THE

TRANSGENDER
TIPPING
POINT
J UNE 9, 2014
t i me . c o m
Americas next
civil rights frontier
BY KATY STEINMETZ
Laverne Cox, a star
of Orange Is the New
Black, is one of an
estimated 1.5 million
Americans who identify
as transgender

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on the cover:
Photograph by Peter
Hapak for Time
time June 9, 2014 1
TIME (ISSN 0040-781X) is published weekly, except for two issues combined for one week in January, May, July, August, September and December, by Time Inc. Principal Ofce: Time & Life Building, Rockefeller Center, New York, NY 10020-1393.
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6 x Editors Desk
BRIEFING
9 x Verbatim
10 x LightBox
Lightning at the
Freedom Tower
12 x World
Three essential facts
about the Thailand
coup; Ukraine votes
in the Chocolate King;
the annual Australian
kangaroocull
14 x Nation
The murderous
rampage in Isla Vista
16 x Milestones
Farewell to Maya
Angelou
18 x Bitter Pill
Steven Brill on
the trouble with
Obamacares
subsidies
THE CULTURE
48 x Movies
On the set of The Fault
in Our Stars with
the YA hits author,
John Green. Plus: a
talk with Fault star
Shailene Woodley
52 x Tuned In
TVs new racial
diversity is about
prot as much as
inclusion
54 x Music
Three new releases
celebrate pops diva
moment
56 x Pop Chart
Quick Talk with
50 Cent; hipster
Slurpees; the worlds
best job openings
58 x The Awesome
Column
Joel Stein bargains
with patent trolls
60 x 10 Questions
German high jumper
Margaret Lambert,
spurned by the Nazis
for the 1936 Olympics
vol. 183, no. 22
|
2014
In Homs, Syria, on May 13, a man picks his way through the rubble of Khaldiyeh,
once a thriving neighborhood. Photograph by Yuri KozyrevNoor for Time
FEATURES
20 Assads Turf
As the regime makes advances against the rebels,
many Syrians on both sides of the civil war long
for peace by Aryn Baker; photographs by Yuri Kozyrev
30 The Plot Against Europe
French politician Marine Le Pen is backing
a right-wing European coalition to dismantle
the E.U. by Vivienne Walt
34 Sky Watcher
Meet NASAs Don Yeomans, the man
responsible for protecting Earth from
asteroids by Jeffrey Kluger
38 A Nation in Transition
Transgender people are emerging from
the margins to claim an equal place in
American society by Katy Steinmetz
The Fault in Our
Stars, page 48
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6 time June 9, 2014
BEHIND THE STORY Aryn Baker, center, met Ali, a 27-year-old government soldier,
on her rst day in Homs as he and his fellow soldiers were stripping wires and cables
from a ruined building both to sell the copper and to pre-empt attempts by insurgents
to recycle the material into bombs. She was struck by the soldiers fury at rebels
who had just left under a cease-re agreement. (I would have burned them all, he
said.) It was a sobering reminder, says Baker, that even if the conict ends, the
resentments will remain for years, if not generations, to come. For more, read Has
Assad Won? on page 20.
Please recycle
this magazine and
remove inserts or
samples before
recycling
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NOW ON
TIME.COM
With the 70th
anniversary of
D-Day approach-
ing, we pored
through the
archives of Time
and Lifewhose
words and im-
ages elucidated
the war from its
beginningsto
commemorate
the historic
Allied victory.
Here, a preview of
whats available
at time.com/dday.
THE PHOTO THAT
ALMOST WASNT
Former LIFE editor
John G. Morris
recounts in a video
how he salvaged
Robert Capas
iconic Normandy
image after others
were destroyed
REFLECTING
ON D-DAY
Historian Douglas
Brinkley puts the
event in context in
his essay The
Longest Day
AFTER THE BATTLE
A gallery of
post-D-Day images
from the places
where the war
continued to rage:
Saipan, Bastogne,
Iwo Jima, Berlin
and Nagasaki
the understanding of syrias dev-
astating civil war has been distorted
by the immense danger and dif-
culty of covering it. Correspondent
Aryn Baker and photographer Yuri
Kozyrev got to see for themselves,
and even for two veterans of horric war zones,
the scenes were shocking. Where buildings
hadnt collapsed under a barrage of shelling,
bombs had peeled away the facades, exposing the
rooms within as if they were life-size dollhouses,
says Aryn of the rebel stronghold of Homs. Dur-
ing a rare cease-re, residents were allowed to
return home to salvage whatever they could.
Some who had supported the revolt against the
regime of Bashar Assad were now just craving
the chance to rebuild their lives: sometimes
normalcy trumps ideology. Other refugees were
more fatalistic. One man pushed an old bicycle
loaded with books in French, English and Arabic,
the only things the looters had left behind. He
had no plans to return. I am an old man and an
engineer, he said. Return to what? I will be dead
before this city can be rebuilt. This is the end of
our history here.
Churchill said history is written by the victors;
it certainly looked that way 100 miles south, in
Damascus, where cafs were full and Assads im-
age was everywhereon posters and T-shirts, on
windows and ags. Assad is running for elec-
tion against two other candidates, who, one can
safely say, are not going to win much of anything.
But the ght is not over, and the story of Syria is
still being told. Aryn was struck by the complex
attitude of ordinary citizens, which she explores
in her story. We should be hearing more from the
Syrian civilians who are living this war, she says,
and less from those who are waging it.
Amid Syrias Ruins
Nancy Gibbs, managing editor
Editors Desk
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Summer is the season weve all
been waiting for. Its 100 days
of high dives, ball games and
barbecues. Its 100 ways to dress
a burger, catch some shade or
get out of town. Its 100 chances
to clear the calendar for whats
most important.

Every two seconds this summer,
someone like you will need blood.
Donating is quick and easy and,
like all good things this time of
year, its worth celebrating.

What are your summer plans?
This summer, there are 100
chances to give hope. Choose
your day to help save three lives.
Donate blood.
Choose your day to give hope.
redcrossblood.org
days of summer.
days of hope.
100

Briefing
We have to strive to change
confrontation to cooperation.
NAWAZ SHARIF, Pakistani President, after resuming peace talks with newly elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi;
his visit to New Delhi was the rst by a Pakistani leader since the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks
I dont know why
you girls arent
attracted to me.
But I will punish
you all for it.
LANDON
DONOVAN, U.S.
soccer star, after
being passed over
for the World Cup
team; four days
later, the snubbed
L.A. Galaxy
player scored his
135th career goal,
breaking
the Major League
Soccer record
ELLIOT RODGER, 22, in a video
message he posted before
killing seven peopleincluding
himselfin a murderous
rampage in Isla Vista, Calif.
$2.8 million
Estimated cost of
Kim Kardashian and Kanye
Wests wedding at Forte di
Belvedere in Florence
202 m.p.h.
Top speed of Italys new
super-cop-car police vehicle, which
was donated by Lamborghini
THEY WANT
TO ... TAKE BACK
THE REINS OF
THEIR DESTINY.
MARINE LE PEN, prominent conservative
French politician, describing a populace
wary of globalization; her far-right
National Front party made huge gains in
the May 25 European Parliament elections
I absolutely
deserved
to be going to
Brazil.
Alibaba
The Chinese
e-tailers
forthcoming U.S.
site, 11 Main, got
big buzz
Amazon
The U.S.
e-tailer battled
publisher
Hachette over
book prices
$10.5
million
Median U.S. CEO
pay in 2013,
up 8.8% over the
previous year;
the current gure
is an all-time high
Just because
we have the
best hammer
does not
mean that
every
problem is
a nail.
PRESIDENT OBAMA,
downplaying the role
of military action in
U.S. global leadership
during a major
foreign-policy address
at West Points
commencement
GOOD WEEK
BAD WEEK
THE WEEK
WE MOURNED
MAYA
ANGELOU
Sources: Wall Street Journal; New York Times; AP (2); E!; Times of India
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(
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time June 9, 2014

Light Show
In a spectacular natural phenomenon,
multi-branched lightning radiates from the
spire of the 1,776-ft.-tall One World Trade
Center on May 23 during a thunderstorm
in New York City.
Photograph by Gary HershornCorbis
FOR PI CTURES OF THE WEEK,
GO TO lightbox.time.com
LightBox
Brieng


Brieng
World
POLL
HOW HAPPY
ARE YOU?
Gallup asked
people in
138 countries
how often they
experienced
positive
emotions such
as wanting
to laugh and
feeling well
rested. Below, a
ranking of how
some countries
fared, from
most positive
experiences
to fewest:
1
Paraguay
19
U.S.
6
Denmark
Election workers were still
counting the ballots in Ukraines
presidential vote when the military
began its assault on May 26
against pro-Russian rebels in the
eastern region of Donetsk. The
rebel ghters, who have received
weapons and reinforcements from
across the border in Russia, had
taken over the Donetsk airport that
morning, and Ukrainian helicopter
gunships soon arrived to take it
back. By the end of the day, dozens
of rebels had been killed, marking
a grim beginning for the countrys
President-elect, Petro Poroshenko.
Known as the Chocolate King
for the fortune he made in the
candy business, Poroshenko was
one of the leaders of the revolution
that toppled Ukraines old
regime in February. His previous
experience in government,
including posts as Foreign Minister
and chairman of the central bank,
helped him win the election in
a landslide and made it hard for
Moscow to maintain its claim that
the revolution brought a fascist
junta to power in Kiev.
On the eve of the vote, Russian
President Vladimir Putin said he
is open to dialogue with Ukraines
new leader; Poroshenko in turn
pledged to negotiate with Moscow
in the coming weeks, signaling
a turn toward diplomacy in
the months-old conict. But
Poroshenko, 48, vowed not to
negotiate with the pro-Russian
separatists in eastern Ukraine,
whom he has dismissed as
terrorists. In the days following
his election, Moscow condemned
the Ukrainian militarys use of
airpower against the rebel ghters
as a colossal mistake.
Russias threat to send a
peacekeeping mission to support
the separatists still stands, as
does its military force of tens of
thousands of troops across the
border. As the ghting escalated
in the run-up to the elections,
paramilitaries reportedly
continued streaming into Ukraine
from Russia to reinforce the
local rebels. With the Ukrainian
government struggling to push
them back, the prospect of a
Russian interventionand a
full-scale war in Eastern Europe
continues to cast a shadow
over both the country and the
wider region.
Ukraine Elects a New Leader as Moscow and
Kiev Vow to Give Diplomacy a Try
103
Russia
116
Pakistan
Pro-Russian rebels take cover
during ghting with Ukrainian
forces near the Donetsk airport.
Photograph by Ross McDonnell
12 By Charlie Campbell, Noah Rayman and Simon Shuster

An eastern gray
kangaroo
Three Essential Facts About
DLODQGV /DWHVW 0LOLWDU\ &RXS
AFGHANISTAN
Political Paralysis
The coup came after
a court ordered PM
Yingluck Shinawatra
to step down on
May 7 after months
of political protests.
The army declared
martial law ostensibly
to maintain order, but
it took control of the
countrys administration
two days later.
Trending In
PROGRESS
Lynne Brown was
appointed South
Africas Public
Enterprises Minister,
making her the
countrys rst openly
gay Cabinet member
ENVIRONMENT
China said it would
remove more than
5 million aging cars
from its streets this
year in an effort to
improve air quality
ELECTIONS
Egypts presidential
polling was extended
by a day, to May 28,
in a bid to boost
voter turnout;
former military chief
Abdul Fattah al-Sisi
is widely expected
to win
CRIME
A gunman opened
re at the Jewish
Museum in Brussels,
killing four people
and leading to a
nationwide manhunt
The Explainer
$XVWUDOLDV &RQWURYHUVLDO .DQJDURR &XOO
THE PLAN
Authorities have orga-
nized an annual cull since
2008 in an effort to limit
overgrazing, which could
kill off native plants and
other native animals.
Over three months,
authorities plan to shoot
450 more kangaroos this
year than lastthe most
since 2011, when 2,439
animals were killed.
Brieng
9,800
Number of troops the
White House plans to
leave in Afghanistan after
withdrawing the majority
of U.S. forces by the end
of the year. The last U.S.
troops will leave in 2016
Economic Free Fall
The military stepped
in against a backdrop
of increasing
economic turmoil.
GDP in Southeast
Asias second largest
economy shrank 2.1%
in the rst quarter
of the year. Tourism
makes up 10% of GDP
but is now slated to
plummet.
No Exit Plan
Prayuth received royal
backing for his coup
on May 26 but refused
to give a timetable
for elections. Among
the militarys rst
steps was making
delayed payments to
rice farmers under a
troubled government
subsidy scheme that
had fanned the unrest.
BETHLEHEM
C-RLQ
PH LQ
KHDUWIHOW
SUD\HU WR
*RG IRU
WKH JL RI
SHDFH
POPE FRANCIS, on a three-day tour
of the Holy Land, inviting Israeli
President Shimon Peres and Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
to the Vatican to pray for peace; the two
leaders welcomed the initiative, saying
they would visit the Pope in June
THE BACKLASH
In mid-May, animal-
welfare groups secured
a court order suspend-
ing the plan, calling it
an example of animal
cruelty. They also argue
that there is insufcient
evidence to show that the
killings, which target the
local population of east-
ern gray kangaroos, lead
to improved biodiversity.
WHATS NEXT
The courts scheduled
a three-day hearing
beginning May 29 to
consider whether to
permanently ban the cull.
A similar hearing last
year led to restrictions
being imposed on the
number of animals that
could be killed.
Ofcials in Australias capital, Canberra, want to control the local marsupial
population by culling over 1,600 kangaroos. But the move is being challenged
by animal-welfare groups.
On May 22, army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha seized power in the
countrys 12th coup since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932. Key
politicians have been detained, and a nightly curfew has been imposed.
POPE, SHI NAWATRA, HELMET, KANGAROO, SI SI , CAR: GET T Y I MAGES; BROWN, PRAYUTH: EPA

