Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: The Hero and The Bum

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is back in court… and back in the news this week. This has got Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinking about what it means to be a hero…

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This is a story of two very large men, former athletes, who have been looked up to by a lot of people. We lavished attention on both of them, and hoped they would be good to us.

One became an authentic hero, who like most real heroes, gets, if anything, too little attention. The other is a bum, who continues to betray all of us. Yesterday, a lot of journalists had to spend time on the bum, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a convicted felon who has been dragged back into court because he hasn’t been paying back money he was ordered to pay.

Kilpatrick, you may remember, charmed and beguiled the voters of poor Detroit into electing him twice. He also seduced some of the city’s top business leaders into bankrolling him.

They put up the money that enabled him to beat a decent, honest man, three years ago. Last year it turned out that Kilpatrick, whose high-living ways were notorious, had lied under oath to cover up an affair. Worse, he pressured his poor city to pay nearly $9 million to the cops he had unjustly fired for investigating him.

Eventually he resigned and did a little time.

The court ordered him to pay back a million of the money he cost the city. But he hasn’t made his full payments, even though a high-paying job was found for him and the business leaders he charmed gave him a $240,000 loan. He and his wife spent more than a million dollars last year. He just doesn’t like paying what he owes.

Fortunately for me, yesterday I got to sit on a stage with a man as large as Kwame, but who is worth his weight in gold. Joe Dumars, the Detroit Pistons’ President of Basketball Operations.

Macomb Community College has been doing a series on the role of sports in society, and asked me to interview Dumars before a large crowd. The man is pure class. Quiet integrity and brains. When his playing days were almost done, Pistons owner Bill Davidson did something unheard of in sports. He asked him to run the team. Not to coach it, to run the entire business operation.

That was ten years ago. Dumars hs been doing it ever since, with class and success. He also has his own foundation and does a vast amount of charitable work that barely gets noticed.

Along the way, Joe D has pulled many an arrogant young hotshot aside and told him what it takes to be a real man.

Dumars was the youngest of seven kids. His dad drove a produce truck, and taught his kids to treat people with humility. Later, when Joe was making seven million dollars a year, he’d go home to see his parents. His mother would make him put the garbage out, and his dad would send him to the store. Kwame Kilpatrick was the son of politicians, who treated him like a little prince.

Yesterday, I found myself wondering if we’d all be better off today if Joe D had been Kwame K’s big brother. I doubt that Joe Dumars has ever thought of running for anything. But if he ever wanted to run my state, that would be just fine with me.

Essay: Stem Cells Again - 10.29.09

Last year, Michigan voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing embryonic stem cell research. But, as Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry reports, some lawmakers in Lansing are now trying to change things…

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You might have thought the legislature would be entirely focused on trying to pass a budget these days. After all, they were constitutionally required to get it done four weeks ago, and they aren‘t finished yet. But if you thought that, you‘d be wrong.

Among other things, a group of lawmakers is working to reverse the will of the people and throw all sorts of roadblocks at embryonic stem cell research, which the voters approved last year.

They’ve introduced legislation in both the House and the Senate designed to prevent this enormously valuable work. Battle Creek physician and former Republican Congressman Joe Schwarz said it best: “They couldn’t stop it at the ballot box, so they are trying to stop it by throwing a regulatory banner at the research.”

Now, you can argue that embryonic stem cell research is highly controversial and that it should deserve careful consideration and vigorous debate, and you’d be right. We had that debate. We had a ferocious public battle and a statewide election on this less than a year ago. And the people decided.

Michigan citizens decisively voted last November to amend the state constitution to allow embryonic stem cell research. The measure passed by a quarter of a million votes. Despite a lot of misinformation, the facts are these:

Scientists are only allowed to use leftover embryos that are created in fertility clinics and then voluntarily donated. These are small clumps of cells that would otherwise be destroyed.

Incidentally, that amendment, combined with President Obama’s decision to lift the federal ban on funding such research, has been good for our state’s economy. The University of Michigan alone recently received $6.8 million in grants for this.

That means more research projects, and jobs.

However, a group of lawmakers in the House have sponsored a joint resolution calling for another constitutional amendment that would essentially repeal the one we passed last year.

They want an amendment saying that from the moment of fertilization, a cell is a person who has a right to life. This would, of course, end all stem cell research. Fortunately, that amendment isn’t going anywhere. What’s happening in the state senate is sneakier.

