"I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
Here, with a typically British bluntness, is one father's reproach to his children. Last year, after what must have been a doozy of a family weekend, a retired Royal Navy officer sent the following email to his children. From The Telegraph:
Dear All Three
With last evening's crop of whinges and tidings of more rotten news for which you seem to treat your mother like a cess-pit, I feel it is time to come off my perch.
It is obvious that none of you has the faintest notion of the bitter disappointment each of you has in your own way dished out to us. We are seeing the miserable death throes of the fourth of your collective marriages at the same time we see the advent of a fifth.
We are constantly regaled with chapter and verse of the happy, successful lives of the families of our friends and relatives and being asked of news of our own children and grandchildren. I wonder if you realise how we feel — we have nothing to say which reflects any credit on you or us. We don't ask for your sympathy or understanding — Mum and I have been used to taking our own misfortunes on the chin, and making our own effort to bash our little paths through life without being a burden to others. Having done our best — probably misguidedly — to provide for our children, we naturally hoped to see them in turn take up their own banners and provide happy and stable homes for their own children.
Fulfilling careers based on your educations would have helped — but as yet none of you is what I would confidently term properly self-supporting. Which of you, with or without a spouse, can support your families, finance your home and provide a pension for your old age? Each of you is well able to earn a comfortable living and provide for your children, yet each of you has contrived to avoid even moderate achievement. Far from your children being able to rely on your provision, they are faced with needing to survive their introduction to life with you as parents.
Wow. It winds up:
I can now tell you that I for one, and I sense Mum feels the same, have had enough of being forced to live through the never-ending bad dream of our children's underachievement and domestic ineptitudes. I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a REALISTIC plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about. I don't want to see your mother burdened any more with your miserable woes — it's not as if any of the advice she strives to give you has ever been listened to with good grace — far less acted upon. So I ask you to spare her further unhappiness. If you think I have been unfair in what I have said, by all means try to persuade me to change my mind. But you won't do it by simply whingeing and saying you don't like it. You'll have to come up with meaty reasons to demolish my points and build a case for yourself. If that isn't possible, or you simply can't be bothered, then I rest my case.
I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed.
Dad
Is this guy a monster? Or is he Father of the Year? His daughter has a thought, also from The Telegraph
Yesterday one of his daughters admitted that she had needed a “kick up the backside”. Emily Crews-Montes, 40, said: “He wouldn’t retract what he said, and nor should he. In no way would I ask him to apologise. Fundamentally, I couldn’t have a great quarrel with what he wrote. I accept it was too harsh..."
She said her father’s email did not upset her because she had already begun to turn her life around when she received it in February. She had set up a business and had started translating a French self-help book into English.
“I had already done what he told me to do. I had already given myself a kick up the backside.” She admitted spending “many years underperforming”, partly because her father’s uncompromising stance left her with little self-confidence.
His daughter, in fact, was the one who published the email, with her father's permission, last weekend.
You've all probably seen the YouTube mash-ups of the famous scene from the film Downfall, which chronicles the last days of Hitler's Reich. In that scene, a berserk Hitler reacts to bad news from the front.
So, I'm thinking: what if we replaced the address of that email -- the "All Three" children of the disappointed retired Royal Navy officer Nick Crews -- with, say, some other groups who need a good stiff dressing down. Obama voters, maybe? The Romney campaign advisors? Anyone else come to mind?
Because the end of the story is a kind of good news, isn't it? "I had already done what he told me to do," his daughter says. "I had already given myself a kick up the backside."
Thought experiment: what if our next presidential candidate delivered a touch of Captain Crews to an electorate which richly deserves it?
He'd probably lose, of course. But it would be satisfying.
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Comments:
Dec '11
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
My goodness! This story could definitely provide lots and lots of additional material for The Long View.
May '10
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
It would be satisfying. But it will be a winning strategy IF things go as badly as so many (of us) predicted.
