The latest polls in this week before the Republican caucuses in Iowa show surprising levels of support for the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. (Frankly, at this point in the fascinating prelude to the "silly season," with polling showing a dizzying sequence of "flavors of the month," I'm not sure we should be surprised by anything.) And so I find myself doing some reading about what Congressman Paul has to say (and has said over the years) about issues of importance to me.
Dr. Paul was an obstetrician/gynecologist before he went into politics. Despite the fact that he has now been in politics for many years (a member of the House as far back as the 70s), he has nevertheless been more than willing to tell people what he really thinks about a broad range of issues. This, for those of you who completely ignore the U.S. political scene, is most unusual.
There was an interesting recent thread on a listserv to which I subscribe, one whose members are interested in emergency care. My colleagues on this list go "off topic" (meaning they discuss things of marginal relevance to emergency care) quite often, which is maddening to some and quite entertaining to others. One of the frequent contributors is an ardent proponent of libertarian political philosophy, and he has taken opportunities to enlighten the rest of us about some of Congressman Paul's views.
Those who are disposed to challenge the libertarian perspective - and who don't much care for Ron Paul - have posted messages about controversial statements made by Dr. Paul over the years. And so a recent thread was launched (perhaps I should say spun, as one would surely find a challenge in the physics of launching a thread) about whether Paul believes in evolution.
It seems the good doctor has some uncertainties about this, and this has led many participants to draw conclusions about his critical thinking skills and about whether all of that education in the sciences was somehow lost on him.
So I did a bit of reading on the Web to find out what the congressman has actually said, and I find myself inclined to agree with him. Not about the soundness of the theory of evolution, but about its place in public discourse in the context of a presidential campaign.
The Republican caucuses in Iowa are strongly influenced by Christian conservatives, and these are people who typically have very definite views about evolution. They tend to believe that evolution and intelligent design are competing theories about how life as we know it came to be and that these theories should be taught side by side in public schools.
Professional educators - particularly those who run public schools - are fiercely opposed to this notion and say it is preposterous to expect teachers to present articles of religious faith alongside scientific theory with some sort of implication that they are equally "plausible" - when, in fact, they represent two entirely separate ways of thinking about life.
So it isn't possible to have a public discussion of evolution and creation and how these ideas relate to each other without getting into the morass that is the highly politicized and emotionally charged controversy surrounding public education and its connection to separation of church and state.
I might like to know what Congressman Paul has to say about that - and I consider it much more important than what he thinks about the theory of evolution. The libertarian position he espouses actually makes his answer to this question pretty straightforward: questions about evolution are strictly a matter of one's personal beliefs and inclination to think in scientific versus spiritual terms, not terribly relevant for a politician, unless one gets into the messy argument over public education, which can be largely avoided by getting the federal government entirely out of the business of public education and giving parents tax credits to let them choose whatever schools they want (or none at all, opting for home schooling).
Yet we will still have public schools (there seems no easy way around that), and so we will have state and local school boards making decisions about curricula. If they decide to include intelligent design, there will be challenges in the federal courts on church-state-separation grounds. Thus it becomes more important to ask Ron Paul how he is going to find Supreme Court appointees who agree with his originalist interpretation of the Constitution. That means what the framers had in mind, which was simply that there should be no official Church of the United States as there was a Church of England - not that religion or religious teaching should be excluded from all spheres of life touched by public dollars. And if he can find some, can he get the Senate to confirm them? Good luck with that, Congressman.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
A Lump of Coal from Medicare
If you're 65 or older, or the Social Security Administration has declared you disabled (or if you have chronic kidney failure), you are covered by the federal health insurance program called Medicare. This is a good thing: it has kept many millions of senior citizens from becoming medically indigent.
But there is a growing gap between what Medicare pays to doctors and hospitals for caring for its beneficiaries and what it costs to provide that care. There is also a gap, growing even faster, between what Medicare pays and what commercial health insurance (also known as "real insurance") pays.
This is not because commercial insurers are generous. Rather, it is because the federal government has decided that the way to slow the growth of the Medicare budget is to pay the providers of health care services less (in inflation-adjusted dollars) each year.
A large part of the reason so many hospitals struggle to stay in the black is that many of the services they provide to Medicare beneficiaries are paid for at rates so low as not to cover the cost of providing the care.
It wasn't always this way. In the 1970s Medicare paid hospitals for what they did, with a bit of a margin. This is called a "cost-plus" system of financing. But the feds decided that was much too expensive, and in the 1980s they implemented a new system in which hospitals were paid based on what was wrong with the patient. If they could care for the patient for less than Medicare paid for the patient's diagnosis by being very efficient, they did well. If it cost more than that to get the patient well enough to be discharged, the hospital took a loss. This was supposed to give hospitals an incentive to be more efficient.
But life is full of unintended consequences. If innovations become available that improve the quality of patient care, will hospitals use them? When the system of health care financing pays for the patient's diagnosis, not for the treatment provided, this favors innovations that prove to be cost-efficient, while those that improve quality but increase cost may fall by the wayside.
Fortunately hospitals also get paid for taking care of many patients who have real insurance, so the potentially stifling effect of this system of financing on innovation has been substantially mitigated.
Nevertheless, as our nation's population gets older and sicker, and the proportion of patients covered by Medicare grows inexorably, more and more hospitals will be squeezed harder and harder.
The situation for doctors is just as bad, but the approach has been different. In the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 a new formula was introduced: the Sustainable Growth Rate formula, or SGR. As its name implies, the purpose of the SGR was to keep growth in Medicare expenditures for services provided by doctors within the realm of sustainability.
Each year a complicated calculation tells the folks at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) how much growth is permitted in payments to doctors for taking care of Medicare patients. If the allowable growth in expenditures is less than the projected growth in expenditures, CMS must adjust for this by paying doctors less.
While on its face this seems patently unfair, there is a rationale based on a certain school of thought in health care economics. The idea is that physicians have a degree of control over utilization of resources. They have some flexibility in deciding what tests and treatments to order or recommend. So the system is devised to give them an incentive to do less. The less they do for Medicare patients, the slower the growth in Medicare expenditures. The slower the growth, the less likely it is that the projected rate of growth will exceed the sustainable growth rate (SGR). Then, instead of getting paid less every year for what they do, they might even get paid a little more.
There are several obvious problems with this approach. First, it assumes that physicians act as a group, in the interests of the group and all its members. After all, if I am constantly looking for ways to practice more cost-efficient medicine, but my colleagues are not, I will not benefit from a reduction in the rate of growth in expenditures. It is only if we are all singing from the same hymnal (the metaphor seems apt on the eve of Christmas) that we will all reap the benefits of economizing.
