A REVOLUTION FROM MEAN-GUY CULTURE TO GOOD-GUY CULTURE (11/5/04)

Pick up a copy of the December Reader’s Digest. You’ll see a picture of me dressed as Santa Claus. It will be next to a column that I wrote after 9/11 about playing Santa for a bunch of homeless kids.

Please do not interpret this announcement as self-promotion. When it is all over, Andy Warhol will still owe me another 14 minutes. The momentary spotlight really has little to do with kindness to a bunch of homeless kids. Sure, there is the oddity of a rabbi playing Santa. But beyond that, plenty of fat guys would be delighted to dress up as St. Nick to bring joy to a homeless kid. Wouldn’t you?

Thanks to a cranky English prof long ago, I was able to commit my emotions to writing articulately enough to catch the Reader’s Digest’s eye. I was noticed not because of a good deed that is replicated by thousands of people who are far more giving than I. I was noticed because I am a better-than-average writer.

What of those more deserving thousands?

They would likely tell you that they neither want nor need recognition. They might even tell you that to receive recognition would cloud the altruism of their kindness. God bless them for that. But, the rest of us who forever teeter on the brink of good-guy vs. mean-guy desperately need models of everyday people who have made statements with their lives on the goodness of being good guys.

This is a watershed – some would say, a bottomed out – moment for the American temperament. It is pregnant with the opportunity to transform America from a mean-guy culture to a good-guy culture. Anyone with an ounce of decency, liberal or conservative, should be shuddering from deepest election-induced trauma. Apparently, no political campaign anywhere in the country focused unambiguously on issues. No longer sufficient to impute simple impropriety to an opponent, the only acceptable tactic in local to national races was to completely dismember and demonize an opponent until s/he was perceived not merely as an unfit candidate, but the evil-incarnate bogeyman.

Clearly, we were simply viewing a microcosm of our thoroughly mean-spirited, mean-guy-over-good-guy culture, in which the voice of kindness and temperance is drowned out by bellicose trash-talk and the actions that accompany it.

How do we bring the transformation to life? Some pollyannas still believe that if you tinker with the medium, you can change the message. Why can’t the media emphasize good-guy news and talk? We very well know why. It’s the same reason that we read the National Enquirer and slow down to gawk at an accident site. “If it bleeds, it leads,” is still the guiding principle of journalism. Murder trumps Christmas parties for homeless kids.

Then what’s left? Parents and pulpit.

Kids need be encouraged not only to do good things. They must also hear about people around them who are good guys – what kind things they are doing, what sort of help the family might offer them. Point them out in church or synagogue. Take the kids over to meet them at the restaurant. Show them that there are good guys all around them to whom we simply pay too little attention.

If one of the talking-head shows is on the tube and Ann Coulter or Al Franken is on a rant, let your kid know that these are mean guys, not because of their political orientations, but because the are disrespectful, demeaning and crude. And maybe one day if Tim Russert is on, point him out as one of the good guys, because – agree or disagree – he is always respectful and moderate.

And what should we say about the pulpit? Promote good causes? Of course. Point out and celebrate the good guys? Naturally. But, O how I wish I could rewrite all the sermons I now realize accomplished no good because they reeked of gratuitous venom. How I wish I could ghostwrite a few sermons for rabbis and pastors who desecrate the attention of their flock with ugly diatribes that typically address issues no more substantive than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

I don’t know exactly what I’d say, but this I do know: Before he was anything else, Jesus was a good guy, and he profoundly influenced others to be good guys. The words and the deeds are right there in the Holy Book. The sermons virtually write themselves. And I likewise know that for my rabbinical colleagues, I would make them write a hundred times on the chalkboard before each sermon prep, “Its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace.”

Whatever text or tactic they choose, the consistent message from parent and pulpit must be that good guys, not mean guys, are the most valued contributors to our society and the future of a sane, decent world. Their voice and deeds must be heard above all the trash and ugliness that has most recently made this culture so lowdown mean-spirited.

When you’re done, please remember to recycle your Reader’s Digest. In the end it will become just so much more paper-mache. In the end, fame – major and minor – is fleeting. But, in the end, goodness endures. Good deeds endure. The legacy created by good guys endures. You need not be a child of the 60’s to join the revolution. All you needs is a sense of urgency and a large appetite for doing little daily acts of kindness.