2Newsweek USA september 16 2016

The Next Space Race / Sexual Harassment in the Media 9/11’S SECOND WAVE 09.16.2016 SOME 400,000 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN AFFECTED BY DISEASES, CANCERS AND MENTAL ILLNESSES LINKED TO THE ATTACKS 09.16.2016 VOL.167 NO.10 + ILLNESS IN THE AIR: Placido Perez, an EMT who was at the base of the World Trade Center in New York during 9/11, suffers from health issues such as liver swelling and post-traumatic stress disorder 22 Conspiracy A Conspiracy of Dunces NEW WORLD 44 Tech Take Two iPads and Call Me in the Morning 46 Drones Drones Unleashed 48 Health FEATURES DEPARTMENTS Fighting Fire With Cancer 52 Images BIG SHOTS 24 The Hurting Heroes of 9/11 Brasília, Brazil The alarming death toll from the attacks on September 11, 2001, is still rising The reason, doctors say: noxious chemicals released when the towers fell that turned Ground Zero into a cesspool of deadly disease by Leah McGrath Goodman 34 Tchau! DOWNTIME Karkamiş, Turkey Murky Motives Caracas, Venezuela Flagging Spirits 10 Santa Clara, Cuba Welcome to Cuba Disruption From Outer Space A massive stream of satellite photos will soon let us track war crimes, spot environmental disasters as they’re happening and hack the stock market by counting the cars in Wal-Mart parking lots by Grant Burningham DEV IN YALKIN FOR NEWSWEE K A GIF-Wrapped Present 54 Wealth Fly Me to the U 57 Bookstore Advanced Western Lit 101 58 Photography Life, Like PAG E O N E 12 Politics A Penalty Kick in the Pants 16 Trump COVER CREDIT: PHOTOGRAPH BY SPENCER PLATT/GETTY Going, Go-Go’s, Gone 60 Rewind 25 Years The Point of No Returns Newsweek (ISSN0028-9604) is published weekly except one week in January, July, August and October Newsweek is published by Newsweek LLC, Hanover Square, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10004 Periodical postage is paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices POSTMASTER: Send change of address to Newsweek, Hanover Square, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10004 18 Harassment Stories No One Dares Tell For Article Reprints, Permissions and Licensing www.IBTreprints.com/Newsweek PARS International (212) 221-9595 x210 Newsweek@parsintl.com NEWSWEEK 62 Bands / / 2016 FOR MORE HEADLINES, GO TO NEWSWEEK.COM EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jim Impoco DEPUTY EDITOR Bob Roe OPINION EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR Nicholas Wapshott INTERNATIONAL EDITOR EUROPEAN EDITOR Claudia Parsons CONTRIBUTING DESIGN DIRECTOR Kenneth Li Priest + Grace EXECUTIVE EDITOR, DIGITAL Matt McAllester Margarita Noriega EDITORIAL SENIOR EDITOR NATIONAL EDITOR R.M Schneiderman John Seeley POLITICS EDITOR Matt Cooper CULTURE EDITOR Joe Veix EXECUTIVE EDITOR, TV, FILM AND DIGITAL CONTRIBUTING EDITOR COPY CHIEF PRODUCTION EDITOR COPY EDITORS Teri Wagner Flynn Owen Matthews Elizabeth Rhodes Jeff Perlah Joe Westerfield Bruce Janicke PUBLISHED BY Newsweek LLC, A DIVISION OF IBT Media Inc CHAIRMAN Etienne Uzac DIGITAL WEEKEND EDITOR DIGITAL STRATEGY EDITOR VICE PRESIDENT, VIDEO PRODUCTION AND STRATEGY EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, VIDEO Nicholas Loffredo CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Dev Pragad Joanna Brenner CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER Eric Gonon Johnathan Davis Barclay Palmer CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Alvaro Palacios ART + PHOTO ART DIRECTOR ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Michael Friel Dwayne Bernard CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Mitchell Caplan VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES DESIGNER Jessica Fitzgerald Madelin Bosakewich PHOTO DIRECTOR Shaminder Dulai ADVERTISING + MARKETING Jen Tse SALES DIRECTOR Katy Lyness Marta Leja PHOTO EDITOR CONTRIBUTING DIGITAL IMAGING SPECIALIST VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING WRITERS Dan Goodman Ryan Bort Leah McGrath Goodman Carolina Buia* Alexander Nazaryan Nina Burleigh Bill Powell Janine Di Giovanni Josh Saul Kurt Eichenwald Roberto Saviano* Sean Elder* Zoë Schlanger Jessica Firger Zach Schonfeld Michele Gorman Jeff Stein Elizabeth Isaacson* John Walters Abigail Jones Lucy Westcott Max Kutner Stav Ziv Douglas Main *Contributing Kevin Maney* SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSWEEK FOR 75% OFF PRINT + ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION + APPS FOR 75% OFF WEEKLY HOME DELIVERY of Newsweek in Print FULL DIGITAL ACCESS to each week’s issue via Newsweek apps for iPad, Kindle Fire and Android SUBSCRIBE AT NEWSWEEK.COM/PREMIER Full access to NEWSWEEK.COM Subscriber-Only Content EVA R I STO SA /A F P/G E T T Y BIG SHOTS BRAZIL Tchau! Brasília, Brazil—The Brazilian Senate voted 61-20 on August 31 to remove Dilma Rousseff from the presidency on charges she illegally used money from state banks to fund public spending, marking the end of