Ilene Tannenbaum responds to Times article
Ilene Tannenbaum is the director of the Brooklyn College Health Clinic, and an ally to young people in the fight for our right to live healthily. She responded to the recent NY Times article on uninsured young adults, and how the unnecessary denial of their health rights is leading them into dire circumstances.
Response Below:
‘For Uninsured Young Adults, Do-It-Yourself Health Care,’ (NY Times, 2/18/09) provides yet another example demonstrating the dire need for our country to implement a national health insurance plan.
Unlike the young adults described in the article, the students at Brooklyn College do not have to rely on the internet or their friends for either self-diagnosis or medical treatment. The system developed and maintained since 1993 for students may in fact serve as a model for our nation, and not merely as an alternative to neglect, self-management, and too often, misguided care. Through a small contribution of only $10 per student per semester, each individual attending Brooklyn College has access to unlimited visits to a skilled practitioner in which preventive care is emphasized, and early diagnosis and intervention help avoid disease complications. While there remain some generally negligible costs for certain medications, laboratory tests and diagnostic procedures, the clinic attempts to assure that these services are available to its patients at substantially reduced rates.
Although the Brooklyn College Health Clinic falls far from the ideal - it cannot offer patients with alternative choices for free outpatient care, it cannot provide in-patient treatment, and budgetary limitations hamper provider availability - this imperfect model nonetheless offers evidence that a population can be served well by garnering fairly small regular and equitable assessments regardless of need or intended use. Clearly any national proposal would have to include a contribution greater than Brooklyn College students are paying, but there is no reason not to be hopeful that much can be accomplished with a modest tax-like share to help ensure this goal.
No one should have to go without access to high-quality, affordable healthcare. At Brooklyn College we have shown how it can be done.
Ilene Tannenbaum, NP
Director, Brooklyn College Health Clinic
Please Stop Dancing
I recently saw the video for Lady GaGa's "Just Dance," to which I will only link, I ain't posting that crap. First of all, I hate her weave. Ok, ok, I will stop discounting her (stupid) song by referencing her physical appearence. However, I am dismayed by both the song and video's misrepresentation of excessive drinking and the dangers implicit in the act like, um, death, and the dangers not implicet like, um, rape. The lyrics follow:
I've had a little bit too much, much
All of the people start to rush, start to rush by
How does he twist the dance? Can't find a drink, oh man
Where are my keys? I lost my phone, phone
What's going on on the floor?
I love this record baby but I can't see straight anymore
Keep it cool, what's the name of this club?
I can't remember but it's alright, a-alright
Just dance, gonna be okay, da da doo-doo-mmm
Just dance, spin that record babe, da da doo-doo-mmm
Just dance, gonna be okay, d-d-d-dance
Dance, dance, just, j-j-just dance
Don't be alarmed, I didn't write that shit out myself. I found it on one of those music lyric website, you know, the ones that infect the life out of your computer so you can know what whether Xtina sang "my hymen broke" or "hi, man, I'm broke."
Ok, I'm not a doctor, but if you drank so much that you can't find your phone, which you may need to call the police department via 9-1-1, and you can't find your keys, which you will need to eventually get back into your house, you should stop drinking. Further, it isn't going to be alright. Nightclubs and houseparties are wonderful places to network and dance with friends and meet a potential significant other, but they aren't safezones for intoxicated young people, especially in the society in which we live. According to RAINN, 1 in 6 American women have been victims of attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. If you can't see straight anymore, then that means someone else will have to lead you out when you want to leave, hopefully that doesn't turn out to be, um, a rapist.
The video grossly misrepresents public intoxication and re-instate terrible drinking habits which may be best describes as "drink till you pass out." I was in the UK this summer while recent high school graduates were receiving their "A levels," qualifications for university which I believe are comparable to the SATs. Anyhow, its a huge partying time, and I got to see a lot of young people equipped with tons of misinformation about alcohol as well as, well, alcohol. At one point I was sitting by the window of a bar, enjoying my friends and my cup of beer, when I saw a young, heavily, intoxicated woman skid across the pavement and bash her head againt a wall. She was subsequently unconscious. I told her "friends" crowding around her that I was going to call an ambulence. They yelled for me to "mind my own bloody business." Um...possible dead girl on the floor sounds like my business. She awoke a few seconds before the ambulence arrived although I never followed up on the state of her health.
I would love to see Lady GaGa add that glamour to her video.
“Students are paying more, and a greater share of the costs, but are arguably getting less,” File this under "Um...Duh."
The Times reports that a study by the Delta Project describes what every student who is either attending or has attended college in the last 15 years already knows: Students are covering a huge share of their college education, aren't getting their money's worth in terms of services, and, after college, aren't able to pay off the loans . In other words, the US has taken on the medieval feudal system: which makes one enslaved to a lord on account of their debt. Yup, we are working our college educated asses off so that the children of banking families can have ponies for Christmas.
