Kindle Edition, 2013 © Time Inc.

Should This Kid Be Making $225,047 A Year for Playing College Football?
That's what he's worth, At Least. Athletes at big-time football schools are Cheap labor who bring in millions. It's time they got paid for their work

RICHARD W. RODRIGUEZ--MCT/GETTY IMAGES

Money Manziel The defending Heisman Trophy champ earns big dollars for Texas A&M

Sean Gregory | 3688 words

The texas a&m aggies opened their 2013 football season on Aug. 31 without the most captivating player in the game. Three days earlier, the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) and Texas A&M had suspended Johnny Manziel, the sophomore quarterback who last season became the first freshman ever to win the Heisman Trophy, for the first half of the Aggies' home opener against Rice University. Though the NCAA and the school determined that Manziel had not personally accepted money when he signed autographs earlier this year, they nonetheless slapped Manziel on the wrist for failing to realize that trinket brokers would surely profit from his signature.

Like most college-sports critics, Manziel responded to this punishment by mocking it. He threw for three touchdown passes in the second half of A&M's 52-31 blowout victory over the Owls in front of almost 87,000 fans at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas. He mimicked signing an autograph while jawing with an opponent and pointed toward the scoreboard in the fourth quarter, earning an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty and another benching, this time from his coach.

Manziel's alleged crime and televised punishment have teed up a debate that has been simmering for decades but is now more intense than ever. Why shouldn't a player worth so much to his school, to his town and to the college-football brand be able to sign his name for money, just as any other celebrity has a right to do? How much longer can everyone else make money from college athletes like Manziel while the athletes themselves see their cash compensation capped--at $0? According to a recent study, if college football operated under the same revenue-sharing model as the NFL, each of the 85 scholarship football players on the Aggies squad could see a paycheck of about $225,000 per year. Manziel is surely worth a great deal more.

The uncomfortable question has surfaced just as college sports are booming. Thanks to plush television-rights deals, like the 12-year, $3 billion contract the Pacific-12 conference signed with ESPN and Fox in 2011, vast revenues will keep rolling into university coffers. Coaches, admissions offices and university alumni operations profit from the stars.

All kinds of people beyond campus are also making money from this lopsided system. Football-game days in particular drive college-town economies. Souvenir hawkers, bars, burger joints, hotels, ticket brokers, stadium vendors, parking attendants and others rely on home games for revenue. According to a 2012 study from Oxford Economics, a global research firm, a season's worth of Texas A&M home football games generate $86 million in business for Brazos County, where A&M is located.

But the players with the talent remain out of the money simply because a group of college presidents, athletic directors and conference commissioners set their wages at zero. "Universities are quick to lecture society," says Charles Clotfelter, an economics and public-policy professor at Duke University and the author of the probing 2011 book Big-Time Sports in American Universities. "But here is a situation where we're not living up to our best selves."

The historic justification for not paying players is that they are amateur student-athletes and the value of their scholarships--often worth in excess of $100,000 over four years--is payment enough. But a growing number of economists and sports experts are beginning to argue for giving athletes a fair share of the take. The numbers are too large to ignore. College athletes are mass-audience performers and need to be rewarded as such. "The rising dollar value of the exploitation of athletes," says Roger Noll, a noted sports economist from Stanford University, "is obscene, is out of control."

How We Got Here

The athlete is the most available publicity material the college has. A great scientific discovery will make good press material for a few days, but nothing to compare to that of the performance of a first-class athlete.

No statement better explains why American colleges are so invested in modern-day sports--and why college athletes have a right to a paycheck. It was written in 1929, part of a Carnegie Foundation study on American college athletics. A college, said the authors, "wants students, it wants popularity, and above all it wants money and always more money."

The Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1862 and post--Civil War industrialization sparked the U.S.'s unique obsession with college sports. "As large public institutions spread into sparsely populated states, the competition for students grew fierce," says Allen Sack, a business professor at the University of New Haven who has written extensively on college-sports history. A new sport, a bastardized version of soccer and rugby that was uniquely American--football--happened to be catching on at this time, and it emerged as a tool to draw students, and spectators, to campuses.

The game professionalized rapidly. The University of Chicago hired former Yale football star Amos Alonzo Stagg as coach in 1892: the university president told Stagg to "develop teams we can send around the country and knock out all the colleges." The 1894 Harvard-Yale football game, for example, generated $119,000, according to the New York Times. That's nearly $3 million in today's dollars. By 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt felt compelled to step in to "save" college football from its then violent format. Chicago dropped football in 1939.

Few schools followed. Today college football is a booming profit center for many institutions at the top of Division 1, the highest level of NCAA sports, and is a growing portion of the regional economy in college towns like Boise, Idaho; State College, Pa.; College Station; and South Bend, Ind. According to the most recent federal data, the University of Texas football team netted a profit of $77.9 million in 2011--12, on $103.8 million in revenue. Michigan made $61.6 million from football, on $85.2 million in revenue. Any business would kill for those profit margins.

In fairness, many college athletes are compensated--with an athletic scholarship. This attractive carrot drives today's intense competition in youth and high school sports. With tuition costs escalating, these scholarships are a serious meal ticket and for many families are the only way their children can afford to go to a four-year school.

Most scholarships are revokable, so if an athlete doesn't perform well on the field, he can, in a sense, be fired from college. But academic work for some athletes is secondary: top men's basketball and football players spend 40 hours per week on their sports, easily. During football season, former Georgia tailback Richard Samuel, who earned an undergraduate degree in sports management in 2011, said he was an "athlete-student," not a "student-athlete," as the NCAA wants people to believe. "In the fall, we would spend way more time on sports than academics," says Samuel.

Players are essentially working full-time football jobs while going to school; they deserve to be paid more than a scholarship. Because even full-ride athletic scholarships don't cover the full cost of attending school, athletes are often short a few thousand bucks for ancillary expenses on top of tuition, room and board, books and fees: money for gas, shampoo and, yes, maybe a few beers. Some athletes are on only partial scholarship or are walk-ons still paying full tuition.

While many players scrimp, their head coaches don't. Average salaries for major college football coaches have jumped more than 70% since 2006, to $1.64 million, according to USA Today. For major-conference men's hoops coaches who made the 2012 March Madness tournament, pay is up 20%, to $2.25 million, over that of coaches who made the 2010 tournament, according to the Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics. "It's nuts," says Michael Martin, chancellor of the Colorado State University system, who was chancellor at Louisiana State University from 2008 to 2012. LSU hired Les Miles to coach its football team in 2005; Miles now earns $4.3 million annually. "It's time for people to step up and say, We think this is the max that a football coach ought to get, and we ought to stick to it," says Martin.

It is harder to calculate the exact value of the p.r. dividend that big-time college athletes deliver to their alma maters. College presidents and conference commissioners are fond of calling sports the "front porch" of their campuses. Schools would have to spend millions of dollars to buy the advertising and media mentions that a team making regular appearances on ESPN or the networks provides. There are countless examples of schools' seeing big jumps in applications after a high-profile championship season--or even a near miss. For example, in the two years after Butler University's basketball team made its first Final Four run in 2010--the Bulldogs made a repeat appearance the following year--undergraduate applications rose 43%. And don't imagine for a moment that universities harvest their athletes' celebrity for only four years. After a truly memorable championship season, veterans are brought back to campus on a regular basis for reunions and tributes, sometimes for decades. The work never ends.

Aggie star Manziel was under fire for potentially seeking to recoup just a sliver of the economic value he helps create. The son of an oil-rich family who played his high school ball in Texas hill country, Manziel exceeded even Texas-size expectations when he nabbed the Heisman in his first year. NFL rules prohibit him from going to the pros, giving him no options to sell his skills. So he was forced to return to College Station and earn more money for the Aggies. Manziel can be as mischievous on the field, where his twitchy legs and laser arm make fools of opposing defenses, as he is off it; he's a party animal and makes no apologies for enjoying his life. The NCAA investigated Manziel because ESPN reported--inaccurately, says Texas A&M--that he signed his autograph for money, which is against the rules.

The real question is, What's the problem with that? "That's crazy to me that it's not allowed," says Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, who starred at Oklahoma. "Actors, actresses--these people can sign things and get paid for it. How come this kid can't? How come a kid that's at a high level, that's going to be offered a big amount of money, can't sit down and be like, 'Damn, this is my decision.?'"

Manziel has not commented on any aspect of the NCAA charges. But his case has exposed some of the minor hypocrisies of not paying players at the big-league schools. The NCAA looked silly when Jay Bilas, a veteran ESPN analyst, former Duke basketball player and vocal critic of the NCAA, took to Twitter to point out that although schools cannot sell a player's jersey with his name on the back, if you typed Manziel into a search box on ShopNCAASports.com, a No. 2 Texas A&M jersey pops up, available for up to $64.95. (Manziel wears No. 2.) Bilas' critique went viral; the NCAA temporarily shut down the site, saying it would no longer sell individual college and university merchandise there but only NCAA-branded stuff.

A court case may also shake up college sports. Four years ago, former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon sued the NCAA, video-game maker EA Sports and a licensing company after realizing that his likeness was being used in a video game, while he saw none of the royalties, years after he graduated from college. NBA and NCAA legends Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson joined the suit, which reached the class-certification stage this summer. Though a federal judge in California hasn't stamped the case as a class action, she allowed the plaintiffs to add current players to the complaint, which significantly raises the potential damages for the NCAA. The plaintiffs are seeking a cut of the licensing revenue tied to video games, as well as a much richer revenue stream: the money schools receive from broadcast-rights contracts. If the former and current players somehow prevail--or even reach a settlement--college jocks will receive some kind of payday. "I think in this day and age, as opposed to yesteryear, the concept of what they consider amateur basketball is gone forever," says Robertson.

A Modest Proposal

The time is right to give schools the option to share their rising sports income with college athletes. Not every school would--or could--participate. Only the 60 or so schools in the power conferences, which have the football and basketball revenues to support such payments, would likely even consider such an option. With conferences and schools set to see record television payouts for the next decade and beyond, the idea of paying players is no longer just fodder for academic debate. It's an ethical imperative.

Schools could either pay players whatever schools want in a free market, or salaries could be subject to regulation. In reality, universities probably aren't going to go from $0 in compensation, where they are now, to allowing an unlimited amount. Salary caps exist in the NBA and NFL; they're fair game for college sports too.

Here's how things might work. All athletes would be eligible for payments in addition to any scholarship. But most schools would pay only football and men's basketball players, since those sports produce the bulk of the revenues. A Southeastern Conference (SEC) school like Alabama could pay 50 of its players up to a limit of $30,000 a year. The best players would get near the maximum while others would get less; it would be up to each school to distribute the funds as needed. And schools could pay athletes in other sports, of course. A star baseball player, or a women's basketball player at a powerhouse like Connecticut, could also get a paycheck. But the total amount any school could pay out would be capped at $1.5 million. Experts think this is a conservative number given the millions in revenue that sports and TV deals provide. Any cap won't placate the free-market supporters; $30,000 per year, however, is a huge improvement over nothing.

Plus, athletes can make money in other ways. Universities should also give athletes at least the right to secure sponsorships, star in a commercial or, yes, offer their signatures for money. The schools could demand their cut too. "Lifting the restriction on athlete commercial opportunities is a great step toward compensating them for the value they generate," says Warren Zola, assistant dean of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College and an expert in college-sports business and law. "And it doesn't cost the schools anything." Since schools would cap athletes' salaries, it would be only fair that they not cap sponsorships. Players can give schools the right to reject sponsorships on moral grounds. No beer deals. Also, schools could require that players remain academically eligible in order to receive any kind of payments. Schools would in effect be adopting the Olympic model. If a gold-medalist like Apolo Ohno wins mainstream appeal, he's free to cash in on his name.

Sponsorships could especially benefit female college stars, who don't have access to the same professional opportunities that men do. Sponsorships for star players shouldn't upset team dynamics on campus. Deals among Olympic athletes are uneven, but such economic disparities don't seem to hamper Team USA's success.

Reforming college sports won't be simple. Paying only men, for example, could face a challenge under Title IX, the federal law requiring gender equity in sports. Salary caps require collective bargaining, which means athletes would likely have to unionize; some states offer limited bargaining rights for public employees. These challenges, however, aren't an excuse to keep a broken system. Smart people can figure out a way to make fairness work. "Amateurism is under attack," says Gabe Feldman, director of Tulane University's sports-law program. "There's an incentive for schools to redesign the model themselves rather than have the Congress or the courts do it for them."

Paying players has risks. Richer schools could buy up talent and disrupt competitive balance. Alumni and fans could be turned off by an even more professionalized game. Paying players could make even more of a mockery of education. Right now, for example, many athletes cluster into easy majors in order to stay eligible on the field. If they're making good money while still in school, they may not care one lick about learning. "I just don't think we ever want to go down the path of creating an employee-employer relationship with student-athletes," says Bob Bowlsby, commissioner of the Big 12 conference. "This is higher education, and it always ought to be higher education."

But too often, it's not. The federal graduation rate for football players at Big 12 school Oklahoma, for example: 38%. (Federal rates count athletes who transfer out or leave school for the pros as nongraduates; the NCAA's more generous "graduation success rate" for Oklahoma football is 47%; Oklahoma's federal rate for the entire student body is 65%.) At some schools, it's difficult to know what graduation really means: at the University of North Carolina, for example, grades were changed and bogus classes were offered for athletes and nonathletes alike. College sports are already impure; paying players can't make things much worse. At the highest levels, the games are mass entertainment.

As for the less crucial worry about competitive balance, it doesn't really exist in college sports right now since the best players are already going to the top schools. SEC schools have won the past seven national football championships. Nearly every top-ranked high school football recruit goes to schools in the SEC, Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12, Big 10, Pac-12 or Notre Dame. Payments for basketball players wouldn't harm the NCAA's crown jewel, the March Madness men's basketball tournament. We could still see Cinderella. The kids who wind up at, say, Lehigh University go to Lehigh because Duke doesn't deem them good enough for a scholarship--and certainly wouldn't deem them good enough for a scholarship plus more. So if Lehigh could upset the big stars from Duke back in 2011, they could still upset the big stars from Duke tomorrow, even if the Duke guys got some extra cash.

