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It's Not the Media
The Truth About Pop Culture's Influence on Children
Karen Sternheimer
Westview Press

In September of 2000, Vice-Presidential nominee, Sen. Joseph Lieberman was grabbing headlines by grilling MPAA head, Jack Valenti, during a senate hearing about why the entertainment industry peddles inappropriate material to minors. In his inimitable whine, Lieberman declared that the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado demonstrated that the media violence children view "has become part of a toxic mix that has actually now turned some of them into killers."

During the same month, the FBI completed a study on school shootings. Of the twelve items on their list of behaviors for educators to watch, only two were related to media usage. Most of the indicators that the FBI worried might lead to violence were: "poor coping skills, access to weapons, signs of depression, drug and alcohol abuse, alienation [and] narcissism."

The accusation, that the media — including the movie, television, music, advertising, Internet and digital gaming industries — is responsible for violence, promiscuity, out-of-control consumerism and other frightening behaviors in children, has been heard for years. But does the evidence back up this claim? Or is the truth, as USC sociology professor, Karen Sternheimer suggests, that "our anxieties about a changing world, uncertain future and seemingly unsolvable social ills are deflected onto popular culture, which serves as a visible target when the real causes are harder to pin down"?

In her book, "It's Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture's Influence on Children," Sternheimer takes on myths about the malevolent influence of each segment of the media and attempts to debunk them by offering a mix of news reports, behavioral studies and some original thinking. For instance, in one chapter, she reports that violent crimes committed by youths have declined since the 1970s. Sternheimer further explains that, kids who live in poverty and have less access to media commit most youth violence. Of the isolated suburban tragedies that have been showered with 24-hour coverage, she points to the same markers appearing on the FBI list as possible motivations, rather than, say, Marilyn Manson CDs. To sum up this argument she writes, "It is too risky to criticize the American Dream... because ultimately that requires many of us to look in the mirror. It is easier to look at the TV for the answer."

This statement gets close to Sternheimer's core hypotheses about the real problems affecting 21st Century juveniles. Her first premise is that by focusing on the media as the guilty party, Americans can ignore issues such as poverty, indifference or abuse in the home, which cause real, measurable damage to society. Secondly, that the media has a stake in keeping its viewers thinking "it's the media," because fear-mongering sells. Politicians have their own reasons for fomenting the belief in media culpability. It is more advantageous for them to keep voters thinking that "TV kills", than to focus on the failed social policies that are really putting youth at risk.

Sternheimer's theories are refreshing. Sadly, her dull, academic prose might make it difficult for readers to finish the book and grasp those ideas. Furthermore, her penchant for repetition and her inability to connect facts in an easily understandable manner, or to conclusively prove her assertions may just provide ammunition to her detractors — of which there should be many.

If what she's saying in, "It's Not the Media," is true, at least Jack Valenti can finally cross this annoying issue off his list and concentrate on stamping out media piracy — his true passion. After all, it might soon be acceptable for kids to consume copious amounts of media, but it will never be okay to do it with bootlegged copies!

Appeared in "LA City/Valley Beat," October 8, 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

The Great Unraveling:
Losing Our Way in the New Century
By Paul Krugman
W. W. Norton & Company

"New York Times" op-ed Page Economist, Paul Krugman, does his math. He's been busy re-doing a lot of other people's math as well, namely, the "fuzzy" variety emanating from the Bush White House. Using the same starting numbers that the administration used to promote policies like privatization of Social Security, tax cuts or changes to Medicare, he's come up with vastly different conclusions than the ones they have built their arguments upon. In his book, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century," a collection of his NYT essays from the past four years, Krugman reminds readers of each and every disastrous economic policy that the current administration has hammered through, and the erroneous positions they used to sell them. Excuse me, erroneous is too bland a euphemism. Krugman flatly calls Bush and his administrators, liars.

Krugman didn't start out to be a Bush basher, he claims. When he began at NYT he had intended to write straightforward economic analyses. But, "as a trained economist I wasn't even for a minute tempted to fall into the he-said-she-said style of reporting, under which opposing claims by politicians are given equal credence regardless of the facts. I did my own arithmetic [regarding various Republican fiscal schemes] ... and quickly realized that we were dealing with world-class mendacity, right here in the U.S.A." Krugman perceived that Bush's economic policies were no only being misrepresented by the administration, but were seriously undermining the financial health of the nation. In the end, he felt obligated to begin pointing out the crooked politics and bad numbers behind the rhetoric. So his columns became as much a commentary on fiscal matters as a critique on Bush & Co.