an impeachment process that has kept Brazilian politics in turmoil for months Rousseff described her removal as a “parliamentary coup.” Many of the politicians who voted for her ouster have also been caught up in a graft scandal involving state oil company Petrobras, and Michel Temer, who has been acting president since May, is banned from running for public office because he violated campaign spending laws EVARISTO SA BU L E N T K I L I C/A F P/G E T T Y BIG SHOTS TURKEY Murky Motives Karkamiş, Turkey—Smoke rises on September near the Syrian border town of Jarablus, where Turkey sent ground and air forces to help drive out Islamic State militants who had held the town for three years Turkey launched its incursion into Syria not only to push back ISIS but also to keep Kurdish fighters there away from its border Washington has urged Turkey to avoid confrontation with the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which has been among the most effective forces fighting ISIS Turkey views the Kurdish group as terrorists allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has fought against Ankara for decades BULENT KILIC NEW WORLD /IMAGES A GIF-WRAPPED PRESENT Properly attributing every internet image is about to get less daunting ON JANUARY 8, 2015, in celebration of David Bowie’s 68th birthday, British illustrator Helen Green posted a GIF of the musician on Tumblr A little over a year later, Bowie died, and Green’s animated portraits of him changing his appearance over his career spread across the internet Many versions of the file have been shrunken, some have been stretched, and others cropped to remove Green’s signature from the lower-right corner Fans must search out the artist to credit her when sharing the GIF, and Green must vigilantly track down people using it for commercial purposes if she’s to get paid or even acknowledged “An image goes viral, and millions of people see it, but the big disconnect is that information about what you’re looking at is lost,” says Mediachain Labs co-founder and engineer Denis Nazarov Launched in December 2014 by Nazarov and Jesse Walden, Mediachain Labs is building an eponymous protocol that connects an image with the information relevant to it and allows for the development of other applications, like a service letting artists track their work across the web Origin details, such as creator, title and year of production, are routinely appended to images through notes called metadata The problem is that metadata is often lost To preserve that connection, the image and its metadata can be stored together in a database By using a TinEye-like tool, the image or derivatives of it can be searched for in the database, which will retrieve the relevant metadata That sounds like a great solution, but it would require Mediachain Labs to create and NEWSWEEK maintain a centralized database of images and metadata While this approach works for Shazam, which identifies songs by searching for them in its library, building such a database for images would be laborious, costly and probably futile, given the overwhelming number of pictures online Shazam works with 11 million songs; 1.8 billion photos are uploaded to the internet every day Mediachain’s protocol sidesteps that with a decentralized database Participants provide access to their images and metadata Thanks to decentralization and openness, the protocol transforms the seemingly impossible feat of collecting information about every image on the internet into a collaborative effort Mediachain Labs has already amassed metadata on million images, which it used to launch its first test network in July Mediachain is also tackling the deluge of images uploaded daily It hopes developers will create, for instance, a tool that allows users to easily add their artwork to the database “In a perfect world, if humanity had started with Mediachain,” Nazarov says with a laugh, “if the only camera was on your phone, where you were logged in, and every photo you took was time-stamped automatically, there would be no way it was possible for someone to claim something before you.” Taking a different approach is the International Image Interoperability Framework IIIF, pronounced “triple I F,” is a consortium of museums, libraries and universities committed to sharing their resources, or “interoperating.” Many such institutions maintain digital archives in diverse 52 / / 2016 BY ARVIND DILAWAR @ArvSux “hubs”—the libraries, museums and archives whose materials it aggregates Nearly 20 percent of the DPLA’s primary hubs have some version of IIIF “It’s astonished me how rapidly IIIF has grown,” says DPLA Director of Technology Mark Matienzo He also hints at a possible difficulty, pointing out that IIIF’s roster includes libraries and museums but few commercial entities Matienzo believes Mediachain Labs faces a similar challenge Although it’s too soon for the company to have produced results from its