Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1036

CIA-Funded Startup Palantir Denies Link to NSA — but They Both Make a 'Prism'

On a Friday full of tech-land denials and government distancing and no real answers about how the NRA's sweeping spy program actually works, Palanatir — the "Mysterious Silicon Valley Company Helping the NSA Spy on Americans" — now insists that its own "Prism" system for database mining has nothing to do with the NSA's data-mining "PRISM" program, but that's not going to calm many privacy fears, either. "Palantir's Prism platform is completely unrelated to any US government program of the same name," the company wrote in a statement provided to The Atlantic Wire. "Prism is Palantir's name for a data integration technology used in the Palantir Metropolis platform (formerly branded as Palantir Finance). This software has been licensed to banks and hedge funds for quantitative analysis and research." It's true that Palantir Metropolis used to go by the name Palantir Finance, according to this Quora thread. And the link describing Palantir's Prism platform falls under the "Metropolis Dev" section. But the coincidence, as well as the company's strong ties to the CIA, have been hard to ignore. 

Indeed, one of the many remaining questions from Thursday night's revelation that the NSA is spying on Americans through nine major Internet companies is how, exactly, the government got "direct access" to databases if tech companies vigorously deny they do just that. Even The Washington Post, which obtained the presentation that led to the disclosure of a second NSA program in as many days, has backtracked on its stance that the companies had begun to "participate knowingly."

If Apple and Facebook and others didn't willingly allow access to their servers, and didn't know their data was being mined, how did the NSA crack in?

Palantir,     

Woody Allen's 'Blue Jasmine' Looks Truly, Madly, and Deeply Good

Summer's here, which means its time for a new Woody Allen movie, and we now have the first trailer Blue Jasmine, which looks like a return to form of sorts for the director, or at least a return to America—and a dark turn to his tale. Unlike some of his other more recent efforts—cough, cough To Rome With Love—this film seems less like a travelogue of some beautiful location than a character study of a woman falling apart. That woman, named Jasmine (get it?), is played by Cate Blanchett. Alec Baldwin is her jerk of a husband. Sally Hawkins is her sister who she goes to stay with in San Francisco when she loses her money. Hawkins dates "losers" like Louis C.K. 

To be sure, Woody Allen puts out so many movies that it's hard to know which ones are going to be good from a trailer alone. But this one comes with the promise of Blanchett being reliably fantastic. It looks like Allen has a real story here, too, one that has all kind of anger and resentment. Color us excited. 

       

Obama's NSA Defense: Congress Can Raise Objections It Can't Actually Raise

President Obama defended the National Security Agency's collection of all our phone calls on Friday by saying at a press briefing that if the agency was acting like "Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amok," then Congress would be free to air those concerns. This is not true. 

"When it comes to telephone calls, every member of Congress has been briefed on this program," Obama said. "With respect to all these programs, the relevant intelligence committees are fully briefed on these programs." He noted that the secret FISA court and Congress provide a check on the executive branch's use of this power. "I think, on balance, we have established a process and a procedure that the American people should feel comfortable about," Obama said. "These programs are subject to congressional oversight and congressional reauthorization and congressional debate. And if there are members of Congress who feel differently, then they should speak up." He later added, "And if in fact there was — there were abuses taking place, presumably, those members of Congress could raise those issues very aggressively. They're empowered to do so."

But they couldn't speak up! Or at least they're certainly couldn't "raise those issues very aggressively" anywhere outside of a classified hearing of, say, the Senate Intelligence Committee, because, legally, they're not empowered to air their complaints in public. The NSA's phone call metadata collection program was classified until Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declassified parts of it in order to keep defending it from a Guardian exposé. That means it's not just that members of Congress couldn't air complaints about the program — they couldn't acknowledge it's existence.

