My Mind 4/17 - 4/23

How I was keeping my mind clean this week:

• Imagining playing with toy cars.
• Feeling guilty about how funny I find news of a priest falling asleep during a suicide hotline call. Spoiler alert: nobody dies.
• Scummy celebrities versus their critics: Baio v. Jezebel and LaBute v. Chicago.

How I was keeping my mind fit this week:

• Wondering with Matt Freeman about raising children in the arts. If the 93% Childless rate amongst NY's Independent Theater as collected by the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation is any indication, the question is not being answered.
• Weighing Tycho of Penny Arcade's response to Roger Ebert saying that video games aren't art. Shorter Tycho: Don't waste your time, Ebert can't take anything away from you.

Important facts:

• A handy chart of where your tax dollars go: 20% to defense, 20% to Social Security, 14% to the safety net, 6% to debt, and then other smaller things. If those are the accurate numbers... it actually seems to me to be about right.
• Another handy chart of sleep schedules. Bottom line: your 20s are an aberration, sleep-wise.
• As polls go, Rasmussen leans furthest to the right, and not for easily-explainable reasons.
• There are 1.1 Million virgins between the ages of 25 and 40. I'm finally part of a minority!
• Voting Yes on Health Care was a big fundraising bump if you were a Democrat. If you were a Republican? Well, we'll never know.
• California's state constitution is the third oldest in the world, after Alabama and India. All three fail to provide political stability or equal access to public services.
• The Double Down is not as bad as many of its fast-food contemporaries. Thanks again, Nate Silver!

Things to watch in the future:

• Will Nick Clegg win -- or at least, break through?
• Will Harry Reid win his financial regulation game of chicken?
• Will Governor Charlie Crist run as an independent?
• Will AIG get in on the action and sue Goldman Sachs?
• Will Viacom back down on censoring South Park?

"Bloggery"

Over at Drama, Daily, there's another defense of theater bloggers in the face of "traditional" critics and their backers. It brings me the same fatigue as Health Care Reform had in the last stretch -- there are some people who are set in their ways, and there are other people who are moving forward with the times. The snippet that's being responded to is:

“Contrary to appearances, there are no “I’s” in “critic,” there are only “eyes.” That is not as needle-pointy as it sounds. You don’t often see first person singular in professional copy. Its unbridled presence in Miss Ellis’ work is the surest indication that there is bloggery afoot.

A critic attends an event as a representative of the reader and keeps the hell out of sight. He’s on assignment, not an adventure. To interject oneself is to create competing lines of focus, one towards the stage and another back to the writer. There are several reasons someone might do this; none are legitimate.”

This view of the critic as disembodied voice reminds me of the debate around CNN's stance as the "objective" network, trying to remove their voice and instead winding up losing in the ratings among those who frequently watch the news.

Jon Stewart is not the most trusted name in news because he injects no personal narrative into his cultural criticism. He is the most trusted name in news because his bias is clear, and because his statements are easily compared to reality -- independently verifiable, and proves reliable.

People should not be trusting cultural critics because they don't use the word "I." They should trust them because they have a trustworthy history.

But anyways, this is a blog. My opinion on this subject clearly isn't a surprise, and few people reading this blog will disagree, since my readers are largely bloggers or blog afficionados.

Really, the reason I wanted to link to this post is because of the phrase "bloggery afoot." I think I'm going to use that, while stroking my moustache, whenever Scott, Isaac, Don, or 99 Seats lays a great post down. It'll be my equivalent of the bat signal.

Things You Can Learn from Canada

No, not Health Care, but dealing with audience response. It's kind of a long post, but it's a sustained examination of feedback -- even simple, knee-jerk responses -- to an evening of their theater. Now, I don't know these folks -- I just like their blog -- but I already get a sense of community and communication that most of us are striving for.

Anger II: A Little More on Malcolm X

I took a moment in the last post to poke at Malcolm X, as quoted by Don Hall, and I did want to mention a profound influence Malcolm X had on my life.

