I See Nothing… I Smell Nothing…
By Pat Racimora on June 9, 2009 at 9:20 AM in Banks, Congress (House & Senate), Economy
While issuing a parking ticket, you’d think that New York’s Finest would notice a dead man in the back seat. Or the by the second ticket…or third…or fourth. Yet it was a month later when a disintegrated body was discovered in a minivan covered with parking tickets and dust.
How could this happen? And what might this say about us in the larger picture?
I doubt it was what one wag suggested, namely that this was simply a fortuitous happenstance to make the quota for parking tickets. Rather, it may have been an extreme example of sensory neglect so characteristic of us humans.
We tend not to perceive what we don’t want to see, especially if the actual facts are unpleasant or negative. And if stimuli are weak or ambiguous, we may take no notice of what we don’t expect to see.
And that’s exactly what I see going on in our country today. We tend to cling to the hope that our American values are being widely practiced. Instead we should probably be in the streets with our signs expressing outrage raised high, showing our teeth, and screaming.
The lack of promised transparency keeps issues that affect us all fuzzy and ambiguous. Investigative journalism is on life-support, so we don’t learn much. Even the National Enquirer can scoop the New York Times.
Basic rights have eroded so slowly that we simply adapt. We have an inexperienced President we don’t know much about, and we know even less about who is pulling the strings. One more broken promise? A few more billion of our tax dollars going out here and there? Ho hum. We mostly still just go along. (”Hope,” doncha know.) Corruption, be it perpetrated by members of Congress or greedy financial and corporate giants–all of whom owe us a fiduciary duty–occurs with such regularity that we have become numbed to it. It’s as if America is cannibalizing itself, but–just like the dead man in the back seat–we just can’t quite see it.
Perhaps much of our plight can be explained as a boiled frog syndrome, meaning figuratively speaking, that if an ultimate catastrophe emerges in small incremental changes, we won’t see it coming.
Empirical data, in a yet to be published study by Professors Gino and Bazerman at Harvard Business School, strongly support the existence the boiled frog syndrome when it comes to perceiving the unethical behavior of others. If dishonest acts escalate in small steps over time, we are more likely to simply discount them.
The bottom line is that unless we break out of our perceptual malaise and commit to making ourselves alert to the gradual onset of abominations and figure out the direction they are taking us, we will be unable to see the resulting catastrophe until it hits in full force. The trick is to take constructive action early on. Any ideas?
Finally, back to that poor dead guy. There is one sense we cannot easily override. So, you’d think that after a few days somebody would have gotten blown off their feet by the stench emanating from that minivan.
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Pat,
Great cartoon.
I read about that.
Disgraceful!
woooo PAT, Great true LIFE analogy of our current situation!
SAD
disappointing
more than disgusting
remember when this was true?
Sam Adams also said this,
or in a local word W.O.R.M.
I know NY is a big city with lotsa people. But to ticket a car repeatedly and not notice a body is just strange.
My heart goes out to this man and his family.
I hate to sound preachy.
But we have so accepted the erosion of morality and the rights under the constitution to the point that we are living in a sewer of corruption and the just are condemned to suffer.
The lack of personal responsibility and the social justification or rationalization of bad behavior will end up destroying this nation.
I so totally agree!
pretty much.
Wow.
I’d call that negligence.
Are not the police trained to be MORE observant of every day “clues” than less? What if that man died in there AFTER the first ticket was issued?
If I were this family, I’d demand an autopsy. I’d wanna know if the negligence led to his death.
Just sayin’.
Pat, what a fine essay. It addresses what is going on right now in so many layers.
New York’s Finest? Ha ha!! There are swarms of them all over Florida on phony disability claims. I see them everywhere – the PGA, bowling alleys, gyms, jogging on the beach, and at the windows in Wachovia. “Thank you, New York”, they are saying to themselves.
