Generation Gap

My HMO recently assigned me a new doctor.  Well, he actually wasn’t a doctor; he was a physician’s assistant.  This fact wasn’t a problem in itself.  But being a careful consumer of healthcare services in the information age, I researched his professional background online.  What I learned gave me pause.

It turns out that my primary care manager, to describe his role in insurance speak, was born in 1987.  I would be placing my health in the inexperienced hands and technology addled mind of a Millennial, and that would not do.  I called my HMO, told the customer service drone on the other end I wanted a new doc, and to my pleasant surprise I got my way.  My new “PCM” is an actual MD, and she was born in 1961.  Her professional record is substantial and, as far as I was able to find, unblemished.

Problem solved, at least for the time being.  I know that this conundrum will recur as the years progress.  Eventually, the professionals of my generation or earlier will have retired and my only choices for doctors, lawyers, and accountants will come from today’s young’uns.  I am dreading the prospect.

I never thought I would feel this way.  After all, I’ve worked with young people throughout my professional life as well as in my community service activities.  More importantly, I’m a little disappointed in my own kneejerk judgments in light of my own youthful frustrations with what I saw as my elders’ misperceptions of my Generation X peers.

If you look at media depictions of Gen X from the Eighties and Nineties, you would have trembled for the future.  Personally, I was a little mystified by them.  Even relatively sympathetic pop culture depictions of Xers, such as the movies Reality Bites, Clerks, or just about any of the early work of Richard Linklatter failed to reflect my subjective experiences as a teen and twentysomething.  Nor did the literary emanations of Chuck Palahnuik or even Douglas Coupland, who did the most to popularize the moniker “Generation X,” fully resonate with me even though I enjoyed them on their own merits. 

I suppose it was because by my late twenties, I was a married homeowner with a couple of kids and a middle management job I’d held since graduating college several years earlier.  I was neither a slacker nor a techie.  I wasn’t financially dependent on my parents as I tried to make my breakthrough as a—fill in the blank—poet, musician, film producer, artist, or dancer.  I suspect the majority of people my age didn’t have these experiences either, any more than the typical Baby Boomer was a hippie other than perhaps in the sartorial sense.

But as I contend with increasingly callow groups of kids each semester, my resentment waxes while my hopes for the future wane.  Official expectations don’t help matters.  The executive dean at my small campus suffers from a case of youth worship bordering at times on ephebophilia.  (The semi-fictional Dean Kimpossible who occasionally haunts my posts is an all-too-slight exaggeration of an all-too-real person.)  My job security as a non-tenured prof consequently demands that I cater to the shallow intelligence and short attention spans of my young charges.  Standing on principle can lead to unemployment in academia just as easily as it can anywhere else in this economy.  I may be craven, but I’m employed.

What I find so hard to grasp is not so much their dependence on technology, but the way in which they use it.  I was inspired by the role of social media—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al.—in organizing and publicizing protest during the Arab Spring.  By contrast, Millennials at home use it to ceaselessly document the minutiae of their daily lives.  The outcome is that, to a larger degree than any generation before them, the present youth cohort exists within a self-referential bubble nearly impossible to burst.  Collective narcissism, if you will.  Already driven to distraction by their toys, our Millennials have had their self-esteem propped up by parents and the educational system to the point where failure really isn’t an option; accordingly, it has all but been eliminated as a possibility.

So, why did I refuse the boy-PA as my primary care doc?  Was it necessarily his youth that made me ask for someone else?  Well, let’s just say it was a matter of premonition and a desire to avert the inevitable just a little bit longer.  Many of my students are self-declared nursing majors or they plan to go into some other healthcare field.  A few of them have told me they’re pre-med.  I guess someone has to do it.  And while I know that the rigors of training will pull the bullshit card on a few of them, I also know that many will get through nonetheless.  (There’s also the possibility that the medical and nursing schools will eventually have their own versions of Dean Kimpossible, in which case we’re all screwed.  I try to push those thoughts aside for the sake of my own fragile peace of mind.)     

