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Christopher Hitchens: Almost a Hero
It’s remarkable how we can develop a deep fascination, sometimes to the point of fixation, toward people we despise.
This is not particularly healthy: we gain much more by studying those who are worthy of our admiration and reverence, both as models for the refinement of our own behavior and as sources of inspiration that demonstrate the heights to which human nobility can soar.
But human nature produces an incessant magnetism toward the negative, no matter how much we may know better. So I couldn’t resist clicking on Daniel Oppenheimer’s recent retrospective* on Christopher Hitchens, one of my least favorite intellectuals.
I’m glad I did.
“A Special Place in Hell”
I am quoting. Don’t shoot the messenger.
In fact, it was Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as U. S. Secretary of State, who declared, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”
Apparently, Ms. Albright believes that Hillary Clinton is either unworthy or incapable of winning the office of the president on her own merit. One has to wonder whether Ms. Albright also believes that she herself was appointed Secretary of State because of her sex rather than her abilities.
Feminist icon Gloria Steinem was close at hand to weigh in on the issue — predictably on the wrong side. “When you’re young, you’re thinking: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,’ ” sneered the crusader for women’s rights and dignity.
Just imagine if a man had said that. But so it goes in our age of unabashed double-standards.
In then, in classically Clintonesque style, the fearless former revolution tried to revise her message: “I misspoke on the Bill Maher show recently,” Ms. Steinem posted on Facebook, “and apologize for what’s been misinterpreted as implying young women aren’t serious in their politics.”
“Misspoke”? “Interpreted”? So what exactly was Ms. Steinem trying to say?
It’s heartening that at least some women are seeing through the smoke and mirrors.
“Shame on Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright for implying that we as women should be voting for a candidate based solely on gender,” said Zoe Trimboli, a 23-year-old self-described feminist from Vermont.
Indeed, that would be like suggesting that people voted for Barack Obama only because he’s black.
Wouldn’t it?
Four Ways to Make Attention Deficit Less Disorderly
Many years ago, when my eldest son was about six years old, I introduced him to Chutes and Ladders, the next board game up from Candyland on the sophistication scale. Nothing but luck, the game nevertheless contains an engaging element of the unpredictable, as any roll of the die can rocket you up a ladder to the top or send you plummeting down a slide to the bottom.
My son took to the game immediately, and we bonded as we moved our respective pieces up and down the board. And then, with fatherly foresight, I waited for the moment of supreme joy and excitement as my son counted his piece onto the 100 mark at the top of the playing grid.
“You won!” I cried out, expecting him to respond with elation.
Instead, my son looked at the board, looked at me, and burst into tears.
“What’s wrong?” I exclaimed, genuinely flummoxed.
“I don’t want the game to be over!” he bawled.
Oh, if only they could stay six years old forever.
It’s worth examining what happens as we grow older that makes us lose the joy of the game in our headlong pursuit of victory. Maybe it’s that we’re not paying attention. Maybe it’s that we’re paying too much attention.
Or maybe it’s both.
And Justice for All?
Two Israelis have been sentenced by an Israeli court for the murder of a Palestinian teenager.
How many Palestinians have been sentenced by Palestinian courts for the murder of Jews?
The next new thing all over again
Why didn’t I think of that?
Can you remember the world before Post-It notes? Have you ever paused to appreciate the brilliant simplicity of the Phillips-head screw and screwdriver?
How many times have you cursed yourself for sloshing tea onto the table or dropping your keys between the car seat and console? But you never thought of the Tea-Pot Frame of the Drop-Stop Car Seat Gap Filler, did you?
Don’t feel too bad; you have plenty of company. That’s why we might all benefit from reading Adam Grant’s new book, The Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World.
But here’s the problem: For years, Dr. Pepper challenged the cola establishment with it’s tag-line, Be Original. Promoters knew that we all like to think of ourselves as one-of-a-kind, to imagine that we are masters of our own destiny, a breed apart from the herd. The sad truth is, however, that we only want to imagine it; in reality, nothing scares us more than the fear that we don’t belong.
Even the Dr. Pepper ads reflected our ambivalence toward non-conformity: a whole room full of people line-dancing, in perfect sync with one another, singing “Be original.”
Anti-conformity is easy. Just say no to the party line, and you can always find a cadre of nay-sayers willing to accept you into the ranks of their new conformity. Just look at some of the most unlikely front-runners in our political primary race.
True non-conformity is much more difficult. It requires thought, courage, integrity, perseverance, conviction, and the willingness to be able to join when it’s right to join and stand alone when popular opinion will crucify you for breaking ranks.
It’s just too hard for most of us most of the time. But then, nothing good comes easy, does it?
