Subversive humor: First example (complete post)

"Thank God he's not one of us" or past tense variation "Thank God he wasn't one of us"

http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2000/apr/apr11a_00.html

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Attorney General Spitzer today announced that his Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) will commemorate its 25th Anniversary on Wednesday, April 12, 2000, at a reunion reception for several hundred past and present staff members at the Brooklyn Marriott (333 Adams Street) in downtown Brooklyn from 6 – 9 p.m.

The Attorney General’s MFCU is the oldest and largest statewide operation in the nation dedicated exclusively to the investigation and prosecution of health care crime. The 300-member MFCU is responsible for monitoring the more than $25 billion annually spent on Medicaid in New York State – more than 15% of the nation’s total.

Attorney General Spitzer said, "Twenty-five years ago, New Yorkers were shocked by revelations of widespread financial fraud, patient abuse, and official corruption plaguing the State’s nursing home industry. In response, New York became the first state in the nation to establish an office – the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit – to thoroughly investigate those engaged in health care fraud and abuse in order to protect both patients and taxpayers."

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The Unit - originally known as the Office of the New York State Special Prosecutor for Nursing Homes, Health, and Social Services - was created in January 1975 following the revelation of widespread and shocking abuses plaguing the State’s nursing home industry. The exposure of these scandals in late 1974 by the Temporary State Commission on Living Costs and the Economy, and by the media – including several intensive investigative projects by the New York Times, Village Voice and WNEW-TV – drew national attention to the fact that millions of Medicaid dollars earmarked for the care of elderly and indigent patients were instead lining the pockets of greedy and politically influential nursing home owners and operators.

As you can read in the above link, this 25th anniversary commemorative celebration, which took place in the year 2000, pinpoints the time of the scandal that I refer to in this blog posting as being in late 1974. I remember it well because it was so shocking and scandalous on so many levels that it was one of those turning points in the national psyche. Being a New York state resident, I felt it’s local impact too, while being a New York City resident my ex- (who I had not met yet but would soon after this happened) saw it unfold as both a local outrage and also a “Jewish” deep embarrassment because of one of the key figures who had perpetrated and benefited from the abuse of the elderly.

So when my ex- and I met and were married, this scandal was fresh in our minds since it had occurred just in the year before. When people get together, especially married couples, they develop a personal dialogue and lingo very quickly, and I don’t mean calling each other pookie. This was especially true of couples who shared a worldview, and who grew up in the political orientations and events of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

The country was rife with prejudice and discrimination, and it was still a very sensitive time for any minority: male, female, any race or any cultural profile, and any religion. People had strong and deeply felt stereotypes and fears. Remember, it was only ten years before that people my age had witnessed, some experiencing first hand, the Civil Rights movement. It was also only twenty years since a Catholic President was a hot issue. Women’s complaints of domestic abuse were routinely dismissed by police, even as they witnessed the actual crime, and men were virtually never charged no matter how heinous the battering. It was a time when any action by one person who belonged to “one group” (“a woman” “a black guy” “a Jew” “a Vietnam vet” etc) was highly likely to inflame existing passions and harden underlying prejudices. Therefore, when a Jew was one of the people responsible for this horrible nursing home scandal, it rocked the Jewish community and there was huge shame and anger.

It’s hard to describe to people who take it all for granted today and think that they have it so hard. Let me tell you, it was a very difficult time for our nation and one that in many ways we never really recovered from, mostly because humans collectively swayed in both extremes. Bad behavior hardened prejudices (one extreme of bad) but they also became, in a weird way, “unspoken truths” if there was a genuine problem In the community but no one wanted to be called “prejudiced” (the other extreme of bad). For example, service people were vilified for years because a number of cases of Vietnam vets coming home addicted and with post traumatic stress disorder (which had not even been diagnosed yet) had gone on killing rampages. It became a caricature of our service people as a whole and was a favorite of the Hollywood liberal crowd. During this horrible time, the crazed evil Vietnam vet was a stock character in many “entertainment” venues.

So imagine how Jews felt when one of the leading nursing home scandals appeared to be “a greedy Jew.” I can not begin to describe to you how that seared the soul. While it’s not like people ran crazy in the street hating on Jews as a result, the Jewish community held their breath every time another scandal broke. The expression “Thank God he wasn’t one of us” became a leitmotif among them at the time. This was adopted by my ex- and I who did not live with such fears, but who certainly understood the feeling. So it became one of the earliest of our code expressions in private talk. It was both sympathetic and subversive humor, since it mocks the mentality of people who draw conclusions about the guilt or stereotypes of entire groups based on one stupid or evil individual. So whenever we used the expression “Thank God he wasn’t one of us” amongst ourselves, it was code words for “Wow, I feel bad for the group that this guy or gal belongs to” and “Aren’t people who are going to draw conclusions from this stupid?” So let’s say we would see something with a Polish guy doing something really bad and scandalous. We’d say “Thank God he wasn’t one of us,” meaning 1) boy do we feel bad for the rest of the Poles and 2) aren’t people sickening who are going to glom onto this as a way to be prejudiced against Poles? Obviously we were never saying that we were happy that the event occurred just because it wasn’t “our dog in the fight” (to use a modern term). Obviously it was quite the opposite; we were being sympathetic of those who might get backlash unfairly AND mocking those who would do so.