Parody
Parody THE EASY QUESTIONS There are no greater para doxes in contemporary politi cal life than those that arise from the knowledge of our own mortality. Life, as Simone Weil astutely observed,...
...If I skip the milk altogether I can probably add a little extra butter to the Kraft's Macaroni and Cheese so beloved of Thomas Mann and make the orange powder deliquesce that way...
...I cannot help but be acutely aware of how limited my time on this sphere is, and how complex are the dilemmas that confront those of us who think deeply in this post-modern, post-industrial and post-ideological age...
...Life, as Simone Weil astutely observed, ends in death, and in between time's winged chariot hurtles on (Donne, bien sur...
...Nor do I buy Harold Bloom's thesis that Oswald Spengler was lactose-intolerant and that if he'd been drinking Lactaid he'd have looked on the brighter side of things...
...But if I saved time by not schlepping milk, would I really use those moments productively, or would I just linger longer at the newsstands looking at German girlie magazines...
...There are no easy answers to this set of alternatives...
...The Kraft's does taste better with whole milk, though with skim I can take it or leave it...
...If he hollers let him go...
...Is it skimmed less than skim milk or is it skimmed more...
...No milk...
...Catch a tiger by the toe...
...And so if I lay the milk or non-milk options out before me, I must rely ultimately on a legitimate call to traditional authority: eenie, meenie, miney, moe...
...If I go to the 7-Eleven, I will have to pass by the sticker on the exit door that measures my height...
...Ultimately life is a series of contingencies and we are mere cave dwellers searching out answers in shadows...
...And though I teach at Princeton, I don't understand what this 2% milk is...
...Eenie, mee-nie, miney moe...
...Let us assume for the sake of argument that I will stop and pick up the carton of the milk on the way home...
...Michael Walzer...
...Reinhold Niebuhr had to walk six blocks from his apartment to the nearest Gristede's, and yet found time, even while composing Moral Man and Immoral Society to purchase whole milk (which spoils faster) three times a week, and make an extra stop at a nearby D'Agostino's, where the Carnation non-dairy creamer was 19 cents less a can...
...But today, the con-sumerization of American life leads to a distinct fin de siecle alienation born of an overabundance of choice...
...And so as I confront the hard ques tion, "Should I pick up a car ton of milk on the way home from work...
...Somehow I feel that man's constant need to measure is a form of dehumaniza-tion, so eloquently addressed by Ionesco, while the implication that we are all stick-up artists robs us in a subtle way of our moral autonomy, to borrow from Willie Sutton...
...On the other hand, if I go to Safeway, I will be confronted by even deeper dilemmas which I have previously addressed elsewhere (see my essay "Paper or Plastic...
...In the end these are probably not questions that can be addressed by an a priori call to high principle, but must be better resolved in a more ad hoc frame of mind...
...An Inquiry," The New York Review of Books, January 29, 1995...
...The heart weeps...
...In my case, I can stop and buy milk at the 7-Eleven, which takes me four blocks out of my way, or I can pull up to the closer Safeway in the hope that the line at the express check-out aisle will be short...
Vol. 2 • October 1996 • No. 7