Sens. Mark Udall and Ron Wyden both tried to raise objections to the program without spilling secrets, writing in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder last year that "there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows." Udall told The Denver Post on Thursday that he "did everything short of leaking classified information" to bring attention to the NSA's phone metadata collection. At a hearing of the Senate Appropriations committee on Thursday, Sen. Mark Kirk was one of several Senators to ask Attorney General Eric Holder, vaguely, about the phone-call mining. "With all due respect, I don't think this is an appropriate setting to discuss that issue," Holder answered. The nation's top lawyer appeared to be reminding a leading member of Congress that public Congressional hearings are not where members of Congress are allowed to talk about the NSA's spying program.

Jennifer Hoelzer, a former aide to Wyden, explained how hard it is to raise concerns about a program you can't acknowledge the existence of. Writing in the Huffington Post, she says, "Seriously, do you have any idea how frustrating it is to have your boss ask you to get reporters to write about something he can't tell you about?" Hoelzer explains, "Because, while he may be a senior member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the executive branch retains the sole authority to classify and declassify information." The executive branch can use this to its advantage:

It's why, for example, President Bush was able to point to a handful of details supporting his case that torture works, without worrying that someone might be able to declassify (or even acknowledge the existence of) reams of evidence that didn't support his case.

"I think there's a suggestion that somehow any classified program is a quote-unquote 'secret' program which means it's somehow suspicious," Obama said on Friday. The president said his position was not "trust me, we're doing the right thing, we know who the bad guys are" but that there are enough checks in place. "If people can't trust not only the executive branch but also don't trust Congress and don't trust federal judges to make sure that we're abiding by the Constitution and due process and rule of law, then we're going to have some problems here." We're not going to have many easy answers from each branch either.

Here's the impromptu question-and-answer session of the president's briefing on Obamacare, in full:

       

The Only 2013 Tony Award Musical Numbers You Need to Know

If you happen to have a soft spot for musical theater—or if you haven't gotten to New York this year—one of the best things about the Tonys (which are on Sunday!) is the chance to see live performances, albeit on CBS, from the nominated shows. These aren't equivalent to the performances at, say, last year's Oscars, which felt forced and out of place. No, this is what the whole damn thing is about! And this year there's a lot to be excited about. So, without further ado, here are some songs you really should get to know. 

New Musical

Matilda: "Naughty"/"When I Grow Up"
Matilda, the delightful, highly-praised British musical based on the Roald Dahl classic, has been through this before in Britain, taking top honors at the Olivier Awards in 2012. Four little girls play the title role, and at the Oliviers each got to shine as they sang the song "Naughty." The first-act number is about Matilda's acts of rebellion against her terrible parents. Though obviously sung by only one girl in the show, at the Oliviers each actress got a chance to sing. 

Another song to look out for: the second act's "When I Grow Up," which puts its ensemble on swings. 

Kinky Boots: "Everybody Say Yeah"/"Raise You Up/Just Be" 
We think you probably should know the second act's closer, "Everybody Say Yeah," from this Cyndi Lauper scored heart-warmer about a young British factory owner and the drag queen that helps save his business. You won't see it in the video below, but the number includes some impressive choreography from director Jerry Mitchell, who has the actors walking on conveyer belts. (You can hear him talk about how hard that was at the New York Times.) The song features the two nominated leads Charlie (Stark Sands) and Lola (Billy Porter) getting excited about the new boots they just created. Stay tuned to the video for the final number of the show, since who wouldn't want to show off the costumes (and legs) of Lola's backups?

Bring it On: "It's All Happening"
The cast of Bring it On—yes, it's based on that Bring it On—might want to show off a number that highlights their pop-inflected soundtrack and flashy high-flying moves like "It's All Happening." 

A Christmas Story: "Ralphie to the Rescue" 
Though there's not a chance that this holiday show will walk away with the big prize, give a listen to "Ralphie to the Rescue" a number that brings together the company in the main character's western fantasy.

