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Photoshopping the American Dream
The spinmeisters are playing same record over and over, recovery, recovery, scratch, scratch, recovery’s in da house! The Associated Press trumpeted, “After two years of recession, Christmas 2010 will go down as the moment when Americans rediscovered how much they like to shop.” On December 28th, Yahoo Finance reassured us at 9AM, “The recovery is on track,” but an hour later, it featured a new headline, “Consumer Confidence Unexpectedly Falls in December.”
With its attendant social chaos, crime and despair, the country is sinking into an economic quicksand, yet Americans are injected daily with a massive dose of tranquilizing nonsense. Today’s top stories, “Elton John Becomes a Dad,” “Air Force Mascot Goes Missing at Game,” “10 Best Celebrity Hair Moments” and “Synchronized Walking Routine.”
The cheeky and cheery are occasionally contradicted by grimmer admissions, however. Even Voice of America, that Cold War relic and official mouthpiece of Washington, has this exchange:
[VOA]: "How does it feel from the beginning of the Christmas season from your point of view?
[Cashier]: "It's not that good. It's like so-so, you know."
[VOA]: "So business isn't so great right now."
[Cashier]: "No I don't think so. Because people don't have the money to buy, there are lots of people who don't have jobs."
[VOA]: "Is your job in danger?"
[Cashier]: "Yeah."
Weird, such candor from the VOA. Maybe their CIA check bounced? In any case, let’s meet some denizens of Philadelphia’s the Gallery, my local shopping center. Mrs. Fischel runs a meat and cheese shop. Business has steadily declined over several years now. To make matters worse, management has raised her rent, to make up for the other merchants who have closed shops or who are behind in their payments. The third level of this mall is completely dead, and the second is barely hanging on. Just this week, Payless Shoes as well as G&G, Unica and Sunshine Blues, all clothing stores, have gone belly up.
Fischel’s son, a recent graduate of law school, has moved back home from Orange County. He has no job, only mushrooming debts from student loans and credit cards. He loved California and never expected to live in Philly again. It used to be that once you moved out, you stayed out. It was an American right of passage. By 2006, however, two thirds of American college graduates were already returning to their parents. Now, the number is up to 85%.
Meet Mr. Ali, who runs a modest kiosk offering cheap purses, belts and watches made in China. He used to sell Gucci and Coach labels—not the bags, just the labels—which were sewn onto knockoffs by the customers themselves. Many of our poorest are infatuated with brand names. With a CK, say, slapped onto their person, they feel instantly higher class.
An immigrant from Pakistan, Ali’s first job was at a Seven Eleven, before he saved enough to buy a gas station. With his current business, it was no big deal to sell $1,500 daily. Now, he’s lucky to gross $500. Whenever this mall’s open, Ali’s in there. All he does is work. Even if there were 12 inches of snow on the ground, Ali would be there at 9AM, waiting for his first customer.
When he had saving, Ali made the fatal mistake of investing in Fannie Mae and Citigroup, among other supposedly blue chip stocks. Like millions of others worldwide, he lost his shirt. A hundred-and-forty-six thousand dollars gone. Ali sold his home and his new truck, hired a lawyer to consolidate his credit card debts. He now drives an unheated lemon. “In a couple of years, I’ll buy another house for my wife and children,” he insists even as his earning nosedives. He’s lost money the last two Christmases.
Meet Mr. Giuliani, who used to make $28 an hour as a computer repairman. He supplemented his day job by freelancing, charging $85 and up for each home visit. Replaced by technicians from India, Giuliani became a transit police officer. The goal of globalism has always been to outsource jobs and import labor. To maximize profits, bosses must minimize costs. At $15 an hour, Giuliani now patrols the Gallery to make sure teenagers don’t go berserk after they get off the trains.
