Howl

The Fifties, we are told, were a time when everyone and everything was trite, respectable, and boring. Louis St-Laurent led the country as it sleepwalked through the decade. Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver kept millions entranced in front of their television sets. Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie wrote best-sellers.

People, though, have forgotten John Diefenbaker, a prime minister vastly more interesting than the simulacra of corporate lemmings who have been running this country since the mid-Eighties. They have forgotten Charlotte Whitton, a mayor who makes Mel Lastman look like a retired refrigerator salesman. They have forgotten that in the Fifties the CBC routinely presented items like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" in prime time, as well as dramas about contemporary public injustices rather than about injustices conveniently long past. They have forgotten that in the United States, television brought down Joe McCarthy.

In literature the Fifties had a certain edge to them, too. Today's writers have been absorbed into the giant publicity and distribution systems of modern global publishing. In the 1950s, though, people actually published books that got banned and seized by the police.

One such book was Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, published in 1956 by the legendary City Lights Books of San Francisco. It was seized by U. S. Customs and by the San Francisco police, and was the subject of a long trial for obscenity (it was finally concluded that the book was not obscene).

These days, people don't get quite so upset about poetry. They don't really get emotional about anything. Contemporary life is basically a lock-step procession of zombies into the abyss. Having abandoned the use of our brains we have satisfied our need for guiding principles by adopting those sold to us by the same media which so effectively sell beer, tampons, and anything with the word light in it. The world is filled with dutiful citizens who spend their waking hours occupied with the thoughts "We must reduce the deficit; we must reduce the debt; I must save for my retirement."

These observations were inspired by a review that – thinking of the impending millennium, whenever that may be – I once conducted of poetry written in English during the twentieth century. It's frightfully refined, isn't it? Compare, for example, the horridly bloodless poems of James Kirkup to the highly raffish and scabrous life he vividly and engagingly recounts in the many volumes of his autobiography.

Certainly, great poetry was written in the twentieth century. There is the work of Wallace Stevens, for example, and one must admit that despite its superficial reserve it does have a distinct visceral aspect. Some – we repeat, some – of T. S. Eliot's work (or the work which he may have plagiarized) actually says something about reality, although something like "The Dry Salvages" deserves the name it is usually given around the literary department – "The Dry Heavages".

Nevertheless, the general run of poetry in the twentieth century is largely trivial. Poetic form has been abandoned, and what chiefly distinguishes poetry from prose these days is typography. Prose is written in paragraphs, while poetry is arranged differently on the page.

For example, on my daily trips in the funereal equipages of the Toronto Transit Commission, I have become acquainted with Poetry on the Way, a program which puts Canadian "poetry" in the place of advertising cards. The supposed poetry to which we are treated consists largely of trite and inelegant writing arranged in scattered blocks of print. Louis Dudek writes a couple of quick sentences about a seeming contradiction in his dogs' behaviour and then arranges them in arbitrary lines within a couple of blocks of print placed at random on the page and voilà…there's your poetry. In the literary department's opinion this type of work seems to have little in common with the definitely poetic – "Bateau Ivre," say – but that opinion is a minority one these days.

By modern standards, then "Howl," which takes up a third of Howl and Other Poems, is poetic. It doesn't rhyme and it doesn't scan, but it is written in a series of hanging indents, so it's poetry. But is it good poetry? That question has been much debated over the past forty-two years.

Certainly "Howl" is gripping. It seizes your attention at the very beginning and doesn't let go. It inspires you to read it aloud, an effect some people still consider to be a mark of good poetry. It inspires you to shout it aloud, and that may be a bit unrefined for most responsible contemporary citizens.

One of the characteristics preferred by modern consumers of poetry is obscurity. Obscurity allows the reader to bathe in a pleasant wonderment at the incomprehensibility of existence, which is apparently a pleasant experience for many. It is certainly a convenient preference for those whose goal is to maintain the populace in its apparently exemplary state of zombitude. "Howl", though, wants you to actually get up and do something, even if it's just to get excited. "Howl" is not obscure. It focusses your attention on actual real things and expects you to think about them.

Two other characteristics often considered these days to be defining characteristics of poetry are loveliness and fatuousness. Anything that deals too clearly with the facts of life is likely to upset the privileged types who make
up most of the modern poetry market. The poetry market in fact consists chiefly of social ballast – people with comfortable jobs and comfortable lives who don't actually do anything productive but who keep society stable by acting in accordance with one of the approved social myths. In poetry, as in fiction, in belles-lettres, and in non-fiction, this group prefers impressionist gewgaws, the elegantly puzzling, and the self-confidently stupid.

