“We really should stop this fighting, otherwise we’ll miss the fireworks!”

Friends:

The events of this past Friday morning at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado are nothing short of tragic in every sense of the word.  Tragic for the unwitting victims who were brutally cut down in a place in which safety should never be a concern; tragic for the survivors who now will live the rest of their lives wondering why they were spared and others had to suffer; and tragedy for the loved ones of the assailant, forever stigmatized as the kin of a monster.  How ironic and yet appropriate that the film is called “The Dark Knight Rises,” for I fear that everyone involved will perceive this devastating event as the darkest of nights.

As I listened along with the rest of the country to the reports surrounding the incident, a few things struck me as heartbreaking.  First was the fact that young children were some of the victims.  In raising my own two young girls, I have tried to insulate them from violence, hatred, and the horror that sometimes comes from the acts of men.  Yet these children were not only exposed to it, they were witnesses to a person at his very worst.  Aside from that, however, was the fact that amongst the children were a four month old and a six year old—I’m not one to tell anybody how to raise their children, but in my mind, a midnight showing of a movie is no place for a six year old, let alone a 4 month old. 

The second item that struck me as heartbreaking was the fact that the killer clearly was disturbed and that could possibly have been a cry for help or was a response to the previous cries for help that went unheeded.  The fact that someone would take to this kind of violence shows a level of anger that really should not go without help.

The third thing that struck me as heartbreaking was that the killer’s mother had claimed that he had dropped out of medical school and had lost touch with his family.  What happens to a person that he feels that he cannot find safety and comfort in his family and that he feels the need to disassociate himself from it?

I recently participated in a leadership seminar and in conjunction with the seminar a personality assessment was undertaken.  After the assessment was completed, I received the results and was astounded by not only the traits that reflected my personality.  Amongst them was the belief that all problems can be resolved by simply talking them out. 

My professional life is oftentimes fraught with stories of families which had been damaged to such a large extent that repair is impossible.  Frequently I wonder whether these challenging family dynamics could have been avoided had there been better communication within the family.  I thought the same after I experienced the emotional wave created by the Aurora massacre. 

I guess it is just my personality-type, but I wonder how many tragedies could have been avoided had there been better communication and family-strength.  Clearly there was something wrong in this family that led not only to the massacre but also to the feeling that the killer could not find safety with his family.  They lost touch and something had to have happened to sever that relationship.  Maybe I am being simplistic, but in this respect I hope that I am not.  I would prefer to believe that when someone needs help and can’t handle matters on their own, the comfort and security of their family will be a jumping off point for recovery.  I sense that I need to seize this belief because without it, the world will be a breeding ground for unstable and dangerous people who are incapable of receiving help. 

I am doing my best, even at my daughter’s young age, to foster a comfortable and safe place for my girls to feel comfortable discussing anything that bothers them.  I want them to know that of all people in this world, their mother and I will be the least judgmental and most supportive, just like my parents were and continue to be with me.  Because without that safety net of family, the world can be a big scary place, one in which you can feel awfully alone.  Alone people can also be desperate people.  And desperate people can be unpredictable and frequently violent.  I would like to think that had the murderer in Colorado felt comfortable talking to his parents about his concerns, why he dropped out of medical school, and why he felt that he had no other options, that this tragedy could have been avoided.

I will admit it, sometimes I can be so naïve.  But one can always hope…

“Now that you have learned what you have learned, it would be well for you to return to your own country.”

Friends:

You remember how funny it used to be when our grandparents and great-grandparents were politically incorrect or even downright racist?  They would say things that were so inappropriate, but we would explain it away as remnants of a bygone age, old habits that die oh-so-hard.  One would hope that those old habits become less and less prevalent as each new generation matriculates.  But maybe that isn’t the case.

The other day I had a bizarre interaction with a complete stranger, one that left me puzzled and shocked.  For some reason this person had been having a bad day and felt it was necessary to share the reason for her displeasure with me.  Maybe I looked sympathetic, but for whatever reason she felt it was acceptable to unburden herself to me.  Without going into too much detail, the nurse’s diatribe was narrowed down to one shocking statement.  She said that she wished that they had never allowed “Mexicans” into the country.

Can you believe that?  This wasn’t one of those situations where you can chalk it up to the rantings of one from my grandparents’ generation.  This was one of my contemporaries! 

I was always taught two things when it came to having any conversations in public:  first, if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything; and second, be careful what you say, because you never know who may be listening.  Good advice for the nurse, don’t you think?  She knew nothing about me, she knew nothing about my heritage, and she knew nothing about my politics or my belief system.

But don’t forget the third rule about conversing in public:  if you want to say something negative about anybody, do it in prose.  It is likely not a surprise to you, but contemporary fiction and literature are rife with examples of an author’s prejudice being exemplified through the creation of characters and circumstances that highlight such bigotry.  Many months ago we talked about Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” and the clear expression of his sentiment towards Jews in the caricature of Fagin.  We also discussed other examples in literature of such racism.