I have this recurring scenario which runs through my head whenever I think of the day when I must entrust my health to today’s youth.  It goes something like this: I’m undergoing a major procedure, let’s say open heart surgery.  My life depends upon a successful outcome.  And the next-oldest person in the OR is twenty years my junior…

Scene: The Operating Room. 

Time: The not-so-distant future. 

The PATIENT is already prepped and on the table.  Enter DR. CHELSEA, DR. TIFFANY, DR. TODD, NURSE BRITNEY, and NURSE JOSH.

DR. CHELSEA

Dr. Todd, is the patient anaesthetized and ready?

DR. TODD

Yeah, we good.

DR. TIFFANY

 Wait…Chelsea, have you, like, ever done this procedure before?  Do you even know what to do?

DR. CHELSEA

(Scoffs)

Huh, yeah!  I totally looked it up on Wikipedia!

 DR. TIFFANY

Oh, wow! That’s such a great idea!  I’m so doing that next time!

DR. CHELSEA

(Smugly)

Yeah, well, that’s why I was first in my medical school class!

 (Turns to NURSE BRITNEY)

Scalpel, please. 

(NURSE BRITNEY seems distracted as she hands DR. CHELSEA the scalpel.)

 What’s wrong, Britney?

 NURSE BRITNEY

(Tearfully, her voice quavering…)

It’s Dr. Jared.  He…he…unfriended me on Facebook!  I…I…just don’t know what to d-d-do…

(NURSE BRITNEY’s voice trails off into a sob.  She buries her face in her hands.  DR. CHELSEA, overcome with shock, suddenly drops the scalpel.  It lands with a clatter on the instrument tray.)

DR. CHELSEA and DR. TIFFANY

(In unison…)

Oh…my…god!!!  What a jerk!

DR. TODD

(Scoffing)

Huh, Jared!  What a pantload!  You could do way better.

NURSE BRITNEY

 (Sniffles, smiles behind her facemask)

Thanks, guys!

NURSE JOSH

(Abruptly, in an alarmed tone)

Aw, dude!  Check it out!  The patient’s vitals are slipping!

 DR.  CHELSEA

(She is clearly annoyed by the interruption)

Josh, WTF!  Can’t you see Britney’s upset?  Stop being such an asshole, okay?

 NURSE JOSH

I’m just sayin’…

 DR. TIFFANY

Yeah, well, save it for later.  The patient’s not going anywhere.  And Britney’s hurting now!

(There is a loud, steady tone as the PATIENT suddenly flatlines.  DR. CHELSEA turns around, clearly agitated.)

 DR. CHELSEA

What now? Can’t this guy leave us the hell alone for two seconds?

 NURSE JOSH

Aw, weak!  He’s dead!

DR. TODD

What a dick!  He could’ve at least waited a coupla minutes before bailin’ on us.  Epic fail!!!

DR. TIFFANY

Hey, wait, this means we’re done for the day!  Let’s go out tonight!

 DR.  CHELSEA

Omigod, that’s great!  I just bought a low-cut dress that totally shows off my new tattoo!

(DRS. CHELSEA and TIFFANY grasp each other by both hands.  They jump up and down in unison)

Omigod!  Omigod!  Omigod!  A-i-i-i-e-e-e-e-e!

NURSE BRITNEY

And let’s go to the beach tomorrow!  I just got a new thong and a bikini wax!  I am so ready to forget Jared and meet some new guys!

(DRS. CHELSEA and TIFFANY begin jumping and squealing again.  NURSE BRITNEY joins in)

DR. TODD

(Jerks his thumb toward the now deceased PATIENT)

Uh, what about this choad over here?

 DR. CHELSEA

(Sighs disgustedly, snapping off her surgical gloves)

Oh, him.  I don’t know…just call it, already.

