The crazy uncle may not be an archetype in the Jungian sense, but he's certainly an American cultural archetype. He lives in his own little world, but he's part of the family (a senior member, in fact) and he insists on inflicting his world on everyone else whenever he gets his chance. The family tolerates him because he's family (and senior member, don't forget!), tries not to hurt his feelings (because it will only make him crazier and louder) and strives to redirect his attention in harmless directions. When all else fails, they lock him in the attic for a few days. If the family's rich, they send him to Florida. If he's rich, they try to have him committed.
Alan Simpson is symptomatic of everything that's wrong with America. He's a crazy uncle, of course. But that's not the problem. The problem is, no one tries to contain his craziness or limit it in any way. To the contrary, his craziness is not just encouraged, but celebrated. It's normal. "A feature, not a bug," as they say in the trade.
Yesterday, digby wrote a post about Simpson's craziness. She hit all the high notes:
The problem with Alan Simpson's comments is bigger than the fact that he said "tits" and insulted women. Not that it wasn't crude and sexist of him, mind you. But the real problem is that he seems to believe that social security is some kind of welfare program for lazy old bastards who should either be rich or set out on an ice floe. Here's what he said:
I've made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know 'em too. It's the same with any system in America. We've reached a point now where it's like a milk cow with 310 million tits!
He's been calling retirees "greedy geezers" for years and seems to think the whole thing is some kind of con game in which elderly people are taking the country for a ride. Does anyone think that is a reasonable approach to this issue, even from the right? It's nuts.
Despite his puerile insults about others' alleged inadequate knowledge, and his ridiculous protestations of having an open mind, we know that he's also tragically uninformed about the way the program works.
And his pathological illogic renders him nearly incomprehensible. Simpson continuously tells the elderly to STFU:
You remember the last time we corrected Social Security, and people calling me. Let me tell you, everything that Bush and Clinton or Obama have suggested with regard to Social Security doesn't affect anyone over 60, and who are the people howling and bitching the most? The people over 60. This makes no sense. You've got scrub out [of] the equation the AARP, the Committee for the Preservation of Social Security and Medicare, the Gray Panthers, the Pink Panther, the whatever.
So, crazy uncle. No doubt. And his latest insulting outburst has lots of folks saying he should go. But hey! We knew he was a crazy uncle going into this thing. As People Magazine wrote in 1991:
"Alan did have a temper," says [his mother] Lorna, sitting in the living room of the Cody, Wyo., home where Simpson and his brother, Peter, were raised. "One day he threw a rock at someone, and I knew that just wouldn't do. So I told him I'd have to close him in a room as a punishment when he couldn't control his temper." She pauses, and then smiles. "Then, when he was 12, he came to me one day and said, 'Mom, you're not going to have to do that anymore-I've learned to control my temper.' And he had, too."
Perhaps he had--but not completely, and not forever. In recent months Alan Simpson, the 60-year-old Republican Senator from Wyoming, has had friends and foes alike wondering when his temper will next take him-and whether it will prove his political undoing. First, there was the Arnett incident: At the height of the Persian Gulf War, Simpson blasted CNN correspondent Peter Arnett for remaining in Baghdad after other journalists had evacuated, calling him an Iraqi "sympathizer" and saying, without foundation, that Arnett's Vietnamese ex-wife had a brother active in the Vietcong. Next came Simpson's performance on Nightline during the Clarence Thomas hearings, when he angrily needled National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg for breaking the story of Anita Hill's sexual harassment charges, questioning both her judgment and her professionalism.
But it was Simpson's behavior at the Thomas hearings that drew the most flak. He badgered Anita Hill and hinted at, but didn't produce until after the hearings ended, "stuff coming over the transom about Anita Hill, saying watch out for this woman"-tactics for which he was roundly condemned by women's groups and in newspaper editorials, including one in the Wyoming Eagle. Says Charles Graves, chairman of the Democratic Party in Simpson's home state: "It's all too bad, because I think Alan is really a decent human being inside. He just can't stand anybody who disagrees with him."
That last statement there is typical of how the political establishment lets him off the hook. No, sorry, that's ridiculous. If you can't stand anybody who disagrees with you, by definition you are not a decent human being. But you damn sure could be a crazy uncle. And you're probably still that little kid who throws rocks at people who say things he doesn't like.
The interesting thing is, the People article goes on to present some evidence that Simpson is actually not a crazy uncle. At the time, it seemed, the criticism finally got through to him--albeit a bit late, and not really all that deeply:
Last month the decent human being in Simpson came to the fore. At a COP fund-raiser held in Cheyenne, he told the assembled crowd, "I have been riding high, a bit too cocky, arrogant, yeah, too smart by half sometimes. I think it's time for a little honest reassessment." He continued, somewhat cryptically, "I see some of my previous life's behavior held up to a prism I had never noticed before through different eyes. For it has been personally uncomfortable to see your good name equated with McCarthy, sleaze, slime, smarmy, evil, ugly. ... I do not blame the media for anything.... The responsibility is mine, and I shall handle it and handle it well."
Whether the speech was political expediency or genuine contrition is hard to determine. Ask Simpson today if he thinks he owes Anita Hill an apology, and he evades the question, saying only, "I would very much like to sit and visit with her and hear what impelled her." Ask if he is apologizing for his performance at the hearings, and he answers, "I have apologized before.... It is a hell of a lot easier than taking responsibility, and that's what I did that night."
What is clear is that the criticisms leveled against him have hurt. Simpson's 12 years in the U.S. Senate, and his 13 in Wyoming's legislature before that, have been marked by angry, often colorful outbursts (Simpson to the press on the Iran-contra question: "You'd just like to stick it in Reagan's gazoo!"), and he has often expressed regret after the fact. (After impugning Arnett's motives, he offered a qualified apology in a letter to The New York Times.) But never before had he seemed so stung by the disapproval his actions have occasioned.
What all that means to me, quite simply is that Simpson is really not your archetypal crazy uncle. Unlike the crazy uncle, he knows damn well what's going on around him--he just doesn't give a damn about anyone else, unless he's forced to. And that's just it: No one will force him too. Quite the opposite. His "crazy unclehood" lies not in his own character, mean and nasty as it may be. It lies in the situation that surrounds him. If you recall, there was virtually no one in the US Senate willing to raise a peep about his psychotic behavior. It took Barbara Boxer leading a delegation of female House members to protest on the Senate steps before anyone in Versailles seemed to realize that there was anything really amiss.
Well not only is no one in Versailles about to force Simpson to give a damn about anyone else, they're seemingly pleased as punch to have such an outspoken leader for their misanthropy.
Lorna Simpson sent Alan Simpson to his room when he threw rocks at other people. She is what's known as an adult. There are no adults in Versailles. They give Alan Simpson the keys to their city.
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