Here's the incipit of a little sermonette from one of The Nation's stable of secular parsons:
Our Budget, Our SelvesI can't help noticing that all these Holy Joes and Josephines down at the Nation have ponderous double-barreled names that would burden a minor Hapsburg royal. How do they stand erect under the weight of these jawbreaking monikers, I wonder? And what about their children? When little Hera Harris-Lacewell marries little Zeus Graham-Felsen, what Pelion upon Ossa of a surname will their hopeful young Hephaestus have to shoulder in his luckless turn?
posted by Melissa Harris-Lacewell on 03/24/2009 @ 08:13amFew processes are more revealing of our commitments, our priorities, and our core beliefs than budgeting.
But I digress.
Melissa is off to a strong start here. The central sacrament of our lives, our Lares and Penates, the "process" in which we are most ourselves, is... budgeting. Not love, not prayer, not song, but sharpening the old pencil and sending every penny home with deadly aim to its optimal target.
The Rev. Ms. Melissa goes on:
I have a good friend who has decided to get rid of their family's second car. Though she and her husband work 30 minutes in opposite directions they are finding a way to make this crazy commute work. Why? Because they live a town with seriously underperforming public schools and they are absolutely committed to providing their daughter with a first class education. For them, this means private school tuition. So everyone is bracing for obscenely early mornings and far more inconvenient work schedules. They never thought twice about this priority.What a feelgood story this is. The friend's little Hephaestus has to be put through the refiner's fire of private school at all costs. And note Melissa's vocabulary: "underperforming." "First class education."
Best of all is that Melissa's friend -- just such another as she, I dare say -- "never thought twice." Indeed, and doesn't that say it all.
It comes as no surprise, as we read farther, to discover that
I work at an elite, private university, but even we are feeling the crush of the economic downturn. This week I watched with pride as my president, Shirley Tilghman, explained that Princeton remains absolutely committed to providing some of the most generous financial aid packages in the country.You knew it had to be Princeton, didn't you? And you knew she'd manage to drop the name somehow, too? Come on, 'fess up. You saw it coming.
There's more:
Tonight President Obama presents his budget to the American people. The budget is more than a balance sheet. President Obama will ask us to evaluate our priorities in the face of economic crisis. He will question our resolve to improve education, offer equal opportunities, and provide for our neighbors despite the the terrifying deficits. He will ask us what we really believe.How do you "ease" a "story"? Do I want to know? Sounds like it might involve a laxative.Each of the stories I have told here could be eased with a collective national effort. All families should have quality public schools for their children. College should be more affordable for high achieving students.
And why, I wonder, are deficits "terrifying"? They don't scare me a bit.
And as for the "low achieving" students -- well, fuck 'em, I guess.
Really, if this is what passes for left discourse in this country, it's no wonder people are reactionaries. Given a choice between the dreary ponderous relentlessly educative Melissa Saxe-Coburg-Artaxerxes-Amenhotep, and Rush Limbaugh -- hell, at least you can remember Rush's name.
Comments (16)
They call it easing the Story: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb.
Posted by Jonathan Lundell | March 24, 2009 11:39 PM
Posted on March 24, 2009 23:39
Nice, JL. Very nice indeed.
Posted by MJS | March 24, 2009 11:44 PM
Posted on March 24, 2009 23:44
What if she didn't specifically ask for a hyphenated name? Is she still guilty?
Posted by Save the Oocytes | March 25, 2009 7:14 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 07:14
I couldn't convict on the basis of the hyphenation alone. But it does set off a shrieking klaxon.
For merit class yuppie liberals, hyphenation is the quintessence of phoniness. They stole their version of the practice from investment banking Brits who stole it from the Welsh, who had used it solely as a marker of lineage. The investment banking Brits used it to compensate for the misfortune of lacking an inherited peer o' the realm title. The US yuppies' putative purpose was to show sensitivity to women who wanted to keep their patronymic after marriage, to assert freedom from patriarchal constraints; in reality, to assure them of whatever career benefits they might get from maintaining the paternal brand. To compensate the men for the loss of publicly certified property rights, they got a double-barreled name and a share in their spouses' paternal brand, without diluting their own birthright branding. As a blow against systemic misogyny, it's a couple of steps below forcing Brooks Brothers to give free alterations on the ladies version of their mens' line. All form, no substance, with the form of the alleged reform explicitly re-entrenching the problem.
