Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1028

How to Talk About 'Yeezus' This Weekend

As we let you know earlier, Kanye West's highly anticipated new album Yeezus, has found its way to the Internet ahead of its June 18 on-sale date. So that means this summer Friday has become all about Kanye's dark, brooding album. Lyrics have been tweeted, snap judgments have been rushed. There is a very good chance that wherever you are this weekend, someone will be be talking about Yeezus. You're going to need some talking points.

So, I guess Kanye's album leaked... is this a publicity stunt?

Could be, but Kanye probably did not want it to get out.

So, do we know who leaked it? 

No. But since the album is called Yeezus, everyone decided they had the completely original idea to say "Yudas" leaked the album. Get it? Yeezus and Yudas. Like Jesus and Judas. 

Yeezus leaked? Guess Kanye's busy right now, trying to find out who Yudas is.

— Madzibaba Sir Revita (@AwkwardZimbo) June 14, 2013

I wonder who the Yudas was who leaked Yeezus.

— Liana Maeby (@lianamaeby) June 14, 2013

OK, so aside from the Biblical humor, were there any other funny jokes to be made? 

One of the most tweet-able lines off the album comes from the bashful-titled song "I Am a God," in which Kanye raps: "Hurry up with my damn croissants." Of course, given these times people thought he should have said "cronuts." 

[image error]

Who could he have been asking for the pastries? 

Well, there are no shortage of guest appearances. Daft Punk get credits as co-producers on four songs including "On Sight," "Black Skinhead," "I Am a God," and "Send it Up." While both Chief Keef and Bon Iver appear on the song "Hold My Liquor." Frank Ocean appears on "New Slaves." Kanye even samples Nina Simone singing "Strange Fruit" on "Blood on the Leaves."  

Are people liking it?

Some. Sasha Frere-Jones at The New Yorker wrote: "'Yeezus' is ambitious, but it’s blessedly free of the longueurs that attend so many Great Albums. Twenty years from now, West’s previous records will remain important, but a new generation may first gravitate to the lean vibrancy of this one." 

Why did you say "some"?

Yeezus doesn't sound like traditional Kanye, so fans of his earlier albums (College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation) think this Yeezus album ain't cutting it bruh:

— Jaquen H'aghar (@RhapidKid) June 14, 2013

Graduation>College Dropout>Late Registration>My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy>808's and Heartbreak>Yeezus

— Cristian Godina (@Worldstar_Cris) June 14, 2013

I Dont Think I Like "Yeezus" So Far... Smh... *Presses Play On "College Dropout"

— KING KLUTCH (@RAPGAMEPICASSO) June 14, 2013

It's been interesting to see the evolution of his sound but I also kinda miss College Dropout, negro spirituals Kanye

— Cyborg (@heavenrants) June 14, 2013

Anything else I should know? 

You've probably got 24 hours max until you're the last person you know to listen to it through. 

 

 

       

Bloomberg's Terminal Snooping More Widespread Than Wall Street Thought

"We are in the often-difficult position of reporting on our customers," Bloomberg News editor Matthew Winkler wrote in The Bloomberg Way, the once-secret journalism manual used to teach reporters about the style and ethics of writing for the news division of Michael Bloomberg's eponymous financial services company, which in the past few months has been accused of spying on Wall Street clients who use Bloomberg's powerful terminals to track financial data.

In reality, Bloomberg staffers consider the position pretty easy. According to a report in The New York Times on Friday, reporters at the company were for years not only permitted, but frequently and forcefully encouraged, to monitor Blomberg's terminal customers for news. The terminal's UUID function, which tracked, among other things, where and when customers log into their terminal accounts, was disabled last month. But, among the Bloomberg sources who spoke to The Times, a former Italy bureau chief said he used the function to surreptitiously track the movements of the CEO of Fiat as he traveled across the United States. An unnamed "senior executive" at Bloomberg added: "It’s not like this was some deep Bloomberg secret. If it’s on the terminal, we’d say go for it."