"Howl" is neither lovely nor obscure, and although it is often fatuous, there is still enough intelligent appreciation of the real in it to disqualify it on that score as well. How can you not like "I saw the best minds of my generation...who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz"? How can you not like "who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried"? How can you not like "[who] rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma sabachthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio"? How can you not like:

"I'm with you in Rockland/where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself  imaginary walls collapse        
O skinny legions run outside           
O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here                
O victory forget your underwear we're free"?

How can you not consider this to be good poetry?

Well, some of the ideas in those excerpts are trite, but so are most of the ideas
in much highly regarded poetry. One problem with the excerpts, though, is that they are exuberant, as is the rest of "Howl." Exuberance is démodé
these days, considered appropriate only in adolescence or in appreciation of a sporting event. In other ages or circumstances we are not to indulge in anything which might impair our solemn concern about the important social issues helpfully defined for us by the Liberal and Conservative Parties of Canada and the International Monetary Fund.

"Howl" also makes too many references to phenomena typical only of the lives of the less favoured, and these days the appetite for literary slumming is much less keen than it was in 1956. Memories of the Depression are much rarer and fainter now, as is the realization that the misfortunes of the poor are not a sign of their moral inferiority to us, the more favoured.

"Howl" also fails to meet contemporary standards by refusing to lie quietly on the page without bothering us after we lay the book down. The images stay in our heads, distracting us from contemplation of the moral necessity of the elimination of barriers to international trade.

"Howl" is just too raucous. It offends the contemporary sensibility by being vital, vibrant, and exciting. It provides an unpleasant contrast with the pageant of steely-eyed sadism which passes for both entertainment and news these days. It suggests that there is an alternative to the modern "lifestyle" of hard work and regular deposits in one's retirement fund. "Howl" is actually fun, and if the masses ever re-acquire a taste for having fun with serious ideas, whatever will happen to us?

Howl © 1998, John FitzGerald

God works in mysterious ways

Faith is a fine invention
For gentlemen who see,
But microscopes are prudent
In an emergency.

–Emily Dickinson

Did George W. Bush lie about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction? Did he lie about Iraq's supposed plans to obtain uranium? Did he lie about Saddam Hussein's supposed support for al-Qaeda?

Probably not. He probably didn't tell the truth, but the reason he didn't is far more interesting than the idea that he simply lied.

One fact which people consider important about the contemporary Republican Party is its strong support among evangelical Protestants. Chief among these evangelical Protestants is Pat Robertson, head of the Christian Broadcasting Network, which grew out of his evangelical television show The 700 Club. Despite the recognition of the importance of the evangelicals to the Republican Party, though, no one seems to have realized the connection between evangelical theology and the Bush administration's dubious assertions.

Now, no one questions Christians' abilities to come up with wacky ideas. After all, the largest Christian denomination continues to organize its worship around what it considers to be an act of cannibalism in which believers consume the body and blood of their god. Nevertheless the evangelicals have come up with a few lulus lately.

Pat Robertson is known as an exponent of Kingdom Now teachings. In themselves Kingdom Now teachings are not all that wacky, but he combines them with another type of evangelical teaching which is, to use the technical term, looney.

Kingdom Now teachings hold that it is the duty of Christians to establish dominion over the earth by taking control of government and social institutions (I said they weren't all that wacky, not that they weren't wacky). Is it all that surprising that sending missionaries to Iraq turned out to be one of the chief American concerns after Iraq fell? Anyway, Kingdom Now devotees believe the Second Coming will be postponed until this dominion is established.

Kingdom Now adherents have many close relationships with another Protestant school of thought, the Word-Faith movement, also known as Positive Confession (we have now reached the really wacky bit). Word-Faith holds that if a person has faith, any word that he utters as a consequence of that faith must be true. Often the proponents of this view – the most prominent these days being Kenneth Copeland, Paul and Jan Crouch, and Benny Hinn – encourage people to believe that faith can make them rich.

Wealth, in fact, is seen as the right of the believer. Word-Faith has a highly deistic view of God, and believes that if what you say is based on faith in God, God is required to make your utterances true. So if you say "God will make me wealthy" (a statement of the type known as a positive confession), God must make you wealthy. Really. They believe that.

