I have been neglecting you because of "South Pacific."
Rehearsals for the ACLOA production - I hate saying MTS - generally run from 7 to 10 PM at the Highland Theater complex.
By the time I get home it's 10:30, it's 11 by the time I unwind and 11:30 before I hit the sack. That is way past my bedtime and though I try to compensate by sleeping later in the morning, it doesn't quite work.
So a little bit tired and a little groggy in the AM, I do not rush to the computer to think out loud here.
But this shall pass.
"South Pacific" opens Friday, Feb. 13, plays that weekend and two more. Then I will be a civilian again.
PS If you remember the music, you know it's lovely. The principals have good voices, too. As for the play, it's soft and gentle and hopeful, as those perilous WWII times now seem to have been.
I recommend it.
Meanwhile..apologies.
I look at Playboy whenever I get a haircut. Today I was able to read most of Norman Mailer's article in the big January issue. Mailer says we can defeat President Bush with the help of Republican conservatives.
That's possible, but it would be more likely if news organizations gave up their passion for simplicity, including the idea that you can divide Americans into conservatives and liberals and that anybody to the left of "liberal" is conservative.
Unfortunately, many reporters, columnists and editorial writers do not see distinctions within "left" and "right."
Heck, they're still writing "drugs and alcohol" as if alcohol is not a drug. I believe this is a big reason we jail marijuana users while tolerating those who abuse alcohol.
Words matter.
The CBS Evening News reported tonight that the US military in Iraq is hunting for an alQaeda leader. They believe him to be responsible for recent attacks there.
And you thought George W. Bush's preemptive war on Iraq had no virtues.
He has succeeded in bringing alQaeda to Iraq, hasn't he?
A few moments ago, I answered the phone. It was a recorded pitch by John Kerry. He touched on a few issues and on the need for Democrats to regain the White House.
But he said nothing about retaking the Democratic Party.
Advantage, Dr. Dean.
I keep getting calls asking for whom I’ll vote next Tuesday.I tell them I don’t know.
Why don’t I know? Because my heart’s with Dean and my head informs me that "He can't be nominated now and if nominated, won't be elected." Yes, that's it. But there's more.
I rallied to Dean a long time ago for more than one good reason. He expressed my anger at the direction the White House radical- incompetent-chicken hawks are taking my country. He saw that Bush's war on Iraq was a demonstration of weakness, undermining the war on alQaeda.
Clearly no great liberal, he did understand the need for universal health insurance.
But this was the clincher: Dean took on the Democratic Party establishment.
He understood the need to build a new, populist party that would offer solutions to most Americans’ problems.
Sadly, he’s all-but-killed his candidacy. Yes, his tough, straight-from-the-gut talk was delightful, but he forgot to post a sentry in his head. Ah, for a little self-consciousness.
What to do then? I am happy Kucinich is in the debates; I might vote for him if we were selecting a saint. Joe Lieberman? A sweet middle-of-the-roader too dim to notice that the middle is now way over on the right.
That leaves Kerry, Edwards and Clark. I will almost certainly choose one of them.
None, however, has shown me a glimmer of understanding that the Democratic Party needs radical change.
So here we go again, voting for the "lesser of evils."
In the primary, for gosh sakes. In the primary!
PS Robert Reich deals brilliantly with similar topics in today's New York Times.
The Bush Agenda is all about repealing the New Deal. And why not?
Well-born critics of FDR called him a "traitor to his class." I suspect they were wrong, that in saving American capitalism, Roosevelt saved their class and most of its privileges. (Like the right to go to Yale because your daddy did.)
But they were quite accurate in indentifying ours as a class society. President Bush is a card-carrying member of that upper class. And no rebel. So he wages war on its behalf.
Thus far, he's brilliantly moved the burden of taxation from the rich and the corporate to the middle-class. Also, he's removed most regulatory restraints on corporations. And, with the recent Medicare bill, begun the subversion of Medicare.
Bush will, if re-elected, move on to "reform" Social Security.
Social Security must change, of course; currently it's based on 1930s - 40s demographics. But how?
Bush's "reform" is "privatization." To privatize a federal program is to kill it.
Why would conservatives want that?
They don't. This White House is radical, fueled by free market fanaticism and financed by corporate dollars.
You see the logic. "Privatized" Social Security means we invest billions of dollars in Wall Street - its brokerages, banks, member corporations.
If we are to defend Social Security, we must take responsibility and offer our own fixes.
That's quite feasible. Social Security can be saved. Sometime soon, I will talk about how. Suffice it to say now that Social Security will be the next target of the passionately ignorant ideologues and corporate apologists who own this White House and lead both houses of the Congress.
In case you thought the next Presidential and Congressional elections were unimportant.....
To prepare for this morning's talk, I assembled some newspaper clips, notes and two back issues of Prime Time - the October and November 2001 issues.
I didn't get to use them, but after re-reading what I wrote three weeks after 9/11, I decided to post it here.
Tell me what you think, please.
After September 11
(italics) At the Mayoral forum, I manage not to cry when we sing the national anthem. but I want to. As the horror recedes, the warmth of national unity fills the vessel, a warmth I haven't felt in years. It feels good.
(end italics)
And I fear it.
War simplifies, wipes out doubts, fills us with certainty and passion.
That's why folks my age look back to World War II with such nostalgia.
But 60 years have passed and surely, we have learned what Samuel Johnson knew in 1775. "Patriotism," he said,"is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
o On Sept. 14, the Paragon Foundation in Alamogordo - an anti-environmentalism outfit - emails me. To better fight terrorism, we must rescind or suspend the endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act.
I wonder, how low can you get?
o Jerry Falwell responds to terrorism: "The pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians...the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"
Thanks, Jerry. Now I know how low one can get.
o UNM Regent Richard Toliver and State Reps. Willaim Fuller, Rob Burpo and Marsha Atkin demand the resignation of UNM Professor Richard Berthold. He made a sick joke about the Pentagon and admits it was stupid.
If a University regent doesn't know what separates the US from, say, the Taliban...ah, forget it.
I wonder if Dr. Johnson also knew that in war the injured party comes to resemble the hated enemy. Remember how we fought Nazi racism by interning yellow people? Remember how our struggle against lawless Communism produced McCarthyism and later, that assault on our fundmental law called Watergate?
(italics) I walk in the neighborhood and two veterans shake their heads at the prospect of war. Still, the President makes a good speech and the unity feels warm. (end italics)
My email turns into a town meeting: Some writers flex their muscles, but don't explain how bombs will end terrorism. Nor do they give me confidence war won't worsen Middle Eastern tensions. The pacifists are right about perpetuating cycles of hate, but they don't tell me how sweetness will persuade terrorists to stop.
I begin to think we must use force, but oh-so-carefully, and only after we build policy.
(italics) When the curtain falls on ALT's Broadway musical, they have us sing "God Bless America." The lady at my left puts her hand in mine and I tear up. (end italics)
It's not 1941, I remind myself. Pearl Harbor is the past. Back then, life and death were simpler.
That was it. Boy, that Dr. Johnson knew his stuff, didn't he?
From time to time, I speak about the news biz to groups around town - Elks and Kiwanis, associations of retired teachers or federal employees - that sort of thing. This morning I talked to a meeting of the Golden Eagles, retired folks mostly, who got together originally by way of their credit union.
How intelligent! How knowledgeable! How passionate! I am so energized.
It is nothing less than joyful to reason with 45 or 50 folks who understand what you're trying to say.
It's not that they all agree with me. (Though many did, I think, thereby establishing their brilliance.)
It's that having shared the same life experiences, we have similar attitudes toward our fellow citizens and our government.
