Just when I think I have experienced most any kind of flu or similar illness, I get hit with something else. Or so it seemed this week when I came down with an intestinal bug, one that has, apparently, been making the rounds.
I have discovered that is actually frightening to be unable to keep any solid food in your system for more than an hour. Also, lack of nutrition makes you lightheaded and occasionally incoherent.
I have also discovered that "I am just one stomach flu away from my goal weight" is really only funny when you don't have said stomach flu.
Since much of this week it has been difficult to form coherent sentences, I thought writing was pretty much out of the question.
I went to the doctor on Thursday. And, let it be said that at least I seem to have found a really good set of medical professionals for my primary care practice, at a clinic designed for people of modest incomes. It is literally amazing every time I go there. This time, the caring older lady doctor diagnosed me right quick, and handed me an easy to fill scrip of affordable medication within 20 minutes of my arrival.
A day and a half later, I am attempting to reintroduce solid foods and get back to work. It may be too soon for both (Thursday morning, when I thought I could handle both, was a disaster, but that was before the pills), but I'm big on trying to get back on the horse as soon as possible. The worst that can happen is... I fall off the horse. Or I wind up in my store's back room, sobbing (somthing I was pretty close to on Thursday morning).
Like food poisoning, there's nothing quite like a stomach or intestinal virus to make clear both the basic necessity of food and the fragile state of one's health when normal food intake is interrupted. Trying to remember to treat myself gently and handle with some care is not the worst lesson to be reminded of... although I could have done without the multiple trips to the bathroom and the feeling that the life was being sucked right out of me.
Anyway, let's see how the next few days go, and hopefully, I can get back to more fully writing my thoughts.
I haven't written much about politics, and even less on healthcare in a long while, and I wouldn't necessarily see a reason to start now, even with the Supreme Court arguments this week... but I think there's a few points that bear repeating.
Which is to say: I feel like much of this "health care debate" is old news and the point's been made, but let's try again, just for giggles.
First, I tend to think the Supreme Court case is premature, but at this point, it was unavoidable. Once three Appellate Divisions had ruled, 2-1 in favor of it, there was pretty much no way for the Supreme Court not to take up this case. That's why the Supreme Court exists, to resolve disputes among the different Circuits. Still, I think the Court will regret taking this up too soon and in an election year, when the decision can't help but be all politics, and little in the way of good law.
Second, even though I think the case should have been left aside, I think the arguments that came out this week were fascinating reminders of why we're having this dispute. As someone with a lot of understanding about the issues of healthcare and health insurance in America, I still tend to forget how few people can see the bigger picture, or have thought deeply about the system of insurance and payments that we have. That, I think, has been a big driver of the "mandate is unconstitutional" side, and a lot of their naivete was on display in the Court recordings. Paul Clement's attempts, for instance, to separate health insurance as a market from healthcare services was almost laughable (and for everyone so sure of the outcomes... it was also telling that the most skeptical voice on this separation was John Roberts). Why people buy health insurance, how people use health insurance, what healthcare costs for people who don't have it, what kind of care people without health insurance can get... these are basic questions for understanding the health care problems we have, and the displays of lack of comprehension of these topics within the Supreme Court debate was deeply revealing... and deeply depressing.
Third, I think it was pretty clear that the mandate is constitutional, if unpopular. Healthcare is, virtually by definition, interstate commerce. Even separated from health service, health insurance is interstate commerce (all that takes is one company that operates in more tha one state, buying health insurance for its workers). Devising a system where people show proof of insurance or pay a penalty is a "necessary and proper" function of the tax code. This isn't hard. There might be a narrow argument that the government can't "compel" economic activity... but compulsion seems like a vague, hard to define standard (if passports require a photo... why can the government compel you to get one?).
Fourth, the mandate isn't nearly what its opponents try to make it out to be. No one is "forced" to do anything, or buy anything, under the regulation. It says, basically, either you have health insurance or you pay a fee. The fee is comparatively small (indeed, it may be small enough that it, too, creates a perverse incentive to not buy insurance until one is absolutely desperate). Most people already have health insurance - again, more than 85% of the population, most workers through their employers, and the elderly through Medicare, just for starters. Those percentages have probably shifted somewhat since the economic downturn, but the vast majority of Americans are, still, insured. That makes the fee a dead issue for almost everyone, and the point of the healthcare legislation is that, with the mandate and other incentives, business and insurers will work harder to make sure more workers are insured, and for others, there will be increased access to programs like Medicaid, or the new health insurance exchanges.
