved population.” Focus on educating people, not firing them. centivize inoculations for its workers, said Sarah Krouse in The Wall Street Journal. The discount store said its 157,000 employ- There’s one more incentive that business is bringing to the table: ees would receive four hours of pay if they got the shots. The Those who decline the vaccine may have a hard time planning company “will provide paid time off to staff who have adverse their next vacation, said Monica Buchanan Pitrelli in CNBC reactions to the vaccine,” although those are rare. Other large .com. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce “referred to vaccinations as a employers are considering providing “401(k) or other cash in- ‘necessity’ for the airline’s international travelers,” and Delta Air- centives, as they do to encourage use of other wellness benefits.” lines CEO Ed Bastian echoed those remarks last month. Neither However, many companies, including Facebook, Marriott, and airline has announced a requirement yet. But hotels that require Discover, have been cautious about mandates, indicating they vaccinations could offer “a boutique sales pitch” to “tap into a would “stop short of requiring” vaccines. ‘Covid-safe’ market.”

What the experts say Charity of the week The ‘Russian doll’ workplace and “the amount you spent on payroll costs, Big City Mountaineers The growth of subcontracting is making it which can include some benefits expenses.” (bigcitymountaineers more common to “not actually work for the Borrowers will generally be taken at their .org) brings trans- people you work for,” said Henry Grabar in word on this; previously, lenders had received formative outdoor trips to youth liv- Slate.com. E mergency room doctors, hotel “no real guidance” and often “asked for more ing in low-income cleaners, and delivery drivers don’t have paperwork to back the loans up, just in case.” neighborhoods. very much in common —except for the fact The PPP program has been relaunched with The organiza- that “their jobs increasingly come from na- an additional $284 billion; while 60 percent tion offers two programs for chil- tionwide firms that specialize in a particular of any money borrowed still has to be applied dren and teenagers employment niche.” Business professor David to payroll, rules have become more flexible on at no cost: an overnight camp for youth Weil estimates more than 4 in 5 hotel work- what expenses qualify for the rest. ages 8 to 12 and a weeklong wilderness ers actually worked for staffing companies expedition for teens led by experienced The twice-a-year approach to investing field guides. These trips, for kids who hired by the hotel operator. Businesses like would otherwise have little chance to these “Russian doll” arrangements because My investment approach involves making experience the wilderness, bring them they can reduce costs, but they are increas- decisions twice a year, said Paul Brown in The out of their comfort zone, give them a ingly creating a “fissured workplace,” which New York Times: On Jan. 1 and July 15 (my chance to develop their confidence, and let them build a deeper connection to detaches employees from the shared successes birthday). That’s it. “On those two days, I nature. The weeklong expeditions have a and makes it harder for workers to seek bet- will sit down and evaluate both my asset al- 1:1 youth-adult ratio, giving teens ample ter work conditions and benefits. location and my individual holdings, changing opportunities for intense mentorship and only what I absolutely need to.” On the other guidance. Founded in 1990, BCM has One-page PPP loan forgiveness provided life-changing experiences to 363 days, “I have made a commitment not to more than 8,000 kids. Loan forgiveness for companies that par- act.” I learned about investing from my father, ticipate in the Paycheck Protection Program who was “convinced he could outsmart the Each charity we feature has earned a has become easier, said Gabrielle Bienasz in market” but never did. I started investing in four-star overall rating from Charity Inc.com. The process has been streamlined passively managed index funds in the 1980s, Navigator, which rates not-for-profit for business owners who borrow less than and the majority of my portfolio remains in organizations on the strength of their $150,000. They will be “required to submit a them today. “When I think about my father’s finances, their governance practices, and the transparency of their operations. single, one-page form” asking “the number of approach to financial planning, I realize what Four stars is the group’s highest rating. P

A employees your company was able to retain” he was doing was essentially gambling.”