Tom George, a Republican from Kalamazoo, is trying to pass a package of “regulations” he says would “define and clarify” the rules for stem cell research. In fact, they would make such research virtually impossible, requiring, for example, that scientists determine whether an embryo had more than a fifty percent chance of surviving implantation before its cells could be used. Nobody can do that.

Sean Morrison, director of the U of M’s Center for Stem Cell Biology, testified that these bills “would impede the development of the life sciences sector by making it illegal to pursue mainstream forms of medical research widely accepted throughout the rest of the country.” What he didn’t say is that what Senator George is trying to do is also probably unconstitutional.

The amendment we passed says state law cannot restrict, obstruct, or discourage stem cell research.

The courts would probably throw these bills out. So here’s a suggestion. The people settled this issue last year. Senator George, you are a smart man. Why don’t you use your time and energy figuring out a way to adequately fund education in Michigan instead?

Essay: Trying to Fix Things - 10.28.09

Lawmakers in both Lansing and Detroit have been criticized this year for failing to get their jobs done. But, as Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry notes, Detroiters, at least, are trying to do something about it…

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Let’s give Detroiters credit for something. They are at least trying to fix their pathetic and dysfunctional system of government.

Over the past few years, the Motor City has been a national laughingstock. Not for the crime rate, racial problems, the bad schools or the terrible poverty that afflicts so many of its residents.

Instead, Detroit has been the shame of the nation in recent years thanks mainly to its elected leaders. First, there was Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a huge and hugely talented man. He talked a good game, but threw it all away to live the life of a flamboyant thug.

Kilpatrick is out of prison now and thankfully out of state, hopefully forever. But he did plenty of damage to a city that already had all the trouble it could handle.

Unfortunately, once he was gone, City Council stepped up to embarrass us further.

We had months of Monica Conyers, the wife of the House Judiciary Chairman, acting very much as you might expect a foul-mouthed teenager to act.

Unfortunately, she was then acting council president. She called her fellow council members names, indulged in openly racist behavior and name-calling, and generally acted like a clown.

Five months or so ago she resigned, when it turned out she was also taking bribes in parking lots. She is expected to be sentenced to prison on December 1st.

Unfortunately, Conyers has had plenty of company in discrediting the council in recent years. There was the councilman who got in trouble for putting his girl friend’s daughter on the city payroll, even though she never lived in Detroit.

He went to jail too. Another council member, known mostly for funny hats and incoherent nastiness, died just before she was to be served with a federal indictment which charged her, among other things, of trading a vote for 17 pounds of sausage.

So why have Detroiters kept electing people like this? Mostly because of the system. Motown is the only large city in the nation to elect all of its council members at large. Voters have to pick from a roster of more than 100 names, and naturally, they tend to go with names they know. Under those rules, Kate Gosselin would likely win a seat if she chose to run.

This summer, a band of mostly young people set out to change that. They pounded the pavement, collected signatures and got a proposal on next week’s ballot to switch to a system where most of council is elected by individual districts.

That would mean for the first time people in the neighborhoods could elect someone they know to fight for their own interests.

To be sure, arguments can be made against a district system. Yet the bottom line is that Detroiters are trying to fix their mess. As further proof, this spring they decided to elect a commission to rewrite their badly flawed city charter.

But meanwhile in Lansing, nothing has changed. Day after day, we’ve seen the appalling spectacle of inflexible and incompetent lawmakers who cannot even balance their budget.

Detroiters are trying to do something about their leadership failure. It might be time to ask what’s taking the rest of us so long.

Essay: Threatening Agriculture - 10.27.09

Michigan’ s agricultural extension programs have been helping the state’s farmers for nearly a century. Now, the program may be threatened with extinction. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry explains.

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Gov. Jennifer Granholm has not specifically said she will veto funding for agricultural extension programs, but she has been strongly hinting that she might do exactly that.

And it would be very hard to imagine anything worse that could come out of the dangerous game of chicken our so-called leaders have been playing for months with the state budget, and with us.

We aren’t talking about much money here. The network of Agricultural Extension programs and offices and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Stations get a paltry $64 million from the state. That compares to nearly two billion dollars Michigan taxpayers spend each year on prisons. But if the governor vetoes funding for agricultural programs, that will mean statewide devastation.

That‘s the word Jeffrey Armstrong uses to describe it. He‘s the dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University. It would mean, for one thing, the loss of millions more in federal matching funds for our second biggest industry.

