madison

Excerpted from the Unpopular Front newsletter:

Cracker Barrel, of course, is not a real old country store or restaurant; It’s a replica of an old country store, an institution which had already gone the way of the dodo by the time the chain was founded in 1969. Conceivably, people could be nostalgic for the old stores in the early days of Cracker Barrel, but by now, people are nostalgic for the nostalgia, for the experience of going to a Cracker Barrel itself. As the Bulwark blog writes, it’s “a Xerox of a Xerox.” There’s a fancy theoretical term for this: “simulacrum.” I’m, of course, referring to the work of the late Jean Baudrillard and his 1981 book Simulacra and Simulation... Basically, a simulacrum is a representation that no longer has an actual referent; there’s no preexisting reality it refers to, it has become the reality itself. Cracker Barrel is not pointing to a remembered Americana; it directly generates the feeling of Americana through its simulation of old-timey-ness. “When the real is no longer what it was, nostalgia assumes its full meaning,” as Baudrillard gnomically comments. It’s really the perfect example because Cracker Barrel wasn’t some old institution that got updated; it was always already a corporate simulation of country life. It’s a gimmick to sell gas, thought up by a Shell executive: It was meant to be plugged into the commercial matrix of the interstate highway system. People at Cracker Barrel are consuming the idea of communal wholesomeness and a pre-suburbanized society... It’s sort of pathetic to reflect that we have so few—maybe no—authentic and unmediated experiences that the thing that now really upsets people is an alteration of a simulation of authenticity. It’s felt as a loss of national identity on par with the defacement of George Washington, because our national identity is now just corporate brands and consumerism. It’s no different than the “trad wife” fantasy, which is also a simulation and simulacrum of pre-modern living. You see this across the reactionary right, and it would be amusing if it didn’t muster real political energy: people genuinely angry over the loss of comforting consumer experiences. The attack on simulations is experienced as a trauma: remember the fury of gamers who felt their imaginary worlds were being tampered with. Not for nothing does Baudrillard refer to the “panic-stricken production” of simulacra and simulations.

It’s one thing to steal pills. It’s terrible, but at least the patient knows those meds aren’t there and can try to do something about it.

He also stole from liquid vials that he filled back up with saline and returned to the hospital pharmacy, which fucks up the dosage and risks contamination. Not to mention that he is then teaching students and younger doctors to give the wrong dosages. And that’s the thing that Santos knows about, I don’t think she even knew about the Librium. He didn’t just steal, he stole in an incredibly dangerous way. And he’s not even taking responsibility for that, just for being an asshole.

I do think it's an easy thing to forget. The huge drama happened around the pills, and the vial hasn't been brought up yet in season two. And if you're not familiar with that kind of vial, it can be hard to string together why it was suspicious (they're supposed to be very easy to open, so the fact that it wasn't is suspicious! and then there was the glue on the lid and the dosage issues, but all that was stretched across multiple episodes), so the smoking gun of the pills is way more memorable.

I wanted to add these screenshots from reddit, which go into how that diluted Ativan could have affected patients. It's more serious than people are acting like it is.