For the week of December 24 - 30, 2003

Reality and
rude awakenings

Commentary by Pat Murphy

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Because most Americans by nature are idealists and so accepting, rude awakenings can be painfully disillusioning.

We saw this in genteel members of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond’s family of dyed-in-the-wool South Carolina aristocrats, who confessed to shock and shame by disclosures that Thurmond had sired a mixed-race daughter with a black housemaid in his youth nearly 80 years ago

As one of the 20th century’s most rabid racial segregationists as the 1948 presidential candidate of the Dixiecrat’s States’ Rights Party and dead-set against integrating the races, Thurmond’s lifelong hypocrisy was that he had engaged in the most intimate form of racial integration, then promoted himself with voters as an enemy of mixing the races, notwithstanding his late-life conversion to racial tolerance.

The Catholic Church’s faithful still are angry and disillusioned by conduct of hundreds of U.S. priests who denounced sin and human corruption from the pulpit while engaging in criminal sexual molestations on children. Protestants had their own salacious charlatans—the Rev. Jimmy Swaggert, caught twice with prostitutes in motels, and Rev. Jim Bakker, a mega swindler and adulterer who went to prison, to name two.

United Way of America, the ultimate do-good charity, still is trying to recover its soiled reputation after Executive Director William Aramony’s theft of millions of dollars for jet-set vacations and gifts for a girlfriend.

Lemming-like followers of radio demagogue Rush Limbaugh are scrambling for excuses for their idol, since the no-nonsense hardliner against illegal drug users disillusioned them with revelations of his own drug addiction. Now, like some "liberals" he despises, Limbaugh is complaining he may be the victim of political prosecution. A left-wing conspiracy maybe?

No less disillusioning has been President Bush’s sharp 180-degree turn away from the conservative article of faith—balanced budgets—that leaves true-blue fiscal hawks with that empty feeling.

Richard Nixon stunned his doctrinaire anti-communist followers by making peace with the Red tyrants of mainland China.

The Camelot idyll of John Kennedy’s presidency was forever shattered by revelations he was carrying on adulterously in the White House with mobster Sam Giancana’s moll, Judith Exner.

Young reporter Jason Blair’s serial plagiarizing and fictionalizing of his news stories toppled senior editors of The New York Times from their roosts and left the staff disillusioned about management’s judgment.

This is the age of disillusionment, sparing no one pain.

For tens of thousands of Americans laid off from jobs being "outsourced" to cheaper wages overseas, theirs is the final disenchantment.

"Sorry, Jones," might’ve been a supervisor’s opening gambit to bad news. "We have to let you and others go. We appreciate your loyalty, hard work and years of service when times were tough. But the boss says we need to keep investors happy with higher profits.

"So we’re sending your job to China to cut expenses.

"You may be out of work. But look at the bright side: your sacrifice helps keep free enterprise alive and helps a poor Chinese worker."

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.