The American Prospect articles from May 2002

The American Prospect archives from May 2002

A tipping point? (Comment).(Brief Article)(Editorial)
May 6, 2002... MALCOLM GLADWELL has observed, in The Tipping Point, that trends sometimes build gradually but explode suddenly. As an editor of a liberal magazine, I wonder whether we are nearly at that point with the ascendance of conservatism. For more...

Peace by other means. (Comment).(Israel and Palestine internally deadlocked)(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... IF ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS cannot make peace with each other, what should the United States and the rest of the world do? Merely offering to mediate may not be enough. The descent into savage violence in recent weeks is not just...

Commentoon.
May 6, 2002... I hope it's an altar boy. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Deal Breakers. (Correspondence).
May 6, 2002... MICHAEL MASSING IS grossly misinformed about the American-Jewish community and peace in the Middle East ["Deal Breakers," March 11]. The role of Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians merits no mention in Massing's list of factors...

Not the People's Choice. (Correspondence).
May 6, 2002... ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR., provided an excellent history of problems created by our electoral college process ["Not the People's Choice," March 25]. I was disappointed, however, that he did not mention any alternatives other than his "bonus...

Between Iraq and a Hard Place. (Correspondence).
May 6, 2002... JOHN B. JUDIS'S "BETWEEN Iraq and a Hard Place" [March 25], sensibly suggests that the "containment-plus" strategy is an alternative to invasion or overthrow of the Iraqi regime. Judis writes, "In 1998, when Saddam blocked UNSCOM, the Clinton...

With Victories like These ... (Correspondence).
May 6, 2002... ELLEN S. MILLER'S "WITH Victories like These..." [March 25] is a one-sided critique of the recently passed Shays-Meehan and McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bills. Passage was a net win for two reasons: First, unlimited...

Correction.
May 6, 2002... The legend in chart 3 of Alejandro Portes's article ["Immigration's Aftermath," April 8] is reversed. Math-test scores are denoted by blue bars; inactivity rate by gray.

Loose-lipped Lindsey. (Devil In The Details).(Lindsey Graham leaks Iraq policy)(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... IF (OR WHEN) THE UNITED States invades Iraq, Saddam Hussein will no doubt be the underdog. So we suppose it's only sporting to give him a heads-up--as Republican Congressman Lindsey Graham did on March 26 during a campaign fundraiser in...

Off message. (Devil In The Details).(state governors)(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... OH, THOSE PESKY REPUBLIcan voters, bringing Democrats to grief in the privacy of the voting booth! Except lately, it's their own party that they're confounding. What could they be thinking? Here's Bush strategist Karl Rove, watching blue...

Reform meets its judge. (Devil In The Details).(campaign finance reform)(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... SUPPORTERS OF CAMPAIGN finance reform may want to hold off before popping those corks. Soon after President Bush grudgingly signed the legislation, die-hard Republican foe Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky rushed to court to file a case...

Compassionate conservatism saves the day. (Devil In The Details).(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... At first glance, the administration's new ergonomic "standards" look appalling, and at second glance, worse. They are, of course, not standards at all, but merely targets that companies are free to meet--or ignore. One early sign of the...

Goliath getting bigger. (Networks).(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... IN THE EARLY 1980S, MEDIA critic Ben Bagdikian concluded that there were about 50 owners of the nation's major media outlets. By 2000 that figure had declined to six. A new study by Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America reveals that...

Countering the cuts. (Networks).(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... "YOUR TAX CUTS AT WORK." That's what the three-inch-round, black-and-yellow stickers say. You might find them on the fences surrounding brown fields that aren't getting redeveloped, on the broken windows of your neighborhood schools, or on the...

Roll, thunder, roll. (Networks).(Roiling Thunder Down-Home Democracy Tour)(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... "A COUNTRY FAIR WITH GUTS" IS HOW Jim Hightower describes his Roiling Thunder Down-Home Democracy Tour, which kicked off last month in Dubya's former residence, Austin, Texas. With the president's approval ratings hovering around 80...

Copywrongs. (On The Contrary).(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... IF I DROP DEAD TOMORROW, ALL THE WORK I'VE produced since 1978 will enjoy copyright protection for the next 70 years, until 2072, some 120 years after my birth. If I live another 30 years or so all the work I've produced since 1978 will be...