It would be disingenuous, of course, to argue that reporters outside of Bloomberg don't challenge and sometimes cross ethical boundaries. As John Cook at Gawker pointed out nearly a year ago, both Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporters who blew open the Watergate burglary scandal for which President Richard Nixon later resigned, relied on techniques that would send any public editor today into palpitations. Bernstein, for example, secretly compiled phone and financial records of Bernard Barker, one of the Watergate burglars. And, as a Bloomberg LP chairman recently explained at staff meeting, reporters at the company are hired primarily to increase the value of the company's profitable terminal business, not afflict the comfortable. "The only journalism that matters is the kind that moves markets," the chairman said, according to a Times source. (This sentiment may be why Bloomberg News has never won a Pulitzer Prize.)

With these fresh allegations of misconduct, however, the company's news division threatens to shrink Bloomberg's dominance in the financial data industry. As the Times points out, competitors like Reuters and Dow Jones are already playing up the privacy features on their own proprietary terminals. This outcome would, of course, be doubly ironic. Bloomberg News was developed as a innovative alternative to fusty organs like The New York Times — and pretty much every newspaper ever — which on principle separates its reporters from its advertising staff, for fear of tainting the editorial product with any hint of impropriety or influence. At Bloomberg, reporters essentially functioned as advertisements for terminals, which deliver their scoops at breakneck speed before ever appearing on a public website. (Bloomberg was the first, by several seconds, to report that the Supreme Court had upheld the individual mandate last summer.) Now those same reporters, by using every tool of investigation at their disposal, have stained the product that pays for their salaries.

       

The 'Mad Men' Characters Are All Safe This Season

With the Mad Men season winding down we had been wondering about the fate of the show's characters, especially with people pointing out gruesome connections between the closet of Megan Draper and Manson murder victim Sharon Tate. But feel free to cross death off your list of conspiracy theories, according to show creator Matthew Weiner. 

"It's just not part of the show," he told the Los Angeles Times during a round table with lead actresses. "No one's going to die." When Jessica Paré, the actress who plays Megan, responded, "Thank God!" He qualified: "This season...I didn't say never!" 

The question of death had been hovering over this season of the show since the particularly heavy premiere, but it gained traction when some folks online noticed that Megan wore the same t-shirt as Tate. When costume designer Janie Bryant commented on Twitter that the instance was "no coincidence," eyebrows were raised. But in the interview with the LAT, Weiner said the decision to put Megan in that shirt was about fashion. "Women's T-shirts had not come into fashion," Weiner explained. "I always wanted Megan in a Disneyland T-shirt and Janie kept saying, 'They're not around yet.' So I said, 'There's got to be a women's T-shirt,' and Janie brought [the photo of Tate] in and asked, 'Is this OK?' And I said, 'Yes. I want that exact T-shirt.' Little did I know ..." That he would set off the inquisitive minds of the Internet clue-hunters. The other potential Tate connection involved Sally Draper reading Rosemary's Baby, which was directed by Tate's husband Roman Polanski. As for that connection, just chalk it up as a sign of the times. Glenn Whipp at the LAT says "we may not have seen the last of it this season." 

Of course, no death doesn't mean something else big won't happen in the final two episodes. We still have to figure out just what exactly Bob Benson is up to. 

 

       

Here Is $250,000 Worth of Speeches, Thank Us Later

While you waste the last drips of this Friday afternoon at your desk, just know there's someone out there who is much more famous than you, is much less deserving than you, and gets paid more than some people make a year to talk about motivational things for about half an hour. The gory, torturous details are all in the latest issue of The New Republic.

[image error]The TNR team of Nora Caplan-Bricker, Lydia Depillis, and Molly Redden have amassed a staggering speaker fee database. From Clinton to Baldwin (Stephen), they've figured out who's getting paid what and who is asking for what.  