Most important, player payments would force schools to operate in an environment in which they're honest with themselves. Sports are a big business, and we value the exposure and revenue that it brings to our schools. But let's stop saying one thing--"we care for our student-athletes"--while doing another: preventing them from benefiting monetarily. "Living a lie," says Richard Southall, director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of South Carolina, "is hard to do."

Within higher ed, there's clearly momentum to give athletes at least a little more than what they're getting now. "I think there is change likely on the horizon," says Nebraska chancellor Harvey Perlman, who is chairman of the Bowl Championship Series oversight committee. The NCAA membership has stalled a plan giving schools the option to offer a $2,000 stipend to cover expenses beyond tuition, room and board, books and fees. Many schools at the lower levels of Division 1 said they couldn't afford it.

But at this point, the power football conferences seem determined to offer at least some kind of extra. "I think we will find a way to provide all scholarship student-athletes with the full cost-of-attendance scholarship," says Perlman. As for anything above that, don't expect radical change, but universities' leaders are at least discussing it. "I don't think there's any doubt about that," says Martin, the Colorado State chancellor who was recently chancellor at LSU. "With the O'Bannon thing hanging out there, we're going to see a great deal more of a conversation about this than we've had before. Because we have to fix it one way or another."

Athletes are starting to speak up too. Chris Burnette, an offensive lineman from the University of Georgia, is pursuing an MBA during his final year of athletic eligibility. Though his pro prospects are strong, Burnette knows he can suffer a career-ending injury at any point. "The NFL is not promised at all," says Burnette. "For so many college athletes, at no other time in our lives will we be as valuable. To be able to capitalize on that would be great."

When he first arrived on campus in 2009, Burnette says, "I thought a scholarship was more than enough." During his freshman and sophomore years, Burnette opened a business on the side giving $5 haircuts to his teammates to help pay expenses. (Burnette checked with the NCAA compliance officer before launching his dorm-room barbershop, just to be on the safe side.) Georgia football--which started the season ranked fifth in the country--generates $75 million in annual revenues.

"I don't want to seem like a troublemaker or greedy," he says. "We're marketing tools for the programs but can't see the proceeds. In this country, it just seems backwards."

The U.S. has enjoyed a long, deep love affair with college sports. It's about time we finally paid for it.

10 Questions.
Artist and activist Yoko Ono on creativity, John Lennon's legacy and why she feels no need to retire

PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER HAPAK FOR TIME

Lily Rothman | 710 words

You've had a productive year, including museum shows; a book, Acorn, that offers readers 100 conceptual instructions; and an album, Take Me to the Land of Hell, out on Sept. 17. What prompted all this creativity?

When I have time to do these things and I get inspired, I just do it.

How has your creative process evolved over the course of your career?

My career? I never think of it as a "career." Art and music and all those things that I'm creating are just part of me.

Has that part of you changed?

I don't think so, but maybe critics might say something else! My feeling is that this particular album is the best I did in 80 years. Also the book, Acorn. I was a bit nervous about it, so I reread it--and said, "Oh, that's not bad."

It's been more than 40 years since "Give Peace a Chance" was recorded, and war is still a big part of the world. Do you ever get frustrated or feel like things will never improve?

Well, we're still here. People say, "What's happening now? You said that it's going to be O.K.!" It's going to be O.K., but it's taking a little time, more time than I thought.

How optimistic!

It's not being optimistic. I think I'm being pragmatic. I'm a pragmatic person. And I'm also being very practical and logical. I really think that we're getting wiser and wiser. We can make it.

In addition to the album, you recently released a new remix of "Walking on Thin Ice," the last track you worked on with John Lennon. What was it like to return to that song?

It's a very strange kind of relationship I have with "Walking on Thin Ice," because when I created it I just thought, Well, it's a pretty good song. But then John and I produced it and he passed away right away. The memory of it is really painful, actually.

How much is he still part of your life today?

I'm proud that I was his wife. I am still, in a way, you know. I'm working on his work too. The fact that I'm doing that, as well as my work, I feel a little pride about it.

There's a song on the album called "Little Boy Blue Your Daddy's Gone." Is that about your son?

Yes, that was a song to him, because I understand what he had to go through. When John and I were going to have Sean we said, "Anybody who is John and Yoko's child should be very, very happy." But we really hadn't realized that it could be very difficult for him. And it was. And it is, in a way.

What does that "Land of Hell" from the title track mean to you? Is it a literal place?

Rolling Stone asked me to write something about John and me. In that, I was saying maybe people feel that they're in heaven when they have a beautiful love relationship. We felt that our heaven was in hell. Hell was created by people, for us, but we still had heaven between us. So I thought that this time--well, we were so adamant about our love, and when I look around I feel that people are much more interested in making money and trying to be famous. They're ignoring their hearts. That's why there are so many heart operations, I think.

So you think people are more interested in fame and money than they used to be?

It seems like that. It'd be good if we loved each other and would give some focus to each other, and weren't afraid of being passionate. To have a relationship that is pure and passionate and beautiful--I think people are scared of having that now. Especially guys.

Do you think you'll ever retire?

I never thought of it. It would be so silly to retire now. It's like my second life is opening up. When I became 70, I thought, Wow, it's great! I'd like people to know, especially women. They're always thinking, I'm going to be 40! What am I going to do? Well, 70 was great. Eighty's even better.

TO SEE ONO'S INTERVIEW, GO TO time.com/10questions

David Frost
TV's great interrogator

FROST: RON GALELLA--WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES

James Poniewozik | 172 words

David Frost, who died Aug. 31 at 74, was much more than the man who interviewed President Nixon. He had a career in the U.K. spanning the possibilities of TV presenting: satire (That Was the Week That Was), entertainment hosting and serious political interviews. But his signature program, the series of interviews with the ex-President in 1977, which became the most watched political interview ever, combined the many aspects of his career. It was part newsmaker interrogation, part psychological inquiry, part drama and a good part theater.

The multisegment interview--chronicled in the play and 2008 movie Frost/Nixon--ended up being a lengthy interrogation of Nixon's betrayal of the public trust. Frost had a reputation as a glib creature of showbiz, but with Nixon he was steady, determined and--maybe rarest in the hurry-up medium of TV--patient. Frost's blow-dried reputation may have gotten him the interview, but he showed up as a journalist. His most lasting influence was as an on-camera natural who proved that an interview set could be simultaneously a stage and a courtroom.

Milestones

165 words

DIED

Ronald Coase, 102, Nobel Prize--winning economist (in 1991) renowned for his work on the creation of companies and the misuse of government regulation.

ACQUIRED

Mobile-phone giant Nokia, by Microsoft, for $7.2 billion. The deal will bring 32,000 Nokia employees to Microsoft, which is hoping to gain ground in the mobile industry.

DIED

Tommy Morrison, 44, boxer who defeated heavyweight champ George Foreman in 1993 but was banned from the ring in 1996 after testing positive for HIV, a result he later said was a false positive.

DIED

Frederik Pohl, 93, award-winning author of more than 65 science-fiction novels, including Gateway (which featured a robot psychologist) and, with Cyril M. Kornbluth, The Space Merchants.

LAUNCHED

FXX, a new cable channel operated by FX Networks. It will air original programming including popular comedies It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The League.

DIED

Ariel Castro, 53, found hanging in his Ohio prison cell, an apparent suicide. He was serving a life sentence for the kidnapping and repeated rape of three Cleveland women he held captive for a decade.

Need for Speed

SIGN: GETTY IMAGES

Brad Tuttle | 493 words

Somewhere, Sammy "I Can't Drive 55" Hagar is smiling. Illinois just became the 37th state to allow speed limits of 70 m.p.h. or more, and bills in Wisconsin, New Jersey and Michigan could push limits to 70, 75 and 80 m.p.h., respectively. There's a good reason: studies show that collisions are less likely on highways where velocity is limited to the speed that 85% of drivers normally don't exceed. That way, cars travel at roughly the same pace. "On a big highway, if you're following the law and going 65 m.p.h., you're likely to get run over," says Illinois state senator Jim Oberweis, who sponsored his state's new law. Critics say higher limits are dangerous, but data indicates otherwise. Ohio Turnpike fatalities are down since the limit rose to 70 m.p.h. in 2011, while average speeds in Utah are up just 1 m.p.h. since the state welcomed its first 80-m.p.h. roads in 2008.

Your Best Shot
With more new choices, there's a flu vaccine for almost everyone

ILLUSTRATIONS BY BROWN BIRD DESIGN FOR TIME

Alice Park | 315 words

Dr. Greg Poland is expecting a lot of questions--and confusion--from his patients this flu season. For the first time, U.S. health officials will distribute six influenza vaccines, up from four last year. "Instead of the one-size-fits-all approach, we are moving to vaccines ... for individual patients," says Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Group.

The goal is to get more than the usual 40% of the U.S. population immunized by adding shots made specifically for those who have an allergy to eggs (previously, all flu vaccines contained egg protein), among other conditions. And a new shot and nasal spray protect against four, instead of the usual three, influenza strains. Within a few seasons, says Dr. Michael Shaw at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every flu vaccine option will be using such an überformula.

There are caveats: some of the specialized shots can be more expensive. For now, that four-strain shot can cost up to 30% more than a standard one. But more vaccine options will lead to fewer flu cases, and that could save both lives and health care costs.

ARE YOU ...

Allergic to eggs?

EGG-FREE SHOT

Made with influenza proteins grown in caterpillar cells instead of chicken eggs; for people who are allergic to egg proteins

OR

Wary of needles?

MICRONEEDLE SHOT

Penetrates the skin, not deeper muscle, for a less painful jab. It delivers less flu protein but protects just as well as the traditional shot while costing more

A toddler's parent?

OR

NASAL SPRAY

Recommended for squirmy kids who might not like needles, although it's approved for use on all ages

OR

Over 65?

HIGH-DOSAGE SHOT

Contains more influenza protein to better prepare older immune systems, which don't always mount strong defenses

OR

None of those things?

STANDARD SHOT

Three-strain versions are effective, but four-strain shots offer broader protection, including against both types of influenza-B viruses circulating during flu season

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Briefing

BOEHNER: GETTY IMAGES

251 words

THE WEEK

THE U.S. DEBATED A SYRIA STRIKE

10 DAYS

Duration of America's first inpatient program for Internet addiction, which launched at a hospital in Pennsylvania

'This is an inadmissible and unacceptable violation of Brazilian sovereignty.'

LUIZ ALBERTO FIGUEIREDO, Foreign Minister of Brazil, on reports that the U.S. National Security Agency has spied on the e-mail, phone calls and text messages of President Dilma Rousseff (above)

Henrik Stenson

Won the Deutsche Bank golf championship

GOOD WEEK

BAD WEEK

Roger Federer

Got knocked out of the U.S. Open in the fourth round

'I'm going to support the President's call for action.'

JOHN BOEHNER, Republican Speaker of the House, backing President Obama's push to authorize a military strike in Syria

'Pens and books are the weapons that defeat terrorism.'

MALALA YOUSAFZAI, 16-year-old Pakistani education activist who survived a 2012 Taliban assassination attempt, presiding over the opening of Europe's largest regional public library, in Birmingham, England

'You're never too old to chase your dream.'

DIANA NYAD, who at 64 became the first person ever to swim from Cuba to Florida (110 miles, or 177 km) without a shark cage

$3.25 million

Portion of the $3.5 million bonus that Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing will share with 10,000 of his employees

$10,000

Prize awarded to Brent the chimpanzee for winning a chimpanzee-art contest sponsored by the U.S. Humane Society

'I'M NOT THERE TO BE A DIPLOMAT.'

DENNIS RODMAN, former NBA star, explaining that his second trip to North Korea this year is merely about his desire to "meet my friend Kim ... and start a basketball league over there or something"

Sources: NBC News; CNN; ITV News; ABC News; AP

LightBox

Photograph by Bulent Kilic--AFP/Getty Images

42 words

Taking Flight

Hundreds of storks gather overhead on Sept. 1 in the Turkish province of Hatay, which shares a border with war-torn Syria. The birds are getting ready to migrate in preparation for the coming winter.

FOR PICTURES OF THE WEEK, GO TO lightbox.time.com

World

JAPAN: JAPAN NUCLEAR REGULATION AUTHORITY--EPA

Nuclear regulators inspect tanks of contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi plant on Aug. 23

Cleo Brock-Abraham, Andrew Katz, Bryan Walsh | 807 words

The Fallout Grows At Fukushima

BY BRYAN WALSH

It's easy to forget, but one of the most important parts of a nuclear power plant is the simplest one: H[subscript 2]O. The thermal energy created by a nuclear reaction generates steam, which drives electric turbines, and the excess heat is then dissipated in pools of water. When something goes wrong at a nuclear plant, water is usually involved.

So it is with the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northern Japan. Nearly 2½ years after Fukushima suffered a meltdown in the wake of a massive tsunami, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) is struggling to contain new leaks of highly radioactive water flowing from the plant. Some 430,000 tons of radioactive water is stored in nearby tanks, and each day an additional 400 tons is added to the total as groundwater flows past the damaged reactors. The hot spots near the tanks indicate that Fukushima is at risk of being inundated by radioactive water that could be released into the environment--and that TEPCO has once again understated the scale of the problem.

With Tokyo seeking to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been desperate to show that Fukushima is under control. On Sept. 3 the Japanese government announced that it would take over the cleanup and spend nearly $500 million on an underground ice wall and other measures that would hopefully halt the leaks of radioactive water. That might sound like something out of Game of Thrones, but such frozen walls have been used to isolate radioactive waste at other nuclear sites--albeit only for a few years at a time. Fukushima will require decades for a full cleanup. Radioactivity has a way of outlasting even the most determined government.

POLL

EUROPE'S FASTEST-GROWING COUNTRIES

A new Oxford study found that European men grew 11 cm on average from 1871 to 1980. Below, the per-decade breakdown.

1.41 cm

Netherlands

1.25 cm

Germany

1.24 cm

Denmark

1.19 cm

Spain

The Explainer

How Enrique Peña Nieto Wants to Transform Mexico

In his first state-of-the-nation address, on Sept. 2, the Mexican President said this could be the year the country "dared to take off." Here are his proposed reforms (and what he's up against):

BETTER SCHOOLS

Congress recently approved a bill to begin evaluation-based hiring, firing and promotion of teachers; many have protested for weeks, saying they're unfairly blamed for subpar student performance.