Some of these kids like to pick fights with each other, shopkeepers or even security guards. With no jobs and little money, their idea of fun is to raise hell, inside this shopping mall or wherever. In March, a 73-year-old man and a 41-year-old woman were hospitalized after beatings by a gang of kids around 12-years-old. Playing a game called “catch and wreck,” they chanted “Fight! Fight!” and called Belinda Moore a “bald-headed bitch” as they pummeled her, knocked her to the ground, snatched her bag and stomped on her hat. Moore told the Philadelphia Daily News, "I don't know if these kids hate society or hate life itself but I cannot believe they could do that to someone. Where is all that hatred coming from when you're only 11 or 12?" Also in Philadelphia, an 18-year-old killed a 68-year-old woman with a frying pan, stole her truck, then blogged on MySpace two days later, “Bored as fuck! Meh and Mira bout 2 go touch city hall! put sum more money in mah mouth!”
Back to Giuliani: he inherited his house, so Giuliani doesn't have to worry about a mortgage, but thanks to the housing bubble, his property tax has ballooned. For sentimental reasons, Giuliani doesn’t want to sell his childhood home, but he may have to. With ten rooms, the heating bill is enormous, and there won’t be too many buyers lining up.
The Gallery is a hub for commuter and subway trains. This design brings in more customers, sure, but the labyrinthine concourses also provide a haven for many homeless people. Dazed, they wander among shoppers, to be shooed away by guys like Giuliani. Dozing in wheelchairs, collapsing in corners or picking through trash cans, these resilient men and women seem oddly unaware that the recovery is in full swing, and that even dogs, according our cynical media, got expensive toys this holidays.
The collapse will not be televised. Ignored and alone, each of us will experience it singly. As blemish and accusation, you will be photoshopped from the American Dream group portrait. The lower you slip, the more invisible you will become. The disconnect between what's real and what's broadcast will become even more obscene by the day.
45 Comments so far
Show AllMr. Dinh's vignette is a snapshot into the slow/fast collapse (depending upon the area) of the middle class.
After WW2 and the GI bill, which largely contributed to the formation and perpetuation of the middle class, it seemed like a natural course of events. Maybe not.
Maybe the middle class was fostered as a sort of buffer against any uprising against the clutches of the postmodern cold-war military-industrial complex.
Now that the middle class is left to rot with outsourced jobs,a lower standard of living, etc., and sure to sink down, where are the uprisings? It can be as simple as not buying into the lies the media has portrayed (think--"recovery" b/c retail sales are up 5%)..
Retail is the phony salve against the anxiety that should be hitting all of us. I don't believe the doctored numbers of this so-called "recovery". The latest tax cuts for the wealthiest, while the unemployed get thrown a bone proves that the gov't is propping up a sinking ship.
solarhamster
"Now that the middle class is left to rot with..." and who may I ask elected the lawmakers to Congress and Executive Branch that causes these problems? I am sure it's not the top 2%, but the lower 98%. Than may I assume we, the people are responsible and to be blame, Correct?
The people are to blame for watching TV and letting news/current affairs tell us what the issues are and failing even to pay attention to what they dont tell us. Joe sixpack does not own any TV stations, newspapers or radio stations. He thinks what he is told to think. North Korea - evil. Us - Good. Iraq - evil. Troops - heroes. Iraqis - bad guys. But those who tell him what to think are profiting. They are stealing oil and externalizing the costs of doing so. We are paying for the war, with money that we cannot afford.
Gee, is it possible that a political campaign would be designed on purpose to fool someone?
"They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness" (John Milton via Mfg Consent).
It takes a poet to see and speak "Truth" with a capital "T". Thank you. It would be interesting to find out:
a) How many of these unfortunate in the mall, in Philadelphia, and in the USA vote for the politicians who have arranged the economy so that most Americans will suffer?
b) How many agree that our highest national priority is to help Israel steal land from Palestinians and some how get rid of them?
c) How many agree with Obama that it is best to let Bush administration war criminals and Wall Street fraudsters all go free with their ill-gotten gains?
d) How many get all teary-eyed and patriotic about our troops invading other nations?
e) How many still believe it was Muslim who did the 9-11 deeds, not our own neo-cons?
Go visit North or West Philadelphia where many of the 11 and 12 year olds who find murder to be an acceptable pastime likely come from and then ask these stupid questions again. When you are living in a war zone as these poor communities of color are, the first priority is putting food on your table and your privileged view of the world is about as far from anyone's mind as Palestine is from Philadelphia. When you see murder on your streets, in your community, on a daily basis, are you really supposed to be worrying about what is happening in the middle east? Come on, get real.
