Health Care News - August 31, 2009

Good news and bad news involving health care reform as the month ends . . .

Janet Hook, reporting for the McClatchy-Tribune News Service, wrote yesterday that Democrats and Republicans actually agree on my many elements of health care reform and such proposals could expand and improve medical insurance in this country. Among these ideas are banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, expansion of coverage for preventive medicine, and provide new incentives for small businesses to offer insurance to their employees. The theory is that Democrats and Republicans can work out a deal of sorts to reform the system incrementally - something Edward Kennedy did for his entire Senate career.

But there's a sinister game afoot. As Democratic legislators have had their town hall meetings disrupted by protesters, Republican candidates hoping to challenge Democratic incumbents in next year's midterm elections are hosting their own "town hall" meetings to let opponents of health care reform vent in a more civilized manner. These meetings are little more than the opportunity for local GOP candidates to preach to the converted and get free publicity from the local media.

The Democrats have dismissed this tactic as empty showmanship, which they do at their own peril. Because as the Republicans, the party of Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan, the President from Hollywood - not to mention Hollywood itself - have all proven, empty showmanship works.

I doubt the Republicans will gain majorities in the House or Senate in 2010 - the majorities Democrats currently enjoy in both houses of Congress are likely top big for the GOP to overcome - but a strong showing and a whittling down of the margins in both houses will make it that much more difficult for President Obama to accomplish much in the latter half of is first term - or win a second.

The United States of Stupid

Recently Bill Maher said on CNN, and again on his own HBO show, that America is a stupid country. And even though that got a lot of right-wingers angry, Maher was armed with plenty of evidence. Among the facts supporting his opinion:

Polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain the Bill of Rights.

Seventy percent of Americans thought in 2003 that Saddam Hussein was behind the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11, 2001. While it's now down to one out of three Americans (about 34 percent), that's still too high, and it corresponds with the number of people who still approved of George Walker Bush's job at the end of his Presidency.

Nearly a quarter of Americans could not name the country we fought in the American Revolution. (Well, we know it was an English-speaking country, that should give 'em a hint!)

Nearly half of Americans don’t know that each state has two senators, and more than half can’t name their own congressman.

A Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, a theory disproved by Copernicus, a Polish astronomer - that's right, a dumb Polack! - in the sixteenth century.

And these are just statistics on what passes for common knowledge. Consider examples of America's dumbness in the big picture. Look at our living pattern. We spent the past sixty years and may spend another sixty years building human settlements that are accessible and easy to get around in by car, leaving no opportunity for public transportation and walking, as if everyone in America can own and drive a car. And what kind of vehicles do many of us drive? Big cars and SUVs, the kind of cars that Heinz Nordhoff, Volkswagen's CEO in the fifties and sixties, said had more power than could be used and "thus violate every principle of engineering and technical science."

Among other American feats of engineering are bridges that collapse and domed stadiums with roofs that cave in.

How about all the money invested in the athletic programs of colleges and universities, which made many of our institutions of higher education more expensive to attend because of all that overhead and turned them into health spas where literature and math are only occasionally studied? That's what makes Title IX in the 1972 Education Act an example of American stupidity. Instead of giving women more opportunities in scholastic athletics, why not give them more opportunities in education?

And don't get me started on our obsession with violence, from handguns to nuclear missile warheads. Or our belief that weapons keep the world safe. What other country could have developed a cannon in the 1840s (a faulty demonstration of which almost killed President John Tyler and did kill his Secretary of State) and a long-range missile in the 1980s and called both the "Peacemaker?"

It doesn't surprise me that Americans are so dumb. Back in 1987, high school seniors were polled on questions of common knowledge. Asked who wrote "The Grapes of Wrath," many said Ernest Hemingway. (It was John Steinbeck.) Asked who wrote "A Christmas Carol," many named the story's character, Ebenezer Scrooge, as the author. (It was British author Charles Dickens, who famously satirized Americans in one of his novels.) And many thought the Civil War began in 1492. Well, I got news for you; these high school seniors of the late eighties are adults on the edge of turning forty, and they're just as dumb. Their high school diplomas and, where applicable, their college degrees aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

And some of them may even vote.

Many of them have parents who oppose health care reform because they don't want the government taking over their Medicare plans.

We may be of different races, creeds and colors, but we Americans are uniformly dumb all over.

