CONTROVERSY HEALTH & SCIENCE TALKING POINTS

THE REVOLT Losing many Were protests

OF THE of Earth’s worth risking
GENERALS species a Covid spike?
p.6 James Mattis p.21 p.18

THE BEST OF THE U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

A need for
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What’s the best way
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 Contents 3

Editor’s letter
In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till of Chicago was visiting fam-
ily in Mississippi when he was kidnapped by a group of white
men who accused him of flirting with a white woman. They
beat him bloody, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, muti-
lated his body, and dumped it in the Tallahatchie River. (The men
were later acquitted.) His mother chose to have an open-casket
viewing, and to let Jet, an African-American magazine, photo-
graph her son’s brutalized remains. “It forced America to see—
for the first time—what American racism actually looked like,”
said Benjamin Saulsberry, director of the Emmett Till Interpretive
Center in Mississippi. That image, and the shame and disgust it
evoked, launched the civil rights era. Years of sit-ins, protests,
and confrontations with police finally toppled Jim Crow segrega-
tion, and culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And now,
after Americans watched a kneeling white police officer noncha-
lantly crush the life out of George Floyd, we’ve come to another
Emmett Till moment—a reckoning.
The passionate, multiracial protests that have filled the streets
of more than 1,000 U.S. cities and towns will not end racism. But
as Mahatma Gandhi taught, shame and moral revulsion can be
powerful weapons against oppression. In the past week, we have
seen police chiefs taking a knee with Black Lives Matter protest-
ers. Cities and Congress are moving toward major reform of po-
licing. A near-insurrection broke out among current and retired
generals after President Trump sought to bring in active-duty
troops to “dominate” the protesters, à la Tiananmen Square. (See
Controversy.) Confederate statues and flags are finally coming
down. In a Monmouth University poll, 76 percent of Americans
called racism “a big problem” in the U.S.—up 26 points since
2015. No one can unsee the knee on George Floyd’s neck, or un-
hear his cry, “I can’t breathe.” Change is slow, William Falk
and change is wrenching, but change is coming. Editor-in-chief

NEWS
4 Main stories
The push to reform
police departments; Black
Lives Matter protests
spread across the U.S.
6 Controversy of the week
President Trump battles a
revolt of the generals
7 The U.S. at a glance
Another election-day
debacle in Georgia; New
York City begins to
slowly reopen
8 The world at a glance
U.S. prosecutors have
questions for Prince
Andrew; New Zealand
free of Covid-19
10 People
The black birder at the
heart of a social media
storm; Vera Wang’s
wedding revolution
11 Briefing
A history of Trump’s new
bogeyman, the far-left
antifa movement
12 Best U.S. columns
Editor-in-chief: William Falk
Managing editors: Theunis Bates,
Mark Gimein
Assistant managing editor: Jay Wilkins
Deputy editor/International: Susan Caskie
Deputy editor/Arts: Chris Mitchell
Senior editors: Chris Erikson, Danny Funt,
Michael Jaccarino, Dale Obbie,
Zach Schonbrun, Hallie Stiller
Art director: Dan Josephs
Photo editor: Mark Rykoff
Copy editor: Jane A. Halsey
Researchers: Joyce Chu, Alisa Partlan
Contributing editors: Ryan Devlin,
Bruno Maddox
Chief sales and marketing officer:
Adam Dub
SVP, marketing: Lisa Boyars
Executive account director: Sara Schiano
Mourners at George Floyd’s casket during a service in Houston (pages 4,5) Midwest sales director: John Goldrick
West Coast executive director: Tony Imperato
Director, direct response: Alexandra Riera
ARTS LEISURE Head of brand marketing: Ian Huxley
Director of digital operations &
23 Books 28 Food & Drink advertising: Andy Price
Sales & marketing coordinator: Lauren
A historian aims to An easy barley risotto Addicks
restore your faith in from Poland; Bordeaux Chief executive: Kerin O’Connor
humanity that won’t break the bank Chief operating & financial officer:
Kevin E. Morgan
24 Author of the week 29 Coping Director of financial reporting:
Bakari Sellers on the How child care will change Arielle Starkman
forgotten residents of in the pandemic era; what
Consumer marketing director:
Leslie Guarnieri
the rural South it’s like to fly these days HR manager: Joy Hart
Operations manager: Cassandra Mondonedo
25 Art &
BUSINESS Chairman: Jack Griffin

The NFL’s self-serving Podcasts Dennis Group CEO: James Tye

reversal on kneeling; the A massive 32 News at a glance U.K. founding editor: Jolyon Connell
looming Chinese threat Black Lives HSBC sides with China
to Taiwan Matter mural over Hong Kong; the stock Company founder: Felix Dennis

lands outside market bounces back

17 Best international
columns
The world worries about
press freedom in the U.S.
18 Talking points
Mass protests and
Covid-19; a rebellion at
The New York Times; is
AP (2)
the White
House 33 Making money
Women workers hit hardest Visit us at TheWeek.com.
26 Film & Music by the recession; venture For customer service go to www
Pete Davidson capital’s race problem .TheWeek.com/service or phone us
shines in The at 1-877-245-8151.
King of Staten 34 Best columns Renew a subscription at www
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report; Ben & Jerry’s does at www.GiveTheWeek.com.

systemic racism real? Vera Wang (p.10) corporate activism right

THE WEEK June 19, 2020
4 NEWS The main stories...
Police violence sparks demands for reform
What happened immunity, and doing so would “send a
Scenes of police across the nation assault- timely message that the days of legalized
ing peaceful protesters ignited widespread winking at police abuses are over.”
outrage this week, adding momentum to
calls for police reform in the wake of the Don’t let “bad events trigger a rush
killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis to bad policies,” said The Wall Street
officer. Hundreds of videos, many shot Journal. Reforms are needed, including
on cellphones, depicted police in cities “more public transparency” about police
across the country beating protesters with misconduct and reducing the power of
batons and throwing them to the pave- unions, which protect rogue officers. But
ment, firing tear gas and rubber bullets “a political drive to defund police risks a
into nonviolent crowds, and assaulting return to the high-crime era of the 1960s
reporters. Some incidents prompted disci- and ’70s that damaged so many Ameri-
plinary action and even criminal charges. In Buffalo, Martin Gugino, 75, after he was shoved can cities.” Crime is already “surging”
In Atlanta, six officers who pulled two this year in many cities, aided by “liberal
college students from a car and Tasered them were charged with law enforcement policies.”
assault; so was a New York City officer who hurled a woman to
the street, causing a concussion. In the most widely shared video, What the columnists said
police in Buffalo pushed Martin Gugino, 75, to the pavement and “The police are rioting,” said Jamelle Bouie in The New York
then walked past his prone body as blood poured from his ear. Times. The horrifying scenes of “indiscriminate violence” against
“Even friends of mine who are different races are saying, ‘Oh, protesters exercising their First Amendment rights represent “an
I see it now,’” said Lezley McSpadden, the mother of Michael attack on civil society” and have created more anger and disorder,
Brown, who was killed by police in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. not less. Faced with burning national anger over their own mis-
conduct, police have responded with “an assertion of power and
In several cities, outrage over aggressive police tactics helped impunity.” They’re effectively saying, “So what?”
spur legislative action and promises of reform. The Minneapolis
City Council pledged to dismantle the city’s police department “Changing the laws is not enough,” said Christy Lopez in The
and rethink the city’s approach to public safety. Amid calls to Washington Post. “We must reimagine the role” police play in
“defund” police departments, the mayors of New York City and public safety. They’re currently called on to respond to drug over-
Los Angeles promised to divert money from police budgets into doses and the crises of the mentally ill, roust the homeless, resolve
social programs. On the federal level, House Democrats unveiled family disputes, and deal with myriad other social problems. All
expansive legislation that would create a national use-of-force “defunding” means is handing those responsibilities off to agen-
standard, ban chokeholds, and create a national registry to track cies “better equipped” to handle them.
police misconduct.
Pull police back, and it’s people of color who’ll suffer most, said
Amid a sea change in public attitude, President Trump offered a Quin Hillyer in WashingtonExaminer.com. Between 1993 and
staunch defense of police, calling 99 percent of officers “great, 2005, aggressive and expanded policing dropped the number of
great people.” He suggested on Twitter that the man pushed by black victims of violent crime by nearly two-thirds. Meanwhile, from
Buffalo police, a longtime Catholic 2015 to 2019 the number of unarmed
peace activist, was an antifa “provo- black civilians killed by cops dropped
cateur”—echoing a false claim by a What next? from 38 to 9. Yes, there are bad cops,
reporter who works for the Kremlin- Calls to defund the police are “playing right into “but most really are the ‘good guys.’”
owned outlet Sputnik. “It just makes the hands” of Republicans, said Douglas Schoen Reduce their numbers and more black
no sense that we’re fanning the flames in TheHill.com. With Trump’s “leadership failures” lives will be lost to crime. And “black
right at this time,” said GOP Sen. Lisa on full display and his poll numbers cratering, lives matter.”
Murkowski of Alaska. Democrats risk blowing that momentum if they
latch on to radical rhetoric. “Right on cue,” Trump “Reforms that target ‘bad apples’ are
What the editorials said tweeted, “Joe Biden and the Radical Left Demo- missing the point,” said Alec Kara-
“Policing in America needs to change,” crats want to DEFUND THE POLICE.” Biden said he katsanis in Slate.com. The deeper
said the Albany, N.Y., Times Union. does not support defunding police, but his party problem is “the daily, largely invis-
We can start by “demilitarizing” will alienate moderates if it fails to stamp out that ible violence” of cops stopping and
departments, stripping them of “equip- slogan. Republicans have their own PR problems, arresting black men and women over
ment and tactics more appropriate for said Tim Alberta in Politico.com. Trump is delib- expired licenses and traffic violations,
war zones than America streets,” and erately echoing Richard Nixon’s “law and order” locking them up for minor drug pos-
train them in de-escalation. We also slogan, which originated “during the bloody session, and imposing overly harsh
need to end “qualified immunity,” said summer of 1968.” But Floyd’s death has triggered sentences that “marks millions with
The Boston Globe. The legal doctrine, “a tectonic shift in public opinion,” and white a criminal record that closes off op-
which grants police broad immunity Americans now join blacks in overwhelmingly portunities for employment, health
from civil liability for their actions, favoring police reform. “As with gay marriage and care, and housing.” Very little of this
“has provided a shield” for too many marijuana legalization, the cultural current is now contributes to public safety. Yet in
abusive officers. The House is consid- America, “this systemic destruction is
Reuters

running plainly in one direction.”

ering legislation to remove qualified what ‘good cops’ do.”
Illustration by Fred Harper.
THE WEEK June 19, 2020 Cover photos from Getty (3)
 ... and how they were covered NEWS 5

Protests for racial justice gain strength across U.S.

What happened We are “being reminded anew of the
Demonstrators demanding justice for power of peaceful protest,” said the
George Floyd and action against police Minneapolis Star Tribune. Instead of
brutality marched in at least 1,280 dissipating, the anger at racial injustice
towns and cities across the U.S. as of has gained strength and is drawing in
this week—a protest movement that is Americans of all races, all marching
now the broadest in American history. “with the same message: Black lives
Crowds waving Black Lives Matter signs matter.” Meaningful reform—when it
took to the streets of big multiracial cit- comes—will be produced not by “rage
ies such as Los Angeles and New York, and destruction” but by a peaceful yet
but rallies were also held in smaller and persistent “demand for lasting change
predominantly white towns and cities, that calls out the best in us.”
including Norfolk, Neb.; Cody, Wyo.;
and Tacoma, Wash. “People didn’t un- What the columnists said
derstand the point of us protesting,” said Protesters near the White House: A national movement Trump wants to replicate President Rich-
Ande’ Green, who organized a march in ard Nixon’s “law and order” playbook
Alliance, Ohio. “But we wanted them to know that we are taking a against protesters, said Ian Haney López in the Los Angeles Times.
stand for our nation.” As demonstrations rippled across the coun- Nixon exploited the upheaval of the 1960s to secure electoral suc-
try, Floyd was laid to rest in his hometown of Houston. In a video cess, calling anti–Vietnam War demonstrators “thugs” and saying he
message played at the funeral, presumptive Democratic presidential stood with the “silent majority.” Trump has denounced protesters as
nominee Joe Biden said the nation must use this moment to tackle a “mob” and urged authorities to “dominate” the streets. But 2020
the “racism that stings at our very soul.” is not 1968. Back then, it was easy for white Americans to “dismiss
the claims by African-Americans that police brutality and pervasive
With the overwhelming majority of protests now peaceful affairs, white racism justified their protests.” But the whole country has seen
cities across the U.S. lifted curfews, and President Trump ordered the cellphone footage of a police officer suffocating Floyd.
the National Guard to begin withdrawing from Washington, D.C.
Work crews started to dismantle some of the 8-foot-high chain-link Such videos have “helped persuade skeptical Americans that an
fencing that was erected around the White House in recent weeks. endemic problem exists,” said Giovanni Russonello in The New
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser renamed a street in front of the White York Times. In a Monmouth University poll released last week,
House “Black Lives Matter Plaza” and had the slogan painted on 76 percent of Americans—including 71 percent of white people—
the asphalt in giant yellow letters. Trump shot back on Twitter that called racism and discrimination a “big problem” in the U.S. “That’s
Bowser was “grossly incompetent and in no way qualified to be a 26 percentage point spike since 2015.” In the same poll, 57 per-
running an important city.” cent of Americans said protesters’ anger was “fully justified,” and
another 21 percent called it “somewhat justified.”
What the editorials said
Trump is failing “to convince people that he can provide calm and We’ve never seen anything like this before, said Lara Putnam in The
steady leadership” during these troubled times, said Washington Washington Post. Unlike the protests of the late 1960s, which most-
Examiner.com. Only 32 percent of voters believe he’s handled the ly occurred in large cities and on college campuses, this movement
mass demonstrations successfully. “When it comes to the horse has spread to “small-town America” and even to some places “with
race,” Biden is leading Trump by an average of nearly 8 points deeply conservative politics.” And unlike the Women’s Marches of
nationally; at this point in 2016, Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by 2017, these are spontaneous events that didn’t benefit from months
only 1.5 points. If Trump “cannot convince the public in the next of planning. America is angry and hungry for change, and that could
five months that he can lead during a crisis, he is likely to lose.” have big consequences for “the election—and future policy.”

It wasn’t all bad
QA feisty 103-year-old from Mas-
sachusetts beat Covid-19—and
then cracked open a cold beer to
celebrate. Jennie Stejna spent
nearly three weeks battling the
virus and at one point seemed
close to death. When her grand-
daughter’s husband asked Stejna if
she was ready to go to heaven, the
Polish-American matriarch replied,
“Hell, yes.” But just days later she
woke up and proclaimed, “I’m not
sick!” A nurse handed Stenja a Bud
Light, her favorite brew, when she
tested negative. “She is legend-
ary,” said grandson Dave Stejna.
AP (2)
QA 9-year-old boy with cerebral palsy and autism has raised
$100,000 for charity by completing a marathon on his street
in northern England. Tobias Weller, who uses a walker to
get around, originally intended to raise funds for Sheffield
Children’s Hospital and a cerebral palsy charity by doing a
1 kilometer sponsored walk
in the local park. But he then
decided to up his ambitions
and complete a marathon. At
the start of his challenge—
which took 70 days—Tobias
could walk a maximum of
164 feet a day, but toward
the end he was walking half
a mile each day as his neigh-
bors and family cheered him
on. “Every bit of it,” he said,
Tobias: Going the distance “has been totally awesome.”
QDeirdre Taylor always wanted to
say thank you to the New York City
fireman who rescued her from a
burning building when she was 4
years old. She moved with her fam-
ily to Virginia soon after the blaze
and spent years trying to track
down her hero: Eugene Pugliese.
Taylor, now 40 and a nurse, recent-
ly returned to New York to pitch
in during the pandemic. At NYU
Langone Hospital, Taylor asked a
group of visiting firefighters about
Pugliese. “Oh, Gene,” replied one,
who gave her his number. A couple
of hours later, the two were chat-
ting on the phone. “You’re a hero,
too,” Pugliese told her.

THE WEEK June 19, 2020

6 NEWS Controversy of the week
The generals’ revolt: Is the military turning on Trump?
Gen. Jim Mattis stayed silent as long as
he could, said David Swerdlick in The
Washington Post. But when President Trump
last week threatened to send active-duty U.S.
troops into American cities to quell the nation-
wide protests, Trump’s onetime defense sec-
retary finally “ripped his former boss” in an
“eye-popping” public statement. Mattis said
he was “angry and appalled” to see Trump
use the National Guard to forcefully clear
peaceful protesters from streets in front of the Then-Defense Secretary Mattis with Trump
White House so he could brandish a Bible in
front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. “Never did I dream,” Mattis
said, that U.S. troops “would be ordered under any circumstances
to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much
less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander in
chief.” Trump, Mattis said, “is the first president in my lifetime
who does not try to unite the American people—does not even
pretend to try.” I was also “sickened” by last week’s events, said
former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen in
TheAtlantic.com, and am “deeply worried” that the men and
women of our armed forces are being “co-opted for political pur-
poses” by a president with open “disdain” for the Constitution.
It’s not just Mattis and Mullen, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag
.com. The entire “security establishment is revolting against
Trump.” Defense Secretary Mark Esper infuriated Trump by pub-
licly opposing his wish to invoke the Insurrection Act and send
troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division into the streets of
Washington, D.C. Two other former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of The Economist in an editorial. While it’s “reassuring” that the
Staff—retired Gens. Martin Dempsey and Colin Powell—have also
made blistering denunciations of Trump’s authoritarian instincts.
The current chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley, issued politics,” and shows how close we truly are to the abyss.
a pointed memo to all the armed services,
reminding them that their ultimate loyalty is
to the Constitution, which “gives Americans
the right to freedom of speech and peaceful
assembly.” The generals know “an apolitical
army is central to American democracy,” said
Jonathan Stevenson in The New York Times.
If Trump persists in seeing the military as his
personal police force, we may see its leaders
engage in “disciplined disobedience.”
Under our Constitution, the military answers
to a civilian commander in chief, said Victor Davis Hanson in
NationalReview.com. That’s why these “not-so-retiring” retired
generals should not be involving themselves in politics. Presidents
from George Washington to George H.W. Bush have deployed U.S.
troops on American soil in times of great civil unrest. So why are
unelected military leaders undermining this president’s authority
to do the same? Regardless of Trump’s “manifest defects,” said
Damon Linker in TheWeek.com, “there is something more than
a little unnerving” about military leaders publicly challenging an
elected president. It raises the specter of “a military coup.”
It’s not a military coup that threatens our democracy, said Dexter
Filkins in NewYorker.com. The much greater threat is that if Trump
suffers a narrow defeat in November, he’ll refuse to leave office,
and ask a friendly red-state governor “to deploy the National
Guard to Washington, D.C.” to surround the White House. Under
Trump, nightmare scenarios are “all too easy to imagine,” said
generals, for now, are willing to stand up to him, the fact “that
it falls to them to do so is an indictment of the state of American

Good week for: Trump uses pandemic

Only in America
QA dozen Republican Party
county chairmen in Texas have
posted on Facebook a conspir-
acy theory that George Floyd’s
death was staged to hurt Presi-
dent Trump. Some of the posts
suggested that protesters have
been paid $200 each by Jew-
ish billionaire George Soros.
James Dickey, head of the
Texas Republican Party, called
on the chairmen to resign, say-
ing their posts “do not reflect”
the party’s values.
QWarner Brothers’ beloved
“Looney Tunes” cartoon
franchise has been revived
on HBO Max—but Elmer
Fudd is no longer armed with
his hunting “wifle.” Fudd
will now pursue his nem-
esis, Bugs Bunny, equipped
with a scythe. “We don’t do
guns,” said showrunner Peter
Browngardt, assuring fans the
new shorts will still be rich in
“cartoony violence,” such as
Ups and downs, after the first American woman to walk in space to cancel regulations
also became the first woman to visit the deepest part of the Pacific President Trump signed an
Ocean. “A once-in-a-lifetime day,” said astronaut Kathy Sullivan, executive order last week
68, after completing a 35,810-foot dive in the Challenger Deep. instructing federal agencies to
Drive-through Botox, offered by Florida plastic surgeon Michael bypass environmental reviews
Salzhauer to residents still wary of the coronavirus. Botox injec- of pipelines, highways, and
tions of masked patients are “really ideal,” says Salzhauer, because other infrastructure projects
they combat wrinkles in the forehead and the corners of the eyes, because of the pandemic-
induced economic emergency.
“exactly the parts of the face that aren’t covered by the mask!” The new order follows an ear-
Hope, after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease lier directive telling agencies
expert, said the U.S. would fund Phase 3 human trials of three dif- to rescind or waive any regula-
ferent coronavirus vaccines this summer. Fauci said he’s optimistic tions they legally could if they
a vaccine will be approved for use by early 2021. impeded growth. The changes
have made it harder for Ameri-
Bad week for: cans to challenge inaccuracies
on credit reports, and have
The Lost Cause, after HBO temporarily removed Gone With
eased rules requiring breaks
the Wind from its streaming service, saying this was not a good
time for a film romanticizing slavery and the antebellum South. for commercial truckers.
Trump’s orders also relaxed
Cleveland, whose mayor, Frank Jackson, said in an interview rules for how businesses report
that there is a public perception that his city is “the butthole of sick leave and how factories
the world.” A spokesman later said it was unfortunate that angry and power plants report emis-
Clevelanders were focusing on “7 seconds” of a 50-minute interview. sions. The Washington Post
Idle hands, after President Trump broke his personal record for reports the White House has
taken roughly 600 deregulato-
tweets sent in a single day, with 200 tweets and retweets on June 5,
including 74 tweets in one hour. He retweeted conservative activist ry actions since the pandemic
began, and hopes to make
Candace Owens’ claim that “George Floyd was not a good person”
Reuters

anvils dropped on heads. many of them permanent.