The Rundown
14 time June 9, 2014
Nation
DEATH PENALTY The U.S.
Supreme Court ruled May 27
that states cant use a xed
IQ formula to determine
whether a convict is mentally
competent to face execution.
The 5-4 decision held that
Floridas rubric, which
deemed inmates with IQs
above 70 t to be put to
death, was too rigid. The
ruling could affect eight other
states with similar laws.
HEROIN New York City
police will begin carrying
naloxone, an overdose
antidote, after a rise in
deaths from opiates like
heroin, which jumped 84% in
the city from 2010 to 2012.
Police in Baltimore, Chicago,
Washington and more
than a dozen states carry
the potentially lifesaving
medication.
DETROIT
$850million
The cost of razing or
rehabbing nearly 80,000
blighted or abandoned
buildings in Detroit,
according to a federal task
force. It would take about
$1 billion more to clear
and revitalize the bankrupt
citys bigger commercial and
industrial spaces.
TEA PARTY After a string
of defeats in GOP primaries
around the nation, Tea Party
backed candidates won big
in Texas on May 27. State
senator and talk-radio host
Dan Patrick ousted three-term
lieutenant governor David
Dewhurst, and Ken Paxton,
who was backed by Ted Cruz,
won the GOP nod for attorney
general. Representative
Ralph Hall, at 91 the
oldest member of the
House, also lost, to
insurgent candidate
John Ratcliffe.
A Murderous Spree Death, sorrow and
regret in Santa Barbara
BY KATE PICKERT
it appeared that all involved had done
what they were supposed to do. Elliot
Rodger, a lonely 22-year-old who had
dropped out of Santa Barbara City College,
was in touch with a therapist. His parents,
concerned about some recent behavior, went
so far as to have the police check on him.
And like most states, California has laws de-
signed to make it easier to require treatment
for mentally ill adults. Yet on May 23, Rodger
killed six people and wounded 13 more. If
this rampage couldnt be stopped, can any?
The best chance to prevent the horric
attack came three weeks earlier, when local
sheriffs deputies visited Rodger at his home
in Isla Vista. Disturbed by videos he had
posted on YouTube, his mother reportedly
called a therapist, who called a mental-
health hotline, which contacted the authori-
ties. The deputies determined that Rodger
was shy but polite and did not appear to pose
a risk to himself or others. Absent that, they
had no legal right to take him into custody.
They urged him to call his mother and left.
Rodger, meanwhile, had already pur-
chased several gunsall legallyalong
with hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
He had been plotting for years to exact re-
venge on humanity, particularly women,
for rejecting him socially, according to a
YouTube video and a parting manifesto he
sent out via email just before the rampage.
Of the encounter with the deputies, he
wrote, For a few horrible seconds I thought
it was all over. When they left, the biggest
wave of relief swept over me.
Its not uncommon for people capable
of such violence to hide it well, and a
spokesperson for the sheriffs ofce said it
didnt know about Rodgers videos until it
was too late. It would have been impos-
sible for them to make an informed assess-
ment without those, says Kenton Rainey,
chief of police for Bay Area Rapid Transit
and an expert in how law enforcement
deals with the mentally ill.
And Rodgers parents had clearly taken
precautions, calling the police and racing
to Santa Barbara after seeing his mani-
festo. By the time they arrived, the killing
spree was over and Rodger had also taken
his own life.
If a family is worried about their
loved one and they call who they think
theyre supposed to call, says Jessica Cruz,
executive director of the National Alliance
on Mental Illness in California, what else
can you do?
Brieng
S
T
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Brieng
16 time June 9, 2014
Milestones
DIED
Maya Angelou
Legendary voice
When Maya Angelou was 16
she became San Franciscos rst
black female streetcar conduc-
tor. By the time she was 40 she
had also been, in no particular
order, a cook, a waitress, a
madam, a prostitute, a dancer,
an actress, a playwright and a
calypso singer. (Her one album
is titled Miss Calypso.) It wasnt
until 1969, when she was 40,
that she became an author and
kick-started a career that would
span TV, movies, university
classrooms and President Clin-
tons Inauguration stage.
In her rst book, I Know Why
the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou,
who died May 28 at 86, tells the
story of her life up to the age of
17. She describes herself as a
too-big Negro girl, with nappy
black hair, broad feet and a space
between her teeth that would
hold a number-two pencil. Al-
though the book has been as-
signed to countless high school
students, its unsparing account
of black life in the South during
the Depression and of her sexu-
al abuse is not easy reading. But
Angelous tough, funny, lyrical
voice transforms her story from
a litany of isolation and suffer-
ing into a hymn of glorious
human endurance that pro-
foundly inuenced generations
of memoirists.
Her relentless creativity
didnt balk at her own obituary,
and as usual she put it better
than anyone else could have.
What I would really like said
about me is that I dared to love,
Angelou told an interviewer
in 1985. By love I mean that
condition in the human spirit
so profound, it encourages us
to develop courage and build
bridges, and then to trust those
bridges and cross the bridges in
attempts to reach other human
beings. lev grossman
Angelou, in 1970, talking about her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

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Progressive Casualty Ins. Co. & afliates. Prices vary based on how you buy.
1.800.PROGRESSIVE / PROGRESSIVE.COM

hypothetical couple whom well
call Barbara and Harry Jones are
52 years old and have two children,
and their household income is
$94,200. Shes a freelance marketing
consultant and hes a plumber, so neither has health
insurance from an employer. They live in Lancaster,
Ohio, and they signed up for Obamacare just in time
to make the deadline at the end of March.
Great news: based on their income, Barbara and
Harry will get an annual $2,904 subsidy from the
government to help pay an insurance bill that will
be $12,288 a year for moderately good coverage. Ob-
viously, the Joneses are not poor. But health care is
now so expensive that President Obamas law was
designed to give even them help buying insurance.
Alice and Bob Smith (another hypothetical
couple) and their two children live next door to
the Joneses in Ohio. They too work in jobsday
care for her, light construction for himthat
dont provide health insurance. Their income is
$94,300meaning theyre keeping up with the
Joneses and, in fact, beating them by $100. The
Smiths will get no subsidy at all.
Now that enrollment in Obamacare has end-
ed for the year, some of the quirksmaybe they
should be called potholesembedded in the com-
plicated and heavily lobbied law are going to start to
become visible. First among them may be the cliff
problem that penalizes the Smiths to the tune of
$2,904 for making $100 more than the Joneses. I can
already see the headline on Fox News: Obamas
Health Care Bureaucrats Tax Ohio Couple 2,904%
for Making $100 More Than Next-Door Neighbors.
It will be true. Thats because the Smiths income
is just slightly more than four times $23,550, the
amount dened by the government as living in
poverty for a family of four. Under the Affordable
Care Act, families like the Joneses who earn up to
but not more than four times the poverty level get
subsidies. After that, there is no subsidy. Sorry, Mr.
and Mrs. Smith. Going over $94,200 is like going
over a cliff. Unlike the way the federal graduated
income tax is calibrated so that the Smiths never
lose money by earning more, the subsidy doesnt
decline step by step. It plunges to zero.
Even steeper cliffs are possible. Suppose the
Johnsons, each 63 years old, live in Florida and their
kids are grown. They make $62,040 (four times the
poverty line for a family of two adults) from the
charter-boat business they run. Theyll get a subsidy
of $9,024 to pay for their insurance. But they will
lose it all if in 2014 they sell just one extra charter. If
they make a dollar more (or $100 or $1,000 more) the
entire $9,024 federal subsidy goes away. If their over-
the-ceiling earnings are $100, thats like a 9,024%
tax on that $100.
For hourly workers or freelancers who cannot
predict their income with complete accuracy, this
could be an anvil that comes down on them next
year, says Barry Cohen, an insurance broker in Lan-
caster who helped me model various scenarios. A
middle-class couple, Cohen notes, could get a sur-
prise $5,000 or $10,000 tax bill next April because
they received a subsidy but then earned just a few dol-
lars more than they estimated, pushing them above
the income ceiling. As with much about the 906-page
Affordable Care Act, you had to be in the room
actually many rooms, over hundreds of meetings
over many monthswhen the law was written to
understand how these startling cliffs came to be.
O
ne of obamas goals, shared by many con-
gressional Democrats worried about conser-
vative opposition, was to keep the cost of the
subsidies to the Treasury as low as possible. But in
dozens of intense meetings, Obama and his staff,
along with the congressional committee staffs, also
struggled to make the insurance that people would
be forced to buy as affordable as possible for as many
people as possible.
Obviously, those two goals pulled in opposite di-
rections. Lower federal subsidies meant higher pre-
miums, but it also meant that the new law would
cost less and therefore be easier for Congress to pass.
So White House and congressional aides worked up
two formulas to balance the competing pressures.
The rst mapped out how much the subsidies would
be. The second dened who would qualify for them.
To determine the amount of the subsidies, the
staffs adopted a graduated scale, like the income tax.
Those earning at the poverty level would not be re-
quired to pay more than 2% of their income for the
second lowest so-called Silver plan premium. (Those
below the poverty level would qualify for Medicaid,
a completely free program.) The plans on the insur-
ance exchanges range from Bronze to Silver to Gold
to Platinum depending on the amount of expected
expensesfrom 60% to 90%you want the insur-
ance company to pay, with you paying the rest.
STANDING
AT THE
CLIFF AND . . .
$9,024
Amount a
hypothetical couple
earning $62,040
will get in federal
subsidies annually
to help pay for their
health-insurance
premiums under the
Affordable Care Act
The Hidden Cliffs in Obamacare
$V WKH $RUGDEOH &DUH $FW EHFRPHV UHDOLW\
VR GR VRPH RI LWV OLWWOHNQRZQ LQHTXLWLHV
18 time June 9, 2014
A
BITTER PILL

Lets assume that youre a family of four with
$24,000 in annual income (just above the poverty
line), and the second cheapest Silver plan available
to you costs $800 a month. Two percent of your an-
nual income is $40 a month. That means you will
get a $760 monthly subsidy ($800 minus $40), or
$9,120 a year for health insurance. Those earning
200% of the poverty level (about $47,000), however,
would be required to pay up to 6.3% of their income
before they would get a subsidy. Those earning
300% to 400% would have to pay 9.5% of their in-
come before the premium subsidy would kick in.
In other words, the more money you make, the less
the government subsidizes your premium, which is
just like the graduated-plan income tax in reverse.
However, when it came to who would get subsi-
dies and who would not, the people who wrote the
law provided for no sliding scale. Once the Smiths
or the Johnsons score an extra construction job or
boat charter that pushes their earnings over 400% of
the poverty line, they get nothing. One way to have
chiseled the subsidy cliff into a gentler slope would
have been to keep some set of gradually declining
premium subsidies for those earning over 400%. But
when the staffers calculated the cost of extending
the premium to people like the Smiths or the John-
sons, it was intolerably high.
Another way to chip at the cliff would have
been to lower premium-subsidy percentages still
more, beginning at the 300%-above-poverty level
and gradually decreasing the subsidy to zero when
400% above poverty was reached. There would
still be no payouts above 400%, but the declining
slope of subsidies from 300% to 400% would have
eliminated the cliff because those at 400% would
be losing little by earning more. That would have
pretty much evened up the fortunes of the Jones
and Smith families. But as it is, the weakest part
of the subsidy formula is that people who make
three or four times the poverty level get subsidies
that are arguably not enough to make their pre-
miums affordable. In fact, the burden on those at
the 300%-above-poverty level is another looming
pothole in the details of the subsidy formula.
For example, even with their current $9,024
subsidy, the Johnsons in Florida, whose earnings
are $62,040, are still paying about $5,000 a year in
premiums (depending on the plan they choose).
On top of that, they will also face a deductible and
out-of-pocket costs of about $12,000. That means
the Johnsons total medical costs (premium and
amounts paid to meet the deductible) could take
$17,000, or 27%, out of their $62,040 in pretax in-
come. Thats better than the $26,000 it could cost
them if they earn $63,000 and dont get any subsidy.
But its a stretch to call something that diverts 27%
of a familys pretax income the Affordable Care
Act. After taxes, thats probably about 50% of their
disposable income.
D
oes all this mean obamacare is going
to backre on its designers? Not necessarily.
Only 1% or 2% of people signing up for the
exchanges will fall off the cliff. They will mostly be
older people, like the Johnsons, in expensive-health-
care states, whose income is at or near 400% of the
poverty level. Younger people, whom insurance
companies charge lower rates, or people in lower-
health-care-cost states, where all premiums are
likely to be lower, probably wont be affected much,
if at all. But in a program that signed up 8 million
people, that could still leave tens of thousands on
the exchanges who will come close to or fall over a
steep cliff. Thats a lot of familiesand a lot of am-
munition for the Presidents opponents.
Complicating things, as a recent report in the
Washington Post notes, is a little-known problem
with the notorious (but mostly xed) Obamacare
website. The sites system for verifying the incomes
people have claimed in order to get subsidies is so
gummed up that it may take months or years for the
government to verify who deserves what subsidies.
Many Obamacare patients will have to submit ad-
ditional documents or face demands that their sub-
sidies be returned to the IRS. That wont be popular
either. Im already advising some clients who may
be at or near the cliff to watch their incomes toward
the end of the year, says Cohen. Maybe they can
stop working overtime or take a month off. If not,
they could get hammered with huge tax bills that
they never expected.
Obamacare took a complex new law with com-
plicated formulas involving big dollars moving
in and out of peoples wallets and grafted it onto
a health care system that was already impossible
for most people to understand. In the most public-
spirited age of bipartisan fellowship, that would not
have been easy. So long as the Affordable Care Act is
the Republicans favorite whipping boy, its likely to
get just plain ugly. n
. . . FALLING
OVER THE
CLIFF
$0
Annual amount the
same couple will get
in federal subsidies
if they earn even $1
more than $62,040
19
Steven Brill

WORLD
ENSCONCED I N A CORNER OF DAMASCUS, BASHAR ASSAD I S GROWI NG ST RONGER,
WHI LE HOMS, T HE CAPI TAL OF T HE SY RI AN RE VOLUT I ON, LI ES I N RUI NS
Wasteland Once lled with
cafs and shops, the Qabaris
neighborhood in the Old City area
of Homs has been reduced to rubble
HAS ASSAD WON?
BY ARYN BAKER/HOMS PHOTOGRAPHS BY YURI KOZYREV FOR TIME


WORLD | SYRIA
I N SYRI A,
VI CTORY
I S WRI T TEN
I N RUI N.
an antigovernment uprising, fol-
lowed by three years of war and the threat
of U.S. air strikes, nearly destroyed this Mid-
dle Eastern nation. But President Bashar
Assads government has fought its way
back with a relentless military campaign
of air strikes, shelling and the strategic use
of siege warfare on insurgent-held areas.
Nowhere is that clearer than in the
former rebel stronghold of Homs, once
dubbed the capital of the revolution. For
two years, rebel groups in a few key dis-
tricts collectively known as the Old City
held out against a debilitating air and ar-
tillery barrage that turned a once thriv-
ing middle-class neighborhood full of
dress shops and ice cream parlors into a
rubble-strewn wasteland of bombed-out
hospitals and commercial centers. Thou-
sands died here.
On May 7, the rebels, exhausted by the
ghting and cowed by a siege, agreed to
a cease-re in exchange for safe passage
out. Three days later, the areas former in-
habitants were allowed back in to salvage
what was left of the homes they ed when
the ghting started. It was a wonder that
anything was left. Dazed residents picked
their way through an apocalyptic land-
scape. Mosques were reduced to craters.
Apartment buildings had pancaked un-
der the barrage of bombs, spewing their
contents into the streets with the force of
their fall. Shattered teacups and cut-glass
chandelier shards crunched underfoot.
Is this our street? disoriented neigh-
bors asked one another as they scrambled
over what used to be the roof of a six-story
apartment building.
Two middle-aged women, walking arm
in arm as much for comfort as for stability
down a debris-strewn boulevard, had trou-
ble holding back tears. Government em-
ployees, they gave only their ages, 40 and
50, for fear of a backlash should they speak
their minds. The government has hailed
Salvage operation In the
wake of a cease-re, residents
of Homs reclaim belongings
from their devastated homes

