Icons and I can't

So now the media is fixated on Tiger Woods and the fact he can't drive straight and keep himself on the fairway or the driveway. The frenzy has brought out hordes of scum artists who are looking for the juicy tidbit around the green. The lastest is Tiger has said he "transgressed" and that he is sorry.Having brought him off his lofty perch, we will see if they begin to let him lie or give him a mulligan.

Meanwhile in Washington, that "Tiger Woods Guy" (dubbed so by Will Farrell during his impersonation of George Dubya) who is president has been trying to fight off all sorts of insults and insinuations--he was born on a different continent, he is a Nazi, a socialist, and a teleprompter junkie. The claims have come faster than Joe Biden's gaffes. It seems he can do nothing that will satisfy the critics. Glenn Blecck's most recent salvo is that he is not following his generals even though the Constitution that Blecck so claims to revere makes it pretty clear that the President is the Commnader in Chief and it is the generals who should do the following.

But I am not writing about Tiger Woods driving ability or his marital skills or the President's policies. I am writing about us. What makes us the creatures who elevate people to impossible heights so that we can celebrate their fall? We weren't content to know that Woods is the greatest golfer likely to ever putt. We also made him a paragon of all that is virtuous. It is not enough that the "Tiger Woods Guy" we put in the White House was a first and one highly bright and talented dude--we had to make him into the second coming. Guess what-- he isn't and neither is Tiger.What we have are two men who do what they do with skill and ease that makes them purveyors of excellence. What they aren't are demi-gods. They aren't perfect. Tiger not only prowled--he strayed. Barack has dived into his plate of horrors that he was handed with gusto and confidence, even though he will get a lot of it wrong. It isn't about what they can do or not do.It is about what we shouldn't do. We shouldn't enbue our icons with all manner of virtue. They are men (or women in other cases) who err and fall and may rise again. Our focus should not be on their perfection but on their struggle. That is the human condition and we are all driving down that path together.

Nobel Son (and Daughter)

Much has been made of the recent honor afforded President Obama by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. Objections have come from a number of places with complaints of "too soon," "he hasn't done anything yet," or "he is leading two wars, how can he be honored for peace?" The far right have shown their dexterity, if not their consistency, by following their celebrations of the loss of the Olympics by Chicago, which they claimed showed Obama's weakness in the world, with thier dismay that the world has now honored the President with the greatest international prize given. I have to admit I have enjoyed watching the talk shows hosts' heads explode as they process this. We have seen conservatives cheer when America loses and scream when it whens. Strange times we ar living in.

And that is the point. The Nobel committee said they gave the prize for the good work that Obama had started and for his setting a new tone. Some have suggested, quite accurately, that a lot of this has to do with the fact he isn't George W. Bush. The realty is that the world became accustomed to a United States that had a "my way or the highway' attitude and if you weren't with us, you were against us. This dualistic view of history created division and distress around the globe. President Obama has acted as the "anti Bush" by offering a collaborative and inclusive vision for the rest of the world.

I was in Cusco Peru the night of the election and it was interesting to see the celebrations in the street, the smile on waiters faces and the children in classrooms the next day yelling "Obama, Obama." It was an election the world followed closely and celebrated mightily. No wonder then that the Nobel committee honored Obama--and for that all American's should be grateful--for it was a prize given to all of us. Conservative columists George Will, just a few days before the announcment, intoned, as only he can, that around the world Obama is adored and ignored. Well,not so fast with that ignoring assumption George.

In the provocative book "The Age of the Unthinkable" author Joshua Ramo posits that the rules of how the world works have changed dramatically in the recent past and that to cope with this requires greater flexibilty and openness to alternative ways of seeing the world. It seems to me that the selection of Obama as the peace prize winner is a perfect example of how the old ways of measuring success must be altered. If the most powerful nation on earth does not have a leader that is capable of being open and inclusive, then there may not be a world left where life time acheivement awards can be given.

But there was other Nobel news beyond the Obama selection and the fact that most of the winners in the other categories were American. The one that was most interesting to me was the selection of Elin Ostrom as the first female economics laureate. I was taken, not so much with her breaking the glass ceiling, but for what she was honored for.

