OLEAN -- Final exams are coming up at the university where I teach. I'm thinking of giving my freshmen some True or False questions on the big test. The goal, of course, is to teach them things aren't always as they seem, and to dig behind the headlines and TV happy talk for news that is routinely downplayed these days in the mainstream media, if it appears at all.
Here are a few I'm considering, all of them taken from the recent issues of the truly excellent non-profit investigative magazine, "Mother Jones."
You've probably figured out by now. All of the answers are True.
For instance, avoidable medical mistakes are the eighth leading cause of death in this country. That's according to the prestigious Institutes of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences. Medical blunders are ahead of car accidents, breast cancer and plane crashes.
For instance, the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate is considering the feasibility of using "soft" tactical mechanisms like rubber bullets or spiked drinking water to deliver club drugs like Special K and Ecstasy, or prescription anti-depressants that would produce less aggressive, "more tranquil" behavior in unruly foreign mobs and suspect ethnic groups. Penn State and the Marines are in on the study. I guess this is an improvement over killing. Put 'em to sleep or in a giddy mood. It might bring "peace-keeping" up a notch.
You have to read "Mother Jones" to pick up on this stuff. It's well-researched and documented. It's not all doomsaying. There's funny fare in that magazine, too. Did you know if you have your male dog neutered and start fretting about his "appearance," you can get artificial implants -- a prominent set of fake balls -- surgically inserted into his scrotum? They're patented and they're called Neuticles. The inventor says the procedure is "very soothing" to guilt-ridden owners. I wouldn't try it on your average pit bull, however.
Mother Jones, by the way, was a gutsy old babe in the early 1900s whose real name was Mary Harris. Her husband was named Jones. She got the "Mother" moniker by fighting indefatigably against the scandalous and murderous child labor that existed at the time because of corporate greed. She once marched all the way in protest from Pennsylvania to Teddy Roosevelt's home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Reform child labor laws probably wouldn't have passed without her. She had a razor for a tongue. According to her namesake magazine, a jailbird once explained to her he was locked up for swiping a pair of shoes. She snapped back if he had stolen a railroad instead he could have been a U.S. senator.
And speaking of Dubya ...
Steady readers of this publication know I like to report on fresh perspectives from innovative thinkers on national issues who puzzle things out and write about them in obscure newsletters, pamphlets and struggling magazines. Such a provocative view appears in the November issue of "The Washington Spectator," a feisty political newsletter published by The Public Concern Foundation in the nation's capital.
As is often the case, this fresh critique is written by an English scribe (native of Liverpool) who usually reports as United Nations correspondent for "The Nation" magazine. Ian Williams, however, is a prolific freelancer, and his "Spectator" article -- prompted by the recent White House visit of Prince Charles -- reflects some truisms about how far our system of government has strayed from the original intentions of the Founding Fathers.
Williams, during the royal visit, was asked on air by some aggressive Fox network inquisitors if his homeland's monarchy didn't represent entrenched privilege. Williams replied, in principle, yes, but noted the constitutional monarchies of Scandinavia, England, Holland, Belgium and other European places present poor people with "far more access to health care and education" than in America. In fact, insisted Williams, "in every measurable way these societies are more egalitarian than the United States."
Plus, writes Williams in the "Spectator," the much-lampooned Prince Charles -- routinely described by the American press as a stiff and doltish philanderer somehow responsible, by implication, for triggering the tragic death of a fairy-tale princess -- "for all his eccentricities, is a convinced environmentalist who supports the Kyoto Protocol, while George (Dubya) thinks global warming, like evolution, and indeed probably gravity as well, is just a theory, despite the hurricanes that batter hardest at the states that gave him the presidency."
Williams does not pull punches. He flatly states the U.S. governing system is now more of a monarchy than Britain's ever was, or certainly is now in its neutered state, and that Dubya has king-like powers far more impressive than the visiting prince's may someday be: "The hereditary principle is indeed a dubious way to fill jobs, but even if the prince were eccentric or barking mad, the world would become safe when he becomes Charles III, even if he only makes it because he's his mother's son."
It made "one hell of a difference to the world," continued the British writer, "that George W., with more than a few psychological question marks of his own, had become George II just because he was the fruit of his father's loins. After all, no rational person would believe that the spoiled legacy brat who deserted from the Air National Guard and sank business after business would ever have succeeded in politics without strong dynastic backing." The main theme of the Williams piece, however, is that while Great Britain's political system and those of other weakened European monarchies have essentially devolved into powerless tourist attractions -- "more and more diluted with each passing year until the kings and queens have all the significance of a team mascot for their nations" -- the Oval Office "has retained all those quasi-monarchial powers of centuries past."
American presidents, Williams asserts, routinely appoint their Cabinets, ambassadors and numerous civil servants "on the same basis as the patronage system of eighteenth-century England. The Cabinet members he (Dubya) chooses need not have any independent political standing whatsoever. Indeed, as we saw with the heads of the Homeland Security and FEMA, not much in the way of professional standing is required either."
Williams wonders why the Founding Fathers didn't pick up on the British reforms of that period that led to the new, important job of prime minister. That institution was newly birthed then, but the new American leaders didn't know enough about it to trust it.
It is "no bad thing for the chief executive to come from the ranks of legislators -- and to be accountable to them," believes the Brit writer. "The roles of head of state and chief executive are separate. But with its political system frozen in 1789, the United States missed out on this idea."
Instead, we now have a confused nation because "an intensely political personage" is the head of state, and the American media and politicians show "far more deference to the president" than their British counterparts do to Queen Elizabeth and her offspring. Most residents of the United Kingdom, writes Williams, "tend to ignore the monarch except as a continuing royal reality show." He contends he's never heard an Englishman say, "I must support my prime minister" the way Americans urge each other to back the president, right or wrong. Should the American president be required to work his way up out of the legislative body?
"How far would George W. Bush's political career have advanced," asks Williams, "if he had to stand up for a Capitol Hill version of Prime Minister's Question Time and actually explain and defend his policies on the hoof against unscripted questions?"
If you haven't watched this regularly broadcast British session on C-Span, you should. The White House and Congress could sure use this method of wringing answers from the chief executive, especially since the presidential press conferences have sadly become pretty much regarded by the viewing public as scripted, vapid and meaningless.
This is not to urge we all start clamoring for a switch to the British system. It is to encourage digestion of all sorts of opposing views that reflect astute observation of the current White House and Congress -- both of which bodies most Americans consider to be performing horribly.
Alexander Hamilton -- astutely pimping the new Constitution -- wrote more than two centuries ago that our new system's "process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications ... here will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue."
Wow. Moral certainty, indeed. Good thing Hamilton didn't reincarnate as a present-day bookie. He'd make the Buffalo Bills a mortal lock for winning the next Super Bowl.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Dec. 6 2005 |