You saw the posters, heard them on radio shows all over town, and if you are any fun at all, you did yourself a favor and bought a ticket to one of their consecutive Halloween shows at Fairfield Theatre Company.
Caravan of Thieves with special guest, Bruce Martin of Tom Tom Club
Of course, I am speaking of none other than Bridgeport’s finest band, and dear, dear friends of Saint Bernadette, the great Caravan of Thieves.
Early reports from the shows are telling us that they were packed, action-packed, and vacuum packed with special guests, including Rock n Roll Hall of Famers, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, of the Talking Heads, joining in for a special rendition of “Psycho Killer”!
Caravan of Thieves warms up with Tina Weymouth
Please, before, it’s too late – check out your homegrown heroes, buy their cd and earn the bragging rights to say you knew them when! Stay tuned for their Christmas mp3, which will appear here soon . . . .
And furthermore with regard hometown heroes poised for greatness, also appearing on Halloween night, in their own hometown of Danbury, CT was Saint B fav, Poverty Hash.
The evening started with Halloween themed band, Creepdust, fronted by Danbury’s most important citizen and local impresario, Anthony Yacobellis of Subrosa Party and anchored down by Poverty Hash sibling, Jim Roberto.
Taking the stage in total darkness were the superheroes of Saint B, who laid a foundation of mishaps and hijinks that set the stage for Poverty Hash’s blistering set.
Batman and Capt. America
Peep this vid of their Halloween appropriate opening song, “Blood Stained Hands”.
Embrace it, you nihilist, sarcastic, sardonic, anti-sentimentalists. Erin Brockovich is a good movie.
I realize there’s virtually no excuse for writing about an ancient movie whose dubious cultural effects have undoubtedly already drowned in a pool of Heidi Montag’s vomit, but the reason I bring it up is that I just saw Erin Brockovich for the first time last week, on cable. The reason that I saw it on cable is because I was being marketed to. The ads that played before and after Erin Brockovich and the ones that, overall, support the kind of shows I like to watch.
They are as follows (in order of importance):
banks
health insurance
car insurance
These commercials came on at that time, on that channel, because they were trying to find me. I am in their demographic, and they found me. They knew that I hadn’t seen Erin Brockovich and that if it came on at that time, they might catch me, needing to zone out, not up for educational TV but refusing to sink to anything resembling “reality” and figured that maybe I was one of the however point whatever million people who missed it when it first came out or who wouldn’t mind living it over again. And they know that I am in that select group of people with the privilege of shopping for a bank and insurance.
In an effort to entice me, these commercials have slowly morphed over time to reflect certain values and trends that I hold dear. I know I hold these values dear because of how glad I am that they have been reflected in these commercials. In their carefully constructed world view, there are minorities represented in all the portrayals of regular people and families. I probably trust these products because they know how important racial diversity is to me and how much I believe in the integration of America’s many races and creeds. And as long as everything is properly represented in these commercials, I don’t have to really do anything directly to affect diversity or the integration of America’s many races and creeds other than choose to watch these shows. Then I can count on these banks and insurance companies to treat these other races and creeds with respect – guiding them with a trusted hand through the uncertain waters of our capitalist system.
Right?
So, look, HBO caught me being lazy, but, in fact, this is the part of capitalism that I really like. It almost trumps the Catholic Church for the ultimate in institutionalized hypocrisy. That’s how it’s able to break borders of race, class and religion. In a pure expression of the philosophy, no one should really care what anyone else’s race, creed, or values are as long as all transactions include fair compensation for equal work – the definition of “fair” and “equal” being whatever numbers allow all parties involved to make an educated, mutual decision on compensation based on what is often a system of team-oriented survival.
Through capitalism, I can tolerate a degree of everything as long as it allows someone to make a buck that in no way effects my ability to make a buck or my ability to live the life I want to lead.
