Friday, October 17, 2008

Babies!

When things go sour in America we look for someone to blame, because a good solution always depends on punishing a likely culprit. But too often we can’t admit the real cause of our pain. In short, why is it so hard to point a finger at babies?

America faces severe challenges. But look at babies. There are ten million of them – ten million! – and they are uniformly disengaged and unknowledgeable. Yet I can already hear people raising their voices, saying, “Don’t blame the babies!”

Here’s a test. Take the balance sheet of an investment bank like Morgan Stanley – and show it to a baby. Ask her how to heal the financial markets. The kind of response you’ll get is this. She’ll either grab hold of the paper and shake it gleefully or pull it to her mouth and start gumming it. Why do we put up with it? We blame the government and corporate leaders – and they have been negligent; but the fact that the experts are no better than babies in this regard is no reason to let babies off the hook.

If there were even one bipartisan commission of babies hard at work on health care reform, I’d hold my peace. But you won’t find an activist among them. You’ll hear people excuse babies based on their cuteness, as if having a big lolling head and round sparkly eyes and chunky feet with incredibly tiny toenails were a free ticket to knee-bouncing idleness. There’s a baby in my neighborhood (I won’t name names!) who rode up and down the sidewalk all summer in a stroller, gazing about with the calm air of royalty. All this, while the stock market was crashing and gas prices soaring.

Like you, I do my part. I never take a break from complaining to my wife about inflation, taxes, the national debt, our costly wars, and my mounting credit card bills. When we watch the presidential debates, she can’t hear the candidates for all the vituperation I’m slinging at them. I pace, jump up and down, and shout questions like, “When are you going to bail out my retirement account?” Soon I’m face-down on the living room floor, kicking and wailing. Even on ordinary evenings I can hardly swallow my food, and my wife has to mash it up for me. But I can’t get as much as a nod of sympathy from a baby.

A couple we know had a baby recently – so I figure, this is my chance. We pay them a visit, and just as I’m about to launch into my lecture, I see that my wife is cradling the infant in her arms, and he’s staring up at her expectantly. Newborns are the worst. Frankly, they aren’t as cute as older babies, but their sense of entitlement is absolute. Soon my wife is cooing to the child and indulging him in all manner of flattery. Before you know it, it’s my turn to hold him, and there he is, drooling on my shirt and making googly gah-gah sounds. Our friends exclaim how much he seems to like me. He clutches my index finger in his fist, and when I shake my finger he laughs, as if spontaneously thrilled. And I’ll be darned, but I’m beginning to feel pleased with myself. After a while – god help me! – I’m raising him into the air and making explosive sounds with my mouth, and he can’t get enough of it, he’s so happy. By the time we leave, everyone is saying how unusually relaxed I seem. The boy’s mother remarks that she hasn’t seen me smile like this since 1999.

On the way home, I say, “It’s so frustrating! You can’t get angry at a baby. You just can’t. And meanwhile, the world is going to hell.” And my wife says (get this!), “Joe, don’t blame the babies!”

Broadcast by Joe Chaney on October 17, 2008
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