Watching Dick Clark

I haven’t watched the ball drop on New Year’s Eve in a long time. It might have been sometime back in the 20th century. Although when I was in college, I remember staying up to see the new year arrive not just in Times Square, but in Chicago too; these days I’m usually in bed before the new year is even official in Nova Scotia.

Which brings us to another New Year’s Eve tradition: Dick Clark.

When Dick Clark first gave us New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in 1972, it was as an alternative to Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians, the band for “old people,” playing Auld Lang Syne. It was a New Year’s Eve celebration for us young people. Well, now, 38 years later, we’ve become the old people, and quite frankly, we wouldn’t mind a bit of Lombardo, when you consider what popular music sounds like today.

But that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Dick Clark is famously known as “the world’s oldest teenager,” and with a nod to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, many of us surmised that there was a painting hidden in his attic that had seen better days. However, his 2004 stroke may have changed the state of the painting, as he finally began to show his age, and it’s been painful for many of us to watch. In fact, I’ve heard people even mention feeling guilty about watching Dick Clark struggle to get through what used to seem to come so easily for him.

I thought about this a bit, and considered that after more than 30 years as host of American Bandstand, he had decided that it was time to step down and have a younger person host the show – a show that was aimed at young people. Knowing that, it just seemed natural that rather than wanting to become Guy Lombardo, he would realize that at some point he should step down for a younger host. And perhaps he had thought that…before the stroke. But the stroke became a game changer.

Before the stroke, he could simply have announced his retirement, done one last ball drop, and all would’ve been well. After the stroke, everything was different. Now, despite any plans he may have had before, he had to come back next year, just to show that he could do it. And so he does, and so he will…until the day he dies on-camera doing the countdown to the new year. And it’s painful for all of us who stay up late enough to watch.

But there are two other perspectives that I hadn’t considered. The first is the amount of encouragement his post-stroke appearances have provided for other stroke survivors. The second is how much being there on New Year’s Eve means to him personally; he said that he wouldn’t have missed the countdown to 2006 for the world.

There’s one more thing that I hadn’t thought of until just now. Maybe he understands that he has become Guy Lombardo, and not only accepts it, but is proud of it. After all, even though he may not have been cool to us kids, for decades Lombardo was synonymous with New Year’s Eve.

To his credit, Dick Clark has handed off most of the hosting duties to Ryan Seacrest (who I hope will pass it along to someone else before he hits 60), and has pretty much become the voice and face of the midnight countdown; making him our generation’s Ben Grauer.

So rather than feeling guilty or uncomfortable about watching him, or wishing that he’d take himself off the air, let’s wish him many more happy countdowns.

Of course, they’ll still all be way past my bedtime.

Have Yourself An OK Little Christmas

Last week I was talking to a friend of mine about how she had always been trying to create the "perfect Christmas" for her and her family, and seemed, to her mind, to be failing at it every time. She could never quite get the magic that she remembered from her childhood and when her now-grown children were younger.

This reminded me of a clip from The Daily Show that my daughter Devra showed me. It was called Even Better Than The Real Thing, and was all about how all these pundits are saying that things were better back in the 80s, the 70s, the 60s, the 50s, the 40s, etc, but when people who actually lived as adults through those eras were interviewed, they told about how many things were wrong back in "the good old days," and that there never was any "golden age" when everything was perfect.

The conclusion that the correspondent for the piece came to was that each of the pundits who referred to a particular time as one when things were "better" was referring to the time when they were kids, and didn't know or have to know all of the gritty stuff that was going on in the larger world around them. So of course things seemed better to them.

So what does this have to do with the price of a bagel in Brooklyn?

When we think of our "perfect Christmases," we almost never remember the ones we had as adults. It's the memories we have from childhood, when we didn't have to do any of the preparation; when Christmas, along with all the presents, all the relatives, and all the food, just sort of magically appeared in front of us, and we participated without really having to help create it. That's why, as adults, the magic seems to fade, and we can't quite get the perfect Christmas anymore...because now we're the ones doing the work behind the scenes to create what will become someone else's memory of a perfect Christmas.

So to all of you and especially my friend, I say, sit back, relax, don't stress yourself out. Don't worry about having or creating a perfect Christmas. Instead, let yourself have an OK one. I'm betting that you'll feel a lot better about it.

The Milgram Effect

Two weeks ago I talked about unspeakable things. That is, I talked about people who insist on going into the gory details of what I would consider to be unspeakable things. I expected some responses to that, and I was not disappointed.

I didn’t have “time” to distinguish between the types of situations where people might feel obligated to give the gruesome details, and I also didn’t have the time to connect them with what I call the “Milgram Effect.” I’ll do that this week.