“The Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station system and MSU extension are providing the research, development, and education for Michigan’s emerging green economy,” Armstrong said.

If that funding is eliminated, or even if it is withheld, he says it would “destroy our ability to build the one economic sector in which Michigan has an advantage,” he says.

What that would mean is that MSU would have to shut down its 83 extension offices -- one per county - plus 15 agricultural and biological research stations and some other programs.

That would also mean a loss of nearly three thousand more jobs. Now, if you are a city dweller like me, you may think that what we are talking about here is a bunch of 4-H clubs.

Well, they do fund those clubs, which reach a lot of urban kids as well. But MSU’s agricultural extension programs are also helping the City of Detroit to convert brownfields into places that grow crops for energy production. They are helping seven thousand families eat better and assisting others with child care and breast feeding.

Extension programs have developed a method they say is close to wiping out the Emerald Ash Borer. In Macomb County, they’ve helped more than a hundred families avoid foreclosure.

That’s only a small sampling of what these programs do.

They have been run for a century by Michigan State, which was founded in 1855 to improve agriculture and help bring the benefits of what were called the “applied sciences” to everyone in our state. Now, Michigan is struggling to cope with a huge budget deficit.

The state still hasn’t finalized a budget that was supposed to have been done a month ago. Last week, the state unexpectedly withheld the October payment from the extension services. The governor’s office won’t say if she plans to kill the programs entirely.

Republicans were quick to denounce her for this, and just as quick to say they still won’t agree to new revenue, no matter what.

What is very clear is that destroying these programs will have a devastating effect on the common good. Last time I checked, that’s what those we elect to serve us are supposed to be looking after.

Something seems to have gone terribly wrong.

Essay: Longer View - 10.26.09

The current state budget crisis isn't over, but everybody agrees we'll have another one next year, and the year after that. Senior political analyst Jack Lessenberry wonders when we are going to get to the root of the problem.

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You may think you have heard enough about Michigan's state budget mess to last a lifetime. But here's something else you need to know. Virtually nobody is trying to do anything about the real problem. Now, if you've been following the news, you know the battles over this year's state budget are not yet over, almost a month after everything was legally supposed to be done.

While a government shutdown the day after Halloween is increasingly unlikely, it is still a possibility. But what is more troubling is that everybody in government knows this isn't a one-time crisis.

As Speaker of the House Andy Dillon tersely said last week, "Next year will be worse." So will every year after that, unless and until the squabbling bands of partisans in the legislature are willing to become statesmen, and address the deeper issue here.

What's really wrong is this. We are depending on a system designed in an era when automobiles and manufacturing were king. When workers did their jobs in one single location, and made high salaries for making stuff -- primarily, cars and car parts.

Everything in our economy was based on that.

That's all changed now. The auto industry has shrunken, and while it may survive, it employs far fewer people. In the future, automotive salaries are going to be smaller.

The parts of the economy that are growing, here and everywhere, are the so-called service sectors. But we don't tax services. If I buy a muffler, I pay sales tax on it. If I pay you to install it on my car, you don't pay a penny in tax on that money.

Incredibly, however, few are talking much about a needed major overhaul of the way the government works. Yesterday, I talked to one man who is. Tom Watkins has never been in the legislature, but spent years dealing with the system as state superintendent of schools.

"Those who think we can simply cut or tax our way out of these budget problems are delusional. It is change-or-die time for Michigan," Watkins said. Here's what he suggests.

To close the deficit and avoid doing horrendous harm to our future, the legislature should agree to a temporary tax increase that would be phased out completely in two or three years.

Then, they look at who, how, and what we tax.

And move towards these other long-term reforms:

First, enact a single health care plan for all government workers, much like the one Speaker Dillon has suggested.

Next, come up with a rational process for consolidating many of our smaller school districts and combining local government services.

Change pension plans from a system of defined benefits to one based on contributions. These much-needed changes will save vast amounts of money. "Then," Watkins said, "if these reforms don't get done in time, major cuts kick in and the lawmakers and the people who elected them have no one to blame but themselves."

He says our lawmakers in Lansing need to be asked: Which side are they on? Will they keep fighting for the dying status quo?

Or will they stand up for the collective future of our state?

Everything depends on whether they, and we, answer that question in the right way.

Essay: Endorsing Away - 10.23.09

The 2010 election is still more than a year away… but our state’s politicians are busily endorsing each other. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry is wondering if anyone really cares…

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We’ve got nearly a year to go before the next primary elections. Michigan is in a near-depression and the state has been close to governmental paralysis for months. The governor and legislature are still fighting over a budget that was supposed to be final a month ago.