The essays he has chosen to include in this book are, for the most part, those in which he turned out to be remarkably prescient. His series on the corporate scandals predicted early that Enron was not an isolated case and would only be the first of many. His look at the California energy crisis foretold the fact that energy generators and traders, motivated solely by profit, concocted the whole, avoidable debacle. His take on Bush's tax cuts made it clear beforehand, that they would mainly benefit the wealthy, would not stimulate the economy, and would plunge the U.S. into tremendous debt for the foreseeable future. How has he substantiated these claims? He did the math, and it's hard to argue with the logical conclusions that come from simple addition and subtraction. Anyone could have checked the numbers with a pocket calculator, but it seems that few others did.

More startling than the revelations contained in the columns — mainly, that the government's economic stimulus proposals mainly enrich the already rich and bankrupt everyone else — is the content in the opening section of the book. In his lengthy introduction, Krugman makes an eloquent case for a vast right-wing conspiracy "that now effectively controls the White House, Congress, much of the judiciary and a good slice of the media." Because the right holds such a dominant position, he says, "old rules about politics and policy no longer apply." This bears repeating: a well known, well respected, "New York Times" columnist claims that the country in the grip of a vast right-wing conspiracy.

He lays out the evidence behind this claim quite thoroughly in the opener, and then goes on to call the current politically mighty "A Revolutionary Power," from a theory he borrowed from Henry Kissenger. There is, he claims method and strategy behind all the madness fueling bad economics, the destruction of the environment and preemptive war.

In some ways, his theory is so horrific as to be unbelievable. But is it any more preposterous than what many liberals claim justifies all the incompetence emanating from the White House: that Bush is just incredibly stupid? Then again, as Krugman says, "People who have been accustomed to stability can't bring themselves to believe what is happening when faced with a revolutionary power, and are therefore ineffective in opposing it."

To better understand how this "power" works, he next sets out a kind of guide that he calls "Rules for Reporting".

1. "Don't assume that policy proposals make sense in terms of their stated goals." In other words, when the President says the country must go to war because we want to wipe out the weapons of mass destruction hidden by a dictator, none will actually be found. Remember newspeak? It's not just for fiction anymore.

2. "Do some homework to discover the real goals." Krugman says the true goals of the administration are usually already part of the public domain. "When you learn that the official now in charge of forest policy is a former lumber industry lobbyist, you can surmise that the 'healthy forests' initiative, under which logging companies will be allowed to cut down more trees, isn't about preventing forest fires."

3. "Don't assume that the usual rules of politics apply." This means that under normal circumstances, when a former Enron executive is appointed to secretary of the Army and then his division of Enron is revealed to have been a source of phantom profits, that secretary would be summarily ousted. But this did happen, and he wasn't. Why? Because, a revolutionary power is immune to criticism, as we shall see in the next rule.

4. "Expect a revolutionary power to respond to criticism by attacking." By way of explanation: "The Bush administration has become notorious for its intolerance for dissent, even from those who are mostly on its side. According to the 'Washington Post,' 'GOP lawmakers and lobbyists say the tactics of the Bush administration used on friends and allies have been uniquely fierce and vindictive.'"

5. "Don't think there's a limit to the revolutionary power's objectives." Given that the right is not playing by any accepted rules, Krugman suggests that they could do almost anything, like making the poor pay higher taxes than the wealthy, or invading countries that are already stable democracies. As hard as this might be to believe, Krugman reminds that, "Pundits who predict moderation on the part of the Bush administration, on any issue, have been consistently wrong."

Wow! This is the kind of stuff you usually hear from easily dismissed, kooks on Internet sites (similar to mine), not from respected journalists. However, just to dispel the idea that he is a conspiracy nut, Krugman reminds us again of Kissenger's own words about a revolutionary force: "'Those who warn against the danger are considered alarmist; those who counsel adaptation to circumstances are considered balanced and sane.' But so far the alarmists have been right, every time."