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 34 Best columns: Business

Corporate politics: Principle, or opportunism? America’s CEOs have suddenly other institution has cratered, cor- become “a new political force,” porations are trying to project “con- wielding “awesome power,” said fidence in the rule of law and the Felix Salmon in Axios.com. “They stability of democratic institutions.” have money, they have power, and Sure they are, said Paul Waldman they have more of the public’s trust in The Washington Post—at least than politicians do.” We saw that on as long as they think they face a full display last week from a “broad risk of being “targeted by boycotts coalition of CEOs who are silencing because they’re helping to fund the Trump and punishing his acolytes GOP’s sedition caucus.” They’ll in Congress.” Corporate political hold on to their contributions for action committees, or PACs, gave now. But they’ll change their minds $91 million directly to members of when Republicans come calling and the House of Representatives in the say, “You can have all the tax cuts last election cycle, according to The you want.” New York Times, and companies At least 48 major corporations are rethinking contributions. spent billions more on political Indeed, you shouldn’t assume that advertising through “Super PACs.” Now many of them have corporate America “spontaneously grew a conscience,” said turned off the money to politicians who voted to overturn the Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. However, there may be a dif- election results. In 2019, corporate leaders took the political ferent business calculus at work. “Corporate America is running stage reluctantly, largely responding to outside pressure. This so far to the left of the GOP because both corporations and par- time they are actively flexing their muscles and mobilizing on ties try to win the future.” Corporations do that by appealing to coronavirus response, racial justice, and climate change. consumers, parties do it by appealing to voters. The Republican Party, though, has followed its “older, whiter, less-educated” Let’s hope the CEOs’ resolve sticks, said Joe Nocera in B loomberg base to the right while “younger Americans and college-educated .com. “When I suggested a week ago that companies should stop Americans have moved sharply left.” Companies are acting just making campaign contributions to House and Senate Republicans as cowardly or brave “as their consumer demographic allows who perpetuated the fiction that Joe Biden had stolen the presi- them to be.” For many decades, “college-educated Americans dential election, I didn’t really think it would happen.” It has—in voted far to the right of those without diplomas,” said Eric fact, at least 48 major corporations have now taken this stance. Levitz in New York magazine. Now that’s turned upside down, This is “more than public relations and more than a purely busi- and companies are siding with their most valuable employees ness calculation.” In a country in which trust in almost every and customers in a time of “historic generational polarization.”

The national debt rose almost $7.8 trillion—$23,500 have to be refinanced, adding to the government’s in- ‘King of Debt’ for each person in the country—during President terest bill. Massive spending was justified last spring Trump’s time in office, said Allan Sloan and Cezary to ward off economic devastation. But “federal skips out Podkul. It’s now “at its highest level relative to finances under Trump had become dire before the our economy since the end of World War II.” But pandemic.” With his 2017 tax cuts and unrestrained on the bill 75 years ago, we didn’t have social outlays like Medi- spending, the “self-styled ‘King of Debt’” oversaw the Allan Sloan and care “baked into our budget,” and America’s postwar third-largest increase in the deficit in the history of Cezary Podkul recovery enabled the debt to rapidly fall. That won’t the United States, trailing only George W. Bush and The Washington Post happen this time. Even with rates at record lows, the Abraham Lincoln. Unlike them, however, “Trump government’s net interest cost in the 2020 fiscal year did not launch two foreign conflicts or have to pay outstripped “all spending on education, employment for a civil war.” The burden now threatens our kids, training, research, and social services.” Rates, though, making the explosive rise in debt one of Trump’s won’t stay this low forever. All the borrowing will most “profoundly damaging legacies.”

Jim Simons disproved the textbooks that said the fortune of $22.9 billion and Renaissance its reputa- This guy beat markets can never reliably be beat, but “the rules still tion as “the most successful quant hedge fund in apply to everyone else,” said Noah Smith. Simons’ history.” Simons’ record, though, will remain “out of the market. exit last week as the chairman of Renaissance Tech- reach” for almost all other hedge funds. That’s not nologies “marks the end of an era.” The core of basic just because beating the market is hard, but because, You still can’t finance theory suggests that in competitive markets even for Simons, “Medallion’s strategies don’t scale Noah Smith no trader can hold on to a winning strategy for long. up.” The Medallion Fund has long been closed to Bloomberg.com But Simons and his “merry band of math whizzes” new investors, and most of the profits it earns are did. From 1988 through 2018, “Renaissance’s flag- redistributed to keep it at a manageable $10 billion. ship Medallion Fund had an average annual return Bigger funds just can’t generate those kinds of gains of about 40 percent after fees” (or 66 percent before for years on end. Renaissance has other funds with fees), without a single money-losing year. That stag- strategies that scale better, but they “lack Medallion’s P

gering performance has earned Simons an estimated special sauce”—and its spectacular returns. A

