The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, August 22 - Unauthorized ...
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>Sunday</strong>, <strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
Killers Among Us<br />
By LARRY DOYLE<br />
QUESTIONS FOR<br />
James Dale, Gay Boy Scout<br />
ON LANGUAGE<br />
Plainspeak<br />
By PATRICIA T. O'CONNER<br />
SALIENT FACTS<br />
It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
By GREG DICUM<br />
THE NEW ECONOMY<br />
Unreal Estate<br />
By JOHN COOK<br />
THE ETHICIST<br />
<strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
By RANDY COHEN<br />
WHAT THEY WERE THINKING<br />
Barry<br />
Bransfield,<br />
Brigham and<br />
Women's<br />
Hospital,<br />
Boston<br />
THE MILLENNIUM ISSUES<br />
"'We were about to go out, and I'm looking in this mirror — me,<br />
with my gut hanging over my bathing suit — and it was, like: Who<br />
would want to look at this?'"<br />
<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
By STEPHEN S. HALL<br />
Tormented by an unattainable ideal,<br />
boys are learning what girls have<br />
long known: it isn’t easy living in a<br />
"Baywatch" world.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
By ADRIAN NICOLE LEBLANC<br />
How the picked-on cope — or<br />
don’t.<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/ (1 of 2) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:11:16 PM]<br />
Can B. Smith Be Martha?<br />
By JULIA REED<br />
An icon of the black professional class is hoping to cross over — by<br />
mounting a three-fronted attack on Martha Stewart’s living.<br />
Television’s Final Frontier<br />
By PETER DE JONGE<br />
<strong>The</strong> willfully isolated Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has finally let<br />
TV inside its borders. Can its ancient Buddhist traditions survive the<br />
tube?
<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>Sunday</strong>, <strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
Into the Unknown<br />
Mapping worlds known and<br />
unknown, redefining adventure.<br />
Women: <strong>The</strong> Shadow Story of<br />
the Millennium<br />
Faith, fertility, politics, imagery, sex,<br />
irritation and hope.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Best of the Last<br />
1,000 Years<br />
Best Stories, Best Inventions, Best<br />
Ideas.<br />
STYLE<br />
Urban Renewal<br />
By PILAR VILADAS<br />
Photographs by WILLIAM ABRANOWICZ<br />
A stylish Manhattan apartment blurs the line<br />
between traditional and modern.<br />
Plus: Footnotes<br />
FOOD<br />
Slaw and Order<br />
By MOLLY O'NEILL<br />
For shreddability, cabbage is still the prime<br />
suspect.<br />
Letters<br />
Puzzles<br />
LIVES<br />
Eviction Day<br />
Photographs by<br />
ED KASHI<br />
On the Cover: Alexander Bregstein (left) and Tyler Snitko tell tales of<br />
overcoming adolescent woe. Photograph by Justine Parsons for <strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong><br />
<strong>Times</strong>.<br />
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INTERNATIONAL<br />
2 Lives, Again Entwined, Mirror the Fate of Berlin<br />
<strong>The</strong> two lives of Wally Muller and Waltraut Neumann mirror the<br />
fate of Berlin in a story of loss, division and elusive reconciliation.<br />
WEEK IN REVIEW<br />
Death Row's Living Alumni<br />
For each seven inmates executed since 1976, one awaiting execution<br />
has been exonerated.<br />
BUSINESS<br />
A Push From the Top Shatters a Glass Ceiling<br />
A middle-aged white guy who never thought much about women in<br />
the workplace until he became a single parent has helped create<br />
Hewlett-Packard's reputation as a bastion of egalitarianism.<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
<strong>The</strong> Troubled Life of Boys<br />
Tormented by an unattainable ideal, boys are learning what girls<br />
have long known: it isn't easy living in a "Baywatch" world.<br />
OP-ED COLUMNIST: MAUREEN DOWD<br />
Just Say Maybe<br />
I get no kick from writing about cocaine. But the press is not out of<br />
bounds here. Whatever W. did in the past, he has made his own<br />
white mischief in the present.<br />
BOOKS<br />
'Diana': All You Could Ever Want to Know<br />
"Diana: In Search of Herself," by Sally Bedell Smith, offers<br />
everything there is, plus a psychological diagnosis: borderline<br />
personality disorder.<br />
TECHNOLOGY<br />
When the Glitter of Stock Options Turns to Dust<br />
When Brian Knapp arrived at Barnes & Noble's new media division,<br />
he thought the risks were amply justified by the rewards. Since then<br />
he's learned an unspoken truth about stock options: they don't always<br />
pay.<br />
TRAVEL<br />
<strong>The</strong> Glory of the Northwest<br />
Artifacts from an Indian tribe's rich history fill a museum on Cape<br />
Flattery. South of Seattle, Mount Rainier looms, inspiring fear and<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/ (2 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:13:35 PM]<br />
BREAKING<br />
NEWS FROM<br />
A.P.<br />
Sunken Barge<br />
Crew Found<br />
Off Russia 9:56<br />
p.m. EDT<br />
Sen. Aspirant<br />
Chafee Admits<br />
Drug Use 9:55<br />
p.m. EDT<br />
Paramilitary<br />
Units Blamed<br />
for Deaths 9:55<br />
p.m. EDT<br />
Fastest 100<br />
Meter Sprints<br />
9:51 p.m. EDT<br />
Force Wins at<br />
NHRA<br />
Nationals 9:50<br />
p.m. EDT<br />
Japanese<br />
Stocks Up in<br />
Early Trading<br />
9:25 p.m. EDT<br />
Mexico's<br />
Seaside<br />
Residents<br />
Remain 9:<strong>22</strong><br />
p.m. EDT<br />
Surinamese<br />
Police Official<br />
Sought 9:21<br />
p.m. EDT<br />
MORE A.P. NEWS . . .
<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> on the Web<br />
respect.<br />
SUNDAY STYLES<br />
Vows Column Archive<br />
Victor Ebisan Ekperigin first saw Sarah Frances Redd a year ago,<br />
when he sat across from her on a Q subway train rattling through<br />
midtown Manhattan. Also, the latest fashions in On the Street.<br />
LEARNING<br />
On This Day<br />
On <strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1902, President <strong>The</strong>odore Roosevelt became the first<br />
U.S. chief executive to ride in an automobile, in Hartford, Conn. See<br />
this front page and read the full <strong>Times</strong> article.<br />
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Copyright 1999 <strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> Company<br />
Privacy Information
Killers Among Us<br />
• Killers Among Us<br />
• Camping Lessons<br />
• It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
• Unreal Estate<br />
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW<br />
Killers Among Us<br />
• <strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
• Plainspeak<br />
• What <strong>The</strong>y Were Thinking<br />
What kind of person would open fire on innocent kids? An<br />
animal — just like any of us. By LARRY DOYLE<br />
friend of mine was murdered<br />
last month. We had been much<br />
closer in college and had fallen<br />
in and out of contact as people do;<br />
even though we had lived within 20<br />
minutes of each other for the past<br />
three years, we had had dinner once. I<br />
came to work one morning and a<br />
co-worker told me that a friend of hers<br />
was trying to reach me about a friend<br />
of mine. I called. Janet was dead. She Photograph by Lars Klove/Nonstock<br />
had been causing trouble for some<br />
drug dealers across the street, and the night before last, people had broken into her<br />
home and executed her. She was four months pregnant.<br />
I couldn't sleep. Not crying, not mourning in any usual sense, I lay in bed, twisted,<br />
caught in the twilight, before dreams but beyond waking. I stood in front of my<br />
friend's home. I crossed the street and entered the drug dealers' house, which nicely<br />
conformed to the lairs I had seen in movies and on "N.Y.P.D. Blue." And I began<br />
shooting. I shot the one on the couch in the stomach, moved into the bedroom and<br />
shot two on a dirty mattress, one in the chest and one in the back. In a corner was<br />
another one, weeping and begging. I shot him in the head. I had this -- for want of<br />
a better word -- fantasy for several nights running, each time shooting more people<br />
with more and more and more anger. If one can be half-asleep and enraged, I was.<br />
Larry Doyle is a television and<br />
magazine writer who lives in Los<br />
Angeles.<br />
I never did anything, because I'm more or less<br />
sane, because it wasn't a very good plan, because I<br />
didn't have a gun. All I had was the impulse to kill.<br />
Two weeks ago, a 37-old man walked into a Jewish community center a few miles<br />
from my home and starting shooting. Two weeks before that, a 44-year-old man<br />
bludgeoned his wife and two small children, then walked into an Atlanta brokerage<br />
firm and started shooting. Nearly a month before that, a 21-year-old Illinois man<br />
got in his car and started shooting. Before that, two teen-age boys walked into their<br />
school and started shooting. Because he hated Jews; because he had lost money;<br />
because he hated Jews and Asians and blacks; because they were picked on by the<br />
jocks. We take solace from the horror or insanity or cold triviality of their motives;<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-killer-impulse.html (1 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:13:55 PM]<br />
ENTERTAINMENT<br />
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Movies<br />
Music<br />
<strong>The</strong>ater & Dance<br />
Bars & Nightlife<br />
Art & Museums<br />
Books & Talks<br />
Sports<br />
Getaways<br />
SHOPPING<br />
Sales<br />
Events<br />
Coupons<br />
Yellow Pages<br />
CLASSIFIEDS<br />
Real Estate<br />
Autos<br />
Jobs<br />
COMMUNITY<br />
About Community<br />
Join a Group<br />
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LIFE<br />
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How to <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong><br />
NEIGHBORHOODS<br />
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Killers Among Us<br />
it makes them monsters and maniacs and demons, not quite human.<br />
But how was their rage so different from mine? Obviously, that I did not actually<br />
shoot anyone. Though had I shot up a house full of drug dealers, the media<br />
response would have been quite different. And a good many people who have been<br />
successively sickened during this plague year would be considerably less<br />
devastated, perhaps relieved and maybe even a little thrilled. <strong>The</strong> rage is the same,<br />
only we share the hate.<br />
Calling for the execution of a<br />
murderer. Or in really bad traffic. It's<br />
the same impulse, whether horrific or<br />
honorable, and we've all had it, at<br />
some time and to some extent. Men<br />
seem to have it more often than<br />
women; they certainly walk into<br />
places and start shooting more<br />
frequently. We've heard the theories:<br />
men are rewarded for their aggression;<br />
men are more avid consumers of the<br />
pop death cult; men are reared to<br />
believe the world will bow before<br />
them and are frustrated to learn it's<br />
actually the reverse; men are denied<br />
outlets for their pain. . . . Most of<br />
these explanations, myriad as the talk<br />
shows and magazines that pander<br />
them about, all suggest that men kill<br />
because of something society does to<br />
them. But in nature, animals who don't<br />
watch TV or work in go-nowhere jobs<br />
kill all the time: for survival, for<br />
ON THE BRINK: A POLL<br />
According to the Gen Y2K Report, a recent<br />
survey of 2,000 young men and women:<br />
Of those ages 16 to 19, 41 percent say there are<br />
people they want to get even with.<br />
43 percent say they sometimes are pushed too far<br />
and feel they will explode.<br />
58 percent of this explosive group agree they<br />
would use a gun "if I had to."<br />
53 percent of this group watch TV movies,<br />
compared with 34 percent of those who do not<br />
feel they will explode.<br />
<strong>The</strong> study's authors, Liz Nickles and Laurie<br />
Ashcraft, report that controlling parents may be<br />
to blame for kids' volatility. "Most people assume<br />
that teens who exhibit . . . violent tendencies are<br />
the result of hands-off parenting," Nickles says.<br />
"In the population we studied, the opposite is the<br />
case." Says Ashcraft, "Overscheduled, pressured<br />
children are an emotional powder keg."<br />
territory, for power. Men who kill do so for the same simple objectives, however<br />
demented or hateful their reasoning may be. It may be as simple as that: men are<br />
animals, perhaps a little more so than women.<br />
So, "animals kill, guns don't kill," to paraphrase the National Rifle Association's<br />
boilerplate regurgitation? Well, that's true, in its own disingenuously dense way.<br />
Obviously, hatemongers with guns are much more efficient killers than<br />
hatemongers with knives and baseball bats. But I think there is something to guns<br />
beyond their convenience. In their very design, they are an eerily perfect extension<br />
of rage. <strong>The</strong> handgun in particular: you make a fist and point the metal finger at the<br />
thing you hate. Impulse to twitch, and a hard, hot bolus of fury hurtles out of you at<br />
hundreds of miles per hour. Point and click. Point and click. From urge to<br />
execution in a flash.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re have been many times in my life when I'm now happy I did not have a gun. I<br />
was a dour teen-ager, I'm told, and if I had had a handgun, I might have not shot up<br />
my school but perhaps a couple of particular individuals, including myself. <strong>The</strong>re<br />
were plenty of other kids in my school who could have made the cover of Time<br />
and <strong>New</strong>sweek, with enough ammo.<br />
Even as a hormonally stable adult, I didn't need something as gut-wrenching as the<br />
murder of a friend to unleash the impulse. Being jostled along the crowded,<br />
steaming streets of <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong>, there were days when, if I could have simply<br />
pointed my finger. . . .<br />
Table of Contents<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-killer-impulse.html (2 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:13:55 PM]
Killers Among Us<br />
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Camping Lessons<br />
• Killers Among Us<br />
• Camping Lessons<br />
• It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
• Unreal Estate<br />
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW<br />
QUESTIONS FOR JAMES DALE<br />
Camping Lessons<br />
• <strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
• Plainspeak<br />
• What <strong>The</strong>y Were Thinking<br />
<strong>The</strong> man who successfully sued the Boy Scouts of America for<br />
discriminating against homosexuals talks about getting on with<br />
his life and the importance of staying earnest. By DAVID RAKOFF<br />
: When you were a kid, did<br />
friends ever give you what on<br />
"Leave It to Beaver" they might<br />
call "the business" for being a Scout?<br />
Like jive for it? Yeah. It loses<br />
coolness the older you get. And it's<br />
one thing to be in the Scout uniform in<br />
the confines of the Scout camp or a<br />
meeting. But then to sort of go out<br />
walking down the street beforehand,<br />
shopping, that was a little . . . actually,<br />
the second troop I was in, the<br />
Scoutmaster just thought, "What's the<br />
point of these uniforms?" I was happy<br />
to not have to put on the uniform,<br />
which was a cotton-poly blend.<br />
That's why I got my "Je Parle<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-gay-scout.html (1 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:58:19 PM]<br />
White Oleander<br />
by Janet Fitch<br />
<strong>The</strong> Testament<br />
by John Grisham<br />
Business @ the Speed of<br />
Thought<br />
by Bill Gates<br />
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff<br />
by Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
Camping Lessons<br />
Francais" badge and got out of there.<br />
Wasn't there also a "Troubador"<br />
badge?<br />
You know, I learned my appreciation<br />
for show tunes and cabaret no place<br />
other than the Boy Scouts of America.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re were more skits in drag and<br />
campfire songs than in any gay bar<br />
that I've ever been in. But it takes a<br />
while to perfect those skills. Actually,<br />
I became more and more valuable in<br />
the program as I got older. Most kids<br />
drop out at 13, 14 -- cars, girls, you<br />
know, whatever the average<br />
heterosexual boy is interested in. But I<br />
was being recruited by troops to be the<br />
older Scout, a role model. I was<br />
always picked on a lot in school, but<br />
the Boy Scouts was a community that<br />
accepted me, welcomed me, gave me<br />
positive reinforcement.<br />
Photograph by Ashkan Sahihi<br />
Now you live in <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong>, world capital of jaded, world-weary anomie. Have you<br />
ever had to be in the closet about being a Scout? Have you ever walked into a<br />
party and thought: "People can be very intolerant. I'd better not act scouty."<br />
I remember running into my first jaded <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong>er at my first<br />
job. He would constantly make fun of me because I couldn't<br />
quote Bette Davis or Elizabeth Taylor films. I went and rented<br />
each and every one of those gosh-darn films -- well, I don't want<br />
to swear. Even the fact that I can joke about this is proving your<br />
point.<br />
And did you memorize the films? How's your Elizabeth Taylor?<br />
"I am not a whore, Mama!" "Butterfield 8."<br />
Related Article<br />
<strong>New</strong> Jersey Court Overturns<br />
Ouster of Gay Boy Scout<br />
(Aug. 5)<br />
You quoted the movie like a true Boy Scout; the actual line is, "I was the slut of all time!" I think<br />
you have an internal V-chip. But tell me, how much of your life has your legal crusade taken<br />
over? Does it play a role in your relationships?<br />
I wouldn't necessarily say that it caused the demise of my last major relationship, but it didn't<br />
help. I see this case as an important community thing. I tremendously believe in the value of<br />
community. And I don't think that my boyfriend viewed it in the same light. He viewed the<br />
victory as "Good for you!" instead of "Good for us."<br />
What about your family? Your brother is a former Scout, right? And he's gay?<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-gay-scout.html (2 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:58:19 PM]<br />
Dr. Atkins <strong>New</strong> Diet Revolution<br />
by Robert C. Atkins, M.D.<br />
Under the Tuscan Sun<br />
by Frances Mayes<br />
All Too Human<br />
by George Stephanopoulos
Camping Lessons<br />
<strong>The</strong>re's always been this weird dichotomy between us. I came out when I was 19; he came out<br />
when he was 28. And I think my coming out so publicly and suing the Boy Scouts didn't<br />
necessarily help him. He was kind of mocking when he was in the closet -- I don't understand<br />
why you're doing this." But now, after all this time, he's more intolerant than I am -- I can't<br />
believe people won't come out of the closet." I think that in time he'll probably be a little more<br />
tempered and maybe more empathetic.<br />
If you have a son of your own, will you encourage him to go into the Scouts?<br />
Assuming that the discriminatory policy's not there, I would definitely like the kid to be in the<br />
Scouts. But I would want to know who the people were that were influencing him -- his<br />
Scoutmaster, the other Scouts. A kid can be highly impressionable, and I wouldn't want some<br />
narrow-minded person leading my son's troop. For all the hysteria around gays in the Boy<br />
Scouts, I think any parent who trusts just anybody with their child is crazy. You have to know<br />
who they are and what it's about. It's not like dropping the kid off with Grandma.<br />
Table of Contents<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
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Help/Feedback | Classifieds | Services | <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> Today<br />
Copyright 1999 <strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> Company<br />
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Plainspeak<br />
• Killers Among Us<br />
• Camping Lessons<br />
• It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
• Unreal Estate<br />
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW<br />
ON LANGUAGE BY PATRICIA T. O'CONNER<br />
Taking the gobble out of gobbledygook.<br />
• <strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
• Plainspeak<br />
• What <strong>The</strong>y Were Thinking<br />
here do you go if you need help "re-engineering communications<br />
processes" or "contextualizing expertise"? What if you want "improved<br />
system efficiencies" and other "value-added communications<br />
components"? Why, you go to a plain-language consultant, of course.<br />
You'll have no trouble finding one. In recent years, the plain-language movement<br />
has spawned a small industry of consulting firms, both large and small, for<br />
showing people in business and government how to use clear, simple English. But<br />
be warned. Some of the "proactive" folks who want to "modify your long-term<br />
business-development strategy to include plain language" haven't quite mastered it<br />
themselves, if the writing on their Web sites is any indication.<br />
To be fair, simple language isn't so simple to use. "Simple English is no one's<br />
mother tongue," Jacques Barzun said. "It has to be worked for." And the defenders<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-onlanguage.html (1 of 4) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:14:49 PM]<br />
White Oleander<br />