This is not a great, or an elegant, or a nearly perfect solution to our healthcare problems; the solutions do nothing about health care cost, and they codify our employment based system of insurance in ways that probably make things worse. But that brings us back to the yearlong debate about the ACA tyo begin with - yes, there are other solutions... but most of them require enormous leaps in our healthcare systems that we're just not prepared to make as a nation. Broadening the availability of insurance is a reasonable, workable workaround. And doing it probably buys some time to craft other solutions without leaving millions with few healthcare options.
Finally, to go back to the beginning, the real mistake here may be the first one the Court made: as they debated on the first day... this case probably should be punted until the penalty fee actually goes into effect (this is the argument over the "Anti-Injunction Act" which says that you can't sue the government over a tax the government hasn't yet collected). Until the government has to start collecting the fee, we won't know how many people have to pay it. And the better case against the fee is actually probably by people who have no way to get insurance... a prospect which is much more likely to be the case if the Federal government and the States can't work out differences over Medicaid, if the health exchanges don't come together successfully, or if eocnomic conditions get worse. Even Massachusetts had to reexamine the timing and structure of their mandate fee, and the avilability of low cost insurance, as it became clear that the fee made more sense for many uninsured people when affordable insurance was unavailable. That may well be a signpost for a similar outcome, on a much larger scale, when the penalty fee goes into effect.
I'm not trying to play Mary Sunshine here - of course the Sipreme Court's conservative majority could overturn the whole thing; proof that this is far more a political choice than anything about the laws involved, more a way to score points for conservatism generally. But conservatives have, really, still no answers for the various problems our healthcare systems create, only a "fend for yourselves" approach that's disastrous not just for some, but for most of us. The Affordable Care Act is unpopular... but more to the point, it is still not really understood. And that may be reason enough to do away with it. But it's not a good reason... just like this case, really, is not a good case.
As the Supreme Court lawyer Tom Goldstein puts it, “Paul has turned the health-care fight from kind of a conservative dream that’s untied to reality into a very serious threat to undo the president’s signature accomplishment.” This alone would be a landmark achievement—and, for most lawyers, would have required their complete attention. But health care is just one of seven cases that Clement will be arguing in front of the Supreme Court this term, a caseload previously unheard of for a private attorney. In fact, since leaving the position of solicitor general under Bush, he has become, in the Obama age, a sort of anti–solicitor general—the go-to lawyer for some of the Republican Party’s most significant, and polarizing, legal causes....
At the age of 45, Clement, who has thinning brown hair and the faintest trace of a midwestern accent left over from his Wisconsin childhood, is already in the upper echelon of the Supreme Court bar. It’s an elite group of lawyers who, much like the justices they routinely argue cases before, conceive of themselves as being Olympian in their detachment from politics. Almost all of them graduated from Harvard or Yale or Stanford law school; clerked for a Supreme Court justice; or worked in the solicitor general’s office. (In Clement’s case, he did all three.) Now, in their private practices, they pride themselves on handling only serious cases brought by serious people in a serious manner; even if their client doesn’t prevail—or, worse, turns out to be on the wrong side of history—that stigma doesn’t fall on the lawyer. John W. Davis, who argued the losing side in Brown v. Board of Education, is still held up as an exemplary Supreme Court advocate.
Nevertheless, despite these lawyers’ contention that they aren’t political animals, they are, of course—and their extrajudicial activities often reflect as much. Ted Olson, the man Clement has supplanted as the top conservative Supreme Court lawyer, was an outspoken critic of Bill Clinton, served on the board of directors of The American Spectator, and helped found the Federalist Society. His legal cases were always assumed to reflect his ideological convictions. (Even now that he is seeking to overturn Prop 8, Olson’s personal support for gay marriage is a major story line in the legal fight.) The unusual thing about Clement is that, while he’s undoubtedly a conservative and a Republican, he has managed to avoid this fate. His persona is rarely conflated with the case he’s arguing.
