Mad Men, The Season Five Finale: Don and Megan Everywhere

There's too much to neatly summarize after the season finale of a show as densely layered as Mad Men. I'll look ahead to the final two seasons of the show later this week, but that demands a separate post. For now, here are several collected observations about the series, almost all of them focusing on Don and Megan. The focus on Don and Megan to the exclusion of other characters might seem excessive, but the final 20 minutes of the season five finale took us into the deeper world of their marriage than ever before. Moreover, this is a marriage which isn't nearly as stable or happy as the first two-thirds of the season might have led us to initially expect.

On with the show, now that we have at least 35 weeks (probably more) to wait for season six... and talk about what has happened over the past 12 Sundays:


In my mind, the essential takeaways from the exploration and expression of the Don-Megan relationship in the season 5 finale are as follows:

1) There is, as always in Mad Men, a great deal of ambiguity and tension running through these events and the inner workings of the characters involved. Season five leaves us with questions more than certainties.

2) Megan is reduced to wanting work for a paycheck. There is a diminishment, if not an exhaustion, of passion for the work, of desire to do the work to advance noble ideals or give expression to something True and Beautiful. Megan’s self-loathing is so high and her confidence so low because there’s a part of her which realizes that “the struggle” has lost much of its romantic or revolutionary qualities. Yet, the alternative to abandoning the struggle is a home-bound boredom that is soul-crushing in a different way. She is utterly trapped, hemmed in by both per parents and by the two dimensions of Don: the one who is a provider/connection/insider and the one who is her spouse, the one who carries a strong set of expectations toward her, many of which have been unfulfilled.

3) It’s not as though Betty was “content” to be a stay-at-home mom. Betty thought that’s what was expected of her, and she took her cues that way but at cost to her emotional well-being. With Megan, the trajectory is neatly – and strikingly – inverted. Megan established an appreciable degree of emotional separation from her parents and displayed a strong independence of mind, but as she goes along, she’s more affected (not less) by what her parents say. She didn’t luck into a photo-shoot gig the way Betty did, but she finds herself with the gig and trying to fight off boredom… not entirely unlike Betty. There’s a heavy dose of irony at work in Megan’s life/career trajectory, relative to Betty’s… and in Don’s realization of this reality, which is why the final scene of season five (after what was a largely forgettable episode, it should be said) struck the perfect chord of ambiguity.

*                                                          *                                                          *

Don’s toothache as reflective of the more central problem in his life: That he can avoid facing up to his problems and the expectations that play a large part in perpetuating them.

What season five unpacked was the extent to which Don wanted Megan to fit a certain role and mold in his life. She hasn’t met Don’s expectations, and as a result, he feels so distant from her, looking at her in the film room the way he looked at Betty in The Carousel – longing for something that either once was (and is consigned to the past) or never truly existed.

*                                                          *                                                          *

Someone I talked to online asked this very penetrating question: "Has Don grown enough that he realizes that he’s still connected to the world, to other people, even if Megan has let him down?"

My response to such a thoughtful query:

The question is certainly one of the two or three foremost questions Don must address at a deeper level. (For me, the other big Don question is: “Can Don allow Megan or anyone else to live on their own terms – not only by letting others sort out their own pursuits of happiness, but in conveying full and unreserved emotional support to them?”)

Being alone is, essentially, feeling alone. People can be surrounded and yet “be” alone. The alone-ness emerges in the mind, in times when one’s worldview or wavelength is not shared by anyone. It is indeed a mistake on Don’s part to believe that he is alone, but I think that in season five – compared to the previous four seasons – this belief is more the RESULT of his behavior than the CAUSE of it. This is an important distinction to make.

In seasons 1-4, Don’s belief that he was alone led to his philandering and such. In season five, it’s different: Don’s internal expectations led him to think that his actions (and his life with Megan) could take him to a different mental world, into a different psychological state. He sees, though, that for all the ways in which he has changed – for all the cheating he has (temporarily) ceased to engage in – his psyche hasn’t. Therefore, his belief that he is alone is that much stronger, in my opinion.

The scene with Peggy in the movie theater is so perfect because Peggy is the one person whom Don understands – and is understood by – on a very deep level. Don’s line about helping people to succeed and then allowing them to move on is not entirely true, given all the times Don smacked down or ignored Peggy over the years; however, it’s still substantially true – Don was Peggy’s foremost mentor and gave her a chance to flourish in the advertising business. If Don could take his attitude to Peggy and then apply it to everyone else, he’d be in great shape, but of course, no one else is quite like Peggy.

I think one can see from this episode that the head space and thoughtful attention Don denied Peggy this season were devoted to Megan instead. Yet, amidst turmoil in his relationships with both women, Don is much more able (and willing) to allow Peggy to be happy on her own terms, compared to Megan. Why is this so? The answer deserves a stand-alone essay, but the short version is that Peggy is someone who has met Don’s internal expectations. She’s doing the things Don has always envisioned her as doing (and has needed to do) ever since she first caught Don’s attention. Megan – with a layered quality not evident in previous episodes – definitively revealed in the season five finale just how fully her life path has veered from Don’s expectations and hopes. Don didn’t want another Betty, but this feels all so familiar, albeit with some underlying differences.

It sets up a fascinating season six.

*                                                          *                                                          *

Megan's character, more than any other character in season five, has created profound and rather entrenched divisions among Mad Men fans. The big raps against Megan take multiple forms, the chief one being that she doesn’t fill or command the screen the way other characters do. (This is true, but it is presented as a knock against both Megan's character and the acting of Jessica Pare; it doesn't dawn upon Megan's and Jessica Pare's critics that there could be a point to Megan's lack of electricity or depth in a number of scenes from the past season.)

A response follows:

Has it ever occurred to Megan's critics that this Zou Bisou Bisou charmer, this person with bubbly optimism and a hatred of cynical Debbie Downers, this person who scooped up little children and cleaned up spilled milkshakes, is so much better at the hard sell – the creation of an image – than at the performance of everyday work in an everyday life? Has it occurred to Megan's critics that this unmistakable dullness (it's true -- it does exist on the screen especially when compared to Joan's or Roger's characters, among others...) is in itself a powerful commentary… not on the 1960s or Emile Calvet’s socialism or the value of being countercultural, but on the ultimate Mad Men truth — that happiness must be found from within? Isn't Megan's hollowness compared to other characters a startling revelation of the fact that for all of her effusive and attractive sex appeal in her best moments, the reality of being married to Don Draper in "Tomorrowland" - which did indeed seem like a fantasy come true for her - has NOT automatically delivered lasting happiness?

