Comrades, It’s Time To Overthrow The Czar
IF AMERICAN HISTORY is any guide, the movement to create yet another federal-level "czar"—this time for the auto industry—should send a clear signal to U.S. consumers: buy Japanese. Forget for a moment that it's perverse the way we fall in love with iron fists, at least linguistically, whenever a problem becomes too big to be solved through democracy. (And come on, the only reason we keep creating czars, rather than, say, sultans, is because words with the letter Z sound badass.) No, the real problem with our czar fetish is how ironically weak the gigs are.
Consider: in 2004, The Washington Times ran the accidentally hilarious headline INTELLIGENCE 'CZAR' NOT NEEDED, SAYS CIA CHIEF—perhaps because the head of the Central Intelligence Agency thought intel czar was his job. (Similarly, the drug czar and the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration? Different guys.) In 2005, Congress created a WMD czar, presumably to save us from nuclear obliteration—a problem so pressing that the job was never filled. President Bush created a "war czar" in 2007, and the first five people he offered it to turned him down. So to likely "car czar" Kenneth Feinberg: may the job pan out better for you than it did for Russia's last real czar, Nicholas II. All they did was kill that guy.
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Devin Gordon is the editor of Newsweek Digital, the umbrella company encompassing Newsweek's various web properties, including Newsweek.com and Newsweek Mobile. Previously, from June 2007 to June 2009, he was senior editor of the magazine's Periscope section, which was nominated for a National Magazine Award for "best section" in 2008. Previously, he was a senior writer, writing about film, television, sports and popular culture for the Arts and Entertainment and Society sections. He was part of the Newsweek reporting team for the past three Olympic games, including the Salt Lake City winter games in 2002, the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, where he covered swimmer Michael Phelps, and the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, for which he wrote Newsweek's cover story about skier Bode Miller.
During his tenure at the magazine, Gordon has written about everything from HBO's "The Wire" to rock band Coldplay to Oscar-winner film directors Ang Lee and Peter Jackson. He profiled "Curb Your Enthusiasm" creator Larry David on the eve of the series' fourth season debut, and "The Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan just prior to the film's record breaking release. For Newsweek's year-end double-issue of 2002, he wrote "The Matrix Makers," (Jan. 6, 2003), a cover story about the two upcoming "Matrix" sequels—the first behind-the-scenes look at the new films by any publication.
Gordon joined Newsweek in 1998, after graduating from Duke University. His first cover story was "The Dominator" (June 18, 2001), an examination of what makes Tiger Woods tick. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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