Death Undying
The Death Penalty: An American History By Stuart Banner, Harvard University Press, 385 pages, $15.95 The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment By Franklin E. Zimring, Oxford University Press, 285 pages, $30.00 More than 3,700 people reside on death row, an average of 60 people are executed annually and, except for a brief period in the…
Window on Reality
“Reality” television is generally scorned as mindless, vulgar, exploitative and contrived. So is it ever sociology, is it ever real? Yes, if it’s American Idol, the FOX show that recently wrapped up its blockbuster second season. The program, for the uninitiated, pitted 12 young performers against one another for a chance at a $1 million…
Youth Hostile
Back in 1984, when I produced the first MTV voter-registration spots, a number of my liberal activist friends were worried about Ronald Reagan’s popularity with youth. I asked then-Congressman Tom Harkin, the Democratic nominee for the Senate, if he thought increased youth turnout would hurt him in a state that, because of heavy cable penetration,…
Insurance Impunity
One day in 1973, 65-year-old Elmer Norman went to his doctor for some hearing tests and a prescription for antibiotics to treat an ear infection. But when Norman submitted the bills to Colonial Penn Franklin, his health insurer, the company denied his $48 claim, arguing, among other things, that the prescription drug he’d received wasn’t…
Bad Medicine
For the third time in as many decades, doctors across the country are protesting rising medical-malpractice insurance premiums. The American Medical Association (AMA) is promoting its long-standing goal of medical-liability reform in the shape of a $250,000 cap on “pain and suffering” (noneconomic) damages in malpractice cases. Karl Rove must be thrilled. For an administration…
Business Meets Its Match
For decades the American chemical industry has put tens of thousands of substances on the market and into the environment with little interference from the U.S. government. What a surprise, then, to come up against the new Europe. The European Union, concerned that it does not have health or environmental data on the majority of…
Mr. Personality
Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) sits about two feet away from me in the back of a sleek, black Dodge Durango SUV, a package of melting peanut-butter chocolate-chip cookies between us. We’re speeding past fields and silos in southwestern Iowa, down a badly paved road to a $25-a-plate bratwurst-and-hamburgers fundraiser for a state senator, where Edwards…
Critical Mess
Back in January, Brazil’s newly appointed minister of science and technology, Roberto Amaral, suggested in a radio interview that his country had nuclear ambitions. “Brazil is a country at peace, that has always preserved peace and is a defender of peace, but we need to be prepared, including technologically,” he said. “We can’t renounce any…
Berserkeley Works
“Berserkeley,” that famous play on Berkeley, Calif.’s name, calls to mind the city’s widely held image. The media feast on tales about kooky characters such as the “Naked Guy” who organized a mass “nude-in” to protest social repression, or the homeless man who converted a city councilman’s office into his nocturnal abode. A measure on…
UNderappreciated
“I’m not a big fan of the United Nations. But if the UN was good for anything, it would be something like this. Since the UN was no good for this, maybe they’re good for nothing.” — Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), on the eve of war in Iraq The United Nations is easy to hate.…
Remaking Steel
His union’s mission, says Leo Gerard, United Steelworkers of America’s international president, is “saving these damn plants for our members, retirees and the next generation of workers” — not for corporate executives or nonunion subcontractors. With temporary import protections now providing a little stability for the battered American steel business, United Steelworkers is actively encouraging…
Road Map to Grand Apartheid?
Jerusalem — The best way to understand just how Ariel Sharon plans to crumple and fold the road map to Israeli-Palestinian peace is to get out on the roads of the West Bank. Drive east from Jerusalem. Pass the stone-faced apartment buildings of Ma’aleh Adumim, a suburb of 25,000 that is the largest single Israeli…
Civics Lessons From Immigrants
The United States has always relied on immigrant workers, but in the last few decades their numbers have risen to a new peak. By 2000, roughly one in eight U.S. workers, or 17 million people, were foreign-born. That’s up from about one in 17 in 1960, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. From 1996…
The Wages of Death
That morning, Edilberto Morales’ supervisor called at 3. The phone rang in the apartment above the gun store, where he and five friends shared three rooms. They all got up, and in the cold darkness they put on their work clothes and made their lunch, their breath puffing like smoke in the September air. Outside,…
A Shameful Harvest
The vast majority of America’s farm laborers are immigrants, many of them undocumented. Farm work is notoriously dangerous, arduous and toxic; the average U.S. farmworker has a life expectancy of just 49 years. Farm laborers are generally paid piecework rates. Their average earnings are $7,500 a year, or $150 a week, by far the lowest…
How NAFTA Failed Mexico
During the 1993 battle over the North American Free Trade Agreement, the proposal’s promoters’ most politically effective argument was that NAFTA would keep Mexicans out of the United States. As political writer Elizabeth Drew later observed, “Anti-immigration was a sub-theme used, usually sotto voce, by the treaty’s supporters.” The voce was not always sotto. “We…
The Indispensable Advocate
Varsha Patel works in the stockroom at the Cintas industrial laundry plant in Piscataway, N.J., sorting dirty uniforms as they come in for cleaning. For eight hours she remains standing as she separates the damaged cloths from the merely dirty; at the end of the day, she says, “My hands, feet and legs are sore.”…
Victims in the Heartland
Shelbyville, Tenn., is an archetypal American working-class community of 16,000 people. Located 53 miles south of Nashville, it has one high school, one movie theater, six pawnbrokers and no parking meters. Its greatest claim to fame is the Tennessee Walking Horse, a smooth-gaited breed developed and tirelessly promoted locally. But far more visible are the…
Closed-Door Policy
At the dawn of the 21st century, the United States offers a contradictory model of global economic openness. American policy has relentlessly promoted open commerce, leading the way by freeing its own markets to foreign investment, trade and travel. America’s own borders have become increasingly open for flows of capital, goods, commodities, information and certain…
The Warrior’s Tale
The Clinton Wars By Sidney Blumenthal, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 822 pages, $30.00 Running for the Senate in the summer of 2000, Hillary Clinton said she was a “Rorschach test.” In fact, both of the Clintons continue to serve as a kind of national Rorschach. Was Bill Clinton an extraordinarily successful president, responsible for remarkable…
Keep Your Eyes On the Prize
“Who are you with?” asks a Democratic activist. “I like Dean.” “He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance,” says another. “If we put up an anti-war candidate, we’re dead. Kerry’s the man.” “Kerry doesn’t connect with people,” says a third. “Besides, we need a southerner. I’m for Edwards.” “Edwards doesn’t have enough experience,” says another activist.…
Will Bush Pay for Deception?
There are lots of reasons to think that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will merely be a historical footnote to the war. Polls this spring have shown little public concern about the government’s inability to validate the principal reason that it offered the world for military action. There hasn’t even…
The Road to Aqaba
Before the Iraq War, administration neoconservatives were fond of saying, “The road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad.” In the wake of the war and of George W. Bush’s June 4 summit meeting in Aqaba, Jordan, many people in Washington think they were right. Liberal columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. wrote in The Washington Post on…
The Demo Derby
George Stephanopoulos: Sen. Kerry … earlier this week, your campaign questioned whether or not Gov. Dean was fit to be commander in chief. Do you think he’s fit? John Kerry: I think Gov. Dean made a statement which I found quite extraordinary, and I still do. He said that America has to prepare for the…