A long time ago, I went to school across the river and spent many happy weekends going into the city. I never feared anything in NYC except for the Police. You didn’t dare ask them directions. You were sure to regret it. To this day, I think of them on a moral level with thugs and criminals in general. I laugh when I hear the term, “New York’s Finest”.
It would appear that “New York’s Finest,” have their man dead to rights.
It’s easy to overlook the dishonesty and greed of the typical politician when you are comfortable with a steady paycheck.
Well drawn!
Very insightful observations, Pat. Like you, I don’t know how the heck anyone could just keep issuing tickets without noticing the smell. I would think that smell of a dead human being would have been quite noticeable, even coming from a closed vehicle.
Kim–what is amazing is that one window was open!
According to one article, the car’s windows were tinted quite dark, because the man lived out of the car some of the time. It’s hard to believe it didn’t reek; even though it was parked near water, can even low tides out-stink a rotting body? Who knows? Geez, look at what most people in this country can’t see, as pointed out, sitting on his throne in DC and systematically destroying this nation. And boy, does it stink out loud!
Pat:
Thanks for another great pertinent post, and bringing to our attention that all of us should/could take responsibility for investigation into what doesn’t appear to be “right”.
I believe a great number of Americans are so involved in their own lives and are apathetic to others’ problems and concerns, unless it involves them. I can see this whenever I go to a shopping area, be it the mall or Wally-World. Being a senior, and somewhat disabled citizen, I note that those persons would walk or drive over one rather than say “excuse me”, stop and let us pass before them. I find a tremendous lack of respect and MANNERS for anyone, because they must chat with a companion or on the cell phone, and ignoring that anyone else in the world exists.
This is how, I believe, that what happened in your post could and may have happen(ed).
We have abdicated responsibility for doing the right thing through shear laziness–people assume someone else will come along and do the right thing. Children leave a mess knowing mom will come along and clean it, CEOs of companies fail through stupidity or greed–or both– knowing the federal government or shareholders will come in and clean up the mess (never mind that the board of directors have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to guard against fraud and foolishness). Is it any wonder that these meter maids dropped off their ticket(s) and moved on?
Parking tickets are not necessarily written by police officers. We have a traffic dept with “meter maids” that write most of the non-moving violation tickets. These people are not police officers.
Oh, well that clears it up. A patrol car driving by would never notice the tickets covering the windshield.
first of all if you live here you’d know that sometimes when you get a ticket you leave it on the windshield in the hopes of not getting another one because you’re unable to find a better place to park the car. Oftentimes it doesn’t work and the car is reticketed which then puts the onus on the car owner to fight the additional tickets in court. The point is that it is entirely likely that NO police officers came anywhere near this car despite the blanket of tickets. Parking tickets are not a high priority for police officers; as I said previously we have a separate traffic dept.
I’m more curious about the regular citizens that traverse that area on a regular basis; how come they smelled/noticed/did nothing. Reminds me of the Kitty Genovese case except in this case the person being ignored was already dead.
Joanie, I used the “cops” image because the stories all read that was. To wit:
The daughter of a man whose badly decomposed body was found inside a minivan said Thursday traffic cops should have noticed her father over the several weeks they covered the vehicle in parking tickets.
What I’m trying to tell you is that in NYC there is no such thing as a “traffic cop” regardless of the characterization of the woman in the article. The NYPD occasionally may direct traffic. That usually occurs in heavily trafficked intersections at certain times of the day, or perhaps if there’s an accident or if a traffic signal stops working. They also sometimes set up check points to find drunk drivers.
The NYPD issues all moving violations such as speeding tickets, driving without a seatbelt and driving while talking on a cell phone w/o a headset.
To the extent that actual police officers write parking tickets, it is incidental to something else. As part of Guiliani’s crackdown on crime, he got the officers out of their cruisers and put them on foot on the street in certain areas. Bloomberg continued this iniative. Now some of these foot patrol officers may account for a portion of the parking tickets written but parking tickets is just not what the NYPD does.
