An op-ed piece in The New York Times today chastised the NFL medical professionals for acting as if the evidence that concussions and repeated blows to the head can cause long-term brain injury were new. The piece cites research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1928 that came to that very conclusion, from a study of former boxers who had been rendered, as the saying goes, "punch drunk."
How is it, says Deborah Blum, the piece's author, that we are still discussing this problem as new and perhaps unproven, 80 years after the fact?
It's simple. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
The NFL, and football in general, has not developed its warrior culture of clashing helmets, hand-to-hand combat, and hard-hitting sacks and tackles in a vacuum. Or even against the wishes of not only its coaches and owners, but the people who come to the coliseum to watch the gladiators grapple. As the Super Bowl looms this weekend, the crowds that gather to watch will be hoping more for battle than ballet. Without the bloodshed, of course, and with some really poetic passes and fakes, speed in motion, brilliant strategy, and breathtaking feats of impossibility in the fray. But battle, nonetheless.
There is money and excitement in the combat, so seeing the medical evidence that the action is not entirely without bloodshed or casualties is a really inconvenient truth. But the culture of football is also so closely linked with its fierce contact element that changing its approach to that element is not a simple switch.
Can a sport's culture change? Given that football players already wear far more padding than they used to, the easy answer is "yes." At least to some degree. And sportscasters are now making an effort not to glorify getting "jacked up" or the sounds of clashing helmets. Nobody gets a sense that they like it; it's just that sportscasters and networks recognize the fact that, somehow, a tide has turned.
But the truth remains that changing any culture is a slow and difficult process--especially in sports where participants get a certain amount of pride in the fact that it's not entirely safe.
Take, for example, the sports of flying and SCUBA diving. Both activities started out as necessarily "macho" endeavors, because the technology for each was pretty rudimentary, and the environments in which they operated were naturally hostile. An article in California Medicine in 1970 (23 years after Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan invented the first regulator and open-circuit breathing system) estimated that SCUBA diving was approximately 96 times more dangerous than driving a car.
I don't have the exact statistics on early flying fatalities, but they were staggeringly high. A fighter pilot's average life expectancy in World War I was something in the order of three weeks. And in Ernest Gann's classic book Fate is the Hunter, he devotes five full pages to a double-column list of early airline pilots who died on the job, just flying the line. And that was after engines and materials had progressed considerably from the days of the barnstormer.
But those early risks meant that those who took on those risks took a lot of pride in survival. The swaggering barnstormers knew they were defying death, as did the diving pioneers of Jacques Cousteau's early era. And so a kind of "macho" culture evolved; one where risk-taking was at least tacitly admired.
Today, the culture associated with SCUBA diving is markedly different. Those who dismiss safety or regulations are not held up as heroes, but as idiots, and there's a much greater focus on safety practices like having a dive buddy, decompression stops, and strict adherence to dive times and depths. Recreational SCUBA diving still has some risk (each year, somewhere around 100 people still die out millions of divers, worldwide), but its safety record, and its culture, have shifted dramatically toward the safety end of the scale.
How did the SCUBA industry improve its safety record so dramatically? Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a greater emphasis on training and technique was certainly was a piece of it. But improved equipment also meant that the sport could start attracting less physically fit and risk-tolerant people into its midst. And the greater number of clients that allowed meant more money for SCUBA industry operators. So there was an incentive to skew toward safety. There may have been other factors at play, as well. But at some point, a critical mass developed to turn the tide, and the sport developed a culture and reputation as something relatively "safe," with safety as a high priority for its promoters and participants.
Aviation, on the other hand, has remained a tougher nut to crack. It still requires a lot of training and investment of money to become a pilot, and airplanes are far more expensive to buy, and far more complex to maintain, than SCUBA equipment. So despite all the manufacturers' efforts to market the idea of "an airplane in every garage," the pilot population, unlike the SCUBA population, has not grown significantly in the past three decades. As a result, the old guard who pride themselves on their bravery remain a larger percentage of the pilot population. And there is less internal pressure for the culture to change.
Given that football is not about to start attracting less physically fit individuals, and that the NFL is not about to become a recreational family sport, what is perhaps surprising is not that it's taken this long for the tide to start turning with regard to the injuries its players sustain, but that it's even beginning to turn now.
What caused the shift? The fact that football, unlike flying or diving, is a spectator sport. So even if we're not playing on the teams, we--the ticket-buying, bet-placing, television-watching public--influence its culture. And over the past year, enough evidence and stories emerged, with enough publicity, in enough places, that even if we wanted to believe otherwise, it became difficult to avoid the truth. Images of former hero athletes no longer able to conduct their daily lives, or even fill out a form without help, began to tweak our collective conscience. It's hard not to have the realization lodge, somewhere inside, that this heartbreaking damage occurred, at least in part, because of our own selfish desire for entertainment.
If we didn't have those twinges of guilt, the impassioned arguments of people like Gay Culverhouse, the former president of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who's become a leading advocate for disabled players, would not have had such an impact. Indeed, the NFL's initial resistance to the growing swell of publicity and medical reports this past fall arguing a link between on-the-job head injuries and neurological problems later in life felt very much like an unfortunate delayed reaction on the part of its managers. The public got over its reluctance to see the evidence before the industry did.
Football is still a contact sport, and its appeal will remain rooted in its conflict. So it's unlikely to become domesticated anytime soon. But quarterbacks now routinely wear rib protection. Helmets are larger. Change has already begun creeping in around the edges, if only to protect each team's assets. And we, the spectators, have adjusted. Just as collegiate ice hockey players today can't imagine a world in which face guards didn't exist, we will soon get used to players going off the field and not coming back in the game--and a culture that doesn't glorify the crash of helmets quite so gleefully.
The old guard might complain that the sport is losing its edge. But what we gain is an ability to enjoy the game with a little less guilt. We may still cringe at some of the more spectacular take-downs on the field. But at least our consciences won't have to cringe, as well.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Lt. Col. Lee A. Archer died last week at the age of 90. Although his name is hardly a household word, he was notable as a Tuskeegee Airman and the the only black fighter pilot ace (an "ace" being a pilot who shoots down at least five enemy aircraft) to come out of World War II. In his later life, he became a vice president of General Foods and a venture capitalist.
For anyone not familiar with who the Tuskeegee Airmen were: at the beginning of WWII, the military was segregated and blacks were not allowed to be pilots. Indeed, a War Department study in 1925 concluded that "Negroes" didn't have the intelligence, character, or leadership to be in combat units, including pilot roles. The Tuskeegee Airmen were formed to test (and some hoped, to prove) that theory. Their name came from the fact that they were trained in and around Tuskeegee, Alabama.