I think the point serious citizen is making is a matter that involves you, me and every american tax payer.
Do u want billions of dollars that could be helping the disenfranchised youth to continue to be used for war, bailing out white collar crooks and going to a racist murderous Zionist regime or DO YOU want that money to go to helping the 12 year olds and their parents future by providing better schools and jobs?
Bravo getoffyourbutt. Well said.
What you describe are the symptoms. What serious describes are the causes. You have to go for the causes.
The Double Date of Hope & Fate empirePie December 29th, 2010
What’s in the cards?
Are hope and fate on a double date?
Do we need to consult the tale in the entrails?
Or do we need to slice the custard that’s on top?
or map the signals when desire has the drop?
Will mankind merge with the machine?
Will a neural prosthesis be really keen?
From Why to the chromosome Y,
What’s the code that’s missing?
Is there a slice in the strata with new useful data?
Can you carbon date an ego or an ‘I am”?
Are we the progeny of God, some Devil, or random selection?
Are we part of a creation or a destruction story?
Are our symbols the nemesis for our place in the garden?
Are our symbols the nemesis for our place in a global commons?
Is there a Gaia that will shake us off?
Are you conscious when you dream?
What are the states of what things seem?
What’s in the cards?
Are hope and fate on a double date?
Tell it like it is, Mr. Dinh!
The Gallery, Philly's attempt to reverse retail business flight to the suburbs by creating an "urban mall", began a slow but inexorable descent to tackiness and tawdriness from its opening day.
Its "anchor" stores, well-established department stores like Strawbridge & Clothier's and JC Penney's, either went out of business or relocated; now discount stores like "Big K-Mart" and "Burlington Coat Factory" are the cubic zirconia in the Gallery's cracking and rusted crown.
The decaying, low-rent ambience is pathetic, and a microcosm of decadent Amerikan capitalist society.
Still, Mr. Dinh, I'm sure if you had tried really hard you could've whipped up a perky, refreshingly optimistic version of this article entitled "Ten Reasons to Cheer at the Local Mall".
I'm amazed at how heartless so many people on Common Dreams are. Your socialist utopia might be a pleasant dream, but you ignore the reality for the many African-Americans who have been left behind in Philadelphia. Living in neighborhoods that look like they've been bombed out, communities torn apart by crack, epidemic levels of homelessness and crime, the Gallery for them represents their one chance to find legitimacy in a culture that has brushed them aside - whether it is finding a job in one of the few remaining stores, having a place to meet friends without the police stopping them and frisking them (though it sounds like even that is likely to happen in the Gallery now) or buying clothes for their children since their neighborhoods only host crack dens and liquor stores. Sure, criticize the Gallery for what it represents to you, but you ignore what it means for those who are disenfranchized and have no hope. The anger of those 11 and 12 year olds is the anger of years of oppression, it is the anger of children who have not been allowed to be children and it is that which we need to address if we wish to have any hope in the future of America. Should the Gallery close down completely, I fear the direction that those who depend on it for their survival will go.
Tanguero, we may sound a wee bit too rough here on CD but we have strong passionate hearts that most Americans ought to have so that everyone including the minority poor in St Louis and Philadelphia do not have to live in poverty and tears. I may not know the "Gallery" much but I feel very sorry that you are into getting starstruck even at the expense of hurting what is truly small and local.
"tanguero"-
I think you were honest and quite accurate in your assessment of African-Americans in Philadelphia and what the Gallery means to them. But I want to draw your attention to something you wrote. You stated, "the Gallery for them represents their one chance to find legitimacy in a culture that brushed them aside."
I want to be careful with my response here because I don't want to sound glib or heartless, but alas we must stop seeking "legitimacy," and bring to question the legitimacy of the whole commercial system. Should it be allowed to exist as it does? Given the poverty, humility and degrading existence that it has created for generations of working poor and people of color, WHY do we want membership in such an unjust and tyrannical system?
I agree that something has to be done, but it is illogical to think that the problems could be solved through the mere expansion of the system. Perhaps enormous compassion and creativity will be needed to turn things around in the so-called disenfranchised communities, but don't glom on to the corporations or their glitter. Their only interest is in the exploitation of every possible resource for profit.