ENERGY INVESTMENT

In August, he revealed plans to lure foreigners to Mexico's vast oil and gas deposits, ending 75 years of protectionism; critics worry that the shift will lead to privatization.

LOWER CRIME

He touts a 13.7% drop in murders since he took office in December and plans to keep targeting extortion and kidnapping; 49% of Mexicans think violence has risen.

An Unyielding Battle

AFGHANISTAN

The body of an alleged Taliban fighter lies on the ground on Aug. 30; he was killed alongside seven other suspected militants during an overnight commando operation in Herat province. The Taliban has escalated its attacks against foreign combat troops as their 2014 withdrawal inches closer. Afghan police deaths have doubled this year after the poorly trained locals inherited security responsibility from NATO. Photograph by Hoshang Hashimi--AP

FRANCE

$5,270,000

Estimated cost to restore the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the famed 2nd century B.C. Greek sculpture at the Louvre in Paris

Roundup

Soccer's Priciest Stars

What financial crisis? Top European clubs spent a whopping $2.3 billion acquiring the best soccer talent this summer; of that, a record $980 million came from clubs in England's Premier League. (Many costs are augmented by TV deals and corporate sponsorships.) Here's a look at some of the biggest player-transfer fees in history.

GARETH BALE

$132 million

The Welsh forward just left Tottenham Hotspur for a six-year contract with Real Madrid, making him the most expensive get of all time.

CRISTIANO RONALDO

$124 million

Florentino Pérez, Madrid's club president, retained his no-player-costs-too-much reputation in 2009 by luring the Portuguese winger from Manchester United.

ZLATAN IBRAHIMOVIC

$94 million

FC Barcelona netted the Swedish striker from Inter Milan in 2009 despite soaring debt in previous seasons. He's now with Paris Saint-Germain.

KAKÁ

$92 million

In 2009, Real snagged the famed Brazilian midfielder from AC Milan--only to send him back there this summer.

ZINÉDINE ZIDANE

$64.5 million

Three years after the now retired midfielder led France to a World Cup win in 1998, Madrid grabbed him away from Italy's Juventus.

THAILAND

'What if the product was white and I painted someone white?'

NADIM SALHANI, CEO of Dunkin' Donuts in Thailand, after Human Rights Watch called the campaign for its new chocolate Charcoal Donut--featuring a model in blackface--"bizarre and racist"; a global brand executive apologized and vowed to pull the ads

Trending In

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HEALTH

Former South African leader Nelson Mandela was discharged from a Pretoria hospital and is receiving care at home

FREEDOM

Iran released six Slovak paragliders held since May for photographing restricted areas; two others are still detained

MUSIC

Kanye West was reportedly paid $3 million by Kazakhstan's President, an alleged human-rights abuser, to perform at his grandson's wedding

CENSORSHIP

In Vietnam, a law that bars Internet users from discussing current affairs--only personal information is allowed--went into effect

'It Has to Stop'
A rape case reveals an unbalanced military-justice system

MIDSHIPMAN: PATRICK SEMANSKY--AP

Mark Thompson | 568 words

Which is worse: a sexual assault by three fellow midshipmen near the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., or spending 20 hours over five days in a military courtroom fending off questions about one's sexual history and the circumstances of the alleged attack?

The latter is what happened at the Washington Navy Yard beginning Aug. 27, when a female midshipman was cross-examined in a lengthy pretrial hearing designed to bring those allegedly involved to justice. The case helps explain why only 3,374 of an estimated 26,000 military members who experienced unwanted sexual contact last year filed complaints. "It is essentially the woman who is on trial, and the trial can be worse than the rape," says retired Colonel Elspeth Ritchie, who served as the Army's top psychiatrist and has testified in similar cases. "I have often thought that I would never report it if it happened to me."

The night of April 14, 2012, began as a "toga and yoga" party at the off-campus Annapolis hangout of the academy's football team. (The men wore togas, the women yoga pants.) By most accounts, the ensuing party got wild. The next morning, the female midshipman awoke at the house with a sore back, a coconut-rum hangover--and no recollection of what had happened. She learned that three male midshipmen, all Navy footballers, were boasting to friends and on social media that they'd had sex with her; the case hinges on whether she was too drunk to consent. The accuser pressed the case only reluctantly, after another female midshipman had said she planned to report what happened. The defendants, Tra'ves Bush, 22, of Johnston, S.C.; Eric Graham, 21, of Eight Mile, Ala.; and Joshua Tate, 21, of Nashville, have denied wrongdoing, saying any sex was consensual. News organizations have declined to name the accuser, now a 21-year-old senior at the academy, as they do in most such cases.

The hearing was brutal. While the defense lawyers attacked her with graphic, repetitive questions, the accuser sometimes gripped her meditation beads, a gift from her sexual-assault counselor. The lawyers wanted to know if she wore underwear to the party, how wide she opens her mouth during oral sex and if she "grinds" when dancing. They asked her if she "felt like a ho" the morning after (although Commander Robert Monahan Jr., the hearing officer, drew the line when a defendant's lawyer asked if she carried condoms in her purse). "This is harassment," Susan Burke, her civilian attorney, told military prosecutors during a break. "It has to stop!"

The inquisition took place during an Article 32 hearing. That's the section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice requiring a "thorough and impartial investigation" into any charge that could lead to a court-martial. Unlike civilian proceedings, which are presented in secret by prosecutors, Article 32 hearings are public, and defense lawyers can cross-examine accusers, sometimes harshly. Intended to keep military prosecutors from steamrolling defendants, it can force sexual-assault victims to endure long rounds of intensely personal questioning before the trial.

Eugene Fidell, an expert in military justice at Yale, says the military needs to make its hearings shorter--and fairer. "They're a waste of time, money and are--particularly in cases like this--a vehicle for oppression of witnesses," he says. "This case raises serious questions about whether Article 32 hearings have become an engine of injustice."

Navy officials will decide in the next several weeks whether the case should proceed to a full court-martial.

Ready, Set, Acquire
How big companies build their future by buying little ones
Harry McCracken | 272 words

When one major tech company plunks down billions for another--think Microsoft buying Nokia--everybody pays attention. The vast majority of deals, however, don't make headlines. They involve low-profile startups and purchase prices in the mere tens of millions of dollars. But that doesn't mean they're insignificant. In fact, they can tell you an awful lot about where the industry's best-known names are headed.

In most cases, the acquirers don't care about the products they've bought. (To prove it, they often instantly shut them down, as Yahoo did with Rockmelt's smartphone browser in August.) What they covet is the expertise of the acquisition's founders and engineers and sometimes the technology they've created or the data they've collected. Here's a look at how some of the startups that four big players snapped up in 2013 could serve their grand ambitions.

Seamus Heaney
The bard of modern Ireland

HEANEY: ANTONIO OLMOS--EYEVINE/REDUX

Mary Karr | 193 words

At a literary fest in England's Lake District circa 1977, I first fell under the spell of Seamus Heaney's brogue, and his carnal yet deeply moral music snapped me awake. "Between my finger and my thumb/ The squat pen rests; snug as a gun." The assonance of thumb and snug and gun makes an uh uh uh noise--a grunting, incantatory, almost aboriginal longing toward speech. Yet Heaney's lines are elegant as Yeats', with their own potent charm--from the Latin carmen, to sing.

Heaney, who was 74 when he died on Aug. 30, never lost his humility even after he was Nobelled and anointed by Harvard as Boylston Professor. Slipping into a poetry reading once in Cambridge, faintly redolent with whiskey, he whispered over, "Apologies, I'm slightly fragrant."

Heaney was sometimes scolded for not being violent enough in his Irish politics, yet most praised his clear-eyed balance. As with Chekhov, it seemed enough for him to describe a problem accurately. His enterprise was more to honor than to judge. Our world is less rich without him on this side of the grass.

Karr's most recent books are Lit: A Memoir and Sinners Welcome, a volume of poetry

Off the Grid.
Nearly one-fifth of the globe can't turn on the lights

PETER DICAMPO

Blackout About 1.3 billion people around the world lack access to electricity

Bryan Walsh | 714 words

What did you do when the sun went down? If you're reading this, chances are you switched on a light. But for the 1.3 billion people around the world who lack access to electricity, darkness is a reality. There is no electric light for children to do their homework by, no power to run refrigerators that keep perishables or needed medicine cold, no power for cooking stoves or microwaves. What light they have mostly comes from the same sources that humans have relied on forever--firewood, charcoal or dung--and the resulting smoke turns into indoor pollution that contributes to more than 3.5 million deaths a year. "For us, life does not stop after dark," says Michael Elliott, president and CEO of the development nonprofit ONE. "For 550 million people in sub-Saharan Africa and many more than that around the rest of the world, it does."

That lack of electricity is called energy poverty, and it's a development challenge that hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. It's easy to see why. Extreme poverty, global hunger, HIV/AIDS and malaria are all immediate threats to human life. Not having somewhere to plug in a cell phone, by contrast, might seem like an inconvenience at worst. But energy poverty is connected to a host of deeper ills: 90% of the children in sub-Saharan Africa go to primary schools that lack electricity, which means no fans or air conditioners in the equatorial heat, no computers, no lights for evening classes. Economic growth is stunted as a result--60% of African businesses cite access to reliable power as a binding constraint on their operations. Energy poverty is even a political issue. In Pakistan, which has just half the electrical-generation capacity of the state of Virginia, frustration over an antiquated grid helped get President Asif Ali Zardari kicked out of office this year.

The good news is that the issue is slowly receiving more notice. This summer, President Barack Obama announced his Power Africa initiative, which promises more than $7 billion over the next five years to bring electricity access to 20 million new households in countries like Ethiopia and Ghana. Development groups like ONE have begun making energy poverty a priority, weaving it into long-standing health and economic programs. "A light where currently there is darkness. The energy needed to lift people out of poverty," Obama told South African students in June. "That's what opportunity looks like."

The Price of Progress

But the challenge is enormous. While some 1.7 billion people have acquired access to electricity globally since 1990, the rate of electrification has been slower than the rate of population growth in the most energy-poor countries. Just to get all of sub-Saharan Africa--a region that generates about as much electricity as Spain--up to levels that comparatively well-off South Africa enjoys would require 330 gigawatts of new capacity. (Power Africa should account for about 10 gigawatts.) The World Bank estimates that it would take $1 trillion a year in global investment to eliminate energy poverty by the year 2030--more than twice what is being spent now. And even that level of investment would guarantee the poorest of the poor only enough electricity to run a floor fan, a mobile phone and two compact fluorescent lights for five hours a day.

The reality is that banishing energy poverty won't be easy or cheap, and it may come with an environmental cost. Much of Africa can and will be supplied with renewable energy sources--especially rural areas beyond the reach of any grid, where solar fits perfectly. But the fastest population growth is happening in the developing world's exploding urban areas, which will eventually need the same reliable, grid-delivered electricity that developed cities enjoy. Some of that electricity will be generated by fossil fuels, including carbon-heavy coal. The result may well be an increase in greenhouse gases, but given that the average Ethiopian emits less than 1% of the carbon that the average American does, Africans should hardly feel climate guilt. For those who live in darkness, electricity by nearly any means will be worth the price.

FOR MORE ON NEW ENERGY, GO TO time.com/newenergy

Falling For the Job
Hiring is a lot like dating, say the new startups that want to play matchmaker between employers and job seekers. And you don't have to show up with flowers

Photograph by Carolyn Griffin for TIME

David Zax | 1815 words

Earlier this year, eHarmony, the dating website, announced a curious line extension: it had begun work on a job-recruiting service to debut sometime in 2014. Initial reactions ranged from skepticism to outright sarcasm. Would HR managers hold out rose bouquets at interviews? Would "long walks on the beach" displace "efficient multitasking" as the résumé pablum du jour? What did hiring have to do with dating, anyway?

Well, quite a lot, actually. To people with deep knowledge of the hiring and dating markets, it's not a stretch. After all, both involve long, costly search processes. Both involve agents with complex sets of criteria on either side. And though money can play a role, it's not the central factor in dating or in hiring.

The companies applying matchmaking algorithms to job recruitment are yet another case of a disruptive technology shattering the status quo. Hiring is a expensive process, which is why it's a $400 billion global industry. In the upstarts' view, it's being approached from the wrong direction: soft skills and "cultural fit" can be better predictors of a good hire than education and experience.

Whether you're trying to find a mate or a systems engineer, the process is complicated. In economics, it's called a two-sided matching problem, and for decades, economists have considered dating and hiring so similar as to be roughly synonymous. "When I write out an economic model," says Utku Ünver, a market-design economist at Boston College, "sometimes I call [the variables] man and woman, and sometimes I call them firm and worker."

Perhaps the most salient common feature of the dating and hiring markets right now is how broken they are. Each suffers from its own grim failure rate: divorce for lovers, churn for workers. The divorce rate is estimated to be about 45%, higher if unofficial separations are included. Though the weak job market has lowered churn, as recently as 2007 about 3 million workers were voluntarily leaving their jobs each month. Today, fully 70% are said to be dissatisfied in their jobs. Both markets are wildly inefficient and plagued by discredited notions of what creates enduring matches to begin with.

Can technology create an efficient market in sectors where "soft" human factors are so much in play? In the dating world, eHarmony believes it already has. The company was founded more than a decade ago by a marriage counselor who concluded that many couples rush into matrimony over superficial matters--physical attraction and shared interests, say--while ignoring the deeper factors that create long-term stability.

Unlike other dating sites, eHarmony doesn't allow users to check out who has the cutest picture; rather, users must fill out lengthy questionnaires. Then the software yenta serves up the matches it believes will have staying power. In June, research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that eHarmony-produced marriages were more resilient than those forged through other means. Some skeptics questioned the findings' significance, wondering if eHarmony simply attracts the very people who are already most committed to the idea of marital stability. But the study does pose a provocative idea. "These data suggest that the Internet may be altering the dynamics and outcomes of marriage itself," wrote John Cacioppo, a neuroscientist and the study's lead author.

The eHarmony of Jobs

In the less emotional world of hiring, eHarmony thinks its special sauce can be applied more effectively than conventional approaches. And it is not alone. Paul Basile, the CEO of recruiting service Matchpoint Careers, is among the many contenders who already pitch their startup as the "eHarmony of jobs" (a phrase with 17,900 Google hits). Basile says that just as barflies are too quick to elope with the guy or girl with the great smile and a shared affinity for Indian food, companies also focus on traits that just don't matter.

