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Table of Contents: February 8. 2010 IN THIS ISSUE EDITION: U.S. Vol. 175 No. 5

COVER

The Problem with Football: How to Make it Safer (The Well / Sports)

Our favorite sport is too dangerous. How to make the game safer

A Lifetime Penalty (Viewpoint)

In Texas, catastrophic spinal injuries aren't enough to change high school football

ESSAY

All the News That's Fit to Mint (Commentary / Tuned In)

Is the Times's play for digital dollars a new beginning or the beginning of the end?

Why We're Failing Our Schools (Commentary / In the Arena)

The government has billions to spend on public education, but teachers' unions are standing in the way

Learn from the Gipper (Commentary)

To get back on track, Barack Obama should borrow from the playbook of Ronald Reagan

What's So Great About Big Birthdays?

What's so great about big birthdays? They inspire us to appreciate the little things

NATION

Can Bank-Bashing Help Obama? (The Well / Nation)

Inside the Administration's populist — and uncompromising — assault on Big Finance

WORLD

Out of the Ruins (The Well / World)

In words and images, James Nachtwey captures the devastation of Haiti and the spirit of a proud people

determined to recover

Out of the Ruins

Photographer James Nachtwey captures the devastation caused by the earthquake and the spirit of a

proud people determined to recover

TO OUR READERS

The Global Forum

This year, TIME, FORTUNE and CNN are hosting a conference on the global economy in Cape Town

during the World Cup

LETTERS

Inbox (Inbox)

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Avatar Ascendant (Movies)

Why James Cameron's megahit is rewriting the rules and the record books

Edge of Darkness: Is Mel Gibson Still a Star (Movies)

In his first leading role since 2002, a notorious actor tries to rekindle his star wattage

Charlotte Gainsbourg: On the Mend and Finding Solace in Music (Music)

On her new album, with help from Beck, Charlotte Gainsbourg turns trauma into rhythm

Short List

TIME'S PICKS FOR THE WEEK

TECHNOLOGY

Apple's Vision Of the Future (Technology)

Publishers see the iPad tablet as a savior. Will consumers feel the same way?

SCIENCE

Industrial-Strength Fungus (Going Green)

Densely packed rootlike fibers can do the job of Styrofoam, insulation and, yes, even bricks

SOCIETY

When Patients Share Medical Data Online (Life / Health)

Why so many patients are sharing their medical data online

PEOPLE

10 Questions for Ozzy Osbourne (10 Questions)

In his new autobiography, I Am Ozzy, the rocker tells his side of the story. Ozzy Osbourne will now take

your questions

NOTEBOOK

The Moment (Briefing)

1|25|10: Baghdad

The World (Briefing)

10 ESSENTIAL STORIES

Spotlight: Campaign Finance and the Court (Briefing)

Verbatim (Briefing)

Brief History: The U.S. Census (Briefing)

The Skimmer (Briefing)

Book Review: Working in the Shadows: A Year Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won't Do by Gabriel

Thompson

Bob Mosbacher (Briefing / Milestones)

Jean Simmons (Briefing / Milestones)

Steve Lovelady (Briefing / Milestones)

Ali Hassan al-Majid (Briefing)

COVER

The Problem with Football: How to Make It

Safer The Problem with Football: How to Make It Safer

Kyle Turley, 34

Offensive lineman Peter Hapak for TIME

Kyle Turley, 34

Offensive lineman Peter Hapak for TIME

Ted Johnson, 37

Linebacker Peter Hapak for TIME

Harry Carson, 56

Linebacker Peter Hapak for TIME

What's wrong with football? It's written in the pain on Greg Hadley's face. The senior from Colgate

University, a two-time all-conference linebacker on the school's football team, is sitting in a Bedford,

Mass., laboratory, staring at shattered brains of dead football players. On this Friday afternoon, Hadley

has come to visit Dr. Ann McKee, a Boston University neurological researcher who has received a dozen

brains donated from former NFL, college and high school players. In each one, it's simple to spot a

protein called tau, which defines a debilitating disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or

CTE. Common symptoms of CTE include sudden memory loss, paranoia and depression during middle

age. The disease is also known as dementia pugilistica, or punch-drunk syndrome, because until recently

the overwhelming majority of its victims were boxers. Not anymore. Researchers like McKee have found

a deep and disturbing association between CTE and America's most popular sport.

Hadley wants to see, in raw, microscopic detail, what could await him. All CTE victims have had some

kind of head trauma, and Hadley has received four concussion diagnoses during his college days. As

they examine images under a microscope, McKee tells Hadley that the brown splotches represent the

dreaded tau buildup in the brain. The brains are as brown as the pigskin itself.

Hadley lets out a quiet "Jesus" and sinks in his chair. His girlfriend stares at him, looking as if her cat just

died. "I had no idea it was all over the place like that," Hadley says. He glances at a picture of a normal

brain next to the stained brain of a deceased player. "You look at something like that and think, This is

your brain, and this is your brain on football."

On Feb. 7, some 90 million people will watch the Indianapolis Colts play the New Orleans Saints in Super

Bowl XLIV in Miami. Perhaps the Roman numerals are appropriate. Although football hasn't quite

reached the bloodlust status achieved at the ancient Coliseum, the path to Super Bowl XLIV is strewn

with the broken bodies and damaged brains that result when highly motivated, superbly conditioned

athletes collide violently in pursuit of glory. The more we learn about the human cost of this

quintessentially American sport, the more questions are being raised regarding the people who run it and

play it. More than 3 million kids play football at the youth level, and an additional 1.2 million suit up for

their high school teams. So football's safety issues reverberate far beyond the NFL. From within the NFL,

and without, a consensus is emerging that reforms are needed to keep football from becoming too

dangerous for its own good.

Baseball is America's pastime, but football is its true passion. The Friday-night lights bond towns across

the heartland; on Saturdays, fans forget their worries to worship at the altar of the campus tailgate,

smoke rising above grills like incense. On Sundays, we park our posteriors on the sofa to cheer the

sublime spirals, miraculous catches and riveting runs down the sideline. It is one of our most lucrative

forms of mass entertainment, celebrated not just on ESPN but in prime-time soap operas (Friday Night

Lights) and Hollywood blockbusters (The Blind Side). The NFL's players and owners and the myriad

industries associated with the game — fanzines, websites, merchandisers, fantasy leagues — have all

been beneficiaries of the tens of billions of dollars the sport generates. But it is irrefutable that those

profits have come at the expense of the long-term mental health of those who play football. And perhaps

more important, the young people emulating the actions of their NFL heroes are putting their futures on

the line as well. "We need to do something now, this minute," says McKee, the brain researcher. "Too

many kids are at risk."

Concussive Dangers

Football has been a rough sport since the leather-helmet days, but today's version raises the violence to

an art form. No other contact sport gives rise to as many serious brain injuries as football does. High

school football players alone suffer 43,000 to 67,000 concussions per year, though the true incidence is

likely much higher, as more than 50% of concussed athletes are suspected of failing to report their

symptoms.

The human brain, although encased by a heavy-duty cranium, isn't designed for football. Helmets do a

nice job of protecting the exterior of the head and preventing deadly skull fractures. But concussions

occur within the cranium, when the brain bangs against the skull. When helmets clash, the head

decelerates instantly, yet the brain can lurch forward, like a driver who jams the brakes on. The bruising

and stretching of tissue can result in something as minimal as "seeing stars" and a momentary

separation from consciousness.

Repeated blows to the head, which are routine in football, can have lifelong repercussions. A study

commissioned by the NFL found that ex–pro players over age 50 were five times as likely as the national

population to receive a memory-related-disease diagnosis. Players 30 to 49 were 19 times as likely to be

debilitated. Of the dozen brains of CTE victims McKee has examined, 10 were from either linemen or

linebackers; some scientists now fear that the thousands of lower-impact, or "subconcussive," blows

these players receive, even if they don't result in documented concussions, can be just as damaging as

— if not more so than — the dramatic head injuries that tend to receive more attention and intensive

treatment.

There is every reason to believe that the concussion crisis will get worse. The speed and size of pro

athletes have made the game more dangerous. Offensive linemen now average nearly 315 lb. — 65 lb.

more than they did 40 years ago. They launch that weight from a three-point stance, headfirst, at

opposing linemen of nearly the same size. There are no small collisions in the NFL.

The average pro career is short but lucrative (average annual pay: $1.1 million). Because there are just

53 jobs on an active NFL roster, however, holding on to one of them requires not only supreme

athleticism but also the ability to play in pain, whether it's a twisted knee, a broken finger or a bruised

brain. Coaches and fans, of course, laud hard hitters. "Guys don't think about life down the road," says

Harry Carson, a Hall of Fame ex-linebacker who has postconcussion symptoms like headaches. "They

want the car. They want the bling. They want to have a nice life."

The Players' Crusade

Carson is one of a growing number of former pros who have begun to petition the NFL for help in dealing

with their deteriorating health and finances. Carson and Kyle Turley, a former NFL offensive lineman who

has had post-concussive symptoms like vomiting, vertigo and headaches, have emerged as advocates

for improved health care benefits for retired players. Dwight Harrison, an NFL player for 10 years who

retired in 1980, symbolizes football's blight. His postconcussion syndrome has robbed him of short-term

memory and left him severely depressed. He lives in a trailer in Texas.

Though some former players have been making their cases for years, the NFL has until recently

downplayed any link between football head trauma and cognitive decline. In 2009, after a study

sponsored by the league showed evidence that retired players had long-term mental trauma, and after

more damaged players came forward, Congress stepped in. At one hearing, Representative Linda

Sanchez, a Democrat from California, compared the NFL's stance on concussions to tobacco

companies' denial that smoking causes lung cancer. Others have taken up the players' cause, like Gay

Culverhouse, the terminally ill former president of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who has established an

outreach program for those needing assistance.

The NFL has finally acknowledged the potential long-term consequences of concussions and taken first

steps toward addressing the problem. Now an NFL player who sustains a concussion cannot return to

the game that day. Since 2007 the NFL and its players' union have spent some $7 million on health care

expenses for retirees with dementia or Alzheimer's.

Help is already too late for Tom McHale, one of the CTE victims Hadley examined in McKee's lab. A

nine-year NFL vet who became an ebullient restaurateur after he retired in 1995, McHale suddenly lost

interest in his work — and life — about four years ago. He couldn't focus, fought addictions to painkillers

and cocaine, and died of a drug overdose at a friend's apartment in 2008. McHale was 45. "He went in,

lay down and didn't wake up," says his widow Lisa, a mother of three sons, ages 15, 12 and 10. "God, if

you would have known him ... The fact that he won't be around to raise his boys — that's the hardest

thing."

How to Fix Football

Restoring safety and sanity to the gridiron can't simply be left to the NFL's overlords. The pressures on

players to perform may be too great, and the financial stakes too high, to expect the league's teams to

back dramatic changes. Should others step in? High-level government intervention to quell violence in

football would not be without precedent. A story in the Oct. 10, 1905, New York Times reads, "Having

ended the war in the Far East, grappled with the railroad rate question and made his position clear, [and]

prepared for his tour of the South ... President [Theodore] Roosevelt to-day took up another question of

vital interest to the American people. He started a campaign for reform in football." T.R. used his bully

pulpit to summon coaches from Harvard, Princeton and Yale to the White House for a little pigskin

summit, imploring them to cut down on violent play among the blue bloods.

Can the government intervene now? President Obama has in the past expressed support for a playoff

system in college football — a goal whose gravity and significance pale in comparison with the goal of

reducing the number of brain injuries occurring at all levels of football. Congress has rarely hesitated to

assert its right to police professional sports, from pressuring baseball to enforce tougher steroid penalties

to threatening to end the NFL's antitrust exemption. Hearings that shed further light on football's

concussion crisis would be a more productive use of the power of the congressional subpoena.

Beyond pols and pros, school boards and colleges, with an eye on legal liabilities, certainly have an

interest in making play safer. Parents, and of course players themselves, play a crucial role. The reform

movement is desperately needed at the lowest levels of the game, where amateur coaches can cause

the most harm to their young players. It should also target the very ways in which football is covered and

consumed. Spectators who fetishize the sights and sounds of high-speed collisions share responsibility

for those who suffer the consequences of such violent encounters.

Woodrow Wilson once said that football "develops more moral qualities than any other game of

athletics." The game has always been a laboratory for traits like teamwork, discipline and perseverance.

If it is to remain a metaphor for American exceptionalism, however, we can't let it leave so many victims

in its wake. Here's a game plan to lessen the pain:

1. Change the rules. The NFL's competition committee seems ready to move on player-safety fixes.

"You start with the premise that nothing is off the table," says Atlanta Falcons president Rich McKay, a

co-chairman of the committee. This is crucial, as NFL changes will not only protect athletes who suit up

on Sunday; they will also trickle down to football's lower levels, reducing injury risk for all.

So go ahead and ditch the three-point stance for linemen, except perhaps for very-short-yardage

situations. "You wouldn't be firing out, I guess," says New York Jets guard Alan Faneca, initially skeptical

when asked his thoughts about this change. "I'd buy that." Starting linemen upright in a "two-point" stance

— two feet, no hands on the ground — would result in more blocking with the arms and hands.

The goal is to prohibit head games. "The No. 1 thing: take the purposeful helmet hit out of football, for

both blocking and tackling," says Dr. Robert Cantu, one of the country's premier concussion experts and

a co-founder of Sports Legacy Institute. That goes for running backs as well. Too often, they make a

conscious decision to lower their head into a defender, hoping the forward lean will give them an extra

yard. That defender's natural reaction? Go head-on as well. What if running backs weren't allowed to

intentionally lead headfirst? The NFL is at least considering such a rule. "What concerns me is the

runners," says McKay. "A lot of those hits are voluntary, where a player ducks his head and is in a

position to deliver a blow ... that's something we have to look at. Because you see it more today than you

did 20 years ago."

Hall of Fame coach and legendary broadcaster John Madden, whom NFL commissioner Roger Goodell

appointed to help solve the concussion problem, has spent his first year out of the booth developing

smart reforms. He points out that today's players wear less padding than they did in the past, either to

increase their speed or for fashion appeal. "So the helmet becomes the only protected part of your body,"

he argues. Madden suggests that if players were required to wear more padding, they'd be less likely to

consider their helmet a safe weapon.

It's time to think even more radically. How about removing an offensive lineman from the equation?

Linemen are more likely to butt heads on every play, so simple math dictates that this move would reduce

overall head trauma. Why not penalize egregious head hits with not only a 15-yard penalty for the guilty

player but a stint on the sideline too? Let's give football a penalty box.

2. Change the equipment and training. When people start discussing fixes for football, the talk

inevitably begins with helmets: Is there a design that is more likely to prevent concussions? There have

been some impressive innovations. The Riddell Revolution Speed embeds sensors that can record the

impact of collisions. Another company, Xenith, markets a model with shock absorbers within the helmet.

These devices, shaped like hockey pucks, are supposed to soften the impact of blows to the head. The

company said it surveyed 540 players using the helmet and found reports of only three concussions.

But even Vin Ferrara, the former Harvard quarterback who founded Xenith in 2004, warns against putting

too much faith in helmet technology. "You will never hear me say that protection is more than half the

battle," he says. "The most effective thing is not getting hit in the first place."

On that point, football players could probably benefit from fewer full-contact practices. "There's so many

damn drills," says Cantu. "You don't need all this one-on-one, helmet-on-helmet macho stuff." The NFL

can easily take the lead on this commonsense solution. Right now, contact continues year-round at

assorted training camps. "We're looking at off-season programs that are probably too long," says

Madden. At some point, the cost of constant blows to the head far outweighs any competitive benefit.