Clement's political persona is "rarely conflated with the case he's arguing"... except, of course, that he's arguing the opposing side of Obamacare, the repeal of DOMA, arguing against race-based redistricting in Texas and defending South Carolina's attempt to impose voter ID. Clement is defending such a laundry list of right wing cases that Zengerle can barely keep a prose-bound straight face as he attempts to sell the notion that Clement represents a non-partisan ideal in Supreme Court advocacy. It's not the examination of Clement I object to, or the attempt to do a "let's see it from his side" presentation of Clement's views (that, at least, is moderately interesting). But seriously - the man is the former Solicitor General for George W Bush, currently serving as the go-to Supreme Court lawyer for Republican state Attorneys General. If that alone isn't a clear indication of the man's politics... then what, exactly, do political labels mean? It's not as if Clement can be mistaken as a Democrat, or that we can even find a liberal who'd take the depth and breadth of conservative causes on Clement's plate (and the example that proves that observation is Ted Olsen, the most noteworthy example in recent years of a lawyer crossing his usual political expectations to argue in favor of gay marriage rights). It would just be more honest, and more accurate to paint Clement as the kind of Republican that's all too hard to find these days: pleasant, respectful, willing to respect the rule of law, whatever the outcome, after making a well thought, full throated argument for his side. That's admirable enough, without pretending he's somehow nonpartisan.
If the nineties were the decade of Prozac, all hollow-eyed and depressed, then this is the era of Xanax, all jumpy and edgy and short of breath. In Prozac Nation, published in 1994, Elizabeth Wurtzel describes a New York that today seems as antique as the one rendered by Edith Wharton. In the book, she evokes a time when twentysomethings lived in Soho lofts, dressed for parties in black chiffon frocks, and ended the night crying on the bathroom floor. Twenty years ago, just before Kurt Cobain blew off his head with a shotgun, it was cool for Kate Moss to haunt the city from the sides of buses with a visage like an empty store and for Wurtzel to confess in print that she entertained fantasies of winding up, like Plath or Sexton, a massive talent who died too soon, “young and sad, a corpse with her head in the oven.”
Miller actually kicks off this article remembering the night she rummaged through her dying mother's medicine cabinet - in front of her mother's home care nurse - looking for an Ativan, surely a sign of the bad to come all by itself. But Miller's evocation, and dismissal, of Wurtzel (as fashionable now as it was when her book first appeared - Wurtzel will forever be punished for speaking truth to medicalizing women's problems) is itself an all-too-glib indication of missing the point: there will still be late nights of crying on the bathroom floor, whether you choose a happy pill like Prozac or an anesthetizer like Xanax or Ativan. We just haven't gotten to that part of the story yet.
And PS, congratulations to the various drug companies enjoying free advertising for their trademarked drug product names!
There I was, trying to explain to my Mom last weekend about the sense that the "insured contraception mandate" discussion was not, as Republicans claimed, about religion, but indeed about contraception, I also said, as a follow-on, that I thought the subtext of the "debate" - and the reason Republicans got some traction on it - was because the real issue was sex, and Americans are uncomfortable with talking about that.
And then Rush Limbaugh took the subtext and made it text.
If there's something heartening about the latest Rush furor, I think it may be that feminism finally had a clear example of "slut shaming" that made an often abstract discussion very literal. Slut Shaming is trying to marginalize voices, especially women's voices, in political discussions by calling people things like sluts and whores, implications that are negative, sexual, and promiscuous. Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown, was offering a reasonable, thoughtful take one the issues of contraceptive cost and availability, and there was Rush, to call her a slut and a whore.
Unfortunately, I suspect that raising awareness about Slut Shaming is about as good as it gets; what's really problematic here is that conservatives will continue to get truck out of the contraceptive debate because liberals, even as they defended and praised Sandra Fluke, tended to run away from the uncomfortable aspect of the contraception debate that is the reality of our American cuture: that is, that we are nation at once obsessed about sex and deeply conflicted about the issues around it. And the idea of people having sex, especially a great deal of it, tends to raise flags about morality that cloud reasonable policy discussions.
