Does Our Debt Ceiling Really Matter When We Can't Even Read Our Own Books

I can't even tell you how many times I have re-read the ending of The Great Gatsby. It is so inspiring.

Let's face it, the only reason F. Scott Fitzgerald is still mentioned in the same breath as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner is The Great Gatsby... but 'Gatsby' is a high water mark in American literature.

This may be the most disturbing news I have read in years: The Not-So-Great Gatsby... because our kids just can't understand it...

"...Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning....

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

American literature doesn't get any better than this... but the kids today will not have to read that passage... it is too difficult for them. 

This is what our kids get to read instead:

"Gatsby had believed in his dream. He had followed it and nearly made it come true.

Everybody has a dream. And, like Gatsby, we must all follow our dream wherever it takes us.

Some unpleasant people became part of Gatsby's dream. But he cannot be blamed for that. Gatsby was a success, in the end, wasn't he?"

What the fuck? 

Maybe soylent green is the answer.  What else do we do with our young?  

I guess this explains why Barack Obama is the the first black President and Michele Bachmann will be the first woman President.

Comments

[MandT]

That's why Moron is better than Dumb. because it's higher on the alphabet.

[fallenmonk]

Regardless of how right you are you are not doing much to improve my attitude. It is just so depressing.

[Mark Zipoli]

Jim, God bless you for being better than the world would expect us to be. I thank you for your work.