Senate News

With Ted Kennedy's death, seven seats in the United States Senate have been or soon will be opened since the last election, mainly in the form of resignations. This is the highest number in sixty years. Some, like President Obama's seat, are scheduled to be filled by election according to the calendar already, but four of them will be require special elections. The Massachusetts seat requires one by January.

The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1913, turned the power to elect U.S. Senators over from state legislatures to the people. Before that, Senate candidates campaigned to get their would-be constituents to vote for their party's state legislative candidates. (It turns out that, had direct election by the people existed in 1858, Abraham Lincoln might have been elected to the Senate; although Stephen Douglas won re-election because the Democrats narrowly held on to control of the Illinois legislature, the Republicans actually won the popular vote.) Before 1913, governors always appointed people to fill the remainder of unexpired U.S. Senate terms; now special elections are constitutionally required, though the states are given the power to set them up and decide how to do so.

Massachusetts had allowed governors to make interim appointments before a Senate election, but the state changed the law in 2004 and barred the governor from doing so when it became likely that John Kerry would be elected President and Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, could appoint his interim replacement. Homophobes in Ohio and a videotape from a terrorist leader in a cave ruined Kerry's chances, but the law remained in effect. No one ever expected Ted Kennedy to die in office. Also, no one probably expected the Democrats to actually elect another governor in Massachusetts! (Deval Patrick was, in 2006, the first Democrat elected governor there in twenty years.)

So now Bay Staters have an empty Senate seat and Democrats are short a sixtieth vote in the middle of the health care reform debate- which is why Kennedy wrote to have that law changed, as previously noted here. In the meantime, there are in Congress bipartisan - yes, bipartisan - efforts to pass a constitutional amendment requiring and dictating the terms of special elections to be held in all cases of Senate vacancies, taking away that right from the states. Considering the unintended consequences of the situation in Massachusetts, that might not be a bad thing.

Pigs and Dogs

A presidential panel announced earlier this week expects anywhere from 60 million to 120 million Americans to contract swine flu this year and for the H1N1 virus to cause up to 90,000 deaths, possibly swamping intensive care units in certain areas of the country.

Considering the state of health care costs in this country - and the benighted efforts to do something about it - I don't feel well somehow.

Meanwhile, Representative Pete Stark, a California Democrat, started shooting off his mouth about the moderate "Blue Dog" Democrats, accusing them of causing trouble and being "brain dead" in an apparent effort to serve the interests of the insurance companies. Stark is known for this humiliating hyperbole; twenty years ago, when George Bush (the first one) was President, Stark complained about then-Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan, a black man, and how Sullivan's positions were a discredit to his race. Sullivan replied, "Tell Pete Stark I don't live on his plantation."

The Blue Dogs are hardly innocent, though. Stark referred to the public option, which Stark's subcommittee the House Ways and Means Committee approved with Medicare rate even as a subcommittee of the House Finance Committee successfully pushed for a provision to have any rates in a public plan negotiated by the Health and Human Services Secretary, effectively making it unlikely that a public plan could compete fairly with private insurers.

That's something to think about as a possible H1N1 epidemic of major proportions of the 1918 flu epidemic is upon us, and millions of people still lack health insurance.

Edward M. Kennedy: 1932-2009

Edward Moore Kennedy, United States Senator from Massachusetts, died last night of brain cancer.

This death comes at a peculiarly poignant time, what with his older sister, Special Olympics founder Eunice Shriver, having just died a couple of weeks ago.

Everyone on the cable news channel MSNBC has been talking about what a giant Ted Kennedy was, and it's impossible for even the most politically arch-conservative Americans to argue. Kennedy, in nearly 47 years in the Senate, crafted legislation that reshaped America far more than most lawmakers were able to do, from civil rights legislation and education equality laws to job training programs and expansion of medical insurance. It is this legacy that remained incomplete in Kennedy's last months as President Obama tried to push universal health care through, only to meet unexpected opposition in a political climate more poisoned than anyone realized.

Kennedy was a compromiser in the Henry Clay mold who could work with Republicans and counted several of them among his friends. He commanded the attention and respect of that another Massachusetts senator, Daniel Webster, in standing up fro a stronger nation. His faults and his mistakes aside - that's enough about Chappaquiddick, thank you - Kennedy's personal compassion and his unwavering fight for equality and justice were a perfect match match for the kind of temperament that is so sorely lacking in Washington today. To sat that he will be missed is an understatement. RIP. :-(

Shout It Out Loud

Kiss leader Gene Simmons turns sixty today.

