Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
I’ve been grumpy lately. Really grumpy. I’ve got one of those debilitatingly severe colds that doesn’t seem to want to get much better. I’m not looking for sympathy, but I mention it because I’m hopeful it’s partially responsible for my reaction when I re-watched the 1942 classic film, Mrs. Miniver, earlier today. Greer Garson won an Academy Award for her wonderful portrayal of the quietly brave title character who led her family through the dark days of World War II. The war was seen not on the battlefields of Europe, but through the lives of the people who resided in the small English town where the Minivers lived. The strength of character and the resolve and the quiet dignity of Mrs. Miniver and those around her was incredibly moving. But it got me wondering about today’s America and whether that strength of character, that resolve and that quiet dignity still exist. Do we have what it takes to make it through a really dark period? Do we really believe there are ideals and institutions worth making terrible sacrifices for? Can we really come together as a people to resist a terrible outside force?
My swollen head is truly worried about the answers to these questions. We seem soft and spoiled. We seem more connected to our communications devices than to the real world around us. The traditions, ideals and institutions that typically bind a people are under figurative attack as never before, and one has to wonder how they would fare under an actual attack. I know there was a burst of patriotism following the September 11th atrocities, but it didn’t seem to take long for political cynicism and expediency to begin to tear at us. Would the Miniver families of today be more willing to trade their way of life for peace and quite and uninterrupted satellite TV?
The world always looks a little darker when seen through swollen, watery eyes, so I hope those among you with clear heads and clear sinuses can say something comforting before I take another dose of NyQuil.
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Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
I feel the same way. It's not just your cold.
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
Maybe I'll take 4 oz. tonight.
Oct '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
Suffering from a persistent cold myself, Pat. Thus, I don't think I can say anything of comfort other than "misery loves company".
Dec '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
Pat, the prescription is old and well-tested: Take a hat, a glass, and a bottle of whisky to your bedside. Hang the hat on the foot of your bed. Get into bed. Pour yourself two fingers of whisky and drink it. Repeat that last step until you see two hats. Go to sleep, and you'll wake up cured.
Jul '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
Would the Miniver families of today be more willing to trade their way of life for peace and quite and uninterrupted satellite TV?
No way I'm trading my sacred American heritage for basic cable, man. But throw in HBO, ESPN and the Monster Truck Channel and you got a deal.
Oct '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
A somewhat more cheerful thought: in a couple of weeks, we Texans will be celebrating the 175th anniversary of our independence. I'd like to think that the grit and determination of my forbears has lasted through the ages and is shared by enough Americans to bring us back from today's abyss.
Jan '11
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
If even the inestimable Pat Sajak can't find a silver lining, or at least a funny one, then we are all well and truly screwed. Get well soon . . . please.
P.S.: Any word on when IBM might field a computer capable of spinning the Wheel?
Edited on Feb 19, 2011 at 8:03pmMay '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
It works much better if you put little umbrellas in it, Pat. Nyquiladas, they're called.
So glad you're back. My favorite name drop. One of the glories of Ricochet is to be able to say "well, I was talking to Pat Sajak yesterday, and he said..." They somehow are at a loss for response.
Sep '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
Pat, what Claire said along with 6,000 IUs of Vitamin D till you're better and then 3,000 IU if your daily sunshine intake is adequate.
Jul '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
Pat, you can call me a cockeyed optimist, but I believe we Americans still have it in us to stand tall in a crisis, the way our parents and grandparents did in the early part of last century. Maybe it's because we're fat and happy right now that we seem incapable of Miniveresque fortitude. The threats we face in the world are so amorphous, diffuse, and indirect that, to many of us going about our mundane lives, they don't seem real.
Maybe those who criticized President Bush for not asking Americans to make bigger, more meaningful sacrifices for the War on Terror were right. I don't know. And certainly there are many among us who would sneer gratefully if America, as they see it, "got what we deserved". Still, even though most plain folks don't give a lot of thought to the big questions when times are good, never fear: when times get bad -- really bad -- they'll be ready. And they'll make you proud.
