Downwardly mobile … with class

Like most opinion-shapers, I don't always have my way. Real life doesn't feel obligated to echo my editorial guidance. It's not always easy to put the country where your mouth is.

I think I can see far enough down the road, America, to have my way whether you like it or not. And the more I can make you like it, the happier you'll be in the long run.

We're either aghast or amused that Arabs blame the rape victim, Hindus worship sacred cows, Thais consider it the pinnacle of vulgarity to show the bottom of your shoes, and the Japanese have a hideous aversion to carrying business cards in their back pocket. But we Americans consider it utterly normal to strive for upward mobility, but despise, avoid and go to leaping lying lengths to conceal even the appearance of any downward mobility.

Nice try, America. And it used to work!

Few words carry the dread of "demotion." We love the phrase, however, "commensurate with my experience and ability." Another phrase – "I'd rather die" – is usually an exaggerated figure of speech. Unfortunately, however, many Americans have ended their own lives rather than go from the large, corner, carpeted office to flipping hamburgers; or even back down to middle management. There are long-term unemployed Americans who could be earning money, paying taxes and "making" it, though at a less lavish standard than before. Those possible jobs, though, are not "commensurate with my experience and ability."

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Once while visiting my parents in Greensboro, N.C., they excitedly announced, "We're going over to Winston-Salem for dinner" – prepared by a former head chef at the Hotel Plaza in New York, my new hometown. I'm glad I concealed my discomfort at traveling 60 miles roundtrip just for dinner, because I met a man I never quit admiring.

My parents had dined under his baton many times, and when they introduced him to their son from New York I pretended to know of his culinary fame, and he pretended to have heard of my radio show. I was street smart enough to know he must have had an alcohol problem or something equally dire, because a normal business quarrel or power struggle would not have chased him to Winston-Salem, N.C. But as I watch him pridefully prepare his own special spinach salad for my appreciative parents, making sure each leaf was properly tinctured with just the right amount of his original dressing, I thought, "He couldn't have given it more effort if he were still in charge at the Hotel Plaza."

Here this chef, who had served kings and presidents table-side in New York, was now doing it for the landowning gentry of Forsyth, Guilford and adjoining counties in North Carolina. And giving it the same measure of expertise and care.

I know broadcasters working on small stations with a fraction of the listening audience they once commanded who give it the same soul-sweat they did in their big old days.

Downward mobility? My dear buddy Jimmy Wooten wouldn't have known the meaning or respected anybody who did. My first boss in radio was a dear friend of Jimmy's and let him use an office next to mine, which also served as his residence; shower but no tub. I could hear Jimmy on the phone to friends he was calling in search of a comeback. Jimmy had been in and out of at least four multi-million dollar fortunes. He had four airlines nationalized out from under him. He was broke, but only in money.

His conversations on the phone staggered me. I'd never before heard anybody admit to such grinding failure having know the troposphere of triumph. "I'm flat busted," he'd say to his still-rich friends, "but Elroy's letting me use and live in one of his offices, and here's an enterprise you may want to be part of." He finally raised enough money to buy a chicken ranch in Flemington, N.J. Jimmy was beloved by Israel's first prime minister, David ben Gurion, for Jimmy's response when told point-blank he could only pay him half price for the thousands of Jews he'd evacuated from Arab countries on his airline, Flying Carpet, when Israel was born in 1948. Jimmy reached out and hugged ben Gurion and said, "I love you, you SOB, and good luck with this little country of yours."

A talent scout in the 1940s was sent to a summer-stock playhouse in Pennsylvania to check out Minnie Pearl for the female lead in "Oklahoma." It was one of those nights where the cast outnumbered the audience, and Minnie was clearly not caring and horsing around and doing inside jokes with the cast. The role went to Celeste Holm.

You'll get over it, America. Armies retreat and win wars. Being "down" today is not as clearly your fault as it once was. But the stigma disappears slowly.

A successful actor in a mad rush to make a videotaping at the CBS studio on Manhattan's west side, darted into a seedy diner and was amazed to see his friend, a no-longer successful actor, behind the counter.

"All right," said the clearly trapped hamburger flipper, "All right. I may WORK here; but I don't EAT here!"