the attitude with arnie arnesen the tues edition noon to 1pm on wnhnfm.org Dec 16
Arnie Arnesen
opening thoughts: RFK Jr...death becomes him
The Kennedy Center of Contagious Diseases
One defining feature of the second Trump administration is how, like in a particularly rotten late-empire monarchy, so much depends on the precise details of mental derangement afflicting the national leader and his top courtiers. Probably the most deranged Trump cabinet official, if his tawdry affairs and wildly erratic behavior are any indication, is Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—though the competition is admittedly stiff.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised that he would let Kennedy “go wild on health.” At the time, I thought this would be very bad, but if anything it has been even worse. In just a few months, Kennedy has obliterated a vast amount of government capacity and expertise that took generations to build up, gravely undermined American medical science, and above all waged an undeclared war against vaccines. The worst outbreaks of measles and whooping cough (or pertussis) in many years are festering around the country, and not only is the federal government AWOL, but Kennedy is expending great effort to make these outbreaks worse, and add more diseases.So far this year, there have been something like 25,000 recorded cases of pertussis, and no doubt many more that have not been reported. At least 13 people are dead, almost all of them babies under one year old. Last week, classes were canceled in one Iowa district thanks to an outbreak.Meanwhile, America is suffering its worst outbreak of measles since it was declared eliminated in 2000, with a reported 1,837 cases at time of writing. Authorities in South Carolina are dealing with two large outbreaks, with hundreds of people in quarantine. The reason for this simply has to be declining vaccine coverage....Kennedy has devastated the basic functioning of America’s public-health apparatus by implementing massive budget cuts, conducting mass layoffs of experienced staff, and installing fellow crazed lunatics in leadership positions....It ends this way: A marked characteristic of Kennedy and many of his cronies is a combination of dishonesty, stupidity, and genuine ideological conviction. Testifying before the Senate, Kennedy has repeatedly sworn that he is not actually reducing access to vaccines. He was lying. As The New York Times recently covered in detail, Kennedy has been working for decades to spread anti-vax misinformation, restrict access to vaccines, and convince people (especially parents) not to vaccinate.This is his life’s work: a madman whose ideas can cause a tremendous quantity of completely pointless illness and death. And now he’s in the precise position to do so. Big thanks to everyone who facilitated this.
part one: Kalena Thomhave is a writing fellow at The American Prospect. Home Care Workers Are Losing Minimum Wage Protections — and Fighting Back Three million care workers, many of them Black and Latina women, could be classified as “companions” instead of professionals. https://capitalandmain.com/home-care-workers-are-losing-minimum-wage-protections-and-fighting-back
part two: Nora Gilbert is a professor of literary and film studies and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of North Texas, where she co-specializes in Victorian literature and early Hollywood film. She is the author of "Better Left Unsaid: Victorian Novels, Hays Code Films, and the Benefits of Censorship" (Stanford University Press, 2013) and "Gone Girls, 1684-1901: Flights of Feminist Resistance in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Novel" (Oxford University Press, 2023), as well as coeditor of "Victorian Gaslighting: Genealogy of an Injustice" (SUNY Press, 2026). She is currently at work on a monograph about the relationship between film stardom, feminism, and anti-feminism during Hollywood's golden age, called "Unwomaned!: Classical Hollywood Stardom and the Threat of Female Independence."
The dystopian Pottersville in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is starting to feel less like fiction https://theconversation.com/the-dystopian-pottersville-in-its-a-wonderful-life-is-starting-to-feel-less-like-fiction-270759
D. ARNIE ARNESEN
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