After setting up this almost inconceivable and very frightening scenario of corruption at the highest levels, Krugman tries to cheer up the reader by saying that he still hopes there will be a "great revulsion: a moment in which the American people look at what is happening, realize how their good will and patriotism have been abused, and put a stop to this drive to destroy much of what is best in our country."

Conspiracy? It seems so. Nut? I think not. Because, most of what he says makes sense. Certainly what the Bush administration says vs. what they actually do makes none. Besides, if you discount Donald Luskin (who heads up the Krugman Truth Squad at National Review Online), no one has threatened to sue Krugman for libel based on any information or opinions he has published. Still, it will take more than this one book to change the minds of those who believe George Bush is a sound and caring leader — just as it takes more than listening to Rush Limbaugh to convert a liberal into a "Dittohead." Still I hope, as Krugman does, that the "great revulsion" happens sooner rather than later. If only a portion of his contentions are true, the alternative is simply too bleak to contemplate.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" December 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

Where I Was From
By Joan Didion
Alfred A. Knopf

After a lifetime of defining the California experience, celebrated essayist Joan Didion is reconsidering. In "Where I Was From," her newest and most personal book of essays, Didion reexamines the ideas about California she believed were immutable. As she puts it, "this book represents an exploration of my own confusions about the place and the way in which I grew up, confusions as much about America as about California, misapprehensions and misunderstandings so much a part of who I became that I can still to this day confront them only obliquely."

Didion is a California native, who grew up in Sacramento, went to school at Berkeley, wrote the seminal essays about her state that were included in "The White Album," and "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," wrote a standard-bearing novel about Los Angeles, "Play it as it Lays," and made a pile of money in backbone local industries like real estate and the film business. She is, in many ways, the quintessential Californian. As she tells it, much of what imbued her thinking about this place has been colored by the myths of the California pioneers who's values she was taught to believe were the true ethos of the state.

This set of ideas was passed to her from her parents down from their parents and so forth, all the way back to the relative that had made the overland crossing with the Donner-Reed party. A relative who had split away from the doomed caravan only at the final cut-off that ensured survival for Didion's clan, and infamy and horror for the others. A central theme that emerges from her exhaustive examination of her family's records and the writings of other pioneer families is the one expressed best by Virginia Reed, "Don't take no cut-offs and hurry along as fast as you can."

As Didion now sees it, her family took plenty of short cuts, as did many who built the Golden State. However like all immigrants, they chose to define the place by what it had been when they arrived, and anything that came after was an aberration. If her clan had not arrived during the initial era of westward expansion, had instead come during the dustbowl migration, or during the post-WWII boom, perhaps they would not have seen the development of the state's vast Spanish land grants into housing tracts as anathema. But they did see new homes, new industries and, most importantly, new people as a blight on their values, moreover, on those values they believed were intrinsic to the place — values that included personal fortitude, love of the land and individuality.

Didion takes a look at these values with a newly jaundiced eye to discover that defining the state by its inhabitants individuality, ability to survive hardship and reverence for nature is as fantastic a notion as that behind any Disneyland theme park ride. The state, she discovers, has always been a place full of carpetbaggers looking for the next strike of gold, the next get-rich-quick scheme, be it hacked from the foothills of the Sierra, grown in the San Joaquin Valley or in built in the aerospace plants of Lakewood.

California, in essence, she now tells us, is a place full of emigrants who left what they had in search of something better, lured by the promise that that better thing would be easily come by. It would not require hardship beyond the initial journey. It is a place where the idea of self-sufficiency rests on the unexamined reality that almost all innovations emanating from the state have been financed by the federal government. In other words, there would have been no agricultural miracle in the once-arid central valley without the government providing the water systems that fed it. There would have been no distribution of the food grown there without the government financing the railroads that carried the goods to market. There would have been no booming aerospace industry if the government had not built the aqueducts that carried drinking water to Southern California, and then financed the cold-war plants that employed so many. The whole state, in this view, is a get-rich quick scheme guaranteed by federal handouts.

Though full of fascinating ideas and information, the book itself is often tedious reading. Didion's recounting of quotes from pioneers on the overland trek goes on for too long. Her final chapters, in which she reexamines her own novel, "Run River," are also slow-moving. In both those sections she is prone to using her signature technique of repetition to drive home her points. This time, however, she exhausts the device. It is only in the central portion of the book where she reverts to her familiar style of reportage, about the aerospace industry in the California Southland, that the book zips along. But, despite the difficulty of wading through some of the less entertaining parts of the book, it is in those sections that Didion straightforwardly reveals the most intimate details about herself, her past and her own attitudes.

