Love is What Matters Most

"If two people really loved each other, they couldn't be separated no matter what happened."--Christopher Tracy, "Under the Cherry Moon"

Money, accomplishments and championships are great but I have learned that without love none of those things matter very much. Love comes in many forms but without love there is no meaning. Last year, I offered this definition of love:  

Love is an easy word to throw around and many people use it far too casually. 

True love is innocent, pure and deep.

True love is based not on how much you can get but how much you can give.

I was searching for something that I thought I had glimpsed and that I hoped existed but that I had not yet experienced--but Julie Sheil has helped me to understand and enjoy love at a level that I could not previously imagine. I have always been driven, self-centered and very narrowly focused on specific, individual goals--but I have learned that life can only be fully appreciated by opening one's heart and mind to a wider perspective that includes another person's dreams, hopes and goals.

I once thought that opening my heart would make me weak, soft and vulnerable, that it would prevent me from reaching my goals--but now I see that the opposite is true: opening my heart frees my mind from irrelevant concerns and provides a serenity that my soul lacked.

The power of love cannot be adequately described by mere words--it is mystical, mysterious, powerful and wonderful, though it can also be overwhelming and frightening. Here is my humble attempt to express the joy and peace that I feel, rendered in the form of an alphabetical acrostic about the most special and most beautiful woman who I have ever met:

Just the prettiest smile in the world, a smile that can light up a room and make my heart sing with joy.

Unique ability to soothe my soul and focus my energies in positive directions.

Lovely, piercing eyes--windows to a fiery, yet caring soul.

Incredible lust for life--you love to learn new things, try new experiences, find out what the world has to offer.

Enormous patience when dealing with the gaps in my knowledge about certain day to day matters.

Caroline Glick Describes Why Barack Obama's Mideast Policy is Misguided

Few writers speak truth to power about the Mideast as clearly and emphatically as Caroline Glick. President Barack Obama's policies vis a vis Israel, Iran and the PLO are misguided and destined to bring misery not just to the Mideast but to the whole world, as Glick masterfully explains in her most recent column. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon has been harshly criticized by the Obama administration for privately expressing grave concerns about U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's bizarre obsession with forcing Israel to make concessions to the PLO but Glick notes that Ya'alon's assessment of Kerry's ignorance about the true nature of the Mideast political situation is echoed even by Israel's Arab enemies; Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab nations are very upset about the United States' reluctance to do anything to stop Iran's rapidly developing nuclear weapons program.

Glick astutely observes that U.S. officials feel free to publicly blast Ya'alon even though they held their tongues not long ago when Saudi Prince Alaweed bin Talal told journalist Jeffrey Greenberg, "There’s no confidence in the Obama administration doing the right thing with Iran. We’re really concerned--Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Middle Eastern countries about this." The Obama administration is not the least bit afraid that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have the courage to challenge their policies and/or speak up in support of Ya'alon; they know that Netanyahu will hang Ya'alon out to dry just like Netanyahu has betrayed the voters who thought that he would uphold the anti-terrorism principles that he espoused for years in his eloquent speeches and books, words that now seem hollow because of his consistent failure to implement them in his policy decisions.

Glick describes why Obama's Mideast policies are viewed with contempt by friend and foe alike:

Syria is a humanitarian and geopolitical nightmare with global implications.

Rather than do everything possible to strengthen moderate forces in Syria, like the Kurds, and cultivate, train and arm regime opponents who can fight both the Assad regime and al-Qaida rebels, Kerry has devoted himself to demanding that Israel release more Palestinian terrorist murderers from prison.

Rather than protect Lebanon from the predations of Iran and Syria to ensure its independence, Kerry is holding marathon meetings with Netanyahu to try to coerce him into helping the PLO build another Jew-free terrorist state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

Rather than try to blunt the growing power of Hezbollah--Iran’s terrorist army--in Syria, the US’s policy is inviting Iran, the party most responsible for the war, to join the phony peacemakers club at Geneva.

