April 22, 2010
Last week a friend forwarded me an e-mail forwarded to him from another friend to whom it had been forwarded. “Jewish Sam Miller on Catholics” was the title, and under it, “Excerpt from an article written by non-Catholic Sam Miller, a prominent Cleveland Jewish businessman.”
“Why would newspapers carry on a vendetta against one of the most important institutions that we have today in the United States, namely the Catholic Church?” the excerpt began, followed by a list of statistics on how many children Catholic schools educate, how many people Catholic hospitals serve, and how much money Catholic organizations save the American taxpayer.
“But the press is vindictive and trying to totally denigrate in every way the Catholic Church in this country,” the piece continued, followed by more claimed statistics, among them that “12% of the 300 Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to sexual intercourse with a parishioner; 38% acknowledged other inappropriate sexual contact in a study by the United Methodist Church. Meanwhile, 1.7% of the Catholic clergy has been found guilty of pedophilia. 10% of the Protestant ministers have been found guilty of pedophilia. This is not a Catholic Problem.”
Finally: “The agony that Catholics have felt and suffered is not necessarily the fault of the Church.... Walk with your shoulders high and your head higher. Be a proud member of the most important non-governmental agency in the United States.”
General skepticism of the truth of forwarded e-mails is always advisable, and some fact-checking before re-forwarding them or writing about them is definitely recommended. In this case, an internet search for “Sam Miller Cleveland” turned up several references to Miller, a controversial 88-year-old board member of Forest City Enterprises, the megalith real-estate development company based in Cleveland, and promoter of Jewish and Catholic causes. It also turned up dozens of Catholic-oriented sites and blogs quoting from and commenting on Miller’s alleged words taken, some of them stated, from a 2008 speech to the City Club of Cleveland. What appears to be the full text, a six-page PDF file, is posted on the Knights of Malta website, www.maltausa.org/files/newsletter_hospitallers_18_stand_up.pdf.
Though this document presents some positive proposals for interfaith cooperation in confronting sexual abuse, much of it is an unrestrained rant against the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other papers, and their “kangaroo journalists ..., Catholics or ex-Catholics who have been denied something they wanted from the Church and are on a mission of vengeance.” Anybody about to push the FW button should think twice, especially about the accuracy of those numbers on sexual abuse among Protestants.
On a related theme from a mainline source, the April 15 issue of the liberal-leaning National Catholic Reporter, columnist Melissa Musick Nussbaum seeks to redirect the press to more pressing problems. After supplying her own set of statistics on media attention to sexual-abuse cases (those by the Hare Krishna sect and at an Episcopalian-run school in South Carolina have been largely ignored, as has the dramatic drop in abuse claims against priests over the last two decades), she suggests that reporters delve into more recent and even more shocking ones, such as the findings of a U.S. Justice Department investigation issued in January that “an estimated 10.3 percent of youth in state and large non-state [juvenile] facilities report experiencing one or more incidents of sexual abuse involving facility staff annually.”
“The fire is out in one house but still raging in the house down the block,” she writes; it’s “the present emergency” that should be the focus of the news.
Is the press out to get the Catholic Church? Despite these facts and factoids, I don’t think that’s the specific goal. There has not been widespread bias against Catholics, either in the media or in American culture at large, since John Kennedy dispelled it by example 50 years ago. Instead, what reporters are going after today is what reporters are always going after, the man-bites-dog story. Nussbaum is right: “Hare Krishnas and Episcopalians don’t summon the same rich associations as Roman Catholic clergy.” Priests are unique because of their promise of celibacy and because of the mysterious spiritual powers of their office, both enduringly fascinating to the public at large. The ethical bar for Catholic priests is thus much higher than for officials in other institutions, religious or secular, and failing to jump it makes much better news.
On the political level, there are the tantalizing prospects of the cover-up, irresistible to the investigative reporter. Watergate or Toyota, Pentagon or pope, it’s pretty much the same: the thrill of the hunt, and the singular pleasure of bringing down the high and mighty.
Miller in his alleged speech makes an arguable point in contrasting the many good works of the institutional Church with the relatively few numbers of predatory priests. But writing in the April 18 edition of Miller’s despised New York Times, the intrepid investigative columnist Nicholas Kristof, who received a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his first-hand accounts of the Darfur genocide, makes perhaps a more arguable point in contrasting the Catholicism of Rome to the Catholicism of the trenches, “the rigid all-male Vatican hierarchy ... obsessed with dogma and rules and distracted from social justice” versus “the Church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in obscurity to feed and educate children.”
Negligence of the hierarchical Church, bashed; praise for the Church of the people, unabashed. That’s a fairly fair assessment.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
A NEW REFORMATION?
April 15, 2010
In 1902, Alfred Loisy, a French priest and biblical scholar, wrote with evident disillusionment: "Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God, and what arrived was the Church."
What would/does Jesus think of what became of his utopian religious vision over the centuries?
To Jesus, the Kingdom of God would turn all conventional kingdoms on their heads. His Kingdom would belong to the poor and the meek. It would have no armies. Its leaders would be servants, getting down on their knees to wash their followers' grimy feet. There would be no priestly class; every believer would have unmediated access to God through Jesus. Complicated religious rituals would be replaced by the simple sharing of bread and wine in memory of him. Mountains of rules and regulations would be supplanted by one great law of love.
It was, I guess, a bit much to ask, even from God himself.
Within a hundred years of Jesus' death, the small communities of believers began taking on the characteristics of "organized religion." By the time the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476, Christianity was so organized it took over the reins of government as well.
What had arrived was the Church, complete with lands and armies and a rigid hierarchical structure and a mediating priesthood and elaborate rituals — in so many ways the very things Jesus found as obstacles, not vehicles, to God.
