A healthy self-doubt or conscience if you will, evolves from being told that somethings that we have, done, said, or intended to do, or say happen to be unacceptable - universally and dogmatically unacceptable. Some of the very first words that had an impact on me came from my parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and neighbors and they were all first and second generation Irish Catholics on the south side of Chicago. The words were 'Well, too bad about you.'
'Well, too bad about you' had a marvelously thick inflection honeyed with obvious irony. Those very intention deflecting words usually followed my plea for more candy, cookies, or Dixie cups; the stated desire to repaint my Grandfather's garage floor with benzine; or, my circa 1958 swaggering into Lou's Saloon at 77th & Ashland to see what uncles Bart, Donnie, Sy, and my Dad, if he were off-shift from the State and on his way to the Beverly Theatre, were drinking for lunch.
"What in the hell are you doing in here, Padgin (Pat-sheen in Chicagoese)?"
Well, Uncle Bart, I thought I'd grab a root-beer and play with the German cowboys( a Budweiser Beer Wagon set behind the bar) , I was in yesterday.
" Well listen here, Bub, your Dad brings you in or it's nix, get me? How old are you, again?"
Six.
" And who brought you in?"
Dad
"That's right. You want to get Lou shut down by Capt. Hennessy?"
Shut down how?
" Shut down fast. You walk all the way here on your own from Granpa's?"
Well,Lou's right next to Jack's car store.
" Well, this is your last trip in. Uncle Donnie will drive you back. Your Old Man will tan your rump."
I like coming to Lou's , Uncle Bart.
"Well, too bad about you."
I learned that I could not walk into a saloon unescorted at the age of six. I was only a guest, if there was no other possibility for my Dad's refreshment, while I was in his charge. I learned that my place was predetermined by my elders and betters. I had already learned at Little Flower Grammar School that I could not get up out of my seat and have a chat with Larry Fiscelli, Al McFarland, Billy Cullina, or Judy Lawlor. The Sisters of Mercy applied the exact same dictum -'Well, too bad about you.'
I learned that I could not steal, abuse animals ( withing reason -crayfish from the Wood Street viaduct, ants, especially huge black carpenter ants, the odd snake or alley rats could, in fact be mistreated); or lie . . . well, that got worked out with a deft rhetorical apprenticeship and the application of strategic omissions - 'Oh, that pack of smokes!'
Telling small lies, actual fabrications and omitted truths, is the foundation of hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is how we evade the inner voice, 'Well, too bad about you.'
Last night, I read a disturbing article about a millionaire celebrity bankroller and pedophile with Hollywood closing ranks in his support. Here is the marrow of one from the Daily Beast:
Despite the pedophile mogul's conviction for soliciting underage prostitution, his circle is standing by their man. Scientists whose research Epstein funded also back the billionaire, writes Alexandra Wolfe.
On the evening of December 2nd, 2010, a handful of America's media and entertainment elite—including TV anchors Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos, comedienne Chelsea Handler, and director Woody Allen—convened around the dinner table of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It wasn't just any dining room, but part of a sprawling nine-story townhouse that once housed an entire preparatory school. And it wasn't just any sex offender, but an enigmatic billionaire who had once flown the likes of former President Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak around the world on his own Boeing 727. Last spring, Epstein completed a 13-month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in Palm Beach. Now he was hosting a party for his close friend, Britain's Prince Andrew, fourth in line to the throne."In the Midwest, where I am from, he would be a social pariah," says Lorna Brett Howard, a political activist and wife of Irving Post Capital CEO and Aeropostale director John Howard. "What I see here is if you have big money or are famous then you get a pass."
“A jail sentence doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing that gets you shunned in New York society is poverty.”
Sure enough, that December night no one mentioned that their handsome host, a gray-haired 58-year-old financier with tanned skin and a joker smile, had just doled out millions of dollars in civil settlements to seven girls who allege that he paid them to perform erotic massages and demeaning sexual acts when they were underage. They are among the 40 victims turned up by an FBI investigation. But at the time, this particular swath of Epstein's elite Rolodex had no idea that the feted royal would soon renounce Epstein as a friend, nor that the royal's ex-wife, Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, would hysterically apologize for letting Epstein pay off some of her debts.
Let's see. I was a long-time high school teacher of English. My sexual inclinations are solidly in the hetero-breeder camp. I started teaching at 22 years of age - that is exactly sixteen years after uncles Bart, Sy and Donnie gave me the bum's rush from Lou's Saloon at 77th & Ashland. I was teaching at Bishop McNamara High School which is a co-educational secondary school. I was, therefore, four or five years older than the oldest of my students. I was wearing a tie and in colder weather a jacket. The tie and jacket were distancing objects - I was not 'Pat, Paddy, Padgin, Hickey, Hick, Dipshit, Numbnuts, or Hey, You'. I was, and remain to my students now in their forties, or very early fifties, Mr. Hickey and they were at that time Mr. Boudreau, Miss Schafsma, Miss Hoekstra, Miss Kell, Miss Purcell, Mr. Whitman,Miss Pelletier Mr. Raines, Miss Regnier, Miss. Nugent, Mr. Coy, and Miss Cardosi and etc.
The girls were students. I treated students with affable distance, but welcoming tutelage. I came to teaching fairly well-armed with a command of my subject, but learning the art of teaching came from observation and good counsel. I had learned from watching and listening to wonderful teaching mentors like Nick Novich, Dave Raiche, Jerry Krieg, Jim Frogge,Rich Zinanni, Fathers Ken Yarno, Jim Fanale, and Bob Erickson, Sisters Theresa Galvan, Helen Kavanaugh, and others that respect for the vocation demanded a constant exercise of respect for my charges -in loco parentis.
High School girls are beautiful, but they are kids and it matters not whether a teacher is male, or female, gay or straight, long-in-the-tooth, or youthfully attractive -mind, words, deeds and hands off! Violate that cardinal rule and be damned to you.
We had several cases of Humbert-Humbert and Lolita and no Nabokovian parsing - cashiered on the spot and shunned by colleagues. Too bad about you - nothing a coronary can't make right, Old Chum!
We, as a people, allow some really obnoxious and dumb people to scratch out our societal moral high ground - the "Who's to Say-ers" The heart wants what the heart wants - TS! Too bad about you.
Our hypocrisy is making a case for understanding people who never fully grasped the commandments of God or the sound ethical dictum shot out of a singe sentence by our elders and betters -'Well, too bad about you.'
