To start, what I think the news should be covering, what is not a distraction in my eyes, is the health care debate as it's a key issue for our well being-- however you see it. Other important things are going on (wars, climate questions, civil rights) but nothing with such an immediate impact on us all.I know some, who have reliable insurance, think it's not an issue to them, but if the costs keep going up, it will be. The insurance corporations have said if they are forced to cover the people who they currently kick off of insurance for any reason they can find, they will up all our premiums; so you can bet it's going up.
Thanks to 'special interest' politicians on both sides, Americans are confusing "insurance" with actual medical care. The cost of this insurance is going so high (and if you don't know how high, it's because your employer pays it) to keep the profits high for those corporations and benefit the stock market. What insurance has to do with health care is stand between the sick and extremely high medical bills-- except today it does not always do even that. Whatever good it actually does the sick is being done through higher and higher premiums to keep the stock market looking good and the profits high enough for those CEO salaries.
So when I saw that Roman Polanski was arrested, I was upset. Not because I care if the disgusting rat goes to prison. He deserves prison for what he did to that girl. Sorry but Lolita was a disgusting view of girls and anybody who is buying into that is sick. A thirteen year old deserves to be protected. Too bad her mother didn't agree. But my upset wasn't that he would be dragged back to this country kicking and screaming; it was that I knew the media would be covering it-- every disgusting detail will find its way into the
It became quickly another tool for the fools who whined (because a few Hollywood celebrities defended Polanski) that it shows the difference between the good people and the bad. The story goes that the good people, Republicans, want Polanski to spend serious time in prison for raping a girl and skipping out before he could be sentenced. Democrats think it's been too many years to worry about it, the girl has been paid off, he isn't doing bad things today (so far as anyone knows), and he had a lot of bad things happen in his life. Well there is a third view from we who wish the courts would handle it and we could quit reading about it and him.
If that wasn't enough distraction from the important issues like what to do about Afghanistan or Iran's nuclear weapon program, we had Obama going to Europe to try and get the Olympics for Chicago and the United States. Now this kind of thing is what a lot of leaders do and since it was an overnight flight, short speech, it really was a non-player for how long it took (except to the partisan right who didn't mind Bush going on vacations to Texas regularly but a trip to Europe-- definitely bad) but then it became a news story when the United States didn't get the Olympics.
Once again news distracted itself from actual information on the health care proposals (of which there were many that week). Instead it was-- What did the loss mean for Obama's political future? I will tell you the answer. It meant exactly nothing. Those, who supported him before, still do. Those, who didn't, hope every falter is the end of the road.
As for the media, we saw videos of Rush Limbaugh chortling over it as though he thinks this will have made Obama ready for a nervous breakdown. Failure. Oh the woe. How can
Last week there were a lot of stories again about Sarah Palin. Her ex-future son-in-law is evidently going to pose for Playgirl (does it get any ickier than that?) and she has a best selling book putting her back in the news distracting from say what should we do about the prisoners in Gitmo who cannot be released, cannot be tried because of torture, and some fear our US prisons aren't sufficient to hold. (How are we holding the other bad guys?)
Palin didn't write her book but worked with a politically oriented ghost writer which is not unusual for celebrities. You can bet this book will be about politics and not about her personal life beyond whatever sounds like Mother Knows Best. If you hoped for the truth of her life, her family (maybe even written by her), that book is somewhere down the road. This one is all about getting big fees for speaking and maybe becoming the next Republican candidate for president.
Her title, Going Rogue, was an interesting choice. A rogue animal is one that interferes with the effectiveness of the herd, that threatens all around it. Does Palin really know anything about nature, life or anything beyond herself? Did someone trick her into using that title?
An interesting side-note to the Palin distractions was a journalist who suggested the reason Republicans want her is because she annoys the left so much. So in other words the pleasure that the right gets at maybe running her for president is because the left goes completely crazy at the idea? Okay then should the left run Michael Moore? Just a thought...
And finally to distract from the (some democrat and all republican) Senators stonewalling the public option was the story of David Letterman having had affairs. Oh the shock. A famous celebrity, who was also famously marriage shy, had an affair-- or rather multiple affairs with women who worked for him.
