JournalInquirer.com

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Saturday, January 23, 2010 12:08 PM EST

As I was scanning the channels after the announcements began pouring in that Martha Coakley had lost the election for U.S. senator from Massachusetts I thought I saw Howard Beale on the Union Broadcasting System in the rant that was heard ’round the world — again.

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it,” Beale said.

But I was mistaken. It must have just been a spooky flashback from 1976.

Beale’s network wasn’t on my TV Tuesday night, but the banter leading up to the election’s result reminded me that some things — like the plight of the middle class, and anger always chasing a spot to spew — never change.

There’s no question we are in the midst of an anger pandemic that is spreading faster and infecting more people than the H1N1 virus. Coakley can testify to that.

People are really worried about their jobs, their future, and their families. Most people want some kind of fix of the broken health-care system but don’t like the fix that’s winding its way through Congress. Most people didn’t want the economy to collapse but they don’t like the outcome of the fix that ended up putting more profits on Wall Street than potatoes on dinner tables on Main Street.

It’s harder to make ends meet — especially now that so many people are spending more in an effort to pay off credit cards, other debts, and refilling pension funds instead of working hard to increase their credit limits.These frustrations and many others are making people lash out at just about anything they can — especially politicians.

And just like Beale’s situation in that 1976 movie “Network,” there’s always someone who can smell an opportunity to exploit some crazed anger for his own gain.

It’s a funny thing that the wave of anger as expressed by Massachusetts voters could, for instance, actually kill the effort to fix America’s seriously flawed health-care system. It is bitterly ironic that the anger seeking ventilation about things such as out of control health-care premiums and co-pays; loss of coverage because of job change, pre-existing conditions, or just getting sick; seeing one’s children start careers with no coverage at all; and many other unbearable health-care coverage atrocities has been directed at the people and institutions that are working hardest to fix the problems instead of the parties that have been at work creating them.

That’s the same “art imitating life” trick UBS used on Beale to goad his anger in an effort to boost ratings and residual profits.

But it seems to me that the goaders on a lot of issues are the ones we should be getting mad at.We pay more and more each day to feed big insurance and big pharma’s profit addictions. And then they spend some of our money to rile up the anger and aim it at blocking the system changes we need the most but might dampen profits.

People are in a rage about working harder, longer, and faster while getting less in return. The goaders rile up the folks about the taxes taken from their shrinking paychecks. But who is shrinking the paycheck and stealing the rewards for the extra effort and productivity? We’ve been through an unprecedented era where most of the rewards for productivity went to the top of the income ladder while the workforce was being pushed down — one rung at a time.

Who’s mad about that?

Beale got it partly right when he challenged his audience: “So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

The part he left out? Just make sure you get angry at the right people.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.