Furthermore, capitalism shows you who is paying for what and your purchase is your vote. But that can be problematic too. Some of my most favorite things are paid for by things I find somewhat questionable and confusing. For a long time, they showed “Girls Gone Wild” commercials constantly during The Daily Show. The Daily Show is arguably the most important show on television for young people and Jon Stewart is a personal hero of mine. But his show would not be on if “Girls Gone Wild” – the cheapest, most exploitative, piece of trashy media possible – paid for it. Though now that I think about it – those girls are hot!
I’ll never know if my post-30 Sapphic daydreams were conjured by repeated exposure to these inane commercials, but after a year of daily doses, I found myself frequently in cocktail party discussions extolling the merits of “Girls Gone Wild” (based purely on the commercials) with vivid and provocative declarations, by me, a former Women’s Studies Minor, that possibly, these girls were doing this of their own volition, in control of their own sexuality, out of their own pursuit of the pleasurable feeling of knowing that a million guys are getting off to you. Madonna built an empire by admitting this under-reported female pursuit that still barely anyone talks about. I, now a crusader for female empowerment of this unusual sort, can safely assume that it’s now okay to admit it because if it were really wrong, then surely Jon Stewart wouldn’t let it interrupt his show.
As such, the TV ad model (one of the last remaining to provide decent jobs of any interest in the American economy, presently at risk of total extinction) illustrates why capitalism will always necessitate hypocrisy. I am against “Girls Gone Wild”. At many other times of my life and probably some future times (i.e. if I ever have a daughter), I have found the mere existence of “Girls Gone Wild” to be reprehensible, pointless, and disgusting. But I am certainly not going to boycott The Daily Show for accepting sponsorship from it. And further, instead of at the very least continuing a silent objection to it, over time, I have come to embrace “Girls Gone Wild” and kind of can’t wait for it as a welcome respite from thinking about the hopeless realities of our country’s politics.
If the Bush Administration can be blamed on engendering an “anything goes” climate of greed and irresponsibility, perhaps it can also be blamed for the degeneration of the very morals it so voraciously claimed to protect. Its policy of deregulation of the financial services industry, resulted only in the production of hundreds of Madonnas without their own dance floor. Just as Madonna flaunted her desire to be desired, in a similar form of self-aggrandization, the financial services industry pursued their own desire for monetary alchemy.
Let’s be very clear. This was not capitalism. I love Michael Moore, but there’s no difference between what he is doing with his film and what the conservative right always tries to do to the idea of Socialism. Both are excellent systems based on a structure and guideline with the intent of creating a robust, happy society. Socialism and/or Communism are not great evils because horrible people did horrible things in the name of them or because they haven’t worked perfectly in every situation. Capitalism is not a great evil because selfish people exploited it for enormous personal gain. A great capitalist society requires an educated, engaged populace. I think we can all agree we don’t have that. A great capitalist society requires actual competition – not an insider, cronyist, pay-to-play economic system.
So, perhaps, “true” capitalism would not institutionalize hypocrisy. You could argue that capitalism in its pure form would prohibit hypocrisy. In a local, sustainable economy (the kind of society that our brand of capitalism would create), everyone’s notion of a fair price – the expressed purpose of a world ruled by supply and demand (with a touch of timing and circumstance) – is based on a more direct knowledge of everyone else’s financial situation.
In a small to medium sized town, or even a neighborhood in a large city, a contractor knows what’s a fair price for tools he needs for his trade. If he frequents the same hardware store, owned by another individual, over time, they form a relationship based on the premise that neither will take advantage of the other with the understanding that their price balance is critical to the future success of both of those businesses. From time to time they may inquire about the other’s family or business and may present to the other a gift on occasion or invite the other to an event on occasion – the social contact supports the mutually agreed goal of fairness in business. The trust built from each one’s acknowledgement of the other’s basic humanity fosters a mutually agreed upon level of success. Neither would feel comfortable upgrading to a level of riches that was in inverse proportion to the other’s hardship.
There is no such relationship within a corporate structure or business at a large scale. I don’t know how much the guys who run the international corporation of Staples make. I don’t know if they just have kids in private school or if they eat off of plates of 14k gold. Although, right now I don’t even know if plates of gold would be that expensive. Maybe all those cash-for-gold programs at the local churches are melting that stuff down and making it into plates that I can buy next week at the community craft fair as “artisanal” and purge myself of this entire link of thinking.
