Talking Back to the Recorded Message: Authority

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“The gods I worshipped demanded the dance of death. I had no other choice . . . .”—Adolf Eichmann 

“Galileo’s raised middle finger points at the Vatican.”—The Wordspinner

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—10/24/11—Perhaps because I grew up under the heavy hand of a military father, I had a hard time disciplining my own children, for I often found it easier to do their chores than raise my voice. Dad struck me a few times, but he usually didn’t need force: his Gorgonian stare could turn the contents of my stomach to stone. I’m sure that look of menacing authority served him well leading 660 combat engineers across Germany in 1945, for he did not lose a single man in the conflict which claimed fifty-five million lives. But if fear is the primary emotion associated with a parent, what does that portend for the commonwealth? In my case, it has meant that my father and I are civil, but we don’t fish, travel, or golf together either; never have.

Underused power, on the other hand, is as bad as that which is overused. I recall reading a newspaper account of a mother and her sickly daughter riding a Chicago city bus. Though the girl was wearing a pacemaker, it did not prevent her from having a massive heart attack. Knowing the downtown area well, the mother begged the driver to take them to a hospital which was only a block away. The shaken driver said he was sorry, but the rules did not allow any deviation from his route. At the next scheduled stop, he let his frantic passenger and her daughter off. A man who’d been waiting for the bus quickly appraised the situation and volunteered to carry the 90-pound, unconscious girl to the hospital. He made it, but it was too late to save her. In the movies, the Samaritan would have commandeered the bus and saved the girl’s life, but reality often wears a different face. The frightened bus driver was so policy-bound he could not see the forest for the rules.

In Philip Roth’s short story, “The Conversion of the Jews,” Rabbi Binder is also bound by policy, but he uses his authority very differently. When Ozzie, a bar mitzvah student, challenges 3,000 years of Jewish belief, Binder strikes him. Bleeding from his nose, Ozzie races to the roof and threatens to jump unless his teacher and his screaming classmates below agree to consider that the ancient beliefs might be wrong. I’ll never forget a sophomore saying in a discussion of the story, “I’d let my kid jump before I swore allegiance to anyone but Jesus.” This 20-year-old, who missed Roth’s ecumenical point, had all the earmarks of the policy-bound adult she was on the brink of becoming.

Rather than have a dead child on his hands, Roth’s rabbi “converted” to Christianity, but forced conversions are the wooden nickels of faith. Nevertheless, children do possess a moral authority disproportionate to their intellectual and physical development.

Recently, a neighbor opened her door to a peddler of some “miracle cleaner.” You should know that this woman is raising four small children almost single-handedly while her husband is serving in Iraq as a translator for a private contractor. Over the last five years, he’s been home five months. When the doorbell rang, all the children ran outside to see who was there. The peddler, nervous in the sudden mob, pushed Michael, the six-year-old “man of the family,” away and, in doing so, accidentally marked his T-shirt with some green ink he’d intended to use in a demonstration of his “miracle.” While the mother went to the telephone, Michael said, “I think you should leave now,” and the peddler did.

Later, the mother said she felt sorry for the salesman as he slouched off to the house next door, for the mercantile spirit had left him. Only the sadist enjoys humiliation, whether it’s deserved or not.

My uncle liked to tell of the time he watched my father, a full-bird colonel, being “chewed out” by a staff sergeant. Uncle Bob was an 18-year-old airman stationed at Ft. Benning while my 40-year-old father was there trying to win his “jump wings.” One day, Bob took some time off from his round of deliveries to see if he could spot his brother-in-law in the new class of trainees jumping from various platforms into the sawdust pit. As luck would have it, Bob witnessed Dad violating the rule of looking down before landing. That’s when the fire-plug of a jumpmaster attacked Dad in a spray of saliva. Bob thought the scene was hilarious, but I’ve always felt sorry for my old man.

In too many instances, especially after he retired, Dad was humbled by my Mother. On one occasion, she had bought a clematis vine and wanted it planted next to the mailbox to beautify the support. For Dad, who was in his 80s, this meant a long, uphill hike to fetch a shovel, so he was arguing for another location near the back porch, “where we can see and enjoy it.” They went back and forth several times, until Mother, pointing at the mailbox, said, “Butch, dig a hole!” Dad knew he was licked and, as he walked to the garden shed, he looked like a veteran soccer player being sent off with a red card in front of his fans.

But honestly, I cannot figure myself out sometimes. One minute I’m against all authority, and the next, I’m feeling sorry for the cock of the walk that’s been bumped from the roost.

My old boss, Dean Morris Cox, handled disrespect as well as anyone I’ve ever seen. When the summer softball league opened, he was invited to play with a group of his faculty. Trouble was, he’d never played softball, but he had donated $100 for bats and balls. On opening day, he arrived wearing Bermuda shorts, black nylon socks, and golf spikes. Unceremoniously, an 18-year-old umpire ejected him from the game before he hurt someone. Quietly, Morris left, but returned a few minutes later in tennis shoes, and the manager immediately put him in the line-up. The freshman umpire wasn’t General MacArthur telling the Emperor of Japan he was no longer a god, but it was close. Both the dean and the emperor handled public humiliation with admirable aplomb.

Some libertarians have argued that each of us, regardless of our authority, deserves a personal veto. I would not go to that extreme because I’ve long admired the moderate position Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas staked out: “I am a man of the law. . . . But had I lived in Germany in Hitler’s days, I hope I would have refused to wear an armband, to Heil Hitler, [and] to submit to genocide. This I hope, although Hitler’s edicts were law . . . .”

In a nutshell, I’d break ranks and dodge the cannonball I saw coming my way while harboring the greatest respect for those who stood there and took it. Lucky for me, I wasn’t at Waterloo.