Category Archives: Politics & Such

I’m cool like that

Turns out watching Jon Stewart’s Daily Show is a contradiction in personality terms. Who knew.

Last week I read that I’m cool – apparently, according to the Globe and Mail’s TV columnist, Conan O’Brien’s move to cable was a brilliant tactical move because only stodgy middle aged people watch Leno and Letterman at 11 on whatever networks they’re on; the truly edgy folk (such as yours truly) watch Jon Stewart on cable.

This explains why I keep having these urges to shave my head and make up rap lyrics.

Then again, I can’t understand why anybody would ever watch the two L’s – wherever they were. Never seemed like a good notion to me to watch creepy guys telling recycled, antediluvian jokes that weren’t funny when Henny Youngman told them, particularly as you’re getting ready to go to sleep. Bound to give you bad dreams.

Then, tonight, I found out – on Jon Stewart naturally – that according to Fox News’s Bernie Goldberg (Bernie Goldberg?! What kind of name is that for a person on Fox, I ask you) Stewart is merely pandering to his small, “unsophisticated” cable audience (when he points out some of Fox News’s’ idiocies and contradictions). All in patronizing tones that made me want to hit him – particularly when he seemed to take umbrage at Jon Stewart actually being polite to his guests, even when he disagreed with them. Wow. What a concept. Politeness. Obviously one Fox is unaware of.

So there you have it. According to Fox, only unsophisticated people watch Jon Stewart.

Now I’ve been called a lot of things – cranky, curmudgeonly, stubborn, irritating, even childish and idiotic – but unsophisticated? Please. I’m sophisticated enough to recognize a gentleman when I see him and Mr. Stewart is a gentleman. And clearly a very nice man.

We don’t get the Fox News Network in Canada which is just as well. Even flicking past it would probably make me apoplectic. It seems to embody the absolute worst of this experiment they call America: boorish, xenophobic, crude, partisan and – let’s not mince words – stupid. The snippets I’ve seen on the Daily Show and the first segment of Colbert make me shudder and do not bode well for the future of the American republic. Particularly since Fox is the fastest-growing network in the U.S.

That’s even scarier than Letterman’s face, frankly. (Since that poor man had quadruple bypass surgery he looks like a zombie walking). Someone should have told him that a massive heart surgery is not “preventive” of anything, particularly dying of heart disease.

But back to Fox. I guess they’re trying to prepare America for the challenges of the 19^th century.

My impression of Goldberg and Glen Back and Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement they’ve spawned is of a sad, scared group of people who are so terrified of Obama and any change – even if it means an improvement to what’s been – that they will literally cut off a nose to spite a face. Who seem to think the fifties were some kind of Xanadu. When men were men and women were women and little green men were little green men from Mars.

It was a time when America was #1 (because Europe was still rebuilding after the second world war) and in many ways the idea of America was amazing. As a Paris cab driver once wistfully said to me, when he was a child in the sixties, America was jazz and cowboys, civil rights and the space program, walking on the moon. It was science and innovation, Hollywood and glamour. American was cool. No more.

Now, it’s Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Walmart and kids’ toys made in China contaminated with lead (because nobody’s willing to pay more than $5 for anything).

It’s a pity the folks at Fox haven’t twigged to the fact that things have changed and being unpleasant ends up working against the America they profess to love. In any event, change, no matter what they think about it, simply happens. It doesn’t care. Seasons change, babies grow and later grow old and die. We change. Things evolve; true, not always for what you or I might consider as the “best”, but hey, that’s life. Life is change.

Screaming just makes you hoarse. And rudeness and spite, as Robespierre found out, only begets more anger and sometimes that guillotine you’ve built to get your enemies with ends up getting you. Fox should perhaps be careful what it wishes for – it might not like the result.

But hey, I’m cool with that.

ObamaCare – damning with faint praise all one can do

Two weeks ago President Obama signed what is being called an “historic” health care bill, and belated the United States is to have a sort-of-almost-maybe national health care system. Except that much like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither Roman, holy nor an empire, US health care will not be universal (some fifteen million people are still left out in the cold), national (people still have to buy health insurance) or particularly historic, since everybody else in the western world got health care 40+ years ago. So, er, hurray.

comme-ci, comme-ca health care*

Of course everybody hates it.