It’s also very much worth noting that the construct underlying Mad Men’s central truths is that people are rarely (or anything close to fully) what they first seem to be on the surface, far more layered and complicated than appearances or positive attributes might first suggest. Megan, due to her emergence on Mad Men in the middle of the series (season four of seven), is not as wholly developed as other characters, without question. However, she’s no longer the hologram/cipher she was in the first third of season five, and now, she’s not even the demanding, emotionally strong person she was in the middle third of this just-completed season. She’s been brought low, her confidence utterly shaken, bringing her through the full gamut of emotions and – instructively – becoming far more like Betty than Don ever could have imagined.

Different person, different background, different outlook, but the same central weaknesses. Don thought he had found such a distinctly different second wife, but he hasn’t. It makes season 6 quite fascinating.

I think we’ll see this late-arriving character get developed more deeply in 2013, enabling us to see that the undeniable flatness and dullness of this character (well, when she wasn’t Zou Bisou-Bisou-ing or raging at Don outside a HoJo…) were and are quite intentional.

I could be wrong, but I still trust Mr. Weiner enough to see what he’ll do with Megan. As a fierce critic of “Tomorrowland,” I think “The Phantom” has done something(s) far more constructive, reasonable and – most of all – honest with Megan’s character.

It’s instructive to point out that Megan has never felt more like a full, whole character than right now, after the completion of the season. She’s finally experienced the feeling that was hinted at in previous episodes, but never as fully as in “The Phantom”: self-loathing. This is the other side of the “Zou Bisou Bisou/Tomorrowland” person who fit multiple fantasy images and was relentlessly positive about everything around her.

Because Megan feels this way, Mad Men has retained its honesty and its textured, multi-dimensional, “appearances are deceiving” quality. The development of Megan’s character was always going to, in a certain sense, “slow down” the progress of season five by forcing a comparatively new character to get more screen time as Don’s wife, thereby taking screen time away from other characters. Yet, when tasked with developing Megan’s character – a task that must be done much more forcefully next season – Matt Weiner did a superb job in peeling back the onion and showing us new layers of this person, who is now far more complicated than we first thought.

When Mad Men shows us new dimensions of darkness/sadness/ugliness in a character, the show so often – if not always – feels more right and more honest. On a less ordinary, less thoughtful television show, a character like Megan would be patently non-entertaining and unambiguously disappointing. On Mad Men, the intentionality with which Betty Draper portrays unspoken confusion, with which Megan Calvet Draper conveys a surprising degree of flatness and dullness, is unmistakable and subtly powerful.

*                                                                      *                                                          *

Another online commentator explored Don's psychological state and his intentions – does he want to cheat on Megan or not? – in the final scene of season five and Sunday night's episode.

My opinion:

I think Don is more thoughtful and contemplative at the end of season five – and not as deeply disturbed or unsettled compared to seasons 1-4 – for a very simple reason that’s not particularly connected to visual cues: He’s been brought back to the beginning of another cycle.

After all he’s been through, after being paralyzed with fear over the prospect that he might one day be unfaithful to Megan, he now realizes that his marriage is not the fantasy it originally seemed to be. Even with Megan, this person who is different in temperament from Betty on many levels, he finds a situation which carries with it all too many echoes of what he went through with Betty. Don finds himself in a most unexpected psychological position, with a wife whom he thought would be so refreshingly, positively different for him… but hasn’t proved to be.

He has to give this matter some honest thought… the kind of thought he hasn’t had to devote to his life since his pre-Megan days.

I think he’s not ready to make a decision as season five ends, but he definitely does feel alone, or at least, far more alone than he has ever felt before as Megan Draper’s husband. He is in a place that demands a lot of reflection on his life, chiefly: 1) Who he is, and 2) how his expectations should/n’t govern his attitudes and behavior toward other people, especially Megan.

*                                                                      *                                                          *

I think that Don has told Megan the broad outline and most of the general details of his backstory, but not everything in its most minute detail. I’m of the view that there will come a time in season six when one of these minute details will surface, and it will carry powerful storytelling resonance for the series, not to mention a great deal of weight for Don’s and Megan’s characters.

*                                                                      *                                                          *

Mad Men And The Power Of The Unspoken

The power of life is not just found in words and actions, but in the scenes we encounter and the silences found within them. One of the most impressive aspects of Mad Men is that it is able to speak so powerfully... by not speaking.

Sunday night's episode didn't just convey a number of seminal events in the series; it did so with the unspoken power Matthew Weiner so deftly uses to his advantage... and to the benefit of viewers.

First, though, some background:

Think of some of the more unforgettable moments in the history of Mad Men: Peggy, Joan and Faye in the elevator; Peggy and Dawn, silently looking at each other in Peggy's apartment; Don and Peggy looking into each others' eyes in multiple situations (the hospital; the end of season three; episode 11 of season five, one week ago); Joan and Greg after Joan's rape; Joan and Lane in the second half of the season five opener, and then later in season five after Lane punched Pete -- these and so many other moments gained power because of the silences between the artfully-arranged words of a first-class Mad Men script. Jon Hamm, Christina Hendricks, Elisabeth Moss, Jared Harris - the best of the best actors on this show convey an astonishing range of emotions in and with their faces, especially their eyes. Much as it's easy to focus on the ball in any sporting event when non-ball action is often more determinative of a team's successes or failures, it's also true that in a dramatic presentation, it's easy to focus on verbal communication when non-verbal communication is just as  important.

Exploring this theme of the unspoken a little more deeply, consider the ending of "At The Codfish Ball" from earlier in season five. The episode unpacked the thought worlds and emotions of five characters in particular: Megan, her two parents, Don, and Sally. When the five of them are shown sitting at the table near the very end of the episode, their simple presence together in one wide-frame camera shot says so much in itself about what had happened over the previous 62 minutes of television. The unspoken act of gathering those five characters is meant to convey a theme, much as an elevator shot of three professional women is meant to convey another theme. Showing Don and Peggy in one extended scene develops their relationship and, with it, the flow of the series. Showing Peggy and Joan in a particular kind of scene makes a commentary on the different choices and paths taken by women in the 1960s. You get the picture.

In Sunday night's episode - the penultimate one of season five - there were so many unspoken scenes that carried such an enormous amount of weight and, moreover, resonance. Forget the dialogue of the characters; the mere presence of certain people in certain places became a part of the narrative Matt Weiner intended to advance.

Lane wanting to initially commit suicide inside a Jaguar shows how utterly trapped Lane was by the mere idea of going back to England in shame and humiliation.

Don's final scene with Glen - a boy who created an outsized persona for himself in a younger age (wanting to be Betty's husband) - paired two people who have experience at reinventing themselves... which is precisely what Lane was unwilling and unable to do.

Betty's scene with Sally showed that for all of Betty's weaknesses as a mother and for all of Sally's misgivings about her biological mother's integrity, the two are still bound by a connection that can never change or disappear. Betty didn't experience a transformative moment - she still relished gaining the upper hand over and against a flustered and worried Megan - but she was able to experience a pure moment of affirming motherhood, a moment that transcended both her struggles and Sally's frequent (but not quite permanent) hatred of her, a hatred built by - yes - Betty's reactions to Glen Bishop.