by Janet Fitch<br />
<strong>The</strong> Testament<br />
by John Grisham<br />
Business @ the Speed of<br />
Thought<br />
by Bill Gates<br />
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff<br />
by Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
Plainspeak<br />
of clarity, including plenty of plainspoken consultants, are making some progress,<br />
however fitful, in the war against jargon, bureaucratese, technobabble, pomposity<br />
and gobbledygook.<br />
It is an old fight, going back at least as far as Aristotle, but one fought with<br />
particular fervor lately. <strong>The</strong> results are mixed, but an optimist may be forgiven for<br />
thinking that things are looking up -- if not navigating an upward trajectory.<br />
Patricia T. O'Conner is the author<br />
of a grammar guide, "Woe Is I,"<br />
and a new book about writing,<br />
"Words Fail Me." William Safire<br />
is on vacation.<br />
In the private sector, some hard-nosed business<br />
types have concluded that intelligibility is good for<br />
the balance sheet. Ford, for instance, recently<br />
demystified its auto-leasing contract. Among other<br />
things, lessee has become you, and there's nary a<br />
shall in sight. Linguists at General Motors have<br />
developed what they call a controlled language for use in service manuals. <strong>The</strong><br />
idea, according to Kurt S. Godden, G.M.'s translation manager, is to eliminate the<br />
ambiguities of English. And the aerospace industry has invented another controlled<br />
language to standardize the vocabulary of airplane maintenance.<br />
On the medical front, we have the plain-language version of the venerable Merck<br />
Manual of Diagnosis and <strong>The</strong>rapy, the forbiddingly technical reference book<br />
physicians have been thumbing for 100 years. Take hangnail, for example. "Acute<br />
or chronic inflammation of the periungual tissues" became "an infection around the<br />
edge of a fingernail or toenail."<br />
"This wasn't a simple matter," says Dr. Robert Berkow, who has been editor in<br />
chief of the Merck Manual for 25 years. It took five years to produce a twin<br />
version of the Merck for lay readers, with virtually the same information but in<br />
everyday language. "Most of that first year was spent practicing writing in plain<br />
English," he says.<br />
As for the Government, it has always provided the kind of warm, moist<br />
environment, undisturbed by fresh air, that's ideal for the incubation of verbal<br />
monstrosities. But Washington's antigibberish brigade got a break in early 1997<br />
when it enlisted Vice President Gore in the effort. <strong>The</strong> result was a Presidential<br />
memo last summer directing Federal agencies to write in ordinary English -everyday<br />
words, short sentences and the active voice. It was a tall order for<br />
bureaucrats used to expressing themselves in language that only another bureaucrat<br />
could understand.<br />
Similar campaigns fizzled out in the 1960's, 70's and 80's, but this one may be<br />
different. "It could really work," says Bryan A. Garner, a plain-language consultant<br />
and the editor of Oxford's new Dictionary of Modern American Usage. "It's<br />
making more official writing accessible." But don't expect overnight results. "It's a<br />
never-ending battle, and you can only change things incrementally."<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-onlanguage.html (2 of 4) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:14:49 PM]<br />
Dr. Atkins <strong>New</strong> Diet Revolution<br />
by Robert C. Atkins, M.D.<br />
Under the Tuscan Sun<br />
by Frances Mayes<br />
All Too Human<br />
by George Stephanopoulos
Plainspeak<br />
So it may be a while before every agency's preliminary planning strategy becomes<br />
a plan. Even the Clinton Administration's clarity guru, Annetta L. Cheek, has a<br />
fussy-sounding title: plain-language coordinator. (She prefers to say, "I'm the one<br />
who's supposed to make the Government write better.") She has no illusions about<br />
the difficulties of getting an entrenched bureaucracy to change its ways, but she<br />
says it will happen.<br />
"<strong>The</strong> customers are going to demand it," she says. "It's the right of the American<br />
people to get clear communication from their Government, and they should insist<br />
on it. <strong>The</strong>re's absolutely no reason for this bloated language."<br />
You don't have to be a psycholinguist to understand the allure of officialese. It can<br />
make a lousy idea look good or an unpalatable one easier to swallow. It lets an<br />
insecure writer sound impressive or helps a writer with nothing to say hide the fact<br />
that the emperor has no clothes. But sheer habit may be the biggest factor of all.<br />
Old customs die hard, especially in government.<br />
Carol Florman, deputy director of the office of public affairs at the Justice<br />
Department, finds some of the writing in her agency simply "frightening." Why?<br />
"Not only are we a bureaucracy, but we're a bureaucracy populated by lawyers,"<br />
she says. "<strong>The</strong>y just don't write in English."<br />
But William Lutz, a Rutgers University English professor who writes about plain<br />
language, says his vote for worst writing goes to the Internal Revenue Service.<br />
"Lawyers are a piece of cake," he says. "You haven't lived until you've gone one<br />
on one with an accountant."<br />
Some agencies, though, have distinguished themselves in the battle against<br />
incomprehensibility. Every month, the Administration gives its No Gobbledygook<br />
Award to the employees who produce the most readable document. <strong>The</strong> star of the<br />
effort has been the Securities and Exchange Commission, for getting companies to<br />
cut the jargon out of financial-disclosure statements.<br />
But plain English is nothing if not humble. An Agriculture Department worker<br />
won the award for rewriting consumer tips on safely cooking a stuffed turkey. Her<br />
summation was clarity itself: "Measure the temperature of both the turkey and<br />
stuffing! Don't just trust a pop-up indicator!"<br />
Table of Contents<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-onlanguage.html (3 of 4) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:14:49 PM]
Plainspeak<br />
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It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
• Killers Among Us<br />
• Camping Lessons<br />
• It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
• Unreal Estate<br />
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW<br />
SALIENT FACTS<br />
It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
• <strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
• Plainspeak<br />
• What <strong>The</strong>y Were Thinking<br />
With new genetically modified crops, agribusiness is positioning<br />
itself as nature's very best friend. Where does that leave<br />
environmentalists? By GREG DICUM<br />
WHAT'S NEW DOWN ON THE FARM?<br />
Ever since high-tech agribusiness<br />
started tinkering with the DNA of<br />
crops, genetically modified foods have<br />
been a battleground for<br />
environmentalists (who have called<br />
them "frankenfoods"). Americans can<br />
buy genetically modified corn,<br />
potatoes and papayas, though in<br />
Europe, groups like Greenpeace have<br />
blocked the importation of some<br />
altered produce. But with the latest<br />
innovations, producers are betting<br />
Wheat: Corbis. Strawberry: Michelle<br />
Garrett/Corbis. Fish: Douglas Peebles/Corbis.<br />
they can beat the greens at their own game, casting their test-tube advances as the<br />
environment's last, best hope.<br />
TO MAKE PRETTIER PRODUCE?<br />
Like all genetic modifications, these crops are created by either fiddling with a<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-food-science.html (1 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:15:01 PM]<br />
White Oleander<br />
by Janet Fitch<br />
<strong>The</strong> Testament<br />
by John Grisham<br />
Business @ the Speed of<br />
Thought<br />
by Bill Gates<br />
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff<br />
by Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
plant's own genetic material or splicing genes from one into the cells of another.<br />
But these latest modifications aren't just designed to benefit consumers and<br />
retailers. According to the claims being made by companies like Monsanto and<br />
Novartis, they are actually kinder to the earth than the earth's own products.<br />
AND WHAT WONDERS HAS THIS YIELDED?<br />
A widely used application is Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a bacterial insecticide.<br />
Scientists plug it into the genes of corn, potatoes and cotton, after which the plants<br />
produce it themselves. By altering the genetic composition of aspens, scientists<br />
have also developed wood that can be made into paper with fewer harsh chemicals.<br />
And Monsanto has developed plants that are resistant to pesticide, allowing<br />
farmers to spray it and harm only weeds -- so long as they use the pesticide in<br />
question, which happens to be Monsanto's flagship product. "We obviously see<br />
that this is a technology that presents the opportunity to use less pesticides, to farm<br />
in a more sustainable way," says a Monsanto official.<br />
SO WHAT HAS GOT THE GREENS SEEING RED?<br />
For starters, they fear that any kind of genetic manipulation could disrupt the<br />
fragile ecosystem in horrible ways. So far in nature, no engineered genes have<br />
migrated from cultivated crops to wild plants, but even Vincent Chiang, a<br />
professor at Michigan Tech University who developed a genetically modified tree,<br />
allows that "it's possible." Second, many scientists are concerned that such<br />
widespread use of Bt will cause insects to develop an immunity. Finally,<br />
environmentalists are alarmed that a multinational company like Monsanto has the<br />
temerity to suggest it is saving the earth. That's their job.<br />
SOUNDS RATHER CONFUSING?<br />
When environmentalists condemn research that at least claims to reduce pollution<br />
and conserve energy, it can get awfully hard to tell who's on what team. Last<br />
month, Gerber baby food -- which is owned by Novartis, a leader in high-tech<br />
agriculture -- announced that it would stop using genetically modified ingredients.<br />
And recently, Robert Shapiro, the C.E.O. of Monsanto (which brought us Agent<br />
Orange), gave an impassioned pro-ecology speech: "If the only model for<br />
development is the recapitulation of the Industrial Revolution, with all its horrific<br />
waste and pollution, there simply is no way that development can occur without<br />
doing permanent, irreversible damage to the systems on which life depends." In<br />
thanks, environmentalists threw a tofu cream pie in his face.<br />
Table of Contents<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-food-science.html (2 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:15:01 PM]<br />
Dr. Atkins <strong>New</strong> Diet Revolution<br />
by Robert C. Atkins, M.D.<br />
Under the Tuscan Sun<br />
by Frances Mayes<br />
All Too Human<br />
by George Stephanopoulos
It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
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Unreal Estate<br />
• Killers Among Us<br />
• Camping Lessons<br />
• It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
• Unreal Estate<br />
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW<br />
THE NEW ECONOMY<br />
Unreal Estate<br />
• <strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
• Plainspeak<br />
• What <strong>The</strong>y Were Thinking<br />
Internet stocks may no longer be soaring, but the market for<br />
Web addresses is getting tighter all the time. By JOHN COOK<br />
arlier this month, the Internet<br />
domain name www.drugs.com -just<br />
the name, nothing else -- was<br />
sold to an anonymous buyer for<br />
$823,456 (which works out to about<br />
$103,000 per letter). It was not the<br />
highest sum ever paid for a domain<br />
name (many addresses, including<br />
wallstreet.com and bingo.com, have<br />
fetched $1 million or more), but it is<br />
evidence of how the supposedly<br />
limitless World Wide Web is running<br />
short on real estate.<br />
According to Network Solutions, a<br />
company that registers domain names,<br />
all you need to secure a home on the<br />
Web is $70 and an unclaimed name<br />
with no more than <strong>22</strong> characters. But<br />
SITE SELECTION<br />
John Cook goes looking for a Web address, but finds<br />
the most obvious permutations of his own name have<br />
already been snapped up.<br />
Cook.com<br />
"It's not for sale," says its owner, Scott Day, a<br />
former watermelon farmer in Oklahoma who has<br />
plans to start a cooking Web site. Not for any<br />
sum? "I don't think it would be affordable to you.<br />
It wouldn't be affordable for any individual."<br />
Cook.net<br />
"If it were just a cash deal, I'd have to hold out<br />
for $25,000," says David Cook, a Florida investor<br />
who once owned the phone number<br />
1-800-PHONECALL, which he sold for $25,000.<br />
Cook.org<br />
"I'd probably sell it for upward of $10,000," says<br />
Steve Anderson, the C.F.O. of a Silicon Valley<br />
company. "I think the dot-org domain names are<br />
worth a lot less. A dot-com domain name is<br />
worth 10 times a dot-org, potentially. It's all in<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-web-addresses.html (1 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:15:12 PM]<br />
White Oleander<br />
by Janet Fitch<br />
<strong>The</strong> Testament<br />
by John Grisham<br />
Business @ the Speed of<br />
Thought<br />
by Bill Gates<br />
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff<br />
by Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
Unreal Estate<br />
that's not as easy as it sounds:<br />
although a Network Solutions<br />
representative says quality domain<br />
names are "limited only by the<br />
imagination," most experts agree that<br />
all the good names have been taken -by<br />
enterprising visionaries hoping to<br />
turn a $70 investment into a retirement<br />
fund.<br />
What makes a good name? For<br />
starters, dot-com is the essential<br />
suffix. Dot-net and dot-org just can't<br />
compare. Jeffrey Tinsley, the C.E.O.<br />
of Great Domains, the company that<br />
brokered the sale of drugs.com,<br />
explains: "Drugs.org or drugs.net are<br />
worth something to someone, but<br />
dot-com is the Internet's Rodeo<br />
Drive." (Of course, any speculator<br />
knows that today's slum can be<br />
tomorrow's hot neighborhood; Great<br />
Domains' parent company holds the<br />
rights to wallstreet.org.)<br />
what the buyer's willing to pay for it."<br />
John.com<br />
Network Solutions has the address registered to a<br />
John Little of Cupertino, Calif., but efforts to<br />
contact him were unsuccessful.<br />
eCook.com<br />
"We're building a prototype of a very cool<br />
cooking site, targeted more toward pop-culture,"<br />
says Firas Bushnaq, who heads a firm known as<br />
Ecompany and maintains that the name is not for<br />
sale. But if it were? "Anywhere from $100,000 to<br />
$200,000."<br />
Cookweb.com<br />
"It was something that I tried to do, and just<br />
didn't have time with school," says Timothy<br />
Cook, a 16-year-old from West Melbourne, Fla.<br />
"I couldn't see charging more than the price it<br />
cost me, which is $100. I'd have to talk to my<br />
dad."<br />
Jcook.com<br />
"I registered the domain name for a friend of<br />
mine a few years ago," says Rodney Joffe of<br />
Phoenix. "He has yet to use it, but keeps making<br />
noises. He has rejected offers because he really<br />
wants it for himself, but my guess is that he'd<br />
probably settle for a couple hundred dollars."<br />
Domain names emerged as an object<br />
of intense speculation around 1996, the year Great Domains was founded. <strong>The</strong><br />
people who got in the game early often just stumbled across the idea. A typical<br />
case might be Scott Day, an Oklahoma watermelon farmer who in 1997 registered<br />
watermelon.com -- and in the process sensed a business opportunity. He quickly<br />
snapped up several food-related names (including cook.com, desserts.com and<br />
barbecue.com), envisioning a Web-based culinary empire. "Over 500 people a day<br />
type in 'cook.com' looking for recipes," says Day, who gave up growing<br />
watermelons.<br />
Many entrepreneurs control large blocks of sites. Rick Schwartz, a Web developer<br />
in Boca Raton, Fla., who was introduced to the domain game as an operator of<br />
adult-entertainment sites, has more than 3,000 titles, including fishingtackle.com<br />
(which cost him just the $70 registration fee), sneaky.com ($3,000), men.com<br />
($15,000), abuseexcuse.com ($70, after hearing the term used on CNN in reference<br />
to Hillary Clinton) and d-i-v-o-r-c-e.com (for $70, not in honor of the Tammy<br />
Wynette classic but because it would read well on a billboard). Though he's not in<br />
the habit of selling domain names -- he intends to develop businesses around all his<br />
sites -- Schwartz did accept $100,000 for the rights to eScore.com (from Kaplan<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-web-addresses.html (2 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:15:12 PM]<br />
Dr. Atkins <strong>New</strong> Diet Revolution<br />
by Robert C. Atkins, M.D.<br />
Under the Tuscan Sun<br />
by Frances Mayes<br />
All Too Human<br />
by George Stephanopoulos
Unreal Estate<br />
Education Services, the college-board prep company). "I bought my mother a<br />
condominium on the beach," he explains.<br />
Other high-stakes addresses acquired in the domain name rush include art.com<br />
(sold for more than $450,000) and rock.com ($1 million). Addresses with an 'e' or<br />
an 'i' before them -- like etoys.com -- are also considered hot; those preceded by a<br />
number (4drugs.com) are getting there, too. Even misspelled versions of famous<br />
addresses -- like amazom.com and yahpp.com -- can turn a profit, since they<br />
guarantee a certain amount of traffic based solely on typos. No niche market is too<br />
obscure to attract speculators. "I've seen someone trying to sell ostrichmeat.com<br />
for $5,000," says Ellen Rony, co-author of the "<strong>The</strong> Domain Name Handbook."<br />
Internet experts believe that sooner or later the naming system will have to change<br />
to accommodate the Web's growth. Until it does, however, promoters are hungry<br />
for any address that will attract traffic, even if it's from people who land there<br />
accidentally. "I know of a young boy who wanted to check on a Nintendo game<br />
called Zelda," Rony says. "So he typed in zelda.com, and guess what? It's a porn<br />
site. And he got into trouble for that from his school. How could he know? It's a<br />
messy business."<br />
Table of Contents<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
• Killers Among Us<br />
• Camping Lessons<br />
• It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
• Unreal Estate<br />
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW<br />
THE ETHICIST BY RANDY COHEN<br />
<strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
• <strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
• Plainspeak<br />
• What <strong>The</strong>y Were Thinking<br />
I have been placed in charge of a data-entry temp whose work is<br />
very shoddy. I don't want to complain about him — who should<br />
be expected to do a good job of mindless work for low pay? But<br />
I worry that his performance is sabotaging me and my<br />
colleagues. What should I do?<br />
— Jon Lackman, <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong><br />
s you rightly suggest, running to the boss<br />
should be a last resort. <strong>The</strong> person to talk to<br />
first is the temp: make sure he knows what<br />
is expected of him and what the consequences<br />
will be if he doesn't deliver.<br />
But few people eagerly work well in bad jobs.<br />
Indeed, if anyone's acting unethically here, it's<br />
your boss; it is ignoble to force people into<br />
soul-deadening, pointless, poorly paid jobs. And it is force -- people must work to<br />
live, and surely no one would freely choose to waste his days in such<br />
circumstances.<br />
Organizing work into tedious, repetitive tasks, while profitable for the few, makes<br />
life miserable for the many; some political economists have called it a crime<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-ethicist.html (1 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:15:21 PM]<br />
White Oleander<br />
by Janet Fitch<br />
<strong>The</strong> Testament<br />
by John Grisham<br />
Business @ the Speed of<br />
Thought<br />
by Bill Gates<br />
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff<br />
by Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
<strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
against humanity. <strong>The</strong> humane solution is to distribute the most tedious tasks<br />
evenly rather than dumping them on one person. But the current arrangement<br />
brings cars, camcorders and the Backstreet Boys to the millions -- myself included<br />
-- and we seem to like that.<br />
Short of a radical transformation of the labor economy (which doesn't seem too<br />
likely), the situation at your office will continue to be exhausting for everyone<br />
involved: your co-workers, your boss and even the temp himself. And as the<br />
supervisor, you have the responsibility to see that the work gets done, so you must<br />
act. Can you persuade the temp to improve his performance? Great. Can you get<br />
him more money or rearrange his most mind-numbing tasks? Even better. But if<br />
you can't do either, and you continue to feel, as you say, that his job is so wretched<br />
that reporting him would be wrong, you can continue to work there, but you can't<br />
ethically continue as his supervisor. You can be a soldier but not an officer.<br />
