FEBRUARY 10, 2020

Kobe Bryant
1978–2020

time.com
 When
my mom
was diagnosed with cancer,
I towanted
have access to
her
the best
treatments
available.
SONEQUA MARTIN-GREEN
Stand Up To Cancer Ambassador

Photo By
MATT SAYLES

THAT’S WHY I’M SO PASSIONATE ABOUT EXPANDING AWARENESS

OF CLINICAL TRIALS
You want the best treatments for your loved ones. My mom’s cancer was treated using a therapy
made possible by clinical trials. I want all people diagnosed with cancer to have access to the
treatments that will make them long-term survivors, like my mom.

Cancer clinical trials may be the right option for you or a loved one. The more information you
have about clinical trials, the more empowered you will be to seek out your best treatments.

Learn more at StandUpToCancer.org/ClinicalTrials

Stand Up To Cancer is a division of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
 VOL. 195, NO. 5 | 2020

2 | Conversation
4 | For the Record
The View Features Time Off △
A memorial for
Ideas, opinion, What to watch, read,
Containing Coronavirus Bryant near the
The Brief innovations
Learning from this outbreak so the
see and do
Staples Center in
News from the U.S. 13 | James Wallman 45 | Why the Oscars Los Angeles
and around the world on the best use of next one doesn’t take us by surprise can’t keep up with a
time By Alice Park and watching world Photograph by
5 | The Bolton
bombshell Charlie Campbell 20 Alex Welsh for
15 | Ian Bremmer on 48 | Books: TIME
7 | Europe’s Huawei Trump’s pro-Israel February’s most
dilemma peace plan  Joe Biden Needs This anticipated releases
What motivates the former
16 | The financial 50 | Television:
8 | Inside the Vice President to run
courtroom at the world slowly A modern fairy tale
awakens to climate By Molly Ball 26 in Katy Keene;
Harvey Weinstein
trial change the McDonald’s
Death of an Icon caper docuseries
9 | Jim Lehrer and McMillions
The brilliance and the complicated
the end of an era
legacy of Kobe Bryant 52 | 8 Questions
10 | TIME with .. . By Sean Gregory 34 for YA author
CBS Evening News Plus: When a child loses his hero Jenny Han ON THE COVER:
anchor Norah Bryant:
By David French 37 Photograph by
O’Donnell
Being honest about Bryant’s life Michael Muller—
By Evette Dionne 41 CPi Syndication

Biden:
Photograph
by Kelia Anne
for TIME

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1
Conversation

WHAT YOU
SAID ABOUT ...
youthquake Readers of all ages learned
something from Charlotte Alter’s Feb. 3
cover story on millennial leaders chang- Davos wrap-up
ing America. Ryan Dailey, a Chatham, N.J., At 2020’s World Economic
high school senior and self-described politi- Forum annual meeting in
Davos, Switzerland, TIME
cal moderate, wrote, “I may not agree with hosted events ranging
many of the ideas from a conversation with
that the millennial young activists such as
Democrats have, but ‘That Greta Thunberg (above) to a
now I have a bet- “progressive kickoff reception co-chaired
by will.i.am (near left) with
ter understanding earthquake” a performance by Lukas
of why they believe can’t Nelson (far left).
what they believe.” come soon
Cindy Haynes in enough.’ Also at Davos, TIME’s
Bedford, Mass., was SHERRY RIND,
Susanna Schrobsdorff
led a panel, produced in
so hopeful she “cried Brier, Wash.
partnership with Kaiser
with joy,” but Peter Permanente, at which youth-
Graber in Elkhart, mental-health advocates
Ind., argued that corporations have the real (bottom left) discussed the
power to make change. Karl Kettler of Stock- urgent need to expand care.

T H U N B E R G : F A B R I C E C O F F R I N I — A F P/G E T T Y I M A G E S; N E L S O N , W I L L . I . A M : C A R O L I N E DY E R - S M I T H F O R T I M E (2); S C H R O B S D O R F F : J U T TA J A C O B I
ton, N.J., said every generation changes the
world in its own way, and readers like Bar-
bara Albin of Normal, Ill., cautioned against KOBE BRYANT The issue of TIME
generalizing about boomers. “Some of us are featuring the commemorative cover of Kobe
Bryant is available at retailers worldwide.
not as selfish as others of our age,” she wrote.
Prints of the cover can be purchased at the
TIME cover store (timecoverstore.com).
If you are a subscriber who would like the
the family business Brian Bennett’s issue with a Kobe Bryant cover and did not
Jan. 27 cover story on media-shy White receive it, please call 800-843-8463 to
have it sent with our compliments.
House adviser Jared Kushner was a source
of “valuable new insights into his life and
work,” said Jan Lupnacca of Rising Sun, Md.
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ▶ In “Inside Game” (Jan. 27) we
Diana Savastano of Johns Creek, Ga., called misstated a detail about Charles Kushner’s guilty plea. He pleaded guilty to
the profile “fair and setting up his brother-in-law with a prostitute. In the same issue, an essay
balanced,” though about U.S. citizenship misstated when Ellis Island opened as an immigration
station. It was in 1892.
John Reynolds of
‘Do you Paso Robles, Calif., TALK TO US
suppose felt it glorified nepo-
▽ ▽
send an email: follow us:
Trump will tism. Greg Wilmoth of [email protected] facebook.com/time
dump Pence Chesterfield, Va., was Please do not send attachments @time (Twitter and Instagram)
from his struck by Kushner’s
re-election telling TIME that Pres- Letters should include the writer’s full name, address and home
bid and ident Trump has “ro- telephone and may be edited for purposes of clarity and space
run with tated out” people on
Kushner his staff who were “in Back Issues Contact us at [email protected], or
instead?’ it” more for themselves call 800-843-8463. Reprints and Permissions Information
is available at time.com/reprints. To request custom reprints,
EVELYN S. STEVENS, than for the President. visit timereprints.com. Advertising For advertising rates and
Please recycle
Lansing, N.Y. “Shouldn’t they be ‘in our editorial calendar, visit timemediakit.com. Syndication
For international licensing and syndication requests, contact
this magazine, and
remove inserts or
it,’ ” he wrote, “for us?” [email protected] samples beforehand
For the Record

‘Why did you

remove
me from the ‘IS NOTHING
SACRED?’
photo?
I was part of
the group!’
VANESSA NAKATE,
Ugandan climate activist, in GEORGE TAKEI,
a Jan. 24 tweet, after being actor, on the Jan. 24 unveiling of the U.S. military’s new Space Force seal
cropped out of an Associated and its similarity to the insignia of Star Trek’s fictional Starfleet Command
Press photo of climate
activists—among whom
she was the only person of
color—in Davos, Switzerland;
the news agency apologized
‘He asked,
“Do you think
97,112 Americans
Carpool lanes Number of gallons of red
wine that spilled into
care about
Arizona police cited
a man for driving in a creek from a winery
in Sonoma County,
Ukraine?”’
the HOV lane with
a fake skeleton as California, after a MARY LOUISE KELLY, NPR host,
a passenger blending-tank door popped quoting from her discussion
open on Jan. 22 with U.S. Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo after they
clashed during an interview;
Pompeo accused her of lying
about their exchange
BAD WEEK
GOOD WEEK

‘The people are

Traffic lights tired of the abuse.’ ‘It’s difficult
A group of Florida
friends went viral IRIS GUARDIOLA, to describe
with a video of
themselves playing
82, speaking to the Associated Press at a Jan. 23 protest in
Puerto Rico, demanding the resignation of Governor Wanda
the pain
Uno at a long red light Vázquez over the U.S. territory’s handling of disaster aid and loss the
Chinatown
community is

80
feeling, but
I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y B R O W N B I R D D E S I G N F O R T I M E

we will not
Number of pythons captured in
be broken.’
the Everglades during the 2020
MARGARET S. CHIN,
Python Bowl, according to a
New York City council member,
Jan. 25 Florida Fish and Wildlife
in a Jan. 27 statement after
Conservation Commission
a fire tore through a building
announcement; the annual event
housing the archives of the
raises awareness of the threat
Museum of Chinese
posed by the invasive species
in America

4 Time February 10, 2020 S O U R C E S : C N N ; N P R ; N B C 2; A P

 EYEWITNESS
John Bolton, then
National Security
Adviser, listens to
President Trump
during an Oval
Office meeting on
April 9, 2019

INSIDE

THE BATTLE OVER 5G AT HARVEY WEINSTEIN’S TRIAL, JIM LEHRER’S BEST ADVICE FOR
TECHNOLOGY COMES TO EUROPE MYTHS FACE SCRUTINY MODERATING A DEBATE

PHOTOGR APH BY ALEX WONG

TheBrief Opener
POLITICS Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and other
John Bolton tests the Republican leaders had tried to pre-empt this scenario,
nursing a whisper campaign against Bolton’s credibility
GOP’s fealty to Trump that suggested he was turning on Trump because he had
been fired last fall and was trying to goose book sales
By Vera Bergengruen by offering testimony. McConnell and company urged a

J
united front to block any witnesses at the trial, but at a
ohn BolTon is noBody’s idea of a lefTisT. meeting of the GOP conference on Jan. 28, the normally
For the better part of three decades, Donald in-control McConnell admitted he didn’t have the votes
Trump’s former National Security Adviser has to block witnesses.
been a leading voice for hawkish American foreign The result has been a barely concealed war between
policy, arguing for military intervention, railing against those who want to allow new evidence and those
treaties and personifying the hard right wing of the Repub- who put defending Trump first. When Senator Mitt
lican Party. So it was a sign of just how fraught Trump’s im- Romney of Utah argued that Bolton clearly had “some
peachment trial had become in its second week when the information that may be relevant” and signaled that he
President’s defenders on cable TV began labeling Bolton a was open to Bolton’s testimony, he was publicly slammed
“tool for the left” and suggested he was selling out decades by his colleague Senator Kelly Loeffler for wanting
of unwavering ideology for personal enrichment. to “appease the left.” The recently appointed Georgia
The short version of how Bolton became the Trump- Republican had supported Romney’s 2012 run, but
ists’ bête noire is simple. After months of hinting that Loeffler’s seat is up for election in November, and she
he had information to share, Bolton announced on could face a Trump-backed challenger.
Jan. 6 that he would testify at Trump’s Sen- Romney was not alone. Susan Collins, the
ate impeachment trial if subpoenaed, bucking Maine moderate, had said she might want to hear
the White House ban on cooperation. Then,
‘They’re not from witnesses, as had others, and the Democrats
on Jan. 26, the New York Times revealed that anti-Trump needed only four Republicans to force testimony.
Bolton, in his upcoming book, The Room Where people, they’re But the danger for the GOP was greater than just
It Happened, says Trump personally told him his own Bolton’s revelations. Democrats want to hear from
that he was withholding military aid to Ukraine appointees.’ other key players, including White House chief

P R E V I O U S PA G E : G E T T Y I M A G E S; T H E S E PA G E S : S C H U M E R : A L E X W R O B L E W S K I — G E T T Y I M A G E S; A U S C H W I T Z : PAT R I C K VA N K AT W I J K — G E T T Y I M A G E S
until the country agreed to cooperate in alleg- SENATOR CHUCK of staff Mick Mulvaney, who suggested during an
ing wrongdoing by his Democratic rivals. Sud- SCHUMER, Oct. 17 press conference that Trump had offered
denly, Bolton was poised to provide eyewitness speaking to reporters on a quid pro quo to Ukraine. Democrats also had
testimony to the central charge in the Demo- Jan. 28 about potential expressed interest in hearing from two other
crats’ first article of impeachment. As his book’s impeachment-trial officials involved in holding up the $390 million
witnesses
title wryly notes, he was in the room. in congressionally mandated military aid.
In the arc of the Trump presidency, Bolton The push to win four Republican votes opened
now represents the high-water mark in loy- up another potential vein of damaging evidence
alty tests for Trump’s followers in Congress. As for Democrats to mine in the trial: documents.
Trump has hired, fired and humiliated some House impeachment managers had mentioned
of the most established GOP national-security multiple White House emails related to the
figures, many Republicans in the Senate have holdup of military aid. These documents, which
tried to remain silent, fearing the political cost the White House refused to hand over, could
of crossing a President with more than 80% prove what more than a dozen officials, Bolton
support in the party. Now, as jurors in the im- now among them, have said for months: that
peachment trial that could decide the fate Trump leveraged the economic and military
of the Trump presidency and their own po- might of the U.S. to aid his own re-election. That,
litical futures, those same Republicans were Democrats argue, is the heart of their charge of
being forced to take a side: believe Donald abuses of power and the reason Trump must be
Trump or John Bolton. removed from office.
Democrats would need 20 Republicans to
The bolTon leak came at a bad moment make that happen, and as of Jan. 29 that remained
for the President, just as his defense lawyers a most remote possibility. But Bolton’s account has
were arguing his side in the Senate trial. Until raised the bar for the GOP’s loyalty test in the era
then, Trump had seemed on course for a quick of Trump. Bolton served in the administrations of
acquittal, and his legal team all but ignored Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, rising to be
Bolton’s allegation as they took the floor of the U.N. ambassador, and ultimately spent 17 months
chamber the day after his account became pub- in Trump’s White House. If they refuse to hear
lic. But outside the Senate chamber the news from Bolton, Republican Senators would be on the
threw Republicans for a loop. record in a way many had hoped to avoid. □
6 Time February 10, 2020
 NEWS
TICKER

Billions of
locusts swarm
East Africa
Kenya is suffering its
worst locust plague in
70 years, as an insect
infestation sweeps
across farmland,
destroying crops
meant to feed millions
of people. The U.N.
warned that the locust
population could grow
up to 500 times after
March rains unless
pesticides are quickly
deployed.

