Magnificent News: Today's Opinions: Target stands with the [redacted] community!

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By Drew Goins
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In today's edition:

Corporations promise that they're still LGBTQ allies
Life expectancy is headed the wrong way, and we know whom to blame
Politicians want to cut discretionary spending. Here's how to do it well.
Self-driving cars and driver-driving cars don't mix well

Profit over pride

(Washington Post staff illustration, iStock)

Happy Pride Month! Or, as an increasing number of corporations might say, Happy Month!

After what now looks like it could have been a post-marriage-equality honeymoon, animosity toward queer Americans is again on the upswing, and instead of closing ranks with the LGBTQ community, many big businesses are distancing themselves.

No company has backed off quite so visibly as Target, which eighty-sixed items from its Pride line after conservative threats against the company. (The fact that some of the right's complaints weren't rooted in reality didn't stop the retailer from promising to remove items causing "confrontational behavior," columnist Greg Sargent writes.)

But don't worry! This doesn't mean Target is backsliding, writes humor columnist Alexandra Petri, channeling a Target executive.

"We are just as brave as we have ever been!" she writes. "Do not think for a second that we're not standing with you, definitely with you, not just near enough to you that somebody who wasn't looking carefully could mistakenly conclude we were together."

Alex's satire shows the problem with relying on corporations in the first place, which at the end of the day will always put profit over pride. It's a theme we explored in 2019 in our Pride for Sale series.

That project feels a little quaint now. Back then, the big issue was companies' desire to make money off queer people's backs. I think I'd take that over their turning tail today.

Chaser: Perhaps June's Pride Month needs a partner in an increasingly hostile world. Critic Anthony Oliveira proposed a provocative option in July 2018: Wrath Month.

Life is short, patents are long

Norway has a full six years on the United States when it comes to life expectancy. Do you know what you could accomplish from 77.2 to 83.2? That's a full term in the Senate!

And Norway is not alone. A whole bunch of the world outlives Americans, and health policy experts Steven H. Woolf and Laudan Aron write that the gap is only getting worse as U.S. life expectancy continues to decline after a sharp drop during the pandemic.

Their op-ed identifies four factors contributing to the slippage, each informed by a very powerful fifth: "deficient public policies." Increasingly, people ages 25 to 64 are dying of "drug overdoses, alcohol use, suicides and cardiometabolic diseases," partly because the government is failing them.

Woolf and Aron identify the measures other countries have taken to improve health and life — and the powerful interests keeping us from implementing them here.

Drug manufacturers are one of those roadblockers, and physicians William B. Feldman and Aaron S. Kesselheim's op-ed on the stubbornly high price of inhalers illustrates the issue perfectly.

Every inhaler approved since 1986, they explain, targets the same lung receptors as inhalers already on the market. There is plenty of potential for generics, but patent trickery has kept out the competition.

Feldman and Kesselheim also have a list of solutions Congress and the Food and Drug Administration could quickly implement — if they are willing to stand up to the lobbies.

Let's hope we live to see the day.

Chaser: Cuba's pharmaceutical industry wants to share its therapies with the world, but health policy experts Achal Prabhala and Vitor Ido say it will take changes in U.S. policy for that to happen.

From the latest entry in the Editorial Board's series on reducing the federal debt. Despite nondefense discretionary spending's relatively small contribution to the deficit, politicians tend to target the category for cuts.

So, to help them out, the board figured it might as well analyze the discretionary budget "to better prioritize it for America's future." Its recommendations would save money along the way. They include:

Ditching the student loan forgiveness program
Cutting subsidies to corporations and fossil fuels
Allowing enough remote work to offload government property and leases

Still, even enacting all the board's proposals would get the United States only partway to fixing its fiscal problems — say, 15 percent.

Less politics

A roadway full of self-driving cars could be a dream. Our current model of cars crewed by people works all right, too. Columnist Megan McArdle says it's the mixing of the two that gets dangerous.

Megan's latest piece explains how the transition to automotive automation has been stymied by the "either/both problem": Machines understand each other, and humans understand each other, but when one of each is trying to turn left against traffic, that's when you get a crash.

So if we want to reach the utopia of playing Wordle during our car commute, Megan writes, we first have to motor through this "godawful gap."

Smartest, fastest

Chris Christie is not in the presidential race to win it, columnist Jennifer Rubin writes. His task is more important.
Columnists Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman report on how a student-teacher revolt in a deep-red Florida county is shaming the right.

It's a goodbye. It's a haiku. It's … The Bye-Ku.

Companies careen

From ally to indifferent;

Who's behind the wheel?

***

Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. I'll be off the next few days, returning June 12 — but Today's Opinions won't be. Senior assignment editor Amanda Katz will see you tomorrow!