Musical Revival

Rogers + Hammerstein's Cinderella: "Impossible"/"Ten Minutes Ago" 
Though technically counted as a revival, this is the first time this show has ever being on Broadway. It was conceived by Rogers and Hammerstein as a television movie for Julie Andrews in 1957. There were two following television iterations, including one starring Brandy and Whitney Houston. In its current iteration, the show has a re-imagined book from Douglas Carter Beane, but the music remains the original, wonderful Rogers and Hammerstein. The cast combined the two numbers mentioned above—the first a duet between Cinderella and her godmother and the second a duet between Cinderella and her prince—on Letterman. 

Pippin: "Magic to Do"/"Corner of the Sky"
Pippin has been on the Tony stage in 1973, the same year its legendary original director Bob Fosse won a Tony, Emmy, and Oscar. We don't doubt that the revival might also trot out the famous opening number, "Magic to Do," which introduces its company of players that will act out the tale of Charlemagne's son. In the revival, the show is conceived as a circus so the song features plenty of acrobatics. Also, brush up on "Corner of the Sky," a solo for the show's lead. 

Annie: "Tomorrow" 
Come on. You probably know the numbers from this show already. Here's the latest Annie singing "Tomorrow."

The Mystery of Edwin Drood: "There You Are" 
When this whodunnit based on an unfinished Dickens novel was at the Tonys in 1986 the cast performed "There You Are." Who is to say they won't do it again, featuring Jim Norton as the show's narrator? Fast forward to the 38 second mark to get a taste. 

       

Romney Wishes Hurricane Sandy Hadn't Happened Because It Hurt His Chances

Mitt Romney has had seven months to think about why he lost the 2012 election, and now that he's coming out of his post-campaign dark period, you'd think he'd know exactly how to answer reporters' questions about what happened. But in a new interview with CNN's Gloria Borger, Romney showed he's still not a natural in dealing with the press. When asked if he had hard feelings about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie praising President Obama after Hurricane Sandy, Romney said no. Instead? "I wish the hurricane hadn't happened when it did because it gave the president a chance to look presidential."

Romney, who is hosting a retreat with his wife on Thursday and Friday in Utah, appears to have convinced himself that he almost had it. "The election was close enough in the outcome with what 4 percent difference between the two campaigns that a number of things could have changed the outcome," he said. Romney implied the IRS scandal might have made a difference. He demanded to know where Obama was during the Benghazi attack. But by modern standards, the election wasn't that close. That 4 percent is 5 million votes, and Romney needed to flip four swing states.

Among the things Romney thinks might have actually changed the election appears to be his own comments. He repeatedly referenced his own "mistakes" in the CNN interview. He said he "regrets" his comment about 47 percent of Americans refusing to take responsibility for their lives. He said of Clint Eastwood's empty-chair moment, "Clint didn't hurt my campaign, I hurt my campaign a couple times." He said dealing with the press is hard. "Jokes, for instance, will get you in trouble," Romney said. "Any time you're trying to be funny."

       

The Steubenville Hacker Who Helped the Victim Is the First New Head to Roll

On the heels of news that Trent Mays and Ma'lik Richmond, the Ohio high school football players who raped an intoxicated and unresponsive 16-year-old girl, may be moved from a juvenile detention center to a decidedly less strict and privately run rehabilitation center, the anonymous (and Anonymous) leaker who shined the national spotlight on those two boys and the town of Steubenville has revealed himself, announcing that he needs help to pay for the FBI raid on his home and the legal case against him. These two tangential yet pertinent updates arrive as the grand jury hearing in the ongoing investigation is still, silently, on its second three-week break in determining more guilt — but the hacker appears to be the first person in the case other than the rapists in serious trouble with the law.

