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 Small Change

By Elizabeth Hay
Counterpoint

This book of short stories by Elizabeth Hay sat for two years in the, "I want to read this," section of my bookcase. Despite the admonition to never judge books by their covers, there was something about the moody, black and white photo on the jacket that I found compelling. It is a picture of a young woman wearing a bathing cap and a look of clear-eyed, resignation, floating on a rubber raft in a borderless body of water. The sky is cloudy, and all the objects within the frame have the same softly blurred edges as the clouds. All together, the photo gives the impression of being simultaneously sharp and soft.

Sharp and soft can also describe the stories in "Small Change". This is a collection of overlapping tales, each of which is a meditation on a particular friendship seen through the eyes of the writer/protagonist. Friendships here are sometimes painted with the bright colors that characterize the sheer joy of experiencing camaraderie. Yet, they are always viewed from a retrospective where the distinct hues of happiness have already bled into each other to form the gray of regret.

What is soft in these stories is the longing Hay expresses for friendships to endure for the long haul. What is sharp are her confessions of the interior darkness that leads to the death of relationships begun in good faith. The terrain this Canadian author explores can best be summed up in her own words:

"My friendship is not reliable, but it reliably follows a pattern established in childhood of over-immersion followed by withdrawal, of infatuation (in its many forms) followed by aversion. I find the unlikable in people. I become critical and harsh, and saddened that I am so ungenerous. Critical of them and of myself for being critical."

Hay's writing is spare, yet never omits the integral — whether it is in her descriptions of the Canadian topography, or the inner landscape. What could be seen as bleak in these stories, ends up seeming merely truthful. There is much comfort in the truth, even if most would avoid it like the plague.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" October 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2004

 It's Not the Media
  The Truth About Pop Culture's Influence on Children

Karen Sternheimer
Westview Press

In September of 2000, Vice-Presidential nominee, Sen. Joseph Lieberman was grabbing headlines by grilling MPAA head, Jack Valenti, during a senate hearing about why the entertainment industry peddles inappropriate material to minors. In his inimitable whine, Lieberman declared that the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado demonstrated that the media violence children view "has become part of a toxic mix that has actually now turned some of them into killers."

During the same month, the FBI completed a study on school shootings. Of the twelve items on their list of behaviors for educators to watch, only two were related to media usage. Most of the indicators that the FBI worried might lead to violence were: "poor coping skills, access to weapons, signs of depression, drug and alcohol abuse, alienation [and] narcissism."

The accusation, that the media — including the movie, television, music, advertising, Internet and digital gaming industries — is responsible for violence, promiscuity, out-of-control consumerism and other frightening behaviors in children, has been heard for years. But does the evidence back up this claim? Or is the truth, as USC sociology professor, Karen Sternheimer suggests, that "our anxieties about a changing world, uncertain future and seemingly unsolvable social ills are deflected onto popular culture, which serves as a visible target when the real causes are harder to pin down"?

In her book, "It's Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture's Influence on Children," Sternheimer takes on myths about the malevolent influence of each segment of the media and attempts to debunk them by offering a mix of news reports, behavioral studies and some original thinking. For instance, in one chapter, she reports that violent crimes committed by youths have declined since the 1970s. Sternheimer further explains that, kids who live in poverty and have less access to media commit most youth violence. Of the isolated suburban tragedies that have been showered with 24-hour coverage, she points to the same markers appearing on the FBI list as possible motivations, rather than, say, Marilyn Manson CDs. To sum up this argument she writes, "It is too risky to criticize the American Dream... because ultimately that requires many of us to look in the mirror. It is easier to look at the TV for the answer."

This statement gets close to Sternheimer's core hypotheses about the real problems affecting 21st Century juveniles. Her first premise is that by focusing on the media as the guilty party, Americans can ignore issues such as poverty, indifference or abuse in the home, which cause real, measurable damage to society. Secondly, that the media has a stake in keeping its viewers thinking "it's the media," because fear-mongering sells. Politicians have their own reasons for fomenting the belief in media culpability. It is more advantageous for them to keep voters thinking that "TV kills", than to focus on the failed social policies that are really putting youth at risk.

Sternheimer's theories are refreshing. Sadly, her dull, academic prose might make it difficult for readers to finish the book and grasp those ideas. Furthermore, her penchant for repetition and her inability to connect facts in an easily understandable manner, or to conclusively prove her assertions may just provide ammunition to her detractors — of which there should be many.

If what she's saying in, "It's Not the Media," is true, at least Jack Valenti can finally cross this annoying issue off his list and concentrate on stamping out media piracy — his true passion. After all, it might soon be acceptable for kids to consume copious amounts of media, but it will never be okay to do it with bootlegged copies!

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Appeared in LA City/Valley Beat, October 8, 2003.

 The Two-Income Trap
  Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke

By Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi
Basic Books

"The Two-Income Trap," is a book that is filled with relevant information about the trying socio-economic conditions facing modern families. Yet, it is a book that is laboring under a ridiculously glib construct that frames — and sometimes distorts — this vital news. The information, in short, is this: families in America a going broke because bad governmental legislation during the past two (or more) decades has brought about a climate in which raising children is a financial liability. The unfortunate construct used by the mother-daughter team of Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi in presenting this information is the one touted in the title which suggests that it is the two incomes that parents now routinely provide, that is the cause of record, family, financial failures. It's not that the authors don't have a point. It's just that there are many instances throughout the text where they labor to squeeze the statistics into a package that doesn't suit them.

This is not to say the book is without merit. On the contrary, this is a pertinent look at the deteriorating condition of America's middle-class families. Further, it is one in which the authors not only address the luckless predicament of today's families and their likely causes, but also suggest (mostly) well-considered solutions.

When Elizabeth Warren, the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, began a study of bankruptcy in America 1999, she was struck by the rising number of economic failures among women. In the figures she studied, compared to those of twenty years ago, the number of women filing petitions for bankruptcy had increased by 662 percent. "As I soon discovered," she says, " divorced, and single women weren't the only ones in trouble; several hundred thousand married women filed of bankruptcy along with their husbands." As she looked at the numbers, Warren and Tyagi came up with the idea that the problem at the root of this massive insolvency was the working mother.

