ROADSIDE ARCADIA
573
the teacher with a farm background. Even the principal, an outside "ex–
pert," grovels before the common image and piously presents his offering
of corn [this precious term reveals the degree to which "rural" and "fake"
have become synonymous] : "Our many pleasant memories of a childhood
on the farm," drools this blood brother of a collective farm leader, "color
our thinking to the point where we have little sympathy with urban
living."
Having taken The Lie upon himself, the school principal adds
progressivism to the arsenal for subduing conflict. Without disturbing
the common illusion, he bores from within the PTA to plant his liberal
ideas among its members as if they had thought of them themselves:
then uses the PTA to bore from within the school board in behalf of
the same ideas.
If
PTA gets too heated in favor of the new program
he holds it back; if his ideas don't go over with the board he pretends
he was always opposed to them. "Through the operation of such in–
tricate processes, Peabody has succeeded in instituting a number of his
ideas: hiring a professional cafeteria manager to replace a local person
and introducing several new courses."
For the sake of such puny benefits, the American small town, like
any ant hill ridden by a superstition, has to put up with, and even be
thankful for, this hypocritical priest of "progress," whose victories rest
on translating "sex" into "health," and who deludes people into think–
ing they are thinking when they repeat the cliches of watered-down
social science.
Peabody fools everybody. But only because they need him to fool
them. Between the dream small town and the real mass society he intro–
duces a gelatinous sheath of compromise under which daily life is
amended while leaving the myth unscratched. This underhand way of
accomodating collective life to new situations without open declaration
or battle is the source of American conformism.
Peabody also fools nobody. The PTA resents him, Vidich and
Bensman report, the teachers dislike and distrust him and a member
of "the invisible government" whom he has won over has put the finger
on him as "a little too inhuman-has never got into anything in the
town. He's good for Springdale until he gets things straightened out.
Then we'll have to get rid of him." Condemned by the dream for
which he has testified, Peabody is the stuff that "people's court" de–
fendants are made of.
Though Vidich and Bensman deny seeking "solutions" for Spring–
dale, I suspect them of regarding Peabody as a hero.
If
this suspicion
is correct-"Life," they conclude in deadpan, "consists in making an