Deric Lostutter (aka KYAnonymous) came forward on his website today — and to Gawker — in a plea for help. Under his pseudonym, Lostutter was the leader of #OpRedRoll, the Anonymous hacking collective's operation that transformed an August incident at post-game parties in a small football team from a single New York Times story lost in the midst of the Newtown shootings into, instantly, a social-media firestorm that got uglier on every side with each new revelation, viral video, and salacious text message. Indeed, the leaks managed to turn a small case in Ohio juvenile court into a year-long national conversation about rape, sports, and victim-shaming. Lostutter, like many who familiarized themselves with the case through Anonymous and the upstart LocalLeaks, felt local law enforcement and school officials in the fading southeastern Ohio steel town weren't doing enough to investigate the parties thoroughly or punish members of the team. As KYAnonymous, Lostutter was integral in raising questions about the county sheriff, organizing protests, and finding the deleted, disgusting 12-minute video of Michael Nodianos making fun of the Jane Doe victim in the case. 

Now, Lostutter feels like he's the one who's been punished. "As I open the door ... 12 F.B.I. Swat Team agents jumped out of the truck screaming for me to 'Get The Fuck Down' with m-16 assault rifles and full riot gear armed safety off, pointed directly at my head. I was handcuffed and detained outside while they cleared my house," Lostutter writes on his website, referring to a mid-April raid on his Kentucky home by the FBI.

To be sure, the local police were struggling to find evidence, and the FBI began to help on the case once that national spotlight arrived. According to the warrant for the raid, it appears the FBI was looking for information pertaining to the hack of RedRoll.com, a booster site for Steubenville's football team:

[image error]

The site was run by one Jim Parks, a fan of the high school's football team, Big Red, which was in many ways the pride of the whole town. Parks's email was hacked, and the contents were dumped on LocalLeaks, a WikiLeaks-style site that gathered tips from around Ohio and nearby West Virginia (some funneled in from Lostutter) about the town's seedy underbelly as well as what the site called the Steubenville "rape crew." Local Leaks had stated — in its unconfirmed, intriguing, and seemingly slanderous way — that Parks was friendly with the boys and may have had pictures of underaged women in his inbox (Lostutter said this charge was completely untrue). "Tips received from anonymous high school students in Steubenville have indicated it is possible James Parks was receiving images from 'The Rape Crew' of their 'various conquests," LocalLeaks wrote at the time. And now it seems the hackers may have been wrong after all.

"I would like to also extend my personal apologies to Jim Parks, The FBI Stated that the girls Noah allegedly found in his email are all over 18, On behalf of anonymous I am sorry for the embarrassment that caused you, I am also glad we were wrong about the age," Lostutter writes on his site. Still, those are very serious and very damaging allegations. And it harkens back to the question, raised by the prosecution after the guilty verdict came down on Mays and Richmond, of how much good Anonymous did — and whether they went too far. Special prosecutor Marianne Hemmeter said the hacks forced investigators to work harder, but that it also made the victim's life harder to cope with after the rape:

In terms of the victim's identity and the pressure put on the victim, Anonymous's attention to the case put so much more pressure on her ... and other witnesses, we had pretty good working relationships with some of the witnesses that you heard from, but once Anonymous hit there was a chilling effect.

And in regards to Lostutter, the hacking of a private citizen's email was involved, and that's what he says got him in trouble. He explained that someone else even admitted to the hacking — and that the FBI said they were watching him before the hack on Parks:

I was emailed their intent to send out a "Target Letter" which means they are going to try to indict me for a Federal Offense, (most likely a felony and two misdemeanors) to a secret Grand Jury of 23 individuals, for which I can not be present to state my side, nor state my innocence. Let us not forget that Batcat did the hack, as stated in the Herald ARTICLE HERE which by all accounts is a clear admission of guilt. So I am curious to see the charges, as is the lawyer I have teamed up with, Jason Flores-Williams of the WhistleBlower Defense League.

It's unclear if Lostutter's investigation is connected to the grand jury in Steubenville, which is still, after convening in late April, investigating whether or not more people should be charged in connection with the case. The jurors aren't looking for more perpetrators so much as proof of a cover up or tampering with evidence.  Regardless, Lostutter is asking for donations.