3. Change youth football. Chris Nowinski is a former Harvard defensive tackle whose pro-wrestling

career — he didn't want to sit in a cubicle — was derailed by concussions. He has since emerged as one

of the country's most prominent advocates for football reform and has written a book, Head Games:

Football's Concussion Crisis. To illustrate his points, he pulls up a YouTube clip titled "Big Football Hit —

Helmet to Helmet." In a drill supervised by the coaches, two 8-year-olds charge toward each other, heads

down, as a woman yells, "Go! Go!" The tiny helmets collide — pop! After one kid gets knocked back to

the ground, you can hear his whimpers. "Who the hell is teaching this?" asks Nowinski.

Far too many of us, it turns out. To improve player safety, all youth coaches should be trained in a

concussion-management program approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and be

certified before strapping a whistle around their neck. Make coaches carry a concussion card that shows

they're aware of the risks and aren't idiotic enough to unleash two 8-year-old heads on each other. "If

you're going to coach football, you should be trained — like a lifeguard sitting over a swimming pool

learning CPR," says Turley, the former NFL offensive lineman and concussion-prevention advocate.

"Because that's what they are — they're lifeguards.

Youth coaches must also rethink tackling technique. One method that has received positive reviews is

the "Dip 'n' Rip," taught by a former UCLA defensive back named Bobby Hosea. Hosea instructs kids to

wind back their arms and explode up with their hips while going in for a hit. Such a movement causes the

head to rock away from oncoming traffic. One convert to Hosea's method is Mike Kulow, a veteran youth

coach who says his Murrieta, Calif., Pop Warner league, which has 450 players, witnessed only one

whiplash injury this past season. "Man, do I wonder, if I had this education about the consequences in the

past, could I have curbed injury?" asks Kulow. "Absolutely."

4. Change the culture. Listen to the logic of A.J. Hatfield, a stud fullback from Port Angeles, Wash.

During a practice in October, his head was knocked against the ground. Hatfield felt dizzy and developed

a splitting headache. Did he tell his coaches about his condition? "Nah," Hatfield says. "I didn't want to

seem like I was being a baby." He played the next day — and struggled to stay awake afterward. He

received a concussion diagnosis. Oh yeah, Hatfield is in the eighth grade. Luckily, he swears he learned

his lesson.

Bravery. Bravado. Machismo. These qualities create superior football players. But they can be poisonous.

"You've got to change the culture, change the mentality," says Turley. "This whole archaic notion that

football is everything, all these stupid things coaches go around saying, comparing football to the

military ... It's not."

The euphemistic lexicon that pervades locker-room culture — calling punishing hits "dings" or being

knocked unconscious "getting your bell rung" — has contributed to a perception that the problem isn't

serious. "We need to use more medical terms here, as opposed to slang," says Tennessee Titans center

Kevin Mawae, president of the NFL Players Association. "The language makes light of the situation."

The actions of the media can also influence the football culture. Over the past few years, the television

networks have toned down the glorification of violent collisions, which is a positive development. Yet

during the Jan. 24 telecast of the NFC championship game, Fox repeatedly replayed images of

Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre being brutalized. The most powerful media outlet in sports,

ESPN, should set the standard for concussion awareness. "I think that's fair," says Chris Berman,

ESPN's lead football studio host. "We've done it and will be a little more cognizant of the fact that a

10-second comment, for a 13-year-old or high school player watching, might be helpful." Let's see if he

keeps his word.

The Last Hit

The momentum for change is strong. Last spring, for example, the state of Washington passed the

Lystedt Law, named for Zackery Lystedt, who as a 13-year-old played with a concussion during a 2006

game. Lystedt collapsed after the game. His brain hemorrhaged, he went into a monthlong coma, and he

remains paralyzed on one side of his body. The law requires that all youth athletes suspected of

sustaining a concussion or head injury during a practice or game must sit out and may not return to play

unless cleared by a licensed medical provider trained in concussion management. New Hampshire,

Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Florida are among the states considering similar

legislation. "I believe we're reaching a tipping point," says Richard Adler, a Seattle lawyer who was

instrumental in designing the Lystedt Law.

Meanwhile, more players are becoming enlightened. Once again, consider those tortured looks from

Hadley, the Colgate senior who was shocked by the images of damaged brains of dead football players.

Hadley loves football and doesn't regret a single hit or his four concussions. He holds a warrior bond with

his fellow players. "It's bothering me that I'm telling you all this," Hadley says after outlining his

concussion history and explaining how he decided to play through headaches until he couldn't remember

the plays. "It's like I'm betraying a fraternity," he says.

Hadley's veneer is strong but no longer impenetrable. Though not quite big enough for the NFL, Hadley

has thought about pursuing a pro-football career in Europe's minor leagues. However, after reading

about football's potential cognitive consequences and seeing all that tau, he's reconsidering that career

move. He'll either pursue the dream of playing pro football or give his long-term health first priority. At

least he's thinking about it. Perhaps the football fixing has begun.

VIEWPOINT

Texas Football and the Price of Paralysis By BUZZ BISSINGER Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010

Each year, about 1 in 100,000 high school football players suffers a serious spinal-cord injury.

Paul Moakley

In 2004, when Friday Night Lights was being made into a movie, director Pete Berg invited me to the

Astrodome in Houston to watch the filming. It didn't take long to realize that the magic of moviemaking

was no magic at all — repetitive and dull. I became bored, which is when I saw a small cluster of young

men in wheelchairs on the sidelines.

I can still feel the stiffness of their fingers as I grasped their hands. I can still see the eyes of longing as

they watched a movie being made about the game they still loved. I knew firsthand the willingness of

Texas high school football players to sacrifice themselves to team and town and winning the state

championship. But I was still unprepared for what these young men shared — the price of paralysis that

had come from their experience. I fumbled for words. I played into the very thing that not a single one of

them wanted: my pity.

Six years later, I recall that moment because of the attention that is finally being paid to injuries in pro

football — at least head injuries, prompted by the wonderful reporting of Alan Schwarz of the New York

Times. But I also think about it because I know the focus will not trickle down to where it is needed most:

the high school level. Research has shown that young players are far more susceptible than older ones

to serious injuries.

Concussions are the hot topic, and their residual effects can be hideous. But they are not the only injuries

in a game increasingly engorged with unholy violence at all levels. Catastrophic spinal-cord injuries are

rare, but in Texas alone there are roughly two a year. That information comes from Eddie Canales, who

so unfairly knows more about the subject than anyone else.

On Nov. 2, 2001, San Marcos Baptist Academy, the team Eddie's son Chris played defensive back for,

took on Waco's Reicher Catholic with the playoffs at stake. Chris was all of 5 ft. 7 in. (1.7 m) and 120 lb.

(55 kg). He liked to "put the wood on it," as his father recalled. With the game on the line, a running back

for Reicher found daylight and made a move to the inside as Chris came up to cut him off. The runner

tried to leap over Chris, and it was most likely his hip that smashed into Chris' helmet, snapping his neck

back. Chris made a game-saving tackle anyway, but then he lay motionless at the 30-yard line for 20

minutes until an ambulance arrived. His father came on the field and knelt next to him.

"I can't move anything. I can't feel anything. What if I am paralyzed?"

"Don't think about that," said his father.

Chris was transported 32 miles (50 km) from San Marcos to University Medical Center Brackenridge in

Austin. There a doctor told Eddie and Pita Canales that their son was paralyzed from the shoulders down.

Eddie, the director of operations at the University of Texas at San Antonio bookstore, quit his job to tend

to his son. He turned him over every two hours to prevent bedsores because the insurance company

initially refused to pay for a pressure-supported mattress. He inserted a catheter every three hours. He

gave Chris medications every six hours. He slept on the floor next to Chris. His care commenced at 7:30

a.m. and did not end until 3:30 the following morning. He fought with the insurance company over

virtually every piece of equipment that was needed. The company finally agreed to pay 50% of the costs,

but the Canaleses' expenses the first year were still $60,000.

As a result of his experience, Canales started a nonprofit group called Gridiron Heroes to lend crucial

support to other families experiencing the same horror with their sons that he had gone through. Some of

the support is financial, but more of it is emotional, and Chris, who through relentless work now has some

mobility in his arms, finds sustenance in his life from helping others so they are not alone.

Eddie and Chris, who is now 26, still love the game and realize that it is a collision sport. But their efforts

to increase awareness of the dangers have gotten a mixed reception. A suggestion that 25 cents of every

ticket sold at high school games in Texas be set aside to help defray the cost of caring for paralyzed

players went nowhere. During the off-season, the Canaleses go to clinics, and coaches listen intently.

During the season, the coaches turn deaf in favor of winning at any cost.

There should be an ambulance at every high school game. There should be trainers. But don't bet on it,

as school districts cry a lack of money. Kids will continue to suffer serious head injuries. Kids will continue

to become paralyzed because they never learned how to properly tackle, with their heads up. The

game's violence will continue because that's exactly why we like it, our gladiatorial lust still intact 16

centuries after the Romans. The bigger the hit, the greater the roar.

Bissinger is the author of Friday Night Lights and a co-author, with LeBron James, of Shooting Stars.

ESSAY

All the News That's Fit to Mint By JAMES PONIEWOZIK Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

Chip Somodevilla / Getty

There are a few things you can count on: the sun will rise in the east, winter will turn to spring, and the

New York Times will come out every day. Of the three, the disappearance of the Times might be the most

shocking to a reader's sense of a rational universe.

But that's exactly the scenario that was implied — and, Times bosses hope, staved off — by the recent

announcement that next year the paper will begin charging for online access. The Times is possibly the

most authoritative paper in the world and the most influential online, with 17 million monthly readers. It's

done well in most media — except the print medium that's green and is issued by the U.S. Mint.

The Times is in the same fix as most other old-media outlets, including this magazine. Online ads don't

bring in enough to support the massive news operation that attracts those 17 million people. Last year,

the Times won five Pulitzer Prizes — and borrowed $250 million from a Mexican billionaire to keep the

lights on.

The online-pay-wall plan is the Times saying things cannot continue at this rate. Something has to give,

and the paper is hoping it will be its readers' purse strings. And if not? What would its fans — and its

critics — do without it?

The pay plan probably won't make much difference to the Times's coffers or its readers at first. If you

subscribe to the print paper, you won't have to pay to read online. If you don't subscribe but read fewer

than a yet-to-be-set number of articles, you won't pay. If you come to an article from a link on Google, you

won't pay.

The reason: any pricing scheme that can raise actual money risks chasing away actual readers. If you

lose readership, you lose influence; you become less essential; you have to downscale your operation;

and you lose more readership and thus even more money. The Times's plan seems to be to gingerly

charge its most avid readers, then gradually see how much more coin it can grab without triggering that

downsizing spiral.

The real significance of the plan is symbolic. To a journalist, the Times's admitting vulnerability is a crack

in the firmament. It's like that moment when you see your father catching his breath on the stairs and it

dawns on you that someday he will die. (And, by extension, so will you.) So other outlets are hoping the

Times will show them a way to rage against the dying of the light, if not with the pay wall then with its plan

(similar to the efforts of companies like Time Inc.) to develop content for the Apple iPad, the $499-$829

gadget journos pray will somehow make digital news as cool (and sellable) as a Lady Gaga single.

But what the Times symbolizes to the media is nothing next to its outsize symbolism in the larger world.

Entire websites are dedicated to critiquing it. To certain conservatives, it's a liberal Manhattan rag and

élitists' pedestal; to certain progressives, it's a ruling-class newsletter and corporate tool (not

contradictory charges, considering the Times's roots in liberal, moneyed New York City).

Beyond politics, though, the Times is a symbol of the Establishment: it presents expert authority in a

populist age that sees establishments as enemies and experts as fools. The Times has always been a

chronicle of power. This used to be a selling point; today, as for the media's other big institutions, it's

cause for suspicion.

Yet those 17 million readers, and a blogosphere that often seems to consist mainly of links to New York

Times articles, show that there's still a desire for an arbiter of truth. The idea that I can believe it because

I read it in the Times was never 100% true, nor was it true for any other news organization. But the paper

represented a certain baseline of agreed-on information. If that no longer exists, what distinguishes a

news report from an e-mail rumor your uncle forwarded you?

No Big Media institution is indispensable: not the Times, not the evening news, not TIME magazine.

People don't owe us their money; we owe it to them to be worth paying for. If we go, people will find other

sources to trust; in some cases, they already have.

One of those is The Daily Show, which commands Times-like faith among its fans. Last year, it did a

segment on the Times's woes, in which Jason Jones mocked the paper's dead-tree format and landline

phones. "Look at me," he laughed, picking one up. "I'm a reporter from the '80s, makin' sure everything's

factual."

It was searing, but bittersweet too. The Daily Show, for all its jokes, cares deeply about facts. If the

Times's pay wall doesn't work — if nothing works — something else will replace today's media.

Something great, I hope. But I wonder if the new media would be a little bereft without a Times to react to,

rebel against and define themselves against, like a dog that finally caught the car. Or in this case, the

rolled-up newspaper.

IN THE ARENA

Why We're Failing Our Schools By JOE KLEIN Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010

School reform

Illustration by Stephen Kroninger for TIME

A remarkable thing happened in New York recently: the state legislature, in effect, turned down the

chance to win $700 million in federal money. No one does that, except extremely conservative Southern

governors (who inevitably relent and take the money) — oh, and occasionally teachers' unions. A few

years ago, I wrote here about the Detroit union that forced the local government to reject a $200 million

philanthropic gift to build 15 charter schools using a model that was already succeeding in the city. And

now we have New York's United Federation of Teachers (UFT), a storied crew, thwarting the state's

attempt to file an application that might have won $700 million in Race to the Top education funds — and

again the issue is charter schools, with a substantial dollop of teacher accountability thrown in.

If you haven't heard about Race to the Top, shame on the Obama Administration. It was one of the most

creative pieces of last year's $787 billion stimulus package. It established a $4.35 billion fund that

Education Secretary Arne Duncan could distribute to states on the basis of their willingness to reform

their schools. Duncan's definition of reform — a common one these days — demanded more school

choice and competition as well as an emphasis on teacher evaluation and accountability. "Duncan really

nailed this," says New York City Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey. "You can use federal funds to drive a

reform agenda. You can buy change, even from state legislatures ... although in our case, the opponents

were pretty ingenious — invidious and ingenious."

The New York teachers' union was launched in 1960 and led in the early years by the smartest and

toughest union man I've ever met, Albert Shanker. The teachers are among the most powerful interest

groups in New York State (and nationally, in the Democratic Party). The UFT's slogan is "A Union of

Professionals," but it is quite the opposite: an old-fashioned industrial union that has won for its members

a set of work rules more appropriate to factory hands. There are strict seniority rules about pay, school

assignment, length of the school day and year. In New York, it is near impossible to fire a teacher — even

one accused of a crime, drug addiction or flagrant misbehavior. The miscreants are stashed in "rubber

rooms" at full pay, for years, while the union pleads their cases. In New York, school authorities are

forbidden, by state law, to evaluate teachers by using student test results.

Toward the end of his life, Shanker began to realize the union was headed down the wrong path. In a

1993 speech, he talked about the need for more accountability: "I wouldn't be saying these things ... if I

didn't have the sense that we are at the same point that the auto industry was at a few years ago. They

could see they were losing market share every year and still not believe that it really had anything to do

with the quality of the product ... I think that we will get — and deserve — the end of public education

through some sort of privatization scheme if we don't behave differently."