And everyone agrees next year will be worse.

So, you’d think it might be appropriate for the state’s politicians to put off worrying about the next round of elections, at least till they get our current financial mess resolved. My guess is that none of us could care less whom any of them want to see elected next time.

Certainly we don’t even want to hear about which politician is backing which other one until they have done their jobs. Until we know that our schools and universities and police and state parks are going to be able to keep operating for the next couple of years.

That, however, is not how the political class thinks. So while the state teeters on the brink of another shutdown, we’ve been treated in the last week to the exciting news that L. Brooks Patterson, the Oakland County executive, is endorsing his local sheriff, Mike Bouchard, in the Republican primary for governor.

Keep in mind that babies who have not yet been conceived will be born before that primary occurs. I find it hard to believe that men and women rushed home from work the other night and threw open the door to share the breathless announcement with their spouse.

“Darling. It’s happened. Brooks Patterson has dropped the other shoe. He’s endorsing Mike Bouchard.” Overcome with emotion, Camilla faints and collapses on the sofa.

No, I don’t see that happening. The Democrats don’t intend to be outdone, of course. In fact, it was only yesterday that I was able to tell my sweetie that Carmella Sabaugh was endorsing Jocelyn Benson for secretary of state. If that doesn’t mean much to you, you must be normal. Sabbaugh is the Macomb County clerk.

Benson is a law professor at Wayne State University. The ironic part is that even if you cared about this endorsement, it is utterly meaningless. You don’t get to pick the nominee for secretary of state.

The political parties do, at their state conventions next year. What’s going on here is largely a bunch of political maneuverings under the general heading of, “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,“ coupled with a few paybacks for previous scratches.

Whether political endorsements have any effect at all is debatable. The old saying is that it was like wetting your pants while wearing a dark suit; it gives you a nice warm feeling, and nobody notices. However, it may not feel so good after a while.

Somewhere, there may be somebody who voted for someone because another politician suggested they do so. I just have never met that person. However, if any of the current crop in Lansing can stand up and lead their fellows to a rational resolution of this budget mess, I may not necessarily vote the way they want me to.

But I might go out and build a statue to them instead.

Essay: Sacrificing Our Kids - 10.22.09

Lawmakers are now battling Governor Granholm’s veto of some money for some school districts… which came at the same time that the Governor was calling for more money for the schools. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at what’s really going on…

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American values have evolved over the years, but one thing has been consistent since the first immigrants came off the boat.

We’ve always wanted our children to have more chances than we did. Americans believed in sacrificing for the next generation.

That‘s why our ancestors died at Valley Forge and Omaha Beach, and that‘s why we established and funded public education.

That is, until now. Our politicians in Lansing have already damaged our children’s future, and are now using Michigan‘s children to play a dangerous game of chicken.

Whatever happens, we all lose. In an effort to cope with a huge and growing deficit, the legislature agreed on a compromise earlier this month to cut the amount of money they give the schools by $165 a student. Now, keep in mind that this is for the ongoing school year. This is money the schools were promised and counted on, and now are losing in the middle of their budget year, which means these cuts are much harder to make.

This is happening now because the lawmakers did not do their jobs and agree on a budget when they were supposed to.

And if you think that is bad, this week things got much worse. Governor Jennifer Granholm shocked just about everybody when she vetoed some funding for some of Michigan’s largest school districts.

This means some middle class districts are really going to be clobbered. Harper Woods, a small middle-to-working class district, will lose almost $500 a pupil. A woman I know with a child in the system wrote her state representative. Democrat Tim Bledsoe, to complain, saying, “Our community and our families are working class to middle class and don’t have a lot of money.

“How does this make sense?”

Bledsoe agreed. “I am angry that the Governor and Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop would use our schools as though they were poker chips in a high-stakes political game,” he told her, adding he would do what he can to fight it.

Bishop says the governor is doing this to try and force Republicans to agree to a tax increase to save the schools, but vowed once again that it wasn’t going to happen. As for Bledsoe, while he may think the cuts are terrible, he opposes the one serious attempt that has been made to get new revenue, a small tax on physicians. You see, he has a lot of doctors in his district.

Meanwhile, members of both parties scrambled to try and find the votes to override the governor’s veto of that appropriation.