(Exit DRS. CHELSEA and TIFFANY and NURSE BRITNEY, shaking their heads in annoyance at having been inconvenienced)

 DR. TODD

(Motions toward NURSE JOSH)

Dude, like, cover him up or something!

(NURSE JOSH carelessly throws the sheet over the PATIENT’S head)

So, like, what’re you doin’ tonight?

 NURSE JOSH

I’m goin’ to a rager over at my cousin’s place.  He’s got this DJ playin’ there, name’s DJ Spazzz.

 DR. TODD

Yeh-yeh-yeh!  I heard of him! 

 NURSE JOSH

Yeh-yeh-yeh!  This dude’s, like, off the chain, yo!  You comin’?

 DR. TODD

Ai’ight!

 NURSE JOSH

S-w-e-e-e-t!  We outta here!

(DR. TODD and NURSE JOSH pull out their phones and begin texting intently as they amble towards the door.  Exeunt.  Fade to black…)

Fade to black, indeed…

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar

Andrew Kehoe: An Overlooked Conservative Martyr?

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shootings here is an ode to an unsung hero, an overlooked martyr of American conservatism named Andrew Kehoe.  Mr. Kehoe, like so many Americans today, was a man who had had enough and was prepared to tell the world, in the most dramatic fashion, that he wasn’t going to take it anymore.

Andrew Kehoe lived on a farm outside the small town of Bath, Michigan in the late 1920s.  A civically minded sort, Kehoe served as a member of the Bath school board and had been the town clerk for a spell.  While in office, Kehoe pursued a single-issue agenda.  Specifically, he believed he was paying too much in school taxes.  Why, he didn’t even have kids!  Accordingly, Kehoe defined himself as a public servant by insisting on strict fiscal discipline. 

Kehoe’s desire not to waste the people’s taxes on such frivolities as books, facility maintenance, and teachers’ salaries brought him into bitter conflict with the profligate district superintendent, one Mr. Huyck.  Contributing to Kehoe’s ire was the fact that the prohibitive school taxes he was paying were breaking his finances.  He was so financially pressed he stopped paying the note on his farm and let his homeowner’s insurance lapse.  The bank soon informed Kehoe that it planned to foreclose, threatening his rightful stake in the “ownership society.”        

Driven to despair by the great liberal conspiracy to destroy the productive classes, Andrew Kehoe decided to push back against high taxes and oppressive government.  In the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, “The tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” and Kehoe was just the sort of patriot to act upon that little nugget of wisdom handed down by one of the founders of our great republic.

A skilled electrician, Kehoe supplemented his slender income by doing maintenance work in the Bath schoolhouse.  (No contradiction here—getting a government paycheck is okay when you do it.  It’s only wrong when someone else does it.)   While puttering in the basement, Kehoe assembled a cache of dynamite and surplus military explosives.  Wired to an alarm clock, it made a pretty good time bomb. 

Andrew Kehoe knew he had to spare Bath’s schoolchildren from a bleak future living under the heel of a tyrannical government.  Worse, they might grow up to live unproductive lives earning so little as to not shoulder their fair share of the tax burden.  Kehoe also knew his wife couldn’t bear to face life without him, so he compassionately bludgeoned her to death and set fire to their house before heading into town to go out in a blaze of glory. 

Kehoe arrived in Bath just in time to see his plan come to fruition.  The bomb detonated with a ferocious blast.  In the confusion, Kehoe called Superintendent Huyck over to his truck.  As Huyck approached, Kehoe lifted up the .30 caliber rifle he purchased exercising his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.  He fired a shot into the cab’s interior, having had the foresight to rig a bomb in the truck for just such an opportunity.  The rifle shot set off the truck bomb, killing both Kehoe and the oppressor bureaucrat Huyck.  The bomb also sent flying the scrap metal with which Kehoe had so thoughtfully loaded the truck, relieving a few more people of their lives in the process. 

The toll of Andrew Kehoe’s handiwork came to 45 deaths, most of them children between the ages of 7 and 12.  But when you think about it, wasn’t that a small price to pay when you’re striking a blow to preserve liberty in this great country of ours? 

