Global
The commercialization of absolutely everything has gone too far. I realize the Pizza Hut people paid $2.5 million for the ad space and the Russian government is slightly desperate, but -- Pizza Hut? Not that it would have been better if it had been some technology firm, but -- Pizza Hut?
Corporations put ads on fruit, ads all over the schools, ads on cars, ads on clothes. The only place you can't find ads is where they belong: on politicians.
I believe it was former state Ag Commish Jim Hightower who first suggested pols should dress like NASCAR drivers, covered with the patches of their corporate sponsors. G.W. Bush should be wearing an Enron gimme cap and an Exxon breast patch, and have Microsoft embroidered on one side of his shirt and assorted insurance companies on the other. Ditto Gore, with a slight change of sponsors. Very slight.
Of all the things you know you shouldn't say in this world, is there any sweeter satisfaction than, "Told you so"? I'm also telling you this deficit is going to get a lot bigger.
As a Republican legislator remarked sourly several months ago, "I actually hope Bush loses just so he'll he have to be here to face the mess he's made."
Many and complicated are the ways of the Texas budget, and according to the state comptroller, we should get a $1 billion surplus out of state taxes, so the shortfall is covered for now. If the economy remains strong. If the desperately poor in our "soft-landing, slowing economy" so shrewdly planned by Fed chief Alan Greenspan don't decide to apply for the social services that they are entitled to.
The dirty little secret of Texas government is that the way we keep it solvent is by shorting the poor. We go to great pains NOT to let people who are qualified for Medicaid know they are qualified, and then we make it incredibly difficult for them to apply.
The rules are unchanged: Consider the answer, and then try to come up with the correct question. Let's get started!
Today's first category is "TV Follies."
- The Alliance for Better Campaigns found that television stations in the
country's biggest 75 media markets, reaching about four-fifths of the
population, aired 151,267 of these during the first four months of 2000.
- According to researchers, at least this much money will end up being spent for this year's campaign TV commercials in the United States.
- During a single month at the height of the 2000 presidential primary season, the Annenberg Public Policy Center discovered, the evening news broadcasts on the nation's top three TV networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) devoted an average of this much time to "candidate-centered discourse" each night.
Now we're on to our next category, "Basics of News Media."
"Nader, Nader, what do we do about Nader? Of course, I agree with him; of course, he's right. But what about the court, what about Roe, what about the environment if Bush wins?"
I have a few modest suggestions that I think may help.
In the short term, support the heck out of Nader -- and I don't just mean progressives, either. Frankly, the Reform Party should nominate him instead of Pat Buchanan. Nader's an economic populist who doesn't much emphasize social issues, which I always thought was the original intent of Ross Perot and that party. Unlike most "liberals," Nader has lunch-bucket appeal. I know for a fact that at least one major union, in addition to the ones that have already endorsed him, is seriously thinking about endorsing Nader.
We hear this sort of refrain every four years. This time around, the alarums are becoming especially shrill because the Democrats fear that with little of substance separating the two major candidates, many possible Gore voters will either stay at home or vote for Ralph Nader. What better way to drag these strays back into the fold than to tell them that by 2002, the Court could be stocked by Bush with two or three more justices like Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, eager to drag the country into the Middle Ages, annul Roe v. Wade, and put the back-street abortionists back in business.
Here we sit, complacently listening to the finest minds of our generation (?) tell us that all we have to worry about is whether to include drugs in Medicare and how to fix Social Security, and that building this bonkers missile defense system is a dandy idea.
When the lights go out this summer -- now there's a dog barking in the night -- I suggest that you light a few candles and curl up with Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World by J.R. McNeill (and you can skip the charts and graphs).
Thomas Friedman is the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and one of the smartest, best-informed and most persuasive people around. His columns are usually irresistibly sensible, and he is in the Golden Rolodex, making frequent appearances on television chat shows. He is also the author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, a book I believe will be featured in the intellectual histories of our time.
From coast to coast, some big newspapers have been scolding Ralph Nader lately. Why? Because he's running for president, and a lot of people -- according to a recent national poll, 7 percent of the electorate -- intend to vote for him.
Yikes! The outspoken foe of corporate power is really making a nuisance of himself. So, certain media heavyweights are now flailing at him with tons of rolled-up newspapers.
"Ralph Nader's long history of public service championing the causes of consumers, the environment and economic justice automatically commands respect," the New York Times declared in its lead editorial on the last day of June. "But in running for president as the nominee of the Green Party, he is engaging in a self-indulgent exercise that will distract voters from the clear-cut choice represented by the major party candidates."
Many millions of Americans are repelled by this "clear-cut choice" between Al Gore and George W. Bush. But the Times proclaimed that "the public deserves to see the major party candidates compete on an uncluttered playing field." (What did we do to deserve this?)
Two years rolled by, and the Apparel Industry Partnership gave birth to a lovely child, the Fair Labor Association. News stories did not dwell on the fact that the labor rep on the partnership, UNITE, and the largest church group, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, had both quit, protesting the failure of the group to consider the explosive topics of wages and the right to organize.
In his acceptance speech at the Republican Party’s presidential nominating convention, Bush delivered a message, which sounded at times more like Robert F. Kennedy than Ronald Reagan. Greatness is not defined by “wealth,” but “is found when American character and American courage overcome American challenges,” Bush declared. “We heard it in the civil rights movement, when brave men and women did not say, ‘We shall cope,’ or ‘We shall see.’ They said, ‘We shall overcome’.”
Bush recognized that contemporary America was challenged with fundamental social problems. “When these problems aren’t confronted, it builds a wall within our nation. On one side are wealth and technology, education and ambition. On the other side of the wall are poverty and prison, addiction and despair. And, my fellow Americans,” Bush concluded, “We must tear down that wall.”
Bush noted that “racial progress has been steady, if still too slow… We will continue this progress, and we will not turn back.”