NEVER FORGET A guard tower at Auschwitz looms during a Jan. 27 ceremony to mark the 75th States sue over
anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp in southern Poland, where roughly 1.1 million 3-D-printed-
people, most of them Jews, were murdered during World War II. More than 200 Holocaust survivors gun rule
attended the ceremony, along with heads of state and dignitaries. “Do not be indifferent when any
minority suffers discrimination,” warned Auschwitz survivor Marian Turski, 93. Twenty states and
Washington, D.C., filed
a lawsuit against the
THE BULLETIN Trump Administration
on Jan. 23 over a
Britain sides with China in federal rule change
technology cold war they say will allow
schematics for
in The BaTTle over The nexT genera- RISKY BUSINESS In Germany, the same 3-D-printed guns to be
tion of telecommunications, China is win- trade-off between economic growth and posted online—where,
critics argue, they could
ning. On Jan. 28, British Prime Minister security is clear, with an added current of be used by anyone
Boris Johnson decided not to ban hardware fear over Chinese retaliation. (An estimated to make untraceable
made by the market-leading Chinese firm 900,000 German jobs depend on exports to weapons.
Huawei as the U.K. builds out its infrastruc- China.) “I don’t think we can quickly build
ture for 5G wireless technology. The choice a 5G network in Germany without Huawei
was a blow to the Trump Administration, taking part,” German Interior Minister Horst Lawyer: Prince
which has waged a monthslong campaign Seehofer said on Jan. 18. And while new E.U. not helping
to persuade allies to shun Huawei—and just guidelines allow members to exclude “high- Epstein probe
lost its closest ally. risk” 5G providers, they stop short of recom-
mending a ban on Huawei. The U.S. Attorney
SENSITIVE TOPIC Although Johnson needs looking into possible
a post-Brexit trade deal with the U.S., he NEW ERA For the past century or more, the sex trafficking by
associates of Jeffrey
also promised voters a revolution in Inter- cutting edge of technology has been domi- Epstein accused the
net speed and coverage. His decision not to nated by the U.S. and its allies. Now, thanks U.K.’s Prince Andrew
ban Huawei—despite warnings of the risk of to years of research and design subsidized on Jan. 27 of offering
spying by Beijing—reflects the importance by the Chinese government, Huawei’s hard- “zero cooperation”
states are placing on the competitive advan- ware is cheaper and faster than that of its to the investigation,
despite his promise
tage in Internet infrastructure. Huawei is to rivals. That could have lasting effects across to assist. Andrew, who
be limited to a maximum 35% role in the pe- the board for U.S. diplomacy. And as China’s is accused of having
riphery of the U.K.’s 5G network, away from sway grows, the Washington-London link sex with a teenage
“sensitive” sites like nuclear plants. But on is unlikely to be the only “special relation- trafficking victim,
Jan. 29, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ship” to come under strain. has denied any
wrongdoing.
still urged Britain to reconsider its decision. —Billy Perrigo
7
TheBrief News
POSTCARD behavior on the night more than 25 years ago
At Weinstein trial, when she says Weinstein pushed his way into
NEWS her apartment and raped her. Throughout
TICKER drama gives way to her questioning, Rotunno touched on issues
‘rape myths’ that Weinstein hopes will cast doubt in jurors’
U.S. discloses minds, including why Sciorra didn’t immedi-
Iran missile- Harvey WeinsTein’s neW york CiTy rape ately call the police, 911 or a hospital after the
strike injuries and sexual-assault trial opened in dramatic alleged attack.
fashion. Lines formed before dawn outside While Sciorra’s alleged attack occurred
Fifty U.S. military
personnel suffered the lower-Manhattan courthouse. Protesters too long ago for Weinstein to be charged with
traumatic brain injury bellowed for justice for Weinstein’s accusers. raping her, the actor’s testimony is key to
from Iran’s missile A list of possible witnesses promised poten- prosecutors’ attempts to show a pattern of
strike on an air base in tial jurors a glimpse of Hollywood A-listers. abuse. (The actual charges he is facing in this
Iraq on Jan. 8, though
But as testimony in the former Miramax trial stem from an alleged rape in 2013 and
31 have resumed their
duties, the Pentagon chief’s trial entered its second week, some- an alleged sexual assault in 2006; Weinstein
said Jan. 28. President thing other than celebrity took center stage: denies all allegations of nonconsensual
Donald Trump initially the myths surrounding sexual assault, in- sexual contact.) Prosecutors got a boost when
said no Americans cluding society’s assumptions about victim two of Sciorra’s friends, fellow actor Rosie
were hurt in the attack
behavior. And while Judge James Burke in- Perez and former model Kara Young, testified
and later downplayed
the severity of the sisted at the start that this case would not be about what Sciorra had done and said to
injuries. “a referendum on the #MeToo movement,” them at the time.
the issues that came to the fore as a result of Weinstein, appearing to chew gum,
that movement have dominated much of the watched the testimony quietly as the seven-
Dozens dead testimony. man, five-woman jury listened intently and
“The idea that women respond to sex- took notes—but as the trial delved into these
in Brazil ual assault by screaming, yelling, punching, crucial questions about sexual trauma and
landslides biting—although that happens, it’s rare,” its often paralyzing effect on victims, fewer
At least 54 people forensic psychiatrist Barbara Ziv explained people were watching than before. While
have been killed and from the witness stand on Jan. 24. Ziv, an ex- spectators had at first queued up to gain
more than 30,000 pert witness for the prosecution, dismissed the access to the trial, interest appeared to drop
displaced after heavy
rains caused floods
“rape myths” that she said society clings to: off after opening statements. Instead of a
and landslides in that most assaults are committed by strangers, crushing crowd, there were empty seats in
southeastern Brazil, that victims scream and try to run away and the courtroom. The protesters who gathered
the Associated Press that they immediately report assaults. outside the courthouse during jury selection
reported Jan. 27. The day before, defense attorney Donna had disappeared, and Weinstein arrived
Thousands of people
were evacuated amid
Rotunno had quizzed the first accuser to take without having to listen to demonstrators’
warnings the rainfall the stand, actor Annabella Sciorra, about her cries for his conviction. —melissa CHan
could continue.

State Dept. GRAMMAR C O I N : H M T R E A S U R Y/A F P/G E T T Y I M A G E S; L E H R E R : J O S H U A R O B E R T S — R E D U X

imposes ‘birth To phrase a coin
tourism’ rules A new coin (left) commemorating Britain’s Jan. 31
A new State exit from the E.U. came under fire for not including
Department visa an Oxford comma in its inscription—“Peace,
rule, designed to prosperity and friendship with all nations.” Here,
prevent women from more problematic punctuation. —Melissa Godin
traveling to the U.S.
to give birth in order
to secure American DAIRY DILEMMA EXPENSIVE ERRATA FRUIT FAUX PAS
citizenship for their In 2018, a dairy company in James Joyce wrote Ulysses In 1872, a comma mistakenly
children, took effect Portland, Maine, agreed to pay by hand, and the typists placed between fruit and
Jan. 24. Opponents $5 million in unpaid overtime who transcribed the pages plants in the 13th U.S.
say the change is to its drivers, who had filed a introduced more than 5,000 tariff act led to certain
discriminatory as it lawsuit over the lack of a comma errors—including extra fruits’ becoming exempt
may lead some women in a labor law about exempted punctuation. Correcting them from tariffs—and a loss of
who are only suspected tasks. Maine legislators for a new edition in 1984 cost $2 million in tax dollars, a
of being pregnant to be rephrased the law. scholars $300,000 of work. massive sum at the time.
denied visas.

8 Time February 10, 2020

Milestones
ARRESTED AWARDED
Charles Lieber, the
chair of Harvard’s
New Kid
chemistry depart-
ment, on Jan. 28, for
First Newbery
allegedly lying about Medal for a
his ties to a Chinese
government program graphic novel
designed to recruit By Raina Telgemeier
foreign scientific
experts. Lieber has WHen Jerry CraFT beCame
previously denied the the very first graphic novel-
affiliation. ist to receive a Newbery
SPOTTED Medal, he shattered a glass
Three Bolivian ceiling for cartoonists, who
Cochran frogs, a have long been looked at as
rare species with producing “lesser” literature
translucent skin, by than their prose-writing sib-
conservationists,
for the first time in lings. I am so proud of him.
18 years, according The Jan. 27 announcement
to reports Jan. 28. that the prestigious prize for
American children’s litera-
RELEASED
U.S. environmental
ture will go to his New Kid,
journalist Philip the story of a seventh-grader
Jacobson, on who doesn’t fit in at his
Jan. 24, after being mostly white private school,
jailed for three days is a victory for Jerry and for
in Indonesia for
allegedly violating
the art form of comics.
Lehrer at his office in Arlington, Va., in 2008 Jerry’s win (after many,
the terms of his visa;
advocates called his many years of hard work)
DIED
arrest an attack on proves once and for all that
press freedom. Jim Lehrer comics and graphic novels
CAPTURED Eminent anchor are real books, real reading,
and really and truly deserve
Fugitive former
Colombian Senator
By Bob Schieffer shelf space front and center.
Aída Merlano, in 1963, i Worked as a reporTer aT THe ForT WorTH Star- It has been a joy to watch se-
in Venezuela, on Telegram and Jim Lehrer worked at the Dallas Times Herald, and quential art evolve and to see
Jan. 27, nearly four
months after she we both covered the Kennedy assassination—but it was only after the warm reception graphic
escaped custody we came to Washington, D.C., that we became good friends. Jim, novels have received from
during a dentist who died Jan. 23 at 85, was a guy I always looked up to. young readers and awards
visit, while serving a So when I was chosen to moderate my first presidential debate committees alike! How joy-
15-year sentence for in 2004, he was the first person I called. I said, “How do I do ous that when children read
vote buying.
this?” and he said, “Remember, it’s not about you.” That was the New Kid in decades to come,
SENTENCED best advice anybody could possibly give me, and for every other they will feel the tactile merit
Libyan militant person down through the years who called me to ask for advice on of the golden sticker on its
Mustafa al-Imam, to how to moderate a presidential debate, I told them the same. cover.
more than 19 years
in prison, on Jan. 23,
The integrity and the objectivity he displayed had set the tone
for his role in the for those debates—not just one but all of them. Jim had great Telgemeier is the Eisner Award–
2012 Benghazi respect for his viewers and for his readers; he thought they should winning author of the best-selling
graphic novel Guts
attacks. be allowed to make up their minds, and he didn’t try to push his
views. He just asked the questions, and he always did his home-
SUED
Imprisoned former work. That sometimes is a little rare these days, but I still think
pharmaceutical that’s what reporters are supposed to do. I mean this literally: he
executive Martin was the most objective person I have ever dealt with. And what
Shkreli, by federal you saw on television was exactly what you’d see if you ran into
and New York
Jim in the grocery store. He was a real person. Sometimes people
State authorities,
for alleged anti- you see on TV aren’t. We don’t run around telling people that, but
competitive we all know—and he was the real deal.
practices, on
Jan. 27. Schieffer, a veteran CBS News reporter, was an anchor of Face the Nation for 24 years

9
TheBrief TIME with ...
CBS Evening News anchor you like and feeds it back to you. It reinforces our
political beliefs,” she says. “CBS Evening News is
Norah O’Donnell says not driven by an algorithm.”
‘down the middle’ is still And yet the same divide is reflected on the net-
works that CBS News competes with for viewers.
the best way to report O’Donnell argues that by staying neutral, at the
By Eliana Dockterman risk of losing more partisan audience members
to MSNBC or Fox, CBS can snag interviews with
world leaders, even the most divisive ones. “We
Norah o’DoNNell is TesTiNg ouT The color- are right down the middle,” she says, adding, “It’s
changing lights in her new Washington, D.C., stu- why Joe Biden sat down with me. It’s why [Saudi
dio. Using an iPhone, she highlights the stage with Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman, one of the
red then purple then green. “We can have photos most scrutinized leaders in the world, sat down
on the floor too,” she says. “Or graphs. With the with me twice.” O’Donnell prides herself on ask-
election, there are a lot of options.” O’DONNELL ing the hard questions, and quickly. Her first query
The studio is sparkling white, like the inside QUICK posed to bin Salman on 60 Minutes was whether he
of an Apple Store, a physical manifestation of a FACTS ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi,
fresh start for a network that has struggled with a which the CIA has concluded the crown prince did.
series of sexual-harassment scandals and a drop (The crown prince “took responsibility” but denied
Digital reach
in the ratings in the past few years. O’Donnell Her interview ordering the execution.)
took over as anchor of the CBS Evening News in with Saudi
July and eagerly agreed to the suggestion from Crown Prince O’DOnnell tOOk Over the Evening News at a
the new CBS News president, Susan Zirinsky, to Mohammed particularly precarious time for CBS. Back in 2012,
move the show from New York City to the nation’s bin Salman O’Donnell shared a desk with Gayle King and
has more
capital in December in hopes of boosting the rat- than 700,000 Charlie Rose as the co-anchors of CBS This Morn-
ings. O’Donnell had first risen to prominence as views on ing. Their chemistry buoyed the program’s ratings.
a White House correspondent, and her husband, YouTube. But in 2017, Rose was accused of sexual miscon-
chef Geoff Tracy, operates a restaurant group duct at CBS during the first wave of the #MeToo
based in D.C. Off the air movement. O’Donnell and King had to announce
O’Donnell
Though some media prognosticators called the and her and react to the news on the air. True to both of
shake-up “a risk,” O’Donnell shares much in com- husband, chef their brands, O’Donnell dealt out the facts with a
mon with her venerated predecessors, including Geoff Tracy, poker face, while King processed the news emo-
Walter Cronkite, once famously dubbed “the most published a tionally, trying to reconcile her friendship with
trusted man in America.” Her high-tech studio baby-food Rose with the allegations.
cookbook in
notwithstanding, O’Donnell is an old-school jour- 2010. Rose’s fall was just the beginning. Sexual-
nalist operating in a world that’s increasingly hos- harassment scandals felled CBS News chair-
tile to that type of newscaster. She prides herself First job man Jeff Fager and CBS CEO and chairman Les
on her shoe-leather reporting skills. She still reads O’Donnell Moonves, and former employees reported a toxic
six hard-copy newspapers every morning. On started culture that pervaded the network. CBS was not
her career
Twitter, she doesn’t spout opinions or share per- covering the only network forced to contend with #MeToo:
sonal anecdotes, just stories from CBS. Congress Fox News and NBC made headlines for sexual-
“My parents are scientists. We’re fact-based for the harassment allegations too.
people,” she says. “I was never someone who was newspaper Even as CBS struggled with the fallout,
siloed into a certain group, ideologically or just Roll Call. O’Donnell was reporting on the #MeToo move-
growing up. I did theater, and I did cheerleading. I ment outside of media. O’Donnell, who grew up in
went to Catholic church camp and Baptist church a military family, won an Emmy Award in 2018 for
camp. I don’t judge. I’m naturally curious.” a story on a sex-abuse scandal at the U.S. Air Force
Nonjudgmental, neutral, reliable—these aren’t Academy. “I firmly believe sunlight is the best
the most exciting ways to brand a broadcast in disinfectant,” she says of reporting on that story.
any era, but it’s a particularly difficult sell in 2020 “There’s no harder interview to do than that, and
when audiences are largely looking to affirm their to try to help [survivors] tell their story in a way
own views: a 2019 Pew study found 55% of Ameri- that not only reveals what happened to them, but
cans get their news from social media, an 8% in- hopefully ushers in change, because that’s also part
crease over the prior year. Facebook and Twitter of it . .. making sure that something changes.”
feeds tend to be either red or blue, full of arti- Yet she’s circumspect on the topic of whether
cles posted by friends hailing from similar back- things are changing at CBS News itself. “I’m sort
grounds who share similar political opinions. “So- of done with that story,” she says. “I want to be
cial media is driven by an algorithm. It learns what judged for my work.” But she did have a hot-mic
10 Time February 10, 2020
 moment when reporting on a sexual-harassment matters. If the boss cares, if she’s there late every
story last year. Some listeners believe they heard night, talking to every reporter, every producer,
her say, “Sounds like someone else here.” every janitor—if the boss cares, everyone cares.”
Zirinsky—famously the inspiration for Holly
O’DOnnell insists that she does not feel like she ‘I’ve never Hunter’s ridiculously efficient character in
is on the edge of a glass cliff, thrust forward as the seen so Broadcast News—has spent 45 years at CBS and,
female face of a network plagued by men’s wrong- when Fager was dismissed, was brought in to clean
doings. The move to D.C. has strengthened view-
much up the mess. Zirinsky has said she was asked to
ership numbers. The broadcast drew 6.8 million cultural take the job before but was loath to give up her
viewers one evening in December, a peak for the change hands-on role as a producer. She’s retained that
show since O’Donnell took over, though it still in such title and spends every night in the control room
trails ABC’s and NBC’s programs. Ratings declines a short while O’Donnell records her show. “I’m sorry,
have slowed across the network, including on CBS period of but no other president of the network is in the
This Morning, where King has lured younger view- time.’ control room of both their morning show and their
ers with high-profile interviews, like a sit-down evening news show every day,” says O’Donnell.
NORAH
with R. Kelly after a documentary accused the R&B OÕDONNELL,
It’s a good thing too. Before O’Donnell’s move
musician of sexual assault. O’Donnell credits the on CBS News to D.C., a soundboard in the New York City studio
progress CBS News has made to its new president, under its new caught fire during a broadcast of the Evening News.
JARED SOARES FOR TIME

notorious workhorse Zirinsky. O’Donnell says president, Zirinsky jumped into action. “She’s down in the
Zirinsky connects with everyone in the building, Susan Zirinsky basement on West 57th Street with a dozen guys
which builds a sense of community and account- telling them what to do and taking pictures,” says
ability. “I’ve never seen so much cultural change in O’Donnell. One more fire out, the hope is that the
such a short period of time,” she says. “Leadership story moves elsewhere. □
11
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SOCIETY

