I would have thought Ralph Nader’s “dream of a lifetime” was to
become the most powerful man in the world. After all he made three
pathetically unsuccessful runs for the White House.
Not so.
Ralph’s dream, like the man, is far more mundane. For decades he
has been threatening to open a museum in his hometown of Winstead,
Connecticut, dedicated to — are you ready for this — American
tort law. Sadly, slow fund-raising and several presidential bids
have hampered his progress. The other week, however, Nader
announced that the Philadelphia architectural firm DPK&A is
“putting final touches on the plans” and he expects the museum —
located in an abandoned mill — to open in the fall 2006.
“Historically, it’s a nice context because that’s where so many
workers got injured, in factories around the country,” Nader told
the AP. Ralph apparently cannot see the sad irony in turning a
once-thriving mill that employed hundreds of local residents into a
tort lawyers’ museum. And isn’t saying that workers got injured in
factories a bit like soldiers got shot on battlefields or drunks
got plastered in saloons? Where else are they going to get
injured?
Actually most people are injured in hospitals, if you believe
Nader. Ralph claims 150,000 people die annually in hospitals and
clinics due to medical malpractice. That’s twice the number that
die from auto accidents, fire, and crime. But Ralph’s not
suggesting we shut down the hospitals, which are obviously a health
hazard on the order of the various plagues that devastated Europe
in Medieval times. Nor does making hospitals safer make good
business sense for Ralph’s museums major donors.
So far, our contemporary P.T. Barnum has raised $2 million for
the museum, most of that coming from trial lawyers. That puts him
about halfway toward his goal. Much of that cost will go toward
hiring the design firm Eisterhold Associates (makers of the Walt
Disney Boyhood Home and Harry S. Truman Presidential Library
exhibits) to create exciting non-interactive exhibits of dangerous
products (i.e., Halloween costumes such as the ever popular
“Invisible
Pedestrian” and “Johnny Human Torch”) and a mock courtroom
where famous product liability trials will be tediously re-enacted
(hopefully the ones involving the old woman who spilled McDonalds
coffee on her lap while driving, and the guy whose phone booth was
plowed into by a drunk driver, so naturally he sued the phone booth
manufacturer and the telephone company). At the trials’ conclusion
huge bags of Monopoly money will be divvied up between the
plaintiff and their counsel with the bulk, of course, going to the
lawyers, while the sore losers wander off muttering about moving
their factories to Louangphrabang.
NADER IS THE SON OF Lebanese immigrants who like most newcomers
came to America in anticipation of a better life, one in which they
wouldn’t have to live in constant fear religious massacres and
starvation. Ralph’s father, Nathra Nader, worked at a textile mill,
prospered, and became owner of a bakery and a restaurant. The
Naders sent their four children to the best schools. Ralph attended
Princeton and Harvard Law. Theirs was, by all accounts, an American
success story (today Ralph’s net worth is more than $5 million).
Only Ralph didn’t think so. Where his parents saw a land of
opportunity, Ralph was more attuned to the '60s zeitgeist. He could
grow wealthy and famous (he’s been on Saturday Night Live
four times) not by the sweat of his brow, but by attacking the very
system that had allowed his family to prosper.
After graduating from Harvard, Ralph briefly went into private
law practice in Hartford, only the anonymity of helping one client
at a time scarcely appealed to him. Besides, Washington, D.C. was
calling. In 1963 he packed a suitcase, hitchhiked to the capital,
and opened shop as a professional whiner. Nor did it take Ralph
long to find a cause. After taking lodgings at the YMCA, he once
told a reporter, “I walked across the street and had a hot dog, my
last.” Ralph immediately declared war on the hot dog industry and
his fortune was secured. Never has anyone been so indebted to one
bad wiener.
Though worth $5 million (almost all of it coming from stock in
evil American corporations like Cisco Systems), Nader makes a big
show of living in a relatively small Washington apartment with a
black and white TV (both Forbes and the New
Republic have alleged that Ralph owns secret luxury townhouses
and homes), of not owning an automobile (too dangerous, apparently,
except for the limos he takes on trips), and of never having fallen
in love or indeed having had any fun at all (also too dangerous.)
Jay Leno once asked Nader what he did for fun. Ralph’s response:
“Strawberries.” Yet, the man famous for denouncing American
corporate practices is often accused by former workers of running
political sweatshops: “Staff turned over rapidly. Few people could
stand the [long] hours, [low] pay and abuse for more than a year or
two,” wrote former Nader Raider Charles Pekow.
Yes, there have been dumber ideas for museums. In fact, if you
can think of a silly idea or invention, there is somewhere a museum
celebrating it. I’ve actually taken a pilgrimage to the birthplace
of the “Great Commoner” William Jennings Bryan in Salem, Illinois.
(Okay, I stumbled across it while in desperate search of a
restroom.) And who will ever forget their awe-inspiring visit to
the Bill Clinton Presidential Trailer in the Ozarks? Dallas is not
surprisingly the proud home of The Conspiracy Museum. And after
visiting Ralph’s Place you will probably want to stop by Mike
Fertig’s Burnt Out Light Bulb Museum.
It’s unclear who, if anyone, will visit the Museum of American
Tort Law. The left still blames Nader for “spoiling” Al Gore’s run
in 2000, and the right has better things to do — like take a nap.
But I for one am looking forward to the grand opening. In today’s
litigious climate it will just be a matter of time before some
geezer in a walker slips and falls and breaks a hip and sues the
Ralph Nader’s American Tort Museum for a million bucks for loss of
sexual potency. The irony will be delicious.
