Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 191

Two Years Hard Time for the 'Affluenza' Teen

Ethan Couch, the Texas teenager who successfully employed the “affluenza defense” in a fatal 2013 crash, will serve nearly two years in prison after all.

Couch, then 16, was drunk when he killed four people while driving. He pleaded guilty to four counts of vehicular manslaughter, but was sentenced to just 10 years probation, in part because experts testified that he suffered psychological problems tied to his family’s wealth. The light sentence spurred outrage. Then, in December, he failed to show up for a probation hearing. It emerged that he and his mother, Tonya. had fled to Mexico. Both were eventually arrested by Mexican police and sent back to the U.S.

The judge in the case has reportedly decided to sentence Couch to four consecutive 180-day terms in prison for violating his probation, though that decision is not final:

Judge says he will give both sides to make arguments for/against this decision in 2 weeks.

— Caroline Connolly (@ConnollyNews) April 13, 2016

As Caroline Connolly reports, the defense raised numerous objections to Couch’s continued detention and the sentence in a hearing today. They apparently did not, however, test to see if the affluenza defense applies to probation violations as well.

The Cost of Keeping Lenin Looking Like Lenin

Vladimir Lenin’s body is nearly 146 years old, but it doesn’t look a day over 53.

Russian scientists have kept the Soviet leader, whose embalmed body is on display in a mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square, carefully preserved since his death in 1924. This year, the Russian government will spend up to 13 million rubles of federal funds, or about $198,000, to maintain the corpse, according to a notice published Tuesday on the country’s procurement agency’s website. The agency says it has contracted a supplier of “biomedical work for the conservation of Vladimir Lenin’s body as it looked in life,” but did not provide a name for the supplier.

Russian scientists have spent 92 years keeping Lenin’s body in good shape, adding a fresh coat of embalming fluids every other year, according to Scientific American’s Jeremy Hsu, a weeks-long “process that involves submerging the body in separate solutions of glycerol solution baths, formaldehyde, potassium acetate, alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, acetic acid solution and acetic sodium.” Hsu described what’s still real and what’s not in a story last year:

To maintain the precise condition of Lenin's body, the staff must perform regular maintenance on the corpse and sometimes even replace parts with an excruciating attention to detail. Artificial eyelashes have taken the place of Lenin's original eyelashes, which were damaged during the initial embalming procedures. The lab had to deal with mold and wrinkles on certain parts of Lenin's body, especially in the early years. Researchers developed artificial skin patches when a piece of skin on Lenin's foot went missing in 1945. They resculpted Lenin's nose, face and other parts of the body to restore them to their original feel and appearance. A moldable material made of paraffin, glycerin and carotene has replaced much of the skin fat to maintain the original “landscape” of the skin.

Russian state-run polls show the majority of Russians believe Lenin’s body should be removed from display and buried. But Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Lenin should stay put, and likened the Soviet leader’s mausoleum to displays of relics of Orthodox saints in monasteries.

(h/t BBC)

Kobe Bryant’s Last Game

Twenty years ago, Kobe Bryant made his NBA debut as an 18-year-old fresh out of high school. He went scoreless in the game. Tonight, the five-time champion, third all-time leading scorer, and 18-time all-star will play the last game of his career in what is sure to be an emotional sendoff to the Los Angeles Lakers great.

Bryant, known by the moniker , the Black Mamba, and the Lakers face off against the Utah Jazz at home to end the season. He announced his retirement in a poem last November, in part writing, “My heart can take the pounding / My mind can handle the grind / But my body knows it’s time to say goodbye.”

Indeed, the last few seasons have been rocky for the Bryant, and the Lakers for that matter. Los Angeles is missing the playoffs for the third consecutive season, something that seemed unheard of during the Phil Jackson years of coaching from 1999 to 2004 and from 2005 to 2011. In the team’s 68-year history, the Lakers have only missed the playoffs eight times. Rupturing his Achilles tendon in 2013 and breaking a bone in his left knee in 2014 made Bryant lose much of the edge that made him one of the best players in the league, making way for the dominance of LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Russell Westbrook.

Even in his final games, Bryant has acknowledged his physical limits, failing to score after the first quarter in a game Monday against the Oklahoma City Thunder. “I couldn’t move, man,” he said after the game, according to CNN. “I couldn’t move well at all."

