Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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right Lights, Big City

(1984) identified the Tennessee author with

New York

City,

NY’s literary brat pack, including Bret Easton

Ellis

and Tama Janowitz, and their

Generation-X

depictions of empty

yuppie

lives in the big city After becoming, in his

own words, an overexposed literary

celebrity

as a twenty-something, McInerney has

sought more serious themes and style, sometimes reflecting F.Scott Fitzgerald, in later

novels like

Brightness Falls

(1992) and

The Last of the Savages

(1996).

GARY McDONOGH

McMurtry, Larry

b. 1936

Born in Archer City,

Texas,

McMurtry has chronicled the changing fortunes o

modern—and sometimes disappearing—Texas with

humor

and insight. Unforgettable

characters populate his small towns and

cowboy

society; he has also addressed the

foibles of contemporary

Houston

(

Terms of Endearment,

1975, film 1983) and

Las

Vegas, NV

(

Desert Rose,

1983). His popular works have also translated into major

motion pictures (

The Last Picture Show,

1966, film 1971) as well as landmark

television

miniseries and sequels based on the Pulitzer-prize-winning

Lonesome Dove

(1986),

which richly recreates the tales of an 1870s cattle drive (

miniseries

1989; sequels 1993

and 1995).

GARY McDONOGH

Means, Russell

b. 1939

American Indian

activist. Means, an Oglala born on the Pine Ridge Reservation,

founded and became national director of the American Indian Movement (AIM), which

sought to both advocate for particular Indians and causes and to point out the racist

assumptions in historical interpretations of treaties and events (like Columbus’ arrival in

the New World). While remaining active with AIM, since the 1990s he has broadened his

interests to include film, music and memoirs.

GARY McDONOGH

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 716

Meany, George

b. 1894; d. 1980

President of the AFL-CIO from 1955 to 1979, George Meany was the most powerful

labor leader at a time when labor

unions

had considerable influence in American politics.

Born in

New York

City, Meany rose through union ranks to become the president of the

ew York State Federation of Labor and then head of the American Federation of Labor

in 1952. With the strength of the CIO compromised by the purges of communists, Meany

was able to merge the two labor organizations, becoming the new federation’s first

resident. Generally conservative in inclination (he refused to endorse the March on

Washington), Meany was angered by

Democratic Party

reforms in 1972. He refused to

support George McGovern for US president, the first time a labor leader had not

supported Democrats since the New Deal. Meany renewed his support for the Democrats

in 1976, but later denounced Jimmy

Carter’s

stagflationary economic policies. Having

indirectly aided Richard

Nixon,

he did the same for Ronald

Reagan,

whose policies after

Meany’s death would significantly diminish the power of unions.

ROBERT GREGG

medical shows, television

The 1990s ratings dominance of

(NBC, 1994–) grew from a long tradition of telling

stories of life and

death

through the heroic figure of the doctor. Its roots lie in movies

Young Dr. Kïldare

(1938) and

Now Voyager (

1942) as much as the transformation o

the American physician him/herself. Like

ER,

many shows have balanced disease and

trauma, of which they may in fact provide public information, and the human character o

the medical staff confronting them.

Early medical shows, from the 1950s

Medic

(NBC, 1954–6) onwards, made these

issues primarily male, although nurses and female patients might provide emotional

interests. Richard Chamberlain was

television’s

brash young Dr Kildare (NBC, 1961–6),

before he became king of the

miniseries

. Vince Edwards defined a similar role in the

rougher-hewn

Ben Casey

(ABC, 1961–6), with its solemn opening invocation o

“Man/Woman/ Birth/Death/Infinity.” Both were based in hospitals, which also provided

storylines for generations of medical shows as well as daytime

soap operas

General

ospita

(ABC, 1963–).

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Early shows also tended to be white unless a specific point about integration was to be

made. Later, the black

middle class

would appear in

Julia

(NBC, 1968–71), showcasing

African

American

nurse, as well as the long-running

Cosby Show

(NBC, 1984–92).