24
WORLD | SYRIA
the country, is excluded from the contest,
but even if it were to eld a candidate, it has
limited support among Syrians. Against
this backdrop, Assads election slogans take
victory as a fait accompli. Across Damas-
cus and along the highway to Homs, bill-
boards in support of his candidacy declare,
together we will rebuild. They are en-
dorsed with his signature, a signed contract
between the President and his people.
Meanwhile, the armed rebel groups
fighting Assad are weary, underfunded
and divided. National Coalition leaders
have repeatedly requested sophisticated
weapons systems, including anti-aircraft
missiles, from allies in the West and in the
Gulf, but so far support has been limited. In
Washington, opinion is divided on whether
the Homs agreement as a turning pointa
template for pacifying other restive areas.
While many Syrians welcome what they
see as the rst steps toward the end of a
war that has claimed more than 160,000
lives, others see it as surrender to the over-
whelming force of the Syrian government.
This is not a peace, the 40-year-old said.
It is not even the beginning of peace, only
the beginning of more destruction.
As she spoke, the distant boom of artil-
lery re could be heard from a nearby rebel-
held district. Fighters there had, at that
point, rejected the cease-re. The 50-year-
old took in the devastation of her former
neighborhood in despair: Its sad to say that
this is what Assad calls a victory, when the
bombings were against his own people.
A Resurgent Dictator
defying expectations that he would
be the next domino to fall in the Arab
Springs chute of regional dictators, Assad
stands stronger than ever. His military,
augmented by ghters from the Lebanon-
based Shiite militia Hizballah, funded in
part by Iran and armed with Russian weap-
ons and ammunition, has consolidated
control over a strategic corridor connecting
the capital, Damascus, to the coast.
With Homs, Syrias third largest city,
all but contained, he is now focused on
the commercial and industrial capital,
Aleppo, which remains split between
rebel and pro-government forces. Already,
as he prepares for the presidential election
slated for June 3, he has declared that all
military operations will conclude by the
end of the year.
The West has dismissed the election
as a farce, pointing out that with nearly
3 million refugees, 6.5 million people in-
ternally displaced and large parts of the
country beyond government control,
the result will be illegitimate. Moreover,
with no viable opponentsthe two other
candidates, vetted under stringent condi-
tions set by a pro-Assad parliament, are
virtual unknownsAssad will win
even in a completely transparent elec-
tion, says Waddah Abd Rabbo, editor in
chief of the nominally independent but
pro-government al-Watan newspaper. The
Istanbul-based National Coalition for Syr-
ian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces,
an opposition umbrella organization in ex-
ile that commands some ghting groups in
I RAQ
TURKEY
M
e
d
i
t
e
r
r
a
n
e
a
n
S
e
a
J ORDAN
SYRIA
Homs
Aleppo
Damascus
LEBANON
I SRAEL

time June 9, 2014 25
anyone who opposes Assad.) But short of
a major military campaign, a signicant
increase in arms to the rebels or a radical
shift by RussiaMoscows U.N. Security
Council veto has blocked four resolu-
tions pertaining to the Syrian crisisthe
Assad regime is likely to stay in power for
the foreseeable future, even if the current
military stalemate is maintained.
Nearly 10 months after a sarin nerve-
gas attack in the Damascus suburbs killed
as many as 1,400 people, the government
has shipped out or destroyed all but 7%
of its chemical-weapons arsenal and pro-
duction facilities, under an international
agreement brokered under the threat of
U.S. air strikes. The remaining precur-
sor chemicals are packed into containers
ready to be trucked to the coast. Assads
foes suspect that he is deliberately delay-
ing the process, and they accuse his army
of using less lethal but equally illegal chlo-
rine bombs against military and civilian
targets. The government denies the claims
and blames all the attacks on rebel forces.
For Western powers that have invested
in Assads downfall and are concerned
about regional instability, Assads resur-
gence requires a difcult adjustment. We
might have to eat some hard crow, Ryan
Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria
and Iraq, told the Council on Foreign Rela-
tions in Washington on May 1. As bad as
the regime is, there is something worse
which are the elements of the opposition
that oppose them.
For all its efforts to present itself as a
legitimate alternative to Assad, the exiled
opposition has failed to convince Syrias
minorities or its secular-leaning, educated
elite that it will not usher in some kind of
Islamist government. The National Co-
alitions forces on the ground claim to be
moderate, but in many cases they fight
alongside more-radical groups that want to
see a Syrian state ruled by the laws of Islam.
The Syrian government has done an ef-
fective job of playing to these fears to rally
support. The regime has used state media
to highlight the abuses of the most extrem-
ist groups, from accounts of beheadings to
detailed exposs on how the Islamic State
of Iraq and Greater Syriaan offshoot of
al-Qaeda so extreme that even the terror-
ist groups leaders in Pakistan have de-
nounced itis forcing Christians in the
areas it controls to pay a protection tax.
Assad and many others in positions of
power belong to the minority Alawite sect,
an offshoot of Shiite Islam. While he sup-
ports all of Syrias religions, religious law
rarely enters into government policy.
A Revolution Derailed
and religion wasnt a major factor at
the start of the uprising against Assad.
When Syrian protesters took to the streets
in March 2011, emboldened by the success
of revolutionaries in Tunisia and Egypt,
they were seeking the implementation of
democratic ideals and an end to pervasive
the rebels can be trusted with the missiles.
Eastern Syria has become a haven for ex-
tremist groups and foreign ghters aligned
with al-Qaeda, whose principal goal is the
establishment of an Islamic stateand,
Western intelligence agencies fear, a new
base for transnational jihad. Fighting be-
tween the two wings of the armed opposi-
tion has resulted in thousands of deaths. It
is a signicant distraction from the battle
to oust Assad, who stands accused of egre-
gious crimes against humanity.
Assads army has dropped shrapnel-
packed barrel bombs onto civilian targets
from helicopters and has used starvation
as a weapon of war. (The government
maintains that it is not targeting civil-
ians but battling terrorists, its term for
Back in business Men gather at a newly
reopened mechanics shop in the Barze
neighborhood of Damascus
A
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26
WORLD | SYRIA
A Nation Divided
for all his swaggering claims of vic-
tory, Assad presides over a country in a pro-
found state of destruction and distress. The
U.N. Relief and Works Agency estimates
that even if the war were to end immedi-
ately, it would take 30 years for the economy
to recover to pre-2010 levelsand then only
if GDP grew at a steady 5% a year. According
to government statistics, prices of basic con-
sumer goods like food and fuel have tripled.
Half the workforce is jobless, and more than
half the population is living in poverty.
Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi recent-
ly estimated the cost of damage at over
$31 billion. Private businessmen say the
true gure is greater still. Winning is a nice
word that some people would love to use,
but you cannot consider you won a battle
when 60% of industry is destroyed, 40%
of houses, and when 9 million Syrians are
displaced. The crisis is not over, says Feras
Shehabi, chairman of the Federation of the
Syrian Chambers of Industry.
There is, however, little immediate sign
of the destruction in the bougainvillea-
laced, upper-class Damascus enclave of
Malki, a two-hour drive from Homs. Al-
though the neighborhood is no stranger
to rocket reat least twice a week reb-
els manage to lob a mortar into the area,
most likely in an attempt to target the
Presidents homeresidents have learned
to shrug off the threat. Assads decision to
live modestly in a tightly packed residen-
tial neighborhood plumps his image as a
man of the people. It is also a canny form
of protection: down among the civilians,
he is a more difcult target.
Every night sidewalks heave with shop-
pers. Bareheaded women come out of pri-
vate gyms toting yoga bags, while others
in colorful headscarves wait for taxis on
street corners. The war may be psychologi-
cally distant, but it is being waged only a
few miles away, along the edges of the city
and in the suburbs. Fighter jets scream
overhead, and the rumble of shelling can
be felt as well as heard. So regular are the
blasts that no one bothers to look up.
Maybe the rst few days we stayed
corruption. Few called for the downfall of
the President. But when the protesters were
met with a series of vicious crackdowns,
they responded by picking up arms. Dis-
contented elements of the army peeled
away with their weapons to form rebel bri-
gades. Foreign extremists from countries
like Iraq, Pakistan and Chechnya joined in.
For the rebel brigades and exiled oppo-
sition leaders, the involvement of extrem-
ist groups was an unfortunate stain on an
otherwise pure uprising against tyranny.
To the regime, it was proof of a foreign-
funded scheme to destabilize Syria.
Now the wars toll has more and more
Syrians turning, reluctantly, toward the
regime. Not because they support Assad
but because they are desperate to return to
some semblance of normal life. Swathed in
the black headscarf and loose cloak of the
conservative Sunni Muslims who tend to
support the opposition, 65-year-old Umm
Hamed, a widow from Homs Old City,
blames both the rebels and the govern-
ment for the destruction of her town. She
clutches a tattered shopping bag stuffed
with a red velvet cushion and brightly
patterned curtains she ripped from the
windows of her kitchenall that was
left of a house that had been in her hus-
bands family for generations. Giving only
her honoric name, meaning mother of
Hamed, she says she feels betrayed by the
revolutionaries who launched the upris-
ing: They were asking for freedom, and
now we are asking for food.
Mustafa Ali, one of Syrias best-
known sculptors, says his country was
a uniquely free place to work as an art-
ist in a region that is largely governed
by religious rulings that limit artistic
freedom. Several months ago, Alis studio
in the rebel-controlled suburbs east of Da-
mascus was looted. Tens of thousands of
dollars worth of raw materials and equip-
ment disappeared within a few days. Ali
is concerned about the fate of his sculp-
tures, totem-like heads carved from mas-
sive chunks of wood. He is not sure if they
were used for rewood or were destroyed
because they contravened conservative
Islamic prohibitions against potentially
idolatrous gures. In the beginning, we
all believed in the revolution, he says.
We wanted a better future. We wanted
change. But I cant believe in a revolution
that comes from the mosque.
Next to normal In Damascus, clockwise from
top left: the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque;
a bustling covered market; Marjeh Square;
pro-Assad campaign volunteers; an evening out
at a new bar; dining in the Old City


WORLD | SYRIA
home, says Mohammad, an English-
literature student at Damascus Univer-
sity. But you have to live. We cant hide
all the time. Mohammad, 23, and four of
his friends had gathered at Caf Lafayette
one recent Saturday night to smoke shisha
pipes and watch FC Barcelona play Atltico
Madrid on the cafs giant outdoor screens.
After the game, the conversation moved to
the upcoming election. Of the ve, four
said they would vote for Assad. Alma, an
accounting student, said she owed at least
that much to a man who had made Syria
so much better over the previous decade.
It seems a long time ago now, but when
Assad assumed the presidency after the
death of his father Hafez Assad in 2000,
he introduced a rash of reforms that radi-
cally transformed the lives of many urban
Syrians. He brought in the Internet and
mobile phones. He opened the way for pri-
vate banks and universities, and privately
owned media outlets competed with state-
run institutions. Young Syrians like Alma
believed that things would only get better.
Before the revolution, she says, using
air quotes, Syria was the best place to be
in the Arab world.
But those reforms did little for Syrias
rural population. By opening Syrias econ-
omy, Assad forced local farmers to compete
with foreign imports. Resentment grew
with increasing poverty, and demonstra-
tions of dissent were quickly quashed by a
ruthless security apparatus left over from
Hafez Assads days in power. When urban
protesters like Mohammad, who asked to go
by only his rst name, joined the uprising,
they sought civil rights, democracy and an
end to corruption. Rural and poor protesters
sought justice, jobs and an end to tyranny.
Mohammad now says he was too im-
patient for change: We thought it would
work, that it would be quick, like Tunisia
and Egypt. But our revolution was stolen.
They turned it from a ght for freedom
into an Islamic revolution. That doesnt
mean he has abandoned the cause. When it
comes time to vote, he will leave his ballot
blank as a form of protest. I dont want to
have to choose between the extremists and
the government. They are both killers.
His words underscore the feeling of
many Syrians today. Caught between a
revolution gone bad and a regime gone
mad, they are desperate for it all to end, as
quickly as possible. n

In the land of Assad Posters
of the President adorn the
ofces of the Syrian Ministry of
Industry in Damascus


Frances Marine Le Pen won big in Mays European Union elections.
Her next goal: dismantle the E.U. itself
BY VIVIENNE WALT/PARIS
WORLD
I
n an office building on the out-
skirts of Parisheadquarters for
Frances far-right National Front
partyMarine Le Pen elbows her
way through a packed conference
room, her blond hair bobbing above the
television cameras. Its 8:30p.m. on the eve-
ning of May25, and polling booths around
Europe have just closed. An estimated
170 million Europeans have cast their bal-
lots to send national representatives to the
increasingly powerful European Parlia-
ment, and the results coming in are stun-
ning. The parties that have long dominated
the European political union since it was
born out of the ashes of World War II in a
passionate attempt to prevent the blood-
drenched continent from ever going to war
again have suffered unprecedented losses.
The big winners are parties that are hostile
to the E.U. itself. And among the former
outliers of European politics now celebrat-
ing their newfound power, there may be no
bigger winner than Le Pen, the leader of the
National Front.
The right-wing party has won 25% of
French votes, relegating French President
Franois Hollandes ruling Socialists to a
paltry third place. The people have spo-
ken, declares Le Pen, 45, who took over
the National Front in 2011 from her elderly
father Jean-Marie (who was once ned for
denying Nazi war crimes after calling the
Holocaust a mere detail). Tonight is a
massive rejection of the European Union.
The next day, Le Pen tells Time that Europe
will never be the same again. In Britain,
the anti-E.U. U.K. Independence Party,
or UKIP, bested three established British
parties. Far-right parties in Austria, Swe-
den and Denmark also won big. Anti-E.U.
leftists won in Greeceand a Greek neo-
Nazi, anti-E.U. party also did well. Even
Germany, Europes richest nation, saw a
far-right party win its rst seat in the E.U.
Parliament. The total number of so-called
Euroskeptic members in the 751-member
body has jumped from 99 to 175, with an
estimated 122 of those from rightist par-
ties and the rest from the far left, according
to VoteWatch Europe, a monitoring orga-
nization in Brussels partly funded by the
European Parliament. That means nearly
1 in 4 E.U. lawmakers will now be opposed
to the organization that pays their salaries.
I believe this is the beginning of the end
of the E.U., Le Pen says. I dont think the
E.U. will be surviving in a few years.
If Le Pen succeeds in her mission, she
will be at the forefront of a movement to
undo what may be the 20thcenturys bold-
est political project. Desperate to avoid
another world war, the E.U.s founding
fathers dreamed of binding old enemies
together in political and economic part-
nership, in the process enforcing peace
and creating an economic market with
global clout. The E.U. has been a remark-
able success on both counts. Europeans
from 28 countries can now travel thou-
sands of miles without encountering a
single border post or having to change
Union Buster
currency. The union has doubled in size
in the past decade, embracing erstwhile
communist foes like Poland, Hungary and
Romania. The E.U. even won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2012 for keeping this mass
of 503million people in relative harmony.
But while the masses are no longer
waging war, the battle in Europe has now
been joinedand the battleground in
late May was the increasingly powerful
European legislature, which passes laws
all 28 member states must observe. The
Parliament is based in the French city of
Strasbourg; the European Commission,
the body that implements the laws the
Parliament passes, is in Brussels. The rul-
ings that Strasbourg and Brussels make
range from the very importantlike res-
cuing European economies from collapse
and imposing sanctions on Syria, Iran and
Russiato the more mundane. Until a few
years ago, the E.U. regulated the shape of
bananasa response to the retail indus-
trys argument that it needed to know how
many t in a box. Anti-E.U. parties tend
to see all decisions that emerge from the
European Parliament as outside meddling
in national affairs. And thats what Le Pen
and her ideological allies in other Europe-
an countries are determined to stop.
The anti-E.U. parties will still form a
minority in the Strasbourg Parliament,
but they will likely be much more vocal
than before. Le Pen intends to form an
anti-E.U. parliamentary group for the rst
time. If she succeeds, she will be entitled V
I
I
Photograph by Christopher Morris for TIME