Power corrupts, and Church history is replete with the misdeeds of popes, bishops, abbots, and priests. All seven of the Deadly Sins — pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth — were committed with abandon by wanton ecclesiastical potentates. Yet to the pure of heart, the Church in its essence was still the living Body of Christ on earth, a precious treasure held in vessels of clay. It was, to extend Luther's phrase beyond the individual, simul justa et peccator, saved and sinner at once. People like Francis of Assisi in the 13th century looked to the almost-forgotten Jesus of the Gospels and embraced his example of poverty, simplicity, and humble service while remaining faithful to a hierarchy they saw as authentic dispensers of grace, despite disgrace. In so doing, they shamed a corrupt institution into righting itself again and again: Ecclesia semper reformanda.
In the 16th century, Martin Luther, in reaction to egregious abuses of power emanating from Rome, rejected the institution itself, asserting that salvation comes not through priest and sacrament but sola fide, by personal faith alone. The Protestant Reformation was not so much a reformation as a revolution, a definitive break from a religious structure that had remained virtually intact for over a millennium. Protestant denominations simplified both governance and worship, modeling their communities on the ones closest to Jesus' own time, as described in the New Testament.
Yet despite these massive defections, the Roman Catholic Church survived. The question at hand is whether it will survive the priest-pedophile scandal of today.
There are reasons to think it will not, at least in its present form.
From the cultural standpoint alone, there are increasing numbers of people in the Western world, especially among the young, who believe in and pray to God but have little use for religious doctrine and practice. A recent Pew poll found that only 18% of Americans under age 30 who identify themselves as affiliated with a particular faith regularly attend its services; for them, religion is primarily personal. Given those statistics, sustaining any mainline church will become hard to do, scandal or no scandal.
Specific to practicing Catholics, there are many whose notions about religious authority have been demythologized by the scandals. In times past, Catholics overwhelmingly believed that priest, bishop, and pope were by their ordination channels of grace regardless of their sins. Today they subject their clergy to what Marxists of beloved memory called the "hermeneutic of suspicion," critically judging them by their merits, not their office. Whereas Catholics used to respect their priests because they were priests, they now give priests respect only if they've earned it.
The attitude of unwavering obedience by Catholics to religious authority is still prevalent in developing countries, which is why hierarchies there have so far been able to keep the lid on their own scandals. But once the hermeneutic of suspicion begins to take hold, those lids too will blow, just as surely as in the United States and Europe.
What may come of all this is a Catholic Church so weakened by distrust that it will have to reorganize itself on a less hierarchical, more egalitarian model: another Reformation, but this time from within.
Among the weeds and briars of the institutional Church, seeds of the Kingdom of God may be, as Jesus once put it, growing secretly.
In 1902, Alfred Loisy, a French priest and biblical scholar, wrote with evident disillusionment: "Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God, and what arrived was the Church."
What would/does Jesus think of what became of his utopian religious vision over the centuries?
To Jesus, the Kingdom of God would turn all conventional kingdoms on their heads. His Kingdom would belong to the poor and the meek. It would have no armies. Its leaders would be servants, getting down on their knees to wash their followers' grimy feet. There would be no priestly class; every believer would have unmediated access to God through Jesus. Complicated religious rituals would be replaced by the simple sharing of bread and wine in memory of him. Mountains of rules and regulations would be supplanted by one great law of love.
It was, I guess, a bit much to ask, even from God himself.
Within a hundred years of Jesus' death, the small communities of believers began taking on the characteristics of "organized religion." By the time the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476, Christianity was so organized it took over the reins of government as well.
What had arrived was the Church, complete with lands and armies and a rigid hierarchical structure and a mediating priesthood and elaborate rituals — in so many ways the very things Jesus found as obstacles, not vehicles, to God.
Power corrupts, and Church history is replete with the misdeeds of popes, bishops, abbots, and priests. All seven of the Deadly Sins — pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth — were committed with abandon by wanton ecclesiastical potentates. Yet to the pure of heart, the Church in its essence was still the living Body of Christ on earth, a precious treasure held in vessels of clay. It was, to extend Luther's phrase beyond the individual, simul justa et peccator, saved and sinner at once. People like Francis of Assisi in the 13th century looked to the almost-forgotten Jesus of the Gospels and embraced his example of poverty, simplicity, and humble service while remaining faithful to a hierarchy they saw as authentic dispensers of grace, despite disgrace. In so doing, they shamed a corrupt institution into righting itself again and again: Ecclesia semper reformanda.
In the 16th century, Martin Luther, in reaction to egregious abuses of power emanating from Rome, rejected the institution itself, asserting that salvation comes not through priest and sacrament but sola fide, by personal faith alone. The Protestant Reformation was not so much a reformation as a revolution, a definitive break from a religious structure that had remained virtually intact for over a millennium. Protestant denominations simplified both governance and worship, modeling their communities on the ones closest to Jesus' own time, as described in the New Testament.
Yet despite these massive defections, the Roman Catholic Church survived. The question at hand is whether it will survive the priest-pedophile scandal of today.
There are reasons to think it will not, at least in its present form.
From the cultural standpoint alone, there are increasing numbers of people in the Western world, especially among the young, who believe in and pray to God but have little use for religious doctrine and practice. A recent Pew poll found that only 18% of Americans under age 30 who identify themselves as affiliated with a particular faith regularly attend its services; for them, religion is primarily personal. Given those statistics, sustaining any mainline church will become hard to do, scandal or no scandal.
Specific to practicing Catholics, there are many whose notions about religious authority have been demythologized by the scandals. In times past, Catholics overwhelmingly believed that priest, bishop, and pope were by their ordination channels of grace regardless of their sins. Today they subject their clergy to what Marxists of beloved memory called the "hermeneutic of suspicion," critically judging them by their merits, not their office. Whereas Catholics used to respect their priests because they were priests, they now give priests respect only if they've earned it.
The attitude of unwavering obedience by Catholics to religious authority is still prevalent in developing countries, which is why hierarchies there have so far been able to keep the lid on their own scandals. But once the hermeneutic of suspicion begins to take hold, those lids too will blow, just as surely as in the United States and Europe.