I'm actually a big sucker for speeches -- great flourishes of rhetoric like the one I cribbed from after HCR passed, or the one that nearly makes me cry sometimes, LBJ's speech on behalf of civil rights. The part that always gets me is when LBJ says, in his deep southern twang:

There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem.

And I know that the moment I was 100% behind Obama was the moment when he cribbed the same speech:

Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.

So I definitely went through a phase where I was hell-bent to uncover all of the great American speeches and be sure to listen to them all -- really listen to them. I had them on my iPod (where they more than once came up on shuffle when I was trying to liven up a party... my social life, she suffers!), and I liked to walk or drive while letting the words really sink in.

Malcolm X's "The Ballot or the Bullet" speech was one of those landmark speeches I came across. And I was most interested by a passage that I had never heard associated with Malcolm X before, which goes like this:

The economic philosophy of black nationalism is pure and simple. It only means that we should control the economy of our community. Why should white people be running all the stores in our community? Why should white people be running the banks of our community? Why should the economy of our community be in the hands of the white man? Why? If a black man can't move his store into a white community, you tell me why a white man should move his store into a black community. The philosophy of black nationalism involves a re-education program in the black community in regards to economics. Our people have to be made to see that any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a community where you don't live, the community where you live will get poorer and poorer, and the community where you spend your money will get richer and richer.

Then you wonder why where you live is always a ghetto or a slum area. And where you and I are concerned, not only do we lose it when we spend it out of the community, but the white man has got all our stores in the community tied up; so that though we spend it in the community, at sundown the man who runs the store takes it over across town somewhere. He's got us in a vise.

So the economic philosophy of black nationalism means in every church, in every civic organization, in every fraternal order, it's time now for our people to be come conscious of the importance of controlling the economy of our community. If we own the stores, if we operate the businesses, if we try and establish some industry in our own community, then we're developing to the position where we are creating employment for our own kind. Once you gain control of the economy of your own community, then you don't have to picket and boycott and beg some cracker downtown for a job in his business.

It's an amazing principle, that's based on the idea that any system can be transformed, given an understanding of the system. Unfortunately, history proved that it wasn't that easy -- probably for similar reasons to the "Move Your Money" campaign that doesn't appear to have much traction (reasons like me).

It's just a pity that this isn't what Malcolm X was known for -- or the parts of his philosophy where he talks about the social health of the community.

Our First Week of National Health Care

This:



Leads to this:

Glass doors at the Monroe County Democratic Committee in Rochester, N.Y., were also broken by a brick. An attached note read, "Extremism in defense of liberty is not a vice," a quote by the late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, known for his libertarian views.

Foretold by this:

Rightwing Extremism -

Star Trek News

Alright, I have some serious news to discuss.

1) The Borg are responsible for Health Care.

2) Kirstie Alley was Lieutenant Saavik? I mean, Lieutenant Saavik? I just lost a piece of my childhood.

Forecasting! Woo!

Every once in a while I check in with the future and try to lay down tabs on what I think the future is going to be like... I have about a 50% success rate (oh Secretary of State Richard Clarke...). It's the political equivalent of brackets.

Since January, my "2012 election bracket" had Scott Brown in the nominee slot for the Republicans. He has one major advantage: plausible deniability from the Bush Era. Don't forget how much of a boon Obama got from not being part of the US Senate that approved the PATRIOT Act (which only Russ Feingold refused to vote for) and declared war on Iraq. So Scott Brown has enough credentials to run against Barack Obama (although he won't have spent quite as much time in the Senate), and he has the opportunity to craft a new message. And hailing from Massachusetts gives himself the latitude to reach out to Independents without really stepping on the toes of people from back home.

That's, I think, the background to this story, which is about Scott Brown's refusal to say he's joining the 'Repeal the Bill' crowd. Mitt Romney, the de-facto voice of the GOP Establishment (which is kind of how he positioned himself from the start of the '08 Campaign) has come out against it, which is all kinds of stupid. But Romney's problem is Brown's problem too; Brown has said he is not against Massachusetts' Health Care system.

