Monthly Archives: January 2006

I had a long talk the other day with a young friend I will call James, who wanted my take on certain things he has observed. As it happens, his observations are mostly accurate, and they do not paint a very pretty picture, even if there may be a bright spot for him.

James is finishing up his Ph.D.—in a life sciences field— at a prestigious graduate school in the East. About halfway into this process, he noted that much of the research going on seemed to bear little direct applicability to actually helping humans. As his interests turned more clinical, he decided to take the next step, and he is applying to medical school.

For the most part, residents of a state are given preference for med school admission to schools in that state, to say nothing of the extreme difference in tuition charged to non-residents. However, in certain states the preferences are not as pronounced, and, as luck would have it, James lives in one of those states. Thus, he has no particular advantage in his own state, and is discriminated against in most others.

I told him that this was all political. Officials of a particular state have to justify the building of expensive medical schools, and thus show favoritism to their own. Of course, they don’t mention that graduates of these same schools are free to practice anywhere, and many do move out of state.

While this favoritism does not apply to most private institutions, although there is so much government funding of all colleges that distinctions between public and private are becoming more quaint by the day, he observed that there are issues involved with private school admissions, as well. Knowing where he was headed, I tried to inject some perspective:

In an attempt to change their stodgy, WASPy image, private institutions, especially the Ivies, started going whole hog toward bigger and bigger doses of political correctness, during the 1980’s. The trend continues unabated. As a result, these schools embarked on the foolish road toward diversity, as if anyone really cares about the race or sex of their doctor to the exclusion of all else. Lemming like, the state universities followed.

We agreed that the end result is that not only are many marginally qualified people being admitted to med school, but the entire admissions paradigm has been changed to favor sycophantic, memorize-their-notes students who could never think out of the box, and may not even know that the box exists in the first place. If you have complaints about the condition of health care these days, the quality of doctors is an important thing to look at, wouldn’t you think?

James wonders how innovation and even quality can survive in such a stifling environment, and he’s not alone.

Then there’s the cost of the education. With tuition averaging over $30,000, tack on living expenses, books and materials, and these students are looking at a staggering debt load. Contrary to the public’s perception, no doubt fed by the class envy boosting Leftist antique media, doctors are not making big bucks these days, unless they happen to be plastic surgeons in wealthy neighborhoods.

So, James asked, where’s the upside? I reminded him that a physician has one of the most portable skills there is, and he would be free to locate, and relocate, essentially anywhere in the world. At least the government miscreants haven’t ruined THAT yet. Furthermore, Medicine is the most noble profession—period. That it does not always live up to this ideal changes nothing. He can still be as great as he wants to be.

Finally, he mused about the forces of peer respect, pride, and lust for prestige convincing highly competent doctors that they must practice in some overcrowded, undercompensated, overpriced, high stress, major urban environment. Why not, he offered, bring your abilities into a less stressful environment, practice your trade, and actually enjoy life?

I told him not to try to understand why so many are controlled by pride, and just follow his own precepts. Getting away from the stress is a fine concept, and the mobility is the best thing he has going for him.

See…there really is a silver lining.

In light of the recent closings of indie favorites Aron Records and the Rhino record shop in Los Angeles, and the Chapter 11 filing of mall giant Musicland, many are sounding the death knell for the conventional retail record business.

No doubt, this demise was a long time coming. In fact, I would peg the beginning of the downward trend with the 1979 release of The Knack’s debut album containing the hit “My Sharona,” and essentially nothing else but filler material. At a time when record albums were priced under $8.00, this particular product earned the undying enmity of the public because it was the first one issued at $9.00, exacerbated by the lack of anything but the single at the new high price.

This little act of greed by Capitol Records, along with the limited talents of The Knack, pretty much finished the career of that group, but also launched the home-taping revolution, that was to grow into the downloading revolution 20 years later.

Ironically, the industry never properly capitalized on the best thing they ever had, which came out only three years after the “My Sharona” debacle, and that was the audio CD. At last, recorded music really was better than live music (at least regarding the pure sonic experience), since you could have beautiful sound quality with none of the live annoyances. Indeed, this was especially true with classical music, long the gold criterion of audio perfection, as the incessant coughing, so typical of a concert hall experience, along with the scratchiness of vinyl and the hiss of cassettes, were gone forever.

While there were some logical constraints in undermining live music performance, not the least of which was that this was the major source of revenue for non-writer artists, the industry did precious little marketing based on the audio quality, except for insider events. Moreover, they never talked about the more robust nature of the CD medium. That was left to one retailer—The Wherehouse—which was the first to promote the sale of used audio CD’s. A great idea, except it meant that someone other than the record company would be taken care of for a change, so they were temporarily drummed out of the business.