And the real shocker is that education and experience are worth surprisingly little, says Basile. Cognitive ability, personality traits and the nebulous notion of "cultural fit" produce a better candidate. Basile tests for each but concedes that the data is still squishy on the culture question. "Fit is not nearly as well developed as the other topics," he says.

That could be a problem for Basile, because the consensus among recruiting startups seems to be that while fit is the most ill-defined of factors, it may well be the most important in reducing churn. Amy Kristof-Brown, an expert on "person-environment fit" at the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa, found that an optimal fit reduces turnover and predicts whether an applicant will be a "good organizational citizen," going above and beyond the basic job requirements.

The Corporate-Culture Quest

When brent daily quit his job five years ago--a bad fit--he began looking into Kristof-Brown's research. He called her and learned that her work was floating around academia but that few businesses had acted on it. "It floored me," he recalls. "It was too good to be collecting dust." Daily co-founded a company called RoundPegg (which counts Kristof-Brown as an adviser) that is dedicated to hacking this question of what it means to fit a company's culture.

We're familiar, by now, with stories about how Google employees whisk to the cafeteria on their scooters for a glass of agua fresca. But is this corporate culture? If you like to play tennis and a company lets you wear shorts to the office, is that sufficient to determine a fit?

Daily thinks a real analysis of the DNA of a company's culture requires a deeper, wider view. RoundPegg believes culture can be measured using surveys to get at the beliefs and attitudes of individual employees. If corporations are people, as a certain presidential candidate once declared, then that's equally true of corporate culture. "Every interaction with a colleague--from the person manning the front desk to the person sweeping floors to the CEO ... all that behavior starts to paint a picture of what it's like to work there," says Daily. RoundPegg's methods also allow it to identify subcultures; if you're working in accounts receivable, the management style of the communications chief is less relevant to you.

That's not to say the scooters don't matter but merely that they're "artifacts of culture," says Daily, rather than the culture itself. "We're also a technology company," he concedes, "and we've got the requisite foosball table. But I'd say our core values are sharing information, creativity and high performance." And he measures each of those, just as eHarmony measures the various traits it thinks matter in a romantic partnership: things like conflict-resolution style, altruism and autonomy.

Even in this problem-within-the-problem of measuring corporate culture, RoundPegg has its share of competitors. A startup called Good.co emerges from beta soon and claims expertise in a particularly vexing segment of the labor market: millennials--those born in the '80s or '90s who are entering the workforce en masse. Churn is more of an issue among this cohort, according to HR groups. Perhaps that's because of an essential narcissism some commentators have eagerly attributed to our 20-somethings. Or perhaps it's as Good.co CEO Samar Birwadker, 33, suspects: millennials believe that work should not only offer a paycheck but also be an expression of "who they are, what they believe and what they stand for."

Either way, if there's one thing universally agreed on, it's that millennials like to be entertained, leading Good.co to make its surveys essentially gamelike. ("Is your manager's approach like a boxer or fencer?" "If your company were a superhero, would it be called Robotica or Chaotica?")

These waters remain less charted, as getting companies to take a hard look at culture is difficult. RoundPegg's Daily, for instance, says he still wrestles with the question of whether to weight the values of senior management more heavily than those of other workers in trying to assess a company's overall culture. Questions like these may keep the workplace matchmaking sector in a kind of beta for some time, but Iowa's Kristof-Brown thinks assessment tools are already eclipsing the industry standard: "There's no reason you should still be relying on, 'Does this face-to-face interview make me think this person is a good fit?'"

Daily puts it more starkly. "I firmly believe that in 10 to 15 years we'll all look back at the early 2000s and the times before, will scratch our heads and think, 'What were we doing ...?' It's the equivalent of using leeches to cure disease."

As in any emerging sector, the struggle to find the right formula causes flameouts. One company, Path.to, drummed up more than a million bucks in funding last year only to shut down this summer. "Unfortunately, we have learned just how hard it is to innovate in the hiring space," the company wrote in a July 16 blog post.

One not insignificant issue is how these outfits will make money. Many are relying on variants of the traditional model--charging businesses for their services or specifically when a hire is made. Others are trying different pricing: RoundPegg, for instance, offers companies a culture analysis for a one-time fee--from $5,000 for a small organization up to hundreds of thousands for huge ones. Once a matchmaking firm reaches scale, something a giant like eHarmony could achieve quickly, the real cash would come from monthly subscriptions. LinkedIn, which makes most of its money as a recruiting tool, already does something similar.

The more-cautious innovators in the hiring market believe in the long-term matchmaking promise of Big Data but are reluctant to wait for the computer oomph to become available. GroupTalent is a marketplace for software-engineering jobs and relies on lightweight interviews to assist its matchmaking. But co-founder Manuel Medina says he doesn't think the science is there yet to create lasting matches based on personality tests and surveys alone.

As he grew his business, one of its incidental features became a hit--brokering "try before you buy" deals, in which workers and companies test compatibility on-site for a few weeks before committing to a long-term relationship. Clients kept telling Medina that the arrangement reminded them of something, and eventually Medina had to agree. "Get paid to date companies," his website now proclaims.

FOR MORE IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE, VISIT time.com/breakthrough

Words Have Consequences
Striking at Assad won't end the conflict in Syria. But it may drag the U.S. into a complex civil war

GERMANY: NEW YORK TIMES--GETTY IMAGES

Fareed Zakaria | 840 words

From the start of the syrian conflict, President Obama has wanted to take two very different approaches to it. On the one hand, he has been disciplined about the definition of American interests and the use of force. On the other hand, he has sought a way to respond to Bashar Assad's human-rights atrocities. But sometimes you cannot split the difference. The tension between the two paths continues to beset American policy as the Administration prepares the ground for a military strike. Selling the U.S. and the world on the need for action while at the same time keeping its mission limited will prove difficult.

Two years ago, Obama declared loftily that Assad had to go. A year ago, he announced that the use of chemical weapons was a red line. For a while it was possible to keep the juggling act going, talking tough while doing little. But presidential rhetoric creates expectations, and, as I wrote in June, "eventually, the contradictions in U.S. policy will emerge and the Obama Administration will face calls for further escalation." The recent, horrific chemical-weapons attack has been the proximate cause, but there would have been others. As a result, we might be inching into a complex civil war, all the while denying that we are doing so.

Just as Obama's past rhetoric has pushed America more deeply into this struggle, the current efforts to win congressional support are already producing mission creep. At a meeting with House leaders, the President spoke explicitly about a "limited" strike that would "send a clear message." The same day, his Secretary of State had to assure hawkish members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "this is not sending a message per se," implying that the strikes would be more substantial. Republicans like John McCain have indicated that they have also been given more detailed assurances of a more intense intervention.

The Administration might want to keep the mission "limited" and "proportional," as Obama initially promised, but it will be a challenge. In making the case to Congress, Secretary of State John Kerry and his colleagues have described what is at stake in monumental terms--vital national security, 100 years of international law, core credibility. It is a "Munich moment," says Kerry. In that case, how could American policy be merely a stiff warning, "a shot across the bow," in the President's words? If it doesn't work, if there is another atrocity--chemical or otherwise--can the Administration sit back and not do more? After all, the Secretary of State has compared the situation to the road to World War II. (A note on the analogy: it is worth remembering that Adolf Hitler was in charge of the world's largest army and one of its richest countries and was seeking conquest of Europe and perhaps the world. Assad, by contrast, runs one of the world's poorest countries and is struggling desperately to remain in control of it.)

What remains unclear in all of this is, What exactly is the goal of this military action? The Administration says it is simply to reinforce a global norm against the use of chemical weapons. But is it really just that? Were the Syrian civil war to continue, Assad to gain the upper hand and tens of thousands more to die--but without the further use of chemical weapons--would the Administration really say, "Mission accomplished"?

The reality is, the U.S. has now put its credibility on the line. It will find it extremely difficult to keep its actions limited in a volatile situation. And were it to succeed in ousting Assad, it would be implicated in the next phase of this war, which would almost certainly lead to chaos and the slaughter or ethnic cleansing of the Alawite sect (to which Assad belongs) and perhaps of other minorities, as happened in Iraq.

Obama has said repeatedly that the President he most admires for his foreign policy is the elder George Bush. Bush's signature achievement was to manage the end of the Cold War peacefully and without major incident. But he was sharply criticized at the time for refusing to speak out in support of the ongoing liberation of Eastern Europe as the Iron Curtain cracked and crumbled. He later explained that he was always conscious that with hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops still in Eastern Europe, there could have been reversals, crackdowns, even full-scale conflict. He didn't want to signal American commitments that he couldn't fulfill. Better, he thought, to have people think he was dispassionate or even cold-blooded. The first President Bush had his flaws, but he did understand that in foreign policy, words have consequences.

TO READ MORE BY FAREED, GO TO time.com/zakaria

What You Said About ...

CLINTONS: PAUL MOSELEY--FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM/MCT/GETTY IMAGES

566 words

Attacking Syria "Isn't Iraq overhanging everything here?" asked Fox's Bill O'Reilly of Time Washington bureau chief Michael Scherer, in a discussion about Time's Sept. 9 cover story by Michael Crowley, which explored President Obama's bind in striking Syria. The cover image, an outsize Obama on a white backdrop, resonated as well--demonstrating that, as Chuck Todd on NBC's Today show put it, "this is a conflict the Commander in Chief of a war-weary nation enters reluctantly." Mark Leinwand of Agoura Hills, Calif., argued that military action was a moral imperative: "We used to wonder how the world allowed the Nazi Holocaust to happen. Or Rwanda. Or Darfur. Now we know. We see it in Syria." But others, like Carlos Reyna of El Paso, Texas, saw no upside. "By all means, let's retaliate against Assad by bombing his cities and killing more civilians. Will this make us more pious than he?"

Miley Cyrus' VMA routine Although culture critic Camille Paglia's column calling Cyrus' act at MTV's Video Music Awards "derivative" prompted hundreds of approving shout-outs ("She hits the nail on the head!" tweeted Alice Nelson), TIME.com commenter JohnMuir argued that Paglia's comparisons with Madonna amounted to "Madonna nostalgia/fangirl fanaticism"; Cyrus, he said, is "young, fun and sexy and doesn't need ... the 'mystery' ... that an older Madonna needed to stay sexy and relevant."

The Clintons needing a restart Joe Klein's column on the power couple's Washington excesses--and how they could damage a Hillary presidential run--prompted praise from conservatives. "Tough, insightful piece," tweeted GOP pundit Ana Navarro. Reader Michael Saken, meanwhile, didn't think Klein's suggested "restart" was likely--or necessary. "This is celebrity time in politics," he tweeted. "Hillary's got it. And it explains the rise of fringe people like Cruz & Paul."

NOW ON TIME.COM

A new generation of artists is redefining Jewish music. On time.com/rockhashana we're highlighting artists such as:

The Maccabeats

A cappella that's Pitch Perfect meets prayer

Rick Recht

The founder of online music source Jewish Rock Radio

Joshua Nelson and the Kosher Gospel Singers

A group that mixes it up, as advertised

NOW ON LIGHTBOX

To mark the start of New York Fashion Week, we're showcasing photographer Robin Schwartz's insider's look at another kind of couture: doggie fashion, a world in which "it's acceptable to ... be extravagant, charitable and eccentric," Schwartz explains. Samples include:

Humans and canines at a pet fashion show during Brooklyn Fashion Week

Nina, a Chihuahua, at a Roaring '20s--themed pet fashion show in Manhattan

FOR MORE ...

We've got a preview of curator Erik Kessels' book on the vanishing art of the family photo album and Yuri Kozyrev's deep dive into the mines of Afghanistan. See them both at lightbox.time.com.

Please recycle this magazine and remove inserts or samples before recycling

The World According to Putin
Moscow is taking an ever more confrontational stand with Washington (and vice versa). Why Vladimir Putin dreams of imperial rebirth

Illustration by HelloVon for TIME

Simon Shuster/Moscow | 3419 words

When Vladimir Putin emerged from his black limousine in Volgograd's train-station square on Aug. 23, squinting and blinking to adjust his eyes to the blazing sun of the steppes, he found an odd mix of people before him. Scattered among the few hundred elderly veterans who had gathered to greet him were a dozen leather-clad members of the Night Wolves, a Slavic motorcycle gang, standing at attention. But it was Putin's kind of crowd. Diving in, he returned the bikers' bear hugs and let the veterans get close enough to take selfies with him on their cameras, even as a secret-service agent stood two steps away with a black briefcase containing Russia's nuclear launch codes--Putin's nuclear football. "He's a colossal historical figure," remarked Mikhail Sidorov, a veteran of World War II, who stood watching at the edge of the crowd. "He's not quite Stalin yet, but he's getting there."

This was meant to be a compliment, and Putin might well have taken it as one. Throughout the weekend of jingoism that Putin had come to inaugurate, Joseph Stalin was cast not as the despot who killed millions of his fellow citizens but as a founding father who transformed Russia from an agrarian society into an industrial giant capable of beating back the Nazi invasion. Later that day, Stalin's face was projected in green laser lights over a rally on the grounds of a former tank factory. A quarter-million people from around the Slavic world had gathered in Volgograd for the rally commemorating the start, 71 years earlier, of the Battle of Stalingrad, as the city was known during Stalin's rule. At the rally's culminating moment, the announcer read a prophecy that Stalin had made in 1939 at the end of the Great Purge. "Year by year new generations will arise," the announcer said, imitating Stalin's accent. "They will again raise the banners of their fathers and grandfathers and will restore to us everything we are owed." The crowd roared, and the sky lit up with fireworks.

Since May, when Putin began his third term as President, his declared objective has been to launch a 21st century Russian resurgence. But his rhetorical embrace of Russia's imperial past at home has brought him increasingly into conflict abroad--particularly with the West. Putin tried fitfully during the first decade of his rule to find common ground with the U.S. and its allies. Now he's blithely burning those bridges. The real-world effects of Putin's newly confrontational approach have been most evident in recent weeks with the crisis in Syria. Russian officials have suggested that a U.S. military strike against the Assad regime could lead to a war that would engulf the Middle East and even spread to Russia's southern frontier in the Caucasus. Putin has demanded proof that Assad had used chemical weapons against rebels, telling the Associated Press it was "ludicrous" that the Syrian military would gas its enemies when it already had them on the ropes.