As for the rest of the region, from Tunisia to Bahrain, from Egypt and Libya to Iraq, and Yemen, Kerry and the Obama administration as a whole are content to watch on the sidelines as al-Qaida reemerges as a significant force, and as Iran undermines stability in country after country.

Then of course, there is Iran itself, and its nuclear weapons program.

After the six-party nuclear deal with Iran was concluded on Monday, Iran’s leaders declared victory over the US. They boasted that the most dangerous components of their nuclear weapons program are unaffected by the deal they just concluded with the Americans. They laid a wreath on the grave of Hezbollah arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, who masterminded the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 243 US servicemen. And they forced Lebanon’s Sunnis to accept a Hezbollah-dominated government.

Obama administration officials publicly accused Ya'alon and Israel of being "ungrateful" but Glick sets the record straight:

Americans are getting the same message from allies throughout the Middle East. Under Obama, America’s regional policies are so counterproductive that the US has come to be seen as the foreign policy equivalent of a drunk driver.

As the US’s strongest ally, and also as a country that has depended for decades on US support, Israel is a passenger in the back seat of the car. On the one hand, we are happy for the ride. On the other hand, the administration’s driving is endangering our survival.

The United States and the rest of the world will long rue the fact that Barack Obama was granted two terms to misguide U.S. Mideast policy--but Israelis have to hope and pray that their country merely survives long enough to rue that fact, because even though Iran's nuclear program is a global threat it is an existential threat primarily for Israel, a reality that Netanyahuu can ill afford to ignore for much longer. 

Ariel Sharon's Legacy is Tainted by his Abandonment of Fundamental Historical and Legal Principles

Ariel Sharon, who passed away on January 11, 2014 after spending eight years in a coma, was a bold and imaginative military leader who played an essential role in Israel's victories in the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War. During most of his subsequent political career, Sharon strongly supported Israel's right--and need--to maintain control over Judea, Samaria and Gaza, three areas that not only are part of Biblical Israel (and the modern Palestine Mandate) but also essential buffer zones against aggression by Israel's Arab neighbors. Sharon was considered, by allies and enemies alike, as one of the founding fathers of the settler movement; he made his name as a proud advocate of the right of the Jewish people to return to their historic homeland in its entirety and his legacy is largely based on his ideology regarding Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Sharon permanently tarnished that legacy when, as Prime Minister, he betrayed the principles he had spent a lifetime upholding.

Prior to becoming Prime Minister, Sharon understood that language is important and he consistently said that Israel had "liberated" Judea, Samaria and Gaza, even though many people incorrectly insist on calling those territories "occupied." According to international law, Judea, Samaria and Gaza are unallocated portions of the Palestine Mandate. Those who refer to Israel as an "illegal occupier" are misinterpreting and/or misunderstanding international law.

Israel has a strong claim to Judea, Samaria and Gaza based on a host of international legal documents, including the Palestine Mandate and the Balfour Declaration, but even if one disregards those historical/legal precedents it is important to remember that Jordan and Egypt used Judea/Samaria and Gaza respectively as staging grounds for wars of aggression against Israel (and, prior to those wars, those countries used those territories as staging grounds for terrorist attacks against Israel).

Israel's policies of appeasement--and the attitude of large segments of the international political and media communities--make no sense, because instead of Israel begging that the Arab countries recognize her right to exist (a right that every other country in the world correctly takes for granted) in exchange for receiving land that had been used as staging grounds for anti-Israel aggression Israel should have been asking for reparations as the victim of unprovoked attacks. If Canada attacked the northern United States and the United States responded by capturing Quebec one can rest assured that the United States would not return Quebec in exchange for Canadian recognition of the United States' right to exist--and even that analogy does not go far enough, because in that scenario the United States' only claim to Quebec would be that Quebec had been used as a staging ground for an aggressive war, while in contrast Israel's valid claim to Judea, Samaria and Gaza predates the repeated Arab attempts to annihilate the Jewish State.

