THE WORLD OF AMBULANCE CHASERS!

THE WORLD OF AMBULANCE CHASERS
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2006

My mother-in-law, a deeply religious woman, with a passionate and energetic proselytizing zeal, was telling me on one of my annual visits to her home in Minnesota, about yet another person who had dedicated her life to Christ, as a born again Christian.

This rebirth could be anything from overcoming drug addiction, child abuse, alcoholism, wife beating, profligacy, prostitution, gambling, compulsive lying, kleptomania, or any other version of the seven deadly sins.

When she finished describing this current person-of-interest that had embarked on a remarkable turnaround, I asked her, "What if you don't have any of these addictions? What if you are not guilty of any of these things? What if you are simply a person going along doing your thing without any of these demons ruling you?

She looked at me with an uncharacteristic hardness that erased her normal beguiling compassion with the comment, "Now we're talking about you? Can't you ever think of anyone but yourself?"

The comment stunned me. I recovered slowly, not knowing what to say. I could see how she could make that connection, but what I meant was that 99 percent of the people I met or knew did not fit these descriptions of dependencies.

They didn't come from dysfunctional families, poor, yes, but dysfunctional, no. They weren't exposed to terrible teachers in school, maybe a bit demanding, true, abusive, no.

In life, I have worked with many dedicated and hard working people, some ambitious, yes, others with private agendas, too, and still others that didn't like me too much, but wicked or evil, no.

Personally, I have had some monumental failures, some screw-ups, too, and not always the happiest of marital relations, but it didn't drive me into one of these behaviors because, someone early in my life, my mother, made it clear to me that I was operating on my own nickel, without portfolio, without a safety net, without people of influence paving the way.

She reminded me that when I screwed up I would only have myself to blame. It proved to be a very comforting and surprisingly resilient knowing I had to pick myself up, and go forward no matter what.

Sometimes I was a bit bloody, other times more than a bit disillusioned, and often confused, even it would be safe to say, bitter. But never so bitter to trust someone else to do for me what I could better do for myself.

My mother made me aware that I was lucky to be alive, and that in the end as in the beginning I only had myself to blame or credit for my rise or fall, and that both were the part of a life no matter who you were.

She had an expression that has stayed with me all these years, "You are always half-finished." Somehow that was comforting to know rather than to be anxiety producing.

I am now of an age in which many of these great people that have been in my life are dying of old age a little early. What little success I have had in life, and with what little of the good that they taught me that stuck, I am deeply beholden to them. I name names in my book In the Shadow of the Courthouse: A Memoir of the 1940s Written as a Novel to honor their memory.

I mention this here because I have never had much patience with the "ambulance chaser mentality" of our society that makes Oprah and Dr. Phil such heroes of that vast wasteland out there called the television audience.

And that is why I asked my mother-in-law, whom I love dearly, "What if you are not guilty of any of these things?" Because, clearly, most people aren't. They will never see their names or pictures in the newspaper, never be interviewed on television, never have a radio interview, but will continue to go quietly about their lives, thank you very much.

We have a big thing about sin, and as I've written in a novel never published, I've never bought into the idea of sin in the first place, only into the idea of waste, wasted life, wasted opportunity, wasted energy, wasted health, wasted worry, and so on. In the end as in the beginning, we are all the same. We are born, we live, we die.

At no time in my life, for example, was I ever interested in smoking or drinking or taking drugs, but in working my way through my low periods as best I could with what support was there for me, or wasn't there for me, realizing that none of us ever escapes the narrow prison of ourselves completely, not even the best of us.

Anyway, what brings this diatribe out of me, was reading an article in The Tampa Tribune today in which Oprah, like the politician that she is, rescinded her earlier claim in support of an author who published his memoir as nonfiction when it appears to have been greatly embellished.

Apparently on "Larry King Live," while this author was being interviewed, Oprah called in iterating what a great book the author had written, and then saying to her regret, "truth doesn't matter."

Well, to her many listeners it seemingly does, which some have estimated at 50 million, if you can believe that.

These listeners are so "other-directed" and so dependent on other people's truth to realize their own, that they were understandably devastated. They were taking this author's troubles and deep lows, apparently largely invented, to be their own.

It was tantamount to a delicious vicarious ride to recovery without pain or struggle as if experiencing themselves being pulled out of whatever hole they were in and lifting them into the beatific light of rejuvenation, not realizing that the whole thing was a gigantic charade, the book a fraud, and now they believed, at their expense.

Oprah said that she feels that she has been betrayed and that her fans have been betrayed. I don't think so. No one can betray us but ourselves.

English playwright William Congreve (1670 - 1729) says it emphatically: "Man was by Nature Women's cully made; we never are, but by ourselves, betrayed."

Thanks to Oprah's endorsement, this author's book has gone through several printings, has made him a multimillionaire, and resulted in a seven-figure advance on additional books, with two books on the top twenty-five best selling list, with this particular book number five in amazon.com's listing of best sellers.

In the Shadow of the Courthouse is a happy book of a nostalgic period in which all these waste makers never crossed most people's minds because parents were too busy working in the war effort to keep America free, and kids were too busy creating their own play and inventing their own toys, because few had enough money to buy luxuries, and even if they did, there was rationing, so there was little point in wanting what they couldn't have.

My book claims on the cover that I have an imperfect memory of events but that this is what I will carry to my grave of those times. It is why it was called Memoir of the 1940s Written as a Novel.

Oprah doesn't know about the book although a lovely lady has attempted to tell her about it, but Oprah is an ambulance chaser and is not interested in promoting books about functioning families who recognize that struggle is not a curse but a blessing.

In the Shadow of the Courthouse has sold very modestly. Perhaps 2 million other books listed on amazon.com have sold more copies, but those who have read it are the backbone of this nation. They are the people who can see themselves in its pages, can remember themselves struggling. They have loving memories now as they grow into old age without regrets and without fanfare.

They are saddened by the bleeding hearts that have every excuse in the book for why their lives have gone bitter. But it does puzzle them why an author who turned his life from ruin to some purpose would feel the need to make it even more ruinous to delight an audience.

Most people go about their business knowing that sympathy runs deep for losers who appear late blooming winners, while accepting the fact that they are essentially invisible to ambulance chasers, as winning and losing are part of their normal day.

The Germans have a wonderful word for ambulance chasers. It is "schadenfreude." Ambulance chasers were around 2,000 years ago, and they will be around 2,000 years into the future. It is the weak that get our attention, but it is the strong that keeps this world alive, and quietly and unobtrusively so.

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Dr. Fisher is the peripatetic philosopher: www.peripateticphilosopher.com