Second, it assumes that SGR-driven reductions in payments are a sufficiently powerful incentive to physicians to take a less-is-more approach to patient care, when many other factors are pushing them in the opposite direction. These other factors include a focus on doing what is best for the individual patient, with an emphasis on diagnostic certainty and state-of-the-art testing and treatment; a natural inclination to pursue the best possible health outcomes regardless of cost; and concern about the consequences of missing something by being less than very thorough, including the possibility of ending up a defendant in a medical malpractice lawsuit.
For quite a while now, the projected growth rate has exceeded the SGR more often than not, meaning CMS is supposed to reduce what doctors get paid for what they do for Medicare patients. And, more often than not, Congress has intervened to prevent the cuts. Each time that happens the gap between actual growth and "sustainable" growth gets bigger, and so each year the cuts that would be triggered by the SGR grow larger. On January 1, 2012 it would be 27%, except that Congress is about to enact a two-month reprieve to give itself yet another opportunity to figure out what to do about this absurd system.
Why should you, if you are not in a health profession, care a whit about whether doctors get paid poorly by Medicare? (And believe me, the difference between payments by Medicare and those for services provided to patients with "real insurance" are sometimes eye-popping.)
Think about CMS as an employer. If your employer decided to pay you less every year for doing the same work, while other employers were giving raises at least enough to cover inflation, how long would it take before you started looking around for other opportunities?
Now imagine you are a doctor who takes care of a diverse population of patients. Some have real insurance. Some have Medicare. Some have Medicaid (the publicly financed health insurance for the poor). And some are uninsured. If you want your practice to be a going concern, you have to limit the number of patients who have no insurance and cannot pay. You probably also must limit the number on Medicaid, which generally pays very poorly for services rendered. It is now getting to the point where more and more doctors are realizing they must limit the proportion of their patients who are on Medicare.
They are not sending letters to their Medicare patients telling them to find another doctor. But they (actually their receptionists) are saying no to new Medicare patients. They have no choice. They have practice overhead to cover: mortgage payments on the office, utility bills, staff salaries, purchases and maintenance of equipment. Oh, and they want to maintain their own personal income, too, because they have educational loans to pay off, families to support, children's college tuition to pay or save for, mortgage and car payments - you know, the same stuff the rest of us worry about. They may drive fancier cars or live in bigger houses, but they're a lot like you.
Expecting doctors to practice cost-efficient medicine - to get the biggest bang for the buck when making decisions about tests and treatments for each and every patient they see - is reasonable. Expecting them to take responsibility for "unsustainable" growth in Medicare expenditures, when that growth is rooted in so many factors beyond their control, is not reasonable. And punishing them when growth in expenditures exceed targets that are based on a deeply flawed formula is decidedly unreasonable.
When you or your parents reach the age of 65, it's going to be harder to find a doctor who takes Medicare patients. That's why you should care.
But there is a growing gap between what Medicare pays to doctors and hospitals for caring for its beneficiaries and what it costs to provide that care. There is also a gap, growing even faster, between what Medicare pays and what commercial health insurance (also known as "real insurance") pays.
This is not because commercial insurers are generous. Rather, it is because the federal government has decided that the way to slow the growth of the Medicare budget is to pay the providers of health care services less (in inflation-adjusted dollars) each year.
A large part of the reason so many hospitals struggle to stay in the black is that many of the services they provide to Medicare beneficiaries are paid for at rates so low as not to cover the cost of providing the care.
It wasn't always this way. In the 1970s Medicare paid hospitals for what they did, with a bit of a margin. This is called a "cost-plus" system of financing. But the feds decided that was much too expensive, and in the 1980s they implemented a new system in which hospitals were paid based on what was wrong with the patient. If they could care for the patient for less than Medicare paid for the patient's diagnosis by being very efficient, they did well. If it cost more than that to get the patient well enough to be discharged, the hospital took a loss. This was supposed to give hospitals an incentive to be more efficient.
But life is full of unintended consequences. If innovations become available that improve the quality of patient care, will hospitals use them? When the system of health care financing pays for the patient's diagnosis, not for the treatment provided, this favors innovations that prove to be cost-efficient, while those that improve quality but increase cost may fall by the wayside.
Fortunately hospitals also get paid for taking care of many patients who have real insurance, so the potentially stifling effect of this system of financing on innovation has been substantially mitigated.
Nevertheless, as our nation's population gets older and sicker, and the proportion of patients covered by Medicare grows inexorably, more and more hospitals will be squeezed harder and harder.
The situation for doctors is just as bad, but the approach has been different. In the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 a new formula was introduced: the Sustainable Growth Rate formula, or SGR. As its name implies, the purpose of the SGR was to keep growth in Medicare expenditures for services provided by doctors within the realm of sustainability.
Each year a complicated calculation tells the folks at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) how much growth is permitted in payments to doctors for taking care of Medicare patients. If the allowable growth in expenditures is less than the projected growth in expenditures, CMS must adjust for this by paying doctors less.
While on its face this seems patently unfair, there is a rationale based on a certain school of thought in health care economics. The idea is that physicians have a degree of control over utilization of resources. They have some flexibility in deciding what tests and treatments to order or recommend. So the system is devised to give them an incentive to do less. The less they do for Medicare patients, the slower the growth in Medicare expenditures. The slower the growth, the less likely it is that the projected rate of growth will exceed the sustainable growth rate (SGR). Then, instead of getting paid less every year for what they do, they might even get paid a little more.
There are several obvious problems with this approach. First, it assumes that physicians act as a group, in the interests of the group and all its members. After all, if I am constantly looking for ways to practice more cost-efficient medicine, but my colleagues are not, I will not benefit from a reduction in the rate of growth in expenditures. It is only if we are all singing from the same hymnal (the metaphor seems apt on the eve of Christmas) that we will all reap the benefits of economizing.
Second, it assumes that SGR-driven reductions in payments are a sufficiently powerful incentive to physicians to take a less-is-more approach to patient care, when many other factors are pushing them in the opposite direction. These other factors include a focus on doing what is best for the individual patient, with an emphasis on diagnostic certainty and state-of-the-art testing and treatment; a natural inclination to pursue the best possible health outcomes regardless of cost; and concern about the consequences of missing something by being less than very thorough, including the possibility of ending up a defendant in a medical malpractice lawsuit.
