Sex Goddess
Since the beginning of the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s, theorists have recognized two kinds of contemporary feminist culture: Feminism Heavy and Feminism Lite. Heavy, or high, feminism includes art exhibits, academic books, PBS, foreign films by Dutch or Belgian women directors (such as Jeanne Dielmann, Chantal Akerman’s interminable saga of a housewife’s interminable…
Bush’s Tenth Justice
While Democrats in the Senate failed to block the appointment of John Ashcroft as attorney general, they did send a message–albeit a weak one–with their opposition. Their 42 votes against Ashcroft were enough to demonstrate that they might have filibustered the appointment and that they could block any future judicial appointment they found similarly unpalatable.…
When Baby Boomers Grow Old
Last year, without warning, a close friend and gifted writer committed suicide. She was 75 and affluent, facing major surgery, a wheelchair, permanent incapacity; she declined that new life as unambiguously as she could. Several nights later, still raw from the news, I received a letter from the hotel-turned-assisted-living-facility–let us call it Shangri-la–where my 76-year-old…
Learning to Love Globalization
In a climate-controlled conference room in Secaucus, New Jersey, G. Clothaire Rapaille is smoothly welcoming a handful of grateful corporate clients to his latest project. Rapaille has only recently become notorious. As the Jungian-archetype analyst of American business, his method of consumer research includes asking people to lie down on the floor on pillows and…
The Estate Tax as Robin Hood
What impact would repealing the estate tax have on the distribution of wealth? On the face of it, there should be no doubt that wealth would become more concentrated. Fewer than 2 percent of estates pay any tax at all; and as of 1997, half of the total taxes paid came from estates valued at…
The Taxonomist
Gore Plan Prevails Remember how George W. Bush regaled the voters last year with his criticism of Al Gore’s “targeted” tax cuts? “You only get a tax break if you do exactly what the government tells you to do,” Bush frequently carped. Well, Bush has now revealed the fine print of his own tax…
No Tax Cut. Period.
Democrats should draw a bright line: No tax cut. Period. The surplus should be used instead for the three things regular working families need most: affordable health care (including prescription drugs), child care, and better schools. Instead Democrats are putting all their energies behind keeping Bush’s tax cut closer to the $1.2 trillion they squeezed…
Meet Mr. Death
Somebody once told me, åJim, we ought to call you Mr. Death,'” Jim Martin tells me proudly. “I’ll have you know, I don’t mind that appellation.” These days, Mr. Death has reason to crow. Martin credits himself with coining the term “death tax” in 1993 as a usefully derisive nickname for the estate tax. As…
Intimate Care for Hire
Four months after our father’s death, Jasmine Mehta, the Trinidadian Indian woman who had been his primary paid caregiver for six years, had the following dream: Our father was sitting in his wheelchair in a beautiful white suit looking very gentlemanly. He told her that they were going on a trip; he had packed his…
Pictures at an Execution
Timothy McVeigh is scheduled to be killed on May 16, on closed-circuit TV (for the benefit of his victims) and with luminaries like Bryant Gumbel presiding over what networks presume will be a national death watch. We won’t actually see McVeigh being poisoned, unless a pirated tape of the execution is disseminated. But we’re sure…
News Flash: Corporate Life Is Harsh
Is journalism the only industry whose quality is adversely affected by the capitalist drive to increase profit margins? You might think so, judging by the media response to the resignation of Jay T. Harris, publisher of the San Jose Mercury News. Harris abruptly quit his job as chief of the Knight Ridderowned daily earlier this…
The Fall and Rise of School Segregation
Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy, James T. Patterson. Oxford University Press, 285 pages, $27.50. What are we to think of Brown v. Board of Education nearly a half-century after the Supreme Court handed down the decision? On the one hand, the momentous ruling of May 17, 1954,…
Science Fiction
George W. Bush is getting lots of credit for giving the National Institutes of Health (NIH) their biggest boost ever, but his increases in spending on research in health care and defense are obscuring drastic cuts in all other kinds of scientific research. When you look closely at Bush’s science budget, what you discover is…
Comment: Budget with Care
I recently proposed that instead of getting rid of what the Bush people call the death tax we abolish the “pre-death tax.” This term, coined by my friend Michael Lipsky, refers to the Medicaid provision that requires people to spend down their personal assets on nursing-home care before Medicaid starts paying the cost. Medicaid is…
A Treaty on Tobacco?
The American public may think that Clinton-era lawsuits reined in Big Tobacco. After all, settlements with the industry have resulted in $240 billion for state governments and a stream of ads about the hazards of cigarettes. But the Marlboro Man and his compadres still ride roughshod over public-health policy around the world. In the past…
As the Left Turns
After Progress: American Social Reform and European Socialism in the Twentieth Century, Norman Birnbaum. Oxford University Press, 432 pages, $35.00. Many of those on the notoriously parochial American left have only a superficial understanding of the history of social movements in other countries. For these people (and you know who you are), Norman Birnbaum’s superb…
From Rez to Riches
Indian Gaming: Tribal Sovereignty and American Politics, W. Dale Mason. University of Oklahoma Press, 330 pages, $29.95. The Revenge of the Pequots: How a Small Native American Tribe Created the World’s Most Profitable Casino, Kim Isaac Eisler. Simon and Schuster, 267 pages, $25.00. Without Reservation: The Making of America’s Most Powerful Indian Tribe and Foxwoods,…
The President Has No Pants
The charge that politics has become indistinguishable from entertainment–and that partly for this reason we now have in office a spoiled frat boy with not much upstairs–is overstated and not especially new. Such notions are not entirely wrong, though, and to see them translated literally into television programming, as they are on Comedy Central’s new…
Doc Hollywood
Physicians have always had a symbiotic relationship with Hollywood. From Lew Ayres in the 1930s Dr. Kildare films to Andre Braugher in Gideon’s Crossing and Melina Kanakaredes in Providence, movie studios and TV networks have enlisted the support of individual doctors and their organizations to provide story ideas, expert advice, and, more recently, high-tech medical…
Better-Paid Caregivers, Better Care
Nobody is happy with the nation’s nursing homes. Too many patients are receiving substandard care. Workers, particularly nurse’s aides who provide the majority of direct care, suffer from low wages, lack of benefits, understaffing, inadequate training, and limited career opportunities. Families are often appalled at how their loved ones are treated. Owners and managers struggle…
