this morning i was listening to NPR (guess i'm an adult now), and the news segment was an analysis of bush's proposed $250,000 "hard cap" on pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice suits. the segment was brief without sacrificing nuance, and it even suggested the kind of underlying cause that most newscasts avoid, the systemic kind that can't be swept away by one tidy piece of legislation. i could feel a deep love for public radio, nurtured by kodak-style dream sequences of our future together, taking root in my heart. the main point was that the malpractice liabilities that drive up doctors' insurance costs are not pain and suffering, but the actual fuckups that they make in treating people. this is not because the formerly rugged individualist physician archetype has been hijacked by a bevy of incompetent liberal ninnies unfamiliar with the maladies of jus' folks, but because medical advances over the past fifty years have created a lot more situations in which doctors can be blamed. (the example the newscast cited was that fifty years ago, diagnosing cancer early didn't matter; you were going to die anyway. now, in some cases, it can mean the difference between life and death.) in short, bush's proposed cap trivializes the problem and fails to remedy anything other than his shortage of policy initiatives to thump his chest over. all of which you could read in any times editorial, except they then played a statement from paul o'neill about how we live in an adversarial society where people think of misfortune as the fault of malevolent (suable) perpetrators.

brilliant. it is so true. i was at peace with the world this morning as i drank coffee and listened to my beloved NPR until, on the walk to work, some asshole (see? see? delusions of others' malevolence) gave a big rude honk, directed at the car in front of him, which was turning but letting me (the wronged victim, the girl in the legbrace) and others cross the street on our walk sign. angry at this small injustice even though the honker couldn't have known he was lashing out at the handicapped, i tumbled irretrievably into the me-first indignance of every pedestrian and motorist and everybody in new york, and now another day has been contaminated by arrogant suspicion of my fellow citydwellers. it's hard to go twenty feet without experiencing or even witnessing that emotion in others, which is a big part of my problem with new york. it's a hundred times more adversarial than any other place i've lived (which, admittedly, isn't so hard to do, considering i come from small-town florida and went to school in even-smaller-town davidson). i can understand how it happens here, because we're nine million people, all with our own agenda, crammed into such a tiny space. but i still don't like it, especially when i see it in myself.