TAKING A SECOND LOOK, ON SEPTEMBER 16

TURNING MOMENTS LIKE WILSON, WEST & CUTLER INTO SYMBOLS

Here's a question -- what do Joe Wilson, Kanye West and Jay Cutler all have in common? The answer is nothing and yet everything...!

Each one is a passing footnote in the news cycle. Good for a little water cooler conversation, but in the long run not much more. We chew up and spit out this stuff with awesome regularity. Such is the way of our 21st century American culture. We're a restless people who usually prefer quick soundbites to in-depth reflection.

However, there really is something lasting and enduring about these frivolous moments after all! Not the moments themselves, but the symbolism that often gets attached to the moments. Each one of these footnotes has what the news media likes to call "legs." Why? Because other people now take over and build upon these moments. Call it a "cause," a "movement" or a "mission," it all comes down to the symbolism that some people choose to create out of the moments.

Joe Wilson becomes a symbol for angry, anti-immigrant, anti-black feelings, and so his face and words get plastered on posters and in campaign ads. Kanya West becomes a symbol for the angry, anti- establishment younger generation standing up. Jay Cutler becomes a symbol of the cocky young newcomer who older players and fans use for a handy target.

See how it works...? These three guys are here today gone tomorrow. But what they symbolize to some, lasts. And gets used over and over again. To take an extreme case, what would Jesus be today without the symbolism he was given by the Apostle Paul? Now wait -- that's not sacrilegious. That's Christian fact.

So here's the point. The great 18th century English writer William Hazlitt once put it this way: "Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion." It's something like the surf on a beach -- here one minute, changed the next. Just like the people and the moments that pre-occupy us. But what often lasts is the symbolism others find and infuse into these people and these moments.

Wilson, West and Cutler are little people who some choose to make large. Large symbols for their own agendas. In democracies, where there are no aristocracies, we are especially vulnerable to this habit. Taking peers and transforming them into symbols. However, given that symbols in a society can be of such enormous social power, it's always a good idea to pick the right people and moments to symbolize....