But it looks like they’ll fall short.

And then yesterday, the governor said, “We must invest in our children, who are going to be the workforce of the future.” She then called on Senate Republicans to be, in her word, “reasonable.”

By the way, she said that after also vetoing a $1.6 million appropriation that has been helping provide a good start for disadvantaged children under the age of three. I think that’s called cognitive dissonance. It is clearly a mess. More school districts than ever are now in danger of receivership. Our leaders have failed us, and the system has broken down.

And somehow, we need to find a way to force them to fix it.

Essay: Edsel & Corvair - 10.19.09

This year marks the 50th anniversary of two cars that Detroit would rather forget - the Edsel and the Corvair. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry looks at what lessons we can learn from both cars...

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Hard to believe now, but half a century ago, one of the most exciting rites of a Michigan autumn was the unveiling of new car models at dealerships throughout the state. Some dealers would cover their windows until the exciting moment arrived.

That was back in the day when gas was cheap, and we were so naïve we expected the Detroit Lions to win. But 1959 was also a key date for a couple of cars whose names today are synonymous with failure. And understanding both those cars is hugely important if we are to understand how the auto industry got where it is today.

Fifty years ago this fall, Ford Motor Co. pulled the plug on what was possibly the most horrendous flop of all time, the Edsel, a styling and marketing disaster. Even as the last of the Edsels rolled off the assembly line, Chevrolet began producing a car that was far more commercially successful, but would become a synonym for a dangerous death trap. I am talking, of course, about the Corvair, rendered perpetually infamous by the book Unsafe at Any Speed.

That book made author Ralph Nader famous and got millions of Americans wondering how safe their cars were.

Today, we think of these cars as case studies in the excesses and corruption of the American automotive industry. Critics sometimes cite them as early examples of the kind of thinking that nearly destroyed the no longer-so-big three.

As with most legends, the popular perception is partly right, and partly wrong. The Edsel, indeed, was a supreme flop, a classic business example of a famous principle: If you don’t know where you are going, you are going to have trouble getting there.

Today, we tend to remember the Edsel’s ugly, “horse collar” grille. Its real problem is that it was an overpriced and overhyped car introduced during a recession. Ford ended up losing, in today’s money, well over a billion and a half dollars.

The Corvair, on the other hand, was around for a decade, and sold well, at least until Nader’s book. If the Edsel was the wrong car at the wrong time, the Corvair was in some ways the right car at the right time. It competed well against early imports. But Nader charged that it had a dangerous tendency to spin out and flip over.

Today, there is evidence the Corvair may not have been as bad as Nader thought. But the way General Motors handled the affair was monumentally stupid. They invaded Nader’s privacy and tried to corrupt him. He sued, and GM ended up paying an enormous settlement. Nader then founded the Center for Auto Safety, which helped lead to more regulation of the industry.

Did Detroit learn from the Edsel and the Corvair? Yes and No. The car companies did finally get serious about safety. But the episodes also illustrate the inherent weaknesses each has.

When Ford has been flush with cash, it still too often wastes vast amounts, as when it bought Land-Rover and Jaguar many years later. And General Motors has repeatedly exhibited an insular, know-nothing arrogance that landed it, this year, in bankruptcy court.

None of us like clichés, but those who don’t learn from the past do, indeed, tend to repeat their mistakes.

Let’s hope that this time, Ford and GM really get it.

Essay: The Governor's Park - 10.20.09

On Thursday, the state will rename Tricentennial State Park in Detroit as the William G. Milliken State Park and Harbor. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks it is a long overdue honor…

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There’s going to be a ceremony in Detroit Thursday afternoon that ought to please anyone who knows the history of our state. The governor will be there, and the mayor, the head of the Department of Natural Resources, and some other dignitaries.

They will be there to rename and dedicate the former Tri-centennial State Park, which will now become William G. Milliken State Park and Harbor. That’s an honor both much-deserved and frankly overdue. As Dave Dempsey observes in his excellent and even-handed biography, William Milliken, Michigan’s Passionate Moderate, the man was not only the state’s longest-serving chief executive, but “the greenest governor of the twentieth century.”

Dempsey has been leading a campaign to name a state forest in honor of Milliken, and that still may happen. But it is also fitting that they are naming a park and a harbor in Detroit for him. Besides his environmental record, he cared about and did more to help the Motor City than any other governor in my lifetime.