The point being, that I don’t know whether I’m getting robbed on the price of pens because i don’t know what’s an appropriate markup for the people of my community to pay on pens so that the shopkeeper (ha, what?) at Staples is making enough money to stay in business and that the price of pens will never go so high as to put me out of business. The reason the wealth gap in America is allowed to grow and spread is because nobody is sure just exactly who has their money. Whatever representative of who has their money (ie the clerk at Staples, the loan officer at the bank) does not have the money either and the shared acknowledgment of humanity with that person prohibits any rioting in their general direction thus protecting the injustice, unfairness, un-capitalist-American-ness from challenge.
Conversely, nobody at the top level of Staples has any idea what’s happening in any of its regional stores apart from probably what are their “net returns”. It certainly has no idea what’s happening with me. Ah, but Staples does give me coupons all the time, so they are cheap and I, like most Americans, cast my vote with cheap. So far none of their prices have ever caused me to fear for the success of my business so I keep shopping there. But from time to time, I am deeply affected by the fact that nobody could put a child through college on the money that one makes working at Staples. That job, working in an office supply store, is the same that it always was. But in the generations before, a person who owned an office supply shop could save and send their children to college on that money. They could afford basically whatever they needed. Now, that is usually one of several jobs that a family member might have and still the children who do go to college will graduate with a six figure debt before they’ve ever had their first job.
Really, this financial crisis has done little more than illuminate just how many people were being so royally fu—d in so many different ways in the name of “wealth creation” and “opportunity”. This student loan industry made a lot of people a lot of money. Big money. Buckets and barrels of money and the power to be “too big to fail”. Our American “capitalist” system allowed a bunch of dynastic entitled ass—-s and newly entitled social climbers to sell worthless pieces of paper two or three times over based on highly leveraged bets in the form of other people’s homes and dreams.
But to themselves and to the relevant members of our previous government, these “financial service professionals” were “innovating” and “achieving maximum returns”.
The only reason something like this can happen without people looting and rioting in the streets is because people are so uneducated that they aren’t smart enough to see it and when they do, the time they would spend to understand it is instead spent figuring out how they can one day ride in a private plane of their own.
These people, these “heroes” of business who make barrels and buckets and bags and troughs of money are almost always stealing outright or cheating money from other people. In rare cases, they are just people who had extremely good ideas and products at the right price at the right time. These are the only circumstances where this kind of extraordinary wealth should be created within the capitalist system, but instead, it has been treated as an entitlement of the upper classes and the fiercely socially mobile and any number of short cuts, subsidies or outright cons have occurred to ensure its delivery to those with sufficient access/resources/hustle.
So, by now I know you’re asking yourselves, what in hell does this have to do with Erin Brockovich?
It’s simple – ladies of the world, unite. Only straight-talking, inappropriate-cleavage-flashing women will be able to deliver this kind of truth to the Republican party. Somewhere we need to ask these people, point blank, why some people need to work three and four jobs to afford their rent, food and healthcare and other people can work just one, not very well, and still afford a 10,000 square foot McMansion full of fat kids who can probably start a war on their computer (and not in a cute War Games type way). They need to get their capitalism in line. If it takes some anachronistic female sexuality with a chip on its shoulder to get it going, let’s do this.
Competition works just fine when everybody has information and a little bit of knowledge and training. Their version of capitalism is based on the preservation of their own wealth-creation engines. It’s not competition, it is not a free market, and its morals are a sham. Real capitalism doesn’t need enforced morals because an ever-shifting reevaluation of supply and demand will usually keep a balance of its own. Every single “social” issue that wedged this insufferable divide between people with brains and people who believe in fairies would have been settled very easily by economic concerns. Are you really going to prohibit gay marriage from an economic point of view? That industry alone could save the country from recession. Add legalized marijuana and America is back in business!
Don’t let a bunch of dishonest hacks deter you from a great idea. Business is fun. If you get into it and do something you like, chances are you can find an economy to join or build one of your own. All the price points have been toyed with and manipulated to make certain faceless people a lot of money. But they went too far and now everyone’s got to start over.