On the other hand, Word-Faith preachers tend to be loaded, so maybe they're onto something. Have a look at Rod Parsley's television show sometime. Besides being one of the most entertaining people on television, Pastor Parsley simply reeks of moolah. His suits are magnificent, and his headquarters in Columbus, Ohio is starting to make the Taj Mahal look like a shack. Benny Hinn doesn't look as if he has to go down to the food bank too often, either, although you'd think if positive confession was all that effective he could do something about his hair.

Anyway, one Kingdom Now adherent who has close ties to Word-Faith is...Pat Robertson! The 700 Club has Word-Faith preachers like Rod Parsley as guests, and the show has long featured Word-Faith shticks like praying over stacks of viewers' letters containing prayer wishes.

Now, George W. Bush, as every Republican tells us, is a spiritual man. No doubt he has been heavily influenced by Pastor Robertson. When faced with doubt about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, what would a Word-Faith believer do? He would believe that if he said Iraq had WMDs, then Iraq must have them.

That does seem to be the most persuasive explanation of what happened. It is simply more plausible than thinking that a bunch of intelligent people like Mr. Bush's advisers could think they could lie about issues like that and get away with it. It's more likely that they thought that if they believed it then it must be true.

Of course, many people think like that without the encouragement of evangelical preachers, and this type of thinking is rampant among the wildly popular American success experts. Even Dr. Phil, who at least has had the decency not to start his own cult, tells people that they come into this world with every ability they need to get whatever they want. However, among the exponents of this doctrine it is Pat Robertson who is the power within the Republican Party and the source of much of its funding. President Bush is more likely to have been influenced by him than by Dr. Phil or Anthony ("if I can go from being an overweight slob living in a rundown apartment to being an immensely wealthy exemplar of fitness who is accused of stealing other men's wives then so can you") Robbins.

The Administration's response to the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction confirms my analysis. Instead of simply planting some evidence, they continue to tell us that they are sure they will find some WMDs. They believe they will, so it must be true.

When you think about it, isn't it much better to have your country run by a bunch of those lying bastard politicians that everyone is always complaining about than by a bunch of religious wackos who are immune to reason and evidence? A lying bastard would have known better than to lie about things you could be caught out on.

But what about Tony Blair? He's probably not a Word-Faith devotee, and he's not a lying bastard (because a lying bastard would have known better). So I guess that makes him a stupid bastard.

Originally published in 2003

God Works in Mysterious Ways © 2003, John FitzGerald

Better living through cynicism!

According to a passage in The Picture of Dorian Gray, a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

Since being published in 1890, that little statement has enjoyed an attractiveness longer-lived than even Dorian's. It is approvingly quoted any time someone wants to castigate someone else for being a cynic.

Somehow the people who use this quotation seem not to have noticed that it's one of Wilde's characteristic paradoxes. It's a cynical remark about cynicism. So by quoting it to castigate cynics you become a cynic yourself. As Lord Alfred Douglas would have said, way cool.

So if it's contradictory to be cynical about cynicism, let's be consistent and be upbeat and positive about it! Wow! What a great idea! I can think of all sorts of wonderful things that the cynical community has given to the world!

• First of all, there's contemporary television! Cynical television executives realized that if they took the value, or quality, out of television programs they could reduce the price! When they reduced the value and price of television programs, they ended up with shows like Survivor and The Bachelor! And that's a good thing! How do I know? Because everybody likes them as much as those expensive "quality" shows they replaced! Wow! High ratings, low cost! I guess sometimes it helps not to know anything about value!

• Then there's contemporary fashion! Cynical marketers suspected that what people wanted in fashion was nothing more than a trademark that certified they'd spent a lot of money on a garment or accessory. How could they find out? Why, they marketed expensive clothes that were identical in every way to cheaper garments except that they prominently displayed the designer's trademark! That's how we got the $100 T-shirt! And you know what! Everybody bought them! Lower costs for designers, but higher revenues – who needs to know about value!

• And of course there's contemporary politics! Neo-conservative and neo-liberal politicians just couldn't see the value in democracy. For them, democratic values could be reduced to one question – how much did they have to pay? So they embarked on campaigns to cut social programs and to cut taxes. And you know what? Everybody loved the idea! They voted the slash and burn cynics into office, where they slashed and burnt! Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, Mike Harris, they all slashed and burnt! And after they slashed and burnt they all got voted in again!