To the surprise of many, the Tuskeegee Airmen, especially the "Red Tail" P-51 Mustang pilots who escorted bombers in North Africa and Europe, performed exceedingly well. For many years, it was believed that not a single bomber was ever lost on their patrol--an achievement not unrelated to the fact that only one of the Tuskeegee Airmen ever became a combat ace.
Apparently, as numerous Tuskeegee Airmen have related to me, their commanders instilled in them a strict focus on their primary mission. They were to bring the bomber crews home alive. And that meant staying with the bombers, not going chasing after dogfights and combat glory. The group's perfect record has recently been questioned, but nobody argues that very few bombers were lost when escorted by the "Red Tails"--a feat especially notable given that bomber squadrons sometimes lost as many as half their number on missions.
Bomber pilots who objected to integrating the service began to rethink their objections when it became clear that their chances of getting home went up when they saw red-tailed Mustangs pulling up in formation. Skin color becomes secondary when the person in question is keeping you alive in a combat situation. The performance of the Tuskeegee Airmen was also a factor in Harry Truman's decision to desegregate the military in 1948.
Interestingly enough, the same dynamic seems to be playing out now, as President Obama sets his sights on overturning the notorious "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy about gays serving in the military. In a New York Times article on Monday discussing some of factors leading to President Obama's State of the Union declaration to overturn the law this year, an interesting statistic emerged. A 2006 Zogby International poll of military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan found that "three quarters were comfortable serving around gay service members." But a 2008 Military Times poll of "largely older" subscribers showed that 58 percent objected to lifting the ban.
There are undoubtedly numerous factors at play. Personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan are necessarily younger, and may be more comfortable with gay colleagues in general. And they've already experienced the incorporation of women into combat units without seeing effectiveness destroyed. But they are also seeing comrades they suspect (or know) are gay performing with distinction next to them in battle situations. In foxholes, there are not only no atheists, there are apparently a lot fewer bigots.
(For a really good primer on the history of Don't Ask, Don't Tell: an analysis of the arguments, pro and con, of overturning it, the difficulty of overturning it--the policy now requires an act of Congress, thanks to Congressional objection to Clinton's attempt to end the ban on gays by executive order in 1993--and the real costs of continuing the policy, check out this article by Colonel Om Prakash in the fall issue of the Joint Force Quarterly. An award-winning essay.)
The question of how people's minds and attitudes change is a complex one. Intellectual argument itself is clearly not sufficient. But the history of the Tuskeegee Airmen, and the changing attitudes among military personnel currently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan about gay service personnel, certainly seems to argue for the power of example. Once the members of a group we view as incapable of performing a particular job well, or without negative consequences, show us otherwise by example rather than argument, our biases and objections begin to dissipate. Especially in the high-stakes world of combat, where the consequence for choosing bias over competence can be your life.
But if that's true--if some of the strongest forces of persuasion and change are familiarity, example and experience--then it also presents something of a conundrum. If a group is excluded or hampered--overtly or subtly--from serving in the military or any other profession, how can they ever provide the example and experience that, in the end, is perhaps necessary to change minds enough to allow them in? It's a strong argument for affirmative action--a policy that, while imperfect, provides a means by which minority groups can gain enough numbers in resistant populations to show, by example, that resistance isn't necessary.
That the Tuskeegee Airmen and other black soldiers who served in WWII convinced Truman to integrate the armed services, but still returned home to a country that discriminated against them as much as ever, argues, perhaps, for the power of the foxhole. If every citizen in America had had the experience of the bomber pilots brought home alive by Tuskeegee Airmen, civil rights legislation would probably have passed much sooner.
In that sense, gays in the military have an advantage over the blacks who served in WWII. The majority of Americans are now aligned with the combat troops when it comes to the acceptability of gay service members. Now it's just the law that's out of step.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
In his just-released book The Last Train From Hiroshima, Charles Pellegrino quotes one of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb blasts as saying that those who survived were, in general, those who looked after their own safety, instead of reaching out to help others. "Those of us who stayed where we were ... who took refuge in the hills behind the hospital when the fires began to spread and close in, happened to escape alive. In short, those who survived the bomb were ... in a greater or lesser degree selfish, self-centered--guided by instinct and not by civilization. And we know it, we who have survived."
But is survival really selfish and uncivilized? Or is it smart? And is going in to rescue others always heroic? Or is it sometimes just stupid? It's a complex question, because there are so many factors involved, and every survival situation is different.
Self-preservation is supposedly an instinct. So one would think that in life-and-death situations, we'd all be very focused on whatever was necessary to survive. But that's not always true. In July 2007, I was having a drink with a friend in Grand Central Station when an underground steam pipe exploded just outside. From where we sat, we heard a dull "boom!" and then suddenly, people were running, streaming out of the tunnels and out the doors.
My friend and I walked quickly and calmly outside, but to get any further, we had to push our way through a crowd of people who were staring, transfixed, at the column of smoke rising from the front of the station. Some people were crying, others were screaming, others were on their cell phones...but the crowd, for the most part, was not doing the one thing that would increase everyone's chances of survival, if in fact a terrorist bomb with god knows what inside it had just gone off--namely, moving away from the area.
We may have an instinct for survival, but it clearly doesn't always kick in the way it should. A guy who provides survival training for pilots told me once that the number one determining factor for survival is simply whether people hold it together in a crisis or fall apart. And, he said, it's impossible to predict ahead of time who's going to hold it together, and who's going to fall apart.
So what is the responsibility of those who hold it together? I remember reading the account of one woman who was in an airliner that crashed on landing. People were frozen or screaming, but nobody was moving toward the emergency exits, even as smoke began to fill the cabin. After realizing that the people around her were too paralyzed to react, she took direct action, crawling over several rows of people to get to the exit. She got out of the plane and survived. Very few others in the plane, which was soon consumed by smoke and fire, did. And afterward, I remember she said she battled a lot of guilt for saving herself instead of trying to save the others.
Could she really have saved the others? Probably not, and certainly not from the back of the plane. Just like the Hiroshima survivors, if she'd tried, she probably would have perished with them. So why do survivors berate themselves for not adding to the loss by attempting the impossible? Perhaps it's because we get very mixed messages about survival ethics.
