Tryophobia

Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: "Hey, where's Mr. Irresponsible been? We miss his brisk, biting commentary on modern manners! Gosh, we hope he's okay! We hope he hasn't gotten trapped under something heavy, or been driven deep into a piano-shaped hole in the sidewalk by a falling piano!" I appreciate your good wishes. And I could tell you I've been out of town or down with the flu, but those would be lies. They would fall under the rubric of the "lifestyle lie," as sketched in my new book -- that is, a small deception designed to ease the teller out of some bigger social inconvenience. Because the truth is, I just haven't felt like working very hard this week. And I refuse to apologize for it. Some very fine people have been refusing to work hard lately. Judge Samuel Alito, for example, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that " ...if you start answering the easy questions you are going to be sliding down the ski run into the hard questions, and that's what I'm not so happy to do." Well, hell, judge, who is? The only surprising thing about this statement is the use of an athletic metaphor by Alito, who looks like he'd faint dead away from heat stroke if he ever actually stepped outside.

The new gold standard, though, in what I like to call tryophobia may be the imaginative stand taken this week by the Philadelphia police, a department known for thinking outside the box. Faced with a steeply accelerating murder rate, the Philadelphia PD took a look at the statistics and realized that, well, it could go out and patrol the streets and lock up bad guys and generally do the retail work of big-city policing, but that's just too hard, and it's cold outside, and those guys are always so cranky when you try to slap the iron on 'em.  So what they've elected to do instead is -- and you really have to admire the cups-and-balls-like dexterity of the misdirection -- tell the public that murder is good. This isn't precisely the way they're arguing the case, of course. Instead, they're putting out word through the almost unbelievably credulous pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer that "More than 70 percent of those killed last year had been arrested at least once, according to police statistics." Some, the Inky goes on to note with a scandalized quiver in its voice, were even "hard-core street thugs." Mercy! So look at it this way, the Philadelphia PD seems to be saying: It's technically true that you can't hear yourself think for the ringing of gunfire in the streets, and some nights you actually have to kick the spent shell casings out of your way to clear a path to the 7-11. But hey, look at the bright side! Most of these people are criminals! "It's bad guys on bad guys," Chief Inspector Joseph Fox told the Inquirer. Which makes the city's murder binge -- well, downright Darwinian! It's inspiring, in a way!

It's hard not to respect the ingenuity of this approach. In one stroke it re-frames the debate and disarms critics. ("Oh, so what are you, pro-criminal or something?") And it offers a sterling example for those in search of a societally acceptable approach to laziness: Frame it in terms of a larger good. If your boss bitches you out for being late, tell him that you've put yourself on flextime. Hell, you're showing initiative! And what is he, some ozone-happy friend of the oil companies who thinks everybody ought to sit in traffic stinking up God's green earth with their greenhouse gases? What does he, hate the earth or something? If your mother complains that you never call her, shake your head as if pained and tell her that you're just doing your bit to keep the nation's overtaxed phone system free for first responders. What is she, anti-fireman?   Does she hate firemen now, just like she hates America?

I could cite other examples, but that would take effort.