cheese in motion

Several years ago a friend lent us a book entitled “Somebody moved my cheese”.  the basic thesis of the book was that if you no longer find your nourishment (physical or spiritual) in a familiar place (like a lab rat learns to find cheese at the end of a maze) you must adjust to that fact and learn to find your cheese in a new place. The book then repeats this thesis ad nauseaum for a hundred

Nevertheless, I’ve found myself thinking back on the simple aphorisms of the book quite frequently as I observe this presidential election.

For one thing, and this is a positive thing, we are learning to eat a wider variety of cheese.  Whatever Hillary Clinton’s many flaws, she HAS paved the way for women candidates to be taken seriously.  A black man is probably going to get the Democratic nomination.  In our city, Portland, we just elected an openly gay mayor, and his sexuality was hardly a factor in the election debate.  We’ve come a long way from the plastic-wrapped American cheese of the heterosexual white male.  Clinton’s landslide wins in states like Kentucky are due to voters rejecting the more exotic cheeses. But even they have been forced to expand their tastes.

It’s the matter of the cheese in motion that all the candidates, fail to address. One of the answers to the conundrum of the missing cheese is as my son (who incidentally is on a weight loss diet) noted:  eat less cheese.  We are living in a time of societal change–the end of the era of unfettered consumption that began with the Industrial Age and intensified after world war II. McCain, Clinton, and Obama are all telling us, in varying styles and degrees, how we can get our cheese back.  Whether it be pollution credits, gas tax holidays, regulation of the oil industry, alternative energy, even mass transportation–its all intended to give us back the amount of cheese we are accustomed to.  None of them dare to tell us that we need to eat less cheese–it would be political suicide.

But we are going to have to.  We cannot continue to consume resources at the rate we have been and survive as a species.  Nor can the United States continue to consume such a disproportionate share of those finite resources.  It’s not enough to drive a fuel efficient car; we need to live near where we work.  We can’t import fruit from half the world away; we need to learn to eat seasonally again.  We can’t base our economy on ever-increasing rates of consumption.  Gas prices are going to continue to go up, food prices are going to continue to go up, and we are going to have to learn to cope.

The last president to confront these ideas directly was Jimmy Carter (remember his cardigan sweater?) and he was excoriated for it.  then there’s Al Gore, but he’s distanced himself from electoral politics and can afford to talk about inconvenient truths.

Barack Obama actually mentioned the word “sacrifice” in his Portland speech last Sunday, but he quickly caught himself and changed the subject.  Maybe if he is elected President, he will have the authority and courage to tell us we need to eat less cheese, and who knows, maybe we will all feel healthier for it.

 

gourmet clinton sighting

some friends of ours were celebrating their anniversary at Paley’s Place the other night when a motorcade rolled up, secret service personnel got out, and who should come in to share the dining room but Bill and Chelsea Clinton?

Paley’s Place is one of the best restaurants in town and I can’t fault Bill for craving gourmet food.  But i bet he’s glad he’s travelling without Hillary, because in her new gun totin, God fearin, G droppin incarnation whe wouldn’t be seen dead in an effete place like that.  NO, I’m sure she eats at Shari’s, or maybe the Old Country Buffet.

What is it about ex-presidents and fine dining?  My husband and I once encountered Richard Nixon at Lutece in New York City.  At the urging of his partners conservative wife he approached NIxon and asked for his autograph–which he gave–and then promptly pocketed by husband’s pen.  (proving beyond all doubt that he really WAS a crook).  but I guess by today’s standards, even tricky dick was a latte-drinking liberal.

Bill and Chelsea continued the gourmet weekend by brunching at Mother’s Bistro on Sunday.

 

go portland

You’ve got to love Portland.  This is the place where artists like Richard Thompson and Bruce Cockburn sell out their concerts the first day they go on sale.  Where ladies scream and ask an obscure folksinger like John Gorka to “shake his butt”.  And this is where Barack Obama drew his largest crowd to date, 75,000 strong, on the banks of the Willamette under a beautiful clear blue sky. Coin Meloy of the Decemberists played, continuing that Portland tradition of literate music.

It was nice to gather at the waterfront for a positive, hopeful event like this.  Obama’s speech was not electrifying but it was reasonably meaty for a stump speech, thoughtful, intelligent, and classy.  Not once did he speak down to or pander to the audience.  I do not agree with all his positions–he’s a bit too much of a classic tax and spend New Deal Democrat for my taste–but it is a pleasure to listen to a politician and feel uplifted and inspired, rather than cringing in shame.  the crowd was diverse in age, dress, and ethnicity; I couldn’t categorize it in any way except to say that it was polite and respectful, with an undercurrent of growing excitement. 

I think (dare I hope?) that I just heard our next President speak. 

the wendy gordon health care plan

Sorry, but both the Obama and Clinton health care plans are truly half-baked.  (we won’t even discuss the Republican “option”).  So here goes with the Wendy Gordon health care plan:

1)  Get rid of employer-based health plans. Every person works and everyone deserves health care as a basic societal privilege.  The current employer-based system discriminates against small businesses, the self-employed, artists, restaurant workers, and at-home caregivers. At the same time some individuals abuse the health care system, with unneccessary doctors visits and tests, poor health habits, frivolous lawsuits, and an unreasonable expectation that the medical system can fix their every ache and pain.  Social security disability payments are also grossly abused.  A single payer system puts everyone on an equal playing field.  Every American citizen will receive single-payer national health insurance in two categories a) catastrophic (defined as any hospitalizations, outpatient surgery, or ongoing care for chronic conditions such as multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, or diabetes), b) preventive–well child checkups, semiannual physicals, yearly gynecological checkups, routine tests such as pap smears.