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 Obituaries 35 The visionary music producer who died a convicted murderer

Phil Phil Spector’s musical genius was After the Teddy Bears disbanded in 1960, Spector Spector eclipsed only by his very public descent moved to New York City and “turned to produc- 1939–2021 into murderous madness. As a record ing,” said The New York Times. Apprenticing with producer in the early 1960s, he shaped legendary songwriters Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, a string of hit singles that transformed the sound of he helped write and produce the Ben E. King classic pop and recast producers as musical auteurs. His sig- “Spanish Harlem.” Returning to Los Angeles, Spector nature achievement was the “Wall of Sound,” a dense co-founded a record label and “struck gold when he layering of drums, guitars, keyboards, horns, strings, began working with the Crystals,” a girl group that and percussion that gave a symphonic power and reached No. 1 with the 1962 single “He’s a Rebel.” sweep to hits such as the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” Soon he was “a one-man hit factory,” placing 24 the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron,” and the Righteous records in the Top 40 between 1960 and 1965. Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.” But as But his fortunes sank as Motown and the British Spector amassed accolades, his b ehavior—already Invasion took off, said The Washington Post. When the song he paranoiac and dictatorial—became increasingly erratic and violent. considered his masterwork—Ike and Tina Turner’s bombastic In 2003, he fatally shot Lana Clarkson, an actress he’d taken home “River Deep, Mountain High”—stalled on the charts, it “sent him after a night of drinking in Los Angeles. Sentenced to 19 years to reeling,” and he withdrew to his neo-Gothic mansion outside Los life, Spector remained behind bars until his death last week from Angeles. “He returned in 1969,” producing the Beatles’ final album, complications of Covid-19. “I have devils inside that fight me,” Let It Be, and subsequently making records with George Harrison Spector said in 2002. “I am my own worst enemy.” and John Lennon. But as the ’70s progressed, he went into a “psy- Spector was born “into a working-class Jewish family in the chic free fall” and became increasingly obsessed with guns, said Bronx,” said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). His ironworker father NPR.org. His second wife, Ronettes singer Ronnie Bartlett, said he committed suicide when Spector was 9 years old, leaving him to kept a gold coffin with a glass lid in the basement, promising her be raised by a mother “who alternately smothered and bullied corpse would land there if she tried to leave him. him.” The family moved to Los Angeles in 1953, and the short and He’d faded from the public eye when police were called to his man- scrawny Spector struggled to fit in at his high school. “He found his sion on Feb. 3, 2003. There they “found Clarkson dead from a salvation in music,” learning guitar, French horn, drums, and piano. gunshot wound” to the head, said Rolling Stone. In a televised trial, Spector enlisted two schoolmates in a group, the Teddy Bears, and Spector “presented a startling image” with a series of “enormous, at 18 wrote and produced the band’s first recording. “To Know unkempt” wigs; when it ended in a hung jury, he was retried and Him Is to Love Him”—a paraphrase of the words on his father’s convicted. “People tell me they idolize me, want to be like me,” he tombstone—became a No. 1 hit, selling over a million copies. said in 2002, “but I tell them, ‘Trust me, you don’t want my life.’”

