Harvard University Professor Dr. David Ludwig is under attack for his public call this week for some obese children to be taken from their parents to protect their health. Ludwig stated that “[i]n severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable, from a legal standpoint, because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems.” That legal standpoint may need a bit more work.
Ludwig is an obesity expert at Children’s Hospital Boston and associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. His comments came in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
First, in defense of Ludwig, he prefaced his statement by saying that such intervention would only be in severe cases. It is indeed possible for a child to be removed in a severe case where the child is in imminent risk of seriously injury or death due to either acts or omissions by the parents.
However, the statement rightfully raised concerns. There is growing evidence of genetic predispositions for obesity in some people. The parents may not be at fault in the continuing condition. Moreover, removing the child from the home will only increase stress for the child.
Parental rights are protected by the Constitution and, while child services are given a fair degree of discretion in the removal of children from homes to protect them, those decisions are subject to a full legal process. Most such removals are likely to fail under current legal standards absent a showing of imminent harm and a failure of the parents to follow medical advice. As a comparison, courts often express reluctance to order cancer treatments or medical interventions for a child when parents claim religious objections to treatment. The child is often at immediate risk when a court issues an order of removal or arrest.
The problem is that obesity is very common (unfortunately) among children today and they are all at some level of risk. An estimated 12.5 million children and teens (17% of that population) are obese.
Ludwig would need a case where the child is in immediate risk of heart failure of some of medical emergency. Such a status usually required hospitalization, not foster care. Moreover, experts in the article below question whether care would improve in foster care.
This was the case of 3-year-old Anamarie Regino who weighed 90 pounds and was removed from the home for two months. She did not show any improvement in foster care. She is now 14 years old and was raised by her parents.
Source: ABC News
Given the stress on CPS that probably won’t solve the issue…maybe he wants to take in a few foster kids given the he’s confident that this would resolve the issue!
You call me a naive fool as if I take anything you say seriously let alone an insult from you, Mr. Makes Up the Definitions He Wants.
By all means if you want to focus on the fiction of Sinclair when it was the factual Neill-Reynolds report that moved Congress into action after Roosevelt clubbed them over the head with it, please do so. That The Jungle was the impetus for commissioning the report is irrelevant to the facts uncovered by the investigation, which as noted above showed that “[i]f anything Sinclair’s allegations had understated the severity of the problem.”
GeneH:
what does a hundred year old novel have to do with anything today? Food is having a rebirth and there are many fine restaurants and farms from which to pick.
I buy from local suppliers all the time, most without USDA oversight. I have not been sick once from the food I purchase. My wife on the other hand went to Chipotle and got a raging case of food poisoning. They are checked by local government, which it came to be known had had multiple complaints against this particular chipotle.
So much for your story and anyway the public read the Jungle and was disgusted. TR had an easy time of it. He probably didnt need to take any action at all. the public would have taken it on their own. And the meat packers would have complied or gone out of business.
@GeneH, you naive fool, will you ever learn:
Sinclair’s novel caused a sensation, and led to Congressional investigations, even though many politicians were skeptical of Sinclair. For instance, here’s what President Theodore Roosevelt wrote about Lewis in July 1906 (even though he shared Sinclair’s distrust of big business):
“I have an utter contempt for him. He is hysterical, unbalanced, and untruthful. Three-fourths of the things he said were absolute falsehoods. For some of the remainder there was only a basis of truth.”
(Source: letter to William Allen White, July 31, 1906, from “The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt,” 8 vols, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951-54, vol. 5, p. 340.)
Sinclair’s fictional characters talk of workers falling into vats and being turned into “Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard,” which was then sold to the public. This was supposedly made possible by the alleged “corruption of government inspectors.” (Source: The Age of the Moguls by Stewart H. Holbrook, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1953, pp. 110-111)
Yes, you see, there were government inspectors, even back in 1905, so does it really make sense that the solution to this supposed food safety problem was . . . government inspectors?
In fact, there were hundreds of inspectors. They came from all levels of government, federal, state, and local, and had been at work for more than a decade. As for their supposed corruption (and Sinclair’s other claims), a Congressional investigation found little evidence. Instead . . .
The 1906 report of the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal Husbandry refuted the worst of Sinclair’s charges point-by-point. The report labeled his claims . . .