And you know what else – the possibilities are endless! What if...we combined all three of these things! What if we selected ordinary citizens at random to run for the Calvin Klein party on a platform of eliminating government service and reducing taxes to nothing! Now there you have absolutely no value at all! And everyone'd love it!

Instead of having to fork out to pay for the pet projects of a bunch of fat old ugly politicians, you'd have the discretion to purchase any service you wanted from any giant transnational corporation that was supplying it! You wouldn't have to put up with clunky old government health care, government police services, or government electricity, you could buy designer health care, designer police, and designer electricity!

And once Parliament was eliminated the parliamentary channel would be freed up for reruns of Survivor!

So what are you waiting for! Those old outmoded bleeding-heart do-gooder attitudes are yesterday's news! For a better society, for a better country, for a new improved, more confident YOU, let's all get cynical!

Better Living Through Cynicism © John FitzGerald, 2003

Frank who?

Ever heard of Frank Sprague? Sorry, you're thinking of Howard Sprague.

You may be asking, Why should I have heard of Frank Sprague? There's a good reason, really, which we'll get to after a largely cribbed but lively bio of Himself.

Anyway, Frank was a Connecticut boy who graduated from the United States naval Academy in 1878. He was interested in electricity a bit.

While serving in the navy, for example, he installed the first electric call-bell system on a U. S. Navy ship and invented a new type of dynamo. Okay, there were more types of dynamo still to be invented in those days than now, but there still weren't all that many people inventing them.

In 1883 he was persuaded to resign his commission and sign up with Thomas Edison. Frank introduced mathematical methods to Edison's operation, which until then had proceeded in its work by conducting trial-and-error experiments. Frank showed them how to use mathematics to select the experiments which would be most effective. He also fixed up Edison's system for distributing electricity from a central station.

The year after that – yup, he knocked those achievements off in his first year on the job – he decided he wanted to run his own company, so he resigned and set up Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company.

At the time, electric railways weren't all that profitable an item. The electric streetcar had already been invented, but could only run on single lines – that is, cars couldn't transfer from one line to another. But Frank apparently was confident in his ability to make something out of electric railways, which he did.

But first – he invented the first commercially practical electric motor, which was heavily promoted by Edison, and invented a system for returning electricity from electrical equipment to their main supply systems. Both of these developments are handy if you're interested in making money off electric railways, of course.

In 1888 Frank built the first streetcar network in Richmond, Virginia. People came, people saw, and people wanted to build their own. Electric railways meant people could get to work faster, which meant cities could be bigger, which meant businesses could be concentrated together more effectively. By the end of 1889 one hundred and ten cities around the world had completed or begun Frank-style streetcar systems.

In 1890 Edison, who built most of Frank's equipment, bought Frank out. Frank, you see, was now interested in elevators. He realized that increasing the capacity of elevators would increase the earnings of tall buildings. So he and Charles R. Pratt improved the electric elevator. They invented the automatic elevator, for example. The Sprague-Pratt Electric Elevator ran faster with bigger loads than the hydraulic elevators which were then the standard, so people started queuing up for them, too. Frank then sold his company to Otis Elevator.

For his next trick, Frank turned his attention back to electric railways, devising a system by which electric railway cars could be hooked up in a train and controlled simultaneously by a single motorman in the lead car. People wanted them, too. Trains without locomotives produce more revenue per unit of rolling stock, and run faster and accelerate quicker than trains with locomotives. Frank had invented the subway train.

So, before turning forty Frank had revolutionized urban life. Buildings could be built taller and produce more revenue, and the increased number of workers needed for business districts full of tall buildings could be accommodated in the larger cities which his streetcar and commuter train systems allowed people to build. Along with other pioneers of electrification, Frank invented modern life.

And Frank didn't stop, continuing to improve electric traction, both horizontal and vertical, for the rest of his life. And you'd probably never heard of him until you started reading this article.

Why is Frank an obscure figure today? An important reason is probably his penchant for selling his companies and inventions to other people. Those companies had no reason to promote the achievements of Frank J. Sprague. On the other hand, many of the other giants of the electricity business of Frank's day didn't sell their businesses, and they're no better known today than Frank. What people today think when they see SIEMENS on the side of a factory is probably better left unconsidered.