Lord knows we need someone like Andrew Kehoe today.  You see, the problem with people like Adam Lanza is that they don’t act on principle.  Because the one thing that distinguishes a patriot from a lone nut is principle.  Because someone has to defend America from that Kenyan Muslim usurper in the White House, big government tax-and-spend politicians, limousine liberals, welfare queens, abortionists, Hollywood activists, the ACLU, atheists, feminists, queers, illegals, terrorists, tree huggers, peaceniks, labor unions, community organizers, and those Occupy freaks…oh, wait.  Never mind…

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar

Got Hawks?

The rumors have been circulating for weeks, but it will become official on Monday.  President Obama will nominate former U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of Defense.

Hagel is a Republican.  Although it has become customary for recent administrations to name members of the opposing party to cabinet posts as a token of bipartisanship, particularly in their second terms, Republicans have consistently run the Pentagon for the past sixteen years regardless of which party has held the White House.  The lone exception has been outgoing SECDEF Leon Panetta, who has held office for a paltry eighteen months. 

The reason for this trend, I think, is not a purported desire for bipartisan amity.  Rather, it’s because Republicans have coopted national security as their policy issue.  Presidents of both parties have shown little hesitation to resort to military force; nevertheless, Republican administrations have cloaked themselves in a reputation for toughness the Democrats can never seem to match.  So, whenever a Democratic president taps a Republican to oversee defense policy he is sending a message that he and the nation will be resolute in the face of foreign threats.

The Democratic reputation for weakness has little historical basis.  In the past, even when they ran for office on a peace platform, Democratic presidents have stepped readily into the role of wartime leader whenever necessary.  Woodrow Wilson and FDR cemented the U.S. in its role as global power by leading the U.S. through the world wars.  Lyndon Johnson soundly trounced the hawkish Barry Goldwater in 1964 by playing upon public fears of thermonuclear holocaust, only to escale the war in Vietnam after he won. 

The so-called “Daisy Girl” spot aired by the Johnson campaign is still considered among the most effective political commercials of the TV age.  The best response the Goldwater team could muster was a message featuring a grim-faced Ronald Reagan downplaying Goldwater’s reputation as a warmonger.  Reagan’s legendary stature as the “Great Communicator” notwithstanding, the commercial was no match for the Daisy Girl ad.  The prospect of nuking little girls playing in meadows was just too unsettling for many voters.

Unfortunately, Johnson's eagerness to prove himself as a wartime leader permanently altered the complexion of his own party.  His insane escalation policy in Southeast Asia, along with the social divide created by the Civil Rights Movement, irrevocably split the New Deal coalition which had ensured Democratic electoral successes for nearly four decades. 

The result was that in 1972, the Democratic coalition prominently featured antiwar activists.  George McGovern ran on a promise to end the U.S. role in the Vietnam conflict.  Concurrently, the Southern Strategy had lured the better part of a key Democratic constituency—conservative whites—to the Republican Party.  In spite of McGovern’s bona fides as a decorated World War II veteran, American voters overwhelmingly chose the tough-talking Richard Nixon. 

The 1972 disaster tarred the Democrats with the peacenik brush.  Never mind that Nixon brought the troops home a few months after the election without any loss of face.  The Republicans were tough realists; the Democrats were wimps.  Jimmy Carter, who had spent more time in uniform than any president since Dwight Eisenhower, was dogged by this reputation.  If Gerald Ford had been faced with the Iran hostage crisis instead of Carter, and had he dealt with it in an identical fashion, it is unlikely Ford would have been judged a failure to the same extent as Carter.  To a public largely devoid of critical thinking skills, perception is reality and Carter went into the crisis already looking weak.

Post-1972 Democratic campaign themes didn’t always help matters.  A 1984 Mondale campaign ad interspersing images of innocent-looking children with those of launching missiles set to the strains of Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Teach Your Children” didn’t even win over aging Baby Boomers.  By contrast, the Reagan reelection campaign emphasized the theme of renewed American greatness.  Metaphorically addressing Cold War security issues, the “Bear in the Woods” ad made the case for a strong national defense in the face of an adversary whose intentions weren’t always evident. 

Nor did the efforts of Democratic presidential candidates to appear martial go over well; one need only recall Michael Dukakis’ infamous tank ride to grasp that simply posing with military hardware won’t automatically give you street cred.  Bill Clinton’s draft board contretemps garnered him conservative hostility in the ’92 race, though his antiwar stance during Vietnam had seemingly evaporated by the time he reached the White House.  The interventions in Somalia, Haiti, and the Balkans, as well as his eagerness to (figuratively) stand toe-to-toe with Saddam Hussein would have cemented the rep of any Republican administration, but few adherents of either party have cared to acknowledge Mr. C’s frequently belligerent foreign policy.

By the time of the 2000 election, the respective images of each party had become fixed.  Al Gore had gone to Vietnam while Dubya played hooky from his Air National Guard duties, but that hardly mattered.  The wimp factor loomed large, and Gore’s condescending, pedagogical persona did little to help the Democratic cause.  The red/blue divide was drawn down the very middle of the American electorate, a division which has changed little in the intervening dozen years.  Public opinion concerning the War on Terror and our ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq has largely followed this divide.

Republicans have dominated the national security issue for so long that the collective wisdom of the party leadership has trickled down to the rank and file voter.  (Popular belief may be one of the few instances where “trickle down” has actually worked.  It certainly hasn’t economically.)   One can learn this in just about any discussion with a Republican on defense and foreign policy.

I’ll give you an anecdotal example.  During the bleak second year following the invasion of Iraq, I was at one of my son’s Little League games and the topic of the war came up among the dads watching in the bleachers.  One of them, a pudgy electrical supplies salesman I’ll call Laszlo, was describing the battle for Fallujah with particular relish. 

Laszlo spoke sagely of flanking and envelopments and preparatory fires, of reconnaissance patrols and intel analyses and the marksmanship feats of snipers.  I mean, wow, it was like you were really there!  In my mind’s eye I saw flags waving and eagles soaring.  I could hear a Toby Keith anthem swelling in the background as F-16s swooped to punish the enemies of freedom.  It was all I could do to suppress the lump rising in my throat and the tears of pride welling in my eyes—

But I composed myself long enough to exclaim, “Laszlo, that’s an incredible story!  You obviously know a lot about this stuff!  When did you serve?”

Laszlo suddenly looked sheepish and said, “I tried to enlist after high school, but my trick knee kept me out.  My wife’s nephew is a Marine, and he told me all about it.”

Hmmm, yes, it’s always a bad back or a trick knee that prevents these suburban heroes from doing their part to safeguard democracy.  But that’s okay, because the simple act of registering Republican will make you an automatic expert on matters of war and peace. 

President Obama appears to agree.  Don’t misunderstand me; I’m criticizing the president’s political motives and not Hagel’s qualifications.  Chuck Hagel led an infantry squad in Vietnam and knows first-hand what it means to serve and sacrifice.  But the president’s audience for this move, the voters he’s trying to convince, are guys like Laszlo who are perfectly happy to send other peoples’ kids off to war.  

This is the place where I should say that the Democrats need to take back the national security issue from the Republicans.  This may not matter as much as I’ve implied, however.  Electoral choice is illusory in a two-party system.  Both parties are the tools of Big Capital, and peace is bad for business.  Consequently, it matters little whether President Obama chooses a Republican or Democrat to helm the Pentagon during his second term.  Senator Hagel is a good choice given the personal attributes we valorize as an imperial nation.  I only wish our values would lead us to select a different kind of person to hold such a critical post.

© 2013 The Unassuming Scholar

A Small Diversion....

