May 25, 2009 -- There was a time when Judy Garland used to sing “Happiness is just a thing called Joe,” lyrics only a female would sing in public then, not so much now. There is a lot of guy to guy “happiness is just a thing called Joe” going around now, with gay marriage becoming legal in more and more states. And maybe that’s what happiness is made of: relationships of one kind or another, although the subject of what is happiness has come up here and there in recent days.
As has been widely reported, studies by the Pew Research Center have found that Republicans are happier than Democrats. Old men are happier than old women, or younger people in general. The rich are happier than the poor (no kidding). The composite happy person, then is a rich old Republican. My question is then, why don’t they seem happier? Does Dick Cheney seem happy to you? He is everywhere, on every broadcast outlet, and you can hardly say he is spreading joy or good cheer. As Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post put it “How many times do we have to be told the sky is falling?” He wrote that just before he took a few days off from his daily coverage of all things political.
On the other hand the Organization For Economic Cooperation and Development reports that heavily taxed nations are the happiest. That ought to wipe the smiles off the faces of our Rich Old Republicans. Yes, people in Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands are the most content with their lives. They pay a heavier price for it than we do but they have a lot of security from government programs, better health care than we do, they live longer, and now even have better upward mobility. They like it. Over here our happiest group, the Rich Old Republicans, call that “Socialism” and wouldn’t want to allow that kind of contentment for their fellow Americans.
In the workplace you would think warm, flexible, team-oriented, and empathetic people, the kind who sound happiest at their work would make the best C.E.O.’s. Not so says deep thinker NYT columnist David Brooks, who delves into arcane things like this (and never seems very content him self). “Those who are organized, dogged, anal-retentive, and slightly boring people are more likely to thrive” he says. And “C.E.O.’s with law or M.B.A. degrees do not perform better than C.E.O.’s with college degrees.” He calls it being “unidimensional.” You don’t think governor and ex-kooky-VP candidate Sarah Palin could be right, do you? That ignorance tops intellect?
I believe I am more apt to find happiness in this report by something called the J. Epidemiol Community Health organization: “Drinking up to half a glass of wine daily may increase longevity by 5 years in men.” At that rate I should be tacking on another twenty years, and being a lot happier doing it, too. That beats seeking happiness by pulling a Specter and switching parties, going back to the white shirts and the three-piece suits, the short hair, losing the beard, paying homage to Ronald Reagan, tuning in to Limbaugh, laughing at John McCain’s little jokes, praising Ann Coulter, learning to appreciate Dick Cheney (and even ex-president George Bush seems to be having a hard time doing that now). No, I don’t have it in me. I will be content to remain a discontented Democrat. Despite theoretically ruling the roost in Washington, there are any number of discontented Democrats. Some of them are still blocking the closing of the prison at Guantánamo, despite what I predicted would be offers to house the prisoners by some small communities hard pressed for funds.
The 3,400 people of Hardin, Montana, for instance, are asking to be sent the terrorist prisoners. They built a $27 million 474-bed prison now empty and to fill it would be a boost to the local economy but their Democratic Senators say no way. There is a 490-bed high-security facility called “Supermax” in Florence, Colorado which currently holds 33 terrorists. As NYT columnist Gail Collins points out, the facility includes: “Ramzi Yousef, who led the first World Trade Center bombing; the failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid; and Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted of conspiring in the Sept. 11 attack.” I can’t believe that so many government officials believe that Americans are such a bunch of wimps we can only house our own home-grown evil doers who are no way near as mean and nasty as foreign evil doers. I say we’ve grown our own as terrifying as any at Guantánamo and are perfectly capable of dealing with them. Are we saying the people we execute in this country are not as bad as our terrorist prisoners, but we kill them anyway? Make sure they are guilty as charged, sentence them and take them out of that American version of Devil’s Island down there.