Meanwhile, Mays and Richmond appear to be on the move. "Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said ... the judge will likely approve the move at a June 14 hearing in Jefferson County Juvenile Court," reports WKBN-TV. As noted by the sheriff (yes, that same sheriff), the transfer would move the boys from their current state-run detention facility to a privately-run "residential rehabilitation center" called the Lighthouse Youth Center at Paint Creek, which "has no bars or fences outside on their 33-acre property."  

"The privately operated center is an open campus where staff members rely on their relationship with residents to prevent escapes. Staff and children live together at the facility, which has shown success in keeping teens treated there from committing new crimes," reports CBS News. Though the move appears all but certain, Judge Thomas Lipps will still have to decide a classification of sex offender for each of the boys. In Ohio, there are three levels of offense, the most lenient being a Tier 1, wherein criminals are required to register as sex offenders every year for 10 years.

Mays's attorney, Brian Duncan, told CBS his client was happy about the move: "Our client looks forward to the opportunity to attend the Paint Creek program, follow all the facility rules, and display to the Court and the community that he has been rehabilitated fully in hopes of returning to his family."

       

Jonah Lehrer Is Officially Selling His Soul

Jonah Lehrer is back to making everyone angry at him now that The New York Times's Julie Bosman has uncovered A Book About Love, the proposal for Lehrer's comeback effort in which, it appears, he will use the scandal that made him a journalistic pariah to make an argument about... love. 

Slate reported Tuesday that Lehrer was shopping a book, and Bosman got a copy of the 65-page proposal, which she writes is "heavily-footnoted." Bosman explains that in the proposal Lehrer "outlines a book with a style that resembles the pop-science titles that helped make him famous," and excerpts passages, including one in which Lehrer describes his reaction to having his sin of fabrication discovered. "I puke into a recycling bin," he writes. "And then I start to cry. Why was I crying? I had been caught in a lie, a desperate attempt to conceal my mistakes. And now it was clear that, within 24 hours, my fall would begin. I would lose my job and my reputation. My private shame would become public." 

But, of course, this is all somehow relevant to Lehrer's book, as he also writes: "Careers fall apart; homes fall down; we give away what we don't want and sell what we can’t afford...And yet, if we are lucky, such losses reveal what remains. When we are stripped of what we wanted, we see what we will always need: Those people who love us, even after the fall." 

And, of course, the Internet had a field day Thursday afternoon, reacting to the irony that Lehrer is making his failings oh so marketable. Lehrer, if you had forgotten, resigned from The New Yorker last July after it was revealed that he made up quotes from Bob Dylan in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works. Earlier that year he had been caught reusing material in various publications. In the proposal, according to Bosman, he writes: "This book is about what has lasted in my own life," adding: "I wanted to write it down so that I would not forget; so that, one day, I might tell my young daughter what I’ve learned." Which begs the question: Why try to sell it? To some, it's a slap in the face:

"No Seriously, Fuck You Guys", a new book coming from Jonah Lehrer in 2014.

— Dana Vachon (@danavachon) June 6, 2013

To others, the proposal seems trite: 

Even @jonahlehrer's barf is recycled. "I puke into a recycling bin." nytimes.com/2013/06/07/bus…

— Sara Morrison (@SaraMorrison) June 6, 2013

“When we're stripped of what we wanted, we see what we need”: I think Lehrer plagiarized from a yoga studio website? nyti.ms/15EK73z

— Juli Weiner (@juliweiner) June 6, 2013

Just wait until the 80,000-word book gets out. 