As the authors saw it, when a couple budgets every penny of two incomes to pay for housing, schools, medical care, child care and other necessities, they put themselves in more peril than a family that relies on one income to do the same. Why would families do this when they used to be able to get by on just Dad's salary? From their statistics, they discerned that it was the need for decent homes in safe communities, near good public schools that had placed parents in a position where they were being forced to have two working adults in a household. More importantly, it was the lack of decent public schools for all children that made it imperative that families bring home more bacon to pay for houses that would be near those few schools that were up to snuff.

In a cause and effect spiral, the more that families desired those suburban homes, the more those homes began to cost. Fundamentally, what the authors say is, that the government's lack of school funding, and the deterioration of modern public education is to blame for the high cost of housing for families Ñ a cost higher than families can reasonably afford.

They go on to assert that this was not a problem twenty years ago for two reasons. One is that schools were better, or perceived to be better, in the 1960s and '70s. The second, and key element in the equation, is that credit deregulation, passed in the '80s, made it possible for people to borrow far more money than they could reasonable be expected to repay. Once credit was not tied to the ability of borrowers to return, the sky became the limit for credit card debt and home loans. As inner-city schools fell apart, families were able to borrow to the hilt and beyond to buy homes nearer better schools, and families began running on a treadmill that was sure to leave them tired and broken — and in too many cases, bankrupt. Add divorce to the equation and the disaster hinted at by all the book's statistics has been brought to frightening fruition.

There is much that works about this book. The numbers and theories make sense, for the most part, in explaining this phenomenon of failing families. However, when the authors assert that families would be better off having the mother's income go to frivolous purchases now, so that, in the case of a financial emergency, there would be a belt to tighten, they are just presenting a load of horse shit. If families are already flying without a net, wouldn't it make more sense for extra income to go into savings to ward off that rainy day, instead of lattes and cruises now, that could be cut out later? Surely all families would be better off starting any crisis period with a bank account rather than with fond memories of Cancun. This is the kind of idea that seems to be part of the silly construct of the title, rather than part of the smart thinking that generated mostly sound financial advice throughout the rest of the book.

A better title for this book would have been "The Two-Income Fantasy". Because, much of what the authors maintain is that it is a fantasy to believe that a family is safer today with two incomes than it once was existing off of one. In fact, the modern family is far more likely to end up with money troubles than the family of yore. Warren and Tyagi urge all family-friendly people to work at a grass-roots level to change the usurious banking and credit policies, to demand better schools and even to declare bankruptcy, if need be, rather than fall through the cracks. All of this is good advice if one can just forget the part about blowing all your money now as a hedge against a rainy day.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" September 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

 A Year by the Sea

By Joan Anderson
Doubleday

As we used to say in Santa Fe, "Marriage, haaard, eh bro?" Marriage is hard, and doubly difficult, it seems, for the female member of legally, wedded duos. Feminism aside, it is still the wife, more often than her male counterpart, who submerges the largest part of her selfhood for the good of the union. Yet, what initially oils the mechanism of a smooth coupling, later begins to grind away at the internal gears of the member of the relationship who has had to apply the most emollients to remain yielding. Then, resentment ensues. Such was the case with Joan Anderson, who writes in, "A Year by the Sea," of the twelve months she spent separated from her husband, learning about the woman she had hidden, and the marriage she was not sure deserved another oil change.

Her beautiful memoir begins with a mercifully brief statement of the facts that led to her exile on Cape Cod. Her husband accepted a teaching job in another city without consulting her. She decided, in light of her misgivings about the relationship, the fact that their children were grown and her other responsibilities were discharged, that she would not follow him. She would instead go to live at her childhood summer home by the Atlantic Ocean. Alone. She would see what stuff she was made of. She would find out who she was and what she wanted. She would determine if the desire to please others, with its ensuing loss of singularity, could be tamed in exchange for a life that included more time spent responding to her essential desires.

Middle-aged and not in great physical or emotional shape, this move proved to be challenging for Joan, yet it was the very challenge she needed to change her life. She begins her adventures by taking her own dare and hitching a ride with a fisherman out to a remote sandbar filled with harbor seals. Though she had not bargained on spending the day by herself with only the ocean-going mammals and the tide, she does so and has her first encounter with profound inner strength. It is a strength she will build upon throughout the story.

Soon thereafter, a need for money compels Joan to become a fishmonger and later, a clammer — both physically challenging jobs that help to tame both body and ego. Pushing herself physically, leads to pushing herself socially, and she makes new friends with whom to share her new self.

While Joan is changing, so it seems, is her husband. A year on his own has made him see that the darkness in his soul is something he needed to take responsibility for and not add to his litany of spousal failings. Consequently, when reunited, he is able to enjoy his newly-strong wife as she pursued her particular visions, allowing him to pursue his own. What could have been the journal of a break-up ends up being an optimistic blueprint for transformation and reconciliation. What makes the tale doubly pleasing, is that this outcome is never assured, and is, in fact, the least likely scenario one would guess at from the bulk of the author's musings.

"A Year by the Sea," is written with fine, spare language that evokes a host of landscapes and emotions, yet never sinks into cliché. Plus, it has a happy ending.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" August 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

 Pigs at the Trough
  How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption
  are Undermining America

Arianna Huffington
Random House

Populist pundit and California gubernatorial candidate, Arianna Huffington's latest book, "Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America," makes a number of critical observations about the military-industrial-corporate complex. Chief among those is that, contrary to what Americans were told during the high-flying Ô90s, a rising tide does not lift all boats. In reality, the gap between the haves and the have-nots is wider than ever, and — to use the common metaphor — the same financial tide that elevated the yachts of corporate executives to dizzying heights, seems to have sunk many of those invested in smaller vessels.