and that it “sickens” her that he “has been held up as a martyr.”
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
 The U.S. at a glance ...
Georgia Satilla Shores, Ga.
Ballot Racist motives: The white man who
meltdown: allegedly murdered Ahmaud Arbery in
Georgia’s February followed three blasts of his
statewide shotgun with a racist slur as Arbery lay
primary elec- dying in road, a state investigator testi-
tions this week fied last week. Arbery, 25, was jogging
were marred on a sunny late February afternoon
Atlanta’s voting nightmare
by chaos at when Travis McMichael and his father,
polling places, with some voters forced Gregory, chased him down with their
to spend virtually the entire day in line. truck, claiming they were attempting to
Many Georgians said they applied for make a citizen’s arrest. William Bryan fol-
absentee ballots but never received them lowed them, and a video he took of the
and were forced to wait at precincts that killing, released last month, led to murder
were woefully understaffed. Georgia charges against the three men. Bryan said
spent $106 million on new electronic he heard McMichael refer to Arbery with
voting machines after a federal judge the slur and a profanity. Investigators
deemed the old system vulnerable to say the three men pursued Arbery in an
hacking, but dozens of the new machines elaborate chase, hitting him with Bryan’s
malfunctioned or were missing this week. truck as he tried to escape. Arbery’s
The worst problems were in Atlanta and mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, attended
environs with large African-American the funeral of George Floyd this week
communities. Secretary of State Brad and said seeing nationwide protests “lets
Raffensperger, a Republican, me know that I’m not standing alone.”
blamed local officials, saying they
should have found more young
poll workers willing to work
through the epidemic. Georgia
has been plagued by allega-
tions of voter suppression,
and this week’s debacle could
foreshadow chaos in the presi-
dential election and a competi-
tive Senate race in November.
New Mexico
Mystery chest: A bronze chest filled
with more than $1 million worth of
gold coins,
diamonds,
emeralds, Arizona and Texas
and arti- Reopening spike: Covid-19 cases in
facts was Arizona nearly doubled last week, and
retrieved Texas recorded two days of record hospi-
from the talizations, while 19 other states reported
Rocky an increase in cases. Intensive-care units
Mountain in Arizona were becoming alarmingly
Fenn: Still not talking
wilderness crowded after the state reported 28,296
last week, the art collector who hid the cases as of this week, with increases over
bounty announced. Thousands of people 13 of the past 15 days. Texas, one of the
hunted for the chest that Forrest Fenn first states to ease its stay-at-home order
buried in 2010, seeking to inspire out- and reopen businesses, reported a 36 per-
door exploration. Fenn, 89, says a man cent spike in cases since Memorial Day.
from “back East” sent him a photograph Although every state is now reopening
confirming his discovery, but wouldn’t businesses and relaxing social-distancing
disclose the treasure’s location. The strictures, health officials were alarmed
search went on so long that some search- by post–Memorial Day spikes and fear
ers suspected the treasure was a hoax; additional outbreaks from protests; the
one sued Fenn for leaving deceptive Washington, D.C., National Guard said
clues. At least four people died searching this week that some of its members were
AP, Reuters, AP (2)
NEWS 7
New York City
Phase 1: New York City began to reopen
this week, ending a 78-day lockdown
during
which nearly
22,000 peo-
ple died from
Covid-19.
With more
than 30,000
tests admin-
istered each Can subways be made safe?
day and new
infections down to around 500 per day,
the city hit statewide containment bench-
marks allowing Phase 1 of reopening,
which could bring back up to 400,000
construction jobs and let retailers start
curbside or in-store pickups. Yet it could
take years to recover the 885,000 jobs
lost during the outbreak, which has
killed more than 17,000 New Yorkers.
The city has yet to offer solutions for the
millions of commuters who
typically pack buses and subway
trains. Restaurants, expected
to open sometime next month,
must space tables at least 6 feet
apart or install barriers at least
5 feet tall.
Richmond, Va.
Set to fall: Virginia
Gov. Ralph Northam
announced plans last
week to take down a
21-foot, 130-year-
old statue of
Confederate
Confederate symbol
Gen. Robert
E. Lee from Richmond’s Monument
Avenue, as outrage over racist policing
led to the removal of Confederate monu-
ments and symbols of slavery across the
country. The City Council in Richmond,
the Confederacy’s capital during the Civil
War, voted unanimously to remove four
other statues from the historic avenue. A
judge blocked Northam from removing
the Lee statue immediately, citing an 1890
deed stating Richmond would “affec-
tionately protect” the 12-ton monument.
Northam vowed to fight that injunc-
tion, as well as a second lawsuit filed to
keep the monument in place. Bowing to
massive protests, Fredericksburg, Va.,
removed a 176-year-old slave auction
block from downtown; Jacksonville,

for the treasure. Skeptics have questioned
whether the treasure really was discov-
ered, or whether Fenn may have just
wanted to call off the hunt.
infected after being deployed to contain
demonstrations. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the
top U.S. infectious-disease official, called
the coronavirus his “worst nightmare.”
Fla., removed a 122-year-old statue, and
Birmingham, Ala., removed a 115-year-
old memorial. NASCAR said it would
ban Confederate flags at all of its races.
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
8 NEWS The world at a glance ...
London Braunschweig, Germany
Andrew in hot seat: U.S. federal prosecutors Suspect in Maddy case: A German prosecutor investigating the
have formally requested an interview with 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann says
Prince Andrew as a witness in an underage it’s likely that the girl was murdered and that the prime suspect is
sex-trafficking case involving his late friend the German sex offender Christian Brückner. Madeleine, then 3 years
financier Jeffrey Epstein. Under the U.S.-U.K. old, disappeared from an apartment in Portugal while on vacation
mutual legal assistance treaty, Andrew could be with her family. Authorities say Brückner was
compelled to answer questions in a British court in the area at the time, and they are asking the
if he does not respond voluntarily. The prince, public for any leads, because they don’t have
Answers needed who retired from royal duties because of the scan- enough evidence to charge him. Brückner, 43,
dal, claims he has repeatedly offered to help with the investigation. is currently serving a seven-year sentence for
But Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of the rape of a 72-year-old American tourist in
New York, said this week that Andrew “has repeatedly declined Portugal and is under investigation in the disap-
our request to schedule” an interview. Virginia Roberts Giuffre, an pearances of a 9-year-old German girl in 2001
Epstein accuser, has alleged that Andrew was one of the financier’s and a 5-year-old German girl in 2015. Madeleine: Vanished
sex-trafficking clients, something the prince has repeatedly denied.
Prague
Poison plot a hoax: A purported Russian assassination plot that
triggered police protection for three Prague officials was in
fact a Russian hoax, Czech officials announced last week. Prime
Minister Andrej Babis expelled two Russian diplomats over the
affair, saying, “One embassy employee sent deliberately made-up
information about a planned attack” to Czech newspaper Lidove
Noviny. The paper reported last month that Moscow had flown
an agent to Prague to poison the city’s mayor and two other high-
ranking officials for removing statues and plaques celebrating
Russian heroes of World War II. The false story, Babis said, was
“initiated as a consequence of an internal fight between employees
of the Russian Embassy in Prague.” Russia called the Czech order
giving the diplomats 48 hours to leave a “fabricated provocation.”

Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Covid-19 soars: Haiti is seeing its number of Covid-19
cases skyrocket. The extremely poor nation reported
81 cases and eight deaths at the end of April; by the
end of May it had registered more than 3,000 cases
and 50 deaths—and only 7,350 people had been tested.
That means the true numbers are likely much higher.
Yet the disease is now so prevalent, says Haitian health
official William Pape, that there is now no point in
testing patients who present with symptoms. He recom- Masked bus riders in Port-au-Prince
mends treating all such cases as presumed Covid-19. That approach
doesn’t make any sense, public-health specialist Dr. Junot Félix told
the Miami Herald. “How are you going to manage an epidemic if
you do not know where the sick people are and how it’s moving?”

La Paz, Bolivia
Morales won: The accusations of vote rigging that drove Bolivian
President Evo Morales from office last October were false, accord-
ing to new research. The leftist Morales was running for an unprec-
edented fourth term in an election of dubious legality when observ-
ers from the Organization of American States said they had found
“an inexplicable change” in the first-round vote count that “drasti-
cally modifies the fate of the election.” Widespread protests forced
Morales to resign. But experts with the Washington,
D.C.–based Center for Economic and Policy
Research said in February that it was “highly likely
that Morales surpassed the 10 percentage point
margin” that would have allowed him to win out-
right in the first round, a conclusion supported
by another U.S. study published last week. The
right-wing caretaker government that took
power after Morales’ ouster has failed to hold
promised new elections and has instead perse-
Brasília
Coronavirus cover-up: Brazil’s
Supreme Court has ordered the
government of President Jair Bolsonaro to make its Covid-19
statistics publicly available, after the Health Ministry stripped its
coronavirus site of months of data that showed a rapidly worsen-
ing crisis. The Health Ministry had said that disclosing only daily
new positive cases and deaths would help “refine” the data, but
critics attacked the change as a cover-up worthy of an authoritarian
regime. Bolsonaro has consistently downplayed the threat from the
pandemic, saying it is more important to keep the economy open
than to slow the spread of the disease. “What we most want is to
get back to normal and for the country to retake the path of pros-
perity,” Bolsonaro said this week. Official statistics rank Brazil as
the world’s second-worst-affected country, after the U.S., with more
AP (4)

Morales: Wronged? cuted Morales supporters and stifled dissent. than 742,000 Covid-19 cases and 38,500 deaths.
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
 The world at a glance ...
Norilsk, Russia
Arctic oil spill: Russia was racing
this week to clean up a massive
diesel spill that is oozing toward a
nature reserve in the Arctic Circle.
A fuel tank at a power plant in
northern Siberia ruptured when
the frozen ground beneath gave
Trying to hold back the diesel
way during an abnormally warm
spring. At least 150,000 barrels of diesel leaked into a nearby
river. President Vladimir Putin ordered a state of emergency, and
authorities arrested the directors of the plant, accusing them of
waiting several days before notifying the government of the spill.
The plant serves a vast industrial complex that produces one-fifth
of the world’s nickel and half the world’s palladium. Workers are
scrambling to keep the spill out of the Pyasina River, which runs
through a nature reserve into the Arctic Ocean.
Kim Yo Jong
Lagos, Nigeria
March against rape: Nigerian
women took to the streets in
cities across the country this
week to protest what they say is
a hidden epidemic of rape and
Demanding justice sexual violence. The demon-
strations came after two gruesome killings made the headlines in
Africa’s most populous country. Uwaila Omozuwa, a 22-year-old
student, was gang-raped in a church before her assailants smashed
her head in with a fire extinguisher. Just days later, another stu-
dent, Barakat Bello, was raped and killed during a home robbery.
Activists with the group Women Against Rape in Nigeria said
the country’s macho culture encourages harassment and brutal-
Getty, AP, Reuters (2)
ity. “In Nigeria, you see men catcalling and groping women in
the market,” said activist Ebele Molua, “and they become violent
once they don’t respond to their advances.” UNICEF says 1 in 4
Nigerian girls has experienced some form of sexual violence.
NEWS 9
Tehran
‘Honor killing’ outrage: A father’s murder of
his 14-year-old daughter has sparked an Iranian
national conversation about the abuse of women
and girls in the country. Before he beheaded
his sleeping daughter, Romina, with a
sickle, Reza Ashrafi called his lawyer and
said the girl was going to dishonor the
Romina: Murdered
family by running off with her 29-year-old
boyfriend. Ashrafi asked what punishment he’d receive for killing
Romina and was told 10 years in prison at most. The so-called
honor killing shocked the country. President Hassan Rouhani
asked for new legislation to protect women, while Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for “harsh punishment” for any
man who abuses women. Iranian women took to social media to
share tales of beatings and abuse by fathers and brothers for minor
infractions like walking home instead of taking a school bus.
Pyongyang
Kim’s sister rises: The sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un
is emerging as a key player in relations with South Korea, and
under her direction Pyongyang this week announced it was
severing all communications—including military hotlines—
with Seoul. Kim Yo Jong, believed to be in her early 30s,
has for years been a key aide to her older brother, but only
began making public statements in March. State media spe-
cifically gave credit for the decision to cut communications
with South Korea to Kim Yo Jong and longtime regime
hard-liner Kim Yong Chol. Officials in Pyongyang “clearly
have high hopes and expectations for her,” said North
Korea expert Michael Madden. “Not necessarily the next
leader, but something of a kingmaker nonetheless.”
Kingscliff, Australia
Fatal shark attack: A 10-foot great white shark mauled a 60-year-
old surfer to death off the coast of Australia this week, the third
deadly attack this year. Rob Pedretti was surfing with two friends
when the shark swam up to the group and bit his leg off; his
friends pulled Pedretti back to shore as the shark rammed their
boards. They tried to revive him, but Pedretti died of blood loss.
A police spokesman called the efforts of the other surfers “noth-
ing short of heroic” and said the shark had been seen “on a
number of occasions just off the shore.” Local anglers say shark
sightings near beaches have increased dramatically in recent years,
and rescue crews are calling for more aerial surveillance as well
as additional drum lines—nonlethal shark traps. The stretch of
beach where Pedretti died has no shark nets or drum lines.
Wellington, New Zealand
Free of virus: New Zealand has declared itself free of
Covid-19 and lifted all restrictions on gatherings, after the last
known patient with the disease recovered and no new cases were
recorded in 17 days. Schools and offices have reopened, and people
are free to party. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ordered an early
and strict lockdown in March, when the country had only 100
cases, shuttering all nonessential businesses and rolling out a com-
prehensive campaign of testing and contact tracing. Ardern said the
country’s borders would remain closed
to international visitors for a “long
time.” The crew of the first Singapore
Airlines flight to land in New Zealand
after the lockdown was lifted com-
plained this week that they were shut
in their hotel rooms for the duration of
their three-day layover, unable even to
see one another or use the gym. Removing distancing markers
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
10 NEWS People
How Wang changed weddings
Vera Wang revolutionized the biggest day of
many women’s lives, said Anna Murphy in
The Times (U.K.). Before the launch of Wang’s
bridal business, in 1990, wedding dresses were
notoriously big and poufy. Wang launched her
company after designing her own dress and real-
izing the appeal of a narrower silhouette. She’s
since outfitted brides like Chelsea Clinton, Ivanka
Trump, Alicia Keys, and Kim Kardashian, but ordinary people who
can’t afford $25,000 bespoke gowns still wear dresses influenced by
her designs. “Bridal is every woman’s red carpet,” she says. Prior to
founding her company, Wang, the daughter of Chinese immigrants,
worked for Ralph Lauren and Yves Saint Laurent and assisted
iconic photographers like Irving Penn and Richard Avedon at
Vogue. She experienced the wrath of editors like Polly Mellen, who
sent Wang home to change on the day of her first shoot. “She was
so cruel,” says Wang, 70. “So rough. I’ve said that to her face.”
Why does the industry foster such viciousness? “There are very few
businesses with a schedule in which you have to be creative,” Wang
says. After every demeaning insult, she would cry to her father,
who’d reply, “If you want to be in fashion, be in fashion.”

Allen’s pariah status

Woody Allen no longer is known for his work as a comedian and
director, said Hadley Freeman in The Guardian (U.K.). Instead,
he’s been defined by his marriage to his former partner’s adopted
daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, and allegations that he molested his
daughter, Dylan Farrow, in 1992. Allen says Dylan and her brother,
the investigative journalist Ronan Farrow, were coached to hate
him by their mother, Mia Farrow, after she discovered his affair
with Soon-Yi. Allen was never charged and emphatically maintains
his innocence, but knows he’s a pariah nonetheless. “I assume that
for the rest of my life a large number of people will think I was a
predator,” says Allen, 84. “Anything I say sounds self-serving and
defensive, so it’s best if I just go my way and work.” Last year he
released his 48th film, but the star, Timothée Chalamet, expressed
regret for taking the role, as have former stars of Allen’s films such
as Greta Gerwig, Colin Firth, and Mira Sorvino. “It’s silly,” Allen
says. “Actors latch on to some self-serving, public, safe position.
Who in the world is not against child molestation?” Denouncing
me, he adds, “became the fashionable thing to do, like everybody
suddenly eating kale.” He doesn’t bother to sue when publica-
tions group him with #MeToo monsters who’ve been convicted of
crimes. “It doesn’t pay to sue,” he says. “And do I really care?”
Birding while black
Christian Cooper would rather be birding than fighting against
racial stereotypes, said Sarah Maslin Nir in The New York Times.
Cooper, a Harvard-educated biomedical editor, is an avid bird-
watcher who spends much of his free time in New York City’s
Central Park. His recent dispute with a white woman who let her
dog go off its leash exploded into a national furor, just days before
the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Cooper, 57, was
looking for olive-sided flycatchers and red-bellied woodpeckers
early one morning when he encountered Amy Cooper (no relation).
He rebuked her for scaring away the birds by unleashing her cocker
spaniel in a semi-wild area. When he started videoing her on his
phone, she became hysterical, warning she’d call the police: “I’m
going to tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my
life.” The implication was clear: If cops thought a black man was
threatening a white woman, bad things might happen to him. “She
went racial,” Cooper says. “There are certain dark societal impulses
that she thought she could marshal to her advantage.” National
outrage cost Amy Cooper her high-level finance job. Chris Cooper
is not happy about the fallout. “I’m not excusing the racism,” he
says, “but I don’t know if her life needed to be torn apart.”

Q Former national security adviser
John Bolton plans to publish his
tell-all memoir later this month
regardless of whether the White
House signs off. Bolton quit
last September, and President
knows about Trump’s decision to suspend
military aid to Ukraine—which led to the
president’s impeachment—but says that’s
not his sole focus. “I view that as the
sprinkles on an ice cream sundae.”
Q Ivanka Trump claimed she was a victim of
“cancel culture” last week after a university
in Kansas dropped plans to show her giving
and was mocked for lines such as “My
greatest personal growth has arisen from
times of discomfort and uncertainty.”
Q Michael Jordan pledged last week to
give $100 million over the next decade to
improve “racial equality, social justice, and
greater access to education” after the killing
of George Floyd. The billionaire basketball
Brittainy Newman/The New York Times/Redux, AP (2)

Trump has reportedly called
him a “traitor” for writing The
Room Where It Happened: A White
House Memoir. “We’re going
to try and block the publication,”
Trump reportedly said. The release
has been pushed back months as
the National Security Council reviews
Bolton’s 592-page manuscript for
classified material; he insists there
is none. Bolton, 71, will tell what he
a pre-recorded commencement speech. Stu-
dents and faculty members at Wichita State
University Tech petitioned the school against
airing Trump’s 9-minute speech during their
virtual graduation ceremony, arguing that
it was inappropriate in light of the Trump
administration’s response to nationwide
protests over the police killing of George
Floyd. “Listening to one another is impor-
tant now more than ever!” Trump tweeted
in response. She released the speech online,
legend and owner of the NBA’s Charlotte
Hornets admitted he doesn’t know specifi-
cally where the money will go. Yet the dona-
tion, coming from him and Nike’s Jordan
Brand, marks a shift for Jordan, who was
stubbornly apolitical as a player, famously
quipping, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”
But he now says black people “have been
beaten down for so many years. It sucks
your soul,” adding, “This is a tipping point.
We need to make a stand.”

THE WEEK June 19, 2020

 Briefing NEWS 11

The origins of antifa

President Trump is blaming a radical leftist group for organizing violent protests and attacks on police. Is this true?