In the end, the challenge has come not from privatization — but in the form of public charter schools, in

which individual entrepreneurs are chartered by states to create their own schools, according to their own

visions. Not surprisingly, those visions usually don't include the workplace straitjacket that comes with

unionization. The successful charters usually have longer school days and years, more intense efforts to

guide student behavior, more creative or theme-oriented curriculums and more aggressive evaluation of

teachers. Not all these schools work. Indeed, it can be argued that most states have been too slow to

close down those that don't. But over time, the results seem to be improving dramatically. A recent study

showed that students in New York City's charter schools — who are selected randomly, by lottery, and

are 90% African American and Latino — have closed 86% of the gap in test results between the poorest

neighborhoods of the city and ritzy suburbs like Scarsdale, which is known for its excellent schools.

There are national implications to this fight. As Shanker pointed out, American schools have been

slipping for decades — our students are now 32nd internationally in math scores, 10th in science, 12th in

reading. It will be impossible to rebuild our economy — to create the sophisticated, high-paying jobs we

need — as long as we have an archaic, industrial-age school system. It's also hard to keep a strong

democracy with a citizenry that is increasingly uneducated and ill informed. No, teachers' unions are not

the only problem here. Troglodytic local school boards and apathetic parents are just as bad. But the

unions, and their minions in the Democratic Party, have been a reactionary force in education reform for

too long. Barack Obama began to change that last year with Race to the Top. It's a fight he needs to

expand, and win.

What Obama Can Learn from Reagan By MARK HALPERIN Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010

Presidents Ronald Reagan, left, and Barack Obama

From left: Diana Walker / Time Life Pictures / Getty; Kevin Lamarque / Reuters / Corbis

Back in January 2008, while meeting with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal before the

Democratic Nevada caucuses, Barack Obama offered some approving commentary on the legacy and

influence of the 40th President. Ronald Reagan, he said, "changed the trajectory of America in a way that,

you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not." Not surprisingly, Obama's remark

riled both Hillary Clinton and her husband, who viewed it as demeaning to the achievements of the

Clinton Administration as well as a cheap tactic to win favor with some of the Silver State's more

conservative Democrats.

In reality, Obama (and, for that matter, the Clintons) has a long history of paying public homage to the

leadership and political skills of Reagan, even while disagreeing with his policies.

See who's who in Barack Obama's White House.

Now, just as Reagan struggled to find his footing at the start of his first term, Obama is straining to revive

his political mojo. And so as the President prepares for his first official State of the Union address, here

are five elements of the Gipper's arsenal that his latest successor would be smart to follow:

See pictures of Barack Obama's family tree.

1. Stand for a few big things. Obama rode to his party's nomination as the anti-Clinton and won the

general election as the anti-Bush without ever having to define his political persona. Reagan's policies

didn't always live up to his mantra (lower taxes, stronger defense, family values), but he was able to fit

most of his major initiatives and high-profile events under that simple tripartite rubric.

2. Be bigger than life. Obama is in many ways an ordinary guy (not unlike brush-clearing Bush and

shorts-wearing Clinton). Scenes of him rhapsodizing about ESPN or headed out for burgers serve to

humanize Obama and are certainly an appealing window into his real-life self. But through stagecraft and

style, Reagan was able to be both an accessible and a towering figure. The Democrat in the White House

needs to be more imposing and less familiar in order to wow his friends and strike fear into the hearts of

his enemies. Plainspoken speeches, richly symbolic events and well-timed humor are Reagan tools that

Obama could employ.

See "Judging Obama's First Year, Issue by Issue."

3. Create more Obama Republicans. Candidate Obama had broad appeal for Republicans and

conservative-leaning independents. Now his image and agenda have left him without any calling card to

widen his support (essential for winning policy fights and elections). The Gipper wooed so-called Reagan

Democrats by finding common cause with them on key issues such as national security and lower taxes

while still keeping his political base solidly on board. Education, spending cuts and maybe even health

care are all ripe areas where Obama can make another effort to reach out to voters, if not intransigent

Republicans in Washington.

4. Don't let the media get you down. By the time Reagan reached the White House, he had been

trapped in the glare of press scrutiny from his days in Hollywood through his time in the California

governor's mansion. Obama, meanwhile, glided into his Illinois Senate seat and into the White House

with very little negative attention from the press (beyond brief, isolated incidents like the Rev. Wright

dustup). Now, hammered nonstop by both the conservative and mainstream media, Obama has to

thicken his skin. Reagan wasn't crazy about the coverage he got either, but he sloughed it off and

followed the actor's credo: Never let them see you sweat.

5. Use national security to strengthen your hand at home. Obama needs to frame future foreign

policy successes in way that gives him leverage with voters and Congress. Reagan deployed his

standing as a successful Cold War President to rally the public around him, and then used higher

approval ratings to advance his agenda. Obama is governing in a more partisan era, but he can break the

bonds of a divided Washington to turn his domestic agenda into a patriotic one — by pushing for energy

independence, for example — rather than one side of a left-right slugfest.

What's So Great About Big Birthdays? By NANCY GIBBS Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

Gerard Dubois for Time

When you're little, every birthday is a big one. But as you grow up, it's O.K. to let them get small. I have

mixed feelings about how midlife birthdays, once easily waved at as they passed quietly by, have spun

so far out of control, thanks to Facebook alerts and my generation's abiding commitment to our eternal

youth.

When my husband asked how I wanted to celebrate my birthday this year — the first anniversary of my

49th birthday, he called it — I was at a loss to answer. No surprises, I said; even our routines already

supply plenty of those. No extravagance: we're still in a recession. When I read about Naomi Campbell's

$1.8 million party at a seven-star hotel in Dubai (still wasn't enough to save the local economy), or the

British retail tycoon who marked his 55th by sending his guests a travel wallet with instructions to meet at

a London airport and clear their calendar for five days, I'm not impressed; I'm exhausted. I count it as a

gift to have reached an age at which I am content to observe the date — or overlook it.

It wasn't always that way. I had to miss my fourth birthday — I had just had eye surgery and was not

supposed to hang out with germy little kids — and my sense of justice was so aggrieved that six months

later, in the middle of July, I invited all my playground friends over for a party. It would have all come off

beautifully, had I not neglected to tell my mother.

To her eternal credit, when a flock of 4½-year-olds descended in the middle of my afternoon nap, she

rose to the occasion, conjuring a cake out of her pantry and a celebration out of thin summer air. It's true

that for years afterward, she wouldn't let me forget it, that party I'd somehow arranged in the sandbox

without permission. Eventually I reminded her of the important part, that when you are 3, going for the

entire year without your friends hoisting you up to 4 seems cosmically wrong.

Ten felt very big — those two digits, one so straight and mature, one so round and promising. And 13,

which made it official: childhood is memory now; life is PG-13. Sixteen was sweet; 18 was freedom, a

launch that in those days could legally include a champagne toast. Your young self hatches again and

again between birthdays, so marking them has meaning — a grab for the handrail to steady yourself on a

dizzying climb. Turn 14 and grow five inches. Turn 17 and fall in love.

But at some point, that all changes, once time is not sliced into semesters anymore. How different really

is 27 from 26, or 42 from 41? The journey curves and loops; your age in years seems to detach from your

age in experience. You get fired at 32 and feel 12 again, or you're invited to teach for the first time and

feel ancient standing in front of all those wide eyes. You circle back on certain ages, replaying them until

you get it right. If the middle-school cafeteria is the setting for your recurring nightmares, you can spend

decades as a preteen in your head, refining the snappy comeback that you never mastered at the time.

What is a midlife crisis if not an adolescent rebellion with a bigger price tag? And our culture conspires to

add to the confusion, now that 50 is the new 40 is the new 30.

Above all, it was having children of my own that most messed with my life cycle. Being allowed to walk

out of the hospital with that child in my arms — no instruction manual, no warranty — sealed the certainty

of adulthood in a way no car keys or paycheck or mortgage ever had. Their birthdays loomed so large

that ours could discreetly recede. My diet would soon include, once again, cupcakes and macaroni and

applesauce. The first time we all went to the circus, I felt 6 years old too.

Raising teenagers has forced me and every mom I know to double back even more, recalling what

heartbreak feels like, and moodiness, and mystery, when every day feels so suddenly rude and ripe with

expectations and revelations. My husband and I talk late into the night, trying to remember what it was

like for us, even as we realize how much has changed for these kids. It feels ageless, middle age, when

we are suspended between twin poles: the needs of our own parents as they hang on to us tighter and

the needs of our children as they push us away. Who has time to stop and look closely at the calendar?

But when we do, when we gather with friends and count our blessings, what I find I'm most grateful for,

nestled so deeply here in middle age, is being able to watch the candles flicker, and marvel at how many

birthday wishes past have already come true.

NATION

Can Bashing the Banks Help Obama? By MICHAEL GRUNWALD AND MICHAEL SCHERER Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010

Callie Shell / Aurora for TIME

The no-drama law professor is going populist.

First President Obama proposed new taxes on big banks, blasting the "twisted logic" of Wall Street

executives who keep awarding themselves giant bonuses while resisting government efforts to recoup

the cost of their industry's bailouts. "Instead of sending a phalanx of lobbyists to fight this proposal or

employing an army of lawyers and accountants to help evade the fee, I suggest you might want to

consider simply meeting your responsibilities," the President warned.

A week later, Obama proposed new restrictions on big banks, aimed at limiting their size while prohibiting

them from playing the markets with their own cash. "If these folks want a fight," he thundered, "it's a fight

I'm ready to have." In case anyone missed the point, Obama used the word fight or fighting 22 times in a

speech the next day in Ohio.

The new proposals were in the works long before Scott Brown rode his truck to victory in Massachusetts,

and they reflect fairly modest shifts in the Administration's finance policies. Even the rhetoric is familiar:

Obama took periodic swipes at "outrageous" bonuses and "fat-cat bankers" throughout his first year in

office. But the latest bank-bashing does indicate a new strategic approach to his second year, inspired by

the same public wrath that produced Brown's upset. As the White House shifts its top legislative priority

from health care reform to financial reform, it is hoping to avoid the mistakes of the health effort that have

left Obama and the Democratic Party on the wrong side of a grumpy public.

That means more populism and confrontation, less deference to Congress. It's a shift from an inside

game to an outside game, from passive leader of a divided party to active agitator for change. The idea is

to take an uncompromising stand, make a clear case to the public and then force lawmakers to choose

sides — as opposed to announcing general principles, letting Congress hash out its own details at its

own pace and then desperately cutting deals to try to cobble together 60 Senators.

That was a bumpy road even before Massachusetts left Democrats with only 59; months of bipartisan

Senate negotiations over health care reform attracted zero Republican votes, as did the financial-reform

package that passed the House in December. And White House officials admit they underestimated how

ugly Capitol Hill's sausagemaking process would look in the spotlight, turning a debate about expanding

health coverage, controlling costs and reining in the abuses of profit-obsessed insurers into a brawl over

"death panels," taxpayer-funded abortions and congressional giveaways to Nebraska.

So now they want to draw bright lines: Are you with us or Wall Street, with ordinary families or greedy

titans? They figure that if they can't get a legislative victory, they'll get a potent political issue.

But Republicans are already accusing Obama of sacrificing reform on the altar of politics, and it's true

that the bright-line strategy could scuttle whatever chances there might have been to build bipartisan

consensus in the Senate. For example, the White House recently leaked word that it considers the

creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency "nonnegotiable," drawing a clear contrast with

Republicans and financial lobbyists on a relatively simple issue that polls extremely well — but risking a

stalemate in the Senate Banking Committee, where the GOP and several Democrats have expressed

doubts about a new bureaucracy. After health care, that's a price the Administration is now willing to pay.

It's no coincidence that the day before Obama announced his latest push to crack down on big banks, his

confidants David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett met with Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) watchdog

Elizabeth Warren, the intellectual mother of the consumer agency and the most prominent populist

advocate for financial reform. "They made it very clear that Wall Street needs to stop acting like nothing

has changed," Warren told TIME.

It's also no coincidence that the President made his announcement while standing next to the unlikeliest

populist advocate for financial reform, 82-year-old former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, a

previously marginalized Obama adviser who had chastised the Administration for making insufficient

efforts to limit the size and risk profiles of big banks. The White House is tired of complaints that its

economic team — especially Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the former New York Fed president

who helped bail out AIG and other failing firms — is too close to Wall Street. Bringing the legendary gray

eminence in from the cold — Obama called his plan to ban proprietary trading by commercial banks "the

Volcker rule" — not only lent capitalist gravitas to populist bank-bashing but also reinforced the message

that the Administration will not be outflanked in its assaults on Big Finance. That hasn't always been the

case.

Allergic to Populism

Shortly after Obama unveiled a $117 billion plan to tax the riskier liabilities of larger financial firms,

Geithner hosted a dinner for bankers. A few of them grumbled about Big Government, class warfare and

the unfairness of scapegoating financial institutions that already repaid their bailout money while GM and

Chrysler keep hemorrhaging taxpayer cash. But one midsize-bank CEO suggested the tax was a

reasonable surcharge on too-big-to-fail conglomerates that benefit from an implicit guarantee of federal

help in a crisis. "If I fail, the FDIC shuts me down," he said. Then he gestured at a big-bank CEO. "If he

fails, the Fed asks how it can help."

It's a telling story. For one thing, it's a reminder that Geithner is the kind of guy who hosts dinners for

bankers. He's not a populist; he's allergic to populists, and so are his aides. Behind closed doors,

Treasury officials can sound like their MoveOn.org caricatures, griping about "wacko populists" who use

"anticapitalist rhetoric" to "extract their pound of flesh from the Street" — even making excuses for the

megabankers who no-showed a recent White House meeting with Obama. ("I wouldn't say they blew him

off," said one Treasury aide.) Geithner has opposed proposals to tax Wall Street bonuses as well as

financial transactions, infuriating the left. And he made quite a few of those how-can-we-help calls to

floundering bankers when he was at the Fed, providing a juicy target for the right.

And yet Obama's bank tax — designed not only to make taxpayers whole but also to discourage

excessive risk-taking — came from Geithner. And so did most of the Administration's plans to address

the too-big-to-fail problem, create an independent consumer agency for financial products and otherwise

overhaul the regulatory system that failed so dramatically in 2008. Geithner sees big banks not as evil

empires to be toppled but as moneymaking machines to be restrained, so that the panic and bailouts of

two years ago are never repeated. Just because it's populist, he likes to say, doesn't mean it's wrong.

And as was conspicuously not the case with health care reform, the Administration has laid out specific

changes it wants to see in financial oversight. In June, Geithner released an 88-page paper with

proposals to address just about everything that went wrong before the meltdown, from unregulated

brokers who peddled toxic subprime mortgages with brutal fine print to in-the-tank ratings agencies that

vouched for house-of-cards financial instruments they didn't even understand. He proposed much

tougher oversight of derivatives, hedge funds and nonbank financial firms like AIG, as well as so-called

resolution authority to help public officials wind down failed behemoths like Lehman Brothers during a

crisis without triggering a panic. Geithner then shipped hundreds of pages of legislative language to the

Hill.

The bill the House passed in December closely tracks the Treasury proposals; Geithner's aides say they

got at least 80% of what they wanted, including the stand-alone consumer agency, an

easy-to-understand innovation for Americans who think mortgages and credit cards should be as safe as

toasters. Many of the differences were technical or turf-based: how to structure the resolution authority

and regulate systemic risks, a loophole exempting "industrial loan companies" from various regulations,

more loopholes shielding community banks and auto dealers (known for their pull with local

Congressmen) from the new consumer agency's direct oversight. House Financial Services Committee

chairman Barney Frank points out that the Republican alternative to the bill consisted of ending TARP

and otherwise maintaining the status quo; he's surprised the GOP hasn't paid a political price. "I'm

disappointed with the zeitgeist," Frank says. "The Republicans are so extreme they couldn't help

themselves; they actually proposed doing nothing. I would've thought refusing to fix a dysfunctional

system would be unpopular."