DO YOU HAVE
ENOUGH TIME?
By James Wallman

In the 2010s, we worried about

too much stuff. A growing
awareness of consumerism’s
effect on the environment
and a desire to broadcast our
lives on social media led us to
prioritize experience over things,
and millions turned to Marie
Kondo and minimalism. Now
we’ve started to worry about
something new: too little time. ▶
INSIDE

REFLECTIONS ON A TRUMP’S MIDDLE EAST MAKING MEMES

LANDMARK LGBTQ CASE PEACE PLAN MORE ACCESSIBLE

13
TheView Opener
Psychologists have found that experiences have built apps to tell you how much time
are more likely than material goods to deliver you spend on your device, but their business
happiness—another reason we were content models rely on your continued use. SHORT
READS
to shed anything that didn’t spark joy—but
▶ Highlights
of course we must make choices about which PeoPle who feel strapped for time are from stories on
experiences to pursue. The fear of making the more likely to be anxious or depressed. They time.com/ideas
wrong one, and therefore wasting valuable are less likely to exercise or eat healthy foods.
time, is something many of us feel deeply. And they’re less productive at work. It makes Being yourself
There’s some irony to this predicament: sense then that there’s been growing interest
We have more free time now than we have from psychologists in the best ways to spend Novelist Marlon James
had in decades. But for a number of reasons, our time. (Current Opinion in Psychology’s moved to the U.S.
just a few years after
it doesn’t feel that way. April 2019 edition was simply called “Time.”) Lawrence v. Texas, the
In his 2019 book Spending Time, Daniel S. In my own writing on the topic, I have Supreme Court case
Hamermesh explains that while our life spans come to characterize experiences as “junk that struck down laws
have gotten a bit longer—13% since 1960—our food” or “superfood.” Junk? Spending too prohibiting people of
spending power has surged by much time indoors, alone, scroll- the same gender from
engaging in sexual
198%. “It makes it difficult to stuff ing Facebook or watching TV. activity. It still gets
all the things that we want and can Superfood? Getting offline and pushback, “but what
now afford into the growing, but outside and, as UCLA associate drew me to these United
increasingly relatively much more professor of marketing Cassie States,” he writes,
limited, time that we have avail-
able to purchase and to enjoy them 4.9
HOURS
Mogilner Holmes notes in her
2019 paper “It’s Time for Hap-
“was the idea that
simply being myself
was protected by law,
over our lifetimes,” he writes. piness,” doing things for or with even if at the time
Next, there’s our cell-phone Average time others and staying active. I didn’t know what
addiction. American adults spend women spent on Of course, these experiences that self was.”
leisure activities
around 3½ hours on their de- each day in 2018 require that we actually take time
vices each day, trying to keep up off—not easy in a culture ob-
with the volume of emails, texts, sessed with productivity. After Doing the
social-media updates and 24/7 all, 55% of Americans don’t use right thing
news. And much of our time is
“contaminated time”—when
5.7
HOURS
all their paid vacation time. But
researchers say sometimes it’s Some people say
we’re doing one thing but think- about reframing how we think Presidents use moral
Average time men arguments in foreign
ing about something else. Try- spent on leisure
about leisure activities. Colum- policy to justify their
ing to get more miles out of every activities each bia’s Silvia Bellezza, Harvard’s personal or national
minute—scanning Twitter while day in 2018 Anat Keinan and Georgetown’s interests. Joseph S.
watching TV, for example— Neeru Paharia have found that a Nye Jr., author of
makes us think we’re being pro- “functional alibi” can be helpful: Do Morals Matter?,
says they’re wrong.
ductive, but really it just makes us we’re more likely to go camping
feel more frazzled.
Add to this the ever expand-
55% if we acknowledge it will be good
for our productivity at work.
“Principle and prudence
sometimes conflict, but
they can also reinforce
Percentage of
ing options in today’s experience Americans who Similarly, Keinan and Columbia’s each other,” he writes.
economy. Think of all the pop-ups, don’t use all their Ran Kivetz have observed that
plays, talks, workshops and escape paid time off we often opt for “collectible ex-
rooms you could go to tonight. periences” that give us a story to Facing history
No wonder many of us suf- tell and help build our “experien-
fer from what psychologists call “time fam- tial CV,” as we like to feel we’re accomplishing Germany is often
praised for owning
ine.” No wonder we’re seeing books about something. They have also argued that while up to its Nazi past,
reclaiming our time, like Brigid Schulte’s we often think we’re being virtuous by choos- but the reality is
Overwhelmed and Jenny Odell’s How to Do ing work over leisure, in the long term we’re more complicated.
Nothing, and about loosening the grip of cell likely to regret this and feel as if we’ve missed According to historian
phones, like Adam Alter’s Irresistible, Nir Ey- out on “the pleasures of life.” Jacob S. Eder, “while
it is inconceivable
al’s Indistractable and Cal Newport’s Digital Time is our least renewable resource. to encounter a
Minimalism. Despite the stress our fixation on it may monument dedicated
There have been calls to rein in the atten- cause, it’s good for us to consider if we’re to a Nazi leader in
tion economy, like Tristan Harris’ Time Well using it wisely. Berlin or Munich, the
Spent movement, but the factors that make countryside leaves
more room
us feel time-poor aren’t going away anytime Wallman is the author of Time and How to for ambivalence.”
soon. Tech companies, for instance, may Spend It: The 7 Rules for Richer, Happier Days
14 Time February 10, 2020
 THE RISK REPORT
Trump’s Middle East plan TECH
acknowledges Israel’s primacy Making memes
By Ian Bremmer accessible
While blind and visually
The Trump adminis- resolving one of the world’s thorniest con- impaired people use
tration’s Israel-Pal- flicts by getting other Arab states to buy special software to
estine peace plan into the proposal. navigate the Internet,
tears up the playbook To entice the Palestinians, the Trump they are often left out of
of prior U.S. policy. Administration has pledged to drum up the conversation when it
Rather than fairness, investments of $28 billion over 10 years to comes to the thousands
it is built upon the rec- support Palestine, with $22 billion of ad- of viral images that
ognition of Israeli power on the ground ditional funding going to Jordan, Egypt spread like wildfire on
social media.
and shifts in the region’s geopolitics. and Lebanon.
Now researchers—
With continued expansion over the Many Palestinians will likely not ac-
from companies like
past two decades, Israelis have been mak- cept anything that smells like a payoff, es- Twitter, Facebook and
ing the West Bank their own. The plan pecially when it includes so many poison Reddit—are proposing
also underscores the reality that Pales- pills. First, before Palestinians can unlock ways to make memes
tinian leaders have lost the active sup- any benefit, the Hamas government in more inclusive. One group,
port of much of the Arab Gaza must renounce its anti- from Carnegie Mellon
world, many of whose The Israel ideology or somehow University and Columbia
leaders would like to work be removed from power. University, recently
more closely with Israel on
Administration’s Second, the Trump plan developed a program
countering Iran and other limits on the would allow the state of Pal- that uses audio as a
initiatives. Palestinian estine to build a capital on means for translating
For Palestinians, the plan ‘right of return,’ the outskirts of East Jerusa- popular memes.
imposes Israeli bargaining even within lem but only in areas east of Advocates hope that
positions from earlier nego- a sovereign the existing separation bar- up-and-coming tech
tiations: a nominally sover- Palestinian rier. Third, the state of Pales- innovators will embrace
eign state of Palestine with tine would control just 70% the issue, though experts
nation, is a note that fun activities—
a capital on the outskirts of serious obstacle of the West Bank, in contrast
East Jerusalem. Both Prime to the 94% to 96% proposed including meme culture—
Minister Benjamin Netan-
for any truly by Bill Clinton in 2000. Fi-
that aren’t necessary for
yahu and his chief rival, free country nally, the Administration’s
daily life often get put on
the back burner.
Benny Gantz, are on board. limits on the Palestinian “They can be cute or
The Trump team is wagering that more “right of return,” even within a sovereign hilarious, but I feel like
geopolitical honesty will change the game Palestinian nation, is a serious obstacle for people also use them to
in the region. Previous U.S. governments any truly free country. really communicate what
presented themselves as neutral arbiters It’s clear that this proposal will not lead the world we live in now is
between Israelis and Palestinians; neither to peace in the coming months—or maybe like,” Tasha Chemel, an
side took that claim seriously. This new ever. The Palestinians rejected the plan, academic coach who is
deal aims to contain, rather than reduce, and their leaders will make their anger blind, told TIME. “So it’s
Israeli settlements, giving Palestinians a clear. According to my conversations with really hard to be left out
smaller plot of land for their state, about senior Trump Administration officials, of that conversation.”
70% of the West Bank. Once the plan is they have already told Israeli and Arab ÑRachel E. Greenspan
formally implemented by the Israeli gov- leaders that territory is specifically open
ernment, Israel would freeze settlement for negotiation should the Palestinians de-
construction for four years in areas that cide to engage after having refused to talk
would become the state of Palestine. for more than two years.
K ID: L ANE Y GRINER; MEME: COLE GLE ASON

This plan is central to Trump’s Middle

Taken wiThin The conTexT of the rest East strategy. As the conflict becomes
of Trump’s foreign policy, this deal is an more marginal to the interests of the re-
outlier. The plan is detailed and thought- gion’s key actors, and the U.S. has gen-
ful, unlike the agreement announced with erally become less interested too, Arab-
North Korea. Most surprising, one of the Israeli normalization is only a matter of
most unilaterally oriented Administra- time, and the Palestinians are at risk of
tions has taken a multilateral approach to missing that train. □
15
TheView Economy
proposed by congressional Democrats,
the climate policy of the IMF and the
changing tune of the financial sector
may sound wonky. But the climate chal-
lenge is unlikely to be met without the
financial sector—and the authorities
that regulate and govern it—on the right
side of the fight. For decades, banks
have given fossil-fuel companies the fi-
nancing to mine and drill; meanwhile,
governments have provided seemingly
bottomless subsidies, some $5 trillion
annually, the IMF said last year. At the
same time, banks have largely ignored
the risk that climate change poses to
their customers, from businesses in the
flood zone to homes in fire-prone areas.
At Davos, there were hints this may
be changing. Just a few days before the
conference, BlackRock, the world’s larg-
est asset manager, said climate change
would lead to a “fundamental reshap-
ing of finance” and promised to rethink
its strategy. Microsoft pledged to go
carbon-negative in a decade and remove
The world of finance by 2050 a sum of carbon equivalent to
all that the company has ever emitted.
groggily awakens The value of assets under management
to climate change in the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, a
group of investors committed to having
By Justin Worland/Davos, Switzerland a zero-emissions portfolio by 2050, grew
△ to more than $4.3 trillion. And the IMF
For years, climaTe acTivisTs have warned ThaT a Georgieva warned that climate change “already en-
warming planet would bring devastation, disrupting not only took office dangers health and economic outcomes.”
developing countries and coastal communities but also the as managing “I don’t want to be naive, but I want
foundations of the global economy. Still, investors continue director of the to acknowledge that the center of the
to pump billions of dollars into fossil fuels, governments pri- International global economy is now saying things
oritize policies to keep cheap oil flowing, and developers Monetary Fund that many of us have dreamed they
in October
build on land that scientists say will soon be underwater. might for a long time,” former Vice
Kristalina Georgieva, 66, the environmental economist President Al Gore said at a dinner at
who took the helm as managing director of the International Davos convened by WWF. “They’re say-
Monetary Fund in October, has spent much of her career ing them forcefully and eloquently.”
studying the problem. Now, she says, a slew of climate-related
disasters have finally awakened the financial sector and the Two broad climaTe risks domi-
economic leaders who guide it. “The tide is turning,” she nated the discussion among corporate
told TIME in a Jan. 23 interview at the annual meeting of the executives and investors in Davos: physi-
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. cal risk and so-called transition risk.
S I K A R I N F O N T H A N A C H A I A R Y— W O R L D E C O N O M I C F O R U M

Georgieva plans to take advantage of this moment. The new The former is obvious. Climate change
chief of the IMF described a range of measures the global fi- drives extreme weather events and di-
nancial institution will take to prioritize climate change during sasters, from flooding and drought to
her five-year term: supporting policies that require investors to wildfires and heat waves, which can de-
disclose climate vulnerability, measuring a country’s financial stroy infrastructure and devastate econ-
situation in part by its preparation for climate change, push- omies. IMF data shows that even seven
ing countries around the globe to implement a carbon tax. “We years after a devastating tropical storm,
have to create the right policy environment that is based on a country’s GDP per capita remains 1%
sound economics,” she says. “I’m prioritizing this for the Fund.” lower than it would have been otherwise.
At a time when much of the climate conversation cen- Transition risk refers to the possibil-
ters on flashy policy prescriptions like the Green New Deal ity that companies may get left behind
16 Time February 10, 2020
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TheView Economy
as the world goes green—the industry few dollars in the fossil-fuel era. “This
driven out of business by new regula- is a whole-of-economy transition, and
tion, for example, or the technology in every sector of the economy there are Camping out
made obsolete by new advances. Not to companies that will be part of the solu- for climate
mention the brand tarnished by grow- tion and there will be companies that, for
ing activist (and consumer) revolt. whatever reason, lag,” Mark Carney, gov- A SHORT RIDE UP a funicular
Companies have been aware of these ernor of the Bank of England, said at a from the conference in Davos,
risks for years, in some cases decades, panel hosted by Bloomberg in Davos. an unusual scene:
a group of scientists and
but executives have always seen manag- The companies that have made bold
youth activists camped
ing them as a balancing act. Move too promises still need to deliver on them.
alongside the actor Rainn
quickly and risk leaving behind your As the teenage activist Greta Thunberg Wilson, who rose to fame
core business. Move too slowly and risk said in perhaps her most publicized mo- playing the quirky Dwight
getting left behind. ment of the week, “Pretty much nothing Schrute in The Office.
But the swiftness and severity of has been done, since the global emis- The goal of this unlikely
recent climate events, along with the sions of CO₂ have not reduced.” encampment? To teach
growing social pressure, have made the In fact, global temperatures are on track people about how the
biggest companies and investors realize for a rise of 3°C since the Industrial changing Arctic is reshaping
they’ve been too conservative, leaving Revolution, even if governments follow global weather systems.
them out of step with colossal changes through on their current commitments, Since the project—part
that are already under way. “The degree blowing past the Paris Agreement’s tar- educational pop-up, part
of capital reallocation and get of keeping the tempera- protest—first came to Davos
the speed of that is going to ture rise well below 2°C. in 2017, the organizers have
be larger and happen more ‘If we really Jennifer Morgan, execu- attracted an array of world
quickly than most market have the tive director of Greenpeace leaders, from former Vice
participants expect,” Brian courage to International, described the President Al Gore, who sought
Deese, BlackRock’s global move, it may dynamic as a “tension” be- out the campers, to Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin
head of sustainable invest- be the silver tween companies that see
Netanyahu, who happened
ing, told TIME in Davos. bullet that themselves as part of the so-
to pass by. When I visited,
Georgieva wants to boosts the lution and “an old energy”
former Icelandic President
nudge the system along to driving companies that oper-
make countries and com-
economy.’ ate with business-as-usual
Olafur Ragnar Grimsson had
just finished a tour. “We’re
panies acknowledge the KRISTALINA GEORGIEVA, assumptions. A Greenpeace speaking science to power,”
threat climate change poses IMF managing director, International report released says Arctic Basecamp founder
on measures to
to their bottom lines. For tackle climate change
during Davos showed that 24 Gail Whiteman. Wilson, who
years, the IMF has tested banks in attendance this year joined the camp for the first
small islands for their ex- financed the fossil-fuel in- time this year, muses about
posure; this year it will do the same for dustry to the tune of $1.4 trillion from the what his character would
Japan, building on pilots done in other adoption of the Paris Agreement to 2018. think. Dwight, he decides,
advanced economies. At Davos, she en- Even as some investors start to step would probably embrace the
dorsed the work central banks are doing up to change that tide, Georgieva says threat that climate change
to measure how climate change might the transition needs a push from lead- poses to his beloved beet
impact portfolios. ers in government, beyond voluntary farm. “I think he would
Tackling climate change isn’t all bad disclosures of climate risks. “To ac- ultimately be on our side,”
news for the economy, Georgieva says, celerate progress toward low-carbon, he said. ÑJustin Worland
as a transition to clean energy sources climate-resilient investments, it would
creates new economic opportunity. be prudent to move toward mandatory
“If we really have the courage to move, disclosure,” the Bulgarian said. “It is a
it may be the silver bullet that boosts welcome sign that some central banks
the economy,” she says. are going in that direction.”
For all the ardent declarations of in-
The newfound urgency of the cli- tention at Davos, the true test lies in
mate discussion at Davos reflects the the months to come. This year will be
reality facing economic leaders. None- a critical test of global commitments,
theless, challenges remain. So far it’s as governments prepare to make new
mostly just talk, of course. And for all pledges to reduce emissions ahead of
the executives and investors who say November’s U.N. climate conference in
HENRY IDDON

Wilson camped out at

they will tackle climate change, there are Glasgow. Davos was a good start; lead- Davos with other activists
others who want to squeeze out the last ers are talking. Now they need to act. □
18 Time February 10, 2020
50,000 boxes
of cookies sold.
That’s pretty sweet.

