Word: robins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Robin Starling is living in a contradiction. As the disabled victim of technology he is society's greatest shame. But as the person who overcomes his handicap with the help of technology, he is society's pride. On one hand, he has the right to be among society's most bitter critics. But on the other, he must be among its most cheerful proponents, to be sure that he--the painful reminder of society's failing--is not locked away...
...those days when I hated the newspaper business. The boy's family had consented to the interview, perhaps seeing it as a way of demonstrating to Robin that he could lead an almost normal life. But more likely they saw it as a way of proving the same thing to themselves, and vindicating themselves from guilt over what was an avoidable accident. But we at the newspaper had initiated the story: we weren't content to list him among the other blue ribbon winners at the Jefferson County Fair, which would have been the normal treatment...
WHAT DID I SAY in my article? I did my job and I lied. I told my readers that Robin Starling is now leading a normal life. He's not only surviving, he's succeeding: he's winning blue ribbons. And he doesn't hold any grudges. Technology nearly killed him but look how it's making a nearly normal life for him now. I lied because the truth was not simply that technology was making a more normal life for him, but, more importantly, that it was making for him an existence with which other people could be comfortable...
...format of my article. But most probably were. We don't like to see things like legless little boys--they contradict our expectations and desires about the world. So we become willing accomplices in a scheme to cover up the truth. We have great psychological use for someone like Robin Starling who can appear to be normal and who therefore affirms what we would like to believe. We can successfully go on fooling ourselves like this because Robin Starling has a great stake in-making sure that we continue to see him as a success story. For if we view...
...writing about Robin, I was also caught in a contradiction. I was the guilty partner-in-crime with all of those people who didn't want to know the truth, who were satisfied with my half-honest news story. But I was also the unreproachable Good Samaritan to Robin Starling, who had to convince these same people that he was a success and not to be abandoned...