If international law is interpreted any other way then that would mean that Country A could attack Country B, lose land during the subsequent war and then insist that Country B either return that land or offer reparations. Furthermore, Jordan--which occupied Judea and Samaria from 1948 and 1967--was never recognized internationally as the rightful owner of those areas and Egypt's claim to Gaza is dubious as well. The "illegal occupier" of Judea and Samaria was Jordan, not Israel! In 1970, three years after the Six Day War, former State Department Legal Advisor Stephen Schwebel explained the legal status of Judea and Samaria: "Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title."

Israel's intimate ties to Judea, Samaria and Gaza are not just legal formalities; the rich Jewish history associated with Judea, Samaria and Gaza predates the creation of both Christianity and Islam. It is also worth mentioning that not only has there never been an Arab country called "Palestine" but that the p sound does not even exist in Arabic; the word Palestine has been co-opted and corrupted in recent decades by Israel's enemies but it originated as a Latin term used by the Roman occupiers to rename Judea, the ancient Jewish state that had provided particularly tough resistance to Roman conquest. The Arabic word Filastin is simply a transliteration of the Latin term and the assertion that there is a distinctive Palestinian Arab people separate from the larger Arab community is a late 20th century propaganda phenomenon--arguably the most successful propaganda campaign ever, completely turning historical truth upside down (the Jerusalem Post was originally called the Palestine Post but just a few decades later Israel's enemies have convinced most of the world that there is such a thing as a separate Palestinian Arab nation, which historically makes about as much sense as saying that there is a separate Michigan nation that is entitled to exist independently of the United States).

Sharon's military achievements and his bold advocacy for Israel's rights made him a hero in the eyes of Israrel's supporters and a villain in the eyes of Israel's enemies--but after Sharon became Israel's Prime Minister in 2001 he made a shocking and abrupt ideological transformation, unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza and four communities in Samaria and making plans for more unilateral withdrawals from Judea and Samaria; if he had not been incapacitated by a stroke in 2006 there is no telling how much more damage Sharon might have done to Israel's security and how many thousands of Jewish residents he may have uprooted from their homes. It is a bitter historical irony that Sharon, the general who helped save Israel from defeat in several wars, became a Prime Minister who inflicted ethnic cleansing on his own people, forcibly removing Jewish families from their homes.

Yitzhak Shamir was a man of principle, in stark contrast to Israeli Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu. Ariel Sharon will always be a seminal figure in Israeli and Jewish history but his ultimate legacy is that he betrayed his most cherished principles and he betrayed the voters who elected him because they believed that he would uphold those very principles.

Israel Desperately Needs a Prime Minister with Menachem Begin's Courage and Foresight

It has been so long since Israel had a Prime Minister who possessed courage and a sense of history that it is easy to forget what it sounds like when an Israeli leader actually speaks truth to power. Benjamin Netanyahu knows the truth and he used to speak it when he represented Israel at the United Nations but as soon as he enters the Prime Minister's office--first from 1996-99, then from 2009 to the present--he loses his mind and his backbone.

Menachem Begin survived the Holocaust and he fought in Israel's War of Independence. Those experiences reinforced what he had always known to be true: the Jewish people must return to their homeland and reestablish an independent state where Jewish culture can thrive and where Jewish people will be safe from persecution and free to live openly as Jews, the same basic rights that every other nation expects to enjoy.

Michael Freund's column about the most recent misguided U.S. Mideast "peace plan" recalls Begin's response to a similarly misguided plan three decades ago. Begin wrote a personal letter to U.S. President Ronald Reagan that included these powerful words:

What some call the "West Bank," Mr. President, is Judea and Samaria; and this simple historic truth will never change. There are cynics who deride history. They may continue their derision as they wish, but I will stand by the truth. And the truth is that millennia ago there was a Jewish kingdom of Judea and Samaria where our kings knelt to God, where our prophets brought forth the vision of eternal peace, where we developed a rather rich civilization which we took with us, in our hearts and in our minds, on our long global trek for over 18 centuries; and, with it, we came back home.