Drool blood. . . .

Transportation Orientation

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced on Thursday that the Car Allowance Rebate System. popularly known as the "cash for clunkers" program, will end tomorrow at 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time, in recognition of the $3 billion allotted for it about to run out. This will give dealers time to finalize the paperwork on deals handled so far, and announcing the end of the program four days in advance has allowed those interested in getting a $4500 government rebate for a more fuel-efficient vehicle to get in on it before the program ends.

The program has proven to be wildly successful, getting several old gas guzzlers off the road, resulting in a 60% increase in the fuel efficiency of the American private vehicle fleet, and it gave a big boost to automakers hurt by the recession. However, all has not been perfect - the bureaucratic red tape means that some dealers will have to wait awhile to get their money from the government.

And although it's gotten more people into a Ford Focus and out of a Ford Explorer, it's not enough. The next thing the Obama administration has to do is work toward more public transportation - not just modernized intercity rail (which is slowly getting traction; witness my blog entry on Bobby Jindal from late last week), but on commuter rail, streetcars, light rail with exclusive rights of way, and city buses, not to mention more transit-oriented development and retrofitting as much urban sprawl as possible to a transit-based transportation network. It won't be easy, but it could provide more jobs and boost the economy.

We can start with public buildings. Government rules dictate that post offices, for example, have to be built to accommodate cars without any meaningful requirements, if any, for pedestrian access. This is how the post office in my hometown was built; dedicated in 1975, the West Caldwell, New Jersey post office sits on the outskirts of town, off a county highway, with no sidewalk access and plenty of parking. (By contrast, the post office in neighboring Caldwell, built in 1934, is in walking distance of my house - ironic, you'll agree, since I don't live in Caldwell - and there's only parking for three vehicles on the street, with a fifteen-minute restriction.) Oregon House member Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat representing transit-friendly Portland, has sought to get these federal rules repealed, without success so far.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't mind seeing the cash-for-clunkers program continue a bit longer, and I say this as someone who's not in the market for a new car at this time.

Infection

Noted health care reform killer Betsy McCaughey made a revealing statement on Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" recently, and it wasn't about the geriatric euthanasia clause in the current reform bill that she completely made up. She defended the current health care system by insisting that it prolongs life better than any other health care system in any other nation, and that the United States would be number one if life expectancy if not for our high rate of homicides and car crashes.

So, part of the reason Americans don't live on average as long as they should is because we have . . . too many guns and too many cars.

The one good thing about this information - assuming McCaughey didn't make this up too - is that it bolsters arguments for more sensible handgun control and more public transit - two other quality-of-life issues this country can't seem to address.

Did I happen to mention drive-by shootings?

McCaughey served as lieutenant governor of New York under George Pataki in the mid-nineties, which clinches it - that office is for losers. But despite the slapstick comedy going on up in Albany under David Paterson, New Yorkers (the state residents, I mean) should be at least thankful it was Eliot Spitzer and not Pataki who was caught with a prostitute.

McCaughey has lost another job. She was voted out of her position on the board at Cantel Medical Corporation, a New Jersey company that provides infection prevention and control products to the health care market. Ironic that she was involved with a firm devoted infection prevention products, given that she's infected the health care debate.

Health Care On the Brink

With President Obama's health care reform plan in danger of falling apart, thanks largely to lies and town hall meeting disruptions Republicans have perpetrated with their smear tactics, some observers are wondering if things would be very different if Ted Kennedy were still available.

The Massachusetts Democrat, who's been at home in Hyannis for much of the year fighting a cancerous brain tumor, is not expected to last through the health care debate, much less to the end of his term in January 2013. Therefore, he hasn't been in Washington to help smooth out the rough edges on the health care issue between factions within the Democratic party and to bring in some Republicans, some of whom (like Orrin Hatch, who refuses to participate in the health care debate any further) are among Kennedy's friends.

Be that as it may, Kennedy himself knows that he won't be a part of the debate on an issue he's fought for for most of his tenure in the Senate, and may not even live long enough to vote on the bill - that is, if a bill ever gets through. The irony is monumental. Therefore, he has written Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, another Democrat, to ask the legislature for the right to appoint an interim U.S. Senator once Kennedy's seat goes vacant through death or resignation. The seat would remain vacant until up to 160 days to allow for a special election under current Massachusetts law.