The graphic actually works better here. [Warning: proceed at your own risk and those with high-blood pressure are discouraged from clicking through.] Now that is all squared away, here  are our picks of the best buys and the overpriced purchases on the speaker fee market:

Best Bang For Your Buck

Nobel Laureate Eli Wiesel at $40,000 is a steal. Wiesel's speaking rate is in the same bracket as David Blaine. If you're paying Blaine $40,000 and he's not performing life-threatening magic, you're doing it completely wrong. Here's a preview of what $40,000 in Wiesel looks like:

Arianna Huffington is also in the Wiesel range. And she's a bit more enthusiastic than Mr. Wiesel. You're basically paying for the accent (and it's worth it):

The Splurges

Michael Phelps, an 18-time gold medalist, comes in at $50,000. And just like Blaine, if you're gonna pay $50,000 to see Michael Phelps talk about muscles and stuff and not even doggy paddle, that's completely up to you:

For $50,000 you can get both the real Patch Adams and the real Erin Brockovich to speak at your engagement and completely mess with your guests' minds. But that might be better spent hiring Al Green: 

And it's totally your choice if you want to spend $20,000 on the very precious David Pogue to have him do this rendition of "YMCA":

Buy a House Instead

You're on your own for this one. If you choose to spend $50,000 to have Donald Trump speak at your event, you're either the richest troll on Earth or perhaps on the steering committee at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. And you're obviously not the Republican National Committee (who canceled on him at last year's convention): 

If you've been counting, we've embedded $250,000 worth of speeches and appearances (Al Green's was a church sermon and whatever Pogue did was strange but we're counting both). And that should kinda make you sad, right? Mad, perhaps? Or inspired? If it's the latter and reading about this infuriating business model is the spark you needed to become the most sought-after motivational speaker in the world, we totally want a cut. 

       

The Joy of Actors Talking About Acting

Have you got an hour, or possibly several hours to spare? Would you like to listen to highly paid actors yammer on about their "craft"? Well then you need to watch yourself one of, or all of, The Hollywood Reporter's consistently fascinating actor roundtable videos. It's hard to articulate what exactly makes them so interesting — I guess it's something about a bunch of famous people in one room talking in what seems to be a pretty candid manner — but for anyone who's interested in actors and acting, Hollywood acting at least, roundtable season is a great time of year.

Well, it actually comes twice a year. The real big names show up for the Oscars roundtable interviews, around when Oscar nominations are coming out. THR gathers six or so of the potential nominees and has them sit and talk for an hour about life and work. Then in the summer, like right now, the small screen stars collide in anticipation of Emmy nominations. The most recent video posted is the Comedy Actors Roundtable, with some interesting bits about Friends regret from Matthew Perry and Fred Armisen talking about a loaf of bread, but the recent standout is the Drama Actress Roundtable. It's great for several reasons, but most of all for revealing Monica Potter, from Parenthood, to be a hilariously down-to-Earth regular lady who finds all this Hollywood stuff pretty silly.

That's the odd joy of these videos, getting a glimpse of the real person behind all the lights and sorta hackneyed interview questions. Nothing profound is ever shared, but there's something undeniably compelling about these hour-long, borderline self-serious videos. Give one a watch and thank me many, many hours later.

       

Is Apple Caving to the iOS 7 Critics?

[image error]Despite all this iOS 7 negativity sounding a lot like the initial — eventually meaningless — iPhone 5 nitpicking, Apple might be reconsidering some of its questionable design choices. 9to5Mac's Michael Steeber spotted some icon redesigns on the Apple mobile site, pictured to the right. The regular Apple site does not have the little blurb with the new icons — the ones on the right — appropriately titled "Everything has been thought through. And through." A lot of thinking went into this new operating system. But apparently not enough thinking yet, with Apple overhauling its weather icon and mixing up the color scheme of the passbook and reminders apps.

This software is in beta, which gives Apple the right to switch things up as much as it wants. But just a week after talking up the the beauty of the new, flatter look, the tweaks are being cited as signs of surrender by the designers and fanboys who lobbed criticism at Jony Ive. The new weather icon, for example, seems to feature the current temperature, an exact something that iOS 7 skeptics demanded on the Twitters.