Now, after a year of deadlock on everything from human rights to nuclear nonproliferation, the U.S. and Russia are as much at odds as at any time since the Cold War. The confrontation will be on full display Sept. 5--6 as Putin hosts world leaders at the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg for talks on the Syria crisis and the halting global economic recovery. On Aug. 7, U.S. President Barack Obama canceled a meeting with Putin scheduled to precede the G-20 gathering: it was the first time a summit of the Russian and U.S. leaders had been called off in 53 years. Obama compared Putin's slouching posture at previous summits to that of a "bored kid in the back of a classroom." Putin's response: "President Obama hasn't been elected by the American public in order to be pleasant to Russia," he told the AP. "And your humble servant hasn't been elected by the people of Russia to be pleasant to someone either."

The proximate cause of the latest spat was Russia's decision to grant asylum to Edward Snowden, the whistle-blower who is wanted in the U.S. for leaking the secrets of American intelligence agencies. But the roots of Putin's confrontationalism are as much political and economic as they are personal and historical. Having faced Western creditors abroad and a disaffected population at home when he first took office in 2000, Putin has spent the past 15 months marrying his country's windfall profits from soaring oil and gas prices to a patriotic message of imperial rebirth. In an attempt to exorcise Russia's lingering humiliation over the Soviet collapse, he has plowed investment into military hardware and its bristling display from its borders in Europe to the economically vibrant Pacific Rim.

But Russia's rapid rebound has also revealed its limitations, which have left Putin in no position to offer a leadership alternative to the U.S. Russia still lacks the military or economic muscle to build a broad coalition of allies. States once bonded to Moscow by force or expediency have broken away in all directions--pushed as much by the centrifugal force of their ambitions as the arrogance of their onetime overlord. Corruption inside Russia is stuck at the level of a Third World kleptocracy, rendering the state so inefficient that Putin often has to intervene in the pettiest municipal affairs, such as unpaid wages at provincial factories or building-code violations. The nation that put the first man into space has given the world no distinctly Russian exports under Putin except for midshelf vodka and Kalashnikov assault rifles.

Instead of functioning democratic institutions, Russia today has Putin's brand of "manual control," a form of government based on Kremlin fiat and jerry-built solutions. Add to that the economy's dependence on the prices of oil and gas (they make up 45% of exports) and Russia's frailties are plain to see--even in the most stage-managed setting. On the square in Volgograd, Putin suggested a role in Russia's resurgence for the Night Wolves, whom he has held up as representatives of a new generation of patriots. "He told us to be proud of our past," says the biker gang's leader, Alexander Zoldastanov, who goes by the nickname Surgeon. But for all their patriotic bluster, even the Night Wolves have to import their bikes. The three-wheeler that Putin likes to ride at the front of their columns is a Harley-Davidson.

Breaking Out the Big Guns

On July 13, the day after snowden announced his plan to seek asylum in Russia, reveille sounded early at military bases across the country, rousing troops from their barracks in the middle of the night for the biggest round of war games since the fall of the Soviet Union. The snap drill, which Putin had ordered the previous evening, would field 160,000 military personnel, 1,000 tanks and scores of warships and aircraft across Siberia and the Russian Far East. The Defense Ministry, eager to head off any claims of aggression, insisted that the show of force was not aimed at any nation in particular.

Konstantin Sivkov saw it differently. Having served from 1995 to 2007 as a military strategist for the Russian General Staff, he says the war games had an obvious target--a joint attack from the U.S. and Japan against Russia's eastern frontier. "You have to think of it in terms of threats," he says. "And the threat to Russia over the past quarter-century has come from the Western world, and specifically the USA. They are our geopolitical opponents."

That attitude is echoed in Russia's official military doctrine. Adopted in 2010, it lists the expansion of NATO, the military alliance dominated by the U.S., as Russia's biggest external threat, and the bulk of Russia's defense budget is spent with that in mind. Over the past decade, that spending has managed to raise the armed forces from the disasters of the 1990s, when Russia's military was in such a dire state that a band of separatist guerrillas from the tiny region of Chechnya forced President Boris Yeltsin to grant them de facto independence. Putin came to power in 2000 with a promise to correct the mistake.

Before his first year in office was out, Chechnya had again been conquered and its capital destroyed, while the Russian military began a long march toward modernization. Today Russia has the third largest military budget in the world--$90 billion in 2012--behind the U.S. and China. Even though it is not involved in any wars, it drafts hundreds of thousands of men into the armed forces each year, maintaining a standing army of more than 800,000 soldiers, and spends the same proportion of its GDP--4.4%--on its military as the U.S. does. Last year, as he prepared to take his third term as President, Putin made the extravagant pledge to "completely rearm" the military at a cost of nearly $800 billion by the end of the decade. That would be piled on top of major pay hikes for police, teachers and other state employees, whose support has helped keep Putin's popularity rating above 60% in all the major polls.

Such generosity is underwritten by the windfall of high oil prices, which have been at historic peaks under Putin, just as Russia became the largest producer of both crude oil and natural gas in the world, surpassing even Saudi Arabia. In 2006 energy exports let Russia pay off nearly all its remaining Soviet-era debt to the West--about $23.7 billion--years ahead of schedule. The money could have been used to raise wages or build badly needed infrastructure. "But Russia wanted to be in the club of countries that cannot be pressured from the outside, that can play its own game," says Natalia Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank in Moscow. "This was a political decision to free Russia from the pressure of Western creditors." Russia's public debt is now 10% of its GDP, compared with an average of 110% for other advanced economies, according to the World Bank.

But as Russia learned in 2008, a drop in the oil price would devastate its economy. The cost of crude collapsed that year from a peak of $145 per barrel to $30, and Russia's GDP contracted by 8%, the sharpest fall in a decade. That summer also put Russia's military to the test when a war broke out with neighboring Georgia--Stalin's homeland. Although Russia crushed its tiny adversary in less than a week, its war machine was shown to be an inefficient wreck. More tanks were lost to malfunction than enemy fire, and at one point Russian officers were forced to use store-bought navigation gadgets after the official ones gave out. "There were a lot of red faces in the general staff," recalls Sivkov, the military strategist.

The American Bogeyman

In a lookout tower high above the rally in Volgograd, the co-author of its script, Alexander Prokhanov, sat at a small table with a bottle of Soviet champagne. He stood up from time to time for a better view of the battle re-enactments on the stage, which combined the acrobatics of Cirque du Soleil with the aesthetics of The Hunt for Red October. "It is a joy to watch," Prokhanov told me in his balcony after the last barrage of fireworks. "What we're seeing now, what we saw tonight, is the process of resurrection, like a mammoth frozen in the Arctic waters that has begun to rise on its sturdy Russian legs."

Prokhanov, a right-wing demagogue no less prominent in Russia than Rush Limbaugh is in the U.S., sought to capture that sense of revivalism in the book he published last year, The Stride of Russian Victory. It argues that Moscow is destined to establish a new empire, the fifth in its history, based on Putin's vision of a "Eurasian Union" of former Soviet states. Making way for this empire will be the era of American decline, which Prokhanov, like much of Russia's political elite, judges to be imminent. In the opening chapter he writes, "Russia will shake off America's decrepit hegemony and take back the emptied geopolitical spaces ... Herein lies Russia's imperial chance, the rise of her imperial destiny."

Prokhanov's anti-Americanism has recently made its way into the political mainstream. This winter, when Russia banned U.S. families from adopting Russian children, the Kremlin official in charge of child welfare, Pavel Astakhov, described American adoptive parents as buyers in the orphan trade and closet pedophiles. He even suggested in an interview with me that the U.S. is trying to depopulate and conquer Russia's resource-rich regions by adopting all their children.

On Russian state TV, Uncle Sam has been turned into a bogeyman for all occasions, blamed for everything from slowing economic growth--expected to be 1.8% this year, compared with an average of 7% during Putin's first two terms as President--to the dumbing down of Russian youth. When a wave of street protests broke out against Putin in late 2011, he called the organizers paid "agents" of the West. The American development agency USAID was then accused of fomenting the protests and summarily kicked out of Russia in September 2012.

None of this has stopped the growing discontent over corruption, inflation and abject social services, but it has served as a useful distraction. "It is a handy trick," says Alexander Konovalov, an expert on U.S.-Russian relations at the Foreign Ministry's diplomatic academy. "When a typical Russian wonders why he has no pension, the state can either give him some complicated answer or it can say, 'Comrade! What pension? The enemy is at the gates!'" This message works. In a survey released in June by the Levada-Center, an independent Russian pollster, a third of respondents saw the U.S. as Russia's main geopolitical foe. In a 2012 Levada poll, 76% said the U.S. is "an aggressor that aims to control all the countries of the world."

And such views are not confined to aging cold warriors. Maria Baronova was born in Moscow during the twilight of the Soviet Union and takes her social cues from the hipsters of Brooklyn. A feminist single mother, libertarian and political activist, she is opposed to Putin on almost every issue. Most weekdays, she puts on a stylish dress and goes to court, where she is on trial for organizing a demonstration against Putin that turned violent last year. The charges against her--"inciting mass unrest"--carry a sentence of up to two years. But get her talking about American foreign policy and Baronova, 29, can sound like an R-rated version of Putin. Her generation, though Western in its tastes, grew up on the humiliations of the late 1990s, as when they watched live footage of NATO warplanes bombing Russia's ally Yugoslavia into submission. "We all became rabid anti-Westerners after that," she says.

It was not much easier for her to watch the U.S.-backed revolution in Serbia, which ousted President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, weakening a cultural connection that had stood for centuries on Slavic unity and the Orthodox Christian faith. That was the first of the Color Revolutions, the popular uprisings that brought pro-Western leaders to power across the former Soviet Union, usually with U.S. support. Three years after Serbia there was the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, then the orange one in Ukraine in 2004 and the tulip one in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. These perceived intrusions by Washington infuriated Putin, who called them U.S. exercises in "political engineering in regions that are traditionally important for us."

These regions lie at the center of Putin's vision of a Moscow-led free-trade zone and military alliance, his Eurasian Union, which Putin called "the will of the era." But he has found few volunteers among his neighbors. Apart from Kazakhstan, only Belarus and Armenia have agreed to a free-trade zone with Russia. Ukraine refused--and paid dearly for it. In August, after Kiev again rebuffed Putin's invitation to join the alliance, Russia blocked all Ukrainian imports, costing Ukraine's businesses as much as $2.5 billion. This type of economic blackmail has become Russia's favorite method of influencing its neighbors.

The other method involves groups like the Night Wolves. Although their tattoos and leather seem ill-suited for diplomacy, their aim is to unite Eastern Europe around the banners of the Orthodox Church and Slavic pride. They have chapters in Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, Belarus, Herzegovina, Ukraine and other parts of the Slavic world, making them natural allies, or "brothers," as Putin puts it when addressing their rallies. On a visit to Ukraine last summer, Putin kept his Ukrainian counterpart waiting for four hours while he took a detour to hang out with the Night Wolves. "We'll help you make this one country again," their leader, Zoldastanov, told Putin on the roadside, referring to Russia and Ukraine. Expressing his gratitude, Putin accepted a biker jacket embossed with the ancient creed of Slavic exceptionalism: with us is god.

Eastern Approaches

Over the northern gate of the Konstantin Palace in St. Petersburg, the venue for the G-20 summit, hangs an enormous two-headed eagle, Russia's imperial emblem, with one head facing east and the other facing west. Throughout its modern history, Russia has straddled the Asian and European continents, and the eagle's eastern gaze will be emphasized at the summit. Ksenia Yudaeva, Russia's representative at the G-20, knows which guest matters most: "As the G-20 sherpa I work with all the member states, but China is a partner with which we regularly coordinate our actions. After all, it is our closest partner, geographically and strategically."

Two weeks before the summit began, Yudaeva inspected the grounds of the palace from the front seat of a golf cart as the busts of Russian royalty flitted past. Turning around in her seat, she told me, "For many countries, but especially for Russia, China offers enormous strategic potential. America is only important in its ability to influence other countries." Trade with the U.S. makes up only 3.4% of Russia's total. That's less than half of Russia's trade with China, which amounted to $88 billion last year.

In March the new Chinese leader Xi Jinping chose Moscow as the destination for the first foreign trip of his tenure, and the massive military drills that Russia held in July were preceded by a round of war games with China in the Pacific. They were the biggest joint naval exercises Beijing had ever held with another country. In the U.N. Security Council, Russia and China have also been working in tandem, with an almost identical record of vetoes of Western resolutions in recent years, like the ones that blocked additional sanctions on Syria and Iran.

Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the foreign-relations committee in Russia's parliament, the State Duma, sees this as part of a strategic shift. "Our geopolitical priorities are evolving," he told me recently in his office in the Duma, which is decorated with a portrait of Putin and a porcelain statuette of Chinese leader Mao Zedong. "We understand that the 21st century will not be the American century. It will be the Asian century, and we feel we've been hung up too long on the Western vector in our foreign policy."

That outlook only fuels the confrontation with the West. And as long as it continues, any U.S. attempt to build an international coalition will face high hurdles. At the G-8 summit in June, Putin was alone in insisting that military support for the rebels in Syria must stop. The talks ended with the now famous photo of Putin and Obama sitting side by side, looking as grumpy as a couple in divorce court. Two days later, Pushkov went before the Duma to vent his anger over the G-8's treatment of his boss. The rousing speech served in part to prepare the ruling elite for a period of isolation from the West. "Loneliness in this or that forum does not mean we are wrong," he told his fellow lawmakers. "Sometimes it is necessary to be lonely in order to prove that you are right." Having brought Russia back onto the world stage, Putin is perfectly happy to stand in the spotlight alone.

All Together Now
Will Congress follow the President into a war that no one wants?

Photograph by Jim Watson AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Team of rivals Barack Obama makes his case for intervention in Syria during a White House meeting with congressional leaders on Sept. 3

Michael Scherer, Alex Altman | 2717 words

Everywhere she goes these days, Nancy Pelosi hears the skepticism. It rains down on her at fundraisers from Boston to Albuquerque, among her fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill and back home in San Francisco, where the antiwar spirit of the 1960s still blankets the city like the summer fog. "I don't run into a lot of people who say, 'Bomb Assad,'" the House minority leader says of the military campaign President Obama has prepared against the Syrian regime. "Certainly plenty have said, 'No. Thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down.'"