We received an invitation to a surprise party for our friend Ted, given by his wife.<br />
It said: "It is a clown party! Ted is afraid of clowns!! Feel free to dress as a clown.<br />
<strong>The</strong> idea is to scare him! Adults only! We do not want children to see how terrified<br />
Ted will be by the clowns!" Not going is a no-brainer. Should we tell him? —<br />
M.M., Madison, N.J.<br />
By all means, tell him about the party. And about a divorce lawyer.<br />
Do you have ethical queries that you need answered? Send them to<br />
ethicist@nytimes.com or <strong>The</strong> Ethicist, <strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>22</strong>9 West<br />
43d Street, <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong>, N.Y. 10036.<br />
Illustration by Christoph Neimann<br />
Table of Contents<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-ethicist.html (2 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:15:21 PM]<br />
Dr. Atkins <strong>New</strong> Diet Revolution<br />
by Robert C. Atkins, M.D.<br />
Under the Tuscan Sun<br />
by Frances Mayes<br />
All Too Human<br />
by George Stephanopoulos
<strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
Home | Site Index | Site Search | Forums | Archives | Marketplace<br />
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Estate | Travel<br />
Help/Feedback | Classifieds | Services | <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> Today<br />
Copyright 1999 <strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> Company<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-ethicist.html (3 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:15:21 PM]
What <strong>The</strong>y Were Thinking<br />
• Killers Among Us<br />
• Camping Lessons<br />
• It Isn't Easy Being Green<br />
• Unreal Estate<br />
• <strong>The</strong> Slacker Temp<br />
• Plainspeak<br />
• What <strong>The</strong>y Were Thinking<br />
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW<br />
WHAT THEY WERE THINKING<br />
Barry Bransfield, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston<br />
Photograph by ROY DI TOSTI<br />
"I am being treated for cancer of the brain, and I went in every day at 9 o'clock for<br />
my 15 minutes of radiation therapy. It was like a job, the job of curing myself. No<br />
one is in the room, so you get into a meditative state. I don't think of the cancer. I<br />
was just thinking about things like Muddy Waters, because I was listening to him.<br />
Blues is the celebration of sadness. I think of my family and my wife the whole<br />
time. But I think of other things to keep going. I am just turning 50, and this is not<br />
what I had planned. Your mind races over all kinds of things, from science to<br />
friends. And you just hope God is thinking of you."<br />
Table of Contents<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>Sunday</strong>, <strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
Go to Article<br />
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White Oleander<br />
by Janet Fitch<br />
<strong>The</strong> Testament<br />
by John Grisham<br />
Business @ the Speed of<br />
Thought<br />
by Bill Gates<br />
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff<br />
by Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>Sunday</strong>, <strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
Table of Contents<br />
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Dr. Atkins <strong>New</strong> Diet Revolution<br />
by Robert C. Atkins, M.D.<br />
Under the Tuscan Sun<br />
by Frances Mayes<br />
All Too Human<br />
by George Stephanopoulos
<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>Sunday</strong>, <strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-cover.html (3 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:16:24 PM]
<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
THE TROUBLED LIFE OF BOYS<br />
<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
Tormented by an unattainable ideal, boys are learning what<br />
girls have long known: it isn't easy living in a 'Baywatch'<br />
world. By STEPHEN S. HALL Photographs by JUSTINE PARSONS<br />
Looking good! Alexander works out in the gym five times a week to be all he can be . . .<br />
and less (about 40 pounds less) than he once was.<br />
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White Oleander<br />
by Janet Fitch<br />
<strong>The</strong> Testament<br />
by John Grisham<br />
Business @ the Speed of<br />
Thought<br />
by Bill Gates<br />
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff<br />
by Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
n an insufferably muggy afternoon in July, with the thermometer pushing<br />
90 degrees and ozone alerts filling the airwaves, Alexander Bregstein was<br />
in a foul mood. He was furious, in fact, for reasons that would become<br />
clear only later. Working on just three hours of sleep, and having spent the last<br />
eight hours minding a bunch of preschool kids in his summer job as a camp<br />
counselor, Alexander was itching to kick back and relax. So there he was, lying<br />
on his back in the weight room of his gym, head down on an incline bench,<br />
earphones pitching three-figure decibels of the rock band Finger Eleven into his<br />
ears as he gripped an 85-pound weight in each hand and then, after a brief pause<br />
to gather himself, muscled them into the air with focused bursts of energy. Each<br />
lift was accompanied by a sharp exhalation, like the quick, short stroke of a<br />
piston.<br />
Stephen S. Hall is a contributing<br />
writer for <strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong><br />
<strong>Magazine</strong>.<br />
<strong>The</strong> first thing you need to know about<br />
Alexander is that he is 16 years old, bright,<br />
articulate and funny in that self-deprecating and<br />
almost wise teen-age way. However, about a<br />
year ago, Alexander made a conscious decision that those weren't the qualities he<br />
wanted people to recognize in him, at least not at first. He wanted people to see<br />
him first, and what they see these days are thick neck muscles, shoulders so<br />
massive that he can't scratch his back, a powerful bulge in his arms and a chest<br />
that has been deliberately chiseled for the two-button look -- what Alexander<br />
now calls "my most endearing feature." He walks with a kind of cocky<br />
gravity-testing bounce in his step that derives in part from his muscular build but<br />
also from the confidence of knowing he looks good in his tank top and baggy<br />
shorts.<br />
As his spotter, Aaron Anavim, looked on, Alexander lifted the 85-pound weights<br />
three more times, arms quivering, face reddening with effort. Each dumbbell, I<br />
realized as I watched, weighed more than I did when I entered high school.<br />
Another half-dozen teen-agers milled around the weight room, casting glances at<br />
themselves and one another in the mirror. <strong>The</strong>y talked of looking "cut," with<br />
sharp definition to their muscles, and of developing "six-packs," crisp divisions<br />
of the abdominals, but of all the muscles that get a workout in rooms like these,<br />
the most important may be the ones that move the eyes in restless sweeping arcs<br />
of comparison and appraisal. "Once you're in this game to manipulate your<br />
body," Alexander said, "you want to be the best," likening the friendly<br />
competition in the room to a form of "whipping out the ruler." While we talked<br />
between sets of Alexander's 90-minute routine, his eyes wandered to the mirror<br />
again and again, searching for flaws, looking for areas of improvement. "<strong>The</strong><br />
more you lift," he admitted, "the more you look in the mirror."<br />
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Dr. Atkins <strong>New</strong> Diet Revolution<br />
by Robert C. Atkins, M.D.<br />
Under the Tuscan Sun<br />
by Frances Mayes<br />
All Too Human<br />
by George Stephanopoulos
<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
In this weight room, in a gym in a northern <strong>New</strong> Jersey suburb, the gym rats<br />
have a nickname for Alexander: Mirror Boy. That's a vast improvement over the<br />
nicknames he endured at school not long ago. "I know it sounds kind of odd to<br />
have favorite insults," he told me with a wry smile, munching on a protein bar<br />
before moving on to his next set of lifts, "but Chunk Style always was kind of<br />
funny." And kind of appropriate. Until recently, Alexander carried nearly 210<br />
pounds on a 5-foot-6 frame, and when I asked if he was teased about his weight,<br />
he practically dropped a dumbbell on my feet. "Oh! Oh, man, was I teased? Are<br />
you kidding?" he said in his rapid, agreeable patter. "When I was fat, people<br />
must have gone home and thought of nothing else except coming in with new<br />
material the next day. <strong>The</strong>y must have had study groups just to make fun of<br />
people who were overweight." He even got an earful at home. "My parents --<br />
God bless them, but they would make comments all the time. My father would<br />
say, 'If you eat all that, you'll be as big as a house.' And I'm, like: 'Dad, it's a little<br />
late for that. What am I now? A mobile home?"'<br />
<strong>The</strong> day of reckoning came in April 1998, during a spring-break vacation in<br />
Boca Raton, Fla. As his family was about to leave its hotel room to go to the<br />
beach, Alexander, then 15, stood in front of a mirror and just stared at the<br />
spectacle of his shirtless torso. "I remember the exact, like, moment in my mind,"<br />
he said. "Everything about that room is burned into my head, every little thing. I<br />
can tell you where every lamp was, where my father was standing, my mother<br />
was sitting. We were about to go out, and I'm looking in this mirror -- me, with<br />
my gut hanging over my bathing suit -- and it was, like: Who would want to look<br />
at this? It's part of me, and I'm disgusted! That moment, I realized that nobody<br />
was giving me a chance to find out who I was because of the way I looked."<br />
And so Alexander decided to do something about it, something drastic.<br />
here is a kind of timeless, archetypal trajectory to a teen-ager's battle with<br />
body image, but in most accounts the teen-ager is female and the issue is<br />
anorexia or bulimia. As any psychologist knows, however, and as any<br />
sufficiently evolved adult male could tell you, boys have body-image problems,<br />
too. Traditionally, they have felt pressure to look not thin, but rather strong and<br />
virile, which increasingly seems to mean looking bulked up and muscular, and<br />
that is why I was interested in talking to Alexander.<br />
Although more than 30 years in age separates us, hearing him give voice to his<br />
insecurities, to imagined physical flaws, reminded me all over again of my own<br />
tortured passage through adolescence, my own dissatisfaction with a body that<br />
seemed punitively untouched by any growth spurt and my own reluctant<br />
accommodation with certain inalienable facts of nature. Like me, Alexander had<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
been teased and harassed about<br />
being short in stature. Like me, he<br />
had struggled to overcome his<br />
physical shortcomings as a member<br />
of the high-school wrestling team.<br />
Unlike me, he also battled a severe<br />
weight problem, but at a similar<br />
moment in life, we had both looked<br />
in the mirror and hadn't liked what<br />
we'd seen.<br />
Still, a lot has changed since I was<br />
15. Consider the current batch of<br />
cold messages from the culture at<br />
large. <strong>The</strong> new anabolic Tarzan.<br />
<strong>The</strong> mirror on the wall tells James, Mickey and<br />
Adel whether they "fit" in — or not.<br />
"Chicks dig the long ball." Littleton. (Buried beneath a ton of prose about gun<br />
control was the report that Eric Harris apparently felt dissatisfied with his height,<br />
repeatedly complaining that he was smaller than his brother.)<br />
Aggressive advertising campaigns showing half-naked men in which the<br />
Obsession could just as easily be about your own very toned body as about<br />
someone else's. Even a lawsuit at the higher echelons of American business<br />
peeled away the pretense of adult civility to show that the classic junior-high<br />
body-image put-down -- Michael Eisner dissing Jeffrey Katzenberg as a "little<br />
midget" -- is alive and well in the boardroom, as it has been in the locker room<br />
for decades. You would never know that for the past quarter-century, feminist<br />
thought and conversation has created room for alternatives to traditional<br />
masculinity, in which toughness is equated with self-worth and physical stature<br />
is equated with moral stature.<br />
No one can quite cite any data, any scientific studies proving that things are<br />
different, but a number of psychologists with whom I spoke returned to the same<br />
point again and again: the cultural messages about an ideal male body, if not<br />
new, have grown more insistent, more aggressive, more widespread and more<br />
explicit in recent years.<br />
Since roughly 90 percent of teen-agers who are treated for eating disorders are<br />
female, boys still have a way to go. Young girls have suffered greatly from<br />
insecurity about appearance and body image, and the scientific literature on<br />
anorexia and related body-image disorders depicts a widespread and serious<br />
health problem in adolescent females. But to hear some psychologists tell it,<br />
boys may be catching up in terms of insecurity and even psychological<br />
pathology. An avalanche of recent books on men and boys underlines the<br />
precarious nature of contemporary boyhood in America. A number of studies in<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
the past decade -- of men, not boys -- have suggested that "body-image<br />
disturbances," as researchers sometimes call them, may be more prevalent in<br />
men than previously believed and almost always begin in the teen-age years.<br />
Katharine Phillips, a psychiatrist at the Brown University School of Medicine,<br />
has specialized in "body dysmorphic disorder," a psychiatric illness in which<br />
patients become obsessively preoccupied with perceived flaws in their<br />
appearance -- receding hairlines, facial imperfections, small penises, inadequate<br />
musculature. In a study on "30 cases of imagined ugliness," Phillips and<br />
colleagues described a surprisingly common condition in males whose<br />
symptoms include excessive checking of mirrors and attempts to camouflage<br />
imagined deformities, most often of the hair, nose and skin. <strong>The</strong> average age of<br />
onset, Phillips says, is 15.<br />
Two years ago, Harrison G. Pope Jr., of Harvard Medical School, and his<br />
colleagues published a modest paper called "Muscle Dysmorphia: An<br />
Underrecognized Form of Body Dysmorphic Disorder" in a relatively obscure<br />
journal called Psychosomatics. <strong>The</strong> study described a group of men and women<br />
who had become "pathologically preoccupied" by their body image and were<br />
convinced that they looked small and puny, even though they were bulging with<br />
muscles. <strong>The</strong> paper got a lot of attention, and it led to an even more widely<br />
publicized study earlier this year from the same lab reporting how male<br />
action-figure toys like G.I. Joe and the "Star Wars" characters have bulked up<br />
over the years.<br />
Of all<br />
body-image<br />
issues, size is<br />
the most<br />
important,<br />
because it leads<br />
to a kind of<br />
involuntary<br />
self-definition.<br />
<strong>The</strong> kids were<br />
called Mouse.<br />
String Bean.<br />
Little J.<br />
Leprechaun.<br />
Recent figures on cosmetic surgery indirectly<br />
confirm the anecdotal sense that men are going to<br />
greater extremes to improve their appearances.<br />
Women still account for about 90 percent of all<br />
procedures, but the number of men undergoing<br />
cosmetic surgery rose about 34 percent between<br />
1996 and 1998, with liposuction being the most<br />
sought service. "Basically, men in general are<br />
getting the same medicine that women have had to<br />
put up with for years, which was trying to match an<br />
unattainable ideal in terms of body image," says<br />
Pope, who has focused his studies on college-age<br />
men just past adolescence. "Boys are much more<br />
prone at this point to worry about being beefed up,<br />
about having muscles," says Mary Pipher, a<br />
psychologist and the author of "Reviving Ophelia,"<br />
a book about adolescent girls. "As we've<br />
commodified boys' bodies to sell products, with<br />
advertisements that show boys as bodies without<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
Shortie. Half<br />
Pint. Spaghetti.<br />
accessible is your appearance."<br />
heads, we've had this whole business about focusing<br />
on the body." And, she adds, families move so often<br />
that teen-agers "don't really know each other very<br />
well, so the only piece of information that's really<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is one trenchant piece of research that justifies the sudden new focus on<br />
male development. Inspired by the AIDS epidemic, Government-sponsored<br />
researchers began an enormous survey of sexual attitudes in teen-age boys called<br />
the 1988 National Survey of Adolescent Males. Joseph H. Pleck, a psychologist<br />
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and one of the principal<br />
investigators of the study, reported in 1993 a factor called "masculinity<br />
ideology," which indicates the degree to which boys subscribe to the more<br />
traditional standards of male comportment: the need for respect from peers and<br />
spouses, a reliance on physical toughness, a reluctance to talk about problems,<br />
even a reluctance to do housework. "<strong>The</strong> more traditional the attitude about<br />
masculinity in adolescent males," Pleck found, "the higher their risk for risky<br />
sexual behavior, substance use, educational problems and problems with the<br />
law."<br />
"This one variable is a really powerful predictor of behavior," says Dan Kindlon,<br />
a researcher at the School of Public Health at Harvard and co-author, with<br />
Michael Thompson, of "Raising Cain." "When you look at the kinds of kids who<br />
are in trouble in terms of -- you name it -- drugs and alcohol, suicide,<br />
attention-deficit disorder and learning disabilities, the prevalence statistics are so<br />
skewed toward boys that it's enough to knock you over. And when they looked at<br />
kids over time, the kids who had the highest risk were the highest in terms of this<br />
masculinity ideology." Since this ideology is so pervasive in boys, Kindlon says,<br />
it creates a kind of social pecking order based on physical size and the<br />
appearance of toughness.<br />
<strong>The</strong> confusions that arise in young males as they try to reconcile the traditional<br />
masculine values of their fathers, for example, with a postfeminist culture that<br />
celebrates sensitivity and openness have created a "national crisis of boyhood,"<br />
according to some psychologists -- as well as a boomlet of academic interest in<br />
boys and a burst of popular literature on the subject. In addition to "Raising<br />
Cain," there is William S. Pollack's "Real Boys," Michael Gurian's "Wonder of<br />
Boys" and James Garbarino's "Lost Boys," as well as a spate of books and<br />
magazines about male fitness. Many of these books were inspired by the<br />
groundbreaking research in the 1970's and 80's by Carol Gilligan, of Harvard's<br />
Graduate School of Education, who charted the psychological and moral<br />
development of adolescent girls. Now Gilligan and Judy Chu, her research<br />
associate, are listening to boys' voices too. And one of the most eagerly awaited<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
books this fall is "Stiffed," an account of the "masculinity crisis," by Susan<br />
Faludi, author of "Backlash."<br />
Some academics claim to have seen the crisis coming for years. After the recent<br />
outbreaks of school violence in Littleton, Jonesboro and Springfield, Pollack<br />
said, "It's boys who are doing this, because of this code about what they can say<br />
and can't say, how they feel about their body self, how they feel about their<br />
self-image, how they feel about themselves in school." <strong>The</strong>re's "no coincidence,"<br />
he added, that boys are unleashing this violence in school.<br />
You don't have to buy the alarmism implicit in Pollack's point to appreciate that<br />
body-image concerns form part of a larger, more complex and in some ways<br />
changeless ethos of male adolescence that would be trite and obvious if it weren't<br />
so true: boys, like girls, are keenly aware of, and insecure about, their physical<br />
appearance. Boys, unlike some girls, do not talk about it with their parents, other<br />
adults or even among themselves, at least in part for fear of being perceived as<br />
"sensitive," a code word for "weak." Indeed, they tease each other, on a scale<br />
from casually nasty to obsessively cruel, about any perceived flaws, many of<br />
which involve some physical difference -- size, shape, complexion, coordination<br />
-- and since adolescent teasing begs for an audience, much of this physical<br />
ridicule occurs in school. If you don't change the "culture of cruelty," as Kindlon<br />
and Thompson put it in their book, you'll never defuse the self-consciousness<br />
and concerns about body image in boys.<br />
"When you go to ask men questions about psychological issues," Kindlon says,<br />
"you've got two things going against you. One is emotional literacy. <strong>The</strong>y're not<br />
even in touch with their emotions, and they're doing things for reasons of which<br />
they're not even aware. You're not getting the real story because they don't even<br />
know the whole story. And even if they did, a lot of them would underrepresent<br />
