Conservative columnist, Kathleen Parker, urges us to quit being mean-spirited and marginalizing. She says we have a leadership problem and the inspiring Obama has quit being inspiring.
I say she's listening in all the wrong places. The media is remarkably, not to say deliberately, bad at communicating Obama's messages. They've made the decision that we are without effective leadership. Anything he says or does that deserves communicating gets deep-sixed. The media are not without their own persistent efforts to marginalize.
That said, Parker has a basic message I think we'd all go along with. For the most part.
Be considerate; tend your garden; mind your own business; lend a hand; keep your clothes on and your hands to yourself; honor your family and your country; don't air your dirty laundry or vocabulary in public. And for God's sake, don't talk about religion. Oh, and resist spectacle.
Taken to heart, these principles would preclude sneaking into the country without permission. They would encourage private worship and public concern. They also might be understood to mean consulting neighbors before planning a symbolically charged structure near a site of national mourning.
Our failure to communicate this part of the American dream has meant we can't get along. Until we do, peace, alas, hasn't got a chance.
Ah, but here's where Parker lets us down: she just has to get in her little kick at the "ground zero mosque." Gratuitous barbs hidden within moral pleas undermine her message.
We all want to get along. But we probably won't until people with megaphones, like Kathleen Parker, break away from the corruption in the media that demand half-truths and gratuitous barbs. I'd say Parker needs to grow up, resist spectacle, and keep her clothes on.