So Brown is at a fork. If in 2012 he wants to run for the nomination, he's going to have to run against Health Care. But if in 2012 he wants to run for re-election, he's going to have to run in favor of Health Care. So there we have the story that posits that Brown hasn't read the Reconciliation Bill yet. Bullfeathers, Mr. Brown. If you haven't had at least a point-by-point summary of what the bill means, you should fire your staff, since you've had five days.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm erasing Brown from my 2012 bracket and waiting to see what happens next amongst the GOP. I'm certain it won't be Palin, or Romney (unless really nobody else emerges), or Pawlenty. If Brown can't untangle himself from Health Care, I'd add him to that list.

"Apologies"

The headline says "GOP lawmaker apologizes to Stupak for 'baby killer' outburst". Judge for yourself:

Neugebauer insisted in a statement that he was not referring directly to Stupak but to the agreement that the Michigan Democrat helped work out with the White House. That 11th-hour deal, under which President Obama said he would issue an executive order pledging that no federal funds be used for abortions, helped seal the last votes Democrats needed to pass the bill.

Neugebauer said his exact words, referring to that agreement, were "it's a baby killer."

"While I remain heartbroken over the passage of this bill and the tragic consequences it will have for the unborn, I deeply regret that my actions were mistakenly interpreted as a direct reference to Congressman Stupak himself," he said.

What a shit apology. To quote a great philosopher: This city deserves a better class of criminal.

Health Care Kerfuffle III: The Senate Bill

The health-care bill provides:

1) Extension of COBRA benefits, allowing people who lose their jobs to remain on their health insurance for up to a year.

2) New regulations preventing people from losing their insurance due to "pre-existing conditions."

3) New regulations requiring insurers to cover dependents until the age of 27, regardless of work or educational status.

4) The creation of state-by-state insurance exchanges. This is the only part of the bill that's complicated, but it's also the most important part. It turns out that this sort of exchange is the mechanism we currently use to provide affordable car insurance throughout the country. The way it works:

• People are required to sign up for car insurance, but the insurance companies don't want to carry them because they're high risk and can't afford good plans.
• The state organizes the people, and divides them between the insurance companies, who are required to accept them.
• The state dictates the terms of these insurance policies to protect the people from being shafted by the insurance companies.

That's what the health insurance exchanges will do. In this case, the insurance exchange policies will be regulated by the Office of Personnel Management. Why them? To ensure that premiums will be no higher than those enjoyed by federal employees, and that they will offer similar coverage with no annual limits. This, by the way, is also the way health care is handled in the country I was born in, Israel. (Don't worry, this system is not the UK monstrosity that we've been warned about).

5) Subsidies to help those with low incomes afford those health insurance exchange plans.

The health care reform might or might not include the public option (probably not, seeing as the Senate is where the reconciled bill has to pass), but if nothing more than the four points above are passed, millions of people are going to have better access to coverage, and better coverage. That's why I think this health care bill is mostly a good thing.

Conversation: Motives

99seats, who I sometimes disagree with but always appreciate listening to, has a post up about the quality of conversation in the theaterblogosphere, which mainly has to do with motives. Money quote:

When Theresa Rebeck writes about the lack of solid structure she sees in young playwrights, the conversation revolves around how it's really about why her plays aren't being well-received or something. When Roland Tec(o) accuses the O'Neill of being a rigged game, it's really about jealousy and sour grapes. When the O'Neill responds, it's really about covering their ass. When I write about the representation of black playwrights, it's really just a plea for more attention. Everyone's motives are questionable and we basically believe the absolute worst of each other. I'd say it's just out here in the blogosphere, but we all know how it is when we meet in the lobby, at the bar after the show, three blocks away from the theatre. (And that's even more gossip, isn't it?) The default is to not take anyone at face value. How do we build communities like that?

