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Archive for the 'Ross' CategoryThe All-Politics IssueIncluding a crucial principle to considerOctober 1st, 2012 BY TERRY ROSS With November’s election staring us in the face, it’s extremely tempting to throw up your hands, admit that nothing much is likely to change no matter who is elected, and firmly exercise your right not to vote. Besides, as Kevin Baker pointed out in the October issue of Harper’s Magazine, “Why vote? When your vote counts for nothing”: For more than a generation, this has been the central truth of American politics: How you cast your vote has almost no relation to what any candidate actually intends to do. This is not simply a liberal complaint. Conservative voters (sort of) elected George W. Bush president in 2000 because he promised fiscal prudence, limited government, and an end to “nation building” in foreign lands. What they got was a president who, almost from day one, busied himself running up record budget deficits, passed an enormous new prescription-drug entitlement, and attempted to build a model laissez-faire democracy in Iraq. Before Bush, Bill Clinton ran on a pledge to “put people first,” promising tax cuts for the middle class and welfare reform that would supplement benefits with job-training programs. Mr. Clinton had barely taken the oath of office before the tax cuts were deep-sixed in favor of reassuring the bond markets and a balanced budget became one of the administration’s important goals. By the end of Clinton’s presidency, Glass–Steagall and many of the other safeguards that had served to protect us from financial chicanery since the Great Depression had been removed, and welfare had been largely turned over to the states to do with as they saw fit — a major part of the safety net thereby whisked away. As with all the most pernicious trends in recent American politics, the move to uncouple campaigns from any true intentions came into its own during the Reagan years. After decades of echoing the catchphrase of his economic adviser Milton Friedman that “there is no free lunch” and advocating a smaller government, President Reagan tripled the national debt — once again, exactly the opposite of what nearly all his voters were counting on him to do. So voting’s a mug’s game, at least voting for president. And if voting’s pointless, then so is arguing about political issues. Still, in the interest of self-expression if nothing else, I’d like to nominate an ideal to strive for, however hopelessly: fairness.
Posted by: The Editors Shamuses, horses, & queers — oh, my!June 1st, 2012 The Black Lamb Review of Books IX BY TERRY ROSS As editor, I have often taken advantage of our mid-year book issue to comment on my own reading since the previous Christmas, and this issue is no exception. Between that holiday and the New Year, I reread Jaimy Gordon’s She Drove Without Stopping (1990), a novel that had mightily impressed me when I read it shortly after its publication. Then I gobbled up her The Lord of Misrule, which won the National Book Award in 2010. Ms. Gordon can write:
Posted by: The Editors Life & death in an age of medical miraclesApril 1st, 2012 The All-Medicine Issue BY TERRY ROSS The reach of medicine has changed, in my lifetime, beyond all recognizing. The advent of penicillin and other antibiotics, the eradication of polio, even the demise of smallpox have occurred over the last sixty years. With these advances have come open heart surgery and other cardiac procedures, organ transplants, and entirely new ways of viewing and treating mental illnesses. We also now have ways to keep people alive almost indefinitely. Because of these life-saving tools, we have altered our attitude to various life-ending procedures. Assisted suicide is now accepted, although controversial. And abortion is widely available, without stigma. We’ve also changed our attitude to who should decide about such forms of death. Where once doctors pronounced people terminal in their own homes, individual citizens are now routinely asked, not told, in hospitals, when to pull the plug, when to shut down the respirator.
Posted by: The Editors Cruel, but not unusualJuly 1st, 2011 BY TERRY ROSS In the May 18 issue of The Wall Street Journal, I read an article — on the editorial page — that in its way was perfectly innocuous. Still, it made me angry. P. Michael Conn, a professor of medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University’s National Primate Center, and James Parker, an ethicist also based in Portland, Ore., wrote a short piece on the fancifully named Daniel Andreas San Diego, one of nine men left on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Terrorist List” after the death of Osama bin Laden, and the only one who’s an animal rights activist rather than a Muslim extremist. Messrs. Conn and Parker seem to find it disturbing that public opinion polls give Mr. San Diego a fifty-percent approval rating, as compared to the almost infinitesimal support shown for guys who aid al Qaeda, hijack airplanes, or attack American ships. Conn and Parker think the animal-rights “terrorist” belongs on the list.
Posted by: The Editors The sexiness of spring & summer explainedApril 1st, 2011 BY TERRY ROSS Women think men don’t talk to one another — or that they talk only about sports — but it’s not true! We talk. Talk all the time. Talk about this, talk about that. Even talk about panty hose.
Panty hose! Why, back when I was a boy, this loathsome article of clothing didn’t exist. Show me a man who isn’t nostalgic for those days of regular, old-fashioned stockings — the ones that stopped, deliciously, somewhere along the thigh, the ones that were held up by garter belts and those little rubber and metal contraptions — I say, show me a man who doesn’t wish those wonderful sheer leggings had never been replaced by the despicable one-piece nylon chastity belt, and I’ll show you a court eunuch.
