Labor Day in Brooklyn means the West Indian Day parade (a must to avoid unless you are a politician, West Indian or a fan of noise and traffic); the ability to park almost anywhere, since half of the city is elsewhere; and stories about unemployment, like this one that dominates the front page of the New York Times this morning. 

With hard core unemployment numbers approaching ten percent nationwide, it’s easy to ignore the other bad labor news: that there has been essentially zero job growth over the last ten years, for instance, or that the idea of job permanence seems as quaint to those about to enter the work force as the reruns on TV Land. But the irony of a day of respite from work for a nation looking for same is inescapable. 

I’m no Thomas Friedman (and tend to think that the relentlessly positive thinking of world-economy boosters like him is partly what got us into this mess) but it seems pretty obvious to me that things will never be the same, work wise. In a culture that is still defined by profession (“And what do you do?” is still the second or third question being asked of strangers at barbecues across the country) we have lost our driving wheel. Maybe it’s time to change the question. 

As the current health-care hysteria reminds us, Americans don’t like to be compared to Europeans. They have a month off, guaranteed, sure, and far more protection when fired from a job than we will ever have. But they don’t make as much! jingoists will declare. And they can’t buy guns at the corner store. But you can go for months in France, or Italy, or Holland without someone asking what you do for a living. There the point is still to spend time with family and friends; the work is just the way you get to that luxury. 

Maybe we’re entering a national period of self-discovery and reinvention, and the fear-mongering, nostalgic baying of Glenn Beck and his ilk represents the dying throes of mastodon caught in the tar pit. That means the rest of us need to find a way to judge ourselves and others not based on profession, or wealth, or status, or celebrity but something more intangible and personal. Since we’re all in this together (really!) maybe we should compare aspirations and hopes instead of vacations and paychecks. The next time you meet someone at a party try asking them, “What do you dream?” See if they walk away. 

I caught the end of Obama’s eulogy of Senator Ted Kennedy this afternoon; the TV was muted as my wife and daughter were concentrating on their laptops. The speech turned out to be a bell ringer (you can see it here). Even though the president and the senator did not know each other well, Kennedy’s endorsement was crucial to Obama’s election and when Ted rallied for the convention, and then the inauguration, to see the torch passed (as he put it) everyone thought it might be his final act. 

But more than a work horse — “a man whose name graces nearly 1,000 laws, and who penned more than 300 laws himself,” as the president reminded us — he eulogized him as a sort of empath, the kind of person who learns from loss. “Through his own suffering,” Obama said, “Ted Kennedy became more alive to the plight and suffering of others — the sick child who could not see a doctor; the young soldier sent to battle without armor; the citizen denied her rights because of what she looks like or who she loves or where she comes from.”

When he was finished and the final rites were given, the family fell in behind the pall bearers and the chorus began to sing “America the Beautiful,” joined by the whole congregation. It’s the best of our national anthems, in part because it’s the easiest to sing and understand but it also sounds great in a church. I remember going to the First Presbyterian Church the first Sunday after 9.11; the reverend had given the church over to the assembly (perhaps he felt there was nothing he could say) and we spent an hour choosing songs from the hymnal. “America the Beautiful” was one of them and I remember us all singing through our tears. 

Those were, perversely, great days to be in New York. It was as if the whole city, grievously wounded, was reconsidering the meaning of everything, the importance of each living person, the stranger on the street. The blow that was supposed to kill capitalism, not to mention our country, just got people back to work. We had more concern for those who had lost more than we had, or had started with less. “As more exposed to suffering and distress,” as the poet said, “thence, also, more alive to tenderness.”

My brother Ethan was the first person to contact me about Ted Kennedy’s passing, which was fitting. Ethan is the youngest in my family and like a lot of Democrats of her generation, our mother loved the Kennedy boys. Not with that velvet-painting-of-John-and-Bobby-with-Jesus-and-MLK kind of pious devotion, either; I think like a lot of long-suffering mothers she saw the sons’ failings clear and stark — and probably loved them the more for being better than their natures seem to sometimes dictate. 

Because Teddy was the also-ran: He took JFK’s seat in the senate and he was supposed to be the Fredo of the family, the semi-competent one no one expected much of. Chappaquiddick seemed to seal the deal, as well as a young woman’s fate. Some thought it criminal that Teddy remained in office though his constituents were more forgiving: the people of Massachusetts reelected him seven times after the accident.

But along the way, amid more rumors of debauchery and disgrace, the youngest Kennedy became a champion of the poor and disenfranchised while never being too doctrinaire to engage the enemy; he co-authored legislation on welfare and healthcare by talking, like Dr. Doolittle, to the animals on the other side of the aisle. As liberalism became a bad word in the eighties, Teddy remained unapologetic and a dogged worker. Maybe it was a Catholic thing; maybe he was trying to atone for some of his excesses (and an innocent woman’s death) by fighting for immigrants, children and ordinary joes. (Have you been laid off and maintained your health care insurance via COBRA? You can thank Ted for that.)