Israel will not survive unless her citizens elect a Prime Minister who speaks the truth--and acts on it--the way that Menachem Begin did. In 1981, Begin's administration bravely destroyed Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear weapons facility as Begin vowed that he "will not be the man in whose time there will be a second Holocaust." No one else had the courage and the foresight to do what Begin did--and Begin was roundly criticized at the time, in what William Safire described as "an orgy of hypocrisy," by nations and commentators who had been silent as France, Italy and other countries conspired with Iraq to develop a nuclear weapons program whose primary target was the Jewish State. Netanyahu is not built from the same moral fiber as Begin, which means that it is unlikely that under Netanyahu's watch Israel will have the necessary resolve to confront Iran, whose leaders have clearly and repeatedly stated their goal to destroy Israel. Israel cannot expect to be saved by anyone else--and if Israel does not act then the Iranians will develop a nuclear weapon and deploy it against Israel.

Writing Con Amore

"The phrase carries a special meaning in Italian. A thing that is done con amore is not done merely 'with love.' It is done with a kind of rapturous enthusiasm that sweeps everything from its path."--James J. Kirkpatrick

Nothing great is accomplished without love: Mozart's compositions, Bobby Fischer's checkmates, Michael Jordan's dunks--all of these things are products of love.  In a wonderful Spring 1994 Current Books essay ("How Must We Write? Con Amore!"), James J. Kirkpatrick explains, "Great writers must be born, but good writers can be made." The great ones are blessed with the ability to precisely and intensely communicate their passion about a particular idea, concept or story. They not only know what Kirkpatrick terms the first rule of prose composition--"Be clear! Be clear!"--but they understand the magic inherent in word creation:

Words come in textures; words are hard or smooth or squishy soft. Words have colors; they are pastel; they are bold. They are neutral. They are colorless. Words have sounds derived from their meanings; timid is soft, savage is hard, clamor is loud. Words are sharp, words are blunt; words have edges that are keen. There are scalpel words and razor words and words that have a saber's slash. Words are dull, words are sparkling. Words are alive, they are languid. Words fly, sail, drive, race, creep, crawl. So many words! If we are patient--if we will work at the task--we will begin to find the right ones.

The writer's art, of course, lies not in merely collecting words or in distinguishing among them. The art lies in stringing the right words together artfully. Newspaper reporters may begin by covering a luncheon speech at the Rotary Club, but if they are good reporters--reporters who can write con amore--they will aspire to something higher.

Along the way they will discover that to embark upon a love affair with language is to take to heart a fascinating but difficult mistress. She can be frustrating, maddening, stubborn, filled with surly resistance. She can give great pleasure also, but she never can be wholly won. Language always holds something back from the eager writer.

...Our seductive and elusive mistress seldom returns our love, but now and then, as I say, she turns and smiles.

Love, in Kirkpatrick's view, is the driving force behind the best writing. Kirkpatrick believes, "No teacher of the writing art can fiddle with a gene string" and thus greatness is unattainable for most writers but that love of the craft can elevate any writer at least to the status of "good."

In his book The Writer's Voice (Norton Lecture)--excerpted in the January 8/January 9, 2005 issue of the Financial Times under the title "Deep in love with word creation"--Al Alvarez describes his point of view about writing as "that of an endangered species that used to be called a man of letters, one of those unfortunate people who write not because they are Ancient Mariners with stories they are compelled to tell, or lessons they have to teach, still less because they are entranced by the sound of their own voices, but simply because when they were young and impressionable, they fell in love with language as musicians fall in love with sound, and thereafter are doomed to explore this fatal attraction in as many ways as they can."