What is antifa? rally in August 2017. Witnesses there,

It’s an umbrella movement of leftists including Jewish and Christian clergy,
and anti-racists, rather than an actual say that they were being physically
group. Antifa (pronounced an-TEE-fa threatened by neo-Nazis wielding semi-
by some, anti-FAH by others) adher- automatic rifles, clubs, and torches
ents see their mission as using direct when antifa members inserted their
action, up to and including violence, own bodies as shields. Fistfights and
to fight fascism and the “alt-right.” mace-spraying broke out. One neo-
They believe that law enforcement is Nazi was convicted of homicide when
complicit in white supremacy, and that he rammed his car into a crowd, kill-
democracy is in danger. The term had ing protester Heather Heyer, 32. “We
its origins in the anti-fascist groups that would have been crushed like cock-
sprang up in Germany and the U.K. in roaches if it were not for the anarchists
the 1930s, and members believe that and the anti-fascists,” said activist and
the Nazis would not have been able to Facing off with white nationalists in Charlottesville Harvard professor Cornel West.
take power in Germany if anti-fascists
had fought them aggressively. The first American group to use the What about Barr’s allegations?
term was the Rose City Antifa in Portland, Ore., in 2007. Because Internal FBI documents leaked to The Nation show that the FBI’s
there is no leadership, hierarchy, or organized recruitment, anyone Washington field office “has no intelligence indicating antifa
can call themselves antifa. “It’s like calling Deadheads or Red Sox involvement/presence” in the D.C.-area protests. In other areas,
Nation” an organization, said Brian Levin, director of the Center experts say antifa is simply too small a presence to be a driving
for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, force in protests. Witnesses have said they saw both black-clad
San Bernardino. It’s unclear how many people identify as antifa, militant activists who could be antifa and white-supremacist agita-
but it’s probably a few thousand at most; it is certain that they tors breaking windows and starting fires, but records show that
make up only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of the vast majority of those arrested were from local communities.
Americans who have been demonstrating in more than 100 cities Many looters, police said, were professional criminals.
against the killing of George Floyd. Nonetheless, Attorney General
William Barr has blamed “antifa and other similar extremist What has President Trump said?
groups” for “hijacking” the protests to instigate violence. He’s blamed “antifa-led anarchists” for violent protests and has
vowed to designate antifa as a “terrorist organization.” Under
Has antifa been violent in the past? U.S. law, however, only foreign actors such as al Qaida or the
Yes, at times. Most antifa activists, says Mark Bray, a history pro- Irish Republican Army can be so defined. Critics have accused
fessor and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, focus on Trump and Barr of focusing on antifa as an excuse to invoke the
trying to identify the names, addresses, and jobs of white suprema- Insurrection Act, call out the military, and put U.S. soldiers on
cists who are active on the internet, and “outing” them to their the streets of American cities. Writing in The New York Times
employers and the public. “It’s a lot of a kind of private investiga- last week, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) called for “an overwhelm-
tor work that sometimes spills out into the streets with confronta- ing show of force” against “cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa
tions,” Bray said. Still, there have been violent attacks. In 2012, infiltrating protest marches.”
militants from Anti-Racist Action, loosely associated with antifa,
stormed a Chicago-area restaurant where Is antifa active on social media?
a white-supremacist group was meeting, The Boogaloo movement Since Floyd’s killing, Twitter and
attacking with baseball bats and hammers Boogaloo—which takes its name from the Facebook have taken down what
and injuring several people; five of them ridiculously titled 1984 movie sequel Breakin’ 2: Twitter called “hundreds of spammy
pleaded guilty to armed violence. After Electric Boogaloo—is a loosely organized, far- accounts,” many purporting to be
President Trump’s inauguration in 2017, right movement that includes gun enthusiasts antifa and calling for violence against
a masked activist punched neo-Nazi and white supremacists who say they want to police or white neighborhoods.
Richard Spencer in the face. The next trigger a race war that will bring down the U.S. Several of those have been traced to
month, a group of some 150 masked, government. Like antifa, there are no formal the white-supremacist groups Identity
black-clad activists interrupted what leaders or organization, and most of the action Evropa, Proud Boys, and American
had been a peaceful protest against an seems to take place online. But many Boogaloo Guard. On Facebook over the past
appearance by right-wing provocateur followers have appeared at Covid-19 lockdown week, rumors of imminent antifa
Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkeley, Calif., protests, armed and wearing Hawaiian shirts, attacks and riots in small towns and
throwing fireworks, smashing windows, and some have now begun showing up at the suburbs have put local law enforce-
and hurling rocks. Later that year, antifa ongoing protests against police brutality. In ment on alert; the attacks never mate-
recent years, police say they have foiled several
activists battled white supremacists in rialized. “I don’t think there was any
domestic terrorist plots by those claiming to
Charlottesville, Va. truth to it,” said John Lane, chief of
follow the ideology. Last week, three ex-military
men who police say self-identify as Boogaloo
police in East Liverpool, Ohio, who
What happened in Charlottesville? Bois were arrested on the way to a Las Vegas put on extra patrols after a Facebook
Hundreds of counterprotesters, including Black Lives Matter protest with full gas cans page attributed to antifa threatened
some who identify as antifa, showed up a suburban riot. “But I think this is
Reuters

and Molotov cocktails in their car.

at a Unite the Right white-supremacist going to go on until Election Day.”
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
12 NEWS Best columns: The U.S.
It is time to rename the 10 U.S. Army bases and forts named for Con-
Bragg and Lee federate officers, said retired Gen. David Petraeus. I have served in many It must be true...
do not deserve of these installations, including Fort Bragg in North Carolina, often
called “the center of the military universe.” The base is named after
I read it in the tabloids
veneration Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general, a West Point–trained officer who
suffered a resounding defeat at the Battle of Chattanooga in 1863 and
QAn alleged “spy pigeon”
captured by Indian forces
David Petraeus then resigned. Why do we continue to honor Bragg and other soldiers after it crossed the border
TheAtlantic.com who took up arms against their own country “for the right to enslave with Pakistan has been
others”? My alma mater, West Point, continues to carry Robert E. Lee’s cleared of suspicion and
name on several structures; the cadet library prominently features a por- returned to its owner. The
trait of Lee with a black slave. Some defenders of Confederate memori- bird had numbers affixed to
als claim we should not erase history, and that famed Americans like a blue ring on its leg, which
Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson also had “deeply troubling” ra- Indian authorities suspected
were codes for militant
cial views. But Confederate officers went much further, “and committed
groups. But the pigeon’s
treason” to defend racism. Soldiers can study their lives, their military owner, a fisherman named
decisions, and their errors, but “we do not live in a country” in which Habibullah, explained that
Bragg, Lee, or other Confederate officers “can serve as an inspiration.” he put his phone number
on the bird in case it did not
“It was a stunning turnaround,” said Joel Anderson, but “a morally return from a pigeon race.
The NFL’s bankrupt one.” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced last
“It’s just an innocent bird,”
Habibullah said.
phony reversal week that the league had been wrong to ban players kneeling during
the national anthem as a peaceful protest against police mistreatment
on kneeling of African-Americans. In 2018, the NFL caved in to pressure from
white fans and President Trump, who said owners should fire “any son
Joel Anderson of a bitch” who knelt during the anthem. Fearing a fan backlash, the
Slate.com league and its billionaire white owners told players that if they would
not stand for the anthem, they should remain in the locker room. But
peaceful protests against racism have become dramatically more accept-
able since the nation saw a cop brutally kill George Floyd on a Minne-
apolis street, and the streets have filled with massive, multiracial crowds
demanding change. Even “celebrities, corporations, and many other QA Romanian cobbler is
brands are now publicly supporting Black Lives Matter.” The league making giant shoes in an
knows it can no longer tell its African-American players to hide their attempt to get people to
anguish in the locker room. But “let’s not confuse this sudden change follow social-distancing
of course with a sincere change of heart.” The NFL has simply made a rules. Grigore Lup, 55,
new calculation about “what its white fans find acceptable.” was inspired to make the
2½-foot-long shoes, which
cost $115 a pair, after seeing
The U.S. and the West have “a moral obligation” to stand up for Hong people standing too close
If Hong Kong Kong, said Garry Kasparov. China’s imposition of a new “security” together at a market in the
Transylvanian city of Cluj.
falls, Taiwan law violates its commitment under an international treaty to give Hong
Kong a high degree of autonomy and self-rule, and is a direct challenge The lifelong cobbler said
that if two people wearing
is next to the values of free, democratic nations. Having gotten away with its
brutal repression of the Uighur Muslim minority in western China, Bei- his shoes were facing each
jing “doesn’t believe the international community has the will or ability other, they’d be 5 feet apart.
Garry Kasparov
“Maybe that way they’ll
TheBulwark.com to deter it from this latest crackdown.” Western nations have consis-
keep their distance,” he said.
tently been loath to risk the economic benefits of trading with China—
even after Beijing helped cause the devastating coronavirus pandemic QA 13-year-old boy has
by suppressing information out of Wuhan. The time has come for the graduated from a California
U.K. and the U.S. to “coordinate a global response” to China’s “decep- community college after
completing four associate’s
tion and vicious repression.” Hong Kongers who want to flee should be
degrees in two years. Jack
welcomed in all Western nations, and sanctions should be slapped on Rico enrolled in Fullerton
Chinese officials complicit in violating human rights. Most importantly, College at the age of 11
the West must consider formally recognizing Taiwan as a separate, in- and obtained degrees in
dependent nation. That would infuriate China, but “anything less will history, human expression,
be shrugged off by Beijing as a price they are willing to pay.” social behavior, and social
science—all while maintain-
ing a 4.0 GPA. He is now
Viewpoint “The epidermis is a very thin outer layer of our skin. It is only 1 millimeter
bound for the University of
in thickness, but it contains one of the few things that seems to justify mil-
Nevada on a full scholarship
lennia of oppression between humans: pigmentation. Were it not for this tiny layer of our skin, we
but isn’t sure what he plans
would all appear very similar. Thus, at its core, racism is bigotry against the epidermis, and yet this
minute human difference was enough for many of our nation’s historical leaders to enable beliefs in to major in or do for a living.
racial superiority. The justification for racism in America is thin indeed, but it continues even now to “I’m 13,” he said, “so I don’t
restrain us from moving forward as a society.” really have the whole life
thing figured out.”
Reuters

Dr. Haywood Brown in the Tampa Bay Times

THE WEEK June 19, 2020

14 NEWS Best columns: Europe
A strange new emotion is blossoming in Belarus,
BELARUS said Mecys Laurinkus: hope. There is the first
hint of a chance “that the easy chair” from which
Will this President Alexander Lukashenko has ruled the
country for the past three decades “may tip over.”
election The man known as “Europe’s last dictator” has
always sailed to victory in elections that are under
be different? his total control. But Lukashenko seems spooked
about the outcome of the Aug. 9 election. A little-
Mecys Laurinkus
known vlogger, Syarhey Tsikhanouski, has sparked
Lietuvos Rytas (Lithuania)
an opposition movement merely by going door-
to-door and interviewing ordinary Belarusians
about politics and their lives. One elderly woman
said archly that when you see a cockroach in your
house, you should grab a shoe and kill it, and soon
after, Tsikhanouski announced his intention to run
for president—under the campaign slogan “Stop
the Cockroach.” Inevitably, authorities arrested
Tsikhanouski on dubious charges and so made him
ineligible to run for office. But his wife, Svetlana,
has now taken his place, and their supporters are
rallying in cities across Belarus, chanting “Stop the
Cockroach!” When a furious Lukashenko declared
that there would be no Ukraine-style uprising in
his country, it only spurred more public activity.
Will the cockroach finally be squished?

GERMANY Donald Trump is running his mouth again, and
Germans are predictably hysterical, said Christoph
Trump’s threat von Marschall. Without giving any advance notice
to Berlin, the U.S. president announced last week
to withdraw that he wants to pull 9,500 American troops out
of Germany—reducing the number of U.S. per-
U.S. troops sonnel there to 25,000. Some of the withdrawn
troops will be sent to Poland; others will be sent
Christoph von Marschall
home. German and retired U.S. military officials
Der Tagesspiegel have screeched that this plan will be ruinous to the
transatlantic alliance, because tens of thousands
of German jobs depend on U.S. bases. But such a
troop cut would actually hurt the U.S. more than
Germany, and “nobody shoots himself in the leg
on purpose.” American troops aren’t stationed
here to protect Germans from Russia, but to serve
as “the backbone of U.S. operations from Africa
to Afghanistan, from Italy to Iraq.” The U.S. has
spent decades building bases in Germany; moving
them to Poland would be unfathomably expen-
sive. So far, the Trump administration has not
even detailed which assets it wants to dismantle.
Perhaps Ramstein Air Base, headquarters to
U.S. air forces in Europe and Africa? Or maybe
the military hospital at Landstuhl, which saves
the lives of Americans wounded in Iraq and Af-
ghanistan? It’s too soon to get upset over Trump’s
“possibly empty threat.”

Europe: Reckoning with racism, past and present

Inspired by anti–police brutality protests names of the dead: Mehdi, a 17-year-
in the U.S., hundreds of thousands of Eu- old run over by a police cruiser as he
ropeans are rallying in the streets under tried to evade a checkpoint; Mawda,
the banner of Black Lives Matter, said a 2-year-old Kurdish-Iraqi girl killed
Afua Hirsch in The Guardian (U.K.). As when police fired on a van smuggling
well they should. “What black people are migrants; Lamine, 27, who died in
experiencing the world over is a system unknown circumstances while officers
that finds their bodies expendable, by were evicting him from an apart-
design,” a template that was forged by ment. Belgians are also looking more
European colonial powers. It was Britain deeply at their history, said Colette
“that industrialized black enslavement Braeckman, also in Le Soir. Statues of
in the Caribbean” and exported that King Leopold II—whose genocidal co-
system to America. The racism that killed lonial regime brutalized the Congo in
Colson’s statue is pushed into a river in Bristol.
George Floyd, the African-American suf- the late 1800s, killing some 10 million
focated by a white police officer in Minneapolis, “was built in people—are being vandalized all over the country, and a civic
Britain.” And this country still treats black Britons as second-class movement to take them down is amassing followers. Leopold’s
citizens: We are more likely to die in police custody than whites, troops were able to conquer the Congo only because the slave
and now we’re “dying disproportionately of Covid-19.” Floyd’s trade had “depopulated villages” there and weakened African
death was horrific, said Melanie Phillips in The Times (U.K.). But resistance. Floyd’s own ancestors may have been “captured in
cowed British authorities are letting the protesters riot. Demon- the forests of Central Africa to be taken away, chained, in the
strators have hurled bottles at police, defaced a statue of Winston hold of a slave ship.”
Churchill, and burned a Union Jack at a war memorial. When
protesters in Bristol toppled a statue of 17th-century slave trader Some of these demonstrations, though, are simply inappropriate
Edward Colston and rolled it into the River Avon, the city’s police performance art, said Emma Jaenson in Upsala Nya Tidning
chief sympathized with the rioters, saying, “I do understand why (Sweden). Police had to break up a Stockholm protest because it
it’s happened; it’s very symbolic.” What an abdication of duty. breached the 50-person limit on public gatherings. The officers
“Vandalism and thuggery” should be punished, “not justified.” were right to do so—we’re in the middle of a pandemic! How
obnoxious of the Swedish demonstrators to carry signs reading
The rally in Brussels was “dedicated to Floyd,” said Ludivine “I can’t breathe” when their very presence risks spreading a dis-
Ponciau in Le Soir (Belgium), “but also to people of color who ease that threatens the breath of “vulnerable people such as the
have died in Belgium” at the hands of police in recent years. elderly and the ill.” Stand up for African-Americans, sure. Just
Many of the 7,000 demonstrators carried placards bearing the don’t risk Swedish lives to do so.
AP

THE WEEK June 19, 2020

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Important Safety Information for OPDIVO + YERVOY
OPDIVO is a medicine that may treat certain cancers by working with your immune
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stomach area (abdomen) pain or tenderness.
• Liver problems (hepatitis). Signs and symptoms of hepatitis may include: yellowing
of your skin or the whites of your eyes; severe nausea or vomiting; pain on the right
side of your stomach area (abdomen); drowsiness; dark urine (tea colored); bleeding
or bruising more easily than normal; feeling less hungry than usual; and decreased
energy.
• Hormone gland problems (especially the thyroid, pituitary, adrenal glands, and
pancreas). Signs and symptoms that your hormone glands are not working properly
may include: headaches that will not go away or unusual headaches; extreme
tiredness; weight gain or weight loss; dizziness or fainting; changes in mood or
behavior, such as decreased sex drive, irritability, or forgetfulness; hair loss; feeling
cold; constipation; voice gets deeper; and excessive thirst or lots of urine.
• Kidney problems, including nephritis and kidney failure. Signs of kidney problems
may include: decrease in the amount of urine; blood in your urine; swelling in your
ankles; and loss of appetite.
• Skin problems. Signs of these problems may include: rash; itching; skin blistering;
and ulcers in the mouth or other mucous membranes.
• Inflammation of the brain (encephalitis). Signs and symptoms of encephalitis
may include: headache; fever; tiredness or weakness; confusion; memory problems;
sleepiness; seeing or hearing things that are not really there (hallucinations);
seizures; and stiff neck.
• Problems in other organs. Signs of these problems may include: changes in eyesight;
severe or persistent muscle or joint pains; severe muscle weakness; and chest pain.
Additional serious side effects observed during a separate study of YERVOY alone
include:
• Nerve problems that can lead to paralysis. Symptoms of nerve problems may
include: unusual weakness of legs, arms, or face; and numbness or tingling in hands
or feet.
©2020 Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. All rights reserved. OPDIVO®, YERVOY®, and the related logos are trademarks of
Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. 7356US1904019-02-01 05/20
• Eye problems. Symptoms may include: blurry vision, double vision, or other vision
problems; and eye pain or redness.
Get medical help immediately if you develop any of these symptoms or they get
worse. It may keep these problems from becoming more serious. Your healthcare
team will check you for side effects during treatment and may treat you with
corticosteroid or hormone replacement medicines. If you have a serious side effect,
your healthcare team may also need to delay or completely stop your treatment.
OPDIVO and OPDIVO + YERVOY can cause serious side effects, including:
• Severe infusion-related reactions. Tell your doctor or nurse right away if you get
these symptoms during an infusion: chills or shaking; itching or rash; flushing;
difficulty breathing; dizziness; fever; and feeling like passing out.
Pregnancy and Nursing:
• Tell your healthcare provider if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. OPDIVO
and YERVOY can harm your unborn baby. If you are a female who is able to become
pregnant, your healthcare provider should do a pregnancy test before you start
receiving OPDIVO. Females who are able to become pregnant should use an effective
method of birth control during and for at least 5 months after the last dose. Talk to
your healthcare provider about birth control methods that you can use during this
time. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you become pregnant or think you are
pregnant during treatment. You or your healthcare provider should contact Bristol
Myers Squibb at 1-800-721-5072 as soon as you become aware of the pregnancy.
• Pregnancy Safety Surveillance Study: Females who become pregnant during
treatment with YERVOY are encouraged to enroll in a Pregnancy Safety Surveillance
Study. The purpose of this study is to collect information about the health of you
and your baby. You or your healthcare provider can enroll in the Pregnancy Safety
Surveillance Study by calling 1-844-593-7869.
• Before receiving treatment, tell your healthcare provider if you are breastfeeding or
plan to breastfeed. It is not known if either treatment passes into your breast milk.
Do not breastfeed during treatment and for 5 months after the last dose.
Tell your healthcare provider about:
• Your health problems or concerns if you: have immune system problems such as
autoimmune disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, lupus, or sarcoidosis; have
had an organ transplant; have lung or breathing problems; have liver problems; or
have any other medical conditions.
• All the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines,
vitamins, and herbal supplements.
The most common side effects of OPDIVO, when used in combination with YERVOY,
include: feeling tired; diarrhea; rash; itching; nausea; pain in muscles, bones, and joints,
fever; cough; decreased appetite; vomiting; stomach-area (abdominal) pain; shortness
of breath; upper respiratory tract infection; headache; low thyroid hormone levels
(hypothyroidism); decreased weight; and dizziness.
These are not all the possible side effects. For more information, ask your healthcare
provider or pharmacist. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You are
encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit
www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.
Please see Important Facts for OPDIVO and YERVOY, including Boxed WARNING for
YERVOY regarding immune-mediated side effects, on the following page.
I M P O RTA N T
FACTS
The information below does not take the place of talking with your healthcare professional. Only your healthcare
professional knows the specifics of your condition and how OPDIVO®  (nivolumab) in combination with
YERVOY® (ipilimumab) may fit into your overall therapy. Talk to your healthcare professional if you have any
questions about OPDIVO (pronounced op-DEE-voh) and YERVOY (pronounced yur-voi).
What is the most important information I should know
about OPDIVO (nivolumab) and YERVOY (ipilimumab)?
OPDIVO and YERVOY are medicines that may treat certain
cancers by working with your immune system. OPDIVO and
YERVOY can cause your immune system to attack normal
organs and tissues in any area of your body and can affect
the way they work. These problems can sometimes become
serious or life-threatening and can lead to death and
may happen anytime during treatment or even after your
treatment has ended. Some of these problems may happen
more often when OPDIVO is used in combination with YERVOY.
YERVOY can cause serious side effects in many parts of your
body which can lead to death. These problems may happen
anytime during treatment with YERVOY or after you have
completed treatment.
Call or see your healthcare provider right away if you
develop any symptoms of the following problems or
these symptoms get worse. Do not try to treat symptoms
yourself.
Lung problems (pneumonitis). Symptoms of pneumonitis
may include:
• new or worsening cough
• chest pain
• shortness of breath
Intestinal problems (colitis) that can lead to tears or holes
in your intestine. Signs and symptoms of colitis may include:
• diarrhea (loose stools) or more bowel movements
than usual
• mucus or blood in your stools or dark, tarry, sticky stools
• stomach-area (abdomen) pain or tenderness
• you may or may not have fever
Liver problems (hepatitis) that can lead to liver failure.
Signs and symptoms of hepatitis may include:
• yellowing of your skin or the whites of your eyes
• nausea or vomiting
• pain on the right side of your stomach area (abdomen)
• drowsiness
• dark urine (tea colored)
• bleeding or bruising more easily than normal
• feeling less hungry than usual
• decreased energy
Hormone gland problems (especially the thyroid, pituitary,
and adrenal glands; and pancreas). Signs and symptoms
that your hormone glands are not working properly may
include:
• headaches that will not go away or unusual headaches
• extreme tiredness or unusual sluggishness
• weight gain or weight loss
• dizziness or fainting
• changes in mood or behavior, such as decreased sex
drive, irritability, or forgetfulness
• hair loss
• feeling cold
• constipation
• voice gets deeper
• excessive thirst or lots of urine
Kidney problems, including nephritis and kidney failure.
Signs of kidney problems may include:
• decrease in the amount of urine
• blood in your urine
• swelling in your ankles
• loss of appetite
Skin Problems. Signs of these problems may include:
• skin rash with or without itching
• itching
• skin blistering or peeling
• sores or ulcers in mouth or other mucous membranes
© 2020 Bristol-Myers Squibb Company
OPDIVO and YERVOY are trademarks of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company.
Inflammation of the brain (encephalitis). Signs and ƕ Tell your healthcare provider right away if you
symptoms of encephalitis may include: become pregnant or think you are pregnant during
• headache • seizures treatment. You or your healthcare provider should
• fever • stiff neck contact Bristol Myers Squibb at 1-800-721-5072 as
soon as you become aware of the pregnancy.
• tiredness or weakness
• confusion ƕ Pregnancy Safety Surveillance Study: Females
who become pregnant during treatment with
• memory problems
YERVOY (ipilimumab) are encouraged to enroll in a
• sleepiness
Pregnancy Safety Surveillance Study. The purpose of
• seeing or hearing things this study is to collect information about the health
that are not really there of you and your baby. You or your healthcare provider
(hallucinations)
can enroll in the Pregnancy Safety Surveillance Study
Problems in other organs. Signs of these problems may by calling 1-844-593-7869.
include:
• are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is not
• changes in eyesight known if OPDIVO (nivolumab) or YERVOY passes into your
• severe or persistent muscle or joint pains breast milk. Do not breastfeed during treatment and for
• severe muscle weakness 5 months after the last dose.
• chest pain Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines
Additional serious side effects observed during a separate you take, including prescription and over-the-counter
study of YERVOY (ipilimumab) alone include: medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements.
Nerve problems that can lead to paralysis. Symptoms of Know the medicines you take. Keep a list of them to show
nerve problems may include: your healthcare providers and pharmacist when you get a
• unusual weakness of legs, arms, or face new medicine.
• numbness or tingling in hands or feet
Eye problems. Symptoms may include:
What are the possible side effects of OPDIVO and YERVOY?
• blurry vision, double vision, or other vision problems
OPDIVO and YERVOY can cause serious side effects,
• eye pain or redness
including:
Get medical help immediately if you develop any of these
symptoms or they get worse. It may keep these problems • See “What is the most important information I should
from becoming more serious. Your healthcare team will know about OPDIVO and YERVOY?”
check you for side effects during treatment and may treat • Severe infusion reactions. Tell your doctor or nurse right
you with corticosteroid or hormone replacement medicines. away if you get these symptoms during an infusion of
If you have a serious side effect, your healthcare team may OPDIVO or YERVOY:
also need to delay or completely stop your treatment with
OPDIVO (nivolumab) and YERVOY. ƕ chills or shaking ƕ dizziness
ƕ itching or rash ƕ fever
ƕ flushing ƕ feeling like passing
What are OPDIVO and YERVOY?
out
OPDIVO and YERVOY are prescription medicines used to treat ƕ difficulty breathing
adults with a type of advanced stage lung cancer called
non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). OPDIVO may be used in The most common side effects of OPDIVO when used
combination with YERVOY as your first treatment for NSCLC: in combination with YERVOY include:
• when your lung cancer has spread to other parts of your • feeling tired • vomiting
body (metastatic), and • stomach-area
• diarrhea
• your tumors are positive for PD-L1, but do not have an (abdominal) pain
abnormal EGFR or ALK gene. • rash
• itching • shortness of breath
It is not known if OPDIVO and YERVOY are safe and effective • upper respiratory tract
when used in children younger than 18 years of age. • nausea infection
• pain in muscles, bones, • headache
What should I tell my healthcare provider before receiving and joints • low thyroid hormone
OPDIVO and YERVOY? • fever levels (hypothyroidism)
Before you receive OPDIVO and YERVOY, tell your healthcare • cough • decreased weight
provider if you: • decreased appetite • dizziness
• have immune system problems (autoimmune disease) These are not all the possible side effects of OPDIVO and
such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, lupus, or YERVOY. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects.
sarcoidosis
You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.
• have had an organ transplant
• have lung or breathing problems
This is a brief summary of the most important information
• have liver problems about OPDIVO and YERVOY. For more information, talk with
• have any other medical conditions your healthcare provider, call 1-855-673-4861, or go to
• are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. OPDIVO and www.OPDIVO.com.
YERVOY can harm your unborn baby. Females who are
able to become pregnant:
Your healthcare provider should do a pregnancy test
before you start receiving OPDIVO and YERVOY. Manufactured by:
ƕ You should use an effective method of birth control Bristol-Myers Squibb Company
during and for at least 5 months after the last dose. Princeton, New Jersey 08543 USA
Talk to your healthcare provider about birth control
methods that you can use during this time.
May 2020
7356US2001322-01-01 05/20
 Best columns: International NEWS 17

How they see us: No longer a bastion of press freedom?