what the problem was, because you're not supposed to ask for help. If you can't<br />
ask for directions when you're lost in a foreign city, how are you going to ask for<br />
help about something that's really personal? Especially if you're an eighth<br />
grader."<br />
etting boys to talk about their bodies is not an easy thing to do, as I learned<br />
when I met with several groups of teen-agers. On one occasion, six<br />
middle-school boys and I sat around a table on a warm afternoon very<br />
close to the end of the school year at a Manhattan public school in Chelsea. I<br />
asked them to describe the feelings they have when they look at themselves<br />
alone in the mirror, and for its sheer confused candor, it was tough to top the<br />
remark of Mickey, a 13-year-old who begins the ninth grade in a public school<br />
early next month.<br />
"I don't know," he said at first. "I can't even tell what stage of puberty I'm in.<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
'I don't know,'<br />
said one<br />
13-year-old. 'I<br />
can't even tell<br />
what stage of<br />
puberty I'm in.<br />
Some parts, I'm<br />
sure about, but<br />
other parts, I'm<br />
not so sure.'<br />
Some parts, I'm sure about, but" -- he added with an<br />
impish smile -- "other parts, I'm not so sure."<br />
We went around the table. Dwayne, mentioning that<br />
he appeared younger than his 13 years, looked<br />
forward to the effect this would have later in life.<br />
Bernie, lean and a little more satisfied than the<br />
others, said he didn't want muscles and would never<br />
use steroids. James saw a chubby 13-year-old in his<br />
mirror. ("I just want to be skinnier," he said<br />
plaintively.) Adel, who shot up six inches and<br />
gained 24 pounds in the last 14 months, monitored<br />
acne outbreaks with the avidity of a D.E.A. agent.<br />
Willie, a powerfully built 15-year-old with<br />
impressive biceps, derived no solace from his solid<br />
athletic build. "When I look in the mirror, I wish my<br />
ears were bigger and my feet were smaller. I wear size 11 1/2 shoes. My behind<br />
is big, too. But," he added, "girls like it." In retrospect, the most interesting thing<br />
about the conversation was how the older, bigger boys dominated the discussion<br />
while the younger, smaller boys deferred: size cued the communication.<br />
Take any half-dozen boys and you'll probably get close to hitting the same cross<br />
section: the fat one, the skinny one, the one who's self-conscious about being tall<br />
and the one who's self-conscious about being short, the jock and the kid who<br />
plays in the band. No one here looked like Mark Wahlberg. <strong>The</strong>y slouched in the<br />
body language of feigned boredom, although that may just have been another<br />
way of expressing wary curiosity, as if body image is something they think about<br />
all the time and talk about almost never.<br />
Mickey, the eighth grader, captured the problem well. "When you're at this<br />
stage," he observed, "it's all about fitting in to something, cliques and stuff. And<br />
when you're not at the same stage of life as other kids, it's harder to fit in." He<br />
was using "fit," of course, in its metaphorical sense, but it was exceptionally apt:<br />
the essence of the word is physical, of shapes and interactions and congruence.<br />
For boys in the midst of the exotic and uncontrollable incongruence of puberty,<br />
growing up in an internal world flooded with hormones and an external world<br />
flooded with idealized male images, the fit may be tighter than ever before.<br />
In seventh and eighth grades, Alexander Bregstein didn't fit in at all. "I was<br />
picked on in every single class," he recalled, "every single day, walking the<br />
hallways. It was beyond belief. <strong>The</strong>y would do things like hide your bag, turn<br />
your bag inside out, tie your shoelaces together. Some of the stuff I just can't<br />
repeat, it was so awful." <strong>The</strong>y called him Fat Boy. <strong>The</strong>y thought he was lazy,<br />
that something was wrong with him. He knew it wasn't true, but he also realized<br />
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that his physical appearance made him a social outcast and a target -- neither of<br />
which is a good thing to be in early adolescence.<br />
hen you visit the office of Harrison (Skip) Pope, in a grim institutional<br />
building on the rolling grounds of McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.,<br />
the first thing you notice are the calipers hanging on the wall -- partly as<br />
objets d'art, but partly as a reminder that what we subjectively consider attractive<br />
can sometimes yield to objective measurement. Pope, after all, was one of the<br />
scientists who devised what might be called the Buff Equation, or: FFMI = W x<br />
(1-BF/100) x h-2 + 6.1 x (1.8-H).<br />
<strong>The</strong> formula is ostensibly used to calculate a person's Fat-free Mass Index; it has<br />
sniffed out presumed steroid use by Mr. America winners, professional<br />
bodybuilders and men whose unhealthy preoccupation with looking muscular<br />
has induced them to use drugs.<br />
Pope is a wiry, compact psychiatrist who can squat 400 pounds in his spare time.<br />
("You can reach me pretty much all day except from 11 A.M. to 2 P.M.," he told<br />
me, "when I'm at the gym.") I had gone to see him and his colleague Roberto<br />
Olivardia not only because they were the lead authors on the G.I. Joe study, but<br />
also because their studies of body-image disorders in slightly older<br />
postadolescent men may be the best indicator yet of where male body-image<br />
issues are headed.<br />
Shortly after I arrived, Olivardia emptied a shopping bag full of male action dolls<br />
onto a coffee table in the office. <strong>The</strong> loot lay in a heap, a plastic orgy of<br />
superhero beefcake -- three versions of G.I. Joe (Hasbro's original 1964 version<br />
plus two others) and one G.I. Joe Extreme, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo in<br />
their 1978 and mid-90's versions, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Batman,<br />
Superman, Iron Man and Wolverine. <strong>The</strong> inspiration for the whole study came<br />
from . . . an adolescent girl. Pope's 13-year-old daughter, Courtney, was surfing<br />
the Web one night, working on a school project on how Barbie's body had<br />
radically changed over the years, and Pope thought to himself, <strong>The</strong>re's got to be<br />
the male equivalent of that.<br />
Once Pope and Olivardia gathered new and "vintage" action figures, they<br />
measured their waist, chest and biceps dimensions and projected them onto a<br />
5-foot-10 male. Where the original G.I. Joe projected to a man of average height<br />
with a 32-inch waist, 44-inch chest and 12-inch biceps, the more recent figures<br />
have not only bulked up, but also show much more definition. Batman has the<br />
equivalent of a 30-inch waist, 57-inch chest and 27-inch biceps. "If he was your<br />
height," Pope told me, holding up Wolverine, "he would have 32-inch biceps."<br />
Larger, that is, than any bodybuilder in history.<br />
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Now let it be said that measuring the<br />
styrene hamstrings of G.I. Joe does<br />
not represent 20th-century science<br />
at its most glorious. But Pope says<br />
it's a way to get at what he calls<br />
"evolving American cultural ideals<br />
of male body image." Those ideals,<br />
he maintains, create "cultural<br />
expectations" that may contribute to<br />
body-image disorders in men.<br />
"People misinterpreted our findings<br />
to assume that playing with toys, in<br />
and of itself, caused kids to develop One way to get a "foot in the door": carry a<br />
six-pack, courtesy of the McBurney Y.<br />
into neurotic people as they grew up<br />
who abused anabolic steroids," Pope said. "Of course that was not our<br />
conclusion. We simply chose the toys because they were symptomatic of what<br />
we think is a much more general trend in our society."<br />
Since the early 1990's, evidence has emerged suggesting that a small number of<br />
adult males suffer from extreme body-image disorders. In 1993, in a study of<br />
steroid use among male weight lifters, Pope discovered that 10 percent of the<br />
subjects "perceived themselves as physically small and weak, even though they<br />
were in fact large and muscular." Researchers termed this syndrome "reverse<br />
anorexia nervosa" and started looking for more cases. Two years ago, the Pope<br />
group renamed this disorder "muscle dysmorphia," the more specialized<br />
condition that involves an obsessive preoccupation with muscularity. Men who<br />
were clearly well developed and, by anyone's standards, exceedingly muscular,<br />
repeatedly expressed the feeling that they were too small, too skinny and too<br />
weak, to the point that their obsessive quest to build up their bodies began to<br />
interfere with work and relationships -- in short, their entire lives.<br />
"It's very hard to document trends like this in quantitative terms," Pope said,<br />
"because people who are insecure about their body appearance are unlikely to<br />
come out of the woodwork to confess that they're insecure about their body<br />
appearance. And so it is an epidemic which by definition is covert. But it clearly<br />
has become a much more widespread concern among men in the United States."<br />
lexander said he felt that insecurity at a visceral level. He was not only<br />
overweight, but also undersize. "I've been called short umpteen times," he<br />
said during a pause in his routine, and the only time I saw a hint of visible<br />
anger in his face was when he talked about being discriminated against because<br />
of being short.<br />
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"Kids are so self-conscious," Kindlon says. "One of the reasons that this<br />
body-image stuff is so powerful is because there's such an increase in<br />
self-consciousness as you move into puberty. I don't know anybody who has a<br />
good neurological explanation for it, but clearly there's real egocentricity,<br />
especially in early adolescence. Everything revolves around you. You walk into<br />
a room and you think everybody is looking at you. <strong>The</strong>se kids are petrified<br />
because they always feel like they're onstage. Clothes at least are something that<br />
you can change. Fat kids and short kids are the ones who get it the most."<br />
Another factor tends to complicate the sense of feeling like an outsider. Girls<br />
usually reach puberty earlier than boys, and the starting line is starkly marked by<br />
menstruation. Boys, by contrast, beginning around the age of 11, suddenly find<br />
themselves awash in hormones, but without any navigational landmarks. <strong>The</strong><br />
amount of testosterone in the bloodstream rises roughly 100-fold in boys during<br />
puberty. (It also rises in girls, though not nearly so much.) And yet biology is not<br />
behavioral destiny, according to the research of Richard Tremblay, director of<br />
the Research Unit on Children's Psychosocial Maladjustment at the University of<br />
Montreal. In a long-term study that has followed boys from kindergarten through<br />
high school, Tremblay's group has shown that the most aggressive boys at age 13<br />
actually had lower than average levels of testosterone, although the most socially<br />
dominant boys had the highest levels of the hormone.<br />
"<strong>The</strong> real damage gets done in middle school," Pollack says, "when boys and<br />
girls are most out of sync with each other in their development." He tells of a<br />
group of mothers, including feminists, who yanked their sons out of public<br />
school and put them in single-sex schools because they were getting harassed by<br />
girls. "<strong>The</strong>y weren't physically harassing them. But they were calling them on<br />
the phone, wanting to talk to them. <strong>The</strong>y were wanting to be romantic, and some<br />
of them wanting to be sexual. In an assertive way, not in an aggressive way. And<br />
these were little shrimp boys, as I call them, who wanted to play Nintendo and<br />
basketball and weren't ready for this level of development. <strong>The</strong>y were two years<br />
behind. When this goes on for two or three years at the middle school and then<br />
you're throwing them into the environment of high school, then you've got this<br />
revved-up negative experience from middle school that gets over-aggressified in<br />
high school. And it just gets worse."<br />
I can vouch for that. In 1965, just shy of 14, I was not only the shortest kid in my<br />
freshman gym class, but also the new kid in school, my family having just<br />
moved to a suburb west of Chicago. It had rained heavily the day before, and<br />
there were huge puddles on the fields around which we were ordered to take the<br />
obligatory lap at the end of calisthenics. As I was running along, two larger boys<br />
-- football players, it turned out -- came up behind me, knocked me down and<br />
then, each taking a leg as if grabbing a wishbone, dragged my 4-foot-9,<br />
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82-pound frame along the ground and through several pond-size puddles. It is<br />
part of the dynamic of stoic boyhood, of suffering the routine bullying and<br />
hazing in resentful silence, that my parents will learn of this incident for the first<br />
time when they read this article.<br />
As I spoke with adolescent boys and psychologists, it became clear that of all<br />
body-image issues, size is the most important, in part because it leads to a kind<br />
of involuntary self-definition. One morning I met with a group of boys attending<br />
a summer session at the Chelsea Center of the McBurney Y.M.C.A. in<br />
Manhattan. I asked them if they had nicknames, and almost every name referred<br />
to a physical quality. Mouse. String Bean. Little J. Leprechaun. Shortie. Half<br />
Pint. Spaghetti.<br />
<strong>The</strong>se insults, even the benign ones, seem to have the half-life of nuclear waste<br />
for kids. Adel, now a hulking and self-confident 6-foot-2 10th grader at the<br />
public school in Chelsea, recalled specific insults about his size and clumsiness<br />
dating back to the 4th grade. Another boy, who will attend Friends Seminary, in<br />
Manhattan, this fall, told me he has always been teased about being tall; he<br />
recalled with painful precision what was said, when and by whom -- eight years<br />
earlier. Rob, who will begin boarding school in the fall, was the shortest in his<br />
class, and he could barely contain a fidgety, amusingly self-aware impatience.<br />
"Can I talk about feeling insecure about being short?" he piped up at one point.<br />
"I'm insecure about being short, because all the bigger kids think, correctly, that<br />
they can beat me up."<br />
Harmless teasing? Psychologists have begun to suggest that the stress of all this<br />
taunting and hazing may have significant biological effects on boys during<br />
puberty. Kindlon, for example, cites the research of Bruce McEwen, a<br />
Rockefeller University neuroscientist who has shown in animal studies that<br />
prolonged and chronic stress leads to biochemical and structural changes in the<br />
brain that compromise the development of cognitive functions like memory. And<br />
Katharine Phillips, the Brown University psychiatrist who specializes in body<br />
dysmorphic disorder, says that some adolescent boys may have a biological<br />
susceptibility to teasing, which in extreme cases can lead to psychiatric illness.<br />
Men who suffer from B.D.D. may believe they are so ugly or unattractive that<br />
they refuse to leave their homes -- they become, in effect, body-image<br />
agoraphobics, and they almost always date the onset of this insecurity to<br />
adolescence.<br />
Leaving such extreme pathology aside, the point remains that a boy's body image<br />
is shaped, if not determined, by the cruelest, most unforgiving and meanest<br />
group of judges imaginable: other boys. And even if you outgrow, physically and<br />
emotionally, the body image that oppressed you as an adolescent, it stays with<br />
you in adult life as a kind of subdermal emotional skin that can never be shed,<br />
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only incorporated into the larger person you try to become. I think that's what<br />
Garry Trudeau, the formerly small cartoonist, had in mind when he described life<br />
as a tall adult as that of a "recovering short person."<br />
t was during his sophomore year, getting "the daylights pounded out of him"<br />
in wrestling and gaining even more weight, that Alexander began what he<br />
calls, with justification, his "drastic transformation." He started by losing 30<br />
pounds in one month. For a time, he consumed only 900 calories a day, and<br />
ultimately got down to 152 pounds. He began to lift weights seriously, every day<br />
for three months straight. He started to read magazines like Flex and Men's<br />
Fitness. He briefly dabbled with muscle-building supplements like creatine. He<br />
got buff, and then beyond buff.<br />
By the time his sophomore year in high school began, Alexander had packaged<br />
his old self in a phenomenally new body, and it has had the desired effect. "My<br />
quality of social life changed dramatically when I changed my image," he said.<br />
He still maintained friendships with the guys in the computer lab, still<br />
programmed, still played Quake with dozens of others. But he worked out at the<br />
gym at least five times a week. He shifted his diet to heavy protein. He pushed<br />
himself to lift ever-heavier weights. Until an injury curtailed his season, he<br />
brought new strength to his wrestling. Still, he wasn't satisfied. When I asked<br />
him if he ever felt tempted to try steroids during his effort to remake his physical<br />
image, he denied using them, and I believe him. But he wasn't coy about the<br />
temptation. "When someone offers you a shortcut," he replied, "and it's a<br />
shortcut you want so bad, you're willing to ignore what it might be doing to your<br />
insides. I wanted to look better. Who cares if it's going to clog up my kidneys?<br />
Who cares if it'll destroy my liver? <strong>The</strong>re was so much peer pressure that I didn't<br />
care."<br />
Alexander was especially pleased by the good shape he was in -- although he<br />
didn't care for aerobics, his resting heart rate was low, he ran a mile under six<br />
minutes and seemed to have boundless energy. But fitness was only part of what<br />
he was after. As he put it: "No one's looking for a natural look, of being thin and<br />
in shape. It's more of looking toward a level beyond that." He added that "guys<br />
who work out, especially guys who have six-packs and are really cut up, are the<br />
ones girls go after."<br />
To be honest, I was a little dubious about this until I spoke with an admittedly<br />
unscientific sampling of teen-age girls. It turned out that they not only agreed<br />
with the sentiment, but also spoke the same lingo. "If you're going swimming or<br />
something like that, girls like the stomach best," said Elizabeth, a 14-year old.<br />
"Girls like it if they have a six-pack, or if they're really ripped, as they say. That's<br />
the most important thing. And arms too."<br />
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"But not too much," added her friend Kate, also 14. "You don't like it if the<br />
muscles are too huge."<br />
"It changes your perspective on them if they have a flabby stomach," Elizabeth<br />
continued. "And the chest is important too."<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is nothing inherently dangerous about weight lifting. "It's great exercise,"<br />
says Dr. Linn Goldberg, professor of medicine at Oregon Health Sciences<br />
University and an authority on muscle-enhancing substances in high-school<br />
athletes, who lifts weights with his 18-year-old son. "Here's the problem, though.<br />
Our studies show that supplements are gateway substances to steroid use, and<br />
kids who use them are at greater risk for using anabolic steroids." Goldberg<br />
noted that 50 percent of males participate in athletics at some point between the<br />
9th and 12th grades, and a recent study of more than 3,000 boys in Oregon and<br />
Washington by Goldberg and his colleagues showed that 78 percent of<br />
high-school athletes use supplements, which include creatine, ginseng, ma-huang<br />
and androstenedione, the supplement made famous by Mark McGwire, who<br />
recently renounced its use.<br />
Many of the kids with whom I spoke were well aware of the health risks<br />
associated with the use of anabolic steroids, especially the fact that the testicles<br />
shrink with prolonged use. (Steroids also increase the risk of cardiovascular<br />
diseases and some forms of cancer.) Despite a great deal more scientific<br />
uncertainty about the risks -- and benefits -- of the supplements, however,<br />
Charles Yesalis, an expert on steroid abuse at Penn State University, estimated<br />
that "creatine use is epidemic at the junior-high-school level, and ubiquitous at<br />
the high-school level."<br />
n my conversations with boys, it began to dawn on me that male adolescents<br />
pass through two distinct stages. During the early phase, when<br />
self-consciousness is at its peak, boys tend to look inward, think asexually and<br />
act like, well, boys. As they get older, their field of view enlarges, and they start<br />
to pay more sophisticated attention to cultural images and their own sexuality.<br />
And they become very interested in whatever their objects of romantic attraction<br />
are interested in. So if you ask 13-year-old boys what catches their eyes, they'll<br />
say "<strong>The</strong> Simpsons" and "Revenge of the Nerds" and ads for Mountain Dew. If<br />
you ask 16-year-olds the same question, they tend to mention "Dawson's Creek"<br />
