BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
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For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
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For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Saturday, November 30, 2002
[BigBody]
posted at 10:32 AM |
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Thursday, November 28, 2002
The crimes of Henry
Kissinger. Christopher
Hitchens has written a
cogent, suitably outraged explanation for Slate on why we
should all be appalled that President Bush has put the loathsome Henry
Kissinger in charge of investigating the intelligence failures
surrounding 9/11. Even the New York Times duly notes that
Kissinger "has been called a
war criminal for his role
in the secret expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and an
enabler of [Richard] Nixon's worst traits."
posted at 11:36 AM |
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A crisis of common sense II.
I can't stand it. I need to take a deep breath and remind myself that
we really do need universal health care, if only to protect
people like Diane
MacPherson and her husband, Mr. X,
from themselves -- and from us, when the cost of their grotesequely
irresponsible decision not to buy medical insurance for their
families falls into our laps.
Today the Boston Globe
offers us the downbeat but heartwarming Thanksgiving tale of
Craig
and Michelle Brenner, both
of whom are unemployed as the holidays loom, but who are persevering
because of their faith in God and their basic human optimism. Good
for them! But there's more. The Brenners appear to enjoy a rather
lavish lifestyle, and it's one of recent vintage. In 1997, Craig was
making $37,000 a year managing a Bruegger's. He jumped into the
burgeoning dot-com economy and, before you know it, was pulling down
$135,000. The inevitable happened, and he's been without work since
October 1 -- with no prospect of finding a new job that pays anywhere
near that.
So what did the Brenners spend
their newfound income on? A $400,000 home on an acre of land. And,
judging from this
photo (online today only),
a spiffy new red SUV. Now, I'm not going to get all judgmental here
and say that they shouldn't have bought these things. Why not? They
were hardly the only ones who thought the New Economy was going to
roll on forever. We'd have probably done the same thing.
But then this sentence hit me right
between the eyes: "The family has no health insurance because the
$750-a-month cost is too steep." Keep in mind that the Brenners have
two boys, a four-year-old and a two-year-old. Hasn't anyone told them
that, you know, things happen?
It gets better. Toward the end of
the article, we learn this:
Finally, Michelle Brenner,
who was a social worker before her husband's growing salary
allowed her to become a full-time mother, is contemplating a
return to the work force if Craig's emergency account -- he's
socked away enough to get the family through much of 2003 -- runs
out.
Michelle! You could bring home the
$750-a-month cost of health insurance working part-time at
McDonald's! And Craig could look after the kids. I mean, I know he's
really busy, "plot[ting] out new business strategies" in his
home office, but couldn't he do that after you got off work? I'm
sorry to belabor the obvious, but the Brenners seem to need it.
posted at 11:14 AM |
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Wednesday, November 27, 2002
Bush's sneaky Kissinger
appointment. One of the best ways to bury an announcement that
you're not too proud of is to make it on the day before Thanksgiving.
Today President Bush named geriatric
war criminal Henry Kissinger
to head a commission that will investigate whatever intelligence
failures may have contributed to 9/11. What a shocking and appalling
insult to the families of the victims. To paraphrase what
Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian
Hellman, every word out of
Kissinger's mouth is a lie, including "and" and "the." In 2001 I
wrote an essay in the Phoenix on Christopher
Hitchens's indictment of Kissinger
as published in Harper's magazine; Hitchens's article was
later turned into a book, The
Trial of Henry Kissinger.
posted at 2:51 PM |
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Views on the upcoming war in
Iraq. Judging from the paucity of e-mail traffic during the past
hour or so, it seems that everyone has abandoned his or her computer
in order to get a jump on the holiday. Soon I'll join them. But I did
want to call your attention to this roundup of commentaries on
the
likely war with Iraq,
published in the new Phoenix. To read my contribution,
click
here.
posted at 1:10 PM |
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Somerby and Gore, take 2.
Russ Smith, publisher of the New
York Press and writer
of the unhinged "Mugger" column, sends this:
Bob Somerby, who used to
run a comedy club in Baltimore (maybe still does) when I owned the
City Paper there (and a very good guy) is more than a Gore
"partisan" as you write today. As you know, he was a classmate,
and, I believe, a roommate of Gore's at Harvard, which puts him
beyond a mere partisan.
Actually, I half-recalled that
Somerby had been Gore's roommate, but wasn't sure, so tried to weasel
out with "partisan." My bad, and Russ was right to nail me on it. On
the other hand, isn't it signficant that Somerby likes Gore
after rooming with him in college? Did you like all your
college roommates?
posted at 11:08 AM |
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Gore's righteous take on the
conservative media. Al Gore's interview with the New York
Observer is the
sensation of the media world
today. People are so eager to read it that the Observer's Web
server has been overloaded, and it took me several tries to get in.