Which is to say... it's fine if you want contraception, ladies... just don't be all sexed up about it.
I have to admit I pretty much figured this year's Presidential election was foreordained as a Romney vs. Obama slugfest over the economy, with a predictable, if dismal, win for President Obama. And that's probably what we're still going to get. But how we get there, apparently, still matters.
If Romney has failed to exactly inspire the Republican base, the last couple of weeks haven't been entirely about him. What's changed, I thnk, is that Rconservatives have decided that they can't win on economic issues... and so they unpacked their favorite old trunk, the thing we often call "social issues."
Maybe it's age, maybe it's the sense that I've heard this song before, but my patience for euphemisms is pretty much gone. And so, I am tired of hearing about "social issues" when what people mean is "let's say awful things about blacks, gays and other minorities and see if Americans will give in to their worst instincts."
"Social Issues" is supposed to be about abortion, gay marriage, "family values" and the like, but really, it's about dressing up age-old prejudices and judgements about others without saying the ugly words. What's wrong with gay marriage? Something about men, women, tradition and procreation... since marriage equality opponents insist, all the time, that they don't hate gays. And what's behind the spate of new restrictive abortion laws and the brouhaha over Catholic charities and insurance coverage for contraception? Concern for life and religious freedom, not hatred of women or opposition to contraception, since that's what they keep telling us.
If there's a reason American conservatism has utterly failed to broaden its appeal, certainly in the past thirty years, it has a lot to do with just how negatve and unappealing their pitch has been. There's been virtually nothing positive that conservatives have had to offer, nothing but anti-this and opposition to that. Immigration, in fact, is a perfectly sensible issue that really does need reform, but it's become a "social issue" about the Mexican border and a specific group of undocumented immigrants because... well, "anti-Hispanic" isn't attractive, either.
It's not surprising, really, that conservatives have drifted back into this corner; an actual election about economic injustice and issues like health care would have been an interesting discussion, especially if the right had something to offer groups of people - especially in the working class - who have really been shafted, left and right, over time. But of course, Republicans have nothing to offer on jobs, housing, financial reform, or health care. All they have is an intense dislike for President Obama and anything he's done on those issues.
I'm not sure Mitt Romney really does have anything to offer, but to his credit, he's studiously avoided reverting to the social issues morass unless heavily pushed; it's not really the Mormon way (Orrin Hatch is a good example of this), and it's not Romney's style to appeal to people's worse instincts. So perhaps it's understandable that the "not-Romneys" of the primary season have found themselves forced to resort to the basest appeals to the base.
Of all of them, though, I suspect the real turning point was South Carolina and Newt Gingrich's win; Gingrich really had nothing to offer except boilerplate rhetoric built on right wing talk radio bromides, the familiar litany of how things are terrible and liberals are to blame for it. It's Gingrich who, rather skillfully, re-introduced the sham issue of insurance coverage for contraception. And Gingrich offered the kind of rhetorical cover that conservatives need to revert to "social issues" as their driving force - we're not clased-minded bigots... we're decent people looking out for America, and the Constitution.
Of course, Gingrich himself is a twice divorced Catholic convert who would, literally, say just about anything to win an election, and the dissonance between who he is and what he says just got more pronounced as his prominence grew. Rick Santorum, on the other hand, doesn't have quite that problem. Unlike almost any of the other conservatives who got big and flamed out, Santorum doesn't have to go to some of the ugliest places to sell his fealty to "social issues"; he's already been there (remember "man on dog"?). And so Santorum pitches himself as the populist voice of the unheard working (white) man (and we do mean men), and all of the "social" issues are covered as well.
I don't know if Santorum can actually ride this wave all the way to the Republican nopmination; it would be frankly hilarious if he pulls it off, but we (and he) can't possibly be that lucky. It's telling, though, that Romney and his team are, yet again, flummoxed by Santorum's success. He's the one thing they don't quite have an argument against: a true believer who thinks moderation is for wimps.
Either way, an election that revolves around the angry right renewing its worst calls against gays, pushing familiar virgin/whore/mommy lines about women's roles in society, selling familiar prejudices about blacks and hispanics... is an election held on familiar ground that they really can't win. There's too many of us, too few of them, and too many like me who are tired of listening to carefully chosen words meant to mask really hateful ideas and prejudices. None of it makes President Obama a better President, but it certainly makes clear the starkness of the choice. Which is a much easier election than the one about those pesky problems with jobs and housing and health care and such.