I’ve mentioned the Milgram Experiment before, in my entry on “obedience to authority,” but in case you’ve forgotten, let me recap for you:

In response to the recent war crimes trial of Adolph Eichmann, Yale Psychology professor Stanley Milgram set up an experiment in which he told volunteers that he was testing the effect of electrical shocks on memory. In reality, his goal was to test people’s obedience to authority, even when what they were being asked to do went against their personal morals.

In the original 1961 experiments, only 35% of the volunteers refused to continue administering the shocks (which unbeknownst to them, were fake) after the person in the other room started screaming, while 65% went on to the final 450-volt shock.

Ironically, after he saw how disturbed the first batch of volunteers were at finding what horrible things they were capable of doing, Milgram continued running the experiment with more people; obeying the “authority” of academic inquiry, rather than saying “enough already” to human suffering; and in the TV movie version of this, once he realized what he had done, Milgram was quite distraught.

So what does this have to do with the workshop I went to? It depends on the reason why the speaker decided to take us all the way to “level 11” in hearing the horrible details of what was going on in the Congo.

If the speaker’s goal was simply to educate us as to the horrors going on there, then that goal could’ve been reached by simply telling us that women were being sexually tortured in unspeakable ways, and not citing chapter and bloody verse, while we sat there, flinching, unable to leave, and unable to stop ourselves from hearing.

Instead, the speaker ended up doing a Milgram on us; continuing to “run the experiment,” and giving us more details, despite seeing the obvious pain of the audience, and the person doing the reading. The speaker went all the way to that last 450-volt shock, by forcing us to hear details that 99% of us never need to hear.

The first one or two shocks would’ve been enough for most of us. But according to the people who replied to me, there is a group of people who definitely need that last 450-volt shock, and maybe even higher ones, administered. These people are what we would call “The Deniers.” These are the people who either deny that the Holocaust happened or that it was really that bad. These are the people who make the same denials about other documented and unspeakable cases of man’s inhumanity to man.

Clearly, to a denier, you have to provide all the gory, disgusting, graphic, unspeakable information, not giving them a moment to flinch; in order to make it clear to them that these things did and do happen. But is everyone a denier? By no means, and the people in the workshop that day were not a bunch deniers.

How would I have reacted had I been chosen to read those passages that day? I've thought about this a bit, and I’d like to think that after the second sentence, I’d have to stop and say that I could not and would not read any more to the audience, citing the Milgram experiments on obedience to authority, and not inflicting more pain as my reason.

I’d like to think that, but maybe I would “simply follow orders,” and keep reading too.

And I wouldn’t like myself very much when I realized what I’d done.

Unspeakable Things

My wife’s family plays a game that I call “One More Terrible Thing.” It’s not really a game at all, but when the family gets together, talk will inevitably turn to some horrible news story that one of them read or heard about, and then that will remind Cousin Jane about some other tragedy that she now has to talk about, and that will remind Uncle Bob about a horrible thing that he has to tell everyone; and it all goes on in a tragic version of “Can You Top This?”

When the game starts, I leave the room. The tragedies I know about, I prefer to keep to myself; and I don’t want to add any new ones to anyone’s collection.

Why? Have you ever heard the old saying that if I have a good idea and I tell it to you, then we both have a good idea? It means that telling that good idea spreads it. Well, similarly, I believe that the same thing applies to misery; and that spreading a tragic story that you have no real connection to, merely spreads the pain. Why should I tell you about a horrible thing that happened to a friend of mine in Minnesota, just to “make conversation?” Why should I add her misery to what you already have on your plate, and then have you spread it later on to some other totally unrelated person.

Maybe I’m just too sensitive a person, but I really believe in spreading no more misery than is absolutely necessary.

Which brings us to the workshop.

A while ago I was at a workshop in which the speaker asked one of the attendees to read few passages to the audience from a book that described in gruesome detail some of the unspeakably horrible things that are being done by both sides to women in the Congo in the midst of war.

As I sat there listening to a game of “one more terrible thing” that would make my wife’s family sound like pathetic amateurs, I wondered just how much of this detail was necessary for us to hear in order for the speaker to make her point, and spur us to want to change the situation. At what point did it become overkill, making some of us think, “Just kill them all and let God sort them out,” or even to question God’s existence in the first place? And not to try to make our discomfort seem at all equal to the very real pain of the people we were being told about, did giving us all of the gory details simply end up spreading the misery further?

You will notice that I mentioned “unspeakably horrible things” that were being done. I didn’t give you the details, because to my mind, just that phrase should be enough to make you wince at what the possibilities could be, without putting actual images in your head that can never be erased.

