Much More Urban Crime
The last week in Gotham was exceptional fun. A Broadway play—compliments of the producer, my NBF Harvey Weinstein—Finding Neverland, had me clapping with one hand due to the operation and standing with the packed theatre for the ovation. Shows how much the critics know, who panned it. The audience loved it, as did I. It’s an uplifting, wonderful play about J.M. Barrie and the children. Then there was the blind black guy in Brooklyn who told me, “You’re too pale for this neighborhood.” Go figure, as they say in that part of town.
I’m always sad to leave the city—especially with the end of spring—its vast mixture of glitz and grit, of races and colors, of violence and pleasures, of misfits and millionaires, but most of all seeing from up close a culture in decline. Someone called Gotham a vast ornithology, and that it certainly is. Not many writers take it on nowadays. But they sure used to, with elegance and economy, starting with E.B. White and Joseph Mitchell. I suppose political correctness inhibits scribes, a bit like touch boxing. One goes through the moves but is very careful not to hurt. In a self-help column in The New York Times, a reader asks for advice concerning household help. The help apparently is restricted to using service lifts. (Nothing unusual, as far as I’m concerned.) The answer from the “expert” is PC at its most egregious. It describes the building as white-glove, a modern-day Downton Abbey. It calls “household help” a poor choice of words, a euphemism for language used “even earlier, like servants.” It suggests that “personal assistants” would be less distasteful.
See what I mean about writers being afraid to take the city on? When one can’t call a spade a spade, one calls him or her—I don’t know—a buddy, Your Grace? Yet turn on the idiot box and all you will see is porn, violence, and bad white guys killing minorities. During commencement week, speakers told thousands of students that they should listen to themselves, that the Big Me is the most important thing to know, and to keep promoting themselves on social media. Tom Wolfe predicted all this thirty years ago, but even he didn’t realize how bad things would become. Character building has become a no-no, one’s weaknesses make him or her strong. Amazing! Self-glorification is the be-all and end-all. Again, go figure.
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