Horrified Australians watched as our routinely calls the press “the enemy
own journalists were “duffed up” live of the people” and encourages his fol-
on air by American police last week, lowers to not just ignore our reporting
said David Penberthy in the Courier- but also to despise us. Anyone who
Mail (Australia). Channel 7 reporter has covered a Trump rally “has expe-
Amelia Brace and cameraman Tim rienced the pure hatred that is shouted
Myers were covering a peaceful protest at us by his Make America Great
outside the White House when the Again supporters.”
Trump administration—determined to
make a “show of strength”—ordered Where America goes, others follow,
the crowds cleared from Lafayette said Astrid Prange for DeutscheWelle
Square. U.S. Park Police officers surged .de (Germany). Brazilian President
Cameraman Tim Myers is attacked in Lafayette Square.
forward, blasting tear gas and swing- Jair Bolsonaro, who idolizes Trump,
ing batons at anyone in their way. One officer smacked Myers is inciting “social division and violence by spreading fake news.”
in the gut with a riot shield and then punched him in the face; Major Brazilian media outlets no longer report from outside the
another officer lunged at Brace with a nightstick. As they headed presidential residence in Brasília because of threats of violence
for safety, the two were hit by rubber bullets. Police “clearly from Bolsonaro supporters. In the U.K., Prime Minister Boris
knew they were journalists”—Myers “had a TV camera on his Johnson—a former journalist—has banned critical reporters from
shoulder”—but attacked anyway. Some commentators have press conferences and lambasted the BBC. And of course, the at-
argued that the pair shouldn’t have been there. But they were tacks on the media in nondemocratic nations are even more egre-
simply doing their jobs, and the decision of a government “to use gious. “Every little tinpot [in Africa] is studying America’s new
force against anyone is always a valid news story.” copybook,” said Zimbabwean activist Tendai Biti.

The U.S. has long held itself up as a beacon of press freedom, said
Robert Penfold in The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia). But
in recent weeks, the world has seen dozens of journalists there
deliberately targeted by law enforcement. CNN’s Omar Jimenez
was grabbed by police and arrested; photojournalist Linda Tirado
lost an eye to a rubber bullet; a woman TV reporter in Louisville
was hit repeatedly with pepper balls. This hostility toward the
media is largely a result of President Trump’s hateful rhetoric. He
“Once a society starts normalizing attacks on journalism, it’s on
a slippery slope to ruin,” said Neil Mackay in The Herald (Scot-
land). The press has become a target because the normal political
process has broken down and the media has taken “on the role of
an almost semi-official opposition.” It’s CNN, not the Democrats,
that holds Trump to account in America. In Britain, “it took jour-
nalists to root out the truth about Brexit” from Johnson’s Conser-
vatives. “A society at war with journalism is at war with itself.”

The banning of alcohol and cigarettes during
SOUTH AFRICA South Africa’s coronavirus lockdown has caused
black-market sales to spike, said Tebele Luthuli.
A pointless The prohibitions were enacted ostensibly for
health reasons, and the alcohol ban, at least,
ban on makes some sense. Getting drunk “diminishes
logical reasoning, which in turn impairs decision-
tobacco making,” so there’s a risk that people might
neglect social distancing or handwashing while
Tebele Luthuli
drinking. Anyway, alcohol sales have now been
DailyMaverick.co.za
phased back in. But the ban on tobacco, which
remains in place, is baffling. Yes, Covid-19 can
strike the lungs and cause pneumonia, but quit-
ting smoking doesn’t produce health benefits for
months, so those smokers who have been forced
to abstain aren’t any better off right now. And
frankly, many haven’t been abstaining. A carton
of cigarettes is selling for about $60 on the black
market in Johannesburg, and a staggering $180
in Cape Town. The surge in demand “negates the
efforts” of police and officials who have made
strides in “battling the illicit trade” in recent years,
and meanwhile the government is losing out on
crucial tax revenues. Prohibition is always a bad
idea—and now it’s hurting not just smokers, but
also our bottom line.

CANADA Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dithered his way
out of having to make a decision about Huawei,
Huawei’s out, said the Toronto Star. The Chinese telecom giant
had lobbied hard to help build core elements of
no thanks Canada’s fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless network.
But every time Trudeau was asked whether Huawei
to Trudeau would be allowed to join the effort, he “ducked
and dived” and refused to answer. Well, now he
Editorial
can “stop wringing his hands over this decision”—
Toronto Star it was made for him. Two of Canada’s biggest tele-
com providers, Bell Canada and Telus Corp., an-
nounced last week they were signing 5G deals with
Huawei’s European rivals, Ericsson and Nokia.
Our third big telecom, Rogers Communications,
long ago “decided that Huawei was a bad bet,”
so that leaves the firm effectively shut out of the
Canadian market. It’s the right decision. Chinese
companies are never independent of the Chinese
government, which through its delays and decep-
tions over the coronavirus has proved itself untrust-
worthy. Three of our four partners in the so-called
Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network—the U.S.,
Australia, and New Zealand—have already frozen
Huawei out because of security concerns. The
final member, Britain, had decided to give Huawei
a limited role, but now thinks involvement with
the company might not be a good idea. Too bad
Trudeau couldn’t come to that conclusion himself.
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
18 NEWS
Noted
QPresident Trump did not
wear a mask last week
while touring one of only
two factories nationwide
that create coronavirus
testing swabs, and all the
swabs made during his
visit will be thrown away.
Puritan Medical Products
in Maine said it had limited
production for a day be-
cause of Trump’s visit. The
testing swabs are in short
supply in most states.
USA Today
QThe last American
receiving a Civil War pen-
sion has died at the age of
90. Irene Triplett received
$73.13 a month for her fa-
ther Mose Triplett’s service
in the 3rd North Carolina
Mounted Infantry, a Union
regiment known as Kirk’s
Raiders, which carried out
a campaign of sabotage.
Mose, who fathered Irene
at the age of 83, died in
1938 at the age of 92.
The Wall Street Journal
QLas Vegas casinos were
allowed to reopen last
week, 78 days after they
were shut down. Employ-
ees are required to wear
masks, but patrons are not,
though they do undergo
temperature checks.
Las Vegas Review-Journal
QPresident Trump and
his press secretary may
both have voted by mail
illegally. Trump listed his
Mar-a-Lago resort as his
primary residence when
he voted via mail in March,
but he has legally prom-
ised Palm Beach he would
not use the resort as a resi-
dence. Press secretary Kay-
leigh McEnany used her
parents’ Tampa address to
vote in 2018, though she
worked full-time in Wash-
ington, D.C.
HuffPost.com
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
Talking points
The protests: Justifying the coronavirus threat
America “spent the last couple
of months being hectored by
public-health experts” about
the danger of gathering in
public places, said Jonah
Goldberg in TheDispatch.com.
But now many of them say
it’s “glorious and essential”
for thousands of protesters to
gather en masse in the streets
for a “Great Awokening”
about police and systemic rac- Worth the risk? A protest in Oakland
ism. Nearly 1,300 public-health professionals and killed African-Americans, vividly demonstrating
“community stakeholders” signed an open letter
from infectious-disease experts at the University of sist in this country. A new surge in coronavirus
Washington endorsing the protests, arguing that
white supremacy represents a greater public-health racism together, as a nation.” Still, protesters
risk to African-Americans than Covid-19. The
massive demonstrations, the letter said, are “vital
to the national public health.” You have to won-
der: “If we have a huge spike in cases because of
these protests, will they say, ‘Well, it was worth it
to end racism’?”
These health officials owe us an apology, said
John Hirschauer in NationalReview.com. Offi-
cials passed onerous lockdowns on the basis of
their dire warnings. Constitutional rights were
trampled, and worshippers were barred from con- gathered at state capitals. If warnings about mini-
vening in churches. Family members were forced
to mourn their “casketed relative on an iPad.”
Business owners were deprived of a livelihood. But decline to heed any public-health advice.”
Covid-19: When the illness doesn’t go away
For an “overlooked” group of patients, Covid-
19 doesn’t end after a few weeks of illness, said
Ed Yong in TheAtlantic.com. Months into the
pandemic, reports are emerging of thousands of
patients who “have been wrestling with serious
Covid-19 symptoms” for months. These people—
most of them under 50 and previously fit and
healthy—have had their lives upended “by relent-
less and rolling waves of symptoms that make it
hard to concentrate, exercise, or perform simple
physical tasks.” Their fluctuating symptoms sub-
side for brief spells and then come crashing back,
and include breathlessness, racing heartbeat, and
neurological problems such as “brain fog” and
short-term memory loss. Among the so-called
long-haulers is Vonny LeClerc, a formerly fit
32-year-old who, 66 days after falling ill, can’t
“stand up in the shower without feeling fatigued.”
The virus, she said, “has ruined my life.” Unsure
what’s happening to them, “long-haulers are navi-
gating a landscape of uncertainty and fear.”
Why these patients aren’t improving is “one of
the ongoing mysteries of Covid-19,” said Fiona
Lowenstein in Vox.com. One theory is that “the
virus might be reactivating,” a syndrome seen in
illnesses such as herpes, which “remains dormant
now, if gatherings are held in
the name of racial injustice,
the coronavirus guidelines
can be thrown out? Appar-
ently, the virus “does dis-
criminate” after all.
“As a professor of public
health, I am conflicted,” said
Scott Lee in The Washington
Post. The coronavirus pan-
demic has disproportionately
the cost of allowing “deep-rooted racism” to per-
cases may be a price worth paying “to confront
“deserve the truth” about the substantial risks
they’ve taken on, said Conor Friedersdorf in The
Atlantic.com. Yes, many wore masks, and there
are “doubts about how easily Covid-19 spreads
in outdoor spaces.” But some didn’t wear masks,
and everyone was “crowded together and shouted
for hours”—behaviors that can spread the virus.
Many also wound up jammed together in police
lockups. Sympathetic health officials should warn
the demonstrators they’re at great risk of infection,
just as they did when anti-shutdown protesters
mizing the spread of the coronavirus are “ideo-
logical and hypocritical,” more Americans “will
between outbreaks.” It may just “be the normal
course of Covid-19,” consistent with milder viral
illnesses that can return or worsen after seeming
recovery. More worrisome, it may be a chronic
postviral condition that lasts even after the virus
is no longer detectable. While some doctors are
confident these patients will recover, others have
doubts—as does Susan Nagle of Massachusetts,
who’s on her third month of symptoms. “My fear
is that ‘relapses’ are my new normal,” she said.
Long-term illnesses sparked by viral infections
“are devastatingly common,” said Brian Vastag
and Beth Mazur in The Washington Post. The
biggest is myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic
fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), a disease that’s
often triggered by infection and may affect up to
2.5 million Americans. Its symptoms—fatigue,
muscle pain, cognitive problems—mirror those
of Covid long-haulers. Even patients who largely
recover from Covid may carry “persisting symp-
toms,” including breathlessness and loss of smell,
said Georgina Hayes in The Daily Telegraph
(U.K.). The virus’ long-term impact “is being
underestimated,” says epidemiologist Tim Spector,
AP, Reuters
of King’s College. Covid-19, he said, is one of “the
strangest diseases I’ve ever come across.”
 Talking points NEWS 19

Rebellion at the Times: What’s fit to print? Wit &

An unprecedented “staff rebel-
lion” at The New York Times
soring Cotton, the Times’ staff-
ers claimed the op-ed threat-
Wisdom
last week forced journalists ened their “workplace safety,” “True peace is not merely
to reconsider deep questions said Robby Soave in Reason. the absence of tension; it
about “what can count as com. “Woke young people” is the presence of justice.”
Martin Luther King Jr., quoted
permissible opinion,” said Joe have learned to weaponize in The New York Times
Pompeo in VanityFair.com. “safetyism” against anyone
“It is impossible to go
The outcry came in response to who disagrees with them—and
through life without
an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton this trend should concern trust: that is to be impris-
(R-Ark.), headlined “Send in the everyone. Newsrooms, college oned in the worst cell
Troops.” Cotton called for “an campuses, and society at large of all, oneself.”
overwhelming show of force” Cotton: A provocative op-ed “shouldn’t live in fear of dif- Graham Greene, quoted in
from military forces to crush “nihilist” protesters ficult conversations.” ArtsJournal.com
who, he said, are “simply out for loot and the “There are three sides to
thrill of destruction.” Dozens of Times journal- In this case, the threat to safety is not imaginary, every story: your side, my
ists—mostly young reporters—expressed outrage, said Margaret Sullivan in WashingtonPost.com. side, and the truth.”
saying the op-ed put black staffers “in danger.” During the protests, hundreds of journalists and Movie producer Robert
Evans, quoted in
Editorial page editor James Bennet came under thousands of protesters have been clubbed, beaten, The Hollywood Reporter
such withering internal criticism, he resigned. and pepper-sprayed by militarized cops. “In this
“One of the difficulties
With the country on edge, the Times decided, polarized, dangerous moment,” journalists are fac-
of being alive today is that
Cotton’s inflammatory demand for troops on the ing difficult questions about their role in society. everything is absurd
streets was the equivalent of shouting “Fire!” in a Many news consumers say, “Just tell me the bare but fewer and fewer things
crowded theater. facts.” That sounds appealing, but in reality, all are funny.”
journalism “is the product of choices.” Every day, Humorist Alexandra Petri,
“The role of an opinion section is to foster we decide what to amplify, what to investigate, quoted in The Washington Post
debate,” said Kevin Williamson in NationalRe- and what not to publish. Should deniers of the “Those who profess
view.com. By that standard, an op-ed by a promi- Sandy Hook massacre be featured on newspaper to favor freedom and yet
nent U.S. senator about invoking the Insurrection op-ed pages? Of course not. Cotton’s views were depreciate agitation,
Act was eminently worth publishing. Liberals worth including in a balanced news story, but his are men who want crops
should have the courage to win these debates “on evidence-free claim that only a military crack- without plowing up
the ground.”
the merits,” not by silencing “the enemy”—which down could stop “cadres of left-wing radicals like Frederick Douglass, quoted in
is how they see every Republican. To justify cen- antifa” did not deserve the Times’ “imprimatur.” SmithsonianMag.com
“It is with narrow-souled

Systemic racism: Is it real? people as with

narrow-necked bottles; the
less they have in it,
A horrifying video of George Floyd’s death has deemed irredeemably racist, such as academia and the more noise they make
proven to most Americans that police racism journalism, “overflow with political progressives.” in pouring it out.”
is real, said Nicholas Kristof in The New York Many African-Americans do succeed in our sup- Alexander Pope, quoted in
Times. But we have no video showing us the posedly racist society; for those who still struggle, Forbes.com
“structural racism” that has left African-Ameri- it’s the paternalistic progressive agenda, not rac- “What do we live for, if it
cans still living in a separate country from whites. ism, that keeps them trapped in victimhood and is not to make life less
Generations of systemic discrimination and dependency. Leftist radicals use the term “systemic difficult for each other?”
oppression have left an enduring mark: The net racism” to justify overthrowing our institutions George Eliot, quoted in
GoodReads.com
worth of the average black household is just 10 and remaking society, said John Hirschauer, also
percent that of whites’—an even greater gulf than in NationalReview.com. “Capitalism is white
in 1968. Today, a black newborn is twice as likely supremacy,” they insist. Immigration enforcement
to die in infancy, and those born in poor Southern is “racist,” and so is patriotism. In short, “the Poll watch
states have a shorter life expectancy than children entire Republican agenda is a species of racism.” Q80% of Americans say
born in Bangladesh. Though the Jim Crow era is that the country is spiral-
supposedly over, black children are “systematically Republicans, meanwhile, barely concede that rac- ing out of control. 59% are
shunted” to largely segregated schools that receive ism exists, said Ronald Brownstein in CNN.com. more concerned about
a fraction of the funding enjoyed by schools in One of the modern GOP’s “core convictions” is police actions in the death
wealthy white suburbs. The problem isn’t the that “widespread racism is no longer a problem.” of George Floyd than by
character flaws of “a few bad apples,” but the Indeed, support for Donald Trump is highly cor- the violence at some pro-
racism that infects “every major institution in this related with the belief that it’s whites who suffer tests, while 27% are more
country,” said Leonard Pitts Jr. in the Miami Her- from racial prejudice. But Floyd’s death has trig- concerned about violent
ald. “We have a rotten tree.” gered a sea change in public attitudes. The coali- protests. 63% remain con-
cerned they or a member
tion of people who see racism as real and requir-
of their family will get
Systemic racism is a “canard,” said Andrew ing major structural change is strikingly broad and the coronavirus.
McCarthy in NationalReview.com. Liberals love diverse. As Trump attacks protesters as radicals The Wall Street Journal/NBC
to cherry-pick statistics to support their “tunnel and thugs, he is betting his presidency that most News
vision” about race, but many of the institutions Americans agree that systemic racism is a myth.
AP

THE WEEK June 19, 2020

20 NEWS Technology

Communications: Protesters turn to new tech tools

“The list of the most popular apps right Whether Citizen is actually making pro-
now offers a glimpse into how people testers safer is unclear, said Jared New-
are using tech to take action,” said Rani man in FastCompany.com. The app uses
Molla in Vox.com. Since protests began police scanners to map incidents reported
after the killing of George Floyd by a to “911 dispatchers, police, fire depart-
Minneapolis police officer, downloads of ments, and other emergency respond-
an app called Citizen soared 633 percent, ers.” Then it adds a “social-networking
making that community-safety platform, layer,” with users’ videos and comments.
which scans police communications, “the At its best, Citizen’s first-person view of
fourth most downloaded iOS app of any the protests “can be inspiring.” But the
kind.” Trailing just behind it is Signal, an comments on Citizen can “devolve into
encrypted-messaging service long favored shouting matches” or spread misinforma-
by scoop-hunting journalists as a means tion. That’s what happened on two other
Protesters rely on apps such as Signal and Citizen.
to securely obtain confidential informa- services, said Brandy Zadrozny and Ben
tion. Police, too, are relying on technology, and migrating to en- Collins in NBCNews.com. “False rumors about antifa organizing
crypted communications as scanner apps become more popular. bus rides to take protesters into white neighborhoods” spread on
the neighborhood-watch app Nextdoor, as well as on the home-
Signal’s popularity could soar even more after the service an- security app Ring, “sparking fearful comments among rural and
nounced last week that it will automatically blur faces in images suburban communities.”
before they are shared, said Shoshana Wodinsky in Gizmodo
.com. That function makes Signal the “app of choice” for pro- Police as well as protesters are relying on data from protesters’
testers who are “keen on maintaining their digital privacy.” The phones, said Alfred Ng in CNET.com. So-called geofence war-
shift to encrypted messaging copies a tactic of protesters in Hong rants “sweep up information on any device that happened to be
Kong, said Nicolas Rivero in Qz.com, who favor a similar ser- in the vicinity of a crime.” Instead of getting a conventional war-
vice called Telegram. But Signal “provides an even greater degree rant aimed at a specific person, police ask Google and other com-
of anonymity, because in addition to encrypting the content of panies for location data on everyone in an area. Requests for such
messages, it doesn’t store metadata about who sent or received a warrants increased fivefold last year; privacy advocates fear that
message, when it was sent, or the location of the participants.” law enforcement can use them to “surveil the public en masse.”

