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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Standard Deviation

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Ted Rall
America as Cost-Benefit Analysis As if our country didn’t already have enough to worry about—advancing technology, downsizing, Pamela Anderson—here come the economics of rape. An exciting new Justice Department study, “Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look,” reveals that the “average rape” costs its victim $5,100. This sum is based on such out-of-pocket expenses as medical bills and visits to counselors. So, locking up a rapist at the cost of $20,000 a year—the average annual cost of housing an inmate—obviously doesn’t make good economic sense, the authors say, until you factor in “the effect on the victim’s quality of life,” which then brings the total average rape cost to $87,000. Therefore it may be a good idea to lock up rapists——assuming, of course, that the average rapist would otherwise have performed at least one average rape every 4.35 years. The Justice Department plans to attach tracking devices to a random sampling of 1,200 average rapists to determine the average rate…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Our Great Mixing Bowl

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Ted Rall
American History for High School Students (September 2053 Edition) As difficult as it may be to believe today, white Americans—now virtually extinct—were once the dominant ethnic majority in our country. Until as recently as the late 20th century, every President and 99 percent of all Congresspersons were Caucasian! What happened to these fascinating people? After four centuries of cultural and political dominance, such famous white Americans as Thomas Jefferson, Ernest Hemingway and Martha Stewart helped build a rich and vibrant civilization that peaked during the late 1900s. White people were responsible for such important inventions as the penknife and airplane. They built computer games, composed music like disco and techno and made contributions to postmodern architecture. White Americans were deeply spiritual. They worshipped a male god with blond hair and blue eyes who lived in a “church,” a large auditorium ringed with benches where money was collected. In addition, they felt a strong kinship with the land, which they believed…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Cashing In On Irony

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Ted Rall
Dole’s Secret Youth Strategy Revealed As a stunned America reels from the shock of pre-selected Republican nominee Bob Dole’s emergence as the Republican nominee, patriotic citizens should read the following secret memo—faxed to me by a Dole mole. As a dutiful public service, I have opted to relinquish my normal weekly column space. Instead, I am releasing this explosive internal strategy paper, for the good of the country and to improve my lagging sales: INTERNAL MEMORANDUM PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL—EYES ONLY To: Bob Dole cc: ___ _____________ From: C___s__ __in___ Dole ’96 National Youth Coordinator Date: 3-19-96 Re: Youth Strategy for General Election ______ Dear Bob: As you know, voters under 35 years of age have emerged as a potent political force. They were single-handedly responsible for Clinton’s 1992 win, but the Little Rock Mafia has failed to market themselves to this key group. For the first time in recent electoral history, the GOP has the chance to appeal to young…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Adolf Redux

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Ted Rall
Pat Buchanan’s Basic Instinct Pat Buchanan is the first Republican I’ve ever considered voting for. Since the day in October of 1972 when my mom took me along with her to pass out McGovern fliers, I’ve been a committed Democrat—or at least a militant anti-Republican. When Democrats jumped into bed with Reagan to support his rancid budgetary attack on the 90 percent of Americans who aren’t rich, it broke my heart. Nonetheless, I still turned out to work on Mondale and Dukakis’ Dem-lite campaigns. And I voted for Clinton in 1992. But after four years of watching him appoint and suck up to Republicans, I’ll never vote for him again. This is where Pat Buchanan comes in. On Monday night, an ABC-TV news commentator noted: “He’s the only candidate talking about issues people really care about.” In particular, out of the single Democratic and nine Republican presidential candidates who entered the Iowa caucuses, Nixon’s ex-speechwriter is the only one who…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Choosing My Religion

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Ted Rall
My friend Debra was born into a Roman Catholic family. She got baptized and confirmed and everything; sometimes she even confessed. But twenty years of reciting the same old liturgies gets pretty tiresome. By the time she turned 35, she only went to mass when her parents came to town. As time passed, Debra began to fear that her life had lost its meaning. She felt empty, unfocused, aimless. So, one afternoon in the fall, she decided to go shopping for a new religion. “I can buy any car I want. Why can’t I choose my faith the same way? There’s so many religions out there that my parents never even considered. Who’s to say the Pope’s guys have a monopoly on meaning?” I was intrigued by Debra’s consumerist approach to finding a higher truth. An erratic Catholic myself, it suddenly occurred to me: “Maybe, despite all evidence to the contrary, God really does exist. Perhaps I’ve just been using…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Dirty Laundry

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Ted Rall
Child Abuse Isn’t Just the Poor’s Problem Three million times a year, we beat our kids so badly that someone calls the cops about it. There’s really no way to know how often Americans pound the stuffing out of their children, since these ritual assaults are as mundane as doing the laundry. What’s remarkable about child abuse is that it’s in the news at all–normally, anything that affects children is a rock-bottom priority. In the last month, we’ve read about 6-year-old Elisa Izquierdo, who was murdered by her mom on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The killing seemed anticlimactic after years of enduring such abuse as having her head used to mop her apartment floor. Then there was Tazar Carter, a 15-year-old boy sold to Detroit crack dealer-pimps by his mom. By far the most spectacular story involved 0-year-old Elijah Evans, whose father’s girlfriend brought him into the wonderful world of Chicago suburbia by amateur C-section–while stabbing his mother to death.…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Now for the Disco President

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Ted Rall
About this time every four years, articles bemoaning the early start of the upcoming presidential campaign begin peppering the editorial pages. Never mind that this writing actually serves to launch the orgy of militant moderation that passes for electioneering in this country. This year we can dispense with all that. The 1996 campaign has ended before it began. We already know that the Republican nominee, and probable victor, will be Bob Dole. The legendary meanness and nasty disposition of the man from Kansas hasn’t escaped the notice of even the most moronic American voters, but his third attempt at the Oval Office is sufficiently well-funded to succeed. Nonetheless, there’s always been something creepy about Bob Dole. He’s like your best friend’s mean father, or Humphrey Bogart’s evil twin. He’s even got Dick Nixon’s five o’clock shadow. Clinton may be able to put up some resistance. After all, he is the President. He could have the CIA reveal that Dole once…
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SYNDICATED COLUMN: And For Our Next Trick

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Ted Rall
The Affirmative Action Debate Exposed There is a most conspicuous absence in the affirmative action debate. That glaring omission is what both the proponents and foes of what passes itself off as affirmative action agree not to discuss: how affirmative action actually works and what its purpose really is. Since the inception of affirmative action programs in the 60’s, no one in the media has ever attempted to clarify exactly how the mechanics of these policies operate on a day-to-day basis. Sure, college admissions offices and employers who engage in preferential acceptance and hiring practices let minorities, women and other “disadvantaged groups” in ahead of white men when all things are equal. The problem is, in real life, things are never equal. Affirmative action theory dictates that a black female high school senior from Newark with a 3.75 GPA and 1300 SAT stands a better chance of admission to Yale than a white male Choate student with the same grade…
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