As happens for many athletic greats, Bryant’s sendoffs—see: “Kobe Plays Last Game in [insert city]” headlines—have been touching and plentiful. Deadspin writes that even haters are “paying our final respects as he made the hardwood his deathbed.” In an online video Nike released this week, famous athletes, from the tennis star Serena Williams to the golfer Rory McIlroy, applauded Bryant’s career.

The Thunder star Kevin Durant, for his part, however, called Bryant an “asshole” in the video. “He pissed me off a lot,” Durant says. “He happened to say, ‘You guys can’t even sit at the lunch table with me. I got five championships. What do you have?’”

Bryant thrived off of being hated, as many competitors do. Even in an advertisement directed toward his Chinese fanbase, which is substantial (some there have made seeing his last game a $10,000 vacation), he said people should hate him because he pushes them “to greatness.” He even found himself at loggerheads with his coaches. Jackson said he could often feel Bryant’s hatred toward him. But, he says, “I’ve always seen Kobe as a truly great player, an intelligent guy, and a remarkable person.”

Bryant leaves a big mark on the NBA, and basketball in general. Beyond his two Finals MVPs and 33,583 points, he’s also a two-time Olympic gold medal winner for the United States. Magic Johnson, another Lakers legend, in a letter said Bryant changed the game of basketball along with other greats like Larry Bird and Michael Jordan.

“Every night you played, I couldn’t wait to watch knowing that I would witness an unbelievable shot or move that I had never seen on the court,” Johnson writes. “I marveled at the skills and loved the energy you brought to the game wearing that purple and gold uniform.”

Bryant, the future Hall of Famer, will start the game tonight for the Lakers at 10:30 Eastern at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Are Banks Still Too Big to Fail?

U.S. banking regulators—the Federal Reserve and the FDIC—ruled Wednesday that five of the eight biggest banks did not have credible plans to wind down operations without affecting the wider financial system.

The banks named are Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, JP Morgan Chase, State Street, and Wells Fargo. They have until October 1 to fix the flaws, the regulators said, or face “more stringent prudential requirements.” The Fed faulted Morgan Stanley; FDIC faulted Goldman Sachs. Citigroup won provisional approval from both regulators.

CNBC provides the context:

The requirement for a living will was part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation passed in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, when the U.S. government spent billions of dollars on bailouts to keep big banks from failing and wrecking the U.S. economy.

In theory, regulators could, under the law, break up a bank that fails to provide a satisfactory “living will,” but since this is the first time regulators have found fault with banks, that’s unlikely to occur in the near future.

Same-Sex Marriage Denied in China

A judge in China ruled Wednesday that same-sex couples cannot marry—the first time a Chinese court has addressed gay marriage. Sun Wenlin and Hu Mingliang were denied a petition to marry last June by the civil affairs bureau in Changsha, Hunan Province. They filed a suit against the authorities, but the judge in the district court rejected their appeal on Wednesday.

In his ruling, the judge said the law permits only “men and women” to wed. The couple, however, argued Chinese law does not include an actual ban—and said they would appeal. In an interview with The New York Times, Sun said, “The fact that marriage between a man and a woman is legal does not suggest that marriage between two men is illegal.”

He continued, “This is illogical. I asked them to name one article that explicitly bans marriage between two men, but they never answered my question directly.”

The Times reports many Chinese spoke out in defense of the gay couple, both outside the courtroom and on social media.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in China only in 1997, but it was listed as a mental illness until 2001. According to a Pew Research Center poll from 2013, 57 percent of Chinese people said society should not accept homosexuality.

No Asian country allows same-sex marriage. Last November, Tokyo issued its first same-sex union certificate to a lesbian couple. But while a small number of cities and municipalities have begun issuing marriage certificates to same-sex couples, gay marriage is not legal in Japan.

More than 20 countries now allow same-sex marriage, mostly in Europe, but also the United States, New Zealand, and Brazil, among others.

The Chinese couple’s lawyer expressed some hope for gay rights in China following what he said was a disappointing ruling. Speaking to CNN, the lawyer, Shi Fulong, said, “The gay rights movement has gone from being underground to being in the open thanks to an increasingly tolerant public. Things will be better as society becomes more open.”