The story of the turn-of-the-21st-century corporate scandals, which fueled a stock market boom and bust, left the moneyed wealthier, and decimated the retirement savings of many regular folks, is now common knowledge to anyone with a passing interest in the news. Huffington's book, however, lays out each dishonor in detail, connects the dots from corporate America to the houses of congress, and paints one, tremendous and appalling picture of the decrepit state of the country's financial-political affairs. Moreover, she does all this employing her own brand of gloriously, witty prose.

In her introductory chapter, she tells the story of John Rigas, head of Adelphia Cable, who bilked his company out of billions of dollars. She ponders what makes Rigas and others like him tick. "In 'Without Conscience,'" she writes, "renowned criminologist Dr. Robert Hare identified the key emotional traits of psychopaths. Included in what he called 'The Psychopathy Checklist' were: the inability to feel remorse, a grossly inflated view of oneself, a pronounced indifference to the suffering of others, and a pattern of deceitful behavior.

"Could there be any better example of a person with a grandiose — and sociopathic — sense of entitlement, of feeling that the rules that mere mortals live by don't apply to him, than John Rigas? He thought nothing of 'borrowing' $3.1 billion dollars from his shareholders so he and his sons could live like sultans — even though they were already fantastically rich, by anyone's definition, before raiding the company coffers."

CEOs as psychopaths is only one of Huffington's utterly charming theories. Her attack on America's elected politicians, who allowed this corruption to exist is equally disarming:

"The mad stampede of greed that coincided with the waning of the bull market and the bursting of the loony tunes tech balloon would not have been possible without an unholy alliance between the CEO class and their buddies on Capitol Hill. For a small fee, payable at the beginning of each election cycle-some call such fees 'political donations'; others, less concerned with semantics, political correctness, and charges of slander, call them 'legal bribes' — corporate mandarins can purchase an all-access pass guaranteeing a sympathetic look the other way from our so-called public servants. Sure, for a few weeks last summer, when the WorldCom bomb made them fear for their political lives, our political leaders actually passed a set of reforms. But don't be fooled. Both political parties have a richly vested interest in corporate corruption."

In addition to clearly-told tales of what happened at Enron, Tyco, Adelphia and WorldCom — plus the shenanigans of stock market "analysts," Huffington's book features a number of sidebars which cut to the heart of matters, and allow for a chuckle or two in the midst of the outrage. For instance, in one called "Upstairs - Downstairs" she treats the reader to information such as this:

Upstairs: Former Kmart CEO Charles Conaway received nearly $23 million in compensation during his two-year tenure.
Downstairs: When Kmart filed for bankruptcy in 2002, 283 stores were closed and 22,000 employees lost their jobs. None of them received any severance pay whatsoever.

Upstairs: In 2000, the average CEO earned more in one day than the average worker earned all year.
Downstairs: In 2000, 25% of workers earned less than poverty-level wages.

Other asides, like, "It's a Rich Man's World," read like a Harper's Index of corruption:

According to Fortune magazine, the total amount of money raked in by corporate executives selling company stock even while their companies crashed and burned was roughly $66 billion. With $66 billion, you could:

Fund the annual budget of the FBI, corporate crime-fighting included, for 16 years.

Give 74 times what America currently gives in foreign aid to all of sub-Saharan Africa.

Cover the entire $25 billion America has spent fighting the war against terrorism in Afghanistan. And still have enough left over to give all Afghans more than two times their average yearly income.

Spend 132 million nights with Julia Roberts at the nightly rate she charged as the hooker in Pretty Woman.

Buy 355 brand new 747s from the Boeing Corporation. And even then, during beverage service, the stewardess would only give you half a can of Coke.

Buy 3.3 billion copies of Who Moved My Cheese? But even if you read each and every one, you still couldn't explain why it's been a best-seller for over two years.

Pay President Bush's $400,000 salary for 165,000 years. Although, if he's anything like his dad, you'll only be on the hook until 2004.

Pay the $1.08 million sales tax on Dennis Kozlowski's artwork and still have $65.99 billion left to buy every masterpiece in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Impressionist collection at its assessed value.

Huffington is a witty writer who almost makes the corporate meltdown sound like a series of hilarious pratfalls. However, it would be a mistake to be lulled into a sense of bemused complacency by this book. Reformed-Republican, Huffington, is trying to foment a populist revolution with "Pigs at the Trough" — and now her campaign for governor of California. She makes this clear in several instances, when after telling a particularly egregious tale, she addresses the reader directly saying things like "I hope your blood is really boiling now. But perhaps still not enough to take action. Then try these numbers on for size..." and then launches into another blood-curdling list of crimes against Americans. If that doesn't make her position clear enough, at the end of the book she provides a good-sized list of activist organizations one can join.

Stay informed. Get mad. Use the list. Join an organization. Vote your conscience. That is the message of this book. Whatever one's political leanings, this is common sense advice, but apparently somebody still needed to repeat it. At least it sounds funny when she says it — though, not as funny as Arnold Schwarzenegger pronouncing CA-LEE-FO-NEE-AH.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" August 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

  Fast Food Nation

Eric Schlosser
Perennial

Much like Barbara Ehrenreich's exposé of the lives of the working poor, "Nickel and Dimed," Eric Schlosser's, "Fast Food Nation," reveals the tremendous amount of hidden, human suffering required to provide simple, inexpensive items for the American public. In this case, it is the nation's favorite food, the hamburger, which is being exposed as the root of a myriad of social and economic evils. In the picture that Schlosser paints, before that burger gets into the consumer's hands at the local Mc Donald's, it has created some sort of misery at every step in the process.

There are the ranchers, who are being evicted from properties their families have owned for generations because they can't provide beef at the prices that the fast food companies — the largest purchasers of beef and chicken in the world — want to pay. There are the meat cutters who are primarily illegal aliens, who are exploited by the processing plants that recruit them. They work for minimum wage, have no rights or health benefits and are injured and killed at a higher rate than workers in almost any other industry. The harrowing anecdotes the author provides from the meat-processing world would shock Upton Sinclair.

