Parenthood: Where's the Manual?

Here's a question I'll bet you haven't pondered lately: What would you do if your brilliant and somewhat precocious 16-year-old daughter was dating and becoming serious about a 19-year-old recovering alcoholic?

This was the situation explored on Tuesday night's episode of NBC's dramedy Parenthood, one of my favorite television hours. If you haven't checked out the Braverman clan, headed by the incomparable Craig T. Nelson and the luminous Bonnie Bedelia, I highly recommend it.

Granddaughter Haddie met Alex at a food bank where she is a volunteer and he is a volunteer coordinator. The product of a very rough childhood with little parental guidance, Alex shared the fact that he is an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous as soon as their attraction to one another became undeniable. The fact that he is African American was not an issue to Haddie -- her uncle is the father of a five-year-old with a black woman -- and it goes unacknowledged in the script until Alex goes to Haddie's house for dinner. Her little brother, who suffers from Asperger's syndrome, blurted out "You're black," when the two were introduced.

Alex knocks it out of the park with Haddie's parents -- he is handsome, charming, mature beyond his years and uncommonly poised -- until the conversation takes a turn that requires Alex to reveal his problem with alcohol.

This is the point in the program when my attention split between the action on the screen and the rerun in my mind's eye. My sixteen year-old-self was faced with a similar dilemma in my real life. The details were different, but the ensuing drama was almost indistinguishable.

Haddie's parents agonize over their next steps. They recognized the dicey nature of the terrain they were about to tread. What kind of message would they be sending to Haddie if they decide to disqualify Alex as an appropriate boyfriend for her? Wouldn't that fly in the face of the ideals of redemption and second chances? After all, Alex was currently clean and sober and attending meetings regularly.

When her parents ultimately decided that Haddie was too young "to deal with adult issues" and ordered her to end the relationship, she went ballistic. When her ranting and raving didn't change their minds, Haddie met Alex anyway and failed to tell him she was forbidden to see him anymore.

Of course she got caught.





But Alex didn't make it any easier for her father to stay the course when he showed up at the Dad's office and discussed it like a man, told the stunned father what a great dad he was, and vowed to honor his wishes.

Haddie did what any normal, pissed-off teenage girl would do under the circumstances. She ran away to her grandmother's house. That is exactly what I did!

The whole time I was watching this unfold, I was pulling for the young couple. I thought her parents were wrong...ish. I thought there were other ways they could have dealt with their concerns about their daughter's best interests. But her parents had ruled, and I'm a parent, so...yeah.

It remains to be seen how the conflict is resolved on the show. In my case, my boyfriend was a big-time athlete, two years older and a well-brought-up gentleman. My mother objected to his tendency to want to keep me unattractive to other guys. He didn't want me to wear any lipstick or perfume or tight-fitting clothes. She also thought I was too young to be so serious about one boy.

So, when I was finally forbidden to continue the relationship, I ran to my grandmother and grandfather, who allowed me to stay with them for several months until my mother and I could reach a compromise. Years later, he broke my heart. My mother and I still have problems over this period of my life. She resents her parents for "interfering" and taking me in. I resent her for being so domineering, even as I readily admit that she was right about the guy.

No matter how much we wish for one, there will never be a How-To manual for raising children. Like every other parent before us and those who will follow, we simply have to make it up as we go along. Who's to say what the right decision will be for Haddie's parents? No crystal ball will tell them if Alex will have a relapse and expose their daughter to substance abuse. Sometimes it just seems like parents cannot win for losing.

Vitriol vs. Tact

"But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized—at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do—it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds." President Barack H. Obama

I wonder if we even remember how to do that...talk with each other in a way that heals rather than wounds. Have we forgotten how to disagree tactfully? Is it possible to refute a person's assertion or allegation without rebuffing the person?

It could take some doing. We Americans seem to have taken our freedom of speech to heart to the point that we've lost a lot of our manners. We've evolved from a time when I was young (all those many decades ago) and married couples could not even be shown standing in a master bedroom equipped with a double bed (heaven forbid anyone be confronted with even the hint that a couple did that,) to a time when some of us freely season our daily conversations with gustily dropped F-bombs, mixed company and children be damned.