“willful and deliberate misrepresentations of fact”
“atrocious exaggeration”
And “not at all characteristic (of the meat packing industry)”
(Source: U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Agriculture, Hearings on the So-called “Beveridge Amendment” to the Agriculture Appropriation Bill, 59th Congress, 1st Session, 1906, pp. 346-350.)
Meanwhile, as Congress went through the time-consuming process of investigating Sinclair’s fictions, the free market was regulating the meat packing industry in its own harsh way. Meat sales plummeted.
This led the meat packing industry to lobby Congress for increased regulation!
The industry actually wanted the government to protect them from the consumer backlash by imposing regulations that would restore consumer confidence, even though new regulations were totally unneeded! The result was the passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906.
But this was not a triumph for the idea of government regulation. Instead, it was a victory for corporate welfare . . .
Taxpayers picked up the $3 million price tag for the new regulations
Big meat packers benefited because small packers had a more difficult time complying with the new regulations
Upton Sinclair himself actually recognized this, and opposed the law!
(Source: Upton Sinclair, “The Condemned-Meat Industry: A Reply to Mr. J. Ogden Armour,” Everybody’s Magazine, XIV, 1906, pp. 612-613.)
The myth of The Jungle has had a terrible impact on the American mind. It has led millions of people to believe that regulation by politicians and bureaucrats is superior to regulation by the free market forces of consumers, investors, lenders, insurance companies, and legal liability.
If the meat packing industry wanted government regulation, then it should have paid for it, not the taxpayers
And all packing companies should have been free to reject government regulation, especially small producers
This would have allowed consumers to decide what they preferred, and what they were willing to pay for – meat inspected by the government, or meat regulated by the self-interest of the meat packers.
In other words, government coercion was completely unjustified, even if Sinclair had been writing fact, instead of fiction.
@JStol, you hit the nail right on the head. If you want to learn how to argue like a true lefty, all you need to do is ratchet up the vitriol and hatred tenfold. You’ll also have to lose sense of shame and reason.
If you want to see 800 posts worth of prime examples just check out this thread. Start at my first post and enjoy. Bear in mind that these are educated professionals, mostly lawyers.
“After weeks of hearings and debate, the bill finally passed the Senate on February 12, 1906. It passed by such a wide margin that only four senators voted against it.[26] The matter would now move into the House for a climactic battle between supporters and opponents of federal food and drug regulation. The timing proved extremely fortuitous for Wiley and his allies. Less than two weeks after the Senate passed the bill, and just as the House began to consider the issue, the “muckraking” journalist Upton Sinclair published a book that would transform the debate permanently and vindicate Wiley’s lifelong efforts on behalf of pure food and drugs. Sinclair’s book was The Jungle, a graphic account of hideously unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry. Sinclair came from an unusual background for a muckraking journalist. A twenty-eight-year old writer from a riches-to-rags Baltimore family, Sinclair had an obsessive fear of alcohol, sex, and impurities of any kind. After converting to socialism while a graduate student at Columbia University, Sinclair accepted an assignment from the editor of a left-wing magazine to investigate labor unrest in the Chicago stockyards. The horrendous working conditions of stockyard laborers appalled Sinclair, and he decided to write a novel dramatizing their plight.[27]
When Sinclair’s novel The Jungle reached bookstores in late February 1906, it became an overnight sensation, but not for the reasons he expected. Sinclair devoted over 90 percent of his novel to describing the plight of immigrant workers and to calling for a socialist revolution in the United States. The reading public ignored Sinclair’s political message and focused instead on the 15 pages of the book that described the grotesquely unsanitary processing practices of the meat packing industry. In those few pages Sinclair had catalogued a horrifying litany of industry misdeeds, including workers falling into processing vats, children drinking milk tainted with formaldehyde, and spoiled meat routinely concealed through chemical adulteration. The public reacted with a ferocity that bordered on mass hysteria. Ignoring the turgid political message of Sinclair’s book, the reading public concentrated exclusively on his lurid inside account of the meat packing industry and the clear threat such practices posed to the public health. Years later, deeply embittered by the failure of his socialist message, Sinclair admitted in resignation, “I aimed at the public’s heart, but by accident I hit it in the stomach.”[28]
