Articles 1999
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Made in the USA
Forbes ASAP, August 22, 1999
It may seem like old rhetoric--talk of anarchy and chaos on the Internet. But the notion turned up again on newsstands early this summer in the British magazine Prospect. The cover featured a picture of a bomb with the tag line "Anarchy.com:Can We Tame the Net?"
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Socialists need tall fences
Forbes, August 08, 1999
Edward Hanna, the mayor of Utica, N.Y., seems perplexed. Ever since The New York Times ran a story about how his town is rebuilding its economy by welcoming refugees, he has been deluged with calls. Reporters as far away as Germany want to know what's going on in Utica: Aren't immigrants, especially refugees, supposed to be a drag on the economy? Don't they consume tax dollars and take jobs?
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The Pleasures of Persuasion
The Wall Street Journal, August 02, 1999
Obituaries for advertising pioneer David Ogilvy, who died last Wednesday, emphasized his respect for the consumer. "The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife," was a popular Ogilvy refrain. "His greatest legacy," declared the Associated Press, "was an approach to advertising that assumed the intelligence of the consumer."
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Creative Matrix
What we lose by regulating culture.
Reason, August/September 1999
"Whereas the distracted state of England, threatened with a cloud of blood by a civil war, calls for all possible means to appease and avert the wrath of God, it is therefore thought fit and ordained by the Lords and Commons in this parliament assembled that, while these set causes and set times of humiliation continue, public stage plays shall cease and be forborne."
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Our anxiety about what's to come is just the wish for things to stand still
The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 18, 1999
We used to think the 21st century would look like The Jetsons - flying cars, robot maids, high-rise apartment buildings, and 1950s-style corporations and sex roles. -
When Movies Become 'Product'
The New York Times, June 14, 1999
LOS ANGELES--Showing the public relations savvy we expect from media moguls, the heads of the Hollywood studios declined to testify last month when the Senate Commerce Committee held hearings on "marketing violence to children." So when television reported the story, viewers saw movie clips of Keanu Reeves facing off against evil, rather than a tape of an anonymous executive squirming in the witness chair. Films remained works of art, protected by the First Amendment, rather than mere corporate products to be regulated at Washington's whim.
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The Big One (review of Francis Fukuyama's The Great Disruption)
Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 13, 1999
Francis Fukuyama likes big subjects and bold claims. In 1989, he burst into public consciousness with his provocatively titled National Interest article, "The End of History," later expanded into a book, The End of History and the Last Man (1992). His thesis: Liberal, democratic capitalism represents the final stage in the Hegelian evolution of governing regimes, and the fall of the Soviet Union settled the debate. When the musical group Jesus Jones hit the pop charts with a 1991 song lauding the post-Cold War joys of "watching the world wake up from history," Fukuyama achieved a cultural penetration few intellectuals--let alone Hegel interpreters--dream of. -
When Doves Cry
Wars without ends.
Reason, June 1999
In Washington, they are calling the fight over Kosovo "Albright's war." The secretary of state's biography, it's said, is the reason NATO has gone to war with Serbia. Madeleine Albright was born in Czechoslovakia, the child of a diplomat stationed in Belgrade before and after World War II; the family twice had to flee the continent, to England to escape the Nazis and to America to escape the communists. Albright calls herself "a product of Central Europe" and says she has seen what happens "when you don't stand up to evil early."
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Sex mandates
Forbes, May 30, 1999
FROM FLORIDA TO ALASKA, state legislatures are debating whether to require private insurers to pay for contraceptives if they also cover other prescription drugs. Maryland enacted the first such mandate last year, and Georgia recently joined it. In all, 31 states will consider "pill bills" this session.
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Rerouting the Pork Barrel
Forbes ASAP, May 30, 1999
Silicon Valley's newly politicized executives stopped playing defense this year and went looking for government subsidies. But if high tech companies get their way in Washington, they may exacerbate the industry's biggest problem -- the lack of talented people to fill technical jobs.