It’s a formula that works as well for rock music as it does for just about everything in life – give yourself a structure and a limited set of tools and then see what you can do without going outside the lines.
The newest offering from King Sexy (Fairfield County’s Best Punk Band as voted by the readers of the Fairfield Weekly) stays true to its narrow mission of powering through three minute punk anthems about one topic – being sexy.
Two of the album’s five tracks contain the word “sexy” in their titles, while the remaining three indicate it in one way or another. For anyone who’s ever encountered lead singer and songwriter, Jeff Coleman, the lyrics of lead track “All Systems Go” – “I feel the vibe/Bing, Bing, Bing, WINNER!” – might be simply the personification of Jeff’s inner voice, or more grandly, a punk rock travelogue of a single man’s Friday night, while the follow up, “MWAH! I’m Sexy” turns it outward, addressing the object of his desire with a blunt introduction: “Hello my name is MWAH! I’m sexy!!!” (exclamation points included).
In Sexycolor is the band’s first with a new line up that includes the aforementioned Mr. Coleman, mainstay guitar player, Frank Zvovushe, and new additions Phil Conine on the drums and Jan Jurglelewicz on the bass and in the producer’s role. We had the pleasure of encountering Mr. Jurglelewicz for the first time at the band’s performance at a recent Downtown event on Baldwin Plaza, what the Downtown Community Council appropriately named “Jeff Coleman Appreciation Day”. His bass playing, hair, and polka dot pants were a perfect complement to Mr. Coleman’s uncensored libido, Mr. Conine’s able drumming, and Mr. Zvovushe’s short shorts.
My personal favorite is the penultimate track “Misery’s Not Attractive” which drops inarguable truths like “Gotta make yourself worth loving” and “Be the flame, not the moth”. According to the liner notes, the track was inspired by the 2005 Heath Ledger vehicle “Casanova” and serves as a sexy man’s pep-talk, encouraging the downtrodden, action-seeking single men to stop their moping and get back on the trail of the hand-bag carrying, tube-top wrapped female masses that populate our city’s bars and clubs. It would behoove the owners of the Black Bear chain to look into adopting it as a theme song.
Clocking in at a total running time of 12:36, In Sexycolor more than deserves your time and attention. It’s a document of a singular artistic vision conceived by a true one-of-a-kind. How sexy is that?
September 21, 2009 at 12:27 am by Meredith DiMenna
We were having a great time. An epic time. One of those perfect days that happens so rarely in life. Two weeks ago at Safe to Swim Weekend in Danbury, we took part in and enjoyed a DIY music festival that was so well organized and so well populated with great talent that one band after another completely slayed us with their songs, performances and energy. Not even the scorching heat could interfere with our fun and good times.
As the day turned to night, we continued to enjoy the excellent lineup curated by Danbury’s master impresario, Anthony Yacobellis of Sub Rosa, and eventually moved on from the downtown City Center location to the after party at the mother of all rock dive bars, Cousin Larry’s.
The Field Recordings, a great band we met recently through the battle of the bands competition at Hamden’s The Space, took the stage at 12:10. I really liked them at The Space and was excited to see them again and they did not disappoint. They were, as we say in business, KILLING it. The crowd was in the palm of their hand, singing along at the direction of lead singer, Dan Gallo. It seemed as though nothing could interfere with our perfect day.
Until something did. As Dan took a few steps back from the mic, rocking at full throttle, he suddenly and violently fell to the floor, grabbing his leg and rocking back and forth in what was obviously agony. The first thing he said was “My knee!!!” The drummer, Jared, jumped up from his seat and pulled the cord from his guitar, which was feeding back loudly.
The bass player, Noel, and some others from the audience and bar staff formed a circle around him. Numerous cell phones were pulled from pockets to call for help. We stood around helpless, feeling terribly, trying to adjust to a feeling of tragedy after feeling so wonderfully for so long.
What really solidified our horrible feeling and what has stayed with me in these two weeks following this rather strange event is this: the second thing that Dan yelled out, the second thing that came to his mind while lying there, writing in pain, was “I don’t have health insurance!”