Republicans say they haven't seen any downside yet to opposing reform. Brown actually stepped into

Obama's populist trap by opposing the bank tax, and it didn't seem to help his opponent, Martha Coakley,

even though internal polling gave her a 21-point advantage when it came to "taking on Wall Street." Why?

"People thought Democrats in Washington would not deliver on these issues," says her pollster, Celinda

Lake.

In fact, Democrats in Washington and even within the Administration were at odds over dozens of

provisions. As with health care, there are serious differences on financial reform between the House and

the Senate, and the Democratic caucus within the Senate is again divided. And as the House bill got

watered down a bit, some reformers saw Treasury's fingerprints. For example, Michael Greenberger, a

policy adviser to Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of union, consumer and environmental

groups, says Treasury lobbied "vigorously" for loopholes exempting certain over-the-counter derivatives

from new regulations, a key objective of centrist New Democrats who took their concerns to Geithner —

and one shared by the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and big banks.

But for critics who believed the Administration was reluctant to crack down on Wall Street, Volcker

became the proof that wasn't in the pudding — the monetary version of the "most trusted name in news"

who suddenly sounded like a Daily Kos blogger. If Obama really wanted to stop banks from getting too

big to fail, why didn't he take Volcker's advice about how to stop them from getting too big? If Obama

really wanted to stop Wall Street's excessive risk-taking, why didn't he take Volcker's advice to stop

federally insured banks from gambling on their own accounts? And where was Volcker anyway?

Back in Vogue

Volcker was living in New York City, getting engaged to his longtime assistant, giving speeches around

the world, making wry comments about the uselessness of financial innovation and the remorselessness

of Wall Street. He was also making cagey references to his lack of influence with Obama, for whom he

was chairing an obscure economic-recovery board. Congressman Paul Kanjorski says that last March,

when he pitched Volcker on a plan to let regulators break up big banks that threatened the financial

system, the former Fed chair said, "I'm out of vogue right now in the White House ... but I agree." Volcker

secured his walk-on-water reputation by taming runaway inflation in the late 1970s, jacking up interest

rates and ignoring intense public pressure to reverse course. His grandpa-in-the-attic status in

Obamaworld seemed to suggest an Administration too cozy with the Street.

In fact, while Volcker did have some policy disagreements with Geithner and National Economic Council

chairman Larry Summers — who were not eager to dismantle large banks and did not see how

proprietary trading contributed to the crisis — those ideas had support from White House economists like

Christina Romer and Austan Goolsbee of the Council of Economic Advisers and Jared Bernstein in Vice

President Joe Biden's office. Volcker was never really persona non grata; he's friendly with Biden, and

Goolsbee says Volcker spoke "extensively and repeatedly" with all the key players — including Obama.

Still, White House officials were increasingly frustrated that they weren't getting credit for going after Wall

Street. "It came up in every meeting: This bank stuff is killing us and killing us," a Treasury official told

TIME.

The political aides were eager to adopt a more populist tone, urging Treasury to give them something

they could use. The bank tax was already in the works, but after Volcker made his case at a White House

meeting in October, the rest of the Administration started shifting his way. Giant firms like Goldman

Sachs were raking in record profits, and financiers ranging from British central banker Mervyn King to

former Citigroup chairman John Reed were endorsing the Volcker rule.

By late December, Obama's entire economic team agreed to support the rule, along with limits on the

size and scope of banks that go beyond the amendment Kanjorski drew up. Geithner would have

preferred to limit risk-taking through tougher rules on leverage and capital — and he's still planning a

push on that front — but in an election year, it was easy to see the value of having Volcker inside the tent.

"The narrative is changing," Warren says. "In 2010, Congress will have a basic choice between taking the

side of banks and taking the side of families."

The question is: Does the new populism make reform more or less likely?

Fight or Fix?

"Your bosses are sociopaths! A bunch of Ted Bundys in $10,000 suits!" The words were hurled by an

unnamed Democratic Congressman at a bank lobbyist who must also remain anonymous. Suffice it to

say the lobbyist is getting used to hostile greetings. "We get it: we're al-Qaeda, and nobody wants to be

seen with us," he says. "Obviously, we're going to take some abuse in 2010." Like most bank lobbyists,

he says he supports financial reform — as long as it doesn't include a consumer agency or a bunch of

other provisions that Obama supports — but that hasn't stopped his industry from spending millions of

dollars to kill it. What's interesting is that now, for the first time, the lobbyist thinks reform is going to stall.

"I'm not sure I see the path anymore," he says.

The problem, as usual, is the Senate — and, in an election year, the calendar. Republicans are already

suggesting that Obama's belated push for the Volcker rule and other add-ons will require new hearings

and more delay, and that its line-in-the-sand approach to the consumer agency is a formula for gridlock.

Meanwhile, in the post-Massachusetts political climate — and with so much industry cash sloshing

around in Washington — centrist Democrats seem to fear getting tagged as Obama liberals more than

they fear getting tagged as Wall Street water carriers. And the White House would rather see reform

blocked by Republican recalcitrance it can exploit at the polls than watch another round of interminable

horse-trading that will ultimately be blamed on Obama.

This is not to say the White House wants an issue rather than a bill. It wants both, especially if health care

dies and leaves Democrats short on achievements to brag about in 2010. It's simply decided that the

most plausible path to a bill is to warn the public that the financial system is still a ticking bomb, and to try

to make opposition to strong reform tantamount to support for the terrorists in fancy suits. The problem is

that on an issue this complex, with so many contentious provisions and alternative proposals floating

around, naysayers are always going to be able to find a populist excuse to say nay. For example, some

in both parties have turned to Fed-bashing, trying to strip the agency's regulatory powers and opposing

Chairman Ben Bernanke's nomination for a second term. Who knows? In 2010, "Bailout Ben" could be

just as potent a populist issue as "financial reform."

Financial reform, like health care reform, is truly complex. It's hard to explain controversies over

pre-emption or end users or proprietary trading; as another Wall Street lobbyist puts it, "Americans don't

care whether Morgan Stanley keeps its prop desk." Obama knows he has little chance to transform the

system if regulatory reform gets bogged down over health-care-style intricacies. The good news for

Obama is that nobody claims our financial oversight is the best in the world. He may have a chance for

reform if he can boil it down to one simple question: yes or no.

WORLD

Out of the Ruins By JAMES NACHTWEY Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010

"An old woman who now lives on the street outside the ruined national cathedral took a set of rosary

beads from inside an old glove and began to pray. At that moment, an international relief helicopter flew

across the sky, as if in answer to her prayers." James Nachtwey

James Nachtwey / VII for TIME

To witness the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti is to be lost inside a waking nightmare. The markers

on this mapless journey are the swarms of looters, children with chopped-off limbs, cities fabricated of

sticks and bedsheets, pulverized cathedrals, dogs circling the dead in the streets.

Most Haitians have always lived in a society constructed along a narrow ledge on a precipice above the

abyss. The rich existed on the plateau above them, unseen in their black-windowed Land Cruisers.

Higher still, as if levitating, was the immaculate, blinding white presidential palace — the secret desire of

all despots — now crushed by the weight of its three Baroque domes. Where the ledge crumbled, the

dead cascaded into oblivion. Where it held, people huddled closer, those with next to nothing suddenly

with even less. They continue to endure their history — a crescendo of privation and hardship, matched

by strength, pride and dignity. Their nation was born in the conquest of slavery; it has been shaped by

poverty, struggle and faith.

The earth shrugged, Haiti collapsed, and the world responded. "Compassion fatigue" was exposed as

the straw man of cynics and ad salesmen. Epic catastrophe was met with epic generosity, without benefit

of untapped oil reserves or geopolitical gain. The U.N. is here in force, but the real united nations are the

small NGOs from every corner of the planet that just showed up, flying by the seat of their pants. String

their acronyms side by side, and they'd go halfway around the equator. Recite them, and you'd be

speaking in tongues.

The Haitians are not just sitting back with their hands out. They're doing a lot of the heavy lifting — so

humble in its nature, it seems invisible. Massive international relief supplies are transported by cargo

ships, helicopters and C-130s. Haitians carry what they need on their heads. They dig survivors out of

the wreckage by hand, not with big yellow machines. Everyone is doing what he or she can by whatever

means available.

As a photojournalist, I've been involved in documenting the history of the past 30 years, and much of my

work has focused on wars, conflicts and social injustice. It's been fueled by anger, driven by the belief

that if people are informed, they will be inspired by compassion and will share a sense of outrage at

violence, aggression and the unacceptable deprivation of fundamental human rights. Those issues are

all man-made, and anger can jump-start the process of change. An earthquake is an act of nature. Tens

of thousands die in a few minutes. Who is to blame? Regime change is not an option. How can anger be

directed at the earth itself? Compassion is the ultimate motivation in a natural catastrophe. The challenge

is to maintain it for the long haul, not allow it to die with the headlines.

Haitians have forged history, with a capital H. Slaves rose up to vanquish one of Europe's mightiest

empires. Earthquakes reveal the power within the earth itself. But the spirit of the Haitian people is also a

force of nature. Virtually all the symbols of political power in a country synonymous with corruption have

been erased. What will the Haitians write on the blank pages of a new chapter of their history?

Haiti: Out of the Ruins

Lost

WARNING: Some of the photographs that follow contain extremely graphic content.

To witness the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti is to be lost inside a waking nightmare. Unclaimed

dead lie on streets outside the wall of the main cemetery.

Buried

Most Haitians have always lived in a society constructed along a narrow ledge on a precipice above the

abyss. The rich existed on the plateau above them, unseen in their black-windowed Land Cruisers. A

man takes refuge behind a Dumpster outside a hospital. He has been refused entry to the hospital

because the workers consider him mentally unstable.

Past and Present

Those with next to nothing suddenly have even less. They continue to endure — their history, a

crescendo of privation and hardship, matched by strength, pride and dignity. Their nation was born in the

conquest of slavery; it has been shaped by poverty, struggle and faith. In a makeshift tent city in the main

square of the capital, a statue of Henri Christoph, a leader of the Haitian war of independence, stands in

the background, overlooking a displaced girl finishing her bowl of food.

Escape

Thousands have fled the ruins of Port-au-Prince. Some of these displaced people have left by

overcrowded bus, some by foot, and others by dump truck.

Faith

An old woman prays with rosary beads near the national cathedral in ruins, with an international aid

helicopter in the background on its way to the airport.

Survival

Looting has been prevalent in the destroyed city center of Port-au-Prince.

Nations United

The earth shrugged, Haiti collapsed, and the world responded. Epic catastrophe was met with epic

generosity, without benefit of untapped oil reserves or geopolitical gain. The U.N. is here in force, but the

real united nations are the small NGOs from every corner of the planet that just showed up, flying by the

seat of their pants. Los Angeles County Fire and Rescue, in silhouette, stand atop a collapsed building,

searching for someone who still might be alive. No one was found at the site.

Pallbearers

The Haitians are not just sitting back with their hands out. They're doing a lot of the heavy lifting — so

humble in nature as to seem invisible. Priests attend the funeral of the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, who

was killed in the earthquake.

Congregation

Mourners grieve at the funeral of the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince. Eighty percent of the country is

Roman Catholic.

Compassion

An earthquake is an act of nature. Tens of thousands die in a few minutes. Who is to blame? Regime

change is not an option. How can anger be directed at the earth itself? Compassion is the ultimate

motivation in a natural catastrophe. The challenge is to maintain it for the long haul and not allow it to die

with the headlines. In the Médecins Sans Frontières Hospital in Cite Soleil, medical staff care for the

injured. Patients were moved outside because of a severe aftershock, with many amputees in outdoor

tents.

Improvised Hygiene

A woman bathes herself in a makeshift camp in the central square next to a statue of Jean-Jacques

Dessalines, a leader of the Haitian war of independence.

Force of Nature

Haitians have forged history with a capital H. Slaves rose up to vanquish one of Europe's mightiest

empires. Earthquakes reveal the power within the earth itself — but the spirit of the Haitian people is also

a force of nature. Virtually all the symbols of political power in a country synonymous with corruption have

been erased. A statue honoring Fabre Geffard, a Haitian leader in the mid–19th century, stands amid a

downtown in ruins. According to the inscription on the statue, he was the "restorer of the republic."

TO OUR READERS

The Global Forum By RICHARD STENGEL, MANAGING EDITOR Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

Cape Town's new stadium

Warren Little / Getty

Cape Town, known as "The Mother City" to South Africans, is an exquisitely beautiful place that is in

many ways a model for the new Africa: diverse, entrepreneurial, forward-looking. It is one of the hosts of

the World Cup this June and July, when hundreds of millions of soccer fans will be focused on the

planet's most popular sport. At the same time, June 26-28, Cape Town will also be the site of the

first-ever FORTUNE/TIME/CNN Global Forum, a three-day event bringing together FORTUNE 500

CEOs, world leaders and members of the TIME 100 for a conference on what we're calling the New

Global Opportunity. This is the idea that global economic power is shifting to the developing world--to

Africa and the Middle East, as well as to Asia--and that these markets are more than just frontiers of

growth; they are the sources of new ideas and models that can be applied everywhere.

FORTUNE has traditionally been the sole host of the Global Forum, but this year, for the first time, TIME

and CNN are principal partners in what will become a regular event. All three organizations will guide and

contribute to the discussions as well as cover them online, in print and on air. Topics will range from the

future of microfinance to business strategies for emerging markets to breakthroughs in science and

health. Michael Elliott, TIME's international editor, has been steering the content and ideas for the forum

from our end. As he says, "We've given the conference the title the New Global Opportunity because

there's a realization that we can't go back to the old ways. Growth has to be inclusive and sustainable.

And the role and potential of those who have been marginalized in the past--the poor, especially women

and girls--will only grow."

New roads, stadiums and hotels have been built in Cape Town and other parts of South Africa for the

World Cup. "The rainbow nation," as Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls it, has pulled out all the stops to be

ready for the big event. I have a long personal connection to South Africa, having written one book about

the country, and then, in the 1990s, I had the great privilege of working with Nelson Mandela on his

memoirs. I'm looking forward to being in Cape Town for both the Global Forum and the World Cup, which

we will cover with a special issue on global soccer. See you in the Mother City.

Richard Stengel, MANAGING EDITOR

LETTERS

Inbox

Heroic Efforts in Haiti

Thank you for a very informative cover story on the Haitian tragedy [Jan. 25]. As an American, I was

proud to read about the role the U.S. military is playing in rebuilding this nation. President Obama and

Congress should offer potential enlistees in all branches of the armed services the option to be sent only

to Haiti. There are many Americans who may not support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who would

surely enlist in a volunteer effort to help assist Haitians recovering from the horrible earthquake.

Paul Feiner, GREENBURGH, N.Y.

The people of Haiti are reminiscent of Sisyphus, who continually rolled a large rock to the top of a

mountain only to helplessly watch it roll back down. How much futility can be absorbed before hope ends?

We can at least be grateful for the immense generosity of the world in the face of this tragedy and the

profound resilience of the Haitians' human spirit.

Carol Faubert, WOODSTOCK, GA.