The way Joan was treated at the partner's meeting was in many ways defined by silences between and among words. The way Megan and Glen awkwardly stared at each other presented a moment in which two very uncertain people - out of their element, worried about their respective partners - were trying to find more of a foothold in lives that felt very unsettling for them.

All of this was wrapped inside an episode in which Lane's death provided a powerful message, albeit one drenched in unbearable sadness: while reinventing oneself cannot and should not be a lie - a foundation for deceit - human beings do have to start over on many times in their life journeys, finding new ways of bringing an authentic and whole self into new, paralyzing, and witheringly complex situations. Lane reinvented himself in a positive way by embracing the good elements of American culture and its creative energy, but he lived a lie by trying to alter SCDP's books instead of asking Don - ironically, the man he trusted most in the workplace - to help him out. (Don would have done so, too.) Moreover, Lane loved America to the point of death: so great was his desire to stay in the country and succeed on a specific set of terms that when he felt he couldn't do so, he gave up.

Mad Men unites themes and motifs this way on a regular basis. What's seen and unseen is all of one piece. Verbals and visuals merge to create a larger message which can be seen, yes, but also heard... and felt... and absorbed. It's hard to describe with words alone, and that's precisely why the realm of the unspoken speaks so loudly on the best television show in America.

  

Mad Men, Season Five, Episode 11 - "The Other Woman"

This won't be the written product of a television critic, because that's not my job. I feel moved to write about Mad Men because it is - simply yet powerfully - the best television show I have ever seen, and probably will ever see, in my lifetime. No television show has ever examined the human condition with such painstaking detail, situational richness, and emotional complexity. Mad Men is not escapist television; it is in fact the very antithesis thereof. The series is one extended and searing portrait of life's difficult nature, a testament to the power of the forces - and the force of the powers - that create unbearably layered dilemmas and highly unsatisfactory choices in a markedly cruel and unfair world.

After Sunday night's eleventh episode of season five, "The Other Woman," it can be said that Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner has delivered to his audience a number of seminal moments in the life of his series, which has just two episodes left this season and only two seasons in the future. There are, unavoidably, television (or more precisely, "industry") issues that Weiner and Company are dealing with as Mad Men nears the finish line. The contractual status of Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson) might have had something to do with Sunday night's episode, but that's the stuff best left for the TV writers who cover the business as a whole. I can only comment on the quality of art and the level of storytelling at work in Mad Men, specifically as they relate to the show's portrait of the human person as a moral, ethical, sensual, relational, political, and economic creature.

There are several themes and motifs at the heart of Mad Men, but the number one theme and motif are clear. The central theme of Mad Men is that one must find happiness from within, on a spiritual-soul level, instead of defining oneself based on externals (especially possessions). The central motif of Mad Men, in accordance with the show's driving theme, is that outward appearances and statements are not to be seen as reflections of truth or as fully genuine indicators of the internal emotions of the show's characters.

This is not a feel-good show, even for all its moments of comedic genius. It is a show about the complexity of human persons and the situations they encounter because of said complexity. Such a landscape creates wrenching pressures, tangled calculations, and their bitter fruits: confusion and, usually, naughtiness. The mystery of the human person - presented authentically - will offer rays of light and hope, but the larger world of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is going to be a dark world more often than not. This was quite clear in season one, and so it should be no less true near the end of season five.

Enter Sunday night's episode.

If you hold the main theme and motif of Mad Men in the front of your mind, you should be able to see "The Other Woman" as a masterwork - not from the standpoint of a television critic, but as one who appreciates the message and identity behind the series.

First, let's deal with the motif of appearances not being what they seem:

Pete, Lane, Roger, Bert - they all express or (in Pete's case, claim) some degree of revulsion to the prostituting of Joan, but they vote, 4-0, to go ahead with the plan. The outwardly stated motives of those four men are not backed up by their actions or decisions. With the exception of Bert - whose private life has not received all that much scrutiny (he's an old fogey) - one can clearly see that Pete, Lane and Roger are all living substantial lies.

Don SAYS he doesn't want Megan to fail at acting, and intellectually, he probably doesn't. However, in his heart of hearts - at a gut level - he DOES want Megan to fail because it's clear that he resents the hell out of Megan for ditching advertising and therefore ditching his dream of having Megan around at all times... to control, to possess, to own... to own the way a man can own a Jaguar automobile... The way Don has established - in his mind - ownership of Peggy Olson's accomplishments and career satisfactions.

The way Don threw money at Peggy, a highly symbolic but extremely potent representation of how he would throw money at so many other relational problems in his past.

The way Don bought Polly (the Draper family dog) when he skipped Sally's birthday party.

The way he bought Betty something nice (a car, even!) after treating her like dirt.

The way he paid off Allison in season four after that ill-advised and drunken fling in his apartment.

In many ways, the only important person Don has never tried to buy off is Joan Holloway Harris. This is the woman who had spent the first 10 episodes of season five trying to establish not just sexual, but personal and relational independence... to get to the point where she could truly feel that she was not - and could not ever be - owned by another man. She finally broke away from Greg, who raped her years earlier but at a time when she could not see or create emotional independence - emotional ownership of herself in a non-work setting - as a realistic possibility. She acknowledged her lack of control in season five, being more vulnerable and empathic to Peggy than she's ever been before. Joan had revealed new dimensions of an emerging interior happiness which almost every Mad Men character fails to attain, Ken Cosgrove and (to a lesser but real extent) Henry Francis being the two conspicuous exceptions.

The conversation with Don at the bar in the previous week's episode, "The Christmas Waltz," was powerful not just because of the abundant chemistry and self-revelation in that scene (not all of that dialogue was truth-telling, but all of it WAS revelatory; that's a key distinction in any discussion of Mad Men), but because the conversation with Don brought Joan to the realization that in her new existence - one spent dealing with a divorce, a new baby, and a nagging but well-meaning mother - she had to define her life not on the basis of her level of control, but on her emotional well-being.

Joan's firmness with Roger; her openness with Peggy; her courage in front of Greg and Greg's parents at the Italian restaurant; and her dialogue with Don all struck the right blend of assertiveness and surrender. Joan had steadily proven how to let go of the toxicity in her surroundings and still retain her best and most warmly human qualities. Joan grew to appreciate how to surrender to the forces she could not change and take charge of the forces she could master. Joan was on the precipice of joining Ken Cosgrove as a fully centered Mad Men character.

