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The Jax Files is an interactive, quick-hitting blog devoted to any and all things Pasco, whether whole-heartedly, tangentially or merely psychologically.

Tom Jackson:

Tom Jackson is in a 12-step program for recovering sports writers; as part of his rehabilitation, he writes a column centered on the people, politics, passions and peculiarities of Pasco County. Email

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The Jax Files: With Tom Jackson in Pasco

Pasco County News | Breaking News

Don’t Push That Button!

Posted Feb 11, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Feb 11, 2009 at 06:39 PM

The embarrassing scurry of local politicians after potential slices of the (evidently inevitable) Obama/Pelosi/Reid spendapalooza recalls the breathtaking incision into the human psyche, and its predilection for inviting unintended consequences, laid out in a previously underappreciated 1986 episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

In “Button, Button,” Norma and Arthur Lewis, a young couple in financial trouble, receive from a well-dressed stranger a simple wooden box distinguished only by a single button. Press the button, explains the stranger, and you shall receive a $200,000 windfall.

Sound good? Wait: Somewhere in the world, someone – someone you do not know – will die. Days pass when, finally and over Arthur’s objection, Norma (played with convincing desperation by Mare Winningham), succumbs to the temptation of quick money and the troubles it might remedy, to heck with the condemned unknown. She pushes the button.

Nothing happens – no cash, no apparent deaths – until the next morning, when the stranger returns, toting a briefcase packed with $100s, which he hands over in exchange for the box. The Lewises, staggered by this unlikely turn of events, ask, OK, now what? Says the stranger, the button will be “reprogrammed,” whereupon the box will go out again, offered to someone else under the same terms and conditions.

“And,” he says, his gaze fixing on Norma, “I can assure you it will be offered to someone whom you do not know.”

I wrote above “previously underappreciated” because this delicious little morality play whose message has never been more pertinent is being developed into a motion picture – “The Box” – starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and Frank Langella. It’s scheduled for a November 6 release.

If faithfully carried out, you have to wonder if critics or moviegoers will perceive its full, dark implications. The bet here, as we watch our governor, our legislators and our local elected officials scramble like squealing kids after piñata treasures released by an unknown hands on an unseen stick: not likely.

We have become a nation of rationalizers, prepared to accept – or, more likely, ignore – any distant or anonymous penalty if the immediate opportunity may somehow, possibly, maybe ease our current discomfort or grant temporary advantage.

In Pasco, county commissioners – four of whom are Republicans who campaign on knowing better about stewardship of public dollars – already have $20 million spent on “shovel-ready” road projects, with no thought acknowledged about who will satisfy the promissory note. After all, if it’s raining money from Washington, only the dope doesn’t invert his umbrella.

But that doesn’t make it right. Or smart. It just makes us part of the pack of desperate button-pushers willing to penalize the unnamed, and dismissive of the consequences. When the bill comes oppressively due and we discover we have only double-crossed ourselves—that we have all, at last, become Norma Lewises—will we have the decency to be as mortified?