TIME FOR A HEALING

I’m as guilty as anyone of stirring up emotions over politics, as played anywhere—the poetry world, the publishing world, the Hollywood world, the world world.

And this presidential election has certainly got me going. But.

I also do my best to pull myself back from the abyss of divisiveness to address the problem of perceptions vs. realities. Perceptions generally influenced, if not entirely formed, by “the media”—meaning whatever TV you watch and/or radio you listen to and/or books, magazines and newspapers you might read.

At my age I’ve experienced a lot of history, some of it up close, and any account I’ve ever read about in memoirs and histories, or seen portrayed fictionally, in movies or novels, etc. has missed the mark of my memories, often by miles.

As we know from experiments and studies done all over the world throughout the last several decades, so-called “eye witnesses” are completely unreliable.

One example often given is the law school professor lecturing, his students hopefully focused on him as he speaks, but if not, they certainly are when suddenly a person rushes into the room at the front of the class, grabs the professor’s briefcase off his desk and runs out.

When asked to write a description of the event and “the perp,” no two descriptions match. Even traits generally portrayed as givens—“race,” gender, hair color, relative size, etc.—are all over the map.

Many students even mischaracterize the event, seeing the “perp” as having grabbed a paper bag, that never existed on the desk, etc.

And what’s worse, when given photos of possible “suspects” these same “eye witnesses” can be coaxed or misled into absolutely swearing to identify the wrong person.

I experienced this long before I read about these kinds of experiments. I used to do a lot of poetry readings around the country, in the 1970s and ‘80s especially. One place I read a few times was at a Community College in Kansas City, Missourri, in a class taught by my friend and fellow poet, Robert Slater.

One year, during my disco phase, I appeared before the class to read my poems wearing pleated blue baggy pants, multi-colored shoes (predominantly lavender as I remember it), a very thing, transparent (see-through) plastic belt that someone had given me and I was particularly fond of at the time, and some kind of flowery shirt I no longer remember.

After my reading, Slater had the class write an essay on my presentation and appearance. Not only did many of the students completely alter my poems and what they were about or the language used in them, but also my appearance.

Several students had me wearing cowboy boots and jeans and blue denim shirt, some had me in a sport coat, a few even described various leather belts with big buckles. At first it shocked me and then it pissed me off and then I finally accepted the reality of it.

Now obviously some facts can’t be denied. But again, every observer of those facts can interpret them their own way, even label them erroneously. Like people who attribute the prosperity and peace during Bill Clinton’s years as president to his Republican predecessors, or blame Clinton for the failings of the Bush-Cheney administration.

It’s a fact that Reagan, for instance, promised to downsize the government and instead it grew under his time as president, and most of what he promised during his campaign for the presidency he failed to produce during his presidency, though he did follow through on his promised tax cuts (“for the wealthy” as some of his detractors would point out, since that is who got the bulk of the cuts).

But it is also obvious he was a much liked and admired president and character, and was in office when the Soviet system in the U. S. S. R. began to change dramatically for the better, at least from the perspective of most in the West (though true “democracy” never took hold, just a state version of “capitalism” so far, which enriched a few, elevated many, and left a minority to suffer in ways that didn’t occur under the soviets, despite their other obvious shortcomings).

I generally opposed most of what Reagan stood for, and was more than aware of many lies he perpetuated and often was never called on by the media, partly because they were as charmed by his winning personality as I sometimes was, despite my opposition to him.

E.g., I admired the way he handled the attempt on his life, and his sometime wit, and the sometimes easy physical grace he had on camera and I assumed in life.

Most of what Bill Clinton promised during his campaign for the presidency actually occurred under his administration, but that doesn’t seem to matter if you are either convinced that Democrats can do no good, or if you are a Democrat who has a visceral reaction to Clinton (and perhaps Hilary as well) for his defects.

To use the nickname “Slick Willie” for instance, is to demonstrate having been influenced by that part of the media (and throughout his years as president the media was mainly negative toward him) that applied that term and saw him through that prism.

Is he “slick?” Politically he was often successful at beating the Republicans at their own game, but when it came to the Monica affair he seemed pretty un-slick, reminiscent if anyone of Nixon (“Would you buy a used car from this man?” was the famous anti-Nixon barb).

But just looking at the facts in the record of say, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush-Cheney, there’s no question that the one who lied the least, on the public record, is Clinton. I know various rightwing friends and others I don’t know will leave comments citing chapter and verse from some book or commentator or wherever, but it will be untrue.

Maybe some of Reagan’s lies were a result of the onset of the Alzheimer’s he eventually was afflicted with. Or maybe it was a result of his having been a professional actor, whose first successes were as a radio sports announcer pretending to comment on a game he was seeing live (“eye-witnessing”) when what he was doing was making up scenes, based on ticker tape statistics as the game progressed.