What may come of all this is a Catholic Church so weakened by distrust that it will have to reorganize itself on a less hierarchical, more egalitarian model: another Reformation, but this time from within.
Among the weeds and briars of the institutional Church, seeds of the Kingdom of God may be, as Jesus once put it, growing secretly.
Friday, April 9, 2010
THE ICON OF PETER
April 1, 2010
It's Holy Week, the most solemn time in the Christian Church's liturgical year. Those who tune in the TV to watch Pope Benedict XVI officiating at those magnificent ceremonies at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome may have some other stray thoughts running in the back of their heads: What did he know? When did he know it? What did he do about it?
These ancient rites commemorating the passion and resurrection of Jesus are in their essence the same as those enacted in Rome for over 1500 years, performed by popes as noble and saintly as Gregory the Great and John XXIII and as smarmy and sinful as the Borgias and Medicis. According to the doctrine of ex opere operato, long ago established to deal with lapsed priests after the Roman persecutions, the moral condition of the presider has no bearing on the efficacy of the act. The validity of a sacrament comes from "the work worked," not from the worthiness of the one working it.
Yet it is the question of worthiness that may bother us as we watch. Benedict — theologian, intellectual, champion of orthodoxy — can hardly be compared with the Medicis, but does he share the guilt of denial in the sexual-abuse scandals that have infected the Catholic Church in the U.S., Europe, and possibly beyond?
The cock crows; is it crowing for him?
The particular scandal that may undermine his papacy goes back to the 1980's, when he was Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich. Hard on to Holy Week, the New York Times revealed memos and minutes of meetings showing that Ratzinger was aware of if not instrumental in the reinstatement of a pedophile priest in his diocese who continued his abuses and was eventually convicted under civil law. The Times also broke a disturbing story of the abuse of dozens of boys at a school for the deaf in Milwaukee in the 1970's and the inaction by the Vatican office headed by Ratzinger when it was finally brought there by the Milwaukee bishop years after.
The dynamic in these two cases is identical to almost every other one everywhere: Same time-period — late 1960's through mid- 1980's; and same response — the bishop is apparently aware but passive, leaving the disposition of pedophile priests to ecclesiastical bureaucrats who put them into therapy and then reassign them. The pattern was so uniform and so worldwide, despite there being at the time no body of Church law or regulation to refer to, that one can only conclude that it was the product of an insular institutional culture operating out of ignorance, compassion, and fear: ignorance of the intractable nature of pedophilia and the belief that it was a moral rather than a pathological problem, a sin to be absolved and healed by confession and its grace; compassion for a fellow priest and the understandable desire to shield the faithful from scandal; and fear of intrusion by secular authorities into what was seen as an internal matter.
Things are different now. As with the Church's stance on slavery, which throughout much of its history was commonly accepted as a given but is now recognized as appallingly evil, moral acuity develops over time. Pedophile priests were treated with a now-unbelievable institutional blindness to the agony of the victims, de facto aided by a laity fiercely loyal to the institution and unwilling to think the unthinkable, that their pastors could ever do such despicable things.
As with slavery, the unmasking of clergy sexual abuse has led to shamed apologies and reparations for past evils and stringent policies to avoid future ones. To their credit, both the present pope and national conferences of bishops have done admirable work towards these ends. But there remain elements of coverup, reluctance to come completely clean, from certain bishops' stonewalling the release of documents to the pope's own silence about his involvement in the Munich case. It's this lack of "transparency," what writer David Gibson has called "circling the wagons," that is fueling the present furor.
We are not used to popes speaking personally. We see them as icons, not individuals, successors of St. Peter, by whose office the work is worked.
But Peter himself, afraid for his life after his master's arrest, three times denied knowing Jesus. Realizing his betrayal, the Gospels recount, "he went out and wept bitterly." Full disclosure.
No matter how great or how small the culpability, the icon of Peter should do nothing less.
It's Holy Week, the most solemn time in the Christian Church's liturgical year. Those who tune in the TV to watch Pope Benedict XVI officiating at those magnificent ceremonies at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome may have some other stray thoughts running in the back of their heads: What did he know? When did he know it? What did he do about it?
These ancient rites commemorating the passion and resurrection of Jesus are in their essence the same as those enacted in Rome for over 1500 years, performed by popes as noble and saintly as Gregory the Great and John XXIII and as smarmy and sinful as the Borgias and Medicis. According to the doctrine of ex opere operato, long ago established to deal with lapsed priests after the Roman persecutions, the moral condition of the presider has no bearing on the efficacy of the act. The validity of a sacrament comes from "the work worked," not from the worthiness of the one working it.
Yet it is the question of worthiness that may bother us as we watch. Benedict — theologian, intellectual, champion of orthodoxy — can hardly be compared with the Medicis, but does he share the guilt of denial in the sexual-abuse scandals that have infected the Catholic Church in the U.S., Europe, and possibly beyond?
The cock crows; is it crowing for him?
The particular scandal that may undermine his papacy goes back to the 1980's, when he was Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich. Hard on to Holy Week, the New York Times revealed memos and minutes of meetings showing that Ratzinger was aware of if not instrumental in the reinstatement of a pedophile priest in his diocese who continued his abuses and was eventually convicted under civil law. The Times also broke a disturbing story of the abuse of dozens of boys at a school for the deaf in Milwaukee in the 1970's and the inaction by the Vatican office headed by Ratzinger when it was finally brought there by the Milwaukee bishop years after.
The dynamic in these two cases is identical to almost every other one everywhere: Same time-period — late 1960's through mid- 1980's; and same response — the bishop is apparently aware but passive, leaving the disposition of pedophile priests to ecclesiastical bureaucrats who put them into therapy and then reassign them. The pattern was so uniform and so worldwide, despite there being at the time no body of Church law or regulation to refer to, that one can only conclude that it was the product of an insular institutional culture operating out of ignorance, compassion, and fear: ignorance of the intractable nature of pedophilia and the belief that it was a moral rather than a pathological problem, a sin to be absolved and healed by confession and its grace; compassion for a fellow priest and the understandable desire to shield the faithful from scandal; and fear of intrusion by secular authorities into what was seen as an internal matter.