Boy, am I jazzed!
Funny, isn't it, how some words stay with you?
I acted in a production of "The Importance of Being Earnest" at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York, in the last century.
I have never forgotten Earnest saying he's spoken the truth, "pure and simple," only to have Algernon retort:
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
Oscar Wilde comes to mind because of the WMD issue.
Given my politics, I'm tempted to believe the Administration lied about WMD, pure and simple. Well, it did lie but that's not the end of the story.
Intelligence professionals David Kay and Kenneth M. Pollak are saying the CIA made mistakes in trying to trace Saddam Hussein's weaponry.
We know, too, that Chaney, Rumsfeld and others leaned on intelligence analysts to bend their findings to fit Administration preconceptions.
(Rumsfeld went so far as to create his own little CIA in the Pentagon.)
Conclusion? The Bush Administration fell victim to inaccurate intelligence, but did some victimizing of its own.
And then the White House told us, the electorate, a bunch of half-truths. (Yes, "half-truths" is kind, but remember the other side of that formulation, half-falsehoods.)
So the truth is complex. And the complexity does not end there.
The Administration first tried to justify its war on Iraq by tying the Iraqis to 9/11. It still does by using the "war on terrorism" formulation.
WMD was the second public justification and when it didn't quite soar, the White House moved to its third story - freeing the poor Iraqis from tyranny.
In fact, all three stories are mostly fiction. The Administration's intellectual rationale is well described by Tom Friedman, Fareed Zakaria, Jim Hoagland and other neo-con journalists who favored the war of choice.
All say the White House believes it can change the course of history in the Middle East by bombing Iraq into democracy. In theory, Iraq's fall and conversion will initiate the toppling of many Arab dictatorships - a "democratic domino" strategy? - winding up with peace between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs.
The neocon journalists' idealism is huge. But what's happened to their skepticism? I never read them wondering if the White House has other motives.
Historically, you rally the population around a war against an external enemy to consolidate your own power. It's hard to vote against the flag.
The White House strategy combines idealism and cynicism. The idealism, that is, of democratizing the Arab World and the cynicism of keeping power by playing patriot.
Sound cynical? So be it.
Golden Globes voters - who they are is a bit of a mystery, but no matter - cited "Lost in Translation" as the best comedy film of 2003.
Now if they'd told me it depicted an almost-affair sensitively, I would have assented.
Even if they'd praised its pretty pictures of Tokyo.
But it could not have been the best comedy. It wasn't a comedy.
I know because I laugh at comedy. And I never did at "Lost in Translation."
The best I could do was smile a few times.
Oh. I see. The humor got lost in translation. But from what language?
The top story in the New York Times this Saturday, Jan. 24, 2004:
David Kay, the Administration's WMD hunter, said he thinks Iraq had no chemical or biological weapons at the onset of the US preememptive attack.
Today's Albuquerque Journal caries no story on that subject.
Bias? I doubt it. So? So the possibilities abound. There may be more than one. I don't know, but I am tempted to credit New Mexico provincialism, which is diminishing but hasn't quite vanished.
Hey, how much does it matter, really?
Remember what Paul Wolfowitz told us - WMD was (were?) a convenient pretext. To alter Joni James' beautiful lament just a trifle, why don't we believe him?
I love to escape into a historical novel. This afternoon, I finished Gillian Bradshaw's "Render Unto Caesar", the story of an Alexandrian Greek who arrives in Rome to seek payment of a debt only to find that Roman law and Roman practice differ. He also finds death threats and romance, of course.
As in her other books, Bradshaw sprinkles educational icing onto the rich cake that is her gripping story.
My favorite Bradshaw is "The Lighthouse at Alexandria," about a young Greek girl who sets off to the big city (Alexandria) to learn how to become a doctor when that art was off-limits to women. Sort of "women's liberation" in the Roman Empire.
I recommend all the Bradshaw historical novels highly. If, that is, you too value escapism.
Thomas Friedman, the NY Times columnist who thinks the preemptive attack on Iraq was great, is pleased that Iowa Democrats rejected, in his view, the argument that Iraq was a distraction from warring on terrorism.
I am not sure he's correct in reading the caucus vote that way, but he surely has put his finger on the key issue.
The war on Iraq was a distraction from the pursuit of al Qaeda or it was not. If you think it was not, you may well accept the idea that we are fighting a "war on terror." That could lead to the impression that George W. Bush is "strong."
The "war on terror" will succeed as well as has our "war on drugs," about 70 years old now.
Where 9/11 is the issue, President Bush clearly is weak, having failed to bring peace to Afghanistan, failed to kill Osama bin Laden and hobble alQaeda. In addition, I believe he has sown the seeds of bigger and better Islamic terrorism. Oh (and here I hope I am wrong), he's done so little to protect the homeland.
PS Friedman has never complained, incidentally, that the Administration adopted the Iraq policy secretly and sold it with lies.
Hey, since when should foreign policy be decided democratically, anyway?
Kenneth Pollack, a CIA and NSC guy who favored the war on Iraq, writes a complex analysis of the intelligence failures leading to that war in the current Atlantic.
He argues that the Clinton and Bush Adminstrations based their policy of "regime change" on bad intelligence.
He faults the Bush White House though, for badgering the professional spooks when they did not come up with analyses that jibed with the Bush-Chaney-Rumsfeld line.
Talk about "political correctness!"
Secondly, Pollak says, the White House distorted intelligence to persuade the public to strike Iraq.
Unfortunately, while millions of Americans heard the President's fanciful State of the Union, only a few thousand will read Pollak's article.
Gotta say this for the Bush team - it's hot to ID and jail that White House operative who leaked the name of a CIA agent, which is illegal and could endanger her.
Not.
I had almost forgotten there's an investigation of the leak to right-wing columnist Robert Novak until the Attorney General stepped out of the line of fire a few weeks ago. Today, reports the NY Times. 10 retired intelligence officers have asked the Congress to investigate.
Don't hold your breath.
PS This White House's secrecy is nothing short of amazing. We have yet to get a strong probe into 9/11, but there would be none if the relatives of the World Trade Center dead had not insisted.
Nor do we know the full extent of the White House skullduggery that paved the way for war on Iraq. But we would know zero about how it cooked the intelligence books if not for intelligence officers past and present.
I never thought I would thank the Lord for truth-tellers at the CIA.
I hardly understand what I am about to tell you, but here goes:
I have a wall and fence outside my house and many of the adobe bricks atop the fence - two or three rows of them - have fallen.
I know why. I have seen our neighborhood roadrunner(s) scurrying across, using the adobes atop the fence as a bridge.
It looks as if my home is decaying (whereas it's only the homeowner who is), so I spoke to my friend-contractor last week and he promised to redo the adobes come spring.
So why am I telling you all this? Because
it was a thrill watching the roadrunner(s) taking their toll - without paying any - on my adobes.
Because I even like thinking about their misdemeanors.
They are beyond my power, you see, and understanding.
They are nature.
And there is consolation in them and in that.
Anybody know what I'm talking about?
Years ago, in the early '70s I think, I hosted a talk radio show in New York City. I called it "Connections."
Swimming as we do these days in a vaster sea, teeming with tiny bits of info, we are even more likely to drown - unless we make connections.
Take the President's State of the Union speech. Ignore his statement that we have the best health care in the world, an obvious falsehood. But consider that he also spoke in favor of improving our "private" health care system.
I connect that to what (his) Medicare said the other day - effective March 1, payments to HMOs and other private health plans will go up a record 10.6%.
That is five times as large as the typical increase in recent years. It's intended to entice private plans to buy into the Medicare program.