Throw in a little sarcasm, a pinch of contempt, a dash of disdain and a handful of hatred; stir in with the F-bomb, heat and Voilà! We have vitriol.

The problem with vitriol, if it isn't completely apparent, is its limited usefulness. It has only two distinct purposes, as far as I can tell:

1) To attack another person or group with the purpose of diminishing the target's feelings and/or sense of worth, or

2) To whip up a group of followers (the proverbial choir) into a rabid frenzy.

The only way I can think of to get this country back to actually communicating is to revive a linguistic tool that seems to have gone out of fashion: tact.

Tact is most useful when trying to convert, win over, convince, persuade, teach and yes, lead. If I want to get a person to listen to my point of view, I can't start off by telling her that her baby is ugly. I cannot attack his mother's virtue and expect him to listen to the rest of what I have to say (if I can still speak after he has separated me from my teeth!)

In the same vein, telling people who endorse the positions taken by the Tea Party that they are
selfish, racist, morons who don't even have enough sense to know they are acting against their own best interests will not cause them to change teams. Instead, we must find the right words and the right tone to get those Americans to listen to us.


The bad news, for me anyway, is we have to be willing to listen in return. I know that's not easy because I get so doggone agitated when people on the other side of my beliefs start to proselytize. But how else will we ever be able to discover whatever common ground we have? I've got to learn to get past it.

The true spirit of the quote from either Voltaire or Ewelyn Beatrice Hall, depending whom you believe -- I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it. -- will have to take hold of each of us if we are ever to move the needle on our political discourse.

Where do we start? How about with each other? Even within a group of people who share a basic ideology, whether it's conservative or liberal, we sometimes encounter people who resort to vitriol if we are not in lock-step with their version of the principle. I am socially as far left as one can get, I think, but fiscally I move closer to the center. When I write a statement that reflects that position, I am just as apt to be told my idea is stupid or ridiculous or worse by a fellow lefty as I am by a Republican!

We can do better than this. If we are going to save our history from being entitled The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, we'd better take a page from the late Michael Jackson and start with the man and woman in the mirror.

The Misfit Heroes

Serendipity happens to me a lot. When it does, I feel as if a mini-miracle has occurred. It happened again today.

I was thinking about Daniel Hernandez this morning. You know. The young University of Arizona student who bravely rushed toward the sound of gunshots when U. S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head. The one who stayed with Gabby throughout her trip to the ER in order to "look after her emotional needs." The one who was honored at the Tucson tribute to the victims of Jared Lee Loughner's rampage of insanity. The one they called A Hero.

I was thinking about how every time someone is singled out for some selfless act of bravery, that person self-consciously rejects the title of Hero. I wonder when and how it was decided that allowing oneself to be called Hero without demurring is politically incorrect. It happened last year when Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta became the first living soldier from the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan to be chosen to receive the Medal of Honor. Giunta's discomfort at being singled out was palpable.

I was thinking about the fact that Daniel didn't even have a gun.

Several hours later I decided to fire up my Roku to download one of my Netflix choices. Don't ask me why, but I tend to watch documentaries when I do that. Today's feature was The Conscientious Objector, the story of Desmond Doss, the first United States Medal of Honor winner who never touched a gun.

There it was. My serendipitous event of the week had arrived. Not only had I found myself a genuine war hero; I found myself another hero who didn't use a gun to become one. And, yes, he was reluctant, too.

Desmond Doss's story could be well known among comic book readers of a certain age, but it wasn't to me. Apparently in the early 1940s, in a backlash against the proliferation of super hero comics, True Comics published a series of comic books based on real-life heroes. The one about Desmond Doss was called Hero Without A Gun.

The really interesting connection between Tucson's anti-hero Loughner and Desmond Doss is that they were both social misfits. Unless you have been away on a space-shuttle or something, you know that Jared gradually alienated just about everyone around him. Doss was a devout member of the Seventh Day Adventist church, and he walked around with a bible everywhere he went. He was determined to keep all ten of the commandments every day of his life, which somehow failed to enhance his coolness rating among his peers.

When World War II erupted for the U.S., there were few men of the proper age who didn't at least try to enlist in the armed forces. The movie points out that some men who were physically impaired, and therefore, ineligible to join, actually committed suicide in despair.