I can’t forget the look on his friends’ faces, trying to figure out how to respond to this inconvenient truth that they could not contradict nor gloss over and still offer some comfort to their injured friend. I remember somebody saying “Don’t worry about that right now,” and Dan continuing to rock back and forth holding his knee with one hand and his forehead in the other while various other people looked around for water, something to use for a stretcher, or anything else that seemed like it could be helpful.
It pains Saint Bernadette to think that young, otherwise healthy people should be living their lives completely at risk. An unexpected injury or illness carries more than just its inherent dangers, it also threatens the person’s financial health. Regardless of what effective medical care an uninsured person receives, he still might end up with a life-altering consequence – a mountain of health care related debt.
Dan was taken out of Cousin Larry’s in an ambulance and the word we received later after a well-placed set from the Hat City Ramblers, was that he dislocated his knee. Sounds bad but doesn’t seem to be as bad as a torn ACL or broken leg or any of the other possibilities thrown out. I’m hoping since I haven’t seen a bunch of announcements on the band’s myspace regarding a benefit concert, that whatever medical care Dan received he was somehow able to take care of. To think that an artist’s career would be derailed by an injury like this due of lack of health insurance is unfortunate, unacceptable and un-American.
September 13, 2009 at 12:14 pm by Meredith DiMenna
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Tony Bennett in concert. That’s Mr. Anthony Dominick Benedetto to you.
As an introduction to one of his songs, Mr. Bennett told the crowd how Bob Hope came up with the Americanized version of his name in a conversation after Tony’s appearance in Pearl Bailey’s show. Tony (the only white kid in the show) tried to introduce himself as “Joe Barri” but Bob caught on right away that this was a made up name and demanded to be told the real thing. Of course, once he heard it, he knew why Tony was using a fake one and quickly suggested the alternative. BUT, I digress.
The purpose of this post is to crudely generalize my ethnic heritage and point out, that regardless of how many Italian-Americans have had to pose as merely “Americans” by dropping the “etto” and the “icci”, the fact remains, that Italians (hyphenated or otherwise) are the best entertainers in the world. And the reason is: we are sentimental, romantic, nostalgic, simplistic, genuine saps, simultaneously ruled by by emotion and able to conjure emotion, just as comfortable ending a show stopper with arms spread under the spot light as winding down a ballad perched on a stool next to a grand piano letting one tear spill down a quivering cheek.
To see a pro like Tony Bennett at age 83 inspire probably 10 or 11 standing ovations in the span of one ninety minute performance, is to understand performance itself. At least the Italian interpretation of performance, which right now, is all that matters to me. It is to feel, publicly, what everyone else feels privately, and let it trickle out of you in an effortless vibrato where appropriate, to whisper it in a husky sotto voce when applicable, to sustain it in a clear bell of a tone where fitting, and most importantly to belt it out at the top of one’s lungs when necessary.
Though the Italian-American style is not in vogue in the music world at present – what’s left of rock music favors sort of a Scandinavian goulache, a Norwegian, Swedish, British deadpan, I don’t care or I am just very precious by nature, look and sound – it always manages to dominate in some sphere of public consciousness, i.e. Bravo’s Real Housewives of New Jersey, and I believe will regain its rightful place in pop music soon.
At the very least, Saint Bernadette, will be working on it . . .
Saint Bernadette is no saint. And just this morning, I suffered the consequences of one of my less saintly actions by spending the morning in an appallingly long line at Superior Court.
I went there in a naive attempt to decrease my fine for the ticket I received a month or so ago for running the red light at the intersection of Fairfield and State St. (you know the one, near the McDonald’s). In my estimation, one can make a “right” on red, even though, according to the cop, it’s technically not a “right”.
In any case, regardless of the time it took, I am now thankful that I decided to dispute this ticket if only for the opportunity it provided to observe our criminal justice system.
