As soon as I saw the picture of George C. Scott as Scrooge, I decided to read this piece. Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol was the first version I saw, and though Mr. Magoo himself is problematic, that version of A Christmas Carol is more faithful to the ethos of the story than most animated versions. The first movie version I saw, in the mid-1970s, was pretty anodyne in its retelling of the story. Heart-warming, but no bite. (This version seams to have been scrubbed from the internet.) With that as background, seeing George C. Scott play Scrooge was eye-opening. It’s still my favorite version. Many versions of A Christmas Carol portray Scrooge as a pitiful, grumbling recluse. It’s easy to see him as an outlier, separate from the rest of the world. It’s great that he is redeemed, but he is a charcature of a rich man. In George C. Scott, we get a much more believable and recognizable Scrooge, a captain of industry, a financier is his prime. This Scrooge is no different from the hedge fund managers and investment bankers that we celebrate with glowing media profiles. By making Scrooge so much more realistic, the fundamental message of the Dickens story hits a lot harder. Is it too much to hope that a few modern masters of the universe might see George C. Scott play Scrooge and realize that they too are forging chains like Marley’s?
It would be really funny if despite the avalanche of disgusting praise for Penny if he, himself, actually harbors extreme shame and guilt about what he's done, and the dissonance caused by the contrast between the adulation and his self-loathing leads to...
Well, whatever it leads to. Some kind of indication that he has noticed what he did was bad. A repudiation, direct or indirect, encoded or specific, of the way he is being celebrated right now.
Today would have been Jordan Neely’s 32nd birthday. It’s sad that the young man never got the help he needed and sadder still that now this case will set a precedent for murdering people who “pose an imminent threat” without actually committing a violent act. Even an atheist like me is praying for our nation.
It's too depressing to think that hell, we're back to the Gilded Age where Scrooges were all the rage.
Also let's remind ourselves; Rep. Gill is able to do this because of Murc's Law. As a newly minted, proud member of the unreconstructed party, he knows that because of that winning party ethos, violent excision of the 'undesirables' is the way to go. Only lefty outfits will call him out for this; performative cruelty is the law of the land.
Just as an instructive example, compare when Maxine Waters once said that people need to get in Republicans' faces.
We're getting in a very awful direction. And Murc's Law makes this okay.
Reid is right—the smirk at the end is the tell. It's astounding how much glee the 'Christian' right is expressing as they plot the doom of huge swaths of the American public.
Scrooge reformed, as you mention, but I doubt that the ghouls in the repub party will reform. You also mention Jesus Christ, whom most in the repub party claim to follow, but their Jesus bears no resemblance to the one in the Bible. Jesus was a homeless, brown Palestinian Jew, living in occupied territory. He was executed by the state in a particularly horrifying and public way, for the crime of making the occupiers uncomfortable. No doubt he was considered part of the surplus population by the occupying Romans. He was in good company - Boadicea and Spartacus also challenged the Romans.
I read an interesting fact about the guy who inspired the Scrooge character Dickens wrote about--apparently, he was incredibly cheap, but only when spending on himself (wore old clothes, lived frugally). Apparently he was always generous with strangers--made loans he never tried to collect, things like that. Dickens tweaked it a bit to make it where he started the story cruel to others as well.
The Right is showing what they're all about--no longer needing to even pretend that there's some other principle involved. In the old days, they might have said "this is all regrettable, but Penny was reasonably trying to defend himself and others" or "Neely was mentally ill and the city should have taken better care of him so he wouldn't be in that position". These days, such sentiments are on the Center Left. It's similar to how some might have thought Rittenhouse was a reckless idiot for bringing an assault rifle to a protest where he wound up killing two men, but that under the law it was understandable that he was not guilty of murdering them.
Now, it's all openly cheering on the killers, not apologizing for their actions but instead lauding them. It's not even so much about the killers or their circumstances, but rather that their victims needed to die, and that killing them was a GOOD thing in and of itself.
This is becoming a normalized sentiment on the Right, no longer confined to the Nazi fringes. And yet too many seem unwilling to accept that this is what we are up against.
Even the murder of the UHC CEO hasn't made these ghouls realize that their way of "thinking" could be used against them. They may be right, but history teaches otherwise.
