It's The Thought That Counts

"'It’s a Wonderful Life' is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation."

-- Wendell Jamieson, who can make one wonder if he, still, hasn't had enough of the bullshit - which wouldn't be surprising to TMR - considering it's coming from The New York Times.

I wasn't going to write about this article (because I just did a piece about the film, and having NewAge "angels" deciding to change my life into a "subsequent Bizarro-world alternate reality") but, since Hot Air's Allah Pundit has mentioned it - featuring the Jamieson quote about how, supposedly, "had George Bailey never been born, the people in his town might very well be better off today” - I thought it does warrant, at least, a few more words:

Mr. Jamieson says Pottersville is "cooler and more fun than Bedford Falls". Really?

I guess Mr. Jamieson likes the imagery, after George Bailey is dead, and the "villainous" Mr. Potter owns everything - how Violet (once merely the town Girly-Girl) is reduced to "a dime dancer and maybe a prostitute" and, when we see her later - without George around - she's become the screaming mad woman of Pottersville? How about the cab driver, Ernie, who doesn't know where his wife has run off to? Or how the cop becomes "a trigger-happy madman", no longer concerned with acting within the letter of the law?

Mr. Jamieson says, before George "dies", that his brother, Harry, returns home as "a slick, self-obsessed jerk." But isn't that because he went out into a world filled with Mr. Potter's?

And, I guess, Mr. Jamieson would rather see Harry dead, than that, right?

George certainly didn't think so.

Nor does George appreciate the change that came over his mother, who's become untrustworthy and cruel - or his wife, Mary, now the town librarian and a spinster. (It always kills me, now'a'days, when I see film husbands run, desperately, for their wives - before any other concern registers - and know that used to be me, before my own Mr. Potter made his debut.)

Mr. Jamieson says, after checking with a professor of urban policy, that "Pottersville, with its nightclubs and gambling halls, would almost certainly be in much better financial shape today. It might well be thriving."

But wouldn't that be because George Bailey wasn't there to help stop Potter's "scheming"? Because of George's dreams that got in the way - and could steer other's behavior to something better (which "We ease up on,...in a depression,” Jamieson's professor says) thus allowing the real community to thrive?


That professor, Mitchell L. Moss from New York University, says "Gov. David A. Paterson 'is under enormous pressure to allow gambling upstate because of the economic problems.'" I'm not surprised.

But the answer to those problems is to come to our senses - not to keep doing the things that got us into this mess to begin with. And I think Mr. Jamieson knows that.

See, he's telling us the thoughts he had watching "It's A Wonderful Life" as a 15-year old kid. And, as a youngster, I know the world can look like a pretty dull place - but that's because adults hide the real world, from kids, if they can.

Being a foster child, I didn't exactly have that option: I grew up in Pottersville, and now, I'm looking for a way out. But the only way for that to happen is for everyone around this foster child - everyone who still insists on thinking such evil, childish, thoughts - to finally decide that what they actually want to do is grow up.

So I'm stuck here alone, writing this blog, waiting. And you know:

Hoping, maybe, y'all will consider a display of maturity as my Christmas present or something.

"It's A Wohlfahrt Life"

So I'm flipping through the channels on television last night, killing time before Saturday Night Live comes on, when I run across Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" with it's timeless theme of how each man's actions touches others.

And I'm shocked that "Doctor" Robert Wohlfahrt's name isn't "Clarence" because, like Clarence the angel, Robert Wohlfahrt is an older man - a quack doctor in Wissembourg, France - who was willing to strip down to his underwear in order to radically affect the life of a younger American man - all the way around the world in San Francisco - who he'd never met before.

By not respecting the bonds of marriage, the history and success of traditional medicine, medical ethics - or even honoring his powerful position (and responsibility) as a physician - he was more-than-willing to change the life I had with the wife I loved.

And he fundamentally changed me, too, in ways that altered - and many times severed - my relationships with everyone, and everything, I thought I knew.

He warped how I now see the entire world.

Remember: I was just a guy.

I wasn't rich but I was happy to be doing what I was doing.

Then, all of a sudden, I was in need of help - from people, both, here and in France.

But what kind of help could I get against a charlatan posing as a "professional" doctor?

So I no longer recognized the world I lived in, filled as it was now with the ugliest of crimes - lying, quackery, cultism, murder - and, of course, illicit sex.

For weeks, I called everyone I knew, all over the world.

I even tried appealing to "Doctor" Robert Wohlfahrt himself - and he laughed at me.

He didn't behave like a doctor at all: he was cruel, thought only of himself, and showed none of the compassion this famous "doctor" is supposedly known for.

He didn't care - he had gotten what he wanted - so he certainly wasn't going to be of any help to me.

He was a quack - and lonely - so he saw his job as making sure the dance that was my marriage was over.

Because this "doctor" didn't care to behave in a professional manner, my wife was no longer the same person: I was forced to see her looking at me - and behaving - like the town whore.

Before "Doctor" Robert Wohlfahrt, I used to sing to her, and was able to make her laugh.

I adored her.

But now, after 20 years of marriage, I had lost everything.

And I wanted to die.

I started to drinking heavily.

I found myself running through the streets like a madman, screaming, "Is this hell what a doctor is supposed to do?"

For me, "Doctor" Robert Wohlfahrt is no angel, like Clarence - and he isn't a doctor either - because doctors are supposed to "first, do no harm."

But there has been harm - and now that I know about "Doctor" Robert Wohlfahrt's NewAge outlook, his love for cultism, his lack of respect for professional medical boundaries, and the crazy "science" of homeopathy - there won't ever be a moment when my life returns to normal.

Because of "Doctor" Robert Wohlfahrt's madness, arrogance, and pride, I know there will never be a time when apologies are made - and, of course, there is no way to get my family back.

All I can hope for, now, is the French authorities doing the right thing.

Because otherwise - unlike in "It's A Wonderful Life" - there won't even be a little bit of a happy ending for me.

I'll be living out my life in a whole other movie - an existential, and international, one - and the most important film that, unfortunately, at this time is still unseen by the public: