Here is my latest Albuquerque Tribune column:
KNOCKED DOWN
Profit-driven corporations, vulgarity are poisoning humane health care
By Arthur Alpert
An innocent draftee back in the day, I was shocked by the Army’s foul mouth but quickly learned to hide behind curses.
That four-letter -word with which the Vice-President is familiar? I brandished it like a sword, wielding verb, noun, adjective and adverb with panache.
So I’m not a prude. I am, however, fed up with vulgarity. What set me off is the new comedy "Knocked Up". Underneath its superficial vulgarity beats a heart of pure crudity.
Plot: slacker protagonist meets babe in singles bar. She gets blotto. They - well, see the title. Amidst this coarseness, we’re cued to admire her because she’s a rising reporter for E. Huh? That cable network retails celebrity trash. Cued to root for him because he gets a job. Whoopee.
The direction is equally crude, with sex scenes so devoid of feeling as to make the act unappealing. Well, almost
That critics and audiences adored "Knocked Up" tells me its coarseness is the norm; thus it fits neatly into our debased culture.
Television parades low-lifes, violence and dysfunction. Governments use the advertising tools of fear and greed to sell deadly snake oil. And the press neglects its Constitutional role to dote on Paris, Paula and Posh. Our culture tears us down.
We are complex, dynamic creatures capable of wonders as well as waste, maybe even of self-government. Our money culture, however, wants materialistic zombies plodding to the Mall, grunting assent to Mad Leaders. (Note to myself: reread "1984" and "Brave New World".)
Citizens once, we have been demoted to consumers. Inescapable advertising defines the pursuit of happiness as super-sizing our vehicles, TV screens and houses. Yea, verily –the iPhone will display the very meaning of life.
Once we belonged to each other in communities. Now we’re alone. Libertarians preach the Gospel from (subsidized) pulpits: Every individual for himself in the (fictional) free market. Survive that jungle and discretionary income is your reward. Thus (they say) spake the prophet Adam Smith: "Blessed be productivity. All else is blasphemy. "
Indecency. Obscenity, The jungle. They so aptly describe our health care system that another movie, Michael Moore’s instructive, imperfect "Sicko", comes to mind.
It shows how profit-driven medicine trashes the uninsured, abuses many insured and spends billions so Americans can enjoy poorer health than foreigners.
Me, I would have focused on the indignity. In 10 years, my HMO has demoted me from patient to client, to customer. Next, unless I escape, will be "cipher."
And I’m lucky; one in five New Mexicans lacks insurance. The state hired experts to cost out five reform models. Projections are iffy, certainly, but they calculate a single-payer system could cover everybody with fewer dollars than the alternatives.
Don’t hold your breath.
Since single-payer would marginalize private insurance, that business will defend itself. Governor Richardson stands with them, just maybe because they reward their friends and punish enemies.
Only one (peripheral) presidential candidate favors government insuring everybody’s health despite polls that show most Americans want it. How come? The industry shot down Hillary Clinton’s plan, which merely regulated private insurers. Imagine how quickly it would Swiftboat a single-payer plan. Socialized medicine, you know.
So where are we?
Humane health care knocked down by corporate dollars.
Society "Knocked Up" by rampant vulgarity, which earns dollars.
And we shop ‘til we drop dollars
Ka-ching! We have convergence - the Almighty Buck rules all. Now that’s vulgarity.
Alpert is a semi-retired newsman in Albuquerque. Reach him at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column appears the fourth Wednesday of the month.
Here is my monthly Albuqueruqe Tribune column:
At 75, it’s time I walk in another conqueror’s shoes
By Arthur Alpert
Later this summer I will explore the Silk Road for 25 days. When a friend asked me why, I said, "Because it is there."
Smart aleck!
Later I examined the question seriously and I’m going to pass along some answers. If you, like me, often wonder why you do what you do, you may laugh, cry, tear your hair or do all of the above.
Now the Silk Road runs from Xi’an in eastern China all the way west to the Caspian Sea and Europe, but the stretch I find most exotic wanders through Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent in Uzbekistan.
Whence this fascination? From "Ali and Nino", a colorful novel by Kurban Said (a pseudonym) about a Christian and Muslim in love in Oriental Russia. I read it perhaps 30 years ago.
But wait - Conrad Veidt’s evil face flashes before my mind’s eye Veidt – portrayer of the Nazi Major Strasser in "Casablanca" - was chilling as the villainous vizier in "The Thief of Baghdad", an Arabian Nights movie starring Sabu, a giant genie and flying carpets. In Technicolor, too! I was transfixed when I saw it in 1940, age eight.
Can you make out the minarets and markets, glistening curved scimitars and dark-eyed beauties? I saw them just the other day, when KHFM aired an excerpt of "Sheherazade". I guess my feudal fantasies borrow from Rimsky-Korsakov, too.
Romance aside, my Silk Road expedition rests on logic, too. The Universe spoke loud and clear when I turned 75 in April.
"Move, Arthur," it said. "It’s now or never. You won’t get younger or stronger."
I hope I haven’t waited too long. When I taught English outside Nanjing, China, three summers ago, filthy air and heat made it hard to breathe. I have enrolled at a gym to toughen up, but thus far the exercise has produced only aches where once (I swear) there lived muscles.
In truth, the physical challenge - and State Department warnings about bad guys in Uzbekistan - have spurred me. Childish defiance, I guess.
In "The 300", the recent movie about Spartans warring against the more powerful Persian Empire, the Spartans teach their boys not to feel so as to be exemplary warriors. In my head I disapprove, of course, but emotionally I’m a traditional, backward male.
So I will enjoy (minor) challenges like riding a camel and sleeping in a Mongolian tent, but I want to learn stuff, too. What does this fabled thoroughfare look like? Who lives on it? What do they make of me, us? I’ve begun the learning experience by reading "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World", by Jack Weatherford – seems I had Genghis all wrong - and "Life Along the Silk Road" by Susan Whitfield.
Finally, my Silk Road adventure is an escape from politics, a retreat to personal pleasure from which I hope to come back refreshed, the better to appreciate Washington’s weird and crazy guys. Like our Vice-President, whose passion for secrecy has him contending his office isn’t in the Executive Branch. That’s inspired humor, of an excellence Jon Stewart of the Daily Show never achieves.
Maybe I’ll explore the possibility of a Cheney-Stewart job swap here next month. That’s before I board my magic carpet to exotic climes, test my (ancient) manhood and, maybe, walking in Marco Polo’s footsteps, stumble on a new perspective.
Alpert is a semi-retired newsman in Albuquerque. Reach him at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com.