The real foreign-policy debate; it's not just Democrats vs. Republicans. It's Locke vs. Hobbes. (Below The Beltway).
May 6, 2002... THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION is on the verge of making momentous decisions in foreign policy that will shape the country's role in the world for the next quarter-century. Nonetheless, there is an astonishing lack of public discussion of these...

While the Mideast burns; a dispatch from Jerusalem. (Gazette).(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... "I HAVE TO DROP SOME PAPERS OFF at Zion Square," my wife told a fellow staffer at her office, a news bureau near downtown Jerusalem. "I'll be back in five." Her colleague pointed to one of the flak jackets that correspondents wear for covering...

The mighty Wurlitzer: David Brock's lessons for liberals. (Gazette).
May 6, 2002... DAVID BROCK SAYS HE'S sorry. His extended mea culpa--Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex Conservative--recounts the tale of a recovering right-winger. He describes his journey from unformed gay, vaguely libertarian Berkeley...

Sins of petition: the left gets tricked into opposing cloned embryo research. (Gazette).
May 6, 2002... IN LATE JANUARY, THE NEW YORK Times ran an influential story with the headline "Some for Abortion Rights Lean Right in Cloning Fight." Certain members of the "political left," Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg revealed, had united with...

Oil drill: is ANWR a red herring? (Gazette).(Arctic National Wildlife Refuge )(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... DRILLING IN ALASKA LOOKS like a nonstarter in the Senate. Democrat John Kerry of Massachusetts has promised to filibuster the issue when the energy bill is reopened for debate, and the GOP probably won't muster enough votes to win. But not all...

The unrelenting corporate welfare lobby. (The Taxonomist).(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... IT'S NOT OFTEN THAT I AGREE WITH REP. BILL THOMAS, THE Republican Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. But we're in complete agreement that--contrary to what you may have read in the papers--the so-called stimulus bill Congress...

Who is Roger Hertog? He's starting up a long-shot New York daily and funding The New Republic. But Hertog doesn't see himself as the vanguard of a new conservative movement--yet.(Cover Story)
May 6, 2002... SOMETIME THIS MONTH--ASSUMING ALL THE GEARS are turning according to schedule, on April 16--New Yorkers will have walked to their local newsstands and been greeted by a sight the city hasn't seen in more than 50 years: a new daily newspaper. If...

War on the SAT: with affirmative action rolled back, University of California President Richard Atkinson wants to ditch the controversial standardized test as the be-all, end-all of college admissions.
May 6, 2002... WHEREVER HE WENT IN THE PAST YEAR, University of California President Richard Atkinson was handing out verbal analogies questions: DRAPERY is to FABRIC as (pick one) fireplace is to wood; curtain to stage; shutter to light; sieve to liquid;...

Of mice and monkeys: the brilliant, depthless nonsense of Human Nature. (Film).
May 6, 2002... DON'T GO SEE HUMAN NAture in the art house. Stay away, if you can, from the like minds and the cineastes and the smell of Central American coffee. The place to see a film as fluidly daft, as limpidly out-there as this is at the mall, where you...

Just a story: for someone who knew her, Iris misses the mark. (Biographical Literaria).
May 6, 2002... SOMETIME IN THE EARLY 1980s, when I was still a graduate student in English at UC Berkeley, I received an invitation from a member of my dissertation committee. He and his wife were having a dinner party for a visiting writer, a much-lionized...

Label whores: Bernard Goldberg's Bias points in the wrong direction. (Media).(Critical Essay)
May 6, 2002... LISTENING TO PEOPLE COMplain about bias in the media, you're reminded that there is more than one paranoid style in American politics. While the left has busied itself unpacking interlocking directorates and corporate ownership, the right has...

A General Theory of Keynes.(John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom, 1937-1946)
May 6, 2002... John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom, 1937-1946 By Robert Skidelsky, Viking, 580 pages, $34.95. JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES WAS AN economist, a policy adviser to the British government (and, at times, a coruscating critic), an influential...

Heal, don't harm. (Where we stand: a commentary on public education and other critical issues).(letter calling for health care policy reform and an end to mandatory overtime for nurses)(Brief Article)
May 6, 2002... A few weeks ago, a healthy young man who was donating a part of his liver to save his brother's life, died in one of the country's most prestigious teaching hospitals--a world-class organ transplant facility. How could this happen? Too few...

The do-something Senate. (Comment).(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... THERE MAY BE SOME LIFE IN the Democrats yet, especially in the Senate. They killed drilling in Alaska. They blocked a wretched judicial nomination. They sidetracked President Bush's outrageous effort to make the tax cut permanent, which would...

