May 01, 2006
Courage
Last night at dinner with friends, the subject of courage arose in relation to a ropes course upon which our hostess unexpectedly found herself. Completely terrified, but encouraged by the man who held her emergency harness, she climbed, jumped and grabbed mid air for trapezes because she realized that such activities would ultimately be useful in developing courage She has come to the understanding that fear restricts her flow.
In contrast, as I was criticized yesterday for walking my bike up a steep incline filled with loose gravel, rather than riding through it, I had the fleeting thought that I was not going to break my hip to avoid wimphood. I am a wimp -- and I was trained to be one by a master. Developing courage has never even crossed my mind. That doesn't mean that I don't know it when I see it.
Stephen Colbert addressed the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday. Now that was an act of courage. He spoke the truth directly to George W. Bush and his entourage, who wriggled two feet away.
The last time the royals had to sit through something like this was when they were shamed into attending Coretta Scott King's funeral. But, there, the keynote speakers had audience support. It is much more difficult to tell the truth surrounded by those who cannot face it, who find it narcissistically wounding, who punish.
Often the archetype of the clown, the trickster is the only one who dares speak the truth to power. Stephen Colbert did just that, and it was shocking. The Pres, quite the trickster himself, walked out right after Colbert's address with the Lovely Lapsed Liberal Laura in tow-- both looked miffed. Maybe because his own hilarious antics were trumped.
Colbert has been duly chastised by an almost universal shunning in the major media I'm certain there are those who would say that his remarks were in poor taste, if they deign to mention them at all. Oops, I take that back
Jon Stewart, another truth teller from Comedy Central, did much the same thing as a guest on Crossfire last year, when he confronted Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson and told them that what they were doing was bad for America, and asked them to cut it out.
Colbert's display of courage, though gutsy beyond belief, and difficult to deliver, did not have the same kind of consequences as telling the truth in a more overt dictatorship -- the kind of courage that was needed to stand up against Hitler, or Edi Amin or apartheid. The kind of courage that it takes to speak out when your life will be endangered if you do. We're not there quite yet, but to judge from the reactions yesterday, of both the President and the press, we're headed in that direction. .
Maybe if it comes to a life and death situation, I won't be quite such a wimp, but I doubt it.
Photo note: Too bad I cut off the thirty feet from where this guy is dangling to to ground -- it would have been a more dramatic shot, but who knew I'd be writing about courage when I took it. I thought I'd be writing about spring cleaning.
Addendum: Look whatt those clever guys on the internet did! Thank You Stephen Colbert.
Posted by Dakota at May 1, 2006 06:08 AM