collaboration with the DPLA, he is hopeful His concerns center on the decentralized database, which he sees as being bleeding edge enough to avert widespread use, raising the question of how the protocol would integrate with the rest of the web Mediachain Labs has several answers for that Besides the two previously mentioned applications (one letting artists track their work across the web and the other registering their artwork to the decentralized database), Nazarov describes how the protocol could combine the various online Creative Commons libraries, and Walden imagines it integrating with a blogging platform to give writers access to use-granted images—all with automated attribution, of course Their reliance on third-party developers may seem hopeful to + SEA OF SEE: Steal- DA R R EN STA PL ES/R EU T E RS ing images found on the internet is shamefully easy, because metadata can be stripped from a file formats, with images and metadata delivered through various, and often incompatible, means This creates difficulties for anyone hoping to draw material from multiple sources in a uniform way The most straightforward approach would be for every institution to settle on a standard format for image and metadata delivery, but that isn’t going to happen “Nobody is going to replace their digital image infrastructure just to interoperate on some medieval manuscripts or whatever,” says Jon Stroop, an IIIF editor and applications development manager at the Princeton University Library, a member of the consortium Rather than asking every institution to redesign the channels through which its images and metadata flow, IIIF requests an additional, uniformly formatted stream The IIIF community is made up of more than 60 cultural heritage institutions Besides Princeton and the Getty, these include Harvard University, Wikipedia and the DPLA Examples of applications that have been made according to IIIF specifications are Mirador, a gallery viewer that includes metadata display, and OpenSeadragon, which allows for the impossibly detailed viewing of large images As a partner of both Mediachain Labs and IIIF, the DPLA is in a unique position to weigh the benefits of each organization’s approach The DPLA, which brings together the online resources of U.S cultural heritage institutions and makes them accessible to internet users, has given Mediachain Labs access to its images and metadata and is advocating for adoption of the IIIF among its NEWSWEEK 1.8 BILLION PHOTOS ARE UPLOADED TO THE INTERNET EVERY DAY the charitable and delusional to the cynical, but Mediachain Labs already has more than 200 members in its open-source community, following or contributing work to the protocol, and the company sees no other way forward Nazarov and Walden struggled with developing more fully formed applications before realizing that, first, it was necessary to build an open protocol as a foundation “We might want to think of ourselves as creative geniuses, but what’s more important than us coming up with this great experience is building a platform for anyone to come up with an experience that they think is valuable,” says Walden And, he might add, for them to get credit for it 53 / / 2016 + SWAG-AIR: The Magellan jet tour meticulously caters to its wealthy clients and takes much of the hassle out of visiting colleges NEWSWEEK 54 / / 2016 DOWNTIME PHOTOGRAPHY WEALTH THEATER BOOKSTORE BANDS MOVIES FLY ME TO THE U M AG E L L A N J E TS Private jet tours are the latest perks offered to the über-wealthy when applying to U.S colleges BY LINDSAY TUCKER @lindstucker ON A LATE August morning, in the dusky haze of the San Fernando Valley, a former Los Angeles politician boards a Gulfstream G200 jet with his teenage son Inside the overwhelmingly beige cabin, varsity swag is neatly arranged on leather lounge chairs, cheerily setting the tone for what’s to come: a privately chartered trip to some of the nation’s finest liberal arts colleges, including Johns Hopkins, Colby College and Dartmouth Over the next nine days—during which the two passengers will visit nine schools—nearly every desire will be provided for, however large (chauffeured service between airports, schools and hotels) or small (Peanut M&Ms) The jet’s refreshment bar will be stocked with Diet Sprite, brownies and vanilla ice cream Grapes on the vine, chocolate chip cookies, watermelon cubes and an assortment of sandwiches will also be served, all according to the client’s specifications On a small dining table, an in-flight reference guide by Ivy League admissions experts offers NEWSWEEK strategies for maximizing the impact of each college visit In the front seat is a handwritten note tucked between a Dartmouth baseball cap and T-shirt: “We know that this is an exciting and stressful time for you both and we are happy that Magellan Jets could be a part of this milestone.” If this doesn’t sound like the way you explored your college options, blame