and the winner is...

A.E. Manier Sr. (A.E.Manier.1@ND.EDU)
Thu, 1 May 1997 18:00:05 -0500

I saw Sling Blade last night. Forest Gump with violence. Totally
predictable! Small town rural Ohio in the 30s except gays were half way
out of the closet, in the movie. One good actor who wrote the screenplay
just to give himself a role he could play. I should have gone to
"Coaches" pub and watched Scottie Pippen beat the Bullets.

On to the winner!

This was not easy. I was often embarrassed I started the whole thing.

Although Marcus Smith and I are not twins separated at birth (I wasn't even
born in a hospital), we share many sentiments. I'm extremely greatful
that by 4/10/97, Marcus changed the subject. The comment of his that
really caught my eye was about "tenderness leads to the gas chambers!"

>>>I do not know why we should all reflect awe and wonder at a one-liner that
>>>any of us would question if a freshman dished it up in the draft of an
>>>exam.
>>>
>> >Percy's epigraph is catchy--but it wasn't just (corrupt) tenderness
>>that lead to the gas chambers. It was also (maybe most of all)
>>bureaucratic "tough mindedness" (probably expressed in the German
>>equivalent of the impersonal [passive] voice), organizational efficiency
>>arguments, and all the authoritarian crapola of the contemporary
>>corporate culture that led to the gas chambers. That leads today to
>>wide-scale death. It is not "tenderness" that guides tobacco executives,
>>but bottom-line profits.

I suspect Marcus and I would give the same grades to lots of student papers.
Marcus Smith(marcus@BETA.LOYNO.EDU). Definitely a good new friend, but
no prize.

Now, the first runner up ('cuz I really like references and interesting
match-ups) is

>Ted Atkinson ( tbatkinson@postoffice.worldnet.att.net) :
> In light of the discussion about Fr. Smith's admonition that "tenderness
>leads to the gas chambers" and Tom More's daughter who died of a brain
>tumor, I wanted to point out an interesting connection between Percy and
>Flannery O'Connor. At the request of the sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual
>Help Free Cancer Home in Atlanta, O'Connor wrote the introduction to _A
>Memoir of Mary Ann_, the story of a young girl with brain cancer whose
>bravery astounded the sisters. O'Connor's introduction is one of the most
>brilliant pieces on the mystery of suffering I've ever read. In the piece
>she warns those who are quick to gauge the "quality of life" of Mary Ann
>and others like her:
>
> In the absence [of faith] now, we govern by tenderness. It is a
>tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is
>wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of
>tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor
>camps and the fumes of the gas chamber. (_Mystery and Manners_ 227)
>
> The similarities between More's daughter and Mary Ann and between the
>ruminations on tenderness are striking indeed.

This only wins second place (costing me $50 I didn't intend to spend to
make Ted a Friend of the Friends of Walker Percy) because the claim "When
tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome
is terror" is never clarified or explained. It is a plausible account of
the relation of grace and nature (without Charity humans are incapable of
love), but this expression is both hyperbolic and authoritarian (believe it
or don't! Flannery never explains). Some of the folks I admire most in
the world are Augustinians, but I can't buy it if they won't explain it.

Since I think the obscene concept, <lebens unwertenlebens>, "life unworthy
of life" or "life not worth living" is at the conceptual core of The
Thanatos Syndrome,

...the winner and true MOVIEGOER is Bill Jenkins!!

I forward a check for $100 for that purpose to THE WALKER PERCY
EDUCATIONAL PROJECT, INC.; P.O. Box 3561, Austin, TX 78764, along with a
second check for $50 for the FRIEND award.