The book became such a public sensation that President Roosevelt himself read Sinclair’s novel. Roosevelt had a passionate reaction. Both Sinclair’s call for a Socialist form of government and Sinclair’s revelations of meat-packing horrors revolted the president. In a letter to F.N. Doubleday, the book’s publisher, Roosevelt complained, “I wish he had left out the ridiculous socialist rant at the end, which merely tends to make people think his judgment is unsound and to make them question his facts.” Doubleday shared Roosevelt’s disdain for Sinclair’s “unfortunate sermonizing,” but he explained that Sinclair had already been forced to cut out 30,000 words.[29]
In a letter to Sinclair, Roosevelt did not mince words when it came to his assessment of Sinclair’s political beliefs. “In the end of your book,” Roosevelt observed, “among the various characters who preach socialism, almost all betray the pathetic belief” in social revolution as a solution to the nation’s problems. Such a development, Roosevelt warned, would lead to mass starvation and chaos, not to freedom and equality. Roosevelt noted further, “A quarter of a century’s hard work over what I may call politico-sociological problems has made me distrust men of hysterical temperament.” Clearly, Roosevelt believed that Sinclair was as a man of hysterical temperament. Yet, despite his condemnation of Sinclair’s political message and his reservations about Sinclair’s judgment, Roosevelt assured Sinclair that he would take action against the meat packing industry: “But all this has nothing to do with the fact that the specific evils you point out shall, if their existence be proved, and if I have power, be eradicated.”[30]
As a astute observer of public opinion, Roosevelt knew how dominant the issue of food safety and sanitation had become in the public mind. Roosevelt immediately directed Agriculture Secretary James Wilson to investigate Sinclair’s allegations, insisting that the Agriculture Department conduct a thorough investigation. Roosevelt had no doubt that the main thrust of Sinclair’s allegations had a basis in fact. He noted that prior experience “with these beef trust people convinces me that there is very little that they will stop at.” Newspaper reporters in Chicago and other major cities, Roosevelt believed, had been bought off by the beef trust in episodes of “wholesale newspaper bribery” to keep the truth from the public. This fact persuaded Roosevelt to take aggressive action, as Sinclair had personally recommended in his letter to the president. “I do not think that an ordinary investigation [into the beef trust] will reach anything,” Roosevelt explained to Wilson. “I would like a first-class man to be appointed to meet Sinclair, as he suggests; get the names of the witnesses, as he suggests; and then go to work in the industry, as he suggests.” Roosevelt concluded by emphasizing the importance of the task ahead. “We cannot afford to have anything perfunctory done in this matter.”[31]
Even as Roosevelt authorized a full-fledged investigation, he remained wary of the investigative journalism that had exposed the meat-packing scandal. In a speech on April 14, 1906, two months after the publication of The Jungle, Roosevelt expressed his reservations about “muckraking” journalism: “Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muckrake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save his feats with the muckrake, speedily becomes not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil.”[32] Roosevelt’s criticism of “muckrakers” such as Sinclair stemmed from his fear that their sensational revelations would promote social upheaval. Roosevelt had good reason to fear social disorder. After all, he had inherited the White House as the result of an assassination, a fact that heightened his fear of public disorder and social chaos. He worried that if the public lost faith in the capitalist institutions that undergirded American society—corporations, banks, even the federal government itself—then the United States would experience social turmoil similar to that which embroiled Europe during much of the early twentieth century.