The casino magnate who became a GOP kingmaker

Sheldon Sheldon Adelson was never afraid at trade shows, Adelson co-founded Comdex, a tech Adelson to place huge bets. He built a casino convention that soon drew hundreds of thousands of 1933–2021 empire that stretched from Las Vegas visitors to Las Vegas each year. to China, specializing in gaudy resorts with singing gondoliers and marble columns. The Needing more convention space, Adelson bought stout, 5-foot-5 Adelson was as pugnacious in politics “the aging Sands Hotel and Casino” for $128 mil- as he was in business, becoming the top Republican lion in 1988, said The Washington Post. After sell- donor of the past decade by contributing more than ing his share of Comdex in 1995 for $800 million, $300 million from his $33.5 billion net worth. Calling Adelson demolished the Sands and built the $1.5 bil- himself “the richest Jew in the world,” Adelson made lion Venetian resort, complete with R enaissance-style unconditional support for Israel a staple of GOP poli- frescoes, indoor canals—and more than 1,000 slot tics. After underwriting Donald Trump’s 2016 presi- machines. After his Las Vegas Sands Corp. went dential campaign, he saw a political dream realized in public in 2004, “his net worth grew for two years 2018 when the U.S. moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to by $1 million an hour,” said The New York Times. That fortune Jerusalem. Adelson borrowed his motto from football coach Vince allowed him to build a $2.4 billion Venetian resort in Macao, luring Lombardi: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Asia’s affluent with a “gaming paradise almost as big as 10 football fields.” A $5.5 billion resort in Singapore followed, as did federal He grew up in Boston’s “tough Dorchester neighborhood,” where probes into Adelson’s business tactics. his family lived in a one-bedroom tenement apartment, said the Los Angeles Times. “Mine is a rags-to-riches story,” he liked to His political leverage “grew considerably in 2010,” said the say, “but we couldn’t afford the rags.” Adelson began selling Associated Press, “after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United deci- newspapers at age 12, was in the candy vending machine business sion lifted many restrictions on individual campaign contributions.” by 16, and following a stint in the Army became a full-time entre- Along with sizable philanthropic spending, Adelson backed right- preneur. Adelson estimated he’d been “involved in at least 50 busi- wing hawks in Israel, opposed Palestinian statehood, and expressed nesses,” said The Wall Street Journal, selling toiletry kits to hotels openness to the U.S. preemptively nuking Iran. He seemed unfazed and windshield de-icers to motorists and dabbling in mortgages, when his candidates lost, his health diminished, or his businesses ) 2 (

y real estate, and chartered tours. His breakthrough came in 1979: faced lawsuits. “I don’t cry when I lose,” Adelson said. “There’s t t e

G After seeing the rise of personal computing and the lavish spending always a new hand coming up.”

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 36 The last word Wrestling with the darkness The pandemic year has been especially difficult for those of us who suffer from depression, trauma, and anxiety, said Geoff Van Dyke in 5280 Magazine. This is how it feels, and how I push through.

HE DARKNESS COMES likely” as a result of at night, or in the the pandemic, and Tmorning, or some- a September Wired times the late afternoon, in article reported that that liminal time between experts fear the dif- daytime and nighttime. ficulties surrounding It doesn’t discriminate. It Covid-19 “will add up doesn’t care that I have to a ‘second pandemic’ work to finish or that I of mental illness.” should wash the dishes It shouldn’t come as or that I need to check a surprise that many in on how my two boys’ of us have turned distance-learning school- to a particular and work is going. It doesn’t widely accepted coping care that, after seven mechanism: alcohol. months of mostly staying Not long after Denver at home, I have already Mayor Michael been examining the uglier Hancock announced recesses of my psyche. that liquor stores It comes fast and hard, would close to help and it’s nearly impossible slow the spread of the to explain to someone novel coronavirus, who hasn’t experienced lines formed outside the weight of anxiety and the shops so people depression. But I will try. could stock up on one If you imagine the excite- The insidious voice of depression can be ‘totally, completely paralyzing.’ of society’s greatest ment, anticipation, and joy numbing agents. of a forthcoming event—seeing a loved It is not always seen or felt, but it is always I didn’t need to get in line. My bar cart was one, going to a concert, a day of skiing or there lurking. I know when it comes for stocked, and my basement beer fridge was snowboarding in powder—and then you me it will hurt, and there is no remedy for full. They usually are. For years, along with invert that feeling, you will have some idea the pain. So I wait. I wait for it to pass. my daily dose of 50 milligrams of Zoloft, of what the experience is like, for me at And once it does, I wait until it comes I’ve used alcohol as an anxiolytic, as a way least. Rather than butterflies in your stom- along again. to ease my discomfort with certain social ach and a hit of dopamine or endorphins, OR THOSE WHO haven’t experienced situations and to dull the stress that comes it feels like a shroud has been dropped over clinical depression before, 2020 with everyday living. your senses. Sometimes there’s a trigger- and its laundry list of awfulness ing event: a conflict at home, a challenging F My relationship with booze was already seem almost flawlessly designed to make day at work, an unsettling segment on fraught—something I’ve discussed with someone feel depressed and anxious. the evening news. Sometimes there’s not. three different therapists over the years— Psychological trauma is considered a lead- Sometimes when I wake up, it’s just there. and the stay-at-home orders only served ing cause of depression, and this year has When it’s really bad, the colors in my field to exacerbate a long-simmering problem. delivered its share of collective traumas, of vision dim. Freed from the responsibility of having to from Covid-19 to widespread social unrest drive my boys to school at 7 a.m. most I frequently notice this desaturation of the to wildfires burning throughout the western mornings, I rationalized that there was no world when I’m driving to work, when we United States. issue with having a few extra drinks on a used to do that kind of thing. To get to my I’ve been reminded of this repeatedly weeknight. If I felt fuzzy in the morning, office in Denver’s LoDo, I drive up Speer since mid-March, when normally upbeat I’d flip open my laptop by 9:30 and no one Boulevard from my neighborhood south of friends say, “Eh, OK,” when I ask how would know. If there were ever an accept- downtown, and it’s as though everything they’re doing or when other friends who able reason to cut myself some slack, I told outside the windshield is dulled—the colors haven’t been diagnosed with depression myself, it was a global pandemic. all run together in muted shades, as if a say that, in fact, they feel depressed. A Turns out I gave myself a little too much child blended his paints a little too care- May Washington Post article cites Census latitude. I’d drink because I was depressed lessly. Nothing seems to cut through the Bureau data indicating that one-third of all about the pandemic and the tragedies gray. A favorite song, a funny podcast, a Americans are experiencing symptoms of resulting from it and because I was anx- friend checking in to ask if I’m OK—none depression or anxiety. A United Nations ious about work and any number of other y of it helps. r e