On the one hand, we're told to put our own oxygen masks on first, and not to jump in the water with a drowning victim. But then the people who ignore those edicts and survive to tell the tale are lauded as heroes. And people who do the "smart" thing are sometimes criticized quite heavily after the fact.
In a famous mountain-climbing accident chronicled in the book and documentary Touching the Void, climber Simon Yates was attempting to rope his already-injured friend Joe Simpson down a mountain in bad weather when the belay went awry. Simpson ended up hanging off a cliff, unable to climb up, and Yates, unable to lift him up and losing his own grip on the mountain, ended up cutting the rope to Simpson to save himself. Miraculously, Simpson survived the 100 foot fall and eventually made his way down the mountain. But Yates was criticized by some for his survival decision, even though the alternative would have almost certainly led to both of their deaths.
In Yates' case, he had time to think hard about the odds, and the possibilities he was facing, and to realize that he couldn't save anyone but himself. But what about people who have to make more instantaneous decisions? If, in fact, survivors are driven by "instinct not civilization," as the Hiroshima survivor put it, how do you explain all those who choose otherwise? Who would dive into icy waters or onto subway tracks or disobey orders to make repeat trips onto a minefield to bring wounded to safety? Are they more civilized than the rest of us? More brave? More noble?
It sounds nice, but oddly enough, most of the people who perform such impulsive rescues say that they didn't really think before acting. Which means they weren't "choosing" civilization over instinct. If survival is an instinct, it seems to me that there must be something equally instinctive that drives us, sometimes, to run into danger instead of away from it.
Perhaps it comes down to the ancient "fight or flight" impulse. Animals confronted with danger will choose to attack it, or run from it, and it's hard to say which one they'll choose, or when. Or maybe humans are such social herd animals, dependent on the herd for survival, that we feel a pull toward others even as we feel a contrary pull toward our own preservation, and the two impulses battle it out within us ... leading to the mixed messages we send each other on which impulse to follow.
Some people hold it together in a crisis and some people fall apart. Some people might run away from danger one day, and toward it the next. We pick up a thousand cues in an instant of crisis and respond in ways that even surprise ourselves, sometimes.
But while we laud those who sacrifice themselves in an attempt to save another, there is a fine line between brave and foolish. There can also be a fine line between smart and selfish. And as a friend who's served in the military for 27 years says, the truth is, sometimes there's no line at all between the two.
Photo credit: Roberto Schmidt/AFP-Getty
Photo credit: Roberto Schmidt/AFP-Getty
Women now account for at least 30 percent of all physicians, but men still account for less than 6 percent of the nursing profession. The percentage of women lawyers has almost doubled since 1985, but the percentage of women pilots has remained stuck at around 6 percent for the past half century.
What accounts for the differences?
Gross and Fosse's paper focuses mostly on a study they conducted to explore why university professors, as a group, contain a higher percentage of self-described liberals than the American population at large. After sifting through data from the General Social Survey of opinions and social behaviors from 1974-2008, they concluded that at least a significant part of the answer was that academia "has acquired such a strong reputation for liberalism and secularism over the past thirty-five years, few politically- or religiously-conservative students, but many liberal and secular ones, have formed the aspiration to become professors." Thus the gap remains unchanged. The paper also extends this theory as a possible explanation for gender imbalances in other professions, including nursing.
It's an interesting theory. And it's entirely possible that social reputation and peer support or derision has something to do with the skewing of certain professions in terms of gender, race, or political affiliation. But if social stereotyping of professions were really such a powerful force, then the fields of medicine, law, business and all other once male-dominated professions should be still just as skewed as they ever were. After all, the social stereotyping of doctors, lawyers and executives as male was every bit as strong as any social stereotyping of professors as liberal.
But all of those gender-skewed professions shifted dramatically despite those once-dominant stereotypes. Why? In large part, because women fought very hard to change that image. Women wanted to be doctors, lawyers, and business executives enough to fight against type. And slowly, our collective image of "type" began to change.
So why hasn't that happened with nursing? Because, Gross and Fosse would undoubtedly say, men didn't aspire to that profession enough to force a change. Okay, but why? Because it's a typecast as a typically "female" job? Or could it be because the job of a nurse doesn't just suffer from an image problem, but is, in fact, a job with less status, pay, power or control than other options a man might have?
My point is, people who don't fit the "norm" of a profession may be motivated to fight their way in if the profession in question offers something they want: power, prestige, control, pay, opportunity, freedom, or even fulfillment, however they define it. Fewer people may be motivated to fight their way into professions that reduce those options, or offer less of what they consider valuable. The once male-dominated professions into which women have made major inroads (medicine, law, business) offer more prestige, pay, and status than many of the fields women traditionally dominated (teaching, nursing, secretarial services, or social services). That's not an image problem. That's a very tangible difference.
But what about the gap in pilot gender? It's a good question, because the job of a pilot offers far more status and pay than that of a flight attendant ... or many other professions in the world. I've pondered that one for years, without coming up with a good explanation. But a friend of mine recently offered a thought I hadn't considered before: being a pilot, like being a combat commander, involves physical challenge, effort, and risk. And while some women certainly welcome that kind of challenge, it may be that not enough women are drawn to it to appreciably change the demographics. Or that the physical risks cancel out the appeal of the status, pay, or other rewards the profession offers. But again, the physical challenges and risks of flying aren't an image problem. They're a very real part of the job.
So how does that relate to the question of liberal-minded professors? It may be that conservatively-inclined young people are turned off by the idea of going into academia. But is it because of its stereotypical image? Or is it, perhaps, because of very real truths about the job: that it offers less pay, less status in our conspicuous-consumption world, and potentially less freedom (other than intellectual freedom) than other possible career paths? Or even because of other factors? Some people may, for example, unwittingly subscribe to the belief that "real men" don't sit around contemplating ideas instead of accomplishing real things in the world--which would discourage young men, at least, from pursuing more academic careers. Is that stereotyping? Of course. But not about the liberalism of academia per se.
Gross and Fosse note that although 80 percent of professors answer that a "meaningful career" is very important to them, 60 percent of the general public answers the same way. They dismiss the difference, but it seems noteworthy, at least, that four out of five professors rate a meaningful career that highly. It's not surprising--you certainly don't enter academia if you want to make a lot of money or climb some entrepreneurial ladder. Other things have to motivate you.
The two researchers acknowledge that other factors are undoubtedly part of the equation, as well. And the motivations, desires, influences and subconscious filters at work in both young people and educational and hiring institutions are nothing if not layered and complex. I also wouldn't argue that perceptions don't matter, in terms of young people's aspirations in the world. One of the strongest arguments for actively working to change the ethnic, gender, political or racial mix of a profession is to provide ample role models young people can identify with as they imagine their futures.