Doss was no different. He wanted to do his part, too. But on his terms:

1) He refused to carry a gun because Thou Shalt Not Kill.

2) He refused to "work" on Saturdays because Thou Shalt Keep Holy the Sabbath. Like Jews, Seventh Day Adventists observe sundown Friday through sundown Saturday as their Sabbath.


Against all odds, Doss became an Army medic and was deployed to the Pacific Theater. He was teased and ridiculed unmercifully because of his non-stop bible reading and his baffling ability to get himself excused from duty on Saturdays. One of his officers tried his best to get him kicked out. But Doss prevailed.

The diminutive Desmond Doss (5' 6" 150 pounds) was fearless in his determination to minister to fallen soldiers. He once picked up a live grenade to try to toss it away from his men, but it exploded right after it left his hands and blew 17 pieces of shrapnel into both his legs. Still he kept crawling from victim to victim, treating their wounds. A bullet then shattered the bone in his left arm. He lay there for five hours waiting for another medic. As he was being carried on a litter to safety, he spotted a soldier who was more critically injured than he was. He ordered the medics to lower him to the ground so that he could attend to the wounded man.

In a 12-hour fracas between his men and members of the Japanese army, Doss single-handedly treated, tied and lowered 75 wounded men down the side of Okinawa's 400-foot Maeda escarpment, while the rest of his men took cover. Doss told officials later that he prayed the entire time, asking God to let him save "just one more" after each one. He was never hit by any enemy fire. When he was offered the use of a handgun by one of the wounded, still he refused.

A Japanese soldier spoke of the Battle of Okinawa and Desmond Doss after the war ended. He said he had his weapon trained on Doss as he worked fearlessly on his fallen comrades. Each time he fired, the weapon jammed. There were several stories like that, stories that seemed to suggest that Doss had some sort of special protection.

When President Harry S. Truman pinned the Medal of Honor on Desmond Doss on October 12, 1945, several of the men who had harassed him in boot camp were looking on. Their lives were among those Doss had saved in the Battle of Okinawa.

Neither Daniel Hernandez nor Desmond Doss bears the swagger of a likely hero. No Audie Murphy, they. In fact, they are a little on the nerdy side, possibly accustomed to being loners. Daniel's teenaged siblings describe him as "quiet and bookish." If either Hernandez or Doss were in a high school cafeteria having lunch, it probably wouldn't have been at the "cool kids table." And neither needed a gun to become a hero.

As my Grandpa used to say, "it takes all kinds."

Desmond Doss

February 7, 1919–March 23, 2006

Mistakes Were Made because A+B ≠C

Thoughts about the tragedy in Tucson have monopolized my mind since it happened. There has been a wave of inspired writing here on Open Salon, the likes of which I hadn't seen in my 11-month involvement here. It tells me I am not alone as I cast about for an inkling of an explanation.


We still don't have any idea what fueled that massacre. We assume Jared Lee Loughner is mad -- wouldn't he have to be to do something like that -- but we really don't know that conclusively.


But the national dust-up between liberals and conservatives in the aftermath of the carnage has taken on a life of its own. When I'm not caught up in the emotion of it all, I find it intriguing.

I studied logic in college. I am no expert, to say the least, but I truly enjoyed the only course in the Philosophy department I ever took. In logic there is a form of deductive reasoning that consists of 1) a major premise; 2) a minor premise; and, 3) a conclusion. This form is called a syllogism.


Example of a valid syllogism


Major premise: All men are mortal.

Minor premise: Robert is a man.

Conclusion: Robert is mortal.


In a valid syllogism, the subject in the major premise (e.g., men) must be part of the predicate in the minor premise (e.g., is a man).

Example of an invalid syllogism:

Major premise: All men are mortal.

Minor premise: Robert is sick.

Conclusion: Robert is mortal.



This example is a fallacy. The premises do not support the conclusion.



I tried to apply logic to some of the conclusions people reached after the shooting.

For instance:


Major premise: Jared Lee Loughner shot Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other people.

Minor premise: Sarah Palin used gun-sighting crosshairs on a campaign map.

Conclusion: Sarah Palin shares the blame for Loughner's act.

