A Word about the Economy

March 7th, 2010

I am not an economist, nor do I play one on TV, but I am a student of human behavior and would like to offer that perspective on our current economic crisis.  It boils down to one word:  Largesse.

I’m not sure that is the right word, and it may be telling that even my prodigious vocabulary is lacking when applied to economic matters.  Does anyone really know what is going on?  Can anyone really describe it in layman’s terms?

The “largesse” I’m talking about is the simple human trait of not caring about things that are plentiful.  If oil and gas are cheap, then who cares what the mileage of automobiles is?  If the nation just acquired a bunch of land in the mid-west, then why not just give it away to whatever citizen will farm it?  If your pocket is heavy with change, then it’s not a big deal to give some to that beggar?  There are downsides: if fish are plentiful we net them to extinction, if trees are plentiful we clear-cut them to oblivion.

Guilt plays a roll in largesse.  If a boss is making a bucket of money, he or she will be more inclined to pay their secretary more money.  I bet you can find a correlation between secretary salaries and those of their bosses.  Same basic job, but much different salary based on that of their boss.  The social culture the Pacific Northwest was upended when Microsoft grew into a behemoth and showered secretaries, receptionists, and other lower-rung employees with millions in stock options.  They didn’t have to, but largesse dictated they do something.

Since the end of WWII, America has enjoyed decades of largesse.  The rest of the world was a wreck.  We were the only game in town – the center of finance, agriculture, manufacturing, and science.  The principle of largesse (and union organizing) drove wages up, and the middle class enjoyed a quality of life unheard of in human history.  There is a competitive aspect to largess and when one business sector is raking in the loot, others wonder why they aren’t getting theirs.  I believe this has played a roll in why doctors have raised their fees in recent decades to keep pace with other professionals.

On a national level, our Federal Government has practiced largesse on a scale that will shock future historians. We became accustomed to having things done in a top-quality manner…no expense spared.  One example: after the recent earthquake in Haiti, bodies were disposed of in mass graves, but in America after 9-11 or Katrina, expensive DNA tests were performed at taxpayer expense on every recovered bone fragment so that it might be returned to relatives for burial.  It was a sensitive thing to do, but can we afford sensitive anymore?

A couple generations of Americans have grown up assuming this largesse lifestyle is standard procedure.  We are the First World, after all.  So it is a cultural as well as economic shock to realize our way of doing things may be unsustainable.  The prosperity we enjoined through the 50s, 60s, and 70s no longer exists.  We are no longer the manufacturing center of the world.  Asia is.  Even our dominance in science and technology is threatened by Japan, Korea, and India.  Over the last couple decades, our economy was propped up by the financial industry, the tech boom, and the real estate boom. These foundations of sand have all crumbled and the well-spring of largesse that trickled through our economy has been shut off.

Economists say our massive marketplace can’t turn on a dime, but it sure did in 2008 when Americans from Juneau to Jersey decided, as though by some cellular osmosis, to stop buying.  Individuals and families can understand the need to tighten belts, but can our government?  Will entrenched interests – military, agriculture, banking – understand that the largesse they have thrived on for generations must now come to an end?  What government leader will take the political hit and be the one to say the party is over?

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My Oscar Votes for an Off Year.

March 5th, 2010

Forget about Health Care, or reforming the Financial Markets.  What people really care about is whether Sandra Bullock will take home the Oscar for her tough, no-nonsense portrayal of a white woman who takes in a freakishly large black man.   Or will that perennial favorite, Meryl Streep edge her out for her twitchy interpretation of Julia Child?  (I didn’t know Julia suffered from Chronic Herky-Jerk Syndrome.)

Here are my picks for the top prizes:

Best Actress:  Bullock.  People like her and know this may be her only shot, while Meryl is sure to be nominated a half dozen more times.

Best Actor:  Bridges.  The Academy loves him and he was the best thing (along with the music) about the otherwise clunky “Crazy Heart.” (C’mon losing the kid in a shopping mall?)

Adapted Script:  A tough category, but this may be where the Academy throws “Precious” a bone.

Original Script:  “Hurt Locker”  Not a lot of competition in this category.

Director:  Bigelow.  “Hurt”  was a very well directed film, combining some artistic flourishes (like the shots of rubble blown up in slow-mo), with a more restrained, non-barf enducing use of hand held camera work (please take note, J.J. Abrams).

Best Picture:  “Avatar”  You can’t argue with a billion dollars of box office.  The Academy loves a money-maker.  And when you get right down to it, this is a landmark film and the Academy would be silly to ignore that.

