New York Magazine 8/20-9/2/18

1 New York dedicated 27 pages in its most recent issue to a look back at the 2008 financial crisis and how it continues to shape the world we live in (“2008,” August 6–19). Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the socialist candidate poised to become the youngest woman elected to the U.S. House, shared the feature, writing, “The 2008 crisis represented one of the largest wealth transfers in American history … It’s time for a 21st-century New Deal.” And the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald added, “If I had presided over all of this, or had spent the last three decades cheering the policies that caused it, I would also want everyone to spend all their time thinking obsessively about Putin and Moscow instead of who and what is responsible for this.” The inclusion of…

ONE MORNING LAST WEEK during executive time, President Trump tweeted out his assessment of the Russia investigation. “The Rigged Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on as the ‘originators and founders’ of this scam continue to be fired and demoted for their corrupt and illegal activity,” he raged. “All credibility is gone from this terrible Hoax, and much more will be lost as it proceeds. No Collusion!” Amid this torrent of lies, the president had identified one important truth. There has in fact been a series of firings and demotions of law-enforcement officials. The casualties include FBI director James Comey, deputy director Andrew McCabe, general counsel James Baker, and, most recently, agent Peter Strzok. Robert Mueller is probing the circumstances surrounding Trump’s firing of Comey for a possible obstruction-of-justice charge.…

YOKO ONO IS A VISIONARY. She imagines and reimagines. In October, she’ll release Warzone, which reprises 13 songs from her past albums. Spookily, or comfortingly, or depressingly, or rousingly, they are as applicable to the world today as they were when Ono wrote them. That same month, she’ll reimagine Imagine in a 320-page book on the making of the album, which will compile previously unreleased images, including the one here. To mark the occasion, I asked her questions inspired by her 1964 book of creative prompts, Grapefruit. She responded over email. What is the state of the world’s imagination? Two things, to make where we live beautiful and peaceful and to fly to another planet to experience something new. Describe the weather in your head on most days. I love…

NONE.” This is Kieran Culkin’s one-word answer to my question about how much preparation he put into playing Roman Roy, the charismatically loathsome scion of the billionaire Roy clan and the breakout character on HBO’s Succession, the breakout show of the summer. We’re sitting in Decibel, the impressively graffitied East Village sake bar. It’s early enough that it’s empty save for a few tourists who’ve just arrived, guidebooks in hand. “Thirty-five and a half years on the island of Manhattan,” says Culkin about his lifetime in New York. “I can’t tell if there’s more people on the street or I’m just old so I’m getting more frustrated that there’s people on the street,” he says of East Village crowds. “I’m dating myself, but I used to Rollerblade down the sidewalk…

AT 2:30 on February 14, David Hogg was not yet a spokesperson for radicalized young America or a renowned media savant or a resistance fighter or, to some, the encapsulation of everything terrifying about where the country is going, but a high-school senior crouched in a dark classroom while a gunman with an AR-15 ranged beyond the walls of his hiding place, slaughtering 17 people in six minutes. In the quiet aftermath, when the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had stopped but before the SWAT team had given the all clear, the 17-year-old debate geek did what first came to mind: He detached himself from the situation by turning on his phone’s video recorder and, in a perfect simulation of the news correspondents he had watched in his…

WHEN KATHLEEN TURNER, standing in the New York reception area, introduces herself in her singular throaty rasp, the effect is almost comical—who else has a voice like that? “This thing happens with restaurants,” says Turner as we walk to a conference room. “I’ll call up and say, ‘This is Kathleen Turner,’ and they’ll hear me and say, ‘Why, yes it is.’” ¶ For a time, that voice, and her charismatic blend of steel and sass, made Turner one of film’s most interesting and popular actresses. The now-64-year-old starred in an impressive string of ’80s hits (Body Heat, Prizzi’s Honor, and Peggy Sue Got Married, among others, as well as The War of the Roses, Romancing the Stone, and The Jewel of the Nile, the latter trio all co-starring Michael Douglas).…