True Ancestor

On calling the President a Liar

It may be of no consequence that Representative Joe Wilson (R - SC) called President Obama a liar on national (no -- global) TV last night, during Obama's speech on health care. But my blood ran cold when he did.

Events like this indicate that we're approaching some kind of crossroads. Either that, or our political processes and our pomp are evolving before our eyes: as this Newsweek post points out, such interruptions would be considered child's play in Britain's House of Commons, where the Prime Minister has to face sometimes angry, confrontational questions in weekly sessions. Perhaps we're moving in this direction.

Or perhaps we're coming apart at the seams. Decorum exists for a reason: it projects confidence and stability at the helm of government, no matter how fractious and internecine the conflict behind closed doors. But when an elected Representative calls his own leader a liar, on television, in front of millions of viewers -- something leaders of both parties acknowledged was way out of bounds -- then the system seems in danger of cannibalizing itself.

I would have been astonished no matter who called the President a liar, and no matter who the president happened to be. But because Barack Obama is an African American man, in a room populated mostly by white men, it seemed to me that a little bit of mob mentality spilled over the decorous bounds inside of which presidential speeches have always been safely held. The fact that Joe Wilson hails from South Carolina added to the chill in my blood.

I don't consider rough politics out of bounds. I don't consider Barack Obama beyond reproach. I don't consider all Republicans bad people (I vote for them sometimes). But moments like this disturb me deeply. It makes me wonder anew whether the animus against Barack Obama is heightened because many cannot stomach the thought of a black man being president. And it reminds me that, when times get tough, civility is one of the first things out the window.

Two nights ago, I was at a ballgame with my son and my parents (see post below). We were two rows behind the visitors dugout. To our right, a man was hurling the most vile invective you could imagine at Eric Patterson of the Oakland A's; Patterson was perched on the top step of the dugout and could clearly hear what the man was saying. The man was white; Patterson is African American. No racial epithets were hurled, but everything else was. I wondered: what made it OK for one man to talk to another man that way? Did the fan purchase a civility pass with the price of his ticket? I also couldn't help wondering: did he really, really need to scream at a black man, and figure this was both a safe and impressive way to do it? (And then I wondered: could his girlfriend -- or the woman to whom he so referred -- really have been impressed?)

Behind us and to our left, two young women (who were white) yelled obscenities at the opposing team throughout the game. There were some breaks, during which they drank beer, but generally, it got worse as the game went on. Finally, when a member of the A's was retired and the woman right behind my 14-year-old-son yelled, "YEAH! SUCK IT, BITCH!", I turned to her and said, "Look: I'm only here for another inning or two. I'd love it if, just for that brief moment, you could spare my son having to have obscenities screamed in his ear. Would that be OK with you?"

She just glared at me. I felt that if she'd had a knife on her, she'd have stuck it in my neck right then and there. My son heard her turn to her friend and say, "Why should I give a #@!!* about this guy and his $%#&in' kid?"

I see signs all around me that people are pissed off and paranoid, self-righteous and self-absorbed. Two nights ago, I saw it in miniature, at a ballgame. Last night, I saw it broadcast to millions around the world. It may have always been this way, but I don't think so.

I'm not above it. I'm surrounded by it, and it scares me.

--T.A.

14

Probably my best times with Gabe occur when we're in the car. There's something about the "parallel play" aspect of it that makes it easier for him to actually enter into a conversation with his father (something that I remember dreading when I was 14). Gabe likes to roll the window down, and if I'm not paying attention, he'll stick his head out like a dog. He'll scroll through an astonishing repertoire of noises, whistles and imitations he can produce, almost like a parrot. He'll listen to the comedy channel on satellite radio. He'll make fun of me. And maybe, just maybe, he'll talk.  On the way to the dreadful White Sox-Oakland game yesterday, he was doing his homework, but on the way home, after dropping off my parents (who met us at the ballpark) we had nothing but time. And we talked.