2009 was not a great year for films.  There were some broadly entertaining movies like “The Hangover” and “The Blind Side.”   There were also respectable, serious films like “Precious.”  On the whole, however, few of these films will cast a long shadow in our collective or cinematic memory.

The year may be best remembered for it’s lesser works by talented filmmakers.  “Nine” was not Rob Marshall’s best musical.  “Bright Star” was Jane Campion at her most sullen.   “Inglorious Basterds” was yet another tiresome homage to a genre by Tarantino.  “Coraline” was more of the same disturbing, unsettling work we have always seen from Henry Selick.  “A Serious Man” was a lesser Cohen Brothers effort (their second in a row, but I admire their productivity).  Even Pixar’s “Up” was very unconventional and not entirely satisfying, with a plot that meandered hither and yon.  Did anyone really think there would be much of an audience for “Lovely Bones” by Peter Jackson, or “Invictus” by Clint Eastwood?   If Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” had been released in 2009, as originally planned, it would have fit nicely into this list.

The only film that will cast a long shadow  – creatively, technically, and financially – is “Avatar.”  It is not as great a film as the best of the last 20 years (“Lord of the Rings,” “Saving Private Ryan,”  “Shakespeare in Love” etc.), but in 2009 it was the closest thing we have.

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Cut Cameron some dialogue slack.

March 4th, 2010

I used my Guild Card to go see Avatar…again.   I’d caught an industry screening months ago, but wanted to see how the film held up.  Besides, that free admission with your Guild Card is almost caput for the season.  Then it’s back to being just another Joe shelling out my ten or twelve bucks.

Cameron gets a lot of flack for his dialogue, which is understandable with on-the-nose exposition like “Dr. Augustine is a legend in the field.”  What no one should fault, however, is  his skill at pushing his stories forward.  “Avatar” is very tightly plotted.  Screenwriters are often judged merely on the dialogue.  It is the most front and center element of writing.  People hear the words, and they know (hopefully) that someone wrote them.  Less obvious are things like concept, plotting, and the visuals.  These structural elements are like the steel beams of a skyscraper – absolutely essential, but often hidden beneath plaster and paint.

Cameron is a master at them.  His concepts are strong and compelling, and he structures his stories so almost everything is conveyed through action.  “Terminator,”  “Aliens,” “Titanic”…all his films create little set-ups and pay-offs in each scene that keep the audience hooked.  “Avatar” is no different.  Every scene propels the story forward.  And while his dialogue may be clunky here and there (I’m more weary of the overall reliance on voice over), give the man props for all the things he does without dialogue.

For instance, there is a scene early in the film in which Jake Sully meets that cute Latina chopper pilot, and then confers with that tough jar-head villain about collecting intel as he works with the Avatar scientists.   There is a lot of exposition to get across here…a thankless job.  Cameron handles it with what he does best…eye candy.  Even as we’re meeting this new character or chatting with the villain, we’re introduced to both the cool Copters (I want that toy!) and to those cool walking robot suits (I already got that toy!).   So Cameron is tempering any dullness to the exposition by providing us with another layer of information via entertaining visuals.   The information on how those walking suits work is important for later in the film and this scene shows us how they are operated.

Making the decision on where to set a given scene may not be as front and center as dialogue, but it may also be a much more important skill for a screenwriter.  I like scenes that function on multiple levels, and am bored by how one-dimensional most TV writing is.  There can be a counterpoint between what we see and what we hear, and writers should take advantage of this.   Cameron’s screenplays should be studied, maybe not for the dialogue, but for all the vital stuff that makes dialogue almost irrelevant.

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Health Care Summit?

March 2nd, 2010

You call that a Health Care Summit?   Man, I am really disappointed.  Here I had hoped for a really thoughtful assessment of the problem, and a discussion of possible solutions -  the sort of thing Obama should have held a year ago.

Instead, we get the same old tired posturing.  The Republicans continue their mantra about “starting over” (code for killing reform), and how reform is something “Americans are against.”  Their crystal ball needs some polishing as poll after poll shows Americans want major reform.

The Democrats were hardly any better, with plenty of sobbing over Joe Schmo in Oskaloosa who lost his job and health care and is now filing for bankruptcy.  This should not be about individual sob stories…we all know them.  It should have been about facts.

