I was helping the teenager prepare for her English final last week, reviewing with her Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir “Night,” which she read this semester. (I’d never read the book, a gap in my own education.)
I came across this passage:
“Dozens of starving men fought each other to death for a few crumbs (thrown by German workmen)… Some years later, I watched the same kind of scene at Aden. The passengers on our boat were amusing themselves by throwing coins to the ‘natives’ who were diving in to get them. An attractive, aristocratic Parisienne was deriving special pleasure from the game. I suddenly noticed that two children were engaged in a death struggle, trying to strangle each other. I turned to the lady.
‘Please,’ I begged, “don’t throw any more money in.’
‘Why not,’ she said. ‘I like to give to charity.’”
I was immediately transported to a warm September afternoon in the early 1980s. Laughs and shouting reached my ears as I turned to enter the quad at my college dorm. Two dozen male students leaned from the windows, laughing and shouting; in the middle of the quad was Antonio.
Antonio, or Tony Oni as he was called, was a diminutive, middle-aged Italian immigrant with limited mental capacity who worked as a janitor (“gooner” in school slang) cleaning my dorm. He was running back and forth across the quad. Students called out “Hey, Tony!” and threw a penny or nickel to the ground. Tony would run to pick it up and was dowsed with water dropped on his head from a beer pitcher or wastebasket. Then a group on the other side did the same, he ran back across and was dowsed again. Tony danced and laughed in the showers of water and patted his pocket, now bulging with coins.
I was still enough of a child to recognize my fellows’ mirth in this cruel game, but enough of an adult to be appalled by what I saw. I ran up to Third East, my floor, and confronted some of my friends who were taking part. “What?” they said. “He likes it! Besides, we’re giving him money.” I let it pass. I had neither the eloquence to explain – even to myself – what I felt nor courage enough then to stand against my peers.
What I felt was anger that these privileged kids were using for their amusement a man who didn’t have the mental capacity to reasonably consent to the game. I felt guilty that some part of me had wanted to laugh, too. I felt the adolescent loneliness that comes with standing apart from the pack, even for good reason. The students – myself included – didn’t have the moral capacity to recuse themselves from the game or call an end to it.
A quarter century later, I was in southern Mexico, talking with some other Americans who had just come from a resort on the Pacific coast. They spoke of the drunken American tourists on balconies, throwing ice cubes at the Mexican waiters who brought drinks to other Americans lounging by the pool. Apparently, this is an old game, one perhaps anthropologists should study. Do apes that control the canopies amuse themselves by throwing unappetizing pieces of fruit to the ground for less lucky apes to fight over?
Maybe political scientists would be better suited for this. There is a prevailing policy theory abroad in the land claiming that the more benefits we give the wealthiest among us, the choicer the morsels they will throw to the ground so the rest of us may amuse them in our competition to snatch them up. These competitions are referred to as “the free market.”
Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wrote a book on this: “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.” It’s 300 pages and its analysis is far more sophisticated than what you’re reading here, but after thinking about this for a week, it still strikes me that it all adds up to the same thing.
A Few Crumbs
I was helping the teenager prepare for her English final last week, reviewing with her Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir “Night,” which she read this semester. (I’d never read the book, a gap in my own education.)
I came across this passage:
“Dozens of starving men fought each other to death for a few crumbs (thrown by German workmen)… Some years later, I watched the same kind of scene at Aden. The passengers on our boat were amusing themselves by throwing coins to the ‘natives’ who were diving in to get them. An attractive, aristocratic Parisienne was deriving special pleasure from the game. I suddenly noticed that two children were engaged in a death struggle, trying to strangle each other. I turned to the lady.
‘Please,’ I begged, “don’t throw any more money in.’
‘Why not,’ she said. ‘I like to give to charity.’”
I was immediately transported to a warm September afternoon in the early 1980s. Laughs and shouting reached my ears as I turned to enter the quad at my college dorm. Two dozen male students leaned from the windows, laughing and shouting; in the middle of the quad was Antonio.
Antonio, or Tony Oni as he was called, was a diminutive, middle-aged Italian immigrant with limited mental capacity who worked as a janitor (“gooner” in school slang) cleaning my dorm. He was running back and forth across the quad. Students called out “Hey, Tony!” and threw a penny or nickel to the ground. Tony would run to pick it up and was dowsed with water dropped on his head from a beer pitcher or wastebasket. Then a group on the other side did the same, he ran back across and was dowsed again. Tony danced and laughed in the showers of water and patted his pocket, now bulging with coins.
I was still enough of a child to recognize my fellows’ mirth in this cruel game, but enough of an adult to be appalled by what I saw. I ran up to Third East, my floor, and confronted some of my friends who were taking part. “What?” they said. “He likes it! Besides, we’re giving him money.” I let it pass. I had neither the eloquence to explain – even to myself – what I felt nor courage enough then to stand against my peers.
What I felt was anger that these privileged kids were using for their amusement a man who didn’t have the mental capacity to reasonably consent to the game. I felt guilty that some part of me had wanted to laugh, too. I felt the adolescent loneliness that comes with standing apart from the pack, even for good reason. The students – myself included – didn’t have the moral capacity to recuse themselves from the game or call an end to it.
A quarter century later, I was in southern Mexico, talking with some other Americans who had just come from a resort on the Pacific coast. They spoke of the drunken American tourists on balconies, throwing ice cubes at the Mexican waiters who brought drinks to other Americans lounging by the pool. Apparently, this is an old game, one perhaps anthropologists should study. Do apes that control the canopies amuse themselves by throwing unappetizing pieces of fruit to the ground for less lucky apes to fight over?
Maybe political scientists would be better suited for this. There is a prevailing policy theory abroad in the land claiming that the more benefits we give the wealthiest among us, the choicer the morsels they will throw to the ground so the rest of us may amuse them in our competition to snatch them up. These competitions are referred to as “the free market.”
Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wrote a book on this: “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.” It’s 300 pages and its analysis is far more sophisticated than what you’re reading here, but after thinking about this for a week, it still strikes me that it all adds up to the same thing.
© Mark Floegel, 2011