Things are different now. As with the Church's stance on slavery, which throughout much of its history was commonly accepted as a given but is now recognized as appallingly evil, moral acuity develops over time. Pedophile priests were treated with a now-unbelievable institutional blindness to the agony of the victims, de facto aided by a laity fiercely loyal to the institution and unwilling to think the unthinkable, that their pastors could ever do such despicable things.
As with slavery, the unmasking of clergy sexual abuse has led to shamed apologies and reparations for past evils and stringent policies to avoid future ones. To their credit, both the present pope and national conferences of bishops have done admirable work towards these ends. But there remain elements of coverup, reluctance to come completely clean, from certain bishops' stonewalling the release of documents to the pope's own silence about his involvement in the Munich case. It's this lack of "transparency," what writer David Gibson has called "circling the wagons," that is fueling the present furor.
We are not used to popes speaking personally. We see them as icons, not individuals, successors of St. Peter, by whose office the work is worked.
But Peter himself, afraid for his life after his master's arrest, three times denied knowing Jesus. Realizing his betrayal, the Gospels recount, "he went out and wept bitterly." Full disclosure.
No matter how great or how small the culpability, the icon of Peter should do nothing less.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
HIGH DRAMA IN HEALTH CARE
March 25, 2010
Last Sunday's rush to passage of the health-care reform bill by the House of Representatives was an example of high drama you never thought happened in a place better known for droning diatribes made to an empty chamber. It was a parliamentary flurry of motions and amendments and scrupulously-timed speechlets and nail-biting votes. For those watching it on TV, the experience was positively exhilarating, a seldom-seen live civics lesson on how bills become laws, how your do-nothing Congress actually does something. It may have changed the minds of not a few young voters about the value of entering public service.
Another civics lesson, far beyond the scope of textbooks, was the way in which Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama marshaled their recalcitrant troops for the necessary 216 votes, an outcome quite uncertain just hours before.
To the surprise of almost everybody, they hauled in the two big fighting fish of totally different ideological species, single-payer proponent Dennis Kucinich and abortion opponent Bart Stupak, along with their respective schools.
Exactly how they did it may never be fully known. No smarmy sweeteners like those bestowed on certain Senators are yet evident; it appears to have been the result of fervent appeal to party loyalty, the promise that their respective objections would not go unheeded, and Obama's Voltairian mantra, "We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Whatever the tactics, it was a masterful display of the power of persuasion, Dale Carnegie on steroids.
Of all the high drama, swaying Stupak and his anti-abortion Democratic colleagues was certainly the highest. Long before Saturday's vote, this new little caucus, whose convictions had been excluded from the Democratic tent and platform for decades, became the makers or breakers of health-care legislation. They were no naïve fools, either, showing serpentine political acumen first in allying themselves with the Republican minority to block passage of last November's House bill unless highly restrictive language on abortion funding were included, and then in pulling the rug out from under them by going with their party at virtually the last minute on Sunday ("Baby killer!").
Stupak himself was the best of all. Last week, when the Network nuns defied their own bishops by coming out in favor of the bill, he enfuriated them by declaring that "on right-to-life issues, we don't call the nuns"; days later, he reversed positions and became their hero. Most interestingly, Stupak and Co. not only exhibited a flexibility seldom seen in the anti- abortion movement but forced flexibility from staunch abortion- rights advocates Pelosi and Obama. Both sides, for the time being at least, eschewed the perfect for the good.
Many more fascinating developments still lie ahead. The first is what enactment of this law will do to the fate of the Democrats in general and Democrat-in-Chief Obama in particular. Over the months, the public has expressed ambivalence at best and hostility at worst both to the legislation and to the legislative process itself. Republicans act convinced that they can still tap into fears of "socialized medicine" and fan a backlash to the majority party's parliamentary ploys; Democrats act convinced that once the law is on the books and people see its immediate effects, they'll come around to support it. We'll get a hard sell from both sides right through the November elections.
The second development is development; reforming the health-care system is a work in progress. Next week, Senate Republicans will try to thwart the House's "fixes" to the new law, then try to repeal it altogether; neither attempt is likely to succeed. Progressive Democrats will do the opposite, proposing gradual changes leading to what they've wanted all along, a sleek and seamless single-payer plan. Having a law in place may allow them to do what they couldn't do in committee; as with Medicare — initially indefensible but now indispensable — they believe that once people see government actually doing some good, they'll ask for even more of it.
As with much high drama, the denouement may be as exciting as the climax.
Last Sunday's rush to passage of the health-care reform bill by the House of Representatives was an example of high drama you never thought happened in a place better known for droning diatribes made to an empty chamber. It was a parliamentary flurry of motions and amendments and scrupulously-timed speechlets and nail-biting votes. For those watching it on TV, the experience was positively exhilarating, a seldom-seen live civics lesson on how bills become laws, how your do-nothing Congress actually does something. It may have changed the minds of not a few young voters about the value of entering public service.
Another civics lesson, far beyond the scope of textbooks, was the way in which Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama marshaled their recalcitrant troops for the necessary 216 votes, an outcome quite uncertain just hours before.
To the surprise of almost everybody, they hauled in the two big fighting fish of totally different ideological species, single-payer proponent Dennis Kucinich and abortion opponent Bart Stupak, along with their respective schools.
Exactly how they did it may never be fully known. No smarmy sweeteners like those bestowed on certain Senators are yet evident; it appears to have been the result of fervent appeal to party loyalty, the promise that their respective objections would not go unheeded, and Obama's Voltairian mantra, "We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Whatever the tactics, it was a masterful display of the power of persuasion, Dale Carnegie on steroids.
