Notable Quotables—Significant Snippets

April 23rd, 2012  |   

I quote others only in order to better express myself.  

 Michel de Montaigne

They are like dandelions; you can find them all over the place.

I am talking about little quotes, snippets, and tiny fragments from various sources. Sometimes you find them attached with magnets to a refrigerator. Clippings carried in one’s purse, like the man I know who carries a Pablo Neruda poem in his wallet. You might spot one pasted on the rear end of a car. Friends often send them to me in e-mails or by postal delivery. With tattoos in vogue these days, you might notice a fragment from the Bible, like “God is Love,” colorfully displayed on someone. These snippets also show up on colorful tee shirts. You might pick them up in church bulletins, on highway billboards, in Chinese fortune cookies, and of course, in the multitude of books, magazines and newspapers where worthy lines get underlined with a yellow Magic Marker or clipped for keeping.

Montaigne’s words serve me well: “I quote others only to better express myself.” They help me express myself to people I care about. They serve as mulch for my garden of ideas and observations. Consider this issue of Notes as my gift of mulch for your garden.

Let’s start with Trayvon Martin’s death in Florida and see where that takes us.

*****

When do you have time to call experts? When do you have time to sort through data and information and do your own research? Even with a well-staffed news organization, we are hostages to the non-stop, never-ending file-it-now, get-on-the-Web, get-on-the-radio, get-on-TV media environment.

Ken Auletta—Non-Stop News

Trayvon Martin’s tragic death in Florida has dominated our nation’s attention for the past few weeks. It will have a long media shelf life. It requires extensive and accurate analysis, as well as careful perusal. I have refrained from writing anything up to this point but will, throughout this edition of Notes, make a couple of observations.

Ken Auletta is profoundly correct in his observation about the hurry-up nature of reporting. His observation about reporters is one that applies to all of us as consumers of news. The rush for “breaking news” and “exclusive” interviews, contributes to the enormously dangerous rush to judgments we all find ourselves caught in when hearing and viewing the news. Facts dissolve in the frenzy that voraciously consumes a hungry public yearning for an opinion about whatever the subject happens to be. 

Case in point: An NBC News producer was responsible for a piece for the “Today” show that had an audio clip of George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin, saying, “This guy (Martin) looks like he is up to no good. He looks black.”

That comment, because of selected editing, became fuel for the fire that raged around the possible racist aspect of this killing. Zimmerman’s comment was, in fact, a response to the 911 dispatcher asking the question, “O.K., and this guy (Martin)—is he white, black or Hispanic?” Only then did Zimmerman say, “He looks black.”

The NBC producer was fired. I won’t question his motives. My guess is that the piece displayed for millions of “Today” show viewers was the direct result of what Auletta has called the rush connected with the “non-stop, never-ending-file-it-now environment” that drives the media.

*****

“Do you have a permit for that hoodie?”Comment from a policeman to a man wearing a red hoodie, armed with six guns and a rocket propelled missile.

 An Ed Stein cartoon in The Christian Science Monitor

A veteran, with two tours in Iraq under his belt, pointed out something rather startling to me the other day. The “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida which will come under scrutiny in the trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting of Trayvon Martin, gives more leeway to shooters here than our own military gives to soldiers in war.  That has me thinking about the ground we stand on, the weapons we carry, and how we use them.

Of course the primary issue in court will boil down to whether Zimmerman was defending himself. I recognize that even raising that possibility is no way to win friends and influence people. The subject of racism has a way of bullying legal issues into submission, and to call racism into question as a motive for the killing is to risk being called a racist. I shall resist that fear by making a couple of observations.

·      Race is always an issue when any of our systems are involved, particularly the criminal justice system. Black people are incarcerated seven times as often as whites. One legal scholar has written, “The system of mass incarceration works to trap African Americans in a virtual (and literal) cage.” Based on my work with Latino immigrants, I would say that they, also, are the targets of our nation’s original sin—racism. Accompany me on a trip to prison, like so many church folks have done, and I promise that when we exit the prison I won’t say, “I told you so.”

·      The rush for white people to run to the street crying “racism” has me, a frequent street marcher, a bit suspicious. I’ll tell you why. White folks sometimes establish their individual virtue by flocking to the rallies and marches in order to differentiate themselves from all those bigoted white racists among us. It’s as if we somehow want to absent ourselves from the deep systemic racism that pervades our life together in this country. No march in the world will ever accomplish that, even though I would encourage marching for justice whenever the occasion arises.