A Tainted Execution in Georgia

Updated at 7:55 p.m. on April 12

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to halt the scheduled execution of a Georgia man convicted of murder on Tuesday despite evidence his sentencing jury had been tainted by racism. Thomas Buffington, a juror in the 1997 trial of Kenneth Fults, signed an affidavit in 2005 saying “that’s what that nigger deserved.”

Georgia executed Fults by lethal injection at 7:37 p.m. local time, according to a statement from the state attorney general’s office.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied a request for clemency on Monday, leaving the high court as his last remaining chance at avoiding lethal injection. Fults filed an eleventh-hour request last week for the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied previous petitions to hear his case, to directly intervene.

Fults’ execution Tuesday night will come almost 20 years after the original crime. Fults, a black man, pled guilty to the January 1996 murder of Cathy Bounds, his white neighbor, after shooting her five times in the back of the head during a series of burglaries. The jury sentenced him to death in May of 1997.

After sentencing, Fults’ case began the complex appeals process that accompanies any death-penalty case. First, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence on direct review in June 2001. From there, Fults then sought a separate habeas review in the state courts in 2003 and in federal courts in 2009.

While his lawyers gathered evidence for the state habeas review, one of their investigators interviewed Buffington, who served on the jury that sentenced Fults to death. Buffington had told the court during jury selection he held no racial biases. Eight years later, his answer changed.

“I don’t know if [Fults] ever killed anybody, but that nigger got just what should have happened,” the 79-year-old man said in a sworn affidavit in April 2005. “Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that’s what that nigger deserved.”

Buffington later died without further involvement in the case. Two other jurors subsequently signed statements condemning his remarks and questioning the fairness of his jury service. “It is my personal opinion, a person with this mentality cannot sit in judgment of others,” said Ryan Archer, the jury’s foreman. Another juror, Mary Bunn, said she was “deeply troubled that Mr. Buffington was allowed to sit in judgment of Mr. Fults since he considered Mr. Fults to be less of a human being.”

In response to Fults’ petition to the Court, the state of Georgia said in a footnote it “obviously does not dispute that this is a highly offensive racial slur.” But the state argued Buffington’s statement should be ignored on procedural grounds. Because Fults did not raise a juror misconduct claim while his case was on direct appeal—which concluded four years before the affidavit was signed—he was barred from raising it on habeas review, Georgia’s lawyers contended. The Georgia Supreme Court and the federal Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state.

Fults’ current lawyers countered there was no way of knowing about the juror misconduct during that appeal. They also blamed inadequate counsel during Fults’ trial and direct appeal—an understatement, to say the least. Johnny Mostiler, the public defender of Spalding County, Georgia, routinely fell asleep while representing Fults at trial and died of a heart attack during his direct appeal. Mostiler also had an overwhelming caseload, a cozy relationship with county prosecutors, and a penchant for telling racist jokes. While representing Curtis Osborne for a double homicide in 1991, he turned down a plea bargain for a life sentence without informing his client; Osborne received the death penalty and was executed in 2008. A white client recounted how Mostiler, in reference to Osborne, told him “that little nigger deserves the chair.”

The Supreme Court denied Fults’ petition last year, and Georgia set an execution date last month. But his lawyers asked for a new stay of execution after the Court agreed earlier this month to review Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, a case also concerning racist remarks by a juror. In that case, the Court will consider whether the no-impeachment rule, which protects jurors from answering questions about their deliberations in many jurisdictions, should apply to evidence of racial bias.

Fults’ lawyers argued he should not be executed until after Pena-Rodriguez is decided, citing parallels with their case and the potential for a favorable outcome. (One major difference: the racist juror in Pena-Rodriguez made his remarks during deliberations, not afterwards, allowing other jurors to quickly notify the judge.) But the Court denied the stay request Tuesday afternoon, roughly five hours before his scheduled execution. None of the justices offered public dissents.

Pat McCrory's Nearly Meaningless Executive Order on HB2

DURHAM, N.C.—After weeks of fierce criticism, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory on Tuesday took steps to blunt the backlash to HB2, the state’s controversial LGBT-related law.

That law—introduced, passed, and signed during an unusual one-day special session on March 23—prevents transgender people from using bathrooms corresponding to the gender with which they identify in state schools and government facilities. It also prevents cities from creating LGBT non-discrimination ordinances or raising local minimum wages. The bill was passed in response to a Charlotte ordinance requiring schools and businesses to make transgender bathroom accommodations and prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people.

