Good morning, Ralph,
We’ve both griped about the press over the years, but there is certainly a wealth of stuff to talk about in this morning’s papers. Before digging in, two necessary disclosures—one to onlookers, the other to you.
The disclosure to readers is that you and I go way back. I worked for you on three “Nader’s Raiders” projects, starting when I was 19. I’ve always been proud of this association—and enjoyed the adventures. For instance, the time you locked three of us in a basement—David Zwick, me, and Mark Green (late of the New York City mayor’s race)—and let us come out two months later when we’d finished writing the book Who Runs Congress? Space permitting, colorful and humanizing anecdotes about Ralph’s Early Years will be served up here.
The disclosure to you is that I was among the Nader alums who admired your entry into politics but resented your effect on the last presidential race. There is nothing new to say on this subject. I will never get you to agree that those 90,000 Nader votes in Florida gave Bush the election. You will never convince me that they didn’t. So, I won’t reargue the point—and I’ll try to keep from asking, about each Bush appointee or policy, “Happy now, Ralph?” But since we’re old friends who haven’t actually spoken since the election, I put it on the record here.
Now, the news. Here are a few conversational possibilities:
- Nothing about Catholic pedophilia on the front pages today, but I have to mention Fintan O’Toole’s great piece in the Washington Post on Sunday. Why is this an American rather than a worldwide scandal? Not because Americans are so debauched—or litigious. Rather, O’Toole says, it’s because American Catholics have the “Protestant” sense that they should control or “own” their church’s policy. It’s a Naderish point—the right reading of Naderism, as you taught us, being not consumer rights but citizen involvement. My guess: Two generations from now, the idea of a celibate, all-male priesthood will seem as foggily antique as fish on Friday does now.
- Richard Cohen in the WaPo this morning, making a point I was warming up to present myself. Twenty years ago it would have seemed insultingly obvious to say that disagreement with Israeli military policy did not make you an anti-Semite. That is still obvious (as Cohen notes) in Israel itself. But in America, a combination of conservative Christians and Likudnik Jews has started waving the anti-Semitism flag as reflexively as Marion Barry once used the “racism” defense to any criticism of his regime. I can’t provide a link to Clive Crook’s latest column in the National Journal, since it’s on a proprietary site, but he makes the same point very well from a European perspective. Yes, there are anti-Semites in Europe, but concentrating on them tells you nothing about a reasonable settlement between the Palestinians and Israel.
- Front-pager in the NYT about the latest doomed effort to control medical costs. Say what you will about the Clinton health insurance plan, now nearly a decade in the past. This problem isn’t going away, and in the long run, I can’t believe that Americans would hate a “single payer” government-run program, modeled on Medicare, more than they hate health insurance companies today.
Lots more possibilities, but that’s it for now. Over to you, Ralph.