The conversation sparked by that piece was responded to by Isaac Butler here (basically, that the motives he's suspicious of are the motives of successful people, and usually he's not a suspicious guy) and by Spencer Ackerman here, who asks:

Would I have opened both barrels on a piece like that if a friend of mine hadn’t written it?

Well, in all honesty, probably, yeah. But that shouldn’t make me beat up on my friend. It should give me pause for when I go all-out on people who aren’t my friend. There should be one rigorous standard — no euphemism, no pulled punches, no intellectual sloppiness, but no unfairness either. Doesn’t mean I have to treat bad-faith arguments as good-faith ones, nor does it mean this blog can’t have fun. It certainly doesn’t mean this blog can’t have friends.

This is another reason I've not been happy about David Cote's "call to arms" for us to engage and enrage. When I look back at the blogosphere as I've been reading it, I haven't seen a reluctance for theater bloggers to spat over the things they feel like spatting over. I've seen all sorts of aspersions cast on the motives or standing of other bloggers--the insults I've seen thrown from Leonard Jacobs towards Isaac Butler or from just about anybody towards George Hunka haven't, in my opinion, served the conversation of theater much at all.

For me, it seems unproductive to question's people's motives when they make statements. For instance, in the example 99seats uses, Theresea Rebeck may be making her comments on the structure of plays because this is her personal belief, or because of her stature as a playwright. Does it matter? When it all boils down to it, even if she has the most corrupt reasoning in the world, if we can't dispute her points on their own weaknesses, then she is correct. If we can't find a cogent and persuasive counter-argument to her points about the structure of plays, then she is correct. If we can, then perhaps she is not. That's the "one rigorous standard" that Ackerman should be applying. That's something we can say to friends, right? "I love you, I respect you, but that last argument you just made has some faults in it."

This is one of the reasons the health-care debate has gone so awry. The Republicans are not debating the plan on its merits. They're simply railing about the "motives" behind the Obama administration. Why? Because it's so much easier! They don't have to make any substantive claims, or battle the Democrats in a forum where winning or losing is left up to the audience. They want to control the debate, so they aim for motives.

Now, I'm not saying we need to pretend that there are no motives. After all, sometimes motives can be part of the argument--if someone is interested in making profit and therefore their prescription for theater is profit-based, and you think that the prescription for theater shouldn't be profit based, then that's a legitimate debate about motives. It's very important to know what people's motives and biases are, as best as you can read them. That's why, for instance, I personally would prefer 99Seats not to be an anonymous blogger (although I can understand why he feels it to be necessary). It would help me understand where he's coming from.

But any argument can be reduced to its motives. If we didn't have motives, why would we speak? The argument itself, however, stands on its own. You can either engage it or ignore it. To fall back to character attacks rather than tackling the argument as put forward itself is not helpful. Liberals failed when they characterized Cheney as evil. When they stick to the rule of law, the systemic demonstration of how and where the law was violated, they can succeed.

In our own private domain, do we weigh other people's opinions based on our perspective on their motives? Sure. When I see a Ben Brantley review of a Richard Foreman piece, I can't help but think that he wants to feel "cool" and "with it" without really understanding the substance of the show at all, and when I see him cooing over a Broadway starlet I roll my eyes. But I still do read his reviews, because in context of his biases I do still often get something out of what he's saying. In fact, that's the power of Critic-o-meter, is that I can get a spread of different biases and imperfect reviews, get a senses to where they disagree and agree, and get a whole opinion.

Grassroots + Power I: First, The Problem

Power, and the structures of power in society, interest me. I've written a play about the colonial power structure (based on Vaclav Havel, the history of Beirut, and the 2006 Lebanon War). I've written essays on art as the performance of political power, and theories on the masses (as they relate to the movie Dark Knight). If I wasn't going down the path of being an artist, I would be studying the Cold War (especially George F. Kennan, who I wouldn't go so far as to call a hero, but certainly an intriguing figure).

