When Someone Throws a Shoe, it’s Time to Care
December 15, 2008 by Julia King · 2 Comments
If nothing else, President George W. Bush is agile. When those shoes went flying at his head, he was smooth, even relaxed as he ducked not just once, but twice. He looked a bit surprised maybe, but generally in control, his famous smirk intact.
“I didn’t feel the least bit threatened by it,” Bush said in the following minutes, brushing aside the Iraqi journalist’s actions as, “a way to get attention.” And with that attitude and those words, the outgoing president of the United States demonstrated yet again why he was unable to govern.
Not the least bit threatened? Not bothered? When a grown man is enraged to the point of throwing shoes, it behooves other men to take notice, to be bothered. I am reminded of President Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain” refrain, the one that drew such mockery from the political Right, as though empathy is a weakness, a sham, or both.
Whether one believed in Bush’s Iraq war or not, there is little question that Iraqis have suffered during the occupation, lost more than most Americans can imagine. Yes, they suffered before we invaded their homeland; but it’s different to suffer at the hands of strangers than at the hands of countrymen. If you don’t believe that, go beat your neighbor’s kids and see how well that goes over.
Long ago, George W. Bush promised Compassionate Conservatism. Compassion is “sympathy for the suffering of others, often including a desire to help.” It was a great plan, this compassion, but one Bush was never fully qualified to carry out. He ducked and he smiled, he avoided the proverbial shoe; but he never learned how to care.
“O” Happy Day — Even in Indiana!
November 5, 2008 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
There are few things sadder than waking up Wednesday morning with the wrong sign in your yard. Do you pull it out of the ground immediately and toss it into the garage to save face? Or do you let the weather beat it into a tattered rag to prove you’ll go down with your principles? After nearly 25 years in Indiana, Lord knows I’ve asked myself those questions more than a time or two.
But today I awoke with the right sign in my yard and “Oh, Happy Day” singing in my head. A bit sleepy from staying up too late, I wasn’t too groggy to dance around in the kitchen and wave my arms up in the air like I was part of a choir. That’s how I feel, like one little voice in a magnificent choir.
Of course, once something has actually arrived, it’s easy to say you saw it coming. So that’s what I’m going to do, claim a little prescience.
The first “sign” was in a window on Main Street. Some months ago, a group of Obama supporters set up a headquarters in a high-ceilinged, freshly renovated space with hardwood floors and cream colored walls. Kids used magic markers and crayons to color in the words “hope” and “change” on pieces of paper that sat cheerily in a display case next to a huge, brightly colored poster of Obama. Over the last several weeks, many people came and went through those headquarter doors, people of all shapes and sizes and ages and shades.
Meanwhile, right next door to the headquarters, a town landmark went out of business. Newell’s dress shop — four generations old and complete with a “Ladies Apparel” sign over its door — ceased to exist. Its inventory gone, McCain/Palin signs clung to its windows and a large American flag stood alone in the center of the otherwise empty store.
The contrast was stark, almost eerily so: the old and the new guard side-by-side in this small, northern Indiana town.
“What was that saying about a picture and 1,000 Words?”
February 5, 2006 by Julia King · Leave a Comment
“What Was That Saying About a Picture and 1,000 Words?”
by Julia King
February 6, 2006
By now we have all surely seen the photographs – the faces contorted with anger, the Danish flags in flames, the smoldering ruins of an embassy or two – but how many of us have seen the cartoons? The infamous caricatures of Muhammad the Prophet, you know – with the turban, the bomb, the fuse – the images that have been described repeatedly in American papers but never actually displayed?
It’s probably a good thing. It’s probably smart not to reprint cartoons that inspire people to set fires and call for people’s heads, but still, isn’t there something unsettling about the fact that virtually all major American media decided against publication?
The New York Times, the Superhero of newspapers, didn’t publish these drawings. The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times – they all decided readers didn’t need to see the drawings for themselves to get the whole story, to understand the situation. They decided a description of the cartoons would be sufficient.
In March of 2004, The New York Times thought I needed to see charred bodies hanging from a bridge in Falluja. For what it’s worth, I disagreed. But their defense of the photos was eloquent and self-confident so I considered the possibility that I was wrong — that I was simply too sensitive for the real world. But now they tell me I don’t need to see the cartoons depicting Muhammad. Again, I disagree. With some difficulty, I tracked down the caricatures on-line. To my democracy-hardened eyes the images were mild.
I understand depicting Muhammad on paper breaks Islamic law and for some that alone makes the images unacceptable. I’m sympathetic to those who feel disrespected, but I am frightened by the notion that religious anger is always righteous anger and that it holds a place high above other grievances.
I am a non-Christian living in a small, northern Indiana town. Participating in public life here means forever submitting to Christian prayer or resisting as the trouble maker. Jesus reigns not only in people’s homes and hearts, but in many of my daughter’s public school classrooms and in public meetings. Bow your head or make a stink. That’s always the choice. Sometimes I choose the former… and sometimes the latter. Neither is easy.
When the major American news outlets refused to publish the caricatures of Muhammad, the freest press on earth bowed its head instead of making a stink. It might be the wisest choice NOT to publish the images, but the argument that the images are somehow unnecessary to the telling of the story, or that they are fundamentally too offensive, is a disingenuous one.
I’m not calling for the cartoon images to appear in our national media, but I am calling for the truth. I’d like to hear just one major editor say, “Here’s the deal: we are afraid. It’s sad to admit, but violence sometimes speaks louder than reason. This is one of those times.”