Those people in the blue uniforms in the blue cars writing tickets are NOT NYPD, they’re traffic dept; if you accost them, they can’t arrest you, they have to get in their cars and try to escape your wrath. Any real New Yorker knows that.
Ah, I have been to New York, had a great time, but I am not a New Yorker. Thanks for the lesson.
lol…..
Where’s Jimmy Justice When You Need Him?..
New York City POLICE breaking the law! The thorn in the side of NYC’s “finest” makes videos of the “finest” in action or non-action and confronts them while videotaping..Illegal U-turns,going wrong way into oncoming traffic, parked illegally at No-Parking Zones, issuing summons thru their window vechicle(too lazy to actually get out. Watch the response when questioned or asked for name/shield number. -Lazy Traffic Cops go through red light- Off Duty NYPD Officer blocks fire hydrant while shopping -Parked illegally while at Victoria’s Secret -See all 9 videos on youtube.
Yes, Tillthen, NYC’s “finest”.
Joanie–I used the “traffic cop” image because the stories all read that way. To wit:
The daughter of a man whose badly decomposed body was found inside a minivan said Thursday traffic cops should have noticed her father over the several weeks they covered the vehicle in parking tickets.
Fully agree with the boiled frog syndrome. I’m impatiently waiting for the nation to awaken to this Jimmy Carter act-alike. Won’t be a pretty sight,rather like discovering a many week old body.
I have a stinking suspicion that it was more of a case of “not my job”, or “let someone else deal with it”. I have a very hard time believing that no one smelled the body. They probably just didn’t want to have to deal with it, and all the paperwork, and stench.
Great toon, as usual!
This is what our country is beginning to look like. All decayed inside. But it still does have it’s heart and that is all of us. We need to preserve our republic! We can do that by hitting the streets again and making our determinations known. We don’t have to be found “in a car dead” for decades.
Great cartoon and article,Pat. I, too like the boiling frog analogy. That’s what I’m going to tell my 3 grown children who won’t listen to me and think I’m nuts. My one daughter said she will read things if I give her the links but it can’t come from any blogs because they are so unreliable. I’ve been compiling some links for her but it is rard without refering her to my beloved blogs.
absolutely ridiculous.
Wow! So, this was a case of dead man rotting. You’d think the smell alone would have tipped the cops off.
Great, sad analogy, Pat. How many “see no evil” passes will it take before the country itself disintegrates?
Sad days ahead of us, I’m afraid.
Thought-provoking piece and a great toon, too.
I sometimes cannot see what is in front of my face in the refrigerator especially if something is not where I expect it to be or if we changed brands and I am looking for the old brand of mustard.
We also do not see in ourselves what others see or we do not see in loved ones or someone we need to see in a specific light, who they really are and instead insist that they are who we need them to be.
In fact eye whiteness identification is often very unreliable. Therefore just because you think you see something does not make it accurate.
Rich
I love your cartoons.
Rich
Pat–Please do a cartoon specifically on the boiling frog syndrome. That is an important concept that kind of got stuck behind that poor man in the car. It is worth its own story.
Great post Pat.
Sadly I think we have moved beyond malaise or passivity. We are no longer just lazy and ignorant, we are willfully and justifiably so. That means getting us to change as a society will take more than gentle nudging.
It’s called, Lack of giveashit.
LOL Barry 0351–That is certainly it in the fewest words possible!
Great analogy, Pat!
The cartoon just kills me (pun intended)!
)
Good cartoon and topic, Pat. The fact many people ignore things they don’t want to see or get involved with is well documented. How many times have we read about or seen stories on TV about people being beaten to death while passersby continued on their way with little more than a casual glance? How often do people stop to help when they pass a car accident on a street? Don’t get involved. Let them call the auto club. Let a good Samaritan do it. I’m late for work or an appointment. Is society becoming callous to the suffering of others? How many times do people toss in the trash a plea for a contribution from an organization working to help starving children? Whether it’s in Africa or the Appalachia or on an Indian reservation? Let someone else help out. Let them help themselves. I can’t afford it. Excuses, excuses….