and "American Pie" and fashion advertising.<br />
"When you hear girls gawking at Abercrombie & Fitch about how hot the guy is<br />
on the bag -- that makes an impression," Alexander told me one night on the<br />
phone. <strong>The</strong> "guy on the bag" turned out to be an exceptionally cut youth not<br />
wearing a shirt. "If I look this way," Alexander said, "I've got my foot in the<br />
door." This very heterosexual impulse, however, was elicited by a school of<br />
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advertising whose genealogy follows a risque and decidedly homoerotic lineage.<br />
In the slow male striptease known as men's fashion advertising, there have been<br />
plenty of landmark cultural images in recent years. Calvin Klein, which until<br />
recently developed all of its advertising in-house, has been pushing the boundary<br />
of taste navel-ward and beyond ever since 1980, when a 15-year-old Brooke<br />
Shields teasingly announced that nothing came between her and her Calvins.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re was Bruce Weber's photo of the model Jeff Aquilon splayed on a boulder<br />
for Calvin Klein in 1982 and Mark Wahlberg (then known as Marky Mark)<br />
prancing in Calvin Klein underwear in 1992. But the ad that made sociologically<br />
explicit what had been implicit all along is what detractors have called Calvin<br />
Klein's "basement porn" campaign of 1995.<br />
<strong>The</strong>se television spots -- they were, almost incidentally, for jeans -- featured a<br />
deliberately cheesy, amateurishly lighted basementlike setting with cheap wall<br />
paneling. <strong>The</strong>y began with an adult male voice posing questions to youthful and<br />
shirtless boys. <strong>The</strong> models were, of course, beautiful, but only in retrospect do<br />
you realize how toned and buff their bodies were -- and how the ads made sure<br />
you noticed. In one commercial, the off-camera voice says: "You have a lovely<br />
body. Do you like your body?" In another, a boy who has both the looks and<br />
indifferent demeanor of a young James Dean sits on a ladder, wearing jeans and<br />
a white T-shirt.<br />
"You got a real nice look," an adult male voice says off-camera. "How old are<br />
you?"<br />
"Twenty-one," the boy says.<br />
"What's your name?"<br />
"<strong>August</strong>."<br />
"Why don't you stand up?"<br />
When the boy complies, the man continues, "Are you strong?"<br />
"I like to think so."<br />
"You think you could rip that shirt off of you?" <strong>The</strong> boy pulls down on the<br />
T-shirt with both hands and suddenly rips it off his body, revealing an extremely<br />
lean and well-developed chest. "It's a nice body!" the man exclaims. "Do you<br />
work out?"<br />
"Uh-huh." <strong>The</strong> boy nods again.<br />
"Yeah, I can tell."<br />
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I don't think of myself as culturally squeamish, but the ad struck me as so creepy<br />
that when I screened it at home recently, I became concerned that my<br />
15-month-old son, toddling around the room, might be paying attention. "<strong>The</strong><br />
style, the look, the leering tone, even the 'chicken hawk' voice-over -- Klein<br />
mimicked, closely, the style and tone of cheap basement gay pornography," says<br />
Bob Garfield, a columnist at Advertising Age and a longtime critic of what he<br />
calls Klein's "shockvertising" approach. If it is true, Garfield adds, that these<br />
commercials influence how boys think about their bodies, it reflects in part "the<br />
opening up of gay culture, where male objectification has almost nearly the<br />
effect that the objectification of females has had for time immemorial for<br />
women."<br />
This point is not lost on researchers. "<strong>The</strong> feminist complaint all along has been<br />
that women get treated as objects, that they internalize this and that it damages<br />
their self-esteem," says Kelly D. Brownell, director of the Yale Center for Eating<br />
and Weight Disorders. "And more and more, guys are falling into that same<br />
thing. <strong>The</strong>y're getting judged not by who they are, but how they look."<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is no way to plug popular culture into an equation and see what effect it<br />
has on mass psychology, of course, but there is widespread sentiment that these<br />
provocative images of buff males have really upped the ante for boys. Writing of<br />
both men and women in her new book, "<strong>The</strong> Male Body," Susan Bordo notes<br />
that "in an era characterized by some as 'postfeminist,' beauty seems to count<br />
more than it ever did before, and the standards for achieving it have become<br />
more stringent, more rigorous, than ever." Some of the research on body-image<br />
disorders in males indirectly makes the connection to cultural images.<br />
Olivardia, who conducted extensive interviews with men suffering from body<br />
dysmorphic disorder, says the patients bring up Hollywood movie stars all the<br />
time. "Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme. And Calvin<br />
Klein -- that name has been brought up quite a lot of times." If you pick up an<br />
issue of Gentleman's Quarterly or Men's Health or Teen People (or even this<br />
magazine), you'll see the trickle-down effect: a boy removes a tank top for Guess<br />
jeans. Firemen drop trou for Jockey shorts. Even the recent ads for "Smart Start"<br />
cereals by Kellogg's feature a naked torso. Consider: a six-pack in a cereal ad!<br />
Indeed, the bare, hairless, ripped chest has become so ubiquitous as a cultural<br />
icon that it occurred to me that contemporary advertising may have completely<br />
reinvented -- or at least relocated -- the physiological epicenter of male<br />
insecurity. Once, the defining moment of terror in a boy's life came in the locker<br />
room at shower time -- the place, as a boy at the Chelsea school put it, "where<br />
there's nowhere to hide." <strong>The</strong>re's still plenty of angst about penis size; many boys<br />
simply don't take showers after gym class these days, but I heard genuine fear in<br />
the voices of older boys when they spoke about the impending horror of going to<br />
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camp or the beach and having to appear in public without a shirt.<br />
fter Alexander finished his workout that hot July day, we stopped to get<br />
something to drink at the gym's cafe. "I feel pretty good right now,"<br />
Alexander admitted, "and I was furious when I went in there." It turned out<br />
that the night before, he had a conversation with a girl that took a decidedly<br />
unsatisfying turn at the end.<br />
At a time when the collective amount of American body fat is enough to stretch<br />
the jaws of Skip Pope's calipers from coast to coast, when so many adults amble<br />
about like fatted calves and so many children are little more than couch potatoes<br />
in training, it's hard to find fault with disciplined, drug-free efforts by teen-age<br />
boys to add a bit of muscle; weight lifting is not a sport with shortcuts, and it has<br />
become an essential adjunct to contemporary athletic performance. But there is a<br />
psychological side to all this heavy lifting that may be as unhealthy and<br />
undermining on the inside as it seems fit on the outside. And it resides not in that<br />
telltale mirror, but in how we see ourselves.<br />
"I look in the mirror and I don't see what other people see," Alexander told me.<br />
"I look in the mirror, and I see my flaws. People go, 'Oh, you're narcissistic.' I<br />
go, 'No, I was looking at how uneven my pecs are,' although I know that in<br />
reality, they're, like, a nanometer off. And I have three friends who do exactly<br />
the same thing. <strong>The</strong>y look and they go, 'Look how uneven I am, man!' And I go:<br />
'What are you talking about! <strong>The</strong>y look pretty even to me.' It's not narcissism -it's<br />
lack of self-esteem."<br />
I'm not so worried about kids like Alexander -- he clearly has demonstrated both<br />
the discipline to remake his appearance and the psychological distance not to<br />
take it, or himself, too seriously. But there will be many other boys out there who<br />
cannot hope to match the impossibly raised bar of idealized male body image<br />
without resorting to the physically corrosive effects of steroids or the<br />
psychologically corrosive effects of self-doubt. Either way, the majority of boys<br />
will be diminished by chasing after the golden few.<br />
Moreover, this male preoccupation with appearance seems to herald a dubious,<br />
regressive form of equality -- now boys can become as psychologically and<br />
physically debilitated by body-image concerns as girls have been for decades.<br />
After all, this vast expenditure of teen-age male energy, both psychic and kinetic,<br />
is based on the premise that members of the opposite sex are attracted to a retro,<br />
rough-hewn, muscular look, and it's a premise that psychologists who study boys<br />
have noticed, too. "While girls and women say one thing, some of them continue<br />
to do another," Pollack says. "Some of them are still intrigued by the old male<br />
images, and are attracted to them."<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
Because he's a perceptive kid, Alexander recognizes how feckless, how<br />
disturbing, how crazy this all is. "I tell you, it's definitely distressing," he said,<br />
"the fact that as much as girls get this anorexic thing and they're going through<br />
these image things with dolls and stuff, guys are definitely doing the same."<br />
True, he admitted, his social life has never been better. "But in a way it depresses<br />
me," he said, before heading off to a party, "that I had to do this for people to get<br />
to know me."<br />
Table of Contents<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
THE TROUBLED LIFE OF BOYS<br />
<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
How the picked-on cope or don't. By ADRIAN NICOLE LEBLANC<br />
Photographs by JUSTINE PARSONS<br />
Tyler Snitko in his bedroom. Weight lifting and a few growth spurts made him a protector<br />
for bullied classmates.<br />
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White Oleander<br />
by Janet Fitch<br />
<strong>The</strong> Testament<br />
by John Grisham<br />
Business @ the Speed of<br />
Thought<br />
by Bill Gates<br />
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff<br />
by Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
he fight takes place in the bright light of adult view -- on a weekday<br />
afternoon, on a tree-lined residential street, within sight of the police station<br />
and a block from the middle school. <strong>The</strong> smaller boy, about 12, waits until<br />
there is a safe distance between himself and the other boy, about 13. <strong>The</strong>n he<br />
sends a curse. It lands. He waits. No response. He follows with a homophobic<br />
slur. His opponent -- a chubby boy nicknamed Sex Machine -- finally turns<br />
around.<br />
A freckled friend of Sex Machine's loops around him on his bicycle, lazily doing<br />
doughnuts. He prods Sex Machine chirpily: "You gonna take that? He's a punk!"<br />
Halfheartedly, Sex Machine blusters back a retort. More friends appear and<br />
cajole him, challenging him to at least pretend that he has nerve.<br />
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is writing a<br />
book about inner-city girls, due out<br />
next year.<br />
"C'mon, Sex Machine!" one shouts, then<br />
whispers to another, alarmed: "Look at him. He<br />
keeps backing up!"<br />
Whatever started the fight is irrelevant. <strong>The</strong> friends clamber up a nearby wire<br />
fence to get a good view, hyper spiders clinging to the mesh.<br />
Sex Machine is frightened. Despite his oversize T-shirt, you can see the rise and<br />
fall of his heaving chest. A man's voice chimes in and shouts encouragement to<br />
the smaller boy from the driveway.<br />
"That's his father!" a boy says. "Can you believe it? He's telling him to fight!"<br />
"That's not right," says a girl.<br />
Borrowing from the man's confidence, the smaller boy rushes forward and<br />
swings. Sex Machine stumbles backward as he tries to duck. A woman leans out<br />
from the second-floor window of a ranch house and says, "Come in, come in,"<br />
without sounding as though she means it, a weary Juliet.<br />
Sex Machine looks desperate, flailing his arms frantically, trying to flag down a<br />
car. Luckily, one stops. Apparently, it's his mother. All the tension and fear that<br />
his body has been holding bursts into punctuated sobs. He storms around the car<br />
to the passenger side. His freckled friend, who had been cheering within inches<br />
of the action, cycles over and dismounts to say goodbye. With all the fury raging<br />
inside him, Sex Machine bellows, "You didn't help me!" then shoves him to the<br />
ground.<br />
ntrim, <strong>New</strong> Hampshire, where the fight took place, is a long way away<br />
from Littleton, Colo., as well as from Conyers, Ga., where a 15-year-old<br />
boy shot six classmates at his high school in May. It is one of nine towns<br />
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Dr. Atkins <strong>New</strong> Diet Revolution<br />
by Robert C. Atkins, M.D.<br />
Under the Tuscan Sun<br />
by Frances Mayes<br />
All Too Human<br />
by George Stephanopoulos
<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
whose regional high school, ConVal, sits in Peterborough, N.H., the setting that<br />
inspired Thornton Wilder's "Our Town." But what it shares with those other<br />
places, and with countless others across the country, is a brutally enforced<br />
teen-age social structure.<br />
Below the<br />
popular kids, in a<br />
shifting order of<br />
relative<br />
unimportance,<br />
are the druggies,<br />
trendies,<br />
preppies,<br />
skateboarders,<br />
nerds and<br />
techies, wiggers,<br />
rednecks and<br />
Goths, better<br />
known as freaks.<br />
Real losers are<br />
invisible.<br />
Boys at the bottom of the pyramid use different<br />
strategies to cope -- turning inward and outward,<br />
sometimes in highly destructive ways. (<strong>The</strong>re has<br />
been a fivefold jump in the homicide and suicide<br />
rates of boys in the last 40 years, a rise some experts<br />
attribute to increasing male depression and anger as<br />
well as access to guns, among other factors.) Most<br />
boys live through it, suffer, survive. But the journey<br />
may be especially deadly now because, as the<br />
avalanche of new "male identity" literature<br />
demonstrates, the old prescriptions for behavior no<br />
longer hold, and the new ones are ambivalent.<br />
Today's young males may be feminism's children,<br />
but no one is comfortable with openhearted or<br />
vulnerable boys.<br />
ConVal is in some ways progressive. <strong>The</strong>re are<br />
about 900 students and an administration that<br />
consciously works to minimize the ultramacho<br />
sports culture that dominates many schools. Says<br />
Bob Marshall, the head of the social studies<br />
department, who founded the football program in<br />
1992: "We had to create a football culture. People<br />
didn't know when to cheer. We didn't even have a school song."<br />
Even so, the traditional hierarchies operate: the popular kids tend to be wealthier<br />
and the boys among them tend to be jocks. <strong>The</strong> Gap Girls-Tommy Girls-Polo<br />
Girls compose the pool of desirable girlfriends, many of whom are athletes as<br />
well. Below the popular kids, in a shifting order of relative unimportance, are the<br />
druggies (stoners, deadheads, burnouts, hippies or neo-hippies), trendies or<br />
Valley Girls, preppies, skateboarders and skateboarder chicks, nerds and techies,<br />
wiggers, rednecks and Goths, better known as freaks. <strong>The</strong>re are troublemakers,<br />
losers and floaters -- kids who move from group to group. Real losers are<br />
invisible.<br />
Bullying, here as elsewhere, is rampant. Even in small-town, supposedly safe<br />
environments like Peterborough, a 1994 study found, the vast majority of kids<br />
from middle school up are bullied by their peers. <strong>The</strong> shaming is sex-based, but<br />
the taunting is more intense for boys -- an average high-school student,<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
according to another study, hears 25 antigay slurs a day.<br />
To be an outcast boy is to be a "nonboy," to be feminine, to be weak. Bullies<br />
function as a kind of peer police enforcing the social code, and ConVal's freaks<br />
are accustomed to the daily onslaught. <strong>The</strong> revenge-of-the-nerds refrain -- which<br />
assures unpopular boys that if they only hold on through high school, the roster<br />
of winners will change -- does not question the hierarchy that puts the outcasts at<br />
risk. So boys survive by their stamina, sometimes by their fists, but mainly, if<br />
they're lucky, with the help of the family they've created among their friends.<br />
good day for Andrew, 14, occurs when R., a boy who torments him, is<br />
absent from school, like when he was suspended for ripping the hearing aid<br />
out of another classmate's ear. R., 15, weighs more than 200 pounds.<br />
Andrew, a small boy with straight, dirty-blond hair and glasses, takes care to<br />
note R.'s better days -- say, when Andrew helps him with an assignment, when<br />
he's in a good mood or distracted by harassing someone else.<br />
<strong>The</strong> trouble started long before the appearance of R. "First people harassed me<br />
because I was really smart," Andrew says, presenting the sequence as<br />
self-evident. "I read all the time. I read through math class." Back then, in middle<br />
school, he had the company of Tom Clancy and a best friend he could talk to<br />
about anything. He says things are better now; during school, he hangs out with<br />
the freaks. Yet the routine days he describes sound far from improvement -being<br />
body-slammed and shoved into chalkboards and dropped into trash cans<br />
headfirst. At a school dance, in the presence of chaperones and policemen, R.<br />
lifted Andrew and ripped a pocket off his pants. "One day I'll be a 'faggot,' the<br />
next day I'll be a 'retard,"' Andrew says. One girl who used to be his friend now<br />
sees him approaching and shouts, "Oh, get out of here, nobody wants you!"<br />
Andrew joined the cross-country team but the misery trailed him on the practice<br />
runs. He won't rejoin next year although he loves the sport. Recently he and<br />
some other boys were suspended for suspected use of drugs. According to<br />
Andrew, he used to earn straight A's; now he receives mostly C's and D's. He<br />
does not draw connections between the abuse and the changes in his life.<br />
He also does not expect help from the adults around him. He suspects they have<br />
their reasons -- some don't care, while others worry only about physical attack.<br />
When I point out that he's being physically attacked, he imagines that the<br />
teachers think it's horsing around, although he does wonder why the teachers can<br />
see the same kid pushing other kids every day and don't just tell the kid to stop.<br />
"Maybe have a talk with him or do something," he says. "One little push isn't<br />
that much, but when it's every day, it's something." He only wishes that someone<br />
had helped in middle school, before the contagion grew. "When it first starts to<br />
happen, there's definitely something you can do," he says. "But you can't turn a<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
whole school."<br />
Neither does Andrew tell his parents. He believes they think he is popular. "If I<br />
try to explain it to my parents," he says, "they'll say: 'Oh, but you have plenty of<br />
friends.' Oh, I don't think so. <strong>The</strong>y don't really get it." His outcast friends,<br />
however, do.<br />
One of them is Randy Tuck, a<br />
5-foot-4-inch sophomore with a<br />
thick head of hair and cheeks bright<br />
red with acne. He rescued Andrew<br />
from a "swirly" (two boys had him<br />
ankle up, and headed for the toilet<br />
bowl).<br />
Randy moved from Alaska to <strong>New</strong><br />
Hampshire almost three years ago.<br />
To his frustration, his classmates<br />
called him Eskimo Boy. Art is his<br />
solace, along with the occasional<br />
cigarette. He loves to draw. He used<br />
to sketch Ninja Turtles and now,<br />
with the help of an art teacher, he's<br />
studying anatomy. He associates Randy Tuck (pictured at home) sought refuge<br />
among the freaks, who, he says, are "friendly, but<br />
with the freaks during school mainly<br />
not welcoming."<br />
because they let him. He says,<br />
"<strong>The</strong>y are friendly, but not welcoming."<br />
Classmates debate with Randy about his atheism, but he refuses to believe a God<br />
could arrange a life as unlucky as his. Andrew blames himself. Randy says,<br />
"Andrew's vulnerable and small and weak and R. takes advantage of that."<br />
Randy utilizes "verbal bashing" as a defense, although he admits that its powers<br />
don't prevent physical attack. R. surprised him one day in the hallway. He passed<br />
Randy, then turned around and punched him in the spine. But Randy also notes<br />
that R. can be funny. "When he's not in a bad mood, he can be very<br />
entertaining."<br />
Andrew says that the ostracizing "does build up inside. Sometimes you might get<br />
really mad at something that doesn't matter a lot, kinda like the last straw." He<br />
could understand the Columbine killers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, if their<br />
misery had shown no signs of ending, but Andrew remains an optimist. After all,<br />
there are some people who have no friends. "Things are not going up really fast,<br />
but they are getting better," he says. "I might have a week where they get worse,<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
but overall they are getting better, definitely."<br />