Diary of a Mad Proffie

Thursday, January the Third

Dear Diary,

Had another classroom nitemare.  I dreamed it was the first day of the semester, and this time I forgot to bring copies of the syllabus.

I wonder how much longer it will be before I dream I came to class in my undies…

XOXO,

Unassuming

Above the Surface, Below the Surface

Two disturbing news items this morning from India.  The first is a commentary among the many stories on this week’s gang rape-murder of a student on a bus in Delhi.  The other concerns labor violence in the state of Assam.

The Delhi piece attempts to explain the assault on the young woman as the result of “two worlds colliding.”  The shopworn cliché aside, such an assertion is bound to raise hackles.  Explaining crime as a function of structural poverty went out of fashion in the United States decades ago.  Similarly, although the Delhi incident clearly raises questions of entrenched gender inequality in the developing world, these questions also obscure the very real problem of poverty and privilege which are exacerbated by uneven development and a growing divide between rich and poor. 

Although no one deserves the fate of the Delhi victim and those responsible for the crime must be held accountable, one should ask whether this incident received wide attention because of the victim’s social status.  If she had been a slum dweller and not the daughter of an affluent family, would this story have made local, let alone global, headlines?  If she had been the illiterate child of a common laborer instead of a promising student, would we have been as concerned?

The story from Assam concerns the murder of a tea plantation owner and his wife, who were burned alive in their house by a mob of women tea pickers fed up with abusive working conditions.  The plantation owner was notorious for withholding pay from his employees and was known to sexually abuse the women in his employ.  More ominously, he was accused of murdering a child worker last year during a protest and yet he remained at liberty.  The article accuses the Assam police of working in collusion with the plantation owner to suppress unrest.

The Assam article appeared in Dissident Voice.  I found virtually no mention of the incident in mainstream news sources.  This should come as no surprise.  Americans find it easy to muster outrage over assaults on individual rights and dignity, but feel scant sympathy for mistreatment of groups.  It may be just as well that the U.S. news media neglected to report the Assam story, because I suspect it would have been framed to vilify the laborers while downplaying the crimes of the plantation owner.  One can just imagine the lead—“Job Creator Slain by Ungrateful Employees.” 

The events leading up to the tea plantation incident should serve as a warning to Western workers.  While I cannot imagine American employees collectively resorting to something as dire as killing the boss—individual workplace rampages are more our style—the conditions that brought about the tea pluckers' revenge, such as the absence of a union to safeguard workers’ rights, the employer’s wage theft, and the open flouting of labor laws as the authorities turn a blind eye are harbingers of what may come in the U.S.  Our laws already have a strong bias in favor of property rights and property owners, and in those states which have adopted “right to work” legislation individual employees are at a growing disadvantage versus employers.  It might not be long before American workers experience a kinder, gentler version of what their sisters in India have endured for years. 

These events may have occurred abroad, but the dominant themes are familiar enough in our culture: male privilege, abuse of power, the immiseration of society’s most vulnerable people, and the mystification of mainstream society on those occasions when the poor and desperate lash out.  We would do well to heed the lesson of these examples set so far away.

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

A Holiday Classic Revisited

The winter solstice has passed and we in the northern half the globe can look forward to longer days and the promise of spring.

The prospect helps me overcome my deep seated dislike for the corporate bacchanalia of Christmas.  The one exception to my antipathy is lifelong my love of TV holiday specials and Christmas movies.  I’m particularly fond of A Christmas Carol in just about any of its film or television adaptations.  But my hands-down, all-time favorite of these is the 1951 film Scrooge starring Alastair Sim. 

Scrooge was a popular holiday programming staple when I was a kid in the Seventies.  I don’t think it’s seen as much nowadays, despite the wide variety of broadcast, cable, and online outlets.  But you can find just about any old movie on YouTube, and so the other day I watched Scrooge for the first time in many years.

