Oliver Twist in Our Time

When high school students in Scranton, Pa. study 19th century English literature, they should have their own insight into the Dickensian world of Oliver Twists being exploited by the rich and powerful.

In a bizarre 21st century version, two local judges have pleaded guilty to charges of taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers. One of them arranged the contracts for housing juvenile offenders, while the other sentenced kids there for the slightest infractions to keep the places filled, an estimated 5,000 over five years.

Now the judges are facing prison time of their own as parents and youth advocates wonder how such echoes of Dickens' brutal world could have gone on for so long in modern America.

Admirers of the great novelist will find a life-size bronze statue of him in Philadelphia, but they will have to travel across the state to Scranton to see how persistent the human exploitation he wrote about still is.

Bah, Humbug and All That

If he wrote "A Christmas Carol" today, Charles Dickens might take flak for insidiously promoting a welfare state that could lead to higher taxes and SCHIP programs for the likes of Tiny Tim.

But after more than a century and a half, Scrooge and his ghosts will be all over TV this week without protest, except from lovers of the classic who feel strongly about the dozens of movies based on it.

Christmas eve, TCM will be showing the 1938 MGM version, which ranks high in memory, with an asterisk to protest liberties taken with the plot, including Bob Cratchit heaving a snowball at Scrooge and being fired before the holiday (always a touch of Andy Hardy in the Louis B. Mayer era).

You'll have to check local stations or Blockbuster because no network showing is scheduled for arguably the best, a 1951 darkly beautiful British tour de force with Alastair Sim, a grand actor who was born to play Scrooge, or for my Yuletide guilty pleasure, the 1970 musical with Albert Finney.

With an undistinguished score (we're not talking Stephen Sondheim here), the singing and dancing somehow seem just right for a tale to lift our hearts and make believing children of us all. Peopled with great actors--Edith Evans, Kenneth More and Alec Guinness as the campiest Jacob Marley ever--it's a thing of visual beauty, culminating in a joyous scene of dancing, bell-ringing celebrants against a snowy background that is pure Breughel.

There have been "Christmas Carols" by all the icons of pop culture from Mickey Mouse and the Jetsons to Star Trek's Patrick Stewart and the Muppets and, in 2009, there will be a live action-computer graphic version with Jim Carrey as Scrooge and all three ghosts.

So take your choice and Bah, Humbug and Merry Christmas to all.