Beware jargon.
The Massachusetts Association of Realtors -- members of which have been too busy to update their Web site since December 2000 -- voted 81-6 yesterday in favor of “designated agencies.” They want legislators to let the same firm represent the seller of a home and the person bidding for it.
Ideally, the agents representing the seller and buyer compete, and all is well because their firms get a commission no matter which client makes out. But any idiot can see the possibilities for collusion, even if it takes someone knowledgeable in real estate to see the mechanics of how the buyer, seller or both get screwed.
The lopsided vote is a little suspicious, but it’s the phrase “designated agencies” that is the real tip-off that this is a bad idea for everyone but real estate agents. That’s because, of course, “designated agencies” doesn’t mean anything.
I’m told by a real estate expert that it’s supposed to mean that at a firm handling a buyer and seller, a boss “designates” one broker to represent the buyer and another to represent the seller. Never mind that they aren’t called “designated agents,” but “designated agencies”; under this reasoning, they could as well be called “choice agencies” or “selection agencies” or any number of other things -- and it would still be impossible to tell from the term what is actually going on.
Suspicion also grows when a Google search fails to present a clear sense of what the term means. The results are all over the place, even though the practice of “designated agencies” is apparently allowed in 26 other states.
A similar effort was presented to legislators here in 1997, and it failed. It should fail again until the real estate agents design safeguards against broker collusion -- and come up with a term that treats the public and the English language with more respect.
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Monday, December 01, 2003
GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD
Is anyone noticing the message to mutual fund investors on industry reform?
“You’re going to probably pay a few pennies more or a few basis points more in expenses,” said Geoff Bobroff, a Rhode Island consultant for the industry, in today’s Boston Herald.
Compare that with what the various market-timing and late-trading abuses, all $4 billion to $7 billion worth, have cost the average investor:
“Pennies on the dollar,” according to comments in early November by Louis Harvey, president of Boston’s Dalbar Inc.
Ideally those fighting for the small investor -- our secretary of the commonwealth, William F. Galvin, and New York’s attorney general, Eliot Spitzer -- will get the guilty to give back the pennies so they can instead be spent preventing the guilty from taking them away.
“You’re going to probably pay a few pennies more or a few basis points more in expenses,” said Geoff Bobroff, a Rhode Island consultant for the industry, in today’s Boston Herald.
Compare that with what the various market-timing and late-trading abuses, all $4 billion to $7 billion worth, have cost the average investor:
“Pennies on the dollar,” according to comments in early November by Louis Harvey, president of Boston’s Dalbar Inc.
Ideally those fighting for the small investor -- our secretary of the commonwealth, William F. Galvin, and New York’s attorney general, Eliot Spitzer -- will get the guilty to give back the pennies so they can instead be spent preventing the guilty from taking them away.
Sunday, November 30, 2003
BAD FOR THE TURKEY, GOOD FOR THE PANDER
I admit my turkey blog was a little over the top -- probably not to vegetarians -- but Radio Free Mike’s charge that I went “utterly fucking nuts” over the ceremonial pardoning of a fowl is, well, hurtful to a sensitive person such as myself.
Forget the topic, if it’s offensive or silly, and consider the subtext of the post, which is about the photo op itself. It is simply embarrassing for the White House press corps, which is supposed to comprise the best of the best of American journalism, to run with junk such as the pardoning of a turkey for Thanksgiving. Tomorrow’s Boston Herald has a giant picture of Bush dropping his glasses while wrangling his puling little dogs. News value? None.
Others have noted that, in fact, the White House press corps is so paranoid about missing The Story -- something awful happening to the president -- that it does not tend to stray very far from the president. It shows little initiative; it waits for handouts. A picture of a turkey-pardoning is surely the worst example of that, worse than a doggie photo because it’s hackneyed and posed.
So even if you don’t buy the image (here’s a similar one) being a sick joke on the American people, as well as on turkeykind, at least you must acknowledge that it’s pathetic for the media to pander as it does.
Forget the topic, if it’s offensive or silly, and consider the subtext of the post, which is about the photo op itself. It is simply embarrassing for the White House press corps, which is supposed to comprise the best of the best of American journalism, to run with junk such as the pardoning of a turkey for Thanksgiving. Tomorrow’s Boston Herald has a giant picture of Bush dropping his glasses while wrangling his puling little dogs. News value? None.
Others have noted that, in fact, the White House press corps is so paranoid about missing The Story -- something awful happening to the president -- that it does not tend to stray very far from the president. It shows little initiative; it waits for handouts. A picture of a turkey-pardoning is surely the worst example of that, worse than a doggie photo because it’s hackneyed and posed.
So even if you don’t buy the image (here’s a similar one) being a sick joke on the American people, as well as on turkeykind, at least you must acknowledge that it’s pathetic for the media to pander as it does.
Friday, November 28, 2003
A 5 ON THE PREDICTOR SCALE
Jules Verne gets a lot of credit for predicting stuff invented decades or centuries after his heyday, while Robert Heinlein gets a lot of credit for being readable and prolific. My holiday trip to California, which returned me briefly to an extensive library with plenty of Heinlein, shows he had his moments, too.
The 1982 science fiction novel “Friday” was given the backhanded compliment of being “Heinlein back in control” after a few novels in which his predilection for writing about authority, nudism, social graces and incest (he seemed in favor of all of them) seemed to many to be Heinlein out of control. It is readable, even when longtime Heinlein readers must roll their eyes through page after page of the writer indulging his authorial fetishes.
The first significant prescience “Friday” shows has to do with California, home of the recent gubernatorial recall. Heinlein says of the state’s residents:
“They elect everybody ... but they unelect them almost as fast. For example, the chief is supposed to serve one six-year term. But, of the last nine chiefs, only two served a full six years; the others were recalled except that one who was lynched. In many cases an official has not yet been sworn in when the first recall petition is being circulated.”
Even more striking is Heinlein’s sideways prediction of the World Wide Web and the serendipitous linking that leads so many astray. In some ways Heinlein’s computer network was ahead of where we are now, even though it was imagined before the first Macs arrived, bringing an emphasis on user-friendliness and graphics that would turn a DARPA project used by college professors into a way 18-year-olds in Dubuque can share their sexual fetishes with great-great-grandparents in Tibet.
“There was no reason for any of us to be bored as we had full individual terminal service. People are so used to the computer net today that it is easy to forget what a window to the world it can be -- and I include myself. One can grow so canalized in using a terminal only in certain ways -- paying bills, making telephone calls, listening to news bulletins -- that one can neglect its richer uses,” he writes. “Live music? I could punch in a concert going on live in Berkeley this evening but a concert given ten years ago in London, its conductor long dead, is just as ‘live,’ just as immediate.”
I don’t know what “canalized” means. But Heinlein goes on at length on how his imagined network functions. There is no need for anyone to actually read the following paragraphs, but for whoever’s interested, here’s the goods -- along with a hint of how Heinlein books can get so long. Despite the fact that not too much happens in “Friday,” at least compared with an average episode of “The Simpsons,” the softcover edition is a healthy 428 pages. (This isn’t an insult. Everyone says Heinlein’s readable, right?)