Bill

Cosby’s

character of the wise, warm Dr Clifford Huxtable, however, drew on

another tradition of medical representation—the kindly family practitioner epitomized by

Robert Young in the long-running

Marcus Welby, M.D.,

(ABC, 1969–76). Young was

already known to many viewers as the

sitcom

father in

Father Knows Best

(CBS, NBS,

ABC, 1954–63); working with a younger sidekick and

Hispanic

nurse, he covered not

only a catalog of American diseases, but also topics such as sex-change operations. Like

his precursors, he rarely lost a patient or faced existential or political crises.

The medical format has also been adapted to different contexts and programming

stressing youth, age, gender (a few nursing shows as well as the doctor hunk) and

intersecting with other formats.

Quincy, M.E.

(NBC, 1976–83)

and Diagnosis Murde

(CBA, 1993–) blended doctor and crime stories, while

Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman

(CBS, 1993–9) brought the respectable female physician to the Old

West

The ensemble cast of

St. Elsewhere

(NBC, 1982–8), with its fallible physicians,

provided a precursor to both the action-driven

(where hunk male doctors still

outnumber females) and its sometimes more surreal rival

Chicago Hope

(CBS, 1994–).

Together, these shows have broached medical issues ranging from

AIDS

to healthcare

cutbacks, interwoven with

yuppie

personal dilemmas of job versus work, gender and

racial discrimination and dealing with older parents. Malfeasance and malpractice

became issues as well in all these shows.

Medical comedies have been less compelling overall. Yet

M*A*S*H used

bloody

medical

humor

to examine the premises of war (albeit a distant Korea) and to become

one of America’s mostwatched series. Bob Newhart also brought clinical

psychology

into a sitcom.

Doctor/medical shows intersect with changing attitudes and issues in American health,

although almost all have taken for granted the social transformation of American

medicine, in which the doctor has become wealthy, glamorous and powerful in

association with his/her control of life and death. Moreover, these roles are reinforced by

medical reporting on television, especially in local reports and information shows, and by

the apparent roles of physicians in television advertising over decades. While these shows

may educate audiences about disease, the need to entertain, resolve and attract transforms

the image of the physician healer and expectations for medicine itself.

Further reading

Stark, S. (1997)

Glued to the Set,

New York: The Free Press.

Starr, P. (1982)

The Social Transformation of American Medicine,

New York: Basic.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 718

medicine

American Medical Association; alternative medicine; body; folk medicine/

herbalists; healthcare; medicine/medical schools

medicine/medical schools

Medicine is a profession that continues to attract entrants of exceptional talent with offers

of status, meaningful service and comfortable compensation. Competition by

college

undergraduates for acceptance into medical school remains formidable. Entry into the

medical profession requires completion of a baccalaureate degree followed by four years

of medical school in order to qualify for a position in a postgraduate training program or

“residency.” Postgraduate training in a hospital setting has become an essential part of the

qualifications for medical practice and can last from three to seven additional years.

Medical schools are responsible for not only imparting a knowledge base to students,

ut also inculcating a professional identity complete with professional norms and values.

There is a natural asymmetry in power stemming from the asymmetry in knowledge

etween physician and patient that mirrors the asymmetry between teacher and student.

Professional norms play a big role in limiting abuses of power. Because patients have

limited ability to monitor whether the medical recommendations they receive are in their

best interest, they entrust their very lives to physicians. These concerns are particularly

acute in the US healthcare system, where physician compensation is related to the volume

and nature of medical services. Fees for service physicians are rewarded for additional

volume, whereas many managedcare organizations create financial incentives to limit the

volume of medical services.

Under the stresses of a distorting payment system, the success of the doctor-

atient

relationship depends on the maintenance of professional norms to protect the interests o

atients. These norms are maintained by: (1) selecting applicants for medical school who

can signal the presence of altruistic concern; (2) early co-option of students as junior

colleagues in the profession; (3) tying professional prestige to personal responsibility for

atient outcomes; and (4) informal and formal censure for physicians whose treatment

decisions show signs of pecuniary motivation.