Bill Jenkins <billj@CC1.UCA.EDU>
>When I first came across Percy's comment that tenderness leads to the
>gas chamber, I took it as an example of satire, much like Swift
>suggesting that Irish children be raised for food. However, I've come
>to see that Percy was dead serious about this assertion and here are
>three reasons why:
>
>1. I read the book Percy mentions at the beginning of \The Thanatos
>Syndrome\, Frederic Wertham's \A Sign for Cain.\ This book came out
>a number of years before the current abortion and euthanasia debates
>that have polarized America, so Wertham's discussion of German
>sentimentality about quality of life and death seem convincing
>because it is non-partisan.
>
>2. I have also read selections from Robert Jay Lifton's \The Nazi
>Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide\, and this
>book, like Wertham's, explains in grizzly detail how the
>sophisticated and humane Weimar doctors and psychologists actually
>prepared upper echelons of German society for mercy killing, which in
>turn made it easier for Nazis to do their work by making use of the
>technology and techniques the Weimar doctors first developed.
>
>3. I also watched on either A & E or Discovery (can't remember) a
>documentary titled \The Nazi Killing Films\. These were movies, some
>of which were quite well-made, that presented believeable situations
>in which talented, sensitive people had to make choices about mercy
>killings. Some of these movies were intended for German filmgoers,
>and some of them were educational documentaries. They all shared the
>intent to justify and make acceptable the necessity of killing people
>suffering from physical or mental diseases for the good of the
>Fatherland. The next step, of course, was the Nazis' utilizing this
>propaganda to justify their final solution.

> I recommend this documentary especially to see what Percy
>is getting at. When one hears the rhetoric and sees the apparent
>concern of the doctors in easing the sufferings of others, one
>quickly perceives Percy knew exactly what he was talking about.
>
>Trying to distinguish between true and false sentimentality is
>therefore uncessary. The Weimar doctors, and later many of the Nazi
>doctors, were quite sincerely sentimental about quality of life and
>the easing of suffering. Percy's point is not about bogus versus
>genuine sentimentality.

This has got to be dead right. Tom More heard Fr. Smith's confession, "I
could have joined them." Tom More knew that Fr. Smith's choice for "life"
was forced by "their" choice of death, a.k.a. "quality of life".

Jay Lifton tells us he'd been thinking about a book on the Holocaust
since the late 60s and the Nazi Doctors was published just a few years
before The Thanatos Syndrome. But not to confuse Percy and More, More
was an alum of P&S and in the culture of that medical school, and as a
budding psychiatrist, might well have followed Lifton's career more
carefully than he read every word Flannery O'Conner ever published.

Enough. Hail to the MOVIEGOER of the month of May, Bill Jenkins.

**************************************************
I was also impressed by the ethnographic commentary by Matthias Staab. I
take it very seriously but Americans of my generation probably have had
their veiws of the subject fixed by Lifton's masterful analysis.

No prize but much gemutlichkeit! And, by the way, I've just discovered a
Rathskeller in Indianapolis, In, without about 4 doz German and Belgian
beers in stock and I'd love to know, if I lead him not into sin, Matthias'
top five choices among German and Belgian beers.

Matthias Staab <Matthias.Staab@DM.KRINFO.CH>
>WP said in an interview: "Weimar leads to Auschwitz". I always took that as
>pointing in a parallel direction as the "Tenderness ..." piece.
>
>In Germany a few years ago, we had a public discussion on 'secondary
>virtues': punctuality, orderliness, tidiness etc. which generally are
>considered as typically German virtues (also by the Germans themselves) and
>which a German politician said were the virtues you need to effectively
>organize a concentration camp. From what I read I wonder whether tenderness
>too is one of these virtues which is free of intrinsic values and therefore
>doesn't protect its bearer from slipping down the slope. It is reported that
>many of the Nazi and SS people were tender husbands and fathers... Heinrich
>Himmler praised his men of always having remained 'anstaendig' (decent,
>correct, respectable)!
>
>I as a German with an inclination to sentimentality find it perfectly
>convincing - as I experience the danger in myself, in my fellow countrymen,
>in my country's past - that FREE-FLOATING TENDERNESS decreases the willingness
>to resist evil and gives room to all who are prepared to exploit that
>tenderness for their purposes. I am aware that this is no (let alone:
>philosophical) argument but only a personal experience. But when I read
>TS first, I knew WP expressed something I had seen in myself and around me.
***********************

I take that as an interesting ethnographic report from the other side of
the Rhine, not incompatible with Lifton's critique.

But I'm with Marcus Smith. What replaces "tenderness" toward <lebens
unlebenswerten> in the good ole U$A is cost-benefit analysis.

I'm off to the post-office.

cuz'n EZE