Rich Bitch

By Jeffrey Toobin
Issue: Sept 29

Leona Helmsley was not a very nice lady, but she was unceasingly devoted to her husband and her dog, Trouble.

When she died, she left small (and wildly differing) amounts to her grandchildren, but the lion's share of her wealth was left to Trouble in a $12 million trust.

Accountants determined that at the most, $2 million of the trust would be necessary to pay for security, care, and health of the dog. So what to do with the other $10 million? You can't ask Leona, and you can't ask Trouble.

Originally, Leona had made arrangements in her will to donate money to poor kids, but she took that out when she revised it. Instead, the money is going into her charitable trust which provides money to dog-related organizations.

But $2 million for a dog? Pet rights activists are thrilled with the amount and with the precedent this sets for other pet trust cases. Others, like the jilted grandchildren, are probably much less happy with the arrangements. Or how about Professor Jeff MCMahon, who said “To give even two million dollars to a single little dog is like setting the money on fire in front of a group of poor people. To bestow that amount of money is contemptuous of the poor, and that may be one reason she did it."

The State of Sarah Palin

by Philip Gourevitch
Issue: Sept 22


The last presidential election was securely grounded in states that regularly play a role in national politics. The candidates, Bush and Kerry, hailed from Texas and Massachusetts, respectively. And the national conventions were held in cities that made sense. Democrats flocked to Boston; Republicans convened minutes from Ground Zero.

This election has been far more inclusive. Iowans were still the first to make their voices heard, but the primaries were make-or-break up until the very end, allowing voters from a wide array of states to appear on the evening news. And John McCain, by picking Alaska's governor as his running mate, propelled American's 50th state into the spotlight.

You got all your information about Alaska from a very interesting piece in the New Yorker. It went into depth about how Alaskans think of subsistence as a "fundamental right," but have also grown accustomed to an influx of federal dollars owing to Sen. Ted Stevens' efforts in Washington.

According to the article, Alaska is sometimes referred to as "America's socialist state" because residents collectively own the state's resources and therefore collect a portion of oil royalties. So why is Palin going around this week calling Barack Obama a socialist?

"It has been Palin's good fortune to govern the state at a time of record oil prices, which means record dividend checks: two thousand dollars for every Alaskan," Gourevitch writes. "And because high oil prices also mean staggering heating bills in such a cold place—and because it's always good politics to give money to voters—Palin got the legislature this year to send an extra twelve hundred dollars to every Alaskan man, woman, and child."

Child? Well, to be fair, some have families to support.

Freeing the Elephants

By Adam Gopnik
Issue: Sept 22

No, not another political article, or one on elephants that can paint, but one on the meaning of the Babar children's stories.

Gopnik holds that they are "a self-conscious comedy about the French colonial imagination and its close relation to the French domestic imagination." The book is not only about taming the wild elephants and putting them in outfits and making them ride elevators and other civilized situations, it is also about recognizing the absurdism inherent in those situations.

The books also contain the struggle between the desire for order and the desire for chaos. Gopnik writes "We would all love to be free, untrammelled elephants, but we long, too, for a green suit."

Illustration slideshow

Echo in the Dark

By David Remnick
Issue: Sept 22

Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) is a tiny, rare, free Russian radio station broadcasting in Red Square since 1990. Because it is in many ways the only game in town (since Putin's crackdown), most of the native and visiting intelligentsia passes through at some point on their journeys.

At one point, the editor in chief, Aleksei Venediktov, kicked Bill Clinton under the table when he went on too long answering an open-ended question.

Here's Putin's attitude towards the media and a free press : “We have never had freedom of speech in Russia, so I don’t really understand what could be stifled. It seems to me that freedom is the ability to express one’s opinion, but there must exist certain boundaries, as laid out in the law.”

So how free is the station, and how threatened is Venediktov? At one point, Putin said “You have to answer for this, Aleksei Alekseevich!” And previously, Yeltsin said “Echo of Moscow, you should be ashamed of yourselves!” As of yet, no one has taken them off the air. “But no matter what we do,” Venediktov said, “no matter how clever we are, we always have to recognize that we can be gone in a flash.”

Outside Man

By John Colapinto
Issue: Sept 22


Any conversation about Spike Lee's new movie "Miracle at St. Anna" could use a reference or two to this recent New Yorker profile. Lee comes out with a film almost every year, a pace matched only by Woody Allen. Of course Lee, fresh out of NYU film school, was dubbed the "black Woody Allen." With the release of "Do the Right Thing," the public came to view him more as the Malcolm X of American cinema. But Lee complains about his reputation.