He did that even though that was bitterly opposed by his fellow Republicans in the legislature and elsewhere. Frankly, most of them didn’t care much for his environmental initiatives either.

He once tangled with Jay Van Andel, the co-founder of Amway and a major contributor to the GOP. Milliken insisted that the phosphorous content of laundry detergent be severely limited, because it was killing our state’s waterway. Van Andel was incensed.

This, he complained, would cost him a lot of money. Milliken held his ground. That decision was a major factor in saving Lake Erie. Within two years, phosphorous dumped into the Detroit River had declined by 40 percent.

Over his fourteen years in office, Governor Milliken signed dozens of major environmental and conservation-related bills. He was the first person to sign a petition for the 1976 referendum that required deposits on beer and soda bottles. Before that, broken bottles and cans littered many a highway and vacant lot.

Yet as his biographer noted, more important than any single law was the perception that Milliken was the guardian of our natural resources. Once, when he was advised that a particular position might hurt him politically, he told an ally on the Natural Resources Commission to go ahead and do what she thought was right.

“Good government is good politics,” he said.

Fortunately, this won’t be a posthumous dedication. Milliken, who is still alive and well at age 87, will be there too.

I don’t know what he will say, but I remember something he said at a banquet a dozen years ago: “The truth is that the quality of human life in Michigan depends on nature. The natural beauty of our state is much more than a source of pleasure and recreation.

It shapes our values, molds our attitudes, and feeds our spirit.

“In Michigan, our soul is not to be found in strip malls. Rather, it is found in the soft petals of a trillium, the gentle whisper of a headwater stream, the vista of a Great Lakes shoreline, and the wonder in children’s eyes at seeing their first bald eagle.

“It is that soul we must preserve.”

Congratulations, sir. You did your part.

Essay: I Did Know Jack 10.15.09

This week, HBO is in Michigan to film a made-for-TV movie called "You Don’t Know Jack." Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry says, he did in fact know the infamous Jack Kevorkian…

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HBO is coming to Michigan this week to film some scenes for its movie, "You Don't Know Jack," about the apostle of assisted suicide, Dr. Kevorkian. This is probably not much of a testimonial, by the way, to Michigan's policy of offering tax breaks to movie makers. Most of the movie was shot in New York, and they are just coming here for some Oakland County courthouse scenes.

I imagine I'll see the movie, but for me it will be an anticlimax, since I had a ringside seat at the real thing. I covered the Kevorkian trials for the New York Times, and had behind-the-scenes access to the defense team for the first trial, which I covered for Vanity Fair.

I participated in the making of numerous news documentaries about him. In the course of all that, I saw and talked to Kevorkian maybe a hundred times between 1993 and 1999, when he was sent off to prison. When the judge sentenced him for second degree murder, Kevorkian winked at me.

"Now I've got them right where I want them," he said.

Well, maybe not. As the prosecutor said to me that day, "prisoners usually don't get to hold press conferences."

Out of sight, out of mind. As it turned out, Kevorkian had used up his fifteen minutes of fame. During the eight years he was in prison, he was mostly forgotten. When he came out, it was to a different world. After September 11, the idea of voluntary suicide had lost some of its appeal. While I was covering him, I was sometimes attacked for being too favorable towards Dr. Death. Later, Kevorkian said he would no longer talk to me because I was, in his words, "too objective."

I've been called worse.

Frankly, it took me a while to figure Kevorkian out. In fact, he was not really a physician, but a brilliant and emotionally very odd scientist who was fascinated by the transition from life to death.

He had virtually no authentic human warmth. He intellectually believed those suffering beyond hope should be allowed to end their lives with a doctor's help, if they were of sound mind.

I agreed with him then, and do now.

However, he also ruined his own movement and discredited himself by increasingly reckless behavior.

But he did accomplish something for mankind that he probably never intended. When he started helping people die, the medical community was far too callous towards people in pain.

Virtually no provision had been made for end-of-life care. The threat of Jack Kevorkian helped change that. Suddenly, the hospice movement won vast new support as an alternative.

And doctors became more sensitive. I had to fight to get my father adequate pain medication on his deathbed. When my mother was dying under similar circumstances thirteen years later, the same hospital kept her comfortable without having to be asked.

In my case, the movie title isn't adequate. I did know Jack, rather well in fact. More importantly, I know something about how most of us die, and it isn't very pleasant. Whatever his motives, his odd crusade to help speed that passage for a few ended up easing it for many more. I think that's how he ought to be remembered.