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McCrory’s order seems to be geared at soothing fears about some elements in the law, but it does not appear to make any material changes. The governor cannot unilaterally change the law. There is no change to the transgender-bathroom conditions, one of the most complicated elements. Government buildings, including schools, will still require people to use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate. But the order also notes that private businesses may establish their own restroom and locker-room policies.

The order also “affirms” that local governments and private business may establish non-discrimination employment policies for their own employees—including, presumably, LGBT people. It also expands the state’s nondiscrimination policy for state employees to include sexual orientation and gender identity. But it does not restore cities’ right to establish local non-discrimination ordinances that apply to the private sector, as Charlotte’s ordinance did. In other words, the North Carolina government cannot legally discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Businesses can discriminate, but can also choose not to, and cities may not prohibit them from doing so.

Finally, the governor said he will support a push during the upcoming legislative short session that would reinstate the right to sue for discrimination in state court. That right was eliminated by HB2, in what appeared to be a clerical error resulting from haste rather than an intentional step. While the right to sue in federal court remained, advocates say it’s important to allow the right to sue in state court as well.

McCrory, a Republican, explained his intention in a video. The text of the executive order is available here.

It’s unclear what material effect the executive order might have. Much of it is devoted to restating what’s already in HB2—including the new rules on transgender accommodations in state facilities, the right of the private sector to set its own policies, and the right of the private sector and local government to create their own non-discrimination policies.

Meanwhile, the governor does not—and likely cannot—deal with some of the more complicated matters in the controversy over the law. McCrory and the Republicans who dominate the state legislature continue to defend the importance of the transgender-bathroom provisions, insisting they are a commonsense step to prevent abuse. Transgender people in North Carolina and elsewhere have criticized the provision. They point out that transgender people are more likely to be abused while using bathrooms that don’t match their appearance than the reverse; some bearded transgender men tweeted selfies to show why they don't feel comfortable using women’s rooms, even if that’s what their birth certificates say their gender is.

In addition, as long as the law applies to schools, there’s a risk that the state could jeopardize federal funding through Title IX. The Obama administration had said it is reviewing whether HB2 runs afoul of federal regulations for moneys for transportation, education, or housing. The federal government has treated gender identity as protected under Title IX, though the judicial view is not entirely clear. Federal funding for education to North Carolina accounted for $4.3 billion last year.

Senate Leader Phil Berger, a Republican, praised McCrory’s order, saying it “put to rest the left's lies about HB2.” But the North Carolina ACLU, one of several groups that promptly sued to overturn the law, on grounds including due process and equal protection, quickly dismissed the order. The acting executive director, Sarah Preston, said in a statement:

Gov. McCrory’s actions today are a poor effort to save face after his sweeping attacks on the LGBT community, and they fall far short of correcting the damage done when he signed into law the harmful House Bill 2, which stigmatizes and mandates discrimination against gay and transgender people. With this executive order, LGBT individuals still lack legal protections from discrimination, and transgender people are still explicitly targeted by being forced to use the wrong restroom.

McCrory’s move comes after weeks of intense pressure on the state from many quarters, in addition to the lawsuit against the law. The NBA has discussed moving its 2017 All-Star game, slated to be held in Charlotte. The NCAA is reportedly reviewing its decision to hold portions of next year's basketball tournament in Greensboro. Bruce Springsteen canceled a show, scheduled for Sunday in Greensboro, in protest. A weekend headline in Raleigh’s News and Observer said that the state was “reel[ing] as a national punch line.”

Perhaps most potently, there’s been a serious backlash from businesses, echoing the response when other states considered or passed similar laws dealing with LGBT rights. Major Old North State companies like Bank of America criticized the law, and a slew of big corporations announced they would reverse or halt plans to create jobs in North Carolina. PayPal canceled a planned 400-job center in the state, and Deutsche Bank announced Tuesday morning that it was freezing plans to create 250 new positions. The Raleigh visitors bureau reported the law was already having a negative effect on conferences in the capital.

The governor cannot unilaterally change the law.