But before concluding that political or gender stereotyping limits the ability of a profession's demographic to change, it's worth noting the examples that have already proven otherwise. It's like the light bulb joke I used to hear, back when I worked in the mental health field: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Only one. But the light bulb has to really want to change.
Why is it that some cultures advance, while others stagnate, stumble, or fade away? It's a question that's asked often about the resource-rich continent of Africa, which has seen so little progress over the past few centuries, and which is being asked again this week as the world's attention focuses on the tragic fortunes of plague-ridden Haiti.
In a column called "The Underlying Tragedy," David Brooks writes that part of the reason the Haitian earthquake was so devastating was the poverty of the country--poverty that has persisted far longer and more pervasively than in many neighboring countries that had similar histories, and even had similar brushes with dictatorial and dysfunctional governments. He quotes historian Lawrence Harrison, who he says wrote that "Haiti, like most of the world's poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences"--including its backward voodoo religion, high levels of social mistrust, poor child-rearing traditions, and a lack of any internalized sense of responsibility.
"We're all supposed to politely respect each other's cultures," Brooks writes. "But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them."
I haven't read Harrison's work. But interestingly enough, that same point was made in a fascinating PBS series currently airing, called "The Human Spark." Hosted by Alan Alda, the first segment of the series went in search of an answer to what sparked the change in our ancient Neanderthal-era ancestors that allowed some of them to advance into what we call "modern humans" with more advanced language, skills, and technology.
More than a quarter million years ago, some of our ancestors migrated from Africa to Europe, becoming known as the "Neanderthals," while other groups remained on the southern continent. What happened next differed dramatically. The Neanderthals in Europe, a small number of perhaps 20,000, lived mostly in isolated locations and caves, with no evidence of trade or shared culture with other groups of Neanderthals. They existed by tradition, doing what had worked for the previous generation, hunting meat and living in the same manner--and in some cases living in the very same cave--for 200,000 years.
Now, any culture that manages to survive 200,000 years can't be judged an abject failure. But the European Neanderthals did not evolve mentally or physically, or develop any new skills or tools. Their distant cousins in Africa, on the other hand, developed a much more open culture, where innovation led to innovation, and evidence of trading and sharing of information--and even more advanced weapons that would have required more complex language to use effectively--has been found dating back at least 150,000 years.
In the process, their brains evolved, as well. And when those more advanced "humans" then migrated north into the area still occupied by the tradition-bound Neanderthals ... they quickly eclipsed the Neanderthals, who dwindled in number and soon became extinct.
What was it about the African groups that made them start innovating, trading, and evolving as a people and a culture, when their northern cousins didn't? I don't think anyone's come up with a definitive answer. Perhaps it was the weather and terrain, which facilitated more travel and chance encounters with other groups. Isolated caves in the hills and mountains of France don't lend themselves to chance discoveries of other groups, who might do things a different, or better, way.
But in any event, the result is clear. The groups that were open to other groups and cultures, possessed enough curiosity to seek new items and ways of doing things, and embraced change as a good thing were the ones who thrived, evolved, and survived. It's a lesson worth at least a few moments' thought.
For one thing, it provides at least a measure of reassurance that while the repressive movements of the world who rage at modern changes or cultures can make the process bloody, they will, eventually, fail. At least if history is any guide. And it may at least illuminate part of the problem, if not an obvious solution, in trying to aid development in cultures that don't inherently value progress or change.
Part of what makes the images coming out of Haiti so wrenchingly heart-breaking is the realization for most of us that the problems there go far beyond the devastating damage of an earthquake. This unfortunate island nation is burdened with problems so complex, deep, and pervasive that it seems almost beyond our ability to solve them.
But the story of the Neanderthals also has implications for modernized nations who may be better equipped to handle earthquakes, but are still struggling with issues of changing demographics, globalization and immigration. For sure, not all innovations are good ideas (see: credit default swaps). Recklessness is a hazard in any situation or culture. But we also cling to the past; to a country the way it used to be, or the way we think our grandparents remembered it, at our peril. Clinging staunchly to tradition did not serve the Neanderthals well.
It's never easy to merge ethnic groups, accept change, or figure out how to balance the new dynamics of a changing, multi-cultural world. But the skulls and artifacts of those ancient cultures in Africa--who became the people we are today--argue compellingly for the power of an open society over the limits of one bound by habit, tradition, or too great a desire to keep external influences at bay.
Senator Harry Reid's words about Barack Obama's electability, as quoted in Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's new book on the 2008 Presidential election, have certainly sparked a firestorm of indignant arrow-slinging among politicians, and heated debate among the punditry. For anyone who's been disconnected from the media for the past two days, Reid reportedly told Obama, in encouraging him to run for President back in 2007, that the Illinois Senator was electable because his skin was light and he didn't speak in a "Negro dialect," although he could adopt the vernacular to connect with audiences who did.
Put aside, for the moment, the faction of professional political game-players, who would take indignant umbrage in an opponent's comments on the weather, if they thought it could score political points. What do the rest of us think about Reid's comment? It seems to me that his statement illustrates two messy but true realities: first, that our use of language in relation to minorities of any kind is a minefield, and second, that we still have a long way to go in terms of our ability to honestly discuss the loaded topics of race, gender, and discrimination in America.
Reid has already called President Obama to apologize for his choice of words in saying "Negro dialect." But does his use of that term mean he's a racist? Not in the eyes of those who still identify themselves proudly as "Negro"--a category that was actually added back into the census this year because of that admittedly small but vocal percentage of ... of what? African-Americans? Blacks? People of Color? If only there were one answer that was universally accepted as "correct," or respectful, life would be simpler. But the truth is, different words have different symbolic meanings to different people, depending on their age, personal history, culture and life experiences. They also have different meanings depending on who says them, and how they're said.
The use of the terms "black," "Negro," and even the "n-word" among African-Americans themselves has a different meaning than if used by someone outside the group--a kind of insider/outsider dividing line that exists in other minority groups, as well. (And since we're focusing on detailed word meaning here, let me be clear: I mean minority in terms of power and status, not just in terms of number. So even if women constitute slightly more than 50% of the population in terms of number, I still consider them a minority group.)