All professions, medicine included, have suffered some erosion in trust and

confidence. Always a nation of do-it-yourselfers, the

self-help

movement has left

America less awed by doctors and more inclined to try to address health problems on

their own. In working out their own solutions to health problems, Americans are

increasingly likely to consult the

Internet,

reference books and alternative health

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practitioners for constructive input.

In addressing its shortcomings, the medical profession is handicapped by long delays

etween the time educational reforms are started and the time the students who benefit

from these reforms enter practice. The long pipeline of medical training is part of the

inherent conservatism of medical practice. The latest adaptation to wend its way through

medical schools has been a move in practice style away from authoritarian paternalism

towards cooperative teamwork in the doctor—

atient relationship. Trainees who have

learned to listen for constructive input from patients and to share medical advice as

suggestions along with the reasoning behind them have been in the making for over a

generation. However, only recently have the numbers of these new physicians begun to

reach a critical mass in communities throughout America.

The next generation of physicians is being trained in an environment that is thoroughly

infiltrated by economic concerns. Insurancecompany policies and constraints are just as

likely to be discussed in daily rounds as the latest vital signs and urine output. Hospitals

and insurance companies both deploy cadres of “case managers” to question the financial

impact of each medical decision. Although older generations of physicians see the

presence of

economics

at the bedside as intrusive and unnatural, how a generation that

has grown up in this system will adapt to the continued presence of an activist payment

system is an open question.

The stress of medical training stems from a variety of sources. Perhaps foremost is the

need for students to adapt to their continual exposure to the harsh realities of

death

and

human suffering. The professional norm of “detached concern” for the suffering o

individual patients does not come naturally to idealistic students selected on the basis of a

high degree of empathy. Finding a way to be effectively present for the suffering o

atients while maintaining the ability to objectively assess clinical situations is a difficult

task to be negotiated during the process of professionalization. Errors of cynicism,

inappropriate

humor

and depersonalization are common in this process. In the end there

is a great deal of variation in how successful each physician becomes at merging

detachment with concern. Overall, medicine tends to focus on physical processes rather

than their meaning for whole persons. American society generally gives little space to

suffering, preferring to deny its presence or attack its validity. Physicians as products o

society mirror this attitude and often address suffering as an objective problem to be

solved rather than a fact of life requiring adaptation.

Additional stresses for medical trainees come from long hours both in medical school

and postgraduate training. Coupled with long hours is hierarchy. A chain of responsibility

extends from the attending physician supervising residents who supervise interns who

supervise medical students. Medical problems occur around the clock and the system

must be able to respond at all hours. It has been challenging to find ways to couple the

dual goals of 24-hour availability and continuity so that the same physicians and students

maintain responsibility for a medical problem until it is resolved. To lower the demands

on trainee hours, continuity of individual physicians has been replaced by continuity o

hysician teams in some medical schools. This permits the introduction of shift work into

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 720

medical training and a concern that the norm of personal responsibility may be replaced

by a watch-the-clock mentality.

Further reading

Becker, H.S., Geer, B., Hughes, E.C. and Strauss, A.L. (1961)

Boys in White: Student

Culture in Medical School,

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Foster, G.M. and Anderson, B.G. (eds) (1978)

Medical Anthropology,

New York: Wiley.

Hahn, R.A. and Gaines, A.D. (1985)

Physicians of Western Medicine,

Boston: Reidel

Publishing.

Mechanic, D. (1994)

Inescapable Decisions: the Imperatives of Health Reform,

New

Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

DAVID BISHAI

menopause

Postwar women can expect to live as much as one-third of their lives after menopause—

longevity that has stimulated reconceptualizations of “the change.” Once a source o

shame, the menstrual cycle from beginning to end has become both a medically treatable

condition and a source of female dignity and empowerment.