Why not spend the morning hearing experts address the problem.  There are 300 million Americans.  How many have health care?  How many don’t?  How many are on employee plans?  Individual plans?  Medicare?  Such facts should be easy to find and hard to argue with.  They are, after all, facts.

Then look at trends, admittedly harder to parse as facts can be interpreted in a variety of ways.  Some general trends should be irrefutable: more people are on individual policies; more people change insurance as jobs are changed; more people are filing for bankruptcy due to health care expenses; a larger percentage of our income is going to health care and insurance.

Then take the afternoon and look at solutions to these problems and trends.  Put single-payer on the table.  Put the free market on the table.  I think you would find that you can’t force insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions, unless you also require everyone to have insurance.  Look at cost.  Not of insurance, but of medical care.  Look for ways to inform the customer about the cost of services so we can question them, decline them, or look for cheaper alternatives.

I’m not sure why the Republicans are so opposed to mandating coverage…they are about personal responsibility aren’t they?  If they feel it is a personal choice, and the free market should reign, then do they also believe that hospitals should be able to turn away patients without insurance (which they can’t).  Is this what the Republicans want?  It would have been nice to hear their answer to that question.

The middle ground to health care is pretty clear to me:

1) Create a BASIC PLAN that covers most stuff most people need.

2) Set a price on it…say $100 / month.

3) Require all insurers to offer this plan.

4) Require everyone to carry it.

The hope is the younger, healthier people paying into the plan offset the expenses of the older folks who use more health services.  Insurance companies might throw extras on top of the Basic Plan to compete for customers.  Those that want more coverage could buy it…or employers could provide it.  Those without that extra coverage would understand their insurance won’t pay for brand-name drugs or the latest procedures.  Those that can’t afford the $1200/year for insurance need to get their act together.

There, problem solved.

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Good, Bad and Ugly Dialogue

February 20th, 2010

I am happily revising my script.  It’s such a relief to have that first ugly pass done…and it is ugly.  Much of revising is making everything track.  Sometimes a sub-plot I sketched out in Act One never pans out in Act Two, so it’s dropped.  Other times I find a nice resolution in Act Three, but need to go back to Act One and lay the track to get there.

The ugly draft is like a big lump of clay that I can now sculpt.  All the scenes are little trees and I can evaluate how they work together to form a nice forest.  There are physical action issues and logic problems to solve as well as internal “issues” to track.  Dialogue isn’t much of an issue at this point, but does play a limiting roll.  Not all scenes can be executed with good dialogue, and I believe such scenes should be avoided.  Many police procedurals have interrogation scenes that are “criminally” bad.  Some sci-fi tales rely on ludicrous techno-babble that is even worse.

I believe there are three calibers of dialogue:  shitty, passable, and good.  Here’s a line of shitty dialogue:  “If anything happened to you, I would never forgive myself.” It’s a terrible cliché line, a plain statement of fact with no personality.  Yet this very line was used in “The Wolfman,” which shows even good writers can commit bad dialogue.

Passable dialogue is basically shitty dialogue with more personality.  A passable version of the above line might be, “If you croaked, that would totally suck.”  Not a great line of dialogue, but it does impart a bit of character.  The use of the words “croaked” and “totally” indicate a younger speaker, probably a goofy teenager.

Good dialogue has little to do with the words being said, and everything to do with their context.   A couple might be talking about the poop-policy of a dog park, but the context might be they are flirting.  Look at the famous breakfast scene in “Citizen Kane” for dialogue that obliquely sketches out the dissolution of a marriage.   Actors love good dialogue, because it gives them subtext to perform.   Anyone can read a line of dialogue, but it takes a good actor to perform the subtext.

If you’re a cinema purist, the best dialogue is little or no dialogue at all – the situations and the visuals communicate everything.  Not every scene can be oblique or purely visual.  Sometimes characters have to state what is on their minds.  Such scenes are called “empty the pockets” scenes, where a character lays all their emotional baggage on the table.  This could happen at the death moment where the hero is at his lowest point.  It might also happen in a “confession” scene in a cop show.  There is typically only one “empty the pockets” scene per script.

Having high standards for dialogue makes breaking a story harder, as I don’t allow myself to use scenes and situations that will require boring expositional dialogue.  The result, however, is a more organic and cinematic story that is generally easier to polish.  I do wonder, however, if the ability and willingness to write horrible dialogue wouldn’t make me a more productive and successful writer.  This business, after all, is as much about quantity as quality.

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That’s (not) Entertainment!