That's a pretty quick turn-around — especially for a company that, after a long history of making pretty things, so vehemently stands behind its design choices. Remember the iPhone 5 reactions from the tech savvy peanut gallery? The tech bloggers just weren't that impressed. "iPhone 5 sounds like the kind of nice incremental upgrade that other companies release," wrote one tech blogger at the time. But it didn't end up mattering. There are lots of challenges to Apple's dominance of the smartphone category: increased competition from Samsung and its Galaxy S IV, people outside America don't want to spend that much on a phone, but making a bad phone is not one of them. The masses loved the iPhone 5 and bought lots of them.

The reaction to iOS 7 feels familiar in that way. The nitpicky Apple dorks might not approve of the orange passbook colors, but the rest of the world doesn't care:

So far iOS 7 still feels pretty half-baked, but I get a lot of "oohs" and "aahs" whenever people look over my shoulder in public

— Matt Lynley (@mattlynley) June 14, 2013

That said, it's encouraging to see Apple get back to a Steve Jobs level attention to detail. Who knows, maybe this will be the Windows Vista of software upgrades — never to be forgotten, forever tarnishing the impecable brand image of a tech giant. Of course, if it is, changing passbook from orange to green won't save it.

       

John Oliver Is Finished Talking About the NSA

For the first night since starting his tenure as temporary Daily Show anchor, John Oliver moved away from the topic of the NSA scandal to address gay rights across the world. While he opened with a bit about the Boy Scouts opening up their ranks to gay members, which feels like old news by now, his visit to other countries felt more spot-on. 

Oliver first looked at Paris, where shirtless anti-gay protests have become commonplace following the country's decision to legalize same-sex marriage. "Quick question," he said, perhaps taking a cue from The Atlantic Wire's coverage. "How is it that France's anti-gay protests look so much gayer than our pro-gay protests?" Taking on the French Open crasher: "Just in terms of pure message discipline, you might want to go with something that doesn't so much scream 'audition piece for Cirque Du Soleil.'" 

He then turned to Russia's anti-"gay propaganda" legislation, making some shirtless Putin jokes. And finally, on a happier note, Oliver turned to the Pope's acknowledgment of the "gay lobby" at the Vatican. "I don't think I'd call a Vatican gay lobby a stunning revelation really," Oliver said. "The whole building is basically a Liberace fever dream... Unless you don't mean an architectural lobby."  

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

 

       

Spend the Summer Reading the Books That Will Be Turned into Movies This Fall

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Summer is a good season for reading, with all that time on the beach and being stuck in traffic on the way to the beach. But your book selection does not have to only be easy beach reading. A far better option is to get an early jump on the fall movie season by reading the source material for all the literary adaptations coming out in the Serious Movie months. That way you can be the smug person who says "Well, that's not how it happens in the book..." all autumn long! Think of this as a summer reading list that will prepare you for the prestige fare of autumn.

 

[image error]The Wolf of Wall Street by Jordan Belfort

Who doesn't want to read more about the disasters of financial wheeling and dealing? Martin Scorsese's high-profile adaptation, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is based on a memoir by Jordan Belfort, a formerly hard-partying, lavish-living stockbroker who was convicted of massive securities fraud in the late '90s. His having been a "white collar" crime, Belfort only served two years and has since become a motivational speaker and author. Oh, and Leonardo DiCaprio is playing him in the movie. So there's some injustice there that could rankle, this sense that he's being rewarded for his $200 million fraud, but that doesn't change the fact that Belfort's book could be a fascinating glimpse into the high-stakes, morally dubious world that, some ten years after Belfort's crimes, kinda ruined the global economy. And if you really like the book, there's a sequel called Catching the Wolf of Wall Street. Spend your summer learning all about awful people working in finance! What could be better? In theaters Nov. 15

 