Some groups in Washington and on Wall Street have reasons to be happy. There are no recession lobbyists. In fact, you might say for them it's boom time. So many things to lobby against. Like cap and trade (so far very successful in heading it off). Credit card companies who are fighting like tigers to head off the Senate’s new credit card reform bill. And of course the Health Care industry. Economist/columnist Paul Krugman points out that the advertising they run (Harry and Louise) describe a world “more bureaucratic than any government agency, routinely deny clients their choice of doctor, and often refuse to pay for care.” They are desperate to block a key provision, the public option, the one thing in it to keep them honest. Can’t blame them. In a “free market” society nobody wants government competition. Huge amounts of money is being spent. If the rest of the country could follow the lobby industry we would describe this as boom time.
Some on Wall Street are looking forward to happy times again. No, not that the banking crises is over. But Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley are, among other banks, ready for federal approval to pay back the funds they’ve been given. That means escape from government controls and that means back to the big bonus system, the golden parachutes, etc. Back to the future until these wise guys do it all over again, boom/bust, boom/bust, I feel like we need to be shaking maracas.
It isn’t easy to make everyone happy as the President is finding out. He wanted to kill an order for expensive new helicopters but 800 people would lose their jobs. Increase taxes on the nation’s wealthiest estates, just three-tenths of 1 percent of estates to raise $266.7 billion over 10 years but charities say it would ruin them. What’s a guy to do?
It saddens me to see Pontiac being deep-sixed. Just sentimental, not that I would buy one today. Another car in my driving history that will die an ignominious death. My family drove Packards until they gave up the ghost. Then my father went to a DeSota because it was the only car on the road at the time in which he could sit and wear his hat (my first car was a DeSota convertible). A time came when I bought two little Pontiac Sunbirds, one for a daughter and one for my wife. My late wife was famous for saying to a passenger “would you like to keep the air conditioner on or would you like for me to drive up this hill.” We should have a ceremony and shoot one in the hood.
While we are down memory lane I can report that a biopic is going to be made of the life of Frank Sinatra. I confess I was a traitor to my generation in that I never liked Frank Sinatra and could care less other than to report an unusual bit of casting under consideration - Jamie Fox in the title role. I have no trouble with that as long as Hugh Jackman gets the role of Sammy Davis Jr. Who else could play the part?
Scientists who have the opportunity to work with that 47-million-year-old pre-human fossil are a happy lot, calling it the Rosetta Stone, the Holy Grail, and “The Link” in human development. They say it has fingernails and an “opposable big toe.” That means, I suppose, that it could pick its nose and shake feet, if not hands, well on its way to human development.
It is unlikely that it could yet have language, which is the rich and awesome feature of our species. Witness a few examples of playful words and phrases of the moment. This phrase caught my attention: “Sex without condoms is the new engagement ring.” And William Safire in his language column reports this headline in “Rolling Stone” about popular American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert as being “flam-bam-boyantly queeny.” And they meant it in a good way (a Times/ News poll in April found 57 percent of those under 40 supported same-sex marriage, with 42 percent approval for all ages).
New words constantly being coined. Safire himself coined one in Sunday’s column, “metaforgotten” to cover old metaphors no longer in fashion. “Illusionati” is a word in use to describe the Cheney-Limbaugh use of fear and ignorance to generate fear and hatred. Safire says both abs and ads are now being called “abbreves.” And then there is youth-speak; Obvi (thank you Captain Obvious) or what will you have? “Yoozh” (the ususal). Safire reports the Web site Language Log collects these items and calls the constructions “snowclones.” In answer to a question a White House spokesman said “I don’t do tick-tocks.”
I was doing a personal tick-tock and thought I needed to coin a word or phrase to cover what we might call my personal expiration date. It isn’t easy. Ebbsville? The bye bit? Last Call? Tapped out? How about ‘intertime.” Sounds more dignified. I’m not being maudlin. I’m like Woody Allen; I’m not afraid of dying I just don’t want to be there when it happens. It has to happen before I reach 113. That’s the year the funds run out on Social Security.
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