Clinton Has His Say

Bill Clinton is right when he says all international efforts regarding Haiti are essential so "the Haitian

people can reclaim their destiny." However, he misses one point that is key to Haiti's becoming

self-sustaining, and that is cultural change. The mix of West African religious and cultural influences

prevalent in the country, like voodoo, sends the message that life is dictated by magic, and planning has

no effect on the future. Haitian culture must be redeveloped and restructured, and although the

circumstances are tragic, this is a time to change in order for the country to move forward and, as Clinton

puts it, "escape the chains of the past 200 years."

Norman Singer, CARY, N.C.

In order to properly help a country, it is first necessary to understand its key problems. Haiti seems to be

at a pivotal point in its history: it can continue as before or make the needed changes in government,

education and infrastructure. It is time Haiti's previous occupiers redeem themselves and help rebuild

Haiti as its own country.

Miriam Allsop, SAN DIEGO

Underappreciating The Unemployed

Nina Easton must have never been on unemployment, or she would know better than to take such a

cavalier attitude toward Americans suffering from the loss of their livelihood [Jan. 25]. To be forced to rely

on unemployment benefits, in my experience, in no way contributes to "warping incentives to look for

work." A job search takes earnest effort and several months' time, even in better times than these; many

of the "lower-paying, less desirable jobs" she cites are passed up because they will not support a

household. Extending jobless benefits would not "be reinforcing that misery." No money coming in at all

would result in even more misery.

Jeanne Rogers, POWAY, CALIF.

Easton makes a fair, unbiased and thoughtful case for not extending jobless benefits ad infinitum.

Unfortunately, stopping those benefits would have catastrophic results. It would cause millions of new

foreclosures, leave millions of people unable to afford medication and create a vast new army of

homeless Americans. Perhaps extending benefits is not ideal, but it certainly is the lesser of two evils.

Bruce McPhee, WEST YARMOUTH, MASS.

It's Lonely at the Top

Yes, Obama's job is certainly lonely, as no doubt all Presidents have found [Jan. 25]. And yet the scale of

destructive attacks on this man--from right, left and now center--is without precedent. By any standard,

this man has achieved a remarkable record of legislation and world leadership in his first year in office.

But how can he hope to continue unless we give him at least our grudging support?

Jon Deak, NEW YORK CITY

Nancy Gibbs got it right. People have short memories: when Obama stressed the fact that the economy

would take months, even years, to fix, most people seemed to get it--at the time. Now because he

couldn't work miracles in a few months, he is being condemned.

Jackye Ivey, LAKEWOOD, COLO.

Keeping Race Out of Basketball

As I read TIME's article on Harvard basketball star Jeremy Lin, I was ashamed and frustrated by the

ignorance of my fellow Americans who targeted Lin with racial slurs [Jan. 25]. Basketball is a multicultural

sport, and as Americans, we need to grow past the ignorance of racial judgment. Lin has the potential to

become a leader in his sport and make an impact on the world.

Frank Ledezma, LOS ANGELES

Do Have a Cow!

Thank you, Lisa Abend, for the article "Save the Planet: Eat More Beef" [Jan. 25]. It is time for us to

abandon the wasteful industrial-farming model. Grass-fed beef tastes great, fights climate change and

supports sustainable local farming. How often do you find such a delicious solution?

Kirstie Pecci, STURBRIDGE, MASS.

Raising grass-fed animals is very land-intensive, and massive deforestation is not a viable solution to the

environmental devastation caused by factory farms and feedlots. Population growth has necessitated

that we eat differently; "élite meat" will never be a solution for the masses.

Stewart David, ASHEVILLE, N.C.

More Problems with Palin

Whether or not Sarah Palin runs for office in 2012, I hope voters take heed of Time's observation that she

remains "no better informed about national and international affairs than she was as a candidate" in 2008

[Jan. 25]. Let's all hope she sticks to her more lucrative speaking engagements and media appearances,

where we can easily tune her out.

Reilly Kelly, SUN VALLEY, IDAHO

Please recycle this magazine and remove inserts or samples before recycling

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Avatar Ascendant By RICHARD CORLISS Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

It has no stars. It's not a sequel. It isn't the screen version of a best-selling novel, a comic-book franchise

or the Bible. It's got a lot of battle scenes, so women certainly wouldn't want to go see it. It's also the most

tree-hugging movie ever, with a defiantly leftish agenda — at the climax, we're meant to cheer when

American soldiers get killed. And what does the title mean, anyway?

Avatar, in other words, has none of the selling points that are supposed to guarantee hit status for a

big-budget movie. Yet James Cameron's enviro-epic, with no famous name attached to it but its

writer-director's, is not just a blockbuster; it's king of the world. Since premiering on Dec. 18, it has

proceeded to shatter most existing box-office records at home and abroad. It has been No. 1 every week,

swatting away ambitious newcomers like so many mosquitoes. And like the best ambassador for

Hollywood, it has earned most of its revenue — nearly 70% — in foreign markets.

On a grander scale, Avatar has achieved what many industry savants thought impossible. It has passed

the $1.843 billion worldwide gross of the previous all-time smash: Cameron's own Titanic, from 1997.

Barring an instant apocalypse, Avatar will have passed Titanic's $600.8 million domestic take by the end

of January. Since the new movie's gross is declining only 10% to 15% each week — far less than most

pictures — there may be no stopping the Avatar avalanche.

Two notes of restraint: First, the movie's income is swelled by the higher prices charged for the 3-D

version and the Imax experience. (These formats account for 80% of the film's domestic gross; worldwide,

Avatar has earned about $125 million in just 262 Imax theaters.) Second, the rate of inflation complicates

any comparison of movie hits from one decade to another. In real dollars, none of the superhits of the

past decade — not The Dark Knight nor any movie with pirates, hobbits, wizards or spider-men — make

the list of the 25 top-grossing domestic films. Titanic is the only picture of the past quarter-century in the

top 10. (It's sixth.) Cameron's new film would have to take in some $950 million in today's dollars just to

match his last one. Avatar is barely more than a third of the way toward reaching the real-dollar champ,

Gone With the Wind.

Still, it's done fine, and that's a tribute to Cameron's insane ingenuity, the visual magic concocted by his

special-effects team and the willingness of the mass audience to give their hearts to something new and

pay extra for it.

Recall that Titanic was a colossal gamble back in '97. With a $200 million budget, it was, some said, the

most expensive picture ever made. (In real dollars, that dubious honor would probably go to the Elizabeth

Taylor Cleopatra in 1963.) Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were not yet established stars. The

historical event lacked suspense: whatever else happened, that 1912 ocean liner would sink; there would

be no Titanic II. Moreover, the scenario Cameron did invent was a love story, and that would scare off the

guys.

But the director took his risk, and it paid off, attracting all sectors of the audience, but especially women.

This often-ignored demographic made Titanic the hit of all hits. (Alan Wade, a writer-director, argues that

the movie resonated so strongly with women precisely because Jack, the hero, dies; in memory he

remains their first, shining, lost love.)

After Titanic, Cameron got financial carte blanche to spend a bundle on another no-star epic. (The film's

distributor, 20th Century Fox, claims that the budget for Avatar was $237 million, less than that of

Spider-Man 3 or the last Harry Potter movie.) This time, instead of re-creating a cruise ship, Cameron

created a whole new world, using technologies he waited nearly a decade to see come to fruition. The

man who built the Titanic became the God of the Old Testament — or at least J.R.R. Tolkien —

summoning previously unseen lands from his majestic imagination.

Avatar's mantra is "I see you," and its final image is of someone's eyes snapping open. Journeying to the

year 2154, moviegoers everywhere have embraced the film — surely the most vivid and persuasive

creation of a fantasy world ever seen in moving pictures — as a total sensory, sensuous, sensual

experience. The planet Pandora is a wonder world of flora and fauna: a rainforest (where it rarely rains)

of gigantic trees and phosphorescent plants, of flying steeds, panther dogs and hammerhead dinosaurs.

Audiences are just as beguiled by Pandora's humanish tribe, the Na'vi — the lean, 10-ft.-tall, blue-striped

people with yellow eyes. They are what humans might have been if they had evolved in harmony with,

not in opposition to, the Edenic environment that gave them birth.

But Avatar wouldn't connect so broadly and deeply with audiences if the central relationship of Jake

(Sam Worthington), the crippled Marine, and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), daughter of the Na'vi tribal chief,

weren't plausible and inviting. Like Titanic, this is a love story enveloped by catastrophe. That's why

Hollywood's anxiety about the movie's supposedly limited appeal to both sexes was needless. Indeed,

Avatar's closest kin among current hits may be The Blind Side, the female-skewing sports film. Both tell

stories of strong women who find rootless young men and give them a purpose around which they can

build their lives.

That also makes Avatar a throwback to ancient movie days, when films about men and women seduced

the mass audience. And because it works splendidly as spectacle and love story, Cameron's picture is

worthy of comparison to the great old epics. The world beater is also a heartbreaker, if you just open your

eyes.

Edge of Darkness: Is Mel Gibson Still a Star

By RICHARD CORLISS Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

We're deep into the new thriller Edge of Darkness. People are dying violently every few minutes;

conspiracy theories are sprouting like kudzu. And Mel Gibson, as a Boston cop trying to find his

daughter's killers, tells somebody it's the moment of truth. "You had better decide," he says, "whether

you're hangin' on the cross or bangin' in the nails." Ouch. It's a reminder that Gibson, the movie star, is

also Gibson, the director of the polarizing religious epic The Passion of the Christ, in which his one

onscreen appearance showed him driving the first nail into Jesus' palm.

In the three decades since Gibson first cruised the postapocalyptic outback as Mad Max, he's forged a

wayward career as one of Hollywood's top moneymakers. He fronted a couple of burly action-film

franchises (three splendid Mad Max movies; four shoddy, popular Lethal Weapons). Ten of his films

earned more than $100 million from 1989 to 2002, back when that was real money. His Scots epic

Braveheart won him Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. That was just Gibson's second film as

director; his third, The Passion of the Christ, in 2004, was the all-time top-grossing film in both the

R-rated and foreign-language (Aramaic, if you recall) categories.

Passion also made Gibson something of a pariah in Hollywood for what was perceived as the film's

blame-the-Jews sentiment. Gibson denied the charge. Two years later, he was stopped for drunk driving;

his arrest report states that "Gibson yelled out, 'The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.'

Gibson then asked, 'Are you a Jew?'" The officer was Jewish.

Gibson got into an oddly similar tangle recently with Sam Rubin, an entertainment reporter for the Los

Angeles TV station KTLA. Rubin suggested to Gibson that some people think he should not have

returned to acting "because of ... the remarks that were attributed to you." Not raising his voice, but

leaning in toward Rubin, Gibson said, "That were attributed to me. That I didn't necessarily make. O.K.?

But — and I gather you have a dog in this fight ... You have a dog in this fight? Or are you being

impartial?" The implication was that if his interrogator was Jewish, he must have been trying to nail

Gibson. Rubin is Jewish.

Aside from Mel's Jewish problem, he has the sizable challenge of rekindling his star wattage after being

absent from leading roles since Signs in 2002. Edge of Darkness might seem just the vehicle for that

mission. Based on an acclaimed BBC miniseries from 1985, with the same director at the helm (Martin

Campbell, who with Casino Royale rebooted the James Bond franchise) and with William Monahan, the

Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Departed, working on the script, it focuses on a familiar Gibson

character: the haunted hero who solves problems by killing people.

Mourning Sickness

In modern movies, when a father and daughter are shown in an affectionate relationship, you know one

of them has to die. Thomas Craven, the cop, is walking into his house with his 24-year-old daughter

Emma (Bojana Novakovic) when she is gunned down. The official suspicion is that Craven was the target,

but he soon learns that she had been engaged in antinuclear espionage at Northmoor, a nearby plant run

by the usual oily CEO (Danny Huston). In streamlining the original show's cast of malefactors, which

included British and U.S. corporations and intelligence agencies, trade unions and the IRA, the movie

reduces the story from a panoramic conspiracy to another one-guy-against-the-system thriller, and Edge

loses its political edge.

Gibson, who has always been an undervalued actor, does a sturdy job as a grieving dad who still

engages in conversations with his dead child; it's almost a letdown when he puts aside his mourning

sickness and spirals into melodrama. At 54, Gibson is aging interestingly, with severe creases and

sagging flesh. You look at him and think, This guy should play Nixon — another complex man of

significant achievement with a debilitating belief that his enemies were bangin' nails into him.

Charlotte Gainsbourg: On the Mend and

Finding Solace in Music

By William Lee Adams / Paris Monday, Feb. 01, 2010

Gainsbourg with Beck in his L.A. studio

Wispy and delicate, Charlotte Gainsbourg rushes into the lobby of Paris' Hotel Montalembert looking like

she might collapse under the weight of her enormous fur coat. Seeing two representatives from her

record label, she delivers four decidedly froid air-kisses. "No more interviews," she says, clearly

exhausted from the weeks she has spent promoting her new album IRM. Once upstairs in a suite,

however, she seems to relax, stripping down to a T-shirt and crouching on her knees, sphinx-like. Would

she like the sofa or a chair, perhaps? "Non," she says. "The floor is fine."

Revered as one of France's finest actresses — and now one of its most successful singers, too —

Gainsbourg, 38, can sit wherever she likes. Since making her screen debut as a 13-year-old alongside

Catherine Deneuve in the 1984 film Paroles et Musique, she's racked up 37 movie credits, including

critically acclaimed turns in 21 Grams and Antichrist, which earned her a Best Actress Award at the

Cannes Film Festival last year. But despite these successes, she's still known primarily as the daughter

of Jane Birkin, the gamine English model and actress, and Serge Gainsbourg, France's beloved

singer-songwriter. When Serge died in 1991, the nation went into mourning and President François

Mitterrand lauded him as "our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire." Carrying such celebrated DNA can be a

daunting task. "With acting I never have to reference my father," Gainsbourg says. "With music I want to

refer to him, but I want to find my own path, too."

Of course, Gainsbourg is lucky she's got her father's musical genes to fall back on. The path that many

actresses follow from the movie set to recording studio is lined with misplaced ambitions and audible

trauma — remember Lindsay Lohan's and Scarlett Johansson's disastrous efforts? But Gainsbourg has

made the transition effortlessly. Her 2006 album 5:55, a collaboration with Radiohead producer Nigel

Godrich, topped the French charts, with critics praising her as a true chanteuse. For her latest album IRM

— which will be released on Jan. 26 in the U.S. and most of Europe — she teamed up with eclectic

alt-rocker Beck. "He wrote all of the music and lyrics, but we really had an exchange. The album is very

close to me," she says. In sessions at Beck's studio in Los Angeles, Gainsbourg tried to inspire him with

books like Through the Looking-Glass. He played her beats, watched her react and then "guessed" what

she wanted to sing about.

In typical Beck style, the collaboration cuts across a variety of different musical styles — blues,

electronica, rock and folk. And Gainsbourg proves she's more than just his muse. Although her vocals

sometimes sound like mere whispers, she conveys intense emotion throughout the album. On "Le Chat

du Café des Artistes," — the only song sung entirely in French — her dark intonations complement the

song's haunting strings. On "Voyage," she channels Enya at a drum circle — and somehow manages to

give the song a spiritual quality.

The most intimate track on the album is "IRM" — that's French for an MRI scan — which pulsates with

clanging industrial beats. In 2007, Gainsbourg suffered a brain hemorrhage in a waterskiing accident and

surgeons had to drill through her skull to save her. Despite recovering fully, she insisted on undergoing

MRI scans for several months after the accident. "The sounds inside the machine are nasty to hear," she

says. "They're brutal and aggressive, and rhythmically very chaotic. But they're also musical." The lyrics

on "IRM" address her attempts to exorcise her medical demons: "Leave my head demagnetized/ Tell me

where the trauma lies/ In the scan of pathogen/ Or the shadow of my sin."

