Who Has the Last Laugh
I can’t remember just when I first read “Comedian’s Children.” Like most of Theodore Sturgeon’s short stories, probably shortly after it came out in paperback – in this case, around 1957.
It horrified me and, for that sequestered time, would likely have horrified almost anyone. The plot features an adored and respected entertainer, performing on the equivalent of futuristic TV, who has established a haven for children beset by an incurable and continually re-inflamed disease. He visits regularly, hugging them, bringing hope and presents, ruffling their hair.
Following an accidentally thwarted attempt to sabotage a spaceship, it becomes incrementally clear that the comedian is both originator and facilitator of the “disease,” which he spreads through a pathogen nestling in his pocket, distributed during that chuckling, fatherly hair-ruffling.
Years later I saw how eerily Sturgeon paralleled the rise of the Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy marathon. I can’t believe for a minute that he didn’t have that in mind – Lewis started his disease-pumping in New York in the mid-‘50s, years before he went national.
Not to accuse Lewis of nefarious designs (he has always given me hives, but only for being Jerry Lewis, the French cinematistes be damned; I remember Orson Welles on late-night TV intoning, “There is this idea afoot that Jerry Lewis is highly intelligent; this should be stopped”).
Sturgeon must have seen, early on, the clear road to abuse left open by such undiluted adulation of beneficent celebrity. The context wasn’t sexual in “Comedian’s Children” of course; in the '50s, you didn’t suggest such things.
So, should Jerry Sandusky come as such a surprise? Only if we remain institutionally blindered – as was much of Ireland to the rampant sexual and physical viciousness of the Catholic Church’s “sanctuaries” for youth that continued well into the late 20th century.
And now there’s Jimmy Savile.
If you’ve missed the news from England, this decades-long host of teen-focused BBC shows has become the subject of allegations of abuse from former young misses who appeared on his show. How many allegations? 300! 300 so far and counting. So many, so unprecedented that the British police investigators hardly know how to handle it all. Even if you dismiss two-thirds of them, you still have a situation that should make your knees quake.
What will become of Jimmy? No much, because he died last year at age 84. He died as Sir Jimmy – honored by Prince Charles and knighted by the Vatican, for Christ’s sake. For Christ’s sake?
As a supposed rationalist and the father of three daughters, I try keep a balance, to figure what this means, practically. Should we act pragmatically or with blind emotional explosion? Should we try to apply a sympathetic eye that encompasses both perpetrator and victim, or just stop trusting anyone who deals with kids? Is it possible to acknowledge that maybe there’s no perfect system to filter out corruptible and corrupted human trash?
I’ve applied to be leader of a 4-H group up here in the hinterlands of Sullivan County, PA, USA. I want to assemble some teens to conduct oral histories of aging countyites (and we have plenty of them, with the oldest county demographic in the sate). In the 1980s, high school English classes here amassed over 300 invaluable tapes that I digitized for permanent record a couple years back. It’s time to get the next generation on record.
To lead these kids, I have to allege, under pain of gonad clamps, that I have done nothing, ever amiss with anyone, anywhere, that I’m as lily-white as Louis XIV’s tablecloth. I have to pass state and FBI checks of all my known proclivities.
I don’t like the gummint sniffing in my drawers, but still less do I like Jerry Sandusky or Jimmy Savile, either which of whom I would shoot on sight, though I don’t own a gun. In fact, I’d be glad to dig up Jimmy’s body and belabor his corpse, a favorite response of Peter the Great in Russia.
Let’s forget that for the moment. Right now, confused as always about what I believe is right or makes sense, what the limits are/should be, I’d like to thank Theodore Sturgeon for having seen into a future that’s always been present. He did that – a lot.
by Derek Davis