Alternate title: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life!
The last scene in The Life of Brian:
And so says Katie "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" Kersten today!
Minnesotans are facing real economic challenges, and there's some justification [Katie really works up a passion for things sometimes] for both private and government efforts to soften the sharp edges.
But before we declare an economic emergency and demand a "New Deal" for the new millennium, let's remember a classic American resource that was in ample supply 75 years ago, when unemployment was not 5.1 percent, but 25 percent.
Hey, that's great Spotty! I didn't know we had a classic American resource that was going to get us out of this economic jam. Will it work in Iraq, too? What's the resource?
Katie wants us to look at the glass as half full.
You're kidding, right?
No, Spot is not kidding.
Maybe Katie lives in the half of the glass that's full!
That's a good way to look at it, grasshopper. And undoubtedly true.
Katie goes on to wax nostalgic about the hardships endured by her parents and grandparents:
If you know people who grew up in the Great Depression and started adult life in the 1940s, you've heard about this resource. It was an attitude, a set of expectations -- the "glass half full" view of life.
I learned something about it from a practical joker and his wife -- John and Jeanne Kersten of Fairfield, Calif., my mom and dad.
The intrepid Kersten duo made its way east, miraculously avoiding the stampede of Iowans leaving for California at the time, finally to Fort Dodge, Iowa where Katie grew up.
Boy, I'll bet Katie endured some hardship, too, Spotty!
Yes, of course, grasshopper. Apparently she had to share a bedroom.
Oh, that's awful!
Yes, but just imagine what it was like for her siblings!
[whistling] Now there's hardship, Spotty.
Indeed.
Katie, like a lot of conservatives, especially boomer conservatives, channels the experience of her parents or theirs and thinks that she somehow lived those experiences herself. As a result of having experienced - even vicariously - hardship, Katie thinks she is entitled to preach on optimism, thrift, and sacrifice. Not Katie's sacrifice, naturally. That's only good for other people.
Governor Pepsodent is another one just like Katie. He likes to bring up his working class roots, but his was not a life of unremitting toil; it was his dad's.
Both Katie and Pepsodent are perfect examples of the unempathetic little scrubs that infest the Republican party today.
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