Partake Foods in
Jersey City, New Jersey
uses Google Ads to
find people looking for
allergy-friendly cookies.

American businesses are growing with

tools and training from Google.
google.com/economicimpact
 Health

CONTAINING
A CRISIS
ARE WE DOOMED TO A FUTURE OF RELENTLESS VIRAL OUTBREAKS?
B Y A L I C E PA R K A N D C H A R L I E C A M P B E L L / W U H A N

20 Time February 10, 2020

 A thermographic
monitor records
temperature in Celsius
of passengers arriving
at the Sultan Iskandar
Muda International
Airport in Banda Aceh,
Indonesia, on Jan. 27
PHOTOGR APH BY
ZIKRI MAULANA

21
Health
T H E Y E A R O F T H E R AT I S
O F F T O A N O M I N O U S S TA R T.
“We just stay home and don’t go out,” says time you read this, but as of Jan. 29, the
Mr. Dong. The 33-year-old researcher, new virus had claimed at least 133 lives
who provided only one name, has no and sickened more than 6,000 people
other options. He, his wife and their across 18 countries, including at least five
3-month-old daughter live in Wuhan, the cases in the U.S. While the World Health
epicenter of an unfolding global health Organization (WHO) has not declared
crisis. They’re treating the forced time at a “public-health emergency of interna-
home as a holiday, though he says, “this tional concern”—which would entail
is different than any of them before.” more stringent monitoring and contain-
Families like his huddle in their homes, ment of infected people—China’s Presi-
fearful that if they venture out, they will dent Xi Jinping is treating it as a national
get sick. Since the first cases of a previ- emergency. He ordered an unprecedented
ously unknown pneumonia-like illness quarantine of Wuhan, banning travel in
emerged in December, Wuhan, the capi- and out of the city on Jan. 22; a few days
tal of Hubei province, has frozen in place. later, he extended the quarantine to a
Ten-lane thoroughfares lie empty after a dozen cities in Hubei province. Xi also
ban on personal cars, and buses and sub- took the unusual step of extending the
ways sit silent. Lunar New Year 2020 official Lunar New Year holiday to dis-
was stripped of its traditional fireworks, courage millions from traveling back to
boisterous gatherings around overflow- work and further seeding new infections
ing tables of food and drink, and happy around China.
reunions with family and friends. Faster than the virus itself, fear has
As researchers and public-health offi- spread around the globe. In the U.S.,
cials scramble to learn as much as they designated airports quickly instituted
can about the new virus—how easily it screening programs to identify passen-
transmits among people, and how deadly gers on Wuhan-originating flights with
it is—fears swamp this city of 11 million. signs of fever, cough or difficulty breath- corner of the world, especially to China,
The disease responsible is caused by a ing, and to immediately direct them to where in some places the flow of infor-
coronavirus that’s never infected people hospital isolation wards. Numerous air- mation is tightly controlled by a paranoid
before. Conflicting advice about how in- lines canceled flights to and from China. state. Researchers in London and Hong
fectious the virus might be are swirling Asian stock markets that weren’t closed Kong have already warned that Beijing
through the Internet, along with mis- for the Lunar New Year plummeted. In has dramatically underestimated the
information about exactly where the the U.S., Europe and Asia, shortages of number of cases in Wuhan. “For any dis-
virus, dubbed 2019-nCoV, came from. surgical face masks were reported. ease outbreak, the best strategy is trans-
Hospitals in Wuhan are besieged by the The emergence of a powerful new in- parency,” says Yanzhong Huang, senior
sick, and only a handful of clinics are able fectious virus for which there is (as yet) no fellow for global health at the New York
to test for the disease. vaccine should scare us, of course. But at City–based Council on Foreign Rela- P R E V I O U S PA G E S : S O PA I M A G E S/S I PA U S A ; C R A N E S : X I A O Y I J I U — X I N H U A / P O L A R I S

Coronaviruses make up a family of vi- the same time, humans are better equipped tions. “Even taking into account the po-
ruses that live mainly in animals (bats are to fight these kinds of outbreaks than ever tential for panic, you need people to be
a favorite) but also includes strains that before. New technologies, specifically ones prepared.” With a government as opaque
contribute to the common cold in people. that make possible the sequencing of any as China’s, can we be sure that we are?
Only recently have they become more living thing’s genetic blueprint, are finally
threatening, causing two deadly global giving us a meaningful advantage over Coronaviruses are not rare. In
pandemics in the past two decades— microbes. We can map the genome of a fact, you might have one right now. De-
severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus, for example, which provides valu- pending on the year, anywhere from
in 2002 and 2003, and Middle East respi- able clues about how it spreads and helps 10% to 30% of the annual burden of
ratory syndrome (MERS) in 2012. Each us figure out how our immune systems can colds can be blamed on one of four coro-
new outbreak adds a fresh urgency to best battle it. The finest scientific minds naviruses. That’s why, until the early
the question of whether public-health are doing just that with coronaviruses 2000s, the scientific community treated
officials could be doing more to confront in the hope that epidemics do not have coronaviruses primarily as nuisances
the threat from emerging infections in a chance to mushroom into pandemics. and paid relatively little attention to
general, and coronaviruses in particular. The question now is how quickly we them. “Twenty years ago, people weren’t
The numbers will have climbed by the can transmit that knowledge to every thinking in terms of coronaviruses being
22 Time February 10, 2020
 findings should have rung alarm bells, he
says. “We made strong predictions that
these coronaviruses were poised for re-
emergence in human populations.” In De-
cember, that prediction came true, when a
mysterious pneumonia-like illness began
spreading in the city of Wuhan.
It’s not a mystery how authorities
should respond to a new infectious dis-
ease; by and large, it’s been the same for
thousands of years. Since typhoid fever
struck Athens in 430 B.C.—among the
first recorded outbreaks—to the black
plague in Europe during the 1300s, and
the more contemporary 1918 influenza
pandemic, isolation and quarantine have
been the most effective ways to contain
a highly contagious infectious agent and
prevent it from decimating an entire pop-
ulation of people.
Yet in China, those lessons weren’t
always followed, despite the recent leg-
acy of SARS. Although scientists in China
quickly identified the new coronavirus,
public-health officials were slow to ad-
vise people about how best to protect
themselves. It took President Xi nearly
a month after the first cases emerged in
Wuhan to finally address the health crisis
publicly, and local health officials say that
delay tied their hands. As Wuhan Mayor
^ officials in white hazmat suits contin- Zhou Xianwang explained on CCTV on
Earthmovers build one of two new ued to sift through evidence when TIME Jan. 27, “As a local official, I could only
hospitals the government ordered to visited on Jan. 22. disclose information after being autho-
treat coronavirus cases in Wuhan
Movement across species is what rized [by the central government]. A lot
makes virus experts nervous. Because of people don’t understand this.” Indeed,
potential causes of pandemics or re- of their sloppy genetic copying, viruses the wife of a doctor in a Wuhan hospi-
spiratory disease,” says Dr. Ian Lipkin, mutate all the time. By chance, the new tal told TIME that her husband had been
director of the center for infection and aberrations sometimes make a strain instructed not to discuss the coronavirus
immunity at Columbia University Mail- more adept at living in a new host—and situation and the government’s response
man School of Public Health. in some cases, those changes make it more with anyone.
That changed in 2002, when SARS virulent as well. The top-down leadership structure of
first emerged from China. Of the 8,000 In some respects, the outbreak in Xi’s government leaves local health de-
people ultimately confirmed to have the Wuhan might have been inevitable. Ralph partments with little authority to issue
respiratory disease, up to 10% died, wak- Baric, professor of epidemiology at Uni- alerts or take any action, snarling pub-
ing public-health experts to the dangers versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill lic health and politics at the expense of
of a virus that had jumped from bats to and an expert on the genetic sequences human lives. Train conductors were re-
cats and dogs, and then to people. In of coronaviruses, has worked with Chi- portedly initially told not to wear masks
Wuhan, officials believe 2019-nCoV nese researchers since 2002 to better to avoid generating more panic among
made such a leap inside the city’s Huanan understand this family of microbes and passengers, just days before the entire
market. Rows of blue stalls housed count- how its members infect human cells to rail system was shut down. “People didn’t
less purveyors of exotic, wild animals for cause major respiratory symptoms. realize the severity of the situation,” says
consumption. “I saw live hedgehogs, por- From bats, Baric and his team ex- a graphic designer from Wuhan who
cupines, that kind of thing,” says Alan tracted a series of coronaviruses that var- provided only her last name, Tao. “They
Laine, 57, a physics teacher from the ied genetically from SARS by anywhere thought the virus was controllable and
U.K. who has lived in Wuhan since 2002. from 2% to 12%. Those differences hinted not contagious. The government did not
“It wasn’t exactly hidden.” The market that some were primed to jump from bats publish the facts in time, and they failed
has been shuttered since Jan. 1, though to people, and cause serious disease. His to control the epidemic.”
23
S TO P P I N G
A KILLER
A new virus has emerged from
central China, infecting thousands
with severe respiratory illness and
killing dozens. Health officials,
doctors and researchers are
scrambling to contain the outbreak

DEC. 31 JAN. 7 JAN. 9 JAN. 13–15

The animal-to-human jump Cause identified First fatality International exposure
Several people in Wuhan It belongs to the coronavirus A death is recorded in Wuhan; Thailand and Japan confirm
report symptoms caused by family, which includes SARS meanwhile, the virus reaches infected travelers; the
a virus that is later tied to a and MERS, and spreads via other provinces as people countries begin to screen
food market airborne droplets travel around China anyone arriving from Wuhan

The swing from downplaying the ini- speeding detection of new cases. When exactly which proteins the virus is using
tial cases to the extreme policies now the first potential case of 2019-nCoV ap- to wreak havoc requires making high-
in place fueled outbursts on the social- peared in the U.S., the Centers for Dis- quality synthetic DNA from the viral
media network Weibo: “The common ease Control and Prevention (CDC) was genome, something only a few compa-
people are suffering. We don’t really able to confirm the fingerprint of the new nies are able to do in a process that takes
have democracy here, and we are de- coronavirus overnight, from the patient’s around 10 days. Then researchers need
prived of the right of telling the truth,” sample sent to the agency. The CDC also to make proteins from that DNA. With-
wrote one Weibo user on Jan. 28. An- plans to ship testing kits to health de- out those proteins from the viral genome,
other, on the same day, went further, partments, both in the U.S. and abroad, you can’t test which antibodies or drug
seeing the outbreak as a harbinger of the to enable them to quickly confirm compounds might counteract them. “The
future of the Chinese state. “The virus coronavirus infections and distinguish [genetic] code on a screen doesn’t get you
outbreak exposes the truth. It is a wake- them from the current seasonal flu. things to work with on the bench,” says
up call: our country is not as strong as Diagnosing a disease is one thing, but Karla Satchell, co-director of the center
we expected, our system is not as supe- treating it is another, and creating a vac- for structural genomics of infectious dis-
rior as TV describes.” cine or drug will take longer. To find out eases at Northwestern University’s Fein-
berg School of Medicine.
Xi’s government has done at least Scientists shouldn’t be relying on pri-
one indisputably effective thing to help P R O T E C T I N G YO U R S E L F vate companies in this way, says Andrew
battle the virus. On Jan. 10, it posted on- Mesecar, a coronavirus researcher and
Use these CDC tips to prevent
line a scientific paper containing the ge- head of biochemistry at Purdue Uni-
the spread of 2019-nCoV and
netic blueprint of 2019-nCoV. The prompt other respiratory viruses:
versity, who researches coronaviruses.
release of the sequence won Xi plaudits He is currently working on a solution:
in the global health community, since it Wash hands often using he and his team have studied the pro-
allowed teams around the world to begin soap and water teins, or enzymes, that different strains
breaking down the ingredients of the in- Avoid touching eyes, of coronavirus use to replicate in human
fection and figuring out how to fight it. nose and mouth cells, and developed 50 compounds that
When SARS hit, the sequencing of Avoid close contact can inhibit their activity, essentially
the human genome was costly and cum- with those who are sick blocking the virus from causing infec-
bersome; in part because of that, in tion. “My idea is to have an [IBM] Wat-
2002, it took the Beijing government Disinfect frequently son of drug discovery,” he says. “As soon
five months to release what it did in just touched surfaces as we get the sequence information for
a few days in 2020. Today, the technol- Cover coughs and sneezes a new disease-causing virus, I can feed
ogy is cheap and routine and is already with a tissue the computer the information, and it
24 Time February 10, 2020
JAN. 17 JAN. 23 JAN. 27 CURRENT
Passenger screening City quarantined Hospitals overwhelmed Treating patients
The U.S. begins airport health A travel ban is put into effect Increasing numbers of sick As China builds new hospitals,
checks on all travelers from in Wuhan and, later, in other patients in Wuhan strain scientists are racing to
Wuhan and, later, all travelers cities in Hubei province, hospital staff and deplete develop drug treatments and
from China affecting 50 million people medical supplies a vaccine
S O U R C E S : W H O ; C D C ; J O H N S H O P K I N S U N I V E R S I T Y; N E W S R E P O R T S
N O T E : D ATA A S O F J A N . 2 9

will say you should try these compounds There is still a lot about the Wuhan which turned into an upper-respiratory
off the shelf to start. It’s not here yet, but coronavirus that researchers don’t know, infection, sneezing, runny nose and then
it’s coming, and I hope this is realized however. It’s not clear how easily the muscle soreness, weakness and sharp
in my lifetime.” virus spreads from person to person or pains throughout my chest,” he says.
Yet even if researchers identify a po- how long its incubation period is, and Unsure whether he was infected with
tential drug for 2019-nCoV, testing its there are reports from Chinese health 2019-nCoV or the flu, he decided to wait
safety and efficacy will take months. officials that it can be spread by some- it out rather than brave a potentially in-
To speed that process up, scientists are one who is infected but doesn’t have any fectious line of people at the hospital for
tapping some new technologies. For symptoms of the illness. The CDC and several hours. “It just seemed absolutely
example, stem cells can be coaxed to other health agencies are trying to con- terrifying and unsafe,” he says.
churn out high volumes of human lung firm that right now. Both U.S. and Chi- Even if he had gone to the hospi-
cells in order to study how a virus like nese scientists are also working on devel- tal, he might not have learned if he had
2019-nCoV interacts with them. And oping a vaccine for 2019-nCoV, relying 2019-nCoV; only four medical centers
three-dimensional cell cultures, which on some of the genetic knowledge they in the entire city had kits to test for the
mimic in a lab dish the physical and mo- gathered from SARS. virus at the time. He turned instead to
lecular environment in the human body, All the science in the world still might his mother, a nurse in the U.S., who pre-
could substitute for some early human not be a match for human nature, how- scribed antiviral and asthma medica-
safety studies, making for a more afford- ever, as personal fears often take prece- tions that improved his symptoms after
able and efficient way to test how safe a dence over the public good— especially about a week.
treatment might be. during an unfolding outbreak when He and the roughly 50 million peo-
Advances like these make some in the health officials don’t have all the an- ple stuck in Hubei province are still fac-
field hopeful that the public-health re- swers. When Jacob Wilson, who runs ing a quarantine period that looks likely
sponse could be better this time around. a media company in Wuhan, first felt to drag into weeks and possibly months,
“Twitter and everything was lighting up his throat get scratchy on Jan. 21, he as the numbers of infections and deaths
on Friday night [Jan. 10] that the genetic wasn’t concerned. The 33-year-old from creep higher. With workplaces shut-
sequence of the virus was posted,” says Alexandria, La., hadn’t visited the sea- tered, and no way to earn money, locals
Mesecar. “We analyzed the first one that food market that was being targeted as are counting their meals—and trying to
Saturday morning. Within 20 minutes of the source of the outbreak, and health au- remain positive. “This break is peace
having the sequence, I knew it was very thorities in Wuhan said the new mysteri- and quiet,” says Dong. “People may feel
close to SARS. That’s when I thought, ous pneumonia-like illness wasn’t passed bored, but I enjoy this holiday.” Until sci-
‘Uh-oh, this could be as virulent as SARS.’ between humans. Reassured, Wilson con- ence offers a better remedy, the people of
That tells you right away that you had bet- tinued going to work. “But for the next Wuhan must cling to those simplest of
ter act like this is SARS.” three days I had a fever and dry cough, defenses: hope and hiding. □
25
 The
HealerFOR JO E BI DEN, THE 2020 ELEC T I O N I S
TH E LAT EST TEST IN A LIFET IM E FILLED WI TH LOS S
By Molly Ball

