Category: Blog Post

In the NY Times today was a not-so-startling story about a study done at Harvard finding that an alarming number of people end up in bankruptcy after they get ill and pile up medical bills they can’t pay. The study says that half the people who end up bankrupt do so for medical reasons.

And most of those were regular working Americans who got sick, lost their jobs because they were sick, then lost their health insurance provided by their job, then lost their house and everything else.

This is of interest to us Minnesotans, of course, because of Governor Pawlenty’s proposal to cut the hell out of medical assistance to people who, for one reason or another, can’t afford private insurance.

Aside from the fact that taking people off insurance will have the obvious deleterious effect on their health, what it will really do is just shift the burden of their care to the counties who run the hospitals who have the emergency rooms where they will end up with pneumonia when they could have gone to a family clinic and got some antibiotics for their mild upper respiratory infection last week when they started feeling ill.

Another leading cause of bankruptcy, according to the story, is gambling addiction. Pawlenty’s other big initiative for this legislative session is expansion of casino gambling so the state can get its cut.

Maybe we can use the profits from the gambling for the welfare of the children whose parents we’re offering two wonderful paths to bankruptcy.

Ok, I’m a big Keith Olbermann fan. I have been since his Sports Center days when he once said of a baseball highlight clip, “That’s 6 to 4 to 3, if you’re scoring at home. And if you aren’t, try flowers.” My son, who was watching with me at the time, turned to me. I turned to him. Then we both fell off the couch laughing. Olbermann was damn near that good every night.

I’m not going to go on much more, except to point you to this, Olbermann’s response to the “SpongeBob is gay” controversy. Read the post from his blog, then be sure to click on the link and watch the video of the cartoon rendition of “We are Family” that so offended the Christian right. Be careful, though. As Keith says, watching the video could make you gay, or at least tolerant. And the religious right wouldn’t want you to be tolerant, now would they? That wouldn’t be Christian.

We will be close to the tequila, and far from the internet for the next week or so. If the two come within close proximity, we’ll try to scratch out a few thoughts about free trade, the Tropic of Cancer, the European vs. English sizing of huarachis, and so on. In the meantime, enjoy the new issue of The Rake which you passed on your way in.

There will be a quiz.

Yesterday, Philip Johnson died. He was the architect who designed Minneapolis’ most recognized skyscraper, the IDS Center. While the building has got its fair share of respect over the years, we’re at a loss to explain why Minnesotans have been so eternally grateful that they have refused to dishonor the man or the building by putting up any building that would exceed it in height. There is surely a phallic joke to be wrung from this. (Our first skyscraper! We never had it bigger! Such a lover!) But we’ll leave that up to you, dear reader. In the broad sweep of 20th century architecture, the IDS is not all that remarkable, and we’re not sure why we’ve granted it this special, ceremonial status into perpetuity—despite several newer scrapers being, uh, erected to within a few feet of the Big Johnson. You know, we didn’t stop writing sonnets to the Foshay tower just because it was eclipsed by, as Guindon once wrote (possibly his best gag ever), “the box it came in.”

Lots of interesting developments today in the world of Mass Media. Yesterday, we were gratified to see Minnesota Senator Mark Dayton take the stage, front and center, in the New York Times. He launched a blistering (and, no doubt, somewhat fumbling—in a charming way, of course) verbal assault on Condie Rice that should have brought a smile to James Woolcott’s face. Among other things, he sounded like a very irritated dad when he scolded, “I really don’t like being lied to repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally.” Go, dad, go!

Of course, Dayton really is a dad (we’ve met one son, and we found him charming). More important, his seat is up in the next general election. The best defense is a good offense, and it’s about time a Democrat from Minnesota lived up to family expectations. The last time we felt this way was when Dayton took on Rummy. He was fighting way out of his weight, of course, but he took some wild swings that landed nicely.