Pelosi says she even found herself surprised on Labor Day by her seventh grandchild, who confronted her with a question. "Yes on the war on Syria, or no on the war on Syria?" asked Thomas Vos, 5, as Pelosi bade farewell to catch a plane for another meeting at the White House on the U.S. response to Syria's use of chemical weapons. When politicians cite the strategic advice of their grandchildren, it typically signals a Hobson's choice. This time was no different. "I think no war," the boy told her.

The conversation that followed between Thomas and the House Democratic leader was as good a place to start as any, an opening volley in the national debate Obama has asked the country to undertake around dinner tables and watercoolers, in committee rooms and on the floor of the U.S. Congress. At issue are elemental questions about what kind of global role the U.S. will play in the coming decade and what behaviors by other nations are unacceptable. There are no easy answers. All options come with incalculable risks.

Convincing evidence indicates that a Syrian dictator, fearing for his regime's survival, has turned chemical weapons on his people, killing more than a thousand so far, in violation of nearly century-old international norms. Now the American people, by way of their elected leaders, must decide: Should their military be in the business of punishing with missile strikes those who use weapons of mass destruction half a world away? Even if intervention fails to curb the practice--or, worse, further destabilizes the region? "If we won't enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules?" the President asked on Aug. 31. "To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorists who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?"

For Pelosi, who in 2007 became the first female Speaker of the House by campaigning against the last war in the Middle East over weapons of mass destruction, the answer is to strike. She is doing all she can to persuade her colleagues to go along. "President Obama did not draw a red line. That was drawn by humanity decades ago," Pelosi told TIME hours after speaking at the White House on Sept. 3 in favor of military action. "Who are we as a country? You know, we are the superpower."

But in a nation weary of war, this view has been fading. A Pew Poll conducted over Labor Day weekend found that fewer than 1 in 3 Americans, including only 29% of Democrats, support air strikes against Syria. Republican voters are actually more likely to support the President, at 35%, though many Republican lawmakers feel differently.

Which means that in order to win congressional approval for missile strikes, Obama will have to turn to his own skeptical party for support. It will be an uphill battle, especially if Republican members of Congress abandon the effort en masse. But if Congress approves the resolution in the coming weeks, a large part of the credit will be due to Pelosi and the scores of reluctant Democrats she brings along. "She's key," confides an Administration official involved in the lobbying push. "Pelosi really carries some sway with the liberal members of the House."

This choice comes as the old foreign policy divisions that defined the national landscape since the Iraq war--GOP hawk, Democratic dove--have been scrambled. Now Republican isolationists are ascendant, while other conservatives would pay a steep price in their home districts for supporting anything the President wants. "It's not the kind of vote where you go up to somebody and say, 'I really need you to vote for this,'" Pelosi explains. "This is a vote where you just present the information, the facts, the intelligence, the judgment that you have about what happens if you don't do something, as well as what happens if you do."

The Friday-Night Walk

Perhaps the most surprising part of the Syrian debate is that the nation is having it at all. Presidents have long had the prerogative to decide when and where to send the military for limited attacks of the sort planned for Syria, without prior approval from Congress or the American people. Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada. George H.W. Bush invaded Panama. Bill Clinton launched air strikes over the Balkans and fired cruise missiles at Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama already undertook the bombing of Libya and the toppling of its dictator without any approval from Congress.

But on the eve of what was an almost telegraphed strike on Syria, the President found himself standing alone. The British Parliament abandoned him. The Arab League could not commit. The United Nations faced Russian obstruction, and the U.S. Congress was unable to cobble together a cogent position, given the low enthusiasm of the American people.

All the President needed to do was say the word. Instead, he went for a walk. For 45 minutes on the muggy evening of Friday, Aug. 30, he strolled through the South Lawn of the White House, just out of view of the ubiquitous tourists gawking with iPhones held aloft from the National Mall. There he decided he did not want to launch this war alone.

One theory of Obama's 11th-hour change was that he needed a way to avoid the conflict he had backed himself into. But senior White House advisers say that the decision was, in fact, a pivot Obama has mulled for some time. After 12 years of nonstop conflict--some inherited, some of his choosing--and a generation more of unilateral executive action, Obama wanted to return to an era in which the President and the Congress are equal partners. "He's getting us off a permanent war footing," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney tells TIME.

In May, Obama delivered a speech to a military university in the capital that invoked the laws that "constrain the power of the President even during wartime." Libya, he believed, should be the exception, not the rule, its timetable rushed by the prospect of an imminent massacre. "It's important for us to get out of the habit of just saying, 'Well, we'll let the President kind of stretch the boundaries of his authority as far as he can,'" Obama said on Sept. 4 during a visit to Sweden. But if the gambit fails and Congress rejects his request, there could be a real cost for the President's ability to deter with threats other defiant nations like Iran and North Korea. Obama has said he reserves the right to act against Syria even if Congress balks.

If Congress approves the action, the President will find some political cover, or at least some company, in case things go from bad to worse in Syria. His aides also argue that a united American front will set a clear precedent for building international consensus against the use or spread of weapons of mass destruction, a key goal of his presidency. "Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something," Obama said about the fight to contain the nuclear threat, shortly after taking office. "The world must stand together."

As things now stand, Obama is likely to win backing for a bombing campaign from the Democratic-held Senate, which has already drafted a bipartisan resolution imposing limits on the length of an operation. But the Republican-controlled House will be trickier. While House Speaker John Boehner and his top lieutenant Eric Cantor support strikes to punish Assad, they expect the White House to "take the lead on any whipping effort," says Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman. Translation: Obama is on his own. The House rank and file doesn't just distrust the President. It has also begun to tally the costs of endless war. "What is the end goal within these countries?" asks Representative Trey Radel, a Florida Republican. "What have we accomplished with so many lives that have been lost?"

Obama's aides are now in a furious sprint to woo wavering members. Progressive Democrats are leery of an open-ended conflict, and some are actively campaigning against a cause championed by a President from their own party. On a Labor Day briefing call for House Democrats, Representative Rick Nolan of Minnesota lectured Secretary of State John Kerry about the perils of another foreign quagmire, likening the Syrian conflict to Vietnam. "Have we forgotten the lessons of Southeast Asia?" Nolan demanded, according to an official familiar with the discussion.

But this is not Vietnam, as Kerry, who was wounded there, knows well. And Obama's national-security officials are taking care to explain why it is more than a localized civil war. They argue that inaction would embolden regional enemies who pose a direct security threat to the U.S. "Iran is hoping you look the other way," Kerry told a Senate panel on Sept. 3. "Hizballah is hoping isolationism will prevail." AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby with huge clout among congressional Republicans, has cast U.S. intervention as vital to Israel's security interests.

These arguments won't settle the identity crises that both parties have been suffering from for a decade or more. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Republicans have typically preached a doctrine of muscular intervention to spread democracy, while dovish Democrats have warned against the perils of endless entanglements. But those lines have blurred. Now Democrats are warming to the merits of humanitarian intervention, while the GOP's isolationist wing is growing, fed by economic turmoil, the rise of the Tea Party and a decade of grinding war. "This hasn't seemed to break down on traditional lines on either side of the aisle," says a House Democratic leadership aide.

Even if Pelosi can rally Democrats, the Republicans are likely to splinter deeply. "Conservative opposition to an intervention in Syria is symptomatic of something larger: political parties advancing a neoisolationist outlook when their party is out of the White House," says Dan Senor, a neoconservative adviser to George W. Bush. But even if that outlook is merely a fad, the vote accelerates a clash that will reverberate through upcoming elections. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell's silence on Syria--even in private high-level meetings--speaks volumes: however he weighs in, McConnell knows he will face blowback from Kentucky Tea Partyers in next year's re-election bid. And the vote could pit some of the Republican Party's hottest political stars, including Senators Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, against one another ahead of the 2016 presidential primary.

When the vote is taken, the GOP may divide into moderates who back the President, Obama haters who oppose him by reflex, anti-interventionists and a small group of Republicans who think Obama isn't intervening enough. Senate candidate Liz Cheney, the daughter of Iraq-war architect Dick Cheney, has said on the campaign trail in Wyoming that she opposes a strike to punish the Assad government's use of weapons of mass destruction. Her reason: the President has failed to develop a plan for intervention with defined goals.

All Bets Are Off

other than Obama himself, no politician got more mileage out of opposing the Iraq war than Pelosi. She won the Speaker's gavel after Democrats swept the House in the midterm elections of 2006 and the following year became an early--if quiet--backer of the antiwar candidate with the funny name. She had long made the rush to war in Iraq her signature issue, both as party leader and member of the House Intelligence Committee. "I say flat out that unilateral use of force without first exhausting every diplomatic remedy and other remedies and making a case to the American people will be harmful to our war on terrorism," she said in 2002, before voting against authorizing the use of force.

So it is ironic that some of those same arguments have now been borrowed by Democratic opponents, who believe that it is wrong for the U.S. to act without the United Nations and that involvement in a Syrian civil war will distract from more core U.S. interests. Pelosi rejects the comparison. "It does not represent any change in me," she says of her decision. "With the Iraq war there was no there there. In Syria, there is a there there. And that's what makes the difference."

Just as she did when Obama's health care bill seemed to falter in 2010, Pelosi has been pushing the White House to amp up its public relations campaign. She has urged fellow Democrats to read the classified intelligence, which she considers conclusive. She has also made clear that she is willing to adjust the wording of any authorization to win votes, including possible restrictions on sending troops to the country and timetables for an end to the bombing. However, her flexibility has limits. "There are some, I think, that are saying it should determine the number of strikes," she says of the legislation. "That goes a little far."

But the bigger issue is selling the public on the conflict. "This has to be taken to the people," she says. "They have to be more aware, to know why a President who is winding down two wars, who knows the public is weary of war, would say I'm going to initiate a tailored, limited strike in Syria."

That's much harder to do, however, than to say. More than 100,000 people have already died in the Syrian conflict, with only a small fraction succumbing to chemical weapons. White House aides have said plainly that the U.S. mission in Syria is not to stop the slaughter or to end the civil war through military force. In the face of the horror, both Obama and Pelosi have tried to focus attention on the national-security interest of stopping chemical-weapons use. "If he shot them with bullets, what difference would it make?" asks Pelosi, referring to the residents of East Damascus who perished in the most recent chemical attack on Aug. 21. "Plenty. Because he used a chemical weapon, which is a threat."

When her 5-year-old grandson asked if the children Bashar Assad killed were in America, Pelosi had to offer a different argument. "I said, 'Well, no. But they're children, wherever they are.'" It was an emotional plea long used by members of both parties to defend U.S. involvement in distant conflicts. Her argument is not with the child; it is with members of her own party on a question that has no good answers. Pelosi declined to hazard a bet on how it all turns out. "Let's see," she says, "how it goes."

The Cult Of Assad
Even the Syrian President's father didn't want him to rule Syria. But the accidental dictator won't give in

Photo-illustration by John Ritter for TIME BRYAN DENTON--THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX; VAHID SALEMI--AP; SAAD ABOBRAHIM--REUTERS; AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Aryn Baker, Jay Newton-Small | 2034 words

To understand the man President Obama is seeking congressional approval--and international support--to punish for hideous crimes against his own people, you have to go back to June 26, 1980, and the pivotal moment of Bashar Assad's youth. He was just 14 when the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood tried to kill his father Hafez, then the country's President. As the elder Assad waited to greet a foreign delegation at a government palace for guests in Damascus, would-be assassins lobbed hand grenades and sprayed machine-gun fire at the President. He survived, reportedly kicking away a grenade. The Brotherhood did not.

What happened that day and over the next two years greatly influenced the teenager who would eventually, unexpectedly, take his father's place. The regime struck back at the Brotherhood with lethal force and a massive campaign of intimidation, torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings. In 1982, Hafez, a member of the minority Alawite Muslim faith, made his final push to rid Syria of the Brotherhood, whose members came from the country's Sunni majority. In a brutal attack on their enclave in Hama, an ancient city 135 miles (215 km) north of Damascus, the military obliterated mosques and caravanserai that dated to the dawn of Islam. Whole neighborhoods were bulldozed flat. Anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 people were killed in the assault. The entire Brotherhood leadership was liquidated; so too were their families. In a report on the massacre, the human-rights group Amnesty International noted that government soldiers allegedly pumped lethal cyanide gas through hoses into houses where suspected insurgents lived, killing everyone inside.

To outsiders, the destruction of Hama was a horrific crime against humanity, one involving the use of poisonous gas to kill civilians, an act outlawed internationally since World War I. But the young Bashar, according to several people who know him well, saw Hafez's actions in a very different light. If a unified Syria and the Alawite-dominated regime were both to survive, he learned from his father, dissent could not be tolerated. Any sign of rebellion was an existential threat that must be quashed with overwhelming force--and international law be damned.

Three decades later, Bashar, who turns 48 on Sept. 11, is fighting a civil war very much in the manner of Hafez. His military is destroying Syrian cities held by antiregime rebels--who are again overwhelmingly Sunni--and his forces are slaughtering armed opponents and civilians alike. The death toll from Bashar's campaign, more than 100,000 in over 2½ years, has long since eclipsed the casualties from Hafez's pogroms against the Brotherhood. And Bashar may have exceeded his father in his use of weapons of mass destruction: on Aug. 21, according to the Obama Administration and several other governments, including those of Britain, France and Turkey, Assad's military launched a chemical-weapons attack against several rebel-controlled neighborhoods in the Damascus suburbs, killing anywhere from 350 to more than 1,400 people. (The regime denies it used chemical weapons, saying the opposition, in a bid to tarnish the government, is responsible.)

But while Hafez received only lingering international scorn for his assault on Hama, Bashar now faces the prospect of U.S.-led air strikes. In Washington, lawmakers are debating an appropriate response to the chemical-weapons attack: Should the dictator merely be delivered a glancing blow, enough to ensure he doesn't use those weapons again, or should his military be crippled, allowing the rebels to topple him? In Damascus, the mood is a mix of sanguine and defiant. In a recent interview with France's Le Figaro newspaper, Assad dismissed Obama as "weak" and warned that action against his regime would destabilize the entire Middle East. He rejected the idea of a political settlement with the rebels, saying that "80% to 90%" were "terrorists" belonging to al-Qaeda. "The only way to deal with them is to annihilate them," he said. Although few Western journalists are allowed into Damascus, rebel commanders and witnesses tell TIME that the military has been scattering its assets and moving personnel to civilian areas in anticipation of the air strikes.