PHOTOGR APHS BY SEPTEMBER DAW N BOTTOMS FOR TIME

 Biden on the campaign
trail in Iowa, where his
crowds have been smaller
than those of his top rivals
 It’s dark inside
Joe Biden’s
campaign bus,
a lumbering blue diesel emblazoned with the slogan
BaTTle for The Soul of The NaTioN. On this late
January afternoon in Iowa, the former Vice President
is in the cramped back cabin, nursing a paper cup of
Panera Bread coffee so the motion of the road and the
drone of the motor don’t lull him to sleep.
He is talking about loss. The things he has lost are
never far from Biden’s mind. Chief among them: his
son Beau, a rising star in Democratic politics who
died of brain cancer in 2015, a few months after his
46th birthday. “I get up in the morning lots of times
and ask myself if he’d be proud of me,” Biden says.
Beau’s death was the latest in the litany of losses
and setbacks that have defined Biden’s life. The death
of his wife and daughter in an auto accident in 1972.
The 1988 presidential bid that ended in a plagiarism
scandal. Life-threatening brain aneurysms. Another
failed bid for the presidency in 2008. For nearly a half-
century, the nation has watched Biden wrestle pub-
licly with sorrow. At countless funerals, he has eulo-
gized Americans great and ordinary, all while nursing
his own barely concealed wounds. “My mother used
to say God never gives you a cross too heavy to carry,” bartender at an American Legion post who lingered to
his wife Jill says. “But God got pretty close with Beau.” speak with Biden after a town hall in Ottumwa, Iowa.
Yet Biden soldiers on: out of pride, out of duty, “That’s what would make him such a good leader.”
out of a deep-seated need to remain in the mix. To his The outcome of the Democratic primary and
boosters, he’s the last authentic man in American pol- potentially the party’s fate in November hinge on
itics and the Democrats’ best hope of toppling Don- Biden’s resilience and whether he can overcome one
ald Trump. To his critics, he’s a nostalgia act whose last test. Embedded in the challenge are existential
well-worn slogans about middle-class uplift and na- questions about grief and experience: Do they add
tional unity are out of sync in this season of outrage. or detract? Are they baggage or scar tissue? Do they
Now, at 77, he stands atop the field of Democratic strengthen a person or deplete him? In Biden, both
presidential contenders. For months, rivals have possibilities are simultaneously present.
nipped at his heels, evincing an I-can’t-believe-I’m- Politics has always been a cathartic exercise for
losing-to-this guy incredulity. His campaign is disor- Biden, a form of exuberant self-expression. It’s as if
ganized, his debate performances uneven, his stump he has to prove to himself he’s still alive, and this is
speech a long-winded hodgepodge delivered to small, the only way he knows. “Purpose,” he says. “That’s
graying crowds. Anyone who’s known him can see he’s how I got through it. I lost my wife and daughter;
slowed down. And yet, as the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses that’s how I got through it. When they told me Beau
draw near, Biden remains the man to beat for the nom- didn’t have a chance of making it, that’s how I got
ination. He has maintained a lead in national polls through it. You’ve got to have purpose.”
since the start of the campaign, bolstered by a dura- This time is no different. Biden’s iPhone rests on
ble coalition of African American and white working- the table in front of him, a platform bolted to the wall
class voters drawn to his experience, his relationships of the bus. The phone is open to a text-message con-
and his humanity. No one in either party connects versation in enlarged type, the sender identified as
with voters in such an intensely personal way: hug- “HUNT”: his younger son Hunter, the one with the
ging, gripping shoulders, planting kisses on fore- soap-opera life and foreign entanglements that fig-
heads. “He’s got more compassion in his little finger ure into President Trump’s impeachment. The only
than anyone I’ve met,” says Mary Luce, a 70-year-old visible message reads, “Love you Dad.”
28 Time February 10, 2020
 were never comfortable either. Joe struggled to over-
come a childhood stutter; his mother assured him it
was because he was so smart his mouth couldn’t keep
up with his brain.
During college at the University of Delaware, Biden
worked as a lifeguard at a swimming pool in a rough,
mostly African-American neighborhood in Wilming-
ton. “You couldn’t run up on him and scare him,” says
Richard “Mouse” Smith, who befriended Biden at
the pool and remains close. “If you got in his face,
he got in your face. He didn’t back down for nobody.”
When Biden ran for Senate in 1972, people said
he was crazy to take on the well-liked Republican in-
cumbent, Cale Boggs. Biden responded, “He’s tired.”
The 29-year-old wunderkind thrilled audiences with
soaring oratory, each speech a feat of Kennedy-esque
optimism that defied the Vietnam-era gloom. Smith
helped introduce him in Wilmington’s housing proj-
ects, where white politicians rarely ventured. It was a
bad year for Democrats, the year of President Nixon’s
landslide re-election, but Biden won by a razor-thin
3,000-vote margin.
Just a few weeks later, while Biden was in Wash-
ington interviewing staff, a tractor-trailer slammed
into the family station wagon. “One of the things
that made it so excruciating is that it came right
after something fantastic happened to him,” says Ted
Kaufman, who was a 33-year-old volunteer on the ’72
campaign and would later become Biden’s chief of
staff, close confidant and appointed successor in the
Senate. “He won this impossible, come-from-behind
The bus pulls onto the campus of Iowa Central ^ race for the Senate seat at 29 years old. We were top
Community College in Fort Dodge, a city of 24,000 Biden, in Mason of the world, and then we were down at the bottom.”
an hour and a half north of Des Moines. The sun has City, Iowa, on Biden’s sons Beau, then 3, and Hunter, 2, were
set by the time Biden finally gets started, nearly two Jan. 22, connects badly injured. Once Biden got to the hospital in
hours late. Despite the venue, the crowd is elderly. with voters in Wilmington, he refused to leave their side. He told
an intensely
As Biden speaks, students drift out of the adjacent the Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield, that he
personal way
library without stopping to listen. wouldn’t return to Washington and sent word that
Something in the front row catches Biden’s eye, the incoming governor of Delaware should prepare
inspiring a riff about the three times firefighters saved to appoint someone else. The tragedy plunged him
him and his family members, starting with the car into such despair, Biden wrote in his 2007 memoir,
crash that killed his wife Neilia and 13-month-old that he came to understand why those who commit
daughter Naomi but spared his two young sons. It’s suicide see it as a rational choice.
been less than three minutes and already we’re talk- Mansfield arranged for Biden to take the oath of
ing about the Jaws of Life. Then the story ends, and office at the hospital and wouldn’t leave him alone
Biden, who’s pacing the room with a microphone, until he agreed to stay in the Senate. Biden never
left hand tucked in the pocket of his slim navy suit, rented an apartment in Washington, commuting two
moseys back to his lectern, scanning his notes for a hours each way by car or Amtrak so he could be home
rhetorical foothold. “But look, folks, um, one of the in Wilmington every night. The meaning he found
things that, uh, that I think is pretty critical here is in his work helped pull him through the tragedy’s
that, uh, you know, uh I think the character of the na- aftermath; the Senate became a sort of second family.
tion is literally on the ballot this time around.” Slowly, Biden put his life back together. In
Biden spent his early years watching his father 1975, after a few years as a single father, he asked
struggle in business. At one point the family had Jill Jacobs on a date after spotting her picture
to live with his mother’s parents, a feuding, hard- on an airport poster and discovering his brother
drinking Irish clan. When Biden was 10, the family knew the onetime model. “It wasn’t like Joe and I
moved to Delaware, where his father worked as a car dated—I dated Joe and the boys,” Jill Biden says.
salesman. The Bidens never sank into poverty but “I watched him heal through his love for the boys.”
29
A life in
politics
Biden, who spent
44 years as a
Senator and as Vice
President, has made 1950S 1987
his experience a core The Bidens at 1973 Biden’s first presidential
theme of his 2020 their family home; Mourning his wife and campaign ends before
campaign. Joe is second daughter, Biden is sworn in at any votes are cast, amid a
from the right his sons’ hospital room plagiarism scandal

By 1987, Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Com- covered and went on to rack up a long record of ac-
mittee and running for the Democratic presidential complishments. He became chairman of the Foreign
nomination. His campaign was a high-wire act, a suc- Relations Committee and won acclaim for his ability
cession of late entrances and ad-libbed last-minute to work across the aisle. “I saw him negotiate with
speeches. Instead of preparing for a debate at the Iowa Jesse Helms to get funding for the U.N.,” recalls for-
State Fair, Biden spent the entire flight westward gab- mer Senator Chris Dodd. “No one else could do it.”
bing with aides about Senate business and failing to Today the deals Biden cut with Republican Sen-
prepare a closing statement. He could talk forever, but ators, including segregationists like Helms, are part
he could never quite articulate why he was running. of the left’s case against him. Biden took the lead in
Unable to come up with his own message, he sub- passing the 1994 crime bill, which included a ban on
stituted those of others. He claimed to have marched assault weapons and the Violence Against Women
in the civil rights movement when he hadn’t, and Act but also increased criminal penalties that have
he lifted passages from the late Bobby Kennedy’s been blamed for America’s mass-incarceration crisis.
speeches. Finally, in a debate, he recited nearly When he ran Clarence Thomas’ 1991 Supreme Court
word for word, without credit, British Labour Party nomination hearing, he initially resisted airing Anita
leader Neil Kinnock’s impassioned monologue about Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment, then presided
his coal-mining ancestors. Biden was not descended over an all-white-male panel that treated Hill with
from any coal miners. A rival campaign tipped off the skepticism and condescension.
press. It was soon discovered that he’d also been dis- Biden voted for welfare reform and banking dereg-
ciplined for plagiarism in law school. ulation, NAFTA and the war in Iraq. He clashed with a
Biden’s political rhetoric had invoked the sacred- little-known professor named Elizabeth Warren over
ness of a man’s word. The scandal cast him instead as bankruptcy legislation that Warren said would leave
a blarney artist, a man so in love with the power of a the working class without a safety net. Biden, whose
good story that facts were incidental. He withdrew home state’s lax financial regulations have drawn
from the race before voting began. many banks and credit-card companies to make their
headquarters there, ushered the bill through. “Every
For The nexT 20 years, Biden worked to reclaim big mistake Democrats have made in the past 30 years,
his reputation as a serious man. “It obviously jolted Joe Biden has been involved, and often he’s been
him,” says former Secretary of State John Kerry, a leading the way,” says Rebecca Katz, a progressive
longtime Senate buddy who is now campaigning for strategist unaffiliated with a presidential campaign.
Biden. The same day Biden pulled out of the presi- Biden’s second presidential run, in 2008, was over-
dential race, he returned to the Senate to question shadowed by Barack Obama’s meteoric ascent and
witnesses about President Reagan’s conservative Su- Hillary Clinton’s establishment machine. He dropped
preme Court nominee, Robert Bork. Biden won over out after getting 1% in Iowa. But Obama had been im-
six Republican Senators to derail Bork’s nomination pressed by Biden’s debate performances and wanted
on ideological grounds, a feat that broke the Senate’s an elder statesman to balance the ticket. Biden agreed
norm at the time of evaluating judicial nominees only to be vetted for Vice President and was interviewed
on the basis of aptitude. by Obama’s senior strategist David Axelrod. “I said,
A few months later, Biden fell ill in a hotel room ‘One thing that concerns me is that you can be a little
after a speech. He underwent two high-risk brain voluble. Can you control that?’” Axelrod recalls. “Two
surgeries to repair cranial aneurysms. Doctors told hours later, he finished answering the question.”
him he had no better than 50-50 odds of recovery. Obama and Biden were opposites in background
Biden was out of the Senate for seven months but re- and temperament, but they became genuinely close,
30 Time February 10, 2020
 1994
1991 Biden helps write 2008
the controversial crime Obama taps the senior
After Anita Hill accuses
Clarence Thomas of
bill signed by Senator to join the 2015
President Clinton Democratic ticket, and Biden and his
sexual harassment, Biden
presides over an all-white- the Senator is elected family at a visitation
male panel in the Senate Vice President for his son Beau

according to both men. Biden commanded an expan- but it got done.” Reid later demanded the White
sive portfolio: implementing the Recovery Act and a House remove Biden from future negotiations.
gun-control push, handling sticky foreign situations
from Iraq to Ukraine and doing much of the Senate The morning aFTer the speech in Fort Dodge,
glad-handing that Obama loathed. Biden also argued Biden arrives at the North Iowa Events Center in
for a restrained foreign policy, frequently clashing Mason City, where he’s introduced by Represen-
with the more hawkish Secretary of State Clinton tative Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania, a 35-year-old
and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Biden advised who in 2018 won a district Trump had carried by
against the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and 20 points. Youth and diversity are great, Lamb says.
against sending more troops to Afghanistan. But “a little adult supervision wouldn’t be the worst
Within the Administration he was a serious player, thing for us in the House!” Taking the microphone,
but he was also known for his antics. Upbeat and gre- Biden extols Lamb’s credentials. “He reminds me so
garious, he couldn’t walk down a hallway without pi- much—excuse me for saying this—of my son Beau,”
geonholing someone for a 10-minute conversation, Biden says. “They both ended up majors, they both
a former West Wing staffer recalls. He carved out a ended up deployed, and they both ended up serving
public persona as a sort of lovable goof, encapsulated their country from their heart as well as their head.”
by a parody in the Onion of a shirtless “Biden” sup- Beau was the attorney general of Delaware, laying
posedly washing his vintage Pontiac Trans Am in the the groundwork to run for governor, when in 2013
White House driveway. His staff once blacked out the he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the same fast-
windows of a venue where he was speaking because moving brain cancer that killed Senators John McCain
his tendency to bound outside to shake hands pre- and Edward Kennedy. “It’s a death sentence. We knew
sented a security risk and scheduling hassle. right away,” Biden recalls in our interview. “But you al-
1 9 5 3 : C O U R T E S Y B I D E N C A M PA I G N ; 1 973 : A P ; 1 9 8 7, 1 9 9 1 , 2 0 0 8 : G E T T Y I M A G E S (3); 1 9 9 4 , 2 0 1 5: A P (2)

