Do Real Men Vote Democratic?
T he gender gap is commonly understood as a story about women. Since 1980 women, repelled by the Republican position on social justice, economic inequality, gun control, military issues, and reproductive rights, have voted and identified as disproportionately Democratic. This summer, as Gore languished, a different story emerged. Women seemed briefly willing to support a…
Superstars Online
Last fall Harvard Law School professor Arthur Miller taped a series of 11 lectures and sold them to the Concord University School of Law, a virtual university founded by Kaplan Inc., the test-preparation company. Miller was stunned when Harvard administrators told him he had violated university policy by providing course material to another school without…
Why W. is Not Q.
B efore W., there was Q.–John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, the nation’s second president. The Adamses were America’s first political dynasty, and like Bush, Q. inherited his father’s first name and a well-worn middle one from a favorite relative. But American dynasties aren’t what they used to be. Where John Quincy Adams succeeded…
Keeping it Real Simple
Looking at who doesn’t vote in America can be a kind of Rorschach test for political commentators. Confronted with the dark splotch of the politically disengaged, they discern all kinds of shapes–here a complacent consumer, there an alienated cynic, and over there a volunteer who values public service over voting. As more people avoid the…
Between Hard Rock and a Place
No doubt there are sun worshippers in Jutland, vegetarian barbecue chefs, male readers of Women’s Day. But Josh Scandlen–of Phoenix, Arizona, and Charles Schwab and Company–is a libertarian advocate of hard-core punk rock, possibly the most entirely leftist subgenre of youth popular music outside of folk, and that puts him in a funny position. It’s…
Year of the Scapegoat
T he near-comic conclusion of the Wen Ho Lee case splattered more than enough egg to cover the faces of much of Washington. It’s a media story, a federal law enforcement story, a civil liberties story, perhaps even a discrimination story. But more than anything else, the Lee case and its awkward denouement are, or…
Time for a New Deal with Mexico
M exican President-elect Vicente Fox, fresh from a historic victory that ended 71 years of one-party rule in his country, dropped in on U.S. lameduck President Bill Clinton just before Labor Day. He was brimming with ideas for further integrating their economies, including a proposal to open the border to more Mexicans seeking work in…
Tax Wars
N othing so neatly differentiates the presidential candidates as their views on taxes. George W. Bush offers a rather extreme version of what passes for “conservative” fiscal policy these days. This philosophy doesn’t tout deficit spending per se, but holds that low taxes, particularly on the wealthy, are the Holy Grail. Many who support this…
The Big Split
I t would be bad enough if the Republicans’ tax plans were merely extravagantly regressive, rewarding the rich and leaving a big budget hole for everyone else to fill. But they appear just when the income gap has grown wider than it has been in more than a century. It’s a double whammy. Al Gore…
Who Gives?
Considering the almost hour-by-hour polling of the nation’s voters, it’s amazing how little is done to survey the views and backgrounds of the people who really matter in American politics: the elite class of political donors. Thus, an unusual survey conducted this summer is worth hailing. The poll compared a sample of 200 political contributors…
Comment: Top-Down Class Warfare
I t is difficult for a liberal to raise concerns about irresponsible corporations without being accused of class warfare. The Wall Street Journal recently ridiculed Al Gore for “schlock populism” and cynical “business-bashing.” In truth Gore’s criticism is carefully calibrated and directed against assaults that affect the broad middle class. The vice president goes after…
Chairman Greenspan Wants Your Job
F or the past year and a half, the stewards of the American economy have been worrying that too many Americans are drawing regular paychecks. The fear is never quite put that way, of course, but as the national unemployment rate has dropped to 4 percent, the Federal Reserve has been getting restive. Six times…
Scolding the Race
John H. McWhorter has seen black America, and it is not pretty. It is a place populated by a people so seeped in pathology that a young girl is urged to smack a toddler who has the temerity to know how to spell the word “concrete.” It is a place where nearly all African Americans,…
Language Density Management
George Orwell’s classic essay “Politics and the English Language” noted that euphemistic language had political effects. In Stalin’s Soviet Union, murder of political opponents was politely termed “liquidation.” Get people to change language, and you change how they think. This is a banner year for political euphemisms, and the right seems to do it better…
School Reform is Dead (Long Live School Reform)
The nation is awash in reforms and would-be reforms that promise to improve–or even transform–public schools. In Left Back, Diane Ravitch conveys a sober message: Schooling in the United States has suffered from “a century of failed school reforms.” Ravitch is an influential historian and herself a seasoned school reformer who served as assistant secretary…
And the Verdict Is…
I n the world of television, imitation is not simply the sincerest form of flattery; it is among the most lucrative. That’s why network executives are doing everything they can to cash in on the reality TV fad. It’s also why the hottest new category of reality TV shows turns out to be that old…
Made in Cuba
I n all probability, it was just a coincidence that in July the House of Representatives voted to repeal some of the more draconian aspects of the economic embargo against Cuba the day after PBS aired Buena Vista Social Club, Wim Wenders’s Oscar-nominated documentary film about an instantly lovable aggregation of Cuban crooners and virtuoso…
Sellouts
T he FTC’s recent report on Hollywood’s violation of its own voluntary rating codes had politicians of both parties expressing indignation about how the entertainment industry targets children with violent and indecent material. Both Gore and Bush promised to increase pressure on industry executives; Gore even threatened regulation if the industry failed to “clean up…
The Performer-in-Chief
Viewers who stayed tuned to network television immediately following the first Kennedy-Nixon debate on September 26, 1960, saw the Original Amateur Hour on ABC, Jackpot Bowling Starring Milton Berle on NBC, or a prerecorded interview with Lyndon Johnson on CBS. In that unenlightened time when the network news broadcasts lasted only 15 minutes, people had…
Selling Higher Test Scores
I t’s hard to imagine the nation’s students profiting from the latest fad in education policy, the new mania for high-stakes testing; but commercial businesses already are. Consider what’s happening in Massachusetts. In 1993 the state enacted a sweeping education reform plan whose centerpiece is the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), a series of grueling…
The Online Education Bubble
Like many administrators, Edward Blakely doesn’t need to be convinced of the Internet’s importance to the future of his university. As the new dean of the Graduate School of Management and Public Policy at the New School University in New York, he seems primed to capitalize on it. Blakely’s school was among the first to…
Six Polish Women
N ot long ago my wife, Ilene, and I journeyed to Auschwitz, which I had been reading about, it seemed, for much the greater part of my life. As it turned out, I had a good deal yet to learn. My teacher was Alicja, the pleasant and scholarly camp researcher with whom we spent the…
Toxic Media
L ike Claude Rains in Casablanca, Al Gore is shocked!, shocked! that the entertainment industry is marketing violent material to minors. Countering Hollywood’s macho entertainments with some macho rhetoric of his own, he gave the industry six months to “clean up its act” and declare a “ceasefire” in what he apparently sees as the media’s…
The Wintry Orwell
“Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent,” George Orwell once warned in an essay, but many have disregarded that advice in judging Orwell himself. John Morris, who worked with Orwell during World War II at the BBC, said, “Orwell always reminded me of one of those figures on the front of…
Back to School
ACROSS: 1 THOUSAND (anag.); 5 BRED (bread hom.); 9 CACHE (cash hom.); 10 TRA(NS)IT (NS = last pair of coiNS); 11 G + ROT + TO; 12 KO(A)LA; 14 R(OR)SCHACH TEST (stretch cash anag.); 17 CELLS (sells hom.); 19 G(R)ASPS; 22 ERITREA (hidden); 23 E(C)LAT (rev.); 24 SAKE (acronym); 25 OD + IOU + SLY…