your cheap parents The recently launched college-tour package from Magellan Jets, a membership-driven private aviation company based in Boston, has been specifically designed for America’s top earners With a price tag greater than a year’s college tuition, the program aims to decrease both the headache and the time spent on college campus visits Magellan takes care of details, arranging private tours and ground transportation Base price is jet-specific: 10 hours of air time on a light-size, seven-seater Hawker 400XP starts at $52,000, while the same package on the aforementioned super-midsize Gulfstream G200, which can seat 55 / / 2016 (97 percent of their students get into their top choices, they say), they sympathize with those who can’t afford their $30,000 to $50,000 asking price, often offering up free advice on their blog “Things just aren’t as they appear in admissions,” says Doe “As a mom and an advocate for this generation, it kills me.” College officials are tipped off to an applicant’s economic status in many ways: by an aggressive college counselor, by an alumnus or board member, or perhaps by a private-aviation company scheduling an exclusive tour for one of its customers On behalf of those who sign up for their college-tour package, Magellan taps into its network of billionaires, many of whom are high-profile alumni or on the boards at elite universities “We have a list of schools and customers who went there, and they’re able to make the [application] experience a little better by making the right introduction,” says Hebert Traditionally, universities sent recruiters to find rich kids at prep schools, says Golden Magellan’s jet tour delivers them like a butler offering a plate of Strottarga Bianco caviar If a major purpose of DOWNT IME /WEALTH up to 18, costs upward of $100,000 The service is completely customizable—Magellan will extend flight time to accommodate additional schools and even make the hotel reservations Magellan says these packages are invaluable to the hyper-wealthy kids and parents who use the service (none of whom would speak to Newsweek) “Unless you’re flying private, there’s just no way to see 10 schools over the course of five days,” says senior aviation specialist Joseph Santo, who works on trip logistics “Is it cost-effective? Absolutely not But for people with busy schedules, it means dollars and cents at the end of the day.” In fact, demand for this service has never been greater, says the company’s CEO, Joshua Hebert With the designated college-tour package now in its third year, 22 families have bought it in the past two years, Magellan says An additional 22 customers used their jets to visit campuses in that period, without purchasing the package IF A MAJOR PURPOSE OF HIGHER EDUCATION IS TO FACILITATE UPWARD MOBILITY, THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN YOUR MONEY OR YOUR GPA It’s well-documented that America’s top schools target the wealthy and often lower academic standards for their progeny It’s been dubbed “the preference of privilege” by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Daniel Golden in his book The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates Admissions departments favor wealthy students, even if their applications are weaker than those of the less privileged Secondary education, after all, is a business And no top-rated college got that way without donations for libraries, prestigious faculty hires and gaudy student centers Admissions practices are becoming less and less transparent, says college consultant Mimi Doe, co-founder of Top Tier Admissions, which provides reference material for Magellan’s customers Doe estimates that roughly half the student body at any given institution had some sort of “in” or “hook” (either they were athletic recruits or alumni children or what Golden calls “development cases”—kids whose well-off parents are expected to make sizable donations) While Doe and her business partner, former Dartmouth admissions officer Michele Hernández, have been very successful helping the percent NEWSWEEK higher education is to facilitate upward mobility, the system is broken Colleges favor families who have connections and can afford expensive SAT prep or private counseling from the likes of Top Tier Admissions Evidence shows that merely interviewing at a college or university enhances one’s chances of acceptance, but not all applicants can afford to travel While elitism in colleges and universities is certainly not news, it’s symptomatic of the growing income inequality among Americans At a time when the national conversation is so often focused on student-loan debt and the increasing cost of education, Golden finds it alarming that programs like this are flourishing “Here’s a group of applicants whose parents are willing to pay the equivalent of a year’s tuition just for the convenience and access of a private jet tour,” he says “Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans struggle to afford tuition.” 