And in Scrooge, I always felt bad for Ebeneezer. The welfare bums wanted a piece of him, but Scrooge was a total badass. He had good traits. He was frugal, hard working and innovative. Its too bad he softened up in that classic. The lefties and the ghosts denutted him and made him their little state bitch, a slave of the poor, guilting the poor bastard to death of his estate. The writer/director had everything upside down in that movie. The lazy asses converted Scrooge. Why couldn't Scrooge have influenced the lazy asses?
78 comments
So you didn't like the character development over the course of the story.
You preferred was is essentially an un-repented, unreformed soul to someone who has seen the light.
Sheesh.
Mainstream conservative position, really. We know that poor people are lazy, because if they weren't then they wouldn't be poor. Any evidence to the contrary (long hours of hard work in Scrooge's office, long hours in the factory with no paid overtime, etc., etc.) is clearly a socialist conspiracy planted to rile up the lazy poor.
I always felt bad for Scrooge. Abusive father, dead sister, rough childhood, causing him to be so withdrawn that he ruined his first chance at love, which in turn made him more bitter. His life put him on a path that he was too afraid to leave, resulting in a lonely, miserable old man who clung desperately to his money because it was a substitute for happiness.
There's also the possible interpretation that Scrooge was Jewish, being forced into this. He followed some common stereotypes, and Dickens was relatively insensitive about Jewish stereotypes until they were pointed out to him.
The lazy asses converted Scrooge.
In Scrooge's time the industrial revolution and the development of the steam engine had wiped out millions of jobs. People who had worked hard all their lives suddenly found they could no longer work because they had been replaced by a machine. The average person in English non-agricultural jobs worked a ten hour day, with a half day off Saturday and a whole day off on Sunday (= about 60 hours/week), so they probably were a lot less of a "lazy ass" than you.
@GigaGuess: The typical response to that is that if that's what the market will bear, then Crachit should have reduced his cost of living to match. Or that if the wages were really that abhorrent, the only answer would be to leave immediately and watch your former employer fail in your absence, even though there may be circumstances that make leaving difficult. (The one constant example in all the adaptations is actually internal - Crachit's respect towards and personal sense of duty to Scrooge.)
... damn. I'll be right back, I'm going to check out a copy of the original and some DVDs of the plays from the library.
You know Dickens made it up but based it on his own experiences during the 1800's in London's gutters, right? And that England in the 1800's is the closest any country has ever come to true capitalism, resulting in extreme poverty among the majority of its population?
Y'know, with the threats of a full-blown communist revolution until the government stepped in and created labour laws (including legalizing unions so that factory owners couldn't exploit the shit out of their workers).
This fails on so many levels.
You do realise that if Scrooge had not changed his ways he was going to hell right?
In the Albert Finney version, when scrooge finnally dies, everyone gets together and sings an upbeat song about how glad they are he's dead.
Do you really want to be that hated?
@Almafeta
Oh, indeed...that and the fact that the next factory will pay the same pittance, and...yeah. Bah, whatever.
"The writer/director had everything upside down in that movie."
Uh, the writer, who wtote the book in the nineteenth century and had been forced as a child to go to work, was hungry and poor himself early in his life. He knew from his own experience how the poor in his era were exploited and had little hope of escaping their circumstances, no matter how hard they worked.
In other words, unlike you, he knew what he was talking about.
I can't recommend spreading this opinion enough. Please, broadcast to the world. "I thought Scrooge had it right".
I can't think of a faster way to get all your arguments devalued.
@Rorschach
"What pisses me off in this is mainly the fact that he seams to have no idea it was a book first."
Yeah, that bothers me, too...
The lefties and the ghosts denutted him and made him their little state bitch, a slave of the poor
It's very telling that the crux of your argument is essentially that you hold experiencing empathy for and a group identity with others to be synonymous with being a slave to them. Nobody forces Scrooge to do anything; they just make a persuasive argument, pointing out implications of his actions that he'd ignored, and remind him of a part of himself that he'd forgotten.
guilting the poor bastard to death of his estate.
