A few years ago I was watching an Oprah show about dysfunctional families. What else? Anyway, it occurred to me: What would a "functional" family look like? I don't know.
I've seen families with drunken moms or dads, or drunken moms and dads, weird uncles who try to cop a feel from the neighbor kids, and many families with a brother or aunt who no one talks about or has heard from for several years. I've known families with kleptomanic kids, defiant and self-destructive kids, kids who throw raging temper tantrums, grandads who are registered child molestors, and one friend of mine had something like three suicides among five siblings.
I've never known a perfect family. Never. I think the whole concept came out of "Father Knows Best." I don't think it exists in real life. Come to think of it, I've never known a perfect person.
So? I wouldn't care or even think much about this, except that the dysfunctional family is something that apparently has made us all victims of... what, exactly? Reality? Are Oprah and her viewers really shocked to learn that nearly everyone has been raised with skeletons in the closet, or with a recollection of that one awful morning when Uncle Pete passed out drunk on the front lawn and the whole neighborhood saw him? I suppose you'll have to pay for that with a couple decades of therapy.
The thing is, Oprah has made it fashionable to be a victim. The whole theme of that show seems to be, "Show us your sores." A friend of mine was invited to be a guest on Oprah to comment about something or another, but never got on the air because an earlier guest started crying and they wanted to keep the camera focused on her. We made a joke of it at the time: All you have to do to get on Oprah is cry.
A long, long time ago -- I hardly remember it and I'm pretty old -- my mom used to watch this show called "Queen for a Day." Three or four contestants would come on. Each got a few minutes to talk about how her husband was out of work and they were facing eviction, or she didn't have money to keep her kids in shoes, or maybe Grandma had passed and Grandpa had no place else to go and was driving everyone nuts. Things like that. Usually, all the contestants ended up in tears.
At the end of the show, I believe the studio audience would pick a winner by applause, just like a talent show. Models would rush up and wrap her in a ratty-looking velvet robe, put a crown on her head, and fill her arms with a couple dozen roses. On top of that, she got a washer and dryer or a maybe new refrigerator.
She was rewarded for being pathetic, for being helpless, trapped, unable or maybe just unwilling to help herself, and for being a really effective whiner.
The US government also rewards victimization. You can get food stamps at least, maybe SSI disability pay, or a credit on your income tax for one thing or another. Of course the big winners are the neglected minorities (including women, who are not a minority), that stand to land government contracts for various products and services -- anything from printing jobs to building highways -- just for being Native-American, African-American, Hispanic, maybe a South Sea Islander or an Australian Aborigine. Who knows? That's another funny thing about America: Almost everyone is a member of one or another minority group. So maybe all this is just a moot point.
About 30 years ago this guy applied for medical school in California. It's tough to get into medical school. Just not enough open slots at US universities. This guy apparently made the grade in terms of his smarts, but he was denied entrance to the school when the last open slot went to an African-American under Affirmative Action.
So the guy sued. He was Jewish, so he sued on the basis of Jews having a history of misery and persecution equal to or greater than anything African-Americans had suffered through the ages. The trial must have been something of a contest of grief and sorrow, the "winner" being the minority group with the bloodiest wounds, the ugliest and most permanent scars, etc etc.
I can imagine the judge throwing up his hands and bellowing to both defense and prosecution, "Quit your damn whining, willya?"
The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and was declared moot. That is, there was no winner. The Supremes couldn't find any useful way to measure and compare the damage. And it took such a long time to wind its way through the state courts, the courts of appeal, and then the Supreme Court, that the guy who filed the case graduated from another medical school before he got the final verdict.
Here's some news: We've all felt pain. Some more than others. Should we be rewarded for that? "Look, I'm a total basket case. I have 14 kids and want more, even though I can't take care of them. Obviously, I'm barking mad. You have to help me!" Or like a Saturday Night Live take-off on the "Lethal Weapon" movies: "Look, I've got dynamite strapped to my waist and I'll blow myself up if you don't give me what I want."
So... blow yourself up. At least that will end your misery.
I think most self-proclaimed victims are just looking for an excuse to dump their lives on someone else or on the government. They don't want to be accountable for what they do. Like drunks or drug addicts. "Hey, I'm sorry I killed your family, but I was staggering drunk when I got into that car. The bartender should have called me a cab." How 'bout maybe you should curb your drinking or leave your car at home?
In college I had a class called "Images of Women in Art," which I took to get an art credit. We had two instructors, both rabid feminists. These women taught mainly that women had been the victims of men through the ages -- and they had the images to prove it. Therefore we're emotionally crippled, have been rendered helpless, and we should all get some kind of an income from the state. (I suppose so that we won't have to miss our soap operas.)
Trade Big Daddy for Big Government. Didn't make any sense to me.
Anyways, I'm bloody sick of these kind of victims. I have considerable compassion for people who are unquestionably disabled (oh, sorry, I guess that should be "differently-abled"), who really and truly can't take care of themselves. I'm willing to help them, and usually they're more than willing to prove how much they can actually do independently.
But I'm goddamn sick of enabling the whiners. A friend of mine observed once, "Isn't it funny how the anorexics always can afford to buy food?" Maybe if they had to make a living their days would be filled to the brim with more positive thoughts and they wouldn't worry so much about if their butts look fat.
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