What stood out for me, what I hadn’t noticed in past viewings, was that the film’s emotional impact stems not so much from its evocation of Christmas cheer and hearth and home typical of nearly all holiday stories but from its emphasis on Charles Dickens’ not-so-implicit critique of early capitalism.  For all its atmospheric shadow and fog and Alastair Sim’s rubber-faced mugging at the camera and for all the heavy-handed simplicity of the familiar redemption tale, where Scrooge differs from other adaptations of A Christmas Carol is the supplementary exposition screenwriter Noel Langley and director Brian Desmond Hurst added to the plot.  

The vignettes Ebenezer Scrooge revisits with the Ghost of Christmas Past are such convincing antecedents to the man that one must remember that half of them were never part of the novel.  Certainly, the dialogue reveals the social Darwinism which characterized the Victorian age.  When young Scrooge and young Jacob Marley agree that society would soon undergo rapid and violent changes and that only the strong would survive, they concisely sum up the worldview of the new merchant elites on both sides of the Atlantic. 

I suspect that one reason for the embellished backstory was the temper of the times in Britain when Scrooge was made.  Although much of the luster of socialism’s promise tarnished in the six years following Labour's 1945 election victory, it appeared that the inherent evils of capitalism had at least been checked.   Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the film’s popularity declined in the era of Thatcher and Reagan.  To imply there’s something wrong with unbridled capitalism is a secular heresy nowadays.  (In the immortal words of Maggie Herself, “There is no alternative” to the free market, and “There is no such thing as society, only individuals and families.”)  When the most elemental gains of 20^th century social democracy such as social insurance and the right of workers to organize are presently threatened, a reminder of how bad the good old days were might have a salutary effect. 

On the other hand, the message can be too obvious at moments.  Consider the scene in which Mr. Jorkin (Jack Warner), a character invented for the film, is confronted with his embezzlement of company funds by his business partners.  Lines such as Jorkin’s “We’re all cutthroats under this finery” and the partners’ willingness to accept Scrooge and Marley’s bailout offer to avoid scandal can touch a sensitive nerve or two in the context of recent events.  Nevertheless, the exploits of Scrooge and his colleagues, both in novel and in Desmond Hurst’s film, raise questions about the relationship between virtue and wealth.  When Mr. Fezziwig loses his family firm to the rise of the new “vested interests,” one reflexively thinks of the small businesses crushed whenever big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart come to a new town.  At one point Langley’s screenplay has Fezziwig deliver an earnest oration on trade as a way of life rather than as mere pursuit of material gain.  It's unlikely such sentiments rest in the hearts of today's b-school graduates. 

                 
Despite the moralism of his tale I think Dickens pulled a punch or two, perhaps in deference to the sensibilities of his well-heeled readers.  After all, Bob Cratchit did not toil in the dark Satanic mills of the early Industrial Revolution.  His compensation of 15 shillings a week (or £39 a year) was a fair wage for the time, and it did enable him to support a large family and send his eldest daughter away to school. Living in a pre-consumer economy where most monetary transactions concerned food, shelter, and raiment meant that Bob’s pay could provide a decent life even if it wasn’t necessarily a life of leisure. 

If Dickens intended to illustrate the hardships of economicl inequality, he would have done far better making Cratchit a mill worker or coal miner living in a hovel with his ill-clad and underfed progeny.  The various film renditions of A Christmas Carol inevitably carry over this flaw in the dramatis personae.  Scrooge succeeds partly due to director of photography C. M. Pennington-Richard’s use of shadowy atmospherics to evoke a seedy London cloaked in a miasma of fog and coal smoke.  (Had he wanted to add verisimilitude he could have moved filming off the Renown Pictures soundstage onto the streets of postwar London and probably achieved the same effect.)  Visuals aside, the film’s characters (save Scrooge) tend to be quaint cut-out caricatures drawn largely to impart the warmth of an archetypal old-time Christmas.