       

59% of Gay Marriage Opponents Say Legalizing Gay Marriage is Inevitable

Fans of Hegel, take note: 59 percent of gay marriage opponents nevertheless believe that gay marriage is historically inevitable. According to a new Pew Research study published today, 72 percent of Americans polled, and 85 percent of gay marriage supporters, believe that gay marriage will be written into law — both figures being significantly more, but not that far off, from the number of citizens who don't want marriage equality ... but think it's coming anyway. To put this in context: 51 percent of all the Americans polled by Pew support legalizing gay marriage, approximately the same percentage as in a poll released last night by Bloomberg News. (Ten years ago, nationwide support for gay marriage was 46 percent.) Gay marriage may be inevitable, but for now it remains a divisive issue.

At the same time, gay marriage remains a suddenly pertinent one, given the anticipated Supreme Court opinion in United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry, concerning, respectively, the constitutionality of the federal-level Defense of Marriage Act and California's Proposition 8, both of which proscribe the legal recognition of gay couples. (The opinions for each case are scheduled to be announced before the end of June.) Given the infamous seclusion of the Supreme Court, particularly when deciding contentious and almost certainly historical cases — remember last year? — it's unlikely the Pew poll, or any other study, will sway a key Justice either way. But polls like these will certainly prime the environment in which the Court's decision will soon appear.

       

Zero Dark Verizon: Why D.C. Hates Leaks Until It Loves Hunting Them Down

The Obama administration has investigated more leaks than all the others combined, and now its hunt for leakers is straying into madness. There will be a government investigation into the leak of the Pentagon report about CIA leaks to the producer of Zero Dark Thirty, The Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Gorman reports. And, according to NBC's Brian Williams, the government will likely investigate who leaked to The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald that the National Security Agency got a court order for the metadata of every single call made by a Verizon customer over three months this year. 

More than many reporters, Greenwald's style, devoted fan base, and history of covering the national security state would make him the perfect leak martyr. "I was told last night: definitely there will be a leak investigation," NBC's Williams said of Greenwald's report on Thursday. Later on MSNBC, Williams sounded more cautious, saying, "It seems highly likely this will trigger a leak investigation." A senior administration official told The Huffington Post's Michael Calderone that that was premature — "There's been no referral yet from the intelligence community."

Yet! That "yet" is very important. As The New Yorker's Steve Coll explains, "Under a thirty-year-old executive order issued by the White House, the intelligence agencies must inform the Justice Department whenever they believe that classified information has been disclosed illegally to the press. These referrals operate on a kind of automatic pilot, and the system is unbalanced." It's up to prosecutors in the Justice Department's national security division to decide whether to turn the leak into a criminal case. Under Obama, those prosecutors have been more likely to act than under other presidents. Last month, The Washington Post revealed the Justice Department went so far as to name Fox News reporter James Rosen as a possible co-conspirator in violating the Espionage Act.

It's important to note that before there was a scandal about the Obama administration's leak investigations, there was a scandal that the Obama administration wasn't investigating leaks enough. The leaky Obama administration was a major story on Fox News after details about the killing of Osama bin Laden first came out in 2011, and again in 2012, with the disclosure of cyberattacks on Iran's nuclear program. The Pentagon investigation into the Zero Dark Thirty leaks was in response to a letter from New York Rep. Peter King, a Republican who has said White House leaks are worse than Watergate.

The Pentagon's investigation found that then-CIA chief Leon Panetta accidentally leaked the existence of SEAL Team 6 in a 2011 speech to CIA agents that, unbeknownst to Panetta, Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal was attending. Panetta "identified the ground commander by name" and revealed other secrets, the report found. Panetta also wanted to be portrayed by Al Pacino, the report says. "One person familiar with the Pentagon report said the leak of it has sparked a government investigation of its own," the Journal reports.