I also used that phrase because the things that were read to us that day were indeed unspeakably horrible. As I posted on Facebook later on that day, “We need to know that the Holocaust happened, we don’t all need to know every gruesome detail of what the Nazis did.” To force people to see and hear every detail of what was done is to spread the pain that they inflicted even further.

I believe that there are some evils that should remain unspeakable, unless you have specifically asked for the information, or have a real need for it. I have heard more than I needed to know, and starting with me, it will become unspeakable, so that I don’t spread the pain any further.

And yet, it remains that something does need to be done about the situation in the Congo.

Peanuts and Prayer

I don’t much read Peanuts anymore. All the strips that are in the paper now are ones that I likely read either when they first came out or in collections as a kid. Actually, I don’t much read the comics anymore. But every Sunday, when I gut the paper for coupons for Sofie to cut out, I have to pass by the comics section, and there, right on the front page, is Peanuts. And I always check to see if it’s a strip that I remember.

This past Sunday’s was a reprint from November 3rd, 1963. It’s not one I remembered reading before, but when I saw it, I immediately called Cheryl into the room.

“You have to read this,” I said. “And then I’ll explain it to you.”

If the link I put in to the strip isn’t working, let me summarize it for you. Sally Brown comes up behind her brother, who’s watching TV, and nonchalantly says, “Guess what?” After Charlie Brown takes the bait and asks “What?” she carefully looks around the house, and takes him to a spot where she’s sure that no one will hear her, and says, “We prayed in school today.”

Then I explained to Cheryl that she was to young to remember, since she didn’t start school until 1967, but I remembered school prayer, and it wasn’t as simple and innocuous as everyone thinks it was. At least not at Ashland School, in East Orange, NJ. It wasn’t a simple case of saying a little prayer at the beginning of the day; I remember the day in Mrs Celmar’s 1st grade classroom starting with the Pledge of Allegiance, a reading from the Psalms, and the Lord’s Prayer. And this was a scene that was repeated in all four sections of every grade from K-8.

That is, until the famous Supreme Court decision of June 1963 that “banned prayer from public schools.”

Someone once said that as long as there are algebra tests, there will be prayer in school.

The decision in Abington School District v Schempp did not ban prayer from public schools. What it banned were the religious exercises like the one I described at Ashland School. It banned them as mandatory, official activities of the school.

Those of you who know me, know that I’m a religious person, and you know something? Based on what I remember, and from what I’ve found out from researching this, the Supreme Court made the right decision. A simple non-denominational prayer, a simple moment of silence, would’ve been one thing; but requiring all students to take part in a religious exercise that may not even be a part of their religion is another.

And here’s the kicker. Whenever this issue comes up, everyone always thinks of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the famous atheist. But the original plaintiff in this suit, before his case was combined with hers, was Edward Schempp, a Unitarian-Universalist, who claimed that the daily religious exercises in the schools his children attended, violated their family’s religious beliefs. Schempp felt that it wasn’t enough for his children to be allowed to leave the room during the religious exercises, because being the ones who left, being the different ones, might make them targets for bullying.

In fact, O’Hair said that her son’s refusal to take part in the classroom religious exercises resulted in bullying being directed at him by his classmates. Bullying which school officials seemed to condone.

Being bullied for being different is something that we’ve gained increased sensitivity to over the past few years.

So go on, pray when you realize that there’s a test next period that you haven’t studied for. Pray that the cute little red-haired girl over there will go to the Homecoming Dance with you. Pray that when the principal calls you down to his office, it’s for a good reason and not a bad one. You can even pray for the victims of the most recent tragedy or disaster (and there seem to be far too many of those). It’s all OK. You can do this in public school. What the Supreme Court banned almost 50 years ago was the kind of coercive, mandatory prayer that I remember. And it’s a good thing.

I just pray that everyone else understands this.

Felony Insensitivity

Many years ago, a friend of mine came up with the term felony stupidity to describe certain incidents of what we call “date rape.” I liked his terminology because it implied no evil intent upon the perpetrator, but instead, that he got himself into a situation where he did something stupid with very bad consequences.

I like to think of the term felony stupidity as also applying to those cases where kids out on a lark drop water balloons, pumpkins, or even bricks, from highway overpasses onto the cars below. I’ve seen what a water balloon dropped from a 10th story dorm room can do to a car’s windshield, so I don’t even want to think about what a pumpkin or a brick could do. Did you ever wonder why so many pedestrian overpasses have chain link fencing to a good arms-length height above?

Once again, we have cases of people with no evil intent doing something stupid, with often tragic results.