(If you want to read that post from September, 2010, here is the link to it:  http://robcohen13.com/2010/09/06/consider-yourself-one-of-us-consider-yourself-one-of-our-family/

More interesting however, is that the interaction with the nurse came on the heels of two other, completely separate encounters with this type of bigotry, one fairly veiled and one more direct.

Did you know that some scholars theorize that the character of Dracula was intended to symbolize the Jewish people?  The novel “Dracula” was written in the late 1890’s, during a time in which hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were immigrating to England as a way to escape persecution from various eastern European countries.  If you are familiar with the story of “Dracula,” the Count is moving from Transylvania to London and has enlisted Jonathan Harker to assist.  The panic of the novel is caused by the move and the fear that Dracula, upon his taking up residence in London, will infect the people with his bloodthirsty ways, wreaking havoc and terror on the city.  An interesting theory, do you agree?

At the same time that the nurse was freely expressing her intolerance and I was discovering the “Dracula Theory,” I was reading a book that was a clear knock-off of the Sherlock Holmes cannon, involving a private detective and his sidekick investigating crime in Victorian-era London.  This particular story involved the murder of a rabbinical student and an anti-Semitic movement in 1897 London.  A strange convergence of unrelated events that were linked in unexpected commonality…

It is interesting to me that when it is expressed in literature it is somehow acceptable, yet if we come right out and say what we are thinking, we are viewed with disdain; it is not only frowned upon but is castigated.  Do you mean to tell me that Tom Clancy actually liked the Russians during the Cold War, or is it possible he was using his writing as an outlet for his own xenophobia?  You would have to believe that it is easier for a writer to make his villains truly despicable if he laces his characterizations of them with his or her own personal animosities.

Which brings me back to the nurse and her clearly intolerant statements.  After the initial shock of the statement wore off and I had a second or two to ponder how to respond, I said the following:

“Perhaps you should write a book.”

“Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life.”

Friends:

Consider this interesting set of facts:  a very wealthy man dies and in his Will he devises all of his assets, including substantial real estate holdings, to his son, provided that he marry a specific girl.  If he does not marry this girl, then the estate is to go to the wealthy man’s butler.  After the wealthy man’s death, his son, while traveling to the funeral for his father, is killed in a boating accident, thus precluding him from marrying the girl.  Based on the terms of the Will, then, the butler inherits the entire estate.

So far so good, right?  Disregard the propriety of the provision in the Will itself and whether a condition of marriage to a specific individual is an enforceable covenant in an estate planning document.  Simply the process by which the butler received the estate is relatively clear.

I want you to step into the shoes of the butler.  You lucked out, didn’t you?  The fact that the son died and was thus unable to complete the term requiring his marriage to the girl made you a wealthy man.  What do you do with all of that money?  The money just fell from the sky, completely changing your life overnight, and escorting you to a status in society you never thought attainable.

Now I want you to consider a different set of facts:  father dies leaving a trust that indicates that the assets of the trust are to be divided between his daughter and his son.  Unfortunately, the daughter and son are not so much estranged as actually strangers, never having met each other and having very little knowledge of the other.  In fact, son, as administrator of the trust, doesn’t even know if his sister is alive, so he does nothing with respect to administration of the trust and acts as if it is all his. 

Years later, when son and his wife are having marital difficulties, wife, in looking for dirt on her husband to use against him in the divorce proceedings, comes upon the trust, reaches out to the sister (who she somehow figured out how to make contact with) and informs the sister of her entitlement.  Sister had no idea she was a beneficiary of her father’s estate and now has a claim against her brother for her share.

I want you to step into the shoes of the wife, the person who informed the sister of her good fortune.  Aren’t you a little jealous of the sister? 

In case you didn’t figure it out, I didn’t make either of those scenarios up.  One is based on true events and the other is the basis for a classic novel by one of our greatest writers, Charles Dickens.  Can you tell which is which?

Here is how the first scenario played out:  after the butler receives his inheritance, he takes pity on the poor girl who missed out on a large payday because of the son’s death, takes her into his home and basically adopts her, sharing all of his good fortune with her, it being his understanding that it was only because of her decided misfortune that he became the sole heir of the estate. 

The second scenario played out far differently:  when the wife learned that her sister-in-law was entitled to inherit a significant sum of money, she took to holding the actual document hostage until such time as an agreement was made by which she would receive a healthy finder’s fee for her discovery.  Her rationale was that if it wasn’t for her, the sister would still be ignorant as to her good fortune and she should be rewarded for her unearthing the trust document.

Obviously the first scenario is a figment of the creativity of Charles Dickens and is the main thrust of his last completed novel, “Our Mutual Friend.”  Be honest, would you really have thought about taking care of the poor girl who did nothing wrong but simply was a victim of her circumstance?  It isn’t too farfetched to believe that had the son and girl married they would not have taken care of the butler, so why should the butler have taken care of the girl?  Wikipedia (that bastion of truth) states that Charles Dickens was known for his keen observation of character and society.  Doesn’t seem accurate in light of the plot of “Our Mutual Friend,” does it?

Then you have the second example, the real life one, the one that more plainly illustrates where we are as a people and the way our morals are compromised when money is involved.  I have said it many times before—money changes people.  But not only does it change people when they receive it, it changes people when other people receive it.  Jealousy mixed with greed is a lethal combination and the second situation described above is a classic example of it. 