32
WORLD | FRANCE
hard to remake the Fronts image, zoom-
ing in on economic pain and high taxes.
Le Pens goal in the European Parlia-
ment is to dismantle the entire system from
the inside. She tells Time she intends rst
to derail the free-trade agreement Europe
is currently negotiating with the U.S.a
high priority for President Barack Obama,
who is scheduled to be in France on June 6
to attend events marking the 70th anniver-
sary of D-Day. She will also ght to stop a
new E.U. banking union, which many
economists argue is key to ending the conti-
nents nancial woes. And she wants to end
the Schengen Agreement, which allows
free travel between 26 E.U. countriesa
core principle of the E.U. Le Pens aim is to
chip away at Europes architecture until
the structure cannot hold. The E.U. is not
reformable in its present form, she says. It
has to disappear and be replaced by a Eu-
rope of nations that are free and sovereign.
You cannot reform it just by adjustments.
Its tempting to dismiss Le Pens plan
as unworkable. Europes populist leaders
are maverick personalitieshardly given
to cooperating on nitty-gritty lawmaking.
UKIPs leader, Nigel Farage, has rejected
joining forces with Le Pen in a right-wing
bloc, saying the Front is anti-Semitic.
Some observers believe the anti-E.U. par-
ties will soon fade from the spotlight. The
reality is that in the past, these guys have
not been interested in actually doing any-
thing, says Daniel Gros, director of the
Centre for European Policy Studies, a pro-
E.U. think tank in Brussels. They hold
big speeches for the national audiences,
and then when theres a directive on some-
thing, theyre nowhere to be seen.
But Le Pen has no intention of fading
away. She has an even bigger prize in
sight: the French presidency. Hollande
is deeply unpopular and could well lose
his re-election bid in 2017, leaving the
door open for the woman who has just
thrashed his Socialists in the E.U. vote.
To most French voters, the idea of a
President Le Pen still seems inconceivable,
not to mention abhorrent. But her E.U. win
has cracked open her political future. Lis-
ten, she says the day after the vote. Were
the top party of France, and we won twice
the votes of the party that has all of the
power in France. So it is quite possible.
Still, its a big leap from far-right politician
to President. And if she morphs into a suc-
cessful Establishment leader, she could see
her angry, impassioned base drift away.
For now, Le Pen has her battle lines drawn.
And they face north, to Brussels. n
to attend meetings of the legislatures top
leaders. She would also be able to become
one of the E.U. rapporteurs, who report
to Parliament on specic policy issues as
policies are shaped in committee. A rap-
porteurs opinion carries a lot of weight,
according to the European Law Monitor,
an independent information service.
Le Pen and her comrades now have
momentum, and many hope to carry that
into national elections, possibly to pres-
sure their own legislatures into holding
referendums about whether their home
countries should stay in the E.U. The
union is delicately constructed; one coun-
trys exit could cause a crisis of condence
in the whole entity, severely affecting
the euros value. Other countries could
followquickly.
Reeling from their thrashing, main-
stream politicians are now taking stock of
just how much damage has been inicted.
Having barely campaigned before the vote,
European leaders now face a crucial ques-
tion in shoring up the E.U.: Can the big-
ger parties, which still hold the majority,
succeed in outwitting the anti-E.U. group,
using their far deeper political experience?
Until now, most leaders have brushed off
the threat as a temporary aberration. That
attitude now looks highly risky.
Having suffered through ve years of
recession and Brussels-imposed spending
cuts, many Europeans are angry. Those in
the rich northern countries like France
and Britain are weary of bailing out their
neighbors; the rescue packages for Por-
tugal, Spain, Ireland, Cyprus and Greece
have cost billions, and yet economic hard-
ship continues.
For anti-E.U. candidates like Le Pen,
such discontent has been golden. Barn-
storming through France in her black
cowboy boots, she was, for many French,
a blast of fresh air compared with the co-
cooned elite in Paris. She pushed a simple
campaign message: the E.U. controls your
lives yet cares little about France, and it
has turned your elected representatives
into toothless toadies who rubber-stamp
decisions from Brussels.
To many, the argument rang true. As
her victory suggests, at least some sup-
port came from those who might once
have squirmed at voting for the National
Front, with its reputation for racism and
xenophobia. Founded by Le Pens father in
the early 1970s, the party immediately at-
tracted many former military men who,
like Le Pen, had fought in Frances brutal
Algerian war. His daughter has worked
RIGHT-WING ROUNDUP
Le Pen is one of a group of increasingly
prominent right-wing leaders in Europe
NI GEL FARAGE
Britain, U.K. Independence Party
UKIP won 24 seats, beating all
the mainstream British parties
GEERT WI LDERS
Netherlands, Party for Freedom
An ally of Le Pens, he saw a rare drop
in votes for an anti-E.U. leader but
held on to his partys four seats
HEI NZ- CHRI ST I AN ST RACHE
Austria, Freedom Party
He campaigned against bailouts
for struggling euro-zone nations;
his party won nearly 20% of the
vote in Austria
NI KOL AOS MI CHALOLI AKOS
Greece, Golden Dawn
Even though its leader is awaiting
trial for murder and other alleged
crimes, the neo-Nazi party won
three seats
J I MMI E AKESSON
Sweden, Sweden Democrats
Expected to struggle in the
polls, his party won almost 10%,
gaining its rst two seats
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THE MOST PLANES
IN THE CLOUD.
MORE WI-FI THAN
ANY OTHER AIRLINE.
DELTA.COM/WIFI

T H E M A N W H O
made in a cosmic census taking like none before. Its high time.
The dinosaurs could tell you how a serious asteroid hit turns
outexcept they cant because theyre all dead, thanks to a
6-mile asteroid that crashed off the Yucatn Peninsula 65 mil-
lion years ago, throwing up a globe-cooling shroud of dust and
debris that made Earth uninhabitable, at least for them. Its the
same kind of event that attened 830 sq. mi. of trees across the
Tunguska region of Russia in 1908 and the same kind that on
the morning of Feb. 15, 2013, clobbered Russia again, this time
near the city of Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,600 people and damag-
ing 7,300 buildings.
The enormous destructive power of space rocks is due to the
enormous speed at which they traveland thus the enormous
energy theyre packing. The Chelyabinsk meteor was 66 ft. wide
and exploded with the power of 33 Hiroshima bombs; the only
thing that prevented 33 times the Hiroshima damage from being
done was that the airburst took place so high in the atmosphere.
The Tunguska meteor unleashed 330 Hiroshimas.
you dont want don yeomans job, no matter how appealing
it seems. Hes an astronomer at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., which is awfully cool. And hes one of the
labs top guys, which is even better. The problem with Yeomans
job is the pressure. He is never really off duty, and his work is very
straightforward: he guards the planet. Really. If morning dawns in
your part of the world and all is still well, its on Yeomans watch.
If your city or entire country is wiped out tomorrow, well, theres
a case to be made that its on Yeomans head.
Yeomans leads JPLs prosaically named Near Earth Object Pro-
gram Ofce, charged with the mission of watching the skies for
errant asteroids that are always out there, always moving at dive-
bombing speed and always capabledepending on the vagaries
of gravity, physics and simple bad luckof putting Earth in
their crosshairs. After decades of being dismissed as apocalyptic
nonsense, the threat from incoming space rubble is at last being
taken seriously. Funding is upway uptelescopes and satel-
lites are being assigned to the hunt, and real progress is being
SPACE I S FULL OF POTENTI AL KI LLER ASTEROI DS. MEET THE
ASTRONOMER WHO STANDS BETWEEN YOU AND THEM
BY JEFFREY KLUGER
34
SPACE
G U A R D S
T H E P L A N E T
Photograph by Sam Comen for TIME

Cosmic defender Don Yeomans leads the Near
Earth Object Program Ofce at NASAs Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in California

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NASA is tracking over
600,000 asteroids that travel
near Earth, including a few
that are large enough to
endanger civilization. Heres
a look at the sizes of the
rocks that threaten us
and how often they hit.
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66 ft.
Last years
Chelyabinsk meteor
exploded with the
power of
33 Hiroshima
bombs
36
SPACE | ASTEROIDS
including at least one basketball-size ob-
ject. Every eight months something comes
in thats as big as a small car.
Most of the objects the Near Earth Ob-
ject (NEO) ofce is tracking are detected
by one of three telescopes, which are in
Arizona, New Mexico and Hawaii. From
there, the data is sent to the Minor Plan-
ets Center in Cambridge, Mass., where the
orbit and size of the objects are estimated.
Those ndings are then sent to both JPL
and a team of astronomers working at the
University of Pisa, in Italy, who rene the
orbit predictions and estimate the odds of
future collisions.
For all the devastation the crack-ups
can cause, Yeomans has developed some-
thing of a fondness for space rocks. There
are no plants on his ofce windowsill, but
there are two large potato-like objects
both scale models of asteroids. One of
them, Eros, which in real life measures
21 miles by 7.7 miles, is a place NASA
knows well. In 2001 the agencys NEAR
Shoemaker spacecraft landed on Eros,
where it remains today. Yeomans turns
the model over and over in his hand, then
points to a dimple on its side. Its right
about there, he says.
He came to his fascination with rogue
cosmic bodies partly as a result of a big win
early in his career. In 1986, Halleys Comet
was due to reappear, which it had done
once every 76 years or so since its rst reli-
ably recorded appearance in 240 B.C. But
the or so part presented a puzzle, and the
comet could actually reappear anytime
within a ve-year window from 1984 to
1989. Predicting exactly when it would
show itself and at exactly what point in the
sky would not only be worth global astro-
nomical bragging rightsa little like get-
ting an NCAA bracket entirely rightbut
would also help validate modern orbital-
prediction methods. By the early 1980s, as-
tronomers around the world were at work
on the puzzle. Yeomans, who had come to
JPL in 1976 after a stint at NASAs Goddard
Space Flight Center, was part of the scrum.
As it turned out, he was the one who called
the shot correctly, telling the astronomers
running Caltechs Palomar Observatory
where they should point their telescopes if
they wanted the rst look at Halleyand
there the comet was. That was gratify-
ing, Yeomans says. That was fun.
But whats gratifying can also be ter-
rifying, a point that asteroid scholars
had been trying to make for a long time.
Finally, in 1998, Congress agreed to be-
gin allocating fundsjust $4 million per
yearto the business of searching for
dangerous asteroids. In 2012 the gure
was bumped to $20 million, and since
thenpost-Chelyabinskits been dou-
bled to $40 million, a lot of which will
go to upgrading ground-based telescopes
and maintaining the NEO Wise satellite,
which also searches for asteroids. But al-
ready were a lot safer than we once were.
JPL astronomers have now found and
plotted the trajectories of nearly 11,000
so-called near Earth asteroids, dened as
those that come within 1.3 astronomical
Someone has to keep an eye on all that
cosmic ordnance, and Yeomans, 72, got
the job. What air-raid wardens were in
the days of the Cold War, he is in the mod-
ern era, except that air-raid wardens never
had to shoot down enemy bombers. Yeo-
mans does. He is responsible for guring
out ways to deect rocks that are headed
our way. Despite the deadly seriousness of
the work, he treats it with as much sang-
froid as he can.
Its our job to make sure the solar sys-
tem is well behaved, he says. Asteroid
strikes are what we call low-probability,
high-consequence events. If were not in-
vesting in some kind of insurance, one of
them, one day, could take us all out.
Keeping Track: 11,000 Asteroids
the world got its most recent taste
of what that might be like with the 2013
Chelyabinsk strikeand a taste too of
the hubris of thinking were too smart to
get blindsided that way. On the very day
that Russia got rocked, NASA was track-
ing another asteroid, known as 2012 DA14,
which had been getting a lot of press. Part
of the coverage was driven by how big the
thing wasabout the size of a small ofce
building. But mostly it was the asteroids
altitude. It was supposed to pass Earth at a
distance of just 17,200 miles, several thou-
sand miles below the altitude of some of our
highest-ying satellites.
That, however, didnt matter. Thanks to
its sophisticated sky-watching capabilities,
NASA knew where 2012 DA14 was going
and knew it would miss, and the agency
was using that fact as a kind of case study of
how sharp-eyed it had become. We had the
asteroid in the bag, says Yeomans. I was
in Vienna at a conference and was going to
talk about it at the end of my presentation.
I had a nice graphic to go with it.
But even before Yeomans took the
stage, Chelyabinsk was hit. The asteroid
sneaked through the same way that ght-
er pilots can get the jump on the enemy: by
ying in from the direction of the sun. Just
in case NASA and JPL needed any remind-
er of how completely they had been sand-
bagged, they learned about Chelyabinsk
in the most proletarian way possible, via
Twitter. That was humbling, Yeomans
says, and instructive.
Yeomans and his team of six other
astronomers are currently tracking over
600,000 asteroids, and something new is
added to the tote board daily. Every day,
we get hit by 100 tons of pebbly debrisall
of which incinerates in the atmosphere

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Source: Donald H. Yeomans
*Roughly the explosive power of a Tomahawk cruise missile
95
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130 ft.
The Tunguska
meteor exploded
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The dinosaur-killing
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Peninsula
65 million years
ago
time June 9, 2014 37
be used to deect it from a path we very
much want it to avoid. Chodas is cheek-
ily aware of those dual purposes. Aster-
oids, he says, are natures way of asking,
Hows that space program going?
The problem is that the engine system
hes using in his work is solar electric pro-
pulsion, which relies on an exceedingly
gentle thrust to accelerate an object gradu-
ally. Its a perfectly nice way to go when you
have the luxury of time and must be very
precise with your steering, but asteroids
threatening Earth dont need such tender
handling. There has long been talk about
using a spacecraft carrying explosives
either conventional or nuclearto simply
blow the thing out of the sky. But nobody
much likes the idea of launching nukes,
and an imprecise blast could merely reduce
one very large object to several smaller but
still dangerous onesturning a bomb into
a cluster bomb.
A better solution, Yeomans and oth-
ers say, is just to give the asteroid a good,
hard shove, changing its trajectory a little
when its far away from Earth so that by
the time it reaches us, it ies widethe
way a fractional change in heading when
youre setting out to sail east across the
Atlantic could determine whether you
wind up in Europe or Africa. Depending
on distance, says Yeomans, you might
have to change an asteroids velocity by
only 1 cm per sec.
Such a course correction could be
achieved by hitting the rock with a
cannonball-like projectile or even a
spacecraft. NASA has already accom-
plished something similar, firing an
816-lb. impactor into comet Tempel 1 in
2005 to gouge out a crater that permitted
the Deep Impact spacecraft to observe
the interior. The impactor did not affect
Tempel 1s trajectory much, but a larger
collidersay, a few tonscould do it.
The hard fact remains, however, that no
asteroid-deecting spacecraft exists, and it
takes time to design one, build it and send
it out on its mission. At the moment, Yeo-
mans estimates wed need a 10-year window
between the discovery of a killer rock and
deection if we wanted to avoid disaster.
For now, JPL is working on boosting
its observational game and is getting yet
more help from Washington. Govern-
ment surveillance satellites that typi-
cally look down rather than up are being
reprogrammed to scan for atmospheric
ashes that suggest a meteor incinerating
itself. Tallying those airbursts will provide
a better estimate of how often Earth gets
hit and of the odds of more-serious strikes.
Washington has geopolitical interests
at stake too. In 2008, JPL spotted an asteroid
that had a fair chance of striking northern
Sudan and alerted the White House that it
should notify the Sudanesefast. They
needed to know that this was a natural
phenomenon and not something coming
from a neighbor, Yeomans says.
In May, JPL conducted a pair of table-
top exercises, or simulations, with both
FEMA and the Defense Advanced Re-
search Projects Agency, war-gaming what
would happen if an asteroid were discov-
ered this year that was on track to hit us
in 2021. A range of experts from spacecraft
designers to civil-defense experts to social
psychologists worked on problems of de-
ection and evacuationand did so un-
der exceedingly high pressure, with the
entire seven-year cycle playing out in a
single day. There are more such drills to
come, and the U.S. hopes to press other
countries to get more involved as well.
Yeomans estimates that with the excep-
tion of the University of Pisa group, 98%
of all detection and tracking work is being
done by the U.S. This is an international
problem, he says. It calls for an inter-
national solution.
Actually, its a bigger problem than
thata potentially existential one. Not all
forms of life succumbed to the dino-killing
event 65 million years ago, but the domi-
nant one on the planet did. We have long
since become heir to that position. The goal
is to avoid falling to that fate. n
units of the sun. A single astronomical
unit is the distance from the sun to
Earth93 million miles. So 1.3 AUs
means close, but with a 30 million-mile
margin of error. To qualify as whats
known as a potentially hazardous as-
teroid, the object must measure 460 ft.
and come within 0.05 AU of Earthor
4.65 million miles. Currently NASA
knows of slightly fewer than 1,500 of these
bruisers. The objective is to project orbital
cycles at least a century into the future.
NASAs plan from the start has been
to nd the largest of these bodies rst
those 1 km or more, says Yeomans, and
weve found 95% of those. But theyve
found less than 40% of the 460-ft. class.
With the new bump in funding, Congress
expects JPL to get that number up to 90%.
By finding them, Yeomans says, we
will have addressed 90% of the remain-
ing overall risk.
A Good Hard Shove?
of course, the poi nt of the work
isnt just to watch all the near misses
y by but also to do something about
the ones that are heading our way. Paul
Chodas, an astronomer who specializes
in asteroid motion and impact probabili-
ties, works both with Yeomans and with
NASAs manned space program develop-
ing a method to steer an asteroid to the
vicinity of the moon and use it as a re-
search base for astronauts. The same sys-
tem that could be used to move a rock to
a spot where we want it to be could also