But ah, yes - things are not what they seem. Not when situations arise such as the one that confronted Joan in "The Other Woman." The Bible could not have told the story any better, but it is oh-so-real that at the end of Sunday's episode, Joan's haunted face reminds us of Jesus's words: "What profit it a man (woman) to gain the whole world" - to gain a five-percent share of SCDP, massively heightened status in the office, and a lifetime of financial security - "and forfeit his (her) soul in the process?"

That concept from Sacred Scripture is in many ways a mere rephrasing of the Mad Men theme: happiness must come from within, from the heart and the soul, from that place where - as Anna Draper (the saintly figure of Mad Men) told Dick Whitman - "I know everything about you, and I still love you."

What every Mad Men character needs to do is to love oneself in that fashion: to know the darkness within, to know the failures of self and the messiness of a cutthroat and plainly amoral business... and still love who you are each day. Loving one's own self - precisely when knowing the measure of one's own inadequacies and imperfections - will enable a person to have the courage to value that love over and against any financial gain, any material possession, when there is a conflict between the two... a conflict laid out in grand detail on Sunday night.

The fact that Matt Weiner turned a brilliant pitch by Ginsberg - "at last: something beautiful that you can truly own" - into the very conceit of Madison Avenue, the very idea all Mad Men characters must work to OVERTURN, NOT UPHOLD, in their personal lives - makes "The Other Woman" a supremely shining (and, paradoxically, dark) example of the series' central theme and motif, mingling in wondrous and spectacular detail. The ownership that every Mad Men character needs in life is the ownership of one's emotions and principles. a mastery of self which enables a person to be happy with oneself and sleep peacefully at night in the house of integrity.

Viewing a woman - or a Jaguar car - as a possession to be coveted, owned and controlled solely for one's own pleasure and desires? That's what Madison Avenue is about. That's what the worst aspects of Don Draper have always sought. That's what Roger Sterling and Pete Campbell so regularly pursue. It's what Herb, the auto dealers' executive who wanted that night with Joan, thirsted for in his life. Ginsberg - artfully crafted as this "alien, outside" figure throughout season five (albeit with minimal accumulated screen time) - is emotionally removed from the world of SCDP, enabling him to see all of this, and it's why he has the clarity (combined with the substantial natural talent) to come up with the perfect pitch line for Jaguar.

The interconnectedness of the plot lines, characters, and human portraits in Sunday night's episode was staggering enough. The ability of Weiner and his team to create so many inversions and ironic structures in the episode made "The Other Woman" that much more remarkable as a work of art... and this series delivers hugely impressive works of art even when it doesn't leave its audience reeling in the wake of earth-shattering events.

In an attempt to capture this last concept - inverting the trajectories of characters and overturning expectations, just when you think you have everything figured out - one can't comment on "The Other Woman" without noting that amidst all this darkness and bitter irony, the heroine of Mad Men can be seen as truly that: a heroine.

After seeing the agony of Joan's inner life, Mad Men viewers were able to witness a beautiful conclusion to an artfully tormenting 64 minutes of television: Peggy Olson, the second most important character on the show - the one who learned at the feet of Don Draper, the master - arrived at more money, status and power without having to sell her soul. In fact, as Freddy Rumsen told her, Don wouldn't have handled her situation any differently, something Don silently acknowledges in that unforgettable final scene.

Peggy is not bought off. Sure, Ted Chaough's money is considerable, but it doesn't matter whether Don can top the figure or not. Peggy knows that for the growth of her career and - far more important - her own self, she must step out of Don's shadow, taking ownership of her life in ways she never could at SCDP. As was the case in the conclusion of season three ("Shut The Door, Have a Seat"), Don is negotiating with Peggy to keep her on the team, but the terms of the exchange are different. Don no longer has a compelling reason to convince his protege to stay with him, on his team and in his office.

Don knows that he still takes Peggy for granted, and that's why his anger and nastiness give way to a knowing acknowledgment that Peggy must do this... for all the right reasons (not the wrong ones). In a masterful interweaving of storylines, Matt Weiner enabled Don's tensions with Megan and his concern for Joan to give way to this wrenching rollercoaster of emotions in which Peggy, the person he most deeply identifies with, becomes Don's best self.

You will recall that at numerous points in season five, Peggy took on so many of the qualities one would associate with the Don Draper of seasons one through three. She ducked out of the office for afternoon movies and hanky-panky. She wasn't emotionally available to her intimate partner (Abe), retracing the way Don behaved toward Betty. She was consumed by her work and identified herself by her achievements in the workplace. She continued to gain more money, power and responsibility, but none of those things made her feel happy. She needed to take ownership of her life from within.

When she smiles at the very end of "The Other Woman," instead of dissolving into a pool of tears, one can know - with certainty - not only that Peggy made the right decision for herself, but that she KNOWS she made the right decision for herself, and that she knows she made the right decision for herself for the right reasons at the right time.

So much emotional and spiritual wreckage fills the SCDP office at the end of this episode. All the men of SCDP - with Don being part of the dynamic, but less so than anyone else (there's an irony for you to contemplate!) - have won Jaguar, but at great cost to their integrity. This bastion of Madison Avenue has advanced up the corporate ladder by selling its collective soul. When Peggy walks out of SCDP for the last time - Don didn't want her to linger, after all - she's leaving this wreckage, this soul-sickness, this emptiness and moral rot behind her.

No wonder she's so happy: She has learned the central lesson of Mad Men.

The TV critics might lament the possible end of the life of Peggy's character on the show, but again, that's an industry concern. I certainly hope there's a way for Peggy to remain a central character and presence in seasons six and seven, but remember: The quality of a television show should be measured by the quality of the stories it tells, not whether certain characters get to stick around for a certain length of time. Sunday night's story brought about more than a little pain - it would be a diminished experience for viewers to not see Peggy Olson on AMC in 2013 and 2014 - but if Sunday night's episode and Peggy's internal triumph represent the price one must pay for such anguish, so be it.

So be it, indeed.

Goodbye, Kid: Gary Carter -- 1954 - 2012

College Basketball Coaches: Reputation Versus Reality

Recruiter, or wizard? Program builder, or late-game maestro? Collector of superior talent, or supreme strategist in evenly-matched games? These are the questions and tension points that apply to big-ticket college football and basketball coaches, and they're the stuff of all-night debates that make sports so contentiously fun. It's worth taking some time to explore what it means to be an elite X-and-O coach, as opposed to "just" a recruiter or program-builder.


Our story begins this past Wednesday night in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.