It's often entertaining to see the mainstream media peer into Higher Education news. When CNN or the Times reports on primary and secondary edu-ma-cation, they usually do so from the point of the "concerned parent." And then they wonder why young people don't care about their shitty news. However, when MSM (mainstream media) reports on higher education, its often as if they are peering into a world they know so little about. It's as if their writers have formed a disconnect between their years at university and their professional life thereafter.
But this news report isn't some surprise to college students. I have friends who have college debt in the range of $0.01-$70,000. That's US dollars, not pesos.
But good news! Ok, I'm kidding. It's actually bad news. David Patterson is going to cut state funding to CUNY by 102 million dollars by 2010, which I have posted about here. Feel free to hate on him. Really, he isn't just the player, he's the entire game.
You can find and contact your NY state senator here. They vote on the governor's budget proposals.
Obama and the Intra-net
 I think that if Dubya Bush spent some time during his very busy terrorist-ass-kicking presidency reading any of thousands of blogs and bloggers who hate his stupid ass then he wouldn't have been too surprised when he received boos from two million Americans upon departing from DC. Hell, even the thought of Bush on the internet is hilarious. Truth of the matter is, bloggers aren't as polite as the Times and CNN because we represent the plebeians. We aren't, as Sarah Palin puts it, the "Liberal Media Elite." We are rude, crass, and lack silly rhetoric (unless we're hating on some damn fool).
Although the mainstream media did raise public favor for Obama in some respects, such as representing Sarah Palin as though she had fried eggs for brains (Which, for the record, she does not), they failed to cover all the obvious paradoxes of the McCain/Palin run for office, such as McCain's claim to support women while conveniently missing the senate vote on the Liddy Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would enable people with vaginas to sue the millions of companies which regularly do a one-over on them by paying them less then people with penises, and Palin's claims to be a feminist in light of the fact that one of the only, or the only, shelter for pregnant teens in Alaska was shut down during her governorship. And remember when Palin said that she had gay friends and that we would be "very tolerant" of gays, as if we were living in Iran or something. The gays were like "No she don't and no she ain't." Probably the only person giggling in the CNN Newsroom was Anderson Cooper.
Blogs and bloggers continue to pick up where mainstream media is lacking. Such as when the BradBlog covered the very suspicious death of Michal Connel, a very key witness in Ohio's 2004 presidential race voter fraud case, after being threatened by Karl Rove. What was on CNN that day? JonBennet Ramsay. OMGZ! She died like a million years ago and the only people who care are white soccer moms from NJ.
That said, young people voted overwhelmingly for Obama, young people don't read CNN or the Times we read blogs and facebook, and the blogs and facebook were all up for Obama.
It isn't that we don't read CNN and the Times because they are a snorefest, we don't read them because they have News titles such as these:
"Freezing woman 'felt my soul leaving'"
"Deliver pizzas: wife tells laid-off hubby"
"Cheney upset with Bush decision"
Let me spell it out for you CNN: No one. Effing. Cares. PS: The soul is a social construction.
As it turns out, Obama has recognized the importance of non-mainstream and diversified media outlets and has set aside an entire page on technology. One underpaid whitehouse intern (probably) typed this point of the Obama agenda up:
"Encourage Diversity in Media Ownership: Encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum."
Two points come to mind as I read this: 1) Hopefully now mainstream media, such as z100 (you know, "today's hit music station"), will be more socially responsible and stop airing commercials that exploit people by stimulating their distresses such as that miserable ad about how men need to buy liquid formula that will increase the girth of their penis because, you know, women contemplate nothing other than penis size all day long.
2) If this means that young people will have a stake in mainstream media then I am putting a stake in that shit like I was Buffy the Vampire Slayer!
But why, you ask, am I so concerned about mainstream media? Well, the truth is that bloggers are only plebeian to a finite degree. Most bloggers who report and discuss the political are college educated. We have been trained to be quite critical of sources of information and processes of thought. We are equipped with the language of sociology that makes in easy to communicate instances of discrimination, oppression, abuse, and other social injustices. Meanwhile, most people get their information from...well...Z100. Brad Friedman at the BradBlog verbalizes this point well:
"One of the reasons I was most looking forward to the likely-victory of John Kerry back in 2004, was so that I could begin to make his life a living hell in regards to Media Reform, the most important --- in my opinion --- reform of all at this particular point in the 21st Century. While the Supreme Court has declared many times that the right to vote is protective of all other rights, I'd suggest that the right to be informed, accurately, via our nation's publicly owned airwaves, is the right that ensures our right to vote is ultimately protective of anything. With our current hard right-leaning corporate media landscape, every attempted reform, including Election Reform, by any Democratic administration, must overcome a nearly impossible crucible of rightwing opposition --- and more disturbingly, propaganda --- across the nation's public airwaves."
If you are considering organizing for young people representation in mainstream media, now is the time. Trust me, we can do much better than the marketing interns are doing at Z100.
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