Obama aides mostly laughed off Biden’s idiosyn- ways hope for a miracle.” Beau succumbed to the dis-
cracies; they’d known what they were getting when ease in May 2015. Before he died, he made his father
they picked him. There was one notable exception. swear that he would be all right, as Biden describes
In May 2012, Biden let slip that he’d come around in his best-selling 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad—a
to supporting gay marriage, forcing Obama to an- deeply moving chronicle of loss that’s interwoven with
nounce ahead of schedule that his own position had descriptions of Biden’s high-stakes negotiations with
also “evolved.” Obama’s advisers, some of whom had foreign leaders. At first, Biden wasn’t sure he could
tested the idea of replacing Biden with Clinton on keep that promise. The boys had gotten him through
the 2012 ticket, were incensed. Today Biden invokes his grief after the car accident, he says. Coming
their partnership incessantly, but Obama remains of- home every night “wasn’t about being a good dad—I
ficially neutral in the primary. needed them.” Now his support system was gone.
Some of Biden’s critics charged that he was so Biden had been making serious preparations
eager to be part of the action that he would agree to run for the 2016 presidential nomination, de-
to bad deals in the name of bipartisanship. In De- spite the conventional wisdom that Clinton had it
cember 2012, then Senate majority leader Harry locked up. His strategist Mike Donilon drew up a
Reid and minority leader Mitch McConnell reached 22-page memo arguing that he was well positioned
an impasse on an extension of the George W. Bush– to win with a message of finishing the work Obama
era tax cuts. Reid was so annoyed with McConnell’s started and lifting up the middle class. Even Biden’s
offer that he threw it in a fireplace. McConnell gaffes, he argued, would strike voters as authen-
“called Biden because I didn’t want any part of tic and refreshing compared with “carefully pack-
that deal,” Reid recalls. “I was not a big fan of it, aged candidates” the public had tired of. But Biden
31
says, “I realized I just didn’t have the heart to do it.” a tactic Obama’s team seized on to encourage volun-
Beau’s death had destabilized the family in more teering. But on his recent campaign swing, all the
ways than one. His widow fell into a romance with field organizers were from out of state, a sign that he’s
his brother Hunter, who had separated from his wife. having trouble recruiting local volunteers.
Hunter had struggled with addiction for years—in Then there’s the candidate himself. Some days he
2014, he was discharged from the Navy when he seems lost; others, he’s perfectly sharp. The campaign
tested positive for cocaine. He’d been to rehab, but has sharply limited his exposure to the media. Biden
after his brother’s death, he resumed drinking and hasn’t taken questions from reporters on the cam-
smoking crack, he told the New Yorker last year. He paign trail in more than a month. Aides cut off the
recently settled a paternity suit brought by an Arkan- interview for this article before the allotted time was
sas woman in local court. In May of last year, Hunter up. “They’ve been very careful how they handle him,”
surprised his parents by suddenly marrying a South Axelrod observes. “He’s like a porcelain candidate—
African filmmaker he’d met six days earlier. (Hunter they don’t expose him very much. I used to say Biden
Biden did not respond to messages requesting com- has a peculiar type of performance anxiety: he per-
ment for this article.) forms, and everyone around him is anxious.”
Hunter’s career has also created issues. After grad- The old Biden gaffes tended to be a product of po-
uating from Yale Law School, Hunter founded a se- litical incorrectness, like when he called Obama “the
ries of lobbying and investment firms that Repub- first sort of mainstream African American who is ar-
lican critics charge were mostly about leveraging ticulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
his name. These activities caused heartburn in the Now Biden often wanders around searching for the
White House, Obama Administration sources say, end of his sentence, cutting off digressions with an
but Biden would become defensive or irate if any- apologetic “anyway.” The fast-talking, wise-
one questioned them. One of his gigs was with the
Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, which paid him up to ‘Joe’s a cracking lawyer-pol has been replaced by an
old man who can’t stop talking about the past.
$50,000 per month to sit on its board despite Hunt- healer. And yet when Biden gets into the weeds
er’s lack of expertise in Ukraine or natural gas. At on policy, a sort of muscle memory kicks in.
the time, Joe Biden was leading anticorruption ef- It satisfies He ticks off the legislative history of bills and
forts in Ukraine, and from this potential conflict of
interest, Trump and his allies have spun an elabo-
that makes sophisticated arguments and has a re-
markable ability to weave together his aw-
rate and false conspiracy theory alleging that Bu- feeling of shucks persona with his high-level experi-
risma was bribing Joe Biden, through his son, to in-
fluence U.S. policy toward the former Soviet state.
purpose.’ ence. One minute he’s cracking jokes about
firefighters (“You’re all crazy, but I love you”),
After 2016, Biden’s political career was assumed to ÑJILL B IDEN and the next he’s recounting his meetings with
be over. But Biden still nursed ambitions. Trump’s “flat Chinese President Xi Jinping. The New York
appeal to hatred” after the deadly white-supremacist Times editorial board gave him scant consideration
protest in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 was for its endorsement but noted he was the only can-
a key factor, he says. Still, he wasn’t sure about didate they interviewed who offered a detailed plan
running, “because I knew how ugly he’d make it.” for what to do if China sent troops to quell the Hong
Biden’s 2020 campaign has been messy and in- Kong protests. (U.N. resolution, warships moved to
sular, like all his previous ones. This is the first time the region, pressure from allies, threats of sanctions.)
his sister Valerie Biden Owens hasn’t managed the The most telling moment from Biden’s session
operation, though she’s still deeply involved. His se- at the Times came not in the interview but before-
nior leadership is heavy on confidants and light on hand, when an African-American security guard ap-
consultants-for-hire, with few veterans of other pres- proached him in an elevator to tell him she loved
idential campaigns and few former Clinton staffers. him. In the 2020 campaign, this has been Biden’s
The candidate is prone to indecision, sometimes abiding strength: the loyalty of voters who feel they
paralyzingly so. The campaign’s kickoff was delayed know him deeply. “He has a real base among African
for months as he dithered. In April, aides planned to Americans, non-college-educated whites and older
launch at last with a video, filmed in Scranton, Pa., voters,” Axelrod says. “He has a palpable sense of em-
about middle-class values. At the last minute, Biden pathy and compassion, and when the race is defined
ditched it and recorded an ad about Charlottesville by a President who’s completely devoid of empathy
instead. It took months for the campaign to open its and compassion, that is a powerful quality.”
Philadelphia headquarters. When the Ukraine scan- Almost anyone who knows Biden can offer a story
dal began to unfold in September, Biden initially about this compassion. Representative Lisa Blunt
struggled to respond to questions about his son’s role. Rochester, a Delaware Democrat, was not yet an
All of Biden’s top Democratic rivals routinely draw elected official when her husband died unexpectedly
larger and more enthusiastic crowds. At events he is in 2014. Biden tracked her down and called out of
usually preceded onstage by a young field organizer, the blue to comfort her. “I got a lot of calls that day.
32 Time February 10, 2020
I don’t remember a lot. I was in a fog,” she says. “But ^ Taking in Biden’s long-winded Q. and A.s can feel
I’ll never forget the conversation with him. Through Biden backstage like a warm bath: not necessarily thrilling, but deeply
the phone I could feel true empathy from somebody before his campaign soothing. His advisers believe voters are hungry for
who had walked that path.” She only found out later event in Mason City reconciliation. “They’re scared to death because they
that Biden’s son had a terminal illness at the time. think the character of the country is going to change in
Biden’s events can feel like a rolling therapy ses- a way that will never be repaired,” Donilon, the cam-
sion. A large chunk of time is set aside after every paign’s chief strategist, says of voters. “That’s what
speech for Biden to interact with voters, many of Biden is talking about. That is a resilient message.”
whom tell him about their own encounters with The other key pitch is that Biden offers the best
trauma and death. Most people would find this con- chance of beating Trump. “We can win in North Car-
stant performance of comfort, the assumption of so olina, we can win in Georgia, we can win in Texas, we
many strangers’ burdens, to be draining. Not Biden. can win in Arizona, we can win Pennsylvania,” Biden
“Joe’s a healer,” Jill says. “He feels people’s problems says. “The question is, who do you think helps? You
because he’s been through a lot of it himself. And it sat- think Bernie or Elizabeth helps them win in North
isfies that feeling of purpose that he’s helping others.” Carolina or Georgia? You know the answer.”
Yet many Democrats fear nominating Biden is a di-
biden’s mosT consequenTial decision this cam- saster waiting to happen. Trump could run the same
paign has been not to make a hard turn to the left. playbook he ran against Clinton: insinuating physical
(Some of his advisers pushed him to reconsider de- decline, pointing out paid speeches and other ties to
fending his work on the crime bill. He refused, saying big banks, the vague scent of legal-but-sleazy asso-
it demonstrated his pragmatism.) Pressed to apolo- ciations, “experience” turned into an epithet against
gize for working with segregationists in the Senate, he the longtime Washington insider. Biden allies recog-
insisted it proves he can work even with today’s Re- nize the threat and insist they’re girding for a brawl.
publicans. “Some of my colleagues don’t think we can Says Senator Chris Coons of Delaware: “We’re going
unite the country,” Biden says on the bus, positioning to go right back at him.”
a throw pillow at the small of his back on the narrow Biden’s bus trundles on through Iowa, the win-
bench. His jacket is off, his tie loosened. “They make dows so darkened by his campaign slogan that it’s
fun of me that I think I can,” he continues. “Well, if we impossible to see the landscape as it passes by.
don’t unite the country, if we don’t bring it back to- “My mom used to say, as long as you’re alive—”
gether, start to be able to work together, we’re done.” he pauses and emits a chuckle. “You’re not dead
It’s a gamble to hawk comity while your rivals in- until you see the face of God.” —With reporting by
veigh against a broken system and a bitter enemy. PhiliP ellioTT/deS moiNeS, iowa •
33
K O B E B R Y A N T
1 9 7 8 — 2 0 2 0
Sports

BY SEAN GREGORY

Jerry West saw

something the
other basketball
mavens didn’t.
Everyone around
the league was
intrigued by the
slender high
school senior
with NBA genes
and confidence to
spare. But could
Kobe Bryant
really go directly
from leading the
Lower Merion
High School
Aces in suburban
Philadelphia to
guarding Michael
Jordan? It took Bryant celebrates the 2010 NBA championship, after the Lakers defeated the Boston
 V I E WP O IN T

WHEN A CHILD
LOSES HIS HERO
BY DAVID FRENCH

WHEN I WATCHED the coverage of Kobe great athlete at the top of his game. It’s a
and Gianna Bryant’s deaths, amid the joy to see an artist perform at the peak of
primary grief I felt for Kobe’s wife, his her talents.
surviving children and the people who And, make no mistake, it was a
knew and loved him, there were a series privilege to watch Kobe. He brought
of images that brought even more tears to a ferocious energy to the court. He
my eyes. It was the kids lined up outside carried that ferocious energy into a will
the Staples Center. Some of them were to improve, to drive himself to match or
dressed head to toe in Lakers gear. I possibly even exceed the game’s greats.
looked at them and saw my own son. To put it another way, Kobe upheld
I was transported back to a magical his end of the bargain. The kids in the
night on Nov. 11, 2014. We live in Kobe jerseys gave him their love, and
Tennessee, not too far from Memphis, he gave them everything he had. And as
and Kobe’s Lakers were coming to Beale he poured his heart and soul out on the
Street to play the Grizzlies. We didn’t hardwood, the bond was sealed.
know how many more opportunities we’d As Kobe got older, his growth was
have to see Kobe play, so I splurged and unmistakable. He was a leader in
bought tickets for the row behind the the cohort of NBA stars who put their
Grizzlies bench. My son brought a friend, families front and center. Kobe’s fans
another Kobe fan, and I’ve never seen started to see Kobe as a husband and
two kids more excited—or more decked father. My son knew his daughters’
out in Lakers gear. They’d even fashioned names. His friends knew their names.
capes out of Lakers flags. And after Kobe retired, the pictures of
NBA basketball is often a more inti- him on the sideline with Gianna went
mate game than the other major Ameri- viral—and not just with sentimental
can sports. In basketball, you can be parents.
sometimes inches away from the world’s Kobe’s life was messy and
greatest athletes. Throughout the night, complicated. There were hard questions
Grizzlies stars Marc Gasol and Zach to ask and hard conversations to have
Randolph talked to my son and his friend, about a terrible night in Colorado, and
good-naturedly giving them a hard time for the man behind the jersey. But most lives
rooting for Kobe. Then, late in the game, have a direction, and the direction of
O P E N I N G PA G E S : B O B L E V E Y— G E T T Y I M A G E S; T H E S E PA G E S : A L E X G A L L A R D O — R E U T E R S

Kobe saw them—in all their ridiculous Kobe’s life was clear.
Lakers finery—and he broke his game And he had so much more to do. While
face for just a moment and smiled. he never quite reached Michael Jordan’s
If you’re a parent, chances are you greatness on the court, he was poised to
know what it’s like when your kid finds a outshine Jordan in his retirement. He won
hero. Channeled properly, it’s a source of an Oscar. He was an enormous presence
true joy. Go to the games together, and in the game. He showcased an intellect
you create those moments that bond that was miles beyond mere “basketball
families. I once read advice that I’ve brilliant.” And kids still wore his jersey.
never forgotten—when spending money He was still their hero, almost four years
with your family, don’t purchase things. after his incredible, 60-point final game.
Purchase shared experiences. And on And now he’s gone.
that night, we had an experience that will I called my son, a college freshman.
stay with us forever. He told me he was wearing Kobe’s
There are a lot of good reasons to jersey. His grief, and the grief of millions
worry about our celebrity culture. We of Americans like him, is—in its own
lavish attention bordering on obsession way—a final tribute to the man who gave
on our biggest stars. But it’s also true them so much joy.
that excellence can be a gift to a nation
Celtics in Game 7 and a culture. It’s a privilege to watch a French is a columnist for TIME

37
Sports
West, then executive vice president of
the Los Angeles Lakers and one of the
best players in NBA history, less than a
half hour to know the answer. As part of
a workout ahead of the 1996 draft, Bry-
ant played one-on-one against the re-
cently retired defensive specialist Mi-
chael Cooper. The GM ended the session
early. “I was embarrassed for Michael to
watch a 17-year-old just basically demol-
ish him,” West tells TIME, “and enjoy
doing it.”
West acquired Bryant in a draft-
day deal, pairing the teenager with the