Such love can be intoxicating and maddening, invigorating and destructive; Alvarez declares, "Freelance writing is a precarious trade and I feel about it much the same as Mayakovsky felt about suicide: 'I don't recommend it to others,' he wrote, and then put a gun to his head."

Alvarez notes that when one is reading purely to "acquire facts efficiently," it is possible to read "diagonally"--to scan the content for key words and pertinent information--but "Real literature is something else entirely and it's immune to speed-reading. That is, it's not about information, although you may gather information along the way. It's not even about storytelling, although sometimes that is one of its greatest pleasures. Imaginative literature is about listening to a voice."

Alvarez sees a parallel between the art of writing and the practice of psychoanalysis, a practice developed by Sigmund Freud, a well-read man who was also, in Alvarez' estimation, someone who "wrote compelling prose." Freud noted that, contrary to what some people claimed, he had not discovered the unconscious--a feat that Freud credited to "the poets and the philosophers"-- but rather "What I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied." Psychoanalysis is a form of storytelling; the patient tells his story and the analyst reinterprets that story in a way that is meant to help the patient.

"By comparing writing and psychoanalysis," Alvarez elaborates, "I'm implying that finding your own voice as a writer is like the tricky business of becoming an adult." That voice is what enables a writer to distinctly and uniquely convey his inner vision from his mind to the minds of his readers. No one would confuse Michael Jordan's playing style--his voice, so to speak--with Magic Johnson's, nor would anyone confuse William Faulkner's voice with Franz Kafka's.

Just developing a voice does not make one great but having a unique voice distinguishes a writer from his peers. First, though, as Kirkpatrick indicated, a writer must master the fundamentals, much as Jordan and Johnson relentlessly honed basic basketball techniques before developing and refining skills that few, if any, other players possess. Alvarez describes how this process works for a writer: "To find his voice he must first have mastered style, and style, in this basic sense, is a discipline that is acquired by hard work, like grammar or punctuation."

The Remarkable David Gelernter

"Why is it so easy for people to believe in the light but not in the dark? We live in a world of disease, squalor, global hatred--government leaders lie and cheat us and yet everyone believes there's a kindly father upstairs but not some guy running around with horns!"--Mel Profitt, "Wiseguy"

David Gelernter is best known as a pioneering computer scientist and as one of the survivors of an attack by the so-called Unabomber but Gelernter should be defined neither by his chosen profession nor by being a victim of violence; Gelernter is an intellectual in the best, classical sense of the word, in addition to being an eloquent writer, a moral philosopher and a painter.

Gelernter's 1997 book Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber details his slow, painful recovery from his injuries but it also describes how the Unabomber case--and our society's response to it--reflects a dangerous moral ambiguity that threatens the very fabric of Western civilization. Here is how a fascinating review at BrothersJudd.com describes Gelernter's take on our society's reluctance to acknowledge the existence of evil:

But the real thrust of this book is his disgust with modern culture.  There is not much new in his argument--it borrows, wittingly or no, from E. B. White, George Orwell, Jacques Barzun, F. A. Hayek, Paul Johnson, and other conservative critics--as he traces the decline of societal morality back to the surrender by WASP elites and their succession by intellectuals. He understands full well that in many ways it was a good thing to move to a system that is based more on merit than on heredity, that the tolerance which is the central value of intellectuals has been beneficial to society in many regards, and that equality of opportunity for women and minorities has been in most ways a good thing. But he is also quite blunt about the downside inherent in all of these trends.

As he argues, the meritocratic elite has turned the education system from a finishing school for gentlemen into a training ground for intellectuals, that is people who believe in the pure power of ideas to remake humanity and in the special role of intellectuals in making decisions for humanity. Tolerance, an initial good as it opened doors for people and allowed for the free exchange of even unpopular ideas, has degenerated into an ethic of "anything goes." Toleration has removed any standards of behavior and has delegitimized the judgment of ideas and behaviors. What started as a refreshing openness to differences has been pushed to an extreme where we no longer seem to recognize the difference between good ideas and bad ideas or between true good and genuine evil, or if we do recognize it, somehow no longer feel confident in our right to judge between the two.

