In the gym yesterday, watching CNN, it finally occurred to me, what was wrong with Everything.
Christine Romans, reporting on the inexorable, record-setting gasoline price rises, expelled with casual, surly disdain the phrase “the paycheck-to-paycheck crowd” when describing those who would be most severely affected.
It was a queer, unsettling, but entirely predictable limousine liberal tube moment in Nowville.
Creepy Soledad O'Brien's “One-Percenter” Breakfast Roundtable of pundits and former and future public office-holders audited Roman’s dismissal of two-thirds of America without comment or even a single raised eyebrow.
That’s Contempt for you.
The anti-answer to everything.
Note:
(1) All images from the motion picture “Contempt” (“Le Mépris"), 1963, dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
(2) I assume those having no paychecks at all are Beneath Contempt.
Have you seen the Japanese film Departures? It shows the total opposite of contempt. Highly commended.
ReplyDeleteI haven't and wanted to try to do so before replying, but haven't yet. I do know about the film and, based on your recommendation will do so. Anything that's the opposite of contempt is for me. Over the weekend I made the mistake of posting a reply on an old friend and college classmate's Facebook page regarding a "subject of the day." My friend, an academic, and some of his friends (I should say particularly his friends because he's a kind person) were busy eviscerating a prominent US college president who had made what we refer to here as a "politically incorrect" statement. The venom level was astonishingly high, I thought, in view of the relative insignificance of the transgression. Unfortunately, however, social media makes it really easy for people to unsheathe the long knives and form virtual gangs. It's been an unsettling week. A few days ago we learned that an old friend had passed away and we've been kind of lost and confused in remembrances. It had been a while since we had seen him, but we had stayed in touch and he was never far from our minds. I don't think he had an ounce of contempt in his soul. Curtis
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