The Week: Most Recent all

Men in Black 3: Surprisingly touching?

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:07:00 -0400

After reports of expensive reshoots and script rewrites, expectations were low for Men in Black 3, which reunites Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as alien-fighting agents for the first time in a decade. Think again, says A.O Scott at The New York Times. In the franchise's third outing, Agent J (Smith) travels back in time to 1969 to stop an evil alien from killing Agent K (Jones) — and finds the younger but no less deadpan K (Josh Brolin channeling Jones). The movie's true surprise, says Scott, is that it is "touching as well as hectic and whimsical." Agrees Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment...

Republicans and the military: No longer BFFs?

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:40:00 -0400

The GOP has long had a reputation as the national-security party. But there's a growing "rift between the U.S. military and the leadership of American conservatism," says Heather Hurlburt at Democracy Arsenal. Hardline politicians "who ritually stand up in front of the public and say they want to 'listen to the commanders,' [actually] ignore the commanders on issue after issue." Congressional Republicans, Hurlburt says, are arguing against Pentagon officials on everything from the threat of war with Iran, to military detention of terror suspects, to green energy initiatives designed to cut...

'The Choom Gang': 9 juiciest details from Barack Obama's days as a pothead

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:08:00 -0400

The "audacity of dope"? In his memoir Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama admits having smoked marijuana during high school, but newly released excerpts from David Maraniss' upcoming biography Barack Obama: The Story paint a picture of a truly committed pothead. The "giggle-worthy" details — many attributed to Obama's high school buddies collectively known as "the Choom Gang," after the slang term for smoking marijuana — are "right out of a buddy stoner flick," says Adam Sorensen at TIME. Here, the most scandalous allegations:

1. The Choom Gang
While in high school at the Punahou...

Did Obama trigger a rise in black support for gay marriage?

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:44:00 -0400

Before President Obama endorsed gay marriage, Maryland voters narrowly supported upholding their state's law legalizing same-sex marriage. Now they overwhelmingly plan to vote for it in the fall, and the shift is almost entirely due to a sharp increase in support for gay marriage among black Marylanders. Previously, 56 percent of them planned to vote against the new law; now 57 percent plan to vote for it. Polls elsewhere suggest this reflects a national trend — there has been a 19-point shift in black support for same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania, a swing state, since Obama announced his...

Is Obama's reelection campaign already stumbling?

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:36:00 -0400

"Nothing inspires Democrats like the Barack Obama swagger — the supreme self-confidence on stage, the self-certainty in private," say Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei at Politico. "So nothing inspires more angst than when the same Obama stumbles, as he has leaving the gate in 2012." Politico's critique follows Team Obama's controversial attacks on Bain Capital, the private equity fund formerly headed by Mitt Romney. After notable Obama allies objected to the attacks, the campaign was quick to point out that it wasn't damning the private equity industry in general, but the damage was arguably done...

The coming glut of American Idol ripoffs: A guide

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:01:00 -0400

American Idol wrapped up its latest season on Wednesday, but viewers hungry for more competitive warbling didn't have to wait long. On Thursday, ABC launched Duets, a singing contest that pairs amateur vocalists in search of a record contract with celebrities like Kelly Clarkson (who, not coincidentally, won season one of Idol). Though TV's crowded field of Idol rip-offs already includes The Voice, The X Factor, America's Got Talent, The Sing-Off, and The Glee Project, Duets isn't the only new entry set to debut in the coming months. Here, a guide to the onslaught of vocal competitions:

... More

Wall Street's rough year: 5 ways banks have shamed themselves

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:33:00 -0400

Once known as the Masters of the Universe, Wall Street's high-powered financiers were laid low by the financial crisis of 2008 and slammed for reckless risk-taking that pushed the economy into a wearying recession. Since then, the banking industry hasn't done much to persuade ordinary Americans that it's repentant, even if its profits are at a five-year high. It seems as if a new controversy flares up every few weeks to remind everyone that Wall Street isn't exactly made of the toughest moral fiber. Here, 5 ways banks have shamed themselves over the past year:

1. Rigging the game
Morgan Stanley...

Four ways Apple has changed under Tim Cook

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:06:00 -0400

A new Fortune cover story takes a look at current Apple CEO Tim Cook, who isn't, as many have pointed out, his predecessor Steve Jobs. When the two execs' careers overlapped, many viewed the level-headed operations chief Cook as the calm yin to the Jobs' famously brash yang. Yet, when Cook took over after Jobs' 2011 death, some worried that his cool approach wouldn't be enough to maintain Apple's momentum. How is Cook's leadership style changing the world's most valuable company? Here, four ways Apple is already different, for better or worse:

