Hendrik Hertzberg on All Topics
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““Avatar” cost something in the neighborhood of a quarter of a billion dollars to make, and you don’t need 3-D glasses to see all that money zooming up at you off the screen.”
“The Senate took a vote on extending the federal debt limit. All the Republicans voted no. That is to say, all of them voted for the United States to repudiate its obligations and go into default.”
“Social Security in 1935 was a way bigger sellout, surrender, betrayal of the base, etc., than the Senate health-care bill comes anywhere near being in 2010.”
“Are Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress doing enough? No. But they are doing what’s possible. That may be pathetic, but it’s no fallacy.”
“There are no good options for the United States in Afghanistan. That has been the conventional wisdom for some years now, and this time the conventional wisdom—the reigning cliché—happens to be true.”
“Can Afghanistan’s nominal government, with its President elected by fraud and its recent rating as the second most corrupt on earth, be finessed or somehow remade?”
“The Pax Bloombergiana will endure a while longer. But then what? Will we have forgotten how to govern ourselves?”
“If President Obama really had to get a gift postmarked Scandinavia this month, he would probably, on the whole, have preferred the Olympics.”
“Bipartisanship is a fine sentiment and an appealing tactic, but where health care is concerned it was never a great idea.”
“If California has the courage and imagination to become a true laboratory of democracy, the [citizen delegates] experiment will be something to see.”
“Europe is a bigger social success than the United States. It’s just as rich as we are; its people, on the whole, are happier and healthier than we are; it has much less crime, poverty, and inequality than we do. And you can go to the doctor of your choice.”
“The American health care system is bloated, wasteful, and cruel. Under the health-insurance-reform package ... it will still be bloated, wasteful, and cruel—but markedly less so.”
“The hyperactivity that has marked the Administration’s approach to the economic crisis, the health-care mess, and the Middle East has been missing on the issue of ... equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.”
“Change is in the Tehran air, and the American President’s openness is part of it.”
“The controversy about Obama’s Notre Dame appearance is less about him than about divisions within the American Catholic community.”
Photo by Katrina Hertzberg