Of all the high drama, swaying Stupak and his anti-abortion Democratic colleagues was certainly the highest. Long before Saturday's vote, this new little caucus, whose convictions had been excluded from the Democratic tent and platform for decades, became the makers or breakers of health-care legislation. They were no naïve fools, either, showing serpentine political acumen first in allying themselves with the Republican minority to block passage of last November's House bill unless highly restrictive language on abortion funding were included, and then in pulling the rug out from under them by going with their party at virtually the last minute on Sunday ("Baby killer!").
Stupak himself was the best of all. Last week, when the Network nuns defied their own bishops by coming out in favor of the bill, he enfuriated them by declaring that "on right-to-life issues, we don't call the nuns"; days later, he reversed positions and became their hero. Most interestingly, Stupak and Co. not only exhibited a flexibility seldom seen in the anti- abortion movement but forced flexibility from staunch abortion- rights advocates Pelosi and Obama. Both sides, for the time being at least, eschewed the perfect for the good.
Many more fascinating developments still lie ahead. The first is what enactment of this law will do to the fate of the Democrats in general and Democrat-in-Chief Obama in particular. Over the months, the public has expressed ambivalence at best and hostility at worst both to the legislation and to the legislative process itself. Republicans act convinced that they can still tap into fears of "socialized medicine" and fan a backlash to the majority party's parliamentary ploys; Democrats act convinced that once the law is on the books and people see its immediate effects, they'll come around to support it. We'll get a hard sell from both sides right through the November elections.
The second development is development; reforming the health-care system is a work in progress. Next week, Senate Republicans will try to thwart the House's "fixes" to the new law, then try to repeal it altogether; neither attempt is likely to succeed. Progressive Democrats will do the opposite, proposing gradual changes leading to what they've wanted all along, a sleek and seamless single-payer plan. Having a law in place may allow them to do what they couldn't do in committee; as with Medicare — initially indefensible but now indispensable — they believe that once people see government actually doing some good, they'll ask for even more of it.
As with much high drama, the denouement may be as exciting as the climax.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
THE HEALTH CARE VOTE
March 18, 2010
Can it possibly be? After a year of dithering, this week the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives will actually attempt to ram through a health-care bill that has already passed the Senate and send it to the President's desk.
Forget the niceties. Forget bipartisanship. Even forget it's a bill many Democrats don't particularly like.
Just do it.
Finally, an act of courage from a party, or most of a party, now fabled for its spinelessness and liberal angst. Next thing you know they'll be taking on Big Coal.
Even their Supreme Leader Barack Obama has shed his failed big-tent strategy and is starting to act like Lyndon Johnson, postponing a trip to Indonesia to fan the embers of his dispirited base and to cajole his party's waverers in the House.
It's a do-or-die battle for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her minions. Unlike the Republicans, who stand like a stone wall against the legislation, the Democrats are the usual herd of cats. At one end, you've got all those Blue Cats that object because the bill goes too far; at the other you've got those Pink Cats that object because it doesn't go far enough; and then you've got the abortion-rights advocates and opponents, both reluctant to compromise.
Can Pelosi pull it off?
On the PBS NewsHour on Friday, pundits Mark Shield and David Brooks were both uncharacteristically flummoxed. "Right now they're short" of the 216 votes necessary to put the measure over the top, Brooks said. "But Pelosi is very smart and knows what she's doing. I don't see how they'll do it, but I assume they're very close."
If Obama, Pelosi, and Co. can come up with the votes, it will be the biggest legislative coup since Johnson passed Medicare in 1965, or at least since Clinton passed the surplus- generating tax hike by a tie-breaking vote in 1993. It would not only be a step towards reshaping U.S. health care; it would also give Democrats something like faith in themselves, a sense of solidarity that could result in bold initiatives on education, environment, agriculture, lobbying, obstructionists be damned. "Yes we can!" could at last be not a campaign slogan but a party mandate.
There's no doubt that the bill Pelosi wants to pass is flawed. It's your standard sausage, a mishmash of provisions that keep the present dysfunctional "system" virtually intact. Nevertheless, as many advocates of a "Medicare for All" single- payer system agree, it's far better than nothing, a modest reform that moves toward universal coverage and control of insurance- company policies and profits.
Believe it or not, there seems to be a certain sense of moral obligation to this effort. With mid-term elections coming up, many House Democrats in swing districts are rightly worried that a yes vote will give the Tea Party people ammunition enough to shoot them down. Their bet will have to be that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is wrong, that the American people don't "hate this bill" but are merely skittish about it, and that once it becomes a fact rather than a fantasy, they will eventually wonder how they ever got along without it, much like what happened with Medicare and, more recently, with Massachusetts' compulsory-insurance law.
Access to health care is not so much a matter of dollars as of justice. The Democrats now have the chance to show what they're made of. Amazingly, they just might be made of principle.
Can it possibly be? After a year of dithering, this week the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives will actually attempt to ram through a health-care bill that has already passed the Senate and send it to the President's desk.
Forget the niceties. Forget bipartisanship. Even forget it's a bill many Democrats don't particularly like.
Just do it.
Finally, an act of courage from a party, or most of a party, now fabled for its spinelessness and liberal angst. Next thing you know they'll be taking on Big Coal.
Even their Supreme Leader Barack Obama has shed his failed big-tent strategy and is starting to act like Lyndon Johnson, postponing a trip to Indonesia to fan the embers of his dispirited base and to cajole his party's waverers in the House.
It's a do-or-die battle for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her minions. Unlike the Republicans, who stand like a stone wall against the legislation, the Democrats are the usual herd of cats. At one end, you've got all those Blue Cats that object because the bill goes too far; at the other you've got those Pink Cats that object because it doesn't go far enough; and then you've got the abortion-rights advocates and opponents, both reluctant to compromise.
Can Pelosi pull it off?
On the PBS NewsHour on Friday, pundits Mark Shield and David Brooks were both uncharacteristically flummoxed. "Right now they're short" of the 216 votes necessary to put the measure over the top, Brooks said. "But Pelosi is very smart and knows what she's doing. I don't see how they'll do it, but I assume they're very close."