What she never gets at are the "confusions as much about America as about California" that she hints at in the beginning of the book. Had she so chosen, Didion could have drawn many parallels to the ideas we Americans have about ourselves Ñ our individuality, grit and personal fortitude — to remind us that much of what we rely upon is not ourselves but plain and simple government assistance. And, in the same way that backing from the federal government made California a powerhouse economy, so too do the entitlements like AFDC, social security, Medicare, the transportation infrastructure, the national park system, corporate welfare and others, allow most Americans to live in a golden state of fearlessness. The danger is that by not admitting that the aid and comfort of the government is vital to the pursuit of our individuality, happiness and economic success, we Americans will allow the support systems we don't acknowledge to disappear. These ideas must be confronted, and not obliquely, otherwise we will soon have to see just how much grit we really possess.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2003© Suzanne Rush 2003

The Road from Coorain
By Jill Ker Conway
Vintage Departures

A palpable love of the land and a deft facility for storytelling distinguish Jill Ker Conway's, "The Road from Coorain," from lesser autobiographies. Conway, who would later go on to become the first female president of Smith College, tells the story of her childhood in the Australian bush and her youth in Sydney, in this artfully written memoir.

Coorain, the New South Wales homestead and sheep ranch, on which she spent her first eleven years, was built by Conway's resourceful, pioneering parents. From a government grant of thousands of acres of arid grassland, acquired at the end of WWI, the Kers built a thriving wool farm, raised three children and came to know, respect and sometimes fear, the land on which they, for a time, thrived. Conway's spirit was molded in this environment, by the hard manual labor a working ranch requires and the love of land that comes from daily contact with the vastness of nature. Indeed, her descriptions of the flora and fauna of the regions of her youth are so vivid, one can almost feel the heat of the relentless sun on one's skin or hear a lizard scuttle through the sage.

Conway's childhood took a turn when a many-year drought, that left most of her family's sheep dead and their grazing land dust, struck Coorain. On the heels of this came the death of her father, an event which devastated her mother and left the family with only one rational choice: to move to the city.

Sydney, relatively verdant and nestled by the sea, marked the beginning of a new period, both physically and emotionally, for Conway. Once established in a home her mother bought to house her and her two brothers, Conway entered a private school to begin her first formal schooling. Meanwhile their mother, who had never gotten over the loss of her husband, began to cling to her children for emotional support. Like many an emotionally impoverished parent before her, she manipulated, bullied and cajoled her children into staying within her dominion for as long as possible.

Young Conway received the brunt of her mother's psychologically charged machinations. As the years progressed, from childhood to her time in college, she began to feel frustrated by and resentful of her mother. However, there was much to frustrate Conway. A woman with a quick wit, and an ever-enquiring mind, she found that both the stilted social mores of Australia in the '50s and the shoddy quality of intellectual inquiry at the University of Sydney, did little to satiate her needs. She chafed under the restrictions of being a woman of her time, being tied to her needy mother and being an intellectual in a place that seemed devoid of real intellectual stimulation.

It is in this section of the book where Conway's gifts as a writer flourish, for she presents her intellectual and personal dilemmas with a steady, but never heavy, hand. Conway displays an ability to see beyond the easy definitions of good and bad and paint a complex picture of the human condition which retains a great deal of sensitivity yet still pierces through the nonsense.

Ultimately she concludes that she cannot stay in Australia and still live the kind of life she desires. She makes the decision, like many misfits before her, to move on — in her case, to the United States. However, though she left the land of her birth to build a new life, "The Road from Coorain," shows her expansive vision will always be influenced by the boundless, dusty horizons of her childhood.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

Garbo Laughs
By Elizabeth Hay
Counterpoint Press

Elizabeth Hay is better at writing about a certain kind of discontent than just about anyone. Her discontent is the deeply rooted type that strangles happiness at every turn. The glass is perennially half-empty viewed from her perspective. But more specifically and far more importantly for her and her characters, no relationship is ever the "right" one. The venomous two-headed snake in her soul always poisons the unconditional love of a husband or friend. It is a relentless creature that won't let her forget that the partner is not without flaw and, at the same time, that there is something wrong with her for seeking fault to begin with. Consequently she lashes out at others, but saves the most vicious attacks for herself. It can't be easy living inside her head.