As part of her recuperation, Gainsbourg also accepted a role in Danish director Lars von Trier's

controversial thriller Antichrist, which she filmed in between sessions with Beck. In the movie, she plays a

woman who descends into madness after her infant son dies: she bangs her head against a toilet,

masturbates naked in a forest and mutilates her own genitals. "The film was so dramatic and so extreme

that it took all my thoughts away," she says. "It helped me recover." Von Trier still struggles to reconcile

her raw performance in the movie with her soft-spoken manner in person. "Privately she is so shy. You

can sit through a meal with her and she doesn't say anything," he says. "How can this very, very shy

person do scenes like this?"

Gainsbourg doesn't have a straight answer, but she says the graphic scenes didn't faze her. "I felt more

naked crying and howling than I did showing my bottom," she explains. Then again, her father did give

her an early education in provocation. His infamous 1969 duet with Birkin, "Je T'Aime ... Moi Non Plus,"

was banned by the Vatican because of its salacious lyrics and feigned orgasms. And in 1984, he

recorded "Lemon Incest," a duet in which he and a 13-year-old Charlotte sing that "the love that we will

never make together is the most beautiful." In the video, they lie together in bed, Serge shirtless and

Charlotte wearing nothing but panties and a shirt. Critics claimed it was a celebration of incest and

pedophilia, but the song rocketed up the French charts.

"It's about the pure love of a father and a daughter," she says, defending the song all these years later.

"There was a lot of shyness about frankly saying, I love you. My father would say it to other people and

through song, and wanted me to know it through other people as a public thing."

Gainsbourg doesn't stir controversy on IRM, but her father's influence can still be felt. By pursuing a

highly personal and unconventional musical path, she pays homage to his legacy. And, as he would have

wanted, she's creating one of her own.

The Short List of Things to Do WEEK OF JAN. 29

Star Now in Stores

According to Peter Biskind's fascinating biography,

Warren Beatty is a postmodern paradox.

Self-obsessed, irresistibly beautiful, utterly shallow,

he exasperates directors and racks up thousands of

sexual conquests — but his best films, like Bonnie

and Clyde and Reds, have a startling depth.

Jimmy Kimmel Live Airing on ABC

In the Tonight Show debacle, Conan got fired, Jay got

trashed and Dave got his dirty laundry aired. But

midnight's forgotten man was a creative winner. His

Ken Burns parody of the NBC fiasco showed that

late-night war is hell but one bystander has a hell of a

funny show.

Fish Tank Now Playing

Andrea Arnold's gritty film centers on the uneasy

attraction between a lower-class teen (Katie Jarvis)

and a grown man. It may sound like An Education in

the slums, but it's fiercely unique, burning bright with

the desire, frustration and confusion of its heroine.

The Inbetweeners Airing on E4

The movies are full of raunchy teen comedies, but

television needed something like this BBC America

import. Simon Bird is a dryly hilarious misfit in this

good-hearted, Superbad-style sitcom about lust, illicit

alcohol and plain old-fashioned humiliation.

8½ Now on DVD

Don't be misled by the mopey Nine. The 1963

Federico Fellini extravaganza that inspired it — now

out on Blu-ray — is one of the liveliest masterpieces

in film history: a tragedy, comedy and three-ring

circus about a director (Marcello Mastroianni) in a

creative crisis.

Randy Jackson's Short List

For eight seasons of American Idol, Jackson, a

Grammy-winning producer, has assessed the sound,

moves and "pitchiness" of would-be superstars. As

the race to become the ninth American idol heats up,

Jackson's MTV show, America's Best Dance Crew,

returns for its fifth season. When he's not sitting at

the judges' table, Jackson might be found scouting

new music or cracking up over a video on Funny or

Die.

Piano man

every time I hear him, I am

enthralled and amazed.

Divine creations

scinating story. His legacy

lives on. The Guggenheim Museum in New York City — need I say more?

A standout film

unding, and the movie reminds me that there's still so much

work to be done on the human mind-set.

New sounds

of:

and the Paper Tongues, a terrific new rock

band out of Charlotte, N.C., with an amazing lead singer.

Laugh track

if you're looking for comic relief, log on to FunnyorDie.com. It will

give you the laugh support you need.

Music means everything to me, and the pianist Keith

Jarrett is a musician for all seasons. Whether it's his

versions of Baroque masterpieces, his work in a jazz trio or his live solo concerts, I love, love, love this

great artist. His music paints pictures and emotions in such vivid color —

Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the greatest architects ever to walk the planet. He designed as if the Greek

or Roman gods were guiding his hands, and each of his structures tells a fa

One movie that stands out in my mind, heart and soul is Babel. In my opinion, it's a brilliant work. The

symbolism portrayed in each story is asto

I feel it's my responsibility to turn people on to great music. Here are two artists you need to be aware

the Rev. Smokie Norful, a brilliantly talented gospel artist,

In the mad world that we live in today,

TECHNOLOGY

Apple's iPad: Has Steve Jobs Seen the

Future — Again?

revolutionary new product, the iPad.

Ryan Anson / AFP / Getty

Correction appended Jan. 28, 2010

ed primarily of journalists. And why not? He creates enough

news to keep many of us employed.

ct."

By JOSH QUITTNER Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010

Steve Jobs unveils Apple's

So finally, after months of hype, Steven P. Jobs unveiled — ta-da! — the iPad, Apple's tablet computer.

As Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" ended and the lights faded out, Jobs faded in and got a standing

ovation from the crowd, which was compos

Jobs told the crowd he wanted to start 2010 by introducing a "truly magical and revolutionary produ

For six months, as a million tech monkeys blogged furiously, randomly anticipating every possible

permutation the iThing might take, nothing would compare — we all knew this from experience — with

whatever it was that the great Jobs himself would reveal. But when at last he unveiled the new device,

removing a black cloth from the thing that lay covered on a small coffee table, the biggest surprise was

that there was no surprise.

The iPad looks and acts exactly the way the tech pundits predicted: like a giant iPod Touch or iPhone

0.5 in. thick, weighs 1.5 lb., has a 9.7-in. multi-touch screen and goes on sale at the end of March,

starting at $499. To the extent that the iPad reveal was a bit of a letdown, it's almost certainly becaus

my expectations were so high. And perhaps that makes me an unreliable narrator for this story. I'm

co-opted: I had wanted the iThing (wha

. It's

e

tever it was) to be a thing unlike any we'd ever seen before, a

thing that would capture our imaginations and compel us to stampede to the Apple Store yet again.

eb

and get people to pay for content again. The New York Times — which plans to start charging for its

d.

A disclosure: for the better part of a year, I've been militating within Time Inc. (this magazine's parent

sion

at

ere shown at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in

early January, which started with a keynote address by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, who showed an

No one gives demos like Jobs. But perhaps because expectations were so high and the product — a

a lot of people," said Jobs. The stripped down 16-gigabyte model starts at $499; the biggest

iPad holds 64 gigabytes and costs $699. If you want to connect it to AT&T's 3G network, that'll cost you

$29.99 (for unlimited

data).

e ever had," Jobs said.

"Way better than a laptop, way better than a smartphone." It feels like your typical Apple product: smooth,

Because if it were a success, then maybe it would take us — those in the struggling and hard-times-hit

publishing business — along with it.

By wirelessly linking consumers to a Web store, the tablet promises to reverse the free culture of the W

website — has been camped at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., for weeks, working on an

iPad-maximized app. It was lovely, and I fully expect that people will pay for the Times via the iPa

division) to prepare for this day and have been among those working here to create tablet-ready

prototypes. So apply the discount.

These prototypes, by the way, anticipate an array of products that extend far beyond Apple. The inva

of the tablets is being staged by every major computer maker — Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer, Lenovo

and others. It's pretty clear that regardless of what happens to the old media business, the idea is th

touchscreens of varying shapes and sizes will soon replace desktops and laptops. More than three

dozen tablets and related devices w

upcoming HP tablet. But in consumer tech, we've come to learn, the show doesn't get interesting until

Steven P. Jobs takes the stage.

device that aspires to be King of All Media — touches so directly the livelihoods of me and the other

e-ink-stained wretches in the room, his performance felt a bit subdued.

Jobs did have a few surprises, however. The first was the relatively low price. "We want to put this in the

hands of

$130 more, plus a monthly service plan for $14.99 (for 250 megabytes of data) or

The second biggest surprise: the battery lasts 10 hours, or a month on standby.

All models are wi-fi-compatible, of course. "It is the best browsing experience you'v

sleek, a slice of the future. The iPad will run practically all the iPhone's 140,000 apps. But Apple has

released a developer's kit so folks can start building apps designed for the iPad.

Five major U.S. publishers will sell their books via the iBookstore, Apple's bid to unseat Amazon and its

Kindle as the Web's e-book king. Apple is allowing publishers to set their own prices, and the titles shown

at the demo retailed for $12.99 and under. Where Kindle displays books in grayscale, the iPad makes

t only saw but made happen —

will be something that business pundits dissect for decades. Regardless, he got results: in 2005, fueled in

That's because Jobs understands that it wasn't enough to launch the personal-computer era, reinvent the

recent case in point: Google's Nexus One smartphone, which debuted Jan. 5, has come closer

than any competing product to approximating the magic of the iPhone. But within days of its release, the

l

want another device in their lives, let alone another subscription service.

Nobody needed an iPod either. And maybe the iPad solves a problem — a portable way to consume

e does.

he original version of this story mistakenly said the 64-gigabyte model of the iPad would cost $829. It

ill cost $699.

them look like real, honest-to-God books — black type on white paper, with page turns similar to the real

McCoy.

O.K., so has the maestro done it again? Apple was bordering on irrelevance and financial ruin when Jobs

rejoined it in late 1997. How he ruthlessly refocused the company — cutting projects he deemed

worthless, doubling down on others and reaching for a future that he no

large part by the iPod and the iTunes Store, Apple's profits topped $1 billion on sales of $14 billion. And

this year Apple's on track to hit $50 billion in sales, Jobs?pointed out.

music business and, with the iPhone, create the first truly mobile computer. The man is a veritable

Innovator Bunny: while competitors scramble to follow him, Jobs races ahead to invent the next thing.

The most

conversation had turned to Apple. Smartphones? With the iPad, smartphones have already begun to fee

dated.

Jobs' golden touch aside, the critics got to work quickly, calling the iPad too expensive and suggesting

that people don't need or

publications — that not enough people have. Jobs doesn't believe it. "We think we've got the goods," he

said. Usually, h

T

w

SCIENCE

GOING GREEN

Industrial-Strength Fungus By ADAM FISHER Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

Fibers form a sturdy network called a mycelium.

's

n, white rootlike fibers. Underground, they form a vast network called a mycelium.

Far West Fungi's dirt-free hothouses pack in each mycelium so densely that it forms a mass of bright

sturdy that he destroyed many a metal file and saw blade

Philip Ross

At an organic farm just outside Monterey, Calif., a super-eco building material is growing in dozens of

darkened shipping containers. The farm is named Far West Fungi, and its rusting containers are full of all

sorts of mushrooms--shiitake, reishi and pom-pom, to name a few. But Philip Ross, an artist, an inventor

and a seriously obsessed amateur mycologist, isn't interested in the fancy caps we like to eat. What he

after are the fungi's thi

white spongy matter.

Mycelium doesn't taste very good, but once it's dried, it has some remarkable properties. It's nontoxic,

fireproof and mold- and water-resistant, and it traps more heat than fiberglass insulation. It's also

stronger, pound for pound, than concrete. In December, Ross completed what is believed to be the first

structure made entirely of mushroom. (Sorry, the homes in the fictional Smurf village don't count.) The

500 bricks he grew at Far West Fungi were so

in shaping the 'shrooms into an archway 6 ft. (1.8 m) high and 6 ft. wide. Dubbed Mycotectural Alpha, i

currently on display at a gallery in Germany.

Nutty as "mycotecture" sounds, Ross may be onto something bigger than an art project. A promising

start-up named Ecovative is building a 10,000-sq.-ft. (about 930 sq m) myco-factory in Green Island, N.Y.

"We see this as a whole new material, a woodlike equivalent to plastic," says CEO Eben Bayer. The

three-ye

t is

ar-old company has been awarded grants from the EPA and the National Science Foundation,

as well as the Department of Agriculture--because its mushrooms feast on empty seed husks from rice or

warehouse. A week or

two later, the finished product is popped out and the material rendered biologically inert. The company's

cradle, it is

ct,

ing to

Bayer's engineering tests, densely packed mycelium is strong enough to be used in place of wooden

eams. "It's not so far-out," he says of Ross's art house. So could Bayer see himself growing a

ushroom house and living in it? "Well"--he hesitates--"maybe we'd start with a doghouse."

cotton. "You can't even feed it to animals," says Bayer of this kind of agricultural waste. "It's basically

trash."

After the husks are cooked, sprayed with water and myco-vitamins and seeded with mushroom spores,

the mixture is poured into a mold of the desired shape and left to grow in a dark

first product, a green alternative to Styrofoam, is taking on the packaging industry. Called Eco

set to be shipped around a yet-to-be-disclosed consumer item this spring.

One of the beauties of Ecocradle is that unlike Styrofoam--which is hard to recycle, let alone

biodegrade--this myco-material can easily serve as mulch in your garden. Ecovative's next produ

Greensulate, will begin targeting the home-insulation market sometime next year. And accord

b

m

SOCIETY

When Patients Share Medical Data Online By BONNIE ROCHMAN Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

Group Therapy

Holly Lindem for TIME

The day that Dave deBronkart learned he

had Stage 4 kidney cancer, his doctor

handed him a prescription slip. On it, he'd

scribbled

d

with

he site's

an

ent at the time

that resembled a cure. "This is scary,

o

take

ent 2.0 —

plenty of doctors are worried about the quality of the information that is being assessed as well as

ays of achieving what the health care industry

calls rapid learning. In October, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), an influential advisory group, hosted a

applying

ed up with Dr.

Daniel Sands, the physician who helped him kick his cancer into remission in 2007, to co-chair the newly

ACOR.org. Within 11 minutes of

submitting his first post to the Association of

Cancer Online Resources, deBronkart, a

software marketer in Nashua, N.H., receive

recommendations for top specialists —

links included — from patients on t

kidney-cancer list. Within half an hour,

e-mail arrived from an ACOR member

suggesting which scans might be

appropriate and offering details about

interleukin-2, the only treatm

terrifying," wrote another respondent, "but

this list offers a lot of hope."

Thousands of patients like deBronkart are

learning as much online — and from one another — as they are from their doctors. These laypeople are

banding together and starting websites to help figure out which practitioners to see and which hospitals t

avoid, which clinical trials show promise and which experimental treatments are bunk. But as people

more control of their health care — joining an empowerment movement many are calling Pati

patients' ability to understand it. Or as Duke neurology professor Dr. Richard Bedlack puts it, "Just

because you have the tools to work on your sports car doesn't mean you're ready to do it."

Frustrated by how long it takes cutting-edge knowledge to trickle down from the lab to the doctor's office,

patients have been rushing to come up with their own w

rapid-learning conference at which experts discussed some of the obstacles to aggregating and

cancer-care data in real time, including privacy issues.

Sharing data — as well as giving people full access to their digitized health records — is being

championed by deBronkart, now an online activist known as "e-patient Dave." He has team

created Society for Participatory Medicine, which encourages patients to learn as much as they can

about their health and also helps doctors support patients on this data-intensive quest.

