Maher Socks it to the Profiteers - Why hasn't everyone else?

How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are. - Bill Maher, Huffington Post, July 23, 2009

In my last blog, about Walter Cronkite, Frank McCourt and Molly Ivins, three totally different communicators who made an impact on me and on my own writing (truth be told), I said, "A writer who can also speak off the cuff is rare. (Of course it helps if you're either Irish or Southern or Bill Maher.)"

I don't know why Maher came to mind when I wrote that sentence. There are plenty of writers who can talk in public. They used to call them "raconteurs", and they used to appear on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show" and on "The Dick Cavett Show". Now they appear on "Charlie Rose" but I can't stay up that late at night anymore to watch them.

But when I wrote the above, Bill Maher's was the only name that came to mind. It was as if I knew he was going to post this absolutely brilliant and incredibly important
New Rule on Huffington Post last night.

There are so many quotable quotes in that one piece that if I began posting my favorites I would be posting every single paragraph. So here are a few terrific truths, and then you can go on and read the rest for yourself:

"A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that's where all the real crime is happening anyway. The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That's why America has the world's largest prison population ­-- because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line."

"In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America's largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket."

"If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.

So many of us have said for so long that this isn't the America we've known and loved. We've shouted until we're blue in the face that letting the obscenely rich get obscenely richer by sacrificing the entire middle class MAKES NO SENSE.

We've screamed at the top of our lungs that sending American businesses offshore to hire workers at slave class wages in order to reap huge profits is wholly un-American.

We've let the lies go on about health care, but the truth is people are sickening and dying because nobody cares enough.

We elected a president we thought would pull us out of this by smacking down the profiteers. On election day, November, 2008 we went mad with sheer joy when Barack Obama said the dark days were over and a new light would shine on truth, justice and the American Way.

As much as I want to go on cheer-leading for our new president, I still see us wallowing in quicksand. We can't wait forever. We've got to get out of this NOW.

Shut those Republicans UP. They're the reason we're in this mess.

Blue Dog Democrats--you sully the very party name.

Wall Street, K Street, C Street--put a cop on every corner. Arrest those bastards!

And keep the comedians commenting. Bill Maher and Jon Stewart--the voices of the people?? Okay, it's a start. Anyone else?

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here)

Cronkite, McCourt and Ivins - Stilled Voices Still Going Strong

Frank McCourt died on Sunday. Walter Cronkite died on Friday. Molly Ivins died more than two years ago. As near as I can tell, none of them had much in common with the other, but yesterday I couldn't stop thinking about all three of them.



It started when Walter died and the tributes began. Clips of Walter's greatest moments were everywhere, his deep Midwestern voice--soothing and comforting, authentic and sure--reminding me that once there were straight, honest chroniclers out there reporting the news in ways that we could understand and then judge for ourselves the truths presented.

In the PBS tribute to Cronkite, a repeat of a biography broadcast several years before, Molly Ivins was seen commenting about his influence on the country. I don't remember what she said, but I bring this up only because both she and Walter were fresh on my mind when I heard the news that Frank McCourt had died on Sunday.


All three were fascinating and sure of themselves and fully aware of the impact they had on the rest of us, but I could say that about a lot of people--even people I don't like at all.

All three of them were unlikely "stars", but they made their marks indelibly, unforgettably.

All three spoke to me in radically different ways, but throughout the years all three voices have stayed with me. Whenever I;ve thought of each of them, it was as if I had known them personally. It has to do, I think, with their fearless honesty, with their refusal to toady or pander, with their ability to communicate with such clarity I couldn't help but sit up and pay attention.

But as I thought about each of them, I also saw them in entirely different ways. I loved watching and listening to Walter. Again--soothing, straight, strong, full of emotion--but as much as I had looked forward to reading his autobiography, "A Reporter's Life", I couldn't get through it. Without that steady, forceful voice I found his words oddly and disappointingly just words .


Molly Ivins could write like the dickens but I admit that more often than not I had a hard time watching her. Her movements were too staged, her Buckley-like, slack-jawed pauses too distracting. I thought I needed her words in black and white in order to appreciate the full measure of them . Then I found the speech she gave at Tulane University in April, 2004. It is over an hour long, but it's one of the best hours I've ever spent with someone in the News business. Watching it again, I miss her more than ever. (Okay, looking back, it's the unscripted interviews that bother me--her speeches are her writings. She wrote them. All is well.)

But Frank McCourt could do both. He could write and he could talk and in either situation he was as comfortable to be around as your lovable, funny Uncle Francis. When "Angela's Ashes" was published in 1996 it became an overnight sensation and McCourt went from being an obscure, unknown teacher to being the delight of interviewers everywhere. He handled himself masterfully and even the people who hadn't read his book couldn't help but stop and watch. A writer who can also speak off the cuff is rare. (Of course it helps if you're either Irish or Southern or Bill Maher.)

We need people like Cronkite. He made us feel safe. We could count on him to be Uncle Walter, no matter what. I can't think of a replacement right now, and I want to--badly.

We need people like Ivins. She could cut through the crap and do it so wittily even the pompous asses she skewered with comforting regularity couldn't help but admire her. Who is out there to take her place?

We need people like McCourt to make us understand the paralyzing shame of poverty and the powerlessness of the children of the poor. We need to allow our hearts to be subject to breakage in order to understand that we have the passion and the power to make lives better.

The one element I left out of this is laughter. Both Ivins and McCourt are laugh-out-loud funny. (Walter not so much) When I finished reading "Angela's Ashes" I had laughed and cried and laughed and cried so much I felt as if the book was an immediate danger to my health. It took years before I could open it again.

But the beauty of the system is that when I thought I could open it again, it was right there on the shelf, waiting for me. Nothing was lost. Molly's books are on those shelves, too. And all I have to do is Google or YouTube Walter's name and in a quick flash he'll be there.

Because, lucky for us, that's the way it is.

Ramona