I hope not, but it seems quite possible that soon Mr. Giuliani’s current job will also be endangered as crime worsens. Wouldn’t a younger person, one with military experience, be better suited to deal with the increasing “terrorism” of our homegrown disenfranchised? $14/hour seems a little steep to pay someone with no experience in such matters in today’s economy, after all.
Then Mr. Guiliani, who doubtless spent much time and money educating himself for a hot skill that then disappeared, will be lining up for a job at McDonald’s to help himself stay afloat while he goes back to school to acquire the latest hot skill, all the while accruing debt. Or maybe he'll lose heart and start rummaging for cans himself.
We can only hope that the Mr. Giulianis start to wake people up, after more and more of us end up like him. Yes, Linh Dinh, many of us are being photoshopped out. The question is, will USians ever adjust their glasses and say, hey, that doesn't look like my world? What will be the tipping point?
Nope! They will never see it. Only we few who lived most of our lives BEFORE the beginnings of corporate propaganda news can see the difference. Perspective requires something to measure it against, and the media have brainwashed many, if not most, of the under 40 crowd, the ones who need to take to the streets and demand change. It is their futures that are being compromised.
We older citizens will endure and only sit and talk about it and shake our heads as we "remember the good old days" of true democracy...or at least what we thought was true democracy...but was not, just the current propaganda of the day. True democracy can only exist in a country with an educated, independent thinking,and voting citizenry, not the dumbed down, fuzzy thinking, non-voting youth of today in the US.
The first President I remember was D.D.Eisenhower...who warned us about the Military Industrial Complex and how it could destroy the US...and we ignored him, just as we ignored Carter when he tried to tell us we had to reign in our wasteful living because oil was going to get very expensive in the future. We were fools then, how can we expect the current generation to do any better?
"Where is all that hatred coming from when you're only 11 or 12?"
It comes from their ability to see what passes for education, business practices, and government policies in this avaricious nation which worships domination and ignores injustice while simultaneously seeking distractions.
These kids are emulating the actions of the people with the most power in this "Jurassic Park" of a nation.
There are local stores and then there are truly local stores that are small and local at heart. It has come to my attention that the meaning of "small business" is under siege whether one talks about the "Gallery" or the Koch Brothers. Any business that puts profits at all costs over quality labor with outsourcing to "cheap" labor from other nations as a strong example is unworthy of respect.
P.S.: The restless young and the homeless described in this article should be a wake-up call that nothing is improving in this nation no matter how far most Americans deny the sad truth.
The Gallery is a central city shopping mall. With the flight of big chains out to Bucks County or King-of-Prussia or such, and its convenient location at a busy public transit center, it IS the place for small local retail to locate.
Linh , your my favorite author on Common Dreams . I'm going to buy all 3 of your books soon .
The cold reality is even to get a 10$ an hour job , half the time you have to be bilingual . Seeing job openings that require fluency in Spanish , or Manderin isn't cool when its just a low paying gig . this may be an end to the "speak American " Era of business ...
I don't see it.
(FYI, I agree with the article, and wish more people would read stuff like this, and that we need real human connection to these problems... I just wanted to say something about what exactly I'm supposed to fear.)
Maybe I'm just in a minority segment, but I don't see all the terrible things media and CD commentors tells me I should be seeing.
I read 'liberal' online progressive wires, I watch non-mainstream news shows. I watch and read some MSM stuff, and I still haven't found a good 'conservative' news source that I can stomach to round out my news. In any case, I hear dire predicitions every day, but i don't see or feel them.
I know I was lucky in the way I was raised. I was taught to 'create my own job'. I didn't go to college. I don't have any debt. I also don't have any capital, assets or savings. Or children. I don't believe I'm going to loose my job tomorrow. And even if I did, I believe I can find another one. I hire people because they have a strong work ethic. That's the #1. And that's what's got me work all these years. I'm smart, but I work harder than think.
I see my friends and family, and they are still working and spending. I don't see a difference in their situations, but i do see a difference in their mentality. they all believe its rough out there. and maybe it is. of course it always was. the good times were never that rosy.
