January/February 2003
In This Issue
“The Real State of the Union”; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “In Defense of Michael Skakel”; Patricia Stacey, “Floor Time”; Ron Rosenbaum, “Sex Week at Yale”; Caitlin Flanagan, “The Wifely Duty”; Christopher Hitchens, “The Wartime Toll on Germany”; fiction by Alison Baker; and much more.
Articles
77 North Washington Street
The Elephantiasis of Reason
The CIA's brand of rational analysis is perpetually half right in a way that makes it completely wrong
Blue Movie
The "morality gap" is becoming the key variable in American politics
The Forgotten Home Front
What are the main elements of national well-being? It is startling how out-of-date and out-of-touch our official politics has become
The Wifely Duty
Marriage used to provide access to sex. Now it provides access to celibacy
The Wartime Toll on Germany
W. G. Sebald wrote of the pain of belonging to a nation that, in Thomas Mann's words, “cannot show its face”
What Now?
Developments, encouraging and otherwise
Stuffed Smoked Sablefish
Pacific Northwest ingredients, Asian theme
Going to Extremes
Richard Powers is getting bigger and more ponderous. Nicholson Baker is getting smaller and more evanescent. Decision: Baker
Back to Square One
My own private Groundhog Day
New & Noteworthy
What to read this month
The Louse is in the House
A malady that does not speak its name
Word Court
A Miscarriage of Justice
Celebrity trials can turn into media lynchings. Last year a Connecticut jury convicted Michael Skakel of killing his neighbor Martha Moxley twenty-seven years ago, even though the prosecution had no fingerprints, no DNA, and no witnesses. The author, a former New York City prosecutor, argues that his cousin's indictment was triggered by an inflamed media, and that an innocent man is now in prison
Suspicious Minds
Too much trust can actually be a bad thing—a polity of suckers is no better than a nation of cynics. But Americans' steadily declining faith in one another is a warning
Mongrel America
The most important long-term social fact in America may be the rising rates of intermarriage among members of ethnic and racial groups. A glimpse into our mestizo future
Does Money Buy Happiness?
In most of the world, yes. In the United States, not any more.
Letters to the Editors
Floor Time
A new approach to the treatment of autism, one that emphasizes emotional development through intensive one-on-one engagement with autistic children, appears to offer some hope in responding to a disorder that is both epidemic and frequently intractable
Sex Week at Yale
In which academics ponder "webcam girls," hermaphrodites, demonic-male chimps, the history of the vibrator, and "sex with four professors"
Happy Hour
A short story
