Grade This! - March 14, 2006
The latest news wrap-up: From the White House to the big house, price-gouging with a side of mustard.
By Brian Beutler
Mar 14th, 2006
Just Wait For the Movie Starring Woody Allen
If I were a book publisher, I’d have three rules: No books on how paint dries, no books on how grass grows, and no books on how a quarter-percent increase in the prime rate will provide a cushion for the economy in the event of a modest downturn in housing prices. That still leaves room for a lot of subject matter. Yet somehow Alan Greenspan has received an $8.5 million advance for his memoirs. Well done, Penguin. Michael Kinsley’s concerns differ from mine, though. He worries less about boring subject matter than about Greenspan’s infamously obfuscatory prose. Kinsley channeling Greenspan: “Although developments in human biology are always—and, in the view of many experts, perhaps not unincluding myself, quite properly—subject to a variety of interpretations, the evidence does tend to suggest, with only a limited amount of ambiguity, that I was born.”
Alan Greenspan: B-
Alan Greenspan’s book: F
Michael Kinsley: A (even if he is riffing on Orwell without attribution)
Thus Making Him the 6,934th-Most Corrupt Former Administration Official
Claude Allen, a born-again Christian and President Bush’s top domestic-policy aide was arrested for an elaborate form of shoplifting. Here’s the ruse: Buy an item, take it to your car, return to the store with the receipt, take the exact same item off the shelf again and get a refund for it. Then, go back to your car and enjoy both your money and your Bose sound system. Clever. But not surprising. Think, after all, of policy makers and their relationship to domestic governance in this country. They pay as little as possible in taxes and then turn around to create huge bureaucracies so that they can provide their unworthy friends with swanky jobs, and they use their salaries and their power to make lucrative insider investments, get special cutbacks in the private sector, and host really neat cocktail parties. If Allen is convicted, expect a swift presidential pardon followed shortly by a Medal of Freedom bestowed for model citizenry. Go ownership society!
Bush fake ownership society: F
Claude Allen: A+ (c’mon. That’s pretty audacious)
Me: F. I wish I’d thought of it.
 Do You Have Any Grey Poupon, or Will That Also Cost Five Hundred Dollars?
The prices of certain cancer drugs have launched again above their already Himalayan heights, even though production costs haven’t changed for them at all. In the case of the topical chemotherapy drug Mustargen, the company that manufactures it, Ovation pharmaceuticals, has increased prices 1000 percent. “The increases have caused doctors to question Ovation’s motive — and left lymphoma patients wondering how they will afford Mustargen, which is sometimes not covered by insurance, because the drug’s label does not indicate that it can be used as an ointment.” This is an abomination. It’s also terrible PR for pharmaceutical companies who have apparently failed to learn from their friends in the men’s razor industry: first, tack useless shit (like an ancillary fifth blade) on to your already fully functional product and then send prices through the stratosphere. Mustargen, for instance, is made from nitrogen mustard. If Ovation could just produce a dual-use drug that both fought lymphoma and added a vinegar-spice to your favorite deli sandwich, they might have a deal.
Ovation: F
Mustard: A
Sandwiches: A+
Shady manufacturing tactics like manufacturing obsolescence or flooding the market with over-produced, underfunctional crap: B. (It’s actually kinda genius.)
Still No Investigation Into Unchecked Waste Material Passing Through David Brooks’ Vocal Cords
The ports deal fell through. Hurray? I dunno. That’s hardly my concern. My concern is David Brooks, who detects more than a tincture of pandering and hypocrisy in Hillary Clinton’s opposition to the deal. Why? Because she likes money from Dubai when it’s handed out elsewhere: “Clinton didn’t seem to mind when officials of the United Arab Emirates kicked in up to a million dollars into her husband’s presidential library. She didn’t seem alarmed when Dubai poured at least $450,000 into her family bank accounts through her husband’s speaking business. She didn’t object when the Clinton administration approved a deal for a Chinese government firm to run the Port of Long Beach .” Now, I’m no expert, but since when were Bill Clinton’s library or speaking career important to our national security? And, since when were first ladies in the business of publicly questioning their husband’s decisions as president? And if she had, wouldn’t conservatives like, say, David Brooks, have attacked her for the umpteen millionth time for having a mind of her own and not staying in the White House to bake cookies? So David Brooks assumes Hillary Clinton is a Bill Clinton parrot, eh? Well maybe Hillary’s not xenophobic. Maybe David Brooks is a sexist hack. Just a thought.
Our port security: F
David Brooks: D
Single-handedly lowering the discourse of this country by calling David Brooks a sexist hack: A+
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Brian Beutler graduated from UC Berkeley in 2004 and has interned at The Washington Monthly and the Brookings Institution. He writes for the Washington City Paper.
Illustration: August J. Pollak
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