So how DID the majors market audio CD’s? They overpriced the product, to be more expensive than vinyl discs or cassettes, even though the manufacturing cost was far less. Yes, CD’s could have been tagged moderately higher based on perceived value, but not 40-50% higher. Another misstep was the absurdly wasteful packaging, utilizing the long box, that was immediately discarded upon purchase. Despite widespread complaints from the get-go, it took a couple of years for this to finally give way to the shrink-wrapped Jewel Box, even though that packaging mode had always been used in Europe.

And why did the industry first favor the long box? Well, it fit into existing bins that were being used for record albums, and besides, how could they pare down those juicy vendor relationships with printers—themselves caught up in the computer revolution? Unfortunately, the long box fiasco was simply another dumb, short-term logic business decision that only ticked off the young record buyers who could see the obvious environmental disaster of the useless long box, being thrown away by the millions.

The final wake-up call was to come in the late 1990’s. Clearly, a fortune could be made by music copyright holders, if they could literally eliminate the middleman (several middlemen, in fact) and provide the product in mp3 format, direct to the user. This should have been done early in the game, before Napster, and before the binary newsgroups got too big.

But, no. I was involved in meetings pitching the creation of company-owned download sites, and the proposals were all turned down. Care to guess why? The execs said that if they were to do that, then people would steal their copyrights. When I told them that this was already going on, they were in a sort of denial that could only be called schizophrenic. A few years later, they would try to turn back the tide by suing struggling single mothers, whose kids had downloaded a few songs. That sure worked…

Thus, the current $18 audio CD, in a world of $14 movie DVD’s, $15/month satellite radio, $18/month Netflix and unlimited movie rental deals, against the backdrop of very minor presence of I-Tunes, scores of “illegal” download sites, and, yes, artists themselves eliminating the biggest middleman of all—the record company—and selling their wares direct.

How big did the writing on the wall have to be for these guys to notice it?

Apparently, the world has not yet had enough of junk historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Beyond being the official keeper of the FDR shrine, she had a long career at Harvard, and appeared on TV countless times as the Left’s favorite historian. That was before she got caught in a massive plagiarism scandal involving her 1987 book the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. Her first tactic was denial, which soon degenerated into whining self-pity, in that she just made a few clerical errors.

Meanwhile her defenders tried to show that there were merely trivial instances of this admitted plagiarism, compared to the bulk of the book, but that tactic also failed. A settlement was reached with the author she stole from, she was kicked off the Pulitzer board, and I honestly thought that we were finally rid of this miserable phony.

No such luck, I’m afraid.

Dizzy Doris is back with her hagiographic Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

We might start by asking Doris exactly how Lincoln was a political genius, beyond putting together, in her sole opinion, such a distinguished cabinet, including some men who did not like him, or each other. Rather, judge them by their fruits! If they were so great, why did they not prevent the war?

Lincoln’s victory in 1860 only occurred because the Democrats had split between the North and South, and more Southern votes were siphoned off by the Constitutional Union party. Considering that the Republicans’ platform of being antislavery in the North and in the territories, but supporting it in the South was all things for all men, the only wonder is that Lincoln did not fare better than he did.

The 1864 election, of course, was a joke since 11 states did not even participate. Moreover, Lincoln did not carry New Jersey, and barely won New York. He carried Pennsylvania by a scant three points, won Connecticut by less than that, and lost Delaware. This, in the face of success on the battlefield just before the election and an estimated 80 percent of the Union Army vote.

Far from preventing the Civil War, a failure that history condemns in at least two of his predecessors, he waged it with astonishing alacrity. Finally, he died before he could supervise Reconstruction, yet the policies he favored were pursued by his successor, who was impeached.

Some genius.

Still, the best of the worst of Doris is yet to come:

Interviewed by Candace Floyd in American Profile magazine, Goodwin is asked what influenced Lincoln’s thinking about abolition leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. She replies, in part…

“It was only when he came up with the understanding that emancipating the slaves was a military necessity that he could legitimately author the Proclamation. He understood that the slaves were helping the Southern cause—by tending the fields so that the soldiers could go to battle, by working in the trenches, by being cooks—so that if he issued the Emancipation Proclamation and turned some of those slaves into free men, they might leave the Army and leave the Confederacy, and that would help the Northern cause.”

How many things are wrong with this outrageous statement?

First of all, the entire war was fought because the South seceded, and was in rebellion, according to the Union. On the other hand, the War was prosecuted by the North as if the South were a separate country, since noncombatants were brutally treated, and vast areas of the South were destroyed, as might befit the invasion of a foreign nation. For the Proclamation to have any meaning, the South would have had to recognize Lincoln as their leader, which they obviously did not do. As difficult as it may be to comprehend in this age of the Federal Leviathan, most people—North and South—had few strong feelings about the national government, and the majority of what they did think was decidedly negative.

Indeed, they were far more likely to identify with their state, thus, and ironically so, the naming of Civil War military units on both sides, by their state affiliation!