For quite a while now, the projected growth rate has exceeded the SGR more often than not, meaning CMS is supposed to reduce what doctors get paid for what they do for Medicare patients. And, more often than not, Congress has intervened to prevent the cuts. Each time that happens the gap between actual growth and "sustainable" growth gets bigger, and so each year the cuts that would be triggered by the SGR grow larger. On January 1, 2012 it would be 27%, except that Congress is about to enact a two-month reprieve to give itself yet another opportunity to figure out what to do about this absurd system.
Why should you, if you are not in a health profession, care a whit about whether doctors get paid poorly by Medicare? (And believe me, the difference between payments by Medicare and those for services provided to patients with "real insurance" are sometimes eye-popping.)
Think about CMS as an employer. If your employer decided to pay you less every year for doing the same work, while other employers were giving raises at least enough to cover inflation, how long would it take before you started looking around for other opportunities?
Now imagine you are a doctor who takes care of a diverse population of patients. Some have real insurance. Some have Medicare. Some have Medicaid (the publicly financed health insurance for the poor). And some are uninsured. If you want your practice to be a going concern, you have to limit the number of patients who have no insurance and cannot pay. You probably also must limit the number on Medicaid, which generally pays very poorly for services rendered. It is now getting to the point where more and more doctors are realizing they must limit the proportion of their patients who are on Medicare.
They are not sending letters to their Medicare patients telling them to find another doctor. But they (actually their receptionists) are saying no to new Medicare patients. They have no choice. They have practice overhead to cover: mortgage payments on the office, utility bills, staff salaries, purchases and maintenance of equipment. Oh, and they want to maintain their own personal income, too, because they have educational loans to pay off, families to support, children's college tuition to pay or save for, mortgage and car payments - you know, the same stuff the rest of us worry about. They may drive fancier cars or live in bigger houses, but they're a lot like you.
Expecting doctors to practice cost-efficient medicine - to get the biggest bang for the buck when making decisions about tests and treatments for each and every patient they see - is reasonable. Expecting them to take responsibility for "unsustainable" growth in Medicare expenditures, when that growth is rooted in so many factors beyond their control, is not reasonable. And punishing them when growth in expenditures exceed targets that are based on a deeply flawed formula is decidedly unreasonable.
When you or your parents reach the age of 65, it's going to be harder to find a doctor who takes Medicare patients. That's why you should care.
Monday, December 12, 2011
We are the 2%!
False beliefs abound. In few areas of public discussion is this more true than health policy.
One of these false beliefs is that emergency care is terribly expensive, and that we could save a lot of money if we could just somehow see to it that everyone who goes to a hospital emergency department with a problem that is not a true emergency could be re-directed somewhere else.
So ... is that true or false?
As with so many other things, it depends on how you look at it. And, with a complex proposition such as this one, it is important to recognize that it has several interdependent parts.
If you've been a patient in a hospital emergency department (ED) for something that you might have seen your primary care doctor about, if you could get a timely appointment, you surely noticed that the bill was higher than it would have been at the doctor's office. There are, as you may know, two fundamental reasons for that.
First is that the ED has a lot more "fixed costs" (or overhead) that must be covered by revenues. Second is that we have to engage in "cost shifting." We have a lot of patients who do not or cannot pay, and many more whose form of payment (Medicaid, Medicare) does not cover the cost of the care provided. And we have far more of these patients than the typical primary care doctor. So the hospital must bill paying customers more to make up for the ones who pay little or nothing.
Imagine going to McDonald's and finding that the price of a Big Mac had doubled because half of Mickey D's customers weren't paying for their meals, and so the paying customers had to pick up the tab. You might think Ronald didn't know how to run a restaurant, that he couldn't make a burger for a reasonable price. But the cost of making the burger didn't change - just the price he has to charge you to stay in business. That doesn't happen at McDonald's, because they don't give everybody chicken nuggets regardless of ability to pay. In the ED, we do exactly that. We do it partly because we believe in certain principles of social justice and partly because there is a federal statute that says we must.
So the cost is higher after accounting for overhead, and the price difference is even bigger. And if you have private insurance, the insurance company has ways of discouraging you from using the ED when you could go to your doctor's office instead. For example, if you were sick, but not sick enough to be hospitalized, your ED co-pay might be $100, whereas in the office it would have been $10. And yet people go to the ED anyway. There are lots of reasons for that: convenience, resources available in the ED, and perceptions of the quality and comprehensiveness of care are perhaps foremost among them. Even if you could always get into your doctor's office on very short notice, you wouldn't necessarily go there for everything your insurance company thinks, in retrospect, you could have. You had a kidney stone? That didn't require hospitalization, so you couldn't have been all that sick. You could have gone to your doctor's office. Try that some time, and see how well it goes.
But let us imagine that you really could get care in your doctor's office for every illness not serious enough to require hospitalization, and you could get it in a reasonable time frame. Let us further imagine that your doctor's office was actually equipped to distinguish indigestion from a heart attack and serious from trivial causes of abdominal pain. Let us even suppose that your doctor could evaluate and treat minor injuries not requiring a surgical specialist - and could tell which ones do and do not require such specialty consultation.
How much money could we save?
Do you have any idea what percentage of the U.S. health care budget is spent on emergency care? If you read the headline, you know the answer. That's right. Just two cents of every dollar spent on health care in the United States are used to pay for emergency care.
So if we could just get everyone without a life-threatening problem out of my ED, we would slash the health-care budget by ... a lot less than 2%, because nearly all of them would get care somewhere else, and it wouldn't be free wherever that might be.
In the halls of Congress we hear all the time this nonsense about the need to get all the patients without true emergencies out of those expensive emergency departments. And nonsense is exactly what it is.
We are the 2%! Occupy Capitol Hill!
One of these false beliefs is that emergency care is terribly expensive, and that we could save a lot of money if we could just somehow see to it that everyone who goes to a hospital emergency department with a problem that is not a true emergency could be re-directed somewhere else.
So ... is that true or false?
As with so many other things, it depends on how you look at it. And, with a complex proposition such as this one, it is important to recognize that it has several interdependent parts.
If you've been a patient in a hospital emergency department (ED) for something that you might have seen your primary care doctor about, if you could get a timely appointment, you surely noticed that the bill was higher than it would have been at the doctor's office. There are, as you may know, two fundamental reasons for that.
