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Man of the Year
The question was, “Should I laugh or be bitter?” while I watched this past Saturday Robin Williams new movie, Man of the Year, in which he plays a Jon Stewart-type character who runs for president.
During one telling scene, two of Williams’ aides are found talking about why he’s done so well with the electorate. One aide responds by saying that candidates usually can’t be heard during campaigns because they all sound the same; Williams, he said was heard by people because he genuinely sounded different.
But what did he say?
Williams’ character spoke the truth about big money, special interests, silly ideas, and misleading rhetoric. He came clean with himself about his own motivations to run and ran because he was willing to lose. Compare this to our current election cycle. Oh yes, I know, many of you are delighted the Democrats might win big on Election Day, while others are concerned about just what that victory might bring.
But Williams’ movie is clear and compelling satire on our current state of public affairs regardless of who ultimately wins next week. Candidates from both parties have brought political conduct to new lows of ugliness and vacuous ideas. Their ads and debates are devoid of substance – and hope.
Just this morning on the radio, when driving into work, I heard one political consultant say that the only way a candidate can break through these days is to “go to the extremes.” To me, she was saying, “Go ahead and make a mockery out of the process in order to win!”
But as I’ve traveled the country and talked about the possibilities for a different kind of politics and public life, the response has been overwhelming. People want someone to stand up and engage people on a notion of the public good, not just their own good. They are longing to be brought together on their basic concerns such as education, safety, good neighborhoods – maybe even the war in Iraq. There is a deep desire within people to focus on authentic hope, and to put an end to the peddling of false hope.
Our political leaders and their handlers seem convinced that the only way to win is to sure up their base and then strike fear in enough other voters about their opponents to squeak out a victory.
But in Man of the Year they got the message just right: people want something more. And in this way our entertainment world is reflecting back to us our most basic aspirations for what we want in reality but cannot yet seem to create.
Before Election Day I urge you to go see Man of the Year. Maybe it will help all of us collectively articulate what is now missing from everyday life -- a politics and public life that matters. Then maybe next Tuesday in our momentary euphoria of victory, or despair in defeat, we will keep our eye on the need for real change and maintain our vigilance in seeking it. -
Thoughts on Our Way Back – Dateline Binghamton
When do you or I have a voice? Usually this question comes up in relationship to public officials – do they hear us? I’ve spent much of my professional life addressing this challenge. But today my hope is to address you personally – can you hear your own voice?
Wherever I go, this powerful and deeply personal question emerges. Just last week when I was visiting Binghamton, N.Y. a young student at Broome Community College said that it wasn’t until she took a recent debate class that she ever truly felt she had a voice.
She was trying to tell those of us in the room something basic and important. It is the same point I hear from older people who are high-paid lawyers, stay-at-home moms and dads, non-profit chiefs, and many others. They each say something similar – something very personal.
What does it mean to have a voice – at work, in the public realm, with others? Is this challenge we each face simply about gaining power; for instance, is it something you can secure by gathering up grant dollars, claim by the position you hold, or create by making enough noise?
There are moments when each of us speak and still feel we have little or no voice. We may utter words, proclaim research findings, assert a position, or perhaps make a demand. But, still, we feel that our own voice is not present. Somehow the words we speak do not come from deep within ourselves; indeed our words fail to capture the sentiments that give meaning to our life. We find that our true intentions and purpose go un-reflected.
At a Barnes and Noble book event I did in Binghamton, a storeowner in nearby Johnson City told a story of how she and fellow merchants had been waiting for the local government to create change in their downtrodden downtown. Ultimately, she told us, the local merchants got tired of waiting and formed their own partnership to clean-up their main street and bring people together.
What, she asked me, should be her next step? I told that she had already taken it. By stepping forward in the bookstore she was doing something that so many people wish they could do: gain and spread newfound confidence and faith in themselves and others.
Gaining our own voice doesn’t necessarily mean that we must solve a local community problem or take a debate class. Rather, first and foremost, it seems to me that we must step forward in our own way to know something about ourselves. How do we see things? What do we feel? What do we believe? What’s more, to know something about ourselves often means knowing something about others, too; our voice exists in relationship to others.
I told the Broome Community College students that I believe cultivating your own voice is one of the most important things they could do, especially in relationship to public life; otherwise, even in our discussions we remain oddly silent. Thus I urged them to try out their voice in different settings – in their classes; in the papers they write; in private journals that no one else may ever see or hear. They must try out their voice if they are to find it.
In our own ways, this is something we each can do. For I hear so many people say that they wish they had more of a voice. Maybe to be truly heard we must first find our own voice.
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The Mark Foley affair
I came to work today not wanting to write about the Rep. Mark Foley scandal on Capitol Hill. I didn’t want to simply vent over yet another congressional brouhaha. But I find I must turn my attention there.
At the very time I am watching the Foley affair unfold, I am reading a book on the meaning of “beauty” – On Beauty and Being Just, by Elaine Scarry. Wow! What a contrast, or is it? The basic point of the book is how something beautiful can help to engage us in thinking about justice; in short, when we come into contact with beauty, we are prompted not only to enjoy that which is beautiful, but also to recognize that which is not present or remains to be done.
But how about when we see ugliness? When we peer into ugliness, when we come face-to-face with it, what do we do then?
As I watch politicians and pundits respond to the Foley affair, I keep wondering, “How hard is it to respond to this scandal?” Does every issue demand a calculated political response? Watch even the clearest-minded politicians on this issue, and even they can’t seem to help themselves, returning time and again, after their initial comments, to taking political jabs.
At some level, politics is politics; it has always been a tough endeavor and not for the faint of heart. But merely to stop there would be to declare, even embrace, a defeatist attitude. It would be to surrender, I believe, to ugliness.
I’m still on my Hope Unraveled book tour and as I travel the country talking with people about their retreat from public life and politics, and their deep desire to find authentic hope, I keep hearing a similar refrain: Will someone please stand up and lead?
But let’s be clear. People are not waiting for the knight in shining armor to ride into town and save them. They know the situation is more complex than that.
Rather, what I think people want is for someone – their neighbor, the local United Way, a community foundation, faith leaders, the mayor, even themselves – to step forward and ask some basic questions: Is it too much to ask that public life and politics reflect something good in us; that it help to activate and animate our aspirations and hopes; that our intentions be driven by some notion of trying to do the most good?
The ugliness of the Mark Foley scandal should help us to see what we already know. Ugliness will always exist. But in confronting ugliness, we can also come to see that we need not accept it.