Her work was recognized because she had shown that local communities were more effective at using their resources in a common collaboration than if the government had controlled the resources or if they had been privitized. This has great implications for public education. The history of public education has been a community based system of local control. Of late the model has shifted to a state and federally run control system with great pressure being applied to expand the issue of privitization into schools. While you don't have to be a Nobel Prize winner to understand that may not be a good idea, it is great to have one prove so. Thank you Laureate Ostrom and thank you Barack Obama for proving that little things mean a lot in the larger world.

Don't Just Do Somethng, Stand There--And Yell

America has been built upon it's "can do" spirit. We excelled as a country because we believed we could do anything and be anything. Our deepest values revolve around being a land of the free and the home of the brave. I don't know about you but lately that has seemed to change. We are becoming a land of the mentally constipated and the home of the fearful. "Can Do" has been replaced with "Can't Do." And the soaring motto of President Obama's campaign of "Yes We Can" is being usurped by a sense of "No We Won't."

It is hard to know where and when the shift to fear and helplessness started but certainly the horrific events of 9/11 put a sense of unease across the land. This was accelerated by the Bush administration that played on the fear and magnified it with a society reduced to color codes telling us how afraid to be. We were surrounded by those who wanted to destroy us for our freedom, so we capitulated and surrendered our freedom so we could stay free. This cognigive dissonance has led us to where we are today. We want what we are unwilling to make happen.

Meanwhile, the election of a vibrant, articulate, Black president was viewed as hope my many. He becme the Great Black Hope for people of all races. He told us that "Yes We Can" and we saw the possibilities of being n control of our lives and our fortunes. Fate intevened in the form of an economic meltdown and much of that hope was put on hold. meanwhle we thought we had emerged into a "post racial" world, but really we just crossed into a "post racist" world. Fear of the "other" rose in the land and some even were fearful of a "wise Latina woman" sitting on the Supreme Court. Some claim our country has an illigitimate president who could only produce the standard birth certificate to prove he was American. As an aside, my own birth certificate is so old and faded I am not even certain I was born anywhere. Obama's election was called into question--by those who were perfectly happy to see a president voted in on a 5-4 vote in the Supreme court. Then those who were on the losing end were told to shut up and sit down. Probably not a bad policy in today's climate. Old ideas and predjudices die hard and change does not come easily.

Today we see politicians of both parties, but I would have to say more Republican than Democrat, who see "No" as the answer to every question and fear as the motivator of human expression. We were told by some only a few months into Obama's administration that he had failed, or others who said they they wanted him to fail not understanding that his failure would fall on all of us, red and blue alike. While I like Obama personally, I certainly don't agree with all his policies. I didn't like George W. Bush, and the longer he was president, the less I liked him. But I can honestly say I never once wanted him to fail anymore than I want to see Obama fail. When you are in a fragile boat, punching holes in the bottom to spite the captain seems foolish.

In the last few days we saw the return of two of our citizens from captivity in North Korea and were told by the conservative talking heads that this wa a sign of weakness on our part for even going after them. And we have seen a piece of the stimulus package (which had been soundly criticized by talk radio, Fox News and Republican leadership) run out of money in one week because so many people were turning in their gas guzzling cars and buying new ones, which helps our flagging auto induntry and improves the environment. Since it was a win all around, what do the "Nattering Nabobs of Negativism" (to borrow a phrase of an earlier political period) have to say? That the Obama administration had screwed up because they had not planned for it to be so successful. My mother always told me if you can't say something nice about someone then don't say anything. Rush "Dimbulb," Bill O'"Really?", Sean "Vanity" and Glen "Blech!" apparently were taught something else by their mothers.

"Birthers," "Deathers," and screaming mobs who want to protect their Medicare from government I am still not sure how that works!) are not the problem--they are the result of the problem. Leaders in the media and politics need to understand that while they are scoring political points, they are undermining the one thing that holds us together as a nation--our ideals. When that is gone, we will really have cause to be afraid--very,very afraid.