In the end, though, the reason is simply that we're incurious drones. We're trained by incurious drones to be incurious drones. And really, curiosity is a threat to the stability of society. If everybody was always asking questions about everything, Iraq would hardly ever get invaded and gun registries would never get set up. It's much better for people to abjure curiosity in favour of cheap thrills. Frank's contemporary Lizzie Borden is far better known today than he is, and according to her trial she never did anything. Frank's contemporaries Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth are better known today than he, because they excited people. They electrified crowds in ball parks, and Frank electrified society. We know what we'd rather watch. And who we'd rather honour.
Frank who? © 2005, John FitzGerald

Syllogisms of apathy

• If one is not virtuous oneself, one can still profit from the virtue of others.
  
• There is no such thing as the golden mean. Moderation in all things is a recipe for mindless consumption. Drinking in moderation is unentertaining compared to drunkenness and uneconomical compared to sobriety.
  
• Politics is the process of establishing who's going to impose whose will on whom, or at least of establishing who thinks who's going to impose whose will on whom.
  
• Leadership is a talent exemplified by, among others, the fastest lemming.
  
• Self-righteousness: The common form of righteousness.
  
• If your knowledge of Italy came entirely from Italian television, you'd believe all Italian women were blondes.
  
• Fortune favours the fortunate.
  
• If we were ever privileged to be shown The Truth, we'd be too embarrassed to believe it.
  
• We no longer believe that suffering ennobles, but instead believe that it profits.
  
• Orderly habits are the sign of a disorderly mind.
  
• People make fun of the superstitious, but believe that a well-dressed person is trustworthy, and a beautiful one admirable.
  
• Reading allows us to live vicariously in a fantasy world other than the fantasy world we actually live in. Its chief function is to distract. People don't remember what they read, they don't think about it, they don't apply it in their lives – they don't even follow instructions. Perhaps it's because they've tried doing all these things.
  
• The chief problem with luck is figuring out which is the good and which the bad.
  
• Adoption is a process by which, instead of redistributing income, we redistribute children.
  
• People seem to feel compelled to offer a justification for their actions, but not to examine it.
  
• Euphemism is the politeness of the condescending.
  
• Since we can't tell the truth to ourselves, how can we be expected to tell it to others?
  
• Insecurity is the belief that one's life, to be successful, must be guided by something other than common decency.

Syllogisms of Apathy © John FitzGerald, 2005

Word up!

We live in the most public age in history, so we have more things to hide than people have ever had before. Since we have more secrets, we have to have more places to keep them. To make sure the secrets stay secret in those places, we need passwords.

I’ve got more passwords than the KGB. I have a password at the public library. I can reserve a book from home now, but only if I do it in secret, through a library account that I can only use if I enter my fourteen-digit library card number and the correct password. Besides that, every couple of years I have to provide proof of my identity.

For the first fifty-odd years of my life no one cared too much about who I was at all; now it seems my library card makes me a prime target for identity theft. But then, think of the havoc terrorists could wreak on the world if they were able to log on to my online library account and reserve whatever book they wanted.

I know, I know. There are good reasons for security precautions. There are bad reasons, too. In Ontario we now have to provide official identification when we vote – or rather, when we vote in person. If you vote by mail you don’t have to. Apparently the danger to the public interest from voter fraud is neatly balanced by the revenue it generates for Canada Post.

But the government also mails you a card, with your name and address on it, which you take to the polling station. Why do we need to provide further identification? Are they afraid we’re going to get mugged for these cards on the way to the polls? It’s not like we’re wearing signs reading I’m going to vote and can’t fight worth a damn.

Whatever your opinion is of the merits of passwords, whether you think all passwords are necessary or, like me, have the correct view of them, you must admit that life has changed considerably over the last twenty-five years or so. In 1980 the only secret number I had to remember was the combination to the lock on my locker in the basement of the building I lived in. Now I spend my days logging in to accounts. And waiting while other people log into accounts while I wait in line behind them.

When I got a letter in the old days, I didn’t have to enter a password to open it, even though in getting it to me the post office had left it vulnerable at several points to interception by the nefariously minded or the royally mounted. In fact, we still require no password to open letters, even though the mail is no better protected. You could open one of those drop boxes for letter carriers with a can opener.