·      The hoodie? Sure, Someone wearing it can be intimidating to some people—a shroud of anonymity worn by a person intent on committing a crime. Just last night, a man described as wearing a hoodie burglarized a home here in Charleston. But think about this. Since the rash of Wall Street and banking corporate executive crime, maybe we should beware of men dressed in expensive Brooks Brothers suits. And with so many pedophiles in clerical garb, maybe folks should cross the street when they see me coming.

·      Let’s face it, given the threat of violence, as we see it portrayed in the nightly news or in the morning paper, it’s totally understandable why people are frightened and choosing to live in gated communities, buying weapons, and arming community watch people to protect them. Hundreds of new gun-friendly laws all over the country give people the right to carry concealed weapons to fight suspicious characters. Ohio allows permits for people to carry concealed weapons into restaurants, bars, and sports arenas. It’s become Gunfight at O.K Coral time. Avoid asking for a shot of anything at your local bar because it may come to you from the barrel of a gun.

·      Since fear acts as kindling for an emotional fire, is it any wonder that guns serve as the match for a huge bonfire that can rage out of control when it comes to dealing with unknown strangers, people who are different from us, and dangers that might go bang in the night?

·      Maybe you’ve seen the bumper sticker that reads: “God, Guns and Guts. Three Things That Make America Great.” Adherence to the three G’s is what seems to get political candidates elected. You can see it at work as Mitt Romney hops from speaking at the National Rifle Association convention and to delivering a commencement address at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. His God and guns are readily visible, but where are his guts when it comes time for him to unmask the lie that President Obama is taking guns away from Americans.

*****

In what other context would a news organization allow someone to become such an integral part of the story and then represent the organization? Shouldn’t Sharpton have to choose between his dual roles?

Howard Kurtz, Newsweek, Washington Bureau Chief

Folks on my side of the political street, myself included, have an endless supply of barbs readily available to hurl at Fox Network commentators who are a part of what I refer to as the “screech media.” You know, the hollering, four-letter screaming, interrupting-everyone-in-sight, self-appointed political pundits who go vicious in their attack of everyone who makes a left turn in their thinking or in their politics. They distort facts, twist the news into an image of their own likeness, become the news they cover, and blur the line between news coverage and analysis.

The Reverend Al Sharpton’s participation in the coverage of the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman story requires me to look at the same kind of distortion on my occasionally not-so-sunny-side-of-the-street. Don’t get me wrong, Sharpton has the same right to advocate for his opinions and beliefs, many of which I agree with, as does Sean Hannity on the other side of the street. The First Amendment to the Constitution protects all of us—Screaming Banshees going after Barack Obama as well as Raving Maniacs devouring Sarah Palin. Hey, there are plenty of lemon meringue pies available to toss in all directions. It’s as American as, let’s say, lemon pie.

Prizing and protecting a person’s right to express his or her opinions, however, does not address my concern about the hazy distortion between reporting news and making news. When Al Sharpton makes news attacking George Zimmerman and raising money for Trayvon Martin’s legal expenses, it seems to me that he has crossed the line when he then tries to report the news on his MSNBC television show.

The complicity and complications around race are like a maze without an exit. Someone like me, and I’ll bet you as well, can get stymied and fearfully lost and timid when trying to talk about the subject, even with family and friends. I either get snow blind or lost in the dark just trying to sort through the debris that smothers this terrible shooting.

One need only remember that both men involved in this tragedy were what society calls “people of color”— Martin, a black man, Zimmerman, an Hispanic man who grew up in a multiracial family. And the color line gets even more blurred when we remember that Al Sharpton, not long ago, made the discovery that his genealogical family tree included white segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond?    

Two things I am sure of. First, I wholeheartedly agree with what Al Sharpton said right after he discovered his connection to Thurmond. “In the story of the Thurmonds and the Sharptons is the story of the shame and glory of America.”

Secondly, as jaded and discouraged as I might get about the criminal justice system in this country, I still have hope that the whole truth, and nothing but the truth will emerge about that tragic night in Florida, and that justice will prevail because of who we are, and despite who we are. That’s a prayer as well as an expectation.