Once the beef has been cut, it is ground, formed into patties and sent off to Burger King or Mc Donald's franchises. Here the semi-owners of the fast food outlets have to find the best ways to sell it at a profit. It is no picnic, it turns out, to own a franchise since the owner of the company name — and in Mc Donald's case, the property — makes the lion's share of the money. That encourages business people to hire the least trained, lowest paid workforce to serve the public. The workers in fast food establishments remain employed, on average, three months at these jobs. They can't possibly make a living wage when they are mostly kept at part time, or not paid for overtime — as documented in several stories about lawsuits filed by workers who were not paid extra for 70-hour weeks — and have few, if any, benefits.

Then there is the food itself. As recent litigation on behalf of obese Americans has attested, the super-sized, over-fatty, sugary food, which is served up by the ton at burger, pizza, taco and chicken establishments, is unhealthy in the extreme. Since the proliferation of fast food restaurants since the 1960s, Americans have become the fattest people on earth. When premature deaths due to the complications of overweight are the second only to those of smoking, it is clear there is a problem.

But the unhealthy aspects of the food don't stop there. Given the appalling conditions in meat packing plants, the speed at which workers are forced to dissect and the unclean environment in which they perform their tasks, the meat being sold to Americans is tainted by a variety of deadly bacterium including Salmonella, E. coli and possibly, mad cow disease. The government has done little to intervene with this problem because the USDA is woefully underfunded, due to a number of Republican administrations that have forced deregulation in this industry, just as they have in almost every other. Plus the lobbying groups, set up by the meat providers and fast food corporations, have bought and paid for a number of elected officials to keep regulation from hampering their ability to make profits.

All of this is just the tip of the iceberg that Schlosser uncovers, providing information in a thoughtful, readable and well-documented manner. At least a third of the paperback edition is comprised of footnotes, sources and evidence to back up his claims. "Fast Food Nation," is a compelling, if harrowing, testimony to the mayhem the fast food industry has wrought on numerous aspects of modern life.

In the end, Schlosser reminds the reader that, despite the seemingly limitless power of the corporations that run this industry, the public still has the final say. Boycotting unhealthy foods, demanding better wages and working conditions for food workers all along the line, refunding and empowering OSHA and the USDA can force positive change. Let's hope he's right and that Americans will be able to view fast food like any other vice, and, in the words of a former First Lady, "just say no."

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" July 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

 Gilligan's Wake

Tom Carson
Picador

"Gilligan's Wake," is a tasty, chopped and diced chef's salad of brilliantly conceived back story about the characters from the 1960s television series, Gilligan's Island, tossed together with 20th Century American history, a crumble or two of pop culture and dressed with some good, old fashioned, conspiracy theory. Taking each character in turn, author, Tom Carson, allows them all to tell their own stories in first-person narrated chapters arranged in theme song order — "Gilligan; the Skipper, too; the Millionaire and his wife; the Movie Star; the Professor and Mary Ann...". If you thought you knew these characters, then think again. If you thought you knew recent history, then think again. Hell, if you thought Tom Clancy was the master of weaving political intrigue into compelling fiction, then you'd really better wake up and smell the sea air. Tom Carson is the real thing, and this amusingly written, clever take on pop culture is the proof.

Gilligan, it seems, is a beat poet, who has been living in Ô50s San Francisco. He spends his chapter in an insane asylum, on the Cleaver Ward, trying to convince anyone who will listen, (Holden Caulfield, Paul Lynde) that his real name is Maynard G. Krebbs. He's hung out with the likes of Ferlinghetti and aspired to literary greatness, but once the drugs and shock treatments take hold, he needs more than a beret to keep his head together.

The Skipper was a PT Boat Captain during WWII. He and his pal McHale, along with that young rich kid, Jack Kennedy, have some less than pacific adventures. "Well, little buddy, you've probably figured out it was the next morning when all of us on Tallulabonka heard that the 109 hadn't come back. No sign of Jack or any of the crew." The Skipper is a bit of a sad sack, but he tells his blustery, bleak tale in a manner that makes it clear why, all those years later, the Minnow would be lost.

Then there is Thurston Howell, the Millionaire. His story, one of unrequited love and espionage begins the portion of the book where Carson really begins having fun weaving conspiracy tales into historical facts. Thurston is, unsurprisingly, dumber than he looks, mistaking a luncheon with his old friend, Alger Hiss, for and old boys club affair, rather than the Soviet spy recruitment meeting that it is. However, Thurston has enough money to dodge most bullets, except the one that pierces his heart, shot from the uncaring bow of Lovey.

Ah, Lovey Howell. She's a spoiled flapper who is self-involved, wealthy, hooked on morphine and whooping it up with her pal, Daisy Buchanan. She's has no time for, or interest in, Mr. Howell while on her madcap, opium-addled dash through the artist's garrets of Greenwich Village — accompanied by her chauffeur, Bruno "something like Hockman or Hopman." No, she disdains all contact with him until the day she discovers she's not as self-sufficient as she once believed. Drugs will do that to you. "Thurston," she finally says to her erstwhile suitor, "I'm going to marry you. But you had better know that I don't feel the least lovey-dovey about it."

By the time the reader sets ground on the shore of the Movie Star's chapter, Carson has them wrapped around all ten of his typing fingers, but the weather has started getting rough nonetheless. There is nothing ginger in his portrayal of this girl who leaves Alabama, with little or nothing on her knees, to conquer Hollywood. Her mother sends her off with only one admonition. "Jiss whatevuh yew do, juss don' sleep with o coon. Chosen people, Ah'll un'stann', Ah know how mowvies gits made, but yew promse me on the other'n." With that, and an impressive set of boobs Ginger arrives, only to become the object of a million adolescent sexual fantasies. However, this Ginger, who reveals herself to be something of a backwoods philosopher, is more prepared to deal with her effect on throbbing, teenage masculinity than she is to deal with Sammy Davis, Jr.'s effect on her.

The Professor is a graduate of the Los Alamos school of atom bomb-making. He takes great pleasure in having chosen Nagasaki as the second Japanese city to be blown to smithereens, ending WWII. A sociopathic narcissist, he alternates between working for a secret government-behind-the-government and bedding everyone, male and female, in his wake — with a particular penchant for cripples. During his illustrious career spent destroying what little honesty is left in government, the Professor befriends the likes of Henry Kissinger and Roy Cohn, and reveals that Gerald Ford was, as long suspected, just a badly designed animatron.

