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What is most helpful about Nancy Gibbs’ article on Mitt Romney in the latest issue of Time is her detailed explanation of why Romney faces doubts — not just from some evangelicals, but also from the cultural left:
Terry and I had trouble agreeing on the method of counting religious leaders in “The Time 100: The Most Influential People in the World.” Terry pointed me toward his recent quip about last year’s list:
One of the more nagging questions about the mass killings at Virginia Tech is how the parents of killer Seung-Hui Cho related to him. Their earlier statement to the public clearly expressed agony about their son’s rampage. The Washington Post‘s front-page story from Sunday fills in more blanks, especially regarding the killer’s mother, Hyang In Cho.
Eve Conant does a great job in the May 7 Newsweek of tracking the spiritual struggles of Army Chaplain Roger Benimoff, who begins a second tour of duty filled with idealism (“My heart is filled with prayer and god is giving me a discerning spirit”) and returns to the United States with his faith in tatters (“We make God into what we need for the moment. I hate God”).
In his feature article “Let’s Die Together” in the May Atlantic, David Samuels does a heroic task of explaining why anonymous group suicide is becoming popular in Japan. The opening image Samuels uses, of a car in a Tokyo suburb in which five young men and one young woman died together, reminded me of a scene in P.D. James’ novel The Children of Men, in which a group of elderly people on a bus cruise hold hands and jump to their deaths from a cliff.
During Virginia Tech’s convocation to mourn 32 murder victims last week, Nikki Giovanni did more with just 258 words than anyone else achieved in the thousands of other words preceding hers (MSNBC video; MP3). It was an electric moment. Her speech came alive for me with the second paragraph: “We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.”
The first of three 40th-anniversary issues of Rolling Stone is on newsstands now, and it is overflowing with the witty Q&A interviews that make the magazine frequently worthwhile. There’s the requisite kissing of founder Jann S. Wenner’s ring, as nearly every interview involves a moment when an artist describes how important a role the magazine played in wide cultural transformation. The next 40th-anniversary issue will focus on the Summer of Love, and I can imagine people discussing how many times a stray Rolling Stone on the coffee table helped them get laid.
Susan Stamberg of National Public Radio recently sent an audio valentine to singer-songwriter Susan Werner of Chicago. Werner’s latest recording is The Gospel Truth, which NPR described as gospel music for agnostics and (in a less accurate headline for its website) “A Songwriter’s View from the Pew.”
While interviewing Walter Isaacson on Wednesday’s Fresh Air, guest host Dave Davies raised the point that Albert Einstein has become an icon of unattainable genius. True, but he’s arguably the one scientist who most strongly attracted the affection of Americans. Whether because of his wonderfully untamed hair, his doleful eyes or that photo in which he sticks out his tongue, Einstein also became an icon of the scientist as approachable, and maybe even humble, human being. What other acclaimed scientist could have inspired Walter Matthau’s oddball role in the film I.Q.?