February 9th, 2010

There was an intriguing article in the LA Times a week or so ago that compared this year’s crop of Oscar contenders with films they resemble.  For example, it compared “Avatar” with the similar soldier-goes-native story of “Dances with Wolves.”  Writer Stephen Farber’s general idea is that today’s films don’t compare well to their ancestors and I think he’s right.

Two films he didn’t compare were last summer “Public Enemies” and the far superior “The Untouchables.”  Both films deal with 30’s era gangsters.  Both feature Federal agents trying to track them down.  Both feature Tommy guns, men in hats, and women in shoulder pads, yet one film is very entertaining, the other is not.

2009 was a great year for box-office, but a lousy year for entertainment.  A lot of films had big stars and lots of spectacle, but very few really entertained.  Is entertainment a lost art?  What is entertainment anyway?  Hollywood’s Golden Age was driven by actors, writers, and directors steeped in theater and vaudeville.  All the comics of TV’s Golden Age were Vaudeville or Borscht Belt veterans.  Not only did the stage teach them what was funny, but it taught their audiences as well.  There was a common language of entertainment.  This language has broken down as those stage veterans, and even their apprentices, have left the building.

What we are left with is a fragmented audience. Every culture has their definition of entertainment.  British humor is known for being strange to American ears.  Indian Bollywood movies are perplexing to the West.  Even the domestic audience is fragmented into cultural, economic, and age demographics…each with their own particular ideas about what is entertaining.  Tyler Perry’s films leave me scratching my head, but they clearly entertain the audience they are designed for.

As Hollywood likes to appeal to everyone, they rely on the lowest common denominator of entertainment…sex and violence.  It’s getting so they can’t even do that very well, as many romantic comedies lack romance or comedy, and the big action films often have explosions with more character than the heroes.  TV is little better, dominated by crime shows that rely on brain-teaser plot twists for their meager entertainment value.  At least sit-coms still deliver laughs, perhaps due to the involvement of stage-tested comedians as writers or performers.

The lack of entertainment in feature films may also stem from the current Hollywood power structure that favors directors and actors above all others.  This is great when you have directors focused on entertainment (like Clint Eastwood or Woody Allen), and actors who know how to entertain (like Jim Carry or Meryl Streep).  Many of today’s directors come from a purely visual background, however, and lack story-telling and entertainment skills.  Likewise, many of today’s actors are only familiar with film-acting and have never performed in front of a live audience.

One of the DVD Extras for “Public Enemies” stressed the use of actual locations in telling the story of John Dillinger.  Micheal Mann and Johnny Depp go on about the emotional benefit of re-enacting this shoot-out or that escape in the actual place it happened.  Such emotions may help actors get in character and please directors seeking authenticity, but they mean nothing to the audience.  We want to be entertained.

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Act IIB or not IIB

February 5th, 2010

It’s taken two weeks, but I made it roughly through the dreaded pages 60’s and 70’s of my first draft.  Why is this latter part of Act II so difficult?  Writing minds want to know.

Most screenwriting books divide a screenplay into three acts.  Act One is about ¼ of the script, Act Two is half, and Act Three is another ¼.  These divisions are made in part by considering Act Two as the “new world” in which the story takes place.  Consider the ancient myths of a young man slaying a dragon.  The First Act sets up the hero and his village and the threat of the dragon.  Act Two then involves the hero leaving the village to slay the dragon.  Act Three is typically about the return to the village where the hero is hailed as victor.  Stories involving young men leaving home as boys and returning as heroes are ancient in the narrative tradition.

Today’s films rarely involve dragons (though “Jaws” is a modern interpretation of this story-type).  Today’s stories are more often about troubles and difficulties in modern life.  There is less leaving of home and more about troubles within the “village” or known world. The old saying about story structure applies:  In Act One you put your hero in a tree, in Act Two you throw rocks at him, and in Act Three you get him out of the tree.

The difficulty is that you can’t spend all of Act Two throwing rocks at your hero.  It becomes boring and repetitious.  The recent Cohen Brothers film, “A Serious Man,” suffered because it was simply one problem after another thrown at a hapless man.  At some point in time a hero becomes unsympathetic (un-respectable?) when he or she puts up with trouble without taking action.

This is why I always split Act Two..in two.  I suppose this would make for a Four Act structure, but to jibe with all the books I’ve read, I simply divide Act Two into Act IIA and Act IIB.  Most books do stress the importance of a mid-point to the film.  In mythology, this is the point where the hero has achieved a goal and starts heading back to the village (often with the villain on his tail).  In modern screenplays, this is typically where the hapless hero turns from reactive to proactive.