It’s not yet clear whether McCrory’s clarifications, perhaps in tandem with supplemental legislation on suing for discrimination, will be enough to assuage those businesses. In Indiana, which in 2015 passed a religious-freedom law that alienated major companies, the legislature ended up taking action to roll back much of the bill. There’s been no such push in North Carolina, despite the demands of some Democrats in the state legislature. The General Assembly is heavily dominated by conservative Republicans from rural areas.

The political effects of McCrory’s order also remain to be seen. There were indications that the governor had misgivings about the law from the start. A former mayor of Charlotte, he had previously criticized state interference in local affairs, declined to call a legislative special session, and said any state action should be narrowly tailored to reversing the Charlotte ordinance. But once the General Assembly called itself back into session, McCrory bowed to the veto-proof conservative Republican supermajority and quickly signed the law, then staunchly defended it.

The law, and the backlash to it, has become a risk to McCrory’s reelection bid, in part because it endangers his attempt to portray himself as a technocratic, pro-business moderate. He’ll face off in November against state Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, who has called for HB2’s repeal and refused to defend the law in court. The N&O speculates that McCrory’s language in the order expanding protection for sexual orientation and gender identity may be aimed at undermining Cooper’s rationale for refusing to defend the law.

Tuesday’s executive order is McCrory’s boldest step yet to wrest back control over the narrative over HB2—which was first snatched away by his fellow Republicans in the General Assembly in calling their special session, and then by businesses and activists who oppose the law. But the impact of the order will still depend on how each of those groups respond. First, it will depend whether these clarifications are enough to convince corporate leaders that the state is still welcoming enough a place to conduct business. If not, the ball will go back to the same state legislators who passed HB2 in the first place, and who have so far shown little indication that the business backlash has changed their minds.

Are Blockbusters Coming to the Small Screen?

The movie-theater industry, like every other lumbering dinosaur in the entertainment business, has long been resistant to the change it knows is coming. Since it’s becoming easier and easier to replicate the cinema experience at home, ticket sales have continued to decline, with cineplexes propping up revenues by raising prices and up-charging for 3D and “premium” theaters. Efforts by streaming companies like Netflix to simultaneously release films in theaters and homes have been boycotted by every major theater chain. But streaming studios could be a relatively small threat compared to who’s on the horizon: the Napster creator Sean Parker.

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Screening Room is a startup being pushed by Parker (the multi-billionaire who also served as the first president of Facebook) that aims to chart a middle ground between the theater experience and online piracy. Access to the service would cost something like $150; then, home viewers could pay $50 to watch a new film instead of going to their local theater. Film distributors would supposedly get a huge chunk of that revenue, as an incentive for partnership—Variety reports that several major studios, like Universal, Fox, and Sony, are interested. But after years of intransigence, studios might understandably be reluctant to allow such a drastic change to be put in the hands of a self-branded industry disruptor.

Parker has made some powerful allies in his campaign to launch Screening Room, and in a presentation at this year’s CinemaCon (a gathering of studios, exhibitors, and theater chains in Las Vegas), the director J.J. Abrams said the industry had to embrace change. “There’s nothing better than going to the movies, and there never will be. I’m open to all good ideas. In this age of piracy we must be thoughtful partners,” he said. “We must do that without fear.” He noted that, as a father of three, he rarely gets to go to the theater, and that Screening Room could tap into new sources of revenue for an industry that’s barely diversified in decades.

The Screening Room model—the idea of paying more than triple the cost of an average movie ticket—has surfaced before. At the dawn of the high-definition streaming era, Universal Pictures announced a plan to offer its new comedy Tower Heist on demand for $60 as part of a pilot program for future releases. Theater chains rebelled and threatened to pull the film (starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy) from their screens, so Universal backed off. In the end, Tower Heist grossed an underwhelming $78 million at the domestic box office, about as much as it cost to produce, and Universal never got to see if the home-release model would have produced a different result.

Directors like Abrams, Peter Jackson, and Steven Spielberg have publicly endorsed Screening Room, but for them the risk is far lower—more people get to see their films while the threat of online piracy is hopefully bypassed. But producers and distributors are understandably wary. Theater revenues remain strong—they were around $11 billion last year—even as ticket sales, which represent the actual numbers of viewers attending movies, remain flat. (In recent years, theater chains have been making up for lost revenue by raising the cost of concessions, which generated almost $800 million in 2014—profit that Screening Room could also potentially hurt.)

