Why the Health Care Debate Sucks Harder

If you are one of those poor souls who actually follows the news, you'll have noticed that the Affordable Health Care for America Act, or H.R. 3962 for short, just got passed in the House of Representative 220-215. This is a pretty exciting result, the legislative equivalent to watching the Chargers beat the Giants 21-20 last Sunday. Actually, Saturday night's vote shares a lot in common with Sunday afternoon's game. They're both only one of a long, long series of contests, and just as the Chargers' win doesn't mean they win the AFC West, the House vote doesn't mean that I can now go visit a government-paid doctor about the throbbing pain in my left eye. The House Bill is guaranteed to die in the Senate, as the few moderate Democrats who have the country's nuts in their hands refuse to let anything that has a whiff of abortion or the public option get passed.

The health care “debate” is also like a football game in that the fans of one side stay the fans of their side. No Giants fans became Chargers supporters after Sunday, and neither group would be willing to cheer for a “non-partisan” third option like the Bengals. As with gay marriage, abortion, and Sarah Palin, the lines for the battle over health insurance have been made and there's no crossing them.

This political climate provides us with hours and hours of entertaining televison, as people can yell at each other for hours on end, or wave signs about the holocaust in front of government buildings to their hearts' content. Unfortunately, it also means that there's no reason to talk about what's actually in the bill.

Let's say you're a Congressman. For the sake of arguement, we'll assume that miraculously, you've actually read the 1,900-page behemoth that is H.R. 3962. You may have some nuanced views about the health insurance debate. The problem is your constituents, the people who elected you and have the power to not elect you a year from now, don't have nuanced views. Some of them think that the bill is “socialism,” some think it's not socialist enough, some of them are confused and think it will mean the end of Medicare, some people are against anything the government does, some of them are convinced that the public option is the best thing since sandwiches, some people are uninsured and just really need a doctor to look at their left eye, which is now looking really red and puffy. These people aren't interested in the complex ins-and-outs of any bill—that's what they have you in office for, they figure. They also want you to vote exactly the way that they, the uniformed voters, would vote in your position.

So unless you're a Representative from an extremely Democratic or extremely Republican district, you, Mr. Congressman, are scared shitless of any health care bill coming to a vote. You'll have to make a decision that a guaranteed 40 percent of your voters are going to hate you for, and all that's on your mind, if you care about reelection, is not making a vote that more than 50 percent of your voters will hate you for. At this point, does it matter what's in the “reform” bill? Or are people's perceptions of the bill more important than the reality?

(Hint: it's the second one.)

Here's the way the debate is going to play out for the next few weeks: abortion, abortion abortion! Filibuster? Rising costs, abortion, pre-existing conditions, costs, costs, abortion! Homosexuals? Socialism! Socialism! Abortion!

Then, sometime in the distant future, a bill looking even more ragged than the bill in that Schoolhouse Rock video above will become a law, and some people who didn't have insurance before will have it. If my eye is still hurting, I'll get it looked at. Some other people's taxes will go up. America's medical costs will stay about the same. And the endless war for the politcal soul of America will move on to the next battle. Whoop-de-doo. Read more!

Why The New York Times Real Estate Section Sucks

The economy has taken a turn for the worse lately, as you may have noticed. The New York Times Real Estate section certainly noticed, and they've written a heart-wrenching piece on the decline of the fortunes of an oft-ignored minority who was hit especially hard by the recession. No, not blacks—young, wealthy bachelors who can no longer afford lavish Manhattan apartments thanks to the rising unemployment rate.

Or so the article implies by mentioning that 7.7 percent of young men are unemployed in New York. It goes on to describe specific examples of young men who, while not actually unemployed, have been forced to adjust their lifestyles in horrifically inconvenient ways.

For instance, there's former MTV reality-show host Jason Brooks, who “paid $5,000 a month for a 2,000-square-foot TriBeCa loft that he shared with his wife..Now, says Mr. Brooks, whose stage name is Brooks Buford, he pays $1,600 a month for a tiny studio in SoHo.”

When I read that passage, my heart went out to this fine citizen, who lives off of royalties from his recording career. It sounds like a divorce, rather than the economy, forced him to change his lifestyle, and he may pay more than three times the rent I do, but still—SoHo! Blech! I bet his building doesn't even have a doorman! Is that any way to treat the former star of something called Trailer Fabulous?