The acceptability of terms, even within a minority group itself, also changes with time. Take, for example, the use of the word "girl" to describe an adult female. Most of the women who flew military fighters in WWII--the famed WAAFS and WASPS--still refer proudly to themselves as "girls." To females growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, however, the term "girl" was taken almost universally as a put-down--one to be met with fighting fists. We were women, thank you. Not small children needing protection. Fast forward another 20 years, and females were once again touting the glory of "girl power," and egging each other on with the enthusiastic cry, "You, Go, Girl!" Note, however, that most of that use was from one girl or woman to another. It still sounds a little different coming from the outside.
Why is that? In part, it's because terms used within a group can be a means of bonding, based on a common, insider's understanding of experience, regardless of that term's meaning in the outside world. If a woman says "girl" to another woman she knows, for example, they can be sharing a rich tapestry of understanding--including how some men historically used that word to belittle them, how they found strength and advanced despite the obstacles, and rather than trying to downplay their female traits, as women did in the early days of the women's movement, now proudly celebrate them. Of course, even among women, the term can also still be used as a put-down, depending on the dynamics of who says it, how it is said, and with what intent.
Ah, the complexity of language! It's like the word "fine." Said one way, by someone with a smile on their face, it means "okay." Said another way, by someone with gritted teeth, it means anything BUT okay. The point is, you can't judge by word alone. Intent, delivery and context matter. And those things have to be discerned by more subtle means than a sound bite.
In a sense, it's also like sexual harassment. In many cases, it's not a particular joke or word itself that constitutes harassment. It's whether or not those words are meant to intimidate, exclude, or harm. I've spent the past 20 years working as a woman in a field (aviation) that is not only 94% male, but which has remained stubbornly and staunchly 94% male for the past half century. And I've never had any trouble differentiating jokes or comments that were meant to hurt, put down, intimidate or exclude from those that were somewhat dated, ignorant, or politically incorrect, but without malice or bigoted agenda. It was a matter of who said them, how they said them, and what the circumstances were.
Thus, as Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote Monday of the comparison between Reid and Trent Lott, "Trent Lott wasn't forced to resign because he said something 'racially insensitive.' He was forced to resign because he offered tacit endorsement of white supremacy--frequently." The phrase "Negro dialect" that Reid used might have been a poor choice of words, at least in some people's eyes, but it was spoken by someone who was supporting the efforts of an African-American to become President. And that contextual detail is significant.
But the issue of how we can and can't talk about race or minority groups is worth raising, even if the current firestorm is a bluster of political game-playing. Because the land mine Senator Reid stepped on isn't just a political opportunity for those looking to score a hit anywhere they can. It's a real obstacle to any meaningful or honest discussion of race or discrimination.
Reid's comment may have been a gaffe. But only in the sense of a gaffe being, as Michael Kinsley once said, when a politician speaks the truth. The messy and sad reality is that Reid is probably right, at least to some degree. As a nation, we were shocked that even Obama, with all his sophistication, education, and oratory skills managed to get elected. To say "how dare Reid say such a thing" is akin to Casablanca's Captain Renault exclaiming, "I am shocked! Shocked! To find that gambling is going on in here!"--as he pocketed his winnings from Rick's casino.
Americans still have race issues. And gender issues. And issues with many other minority groups. We are not color-blind, and we are not at peace with our past. And after decades of trying, we're still not very good at having an open and honest discussion on the subject. In part, that's because the subject itself is so loaded with turf issues, ancient prejudices and assumptions, a changing balance of power, a fear of the "other," and questions of where we fit into society. But it's also hard to have an open discussion if every word becomes a potential road hazard, regardless of intent or context.
It's not that words don't matter at all. It's just that they're the trees in the forest of communication. And we focus exclusively on them at the peril of missing bigger things--including the chance to talk calmly and honestly enough to see, understand, or develop a greater sensitivity to how the world looks through someone else's eyes.
As we look back on the first 10 years of the new millennium, the ubiquity of the Internet and the growth of all its social networking possibilities, from email to Blackberries, iPhones and Facebook, is surely one of the most significant changes to emerge from the decade. Granted, the changes began a decade before that. But the past 10 years has seen a phenomenal boom in the growth of Internet access and usage ... up 1600% in the Middle East, 1300% in Africa, and more than 300% worldwide, so that Internet users now number more than half the total population of the world, according to Internet World Stats. We can now easily connect with friends on different continents without waiting two weeks for a letter, talk via computer without the expense of international long distance, and share new baby or other photos with hundreds of friends and relatives in a single posting, via personal Web sites and Facebook pages. My next-door neighbors, who are from Turino, Italy and just had a baby, even hooked up webcams around the house so the distant grandparents could watch live videos of their new grandson playing, feeding, and sleeping from half a world away. With chat rooms, email, Skype, Facebook, and the worldwide Web community, the possibility of being isolated or without someone to "talk" to is far more remote.
But are there hidden costs to all this connectedness? Is it possible that for some, there is loneliness, not safety, in numbers? Two essays by Willaim Deresiewicz in The Chronicle for Higher Education--one last January, and one penned only a few days ago, argue that it is. In his most recent essay, Deresiewicz quotes two studies, one from 1985, and one from 2004, that show a marked decline in people who have a "close confidant." In 1985, only one out of 10 people said they lacked such a person in their life. In 2004, that number had climbed to four out of 10. And that was before so many blogs and social networking sites expanded the number of options (and distractions) for how we spend whatever social connection time we have.
So as we spend more time connecting to the world, it appears that at least some of us may be trading off depth for breadth. We are at once more connected and less connected, depending on how you look at it. But that's not the only impact that concerns Deresiewicz. In his essay from last January, entitled "The End of Solitude," he talks about the impact of constant connectivity on our comfort with being quiet and alone. Just as boredom comes from a discomfort with idle time, he argues that loneliness comes not from being alone per se, but from discomfort over being alone. Just as a small child has to learn to put themselves to sleep, we have to learn how to be comfortable with being alone. And that takes practice ... practice that is far easier to avoid with all the distractions of constant connectivity.
The essays are an interesting read on the history of friendship, social values, and how evolving technology has affected our social connections, from the evolution of the suburbs to the advent of the Internet. And whether you agree with his assessment of Facebook and its impact on social connection, he raises some interesting and valid points.
Without question, there are certain elements that exist in inverse proportion to each other. An Olympic gold-medal athlete has deep expertise in one area, but generally trades off experience and knowledge in other subjects for that one field of excellence. You can go deep, or broad, but generally not both. Quality begins to degrade if increasing quantity is demanded in the same time frame. If you have 10 priorities, you really have none. The same goes for intimacy. Just ask anyone who's tried to balance multiple intimate relationships at the same time.
