Shots in the Dark

A local kid and Dem-for-life ponders….

We’re what’s the matter with Massachusetts, aren’t we? Not them. Not the frustrated easy-answer seekers who tossed their votes to prettyboy Brown over there. No, it was our fault for assuming that some things are given. If that seems fairly obvious to you (and it probably should), it certainly didn’t to some of us. I suppose it’s a kind of arrogance, but it’s also a strange naivety — a sort of childish wish for things to be as absolute and simple as we’d seen them when we were young. I chose to ignore the pick-up trucks and Dixie flags (yes, actual Dixie flags in New England) that you sometimes run into once Boston’s skyline has faded and disappeared. Clearly that was an enormous blunder. Massachusetts is, yes duh, their state too. And all those people there in the middle, it’s theirs too! And now they’ve finally given us a stern rap on the noggin as a reminder.

Like, well, some of the readers on this blog, that kid forgot (or just didn’t bother) to fill out his absentee ballot….

But to be fair, it helps to have an inspiring candidate—or at least a hard-working one. Coakley was neither. If you don’t show you really want the job, there’s no reason voters should give it to you.

The Times reports on a new study that shows kids spend seven hours daily using an electronic device—and because they often use more than one at once, it’s really more like 11.5 hours.

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Also, they’re fat and eat constantly. But that part is kinda the parents’ fault.

I sense a whole new generation of Scott Brown voters….

Scott Brown pimps out his daughters.

I mean, really, there’s no other way to put it.

Because Scott Brown’s Massachusetts victory (I grieve for you, Massachusetts) has already led to talk of killing the health care legislation…because Brown’s victory will be interpreted as a sign of popular disapproval of that legislation.

Which it probably is.

But here’s the thing: The people are wrong. They are projecting their anxiety about the economy and the pace of change and their frustrations with Barack Obama onto this legislation. And while legislators should appreciate the sentiment, they should also realize that when it comes to this piece of legislation—well, how can I put it?—much of the American public doesn’ t know what the hell it’s talking about.

Let me put it another way: Just because a majority of Americans disapprove of something doesn’t mean they’re right.

Here’s the Times’ David Leonhardt on this health care bill [emphasis added]:

The current versions of health reform are the product of decades of debate between Republicans and Democrats. The bills are more conservative than Bill Clinton’s 1993 proposal. For that matter, they’re more conservative than Richard Nixon’s 1971 plan, which would have had the federal government provide insurance to people who didn’t get it through their job.

…The current bills, for better and worse, are akin to a negotiated settlement to this six-decade debate [over health care]. It would try to end our status as the only rich country with tens of millions of uninsured people, as liberals have long urged. And it would do so using private insurers and government subsidies, as conservatives prefer.

So how, Leonhard asks, could more people oppose this legislation than support it?

His answers:

Republican scare-tactics. A failure on the part of the White House to sell the bill. Complacency on the part of voters who have health insurance, and misconceptions about the price and quality of our current health care system.

In the wake of Mr. Brown’s victory, the decision facing Democrats is not whether to start with a blank slate and try to write a bill based on both liberal health care ideas and conservative ones. They’ve already tried that.

The decision is whether to expand insurance and try to control costs, despite the political risks, or whether that project will once again be put off until another day.

Let’s be tough-minded here.

Is it likely that any Republican president would ever attempt health-care legislation?

No.

Is it likely that any future Democratic president will attempt health-care legislation after the last two Dems’ attempts have inflicted enormous damage on their presidencies?

Hard to imagine.

Now, maybe some people think that the American health care system is basically fine or that the government shouldn’t be involved in trying to help the 40 million Americans without health care. If so, God bless and don’t get laid off.

But if you don’t feel that way, you have to support the Obama bill. Because it is this or nothing, ever.

She’s done. With 66% of the vote in, Martha Coakley is losing by about 53-47%. Does this mean that 30 million uninsured Americans will stay that way?

Erich Segal, author of Love Story—perhaps the most famous Harvard-centric work of fiction—has died at age 72, the Guardian reports.

The cause was a heart attack, though it was my impression that Segal was suffering from chronic illness—Parkinson’s, perhaps?

