Is it just me or does it seem that it takes a lot more each day to shock or
dismay us?
Think about it: Our
grandparents thought it disgraceful that Elvis swiveled his hips and forbade our parents to own his records. In
what is now the stuff of folklore, Ed Sullivan only allowed Elvis to be filmed from the waste up back in the 1950’s.
In the 60’s, the Ed Sullivan Show was the scene for
other attempts at censorship. The Doors appearance on the show shocked America by refusing to change this
line in their hit song, “Light My Fire”: “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher”
and the Rolling Stones struck again with their song, “Let’s Spend the Night Together”. There
were also the many battles that The Smothers Brothers Show had with censorship. The Rolling Stones stirred
up a fuss in Radioland with their song, “Satisfaction” and Barry McGuire caught a lot of heat from his hit, “Eve
of Destruction”.
Fast-forwarding to recent years, there’s
not much more than a 24 hour window of attention when TV airs horrific acts of savagery. We were shocked
with the horrible events at Columbine but yawned as others tried to mimic the carnage. We were stunned
when the Challenger exploded shortly after launching and all but shrugged when the Columbia disintegrated while returning
from a space mission.
I think the same kind
of comfortable numbness is affecting how we view the un, and under, employed. It’s kind of like the
old saying that describes what the differences are between a recession and a depression. A recession is
when someone you know is out of work. A depression is when you are out of work. I’ve
experienced both scenarios and I don’t think either scenario is very much fun.
As
I write this, experts are telling me that the REAL unemployment rate is 16.6% (including those who can no longer collect unemployment
and/or have quit looking for jobs). SIXTEEN-POINT-SIX-freakin’-percent! That’s
just around 9 percentage points away from the levels of the Great Depression! With these kinds of numbers, the odds are incredibly
high that right at this moment, we know people who are unemployed or even underemployed.
I can’t tell you how many people I see who once were high flying managers, directors,
or even VP’s for some of the largest companies in the Dallas area and now are waiting tables in restaurants, working
retail jobs or other vocations for a fraction of what they once earned. I know that but by the grace of God, go I.
I’ve begun to recognize the possibility that the waitresses and waiters that work
at the restaurants I frequent could have once been a co-worker of mine. That the cashier or sales help
in the stores I shop may be working one of their three jobs to try to make ends meets since they lost their good job.
I hope and pray that none of us are comfortably numb
as we hear the unemployment numbers on the nightly news.