Does this pass the test for a valid argument (syllogism)? No, it does not.


Let's try another:


Major premise: Jared Lee Loughner shot Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other people.

Minor premise: Glenn Beck, when asked what he would do for $50M, said this: "I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. ... No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out. Is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus -- band -- Do, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, 'Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore,' and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, 'Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death.' And you know, well, I'm not sure." –responding to the question "What would people do for $50 million?", "The Glenn Beck Program," May 17, 2005 (Source)

Conclusion: Glenn Beck's rhetoric could have encouraged Jared Lee Loughner's behavior.

As reprehensible as Beck's statements were, and as much as we think such statements are incendiary, this syllogism is a fallacy. It doesn't pass the test of validity.

A series of mistakes, both in actions and in logic, have been made in this case. These are the ones I think were the most costly.

1. Jared Lee Loughner didn't get effective treatment. We don't know if Loughner received ANY treatment, but we can say with impunity that if there was treatment, it didn't prevent the disastrous outcome of his illness. The Pima County Community College did everything they could to protect the school from liability and its students from whatever danger Loughner posed, but did they do enough? Did his parents do enough or were they thwarted by lack of money, lack of access to resources or some combination of the two? Was Jared simply not willing to seek help?

2. The Congresswoman’s target status caused people to make connections that were not valid. If the target of the shooting had not been a member of Congress, there would have been no compelling way to make the leap to blaming Palin, Limbaugh and Beck. It would have sparked the gun control debate and mental health treatment discussions because of their obvious relevance to the case. It appears that Loughner's beef with Representative Giffords could be a personal affront that his bizarre mind conjured up. Might that not be enough to lead him to his assassination attempt?

3. The collective public outrage created a desperate need to understand. The horror of the incident is more than individual Americans can take in. Our minds race to exonerate ourselves first, then our family, then our affiliates, including political. We don’t want to be responsible for such a travesty. In the same manner that children shout “I didn’t do it, she did,” in an attempt to deflect the blame for an infraction to another target, some liberals pointed to conservatives. Being adults and intelligent, some may have seen a “Gotcha,” a chance to flagellate those who appear to condone, indeed promote, the use of violence to win, with the probable consequences of those tactics. The accusations flew. Prematurely.

4. Right-wing pundits refused to acknowledge any possibility of connection, citing “no evidence.” Maybe out of fear that there in fact was a connection, given the record of contact between the shooter and the Congresswoman, Limbaugh and Beck started screaming, loudly, about “they” meaning all liberals, accusing them of trying to make political hay out of a tragedy. They railed against liberals looking for a way for the shooter NOT to pay for his crimes.

Because we didn’t wait to get all the facts before we started trying to assign blame, we have lost the point of the argument surrounding vitriolic rhetoric. The assumption of a political connection distorted all other discussions. Even if there was never to be any connection, the fact that it was a violent massacre using a semi-automatic weapon was and is indisputable. We made the mistake of rushing to judgment and politicizing it, thus rendering dead in the water all opportunities for using the incident as a catalyst to reassess political discourse.

Our world of instant everything – news, coffee, rice, mashed potatoes, bank statements, oatmeal, photographs and pregnancy tests – have encouraged one of our least evolved human tendencies; i.e., to jump to conclusions based on available information, even if the available information is not complete enough to insure validity. Can we learn from our mistakes this time?

Snooki Takes Today

Somebody hold me back. No, really. I am about to lose it.

Contrary to some of my friends' opinion, I am not an egghead. Yes, I like to read,and I read a lot. But I'm not above awaking every morning and reaching for my bedside remote control. I usually watch The Today Show with Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira.

What with monstrous Arizona mayhem and monster East Coast winter storms creating angst and suffering from LA to NYC, imagine my reaction when I looked up from my keyboard (yes, I admitted in a recent post to being a multi-tasking maniac) to see Matt Lauer interviewing Snooki from the MTV train wreck Jersey Shore.

Why? Because Snooki, the 23-year-old Jersey girl whose most recent claim to fame is being arrested for public drunkenness on a Jersey beach, HAS WRITTEN A NOVEL! Yes, of course I am shouting. Gallery Books, in their infinite greed wisdom, has probably rejected manuscripts from dozens of the talented writers who toil on this web site and elected to publish this 289-page tribute to trash.