It is an important turn.  Vital really.  It isn’t hard to come up with the compelling high-concept that plays out in Act IIA.  It’s relatively easy to get your hero into this situation via Act I.  And getting the character out of the problem in Act III is often as routine as a big fight or car chase (yawn).  What separates real writing from lazy writing happens with the turn taken in Act IIB.  It ads dimension and scale to the sweep of the story, explores the premise on a deeper level, and carries the hero to new depths…setting up new heights in Act III.

In a nutshell, if the hero is being threatened in Act IIA, then he or she should becomes proactive and fight back in Act IIB.  In “Jaws,” for example, they go on the offensive with Hooper’s high-tech anti-shark weapons.   If in Act IIA the hero is enjoying some new power, then in Act IIB that power should take a darker turn from which the hero must escape.  You can see this in films like “Click,” “Bruce Almighty,” and even “Coraline.”

What I have learned is to be aware that the high-concept gag you’ve devised for Act IIA should include within it a possible weakness that the hero can proactively attack in Act IIB.

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Slogging through the First Draft

February 2nd, 2010

I’m on page 67 of my latest opus.  This first draft has moved at a snail’s pace…maybe a page or two a day.  It’s murder.  Some people write a fast first draft.  They call it the “vomit draft” or “garbage draft,” the idea being to just get something on the page so they can start molding the shaping the piece.  There is a lot to be said for this approach and if the words are flowing I am never one to stop working.

Rarely do the words flow easily, however, and this latest script follows a more typical pattern of thoughtfully considering every beat.  It’s agonizing.  I have an outline, but that only goes into so much detail.  It’s only in the first draft that I start to judge the physical action of each scene (the guts or purpose of the scene) and evaluate them with the ongoing character dynamics and overall thematic arc.  Then there are practical things like the blocking of how a scene begins,  how we transition to the guts of the scene, and what sort of button is put on the end that tips us toward the next scene.

Audiences today have little patience for lengthy scenes.  Look back at a film from the thirties and you’ll see a character enter a room, take off their coat and hat (great hats back then), pour themselves a cup of coffee, chit chat with the other person in the scene, and only gradually get to the heart of the moment (i.e. being fired from a job, or learning your wife is cheating on you).  Such slow ramp-ups are part of the theatrical tradition where you had to actually see the actor walk onto the set, and that carried over to early talkies.  Today’s filmgoer wants to cut to the chase:  “Dude, you’re fired!”  “Honey, I’m leaving you!”

Consider what each scene must do:  1) Move the story forward.  2) Convey what is motivating the characters.  3) Convey their internal dynamics. 4) Provide some entertainment value, and 5) Pique our curiosity for what happens next.  It’s a challenging to-do list.  I tend to pick my way through this minefield very carefully, step by step.  Hopefully, the thoughtful decisions I make now result in a story that is structurally sound.  The dialogue and sight-gags can change (actors do like to ad-lib, and directors do like to improvise business), but the overall structure of the piece remains strong.

What happens (the structure) is just as important as how it happens (the dialogue and gags), but you’ll never convince a producer, director, or development executive of that.  They believe a catchy concept can be larded with jokes and marketed for a quick buck.  Witness the recent spate of clunky rom-coms like “Leap Year” and “When in Rome.”  I haven’t seen either, and don’t need to…I can smell them.

On the good side, the closer I get to the end of a script, the easier it is to blast on through.  So much has already been set in stone, that the options for the last 20 pages or so are few.  Like putting a puzzle together, the more pieces you have in place, the fewer you have to work with.

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Boy, things really suck.

January 21st, 2010

It’s raining cats and dogs.  Hillsides are turning to mud.  There are tornadoes in Playa Vista.  A republican has taken over Ted Kennedy’s seat.  Healthcare reform is in danger.  The Supreme Court rules that corporations can throw as much money into political campaigns as they want. And to top it all off, I can’t find a cheap Playstation 3 on Craigslist.  What is the world coming to when I can’t ignore its epic problems by zoning out playing Call of Duty?

So it looks like the new decade will suck just as much as the last one.  Sure, I could rant, but what good will it do?  Okay here goes:

Massachusetts:  I’m not even sure where this state is, or if that’s how you spell it, but any moron knows the campaign was as much about a lackluster democractic candidate as it was about a repudiation of President Obama.  People want an ass-kicker, not some nice little lady.