The long wait on the line outside the courtroom was the criminal justice version of the legendary TV series “Playboy After Dark” – a smattering of overheard conversation and impromptu performances in an open space lorded over by provocative personalities. In this case, instead of Hugh Hefner in a smoking jacket, it’s lawyers in bad suits.
Most of the overheard conversations went something like this:
Lawyer: Ok, do you understand what you need to do? I don’t want you to get in trouble again.
Citizen: Yeah, hey you’re the lawyer. I don’t want to get in trouble again.
Lawyer: Ok, do you understand what a protective order means?
Citizen: Yeah, it means I can’t see my wife and my daughter.
Lawyer: Ok, so you don’t want to violate that protective order.
Citizen: But why can’t I see my wife and daughter?
The citizen in question was a 50 + man of limited intellectual capacity and uncertain sanity. Following this conversation, he launched into the performance component of the day’s entertainment which consisted of what I believe to be an excerpt of Jerome Robbin’s legendary choreography from the garage scene in West Side Story and what the Haitian girls next to me believed to be worthy of a punch in the face, which for a moment there seemed extremely likely to be delivered courtesy of a confused citizen waiting in the line for Courtroom B.
When I finally reached the courtroom, I gave my name and saw its corresponding yellow file pulled from the box and put into a pile. I was instructed to take a seat. As I waited in the bitter cold (probably 10 degrees colder than the hall), I witnessed a litany of tongue lashings doled out by the prosecutors to the perpetrators of such charges as driving with a suspended license, illegally parking, and my personal favorite: loitering.
In one such tongue lashing, I felt a surge of empathy for the prosecutor (a good looking guy in a pretty decent suit). He seemed to genuinely care for the citizens coming before him, trying to give them a break and extra credit for being well spoken, looking him in the eye, being enrolled in school or working. However, as I sat there, a little Bill O’Reilly -shaped troll deep within my brain started to rise up from under the bridge, rubbing the crust off his eyes and demanding to be heard.
“Why is he cutting deals for these people?”
The deals would be presented like this “Okay, so, take this as a life lesson. The police are watching that corner and they are watching you. They don’t want people hanging out on that corner and they use this loitering charge as a way to permit them to search you and if they find something on you, you’re going to jail. Okay? Do you understand? Don’t hang out on that corner. I don’t want to see you here again.”
The young man on the receiving end of this speech nodded obediently throughout and seemed genuinely thankful for the leniency. Until he turned around to face those of us waiting in our seats at which time, a bounce came back into his step, a smile broke out across his face, and he rubbed his hands together like a hip hop supervillain, so clearly pleased he pulled yet another one over on the system.
Of course, I know the answer to this. They have to cut deals because there’s no possible way to process all of these people, committing all of these petty crimes. And there’s no possible way to collect money from people who have no money. In the end, the cutting of deals and collecting at least half of the owed money in conjunction with the doling out of tongue lashings is really the best these prosecutors can do.
But the real question is this – when we discuss the “people” who need help or education or healthcare or outreach or whatever it is that underprivileged or disadvantaged or wrongly imprisoned or improperly served people need, we always come up against a wall of how to reach these people. And it’s very simple – they are all in Superior Court with plenty of time on their hands.
Perhaps we could hand out pamphlets about public programming there? Info on the assistance program at the organic market? Info on the resources available at the Small and Minority Owned Business Office? Info on community college courses and incentives in green business? If there was ever a motivation for reading – it’s standing in a line with nothing to do for several hours.
I, on the other hand, did not receive a tongue lashing. The prosecutor I encountered seemed to know the intersection I described and thought to herself that it was kind of up for grabs whether or not I actually violated any traffic laws, so she offered me a deal.
Pay $35 and if I already have some tickets on my record, maybe I would get some points, OR donate $50 to a charity having something to do with criminal injuries and she would throw it out.
At my regular check-up yesterday, I carried on my usual “how are things” conversation with my doctor of over 15 years. He asks about my mom, I ask about his kids. Over the years, we have developed a decent rapport for two people who see each other for about 15 minutes a year.
On the whole, my doctor is a jovial guy. He’s smart, personable, wears a bow tie. Yup, he’s that guy. Gray hair, distinguished, smiley bow tie guy.
