May 2003

Working Alone
This week, reporter Rick Bragg, a Pulitzer winner, resigned from The New York Times. Earlier this month, the paper revealed that reporter Jayson Blair had fabricated details and plagiarized quotations in his stories. Bragg was suspended for a less serious offense, relying heavily on the work of an uncredited assistant. Bragg maintained that he did nothing out of the ordinary... and commentator James Poniewozik says that journalists are not the only ones who don't work alone. Renaissance masters and famous scholars no more originate all their own material than Ray Kroc flipped every last McDonald's hamburger.

Crossing No Man's Land
New Delhi based commentator Martha Ann Overland describes what the communications freeze between India and Pakistan has meant to her and her kids. Often, the only way to visit the children's father is walk a half-mile across a barren no-man's land of concertina wire and machine gun emplacements to cross into Pakistan.

America, Defender of Islam?
Commentator Joe Loconte says that by pledging to rebuild Iraq, the United States is functioning as the world's largest defender of Islam.

U.S.-Russia Summit
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says that at their upcoming meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, the closest U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin may come to resolving their long-standing differences is forgiving them.

Indy 500 and 'Indiana'
About 300,000 people are expected at the Indiana Motor Speedway on Sunday to watch the 87th Indy 500. And before the green flag, right before "Gentlemen, start your engines," Jim Nabors -- yes, Jim Nabors -- will sing "Indiana," just as he has almost every year since 1972. Why is this song -- before this race -- as sentimental to some Midwesterners as the singing of "My Old Kentucky Home" before the derby? Commentator Bob Cook thinks he has an answer.

Candidate Families
There are nine Democratic candidates who want to be their party's Presidential nomination. Commentator and political reporter Jake Tapper observes that such a crowded field makes it hard for some of the candidates to distinguish themselves. Dick Gephardt is bringing up his children, and the lessons their lives have taught him about policy issues like health care and teachers' salaries. Jake Tapper writes for Salon.com.

Second Acts
The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that there are no second acts in American lives. Writer Louise Shaffer is proving him wrong. She had a long acting career, including winning an Emmy for her role on Ryan's Hope. Now she's just published a novel, titled The Three Miss Margarets. She says that her second act as a novelist has a lot in common with her first. Shaffer's novel is published by Random House.

U.S. Relations with Iran
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says U.S.-Iran relations are becoming increasingly strained as suspicions rise about Tehran's connection with terrorism.

Economic Advisors
Gus Faucher, an economist with Economy.com, comments on the Bush administration's decision to move the president's Council of Economic Advisors to office space further away from the White House.

Quarantine
In 1941, commentator Desiree Cooper's grandfather was diagnosed with tuberculosis. There was no sanitarium in rural Georgia that would take blacks, so the health department built a shack in the back yard for her grandfather to live in, while his wife and children lived in the house, close but not making much contact.

Money Issues
Other girls growing up in the 1950s read biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt or Amelia Earhart. But for commentator Heather King, her heroine was Hetty Green, billed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the stingiest woman on earth. As an adult, Heather was frugal to the point of obsession, but then she started to think: She was taking all of her books out of the library and wondering why her own book wouldn't sell. She needed to put something into the world in order to get something out.

Flight Attendants
Commentator Andrei Codrescu is entranced by the self-possessed manner in which a flight attendant reads the pre-flight instructions to passengers on a plane. She turns the mundane into art, he says.

Cuban Connection
Commentator Ana Hebra Flaster was born in Cuba and came to the United States as a child. She spends a lot of time trying to get around the trade embargo -- finding ways to get money and gifts to relatives still in Cuba. Right now, her best connection is a gay hairdresser in New Jersey who travels to Cuba to see his boyfriend. He charges 10 percent for cash deliveries to her relatives.

Anti-Western Violence
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says anti-Western violence is spreading like an epidemic in the Islamic world.

Water Yo-Yo
Commentator Lenore Skenazy says health officials are overreacting to a new popular toy called a water yo-yo. She says kids have always found strange and potentially dangerous items to play with. This one should scare us no more than any other.

Tax Politics
Commentator Jay Bryant argues that the fact that Congress is debating the size and shape of a tax cut that it will eventually pass is a victory for the President. Polls indicate that Americans aren't that passionate about a tax cut. But as long as President Bush focuses on tax cuts, he's keeping the domestic focus off other issues that he's not polling as well on. Jay Bryant writes theoptimate.com.

Soccer Hooligans
On a trip to Dublin, commentator Hollis Gillespie got caught up in a rampage of soccer hooligans.

Passing for Egyptian
When commentator Murad Kalam traveled to Egypt, he realized that, if he kept his mouth shut, he could pass for Egyptian. For the first time in his life, he felt ordinary. He could hail a cab at any hour, something he could not do in Boston or New York. But he was not "passing" in the American sense -- a light-skinned black person passing for white. And even though he was passing, he knew that he was not truly Egyptian.

Healer's Art
Right now, there's a new social contract in negotiation between doctors and everyone else, says commentator Joe Wright. Doctors have long been viewed as arrogant and uncaring. Now, there's a movement to make doctors more caring and spiritual about their practice. In medical school, he took a class called 'The Healer's Art' that tries to teach these new values. At the end of the class, he received a pin to wear that says 'The Healer's Art,' but he's not going to wear it. Wearing it runs the risk of creating a kind of church of the doctor, and Wright doesn't want the arrogance of the past to be replaced by piety.