First is that the ED has a lot more "fixed costs" (or overhead) that must be covered by revenues. Second is that we have to engage in "cost shifting." We have a lot of patients who do not or cannot pay, and many more whose form of payment (Medicaid, Medicare) does not cover the cost of the care provided. And we have far more of these patients than the typical primary care doctor. So the hospital must bill paying customers more to make up for the ones who pay little or nothing.
Imagine going to McDonald's and finding that the price of a Big Mac had doubled because half of Mickey D's customers weren't paying for their meals, and so the paying customers had to pick up the tab. You might think Ronald didn't know how to run a restaurant, that he couldn't make a burger for a reasonable price. But the cost of making the burger didn't change - just the price he has to charge you to stay in business. That doesn't happen at McDonald's, because they don't give everybody chicken nuggets regardless of ability to pay. In the ED, we do exactly that. We do it partly because we believe in certain principles of social justice and partly because there is a federal statute that says we must.
So the cost is higher after accounting for overhead, and the price difference is even bigger. And if you have private insurance, the insurance company has ways of discouraging you from using the ED when you could go to your doctor's office instead. For example, if you were sick, but not sick enough to be hospitalized, your ED co-pay might be $100, whereas in the office it would have been $10. And yet people go to the ED anyway. There are lots of reasons for that: convenience, resources available in the ED, and perceptions of the quality and comprehensiveness of care are perhaps foremost among them. Even if you could always get into your doctor's office on very short notice, you wouldn't necessarily go there for everything your insurance company thinks, in retrospect, you could have. You had a kidney stone? That didn't require hospitalization, so you couldn't have been all that sick. You could have gone to your doctor's office. Try that some time, and see how well it goes.
But let us imagine that you really could get care in your doctor's office for every illness not serious enough to require hospitalization, and you could get it in a reasonable time frame. Let us further imagine that your doctor's office was actually equipped to distinguish indigestion from a heart attack and serious from trivial causes of abdominal pain. Let us even suppose that your doctor could evaluate and treat minor injuries not requiring a surgical specialist - and could tell which ones do and do not require such specialty consultation.
How much money could we save?
Do you have any idea what percentage of the U.S. health care budget is spent on emergency care? If you read the headline, you know the answer. That's right. Just two cents of every dollar spent on health care in the United States are used to pay for emergency care.
So if we could just get everyone without a life-threatening problem out of my ED, we would slash the health-care budget by ... a lot less than 2%, because nearly all of them would get care somewhere else, and it wouldn't be free wherever that might be.
In the halls of Congress we hear all the time this nonsense about the need to get all the patients without true emergencies out of those expensive emergency departments. And nonsense is exactly what it is.
We are the 2%! Occupy Capitol Hill!
I Think, Therefore I ... Should Turn Off News Reporting on Politics
During a recent debate featuring candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich expressed the view that a compassionate, humane approach is called for in dealing with undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States for many years.
Gingrich pointed out that it makes no sense for members of a party so focused on the family to want to deport immigrants who have built lives and families here, thereby breaking up those families.
In observing that doing so is neither humane nor compassionate, Gingrich sounded much more like a centrist or moderate than most people think he is. Of course a review of his statements and actions when he was Speaker of the House during the 1990s reveals that he was definitely capable of taking a centrist approach, as evidenced by the various things that were achieved through the joint efforts of the president and the speaker.
The next day this aspect of the debate was reported by CNN. Call me old fashioned, but I think news reporting is a matter of telling people what happened. Of course a bit of context is helpful, and it is entirely reasonable to include something about reactions to what someone has said.
Suppose one of the other candidates had responded by saying, "Newt! That's amnesty! Don't you remember what happened the last time we did that? The floodgates opened. We cannot do that again."
That would have been something to report, but that didn't happen. And it's too bad, because it would really have been interesting to see how Gingrich, who loves history and champions the importance of studying history to avoid repeating mistakes, would have handled it. No, in fact, none of the other candidates replied in a memorable or effective way.
So, absent anything good in the way of a response to report from the debate itself, CNN turned the matter over to its pundits. And I'd be OK with that, because I am a pundit myself - I have a certificate suitable for framing from the online University of Punditry - and I am usually interested in hearing what other pundits think of the events of the day.
That, however, is not what the pundits did. No, instead, they launched into speculation about how what Gingrich said would be received by voters - particularly conservative Republicans in Iowa. All day - OK, maybe not literally, but it sure seemed so - the pundits droned on about how conservative Republicans in Iowa (they may have mentioned New Hampshire or South Carolina, but Iowa was the focus) would not like what Gingrich had to say.
This statement, the pundits said, was sure to go over poorly with Iowa's conservative Republicans, would likely affect Newt's standing in Iowa polls, and might very well torpedo his chances of a big win in the upcoming Iowa caucuses.
This goes far beyond the proper role of a pundit. The reporter tells us what happened. The pundit provides context and gives us some perspective on the news. It is not the pundit's proper role to tell us what to think about the news.
In other words: Now hear this, all you pundits. You may tell me what you think. Do not tell me what I should think. Do not tell the conservative Republican voters of Iowa what they are expected to think or how they are expected to react.
Surely many of you have noticed that the news networks have gone far beyond reporting and analysis. This is not good journalism. So here is my recommendation. Watch the debates, and then turn the television off. Do your own thinking. If you want to know what to think, don't ask me. I will tell you what I think, but don't adopt my thoughts as your own, if you want to stay out of trouble.
Gingrich pointed out that it makes no sense for members of a party so focused on the family to want to deport immigrants who have built lives and families here, thereby breaking up those families.
In observing that doing so is neither humane nor compassionate, Gingrich sounded much more like a centrist or moderate than most people think he is. Of course a review of his statements and actions when he was Speaker of the House during the 1990s reveals that he was definitely capable of taking a centrist approach, as evidenced by the various things that were achieved through the joint efforts of the president and the speaker.
The next day this aspect of the debate was reported by CNN. Call me old fashioned, but I think news reporting is a matter of telling people what happened. Of course a bit of context is helpful, and it is entirely reasonable to include something about reactions to what someone has said.
Suppose one of the other candidates had responded by saying, "Newt! That's amnesty! Don't you remember what happened the last time we did that? The floodgates opened. We cannot do that again."
That would have been something to report, but that didn't happen. And it's too bad, because it would really have been interesting to see how Gingrich, who loves history and champions the importance of studying history to avoid repeating mistakes, would have handled it. No, in fact, none of the other candidates replied in a memorable or effective way.
So, absent anything good in the way of a response to report from the debate itself, CNN turned the matter over to its pundits. And I'd be OK with that, because I am a pundit myself - I have a certificate suitable for framing from the online University of Punditry - and I am usually interested in hearing what other pundits think of the events of the day.