I say this because, in a strange way, this somewhat esoteric-sounding set of interests have become the center of our national dialog right now--a dialog that people in my generation take for granted as having been ended, but which a determined fringe continue to place at the center of discussion, the central ideological conflict of the Cold War: what are the responsibilities of the government?

Obviously, this is a genuinely interesting and complex set of issues. But in the Cold War, this became a Manichean conflict, wherein there were only two sides: Democratic-Capitalism and Authoritarian-Communism. For my generation, that Manichean conflict seems rather silly. Most people I come into contact with realize that since FDR, the US has been a socialist country, and that even at the height of Leninism was more capitalist then its ideals would admit (when I was young, I assumed that the Soviet Union had no currency, because why would a country that apportions goods equally need currency?)

This is what the problem is today: in the wake of the Cold War, we need right now to take a deep breath, step back, and really ask: What do we expect from the US Government? What are the responsibilities of government, what powers should it have, and which ones shouldn't it have?

In the last century, we've given the US Government broad powers over interstate commerce, and national surveillance. For instance:

• The US Government now has the right to track people's reading habits
• The US Government now has the right to measure the quality of foodstuffs
• The US Government now has the right to apportion radio wavelengths, deciding who has the ability to broadcast

Those are just three arbitrarily selected issues in which the 21st Century America has power, but the 19th Century America did not. I'm not passing judgment over that.

The problem is, we're not having a healthy discussion as to what our government should or should not be involved in. The Health-care Debate is a clear example of this. I have not yet heard a compelling, intellectual argument on either side as to why government should be involved in health-care. I've heard practical arguments on behalf of government intervention, and I've heard emotional arguments for and against.

It may seem like an academic exercise, but the fact that we're not bringing our critical thinking and intellectualism to bear on this issue is a problem. The Founding Fathers may have written the Constitution on largely practical grounds, but they made sure to explain everything intellectually.

Now, the reason I brought this conversation up is because I commented on a conference call I was on with Kalpen Modi about the 9/11 National Day of Service. This prompted a rather surreal backlash against me from people I've never heard of, who found my blog because of a Big Hollywood article (which I haven't read and am in no hurry to go out and find).

What I was curious about was that they had attacked me for being a naive artist who did not question the power relationship between grassroots organizations and the government that was interacting with them. For example, one of the closest to being a measured response (it starts off as a real comment, and then slides away at the end):

You wrote, "My sense...is this: the Obama Administration wants to create a grassroots arts policy..." This is a contradiction in terms. If the policy is created by the administration, it is not grassroots. "Grassroots," by definition, means coming from the bottom up, from the lowest possible level. What the administration intends is to create the illusion that the policy is grassroots and whoever buys into it is a willing tool of deception.

Partly, this comes from a mistatement on my part. The commenter sees me as advocating allowing the government to come up with a policy which we grassroots supporters will carry out as willing partisans. My meaning was not that. my meaning was that the Administration should come up with a policy that interfaces with the existing grassroots organizations, to help them in whatever they're already doing, rather than creating their own policy and imposing it.

In other words, instead of directly running an arts program, they just want to help arts programs that are already out there. In the same way that the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives doesn't run a church, it just helps existing faith-based programs (that's another good question: does helping existing faith-based programs violate church and state, if it turns out to be truly equal opportunity?).

What the commenters seemed unable to distinguish is what the relationship of power involved is. Here are some hypothetical relationships between government and artists:

• Government A buys art organizations and appoints NEA officers to run them.
• Government B gives the NEA powers to license performances: unlicensed performances are made illegal.
• Government C passes rules saying that the NEA can only fund Pro-America productions. The NEA evaluates grants based on their content.
• Government D creates a web listing of currently existing arts-charity programs, to help donors find them.

Can you spot which option does not involve the governments dictating content to the arts?

Now, Government D (which is the US Government, if you didn't catch my thinly failed allegory) is not controlling the arts. It might be subtly highlighting arts it likes over art it doesn't like, but that's not a gross abuse of power (if you want to see gross abuses of power, see parts one-three).