The Midpoint of the World
As we finally enter the voting season with the Iowa caucuses, I’m drawn back to these thoughts from 2013 on who we are and where we are headed. If hindsight is 20/20, why do we keep making the same mistakes over and over again?
What would you ask of a time traveler from a hundred years ago? And if you traveled a hundred years into the future, what would you want to tell the people you found there? Perhaps it would sound something like this:
What did you do to handle the overpopulations we predicted? How did you protect the seashores? What did you do to keep the ozone layer intact, the energy supplies, the trees? Have you eliminated ignorance, brutality, greed?
There might be no better way to discover unexamined truths about ourselves then by composing a letter to our grandchildren’s grandchildren. This was certainly on the mind of award-winning essayist Roger Rosenblatt a quarter century ago when he penned his deeplythoughtful Letter to 2086:
This letter will be propped up in a capsule at the Statue of Liberty, to be opened on the statue’s bicentennial. Go ahead. Undo the lock. I see your sharp, bright faces as you hoist us into your life, superior as cats to your primitive elders. Quaint, are we not? Beware of superior feelings. The message is in this bottle.
As a student of Jewish philosophy, I don’t believe in coincidences. So when my neighbor — out of the blue — handed me a long forgotten back issue of Time Magazine, the cover article by Mr. Rosenblatt resonated with the faint echo of providence. And although the intended audience still reside three generations in the future, this letter offers a tantalizing window into the past, as well as an illuminating perspective on how much has changed and how much has remained the same.
Click here to read the whole essay.
The Failure of Freedom
For those who care enough to learn the lessons of history, the echoes of the ancient past can be heard clearly amidst the discord of the chaotic present. If we want to understand the crisis of political leadership that plagues our country and our world, we have only to look back to earliest records of national governance, nearly 3000 years ago.
It was the 9th Century Before the Common Era. 391 years had passed since the Children of Israel first entered their land. For nearly four centuries, Jewish society had been plagued by divisiveness, political instability, and spiritual ambivalence. But at last, after the prophet Samuel spent his entire career teaching the Jews to more deeply respect the law and inspiring them to more profoundly appreciate their national mission, the people united in response to his invocations and dispatched emissaries to ask:
“Appoint a king to rule over us like all the other nations” (1 Samuel 8:5).
Seemingly, the Jews had finally come to their collective senses, recognizing that all their political and social strife stemmed from a pervasive national attitude in which “every man did what seemed right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). Without a strong executive office to pilot the ship of state, without a single voice of authority to bind many into one, the tribes of Israel remained a disconnected confederation of individuals who joined forces only when necessary and turned against one another whenever self-interest clashed with national purpose and identity.
240 years ago, another attempt was made to create a new nation, conceived in liberty, and built upon guiding principles of equality and justice.
Today, that same nation, blessed with more power, prosperity, freedom, and opportunity than any in the history of the modern world, confronts a political system crippled by bloat, inefficiency, and corruption. At a moment in time when we desperately need inspired leadership, we face a contest between a socialist and a sociopath in one party, a narcissist and a curmudgeon in the other. And while the frontrunners serenade us with siren-songs of high-sounding dreams and visions — all deeply divorced from reality — the few aspirants who attempt to set forth concrete policy proposals and plans of action wallow in low single digits.
Why is the electorate so eager to embrace the illusion of leadership and so unwilling to recognize the real hope of positive change?
Oscar Equality
Click here to listen to my interview with Christal Frost of WCTM Michigan on the Oscars and racism.
You can read last week’s article “Black Actors Matter” here.
Join Bernie to look for Amerika
Just when you thought this election cycle couldn’t get any wackier, the Sanders campaign has launched a new ad blending sixties-style images of protest marchers and flower children with Simon and Garfunkel’s pop-classic “America.” The unctuous 60-second commercial is brilliantly crafted to stir the heartstrings of starry-eyed liberals everywhere.
But here’s the irony: “America” is a ballad lamenting the failure of romanticism to flourish in a society bereft of direction and meaning, and about the disillusionment of a generation that had abandoned traditional values for a utopian fantasy only to find itself left with nothing:
“Kathy, I’m lost”, I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.”
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike,
They’ve all come to look for America,
All come to look for America.
Even Art Garfunkel missed the contradiction of using his own song to endorse a socialist agenda. One might as reasonably use “Mrs. Robinson” in an ad for marriage counseling.
Then again, there really could be no better theme song for the campaign of Bernie Sanders, a holdover from the hippie era passionately espousing grand ideas that could never work.
And, on the Republican side, Donald Trump, the alter-ego of Bernie Sanders, promises us a new America — trust me! — while truly viable candidates repeat the mistakes of 2012, forming a circular firing squad (to quote Mara Liasson) and all but ensuring that the general election will offer us a choice between one brand of demagoguery or another.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Yonason Goldson 