At least Dayton is getting his message out the old fashioned, honest way—by getting legitimate news coverage, rather than by paying a journalist or columnist to covertly do it for him. Yesterday, Armstrong Williams—the besieged columnist who took $240K to publically support No Child Left Behind policies—called efforts to bring him and his benefactors to task “a witch hunt.” Today, columnist Maggie Gallagher doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about that she accepted $20K to shill for a Bush-sponsored marriage initiative.

What is wrong with these people? Why don’t they offer us a quarter of a million dollars for our thoughtful, considered opinions?

Aside from the resounding silence of the right-leaning blog-ons with regard to this tetchy subject, we are highly entertained by these “journalists” efforts to dismiss the matter as no big deal. Indeed, it really is no big deal to many Americans—possibly most Americans. Just like torture is no big whoop. If you’re not guilty, then what are trying to hide? In both substance and style, that is the MO of the neo-con monopoly. Live for today!

But what these people seem to be genetically incapable of understanding is one of the pillars of this great country of ours: minority rights and representation. When a majority, cultivated honestly or through the almighty dollar, begins first to pooh-pooh dissenters, and then to slowly phase them out—well, that’s called a tyranny of the majority. And that’s when the backlash begins, and the bastards get run out of town.

The New York Times has had two good stories in the last two days illustrating what the Democrats need to do to get back into the good graces of the American voter.

Yesterday a story about Hillary Clinton’s appearance Monday in front of abortion rights activists in New York told of Hillary’s conciliatory tone toward pro-life partisans. Clinton said, “There is an opportunity for people of good faith to find common ground in this debate.”

What was extraordinary about the reactions to this statement was not the expected Republican outcry that she was trying to have it both ways, but the reaction from the pro-choice types, who greeted her overtures to the pro-lifers with silence, and later, thinly veiled admonitions that Hillary better remember where she stands.

In today’s op-ed piece, Paul Starr points out an original notion of what when wrong with the Democrats–that, like in Roe v. Wade and the lawsuits to legalize gay marriage in Massachusetts, they have relied too often on the courts to further their agendas by ruling their desired results legal on constitutional grounds, rather than building a consensus of support that would solidify their positions with electoral majorities.

As Starr and many other have pointed out, the judicially-oriented activism on gay marriage resulted in handing the Republicans a huge issue, and in 11 states (including decisive Ohio) the passage of anti-gay marriage referendums.

And, even more damaging to their cause, the Democrats made sure that George W. Bush will be appointing the next generation of federal judges who will be doing the ruling for a long time to come. Oops.

But try to make these conciliatory points sometime, like Hillary did, and the ideolologically pure Democrats are goint to have a hissy fit.

But now the Republicans are even more beholden to an ideological radical wing than the Democrats. The party that can find its way to the middle ground of reason, compromise and consensus building is the one that’s going to prevail in the long run.

And one place they should start is this war that Bush, Rice, et al. lied us into, and for which Gonzales wrote the playbook for torture. Kudos to Mark Dayton and the other Democrats who are opposing the nominations of Rice and Gonzales. That’s an issue the Democrats need to make their own–that war mongering and torture are inconsistent with the real American “moral values” that Bush ran on. Too bad so many Dems are so unwilling to oppose an African or Hispanic-American nominee that they won’t do the right thing and vote against these disgraceful shills for war.

You’ll recall that one of our guilty pleasures—among several, true—is the Fox program “24,” and this fourth season is certainly setting the bar high on a number of levels. First, it is interesting to watch the show’s writers struggle with the whole anachonistic idea of a cliffhanger. A show that dedicates an hour in real time to an hour in the storyline is bound to run into long stretches of sub-plot, while at the same time trying to sustain the main thrust of the show—in this case, a complicated massive terrorist attack on American soil. This is a formidable conundrum. You’ve gotta give your audience some payback along the way, and to do this, there must be some very bumpy conflict-and-resolution cycles… but always with some sort of provocation to bring them back next week.

