Reality shows.
Talking to the top of somebody's head while they continue texting during the conversation.
Full disclosure.
That last one, admittedly, is a bit of a sticky wicket.
The notion that we should not be entitled to all the facts, all the time seems like it should be endorsed wholeheartedly without hesitation.
Actually, not so much.
Des Moines, Iowa (CNN) - Newt Gingrich teared up at a campaign stop in Iowa Friday, openly weeping while talking about his mother, who suffered from bipolar disorder and depression.
The moment was sparked by a question from GOP political consultant Frank Luntz, who was moderating a forum targeted to mothers at a local coffee shop Java Joe's in downtown Des Moines.
Luntz, noting the room had a number of moms present, asked Gingrich, "What moment do you think of when you think of your mom?"
"First of all you will get me all teary-eyed. Callista will tell you I get teary eyed every time we send Christmas cards," Gingrich said, coughing back tears.
"My mother sang in the choir and loved singing in the choir. I don't know if I should admit this but when I was very young she made me sing in the choir. I identify my mother with being happy, loving life, having a sense of joy in her friends," Gingrich continued.
Gingrich said his mother, who died in 2003, played a part in his legislative interests in long-term health care and mental disease.
"Late in her life she ended up in a long-term care facility. She had bipolar disease, depression and she gradually acquired some physical ailments and that introduced me to the issue of quality, long-term care."
Gingrich continued, stalling at times to fight back tears, "My whole emphasis on brain science comes in directly from dealing – see how I'm getting emotional – from dealing with you know the real problems of real people in my family. So it is not a theory. It is in fact my mother."
Moms Matter 2012, a group that describes its mission as "moving moms from the political sidelines to the headlines," sponsored the Gingrich event. Approximately 100 people were present, including a few mothers with young children.
Gingrich's immediate family joined him on stage for the event: wife Callista, daughters Kathy Gingrich Lubbers and Jackie Gingrich Cushman, sons-in-law, and two grandchildren, Maggie and Robert.
Inevitably, two points of view, at least, result from an episode like this.
There is the "aw, he's a good guy who loved his mom and not just another scheming politician..."
And then there's the "please, he's just another scheming politician...".
I don't know the man.
And I don't trust the commentators and/or pundits on either side of the ideological fence to make up my mind for me.
So, as to whether Newt's tears are twenty four carat or crocodile, I'll take a pass on pondering.
The thing about the thing is this.
I don't really want to know.
More to the point, I don't think it does us any good to know.
That kind of emotional expression only clouds, not clears, the water as we try to figure out which lever to pull come November.
If he's not sincere, then he's a manipulative schemer who is not to be trusted.
And if he is sincere, he's not exactly the kind of guy we want sitting across the table from those zany lads from, say, Iran or, say, North Korea.
When and if.
And for all those Hallmark Card sending, Lifetime Movie Of The Week loving folks whose favorite day during the Christmas season involves nine hearts a bleeding, let me offer you this.
Given the texture and tone of the world's politics at any given time in this day and time, we don't really need a guy living at 1600 Pennsylvania who is in touch with his feelings.
We need a boy named Sue.
And he said: "Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's the name that helped to make you strong."
I imagine that Harry Truman probably welled up a little, somewhere along the way, as he reflected on dropping atomic bombs that would kill thousands of Japanese men, women and children.
I suspect that John F. Kennedy probably got teary, at least once, at the notion that one wrong move in Cuba could send Soviet missiles flying and kill hundreds of thousands of American men, women and children.
The list, likely, goes on.
But neither of those, or any other, Presidents let us see that side of their humanity.
And with good reason.
When we climb on board an airliner and are taken to thirty thousand feet, we all want to believe, and obviously, assume that the person at the controls is a warm, loving, caring human being.
But, we really don't want, or need, to see them walk through the cabin with tears in his or her eyes.
Standard issue for Presidents of The United States needs to be big boy/girl panties.
Not crying towels.
No comments:
Post a Comment