At least he didn't have to move to Bushwick, like poor Joe Tandle. As the Times relates, Joe was so hammered by the economic downturn, he decided to buy an apartment instead of renting one. He paid half a million dollars for a 1,900-square-foot pad that he can't even afford to fill with leather couches. He made a brave face for the article, saying he didn't really want rich “hipster friends or whatever” and mentioned that “sometimes you want to have a ridiculous 150 people and a world-class D.J. in your basement,” but you could read between the lines. The man was crying inside.

How can a Manhattan bachelor date a successful model or actress in these conditions? How will they have enough self-confidence to seduce beautiful women from Finland when they are only paying $1,000 a month in rent? The best they can hope for now, these poor huddled masses, is going home with a moderately attractive bassist from a punk band.

America needs its Manhattanite bachelors to be living impossibly lavish lifestyles. Remember the 80s, when Reagan was in charge and bond traders could have bathmats made from hundred dollar bills? Or the late 90s, when technogeeks could sip brands of alcohol so expensive that normal people had never heard of them? Those were the glory days of our nation. Now we're mired in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, our nation is torn apart by the prospect of health care paid for by the government, and bachelors in Manhattan are forced to cram themselves two at a time into ten-room apartments that they were previously able to afford by themselves. That's only five rooms apiece!

Look at that picture at the top of the post. Does that young, attractive, gainfully employed white man in a scarf look happy? Yes? Well, he's not as happy as he could be! Truly, his demographic has been “one of the hardest hit” by the recession, as the newspaper says.

Articles like this are why people respect the New York Times even in this age—they aren't afraid to run articles about a tiny segment of the population and describe “trends” that exist only in their newsroom. If they tell you a few people moving to less expensive apartments is news, it's news, motherfucker! You wonder sometimes, “Isn't the Times Real Estate section pretty much lifestyle porn for anyone who isn't extremely rich? And don't the people who can relate to articles like this one get the Wall Street Journal anyway?”

No, of course not. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go look for a job. And while I struggle to pay rent the next couple months, I'll have one thing to console me—at least I'm not a wealthy bachelor.

The Decline and Fall of the Bachelor Pad (NYT) Read more!

Why Election Coverage Sucks, Vol. 1

The World Series ended this week, with the New York Yankees defeating the Philadelphia Phillies four games to two. The Yankees are officially the best baseball team in America. There is no way that the Phillies, or any other baseball team, can claim that they somehow won, or benefitted at all, from the World Series. That's the beautiful unambiguity of sports--when the game ends, it ends. A winner is declared, a loser is left to accept the fact of the loss, and we all go home.

Elections may sometimes be covered like horse races, but politics are not so wonderfully clear-cut. Several elections were held this week, and the three major ones--Governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey, a messy Congressional race in New York's 23rd District--have been analyzed again and again for meaning, for national significance. The worst offender is NY-23--after the Conservative Republican lost, this headline appeared on Politico: "Conservatives on NY-23: We Didn't Lose." Such behavior would shame even Phillies fans, but in the world of 24-hour news networks and political blogs, losers claiming they didn't lose is as common as videos of angry white people at rallies.

If you don't live in New Jersey, Virginia, or NY-23 (which has less than 700,000 residents), there was almost no reason to care about these races. But all those new outlets devoted to the coverage of politics have to pay attention to every election, and the only way to make local races compelling to people with no interest whatsoever in them was to turn the elections into microcosms of the nationwide elections 12 months away.

So the Governors' races became "referendums on Obama," who isn't up for election for three more years. The NY-23 race went from something that no one cared about to a "battle for the soul of the Republican party." This gave the blogs something to chew on, and allowed the cable news networks to provide 24 hours of programming a day without resorting to showing YouTube videos of adorable kittens napping.

Now, after the election, the importance of these isolated local races is being emphasized again. Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, the only black person in America to vote for John McCain, crowed over the "national implications" of the elections his party won. He ignored NY-23, where the candidate his party nominated ended up withdrawing from the race and endorsing the Democrat, who won the elections thanks to Republican blunders, and he ignored the fact that a diseased goat with mob ties could have beaten Jersey incumbent Chris Conzine, who oversaw a big increase in the state's deficit and unemployment rate.

