Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Saturday, March 05, 2005
With sincere apologies to rats everywhere...
Mickey, you paint a very good picture of one of the evils of Capitalism. Workers in this country are terrorized at the thought of loosing a job. I know a man who was fired because he took a day off to attend his father’s funeral. I know a single mother who was not allowed to leave work when her house was flooding. I could go on for hours on this topic. Workplace terror by bosses is a common occurance. I predict that things will get much worse....It helps to think of that old quote from Kahil Gibran (maybe) “THEY DEEM ME MAD BECAUSE I WILL NOT SELL MY DAYS FOR GOLD. I DEEM THEM MAD BECAUSE THEY THINK MY DAYS HAVE A PRICE”. That is one of my favorite quotes but it is not of much comfort if you have a hungry child and no money.
Posted by rosemarie on from 03/05 at 05:33 PMNothing is better than contempt for the wage-eargning middle classes. Especially sensitive is your indictment of what occupies their attention on the train--"tabloid newspapers and romance novels and blaring iPod devices.” I imagine Mickey Z sits on the train reading TOLSTOY, or maybe LUKACS.
Stupid workers! If only they’d wake up earlier, or buy fewer iPods, or better yet, quit their jobs and be a blogger--just like Mickey Z!!!
Posted by Jordan Segall on from Chicago 03/05 at 06:07 PMAh, the ultimate bourgeois hypocrite, slamming the middle-class while reveling in a grant from the Puffin Foundation, adunct of the pro-Kerry Nation Institute. Ah, Mickey Z., slammer of those who care about going to work and making sufficient money to live, while he sends out e-mails like this:
“I’m not too proud to ask for help...so (if you have the time or interest)
here are 10 ways you can help SDS out there to counter the endless
propaganda masking the realities of war.1. Buy the book. Read it. Tell others about it. When people around you
(inevitably) bring up related current events, let them know about the book.
2. Give the book as a gift this holiday season. Give the gift of critical
thought.
3. If you like SDS, go to Amazon and write a review (5 stars would be nice).
You can quickly link to Amazon at my site: http://www.mickeyz.net.
4. Request it at bookstores and libraries you visit. If they don’t have it,
ask them to order a copy and follow-up if you can.
5. Suggest it as material for reading groups.
6. Write a letter to the editor about it and ask publications and/or
websites to review it.”[etc.]
Pathetic. Hypocritical. Sad.
Posted by Ludwig von Gergen on from 03/05 at 07:59 PMWow, Jordan Segall’s comment is the comment I have been waiting for, well maybe all my life. Who is this guy? Director of the Tabloid/Romance-Novel/I-Pod Anti-Defamation League, heretofore known as the TRNIPADL, and how did he find his unhappy way to your website? Actually, I kind of like Tabloids myself, especially the try-to-pass-as-newspaper sort you have in New York City, yet I find it unfathomable that anyone could be in any way offended by your nice little editorial-story of the subway commute race. Well, I suppose all your fateful rat readers will be offended, as my new hero Russell Means would say: they too were put here by the Great Mystery, but Segall does not seem to be of the rodent variety. Least he does not admit it. Perhaps he is ashamed of his species. If that is the case I really feel for him. Still, I am willing to take Segall at his word and believe he is as human as I am, which is let us say, as human as the next human. With that in mind, I wish Mr. Segall and the TRNIPADL good luck with future efforts.
Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/05 at 08:06 PMI just reread the article for the 5th time. Every time I read it , I get something new from it. This time It came across as a comment on the lack of humanity we all see in our daily lives. Thank you for reminding us of that, Mickey. It is making me think about the Kitty Genovese murder, if I am remembering correctly. Also, again I say, Capitalism is anti-family, anti-humanitarian, anti-justice, anti-labor,etc. I am glad that I have stopped drinking the cool ade.
Posted by rosemarie on from 03/05 at 08:20 PMObviously I was wrong, not one but two readers have found reasons to be upset with Mikey Z’s story. Let me get this straight. Mickey Z is “the ultimate bourgeois hypocrite”, “pathetic” and “sad” because he is critical of commuters who put getting to work on-time ahead of their mental health and because he published a book and wants people to buy it and read it. I’m sorry Ludwig but I really don’t get it. I suppose you must be one of those people on the subway rushing to get to work, and apparantly you have plenty of leftover angst after your commute is done. Unless of course you are somehow responding to Mickey’s story from a laptop on the subway. I don’t know enough about the internet to know if that is even possible, but whatever the case may be you really do need to cool down. I too commute to work. Hell, I drive a fucking car, and sometimes I am late and sometimes I am a little stressed out by this combination of sins. Nevertheless, I read Mickey’s piece without taking it too personally. Let’s all try to be friends and leave the road/subway rage behind because all this is nasty name-calling is making me “sad”.
Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/05 at 08:30 PMI too went back and re-read Mickey’s piece. I forgot all about the poor sick fellow commutator who started this round of name-calling. I have changed my mind. I don’t want to be friends with Ludwig von Gergen or Jordan Segall. Obviously the tyranny of work does terrible things to people, but to use this ugly little story of man’s inhumanity to man as a launching pad to attack yet another human who is simply trying to make a living and make a difference along the way, well this goes beyond the pale. My initial response was simply an excuse to say something silly, but after reading Rosemarie’s comments and reading again Mikey’s story I realize we are treading upon some very important points and the response this has generated from von Gergen is indeed ugliness for the sake of ugliness. On second look Jordan Segall’s comments seem perhaps not so funny too. Mickey does not show “nothing but contempt” for anyone, much less “wage-earning middle classes”. In fact, I don’t think he said anything about anybody’s class. There is no doubt that quite of few of those poor souls, ruining their health, both mental and physical, as they rush hurdy-gurdy to beat the mythological clock are members of the working poor. Mickey’s story illustrates in subtle ways several varities of work related evils and these two negative responses place an exclamation mark on the lessons he has told. Thanks to everyone involved for helping me to understand this.
Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/05 at 09:14 PMI just got home from hosting a monthly gathering (along with Michele) at a local diner in Astoria. We invite tons of people who have nothing in common except knowing one or both of us. By the end of the night, a community has formed...the possibilities are endless.
I see that while I was out, some new voices have chimed in here. While I can definitely see how my post could be misconstrued as aiming contempt at my co-commuters, I think it’s fairly obvious that was not my intent...and it’s self-serving to ignore it. I appreciate Glen and Rosemarie offering support and, more importantly, for taking so much time to consider my words.
The negative comments are not surprising or particularly unique (although I fail to see any correlation between the e-mail I sent out about my book and this post). If one questions any institution, e.g. standard American diet, Western medicine, renting oneself out as a wage slave...the loudest voices of disapproval are typically from those most damaged by that institution. Interesting...to say the least.
I don’t expect or want everyone to agree with me...but why even waste your energy with personal attacks?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 03/05 at 10:56 PMWhen you don’t like the message and fear it might be true, attack the messenger. Under all the denial, truth still niggles away. These people are actually attacking themselves. It is a mistake to respond in kind.
JimPosted by Jim Shanahan on from 03/06 at 12:15 AMI’m going to take a pass on Glen Thrasher’s comment, which was, err—how can I phrase this delicately? Inchoate. Same goes for Jim Shanahan, who just doesn’t get it (“denial”?)
As for you, Mickey Z, there are two possibilities. First, you may have meant your post solely as a critique of capitalist time-discipline. If so, then the whole thing is an exercise in self-aggrandizing redundancy. E.P. Thompson covered that in 1967—and much more deftly to boot.
But come on. Your post wasn’t just about time-discipline, false consciousness, or anything quite so high-minded. It was also about just how superior you feel to all those “rats,” too stupid to take their heads out of the tabloids and too brainwashed to skip work to hang out with Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Z at an Astoria diner. Your smugness neuters whatever critical potential your essay might have had. And let me tell you, there wasn’t much to begin with…
Posted by Jordan Segall on from Chicago 03/06 at 04:45 PMSkip work? If only…
Again: There’s always room for disagreement and debate. Segall, on the other hand, would rather position himself as the only one who “gets it.” So be it.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 03/06 at 05:04 PMI certainly am glad Mr. Segall decided to be err-delicate or I might have gotten my feelings hurt.
Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/06 at 06:05 PMJust sitting here licking my wounds and wondering if perhaps Mr. Segall was refering to Thompson’s “Making of the English Working Class.” If so it was published in February of 1966 and at 864 pages, I should hope it was more “deft” than Mickey’s several paragraphs. Must every sentence we type here necessarily meet the standards of one of the greatest political historians of the 20th century? Sorry to be harping on this but just before I came home from work to discover I was “inchoate”, I had a confrontation with about seven big guys who were making a ton of noise in front of my peaceful little bookstore. They called me a “pussy” and told me to “call my daddy” (he’s been dead since 1984 actually). All the while I continued to scream at them at the top of my lungs and tell them to “get the #### away from my store”. I know this event and this silly exchange of views over the internet have nothing to do with each other, but it’s just been one of those afternoons.
Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/06 at 06:42 PMI am sorry to hear about your encounter with the large men, but by relating it here you’re not exactly defending yourself well against the “inchoate” charge. As for your snide remark about the publication date, I was referring to E.P. Thompson’s “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism,” which, at 41 pages, is one of the most compact and beautifully-argued pieces ever printed. Positively *deft*.
I never positioned myself as the only one who “gets it,” though I appreciate that you’re putting words in my mouth. If I’m not mistaken, the only person I said doesn’t “get it” was Jim Shanahan, and you have to admit--he didn’t.
But come on, Mickey. You’re accusing me of positioning myself above the fray? That’s ironic, since you haven’t actually responded to anything I’ve said.
Posted by Jordan Segall on from Chicago 03/06 at 10:15 PMMickey Z. is never acknowledged in the major history journals! An outrage! We should demand a FrontPage Symposium on this!
Posted by Outraged Scholar on from 03/06 at 10:57 PMI will have to read “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism”. I don’t know that short work and it sounds wonderful. As for defending myself against your “charge”, I did not know I had to. I was just trying to explain that I was having a bad day and (again) trying to put a little humor into what is from your end a completely humorless exchange. Do you always take yourself so seriously? Perhaps the reason my thoughts sound so tentative is that yours are so implacable.
Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/06 at 11:28 PM“Time-Work...” became a chapter in Making of the English Working Class. Your inability to recognize it suggests you haven’t read “Making of...,” either, and are more familiar with its publication statistics than its actual analysis and content.
Posted by Ludwig von Gergen on from 03/07 at 04:40 AMOn the issue....What is it in our culture that makes so many of us behave in such a mean spirited way, as Mickey describes in his article? Why are so many workplaces hostile to the workers? Why are so many of us living in a state of fear? Most of us probably have answers to the questions I ask but no one has a solution. How can we start to fix things? Mickey’s article reminded me of many things...the movie “Office Space” and also Barbara Ehrenright’s book, “Nickle and Dimed”.
Posted by rosemarie on from 03/07 at 08:07 AMmickey z, you wrote that these people are stupid ("few of my co-commuters ever plan ahead”, etc) and “deluded”. one is a “miscreant” and a “boor”. they are all “unaware of how much they have in common” and read only tabloids, romance novels, or listen to their ipods (presumably the latest trashy pop music?). you then claim (#8) that it should be “fairly obvious” that the article is not meant to be contemptuous.
obviously, it is not obvious to me. i have reread the article many times and it still bothers me.
i am at a loss to understand what these awful negative stereotypes are doing on this web site. public transport - and trains in particular - are amazing cauldrons filled with every kind of people. but all you saw when you wrote this article were negatives - wage slaves, unable to chill out at 9am because they’re too weak to tell their bosses to shove their jobs up their bottoms, drooling over their ipods and mills’n’boon while simultaneously worrying about the yelling-at they’re going to get when they arrive late for work.
we all know it’s not this simple.
you write as if you have no sympathy for the predicament of any of your fellow commuters; you assume the worst of them all. i find it difficult to believe that this is how you feel, but i also find it difficult to read any other way.
i’ve really enjoyed a lot of your writing - but this piece really leaves me cold.
Posted by mark on from melbourne, australia 03/07 at 09:43 AMNo. I have not read “Making of the English Working Class”, though I have a copy in my collection and (along with about 3000 other books) I plan to get to it one of these years. Other than working, I do nothing really but read, about 2 or 3 titles per week and yet there will always be more books I still need to read than books I have already read. I will never catch up and I will never run out and that seems to me, a good thing. What about you, Ludwig von Gergen, have you read them all yet? I was not actually familiar with the publication statistics of Thompson’s classic. I just thought 1967 sounded slightly off and so I looked it up.
Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/07 at 09:51 AMMark, this piece is actually a very short excerpt from a book I wrote several years ago. Thus, out of context, I will admit it loses its satirical edge. I had hoped that those who have read more of my work would recognize this. Maybe I was wrong.
Perhaps one day, when the complete book is published, I’ll be “honored” by “major history journals.” (Btw, Luddy, your use of different names but the same IP address is a nice touch.)