“That morning I was speed-searching the index of the Tulane University library (one of the best in the Lone Star Republic), looking for history of Old Vicksburg, when I stumbled across a cross-reference to spectral types of stars and found myself hooked. I don’t recall why there was such a cross-referral but these do occur for the most unlikely reasons,” Heinlein writes.
“That afternoon I got back to Old Vicksburg and was footnoted to ‘Show Boat,’ a musical play concerning that era -- and then spent the rest of the day looking at and listening to Broadway musical plays from the happy days before the North American Federation fell to pieces ...
“Next day I resolved to stick to serious study of of professional subjects in which I was weak because I felt sure that once my tutors (whoever they were) assigned my curriculum, I would have no time at all for my own choices ... Frustrated and irritated I punched up Louis XI. Two hours later I came up for air. I had not learned anything about poetry -- so far as I could tell the Spider King had never even rhymed ‘ton con’ with ‘c’est bon’ or ever been a patron of the art. But I learned a lot about politics in the XVth century ...
“I spent the rest of the day punching up French lyric verse since 1450 ... I never did find out what effect, if any, Louis XI had on verse.”
Friday moves to the terminal in “my room and went on with French history since Louis Onze and that led me to the new colonies across the Atlantic and that led me into economics and that took me to Adam Smith and from there to political science. I concluded that Aristotle had had his good days but that Plato was a pretentious fraud and that led to my being called three times by the dining room with the last call including a recorded message that any later arrival would mean nothing but cold night rations ...
“This fiddling went on for over a month before it filtered through my skull that someone (boss, of course) was in fact trying to force me to become ‘the World’s Greatest Authority.’ ”
The 1982 science fiction novel “Friday” was given the backhanded compliment of being “Heinlein back in control” after a few novels in which his predilection for writing about authority, nudism, social graces and incest (he seemed in favor of all of them) seemed to many to be Heinlein out of control. It is readable, even when longtime Heinlein readers must roll their eyes through page after page of the writer indulging his authorial fetishes.
The first significant prescience “Friday” shows has to do with California, home of the recent gubernatorial recall. Heinlein says of the state’s residents:
“They elect everybody ... but they unelect them almost as fast. For example, the chief is supposed to serve one six-year term. But, of the last nine chiefs, only two served a full six years; the others were recalled except that one who was lynched. In many cases an official has not yet been sworn in when the first recall petition is being circulated.”
Even more striking is Heinlein’s sideways prediction of the World Wide Web and the serendipitous linking that leads so many astray. In some ways Heinlein’s computer network was ahead of where we are now, even though it was imagined before the first Macs arrived, bringing an emphasis on user-friendliness and graphics that would turn a DARPA project used by college professors into a way 18-year-olds in Dubuque can share their sexual fetishes with great-great-grandparents in Tibet.
“There was no reason for any of us to be bored as we had full individual terminal service. People are so used to the computer net today that it is easy to forget what a window to the world it can be -- and I include myself. One can grow so canalized in using a terminal only in certain ways -- paying bills, making telephone calls, listening to news bulletins -- that one can neglect its richer uses,” he writes. “Live music? I could punch in a concert going on live in Berkeley this evening but a concert given ten years ago in London, its conductor long dead, is just as ‘live,’ just as immediate.”
I don’t know what “canalized” means. But Heinlein goes on at length on how his imagined network functions. There is no need for anyone to actually read the following paragraphs, but for whoever’s interested, here’s the goods -- along with a hint of how Heinlein books can get so long. Despite the fact that not too much happens in “Friday,” at least compared with an average episode of “The Simpsons,” the softcover edition is a healthy 428 pages. (This isn’t an insult. Everyone says Heinlein’s readable, right?)
“That morning I was speed-searching the index of the Tulane University library (one of the best in the Lone Star Republic), looking for history of Old Vicksburg, when I stumbled across a cross-reference to spectral types of stars and found myself hooked. I don’t recall why there was such a cross-referral but these do occur for the most unlikely reasons,” Heinlein writes.
“That afternoon I got back to Old Vicksburg and was footnoted to ‘Show Boat,’ a musical play concerning that era -- and then spent the rest of the day looking at and listening to Broadway musical plays from the happy days before the North American Federation fell to pieces ...
“Next day I resolved to stick to serious study of of professional subjects in which I was weak because I felt sure that once my tutors (whoever they were) assigned my curriculum, I would have no time at all for my own choices ... Frustrated and irritated I punched up Louis XI. Two hours later I came up for air. I had not learned anything about poetry -- so far as I could tell the Spider King had never even rhymed ‘ton con’ with ‘c’est bon’ or ever been a patron of the art. But I learned a lot about politics in the XVth century ...
“I spent the rest of the day punching up French lyric verse since 1450 ... I never did find out what effect, if any, Louis XI had on verse.”
Friday moves to the terminal in “my room and went on with French history since Louis Onze and that led me to the new colonies across the Atlantic and that led me into economics and that took me to Adam Smith and from there to political science. I concluded that Aristotle had had his good days but that Plato was a pretentious fraud and that led to my being called three times by the dining room with the last call including a recorded message that any later arrival would mean nothing but cold night rations ...
“This fiddling went on for over a month before it filtered through my skull that someone (boss, of course) was in fact trying to force me to become ‘the World’s Greatest Authority.’ ”
Thursday, November 27, 2003
TURKEY DAYS
The newspapers are predictably packed with Thanksgiving-themed thinkpieces -- by which I mean there’s one each in the Times’ of New York and Los Angeles, but how much more can you take, even on a day when excess is expected?
Their points can be tortured to fit my thesis that all our holidays are (or should) blur together, as can my family’s kitchen conversation about pie, which made me realize that pumpkin pie straddles the fall holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving. For which did my sister make hers last year? Heck, I couldn’t even remember, and still can’t, for which holiday the pie is considered necessary. Neither, now, am I right?
Anyway, The New York Times piece notes that Native Americans actually had nine Thanksgivings for various events. The nonnative Americans wound up with one. But I predict, in line with the more common thesis that Hallmark is creating or exaggerating holidays for profit, that we soon will be embracing more and more of them.
It’s excessive, sure. But it suits.
And now I must eat.
Their points can be tortured to fit my thesis that all our holidays are (or should) blur together, as can my family’s kitchen conversation about pie, which made me realize that pumpkin pie straddles the fall holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving. For which did my sister make hers last year? Heck, I couldn’t even remember, and still can’t, for which holiday the pie is considered necessary. Neither, now, am I right?
Anyway, The New York Times piece notes that Native Americans actually had nine Thanksgivings for various events. The nonnative Americans wound up with one. But I predict, in line with the more common thesis that Hallmark is creating or exaggerating holidays for profit, that we soon will be embracing more and more of them.
It’s excessive, sure. But it suits.
And now I must eat.
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
TERRORIST! PORN ENTHUSIAST!
Hey, where have we seen this before?
Capt. James J. Yee, imprisoned for almost three months, has been released, cleared of espionage charges and allowed to return to work with the Muslims being held at Camp X-Ray in Cuba.
But the government, although it no longer considers Yee a terrorist sympathizer, is still investigating him. The charges now are that he kept porn on a government computer and cheated on his wife, The New York Times said today.
Uh-hunh. What’s this anti-crime effort called? Operation Whitewater?