Medical research linked the declining estrogen levels incident to menopause with

osteoporosis, reproductive-organ

cancers

and heart disease in older women. Hence,

physicians advocated hysterectomy to shorten menopause, relieve pain and pre-empt

cancer. Doctors also prescribed artificial estrogen to prevent osteoporosis and to

moderate hot flashes, headaches, irregular bleeding and declining libido, considered the

most distressing symptoms of menopause.

Feminists, patients and some doctors resisted this model of menopause as a “disease,”

viewing rising rates of elective hysterectomy as evidence of doctors’ continuing

disrespect for women’s bodies. Linkages between artificial estrogen and cancer spurred

women to inform and treat themselves, increasingly sharing information through the

Internet

. Though, for many women, surgery remained a welcome option, better hormone

replacements and herbal supplements, exercise and nutritional therapies gained in

popularity

Women also affirm menopause as a positive liberation from the physical and social

requirements of fertility. Aging

baby-boom

women and their daughters offer a large

market for these new ideas. Representations of menopausal women now range from

images of vital, sexually active independence to re-affirmations of ancient wise women

and powerful crones.

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Further reading

Laudau, C., Cyr, M. and Monet, A. (1995)

The Complete Book of Menopause,

New York

City: Perigee.

http://www.menopauseonline.com;

http://www.menopause.org

SHARON ANN HOLT

mental health

addiction; depression; psychology and psychiatry; self-help/self-esteem; stress

Merchant Marine

The Merchant Marine encompasses the commercial uses of vessels and the people who

operate them. Ships carry more than 90 percent of all goods imported to or exported from

the United States. Although the vast majority of these are not operated by US citizens or

the government, the international maritime community plays a significant role in

American commerce. The Merchant Marine is not a branch of the military, but

historically there have been close ties because of the key role supplies play during

wartime.

Vessels that are operated commercially include tankers (which carry petroleum at all

stages of the refining process and other liquid cargoes), container carriers (including dry

liquid and refrigerated containers), dry bulk carriers (for grains and ores), roll-on/roll-of

ships, also called “ro-ro” (for

automobiles

and other rolling equipment), cruise ships

(passenger ships), harbor craft (tug boats and spill-response vessels) and specialty ships

(cablelaying vessels, research vessels, etc.). While cruise ships may have hundreds o

seamen on their crews to meet the needs of the passengers, most of the cargo ships

operate with less than thirty people (even on long international voyages), and harbor tugs

can operate with a crew of only two or three.

Most Americans are not aware of the significant role the Merchant Marine plays as the

carrier of the world’s trade. Large commercial ships can only enter a limited number o

orts, often located out of sight in industrialized areas of coastal cities. The rise o

commercial air travel in the twentieth century also reduced awareness.

LAURA L.COOGAN

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 722

Meredith, James

b. 1933

In 1962 Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi, having had his application

turned down the previous year. Governor Ross Barnett, however, defied federal courts

and barred his entry to the college, triggering riots. President John

Kennedy

intervened,

dispatching Army troops and federalizing the National Guard, forcing Barnett to back

down. Four years later Meredith undertook a march from Memphis to Jackson to

persuade

African Americans

to register to vote. On the second day of the march he was

ambushed and wounded by a

white

man. The major

civilrights

organizations,

SCLC,

CORE, NAACP

and SNCC determined to continue the march. On this march, Stokely

Carmichael,

newly appointed head of SNCC, turned the rhetoric towards

Black Power

ROBERT GREGG

Merton, Thomas

b. 1915; d. 1968

Prolific American poet, essayist and author of

The Seven-Storey Mountain

(1948), his

memoir of modern spiritual discovery Born in Prades, France, but educated in the United

States and England, Merton converted to Catholicism in the late 1930s. In 1941 he

entered the Abbey of Gethsemani in rural Kentucky. As a Trappist, the pull between

inward experience and the outside world continued in Merton’s life. He became

increasingly attracted to Eastern mysticism in the 1960s, all the while involving himsel

in the Anti-

Vietnam War

movement and other left-wing political causes. Merton died in

an accident while at a religious conference in Thailand.