[image error]But this leak investigation madness is not enough for some people. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat (pictured above), railed against The Guardian's report, saying on MSNBC on Thursday, "I think we have become a culture of leaks now." Like many of her colleagues on Capitol Hill and the airwaves, she dismissed any outrage over the NSA's database of all phone records and all emails as no big deal. "There is nothing new in this program," Feinstein said. "The fact of the matter is, that this was a routine three-month approval under seal that was leaked." That's interesting, because the official government talking points do not confirm Greenwald's report is true, or that the court order posted by The Guardian is real. Further, while the government vaguely says these kind of tools are useful for stopping terrorists, it does not explain when or how often those tools are used. Feinstein's comment — "a routine three-month approval" — indicates that the warrant is a regular thing that happens four times a year. If that's true, that's new information. Thus we simply must demand a leak investigation into Dianne Feinstein.

       

They Don't Make Movie Stars Like They Used To

Two recent articles claim that, in various ways, the movie star as we know is going the way of the dodo. Old models and paradigms are crumbling and a new, megastar-less world is emerging. And they're right. The days of Julia and Tom are ending, perhaps already ended. And the younger generation of famous actors are struggling to take their place. Or maybe aren't even trying to. While both of these new articles primarily focus on women in the industry, it's happening to the men, too.

The Hollywood Reporter's take on the matter is that older actresses are suddenly reigning supreme, with 40-and-over stars like Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Cameron Diaz, and Meryl Streep getting movies made, and in many cases commanding huge salaries. And this is true! This is definitely happening and it is exciting. Who isn't happy about the fact that a film actress's career doesn't have to end at 40 the way it used to? That was terrible, and went on for way too long. Just think of what Debra Winger could have done if the system hadn't scared her off. But beneath all that celebration is the other curious change in Hollywood: The dearth of younger stars coming up behind the older ones.

Sure there are a few, talented and likable folks like Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone, but THR points out that these younger women aren't nearly as popular as those twenty-plus years older than them:

Bullock, Julia Roberts, 45, and Streep are the three film actresses with the highest Q scores, with Bullock scoring 89 percent in recognition and a 41 Q score. By contrast, though their scores are higher among younger respondents, among all adults over 18, newly minted Oscar winners Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence rate Q scores of 20 and 15, respectively, while Twilight's Kristen Stewart checks in at just 10.

The best explanation for this is that the Baby Boomers are getting older and they're the ones most likely to go see movies in the theater. So as they get older, their taste in actors gets older with them. Thus they might like Silver Linings Playbook, but that nice girl who won the award doesn't register in the same way that tried-and-true Sandra Bullock does in The Blind Side. For younger people, obviously that nice girl is Katniss Everdeen, savior of Hogwarts or whatever. But most of those kids aren't going to go see a Jennifer Lawrence movie just because she's Jennifer Lawrence. That's not really how they consume things, it doesn't seem. (Remember all the craziness about Taylor Lautner in Twilight? And then remember how all those crazy, obsessive fans stayed home en masse for his big solo effort Abduction, essentially killing his nascent movie career?) It's possible that these younger actresses will become bigger, more traditionally "bankable" stars once they and their fans get a little older, but it's also possible that the "traditional" star is an irretrievable thing of the past.

The New York Times is suggesting just that today, noting how women's magazines are featuring fewer and fewer movie actresses on their covers, in lieu of musicians and television stars. Magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour used to rely on big splashy movie star issues to move copies at newstands, but now it's all reality heroes like Lauren Conrad and the Kardashians, or TV/music crossover acts like Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus. The rise of quality, obsession-stoking television, also heavily referenced in THR's article, has shifted attention to the stars of that medium, frequently accessible and intimate as they are. An Entertainment Weekly editor tells the Times that TV stars are more likely to interact with their fans on things like Twitter, sending out links to their magazine covers and thus moving more copies. So there's that element to the shift.