Capt. James J. Yee, imprisoned for almost three months, has been released, cleared of espionage charges and allowed to return to work with the Muslims being held at Camp X-Ray in Cuba.
But the government, although it no longer considers Yee a terrorist sympathizer, is still investigating him. The charges now are that he kept porn on a government computer and cheated on his wife, The New York Times said today.
Uh-hunh. What’s this anti-crime effort called? Operation Whitewater?
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
THE THING WITH FEATHERS
I’m not a real vegetarian -- my diet isn’t based on moral grounds and isn’t even consistent -- but I grow increasingly put off by the annual White House tradition of sparing the life of a turkey as Thanksgiving nears. The latest such event was held yesterday, starring a bird named, for some reason, Stars.
Stars was sent to lifelong refuge in a Virginia park after the photo op, in which President Bush patted the bird and its owner beamed down paternally as the cameras clicked away, controlled by journalists complicit in a farce of mercy. A worse farce than usual because the president’s usual farces at least have news value: “mission accomplished” in Iraq and whatnot.
Don’t get me wrong. The United States eats turkey on Thanksgiving, and nothing is going to change that. But that’s why the presidential pardoning is so offensive. The deal Stars is given, without even being asked, is the same offered Yossarian in Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” to go free while others die, so long as he’s willing to put a happy face on the occasion.
Yossarian condemns the deal as “odious,” and the offerers agree. The inarticulate and unknowing turkey is unable to give an opinion or make a choice; it’s trotted out as a token of benevolence by the White House unasked by the public (or would there be an outcry if this event was skipped?). The bird’s a walking, squawking metaphor for the luck or privilege enjoyed by some of us in a society that chooses to eat living things domestically and kill them for ideology or politics abroad.
Odious? It’s fowl.
The New York Times says Stars was “vocal” and “tried to steal the limelight,” but -- since I ascribe no great intelligence to turkeys, no matter what Ben Franklin felt about them -- I don’t believe it was protesting the fate of its fellows, like a movie star accepting an Oscar to make a statement of protest. It’s just a natural instinct, perhaps, to scream as you’re placed on a platform, strangers gather around, voices boom and lightning flashes at you from ominous black boxes.
Better terrorized than dead, Stars. But if there’s a Stripes out there that you knew, that you grew up with on the farm or in the factory, it’s probably dead.
Stars was sent to lifelong refuge in a Virginia park after the photo op, in which President Bush patted the bird and its owner beamed down paternally as the cameras clicked away, controlled by journalists complicit in a farce of mercy. A worse farce than usual because the president’s usual farces at least have news value: “mission accomplished” in Iraq and whatnot.
Don’t get me wrong. The United States eats turkey on Thanksgiving, and nothing is going to change that. But that’s why the presidential pardoning is so offensive. The deal Stars is given, without even being asked, is the same offered Yossarian in Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” to go free while others die, so long as he’s willing to put a happy face on the occasion.
Yossarian condemns the deal as “odious,” and the offerers agree. The inarticulate and unknowing turkey is unable to give an opinion or make a choice; it’s trotted out as a token of benevolence by the White House unasked by the public (or would there be an outcry if this event was skipped?). The bird’s a walking, squawking metaphor for the luck or privilege enjoyed by some of us in a society that chooses to eat living things domestically and kill them for ideology or politics abroad.
Odious? It’s fowl.
The New York Times says Stars was “vocal” and “tried to steal the limelight,” but -- since I ascribe no great intelligence to turkeys, no matter what Ben Franklin felt about them -- I don’t believe it was protesting the fate of its fellows, like a movie star accepting an Oscar to make a statement of protest. It’s just a natural instinct, perhaps, to scream as you’re placed on a platform, strangers gather around, voices boom and lightning flashes at you from ominous black boxes.
Better terrorized than dead, Stars. But if there’s a Stripes out there that you knew, that you grew up with on the farm or in the factory, it’s probably dead.
Monday, November 24, 2003
POINT OF POINTLESSNESS
I’ve been brief in my postings lately, largely as a result of distraction and news fatigue. This afflicts me semipermanently on certain topics -- the endless madness of Northern Ireland and Israel and Palestine -- but cyclically for current events in general; periods in which I read the news intensely, clipping articles and writing with passion, lead to periods in which I’m overwhelmed by surrender and lassitude.
The two are related. Ireland and Israel have alienated my interest through disappointment: Fool me once, shame on you, fool me since the dawn of time, shame on me. But it’s pointless to care about people who willfully resist resolution, who embrace bloodshed not just by fighting but by regularly embracing the leaders preventing them from ending that bloodshed.
That’s sort of where I am with larger events, too, as the United States consistently embraces not just madness and bloodshed, but the leaders that bring it to the point of more. President Bush is a huge fan of President Reagan, whose administration gave us the outrage of Iran-Contra, so it’s not really a surprise that the country finds itself in another ideological war of choice. The war in Iraq ultimately represents the worst and most illegal policework -- knocking down a door to look for evidence that justifies knocking down the door -- but the majority of Americans don’t care (even though Bush’s attorney general has a parallel lack of regard for domestic procedure). And Bush has a goal of raising $170 million for the upcoming election, even though he has no Republican opposition, but no one has even asked him why, much less expressed much concern over it. The guy who lost the popular vote last time will spend stratospheric amounts of money to win this time, and he stands an excellent chance of succeeding.
There’s the crux of it, that it’s hard to keep caring in the face of tremendous indifference.
I will care again. But it’ll be a “long, hard slog” until November 2004. I have to conserve a little strength.
The two are related. Ireland and Israel have alienated my interest through disappointment: Fool me once, shame on you, fool me since the dawn of time, shame on me. But it’s pointless to care about people who willfully resist resolution, who embrace bloodshed not just by fighting but by regularly embracing the leaders preventing them from ending that bloodshed.
That’s sort of where I am with larger events, too, as the United States consistently embraces not just madness and bloodshed, but the leaders that bring it to the point of more. President Bush is a huge fan of President Reagan, whose administration gave us the outrage of Iran-Contra, so it’s not really a surprise that the country finds itself in another ideological war of choice. The war in Iraq ultimately represents the worst and most illegal policework -- knocking down a door to look for evidence that justifies knocking down the door -- but the majority of Americans don’t care (even though Bush’s attorney general has a parallel lack of regard for domestic procedure). And Bush has a goal of raising $170 million for the upcoming election, even though he has no Republican opposition, but no one has even asked him why, much less expressed much concern over it. The guy who lost the popular vote last time will spend stratospheric amounts of money to win this time, and he stands an excellent chance of succeeding.
There’s the crux of it, that it’s hard to keep caring in the face of tremendous indifference.
I will care again. But it’ll be a “long, hard slog” until November 2004. I have to conserve a little strength.
Sunday, November 23, 2003
TOUCH SONG TRILOGY
Shouldn’t someone -- perhaps Rhino Records -- comes out with a masturbation compilation album? The time seems ripe; in the latest Rolling Stone, Sting describes hearing the Police on the radio as being like “Maybe the first time you masturbated successfully,” and Britney Spears explains that her song “Touch of My Hand” is about masturbation.
“Guys can talk about it. Why can’t girls? It’s a positive thing,” she said.