Understand, please. The Administration is subsidizing profit-making insurance companies with taxpayer money so as to keep our health system "private."
Sounds like socialism to me, at least for the corporations.
Another connection:
Richard Reeves writes in today's Albuquerque Journal about how the Administration disdains the press.
"The press still thinks that buttering up the White House - particularly in coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan policy - will get them more favored treatment," he says. "Wrong! All the White House press corps is gettng from the people they cover is amused and deserved contempt."
Connect that, if you will, to James Fallows" article, "Blind into Baghdad," in the January "Atlantic."
Fallows takes us report-by-report, meeting-by-meeting through Washington's planning for post-war Iraq. Turns out there was lots of it, that the planning was expert, detailed and predicted everything that happened - the looting, the fading away of the (armed) Iraqi army, the inability to provide water and power, you name it.
But - get this - Fallows establishes that it was all willfully ignored by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and others.
Would you have known that from reading the daily press?
As I was saying, connections are how we understand what's happening.
Of course, understanding also can make one cry.
Driving in the rain. Grocery shopping. On KUNM, Governor Richardson has just stated there is no "single" answer to the problem of financing health care – wrong, Bill, I think – when I arrive at the store. Shopping done, I'm back in the car. When I turn on the ignition, Bill is gone and they’re playing folk music.
Folk music is introduced by idealism these days, I learn, just as it was when I was a fan. Clearly, the Irish lass on the radio is a lineal descendant of Pete Seeger and the Weavers. She offers lovely, hopeful comments on the possibility of peace and justice in the simplest words, as if to promote the cause by her modesty. Inwardly, I smile at her naiveté. And my own.
That's when my mind flew to the book that was waiting for me at my iMac, "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea (Why the Greeks Matter)" by Thomas Cahill, and to the page I had book-marked.
It was Pericles’ famous funeral oration over the Athenians who died in the Pelopponesian War. Specifically, this passage:
"Our constitution is called a democracy, because power rests in the hands not of the few but of the many. Our laws guarantee equal justice for all in their private disputes; and as for the election of public officials, we welcome talent to every arena of achievement, nor do we make our choices on the grounds of class but on the grounds of excellence alone."
….Open and tolerant in our private lives, in our public affairs we keep within the law. We acknowledge the restraint of reverence; we are obedient to those in authority and to the laws, especially to those that give protection to the oppressed and to those unwritten laws of the heart whose transgression brings admitted shame."
I have no doubt Pericles was gilding the lily, but even if his speech represents only what he and other Athenians aspired to, it speaks of a decent society.
Contrast it with ours. What a fall-off. (Yes, they had slaves, but so did we until what, 140 years ago?)
The measure of our society’s weakness is that we ridicule idealism, sometimes with whole heart and sometimes for fear we will be ridiculed.
This need not be forever, though. One day, maybe soon, we will muster the courage to be idealistic.
We, not just young folksingers.
It wasn't that he's too negative. Nor that he is wrong in opposing the war of choice on Iraq.
It's that he stopped attacking, lost focus and became just "the front runner."
Rather than basking in endorsements and crowing about his organization, Dean
needed to repeat this mantra daily:
"President Bush is weak on terrorism. The war on Iraq was a distraction from the war on alQaeda.
President Bush is weak on terrorism. The war on Iraq was a distraction..."
And, as a minor theme:
"The President wraps himself in the flag so that you cannot see his hands. He's using them to hand the country to the big corporations."
Howard Dean needs to remember what Georges Jacques Danton said:
"Audace, de l'audace, toujours l'audace."
PS I thought it was Napoleon, but Bartlett's Quotations set me straight.
Years ago, I wrote and produced a special for the ABC Owned & Operated TV Stations. The anchor was Edward P. Morgan, who had moved into television after years of solid news analysis in radio.
We opened the program something like this:
"As Calvin Coolidge said, ‘The business of America is business.’"
Cliché, I know, but true. Most Americans would agree that’s what we are about. True, too, in the sense that American capitalism is the world’s most creative, productive and powerful.
(Of course, some might tack other truths on the wall next to it, like "The business of America is freedom." Or, "The business of America is democracy.")
Why am I telling you all this?
Because I have just finished reading the "Business Outlook" section in today’s Albuquerque Journal, which conveys the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce’s agenda for the upcoming state legislative session.
High on that agenda is opposition to any increase in the minimum wage.
The Journal reports that and, unsurprisingly, does not explore the issue.
This reminded me that, with few exceptions – the Wall Street Journal and New York Times jump to mind – business reporting in the press is a service to the business community of which the local newspaper is part. The critical faculties exercised elsewhere in the paper are allowed to snooze on the business side.
Oh, local newspapers do carry syndicated stories on business’s darker side. And yes, they have been known to do a pro-and-con on controversial issues. But as a rule, they convey positive messages.
We have had notable exceptions. When Sherry Robinson edited the Albuquerque Tribune business section, it had many virtues, not the least of which was that she made its pro-business agenda overt.
Winthrop Quigley of the Journal is a fine business reporter. He covers the health business particularly well. Like Sherry, Win lets us know where he is "coming from."
This is not a plea for reform. I do not expect our newspapers to diverge from the cheerleading tradition in business coverage.
It would be nice, though, if they put Coolidge’s words on the front page. Sort of truth-in-packaging.
Anybody here remember A.J. Liebling? He was a superior writer for the New Yorker, the husband of Shirley Jackson (who wrote that great short story, The Lottery) and the guy who said:
"Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one."
That was not only witty but true at the time, which I believe was during or shortly after World War II.
It no longer is true, of course. First, the personal computer spawned desktop publishing. Now the computer and Net have combined to give birth to blogs, which often are a form of journalism.
It’s Monday morning. How’s that for beginning the week on an optimistic note?
I have always felt sorry for people with two first names.
Was it that their families could not afford a real second name? Or were their folks simply dull?
John Edwards was impressive on CBS this morning, even more so given his name handicap. The same is true of Wes Clark and Howard Dean, I guess, but they’ve enjoyed General and Doctor for years.
Among the Democrats, Gebhardt, Kucinich and Lieberman have a clear edge in the name game, with Kerrey and Sharpton not far behind.
One "real" name isn’t too much to ask, is it?
PS I cannot imagine the joy of having Mario Cuomo as nominee.
Aaaargh!
A few days ago I wrote about educators’ misuse of language. I said folks who cannot write English probably cannot think. Today, a Washington Post story carried by the Albuquerque Journal says it’s worse than that!
"Eduspeak" or :"educationese," the story says, "has oozed into the classroom."
As an example, the story offers a second grade teacher describing the task of the day as "modeling efficient subtraction strategies." Also, "selected response" has replaced multiple choice.
Today's story asked why. "Teachers say they use the language…because they’re told to. Administrators …because it’s on the tests…."
Outsiders, according to the story, say the language "alienates parents, complicates learning and muddies the language."
That’s understatement. Jargon reflects and fosters stupidity.
Speaking of the failures of journalism, when will the Journal or Tribune evaluate Pete Domenici? After he’s gone?
What reminded me was the Op-Ed in today’s Journal opposing the pending energy bill. Stanley Euston, representing the NM Council of Churches, wrote it. And while it is passionate, the article never mentions the bill’s primary architect, New Mexico’s senior Senator.
Maybe he is St Pete!
Meanwhile, back on page E2, John Fleck reports that Ohio is not looking forward to storing waste from a nuclear fuel factory proposed for Hobbs.
Domenici’s passion for underwriting the nuclear industry is not new. Nor is his dedication to fossil fuels. He’s even opposed a minimal rise in fuel efficiency standards for Detroit’s vehicles.
However, his support for deficit spending is novel; he used to be a conservative.