In the city where Hafez survived the assassination attempt, his son expects to outlast his enemies, domestic and international. Officials and friends of the dictator tell Time that he believes the civil war is a repeat of his father's battle against the Brotherhood. "Muslim fanatics nearly killed his father, [and] to Assad, they are back," says a former government official who has long known the Assads and still maintains ties to the regime. "He believes he is the last bastion of resistance against the Islamic terror threat. He does not care if people will still be calling him a murderer in 10 years, because he knows in 100 years he will be called a hero."

Second-Choice Successor

Never mind a hero, his father had intended Bashar to be no more than a footnote in Syria's history. The presidency was reserved for his older brother Bassel, a charismatic athlete favored by their father. Hafez schooled Bassel in both war and politics from a young age, determined that his firstborn son would carry on his vision for a strong, unified Syria. Bashar, as the second of four sons, was kept away from the political and military instruction that made up Bassel's education. The senior Assad, scarred by his own conflicts with a power-hungry brother that included an attempted coup, wanted to make sure that Bassel, as the appointed heir, would not face similar competition, says British author Patrick Seale, an old family friend and author of a biography of Hafez, Asad [sic]: The Struggle for the Middle East.

According to childhood friends, Bashar was a middling student--introverted, stubborn and moody but also loyal and modest. He overthinks things, say friends and colleagues, and has a hard time making decisions. He tends to go with the advice of the last person he consults. That indecisiveness, combined with a fierce stubbornness, is at the root of his sometimes unpredictable behavior, says the former official. "He comes off as weak, but that is because he is more analytical than his father. He wants to consider all the angles and is incapable of making snap decisions," says an official who has recently seen Assad. "The weak chin is as much metaphorical as physical."

Assad's father encouraged him to be a doctor, and he chose ophthalmology--"because he couldn't stand the sight of blood," says an old school friend, a little sarcastically--and went to study at London's Western Eye Hospital. (The schoolmate, like most other Syrians interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of a backlash from the regime or its supporters.)

Hafez's carefully laid succession plan blew up on Jan. 21, 1994, when Bassel died in a high-speed car accident while driving to Damascus airport. Bashar, after 18 months of studying in the U.K., was recalled to Damascus, and Hafez now attempted to instill in his second son, only 28, the leadership qualities he felt Syria would need. Bashar proved largely inept. "Hafez was desperate to influence and train Bashar to be a leader, but he was never the right type," says Seale. The young doctor was awkward and lacked the common touch necessary to win the loyalty of the population. "He was, still is, a terrible public speaker. He blathers on in an uncontrolled way and loses his audience quickly," says Seale.

In an attempt to prepare his new heir apparent for the presidency, Hafez asked then U.S. ambassador to Syria Ryan Crocker to help Bashar bone up on his knowledge of international affairs and diplomacy. "It was a curious way to prepare someone for leadership," Crocker remembers. "He didn't sit in on any of his father's meetings. Instead, we spoke several times for long, intense sessions." The sessions were conducted in Arabic because Assad's English wasn't as good as it is now, even though he'd just finished graduate school in London. "My understanding is he just went to school and went home and hung out with his Syrian friends at night," Crocker says. "So he could discuss eye surgeries in English, probably at a higher level than I could, but he didn't have the political and economic vocabulary."

A Disarming Dictator

When he eventually succeeded Hafez in 2000, many Syrians projected on him their hopes for change--for democratic reforms at home, for better relations with the West, for a stable and harmonious multiethnic nation in the world's most volatile neighborhood. The young Assad was thought to be more comfortable with the West than his father. After all, he had studied in Britain and had married an elegant British-Syrian banker named Asma, who would later be profiled in Vogue. He liked computers and was responsible for bringing the Internet and cell phones to Syria. He was self-effacing, even ordering the removal of posters of his father and the first family that had been ubiquitous in shops, offices and public places. He confessed to being a fan of Phil Collins and was a keen amateur photographer.

Western governments were disarmed by a leader who seemed more dweeb than dictator. On the eve of his first state visit to the U.K., in December 2002, British diplomats sought, unsuccessfully, to have the Queen bestow upon him an honorary knighthood. Italy did grant him its highest honor--the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. (It was revoked last year.) American observers, mindful of Syria's close ties with the Lebanese terrorist group Hizballah, were warier of the new leader in Damascus--and they grew warier still when he turned a blind eye to Arab jihadists using his country as a staging ground for operations against U.S. troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2007. Even so, today's Secretary of State John Kerry, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met Assad several times, visiting him in Damascus as recently as 2009. Kerry developed a good relationship with Assad and in a question-and-answer session following a speech the Senator delivered on March 16, 2011--the day after the start of the protests that would morph into Syria's civil war--Kerry expressed optimism that Assad would improve ties with the U.S.

But David Lesch, a history professor at Trinity University in Texas who met with Assad regularly from 2004 to 2009 in the process of writing two books about him and Syria, says his fondness for Western influences--like Phil Collins--was deceptive. It helped form an image of him as a pro-Western reformer, Lesch says, "when in fact he was a child of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a child of the Cold War and a child of Hafez."

Like his father, Assad eventually developed a taste for the cult of personality. The posters he had ordered taken down would be replaced by new ones showing the young President. "For his 2007 're-election'--he was the only one on the ballot--there were pictures of him everywhere, [and] he won the referendum with 97% of the vote," says Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who twice met with Assad in Damascus. Lesch says he asked Assad about the 97% vote and "half expected him to revert back to the unassuming, unpretentious nature he'd come into office with and dismiss it, but he embraced it. He said it showed people loved him, adored him, needed him. It showed me he'd be President for life."

And he may yet be. In the third year of the war his military remains strong and well supplied, and it has managed to take back some of the key cities previously lost to the rebels. Besides, few of the voices in the West now arguing for air strikes against Syria want Assad to be toppled, lest the power vacuum be filled by Islamist rebels far more extreme than those who tried to kill his father. That fear also unites many ethnic and sectarian minorities behind the dictator. "I really do think that if an election were held today in Syria, a legitimate one, Assad would still win a majority," Lesch says. "Not because people love him or the regime, but because they don't see an alternative." Whatever the severity of the punishment President Obama hands out to the man who sees himself as Syria's great protector, Assad will cling to the lesson he learned that day 33 years ago: to survive is to win.

12 Votes Down
I'd be so good at judging my peers. Yet I can't seem to get myself picked for a jury

ILLUSTRATION BY TOMASZ WALENTA FOR TIME; GETTY IMAGES (10)

Joel Stein | 901 words

Far too little is asked of me in return for being an American. Sure, I could join the military, work for the government or stop using complicated accounting tricks to avoid taxes, but I'm the kind of guy who prefers to be forced. So I get excited whenever I get a jury-duty letter. Not only is it an opportunity to do my part for a legal system I believe in, but also, after a career of writing columns, it would be nice to finally have my opinion matter.

Yet I've never even gotten close to making it onto a jury. A few weeks ago, I once again sat in an L.A. criminal-court building all day, hoping to be assigned to a trial. Then, just an hour away from being once again sent home, I heard my name called. I ran down the hall like it was The Price Is Right.

The first thing the Honorable Craig Richman told me and my hundred competitors was that our trial was going to take a little longer than average, since he likes to make it fun. Judge Richman, I could tell, really knew how to read a room. He asked Deputy Velasco, who is short, to stand up even though he already was standing; he told us not to leave our belongings behind since this was a criminal court, which meant there were criminals around. It was the material of a man who had a legally captive audience.

The next day, I was randomly labeled juror No. 5 and proudly took my seat in the jury box. Then Judge Richman asked if anyone had a reason they could not serve on this jury. People had incredibly elaborate excuses about how busy they were with their jobs or their kids, and for some reason, Judge Richman never said, "Oh, you're right, that does sound far more important than figuring out if someone tried to kill another person."

Judge Richman then asked us each if we were able to avoid making assumptions about the defendant, who was also in the room, based on the enormous tattoo covering his face. I told him I certainly could. But by the 20th time he asked a potential juror, I started to wonder if, compared with the non--face tattooed, the face tattooed are more likely to make poor decisions. After all, these are people who walked into a tattoo parlor and said, "I think this design will go well with my face."

Next, we were asked our occupation, our family members' occupations, if we were tight with any cops and if anyone close to us had ever perpetrated or suffered from a violent crime. I was shocked to find out that a quarter of my fellow potential jurors had experienced horrifying violence: a husband murdered, an ex-husband in prison for murder, a sister killed by a gang member, a woman whose suburban home was broken into and had knives left on her bed as a warning. One guy had so much drama in his life that an hour after he was asked, he raised his hand to tell the judge he'd forgotten to mention that his brother got arrested for having marijuana in his car, did three years in a Texas jail and got deported on the day of his release. When a man stepped on my sunglasses as we left for lunch break, I didn't get angry at him, not because his brother and two cousins had been murdered but because he knew that I knew that.

I made it to Day Three without a single question being fired at me by either attorney. With only half the room remaining, I was feeling great about my chances, when, out of nowhere, I was sent home by the prosecutor. Which verified all my fears: I am too soft, too weak and too liberal to convict even a potential murderer. I stood up and yelled, "What did I do? I was well behaved!" I left the courtroom and mimed "I'll call you" to the prosecutor.

The prosecutor wouldn't talk to me, possibly because my miming was more suggestive than I intended. So I called Philip K. Anthony, CEO of DecisionQuest, a national trial-consulting firm. He told me that because I live in Holly-wood and work in the media, I am indeed too soft, weak and liberal to ever get picked for a criminal case, though he thought I might be good for other cases. "If you got called on an intellectual-property case, both sides could potentially say, 'We need people who can analyze data and be precise. This guy is perfect,'" Anthony said. In other words, I'm such a nerd that I can judge only other nerds.

Tossing me didn't help just the prosecution but also justice itself. Because while a jury that included a few educated English speakers might sound great, Anthony told me, it's more important to have a homogeneous jury that will debate instead of being led by one person's opinion. That's why I got thrown out at the same time as four other potential jurors with white collar jobs. Who, I must admit, were not a jury of peers for the face tattooed. Or people who don't watch Mad Men.

I don't know what the jury decided, but I'm sure they made a better decision than I would have. Because I'm not jury material. Or Army material. Or government material. They really should raise my taxes.

Pop Chart

FRANCO: ELISABETTA A. VILLA--GETTY IMAGES

Nick Carbone, Kelly Conniff, Nate Rawlings, Lily Rothman | 875 words

FUNNYMEN EDITION

GOOD WEEK/BAD WEEK

James Franco

His roast on Comedy Central drew an impressive 3.1 million viewers

Dave Chappelle

Faced hecklers during a stand-up gig in Hartford, Conn.

AWW

Glamour Puss

Grumpy Cat already has a book, a movie deal and a coffee line (Grumppuccino). Now the YouTube star has also gotten the Golden Kitty award at the Internet Cat Video Festival in Minnesota, meaning that she's officially the Internet's favorite feline. How purr-fect.

EASY MONEY

$3.70

BIG IN JAPAN

Many photos made after Japan opened its doors to the West were hand-colored images meant to entice foreigners. But black-and-white portraits like this were also made for the domestic market. Both types are on view in "Camera Nipponica: Photographs from Japan, 1880--1930" at the University of Washington's Henry Art Gallery through Jan. 5.

VERBATIM

'You know, he's not playing King Lear. It's Batman!'

MATT DAMON, defending the acting chops of pal Ben Affleck, who was dismissed by many fans as a bad choice to play the Caped Crusader in an upcoming feature

Average Tooth Fairy gift amount per tooth in the U.S., according to a new survey by Visa. That's a 23% uptick from last year and a 42% increase over 2011. Your move, Easter Bunny.

QUICK TALK

Vin Diesel

At 46, Diesel has already rebooted one franchise, The Fast and the Furious: its sixth iteration just grossed almost $800 million globally. Now he's aiming to do the same with Riddick, out Sept. 6, in which he plays a space mercenary who's dropped on a hostile planet. It's the third part in a sci-fi series last seen in 2004. Here, he talks to TIME.

--LILY ROTHMAN

You fight some scary aliens in Riddick. Are there any creatures that you're scared of in real life?

Huh. Uh ... dinosaurs?

I meant creatures that actually exist now.

I would say King Kong, but I'm not really scared of King Kong. That would be inaccurate.

So you're basically not scared of anything, ever.

That's not at all what I'm saying. The thing I'm scared of most is not fulfilling my work. There's so much anxiety around trying to get a movie made that you don't really get to be afraid of anything else.

There's a line in the movie about how everyone has bad days, but this one is legendarily bad. Have you ever had a legendarily bad day?

You know, I don't even think about bad days.

What about a legendarily good one?

A day with my kids. A day with my kids is the best day.

What would you do?

Everything. We'd have picnics, we'd be playing chess. My 5-year-old daughter, her new pastime with Daddy is playing chess.

Sounds like the opposite of being dropped on a hostile planet.

It is the antithesis of being dropped on a hostile planet.

Which franchise will last longer: Riddick or The Fast and the Furious?

Unfair. That's like asking which child I love more!

What's Vin playing right now?

"'Roar,' by Katy Perry. My 5-year-old daughter just did a performance for us, and she used the song. It's apropos, because I literally taught my kids how to roar before they could talk."

WORDPLAY

The late California artist Jason Rhoades' sprawling installations are known for presenting taboo topics in a new light--as in this jumble of neon signs (Untitled, shown above on display in Switzerland in 2004), each in a different hue, representing the myriad terms people use to discuss parts of the female body. It's just one of his many works that will take over the entire Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia from Sept. 18 through Dec. 29.

GOOD SPIRITS

Drinking With the Stars

We'll toast to this: a group of researchers (who originally published in the journal Substance Use & Misuse) tracked every booze brand that was name-dropped in more than 700 of radio's most-played songs, as defined by Billboard year-end charts from 2009, 2010 and 2011. Here are the biggest repeat offenders and some of the lyrics that got 'em there.