Nevertheless, Roosevelt knew the evils exposed by “muckrakers” like Sinclair demanded a government response. He appointed two highly qualified investigators for the government’s probe of the meat-packing industry: Charles Neill, the Commissioner of Labor, and James Bronson Reynolds, a well-respected social worker. After an exhaustive probe, the Neill-Reynolds investigation completely confirmed Sinclair’s allegations. When Roosevelt received and read the full text of the Neill-Reynolds report, he was more appalled than ever. If anything Sinclair’s allegations had understated the severity of the problem. Roosevelt knew that when the public learned of the full scope of the wrong-doing, any politician standing on the wrong side of the issue would soon be out of a job. Roosevelt also understood that Sinclair’s revelations had devastated public faith in the industry, and that further muckraking revelations would soon be hitting the front pages of newspapers across the country. As he privately noted to Representative James Wadsworth, “I have recently had an investigation made by Commissioner Neill of the Labor Bureau and Mr. J.B. Reynolds, of the situation in Chicago packing houses. It is hideous, and it must be remedied at once.”[33] Roosevelt felt so enraged by the report he initially considered landing a public relations body blow on the meat packing industry. “I was at first so indignant that I resolved to send in the full report to Congress,” he explained to Wadsworth. “As far as the beef packers themselves are concerned I should do this now with a clear conscience for the great damage that would befall them in consequence would be purely due to their own actions.”[34]
But, at the same rate, Roosevelt feared that if the report became public, it would have devastating economic ramifications, particularly for American exporters. He lamented the fact that the damage resulting from public panic would also harm “the stock growers of the country and the effect of such a report would undoubtedly be well-nigh ruinous to our export trade in meat for the time being, and doubtless the damaging effect would be apparent long after we had remedied the wrongs.”[35] Several European nations had already announced plans to ban American beef imports, a development which would land a severe blow on the already floundering cattle industry.[36]
Roosevelt decided therefore to use behind-the-scenes pressure to coerce the meat packing industry into compliance. More precisely, he would use the threat of publicly releasing the report to force the meat packing industry’s supporters in Congress to vote for the Beveridge amendment. Authored by Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana as a rider to the Agricultural Appropriations bill, the amendment mandated sweeping reforms of the meat-packing industry. It required the industry to submit to constant surveillance and investigation by the Agriculture Department, the cost of which would be borne by the industry itself. It also required the industry to date stamp every can of meat that went on the market for public consumption.[37] Roosevelt demanded that Congress approve the Beveridge amendment. As he privately explained, “I am . . . going to withhold the [Neill-Reynolds] report for the time being, and until I can also report that the wrongs have been remedied, provided that without making it public I can get the needed legislation; that is, provided we can have the meat inspection amendment that has been put on in the Senate in substance enacted into law.”[38]
Roosevelt staunchly believed that federal regulation of meat production would benefit, not harm, the packing industry. “Of course what I am after is not to do damage even to the packers, still less to the stockmen and farmers. What I want is the immediate betterment of the dreadful conditions that prevail, and moreover the providing against a possible recurrence of these conditions.” Roosevelt knew that things would only get worse if the meat packing industry resisted federal regulation. “I happen to know,” he revealed to Congressman Wadsworth, “that in the near future further publications will be made showing how badly they have done.” Roosevelt placed maximum importance on restoring public confidence. “The only effective way to meet these publications, which will doubtless contain a very great mass of exaggeration together with a quantity of damaging truth, will be to show that the situation has been met and the evils complained of have been remedied; and above all that legislation has been had which will guarantee us against their recurrence.” According to Roosevelt, Senator Albert Beveridge’s meat inspection act not only benefited consumers, it was also “a good thing from the standpoint of the beef packers themselves. Their practices have been very bad and it is useless for anyone to attempt to whitewash them.” Therefore, Roosevelt urged Wadsworth to see to it that Beveridge’s amendment passed through the House and established “effective inspection and control over the packing industry.”[39]
Despite having public support behind him, Roosevelt knew he faced staunch opposition from many of his erstwhile supporters in corporate America. “In my effort to correct the abuses in the packing industry I am met by a most violent opposition, not merely from the packers . . . but also from great bodies of capitalists who are interested mainly through that noxious feeling in which the socialists exult and which they call ‘class consciousness,’” Roosevelt explained to his friend Lyman Abbot. “The National Manufacturers’ Association and the Chicago Board of Trade have written me violent protests in offensive language, stating that the reports of the Government committees are false, that everything is clean and perfect in Packingtown.”[40]
Yet, even in the face of such intense opposition, Roosevelt found strong support from the most unlikely of places: the very corporations that the food and drug bill proposed to regulate. Contrary to prevailing assumptions that corporations monolithically opposed reform, many companies that engaged in food and drug production saw federal regulation as an advantageous, pro-business measure. Indeed, Harvey Wiley himself had strong support from several leading corporations, such as the Heinz ketchup company and the Old Taylor whiskey company. These companies had much higher standards of sanitation and product purity than their competitors, a fact that put them at a competitive disadvantage vis a vis their less savory market rivals who could sell inferior products at a lower price. Government regulation of food and drug production rewarded corporations that already had high standards because it forced their competitors to engage in expensive improvements in sanitation and product quality. As this fact dawned on many leading companies, they began to work behind the scenes to promote passage of the Food and Drug law.[41]