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

Researchers in Canada have
designed a hydraulic “third” arm that
can be worn around a person’s waist,
said James Vincent in TheVerge.com.
The design—some have pointed out
similarities to the robotic tentacles
of the Spider-Man villain Doctor
Octopus—has some practical uses
for those always searching for an
extra hand. It has a three-fingered
manipulator and “weighs just 4 kilo-
grams, roughly the same as a
human arm,” allowing it to perform
tasks from picking fruit to passing
tools. But the arm depends on an
Your office surveillance score
Businesses are assigning a new “productivity
score” to employees working from home, said
Will Douglas Heaven in the MIT Technology
Review. A startup called Enaible provides soft-
ware that “learns the typical workflow for dif-
ferent workers: what triggers, such as an email
or phone call, lead to what tasks and how long
those tasks take to complete.” The software
then gives workers a score between 0 and 100.
Critics say such workplace surveillance soft-
ware “undermines trust and damages morale.”
But Enaible’s CEO is pitching companies on
even more intense monitoring: “Imagine you’re
managing somebody and you could stand and
watch them all day long” to get them to im-
prove their work, he says. “That’s what we’re
trying to do.”
Tesla chief takes aim at Amazon
Elon Musk said it’s “time to break up Ama-
zon” after it rejected a book that questions
whether the coronavirus “is as deadly as
In that, Berenson’s views are similar to those
of the Tesla CEO, who has “repeatedly ques-
tioned the severity of the pandemic” and com-
plained about restrictions on Tesla’s Fremont,
Calif., plant. After Musk heard that Berenson’s
book had been rejected by Amazon’s self-
publishing arm, he tweeted his ire at Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos and added, “Monopolies are
wrong!” Amazon reversed itself shortly after—
a turnabout for which Berenson credits Musk.
Checking up on your elders
Technology is helping people keep an eye on
elderly family members during quarantine,
said Susan Garland in The New York Times. A
“dizzying array of gadgets, apps, and services”
go well beyond the decades-old “medical
alert” buttons and necklaces. Norman Pot-
ter installed a platform made by GrandCare
Systems in his 90-year-old mother’s home in
North Carolina that offers video chat as well
as a motion sensor and vital-sign devices.
“Every morning, Mrs. Potter inserts a finger in
Getty, Université de Sherbrooke

external power source, which lim-
its some of its mobility. And it still
needs a human operator; “creating a
robotic limb that’s smart enough to
be useful without human instruction
is a very difficult task.”
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
public health experts say,” said Tim Higgins
in The Wall Street Journal. The book, titled
Unreported Truths About Covid-19 and Lock-
downs, was written by Alex Berenson, a for-
mer reporter for The New York Times who has
become a prominent coronavirus contrarian.
a Bluetooth pulse oximeter” and “steps on a
Bluetooth bathroom scale, which measures her
weight to detect possible fluid retention.” Nor-
man is alerted to any problems. Newer wear-
able products can also “detect a fall, even if
the older person has not pressed the button.”

Herd immunity not on the horizon
The world is still a long way from achiev-
ing herd immunity to Covid-19. That’s the
troubling takeaway from a crop of new
serology studies into how many people
have contracted the disease, reports The
New York Times. The researchers examined
blood samples for antibodies—proteins
generated by the immune system that indi-
cate a past infection and that usually pro-
vide protection against catching the same
virus again. The threshold for Covid-19 herd
immunity is unknown, but most epidemiol-
ogists think 60 percent to 80 percent of the
population will have to have been infected.
In hard-hit cities around the world where
A Sumatran rhino: Critically endangered
Mass extinction accelerating
The sixth mass extinction of wildlife
on Earth is already underway, scientists
say—and it’s happening much faster than
previously thought. Researchers analyzed
data on more than 29,400 endangered land
vertebrates. They found that about 500
critically endangered species—those with
1,000 or fewer individuals left, including
the Sumatran rhino, the harlequin frog, and
the Española giant tortoise—were likely to
become extinct within the next 20 years. In
comparison, 543 species are known to have
gone extinct over the past century, a level of
loss that would normally take 10,000 years.
Another 388 species currently have popula-
tions between 5,000 and 1,000. Scientists
say the loss of some of these animals—most
of which live in the tropics—could trigger
a domino effect, in which the extinction of
one species causes the decline of another
that is dependent on it, eventually threaten-
ing the entire ecosystem. While previous
mass extinctions were the result of natural
causes—the most recent being the asteroid
strike that wiped out the dinosaurs—this
one is being driven by humans, with habi-
tat destruction and the wildlife trade the
main factors. Co-author Paul Ehrlich, from
AP, Newscom, Reuters
Stanford University, tells The Guardian
(U.K.) that humanity “is sawing off the limb
on which it is sitting, destroying working
parts of our own life-support system.”
Health & Science
serology surveys have been conducted,
none comes close to that level. In New
York City, an estimated 19.9 percent of resi-
dents have antibodies; in London, 17.5 per-
cent. In Boston, Stockholm, and Barcelona
the rate is still in single digits. That sug-
gests herd immunity may be a pipe dream
until a vaccine is developed. Michael Mina,
an epidemiologist at Harvard University,
says there’s currently no safe way to build
up to herd immunity. “Unless we’re going
to let the virus run rampant again—but
I think society has decided that is not an
approach available to us.” Serology tests
also provide scientists with a more accu-
Vaccine trial speeds ahead
The U.S. biotech firm Moderna is expected
to begin its third and final phase of test-
ing on a potential Covid-19 vaccine in the
first week of July, reports CNBC.com. The
Phase 3 trial for the experimental drug—
widely considered one of the most promising
vaccines under development—will involve
some 30,000 people. Phase 3 trials are typi-
cally the final stage before approval or rejec-
tion by the Food and Drug Administration.
The results of the trial won’t be known until
November or December. But with funding
from the federal government, Moderna will
begin manufacturing doses before then in
case the vaccine proves successful. It aims to
have close to 100 million doses prepared by
the end of the year, and 200 million more by
early 2021. Anthony Fauci, director of the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, says he is “cautiously optimis-
tic” that scientists will develop an effective
Covid-19 vaccine, though he emphasizes
that “there’s never a guarantee.” The fastest
vaccine development to date, for mumps,
took four years and was licensed in 1967.
An interstellar hydrogen iceberg?
Scientists have a new
theory to explain
Oumuamua, the mysteri-
ous cigar-shaped inter-
stellar object first spotted
shooting through our
solar system in 2017:
They think it’s a “hydro- An artist’s impression of Oumuamua through our solar sys-
gen iceberg.” Hydro-
gen freezes into solid form at around
minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit. The only
known regions of the universe with tem-
peratures that chilly are the cores of giant
molecular clouds. These colossal stellar
nurseries can stretch for light-years and
contain enough gas to create tens of thou- is currently speeding toward the edge of
sands of stars, reports Wired.com. The
NEWS 21
Only one-fifth of New Yorkers have antibodies.
rate picture of how deadly the coronavirus
is. Figures from New York City suggest that
about 1 percent of those who contract the
disease will die from it.
Ancient Israeli cannabis
Archaeologists say they have discovered can-
nabis residue on artifacts from an ancient
temple in southern Israel, evidence that
the drug may have been used in religious
rituals in the biblical kingdom of Judah.
Researchers have for decades tried to deter-
mine the composition of black deposits
found on two limestone altars at the 8th-
century shrine in Tel Arad, some 35 miles
south of Jerusalem. A chemical analysis has
now revealed that the residues on one altar
came from cannabis, which was burned
atop dried animal dung. The other altar had
traces of frankincense—a component of the
incense that was burned in ancient Jewish
temples. “We know from all around the
Ancient Near East and around the world
that many cultures used hallucinogenic
materials and ingredients in order to get
into some kind of religious ecstasy,” lead
author Eran Arie tells CNN.com. “We never
thought about Judah taking part in these
cultic practices.” The researchers believe
worshippers burned the psychotropic drugs
to induce a high during ceremonies.
researchers believe Oumuamua may have
been spat out by one of these clouds—and
that some of its outer
layer boiled off as the
object passed our sun.
This would explain not
only Oumuamua’s pecu-
liar, elongated shape
but also its acceleration
tem. “Even though the
hydrogen iceberg thing is a little exotic,”
says co-author Darryl Seligman, who car-
ried out the research at Yale, “it explains
every single mysterious thing about
Oumuamua.” Alas, we’ll likely never know
whether this theory is correct: Oumuamua
our solar system at 70,000 miles per hour.
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
22 NEWS Pick of the week’s cartoons

THE WEEK June 19, 2020 For more political cartoons, visit: www.theweek.com/cartoons.
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
Humankind: A Hopeful History
by Rutger Bregman (Little, Brown, $30)
If its central theory is correct, “this book
might just make the world a kinder place,”
said Tristram Fane Saunders in The Daily
Telegraph (U.K.). Rutger Bregman, a Dutch
historian and popular young public intel-
lectual, argues that we have the capacity
to create a fairer, friendlier society if we
will finally stop telling ourselves that we’re
inherently selfish and instead accept the
opposite. “Most people, deep down, are
pretty decent,” he writes, contending that
we have been hoodwinked into believing
that civilization is a thin veneer guard-
ing against the species’ natural inclination
to violent chaos. Bregman can get sloppy
with his facts when he tries to knock down
counterevidence. He also over-relies on a
breezy bullet-point style. “Is this patron-
izing? Annoying? Does it hold your atten-
tion nonetheless? Yes, yes, yes.” Despite its
flaws, “I enjoyed Humankind immensely.”
Think of the book “less as a scholarly trea-
Novel of the week
A Burning
by Megha Majumdar (Knopf, $26)
“I can’t remember when I last read a
novel that so quickly dismantled the
ordinary skepticism that attends the
reading of made-up stories,” said
James Wood in The New Yorker. Megha
Majumdar’s masterful debut mixes
elements of a thriller with a portrait of
contemporary India brought to life in
shifting first-person narration. Jivan is
a 22-year-old Muslim woman. When a
crowded passenger train is firebombed
in Kolkata and Jivan criticizes the gov-
ernment’s response in a Facebook post,
she is quickly arrested for the crime.
A transgender aspiring actress and
Jivan’s former gym teacher have the
power to save her with their testimony,
and “much of the novel turns on their
willingness to offer it.” Still, “this is a
book to relish for its details,” said Parul
Sehgal in The New York Times, for the
way Majumdar makes us attend to
sights, smells, and motivations that a
less original novel might race past. “The
interplay of choice and circumstance
has always been the playing field of
great fiction, and on this terrain, a pow-
erful new writer stakes her claim.”
Getty
Tonga’s castaways, with the man who found them
tise on human nature and more as a call
to consciousness and action,” said Oren
Harman in Spectator.us. Bregman roots his on innate human depravity. At one point,
theory in what science has lately been telling he even debunks the premise of William
us about human evolution—that “we are
to Neanderthals what dogs are to wolves.”
The human species has for eons self-selected several schoolboys from Tonga were ship-
for sociability and friendliness, which is why wrecked alone on a remote island for more
Bregman nicknames us “Homo puppy.”
He claims violence was rare among hunter-
gatherer societies and became common only castaways created a healthy, sustaining com-
after the advent of agriculture and the shifts mune, complete with a food garden and a
it created in notions of property and labor.
Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a
Chef in Training…
by Bill Buford (Knopf, $29)
Bill Buford’s previ-
ous memoir was
“so persuasive an
achievement” that
he’s created himself
a minor credibility
problem, said Lisa
Abend in The New
York Times. But even
though the former
New Yorker fiction
editor is no longer the
novice he was when he threw himself into
learning Italian cuisine for 2006’s Heat,
this similarly structured book “may well
be an even greater pleasure.” Here, his
subject is French cuisine, and to understand
its essence, he moves to Lyon—France’s
gastronomical capital—and stays there
five years while subjecting himself to boot
camp–style training in a culinary school
and Michelin-starred restaurant. “Along
the way he tangles with the bêtes noires of
every Anglophone in France—the language,
the bureaucracy, the arrogance”—while
annoying all around him by trying to
prove that Italy is the true source of certain
beloved French dishes.
23
True, our tendency to bond within a group
while demonizing outsiders appears to have
been with us always; it can be observed
in toddler behavior. Still, “it was civiliza-
tion which brought out all the bad in us,”
and Bregman is advocating that society be
restructured to bring out the altruism that
usually emerges in crises.
Of course, “he cannot deny that people
sometimes commit unspeakably evil acts,”
said The Economist. He ascribes the
Holocaust to citizens being conditioned to
believe they were doing good while commit-
ting horrors. But he also tears down many
postwar psychological studies, such as the
Stanford Prison Experiment, that sought
to pin the complicity of everyday Germans
Golding’s seminal 1954 novel, Lord of the
Flies. A decade later, Bregman discovers,
than a year. Instead of descending to sav-
agery, as Goldman’s group did, the actual
badminton court.
Buford is a writer who “seeks out extreme
experiences,” and in Lyon, “he finds
plenty,” said Moira Hodgson in The Wall
Street Journal. The rough-edged city made
sure the Bufords felt unwelcome. But
after the author finds temporary work
with a baker, then hones some skills in a
top culinary school, he is soon working
15-hour days and enduring brutal hazing
at the hands of, among others, a 19-year-
old supervisor. “Built into the culture of
the kitchen,” the 66-year-old writes, “is a
pathological intolerance of the novice and a
perverse bully’s pleasure in watching a nov-
ice’s failed efforts.”
Buford has witnessed such conduct before,
said Ryu Spaeth in The New Republic. His
mentor in Heat was celebrity chef Mario
Batali, whose career was sunk by the kind
of sexist behavior and sexual harassment
Buford chronicled. Dirt is “not a better
book, but it might be the deeper one,”
because it seeks and finds the element that
binds the refined and the brutish in France’s
culinary culture and others like it: a desire
to preserve a way of eating that predates
industrialized food production. In the end,
he simply wants us to be more mindful of
the food on our plates, and of its origins
and hidden costs. In Buford’s world, “we
are what we eat.”
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
24 ARTS
Author of the week
Bakari Sellers
“Bakari Sellers’ story is
black America’s story,” said
Michael Harriot in TheRoot
.com. Though he is the son
of a civil rights hero and a
former political wunderkind,
the 35-year-old writer, lawyer,
and CNN analyst is before
all that a
child of the
South, as are
most black
Americans.
And he is
a child of a
rural black
town in the
South, a region that remains
home to all but one of the
nation’s 106 majority-black
counties. With his new mem-
oir, My Vanishing Country,
he asks that the nation not
lose sight of the many black
Americans who share his
regional background. “The
media, when they say rural,
they mean white people,”
he says. “But I’m rural, too.
The Black Belt is our roots.
And the plights that we go
through have, many times,
been forgotten.”
Sellers is also unusually
open about the accumulat-
ing trauma of being black
in America, said Michel
Martin in NPR.org. Sixteen
years before he was born,
his father, Cleveland Sellers,
was one of 29 civil rights
demonstrators shot by police
on the campus of South
Carolina State University.
Three black students died,
the nine officers charged
were acquitted, and the elder
Sellers—then a 24-year-old
activist—was the only person
imprisoned in the aftermath.
Bakari Sellers says that event
shaped his own life like no
other, because he has for-
ever wanted to carry on his
father’s commitment to end-
ing such injustices, to helping
black Americans live free of
fear. At the same time, he for-
ever sees that effort failing as
racism again and again takes
more lives. “We have made a
lot of progress,” he says, “but
we still have so far to go.”
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
The Book List
Best books…chosen by J.A. Jance
Mystery writer J.A. Jance is the author of the best-selling J.P. Beaumont, Joanna Brady,
and Ali Reynolds series. In Jance’s new novel, Credible Threat, Reynolds—a news
anchor turned cybersleuth—helps an archbishop who is receiving death threats.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank
Baum (1900). My second-grade teacher allowed
students who finished their work early to choose
a book from the classroom bookshelves. I wasn’t
particularly impressed by the wizard, hiding
behind his green curtain. What spoke to me
instead was the realization that a living, breath-
ing human being had put all those words on
the pages. From that moment on, that’s what I
wanted to be—the person writing the words.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
by J.K. Rowling (1997). When I first encoun-
tered the tale of the young wizard raised among
Muggles, one month after 9/11, it was just the
diversion I needed. The Harry Potter books cre-
ated a generation of kids who considered reading
fun rather than a punishment.
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography (1977).
In the late ’80s, following a book signing in Gig
Harbor, Wash., the bookstore owner gave me a
copy of Agatha Christie’s autobiography. I found
real inspiration as well as common ground. And
I was astonished to discover that she, too, suf-
fered from literary postpartum depression.
Also of interest...in birds and bird-watchers
What It’s Like to Be a Bird
by David Allen Silbey (Knopf, $35)
“Any new David Allen Sibley book is
an event,” said Peter Fish in the San
Francisco Chronicle. The latest from
the renowned ornithologist and illus-
trator landed on spring best-seller lists
and offers a “sprightly, information-
packed” survey of the behaviors of hundreds of
North American bird species. It’s packed with
insights about the robins or scrub jays you might
see every day, and “what lifts it into the realm of
art” are the 330 illustrations—all as accurate as
John James Audubon’s, “but more alive.”
Parakeet
by Marie-Helene Bertino (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26) by Jennifer Rosner (Flatiron, $26)
A wisecracking parakeet defecates on
a wedding dress in the first scene of
Marie-Helene Bertino’s second novel.
“But Parakeet contains so much more
than the typical wedding narrative,”
said Hillary Kelly in NYMag.com. The
ambivalent bride-to-be is prone to visions, the par-
akeet is her grandmother reincarnated, and said
elder wants to see a family mission completed.
What’s more, “as more of the bride’s memories
are unfurled and dissected, her forays into other
dimensions become both rational and revelatory.”
…And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven
Santmyer (1982). When would-be writers ask
me if they’re too old to start, I refer them to this
book, published when the first-time author was in
her 80s. Written long before book clubs were “a
thing,” this novel about a small-town Ohio liter-
ary club gave me some real insights into my moth-
er’s life as a 1950s housewife whose coffee breaks
with neighbors kept her from losing her bearings.
Abandon Ship! by Richard Newcomb (1958).
The true tale of how, after delivering the atomic
bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the USS Indianap-
olis was torpedoed and sank within 12 min-
utes. Its captain was court-martialed for not
acting sooner, and only in 2000, after a young
reader mounted a protest, was the officer
exonerated.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle
Stop Café by Fannie Flagg (1987). This was
another gift from a bookstore. I laughed aloud
at the story of the kids teasing their pet raccoon
with saltine crackers that disappeared when he
tried to wash them, but I remain haunted by the
murder mystery lurking in the background.
The Bird Way
by Jennifer Ackerman (Penguin, $28)
In her follow-up to The Genius of
Birds, said Julie Zickefoose in The
Wall Street Journal, author Jennifer
Ackerman “digs deeper and ranges
further into bird behavior, pulling
tasty stories out of rich ground as she
hops across continents.” The reader soon learns
that the rules of avian mating are dramatically
different outside North America, and to expect
as many good stories about bird people as about
birds. “Like a bowerbird,” Ackerman “gathers
and displays treasures to amaze and delight.”
The Yellow Bird Sings
In this “exquisite, heartrending”
debut novel, said Mary Beth Keane
in The New York Times, a Jewish
mother and her 5-year-old daughter
hide from Nazi soldiers in a neigh-
bor’s barn in 1941 Poland. To keep
her girl quiet, Roza invents a story about a yel-
low songbird, which becomes the child’s imagi-
AP, Mary Ann Halpin
nary companion. An “absolutely beautiful and
necessary” novel about the bond between mother
and daughter, The Yellow Bird Sings is “full of
heartbreak but also hope.”
 Review of reviews: Art & Podcasts ARTS 25
Art in the streets: Washington goes big for Black Lives Matter
“It is a clapback so mighty it can “End Racism Now” and painted
be seen by satellites,” said Petula it onto a street adjoining the city’s
Dvorak in The Washington Post. Contemporary Art Museum.
Last Friday morning, the nation’s
capital awoke to a monumental But the signaling isn’t stop-
work of public art ordered by ping there, said Kadia Goba
the city’s mayor and completed in BuzzFeedNews.com. In
overnight. On the street leading Washington, the local chapter
to the virtual front yard of the of the Black Lives Matter move-
White House, a message had been ment dismissed Bowser’s mural
painted in bright yellow 35-foot “before the paint was even dry.”
block letters by artists, city work- In a tweet, the group labeled it “a
ers, and impromptu volunteers. performative distraction,” a stunt
“Black Lives Matter,” the two- “to appease white liberals” while
block-long mural reads, and when Bowser ignored the group’s policy-
the sun rose that first day, Mayor change demands. The weekend’s
Muriel Bowser visited the site The new view along 16th Street toward Trump’s White House demonstrators quickly added their
with civil rights hero John Lewis own commentary, in graffiti scrib-
and welcomed the assembled demonstrators views of D.C., said Sebastian Smee, also bled atop Bowser’s yellow letters, said Kevin
to the newly renamed Black Lives Matter in the Post. “The sign, which couldn’t be Lewis in WJLA.com. “We Want Change Not
Plaza. She was symbolically reclaiming more vivid, is so close to Lafayette Square a ‘Mural,’” said one such message. “This
city and public turf where four days earlier and the White House that reading it, from ‘Mural’ Ain’t Doing S---,” said another. By
peaceful protesters were teargassed and left to right, your eyes virtually stumble Friday night, Black Lives Matter had devel-
shot with rubber bullets by federal police into the seat of executive power.” Copycat oped an even bolder response. As demon-
officers to allow President Trump to stroll art immediately began appearing in other strators danced to a joyous Beyoncé song,
out of the White House for a photo op. cities around the country, said Taylor Dafoe BLM volunteers with paint rollers added
in ArtNet.com. Giant “Black Lives Matter” three words and an equals sign to the street
Score that round to Mayor Bowser and messages were sprayed or rolled onto major painting. By morning, the giant yellow letters
her street mural, which was almost streets in Oakland and Sacramento. In on 16th Street spelled out a new message:
instantly added to Apple Maps’ satellite Raleigh, N.C., volunteers chose the slogan “Black Lives Matter = Defund the Police.”