That, however, is not what the pundits did. No, instead, they launched into speculation about how what Gingrich said would be received by voters - particularly conservative Republicans in Iowa. All day - OK, maybe not literally, but it sure seemed so - the pundits droned on about how conservative Republicans in Iowa (they may have mentioned New Hampshire or South Carolina, but Iowa was the focus) would not like what Gingrich had to say.
This statement, the pundits said, was sure to go over poorly with Iowa's conservative Republicans, would likely affect Newt's standing in Iowa polls, and might very well torpedo his chances of a big win in the upcoming Iowa caucuses.
This goes far beyond the proper role of a pundit. The reporter tells us what happened. The pundit provides context and gives us some perspective on the news. It is not the pundit's proper role to tell us what to think about the news.
In other words: Now hear this, all you pundits. You may tell me what you think. Do not tell me what I should think. Do not tell the conservative Republican voters of Iowa what they are expected to think or how they are expected to react.
Surely many of you have noticed that the news networks have gone far beyond reporting and analysis. This is not good journalism. So here is my recommendation. Watch the debates, and then turn the television off. Do your own thinking. If you want to know what to think, don't ask me. I will tell you what I think, but don't adopt my thoughts as your own, if you want to stay out of trouble.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Joe Pa
In 1975 I was a college freshman at Pennsylvania State University. I spent only a year there, but I couldn't help noticing that football was a big deal on that campus. Two years earlier the Nittany Lions had finished their season undefeated and won the Orange Bowl. But I was pre-med, and my curriculum didn't lend itself to football Saturdays. During my year there I never got close enough to Beaver Stadium to be able to recall what it looked like.
Joseph Vincent Paterno was still in his 40s then, but he had been head coach for a decade and had already collected five bowl victories. His career totals of bowl victories (24) and appearances (37) are records unlikely to be broken any time soon. I'll go out on a limb and say his Division I record of 409 career wins will likely stand through at least the rest of this century.
Paterno spent six decades in coaching at Penn State, having signed on as an assistant in 1950. He built a culture of success in which academic performance was regarded as equal in importance to what an athlete did between the sidelines. He consistently emphasized team over individual, as symbolized by Lions uniforms that had numbers but not names.
In a national culture obsessed with youth, it came as no surprise that many fans thought the grandfatherly Paterno might be getting too old to continue coaching successfully when the team hit a five-year slide, losing more than winning during the 2000-2004 seasons. There were many calls for his retirement. He finally said he would step down if things didn't turn around in 2005. That year the team went 11-1, winning the Big Ten title and the Orange Bowl. In 2006 Paterno was inducted into the college football Hall of Fame, turned 80, and kept right on coaching. The five years from 2005 through 2010 brought a record of 58-19, and few fans remained convinced that Joe was too old to continue as head coach. The term "living legend" has fit few men in organized athletics as well as when it has been worn by Joe Pa.
In 2002 Joe Paterno, in his mid-70s, was informed by Mike McQueary, a young graduate assistant, that McQueary had witnessed Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing a ten-year-old boy in a shower in a university athletic facility. Sandusky, the former PSU defensive coordinator, had retired from that position in 1999 but had continued access to university facilities because of his involvement in youth programs. Paterno reported McQueary's information to university officials, including the athletic director and the administrator who oversaw the university police.
Accounts of how and why it took nine years for there to be a thorough investigation and a grand jury report are a bit hard to follow, and I certainly won't try to make sense of them here. No, what I want to do instead is tell you what troubles me about this story.
McQueary told the grand jury he was very specific, in his conversation with Paterno, about what he saw in the shower. Paterno says otherwise. Both have reasons for biased recall. Should we believe that a man in his mid-20s would describe what he saw in graphic detail to a man in his mid-70s? It is entirely possible that he did exactly that. But I am firmly in the camp of the skeptics on this one.
Should Paterno have taken the information he was given and gone directly to outside (not university) law enforcement? Joe now says that, in hindsight, he wishes he had done more. But that's the thing about hindsight: you never have it when you need it. He did what he was supposed to do and sent it to university higher-ups whose job it was to handle such problems.
Should McQueary have gone straight to outside law enforcement (not to Paterno)? He knew that Sandusky had been Paterno's friend and protégé. What would you have done in his place? I know my answer. There is plenty of blame to go around when we consider the tragedy of Sandusky's shocking behavior, extending over a period of years with an uncertain number of young victims.
If you've read my profile associated with this blog, you know I like to find fault with the work of professional journalists. And now I have a whole sector to go after: the sports writers, commentators, and pundits. It is very difficult to find a Paterno defender among them. When the university's Board of Trustees rejected Paterno's decision to retire after this season and instead abruptly fired him in a public relations damage-control move (that was stunningly ineffective), I heard no sports journalists even suggest the decision might have been hasty or an overreaction. Why? Well, no one wants to jeopardize his career by saying something that might label him as soft on child sexual abuse.
Just look at what happened to Franco Harris. The Steelers' superstar running back was born the year Paterno joined the PSU coaching staff and played for Paterno in college. Somewhere along the line Harris learned something about loyalty and courage under fire and suggested the Penn State Board of Trustees displayed a lack of both. For taking that stand, Franco was criticized by Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who demanded that Harris step down as chair of the board of the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program.
Ravenstahl? Really? The same Ravenstahl who wasn't even born yet during the 1970s, when the Steelers, whose fans' affectionate names for the franchise included Franco's Army, were the best team that had ever stepped onto an NFL gridiron. The same Ravenstahl who became the youngest (and arguably least qualified) mayor in Pittsburgh history because the city council had made him Council President in a foolish compromise, and Mayor Bob O'Connor died in office. The same Ravenstahl who, in his five years as mayor, has been the subject of a remarkable number of controversies and criticisms surrounding his apparent lack of any sense of ethics. Biblical sayings in abundance (the ones about judging not and about casting the first stone, among others) apply to this buffoon.
Joseph Vincent Paterno gave six decades of his life to the Pennsylvania State University, helping to make its athletic programs not only successful but famous for character and integrity. The university board of trustees, amid swirling controversy and scandal, fired an 84-year-old legend because he didn't do enough after being informed of a very disturbing incident nearly a decade earlier. They did it because, in their view, letting him finish the season would have further tarnished the university's reputation.