A series of articles on his migration rightward might also spotlight his role in sponsoring Heather Wilson, apparently his heir, and other forays into state GOP politics.
The Senator would have to be given credit, of course, for the extraordinary job he’s done as state bagman; reporters who can count might try to quantify how much tax money he’s siphoned here from all over the US.
I look forward to the series, but I am not holding my breath.
I think New Mexico’s press fears the Senator.
o Win Quigley reports in today’s Albuquerque Journal that Sen. Jeff Bingaman will introduce legislation to improve the new Medicare law.
The New York Times reports that AARP will seek changes, too, aimed at getting lower prices for prescription drugs.
Since Bingaman voted against the Medicare "reform," I have to respect his efforts. Since AARP partnered with the drug industry to get the law passed, I have to assume the "senior lobby" is kidding me.
o A Dean volunteer rang my bell this morning. She looked like an amateur.
Dean’s verbal mishaps have hurt. He may lose his front-runner status. But give him this – like Goldwater and JFK before him, he’s drawn new people into the process.
o The Journal’s not-very-enlightening series on the Democratic candidates continues this morning with Joe Lieberman. And while there was a question about how the world would respond to a Jew in the White House, there was no mention of how much anti-Semitism Lieberman would face as the Democratic standard-bearer.
This is conventional, I gather, but stupid. Heck, it was only about 40 years ago that JFK became our first Roman Catholic President and Catholics represent a significant voting bloc. We have never had a Jewish President and Jews don’t represent a significant voting bloc. In my view, many American Christians would vote against Lieberman because he’s a Jew.
(I hope he is knocked out of the race because he’s Bush lite.)
That was the title on a handout we students at James Madison High School in Brooklyn received from an English teacher back in...oh gosh...was it that long ago?
Smartasses that we were, we derided it for redundancy.
Ah, but sometimes redundancy has a virtue.
In deciding who should run for President as a Democrat, my "minimum basic essential" requirement is that he must believe and hammer home the following:
The war on Iraq was a distraction, detour, diversion from the effort to find and punish the perpetrators of 9/11.
PS This happens to be the conclusion of Dr. Jeffrey Record, visiting professor at the Air War College. It's in a paper for the Strategic Studies Institute. I have not yet read it, but will be looking for it at www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi.
I write a "New Wrinkles in Aging" column for the Albuquerque Tribune. It appears the third Thursday of the month. Here is today's:
[Head = I'm chapped that health care is now us vs. them.]
We were in Roy, the dust-bowl town, talking with elderly ranching folks about the Great Depression. And they spoke about FDR and the New Deal exactly the way my family used to in Brooklyn, New York. Thankfully.
"Wow!" I thought. "Geography doesn’t count. It’s when we were born. And the tough times we shared."
That happened about 10 years ago. I was reminded of it by a new "Wow!" moment.
Last month, you see, I lambasted AARP here for betraying seniors to the drug industry. Several readers emailed comments and one - whose name and address I (sob) have lost- mailed me an article by Steve Chapman, "Meet the Greedy Grandparents," from slate.com. Chapman writes for the Chicago Tribune.
Wow! What a vision! Chapman says America’s elderly "never had it so good," we are politically powerful, but insatiable: "It’s not enough to be blessed with medical miracles. Modern seniors also want them cheap, if not free."
Then he whirls, targeting boomers: "It’s not just the interests of old coots that are being served here," he says. Boomers, he beefs, are selfishly indulging "the grizzled ones" and feathering their own nests. He figures the "Me Generation" will have its way, with the nation spending billions on them, only to have their own kids reap the whirlwind.
Forget politics. Forget conservative, liberal. Let’s look deeper, at what Chapman assumes about the world, starting with "government."
Clearly, he believes government is "them." And it’s just awful, he thinks, that we spend years "supported" by "them." Hmm. I’d bet my bottom dollar (only inches from my top dollar) that he doesn’t oppose subsidizing corporations. But I digress. The point is that we who lived the Depression and World War II saw government helping individuals.
Chapman notes that the growth in Washington’s spending on health is due to mostly to "rising health-care costs, not to the aging of the population." True, but why? He never asks. A natural phenomenon, like earthquakes? Nothing to be done? His failure to wonder why tells me that he accepts the status quo - corporate ownership of the nation – and may even think it’s God-given. No surprise, then, that he doesn’t quarrel with turning health care into a business.
We "coots," however, remember when MDs, not MBAs, ran health care. As guild professionals, they offered humane, personal medicine, lots of it pro bono. Norman Rockwell GPs may never return, but why can’t our government rein in corporations? We are the only modern industrial nation that doesn’t.
You’re smiling. Yes, I did write "our government." Well, once upon a time, Washington, D.C. responded to the middle class and the weak.
Chapman may not speak for the majority, but he’s hardly alone. Millions have been infected with the delusion of the "free market." Hobbes – the pessimistic philosopher, not the cartoon tiger – is back in favor. Mind you, if Chapman assumes society is only a brutish struggle, I do not fault him. Hey, he’s 49. (I emailed him.)
But older Americans remember when, even in the depths of poverty, money wasn’t everything.
And that we were close. In this together. In the same boat. Americans. Yes, there was community forged in the Great Depression and World War II.
That was a long time ago, I know, but I don’t think it’s gone forever. The pendulum will swing.
Wow! Hope it doesn’t take another Depression.
Alpert’s new web log is www.alpertstruth.com.
The headline reads:
"Institute of Medicine Wants Universal Care."
I wish the headline writer had written "universal health insurance," which is what the reporter said in the first paragraph of the AP story on page A8 of today's Albuquerque Journal.
Because, you see, universal insurance and universal care are not quite identical.
But no matter. It's a big story.
The Institute of Medicine, a part of the National
Academy of Sciences, urged the President and Congress to provide health insurance to every American by 2010.
We are "reaching the point where the system is unsustainable," said one of the report's authors, a Dr.Arthur Kellerman of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
The story notes that the Census Bureau said 43.6 million people lacked health insurance at some point in 2002, up from 39.8 million in 2000.
The doctors endorsed no specific proposal, admitted the project would be expensive and said progress will require a bipartisan effort.
In that connection, I was struck by this:
A survey for the American Hospital Association found a majority of Americans, including a majority of Republicans (!), is willing to pay higher taxes for universal coverage.
What makes this a big story? Doctors are talking. Affluent, independent doctors. And they're saying that single-payer health insurance is the way to go.
I find that hopeful.
PS That exclamation point after "Republicans" is mine.
The other day I recommended The American Prospect magazine, after which I thought I ought to pass along some other useful endorsements.
Like Southwest Cyberport, the internet service provider. I'm amazed at their service. SWCP is pleasant, problem-solving and - fanfare! - human, not recorded.
Then there is Edgewise, the host of this blog. Edgewise is really one Mark Justice Hinton, who has made my little venture into venting an unalloyed pleasure.
In the background I hear the strains of "Another Spring," a recent CD from Arlen Asher, the New Mexico master of the winds. (He plays every wind instrument, I think.)
It's a fine experience in jazz; I know because I play it a lot.
(You should know that it is jazz, not pop, but it stays with melody long enough to please my reactionary ears, ears deaf to what Bird wrought.)
You can find the CD at arlenasher.com.
Because I'm getting older (preferable to the alternative), health matters. And I have come to respect the knowledge of an old friend, Dr. Gwen Scott, an herbalist who has a doctorate in natural health.
(You may recognize the name from her column in Prime Time and you may have seen her on Channel 13 a few years ago.)
I was skeptical at first, but she's converted me. Gwen does consultations by phone (465-0279) and in person.