Everything that falls into the gray area in between people can either cover with a private health plan or pay for out of pocket.  i.e:  people who run to the doctor every time they get the sniffles can purchase a plan that covers unlimited doctor visits; people who believe in alternative medicine (chiropractic, acupuncture, biofeedback) can buy an additional plan that covers this.  Prescription medications, unless they fit under the umbrella of catastrophic or chronic illness care, could also be covered by a private plan.

Obviously, what is defined as “catastrophic”, “chronic care”, or “preventive” is a subjective decision, and one that needs to be continuously reassessed in light of new medical discoveries.  I suggest taking this necessarily imprecise decision-making process out of the hands of bureaucrats and health administration officials and leaving it solely in the hands of medical professionals (largely doctors but with a few related professionals thrown in, such as nurses, nutritionists, social workers, psychotherapists, and medical ethicists).

Related changes would also help such as strictly limiting and regulating malpractice suits while at the same time making the licensing and medical practice records of doctors more transparent, and very strictly regulating the connection between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry (no more boondoggle trips, free samples, television advertising of prescription drugs, etc.)

My health care plan could be paid for by pulling out of Iraq and strictly limiting subsequent military spending.  It would put a lot of paper-pushing health care bureaucrats out of work, but maybe they could do something useful, like teach preschool or fix toilets.

 

on to oregon

only one more comment on the endless Obama/Clinton battle, I promise.

Exit polls from North Carolina and Indiana show that the demographic fault lines among voters remain the same.  Osama had to apologize for calling small town residents “bitter” , but he is running for President and can’t afford to offend major voting blocs.  I’m not in that situation, so…

Back in the 1970’s I worked in a health clinic on Obama’s home turf, a desperately poor black neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago.  Besides myself, there were only two other white employees, two middle-aged nurses from the neighborhood of Marquette Park.  Marquette Park, where I was born, is the kind of gritty, working class neighborhood that makes HIlary Clinton want to sit down and swig a shot of whiskey.  It’s also home to a lot of ignorance and prejudice.  These two nurses were none too fond of Jews, which I happen to be.  They would ask me questions like “did I have a housekeeper?” , never mind that I was twenty two years old and didn’t own a house, forget someone to keep it. 

BUT AT LEAST I WAS WHITE.  In their calculations, that made me the lesser of two evils, worthy of coffee break conversation and the occasional invitation to lunch.

The time for the clinics annual Christmas party came around and these two nurses were in a frenzy about all the black cultural festivities about to occur.  The food for one–all that fried chicken and pickled pigs feet.  They made plans to bring in potato chips and onion dip.  And most importantly, the music.  All that scary rhythm and blues (this was before the days of gangsta rap).  In desperation, one of the nurses brought in some heavy metal albums, borrowed from her teenage son.  Mind you, she didn’t like heavy metal any more than she liked Jews.  But at least those noxious headbangers were WHITE.

I suspect a lot of Pennsylvania and Indiana voters–and in even greater numbers kentucky and West Virginia voters, judging by the polls–are making similar value judgements.  They don’t really trust HIllary Clinton, and aren’t totally fond of the idea of a woman candidate, but at least she’s WHITE.  How else is one to interpret these Clinton voters who say that “race” is an important factor in their decision?  Cmon, folks, we’re talking skin pigmentation here.  Obama can’t say the dirty word, but we are talking racism, pure and simple. 

Small town people–especially if they are uneducated and poorly traveled–can be the kindest people in the world if you know them personally or fit comfortably into their worldview.  They will smile fondly at your baby in the stroller, and chat with you in the cafe, and hold bake sales and car washes for the family whose house burnt down.  But if you are different than what they know, they tend to be suspicious.  A friend of mine saw a TV report where some small town Pennsylvanians mistrusted Obama not so much because he was black, but because he used to live in Indonesia–you know, one of those foreign countries.  Who knows, maybe they still practice cannibalism over there.  And his middle name–Hussein–like those terrorists.

Voters have some legitimate reasons  to prefer Clinton over Obama but there’s a definite percentage, “bitter” or not, who voted for her because they are small-minded racists.  There, I’ve said it.

On to Oregon, where, miraculously, our vote really counts, and I promise to move on to other topics.

let them eat waffles

Barack Obama’s campaign has had a hard month, and that is not surprise. As a nation we seem to delight in blowing up our public figures to superhero proportions only to deflate them.  With Obama this dynamic was accentuated because we are a) so desperate for a leader to bring us back from the morass the Bush administration has sunk us into and b) Obama is unusually well spoken and charismatic and c) he fit well as one of the three character actors chosen for this election by the media (the war hero, the woman, and the black man).

My husband thinks that public figures, especially those that aspire to as high an office as the president, should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us folks.  He has a point.  But there is not a human being alive who could stand up to the modern era media witch hunt.  In the case of Obama there isn’t a single thing the media detectives could come up with to smear this squeaky clean overachiever, so they relied on guilt by association.  And they’ve done what they wanted to, cause damage.  While Obama’s first response to the Jeremiah Wright flap was statesmanlike and eloquent, after the media, the opposing party, and his fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton (as well as Rev Wright himself) refused to let the matter die, Obama became angrier, more diffident, more bumbling.  His confidence was shaken; he felt pressured to apologize though he’d done nothing wrong.

Please.  Barack Obama is not the return of the Messiah.  He is not the return of JFK.  Even JFK wouldn’t be the return of JFK in this day and age.  He is an intelligent, articulate, highly ambitious human being who is the best of the three candidates still running and a hell of a lot better than the moron currently in office. 

He’s evidently not as unflappable as the impervious Clinton, whose makeup never smears, voice never hesitates, and has a smile as glued on as Pat NIxon’s used to be.  So what?  Are we electing chief robot?  Let the poor guy eat his waffle.