But this year, our usual five minute catch up took a turn. After my examination, he told me, as always, to meet me in his office to go over any issues I might be having. I waited in the chair across from his desk. But, when he entered the room, instead of sitting at his own chair, he plopped down in the second visitor’s chair next to me, slumped down in it, turned his distinguished gray head and said “I’m gonna get a job driving a cab.” Perhaps responding to my shocked expression, he continued “It would just be easier.”
This is the state of our health care system. It’s so screwed up that even happy bow tie guy cannot find the bright side.
I probed him, asking what did he feel the big problems were. He said he was sick of hearing that the US health care system is second rate. He is completely certain we still have the best care in the world. The problem is that the system does not allow doctors to do their job. The issue he was focused on is generic prescription drugs. According to him, generic drugs can vary up to 20% from the name brand in terms of dosage of the active ingredient. This makes it nearly impossible for a doctor to know how a patient is responding to a drug and how to adjust their dosage accordingly. He said, “I don’t care what Obama says – generic drugs are not the same!”
There are so many sides to this issue – the consumers, the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies and, of course, the health care providers. We all think we know where the evil is coming from – the profit-driven players: insurance and pharmaceutical companies. And yes, they are evil, BUT, the profit motive is what keeps these companies in business. The profit motive fuels jobs, research and development, advertising and marketing and the billions of dollars they contribute to the economy as a whole. This is not something that can be converted to a not-for-profit, government-run model completely. The profit motive is what makes American health care among the best in the world. Any plan with a chance of being successful must keep this profit motive in tact.
The challenge will be to find the balance – how do we allow these companies to stay profitable AND provide fair and appropriate care to American citizens?
A very good friend of mine is a doctor at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. She graduated from Harvard and got her medical degree at Columbia. She is probably the smartest person I know. A few years ago, she called me to see if I could introduce her to a journalist friend of mine because she was thinking of switching careers. I couldn’t believe it because she had wanted to be a doctor since high school. I asked her what was behind her decision and she said, “I’m a fellow at Columbia Presbyterian and I make the same money as my husband’s executive assistant”.
Now, that’s a wake up call. Of course, this was a few years ago. You know, those years where the financial services industry was rewarding itself (and its executive assistants) to the tune of all the money in the world, which is now lost, due to the fact that it never actually existed. So, yes, this executive assistant was paid a much larger sum than your average executive assistant, but still, it seems a stretch that there would be any economy where this would be the same as a surgical fellow at a major hospital.
My friend decided to stay a doctor because she’s a good doctor and it’s what she wants to do. But to ignore that compensation factors into all of our decisions, is naive and unnecessary. There are other countries who do not have as robust a commitment to the free market economy as America claims to have. I think the reason Obama is coming under so much fire from his own constituency is because he is representing what is essentially a conservative-style commitment to this ideal. What I like about his spin on it, is that he is saying “Listen, profit motive is good, evil people who cheat and take advantage of it (like our friends at Pfizer) are evil.” This is exactly the same issue with the financial services industry – there’s nothing inherently wrong with the development of new financial products, but there is something wrong with corrupting, polluting, cheating, and over-leveraging them for short term gain at the expense of the long term financial health of the entire world!
The fact remains that we need the free market (FREE market, the real kind of free, not the kind of free that’s sort of free except for when it favors people who happen to have influence in Washington) to be involved in our health system. When the best and brightest in a given profession are not appropriately rewarded, they will not stay. Why should my friend, after years of busting her butt to graduate from the top universities to be a doctor at one of the top hospitals, make the same amount as someone who provides admin support? Why should my doctor, after years of providing health care, in one of the wealthiest areas of the country, feel that he would be happier driving a cab?
This health care issue is deep and complex. It affects you personally no matter what. Tune in – listen to Obama’s speech and develop your own opinion. Think about your own situation and what health care system would work best for you. Think about the free market economy and how it should intersect with insurance and health care. The time is now and we all need to be engaged in an actual, substantive debate.
And though I’m sure my doctor would make a great cab driver, I think he’s pretty useful right where he is.