A couple of days ago I wrote that Paul O'Neill had been CEO of US Steel. Wrong!
It was ALCOA.
I regret confusing metals, but hope you give me credit for coppering to my mistake.
(And that you forgive the pun.)
One Randy Barron, chair of the NM Advisory Council on Arts Education, wrote an Op-Ed piece for today’s Journal arguing that Gov. Richardson got it wrong. Arts education, Barron says, is basic, not "special."
Makes sense to me, so I follow with sympathy for six paragraphs. Until Barron commits this:
"The arts support multiple learning modalities and multiple intelligences, inviting more students to demonstrate understanding in ways that move beyond simple verbal-linguistic or logical-mathematical measurements and into holistic comprehension of core concepts."
You don’t say.
What was wrong with English and why did he abandon it?
I want to support public education, but educators always write this way. And every time I read this pretentious, impenetrable gobbledygook, I break down, torn between regurgitating my lunch and crying buckets for the crime perpetrated against the Mother Tongue.
And I wonder – can somebody who writes like this think?
Then again, my holistic comprehension of core concepts may be..er...screwed up.
When Rep. Heather Wilson visited the Bosque School Monday to give a first-hand lesson about the Congress and democracy, Brynne Jojola, 13, queried her about the Patriot Act.
"Wilson called criticism of the act, enacted after the attack on the World Trade Center, ‘urban myths.’ She cited government access to library records as ‘nothing new’ and new wiretapping laws as an update for the age of the Internet and cellular phones."
That’s from Andrea Schoellkopf’s report in the West Side Journal Jan. 13.
The story does not tell us specifcally what Brynne asked, but we know that the government rounded up almost 1,000 people in the aftermath of 9/11 and their names (with the exception of 129 who have been charged) remain secret. The government tells us it cleared others and deported some on immigration violations.
We also know that the Supreme Court will soon take up the case of an American citizen arrested and held without charges an an "enemy combatant" as well as the cases of 16 foreigners held without charges in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Secret arrests. Secret, long-term imprisonment. Arrest without charges.
Are these what Wilson derides as "urban myths?"
What shocks me is Wilson’s reference to the FBI’s access to public library records as "nothing new." If so, why isn’t she raising the American flag and spurring an attack on this violation of the spirit, perhaps the letter, of the Constitution?
Because the Constitution is sacred to conservatives and she’s no conservative, that’s why. She’s an apologist for the growing police power in Washington.
I hope the Bosque School faculty saw Wilson’s comments as the inspiration for a great lesson in political science. They might start with the Magna Carta and study the growth of democracy via key documents over
the years, winding up with the US Constitution! And including, of course, the Bill of Rights.
Then have the kids put the Constiution and the Patriot Act side-by-side.
Good lesson, huh?
Conservatives hate big government, right? And they distrust bureaucrats, right?
Below are the first few paragraphs from a story I first thought was a hoax: It’s about the Office of Management and Budget wanting final say on
….well, lots of things.
Read on:
By Andrew Schneider
Of the Post-Dispatch [copyright]2004, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
WASHINGTON - Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis.
The White House Office of Management and Budget is trying to gain final
control over release of emergency declarations from the federal agencies
responsible for public health, safety and the environment.
The OMB also wants to manage scientific and technical evaluations - known
as peer reviews - of all major government rules, plans, proposed
regulations and pronouncements.
Currently, each federal agency controls its emergency notifications and
peer review of its projects.
But the OMB says peer review policies in various agencies vary
dramatically. And a senior OMB official says his office has been ordered by
Congress to take "a greater role in evaluating what the agencies do."
On Friday, a nonpartisan group of 20 former top agency officials sent a
letter to the OMB asking the White House watchdog agency to withdraw its
proposal, saying it "could damage the federal system for protecting public
health and the environment."
That’s enough, isn’t it? If this is conservatism, Joseph Stalin was a powerful one.
There's a dynamite article on the terrible new Medicare law in the January issue of The American Prospect. Theda Skocpol of Harvard wrote it.
And it reminded me that the GOP, AARP, insurance and pharmaceutical industries were not the only culprits in the passage of this monstrosity. The Democratic Party helped.
They could have derailed the bill with a filibuster, but feared - that's the key word in 2004, isn't it? - feared they would be called obstructionist.
I make a point of the Democrats' betrayal because various Democratic campaign committees want me to send dough to fight the bad Republicans.
Sorry. A plague on both your houses.
PS The American Prospect is a fine magazine, pretty easy to read. (Impressive, considering that it's run by economists.) Subscriptions at 888-MUST-READ.
It becomes clearer daily that the Bush Administration is neither conservative nor minimally decent. Yet I detect no wave of anger sweeping the nation. And no shame in the White House.
Paul O’Neill charges that they wanted to go after Saddam long before 9/11. White House response? It’s investigating if he improperly used a "Secret" document. What will you bet they move faster on that than on finding out which White House operative illegally leaked the name of a CIA agent?
O’Neill probably does nurse a grudge against his old buddies for kicking him out of the club. But look at who he is and what he is saying.
He is George W’s first Secretary of the Treasury and a former boss of US Steel. No liberal.
O’Neill says we've been misled to believe that we invaded Iraq because of 9/11/01; Rumsfeld was pushing that in February, 2001.
Tax policy? O’Neill says he opposed the Bushies’ huge, permanent tax cuts based on questionable projections, as did Alan Greenspan. He says the Federal Reserve chief called that "irresponsible fiscal policy" in May 2001. (Funny. Alan never called me with that view.)
Thirdly, O'Neill says President Bush knew his tax cuts would go to the "top-rate" people, but said in his 2000 campaign that the "vast majority would go to the bottom end of the spectrum."
As Bob Dole used to say, "Where’s the outrage?"
In the aftermath of a mad cow scare, columnist Rich Lowry thinks we shouldn’t let environmental activists stampede us into hysteria. American agriculture, he says in a column in today’s Journal, is "miraculously productive and safe."
Lowry, relying on experts from the Hudson Institute (an industry-supported think tank) is merely the latest in a long line of folks, including our governor, to reassure us.
Me, I find more reassurance in the news that Washington has imposed new regulations on the beef industry, regulations that industry bought…er, fought off for years.
But don’t believe me. Believe Henrik Ibsen. He wrote the book (or rather, the play) on this subject. In "An Enemy of the People," Ibsen describes what happens in society when the community’s business is put at risk by a truth-teller. Guess how it ends.
PS Lowry is editor of the National Review. The Journal runs his column often now but still runs that of William F. Buckley, founder of the National Review.
Ah, the liberal media….
This morning’s Albuquerque Journal has two stories on Governor Richardson’s Medicaid proposals.
On the front page, under the headline "Medicaid Reforms Draw Tears," we learn beneficiaries of Medicaid home care pleaded that the state not cut the pay of their caregivers, whose work keeps them out of hospitals. This, at a Santa Fe hearing.
The front-page of the Metro Section has a story headlined, "UNMH Stands to Lose $7.6 Million."
I think it’s clear there are efficiencies to be made in Medicaid; in particular, transportation costs can be cut.
But looking at the wider picture, we see that the Democratic - dominated state government has cut taxes for its best-off citizens and seeks big savings from services for the worst-off.
Wouldn’t it be great if there were two parties?
PS Broadening the picture still further, we see that Medicaid is but one shard of a huge, broken vase called "the national health care system." Wouldn’t it be more rational to deal with it as a system, rather than shard-by-shard?
I can imagine, for example, saving billions by nationalizing the insurance function, first, then letting "health providers" compete in a medical free market.
Imagine how many more dollars we could save by destroying price control in the pharmaceutical industry. Right now, the biggest cost for hospitals and HMOs is, you got it, pills. But competition is anathema.