Delightful. But “Touch of My Hand” would be only the start of “Masturbation Compilation.” It would also include Cyndi Lauper’s “She-Bop,” of course, and the Divinyls’ “Touch Myself,” the Vapor’s “Turning Japanese,” New Order’s “Perfect Kiss” and so on. The list is long and tedious and -- I have found out -- not original. Google returns 105,000 results for “songs about masturbation.”
“Guys can talk about it. Why can’t girls? It’s a positive thing,” she said.
Delightful. But “Touch of My Hand” would be only the start of “Masturbation Compilation.” It would also include Cyndi Lauper’s “She-Bop,” of course, and the Divinyls’ “Touch Myself,” the Vapor’s “Turning Japanese,” New Order’s “Perfect Kiss” and so on. The list is long and tedious and -- I have found out -- not original. Google returns 105,000 results for “songs about masturbation.”
Saturday, November 22, 2003
HI, HOLIDAYS
I asked my niece about Thanksgiving plans. She plans to be a fairy. Or did she say she was a fairy? Either way, it was obvious she was confusing Halloween and Thanksgiving, which is a confusion unlikely to follow her much past the age of 4.
As she grows, she’ll find it’s better to confuse Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day -- which would be merged if the politicians of this country had any gumption. (There’s also an increasing convergence between Halloween and New Year’s Eve. Costume parties are common for New Year’s Eve, and I’m starting to get sick already of those tedious Halloween resolutions.)
Anyway, before the real Halloween rolls around again, I must know: Is there a regulatory distinction between candy that’s “fun-sized” and “snack-sized”?
As she grows, she’ll find it’s better to confuse Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day -- which would be merged if the politicians of this country had any gumption. (There’s also an increasing convergence between Halloween and New Year’s Eve. Costume parties are common for New Year’s Eve, and I’m starting to get sick already of those tedious Halloween resolutions.)
Anyway, before the real Halloween rolls around again, I must know: Is there a regulatory distinction between candy that’s “fun-sized” and “snack-sized”?
Friday, November 21, 2003
LONG-DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP
I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it: You love him more than he loves you. In fact, he doesn’t love you at all. He’s just using you, that caddish frat boy. You give and give and give, and what do you get back? Nothing. Just pain. And people are talking, let me tell you. They’re saying “Tony Blair, where’s your self respect?”
Thursday, November 20, 2003
TONIGHT, IN A VERY SPECIAL EPISODE OF JACKSON’S CREEK
Even the Herald newsroom was riveted by coverage of Michael Jackson’s arrest today on suspicion of confirming what everyone already suspects.
(We truly seem to have entered a new phase in American celebrity, in which there’s almost no one that doesn’t believe Jackson likes little boys and R. Kelly likes slightly less little girls, yet both artists continue to sell albums by the millions ... which is odd, considering that everyone’s so freaked out by gay marriage. If our society was so moral, wouldn’t we be boycotting the horrid musicians and endorsing the legitimizing of marriage of loving adults?)
Where was I? Oh, yes ... the television sets in the Herald were tuned throughout the day to ceaselessly dull video of Jackson’s plane landing, taxiing in, Jackson’s car moving slowly along the highway ... to break up the dullness, people exchanged Jackson jokes (“What happens at midnight at the Neverland Ranch? The big hand touches the little hand.”), discussed the case and printed out pertinent documents from thesmokinggun.com. This was couch vegetation without even the excitement of clicking from channel to channel; no one wanted to look away, but it wasn’t really entertaining, either. So the dullness actually brought an element of interaction to the event.
Tomorrow’s paper will be a big one -- the Herald business section starts on page 54 -- and I have to suspect some of that is thanks to the Jackson scandal. At least the paper represents an entire 24 hours worth of action, with new information justifying the space. But it’s astonishing that a newsroom would be so rapt and patient with an unfolding story holding so little excitement. No one admitted to feeling uncertain what was going to happen, as they did when O.J. Simpson took another slow trip down a highway, but with a weapon in hand and craziness in the air.
No, in fact the day unfolded with bland smoothness. There was a lawyer on hand and acceptance in the air.
It’s not even worth pointing out the simultaneous death and terror in Turkey from a suicide bombing, which seems somehow less visceral than did the knowledge that somewhere a plane was landing, and that its passenger would be in handcuffs by the end of the day. And in several months, a trial.
The best, most surreal aspect of the day was looking up every few minutes to find that Fox News was live, still live, and that not only were its cameras showing the dullest of scenes, or that it had to tell us what we were seeing (“Michael Jackson’s plane lands,” that sort of thing), but that above those descriptions were the legend: “FOX NEWS ALERT.”
Fox news alert: Michael Jackson’s plane will land here.
Fox news alert: The plane is landing.
Fox news alert: The plane has landed.
It’s the repetition and setup we treasure in sitcoms applied to news, in which everything becomes so predictable that we find it comforting to watch it unfold. It’s just that usually it has to do with semi-popular, quirky public figures in awkward situations, and in this case it’s ... well, exactly that.
(We truly seem to have entered a new phase in American celebrity, in which there’s almost no one that doesn’t believe Jackson likes little boys and R. Kelly likes slightly less little girls, yet both artists continue to sell albums by the millions ... which is odd, considering that everyone’s so freaked out by gay marriage. If our society was so moral, wouldn’t we be boycotting the horrid musicians and endorsing the legitimizing of marriage of loving adults?)
Where was I? Oh, yes ... the television sets in the Herald were tuned throughout the day to ceaselessly dull video of Jackson’s plane landing, taxiing in, Jackson’s car moving slowly along the highway ... to break up the dullness, people exchanged Jackson jokes (“What happens at midnight at the Neverland Ranch? The big hand touches the little hand.”), discussed the case and printed out pertinent documents from thesmokinggun.com. This was couch vegetation without even the excitement of clicking from channel to channel; no one wanted to look away, but it wasn’t really entertaining, either. So the dullness actually brought an element of interaction to the event.
Tomorrow’s paper will be a big one -- the Herald business section starts on page 54 -- and I have to suspect some of that is thanks to the Jackson scandal. At least the paper represents an entire 24 hours worth of action, with new information justifying the space. But it’s astonishing that a newsroom would be so rapt and patient with an unfolding story holding so little excitement. No one admitted to feeling uncertain what was going to happen, as they did when O.J. Simpson took another slow trip down a highway, but with a weapon in hand and craziness in the air.
No, in fact the day unfolded with bland smoothness. There was a lawyer on hand and acceptance in the air.
It’s not even worth pointing out the simultaneous death and terror in Turkey from a suicide bombing, which seems somehow less visceral than did the knowledge that somewhere a plane was landing, and that its passenger would be in handcuffs by the end of the day. And in several months, a trial.
The best, most surreal aspect of the day was looking up every few minutes to find that Fox News was live, still live, and that not only were its cameras showing the dullest of scenes, or that it had to tell us what we were seeing (“Michael Jackson’s plane lands,” that sort of thing), but that above those descriptions were the legend: “FOX NEWS ALERT.”
Fox news alert: Michael Jackson’s plane will land here.
Fox news alert: The plane is landing.
Fox news alert: The plane has landed.
It’s the repetition and setup we treasure in sitcoms applied to news, in which everything becomes so predictable that we find it comforting to watch it unfold. It’s just that usually it has to do with semi-popular, quirky public figures in awkward situations, and in this case it’s ... well, exactly that.