(While I was at 02138, I tried to assign a profile of Segal, but he was unable to cooperate.)

…he continued to write right up to his death, producing more than half a dozen novels, essays, literary criticism and, with his dear friend and comrade-in-comedy, Jack Rosenthal, a new English translation of the opening Friday-night Hebrew prayer for the West London Reform Synagogue. His last major work, in 2001, was a scholarly look at the history of comedy, and of dirty jokes, from the ancient Greeks through to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove.

I will confess to having some very vivid memories of Segal, who taught at Yale while I was there. In the first semester of my freshman year, I took his course, “The Classical Tradition in Comedy,” mostly because my freshman year crush—let’s call her “Holly“— was in the class. The course was a survey of great comic writers, from Aristophanes to Moliere, and it was pretty good. And, also, it must be said, kind of a gut.

Anyway, I would go to class and sit with “Holly,” and it was all good, except for one day when I was so busy talking to her during Segal’s lecture that he stopped to chastise me. So caught up in “Holly” was I, it took me a few seconds to realize that I was being called out in front of a couple of hundred students.

Actually, I felt crummy about being so rude, and later that day, by sheer happenstance, I happened to see Segal at the Yale Coop. I introduced myself and told him that I was the guy who had interrupted his lecture and apologized. He seemed quite nervous about the whole thing.

Here’s another memory of that course: During the final exam, the lecture hall doors suddenly flew open, and four tuxedo-clad guys strode in carrying waiters’ trays, each of which had a Heineken on them. They delivered the beers to their intendeds, and everyone, even Segal, had a good laugh. It was the classical tradition in comedy, after all. How could you not?

These are slight memories, of course. But if others have more meaningful ones, I’d love to hear them. There’s something quite sad about the passing of a genuine romantic.

I love this dramatization of Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Doc Ellis’ 1970 no-hitter against the San Diego Padres, which he threw while he was on an acid trip.

The animation is creative and funny, but the real brilliance belongs to Ellis, who is just a wonderful storyteller….

The Daily Mail reports on an area in Russia’s White Sea where beluga whales breed under the ice.

It’s here. (You folks in Massachusetts must be kind of relieved.)

From my perspective, the choice is clear: Though Coakley is uninspiring, her opponent is alarming.

A conservative political action committee called Our Country Deserves Better, which has aligned itself with the antitax Tea Party movement, has spent over $348,000 in support of Mr. Brown over the past couple of weeks, federal election records show. The political action committee of the Cooperative of American Physicians — a California-based consortium of doctors concerned with the costs of malpractice lawsuits — has spent at least $35,000 on “prerecorded messages” in support of Mr. Brown.

Any predictions?

Paul Krugman has a pretty smart analysis of Obama’s missteps in today’s Times.

Lately many people have been second-guessing the Obama administration’s political strategy. The conventional wisdom seems to be that President Obama tried to do too much — in particular, that he should have put health care on one side and focused on the economy.

I disagree. The Obama administration’s troubles are the result not of excessive ambition, but of policy and political misjudgments. The stimulus was too small; policy toward the banks wasn’t tough enough; and Mr. Obama didn’t do what Ronald Reagan, who also faced a poor economy early in his administration, did — namely, shelter himself from criticism with a narrative that placed the blame on previous administrations.

I agree. I’ve never shared the idea that Obama was asking Congress to do much at one time. Why can’t Congress do more than one thing at a time? And of course there’s only so much the president can do about the economy (presumably the first priority) anyway. Yes, he probably should have made the stimulus larger and cracked down harder on the banks. But getting that first stimulus through wasn’t easy—people were/are freaked out about the money—and doing a larger stimulus package might have been a real political challenge.

As for the banks—well, it seems like the president has finally got the message that his advisers (Geithner, Summers…Rubin?) are too close to Wall Street, and he’s taken a tougher line. It’s probably too late for that as a substantive question; now that the banks have paid back their TARP money, the government has less leverage over them than it could have. But still—at least he appears to be getting it.

Krugman argues that Obama has to pass the health care bill or it’s “political doom” for the Democrats. Sadly, this is probably also true. And if the Republicans gain a bunch of House and Senate seats in November, get ready for gridlock—just at a time when we actually need activist government. This is not 1994.