Here is my Albuquerque Tribune column published November 23, 2006 - Thanksgiving Day.
A SILVER LINING
Despite crazy elections and complicated health care, there are things to be thankful for
By Arthur Alpert
For Thanksgiving, here are four courses to nibble on:
First course: I am thankful for the doctors and nurses, naturopathic physician and acupuncturist to whom I sometimes have recourse. Not so the health industry.
Two weeks ago, deciding to consult an MD, I dial my HMO.
"Please hold," says the recorded message, "for the next customer service representative." I smile at "customer," but, hey, it’s accurate. You’ll find "patients" in the history files, near Norman Rockwell’s magazine covers.
Days later, I arrive early for my appointment.
"Please have a seat." Twenty-five minutes later, I check to see if I have been forgotten.
"No," I’m assured. "The doctor is more than an hour behind schedule."
Now you tell me?
I cancel that appointment and reschedule. On arrival a week later, I ask about the wait. They say "30 to 45 minutes."
One hour and 15 minutes later, I see the doctor. He’s focused and schedules tests to pinpoint why I’m no longer jumping tall buildings in a single bound.
When I get home I call the other HMO. I doubt they’re better, but I’ll enjoy expressing my anger at market medicine. Though it’s really my fault for remembering that I once was human, not a variable in some P&L spreadsheet.
Second course:
I am thankful for the election results, which. I see not in political terms - liberal vs. conservative, blah blah - but in a mental health context.
Republicans and independents joined Democrats to pull a deranged nation back from the railing to a safer place. We remain on the bridge, however, overlooking troubled waters Or maybe the vote was a return to reason from delusions inspired by inhaling a witches’ brew of paranoia, innocence, ignorance, true belief, cynicism, eye of newt and toe of frog.
Wasn’t it an awful process, though? The ethics of the market – which is to say, no ethics – dominated. There is just the goal – winning.
Of course, the market is swallowing law, medicine, sports, even consciousness. Case in point: I just met a man whose passion and expertise lie in preventing school dropouts. He said he’d been explaining to the Mayor and Governor that it was crucial to educate our kids to compete in the global economy.
Smart approach. Still, since when do we need a dollar justification for teaching kids?
Main course:
I am thankful for the fine journalism I read in newspapers and on the Web, but mainstream media move every day toward offering more pseudo news, syndicated celebrity tidbits and six-second sound bites.
Compared to when I started 45 years ago, the business makes it tougher for producers, reporters and editors to fulfill their First Amendment responsibilities. (First Amendment? What’s that? They never covered it in my MBA classes.)
No surprise, then, that much election coverage in newspapers and TV was so timid. What ever happened to skepticism and its offspring - thought?
Recommended reading: "All Governments Lie" (Scribner, 2006), Myra MacPherson’s new book on journalist I.F. Stone.
Dessert:
Driving home from Denver. Sunday, late. Past Raton, mesas lit from behind by the dying sun. Hardscrabble territory, suddenly mysterious. I am touched. Radio signals from afar carry Nebraska ranchers chuckling, deep-voiced, over jokes I don’t get. Miles speed by in blackest beauty.
Epiphany? I don’t know but something there is like peace - for which I am thankful.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Arthur Alpert is a semi-retired newsman in Albuquerque. Reach him at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column appears the fourth Thursday of every month.