The word now is that Ted will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near Jack and Bobby. Who would have thought his accomplishments would surpass theirs? I guess hard work and perseverance — not to mention an actual set of core beliefs, unchanged by political winds — can actually win the day. Just like your mother told you. 

Some people see The Wizard of Oz as a template for life (and this is without Pink Floyd or psychedelics); they believe we are all either Scarecrows, Tin Men, or Cowardly Lions, lacking in brains, heart or courage respectively. Now I’m afraid we have seen Obama’s true colors, and they’re kind of yellow. 

I know, the White House has not completely forsaken the idea of a public option in discussing health care reform but signals this weekend, both from the Health and Human Services Secretary Kathy Sebelius and the president himself, is that the administration is willing to let that part of the solution die. Especially if it upsets Republicans or lobbyists from the health insurance companies. 

Instead they are floating this bogus and ill-defined idea of “insurance co-ops” because they think it sounds a little less socialist than government administered health insurance. You know, the kind we provide for veterans and old people. And this is all without either the GOP or the insurance companies throwing a punch. 

Think about it: the deceitful anti-reform advertisements, the screaming meemies at the town hall meetings, the campaigns of misinformation spearheaded by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the like are not sticks and stones. Sure, NRA supporters may be coming to Obama rallies strapped and the threat of actual violence is never far from the minds of the president’s enemies. But the words and the lies are just that, and can be counterpunched with other words — and the truth! What’s wrong with using the forced period of public consideration as a time for clarity and disinformation dissing? He did it in his campaign with Reverend Wright and the Muslim nonsense. Why stop now?

I have been a loyal enough follower to still hope that he is playing a deeper game. That he is like one of those chess masters who sees twenty moves ahead and has his opponents sussed. But I am more afraid that he is afraid — afraid of an old-fashioned, us-versus-them fight after he ran as an agent of change. Well, it’s seems pretty obvious that the GOP will not be happy with anything the Dems come up with, so let’s stop trying to please them. And nothing would please the insurance companies more than a government mandate that everyone must be insured. It would be like telling the whole country it must have cable and then leaving Time-Warner, Comcast et al to look out for your best interests…

I know that sometimes a wise leader looks at an impossible situation and walks away, tells his men to stand down because the casualties would be too great. But some great battles have been won when the leader looks at the army arrayed before him and says, fuck it, we’re going in. Because when it comes to this issue the question is truly: If not now, when? Write the White House and tell them you want them to fight for what’s right. Remind Obama that brains and heart are not enough — he’s got to show some character, break some eggs if not some heads. And remind him what puts the ape in apricot. 

Last night I got an important insight into the thinking behind those opposed to health care reform. Okay, not thinking, because I have friends — a small business owner for instance — with legitimate concerns about what devil might lurk in the details. I’m talking about the screamers who are trying to shut down town hall discussions about the various bills in congress. 

Republican Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, is now the head of Freedomworks (nice name!), one of the conservative groups that is encouraging the protests that have been aimed at stopping debate. He was on the PBS News Hour doing the point-counterpoint thing with Richard Kirsch, the director of Health Care for America Now, a liberal group that is for exactly what the name implies. There weren’t too many surprises in the exchange: Armey was talking Tort reform, laying the blame for the health care mess on lawyers, with Kirsch insisting that wasn’t the issue and arguing for good, guaranteed coverage for all citizens. 

Kirsch pointed out that there is nothing in any of the legislation that says people would be forced into government health care, and that the Congressional Budget Office did an analysis of the House bill and estimated the number of people who would go into the public plan is nine million, even as Armey insisted 100 million people would lose their coverage — a number he seemed to have pulled out of the air. When moderator Judy Woodruff asked him, in polite PBS fashion, about the discrepancy, Armey said, “We have a difference in information here but I have to tell you, if you look at the unrest brewing in the country today it’s because the American citizenry at large does not believe what the government, or agents of the government, are telling them.”

That’s right: facts don’t matter. Don’t bother me with your analysis because we don’t trust your stinking bureaucrats. There is nothing new in this thinking, of course: It’s just the kind of knee-jerk reaction that has fueled the anti-government wing of the Republican party for years. But the fact that it was coming from a man who was once the face of government, or one branch of it, is particularly galling. And the fact that his law firm received over a million dollars from a pharmaceutical company this year is completely beside the point.

I can only hope that the screams being heard in the town hall meetings are the dying gasps of a wounded animal, the white conservative minority that sees Obama’s presidency as a comet headed for its planet. To them words like “socialized medicine” are still scary enough to keep them up at night. (A friend of mine told me about being in an ER with his daughter for nine hours — only to have a man who’d been there longer say, “It could be worse: You could live in Canada where they have socialized medicine.”) The rest of us (who I think actually represent the future)  look up from the campfire at the old scary costume — the pillow case over the head, the bloody ax — and say, “Really? A pillow case?” And then go back to tending the flame.