Friendship is less demanding than a more intimate and vulnerable romantic connection, but the same principle applies. I've noticed, the more times I've moved, and the more people I've met, how much harder it is to keep up with all those friendships on any significant level. Acquaintances are easy to maintain with casual, group emails and Holiday notes. But real friends? They take time and energy--both to develop, and to nurture or maintain.
Facebook, Twitter, Group Emails, texting and other mass communication and connection vehicles don't preclude anyone also taking that time and focus to develop a few deep friendships, any more than they preclude taking time to read, think, or get comfortable with yourself, alone. But they do throw more potential and tempting distractions in the mix, as well as a slightly guilty feeling that we should be keeping up with all those people. In our increasingly immediate, non-stop society, all of us struggle to find enough time for family and friends. And the more of that already-squeezed time anyone spends maintaining a broad network of Internet, text, Facebook and Twitter friends and updates, the less time and energy they have to devote to any one friend or person. It's just simple math.
Once upon a time, books and conversations were the only distractions we had. We also tended to stay in small, local communities, so we had years to develop ties with one small group of people. Is there a link between our moving away from those communities and the development of more media to assuage the loneliness and distance that ensued? I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me there was. But in any event, the media and distractions came. First radio and movies. Then TV. Then videos. Then video games, the Internet and the cell phone. For the past 50 years, there's been some passive way to avoid facing silence, alone with yourself, if you really wanted to.
At the very least, the increase in connection and distraction possibilities increases the need to make choices among all the options. There is no technology that can speed up the time it takes to have an intimate, personal, and unique conversation with a single friend. But it can increase the number of friends, past and present, with whom I could have those conversations, either via email or just through the reconnection magic of Internet searches. So the temptation is there to become scattered--and in trying to keep up with all, to end up keeping up well with none.
Does that mean that our friendships are in danger of becoming less deep, or that the increased distractions mean we've gotten worse at learning to be alone, in silence? Maybe. But only if we've allowed it. Avoiding scatteredness--in social connections, anyway--is simply a matter of prioritizing and letting go of things that are less important. And getting immersed in distractions is a choice. For those who are afraid of being alone, there have always been distractions. For those of us who recognize the value of silence and deeper connections, I doubt the advent of new technologies will suddenly change our craving for those things.
Indeed, as I've sat in a snow-bound Connecticut house, curled up with a bad cold the past few days, I've remembered again the beauty of a slower pace of living. One that allows for a long chat with an old friend, a well-developed thought, or the joy of spending time over a piece of writing not due two hours later. But I also love being able to keep in frequent touch with lifelong friends who live in Paris, in ways we never would if it took mailing international letters, instead of email, to connect.
As always, it's a matter of balance; of being master of the sorcery at our disposal, instead of letting it master us. Of course, balance itself is a skill that, like being comfortable with solitude or a deep friendship, requires patience, dedicated effort ... and evolves, in most cases, with age, experience, and time.
Photo credit: Cameron Spencer/AFP-Getty Images
Photo credit: Cameron Spencer/AFP-Getty Images
Of all the presents I've ever given, the best reaction, ever, was to a battery-operated toy puppy I gave my three-and-a-half-year-old niece one Christmas. She wasn't quite sure about it until we put it on the floor and sent it off, where it squeaked its way down the hall, stopping every few steps to sit up and bark. Eyes wide as searchlights, she squealed, jumped up and down, and raced down the hall so she could see the puppy coming toward her. She quite literally couldn't contain her excitement. She jumped up and down, squealing, then dropped down on the floor to look eye-to-eye with the puppy, then jumped up again, laughing, squealing and bouncing, more wound up than the toy itself.
I wish I'd had a video camera to record that moment, because one of these years all too soon, moments of such perfect, complete and unadulterated joy will be far harder for her to find. Especially around the holidays.
I'm not sure when, exactly, the shift happens. When we lose that three-year-old ability to just love the moment and not worry about what it isn't, or what it should be. Three year olds don't sing songs of longing at the holidays, about white Christmases or being home, or the kind of Christmas they wish they'd had. So why do the rest of us?
In a New York Times op ed piece about Chrismas songs, musician Michael Feinstein noted how many popular Christmas songs were written by Jewish composers (something he got in trouble for joking about during a performance, wondering aloud whether that meant all the Christian composers were busy writing Hanukah songs). His explanation was "it doesn't take Freud to figure out that the sugarplums, holly and mistletoe all tap into a sense of comfort, longing, security and peace that so many fervently desire; that we all wish the cliches were true."
Perhaps it's an inevitable consequence of developing as a human being--the only member of the animal kingdom with the unique gift and burden of being able to imagine the future and regret the past. That sense of timeline, past and future--including the ability to imagine what doesn't yet exist--is what's given us virtually every new invention since the wheel, of course. But it does have its downsides. When we're small, we are more like a puppy--happy or sad in the moment, oblivious to the past and future. But as we develop and grow, we get a better sense of timeline. And with it, our ability to let go of all that isn't, wasn't or might be, and just be in the moment, diminishes.
Added to that, of course, are the fantasy images of a picture-perfect holiday (as in, only in pictures) that come at us in ads, television shows and movies. A happy Christmas holiday must involve big fireplaces, perfectly trimmed Christmas trees, formal dress parties, eggnog, romance, perfectly behaved and loving families, and Christmas card moments all day long. I'm not referring to the oft-criticized "overcommercialization" of the holidays--just the image we succumb to of what "happy" or "perfect" means.
The ironic piece of that perfection is that if we actually found ourselves in the middle of one of those scenes, where every decoration and package and piece of clothing was just like the movies, we'd probably be in the midst of an extraordinarily rigid and dysfunctional family, where image was far more important than substance, and a hair out of line was cause for critique. A friend of mine talks about the "rules" his family had for wrapping Christmas presents, which included having to use double-sided tape so no tape showed to mess the perfection of the wrapping. Somehow "joy" doesn't seem likely to erupt in such a scripted and scheduled environment.
So do Jews or other non-Christians get a pass on all this baggage? If so, it might be reason enough to convert. "Nah," a Jewish friend of mine told me. "I think all that expectation stuff bubbles to the surface any time families get together, no matter what the holiday is. I also think it's a matter of exclusion and inclusion. I used to get the Christmas blues about not having that kind of perfect Christmas family gathering, because we didn't celebrate Christmas." I told him not to worry--we Christians weren't having that perfect Christmas family gathering, either.