There are those who will never watch his show again. Of course, they never watched it anyway but that's not what is important here. It's making the point that the right wing doesn't approve of sex outside of marriages, between employees and bosses, or maybe kinky sex anywhere.
I won't even go into the Ensign story coming up again because about now I am thinking I need a glass of Merlot-- for my health...
I do kind of wish that President Obama would have held back on the health care issue until the economy were repaired but I also think that whatever is done will not really fix the problem. If the economy were not in such dire straits I think the insurance issues would be easier to address and without so many distracting other things going on, the talk could be more focused on the actual problems affecting insurance.
ReplyDeleteChange no longer seems to be done to benefit the people but to benefit the corporations bottom line. There are a lot of things that need to be changed but I doubt that I'll ever see many of them in my lifetime.
I never watch the news anymore, and yet somehow I stay informed. Most of the stuff on the airwaves is blustery infotainment. High calorie, low nutrition brain food. It helps to shape the conversation, but fortunately with the short attention span of most viewers, the conversation is mercifully short-lived.
ReplyDeleteThe real health insurance debate is going on behind closed doors. That's the real story.
People aren't aware of how much this health care problem is sucking up our economy. My daughter manages their small veterinary clinic where she said she could afford to hire two more employees or give raises to the ones they have and hire one more if they didn't have such high insurance costs. People mostly have no clue how high those costs have gone. Insurance is sucking our economy dry and it's only going to get worse if we don't get a Congress with some guts and who aren't in the pocket of those executives. This is an issue of the economy.
ReplyDeletePoliticians need to sit in a doctor's office and watch what goes for ordinary folk ! You are so beautiful Rain...:-)
ReplyDeleteLazy journalists using non-stories as their topic (because they can make them sensational) is the norm these days. You have to really search for important news. It's disgusting!!!
ReplyDeleteExcellent commentary Rain. I really do not think the Letterman deal is a right or left thing. Maybe a little because he is such a big Democratic Supporter and he has lambasted every Republican that has ever had a sex scandal. But he has gone after Dems for sex scandals too. I guess the main partisan issue is that having sex with a woman that works for you used to be one of the things that the left screamed the loudest about. That even a consensual relationship was not allowed because there may be sexual harassment involved. Then after Clinton the left changed their entire tune even the liberal womens groups that had been the loudest voices prior to the Lewinsky affair. Oh well just my 2 cents on that one. I really don't care about it much. Letterman has not been funny for several years and now has proven that he is a total pig. If his ratings do not suffer then I guess it is OK for him to be a pig. But I am pretty sure if it came out that Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity had done the same things as Letterman there would be cries for government intervention and law suits and picket lines and all sorts of screams. Similar to all the rhetoric about the possibiity of Rush becoming a minority owner in an NFL Football team. Why does Al Sharpton get a say in whether Rush can own a football team. Seems to be a double standard.
ReplyDeleteAnyway I wandered there. I give Congress about a 2% chance to get Health Reform even remotely close to correct. They are going to mess it up and make it even more expensive and then blame somebody else for the problems that they make worse.
The issue about NFL is probably money which is usually the bottomline. when an owner is controversial and makes some people really angry, it might impact sales. I think it's that simple.
ReplyDeleteOn health reform, I am worried that that is exactly what will happen. Olympia Snowe expressed her concern about the same thing. If costs can't be brought down, than forcing everyone onto insurance will be like the TARP with high salaries for some and the shaft for everyone else.
Just finished viewing the movie, "Soloist". Nathaniel Ayres didn't want medical care for what we consider to be his mental illness. But he did need a friend - reporter Steve Lopez.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 10, I had a very high fever and my family doctor could have put me in the hospital but preferred to visit me at home three times the first day and then twice a day for several days and a week later he was still making house calls once a day. There was a healthy amount of friendship in his care. Now there are so many people and too few doctors. I expect in ten years I will be visiting a robot supported by a team of assistant friends.
To me there can't be a right bill. The health care system is like a tangle and what change we make is a tentative beginning but most importantly it is a beginning and the most important thing is to keep the momentum going to working it all into a functioning system.