If I have to explain the obviousness of that statement, then we both have a problem... and a good explanation of the wild politics of the past week.
Nothing was stranger, and yet more American, than all the men - and it was almost always a man - who said, piously, that the discussion we were having "was not about contraception" as if it were true. It's about freedom of religiion, it's about government coercion, it's about the rights of the Catholic Church...
Most obviously, this debate is all about contraception, and the fact that abortion is a form of contraception.
Lots of people said this "controversy" - and it's not "controversial" when the vast majority of women, Catholics and, in fact, most Americans favor coverage for contraception - started last November, but the seeds of this debate go back to the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Remember when they tried to strip provisions to cover abortion out of the bill? That was the warning shot for this. And then, as now, a big problem is the muddle of euphemistic words like "pro-choice" and "women's health" when we discuss contraception, and more pointedly, abortion.
Liberals often seem confused by anti-abortion, pro-life rhetoric; I think part of the mistake is that many of the "reasonable", pro-choice people see two separate issues: a dispute over abortion, that may also extend to contraceptives. The truth, I think, is that many people have it backwards: truly Pro-lifers oppose contraception, birth "control" of any kind. Abortion is just the most extreme example.
Morning after pills, "Plan B", tubal ligation, the pill, IUD... there's scientifically little difference to what these approaches do to prevent pregnancy. And it's problematic to try and separate them, to try and draw some sort of "contraceptive line" where some of these are better/different/more reasonable than others. Yet, that's the "muddy middle" of the pro-choice moderates, the ones who say "safe legal and rare" and genuinely mean that abortion shouldn't really happen all that much. If at all.
There's a tacit agreement among many professional Democrats that abortion politics are in fact too loaded to touch; that while pro-life conservatives are wrong on the specifics, they're right on the emotional impact of opposing abortion and calling it baby killing. It's safer to talk about "women's health" (as if we don't know that the main differential here is... pregnancy), it's safer to try and set artificial distinctions for liberals than to take on the whole stupid, brutal underlying argument: that, at heart, conservative pro-lifers don't want women to exert control over the sexual reproductive process.
This issue - the one where we try, at a very basic level, to do something based on common sense that helps women - is a "loser" for the left because the left is terrified about being seen as favoring infanticide. And basically, my point is, we can't turn this around until liberals are willing to try harder and own it. That is, until someone can stand up and make the basic point that the breadth of contraception, from condoms to abortions, are all on a continuum, all practical and all useful, we're kind of doomed. We wind up wilting the closer conservatives get to calling us baby killers.
In that context, I'm not surprised that the President - and his men - invented a fig leaf of compromise that might, maybe, survive close scrutiny: most women will be able to get coverage for contraception. Those who work for certain charitable organizations will also get coverage, just as a paid add-on absorbed by the insurer.
The real news here, though, is probably that the thin shreds of obfuscation that the euphemisms provide really broke down this week; as with Susan Komen and Planned Parenthood, the real action here was how many women, especially younger professional women, made it clear that the euphemisms were silly and that access to conraception, women's health care, and, yes, abortion, is not up for grabs. Or up for debate. That, in itself, is a big step towards reframing the discussion of women and pregnancy and who decides to be not pregnant, and when. But the problematic math remains: as long as conservatives are more comfortable linking abortion to other methods of contraception, as a way to stop all of them, lefties are in the weaker position. We can't win defending half a position, no matter how artfully we try to word it.
All those 5K runs and long walks and pink ribbons and all the rest... if this week is the moment that some women realize there's a problem in breast cancer fundraising, all I can say is, you're really late. The industry of fundraising around breast cancer "awareness", treatment, research and "finding a cure" has long been excessive and in need of a good bit of questioning. And if it takes a stunningly strange decision by executives at the Susan G Komen foundation to do it, well, there's another thing one ought to ask more clearly: why is everyone giving money to the Susan G Komen fund anyway?