Any way you slice it, then, the Proclamation had absolutely no effect in the South, and Lincoln, “genius” that he was, surely knew this. Most real historians agree that the Proclamation was set forth to curry favor with European powers, and put a sudden antislavery patina on the Union effort. The slaves were not freed by this Proclamation, or by Lincoln. They were freed by the 13th amendment (1865).

Slaves were helping the Confederate cause, all right, with tens of thousands of them in the Confederate Army. Many Confederate commanders freed these men during and after their service, and Robert E. Lee himself advocated arming them, and freeing them afterward. As to their impact on the Southern home front, do the math. At no time did more than 15 percent of Southerners own slaves. The fields were tended, as in the North, by older men, women, children, and those who could avoid conscription.

As to the slaves leaving the Confederacy, not only did this hardly ever occur, those that did succeed in leaving were not exactly met with open arms in the North. Certainly, as the fabric of the South weakened, more could escape, but many stayed put. Where could they go, and how would they get there? Or does Doris forget that the so-called Great Migration of Blacks to the North did not occur until after 1910?

But, Doris is back on the bestseller lists with this one, along with national embarrassment Jimmy Carter.

We are reminded of this quote from H. L. Mencken, as maligned in death as Lincoln is built up…

“No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

With colder weather and a full lineup of big-time sports programming, many of us are now becoming seasonal couch potatoes. Worse, there are some who keep it up all year-round. Maybe it’s time we look at the consequences…

From a historical perspective, it does seem quite odd—if not shocking—that our nation, formed with a pioneer spirit, featuring individuals who could be called just about anything EXCEPT vicarious could be so transformed. No doubt, even in colonial times, there were always some who would get unduly wrapped up in the machinations of the latest pop culture icon, but most were far too busy for all that. Besides, mass communication was hundreds of years in the future.

For the transformation to occur, three factors would have to merge, and exert their synergistic influence: entertainment, advertising, and government.

By the late 1930’s the moguls had fully created the studio system, and there was no shortage of Depression-scarred patrons for the Hollywood dream factory. With their iron grip on the media, not to mention the LA Police, the moguls could convince millions to drink the sweet Kool-Aid of the multifaceted fantasy. Ironically, they would succeed far too well: Most of the performers ended up believing their own BS, and when that wouldn’t reconcile with the small dose of the real world that even they had to experience, they would often come to a bad end.

Few movie fans at the time seemed to “do the math,” and ponder why so many sex goddesses, such as Jean Harlow, Lana Turner, or Marilyn Monroe, couldn’t hold onto a man. Even fewer would consider the sexual preferences of certain leading men. Every drug has side effects, and the cinematic drug to cloud reality is no exception.

As to advertising, it was David Olgivy himself who once said “You will never win fame and fortune unless you invent big ideas.” Buy this shirt, get the girl; use this brand of makeup, get the guy; take this pill, cure the disease; buy this brand of car, you will attain status…ad infinitum. Great fortunes were founded on these images, and if Olgivy and company were telling us what to do, and how to think, we didn’t have to think for ourselves.

To be sure, somewhere near the core of the 1960’s social revolution was the desire to break away from all the post-World War II conformity and groupthink. Fair enough, until the 60’s developed its own brand of conformity and groupthink.

This morphing of the man in the gray flannel suit to the sensitive liberal with a social conscience was not lost on the power hungry politicos. If unprecedented Supreme Court action (Brown v. Board of Education–1954) could be enacted in a good cause, why not push the envelope with imperial Court outrages in a bad cause, such as Murray v. Curlett (1963), Miranda v. Arizona (1966), and Roe v. Wade (1973)?

But, this would not be the half of it. Government, in all forms, would grow astronomically from the 1960’s onward, insinuating itself into more aspects of people’s lives than FDR could even imagine. Nor, could he imagine how willingly most people would take to exchanging huge portions of their incomes—and their freedoms—to let Uncle Sugar run their lives.

Perhaps Government’s biggest current fraud, carefully timed to achieve its maximum effect as the Baby Boomers get older and sicker, is its creeping control of what is now called “health care.” True health care would have people exerting responsibility for healthy lifestyles, well before they need the DISEASE care funding scheme, that presently is masquerading as health care. More than that, the entire notion of third party payers in this matter, a far cry from the original model of catastrophic expense health insurance, simply forces the costs upward, and the quality usually downward.

In many ways, this parallels a much older government fraud called public education. At its outset, public schools were simply a bigoted reaction to create an alternative to the highly successful Catholic schools. Now, they serve to indoctrinate millions of pliable young minds into the latest Leftist social engineering modality, along with hilariously distorted history. Don’t believe me? Check out any high school history book.

Just think, this destruction of the American persona can be traced to simple sloth, avarice, and envy. No wonder they are capital sins.