In several extremely opinionated and politically incorrect passages he tackles questions of gender equity, race, gay rights, etc., in light of this understanding. But the book is brought full circle when he examines the events of his own life: modern attitudes towards crime, the sensationalist press, and the celebrity culture.  In perhaps the strongest and most memorable few paragraphs of the book Gelernter considers whether his own religious beliefs should mitigate against his desire to see the Unabomber pay for his crimes with his life:

I would sentence him to death.  And I would commute the sentence in one case only, if he repents, apologizes and begs forgiveness of the dead men's families, and the whole world--and tells us how he plans to spend the whole rest of his life pleading with us to hate the vileness and evil he embodied and to love life, to protect and defend it, and tell us how he sees with perfect agonizing clarity that he deserves to die--then and only then I'd commute his sentence...

The crux of the matter is that it is vitally important for both individuals and societies to not only distinguish between good and evil/right and wrong but to vigorously fight for good/right and to vigorously fight against evil/wrong. As Edmund Burke put it, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Columbus' Short North Gazette includes a section titled "I Can't Believe You Said That!" The November/December 2013 issue contains some funny quotes:

"I'd like to introduce a man with a lot of charm, talent, and wit. Unfortunately, he couldn't be here tonight, so instead..."--Dave Attell

"There are three ways to be ruined in this world. First is by sex, the second is by gambling, and the third is by telling jokes. Sex is the most fun, gambling is the most exciting, and being a comedian is the surest."--Paul Roth

"I wasn't any good in French or Italian, but I excelled in Thousand Island."--Steve Moris

"Watch out when you're getting all you want; only hogs being fattened for the slaughter get all they want."--Joel Chandler Harris

"I am not so think as you drunk I am."--Sir John Squire

"An improper mind is a perpetual feast."--Logan Pearsall Smith

Classic Brill's Content Article Contrasts Journalists With Historians

Do journalists seek to educate the public or to attract the widest possible audience? The February 2001 issue of Brill's Content contained an article by historian David Greenberg titled "Gracious Loser? Hardly." Greenberg cautioned that journalists and historians have different methods and different objectives: "The journalist in me searches for the relevance of historians' scholarly work, trying to see how it can enrich our understanding of today's world; the historian in me shouts back that forcing history into contemporary debates can violate its integrity and that, like a well-wrought poem, history should be palpable and mute, like globed fruit. Though I frequently write about historical matters for the popular press, I often find myself warning readers against using history as a source of instruction."

Greenberg noted that during the aftermath of the tightly contested 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, many journalists compared Gore's reaction to Bush's narrow victory to Richard Nixon's reaction to barely losing the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy; a mythology has developed that Nixon graciously accepted defeat but Greenberg's research indicated that the opposite is true: "It turned out that far from rolling over in the wake of Kennedy's victory, as I had always believed they did, Republican officials, including some of Nixon's closest aides, waged aggressive challenges in 11 states." Greenberg did not have trouble discovering the truth: "Like the purloined letter, this information was hidden in plain view--in the pages of America's leading newspapers."

Despite the fact that any dedicated and competent researcher could determine that Nixon's allies vigorously contested Kennedy's electoral triumph, many media commentators insisted that Nixon had lost graciously and that Gore should do likewise. Greenberg wrote an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times in an effort to explain what really happened after the 1960 election. In his Brill's Content piece, Greenberg made it clear that he had no political ax to grind: "My point wasn't to bash Nixon or to succor the Gore forces. I wanted to correct the historical record, which I believed was being twisted and wrenched from context for expedience. It seemed to me that if pundits were going to cite the 1960 election as a precedent, they ought at least to know all the facts."