With Roosevelt’s strong support, and with newspaper editorials across the country demanding action, the Senate passed the Beveridge Amendment by an overwhelming margin. Nevertheless, the real battle would be fought in the House, where the meat-packing lobby had its strongest base of support. Undaunted, Roosevelt personally lobbied House Speaker Joe Cannon on the bill’s behalf. Roosevelt wrote, “I understand the Pure Food bill and the Naturalization bill [a bill regarding citizenship requirements for immigrants] must be considered first. I earnestly favor both, especially the pure food bill.”[42]
Roosevelt’s efforts to sway Congressman Wadsworth, however, fell flat. In the House, Wadsworth and Representative William Lorimer of Illinois led the fight against the Beveridge Amendment and the Heyburn Bill. Although in public they mounted a states’ rights argument against the Beveridge and Heyburn bills, Wadsworth and Lorimer had other incentives for opposing reform legislation. Both had strong ties to the meat-packing industry, ties that inspired them to mount a desperate, last stand defense against Congressional passage. Wadsworth proposed amendments to the Beveridge bill that essentially stripped it of its reform character. Roosevelt responded with indignation. To Wadsworth he wrote, “I am sorry to have to say that it seems to me that each change is for the worse and that in the aggregate they are ruinous, taking away every particle of good from the suggested Beveridge amendment.” Roosevelt went still further, informing Wadsworth he had decided to make the full Neill report available to the press.[43]
As Roosevelt expected, the publication of the Neill report created a storm of public outrage as vociferous as that which had greeted The Jungle three months before. It also led to a precipitous drop in American beef exports, for governments around the world refused to allow their importation. But Roosevelt had no sympathy for the meat packers. As he explained to Lyman Abbott:
“I did not wish to make the report public. I had the different Senators informed privately of the facts that would be shown, and stated that if I could get proper legislation I would not make these facts public until I could also make public the fact that the evils had been remedied. The Senate passed the necessary legislation. But the packers, through their tools in the House, held up the legislation, produced a sham bill, and made it evident that the only chance to get a decent law was through an aroused public feeling that could only act on full knowledge. It was the packers themselves and their foolish or wicked friends who rendered imperative the publication of the report, with its undoubted attendant harm to our export business in meat. We can put this export business in meat on a proper footing again only by proper legislation; and if we have this legislation I will guarantee proper administration under it.”[44]
Roosevelt knew he had the industry on the run. An administration ally in Chicago sent Roosevelt a first-hand account of the meat-packers’ belated efforts to clean up its act. The correspondent’s experience made clear that panic had infected the industry:
“On Monday I began a tour of all the great packing houses—going first to Libby’s, then Swift’s. . . . On every hand there was indication of an almost humorous haste to clean up, repave and even to plan for future changes. Brand new toilet rooms, new dressing rooms, new towels, etc. etc. Swift’s and Armour’s were both so cleaned up that I was compelled to cheer them on their way, by expressing my pleasure at the changes. The sausage girls were moved upstairs where they could get sun and light. . . . I asked for showers and lockers for the casing workers at Armour’s, and got a promise that they would put them in. The canning and stuffing room, chip beef and beef extract at Armour’s seemed really quite good. . . . They are putting in toilet rooms which they say are temporary, and that when the building is remodeled they will have these put in a better place. The haste towards reform would have been amusing if it were not so nearly tragic.”[45]
Roosevelt warned Wadsworth that with every passing day, the administration’s resolve grew firmer. The investigations had produced enough evidence “in my judgment to call for immediate, thoroughgoing and radical enlargement of the powers of the Government in inspecting all meats which enter into interstate and foreign commerce.” Roosevelt insisted that reform would benefit business, not harm it. “Unfortunately, the misdeeds of those who are responsible for the abuses we design to cure will bring discredit and damage not only upon them but upon the innocent stock growers, the ranchmen and farmers of the country. The only way permanently to protect and benefit these innocent stock growers, theses farmers and ranchmen, is to secure by law the thorough and adequate inspection for which I have asked.”[46]
The tide of public and political support for the acts had become irresistible. After years of appearing insurmountable, the opposition to a federal food and drug law collapsed. On June 30, 1906, Congress passed and Roosevelt signed into law both the Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. Although passed independently from one another, the Food and Drug Act encompassed both the subject matter of both acts, since under the terms of the act the Food and Drug Administration would regulate meat. Although written in the broadest terms, the Food and Drug Act of 1906 transformed food and drug production in America. Even at the time, contemporaries recognized that a historic achievement had been made. The federal government was now permanently in the business of protecting American consumers from unsafe food and drugs.[47]”
http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/654/Gaughan.html
Yeah, private industry has such a sterling reputation for policing itself.