That said, it’s a delicate balance when commenting on “society.” Obviously, there are many factors that contribute to the scene I wrote about and we peons are not entirely to blame. As a lifetime subway serf, high school grad, mostly blue collar worker, I’m not looking down my nose at anyone...BUT all of us, to some degree, buy into this mentality and some will even defend it to the death. That, I feel, is worthy of critique.
Contempt was never my aim. I was hoping for something closer to Rosemarie’s response: A discussion on such issues… without personal attacks.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 03/07 at 10:19 AMRosemarie, a possible solution.
Our society is structured as an hierachy and hierachies only operate by way of coercion. This is evidenced by the fear Mickey described. It is no way to live and most people (espacially on the bottom) know this. The hierachy is established on the foundation of the banking/monetary system. This system underpins all the corruption we see around us. This needs to be understood and then changed.
To understand it and some of it’s ramifications read “The Truth In Money Book” available from Amazon, at least.
To change this banking system, the character of government needs to be changed and to do that you can take a leaf out of the Neocon’s book. Don’t worry about changing parties in power but focus on changing Congressmen and women. Make it personal based on what legislation they pass and don’t pass. Imagine all that energy that went into putting Democrats who signed off on the Patriot Act being put into evicting them and their Repub counterparts. Imagine a Congress full of lots of new faces from both parties who owed their position their to progressive activists and who also knew that they didn’t follow the wishes of their electors that they would not be supported come next election.
Imagine an administration that would have a huge job in front of it corrupting and compromising a whole new batch of representatives.Jim
Posted by Jim Shanahan on from 03/07 at 09:52 PMI found this article in the “Atlanta Journal Constitution” and I think it speaks to some of the issues we have been addressing here. Apparantly there is a word limit on posts here, so I am posting it in two parts. Thanks to Karen Heller: -------
A plague upon our culture’s angry cowards/
By Karen Heller/
Inquirer Columnist.
His name is Andy. Just Andy. He’s upset and angry and so he calls on Sunday, when he suspects no one will answer, and lets it rip.The column is dumb and meandering and so, by inference, is its author. Yet he starts to agree with the premise, while revealing more misogyny than is good for the workplace or romance, unless one favors masochists.
Then he hangs up. No number, no last name.
Alas, Andy is not alone, simply this week’s sweetheart. He’s average in such hostility, matched only by his cowardice.
Rudeness is epidemic in our culture, and anger lashes out at the slightest provocation. E-mail and voice mail, designed to ease life, have given rise to malice with little forethought.
Consequently, machines complicate matters, not technically but emotionally. Eruptions arrive without warning from strangers, like the hand rising from below in Carrie. There’s rage in the machines.
Historically, anonymity served as a gentle cloak to mask affection. Consider the misunderstood letters in Twelfth Night or Cyrano or Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner.
E-mail and voice mail, though, behave like bullets from a masked assailant. There’s a legion of folks nursing huge wrath with too much time on their hands, waiting to correct, judge or attack - or, if they’re feeling particularly generous, all three. Such missives are rarely kind. These days, no one wants to do anything nice without credit.
Everybody’s mad
Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/08 at 08:14 AMIf it is not already obvious I am guilty of some of Heller’s charges in life and in my posts. Also some of you might have noticed that I don’t know how to create paragraph breaks on these posts. If anyone is actually still reading this and wants to tell me I would appreciate it. Here is part two of Karen Heller’s piece:------What gives? Life is better for most Americans, yet we’re furious. Not all attacks are surreptitious; some assaults are full-frontal, though the tendency is to strike at strangers. A woman flips the bird because she’s restless to enter a store, ignorant that manners dictate the person exiting takes precedence.
Politics utilizes the polarizing language of war, each side sure the other has launched a first offensive, which renders conciliation impossible. And, as I’ve noted before, all those chest-thumping ribbons and flags are partially rooted in fury and scorn. There’s no need to boast when you’re feeling swell.
There’s class warfare. We’re mad at the rich, though obsessed with aping their affectations. Schadenfreude is in full flower. Meanwhile, there’s contempt for the poor, whom some wish would simply disappear.
Indignation isn’t confined to large issues; minuscule infractions set it off. We’re impatient and angry, every slight perceived as a conspiracy. Each day brings fresh indignation. Hooked on speed, people harrumph about waiting in short lines. Drivers behave as though other vehicles are the enemy. Someone cuts you off and it’s the thrown gauntlet welcoming a road duel, an assault on one’s independence - or worse.
