Newsweek 2/7/2020

1955 “The public image of Margaret as a gaily mischievous foil to her serious sister is already beginning to change,” Newsweek wrote of British royal Princess Margaret, then 24, who was perceived as a “spoiled darling of chance” who “enjoys all the pleasures of royalty but bears none of its responsibilities.” While Margaret adopted some official duties during her royal tenure, she nevertheless maintained a reputation of unapologetic autonomy within her world of propriety and tradition. Some royals, like fellow second born Prince Harry today, simply prefer to take the less conventional route. 1981 “The 52 hostages were home at last,” Newsweek wrote after the 444-day long Iranian hostage crisis. Newly-inaugurated President Reagan warned of “swift and effective retribution” should a similar event reoccur. Even now, President Trump referred to the number of…

Grieving fans assemble outside the Staples Center in Los Angeles on January 26 after hearing of the death earlier that day of NBA star Kobe Bryant. Bryant and eight other people, including his 13-year-old daughter, were killed in a crash of a private helicopter in foggy weather that morning. Bryant, 41, widely considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time, retired in 2016. He played his entire 20-year professional career with the Lakers, winning 5 NBA championships, earning NBA Finals MVP honors twice and becoming an NBA All Star 18 times.…

Charles Fried was a fervent, superior officer on the frontlines of the Reagan Revolution. As solicitor general of the United States from 1985 to 1989, he urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the reining liberal orthodoxies of his day: abortion, civil rights, executive power and constitutional interpretation. But the Trump Revolution has proven a bridge too far. As he reveals in a scorching interview with Newsweek, Fried has broken ranks. He denounces a president who is “perhaps the most dishonest person to ever sit in the White House.” As disgusted as he is by President Donald Trump, Fried is, if possible, even more dismayed by William Barr, Trump’s current attorney general, for having stepped up as Trump’s chief apologist. Fried says of Barr. “His reputation is gone.” Fried was born in…

Heading into the 2020 presidential election, campaign strategists would do almost anything for a crystal ball to predict voting patterns and give them the key to lock up a large voting bloc. Securing the “women’s vote” would be a major coup, yet in this adaptation from their recently published book, A Century of Votes for Women, political science professors Christina Wolbrecht and J. Kevin Corder explain why this is easier said than done. What will women voters do? Since the 19th Amendment prohibited the denial of voting rights on the basis of sex a century ago, the press, the public and especially politicians have sought to answer this question. Yet expectations for women voters are often more grounded in assumptions and stereotypes than in evidence, and predicting how women will vote…

Why this book? CW & KC: Politicians and the press have been speculating about the “women’s vote” for more than 100 years. Observers confidently report the conventional wisdom of the time without much attention to what the evidence actually says. We wanted to tell the story of the first century of women voters in the U.S.: How the press covered them, how politicians reached out to them and what we actually know about how women used their ballots in American presidential elections since suffrage. “The Squad” is a vocal group of progressive female congress women. Does their style or self-proclaimed nomenclature have any impact on female voters, voting patterns or perceptions by voters? CW & KC: If there is an impact, it is much more likely to be tied to someone’s partisanship and…

At CES 2020, the tech industry’s biggest event of the year, thousands of cutting-edge products and services were unveiled. Here are the themes that matter most. CES, WHICH TOOK PLACE IN LAS VEGAS IN EARLY JANUARY, is the world’s biggest and noisiest tech convention. It was a dazzling display of futurism: More than 4,400 exhibitors unveiled some 20,000 new products to 170,000 attendees across 2.9 million net square feet of exhibition space. The show is the first stop every year for anyone wanting to see the latest and greatest gadgets and gizmos they’ll be able to buy or sell in the coming 12 months (see top picks, page 26). But four days of looking at the thousands of current, upcoming and prototype products on display—not to mention more than 300 conference panels…