The left because they maintain, not unreasonably, that Obama gave up the public option (early on he seemed to be harbouring the vain hope that it would lead to some bipartisan support) and as such Medicare, the existing system for seniors, was not expanded – which would have at least provided a kind of national health care without starting from scratch. Pity. That would have been the logical route. But nooo. Not in America. So, the basic, dysfunctional structure of American health care remains – and insurance continues to stand firmly between the patient and the health care provider.

The right hates it more and for a lot more reasons – although there’s some serious irony here since the genesis of this bill was the Republican proposal to counter what was dubbed HillaryCare back in the 90’s.

First and foremost, the right is cranky because a lot of them listen to Glenn Beck and Fox News and hang out at those tea parties where there aren’t any sandwiches, and they simply hate anything Obama does. More rationally, however, they object to the form of the bill, which forces individuals to purchase health insurance (which, if they can’t afford, the government will subsidize). Here they have a point, since you have to admit it does seem a touch undemocratic to make people buy something whether they want to or not.

Republicans add that the the bill makes no attempt to cut costs or deal with the ludicrous consequences of litigation; this argument is true albeit disingenuous since if they had actually got involved, as Obama had asked, they could have added that in.

Business is not too keen on this bill either, probably because health insurance is currently provided, for the people who have it, through their employer, and business has no idea what this bill implies for them, and they loathe uncertainty.

(The bill would tie health insurance to the person, so even if they lose their job they keep their insurance. There is also talk of creating some kind of risk ‘pooling’ for people who are not employees but self employed or what-have-you. Plus, in theory at least, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to turn away people with pre-existing conditions – though I’m sure some clever lawyers are already figuring out other ways to reject people they think will cost too much. Too tall, perhaps or too freckled.)

My problem with this bill is its fundamental premise, namely that health care has to be administered by insurance companies. It’s a nincompoop idea and only one that a country besotted with business could endorse.

Insurance companies, boys and girls, are what are known as bu-si-nesses. This means that they exist to make money: their raison d’etre is profit. If it were otherwise we’d call them, oh, NGO’s. Not-for-profits. (That’s what we used to call charities before we opted for the more unwieldy name.) Except that health care, medicine, is not and cannot be (ever!) a business. Economists long ago realized that it simply does not fit the market model.

Health care is not a commodity. You cannot make money on health care. Never mind that you shouldn’t. Why? Well, for those of you who missed Econ 101, I’ll explain. Please pay attention, there’ll be a quiz later.

The free market is at heart transactional: I make hand-embroidered doilies; you, for reasons that elude everyone else, like and want hand-embroidered doilies. So, I make them and you buy them from me. And we’re all happy. I, in turn, use the money I make to buy things I want/need, like food and shelter and some really cool stilettos. Supply and demand.

But (and here’s where it gets tricky), if a villager in China can make aforesaid doilies that are just as nice for a lot less, then you will get them from her so I will be out of business, unless I move my manufacturing to an even cheaper place, Bangladesh, say. This, in a nutshell, is the free market, which, in Adam Smith’s immortal baker metaphor, does not rely on the goodness of anyone’s heart but is inherently rational. As are consumers.

Now you and I both know that this is patent nonsense. Not only are most people not rational consumers, most of the time they are crazy. Or, as a psychiatrist would say, stark raving bonkers. Why else would tens of thousands of people line up on Boxing Day to get a gizmo they don’t need? Or pay good money to buy a piece of bacon wrapped in a pancake with a list of ingredients too long to read? (I could go on but you get the picture.)

Even if consumers aren’t nuts their actions are often dictated by a lot of things other than reason, price and need. Otherwise nobody would ever buy a Kelly bag or have eighteen pairs of virtually identical black trousers. But for the sake of argument, let’s stick to the model – this is 101, remember, and we don’t have time to veer into behaviorial economics and all that complicated stuff like status and advertising and whatnot.

