THE MESSAGE IS RIGHT, BUT THE APPROACH COULD USE SOME WORK . . .
(Written 10 November 1999.Published in the Neighborhood
Journal.Posted
08 December 2009.)
Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura has been chastised by
both extremes of the political spectrum for his comments in a recent interview
in Playboy.The religious right took offense at his
remarks that religion is for the weak, as well as his comments about legalizing
prostitution and drugs.The feminist
left has criticized Ventura
for his remarks that the Tailhook incident was “much
ado about nothing.”The crescendo has
reached such a fevered pitch that even some within his own party, name the Perotists, are demanding Ventura’s head on a platter.Political pundits across the nation have
declared Ventura’s
political future dead on arrival.But is
it?
Probably not.In fact, Ventura’s interview may go down as the
watershed event in American politics in the late twentieth century.In this interview, Ventura threw political caution to the wind
and spoke from the heart, a very courageous and dangerous thing to do.As honesty and forthrightness are in short
supply in this day and age, I suspect that Ventura’s boldness may have won him the
respect of those who long for candor, who are sick of having our intelligence
insulted by the saccharine-sweet euphemisms and deceptions that are the norm in
our culture.
Of course, candor is all well and good, but it is of
little value unless what is being expressed with candor has some validity.So is there some validity to what Ventura said, or is he
“all wet” (to use a hackneyed cliche’)?Yes, I must admit that Ventura could have
shown a bit more tact when he commented that religion was for the weak, but,
when you think about it, there is some validity to that claim.There are a good many self-confident, strong
people out there who are religious and try to make this world a better
place.These people should be commended
for their convictions.However, there
are a great number of people who only go to church because it is the socially
acceptable thing to do, who hold certain beliefs not because they truly believe
but because their religious leader tells them that that is what they should
believe.These are the weak that I
believe that Ventura
was referring to.For these kind of people, doing what is socially acceptable is more
important than personal convictions.It
is the shallowness and hypocrisy of these folks that gives religion a bad
name.Technically, Ventura is partially right, but his
presentation needs some work.
We all know about the Tailhook
“scandal”, right?Tailhook
was basically a big hotel party for Navy fliers where some of the men got a
little tipsy and groped and fondled some of their female comrades.I have never been in the Navy, but I have
heard about the wild reputations of the Navy fliers.Now my question is this—If
I, someone who is never been in the military, knows about the wild reputation
of Navy fliers, don’t you think that folks in the Navy know about it, too?Yes, I would think so.Tell me, then, if you are a woman and you
know that some of your male counterparts have a reputation for getting drunk
and rowdy, why would you be shocked, then, if you went to a party with these
men and they got drunk and rowdy?You
shouldn’t, and that was Ventura’s
point — these women knew the reputation of the men, so they shouldn’t be upset
when the men lived up (or rather, down) to their reputation.If an atheist went to a preacher convention
and then got offended about all of the talk of God, would anyone come to the
defense of that poor atheist?I doubt
it.I would venture a bet that most
people would say that if an atheist is offended by talk of God, he shouldn’t be
at a preachers’ convention, because you can expect that preachers will talk
about God.That is, after all, what
preachers do.So why is it, then, that when a woman puts herself in the midst of
company where she knows that there is a high probability that she will be “hit”
upon, that suddenly a big production is made out of the whole thing?After all, she knew what she was getting
herself into from the beginning.This is
not to excuse boorish behavior, but we each must assume some responsibility for
the situations we put ourselves in and their outcome.With Tailhook, no
one bothered to question why the women put themselves in the compromising
situation to begin with. That, I think, is the point that Ventura was trying to make.Again, technically correct, but the
presentation needs some work.
I think that the reason the Ventura interview upset so
many people is because he said, perhaps a little too bluntly, what many people
already think but are too afraid to say.There are a lot of people who are disgusted by the shallowness and
hypocrisy of many churchgoers, but are afraid to speak out for fear of
retribution.There are also many who believe
that sexual harassment is being used as a tool by women against men; sadly,
these, too, must remain silent for fear of reprisals.Ventura,
then, is the mouthpiece for this silent majority.This is what makes him so dangerous to those
who want to perpetuate these deceptions for the sake of maintaining their
power.
Hopefully, others will follow Ventura’s lead and speak out.It takes a great deal of courage to do what
Ventura did, but it must be done, before we turn into the programmed society of
Orwell’s 1984, a society where no one
offended because there was no free will.