1. Cook is willing to release less-than-perfect product...

How much America spends on graduation gifts: By the numbers

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:43:00 -0400

The class of 2012 might be heading into an unwelcoming job market, burdened by heavy student loans, but, for many, there's a thin silver lining. Parents, grandparents, other relatives, and family friends will be showering them with graduation gifts. Here, a look at the financial ups and downs of graduation:

$4.7 billion
Amount Americans are expected to spend on gifts for college and high school graduates this year, according to a National Retail Federation survey

30.7
Percentage of Americans who bought gifts in 2011. That percentage is expected to rise by a few points this year.

58
Percentage of gift...

The New Yorker story that's being published one tweet a time

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:41:00 -0400

Last year, Jennifer Egan, a novelist and short story writer, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her book A Visit From the Goon Squad. Now, Egan, whose work has appeared in a number of illustrious publications including Harper's and The New York Times, is publishing an original short story that she wrote for The New Yorker — on Twitter. The magazine will release the 8,500 words of "Black Box" one tweet at a time, on its @NYerFiction feed. How will this work? Is it a terrible idea? Here, a brief guide:

How will the story-tweeting work?
The New Yorker began publishing...

Europe's choice: Break up or become a super state?

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:55:00 -0400

Over the past two tumultuous years, Europe has lurched from one emergency rescue plan to the next in its attempts to resolve its debt crisis. Despite the creation of a massive bailout fund, the extension of billions of euros in loans to Greece and others, and the intervention in bond markets by the European Central Bank, the crisis threatens to boil over once again, putting the world at risk of a global economic slowdown. As the possibility of Greece's exit from the euro looms, these extraordinary policies seem little more than half-measures, and many are arguing that the eurozone's only hope for...

Were Egypt's first elections really free and fair?

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:48:00 -0400

Egypt wrapped up two days of voting Thursday in what's being hailed as the country's first legitimate presidential election. The counting continued Friday, but partial results suggest that Mohammed Mursi, the candidate of the once-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, has earned a spot in a June run-off. The battle for the second slot remains tight, with a darkhorse leftist candidate, Hamdeen Sabahi, neck-and-neck with Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force commander and holdover from the Hosni Mubarak era. Islamists have threatened to protest if Shafiq wins, saying his victory could only happen in a rigged vote...

6 photos that Facebook controversially banned

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:11:00 -0400

Facebook has famously earned the disdain of privacy advocates for encouraging massive oversharing by its more than 900 million users. But there are some photos even Facebook won't let you share — and, of course, the site has gotten blowback for that, too. The latest picture it's censored depicts a topless woman, but not erotically: A British woman, celebrating her cancer-vanquishing mastectomy, posted a shot of her breastless self only to see it promptly removed. Here's that story, and the tales of five other photographs that prudish Facebook deleted — and sometimes restored, after...

Why you vote the way you do

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:32:00 -0400

HERE'S A SIMPLE definition of ideology: "a set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved." And here's the most basic of all ideological questions: Should we preserve the present order or change it?

Political theorists long assumed that people chose ideologies to further their self-interest. The rich and powerful want to preserve and conserve; the workers want to change things. But that link has been largely broken in modern times, when the rich go both ways (industrialists mostly right, tech billionaires mostly left), and so do the poor (rural poor mostly...

15 desperate emails and texts from the Obama campaign

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:15:00 -0400

President Obama's campaign strategists are not big on restraint. Indeed, Team Obama has sent out so many emails talking up a shot at dinner with Obama and George Clooney, Bill Clinton, or Sarah Jessica Parker — you simply need to donate for a chance to join in — that commentators have been complaining about the flood of messages since last fall. "It's like they're practically coming to my house and asking me to take part in this George Clooney fund-raiser thing," said New York's John Heileman on MSNBC's Morning Joe. There must be "a little bit of fear in the eyes on the Democratic side...

Repairing a broken heart... with skin

The Week — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:42:00 -0400

For the first time ever, scientists have successfully transformed ordinary skin tissue into cells for the beating heart, a procedure that could lead to promising new therapies for recovering heart attack victims. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 5.8 million Americans have suffered from heart failure, with an additional 670,000 diagnosed each year. Here, a concise guide to the breakthrough that has cardiologists buzzing:

How did researchers do it?
Scientists took skin cells from two older patients who had suffered from heart failure and, in a Petri dish, they genetically...