From MSN Money, September 2008

This is a screen capture of an MSN multimedia feature for which I did the research and a bulk of the writing. See the full feature here.

from Duff Does Africa, 8/21/08

In today’s New York Times, Roger Cohen bubbles over with optimism about Africa’s current situation and prospects. Apparently Cohen just came back from Ghana, one of a small handful of African nations with relatively decent governments, and he’s extrapolated Ghana’s modest success onto the rest of the continent.

Unfortunately, Cohen’s rosy view of Africa’s current state is deluded. “Vodaphone had bought a majority stake in Ghana Telecom for $900 million…and I’d heard much about 6 percent annual growth, spreading broadband, and new high-end cacao ventures,” Cohen reports. “I don’t think that picture is exceptional these days for Africa, where growth averaged close to 6 percent last year.” What Cohen fails to take into account is that a lot of that 6% growth is fueled by opportunistic Chinese and Russian companies who strip mine and destroy the local environment, or companies like Firestone, which has been operating a virtual slave labor camp in Liberia. Moreover, no matter where the cash flow comes from, the amount that touches Africa’s poorest citizens amounts to less than a trickle. Most of Africa’s pseudo-democracies still operate on old patronage networks, in which profits go to friends and political networks, not roads and schools.

Cohen claims that “Africans care about democracy” now. But that hasn’t halted rampant electoral intimidation and fraud, not just in Zimbabwe but in Angola, NIgeria, and Ethiopia, to name a few. Cohen does recognize that there are still some dictators in Africa—he mentions Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Omar Bongo of Gabon. But he leaves out Paul Biya of Cameroon, Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, the genocidal Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, and numerous lesser-known brutes. These dictators aren’t going away just because Africans suddenly have an abstract appreciation for democracy. They’re violently clinging to power.

If Cohen counted the number of African countries with complete political freedom on one hand, he wouldn’t need all his fingers. And while he celebrates the end of authoritarianism in Africa, China and Russia continue to sell weapons to dictators and veto U.N. sanctions (Sudan and Zimbabwe), the U.S. continues to prop up criminals in exchange for their oil (Equatorial Guinea), and we all remain part of the problem rather than the solution.

But Cohen has yet another reason to trumpet the magical rise of Africa. “Just watch its agriculture, which is about to boom,” he claims. Let’s momentarily ignore the very real chance that global warming will bring increasing desertification to Africa and cripple its agricultural capabilities. Even if Africa could fully exploit all its fertile soil, in what market would its agriculture boom? Not one in which America and Europe are intent on subsidizing their own farmers just enough to keep Africa from ever competing in the agricultural export market.

Cohen’s overall point is that any encouraging news that emerges from Africa shouldn’t be hidden, and I agree. Giving more press to African success stories would provide models to emulate, and it could help Western aid focus its resources on the governments, organizations, and individuals that deserve them. But if we imagine that the few improvements we’ve seen so far signify an inevitable “rise of Africa,” we merely give ourselves an excuse to be complacent. Industrialized nations need to remain vigilant, make responsible investments and diplomatic choices, and seek out and support Africans in the public and private sector with the commitment and ingenuity to bring about real progress.

From the Playboy Blog, July 3, 2008

As a longtime Obama fan, I’ve been preparing for the excruciating anxiety of poll-watching in the months leading up to November’s election. What I wasn’t prepared for was the pain of seeing Obama bend to conservative interests as he attempts to woo independents and moderate Republicans. When I read yesterday’s New York Times headline, “Obama Wants To Expand Role of Religious Groups,” my liberal conscience wanted to reach for an ice pack.

But wait. As it turns out, the Times headline—in fact, the entire article—was misleading. It implied throughout that Obama simply plans to continue and expand President Bush’s White House Office of Faith Based Initiatives (WHOFBI). Barely allowed in a criminal 5-4 Supreme Court decision, the WHOFBI directs federal money to help faith-based—and only faith-based—charities apply for federal grant money, giving religious groups an automatic advantage over secular ones. Obama’s plan, the President’s Council for Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, actually rights Bush’s wrongs. It opens funds to secular community groups as well as religious ones and requires rigorous monitoring to ensure that federally funded charities do not proselytize or discriminate when they hire staff.

Why didn’t the Times mention this radical difference, which makes Obama’s policy, unlike Bush’s, constitutional? Well, because Obama barely mentioned it himself. In his speech in Zanesville, Ohio, Obama spoke almost exclusively about the merits of faith-based programs. His addition of secular groups seemed like an afterthought. Obama should be trumpeting his respect for the Constitution; instead, he’s showing sheepish deference to those who think their faith trumps America’s basic principles.

Thanks to our current administration and Supreme Court, the separation of church and state is in jeopardy. If Obama is elected, and if he is backed by a Democratic Congress, he needs to stop pussyfooting around this issue—in his programs, his court nominations, and his rhetoric. As a Constitutional scholar and teacher, a President Obama must stick to his guns. Of course, his stance (or lack thereof) on guns is another issue altogether.

