The Sunday Times: Chest-beating Putin aims his vilest weapon at the West — misogyny

Photo: Drew Hays

Photo: Drew Hays

I am not a professional Dr Angry. I don’t go round collecting grievances. Nor do I have a brain that categorises everything in terms of “isms”.

So when I say Vladimir Putin’s Russia is one of the most loathsomely misogynistic countries in the world, I am speaking from the heart. I don’t just mean misogyny in a crass, vodka-swilling, male loser way; I mean in a big threat to world peace way.

I have visited a fair number of countries this year in the course of filming a documentary series on the history of women. Some could hardly be described as bastions of tolerance and equality. But only in Russia did I witness sexism bolstered by state-sanctioned menace and contempt. It’s a truly repellent culture that can’t see anything wrong in a poster for vodka showing an alluring woman with bruised knees.

But simply being brutish and boorish is not in itself a national catastrophe. The poison in the well comes from the skilful way in which Putin has encouraged a cultural war— one that equates patriotism and nationalism with hard-fisted chauvinism — in order to bolster his political war with Europe.

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The Sunday Times: America lies paralysed by the election monster that never sleeps

Photo: Startup Stock Photos

Photo: Startup Stock Photos

During a 14-hour flight from China last week, I confess to having watched Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise’s sci-fi adventure flick Edge of Tomorrow. It was research, you understand. For those of us living through yet another mid-term election this week, the film’s tagline “Live. Die. Repeat” has particular meaning.

Cruise’s character is caught in an endless time-loop, as are American voters.

As soon as one two-year cycle is finished, the campaigning begins for the next. Between the four-year presidential terms, the six-year Senate terms, and the two-year terms in the House of Representatives, there is never a moment’s respite. Voters have had enough. Even though this year is theoretically full of drama and excitement — with the Republicans set to win back control of Congress — only two-thirds of registered voters say they are certain to go to the polls. That’s down from three-quarters in 2006.

Just like Ms Blunt, I want to hunt down the monster that’s forcing us to live every day as though it’s a general election. And when I do, I’m going to make it watch endless loops of every election ad since 1975. Then, I’ll order it to try driving through Manhattan when the president is in town for one of his frequent fundraisers (more than 400 nationally since 2009).

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The Sunday Times: In the land of sexual confusion a threesome is fine, adultery’s a crime

Photo: Scott Webb

Photo: Scott Webb

Was last week a great one for sex? Well, that depends. If your taste runs to threesomes then life just got even better. There’s now an app for that: 3nder. After only six months in business it has registered more than 200,000 users.

Life also improved last week for gay couples living in the 11 American states where same-sex marriage became legal. Only 20 more states to go and the country will have finally fulfilled its constitutional mandate to grant equal protection under the law to all citizens of the United States.

Otherwise, I would say that on balance it has been a mixed bag of sexual transgression and religious fundamentalism. Stolen nude photographs of the actress Jennifer Lawrence were shared online; a Texas law closing 80% of the state’s abortion clinics came into effect; and Phil Robertson, the gay-bashing patriarch of the popular TV docudrama Duck Dynasty, issued another fire and brimstone statement about biblical sex versus the rest. And that’s only seven days in the life of a nation.

British attitudes to sex could fill an entire library. But I’m telling you, Americans are all over the place. This is the country, after all, that invented the scarlet letter as well as the celebrity sex tape.

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The Sunday Times: America, the land of unleaders, lets in a brutal new world order

Photo: davide ragusa

Photo: davide ragusa

RIGHT now, is there any American child who says: “Mom, Dad: when I grow up I’m going to be a leader”? Movie star, lawyer, software designer, maybe. But leader — as in the person who makes things happen — nooo. That’s not the American way any more.

Instead the United States has unleaders. They carry the seals of office but they don’t wield them because that would be problematic. To the unleader, anything that implies the existence of a vertical relationship bears the stigma of imperialism and God knows what else. Forget about driving, shaping, changing or simply taking responsibility for events. That’s 20th-century talk. Unleadership is a state of being rather than the act of doing.

It is not a new phenomenon. The average 19th-century American politician barely rated on the leadership scale. Aside from Abraham Lincoln and a handful of others, most US presidents before the 20th century were a sorry lot of party hacks and political hucksters.

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The Sunday Times: America may fret over its shrinking middle class but the dream is intact

Photo: Luis Llerena

Photo: Luis Llerena

First, some history. In 1883, during the middle of the Gilded Age, Alva Vanderbilt decided to force her way into the elite sector of New York society known as “Mrs Astor’s Four Hundred”.

For years, Mrs Astor had maintained her own list of acceptable blue bloods. “Old money”, a relative term compared with Europe, counted; “new money” did not. Unfortunately for Alva, the Vanderbilt family wealth — which topped $1bn (£616m) in today’s money — was considered new money.

It was perhaps not surprising that Mrs Astor fought so hard to maintain the tribal identity of New York high society. The Gilded Age was an era of sudden prosperity (the economy grew by 400% between 1860 and 1900) and gross income disparities. According to best estimates, by 1905 the top 1% held more than 50% of the country’s wealth. Yet it was also an era of unprecedented social mobility.