When Tyler Zeller failed to close down the shooting hand of Duke's Austin Rivers on that last-second three-pointer which gave the Blue Devils a win at North Carolina, a respected tweep with a substantially nuanced and granular knowledge of the game of basketball ripped UNC coach Roy Williams for the final, fatal, fateful play. This astute commentator said, quite understandably, that Williams needed to tell Zeller (and his teammates) to shut off the three at all costs. Coaching is partly a craft built on reminding players, and based on Zeller's response to the final six seconds of the Duke-Carolina game, it's fair to wonder if Williams did impress upon his team the importance of denying a Duke three. Williams has established a reputation for being more of a recruiter than a coach in some circles. He is seen by many commentators as a "roll-the-ball-out-on-the-floor" kind of guy, primarily because he insists on winning games with a breakneck pace rather than halfcourt-oriented structure. However, the question is worth asking: If Mike Krzyzewski, and not Williams, had been victimized by that sequence, would there have been the same outcry about deficient coaching? Probably not.


It's very clear that coaches enjoy (or suffer from) reputations that have become entrenched and encrusted over time. These reputations might not be universal or even overwhelmingly unanimous, but the human mind can and does form strong opinions of coaches based on decades of evidence, so let's dive into this subject, including Williams and some other case studies, especially longtime Arizona coach Lute Olson.


Williams and Olson both own national titles, but they also absorbed many really bad - and early - losses in the NCAA Tournament. Williams lost to UTEP on the first weekend in 1992 and to Rhode Island in 1998. He lost as a top seed in the Sweet 16 to Virginia in 1995, made worse by the fact that that game was at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, a kind of second home for the Jayhawks. KU lost as a top seed in the Sweet 16 to Arizona in 1997, with what was probably Roy Boy's most loaded team during his stay in Lawrence. The Elite Eight loss to Syracuse in 1996 was a wound of a different sort, but it still cut deep. Williams then let a big fish get away at North Carolina when his Tar Heels faltered against Georgetown in the 2007 regional finals. Williams has ridden a lot of thoroughbred teams in his career, yet failed to steer those horses into the winner's circle. When these events happen repeatedly, it's possible to make a case that a coach is more successful because of the players he draws into the program, not the plays he draws up on the bench with 30 seconds left in regulation.


A similar verdict can be rendered against Olson, the Arizona coach who lost before the Elite Eight as a top seed in 1989 (versus UNLV) and 2000 (Wisconsin) and was bounced out in the first round as a top-4 seed  in 1992 (East Tennessee State), 1993 (Santa Clara), and 1999 (Oklahoma). Olson looked very helpless on the sidelines in four of those games (in the fifth game, the 1989 West Regional semifinal against UNLV, Arizona's Kenny Lofton drew a charge on Vegas's Anderson Hunt in the final minute, but the officials saw things differently; que sera sera). Moreover, Olson had his shirt handed to him by Utah's Rick Majerus in the 1998 West Regional final, probably the single poorest coaching performance of a decorated career. The 2005 collapse to Illinois in the final 68 seconds of the Chicago Regional final represented the kind of stomach punch that makes it hard for a coach to sleep at night. It's true that Olson, like Williams, fell short on many occasions. It's also quite true that having a national title or even a stack of Final Fours doesn't automatically equate to greatness as an X-and-O coach.


Jim Harrick won a national title, and few would say he was a great X-and-O man.


Dale Brown reached multiple Final Fours, and he was not seen as a wise strategist in his time on the bench for LSU.

As has been mentioned on Twitter this past week, Syracuse has been as far as the Elite Eight only once in the past 15 seasons under Jim Boeheim. That's a pretty interesting case study right there.

Mike Montgomery, Olson's contemporary during the days of the red-hot Stanford-Arizona rivalry in the old Pac-10, made just one Final Four, and he did so because of a Rhode Island (under the aforementioned Mr. Harrick) collapse in the Midwest Regional final.

Gene Keady never made a Final Four. Neither did John Chaney of Temple. Yet, those two men won piles of games and - especially in Chaney's case - were usually coaching against superior teams in the NCAA Tournament (1994 being the exception for Keady when his Purdue team was a top seed).

The bottom line about coaching over the past 25 years in college basketball is that if you're not Mike Krzyzewski, Tom Izzo, or Dean Smith, making the Final Four an average of once every three years over a 10- or 15-year period is really hard to do. College basketball's one-and-done world makes it very hard to run the table. Coach K is a god in this business, the best achiever after Wooden and one of the best practitioners of the craft along with guys like Pete Newell and Bob Knight. (Speaking of Knight, how many times did HE flop in the NCAA Tournament with Indiana?) He has four national titles in over 30 years of coaching. That means he wins roughly once every eight years. That means he fails to win the national title seven out of every eight years he's been at Duke.


It changes the discussion's trajectory, doesn't it?


It's true that making Final Fours and winning a title don't automatically bestow X-and-O greatness on a coach. I can see how and why a commentator would look at Roy Williams or Lute Olson and say, "Hmmmm... he didn't really maximize talent, did he?"

For me, then - just me; others will form their own opinions - what makes Williams and Olson worthy (though not excellent) X-and-O coaches is that they've won as underdogs or as pick-'ems, winning games when the talent on the other side of the court was equal or superior. Williams did this in his 1991 and 1993 tournament runs at Kansas, and he led other Jayhawk teams into the Sweet 16 in 1994 and 2001 before losing hard-fought regional semifinals against No. 1 seeds from the Big Ten (Purdue in '94 and Illinois in '01). Williams then capped his Kansas career with a fantastic tournament performance, beating Coach K and Duke in the Sweet 16, Olson and Arizona in the Elite Eight, and Marquette in the Final Four before losing to Syracuse in the final... only because Nick Collison couldn't hit a foul shot to save his life. Williams has squandered great talent, but he's also made the most of teams that weren't "best in show" from a purely athletic standpoint. That earns him enough credibility on an X-and-O level.


The same pretty much holds true with Olson. In 1980 with Iowa, he beat a higher-seeded Georgetown team to make his first Final Four. In 1994, after the flameouts of '92 and '93, he regathered his troops and made a run to the Final Four. Then came his magnum opus, the felling of three top seeds (Kansas, North Carolina, and Kentucky) en route to his one championship in 1997. Olson's work in 2001 was also particularly special, getting his team to beat top seeds Illinois and Michigan State before losing to a third No. 1 - Duke - in the title game. The Elite Eight loss to Utah in 1998 was brutal - as said above - but the Elite Eight loss to Kansas in 2003 was much more a product of one simple fact: Channing Frye wet the bed in an absolutely abysmal performance. Olson took his blows, but he landed enough blows to be seen as a credible X-and-O coach.


Yes, Rick Majerus and John Chaney made more with what they had, even though they didn't win titles or march to a parade of Final Fours. They are better X-and-O coaches than Roy Williams and Lute Olson. However, does that make Roy and Lute "bad" coaches? Not quite. It's a debate, but a debate that ultimately leads me to defend the records Williams and Olson assembled in their careers.