Lastly, as the song foreshadows, is Mary Ann. Who knew this quintessential, all-American, Kansas-bred virgin went to the Sobornne? By this last chapter, the author's voice has begun to intrude in a way that is less pleasing than the voices of his "fictional" characters. It seems the author has a bone to pick with an ex-girlfriend who betrayed him during high school. While this subplot, woven through several other chapters, is cleverly interjected, it is the least interesting portion of the novel. Despite that bit of flatness, the book is otherwise superlative. "Gilligan's Wake," is a three-hour tour one won't soon forget.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" June 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

 What Liberal Media? The Truth About BIAS and the News

Eric Alterman
Basic Books

Journalist, Eric Alterman's book, "What Liberal Media?" is everything that Bernard Goldberg's, "Bias," is not. It is well researched, well written, footnoted and successfully makes a case that the media is not — as purported by the "powers that be" — leaning precariously to the left. The facts, as he presents them, imply the inverse notion: the Right controls the press. The case that Alterman makes, and seemingly proves, is that conservatives bellow more loudly and effectively than liberals, and have put big media on guard for liberal bias, while simultaneously co-opting the airwaves and publications for their right-wing attacks on anyone with a differing opinion. Alterman systematically examines the purveyors of print, radio, the internet and television to show that most media outlets are, contrary to belief, overwhelmingly conservative.

The television media, most now understand, is in the hands of very few owners, all of which are multi-national corporations. "What Liberal Media?" asks, can a corporation with many financial interests allow its public voice to offer criticism of its moneymaking enterprises? As Alterman says, "While some editors and producers profess to be able to offer the same scrutiny to properties associated with their own companies that they offer to the rest of the world, in most cases, it taxes one's credulity to believe them." For example, "Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of Slate.com, which is funded entirely by the Microsoft Corporation, did the world a favor when he admitted, 'Slate will never give Microsoft the skeptical scrutiny it requires as a powerful institution in American society — any more than "Time" will sufficiently scrutinize Time Warner.'"

So, who cares who own the media, you might ask? The answer is that if major corporations suppress information about their own machinations — legal and illegal — then the traditional, watchdog position of the press is compromised. For instance, during the drawn-out debate over campaign finance reform: "The dramatic events in question dominated domestic coverage for weeks, if not months — a fact that many conservatives attributed to liberal media bias, since Americans, while supportive of reform, did not appear to be passionately interested in he story. But even within this avalanche of coverage, virtually no one in the media thought it worthwhile to mention that media industry lobbyists had managed to murder a key provision of the bill that would have forced the networks to offer candidates their least expensive advertising ratesÉ. Political campaigns have become get-rich-quick schemes for local television station owners, who's profit margins reflect the high rates they charge for political advertisements." The provision ultimately lost, much to the delight of the broadcasters.

And speaking of elections, Alterman's dissection of the 2000 presidential election is masterful in its description of how the decided lack of liberal bias in the press corps helped to sink Al Gore and elevate a man to the white house who did not win the popular, or electoral, vote. "Gore," he says", could and should have won the election by a much more considerable margin than the easily reversibly one he eventually managed. And he might have, but for one key and frequently overlooked reason: the almost universal hostility he inspired in the reporters and editors who covered the race." The national press, as he outlines, vilified Gore's personality, forcing him to run on the issues." (Of course, all candidates should be forced to run on issues, rather than competing in the popularity contest currently held every four years, but that's another story.) Then they either misrepresented his stand on issues, refused to give him credit for winning debates or created headlines about scandals which were proven to be so much thin air, though they were never retracted. After the election, he was further attacked for his fight for the presidency, while George Bush was given the title of president-elect long before that question had been settled. Where is your liberal media Messiah now, Al?

Alterman's look at the downright misinformation disseminated by right-wing pundits — opinions disguised as news, as it were — is both infuriating and frightening. Bill O' Reilly, Ann Coulter and former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan, are among many conservatives who's words do not hold up under the slightest scrutiny. They appear on TV and in newspapers and, in essence, spout a bunch of lies, and no one in the so-called liberal media takes issue with this. In just one example of the hundreds in the book, this one complied by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Alterman points out how Bill O'Reilly manhandles facts.

"During an interview with the National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy, O' Reilly claimed that 58 percent of single-mom homes are on welfare.' When Gandy questioned that figure, O'Reilly held firm: "You can't say no, Miss Gandy. That's the stat. You can't jus dismiss itÉ It's 58 percent. That's what it is from the federal government. But by the next broadcast, O'Reilly was revising his account: ÔAt this point, we have this from Washington, and it's bad. Fifty-two percent of families receiving public assistance are headed by a single mother, 52 percent.'É The following night, O'Reilly came up with more solid figures, but they bore no resemblance to his original numbers: About 14 percent of single mothers receive federal welfare benefits — less than one-fourth of his earlier claim. (He suggested that food stamps ought to be considered a kind of welfare, but that only gets him to 33 percent — still 25 percentage points short.)"

In the end, what Alterman presents is an alarming package, where the conservative rich own the media — and everything else — and suppress most class dissent by crying "liberal bias." Though, in some ways, Alterman's repeated use the terms "right-wing" and "conservative" becomes a kind of shorthand for "corrupt" and "undemocratic," he credibly illustrates why this is likely true with exhaustive examples and documentation. In some ways, this makes for a fatiguing read. It certainly makes for a depressing read.

In the last chapter, "Conclusion, An Honorable Profession," he tries to leave the reader on an upbeat note, but only succeeds in drawing a black box around the obituary he has written for the profession of journalism.