I have often sighed and shaken my head when I've seen a football game end with a result different from what would have happened if the officials had not made a bad call late in the game. The Penn State board of trustees made a bad call. Yes, that is an understatement if ever there was one. Thank you to Franco Harris for telling us the honest truth about that.
And thank you to Joe Pa for giving your best to college football for six decades and inspiring generations of players, fans, and alumni.
Epilogue
And now (January 21, 2012), Joseph Vincent Paterno has been laid to rest. I believe he will be remembered for his many contributions to his university and to collegiate football and that Sandusky will ultimately be nothing more than a footnote. Joe has said he really didn't know how to handle the matter and turned it over to people he believed would take the appropriate steps. For that the PSU Board of Trustees dismissed him nearly a decade later - for PR purposes. May Joe rest in peace. May the Board of Trustees reflect upon their actions and struggle to find the peace they denied him in his final months.
Joseph Vincent Paterno was still in his 40s then, but he had been head coach for a decade and had already collected five bowl victories. His career totals of bowl victories (24) and appearances (37) are records unlikely to be broken any time soon. I'll go out on a limb and say his Division I record of 409 career wins will likely stand through at least the rest of this century.
Paterno spent six decades in coaching at Penn State, having signed on as an assistant in 1950. He built a culture of success in which academic performance was regarded as equal in importance to what an athlete did between the sidelines. He consistently emphasized team over individual, as symbolized by Lions uniforms that had numbers but not names.
In a national culture obsessed with youth, it came as no surprise that many fans thought the grandfatherly Paterno might be getting too old to continue coaching successfully when the team hit a five-year slide, losing more than winning during the 2000-2004 seasons. There were many calls for his retirement. He finally said he would step down if things didn't turn around in 2005. That year the team went 11-1, winning the Big Ten title and the Orange Bowl. In 2006 Paterno was inducted into the college football Hall of Fame, turned 80, and kept right on coaching. The five years from 2005 through 2010 brought a record of 58-19, and few fans remained convinced that Joe was too old to continue as head coach. The term "living legend" has fit few men in organized athletics as well as when it has been worn by Joe Pa.
In 2002 Joe Paterno, in his mid-70s, was informed by Mike McQueary, a young graduate assistant, that McQueary had witnessed Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing a ten-year-old boy in a shower in a university athletic facility. Sandusky, the former PSU defensive coordinator, had retired from that position in 1999 but had continued access to university facilities because of his involvement in youth programs. Paterno reported McQueary's information to university officials, including the athletic director and the administrator who oversaw the university police.
Accounts of how and why it took nine years for there to be a thorough investigation and a grand jury report are a bit hard to follow, and I certainly won't try to make sense of them here. No, what I want to do instead is tell you what troubles me about this story.
McQueary told the grand jury he was very specific, in his conversation with Paterno, about what he saw in the shower. Paterno says otherwise. Both have reasons for biased recall. Should we believe that a man in his mid-20s would describe what he saw in graphic detail to a man in his mid-70s? It is entirely possible that he did exactly that. But I am firmly in the camp of the skeptics on this one.
Should Paterno have taken the information he was given and gone directly to outside (not university) law enforcement? Joe now says that, in hindsight, he wishes he had done more. But that's the thing about hindsight: you never have it when you need it. He did what he was supposed to do and sent it to university higher-ups whose job it was to handle such problems.
Should McQueary have gone straight to outside law enforcement (not to Paterno)? He knew that Sandusky had been Paterno's friend and protégé. What would you have done in his place? I know my answer. There is plenty of blame to go around when we consider the tragedy of Sandusky's shocking behavior, extending over a period of years with an uncertain number of young victims.
If you've read my profile associated with this blog, you know I like to find fault with the work of professional journalists. And now I have a whole sector to go after: the sports writers, commentators, and pundits. It is very difficult to find a Paterno defender among them. When the university's Board of Trustees rejected Paterno's decision to retire after this season and instead abruptly fired him in a public relations damage-control move (that was stunningly ineffective), I heard no sports journalists even suggest the decision might have been hasty or an overreaction. Why? Well, no one wants to jeopardize his career by saying something that might label him as soft on child sexual abuse.
Just look at what happened to Franco Harris. The Steelers' superstar running back was born the year Paterno joined the PSU coaching staff and played for Paterno in college. Somewhere along the line Harris learned something about loyalty and courage under fire and suggested the Penn State Board of Trustees displayed a lack of both. For taking that stand, Franco was criticized by Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who demanded that Harris step down as chair of the board of the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program.
Ravenstahl? Really? The same Ravenstahl who wasn't even born yet during the 1970s, when the Steelers, whose fans' affectionate names for the franchise included Franco's Army, were the best team that had ever stepped onto an NFL gridiron. The same Ravenstahl who became the youngest (and arguably least qualified) mayor in Pittsburgh history because the city council had made him Council President in a foolish compromise, and Mayor Bob O'Connor died in office. The same Ravenstahl who, in his five years as mayor, has been the subject of a remarkable number of controversies and criticisms surrounding his apparent lack of any sense of ethics. Biblical sayings in abundance (the ones about judging not and about casting the first stone, among others) apply to this buffoon.
Joseph Vincent Paterno gave six decades of his life to the Pennsylvania State University, helping to make its athletic programs not only successful but famous for character and integrity. The university board of trustees, amid swirling controversy and scandal, fired an 84-year-old legend because he didn't do enough after being informed of a very disturbing incident nearly a decade earlier. They did it because, in their view, letting him finish the season would have further tarnished the university's reputation.
I have often sighed and shaken my head when I've seen a football game end with a result different from what would have happened if the officials had not made a bad call late in the game. The Penn State board of trustees made a bad call. Yes, that is an understatement if ever there was one. Thank you to Franco Harris for telling us the honest truth about that.
And thank you to Joe Pa for giving your best to college football for six decades and inspiring generations of players, fans, and alumni.
Epilogue
And now (January 21, 2012), Joseph Vincent Paterno has been laid to rest. I believe he will be remembered for his many contributions to his university and to collegiate football and that Sandusky will ultimately be nothing more than a footnote. Joe has said he really didn't know how to handle the matter and turned it over to people he believed would take the appropriate steps. For that the PSU Board of Trustees dismissed him nearly a decade later - for PR purposes. May Joe rest in peace. May the Board of Trustees reflect upon their actions and struggle to find the peace they denied him in his final months.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Truth in Advertising
It isn't often that the European Commission does something that I find simultaneously astonishing and hilarious - especially nowadays, when there is so much cause for serious concern in the European Union about the economy on the continent and the lengthening list of member nations having mounting problems with debt. But today's edition of the Telegraph (a London newspaper) brought just that combination of surprise and mirth. Sorry to keep you in suspense, but if you haven't already seen the story, I'll be coming back to that at the end.