56 / / 2016 + BUILT TO LAST: The Last Bookstore is in a former bank and has turned a couple of vaults into reading rooms Advanced Western Lit 101 JAY L C L E N D E N I N / LOS A N G E L ES T I M ES/G E T T Y A reader’s paradise blooms in the Los Angeles desert BY ALEXANDER NAZARYAN @alexnazaryan NOBODY in Los Angeles reads books, right? They’re all just running up and down Sunset Boulevard, thrusting scripts at producers It’s a coming-of-age story about a young woman who discovers the meaning of love at an ISIS training camp Does that sound true to you? If so, you probably haven’t been to the Last Bookstore Located on the still-gritty stretch of downtown, the Last Bookstore is a potent symbol of the resurgent literary fortunes of Los Angeles It also has become one of the finest independent bookstores in the nation, rivaling acknowledged greats like the Elliott Bay Book Company (Seattle), Pegasus Books (Berkeley, California), Politics & Prose (D.C.) andTattered Cover (Denver) The Last Bookstore is now the subject of a 12-minute documentary by Chad Howitt that focuses on Josh Spencer, who opened his first store in 2009 He’d been selling books online for about a decade, as he continued to struggle with the aftermath of a 1996 car accident that robbed him of the ability to walk It proved surprisingly successful, allowing Spencer to open a store that was more than just a domain name “I think that the digital age has made print books more popular, in a weird way,” Spencer says in the documentary, Welcome to the Last Bookstore, which has him going through boxes of used books and doing fatherly things with his young daughter “It’s just made everyone come out of the woodwork who wants to see books survive.” Now in its second location, the Last Bookstore occupies the vast ground floor (as well as parts of the second) of the CrockerCitizens National Bank building, selling about 250,000 titles, according to store manager Katie Orphan, who estimates that there are another 200,000 titles in a warehouse About 80 percent of those, she believes, are used While the selection at the Last Bookstore is impressive, it’s the setting that stands out, an airy and grandiose chamber at once comfortable and whimsical, with a tunnel fashioned out of books and two vaults turned into reading rooms The Last Bookstore is a sign that while the days of Charles NEWSWEEK 57 / / 2016 Bukowski pulling up to the King Eddy Saloon are long gone, plenty of readers and writers call Los Angeles home What’s more, they’re creating something many thought was inimical to this city of freeways and strip malls: a genuine community The Los Angeles Review of Books, for example, has in many ways outfoxed its graying New York competitor The Hollywood Reporter called it “a vibrant rebuke to outdated L.A.-ascultural-wasteland cliches,” citing wildly popular young-adult novelist John Green and actress Cameron Diaz as supporters, along with some guy named Tom Hanks Unlike San Francisco and New York, Los Angeles is a big, thrumming city where an artist can still afford to live The Last Bookstore may be the final gasp of the printed book or the resurgence of the same, as well as confirmation that reading Ulysses on an iPhone is not quite the experience we hoped it would be “I’ve lost things in my life much more traumatic than a business,” says Spencer near the conclusion of Welcome to the Last Bookstore “No fear.” DOWNTIME /PHOTOGRAPHY LIFE, LIKE WHEN INSTAGRAM started, the great appeal was its accessibility: freely available photographs on your handheld screen, taken by millions of us, far away from the edited world of glossy coffeetable books and magazines Now the trend has reoriented, with the publication of Life on Instagram, the first in a series of coffee-table books— or, as its curator, Jim Stoddart, has it, “annuals” of life, this being the first in a yearly series The images come from the lenses of about 300 contributors, handpicked by Stoddart “A book is pretty much the opposite of social media, which is the point,” he says “Some of this needs to be recorded for posterity.” An edited version of Instagram is welcome, to be sure, and Life on Instagram doesn’t let you down with too many dumb breakfast shots or endless selfies In these pages are beauty, intrigue, sadness and comedy: a woman in a New York snowstorm, an elephant on the road in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a man proposing to a woman by the Chicago River Life, as chosen by Stoddart, is charming and quirky and lovable His favorite shot? The one of a woman in a long white dress holding a plastic bottle of milk It has more than a gesture of Vermeer to it, which prompts another question: If Instagram can be mined to provide the images for a handsome hardback, how long before it furnishes the commercial art market? Actually, it already does Last year, a set of prints from the