Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine ( the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers) on this eve of Saint rogers’s Day!

Thanksgiving Day¹ is the holiday that, if we did not already know that there exists a personality type referred to as a roger,  someone else would have pointed it out to us.  Perhaps the task would have fallen to an Art Professor in a land grant college somewhere  in the Midwest. We can imagine the epiphany …in the middle of the night (during his sabbatical devoted to the study of the works of Norman Rockwell)
“ My god!  Norman’s work is not just a robust and healthy celebration of paedophilia! He has been  trying to tell us to transform our culture!  …for all good Americans to come forth and show their appreciation  of patriotism, consumerism and child-abuse!!”

We have, from time to time, been accused of indiscriminate use of hyperbole in these pages, however, just consider the astounding level of pervasiveness of the  ‘Holiday of Thanksgiving’.  It is not enough to close the Post Office system and all other government agencies² , no it is not, this Holiday actually attempts to compel normal, rational, adult people to sit in front of the television and watch a Parade involving giant balloon representations of out-of-print newspaper cartoon characters! Who the hell watches the Macy’s Day Parade on purpose?!?  Throughout the entire morning of Thanksgiving, you simply cannot escape the pageantry and spectacle,  broadcast live and has as the ’emcees’,  News Anchors from the major networks morning news shows!  ( ” Thats right, Matt! That’s  Kenny Chesney and Taylor Swift on the Snoop Dog float… it says here that her eye makeup took 12 hours and 6 pounds of aluminum foil chips to create!!” ). Like a  Hieronymus Bosch painting done in ‘live-action’, the whole country is exposed to hours and hours of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade… more than 3 hours of parade music and floats  (” … hey, Anne isn’t the next float from your hometown”?   “That’s right Al! it’s my old Alma mater,  the East Clydesdale High School Marching Band playing a medley, ‘Straight outta Compton’, ‘Fuck tha Police’ and ‘Gangsta Gangsta’ )

Why do we say Thanksgiving is the most rogerian of all holidays?  Simply because Thanksgiving is about the how, not the why.  As a holiday and a cultural event, this particular holiday tells it’s participants exactly what to do; what to eat and how to cook it!  Taught from childhood, every member of our culture knows precisely how (and) where they are expected to spend the Holiday! Thanksgiving is about family! and if there is anything that rogers fake better than anyone, it is the joyful appreciation and celebration of the family.

But don’t just take my word for it! Following is an excerpt from a Post of the Wakefield Doctrine that was written over a year ago! (and nothing says credibility better than…age)

We all know that “the holidays” are experienced differently by each of the three (clarks, scotts and rogers) and therefore the demands of the celebrations are a very effective illustration of the nature of each. But if there was no Thanksgiving, a roger would have invented it! (Actually, they probably did). Think about it! A holiday celebration that is:

• based on a factual historical event (sort of)
• the protagonists (of the story) are religious refugees, persecuted and driven away together on boats
• food, specific food and a not-to-be-deviated-from Menu
• ritual menu and a full schedule of events
• shopping in herds, as the climax of the celebration (Black Friday)
• a moral taught to the young: we came here, those strangers who helped us were different, (…we had a feast and wiped out their culture)

I will be so bold as to suggest that there is no more rogerian a holiday than Thanksgiving!  And since we are on the subject of rogers and holidays, (sort of),  is there any human activity that is more one sided, over-hyped, ‘expectations-sure-to-fall short’, ( not counting sex on the eve of a relationship breaking up),  than Parades? I don’t care if you are a trombone player in the middle of the herd or someone sitting in their living room watching it on TV, nothing says roger better than Parades!

1)  the Day that the indigenous people of the North American continent made a gift of their lands and cultures and cuisine to their new European friends.

2)  you do know about the Post Office and rogers, don’t you?

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* first printed for Thanksgiving in 2011 this Post has been one of the more popular Posts when re-printed.  New Readers?  the joke in the title has to do with two things:  a) we kid rogers a lot, on their worldviews, ‘i.e. the quantifiable world, the presence of abstract Truths, the celebration of tradition ( exemplified in the horribly, yet indefinably seductive notion underlying the expression heard coming from many a roger while something really cool is happening, “this is wonderful. we’re making a memory here!“)  …be it our child’s high school graduation,  their First Day at School, the pinning of the Prom corsage, the wedding night…. anything is a potential victim to the spontaneity-eating, life-force-sucking, Dewey-Decimal-imposing of a ‘historical perspective (or pre-perspective)’ to an event in the here and now….  2) and, of course we’re so aware of the inherent irony of creating and celebrating a Thanksgiving tradition. In our defense, the Doctrine does tell us that we are not just a clark or a scott or a roger. We are ‘a clark’ or ‘a scott‘ or ‘a roger‘ by virtue of the fact that these are the worldview that we grew up, developed, learned to deal life in…. and, in fact is our personal reality (aka predominant worldview), however, since everyone has the potential to become a clark or a scott or a roger, we always retain the potential to experience the world as do ‘the other two’. This fact is why the Wakefield Doctrine is as much fun as it is, why it’s the best approach to self-improving ourselfs and why, sometimes, as a New Reader you might think, ‘I guess I must be a roger because…. but then I’m sure that I must be a scott, except sometimes….’  sorry, only one worldview to a life…however, if you have very robust secondary and tertiary aspects…well! good on you!.