Maybe it's different in Chicago. Maybe it's different in the all-black neighborhoods (though the pain there is hardly new). But I seem to see the same amount of homeless. I seem to see the same amount of dissaffected youth.
I know it's out there. intellectually, I know the capitalist's game. I know the chasm between rich and poor, and that 99% of us are actually poor, and the only classes are really Disgustingly Rich, Rich, Poor, and Screwed. I can watch the markets and such just as well as the next guy. I know things were always getting worse, and these days things are getting worse at a faster clip.
Is it because I've known for a long time that the American Dream is a fantasy to ensure control, the real/biggest/most important war is the Class War that's been going on since the begining of civilization? Once you see that, then all today's news in not as much a 'surprise'.
Am I just lucky? Am I not looking? And not to say that things are great, or that we should ever buy into MSM crap, or that we should ever give up on the fight for true global, human equality, justice, freedom and peace, or ever deny that we are only as strong as the weakest among us... but, all commentors here, How Bad is Your Lot? Everything I hear seems to be telling me I should be more Afraid then I actually am.
I hear it all around me. I just don't see it. What's wrong with me?
When I moved to California in the late 1970s, I was at a grocery store buying vegetables alongside an elderly lady. A local neighborhood crazy lady who was homeless came shuffling through and picked up a single apple, which she took to the register. We both watched her sadly and the elderly lady said to me, "You know, you never saw crazy people on the street until Ronald Reagan became governor."
That one sees homeless people at all makes this a very different America than it was before the 1980s, though you may be too young to remember that.
"Denn die einen sind im Dunkeln
"Und die andern sind im Licht
"Und man siehet die im Lichte
"Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht."
["There are some who are in darkness
["And the others are in light
["And you see the ones in brightness
["Those in darkness drop from sight."]
--Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera
I suspect you mean well. I’ve seen several posts lately blaming Reagan on letting the “insane” out to live on the streets. Wasn’t it nicer when you never saw crazy people on the streets? So much cleaner.
Reagan cynically used the egregious unveilings of the anti-psychiatry movement to “free” the inhabitants of the mental institutions, while forgetting the money to be saved from closing such institutions was to be spent helping people live and adjust on the outside.
This is my issue. I am bipolar. If I’d been born two decades earlier, I would have been one of those dumped into a mental institution and kept there, in fetid, inhumane conditions for decades, only to be released to a confusing world with no opportunities other than the dumpster. Who would have hired me if I’d come out of one of those holes in mid-age?
"Crazy" is of course a lay term, and in this context it refers to someone who has no capacity to care for his or her self, a condition which has persisted socially since at least the Middle Ages, probably because most such cases were legally disposed of through infanticide or fatal parental punishment in earlier times. The profession of psychology is particularly prone to hypostatisization, merely naming a condition and making recommendations based on the name alone. In the face of the bottom line considerations that face all society, precisely because capitalism is its motor, the inexorable outcome of those with any infirmity is to receive the least demanding care possible, ultimately in effect dumping all those with illness into a mass grave with the same inexorability as if they had been "liquidated".
I don’t see where you get the idea that crazy in this context “refers to someone who has no capacity to care for his or her self.” The “crazy” women you referred to was buying herself an apple with the little money she’d scrounged up somewhere. A good choice. No doubt she’d found some nest to sleep in. Seems she was taking care of herself as best she could.
I cannot agree that people who can’t care for themselves are thrown in the trash heap. As cut-throat as our society is, we spend all kinds of money on the physically disabled. For instance, this last semester I had a deaf student, who was constantly followed around by a coterie of paid signers and tutors. I gave him a D (he did, after all, work hard with his tutors and hand in most of his assignments. You have no idea what passes for passing these days). He’d been mainstreamed in high school, passing all his English classes with As and one B. His response to his grade? “Exause me, Why I'm got a D in the ENGLISH CLASS?? But I tho that I was passed thid class and I had a been tutor for english!! you know better!!!!”
I’m waiting for the dean to call me on unfairly grading that student. Frankly, I thought I was being kind. He needs to learn the language for his own sake.