Catholic crisis, Jewish nightmare. (Comment).(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... THE SOURCES OF MORAL ANGUISH are entirely different, and some on each side may reject--and even resent--the comparison. But as Catholics confront a sex-abuse scandal in the Church and Jews agonize over events in Israel, there are striking...

A low blow? (Correspondence).
May 20, 2002... I AM WRITING TO INFORM you that there are a number of intentional misrepresentations in the article you published entitled "Sins of Petition" [May 6]. First, the subtitle of your article is "How the left got tricked into opposing cloned...

Just a Story. (Correspondence).
May 20, 2002... WENDY LESSER'S ARTICLE on the film Iris ["Just a Story," May 6] was dead-on and beautifully analyzed. I was an actress in Iris Murdoch and J.B. Priestley's play A Severed Head, which absolutely bears out Lesser's analysis of Murdoch as part...

Trouble at High Levels. (Correspondence).
May 20, 2002... I FOUND JASON VEST'S ARTICLE "Trouble at High Levels" [April 8] very refreshing. Rather than offering lefty slander against the Army (as in various British publications), Vest actually did the research, and his article supported his point. Good...

The Democrats' Energy Problem. (Correspondence).
May 20, 2002... I FIND IT DIFFICULT TO accept Paul Starr's assertion that Enron's collapse is not a political scandal in the usual sense ["The Democrats' Energy Problem," March 11]. It is a scandal that George Bush turned over the Federal Energy Regulatory...

Let them eat lead ... (Devil In The Details).(lead testing policy formation)(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... DID KARL ROVE GO ON vacation again? That's the only explanation we can think of for the Bush administration's colossally stupid and morally obscene move toward changing federal policy on lead testing. Although a 1989 law requires that states...

... And read labels ... (Devil In The Details).(warning labels for passenger vans)(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... DON'T BUY THE CANARD that federal regulators under the Bush presidency refuse to do anything. Consider, please, the sudden outburst of activism at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, for you federal-abbreviation...

... And wear masks. (Devil In The Details).(nerve gas incineration and civilian gas mask use)(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... BUT DON'T LET IT BE SAID that the feds are totally indifferent to the plight of common folks--or, at least, those common folks who take them to court. Consider the new program that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has agreed to in...

Merci, no coup. (Devil In The Details).(Venezuelan government)(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... IMAGINE, FOR A MOMENT, the imaginable: that the plotters of the Venezuelan coup did work hand-in-glove with Otto Reich, assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, and his merry band in planning what became the two-day overthrow of...

Sex and liberals! Oh, the horror! (Devil In The Details).(legislator advises against Baylor University)(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... Technically, Baylor University is a liberal-arts institution. But only just barely. In 1999, for instance, Baylor (nestled deep in the heart of Texas) became the nation's first university to launch a research center to investigate "intelligent...

Fast Track's Trojan horse. (Networks).(international trade regulations)(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... WHEN "FAST TRACK"--ALSO known as "trade promotion authority"--passed the House on December 6, many Beltway fortune-tellers expected it to sail smoothly through the trade-friendly Senate. More than four months later, though, the measure's...

Nuking Yucca. (Networks).(nuclear waste dumping at Yucca Mountain)(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS unveiled plans to truck nuclear waste through 44 states before depositing 77,000 tons of it at Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. A central nuclear repository has long been the dream of the...

Enron-zine. (Networks).(The Daily Enron )(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... THE HOTTEST POLITICAL issue of the day hits the coolest communications medium with The Daily Enron (www.thedailyenron.com), brainchild of Mike Lux, the founder of American Family Voices. While not the only sentry on Enron watch, The Daily Enron...

Lies and consequences. (On The Contrary).(suing the government)(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... "THERE ARE LOTS OF DIFFERENT SITUATIONS when the government has legitimate reasons to give out false information, Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the U.S. Supreme Court in March. He was defending the government's right to lie in Harbury...

The tyranny of triangulation: can Joe Lieberman lead? (Below The Beltway).
May 20, 2002... JOHN KERRY AND JOE LIEBERMAN have a lot in common. Both went to Yale. Both are senators from the Northeast. Both are prominent, well-liked members of the Democratic caucus. And both very much want to be president someday. But when top...