Obama lacks both Tom Daschle at the helm of the Health and Human Services Department and Ted Kennedy in the Senate. Both Daschle, a former Senate Democratic leader, and Kennedy, in office since 1962, are seen as the most experienced people in Washington with health care expertise who can make Obama's reforms happen and get enough Democratic votes for something like a public option. My mother dismissed the idea of Daschle or Kennedy being indispensable on the grounds that this issue doesn't hinge on one or two people.

Umm, it kind of does.

And, thanks to the rhetorical equivalents of dirty bombs Republicans have been setting off in this debate, now more than ever.

Jindal On Track

Keith Olbermann reported on his MSNBC show yesterday that Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, after having ridiculed President Obama for advocating funding for more high-speed passenger rail, recently signed his state up for . . . money for a high-speed passenger rail line. Olbermann chastised Jindal for hypocrisy, but I won't. I'm glad to welcome Jindal aboard. I'll happily cheer on any elected official who invests in high-speed passenger rail, as the United States sorely lacks in that arena - among other things - and we need more of it.

Well, Acela isn't exactly like the bullet trains American railfans experience abroad.

Also, I have to confess: I loved Trent Lott. Sure, the Mississippi Republican was backward on race issues and had plastic hair, but he was also one of Amtrak's biggest supporters in the Senate. I even wrote him letter once commending him for his support for the national passenger railroad.

If a politician supports bullet trains for Amtrak, that politician will have my backing. A pro-Amtrak politician would have to be pretty despicable not to have my support.

So don't try to sweet-talk me with railfan banter, Sarah Palin.

In the News

Reports have circulated that President Obama is ready to give up on Republican support for health care reform, but his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, insisted that this is not the case. Gibbs said today that the President is still interested in working with Republicans, and he wants to work with legislators with constructive ideas.

Well, is Obama going to make up his mind?

Although more Americans are supporting a public option, many more Americans still believe in the lies about government takeovers of health care and rationing, and the lies have been repeated by health care reform opponents. Although they've been called out, these opponents are not interested in the truth. To paraphrase a movie line, if they wanted to get the truth out, they would have spoken to "60 Minutes."

Speaking of which, I heard that Don Hewitt, the creator of "60 Minutes," died today. Hewitt expanded television journalism with his news show, looking at stories with greater depth and digging deeper at timely issues. The show has kept the high standards it started out with when it debuted in 1968, even after Hewitt's retirement five years ago. RIP.

Sour Cream

Ginger Baker turns seventy today.

Baker, the greatest British progressive rock/blues drummer whose name isn't Rob Townsend, is best known as the drummer for Cream and Blind Faith, as well as the Graham Bond Organisation. In the seventies, he founded Air Force, a band that included Blind Faithers Steve Winwood and Ric Grech, and followed that up with a band he founded with Adrian Gurvitz, the Baker-Gurvitz Army.

As Groucho Marx would have said, thank goodness we had no Navy.

There's an article about Baker in the current issue of Rolling Stone, but I have yet to read it.

From what I understand, he's still an irascible type, having hit three score and ten. He currently lives in South Africa, having been forced out of other countries due to tax evasion, among other charges.

It's a Cruel, Cruel Summer. . . .

In an effort to keep health care reform alive, President Obama may have killed it by suggesting that a public option program may not be necessary. Well, in the case, maybe health care reform may not be necessary. Health care reform without a public program for people who can't afford private insurance may be taken off the table in order to get a bill passed in the Senate. We might as well forget reforming the medical insurance system for another fifteen years.

There aren't enough votes in the Senate to pass a bill with a public option despite a Democratic majority of sixty seats. Paradoxically, as many as one hundred Democrats in the House, led by Anthony Wiener of New York, refuse to support a health care reform bill if a public option is not included.

Health care reform in America is dead unless Obama bypasses the Republicans and gets some kind of public plan passed and twists a few arms in the Senate. I can't think of anything more depressing.

No, I'm kidding, this is America, so I can. Minnesota right-wing congresswoman Michelle Bachmann - who makes Sarah Palin look like Hannah Arendt - is thinking of running for President in 2012.

