Something one hears quite often is that things aren’t made as well today as they were in the past. As is usually the case with generalizations, there is more than a little truth to that.
Certainly movies aren’t as well made. The scripts aren’t as literate, the characters aren’t as well drawn. What they’ve lost in depth, they’ve tried to make up for in length. These days, it seems that half the movies are based on comic books and theme rides. The other half are their sequels.
If it’s true that politicians are made, not born, a case could be made that they’re not made nearly as well these days. Human nature being human nature, I’d hazard a guess that today’s crop of senators are no more corrupt or deceitful than their predecessors. But they are less well-educated in the classics and are therefore very unlikely to quote Shakespeare or the Bible when they get up on their hind legs. When, instead, you hear these blowhards quoting Al Gore, John Murtha and Howard Dean, or parroting James Carville’s talking points, you must recognize that we’re dwelling in an age of political pygmies.
But it wouldn’t be sporting to measure an entire society solely by its movies and its morons.
There are things that we produce that are absolutely first-rate. Two things that spring to mind are wristwatches and refrigerators. I confess that I haven’t the slightest idea how watches tell time. But, even the least expensive of them appear to be absolutely reliable.
The same holds true for refrigerators. It’s my belief that the things never break down, and that the only reason people ever unload them is that they’re changing the color scheme in the kitchen or they’ve decided that they want a newer model that not only dispenses cold water and ice cubes, but bakes bread and walks the dog.
There are two other items that are almost too well-made. But in each case, it’s the packaging, not the contents, that’s so impressive. I only wish that the folks who package computer ink jets were in charge of building our cars and bridges. The darn things would last forever.
And, believe me, if the folks who seal up boxes of matzo had ever turned their know-how into manufacturing safes, the immortal Raffles, himself, would have been forced to take up a different line of work.