[image error]August: Osage County by Tracy Letts

OK, so this is technically a play, but you are allowed to read a play as a book (we do it with Shakespeare all the time, after all). Tracy Letts's brilliant, Pulitzer-winning family drama is getting the star-studded Oscar-bait treatment this fall, with none other than Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts in the two leads, so you should probably acquaint yourself with the original in preparation for saying "Ugh, Julia Roberts was completely miscast" or "Meryl Streep's accent was amazing!" as you walk out of the theater. Obviously, the best thing would be to see a production of the play, but if that's not happening near you (there are a few scattered regional productions every year since the show closed on Broadway in 2009) at least reading the play will give you a sense of how it's supposed to be done. Plus, it's just really terrific writing, knotty and operatic and full of delicious, biting turns of phrase. Letts, who just won a Tony for acting in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is quite the talent. One you should be familiar with. And there's no better way to get to know his work then spending an afternoon with the wild Westons of Oklahoma. In theaters Nov. 8

 

[image error]The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel

George Clooney directed himself, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, and others in the World War II drama Monuments Men, based on Robert M. Edsel's fast-paced historical narrative about the daring exploits of six men who traveled around Europe during the height of World War II, seeking out precious works of art so they wouldn't fall into Nazi hands. These men were curators and art historians, not trained spies, yet they managed to save a plethora of important pieces of Western culture. Monuments Men sounds like a fascinating true-life yarn, and actually reading about it will help deepen your appreciation of the movie. Because the movie is going to be good, right? It has to be good. It's a big December prestige release, directed by George Clooney and starring a bunch of Oscar winners. (And Bill Murray!) So read the book and nod your head sagely as the end credits roll, telling your companions, "He really got it right. He really did." Your friends will be very impressed. In theaters Dec. 18

 

[image error]Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

In 1853, a man named Solomon Northrup published this account of the twelve years he spent in slavery in Louisiana. Though born a free man in New York, Northrup was kidnapped and sold to a plantation owner, who put him in charge of disciplining other slaves. This is tough stuff to read about for sure, but nonetheless a valuable and in-depth personal account of the darkest chapter in American history, a primary source document that's proven historically enlightening for a century and a half of study. Shame director Steve McQueen has adapted the book into a film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northrup, along with McQueen mainstay Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, and little Quvenzhané Wallis, appearing on the big screen for the first time since she made a splash in Beasts of the Southern Wild. It's bound to be one of the highlights of the season. In theaters Dec. 27

 

[image error]Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

Jason Reitman has adapted Joyce Maynard's 2009 novel into a film starring Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, and Tobey Maguire, one that's sure to make a big Oscar push for all involved when it opens on Christmas Day. The story concerns a 13-year-old boy and his mother who become entangled with a mysterious man who hitches a ride. He, of course, turns out to be a murderer who's just escaped from prison. The suspenseful setup eventually turns into something of a coming-of-age story, as the boy and his mother form a strange bond with the escapee, who becomes a father figure for the boy (and a romantic partner for the mother). Maynard is a lovely writer and received strong reviews for Labor Day, so this could be the perfect thing to read, both unsettling and oddly touching, while you vacation with your own relatively normal (well, we hope anyway) family. In theaters Dec. 25

 

[image error]Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10 by Marcus Luttrell with Partick Robinson

A nonfiction account of a Navy SEAL mission gone terribly wrong, Lone Survivor was written by Marcus Luttrell, the only of four SEALs to survive a 2005 clash with the Taliban. The book, which also chronicles Luttrell's path to becoming a SEAL, is getting something of the action movie treatment by Peter Berg this November, though its release date would seem to suggest that it will be a more serious film than, say, Battleship. Still, probably better to have read the actual thing before heading off into Berg's world of pumped-up action and Taylor Kitsch glowering. Everyone is now well aware of the exploits of the famous SEAL Team 6, so here is your chance to learn about another elite group of commandos. There's a political element to the book that might chafe some, what with its strong conservative bent and criticism of the liberal media, but at the core is an exciting and tragic first-hand account of the war in Afghanistan. In theaters Nov. 15

 