[image error]But also, as new Cosmo editor Joanna Coles tells the Times, "There are a lot of movies right now that don’t speak to women." Indeed, the Times points to a study that found that only 28 percent of the speaking roles in "the nation's top movies" in 2012 were women. That's pretty darn low! Now, you'd think that that would mean that the scarcity of roles would create a few bright, burning megastars, but that hasn't really happened. It might, Jennifer Lawrence perhaps being the strongest candidate, but the kind of movies that make people Julia Roberts-level movie stars don't seem to come around as often as they used to. Jennifer Lawrence's Pretty Woman or Emma Stone's While You Were Sleeping might be just around the corner, but it seems more likely that they'll continue to feature in huge franchises that are way bigger than their stars, Hunger Games and Spider-Man respectively. Those movies certainly get their names out there, but don' quite engender the same fervor as, say, Top Gun did for Tom Cruise. Maybe nothing will, maybe as the Internet shines a harsh light on the once faraway mystery and allure of Hollywood, we just won't revere movie stars as highly as we once did.

[image error]Speaking of Mr. Cruise, let's remember that this change isn't just affecting women. Esquire pondered a dearth of new male movie stars last year, and the Times article notes that men's magazines like Details still like putting big movie stars on their covers, but that it's mostly the older guys like Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp (both turning 50 this year). Most of the big hitters are getting gray; studio staples like Denzel Washington, George Clooney, and Tom Hanks are all in their mid-to-late 50s. (Well, OK, Clooney's 52.) At 44, Will Smith still potentially has a good number of years ahead of him, but his After Earth was a high profile bomb, and there's a vague sense that public sentiment has turned against him. And then behind him is who, exactly? Shia LaBeouf fizzled out. Ryan Reynolds never quite got there. Obviously Ryan Gosling enjoys a lot of good will, but his movie track record is spotty at best, box office-wise. There are slightly older guys like Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg who still do pretty well, and then there's Gosling's Place Beyond the Pines costar Bradley Cooper. But can we really count Bradley Cooper on the level of a Pitt, a Cruise, a Depp? I'm not so sure. And the same goes for DiCaprio and Wahlberg, I think. So if this is really happening to both genders, albeit in different ways, then why is it happening? What's the cause of our sudden movie starlessness?

Well, the game has changed. The big movies are all franchises based on cultural properties, less star vehicles than spectacle machines. The Avengers can make someone like Chris Hemsworth famous, but it doesn't make him a box office draw exactly. (We'll see how his Ron Howard racing drama Rush fares this fall.) Certain comedies can rocket people into the mainstream — Melissa McCarthy, Jonah Hill — but it's been a while since we've had another Will Ferrell, who opened a string of successful movies rather than just one breakout hit. And then there are indies, which could-be-bigger actors like Ryan Gosling and Jennifer Lawrence seem determined to mix in with the commercial stuff. That's good and all, but during her big late '80s to mid '90s run, the most indie thing Julia Roberts did was a Robert Altman film. The mix probably makes them better actors, but it doesn't turn them into the money-machine supernovas that we used to have in days of old.

There's both a good and a bad to this development. On the one hand it's great that big actors feel free to switch back and forth between big and small movies. That means interesting scripts and talented newcomer directors get more attention, and that actors get to stretch themselves in often fascinating ways. But on the other hand, it means we get fewer studio movies (meaning movies that everyone can see in the theater, across the land) in the star-driven mid-budget vein. Major studio movies are becoming way bigger, and thus more distant, divorced from the personal. That trend was more a cause than a symptom of the shrinking of the movie star, but ultimately it's all related in a loop. The fewer dependable box office draws there are, the more the studios look toward mega-budget franchise stuff that isn't reliant on huge stars. The more those movies do well, the less incentive the studios have to go smaller and slightly riskier. Small movies soldier on and enormous ones flourish, but everything in the middle begins to evaporate.

But really, all is not so drastic as it may seem. After all, we have Channing Tatum, don't we? Of all the people mentioned so far, I think he has the most megastar potential. He does dramas, comedies, thrillers, and action movies all with the same conviction and likability. And his movies are hits, for the most part. That's pretty rare these days. Jennifer Lawrence is much the same way, and has an Oscar to boot. So those two might be our best hopes for the next big things. What remains to be seen, of course, is just how big they'll get.