artist Richard Prince, all of blown-up Instagram photographs, none taken NEWSWEEK by him, went on sale at the art fair Frieze New York with price tags upward of $90,000 Uproar ensued, not least among the photographs’ originators One of them printed out her shots at the same size and sold them for $90 apiece She hit a better price point than Prince— at least according to Clemency Cooke, the director of Michael Hoppen, a London gallery specializing in fine art photography “Contemporary, digital photography is probably the most successful art to sell online But the difficulty people have in imagining how a work of art will look off-screen means they tend not to want to spend more than a few hundred pounds.” Cooke can imagine a world where we buy Instagrampromoted photography direct from its photographer, but she doesn’t predict a negative effect on commercial galleries That there is now a flood of images washing around popular culture is all to the good, says award-winning photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn, whose show “Being Inbetween” has just been exhibited at the Salts Mill gallery in Yorkshire, in the north of England “I imagine it will increase people’s desire to spend money on images, if they are beautiful,” she says And the shots in this book are that As Stoddart says, Instagram offers an aesthetic democracy “It is about the beauty of everyday moments and everyday life, captured by everyday people.” Life on Instagram, curated by JIM STODDART, published September in the U.K by Particular Books, £20 ($26) 58 / / 2016 BY ROSIE MILLARD @Rosiemillard @BENJAM ARKOWORD/ RANDOM HOUSE A British publisher thinks Instagram pictures belong on your coffee table ALL LIKES AS OF AUGUST 2016 160 likes Pforzheim, Germany, by benjamarkoword NEWSWEEK 59 / / 2016 299 likes Mumbai, India, by riteshuttamchandani DOWNTIME /PHOTOGRAPHY 445 likes Toronto by m_mateos 685 likes Havana by m_mateos 16 likes London by alexfawks NEWSWEEK 60 / / 2016 CLOC KWIS E FROM TOP L EFT: @M _M ATEOS/RAND OM HOUSE ; @RITESH UTTAM CHANDANI/RANDOM HOUSE; @OGGSIE/RANDOM HOUSE; @M_MATEOS/RANDOM HOUSE ; @A L E X FAWKS/ RA N D O M H OUSE 465 likes Sydney by oggsie NEWSWEEK 61 / / 2016 DOWNTIME /BANDS GOING, GO-GO’S, GONE One of the most infectious bands of the ’80s is hanging up its hooks DURING THEIR 19-date farewell tour that traversed two countries but only one month (August), the Go-Go’s pranced onto stages to Grand Funk Railroad’s ’70s classic “We’re an American Band.” Damn straight they are The only distinctly distaff band to write and record an album that spent six weeks at No (Beauty and the Beat), the Los Angeles–based quintet has always been a rock ’n’ roll symbol for “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” The Go-Go’s played their final show on August 30, in their hometown If you were born in the ’60s, that’s the sound of time shoveling dirt onto your adolescence Or, more accurately, it may feel as if the lights are coming on in the basement as someone frantically yells that the cops are at the front door In 1983, Cyndi Lauper had a massive hit with “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” but the Go-Go’s and their legion of predominantly female teen fans were already peeing in the bushes at that party and on a quest for another bottle of Bacardi When “We Got the Beat” rose to No on the charts in 1982, seditious suburban girls suddenly had an anthem That the Go-Go’s—guitarist Charlotte Caffey, drummer Gina Schock, guitarist and backup vocalist Jane Wiedlin and lead singer Belinda Carlisle (bassist Kathy Valentine had a messy divorce from the band four years ago)—have gone-gone is bittersweet Their music, a fusion of punk and pop that was mislabeled New Wave, is ageless Like another SoCal quintet, the Beach Boys, whose songs native Angelenos Carlisle and Wiedlin heard on the radio through- NEWSWEEK out their prepubescence, the Go-Go’s wrote infectious songs that captured both the joy and angst of teendom It’s no accident that Cameron Crowe’s landmark 1983 film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, opens with Schock’s inimitable drum intro for “We Got the Beat.” The beauty of the Go-Go’s is that they were not molded by a record executive or found in auditions for the new Mickey Mouse Club They rose up from the same overflowing-toilet punk scene that produced the Runaways, Black Flag and X In the late 1970s, Carlisle, who grew up in Newbury Park and was a high school cheerleader (she was, like, a Valley girl), was seduced by rock ’n’ roll On a stalking expedition at the Beverly Hilton in hopes of meeting and getting an autograph (selfies were still decades away) from Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury, she met a pair of burgeoning punk rockers, Darby Crash and Pat Smear (the latter was later a frequent collaborator on guitar with Nirvana) The trio, along with a girlfriend of Carlisle’s, would go on to form the