A friend sent me the following. I don't believe the "Japanese error messages" are real. But even if this is a hoax, it's witty and poetic, so here it is:
Here are 16 actual error messages seen on the computer screens in
Japan; some are written in Haiku. Aren't these better than "your
computer has performed an illegal operation"?
•The Web site you seek cannot be located, but countless more exist.
•Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.
•Program aborting: Close all that you have worked on. You ask far too much.
•Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams.
•Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that.
•Your file was so big. It might be very useful. But now it is gone.
•Stay the patient course. Of little worth is your ire. The network is
down.
•A crash reduces your expensive computer to a simple stone.
•Three things are certain: Death, taxes and lost data. Guess which has occurred?
•You step in the stream, but the water has moved on. This page is not here.
•Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, But we never will.
•Having been erased, the document you're seeking must now be retyped.
•Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared.
•Screen.
Mind.
Both are blank
Michael Coleman, the Washington reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, replaced a guy named Richard Parker, who did some tough reporting.
Coleman's Sunday column was headlined, "Phoenix Summit Brings Money, Politicians Together."
It was about an energy industry event, at an Arizona resort, sponsored by the US Chamber and the Western Business Roundtable (a coalition of mining and energy resource companies). Attendees spent $1500 each for room, food, golf, entertainment and chats with leading lawmakers and Washington officials. Pete Domenici was a speaker.
Proceeds of the event were to be divided, Coleman reports, among the House Republicans present.
Domenici, who said he took neither a fee for his speech nor any contributions, told Coleman he saw nothing wrong with those who did.
Coleman interviewed conservationists who differed. They said the conference allowed affluent special interests to buy access to leading lawmakers, like Domenici.
Coleman should be credited with doing the story. And he neatly set those "propriety" arguments side-by-side.
But read his concluding paragraph:
"Domenici's presence at the controversial event would certainly seem to be OK under the rules, but a growing perception that only the wealthy can get special access to powerful politicians helps erode public faith in a representative democracy."
That summary sure erodes my faith in journalism. Come on now. Has John McCain taught us nothing? Doesn't Mr. Coleman know that energy policy is bought and paid for?
The reporter missed a rich opportunity to tie the conference into the specific provisions of the energy bill Pete didn't quite get through the last session of Congress? How come... (Bulletin! We interrupt this little comment to note that the airline industry claimed late last week that the Bush Administration is pushing up oil prices by buying fuel for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.End bulletin.)
Meanwhile, back in the news biz...
Journalists have been putting two sides of a debate next to each other and calling the result "objectivity" for too long. It's not "objectivity," whatever that means.
It's unwillingness to educate the readers to the dynamics of our political system. And unwillingness to call a spade a spade.
Warning. Self-back-patting ahead:
It seems there's a blog called Metaquerque at blogspot.com. And the author, one Dagwood, visited my new blog and wrote some kind words. Here they are:
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Alpert's Truth
Alpert's Truth is written by semi-retired Albuquerque journalist Arthur
Alpert, and is one of the most uniquely entertaining blogs around.
January 4:
It is fascinating to watch the process by which "television news"
becomes a contradiction in terms. One facet is the pairing of
anchors with public officials. They all do it; most recently, Dick
Knipfing of Channel 13 partnering with Bernalillo County Sheriff
Darren White on behalf of a good cause.
How old am I? So old I remember when news organizations and
government had an adversarial relationship.
January 3:
"Starting Sunday, the Journal is joining with KOAT-TV to provide
in-depth coverage..."
That's from the front page of the Albuquerque Journal this
morning.
Yes, these days newspapers and "TV news" work together, whereas we
used to rely on daily newspapers to review and critique TV.
No more. Now they're partners. Marketing, you know.
Our loss.
January 2:
The young man taking tickets at the Century 14 downtown recently
was wheel chair-bound. Very verbal, outgoing fella. Hiring him
speaks so well for the Century chain that I will forgive them
(this time) for making me sit through 20 minutes of movie trivia,
trailers, local ads and slides asking me to appreciate the lack of
ads.
His cranky diatribe against superficiality in popular culture in the Tribune
is also worth reading:
When I hear, "That guy has attitude," I wonder, "Oh, what is it?
Toward what?"
Wrong. They mean he's edgy. I think.
Last month, La Montanita's Coop Connection wrote: "We would like
to begin to again grow our membership."
They want taller members?
The detail I love here is that Alpert actually reads Coop Connection. [Link
via New Mexico Politics with Joe Monahan.]
Posted by: Dagwood / 1/6/2004 11:53:10 AM
Cranky commentary? From me?
The morning paper says the WW II Memorial to the "greatest generation"
is underway.
I approve.
But I wonder. Are they the greatest generation? Or just greedy geezers who want the nation to pay for all the pills they swallow, those still on this earth?
Oh, and one more question:
Please explain how the "greatest generation" could fight and win World War II when it's common knowledge that, as kids, they pledged allegiance to one nation, indivisible, without saying, "under God."
Thank you for your help.
The "news" this morning was that President Bush was thinking about knocking off Saddam Hussein before 9/11/01. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill is saying that.
I cannot believe it. How is that news? What is new about it?
Readers of "Bush at War," by Bob Woodward, published only months after 9/11, read it there. Readers of newsmagines like Time, Newsweek and US News know it. Ditto, the readers of monthlies like Harper's, Atlantic and Washington Monthly.
In fact, the "get Hussein" policy has been the subject of countless stories in the daily press.
Heck, while not exactly boasting of it, the Administration hasn't exactly denied it.
So why do the papers and networks treat it as news?
First, the publishers of Paul O'Neill's book want it that way to sell books. Secondly, 60 Minutes wants it that way so people will tune in to their interview with O'Neill tonight.
(Need I add that what news organizations pass along is mostly messages from authorities and other salespeople?)
Secondly, we have a disorganized press.
That's good; you will find "organized" journalism only in authoritarian states.
The downside, however, is that American news mediums have no mechanism for coordination. No way to agree that "The Bush Adminisration wanted a war with Iraq before 9/11" is not only true, but old.
PS In fairness, O'Neill's plain words on the subject deserve some attention. I just wish they wouldn't call it "news."
The public art folks are thinking of adorning Louisiana Blvd. near Winrock with a sculpture that resembles upturned bowls.
This leaves me cold, but I don't want to complain.
You see I have always considered the opponents of public art to be know-nothings.
Remember the outcry sparked by the Chevy-on-a-Stick? (Wasn’t that when Larry Ahrens threw off his genial, optimistic DJ personality to reveal his profound insight into society and politics?)
Anyway, Ahrens' furious opposition persuaded me that the Chevy-on-a-Stick was worthwhile.
I have since decided the idea was fine, but the color scheme dull, depressing.
Back to Winrock. I guess public art is supposed to stimulate us, make us think or feel, sometimes by connecting with geography or history.
Like the neat signposts the City has erected to mark historic Rt. 66 at the West Side of the Rio Grande Bridge on Central.
If so, the Winrock bowls fail the test. I read somewhere they connect to the volcanoes, but that’s a stretch, isn’t it?
If I were designing something for that site, what would I do?
Well, the Coronado and Winrock shopping centers suggest...er, a towering dollar sign. Visualize a $ stretching toward the sky. Provocative, no? Guess not.
Since that area is almost clogged with traffic, what about a colorful pollution gauge of some sort? Too literal?
OK. I’ve got it. Let’s move the Chevy-on-a-Stick!
But minus those drab blues and greens, OK? I vote for red tiles on the car and how about black beneath. Red and black! Hola! A classic Spanish combination. (It’s also reminiscent of chess and checkers, which has absolutely nothing to do with Louisiana Blvd.)