Last night may have been the most bold and disturbing episode in the entire series, for a lot of interesting reasons. A quick recap: The US Secretary of Defense has been kidnapped with his daughter. Islamic fundamentalists are holding him in a bunker outside of LA, and they are planning a trial and an execution to be broadcast on the Web. It looks hopeless, so the President—having located the bunker—plans a missile strike to destroy terrorists, abductees, bunker, the whole lot before the execution can take place. Our man, agent Jack Bauer, is on the scene, and he singlehandledly breaks the perimeter and rescues Secretary and daughter.

The rescue is dramatic, and ends with the arrival of the US Marine Corps in helicopters. They rappel into the scene and, with cool precision, rip the place apart.

Now, we are well aware of how filmmakers manipulate us emotionally. We were not very surprised to feel a charge of excitement, a sense of justice, a rush of pride in American military might… this is standard operating procedure for a good action film. We have been set up to be sympathetic to the protagonist of the show (the USA, if you’re keeping track), and merciless to the antagonist. We are put in a position of cheering for death and violence.

What is most interesting about this new season of “24” is that it has removed the last veils of mitigating fiction, and taken the present world-situation head-on. Whereas in previous seasons, terrorist organizations were either a non-specific amalgam of multinational bad guys from some non-existent Baltic state, this seasons bad guys are islamic fundamentalists bent on their well-known goals and methods.

After last night’s blow-up, it is getting very difficult not to see this program as pro-war propagandizing. It is a terrible emotional mine-field to have to negotiate: If you didn’t feel a surge of pride after seeing all those terrorists cut down, you should worry that you can no longer be reached emotionally by the art-and-flash of mass media. (It’s OK to get excited, and then collect yourself and realize that you have been duped. Willing suspension of disbelief—engage!) Perhaps this point was driven home by the news of the Secretary’s successful rescue, televised within the program on (where else) Fox News. Or perhaps it was effected by the post-show dedication of the episode—”This epsiode is dedicated to Lt.Col. Dave Greene of the Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 775. His sacrifice, and the sacrifice of all our men and women of the military, will not be forgotten.”

Indeed. Righteous, merciless justice is so much easier in fiction than in real life. Can Americans tell the difference anymore?

I get a semi-regular newsletter from a guy named Jim Crotty, one of the founders of the ultra hip Monk magazine. The one waiting in my inbox today was titled “Bush Throws Dems a Bone: Will they Fetch.”

Crotty argues that the inagural speech “freedom fest” will set the bar pretty high for the Republicans. Bush, Crotty argues, has now committed his administration to a policy that more closely reflects the late pronouncements of Democratic softies like Jimmy Carter, i.e. that the United States should promote democracy and human rights in the world.
When you realize that among our biggest friends these days (at least the biggest friends of the Bush cabal) are such vigorous defenders of Jeffersonian ideals as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China, you begin to wonder what the hell Bush is really talking about…other that again masterfully co-opting traditional Democratic issues.

Crotty sees Bush’s pronouncements as a perfect opportunity for Democrats to call him to task–to actually hold him responsible for what he says vs. what he does. But, if we’ve learned anything in the past 4 years is that the Dems can’t hold anybody responsible for anything. What if, for example, they said something like this: “Bush said we started the war in Iraq because Iraq had WMD. Then he said Iraq sponsored terrorism. Then he said Saddam was a terrible dictator that had to go. Then he said Iraq will be an example to other Middle Eastern dictatorships of what freedom can be. Which is it?” Don’t hold your breath.

Why is it that Bush can change his message at will and get away with it, yet the Dems can’t even get one message across with any consistency?

Will the Dems hold Bush to his promise for the next four years? All I’d be willing to bet on is that the story will change a lot between now and then, but it will still being the Bushies doing the talking and the Dems wondering what the hell happened to their issue…again.

We happened to be present this morning at both a death and a birth. About an hour ago, Minnesota Public Radio pulled the plug on WCAL… And like trying to change alarm clocks without having to reset, they quickly plugged in KCMP, the much ballyhooed new “eclectic music” station they are calling “The Current.” Most people don’t pay that much attention to this sort of thing, but there is a decorum to be observed, and people in the industry attach great importance to the moment of switch-over. Normally, after a hostile commercial take-over, a station will switch formats without calling any attention to itself.