38
in the beaux-arts lobby of the nourse theater in san francisco,
men in deep V-necks and necklaces walk by women with crew cuts and
plaid shirts buttoned to the top. Boys carrying pink backpacks kiss on
the lips, while long-haired ladies whose sequined tank tops expose broad
shoulders snap seles. About 1,100 people, many gleefully defying gen-
der stereotypes, eventually pack the auditorium to hear the story of an
unlikely icon. I stand before you this evening, Laverne Cox, who stars
in the Netix drama Orange Is the New Black, tells the crowd, a proud,
African-American transgender woman. The cheers are loud and long.
Almost one year after the Supreme Court
ruled that Americans were free to marry the
person they loved, no matter their sex, another
civil rights movement is poised to challenge
long-held cultural norms and beliefs. Trans-
gender peoplethose who identify with a gen-
der other than the sex they were assigned at
birth, to use the preferred phrase among trans
activistsare emerging from the margins to
ght for an equal place in society. This new
transparency is improving the lives of a long
misunderstood minority and beginning to
yield new policies, as trans activists and their
Photographs by Gillian Laub for TIME
SOCIETY
NEARLY A YEAR AFTER THE SUPREME
COURT LEGALIZED SAME-SEX MARRIAGE,
ANOTHER SOCIAL MOVEMENT IS
POISED TO CHALLENGE DEEPLY HELD
CULTURAL BELIEFS
BY KATY STEINMETZ
Laverne Cox has gone
from being bullied
for appearing feminine
as a kid in Mobile, Ala.,
to acting in Orange
Is the New Black and
becoming a public face
for the transgender
movement.
The
Star

supporters push for changes in schools, hospitals, workplaces,
prisons and the military. We are in a place now, Cox tells Time,
where more and more trans people want to come forward and
say, This is who I am. And more trans people are willing to tell
their stories. More of us are living visibly and pursuing our
dreams visibly, so people can say, Oh yeah, I know someone who
is trans. When people have points of reference that are human-
izing, that demysties difference.
The transgender revolution still has a long way to go. Trans
people are signicantly more likely to be impoverished, un-
employed and suicidal than other Americans. They represent
a sliver of the populationan estimated 0.5%which can
make it harder for them to gain acceptance. In a recent survey
conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, 65% of
Americans said they have a close friend or family member who
is homosexual, while 9% said they have one who is transgender.
And as the trans movement has gained momentum, opponents
have been drawn in to ght, many of them social conservatives
who cut their teeth and fattened their mailing lists opposing
same-sex marriage. But perhaps the biggest obstacle is that trans
people live in a world largely built on a xed and binary deni-
tion of gender. In many places, they are unwelcome in the mens
bathroom and the womens. The effect is a constant reminder
that they dont belong.
During her speech, Cox recalled being bullied and chased
home from school as kids called her a sissy and a fag, being put
into therapy to be cured of feminine behavior and getting as-
saulted on the street by strangers. She talked of downing a bottle
of pills as a sixth-grader, hoping to end her impure thoughts.
And she spoke about those who didnt wake up, after suffering
violence at their own hands or others, driven by the enduring
belief that trans people are sick and wrong.
Some folks, they just dont understand. And they need to get
to know us as human beings, she says. Others are just going
to be opposed to us forever. But I do believe in the humanity of
people and in peoples capacity to love and to change.
Fixing Natures Mistake
history is filled with people who did not fit societys
denition of gender, but modern Americas journey begins after
World War II with a woman named Christine Jorgensen. (This
article will use the names, nouns
and pronouns preferred by individu-
als, in accordance with Times style.)
ex- gi becomes blonde beauty: op-
erations transform bronx youth,
trumpeted the New York Daily News
headline on Dec. 1, 1952. Inside was
the tale of a soldier born George, who
sailed for Denmark after being honor-
ably discharged, in search of a surgeon
to physically transform him into her.
Nature made a mistake, Jorgensen wrote in a letter that the
paper printed, which I have had corrected.
The blonde with a fair leg and a fetching smile, as Time
described Jorgensen in 1953, became a national sensation and
led some Americans to question ideas they had long taken for
granted, like what makes a man a man and whether a man can,
in fact, be a woman. At the time, the word transgender was not
yet in use. Instead, America called Jorgensen a transvestite (trans
meaning across and vest referring to vestments, or clothes);
40
today, those who seek medical interven-
tions are commonly known as transsexuals.
Columnists wondered whether Jorgensen
could be cured or treated, and in the de-
cades that followed, many in the medical
establishment viewed transsexualitylike
homosexualityas something to correct. In
1980, seven years after homosexuality was
removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, a classication
bible published by the American Psychiatric
Association, transsexualism was added.
Eventually that entry was replaced by
what psychiatrists called gender identity
disorder, and in 2013 that diagnosis was su-
perseded by gender dysphoria, a change ap-
plauded by many in the trans community.
Gender identity disorder [implied] that
your identity is wrong, that you are wrong,
says Jamison Green, president of the World
Professional Association for Transgender
Health. The change has helped remove
the stigma of mental illness (though some
worry that removing disorder may make
it harder to access health care like hormone
therapy). Green describes gender dyspho-
ria as discomfort with the gender a person
is living in, a sensation that much of the
population will never feel. Most people are
happy in the gender that theyre raised, says
Elizabeth Reis, a womens and gender studies
professor at the University of Oregon. They
dont wake up every day questioning if they
are male or female.
For many trans people, the body they
were born in is a suffocating costume they
are unable to take off. There was a sense of
who I was to myself that did not match who
I was to other people, and for me that felt
profoundly lonely, says Susan Stryker, 52, a
professor of gender and womens studies at
the University of Arizona who transitioned 22 years ago. It felt
like being locked in a dark room with my eyes and ears cut off
and my tongue cut out and not being able to connect my own
inner experience with an outer world.
Understanding why someone would feel that way requires
viewing sex and gender as two separate conceptssex is biologi-
cal, determined by a babys birth anatomy; gender is cultural, a
set of behaviors learned through human interaction. Wearing
dresses didnt feel right, says Ashton Lee, a 17-year-old from
Manteca, Calif. When I was in kindergarten and preschool, we
used to line up in girls lines and boys lines, and I would always
struggle on which line to choose, because I didnt feel like a girl
but I didnt look like the other boys.
Sexual preferences, meanwhile, are a separate matter al-
together. There is no concrete correlation between a persons
gender identity and sexual interests; a heterosexual woman, for
instance, might start living as a man and still be attracted to
men. One oft-cited explanation is that sexual orientation de-
termines who you want to go to bed with and gender identity
determines what you want to go to bed as.
SOCIETY | TRANSGENDER
Paisley Currah
decided to
transition after
he already had
tenure as a
political-science
professor
at Brooklyn
College, City
University of
New York. Even
in that situation,
I was nervous,
Currah says. He
was surprised
by how smoothly
it went, though
he believes
trans men
generally
face fewer
challenges than
trans women.
The culture
tends to assign
more authority
and gravitas
to men, says
Currah, noting
that he doesnt
get as many
late papers
now as when
he appeared
female. It
makes me think
a lot about the
pervasiveness
of sexism.
The
College
Prof
THERE ARE SOME
1.5 MILLION
TRANS PEOPLE
IN THE U.S.
ROUGHLY
0.5% OF THE
POPULATION


42
dance with their gender identity, regardless of the sex listed on
their school records. We introduce this concept called gender
identity, and I dont have any idea what that is. Can you claim
a racial identity based on how you feel or the community that
youre growing up in? Can I claim to be an African American if I
feel African American?
Many trans people choose to use hormones and puberty
blockers that can result in beards on biological females and
breasts on biological males. Some go so far as to get facial femi-
nization surgery or speech therapy, training a tenor voice to
spring alto. According to one study, about two-thirds seek some
form of medical treatment and about one-third seek surgery.
While there remains a public fascination with whether any
trans person has had top or bottom reassignments, these
are highly personal decisions that can have as much to do with
economic status or the desire to have kids as physical preference.
No matter their anatomy, transgender people want to liveand
be identiedaccording to how they feel: to be able to dress
and be treated like a woman or a man regardless of what their
parents or delivering nurses may have assumed at birth. The
That complexity is one reason some trans people reject all
labels, seeing gender as a spectrum rather than a two-option
multiple-choice question. The word transgender, which came into
wider use in the 1990s after public health ofcials adopted it, is
often used as an umbrella term for all rejections of the norm, from
cross-dressers who are generally happy in their assigned gender
to transsexuals like Jorgensen.
For the majority of people who are accustomed to understand-
ing gender in xed terms, the concept of a spectrum can be over-
whelming. Last year, when Facebook broadened its options for
gender beyond male and female, users suddenly had some 50
categories to choose from. We generally like to think of things
in black-and-white terms, and this just raises so many gray areas,
says Reis. Even some people who are sympathetic to the idea of
being trans just throw their hands up in despair.
Others reject the notion that a person could have their gender
assigned as male at birth but in reality be a woman. Gender is a
known factyoure either male or female, says Frank Schubert,
a political organizer who led a failed effort to overturn a new
California law that lets students use school facilities in accor-
SOCIETY | TRANSGENDER
TO HEAR CASSIDY LYNN
CAMPBELLS STORY, VISI T
lightbox.time.com
Cassidy Lynn Campbell,
left, holds hands with her
friend Victoria Avalos, 18,
who has also transitioned
from male to female.
Weeks after Campbell
came out as transgender
in her senior year, the
17-year-olds classmates in
Huntington Beach, Calif.,
elected her homecoming
queen. Her father, who still
introduces her as his son
Lance, hasnt been so
accepting. I wish he could
see me as what I want
him to see me, she says.
The
Homecoming
Queen

ago. I had shut myself down emotionally by being in the
closet, and grief opened that up again, she says. The pros-
pect of proclaiming, in early middle age, that she was ready
to realize herself as a woman was terrifying. There were all
these things I was convinced I would lose instantly if I came
out, she says. Some of those fears came true: within a week,
her wife of nearly 23 years contacted a divorce attorney. The
house was sold within the year.
Hayes is certain she could have had a completely different
life if she had been born later. If the Internet had existed, in
any meaningful sense, when I was 21, I would have gured
it out, she says. That alternate reality sits opposite Hayes in
a tank top and short purple hair. Teagan Widmer, 25, grew
up a pastors son in Northern California and now lives as a
programmer in Berkeley, where she designed an app called
Refuge Restrooms to map gender-neutral, safe bathrooms
around the world. As with many other millennial trans peo-
ple, Widmers transition started with search results. As a
middle schooler who had secretly experimented with wear-
ing womens clothes, she queried, How do I hide my penis?
focus on whats in trans peoples pants is maddening for us,
says Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for
Transgender Equality. Its just not what any of us thinks is an
exceptionally interesting thing about us.
The Generation Gap
even in the trans community, male-to-female transitions
are thought to be more common than female-to-male, though
experts caution that exact gures are unknown. At a bus-
tling brunch spot in San Franciscos
Mission neighborhood, Rose Hayes
sits straight up, her curly hair in
a side-do that hangs around her
neck. She and other trans women
male at birth but now identifying
as femaleare discussing what it
was like to start their transitions.
Hayes, a software-engineering di-
rector at Google, decided to transi-
tion after a friend died a few years
time June 9, 2014 43
65% OF
AMERICANS HAVE
A CLOSE FRIEND
OR RELATIVE
WHO IS GAY;
9% HAVE ONE
WHO IS TRANS
Ashton Lee, 17, told
his family when he was
15 that he no longer
identied as Kimberly
Marie. He soon started
ghting for a new
California law, which
allows K-12 students to
use bathrooms and play
on sports teams that
align with their gender
identity, regardless of
their sex at birth. He says
the law has eased
bullying at his school.
People have been
standing down, Lee says,
because they know
theyll get in trouble.
The
Teenage
Activist

44
That was the beginning of an education that led to Widmers
coming out in graduate school.
Her story is a reminder that the Internet has been a revo-
lutionary tool for the trans community, providing answers
to questions that previous generations had no one to ask, as
well as robust communities of support. And the digital world
offers a way to test the water before jumping in. As Widmer
puts it, You can be yourself on the Internet before you can be
yourself in person.
It has also helped expose the broader culture to trans people.
Coxs role on Orange has turned her into a sought-after celebrity.
The luxury retailer Barneys featured trans models in a recent
ad campaign. And a memoir by the writer Janet Mock that told
of her transition from living as young Charles in Hawaii be-
came a best seller. The result has been a radical increase in trans
consciousness. When Reis began teaching
a trans-issues class at the University of Or-
egon in the late 1990s, most of the students
already a self-selected group highly attuned
to gender politicshad no clue what the
word transgender meant. Now, she says,
nearly everyone who enters her classroom
already knows the term.
That awareness is creating new possibili-
ties. This fall, students in Huntington Beach,
Calif., elected a 17-year-old trans girl named
Cassidy Lynn Campbell as their home-
coming queen. Standing on the football eld
in a $23 dress, she broke down in tears when
her name was announced. I was crying and
sobbing and weeping, she says. I was over-
whelmed by what a statement it would be,
how big it would be.
Her teary-eyed crowninga striking
event in an Orange County town that was
ranked as one of the 25 most conservative
in the nation in 2005, according to the Bay
Area Center for Voting Researchwas cel-
ebrated by many as a tolerance milestone.
But as Campbell thumbed through con-
gratulations from strangers on Twitter after
the game, she also stumbled upon sneers from peers at school,
many saying she wasnt a real girl and didnt deserve to win.
She posted a YouTube video that evening, which she later took
down, of her crying in front of the computer wearing her sash
and tiara. I can never have something good happen to me and
people just be happy for me. Never. Im always judged and Im
always looked down upon, she said, wiping tears away with
long acrylic nails. Sometimes I wonder if its even worth it, if I
should just go back to being miserable and just be a boy and hate
myself and hate my life.
Speaking about the incident months later, Campbell says it
was an overreaction. But in the raw pain of her confession is a
revelation about how wounding it can be to live outside soci-
etys boundaries, even in this more tolerant age. The statistics
also bear it out. According to the National Transgender Discrimi-
nation Survey, a 2011 report on nearly 6,500 trans and gender-
nonconforming people from each state, nearly 80% of young
trans people have experienced harassment at school; 90% of
workers say theyve dealt with it on the job. Nearly 20% said they
had been denied a place to live, and almost 50% said they had been
SOCIETY | TRANSGENDER
Jamie Ewing,
28, says she
was discharged
from the
National Guard
in November
2013 after
superior ofcers
discovered she
was trans. Ewing
is now a defense
contractor, doing
similar work
for better pay.
I would trade
my current job
in a heartbeat
for the Army if
it meant I could
wear a uniform
again, she says.
The
Soldier


