At the crack of dawn this morning, even before I opened my eyes to the dog lodged securely against my left leg, Will Rogers popped into my head, followed by a voice that whispered, “I never yet met a man I didn’t like.”
What is Will Rogers doing in my head, I thought, and at 6:17am, no less? Why is the cowboy-cum-humorist-cum-social commentator of yesteryear showing up on my radar screen before I am even out of bed? Am I nuts?
Maybe, but I’m also a believer in signs, so I look up the famous quote. The original is longer. Rogers was referring to Leon Trotsky when he said, “I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I didn’t like. When you meet people, no matter what opinion you might have formed about them beforehand, why, after you meet them and see their angle and their personality, why, you can see a lot of good in all of them.” Saturday Evening Post, November 6, 1926.
A lot of good in all of them? I ask myself if Will has come all the way from the great beyond to my cerebral cortex in suburban Jersey with an important message just for me. Is he saying, I wonder, that I need to look at my sometimes careless disgust of others, and the criteria by which I judge them? Does he want me to stop with the foul mouth expletives of loathing I sometimes spew at the images of Dick Cheney, Michele Bachmann, and the various CEOs of investment banks, agribusiness, health insurance companies and Big Pharma? I will take it under consideration.
Maybe, I decide, Will has shown up merely to remind me of how incredible my brain is, an instrument so amazing it can pull up a fact from ninth grade history class some forty–five years later – just for the hell of it, just because it can. Responsible for some very peculiar notions that strike me from time to time, my mind astounds me. My brain is a marvel.
I guess that’s what Luzerne County Court judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, accused of taking kickbacks for sending juveniles to for-profit detention centers, must have thought as they sentenced each child to time they didn’t deserve. “How smart are we!” they must have crowed to each other, laughing, as they say, all the way to the bank. I dare you, Will, to find the good in those two.
Never mind the countless others. How about Martin Sullivan of AIG who had the gall to approve bonuses after sucking up nearly $200 billion from U.S. taxpayers, and then left the mess he created with a $25.4 million severance package. Brilliant! Or Senator Max Baucus who drafts a healthcare bill with the public option off the table while taking more campaign money from health and insurance industry interests than any other member of Congress. Very shrewd. Or the math wizards on Wall Street who dreamed up all that fancy financial stuff that’s ended so badly for so many- except, of course, for them. So many brainy people with minds gone to waste and worse. It sure can ruin a beautiful day in the neighborhood, no, Mr. Rogers?
“Listen here, Will,” I tell him after thinking all day about him and his quote, “I know it’s a noble thing to aspire to. A genuine love of humanity, a respect for all people everywhere – it’s definitely where it’s at. I will try harder, I promise. But let’s be real,” I remind him. “Trotsky was easy to love; he was a revolutionary.”
Sixties Chick 