MARK BREWIN

Methadone

addiction

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Method Acting

actors; Brando, Marlon

Methodists

Evangelical Christian denomination, founded from within the Anglican Church by John

Wesley and George Whitefield in the mid-eighteenth century whose largest group o

adherents,

white

and

African American,

live in the United States. Methodist

denominations, while low church in ritual, are centralized and organized under the

direction of bishops who supervise their own regions. This has allowed the denomination

to be expansive, sending missionaries into new territories and countries previously

unprovided for; it has also made it prone to schism and internal division.

The issue of

race

has been one of the major forces of tension among American

Methodists. Both the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in

Philadelphia, PA

and the AME Zion Church in

New York

City, NY were established in the nineteenth

century by black men and women who could no longer abide the discriminatory seating

ractices in Methodist Churches. This division between white and black Methodists has

remained, African Methodists now comprising as many as 4 million separate congregants

in the United States.

Race caused another fundamental split in the mid-nineteenth century when Southerners

resisted the eradication of slavery breaking away in 1844 to establish their own

denomination, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. After the end of slavery the MEC,

South formed segregated churches for their “colored”

rethren, which became, in 1870,

the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (later called Christian ME).

By the twentieth century, with pressure coming from other denominations that were

growing more quickly—the more elite churches like

Episcopalians

and

Presbyterians

attracting wealthier Americans, the Baptists and Spiritualist churches appealing to poorer

Protestants, and the Catholic church growing among immigrants—many Methodists felt

the need for consolidation. In 1939, therefore, the MEC and MEC, South reunited, and

then in 1968 the United Methodist Church (UMC) came into existence by combining the

Methodists and other liturgically similar Protestant denominations. In the early 1990s, the

UMC alone had a worldwide membership of about 50 million, 11 million of whom

resided in the United States. Overall, Methodism was the third-largest affiliated Christian

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 724

denomination in America with 13 million members and over 52,000 churches.

Besides a church organization conducive to expansion, Methodism has also increased

its appeal by avoiding extremes, at least theologically. Once political issues that divide

Methodists diminish in importance, then other differences can be smoothed over. The

racial divide, however, is not one that Methodists can easily overcome.

Further reading

Norwood, F.A. (1974)

The Story of American Methodism,

Nashville: Abingdon.

ROBERT GREGG

Mexico, relations with

Mexico’s relationship with the United States began with the settlement of Anglo-

Americans in northern Mexico in the 1820s. Hostilities between the two governments and

groups of citizens, particularly in what is now the southwestern United States, escalated

into the Mexican American War of 1846–8. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially

ended the war between the two nations, although portions of the treaty remain in dispute

over 150 years after its signing. Relations between Mexico and the United States and its

citizens have fluctuated from cordial to violent.

On the macroscopic level, the relationship of the United States with Mexico in the last

fifty years is a neo-colonial one. Mexico’s material and human resources are continually

utilized by the United States, on both sides of the border. This unequal status and

exploitation began in 1848, and violent eruptions, such as the Mexican Revolution o

1910, have resulted. The Border Industrialization Program in the 1960s, and the North

American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s, have further eroded the Mexican economy

and government and created domestic instability At the beginning of the twenty-first

century issues such as the United States’ militarization of the border in “wars” on drugs

and undocumented

immigration

continue the legacy of distrust between the two nations.

At the microscopic level, the 1848 treaty awarded the northern half of Mexico to the

United States, and, with it, the people on those lands. Personal and political ties remained

etween Mexicans living on both sides of the border and distinct cultural variations

emerged. Mexicans and Mexican culture (and United States citizens and their culture)

continue to move back and forth across the Rio Grande, suggesting the border between

the two countries is more political than social. Despite at times hostile relations between

the two governments, personal and

community

relations continue to thrive. Mujer a

Mujer, a binational network of female workers discussing shared labor concerns,

demonstrates the strength and utility of such ties.

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