One wonders when the tide will turn from one of rampant conservatism, monopolistic corporate power and the censorship of dissenting opinions, to a new liberalism. Most Americans still consider themselves liberal thinkers, though many "liberals" would be the first to say that they are "fiscally conservative". In other words, they want to believe everyone in need will be taken care of without their help, while they take advantage of "the system" — avoid paying taxes, make a killing in stocks and buy everything they see on the TV commercials shown between infotainment segments — all in pursuit of their personal American dreams. In this ideological climate, it is no wonder that the arguments of conservatives are popular. Yet, the masses like to be on the side of the winner. While the conservatives are on top, the vocal majority will remain allied with them. When the populists rise, as they will eventually, few will be honest enough to remember that they once thought that term was synonymous with street bum.

All it will take is a 21st Century Watergate scandal to put all of the greed that fuels the lies into perspective. Maybe an out-and-out economic depression, that the media and government can no longer obscure with imaginative statistics and interest rate decreases, will do the trick. Let us hope there are still some news outlets that can report the stories that will alert the public. Because, though the malfeasance at Enron, World Com and other corporations, should have awakened the sleeping to the fact that the Emperor is naked, everyone was too busy watching Bill O'Reilly blame welfare mothers or listening to Ari Fleisher blame Saddam Hussein for all of America's problems, to notice. Meanwhile, only a few in the allegedly "liberal media" were connecting the dots to point out what is really destroying the American dream. Cheer up, there's always Prozac®.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" June 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

  Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News

Bernard Goldberg
Perennial

The premise of ex-CBS news producer, Bernard Goldberg's, "Bias," is that the news media is run by a bunch of liberals who are infecting allegedly dispassionate reporting with their leftist slant. It is a premise that he substantiates with great vigor in this book. However, almost any theory can be proven if argued with limited information: "God is dead"; "Faith is alive"; "Men are oppressed in the U.S."; "Women make $.75 on the dollar in comparison to men"; "African Americans attend college in smaller numbers than Caucasians"; "Quotas that favor Blacks are keeping Whites out of universities." All of these arguments can be made, and proven in ways that seem to tell the indisputable truth — but only if half the facts are all that gets presented. And half the facts are exactly what Goldberg presents in "Bias."

A newsroom insider for many years, who had done "a thousand stories for Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News," Goldberg says he finally began to notice in 1996 that network (and newspaper) coverage of current events was being unduly influenced by the predominantly Democratic and liberal members of the press Ð his peers. In response to another reporter's clearly prejudiced coverage of Steve Forbes' presidential campaign, "Bernie" wrote an op-ed for the (conservative) "Wall Street Journal" blasting the TV piece in particular, and the conspiracy of liberally slanted journalists in general. Yes, the Forbes item was clearly partisan and designed to ridicule the candidate. Goldberg was right about this.

As a result of his WSJ editorial, Bernie was chastened by the CBS news staff led by anchor, Dan Rather. Bernie uses a large portion of his overall word count to disparage Dan Rather in this account. He calls him "The Dan," and likens him to fictional Mafia Don, Tony Soprano. While it is probably true that Dan Rather has an inordinate amount of power in the news business — as do all TV stars — Bernie loses his ability to be objective in relation to Rather, and uses the book as a character hit piece. He refers repeatedly to "The Dan," as if this phrase were the cleverest joke he had ever heard, and like many other anecdotes and lame witticisms he inflicts upon the reader, it makes for tiresome reading.

Getting demoted and eventually pushed out of CBS by "The Dan," left Bernie with some time on his hands to stew in his outraged juices and collect the kind of proof he believed would indict the news media. The Forbes piece was undoubtedly a fine starting place for making his argument, and Bernie builds on this cornerstone with several other subjects he believes were covered unfairly by the news. One of the issues that he takes up is the portrayal of homelessness in America. He writes that during the length of Ronald Reagan's presidency, the media aired endless stories about street people, in some kind of deluded liberal effort to blame the presence of beggars on the president. However, when Bill Clinton came into office, he claims, newspeople dropped the issue, as if all the vagrants had suddenly been housed by dint of a Democrat appearing in the White House.

Next, he goes on to illuminate his views on the coverage of touchy subjects such as childcare. Apparently studies show that children should be at home with their mothers, though the news media, he opines, full of working women and feminist husbands, will never tell the public about it for fear that their own lifestyles would become suspect. In another chapter, he writes that the media created the myth of heterosexuals getting AIDS in great numbers. "Where were all these straight Americans with AIDS? I didn't know any," he remarks. Later Bernie admits that it is true that 40% of people with AIDS are heterosexuals, but that most of those were "shooting up." The disease is not, he declares, what the liberal, gay-loving, politically correct media liked to portray as, "The Killer Next Door."

Undoubtedly, many of his points are well taken. Children probably do better with a parent at home to care for them. (The conservative Dr. Laura Schlessinger convincingly preaches this doctrine daily on her ABC radio talk show.) AIDS does infect more gay men than it does heterosexuals. Even homelessness did not end with the Clinton ascendancy. Are these examples enough reason to believe that the news media has been taken over by leftists? A quick perusal of Fox news, where the right-wing, pit-bull, Bill O'Reilly presides nightly, might dispel that belief. Listening to AM radio, and its plethora of Republican pontificators, led by Rush Limbaugh, would also cause one to question whether the media was in the hands of neo-Commies.

As was stated before, Goldberg only presents half of the story in this poorly written, self-serving diatribe. The other half of the story might contain the information that most of the media he writes about is owned by conservative corporations that censor what news is presented. All one has to do is remember the last presidential election, where the news media used every opportunity to remind Americans how boring and taciturn Democratic candidate Al Gore was — rather than to explain his policies — to wonder just how liberal a slant there really is in mainstream news. By not examining both sides of any issue, Goldberg never makes a convincing, case for blanket liberal bias in the media. After reading this semi-literate book, it is surprising CBS news did not get rid of him years earlier for his flimsy grasp of storytelling — if nothing else.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" March 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

 Wonder When You'll Miss Me

Amanda Davis
William Morrow

Like many first novels by young female authors, "Wonder When You'll Miss Me," examines teen life from the perspective of the misfit. Author, Amanda Davis', protagonist, 16-year-old Faith Duckle is the classic, high school outcast. She is fat, shy and has, seemingly, no friends. Her father has passed away and she lives with a mother who neither likes nor understands her. Faith is, for all intents and purposes alone in the world.