On the other hand, people seem outright scared of the mentally ill, and do all they can to push them away, deny them chances, and exacerbate their condition. In graduate school, I had a professor who was denied tenure—the first denied in 30 years in that department, despite the fact that her book on Donne had recently been published by Oxford University Press and she was a good, dedicated teacher. She believes, and I concur, that this was because she’d been detained in a psych ward for four days when she went to an emergency room and calmly asked for a med refill, as her psychiatrist was out of town. The hospital put guards outside her door until they could transfer her to the psych ward. She missed classes and the department found out where she was. Nobody in the department offered her any sympathy, although, when she had needed back surgery, those same people were generous with their flowers and condolences and offers of assistance.
That is how it goes. Keep your mental problems to yourself if you want to keep your job. No wonder so many people throw themselves in the river.
Perhaps you need to spend a bit of time in the less affluent parts of Chicago, you might find that they are worse there.
Certainly things are looking worse where I live...
I know what you mean. I'd say your guess that you're 'lucky' is close to truth. There's probably parts of Chicago, and of American life, that you've just not had cause to experience. I commend your open-mindedness & curiosity much, though _ lots of folks in your boat have just built their fences, are enjoying their lives, and just disimiss any negativity as delusional nihilism from feckless whiners who simply do not try hard enough, and believe that if you have a 'work ethic,' all will be okay _ which is simply no longer true. That's the value of Linh Dinh's columns _ he's providing snapshots of a reality that's still just invisible to many people.
Linh Dinh is simply a powerful and razor-sharp writer who paints a succinct portrait of our life and times. Bitter medicine to take, yet written in a way that is hard to ignore. Thanks Mr. Dihn and keep telling in like it is.
But, this picture is of the City of Brotherly Love. Where's the picture of Bad Ax, Michigan?
It does help to accept that the human condition was never up to much. It was always a sewer. Some are able to stay afloat in the sewer better than others. Occasionally a part of the sewer seems less murky. It certainly helps not to be driven by the chemistry of nature which seeks only the process of replication and generation.Cooperation is the best and most difficult thing to learn.Nature is a beautiful but pitiless. Not to respect and understand her leads to desolation and death. Religions, dynasties, social and financial systems erect themselves over nature and all are subject to time and decay.
In many countries media parrots, land agents and tattered monetarists are fitfully croaking and trying to talk it all up. It won't be talked up because it was never anything new in the first place. Rather the new economic liberalism signaled the death spasms of something very old.
Kiss it all good-bye and start to cooperate.
well said
Great title to this article! Says it all....
"may you live in interesting times"
"I hear it all around me. I just don't see it. What's wrong with me?" writes DustinChicago.
"What's wrong with me?"
Nothing that getting out looking won't cure. Nothing that caring enough to observe the real world, even those parts---especially those parts---beyond one's comfort zone.
I was a virtual rural hick when I relocated to Center City, Philadelphia, in 1999, for employment.
My general appraisal? Never had I imagined so many square miles of ghetto. Never had I seen so many abandoned, burned-out cars. Never had I smelled such yard after yard of underground, urine-soaked subway corridor. And never had I sensed such universal, seething racial tension, ready to explode.
Now add to that ten years of economic repression, job loss, and inexorable hopelessness.
Dinh's brilliant sketch is spot-on.
Surely, there are also some very nice neighborhoods and places to go and walk about in Philly too, right?
Pittsburgh is in the heart of the rust belt, and yes, it has its dilapidated neighborhoods, but on balance, my "general appraisal" is that it is vastly more vibrant and interesting place than the affluent suburban cultural wastelands that I lived in until moving there.
However, aside from the fortunes of a few hyper wealthy corporations - and sports teams and their tax-blackmail stadiums and hockey arenas, things are in decline. The loss of much of our public transportation service is going to send the city into a downward spiral.
Four frictionless juxtapositions to accompany the descent–
"They fired at the hospital from outside and threw grenades over the walls into the courtyard. The patients did not understand what was happening. They started to wander around, singing with their hands in the air."
–(A worker at Rawanda's main psychiatric hospital describing the beginnings of the massacre in April, 1994.)
"This is merely one of the snares that history and its various influences sets for us. But can we escape becoming dizzy? And who can affirm that vertigo does not haunt the whole of existence?"