By now, you may have already heard that Gore states the obvious: that
conservative media outlets such as the Fox News Channel, the
Washington Times, and Rush Limbaugh's radio show amount to a
permanent cheering section that gives the Republicans an enormous
advantage in framing public debate -- and, of course, in winning
elections. What's unusual is that Gore, a once and possible future
presidential candidate, would be willing to speak such truth. Gore
tells the Observer's Josh Benson:
Something will start at
the Republican National Committee, inside the building, and it
will explode the next day on the right-wing talk-show network and
on Fox News and in the newspapers that play this game, the
Washington Times and the others. And then they'll create a
little echo chamber, and pretty soon they'll start baiting the
mainstream media for allegedly ignoring the story they've pushed
into the zeitgeist. And then pretty soon the mainstream media goes
out and disingenuously takes a so-called objective sampling, and
lo and behold, these RNC talking points are woven into the fabric
of the zeitgeist.
Gore's best line is when he
describes Fox's slogan "We Report, You Decide" as "the current
version of their ritual denial."
The great shibboleth is that the
media in this country are biased toward liberals. This shibboleth was
given its widest airing in a clumsy, poorly argued, yet bestselling
book by television journalist Bernard Goldberg called Bias,
which I
reviewed for the Boston
Phoenix earlier this
year. Broadly speaking, the media do have a liberal bias, at least on
cultural issues. But Goldberg seemed more interested in imagining Dan
Rather as a cross-dresser than in offering a serious
argument.
Yes, mainstream media such as the
New York Times, the network newscasts, and National Public
Radio are liberal on cultural issues such as gay rights and
reproductive choice. But what Goldberg and his ilk miss is that they
are also cautious middle-of-the-roaders on the really big issues,
such as the economy and foreign policy. Moreover, the mainstream is
liberal, but it is not a tool of the Democratic Party. Witness the
hell that it put Bill Clinton through, from Whitewater at the
beginning of his presidency to Monica Lewinsky at the end -- or
witness the disingenous attacks it launched on Gore during the 2000
campaign. Read this Bob
Somerby analysis of how the
media treated Gore. Admittedly, Somerby is a Gore partisan, but there
is a lot of truth in his contention that the media had it in for
Gore, and that George W. Bush was never subjected to the same
scrutiny or, for that matter, to the same sort of dripping disdain.
The media may not have respected Bush, but they hated
Gore.
In contrast to the conflicted
liberal mainstream, the conservative media are openly and nakedly
pro-Republican. There is simply nothing like it on the Democratic
side. Even now, Gore admits that he's smarting from a nasty piece by
liberal Times columnist Frank Rich, snarkily headlined "Do
We Have To Call You Al?"
Perhaps the difference is that,
because most reporters are liberals, they are hypersensitive to being
accused of liberal bias, and thus gleefully pounce on the weaknesses
of liberal politicians. Perhaps it's because, as Nicholas
Confessore argues in a
profile of Times columnist Paul Krugman in the Washington
Monthly, liberals in the media overwhelmingly come from the
reporting ranks, whereas conservatives tend to come from the world of
partisan politics.
Whatever the reason, in terms of
ferocity and influence, the conservative media have it all over the
so-called liberal mainstream.
posted at 10:36 AM |
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Promising premiere. Nice
debut by new
columnist Howard Manly in
the Boston Herald today. Manly was a longshot candidate for a
metro columnist's slot at the Globe in 1998 after Patricia
Smith and Mike Barnicle imploded. He's a smart and interesting guy,
and his column will bear watching.
posted at 10:36 AM |
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Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Caveman unavailable for
comment. I was doing a little research on a rare genetic
condition called cleidocranial dysplasia when I ran across
this:
A possible example of this
disorder has been found in the skull of a Neanderthal man. (The
patient could not be interviewed as to family history).
It's on a website called
MedicineNet.com, which promises "Smart Medicine." If only.
posted at 4:13 PM |
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It's the monopoly, stupid! I'm
a day late in taking note of this Brian Mooney story in the
Globe on the
state of the Massachusetts Democratic
Party. As Mooney notes, the
Democrats have lost four consecutive governor's races, and they've
done it while trying every conceivable model: a bombastic
conservative (John Silber, 1990), a liberal policy geek (Mark
Roosevelt, 1994), a reformist outsider (Scott Harshbarger, 1998), and
a play-it-safe insider (Shannon O'Brien, 2002).
The current battle, Mooney reports,
is between moderates, who think the party has moved too far to the
left, and liberals, who complain that their party's candidates have
grown so cautious that there's a growing passion gap.
I'm skeptical about all of this.
The truth, I suspect, is that the best way for the Democrats to win
back the corner office is to let the Republicans capture a meaningful
chunk of seats in the legislature, and maybe even a couple of
congressional seats and a constitutional office or two. Even during
the heyday of Michael Dukakis, the Democrats did not have quite the
iron grip on state politics that they do today. The voters, alarmed
at this one-party dominance, have not quite demanded divided
government (obviously), but they have opted for at least some
minority-party oversight. Voting for Republican governors has been
the best way they could do that.
This year's race tells the story.