The enemy within? The FBI's anthrax investigation turns in on itself. (Gazette).(former lab employees investigated)
May 20, 2002... WHEN ANTHRAX FIRST turned up in letters to journalists and members of Congress last October, much of the public, still shaken from the September 11 attacks, naturally assumed that the perpetrator was an outside terrorist group like al-Qaeda....

As children die: a dispatch from Jerusalem. (Gazette).(social aspects of war)
May 20, 2002... MY SON FOLLOWED ME out of the apartment and caught up with me as I leaned on the fence around the playground, shaking. "What's wrong, Dad?" he asked. He's used to a wordy father, but I couldn't find words, not then. I took a breath, slipped...

Security in the shadows: Congress wants an accountable Tom Ridge. Bush doesn't. (Gazette).(power struggles over national security planning)(Director of the Office of Homeland Security)(President George W. Bush)
May 20, 2002... FOR TOM RIDGE, PRESIDENT Bush's homeland-security director, the storm clouds over his relationship with Congress began gathering almost as soon as his appointment was announced nine days after September 11. From the very beginning, a bipartisan...

Your federal tax dollars at work. (The Taxonomist).(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... TAX DAY HAS COME AND GONE, AND ABOUT 100 MILLION Americans have filed their income-tax returns. For all the grumbling about complexity--fair enough, tax filing is way, too complicated--most of us understand that taxes pay for defending our...

Axis of incompetence: on the shambles that is the Bush foreign policy.(President George W. Bush)
May 20, 2002... IF THE ADMINISTRATION'S FOREIGN-POLICY APPARAT (minus the increasingly isolated Colin Powell) were placed under one roof--Rice, Rumsfeld, and Reich; Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Bush--what watchword would be inscribed over the door? No, not...

The power and the glory: who needs the Christian Coalition when you've got the White House? The religious right's covert crusade.
May 20, 2002... GARY BAUER, CHRISTIAN-RIGHT LEADER AND 2000 presidential candidate, fully appreciates the political perils of the discussion we're about to enter into this early spring morning. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson publicly breached the same...

Kerrey's quagmire: the former senator and the new president of the New School turns the legendary institution into a free-fire zone.(Bob Kerrey)(controversy over school finances and management)
May 20, 2002... ON THE AFTERNOON OF FRIDAY, MARCH 15, THE last day before spring break, New School University President Bob Kerrey made one of his periodic star turns on the Tishman Auditorium stage in lower Manhattan. In his last such appearance, in April of...

What's in a name? Not much, alas, in Hal Hartley's No Such Thing and Rose Troche's The Safety of Objects. (Film).(Brief Article)
May 20, 2002... HAL HARTLEY HAS A FINE name, a bright exhalation of a name, prancingly rhythmic, mildly heroic, suggestive of things boyish, airy, lyrical. A better name, perhaps, for an athlete--a high jumper or a thrower of javelins--than a filmmaker, but...

Organ rejection: why do blacks fear organ donation? (Transplantations).
May 20, 2002... IN THE FILM JOHN Q., DENZEL Washington plays a working-class dad who holds a hospital emergency room at gunpoint to get a heart transplant for his nine-year-old son. The film's critique of health care in the United States is hard to miss: The...

Masterful.(The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate )
May 20, 2002... The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate By Robert A. Caro. Alfred A. Knopf, 1,040 pages, $35.00 THE YEAR 1952 WAS A POTENTIALLY dangerous one for the NATO alliance. Western European nations were fearful of Soviet aggression and...

Ambling into nonsense.(Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush )
May 20, 2002... Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush By Frank Bruni. HarperCollins, 278 pages, $23.95 NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER Frank Bruni has written an instructive, important book about the state of modern American political...

Inventing America.(What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States )
May 20, 2002... What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States By James F. Simon. Simon and Schuster, 348 pages, $27.50 TEN YEARS AGO, I MADE A PILGRIMAGE to Shockoe Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia,...

Growing up hip hop.(The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture )
May 20, 2002... The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture By Bakari Kitwana. Basic Books, 230 pages, $24.00 AT A MEETING I ATTENDED several years ago, a man who did not look all that much younger than me turned in my...

Big John.(Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader )
May 20, 2002... Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader Edited by Michael Streissguth. Da Capo Press, 352 pages, $26.00 WHEN I WAS EIGHT OR so, I asked my stepfather what the difference was between Johnny Paycheck and Johnny Cash. As far as I could tell,...