Woodstock - 40 Years

The current hoopla over the anniversary of Woodstock impresses me somewhat. I'm too young to have been at Woodstock, and given the logistics and the lack of amenities there, I don't think I would necessarily have wanted to be there - but I do have a grudging respect for the four hundred thousand hippies who were just as responsible in making it a memorable event as the performers. Maybe more so. Nobody remembers Sweetwater, one of the bands that played on the first day of the festival. No one who was there wants to admit that Sha Na Na or Blood, Sweat and Tears - both of whom became symbols of seventies cheesiness - were among the acts, or that sometimes you couldn't hear the acts that were worth sitting in the mud to see (the Who, the Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, etc.).

The main reason the Woodstock Art and Music Fair (as it was called) was a success was because the audience took the rain, the delays, and the boredom of listening to Melanie's warbling in stride and made the best of it. They listened to whatever music they could hear - and I have a feeling everyone heard Hendrix, he was so darn loud - took it easy, smoked pot, and generally enjoyed themselves. The festival started as a concert charging admission, but when the hopeful attendees stormed the gates, it became a free concert and there was no trouble. Max Yasgur, the owner of the farm the Woodstock festival was held on, said it best when he told the crowd that they proved they could successfully have three days of peace and music.

Unfortunately, three days of peace and music was all the Baby Boom generation could sustain. The Altamont festival headlined by the Rollins Stones four months later was full of violence and mayhem, including the stabbing of a black Rolling Stones fan by the Hell's Angels who were supposed to provide security for the concert. The annual Isle of Wight festival in the United Kingdom was such a headache when held a third time in 1970 that it wouldn't resume for another 32 years. Today's annual music festivals - Bonnaroo in the United States, Glastonbury in Britain - are less about making a cultural statement on the need for a better tomorrow and more about a good weekend's entertainment. And after Live Aid - the 1985 all-star bi-national concert that, if remembered for anything, will be remembered for Phil Collins managing the hat trick of performing at both the London and Philadelphia shows - no one imagines that the English-speaking world's biggest pop acts can make the Third World a better place by raising money to help lift it out of poverty, much to the chagrin of Bob Geldof.

Still, Woodstock was a concert that had some good music and some good vibes, and it proved that people could get together en masse and get along. I'm all for preserving the spirit of Woodstock, as well as the field the show was held on.

But a Woodstock museum? Don't we have enough music museums? And isn't the very idea of such a thing kind of dumb?

So where was I in the summer of 1969? My parents and I went to Ocean City, New Jersey. I was three years old. I only know I was there because Mom took pictures. I don't remember being there.

Just like a lot of the folks who went to Woodstock - thanks to too much pot - don't remember being there.

And just like I don't want to remember being at Live Aid.

Guitar Hero

Les Paul, the legendary guitarist and recording technology innovator, died yesterday at 94, and in his long life he created new ways for music to be heard. His Gibson solid-body guitar with electric pickups allowed for a more shimmering, fluid sound, and its controls allowed players to manipulate the sound and make the notes cry or sing by manipulating the treble for more brightness and clarity or deepening the rhythm for a fuller sound. Also, he pioneered multi-track recording, allowing bands to concentrate on each instrument of the arrangement individually and re-record elements of the song, rather than perform a song live in the studio over and over until they got it right. The range of possibilities he created helped spur the rise of the guitar hero in sixties and seventies rock, and many a rocker - Jimmy Page, Joe Walsh, Joe Satriani, Keith Richards - has sung Paul's praises. Or, more appropriately, played them.

Paul was still playing at the Iridium Jazz Club every Monday night in New York as recently as June - he never planned to retire - but pneumonia sidelined him this summer, and he died from complications of the disease. Mondays will still be devoted to guitarists there as a memorial to him. It will be a fitting tribute.

While many veteran rockers and rock fans are eulogizing Paul as one of music's greats, I doubt his death will have much of an impact on the younger generation of hip-hop and dance pop performers.

To them, Paul was probably just another white guy with a guitar.

Pulling Plugs

The right-wing hijacking of the health care debate depresses me, as if the weather and the problems I've had with my car and with my job search weren't depressing enough. Right now, the reactionaries in America are trying - successfully, so far -to derail the health care debate by exploiting the provision that facilitates living will preparations, and preventing an intelligent discussion on how to reduce costs so that we don't spend any more on health care than other countries do. But then, in America, discouraging intelligent debate is easy.