So homo economicus operates on simple efficiency and if he or she can afford it, they will get the best darn doily or car or house they can get. So, people with money get the nice stuff, the cashmere sweaters and the Prada belts, while everybody else makes do with Joe Fresh and H&M. That’s life according to economics.

Health care doesn’t work that way. Nobody gives up a trip to the Bahamas to check themselves into the hospital for a quadruple bypass for fun. That’s because, in economics-speak, health care is not a direct “purchase” but is subject to agency issues. In other words, there is a person or a group between the person and whatever is being bought, whether it’s a bypass or a prescription. When I feel sick, no matter how many internet sites I surf or friends I text, I really don’t know the reason; I need a doctor. Or a nurse. Or a faith healer if that’s what I happen to believe in. Even if I did figure it out the diagnosis, I can’t write myself a prescription or do surgery on myself. I need someone else, an “agent”, to confirm my choice. (In terms of that quadruple bypass I should really go back to the internet and do some serious research because there’s no evidence it is in any way preventive if I’m feeling all right, but that’s another post.)

Medicine, unlike cars and refrigerators and new tiles for the bathroom, is about a patient, a person who is sick and vulnerable and scared and in no position to make rational choices about anything. This is also why there are medical ethics and professional organizations and the Hippocratic Oath (though that’s just a metaphor, the actual Oath hasn’t been used for nearly a century no matter what TV shows would have you think.)

“Enough”, when it comes to cars and refrigerators and trips to sunny Spain is only limited by your budget and, presumably, greed and appetite: if you really want thirty six SUV’s, or feel the need to stuff your kitchen with 97 Sub-Zero fridges full of chocolate ice cream and would like to give Imelda Marcos a run for her money when it comes to shoes – well, if you can afford it, it’s your choice. Medicine is not like that.

Too much medicine – too many medical interventions – can kill you.

It’s called iatrogenesis. A term from the Greek, meaning harm caused by medical treatment. One aspirin can take away your headache; popping the whole bottle is a suicide attempt. One operation could save your life (if it goes well) but if you have an appendectomy and for whatever reason things screw up and you end up in ICU with sepsis and need four more operations, well, you could easily end up maimed or dead. In fact the more you get done medically, the lower your chances.

As Peter Davis writes in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (“Health Care as a Risk Factor”, http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/170/11/1688), close to 70,000 preventable adverse effects occur each year, some 20% of which result in the person’s death. This, writes Davis, is not because hospitals are inherently dangerous places but because the “unchallenged therapeutic imperative” tends to move people to ever-higher (and more complex) levels of care, levels that they are unable to sustain.

When people proudly proclaim that American health is “the best in the world” therefore, as they are wont to do, what they mean is that they have access to more MRI’s and operating theatres and doctors than anyone else. The model they’re using is that of the market. Except they’re dead wrong (so to speak). By any objective measure American health care is the worst in the developed world. Life expectancy is lower, infant mortality is higher and your odds of surviving healthily after a heart attack are considerably lower than they are anywhere else in the west. Why? Iatrogenesis. Americans do too much. Too many tests, too many surgeries; too many drugs. In short, overtreatment. Because medicine in the US is treated like a commodity, like cars and refrigerators and Prada bags, which it is not.

That’s what Obama’s bill didn’t even begin to address. True, some of the currently uninsured might, if all goes well, not end up bankrupt if they get sick. More people will have access to health care. The notion that health care might be a basic mark of a civilized society has at least come up and might even be discussed further. It will continue to cost too much (16% of GDP at last count versus an average of 10% in Canada and France and everywhere else); doctors will continue to practice “defensive” medicine and Americans will continue to get sub-standard care. But at least it is a start.

Too bad it was so fitful.

* photo c/o creative commons and newsrealblog.com

Viva Vancouver!

When things work out well – contrary to expectation – it is only right and proper that one acknowledge this. And, as it turns out, the Olympics (whatever the long-term consequences might be) appear to have been a stellar experience. People even less enthused about them than I (whose interest, to quote Edward Lear, would have had to grow to be even cursory) have told me that the energy was positive, the vibe, good and the atmosphere good-natured: in short, the whole experience was simply splendid. For whatever reason, these 2010 Winter Olympics brought out the best in people, visitors and residents alike.