May '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
Go watch the footage of Andrew Breitbart et. al. in Madison today. I was a student there once upon a time when the signs all said "Free Karl Armstrong." Yup, support the murderer, forget his victim.
But things HAVE changed. The American Majority rally didn't have the president and OFA, SEIU, AFL-CIO, money as support behind them.They carried no fake notes from doctors so they could evade the responsibility of doing what they say they won't be paid enough to do as those "teachers" were. Americans came out and said, "enough." For every person there, there were many who would have loved to march with them, but have to WORK for a living. They believe in being productive and faithful to their work ethic.
Fear not. As Yamamoto once said, "I fear that all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant." Obama woke the producers in this nation up. And they are "mad as hell, and they are not gonna take it anymore."
May '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
I'm with Keith and Peter. I think there's still a vast number of people in this country who have what it takes to weather tough times. I'm sure people in the Depression thought all was lost and couldn't seem to find a ray of light. But they hung through. We will, too.
Plus, these TEA party people and new GOP majority in Congress make me pretty darn cheerful.
May '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
You think Mrs. Miniver is discouraging. Try the Scarlet and the Black. Or How Green was my Valley? The Winslow Boy can plunge me into deep despair.
We are far gone in corruption, I fear.
And yet, and yet, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:
"There lives the dearest freshness
deep down things."
My other great consolation comes from Isaiah: "God's arm is not too short to save."
May '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
Best sign at the rallies today: Stop leeching, start teaching.
That had to sting.
Had to pop their balloons a bit, don't you think? Make them suspect they might be on the wrong side after all?
Sep '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
I'm with Keith and Peter on this. Remember the passage in Tolkien's The Return of the King in which Merry the hobbit sees Eowyn standing alone against the Black Captain: "... suddenly the slow-kindled courage of his race awoke." We're a lot like Tolkien's hobbits, fat and happy. But while the courage of our people may be slow to wake, we have it still.
Edited on Feb 19, 2011 at 8:55pmFeb '11
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
If you can have a tea party in San Francisco with 1000 people marching on Pelosi’s office, if people can get off their couches and protest for the first time in their lives, if an old hippy feminist who voted for Obama can wake up and become a gun totin’ conservative, if people “out” themselves at a PTA or school board meeting and say NO to ridiculous policies they put up w/ for years, if, at an anti-Obama rally in San Francisco, a gay man and Latina (both tea partiers) can stand up to angry leftwing protesters who were chanting “Racist, sexist, anti-gay. Tea Party go away,” then there is considerable resolve, tenacity, commitment and strength among conservatives. If they have to live without their electronics and find another way to communicate, if they have to take to the hills and live off the land and form new communities, they have character and love of country that should be more of a shot in your arm than that Nyquil. I would go shoulder-to-shoulder w/ the people I have met and if I had to be in a foxhole, I’d want them by my side.
Sep '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
katievs: Best sign at the rallies today: Stop leeching, start teaching.
That had to sting.
Had to pop their balloons a bit, don't you think? Make them suspect they might be on the wrong side after all? · Feb 19 at 8:28pm
I hope so, but my experience has been discouraging. No one is more convinced of his of her own rectitude than a liberal teacher.
Jun '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
Hopefully Miniver families would heed the words of Howard Beale in Network:
"...We know things are bad - worse than bad, They're crazy! It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone!' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone! I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad! You've got to say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"
(Forgive me for the CoC infraction)
Sep '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
Oh, and Pat: take some zinc! In my experience it really works. Even the New York Times agrees with me:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/for-cold-virus-zinc-may-edge-out-even-chicken-soup/
Jul '10
Re: Take 2 Oz. Before Bedtime, and Don't Watch "Mrs. Miniver"
dogsbody
I'm with Keith and Peter on this. Remember the passage in Tolkien's The Return of the King in which Merry the hobbit sees Eowyn standing alone against the Black Captain: "... suddenly the slow-kindled courage of his race awoke." We're a lot like Tolkien's hobbits, fat and happy. But while the courage of our people may be slow to wake, we have it still. · Feb 19 at 8:48pm
Edited on Feb 19 at 08:55 pm
That is exactly right.