"People think I'm this angry black man walking around in a constant state of rage."

Angry, maybe. But not unfriendly. As he walks around Midtown Manhattan, he's recognized constantly. Autograph? Sure. Photo? No problem. M&M's to support my high school football team? You on the straight and narrow? $5.

Passing by the Niketown store, he spots several teens,"Sneakerheads," and asks them "what's about to drop."

Since the late 1980's, Lee has been heavily involved in Nike's marketing campaign. Obama's campaign is a whole other story.

"Look, if they need me, they know where I am," he says. "You know, that shit could be used against them, too...Sometimes you might just be a liability."

The Home Team

By Peter Hessler
Issue: Sept 15

In this final Letter from Beijing about the Olympics, Hessler tells us about the Chinese experience. Many experienced it as volunteers: organizing, cleaning, building, and creating the new city.

City volunteers were unpaid and had great pride, while the rural peasants were paid. Everyone got the schwag though; flags, raincoats, and more.

Many residents supported the games with pride, while others just wanted to play chess in peace and not have to move their game for the bikers to cycle through on their race.

The Long Dig

By Burkhard Bilger
Issue: Sept 15

This article was so friggin cool. Giant machines, dirt, rocks, getting stuck in tunnels... what more do you want?

Apparently, digging two enormous tunnels from Germany to Switzerland through a mountain isn't that easy. But with the right planning and equipment, teams tunneling in from each end might be able to meet each other in the middle only a few feet askew, as happened in an earlier tunneling project.

Martin Herrenknecht builds crazy tunneling machines used all over the world and looks forward to tunneling near you. Watch for him in your backyard.

A Cloud of Smoke

By Jennifer Kahn
Issue: Sept 15

James Zadroga died at age of 34 due to lung problems.
That much is uncontested, but that's about all that is.

See, Zadroga was a firefighter on the scene at Ground Zero, and became the poster boy for 9/11 related health problems. There was even an official act named after him in 2006 that provided benefits to the families of the people who died from 9/11 related illnesses.

But what caused the lung problems and the hundreds of granulomas "knots of scar tissue that build up around inorganic particles, like the pearling around sand grains in an oyster;" 9/11 or possibly drug abuse?

At this point, the people lobbying for benefits for those affected by 9/11 are probably wishing they had a poster boy with a cleaner health history, but whether or not 9/11 was what killed James Zadroga, at least his story helped get families some well-deserved money.

The Lonesome Trail

By Ariel Levy
Issue: Sept 15

Cindy McCain is worried that the role of First Lady might cut into her humanitarian work abroad. She spends several weeks a year traveling with Operation Smile, an organization that provides surgery for children with cleft palates.

Cindy does not care for smiling much herself.

Here Levy writes of Cindy's appearance at a rally, clearly comparing her to a pig, pit bull and/or hockey mom: "Cindy McCain stood by her husband’s side, her eyes rendered invisible by sunglasses, her mouth a lipsticked slash across her face—a straight line, unsmiling."

Still, the woman does know firsthand how a surgery can change your life; she became severely addicted to painkillers after undergoing surgery for a ruptured disk.

John didn't know about the drug abuse. He also had no idea that his wife was taking flying lessons, or bringing home a smiling infant (post-op) from Bangladesh.

"McCain zigzags constantly between the two roles she was brought up with: she is the brave, individualistic Westerner who can ride the range and fly a plane and then the polite, fragile lady of the house with the flawless outfits and the duct-taped mouth," Levy writes. "These are very different roles, but they both require privacy."

The General's Dilemma

By Steve Coll

Issue: Sept 8

I didn't read this article about Petraeus, and neither did Juliet.

But let's pretend we did. Isn't Iraq f*cked up? Don't you feel worse about the U.S. and the way the world is going after reading that article? Us too.

And that's why we didn't read it.

Party Faithful: Can the Democrats get a foothold on the religious vote?

By Peter J. Boyer

Issue: Sept 8

Heeding the words of advisor Karl Rove, Bush went after the Catholic vote. He was a pretty convincing Catholic. (Did you know Jeb's one?) Anyway, Bush's second victory is attributed in part to his success with the Catholics. 

So when John McCain hit the campaign trail, he planned to take a similar approach. Then he received the endorsement of a megachurch pastor, John Hagee, who calls the Catholic Church the antichrist. Oops. Eventually McCain rejected the endorsement.