Abby Zimet on a Tale of Two Men

Abby Zimet at Common Dreams on how the two presidential candidates spent last Tuesday night and Wednesday morning:

Teaching Homophobia: Lori Kasten on a Christian School's Homophobic Indoctrination of Her Daughter

Here's a fascinating story that I hope readers won't miss. It deserves attention for all kinds of reasons.

First, it raises disquieting questions about the use of taxpayer funds in places like Florida to support church-based schools that teach homophobia. Second, it raises questions about why any school, especially a "Christian" one, would feel the need to begin indoctrinating children in homophobia at the age of four. That ravenous need to teach prejudice even to such tiny children surely says a lot more about those doing the indoctrinating than about the children they're indoctrinating.

And, finally, the story causes me to ask about the manifold ways in which schools have the ability to teach homophobia not merely unconsciously, by presenting children only and repeatedly with symbols of heterosexual people and heterosexual relationships, but overtly, as in the case discussed in this posting. Have things gotten so bad out there that schools are actually teaching children directly and intentionally now to be homophobes?

It would appear that this is the case in Florida. I applaud Jodi Kasten for telling this story and challenging the indoctrination of her four-year old girl. The voices that usually clamor for attention when these issues are raised are predictably from the other direction.

Edward M. Kennedy: The Best Old Boy Who Ever in This World Did Live

As I think about the loss of Ted Kennedy and about an appropriate way to eulogize someone who contributed so much to the United States, from a Catholic social justice perspective that often seems to be in its death throes these days, I think back to a childhood scene involving my maternal grandmother.

As readers who have followed Bilgrimage for some time might guess, my mother’s mother played a significant role in my childhood. My grandmother shaped my outlook on life, and her lessons in values—ones she took dead seriously, and which her grandchildren had no choice except to regard as significant—formed my character in ways I feel sure I will never totally fathom. It was this grandmother who taught me to pray on evenings when I would spend the night with her as a child, and we would talk into the night as I slept beside her.

As I’ve grown up and look back on her subtle techniques of character formation, I realize that my grandmother deliberately staged the constant visits we made to her as occasions to teach her grandchildren about values. Many of our visits included a drive to the cemetery in which her parents and grandparents are buried, along with countless other relatives on that side of my family. My grandmother herself is now buried in that cemetery.

On these occasions, as we’d walk slowly through the cemetery from grave to grave, she would tell us stories of each person buried in the plots to which she guided us. These were stories designed to make us aware that who we were was an extension of who our forebears had been and what they had done: we had a heritage to carry on, and we also needed to remember with gratitude the sacrifices made for us by those who came before us.

Needless to say, each story included a little moral lesson.

One grave puzzled me, though. It did so because my grandmother never failed to visit it and point it out to us. But she had no story to go with the burial site.

What she did instead when we reached this grave was pat the tombstone and say, “Here lies the best old boy who ever in this world did live.” That was it. That was her eulogy, and it has stuck in my mind as an exceptionally fine one.

Years later, I discovered the reason for my grandmother’s reticence to talk about this fine “old boy.”

The man she was eulogizing—and encouraging us to remember—was her cousin, her first cousin. He was the son of an aunt about whom she was always reticent—a half-aunt, as she was quick to point out, born to her grandfather's second wife.

The reason for the reticence, I have learned as an adult, is that this aunt had a child some years following her husband’s death, a child born to a neighboring farmer up the road from her. In rural Arkansas, such events caused quite a stir—at least in the area in which my family lived. They brought shame on an entire family, down to third and fourth cousins descended from half-brothers and sisters far back in the family tree.

Despite this shame, which obviously mattered to my grandmother many years after her poor old widowed aunt had stepped across the conventional line with a neighbor (as old letters delicately explain), my grandmother obviously cherished the cousin whose tombstone she wanted us to remember, the best old boy who ever in this world did live.

And I can think of few better ways to eulogize Senator Kennedy. My grandmother was wild about the Kennedys. They could, in her eyes, do no wrong. When she saw the photograph of a Ryan relative of theirs in County Wexford, she was absolutely convinced—nothing would persuade her otherwise—that this Kennedy cousin had to be a cousin of hers, given that her own mother had been a Ryan born in County Kilkenny close to the Wexford border, and that the president’s cousin looked like the very spit and image of her mother.

If my grandmother were alive today, she would say of Ted Kennedy—I know it in my bones—and of his death, “We've just lost the best old boy who ever in this world did live.” And as her grandson, I can think of no finer way to eulogize a man I admired deeply, and for whose good work on behalf of all of us I will forever be grateful.

Thought for the Day: One-Issue Analysis Misses the Point of What Ails Us

This strange approach to politics, involving nudges, nods, and winks on cultural issues, reflects the real division in the nation: between those who want to have a culture war and those who don’t. At election time political candidates need simultaneously to "rally the base," which includes a heavy quotient of culture warriors, and to "appeal to the center," meaning the majority (often left of center on economic issues), which sees health care, education, jobs, taxes, and national security as central concerns trumping gay marriage or abortion. The result is a strained, dysfunctional, and often dishonest political dialogue based on symbolic utterances. Hot-button questions that rally particular sectors of the electorate—and draw listeners and viewers to confrontational radio and television programs—preempt serious discussion of what ails American culture and society.

E.J. Dionne, Jr., Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008), p. 50.

Thought for the Day: Annie Proulx on Everyone's Right to an Opinion

Debra Gale had read no more than ten books in her life but she knew she had as much right as anyone to give her opinion.

Annie Proulx, “Tits-Up in a Ditch,” in Fine Just the Way It Is (NY: Scribner, 2008), p. 184.

More on Failed Leadership and Character

My apologies for chattering today, but it's impossible not to be fascinated by some of the commentary about leadership in our nation as the campaign unfolds.

