What a load of crap. Is there something authentically working class about ignorance? Is "egregious" some kind of word that only pointy-heads use? Does physics have nothing to do with the lives of the "bulk of the six billion"? Would the "bulk of the six billion" be insulted to be thought so intellectually limited? This is populism of the most debased and braindead sort.
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Yup...
It's like a sort of clockwork mechanism isn't it? Someone says, *gamma ray burst* and quantum teleportation quick someone else appears in a flash on stage to remind us the world's a bloody mess and we shouldn't be thinking about gamma ray bursts or, if we do, we're overfed scoundrels and limo liberals.
It was a sexy maneuver once, long ago when it probably seemed that people could politically argue their way out of the flaming paper bag fix we're in without paying attention to things like gamma ray bursts but now it's about as useful as giving your dog a subscription to The New Yorker.
When I read that working class folks -- with rents to pay and babies to feed -- don't care about anything outside of bills and other woes I think about a harassed delivery driver named Joe I knew when I worked at a busy retail store at around the age of 18.
Every day, several times a day, he'd stop by to pick up items from the store (washing machines, televisions, stereos, that sort of thing) to deliver to customers. He was a tough old bastard; a guy who didn't like to sit around and chat about the weather or last night's game.
He rarely had the time.
But one evening, near Christmas (for retail, an extraordinarily busy season you understand) he stopped in the store for his pickup and instead of hurrying through, paused in front of the array of televisions we kept against the longest wall. He picked up remotes and began changing the channels of other sets to match the one he was fixated on.
I finished explaining to a customer in his 70s -- a retired electrician -- that no sir, more transistors did not necessarily mean better sound and walked over to see what Joe was watching on something like eight televisions.
It was a public broadcasting documentary about supernovas. The narrator calmly explained how, billions of years from now, our sun will exhaust its core fuel of hydrogen and expand to a red giant, probably engulfing the Earth (unless our orbit changes over time, which, no doubt, won't be such a good thing either).
Joe sat very quietly and didn't do a bit of work till the program finished. One hour later.
I know the manager wanted to yell at him to get going (he was the shouting, wildly gesturing, spinning toupee and flying spittle type, plus he was fond of waving his .357 Magnum about at odd moments) but there was something about this usually very busy -- indeed, overworked -- man pausing, in an almost reverent way, to watch a program on astrophysics that seemed to hold him back.
After the show finished and the last of the end credits rolled off the screen Joe turned to me and explained that when he was my age he'd wanted to be an astronomer; even had his own telescope. But his family couldn't afford the university costs and of course later, with family responsibilities of his own, he had to find a job.
So truck driving it was.
Still, even into his prematurely bent early 60s he followed developments in the field and tried to watch whatever decent television programs on the subject he came across.
After that, every time I saw him, I gave him a copy of some of the astrophysics books or magazine articles I had. It became our shared thing.
Now I wonder, how many other working class people have similar interests that don't reflect their immediate, daily problems but rather, their intellectual concerns and artistic passions?
I'd guess the answer is just about everyone.
.d.