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
BIBLE LESSENS
Massachusetts’ Supreme Court decided Tuesday that gay people should be allowed to marry. Fortunately, conservatives are taking it in stride.
“We must amend the Constitution if we are to stop a tyrannical judiciary from redefining marriage to the point of extinction,” thundered Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, from the pulpit of The New York Times.
One may reasonably wonder why the council, which promotes the Judeo-Christian notion of family and marriage because “God exists,” fears a human law’s effect on an institution created by God. Usually when God feels threatened, he does things such as wipe out evildoers and spare the good. Conservatives tend to feel God needs protection.
It’ll be interesting to see this go to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will probably ultimately be put in the uncomfortable position of deciding a case in which one side says it’s correct because “the Bible says so.” If a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage is passed first, it’s that the Supreme Court will have to decide on. Either way, the conservatives are going to have to come up with an argument that has nothing to do with God ... because that’s a sure ticket to a bunch of Supreme Court justices giving the okay to gay marriage, pained as they may be by having to do so.
For a brain-bending look at how the conservatives justify their position, check out the council’s question-and-answer page. Although it doesn’t explain how judges that have granted a freedom are “tyrannical,” it does provide such gems of circular reasoning as:
“Marriage is not a creation of the law. Marriage is a fundamental human institution that predates the law and the Constitution. At its heart, it is an anthropological and sociological reality, not a legal one. Laws relating to marriage merely recognize and regulate an institution that already exists.”
Cool, eh? The council can’t even make sure its own attack on the decision (it’s saying the law can’t redefine marriage to include gays because “marriage is not a creation of the law”) actually precludes the law redefining marriage to include gays (because heterosexual “marriage” existed before the law codified it -- like long-term gay relationships now).
It’ll be a hoot hearing such arguments before U.S. Supreme Court justices. The more the council draws counsel from the Bible, the more it’ll be lessening its chances to win its case.
“We must amend the Constitution if we are to stop a tyrannical judiciary from redefining marriage to the point of extinction,” thundered Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, from the pulpit of The New York Times.
One may reasonably wonder why the council, which promotes the Judeo-Christian notion of family and marriage because “God exists,” fears a human law’s effect on an institution created by God. Usually when God feels threatened, he does things such as wipe out evildoers and spare the good. Conservatives tend to feel God needs protection.
It’ll be interesting to see this go to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will probably ultimately be put in the uncomfortable position of deciding a case in which one side says it’s correct because “the Bible says so.” If a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage is passed first, it’s that the Supreme Court will have to decide on. Either way, the conservatives are going to have to come up with an argument that has nothing to do with God ... because that’s a sure ticket to a bunch of Supreme Court justices giving the okay to gay marriage, pained as they may be by having to do so.
For a brain-bending look at how the conservatives justify their position, check out the council’s question-and-answer page. Although it doesn’t explain how judges that have granted a freedom are “tyrannical,” it does provide such gems of circular reasoning as:
“Marriage is not a creation of the law. Marriage is a fundamental human institution that predates the law and the Constitution. At its heart, it is an anthropological and sociological reality, not a legal one. Laws relating to marriage merely recognize and regulate an institution that already exists.”
Cool, eh? The council can’t even make sure its own attack on the decision (it’s saying the law can’t redefine marriage to include gays because “marriage is not a creation of the law”) actually precludes the law redefining marriage to include gays (because heterosexual “marriage” existed before the law codified it -- like long-term gay relationships now).
It’ll be a hoot hearing such arguments before U.S. Supreme Court justices. The more the council draws counsel from the Bible, the more it’ll be lessening its chances to win its case.
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
MEETING A STANDARD
The hints at a connection between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Al Qaeda go on, but I continue to have the same problems with the hints: The language used in almost all these leaks and intelligence assessments never really says anything.
I don’t think the Central Intelligence Agency purposefully skews much intelligence at the request of the executive branch, but I do think it has been forced to walk a fine line between providing what it knows the White House wants -- a rationale for war and related activities -- and what it knows to be true. This results in the language-that-says-nothing of that Oct. 7, 2002, letter from CIA director George Tenet to the Senate intelligence committee (“Iraq and al-Qa’ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression ... we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq if al-Qa’ida members ... We have credible reporting that al-Qa’ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities”) that continues today.
“Members of al Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house ... The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other [Iraqi Intelligence Service] officers met at bin Laden’s farm and discussed bin Laden’s request for IIS technical assistance,” Andrew Sullivan’s Web site quotes from a leaked Oct. 27 intelligence memo from undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas J. Feith to the same Senate committee.
“[A senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for [chemical and biological weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi intelligence was ‘encouraged’ after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training,” Sullivan continues.
Most of the memo information is like this: Such and such sought a meeting for some purpose; such and such met with the intention of some other purpose. Although the massive amounts of data being revealed begins to sway me to thinking, again, that there was some link, it still seems odd that the same sources and writers, over the course of more than a year of dramatic change, find themselves unable to state things more positively: Such and such Iraqi taught such and such Al Qaeda member how to do this in return for X amount of money or prohibited materials.
I’m not criticizing; on the contrary, I respect the sources and writers for not overstepping the bounds of intelligence analysis (if restraint is, indeed, what I’m seeing here). But that doesn’t make it any less odd that this memo and the data it quotes is full of weasel words and passive-voice writing that barely counts as assertions. As I’ve said before, I’ve met with lots of people, with lots of intentions, but it doesn’t mean I got anything from them, or them from me. And, since there have been attempts before to frame Iraq, albeit clumsy ones, is there concern that some of this data is of questionable value (but better quality)?
Surely no one should go as far as the Weekly Standard, which writes that “there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans.”
There can be, if only because even if Iraq provided support to Al Qaeda, that doesn’t necessarily constitute plotting against America or its people.
More disturbing is the question that, if we point the finger at proved Iraq and Al Qaeda collusion, do we really have any moral high ground? This country has also had some pretty nasty allies -- including Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden -- to whom we’ve provided deadly materials and the training to use them.
I don’t think the Central Intelligence Agency purposefully skews much intelligence at the request of the executive branch, but I do think it has been forced to walk a fine line between providing what it knows the White House wants -- a rationale for war and related activities -- and what it knows to be true. This results in the language-that-says-nothing of that Oct. 7, 2002, letter from CIA director George Tenet to the Senate intelligence committee (“Iraq and al-Qa’ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression ... we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq if al-Qa’ida members ... We have credible reporting that al-Qa’ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities”) that continues today.
“Members of al Qaeda would sometimes visit Baghdad where they would meet the Iraqi intelligence chief in a safe house ... The Iraqi intelligence chief and two other [Iraqi Intelligence Service] officers met at bin Laden’s farm and discussed bin Laden’s request for IIS technical assistance,” Andrew Sullivan’s Web site quotes from a leaked Oct. 27 intelligence memo from undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas J. Feith to the same Senate committee.
“[A senior al Qaeda operative] said he was told by an al Qaeda associate that he was tasked to travel to Iraq (1998) to establish a relationship with Iraqi intelligence to obtain poisons and gases training. After the USS Cole bombing in 2000, two al Qaeda operatives were sent to Iraq for [chemical and biological weapons] training beginning in Dec 2000. Iraqi intelligence was ‘encouraged’ after the embassy and USS Cole bombings to provide this training,” Sullivan continues.
