Joan told me, during one of our very earliest sessions, "The Story of My Life In Six Short Chapters." It goes like this.
Chapter 1: I walk down the street; I fall in the hole; I don't know where I am, and I can't get out.
Chapter 2: I walk down the street; I fall in the hole; I know where I am, but I can't get out.
Chapter 3: I walk down the street; I fall in the hole; I know where I am, and I can get out.
Chapter 4: I walk down the street; I almost fall in the hole, but I don't.
Chapter 5: I walk down the street; I see the hole and I go around it.
Chapter 6: I walk down a different street.
I think this is one of the best metaphors for personal growth and change. However, at least in my life, this story does not occur once over many years, but rather repeats itself many times over. And once I find a new street, I usually don't stay there too terribly long at first. Rather, I tour the new street, decide it's perfect, start walking down it, and then somehow make my way right back to the old street with the hole.
That's where I found myself not long ago. After spending an entire summer learning my way onto a new street, once school began I just couldn't keep myself away from the old one. I have various theories to explain this phenomenon (and they're probably all pieces of the puzzle) but what I have realized is that identifying why something happens does not always solve the problem. Right now, what I need is a how: how to get off this street and work my way back to the next one. So I've developed a plan that involves two concepts: Robert Moore's theory of humility and my dad's theory of "fake it 'til you make it."
Robert Moore says that true humility simply means recognizing your limitations and getting the help that you need. I have a real problem with this. Previous to reading this definition, I had always considered myself a humble person due to my constant self-deprecation and chastisement. By letting my internal bully reign supreme, I not only prevented myself from truly realizing my personal limitations, but I made the prospect of getting support out of the question.
What to do when you find yourself in a familiar rut but feel too low to get yourself out yet too high to ask for assistance? You behave yourself into believing. In other words, force yourself to act as you would if you already are the person you are trying to become. For me, this involves structuring my day with activities that I don't necessarily want to do, that are scary for me or challenging or tedious, but ones that would be rote for a healthy, integrated person. I ask to be held accountable and establish consequences for failure to complete these activities. Initially, I am rarely strong enough to hold myself accountable. I have finally grasped this very real limitation, and thus have at least summoned the strength to ask others to help me with this task.
Eventually, I will find enough comfort in these rituals and peace in this routine that I can hold myself accountable; some activities may even become so enjoyable that I wouldn't even consider skipping them. Others will probably never be easy, but will become somewhat tolerable simply out of force of habit. I also know that I'll revisit my old street from time to time, but hopefully just to view the hole from afar, contemplate jumping into it, and then walk away.
The White House Correspondents Dinner took place this weekend. As usual, the president was in attendance and a comedian provided the evening's entertainment. As Toby Harnden of London's Daily Telegraph reports, the comedian, Wanda Sykes, turned out to be a crass act:
The speech took a very ugly turn when she laid into [Rush] Limbaugh.
This is what she said: "Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails, so you're saying, 'I hope America fails,' you're, like, 'I dont [sic] care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq.' He just wants the country to fail. To me, that's treason.
"He's not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying. You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight."
She then concluded: "Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a good waterboarding, that's what he needs." Obama seemed to think this bit was pretty hilarious, grinning and chuckling and turning to share the "joke" with the person sitting on his right.
Here's the video. In fairness to the president, we'd say "pretty hilarious" overstates the case. He does not appear to be laughing uncontrollably, although there is no doubt that he is amused. So are the folks at the left-wing Puffington Host, where the headline proclaims "Wanda Sykes Kills." (In comedy, kill means "to perform successfully"; the antonym is die or bomb.)
Our view is that Sykes's joke clearly crossed the line into poor taste, unredeemed by either humor or insight. The same is true for another joke that sparked a kerfuffle last week, described in an Associated Press report:
CBS Sports golf analyst David Feherty apologized Sunday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a morbid joke that went bad in a Dallas magazine.
Feherty, one of the most popular golf analysts for his sharp wit and self-deprecating humor, was among five Dallas residents who wrote for "D Magazine" on former President George W. Bush moving to Dallas.
"From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though," Feherty wrote toward the end of his column.
"Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."
The full column is here. In a statement, Fehrety described his botched joke as "a metaphor meant to describe how American troops felt about our 43rd president." (The next sentence of the column began: "I've never met a soldier who didn't love this president and this country.") In his apology, Fehrety added: "In retrospect, it was inappropriate and unacceptable, and has clearly insulted Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid, and for that, I apologize."
Meanwhile, here is the full text of Sykes's apology: .
Our guess is that most normal apolitical people would view both Sykes's and Fehrety's jokes as unfunny and tasteless. Our sense, further, is that conservatives do not much care for Fehrety's joke either. The closest thing we could find to a defense was an item by blogger Jules Crittenden titled "Sounds Like His Heart Was in the Right Place." Yet Crittenden concedes Fehrety's "rhetorical excess" and devotes most of his post to arguing that many liberals have said things about U.S. soldiers that were worse and not in jest.
By contrast, lots of left-wing bloggers are cheering Sykes on, and the president of the United States was visibly amused by her joke. So the question is this: Why do liberals find this joke funny when they should find it embarrassing?
The answer, it seems clear, is that this is an example of shock humor: a genre that relies on the frisson of violating taboos. By our count, Sykes runs afoul of five taboos in her Limbaugh joke: She equates dissent with treason. She likens a domestic political opponent to a foreign enemy. She makes fun of the disabled (Limbaugh's past addiction to painkillers would entitle him to protection under the Americans With Disabilities Act). She makes light of a form of interrogation that some people consider torture. And she wishes somebody dead.
Except for the last one, these are all taboos that liberals promote and enforce with especial vigor. If a conservative violated any one of them, he would be on the inside track to be named "Worst Person in the World" by that NBC blowhard (as indeed Feherty was).
What makes Sykes's joke funny to a liberal, then, is the sense of danger that accompanies her risky themes, combined with the secure knowledge that since the joke is at the expense of a liberal hate figure, the usual rules do not apply. It's the same reason people on the left evince particular glee when they attack Clarence Thomas or Michael Steele in expressly racist terms, or when they use antigay innuendo against their political opponents (regardless of the latter's sexual orientation).
In Obama's wide grin as Sykes was telling her joke, we saw the smug look of a man who enjoys seeing his critics dehumanized. The president of the United States should be better than this.