46 time June 9, 2014
red, not hired or denied a promotion because of their gender
status. A staggering 41% have attempted suicide, compared with
1.6% of the general population.
The Personal Is Political
the transgender law center takes up one floor of a skin-
ny building on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, Calif. The staff
there has noticed a shift in the mood, in part because their help-
line calls have changed in number and tone. In prior genera-
tions, says legal director Ilona Turner, kids who knew they were
transgender told their families Im a boy or Im a girl, and their
families had no context in which to place that other than Thats
not truestop saying that. In the past few years, the help line
has started ringing with parents asking what they can do to sup-
port their trans children.
On the other end of the line are mothers like Catherine Lee.
Her son Ashton told his family he identied as a boy when he
was a 15-year-old named Kimberly Marie. Lee soon became
an outspoken advocate for the Cali-
fornia law fought by a coalition of
social conservatives, which ensures
his right to use the boys bathroom
and play on the boys sports teams at
Manteca High School. When he came
out, his mom tried to be supportive,
but it wasnt easy. I found myself
making a lot of mistakes and using
the wrong pronouns and confusing
people sometimes, she says. I would
say, my son, my daughter, he or she . . . It was hard to get Ashton off
my tongue. Less than a year later Catherine was driving Ashton,
wearing his mohawk haircut and a tie, to Governor Jerry Browns
ofce in Sacramento, where he hand-delivered more than 5,000
signatures in support of the bill.
On May 15, Maryland Governor Martin OMalley signed a
law that protects trans people from being red or refused service
at a restaurant or otherwise mistreated because of their gender
identity. As in California, opponents have drawn a line in the
sand on bathroom access. I dont want men who think they are
women in my bathrooms and locker rooms, testied a Mary-
lander named Elaine McDermott at a hearing on the bill. I dont
want to be part of their make-believe delusion. Males are always
males. They cannot change. Im here to stand up for women,
children and their safety. That criticism rings hollow to state
senator Richard Madaleno, who had been pushing the bill for
nearly a decade: We hear this on every gay-rights issue. Theres
always this parade of outlandish consequences that are going to
occur that never do.
At least a dozen other states have instituted policies that al-
low students to play on the school sports team that aligns with
their gender identity, often after a panel conrms that theyve
demonstrated habitually living in that gender. One such stu-
dent is Mac Davis, an 11-year-old from Tacoma, Wash., who just
nished his rst season on the boys basketball team. Through
the window of a gym door, he looks like the other sixth-grade
boys playing volleyball in gym class: sporting short, dirty blond
hair and baggy jeans, checking his phone and playing rock,
paper, scissors for the serve. School administrators have tried
to be accommodating, instructing teachers to ignore the name
on the roll-call sheet and letting him change in a private area be-
fore practice. Our goal is to make him successful, says Bryant
Montessori principal Sandra Lindsay-Brown, so he has good
days and not bad days.
Mac has had plenty of bad days. I have almost always felt
alone, he says, sitting on a couch at home with his mom on his
11th birthday. Most of the time its like Im sitting in a corner,
until I make that one friend that helps me get up and dance. His
older sister, though protective, says she doesnt believe in [be-
ing] transgender and still refers to Mac as her sister. Sports have
provided a crucial outlet.
At womens colleges, administrators are struggling with how
to handle applications from trans women. An even larger ques-
tion looms over the military, where perhaps as many as 15,500
transgender troops await the day when they can serve openly. On
May 11, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel offered a spark of hope
when he said that the policy prohibiting their service continu-
ally should be reviewed and added that every qualied Ameri-
can who wants to serve our country should have an opportunity
if they t the qualications and can do it. Some advocates for
LGBT military personnel believe Hagels remarks foreshadow a
formal policy review. Others caution that the military remains a
slow-to-change institution that is only beginning to adapt to the
repeal of Dont ask, dont tell.
And then there is a far more basic challenge: how to get gender
markers changed on ofcial documents like drivers licenses,
birth certicates and passports. Thanks to the efforts of the
National Center for Transgender Equality and other advocates,
what in many cases used to require proof of surgery can now be
handled with a doctors note. But other obstacles abound. Many
insurance plans have explicit exclusions for treatments related to
gender transitions. Five statesCalifornia, Oregon, Connecticut,
Vermont, Coloradoas well as Washington, D.C., have prohib-
ited such clauses, and activists are pushing for more to follow
suit, arguing that many of the services transgender people seek,
like hormone-replacement therapy, are provided to nontrans
people for other reasons. Eighteen states and D.C. currently have
nondiscrimination measures that include gender identity. A
federal bill barring discrimination against gay and transgender
workers, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, passed the
Democratic-controlled Senate in November but has stalled in the
GOP-controlled House. Years may pass before the measure does.
after cox finished her speech at the nourse theater and
took questions about media stereotypes and trans sex workers, a
person emerged from backstage with a piece of lined notebook
paper, scrawled on by a child. The presenter read it to Cox: Im
Soleil. Im 6 and I get bullied. Since I get teased in school, I go to
the bathroom or to the ofce. What can I say to the kids who
tease me? What if they dont listen to me? The room was heavy
with sighs and empathyand then yells of solidarity as it was
discovered that Soleil was in the audience. An older woman
made her way to the stage carrying Soleil, who wore a polka-dot
shirt. Youre beautiful, Cox told Soleil. Youre perfect just the
way you are. I was bullied too, and I was called all kinds of names,
and now, she said, smiling, Im a big TV star. The crowd erupt-
ed again, and Soleil reached out her hand. Dont let anything
that they say get to you, Cox continued. Just know that youre
amazing. From the audience, it was impossible to tell if Soleil
had been born female or male, whether the child identied as
a boy or girl. And Cox says it doesnt matter. We need to pro-
tect our children, she says, and allow them to be themselves.
with reporting by eliza gray/new york n
SOCIETY | TRANSGENDER
1 IN 4
TRANSGENDER
AMERICANS
SAY THEY HAVE
LOST A JOB
BECAUSE OF
GENDER STATUS

TELEVISION
Close
Quarters
Move over, Jack
Sparrow. Set on a
tropical island in the
year 1729, NBCs
new Friday-night
drama Crossbones
(premiering May 30)
stars Emmy winner
John Malkovich as
the treacherous pirate
king Blackbeard,
whose quest for a
powerful treasure is
complicated by the ar-
rival of an undercover
English spy (Richard
Coyle) on a mission
to assassinate him.
Dark, twisted char-
acters with swash-
buckling accents?
Sounds like the per-
fect job for creator Neil
Cross, who previously
helmed the acclaimed
British crime drama
Luther and has also
written for Spooks and
Doctor Who.
The Culture
I REALLY DONT CRY THAT OFTEN. BUT I DO CRY EVERY DAY WHEN IM ON THE SET. PAGE 48
BOOKS
American Dream
Cristina Henrquezs novel The
Book of Unknown Ameri-
cans, out June 3, follows
a Mexican familyand
the fellow immigrants they
meetas they give up every-
thing to move to the U.S. and
care for their injured daughter.
MOVIES
Edge of Glory
Tom Cruise just cant
stop dying in Edge of
Tomorrow, an ambitious
summer blockbuster
about a soldier who mys-
teriously keeps reliving
his fatal battle against an
alien race. See it June 6.
MUSIC
Hands Up
Only Run, which will be
released June 3, is the
keyboard-heavy fourth
album from indie rockers
Clap Your Hands Say
Yeah. The LP features
an appearance by the
Nationals Matt Berninger.
THE WEEK
HALT AND CATCH
FIRE IGNITES AMC
C
R
O
S
S
B
O
N
E
S
:

N
B
C
;

B
O
O
K
:

K
N
O
P
F
;

C
R
U
I
S
E
:

W
A
R
N
E
R

B
R
O
S
.
By Nolan Feeney


The Culture
Being Green. The
author of The Fault in
Our Stars watches his
book become a movie
By Lev Grossman
question: what is the job of a novelist
on the set of the movie adaptation of his book?
When John Green arrived to watch The Fault
in Our Stars being shot in Pittsburgh on a
cold morning last September, it was a bit like
Aslan making an appearance in Narnia: here
comes the benevolent deity, padding amiably
through his creation. Everybody wanted to say
hi. Shailene Woodleywho plays the hero,
Hazelsaid hi. The director, Josh Boone, said
hi. The guy holding the boom mike said hi. I
dont know what authors are supposed to do on
movie sets, Green admitted, and it wasnt clear
that anybody else knew either. But everybody
was happy to see him anyway.
Thats the thing about John Green, or one of
the things anyway: people are generally glad to
see him. Green is the author (or co-author) of
ve best-selling young-adult novels, of which
The Fault in Our Stars is the most recent and the
most best-selling (though theyre all pretty
popular). But hes also what is commonly and
increasingly less oxymoronically called an In-
ternet celebrity, presiding over a sprawling
social-media empire that runs largely on his
immense personal charm. With his brother
Hank he heads a YouTube channel with 2 mil-
lion subscribers and an organization called
Nerdghters that advances social causes and
generally celebrates nerdiness. He has 2.4 mil-
lion followers on Twitter. In an inversion of the
natural order of things, Green is more famous
than a lot of the actors in the movie.
Just as Green is a different kind of author,
The Fault in Our Stars is a different kind of story
from Twilight and The Hunger Games and the
other major young-adult franchises of the past
decade. Most obviously its a work of realism,
inspired by ve months Green spent working
as a chaplain in a childrens hospital, as well as
by his friendship with a teenage cancer patient
named Esther Earl, who died in 2010. The
books heroes, Hazel and Augustus, are two
clever and charming teenagers who live in In-
dianapolis. They both have cancer. Hers is in
her thyroid and her lungsshe wheels around
an oxygen canister to help her breatheand he
lost a leg to it. Hazel and Augustus meet in a
cancer support group. They fall in love.
Without the cancer The Fault in Our Stars
would just be an intensely wise and charming
book about teenage romance. But the fact that
the main characters are terminally ill makes it
something more. Watching Hazel and Augus-
tus summon up the courage to love each other,
even in the face of constant pain and an almost
certain early death, is a deeply, powerfully
moving experience. The Fault in Our Stars is a
great romantic comedy, but it has the long,
dark shadow of a great tragedy.
Still, it wasnt supposed to be a movie, for the
simple reason that Green didnt want it to be
one. I did not want to sell the movie rights for
The Fault in Our Stars, Green says. It was a very
personal story for me. Also Id had some unhap-
py experiences before, and I didnt want a mov-
ie I didnt like being made from a book thats so
important to me. This book frankly is more im-
portant to me than my other books. (He
laughs. But he doesnt take it back.)
Its important to a lot of other people too. The
Fault in Our Stars has 10.7 million copies in
print, and after 77 weeks its still No. 1 on the
New York Times young-adult best-seller list.
Naturally Hollywood calledbut Green said
no. Everyone was like, Oh, its a Love Story for
Greens books have
always been successful,
but The Fault in Our Stars
took him to another
level: a year after it was
published he held four
spots on the New York
Times best-seller list
Photograph by Gregg Segal for TIME