New and notable podcasts

Code Switch
(NPR)
Podcasts can do more
than entertain and
inform: They can “offer
models of produc-
tive exchange,” said
Samantha Vincenty
in OprahMag.com. In
recent weeks, the four-
year-old audio spin-off of NPR’s Code Switch
blog has been one of the nation’s most-
listened-to podcasts, because each of its
roundtable discussions provides “a thought-
ful companion to the 24-hour news cycle,” as
co-hosts Shereen Marisol Meraji and Gene
Demby “explore how issues of race and
identity manifest in every corner of American
culture.” Meraji and Demby bring “honesty
and nuance” to every conversation, said
Justine Goode in VanityFair.com. Past epi-
sodes have explored the black exodus from
the Republican Party and the lasting cultural
impact of Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer.
In a podcast released days after protests
against police brutality swept the nation,
writer Jamil Smith revisited “What Does
Seeing Black Men Die Do for You?”—an
essay he wrote in 2015. “To live in America
is to confront harsh realities,” and that makes
Code Switch an “essential” listen.
AP
The Last Archive
(Pushkin Industries)
Jill Lepore has joined
the true-crime racket—
sort of, said Jennifer
Schuessler in The New
York Times. In a new
series that delivers
“plenty of the kind of
intellectual surprise
twists familiar from Lepore’s articles in The
New Yorker,” the Harvard historian seeks
to answer a question on many people’s
minds: Who killed truth? The series is
based on a class she teaches on the his-
tory of evidence. And though the subject
“might sound awfully dry,” the show breaks
it into 10 case studies presented in the
style of old-school radio detective yarns—
“more War of the Worlds than PBS.” Still,
Lepore takes the mission seriously, said
PodcastReview.org. In the first episode,
she travels to Barre, Vt., to look into a 1919
murder case that newspapers of the time
couldn’t accurately describe without violat-
ing obscenity laws. As ever, her gift is “her
ability to select the juiciest details.” We
learn, for example, that the word “clue”
originally referred to a ball of yarn that peo-
ple unspooled as they entered and explored
labyrinths. “History nerds, rejoice!”
Phoebe Reads a Mystery
(Radiotopia)
“Ever since the pan-
demic hit, the only
podcast I can stomach
is Phoebe Reads a
Mystery,” said Kayla
Webley Adler in Elle
.com. Phoebe Judge,
the longtime host of
Criminal, has one of the most recogniz-
able voices in the business, and she’s
been using it to share with listeners her
favorite method of coping with stress:
reading classic whodunits. Every night,
she reads a chapter from a work by Arthur
Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, or Wilkie
Collins, and “her distinctive and soothing
voice” makes Phoebe Reads an excellent,
stress-relieving bedtime ritual. Hercule
Poirot has become a recurring favorite,
said Hannah Davies in TheGuardian.com.
Judge began the series with 1920’s The
Mysterious Affair at Styles, the first novel
by Christie to feature the Belgian detective,
and in June’s offering, 1923’s The Murder
on the Links, Poirot takes on the case of an
ex-client whose body was discovered on
the grounds of a golf course in northern
France. “Turn on, tune in, and don’t drop
out, lest you miss the clues.”

THE WEEK June 19, 2020

ARTS 26 Review of reviews: Film & Music
Tomei and Davidson: When home won’t let go
The King of
Staten Island
++++
Judd Apatow has a knack for turning unique
comic talents into bankable movie stars, and
the director of Trainwreck and Knocked Up
just might have done it again, said David
Ehrlich in IndieWire.com. Saturday Night
Live’s Pete Davidson is “unlike any other actor
of his generation.” A “compulsively watch-
able screen presence,” he’s “a scarecrow-size
open wound,” and in this “wry and tender”
R-rated comedy closely based on his own
life, he puts a new spin on the typical Apatow
man-child by infusing the part with the same
style of confessional humor that he brings to
SNL, “like he’s bleeding out in open daylight
and the joke is that everybody thinks it’s just
Run the Jewels
RTJ4
++++
Run the Jewels’ potent
new protest album is
“designed to shake
even the most self-
regardingly woke of
us out of our compla-
cency,” said Jon Dolan
in Rolling Stone. Heirs
to the articulate anger of Public Enemy and
Rage Against the Machine, rappers Killer
Mike and El-P have put out four excellent
and widely acclaimed albums since join-
ing forces in 2013, and yet there’s a new
urgency to their latest assaults on systemic
inequality, violent cops, and other eternal
foes. “Fascism slaps, and they slap back.”
The duo’s first album of the Trump era
“bounces as much as it brays,” powered by
explosive funk-punk beats, including one
lifted from Gang of Four. Though RTJ4 was
recorded before America’s current unrest,
“the palpable anger coursing through tracks
like ‘Yankee and the Brave’ and ‘JU$T’ feels
as cleansing as an acid bath,” said Mikael
Wood in the Los Angeles Times. Fury isn’t
the only emotion articulated here, though.
Killer Mike’s “deep-seated humanism” has
risen to the surface, making RTJ4 the duo’s
“most emotionally complex album so far.”
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
a bit.” Davidson plays Scott, a
24-year-old stoner who’s still
living at home with his mother
in Staten Island when she starts
dating for the first time since
Scott’s firefighter dad died on
the job 17 years earlier. Marisa
Tomei plays Scott’s mom, and the
actress’ flinty warmth “has rarely
been more winning,” said Justin
Chang in the Los Angeles Times.
But Bill Burr, as the new fire-
fighter of the household, is even
more effective, “both genuinely
annoying and genuinely likable.”
He and other great support-
ing characters save the movie from being
merely a meandering and overlong coming-
of-age. Still, Davidson, who co-wrote the
screenplay, more than holds his own, said
Peter Travers in RollingStone.com. “You
feel the pain under the clowning,” and he
has shaped his life story into “something
funny, touching, and vital.”
Other movies on demand
2040
This documentary is a real pick-me-up, said
Brian Lowry in CNN.com. Its central argu-
ment—that the technology to avoid climate
disaster already exists—“has a powerful
pull,” and though its methods are “undeni-
ably manipulative,” it does a nice job of
explaining how driverless cars, ocean farm-
ing, and other innovations could add up to
the solution we need. ($20) Not rated
Hinds
The Prettiest Curse
++++
“There should be a law
requiring Hinds to release
all of their future albums
during the summer sea-
son,” said Andy Crump
in PasteMagazine.
com. The all-female
garage-rock quartet
has always made music that “pairs perfectly
with warm, sunny days spent driving on
beachside highways with the windows rolled
down.” Still, there’s more pop effervescence
than ever before on this third album from the
Madrid-based band, even as they’ve sacrificed
none of their “punk-cum–surf rock” vigor.
“They’ve grown up, but they haven’t lost their
edge—they’ve merely sharpened it with their
best work to date.” Another thing that hasn’t
changed is “the impressively unhinged vocal
style both Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote
employ,” said Tim Sendra in AllMusic.com.
At times, they “sound like a hurricane of zeal-
ous enthusiasm,” especially on the anthemic
“Riding Solo” or “Waiting for You,” a “strutting
kiss-off.” The music “might not be simple and
true garage rock anymore,” but The Prettiest
Curse shows that the ladies of Hinds are “able
to grow up a little without losing any of the
qualities that made them special.”
Tommaso
Tommaso has one undeniable strength:
Willem Dafoe’s unforgettable lead perfor-
mance, said Owen Gleiberman in Variety.
Dafoe plays a stand-in for his director in this
Abel Ferrara drama about a former bad-boy
filmmaker and addict who’s raising a child in
Rome as his current marriage unravels. The
result reaffirms Dafoe as “one of our great-
est actors,” though “the film should have
been shapelier and 20 minutes shorter.”
($12) Not rated
The Surrogate
This quiet drama takes “a highly specific sce-
nario” and makes it universally relatable, said
David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter.
Jasmine Batchelor delivers a performance of
“stunning psychological insight” playing a
Brooklynite who agrees to be the surrogate
mother for a gay couple’s child— only to face
a hard choice upon learning that the unborn
baby has Down syndrome. ($12) PG-13
Dreamland
Perhaps “the freakiest film of the year
so far,” Bruce McDonald’s latest pulpy
dystopian noir “goes all out to attain cult
status,” but ends up delivering “a ludicrous-
to-intriguing ratio of about 80-20,” said
Cath Clarke in TheGuardian.com. Stephen
McHattie stars as a gaunt hitman who’d
like to rescue a girl trapped in a hideous
sex-trafficking ring but has to contend with
Juliette Lewis’ unhinged “Countess” and
her vampire brother. ($7) Not rated
Ondara
Folk N’ Roll Vol. 1: Tales of Isolation
++++
J.S. Ondara is living
proof that the American
dream survives, said
Lee Zimmerman in
AmericanSongwriter
.com. The Kenyan-born
singer-songwriter—who
at 20 emigrated to Min-
neapolis, intent on following the path of idol
Bob Dylan even though he’d yet to learn
guitar—went from playing open mics to
touring with Neil Young. Now, a year after
his Grammy-nominated Tales of America, he
has followed up with a “stark but sensitive”
rumination on life during the Covid-19 shut-
down. Song titles such as “Isolation Blues”
and “From Six Feet Away” speak for them-
selves, “but it’s Ondara’s haunting and har-
rowing delivery, particularly on the riveting
‘Pulled Out of the Market,’ the nagging ‘Iso-
lation Blues,’ and the decidedly Dylanesque
‘Mr. Landlord,’ that find a common bond
between tone and tenacity.” Though the
11-track acoustic project came together in
about a week, “it feels just about as fleshed
out as its predecessor,” said Andrew Sacher
in BrooklynVegan.com. Ondara’s voice is
Universal
“truly angelic,” and “his storytelling ability
is still just as compelling.”

Streaming tips
Five great series still waiting
for you to discover them:
Rectify
Maybe you’ve seen glowing
reviews of this Sundance se-
ries but never gotten around
to watching any of its four-
season run. How about now?
Aden Young plays a murder
convict who returns to his
family in rural Georgia after
19 years in prison. From
beginning to end, the story
of his reintegration is both
heartbreaking and beautiful.
Netflix
Halt and Catch Fire
At the dawn of the personal-
computing revolution, a
group of four bright young
innovators try to build
lives while building the
next big thing. Especially
from Season 2 on, it’s all
impeccably executed, from
the Mad Men level of ’80s
period detail to the superb
performances. Netflix
Red Oaks
If you love Caddyshack, The
Wonder Years, and every
John Hughes movie, this
is the retro dramedy series
for you. Set in the mid-’80s,
it follows a college film
student who’s wondering
what future to pursue while
spending his summers
working as an assistant
tennis pro at a New Jersey
country club. Amazon Prime
Southland
NBC canceled this L.A.
police drama after just one
promising season before it
became even better on TNT.
It was never going to be The
Wire, but it avoids genre
cliché and depicts a modern
police force as populated by
a range of individuals who
struggle with the ambigui-
ties of their profession. Hulu
Treme
Speaking of The Wire,
David Simon’s follow-up
series never escaped the
shadow of that revered por-
trait of modern Baltimore.
But Simon’s love letter to
post-Katrina New Orleans is
a great watch, crowded with
music and characters deter-
Showtime, HBO
mined to pick up the pieces.
HBO Max
• All listings are Eastern Time.
Television
The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching
The Marion Stokes Project
In 1979, Marion Stokes of Philadelphia pressed
the Record button on her VCR and commenced
an obsession. As this documentary recounts, the
African-American activist and librarian spent the
next three decades trying to capture every minute
of news-related content broadcast throughout
each 24-hour day across multiple networks. The
project turned her into a recluse. But she was
right that one day her 70,000 tapes would be
found valuable. Monday, June 15, at 10 p.m.,
PBS; check local listings
One Day at a Time Animated Special
With most TV production halted by Covid-19
concerns, the reboot of Norman Lear’s 1970s
sitcom has devised a clever way to carry on.
Penelope Alvarez and family will be animated
characters for an episode in which a visit by
conservative relatives creates sparks. Guest stars
Melissa Fumero, Gloria Estefan, and Lin-Manuel
Miranda will join the voice cast. Tuesday,
June 16, at 9:30 p.m., Pop TV
Love, Victor
The 2018 movie Love, Simon proved that a
mainstream teen romance can be built about an
ordinary kid who happens to be gay. In this new
spin-off series, Michael Cimino steps into the lead
role as a 16-year-old who’s still coming to terms
with his sexuality when he moves to Atlanta.
While trying to sort out conflicting new romantic
interests, he starts emailing Simon for advice.
Available for streaming Friday, June 19, Hulu
Bully. Coward. Victim.
The Story of Roy Cohn
It’s not easy to decode the lawyer and political
fixer who mentored Donald Trump. But this
documentary, made by a granddaughter of Julius
and Ethel Rosenberg, goes a long way toward
explaining why a closeted Jewish homosexual
would spend so much of his life targeting Jews
and homosexuals, refusing to pay his bills,
and answering every accusation with fabri-
cated counter-accusations. Friday, June 19, at
8 p.m., HBO
Rhys as Mason: Still working out some issues
ARTS 27
Hibbert and Birgundi Baker at a Chi wedding
The Chi
Lena Waithe is giving us Chicago’s South Side in
full. The third season of her ensemble series set
in her childhood neighborhood will be missing
a couple of original cast members but adding
Lala Anthony and Waithe herself, as a mayoral
candidate running at a moment when black girls
are going missing. Meanwhile, the kids viewers
know are growing up, which means more time
for talented young actor Alex Hibbert. Sunday,
June 21, at 9 p.m., Showtime
Other highlights
Prehistoric Road Trip
Emily Graslie, a science-mad YouTube sensation,
launches a three-part series that explores what
archaeology reveals about prehistoric North
America. Wednesday, June 17, at 10 p.m., PBS;
check local listings
Wasp Network
Edgar Ramírez stars in an Olivier Assayas film
about five Cuban spies operating in 1990s
Miami. With Penélope Cruz, Gael García Bernal,
and Ana de Armas. Available for streaming
Friday, June 19, Netflix
The 2020 ESPYs
The sports awards show turns its attention to
athletes’ humanitarian efforts. Sunday, June 21,
at 9 p.m., ESPN
Show of the week
Perry Mason
Matthew Rhys is not your grandfather’s Perry
Mason. That Mason was a bluff defense attor-
ney played by Raymond Burr, and he proved
every client innocent within an hour. This limited
series, inspired by the Mason who appeared in
dozens of pulp novels beginning in the 1930s,
makes him a more complicated man. Rhys
plays him as a gin-soaked private eye tasked
with clearing a mother who’s been accused of
killing and mutilating her own baby. And both
the church and the police stand in his way.
With John Lithgow and Orphan Black’s Tatiana
Maslany. Sunday, June 21, at 9 p.m., HBO
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
28
Barley risotto: A light, comforting supper without the fuss
Kaszotto—a Polish risotto made with pearl
barley—is “much simpler to prepare than
the classic Italian version with rice,” says
Michal Korkosz in Fresh From Poland:
New Vegetarian Cooking From the Old
Country (The Experiment). “You do not
need to stir the pot constantly like an
Italian grandma.” You can even make the
barley in advance, then throw together this
“comforting, light dish” in about 10 min-
utes. It’s great with a chilled dry cider.
Though any vegetable broth will do here,
Polish vegetable soups “taste unlike soups
from anywhere else,” so I’ve included the
instructions for my go-to broth.
Recipe of the week
Barley risotto with asparagus, cider,
and goat cheese
3 cups vegetable broth
1 cup pearl barley
3 tbsp unsalted butter
1 large onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 bunch (1 lb) asparagus, trimmed, cut in
1-inch pieces
1 cup dry (hard) apple cider, more if needed
½ tsp grated lemon zest
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more
for serving
2 tbsp soft goat cheese, plus more for serving
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
LEISURE
Food & Drink
The goat cheese will melt right in.
Boil broth in a large saucepan. Stir in
barley; cook, covered, over low heat until
liquid has been mostly absorbed, 20 to 30
minutes. Remove from heat; let sit in the
covered saucepan. Melt butter in a large
saucepan over medium heat. Add onion
and cook, stirring frequently, until nearly
soft, about 2 minutes. Add garlic and
asparagus; cook until golden, about 2 min-
utes. Remove asparagus tips and set aside.
(You will use them for serving.) Stir the
cooked barley into pan. Add cider; bring
to a simmer and cook over high heat, stir-
ring frequently, until barley absorbs most
of the liquid, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in lemon
zest, Parmesan, and goat cheese. Season
with salt and pepper. Add more cider for a
looser consistency.
Divide kaszotto among individual plates
and garnish with asparagus tips. Top with
more Parmesan and goat cheese. Serves 4.
Vegetable broth
3 tbsp unsalted butter • 3 bay leaves •
3 whole cloves • 1 tsp black peppercorns •
½ tsp allspice berries • 1 medium onion,
unpeeled and halved through the root •
2 whole garlic cloves, peeled • 2 medium
carrots, halved • 3 medium parsley roots or
parsnips, halved • 1 celery stalk, halved •
1½ tsp fine sea salt
Melt butter in a large pot over medium
heat. Cook, stirring often, until it starts to
turn dark amber, about 5 minutes. Add
spices. Cook, stirring occasionally, until
fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Add onion, cut
side down, to spiced butter. Add remaining
ingredients and cook, stirring occasion-
ally, until vegetables begin to brown, 3 to
4 minutes. Add 3 quarts cold water. Bring
to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer
uncovered, stirring occasionally, until broth
is reduced by half, 1 to 1½ hours. Allow
to cool slightly, then strain broth through a
fine-mesh sieve. Makes 1½ quarts.

Wine: Bordeaux under $30
“You don’t have to look toward the top
shelf for high-quality Bordeaux,” said
Roger Voss in Wine Enthusiast. Though
the region produces many of the
world’s most expensive wines, its crus
bourgeois are both the real thing and
reliably affordable. The “bourgeois”
refers to the middle-class merchants
who, beginning in the 1300s, were
allowed to purchase estates.
2016 Château Côtes de Blaignan
($15). This cru bourgeois “has ripe
berry fruits, rich tannins, and
a juicy, smoky character that
makes it a classic.”
2017 Château Vernous ($25).
Another Médoc cru bourgeois,
“this ripe, structured wine is
full of satisfying black fruits and
acidity.” Cellar it until 2022.
2017 Château Maucamps ($27).
Wait until 2023 to drink this
Haut-Médoc cru bourgeois, in
which juicy blackberry and
Restaurants as groceries: A new look for neighborhood dining
The past may be the future for many ambitious restaurateurs,
said Kate Krader in Bloomberg.com. Around the country,
various restaurants have survived the Covid-19 shutdown by
re-creating the days when great cooks doubled as grocers.
In recent months, “the hybrid restaurant–grocery store has
become such a viable model for struggling places that several
are planning to keep it going.”
Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria New York City • Il Buco has al-
ways had a market section; that’s the alimentari in its name.
But the challenges of Covid have lured back beloved chef
Justin Smillie, whose focus is now on doubling that side of
the business while continuing to serve Il Buco’s signature
spit-roasted short ribs and bucatini cacio e pepe. Custom-
ers will be able to stop in not just for salumi, pastries, and
aged pecorinos, but also porchetta and other offerings of the Counter life at Il Buco
counter’s new “concierge” butcher. 53 Great Jones St.
Café Cancale Marché Chicago • Dining in is out at Café Cancale, so chef Paul Kahan
and his partners have converted their French-inspired Wicker Park operation to a
market selling fresh seafood, specialty pantry items, house-made sauces, and take-out
dinners such as trout amandine. The marché even sells cook-at-home meal kits for
mussels à la Normande and flounder en papillote. 1576 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Sightglass Provisions Los Angeles • Sightglass, a popular San Francisco coffee chain,
opened its first L.A. location in a bright warehouse-like space one day before the city’s
shutdown. Six weeks later, it relaunched as Sightglass Provisions, stocking coffee, yes,
Michal Korkosz

acidity are balanced by a hint but also artichokes from local farmers, brined chickens, vegetable stock, and the fresh-
of licorice. baked bagels and cinnamon rolls of pastry chef Jillian Bartolome. 7051 Willoughby Ave.

THE WEEK June 19, 2020

 Coping LEISURE 29

Parenting: What your child care should look like now

As Americans return to work this inside, the children wash their hands
month, “the stifling atmosphere of ‘I for the first of many times and are
don’t know’ hangs over day care,” said kept in separate groups that no longer
Pete Croatto in GoodHousekeeping mingle. The facility has a refrigerator-
.com. Many of us parents can’t return size device that uses UV light and
to our workplaces unless we send our ozone to sanitize toys and nap mats.
children to day care, yet doing so feels And though the children don’t wear
like putting them at risk. But states masks, the caretakers do. After story
are gradually letting day-care facilities time, the kids cheerfully sing one of
reopen, several weeks after orders shut- two new songs about handwashing.
tered 6 in 10 nationwide, and there’s
reason to put faith in the move, said Health regulations will vary by state,
ProPublica.org. First, children who said Katherine Courage in Vox.com.
become infected with the Covid-19 A teacher and her charges at Magical Beginnings Though most take cues from the
virus typically do not get as sick as Centers for Disease Control, many of
adults do—and for children, death is extremely rare. And though the CDC’s new Covid-19 guidelines “seem incongruous with
further studies are “frustratingly” scarce, 2 in 3 indicate that chil- young kids’ behavior, such as expecting 3-year-olds to keep
dren are less susceptible to contracting the virus. In New Jersey, masks on all day.” If you’re considering a return to day care,
more than 500 child-care centers remained open in April and said Tara Santora in Fatherly.com, ask yours for specifics on
May to serve children of essential workers, and none reported masks, handwashing, cleanings, maximum group sizes, social-
evidence of children passing the disease among themselves. distancing measures, and screenings for children and staff mem-
bers. While it’s true that kids are relatively unlikely to become
Day care will look different to returning customers, said severely ill, they could still spread the disease, even before
Stephanie Ebbert in The Boston Globe. At Magical Beginnings they’re symptomatic, to day-care staff, other children, and peo-
in Middleton, Mass., drop-offs are now strictly one family at a ple at home. It’s a tough decision for sure. “Sending your child
time, with parents not stepping past the foyer. Families must sub- to day care is a risk for your family and for your community.
mit a daily checklist affirming a lack of symptoms, but the kids’ But so is going to the grocery store and work. Depending on
temperatures are also checked before the parent departs. Once your situation, day care may be a risk you need to take.”