–(Franz Fanon, "The Wretched of the Earth.")
"Most of all, beware, even in thought, in assuming the sterile attitudes of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, a man who wails is not a dancing bear."
–(Aimé Césaire, "Return to My Native Land.)
"Is not this rather the place where one finishes vanishing?"
–(Samuel Beckett–"The Unnamable.")
Linh might like this article:
Man accused of taking items from Christmas crash victim's casket
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
By Emily Gibb, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
State police arrested a man accused of stealing items during a memorial service Monday evening from the casket of a 17-year-old boy killed in a Christmas Day crash.
The family of Bradley McCombs Jr., of Clymer, Indiana County (PA), told police that Jody Bennett, 37, of Pine Township, Indiana County, took a Game Boy, a Game Boy Light and three games from the open casket during the public visitation at the Rairigh Funeral Home in Montgomery, Indiana County.
Police are charging Mr. Bennett with vandalism, theft, harassment, disorderly conduct and abuse of a corpse. He was arraigned around 1:15 p.m. today and is being held on $15,000 bail.
Police said Mr. Bennett fled after Bradley's family members confronted him.
The Bennetts are family friends with the McCombses and have known each other for many years. Mr. Bennett's aunt, Dianna Bennett, said that Bradley McCombs Sr. posted a message on his Facebook page that "he should have been grieving and something to the effect that Jody Bennett had stolen from his son's casket."
He said he couldn't grieve his son's death because he was too angry, she said.
Ms. Bennett was not at the funeral home on Monday, but heard about it after arriving home from work Monday night.
"I still cannot believe anyone would do anything like this," she said.
Mr. Bennett has a history of alcohol and drug-related charges.
"He even had a brother killed when he was drinking and driving," Ms. Bennett said. "You think that would make him think, but I don't know."
More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
______________________
...Sure, the guy stealing from a casket is bad, but adorning the corpse of a loved one with "a Game Boy, a Game Boy Light and three games" seems an incredibly shallow and crassly commercial way to pay tribute to the memory of someone struck down young and tragically. Surely there are mementos of this kid more significant than the plastic crap computer games he used to play! What a statement on USan culture this makes!
Hey, SaboCat!
one is what one does with one's time...we are in an age where it is quite possible that gaming is one's primary time-consuming activity...one's identity...
I have wondered about this with my own son...with technology so ubiquitous, it is difficult to divert attention to other things, especially things not electronic, or immediate...
how does one laud To Kill A Mockingbird over a midnight store release of Call Of Duty, given all of his friends are gaming, too?
my most successful efforts have been musical...he has made time to play drums and guitar...
the truly sad aspect to your tale is that this gesture, this placing of gameboys into the casket, indicates his family members also see his identity as 'gamer'...
kind of like identifying as a 'tv watcher', or 'seahawk fan'...pretty low bar...
can we come up with a better, higher bar?
In the old days, a dead person - even a young one, was remembered for things like friendships, engagement in civic and community organizations, kindness, compassion, humor, dedication to a cause etc, NOT the toys they played with in life!
But apparently this sort of stuff is becoming more common - probably encouraged by those tacky commercial funeral directors. when a co-worker, who played and was interested in tennis, died in his 40's a few years ago, his doctored-up corpse was adorned with tennis rackets and tennis balls.
Sick.
I better make my family aware that I want NO hang-gliding junk in my casket. I want the peace flag that accompanied me to all the demonstrations, and a copy of the Communist Manifesto in my hands.
The American Dream is a sick joke. Kids, immigrants, poor people believe money can buy anything. I can excuse them. they don't know any better.
The human condition was bad enough when the human animal had something. Some people had a God, some had Mother Earth, some had friends, but everybody had something. Even the contemplative had the mysteries of life to ponder.
Now God is dead, Mother Earth has been so badly used we can't look at her; She used to be so beautiful and now She has been raped so many times that every glimpse of her is an indictment of what we have done. Anybody who has read any psychology at all knows what a lie friendship is.
I had Prostate Surgery in the year 2000. Now I am impotent and incontinent. I used to enjoy working on this farm but now my Arthritis dares me to try sawing up a tree.
