ManicDDaily

With All Due Respect, It Just Hurts You

Dear Mr. President,

I don’t blame you for being p—–.  You were down there in the rain.  You were down there before all these talking heads even knew what was going on.  You were down there even before there was a Web cam.

I don’t blame you for being very very frustrated.  People seem to expect that a President, like a king, can cure scrofula with the touch of a hand.  I’m not sure what scrofula is, but you get the point—they seem to think that you have quasi-magical powers, and that any hesitation in the use of this magic is a sign that you just don’t care.

I absolutely believe that you are hopping mad at BP, just as you are hopping mad at NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, CNBC, AP, and practically every single commercial organization out there with a name of three letters or less.  But when your showing pique is actual news, when Brian Williams has to make a televised announcement telling us that your showing anger is what we are about to see (from a clip of an interview with Matt Lauer) then you have just got to accept that the voice of rage does not come readily to you.

Personally, I think that’s fine.   No one ever disparages George Washington for keeping his temper.  Washington himself, in the Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior In Company and Conversation, which he transcribed before the age of 16, set down Rule 45^th, “in reproving Shew no Sign of Cholar but do it with all Sweetness and Mildness.” 

I happen to be someone who shows Choler a fair amount.  But, when I’m in a better mood, I generally understand that anger to be a sign of my immaturity—the ManicDDaily part of me.  I get angry because I want the world and people in it to be different than they are.   But the world is what it is; s— happens; people can be jerks; sometimes, my own anger (as warranted as it is!)  just adds to the general jerkiness of it all.   A few curt admonitions definitely have their place;  still, it’s often more useful to focus on concrete steps than to rant at the nature of nature (human, mechanical, or divine.)

The point is that some people angry are cold, clear, analytical.  (Often such people are mainly angry at themselves–for not predicting jerky people, jerky circumstances.)

I don’t know, Mr. President, if your anger takes you into those cold, clear waters  (the kind we’d really like to protect), but I’m pretty sure it’s not the type of anger that rants about “kicking a–.”  The words are dumb words, and they sound especially dumb coming from you.  They don’t flow from your lips correctly; there’s a stutter, a disconnect, that comes across as forced and petulant.

So, let it go.  Be yourself.  Stop worrying about the anger bit; just keep worrying about the doing bit.