Oh well. I give up. I’m no artist.
But I know what I don’t like. And this time around, that makes me a know-nothing.
At the wedding party previously alluded to, I was part of a conversation in which an HMO surgeon explained he was not opposed to a national single-payer health system.
(That means the US of A covers everybody with health insurance, while doctors, medical groups, hospitals compete in a free medical market.)
Funny. Though the idea makes insurors furioous, lots of MDs agree. Yet no serious candidate for President - sorry, Dennis - is on record favoring a single-payer system.
PS Which reminds me. I have doubts about Howard Dean. I'm beginning to doubt that he's very liberal.
HealthSouth stock and bond-holders charge in an amended lawsuit that the company's bankers and auditors knew there was accounting fraud long before investigators uncovered it.
The bankers? UBS Warbug. Auditors? Ernst & Young.
So? So every time there's a Wall Street scandal we are told by business apologists and the unthinking press that it's a matter of individual morality. Yeah, there's a greedy rotten apple in the barrel.
Hogwash.
The barrel - read, system - is rotten.
To put it another way, we go through political periods where the climate encourages the free market - rife with white collar thievery - and periods where we strengthen oversight and regulation.
So - duh!- the number of business bimbo eruptions goes up or down depending on the rules governing the system.
It isn't about morality.
Believe it or not, at a wedding party last night, I chatted with a man of far right politics who loves jazz.
Isn't that a violation of nature? A miracle-in-reverse?
Three experts at the Carnegie Endowment of Peace produced a report yesterday that said the Bush Administration
"systematically misrepresented a weapons threat from Iraq." (The quote is from an AP story in today's Albuquerque Journal.)
Darn peaceniks.
Colin Powell said yesterday he has seen "no smoking gun.. concrete..evidence" of ties between Saddam Hussein and alQaeda.
As for WMD, Powell said Iraq had them in the 80s and had refused for a decade to assure th world it had disposed of them.
(Yesterday, you may have noted the US withdrew most of the team searching for WMD. This after having found none.)
So the two reasons the Administration offered for its attack on Iraq - ties to the 9/11 terror and WMD - lack proof.
Of course, the third reason the White House gives - freeing Iraq of Hussein's tyranny - suggests there are a lot more premptive wars ahead, as we pursue our God-given task in the world.
Ever loyal, and in defiance of logic, Powell maintained yesterday that Iraq needed to be disarmed by force.
Secretary Powell is an intelligent guy. I presume he has conducted an internal debate and concluded that he is serving the nation as a force for reason in an Administration populated by Hobbesians, true believers and ideologues.
Poor Colin Powell.
PS I know where the WMD are. They're in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Yao Ming grew up in China. Now he is the 7'6" center for the Houston Rockets of the NBA. He's darn good, too. But the experts, like former Knick Patrick Ewing, say Yao won't be great until he learns "to be more agressive."
Why isn't he?
Donnie Nelson, a Dallas Mavericks' executive, told the N.Y. Times:
"..it's just a different way of being brought up."
In China, Nelson said, "...it seems like a culture that promotes a more unselfish, 'what's best for everyone is best for you' mentality.
In our culture," Nelson continued, "it's almost exactly the opposite."
The story says the Rockets have stressed to Yao that "taking over on the court does not mean he is being selfish."
What do you think?
I do not want to be misunderstood here - China is no role model. Still, might we Americans benefit from watering our competitive wine with a few drops of cooperation?
Conservatives and liberals have one more reason to be angry at the Bush Administration. It's the White House's "Borrow and spend" approach to finance.
I do not believe God demands a balanced budget, but common sense suggests keeping any deficits very small.
This morning, the IMF, hardly un friendly to the US. warned that the huge and growing US budget deficits imperil the world economy. In his new book, Robert Rubin makes a similar argument, says George Will (!).
Critics who warn that our grandchildren will have to pay for this irresponsibility are optimistic. A global Depression could happen first.
I got home today to find that Howard Dean had called and left a message. In the recording, Dr. Dean was thankful and hopeful. He was easy, pleasant and quiet.
And, frankly, I felt let down.
Look. I like several of the Democratic candidates. I will not be unhappy if Gebhardt, Edwards, Kerry or Clark win the nod.
But Dean ranks high on my list because he's really angry.
Is there a serious American conservative or liberal who doesn't share that anger?
Domestically, the radical Bush Administration is conducting class warfare to make the powerful more so.
It is liberating major corporations from all behavioral restraints (taxes and envirommental regulations among them). It is enhancing the State's police power at the expense of those protections the Constitution affords individuals.
Internationally, the Administration has rejected the policies of every President since FDR, including Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and Bush Pére to conduct a phony "War on Terrorism."
All this we know. Thanks to secrecy,
we won't know for years what additional outrages they have perpetrated. (Saudi Arabian connection, anyone?)
If this doesn't anger you, what will?
Oh, I understand that candidates who smile and offer rosy scenarios are elected more often than the dour guys. (Think Ronald Reagan.)
But it's also true that Americans like candidates who believe in something other than getting elected.(Think Ronald Reagan.)
So every time I read that Howard Dean is "too angry," I assume the writer has a job and health insurance
and his kids are in a good college, not in Iraq.
To all the Democratic candidates, I say,
"Show me the anger." Smile later, much later.
PS Barry Goldwater was an angry young man. He lost big. But he began a process wherein the GOP jettisoned its Establishment and found itself.
I hope the Democrats win the White House this year.
I will surrender ideological "purity" for that victory. But if the Democrats lose this election while finding the party's soul, so be it.
My last column for Prime Time is in the current issue. I thought it might serve you by providing some background on me. Here it is:
How Long? That Long? So Long.
I’ve just leafed through the first issue of Prime Time, dated September 1991.
Howard Morgan, of Channel 7 weather fame, was our cover story. Inside, Don Nutting wrote about KDEF radio dropping its "nostalgia" format (swing) for sports. We had syndicated columns from Paul Harvey and Bruce Williams, as well as the thoughts of New Mexico’s own Art Schreiber, Ned O’Malia and Susan Wachter.
Near the back, I find my first "Nobody asked me, but…." column. That means I have written it for 12 years! Gosh, time flies when you’re getting ancient.
But twelve years! It’s time to hang it up. Yes, this is my last column.
Why? Well, since the present owners of Prime Time have their own worldview, they should be free to shape their publication.
Secondly, I need change.
Of course, I loved writing the column, a conversation in which you were kind enough to take part. (Thanks, in particular, to those of you who stayed despite strong suspicions that I was nuts.)
I sure did relish piercing the wall between writers and readers, being human, opening the dusty, disordered attic of my mind to your gaze and thinking out loud about big topics. And for your warm response, I cannot thank you enough.
But there’s a time for the new. You and I hate senseless change, of course. Like discarding the name, "Mountain Bell" with all its history and geography. Or giving up "Albuquerque Civic Light Opera"? Couldn’t they see, hear what that conjured up - the black tie, feather boas and lace under the silvery moon?
But change, like fresh air, can invigorate. That is why I have just dropped subscriptions to two fine magazines I’ve read for years (Harper’s, The New York Review of Books), to start on another (The Atlantic).
And why I have begun a web log. Who knows where it will lead, but I can vent when I want to. (Find my mutterings online at www.alpertstruth.com. Let me know what you think, but no cursing, please. )
And I continue to write "New Wrinkles in Aging" for the Albuquerque Tribune; it appears the third Thursday of each month.