We need to change our whole food system. the Princeton study comparing HFCS with ordinary sugar shows this toxic substance causes, calorie for calorie, more weight gain than sugar and damages the liver.
We have a terrible meat production system that has caused our meat to be banned in the Eu and Japan. It is contaminated with genetically engineered steroids, hormones, and antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Our national use of Roundup plants has caused our soils and the food grown in that soil to be nutrient deficient. Roundup works by inhibiting the chelation of minerals we need for good health.
All of this is why we have high obesity rates. Look in the grocery store and try to find a loaf of bread that does not contain HFCS. It is in everything from soup to nuts, from pasta sauce to ketchup.
Big Ag makes us sick so Big Pharma can sell us drugs. We are killing our youth, not just with obesity, but with terrible food that is nutrient deficient.
The FDA has been battling people who want real food by closing down raw food producers and farm co ops, these are SWAT team raids on real food producers. This is government and corporate collusion of the worst sort.
If you want to show a legal problem with food in America, this is one of the most horrible and under reported stories of all.
kderosa:
I have been reading and learning how to “argue” in an appropriate liberal way. That way when I go to cocktail parties I can know how to respond when someone brings up conservatives.
For example:
“Did you hear what that Sarah Palin just said?
Yes, she must be a sociopath with elements of stupid.
Yes, you are right, In fact I was thinking the same thing myself.”
Uh I am sure you were. 🙂
@jstol, that was good.
@lottakatz, are you saying that government might be taking the side of big chicken and big beef over our school children? Who can you trust?
All I remember from my school days was that the frozen french fries my school used (not a public one at the time) were stamped “no nutritional value, but edible” which was reassuring.
kderosa:
It was parody. I just thought when in Rome do as the Romans do.
You and Roco dont seem like sociopaths at all.
@JStol, you must be right. Apparently they do a much better job. Shame on the USDA for making their standards accessible and transparent like that.
K, The food the government buys for schools, and sells to schools at a loss I believe from season 1, are actually one of the ways the government props up the food manufacturing industry. I grew up when schools cooked their own food and it was often the best thing about the school day as I recall.
Sounds like you boys made an impression. Not a good one mind you, but an impression nonetheless.
then USA today is a subversive element in our society if they are saying the private sector does a better job at controlling food safety than the USDA.
I think you and Roco must be some sort of sociopathic cabal trying to suck the life out of our country.
@jstol, I wasn’t sure because it was so rhetorically hyperbolic and the information came from that known anti-government think tank USA Today. Here too.
Mike S: “To find out about foster care read any of Andrew Vacch’s excellent Burke novels”
—
OMG! You have revealed one of my most guilty pleasures 🙂 I love the Burke novels- he is an outlaw, a samurai outlaw living in the shadows of a broken society. He is a bad man, a killer, an adherent to a code of structured ‘natural justice’. The writing in the Burke novels makes the Spenser novels dialogue look ‘wordy’ by comparison. Burke is a chainsaw of a character and I am addicted. I love the noir feel of them. I have always thought that the Burke novels would be perfect for translation to the graphic novel form, illustrated by Frank Miller. I swoon at the prospect ……
He did do a Batman novel Ultimate Evil that was a GN but it was a one off. Nicely done and I had hoped it would gin up interest in converting his Burk series but it didn’t. Darn.
I did an Internet search to see if Vachss had written any new ones and I was amazed at the large fan base for the Burke novels. I found it endearing that Vachss did an interview and felt the need to explain that Burke wasn’t a hero, wasn’t written to be one and shouldn’t be considered a role model. Burke was more of a form of demon purging than anything else for him (Vachss). LOL, I don’t care, I want all of the series released in a special Frank Miller run of GN’s. Burke, sigh……
I know how these libertarian/free market people think. they are sociopaths.
kderosa:
no, why do you ask?
@JStol, was that parody?