I Always Hated "Seinfeld."

"Seinfeld" was famously, and admittedly, a show about nothing.  So, in its way, was "Curb Your Enthusiasm," which I would also have hated, if I had given myself more than about 10 minutes' exposure.  I couldn't watch any more after the 10 minutes.

I have seen Seinfeld probably half a dozen times, under one circumstance or another.  It was quickly obvious that "there was no there there," and the characters were empty and meaningless people.  They whined constantly and were always working up antipathy about one person or another in their ridiculous lives.  They crabbed about nothing, and their lives were about nothing.  Funny enough, I happened, purely by chance, to see the final episode.  The show had been on for years, people loved it, and I took lots of flak for persistently and insistently hating it.  If you saw the last episode yourselves, you know how I felt: totally vindicated.  See, even the "Seinfeld" people, including Seinfeld, admit this was never about anything, and that they are horrible and empty people.  I was right.  It wasn't just bad attitude or stubborn portrayal of lack of appreciation on my part, as my frustrated friends accused me.  Even Seinfeld admits I got it.  (I would say, I got the joke, except it wasn't funny.)

On my homepage today, there were two articles that struck me.  One was about the college football season, and someone's prediction as to whether there would be upsets today.  Honestly, who cares about someone's prediction of the outcomes to today's games?  If people are interested, they'll watch the games, and they may have their own guesses about results.  They'll find out how the games progress and who wins.  If there are "upsets," they'll experience them for themselves.  What does it add for some imagined expert to predict what will happen?  It's just chatter, designed to fill space on a homepage.  It has no substance.  It's not about anything.

The other article was about some sports journalist's interaction with Derek Jeter, based on having been on an elevator with Jeter's girlfriend in the spring of 2013.  The journalist sent out a Twitter tweet about the elevator ride, commenting that "Realizing you're in the elevator w/ one of Jeter's famous girlfriends is annual spring training ritual.  Today, checked Hannah Davis off the list!"  Jeter got wind of the tweet and complained about it to the journalist.  The journalist was unable to understand what Jeter's gripe was, until Jeter asked "What was she supposed to think when she saw that?"  Then, the journalist got it.  What was intended as filler and innocent fun, and the supposedly excusable chatter of a journalist, had real consequences, even though it had no meaning.

The fact is, it's not always obvious what's about nothing and what's about something.  When people try to fill space with whatever amuses them or is familiar to them, there can be consequences.  It doesn't matter whether "Seinfeld" or "Curb Your Enthusiasm" existed, or whether sports do.  But people get very caught up with both.  And some things really do matter.  You have to be careful how you deal with other people.  You can do real damage, and you should be sure, at least, that that's what you intend.

Just this week, some of our neighbors decided, for whatever were their reasons, to make a statement about the whole "sanitation" matter.  Their method of communicating their statement was to plan a small lunch for the sanitation workers who worked for us, but who did not want to continue to work for WastePro, whatever were their (unexplained) reasons.  So our neighbors provided food of some sort for the PW staff, and they did this at the PW building.  But no one heard about this via e-mail blast from the Village.  It was not in any way structured as a "public" event or gesture.  One of the organizers of this event went so far as to tell Village staff that the PW employees, or the sanitation employees (unclear who was supposedly quoted), did not want Village staff at this event!  This assertion turned out not to be remotely true.  Also, of five Commissioners, only two were invited to the event.  One was an organizer of the event, and the other voted against outsourcing, or perhaps his wife was another of the organizers.  The other three Commissioners were explicitly not welcome to come.  So we didn't.

The question is, what does this, as Derek Jeter might understand, communicate to the PW/sanitation workers, and what does it communicate to the rest of the Village, including the three uninvited Commissioners?  Whatever swipe organizers wanted to take, they insulted the PW/sanitation workers by ignoring their feelings, lying about them (and indirectly to them), and excluding from the celebration Village "dignitaries," who would likely thus appear not to care about the PW/sanitation workers.  This was a political distortion, and it was not true.  But organizers wanted it to be true, and they manipulated everyone to make it appear true.  Village staff, by the way, led by our Manager, heard about the event and refused to be excluded.

This kind of childish bad behavior is divisive.  It is conniving and undermining. It is antithetical to the interests of this community.  And it is very self-serving, in an antisocial way.  "Seinfeld" wasn't really about nothing.  At one point, I heard that the four main cast members got $1M, each, per episode for acting in "Seinfeld."  That's certainly not nothing.  Sports writers get paid, and they get bylines, which reinforce and further their careers.  The question is, what do the Village residents behind the empty masquerade this week get?  I'm asking.

By the way, there's a real and public sendoff for our sanitation workers who chose not to continue their work with WastePro, and it's being held in the recreation center this coming Tuesday, 9/30, at about 2:30 PM.  Everyone is welcome to come, to say goodbye to our employees at the end of their last day as Village employees.