Sunday, March 20, 2005

In Defense of Grandstanding--Schiavo

Congress is busily engaged in inserting itself into the Karen Schiavo case. Is this political grandstanding? Of course, but that's what politicians do. Pointing with pride and viewing with alarm, taking forthright stands on the side of the angels and courageously attacking the evils of the world.

I believe Oscar Wilde said something like: "hypocrisy is the lip service that vice pays to virtue". IMHO there's something like that going on here. Our leaders strut and pose and thereby reassert our shared values. ("Our shared" is loosely used: the values of the vast majority, the knee-jerk reactions of those who are not leisured retired bureaucrats or those who get paid to think and opine.) But as a good liberal I hasten to find the exculpatory facts for those I might otherwise criticize. It is, after all, to those in the grandstand to whom our leaders are appealing. And "grand" stand implies a vast audience, although those who have watched basketball and mourned for the days of purity might be brought to admit that playground athletes grandstand for each other. It's the old Darwinian sexual selection, each putative leader posing as the bigger defender of morality, as having the bigger ....

If one can't gain consolation by the image of members of Congress comparing their members, I can think that every day spent on political grandstanding represents one less day available for these clowns to work on issues like liberty and equity, fairness and justice.

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