Gates to Gates

In 1991 Rodney King, an African American was beaten by four white members of the Los Angeles police department. Unlike many claims of "police brutality" this was caught on tape and led to the trial of the four officers.LAPD chief Darryl Gates insited that his men were merely doing their duty. In essence he asked that the public believe him rather than their lying eyes. The tape revealed the officers tasering King and then using their nightsticks to beat him into submission. They claimed that he was under the influence of drugs and was resisting arrest. The officers argument prevailed at trail and their acquitals touched off an eruption of violence and rage in the black community of Los Angles. Riots lasted for days resulting dozens of deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage.

Chief Gates moved to the center of the controversy and his many appearances on television did nothing to assuage the mood of the black community. In fact, many of his statements seemed to show a lack of sensitivity to the issue of race and the historic interplay between police and the black community. For years I have heard my black friends joke in a rueful manner about being stopped by the police for "driving while black." That is the term used to label the reality that blacks are stopped and arrested by the police at a much higher rate than whites. Many times these arrests are with the flimiest of cause. The issue of "racial profiling" has emerged from this concern.

Now, in mid 2009 we have seen another Gates hit the news because of this issue. The time it is Professor Henry Gates of Harvard who, in one of the many ironies of this case, is considered to be the leading American scholars of race. He was arrested by the Cambridge Police, shortly after trying to enter his own home. It seems a neighbor had seen two black men with backpacks trying to force the front door of the house. The men were professor Gates and his driver who ws tryig to help me force open the stuck door. Dr. Gates was inside his home when the polic arrived and became incensed at the officers for accosting him in his own home. They claim he became loud and difficult and they arrested him for this behavior, cuffed him and took him to jail.

This has caused another firestorm across the nation with many lining up behind the officer, who ironically was a model officer and a trainer for the department on racial sensitivity issues. Officer Crowley claims he was merely following procedure which procuced echoes of Los Angeles in the minds of many African Americans. Most African Americans I have heard comment on the case see it merely a one more evidence of the disparate tratment of blacks in this society. Even President Obama has been caught up in the controversy when he suggested that the Cambridge Police were "stupid" for arresting a man for breaking into his own home. He has sense disavosed his language but continued to suggest the incident was troubling.

As with any issue the details of this incident for open to interpretation. Perhaps Professor Gates was treated more harshly simply because he was black. Perhaps Officer Crowley indeed followed the letter of the polcy manual. Or perhaps we had two men indulging in some "macho maashup" letting their egos and different perspective escalate a situation beyond its normal limits.

What is clear is that while America has come a long way in our relations between the races, the racial lens is still applied first when incidents like this occur. All this comes on the heels of the hearings for Puerto Rican Sonia Sotomayor for supreme court justice. At those hearings and in the run-up to them, the nation was "treated" to a litany of white men, many of whom had demonstrated their own racial insensitivity in the past suggesting that Sotomayor was a "reverse racist" for suggesting that a wise Latina might be a better judege that a white man.

What all American's should stipulate, up front, is that race still matters in this society. The election of a mixed race president who has addressed this issue quite eloquently, has not healed our divisions. In fact, his election seems to have raised the racial barometer for many whites. I seriously doubt if there is one person of color in the country who at one time or another has not been subjected to treatment based upon their race. This could be from being arrested unjustly or merely, as President Obama described in one of his books, waitng for the valet to deliver a car and having a white person throw him the keys, thinking he was the valet because he was black. And there is not a white person in America who hasn't at one time or another reacted to a person of color out of that lens rather than seeing beyond it. This could range from the ugly racism of jokes or actions, or merely getting steamed when a person of color seems to slow down when they cross the street in front of your car. Our nation has a long, dark history of racism. We fought a civil war, in part, because of it. We have had ongoing viloence because of it. It has cost us money and moral authority. And it has been a topic largely ignored in public discourse because it is so fraught with peril and pain. But we will never get past it until we brave the peril and face the pain.

Perhaps, taking a lead from President Obama and incidents like the one played out in Cambrige these las few days, we can open up the dialogue between the races. It is clear that we are not in a "post racial" time as some thought after Obama's election but maybe we can finally get to the the starting post of shedding light and understanding about this difficult issue. At last maybe we can follow the words of Rodney King in the midst of the riots,"can't we all just get along?"