In the current anti-government liberatarian extreme climate, even the third is considered untenable. Because there is no examination of power going on, no real examination of how the government is getting involved. You just say "the government might be involved" and the response is "NO THAT'S AUTHORITARIANISM."

And in other debates, the same conflation is going on. The current health-care debate is so far centered around comparing the Public Option to Government-Run Healthcare. But it is not. There is currently no mechanism in the Public Option that allows the Government to run Healthcare. However, if the US Government had a public option and was given broad powers to interfere with its competition through regulation, there might be some trust issues to be raised. That's an argument I'd be interested in hearing.

The idea that the government will get between you and your doctor is valid. But only because insurers are already a step between us and our doctors. The current system does not allow you to simply accept whatever treatment your doctor proposes. And the argument that the government will tell your doctor whatever treatments they can or can't prescribe is silly because the FDA already does that.

Those are power relationships. The FDA's power to regulate what procedures are allowed is a power relationship. Having people rely on the US Government's money is a power relationship. The Insurance Companies, however, also have power relationships. They have the power to grant or deny care. We rely on them for their money. And we have very little power over either of them. Our democratic voice is a somewhat indirect check on the US Government (for a number of reasons), and our "consumer choice," in practice, is a rather poor check on insurance companies.

Instead, we need to pit them against each other, because their weapons against each other will be a much better check than our weapons against either of them. When Alexander Hamilton talked about political parties in The Federalist, he talked about how our government was designed on the assumption that government officials would be greedy and ambitious. The way he solved that was by trying to pit the different ambitions against each other.

Artists do need to be wary of the government. The government may propose partnerships in the future that are not so loose and free. But if we don't figure out how to talk about those power relationships, how to understand what really are the checks and balances involved, then we're just going to get into irrational arguments about the powers of government.

Solutions I

I got a smile this morning when I saw the phrase "Guyyedwabian/Culturefuturesque" dropped casually into a fellow arts wonk's blog.

At any rate, I've been focusing on an upcoming more in-depth analysis of the FSG Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement report that I've been swimming in for a while. That's why posting continues to be slow (I usually post in fits and starts, though, so I'm sure you're used to it).

Since my blog-roll is a little backed up and I haven't posted in a while, I thought I'd post something that should become my own little CultureFuture running segment.

When I first started this blog, the question was, "How do I influence the future of culture?" That was the impetus behind the name. Until I got on this arts-wonkery rampage, I didn't really focus very closely on this message. At the time, my belief was that simply talking about the future of culture was a start--and I was right. But it was time to move on to solutions.

When I first started diving into the theatrical blogosphere, I saw everywhere--everywhere!--prescriptions about what was wrong with American theater. Mike Daisey, perhaps, takes the cake for being one of the louder and more forceful voices, but there were a lot of people raising a million issues.

In a way, the problem with the arts is similar to the problem of Health Care: there isn't one thing that needs to be changed, there's a system of problems. And because of the scale of the problems, artists didn't seem to know where to start.

Like in health care (climate change too), I've watched the debate evolve from "What's wrong?" to "What are the solutions?" You start seeing posts like: "Well here's one simple thing we can do..."

For instance: I have a close friend who graduated with a degree in Experimental Theater, but wound up on the front-lines of the health-care battle. She's not actually involved in the healthcare reform debate right now--instead, she works with a small not-for-profit (operating entirely on donated food and office space) whose charter is to find low-income clinics that are being closed, and organize the community to defend them.

The health-care bill is large, but I don't know if that's one issue they've tackled: making sure that hospitals are close. After all, having health insurance won't help if you get a heart attack and have to sit in a car for 25 minutes before a cardiologist can see you. And as the economic crisis and the rising cost of health-care take their toll, more and more hospitals are closing their low-income accessible clinics.

But that's just one part of the puzzle. Keeping track of all the healthcare solutions (tort reform, insurance regulations, public option, defense of low-income clinics, preventative care techniques, etc.) or all of the climate change solutions (smart grid, solar panels, painting roofs and roads white, etc.) is difficult.