seminal L.A punk band the Germs Carlisle, then a drummer known as Dottie Danger, immersed herself in L.A.’s flourishing punk music scene, an antidote to the bell-bottom soft rock (i.e., flaccid rock) that dominated the airwaves in the mid-’70s A bout with mononucleosis prevented Carlisle from ever taking the stage with the Germs, but she met Wiedlin, another regular in the L.A punk scene, and they started forming a band The Go-Go’s were not L.A.’s first all-female punk 62 / / 2016 BY JOHN WALTERS @jdubs88 AP THE GERMS OF AN IDEA: Carlisle, right, had her roots in punk, but the Go-Go’s made the leap to pure pop that popped on the charts + outfit to make noise—that would be the Runaways, fronted by Lita Ford and Joan Jett Unlike the Runaways, though, the Go-Go’s wrote songs that emerged from the underground and became radio-friendly hits There was never an issue of the Go-Go’s winning the war of the photo shoots, of being more sexually appealing: They simply wrote irresistible sub-three-minute pop songs, not unlike the early Beach Boys and Beatles It may sound like heresy to mention the Go-Go’s in the same sentence with those “B-boys,” but similarities cross the gender lines Like those two bands in their early years, the Go-Go’s wrote short, upbeat songs with catchy hooks that not only captured but created a zeitgeist People may have surfed before Brian Wilson learned to play the piano, just as teenage girls out in packs and drank too much before the Go-Go’s trashed their first hotel rooms It’s just that now both subcultures had a playlist Like the Beatles, the Go-Go’s went abroad to hone their chops as a band, touring England in support of Madness and the Specials Without that dues-paying experience, the band would have never gone beyond being Sunset Strip favorites When the Go-Go’s returned to the U.S and embarked on a tour with the Police in late 1981, NEWSWEEK they were less known outside the 310 area code than Moon Unit Zappa Then their singles “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got the Beat” were released Before long, the Go-Go’s had the No album in the nation The Police’s Ghost in the Machine “dropped back to No 6, and we were WHEN “WE GOT THE BEAT” ROSE TO NO 2, SEDITIOUS SUBURBAN GIRLS SUDDENLY HAD AN ANTHEM opening for them,” Carlisle told Rolling Stone “Sting came into our dressing room with a bottle of champagne and said congratulations [The Police] were really gracious about it.” Their final show, which took place just a mile or so northeast (and 38 years later) from where the band first played sets at the Masque and Whiskey a Go Go clubs, should not be the last show the Go-Go’s play That should come at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, but there’s just one problem: The Go-Go’s have never even been nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame In the 34 years since Beauty and the Beat shot to No 1, no other female rock group has even come close to charting that high And those groups never appeared to be having as much fun—few bands have—as the five young women who once appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing only giddy smiles and their underwear It was a character from another Cameron Crowe film, Almost Famous, who also appeared—at least in the movie—on a Rolling Stone cover In one scene, standing on the roof of a home at a raucous high school party, intoxicated by both booze and fame, Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) proclaims, “I am a golden god!” What happens when you truncate those final two words to their first two letters? “I am a Go-Go!” 63 / / 2016 REWIND25 SEPTEMBER 16, 1991 YEARS NEWSWEEK REPORTS ON A DIFFERENT SIDE OF SUPREME COURT NOMINEE CLARENCE THOMAS “In the other, darker universe exists the bitter, impulsive, hotheaded and opportunistic [Clarence] Thomas Here is the family man who publicly skewered his own sister as an example of welfare addiction And the 33-year-old civil rights chief at the Department of Education who bellowed to an aide, ‘You could fill books with what you don’t know.’ Here is the Thomas who logs obsessive hours at a desk and in the gym, had his kid doing pushups at the age of and confided to a friend that he idolized Darth Vader (who, strangely enough, abandoned his son just as Thomas’s father did).” The information and inspiration you need to roll out that mat On Sale Now Find it on newsstands nationwide or OnNewsstandsNow.com ... or even tipsy.” 23 / / 2 016 + RUSHING INTO HELL: Once the towers fell, thousands of volunteers came to assist in rescue efforts and to clear the rubble NEWSWEEK 24 / / 2 016 THE HURTING HEROES... and treatment to responders and survivors of September 11 for the rest of their lives In fiscal 2 016, Congress will spend $330 million on the / / 2 016 DEV IN YALKIN FOR NEWSWEE K cent higher for...09 .16. 2 016 VOL .167 NO.10 + ILLNESS IN THE AIR: Placido Perez, an EMT who was at the base of the World Trade