50 time June 9, 2014
The Culture
|
Movies
delivered the line 10 times in 10 different
ways. Then they did an extra take where
she told him to go to hell, in case they
needed a version for TV.
For Green part of the appeal of being
on set is the company. Writing novels is a
solitary pursuit: if theres a collaborative
element to it, its between writer and
reader, two people who generally never
meet. You never get to see that collabora-
tion happen, Green says. It all happens
alone in their room and youre not there.
And if you were there it would be super-
weird, like watching someone sleep or
something. Here I feel that collaboration
you have with readers, except I get to wit-
ness it and be part of it.
Though witnessing it can be a little un-
canny. Its like Im hallucinating some-
thing I imagined six years ago, Green
says. So its like an extremely delayed
hallucination. One crucial scene in the
book takes place at the Anne Frank
House in Amsterdam, and even if youre
not the author, its a bit surreal to walk
into a darkened warehouse in Pittsburgh
and nd a meticulous, full-scale repro-
duction of Anne Franks home inside it.
Witnessing it can also be upsetting: mak-
ing The Fault in Our Stars brought back
some of the raw emotions that inspired
the book in the rst place. I think the
rst thing that I saw was Hazels house,
Green says. When they opened the
doorI f-cking cried. I was thinking a lot
about Esther, because Shai with her puffy
cheeks looks a little like Esther with the
cannulaits very difcult to describe.
In fact, if theres one thing everybody
agreed on about Greens role on set, its
that it involved a lot of crying. Hes en-
couraging, says Boone. Mostly hes cry-
ing behind the monitors. Like I showed
him the rst cut of the throwing-eggs
scene at Monicas car and he laughed up-
roariously the whole time and then cried
at the end. And then he asked to see it two
more times. Green conrms this, up to a
point. Here they think Im such an emo-
tional person, he says. I really dont cry
that often. But I do cry every day when
Im on the set. They make fun of me. Nat
Wolffwho plays Isaac, Augustus best
Everybody was like,
Its a Love Story for a
new generation! And
I was like, Thats the
worst thing you
couldve said to me.
a new generation! And I was like, That
was the worst thing you couldve possibly
said to me. Thats where things stood
until he heard from two producers, Wyck
Godfrey and Isaac Klausner, whom he
knew already from an earlier project.
When they described the movie they
wanted to make, it was the same one that
was in Greens head. I wanted it to be a
funny movie and a sweet movie, he says,
but I also wanted it to be a movie about
asking the question, What constitutes a
good life? And whether its possible to
have a good and meaningful life even if
you have a short life.
The movie was greenlighted with a
budget of $12 million, which now seems
like a steal for a movie that is shaping up
to be one of the summers blockbusters.
But at the time it seemed like a risky
proposition. It was a lot of money to be
spending on a movie about dying chil-
dren. The idea of having a female lead in
a movie wear a nasal cannula for every
moment in the movie, Green says,
thats a very difcult thing to convince
a studio to do.
Green was involved with preproduction
he watched the auditions and made notes
on the scriptbut he didnt plan on spend-
ing a lot of time watching the movie actu-
ally get made. Then a funny thing
happened: he couldnt stay away. I was go-
ing to come just for the rst few days, just
to get a feel for the set and say hi to all the
actors and whatever. But immediately
they were like, Just come back and stay
the whole time! And I was like, All right!
So for most of the shoot, he ew to Pitts-
burgh on Sunday nights and then back to
his home in Indianapolis for weekends.
Its like having a great audience right
there, Boone says. Hes so pure. Hes not
movie-obsessed. Like his favorite movie is
Die Hard4. I dont think he was joking
when he told me that.
On this particular day they were shoot-
ing a scene set in the home of a ctional
writer named Peter Van Houten, who is
Hazels favorite author but who turns out
to be kind of a jerk. When Boone called
action, Woodley, who is in reality a
healthy and relatively extroverted
22-year-old, somehow sank into herself
and became thin and pale and quiet and
16. (It helped that Ansel Elgort, who plays
Augustus, is 6 ft. 4 in. She looked tiny
next to him.) The scene called for Hazel to
tell Van Houten, played by Willem Dafoe
in soiled pajamas, Go f-ck yourself! She
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Love and death In Greens story about
cancer patients Hazel (Woodley) and
Augustus (Egort), their feelings, not their
disease, are center stage
friendsaid, John Green cries at a good
meal. And thats not true! Thats not a fair
assessment at all.
The actors studied him for whatever
bits of himself he put in his characters,
which they could then take and use in
their own performances. Until I met John
I didnt really understand the tone and the
voice of Augustus, Elgort says. This
superconcise, supersmart way thats so
witty but not annoying. Once I heard John
talk, it made sense to me. Green also func-
tioned as something like the movies con-
science. After a take, people often glanced
over at him to get his reaction, to conrm
that what they were doing matched up
with what was in his mind. If youre get-
ting something wrong, he doesnt say
much, Godfrey says, but therell be a
look on his face where youre a little bit
like, O.K., whats up? And hell say it.
Green, though, insists he hardly ever
overruled anybody on set. The only ex-
ample he can come up with is the time he
tried to get Elgort to take off his Knicks
cap, becauseas is made quite explicit in
the bookAugustus doesnt like basket-
ball. But it turned out Elgort wasnt in
costume. He just happened to be wearing
a Knicks cap that day. It stayed on.
If Green had a job on set, it may just
have been to radiate his particular brand
of enthusiasm. It was to be John Green.
Everyone has their biggest fan on set
when John is here, Woodley says. He is
my biggest fan, he is Ansels biggest fan,
he is Josh Boones biggest fan, he is the
boom operators biggest fan. In between
takes, Green met Dafoe for the rst time,
and they rapidly established that Dafoes
parents lived near the house in Florida
where Green grew up, and one sensed
that before long Green would be Dafoes
biggest fan too.
As the worlds ultimate authority on
the work of John Green, hes in a position
to say, You got it right. The problem with
movie sets is that everybody has an im-
portant job, Green says, and that job
naturally comes with some stress. But I
dont have an important job at all here.
And when theyre all like, This take, that
take, this take, that take, Im like, But
you know what? They were all pretty
good though. n
Stars Starlet. Shailene Woodley on love, death
and the age of the human soul
Shailene Woodley was so passionate about
John Greens love story that she offered to
work as a caterer on the set of the movie if
she didnt get the role of Hazel. She neednt
have worried. The 22-year-old brought both
Green and the director to tears during her
audition. Off set, Woodley is as famous for
her eccentric beliefs as she is for her excep-
tional talent: shes a proponent of a hunter-
gatherer lifestyle that involves eating clay,
sunning herself between her legs and not
owning a cell phone. Woodley sat down with
TIME to talk about what makes a healthy
partnership, the afterlife and why shes not
a feminist.
What jumped out at you about the
script for The Fault in Our Stars?
I always know intuitively whether a script is
something I fall in love with or not. I get but-
teries. If I get butteries, its something Ill
ght for.
Do you think that teenagers can fall in
love in the same way that adults can?
Absolutely. I think age is one of the
hamartias [a aw likely to lead to a down-
fall] of modern-day society. When people
criticize people for dating someone
whether theyre older or youngeryou nev-
er know what two people share in common
on a soul level. I think souls know no age.
The only thing that knows age is the mind,
and the minute you leave that behind,
some people have chemical connections
and some people dont. Love isnt limited to
marriage and sex and whatnot. Teenagers
who fall in lovetheir love is just as real,
just as visceral and just as worthy as that of
adults who fall in love.
Theres a lot of discussion in the
lm about what happens to
people after they die. Do you
believe in an afterlife?
I believe in energy, and I believe
that we all come from the earth and
we all come back to the earth. And
then what happens spiritually or
mentally or emotionallyI have no
idea. Its like what Peter Pan says: To
die would be a very great adventure.
John Green has said he was
consciously trying to subvert
gender stereotypes. How do
you think Augustus
and Hazels rela-
tionship is dif-
ferent from
what we usually
see in Hollywood
movies?
I think its so different be-
cause theyre best friends at
the core, and then the ro-
mance and the sexual attrac-
tion get explored later in the book and the
movie. And I think thats what healthy part-
nerships are: two people who nd a really
deep friendship and sense of pride and trust
and respect for one another. I think its in-
credibly realistic.
Youve talked about being conscious
of the messages you send to young fe-
male fans when youre taking roles. Do
you consider yourself a feminist?
No, because I love men, and I think the idea
of Raise women to power, take men away
from the power is never going to work out
because you need balance. With myself, Im
very in touch with my masculine side. Im
50% feminine and 50% masculine, same as
I think a lot of us are ...
My biggest thing is really sisterhood more
than feminism. I dont know how we as
women expect men to respect us, because
we dont even seem to respect one another.
Theres so much jealousy, so much compari-
son and envy. Its just so silly and heart-
breaking in a way. I think that movie The
Other Woman looks really good, because I
think its really neat that it shows women
coming together and supporting each other.
Even though they come together to
bring down a man?
Yeah, but they created a sisterhood. He did
something wrong, and theyre going to go af-
ter him for it. I think thats great.
Youre known for living such a healthy
lifestyle. Where do you get your health
advice from?
I pick up tips from everywhere, but the In-
ternet is such a great database. There is an
amazing website by this man named
Daniel VitalisI would say 90% of
how I live my life is because of
him. He talks about rewilding
awakening our inner wildness and
returning to our nature and the
nature of our ancestors. Thats so
important because as humans
were just creatures.
Any health tips you can share?
Ive realized that worry is the
product of a future that we
cannot guarantee and guilt is
the product of a past we
cannot change. Once that
clicked in, it became easier
to live this lighter life. And
the happier I am, the
healthier I am and the bet-
ter I look and feel.
What do you do to
unwind?
Theres nothing like a good
candle-music sesh.
ELIANA DOCKTERMAN

The Culture
52 time June 9, 2014
in 2008, as the u. s. was about to elect
its rst black President, the major broad-
cast networks announced a fall schedule
that featured only one show starring a
person of color. And that depended on
your denitions of person and of color: the
series, Foxs The Cleveland Show, was ani-
mated, and its African-American lead
was voiced by a white guy.
The ensuing years have proved, from
Trayvon Martin to Donald Sterling, that
the Obama age did not usher in a post-
racial paradise. But heres one sign of
hope and change: those same broadcast-
ers just announced what is likely their
most racially diverse new schedule ever.
There will be sitcoms about African-
American, Hispanic and Asian-American
families; dramas starring black women; a
music-business drama about a black fam-
ily; and an ambitious legal drama about
race in America from the screenwriter of
12 Years a Slave. (All this after Comedy
Central named Larry Wilmore, The Daily
Shows senior black correspondent, to
host The Minority Report after Stephen
Colbert leaves next year.)
TV has been through this cycle before:
the networks announce a vanilla sched-
ule, protests arise, things get better for a
while, until they dont. But theres a rea-
son to think the change will be more last-
ing this timethe only reason to believe
anything in Hollywood: money.
The main audience for the networks
schedule announcements is advertisers.
Once, networks would pitch the few
shows with minority leads by scheduling
them in urban blocks or assuring Madi-
son Avenue that white viewers wouldnt
ee shows with stars of color. Inclusive-
ness was nice, but would it pay?
Today, though, advertisers know it
does. When Coca-Cola aired a striking
Super Bowl ad with America the Beauti-
ful sung in languages other than
English, it bet that in todays America
the multicultural halo was worth any
Colors of Money
The new TV market
demands diversity
By James Poniewozik
xenophobic pushback. Interracial or gay
couples have been in ads for Cheerios,
Chevrolet, Banana Republic and Honey
Maid graham crackers.
Meanwhile, the networks have proof
that minority stars are not commercial
suicide. Indian American Mindy Kaling
is going into her third year on The Mindy
Project, while two of the biggest hit dra-
mas, Scandal and Sleepy Hollow, star black
women, as does CBSs summer sci- tent-
pole Extant, with Halle Berry. This isnt
some condescending toleranceits
viewers of all colors wanting authentici-
ty, a world that looks like their world,
where white is no longer the default.
And its truer the younger the audience
gets. More than 40% of millennial adults
are nonwhite. Youth-oriented ABC Fami-
ly has for years cast shows like The Fosters
and Switched at Birth with attention to
race, disability and sexual orientation.
Now its former chief, Paul Lee, runs ABC,
the network with the most diverse fall
schedule. Youre going to see shows re-
ecting the already changed face of
America, he told advertisers.
Young people want diversity. Advertis-
ers want young people. Networks want
advertisers. That may not be stirring ide-
alism, but it works. Diversity achieved
through shame can fade when the head-
lines do. Diversity demanded through the
market is sturdier, because media compa-
nies desire for money never fades.
Of course the shows, like any shows,
need to be good. Creatively, Im most
excited about how this new crop is aware
of the complexities of ethnic cross-
pollination today. In ABCs Fresh off the
Boat, based on chef Eddie Huangs mem-
oir of growing up Taiwanese-American
in the 90s, young Eddie (Hudson Yang) is
obsessed with hip-hop culture and
African-American rappers like Notorious
B.I.G. In Black-ish (produced by Wilmore),
Anthony Anderson plays a family man
grappling with what it means to be black
in an afuent, largely white community.
These shows are engaging with a cul-
ture whose boundaries are more porous
a world thats not black and white but
black-ish, white-ish, yellow-ish, brown-ish.
Theres still work to do. Stereotypes havent
disappeared. TV has hardly become per-
fect. But its getting better . . . ish. n
Tuned In
Scandal
Extant
Fresh off the Boat
How to Get Away With Murder
Black-ish


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The Culture
54 time June 9, 2014
in the current pop market, theres
no wrong way to be a diva. The lat-
est evidence: three new releases from
female pop artistsall issued within
a two-day period, all operating outside
radios Top 10highlight paths to ful-
lling careers that dont require Hunger
Gamesstyle death matches to reach the
top of the charts.
Of the three singers dropping new
songs on May 26 and 27veteran Ameri-
can star Mariah Carey, British reality-
show alumna Cher Lloyd and Swedish
underdog RobynCarey has weathered
the most ups and downs (remember Glit-
ter?) while chasing the relevance she had
in the 90s and reclaimed in the mid-2000s.
After a number of delays and false starts,
her 14th studio album resembles a ploy
for attentionat rst glance. The al-
bums title, Me. I Am Mariah . . . the Elusive
Chanteuse, is so fabulously over the top, it
could almost be a joke; her young chil-
dren with husband Nick Cannon are fea-
tured artists, credited as DemBabies;
one song has a hashtag for a title, while
anothergulpprominently features a
harmonica. (At least it comes courtesy of
Stevie Wonder.)
But dont let Careys creative use of punc-
tuation fool you. The album, her rst in
ve years, is low on gimmickry. #Beauti-
ful opens with a bluesy guitar riff that as-
suages any worries about the titles nod to
Internet culture. Contributing a verse to
the track is R&B crooner Miguel, one of
several party guests Carey shufes in and
out like a master hostess who knows how
to keep things lively. The hip-hop kiss-off
Thirsty features a sterling beat from Hit-
Boy (whos produced tracks for Beyonc,
Kanye West and Jay Z), but strip away its
bells and whistles and the songs hook
would sound right at home in a piano bar.
Carey often references the pastthe ti-
tle is from a childhood drawing, while the
Divas for Every Demographic. A trio of
new releases shows pops niche power
By Nolan Feeney
disco-inspired Meteorite quotes Andy
Warhols 15 minutes of famebut she
doesnt dwell on it. Nowhere on the record
do Carey and her ve-octave voice sound
desperate to please, though nothing
reaches the soaring heights of 2005s We
Belong Together. Carey hasnt had a
Top10 hit in ve years, but even when she
(relatively) underperforms, her numbers
are nothing to scoff at. #Beautiful, which
peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100
chart, was still certied platinum. Critics
may hail newcomer Ariana Grande as the
new Mariah, but Carey remains an icon.
Call her Mariah, the original chanteuse
a diva with staying power.
Enter the Upstart
at the other end of the spectrum
is Cher Lloyd, who is half Careys age and
currently trying to prove that she too
is capable of longevity. Lloyd is a kind
of pop act that didnt exist a decade ago.
She got her start in 2010 as a teenage
contestant on Simon Cowells U.K. sing-
ing competition The X Factor, covering
Jay Z and rapping over Coldplay. During
her stint on the show, where she placed
fourth, Cowell affectionately called her a
brat, and the name stuckboth for better
(her hyperloyal, social-media-savvy fans
call themselves Brats) and for worse (it
cemented her drama-queen reputation,
which Lloyd now admits wasnt far off).
On her 2011 debut, Sticks & Stones,
Lloyd incorporated Top40 guitar pop,
dubstep and Nicki Minajs hip-hop the-
atrics. At times, her coquettish persona
sounded obnoxious and grating as she
sang about never growing up. But on her
sophomore effort, Sorry Im Late, Lloyd de-
cided to do just that. Though its odd to
hear an artist whos not yet 21 sing about
the pains of getting old, Sorry Im Late
abandons what made her polarizing
without losing what makes her interest-
ing. She ditches the rapping for more
power ballads in the vein of Pinkwhose
mix of punky personality and poise of-
fers Lloyd a career blueprintbut re-
prises the unintelligible grunts and
cheeky humor of her sole Top20 single,
Want U Back. I wish I had style, I wish
I had ash/ Wish I woke up with a butt
and a rack, the petite star yearns on I
Wish, which features rapper T.I.
Though Lloyd has access to some of the
top producers in pop (Shellback, Max
Martin), she hasnt delivered the kind of
inescapable hit required for her to be add-
ed to the A list. (She comes very close on
Sirens and the uplifting Human.) But
Music
5
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55
then again, she may not need to. With a
very young, very female fan base as de-
voted as hers is, she has a sizable core au-
dience already in placeas long as it
grows up with her.
Songbird of a Different Feather
compared with carey and lloyd,
Robyn maintains the biggest cool factor,
mostly because she tries so hard not to be
cool. After having bubblegum-pop hits as a
teenager in the late 1990s, Robyn retreated
to her native Stockholm, where, unhappy
with her label, she founded her own
Konichiwa Records to release the edgy
electro-pop she longed to make. There,
she wrote theme songs for outsiders and
mists that made her a cult favorite long
before Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Kesha
(formerly Ke$ha) unleashed It Gets Better
anthems championing self-acceptance.
Still, one song from 2010s three-part
Body Talk, Dancing on My Own, found
its way into a high-prole spot on the rst
season of HBOs Girls. It was a perfect t.
The way Robyns albums reference public
transportation and the way she treats
dance oors like testing grounds for new
identities demonstrate a keen under-
standing of what its like to be a young
person in a big city. Robyn isnt about
popping bottles in the club; shes about
nding herself there. And though she
employs many robot metaphors in her
music, her observations about technolo-
gys role in everyday life are partly what
make her music so relatable and beloved
by both the cool kids and the critics who
revere her ingenuity and musicianship.
Saturday Night Live writers may have
memorably spoofed the st-swinging
choreography of her Call Your Girl-
friend video, but its the songs distinct
take on classic love-triangle stories that
helped make Robyn the hipsters pop
star. Her insistence on creative indepen-
dence impresses those who would dis-
count pop as a soulless, corporate
product, and it makes chart performance
a low priority.
Her latest work, the Do It Again mini-
album, is a stopgap collaboration with
Norwegian duo Ryksopp. That likely ex-
plains why a handful of its ve songs
buck the usual verse-chorus-verse-chorus
structure of pop songs in favor of atmo-
spheric instrumentals. Robyn barely
speaks on Sayit, while Monument
and Inside the Idle Hour Club approach
10 minutes in length.
Yet its also hard not to see the EP as a
reminder that as capable as Robyn is at
writing big, classic pop songs with uni-
versal themes, shes utterly uninterested
in celebrity or commercial success (and
with this outr release may be looking to
escape the pressure of following up such
an acclaimed album). While the title of
her Body Talk series indicates that Robyn
is one of the pop stars most committed to
getting fans moving, Do It Again doesnt
make it easy for anyone simply looking to
quickly freshen up a gym playlist.
Thats not to say listeners wont nd
such materialthe EPs title track is a
shimmering piece of elastic dance music
that could cause whiplash with all its
stuttering stops and starts. But by mak-
ing some of the most interesting pop
musiceven if its not always the most
digestibleRobyn offers a completely
different path to divahood: opting out of
the game entirely. n
MARIAH CAREY
THE QUEEN
CHER LLOYD
THE STARLET
ROBYN
THE HIPSTER
TWITTER FOLLOWERS
6,090,000
312,000
May 27
Sorry Im Late
May 27
Me. I Am Mariah . . .
the Elusive Chanteuse
May 26
Do It Again
NEW MUSIC
Released
Body Talk as
three mini-
albums in 2010
CRITICAL CONSENSUS
15,000,000
Rating out of 100, based on career average on Metacritic
51
81
61
Rocks more
than 20
tattoos
Has a
ve-octave
range
Songbird Stats
A color-coded comparison of the careers and social currency
of three singers releasing new music the same week
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The Culture
QUICK TALK
50 Cent
The In da Club singers latest
album drops June 3, but thats just
part of 50s plan for media domina-
tion. On June 7, Power, a show he
executive-produced, setwhere
else?in the world of New York
nightclubs, premieres on Starz.
Here, the 38-year-old entertainer
talks to Time. lily rothman
Your new album is called Animal
Ambition: An Untamed Desire to
Win. Whats the story behind the
title? A lot of the material in hip-
hop is [about] life and death. This
time, I searched for something
different. It has a more positive en-
ergy. The art is a picture of a lion.
Do you think lions are particularly
ambitious? Well, then it would
be the female lion, right? She
does all the hunting. I used
the lion because it has an
aggressive look. Good point.
Its the most violent image
you can have and be com-
pletely appropriate. Speak-
ing of titles, what does
power mean to you? For
me, the denition of power is
inuence. So who inuences
you? It changes. It doesnt matter
how much money you have, to
be honest. Ive seen people with
so much money theyre trying to
gure out how to buy cool. Can
you do that? Theyre trying! Ive
been places where people pay
me $100,000 to come for a walk-
through of a nightclub and
when I get there, its residential,
and there are 12 people. They
just want to be able to say they
met 50 at a crib.
ON MY
RADAR
XHBOs
Boardwalk
Empire
I dont get
a chance to
consistently
see anything
because Im not
in one town. I
was into [that
show] for a
minute, with
DVR.
VERBATIM
'e ||g|er ,ou c||m| |n |||e, ||e more
r|c|cu|ou ,our |a| w||| |ecome.'
CHARLIE DAY, star of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, delivering words of wisdom during a
commencement speech at his alma mater, Merrimack College, in North Andover, Mass.
THE DIGITS
233.3%
Increase in sales of songs by Solange
KnowlesBeyoncs younger sisterin the
week after video footage leaked of her now
infamous elevator ght with Jay Z
Pop Chart
BODY AND SOUL The Austrian painter Maria Lassnig
called her portrait style body awareness, and, as in
Sciencia, above, she aimed to translate onto canvas
not what bodies look like but what it feels like to be in
one. A survey of her work is on view at MOMAPS1
in New York City; after the artists May 6 death, the
museum extended the show through Sept. 7.
Not his
actual hat!
SIts not deliv-
ery, its a drone!
A Mumbai eatery
says it dropped
off its rst
pizza with an
unmanned
aircraft, after a
similar Dominos
stunt last year.
SA loyal Mariah
Carey fan fought
music piracy
as only a diva
would: he spent
$1,200 to y
to Germany
and buy her
album early.
SSip your Slur-
pee with a side
of irony this sum-
mer: 7-Elevens
mason jars
and mustache-
adorned straws
will bring all the
grungy hipsters
to the yard.
SFrequent y-
ers just got way
more y. Jay Z
opened a
scaled down
version of his
40/40 Club
sports-bar chain
in Atlantas
Hartseld-
Jackson Inter-
national Airport.
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DAY, HAT, NEYMAR, JAY Z: GETTY IMAGES; OPERA HOUSE: JIN LINPENGXINHUA/LANDOV; ANGRY BIRD: ROVIO; JOBS: ILLUSTRATION BY BROWN BIRD DESIGN FOR TIME;
50 CENT: LARRY BUSACCAGETTY IMAGES; SLURPEE: 7- ELEVEN; SCIENCIA (SCIENCE), 1998: MARIA LASSNIGCOURTESY THE ARTIST