So all in all A Good Thing – and now that the 2010 Winter Olympic and ParaOlympic Games are over, closing ceremonies and fireworks finished, one can breathe a sigh of relief and say: Bravo Vancouver!

Inevitably, a handful of people have taken this wonderful memory way, way too far – at least according to what I read. These folk are said to be “grieving” the end of this huge party, this wonderful feeling of liberation, this sense that Vancouver was a real city, united and at one with the universe. Ah, get over it. Parties end, everybody goes home, the mess has to be cleaned up.

I’ll wager the many small businesses who did zero business during the Olympics aren’t that sorry to seen the end of it, no matter how much as individuals they may have liked dancing in the streets. (A merchant at Granville Island, a hub for many pavilions and events, told me that “unless you sold fast food or booze you didn’t sell anything”.) Perhaps that is why, pleased as I am that it all went well, that I am glad (nay, ecstatic) that I left the city and that it’s bloody over.

My impression is that festivities tended towards youthful exuberance and the beer-fuelled; my proclivities tend more towards red wine and quiet jazz. A friend who wrote an Olympic Diary to record the wonderful time she and her husband had relates that they stood in line for nearly three hours to get into some pavilion or t’other – and frankly, I wouldn’t stand in line that long to meet the late JC .

I don’t see the point of wandering the streets, no matter how charming the crowd or super-cool the win – which that Canada-US hockey final turned out to be.

And the crowds go wild when Canada wins hockey gold

Even the massive police presence felt benign, protective, apparently. There were a few hiccups at the start, particularly the second day when some scary looking ski-masked thugs broke windows at the Bay downtown and the police looked really jittery. But things settled down – and the massive crowds felt like a large, happy family. Another friend, about as enthused as I was at the outset, told me he found himself (much to his own astonishment) high-fiving a large, mildly sossled, American gent partying downtown and this uncharacteristic gesture actually felt right. OK, that’s impressive.

Perhaps it was all that international attention, the bulk of it positive. This I noticed on my travels; people really seemed psyched about Vancouver and not just the gorgeous scenery, although that did garner much attention. The mountains! The water! The forests! Si beau! And wasn’t I lucky to live in such surroundings. I smiled and mumbled something lame. One cannot, after all, take credit for nature. Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little chuffed. (I didn’t mention I live in the heart of the city and not up in the Whistler mountains.)

Most impressive was the fact that more people turned out to watch and cheer the ParaOlympian athletes than ever before, something no host city or country has done. That was elegant.

So now can we say it was all worth it? Too soon to say, really. True, we did get a metro to the airport from downtown (though having lived a few blocks away from the construction I am still smarting from the dust and noise). And Vancouver did raise its international profile – but will that translate into actual benefits, economic or otherwise? More investment, better and more social housing, fewer homeless people, more opportunities? Possibly, but I doubt it.

In the grand scheme of things, then, did any of it matter? This short event, lasting only a few weeks, no matter how grand everyone says it was? To quote Bertrand Russell: “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatsoever that it is not utterly absurd.”

Well, a spot of absurdity is not the worst of things in a world where so much seems so unrelentingly dreary. So, ephemeral as it may have been, to everyone who was here, to the many volunteers and guides and people who worked on the Games, to the athletes and coaches and all the rest: a tip of my fedora and a red-mittened high five.

The Vancouver Olympics may not have changed the world, but they didn’t stink. A curmudgeon can’t say fairer than that.

My friend, web designer Mia Johnson, with her daughter & gallery owner Diane Farris out there after that hockey win.

There is a thin line between genius and insanity

“There is a thin line between genius and insanity,” said the curmudgeonly Oscar Levant, “and I have erased this line.” We have too – unfortunately, we went straight to crazy without so much as a pause at intelligent, never mind genius.