Nietzsche says that when your vices are taken from you you can call their absence your virtues. It's true. I live alone in a very nice house that my former wife thought would be hers and no expense was spared in it's construction.
I have many books and not being very bright, I can read a golden oldie and it seems like the first read. I can think. I can write. I dream. I contemplate the mysteries of being with a grateful heart, since I, even I am part of it all.
Thanks for the thoughts. As you point out, there is very little to hang your hat on these days.
Actually, I do not live in a very affluent neighborhood. It's mostly mixed income, lots of renters, and we've had several rapes and murders in the past few years. And for a living I work with non-profits who assist with early education in low-income (read: all-black) neighborhoods. And furthermore, probably why I don’t see a lot might be because I do not own a house or business or have kids.
But the point I was trying to raise is regarding fear and hope. There is a difference between things steadily declining and things surprisingly declining. Very true the posts about the New Deal and other things around that time that, after more suffering than could be ignored, the people took some power and gave birth to the modern ‘middle class’, which of course has been the battle ground in the class war to either improve (if you’re poor) or reverse (if you’re not). None of this is new. What was going on in the last 10 years was going on in the last 80 years. And this cycle has been repeated I would guess since the beginning of civilization. The only thing that seems different, which actually isn’t, is the scale, which has been ever increasing since the start of the Industrial Age.
Which brings me to fear. 10 years ago, this Fear was not the same. Sure there was fear and cynicism. Sure everything that was happening today was happening then. Of course the biggest bubble was not in Housing- where the majority of the middle class invest. And though that might be one big simple symptom, I feel there are others that are just as impactful but not as quantifiable.
I also believe there is a difference between reality (things getting worse on an ever increasing scale) and the Fear Machine (getting better on an ever increasing scale). In Reality, we may be cycling through to a new Great Depression, which hopefully will lead to a new New Deal. The Fear Machine, on the other hand is following its own path. And the fear Machine is not just Fox News and Dick Cheney. It is also all of us. Fear is a virus. Fear and Cynicism are spread not just by those with specific agendas, but regular people either on the street, in the home, or in a sort of media that’s trying to sell you something and it’s reaching a lot of people.
Linh Dinh and other like him are doing a great service by bringing to light the injustice of the world. But sometimes these heralds get more attention by linking themselves (unconsciously I suppose) to the wave of “it’s all going to hell, and that’s new”. I just wish there was a slight change of tone- more like “there are strangers and friends alike, maybe even you yourself, who are suffering and in need, and more and more of you are realizing that it is ok to look at them because you are realizing that they are not really strangers, that even you or your loved ones can end up like that one day soon, and that if you ease the suffering of others you do get a return, not just in good will but also in economics and security. And as you see suffering, do not be afraid, for personally you can do something about the people in need you meet, and there are answers for People to do something about everyone else, just remember history- remember that even though oppression has always been here, so has liberation and populism. There have always been answers of justice to the darkness of tyranny, and though those answers may be small, and the effects may be overturned, that is not your concern. Because the only thing you have control over is what you decide to do next. That’s it. So decided to not let yourself be a slave to another’s interest, but strive to be a benefactor of others’ needs.” Actual Fear might be good in a gun battle, but what has Social Fear ever done for you?
I'm off to read "state of the union"....
Your two pieces are wonderful. I could learn something from it. I'll come back again later and digest it into my brain after I scan through CD for other interesting topics.
To be fair, I should not direct my comments at Linh Dinh, but at voices in general. Linh seems to be thick in the middle of it- really opening his eyes to the pain and the truth. In that situation it is so easy and entirely understandable to get cynical and angry (though Linh seems as balanced as he can be in State of The Union).
Also, he's probably actually talking to more needy than I am talking to (though I do my part too). Maybe we both can merge what I want to say to the suffering to what Linh actually says, and make even more of a difference.
Jesus wasn't just a talker, he was a doer too. (and not the Facist Jesus, but the Hippie Jesus).
tanguero December 29th, 2010 12:43 pm
I think your comment reveals - and conceals - greater truths than its intent. This is an observation: NOT a critisism.
Are you sure 'Philadelphia' is so very far away from 'Palestine'? - Let's talk in five years time!