Cosby, Cursive, and Gnash
“I’m done with my cursive!” cries my older son. “Dessert time!” Never mind that the one does not follow from the other. He, being eight, is inclusive by nature.
I’m increasingly curious about inclusivity. Inclusive politics, inclusive analysis, inclusive everything. In reading over a recent edition of The Atlantic Monthly, I discovered a profile piece, feature length, on Bill Cosby. Aside from the interest Cosby himself holds, the article struck me as a fine example of a piece that details various warring factions––in this case, black integrationists vs. black nationalists, which horribly simplifies the whole thing, but I don’t have time to repeat the entire article, and in any case, that would be plagiarism––wait. Where was I? Oh, yes. This article defined that peculiar brand of journalism where various exponents sound off about the virtue of their perspective while doing their best to tarnish that of “the other guy,” while in fact never once pausing to take note that perhaps both perspectives make sense, that both or even many of the available approaches and viewpoints could shore up otherwise untethered lives and minds. In effect, life-stances that are presented as anathema are not, in fact, exclusive.
This is complicated twaddle for “Both sides have a point, both may be equally valid.”
Liberalism at its worst, right? “Everybody’s right and to hell with standards!”
No. It’s dangerous to lick a below-zero metal tether-ball pole with your tongue. You’ll get stuck. That’s an absolute. Also, hitting is not allowed in my household. I don’t care who did what with which and I don’t care why the hitting started. It’s simply not permitted. Period.
But certain issues, such as how black America should conduct itself or attempt to right and redress the (truly unbelievable) rates of male black incarceration, are so multi-faceted that they defy both description and prescription. I suspect that Bill Cosby is right when he sounds off about the stupidity of young men stealing “pound cake” (his reference, see Wikipedia) when the fact is that wanting it and not having money to pay for it equal a situation where they shouldn’t be carrying off the pound cake. But I also find myself drawn to Cosby’s critics. Some (Cosby, perhaps) would call me wishy-washy for this, but these aren’t mathematical principles, and there is room for debate. Many of those interviewed or cited in this generally excellent article suggest that somebody must, naturally, be right while the others are wrong. I’m honestly not so sure.
Take the example of hitting in my household, above. Sometimes my four-year-old “annoys” my eight-year-old. Sometimes it’s the other way around. I am practically never there when these occasional eruptions occur, but you can bet I come running when I hear certain tell-tale sounds or a dire, rising shriek in the combatant’s voices. What actually happened is beside the point: Both sides will have an explanation, both are probably valid to some degree, but neither really explains anything to the degree where I can verify some sort of Cosmic Truth in what just unfolded. In parenting, this leads (or I would hope this leads) to a dispassionate judgment call where everyone gets reminded that the outcome of the sudden war (i.e., the hitting or maybe kicking) was wrong. Now it’s time to kiss and make up and get on with our lives.
In situations such as Cosby’s, where he is on a crusade to help as many people as possible (which really means help them his way, to convince them that his way is better than those other ways), there’s not a lot of room for kiss and make up, partly because local follow-through, especially at the household level, is never the job of the crusader. And besides, those who are in disagreement may not actually love each other and spend most of the day holding hands, as my boys do. But the demagogues of How To Live Your Life do everyone involved a disservice by assuming that one solution––one size, let’s say––fits all.
In a more extreme example, is it possible for religion (or at least some spiritual conception of God) to coexist with science? Most say yes, of course––but not all.
Is it possible to be pro-life and pro-death penalty?
Is it possible to gird for war and peace simultaneously?
Is it possible to recognize Bob Dylan’s complete inability to sing and still praise him as a songwriter?
My point, having by now been thoroughly ground to dust, comes down to this: In a society that theoretically prides itself on both the breadth and depth of its thought, on the immersion-style Democracy that allows any number of social currents to pour over the falls––and in this analogy, I suppose we are the upstream salmon––why do we insist on winner-take-all, pyramid-scheme paradigms of acceptable thought and policy?
Or, to put it another way, given this year of Presidential Elections, can’t we have a social safety net and still insist that people work as hard as humanly possible to better themselves?
Of course, if we did that, we wouldn’t have two political parties. We’d just have one big swamp of agreement.
Hugs all ‘round.
Yuck.
Time for dessert!
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Friday, August 1, 2008