Most of the memo information is like this: Such and such sought a meeting for some purpose; such and such met with the intention of some other purpose. Although the massive amounts of data being revealed begins to sway me to thinking, again, that there was some link, it still seems odd that the same sources and writers, over the course of more than a year of dramatic change, find themselves unable to state things more positively: Such and such Iraqi taught such and such Al Qaeda member how to do this in return for X amount of money or prohibited materials.
I’m not criticizing; on the contrary, I respect the sources and writers for not overstepping the bounds of intelligence analysis (if restraint is, indeed, what I’m seeing here). But that doesn’t make it any less odd that this memo and the data it quotes is full of weasel words and passive-voice writing that barely counts as assertions. As I’ve said before, I’ve met with lots of people, with lots of intentions, but it doesn’t mean I got anything from them, or them from me. And, since there have been attempts before to frame Iraq, albeit clumsy ones, is there concern that some of this data is of questionable value (but better quality)?
Surely no one should go as far as the Weekly Standard, which writes that “there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans.”
There can be, if only because even if Iraq provided support to Al Qaeda, that doesn’t necessarily constitute plotting against America or its people.
More disturbing is the question that, if we point the finger at proved Iraq and Al Qaeda collusion, do we really have any moral high ground? This country has also had some pretty nasty allies -- including Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden -- to whom we’ve provided deadly materials and the training to use them.
Monday, November 17, 2003
U.S. OUT OF THE SHIRE
The extended edition of “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” comes out tomorrow.
That’s it. That’s all I got.
That’s pretty much all I can think about.
That’s it. That’s all I got.
That’s pretty much all I can think about.
Sunday, November 16, 2003
OLD COLLEGE TRY
All credit to Emerson College for its tremendous campus improvements. As sad as it is that the college had to give up those charming but hardly cost-efficient Beacon Street brownstones, a look at the Boston Common-area buildings are encouraging.
The Cutler Majestic Theatre is stunning inside. The acoustics during a performance of “The Fabulous Invalid” last night at the Majestic were strangely bad, but a gaze around the refurbished 1903 theater afterward made up for it.
The new Tufte Performance and Production Center, cleverly tucked away behind the Majestic, is a sharp and valuable addition. (One oddity: The third-floor black box theater’s reception space gets uncomfortably packed with only a couple of dozen people in it, and its sloping glass wall offers only an earthy but less-than-glamorous close-up of the back of another building, complete with fire escape and smoking stagehands.) The Tufte building’s coolest aspect is the ethereal, ever-changing lights aligned on every floor visible from the Tremont Street alley next to the Majestic.
That Emerson is doing so well is strong testimony to my policy of not giving it any money. Cheers!
The Cutler Majestic Theatre is stunning inside. The acoustics during a performance of “The Fabulous Invalid” last night at the Majestic were strangely bad, but a gaze around the refurbished 1903 theater afterward made up for it.
The new Tufte Performance and Production Center, cleverly tucked away behind the Majestic, is a sharp and valuable addition. (One oddity: The third-floor black box theater’s reception space gets uncomfortably packed with only a couple of dozen people in it, and its sloping glass wall offers only an earthy but less-than-glamorous close-up of the back of another building, complete with fire escape and smoking stagehands.) The Tufte building’s coolest aspect is the ethereal, ever-changing lights aligned on every floor visible from the Tremont Street alley next to the Majestic.
That Emerson is doing so well is strong testimony to my policy of not giving it any money. Cheers!
Saturday, November 15, 2003
PHOENIX GETS A RISE OUT OF ME
I don’t use the Boston Phoenix very much, largely because I dislike rewarding willful ugliness. I also remain confused by its insistence on splitting its “arts” and “8 days a week and beyond” sections since, a look through them will show, “8 days” doesn’t cover a whole lot that isn’t “arts.” This means that the film calendar runs in the “arts” section, but not in the calendar section, although that’s where the Phoenix indicates to its readers what movies are premiering and when ...
And what’s with the name of that section? Since there are only seven days in a week, one would think “8 days a week” would serve to indicate that there’s more in the section than just a week’s worth of schedules. But I guess “8 days a week and beyond” isn’t too moronic.
No, it really is. Sorry.
My main problem with the Phoenix remains its fugliness, though, and it drives me crazy because no one seems to notice (unless everyone else is just ignoring it, as one would a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum). Check out the issue on the stands now, with Russell Crowe representing the film “Master and Commander,” and see if you come away unscarred by this jagged junk heap of cutouts, colors and circus type. Even more notable is that the cover art of Crowe, and the tagline that refers you to read about “THE BLOCKBUSTER AS ART FILM,” refers to all of six paragraphs on page 4 of the “arts” section -- a bleedin’ movie review.
Thank God for the Phoenix, our local alternative newspaper.
It did, however, steer me toward two events this weekend I otherwise wouldn’t have known about, I think, and deserves credit for that. Even in thanking the Phoenix for having valuable content, though, I must slam it again for its presentation. Why? The same “arts”/“8 days” schism.
The “8 days” front touts “The Fabulous Invalid” at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, the play’s provenance, cost and run dates, the theater’s address and phone number. What time does the play show? See the “arts” section! And page 9 of “8 days” reveals the Bread and Puppet Theater’s Oratorio of the Possibilitarians” and “Victory Over Everything Circus,” taking up an entire third of a page and revealing all information except ... right: performance times. Wait! There is a time given. But it’s for a one-time symposium put on by the theater troupe, not the troupe’s actual shows.
For show times, readers must look in the “arts” section. But don’t look under the names of the shows, unlike every other listing there. Look instead under the name of the theater troupe.
Possibly it’s a locals-only thing, like Boston’s confusing geographical place names and the twisted streets of Somerville. But it’s frustrating ... and beyond.
And what’s with the name of that section? Since there are only seven days in a week, one would think “8 days a week” would serve to indicate that there’s more in the section than just a week’s worth of schedules. But I guess “8 days a week and beyond” isn’t too moronic.
No, it really is. Sorry.
My main problem with the Phoenix remains its fugliness, though, and it drives me crazy because no one seems to notice (unless everyone else is just ignoring it, as one would a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum). Check out the issue on the stands now, with Russell Crowe representing the film “Master and Commander,” and see if you come away unscarred by this jagged junk heap of cutouts, colors and circus type. Even more notable is that the cover art of Crowe, and the tagline that refers you to read about “THE BLOCKBUSTER AS ART FILM,” refers to all of six paragraphs on page 4 of the “arts” section -- a bleedin’ movie review.
Thank God for the Phoenix, our local alternative newspaper.
It did, however, steer me toward two events this weekend I otherwise wouldn’t have known about, I think, and deserves credit for that. Even in thanking the Phoenix for having valuable content, though, I must slam it again for its presentation. Why? The same “arts”/“8 days” schism.
The “8 days” front touts “The Fabulous Invalid” at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, the play’s provenance, cost and run dates, the theater’s address and phone number. What time does the play show? See the “arts” section! And page 9 of “8 days” reveals the Bread and Puppet Theater’s Oratorio of the Possibilitarians” and “Victory Over Everything Circus,” taking up an entire third of a page and revealing all information except ... right: performance times. Wait! There is a time given. But it’s for a one-time symposium put on by the theater troupe, not the troupe’s actual shows.
