It's official. Champaign-Urbana is the epicenter of a surreal, Grumpy Old Man universe. In Sunday's paper alone, the former mayor of Champaign, Dannel McCollum, blasted the works of Impressionist artists (talentless), Picasso (ugly), and Jackson Pollack (nonsense) in favor of Buggereau (who?), whom he describes as a "classicist."
Buggereau may have been a typo or homosexual Freudian slip or a stripper's stage name or a mistake on the News-Gazette's fact checking desk. There was a 19th century artist named William-Adolphe Bouguereau who painted porcelain-skinned full-frontal female nudes. For some time, grumpy old men have been known to prefer naked dancing forest nymphs to abstract colorful squiggles.
In the same issue, David Eisenman complained at length about those whippersnappers and their newfangled electronic toys. Let's outlaw them!
Another outraged grump dictated that the government should round up and bus 12 million Mexicans across the border. Do people realize that their names appear at the ends of these letters?
And then there are the inevitable letters from Henry Seiter, his fans and his progeny, which offer bizarre, pretzel-logical versions of American history and religion. None of these letters can be written without using epithets and taunts, words like "pinhead" or "loony," to describe those who have other interpretations of reality.
I won't bother to mention Glenn Poshard or the NCAA.
Grumpiness has become the new national addiction, from Lou Dobbs to Rush Limbaugh. We shouldn't be surprised. War, lies, torture, greed, Blackwater and the Religious Right, the aversion to science – the hallmarks of the last half a decade, are bound to take their toll on our reason and compassion and humanity.
One good thing to come out of the Bush Administration may be the dawning realization that the USA is not necessarily the best or the only place in the world to live.
We have a right to be grumpy.
Gregoire Melville
7 comments:
People who actually read my op-ed in the Sunday, October 21, News-Gazoo will know that it was not armchair grousing and that I have nothing against cell phones per se.
I simply recount my inadvertent "field research" -- some of my encounters with distracted drivers who either came close to killing me or scared the living daylights out of me. (And I don't even drive very much: my 1981 K-car has yet to hit 100,000 miles.)
Why is it, a year after Matt Wilhelm's death, that have we taken absolutely no action on an obvious problem?
My analysis is that a majority of people, including "community leaders", believe that they can drive safely while on the phone. Many of them are wrong, but they don't know that yet -- and won't until they come close to killing someone. That's why an outright ban on cell phone driving has little support -- no one believes that he or she could be dangerously distracted, only some other guy.
So I propose that instead of banning all cell phone use by drivers, we throw the book at only those who prove -- by making egregious driving errors -- they can't both call and drive safely.
If that's not a legitimate proposal, what is?
My research suggests that distracted drivers quickly suppress memory of idiot things they did while on the phone. I think we should give them a way to remember: a big fat fine. Surely it's fair to target people who are in the act of finding out that they can't do both things--people who have an accident or violate a law while on the phone.
It's a sound educational principle: When people are in their "teachable moment", we should not fail to teach them.
If this qualifies me as a "grump", I proudly plead guilty.
By the way, I'm an even-handed grump: my proposed stiff fine for any misuse of our roads while on the phone would include pedestrians who walk off the curb in the middle of a block directly in front of cars that they apparently think can stop on a dime.
Thanks for calling attention to my piece: Any publicity, as the saying goes, is good publicity.
Keep up the good work -- it's good to know that at least one person still reads the paper!
David Eisenman
P.S. -- Note, please, that we grumps can be risk-takers. Friends have suggested that if I keep "interviewing" cell-phoned drivers who have just come close to killing me, as I report having done in the piece you mention, my gravestone may have to say:
"Admonish the sinner"
was his favorite Biblical passage.
***
He did it one time too many.
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