Naturally, it won’t all be work. It was fun acting in "Vaudeville Memories" at ALT and "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" at Adobe and I’ll continue to audition for roles around town. (Though the directors never see me as I do, John Garfield, the dynamic lead. For some reason, they always cast me as an older man. Hmmm.)
And I will read novels, go to the movies in mid-week and peruse Prime Time over a leisurely breakfast. Hey, I figure I have earned that.
So here’s to adventure in 2004. So long and Happy New Year.
Arthur’s email is ArthurAlpert@swcp.com
That's it. I regret only that I forgot to tell folks I see myself, not just as the gritty, urban John Garfield, but also as the handsome, swashbuckling Errol Flynn, leaping from pirate ship to ...well, you get the idea.
In case you missed it - I saw it not in the Albuquerque dailies -
here are the essentials of a story the New York Times ran Jan. 6:
Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, a very profitable painkiller, deliberately misled the US Patent office to protect its drug from generic competition. So ruled a federal district judge in New York.
Purdue told the Patent Office 90 percent of patients got relief by taking very little medicine, from 10 to 40 milligrams.
Ah, but there were no studies backing that claim. Purdue admitted it was Dr. Robert Kaiko's "discovery," made solely in his head, but contended it still was valid.
Internal documents from 1993 revealed Purdue executives believed company's claims "weren't anywhere close" to proof.
The decision will pave the way for Endo Pharmaceuticals to market a generic version.
PS The story notes that the FDA grants five years of exclusivity to any drug it approves and companies generally rely on patents to keep their monopolies after that.
It figured that his Democratic Party opponents would rough up Howard Dean. After all, he opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning while they did not. Further, he represents "old" Democrats, while most of them are the "new," centrist kind. This is not just a matter of politics, but of style, too. Dean gets into trouble because he is terrible at Clinton-speak. Kerry and Lieberman, on the other hand, appreciate and ape the former President, a master at couching positions for greatest effect.
But what explains the antagonism of the press? It is treating Dean the way it did Al Gore. Maybe worse.
Russell Baker, responding to a letter about journalists’ attitudes in the December 18 "New York Review of Books", offered this:
"Today’s top-drawer Washington newspeople are part of a highly educated, upper-middle class elite; they belong to the culture for which the American political system works exceedingly well. Which is to say they are, in the pure sense of the word, extremely conservative.
"Most probably passed childhood in economically sheltered times, came to adulthood in the years of plenty, went to good colleges where they developed conventionally progressive social consciences, and have now inherited the comforting benefits that 60 years of liberal government have created for the middle class."
"This is not a background likely to produce angry reporters and aggressive editors…."
Baker goes on to suggest that these journalists lack a capacity for outrage because they are disconnected from the masses. He suggests taking away their health insurance might be instructive.
If Baker’s picture of "top-drawer Washington newspeople" is accurate, perhaps it explains their antagonism toward Dean.
Baker’s description of how they grew up reminds me that the journalists in question are boomers, mostly. I have always envied boomers for their ability to spend freely. And pitied them for their lack of education. They missed the Great Depression, you see.
Dan Weaks advocates for the New Mexico Hospitals and Health Association. The following is from his op-ed in this morning’s Albuquerque Journal addressing Governor Richardson’s plans for health care reform.
"We have four home-grown health insurance companies that employ thousands of New Mexicans and contribute significantly to our economy and economic development. We need to nurture those companies as much as we need to recruit new businesses."
Well, obviously. Health care is a business, after all.
How old am I? I remember when it wasn’t.
And, funny, I cannot remember the vote. You know, when Americans decided to topple the medical profession and put our bodies in the hands of corporate operations run by MBAs and responsible to Wall Street?
Maybe you do.
It is fascinating to watch the process by which "television news" becomes a contradiction in terms. One facet is the pairing of anchors with public officials. They all do it; most recently, Dick Knipfing of Channel 13 partnering with Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White on behalf of a good cause.
How old am I? So old I remember when news organizations and government had an adversarial relationship.
"Starting Sunday, the Journal is joining with KOAT-TV to provide in-depth coverage..."
That's from the front page of the Albuquerque Journal this morning.
Yes, these days newspapers and "TV news" work together, whereas we used to rely on daily newspapers to review and critique TV.
No more. Now they're partners. Marketing, you know.
Our loss.
Years ago, I frequently looked forward to TV. No more. But I was anxious to see the PBS special program on Jack Paar a few weeks ago. Oh, I knew the idea was to persuade older viewers to pony up, but Paar was a complex, entertaining guy and I wanted to know if he was alive or dead. So I watched.
My mistake.
Not only did KNME-TV interrupt every few minutes with its ancient, cliched appeals for money, but the show was mediocre.
And I still don't know if Paar is alive or dead.
I send Channel 5 a few bucks at this time of year, but my heart's not in it.
Public TV's standards keep slipping. If I want to see a once-over-lightly, superficial biography, well, that's why God created A&E. right?
• The young man taking tickets at the Century 14 downtown recently was wheel chair-bound. Very verbal, outgoing fella. Hiring him speaks so well for the Century chain that I will forgive them (this time) for making me sit through 20 minutes of movie trivia, trailers, local ads and slides asking me to appreciate the lack of ads.
• Speaking of business, not long ago I ran into an email problem late on a Sunday. The tech who picked up the phone at Southwest Cyberport stayed late, past office closing, to help me solve it and I wasn’t a bit surprised. Those SWCP folks run a great Internet service provider, efficient yet human.
• I’m always late. Walter Mosely’s "Devil in a Blue Dress" came out in 1990, there was a movie with Denzel Washington in ’95 and I just got around to the book. It's an LA thriller, in the Chandler and Hammett vein. That good. Maybe better, because it's set in Los Angeles' black world, which is new to me.
And I just caught up with "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," John Berendt's 1994 report on events and great characters in Savannah, Georgia. I was transfixed, but the author's postscript was a downer. He said he'd taken "certain story-telling liberties.."
So what was it - a report or a novel?
JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, is the richest woman in Britain, says the Daily Mail, with an annual take of some $177 million. Catherine Zeta=Jones came in at #11. Others on the Daily Mail list included Madonna and ex- Spice girl Victoria Beckham.
This news followed by a day a big story listing Hollywood films in 2003 and their "grosses."
When I was young, the newspapers simply did not allocate space to this kind of story.
They rated movies on entertainment value.
But my youth was a long time ago. So long, in fact, that my parents taught us that "money wasn't everything."
How innocent they were. Or were they? Maybe they were just conveying what most people believed in that era.
If so, times have changed.
Here is the lead of an AP story from Washington published in this morning's Albuquerque Journal:
"Almost 5,000 ships and aboout 80 percent of the nation's ports, ferry terminals and fuel-chemical tank farms failed to meet a Wednesday deadline for submitting maritime security plans showing how they will deal with security threats."
A few paragraphs down, the story noted that five airports would not meet their deadline, also Wednesday, to start screening all baggage electronically for explosives.
PS AP also reported that terrorists may be probing airport security measures. That story relies on testimony from airline pilots and flight attendants.
As I was saying, President Bush is soft on terrorism.
A friend sent me what follows. (I've trimmed it a bit.) I don't know the source, but it's worth reading:
The Free Market
A car company can move its factories to Mexico and claim it's a free market.
A toy company can outsource to a Chinese subcontractor and claim it's a free
market.
A major bank can incorporate in Bermuda to avoid taxes and claim it's a free
market.
We can buy HP Printers made in Mexico. We can buy shirts made in Bangladesh.
We can purchase almost anything we want from many different countries BUT,
heaven help the elderly who dare to buy their prescription drugs from a
Canadian (or Mexican) pharmacy. That's called un-American!
And you think the pharmaceutical companies don't have a powerful lobby?