It's the first day of Summer II. I'm only doing one class this semester, but it's WLIT II, so very dense on the reading. Lighter on the essays. Eh, it's a trade-off.
We went up to Fayetteville yesterday and visited my parents. Also saw Uncle Charger and went to the movies (lots and lots and lots of theaters in Fayetteville, including a massive new stadium theater called the Malco Razorback with a giant fountain in its center, like something out of the Roman Empire, which is where we went). We saw
Midnight in Paris, in one of those tiny little auditoriums that seat like 75 people, all of them exactly like us -- i.e. liberals and probably English professors or at least Art History majors who wish they could live in Paris. We all laughed in delight as Gil, our hero, met one of our old friends after the next. My kid, who was sitting next to me, kept leaning over to whisper to me, confirming her guesses about who each person was. And, when the movie was over, she said, wistfully, "Let's move to Paris."
I wish, kid.
Then we left the theater to go out into the blistering 101 degree Arkansas July, blasting sunlight, a huge field-sized parking lot filled with SUVs, to drive down College Avenue, a highway filled with car dealerships, liquor stores, fast-food shops, and strip malls. The closest we'll ever come to Paris is Paris, Arkansas.
Which is, among other reasons, why
this solemn little apology for our betters and why it isn't right that they pay their share of running this country really got down my neck this morning. Oh, it's
so sad that Mr. and Mrs. Jones can barely make ends meet on $250, 000.00/year -- after, you know, socking away $8000.00/per kid in college savings a year, and investing the maximum amount in their 401(k) accounts, mind you -- they're so poor, what with the high cost of living in Manhattan, they can't afford expensive vaccations, it's tragic.
Though of course if they moved to Texas or Alabama (the horror) they'd have plenty of money, the article adds. But who can actually do that, the article hints.
I can't afford a dentist, much less to sock away $8000.00 for college savings for my kids. ($8000.00/year is my
rent.) I don't have a house. I don't put any money in my 401(k). If you don't count TIAA-CREF, I don't have a 401(k) -- and my university puts money in that, I can't afford to match it. I haven't gone anywhere on a vacation, if you don't count the odd trip up to Fayetteville to see a movie, in almost three years now. And mind you, I count myself well off enough, because I can look around me and see my students, who are living on, probably, a fourth of what I make. They're the actual poor. I'm doing all right, even if I feel kind of desperate toward the end of the month (okay, by the third week in the month, usually, these days).
But it's Mr. and Mrs. Jones we're supposed to feel sorry for?
Shit. The idiots who write these articles don't have a clue.
And neither, frankly, sad as I am to say it, does Woody Allen. Move to Paris? Like that's a choice most people in America even have.
