Ironic Responses to Economic Crisis

In one of Karen Dybis's posts last week to the Detroit Blog, she introduced her audience to Attorney C, an acquaintance who is having a terrible time making it in the present economy. After the brief introduction of Attorney C, Dybis let the lawyer tell her own story, which included a narration of two bad decisions she had made: one, buying a house several years ago in Detroit and, two, getting a law degree. Attorney C wrote about the huge chunk of money she and her husband had lost by buying the house. (They bailed, however, before the economic downturn.) And she wrote of the difficulty of finding employment as an attorney in this day and time, especially in Metro Detroit.


Attorney C's experience would be classified as a human interest story, and the appeal of such stories is the reader's ability to relate to whatever might be the focus of the story and of course to the person profiled. Certainly, Attorney C's unemployment woes are very common in the present economy, yet possibly it was, for Dybis, other characteristics of this woman's life that made her story newsworthy. My guess concerning how Attorney C's story made the cut would be that Dybis found some irony in the fact that in the present economy even well educated people, who have, as Attorney C put it, done "everything right" may experience difficulty finding and sustaining employment. For Attorney C, everything right began with her ancestors' immigration from South Africa, their belief in and commitment to the American Dream.


I'm afraid that for me, the romantic nature of this immigrant story is more troubling than inspiring. There is something strange yet at the same time not unexpected in Attorney C's expectations. The logic is simple enough. Attorney C is the hope of her ancestors' dreams and of their sacrifices. She followed their plan for her life, got an education as her father encouraged her to do. Yet, the American Dream remains for her own created family--husband and child--elusive. What message does this story send? What message did Dybis think it sent? What message was Attorney C herself hoping to send by making this private failing public? On the surface, Dybis simply introduced a person for whom the American Dream should be attainable, perhaps even in any economy. That it isn't, or has not yet been anyway, is what may have, in Dybis's mind, made the story newsworthy. The irony.


Unfortunately, the present economy thwarts this simple logic. Anyone, yes anyone, can find him or herself unemployed these days. I personally know of an educated, highly experienced, chief financial officer who has in the last eight or more years had about that many jobs that have ended quickly. Thank God for his family's savings. Yet, it isn't just the mere fact that unemployment may be an equal opportunity possibility that justifies the focus of this piece, and it is specifically the fact that Dybis thought Attorney C's story worthy of publication that led me to write about this coverage. I take some issue with the publication of this particular story in the way that Dybis framed it. However, I can admit that Dybis, being a trained journalist, bet right on her readers' likely responses. Readers chimed in with reassuring words for Attorney C, advice, and well-wishes. "Hang in there. I hope you make it. I admire your grit," one commentor wrote, a thought echoed by others.


Dybis put a human face on the crisis of unemployment, a face on the effects of the recession. Personalization of what might otherwise be experienced by some as overly objective, dry, and abstract treatments of these socio-economic conditions is a humane thing to do, but, at the same time, personalization can sometimes obliterate the pains of many by focusing on the pain of one. This happens I think when, as is the case with C's story, the subject is presented as someone who should have been spared the crisis, someone whose attributes should have protected them from the fate of thousands of others. Just imagine how the message might change were these assumptions not underlying. I must point now to the specific manner in which Dybis described Attorney C as she introduced her to readers. I quote. "She's an angel of sorts--a beautiful blond, smart, funny, delicate without being too soft."


I shake my head. What was Dybis thinking? The answer I'm afraid is that she wasn't thinking, at least not critically. Apparently, Dybis doesn't see anything wrong with describing Attorney C in this anything but objective or neutral way. Dybis may see nothing wrong whatsoever with equating angelic character with good looks, or what she takes to be good looks. Dybis may also see nothing wrong with so easily anointing this rather ordinary person. If Dybis doesn't recognize the intrinsic racism and classism in her presentation of Attorney C it is because her decision to offer this story and her treatment of it she expects her readers to embrace.


To be fair, I will admit that Dybis doesn't construct Attorney C as an angel entirely based on appearance and pluck. Rather, the case for sainthood or, actually, angelhood is made also of the struggling attorney's willingness to live in--even to purchase a home in--the forlorn City of Detroit. One gets the sense that this "poor" decision was an unfortunate parting of ways with the immigrant ancestors' dreams. Again, they sacrificed so that their daughter could attain the good life; though they themselves were very poor, they found a way to raise Attorney C in (northern) Oakland County. Along the lines of their own strategy for success, their child's choice of residence made little sense. Why she would choose to live in the blackened city can only be understood if we see Attorney C as a daring urban pioneer, as a missionary, or--though it's a stretch--as a savior. Older and wiser, she has admitted to the lost cause of the first two if not the last. Attorney C publically admits of "failure," and this admission of the immaturity of trying to do it her way is a partial plea for her father's forgiveness (memory of his high hopes haunts her).


In a sense, then, this is a familiar tale of a prodigal daughter and of youthful idealism, and Dybis's publication of the story provides assistance to get Attorney C back on the right track. At the end of her testimony, Attorney C commits herself to making her "own damn pie" by going into business for herself. Readers admired her determination and resourcefulness. I myself admire her awareness that nothing comes easy in this economy as one would like to think, and nothing can be counted on in ways that some people have maybe come to in the past. If all of the social supports have not been lost, one has to search really hard for them, or, better yet, create them. The titillating question is whether new wine in old wine casks will do. Attorney C leads us to this question and leads me as well to focus on underlying currents in this piece as I try to answer the question. I would describe this as a highly empathetic argument. Even with Attorney C's bold statements of self reliance, she still depends on constructing an image that the world will get behind. And the world does, first of all, through Dybis. Attorney C ends with a statement of hope, a realization that the American Dream has changed since her father's time. Though some would say that it has died, Attorney C shows us that it is only more difficult to see. While Susan Faludi argues in her book Stiffed, the Betrayal of the American Man, that the social contract between the "average" man and the capitalists who once provided jobs for them has been broken, her work also makes clear that success today depends on inventing oneself as a commidity. If life were ever a game, if finding employment were ever a contest, it is only more clearly so now. Film illustrates this. Ten years ago it was Michael Douglas and the Game. A few years ago, it was Saw IV. These cultural productions teach us that obtaining a degree and specialized training is only one stage in an endless game of strange, required performances. In truth, I'm not sure that this reality comes as a surprise either to Attorney C or to the journalist Dybis, for beneath the councillor's lament I see someone who is shrewd enough to survive and even thrive. She has been granted another day in court.


I expect that if she continues as she is doing, she will land on her feet, but not without society's support. Her bold declaration rings familiar. It sounds like Scarlett O'Hara's commitment never to be hungry again. It teaches the same lesson as blogger Julie Powell's strange success. In the present economy, those who will fare best will not necessarily be most intelligent or the fittest but those who can best make the case that they are worthy of support by constructing an image that appeals, that sings the right tune, and pulls at the right strings.


Attorney C closes, "But maybe in all this wreckage, there lies some hope, and I'll cling to that." It would be easy enough to think that Attorney C is referring to her life alone, but of course she is not. We should see her life in a local, national, and even global context. The death of manufacturing and all of its implications are the wreckage she speaks of. And she places her life--her determination to survive the apocalypse--at the center. The message is painfully clear, and it pains me to state it more than it will pain my readers to hear it: this blond angel is the hope of Detroit and, if of Detroit, then of the nation, and, if of the nation, then of the world. What are the implications of this idea?