"On a GREY GOOSE diet, diet, diet, and you ain't getting wasted as I get."

From "Grey Goose Diet" by DJ Charlie B

"I've thrown a punch or two and gave a few black eyes/ But JACK DANIEL'S kicked my ass again last night."

From "Jack Daniel's" by Eric Church

"I'm ridin' through the city sippin' HENNY with my thoughts in sync."

From "Spill My Drink" by Obie Trice

"Bring another glass of PATRÓN with one more lime/ And Imma ... give it to them one more time."

From "One More Time" by Drake

"Baby will you be my CORONA and lime?/ And I will be your main squeeze."

From "Corona and Lime" by Shwayze

"All I drink is my s---: CÎROC by the case load."

From "O Let's Do It (Remix)" by Waka Flocka Flame

BRANDING

Shades of Facebook

As if using Facebook weren't enough, visitors to the social network's San Francisco--area headquarters can now actually wear it--by buying Social Butterfly Blue nail polish in Facebook's signature hue, at $5 a bottle. Virtual friends not included.

3 THINGS YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THIS WEEK

1. Who will be the new face of S&M.

Relative newcomers Dakota Johnson and Charlie Hunnam have been tapped to play the leads in the 50 Shades of Grey movie.

2. Waning interest in doing funky stuff in the desert.

More than 61,000 people attended this year's Burning Man festival, a new record.

3. Whose judgment you'll judge.

American Idol has confirmed its new panel: Keith Urban, Harry Connick Jr. and Jennifer Lopez.

FOR TIME'S COMPLETE FILM AND TV COVERAGE, VISIT entertainment.time.com

Spiriting Away
With a daring war film, Japan's movie master lays down his pen

Set design by Vault49 for TIME ALBERTO PIZZOLI--GETTY IMAGES; PHOTOFEST (9); EVERETT (7); THE WIND RISES: STUDIO GHIBLI/NIBARIKI--GNDHDDTK/DISNEY

Drawn to life Hayao Miyazaki, director of animated features including Ponyo, Howl's Moving Castle and the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, said The Wind Rises will be his last film

Richard Corliss | 1232 words

Moviemaking, which requires a field marshal's gift for strategy and a foot soldier's fortitude, is supposed to be a young person's game. And occasionally, directors in their prime get weary of scouting locations and coaxing another take from a temperamental star. Steven Soderbergh, who directed 25 features in as many years, has called it quits at 50, saying, "For the foreseeable future, the movie door is closed." Kevin Smith (10 features since his 1994 debut with Clerks) tweeted in December, "My last cinematic effort as a writer/director will be Clerks III." He's all of 43. But most helmers keep going as long as they can find someone to subsidize their visions. They see directing not as a job but as a fulfilling, lifelong quest.

So the news that Hayao Miyazaki, the world's most revered director of animated features, was calling it quits at 72 came as a jolt and a disappointment. "Miyazaki has decided that The Wind Rises will be his last film and he will now retire," Koji Hoshino, who runs the Japanese director's Studio Ghibli, announced Sept. 1 at the Venice Film Festival, where the new movie received its premiere outside of Japan. The Wind Rises screens at the New York Film Festival Sept. 28; Disney will release the film in North America.

Miyazaki fans might show a little sympathy toward the master. His films, meticulously hand-drawn (little or no CGI), can take four years to complete. From his 1979 debut, The Castle of Cagliostro, he has made just 11 features. He has created other creepy castles (Castle in the Sky, Howl's Moving Castle), launched teenage witches (Kiki's Delivery Service) and a flying pig (Porco Rosso), unleashed forest gods (Princess Mononoke) and fish-girls (Ponyo) and, in Spirited Away, which in 2003 won the Best Animated Feature Oscar, sent a plucky girl into a haunted bathhouse. His past four films have grossed $743 million in Japan and $870 million worldwide. But Miyazaki is in it only for the art, and making his kind of art is exhausting. He may not want to climb another mountain.

And he couldn't have picked a more piquant swan song. In his first film intended primarily for grownups, he has courted political controversy. Miyazaki's protagonist, whom he portrays as a visionary genius, is Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter planes that on Dec. 7 in the year of the director's birth dropped the bombs on Pearl Harbor. The Wind Rises, which earned $80 million in its first six weeks in its home country, has been ripped by the pacifist left for blessing the war aggression of imperial Japan and by the nationalist right for being "anti-Japanese." Even the Japan Society for Tobacco Control has a grievance: people in the movie smoke too much.

The wind rises--its title taken from a line in Paul Valéry's poem "The Graveyard by the Sea" ("The wind is rising! We must try to live!")--weaves a tender, doomed love story into two volcanic decades of Japan's history, from 1918 to the end of the '30s. Here are indelible images of the 1923 Kanto earthquake and the firestorms that devoured whole cities and killed 140,000 people. Here is the Depression that crippled Japan while its government poured more money into its military.

The movie is really a double biopic: of Horikoshi, whose life it follows from his youth to his work at Mitsubishi, with a brief postwar coda; and of the author Tatsuo Hori, whose 1937 novel The Wind Has Risen tells of a tubercular girl at a sanatorium. The life and works of Hori, who died at 48 of TB in 1953, inform the character of Naoko Satomi, the young woman who becomes Jiro's wife.

The Wind Rises is inspired by a quote of Horikoshi's: "All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful." Miyazaki often achieves just that. In the amazing first scene, young Jiro climbs to the roof of his home and finds a plane parked there. Lured by its colorful avian design--white wings, blue feathers, a red tail and a yellow nose--Jiro scoots aboard this metallic bird for a lovely jaunt until he is shadowed by a huge dirigible holding dozens of military aircraft; the boy falls from the sky and awakes in his bed. The film is a series of flights and falls, airy dreams that crash-dive into disaster.

Stark history and buoyant fantasy often merge in The Wind Rises. Jiro's spiritual guide is the Italian airplane designer Giovanni Caproni, who says, "The whole world's a dream." Caproni eagerly awaits the age of commercial aviation: "Instead of bombs, we'll carry passengers." But his first attempt, essentially an airborne cruise ship, crashes. That was Caproni's tragedy. Jiro's planes flew supremely efficient bombing raids. That was his.

Miyazaki has never cared much for the "realistic" animating of human figures; they are abstracted into giant-eyed doll faces and stiff legs, as if trudging on stilts. (Even the adult Jiro looks like any anime child.) The director expresses his true artistry in his landscapes: rural vistas rendered in the most delicate pastels, like the watercolors Naoko paints as Jiro courts her. In a hard land heading to war, Miyazaki makes sure the views are ravishing. His perfect metaphor for a Japan straddling the old world and the new: the planes Jiro designs are pulled onto the practice field by teams of oxen.

This exquisite paintbrushing, or whitewashing, extends to Jiro's visits to Germany to gauge its aircraft ingenuity against his, and to his development of the Zero prototype. But as Japan flexes its military muscle, Miyazaki tiptoes away to concentrate on the Jiro-Naoko love story. Their devotion is heart-strong and constant. As Naoko says, "I've loved you since the wind brought you to me." But this last half hour might have considered the impact of the hero Jiro's Zero. It was a beautiful machine that encouraged tyrannical Japan to dream of world conquest and brought death more swiftly to rival airmen and civilians alike.

The Wind Rises may be a challenging end to a major artist's career. But Miyazaki has retired before, after the 1997 Princess Mononoke, and he returned to make four more wonders, including this one, that immeasurably enrich his legacy. The new film betrays no hint of flagging energy, let alone senility; it is vigorous, subtle, thematically daring, visually gorgeous. So may his stated retirement be a brief, dark whim. May he go on enchanting and confounding us for years to come.

Caught.
A fresh look at J.D. Salinger's triumphant, traumatic, tawdry life

PAUL FITZGERALD--THE STORY FACTORY

Lev Grossman | 682 words

In 1949, still reeling from his heroic service in world War II, already deep in the throes of writing The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger took a vacation at the Sheraton Plaza Hotel in Daytona Beach, Fla., where he met a girl named Jean. She was 14. Salinger was 30. "He was the first adult who seemed to be genuinely interested in what I had to say," she would recall 60 years later.

When he got home, Salinger began writing Jean letters, and the two stayed in touch. Salinger told her, not implausibly, that she inspired his story "For Esmé--With Love and Squalor." After five years, things went further: he took her to Montreal for the weekend, and they slept together. She was a virgin. The next day his manner was chilly. Apart from one wordless glimpse, she never saw Salinger again.

Disconcerting anecdotes of this kind are thick on the ground in Salinger, a new biography by David Shields and Shane Salerno. How could a man like Salinger, who saw into the hearts of millions of readers, not see what was going on in Jean's? Or not care? If biographies are supposed to elucidate the contradictions within their subjects, they don't come much starker than that.

Salinger is billed both as "the official book of the acclaimed documentary film"--meaning Salerno's movie of the same name, which was released on Sept. 2--and as an "oral biography." In fact, it's somewhat more than the first and less than the second. It presents a decade's worth of genuinely valuable research, but in an oddly half-baked form, choppily edited into 700 pages of brief, bloggy chunks with minimal context and attribution. It's as if Salinger's life were a YouTube video and we were reading the comments. (And while I'm complaining: there's no index.)

But scroll through it, because there are riches here. I knew, for example, that Salinger fought in WW II, but the book presents a shocking, vivid account of a smart-alecky wannabe writer who went from the bosom of a well-heeled Park Avenue family to the D-Day landings--he hit Utah Beach with the first six chapters of Catcher in his pocket--and who witnessed some of the most horrific scenes in the European theater: the Norman hedgerows, Hürtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge and, finally, the liberation of the concentration camp Kaufering IV.

It's a miracle Salinger survived; in fact, not all of him did. "You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live," he once remarked to his daughter. An irony Salinger returns to repeatedly is that the war both made him as a writer and destroyed him as a person. It stripped away the slick glibness of his prewar fiction, giving him the voice he needed to write Catcher and the Glass-family stories, but it also left him with a crippling case of posttraumatic stress disorder.

What follows is well known: Salinger fled fame and celebrity for rural New Hampshire, where he embraced an ascetic form of Hinduism. His emotional life revolved around a personal mythology in which a series of younger women (like Jean) appeared first as idealized goddesses to be wooed, then as imperfect humans to be spurned. If there's a bombshell in Salinger, it's that although he published his last story in 1965, Salinger apparently left behind five new books that will appear over the next few years.

Salinger doesn't excuse its subject's personal failings, but it helps explain them: in his fiction, Salinger had a chance to be the good, untraumatized man he couldn't be in real life. "All of us are broken," Shields and Salerno write, "everyone, at some point, especially in adolescence, feels irreparably damaged, and we all need healing." Most of us find it; some of us even find it in Salinger's fiction. But while he sometimes granted his characters grace and closure, they were, apparently, gifts he could never give himself.

Strange Bedfellows
The rise of sharecations

ILLUSTRATION BY LEANDRO CASTELAO FOR TIME

Eliana Dockterman | 718 words

Robert Hero, 22, biked across Europe with two friends this summer, crashing on strangers' couches as they went. They had met these people not in train stations or coffee shops but on a website that connects travelers with hosts who have spare mattresses.

Tight economic times and a growing openness to strangers thanks to the Internet have given rise to the "sharing economy." People are logging on to sites and apps to rent out their cars, houses and even their clothes directly to one another. And it's big business: the peer-to-peer rental market is worth $26 billion, according to Rachel Botsman, author of What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption.

Arguably the biggest sector of the sharing economy is travel. People are renting their beds to out-of-towners (Airbnb and Couchsurfer), leading them on guided tours (Vayable and CanaryHop) and hosting meals (Voulez Vouz Dîner and EatWith), sometimes for free but on most sites for a price--though one far below those found at local hotels. Trust, based mainly on online reviews, is fueling a global sharecation network.

Airbnb has grown immensely since it launched in 2008. It now boasts listings in over 35,000 cities and has 4 million registered guests, 3 million of whom joined in 2012 alone. That same year, 10.4 million couches were surfed via Couchsurfing.org.

Part of the appeal for travelers is the chance to live like locals. "In certain small towns, Googling what to see would not have helped," says Hero. "But in Compiègne [in France], our host took us to this castle where Napoleon partied." Hero and his friends crashed on 35 couches during their trek. "Originally, we did it to save money. But now I would be upset if I had to travel any other way."

Some people might dread strangers' using their kitchen or showering in their bathroom. But hosts on sharing sites relish the idea. Ian Barrere, 26, who hosted while living as an American expat in Serbia, said some couch-crashing experiences blossomed into long-term friendships that spanned borders. Others were less fruitful: "I hosted a lot of hippie musicians in torn and dirty clothes."

Trust between strangers has grown so much that people may be willing to share hotel rooms, not just houses. Easynest.com, which launched this summer, pairs strangers together to split the cost of a hotel room--hopefully with separate beds. On these sites, users pick hosts or fellow travelers mainly on the basis of user reviews, so online reputation becomes paramount.

But there are risks to any system based on peer reviews. Ashley Reynolds, 31, ran into trouble while traveling through Europe. A male host in Barcelona got drunk at a party and told her, "You're getting raped tonight." He claimed it was a joke, Reynolds says, "but he kept saying it to the point that I was so uncomfortable that there was no way I was staying with him." She ended up crashing on a hostel sofa and posted a negative review, but the host is still on the site. She now usually stays with female hosts while traveling.

Though such horror stories are not the norm, safety concerns have led some sites to take external measures. Airbnb recently introduced a system whereby you can verify your online identity by sending the site a copy of an off-line ID, like a driver's license.

And while most sharing sites do not vet hosts, more are turning to social networks like Facebook as a platform for building trust. The new Friends of Friends Travel connects travelers already indirectly linked through social media. "Even if the person you're crashing with is technically a stranger, someone you know knows them and can vouch for them," says D.J. Singh, a co-founder.

Yet even on stranger-to-stranger sites like Airbnb, rebooking rates are over 80%. And most of those who stay with strangers or rent out their homes swear that the experience has reinforced their faith in the system. Botsman believes this is the beginning of a new economy based on one's good name. "Reputations on- and off-line will merge to create a marketplace where trust is the currency."

Or at least trust tempered by experience. "The good times outnumbered the bad," Reynolds says of her experience. "I trust my gut now. I know when to say no."