If Obama, Pelosi, and Co. can come up with the votes, it will be the biggest legislative coup since Johnson passed Medicare in 1965, or at least since Clinton passed the surplus- generating tax hike by a tie-breaking vote in 1993. It would not only be a step towards reshaping U.S. health care; it would also give Democrats something like faith in themselves, a sense of solidarity that could result in bold initiatives on education, environment, agriculture, lobbying, obstructionists be damned. "Yes we can!" could at last be not a campaign slogan but a party mandate.
There's no doubt that the bill Pelosi wants to pass is flawed. It's your standard sausage, a mishmash of provisions that keep the present dysfunctional "system" virtually intact. Nevertheless, as many advocates of a "Medicare for All" single- payer system agree, it's far better than nothing, a modest reform that moves toward universal coverage and control of insurance- company policies and profits.
Believe it or not, there seems to be a certain sense of moral obligation to this effort. With mid-term elections coming up, many House Democrats in swing districts are rightly worried that a yes vote will give the Tea Party people ammunition enough to shoot them down. Their bet will have to be that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is wrong, that the American people don't "hate this bill" but are merely skittish about it, and that once it becomes a fact rather than a fantasy, they will eventually wonder how they ever got along without it, much like what happened with Medicare and, more recently, with Massachusetts' compulsory-insurance law.
Access to health care is not so much a matter of dollars as of justice. The Democrats now have the chance to show what they're made of. Amazingly, they just might be made of principle.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
"THE HURT LOCKER"
March 11, 2010
My college classmate Roger, a physician at the Fort Lewis Army base in Tacoma, Wash., came for a few days' visit early last November. In addition to the plays, concerts, and tourist sites he wanted to see, he searched the movie listings for one film: The Hurt Locker.
"It's a story about an Army bomb squad in Iraq," he told me. "A friend of mine recommended it — he's a very thoughtful ex- Green Beret. It's not playing anywhere in the Seattle area, but it's got to be here in New York."
It was, at only one place, an art-house in the Village. We went to an early-evening weekday show. The theater was practically empty, and most of those that were there were folks like us, Vietnam-era Boomers, some of them apparent veterans, a few with disabilities.
"I think it's hard to find this movie because most people don't want to deal with Iraq and Afghanistan," he guessed as we settled in with popcorn and sodas. "They don't want to hear about it or think much about it because it doesn't affect them directly. They go to the movies to escape, not to face hard questions."
So it was a big surprise to both of us that The Hurt Lockerswept the Oscars last Sunday. Now venues nationwide will multiply, and people will go just to see what they'd ignored all these months.
They won't be disappointed.
What makes this film unique and prize-winning is that it's not your standard war film — but that's because Iraq was not your standard war. In conventional war movies, as in conventional wars, there is a defined, uniformed enemy engaging in defined battle; battles are followed by relative calm, a time of release before the next conflict begins. In this film, as in Iraq itself, there is little release, and in that sense it falls more in the genre of suspense or horror. The tension is unrelieved because, as in a horror movie, no one really knows who or what the enemy is or when or where it will strike next: terror on every side.
Scenes showing the obsessed explosives expert Sergeant William James, played by Jeremy Renner, delicately unearthing improvised explosive devices and deftly snipping detonation wires keep your stomach in knots, and when the last critical wire is cut, you want to sigh in relief — but you can't. Your stomach knots again as the camera pans past alleyways and doors and balconies where Iraqis stand looking, watching, some with camcorders and some with cell phones, then turns to the three- member squad, themselves panning the same surroundings with their rifles.
There is no respite to the anxiety because it's clear that any one of these ordinary-looking people, man, woman, or child, could be a killer.
It is this unrelenting uncertainty that makes the film an overpowering experience. It is also the real-life uncertainty in the minds of the troops that has surely contributed to the extraordinarily high incidence of psychological trauma among our soldiers — one in five, by some estimates. It is horrible enough to kill a uniformed enemy, but there the guilt can be salved by clearly knowing exactly who the enemy are. In the conflicts in Iraq and now Afghanistan, the enemy could be anyone at all.
Prior to his medical career, Roger served as an officer in the Army; today he continues to serve those wounded in combat, both physically and psychologically. He knows things from the inside.
The other day, he e-mailed me: "This morning I heard a report about one of the hardest-hit platoons in Iraq, covered by a journalist who wrote a book about them called They Fought for Each Other. It was heartbreaking to listen to the trauma they had to endure. The platoon had been so over-exposed to IED's and death that they actually refused to go out on patrol one day, as they all met with a psych counselor and told him they would likely shoot anyone in sight due to their anger, and they felt it would be inadvisable to go out. The psychologist agreed, but the commander didn't, and they still didn't go out — a small act of mutiny which went unpunished. In the end, the commander actually praised the soldiers' judgment in staying behind."
Months after seeing it, the film was still playing in his head as it was in mine, as the invasion of Marja in Afghanistan began, the roads to which and in which were strewn with Taliban IED's.
In another e-mail, Roger wrote: "One line that impressed me in the movie was when Sgt. James is disarming a bomb and encounters the recalcitrant Iraqi driver who doesn't want to get out of his way. After finally forcing him to back up his car by putting a gun to his head, the sergeant's comrades jerk the Iraqi out of his car and beat him up. The sergeant says, ‘If he wasn't a terrorist before, he is now.' My impression is that war brutalizes everyone it touches — the good guys and the bad guys, from whatever perspective you define those terms. While we praise the sacrifices of our military people, we don't realize the physical and psychological devastation ravaged upon them by repeated ‘deployments' to war zones, especially to war zones as weird as those we are in now."
The Hurt Locker captures that weirdness precisely.
My college classmate Roger, a physician at the Fort Lewis Army base in Tacoma, Wash., came for a few days' visit early last November. In addition to the plays, concerts, and tourist sites he wanted to see, he searched the movie listings for one film: The Hurt Locker.