C L O C K W I S E F R O M T O P L E F T: K O B E B R YA N T/ I N S TA G R A M ; V I N C E N T L A F O R E T — A F P/G E T T Y I M A G E S; S T E V E G R AY S O N — W I R E I M A G E /G E T T Y I M A G E S; T I M O T H Y A . C L A R Y— A F P/G E T T Y I M A G E S; J O H N S H E A R E R — G E T T Y I M A G E S
towering Shaquille O’Neal and launching
one of the most decorated careers in
professional sports. Over 20 seasons—
all of them with the Lakers—Bryant
won five NBA championships, two
scoring titles, a pair of Olympic gold
medals, one MVP award and was named
to 18 All-Star teams. More than merely
guarding Jordan, Bryant emerged as
his heir, a scoring assassin who could
rip a defender’s heart out by way of a
devastating dunk or an elusive fadeaway
jump shot from the baseline, his singular
work of athletic art. His ascent coincided
with the development of social media
and basketball’s embrace around the
world, which turned Bryant into one of
the game’s first truly global stars. Back
INDELIBLE MOMENTS
home, he inspired a generation of high Clockwise from top left: In 2019, Bryant with daughters Natalia,
school phenoms like LeBron James Bianka and Gianna, and wife Vanessa, pregnant with daughter
to follow his lead from high school to Capri; chatting with Michael Jordan during a 1997 game; with
the NBA. Jerry West, left, upon joining the Lakers in 1996; showing off his
“You said Kobe, and everyone knows gold medal at the 2012 Olympics; clutching his Oscar in 2018
who that is: a one-word name,” says
Quentin Richardson, who played against
Bryant in the 2000s.
Driven by a focus and intensity that including Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter social networks, the hashtag for Bryant’s
he would come to call—and trademark— Gianna, known as Gigi, and two other death drew nearly 2.5 billion views in a
Mamba Mentality, Bryant had the rare young girls. Bryant had begun using he- day. Former President Barack Obama
combination of elite talent and preter- licopters as a player to avoid L.A. traf- said, “Kobe was a legend on the court
natural fire seen only in the true greats. fic on his commutes to home games, and just getting started in what would
“Kobe played the game,” says West, “like and to give him more time with his wife have been just as meaningful a sec-
it was war.” Vanessa and their children. The crash ond act,” and world leaders from Israel
When Bryant retired in 2016, he had is still under investigation, though the to Venezuela shared their own condo-
scored 33,643 points, good for fourth on National Transportation Safety Board lences. Murals of Bryant with his daugh-
the NBA all-time scoring list. He was in said the helicopter was not equipped ter appeared in states from Texas to
third until Jan. 25, when James passed with a terrain-warning system that Massachusetts. Across the Philippines,
him. Bryant called James and sent a con- could have alerted the pilot to danger. skyscrapers lit up in tribute.
gratulatory tweet. The loss was one of the most stun- In Los Angeles, thousands gath-
The next day, Bryant was gone. The ning in the history of sports and global ered to cry and light candles outside the
helicopter he was taking to his daugh- celebrity that Bryant had done so much downtown Staples Center—“the house
ter’s youth-basketball tournament to fuse. To many, it was as if a vein had that Kobe Bryant built” as host Alicia
crashed in the hills near Calabasas, Calif. been opened. NBA players wept pub- Keys called it at the top of a notably sub-
All nine people on board were killed, licly. On Weibo, one of China’s largest dued Grammy Awards held in the arena
38 Time February 10, 2020
that night. It has become a gathering V I E WP O IN T
place for Bryant’s legions of fans, who
come bearing jerseys and balls much COMING TO TERMS WITH
the way Buckingham Palace overflowed
with flowers following the death of Prin-
A COMPLICATED LIFE
cess Diana. BY EVETTE DIONNE
Reactions to Bryant’s death have
deepened to reflect the dimensions and
sometimes confounding complexity
IN THE WAKE of Kobe Bryant’s untimely helped equip us with more nuanced
of his life. Though not cut down in the
death at 41, the usual cascade of understanding of sexual violence. A
prime of his basketball career, Bryant, at
emotion set in: disbelief, shock, person can be good to their spouse
41, was well into a second act that gave sadness and, for some, anger. That last and their children, donate lots of
him more prominence than many active emotion was born not from what was money to worthy causes and create
players. He had already written an Oscar- said about the superlative basketball indelible work that influences—and
winning animated short film, launched a star and doting father, but what wasn’t: also be a monster. And yet it’s still
production company, created a sports rarely did the outpouring of tributes difficult to process legacy in the face
academy and become a vocal champion stop to acknowledge that amid the of tragedy. Thanks to the pressures
of women’s sports. “I absolutely be- many wonderful accomplishments, of social media, on which we react to
lieve he was going to do great things,” Bryant did something horrific. unfathomable news in real time, we
says Richardson, “and write another In July 2003, Bryant was charged often fall into a binary of good or bad,
chapter of greatness after basketball.” with sexually assaulting a 19-year- wrong or right, on the side of survivors
And he died being a parent. As word old employee of the Lodge and Spa or on the side of a rapist. It is rarely
emerged that Gigi had been killed with at Cordillera in Edwards, Colo. He that simple.
him, queasiness was compounded by admitted that he didn’t explicitly ask for Bryant, aged and matured, became
recognition. Every weekend, parents consent and initially denied even having an ambassador for women’s sports,
travel with their children to organized sex with the woman. He left a bruise coached his daughter’s basketball team
youth-sporting events, just like Bry- on her neck and drew blood from her and took pride in being a “girl dad.”
skin. After Bryant’s defense team badly But none of his commitments—to his
ant was doing with the second of his
intimidated the victim and smeared children, to women’s sports, to a more
four daughters. Suddenly people who
her reputation, she refused to testify. equitable world—negate his culpability.
did not know Bryant, or particularly After the criminal case was dismissed, We must confront the tragedy that
care for him, could picture themselves Bryant issued an apology that said, has befallen Bryant and his family,
in his place, and choke up. To toggle in part, “After months of reviewing understand the greatness he exhibited
between Instagram and Twitter in the discovery, listening to her attorney, and on the court and finally—maybe for the
days after Jan. 26 was to experience the even her testimony in person, I now first time—reckon with the irreparable
social-media version of a wake: Gigi understand how she feels that she did trauma he inflicted.
dangling from her father’s shoulders, not consent to this encounter.” He When we are wedded to specific
or parked above them, her hands rest- later settled for an undisclosed sum narratives of how feminists are
ing on his head. The two sitting court- in a civil suit. supposed to act, it can be all too easy
side, exploring the nuances of the game. It is irresponsible to excuse or gloss to disregard humanity. But feminism,
Bryant’s biography included another over Bryant’s treatment of this woman at least the tradition I follow, makes
critical element: in 2003, he was ar- or his complicity in a legal strategy space for redemption too. Only Bryant’s
rested and charged with sexual assault. that upended her life. But it is also accuser can decide if she forgives him,
The criminal case was dropped after Bry- reductive to focus only on this behavior and it’s not our place to do that work
ant’s accuser refused to testify in court. when reflecting on his life and death. publicly on her behalf. What we can do
A civil suit ended with a settlement. Bry- When I learned of the helicopter crash, is complicate these conversations so
ant issued a statement of apology, which I immediately thought about my older we can usher in more honesty about
brother yelling, “Kobe!” whenever he who’s elevated in the aftermath of
read in part: “After months of reviewing
threw makeshift paper basketballs into a sexual assault and how fame and
discovery, listening to her attorney, and
a trash can. I thought about Bryant’s money insulate perpetrators from being
even her testimony in person, I now un- widow Vanessa and their fatherless brought to account. We can do this
derstand how she feels that she did not daughters, who now have to move while still acknowledging that Bryant did
consent to this encounter.” through life with a hovering cloud of not deserve to die in such a manner at
The case failed to derail Bryant’s ca- grief. I thought about the many black such an age and that the people who
reer, and by the time he retired, it tended children and families who saw Bryant loved him are grieving.
to be mentioned reluctantly, if at all, in as- as a model of possibility. And I thought
sessments of his legacy. In the era before about the woman who accused Bryant Dionne is the editor in chief of Bitch
#MeToo, an NBA superstar could com- of rape having to watch her perpetrator Media and the author of the forthcoming
mute between games and court appear- being valorized for eternity. book Lifting as We Climb: Black
ances without apparent consequence. The #MeToo movement has Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box

39
 Bryant’s aerial displays
were among the game’s
most thrilling ever;
here, a reverse slam in a
1998 home game
A N D R E W D. B E R N S T E I N — N B A E /G E T T Y I M A G E S
Sports
Bryant was the son of former NBA kept chanting, ‘Kobe! Kobe! Kobe!’” The
player Joe “Jellybean” Bryant and Pamela U.S. won gold in Beijing.
Bryant. He spent part of his childhood UNBEARABLE LOSS A Lakers renaissance followed. Los An-
in Italy, where his father played profes- Victims of the helicopter geles won back-to-back titles in 2009 and
sionally and where he learned both the crash that killed Kobe Bryant 2010, and Bryant was MVP of both finals.
language and a love of soccer. The family include teen basketball players, He continued to produce, but injuries
coaches and parents
eventually settled outside Philadelphia, plagued the last few years of his career.
where Bryant grew into a phenom. JOHN ALTOBELLI, 56, The 2015–2016 goodbye season served as
He was self-confident, and solitary, KERI ALTOBELLI, 46, AND both farewell and affirmation of his bas-
which disarmed teammates. At the 1998 ALYSSA ALTOBELLI, 13 ketball greatness. In a full Mamba showing
All-Star Game in New York, Bryant, then Alyssa Altobelli was a member that was replayed on national television,
19, went right at Jordan in what was a clear of the Mamba Sports Academy in prime time, a day after his death, Bryant
generational shift. After Jordan retired team and with her parents when scored 60 points, on 50 shots, at the Sta-
from the Bulls, the Lakers of Shaq and she died. Her father John was ples Center in the final game of his career.
Kobe won three straight NBA titles, from the longtime baseball coach at Rather than jump to TV or hawk
2000 to 2002. Bryant and O’Neal had an Orange Coast College; a colleague products after his playing days, Bryant
inevitable falling-out: not even L.A.’s called him an “amazing mentor.” embraced the clean slate. He dedicated
sprawl could contain those two alpha time to his venture-capital firm, created
egos. When, in 2004, O’Neal was traded a musical podcast for children and won
GIANNA “GIGI” BRYANT, 13
to Miami, many blamed Bryant, painted his Oscar for “Dear Basketball,” an ani-
The second oldest of four
as a selfish ball hog and whose reputation mated film based on the poem he used
children that Bryant had with
was tainted by his criminal case. to announce the end of his playing ca-
his wife Vanessa, Gianna was
Bryant chose to embrace the role of vil- reer. In addition to supporting women’s
an aspiring basketball star who
lain, creating the Mamba Mentality pop sports—Bryant was a regular presence at
played at her father’s Mamba
philosophy. It was an approach to life that and cheerleader for the WNBA and U.S.
Sports Academy.
required extreme focus, discipline and en- women’s national soccer and gymnastics
thusiasm for taking on all comers. Magic teams, among others—he became a de-
Johnson’s perpetual smile didn’t fit Bry- SARAH CHESTER, 45, AND voted coach for his own daughters. He
ant’s style. Like Jordan, Bryant embraced PAYTON CHESTER, 13 embraced the role, telling Jimmy Kim-
brutal honesty and could be cruel to un- Payton Chester was also a mel that his goal was to give the girls “a
derperforming teammates. basketball player for Mamba foundation of the amount of work and
The Lakers suffered some down years Sports Academy and was on preparation that it takes to be excellent.”
in the mid-aughts, but Bryant’s displays of board the helicopter with her “We lost a big advocate for women’s
individual excellence continued to make mother Sarah. A family member sports,” soccer icon Mia Hamm tells
noise. In 2006, he scored 81 points in a said Payton “was the greatest TIME. “But we’re all inspired by his be-
game, the second highest point total in person you would ever meet” lief in equality, and it’s our job to continue
league history. Around that time Jerry and that Sarah was “the one to move forward.”
Colangelo, the head of USA Basketball, everybody counted on.” She is among the many who believed
told Bryant that if he wanted to play for Bryant’s best was ahead of him, which
his first Olympic team, he’d have to serve CHRISTINA MAUSER, 38 only added to the despair over his death.
primarily as a passer, not a shooter. Bry- An assistant coach at Mamba When athletes hang up their uniforms,
ant, though surprised, still promised Col- Sports Academy, Mauser was they’re supposed to return to mortal life
angelo he’d do whatever was needed to remembered by her husband as a and age with the rest of us. They show up
bring a gold medal back to the U.S. Win- warm, witty and funny mother of at ceremonies, hair a little more salty but
ning was always paramount. Colangelo three who was especially adept at the applause as raucous as ever. “I had a
was testing Bryant; the pair then shared coaching defense. brother killed in Korea and honestly,” says
a laugh, knowing that asking Bryant not West, “it affected me in the same way.”
to score was like asking a dog not to bark. The NBA’s silhouette logo is modeled
At an early training camp for those ARA ZOBAYAN, 50 after West in his playing days. A petition
Beijing Olympics, Bryant arrived in the A pilot for more than 20 years to change it to Bryant’s likeness has since
weight room before 6 a.m. Younger su- with a commercial license since received close to 3 million signatures.
perstars like James and Dwyane Wade, 2007, Zobayan was said to —With reporting by Andrew r. Chow/
according to Colangelo, learned to follow frequently fly with Bryant. He new york •
Bryant’s example. In China, where Bry- was described as a dedicated
ELSA — GE T T Y IMAGES

ant first hosted a clinic in 1998, hordes flight instructor who was ▷
of people would greet the U.S. team bus. passionate about aviation. Bryant holds his daughter Gianna,
“They didn’t want to see us,” says Colan- —Mahita Gajanan then 9, before the 2016 NBA All-Star
gelo. “They wanted to see Kobe. They just Game in Toronto

42 Time February 10, 2020

 Without A, B and O,
we can’t save anybody.

Only 3 out of 100 Americans donate blood—and that’s not enough to help patients in need.

Without more donors, patients will not have the type A, B, O or AB blood they need.
You can help fill the #MissingTypes this summer. Make a blood donation appointment today.

RedCrossBlood.org/MissingTypes
 ALL THAT
GLITTERS
This year,
Oscar is #somale
as well as
#sowhite

INSIDE

DIANE KEATON RETURNS TO A MARY RICHARDS AN INFAMOUS MCDONALD’S

CHILDHOOD IN HER MEMOIR FOR OUR TIME SCAM GETS THE DOC TREATMENT

ILLUSTR ATION BY NEIL JAMIESON FOR TIME

TimeOff Opener
MOVIES

Fixing the Oscars

won’t change the
world. But it’s a start
By Stephanie Zacharek
he AcAdemy AwArds used To serve A fAirly

T simple purpose. They were Hollywood’s way

of patting itself on the back, of acknowledg-
ing the best the industry had to offer. It Hap-
pened One Night, The Best Years of Our Lives, Lawrence of
Arabia, The Godfather: these were all great movies that
Hollywood was proud of, and audiences loved them too.
A Best Picture Oscar only validated their good taste.
But today audiences want a different kind of valida- Joker

11
tion from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sci-
ences, and the rise of streaming platforms that sharpens
that appetite also makes its fulfillment less likely: having
more movies, and more choices, means more favorites.
Consensus seems hopeless. A few years back, the organiza- N O M I NAT I O N S
tion took steps to diversify its ranks, inviting more women Todd Phillips’ dark take on Joker earned 11 nominations,
and people of color into its membership. The impulse was including Actor in a Leading Role for star Joaquin Phoenix,
great. But if this awards season is any indication, it’s not Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture
clear that the changes have done much good. Joker, a hit
movie that seeks pity for a violent, white male character
who’s been failed by society, leads with 11 nominations. The Irishman or Marriage Story, two
Meanwhile, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, which powerhouse Netflix releases from last