For show times, readers must look in the “arts” section. But don’t look under the names of the shows, unlike every other listing there. Look instead under the name of the theater troupe.
Possibly it’s a locals-only thing, like Boston’s confusing geographical place names and the twisted streets of Somerville. But it’s frustrating ... and beyond.
Friday, November 14, 2003
WHERE THERE’S SEX, THERE’S HOPE
I’m well aware it’s not over, but, to my immense relief, Roy S. Moore has been removed as Alabama’s chief justice. The coverage only a day ago seemed to suggest Moore would survive an ethics committee considering his insistence on keeping a huge granite statue of the Ten Commandments in his courthouse -- even though several higher courts told him not to.
It seems insane there’s even a question. How can a judge do his job if he defies court orders, which proves he has no respect for the law?
Yet, Moore is apparently not only respected by the majority of Alabama residents, but exalted.
The patterns discernible just by reading a couple days’ worth of New York Times coverage are disturbing, to say the least, if only a little inconsistent. Earlier this week, Nicholas D. Kristof again cited a Pew study that found Americans now “are three times as likely to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus as in evolution” and far more likely than in 1987 to expect an actual, biblical, Judgment Day.
Certainly this reinforces my discomfort over religions that force beliefs on others. But it also reinforces my discomfort with religion in general, because its strictures are at once so rigid and so difficult to pin down, with our historical religious writings so open to interpretation, but so many of our modern worshippers so opposed to admitting it. How can one follow the word of God when it keeps getting reinterpreted? It forces the admission, ultimately, that people choose the interpretation they like best -- and, suddenly, the serenity and certainty inherent in religion evaporates.
At the courthouse Wednesday were women in black veils, “to mourn the death of America,” and when the decision went against Moore, atheists were cursed as “destroying our country.”
“Many of Mr. Moore’s supporters were outraged that an unelected panel had removed an elected justice,” the Times says, quoting Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition as saying, “They’re undoing a democratic process here. It smacks of third-world countries. It smacks of dictatorship.”
Does this make any sense? Especially since, in the words of the Times, Moore’s reasoning for creating and keeping the giant, 5,000-pound statue was “to honor the biblical underpinnings of America’s laws”?
And especially since it’s in keeping with a constitutional amendment to prevent the burning of the American flag, and the outrage over the notion of cutting “under God” from the pledge of allegiance, even though it’s only been in since 1954. This is like the constant bleating over the “liberal media”: If the media’s so liberal, how can there be so much complaining about it? If everyone’s waiting for Judgment Day, how dead and destroyed can their America be?
I take it back. I’m not just discomforted. I’m terrified by the intense, almost desperate need Americans have for image and symbol over substance and reason.
If there’s a bright side, it oddly enough comes from another Times story on religion, one that should be, by all rights, as disturbing as the others. Thursday’s paper carried a story on Roman Catholic bishops’ decisions on how to tackle the staggering indifference shown by Catholics to the church’s stand on contraception (their decision: liken it to abortion) and the increasing acceptance of homosexuality (although they considered calling it “gravely sinful,” they went with “immoral”).
Despite the scary aspects of that, and the much scarier stuff I’m not bothering to quote, what stood out from the story was the church’s admission that “Catholics used contraceptives as much as anyone else and that only 4 percent of married Catholic couples of childbearing age practiced natural family planning.”
So there’s hope.
It seems insane there’s even a question. How can a judge do his job if he defies court orders, which proves he has no respect for the law?
Yet, Moore is apparently not only respected by the majority of Alabama residents, but exalted.
The patterns discernible just by reading a couple days’ worth of New York Times coverage are disturbing, to say the least, if only a little inconsistent. Earlier this week, Nicholas D. Kristof again cited a Pew study that found Americans now “are three times as likely to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus as in evolution” and far more likely than in 1987 to expect an actual, biblical, Judgment Day.
Certainly this reinforces my discomfort over religions that force beliefs on others. But it also reinforces my discomfort with religion in general, because its strictures are at once so rigid and so difficult to pin down, with our historical religious writings so open to interpretation, but so many of our modern worshippers so opposed to admitting it. How can one follow the word of God when it keeps getting reinterpreted? It forces the admission, ultimately, that people choose the interpretation they like best -- and, suddenly, the serenity and certainty inherent in religion evaporates.
At the courthouse Wednesday were women in black veils, “to mourn the death of America,” and when the decision went against Moore, atheists were cursed as “destroying our country.”
“Many of Mr. Moore’s supporters were outraged that an unelected panel had removed an elected justice,” the Times says, quoting Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition as saying, “They’re undoing a democratic process here. It smacks of third-world countries. It smacks of dictatorship.”
Does this make any sense? Especially since, in the words of the Times, Moore’s reasoning for creating and keeping the giant, 5,000-pound statue was “to honor the biblical underpinnings of America’s laws”?
And especially since it’s in keeping with a constitutional amendment to prevent the burning of the American flag, and the outrage over the notion of cutting “under God” from the pledge of allegiance, even though it’s only been in since 1954. This is like the constant bleating over the “liberal media”: If the media’s so liberal, how can there be so much complaining about it? If everyone’s waiting for Judgment Day, how dead and destroyed can their America be?
I take it back. I’m not just discomforted. I’m terrified by the intense, almost desperate need Americans have for image and symbol over substance and reason.
If there’s a bright side, it oddly enough comes from another Times story on religion, one that should be, by all rights, as disturbing as the others. Thursday’s paper carried a story on Roman Catholic bishops’ decisions on how to tackle the staggering indifference shown by Catholics to the church’s stand on contraception (their decision: liken it to abortion) and the increasing acceptance of homosexuality (although they considered calling it “gravely sinful,” they went with “immoral”).
Despite the scary aspects of that, and the much scarier stuff I’m not bothering to quote, what stood out from the story was the church’s admission that “Catholics used contraceptives as much as anyone else and that only 4 percent of married Catholic couples of childbearing age practiced natural family planning.”
So there’s hope.
Thursday, November 13, 2003
MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT
So much for President Gen. Wesley K. Clark.
At an appointment Tuesday to pander to veterans in New Hampshire, the general said he supported a constitutional amendment against “flag desecration.” Veterans, of all people, should know that it’s ridiculous and offensive to trample our freedoms to protect a scrap of cloth, but for those that didn’t, Clark was right there sucking up.
Next!
At an appointment Tuesday to pander to veterans in New Hampshire, the general said he supported a constitutional amendment against “flag desecration.” Veterans, of all people, should know that it’s ridiculous and offensive to trample our freedoms to protect a scrap of cloth, but for those that didn’t, Clark was right there sucking up.
Next!
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
DRUG ADDITION
The threat of imported prescription drugs has the pharmaceuticals industry and its free-market friends warning of the end of health care innovation -- a wildly overblown theory.
Friend Ted Bunker, the business editor at the Boston Herald, cites drug imports as “plainly a back-door method of imposing price controls on drug makers” and, as evidence that price controls would be deadly, challenged his readers Monday to name “a life-saving drug or medical device invented in Canada, where care is rationed and prices are controlled.”