First and foremost, Scrooge is a miser. He does fuck-all with his estate; it's wasted on him and he doesn't deserve it. Even Rand wouldn't have held him amongst her heroes for that.
Second of all, the only people who denounce guilt are those who feel a lot of it. Thanks for sharing.
Um, you do know that Jesus told people to sell everything they had and to give all that money to the poor in order to get into heaven, right?
Or was that something the evil liberals wrote into the bible?
@breakerslion
No, actually, I think that needs to happen. And then someone needs to make him post a response to A Modest Proposal on the internet. It sounds like it would either be a hilarious or soul-crushing situation.
Funny, I saw a stingy asshole who wouldn't even let his overworked clerk get ONE DAY OF THE YEAR off to celebrate with his family. Then, in the end, he actually became halfway decent.
If this isn't a Poe, then it's exactly the sort of person Dickens tried (and apparently, failed) to reach with his message of love and generosity. The Cratchets were far from lazy.
"Scrooge was a total badass"
God damn, you are a loser, aren't you?
Isn't this charming.
Let us fire up those gas ovens of Eugenics for those unable to work due to age, injury, or disability. Let us work the rest to premature graves, then toss them into those same ovens, because we cannot have the Haves supporting the Have Nots, this cannot be!
Excuse me, I do need to throw up!
I don't think welfare existed at the time of the Christmas Carol and you totally missed the point bucko.
You're just like the asscracks crying that health care reform will kill jobs because holy shit small businesses will actually have to provide health care instead of making people work for like slave for minimum wage. Like I'm supposed to care if we lose those kind of jobs and feel bad for those shitty bosses.
@Seeker Lance,
I have felt exactly the same way for many years, but I've never heard anyone else say it before. And I've worked at those types of jobs, and it's a living death, a hand-to-mouth existence BECAUSE they don't offer any type of benefits. But the business owners invariably have insurance for themselves and their own families....
``I wish to be left alone,'' said Scrooge. ``Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.''
``Many can't go there; and many would rather die.''
``If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, ``they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that.''
Yep. All sort of good traits the conservative "Christian" right can admire and aspire to.
And what about that Sheriff of Nottingham? Just trying to do his job and collect taxes off the lazy peasants and Robin Hood goes and tries to 'share the wealth'. Socialist!
(Conservatives are comic book villians)
Frugal, hardworking, innovative. No, that's Bill Gates circa 1979. Scrooge was gold-hoarding, vindictive, and petty. He forced his one employee to work through Christmas, paid said employee in belly-button lint, refused to give to charity - and there were no "welfare bums" in 19th Century England, these were things like orphanages and churches he was turning down, you goatsucker- he rejected the family that only wanted to love him-- hell, he moved everything he owned into one room of a vast and empty mansion just so he wouldn't have to pay to heat the whole house!
Scrooge was the villain of that book, you twit. The "lefties" didn't do shit except show Scrooge that the human race deserved more credit then he gave them.
God, I wish someone would write a Fundies Christmas Carol. The ghosts of Rationality could show some Gawd-head how his superstitions were holding the human race back, he repents his irrational adherence to ancient ritual, and becomes a respected biologist or lawyer or other actual person.
Also, the book saved Christmas. Seriously. So...if Scrooge hadn't converted from douchbaggery, you'd probably be a secular humanist living with some fella named Molly.
Twatt Junkbrain here had better not watch the BBC one-off special "Blackadder's Christmas Carol" then, if he knows what's good for him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackadder%27s_Christmas_Carol
(I always remember on a "Kenny Everett Video Show" Xmas special years ago, in which he did a spoof of "A Christmas Carol", and Scrooge's catchphrase was - whilst rubbing his hands in glee - 'Stinge!' X3 )
A Randroid defending Ebeneezer Scrooge? Meh. Been there, seen that. I wanna see one of them defending Charles Montgomery Burns, or Cruella de Ville, or Miranda Priestly, or E.P. Arnold Royalton.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
To post a comment, you'll need to Sign in or Register . Making an account also allows you to claim credit for submitting quotes, and to vote on quotes and comments. You don't even need to give us your email address.