The novel begins with an intriguing first chapter, where the reader is introduced to Faith, told that she has just been released from an insane asylum and given the appalling details of the gang rape that led her there. Since Faith is alone and unloved, there is no one to whom she can reveal this story — no one except her imaginary friend, the "fat girl". Since Faith has now lost all her excess weight in lock-up, the fat girl exists as her alter ego, the place where her emotions — primarily those of anger Ñ survive. It is the fat girl who propels Faith to commit an act of revenge, which necessitates her rapid departure from her home and, blessedly, her high school.

When Faith hits the road, to find her only flesh-and-blood friend, — the brother of an inmate at the asylum — the story takes an interesting twist. Her friend is a member of a traveling circus. She finally tracks down the caravan, several states and predictable adventures, later, only to discover that he has left this motley band. Inevitably, she is offered work, and with the help of the fat girl, who goads her into shoveling the elephant shit, joins the troupe.

Despite Davis' fresh look at circus life, and the supposedly, compelling fear of the law catching up with Faith, that dominates the second section of "Wonder When You'll Miss Me," the novel still feels emotionally flat. Reading this book is a bit like watching a method actor who has learned to reach into herself to find the tender roots of her motivations, but has not yet figured out how to get them to register on her face when she repeats her lines. We are told, though the dialogue, that there is something seething beneath the heroine's bland surface, but we are never truly convinced.

Many portions of this story are decidedly emotionless and shopworn, yet Davis' take on running-away-and-joining-the-circus is the one cliché she employs that is worth revisiting. If nothing else, it beats the running away to become a groupie scenario. At this point in history, it is far more satisfying to read about unwashed carneys than to hear another syllable about rock n' roll blow jobs. Ultimately, Faith discovers her inner beauty, loses the fat girl, eludes the police and finds love on the high wire.

Amanda Davis died earlier this year (March 2003) in a plane crash. Her father, James Davis, who perished in the accident along with his wife, Frances, piloted the plane. This was Davis' only novel.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" July 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

 The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold
Little, Brown

"The Lovely Bones," last year's best selling novel by Alice Sebold, has many positive qualities. It is accessibly written. It is compelling. It is innovative in its point of view. Yet, in the end, this supernatural family saga, told through the eyes of Susie Salmon, recently deceased, stumbles and falls flat on its emotionally manipulative hindquarters.

Our narrator, Susie, is raped and murdered at the beginning of this story, and it is through her that the reader witnesses the undoing of her parent's marriage, and her friends', siblings' and murderer's lives, in the wake of her death. On the one hand, the book works marvelously on many levels. Telling the tale from the perspective of one who now feels no pain, in a heaven of her own making, is comforting to all of those who have lost a loved one and fear death. Death, the reader is shown, is a marvelous place, full of lost pets and many of our unfulfilled wishes. Like a good Columbo episode, the book also works at the level of an I-know-who-dunnit. The reader hopes that those on earth will find the clues that reveal the murder. This alone keeps one turning pages.

Where the book fails is in its lack of palpable emotion. Though the feelings of Susie and her grief-stricken family and friend are described, there is a decided hollowness to the depictions. Perhaps the lofty vantage point of the narrator provides too much distance between ethereal heaven and sensuous earth. The earthbound remember Susie and react to her absence, but the reader only witnesses these events; they are never privy to the depth of pain the survivors feel. There are scenes where Susie's father breaks down, or her mother acts out her anguish through infidelity, but the reader is left feeling little in response. This coldness may be precisely what makes the book appealing to readers looking for solace.

Finally, though many a pot may boil over while this book is being consumed like a super-sized candy bar, Sebold's ending is a thorough disappointment. Yes, the family heals. Yes, the friends survive and move on. Yes, the killer gets his just desserts. But when Susie comes back to earth, just "one last time" — in a manner familiar to readers of bad Anne Rice novels — to spend an afternoon with the boyfriend with whom she never got to consummate her love, the book loses whatever credibility it had managed to cobble together.

Steven Spielberg will probably get his hands on this material and fashion a shallow tearjerker from the story. Readers of "The Lovely Bones," will ruefully declare that the book was better. However, that will not necessarily be true. What is true, is that whatever literary aspirations this novel fails to accomplish, it still genuinely fills a void for the many who have made it a success. In this country, we don't argue with success.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" June 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

 Eyesores

Eric Shade
University of Georgia Press

Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, "Eyesores" is a collection of eleven separate, yet fractionally interconnected stories set in fictional Windfall, Pennsylvania. Windfall is a town that has refused to die but instead lies rusting somewhere out of sight of the highway that passed it by. The people in this town, too, refuse to die. They live their chiefly stagnant lives, working as manual laborers, marrying early, cheating on their spouses and getting drunk. What they don't seem to be able to do is escape this place on that elusive highway — though the need to flee and live fully, somewhere beyond the bounds of this rotting town, is palpable in almost every story.

The collection of bleak yet compelling tales in "Eyesores" begins with one about a down-and-out guy who joins a crew of other losers who are supposed to dismantle the local drive-in theater at the behest of the owner — the only man in town with any money. There is a sinister quality from the very first description of the locale that leads the reader, not in vain, to believe that only tragedy can come from the combination of desperation and power tools at the deserted former screening site.

Shade has a gift for describing the lives of adolescents whose most life-affirming acts include pushing stolen property off of abandoned bridges, or successfully concluding their first sexual groping. In some stories, these adolescents have grown into men who can't hold on to jobs or relationships, and have spiritual lives largely devoid of introspection.

The two most compelling stories in the collection somewhat break this mold of internal emptiness. The first is "The Heart Hankers," about a man so insecure that he leaves his wife and creates disaster for himself long before she has stopped loving him. He spend the rest of his days, now a devout Christian, trying to win her back by broadcasting sermons and heartfelt apologies directed at her on the local radio station. As in all these stories, there is no happy ending.

