I am discovering that, in our push to create this “one size fits all” method of writing instruction, we are in effect also dumbing-down the kinds of reading we assign. We are less often reading good essays to appreciate why they are great; rather we read them and break them down to see how they fit our pre-supposed, assembly-line interpretation of what a “good” essay is.
My recent comic addressing the cost of health care drew pretty quick fire from many venues (here, Reddit, etc…). And, as I’ve already conceded on this website, extenuating factors do have a pronounced impact on the cost of medical products and procedures. What I’ve realized too late is that I made the same sort of mistake with Class Warfare #011 that I made with my longer-running comic about life in public education a few months ago; namely, I moved away from how the issues of the day were affecting me directly in the world I was living in. I tried to be grandiose and worldly, and I got away from writing and drawing about how all of this was playing out in my world.
So, I’m going back to basic nuts and bolts, here, and I’m trying this again. This is the health care issue as it affected many of us throughout the nation. It’s a pretty accurate description of how I felt when much of this happened to me, and I’d venture that others going similar (or worse) turns of fate carry the same sort of resentments.
Before I drew this, I tried to look up the real value cost of a pace-maker. I had considered the possibility that the technology needed to jump-start the heart beat might actually be more intricate than the technology needed to do all the things that an iPhone or Android can do.
I never found a real value cost, and most of the descriptions of the functions of a pace-maker left me with the impression that our smart phones and iPods are about as technologically adept as these medical devices (if not more so).
Before anyone says, I am aware that Mitch Daniels can not run for a third term in Indiana in 2012. But adding two or three more panels to try to explain how Mike Pence’s policies are a magnification of Daniels’s seemed counter-productive.