The sidebar to the Playboy Interview with Fareed Zakaria in the May 2008 issue.

from the contributor page of Playboy Magazine, May 2008

This month’s Playboy Interview with Fareed Zakaria began at a New York restaurant. But long after that first meeting, Contributing Editor and author of Beautiful Boy David Sheff just couldn’t stop telephoning the razor-sharp Newsweek columnist and foreign-relations expert. “Zakaria makes really complicated issues understandable without dumbing them down,” says Sheff. “So much happens in the world every day that I could have kept calling him for updates until the day the interview went to press. In fact, I’d love to call him right now.”

“When we were kids he could be a real pain in the ass,” says Tom Farley, Jr., big brother of Chris Farley, the star of Saturday NIght Live and Tommy Boy. Over the years Tom came to admire his kid brother and was hit hard by his overdose in 1997. Farley heads up the Chris Farley Foundation, through which he uses his family’s brand of humor to help kids fend off peer pressure, drugs and booze–three things that killed Chris. Now Farley has co-written The Last Days of Chris Farley, an excerpt from the upcoming book The Chris Farley Show (Viking). To tell Chris’s story, Farley and Tanner Colby sat down with family, friends, and co-stars including Chris Rock and David Spade. “Throughout Chris’s life we all used to get together and tell stories about him,” says Farley. “I couldn’t imagine doing this biography any other way. Only this time I told people not to hold anything back.”

HIllary CLinton’s rocky marriage was an inspiration for Laura Kipnis’s book Against Love: A Polemic. In The Men Who Hate Hillary the renowned feminist defends Clinton against the right-wingers whose rants put her at a disadvantage before the primaries had even begun. “I wanted to tear apart their arguments,” Kipnis says. “I’m offended by the general level of stupidity, the platitudes, the pandering religiosity that passes for political discussion these days.”

From the Playboy Blog, 2/4/07

Last week six-term Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich bowed out of his bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination. No one gave Kucinich a chance in the primaries, but he’s used to being the underdog. When he sat for the Playboy Interview back in June 1979, Kucinich’s uphill populist battle was just beginning. The spunky 32-year-old Cleveland mayor had a lot to say about fighting against the odds, the evils of corporate America and the need to clean up politics.

Playboy: Weren’t you a third-string quarterback on your high school football team?
Kucinich: That’s true. I was so small that when I came out and said I wanted to play football, the coach told me he already had a football. When I ran out on the field people thought I was a mascot. When they found out I was on the team, they started rooting for me.
 

Playboy: You’ve been waging battles of all kinds since you became mayor. What’s all the controversy about?
Kucinich: We don’t have economic democracy. And economic democracy is a precondition to political democracy. A tremendous amount of the wealth in this country is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. We may have the form of a democratic society, but we don’t have the substance of it. Party politics in America today is all but defunct. The two-party system is merging into one party under the banner of a corporate state. If you have the great corporations of America running this country—or a city—you don’t have a political democracy. If competition is destroyed and big corporations are profiting from inflation and from government programs that shun the needs of most people, what you have is a corporate dictatorship.

Playboy: What about the charges that many of your appointees have been young, inexperienced or unqualified for their posts?
Kucinich: The average age of my top appointees is 41. But the real reason that the young people I’ve appointed to positions of power have been criticized is that they haven’t learned how to steal yet. If they learned to take bribes, if they learned to make policy according to the highest bidder, they would be praised as being innovative and bright.

Playboy: Why are you so optimistic about change?
Kucinich: Because I’ve seen, in young people I’ve hired, that the need for a purpose is still there. It’s young Americans who are going to be leading the push on economic issues, because they’re the ones who are affected by the job market. They, along with old people, are expendable. There’s also a movement to revive the draft, and it will have to be young people who have to resist becoming cannon fodder as we stumble our way through our foreign policy. So I guess what it amounts to is showing young people they have a self-interest involved here: that the world they will face 20 or 30 years hence will be one they shape—just as those who grew up in the Sixties have had their involvement affirmed or have had their lack of involvement remain a liability.

Playboy: Does it ever strike you that your stubbornness about fighting for your beliefs makes your quest overly idealistic, even quixotic?
Kucinich: Of course, some people thing mine is a somewhat quixotic quest. But you have to be ready to dream the impossible dream. I believe that. I’m a very independent person, politically, ideologically, personally. And I guess my whole life has been a matter of establishing my independence. You know, you have to fight these powers! Most people just want to be accepted by big institutions, they want in. They pay your bills. They make life easier for you. If you can’t beat them—and most people can’t—join them. At least that’s the refrain.

