OUR GAFFE/GOTCHA GIG

When life gets too complicated -- and it has -- whattya do? Either keep up or give up! Seems like most of us have chosen the second. We tend to reduce every complexity into a simplicity. Take today's gaffe/gotcha gig...!

Instead of thinking things through, too many of us go through life using cliff notes. They didn't teach us much in our Shakespeare or History classes, but what the heck, it's so much easier this way. So now every politician or celebrity is mainly defined by their latest gaffe (as if our lives aren't one long series of gaffes); followed by the inevitable sleazy gotcha report we laugh over at the water cooler (as if we're not being laughed at at the other water cooler).

What's worse, now the next generation is already way ahead of us in this gig. Stats show the average 8-18 year old spends almost every out-of-school hour on the Internet, watching television, listening to music on MP3 players, texting, tweeting or facebooking.

Thinking with cliff notes got us poor grades in class....what will they get us in life?

FEMINIZATION OF AMERICA?

There's a lot of talk these days about the feminization of America. More specifically, of the American male. Historians tell us this comes from the closing of the Old West...sociologists explain there are role reversals happening...movie critics analyze it as nice-guy-hunks Tom Hanks and Jude Law replacing tough-guy-hunks John Wayne and Charles Bronson in the hearts of women.

Much of it comes down to the sensitivity quotient. In our less primitive more sophisticated environment, women look more for men who can understand as well as protect. Lets face it, Wayne and Bronson are not the tea & sympathy kind. Tony Bennett doesn't call women broads like Frank Sinatra. And the female of the species is considerably more interested in what Oprah and Ellen have to say than what the NASCAR and rodeo gang have to offer.

If true, this leaves today's young male three basic options. First, read up on manners, and study how the gentlemen exquisitely execute them on Masterpiece Theatre. Or second, he can look for women who love NASCAR races and rodeos. Or third, he can let his beard grow scraggly, join an all-male country club, and explore the joys of rugged celibacy.

Actually, he probably doesn't have to become pro-active over this issue at all. Because the transformation has already subtly settled in. How can he tell? Well, all it takes is a simple history lesson. Has he stopped wearing chaps and smelling of horse manure...has he stopped spitting tobacco juice...does he attend church or temple on the weekends....does he drive a Prius, enjoy Barbra Streisand, hum Andrew Lloyd Weber tunes?

If he can answer yes to at least three of the above, he's already made the transformation. And aren't the women in his life glad...!

WORRIES AT WRIGLEY!

OK, so we've got problems with our snow removal, our parking prices, and our local candidates. But there are some even more serious problems brewing at Wrigley...!

The Ricketts family is talking about "revitalizing" the Friendly Confines. Just 10 weeks away from opening day, we have to wonder if good intentions are going to mess up the last neighborhood ball park of its kind in America. Sure, the barnyard-like latrines need changes...some of the cramped seating needs repairs...and most of the food could use a little upgrading. But lets not try to turn a classic into just another copy.

Mr. R, , after 60 years of watching your Cubs, here's my list of the Untouchables. The unmechanized scoreboard! The uncouth bleachers! The unfriendly ushers! The unsophisticated beer hawkers! The unhealthy pizza slabs! Look, I know you can't do much about the unlucky team, but at least you can preserve some of your park's unduplicatabtle features.

Otherwise I'll think I'm in Sox Park...

THE PAST IS NEVER PAST

Right after New Years Day I realized I had some stray yesterdays lying around. What to do with yesterdays in a tomorrow-minded culture?

Then it occurred to me. Whenever we come across old photos, love letters, music tapes, even check stubs, they capture our imagination. Gaps like time, space and generations seem to melt into a kind of impressionistic mural of our life. Suddenly no past, no present, no future. The painting becomes a single revelation of our days here.

Well, if random yesterdays can do that, maybe they're worth cherishing more than we do. Not just because of the comfort old memories hum, but because of the chorus of new possibilities they can still sing.

Heroes...? Jackknifed into the back seats of my neighborhood movie house during WWII, heroes were painted for me in great swatches of gritty red, white and blue. Today, so many failed icons. And yet from what I incandescently remember, they did exist. And can exist. So I seek them still.