The Susan G Komen Race For The Cure was, at its inception, a clever idea: Komen was an active woman who apparently enjoyed those 5K races (before she was diagnosed and died of breast cancer), it tapped into a group of active young women who are probably the third (or fourth wave) of feminism looking for ways to be active (especially a group of young, mid-level corporate women), and it served as a good reminder that women have the economic leverage, now, to make a difference on causes they care about most.
Trouble is, "Susan G Komen" also became a kind of corporate shorthand for easy giving to a cause. You can buy lipstick and detergent and cereal and God knows what else these days, and "a portion of the proceeds" will go to Komen. Bank of America will give you a Susan Komen Visa, for God's sake. For fashion and advertising and health and beauty - or more to the point, anything in the industry of selling things to women - the easy way to look good and caring is to wrap something in pink and slap the Susan G Komen name on it.
Pink. Seriously, all this stuff, and they've colored it pink and say its for breast cancer awareness and the fact that it's also gendered and sexist determinism, suddenly flies out the window because it's for "Breast Cancer" and that makes it practically illegal to point out that most of this stuff is exploitative and kind of offensive... because say that, and somehow you're an uncaring lout who doesn't care about the millions of women with breast cancer.
And what does the Susan G Komen Foundation do, anyway? Well... mostly, they raise money, or spend money to raise yet more money, planning events and running races and all the rest. Do they actually do breast cancer research? Do they do breast cancer screenings? Do they treat patients? No, none of these, and not much else. What they do is take the money they raise - and I'm sure it's a reasonable percentage as these things go, not some scandal about them keeping more of it than they give away... but that's not my point. My point is, they take the money they raise... and they give it to the people who actually do those things.
At some point, one can reasonably say... why are you giving money to a third party when you could just as easily give the money you want to see used for breast cancer screenings and treatment and research and all the rest... and give it to the people who actually do that?
The thing that this "scandal" about Komen dropping Planned Parenthood reveals is not (just) that it exposes some woman at Komen as a pro-life tool, or that it puts both organizatiosn squarely in the middle of white hot women's politics (abortion is so the issue that's all over this election season that most men like to pretend isn't)... the thing about this scandal that cuts to th heart of charitable giving is that it makes something really lazy and embarrassing really obvious about all these people giving to Komen as if they're doing something. In other words... if you want to give money to see more women screened for breast cancer... give it to Planned Parenthood. Like you should have been doing, anyway.
I'm not trying to make people feel guilty or bad about giving to Komen; but from the start, sending money to "The Susan G Komen Fund For The Cure" has been, as charity often is, a class issue masquerading as kindness. It's third party, hands clean, do a little something, but just a little, for a difficult issue. Do you have some money, a little time, do you like parties or running or really long walkathons? Do you like to wear pink? Then we have the charity for you! Because that's what "charity" is, that's how charity works... it's comfortable, well off people who can watch other people's difficulties from a comfortable distance giving money to make sure other people take care of whatever it is that's wrong.
There's nothing wrong, really with giving money that goes to the Komen fund; even if they don't give it to Planned Parenthood, I'm sure they give it to a lot of worthy enterprises that are doing things to treat and research breast cancer. There's also nothing wrong with giving money, or having the kind of wealth that allows you to give generously. But the problem is, and has been, that giving money in this kind of corporate, three hands from the source kind of way is just what the past couple of days reminds us - you are at the mercy of a lot of well meaning people whose actions you don't control and have very little say over. And the reason people give to Komen, rather than to the actual sources, is because it would be harder, and take more work, to figure out what that is, how to give that way, and also still not think about the fact that you could do a lot more, really, than just give money. Or race for the cure. And people with the money to give don't like to spend a lot of time, often, thinking about all of that.
I've always felt that I have a New Yorker's approach to celebrities - certainly as long as I've ben a New Yorker, possibly since I was a child of 8 or 9 - which is that celebrities, per se, are not all that important, but trends have to come from somehwere. Which is to say, it's always good to know who the latest important celebrities are... and then try not to care all that much about them or what they do.
Lately, it's become next to impossible to keep up with all the variations and dimensions of "celebrity" out there - I blame reality television - but generally, the rules still hold; it's best not to care too much about who's famous or why, but occasionally, one may want to stay up to speed on what's happening with some of the big names of the day.