"It's a story about an Army bomb squad in Iraq," he told me. "A friend of mine recommended it — he's a very thoughtful ex- Green Beret. It's not playing anywhere in the Seattle area, but it's got to be here in New York."
It was, at only one place, an art-house in the Village. We went to an early-evening weekday show. The theater was practically empty, and most of those that were there were folks like us, Vietnam-era Boomers, some of them apparent veterans, a few with disabilities.
"I think it's hard to find this movie because most people don't want to deal with Iraq and Afghanistan," he guessed as we settled in with popcorn and sodas. "They don't want to hear about it or think much about it because it doesn't affect them directly. They go to the movies to escape, not to face hard questions."
So it was a big surprise to both of us that The Hurt Lockerswept the Oscars last Sunday. Now venues nationwide will multiply, and people will go just to see what they'd ignored all these months.
They won't be disappointed.
What makes this film unique and prize-winning is that it's not your standard war film — but that's because Iraq was not your standard war. In conventional war movies, as in conventional wars, there is a defined, uniformed enemy engaging in defined battle; battles are followed by relative calm, a time of release before the next conflict begins. In this film, as in Iraq itself, there is little release, and in that sense it falls more in the genre of suspense or horror. The tension is unrelieved because, as in a horror movie, no one really knows who or what the enemy is or when or where it will strike next: terror on every side.
Scenes showing the obsessed explosives expert Sergeant William James, played by Jeremy Renner, delicately unearthing improvised explosive devices and deftly snipping detonation wires keep your stomach in knots, and when the last critical wire is cut, you want to sigh in relief — but you can't. Your stomach knots again as the camera pans past alleyways and doors and balconies where Iraqis stand looking, watching, some with camcorders and some with cell phones, then turns to the three- member squad, themselves panning the same surroundings with their rifles.
There is no respite to the anxiety because it's clear that any one of these ordinary-looking people, man, woman, or child, could be a killer.
It is this unrelenting uncertainty that makes the film an overpowering experience. It is also the real-life uncertainty in the minds of the troops that has surely contributed to the extraordinarily high incidence of psychological trauma among our soldiers — one in five, by some estimates. It is horrible enough to kill a uniformed enemy, but there the guilt can be salved by clearly knowing exactly who the enemy are. In the conflicts in Iraq and now Afghanistan, the enemy could be anyone at all.
Prior to his medical career, Roger served as an officer in the Army; today he continues to serve those wounded in combat, both physically and psychologically. He knows things from the inside.
The other day, he e-mailed me: "This morning I heard a report about one of the hardest-hit platoons in Iraq, covered by a journalist who wrote a book about them called They Fought for Each Other. It was heartbreaking to listen to the trauma they had to endure. The platoon had been so over-exposed to IED's and death that they actually refused to go out on patrol one day, as they all met with a psych counselor and told him they would likely shoot anyone in sight due to their anger, and they felt it would be inadvisable to go out. The psychologist agreed, but the commander didn't, and they still didn't go out — a small act of mutiny which went unpunished. In the end, the commander actually praised the soldiers' judgment in staying behind."
Months after seeing it, the film was still playing in his head as it was in mine, as the invasion of Marja in Afghanistan began, the roads to which and in which were strewn with Taliban IED's.
In another e-mail, Roger wrote: "One line that impressed me in the movie was when Sgt. James is disarming a bomb and encounters the recalcitrant Iraqi driver who doesn't want to get out of his way. After finally forcing him to back up his car by putting a gun to his head, the sergeant's comrades jerk the Iraqi out of his car and beat him up. The sergeant says, ‘If he wasn't a terrorist before, he is now.' My impression is that war brutalizes everyone it touches — the good guys and the bad guys, from whatever perspective you define those terms. While we praise the sacrifices of our military people, we don't realize the physical and psychological devastation ravaged upon them by repeated ‘deployments' to war zones, especially to war zones as weird as those we are in now."
The Hurt Locker captures that weirdness precisely.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
PLEDGE BREAK
March 4, 2010
That's NPR News at the top of the hour. Good morning, I'm Paige Turner, and as you've all feared, this is Pledge Week at KHBX, Public Radio 830. We're taking a break from Morning Edition to ask for your support. For the life of me, I don't understand why this works, but it does. They must have done studies. If I were you, I'd punch that preset on your radio and jive to the oldies till we're done with this stuff. That's what normal people do, but I am not you.
Are you still there? See, you Public Radio listeners really are different. You like us because you like our long, in-depth stories, and so I guess you must also like our long, shallow, repetitive, uncreative fund-raisers. It's counter-intuitive! Wouldn't you be more likely to make a pledge if these drives were entertaining? I don't know, maybe it's hypnosis: We put you into a trance with our monotonous drone and plant the urge to pledge into your subconscious. Yes, that could be it: You are now completely relaxed. When I clear my throat, you will become fully awake. Ahem! Now you will pick up the phone and dial 1-800-555- 1212, or log on to www.KHBX.org. This will only take a couple minutes, and afterwards you will experience a profound sense of well-being.
If that didn't work, consider this: We're commercial-free! — well, sort of. Unlike the all-news-all-the-time stations with their two two-minute stories followed by a minute of annoying commercials 24/7, all we have every hour all year long are a few minutes of modest little announcements from our corporate sponsors. They're delivered so soberly by our staff that they hardly qualify as commercials, don't you think?
Yes, I know Pledge Weeks are different; I admit they're like one giant commercial. But the genius here is that it's concentrated — all-commercial-all-the time, but for just three weeks a year. How cool is that? What if the all-news stations did it our way? What if our cousin PBS did it our way? They're the epitome of cleverness. They lure you in with spectacular specials and then, just when you're hooked on that Peter, Paul and Mary retrospective, they hit you with The Pitch for ten minutes at a time. That's not us. We don't lure, we don't even surprise. We do full disclosure weeks in advance, sort of like the military at Marja giving the Taliban plenty of notice to get out of town.