I suppose the problem is that the criminals are becoming as computer-bound as we are. They spend so much time entering passwords and checking e-mail that they just don’t have time to go out and bribe a letter carrier to lend them his or her keys for a few hours. So they end up having to conduct their business through the internet, trying to get e-mail recipients to go to phony websites and innocently enter their credit card numbers – and passwords.

The price of convenience is eternal inconvenience, it seems. In the old days, if I couldn't find a book I wanted at the bookstore, I'd ask the bookstore to order it for me, then go back a week or so later to pick it up.

If I can't find a book I want in the bookstore these days, I search a website or two, find the book, log into my account with my password (if I have one) or create an account (if I don’t), fill out forms, supply my credit card number and the special four-digit code, click a button, print out the receipt, log out, then sit back and wait a week or so for the book to turn up.

I have saved the time I would have spent previously going back to the bookstore. Time is money, and money talks, and talk is cheap, etc. The time I save by using my password I can now use for productive activities, like waiting for hackers to steal my credit card information off the bookstore website. Or making erroneous entries on Wikipedia. Or sitting hunched over my computer, entering more passwords.

Word Up © John FitzGerald, 2007

Why we hate lawyers

Jokes about lawyers are very popular these days, and the most popular ones display, especially in these politically correct times, a surprising bloodlust:

What do you call 5000 dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A good start!

What do you do if you run over a lawyer?
Back over him to make sure. Then, make another notch on the steering wheel.

What do have when a lawyer is buried up to his neck in sand?
Not enough sand.

Now what do lawyers do to arouse such animosity? Chiefly, the problem is that they're smart. Being smart is definitely démodé these days. It is outré. It is, above all, pas comme il faut.

For one thing, having to acknowledge that someone other than us is smart restricts our ability to perform our duty of esteeming ourselves. Moreover, the existence of a group of people who make good money from living by their wits rather than by doing what they're told to do makes most of us feel inadequate, so we hate them.

Intelligence is also the enemy of the good life, as defined for us by giant corporations. It hinders our ability to follow the directions for living that our employers so thoughtfully send us over our cellphones and pagers, and that Oprah and other corporate giants send us over the airwaves. If we actually exercised intelligence, how could we enjoy Survivor, taking work home on the weekend, or reading all those self-help books? Lawyers are intelligent – they must want to ruin our lives.

Furthermore, lawyers are just not genteel enough. If the people had their way, life would not be marred by such embarrassments as the release from prison of Donald Marshall, David Milgaard, Guy-Paul Morin, Rubin Carter, Rolando Cruz, and on and on. When society says that someone is a murderer, the well-behaved accept its judgment.

Often our hatred of lawyers is justified as a dislike of lawyers' greed. Given the incidence of selfless behaviour on our parts these days, though, we can safely assume that this explanation is but another example of the defence mechanism of projection. Feeling guilty about our own greed, we project it onto some outgroup. Certainly lawyers place a high value on their work, and like to get paid for every second of it. On the other hand, people are willing to pay their stratospheric fees, so maybe they're worth it.

Anyway, if lawyers were that greedy, they wouldn't be lawyers. They'd be where the real money is – playing professional sports. Representing the legal interests of citizens caught up in the toils of the "justice" system, or even the interests of giant corporations, pays peanuts compared to what you can get for batting balls about. And when you bat balls about, people worship you. And you get a lot more time off.

We also justify our hatred of lawyers as hatred of their questionable ethics. Insert your own sarcastic comment about that idea here.

Perhaps I have not persuaded you. Luckily for you, society seems to be evolving in a way which will make most lawyers obsolete. People seem to be losing interest in the mainstay of lawyers' business.

Specifically, they are losing interest in democracy. They don't vote; they don't pay attention to the issues when they do vote; they vote, as Ontario voters have done, to reduce their control over the expenditure of public funds. Democracy just takes too much of our valuable time in a world full of rewarding things to do, like watching So You Think You Can Dance or searching YouTube for videos of dogs dancing the hula. Why not just leave the running of society to the experts?

Once the experts take over lawyers will become unnecessary except, of course, to the experts. At any rate you won't have to deal with them, since your rights will be thoughtfully reduced to a convenient number you can protect all by yourself - the right to pay taxes; the right to have your urine tested; the right to be denied unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, and health care. And, of course, the right to tell jokes about lawyers.

Why We Hate Lawyers © John FitzGerald, 2001