So for the arts, I've started hearing solutions that sound reasonable, and should be kept track of. So starting now, I'm going to create a quick bullet-point list of solutions--different approaches or policies--that I (or other folks) think would help the arts. And I want the list to grow. To the point that eventually becomes a checklist. Any artist should be able to look at the list and go: "Which of these do I do? Which of these can I do?"

Without further ado, my current list of solutions. Comment this post if you know of any specific solutions you've come across:

• The Less than 100k Project - Built to address the NY-centrism of the theater world (although the principle could apply to any art discipline), Scott Walters is developing a funding approach to cultivate community arts in small communities. The thrust of the idea is to allow theater groups in small communities that lack theaters to apply for a 3 year developmental process that will eventually wean them into independence.
• Community Storytelling - A conversation I had with Scott about the aforementioned project asked "how do we make such a community theater actually part of the community?" My suggestion was that the theater focus on the stories and history within the community--go into the community, collect their stories, and present them. This invests the community in the product, and serves a needed social function. This idea was inspired by StoryCorps, the Laramie Project, and Anna Devere Smith's work, but as Scott pointed out, rather than having the stories leave the community (such as the way StoryCorps deposits the stories in the Library of Congress), the stories become a part of the community. Not everyone understands what "theater" is or could be, but everyone loves sharing stories.
• Shared Measurement - The company I currently work for specializes in standardizing business processes for Information Techonology companies. As the aforementioned FSG report documents, there is a rise in non-profits standardizing their tools of self-analysis, and sharing the results. In the same way that these metrics allow the for-profit world to study impact, non-profits need to have a more methodical approach to their role in society, both instrumental and intrinsic. My personal belief is that public policy needs to take this up rather than trying to match the foundation's per-project or per-organization funding model... but more on that when my analysis comes out.
  
• Healthcare Reform - We all want Healthcare Reform for a bigger, more universal reason than just the plight of artists. However, the current employer-based healthcare system discriminates against two groups: the unemployed, and free-lancers. Artists are, often, free-lancers (as opposed to the Arts Administrators who are often full-time employees). If a public option for healthcare were to support artists, it would ease the burden of artists attempting to support their healthcare--and might ease the bottom-line of small non-profits that have to spend a lot on healthcare for their employees. It might even help heal the divide between Administrators and Artists.
  
• Creativity Education - The current arts education approach has been, in my experience, a largely instrumental one: music training, for instance, teaches you how to play an instrument, not how to listen to music or how to write music. This is a large failing in the arts, because it tells people that art = craft, not art = creativity. Granted, as Theresa Rebeck rightly points out in her discussion on the topic, these two concepts are not mutually opposed. However, our early arts education stresses craft and ignores creativity, which probably creates the anti-craft backlash later on. Augusto Boal describes some very interesting approaches to what he called "Arts Literacy" that were attempted in Peru at the time--my favorite was where he talks about asking children questions and asking them to answer the questions in photographs. One question was "Where do you live?" and the answer was a photograph of a young boy whose upper lip was chewed off by rats. The teacher asked "How is that photo 'where you live?'" And the boy answered "I live in a country where these things happen." A much better understanding of art than learning how to draw a human face properly.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some solutions, so I'll periodically do this feature again, hopefully with a longer and longer list of solutions.

Health Care Kerfufle II

Ezra Klein continues:

In concert with Andrew's thesis, Britain does indeed have a high rate of amenable deaths. Just not higher than ours. in 2002-2003, Britain suffered 102.81 amenable deaths per 100,000, citizens. America suffered 109.65. This doesn't totally eviscerate Andrew's assertion of cultural difference. It may be that Brits believe they should endure that many preventable deaths while Americans don't believe that but have such a bad health care system that they nevertheless beat out the Brits. But either way, the difference between the American and British health care systems is not that we are enjoying timely and lifesaving interventions while they are forgoing them.

Emphasis mine; the statistics are the most important thing.