After the publication of his Los Angeles Times' piece, Greenberg was invited to appear on several national TV programs, including 20/20, Inside Edition, Hardball and NBC's Nightly News. Greenberg recalled that at first he thought that his efforts to publicize the truth would be very successful: "The reaction induced some delusions of grandeur. I entertained fantasies that I was going to set the historical record straight, that other historians would start scouring the sources, forging beyond the self-serving memoirs and timeworn memories to piece together the neglected story of the 1960 election aftermath. Good information would drive out bad, and whatever would become of electoral accuracy in this affair, historical accuracy would at least claim a small victory."

It did not take long for Greenberg to realize that nothing of that sort would happen: "I was mistaken...For every pundit who corrected the record about Nixon--and several did--dozens more rehashed the canned version of events. Like a hapless gardener, I would root out one weed only to have more sprout elsewhere."

While it is easy to understand why partisan figures perpetuated the Nixon mythology--Republicans wanted to rehabilitate Nixon's reputation as much as possible while also pressuring Gore to not contest the election--it is more difficult to understand and much more disturbing to consider why so many media members did not actively seek out the truth. Greenberg speculated, "In the case of the pundits, the bias was rooted, I think, not in ideology but in how they do their job. Newspeople love a good story, and the tale of Nixon's magnanimity teems with irresistible irony...The story also lends the pundits a veneer of credibility and fair-mindedness: They can show everyone that they're neither knee-jerk Nixon haters nor congenital JFK courtiers."

As disappointed as Greenberg was in the conduct of the pundits, Greenberg found it "most troubling" that television news reporters--most notably those affiliated with 20/20--made no effort to uncover and report the truth. Greenberg's experience with 20/20 was, in his opinion, "reflective of the shoddy way in which TV news is sometimes reported." While Greenberg's Los Angeles Times' article brought his research to the attention of 20/20, Greenberg's interactions with the show's booker demonstrated to Greenberg that, as he paraphrased the perspective of 20/20's producers, "It was easier to run with a familiar story (even one demonstrably untrue) than to take time to consider new information."

Greenberg concluded that "most journalists enlist a historian not on his or her own terms but on their terms. Journalists seek not to get a lengthier, more subtle, and more complicated take on the past, but to borrow the aura of authority that emanates from a 'historian' and thus be relieved of having to make sense of history for themselves."

TV news shows often do not seek out historians or other figures who are experts in the specific subject matter being covered but rather the producers simply interview any alleged authority whose credentials make him seem impressive and well-informed. Greenberg criticized even the journalists who correctly reported the Nixon story, because many of those journalists did not in fact do their jobs any better than the journalists who incorrectly reported the story: "...I was struck by another irony. Although several commentators had reported my findings, few inquired into my sources, looked at my research, or quizzed me about how I knew what I knew. In other words, many of those who adopted my argument were as guilty as those who repeated the tales of Nixon's magnanimity. They, too, uncritically accepted what I said simply because I wear the label of historian...Constrained by the demand for sound bites, the allure of neat historical lessons, and the culture of competitive deadline journalism, most newspeople place getting a good story above honoring the richness and fullness of history. They rarely track down the right experts, or air competing points of view, or linger over wrinkles in an argument. They don't make room for the immense amounts of research, the careful sifting of evidence, and the nuanced verdicts of which history consists."

There is a cliche that anyone who knows how sausage is really made would never eat the stuff; that is how I feel about the mainstream print, internet and TV media: anyone who knows how those products are assembled would take most pundits' words for what they are worth--not much.

Never Let the Critics Stop You From Shining

The default tendency for most people is to not intentionally disturb other people, to go with the flow instead of making waves--but this kind of safe approach is rejected by dynamic individuals who have big thoughts and dreams that cannot be contained or stifled. In The Plus Side of Pissing People Off, Tim Ferriss declares that nothing great can be accomplished without upsetting somebody:

Doing anything remotely interesting will bring criticism. Attempting to do anything large-scale and interesting will bring armies of detractors and saboteurs. This is fine--if you are willing to take the heat.