From the Playboy Blog, 1/31/07

Since 9/11 and the Patriot Act, everyday Americans can assume that their internet history, library records, and private conversations are making lively water cooler banter at the FBI building. We complain, but the Feds have been snooping into the private lives of celebrities for a whole lot longer. Recently declassified documents from the 1940s to 1970s show that J. Edgar Hoover had an intimate knowledge of the A-list’s doings. Very intimate.Among the FBI’s findings: Elvis Presley got some special “treatments” from a male dermatologist in the army, while Jimi Hendrix couldn’t stop practicing solo in his barracks. Comedy duo Abbott and Costello were porn addicts. Even our first centerfold, the unimpeachable Marilyn Monroe, may have had a sex tape stashed away. Read the full story on J. Edgar’s voyeurism here.

1/25/07

Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times Op-Ed column this morning is drawing much needed attention to the “Genocide Olympics” campaign. Its message is simple: as China prepares for its debutante ball—the Beijing Olympics—it should reconsider its open support of the genocidal government of Sudan, lest it tarnish the bright image it’s trying to promote. China spends $2 billion a year on Sudanese oil, sells weapons to Sudan’s government, and most importantly blocks attempts by the U.N. to deploy an effective peacekeeping force to a miasma that’s seen 200,000 people killed and 2.5 million displaced.

As part of the Genocide Olympics campaign’s efforts, they asked Beijing’s corporate sponsors to use their influence to pressure China to take action, since slaughter isn’t exactly one of the Olympic ideals the companies claim to promote. Now the campaign has a nifty report card telling us just how much the sponsors care. Read the full report here.

The results: 13 F’s, 3 D’s, 2 C’s, and one C+. Several companies actually received scores of 0, including Anheuser-Busch, Panasonic, Samsung, Lenovo, and Swatch. So this summer crack open a Bud, flip on your Panasonic flat screen, and enjoy Beijing 2008: “One World, One Dream.” Who doesn’t dream of Olympic-size pools full of cash?

From the Playboy Blog, 1/10/07

The New York Times reports today that a five-person majority of Supreme Court justices are leaning towards upholding Indiana’s requirement that all voters show government-issued photo ID at the voting booth. This is a tricky issue. Requiring voters to show a government ID might stem voter fraud to some extent, but at the same time it presents a real burden to lower-income voters, who are less likely to have IDs or the time and resources to obtain them (see this study). 

But what bothers me more than the majority’s stance on IDs is that they’re rejecting the Indiana Democratic Party and ACLU’s right to challenge the law at all. The case is a facial challenge, which means that the IDC and ACLU are opposing a restriction that they see as unconstitutional before it actually causes harm. This method has been accepted historically and, as Linda Greenhouse of the Times points out, was a key to overturning poll tax and gerrymandering laws before they actively disenfranchised voters. 
Today our conservative justices are suggesting that we wait until individuals are harmed by a given law before we address its constitutionality. They call this “judicial restraint.” If that individual’s grievances can be fixed retroactively by awarding damages, this approach is fine. But election results are permanent. If the court waits to rule on a specific voter’s case, the election will have already been stolen.

Whether Indiana’s voter ID law is constitutional or not, facial challenges are necessary to protect voter rights and keep elections fair. Unfortunately, this won’t be the first time the current Court has acted to dismantle our means of challenging corrupt laws. Check out last summer’s decision in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, in which the court barred U.S. citizens from suing to stop unconstitutional White House spending. Our justices aren’t just making the wrong decisions; the precedent they’re setting is whittling away our ability to defend our Constitutional rights. They’re becoming the bad government they were meant to prevent.

From the Playboy Blog, 11/28/07

George W. Bush hasn’t been a “sexy” president. But a new calendar by photographer Burke Heffner (no relation to our Hef—Burke’s got an extra “f” in there) suggests that you don’t have to be having sex with someone to be in bed with her. Or him. Or them.

Each month of the calendar assigns a pinup girl to a different form of Bush corruption. Miss July bathes in a tub of oil, and thanks Georgie for starting a war for her. Miss April rolls nude in a pile of money, celebrating Bush’s tax breaks for the rich. The pictures include vital stats like income ($12.2 billion for February’s girl, “Mrs. Wal”) and turn-offs (Michael Moore for Miss June, a.k.a. “Robin DeSyck”). The calendar also points out fun dates like August 30, 2005, the day Dick Cheney ordered crews to fix oil pipelines running to the Northeast instead of restoring power to hospitals serving Hurricane Katrina victims. Heffner’s love of vintage pinups goes well with his affinity for film noir; he likes innocent-looking girls getting dirty. The photos, like the subject matter, are pretty dark. But the combination of humor and beautiful women makes it all less depressing. And the end is in sight: the calendar finishes on January 20, 2009, the last day of Bush’s presidency.
A quarter of the calendar’s profits are going to go to watchdog groups to try to stop Dubya—and future presidents—from hopping in bed with special interests. Buy it at Heffner’s website. One warning: I’d skip March. The photo focuses on Miss Hal E. Burton, and he isn’t quite as fun to look at as his counterparts.