Gosh, I can’t. But saying Canada can’t invent drugs because it has price controls is ignoring the fact that drug companies have no reason to be in Canada, not when there’s a place they can go that offers much and takes, especially in the form of price controls, little.
That would be the United States.
Industry goes to where conditions are most salutary. Our states and communities sacrifice and bribe to attract industry, competing all the way to the bottom whether it be a biotech company, prison or sports team, and the sacrifices and bribes are not always worth winning the prize. On the national scale, manufacturing has fled across borders and oceans to where people toil in sweatshops to earn pennies on the U.S. dollar, but the Mexicans who worked themselves and their environment to illness are finding themselves expendable as Asian nations commit to being the next lowest on the chain. Let’s not raise a loophole to the level of a virtue.
Instead, consider a world in which the playing field was level, and price controls existed in the United States. The country would have to find other reasons to be a favored location for the pharmaceuticals industry, with the drug infrastructure already in place here being a help. But the industry would have less money to spend and be able to buy less equipment or pay less for it.
That sounds like disaster, but I’m willing to let the supply-siders do the work for me here. The free-market beloved Say’s Law dictates that “if inventory doesn’t sell, then prices will be cut until it does,” according to the folks at fiscal-conservative Web site Friesian.com. So the makers of technology that feeds the pharmaceuticals industry would have to cut prices to stay in business. And so, therefore, would their suppliers, and so on down the line, until there were suppliers who could stand firm against the cuts.
Inevitably, I think, expenses elsewhere would take a hit, including some wages and salaries. Being a member of a fairly low-paying profession, I sympathize for those who would be hurt, which would most likely be in the middle class. Certainly people would have to be taking jobs in the industry for love of science, rather than to make a lot of money, if that’s the case now.
But this could also affect executive pay, and perhaps the best possible outcome of all this conjecture -- aside from cheaper prescription drugs -- could be if this helped close the gap between the richest and poorest in the United States. I’m reminded, actually, of another Herald article that brilliantly points out the difference in pay scales for U.S. executives and their counterparts in Canada.
The article, an Oct. 4 piece by Jon Chesto, is about the financial services industry, not pharmaceuticals, so it works only by example. In the purchase of Boston’s John Hancock Financial Services Inc. by the Canadian Manulife Financial Corp., it turns out that Hancock CEO David “D’Alessandro's $2.1 million in cash pay last year was supplemented with a long-term incentive payout of $7.9 million, restricted stock worth an estimated $11.7 million and stock options valued at up to $19.1 million. By comparison, Manulife’s chief got $2.7 million [total] last year.”
I think there’s room to even that out a bit -- and that it’s unlikely such excess isn’t a factor in a Tufts University figure Bunker cites showing “the average cost of bringing a drug from initial idea to pharmacy shelves has nearly tripled, to $897 million.” (Tripled since when? Is the figure adjusted for inflation? Lacking this information, the number’s meaningless.)
I even ponder, not unpleasantly, a world in which the free-market fears come true and scientific creativity and ability dries up without the money being wrung from the American people. In that world, the U.S. government places a priority on diseases that need curing and diverts money to do so from weapons research.
Price controls the end of health care innovation? Doubtful. Could America lose its place at the top of the pharmaceuticals hierarchy? Possibly, and all the pharmaceuticals companies would move elsewhere.
But then we’d have no reason not to create federal price controls, since we’d have no drug industry to protect, and the cost of our drugs would be ... well, probably about the same as Canadians pay for theirs.
Friend Ted Bunker, the business editor at the Boston Herald, cites drug imports as “plainly a back-door method of imposing price controls on drug makers” and, as evidence that price controls would be deadly, challenged his readers Monday to name “a life-saving drug or medical device invented in Canada, where care is rationed and prices are controlled.”
Gosh, I can’t. But saying Canada can’t invent drugs because it has price controls is ignoring the fact that drug companies have no reason to be in Canada, not when there’s a place they can go that offers much and takes, especially in the form of price controls, little.
That would be the United States.
Industry goes to where conditions are most salutary. Our states and communities sacrifice and bribe to attract industry, competing all the way to the bottom whether it be a biotech company, prison or sports team, and the sacrifices and bribes are not always worth winning the prize. On the national scale, manufacturing has fled across borders and oceans to where people toil in sweatshops to earn pennies on the U.S. dollar, but the Mexicans who worked themselves and their environment to illness are finding themselves expendable as Asian nations commit to being the next lowest on the chain. Let’s not raise a loophole to the level of a virtue.
Instead, consider a world in which the playing field was level, and price controls existed in the United States. The country would have to find other reasons to be a favored location for the pharmaceuticals industry, with the drug infrastructure already in place here being a help. But the industry would have less money to spend and be able to buy less equipment or pay less for it.
That sounds like disaster, but I’m willing to let the supply-siders do the work for me here. The free-market beloved Say’s Law dictates that “if inventory doesn’t sell, then prices will be cut until it does,” according to the folks at fiscal-conservative Web site Friesian.com. So the makers of technology that feeds the pharmaceuticals industry would have to cut prices to stay in business. And so, therefore, would their suppliers, and so on down the line, until there were suppliers who could stand firm against the cuts.
Inevitably, I think, expenses elsewhere would take a hit, including some wages and salaries. Being a member of a fairly low-paying profession, I sympathize for those who would be hurt, which would most likely be in the middle class. Certainly people would have to be taking jobs in the industry for love of science, rather than to make a lot of money, if that’s the case now.
But this could also affect executive pay, and perhaps the best possible outcome of all this conjecture -- aside from cheaper prescription drugs -- could be if this helped close the gap between the richest and poorest in the United States. I’m reminded, actually, of another Herald article that brilliantly points out the difference in pay scales for U.S. executives and their counterparts in Canada.
The article, an Oct. 4 piece by Jon Chesto, is about the financial services industry, not pharmaceuticals, so it works only by example. In the purchase of Boston’s John Hancock Financial Services Inc. by the Canadian Manulife Financial Corp., it turns out that Hancock CEO David “D’Alessandro's $2.1 million in cash pay last year was supplemented with a long-term incentive payout of $7.9 million, restricted stock worth an estimated $11.7 million and stock options valued at up to $19.1 million. By comparison, Manulife’s chief got $2.7 million [total] last year.”
I think there’s room to even that out a bit -- and that it’s unlikely such excess isn’t a factor in a Tufts University figure Bunker cites showing “the average cost of bringing a drug from initial idea to pharmacy shelves has nearly tripled, to $897 million.” (Tripled since when? Is the figure adjusted for inflation? Lacking this information, the number’s meaningless.)
I even ponder, not unpleasantly, a world in which the free-market fears come true and scientific creativity and ability dries up without the money being wrung from the American people. In that world, the U.S. government places a priority on diseases that need curing and diverts money to do so from weapons research.
Price controls the end of health care innovation? Doubtful. Could America lose its place at the top of the pharmaceuticals hierarchy? Possibly, and all the pharmaceuticals companies would move elsewhere.
But then we’d have no reason not to create federal price controls, since we’d have no drug industry to protect, and the cost of our drugs would be ... well, probably about the same as Canadians pay for theirs.
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