he quips ricochet around the bedroom like friendly-fire darts. Myles<br />
Forrest, 16, a sophomore with baby fat and sweet eyes, is one of George<br />
Farley's closer friends. George, also 16, is a floater. He has set up camp<br />
with ConVal's freaks for now. George sees weakness everywhere -- in women<br />
who look for milk cartons with the latest expiration date at the store where he<br />
works; in the unemployed drunk who receives an allowance from his working<br />
wife; in white girls who think they are cool because they date guys who are<br />
black. Softness arouses his contempt. He is no more gentle with himself. <strong>The</strong><br />
volleying with Myles, who wears his Y2K T-shirt -- "01-01-00" -- relieves<br />
George of the clearly burdensome obligation of having so much edge.<br />
"<strong>The</strong> end of Myles's life," George starts.<br />
"<strong>The</strong> end of life as we know it," Myles says. <strong>The</strong> phone rings. George lifts the<br />
receiver. "Myles Forrest, loser," he announces, and so the afternoon begins.<br />
Myles and George provide sustenance between insults. Myles fiddles with his<br />
computer -- one of two -- as George peers out over the street. "What's up with<br />
the dress?" George asks, spotting an exchange student from ConVal.<br />
"What? He's Hindu," says Myles.<br />
"I said, What's up with the dress?"<br />
"It's like a cult thing," Myles says, somewhat sharply.<br />
"That's a dress," George says, losing steam.<br />
"It's like a cult thing. It's like a kilt."<br />
"You know I'm messing with you, don't go getting all politically correct with<br />
me." (Later on, Myles will explain the theory of equal-opportunity hatred: "You<br />
ever notice that you can't hate a particular group, but if you generally hate<br />
everybody nobody seems to mind?") <strong>The</strong> sarcasm slows when the Quake<br />
competition begins.<br />
It strikes me as I watch them in front of the famously violent video game that it<br />
is one way for the boys to enjoy closeness without it being threatening. <strong>The</strong><br />
violence of the game, the state-of-siege mentality, the technical expertise<br />
required, supplant the macho expectations and give the boys a rest from the<br />
relentless one-upmanship. Rather than insult each other, they can attack the<br />
game. Soon enough, they are allies in the search for snacks, rushing down the<br />
stairs. <strong>The</strong>y amble past the locked gun case behind the door leading through the<br />
playroom, to the kitchen. George sticks his head in the fridge.<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
"How about some of these worms?" he asks, holding a baggie of bait. "Fishing is<br />
like alcoholism. It's an excuse to drink. Or maybe they're trying to level the<br />
playing field. How hard can it be to outsmart a fish?"<br />
"Catching it is kinda fun --" Myles tries.<br />
"Now ice fishing -- alcoholism in the extreme," George continues. "Cold, boring,<br />
worry about falling through the ice. Hey, my girlfriend dumped me. She dumped<br />
my slacker [expletive]."<br />
"I thought you were gonna give her the --" Myles tries.<br />
"Yeah, but she surprised me."<br />
"Irony of ironies. So, technically, you're the loser."<br />
"Shut up," George says, sounding sad.<br />
Toffer survived<br />
the solitary years<br />
by not showing<br />
emotion. 'I didn't<br />
like myself<br />
because I didn't<br />
have anything,'<br />
he says flatly.<br />
'No athletics, no<br />
grades. <strong>The</strong> only<br />
thing that kept<br />
me going was<br />
that I hated them<br />
more than I<br />
hated myself.'<br />
"To the winner goes all the spoils of war," Myles<br />
appeals.<br />
"Shut up," George says, relocating to the sun room.<br />
He lifts Fido, Myles's lizard.<br />
"Watch out, George," Myles says protectively.<br />
George presses Fido into the aquarium to make the<br />
wood chips fly.<br />
"That's cruel, stop it," Myles says, retrieving his<br />
lizard, as George moves on to his lectern, the<br />
Stairmaster.<br />
"That cat is wishing for a tail," George says,<br />
observing Myles's tailless cat.<br />
"To the victor goes the spoils of war," Myles sighs,<br />
mock ruefully.<br />
"Stop defending your tailless cat," says George.<br />
"Anyways, so Colleen broke up with me."<br />
"You already told me that," Myles says. He glances<br />
at his buddy. "I thought that's what you wanted."<br />
"I did," George says, sounding far from sure. Now that he has been rendered<br />
single, what will come of the flirtation he lost his girlfriend for?<br />
<strong>The</strong> new girl, a computer skateboarder chick, likes to spar. George says, "We're<br />
both the same person, but it's hard when you have two sarcastic people making<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
fun of each other, and then they get worse and worse until --"<br />
"Until there's no place you can go," Myles says knowingly.<br />
"Shut up, you slack [expletive]," George says, knowing, too.<br />
een-agers find heroes among their friends. Tyler Snitko, 17, pulls other<br />
outcasts in, functioning as a kind of human insulation for the freaks. To<br />
each taunt he quips, "Thank you." He booms, "<strong>The</strong>se are my people,"<br />
opening his arms, his fingernails polished black, to embrace his fellow freaks at<br />
lunch time in what has been labeled Mutant Hall. In the presence of someone<br />
like Tyler, more vulnerable teen-agers are less likely to be picked on, and they<br />
intuitively know this.<br />
Tyler's hero is his grandfather. Not only did the old man give him advice that he<br />
often quotes ("Sometimes there are going to be rat bastards in life, and you have<br />
to deal with them"), but he also backed up the talk with action: he gave Tyler his<br />
first set of weights.<br />
Tyler kept his strategy secret, taking long, midnight runs because he did not want<br />
to jeopardize his affiliation with the freaks, who were supposed to be "all skinny<br />
and pale." He soon discovered that his best friend, Toffer, 17, studied jujitsu to<br />
control the anger building in himself.<br />
Toffer knew what it was like to be excluded. His isolation began in elementary<br />
school, and only in high school, through his friendship with Tyler and with his<br />
girlfriend, Anne Baker, did the fog begin to lift. Through the worst of the<br />
ostracization, the boys had each other. Says Tyler: "Other people turned me<br />
away, like I'd bring the whole house down. He stood by me."<br />
Toffer, whose name is Christopher<br />
Eppig, is a senior who looks very<br />
much like Jesus. He survived the<br />
solitary years by not showing<br />
emotion. He shows very little<br />
emotion now. "I think it was the fact<br />
that I couldn't completely control<br />
myself that scared me," he says<br />
flatly. "I didn't like myself because I<br />
didn't have anything. No athletics,<br />
no grades. <strong>The</strong> only thing that kept<br />
me going was that I hated them<br />
more than I hated myself.<br />
Toffer (Christopher Eppig) in the blacksmith<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
"Before, all I knew was what people<br />
were telling me about myself, and it<br />
wasn't a positive image, and I wasn't<br />
shed in his backyard. He manages his anger<br />
largely through jujitsu.<br />
interested in who I was," he continues. "Jujitsu gave me something else that I<br />
was, that was better and more believable."<br />
<strong>The</strong> friendship with Tyler created elbow room. <strong>The</strong>y joined the wrestling team.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y formed a band named Gawd. It helps that Tyler's parents encourage his use<br />
of their renovated colonial as a social center, and that his dad quit his job as an<br />
executive to stay home full time. His parents call the arrangement a luxury, a<br />
decision they made around the time when Tyler's mother was promoted to<br />
assistant principal of a middle school. <strong>The</strong>n Tyler had the great good fortune of<br />
several growing spurts, which, at last measure, topped six feet to match the<br />
hard-earned bulk.<br />
His upbeat personality may defuse hostility, but his physical presence is a moat.<br />
A friend who has known Tyler since childhood, who will only give his on-line<br />
name, Bladerunner, says: "He is just really nice and he sticks up for people."<br />
Bladerunner, 17, has had his own troubles. A boy he'd met in the hospital after a<br />
suicide attempt wanted to beat him up, and for months, the tranquil <strong>New</strong><br />
Hampshire town became a minefield for him. Bladerunner stopped visiting the<br />
park and dreaded school. <strong>The</strong> restaurant where he washes dishes was the only<br />
place he anticipated with some pleasure because his boss treats him "like a<br />
person." Otherwise, he met Tyler at the Incubator, a room where students go<br />
when they have a free period. <strong>The</strong>y would get passes to the weight-lifting room.<br />
Bladerunner didn't stick with the weights, but it mattered that Tyler encouraged<br />
him. Recently, Tyler invited Bladerunner to be a vocalist for Gawd. "I realized I<br />
was walking around people on eggshells, because I'm always afraid of what's<br />
going to happen to me, or what people are going to think," Bladerunner says. "I<br />
am going to try to take what I am afraid of and look it in the face, as much as it<br />
might physically hurt."<br />
Even as it helps in the day-to-day of high school, bodily renovation perpetuates<br />
the hierarchy. Bulking up -- or being near someone who does -- just means the<br />
pyramid starts lower down. Tyler sees similarities between R. and himself: "He<br />
gets respected because he throws his weight around. I get respected because I<br />
don't have to." He also recognizes how the pressure to prove his masculinity<br />
drove him to objectify girls. "I treated my girlfriends really bad," he says. "I<br />
admit it. I was like, Oh, there's a pair of boobs, I'll go stand next to it. I think I'll<br />
go talk to it."<br />
Of course, trivializing girls is a most likely result of a pecking order in which<br />
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<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
girls represent "femininity," the perceived threat to conventional masculinity, the<br />
mix of which leaves boys so confused these days. <strong>The</strong> fear of feminizing boys is<br />
embedded in the hierarchy of the social cliques: winner-loser, popular-outcast,<br />
boy-girl. "This fear of sissifying boys," says Olga Silverstein, author of "<strong>The</strong><br />
Courage to Raise Good Men," "I think it's going to be the last prejudice to go."<br />
he danger signs are everywhere, but only if you want to see. Banning<br />
trench coats, installing metal detectors and security guards -- the quick-fix<br />
solutions to the problem of seemingly rampant boy violence -- "becomes a<br />
weird kind of McCarthyism," says Russell Novotny, a 1999 ConVal graduate.<br />
"<strong>The</strong> only way to get kids not to hurt each other is to get kids not to want to hurt<br />
each other," a process he compares to a road. "It's the whole little-step thing.<br />
You take a little step and suddenly you are in the woods. How did I get here? We<br />
are so far into the woods. For every mile you walk, you have to walk a mile<br />
back. You can't look too far ahead or you trip over what's in front of you." Or<br />
you look at what's in front of you, a boy like J., and you don't really see him.<br />
J., who doesn't want his name to be used, ranks as a loser. He finds temporary<br />
refuge with the burnouts, but his precarious welcome depends upon their mood<br />
and whether or not he has weed. His greatest flaw seems to be his willingness to<br />
try anything to fit in.<br />
"That kid does whatever you tell him to do," says Josh Guide, a classmate. Past<br />
instructions are rumored to include wading knee-high in a running brook, with<br />
his sneakers and socks on, fetching sticks. He doesn't fight back when people<br />
shake him down for money. He claims to get high when a classmate sells him<br />
oregano with chives. He falls off his bicycle when the other boys are done using<br />
it and ignores the bleeding, which, during a game of basketball, stains another<br />
boy's new Tommy Hilfiger shirt.<br />
"Now I have AIDS," the boy says, disgusted. J.'s distress is so apparent that the<br />
boy says, "I'm kidding," but his hostility is clear. This particular afternoon, J.,<br />
who has ragged black hair and a crumpling smile, opens his mouth as if to speak,<br />
but doesn't. He saves his mouth for his teachers.<br />
<strong>The</strong> week after the shootings in Littleton, Colo., ConVal High School held an<br />
assembly about school safety. J. recounts what happened in his class next period.<br />
"I said, 'I wish those kids would come over here and blow away the teachers,"'<br />
especially an assistant principal, with whom J. had a long history. J. says, "I am<br />
always in trouble, every day, for my attitude."<br />
According to J., the classroom teacher said, "I'm kind of concerned about you."<br />
"Nothing to be concerned about," J. replied. "Everyone hates him anyway."<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-boys-social-coping.html (10 of 13) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:18:<strong>22</strong> PM]
<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
"Do you want to go to the office?" she asked.<br />
"Hell, no," he said. <strong>The</strong>n she sent him there.<br />
Ordinarily, J. would have been sent home for cursing. He knew the drill. This<br />
time, however, he waited for the Peterborough police, who, he says, searched his<br />
knapsack and escorted him to the station, where he was charged in juvenile court<br />
with disorderly conduct. (ConVal officials cannot comment on J.'s case because<br />
he is a juvenile and because it is pending.)<br />
That night, the police appeared at the homes of members of J.'s family with a<br />
search warrant and collected handguns and sporting rifles. <strong>The</strong> next day, news<br />
cameras greeted ConVal students in the parking lot. <strong>The</strong> print media continued<br />
the story, and J. became known as a copycat in a wider world. "It's retarded," he<br />
says. "I shouldn't have got in trouble. If it was some good kid that did it, they<br />
wouldn't have gotten in trouble." Many students feel that the administration<br />
overreacted, less because of Columbine than for the fact that even if he had<br />
meant what he said, he was an unlikely candidate to carry out that particular kind<br />
of plan. Says one parent, sighing, summing up a typical adult response, "That's<br />
just J. being J. again."<br />
Being J., according to J., is as inevitable as his difficulty in school, which he<br />
compares to his unhappiness in his family life. He says: "I try not to spend much<br />
time at home. It's like I'm a failure. My sister is a straight-A student and<br />
everything." He doesn't get along with his stepfather. Right now, his relationship<br />
with his mother isn't good. "Whenever I get in trouble, she yells at me for 10<br />
minutes, then she stops," J. says. "<strong>The</strong>y yell nonstop, then they forget what they<br />
are yelling for. <strong>The</strong>y don't even punish me. It's like a habit with them."<br />
J. spends his days watching television. In the afternoons, he goes to the nearby<br />
basketball court. His mother tracks him down. (She declined to comment for this<br />
story.) J. says, "<strong>The</strong>n she yells at me all the way home, then I fall asleep and get<br />
up and do it all over again."<br />
More upsetting to J. than his threat to an assistant principal -- and more<br />
memorable to many ConVal students -- was an event for which he was<br />
suspended earlier. He stepped into a bathroom to smoke a joint. It wasn't getting<br />
high, or even getting high during school, that was so problematic to the other<br />
students, but that he had selected a bathroom without ventilation that led directly<br />
into the hall where a teacher stood. J. heard the teacher but still kept smoking. "I<br />
just finished cuz I knew I was gonna get caught," he says.<br />
"How stupid can you get?" George asks. "He just proved to everyone that he's<br />
the [expletive] everyone thinks he is."<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-boys-social-coping.html (11 of 13) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:18:23 PM]
<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
Andrew ventures, "Not to be mean to J., but that's plain old stupid."<br />
Even Tyler, who tried to defend what was left of J.'s eroding reputation, admits:<br />
"That was the stupidest thing I ever heard of. I don't even know why I tried to<br />
protect that kid."<br />
Drugs -- at least temporarily -- blur the social lines. Boys and girls from different<br />
groups get high together; says George: "Polar opposites -- they are bound<br />
together by drugs." James Key-Wallace, a 1999 graduate, attributes the social<br />
leveling to limited distribution: "<strong>The</strong> drugs come from the same half-dozen<br />
sources. You're going to come in contact on grounds that demand respect." Says<br />
Hayden Draper, who also just graduated: "Popular kids do drugs. Unpopular kids<br />
do drugs. Everyone has their own place to get high." J., however, was all alone.<br />
Since Columbine, the Safe School Committee at ConVal has undergone a<br />
renaissance. <strong>The</strong> Peterborough police have stationed an officer at the entrance.<br />
But many of the students believe that a shooting spree like that of Klebold and<br />
Harris's could happen anywhere. Says Toffer: "It certainly didn't happen because<br />
of the lack of a safe-school committee. <strong>The</strong>ir problem was, they weren't<br />
accepted, and they weren't going to be accepted, and that's the way that our<br />
society is. <strong>The</strong>re are always people that are going to be cast out and people that<br />
are cast in."<br />
Colleen, George's ex, a slim girl with short straight hair and an easy smile, grew<br />
up down the street from J. He's generally annoying, she says. He used to sing<br />
Christmas carols on the bus in June, but he is not cruel. Everyone, she says, has<br />
their days. What J. hates is people talking down to him, so she takes care not to<br />
do that. She feels the same way when people talk down to her because she is a<br />
girl. "<strong>The</strong>re are times I can talk to him about things, without it being weird and<br />
without him being a pervert," she says. It's all relative. When you are close to the<br />
bottom, there's not much room left to fit. She recalls J. at his happiest during a<br />
class he described to her, in the high school's on-site preschool, how content he<br />
felt playing among the little kids.<br />
Table of Contents<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-boys-social-coping.html (12 of 13) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:18:23 PM]
<strong>The</strong> Outsiders<br />
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>Sunday</strong>, June 6, 1999<br />
<strong>The</strong> story of the last 1,000 years can be told as a series<br />
of great adventures: Marco Polo to China, Columbus to<br />
the <strong>New</strong> World, Lewis and Clark to the Pacific, Darwin<br />
to the Galapagos. Adventure is as old as Homer, but<br />
plunging into the unknown in quest of knowledge is the<br />
special legacy of this millennium -- one that began with<br />
Leif Ericsson and ends with a robot on Mars. Where<br />
must the explorer go now to find terra incognita?<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Times</strong><br />
Capsule<br />
Submit your<br />
ideas for our<br />
1000-year<br />
project.<br />
Audio Special:<br />
<strong>The</strong> Art of<br />
Adventure<br />
Writing<br />
Listen to authors<br />
and actors read<br />
adventure<br />
literature.<br />
Crossword Puzzle<br />
With two sets of<br />
clues.<br />
Forum<br />
Join a discussion on<br />
adventure.<br />
In <strong>The</strong> Same Boat<br />
A journey in which the author confronts a difficult<br />
truth about himself -- and the limits of thinking in<br />
black and white. By Richard Ford<br />
Black Like Huck<br />
Revisiting Twain in the age of Oprah. By Stanley<br />
Crouch<br />
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Novelist Pat Conroy<br />
Responds<br />
Why We Go<br />
Even a modest adventure can reinvent the world<br />
-- and our place in it. By Andrea Barrett<br />
1492: <strong>The</strong> Prequel<br />
Decades before Columbus, Zheng He sailed from<br />
China with 300 ships and 28,000 men. His fleet<br />
got as far as Africa and could have easily reached<br />
America, but the Chinese turned back. What<br />
happened? By Nicholas D. Kristof<br />
AUDIO SPECIAL: Interview With Nicholas Kristof<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/millennium/m3/index.html (1 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:21:00 PM]<br />
On Language<br />
Adventurer<br />
By William Safire<br />
<strong>The</strong>y Lived to Tell<br />
the Tale<br />
By Annie Proulx<br />
SLIDE SHOW: An<br />
Adventurer's Scrapbook<br />
Crazy for<br />
Adventure<br />
By Brad Wetzler<br />
<strong>The</strong> Wanderjahrs<br />
By Lesley Downer
<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>Sunday</strong>, June 6, 1999<br />
Letters<br />
From the June 27<br />
issue of the<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong>.<br />
THE MILLENNIUM<br />
ISSUES<br />
Women: <strong>The</strong><br />
Shadow Story of<br />
the Millennium<br />
Faith, fertility,<br />
politics, imagery,<br />
sex, irritation and<br />
hope.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Best of the<br />
Last 1,000 Years<br />
Best Stories, Best<br />
Inventions, Best<br />
Ideas. <strong>The</strong> first of<br />
the six special<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> issues.<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Cover<br />