I've never watched the TV show that created other sterling examples of young adulthood like The Situation, stiff-backed, rhythm-challenged, hair gel model of Dancing With the Stars "fame." Considering her ubiquitous presence in every form of mass media lately, I figured I must have missed her intellectual side, so I paid closer attention to the interview this morning.

Here's what I *learned*:

A Shore Thing took Nicole Polizzi (Snooki) three months to write.

"It was pretty hard, but I got it done," said Snooki about her effort in partnership with co-writer Valerie Frankel.
The story about a fictional character called Gia is not intended to be "guidelines to be a Guidette," Snooki told Lauer. I knew at that moment that Matt and I were going to need a glossary.

Guidette: Thanks to the online Urban Dictionary* I now know this is "the female counterpart to the guido. Usually moderately attractive, with nice fake tits but in desperate need of a nose job."

Guido: A sad pathetic excuse for a male; not necessarily of Italian descent, but most likely; usually native to the New York/New Jersey Tri-State area.*

Bedunk: Snooki told Lauer during the interview that this refers to one's butt, as in bedunkadunk, which usually describes a very large derriere. Think J-Lo or Beyonce.

Benny: According to Snooki, a New Yorker who goes to the Jersey Shore.

Weenus: The wrinkled skin on a straightened elbow. Huh? you ask. Maybe this verse I found in the Urban Dictionary will help.

Weenus,

It is a flap of skin.

Weenus,

It holds your elbows in.

Weenus,

It sounds like penis,

But it is weenus,

Oh, Yes, It is!!!

I read somewhere that the season premiere of The Jersey Shore on January 6, 2011 garnered 8.45 million viewers, an MTV record. According to Matt Lauer, that show featured Snooki getting punched in the face by a guy.

"That wasn't good," Snooki responded. "But I only party like that during the summer."

What does Snooki see for her future? The Snooki Brand, of course.

As I said, somebody hold me back!

Photo: MTV.com

I Fear for Ted Williams

I found myself waiting anxiously Thursday morning to watch the interview between Matt Lauer and the newly discovered Man With the Golden Voice, Ted Williams.

Several days ago, Williams was holding a sign on a freeway, hoping for the kindness of motoring strangers. That morning he was clearly overwhelmed by his good fortune.

NBC was uncharacteristically tolerant of the man's lack of sophistication and poise by allowing him to speak pretty much without their usual attempts to control the time segments. At one point, he broke down. Earlier he had asserted that he "hadn't even had time to smoke a cigarette." And he told a social worker that NBC apparently made available to him that he thought he might "need a tranquilizer pill or something."

I am as happy as anyone for this guy. A story like this happens much too infrequently for me to get ann0yed by the way the media has swarmed the poor man. But it occurs to me that he could very well be driven out of his tw0-year stretch of sobriety by the stress of it all.

In spite of all our fantasies about good fortune befalling us on any given day and saving us from our respective travails, these things don't always end well. Taking a man who has been living in a homeless camp site for many years and bombarding him with unfamiliar external stimuli is a recipe for disaster.

Think about the way overnight sensations in the entertainment world tend to run amok. Think about the stories one reads about lottery winners who are taken advantage of by predatory relatives and their own lack of fiscal discipline.

I sure hope Dr. Drew or some other behavioral scientist was watching that interview and will intervene before it's too late.

Photo credit: The Daily Beast

PERSPECTIVE

Another year has come and gone

The tree is down, the drapes are drawn

The revelers have left Times Square

The crystal ball’s no longer there

Although today marks a year brand new

My life’s the same; no dreams came true

The world still writhes in tortured pain

The troops will wake to war again

Elected people still tell lies

Unbridled hatred never dies

No magic wand was waved last night

No world-wide party made things right

Santa Claus forgot the jobs

Broke fathers still must stifle sobs

A desperate mother robbed a bank

While plutocrats ate cake and drank

Can the tick of a clock past midnight

Or the turn of a calendar site

Change the luck of a downtrodden man

Or the future on which we can plan?

None of that comes with the day

What does come is a change in the way

We look at a parcel of time

A new start; a new hope for the climb.

(Photo from flkr.com)