The following is from an article by Mitchell Bard at Huffington Post, on how smears of others' character is the ultimate resort of failed leaders (www.huffingtonpost.com/mitchell-bard/mccains-desperate-smears_b_132617.html):

If Americans want any hope of changing the culture of failed leadership that the United States has endured for the last eight years, they have to reject a candidate who has allowed himself to fall into the gutter, and who has displayed an acute lack of understanding of what is needed in a challenging time.

Absolutely true, it seems to me. When the only weapon in a "leader's" arsenal is to smear others, then that leader reveals a serious character flaw. Good leadership depends on a leader's strength of character--demonstrated character. The diversionary tactic of smearing the character of others to draw attention away from one's own lack of character only underscores the emptiness of the one going on the attack.

+ + + + +

Well, I can't stop. The more I read, the more I find. I highly recommend Baratunde Thurston's "Silence in the Face of Hate Makes McCain-Palin Unfit to Lead" on Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com/baratunde-thurston/silence-in-the-face-of-ha_b_132660.html).

Excerpts:

Everything we need to know about John McCain and Sarah Palin is summed up by their reaction to these incidents [i.e., to the hate rhetoric spewed at their recent rallies]. Their positions on health care no longer matter. Their tax policies are irrelevant. Their talking points have been made moot. Not only do they bring out the worst in people, but they feed the worst in people. They are basing their campaign on painting Obama as a terrorist and monster. They are cultivating prejudice, racism, fear and ugliness.

America has been down this path before, and it is the exact opposite of what this country needs right now. . . .

We can be a better nation than this, and we deserve better leaders than these.

Amen. And if we don't stop it--we who stand by in silence as it's being done--then we'd better be preparing for the fire next time.

A Moment of Mediocrities: Serious Reflections on the Dearth of American Leaders

As the day goes on: an article at today’s Huffington Post website demands serious attention—Steven Weber’s “We Are in Danger” (www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-weber/we-are-in-danger_b_132654.html). Weber takes on the overt hate-mongering to which the McCain-Palin ticket is now stooping.

As he notes, if we let this happen and sit on the fence, if we let the hate pour out and do nothing, we are in real danger as a nation. Allowing a small group of citizens to incite hatred, while the rest of us stand by in silence, is a preliminary to fascism.

It perturbs me more than I can say that McCain and Palin have not only allowed people at their rallies to shout that Obama is a terrorist while they have done nothing to quell such hate speech, but that they have actively egged this rhetoric on. But even more disturbing to me is Sarah Palin’s absolute silence when someone at one of her rallies recently shouted that Obama should be killed.

As this goes on, where are the Christian leaders who tell us we should vote on the basis of candidates’ stands about life issues? I’m not hearing a peep—not even from the Catholic bishops, who have (many of them) done about everything but stand on their heads to instruct us to vote for the “pro-life” candidates.

Our own silence speaks volumes about us as a nation—our refusal to raise our voices in protest when we are offered morally vacuous leaders who are caricatures of everything authentic leadership stands for. As Matt Taibbi recently noted, "The scariest thing about John McCain's running mate isn't how unqualified she is -- it's what her candidacy says about America" ("Mad Dog Palin," www.alternet.org/election08/100551/mad_dog_palin).

And as Bob Herbert observes, "This is such a serious moment in American history that it’s hard to believe that someone with Ms. Palin’s limited skills could possibly be playing a leadership role" (Bob Herbert, "Palin's Alternate Universe," www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04herbert.html). Arianna Huffington was absolutely right when she noted last Sunday, “When it comes to leadership, this last week proved we are living in a moment of mediocrities—a long moment” (www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/sunday-roundup_b_131827.html).

A moment of mediocrities: one in which there is no possibility of looking to areas outside the political arena, like higher education or the churches, for viable models of alternative leadership. In a column on the role of the Catholic bishops in the current election in the National Catholic Reporter today, theologian Fr. Richard McBrien notes that in the long papal reign of John Paul II, the unchecked power of the papacy resulted in a crop of non-leaders appointed not because of their leadership skills or strength of character, but for their willingness to say yes to the man at top (http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/2089):

In a question and answer period, on a different subject, he asked the audience to imagine a scenario in which President Bush “were in office for life and that he had the authority to make appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court and throughout the federal court system at will, without even a U.S. Senate to hold hearings and vote on the nominees.”

“That's exactly what Pope John Paul II -- or any other pope for that matter -- was able to do in his long term of office, and that is why the Catholic church finds itself today -- and especially during the height of the sexual-abuse crisis in the priesthood -- with such a dearth of pastoral leadership.”

McBrien said John Paul’s greatest failing, as pope, were the bishops he named. “Men were appointed bishops or promoted within the hierarchy on the basis of loyalty to the Holy See rather than on the basis of pastoral aptitude, theological sophistication and leadership skills.”

The willingness to say yes to those who give us orders, rather than pastoral aptitude and leadership skills: I think that if any aspect of my contact with some conspicuously bad leaders in academic life has given me most reason to ask what I consider good leadership to be, it has been the moral bankruptcy of some of the church-affiliated academic “leaders” I know. The lack of character. The willingness to lie. The willingness to treat other human beings as things to be moved around on a game board rather than flesh and blood persons with real lives and real emotions. The belief that, in the final analysis, only I and my feelings count, that only I have rights, and that if I can get away with it, then it must be right—especially when the object of my scorn is already a member of a despised group that has no legal rights.

Character: it’s absolutely essential to sound leadership. And it begins with us. Until we demand it first in ourselves, and then in those who lead us, we’ll keep being offered the kind of “leaders” who are now inching us towards total dissolution as a viable democratic society. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for: when we expect more of ourselves, then perhaps we’ll be offered leaders who reflect that heightened expectation.