Posted by: The Editors The All-Men IssueFour lessons for boys who want to become menFebruary 1st, 2011 BY TERRY ROSS Today I am a For this All-Men Issue of Black Lamb, I received a typically various bunch of essays from our columnists. In our page 2 feature, Beren deMotier admits — no, affirms — how much more she began liking men once she had stopped dating them. On page 3 John M. Daniel narrates a young man’s rite of passage, a failed attempt to savor the masculine world of a would-be Jack Kerouac out On the Road. Dean Suess (p. 4) remembers his penitentiary days and the bizarre attempt of one fellow inmate to get in touch with his true manhood. On the same page, Benjamin Feliciano paints a partial yet affecting portrait of contemporary young men. Ed Goldberg (p. 5) reflects on the differences, real and imagined, between men and women, as does Toby Tompkins in his essay entitled What is a man? (p. 7). Elizabeth Fournier (p. 6) takes a page or two from her book on blind dating to describe some of the sorry slobs she encountered in her quest for true love. Greg Roberts urges men to get out and be hunters — literally or figuratively — if they hope to win fair maidens. A passage from Lorentz Lossius’s Turkey diaries (p. 6) shows us men of a culture different from ours in the West, and Dan Peterson recalls an Italian man among men. All of these essays, with the exception of John’s and Ben’s, are, in a way, almost as much about women as about men. (We’ll have an All-Women Issue in April.) They consider men, and men’s abilities and responsibilities, in relation to women. Which makes perfect sense. But in my own essay below, speaking as man, I’ve chosen to focus on a few things that in the past fifty or sixty years, at least in America, have pertained chiefly to males, young and old. Lesson No. 1: You’ve Gotta Be Tough. Physically tough. Tough enough to take a jab in the nose or a whack on the ear and not cry. Tough enough to mix it up, lick the blood off your lip, and punch someone in the face. Tough enough to endure pain in order to administer pain. To make that crunching tackle on the football field, to use your elbows on the basketball court. To hold your place in line when people try to cut in. To hang onto your stuff when others want to take it. Skinny and underweight? Tough titty. Suck it up, kid. I remember being a skinny and underweight boy and being in more or less perpetual low-level fear of bullies. In my fantasy world, I was a tough boxer; I used to lie on my bed manipulating toy soldiers and cowboys in extended punch-outs. But on the street and in school, it was a different story. And it didn’t change very much once I got into high school, either. There, the sadistic physical education teachers seemed to get a kick out of trying to toughen up the boys, like me, who didn’t like sports where you’re always bumping into people: football and wrestling, especially. It wasn’t until I was out of high school that the daily anxiety disappeared, but even then there was always the background hum of violence: tough guys looking for trouble, angry people spoiling for a fight. As a male, you were expected to be able to hold your own, to want to hold your own.
Posted by: The Editors American dreamerThe secret life of Louis RoslafskyAugust 1st, 2010 BY TERRY ROSS I didn’t know my Grandpa Louie… really know him. My brothers and sister didn’t know him, either. I’m not sure his own son, my father, knew him.
Posted by: The Editors A regrettable decisionApril 1st, 2010 BY TERRY ROSS This is the saddest story I have ever heard. A couple of years ago a close friend of mine, who was moving from one state to another, did a very strange thing. For reasons that I’ve never understood, he decided to get rid of most of
Posted by: The Editors Do inquiring minds want to know?What one curious person discovered about global warmingFebruary 1st, 2010 BY TERRY ROSS When I was in my early teens I used to read — devour, really — the magazine Scientific American. There was no doubt in my mind that I would one day become a scientist. Along with four or five like-minded classmates, I even got to be on a TV panel show discussing science with a science teacher. No one saw the show except our families, because it was on the educational station, but that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm.
This is all by way of prelude to my saying that if I’m not a scientist in any sense of the word, I am still interested in things scientific. Which has led me recently to the subject of global warming. I’ve done my best to read up on the subject, in hopes of discovering whether the predictions of virtually imminent catastrophe are something I should be worrying about, and I’ve made a few discoveries.
Posted by: The Editors California dreamingCultures clash in the land of plenty.May 1st, 2007
Even when you’ve made up your mind to relax and take your mind off the workaday world, when you want nothing more challenging than a nice view, good meals, and no alarm clock — in short, when you go on vacation — the world and its issues have a way of insinuating themselves. The road trip to Los Angeles that Cervine and I made just after Christmas seemed like it would be about as weighty as an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. On our itinerary were stops at Hearst Castle, sightseeing in Santa Barbara and Ojai, meanderings in Hollywood, a visit to the Huntington complex in Pasadena with a tour of the (Procter &) Gamble house, as well as a detour south to see the Queen Mary and, finally, a ramble round J. Paul Getty’s villa in Malibu.
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