CSotD: And now, a word from our REAL sponsor …
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After going through a raft of "Black Friday" cartoons that could have run any year, it was good to get to "Sinfest" and find commentary that actually appears to take place in the here and now.
Maybe I'm taking it all too personally. As someone working in journalism, my response to all those cheerful "shopaholic" jokes has always been "How can they afford it?"
But now that my industry is in freefall and much of the general economy remains devastated, I'm scraping along on freelance income and my response to conspicuous consumption is becoming a little more hostile. A perfect time for Satan to step in and take a visible role in the whole process, rather than the invisible one I suspect he has always occupied.
It's more than a vague suspicion, mind you. Back when I was a younger man and still believed in a few things, I was sitting in a suburban church on the Sunday when the reading came up about how the early Christians gave away all they had in order to follow the Lord righteously, and the priest got up and began to talk about how the reading was actually speaking about "poverty of spirit."
As I walked out on his defense of fat cars and riding lawnmowers, I walked past a card table in the vestibule where they were selling tickets on the chance to win $1,000 in a church lottery. Actively selling. During the Mass. I really wanted to kick it over and start raging about turning my father's house into a den of thieves but I couldn't honestly say I believed I was in my father's house.
This sounds pretty self-righteous, but I was about 24 years old and still pretty righteous-feeling. Over the years, I've taken this away from the cosmic and centered it more on the ethical. Religious principles aside, it's just not ethical to be rude and insensitive. It is, if nothing else, poor etiquette.
For instance, I realize doctors get these magazines for free and that they don't think about it, but, dammit, ethical people should think about it. I really smolder when I see a waiting room where people are sitting wondering how on earth they will afford a medical treatment they really need, and the reading material on the tables consists of doctors' magazines about yachts and exotic travel destinations. Lemme just put on a glove and roll up this magazine, doc, so I can examine you for poverty of spirit.
Not everyone was unemployed in the Great Depression, but the overall impression I get from those who lived through it was that you were expected to be grateful if you weren't among the unlucky, and that all that cheerful Scott-and-Zelda stuff kind of faded from the zeitgeist.
Not so this time around.
I do understand that we have to spend our way out of this recession, but it does sound a bit like "Please take off your lifejackets and stuff them into that big hole in the side of the ship."
First of all, I'd like somebody to sound at least a little apologetic about it, and not quite so much as if they were looking up from their yachting magazine as they make the request.
Second of all, it damn well better work.
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