And now, with the tragic events at Rutgers last week, I’d like to add another term to the lexicon: felony insensitivity.

Was it truly a hate crime when Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei used a hidden webcam to stream live video of Tyler Clementi having a sexual encounter with another man to the Internet? Did they target him because they knew or suspected that he was gay, or were they just out for a little “fun,” hoping to embarrass him by catching him with anyone, male or female, or maybe even masturbating on camera? Was what they did motivated by hate, by homophobia, or by simple stupidity and insensitivity? Felony stupidity and felony insensitivity?

Does the motivation even matter, as long as one person is dead as a result of these actions?

For that matter, does the person’s orientation really matter in cases like this? I have a dear friend who had intimate video of her copied off of her boyfriend’s computer by his roommate, and then posted to the Internet. Was it any less wrong that this was done to her because she was straight? It might have been less embarrassing, but it definitely wasn’t less wrong. Fortunately she had a good head on her shoulders, and lots of supportive friends, as well as a supportive family; and her body was not found floating in the Hudson River.

It’s worth noting that according to New Jersey law, collecting or viewing sexual images without consent is a 4th-degree crime. Do you hear that? It’s not just a little prank, it’s a crime. Furthermore, transmitting those images is a 3rd-degree crime, with a maximum sentence of five years. These are things that everyone should know before they even open the shrink wrap on their webcam.

Before this story broke, I talked to my 6th, 7th, and 9th grade computer literacy classes about the difference between knowledge and wisdom. We concluded that knowledge is knowing how to do something, while wisdom is knowing whether or not you should use the knowledge you have. I was, however, particularly struck by the definition one young lady gave me when she said that wisdom is knowledge with a conscience.

“Knowledge with a conscience.” This appears to be something that Ravi and Wei didn’t have. They knew how to set up a webcam to spy on the private moments of a fellow student, but they didn’t stop to think that maybe this was something that they shouldn’t do. The conscience seems to have been lacking there.

It is unspeakably tragic that Tyler Clementi gave himself a permanent solution to a temporary problem, because as Ellen DeGeneres said in her widely circulated video statement about this, “Things will get easier, people’s minds will change, and you should be alive to see it.”

In the meantime, it's up to all of us to see to it that there are fewer cases of this kind of felony insensitivity.

Academic Dishonesty

School’s back in session, and it’s time to talk about cheating.

According to recent studies, over 90% of all students admitted to some form of academic dishonesty at one time or another. The educational community is shocked about this. What has happened lately to cause so many students to lose any sense of a moral compass?

However, this isn’t an issue of just recent times. In her book My Freshman Year, author Rebekah Nathan cites figures of 83% for 1993. That’s a significant rise from 1963’s figures of…81%

What’s going on here? Is cheating really rampant enough among our high school and college students for us to be worried about it? Have things gotten totally out of control?

I think it all depends on how you define “academic dishonesty.” Let me tell you a story.

My sophomore year in high school, Mrs Guyre, our English teacher, gave us a vocabulary test every Friday. We didn’t have to be able to spell them right, we just had to be able to define them. She was a new teacher, so she didn’t have her own room. She used the room we had her in just for that one class, then it was off to the next available room. My homeroom was right around the corner from the room we had English in, and one day, just to see what would happen, I put about three or four words, and their definitions, on the far corner of the blackboard.

She never noticed.

This was the beginning of a plan to have someone on the lookout for her every Friday, while I wrote as many words and their definitions on the board as possible before she got there. This went on for weeks, until one day the class got lazy and sloppy.

“Facetious,” Mrs Guyre called out. And as one 28 heads went up and looked to the far corner of the blackboard. She didn’t think anything of it.

“Ostentatious,” she called out. And again, 28 heads went up to check out the words on the board. About four words in, she figured out that something was going on, and then turned around to see the words on the board.

“OK, who did this?” she asked, and 28 fingers pointed in my direction.

“And just how long have you been doing this?”

“Oh…” I said, “about two months.”

She was not happy. Not at all.

What’s my point here? My point is that by our 10th grade standards, we had simply pulled a fast one on the new teacher for two months. We had “gotten over.” I’m willing to bet that none of the 28 of us had ever cheated on a test or paper in the classic sense of cheating, and yet, if you consider the broader term of “academic dishonesty” from an adult’s perspective, that little two-month game we played with Mrs Guyre surely qualified as a case of it.

Do over 90% of all students cheat or otherwise engage in some form of academic dishonesty? You bet they do. In fact I'm betting that most of it involves some form of "getting over" on the teacher like we did with Mrs Guyre.

Did over 90% of us do the same thing when we were their age?

If you’re honest with yourself, you know what the answer is.