Certainly Harriet, the protagonist in her novel, "Garbo Laughs," is tormented by her internal dichotomies. Harriet lives in Ottawa, with her compassionate husband Lew, and their two children. However, she lives here in body only. Where she really comes alive is inside the illusionary world that she has constructed from repeatedly watching movies on videotape. Continually and systematically, Harriet views old musicals and other classic films to fill the void she feels in her own life. She has recruited her children to this singular endeavor, and consequently has two pre-teens who are more well-versed in the lore of old Hollywood than in contemporary pop culture.

Harriet is a writer, plagued by insomnia, who has given up the composition of anything but daily letters to movie critic Pauline Kael. She does not know Kael and these are letters she will never send — has no intention of sending. Yet, only in them, first by using the metaphors of film criticism and then more directly using the missives as a kind of diary, is she able to address her dissatisfactions.

"Dear Pauline, Here is my favorite fantasy. Guests have come for dinner. We are talking in the kitchen, or on the verandah ... and one of the guests insults me. Then evenly, without rudeness, I say, 'There's a very nice restaurant down the street. Why don't you try it out?'

"The insulter laughs. Coarsely. Like a horse.

"'I mean it.' And I am very calm. "I don't make food for people who insult me.'"

What the reader begins to understand through these oblique disclosures of Harriet's passive-aggressive behaviors and descriptions of her almost-agoraphobic lifestyle, is that underneath the simplified unhappiness she is truly paralyzed by fear. Life to her, is flawed and scary; movies are ideal and safe.

Lew knows he competes for her affection with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, but understands that his wife's emotional dalliances with long dead movie stars can't truly disrupt the life he offers. It is only when a friendship with a neighbor, Dinah, and the return of an old flame begin to insinuate themselves into the couple's life and marriage that the unmistakable signs of unraveling begin. Temptations are offered. Yet, for Harriet, no temptation of new romance will ever live up to the unrealistic expectations she has imbibed thorough her film addiction. For Lew, who is more intrinsically honorable and tethered to reality, the choices pose a deeper dilemma.

Besides writing about lady malcontents like she was born to it, Elizabeth Hay has a gift for creating striking descriptions of flora and fauna that make one wish she was a nature writer. It is almost exclusively in the passages of the novel where Harriet is contemplating the outside world, that the reader senses a temporary and uncommon respite from her inner turmoil.

Hay resolves "Garbo Speaks" by allowing Harriet to regain a taste for life only to lose her appetite for movies. All just in time, as it turns out, to hold on to her husband and the remainder of a life she finally saw wasn't so bad after all.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

Small Change
By Elizabeth Hay
Counterpoint

This book of short stories by Elizabeth Hay sat for two years in the, "I want to read this," section of my bookcase. Despite the admonition to never judge books by their covers, there was something about the moody, black and white photo on the jacket that I found compelling. It is a picture of a young woman wearing a bathing cap and a look of clear-eyed, resignation, floating on a rubber raft in a borderless body of water. The sky is cloudy, and all the objects within the frame have the same softly blurred edges as the clouds. All together, the photo gives the impression of being simultaneously sharp and soft.

Sharp and soft can also describe the stories in "Small Change". This is a collection of overlapping tales, each of which is a meditation on a particular friendship seen through the eyes of the writer/protagonist. Friendships here are sometimes painted with the bright colors that characterize the sheer joy of experiencing camaraderie. Yet, they are always viewed from a retrospective where the distinct hues of happiness have already bled into each other to form the gray of regret.

What is soft in these stories is the longing Hay expresses for friendships to endure for the long haul. What is sharp are her confessions of the interior darkness that leads to the death of relationships begun in good faith. The terrain this Canadian author explores can best be summed up in her own words:

"My friendship is not reliable, but it reliably follows a pattern established in childhood of over-immersion followed by withdrawal, of infatuation (in its many forms) followed by aversion. I find the unlikable in people. I become critical and harsh, and saddened that I am so ungenerous. Critical of them and of myself for being critical."