Lockdown season: Making the most of it And if you’re bored…

How to help a city heal
There’s no need to merely shake our heads
over any damage left behind by many recent
demonstrations, said Ellen Barry in The New
York Times. “A hallmark of recent days in
America is that, in cities troubled by conta-
gion, grief, and now violence, people are com-
ing out of the woodwork to clean.” On the
mornings after rallies in Boston, Denver, Min-
neapolis, Los Angeles, San Antonio, and else-
where, residents have gathered spontaneously
to sweep up trash or broken glass and to scrub
away graffiti using rags, pails, and Goo Gone.
Most are supporters of the demonstrators or
are demonstrators themselves; they want to
make sure the rallies don’t become defined by
incidents of vandalism and looting. One Bos-
ton woman said being part of the first night
of protests was inspiring but nerve-racking.
“What I really found,” she said, “is that the
most beautiful moments were the aftermath.”
What it’s like to fly these days
Even at a major airport these days, “going
through security is a breeze,” said Kathleen
Elkins in CNBC.com. So much is strange,
though, about air travel right now, as I learned
Getty, AP
reminded by email to wear a mask, and I ar-
rive at an “uncharacteristically empty” LAX
with mask and sanitizer ready. But while many
boarding gates are empty and certain trans-
actions modified, my own gate is packed—
making social distancing impossible—and so is
my plane. When I take my seat, “I am inches
from the passenger in the middle seat, who
is inches from the passenger in the window
seat.” For the next five hours, we and others
nearby share the same air. All I can do, once
my dad picks me up, is self-isolate for two
weeks to keep the family safe.
Why you should DIY everything
If a needed home repair is currently staring
you in the face, “grab some tools and go for
it,” said B.S. Harris in Popular Mechanics.
Sure, “some jobs require a pro.” But if you
have the time, if you do a little online research,
and you’re willing to laugh off your mistakes,
the rewards can be great. I adopted a try-
anything attitude long ago, and over time I’ve
repaired appliances, stopped plumbing leaks,
trimmed trees, and re-roofed my house. “Even
when it costs me extra time and money, my
DIY efforts always feel worth it. They make
“Watching the sunrise at Stonehenge
on the summer solstice has to be
one of the world’s most magical
heritage experiences,” said Richard
Morrison in The Times (U.K.).
This year, for the first time, you
can watch the phenomenon from
home. In fact, you can spend a
virtual overnight at the 4,500-year-
old pre-Druid monument, because
instead of hosting 20,000 people for
a solstice celebration, Stonehenge
will be emptied by pandemic con-
cerns but equipped with cameras
to livestream via Facebook the
moment when the ancient stones
perfectly align with the rising sun.
The stream will start about 4 p.m.
Eastern Time on June 20, which will
be shortly before the U.K.’s sunset.
Dawn’s magic moment will arrive at

on a recent trip from Los Angeles to Char- me smarter, savvier, and most of the time no 11:52—nearly eight hours later.
lotte, N.C. Before I even leave home, I am worse for wear.”
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
30 Best properties on the market
This week: Homes in Fort Lauderdale

1 W Coral Ridge Set on a canal across from a state

park, this 2019 home comes with 80 feet of waterfront
access. The house has six bedrooms with bathrooms,
including two master suites, and features 14-foot
ceilings, oversize windows, sliding glass walls, and a
European-style kitchen. Outside are a wraparound ter-
race, tropical landscaping, a heated saltwater pool and
spa, and a deeded dock. $3,195,000. Timothy Singer,
Coldwell Banker Homes, (954) 292-8900

Florida

Fort
Lauderdale

2 X Las Olas Isles From its perch on the top floor, this three-
bedroom waterfront condo overlooks waterways, Port
Everglades, and the city skyline. The fully furnished penthouse
features custom lighting, glass-door partitions, automated
sound and privacy shades, and a chef’s kitchen including a
large island with seating. Outside are balconies and an exclu-
sive roof terrace; below are a private boat slip and two covered
EV-ready parking spaces. $2,395,000. Niliana Garcia, Engle &
Völkers, (561) 222-3053

3 X Harbor Beach
The gut renova-
tion of this 1957
four-bedroom
home was com-
pleted this year.
The house has
two master suites,
a gourmet kitch-
en with high-end appliances, and
a dining room with doors opening
to the patio. The lot features a yard
with drought-tolerant landscaping
and a saltwater pool, a pergola, and
a grill island, and comes with access
to a private beach club and marina.
$1,800,000. Michael Eaton,
International Realty Services,
(917) 940-8676
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
 Best properties on the market 31

4 X Landings Under
construction and nearly
complete, this five-bedroom
home has been designed with
Florida Vernacular details. A
second-floor balcony wraps
the exterior; the master suite
includes a sundeck; and the
vaulted, skylit living-dining
area has oversize windows
and glass doors to the
outside. The 12,500-square-
foot lot on the Intracoastal
Waterway comes with
mature trees, native plant-
ings, a summer kitchen, a
pool and spa, and 108 feet of
water frontage. $4,780,000.
Ines Hegedus-Garcia, Avanti
Way, (305) 206-9366

Steal of the week

6 S Lauderdale Beach This

5 S Lauderdale Beach Designed with a contemporary open
layout, this four-bedroom home was built in 2014. The light-
filled house, looking out on the ocean, has floor-to-ceiling
windows and glass doors, porcelain floors, an elevator, a
custom kitchen, and a third-floor main suite with walk-in
closet and surround views. The tropical lot features fruit trees,
mature palms, a covered outdoor kitchen, a lap pool, and a
hot tub. $3,750,000. Tika Van Den Hurk, Douglas Elliman,
(305) 778-6570
two-bedroom condo overlooks
the Atlantic Ocean from a
31-foot balcony with room for
a seating area. Built in 1976
and recently updated, the home has a new open-plan kitchen and
redone bathrooms, built-in closets, and a washer and dryer. Build-
ing amenities include two parking spaces, a rooftop pool, a gym,
a 24-hour doorman, and easy access to the beach. $419,000.
Tara Quailey, Douglas Elliman, (954) 260-0076
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
32
The bottom line
QAt least 3.3 million small
businesses—22 percent of all
the firms in the U.S.—shut
their doors between February
and April. For comparison,
730,000 businesses closed
between the start and end of
the Great Recession.
Axios.com
QColleges in the U.S. earn
roughly $600 billion per
year—equivalent to the
combined annual revenue
of tech firms Google, Apple,
Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix,
and Twitter.
The Wall Street Journal
QOf the 312,000 jobs the
health-care sector added in
May, 245,000 were in den-
tists’ offices.
Axios.com
QMore than 50 percent of
bookings on Airbnb in May
were within 200 miles of
travelers’ homes. While
hotel bookings remain way
down, Airbnb bookings since
mid-May are ahead of 2019
numbers.
Bloomberg.com
QShuttered jewelry stores
mean the five biggest dia-
mond producers are sitting
on roughly $3.5 billion in
excess inventory. A diamond
auction in May yielded just
$35 million for De Beers,
$381 million less than the firm
sold the same time last year.
Bloomberg.com
QBoeing delivered four jets
in May, its lowest total for
the month in six decades.
Customers canceled orders
for 18 planes, including 14
737 Max jets.
Reuters.com
QIn the 10 weeks since the
S&P 500 bottomed out in
late March, every stock in the
benchmark index has posted
a positive return.
Bloomberg.com
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
BUSINESS
The news at a glance
Geopolitics: HSBC sides with China
Made with “no fanfare or press Hong Kong’s former chief
release,” HSBC’s decision to side executive, Leung Chun-ying,
with China over Hong Kong’s urged HSBC to consider “which
future has caused an international side of the bread is buttered” in
outcry, said Stephen Morris in deciding which side to support
the Financial Times. “The largest in the Hong Kong protests, said
lender in Europe” posted a simple Grady McGregor in Fortune,
photo on social media last week of and HSBC’s answer is clear.
the bank’s top executive in Asia as The bank is now “ensnared
he signed a petition backing a new even further in the Hong Kong–
Beijing security law that threatens Signing on Beijing’s dotted line Beijing feud” and drew the
Hong Kong’s autonomy. The gesture “compro- ire of the U.S. secretary of state, who lambasted
mised more than a century of careful neutrality” HSBC for a “corporate kowtow” to China’s
for HSBC, which was founded in Hong Kong in Communist Party. But the bank, which in 1993
1865. The decision has prompted “acrimonious moved its center of operations to London, expects
debate” within the company, which is undergoing that over the next decade Asia will “become the
a $4.5 billion restructuring that could include sell- center of global trade”—and seems to have calcu-
ing the bank’s entire U.S. business. lated that keeping Beijing happy is worth the risk.
Federal Reserve: Expect years of near-zero rates Betting big on
The Federal Reserve said this week it expected not to raise interest rates bankrupt firms
through 2022, said Craig Torres in Bloomberg.com. While some “better- The stock market is
so euphoric right now
than-expected May unemployment data point to the economy being past
that investors are buy-
the worst,” the Fed’s first quarterly projections since December still high- ing shares of bankrupt
lighted “considerable risk” in the recovery. The central bank “pledged companies, said Yun
to maintain asset purchases at ‘at least’ the current pace,” after slowly Li in CNBC.com. Hertz,
reducing its buying in April. Policymakers expect economic output to
Pier 1, J.C. Penney, and
shrink by 6.5 percent this year and project that the unemployment rate Whiting Petroleum—
will stand at 9.3 at the end of 2020 and remain elevated for years. all companies that
declared bankruptcy
Oil: Shale wells restart production amid the pandemic—
U.S. shale drillers are cranking up production again as oil prices rebound have seen their shares
skyrocket. Hertz’s
to nearly $40 a barrel, said Rebecca Elliott in The Wall Street Journal.
shares, for example,
With demand picking back up, several U.S. companies this week started
to turn on some of the wells that they had to shut off in late April, when rose 888 percent from
oil prices briefly plummeted into negative territory. The price of $40 a a low of 56 cents
barrel is considered a breakeven point for many shale wells. The bounce when Hertz declared
bankruptcy on May 22.
back comes as many of the world’s oil producers cut output, under an Shares of bankrupt
OPEC deal struck in April and extended last week. companies typically
fall to $0 during a reor-
Algorithms: IBM quits facial recognition tech ganization period and
IBM said it is abandoning its facial recognition products this week after often eventually get
questioning whether the technology should be used by law enforcement, relisted as part of the
said Robert Cyran in BreakingViews.com. Firms such as Amazon and restructured company.
Apple have come under fire for their work on facial recognition, which “It really doesn’t make
has been blamed for racial bias after “a study last year found that many rational sense,” says
popular algorithms falsely identified African-American faces up to 100 one stock analyst. The
times more than Caucasian ones.” Getting out of the business is an easy “bankruptcy bubble”
call for IBM, which scores a public relations win in an area in which “its has created bizarre
market swings. Shares
operations are small, rivals are pulling ahead, and regulation threatens.”
of Chesapeake Energy,
Markets: Stocks reverse 2020 decline an oil and gas producer
widely reported to be
The stock market briefly returned to the green for the year, with the
S&P 500 index rebounding 47 percent from its March low, said Fred preparing a bankruptcy
filing, went from $14
Imbert and Yun Li in CNBC.com. The quick ascent has startled many
to $84.75 in trading
experienced observers. “I’ve been humbled many times in my career. so frantic that it was
And the last three weeks certainly fits that category,” said legendary halted 22 times—and
fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller. The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed
WeChat, AP
then promptly plum-
above 10,000 for the first time, even as bears noted that government meted 74 percent.
economists this week declared that the U.S. was officially in a recession.
 Making money BUSINESS 33

Recessions: A big setback for women in the workforce

Women have been bearing the brunt of this one has looked very different;
the pandemic’s economic impact, said 55 percent of the jobs lost in April had
Shelly Banjo in Bloomberg Businessweek. been held by women. In other reces-
Forget the smiling photos on social media sions, women have taken jobs when
of “moms baking bread and crafting with their husbands have lost them. But now
their kids between Zoom meetings.” The there are no such replacement jobs to be
reality is that throughout the crisis women had. That’s why, Albanesi says, “we can
have been “losing jobs at higher rates expect a much bigger drop in consump-
than men, represent a greater proportion tion and income for households than we
of hourly workers that don’t have paid do during a normal recession.”
sick leave, and are shouldering most of
the additional housework and child-care More likely to lose jobs now, women
duties.” In two-earner couples, women are will probably face a slower recovery,
more likely to leave their jobs to handle said Elisa Martinuzzi in Bloomberg
the child care; many are being forced to .com. Unfairly, “crises tend to reinforce
“scale back their career ambitions, leave Women held 55 percent of the jobs lost in April. the idea that men are responsible for
the workforce, or sacrifice their sleep and putting bread on the table whereas
mental health.” Women risk giving back a decade of gains in the women take care of the family.” Women juggling child-care
workplace. “This pandemic is forcing women 10 steps back,” responsibilities will face a disadvantage getting back into the
says Ashley Reckdenwald, a New Jersey physician’s assistant workforce, said Patricia Cohen and Tiffany Hsu in The New
who was planning to switch jobs when the pandemic hit and is York Times. With fewer “hours logged,” those who still have
now staying home with her children instead. jobs will find it harder to get promoted. But some economists
think that “the increased pressure on families could—over the
The way this recession has affected women will have far-reaching long term—force structural and cultural changes” such as greater
consequences for any rebound, said Sarah Chaney and Lauren child-care options and more flexible work arrangements that may
Weber in The Wall Street Journal. Women make up “77 percent ultimately benefit women. One small early sign of a bright spot:
of workers in occupations that require close personal contact and Economists studying the coronavirus outbreak have found that
cannot easily be done remotely.” While other recent recessions men who are able to work from home—an increasingly common
have been what economist Stefania Albanesi calls “mancessions,” situation—“do about 50 percent more child care.”

What the experts say Charity of the week

‘Financial abuse’ and the stimulus
“Hundreds of people have written to me won-
dering why they have not received their stimu-
lus payment,” said Quentin Fottrell in Market
Watch.com. A scenario seen frequently with
couples who are married but estranged is that
one spouse—usually the husband—demands
the full stimulus payment. That’s financial
abuse—a situation in which “an abuser takes
control of finances to prevent the other per-
son from leaving and to maintain power in a
relationship”—and you shouldn’t stand for
it. If your partner does that to you, “he has
no legal right to keep your money.” Your best
option may be not to call the IRS support
lines but to appeal to your local IRS Taxpayer
Advocate; there is at least one in each state.
You should be able to get your money, and if a
joint return was filed through forgery or fraud,
the consequences can be very serious.
JETS fund takes off
An obscure exchange-traded fund that tracks
U.S. airlines has exploded in popularity, thanks
to young day traders, said Katherine Greifeld
in Bloomberg.com. The US Global Jets ETF,
ticker JETS, held “just $33 million in assets
in early March as the coronavirus pandemic
Getty
ing to catch the bottom in airline stocks” have
pushed the fund above $1 billion. “All these
Millennials, being stuck at home with no bars
to go to and no beaches to travel to, took their
money and became day traders,” said Frank
Holmes, the chief executive of JETS issuer U.S.
Global Investors. Though Warren Buffett an-
nounced he was dumping his airline holdings,
JETS investors have seen a gain of more than
60 percent in the last month.
VCs take steps to back black founders
Some venture capital firms are stepping up to
support founders of color in the wake of pro-
tests, said Natasha Mascarenhas and Jonathan
Shieber in TechCrunch.com. VC firms encoun-
tered criticism last week for tweeting in sup-
port of the Black Lives Matter protests while
doing little to address the fact that “just 1 per-
cent of VC-backed founders are black.” A
few venture capitalists have pledged to make
changes. The New York–based investment
firm Work-Bench “detailed steps it would
take to make sure it is encouraging black en-
trepreneurs and investors.” The head of tech
conglomerate SoftBank’s new $100 million
Opportunity Growth Fund promises to be “an
effective ally to black Americans who have
In the wake of George Floyd’s death, the
Minneapolis Foundation (minneapolis
foundation.org) has pledged to help
repair the city
and create
a more just
society. The
foundation’s
Fund for Safe
Communities
was estab-
lished in 2018
to bring money to local organizations
that are working to reform the criminal
justice system, prevent violence, help
individuals heal, and find meaningful and
peaceful solutions to social problems.
To help those affected by Covid-19, the
foundation has also set up the OneMPLS
Fund, donating nearly $2 million in grants
to 147 nonprofits that help the most
vulnerable populations. There are still
many organizations that need support:
The OneMPLS Fund has received grant
requests totaling $14.2 million from more
than 350 organizations.
Each charity we feature has earned a
four-star overall rating from Charity
Navigator, which rates not-for-profit
organizations on the strength of their
finances, their governance practices,
and the transparency of their operations.
Four stars is the group’s highest rating.

grounded global air travel.” But traders “look- been fighting injustice for centuries.”
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
34 Best columns: Business

Jobs: Hint of recovery or a blip in the data?

Economists who expected a “train sibilities like caring for children,”
wreck” in last week’s employment re- and the share of U.S. adults out
port were stunned to see the economy of work jumps to 27 percent. And
add 2.5 million jobs in May, said while the jobless rate fell overall, it
Jordan Weissmann in Slate.com. It’s a worsened for black Americans.
sign that a few sectors of the economy
have “revved back up a bit” in states Yes, the plunge in the economy has
that have lifted lockdowns, though “been the fastest and deepest on re-
“a crushing number of Americans” cord,” said The Wall Street Journal
are still unemployed. President Trump in an editorial, but “the economy
was quick to seize credit, taking the has hit bottom and is on the way
numbers as a message that a V-shaped back to growth.” The new numbers
recovery is imminent amid a week of appear even better when you con-
Headed back to work—but not ready to spend
unrest and anger. In a press confer- sider that the survey was taken in
ence, he referenced George Floyd, whose death in Minneapolis mid-May, before many lockdowns were eased. The Paycheck Pro-
ignited nationwide protests, saying “hopefully George is looking tection Program has “succeeded in its main goal of getting small
down right now and saying this is a great thing.” businesses to retain workers,” and will help the recovery “gain
speed in June.” Democrats want yet another trillion-dollar rescue
The latest data brought the official unemployment rate down to bill, but a new “spending binge might not be needed.”
13.3 percent from 14.7 percent, but the real number could actu-
ally be significantly higher, said Heather Long in The Washington That assumption could prove dangerous, said Derek Thompson
Post. The jobs report is compiled from a survey of about 60,000 in The Atlantic. Sure, this might be the beginning of a recovery—
households every month; many “insisted they were just ‘absent’ or it could just as well be merely “a dead-cat bounce.” Yet
from work during the pandemic.” Government economists be- Republicans are already “backing away from further stimulus”
lieve that most of those respondents are effectively unemployed. and planning to let expanded unemployment benefits expire at
Without that “classification error,” the unemployment would the end of July. This eagerness to turn the page misses the bigger
have been at 16.3 percent for May—and an awful 19.7 percent picture, said Neil Irwin in The New York Times: The economy is
for April. Whichever numbers you use, the headline jobless rate still “experiencing an epic collapse of demand.” Some businesses
“doesn’t tell the whole unemployment story,” said Alicia Parlapi- may be reopening, but businesses and consumers have cut back
ano in The New York Times. Add in those who are “absent from dramatically on purchases. “When there are profound rips in the
work, probably on layoff,” working part-time for economic rea- economic fabric, repairing them isn’t a simple job, it isn’t quick,
sons, or can’t work “because of fears about getting sick or respon- and even what seems like a huge response often isn’t enough.”

Ben & Jerry’s is showing other companies how
Four decades corporate activism should be done, said John Stoll.
of corporate In the wake of nationwide protests over police
violence, many companies issued “warmed-over
activism platitudes” about the need for change. Then there
was Ben & Jerry’s. “The murder of George Floyd
John Stoll was the result of inhumane police brutality that
The Wall Street Journal is perpetuated by a culture of white supremacy,”
the company’s red-hot 700-word statement began,
adding “a four-point plan to ‘dismantle white
supremacy in all its forms.’” The irreverent ice
cream maker, “founded by a pair of hippies,” Ben
Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, in the late 1970s, is
hardly a new voice on social justice. For years it has
earmarked as much as one-fifth of the company’s
marketing budget to promoting causes like Black
Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, and immigration
reform. It even began encouraging franchisees to
“designate a staffer to shepherd in-store activism.”
Yet Ben & Jerry’s current CEO, Matthew McCar-
thy, still acknowledges the company’s shortcomings.
“We’re still a really white company,” he said. “And
we haven’t done enough to bring equity into the
business.” Other corporate leaders should also rec-
ognize that “the fight over any issue worth fighting
for lasts longer than a news cycle.”