Which brings me to a few stories that seem to be comsuming a lot of oxygen just now.
First, Paula Deen has Type 2 Diabetes. I spent a lot of time not knowing who Paula Deen was - this is especially easy if one tries very hard not to watch the Food Network - but then I kept seeing pictures of this odd looking (i mean, the expression of perpetual surprise/fear on her face) woman on the covers of magazines at my local drugstore, including her own, and kept wondering, "who is this Paula Deen?" only to find out that Deen, apparently, is southern, and cooks, and became famous talking about southern cooking on television. Also, apparently, "southern" is another way of saying "use a lot of butter and cream and sugar" and the results are often fried or gooey or both.
A lot of the discussion of Deen's diagnosis - which is actually about three years old - has something to do with "just desserts" or the clucking of food moralists, which mostly is a reminder that food moralists may be right but are also annoying and unlikely to win people over. I admit, I find it curious that Deen is suddenly all too willing to discuss her health and ideas for healthier cooking (via her son's new cooking program), just at the convenient moment when she's signed a lucrative endorsement deal with Novo Nordisk. But mostly, I wonder why Deen matters at all, making food most of us wouldn't eat, let alone make on a regular basis.
Then there's Tim Tebow. Tebow is a quarterback for the Denver Broncos, and apparently grew up home schooled by his Baptist missionary parents. So he's very religious. So religious, apparently, that when he scores a touchdown, he drops to one knee and prays, thanking God for his scoring success. I think this is silly, but you know, there are worse things one could do.
But my goodness, how this whole thing has gotten people up in arms! There are the people who seem to find it crucial to compalin about Tebow and his prayers - and his mediocre playing, or so I'm told - and then there's the copnservatives who seem determined to turn Tebow into a rightwing icon, and "Tebowing" into the next big trend.
It would be easy to do the "I'm gay and who cares about sports"... but I'm gay and like sports, not football that much, but I try to keep up. I tend to think the conservative embrace of Tebow is, in its way, deeply cynical; it's one thing for other evangelical types to admire Tebow and his openness, another when cynical DC types embrace Tebow because it plays well to the conservative base. Both, though, are in some ways a good example of not being especially godly; using Tebow as a cudgel to judge the religiosity of others misses the point that the wonder of America is that we can all pray any old way we want to... or not pray at all. At the same time, the Tebow haters tend to give their game away by making Tebow into some sort of reliigious zealot, a reminder that there is, among the less religious, a discomfort with religious expression because it is, in fact, so reverent, and thus so hard to assail. Tebow's praying should, really, just be a colorful side note to a moderately successful career. Over time, it may well be just that.
In these uncertain, politically enervating times, the escapism of celebrity gossip is easy and inviting. I picked up the Star Magazine to find out more about the Kardashians, spent and hour or more discussing who wore what at the Golden Globes; I don't claim to be above the celebrity news. the thing about celebrity culture is that it isn't, and shouldn't be our only definition of culture. It's sad to see how much of what passes for "news" these days is warmed up, or leftover, or day old celebrity gossip stretched into filler. Paula Deen is now a "health" segment. Tebow leads the sports pages and political discussions, when he is less than crucial in either space. Kardashians, the saga of Donald Trump, Stephen Colbert and some comedic comment on the cmapaigns... it all goes on and on, and it's amusing, at first, how much we have a thing about celebrities. But not for long.
To me, the real definition of "screen presence" or star power is the ability to visually hold the screen. It's not as simple as being good looking, or well known. It's a quality, I think, of "something behind the eyes" - the presence of a mind that conveys feeling, thinking, something to make us both curious and satisfied, all at once.
I'm not explaining it all that well, but whatever it is, Kirsten Dunst is a movie star because she has it. She has had it for a long time, really since she first burst onto the scrren in Interview With The Vampire. Big or small, arty or lightweight (bring it on!), most of Dunst's work is amazing because she's so much more than just an attractive face.
Melancholia opens (as Manohla Dargis, lord help me, describes) with a series of dreamlike shots of Dunst in various moments of the film's story. There's a shot of her sinking into the ground as she tries to run across a golf course, and a shot of her appearing to conduct electricity. And there's the dramatic shot of her in an opulent wedding dress, tangled in strings and branches, trying to escape a forest. All of it centered on Dunst, beautiful, magnetic, mysterious.