[image error]The Requisite Y.A. Stuff

All right, enough with all the gloomy warfare and family strife. It's time for some teen adventure. There are three big Y.A. adaptations coming out this fall, so you should probably spend your down time boning up. The first is The Seventh Son, based on The Spook's Apprentice, the kick-off to a British fantasy series about so-called Spooks fighting against demons, witches, and other dark magic. You'll only have to read the first book for now, but if the movie (Oct. 18), which stars Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges, and dreamy son of Narnia Ben Barnes, does well, there are, um, eleven other books to go, with a thirteenth on the way. Then it's time for Ender's Game, a sci-fi space actioner based on the book by Orson Scott Card. Fans seem pretty excited about the movie (Nov. 1), which stars Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford, though others are wary of Scott Card's troubling social politics, which tend to seep into his books. Decide for yourself, I suppose. And then lastly there's Catching Fire, the second film in the Hunger Games franchise (Nov. 22). If you haven't already, you'll need to reed two books to be caught up for the film. But they're worth it; scary and wildly entertaining as they are. Sure, kids killing kids isn't the cheeriest of beachtime reads, but it's OK, it's all make believe. It's for kids, after all.

       

This Commander of a Nazi Unit Has Been Living in Minnesota for 60 Years

An investigation by the Associated Press has found that a 94-year-old man who moved to Minnesota in 1949 was actually the commander of Nazi SS-led unit during World War II. According to the report published on Friday, Michael Karkoc emigrated to the U.S. after telling immigration officials that he performed no military service during the war. However, reporters David Rising, Randy Herschaft, and Monika Scislowska say they have uncovered evidence that Karkoc was a member of two military units that were accused of massacring whole villages in Poland during the conflict.

Karkoc is a native of Ukraine who helped found the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion, a unit of Ukrainian nationalist soliders who fought alongside the German army against the Soviets and received orders directly from the SS, the Nazi's burtal security force. Other members of that unit have testified in the past that they were ordered to "liquidate" entire villages, burning homes and killing women and children. Karkoc was allegedly an officer in the SS Galician Division, which helped surpress the Warsaw Uprising in Poland. After the war, both units were placed on a government blacklist that was supposed to prevent any of its members from entering the United States.

The U.S. does not have the legal authority to prosecute Nazi war criminals, but if the AP report is verified, Karkoc could be deported to Germany and be put on trial for war crimes. Under German law, any one with "command authority" of a unit that participated in atrocities can be punished, even if there is no direct evidence of the individual's involvement.

When contacted by the AP, Karkov refused an interview to discuss his wartime history. He still lives in Minneapolis.

Perhaps even more remarkable than the facts that Karkoc lied to American officials, passed a background check, and lived in the United States unnoticed for more than 60 years, is that he actually a published a memoir in 1995 in which he admits to founding the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion, serving as a company commander, and collaborating with the SS. The book is available in the Library of Congress, but was written in Ukrainian and has likely been read by very few people.

The AP not only found the book, they uncovered the Army intelligence file prepared on Karkoc when he moved — a document that found no red flags in his background — and more documents from Europe, including pay stubs, that connect him to the German army and those specific units. In perhaps the oddest twist of all to this incredible story, the AP's reporters were tipped off to Karkoc by an amateur historian in Britain, who found him on the Internet while researching members of the old Galician Division.

       

Russia Says Evidence of Syrian Chemical Weapons Is 'Not Convincing'

Officials in Moscow say they've seen the evidence the U.S. says is proof that Syria has used chemical weapons, but it's not going to be enough to get the Russians to turn their back on their man. Yury Ushakov, an aide to President Vladimir Putin, said on the Friday that American sources have shown them the intelligence "but frankly we thought that it was not convincing."

Ushakov went on to say that he doesn't really want to bring up the whole Iraq-missing-weapons-of-mass-destruction-thing, but he's totally going to bring it up:

“We wouldn’t like to invoke references to the famous lab tube that [former US] Secretary of State [Colin] Powell showed, but the facts don’t look convincing in our eyes.

That reaction from Moscow shouldn't be totally unexpected since no country has done more to support Bashar al-Assad's cause with the international community. They will continue to push for a diplomatic solution to the problem while simultaneously ensuring that the only real diplomatic solution — U.N. condemnation and sanctions — never comes to pass. But whether they agree with Americans or not, it's increasingly unlikely that planned peace conference (that's been postponed several times already) will do any good at all.

The British, as you would expect,