policy memo suggested, this past spring, things. The following morning, I’d have a k a B

a My mood disorder is such that I sometimes that “a long-term upsurge in the number headache and have to face the shame of i d e think of it as a predator waiting to attack. and severity of mental health problems is having lost control with alcohol, yet again. M

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 The last word 37

By early afternoon, my mind would clear These kinds of things are not at all rare— lead to adaptation. Maybe that’s as good and the regret would subside, but that for anyone. They are not disastrous traumas an explanation as any? Maybe I never felt made headspace for the depression and or life-destroying events, and for people despondent because, whether it was true or anxiety to return. It also left room for the without mood disorders, they would not be not, I felt like I could do something to help voice, the voice that tells me the reason treated as such. For someone who struggles someone I was close to and loved deeply? my company is struggling is because I with depression and anxiety, however, they On the other hand, a global pandemic, suck at my job; that the reason I’ve put on take on an outsize importance, both in real a national reckoning on systemic racism, 10 pounds is because I’m lazy and drink time and in that person’s history. raging wildfires—each of these issues feels too much; that the reason my kids are I have actually lived a very fortunate life, overwhelming, scary, impossible to fix. bored is because I’m a crappy dad. After but I have experienced events that one Each thing on its own is so massive and listening to the voice berate me for a few disorienting that it’s difficult to find hours, 5 o’clock would once again bring even the smallest way to engage in a relief. I’d crack a beer or mix a mar- meaningful substantive way. I haven’t garita. Lather, rinse, repeat. known what to do. It doesn’t seem like For people suffering through the anyone really knows what to do. It’s all despondency spurred by the pandemic totally, completely paralyzing. or social unrest or the election or EPRESSION IS THE flaw in natural disasters, the pain is real. If it’s love.” This is the opening line anything like my first encounter with ‘ in Solomon’s The Noonday depression, it’s also probably wildly D Demon and is perhaps the most suc- confusing and terribly frightening. For cinct, accurate description of the dis- those who are already familiar with ease I’ve ever read. “To be creatures melancholia, though, 2020 has delivered who love, we must be creatures who a unique blow. A May 2020 article in can despair at what we lose, and The Atlantic quotes Andrew Solomon, depression is the mechanism of that author of The Noonday Demon: An despair.” What we have all lost over Atlas of Depression, on what some of the past 11 months is immeasurable. us who have mood disorders have been What we have each lost is singular, dif- experiencing this year. “[People already ficult, and real. We are all struggling. diagnosed with a major depressive dis- We are all suffering. order] develop what some clinicians call ‘double depression,’ in which the under- I started writing this piece in May, for lying disorder coexists with a new layer myself, with no intention of publishing of fear and sorrow.” Bruce Springsteen, Kristen Bell, Dak Prescott, and it. I was in a bad spot, and as so many Lady Gaga have all suffered from depression. writers know, writing can be therapeu- Depression is bad. Double depression is tic. Writing is also an act of discovery, really awful. This is what it has looked might consider classic depression inducers, and I have discovered much over the past like for me: Over the past half year, I’ve things that could send almost anyone into few months as I’ve wrestled with my mood been pushed into profound misery for a period of sustained melancholy. Strangely, disorder and with the words on the page. roughly 48 to 72 hours at least once a these things did not do that for me. My Maybe my greatest revelation has been week. I don’t