Coming out the primaries, O'Brien, a capable career pol who'd done a
good job of running the treasurer's office, jumped out to a
significant lead over Republican Mitt Romney. The public clearly had
real doubts about Romney, who, despite his moderate rhetoric, came
across as significantly more conservative on social issues than his
Republican predecessors, Bill Weld, Paul Cellucci, and Jane
Swift.
So what turned it around? O'Brien's
poor campaign, in part. The key, though, was when Romney started
running against the "Gang of Three" -- House Speaker Tom Finneran (a
staunch O'Brien ally), Senate president-apparent Bob Travaglini
(brother of top O'Brien aide Mike Travaglini), and O'Brien herself.
Voters took a second look, decided O'Brien would be one Democrat too
many, and made a leap of faith by switching to Romney.
The real problem with Massachusetts
Democrats is not that they are ideologically divided or out of touch,
even though both of those propositions may be true. Rather, it is
that they are the victims of their own success.
posted at 11:28 AM |
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Monday, November 25, 2002
A crisis of common sense. I
don't mean to make fun of Diane MacPherson and her family. I'm sure
they're nice people. But they've been shockingly irresponsible, and
the New York Times wants
you to feel sorry for them.
These Lowell residents are the
showcase example in today's front-page story on how the
health-insurance crisis has reached the middle and even the upper
classes. The family is solidly middle-class, and at the moment they
are entirely without medical coverage.
How did this happen? By the
Times' account, it began when Diane MacPherson lost her job.
It would have cost them $931 a month to continue it through the
federal COBRA program, so they dropped coverage except for their
four-year-old daughter, reducing their monthly cost to $270. Then,
when MacPherson's unemployment benefits ran out, they dumped their
insurance altogether.
A sad tale, but there's more, much
more. It turns out that MacPherson's husband -- he is never named,
perhaps because he was too embarrassed to want his identity revealed
-- makes $75,000 a year in construction, although the company for
which he works offers no health benefits. So there you have it: a
family of three, making roughly the median
income for a family of four
in Massachusetts (for the math-challenged, that means they're making
more than the median), has chosen not to pay for health insurance,
not for themselves, not for their child.
Continuing coverage just for their
daughter would cost just 4.3 percent of their annual gross income,
even if Diane doesn't find another job. Yet the Times says
MacPherson and her husband simply can't do it, explaining, "Although
her husband earns about $75,000 a year, construction work is seasonal
and they could not be assured of enough income every month to pay for
health insurance." Paging Diane MacPherson and Mr. X! You can set
aside more money during the fat months so that you can pay your bills
during the lean ones. It's called budgeting.
My wife peered over my shoulder as
I was reading this and, photographer that she is, examined the photo
of Diane MacPherson and her daughter and said, "Look at the window
behind them. They're in a brand-new development!" And, yes, it does
appear that they've living large -- way over their heads, no doubt,
especially given their new, downsized circumstances. But what this is
really about is the misplaced priorities of two adults who ought to
know better -- not an insurance "crisis."
Now, if I were a conservative, I
would end my little morality tale right there. But I'm not, and I
won't. We do need some sort of universal health care to cover the 40
million or so Americans without insurance. Some are poor. Some are
sick, and the insurance companies don't want them. Some are
small-business owners struggling to keep their heads above water, and
the Times documents those cases, too. And yes, some are like
our Lowell family, middle-class but with idiotic priorities, putting
their dream home and their lifestyle ahead of their health-care
needs. The point is that unless you want to live in a Hobbesian state
of nature, with everyone on his or her own, we ought to make health
care a basic social benefit.
Still, you can't help but cringe
when you take a close look at the choices that some people
make.
posted at 9:22 AM |
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Sunday, November 24, 2002
Howard Dean, President of
2003. God help us, here comes another one. This year's model of
the socially liberal, fiscally conservative "reformist" Democrat
who's running for president against the proverbial long odds is
Vermont governor Howard
Dean, profiled in today's
Boston Globe Magazine by the estimable Charlie Pierce. Dean
follows in the futile tradition of Bill Bradley (2000), Paul Tsongas
(1992), Bruce "Stand up for taxes!" Babbitt (1988), and, arguably,
Gary Hart (1984).
The good news is that unlike the
self-absorbed, self-regarding Bradley, Dean actually seems to be
something like a regular guy, openly ambitious, blunt (although not
nearly as blunt as, say, John McCain, the Republican version of the
Bradley/Babbitt/Tsongas strain), and the sort of political weasel we
can all recognize, if not appreciate: he pissed off all sides in the
same-sex-marriage debate by signing Vermont's civil-union law with so
little fanfare you'd think he was signing pardon papers for Hannibal
Lecter. The bad news, at least for the Dean family, is that he's not
going to win.
But as Pierce notes, Dean is wowing
the pundits, and he stands to be President of the Beltway in 2003.
That's as close as he's going to come, though he could get
consideration for vice-president or -- assuming George W. Bush can
actually be defeated -- a Cabinet post. So do give this a
read.
posted at 7:35 PM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