Gabe was impressed by watching my aged and revered parents navigate the long march up the steps from our seats to the concourse, but he was saddened, too, by how hard it is for them to do these things that for him are very simple. He started asking questions about my family, about my dad's upbringing, about my dad's dad. I mentioned that I'd never met my paternal grandfather -- he died long before I was born -- but I told him what I knew of his qualities, including that he wasn't very emotionally expressive.

Gabe asked what that meant. I said that it meant he didn't really enjoy talking about his feelings, or expressing himself emotionally. Gabe said, "I'm like that, too," and then it struck me: he really is a Gottlieb.

Gabe said he'd never seen a picture of my dad "in his prime," and I said I would get the old photo albums and show him some shots. We have one old brochure from my father's summer camp; in it, there's a picture of my father, at about age 10, holding up a fish he has just caught. The resemblance to Gabe is astonishing (my dad, not the fish.)

One of the good things about being around extended family is that, when young, you're in closer and more regular contact with the stages of life. You see how people change. You see generations come and go. Just when you're getting used to being the center of the universe -- you're a first cousin once removed, or (God willing) an uncle. A huge fuss is made over the baby, and suddenly, you're not so cute and so young.

On the eve of high school, Gabe is a much more centered person than I was at that age (and probably than I am today). He does not get pressured into doing stupid things. He goes out of his way not to be hurtful, but he has a quick wit and a sharp tongue in reserve, and it seems as though his classmates respect him. He's a pretty good athlete, but he doesn't hang his self-esteem on that. He's very perceptive. He's thoughtful. He's funny as hell. And, for a 14-year-old, he's disciplined.

In some respects, I am already letting go of him. He is watching me for clues, but most of his guideposts are well beyond me, on the horizon: he is determined to be more competent, more even-keeled, more accomplished and more wealthy than he considers me to be. He doesn't say so; I just know.

Leaving the ballgame last night, he helped my father up the stairs, until my father insisted he could handle it himself. When we got outside the park, I asked for a wheelchair to take my dad from the gate to our car. About 100 yards short of the car, my dad got out of the wheelchair and walked the rest of the way. Gabe asked why my dad did that, as he was clearly exhausted.

I told Gabe that my dad has lived into his 90s because he is still engaged in the world, and because he is an optimist. He is still interested: in sports, in playing bridge, in the environment, in real estate; he still decries the idiocy of war, which deprived him of his only and dearly beloved sibling more than half a century ago. He wants to do as much as he can, every day, even if it's a little less than he could do the day before.

I also told Gabe that watching my dad has been a great lesson for me: you spend far more than half your life in physical decline -- and that's if you're lucky. If you let that get to you, the decline is (or feels) steeper, and the color leaches out of your life. My father has stayed as mentally and physically engaged in life as his mind and body have allowed. What a great thing for a son and grandson to be able to witness.

Gabe's dreams are changing; he may talk to his sisters and his mom about them; I'm not sure. He doesn't talk to me about them. That makes me a little sad, but I'm pretty sure I understand.

What I am sure of is that he is living proof of how love and evolution are somehow twinned. The love that created him, that surrounds him, that's within him, has made him a better human being than I can ever hope to be.

And that makes me happy.

--T.A.

A new respect for the German language -- on the 70th anniversary of the "Blitzkrieg"

Thanks to my indefatigable polymath of a sister, I survived an intense five-week course in the study of reading German for research purposes, with pride and some knowledge intact. This course was necessary a) because I'm required by the Divinity School to pass reading exams in French and German, and b) because some of the scholarship I want to be able to explore is written in German.

(Before we go further, I'll answer two of the questions I've gotten most often. One is, "Wie geht's?," or some other German greeting people like to hurl at me, and to which I might or might not be able to respond. This is because learning to read a language and learning to speak it are related but distinctly separate skills -- a little ice skating and skiing: the former is an orderly progression that picks up speed as you gain competence, the other is a combination of skill, experience, luck and mad improvisation.

