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The Jackass-Reduction Plan
Jonathan Alter 9/19/2009 12:00:00 AM
It's enough to make me nostalgic for Jackass, the MTV show of a decade ago. At least the yokels performing those stupid stunts were trying to hurt themselves, not act like jerks toward someone else. Instead we're getting "Vote for Joe Wilson! He heckled the president!" The money is pouring in to the South Carolina congressman's campaign. Collegiate right-wing jackasses are being inspired to follow the path John Belushi's Bluto trod from Animal House to the Senate. Can the republic be saved from boorish fools? The good news is I've got a jackass-reduction plan ready for review. And it could really work.
MUSIC
A Rolling Stone, Still
David Gates 4/18/2009 12:00:00 AM
For more than four decades, Bob Dylan's following has resembled both rapt children behind the Pied Piper and hellhounds on his trail: they can take any new direction in his work as a revelation or a personal affront. During a 1966 concert in Manchester, England, one fan's devotion to the early recordings with acoustic guitar moved him to shout "Judas!" when confronted with Dylan's full-on rock band. And then came the quasi-country albums, the cover albums, the breakup album, the white-jumpsuit period, the Christian period, the '80s rock period, the return to acoustic folk and the so-called comeback album "Time Out of Mind," followed by "Love and Theft" and, most recently, "Modern Times."
THE DIGNITY INDEX
Let Me Share My Top-Secret Plan
3/28/2009 12:00:00 AM
ARTS
No Culture Czar
Seth Colter Walls 2/5/2009 12:00:00 AM
Should President Barack Obama create a cabinet-level post for an arts administrator? Music producer Quincy Jones has promised to beg the new president to create a "Secretary of Arts" the next time they speak, while an online petition to similar effect currently claims more than 200,000 signatories. But John Adams, one of America's most-performed living composers ("Nixon in China," "Doctor Atomic"), says he isn't so sure. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Seth Colter Walls. Excerpts:
BEYOND WORDS
Note by Note, Inspiring a Nation
1/18/2009 12:00:00 AM
Will.i.am's latest Obama-inspired music video (and, as he reveals below, it won't be his last) is called "It's a New Day," and features clips of the president-elect's supporters and celebs singing along over a barrage of election night revelry. (Sample lyrics: "I woke up this morning/Feeling brand new/Cause the dreams that I've been dreaming/Have finally came true.") The rapper-producer (real name William James Adams Jr.) spoke with NEWSWEEKabout drawing inspiration from Obama's words. Excerpts:
FASHION
Political Ties
Tony Dokoupil 10/14/2008 12:00:00 AM
Those who read neckties like tea leaves, using them as a window on their wearer, have tended to focus on the tie itself: solid or striped, paisley or plaid, skinny or wide? But it's the knot, obvious and yet overlooked, where the real insights lie. At the ill-fated Battle of Waterloo in 1818, for example, Napoleon donned a large, loose knot that his soldiers understood as a show of optimism.