"Patients expect me to have seen every possible thing about melanoma out there, but if I did, I wouldn't

gression. Wonder how others are coping with your

particular ailment? PatientsLikeMe.com spells it out via color-coded charts and graphs. "When you need

entional

clinical trials. (In an interesting sign of the times, PatientsLikeMe presented its observations in December

on.

methodology. "Traditional, long-standing, peer-reviewed ways of testing new treatments and

interventions is not going to go out the window," says Dr. Sharon Murphy, a pediatric oncologist who

itter feed in April where patients can ask questions

about off-label therapies. A team of doctors then investigates each query and posts their medical opinion

each patients to be better scientists. In 2011, ALS researchers plan to launch a

crash course similar to one offered for the past two years to Parkinson's patients; in three days it teaches

ut also urging fellow patients to become part of formal studies. Parkinson's clinical trials

historically have had low participation levels, which delays the approval of new therapies. Morgan says

she credits the workshop with making her feel as if she's "on the cutting edge," adding, "I like to know as

much as I can."

possibly have time to take care of patients," says Duke oncologist Dr. Amy Abernethy, who spoke at the

IOM conference about what rapid learning might look like when applied to real patients.

One private-sector initiative already has about 50,000 patients inputting their symptoms and treatment

regimens and updating details of their disease pro

help, privacy is a terrible thing," says Jamie Heywood, who co-founded PatientsLikeMe in 2004 before

his brother died of Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS.

In 2008, in response to the publication of a small study indicating that lithium helps people with ALS, the

site evaluated the collective experience of its members who had taken the drug and determined that

lithium didn't work — a conclusion it reached six months ahead of similar findings from conv

at the international ALS symposium in Berlin.) Free to patients, the for-profit venture sells pharmaceutical

companies the blinded data it compiles from its members about drug safety and efficacy.

The medical community is watching such Patient 2.0 endeavors with a mix of admiration and trepidati

Clinical trials take a long time because they're rigorously controlled, with close attention paid to sampling

bias and

organized the IOM conference. "There is a strong scientific underpinning that is lacking in this Web 2.0

stuff."

Concerned that too many ALS patients pursue sketchy treatments they discover online, Bedlack and

about 40 other directors of ALS clinics set up a Tw

online. "Everyone's heart is in the right place, but not everyone has the knowledge to do this the right

way," Bedlack says of the Patient 2.0 movement.

The next logical step? T

laypeople why clinical studies should be controlled and blinded, and how to evaluate outcomes and

assess journal articles.

One graduate of the Parkinson's workshop, Linda Morgan, a pharmacist in Asheville, N.C., who has

participated in 10 research trials since her 2005 diagnosis, spends a lot of time not only figuring out which

trials to enroll in b

PEOPLE

10 Questions for Ozzy Osbourne

Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

Ozzy Osbourne

Joe Giron

How does it make you feel that people are

still talking about the fact you once bit the

head off a bat while onstage?

Dario Flecklin

SCHWYZ, SWITZERLAND

I mean, that happened in 1982. It's now the

year 2010. Everybody knows what I did. This

is just repeating old stuff. It's like, I once had

a girlfriend called Mary when I was 14. Move

on.

Who do you think is the best guitarist you've

played with?

Mary Coburn

WARREN, MICH.

They've all been good. I don't try and say, You're better than him. What I get enjoyment out of is passing

the torch on. I've got a new guitar player, Gus G.--he's from the country of Greece. He's a very good

player. Zakk Wylde was amazing. Jake E. Lee was amazing, Joe Holmes was amazing, Randy Rhoads

was amazing, Tony Iommi was amazing. I don't say anybody's better than anybody. To get the job,

you've gotta be pretty good, you know.

Is there any possibility of a Black Sabbath reunion?

Vasilis Samaras, ATHENS

I'm not closing the door. We had one reunion. We did a live album. I did try and do another one in the

studio. But the thing about it then is, it's been so much time--1979 until now. If we don't do something

that's a thousand times better than the last time we recorded, that's a scary place to be. I don't want to

destroy the myth. If I thought it was possible, I'd do it. I'm not saying I'll never do it, but we did try, and it

didn't work out. We have one month where we're talking. The next month, we ain't. But if they call me for

something, I'm there.

Where do you get your awesome glasses?

Raph Delgado

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.

Oliver Peoples in Los Angeles. They're prescription. I wear them all the time. Otherwise, I'll start walking

into buildings.

What do you think of the current music scene?

Scott Rowlands

CAMARILLO, CALIF.

I like Oasis. I don't really listen to much. I've got my own personal studio in my house, and I've been doing

a new album for the last year. Slowly. I love, primarily, early bands, folks like Procol Harum. I think one of

the best songs I've ever heard is "A Whiter Shade of Pale." Fabulous song.

What's your favorite tattoo?

Sara Heath

HESPERIA, CALIF.

I suppose this is [points out tattoo on right shoulder]. This guy. A dragon. I got it in 1982 in Los Angeles. I

had one that I wanted to get covered up. I wanted something different, and it was different. But now kids

have tattoos everywhere. Girls do it. I don't mind a little bird or something like that, but you see girls with

these big dragons and battleships and things. If you want to be somebody special now, don't have a

tattoo, because everyone's getting them, you know.

How do you and your wife Sharon keep your marriage going after all these years?

Kerry Purdy

TIRAU, NEW ZEALAND

It's a give and take. I give and she takes.

What was it like having cameras follow you around 24 hours a day on The Osbournes, your reality show?

Patrick Ryanball

WASHINGTON, PA.

At first it was fun, but then it got old very quick. After about the first season, it started to slide for me. Then

Sharon got colon cancer. Then the kids ended up on drugs and alcohol. I was on drugs and alcohol. It

was like a ship of doom.

Do you have any regrets?

Karci Wenger

MADISON, WIS.

A lot of things I regret, but that's part of my past. When you get to the crossroads, whatever path you take,

you've gotta take the good and the bad. I'm sad that I wasn't there for my children, either physically or

mentally, for so long--until I quit drinking and getting stoned. But if you change any part of the journey,

then I wouldn't be here now. Either good or bad, you gotta live with it, you know.

If you were not a musician, what would you be now?

Pat Gaddis, PALESTINE, ILL.

Probably dead or in prison.

NOTEBOOK

The Moment By BEN LANDO Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

As my driver and I left a press conference at the Iraq Oil Ministry and headed back to the Hamra Hotel

compound, where I live and work, we saw a dusty cloud rising to our right. "Perhaps a mortar into the

Green Zone," he suggested. We had almost arrived when the second bomb exploded. The gunshots

started soon after. My driver slammed the car into reverse and wove around cars, people and concrete

barriers, right up to the hotel entrance. We ran inside, joining a handful of people sheltering from the

gunfire. The last bomb brought down much of the ceiling all around us. As the dust swelled we shuffled

into the basement; a girl, maybe 5 years old, bloodied in the face and moaning, was carried down the

stairs. Outside, halfway between the checkpoint and the hotel, a crater 6 ft. (1.8 m) deep smoldered. All

told, 37 people were killed and close to 100 wounded in the attacks, which came amid rancorous

sectarian debate over Iraq's looming elections. Looking back, I'm gripped by the scent of oranges cutting

through the smell of charred vehicles and flesh: tart, from fruit not yet ripe, shaken early from the trees by

the blast and scattered amid the debris.

The World

By Harriet Barovick; Laura Fitzpatrick; Alexandra Silver; Alex Altman; Claire Suddath; Alyssa Fetini;

Frances Romero; Kristi Oloffson; Kayla Webley Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

1 | Haiti

The Long Road Back

With the tales of miraculous rescues from the rubble of Port-au-Prince slowing to a trickle, the Haitian

government called off the search for survivors of the devastating earthquake that flattened much of the

capital on Jan. 12. Though the death toll is impossible to pinpoint, government officials estimated that

150,000 corpses have been interred in mass graves; tens of thousands more remain buried under debris.

As aid organizations struggle to deliver emergency provisions to the ravaged disaster zone--the U.N.'s

World Food Programme estimated it has fed hundreds of thousands of people but cautioned that far

more were going hungry--President René Préval issued an appeal for 200,000 tents to house some of

the more than 800,000 people rendered homeless. Préval, whose palace collapsed in the temblor,

intends to move into one himself.

2 | Washington

New AIG Bailout Furor

With recently subpoenaed e-mails indicating that the New York Federal Reserve had sought to conceal

details of the controversial $182 billion bailout of troubled insurance giant AIG, U.S. Treasury Secretary

Timothy Geithner--head of the New York Fed when the e-mails were sent--was called to testify Jan. 27

on Capitol Hill, along with his Treasury predecessor Henry Paulson. At issue: the use of taxpayer money

to cover AIG's debts to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street firms. Both men defended

the "backdoor bailout" and denied any involvement in the alleged attempt to hide the details of payments.

3 | Washington

No Trial for Gitmo Detainees?

As President Obama's self-imposed deadline for shuttering the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay

passed, a Justice Department--led task force recommended that about 35 detainees be tried in civilian or

military court--and that nearly 50 be held indefinitely without charges, government sources told the

Washington Post. The ACLU said such a move would reduce the camp's closure to a "symbolic gesture."

[The following text appears within a chart. Please see hardcopy or PDF for actual chart.]

An uptick in teen-pregnancy rates

100*

80

60

40

20

0

PREGNANCY RATES

2006 saw a 3% rise

ABORTION RATES

1996

2006

*RATES ARE THE NUMBER OF EVENTS PER 1,000 WOMEN AGES 15 TO 19

SOURCE: GUTTMACHER INSTITUTE

4 | New York City

Teen Pregnancies on the Rise

After declining for more than a decade, the teen-pregnancy rate climbed 3% in 2006, with some 750,000

teenagers becoming pregnant, according to a Guttmacher Institute report. Abortions among teens

increased 1%. Planned Parenthood blamed abstinence-only sex-education programs for the uptick, but

the report notes that demographic changes and shifting attitudes toward pregnancy could also be factors.

5 | France

Fighting over A Veil Ban

After six months of deliberation, a panel of 32 French lawmakers netted just enough votes to submit a

report to Parliament recommending a ban on full-facial veils in certain public institutions. Originally a

proposal had been made to pass a law prohibiting the coverings anywhere in public. But after a long and

divisive debate, legislators were able to agree only on a ban in government offices, in public hospitals

and on mass transit. Parliament will now decide whether any such law should be passed, although it's not

expected to act until March.

6 | Sri Lanka

RAJAPAKSA RE-ELECTED

Upending predictions that Sri Lanka's first election since the end of its civil war would be a close fight,

President Mahinda Rajapaksa easily beat his challenger, retired army commander General Sarath

Fonseka, a former ally in the military victory over the separatist Tamil Tigers. The results of the largely

peaceful election, announced Jan. 27, showed the President leading with 58% of the vote. Fonseka

immediately rejected the results, alleging vote rigging, and claimed his life was under threat from the

government.

7 | Venezuela

Off the Air

"One, two, three--Chávez, you struck out!" protesters chanted as they took to the streets in several

Venezuelan cities after authorities closed six TV stations that refused to air a speech by President Hugo

Chávez, as required by law. Two students were killed in clashes among protesters, Chávez supporters

and police. One of the stations, a frequent critic of the President, has skirmished with the government

since supporting the 2002 coup that briefly unseated him.

[The following text appears within a map. Please see hardcopy or PDF for actual map.]

To keep carp out, a bid to block the locks

Area of detail

CHICAGO

Wilmette Lock

Chicago Lock

Lake Michigan

O'Brien Lock

SOURCE: U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS

8 | Michigan

Girding for a Carp Invasion

The Supreme Court rejected Michigan's request to temporarily shut down three locks to stop mammoth

Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes. But the battle is far from over. As news broke that scientists

had detected DNA from the fish in Lake Michigan, the White House--which also opposed the

shutdown--agreed to convene an Asian-carp summit for worried Great Lakes governors. U.S.

Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, meanwhile, introduced a bill to halt the potential spread of the

aggressive fish and develop a strategy to close the waterways.

9 | Guinea

A Civilian Takes Charge

Jean-Marie Doré was sworn in as Guinea's interim Prime Minister Jan. 26, a crucial step toward ending

the country's military rule. A critic of the staunch regime, Doré has pledged "free, transparent and

credible elections" within the year. An assassination attempt and subsequent exile forced Guinea's

unpopular strongman, Moussa Dadis Camara, to allow a civilian interim leader. Some fear he continues

to meddle from his base in Burkina Faso.

10 | New Orleans

Whistle-Blower Arrested

Last September, James O'Keefe, a conservative filmmaker, posed as a pimp for an undercover exposé

of negligent practices by the community action group ACORN. Now he appears to be on the wrong side

of a different scandal. On Jan. 25, O'Keefe and three associates were arrested by the FBI for

coordinating a plan in which two of the men, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, entered the New

Orleans office of Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu and posed as telephone repairmen in a ploy to

install wiretaps. The accused are charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the

intent to commit a felony. If convicted, they face up to 10 years in jail.

* | What They're Wearing in South Africa: The African National Congress might want to stick to politics. In

a bid to foster unity, South Africa's ruling party has introduced 19 leather jackets in black, green and gold,

its official colors. But while President Jacob Zuma sported a similar look at the ANC victory party

following last year's election, the jarring neon threads aren't catching on. In a poll by South Africa's

Independent Online, 86% of respondents said they wouldn't buy one.

Spotlight: Campaign Finance and the Court

By David Von Drehle Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold, the reform act's authors.

Jay Mallin / Zuma

The only sure things in life, Benjamin Franklin should have said, are death, taxes and campaign-finance

reform. Trying to keep money out of politics is like trying to keep a basement dry in New Orleans, which

made the issue a perfect subject for the Supreme Court: nothing revs up Justices like a symbolic fight

over an intractable issue. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court struck down

certain limits on corporate campaign spending--upholding the First Amendment or selling American

politics into bondage, depending on your view.

Some backstory: in 2008 the conservative nonprofit Citizens United produced the anti-Clinton film Hillary:

The Movie and arranged to distribute it using money from the group's corporate treasury rather than from

its political-action committee--a crucial distinction under the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reforms

of 2002. In a 5-4 ruling, the court found that distinction unconstitutional. If freedom of speech protects the

right of individuals to air their political views, it decided, then that right extends to incorporated

groups--like businesses, labor unions, Planned Parenthood and Citizens United.

The case sparked a clash of worldviews. "The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak and to use

information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means

to protect it," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. A law declaring who can say what about

elected officials, and how and when, did not pass muster. On the other side, Justice John Paul Stevens'

90-page dissent spoke admiringly of McCain-Feingold and shuddered to imagine the influence that big

corporations and Big Labor might exercise over politics in the absence of such efforts. The ruling, he

wrote, "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation."

There is an obvious tension between freedom of speech and the danger of some voices drowning out all

others. But Kennedy's world of stifled corporations and voiceless labor unions bears little resemblance to

the one we live in. At the same time, Stevens' picture of corporate fat cats oppressing the little guy

ignores the revolutions in campaign finance and communications wrought by the Internet. The Justices'

hyperbole aside, chances are that the 2010 congressional midterm elections will be little changed: a

blend of big-money manipulation and grass-roots passion, in which all the players share one common

complaint--that the other guy has too much power.

Verbatim

'I'd rather be a really good one-term President than a mediocre two-term President.'

BARACK OBAMA, vowing in a Jan. 25 interview with Diane Sawyer to continue to press for health care

reform

'If our messages had been able to reach you through words, we wouldn't have been delivering them

through planes.'

OSAMA BIN LADEN, purportedly speaking on a recently released audio tape, praising Umar Farouk

Abdulmutallab for his attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound aircraft on Christmas Day. The tape also

threatened future attacks against the U.S.

'I did it my way, with people I love. I do not regret one second.'