Mar '11
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
I suppose one would like to take this in a humorous fashion Mr. Long but I cannot help but find it profoundly depressing.
So... now in the position of being forced to hope it is all some amusing hoax.
Edited on November 29, 2012 at 5:31amNov '12
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
Would an American naval officer be able to write that well?
May '12
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
I do take offense at the assumption that there is something uniquely American at not being able to write a clear, cogent and yet complex sentence.
Many Americans are inadequately skilled at composing a sentence. So are many Britons. And many Americans are simply not interested in improving their writing skills. The same applies to many Britons.
But surely you have seen sufficient evidence here on Ricochet that there are Americans who have made the effort to learn how to compose a cogent, clear and complex sentence.
You paint with too broad a brush, Dex Quire.
Jul '10
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
He may have been harsh, but sometimes love requires telling someone the truth even if it will hurt them. You're not doing them any favors in the long run if you lie to them to spare their feelings and help prolong the damage they're doing to their lives.
Jan '11
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
When I first read it, I thought it must be from Prince Philip.
Nov '12
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
Ahoy Edward Smith!
I was just asking...not painting...a bit-tongue-in-cheek at that...forgive a bumbling newcomer's faux pas...of course I agree with you that this is the place for cogency and clarity...
Dec '11
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
Kim Jong-un is one of the most depressing subjects ever, but I thoroughly enjoy the skewering he receives in NR. I'm just suggesting above story has similar potential...
Jul '10
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
I applaud Captain Crews for his frankness, but I cannot condone it. Even a handwritten letter would be more appropriate. The choice of medium--e-mail--is too impersonal for such a discussion.
And it should be a discussion, preferably face-to-face, though it is difficult not to let emotions get the better of us in such situations.
May '10
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
Dex Quire - An American Naval officer would know to capitalize the "n."
Sep '10
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
That was a great letter. I posted it to my FB, and commented that I wish more delayed adulthood Gen Xers would receive letters like that.
i love how he said their problems seem to be mostly "copulation related".
May '11
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
I was struck by this line,
I mean really, that would be like translating a British Cookbook into French.
Maybe she is not making the best business decisions, but at least she is trying.
Mar '11
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
I should like to think so.
Though I will say, the British do have a particularly felicitous turn of the phrase: here delightful in its precision, there acute with understated condescension.
May '10
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
It's a horrible letter. No wonder his children grew up to be underachievers.
Still. If it doesn't destroy them, maybe it will help.
May '10
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
I agree with katievs and Chris O. -- I find little to applaud in the letter. As a naval officer he should know that responsibility begins at the top and if his children do nothing but whine to their parents it is from years and years of learning this communication style. As their father he is far from blameless in whatever their shortcomings might be, and if he can't deliver this message in person and be prepared to receive the blowback, then he ought never to have delivered the message in the first place. It is the current rage on FB to applaud harsh generational criticism such as this, but I find it goes too far. Much too far.
Jul '10
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
This is what a father does. My youngest daughter has not spoken to me in two years. I wrote a more preemptive series of e-mails than this officer. Sadly her life is far worse than I feared. She had no frame of reference for my warning but she is gaining one.
The only question is will destruction out run knowledge. Sound familiar?
Sep '10
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
As someone who has read Theodore Dalrymple's musings on the rise of the British Underclass for over a decade and as someone with a close relative who exhibited far worse behavior and pathologies than these folks, I admire the verve without necessarily condoning the intent.
Jun '10
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
Dear American Electorate,
I am bitterly disappointed in you. I am disappointed on so many points it is difficult to know where to begin but several stand-outs come to mind.
First, is it possible that you really do not know enough about economics (that would be the function of money in your life and the lives of people you claim to care about) to understand what represents basic good will towards men? If so, this is much like fish not knowing about water. But the evidence appears to indicate that you are fish that don't know water.
Second...
Sep '10
Re: "I am Bitterly, Bitterly Disappointed"
A rejoinder I over heard yesterday: "All's well that Broadwell."