Books in Review:
Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago By Eric Klinenberg. The University of Chicago Press, 305 pages, $27.50 Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago By David Naguib Pellow. The MIT Press, 234 pages, $24.95 By many measures, Chicago, the “City That Works,” has been working just fine in recent years.…
On the Contrary
It’s too bad that the word “Orwellian” is losing its power from overuse, because sometimes no other word will do. Sad to say, it’s often used appropriately. There’s no better word to describe U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s depiction of himself as a freedom fighter. “We’re not sacrificing civil liberties, we’re securing civil liberties,” he…
How the Culture War Was Won
Imagine for a moment that we live in an alternate universe where the United States is openly hostile to lesbians and gay men. How hostile? Well, in this world, the liberal state of Massachusetts bans lesbians and gay men from being foster parents. The only gay person you might find on TV — and you’d…
Canada’s Romance with Market Medicine
Canada, of all places, is having a highly charged national debate about whether to adopt the U.S. model of commercialized health care as part of its national health-insurance system. Health policy makers in Canada, particularly at the provincial level where most practical decisions are made, are being told a monstrous myth. Consultants and business people,…
Oregon Gets Taken
Frank Hardin may finally get his chance to dig up the 18 million tons of gravel beneath his land in the foothills of the Siskiyou Mountains. For nearly a decade, Oregon’s Jackson County has denied him mining permits in order to keep scores of double-length mining trucks from rumbling through the tiny town of Jacksonville…
Animation Sensation
Terrified by the toxic perkiness of Pokémon and Sailor Moon, or by the splattery violence of other Japanese cartoons, mainstream America has largely shunned as childish or eccentric what Japanese audiences see as a sophisticated, adult art form — in every sense. Anime, as Japanese animation is otherwise known, has its eroguro (erotic-grotesque) side: One…
The Winner-Steal-All Society
How much is a CEO worth? These days the munificent compensation packages lavished on America’s chief executives have about as many defenders as Slobodan Milosevic. The statistics are simply too obscene: In 1999, the average chief executive earned 419 times more than his or her coworkers, up from 25 times in 1981, while the 10…
Under the Plume
From his healthy head of hair to his running shoes, Andy Reeve, a young computer programmer, was covered in white soot and ash. He had just arrived for work across the street from World Trade Center that horrible September morning, when a commercial jet slammed into the tower at his back. “I was on Wall…
In Israel’s Interest?
More than 15,000 Israelis lined up on a single day to get new government-issue gas masks, the daily newspaper Ha’aretz reported Sept. 18. On the same page: Israel’s Defense Ministry was seeking an advance on next year’s budget to speed gas-mask production, inoculation of hospital staffers for smallpox was about to begin and Interior Minister…
In the Name of National Security
Erlinda Valencia came from the Philippines almost two decades ago. Like many Filipinos living in the San Francisco Bay Area, she found a minimum-wage job at the airport, screening passengers’ carry-on bags. Two years ago, organizers from the Service Employees International Union began talking to the screeners. Valencia decided to get involved and eventually became…
Union Seeks Republicans
I. Labor Day in the Park with George If you closed your eyes at this year’s New York City Labor Day rally, you might have thought you’d been transported to some Hibernian rite at the turn of the last century, back when organized labor spoke with a brogue. The city’s locals had assembled in Battery…
A Reckless Rush to War
The suspicion will not die that the Bush administration turned to Iraq for relief from a sharp decline in its domestic political prospects. The news had been dominated for months by corporate scandals and the fall of the stock market, and the November elections were shaping up as a referendum on the Republicans’ handling of…