Many lies have been told about the living will provision, most of which have implied that the government would deny care to elder Americans and encourage folks to "pull the plug on Grandma," and no matter how much health care reform proponents expose these claims as lies, the liars - including noted book-banning wolf killer Sarah Palin - scream louder. They're trying to pull the plug on health care reform.

They've even belittled the British health care system by bemoaning the idea that physicist and Lou Gehrig's disease sufferer Stephen Hawking would have been allowed to die under it . . . even though he's British and has benefited from it immensely.

I've only had health insurance as an adult when I've worked at a permanent job, and my employment has been so erratic for the past six years, I've mostly worked temporary jobs. So I have no health insurance now. If I become catastrophically ill in an America where Republican health care values prevail, I might as well just drop dead.

And then I won't have to listen to this death panel nonsense anymore.

How Can She Resist It?

My mother has exhibited the weirdest behavior lately. She can't stop watching the movie version of the Abba Broadway musical "Mamma Mia!" whenever it comes on cable television, and it's been on cable TV a lot. She loves the storyline, but she also likes the songs and the music.

But get this - she doesn't remember Abba from the seventies!

My mother was in her mid-thirties when ABBA were together, and they were always on the Top Forty AM radio station we used to listen to then, since they had so many hits. And Mom doesn't remember the Swedish quartet? Hmmm, maybe the songs simply sank in to her psyche through osmosis.

Abba have long been criticized for their lightweight, airy, plastic pop songs, but their records have turned out to be durable plastic. How else can you explain the fact that "Mamma Mia!" will have been on Broadway for eight years this October, and shows no signs of slowing down despite the movie version being so obviously available on demand. Abba have remained popular since their breakup in 1982 and have resisted efforts to regroup far more successfully than the Beatles, who of course reunited as a threesome and concocted new Beatles songs with unfinished John Lennon recordings for the Anthology project. Abba had even been rumored to be the substitutes for the fifty dates Michael Jackson was to perform in London.

Abba had a unique start when they, as Sweden's choice to contribute an entry in the 1974 Eurovision song contest, chose "Waterloo," a song referring to Napoleon's last defeat. They won the Eurovision song contest, and it was their first international hit. Now that's irony for you.

Two Fifth Beatles Gone

Two individuals with connections to the Beatles died recently . . ..

Gordon Waller was the latter half of Peter and Gordon, the most successful duo to come out of the sixties British Invasion. He and Peter Asher recorded Lennon-McCartney songs predominantly written by Paul when he was dating Asher's sister Jane, and these were unsurprisingly among the most heartfelt ballads of the time. The list is quite impressive: "World Without Love," "Nobody I Know," "I Don't Want To See You Again," and "Woman." Hits not penned by Lennon and McCartney included "Lady Godiva" and the Buddy Holly Song "True Love Ways." Their harmonies were perfect (Waller mostly sang lead), and the arrangements were first rate. Waller went on to perform in British musical theater and run a music publishing business after the duo broke up. (Asher, of course, became a record producer, producing James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, among others.) The duo reunited a few years back, and this blogger had the rare and appreciated opportunity to see them perform at a Beatles convention in 2006. After nearly forty years apart, they hasn't lost their touch. They were doing some shows only recently, including an Atlanta appearance this spring. Waller died in Connecticut, where he lived, on July 17 of a heart attack at 64.

Heinz Edelmann was a prestigious advertising and editorial illustrator in Germany in 1967 when movie producer Al Brodax approached him to be the art director for the animated Beatles movie Yellow Submarine. Edelmann's neo-Art Nouveau approach, characterized by fluid lines and bright colors, fit the mood of the movie perfectly, and he revolutionized animation with his work (and made the greatest animated movie ever as well). The Beatles themselves loved Edelmann's work, and John Lennon singled out as the only person involved with Yellow Submarine worthy of his respect. Edelmann got little respect for a long time, as many people somehow came to believe that poster artist Peter Max had been responsible for Yellow Submarine's look. (Max, to his discredit, let people believe that.) Edelmann was still able to enjoy a distinguished career, and he gained recognition for his contributions to Yellow Submarine in later years. He died at 75 on July 21 of heart disease and kidney failure.