There are good reasons to be willing, even eager.

Colin Powell makes the case: pissing people off is both inevitable and necessary. This doesn’t mean that the goal is pissing people off. Pissing people off doesn’t mean you’re doing the right things, but doing the right things will almost inevitably piss people off.

Understand the difference.  As Mr. Powell has put it, "Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off."

Mr. Spock expressed a similar sentiment in the classic Star Trek episode "The Enemy Within," noting that when a transporter malfunction split Captain James Kirk into a "good" version and a "bad" version it became clear that the "bad" version--the version that did not care what other people think--is an essential aspect of what made Kirk so decisive and effective: "And what is it that makes one man an exceptional leader? We see here indications that it's his negative side which makes him strong, that his evil side, if you will, properly controlled and disciplined, is vital to his strength."

Exploiting Chaos

Jeremy Gutsche's 2009 book Exploiting Chaos: 150 Ways to Spark Innovation During Times of Change provides practical advice about how to thrive when life seems like a maelstrom of uncertainty. Soundview Executive Book Summaries offers this take on Gutsche's work:

"Chaos is the uncertainty sparked by uncharted territory, economic recession and bubbles of opportunity. Chaos causes organizations to retreat, but not always.

Did you know that Hewlett-Packard, Disney, Hyatt, MTV, CNN, Microsoft, Burger King and GE all started during periods of economic recession? Periods of uncertainty fuel tremendous opportunity, but they also reshuffle the deck and change the rules of the game."

Here are some of Gutsche's key concepts:

1) "The upbeat impact of crisis is that competitors become mediocre and the ambitious find ways to grow." Gutsche cites the example of the Kellogg Company, which thrived during the Great Depression and seized the cereal market from once-dominant Post. Post rested on their laurels during the economic slowdown, while Kellogg doubled their advertising budget and convinced consumers that Kellogg products were superior to Post products.

2) "Innovation is not about market timing. It is about creating something that fulfills an unmet need." Does it sound like a good idea to launch an expensive magazine during the middle of the Great Depression? Henry Luce thought that it did and because Fortune filled an "unmet need"--affording readers a unique opportunity to understand how the corporate world functions--his new magazine became a huge success.

3) "The time to act is always now." Basketball Hall of Fame Coach Pat Riley once wrote about "paralysis by analysis," the tendency to get so caught up in trying to perfectly determine what to do that one ends up doing nothing at all. Gutsche declares, "You don't need to have everything figured out. Colloquially, chaos is synonymous with stress and disorder, but this doesn't have to be true. By knowing that you can adapt, and by seizing the opportunity presented by chaos, you can avoid being trampled and step away from the herd."

4) "Successful ideas first require excessive testing and experimental failure." Thomas Edison put it best when he described the process of inventing the light bulb: "I have not failed 1000 times. I have successfully discovered 1000 ways to not make a light bulb."

5) "Chaos should not be tempered with structure, it should be harnessed with ideology." A spider cannot survive if its arms are ripped off but if a starfish's arms are ripped off then each arm becomes a new starfish; the difference is that a spider has a centralized nervous system, while a starfish has a decentralized nervous system. Many groups--ranging from Alcoholics Anonymous to various terrorist networks--have figured out the power of being decentralized, held together not by an inflexible organizational template but only by a shared belief/ideology. Gutsche quotes Rod Beckstrom and Odi Brafman, authors of The Starfish and the Spider and coiners of a rule that they call The Power of Chaos: "Starfish systems are wonderful incubators for creative, destructive, innovative or crazy ideas. Anything goes. Good ideas will attract more people, and in a circle, they'll execute the plan. Institute order and rigid structure, and while you may achieve standardization, you'll also squelch creativity. Where creativity is valuable, learning to accept chaos is a must."