"If we can't beat another dealer's price, we'll just GIVE you the car!"
I'm sure you've all heard one like that, and you realize just how ridiculous it is. If one dealer offers you a selling price of $25,000, and you then go to another, the second dealer is sure to offer you a lower price, unless he is short on inventory or for some other reason is just not trying to move cars that day. So the dealer who runs this advertisement will live up to his ad's claim of a $500 difference and sell you the car for $24,500. He will not give you the car.
Not quite so obvious are the ads for dietary aids and supplements that have small print saying the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease or condition.
Really? And you want me to buy it anyway?
Yeah, I know, there's one born every minute. And suckers don't notice the statement that the claims "have not been evaluated by the FDA" - or realize that this disclaimer should put them on notice that the claims are probably baloney.
Then we have direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. Here the claims have been evaluated by the FDA, which doesn't allow manufacturers to make statements that are blatantly false. Unfortunately, a statement can be remarkably misleading without crossing the line into the territory of blatantly false, and the FDA seems not to take much notice of ads that are misleading. We do get fine print and rapid-fire, monotonous recitation of a litany of side effects. If you read or listen carefully, you will wonder why anyone would take this drug. It may cause your left foot to become permanently lodged in your right ear? Really?
A drug that may cause me to commit suicide? Great. That will cure my depression.
The ones that disturb me the most are the ones that you might suppose are the most accurate, because the audience is well-educated and naturally skeptical. These are the ads in scientific journals and news magazines published for physicians. I have been an ardent critic of the content of these ads for many years, simply because the chasm between accurate information (such as one might expect to find in the peer-reviewed articles in these publications) and promotional information (the content of the ads) is so wide.
Ads in medical journals are subject to a higher level of FDA scrutiny, but a recent study showed that no more than 20% of journal ads were entirely compliant with FDA standards.
You might think the journals themselves would scrutinize the content of these ads. I can tell you, as a reviewer for two major journals in my specialty, that trying to assure high quality in the scientific information presented in the articles is plenty of work. No one is volunteering to review the ads. If we tried to do that, we would soon find ourselves in an adversarial relationship with the advertisers. We could just decide not to accept advertising, but then the journals' subscribers would have to pay a lot more to cover the costs.
By now you can tell that I think we have a lot of work to do in improving truth in advertising. And then along comes the European Union to show, beyond any doubt, that it is possible to get carried away. Earlier this year the European Foods Standards Authority refused to approve a statement for use in advertising by distributors of bottled water, submitted by a pair of German professors, that claims drinking plenty of water is an effective way to prevent dehydration.
This was no claim of superiority of bottled water to tap water. Just plain old water.
According to the article in the Telegraph, "Prof Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society, said dehydration was usually caused by a clinical condition and that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water."
A "clinical condition?" Like going to the gym for a workout? Sure, we could make sure we are well hydrated in advance (or rehydrate afterwards) by drinking Coca-Cola, but that doesn't mean water isn't effective for this purpose, and if Ratcliffe really believes water is not a better choice than Coke, he is just as foolish as he sounds.
These days I am anxiously waiting to see what the EU is going to do about the debt crisis spreading across the continent, at the same time our congressional "super committee" is trying to figure out what to do about our own deeply ingrained national habit of spending more money than we have. So comic relief is welcome.
In the words of Roger Helmer, a British politician of the Conservative Party and Member of the European Parliament, "This is stupidity writ large." I fully agree. I am grateful nonetheless, because sometimes stupidity writ large is wicked funny.
"If we can't beat another dealer's price, we'll just GIVE you the car!"
Not quite so obvious are the ads for dietary aids and supplements that have small print saying the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease or condition.
Really? And you want me to buy it anyway?
Yeah, I know, there's one born every minute. And suckers don't notice the statement that the claims "have not been evaluated by the FDA" - or realize that this disclaimer should put them on notice that the claims are probably baloney.
Then we have direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. Here the claims have been evaluated by the FDA, which doesn't allow manufacturers to make statements that are blatantly false. Unfortunately, a statement can be remarkably misleading without crossing the line into the territory of blatantly false, and the FDA seems not to take much notice of ads that are misleading. We do get fine print and rapid-fire, monotonous recitation of a litany of side effects. If you read or listen carefully, you will wonder why anyone would take this drug. It may cause your left foot to become permanently lodged in your right ear? Really?
A drug that may cause me to commit suicide? Great. That will cure my depression.
The ones that disturb me the most are the ones that you might suppose are the most accurate, because the audience is well-educated and naturally skeptical. These are the ads in scientific journals and news magazines published for physicians. I have been an ardent critic of the content of these ads for many years, simply because the chasm between accurate information (such as one might expect to find in the peer-reviewed articles in these publications) and promotional information (the content of the ads) is so wide.
Ads in medical journals are subject to a higher level of FDA scrutiny, but a recent study showed that no more than 20% of journal ads were entirely compliant with FDA standards.
You might think the journals themselves would scrutinize the content of these ads. I can tell you, as a reviewer for two major journals in my specialty, that trying to assure high quality in the scientific information presented in the articles is plenty of work. No one is volunteering to review the ads. If we tried to do that, we would soon find ourselves in an adversarial relationship with the advertisers. We could just decide not to accept advertising, but then the journals' subscribers would have to pay a lot more to cover the costs.
By now you can tell that I think we have a lot of work to do in improving truth in advertising. And then along comes the European Union to show, beyond any doubt, that it is possible to get carried away. Earlier this year the European Foods Standards Authority refused to approve a statement for use in advertising by distributors of bottled water, submitted by a pair of German professors, that claims drinking plenty of water is an effective way to prevent dehydration.
This was no claim of superiority of bottled water to tap water. Just plain old water.
According to the article in the Telegraph, "Prof Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society, said dehydration was usually caused by a clinical condition and that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water."
A "clinical condition?" Like going to the gym for a workout? Sure, we could make sure we are well hydrated in advance (or rehydrate afterwards) by drinking Coca-Cola, but that doesn't mean water isn't effective for this purpose, and if Ratcliffe really believes water is not a better choice than Coke, he is just as foolish as he sounds.
These days I am anxiously waiting to see what the EU is going to do about the debt crisis spreading across the continent, at the same time our congressional "super committee" is trying to figure out what to do about our own deeply ingrained national habit of spending more money than we have. So comic relief is welcome.