ALL OF THE LIGHTS The sails of the Sydney Opera House are among the most recognizable architectural shapes in the
world. Since May 23, theyve also been canvases. As part of the annual Vivid Sydney light-and-music festivaltimed to
celebrate the start of winter, which is just beginning Down Underartists were commissioned to create a new video piece
to be projected onto the buildings white roof, where it will be shown every night through June 9.
ROUNDUP
Jobs That Are (Almost) Too Good to Be True
The China-based Giant Panda Protection and Research Centers recent
post about hiring a so-called panda nannysomeone paid to spend a year
documenting their time on its reserve in order to raise awareness about panda
endangermentled some animal lovers to call it the ultimate dream job.
But its not the only profession vying for the title.
$17,000+
BEER TASTER
Both major and
regional breweries hire
professionals to judge
brews on taste, texture
and market potential.
$31,000
WATERSLIDE
TESTER
SplashWorld resorts
hired a college student
last year to rate its
slides on the basis of
splash size, adrenaline
factor and more.
$80,000
NAIL ARTIST
Manicurist Pattie
Yankee has turned
celebs nailsincluding
Pinks and Katy
Perrysinto Pinterest-
worthy works of art.
$66,000+
WHISTLER
The best professional
whistlers have
performed Mozart
in concert halls and
recorded albums.
$40,000+
COOL HUNTER
Retailers and tech
companies routinely
hire trend forecasters
to determine whats
cool and whats not,
especially for younger
demographics.
$32,000
(per year)
PANDA NANNY
TThe engineer
who security-
proofed Presi-
dent Obamas
BlackBerry
revealed that it
cannot support
Angry Birds.
TBrazilian
soccer star
Neymar (full
name: Neymar
da Silva Santos
Jniora) has
kicked off
a mullet-hawk
craze among his
younger fans.
TKanye West
dropped a new
track, called
God Level, on
the same day
he married Kim
Kardashian.
TSome
New York par-
ents are hiring
professional
organizers to
pack their kids
suitcases for
sleepaway
campfor as
much as $250
an hour.
FOR TIMES COMPLETE
TV, FILM AND MUSIC
COVERAGE, VISIT
time.com/
entertainment
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By Kelly Conniff, Nolan Feeney, Lily Rothman and Laura Stampler

58 time June 9, 2014
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when you start a busi-
ness you have to do due dili-
gence, like nding out what
due diligence is. From what
Ive gathered, its exactly
like diligence except it requires people to
say do due, which Im guessing amuses
the business community.
I also found out that if Im going
to start a humor websitewhich Im
considering, since there are not enough
websitesIm going to have to deal with
patent trolls. These are entities that dont
actually make products but own patents
for vague ideas and send out mass letters
threatening to sue unless you pay them.
There are a lot of them, mostly because
while the federal government issued
fewer than 78,000 patents a year from
1966 to 1986, it has handed out more than
250,000 in each of the past two years.
Someone apparently got sick of look-
ing at that big pending pile and just
stamped them all.
To get started, I began looking into the
trolls who would affect my business
the most. Getting in touch with them
to nd out how much they wanted was
surprisingly difcult, since the patents
are owned by shell companies owned by
other shell companies, none of which
have readily available websites, phone
numbers or employees for angry people
to get in touch with. This is exactly how I
plan to run my humor website.
Eventually I tracked down Brad
Liddle, the lawyer representing Personal
Audio, which has a patent that it claims
relates to podcasting, which is something
Ill probably do as part of my website
since talking is even easier than writing.
He said Id have to sign a nondisclosure
agreement to nd out how much Per-
sonal Audio wanted from me, which I re-
fused to do, since as a journalist I believe
that free information is a key tenet of
democracy. Also, it sounded as if signing
it might involve using a fax machine.
So I called some of the victims
instead. Comedian Adam Carolla,
who has raised $400,000 to wage a case
against Personal Audio, said the compa-
ny was asking for a penny a download
about 40% of what he has netted over the
past ve years. Marc Maron, who also
got a letter from Personal Audio, told me
I wouldnt be able to afford that kind of
money, based on my potential podcast-
ing revenue. I know youre the fancy,
back-page-of-Time guy, but how much
are you going to make? he asked. Its
way less than he even thinks, since Im
now the next-to-last-page-of-Time guy.
My business might also have to scan
documents for emails, for which troll
MPHJ Technology, according to news
reports, would charge me $1,000 per em-
ployee, which is signicantly more than
I was planning on paying my employees.
Id also provide free wi- to visitors who
ask, since not doing that requires you to
waste a lot of time pretending you cant
remember your password; Innovatio ap-
parently asks coffee shops and other busi-
nesses for $2,300 for that right. In case my
site did any news-release
generationdespite my
not having generated any
news in 17 years of writ-
ing for TimeI could
be asked for $250,000
by Gooseberry Natural
Resources LLC, accord-
ing to Drew Curtis, the
founder of Fark.com,
who settled with the
company and heard from
others that it had asked
for that amount. Send-
ing links on texts with
news items could require
me to send $750,000 to a
licensing company. Al-
lowing people on my site
to message one another
could require me to pay
$300,000 to Unied Mes-
saging Solutions. This
was starting to add up.
My only hope was that the government
would end all this before I put my site
up. But while the House passed an anti-
patent-troll bill with unusual bipartisan
support (325 to91) and the President ar-
gued for patent reform in his State of the
Union address this year, the Senate Judi-
ciary Committee shelved it on May21,
likely because of pressure from pharma-
ceutical companies and trial lawyers,
causing me to move some investments to
pharmaceutical companies and law rms.
When I asked a co-sponsor of the bill,
Representative Jason Chaffetz (Repub-
lican of Utah), why the Senate punted,
he said, They dont do anything in the
Senate, so they have to keep their reputa-
tion going. Other than their Wednesday
bingo and wheelchair races, I dont know
what they do. The trolling situation is
so bad, Chaffetz said, that an executive
from J.C. Penney spoke at the House
hearing. When J.C. Penney gets sued for
being innovative in technology, weve
got a problem, he said. Chaffetz is going
to have a big role on my humor site.
When I asked Chaf-
fetz what I should do to
protect my business, he
told me I was screwed
and could either pay the
trolls or pay the Maa
to take care of them. I
decided to go with paying
the trolls. But in total, my
humor site would have
to pay $1,302,300 plus
$1,000 per employee, 40%
of my podcast revenue
and 0.6% of my app
revenue. This is much
more than the budget for
my entire site, which Id
mostly allocated toward
marijuana, marijuana
paraphernalia and re-
location to Colorado. Im
just hoping my pharma-
ceutical investments
can cover it. n
Tolls for Trolls
All I ever wanted was to start a humor website.
But the patent trolls wont let me
THE AWESOME COLUMN
Joel Stein

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10 Questions
On her 100th birthday, high jumper
Margaret Lambert got hundreds of
postcards from Germans. Heres why
60 time June 9, 2014
ums in Germany that have
your name on them. Youre
probably more famous now
than if you had competed.
Does that make up for what
happened to you?
It can never make up for it.
But I realized after a while
that these younger people had
nothing to do with this whole
thing. They also had to do
what they were told. Our best
friend used to sneak into our
house at 11 oclock at night be-
cause he couldnt come in and
visit us ofcially. And when
we saw each other in the street,
we didnt say hello to each
other. And thats the way it
was. My friend from next door
never looked at me again. They
couldnt afford to talk to me.
You were married to Bruno,
another Jewish escapee from
Germany, for 75 years. Do you
have any secrets for how to
have a long marriage?
No. Just be a nice person. And
be married to a guy who looks
like my husband, the best
merchandise ever to come
into the United States.
In April you turned 100. Are
you living so long to take re-
venge on the Nazis?
I dont even think about it
that much. I get up in the
morningHey, Im still
hereyou know? I go to
sleep at night thinking, O.K., I
hope I wake up. We were sup-
posed to have a birthday par-
ty, but during the night I fell
out of bed and hurt myself, so
we called the party off. Ha!
Saved a lot of money!
belinda luscombe
tending to be a woman or a per-
son of indeterminate gender?
We really couldnt make a
judgment. She was very mas-
culine, but so were a lot of the
other girls.
How did you get out of Germa-
ny and into the States?
There was somebody in my
town [Laupheim] who moved
to the U.S. and became very
rich. My father was a friend
of his from school days. They
arranged that he would give
me the afdavit I needed. I
won two high-jump cham-
pionships here. And one
shot put.
Have you been back to
Germany?
I had sworn to myself I would
never, never go back to Ger-
many and I would never, nev-
er speak a word of German,
which I havent done. For
many years I couldnt watch
the Olympics. But then the
German Olympic Commit-
tee invited me to the games
in Atlanta, and they named
a stadium after me in my
hometown. So I went back.
There are actually two stadi-
They gave me a standing-
room ticket to watch [the
Berlin Games], which I did
not accept.
Did you know the athlete who
replaced you, Dora Ratjen?
She was my roommate [at
training camp]. We got along
O.K. But she was . . . well . . .
a little odd. We had a huge
shower room, and when we
were nished training, ev-
erybody stripped and went in
the shower room and cleaned
up. Not Dora. Dora sneaked
into a little bathroom which
we were not supposed to use.
Later on I found out why. She
was not exactly a lady.
Do you think she was a man pre-
In 1934, you were Gretel
Bergmann, a German Jew liv-
ing safely in the U.K. Why did
you go back to Germany?
I went back to Germany be-
cause my father came to [see
me in] Englandhe could
not use the telephone or write
because the Nazis checked
everything. He told me that I
had to come back because the
Nazis needed me for the 1936
Olympic team. They needed
to show that Jews were not
excluded, and I was the
only Jewish person that had a
chance. My family still lived
in Germany. Had I not gone
back, the Nazis would have
killed them immediately.
Was it very different from the
Germany youd left?
Oh, yes. You had to get used to
a whole new deal. I was a
member of the Olympic team,
but I was not fully accepted
because I was Jewish. The oth-
er girls were quite nice, but
there were some that didnt
talk to me, and I said, To hell
with you, if you will pardon
the expression. Then at the
end, the [German ofcials]
kicked me out.
What reason did they give?
They told me I wasnt
good enough, even
though I had equaled
the German record with
a 5-ft., 3-in. (1.6 m) [high]
jump the week before.
They expunged that. They
said in a letter, You must
have known yourself that
you were not good enough.
Ratjen won gold at the
1938 European
championship but returned
the medal when it was
determined he was a man
FOR VIDEO OF OTHER
INTERVIEWEES, GO TO
time.com/10questions
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