I highly doubt that sensibilities and avarice have changed considerably since 1865; however, Dickens can’t be criticized for creating characters that embody positive principles and moral fiber.  Instead, I view “Our Mutual Friend” as one of two things:  a fantasy fashioned by Dickens that gave him the freedom to manipulate the characters in a way which he knew normal people would never act; or, it was just one big excoriation of the greed of English society in the 1860s.

In fact, I think that “Our Mutual Friend” was both.  It was fun for Dickens to play overlord in a fantasy world, and it was also discouraging to Dickens to have the knowledge that people would never change.

And based on the second scenario above, can you really blame Dickens for wanting to have that fun.  Real life is distinctly not like in the books.  When money is involved, people most assuredly change.

As Gordon Gecko so eloquently described it in “Wall Street,” “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”  It is that mindset which will keep me busy handling probate and trust litigation matters, I assure you.  Human nature doesn’t change overnight, nor over 160 years… 

“It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark…”

With the events transpiring lately involving Jerry Sandusky and his heinous crimes, I felt that I would be remiss if I didn’t address at least some aspect of the situation.  But I don’t want to talk about the crimes, the predatory nature of the monster or the harm he has caused to so many people.  Instead, I want to focus on the penchant that this society has for idolatry, for placing ordinary people on pedestals and attributing some aspect of greatness to them.  In the Sandusky affair, the personality involved is none other than the most celebrated and esteemed of citizens in State College, Pennsylvania, Joe Paterno.

I think we all can agree that Joe Paterno had a remarkable career as the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions, with countless victories, championships and (more importantly) graduated students.  He was named Sportsman of the Year by “Sports Illustrated” in 1986, won three coach of the year awards, was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame and has a coaching award named for him.  He was even nominated for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  He was Penn State football and he was that town.

And now his legacy may very well be that he was complicit in the atrocities being committed by his former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky.  Oh how the mighty have fallen.  In a town as small as State College, PA, there was nothing other than college football and JoePa was worshipped as a deity.  Children were named after him, buildings were erected in his honor and statutes were built in tribute to his greatness.

How silly does it look now to have revered someone who quite possibly looked the other way when Sandusky was wreaking his havoc in the name of winning college football games?  Do you think those children who were named after JoePa might soon regret their name connection to this accomplice to villainy.

We see it all the time, celebrities and sports heroes who fall so mightily in scandal and misbehavior.  We as a society adore these people and then act surprised when we learn that they are just as human as you or I.  Because these people can act or score touchdowns or coach winning football or moonwalk we think that they are better than us and so we idolize them and fete them as being supernatural beings.  But we forget that they are just human, prone to making errors that any of us would make.  (I am not saying that the error in judgment that Paterno made in looking the other way is an error that any of us would have made, but the DUIs and divorces and things of that nature are not uncommon in today’s culture.)

So when I hear about such a venerated citizen as Paterno, someone who was god-like to the people of Penn State and State College, who it turns out was a flawed human being just like the rest of us, I get a weird sense of glee out of the level of depression that must be felt in learning that our heroes are imperfect.  As if the devout believers in the cathedral of Paterno were so narrow-minded as to believe that gods really do exist in the human form and that that form is a college football coach.  In some respects I guess I find it to be pathetic in a small way.

Now, before you go calling me hypocritical, I will explain how my personal situation is different.  As many of you know, my daughter’s name is Brooklyn, named after the Brooklyn Dodgers, owing to the fact that all of us in the family are huge Dodger fans.  So yes, I did name my child after an affection for a sports team.  But when my wife and I were thinking of names for our daughter, I actually considered the impact naming her after some celebrity would have.

As a result of our love of the Dodgers, I was bombarded with suggestions for names, from Lasorda to Sandy to Vin to Duke.  And I specifically rejected all of them because I was concerned that the same situation with Joe Paterno would happen and then I would be stuck with a child with a name that was a terrible reminder of something negative.  For instance, if I named my child after Duke Snider and it was later determined that Duke was anti-Semitic, that would be disastrous!

So instead, we gave her the name of Brooklyn.  The thought process was that the Brooklyn Dodgers do not exist anymore except in the form of newsreels and history books.  It isn’t as if the entire Brooklyn Dodgers would be exposed as being terrorists or extremists or anarchists or any other type of –ists.  The Brooklyn Dodgers exist only as memories and highlights of fantastic feats—no one can take that away from that team.  Nothing that happens now could alter that grouping of ballplayers and its love for its borough.  So I felt that the name of Brooklyn was pretty safe.

But to those people out there who idolize these celebrities and expect them to be infallible just because they can run really fast or are terrific actors, they really need to get a better perspective on what it means to be exceptional and worthy of adoration.  Want to be a fan and root for your team and players?  Be my guest.  But the real heroes should be the people who have touched you directly, who have sacrificed for you and have worked hard to make you what you are.  Look to your family and friends and, especially, your parents first—

Seriously—worshipping a college football coach or a television actor or a singer?