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On the Square: Were the Egyptian Protesters Right to Trust the Military?

We discussed possible leaders. None of the opposition parties had been able to garner any significant support among the protesters. Most seemed well-meaning but amateurish, and were headed by an older generation. I mentioned Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who had returned to Egypt from Vienna, where he lives, and quickly became associated […]

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Taming the Wild

Mavrik, the object of Trut’s attention, is about the size of a Shetland sheepdog, with chestnut orange fur and a white bib down his front. He plays his designated role in turn: wagging his tail, rolling on his back, panting eagerly in anticipation of attention. Trut reaches in and scoops him up, then hands him […]

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The Day the Movies Died

“Fear has descended,” says James Schamus, the screenwriter-producer who also heads the profitable indie company Focus Features, “and nobody in Hollywood wants to be the person who green-lit a movie that not only crashes but about which you can’t protect yourself by saying, ‘But at least it was based on a comic book!’ “

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The One-Man Political Machine

On a brutally cold morning in mid-December, Rahm Emanuel, hatless and wearing a glove on only his left hand, stood for an hour in front of the turnstiles at the Paulina el station, which sits in his old Congressional district on Chicago’s North Side. As the trains slammed and screeched overhead, he offered his hand […]

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Tabloid Takedown

The John Edwards tale began, like so many National Enquirer investigations, with a phone call. When the tip line rang in the paper’s Santa Monica office, reporters often raced to answer it. Rick Egusquiza grabbed it late one afternoon in fall 2007, knowing full well that nine out of 10 calls were worthless, just wackos […]

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