Originally posted April 1, 2005.<\/p>\n
Left Behind,<\/i>\u00a0pp. 71-73<\/b><\/p>\n
Two things happen over these few page of the book. The surface-level thing is that Buck Williams talks to a customer service agent in the airline club and she helps him to charter a private flight to New York City.<\/p>\n
Suddenly it was Buck\u2019s turn at the counter. He gathered up his extension cord and thanked the young woman for bearing with him. \u201cSorry about that,\u201d he said, pausing briefly for forgiveness that was not forthcoming. \u201cIt\u2019s just that today, of all days, well, you understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Apparently she did not understand. She\u2019d had a rough day, too. She looked at him tolerantly and said, \u201cWhat can I not do for you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, you mean because I did not do something you asked?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m saying that to everybody. It\u2019s my little joke because there\u2019s really nothing I can do for anybody. No flights are scheduled today. The airport is going to close any minute. \u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Both Buck and the woman at the PanCon counter eventually recover their cheer and their charm and wind up having a fairly friendly conversation that results in the woman helping Buck find a charter pilot.<\/p>\n
To appreciate the other dynamic at work in these pages, though, we need to step back and reconsider the backdrop for this flirty exchange of banter.<\/p>\n
Taken in isolation, this is an unremarkable bit of conversation. The airport is completely shut down, so both Buck and the woman are a bit cross, a bit wearied by the inconvenience and the extra work that this shutdown entails for them. Yet despite this inconvenience, each is able to summon enough pluck to be civil and even cheerful. We\u2019ve all faced unavoidable travel delays and we can all relate to how frustrating they can be.<\/p>\n
The good cheer demonstrated by Buck and the PanCon woman might be seen as exemplary if the airport\u2019s paralysis were the result of a freak snowstorm, or a power outage, or a computer glitch. Their glib, these-things-happen, whatchagonnado? playfulness might constitute a healthy attitude in such a situation.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not what\u2019s going on here. That\u2019s not why Buck and the PanCon woman are having a \u201crough day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The airport is shutting down, to their inconvenience, because of a fatal plane crash. That alone makes their conversation seem inappropriate and self-centered. That alone should be enough to cause the next person in line to interrupt with something like, \u201cGee, I\u2019m sorry you\u2019re having such a rough day and this is all so inconvenient for you, but think of that poor bastard who crashed his Piper Cub out there on the runway. Think of his family and how they must feel \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
But the tragedy shutting down the airport doesn\u2019t involve just the death of one person in a small plane. It involves dozens of crashes on the runway. Dozens of crashes of giant passenger planes carrying hundreds of people. The death toll there at O\u2019Hare could easily surpass 1,000. And, by the way, the same thing has happened at\u00a0every<\/i>\u00a0airport, everywhere in the world. Tens of thousands are dead. Thousands more are injured, many of them still lying, untended, on the runways outside the windows of the PanCon Club where Buck and the woman are chatting.<\/p>\n
Oh yes, and the children are gone.\u00a0Everyone\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0children. All of them. Just \u2026 gone. Without explanation.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the background here. That\u2019s the setting that LaHaye and Jenkins have created. It\u2019s one of the most awful and awesome panoramas of human suffering ever imagined in a work of fiction. But the audacity of the wholesale suffering that L&J imagine is dwarfed by the greater audacity of their wholly disregarding the very scenario they have presented. The authors and their protagonists seem wholly unperturbed by all of this death and destruction, save in how it presents a logistical inconvenience and cramps the travel plans of our heroes.<\/p>\n
Given this context, Buck and the PanCon woman cannot be described as merely playfully glib. Their glibness \u2014 their self-centered obsession with their own inconvenience \u2014 is monstrous, psychopathic.<\/p>\n
I wish I could read this as a sly, intentional message of the book. I wish L&J were here trying to convey that our left-behind, and therefore unredeemed, protagonists are unreliable narrators whose unregenerate, sinful natures make them wholly incapable of basic human empathy or sympathy and the instinctive desire to help in time of tragedy.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s no indication that this is what\u2019s going on. Just as we are intended to believe that, despite his profoundly dense incuriosity, Buck Williams is the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time \u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to get into journalism,\u201d the woman tells Buck. \u201cI studied it in college.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you really want to be a journalist,\u201d he does not say in reply, \u201cthen why are you sitting here behind a desk that might as well be closed instead of getting your butt out there, on the other side of that window, where the biggest story in human history is unfolding even as we speak?\u201d He does not say this because it never occurs to him.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Likewise, despite his utter lack of courage and his unwillingness to help others in crisis, we are intended to believe that Buck is a good guy and a genuinely noble protagonist.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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Left Behind Classic Fridays, No. 39: 'Nero's fiddle'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's one of the most awful and awesome panoramas of human suffering ever imagined in a work of fiction. But the audacity of the wholesale suffering that LaHaye & Jenkins imagine is dwarfed by the greater audacity of their wholly disregarding the very scenario they have presented. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Left Behind Classic Fridays, No. 39: 'Nero's fiddle'","description":"It's one of the most awful and awesome panoramas of human suffering ever imagined in a work of fiction. But the audacity of the wholesale suffering that LaHaye & Jenkins imagine is dwarfed by the greater audacity of their wholly disregarding the very scenario they have presented. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. 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