Alva Vanderbilt understood that the issue at stake was class versus caste. Armed with that insight, she built the showiest mansion on Park Avenue, planned history’s most expensive costume ball (costing $250,000 when the average income was $380 a year), and invited every smart person in New York — except for Mrs Astor and her daughter Carrie, then in the middle of her debutante season.

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The Sunday Times: Here’s the first crack in the shield around America’s bad teachers

Photo: Redd Angelo

Photo: Redd Angelo

A nightmare scenario is unfolding for the Californian parents of 12-year-old Jane Smith. Their child has been in a car accident and lies unconscious in A&E. The doctors say that Jane is bleeding internally — only an immediate operation will save her life.

Unfortunately it’s a Wednesday. That’s the day the surgeon on call is Dr Jones, aka Dr Death. He has killed every patient under his care for the past 10 years. The hospital would give anything to be rid of him. But Jones has tenure and that means he’s untouchable. In the past 10 years only 0.0007% of Californian surgeons have been sacked for incompetence. Bad luck to the Smiths; little Jane picked the wrong day to need surgery.

As far as I know, this scenario has never happened. American doctors simply aren’t that powerful. But until three months ago its teachers were. The dismissal rate of 0.0007% is a genuine statistic. That is to say, over the past decade just 19 incompetent teachers in California have been sacked out of a workforce of almost 300,000.

It’s no secret as to why: teachers in the state receive tenure after a mere 18 months. From then on, union regulations ensure that it takes years of hearings and can cost more than $1m (£610,000) to remove a single teacher.

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The Sunday Times: Legal thuggery and rule by fine print batter America’s body politic

Photo: Cole Patrick

Photo: Cole Patrick

This year I have been away from home a great deal working on a documentary series that will complement my forthcoming book on the history of women. The experience has been an eye-opener in many ways.

The past month, for example, has been spent in countries that don’t entirely share the BBC’s position on the bribing of public officials, or the European Union’s love of health and safety, or America’s belief in equality for all. What I witnessed made me feel lucky to be living in New York.

The airport may be a sorry dump but the rest of the city still sizzles with energy and optimism. Yet for the first time I have arrived back with a sense of foreboding.

Contrary to popular belief, democracies are not more robust than their totalitarian counterparts. It is in fact relatively easy to subvert a democratic institution from the inside, rotting the core while leaving the facade intact. Turkey, for instance, that beacon of Middle Eastern democracy, has the highest number of detained journalists in the world.

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The Sunday Times: Marshmallows and a toasting fork: the insignia of high office

Photo: Jeremy Ricketts

Photo: Jeremy Ricketts

August 1963. Little Stevie Wonder (as he was then) had the No 1 spot on the US Billboard Top Tunes chart with his song Fingertips Part II. The second spot belonged to Allan Sherman, a singer-songwriter who remains almost unknown outside America.

Sherman was an enormously talented parodist who rose to fame on the back of his first album, My Son, the Folk Singer, a collection of humorous songs about Jewish life in America.

It was his 1963 hit Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh that made Sherman a national hero. Americans from all walks of life could relate to his song about a boy’s first experience of summer camp. Set to the melody of Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours, it begins:

Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh

Here I am at Camp Granada;

Camp is very entertaining,

And they say we’ll have

some fun if it stops raining.

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The Sunday Times: Feckless, spoilt, lazy . . . now where did our millennials learn that?

Photo: Jan Vašek

Photo: Jan Vašek

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most narcissistic, entitled and lazy of them all? In America there’s no contest: it’s the Millennial Generation — those 18 to 35-year-olds who text instead of talk, who have a shorter concentration span than my dog Max, who believe that rules are just guidelines and who know beyond all doubt that they are unique and special human beings.

Millennials certainly get blamed for a great deal: for taking up space in their parents’ basement, for turning up late (again) and for thinking that a hoodie is appropriate work attire. A YouTube spoof, “Millennials in the workplace training video”, advises managers that millennials require heaps of meaningless praise to put in the bare minimum effort.

They also need plenty of “me time”, which can’t be counted towards the regulation two-week annual holiday. The trainer ends with the line: “It’s your civic duty to employ them. Trust us, we want to fire them all, too. But we can’t.”

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The Sunday Times: The American dream keeps rolling in a camembert chuck wagon

Photo: Daryn Bartlett

Photo: Daryn Bartlett

Call us a nation of fatties, lard-lovers and super-sized seat-hoggers. But it’s hard to stay lean when the greatest food revolution since the invention of the sandwich is parked enticingly on every street corner.

So excuse me while I hoof it over to the Korilla BBQ food truck to grab my lunchtime Porkinator: a taco filled with pulled pork, bacon, kimchi slaw, shredded cheese and barbecue sauce. Last week we had the Taim Mobile in the neighbourhood offering a kind of Middle-Med falafel fusion. The week before it had been Palenque, a Colombian-themed food truck that had sent out its siren call of beef-stuffed arepas. For us New Yorkers it’s the American dream on a paper plate.

Millions of people eat from food carts and trucks every day. Behind the beef short rib, marmalade-glazed onion and camembert grilled flatbread that I had last Thursday lies one of the key reasons why this country is still a better economic bet than Europe. In a word (well, three words actually): market-driven innovation.

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