Democrats, meanwhile, are fretting over the midterm elections. What lessons can be learned from the 2009 elections? Is the country coming out against Obama's policies? Should they de-emphasize health care? Is the country swinging back toward the right already? Were the "surge voters" who came out in support of Obama in 2008 a one-time phenomenon? How will Afghanistan affect all of this?

Baseball has ended, but fans can thankfully turn to football and basketball for their sports fix. I say "thankfully," because without these other sports, ESPN would have nothing to do but obsess over batting averages and off-season trades and contracts. The political news machine doesn't have another sport to move on to, so we can expect commentary and arguments over the relative relevance of NY-23 and the resounding GOP victory in Virginia for the rest of the year, before we head out on the campaign trail for the 2010 midterms, at which point the media will whip itself into an orgiastic frenzy of liveblogging and last-second polling, and then the midterms will be over, and we'll be treated to another round of, "What do these results really mean?"

Ahead of time, I'll hazard a guess as to what the 2010 elections will end up meaning: they'll mean more news, more analysis, and more people yelling at one another on television until 2012, when the whole beautiful cycle will start all over again. My only hope is that by 2012, the Yankees won't be in the playoffs. Read more!

Why Cultural Warriors Suck

There are only two kinds of Americans, and these two groups will probably never see eye-to-eye on anything. In fact, their views are so foreign to one another, they seem to be occupying parallel universes. I'm not talking about Liberals and Conservatives, or blacks and whites, or men and women, or Mac users and PC users, or New York City and the rest of the country. No, I'm referring to the difference between the Cultural Warriors and everyone else.

What do I mean by “Cultural Warriors?” Well, the “Culture Wars” are a series of unresolvable arguments about topics such as drugs, abortion, gay rights, public displays of religion, America being a “Christian Nation” or not, gun control, and whether George W. Bush or Barack Obama is closer in spirit to Adolf Hitler. These arguments are just as pointless as the “Yankees suck/Yankees rule” debate. No one is going to be convinced by the other side's arguments, and there's never going to be a defining event that proves the rightness of one position or the other. The Culture War is a lot like the War on Terrorism and the War on Drugs in that it isn't really a war, it makes some people very rich (in this case, political pundits), and it is never going to end.

Cultural Warriors are people who have volunteered to fight the Culture Wars for one side or the other. They stay on top of the issues, they read blogs voraciously, they comment on the blogs, they protest and counter-protest whenever they can, and they never waver in their convictions.

Cultural Warriors include people like Glen Beck and Michael Moore, the portly, constantly smirking Hector and Achilles of the Culture Wars. Rush Limbaugh and Jon Stewart are well-known recreational drug users and Cultural Warriors, although Stewart sometimes lightly rips the Democrats if there's a joke in it. Sarah Palin is Xena, Cultural Warrior Princess, and Ann Coulter is a male version of Xena. Wonkette and Redstate are two of the many Culture War fortresses on the Internet. And if you think the Culture Wars are a new phenomenon, remember that Ayn Rand and Father Coughlin could out-demagogue anyone on Fox News or MSNBC with one side of their mouths.

While the two sides disagree about nearly everything, they both rely on one core belief: there are no noncombatants in this war. That is, everything is a political statement for one side or the other. There is always something outraged about, and every new outrage is a skirmish that will determine the winner. A sculpture of the Ten Commandments outside a courthouse will force judges to rule by the law of the Bible; schoolchildren singing a song praising the President is a 1984-style indoctrination. If the other side's politicians are having an affair, they're hypocritical scumbags; if our guys get caught having an affair, they're victims of character assassination by the media and the other party. These arguments are not ever resolved because they can't be resolved. Instead, we go onto the next issue, which is always just a cable news cycle away.

Cultural Warriors, thanks to their numbers and their noise, can drive the public debate and make a whole lot of money if they get their own show, but they never make policy decisions. Partly, this is because they hardly ever hold office (Palin even resigned as governor to take part in the Wars), but mostly their suggestions are not adopted because they don't make suggestions. They aren't interested in the nitty-gritty details of laws and governance, unless those details can support a point they want to make. If a fact or report disagrees with their already-resolved opinions, the find a way to cast doubt on that fact or opinion, or they simply ignore it.