On Tuesday at CinemaCon, John Fithian, the CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners, blasted Screening Room. He argued that the traditional “window” between theatrical and home releases was the biggest advantage theaters had, and that any sacrifice of that wasn’t worth the financial reward. That window “makes new movies into events,” he said at a CinemaCon conference. “Success there establishes value and bolsters revenue in downstream markets.” (Meaning DVD and on-demand services.)

The startup is more popular among international distributors, for whom the threat of online piracy is even greater. Paul Higginson, an executive vice president at 20th Century Fox, told Deadline that studios’ aversion to Screening Room stems from a “fear of the unknown.” But he added, “I think we need to have an open mind of what’s possible. Because we can’t be like King Canute or we’ll get drowned.” The tide of home viewing is indeed rising to threatening levels—but thus far, studios have remained intent on trying to turn it back.

What Private Information Did Uber Give the Government?

Between July and December 2015, Uber provided information on more than 11.6 million users and nearly 600,000 drivers to state and local regulatory agencies, the ride-sharing mobile app said Tuesday.

In its first-ever transparency report, the transportation company said it is required by law to provide certain information to government agencies, and has been asked to hand over information on trip requests, pickup and drop-off locations, and fees. Uber says it was able to negotiate “a narrower scope,” limiting the amount of information provided than was requested by regulatory agencies, for more than 42 percent of requests. In those cases, Uber deemed the request went beyond what was legally required or the information was personally or commercially sensitive. In its report, Uber lists the California Public Utilities Commission and the New Orleans Department of Safety and Permits as examples of regulatory agencies.

The company says it has “[defended] ourselves in legal proceedings before the agency or in court” in order to limit the amount of information it has released.

Customers in California were most affected by requests from regulators; there, Uber handed over information on 5.4 million riders and 299,000 drivers to local regulatory agencies. In New York City, Uber said it tried unsuccessfully to narrow the amount of information regulators requested for nearly 2.9 million users and 37,000 drivers. However, in Chicago, Uber reported it limited the scope for nearly 1.7 million users and 95,000 drivers, providing less information than requested.

During that time period, state and federal law enforcement requested information on 408 riders and 205 drivers. Uber, however, only fully complied with 32 percent of requests, while partially complying with 53 percent of requests.

In 30 “emergency” situations, in which there was “an imminent threat of harm to a rider or driver,” Uber has released information to law enforcement without going through the legal process. However, on all other occasions, Uber requires subpoenas, search warrants, or court orders before providing law enforcement with information on specific trips, riders, and drivers.

Most law-enforcement requests for information related to investigations into fraud or stolen credit cards, Uber said. The company has also responded to cases involving driver and rider safety. Uber has not received any requests for investigations into national security.

Uber has faced criticism in the last year over major data breaches, which compromised personal information for around 50,000 drivers. The company says it has taken several steps to quell concerns and shore up security. But the transparency report could stir up concern that personal information of drivers and riders aren’t quite as secure as people previously thought.

Following the Edward Snowden leaks in 2013 that exposed court orders to Verizon to hand over call data, various companies have attempted to reassure their customers that they do not provide their information in bulk to government agencies. Right after those leaks, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws, and then only provide the information if is required by law.” Uber, in the same vein, is attempting to show its customers that it takes information requests on a case-by-case basis.

Uber said Tuesday hopes to provide similar analysis of its cooperation with regulators and law enforcement outside the United States, as well. Uber operates in over 60 countries. However, the company hasn’t always been greeted warmly abroad, with protests breaking out this year in France and Brazil and drivers attacked in Kenya in February, among other nations.

Michael Pollan and the Luxury of Time

If there’s one overarching lament on Cooked, the four-part Netflix series hosted by the journalist and culinary redeemer Michael Pollan, it’s that Americans are transfixed with the culture of food, but not with the actual cooking of food. Americans, as it turns out, are cooking less and even the food they do consume at home is increasingly being prepared somewhere else.

While Cooked, which debuted to acclaim this spring, is based on Pollan’s 2013 book of the same name, the sifting of Americans from their kitchens has been his cri de coeur for much longer, particularly as food-themed television became mainstream.

“It’s no accident that Julia Child appeared on public television—or educational television, as it used to be called,” Pollan wrote back in 2009. “On a commercial network, a program that actually inspired viewers to get off the couch and spend an hour cooking a meal would be a commercial disaster, for it would mean they were turning off the television to do something else.”