smile. I don’t laugh. I have dad has beaten cancer—twice. My mom waking up to the fact that I do want to difficulty feeling love. I contemplate differ- has painful osteoarthritic issues for which live, that my thoughts of hurting myself are ent ways of hurting myself. I want to sleep she’s had numerous surgeries. My eldest fleeting, that I have the ability to quiet the so I don’t have to think about anything son was born via an emergency C-section voice when it arrives—sometimes through anymore. Sometimes I’ll work the better after my wife suffered a placental abruption talk therapy; sometimes, yes, with the help part of the day and then crawl into bed during labor. Perhaps most significantly, of alcohol; and sometimes through the at 4:30 in the afternoon and sleep for two though, my younger brother was diagnosed simple passage of time. hours. Then, of course, I can’t fall asleep at with a rare and potentially deadly form of I have also discovered that, although the night. My mood darkens. My mind whirs. leukemia when he was 26. The voice returns. idea of telling my story makes me nervous, To this day, I’m not sure why those ordeals there is a relief in making my history with ONCE DID an exercise with my therapist didn’t drive me into abject sadness. I didn’t depression known. Of course, there is also called a trauma timeline. Everybody feel the shroud of depression lower itself the hope that this confession will make experiences trauma differently—no mat- I over my senses. The voice that so often someone feel less isolated—now, during ter how minor or major it might seem to tells me that I’m not good enough, that I’m what is arguably one of the most tumultu- others—and the trauma timeline is designed a failure, that I don’t fit in, that I c reate, ous, uncertain, and depression-inducing to identify how and when the client experi- rather than solve, problems, that I am a times in history, or later, when the pain of ences it. In doing this assignment, I learned f------idiot never appeared. This disease depression might come for no reason at all. depression, or something approaching doesn’t lend itself to easy answers, but I Beyond that, what I know for sure is that depression, had been near to me for years. have wondered if each occasion involved a I have much more to endure. In the mean- I believe it was there when, after each component of “good” stress that allowed time, I will continue to push forward, even semester in college ended, I would fall into me to be proactive and productive. as I wait for the darkness to come again. a funk. And I believe it was there when my girlfriend—now my wife—and I split up for Myriad studies explain that some varieties

) of stress are deleterious; however, it is well A version of this article originally appeared 4 a few months in our late 20s and I thought (

P

A my life was over. known that a certain amount of stress can in 5280 Magazine. Used with permission.

THE WEEK January 29, 2021 38 The Puzzle Page

Crossword No. 584: Wonders From Down Under by Matt Gaffney The Week Contest 1234 5678 910111213 This week’s question: Jacob Chansley—the shirtless, 14 15 16 horn-wearing “QAnon Shaman” who stormed the Senate chamber in the U.S. Capitol riot—has demanded 17 18 19 an organic diet in jail. “He gets very sick if he doesn’t eat organic food,” explained his mom, Martha. If Chansley, 33, were to write a cookbook of organic recipes for insur- 20 21 22 23 rectionists, what would it be called? 24 25 26 27 Last week’s contest: Danes have created a new lexicon of pandemic-inspired words, including albuehilsen, or 28 29 30 elbow greeting, coronakilos, or weight gained during lockdown, and bodegavirolog, an unqualified bigmouth 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 who considers himself an expert in virology. Please come up with a new English compound word to describe one 39 40 41 42 aspect of life in the era of Covid-19. THE WINNER: Quarantired —Mike Veitenhans, Seattle 43 44 45 SECOND PLACE: Multimasking —Laurel Rose, Pittsburgh 46 47 48 49 50 THIRD PLACE: Blursday —Amanda Marvel, Los Gatos, Calif.

