Not long ago, several messages here mentioned "Little Miss Sunshine." One of the best things about the movie: It showed how much we can depend on the favors of middling functionaries. Grief counselors, police officers, contest organizers, etc. They can exercise their discretion to give you a hard time, or they can give you a break. It showed that the individual can-do spirit is not always all. (The same with family solidarity.) By the end, the would-be motivational speaker seemed to get it.
Kevin
"B." <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
[A pretty thought-provoking piece on the kinds of quotidian power games and day-to-day social relations that folks stress out about and hide from others all the time. The conclusion to the problems below isn't FULL-SCALE ANTI-CAPITALIST CAPITALIST REVOLUTION!! (It's an advice column and so rises to a tired 'You might rise above it all, Zen-like, and live your own internalized, segregated life from this nonsense, ignoring the fools out there -- easier said than done), but it touches on some important stuff I generally don't find outside of folks like Ehrenreich, et. al. - B.]
[From piece: '[A weathier-seeming couple] had both been given money by their families (something they felt they had to hide from friends), and they actually did have a mortgage. [...] But, as Boss points out, no one looks at someone with a used car and modest home and says, 'Wow, they must be putting a lot of money aside for their future!' As she puts it, 'Those kinds of people are] just not on our radar screen.']
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