Health Care:  I have no idea what that humongous reform bill contains.  Does anyone?  It says it will require insurance companies to reject no one and cover everything, but won’t that mean they have to raise rates?  Here’s what health reform should entail:

1) Devise a basic coverage plan.  It would cover most things that most people need.  Physicals and generic meds…yes.  Face transplants…no.  Set a price on it…say $100 a month.

2) Require all insurance companies to offer this plan and reject no one who applies for it.  This would set up competition amongst companies to offer the better “basic” plan.

3) Require every citizen to carry this plan.

Simple…next problem:

Campaign Finance:  Granting corporations the same rights as individuals is a vile perversion of democracy.  Now more than ever we need the will of the people expressed accurately, not distorted by ad campaigns.  We don’t let foreign powers contribute to our domestic campaigns.  Why would we let a corporation or individual in Ohio contribute to a campaign in Oregon?  The only people who should contribute to a campaign are those individuals who can vote in that election.  What this is really about, however, is the massive size of congressional districts and the reliance on expensive mass-media.

Whew, there…good to get that off my chest.   Now people will read this, rally behind these brilliant ideas, march on Washington, pass new legislation, change the Constitution, and make America the nation it was meant to be.  Or not.  Maybe they are too busy playing Call of Duty.

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God to Haiti: Stop having Babies!

January 18th, 2010

My 100th blog entry.    It seems like only yesterday I was learning how to secure a domain name, set up a hosting account, link all that to Wordpress, and start blogging.  On the other hand, it was so long ago that I’ve completely forgotten how I did any of it.  Just proves the point:  you only get really good at the things you do every day.

And that is why blogging is such a good thing for writers.  It requires the daily (or weekly) task of turning a thought or observation into a written statement.  This is all writing is – putting the thoughts floating around in our heads into organized sentences and paragraphs.  It requires a certain mental discipline to do this, and the more often we practice it, the better writers we become.

I was going to use this milestone entry to write about effective techniques to start a story.  I also considered a critique of two recent films I watched (or tried to watch) “It’s Complicated” and “500 Days of Summer.”  But the news of the week is Haiti so I’ll weigh in on the recent earthquake.  I must have a heart of stone, for my thoughts are not entirely sympathetic.

The earthquake is clearly a tragedy, but it has to be noted that San Francisco had a temblor of similar magnitude a decade or so ago and less than a hundred lives were lost.   Haiti has lost as many as 200,000.  Why?  Simple: poor building methods.  Let us dig a bit deeper, however, and ask why Haiti has such poor construction standards.  That too is simple:  poverty.  Poor countries can neither afford quality construction, nor the inspectors to enforce it.

Now here is the really cold-hearted part.  Why is Haiti poor?  It has been poor for as long as it’s been a nation, due in part to external meddling and intimidation, as well as internal political upheaval.  Other nation’s (including the USA) overcame such external pressures.  Why not Haiti?  Simple again: because the real source of Haiti’s poverty is…here goes, gulp…over-population.

Haiti is not simply the poster child for failed nations in the Western Hemisphere, it is the leading case-study on the devastating impact of over-population.  A hundred years ago Haiti had two million citizens (www.populstat.info/Americas/haitic.htm).  They were most likely poor by U.S. standards, but they were also most likely self-sustaining through farming and ranching.   Today, Haiti has over 9 million residents.  The same half-island of land simply cannot sustain that number of people through farming and ranching.  Not surprisingly, its economy is sustained by international aide and remittances from Haitians living abroad.

The result is massive poverty and all the resulting hardships: political instability, criminal activity, environmental ruin, and general human degradation.  I recall reading some month ago that Haitians were even mixing dirt into a crude flour cake.  People who have to eat dirt-cakes are not likely to care about the use of steel rebar to prevent concrete-block structures from collapsing like pancakes.

Pat Robertson, the crack-pot televangelist, has blamed the Haitian earthquake on an age-old pact the nation made with the devil (www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/13/pat-robertson-haiti-curse_n_422099.html).  I would like to propose a different, but no less opportunistic, take on the tragedy.  The LA Times published a photo of the collapsed Catholic Cathedral in Port Au Prince, so clearly the earthquake was God’s way of telling the Catholic Church to stop opposing common-sense family planning.  It may be a stretch to link over-population to general poverty and then to low building standards, but that is exactly what must be done for Haiti’s long-term advancement.  This month we need to send Haiti food and medical supplies, but next month we need to send them family planning counselors and birth control.  Sending aid without addressing population is throwing good money after bad.

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