Similarly, the Cockney of supporting characters such as that of Scrooge’s charwoman seems calculated to evoke nostalgia for a time and place none of us have lived in.  Listening to Kathleen Harrison’s aitch-dropping, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard screech, I was strangely reminded of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.  I don't mean as a literal comparison, but in the sense that both make us think of the Victorian years as a time of cloying charm rather than pointing up the rough, often brutish lives experienced by England’s proletariat. 

That said, perhaps I’m analyzing too much.  Watch the movie when you have the chance.  Happy holidays.

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar

Lost Minds

They’ve lost their minds.  Conservatives, I mean.

There can’t be any other explanation.  Reading the headlines over the last few days it’s difficult to think otherwise: The National Rifle Association has called for armed guards in public schools following the Newtown massacre, there’s been still another mass shooting, this time in Pennsylvania, a middle aged truck driver has pled guilty to setting fire to an Ohio mosque claiming he was goaded by Fox News’ relentless vilification of Muslims, and the ragged remnants of the congressional Tea Party caucus are stubbornly blocking a compromise solution to the fiscal cliff crisis.

I’m not sure why this series of events is any more comment worthy than others of late.  The myriad permutations of madness that express themeslves so frequently in this society are like background noise by now.  It won’t be long—a few weeks at most—before the Newtown murders fade from popular memory.  More unsettlingly, it will probably be recalled only when the perpetrator of a fresh new atrocity exceeds Adam Lanza’s body count.  Because, you see, in our fascination with superlatives we are pleased even when the unthinkable occurs to set a new record.  Not overtly pleased, but the enthusiasm (if that’s the right word) is clear as the talking heads linger over the latest numbers as if recounting the score in a particularly exciting football game. 

We’ve become inured.  It’s our way.  Twenty-eight dead, and our biggest concern is that Congress is going to raise taxes and take away our guns.  A couple of days ago, I heard a story on NPR about the recent spike in nationwide gun sales and proposals to renew the federal assault weapons ban.   The memorable soundbite was from a man buying a semiautomatic rifle and several high-capacity magazines (and I wish I was making this up): “Ah was savin’ up to buy a new truck, but I figgered Ah’d better buy a new rifle ‘fore the law changes.”   (I don’t remember if this interview took place in the South.  It probably doesn’t matter.  In the same fashion that the inflectionless California dialect has become the norm among denizens of Blue State America, the manner of speech I like to call “Redneck Creole” has become the patois of Red State America.  This poor ass could have lived anywhere, really.)

Now for the obligatory disclaimer: This is not to imply all, or even most conservatives are on the loony Right.  But when one surveys the political landscape at the close of 2012 it is not difficult to infer that the quotidian conservative is at least partially influenced by the propaganda echo chamber created by Fox News and AM talk radio.  Subjected to a worldview which offers pat, self-contained answers in lieu of critical thinking, public acquiescence to the right-wing agenda can be little wonder to the minimally astute observer. 

Of course this raises the question of why so many people so willingly accept such tripe.  In a more charitable frame of mind I would chalk this up to conservatives' penchant for conflating opinion with fact (a flaw shared by more than a few on the Left), their unwillingness to consider points of view which conflict with or refute their own, and a narrow shortsightedness that leads them to support unstintingly policies that are beggaring our country.  When I’m feeling irritable (my default setting these days), I attribute our problems to the millions of brainwashed imbeciles that the U.S. produces so prodigally.

The balkanization of public opinion is, I’m told, an unfortunate byproduct of the information age.  We cherry-pick information to suit our politics.  So it matters little, in the end, what recommendations come of the Vice President’s search for solutions to the gun violence problem.  They will come to naught as Republican lawmakers and their Blue Dog Democrat colleagues alike depend upon favorable NRA endorsements at election time.  Even if Congress does succeed in enacting more restrictive gun laws those laws will inevitably be challenged in the courts, and the federal judiciary has traditionally taken a cautious approach to interpreting the Second Amendment. 

In short, expect little substantive change and more grieving communities until sanity and reason return to our political discourse.       

© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar