Showing posts with label Black Comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Black Comedy. Show all posts

Saturday, June 18, 2022

Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta (Scribner 2022)


Jack Weede

My hands were tied. There was no way that a sixtysomething male administrator could broach the topic of your erect nipples with a thirtysomething female teacher and not expose himself to a humiliating lawsuit, along with a virtual stoning on the internet. I had no intention of jeopardizing my hard-earned reputation—not to mention my retirement benefits—in the final lap of my long career.

I know I can sound paranoid about this stuff, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating. The pendulum has swung so far in the past few years, I’m amazed I haven’t been run out of town on a rail, like so many of my contemporaries. Guys like me are the old guard; we’re presumed guilty whether we’ve done anything wrong or not, though many of us have sinned, I’m not denying it. It’s like the French Revolution. They had a just cause, but they got a little overzealous with the guillotine. That’s where we are now with all this Me Too business. The-old-guy’s-head-in-a-basket phase.