So what's to be done about all that expectation and baggage? How do we let go of all the regrets, longings and hopes of perfection, and regain that Christmas Present happiness kids do so well? One way, of course, is deprivation. Nothing like having everything taken away to clarify the things that really matter. When I was 20 years old, I was in a near-fatal car accident in New Zealand at the beginning of December. I'd already been away for six months, and I was determined to recover enough to be allowed to travel home in time for Christmas. When I arrived at immigration control in the U.S., December 23rd, I presented my passport to the official. He looked at my bandaged head and asked what had happened. I told him, and he winced. Handing my passport back to me, he held my eyes for a moment. "Welcome Home," he said quietly. Home. I'd actually made it home. After holding tough for weeks, I burst into tears.
That same understanding of what perfection really is would be well understood by every American service person serving right now in Iraq or Afghanistan, far away from comfort, family, or safety. Give them a simple hug from their loved ones, in person, on Christmas morning, and they, too, would be filled with perfect, unadulterated joy.
So perhaps it's just a matter of perspective. Kids have the advantage of a perspective uncluttered by time, loss, or experience. All they have is short-term memory. The rest of us have to contend with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Future, Imagined and Regretted. But it's possible to beat all that back, as anyone who's been in combat or on the edge of life and death can tell you. It just takes a little more work. But that's where nieces, nephews, kids and grandkids come into play. Like a million Ghosts of Christmas Present, they remind us that life is in the moment and that perfection doesn't require snowfall, decorations, or a Hollywood ending. It can be found anywhere, anytime, and in something as small and simple as a battery-powered puppy that elicits squeals of joy.
Note: I'll be offline for the next two weeks. See you in the new year.
For the most part, I've been watching the unfolding drama surrounding Tiger Woods with a bit of detachment. I am, to be sure, exceedingly glad that I'm not his wife. But, still. A professional athlete being unfaithful to their spouse is not exactly new news, any more than a politician cheating on their spouse is.
But I'm perplexed and intrigued with a particular theme that's emerged out of the sports and publicity punditry over the past few days, which follows the lines of a "Sports of the Times" column by William Rhoden on Sunday. What Tiger needs to do to repair his reputation, the argument goes, is to make a public statement and apology. "We need to see Woods," Rhoden argues.
Woods has apologized publicly already, in print statements. But apparently that's not enough. No, to earn forgiveness, he apparently has to stand in front of lights and cameras, humble, shamed, and apologizing to...and that's where I get puzzled. To whom is this public apology supposed to be directed? And to what end?
One could argue that an elected governor of South Carolina who disappears off the job to South America for five days--without telling anyone where he's going--in order to have a liaison with his mistress, owes the public that elected him and entrusted him with the responsible governance of their state a correspondingly public apology. Of course, one could also argue that the extremely public news conference that ensued gave us way more information than we really needed or wanted about the whole mess. It also, by the way, did very little to repair or burnish the governor's reputation. But Tiger Woods wasn't elected to manage a constituency, enact responsible legislation, or rule over the public's lives. He plays golf. Exceedingly, phenomenally well, as it happens. Which is the primary reason so many people were attracted to any tournament in which he was playing. And because he plays so well, and because we tend to glorify sports champions, he was able to parlay that talent and success into $100 million a year in sponsorships and product endorsements.
Woods clearly owes an apology--and more--to his wife and family. And to the extent that those $100 million worth of product endorsement deals were dependent on his image as a trustworthy image of responsibility and purity, his marketability in that role will now diminish dramatically, along with his paychecks. If we feel there must be consequences for his behavior, the market--and I'm sure his wife--are imposing them already. As far as I'm concerned, we're square.
But this idea that the public will somehow forgive him and he can mend his image if--and only if--he submits to the humiliation of a public apology in front of lights and cameras, intrigues me. That argument implies that there is an accepted ritual of forgiveness we require any public figure, regardless of why they're a public figure, to go through for absolution.
We need to know he's sorry, the argument goes. Well, he's already said he's sorry. And he's already reaping a wave of negative consequences for his actions. For his family, words are too easy, and meaningless unless he does the work to make sure he doesn't hurt them like that again. And that work, if he chooses to undertake it, requires very difficult and private effort and time, away from the cameras.
But for the rest of us, it's worth asking--first, why we feel entitled to a public apology, and second, what more, exactly, would standing in front of the cameras do?
In many ways, the demand for a public, in-front-of-the-cameras apology has the feel of a primitive ritual punishment for breaking a societal more. The modern-day equivalent of being put in stocks in the town square, scarlet letter "A" emblazoned on his chest. So perhaps, for all our modern views on love, sex and marriage, we're not all that modern, on the inside. Do we still believe that adulterers should pay a price of public humiliation? Or does that impulse stem instead from conflicted desires and emotions we have regarding celebrities?
Certainly, we seem to relish taking down celebrities as much as we relish creating them in the first place. We love to look up to people, and yet we also love to prove that they're really no better than we are. We also infuse celebrities with an awful lot of our own baggage, in terms of dreams and beliefs and desires. George Clooney is the perfect man we all want to believe is out there somewhere. Barack Obama is going to make everything all right. If the Patriots win the Super Bowl and we're on their side, it proves we're a little bigger, too.
We build celebrities--actors, politicians, sports figures alike--into our best fantasies of whatever it is we choose to see in them. We take the public pieces we see and fill in the blanks as we wish. But if that celebrity then bursts that bubble we put them in, by policy decision or action, we react with anger, even if they never said they were the figure we made them out to be. If they benefited in any way from the fantasy, all the worse. So perhaps at least a piece of the public indignation, and desire for public humiliation on Woods's part, comes out of our own embarrassment of feeling somehow duped. Even if we built the fantasy ourselves. But do celebrities really owe us an apology for not turning out to be what we imagined they were?
If anyone had a perfect man fantasy about Tiger Woods, that image is shattered forever, no matter what he does now. Whatever value he has going forward will probably be based on more realistic traits: his golf skills, which will undoubtedly remain prodigious, and a more tempered image of a flawed man going on with whatever wisdom, learning or lack thereof he acquires throughout this process. And that second part will take a while to evolve and emerge. What will repair Tiger Woods's image, to whatever balance point that emerges, is time. Time, and a lifetime of future actions against which to balance the past.