The media loved him, and he and his team were extremely adept at manipulating the media into reporting things they way they wanted them reported. Many times during his presidency, Reagan recalled stories of his experiences in warfare that were taken from movies he was either in or saw, since he never experienced warfare but spent WWII making movies.

He also recalled the experiences of combatants that he spoke of as actual events, when they too came from movies. He convinced most of us that he would be tough on terrorists and that the U.S. would never abandon Lebanon to civil war. But after a terrorist blew up the barracks that housed our marines there, and as I remember it over two hundred of them were killed, the worst terrorist attack against “Americans” until 9/11, Reagan immediately withdrew the remaining “American” troops and gave up Lebanon to the terrorists and civil war.

I’m not saying it was the right or wrong move, I’m just saying he often told outright lies and/or did not follow through on promises he made, like they were solemn oaths he would never break, but often did, and usually wasn’t called on it by the media.

Clinton did the same in some instances, but was always attacked vigorously by the media. And Bush-Cheney have lied more often on the public record than certainly any other administration in my lifetime.

And Clinton fulfilled more of his promises, even went beyond them. He not only balanced the budget (something Reagan promised and then ended up with the largest deficit in our history, until Bush-Cheney came along and topped him in that area) but he left his Republican successors with the biggest surplus in history.

Again, the right wing comments I expect for this post will try to interpret Clinton’s successes as a result of other factors than the fact that Clinton was able to make it happen on his watch because he’s smart, understood the details, and appointed competent people to do the job.

The media take on his campaigning for his wife is that he’s playing “the hatchet man” (I haven’t heard anyone use that term, but it fits the way he’s being criticized and some of his behavior, “the hatchet man” in basketball when I was a kid was the tough guy who fouled the other teams’ star(s), often so hard they injured them).

And that he’s somehow sliming (another term I haven’t heard yet in the campaign but is certainly applicable for a lot of what’s happened from every candidate’s camp in both parties but has been exposed by the media and covered most the media as regards the Clinton campaign, partly because of their fame and position, and partly because of their real hatchet man Mark Penn) not only his wife’s opponents but “the office of the presidency” (as if Bush-Cheney have elevated that office, or Reagan didn’t debase it when he laid a wreath in Germany at Bitburg (sp.?) cemetery where former Nazis—and not just any Nazis but SS men, the worst offenders in all the atrocities of WWII—are buried).

Obama generated so much “hope” after his speech at the Democratic convention that nominated Kerry, and in the weeks leading up to the recent Iowa caucuses, that it seemed, even to me, that perhaps he really is a candidate who can heal many of the wounds caused by decades of clashing partisan perspectives on reality.

But at times he hasn’t shown the ability to maintain grace under fire, as Reagan often did, and Clinton too before the Monica scandal. That doesn’t mean Obama might not be the most healing candidate in the race, which certainly would be true for a lot of racial wounds if he were elected president.

But it may be a good thing that the Clintons exposed some of his weaknesses before the nomination is settled, so that if he does win he may be better prepared for the Republicans, and if he wins the presidency, better prepared for the media if and when it turns against him, which the right-wingers will certainly be pushing for behind the scenes as well as through the mass media venues they control or highly influence (which is the majority of them no matter how well they continue to employ the “liberal media” fallacy).

There are too many people who make their livings and/or reputations from fanning the fires of partisanship and negativity and sometimes downright evil—as well as from finding or creating enemies to rally their followers, constituents or clients/customers against—for any grand unifying movement to succeed completely.

But, if a true “unifier” could be elected, a lot of healing could possibly occur, and maybe, just maybe, the partisan flame throwers could be marginalized for a while. Like they were after 9/11, when the nation felt unified in its grief and resolution, before Bush-Cheney squandered that opportunity and led us all to the brink of national bankruptcy not only financially, but politically and spiritually as well.

I think Obama might be that candidate, more than any of the others. On the Republican side, it seemed like it could be McCain, though the mudslinging between him and Romney over Florida might leave a bad aftertaste, too bitter to enable the kind of unifying that only a strong national mandate and follow up support from a majority of voters could help enact.

I’m beginning to hope Obama makes it. I hope Ted Kennedy’s endorsement helps and doesn’t harm his chances (the only Democrat the rightwingers love to hate as much as the Clintons is Ted Kennedy). But I can’t see how Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement can’t help. It impressed me, just the way she put it—that all her life people have been telling her how inspired they were by her father, JFK, and now, for the first time in her life, there’s a chance, from her perspective, and even more important to her reasoning, from her three teenagers’ perspective, to have a president who can inspire people like that again.

Let’s hope it’s true.