In the words of Roger Helmer, a British politician of the Conservative Party and Member of the European Parliament, "This is stupidity writ large." I fully agree. I am grateful nonetheless, because sometimes stupidity writ large is wicked funny.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
The Essayist's Essayist
Thirty-three years and 1,097 commentaries, the last one just a month ago at the age of 92.
Andy Rooney has left us now. He has left us with many memories and many smiles. I often wonder how many people watched the TV news magazine "60 Minutes" mostly because of him. One indication was what happened in 1990, when he made an ill-considered remark about homosexual unions (for which he subsequently issued a public apology). CBS suspended him from the program and in short order lost 20% of its audience.
"A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" was launched in 1978 as a summer replacement for the short political debate segment called "Point/Counterpoint." A year later the debate segment was gone. This might be an object lesson about the hazards of allowing yourself to be replaced temporarily.
Rooney's subject matter was sometimes trivial and usually whimsical. His presentation was most commonly charming, delivered with a twinkle in the eye, and almost always successful in bringing a smile to his viewers. His essays were of the best form, working well both in print and on the screen.
They have been published in book form as collections. When I read them to myself, I can see and hear Mr. Rooney reading them to me on camera. No doubt when he wrote them, this is exactly what he had in mind. Far too few writers nowadays pay attention to this essential feature of the written word. What will it sound like to my audience when they read it "aloud" in their minds?
One of the things I liked most about Andy Rooney was that he recognized and admitted personal error. The 1990 episode in which he learned how misguided was his remark about homosexual unions was a well-noted example. More meaningful to me, however, was what he learned about war from his experiences as a correspondent during World War II. He was a journalist for Stars and Stripes, the army newspaper, and later wrote a memoir, My War (1995), about his years as a war correspondent. Rooney had been a pacifist and was opposed to America's entry into the war, although he had not sought to avoid service when he was drafted in 1941. But near the end of World War II he was among the first American journalists to enter Nazi concentration camps, and what he saw there forever changed his views on whether there can be such a thing as a just war.
I also liked the fact that he was willing to be politically incorrect without worrying too much about offending people. I agreed with him fully when he said it was "silly" for Native Americans to complain about team names like the Washington Redskins. I'm not sure exactly why he thought that, but I can tell you why I did. With serious social and medical problems like unemployment, alcoholism, tuberculosis, and sudden infant death syndrome all occurring at rates much higher than in the general population, I've always thought the tribal nations had more important things with which to concern themselves.
In the six months since I began putting my thoughts on my computer screen for the essays in this blog, I have occasionally thought that perhaps some day people will be as interested in what I have to say as they have been in the musings of Mr. Rooney. A lofty goal, and quite possibly far out of reach. But his first "few minutes" on "60 Minutes" came when he was older than I am now, so I can dream.
In Rooney's last "few minutes" a month ago he told viewers, "Not many people in this world are as lucky as I have been. All this time I've been paid to say what is on my mind on television. You don't get any luckier in life than that." This reminded me of the Confucian saying, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” The fact that Andy was still doing that job in his tenth decade says it all.
For those who prefer the television format, I suggest the DVDs released by CBS in 2006 (three of them, available on Amazon and elsewhere), which offer an excellent collection of his later essays. For fans such as I, who like to read his work and who can see him and hear him as we read, I suggest the 2003 collection, Years of Minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Rooney, for thirty-three years of thought-provoking commentary.
Andy Rooney has left us now. He has left us with many memories and many smiles. I often wonder how many people watched the TV news magazine "60 Minutes" mostly because of him. One indication was what happened in 1990, when he made an ill-considered remark about homosexual unions (for which he subsequently issued a public apology). CBS suspended him from the program and in short order lost 20% of its audience.
"A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" was launched in 1978 as a summer replacement for the short political debate segment called "Point/Counterpoint." A year later the debate segment was gone. This might be an object lesson about the hazards of allowing yourself to be replaced temporarily.
Rooney's subject matter was sometimes trivial and usually whimsical. His presentation was most commonly charming, delivered with a twinkle in the eye, and almost always successful in bringing a smile to his viewers. His essays were of the best form, working well both in print and on the screen.
They have been published in book form as collections. When I read them to myself, I can see and hear Mr. Rooney reading them to me on camera. No doubt when he wrote them, this is exactly what he had in mind. Far too few writers nowadays pay attention to this essential feature of the written word. What will it sound like to my audience when they read it "aloud" in their minds?
One of the things I liked most about Andy Rooney was that he recognized and admitted personal error. The 1990 episode in which he learned how misguided was his remark about homosexual unions was a well-noted example. More meaningful to me, however, was what he learned about war from his experiences as a correspondent during World War II. He was a journalist for Stars and Stripes, the army newspaper, and later wrote a memoir, My War (1995), about his years as a war correspondent. Rooney had been a pacifist and was opposed to America's entry into the war, although he had not sought to avoid service when he was drafted in 1941. But near the end of World War II he was among the first American journalists to enter Nazi concentration camps, and what he saw there forever changed his views on whether there can be such a thing as a just war.
I also liked the fact that he was willing to be politically incorrect without worrying too much about offending people. I agreed with him fully when he said it was "silly" for Native Americans to complain about team names like the Washington Redskins. I'm not sure exactly why he thought that, but I can tell you why I did. With serious social and medical problems like unemployment, alcoholism, tuberculosis, and sudden infant death syndrome all occurring at rates much higher than in the general population, I've always thought the tribal nations had more important things with which to concern themselves.
In the six months since I began putting my thoughts on my computer screen for the essays in this blog, I have occasionally thought that perhaps some day people will be as interested in what I have to say as they have been in the musings of Mr. Rooney. A lofty goal, and quite possibly far out of reach. But his first "few minutes" on "60 Minutes" came when he was older than I am now, so I can dream.
In Rooney's last "few minutes" a month ago he told viewers, "Not many people in this world are as lucky as I have been. All this time I've been paid to say what is on my mind on television. You don't get any luckier in life than that." This reminded me of the Confucian saying, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” The fact that Andy was still doing that job in his tenth decade says it all.
For those who prefer the television format, I suggest the DVDs released by CBS in 2006 (three of them, available on Amazon and elsewhere), which offer an excellent collection of his later essays. For fans such as I, who like to read his work and who can see him and hear him as we read, I suggest the 2003 collection, Years of Minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Rooney, for thirty-three years of thought-provoking commentary.
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