51 52 53 54 55 For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to theweek.com/contest. 56 57 58 59 60 61 How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest @theweek.com. Please include your name, address, and 62 63 64 65 66 daytime telephone number for verification; this week, type “Shaman eats” in the subject line. Entries are due 67 68 69 by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, Jan. 26. Winners will appear on the Puzzle Page next issue 70 71 72 and at theweek.com/puzzles on Friday, Jan. 29. In the case of identical or similar entries, the first one received gets credit. ACROSS 45 Mamie was his first 10 Org. for attorneys 1 Dear old Dad lady 11 Dramatic “goodbye” WThe winner gets a one-year 5 Flag’s place, on a ship 46 Law & Order: ___ 12 Weighs the pros and subscription to The Week. 9 Sirs’ counterparts 48 Like some pillowcases cons of 14 Immigrant’s course, 51 1998’s award was won 13 Cut drastically, as often (abbr.) by this sprinter; she prices 15 “Moving ___ another also lit the torch at the 18 Take to heart topic...” opening of the 2020 22 It may be iced and Sudoku 16 Paula who sings Olympics in Sydney spiced “Forever Your Girl” 56 Entourage superagent 25 Fiona in Shrek, e.g. Fill in all the 17 The 2021 “Australian 57 Economic bonanza 26 Pretend to feel, as boxes so that of the Year” award will 58 Bring up, as an issue shock each row, column, be announced Jan. 25 62 Early programming 27 Pressed, as a doorbell and outlined in Canberra; 1985’s language 28 Make inroads? square includes award was won by 64 2002’s award was won 29 City southwest of all the numbers this actor, who played by this tennis star; he Geneva from 1 through 9. Crocodile Dundee won the US Open in 31 “I ___ of you!” 33 19 Boxer Ali 1997 and 1998 Speak lovingly Difficulty: 67 Three-line work 34 Belmont Stakes 20 Major shopping hard 68 Spooky sound entrant excursion 69 Cookie with a new 36 “Whatcha ___’?” 21 Greek salad ingredient brownie variety in 37 Like a tattoo artist’s 23 Ernie of golf and wine 2021 gloves, often fame 70 Delete 38 100+, for centenarians 24 2012’s award went to 71 Meal from a pot 40 Graze this thespian, who won 72 Many of these 41 Crayola hue since 1957 a Best Actor Oscar in businesses closed 42 He played Oskar in 1997 for Shine because of Covid Schindler’s List 28 Give during a telethon 47 Overhead mystery 30 Arkansas governor DOWN 49 Actress Reid Find the solutions to all The Week’s puzzles online: www.theweek.com/puzzle. Hutchinson 1 ___ up (invigorates) 50 Dazed 31 Good location for a port 2 Without delay 51 Hidden supply 32 Loaded 3 Rain cats and dogs 52 Loud, like a crowd ©2020. All rights reserved. 35 Country where 4 Claim in court 53 It parallels the fibula The Week (ISSN 1533-8304) is published weekly with an additional issue in farmers have recently 5 Pasture comment 54 On the ___ (in trouble) October, except for one week in each January, June, July, and September. protested over new 6 Lee who directed 55 Put on the books The Week is published by The Week Publications, Inc., 155 East 44th Street, 22nd fl., anti-pollution laws 2019’s Gemini Man 59 “Great job!” reply New York, NY 10017. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional 39 1971’s award went mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send change of address to The Week, PO Box 7 Find employees for 60 Appear to be 37252, Boone, IA 50037-0252. One-year subscription rates: U.S. $150; Canada $180; to this tennis star for 8 Powder in a printer 61 Flier with a bow and all other countries $218 in prepaid U.S. funds. Publications Mail Agreement winning Wimbledon; 9 Country whose prime arrow No. 40031590, Registration No. 140467846. Return Undeliverable Canadian she won Wimbledon 63 Gives a green light to Addresses to P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6. minister, Muhyiddin S

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THE WEEK January 29, 2021 Sources: A complete list of publications cited in The Week can be found at theweek.com/sources. EVER WONDER IF THERE’S LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS? LUCIANNE WALKOWICZ ASTRONOMER, THE ADLER PLANETARIUM

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