Category: Blog Post

It’s been some time since we offered anything on the subject of David Brooks, so here is something at last. Today in the Times opinion pages, Brooks modestly offers to assist President Bush, after the Prez’s State of the Union offer to listen to “other people’s ideas on how to fix social security.” (We wonder why President Bush would start listening now. Is this his idea of consensus-building—an eleventh-hour olive branch to all persons outside his sphere of absolute certainty and infalliability? Have his “mandate” and “political capital” so quickly evaporated in the wake of his train-wreck budget—a modest proposal that will have Republicans eating children for decades to come? Never mind, live for today!)

Now, just as a light-hearted prelude, let’s just consider how modest Brook’s offer of assistance really is. Considering that President Bush doesn’t even read newspapers—it seems possible that he doesn’t read at all—that’s a good one. Ha ha!

But we’re a little disappointed that Brooks’ thinking on this subject isn’t really up to snuff for the Times. In fact, it’s as fuzzy as his whole impressionistic “Bobos” daydream, and we’re surprised an editor didn’t catch it. In an effort to refine the whole idea of personal retirement accounts as a way to fix the unbroken social security system, Brooks dredges up the old idea of KidSafe. This was a bootless bipartisan taradiddle from the dark ages (the 1990s) that proposed establishing a $1000 savings accounts for all American children the day they are born. This amount would be tendered from the government, but—accforing to Brooks’ interpretation—it would be “invested in a limited number of mutual funds, but it couldn’t be withdrawn until retirement.”

So far so good. Sounds terrific. Except that for Brooks, this is a slam-dunk strategy for establishing the President’s chimeric “ownership society” based on the simple and absolute truth of “compound interest.” Brooks enthuses:

“Over decades, it would grow and grow, thanks to the wonders of compound interest, so that by the time workers retired, they would each have a substantial nest egg, over $100,000, waiting for them.”

Now, we count ourselves among the world’s most incompetent financial managers, and even we see a problem here. Brooks is apparently even dumber than we are. Compound interest is one thing, and a mutual fund operating in the open market is quite another. We can barely remember our own social security number, but we do know that putting money in a stock is not the same as putting it in a bank.

It’s a useful confusion because it obscures what they are really proposing: Bush and the people he will undoubtedly listen to most closely want more than anything to turn Americans’ money over to private concerns on Wall Street. As is always the case, Wall Street will take its cut, win or lose—the commission is the same whether you’re buying high or selling high, and the Plain People of America will leave their financial security exposed to the whims of the marketplace, with an equal chance of losing as much as they might gain.

We’ve said it till we’re blue in the face. It is not possible for 100 percent of Americans to be in the top one percent of taxpayers, and the sooner ninety-nine percent of Americans realize this, the better.

In yesterday’s New York Times, our friend Charles McGrath is up to his old tricks. In “Week in Review,” he considers whether The Paris Review can survive the death of its founder and guardian, George Plimpton—and at the same time considers the life expectancy of these tiny little “lit-mags” with circulations in the 10K range. McGrath points out that most titles of this sort will live about as long as a good dog—say ten years.

The Paris Review has managed thirty years or so for one reason: George Plimpton. He was an outsized personality with good literary chops and connections, and he had the charisma of a world-class editor and party-thrower, although he was mainly a great writer.

But the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Plimpton’s little vanity project persisted because Plimpton was willing to write big personal checks to insure that it did. And thank goodness for that. There are lots of good reasons to write and read that have nothing to do with making, keeping, or spending money. So there may be a direct relationship between the celebrity of the editor and the lifespan of the journal, and that’s no real surprise.

Further, McGrath poses the interesting proposition that Dave Eggers may be our generation’s George Plimpton—the respected literary superstar who uses his powers for literary good, so long as he is willing to write checks and lend his boyish face and soft hands to the miserable job of begging for financial help when necessary. (But this is easier than it seems, probably. We just finished a wonderfully written book that contains a nice description of the perpetual-motion-machine of celebrity: “You know you have passed through the magic looking glass when people pay you to do what you wanted to do anyway.” That, and the free drinks for life are also kind of a red flag.)

We’re reminded of Will Blythe’s thoughtful review a few weeks ago of Plimpton’s latest book, a posthumous collection of his unique brand of “gonzo” participatory journalism. In that review, Blythe proposed that Plimpton was a certain kind of archetypal loser—the American anti-hero, who made a career of failure and self-deprecation. Clearly, Eggers has done the same thing.

But Blythe wonders why the anti-hero can never quite achieve the apotheosis of the hero in American letters, and we think we know why: Anti-heroes are an inherently contrarian minority. (That’s why they insist, for example, on publishing literary magazines for a couple hundred readers. How Euro-faggy is that? And why, after all, did Plimpton insist on naming his New York-based journal after that other gay city?) What’s more, neither Plimpton nor Eggers ever really failed at anything—if they did, it was a glorious case of failing up. Both are essentially privileged upper-middle-class literary fellows who have been in a position to prank the literary establishment, and the literary establishment loves to be pranked by its chosen sons.

This story by David Sheff in yesterday’s NY Times Magazine about his accomplished but drug-addicted son is a cautionary tale. I don’t have anything to add to it, other than to recommend it and remember that “there but for the grace of God…”

There were two good pieces yesterday on the role of the press, or lack thereof, in providing information to our people so they can intelligently participate in their government.

Jack Shafer, who writes mostly about media for Slate, is one of my favorite columnists. His column yesterday is about what Bush has learned about media manipulation from his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jung Il. Not as far-fetched as you might imagine.

Columnist Mike Hedricks of the KC Star is more flippant when he puts the blame for the denigration of the press on Rush Limbaugh and his clones. But there is a smidgen of truth in there, too.

I won’t deny that Dan Rather, Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass and others played right into the hands of those who would bring this plague down upon the journalistic house, but when it comes to getting information about your government, whom are you going to trust? The government itself? There’s a disinterested and unbiased source for you.

I hope I’m not going to make this blog a magnet for fundamentalist Christians, (see the posts from Jan. 31 under the title “Try Flowers”) but I can’t help calling attention to this story from Tuesday’s NY Times.

I read about some recent Gallup Poll data in Editor and Publisher that public acceptance of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is below 50 percent in the U.S. What I’m waiting for is a poll that compares the people who subscribe to creationism to those who believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

I’m guessing the groups are close to identical. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice and I’ll vote for you for President?

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.