Perhaps, as Rhoden suggests, Woods's absence from the cameras is a misjudged strategy for image manipulation. But perhaps he and his handlers understand the need for time and growth, and how little, against that reality, a public appearance would really do. Or perhaps, in the end, Woods cares less about our desires, and even his potential public image, than he does about his and his family's desire for privacy right now. Hard to believe about a celebrity, I know, but it's possible.
Sure, the media wants to see a public apology. Perhaps the public does, too. But that doesn't necessarily mean we're entitled to it. Or that our motives don't bear a bit of scrutiny themselves. As David Brooks just wrote, "Each person is part angel, part devil. Life is a struggle to push back against the evils of the world without succumbing to the passions of the beast lurking inside." Which is to say, why we wish to see Woods publicly and visually humbled is at last as worthy a question as why a golf icon was so careless and thoughtless with his family and his image in the first place.
Photo Credit: keith allison/wikimedia commons; wikimedia commons
Like many people (including my Atlantic colleague Jim Fallows), when I first heard about Northwest Airlines Flight 188 going radio silent for 75 minutes and overshooting its destination by 150 miles in October, I figured the pilots must have fallen asleep. As a pilot myself, I could think of no other conceivable reason for such a jaw-dropping lapse in pilot performance. And like Fallows, I, too, reacted with disbelief when the pilots said they had simply been too absorbed with company scheduling issues on their laptop computers. For over an hour?? With absolutely zero thought to where the heck are we?? In subsequent conversations with airline pilots I know, I discovered that to those who fly the line, it's not inconceivable. Just appalling. Suffice it to say that there are apparently a few other pilots out there whose sense of professionalism is noticeably and irritatingly lacking. And while pilots usually try to cut each other a little slack, especially from critiques outside the industry, I've only received one email from an airline pilot defending the actions of the Northwest crew. The rest ran along the lines of "they should be stripped of their ratings and pensions and never be allowed to fly an airplane again. Period."
The FAA agreed, revoking the pilots' certificates within days of the event. The reason all this is noteworthy again is that the pilots are currently in the process of appealing those revocations. And in statements to the FAA released Monday, they tried to shift the blame onto the air traffic controllers who failed to get in touch with them, saying that failures by the air traffic controllers that were "a causal or contributing factor in the incident."
I'm not sure which is more outrageous, actually. To get so engrossed in your personal priorities that you don't bother to ask, "gee, why is Center not calling us," or glance at any of the navigation screens that show you fast approaching your destination, or notice any of the eight separate text messages your own dispatchers have sent you, accompanied by warning lights ... in short, to not think for even one minute about actually flying the airplane ... or to try to blame it on controllers who didn't manage to yell at you loudly enough to get your distracted attention.
It is drilled into every pilot, from the earliest days of their flight training, that the pilot in command is just that: the person who holds final responsibility and accountability for the safe outcome of every flight. If you're flying in busy airspace, in clouds, or at altitudes where the airlines cruise, there are rules that say you have to be in contact with controllers and on a flight plan, at all times. If a controller says you need to do something, in most cases, you should do it. But the pilot retains final responsibility and say over the operation of the aircraft--as it should be. After all, as pilots are fond of saying, the furthest a controller can fall is the 18 inches from their chair to the floor.
If a pilot doesn't feel they can safely execute a controller's request, the simple response "unable" trumps the controller's direction. If worse comes to worst, a pilot can simply declare an emergency and do whatever is necessary to save the airplane and sort the details out on the ground. So blaming the controllers for not doing a better job at getting you to do your job is an even flimsier excuse than saying "the dog ate my homework" or "Johnny made me do it."
Controllers can make mistakes, of course, and from reading the transcripts of the air traffic control communications related to that flight, it seems as if there might have been room for improvement. Not in getting the attention of the Northwest pilots (one controller tried to contact the pilots more than a dozen times), but in realizing that a potentially serious situation, with potentially serious security concerns, was unfolding before them.
In the years since the attacks of 9/11, any number of small airplane pilots who strayed out of approved flight paths or airspace have found themselves eye to eye with pilots in military aircraft and helicopters, signaling stern orders to follow them to an airport and land NOW. This, mind you, for little training aircraft that weigh less than a Honda Civic and could probably do less damage. Yet an airliner with the fuel and mass to really do damage goes radio silent for over an hour, and cruises right past its destination, and nobody moved to intercept it--at least in part because controllers were slow to process what was going on and notify the appropriate agencies.
A mismanaged shift change in Denver may account for some of the delay. And in all fairness, the controllers after that assumed a benign explanation: that the flight had simply lost its radios and was unable to talk to anyone. So they treated it as such. And that kind of thing does happen. But the transcripts also show confusion among controllers about what was really going on and what to do about it. The same kind of confusion that the transcripts of controllers on 9/11 showed. Where are they? Are you talking to them? Can you get someone to try to reach them? Did someone call their company dispatchers?
Of course, the airliner had not departed from its flight path, or shown erratic behavior that would have raised more alarm. And enough little glitches happen in air traffic control communications that controllers are not trigger-loaded to ring alarm bells at the first sign of something amiss. But, still. The Commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command is not pleased.
It's been said that the attacks of 9/11 succeeded due to a lack of imagination on our part. We simply couldn't conceive of hijackers using box cutters to take over airplanes and fly them into buildings. And perhaps the controllers working with Flight 188 had, thankfully, gotten so used to safe skies again that they assumed a lack of contact from an airliner meant an inoperable radio rather than imagining something more serious.
So I hope controllers are getting a refresher course on the importance of better coordination, keeping alert for anomalies, and and questioning all the possible reasons a problem might be occurring. But for the Northwest crew to blame the controllers for not preventing their own transgressions is, as Jim Fallows said of the transgressions themselves, beyond the pale.
I'm guessing that the pilots are following the advice of their lawyers, who are trying to find any and all angles out of a thin list of possibilities that might get their clients off the hook. But ever since the first officer confidently told the press that the passengers were in no danger at any time, the crew has shown an appalling lack of awareness of just how egregious their sins were. What if the flight had been intercepted, as it perhaps should have been? Not to mention multiple other hazards that come with having a flight crew so detached from what's going on in the cockpit.
Perhaps it's asking too much to expect pilots who thought so little of their professional responsibilities in the first place to step up and take professional, mature responsibility for their failures. And the idea of minimizing their professional and legal exposure and cost is surely a tempting one. But redemption doesn't come as easily as a legal victory. And it surely doesn't come from blaming someone else for your own mistakes.
(Photo: Flickr/Dave Heuts)
Lane Wallace