U N I V E R S A L ; T H E S E PA G E S : J O K E R : W A R N E R B R O S .; T H E I R I S H M A N : N E T F L I X ; 1 9 17: U N I V E R S A L ; O N C E U P O N A T I M E I N . . . H O L LY W O O D : S O N Y
P R E V I O U S PA G E : H U S T L E R S : S T X ; H A R R I E T: F O C U S F E AT U R E S; D O L E M I T E I S M Y N A M E : N E T F L I X ; T H E F A R E W E L L : A 24; Q U E E N & S L I M , U S :
focuses on a family of women—and which has also been year, those films weren’t positioned for
popular with audiences—earned nominations in several optimum Oscars attention.
categories, including Best Picture. But Gerwig wasn’t In a directors’ roundtable sponsored
nominated for Best Director, an oversight that feels like by the Hollywood Reporter late last year,
a slap to many women struggling to have their work Lulu Wang, director of The Farewell,
recognized in the industry. Furthermore, many critics pinpointed the problem. She said that
were frustrated that Jennifer Lopez failed to get a nod for
We go to while streaming deals can be favorable
her terrific turn in Hustlers; likewise, Lupita Nyong’o was movies not for established directors like Martin
overlooked for the intricate performance she gave in Us. just to see our Scorsese or Noah Baumbach—whose
The outrage on social media has been deafening. best selves names are extremely valuable in helping
We—that is to say, anyone who hopes for a progressive, reflected Netflix build its brand—her preference,
democratic, open society—want our movies to better but also as a relative newcomer, was to go with
reflect the diversity of the world we live in, and we’re to help us a small studio, A24, though one of the
desperate for the Academy to follow suit. But while it’s understand streaming platforms had offered her
normal to want change, and to want to fix everything that’s ourselves at twice as much money.
wrong with Hollywood, the bigger question is this: Are we As of December, The Farewell had
sure we’re not looking to Hollywood to fix us?
our worst been playing in theaters for almost five
months. That theatrical release granted
How a movie like The Farewell—an unequivocally Ameri- it a legitimacy it might not have gotten
can film, though it features a nearly all-Asian or Asian- from a streaming platform. “I know for
American cast and is largely in Mandarin, with subtitles— a fact that if I took that bigger money,
gets out into the world can make all the difference. The [the streamer] wouldn’t have the energy
rise of streaming platforms is good news, to a point, for to put behind someone like me to build
new filmmakers hoping to break in or for established film- my brand,” Wang said—especially when
makers who have been unable to get even a small, indepen- there are now so many established di-
dent project off the ground. In years past, Netflix provided rectors who are open to streaming deals.
a home for fine work from directors like Tamara Jenkins Wang’s decision against streaming
(Private Life) and Dee Rees (Mudbound)—but unlike highlights a conundrum that all
46 Time February 10, 2020
 The Irishman

10 Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood

10
N O M I NAT I O N S
Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, 1917

10
his 3½-hour epic Mob movie for Netflix,
received 10 nominations
N O M I NAT I O N S
Both Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio were
nominated for their performances in Quentin
N O M I NAT I O N S Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood
A bracing war drama shot in the style
of one continuous take by director
Sam Mendes, 1917 was nominated
in 10 categories

filmmakers seeking to break in will have to think People who love movies have so much invested
about. The rise of streaming services has already in the “Oscars suck!” argument that we see our
changed what kinds of stories get told and who foot stomping as being somehow productive. But
gets to tell them and stands to alter the landscape “fixing” the Oscars—to the extent that it’s even
further: according to a recent Los Angeles Times possible—won’t solve society’s bigger problems.
article, Netflix released 19 original movies from Many filmgoers are torn between claiming that this
first-time directors in 2019; 11 more are already elite institution doesn’t matter and agitating for it
scheduled for 2020. About half the directors to change. We can’t have it both ways.
making Netflix debuts last year were women, and The healthier approach might be to follow the
several were filmmakers of color. lead of Bong Joon-ho, director of Parasite, which
has been nominated for six Academy Awards,
But if directors like Scorsese and Baumbach— including Best Picture—it’s the first Korean film to
that is, male, white and established—have have earned that honor. In October, as Bong was
everything to gain and little to lose from releasing bringing his film to various festivals (it had already
a movie on Netflix, a filmmaker seeking to build won the top prize, the Palme d’Or, at Cannes),
a name will find it harder to stand out from the he was also in the midst of the obligatory Oscars
pack. Having more movies out there means more campaign, a routine that was new to him. When a
movies to slip through the cracks, especially if reporter from Vulture asked what he made of the
they don’t come with a big-ticket director’s name fact that no Korean film had ever been nominated
attached. Netflix’s Dolemite Is My Name, made for a Best Picture Oscar, despite the Korean film
by experienced director Craig Brewer, is a terrific industry’s size and worldwide influence, he
picture about blaxploitation impresario and responded with a tongue-in-cheek but potent
entrepreneur Rudy Ray Moore, starring a dazzling answer. “It’s a little strange, but it’s not a big deal,”
Eddie Murphy. But the film received no Oscar he said. “The Oscars are not an international film
nominations. With streaming, the public may have festival. They’re very local.” Hollywood is a big-
greater access to good movies that perhaps couldn’t business tiny town, and its awards body is never
otherwise have been made—but that doesn’t going to be the answer to the public’s prayers. It’s
necessarily mean those movies will get the awards our job, by buying tickets and being thoughtful
attention they deserve, which in turn grants those consumers, to show it what to think—not the
filmmakers more freedom to tell worthy stories. other way around. □
47
TimeOff Books
ROUNDUP

Fresh reads
for February
By Annabel Gutterman
A crop of new books this month asks
readers to consider their roots. Some of
the authors of February’s most antici-
pated releases mine their histories to un-
derstand how the places they come from
have shaped who they are. Others craft
narratives that explore the complications
that come with moving away but never
on from the past. Some voices, like Clare
Beams and R. Eric Thomas, are emerging.
Others, like veterans Colum McCann and
Erik Larson, are celebrated. All are explor-
ing how attachments to home define the
contours of our lives.

DJINN PATROL ON THE THE ILLNESS LESSON

PURPLE LINE CLARE BEAMS
DEEPA ANAPPARA After a strange flock of birds flies
In journalist Anappara’s first into town in Beams’ debut novel,
novel, a 9-year-old crime-show the students at an all-girls school
fanatic attempts to find his in 19th century Massachusetts
missing classmate. Jai and begin to develop headaches,
his two friends search all rashes and odd sleepwalking
over the smoggy, unnamed habits. As they grow sicker, a
Indian city where children keep doctor with a questionable track
disappearing, devastating the record is invited to campus, his
community. Though the premise presence underlining a timely
is bleak—there are thousands of conversation about who claims
real cases of missing children in control of women’s bodies.
Indian cities—the protagonist’s (Feb. 11)
youthful perspective makes a
moving case for perseverance A MAP IS ONLY ONE STORY
and hope. (Feb. 4) NICOLE CHUNG AND MENSAH
DEMARY (EDITORS)
BROTHER & SISTER How do we define home? The 20
DIANE KEATON voices in this essay collection
The Academy Award–winning seek to articulate what it feels
actor intimately describes loving like to live between cultures.
and living with a troubled sibling, From stories about being
tracing her childhood with her undocumented in the U.S. to
brother Randy. Though they living on the border with Mexico,
were close as kids, their paths these personal narratives
diverged in adulthood: Randy delve into the challenges—and
struggled with alcoholism and power—that we derive from our
mental illness, while Keaton connections to place. (Feb. 11)
rose to prominence in the film
industry. Illustrating years they SHUGGIE BAIN
spent both together and apart, DOUGLAS STUART
Keaton showcases the difficulties In his debut novel, Stuart
of loving someone you can never focuses on a working-class
fully understand. (Feb. 4) family living in 1980s Glasgow,

48 Time February 10, 2020

where alcoholism threatens was about to endure a very violent
the unit’s stability and sanity. year: Adolf Hitler’s bombing
He narrows in on struggling campaign would kill more
mother Agnes and her youngest than 40,000 citizens. Larson
son Shuggie, who is coming to delves into the impact of those
terms with his sexuality. Stuart 12 months on Churchill and his
charts the evolution of their family, painting a complex portrait
relationship over several years, of leadership and determination
offering a heartbreaking story in the midst of chaos and fear.
about identity, addiction and (Feb. 25)
abandonment. (Feb. 11)
APEIROGON
AMNESTY COLUM MCCANN
ARAVIND ADIGA After both their daughters are
The Booker Prize winner’s latest brutally murdered, a Palestinian
novel follows house cleaner and an Israeli bond over their
Danny, who fled Sri Lanka and is enormous losses. Inspired by the
living undocumented in Australia. true friendship between Bassam
Danny faces an impossible Aramin and Rami Elhanan, the
dilemma after learning critical latest novel from the National
details about the murder of one Book Award winner blends fiction
of his clients. If he speaks up, the with history to examine how
life he worked so hard to build two men channel their grief into
could be threatened, but if he political power as they become
stays silent, the truth may never advocates for peace in the
come to light. The novel takes Middle East. (Feb. 25)
place over the course of one day,
but Danny’s decision highlights MINOR FEELINGS
a lifetime of real-world anxieties. CATHY PARK HONG
(Feb. 18) Hong dissects her experiences
as an Asian American to create
REAL LIFE an intricate meditation on racial
BRANDON TAYLOR awareness in the U.S. Through
At the center of this aching debut a combination of cultural
is Wallace, a gay black graduate criticism and personal stories,
student at an overwhelmingly Hong, a poet, lays bare the
white Midwestern university.
Over the course of a summer
weekend, Wallace unveils the
pain he’s been carrying his whole
life through several interactions
with his friends, who understand
Diane Keaton
little about where he comes from.
As Taylor exposes the layers of
has written
his protagonist’s existence, he three titles,
crafts a gripping narrative on
racism, queerness and trauma. in addition to
(Feb. 18)
editing and
HERE FOR IT publishing
R. ERIC THOMAS
What does it mean to belong? multiple books
Thomas poses this question
throughout his essay collection on photography
as he explores all the places he
never fit in, from his conservative
black church to the primarily
white school he attended. With
humor and heart, he dissects the shame and confusion she felt
experience of being black and in her youth as the daughter
of Korean immigrants, and the
gay in America, simultaneously
way those feelings morphed as
inspecting the ways the country is
she grew older. From analyzing
evolving. (Feb. 18)
Richard Pryor’s stand-up to
interrogating her relationship
THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE with the English language,
ERIK LARSON Hong underscores essential
When Winston Churchill became themes of identity and otherness.
Prime Minister in 1940, Britain (Feb. 25)
49
TimeOff Television
REVIEW

A big McScam
Wanna feel old and disillu­
sioned? It was way back in
1987 that McDonald’s joined
forces with Monopoly for a
series of smash­hit promotions
in which game pieces pasted
to food packaging offered
shots at prizes of up to $1 mil­
lion. And for 12 years, an ex­
cop, who ran security for the
firm contracted to administer
the contest, was rigging it in
a bananas self­enrichment
scheme. All told, he and his
many accomplices siphoned
off $24 million.
As recounted in a 2018
Daily Beast article for which
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon
TV’s newest Cinderella (Hale), resplendent in Katy Keene couture swiftly snapped up the film
rights, it’s a fascinating, often
funny caper, all corporate
cluelessness, desperate
REVIEW
characters and FBI operations
Greg Berlanti’s fairy tale of New York disguised as film shoots. But
By Judy Berman like so many docuseries born
out of the true­crime boom,
Nobody’s perfecT, buT KaTy KeeNe working-class girl seeking her fortune HBO’s McMillions—a six­part
comes close. A lovely young New York in high fashion. Her snooty co-workers exploration of the scam—
native, she spends her days charming have it out for her. Their boss (Katherine overplays its hand. Episodes
VIPs in the personal-shopping depart- LaNasa) is a Prada-wearing devil. She end on true cliff­hangers but
ment of a Bergdorfesque emporium starts to question what she has with K.O. overflow with filler; mundane
called Lacy’s. By night, she’s a budding Yet Katy isn’t the only Cinderella in events are recounted in detail.
designer, banging out whimsical pink this story. Her roommate Jorge (Jonny The story sometimes moves
too slowly, and insight proves
and red garments—dramatic capes, Beauchamp) has a drag alter ego, Gin-
elusive in the three episodes
smart bouclé dresses—for herself on a ger, and Broadway dreams but faces
sent for review. McMillions
sewing machine that’s been in her fam- antifemme prejudice. New arrival Josie could’ve been a great doc, if
ily for generations. She lives in a big, (Ashleigh Murray), late of the Pussycats, only its makers had learned
shabby-chic apartment with two other a wannabe rocker from Riverdale, meets from their subjects not to
aspiring artists and parties at the club a music-industry heartthrob. Their pal get greedy. —J.B.
where K.O. Kelly (Zane Holtz), the chis- Pepper (Julia Chan), an It girl with se-
eled sweetheart who’s been her boyfriend crets, is somewhat out of place in this MCMILLIONS premieres Feb. 3
since high school, works as a bouncer. wide-eyed world. But her darker story on HBO
K AT Y K E E N E : B A R B A R A N I T K E — T H E C W ; M C D O N A L D ’S : G E T T Y I M A G E S

On paper, she sounds kind of cloy- line is such soapy fun, I didn’t care.
ing. But the breezy Riverdale spin-off Each show in megaproducer Greg
Katy Keene is a fairy tale—and every Berlanti’s Archie franchise combines
fairy tale needs its princess. Thankfully, retro aesthetics with deep cultural lit-
Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars) makes eracy. This latest escapist mixture is a lit-
an unusually appealing one. A stylized tle bit Fame and a little bit Felicity, with
update of a decades-old Archie Comics big “summer of scam” energy and sing-
character, her Katy also embodies the along musical numbers. Less about find-
best traits of every idealized TV career ing your Prince Charming than about
woman: Carrie Bradshaw without the realizing your dreams without losing
empty philosophizing, Midge Maisel your soul, Katy Keene is a blissful fairy
without the baggage, a Mary Richards tale for a new decade.
for our time. Twenty-one people were
Oh, she faces some adversity as a KATY KEENE premieres Feb. 6 on the CW indicted as part of the case
50 Time February 10, 2020
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8 Questions
Jenny Han The YA author on the film adaptation
of her To All the Boys trilogy, the power of rom-coms
and her best love advice

P .S. I Still Love You picks up

where the previous book left
off. Your main character, Lara
Jean, has a boyfriend, but now finds
herself feeling insecure. How do you
you still see a need for progress in
representation in the movies? I want
to hear from people we haven’t heard
from before. I hope that’s where this is
going, and that the representation will
get into the mindset of a teenager? just get wider. Not just with race, but
I really don’t approach it any differently with size and sexuality. There’s so much
than when I’m writing for adults. It’s all more to explore.
just a human experience—and you can
feel insecure about your relationship What was your high school
and be thinking about his past experience like? I had a really great
girlfriends when you’re 40 years old. It’s time in high school. I went to a magnet
approaching those “teenage” emotions school. If you were cool, you were still
with the same respect and seriousness like a nerd. And it was a really diverse
as you would for an adult love story. school. So I felt like going into it, I just
learned so much about other cultures
There are a lot of firsts in P.S. I Still that I never would have known about if
Love You. First boyfriends, first I had stayed in my regular school.

‘
dates. What’s a memorable first for
you? Everything went wrong on the I WANT TO How do you use social media to reach
night of my first dance. I was 15 or 16, HEAR FROM your readers, and what are those
and my date got into a car accident on PEOPLE WE interactions like? I feel very close to
the way. After, he was shaken up, so he them and worried for them. It’s hard
HAVEN’T HEARD

’
drove really slowly. He parked really far sometimes to even read some of their
away from the dance and it was raining FROM BEFORE questions because I feel scared for
so hard. We walked all the way up to them. There are so many hard aspects
the school, and a low-hanging branch of being on social media, but one of the
knocked me in the head. I have pictures really positive ones is that you have a
of myself from that night and I have a direct line to talk to your readers and
mark on my forehead. Oh, and when connect, and to me, storytelling is all
we got to school, he realized he left the about connecting with people.
tickets in the car.
Do a lot of young people come to
Romantic comedies are having you for love advice? Yes, and not just
a comeback, but they were long young people—even people in their 30s.
criticized for perpetuating I love giving advice. I’m just careful
stereotypes. How do you address because I don’t want to give the
those concerns? Even though we wrong advice. I try to be
see Lara Jean’s personal growth, she’s honest and not tell people just
still who she is from the beginning what they want to hear, but
to the end. Being in a relationship what I think is right. A lot of
or meeting a guy, those weren’t the their questions are like, “Am
things that changed her. It was I weird?”
more of her opening up and having
her world get a bit bigger. It was How do you answer that? I say no!
important for me to see that I say: You’re not weird. Everything
EMMA MCINT YRE— GE T T Y IMAGES

representation of not changing you’re doing is just right. And don’t feel
your whole self just to be pressure to do something if you’re not
with somebody. quite ready for it yet, or if you haven’t
met that right person. It’s all in your
Lana Condor, an Asian-American own time.
actor, plays the lead. Where do —AnnAbel GuTTermAn
52 Time February 10, 2020
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