He’s not imagining things. Last year, the U.S. Commerce Department released data showing that, for the first ever on record, consumers spent more money at restaurants and bars than at grocery stores. And, of all developed countries, Americans cook the least and eat the fastest. All of these are issues that boil down in large part to the availability of time, and the concept of convenience.

“Time is the big impediment to most people,” Pollan told me last month in New York. “There are several impediments. One is the loss of skills and confidence. People have less time and even people who have the same amount of time feel like they have less time. We work long hours, some of us work two jobs, and we have longer commute times.”

In renewing his plea for a return to the kitchen, Pollan works against even less favorable conditions than he did just a few years ago. According to Pew, nearly half of American households have two full-time working parents now, up 15 points from 1970. The number of single-parent households—also a demographic not known for being particularly rich in leisure time—is at its highest point as well, at nearly a third of American households.

It’s not just about having time to cook—there’s also the time required to plan out meals, shop for ingredients, and wash dishes. As my colleague Derek Thompson noted in 2014, even if the phenomenon of many Americans working more than ever is a myth, the sense that we have less time is very real.

“If you look at it … we have found time for some new activities,” Pollan argues. “Being online outside of work about two hours in the last 15 years, we’ve found that time somewhere. We’ve taken it from other things, we took it from television. We probably took some of it from cooking, maybe we’re sleeping a little less.”

What separates Americans from their culinarily prolific European counterparts, in Pollan’s view, is a combination of cultural and political considerations.

Europeans fought for shorter workdays, more vacation time, family leave, and all these kinds of things. Those haven’t been priorities in America, it’s been about money.

“Europeans fought for shorter workdays, more vacation time, family leave, and all these kinds of things,” he said. “Those haven’t been priorities in America, it’s been about money. You see in the countries that fought for time, they cook more often, they have less obesity. There are real benefits to having time. There’s often a trade-off between time and money.”

Of course, the lavender is always purpler in Provence. And while Pollan isn’t advocating a wholesale adoption of the European work model, our conversation came as Europe projects a feeble economic outlook and eurozone countries battle double-digit unemployment.

Even France, the origin point of culinary elitism, is reconsidering its famously misunderstood 35-hour workweek. Spain is exploring the end of its two-hour daily siesta regimen. To some, these corrections might represent Old World manifestations of a nanny state; governments essentially telling their citizens to be more industrious (or perhaps even more American).

Given that Pollan and I were having a luxurious breakfast in Manhattan, the financial capital of the United States and the center of a city that had thrown an interborough temper-tantrum when its previous mayor had sought to ban the availability of sugary drinks, I wondered if the accusatory specter of paternalism had influenced the way he approached his efforts to get Americans to cook more and eat better.

“Look, food culture is emotionally very fraught,” he said. “People have very strong feelings and they don’t want to be told by anybody how to eat. You have to be very careful how you have this conversation.”

Pollan mentioned the case of the British parents who slipped their children fatty snacks through the gates of their schools to protest Jamie Oliver’s efforts to change school foods.

“People objected that he was implicitly criticizing parents for what they were sending to school and they went to the school gate and threw crisps over the fence,” he explained. “Although it’s worth pointing out that we tolerate social engineering from corporations about our eating in a way we won’t tolerate it from our elected representatives. So you take something like Bloomberg’s efforts  ... there was outrage. Essentially, he was asking people to pause and reflect before you go from 16 to 32 ounces of soda.”

In acknowledging Bloomberg’s tactical missteps in trying to wrest Big Gulps from New Yorkers, Pollan also may have inadvertently signaled one potential criticism of his nudge to get Americans back into their kitchens to cook, a pastime he characterizes as a “political act.”

“What I’m hoping to do with this project is to get people to cook a little bit more than they do,” he said. “It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. If people add one meal a week to the food they cook at home, there are strategies that can help you navigate that. But you’re only going to do that if you find it pleasurable, so what I’m proposing is that this process we’re being told is pure drudgery is actually interesting and gratifying and satisfying. I’m just trying to propose an alternative narrative to the one that says, ‘This isn’t fun, you don’t have time, you don’t know what you’re doing’ and that’s all I can hope to do.”