A Handful Of Points, A Truckload Of Angles, And The Noble Loss

What is the enduring truism attached to top-level tennis matches? It is that these boxing matches without the blood come down to a few points, and that the better player will win that handful of points (or that the inferior player will lose them). Yet, as the 2012 Australian Open recedes into history and Novak Djokovic undeniably cements his place in the top echelon of all-time tennis greats - alongside Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer - one can't help but marvel at the larger reality of the three men's careers and how they're more alike than ever before. The growing similarities uniting these three kings of a golden era in men's tennis lead to a discussion that is at once definable and elusive. Winning or losing two points here or one point there does so much to rewrite the history books, and with them, the way whole careers are perceived. Yet, as Rafael Nadal's five-hour, 53-minute loss to Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open final shows, the notion of assigning such weight and glory to the winner while giving bread crumbs to the loser is one of the ways in which modern sporting culture (not just tennis, but encompassing all sports under the sun) falls short.

Yes, many writers have given Nadal's loss the praise it deserves. Brian Phillips of Grantland gives expression to these ideas with more clarity and directness than anyone else has in the aftermath of Sunday's (genuine) epic. When he notes that Nadal's runner-up finish in Melbourne is worth more than a major title won in pedestrian fashion, he sees beyond the closed and contained math that is governed by "that handful of points" and the numbers that flow from them.

Numbers, after all, lie on some occasions. Hence the expression "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." When numbers don't lie, they still fail to tell the whole story as often as they reflect truth. This is where a comparison of the careers of Nadal, Djokovic and Federer becomes infinitely more fascinating and complex.

What Sunday's Nadal-Djokovic final did was flip some historical scripts in ways that have brought Djokovic into the highest circles of tennis greatness, but which have also made Nadal the co-owner - with Federer - of the kind of loss which endures not for its failures, but for its most gallant and uplifting dimensions. Moreover, Sunday's "loss" (it was frankly a triumph for Nadal in every sense but the scoreboard) neatly underscores the painful and viciously cruel truth of tennis: Two, three, four points - that nasty little handful - carry a weight that would make Atlas take notice.

The Djokovic-Nadal final at Rod Laver Arena has naturally given rise to comparisons with Nadal's win over Federer three years prior in Melbourne. It's plainly obvious that Djokovic's 10 sets of tennis in 10 hours and 43 minutes offered a 2012 equivalent to Nadal's 10 sets in 9 hours and 37 minutes when he beat Fernando Verdasco (semifinals) and Federer (final) to win the 2009 Australian Open. However, the nature of Nadal's loss is worth exploring in greater detail. This match bore a very strong resemblance - not in style of play or the exact order of sets won, but in terms of the larger narrative arc - to the 2008 Wimbledon final, in which Nadal beat Federer in a titanic fifth set that was played on the razor's edge until the very end.

Do recall that the 2008 Wimbledon final - in the middle of the third set - was fully controlled by Nadal. Remember that in the fourth set, Federer was doing all he could to stay in the arena and prolong the battle. In the fourth set, Nadal had the clear advantage, only to surrender it with a nervous mistake. In the fifth set, Federer - though never able to break Nadal (a clear difference from the 2012 Aussie final) - was the first man to sniff victory (with Nadal serving at 4-5, 30-all) before Nadal found a way to turn the tide. In looking at Nadal-Djokovic, one can see how the roles were reversed. Djokovic was the ascendant player in the middle of the third set. Nadal hung on by his fingernails in the fourth. Djokovic owned the flow of the fourth-set tiebreaker but then sprayed a few shocking errors when the finish line beckoned. Nadal had his path to victory at 4-2, 30-15, but then lost it on that one down-the-line miss which gave his opponent the motivational fuel needed for one last finishing kick.

Let's be clear, then: The comparison between Nadal's loss two days ago in Melbourne and Federer's loss to Rafa three and a half years ago at Wimbledon is not just a matter of losing a long, close match in five sets. It's more than that. Nadal fought an uphill battle against an opponent who enjoyed a defined tactical/matchup advantage and the mental comfort zone which comes with it. He persevered to an extent that he had never quite persevered before (he ran out of steam in the fourth set of the 2011 U.S. Open final in what was a remarkably physical fistfight with Djokovic, a match that taxed both men for the remainder of the 2011 tennis season). Yet, he still lost in spite of his massive expenditure of effort. THAT is the key takeaway from the Nadal loss this past Sunday, and from Federer's loss to Rafa in 2008 on the lawns of the All-England Club: They went above and beyond relative to the trajectory of their careers, which had been so regularly transcendent to that point in time, accessing new wells of competitive determination and passion... and still not gaining the victor's crown on that handful of points.

Perhaps the tennis world appreciates this point already, but I'm not sure it does: You can reach higher, dig deeper, and find more fire inside your heart than you ever knew you had; you can pour out your soul in ways you never thought you could... and still come up short. There's no way to measure that with "Federer leads Nadal, 16 major titles to 10, or Nadal leads Djokovic 10 majors to 5." Numbers are at once the defining measure of historical greatness - the man who has closed the sale 16 times at majors is supposed to be seen in a better light than anyone else; why shouldn't it be so? - and yet a substantially empty way of measuring the entirety of men and the careers they forge. Seeing Djokovic - who entered Sunday's match with six fewer majors than Nadal - eclipse his rival three days after Nadal beat Federer (who has six more majors than the Spaniard) shows that there are limits to the notion of measuring greatness only in terms of wins. It is in many ways the losses that magnify greatness on an all-time scale, and there are ways of doing this for Nadal, Federer and Djokovic as their careers can be seen in a fuller light.

Nadal's losses to Djokovic - especially at the 2011 U.S. Open and even more so in Melbourne this past weekend - were the textbook embodiment of "noble losses," defeats that enhance a reputation more than diminish it. Nadal has conquered the five-set crucible on several occasions - beating John Isner in the first round of the 2011 French Open; stopping Robin Haase and Philip Petzschner in five-setters during his 2010 Wimbledon title run; eclipsing Federer in memorable encounters, of course; and fighting off Robin Soderling in that infamously contentious match from the first week of the 2007 Wimbledon championship - but even when Nadal loses, he loses not with timidity, but a mighty show of resistance.

Djokovic - 14 months ago, in December of 2010 - was sitting on just one major title, but it's worth remembering that the Serbian superstar came so close to making main-event matches his own. He held five set points in the opening stanza of the 2007 U.S. Open final against Federer before losing in a tiebreak. He held two points in the second set of that same match, but simply couldn't finish. He engaged Nadal in a couple of French Open semifinals and competed on very even terms in the opening sets, failing only on those occasions when he really needed to deliver the goods. He didn't lose five-set epics in 2007, 2008 and 2009, but he lost so many 7-5 and 7-6 sets that, if different, would have added to his trophy case to the point that he, and not Nadal, would be in prime position to overtake Federer's 16 majors. The fact that Djokovic is now regularly able to win matches 7-5 in the fifth set (2010 U.S. Open semifinals against Federer; 2011 U.S. Open semifinals against Federer; 2012 Australian Open semifinals against Murray; 2012 Australian Open final against Nadal; he also won that first-set tiebreak against Federer in the 2011 Aussie semifinals, the tiebreak that set the tone for his dominant run from January through mid-September, the greatest eight-month stretch in tennis history after Laver's two calendar Grand Slams in 1962 and '69) shows how much those 7-6, 7-5, 7-6 losses to Federer taught him. Lesser men - men with names such as Tomas Berdych or David Nalbandian - would allow close losses to hijack their careers. Novak Djokovic used his close losses to transform himself into a man who is now likely to win at least 10 majors, and quite possibly a few more.