What <strong>The</strong>y Carried<br />
Forget Gore-Tex and polar fleece. For most of this<br />
millennium, all an explorer needed was a<br />
compass, a buckskin jacket and a plate of lichen.<br />
By David E. Brown<br />
On the Road With God's Fool<br />
How St. Francis lost everything and found his<br />
way. By Gretel Ehrlich<br />
SLIDE SHOW: St. Francis of Assisi<br />
Points of No Return<br />
Mapping the millennium: <strong>The</strong> globe is dotted with<br />
posthumous reminders that adventure is risky<br />
business. By Stephen Mihm<br />
Under the Tongue of the Ocean<br />
A novelist sent to the bottom of the sea finds<br />
illumination in the darkest of places.<br />
By Robert Stone<br />
VIDEO: Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution<br />
SLIDE SHOW: On the Dive<br />
Only on the Web<br />
Hubble's Human Brain<br />
A novelist sent to explore the cosmos meets the<br />
people behind the telescope. By Bruce Duffy<br />
VIDEO: Animations From the Hubble Telescope<br />
Overheard at the Explorer's Club<br />
A cartoon by Stan Mack.<br />
Not Because It's <strong>The</strong>re<br />
It took admiring climbers like Petrarch and<br />
Cèzanne to put mountains on the map.<br />
By Michael Kimmelman<br />
SLIDE SHOW: Cézanne's Ste.-Victoire<br />
Journey to the Center of My<br />
Mind<br />
Brain scans can locate the home of memory and<br />
the land of language. <strong>The</strong>y may eventually help to<br />
map consciousness. By Stephen Hall<br />
AUDIO SPECIAL: An Interview With Stephen Hall<br />
One if by Land, Two if by Sea,<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/millennium/m3/index.html (2 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:21:00 PM]<br />
contemplation.com<br />
By Pico Iyer<br />
Style<br />
Have Duvet, Will<br />
Travel<br />
Whether her<br />
destination is<br />
Marrakech or Mars,<br />
the woman of the<br />
future is a creature<br />
of comfort.<br />
Photographs by<br />
Warwick Saint<br />
Food<br />
Going to Extremes<br />
Toungue torturers<br />
and palate<br />
educators. By Molly<br />
O'Neill<br />
Endpaper<br />
Bad Trips<br />
A log of explorers<br />
who should have<br />
stayed in bed that<br />
day. By John Tierney<br />
Adventure Quotes
<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>Sunday</strong>, June 6, 1999<br />
Three if by Rollerblade. ...<br />
It's not enough for modern-day athletes to run,<br />
sail, kayak, orienteer, climb, swim and paddle<br />
their way in adventure competitions. Now they<br />
have to relate to the natives too. Text by Edward<br />
Zuckerman<br />
A Nigerian Discovers America<br />
Back home, Murphy Popoola couldn't get even a<br />
small loan. In Houston, his hopes are already<br />
rising, perhaps even for Popoola Special Breeds.<br />
By Roger Cohen<br />
Found in the Woods<br />
You can still visit a patch of the<br />
forest primeval, in the Bronx.<br />
Just don't take a cell phone, and<br />
watch out for skunks.<br />
By Charles Siebert<br />
AUDIO SPECIAL: One Minute in<br />
the Forest<br />
MULTIMEDIA SLIDE SHOW: Fernando Pessoa's<br />
Poem #47<br />
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>Sunday</strong>, April 18, 1999<br />
Best of the First<br />
Millennium<br />
By Felipe<br />
Fernández-Armesto<br />
Best Time to Be<br />
Alive<br />
Moderated by<br />
Russell Baker<br />
Best Speech<br />
By William Safire<br />
Games<br />
Crossword<br />
Puzzle<br />
With two sets of<br />
clues<br />
Faces of the<br />
Millennium<br />
A Photo Gallery<br />
and quiz<br />
Forum<br />
<strong>The</strong> Best of the<br />
Millennium<br />
Join the discussion<br />
Introduction<br />
Why the Best?<br />
By Frank Rich<br />
Video<br />
Eyes Wide<br />
Open<br />
By Richard<br />
Powers<br />
Every Dictator's<br />
Nightmare<br />
By Wole Soyinka<br />
When Tristram<br />
Met Isolde<br />
By Joyce Carol<br />
Oates<br />
Best Magic<br />
Trick<br />
By Teller<br />
Video<br />
Best Feat of<br />
Engineering<br />
By David<br />
Macaulay<br />
Best Nuisance<br />
By Penelope<br />
Fitzgerald<br />
Best Innovation<br />
in Painting<br />
By Michael<br />
Kimmelman<br />
Slide Show<br />
Best Vision<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Times</strong> Capsule<br />
Submit your ideas for <strong>The</strong> <strong>Times</strong><br />
<strong>Magazine</strong>'s 1000-year project.<br />
Narrate or Die<br />
By A.S. Byatt<br />
Audio<br />
<strong>The</strong> Book That<br />
Killed Colonialism<br />
By Pramoedya<br />
Ananta Toer<br />
Morality Bites<br />
By Elmore Leonard<br />
Best Love Song<br />
By Lorrie Moore<br />
Audio<br />
Best Pope<br />
By A.N. Wilson<br />
Best Sex Scandal<br />
By Josephine Hart<br />
Best Trial<br />
By Scott Turow<br />
Best View of the<br />
World<br />
By Charles Johnson<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/millennium/m1/index.html (1 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:23:21 PM]<br />
Everything in<br />
Its Place<br />
By Oliver Sacks<br />
How the Bean<br />
Saved<br />
Civilization<br />
By Umberto Eco<br />
Invention Is<br />
the Mother of<br />
Necessity<br />
By Jared<br />
Diamond<br />
Best Piano<br />
Composition<br />
By Charles Rosen<br />
Audio<br />
Best Ergonomic<br />
Design<br />
By David<br />
Gelernter<br />
Slide Show<br />
Best Tool<br />
By Witold<br />
Rybczynski<br />
Best Stage<br />
Comedy<br />
By David Lodge<br />
Best Mistake
<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>Sunday</strong>, April 18, 1999<br />
Best Herb<br />
By Molly O'Neill<br />
Best Question<br />
By Dennis Overbye<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong> Cover<br />
Letters<br />
From the May 9<br />
issue of the<br />
<strong>Magazine</strong>.<br />
Image Credits<br />
By James Gleick<br />
Slide Show<br />
Best Species<br />
By Edward O.<br />
Wilson<br />
Best Building<br />
By Herbert<br />
Muschamp<br />
Best Shot<br />
By Charles<br />
McGrath<br />
Best<br />
Punctuation<br />
By Alberto<br />
Manguel<br />
Best Utopia<br />
By Margaret<br />
Atwood<br />
Best Port<br />
By Jan Morris<br />
Slide Show<br />
Best Leader<br />
By Gail Collins<br />
Best Escape<br />
By David Fromkin<br />
Best Treaty<br />
By Fareed<br />
Zakaria<br />
Best Clown<br />
By Wendy<br />
Wasserstein<br />
Best Lawyer<br />
By Bernhard<br />
Schlink<br />
Best Sermon<br />
By Peter J.<br />
Gomes<br />
Audio<br />
Map<br />
Best Revolution<br />
By Alan Brinkley<br />
Best Toy<br />
By Stephen Mihm<br />
Best Land Deal<br />
By Ron Chernow<br />
Best Town Square<br />
By Vincent Scully<br />
Best Naval Battle<br />
By Patrick O'Brian<br />
Best Fable<br />
By Marina Warner<br />
Best Musical<br />
Instrument<br />
By Leon Botstein<br />
Audio<br />
Best Poem<br />
By Helen Vendler<br />
Best Come-From-<br />
Behind Victory<br />
By Keith Olbermann<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/millennium/m1/index.html (2 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:23:21 PM]<br />
By John Lukacs<br />
Best Medical<br />
Insight<br />
By Jerome<br />
Groopman<br />
Best of Breed<br />
By Caroline<br />
Knapp<br />
Best Meal<br />
By Ruth Reichl<br />
Best Deception<br />
By John Julius<br />
Norwich<br />
Best Garden<br />
By W.S. Merwin<br />
Best Battle<br />
By R.W. Apple Jr.<br />
Best Game<br />
By Paul Auster<br />
Best Fashion<br />
By Alison Lurie
<strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> <strong>Times</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>Sunday</strong>, April 18, 1999<br />
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Letters<br />
Letters<br />
<strong>The</strong>re were no undecideds in the Rudy Giuliani mail. <strong>New</strong><br />
<strong>York</strong>ers were either all for the Mayor's possible Senate bid or<br />
all against it, with the ayes edging out the nays. On the<br />
sex-selection front, reactions remained strong. Writers were<br />
less critical of the medical procedure than of what many<br />
regarded as parents' selfish motives.<br />
THE MAYOR'S MAKEOVER<br />
James Traub (Aug. 1) mixes an odd<br />
cocktail in trying to define Rudy Giuliani's<br />
strengths as weaknesses. Perhaps more<br />
remarkable, however, is the theme that the<br />
Mayor may have too strong a personality<br />
and set of beliefs for the Senate. It is<br />
frightening to read that our nation may no<br />
longer seek charismatic and virtuous<br />
leaders.<br />
Giuliani has already given much -- not just<br />
to <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> City but also to the country,<br />
in the policies and strategies that have<br />
become the accepted paradigms for urban Photograph by Jake Chessum<br />
renewal and recovery. That he is willing to<br />
accept the mantle of broader office is another sign of his strength, and one we<br />
should rush to embrace.<br />
MICHAEL OFFIT<br />
<strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong><br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-letters.html (1 of 5) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:25:13 PM]<br />
White Oleander<br />
by Janet Fitch<br />
<strong>The</strong> Testament<br />
by John Grisham<br />
Business @ the Speed of<br />
Thought<br />
by Bill Gates<br />
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff<br />
by Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
Letters<br />
If, in James Traub's deft phrase, the "Mayor does seem to lack some of the<br />
typical furniture of the human personality," surely the furniture most<br />
exasperatingly absent is anything upholstered with recognizable human empathy.<br />
This isn't merely to criticize his style; there's something far more troubling in his<br />
lawyerly reactions than in his often blunt choice of words -- some essential grasp<br />
of human nature seems to be missing.<br />
GUY KETTELHACK<br />
<strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong><br />
It is ironic that an article about Rudy Giuliani, whose very claim to fame was his<br />
crackdown on organized crime, should include Mafia terms like "consigliere"<br />
and "caporegime" in describing members of his staff.<br />
ROBERT J. DYM<br />
Brooklyn<br />
<strong>The</strong> Mayor does not need a makeover! He is what he is: an honest, intelligent<br />
public servant. Like him or not, he has made <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> City a place that people<br />
want to come back to.<br />
ROSE M. FACELLE<br />
White Plains<br />
Traub's article contained a secondhand quote from Rudolph Giuliani calling me a<br />
liar. <strong>The</strong> supposed quote, from an unidentified confidant of the Mayor's, had<br />
Giuliani talking about plans we made for a parade celebrating the Police<br />
Department's 150th anniversary. <strong>The</strong> article quoted Giuliani, secondhand, as<br />
saying, "That's the last time he'll ever lie to me," a rather broad accusation.<br />
I take strong objection to this characterization. I never lied to the Mayor about<br />
this event or any other. Despite their public denials at the time, the Mayor and<br />
his counsel, Dennison Young, were given a full briefing on the plans for the<br />
parade in my conference room at Police Headquarters. After that meeting, there<br />
was continued contact with the Mayor's aides about the project.<br />
WILLIAM J. BRATTON<br />
<strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong><br />
WHO'S AFRAID OF CHINA?<br />
In his highly informative article (Aug. 1), Patrick E. Tyler described how he<br />
broke out of house arrest in an obscure Chinese town, how he ran along a<br />
highway until a motorist picked him up, dropping him off eight hours later at<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-letters.html (2 of 5) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:25:13 PM]<br />
Dr. Atkins <strong>New</strong> Diet Revolution<br />
by Robert C. Atkins, M.D.<br />
Under the Tuscan Sun<br />
by Frances Mayes<br />
All Too Human<br />
by George Stephanopoulos
Letters<br />
another remote spot, and how he caught the last flight to Beijing to cover the<br />
death of Deng Xiaoping.<br />
Is that the way things are in that notorious police state? A Western journalist can<br />
skip out of police custody and freely find his way back to the nation's capital,<br />
thousands of miles away? Some police state!<br />
JOSEPH D. POLICANO<br />
East Hampton, N.Y.<br />
Tyler's point that 1.3 billion Chinese want only to develop their economy would<br />
be more reassuring if ordinary Chinese citizens were able to shape their country's<br />
foreign and defense policies. <strong>The</strong> Chinese Government's recent record<br />
demonstrates its intent to increase its power in order to challenge America's<br />
influence in Asia.<br />
<strong>The</strong> correct response to China's rise as a superpower is neither the fear that Tyler<br />
discounts nor the complaisant optimism he advocates. Instead, the United States<br />
should meet the challenge by defending its values and by strengthening its<br />
alliances in Asia.<br />
FRANK LECHNER<br />
Atlanta<br />
THE TRUMAN SHOW<br />
James Truman says he doesn't get good press, and he's right (Alex Kuczynski,<br />
Aug. 1). He has come twice to the <strong>New</strong> School to talk to students in my<br />
journalism classes. <strong>The</strong> last time he had just got off a plane and was jet lagged.<br />
We offered to reschedule, but he did not want to disappoint the students. In his<br />
first lecture, he talked about query letters, how to try to specialize in a subject<br />
and how to work with editors. He was kind, attentive and spoke clearly on the<br />
business of freelance writing. On the second occasion, his office phoned and<br />
asked whether your reporter might attend. She was there for several hours<br />
listening to Truman giving advice and encouragement. Yet not a minute was<br />
mentioned in your article.<br />
ELISABETTA DI CAGNO<br />
<strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong><br />
ROBOKITTY<br />
Nicholas D. Kristof's article (Aug. 1) scared the bejesus out of me. It paints<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-letters.html (3 of 5) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:25:13 PM]
Letters<br />
Hugo de Garis as a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein. What made this article more<br />
nightmarish than Mary Shelley's story was the potential for these machines to<br />
surpass humans and the possibility that they may eventually turn on us.<br />
LEONARD KAPLAN<br />
Brookline, Mass.<br />
GETTING THE GIRL<br />
Lisa Belkin's article (July 25) on medical advances in sex preselection was astute<br />
and gripping. I was less concerned by ethical issues than by the women<br />
interviewed, who were in such a collective froth to conceive babies with the right<br />
chromosomes. (Interestingly, the husbands were indifferent on the matter.) "It<br />
was like I was robbed of my little girlyhood," said one woman.<br />
NELL BERAM<br />
Cambridge, Mass.<br />
Wishing for a girl is one thing, but being obsessed is another. Yet I do<br />
sympathize. When I was pregnant with my second child (and I knew it would be<br />
my last), I learned during the ultrasound that I was going to have another boy.<br />
Disappointed, I went home, allowed myself a few tears and then gave thanks that<br />
by all accounts my child was healthy. Not all parents receive such good news.<br />
BARBARA REITZ<br />
Hampton, N.J.<br />
Letters should be addressed to Letters to the Editor, <strong>Magazine</strong>, <strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong><br />
<strong>Times</strong>, <strong>22</strong>9 West 43d Street, <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong>, N.Y. 10036. <strong>The</strong> E-mail address is<br />
magazine@nytimes.com. All letters should include the writer's name, address<br />
and daytime telephone number. We are unable to acknowledge or return<br />
unpublished letters. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.<br />
Table of Contents<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-letters.html (4 of 5) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:25:13 PM]
Letters<br />
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Page One Plus<br />
<strong>Sunday</strong>, <strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
ON THE FRONT PAGE<br />
States Criticized on Lax Lead Tests for<br />
Poor Youths<br />
By ROBERT PEAR<br />
Federal investigators say most states are flouting a 1989<br />
law requiring that young children on Medicaid be tested<br />
for lead poisoning. As a result, they say, hundreds of<br />
thousands of children exposed to dangerously high<br />
levels of lead are neither tested nor treated.<br />
2 Lives, Again Entwined, Mirror the<br />
Fate of Berlin<br />
By ROGER COHEN<br />
This is a normal German story -- one of loss, division<br />
and elusive reconciliation -- a tale of two women tossed<br />
this way and that by the traumas of their city and their<br />
country.<br />
Sidelined for Days, Turkey's Army Joins<br />
Rescue<br />
By STEPHEN KINZER<br />
With victims complaining bitterly about a lack of<br />
government authority to help them recover from<br />
Tuesday's shattering earthquake, the Turkish army<br />
entered the rescue and cleanup effort Saturday after<br />
spending days on the sidelines.<br />
FRONT PAGE IMAGE<br />
TODAY'S PHOTOS<br />
Today's Sections<br />
INTERNATIONAL<br />
NATIONAL<br />
N.Y. Region<br />
Politics<br />
Obituaries<br />
BUSINESS<br />
TECHNOLOGY<br />
SCIENCE<br />
SPORTS<br />
EDITORIAL<br />
OP-ED<br />
LETTERS<br />
ARTS & LEISURE<br />
SUNDAY STYLES<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
<strong>Sunday</strong> Sections<br />
ARTS & LEISURE<br />
AUTOMOBILES<br />
BOOK REVIEW<br />
TRAVEL<br />
REAL ESTATE<br />
WEEK IN REVIEW<br />
A Push From the Top Shatters a Glass<br />
Ceiling<br />
By REED ABELSON<br />
A middle-aged white guy who never thought much about women in the<br />
workplace until he became a single parent has helped create Hewlett-Packard's<br />
reputation as a bastion of egalitarianism.<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/front/ (1 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:27:11 PM]
Page One Plus<br />
For Jews from Around the World, Brooklyn Is the Place<br />
to Shop<br />
By KIT R. ROANE<br />
Driven by the density of its Jewish population and an entrepreneurial spirit<br />
among its business community, Borough Park, Brooklyn, has become what the<br />
Lower East Side used to be: the place for Orthodox Jews to shop.<br />
ALSO IN TODAY'S TIMES<br />
Cold Feet in Russia Doom Stepashin's Marriage of<br />
Convenience<br />
By MICHAEL R. GORDON<br />
If ever there was an example of how hard it is for Russia's liberal politicians to<br />
work together it was the implosion Saturday of Sergei Stepashin's new centrist<br />
electoral bloc.<br />
Russian Money-Laundering Investigation Finds Familiar<br />
Swiss Banker in the Middle<br />
By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN WITH RAYMOND BONNER<br />
At the intersection of illicit Russian money and the Bank of <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> is Bruce<br />
Rappaport, a Swiss banker who has had brushes with governmental<br />
investigators in the past and who has long had an important connection to the<br />
bank.<br />
At Johnson Wax, a Family Hands Down Its Heirloom<br />
By DAVID BARBOZA<br />
Samuel Curtis Johnson, the owner of S.C. Johnson & Co., plans to carve the $5<br />
billion enterprise into three unequal parts, giving each interested child a<br />
separate company to run.<br />
Corrections<br />
QUOTATION OF THE DAY<br />
You can't babysit him all his life. He comes up with all different<br />
excuses, and I say, `All right, that's your decision, that's your choice, but<br />
10 years down the line I don't want to hear you going, when you've got<br />
that dreary job doing nothing, `That could have been me, that could have<br />
been me.'<br />
MICHAEL O'FARRELL, whose stepson, George Carrion, played<br />
professional baseball, then quit.<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/front/ (2 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:27:11 PM]
Page One Plus<br />
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http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/front/ (3 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:27:11 PM]
Just Say Maybe<br />
<strong>August</strong> <strong>22</strong>, 1999<br />
LIBERTIES / By MAUREEN DOWD<br />
Just Say Maybe<br />
Related Articles<br />
● Op-Ed Column Archive<br />
Forum<br />
● Join a Discussion on Maureen Dowd's Columns<br />
get no kick from writing about cocaine.<br />
But the press is not out of bounds here. Whatever W. did in the past, he has<br />
made his own white mischief in the present.<br />
<strong>The</strong> problem lies in George Bush's packaging of his myth. W. understands that<br />
the arc of a Presidential campaign follows the arc of a heroic adventure. <strong>The</strong><br />
candidate must slay the dragon or the giant.<br />
As Joseph Campbell wrote: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common<br />
day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are there encountered<br />
and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious<br />
adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."<br />
John F. Kennedy, Bob Dole, President Bush and John McCain offered traditional<br />
conquests. <strong>The</strong>y fought real enemies in war.<br />
But boomers like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush who avoided Vietnam<br />
needed to create domestic dragons and internal giants to kill. Mr. Clinton<br />
dramatized his teen-age confrontation with his alcoholic, abusive stepfather.<br />
Yuppie candidates play up painful odysseys of self-discovery. <strong>The</strong>y slay the<br />
Gorgon of addiction and the Hydra of self-indulgence. <strong>The</strong>y present themselves<br />
as redeemed, reborn (or born again) with the Arthurian virtues -- temperance,<br />
loyalty, courage.<br />
W.'s myth (potent because it offers the classic plot line of succeeding his father<br />
as ruler) has been much written about of late: He was, as his cousin John Ellis<br />