CONAN O'BRIEN, in his final episode as host of The Tonight Show

'The aid is never fast enough for the armchair aid workers sipping their lattes.'

STEVE MATTHEWS, spokesman for the charity World Vision, blasting critics of aid organizations' relief

efforts in Haiti

'It strains credulity to expect Karzai to change fundamentally this late in his life and in our relationship.'

KARL EIKENBERRY, the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, in a recently leaked November 2009 memo

that censures President Hamid Karzai

'My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray

animals. You know why? Because they breed.'

ANDRE BAUER, lieutenant governor of South Carolina and Republican gubernatorial candidate,

criticizing policies that extend welfare benefits to the poor

'I aspire to higher things.'

GRANT DESME, a former top prospect for the Oakland Athletics, announcing Jan. 22 that he will quit

baseball to become a priest

TALKING HEADS

Bruce Riedel

Responding to Osama bin Laden's threat of further attacks against the U.S. in the Daily Beast:

"Obama should take bin Laden's threat seriously; prudence dictates no less ... But we must also strike at

the narrative that al-Qaeda sells to wage its war. We can separate al-Qaeda from the vast majority of

Muslims by advancing a just and lasting peace that Palestinians accept ... We do this not to appease

al-Qaeda, but because it is in our national security interest to end this conflict that breeds so much hate

for our country."

--01/24/10

David Brooks

Decrying the divisiveness of populism in the New York Times:

"Populism and elitism seem different, but they're really mirror images of one another. They both assume

a country fundamentally divided. They both describe politics as a class struggle ... These days populism

is in vogue ... If [populists] continue their random attacks on enterprise and capital, they will only increase

the pervasive feeling of uncertainty, which is now the single biggest factor in holding back investment, job

creation and growth."

--01/25/10

Andrew Sullivan

Writing about President Obama's recent struggles in the London Times:

"How Obama responds to this will tell us a huge amount about him. He cannot and should not reinvent

himself as a Democratic partisan. He isn't. He cannot fake populism. He's too responsible for that ... So

he has to be calm, patient, reasonable and somehow harness Democratic anger as well."

--01/24/10

Sources: ABC News; Wall Street Journal; NBC; AP; U.S. Department of State; AP (2)

Brief History: The U.S. Census By ALEXANDRA SILVER Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

Census files in Suitland, Md., circa 1949. Computers were first used to help process the data in 1951.

Bettmann / Corbis

It's that time of decade again. On Jan. 25, U.S. census workers began knocking on doors in Noorvik,

Alaska, the first stop in an epic attempt to count everyone in America. Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S.

Constitution calls for an "actual Enumeration" of the population every 10 years in order to determine how

many Representatives each state gets in the House. The survey has also collected data on occupations,

education and housing, among other subjects. The first Census, in 1790, was mainly a head count of free,

white, draft-eligible men. Later queries were sometimes absurdly specific: in 1850, data collectors were

instructed to "ascertain if there be any person in the family deaf, dumb, idiotic, blind, insane, or pauper."

The 1870 Census distinguished between farmers and "farm laborers" and between housekeepers and

those just "keeping house." (Enumerators were also instructed to "use the word huckster in all cases

where it applies.") Until the Civil War, surveys differentiated free people from slaves, who had historically

counted as three-fifths of a person.

Race has long been a muddled matter: 1890 classifications included mulatto, quadroon and octoroon,

Chinese and Japanese. In 1930, Mexican was listed. The 2010 survey has caused a stir with the

inclusion of Negro in addition to black and African American.

Despite the evolution of data gathering, miscounts have occurred, particularly among the urban poor.

Democrats tend to say sampling--the extrapolation of data from smaller groups--is more accurate, but

Republicans, suspicious of overcounting in left-leaning areas, argue that the Constitution's use of the

word actual mandates a nose count. Getting it right is important: in addition to its role in doling out

congressional seats, the Census influences the allocation of more than $400 billion in federal funds that

affect the lives of some 300 million Americans. How many, exactly? It'll tell us that too.

The Skimmer By FRANCES ROMERO Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

Working in the Shadows: A Year Doing

the Jobs (Most) Americans Won't Do

By Gabriel Thompson

Nation Books; 298 pages

Whether or not they choose to acknowledge

it, most people know that immigrant and

migrant workers are paid poorly in the U.S.

What they may not know is how hard these

laborers toil for their earnings. That's why

Gabriel Thompson, a journalist based in

Brooklyn, N.Y., spent months undercover

working alongside mostly Guatemalans and

Mexicans in the lettuce fields of Yuma, Ariz.,

at a chicken plant in rural Alabama and as a

delivery guy for a restaurant in New York

City. His goal was not to survive on his

income, which he quickly realized was

nearly impossible even at the lowest

standard of living, but to remain at each job

for two full months, no matter how bad the

back pain, how sickening the smell of raw meat or how crippling the fatigue. Thompson succeeds--mostly

He gets found out and fired from the chicken plant a week before his self-imposed deadline and hangs

his delivery bike after seven weeks of risking his life in New York City traffic. Therein lies perhaps the onl

blemish on the book's premise: Thompson has the luxury to quit.

.

up

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READ [X]

SKIM

TOSS

Bob Mosbacher By George H.W. Bush Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

In a lifetime filled with so many blessings, I am constantly asking Barbara, "Where would we be without

friends?" So many wonderful people have helped us in so many ways through the years, but that

question is particularly easy to answer when it comes to Bob Mosbacher.

Without Bob, who died Jan. 24 at age 82, it's highly unlikely I would have ever been President of the

United States.

It's a fact of modern political life that to run for office, you have to raise funds, and nobody ever, in my

view, did a better--or more ethical--job of that than Bob Mosbacher.

And of course, as one of the key leaders on NAFTA and tackling our trade deficit, Bob will be

remembered, I also believe, as one of the most effective Commerce Secretaries in our nation's history.

He was an aggressive advocate for HDTV and other communications technologies 20 years before they

became popular. And he was a tough negotiator on trade deals with South Korea, India and the

European community.

But the fact is, I enjoyed any occasion to spend time with Bob. The casual observer who may have seen

us play golf or hunt over the past 50 years might have thought we were wasting our time if our goal was

to demonstrate any true proficiency. But they would have missed the point. The real goal, for me at least,

was to spend time with a man who loved life, loved his wonderful family and was patriotic to the core.

Bob Mosbacher made life in Houston, life in Washington--life, period--more enjoyable and meaningful for

Barbara and me than mere words can describe. Simply put, we hate to think where we will be without

him.

Bush was the 41st U.S. President

APPRECIATION

Jean Simmons: Portrait of a Complicated

Lady By RICHARD CORLISS Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010

English actress Jean Simmons died on Jan. 27, 2010, at her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 80

Getty

"I think she's very pretty," says poor young Pip of the slightly older Estella. "I think she's very proud."

Extraordinarily pretty and proudly defiant: that was the indelible first impression the 17-year-old Jean

Simmons made on moviegoers in David Lean's Great Expectations in 1946, at the beginning of a long,

full career that lasted from her early teens to her death on Jan. 22 at 80, in Santa Monica, Calif., of lung

cancer. The actress's screen impact in her early flush of stardom could also be defined by another pair of

clashing adjectives that a British distributor slapped onto She Couldn't Say No, a minor Simmons vehicle

from 1954: Beautiful but Dangerous.

The gallery of elegant, gorgeous, witty leading ladies that Britain showcased in the years just after World

War II is crowded and entrancing: Deborah Kerr, Claire Bloom, Kay Kendall, Joan Greenwood, Dorothy

Tutin and of course Audrey Hepburn — whose career was launched as the princess in Roman Holiday

because Howard Hughes, the owner of Simmons' contract at the time, refused to loan her out for the role.

She determined never to be indentured to a studio again, and as a freelancer forged a strong résumé that

cast her opposite Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier, Robert Mitchum (twice with each star), Burt

Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck, Paul Newman, Richard Burton and other dominant movie males.

She earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, in the 1969 The Happy Ending, to go with

the Supporting Actress Oscar nomination she had received for playing Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet in her

teens.

Born Jan. 31, 1929, in London — her schoolteacher father Charles had competed as a gymnast for

England in the 1912 Olympics — Jean Merilyn Simmons was blessed from youth with a beauty the

camera simply had to capture. The striking quality in Simmons was the waywardness of her beauty: a

triangular face dominated by large eyes and high cheekbones leading to a small, voluptuous mouth that

could be sullen or amused. Her attitude promised a challenge to any man who would seek to love or

tame her. That's clear in the 1946 Great Expectations, where her Estella calls Pip a "coarse little

monster" at one moment and says, "You may kiss me if you like" the next. She steals Pip's heart, and

breaks it, with the same cool smile.

Soon Simmons had caught the eyes of virtually every top filmmaker in Britain. After her turn in Great

Expectations, Olivier tangled with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger over who would win her

services, either as a Himalayan dancing girl in Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus (1947) or as

Ophelia in Hamlet (1948). The directors finally agreed to rearrange their schedules so Simmons could

appear in both films. In Black Narcissus she donned brownface to play the Himalayan girl Kanchi, who

performs a wild native dance (it's mostly just running) and gets whipped for her insolence. Simmons's

blond-wigged "most beautified Ophelia" is another willful creature, no less flirtatious with her brother

Laertes than she is crazy for Hamlet. As a girl-child unable to cope with the roiling emotions of passion

and rejection, Simmons aces her mad scene and makes a most picturesque suicide, in a weedy white

dress, supine in a stream. "She was lovely in both of them," Powell wrote of Simmons in his

autobiography, "I don't think that she was ever quite so good again."

That's a grudging remark to make about an actress who had 60 years of film and TV roles ahead of her.

After playing in a few other British films, notably as Emmeline the nubile castaway (the role that brought

stardom to Brooke Shields three decades later) in Frank Launder's The Blue Lagoon, Simmons went to

Hollywood and stayed there. Her first of four movies for Hughes was her best: Otto Preminger's Angel

Face (1952), essentially a feature-length rendition of the Ophelia mad scene. As Diane, a young

Englishwoman in Southern California, she's in hysterics when Mitchum first sees her (they exchange

hard slaps); later she toys portentously with chess pieces and glowers at us out of a fetal position. By the

end Diane has been the agent of two gruesome car crashes and four deaths. "I don't pretend to know

what goes on behind that pretty little face of yours," Mitchum tells her, "and I don't want to." Yet for the

length of the movie he denies his better instincts to get closer to this petite praying mantis.

British directors had exoticized Simmons' beauty; the Americans mostly domesticated it. She suited

Hollywood's fondness for coming-of-age stories about the great and famous. In George Cukor's The

Actress she played the teenage Ruth Gordon, desperate for Broadway acclaim; in The Young Bess

Simmons was a budding Queen of England, co-starring with her first husband, Stewart Granger. She

ornamented De Mille–style antique epics like The Robe and The Egyptian, which required only that she

look good and speak well. And she went up against Brando first in the 1954 Desirée, where she's a

French maid with a crush on Napoleon, then a year later in Guys and Dolls, an undervalued movie much

more crucial to Simmons's screen persona.

Guys and Dolls, adapted and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, was based on the hit Broadway show

about a Salvation Army lass liberated from propriety by demon rum and the attentions of a sharp gambler.

As Sergeant Sarah Brown, Simmons begins with a virginal haughtiness, compromised only slightly by

her nervous habit of unbuttoning the middle button on her army jacket. Then, on a night in Havana with

Brando's Sky Masterson (he's made a $1,000 bet he can take her there), she's the innocent blossoming

into sexual joy. That emotional unbuttoning is something the actress had rarely been allowed to portray in

her early roles, except for The Blue Lagoon. As Estella, for example, she is selfishly pleased with the

shattering impact of first love on Pip; here a Simmons character gets to experience the sunburst of that

poignant rapture on herself. She sings, dances (with much more abandon and expertise than in Black

Narcissus) and gets in a fight with a Cuban tart.

The Guys and Dolls gig should have been Simmons' passport to full American stardom. Instead, it

signaled her passage into two kinds of films: small dramas, like Hilda Crane, Home Before Dark and All

the Way Home, where her character was the focus; and splashy epics that concentrated on the men. She

dallied with Newman in Until They Sail, supported Peck as he made his way across The Big Country and

in Spartacus was the slave who is bought by Olivier but pines for Douglas. There was some meat for her

to gnaw on there, and in another 1960 film, Elmer Gantry, with Simmons as the fake evangelist promoted

by Lancaster in one of his best smiling-shyster roles. Her Sister Sharon Falconer is more mature and

complicated a figure than Sergeant Sarah Brown, and Simmons does full womanly justice to the

character. But it was her last important part in a big film.

On the set of Elmer Gantry she had fallen in love with the film's writer-director, Richard Brooks, whom

she married after divorcing Granger. She took a couple years off when they had a daughter, Kate (she

and Granger had a son, Tracy — both children named in honor of Simmons' friends Spencer Tracy and

Katharine Hepburn); and when she was ready to return to films, her moment had passed. Her enduring

glamour, and the tang she put into every line of dialogue, would have made her a welcome presence in

sophisticated comedies, but nobody was writing them. Not yet 35, she had become the Older Woman in

a town where that label defined an endangered species.

Brooks wrote a fine part for Simmons, now 40, in The Happy Ending. Her Mary Wilson is an unsatisfied

woman who leaves her husband of 16 years and finds new interests in Bobby Darin, Lloyd Bridges,

alcohol and suicide attempts. It earned her that second Oscar nomination but no good roles in big

pictures. Going where the work was, she exiled herself to TV and the stage. She earned an Emmy in the

miniseries North and South and played a more worldly-wise Desirée, singing "Send in the Clowns," in the

West End edition of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. She divorced Brooks in 1977, struggled

with alcoholism in the '80s. She had summed up her two marriages by observing that "when I wanted to

be a wife, Jimmy [Granger] would say, 'I just want you to be pretty.' And when I wanted to cook, Richard

would say, 'Forget the cooking. You've been trained to act — so act!' " So act she kept doing, with skill

and delicacy and diminished visibility.

In her final decade she did voice work (for the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's

Moving Castle), and just last year she starred as the matriarch of a troubled family in the film Shadows in

the Sun, back in her native U.K. In its modest way, this marked the return of Jean Simmons, a prodigious

daughter. She had beguiled the British movie world as a teen, rose to one of the higher Hollywood hills in

her 20s, then had to settle for being a working actress — still very pretty, but not quite so proud.

Steve Lovelady

In an age of sound bites and short attention spans, Steve Lovelady was a throwback: a newsman who

believed that even the most complex topics could be brought to life through thoughtful, rigorous

storytelling. At the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he spent much of his career, and later at TIME, he edited

stories that won multiple Pulitzer Prizes and two National Magazine Awards. Lovelady, who died Jan. 15

at 66, was the ultimate writer's editor, never taking credit for the work of others even as he made it better.

Ali Hassan al-Majid By ALEXANDRA SILVER Monday, Feb. 08, 2010

EXECUTED

Nearly seven years after his capture, Ali Hassan al-Majid, a notorious henchman of Saddam Hussein's

known as Chemical Ali, was executed Jan. 25. An Iraqi court had sentenced the former general, 68, to

death by hanging for ordering a poison-gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja, in northern Iraq, in

1988. The massacre, which killed about 5,000 people, is believed to be the deadliest chemical attack on

civilians in history. That year Majid led a campaign that killed as many as 180,000 Kurds, and in the

1990s his victims included thousands of Shi'ites rebelling against the Baathist regime. In 2003, when the

U.S. military put together a deck of cards with pictures of Iraq's most wanted, Majid was depicted as the

king of spades.