Comments on: Marriage and Entrepreneurship: A Defense of George Bailey

By: Joe Z

Joe Z — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:35:51 +0000

Amen. Deneen’s article is the epitome of riding a hobby horse. The connection between “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the horse he was riding (or flogging) was the slimmest of slender reeds.

By: pentamom

pentamom — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:38:41 +0000

I may be particularly sensitive to this because I grew up in something like a “Bailey Park” — a postwar neighborhood on the edge of a small town with a thriving downtown. This was not a “suburb” of the kind that resulted in people staying out of the downtown — it was a ten minute walk/two minute drive to downtown, where most people still did most of their business and worshiping. Bailey Park is not depicted as Levittown or Columbia MD, a totally constructed entity detached from any existing community; it appears to have been just a housing development. In his desire to find a focal point for some legitimate criticisms of suburbanization, I think Mr. Deneen misconstrued what Bailey Park represented.

By: pentamom

pentamom — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:32:41 +0000

Sorry for the sloppy editing. The cop was not of course composed of people who lived on the edge of town — that was the community.

By: pentamom

pentamom — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:31:19 +0000

That’s what I always assumed about the Potter’s Field — it was unused, undeveloped land in George’s childhood, but instead it being filled with rows of the prettiest little houses you’ve ever seen (with a couple of decent rooms and a bath), it *became* a graveyard over the ensuing 20 years. Deneen’s suggestion that BB&L built over an existing graveyard seemed to be a non sequitur.

And let us not forget that it was not obviously George who built on the graveyard — Ernie Bishop was living in “a shack in Potter’s Field.” The desecration came with the Potterization of the community, not with the Baileyization.

I never did quite figure out from Deneen’s article how shady dance halls and people living in shacks in the graveyard were representative of a better civic culture than a safe, prosperous town that functioned happily with one normally visible cop, composed partially of people who lived in a new development on the edge of town. Somehow this is because a guy with an old tree lived there — did the construction of Bailey Park mean that he couldn’t live in his old house with the old tree downtown anymore? It does not compute.

By: Greg Forster

Greg Forster — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:56:11 +0000

Hold on, I’m getting a ruling from the judges…

For mentioning the Temporal Prime Directive in the opening post, you win this comment thread. Congratulations!

By: peg

peg — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:08:55 +0000

” If he gave any thought to this question at all, he undoubtedly expected us to assume there was no graveyard there in the original timeline.”

This is what I assume as well. Capra used some obvious short hand to send his message (poor unmarried Mary, what with her ugly glasses, mousy bun, drab coat and boring job at the library… “Look what I saved you from” says my husband every Christmastime).

George and Clarence violated the Temporal Prime Directive and tinkered with the time line. That always means that things aren’t necessarily what they could have been, or should have be. Or will be.