The other questions I get asked a lot are, "Why don't you just find an English translation of the German? Or use translation software?" The answer is, you don't want to rely on anyone else's experience or perspective to understand something when you can at least try to understand it yourself. Besides, with most translation software, you'll wind up sounding like Borat.)

Even though I have a German last name, and Austrian-Jewish ancestry, I was never at all interested in learning German. In fact, I admit to having been a little repulsed by the sound of it. I associated spoken German with old newsreel footage of Hitler, in one of his apoplectic-xenophobic fits, spewing spittle and hatred and arousing mobs to murderous frenzy. German was his weapon: it was guttural and harsh, sinister and surgical, undeniably angry. Even Rilke or Goethe, read in German, sounded to me like the narration of someone bearing a grudge.

The truth is, German is an incredibly precise and pristine language, and a very beautifully constructed one. It isn't simple, but it can express a whole range of emotions and relationships in a few words, or in subtle shifts of tense, that English can't match. We have to prattle on for about three sentences about some things for which German needs perhaps a single word. English has become a universal language partly because, aside from the spelling, there isn't much to learn, really: we don't use the subjunctive much, we don't have too many irregular verbs, we don't have formal relationships that require the use of an archaic pronoun. We say what we mean, which, usually, isn't much, or isn't very complicated.

Not so in German. I get the feeling that Kant would not have been Kant without German. That Moses Mendelssohn wouldn't have been a sturdy bridge across which Judaism could begin to pass into modernity. That the Enlightenment would've been little more than a really good salon. And -- sadly -- that the word "Blitzkrieg" would never have menaced the modern world that Germany helped create.

Seventy years ago today, Germany marched into Poland. Even today, the sight of umlauts, or classic German script, or even just ß, the Eszett (a sort of double "s"), makes me start looking over my shoulder and checking my coat for sudden armbands. And even today, the sound of the language -- which never menaced me in my lifetime, nor any of my family, all of whom had been stateside for at least half a century by the time German tanks roared into Poland -- even today it makes my forehead break out in little beads of sweat.

But the German language (as my sister explains -- see the link above) has great insights into human nature embedded in it. Take the word Geist, for example. As Annie says:

"In some contexts, it will be translated into English as “spirit;” in others, as “mind” or “intellect.”  But in German, it encompasses both.  They are not two different things.  We need at least two words to approximate the German word — poorly.  What does that mean?  It means, I think, that in English we think of mind as a tool, mechanism, or process that assembles or manipulates parts of ideas, while spirit is sort of featureless and above all that.  Mind is a factory, if an advanced one; spirit is a mist.  But in German, you think with your spirit.  Ideas are not something you assemble, they’re something you apprehend."

German's wondrous insights -- its tenses and declensions, its insights into human nature -- are indicative of how thought and language are double-helixed together, and together shape minds. Like any great strength, it can be greatly misapplied.

My father, knowing I spend most of my days studying religion, or religious scholarship, likes to goad me by saying that religion is the cause of most of the world's suffering. I try to tell him that mankind is the cause of most of the world's suffering. Religion's just an instrument. It's the old "Guns don't kill people -- people kill people" argument, I suppose. (I spin it a different way to my dad: I tell him that blaming religion for the world's ills is like blaming Abner Doubleday for steroid use). The same idea can be applied to the German language. It helped fuel a kind of nationalism that came very close to destroying the world (certainly the Jewish world, but also all of Europe); but from the 17th the early 20th century, the German language itself helped seed the exponential growth in science, philosophy, poetry, opera, and literature.

The word Geist says it all: in German, you think with an entity that is both Spirit and Mind. When you see the German language in calligraphy, you can practically feel its beauty; sense its feeling/thinking spirit.

May the beauty of Geist, the word and the idea, help the German language, and the rest of us, leap clear of the depths toward which the powerful can propel us.

--T.A.