The problem with this hyper-politicized viewpoint is that it is incredibly limiting. Veteran Cultural Warriors are all bile and bias, so they assume that everything in the world is biased. This makes them unsuitable scientists, because scientists have to draw conclusions from facts, not facts from conclusions, and good scientists have to be able to recognize when a hypothesis has been proven incorrect. Cultural Warriors will never produce a worthwhile work of art, because their ideology prevents them from understanding art. Everything is considered from a political standpoint, so they lose sight of aesthetics and treat everything as a form of propaganda. Conservative Christians flocked to Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ not for its virtues as a film, but because Gibson is one of them and wants to further their message, much like dyed-in-the-wool Liberals enjoy Michael Moore's movies. This is the sort of art that a Cultural Warrior produces--political in the shallowest possible sense, guaranteed to be enjoyed or hated depending on the party affiliations of the viewer, and boring to look at.

Meanwhile, a whole lot of Americans go through life without considering the political ramifications of Christmas displays in public buildings or renting movies at Blockbuster. Some people are not bothered by the biases of Fox News and MSNBC because they never watch those channels. Mind-bogglingly, some people don't even think of politics as all that important. These people are easy to ignore because they don't blog, don't appear on television, and many of them don't even bother to vote. You can criticize this sort of attitude as being apathetic or unappreciative of the rights given to us by modern democracy--then again, given the state of political debate in this country, there's something to be said for ignoring it and hoping it goes away.

For an example of Cultural Warriors fighting over Whole Foods in the most ridiculous manner possible, watch this video:
Read more!

Why the New Jersey Turnpike Sucks

I've heard from some friends and acquaintances that parts of New Jersey are beautiful. Most of these people are from Jersey, so their opinions are somewhat suspect, but I assume that there are areas in the Garden State that have at least some natural beauty. I have little firsthand knowledge to draw on here. The only times I have been in New Jersey I've either been in Atlantic City―coast to coast, card rooms all look the same―or traveling, usually by bus, on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Before I moved out East, I always pictured the “New Jersey Turnpike” as an industrial wasteland, with smokestacks steaming under a heavily-polluted sky. Pipes and overpasses and underpasses crisscrossed one another in my head's version of the turnpike, with trucks towing immense tanks of chemicals from factory to factory. Basically, the New Jersey of my imagination was the real world from the Matrix. This vision would be a lot more interesting to drive through than the real thing.

The Turnpike isn't devoid of nature. There are shrubs and grass and small- to medium-sized trees between the multi-laned highways, and you can spot patches of forests from your car window. Animals―birds, small rodents, the occasional deer--must live somewhere in these places. I've never seen any; they've probably learned that going anywhere near the roads makes them targets for the world's most dangerous animal, the Tri-State driver. If you squint, or if your brain has been corroded by psychotropic drugs, you can imagine what the land must have been like before the freeway, cars, or Christopher Columbus: gently rolling hills, occasional streams lined by cattails, forests that turn picturesque shades of red and orange during autumn―if not for the Turnpike, you could see that section of Jersey being a tourist attraction, the sort of thing that nature-starved Manhattanites would drive for hours to see.

Then again, without the Turnpike, Manhattan wouldn't exist. We need some way to transport a whole lot of goods and people between several major metropolitan areas and the places that supply them with food―it wasn't like we decided all of a sudden to tear apart the landscape and install concrete instead of grass. But the Turnpike is still hideously ugly, ugly in the way usually only airports are ugly. It's not a destination for anyone, only a means of getting from one place to the other. There's never any effort to do anything with the empty, grass-and-asphalt landscape because we don't want to stay there long enough to do anything to improve the area.

There is nothing on the Turnpike except cars. There are no people not in cars, there are very few visible towns, there are no signs of humanity except for what humans have built and, occasionally, the graffiti that humans have scrawled on things other humans have built. Even the billboards are about cars--car insurance, car dealer ahead, sell your car for cash. Sometimes, you will see a building in the middle of all these cars. Sometimes, it isn't even a car dealership. These are usually malls, casinos, discount liquor stores--in any case, there will always be a parking lot stretched out in front of the building, inviting cars to come and stay.

The Turnpike sucks because it is an example of what happens when we don't build cities and don't care how the land looks, what happens when an area is allowed to be built on with no plan in mind. It represents what aesthetic develops when there is no thought given to aesthetics at all. Above all, it demonstrates that America, vast and complex creature that it is, has some bits in it that are amazingly boring and should be driven through as fast as possible. Fortunately, thanks to the highways that have ruined the landscape, it's possible to drive extremely fast when you are in New Jersey. Read more!