Employers are forcing a terrible choice on thou-
Workers sands of workers who are fearful of contracting the
face a cruel coronavirus, said Jack Healy: Return to work or
lose both your job and your unemployment ben-
ultimatum efits. As more businesses reopen and try to recoup
losses after weeks of lockdown, employers are firing
Jack Healy workers who stay home—and reporting them to
The New York Times unemployment authorities. Workers at one tea shop
in Fort Collins, Colo., “asked the shop’s owner
to delay reopening and meet with them to discuss
safety measures.” In response, the owner fired six
of them and asked the state to revoke their benefits.
“They wanted to wait a little bit longer till the dan-
ger passed,” the owner said, “but for us as a small
business, the danger is imminent.” Some states are
pushing hard to make workers return. Tennessee,
for example, sent out a press release cautioning re-
luctant employees that “the fear of contracting the
coronavirus was not a good enough excuse not to
go back.” One 71-year-old car salesman returned
to work in suburban Detroit even though a co-
worker had already died of Covid-19. Unable to
get through to the unemployment office to see if his
benefits would be cut off, he reluctantly went back
and now sits in a dealership that’s still almost empty
of customers.
AP

THE WEEK June 19, 2020

 Obituaries 35

The sprinting champ who ran from the spotlight
Bobby In the late 1950s,
Morrow Bobby Morrow could
1935–2020 claim to be the fast-
est man alive. The
American sprinter set 14 world
records, and at the 1956 Olympic
Games in Melbourne he notched
gold in the 100-meter and 200-meter
races and the 4-by-100-meter relay.
No athlete had so dominated the
Olympic track since Jesse Owens at
the 1936 Berlin Games; only Carl
Lewis and Usain Bolt have since
matched his medal haul. Morrow
returned home a national hero,
appearing on the cover of Life and visiting the
White House. A God-fearing Texas farm boy,
he seemed to perfectly embody the values of
Eisenhower’s America. But disillusioned with the
way amateur athletics was run and by his rejec-
tion from the 1960 U.S. Olympic team, Morrow
soon retreated from public life. “He was the finest
sprinter of his era,” said Olympic historian David
Wallechinsky. “But it was a short era.”
Born in the Rio Grande Valley, Morrow devel-
oped his speed “chasing jackrabbits on his father’s track success has largely been forgotten by the
farm,” said The New York Times. His brilliance as athletics establishment. “I get left out a lot,” he
a high school runner attracted scholarship offers
from across the country, but Morrow chose to
The writer who found laughs in male neurosis
Bruce Jay Friedman
Bruce Jay
Friedman helped craft what
many now consider
1930–2020
to be the voice of
American Jewish comedy: zany yet
angst-ridden, self-knowing yet often
oblivious. The author of more than
a dozen books, eight plays, and a
handful of Hollywood screenplays—
including the hits Stir Crazy (1980)
and Splash (1984)—Friedman drew
laughs from the fears and fantasies
of his neurotic male protagonists.
His 1962 novel, Stern, sees an urban transplant
wrestle with the psychic terrors of suburbia; in
1964’s best-selling A Mother’s Kisses, a Brooklyn
teen escapes to a Kansas agricultural college only
to have his smothering mother follow him there.
In the short story “A Change of Plan”—adapted
by Neil Simon for the 1972 movie The Heartbreak
Kid—a honeymooning newlywed leaves his wife
for a woman he meets at a hotel pool. It was built
Newscom, The New York Times/Redux
stay in Texas, at Abilene Christian
College. He won the 1955 Amateur
Athletic Union championship in
the 100-yard dash. The next year,
he successfully defended his title
and won the 100- and 200-meter
races at the NCAA championships.
Morrow continued his winning
streak at the Melbourne Olympics,
said The Washington Post. He nar-
rowly missed a world record in the
100 meters, and matched the record
in the 200. In the relay, he ran the
final leg in a winning effort against
the Soviet Union and helped his team
“set a world record of 39.5 seconds, breaking a
mark that Owens had helped set 20 years earlier.”
Back in the U.S., Morrow chafed at the gover-
nance of amateur athletics, said The Daily Tele-
graph (U.K.). While officials and coaches enjoyed
a “feather-bedded life,” Morrow griped that he
and other Olympic athletes received only about
$15 a day. After failing to make the 1960 U.S.
Olympic team, Murrow hung up his running
shoes and “made a life as a cotton farmer.” His
said in 2016. “And I think that’s because I was
fighting them so much.”
tracted gangrene in his left arm and
a surgeon suggested the limb be
amputated, his mom shot back: “I
have a better idea. I’ll saw off your
head.” After receiving a degree in
journalism from the University of
Missouri and spending two years
in the Air Force, he took a job in
Manhattan editing “somewhat
cheesy” adventure magazines with
titles like Male and True Action.
“Among the dozens of freelance
writers he hired was Mario Puzo,
who became a lifelong friend.” Puzo once asked
Friedman what he thought of the title of a novel
he was working on: The Godfather. “Sounds
domestic,” said Friedman. “I’d give it another try.”
His first novel, Stern, was “a literary success, if
not a best-seller,” said The Washington Post. A
Mother’s Kisses fared better, and in 1968 The
New York Times Magazine declared Friedman the
The publicist who
helped create the
Star Wars phenomenon
In 1975, Charles Lippincott
was hired to drum up public-
ity for a science fiction movie
that was about to start film-
ing in the Tunisian desert.
The film was
Charles a strange mix
Lippincott of Arthurian
1939–2020 legend, reli-
gious mys-
ticism, and 1930s space
serials, and many Hollywood
insiders were sure it would
flop. But with an innovative
approach to movie market-
ing, Lippincott built an unpre-
cedented level of audience
excitement. He teamed up
with Marvel to create a
tie-in series of comics that
came out before the movie
debuted, struck a deal with
Kenner to sell action figures,
and had the upcoming flick’s
star—a little-known actor
named Mark Hamill—attend
San Diego Comic-Con, at the
time a niche convention. His
strategy worked. When the
original Star Wars opened
on Memorial Day weekend
in 1977, it was a box-office
smash that had fans lining
up for repeat viewings. “In
our wildest dreams,” said
Lippincott, “we could not
have predicted how massive
a hit we had on our hands.”
Born in Adams, Mass., Lip-
pincott attended law school
“before deciding on a new
career path and entering film
school at the University of
Southern California,” said
The New York Times. After
graduating, he landed a pub-
licist job at Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer, and promoted movies
including Westworld (1973)
and Alfred Hitchcock’s Family
Plot (1976) before venturing
into the Star Wars universe.
“Lippincott later publicized
science fiction films such
as Alien (1979) and Flash
Gordon (1980),” said The
Washington Post. His fan-
based approach to market-

year’s “Hottest Writer.” As he became “a favorite ing is now de rigueur in

on a real-life encounter, said Friedman. “That’s
how a story will happen. You have a fragment of
an experience and ask yourself, ‘What if?’”
Friedman was born in the Bronx to a father who
worked in the garment industry and a homemaker
mother who had “a feisty patter,” said The New
York Times. When the teenage Friedman con-
Hollywood wordsmith” in the 1980s, Friedman Hollywood, but Lippincott
saw his literary reputation decline, said the remained humble about his
Associated Press. He often felt torn between writ- place in cinematic history.
ing screenplays for big paychecks and the loftier “I’m just a dweeb,” he said,
calling of novel writing. But eventually he found “who happened to work on a
peace, summing up his philosophy as “Take the movie you like.”
money, scribble a bit, and enjoy the room service.”
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
36 The last word
A reckoning for Texas’ liberal bastion
Austin has long imagined itself as a progressive oasis, said Peter Holley in The Washington Post. But the police’s
violent response to protests has shown white residents a different view of the city.

S
TEVE ARAWN REMEMBERS the moment
he no longer recognized Austin, the
city he has called home for nearly two
decades. The 43-year-old volunteer medic
was on a grassy embankment rushing to
the aid of an injured protester in downtown
Austin. Perched atop an elevated highway
to his left, police officers were unleashing a
volley of beanbag rounds into the crowd of
demonstrators surrounding him.
Despite wearing a brightly colored vest
adorned with red medical crosses, Arawn
was shot in the wrist and thigh, making
him one of hundreds of people injured by
police weaponry during two days of pro-
tests across downtown Austin last week-
end. “The level of brutality was shocking,”
an astonished Arawn said a day later, his
wrist bandaged and his leg marked by a
dark red and purple bruise. “I just couldn’t
believe something like this was happening
in Austin.”
The people’s republic of Austin is reeling.
As protests against police brutality have Arawn: ‘I just couldn’t believe something like this was happening in Austin.’
swept the nation in the wake of George
Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, the laid- Like the pandemic that has spread unevenly disingenuous exercise in deflecting blame.
back liberal oasis in Central Texas has wit- across the U.S., protests over Floyd’s death “I’m sad and heartbroken,” said Eugene
nessed some of the most acute violence in have exposed fault lines and frailties that Sepulveda, a prominent Austin philanthro-
the country—a development that shocked have festered beneath the surface of cities pist and entrepreneur and a senior adviser
many residents, as well as the city’s liberal nationwide. to Adler, the mayor. “I have been in touch
leadership. with our hired officials and elected officials
Austin police pledged this week to stop fir-
At a six-hour-long emergency City Council ing bean bag projectiles into large crowds expressing very loudly that this is not the
meeting to review police protocols, hun- after several black and Hispanic protesters Austin we know and love.”
dreds of Austinites berated city leaders were badly injured. A 16-year-old Hispanic The alarm reflects the sense of exceptional-
and called for the police chief’s ouster. An teenager was struck in the head and a ism built into the fabric of Austin’s psyche.
editorial in the Austin American-Statesman 20-year-old black man, Justin Howell, Like a blue life raft in a sea of Texas red,
said the police response “compounded the was nearly killed by “less-lethal” ammuni- the taco-obsessed, music festival–embracing
outrage and pain that brought protest- tion. Relatives of Howell, a Texas State city long ago fashioned itself as a bohemian
ers to the streets to begin with.” Reached University student, say doctors have told refuge for musicians, poets, intellectuals,
by phone, Austin Mayor Steve Adler, a them he has a fractured skull and brain and slackers. Even now, nearly a half cen-
Democrat, said videos of the violence made damage. tury past its hippie heyday, many Austinites
him “incredibly uncomfortable.” consider their city more livable, beautiful,

I
N ANOTHER INSTANCE, police shot a
“It didn’t seem right,” he added. pregnant black woman with an “impact and liberal than most places in America.
munition” that left her screaming for Each afternoon, the city’s blue-green water-
But the shock did not extend to the east ways and parks fill with carefree crowds
her baby, a harrowing scene that circulated
side of Interstate 35, a concrete rampart of young white people, basking in the
widely on social media, unleashing fury
that has for decades sliced this community sun, throwing flying discs, and floating on
across town. At nightly protests outside
in half, both physically and culturally. In paddle boards.
police headquarters, demonstrators have
traditionally black and Hispanic neighbor-
begun holding signs calling for city leaders “Austin is a really cool place for people
hoods on the city’s east side, residents said
Tamir Kalifa/Washington Post (2), AP

the only thing surprising about police turn-
ing their weapons on the public is that any-
one is still surprised when it occurs.
“The idea that this is a progressive city is
just a liberal fantasy,” said Nelson Linder,
president of the Austin NAACP.
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
to “Defund the Police.” During a public
address last week, Austin Police Chief
Brian Manley looked pained and held
back tears as he said that the incidents
had left him “crushed.” But for many
Austinites, the chief’s comments were
little more than performative penance, a
that are not aware of the injustices occur-
ring in the world,” said Chas Moore,
founder of the Austin Justice Coalition.
“I tell people all the time, Austin is white
people’s Atlanta. It’s where a white person
can come and fit right in and go anywhere
and see themselves.”

State troopers guard I-35 (top); protesters at Austin’s police HQ
In the traditionally black and Hispanic
neighborhoods on the city’s east side, resi- Georgia in 1980, said Austin has long suf-
dents describe a different reality. Only a
month ago, local activists noted, Austin
police shot and killed unarmed 42-year-old
Mike Ramos. At protests across the city,
some black Austinites say they’re regularly
the victims of police brutality.
“I’ve lived here my whole life, and the
first time I saw a cop kill someone inno-
cent I was in elementary school,” said
Anthony Evans, 25, referring to the death perienced in dealing with conflicts between
of 18-year-old Daniel Rocha in 2005. “It
was traumatizing, and we can’t take these minorities. And if there’s any confrontation,
things anymore.” Rocha’s death resulted in they’re not prepared for it.”
a $1 million settlement, among more than Linder’s office is located in a traditionally
$8 million in settlements the city doled
out for wrongful shooting deaths involv-
ing Austin police between 2005 and 2017, out by skyrocketing housing prices that
according to CBS Austin.
E
VEN AUSTIN PROTESTERS have been
accused of racial ignorance in recent
days, after the only black-owned
business on East Sixth Street—the heart
of the city’s downtown entertainment
district—was looted. “People talk about
Black Lives Matter and investing in the
black community, and then they go out
and harm the only black business owner
in the area,” Moore said. “How does that
make any sense?”
The last word
Adler, the mayor, maintains
that the city has made
significant strides in recent
years. Among them: raising
the minimum wage for city
employees to $15 an hour
and embracing the Green
New Deal espoused by Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
(D-N.Y.). The city created
an Equity Office to evaluate
the impact city policies have
on vulnerable populations.
In 2018, the City Council
voted to make Austin the
state’s first “freedom city,”
a designation tied to a set
of policies that keep police
from inquiring about some-
one’s immigration status
and decriminalize petty
offenses that ensnare dis-
proportionate numbers of
minorities in the criminal
justice pipeline.
“We’ve been having a con-
stant conversation for years
about the things that are
not working well and we’ve
been able to get a lot of
things done,” Adler said.
But Linder, the NAACP president, who
moved to the state capital from southern
fered from the same racist attitudes that
defined life in the Deep South—though less
overt ones. The dissonance between percep-
tion and reality, he said, helps to explain the
bewilderment white Austinites feel when
they’re forced to confront police violence.
“In Austin, folks pretend they’re liberal, but
they’ve never dealt with these racial issues
before,” Linder said. “This city is very inex-
black people and white people, police and
black neighborhood that has been losing
residents for decades, most of them forced
have accompanied the city’s transformation
from a lazy college town and live-music
mecca to an overpriced, traffic-clogged tech-
nopolis known as “Silicon Hills.” Though
they are separated by only a few miles,
there is a 10-year difference in life expec-
tancy between the city’s wealthy west side
and poorer east side. In 2015, the Martin
Prosperity Institute revealed that Austin has
the highest level of economic segregation of
any large metro area in the nation.
In downtown Austin, Russell Bangor, a
37
36-year-old white protester, said he felt
that the city’s economic disparities influ-
enced whether police targeted demonstra-
tors with high-velocity weapons during
recent protests. “I think a lot of police will
automatically assume when they aim at a
black person that they fall within a lower
economic class and don’t have resources,”
Bangor said. “A white person, we get the
benefit of the doubt. They think we might
be property owners or someone worth car-
ing about.”
I
N RESPONSE, SOME white demonstrators
began silently standing in front of black
and Hispanic protesters when they were
engaging with police, turning their bodies
into shields. “As a white person we are
here to listen and use our bodies to protect
and shield black and Hispanic people,”
said Danielle Reichman, 33. “I’ve seen
more white people deciding to use their
privilege like that.”
Despite initiatives such as decriminalizing
minor offenses, Adler said he was under
no illusions about the festering racial
issues inside the Austin Police Department.
Last year, City Manager Spencer Cronk
launched an investigation into the depart-
ment after allegations surfaced that an
assistant chief had repeatedly referred
to President Barack Obama and a long-
time black city councilwoman using the
N-word.
Though a final report found no evidence
of the alleged offenses in text messages, the
findings led some City Council members to
call for a radical shift in the department’s
culture. City leaders decided to delay the
start of the department’s newest cadet class
to make changes to curriculum related
to race, mental health, and de-escalation
tactics.
The idea, Adler said, was to create a cur-
riculum that ensured officers would behave
more like “community protectors” than
“warriors.” That conversation was ongo-
ing, Adler said, when Floyd was killed and
Austin police—like departments all across
the country—found themselves in riot
gear, facing off with thousands of angry
protesters.
“I think this is still a pretty magical place,
a city of innovators and early adopters
that on so many levels each day is doing
things right,” Adler said. “I look at our
city and think we are a progressive place,
but like the other cities around the country,
this moment has revealed we have a long
way to go.”
This article originally appeared in The
Washington Post. Used with permission.
THE WEEK June 19, 2020
38 The Puzzle Page
Crossword No. 556: Flagging Interest by Matt Gaffney The Week Contest
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
This week’s question: A Florida plastic surgeon is offering
drive-through Botox injections for mask-wearing patients
14 15 16
who are worried about wrinkles on their forehead and the
corners of their eyes—parts of the face that aren’t covered
17 18 19
by a mask. If a dermatologist were to set up a special
practice to treat skin problems associated with mask
20 21 22 23
wearing, what should it be called?
24 25 26 Last week’s contest: Will Carroll, drummer for thrash-
metal band Death Angel, has admitted that he no longer
27 28 29 30
thinks Satan “is quite as cool” as he used to after Carroll
contracted Covid-19 and, he said, visited hell while in a
12-day medically induced coma. Please come up with a
31 32 33 34 35
title for a heavy-metal song Carroll might write about his
recent change in opinion.
36 37 38
THE WINNER: “No Sympathy for the Devil”
39 40 41 Joe Ayella, Wayne, Pa.
SECOND PLACE: “Scareway to Heaven”
42 43 44 Glen Alfredson, Durham, N.C.
THIRD PLACE: “Hot for Preacher”—Jason Kuller, Bethesda, Md.
45 46 47 48 49
For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go to
theweek.com/contest.
50 51 52 53
How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to contest
54 55 56 57 @theweek.com. Please include your name, address, and
daytime telephone number for verification; this week,
58 59 60 type “Mask treatment” in the subject line. Entries are due
by noon, Eastern Time, Tuesday, June 16. Winners will
61 62 63
appear on the Puzzle Page next issue
and at theweek.com/puzzles on Friday,
June 19. In the case of identical or similar
ACROSS 42 Used a Hoover 13 Outermost part entries, the first one received gets credit.
1 Kingdom 44 Number before quattro 18 55-Across was once WThe winner gets a one-year
6 Still contending for 45 Queen ___ lace pt. of it subscription to The Week.
the title (flower that resembles 23 Mimics
10 Go on and on and on hemlock) 25 Shed tears
and on 46 Pho’s home 26 Eyelashes, e.g.
14 Guiding principle 50 Hit song from the 28 Just plain awful
15 Winning side in the movie Flashdance 29 Absence of hassle Sudoku
Cold War 52 Fails to be, casually 30 Predator’s dinner
16 Oklahoma city 53 Director DuVernay 31 You can watch sports Fill in all the
17 Flag Day is June 14; 54 Plenty on it boxes so that
the gold band on 55 This country’s flag 32 Number without each row, column,
Nauru’s flag depicts features the blazing backup and outlined
this, which the island sun as viewed 33 Nicaragua’s flag square includes
nation lies just through the ceiling features five of these; all the numbers
beneath hole of a yurt the country actually from 1 through 9.
19 Impatiently excited 58 Protected from has about two dozen
20 Stephen of Interview the wind of them Difficulty:
With the Vampire 59 Backstabbing type 34 Battle of the ___ (2017 super-hard
21 Org. offering Informed 60 Clean off tennis movie)
Delivery 61 Part of Einstein’s 37 Best Director winner
22 Guard’s neighbor formula for Forrest Gump
24 Setting for John 62 Toffee bar 38 “Lettuce Turnip the
Wayne movies, often 63 Vocal features ___” (T-shirt phrase)
26 Not in the dark about 40 Sushi fish
27 Ending for pamphlet DOWN 41 Food with a twist
28 Dwight or Stanley on 1 Like the decor of 43 Forms a partnership
The Office, e.g. many diners 44 Microscopic
31 Safe space 2 Blues great Waters 46 Energy Find the solutions to all The Week’s puzzles online: www.theweek.com/puzzle.
34 Agronomist’s concerns 3 Winning 47 Birth-related
35 Easy-to-learn 4 Bogus story, e.g. 48 “Stop!” if you’re in a
card game 5 Papillon actor, 1973 pirate costume ©2020. All rights reserved.
36 Get rid of 6 Out of place 49 Prides of lions? The Week (ISSN 1533-8304) is published weekly with an additional issue in
37 The black and white 7 Series winners of ‘19 50 Word after yes or no October, except for one week in each January, June, July, and September.
stripes on Botswana’s 8 Retired judge Lance 51 Penne ___ vodka The Week is published by The Week Publications, Inc., 155 East 44th Street, 22nd fl.,
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mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send change of address to The Week, PO Box
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38 Second or third, say 11 Cambodia’s flag “If I’m doing a fake all other countries $218 in prepaid U.S. funds. Publications Mail Agreement
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Our commitment
to Florida
A letter from Florida Blue
CEO Pat Geraghty

To our Florida neighbors,

Since 1944, we’ve had one mission: to help every person in Florida achieve better
health. And today, we remain steadfast in our commitment to keep Florida healthy.
As we face this pandemic together, we’re extending our resources to you and your
loved ones, whether you’re a Florida Blue member or not.

In this difficult time, all Floridians are united in the pursuit of health, so Florida Blue is
extending many of our resources, at no cost, to serve all of Florida. We’ve launched a
24/7 Emotional Support Helpline (1-833-848-1762), providing free, bilingual counseling
if you’re experiencing feelings of stress, anxiety or grief. We’re also offering personalized
help (1-877-352-5830), so you can call neighborhood nurses and specialists from our local
Florida Blue Centers with questions about COVID-19, to learn about testing site locations
and to better navigate the health care system. Furthermore, we’ve committed time and
resources to other non-profit organizations to address urgent health and safety needs in
communities across Florida.

As Florida’s leading health insurer, we care for 1 out of every 4 Floridians. And for those
members, we are working tirelessly to make quality care accessible, affordable and
helpful in these challenging days. Our most up-to-date information is available at
FloridaBlue.com/covid19.

Rest assured, our teams are dedicated to the safety and health of our own employees,
to our frontline health care partners and to every Floridian, so we can stay healthy and
get through this together.

We are inspired by the kindness and courage we’ve seen across our communities. And at
Florida Blue, we remain committed to all whom we serve.

Pat Geraghty
President and CEO, Florida Blue

For more resources and updates, visit FloridaBlue.com/covid19.

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