said, "on the road to nowhere at age 40." In 1985, he had a serious talk with Billy<br />
Graham at Kennebunkport. He quit drinking, drifting, smoking and chewing<br />
tobacco and became a disciplined, Bible-reading leader who "accepted Christ."<br />
W. is perfectly content when the press hews to this story line: hothead and<br />
goof-off metamorphoses into Presidential timber.<br />
He'll talk about overcoming alcohol. He'll talk with pride about his faithfulness<br />
to his wife because it offers a positive contrast with Bill Clinton. Other<br />
"mistakes" are declared off limits.<br />
But as in "Fantasia," once the demons are unleashed it's hard to contain them.<br />
When you pick and choose which dragons you've slain, you shouldn't be<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/dowd/08<strong>22</strong>99dowd.html (1 of 2) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:51:17 PM]
Just Say Maybe<br />
surprised when the press won't be spoon fed from a menu of sins you choose.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y'll also be interested in the ones you want to hide.<br />
And in hiding, W. began to sound too much like the man he scorns, the President<br />
-- parsing, tap-dancing, obscuring, trying to have it both ways, dribbling out and<br />
selectively revealing the facts.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Texas Governor's tough talk on crime also left him open. He signed a<br />
punitive law in Texas that allowed judges to put people convicted of possessing<br />
less than one gram of cocaine in jail. He is also the new standard bearer of a<br />
party that has worked hard to demonize drug users as weak and immoral sinners,<br />
best treated from a jail cell.<br />
His reaction to the kerfuffle shows that he is still green in many ways. He<br />
clumsily reversed his stance of not going beyond acknowledging youthful<br />
"mistakes," boxing himself in by defining time periods when he did not do<br />
illegal drugs. <strong>The</strong> coyness was unbearable. First it was seven years, then it was<br />
15 years, then it was 25 years. He grew ever more ill at ease and peeved.<br />
By the time he got to Fairlawn, Ohio, on Friday he was still deep in<br />
Clintonspeak. "I think parents, particularly baby-boomer parents, ought to say to<br />
children, 'Do not use drugs,' " Mr. Bush said. "I think we owe the children that<br />
responsibility to share our wisdom. I worry about a society that sends a different<br />
message. One of the interesting questions facing baby boomers is, 'Have we<br />
grown up?' "<br />
He was pressed by <strong>The</strong> <strong>Times</strong>'s Adam Clymer: "And if a child asks a<br />
baby-boomer parent, 'Well, did you?' "<br />
He replied: "I think the baby-boomer parent ought to say, 'I've learned from<br />
mistakes I may or may not have made.<br />
And I'd like to share some wisdom with you.' "<br />
Mistakes he may or may not have made? <strong>The</strong>re's not a teen-ager in America who<br />
would swallow that. It's not moral instruction. It's not even wisdom. It's evasion.<br />
Voters might accept a boomer candidate who admitted he dabbled in drugs. <strong>The</strong>y<br />
might welcome a candidate who said firmly and consistently "none of your<br />
business." But they'll never accept a Bush who sounds like a Clinton.<br />
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States Criticized on Lax Lead Tests for Poor Youths<br />
<strong>August</strong> 21, 1999<br />
States Criticized on Lax Lead Tests for<br />
Poor Youths<br />
By ROBERT PEAR<br />
ASHINGTON -- Federal investigators say most states are flouting a<br />
1989 law requiring that young children on Medicaid be tested for lead<br />
poisoning. As a result, they say, hundreds of thousands of children<br />
exposed to dangerously high levels of lead are neither tested nor treated.<br />
<strong>The</strong> General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, found that<br />
"few Medicaid children are screened for blood-lead levels," even though the<br />
problem of lead poisoning is concentrated among low-income children on<br />
Medicaid. Medicaid recipients are three times as likely as other children to have<br />
high amounts of lead in the blood.<br />
Separately, a Federal advisory panel said this week that "current lead screening<br />
rates among children covered by Medicaid are very poor, despite Federal<br />
requirements."<br />
Cost is not the main reason for the failure to test children, health officials say.<br />
<strong>The</strong> laboratory test usually costs less than $10.<br />
Officials cite more complex reasons for the low rates of testing. Many doctors do<br />
not see lead exposure as a problem for their patients and therefore do not believe<br />
tests are necessary, or they are unaware of the Federal requirements. In addition,<br />
many poor children do not go to the doctor until they are sick, and most children<br />
with high levels of lead in the blood display no obvious symptoms at first.<br />
Under Federal law, states are responsible for the screening of children on<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/08<strong>22</strong>99lead-poison.html (1 of 4) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 10:<strong>22</strong>:43 PM]<br />
White Oleander<br />
by Janet Fitch<br />
<strong>The</strong> Testament<br />
by John Grisham<br />
Business @ the Speed of<br />
Thought<br />
by Bill Gates<br />
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff<br />
by Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
States Criticized on Lax Lead Tests for Poor Youths<br />
Medicaid. <strong>The</strong>y can provide such services directly, or they can arrange for the<br />
services to be provided by doctors, clinics and health maintenance organizations.<br />
President Clinton has repeatedly emphasized that all Government policies should<br />
be evaluated for their effects on children. But the General Accounting Office<br />
found that most of the children served by Medicaid and other Federal health<br />
programs were not tested for lead, as Federal law and regulations dictate they<br />
should be.<br />
"Federal lead-screening policies are often not followed" by state officials, and<br />
the Federal Health Care Financing Administration, which supervises Medicaid,<br />
does not review state compliance with these policies, the auditors said.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 890,000 children age 1<br />
through 5 have so much lead in their blood that it could harm their health or their<br />
ability to learn.<br />
About 535,000 of these children are enrolled in Medicaid, but fewer than 20<br />
percent of Medicaid recipients in that age group -- 1.2 million of the 6.3 million<br />
recipients -- are ever tested, the accounting office found.<br />
"This is a dismal record," said Senator Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of <strong>New</strong><br />
Jersey, who recently introduced a bill to increase lead testing of children.<br />
<strong>The</strong> state auditor of California, Kurt R. Sjoberg, reached a similar conclusion in<br />
a new report on the experience of that state, which has far more Medicaid<br />
recipients than any other state.<br />
"Thousands of lead-poisoned children have been allowed to suffer needlessly"<br />
because California has not complied with the Federal requirement to test them<br />
for lead poisoning, Sjoberg said.<br />
Dr. Susan K. Cummins, chief of the state's lead poisoning prevention program,<br />
said perhaps 20 percent of the children on Medicaid in California had been tested<br />
for lead. "And that's probably an optimistic estimate," she said.<br />
Federal rules say children on Medicaid must be tested for lead poisoning at the<br />
age of 12 months and again at 24 months. Medicaid recipients ages 3 to 6 must<br />
also be tested if they had not previously been screened.<br />
Children on Medicaid have a higher risk of lead poisoning because they often<br />
live in older housing with peeling lead-based paint and with dust contaminated<br />
by such paint.<br />
More than 80 percent of houses built before 1978 have lead-based paint.<br />
Screening rates vary greatly from state to state. In Washington state, Federal<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/08<strong>22</strong>99lead-poison.html (2 of 4) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 10:<strong>22</strong>:43 PM]<br />
Dr. Atkins <strong>New</strong> Diet Revolution<br />
by Robert C. Atkins, M.D.<br />
Under the Tuscan Sun<br />
by Frances Mayes<br />
All Too Human<br />
by George Stephanopoulos
States Criticized on Lax Lead Tests for Poor Youths<br />
auditors found that fewer than 1 percent of the children on Medicaid had been<br />
tested for lead poisoning. Elsewhere, they said, rates range from 3 percent in<br />
Montana to 10 percent in Colorado, 40 percent in <strong>New</strong> Jersey and 46 percent in<br />
Alabama. Many states, including Connecticut, said they did not have statewide<br />
data on testing rates or the prevalence of lead poisoning.<br />
<strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> has a state law that requires day-care centers and nursery schools to<br />
ask parents for evidence of screening. <strong>The</strong> <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> City Health Department<br />
reported that more than 40 percent of children ages 1 to 5 had been tested.<br />
Statewide data for <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> were not immediately available.<br />
Despite the Federal requirements, Thomas W. Bedell, the Medicaid director in<br />
Washington state, said: "We don't believe we have much of a problem with lead<br />
exposure here. So we don't think it's cost-effective to impose 100 percent<br />
screening. <strong>The</strong>re are better ways to spend our money."<br />
Dr. Maxine D. Hayes, the acting health officer for Washington state, added, "We<br />
don't think it's right for the Federal Government to dictate what states should do"<br />
in testing children.<br />
Under Federal rules, Medicaid will pay for testing and treating a child, but will<br />
not pay for testing of substances like water and paint that are sent to a laboratory<br />
for analysis.<br />
"Medicaid reimbursement is available only for the provision of medical<br />
services," said Sally K. Richardson, director of the Federal Medicaid program.<br />
"Water and paint are environmental elements. If a child has already been<br />
diagnosed as lead-poisoned, the testing of these elements serves no direct<br />
medical purpose."<br />
But public health experts say this policy often cripples efforts to identify the<br />
cause of a child's lead poisoning.<br />
<strong>The</strong> advisory panel that voiced concern about the low rates of screening also said<br />
this week that Medicaid should pay for laboratory tests of dust, water and other<br />
substances in the homes of children poisoned by lead.<br />
"Such testing is good public health policy, and it's definitely the standard of care<br />
for treating lead-poisoned kids," said Dr. Cummins, the chairwoman of the<br />
panel, the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention.<br />
Heather M. Mauro, a resident of Atco, N.J., said she felt fortunate that her<br />
children had been tested for lead because the tests detected high levels of lead in<br />
all four youngsters.<br />
<strong>The</strong>ir home, a large Victorian, was built in the late 1800's or early 1900's.<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/08<strong>22</strong>99lead-poison.html (3 of 4) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 10:<strong>22</strong>:43 PM]
States Criticized on Lax Lead Tests for Poor Youths<br />
Lead poisoning can cause learning disabilities, behavior problems and<br />
neurological damage in children, and Mrs. Mauro said she believed that her<br />
children had suffered such problems because of exposure to lead.<br />
State officials across the country are encouraging families on Medicaid to join<br />
health maintenance organizations. But Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health<br />
law and policy at George Washington University, said that in their contracts with<br />
H.M.O.'s, states rarely specified the full range of services that should be<br />
provided to children with lead poisoning.<br />
In <strong>New</strong> Jersey, Edward J. Rogan, a spokesman for the Department of Human<br />
Services, said "we are not happy" with the fact that only 40 percent of children<br />
on Medicaid have been tested for lead poisoning. "We want to strengthen our<br />
contracts with H.M.O.'s to make sure they achieve a greater level of screening,"<br />
he said.<br />
Connecticut officials said they did not have statewide data on lead testing of<br />
Medicaid recipients. In Hartford, where doctors and hospitals have made special<br />
efforts to eliminate lead poisoning, a recent study of 877 preschoolers found that<br />
93 percent had been tested. But Judith Solomon, executive director of the<br />
Children's Health Council, a child advocacy group, said, "We don't assume the<br />
results would be the same in other parts of the state."<br />
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http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/08<strong>22</strong>99lead-poison.html (4 of 4) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 10:<strong>22</strong>:43 PM]
Brief Fare Deals Doing an Encore<br />
<strong>August</strong> 19, 1999<br />
PRACTICAL TRAVELER / By BETSY WADE<br />
Brief Fare Deals Doing an Encore<br />
ome air fares for fall and winter, and a few Mediterranean cruise prices, are<br />
making Europe seem nearly irresistible. <strong>The</strong> low air fares were presented<br />
as short term earlier in the summer, but industry officials said that an<br />
oversupply of flights to Europe had developed with the delivery of new planes,<br />
and the airlines began gradually backing away from higher prices to try to fill the<br />
seats.<br />
Competition is bringing a bonanza for travelers. Northwest was first with the<br />
fare cuts, but others have followed. As seats fill, of course, the good buys will<br />
fade away. But not many have so far.<br />
Likewise, the cruise specials were sometimes described as an effort to recover<br />
from the period of the Kosovo bombardment, when many Adriatic itineraries<br />
were changed. But various circumstances, including itinerary changes caused by<br />
the late delivery of new vessels, have created the cruise bargains.<br />
One example of an excellent price is Swissair's <strong>New</strong>ark-Basel round-trip<br />
economy fare of $330, plus taxes, a promotion to introduce its new A-330<br />
Airbuses on the daily service, which has been operating for a year or so. This<br />
fare will be sold at least until Friday, with travel possible until Dec. 15. <strong>The</strong> new<br />
planes have <strong>22</strong>4 seats, with 166 in economy class; the route to Basel, a<br />
pharmaceutical center, is heavily used by business travelers. Swissair: (800)<br />
<strong>22</strong>1-4750.<br />
Here is a small selection of some other good buys running into the fall. <strong>The</strong>se are<br />
available from travel agents, the airlines or on the Web. <strong>The</strong> prices do not<br />
include departure taxes or Customs fees.<br />
Discounts on Flights<br />
American Airlines had a fistful of choices. Many of these fares for midweek<br />
travel were originally due to expire 10 days ago, but continue to be available<br />
until Aug. 31 -- and that deadline is not immutable, either. Those looking for<br />
even lower rates can buy them now for travel in November and December, but<br />
blackouts apply to the holidays. <strong>The</strong>se are all seven-day advance-purchase fares.<br />
Tim Smith, a spokesman for American, said that the seats available for these<br />
prices were limited, but that many flights in the winter showed wide availability.<br />
Weekend flights, which are $50 more round trip, fill up faster than midweek<br />
ones.<br />
On American, a <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong>-to-Frankfurt economy ticket is $588 for midweek<br />
travel, $638 otherwise. For travel from November to mid-March, with a holiday<br />
blackout, fares are $330 and $380.<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/travel/practical/pt9908<strong>22</strong>.html (1 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 10:30:34 PM]<br />
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Brief Fare Deals Doing an Encore<br />
Boston-London (Heathrow) economy round-trip fares for travel on American<br />
into October are $448 to $498, depending on the day of the week. For later<br />
travel, holidays excluded, Bostonians who want to swap their dark city for a dark<br />
city on the Thames can do it for $318 to $368. Nonstop flights from Dallas-Fort<br />
Worth, American's headquarters, to London go into Gatwick: these fares are<br />
$588 and $638 until October, $428 and $478 after that.<br />
<strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> to Paris until October is $458 and $508; for November, these are<br />
$368 and $418.<br />
Continental has a new route from Cleveland to London (Gatwick). Until Aug.<br />
31, round-trip tickets for midweek travel between Sept. 5 and Oct. 30 cost $588.<br />
For travel from Oct. 31 to March 31, with a blackout from Dec. 17 to Jan. 2,<br />
midweek round trips drop to $428. Also on Continental, midweek travel between<br />
<strong>New</strong>ark and Paris in September and October is $458. For November, it is $368.<br />
British Airways put some promotional fares on the market Aug. 10, with the<br />
last purchase date Aug. 31. All of the line's <strong>22</strong> United States cities were<br />
involved. Jill Donaldson, vice president for leisure marketing, said that the best<br />
buys involved <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> departures. To London (Heathrow), the midweek fares<br />
begin at $448; to Paris, $458; to Rome, $588.<br />
Midweek fares from Los Angeles or San Francisco to London begin at $638.<br />
From Chicago, the midweek fare is $558. Dallas-Fort Worth to London is $588,<br />
and Atlanta-London, $608. Travel on these fares is possible between Sept. 5 and<br />
Oct. 30.<br />
It is likely that any other airline flying the routes mentioned above is offering<br />
similar prices. Ask.<br />
An airline new to the United States, AirEurope, is offering flights between<br />
Kennedy Airport in <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> and Venice, with a continuation to Pisa. To<br />
announce itself, it is offering $425 round-trip fares for travel until the end of<br />
September. <strong>The</strong> price is available until Aug. 30. <strong>The</strong> line was having some<br />
ticketing difficulties at first and apparently could not process credit card sales at<br />
Kennedy, only cash. <strong>The</strong>re is a long wait on the line's number: (888) 999-9090.<br />
Savings at Sea<br />
n the Mediterranean cruise front, Holland America made schedule changes<br />
because delivery of its new vessel, the Volendam, was delayed. As a<br />
result, a 12-night cruise on the Rotterdam from Venice to Istanbul on Sept.<br />
<strong>22</strong> is being deeply discounted. Stewart T. Chiron of the Cruise Line, a big<br />
agency in North Miami Beach, is offering this cruise for $2,399 a person,<br />
including port charges and air fare from <strong>New</strong> <strong>York</strong> and other United States and<br />
Canadian cities, based on double occupancy in an inside cabin. <strong>The</strong> least<br />
expensive outside cabin is $2,899. <strong>The</strong> ship visits Romania and Greece before<br />
reaching Turkey. <strong>The</strong>se prices were $1,500 higher when they were first posted.<br />
Another value Mr. Chiron cited in the European cruises was a 12-night trip<br />
aboard the Norwegian Dream of Norwegian Cruise Line that leaves Istanbul Oct.<br />
23 and ends in Civitavecchia, the port for Rome, on Nov. 4. This cruise is also<br />
sold with air fare from the East Coast to Istanbul and home from Rome. Prices<br />
per person, based on two people in an inside cabin, start at $2,652. <strong>The</strong>se prices<br />
were formerly $2,600 higher. In addition to Turkey and Italy, this cruise stops in<br />
Israel, Egypt and Greece. Mr. Chiron said the Norwegian Dream was shifted<br />
from the Black Sea to this Holy Land itinerary because the line found two<br />
similar cruises were selling well. <strong>The</strong> Cruise Line: (800) 244-7447.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re are pluses and minuses to prices that include air fare. <strong>The</strong> flight may take a<br />
roundabout route. But if the flight was booked by the cruise line and is delayed,<br />
the line usually takes responsibility. On the other hand, if a cruise starts or ends<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/travel/practical/pt9908<strong>22</strong>.html (2 of 3) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 10:30:34 PM]
Brief Fare Deals Doing an Encore<br />
in Venice, and the traveler wants to stay over, arranging the air trip separately<br />
can be an advantage. Travel agents can quote prices with and without the air<br />
fare. A 12-night Royal Caribbean Mediterranean cruise in Mr. Chiron's roster<br />
was $2,649 with air fare; $1,599 without.<br />
Web Strategies<br />
hen competition drives down air fares, do Internet shoppers learn it<br />
quickly, or do they have to fill in the boxes for departure date and return<br />
date to get a picture? Suzi LeVine, a product manager for Microsoft<br />
Expedia, said clients did not have to fill in all the blanks.<br />
Her company's home page at www.expedia.com posted a "big sale" notice on<br />
Aug. 3, with samples also on the front page. <strong>The</strong> page gave all the caveats,<br />
which at that point included an Aug. 13 closing date for the sale. A fare tracker,<br />
a service users can sign up for, will look for the best fare, she said.<br />
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