We remember eight years ago when an audibly surprised and upset Shawn Stewart said goodbye with virtually no warning the day Cargill sold REV-105. We don’t remember what song was played at the top of the last hour, but it was some godawful hair-metal song played on a continuous loop for at least 24 hours, while presumably REV-105 staffers were escorted from the building.

There were other reasons to remember that infamous day—it was the same day that the Village Voice announced it had bought City Pages and the Twin Cities Reader, and would be liquidating the latter. For those of us in the media biz, it sure felt like the day the national corporate monopolies moved into the Twin Cities and started crashing around our quaint little china shop. But of course, death often leads to birth—both processes being almost too painful to endure.

Old fans of REV-105 will surely expect “The Current” to reprise what they remember, in the sepia-toned twilight of their memories, about that celebrated radio station. And in the intervening years, we find we’ve become jaded about radio. An interesting inversion has occured in the last fifteen years. Commercial radio has so successfully been colonized by the bean-counters, focus-groupers, and poll-takers, that we expect any radio station that wants to compete will have its programming dictated by its format. That is, if your market needs a classic rock station, according to market research, then you will have certain, very limited choices about what kinds of music you can play. Your DJs, it is understood, aren’t a lot more invested in the business than your custodians–their jobs being limited to moving stuff and pushing buttons. Think?! You’re not paid to think, you’re paid to DO!

When news escaped that MPR was planning some sort of popular-variety music station, we were skeptical. Then, when they began to announce the pending switch-over to “eclectic radio,” we thought they were having trouble deciding what the station would be. In the mouths of radio professionals, “eclectic” is a word with much the same effect as a barber saying “Oops.” Surely MPR was not having trouble figuring this new animal out?

And then we realized what we most loved about REV-105. That station could get away with programming virtually anything, from Luna to KISS, Jimmie Rodgers to Joy Division. The reason they could do it successfully was because of the station’s ineffable personality. It reflected a group identity that synched and felt natural. The station owners left the programming in the hands of a bunch of passionate kids with great taste in music, and the results now live in immortal legend. (The Big Boss just stepped in to add, soto voce: “Yeah, but what was REV-105’s listenership? Microscopic!”) We like to think the same thing happens here at The Rake. There are no sui generis Rake stories, nothing really off limits. The only thing that dictates what we publish is whether it piques our collective, er, eclectic interests.

So far, we have to say the new station’s first-day playlist looks completely insane on paper. Opening song by Atmosphere. Last set: Luna, Son Volt, Hank Williams, Matt Pond. But then we had the funny realiziation that it compares favorably to our own iTunes library, set to shuffle.

Yeah, but can an idiosyncratic mix of unimpeachably cool music succeed as a real radio station with a real audience? We hope for their sake and ours that it can–but idiosyncracy plus mass media normally equals that saddest of all propositions: a critically-acclaimed money loser. It’s neat to think we’re not the only crazy people swimming against the currents of modern commercial media.

Forgive me if I’ve been thinking about this a bit, but the reason I haven’t been blogging for the past 9 days is that I’ve been flattened by a flu-like malady. Believe me, next year, I’m getting the shot. I don’t care how many old ladies I have to trample.

But it doesn’t seem so bad after reading up a bit on what could be in store for us. Now Forbes, the business magazine that bills itself as the Capitalist Tool, doesn’t seem to be high on the list of fear-mongering yellow journals. But this article is pretty damn scary.

According to Michael Osterholm, the University of Minnesota epidemiologist, the avian flu now running around Asia could mutate into a virus that can be transmitted human to human, instead of only bird to human, as it seems to be now. If that happens, millions will die before any vaccine could be developed or distributed. Here’s more on that.

So, what can we do in the meantime…other than pray? Well, we could mobilize on research and vaccine creation. But, as Vice President Cheney so aptly pointed out when the regular flu vaccine shortage came to light, “There’s no money in that.”

If you’re wondering what this potential flu pandemic will be worth, though, the insurance companies have done some figuring for you. Here is that info, in case you want to start short selling your insurance stocks.