Untitled Document
Mr. Claro -- Modern Nonfiction Reading Selection by Barbara Ehrenreich Family Values
The writer, feminist, and Socialist Party leader Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941) wrote some of her first articles and books on the inefficiency and inhumanity of the American health care system. In Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness (coauthored with Deirdre English, 1973) she critiques the unjust and unequal treatment women receive in the medical system. She has written over a dozen books, among them The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (1983), The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed (1990), from which "Family Values" is taken, and Kipper's Game (1993). Ehrenreich is a contributing editor at the Progressive and the Nation, and her essays also appear regularly in magazines as varied as Radical America, Time, Vogue, and the New York Times Magazine. Her most recent books are The Snarling Citizen: Essays (1995), Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War (1997), and Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001). Asked whether she writes in a different voice for the alternative and the mainstream press, Ehrenreich replied, "I don't think it's really a different voice.... Obviously I assume more political sympathy for my views if I'm writing for Z or the Guardian in England or the Nation than Time, but it might be the exact basic argument." She added, "An essay is like a little story, a short story, and I will obsess about what is the real point, what are the real connections, a long time before I ever put finger to keyboard."
Sometime in the eighties, Americans had a new set of "traditional values" installed. It was part of what may someday be known as the "Reagan renovation, that finely balanced mix of cosmetic refinement and moral coarseness which brought $200,000 china to the White House dinner table and mayhem to the beleaguered peasantry of Central America. All of the new traditions had venerable sources. In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies and esteemed customers, the Shi'ite fundamentalists.
A case could be made, of course, for the genuine American provenance of all these new "traditions." We've had our own robber barons, military adventures, and certainly more than our share of enterprising evangelists promoting ignorance and parochialism as a state of grace. From the vantage point of the continent's original residents, or, for example, the captive African laborers who made America a great agricultural power, our "traditional values" have always been bigotry, greed, and belligerence, buttressed by wanton appeals to a God of love.
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Joe%20Claro/Des...012%2003-04/Nonfic%20pieces/Ehrenreich/Ehrenreich.htm (1 of 7)11/18/2005 8:04:04 PM