I digress. If you've already made your pledge, thank you, and I give you permission to change stations. For the rest of you, I really do hate to have your serene morning commute upset by this harangue, but think of it this way: It's sort of like what your mom did to you as a kid, you know? — "I hope you appreciate all I'm doing for you, and you better be grateful to me." This is listener-supported radio, and that means you! If you tune in every day — think about it, how many of you tune in every day? — and believe Fresh Air and Speaking of Faith are your God- given right, then shame on you. Shouldn't you render to us a fraction of what we render to you? Speaking of faith, doesn't your rabbi or pastor or imam tell you that every week or so?
If you're sufficiently guilt-ridden by now, salve your soul by picking up that cell phone on the passenger seat, checking the mirrors carefully, of course — we of all people don't want to get you in trouble — and call 1-800-555-1212 or iPhone an e-pledge to www.KHBX.org. If you're distracted and fatally plow into the car ahead, our station-manager Beatrice will lead you to the ring of KHBX supporters in the Paradiso. No kidding. We've set it up.
That's 1-800-555-1212 or KHBX.org. Oh, but wait, wait, don't tell me! Is there something positive here? Yes! We're not all about guilt. For a pledge of just $60 you will receive a sturdy, eco-friendly KHBX tote-bag to add to that vast collection in your closet. Sixty dollars! Why, that's just five dollars a month! That's crazily cheap when you think about it. What do you pay for your cable and phone? I'm back to guilt, but it's the truth! Call 1-800-555-1212.
And wow! Here's another great way you can pledge: Become a Sustaining Member! All you do is tell us to bill your credit card for a small amount every month for as long as you live or until you declare bankruptcy. Set it and forget it! What could be easier?
There. That's over for another 15 minutes. For most of the year, I'm a responsible news anchor. For three weeks, I'm a shameless huckster. I hate this, but what can I do? Help me redeem my self-esteem! Call 1-800-555-1212.
We now go back to Morning Edition, but first:
"KHBX is sponsored by ...."
That's NPR News at the top of the hour. Good morning, I'm Paige Turner, and as you've all feared, this is Pledge Week at KHBX, Public Radio 830. We're taking a break from Morning Edition to ask for your support. For the life of me, I don't understand why this works, but it does. They must have done studies. If I were you, I'd punch that preset on your radio and jive to the oldies till we're done with this stuff. That's what normal people do, but I am not you.
Are you still there? See, you Public Radio listeners really are different. You like us because you like our long, in-depth stories, and so I guess you must also like our long, shallow, repetitive, uncreative fund-raisers. It's counter-intuitive! Wouldn't you be more likely to make a pledge if these drives were entertaining? I don't know, maybe it's hypnosis: We put you into a trance with our monotonous drone and plant the urge to pledge into your subconscious. Yes, that could be it: You are now completely relaxed. When I clear my throat, you will become fully awake. Ahem! Now you will pick up the phone and dial 1-800-555- 1212, or log on to www.KHBX.org. This will only take a couple minutes, and afterwards you will experience a profound sense of well-being.
If that didn't work, consider this: We're commercial-free! — well, sort of. Unlike the all-news-all-the-time stations with their two two-minute stories followed by a minute of annoying commercials 24/7, all we have every hour all year long are a few minutes of modest little announcements from our corporate sponsors. They're delivered so soberly by our staff that they hardly qualify as commercials, don't you think?
Yes, I know Pledge Weeks are different; I admit they're like one giant commercial. But the genius here is that it's concentrated — all-commercial-all-the time, but for just three weeks a year. How cool is that? What if the all-news stations did it our way? What if our cousin PBS did it our way? They're the epitome of cleverness. They lure you in with spectacular specials and then, just when you're hooked on that Peter, Paul and Mary retrospective, they hit you with The Pitch for ten minutes at a time. That's not us. We don't lure, we don't even surprise. We do full disclosure weeks in advance, sort of like the military at Marja giving the Taliban plenty of notice to get out of town.
I digress. If you've already made your pledge, thank you, and I give you permission to change stations. For the rest of you, I really do hate to have your serene morning commute upset by this harangue, but think of it this way: It's sort of like what your mom did to you as a kid, you know? — "I hope you appreciate all I'm doing for you, and you better be grateful to me." This is listener-supported radio, and that means you! If you tune in every day — think about it, how many of you tune in every day? — and believe Fresh Air and Speaking of Faith are your God- given right, then shame on you. Shouldn't you render to us a fraction of what we render to you? Speaking of faith, doesn't your rabbi or pastor or imam tell you that every week or so?
If you're sufficiently guilt-ridden by now, salve your soul by picking up that cell phone on the passenger seat, checking the mirrors carefully, of course — we of all people don't want to get you in trouble — and call 1-800-555-1212 or iPhone an e-pledge to www.KHBX.org. If you're distracted and fatally plow into the car ahead, our station-manager Beatrice will lead you to the ring of KHBX supporters in the Paradiso. No kidding. We've set it up.
That's 1-800-555-1212 or KHBX.org. Oh, but wait, wait, don't tell me! Is there something positive here? Yes! We're not all about guilt. For a pledge of just $60 you will receive a sturdy, eco-friendly KHBX tote-bag to add to that vast collection in your closet. Sixty dollars! Why, that's just five dollars a month! That's crazily cheap when you think about it. What do you pay for your cable and phone? I'm back to guilt, but it's the truth! Call 1-800-555-1212.
And wow! Here's another great way you can pledge: Become a Sustaining Member! All you do is tell us to bill your credit card for a small amount every month for as long as you live or until you declare bankruptcy. Set it and forget it! What could be easier?
There. That's over for another 15 minutes. For most of the year, I'm a responsible news anchor. For three weeks, I'm a shameless huckster. I hate this, but what can I do? Help me redeem my self-esteem! Call 1-800-555-1212.
We now go back to Morning Edition, but first:
"KHBX is sponsored by ...."
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