And then there's this Federer guy. Much as I find that Nadal's lack of a major title at the 2012 Australian Open is simply not an accurate reflection of his performance or worth, so it also is that the 16 major titles don't measure Federer in full as well. Nadal's ability to play so well on hardcourts, his worst surface, makes Rafa a more impressive figure than Federer, whose stature would REALLY be enhanced if he could lose to Nadal on clay (in Paris) the way Rafa lost to Djokovic on Australian plexicushion. Relative to their respective talents, Nadal has made more of his career than Federer has. Mind you, that should not be seen as a way of minimizing what Federer has done, but of magnifying what Nadal has done. Federer's gifts have always been so blindingly evident that the challenge for Roger was always about getting out of his own way and simply allowing that talent to flourish. Nadal, though, has had to push himself to find new ways of winning, new areas of improvement that could add to his tried-and-true formula of defensive retrieving backed by that point-resetting topspin forehand. Because Nadal has played his career uphill - even when standing on top of the hill - he has done something Federer hasn't. Roger won't attain the one remaining transformative moment of his career until he beats Nadal at the French; without that, there will be - in a narrow (not total) sense - a career arc in which Nadal will have left less on the table than Federer has. It is counterintuitive, but it's true.

In the wake of Nadal's heroic loss to Djokovic in Australia - which magnifies how Djokovic has himself undergone a transformation from "close loser" to "regular survivor" in big-stage matches - the aspect of Federer's career that becomes so much more impressive to me is how many times he has come so close to winning. The 16 majors are fabulous, but at a time when the brave, extended "noble loss" in tennis is being given fresh attention, it's worth pointing out that - but for that handful of points he has won more often than lost - Federer would be sitting at 20 majors right now.

He had match point against Marat Safin in the 2005 Australian Open semifinals, and lost two more major semifinals in which he had match points (against Djokovic in New York in both 2010 and 2011).

He was two points away against Rafa at Wimbledon in 2008. He was two points away from a two-set lead and almost-certain victory against Juan Martin del Potro in the 2009 U.S. Open final. In the 2006 French Open final, he lost a fourth-set tiebreak to Nadal. In 2011, he lost a set point in the opening stanza and dropped a second-set tiebreak. In Australia this past Thursday, he lost a third-set tiebreak, 7-5.

The man acclaimed as the best golfer of all time is not Federer's buddy, Tiger Woods, but Jack Nicklaus. Sure, Nicklaus owns 18 major titles, four more than Tiger's 14, but what people forget about the Golden Bear is that he finished second or third in 19 other major tournaments. No man has come remotely close to competing for championships in 37 major tournaments in golf, winning a fair share while also coming really close on so many other occasions. In tennis, Jimmy Connors owns 31 semifinal appearances at the majors and Ivan Lendl reached 19 major finals. Federer's 16 majors are double Connors's and Lendl's eight championships, but Federer's consistency - in addition to the major-tournament trophies - truly elevate him above Jimbo and Ivan and 99 percent of other tennis greats. It's Federer's close losses - just as much as the wins - which magnify what he has achieved. It is similar for Nadal right now, and tennis will - in four years or so - recognize the same thing in Djokovic.

Yes, winning is the focus of our sporting culture and the comparisons that inevitably flow from it. However, after the 2012 Australian Open final, there should be greater appreciation than ever for the noble loss and how it magnifies the career of the man who "loses" only in that most narrow, numerical sense. Rafael Nadal's career just looks better and better in comparison to Roger Federer's after his "loss," and what keeps Fed ahead of Nadal by the slightest of margins is - ironically - the number of times he has reached a major final - especially in Paris - only to not win, either.

The handful of points that decide tennis matches at the highest level have value even when they're NOT won... as long as "not winning them" does not remain a permanent and prominent feature of a career. Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic have all lost that handful of points on plenty of occasions. It is that dimension of their careers which makes their periods of ascendance - Federer in the past, Nadal in an unexpected fashion, and Djokovic in his glorious moment of unquestioned triumph - so real and utterly magnificent.

The Race We Are Still Running

Today, two tweeps I regularly derive enjoyment from - Bomani Jones and John Stansberry - showed how far we have to go in America on the matter of... no, not "race relations" (that's too limited a point of focus), but on the matter of understanding the larger reality of race as it affects attitudes, perceptions, and the whole of society. The point of this brief commentary is not to weigh in on what both men think about Cameron Newton. Read their linked articles above. It's similarly pointless to render a verdict on their assessments of the extent to which the "black quarterback" label is limiting social progress - you need to wrestle with what Mr. Jones said in his piece.

What I'm here to talk about is the long-distance race we are still running in America on issues pertaining to race. As Bomani Jones would tell you, for all the progress we've made on race in 50 years, racism is still quite prevalent in this country, anything but a fringe reality or a merely marginal presence on the national landscape. While gains have been made here and there in the course of time, they haven't brought us to a point where Americans enjoy both harmony and true understanding in relationship to "The Other," to people with identities different from our own. The Obama presidency and the issue of immigration have shown how uncomfortable Americans remain when dealing with a subject that cuts very deep and owns a central place in our young nation's history. The reality of our nation's prison system offers powerful testimony to the fact that race remains a source and manifestation of profound injustice, proving that we are hardly a "post-racial" society. No matter what you might think or believe about race, it shouldn't be hard to accept the claim that we - as Americans - have not "solved" questions of racial and ethnic identity. This stuff gets under our skin (and our skin color, as it were). One must keep that point firmly in mind before going forward here...

John Stansberry (@LonelyTailgater on Twitter) made two basically correct points in his piece above: 1) Things are better for black quarterbacks today than they were in 1978; 2) It is very tricky for racial minorities to talk about their own groups or members of their own groups in ways that are less than flattering. Those are two correct-enough assessments, and there's nothing to lament in Stansberry's ability to make those identifications.

The question becomes, what should be taken from those identifications?

One conclusion I certainly would NOT reach is that Jones - @bomani_jones on Twitter - is being a race-baiter or someone who is casually overstating the extent to which Cam Newton has been besieged by racist attitudes.

