Plot Device
08-16-2008, 07:02 AM
This speech (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_crisis.html) by Carter is considered by commentators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter#.22Malaise.22_speech) to be the greatest of his career. In it he said that Americans themselves were partially to blame for the state of the American economy. He spoke of rampant consumerism and a pernicious form of self-focus he called "me-ism" (which is a startlingly accurate term for describing what our society has today achieved, but in spades).
It was NOT a feel-good speech. Nor was it a locker room pep talk. Nor was it a chin-up-we-can-pull-through-this-one proclamation. It was a dark and somber admonition for Americans to re-examine their style of living, their spending habits, and their sense of entitlement.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2008/08/13/past-and-present-malaise-and-the-energy-crisis.html?PageNr=1
Past and Present: 'Malaise' and the Energy Crisis
Jimmy Carter's speech is remembered for something he never said—we should recall what he did say
By Kevin Mattson (http://www.usnews.com/Topics/tag/Author/m/mattson_kevin/index.html)
August 13, 2008
The president of the United States was rumored to have disappeared or gone crazy. It was July 5, 1979, and Jimmy Carter had canceled a speech scheduled for national television that evening. During the day, as the press pondered his infirmity, the president was at Camp David, consulting his staff about a broad "crisis of confidence" that his young pollster, Patrick Caddell, had diagnosed.
He spent 10 more days at the Maryland mountain retreat, meeting with not only staff but also political and civic leaders from various walks of life. On July 15, 1979—a Sunday, fit for a national sermon—Carter went in front of television cameras to give the most important speech of his presidency. He spoke in dire terms of the "crisis of confidence." Since then, his words have been remembered as the "malaise" speech, a word never uttered during it but later grafted onto it by the media and Carter's political opponents, Ted Kennedy to the left and Ronald Reagan to the right. "Malaise" stuck.
As with so many other things from the Carter years, the speech has been misremembered, mocked on The Simpsons, or glossed in college textbooks. But with energy prices again reaching record highs, the speech is worth recalling today not simply for what Carter proposed but also for how he did so.
What Carter really did in the speech was profound. He warned Americans that the 1979 energy crisis—both a shortage of gas and higher prices—stemmed from the country's way of life. "Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns," the president said. Consumerism provided people with false happiness, he suggested, but it also prevented Americans from re-examining their lives in order to confront the profound challenge the energy crisis elicited.
It was NOT a feel-good speech. Nor was it a locker room pep talk. Nor was it a chin-up-we-can-pull-through-this-one proclamation. It was a dark and somber admonition for Americans to re-examine their style of living, their spending habits, and their sense of entitlement.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2008/08/13/past-and-present-malaise-and-the-energy-crisis.html?PageNr=1
Past and Present: 'Malaise' and the Energy Crisis
Jimmy Carter's speech is remembered for something he never said—we should recall what he did say
By Kevin Mattson (http://www.usnews.com/Topics/tag/Author/m/mattson_kevin/index.html)
August 13, 2008
The president of the United States was rumored to have disappeared or gone crazy. It was July 5, 1979, and Jimmy Carter had canceled a speech scheduled for national television that evening. During the day, as the press pondered his infirmity, the president was at Camp David, consulting his staff about a broad "crisis of confidence" that his young pollster, Patrick Caddell, had diagnosed.
He spent 10 more days at the Maryland mountain retreat, meeting with not only staff but also political and civic leaders from various walks of life. On July 15, 1979—a Sunday, fit for a national sermon—Carter went in front of television cameras to give the most important speech of his presidency. He spoke in dire terms of the "crisis of confidence." Since then, his words have been remembered as the "malaise" speech, a word never uttered during it but later grafted onto it by the media and Carter's political opponents, Ted Kennedy to the left and Ronald Reagan to the right. "Malaise" stuck.
As with so many other things from the Carter years, the speech has been misremembered, mocked on The Simpsons, or glossed in college textbooks. But with energy prices again reaching record highs, the speech is worth recalling today not simply for what Carter proposed but also for how he did so.
What Carter really did in the speech was profound. He warned Americans that the 1979 energy crisis—both a shortage of gas and higher prices—stemmed from the country's way of life. "Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns," the president said. Consumerism provided people with false happiness, he suggested, but it also prevented Americans from re-examining their lives in order to confront the profound challenge the energy crisis elicited.