The previous post was the news side of today's sermon.
Here's where I think we are as a country in my own words.
Our economy is about to go through a ringer that was predictable from the beginning of the Bush Administration fiasco. Let's put this in personal, local terms:
Let's say you are the head of the spoiled brat ne'er-do-well family of the neighborhood.
You've always been uppity with your neighbors, and certainly you seemed to have more money than they did, but at least they all thought you meant well -- despite your occasional drunken binges, your wild parties (where everyone had fun anyway), in spite of that odd car you wrecked into a lamppost once when you were over in Little Vietnam down in Orange County (well, that was a long time ago), and in spite of a certain amount of bullying you can be prone to -- because you have always come to everyone else's defense when other people get into trouble.
Then let's say your oldest son comes home from college. He didn't graduate with honors, and he nearly got thrown out, but you don't tell anyone about that.
Everyone likes him at first. However, he's a smart-aleck frat kid, and his sense of humor tends to put others at a disadvantage. Every now and then he humiliates someone else with an off-hand joke, and you get the feeling from him that if you don't laugh, there will be consequences. Very awkward. People stop coming around, and your parties aren't fun any more.
What's worse for you is that your son can't keep a job. He goes through the allowance you give him on the first day you give it to him, every week.
You're starting to get worried, to say the least.
One day, someone who doesn't like your frat kid son, breaks into your garage and burns it down. He had an old race car in there he was fixing up. Maybe someone thought your son cared about it, but he'd had it up on jacks since he was in high school.
A couple of days go by, and still no one knows who did it. You want to get the police involved, but your son bullies you about it until you let the whole thing go.
Now you really begin to suspect that something is terribly wrong, but you say nothing for the sake of maintaining some peace at the dinner table. Your son has a rotten temper, and you don't want to provoke him.
No one outside your family knows anything about this, of course. All of your neighbors finally feel sorry for you. They come around bringing pies and cakes and lasagna to say how much they care. But instead of saying thank you, your frat kid son points his finger at one neighbor who comes to the door and he threatens to burn down your neighbor's garage if he so much as looks cross-eyed at your son again.
Word gets around quickly. Everyone in the neighborhood is frightened to talk with you now. They avoid you at the market, at church, at the hardware store. Even the barber won't talk to you when you get a haircut.
Still, you hold up your head and try to maintain your dignity. After all, you've been an important person in your town, in spite of your weaknesses.
The next blow falls when you start getting dunning notices from the credit card companies, and you discover to your horror that your son has been running up debt like a drunk (well, he is a drunk; you just didn't want to admit it. After all, you're not so sober yourself, and your spouse is on anti-depressants).
To get the banks off your back, you do something desperate: at a poker party at a neighbor's house one night you ask your closest friends to lend you money. You discover they still love you and your family, in spite of everything that's happened, and they feel very sorry for you now. They don't blame you for your troubles. They blame your son. So they say yes. "Anything you want," they promise, and you accept the moon.
But there is an unspoken agreement between you and your neighbors as a price for their generosity, and that is this: they tell you you have to keep your son under control. "He's a menace to the serenity of the neighborhood," they tell you. You say yes, okay, you will.
But you don't, and things get immeasurably worse.
One rainy night, under the cover of a thunder storm, your son gets caught breaking and entering an old lady's house. She gets driven off in an ambulance, a brace around her neck. You are left with untold thousands in legal bills, medical bills and lawsuits.
You wish your son had run from the law. It would have been easier to face everyone else. But he doesn't. Instead, he swears he was just getting his revenge for the garage incident. He insists the old lady's nephew was the one who did it, and he can prove it. He claims he was looking for evidence. He even tells this tall tale to the police. Your lawyer sends your son to a psychiatrist. He wants to use an insanity defense, but you won't hear of it. "Not my son!" you shout.
Your son bravely locks himself in his room and sulks. You can't talk to him. He won't come to the door. Things get black.
And the bills pile up, and up.
What can you possibly do? You're stuck. You can't move, you can't sell, because no one will buy your house for what you paid for it. The yard has gone to seed. The garage is still a charred scar beside your once beautiful home. The paint is peeling, and you have no money to fix it up again.
One morning you announce to your wife over the last two glasses worth of orange juice in the fridge that you've decided you have no choice. You have no credit. You plan sell everything you have to pay at least a few of your bills. All of your income and hers goes to the lawyers now. And you at least have to eat.
"You may just have to eat, but I have a life, and everything is in your name," she says. Your wife packs her bags and leaves you without another word. You know, because she's told you over and over for weeks, that it was either her or your son. And you hadn't been willing to make a choice. So she makes it for you.
You get really good and drunk that day, a Saturday. The next morning, on a Sunday, hung over and unshaven, you put everything out in your driveway, and you start a vigil with all of your belongings, until everything you own is gone. Your neighbors dub it "the longest yard sale in the history of your town."
Half of your belongings they simply cart away. You don't dare charge them a nickel, because you owe them more money than you want to tally.
Everyday you think, as you sink more and more into a depression, that maybe if your son has no bed to sleep on, he'll leave. You hope and pray he'll leave. But no. Never. He hunkers in the corner of his empty closet, rocking back and forth, madly muttering incoherently. His room begins to smell so bad you won't go down to that end of the hall anymore.
Now you can barely afford to buy peanut butter and milk. Your wife has left you. You sleep on one broken down couch facing an old black and white television you can't bring yourself to shut off at night. Your house is empty. You will never have any money to pay back your friends, the banks, the lawyers, the doctors, the IRS or the courts. You are alone, and friendless, and about to be homeless.
But at least, you have your son.
And that, my friends, is about where we are.
Not exactly David Niven's sermon at the end of The Bishop's Wife, now was it? I wonder what Cary Grant would say, were he alive today. I know if I were he, I would be living in France.
Here endeth the lesson for today.
Wait a second! Wait a second! I just watched Lewis Black's new HBO special on Comedy Central, and I just have one thing to say about the ridiculously pessimistic essay above. I mean, have you ever heard such sophomoric drivvle in your life? ...Wait...
What? Someone's at the door? The Intervention TV show crew?...What? And this stupid slob's parents? What? And his GRANDMOTHER? You have GOT to be kidding me. . ..
What? Bill Clinton's here, too? What the hell is this, a campaign stop, fer godssakes? What the hell is Bill Clinton going to do here, feel this guys's pain? What? No, I don't know whether he's going to vote in the primary next month! He doesn't even have a car! Jesus H. Chri...
Hey, ask Bill Clinton if he'll pay for this guy's heating bill! He will if this guy will volunteer for Hillary, huh? Okay, lemme ask him... Nah, don't bother. He says he's voting for Obama... Hold on! What did you say? You were a f***king Republican? That the f***ck is the MATTER with you people!??
Oh, fer Chrissakes, nevermind... Of all the stupid idiots in the world... And you couldn't see this coming, huh....?
First posted 1-20-08 on the original Whistling Dog.
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