Hay's writing is spare, yet never omits the integral — whether it is in her descriptions of the Canadian topography, or the inner landscape. What could be seen as bleak in these stories, ends up seeming merely truthful. There is much comfort in the truth, even if most would avoid it like the plague.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" October 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

The Two-Income Trap
Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke
By Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi
Basic Books

"The Two-Income Trap," is a book that is filled with relevant information about the trying socio-economic conditions facing modern families. Yet, it is a book that is laboring under a ridiculously glib construct that frames — and sometimes distorts — this vital news. The information, in short, is this: families in America a going broke because bad governmental legislation during the past two (or more) decades has brought about a climate in which raising children is a financial liability. The unfortunate construct used by the mother-daughter team of Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi in presenting this information is the one touted in the title which suggests that it is the two incomes that parents now routinely provide, that is the cause of record, family, financial failures. It's not that the authors don't have a point. It's just that there are many instances throughout the text where they labor to squeeze the statistics into a package that doesn't suit them.

This is not to say the book is without merit. On the contrary, this is a pertinent look at the deteriorating condition of America's middle-class families. Further, it is one in which the authors not only address the luckless predicament of today's families and their likely causes, but also suggest (mostly) well-considered solutions.

When Elizabeth Warren, the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, began a study of bankruptcy in America 1999, she was struck by the rising number of economic failures among women. In the figures she studied, compared to those of twenty years ago, the number of women filing petitions for bankruptcy had increased by 662 percent. "As I soon discovered," she says, " divorced, and single women weren't the only ones in trouble; several hundred thousand married women filed of bankruptcy along with their husbands." As she looked at the numbers, Warren and Tyagi came up with the idea that the problem at the root of this massive insolvency was the working mother.

As the authors saw it, when a couple budgets every penny of two incomes to pay for housing, schools, medical care, child care and other necessities, they put themselves in more peril than a family that relies on one income to do the same. Why would families do this when they used to be able to get by on just Dad's salary? From their statistics, they discerned that it was the need for decent homes in safe communities, near good public schools that had placed parents in a position where they were being forced to have two working adults in a household. More importantly, it was the lack of decent public schools for all children that made it imperative that families bring home more bacon to pay for houses that would be near those few schools that were up to snuff.

In a cause and effect spiral, the more that families desired those suburban homes, the more those homes began to cost. Fundamentally, what the authors say is, that the government's lack of school funding, and the deterioration of modern public education is to blame for the high cost of housing for families Ñ a cost higher than families can reasonably afford.

They go on to assert that this was not a problem twenty years ago for two reasons. One is that schools were better, or perceived to be better, in the 1960s and '70s. The second, and key element in the equation, is that credit deregulation, passed in the '80s, made it possible for people to borrow far more money than they could reasonable be expected to repay. Once credit was not tied to the ability of borrowers to return, the sky became the limit for credit card debt and home loans. As inner-city schools fell apart, families were able to borrow to the hilt and beyond to buy homes nearer better schools, and families began running on a treadmill that was sure to leave them tired and broken — and in too many cases, bankrupt. Add divorce to the equation and the disaster hinted at by all the book's statistics has been brought to frightening fruition.

There is much that works about this book. The numbers and theories make sense, for the most part, in explaining this phenomenon of failing families. However, when the authors assert that families would be better off having the mother's income go to frivolous purchases now, so that, in the case of a financial emergency, there would be a belt to tighten, they are just presenting a load of horse shit. If families are already flying without a net, wouldn't it make more sense for extra income to go into savings to ward off that rainy day, instead of lattes and cruises now, that could be cut out later? Surely all families would be better off starting any crisis period with a bank account rather than with fond memories of Cancun. This is the kind of idea that seems to be part of the silly construct of the title, rather than part of the smart thinking that generated mostly sound financial advice throughout the rest of the book.

A better title for this book would have been "The Two-Income Fantasy". Because, much of what the authors maintain is that it is a fantasy to believe that a family is safer today with two incomes than it once was existing off of one. In fact, the modern family is far more likely to end up with money troubles than the family of yore. Warren and Tyagi urge all family-friendly people to work at a grass-roots level to change the usurious banking and credit policies, to demand better schools and even to declare bankruptcy, if need be, rather than fall through the cracks. All of this is good advice if one can just forget the part about blowing all your money now as a hedge against a rainy day.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" August 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003