The Teflon President
NPR Senior News Analyst Dan Schorr says recent CBS/New York Times poll numbers demonstrate a national ambivalence about President Bush. Despite widespread skepticism about his policies, the President's job-approval rating is high.

Writer's Clock
It's no news flash that looking young is all-important in Hollywood. But commentator and TV writer Lori Gottlieb never thought this would apply to her. Now, it seems that producers want to hire writers who are young -- and the writers are getting plastic surgery and wearing their hair in braids to try to try to get work.

Jose Padilla's Civil Liberties
Monday on All Things Considered, a commentator argued that the federal government is dangerously violating the Constitution in the way it is handling the detention of Jose Padilla. Padilla is suspected of being an al Qaeda terrorist and planning to build a dirty bomb. He has yet to meet with lawyers arguing his case. Today, commentator Paul Rosenzweig argues his position. He says the balance between civil liberties and national security is always changing, and the current situation is not a cause for alarm.

Semiotics
Commentator Marion Winik muses about her college major -- semiotics.

Watching Twisters
Commentator Daniel Ferri didn't actually see very many tornadoes during his Missouri childhood. But they still made an impression on him.

Commentary: Jose Padilla
The case of Jose Padilla has been making its way through the federal court system since his arrest last June. He's suspected of being an al Qaeda terrorist and planning to build a dirty bomb. He has yet to meet with lawyers arguing his case, though he's been in detention for the better part of a year -- and that's too long, argues commentator David Cole. Cole is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

Commentary: The Milt
The Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Penn., was founded as a boarding school for orphans in 1909. Today, kids from low-income families attend for free. Among the school's alumnae is commentator Paul Ford, who attended The Milt during high school. The Milt had rules about everything -- how to vacuum the floor in a triangular pattern, how to wear a hat properly, the kinds of haircuts that were allowed. Though students wanted to rebel, they knew they were charity cases dependent on the philanthropy of Milton Hershey, so they rebelled quietly. But as Ford recalls, one day his roommate rebelled openly and bizarrely: He shaved his eyebrows.

Sports and Racial Politics
Commentator Leon Wynter is a big sports fan, but lately he's been watching sports with a new kind of race-consciousness. He's rooting for white basketball players and black quarterbacks who demolish stereotypes of racial superiority in their sports. But if he roots for a player because the player is white, is that racial treason?

Psychology and Religion
Psychology and religion work in much the same territory, wrestling with big questions about personal meaning, relationships and life. Commentator Aaron Freeman found that, for his family, religion is psychology.

Ubiquitous Mobile Phones
In Vietnam, as in many Asian countries, mobile phones are everywhere, observes commentator Andrew Lam.

Living with the Threat of SARS
Commentator Anne McBride-Norton and her husband live and work in rural China. The SARS epidemic is a danger to them, but because they are Americans, they have options that their Chinese neighbors and friends don't have.

Bush's Re-election and the Economy
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says fundraising success will likely determine the 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee. But President Bush's chances of re-election will depend more on the health of the economy than on the strength of his opponent.

Bush's Re-Election Strategy
Commentator Byron York looks at the election from a Republican strategist's point of view. National security, York says, is going to be the winning issue for President Bush. This election will not be like the 1992 race, when President George Bush, Sr. seemed invincible because he had won the Gulf War, yet still lost the election on the economy. The recent war in Iraq seemed to be about security and domestic terrorism.

Baby Seats
Commentator Andrei Codrescu thinks that baby seats offer kids a view of all the many passengers of a car's past. He says that when the parents grow too old to drive, the phantom passengers move to the child's car.

Unbelievers
Commentator Meredith Gudger is planning to go to a Methodist seminary in the fall. To prepare, she's taking this year to travel around the country and visit churches of many denominations. And in the congregations she's seen, she's met all kinds of believers. One man in California calls himself a chicken-fryer -- not particularly spiritual, but always willing to help out at the church picnic or with any other task the community needs. Another man in New York has spent most of his life doing volunteer work for his congregation, but he admits to her that he is an agnostic. When she is a minister, she hopes that her congregation is full of chicken fryers and agnostics.

Lipstick
Commentator Elissa Ely's colleagues all tell her she's looking fine, but it takes a delusional curmudgeon to reveal the truth.

North Korea
NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says an embargo against North Korea will likely be the next "battle" in President Bush's war on terror.

Spam, Spam, Spam!
Commentator Ralph Schoenstein says his in-box fills up with spam everyday. And some of it isn't exactly family-friendly.

Iraqi Playing Cards
The capture of more leaders of Saddam Hussein's government was announced today by the U.S. military. All were on a 55 most-wanted list. Commentator Jake Tapper observes that every time someone on that list is taken into custody, reports include how they were ranked in the deck of cards the Pentagon put out to help soldiers identify the leaders of the Iraqi regime. It makes the operation in Iraq seem like a game but, he says, it's not, and we should not see it that way.

Codrescu
Commentator Andrei Codrescu reflects on the flap of skin between the mouth and the nose.

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