Posted by Al Schumann | March 25, 2009 8:41 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 08:41
father S
while reading your post here
with its target authorettte
and her scotched ass hole
credentialcratic
infra oaths
i realize with a certain iced over clarity
why the road thru an inner party
of o'briens
http://www.earthstation1.com/1984.jpg
looks like liberation's better path choice
Posted by op | March 25, 2009 8:48 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 08:48
for her for me ..perhapps for all
better a state penitentiary
and
aid from a generous package
then
an elite university
and
a package of generous aid
Posted by op | March 25, 2009 8:59 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 08:59
for her for me ..perhapps for all
better a state penitentiary
and
aid from a generous package
then
an elite university
and
a package of generous aid
Posted by op | March 25, 2009 9:00 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 09:00
I like having a Chinese spouse. She keeps her family name. But wait, aren't those orientals a hive of dowry doers? And wait, aren't I now playing da Nation moral one-upmanship game?
Wow, is Ms Harris-Lacewell's consummate crudola target practice for right-wing populists, of a species I have yet to imagine. And she too is a species I have to yet to encounter, a mythical beast like the three-footed Yeti... but apparently she's out there, in droves. Scary.
Posted by gluelicker | March 25, 2009 9:29 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 09:29
After digesting this schmaltz essay Charles Murray would be very very very moved, enough to order a 21-gun salute... until he learned that its author is an openly practicing wiccan.
Posted by gluelicker | March 25, 2009 9:57 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 09:57
Why would any parent in their right mind send their precious little hope-for-the-future to a dirty, common, low class public school? Why, I'd wager that Mellissa Smythe-Smith-Smythe-BiscutBarrell-Pftang-Ole-Cohen-Luxury-Yacht is even now shopping for discount caviar at Byerlys instead of ordering the usual case of Beluga from Harrods. Oh, the sacrifices! Alas!
Posted by AlanSmithee | March 25, 2009 10:18 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 10:18
"TV dinners, there's nothin' else to eat
TV dinners, they really can't be beat
I like 'em frozen but you understand
I throw 'em in and wave 'em and I'm a brand new man, oh yeah!
...
TV dinners I'm feelin' kinda rough
TV dinners this one's kinda tough
I like the enchiladas and the teriyaki too
I even like the chicken if.... the sauce is not too blue."
Posted by gluelicker | March 25, 2009 10:27 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 10:27
Well, I'll be dipped in it.
And, here I thought that The Nation was rejecting my cartoons because they were too hardcore left, because they were borderline anarchist -- when it turns out I just had the wrong kind of name.
Knowing what I now know, perhaps I should give it another shot...
Yer pal,
Michael Biffington-Flugennock
Posted by Mike Flugennock | March 25, 2009 10:49 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 10:49
Wow. Old Goriot.
I read that -- recently.
My first attempt at Balzac since college. Very good, actually. Fairly dense writing -- I had to flip back a few pages every so often to mentally refresh the plot -- but a really good story.
Besides, I figured, if I was able to tackle Les Miserables, Balzac should be a cakewalk, and those ponderous essays in The Nation -- beneath comment.
Yer pal,
Michael Biffington-Flugennock ("Biff")
Posted by Mike Flugennock | March 25, 2009 10:56 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 10:56
There's an easier way in, Herr Van den Flugennock.
Posted by senecal | March 25, 2009 11:01 AM
Posted on March 25, 2009 11:01
All right, all right, one sentence you will never see me utter is "I watched with pride as my president..." and boy, those elite credential mills just love those racialized spokespeople to mouth the Coke Harmony hillside songs. However, professors make janitor money compared to the Wall Street wages awaiting their keg-puke-stifling charges, and I don't think the paleo-right wins the blowhard battles against the folk music left. And lastly, on the name front, I think Ms. Melissa Hope-Lacely beats out Shirley Tilghman by a new-fashioned elite country mile. If a wife changes her last name because of some hoary tradition, then that her weakness. If a woman gets a last name like "Schuman," though she'd better hyphenate away or ditch it, pronto, at the altar.
Posted by mjosef | March 25, 2009 6:15 PM
Posted on March 25, 2009 18:15
Herr Flugennock: you missed the best 19th century French writer -- Flaubert. You'll definitely enjoy Sentimental Education, story of a romantic young man making his way in Paris, after the revolution,surrounded by all political types -- students, idealists, radicals, napoleanists, careerists, bohemians, climbing bourgeois. My pen name comes from one of them, a young communist struggling to survive.
Posted by senecal | March 25, 2009 10:32 PM
Posted on March 25, 2009 22:32