*****

Any recruit…was prone on occasion to incorrectly refer to his rifle as “a gun.” As punishment, a recruit would likely stand at attention outdoors (sometimes clad only in his undergarments or even naked) and repeat over and over “This is my rifle, this is my gun. This is for shooting, this is for fun.”

Richard Allen Burns—This is My Rifle, This is My Gun: Gunlore in the Military

Maine’s Senator, Susan Collins, has conjectured about the Secret Service sexcapade with prostitutes in Columbia. “To me it defies belief that this is just an aberration. There are too many people involved. If it had been one or two, then I would say it was an aberration. But it included two supervisors. That is particularly shocking and appalling.” I agree with that conjecture.

It’s an ugly truth, but it must be acknowledged if we intend to address the relationship between violence and sex, masculinity and misogyny. Face up to the fact that wherever boots and guns are on the ground, whether our military personnel wear them, or Secret Service agents recruited from the military wear them, the link between violence and sex will be present.

By pointing to these connections, I do not mean to say that people in the military or Secret Service hate women or love violence. What I am talking about are the connections built into the systems we live inside of, particularly that are male driven and militaristic. For example, it is no secret that prostitution thrives just outside the gates of military bases. While in the Marine Corps, I saw that in Olongapo, the town outside the base at Subic Bay in the Philippines, and in Henoko, just outside of Camp Schwab in Okinawa. Doing church work in Honduras, I was in Comayagua where prostitutes were transported fom Tegucigalpa to service the troops at the nearby Palmerola military base.

Cartagena, a sex tourist oasis, is where the Secret Service agents were sexually serviced while in Columbia to protect the president. Being a man, I know the system that winks and nods with a smile, and says, “boys will be boys.” So why would this dalliance with prostitutes shock me, as it has with so many folks who say, “how could this have happened?”

The shock for me was the fact that while the media was fixated on the sexual shenanigans of Secret Service agents protecting President Obama, he was signing a trade agreement with Columbia, without any human rights provisions to protect the workers in that country. Mind you, dozens of workers have been gunned down over the past two years for having tried to organize their workplaces.

*****

If you were writing a morality play about class privilege, you couldn’t do better than to dream up a glamorous ship of fools and load it with everyone from the A-list to immigrants coming to America for a better life. The class issue is one major reason the Titanic disaster has always been so ripe for dramatization. And yet the way we tell the story reveals more about us than it does about what happened.

Daniel Mendelsohn—The New Yorker

In case you haven’t noticed, we have just passed the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Books about the disaster are the quite the rage. If you go to the Titanic exhibit in Orlando, Florida, you can put your hands up against an iceberg made of real ice in order to understand the horrors of hypothermia. In the gift shop you can buy a lavish cookbook titled “Last Dinner On The Titanic.”

Mendelsohn’s comment calls attention to the class issue, one that intrigues me. I think that’s because whenever the class issue is raised, particularly in a political campaign, Americans argue about it vociferously.

Conservatives tend to pretend there is no class divide, and when left-wingers go after the rich for more taxes, or to attack upper class abuse of power, apoplexy sets in. The Fox News Obama-hater commentators say the president is “resorting to the politics of division, by using outrageous warfare rhetoric to attack his opponents.” The president’s political strategy is, they say, “to pit American’s against one another in order to win a second term and hang on to the White House and Air Force One and his beautiful helicopter.”

One of the reasons the Republicans are able to connect with working class people is the very fact that they recognize the ambivalent feeling that exist among their hard hat working class audience. They understand all too well that the average Joe’s hostility toward fat-cat rich people masks a latent desire to become one of them. One need only watch people run like lemmings to purchase lottery tickets in order to understand that the closer folks are to the bottom of the economic ladder, the more they want to become one of the rich people they can’t stand.

A common question I hear so often when it comes to elections goes like this: Why do folks who are economically hard-pressed wind up voting against their own interests? Perhaps it’s because economically strapped people want to be a member of the class that is responsible for their situation so that they will no longer have to feel powerless and penniless. If that’s the case, it’s understandable, but not possible without tax increases on the rich and adequate regulation on powerful corporate interests that live at the expense of poor and middle class people.

To return to the Titanic imagery, the apocalyptic truth lies at the bottom of the ocean. It is simply the fact that unless there is a more equitable economic balance among all people, the ship on which we are all passengers—Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean—will tilt and sink and all classes will perish.

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