My Favorite Funny Man May Be Onto Something
I’d like to think that if my friends, family members, or fellow Cal Dems could say one thing about me: they would say that I love Conan O’ Brien. Sure, actual aspects of my own personality would be more appropriate, but honestly, I’d rather be defined by my devotion to a late-night host.
In recent days, my dear Conan (whom I call my “tall glass of Irish comedy”) has gotten into a semi-serious and wholly entertaining feud with the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey – Cory Booker. It all began when Conan joked about Mayor Booker’s health program for Newark residents, saying “The health care program would consist of a bus ticket out of Newark.” Then Mayor Booker posted a YouTube video in opposition in which he banned Conan from Newark Liberty International Airport, and they’ve hilariously gone back-and-forth since then. Personally, I highly recommend watching the last several nights of The Tonight Show to enjoy the full experience of this feud (surprise, surprise). And although I’ve indulged in the guilty pleasure of laughing at Newark while enjoying Conan and Booker’s shenanigans, Bob Herbert’s latest Op-Ed uses this seemingly nominal feud to remind us of America’s many downtrodden and crumbling cities. Most of our metropolises have neighborhoods that have been far from alright for a very long time, and not only are these areas even worse-off today, but mid-size cities and borderline neighborhoods have either fallen through the cracks or are hanging on by a weak thread.
During the worst economic times since the Great Depression, we are failing to attend to the heart of urban America. Some of our nation’s greatest public servants, scholars, and artists have risen out of city poverty, mind you through their own dedication and passion – but is mobility out of these neighborhoods even a possibility for those who are waiting in line simply to get to the bottom of the ladder? Let alone ascending the rungs. We need to invest in these neighborhoods by repairing public education and mending structural defects which allow for startling discrepancies in arenas as simple as access to a decent grocer.
Basic livelihood is a daily challenge for millions of Americans. And yet the media gods and public officials misuse their platforms and ignore real, visible problems such as these for “sexier” policy issues like “national security”. They don’t want to anger contributors who may disagree because they can profit from poverty in America and opportunistic developers who claim to “revitalize” and “rejuvenate” these neighborhoods as if what’s at stake is aging skin. Need we be reminded – the homeland has been here all along. Herbert points out these living contradictions:
In Newark, where some of the streets do look as bad as the scenes that were part of Conan’s comedy bit, the unemployment rate is 14.7 percent. Keeping kids in high school long enough to graduate is difficult. Drug dealing is a fallback employment option for men and boys who can’t find legitimate work.
Other cities have the same problems, some to a greater degree. So what are we doing? While mulling the prospect of sending up to 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, we’ve stood idly by, mute as a stone, as school districts across the nation have bounced 40,000 teachers out of their jobs over the past year.
That should tell you all you need to know about twisted national priorities.
Let’s make it a national priority to invest in our human capital with after-school programs for students and solid job creation for their parents, so they don’t have to turn to the unfortunate truths of turning tricks and pushing illegal substances.
Unfortunately, Newark is not unique – it was one of many American cities and neighborhoods that used to be the exception, but are becoming the rule.
America’s future lies with its people and their potential. It is all there is and all there ever will be.
Maybe one day we can look back and think this was all pretty funny.
If you look at any of the research that’s been done on how the national media has covered the Great Recession so far, it’s really quite astonishing how little has been focused on what’s happening to ordinary people all across America. There’s been an enormous amount of focus on Wall Street and Washington, but very little about the reality of double digit unemployment/underemployment. In fact, the NYT recently ran an article ridiculing Germany’s response to unemployment, which has been vastly superior to ours. Their unemployment rate is actually lower now than it was in 2007.
Of course, if you earn what a newspaper editor or TV news reporter earns, you have been largely shielded from the most pernicious effects of what’s happened. Being biased towards covering the stock market and surrounding issues makes sense if that’s the only thing that’s really gone wrong in your life since the recession began.
Yeah, absolutely. Mass media dedicates a majority of its recession coverage to the market as a whole, property values, and corporate situations. I would actually love to see a special that really goes into the streets, literally or so-to-speak to document the effects of this recession on Main Street. This recession hurts the micro level and the here-and-now far more detrimentally than the system at large or projected complications. I’m sorry to see that the NYT was quick to criticize the German solution before evaluating the lack of real amendments back home.