The other standout is "The Last Night at the County Fair," about an adolescent boy living with his mother and stepfather. Our protagonist, Darren, has planned to go with a friend to meet some girls and possibly experience his first sexual encounter at the fair. At the last minute, his milquetoast stepfather, Don, is forced to chauffeur the boys there. He first surprises the two by allowing them go off on their own so they have an opportunity to pursue their glandular impulses. This they do with some success, and quickly enough to catch their ride home. On the drive back, stuck in a traffic jam, they get their second surprise when Don the downtrodden, turns into Don the dynamic. He goes out onto the highway and unexpectedly lassos an errant bull, clearing the road for everyone. Darren is never the same after this night — nor is Don.

These stories, and others, like the notable "A Final Reunion," illustrate Shade's skill in illuminating all the banal-yet-life-changing wonder in a seemingly unremarkable slice of life. "Eyesores" is a book that reminds everyone who moved away, why they did.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" March 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

 The Seven Sisters

Margaret Drabble
Harcourt

When her fortieth birthday came around, my Mother said she "didn't mind". When it was time for 50, she took it in her stride. However, 60, to hear her tell it, was a depressing turning point. "That's when I knew I was old." When there is much less time to pursue the dream than there is to regret its elusivity, the silver years can seem bleak, indeed. That, too is what sixty-something Candida Wilton, believes. Well into her last age, she has lost her husband and home to a younger woman and her children to indifference. Now she lives in a tiny London flat, in seedy Ladbroke Grove, with little to sustain her but her will to live on.

Alone, for the first time in her life, separated from family and what few friends she has, Candida could have faded to ashes and been blown away long before anyone noticed. However, Margaret Drabble has another destiny in mind for the heroine in her latest novel, "The Seven Sisters." Candida is going to live. Initially, only in dribs and drabs. Taking a classics course on Virgil, joining a health club in the neighborhood and buying a laptop computer to keep her first diary since attending the boarding schools of her youth. This is little from which to construct a life, but it is enough to keep her from fading away.

Written in the form of a diary, the reader is privy to Candida's world only through her own eyes. Yet, what remarkably insightful eyes they are. After a disagreeable visit with an old friend, she remarks: "I sometimes think that Schadenfreude becomes a serious affliction for many of us as we grow older. We long for the illnesses and death of others. This is not pleasant, but I fear it may be so." In reference to keeping her journal, she says: "Self-pity is a seductive emotion. One day soon, I'm going to read through this diary and weed out all the passages contaminated by self-pity. If I recognize it for what it is. Which, of course, I may not. It deludes as well as seduces."

Drabble uses her well-honed skill at creating beautiful language and marries it to ruthless perceptiveness, to create, in Candida, a fully-fleshed woman of the third age. At one point, Candida's friend, Julia tells her, " Human beings weren't really mean to live so long. We weren't designed to age we do. We ought to have been killed off long ago, by predators, or scarcities or natural calamities. That's what happens to other species. Other animals don't age as we do." Yet, Drabble's heroine finds an alternative to the death's head reflected in her mirror. She finds the courage, or more correctly, the hope, to soldier on. At sixty, to her surprise, she discovers a life more full than any she could have imagined at twenty.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" March 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

 William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles

Catherine Mulholland
University of California Press

Catherine Mulholland wants to set the record straight: William Mulholland, the man who engineered and built a man-made river that brought life-sustaining water to arid Los Angeles, is not Noah Cross — the incentuous and unscrupulous water pirate from the movie, "Chinatown." On page four of her biography about her grandfather, "William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles" she says of his life story:

"This saga deserves renewed scrutiny, as in recent years the popular media, relying upon old rumors and hearsay, have increasingly presented this water story as a tabloid yarn of water thievery and crooked land deals. One fictional and melodramatic movie, "Chinatown" (1979), has come to be regarded by the uninformed as a kind of documentary work on the history of Los Angeles, while others who hold the city in disdain see the film as a clever parable on the greed and ambition of an upstart town." Or, more succinctly: she is not her Mother's sister.

That may well be the case. Her seemingly well researched and documented account paints a portrait of a man who cared for little but the welfare of his adopted city and his own personal integrity. On the other hand, a simple fact check would have revealed to the author that "Chinatown" was released in 1974, not 1979.

Mulholland was an Irish immigrant who arrived in Los Angeles during the late 1800s. He worked various menial jobs until he landed work with the city's privately owned water company. Like a character from a Taylor Caldwell novel, the destitute Mulholland rose from laborer to head engineer through a combination of hard work and self-education. Moreover, his work led him to develop the twin passions that would color every aspect of his life: to bring water to his desert city and to wrest the control of that liquid gold, and the power derived from it, from private hands and create a publicly owned utility to manage it. Angelenos have him to thank for the Department of Water and Power, which kept them from paying the same outrageous prices for electricity that the rest of the state was subjected to during the Enron-induced power crisis of 2001.

Catherine Mulholland uses the bulk of this 400-page tome to tell the story of the building of the Los Angeles aqueduct. Though she alludes to the idea that the building of this cement river has long been surrounded by controversy, she does a masterful job of exonerating her grandfather from any perception of malfeasance. Yes, she shows repeatedly, there were land grabs and people in-the-know who made a killing on real estate as a result of the building of the waterway — but her grandfather was not one of them. Yes, it is true that the Owens Valley's farmers lost the means to irrigate and now live in a dust bowl instead of a verdant paradise — but her grandfather believed that the good of the many outweighed the good of the few.

Controversy aside, the story of the building of the aqueduct is astounding both because of its audacity and its ultimate success. Mulholland conceived and built a means for transporting water for hundreds of miles, across a desert, with little loss of life, almost a century ago — an accomplishment for which he deserves the accolades he has been accorded. Like the Romans before him, he saw and he conquered. What's more, he did it within budget, without slave labor and created a system that still stands and works.

Catherine Mulholland is a gifted writer. Her use of language is beautifully spare and lightly tinged with humor. Whether or not one believes that her grandfather was the squeaky clean, do-gooder she portrays, her book on this man and his spectacularly singular act — an act without which there would be no megalithic Los Angeles as we know it — is an important literary addition to the city's historical record, and a lively read to boot.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" February 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

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