It seems like only yesterday when a modicum of civil discourse was possible – and one could engage in the odd conversation or commentary on the environment or the economy or health care without people going all apoplectic (or reducing the argument down to infantile levels: t’is too, t’is NOT). Then again, it seems like only yesterday when taking a bottle of water on a plane didn’t set off alarm bells and only crazy people walked down the street waving their arms about and talking to air.

Ah, the good old days, circa 2002 …

So what happened? How did we descend into babbling incoherence without so much as a telethon or ribbon to commemorate the day when sense, like the whales in Hitchhiker’s Guide Guide to the Galaxy, just up and left (without so much as a note saying “good-bye and thanks for all the fish”)?

Maybe it’s just information overload: our 24/7 ability to stay connected, in touch, on line and on top of every gloomy bit of news as it happens – all in High-Def in all its ugly, excruciating, migraine-inducing hues and garish detail. Or those minor but constant irritants, like having to press 2 and 6 every time we call some company (and end up talking to a nice man in the Philippines who can’t help). Maybe it’s all those cameras everywhere (according to The Economist the number of surveillance cameras in the UK averages out to one per 14 people) or that horrible fluorescent light we’re now suppose to embrace (even though they make everyone look diseased and their flicker gives the rest of us headaches). And don’t get me started on those ghastly SUV’s in the city and those horrid, ugly little cars with great mileage and mean little headlights. Or my favorite: reality shows. Thousands of years of story arcs tossed aside in favour of watching nasty people snipe at each other in contrived situations on desert islands. (Where’s Dr. Moreau when you need him?)

Most of all I object to the sheer, unrelenting dreariness of it all, especially that 24-hour news cycle. All presented with such gravitas that Brangelina’s possible breakup becomes as much of a tragedy as Darfur or Haiti. Sure, the spotlight occasionally goes to some natural disaster that brings tears to our eyes but the resultant overkill is almost as bad. Once we’ve made the donation to Medecins sans Frontieres we can feel better and go watch Avatar. (I must confess to a modicum of cynical glee when I read the MSF and other charities had asked that Haiti donations be halted as they were unable to use them.)

Not that we ever get the followup. Anyone know what happened with that tsunami thing? Because I sure don’t.

Moreover, we don’t protest or argue, just take it all at face value; rarely if ever questioning the perspective or veracity of those authorative sound bites. So we end up shallow and flat and two-dimensional, just like our technologies.

We forget there’s a world of history and culture out there, the backdrop to those uncontextualized blobs of information we’re fed. The economy or even the markets aren’t just rows of video ticker-tape symbols at the bottom of the screen. Borders did not magically appear on the map – they were the result of years of conflict, colonialism and hardship (not to mention warring interests and powers). Real life is messy, complex and oftentimes boring, containing, as Walt Whitman said in a different context, “multitudes”. It’s not neatly reduceable to a 90-second segment.

And when it’s s not ‘out there’ it’s us: our genes, our aging bodies, our addictions, our telomeres or whatever those stupid things are called (the ones that shorten as our cells regenerate and end up making us old and dead). Not to mention our blood pressure and lipids and body fat index and bones that – any minute now – will fall in on themselves and make us disappear altogether (perhaps a not-so-hidden metaphor for how we tend to disappear in this culture as we age).

This last while it’s been epidemics. Of obesity, of type 2 diabetes, of cancer – and of course the epidemic-epidemics. The ones where viruses are described in metaphors that liken these little chunks of protein to an invading army, lurking, like Stephen King’s Chucky, waiting to pounce on the unwary.

Frankly, I’m surprised more of us aren’t standing on street corners holding placards reading “Abandon All Hope” or “The End is Nigh”. (Or “night”, given how badly everyone seems to spell.)

So for now I plan to skulk here, in my curmudgeonly corner, making the odd attempt to bring some sense and sanity here and there when things particularly irk me – maybe debunk a bit of nonsense or two from the mounds of information all over the place: information that’s largely shrill, reductionist, sensationalist, biased and just plain wrong. Not that that ever stops it from streaming out, all assured and authoritative.

Progress, said Paul Fussell, is one damn thing after another. Well, someone has to say something.