Finally, here’s what you can do. It is of no consequence to us whether you do it or not, because you will no longer be a threat to anyone. This is only a small gesture of goodwill to a remnant of you who may survive and who may have the chance to start all over — though you will probably repeat the same mistake. We have been students of your climatology for years. I have here a current read-out and prediction of the prevailing wind directions and fallout patterns for the next two weeks. It so happens that the place nearest you which will escape all effects of both blast and fallout is the community of Lost Cove, Tennessee. We do not anticipate a stampede to Tennessee. Our projection is that very few of you here and you out there in radio land will attach credibility to this message. But the few of you who do may wish to use this information. There is a cave there, corn, grits, collard greens, and smoked sausage in abundance.
That is the end of my message. Penny—
DONAHUE: We’re long! We’re long! Heavy! Steve, I’ll get you for this. Oh boy. Don’t forget, folks, tomorrow we got surrogate partners and a Kinsey panel — come back — you can’t win ‘em all—'bye! Grits. I dunno.
AUDIENCE: (Applause)
Cut to station break, Secure Card 65 commercial, Alpo, Carefree Panty Shields, and Mentholatum, then The Price Is Right.
Question: If you heard this Donahue Show, would you head for Lost Cove, Tennessee?
(a) Yes
(b) No
(CHECK ONE)
*Abigail Van Buren, The Best of Dear Abby (New York: Andrews and McMeel, 1981), p. 242.
(9) The Envious Self: (in the root sense of envy: invidere, to look at with malice): Why it is that the Self — though it Professes to be Loving, Caring, to Prefer Peace to War, Concord to Discord, Life to Death; to Wish Other Selves Well, not Ill — in fact Secretly Relishes Wars and Rumors of War, News of Plane Crashes, Assassinations, Mass Murders, Obituaries, to say nothing of Local News about Acquaintances Dropping Dead in the Street, Gossip about Neighbors Getting in Fights or being Detected in Sexual Scandals, Embezzlements, and other Disgraces
EVERYONE REMEMBERS WHERE he was and what he was doing when he heard the news of the Kennedy assassination — or, if he is old enough, Pearl Harbor.
Why?
The self deceives itself by saying that it is natural that such terrible events should be etched in the memory.
It is not so simple.
The fact is that the scene and the circumstances of hearing such news become invested with a certain significance and density which they do not ordinarily possess and with which ordinary events and ordinary occasions contrast unfavorably.
Two such recollections as reported to me:
(1) I was standing outside a grocery store on the corner of St. Charles and Jackson avenues in New Orleans when a stranger came up to me and said that the President had been shot and killed. I can remember noticing that the stranger wore an old-fashioned shirt, the kind with a tab collar and a gold pin which fitted little holes in the tabs and kept the collar snug against the neck. Everything seemed amazingly vivid and discrete. I could even see the threads sewn in the little holes of the man’s tab collar. Then he began to tell me the story of his life. He, too, felt curiously dispensed. I can even remember exactly where I stood on the sidewalk and a sycamore tree growing through a hole in the concrete. I can still see the bark.
Question: Had you noticed the tree before?
No.
Question: Have you noticed it since? No.
(2) I was watching the soap opera As the World Turns on TV. It was a scene between Chris Hughes and Grandpa. A bulletin was flashed on the screen. Bulletin: Shots have been fired into the Presidential motorcade in Dallas. As the bulletin came on, Grandpa was saying to Chris Hughes something like: “Now let’s don’t be too hasty, Chris. I don’t believe Ellen would do such a thing.” I can remember thinking how unimportant the soap opera seemed compared with the events in Dallas.
Question: But before that, the soap opera seemed more interesting than the events in Dallas?
Yes.
Question: And since? Have you resumed watching As the World Turns?
Yes.
Question: During the week following Pearl Harbor, the incidence of suicide declined dramatically across the nation. Was this decline a consequence of
(1) A rise in patriotic fervor and a sense of purpose?
(2) A new sense of interest (e.g., something, even war, is better than nothing. Peace in the 1930s was like nothing)?
A Short Journal Chronicling Certain Events in Our Town
Monday. Everyone is cheerful today. Mr. D—, a well-known judge and gubernatorial candidate, was detected in an act of fellatio with a bellboy in the men’s room of the Roosevelt Hotel during lunch hour. He was arrested by the vice squad. It is on the five o’clock news. Men stop each other in the street, shaking their heads: “Did you hear the awful thing that happened to Judge D—?” “Yes. I don’t believe it. I think it’s political. He was set up.” “Right. Clearly, entrapment.” Telephone lines are buzzing all over town. Housewives stop watching talk shows and soap operas to call each other.
Tuesday. Everyone in town is moderately depressed. Mr. L—, a highly successful attorney, a cheerful and generous man, wins the biggest lawsuit of his career, a ten-million-dollar judgment against A.T.&T. On the same day, he learns that his wife has been awarded the Times-Picayune cup for outstanding service to the community, his son has won a Rhodes Scholarship, and his daughter has been chosen to be Queen of the Comus Ball. His friends congratulate him. “You really hit the jackpot!” they exclaim and turn away with preoccupied expressions. The telephone wires do not hum. Housewives watch more soap operas than ever.
Wednesday. The ex-Premier of France, General de Gaulle, has died and the President of the United States attends his funeral. He looks very solemn and dignified sitting in Notre Dame cathedral. Later he confides to an aide that he enjoys state funerals more than anything he does in Washington or even Camp David because he can relax and let his mind go blank and yet be admired for paying his respects and taking so much trouble when all he has to do is look solemn. And also because there is de Gaulle dead as a duck and here I am alive and kicking.
Questions: Imagine yourself in a place most familiar to you and therefore most nugatory; e.g., standing on the platform of the commuter station at 8:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning waiting for the 8:05 to New York. Or walking across your front yard in Montclair for the eight thousandth time to pick up the morning paper.
Now imagine that in these circumstances you receive a piece of news, either by way of a newspaper headline, by word of mouth from a neighbor, or perhaps by overhearing a radio bulletin from a black youth carrying a Sony CF-520.
In each instance of news, check the correct answer. Hint: Use as your guide your altered perception of your surroundings and any change in mood — e.g., whether, as a result of hearing the news, your front yard becomes visible for the first time since you moved in, or whether it becomes more nugatory than usual; whether your usual morning depression deepens or lifts.
There are four possible answers: (a) The news is unrelievedly bad. (b) The news is putatively bad, that is, news which by all criteria should be bad but in which you nevertheless take a certain comfort. (c) The news is unrelievedly good. (d) The news is putatively good, that is, news which by all criteria ought to be good but which you find secretly depressing.