As soon as I saw the picture of George C. Scott as Scrooge, I decided to read this piece. Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol was the first version I saw, and though Mr. Magoo himself is problematic, that version of A Christmas Carol is more faithful to the ethos of the story than most animated versions. The first movie version I saw, in the mid-1970s, was pretty anodyne in its retelling of the story. Heart-warming, but no bite. (This version seams to have been scrubbed from the internet.) With that as background, seeing George C. Scott play Scrooge was eye-opening. It’s still my favorite version. Many versions of A Christmas Carol portray Scrooge as a pitiful, grumbling recluse. It’s easy to see him as an outlier, separate from the rest of the world. It’s great that he is redeemed, but he is a charcature of a rich man. In George C. Scott, we get a much more believable and recognizable Scrooge, a captain of industry, a financier is his prime. This Scrooge is no different from the hedge fund managers and investment bankers that we celebrate with glowing media profiles. By making Scrooge so much more realistic, the fundamental message of the Dickens story hits a lot harder. Is it too much to hope that a few modern masters of the universe might see George C. Scott play Scrooge and realize that they too are forging chains like Marley’s?
Thanks!
It would be really funny if despite the avalanche of disgusting praise for Penny if he, himself, actually harbors extreme shame and guilt about what he's done, and the dissonance caused by the contrast between the adulation and his self-loathing leads to...
Well, whatever it leads to. Some kind of indication that he has noticed what he did was bad. A repudiation, direct or indirect, encoded or specific, of the way he is being celebrated right now.
Today would have been Jordan Neely’s 32nd birthday. It’s sad that the young man never got the help he needed and sadder still that now this case will set a precedent for murdering people who “pose an imminent threat” without actually committing a violent act. Even an atheist like me is praying for our nation.
Your words and those of Dickens have moved me to donate to Care and Share. I am not a Christian but believe in charity.
Thanks!
It's too depressing to think that hell, we're back to the Gilded Age where Scrooges were all the rage.
Also let's remind ourselves; Rep. Gill is able to do this because of Murc's Law. As a newly minted, proud member of the unreconstructed party, he knows that because of that winning party ethos, violent excision of the 'undesirables' is the way to go. Only lefty outfits will call him out for this; performative cruelty is the law of the land.
Just as an instructive example, compare when Maxine Waters once said that people need to get in Republicans' faces.
We're getting in a very awful direction. And Murc's Law makes this okay.
Reid is right—the smirk at the end is the tell. It's astounding how much glee the 'Christian' right is expressing as they plot the doom of huge swaths of the American public.
Scrooge reformed, as you mention, but I doubt that the ghouls in the repub party will reform. You also mention Jesus Christ, whom most in the repub party claim to follow, but their Jesus bears no resemblance to the one in the Bible. Jesus was a homeless, brown Palestinian Jew, living in occupied territory. He was executed by the state in a particularly horrifying and public way, for the crime of making the occupiers uncomfortable. No doubt he was considered part of the surplus population by the occupying Romans. He was in good company - Boadicea and Spartacus also challenged the Romans.
I read an interesting fact about the guy who inspired the Scrooge character Dickens wrote about--apparently, he was incredibly cheap, but only when spending on himself (wore old clothes, lived frugally). Apparently he was always generous with strangers--made loans he never tried to collect, things like that. Dickens tweaked it a bit to make it where he started the story cruel to others as well.
The Right is showing what they're all about--no longer needing to even pretend that there's some other principle involved. In the old days, they might have said "this is all regrettable, but Penny was reasonably trying to defend himself and others" or "Neely was mentally ill and the city should have taken better care of him so he wouldn't be in that position". These days, such sentiments are on the Center Left. It's similar to how some might have thought Rittenhouse was a reckless idiot for bringing an assault rifle to a protest where he wound up killing two men, but that under the law it was understandable that he was not guilty of murdering them.
Now, it's all openly cheering on the killers, not apologizing for their actions but instead lauding them. It's not even so much about the killers or their circumstances, but rather that their victims needed to die, and that killing them was a GOOD thing in and of itself.
This is becoming a normalized sentiment on the Right, no longer confined to the Nazi fringes. And yet too many seem unwilling to accept that this is what we are up against.
Even the murder of the UHC CEO hasn't made these ghouls realize that their way of "thinking" could be used against them. They may be right, but history teaches otherwise.
Same reason they keep calling for "civil war"--they assume they'll be the ones doing all the killing.
Beautifully done, Stephen.
I wonder if workhouses and debtors’ prisons will once again become fashionable?
I definitely believe those institutions are where we are headed. And if America's good at one thing it's locking people up.