I just found out about both passings yesterday. :-(

John Hughes, Unsentimentally

When moviemaker John Hughes died Thursday of a heart attack at 59, one film critic eulogized him as a director and writer who took teenagers seriously and treated them as three-dimensional characters. This reputation Hughes cultivated rests largely on Sixteen Candles, is directorial debut, in which Molly Ringwald played a suburban high school student whose family is too obsessed with her older sister's wedding to remember her sixteenth birthday. Yes, Sixteen Candles was a sweet, warm, and genuinely funny movie, but to call Hughes a great director for that one movie is like inducting Kansas into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame strictly for "Dust In the Wind."

The truth is that most of Hughes's work, as a director, producer, or screenwriter, was by and large sophomoric. The Breakfast Club asked us to feel sorry for kids trapped in Saturday detention together simply for being different from each other and everyone else, when they're being punished. (We, the viewers, are punished with Judd Nelson.) Weird Science was about two high school nerds who create the ideal woman with a computer. Ferris Bueller's Day Off illustrated a day in the life of a teenager who cuts class because he's entitled to free time from school. These characters were pretty juvenile, and Hughes seemed more interested in celebrating their shallowness than making them grow up. Home Alone, which Hughes wrote and produced by did not direct, was even less mature, involving a ten-year-old kid left to his own devices at home who sadistically booby-traps his house to keep bandits from breaking in.

Even when Hughes came up with a genuinely funny idea, he overdid it. In National Lampoon's Vacation, which he wrote, the hapless Griswold family travels from Chicago to Los Angeles (the Route 66 trajectory, coincidentally) and everything goes wrong. This is something that happens to many families on road trips, including mine. My mother, my sister and I even related to the scene where Clark Griswold (played by Chevy Chase) takes the wrong exit in St. Louis and ends up in a black ghetto, because that happened to us in Newark. But in that scene, Hughes couldn't leave well enough alone, playing up every black ghetto cliche - the pimp with two hookers, the gunshots, the hubcap thieves, and folks living in cars with no wheels. In fact, every stereotype Hughes exploited was a decade out of date by the time the movie came out; the superfly pimp was pretty much passe by 1983. And Clark's son Russ wondering aloud if the black guy Clark gets directions from or his friends know the Commodores was just dumb.

That was the only time Hughes bothered acknowledging black people in his movies. Otherwise, he spent much of his time exploring the angst of white, upper-middle class kids from Chicago's North Shore suburbs, trying to make us feel pity for these kids dealing with adolescent problems. I'd have had more pity for them if they came from the wrong side of the tracks. Hughes did have such a character in Pretty In Pink (again, played by Molly Ringwald), but that was an exception.

Hughes's movies mostly celebrated the vapid youth culture of the 1980s, with all the mall hair and bad synth music that went with it. His greatest contribution to civilization may have been giving Ben Stein an entertainment career by casting the former Nixon White House aide in Ferris Bueller's Day Off as a dull teacher. Hughes couldn't claim credit for Molly Ringwald; she originally came from television sitcoms.

So, does anyone want to defend Hughes' career?

Anyone?

Anyone?

John Bolton Is A @#**! Idiot

No sooner than Bill Clinton return from North Korea triumphant in bringing home Laura Ling and Euna Lee than John Bolton urinated on his shoe. (I could say he rained on Clinton's parade, but this is a reactionary Republican we're talking about.)

Bolton, who served as Bush the Younger's United Nations ambassador in a recess appointment and amazingly alienated us from the rest of the planet even more than Bush had, complained that Clinton only legitimized North Korean leader Kim Jong Il by going to Pyongyang and pleading for Ling and Lee to be released and rewarded the practice of illegitimately arresting and detaining them in the first place, which was tantamount to hostage taking. Even worse, Bolton complained, Clinton negotiated with nothing to offer, putting himself in a position of weakness and making it easy for American journalists abroad to be captured. This sounds like an extreme rightist opinion, and it is, but the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger, which published Bolton's op-ed piece, even chided Clinton for allowing Kim to bully him the same way a Chicago ward boss would.

Neither the Star-Ledger nor Bolton seem to be concerned with the fact that the welfare of two women were involved, not nuclear weapons. As for Clinton legitimizing Kim, Kim doesn't need for the former President's help. He's already legitimized by having the fourth largest army - which could invade South Korea the day after tomorrow - in the world.

To think that Bolton was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Having a xenophobe like Bolton in that position makes about as much sense as making Willie Sutton a prison warden.

I want to hear John Bolton pontificate on international diplomacy as much as I want to hear Michael Bolton sing.