Hostility as entertainment
Complaint is a national sport. People get mad over garbage. I mean, absolute nonsense. A reader once attacked me in the most venomous, personal way imaginable because I had the temerity to criticize - get this - a television show.
We live in a state of vexation, despite so many improvements in technology and efficiency. Our culture of dissonance rewards hostility as entertainment. Acrid disaffection is perpetuated on talk radio and cable news, where interrupted shouting is accepted as discourse. Sports boils down to grievances and thugs.
Television thrives on loutish behavior and dismissal, being booted off the island, the stage, out of the boardroom. It’s humiliation as theater, snarkiness as creativity. The nastier the terminator, the brighter his astral burn.
Fiction is nothing without villains. What we’ve done is fill our daily lives with enemies everywhere, real and perceived, from menacing dictators to the other political party to the guy behind us on the expressway riding our tail.
We’ve become amateur pugilists because combative behavior is the accepted norm. We feel deserving of more, but no one’s offering handouts. Louts behave spontaneously out of anger, then let others deal with the consequences, mopping up the mess. We’re all maids to their muck and hostility.
The only response is to take a yoga class or get a massage, because the truth is you often have to pay strangers to be nice to you these days.
There are fewer rewards for civility, and manners have completely evaporated. I’m telling you, e-mail and voice mail, aired attacks and flipped birds at strangers are easy, mindless, and cowardly. It’s kindness that takes work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/08 at 08:17 AMhello glen,
to insert a paragraph break just type: <p>. you can insert a line break with <br>.
thank you for your reply mickey Z, i’m glad i was missing something.
cheers,
mark
Posted by mark on from melbourne, australia 03/08 at 09:37 AMJim...I agree with some of what you said but just changing those in Congress is not always effective. Something happens to otherwise good people once they get to Washington. In Vermont the voters elected a socialist to Congress and now they cannot even get him to bring up an Impeachment Inquiry resolution.----Glen...yes, most of us are angry. That’s a good thing. The problem is that we show our anger and hostility to the wrong people. We should be angry at those who are doing the killing but that is perceived as being unpatriotic. When the professor used the “E” word, most got angry at him, instead of those who are responsible for the killing. Words make people mad, 100,000+ dead bodies just don’t matter. A culture that can trivialize killing this much is in a terminal state of decay.
Posted by rosemarie on from 03/08 at 01:24 PMRosemarie - Something does in deed happen to them when they start to exercise power. Power is a drug. It affects the mind in exactly the same way as any other drug of addiction. As with other drugs, the brain is affected first. Perception changes. Obtaining more of the substance of the addiction (power in this case) becomes paramount. Everything will be sacrificed to it. Power becomes pathological. They are all quite literally as mad as hatters (opologies to any hatters out there).
My suggestion was not meant to be the final solution (now that rings a distant bell) but rather , something that can be done to alleviate the problems and that can be acted on now without changing laws or the structure. Toss ‘em out soon as they go mad. Party loyalty works against democracy. Actually, political parties hijack democracy, period.Posted by Jim Shanahan on from 03/09 at 02:11 AMGood post, Glen. Thanks very much.
JimPosted by Jim Shanahan on from 03/09 at 02:13 AMTo Mark in Melbourne, That seems to work. I am learning as I go. Only this past November did I get internet access at home. Thanks much for the help.
Posted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/09 at 02:53 AMOr maybe it does not work. The break shows up on the “Live Comment Preview” but once I hit submit it is gone. I suppose it does not matter enough to be wasting space and time here. Thanks anyway. I will figure it out if I really need to.
thanksPosted by Glen Thrasher on from Atlanta, GA 03/09 at 02:57 AMThis might be slightly off topic but I think that it is important. Last night on the Bill Maher show, Ward Churchill said,”...The government does not kill anybody.” Everyone who visits this site knows that, but I believe that it might be the single most important message that has been ignored by most other people. The clarity of Churchill’s continuing message is inspiring. The Left continues to blame Bush and the government. The real problem is us, not the U.S. If we, the mass of citizens in the U.S., had been good world citizens those 100,000+ would not have been slaughtered in Iraq. It says a lot about who we are, when so many have been silent during this holocaust...and worse yet, recent polls show that roughly 50% of us would support the use of large nuclear weapons.
Posted by rosemarie on from 03/09 at 08:25 AMWhere is everywhere?
Posted by sexspace on from 07/30 at 03:58 PM
Next entry: The Buddhists say:
Previous entry: Sites for sore eyes
Copyright © 2005-2007 Mickey Z.