And then the world ends.
Director Lars von Trier makes the nervy decision to show his hand up front - the plot of Melancholia, no spoiler, is that a giant planet is headed for the Earth and will crash into it and destroy it. But that, really, is not what Melancholia is about. Melancholia is a musing on depression, a science fiction story about being so depressed it's the end of the world... except if the world were really to end.
Dunst plays Justine, a young woman who is getting married at the start of Melancholia, whom we first see on her way to the reception with her new husband. The reception is taking place at the large hotel/estate of her sister and brother-in-law, and things, naturally, go disastrously awry. The bride's family is a mess, her boss is on hand to pressure her to work, and Justine is sinking into a deep depression that makes it impossible for her to please all of the people who expect so much from her. It's a long night, with a variety of dramas and revelations... but we wind up with a marriage that couldn't survive the after party, and a woman uncertain of her future.
We next see Justine returning to her sister Calire's a few weeks later, when her depression has worsened, and the world is gripped by the news of Melancholia, the planet headed straght for us. Claire's husband is fascinated by the planet's movements, the real life science experiment happening overhead, less concerned with his family's growing concern, or with supporting Justine at her most desperate hour of need. Claire is left to try and hold everything together - her fragile sister, her difficult marriage, and taking care of her young son. It is, in the end, too much.
As Claire sinks, miraculously, Justine revives; as Melancholia inches closer to its collision (the one we've already seen), Justine sharpens, gains focus, It's Justine who takes charge as Claire gets ever more hopeless and helpless, especially when John, her husband, realizes that we are, in fact, doomed. And it's Justine who faces the final end more alive, more present than ever, whose face may well be the last thing we ever see.
Von Trier is a difficult, eccentric director - and that's being kind - and Melancholia is not without his usual tics and tendencies, particularly to mistreat his beautiful female leads, and to be needlessly heavy handed with his thematic points, especially in his graphic depictions of sex and female sexuality. That said, this may be von Trier's best, most commercially accessible film yet, a sharp piece of carefully controlled sci-fi that harks back to classics like Raymond Carver, where a hypothetical futuristic scenario yields well observed thoughts on the current human condition. As a metaphor for depression, the end of the world caused by slamming into a planet named Melancholia may be obvious... but it's also, in its way, accurate. Von Trier's implication is that something about depression is personal, internal - it turns on, and then, for some reason, turns off. He also suggests, via Justine and Claire's interpersonal dynamic, that depression is catching, and that passing it along may somehow be part of surviving.
As I said at the start, what holds all of this together is Dunst, luminous, fearless, taking enormous risks as an actress that pay off, handsomely, in the end, as Justine regains her inner strength and sense of purpose. As she bathes, naked, in the glow of Melancholia as it approaches, Dunst is every inch the movie goddess, but that is almost beside the point; it's her moments of near catatonia, her desperation as Justine is at her lowest, that really speak volumes to how natural and unforced her work can be.
Dunst is ably supported by a stellar international cast - especially Charlotte Gainsbourg as Claire and Kiefer Sutherland (who knew?) as the feckless John. But there are masterfu turns by John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling as her parents, Stellan Skarsgaard as her boss, and several lovely young men during the wedding scenes (notably Alex Skarsgard as her new spouse). It's likely that von Trier had two films that didn't make sense until he combined them - one a bitter wedding story, the other, this intruiging idea about a planet. Together, they make a genius combination, a way to underline what matters, and what we really have to live for, in every sense.
Handsomely shot, and beautifully scored (as well as stunningly costumed), Melancholia may suffer during awards season from an understandable backlash against von Trier's thoughtless manner of speaking, but it's terribly unfair to such an ambitious, fascinating exercise, graced with such a daring, expressive performance. In a sane world, Dunst would easily face off against Michelle Williams and Meryl Streep. But likely there's no justice to be had, and Dunst will have to simply advance on a brilliant revival of her career in an overlooked gem. If you have better sense than an Academy voter, I'd urge you to give Melancholia a look.
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