Friendships...? When Johnny firmly caught my outstretched hand from the cold waters on that ice-cracking day, I understood what it meant. The burst of illumination from such a yesterday tells me to believe still.

Wisdom...? I watched Ms. Jenkins day after day handing us the keys to the kingdom of truth in her literature class. Her passion for the beauty of truth lite our fires. She remains a memory which insists embers of great truths can still be found. And fanned. And felt.

Duty...? I calculate Mom prepared 37,230 meals throughout the yesterdays of her marriage. Not exactly a banner in the book of feminism, and surely not always moments of personal fulfillment. And yet, the pedigree of her yesterdays sheds light on this easily neglected value of old-fashioned duty.

Honor...? At his age, my Father was exempt from service in that war. But escaping the honor of duty was for him unthinkable. Honor like that may be harder to find in our more self-serving todays, yet his example shines through the years. And, for me, cuts through the cynicism.

I see it this way. The past is not past. It is never past whenever its brightest moments are recalled. And re-lived. That's why there are books...and ballads...and theatres...and, oh yes, old photo albums to hold and share what was best about yesterday.

LOSING FAITH

These are the days when every Chicagoan loses faith! Faith in the political system. Not because every candidate is so bad, but mainly because every candidate's campaign is. This month some of these campaigns have reached for new lows, like bringing dead politicians out of the grave and melodramatically suing their opponent.

However, what really kills our faith is how every candidate follows the same dreary, disillusioning script: They feature out-of-context quotes from newspapers they claim support them...they stage phony on-location testimonials by citizens they insist agree with them...they slam their opponent with half-truths, kiss a few babies, shake a few hands and always always promise to lower taxes.

You'd think just once, one of them would tear up the script and try something revolutionary. Like telling us what's gone wrong and exactly how together we have a fighting chance to change it. Oh wait, come to think of it, that can get you killed! There was Kennedy, McKinley, Lincoln...well, you get the idea.

KILLING COLUMBUS

Did you notice it too...? The way Apple's Steve Jobs just drove another nail into Christopher Columbus' coffin...?

With this week's flashy intro to their new iPad, Apple continues our trend toward personal insularity. Along with our iPhones, iPods and Blackberries, we can now put the entire world into the palm of our hand. In another age, Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong were trying to reach out and put themselves into the entire world.

Something's happening here. As malls shrink, world cruises diminish, and big-audience events grow fewer, Chicagoans are finding more and more reasons to go out less and less. Nothing's wrong with having the power of the world right in our own hands, but sometimes that world misses us. And what we could be doing for it in its time of need!

LIVING HISTORY

The premier quarterbacks are the ones who, when they fade back, have this gift of somehow seeing and sensing the entire field of play. All in an instant, all as if in slow motion. That's what is meant by "seeing things in context." And that's the gift only a few of us have when playing in game called life...!

News in the media and blather in Washington are usually here-and-now rhetoric. Saying things without ever understanding how these things fit into the large screen. For instance, all the disastrous "firsts" today are hardly first-time events with only here-and-now meaning. Consider them. Terror...? Think of living on an isolated 19th farm near Indian country. Failing economy...? Think of all the booms-turned-busts throughout our nation's history right up to the Crash of 1929. Angry politicians...? Think of the pre-Civil War days when Senators often carried hidden sidearms during their bitter floor debates.

And talking about arms, as we read the tragic deaths of hundreds of our nation's warrior-sons, remember the hundreds of thousands who died at Gettysburg, Flanders Fields, and Normandy. So as we give vent to our anti-government, populist frustrations, remember these same furies of hatred were also unleashed against Washington, Jackson, Lincoln and FDR. Many of us working from scripts written and shouted generations ago.

No, such previous failures and furies are nothing to be proud of. But they can remind today's doomsayers that we've struggled down these very same paths before. Our times have no monopoly on anger; no exclusive on graft, corruption and failed promises; and no lock on foretelling our apocalypse.

We're still here. As are so many other imperfect civilizations that have survived the very same traumas and tragedies. A reason to feel good about ourselves...? Not really. But maybe a reason to fade back and pass judgment in the long light of history.