In fact, it proves Sullivan's hypothesis that the British are willing to put up with bad healthcare more than Americans. But clearly, Americans would only revolt against the British Healthcare system at a slightly less urgent rate than they're revolting against the current system.

But if Andrew Sullivan praises our right to demand better healthcare, then he shouldn't be surprised that we want to radically change our system. After all, the countries with bigger declines in the amenable death rate are countries like Japan, France, and Australia. If our choice--i.e. the free market--were really improving our healthcare system, then why wouldn't our health rate be continuing to fall?

Second point, from The Reaction:

Consider the following from the MinnPost:

UnitedHealth to sell insurance policies that insure individuals against becoming uninsurable


This links to the following at The New York Times:

UnitedHealth to Insure the Right to Insurance

Basically, health insurance has proven so reliable at falling through for those who need it, that Americans are lining up to insure themselves from insurers.

Health Care Kerfuffle

An interesting thread of conversation came up between Ezra Klein, Andrew Sullivan, and Gershom Gorenberg about the merits and drawbacks of socialized healthcare.

One of the commenters in Ezra Klein's blog referred to the Andrew Sullivan post I linked to above and said that Andrew Sullivan was comparing "the US healthcare system as experienced by Andrew Sullivan to the UK healthcare system as experienced by Andrew Sullivan." To a certain extent, both Andrew Sullivan and Gershom Gorenberg are speaking about their own personal experiences, and how it has affected their opinions toward socialization of healthcare; Sullivan is responding to the UK, and Gorenberg is responding to Israel.

But in Sullivan's other post on the subject, he does point out that Ezra Klein's opinion polls aren't necessarily a better indicator of whether British-style healthcare is better for us than US-style medical industry (I refuse to call it "healthcare" but it is a medical industry). He's right that different countries respond to different systems differently.

But I disagree that Americans living under the NHS would have a revolution instantly. Certainly, I know many Americans who would be extremely frustrated with the healthcare system; that is because I know many people who can afford healthcare under the current system. But for those people who I know who can't afford the healthcare system, the choice between a nationalized healthcare system and no health care at all can't even really be called a choice. It was summed up for me when John McCain said, when asked about his skin cancer, that like most Americans he consulted with his oncologist about the issue. There are many Americans (I don't know if it's a majority or not) don't even have their own GP--they get a doctor when it is direly important, because they can't afford anything else.

But I do agree with you that the NHS is not what we should be looking for. In Ezra's post "The Canada/England Fallacy" he lays out a pretty good argument for not pursuing the British Model: because we shouldn't have a system that disallows those who can seek better health-care to do so. You, Andrew, probably have enough money to get better healthcare for your family than that which the NHS provided you. And so you should. But those who can't afford any healthcare at all--and whose privatized healthcare, if they could afford it, would probably treat them equally as poorly--should have something.

The state of postage in the United States (and other nations in the world) is similar. A government-run entity (USPS) is good for non-urgent mail, and can send registered mail and packages if you want it to. But other private companies (UPS and FedEx) compete with the government-run entity. If the USPS completely failed to provide any worthwhile service, it would eventually collapse--but I use the USPS all the time for letters, and for packages I tend to use UPS.

I'm aware of the pitfalls of socialized medicine. I was born in Israel, where my parents had lived for many years, and it has its own socialized medicine. My parents are ambivalent about socialized medicine; when they were young and poor, they got healthcare that they might not have gotten without its existence. But my oldest brother was born while my mother was not anaesthetized, because the nursing staff at the hospital attempted to give her the run-around because the anaesthesiologist had taken the day off. My grandfather had many troubles with his heart, and spending time waiting for cardiologists to have the time to address him was difficult.

Still, at the end of the day, this issue should be decided on economic models, on a more scientific approach to addressing what methods are most effective for the most amount of people. We want people with a lot of resources to have the best healthcare possible, and people with no resources to have the most healthcare possible. The top should be unfettered; the bottom should be supported.