2005 – Page 5 – Jonathan Rowe

Those Lawyers

Lawyers occupy the top tier in the demonology of the Bush Administration, right next to taxes and Saddam Hussein. Lawyers are responsible for high medical costs, the shortages of flu vaccines, the travails of small businesses and the flight of U.S. jobs abroad. As representatives of “judicial process”, they even share the blame for the nation’s vulnerability to terrorists, according to a new Administration report.

But while the polemical brush is broad, the actual target is more specific. In actuality, the Administration doesn’t have a problem with most lawyers; some of the President’s closest advisers fall into that group. The lawyers he doesn’t like are the ones that represent ordinary people injured in some way by interests that give Republicans a great deal of money, such as medical doctors and major corporations. When the shoe is on the other foot — when those interests are suing ordinary people and using the “judicial process” to extort money from them and harass them to death — then it ‘s a different story.

Where’s Hoover?

The inkjet printer represents one of the worst business models ever devised. They sell the things for practically nothing. “What?” you think. “I can buy a printer for less than a hundred dollars?” Then you discover that the cartridges cost twenty-five to thirty dollars each, and that they wear out all the time, so that you’ll pay for the printer several times over within a year or two.

Not only that. They make a slightly different cartridge for each series of models, so that you can’t interchange them. If you had a stash left over from your old printer, too bad. They design them to be hard to refill — with most types you actually have to use a drill. If you do refill anyway, the cartridge won’t send the proper signal back to your computer, so the control mechanism gets thrown off.

Speak out for the World our Kids Will Live in

Frank Luntz, the Republican focus group wizard, says a magic phrase for Republicans is “for the children.” Talk about kids, and voters are with you.

So what do people who care about our habitat talk about? The “environment.” “Sustainability.” They talk about abstractions that have zero affective content for those who have not bought in already. The environment is the world we inhabit. Sustainability is about the world our kids will inhabit. Why can’t we talk about them that way?

Federated May, Starbucks Will

Boston was tired and a bit grimy when I was a child there in the ’50s. Even Fenway Park was just an old place where the Red Sox played, near the tire outlets and Sears Roebuck store. But then there was Christmas. You’d walk across the Commons in the biting cold, next to your father in his big overcoat. There were reindeer, crèches (butt out, ACLU) cheery Christmas music, a canopy of lights on the bare trees overhead.

You’d cross Tremont Street, and enter the shopping district where the department stores were. There were four or five of them back then: Jordan Marsh and Filenes of course, but also Raymond’s at the low end and, if memory serves, Gilchrist’s and R.H. Sterns at the high. The rest of the year the store windows had boring adult stuff. But at Christmas time they came alive. There were Santa’s workshops with mechanical elves. Little trains chugging merrily through snowy landscapes. All from Switzerland I believe, with loving attention to detail.There even was a real life St. Nick, who waved to us kids as we pushed and yammered for a look.

The ‘We’ in Social Security

It’s been just a month or two, but already it seems like 50. The focus-group maestros and message masseuses are out in force. (It’s personal accounts, not private accounts.) The megabuck ad campaigns are rolling into place. The folks who brought us the Swift Boat ads in the presidential campaign now are going to maul the American Association for Retired Persons, which has committed the crime of opposing the president’s plan.

I am talking of course about the Social Security debate, which quickly has become a dreary reprise of everything that has made big-time American politics such a numbing turnoff.

Bush and Kids: Standing Small

President Bush may be asserting friendship with “Old Europe,” as Donald Rumsfeld, his defense secretary, famously called it. But it is no secret that the Bush administration holds that part of the world in less than high regard. Time magazine reported that the Bush people frequently call their European allies “Euro-wimps.”

Well, guess what? When it comes to standing up for kids, those “Euro-wimps” have shown a lot of guts of late. The Bush people, to put it politely, haven’t.

Quiet the Cell, Hush the Bus

I love tools. I stop at hardware stores sometimes just to look at them. The utter economy of a screwdriver and hammer feels almost cleansing in a society built upon diseconomy and waste.

Technology is another matter. Technology is what happens when the tool becomes the task, rather than just a means of doing the task. Usually it doesn’t so much solve problems as shift them around and create new ones. Cars, televisions, cell phones — we all could make a list.

Take and Take

I had this lawyer. Some big guys were suing me and I had this lawyer. The big guys, they used all the tricks. Shopped for a friendly forum. Pleaded hardship and poverty, even though some of them are rich as sheiks.

They won the first round, but no surprise there. We’d win on appeal I thought. I kept waiting for the lawyer to file. I was patient. The wheels of justice turn slowly, and all.

Tricycle Man

Which comes first, prosperity or virtue? Jack Kemp, then a vice-presidential candidate, argued in a debate with Al Gore that material wealth comes first. Enact “supply side” tax cuts, boost the churn of money through the economy, and virtue will follow as heat follows flame.

There actually is a lineage to this line of thought. It goes back to an American economist by the name of Simon Patten, who was prominent around the turn of the last century. Patten tried to reconcile the burgeoning consumer culture with the traditional values of probity, hard work and thrift. It was the old virtues, Patten said, that had to go. The new economy would usher in a new and finer form of humanity, with more discerning tastes and more philanthropic views.

Air Fare

Selling is your business, your reason for being. Then you discover that people are shopped out. They want to simplify their lives.

What do you do?