One can be a No. 1 NFL Draft pick and still encounter racist sentiments. Social progress on race can advance over the course of 33 years (a third of a century) and still fall far short of where it needs to be... even to the extent that racial matters stir the blood so easily in public forums. Stansberry was speaking on a very immediate level in his analysis, but he then chose to see Jones's piece in a similarly confined context. Jones was speaking on a much broader social level, targeting the persistence of prevalent racist attitudes in the football world and trying to point out - correctly - that we haven't figured out. He wasn't zeroing in on Newton's draft status but was instead trying to do what a good citizen does: Point the way to the larger truth instead of allowing society to settle for the simpler answer in a more limited context.

People might find flaws in the way Jones executed his argument or supported it (I personally think it was structurally sound), but the point I seek to stress is that Jones's intent was and is to bring society to a healthier understanding and awareness of what's really going on. As is the case in politics, one should be able to grow in respect for someone you disagree with if that person is acting on convictions with sincerity and a desire for a larger social good. Disagreement should not be seen as due cause for a parting of ways; misunderstandings should not be viewed as grounds for attacking other people or assigning negative motives to them. Disagreements, in short, are best handled when they're left as merely disagreements, differences meant to be talked about and fleshed out in the fullness of time. When disagreements are seen as unacceptable positions, opposing sides - on one issue, on a whole host of issues, or in various sectors of life (sports, church, government, medicine, etc.) - are pulled far apart, thereby maintaining a fractured environment in which social divisions only deepen and various communities have little incentive to see life through the prism of "The Other."

It is this social division - the perpetuation of an us-against-them mentality - which limits the ability of men and women to make even greater strides in our dealings. Bomani Jones's attempt to speak to a larger truth and John Stansberry's misreading of Jones's motives show us that it is so incredibly difficult to get any two Americans to arrive at a shared place of understanding on race. When I use the phrase "shared place of understanding," I'm not saying that we should all see issues the same way. I'm saying that we should allow a critique of racial issues or attitudes to be seen as an honest attempt to bring about social improvement and call people to be better... not as "race-baiting" or the self-interested pushing of  buttons to elicit strong responses and gain heavy internet traffic (and hence, more money or publicity).

No matter what you think about Cam Newton, I think it's fair to say that the young man is not an easy figure to analyze without generating a strong response. Newton was immersed in a controversy at Auburn which gained sustained national attention (the controversy didn't involve wrongdoing by Newton himself; the point is that it touched a national nerve). Newton's "When the devil be messin', God be blessin'" comment also captured the attention of many Americans. He won the Heisman Trophy and has maintained a place in the spotlight, most recently for his stellar play on the field. If anyone with the national profile of Bomani Jones were to tackle Cam Newton, plenty of people would react. It's unfortunate that anyone would view Jones's article as an attempt to stir the pot and create trouble. Viewing the piece as an attempt to challenge the national conscience - especially within the innards of the football community - offers a far healthier and more productive way to view Jones's essay. Being able to engage him in thoughtful dialogue would then offer anyone - including Stansberry - a chance to understand Jones's views in greater detail. The assignation of motives without (and removed from) a process of questioning makes the storm of criticism against Jones counterproductive. Being open to the merits of what Jones has to say is the attitude which can enable healthy conversations about race to unfold in this country.

There's one other way in which to cultivate a climate that's conducive to the continuation of healthy conversations about race: Not calling a disagreer or opponent "racist" unless the reality is blindingly apparent beyond all reasonable doubt.

I do think that Jones's fiercest critics - those who assign the race-baiter label to him - are demonstrating a very impoverished view of race and racial tensions; accordingly, Jones's detractors reveal how hard it is to establish a nourishing, illuminating conversation about race free from suspicions about ulterior motives. However, having a poor understanding of racism doesn't make a person a racist. In fact, the very point of writing with such studied intelligence and precision on race - as Jones does - is to call the larger society to a greater awareness of racial tensions. Racism - like other sins - can be fully considered "sinful" to the extent that the person manifesting it understands larger truths and can make important distinctions as a citizen. Without broad and expansive knowledge, a person can't quite "own" his or her sins because that person can't be seen as a purposeful, intentional actor, someone guided by his/her own initiative. The fully knowing person - the person who SHOULD know between right and wrong - is the person guilty of racism. If one were to have this Cam Newton conversation face-to-face for 60 minutes and not break new ground, perhaps one could then be in a position to view an opponent through a dimmer lens. A few tweets and linked articles, however, do not provide enough basis for being able to say that another person is genuinely racist (and all that the R-word implies).

Many Americans are fatigued by conversations about race. They are tired of running. Yes, we still need to have conversations; yes, our society still isn't close to where it needs to be; yes, we can't think we've arrived at a post-racial paradise; however, in order to reach those who disagree with us, we have to understand where they live. We have to understand that fatigue exists, which means that it has to be dealt with and accounted for. Calling someone a racist merely tells that person, "I have no faith in your views and no respect for your place in this national conversation." The critique might perhaps be true, but in the absence of a face-to-face conversation or (at the very least) a genuinely extended dialogue which transcends six or eight tweets on one afternoon, it's not going to bring more people to the conversation table.

There are problems which need to be talked about in the wake of today's writings by Bomani Jones. I don't think John Stansberry understood very well what Jones had to say, and I am confident in saying that Stansberry should not have assigned motives to Jones; he should have instead asked questions before deciding to write what he wrote. Moreover, if he was still upset at Jones, he should have held his tongue instead of getting into a Twitter fight.

However, I don't think that the above paragraph makes John Stansberry a racist, and Stansberry shouldn't be hit with that label. Can this larger episode be seen as a teaching tool and a timely reminder - at the end of 2011 - that we need to work very hard to generate meaningful, productive dialogue about race? Yes. Does it need to be seen as a defining indictment of anyone? No - not at all.

How do we improve our society? By confronting tough problems. Bomani Jones is trying to do that, even if you might think he's not doing it the right way.

How can we confront tough problems? By talking about them in ways that foster greater understanding and awareness. Therefore, let's view Jones as the public thinker and conscience-raiser he is, instead of tarring him as an opportunist. Jones's critics, in turn, should be allowed to grow - as we all must grow in our lives, which unfold at different speeds - instead of being labeled as racist. Fatigue is part of the American story on race at this point in time; let's then catch a breath, rest our weary minds (fatigue does make us cranky and ornery, after all...), and be charitable in the way we talk to each other.

Let's also use essays instead of tweets to explain ourselves a little more. That would be a nice development to see in 2012, and just to back up my talk, I'll offer this blog site as a public space for anyone who wants to write an essay/extended commentary to unpack important viewpoints.

An Idea Whose Time Should Have Come Long Ago

So, Mark Cuban is envisioning a Bracket Busters-like event for college football, adding marquee regular-season games to the slate in December. I don't know if the sport needs to add games, but it does need to have TV-friendly regular-season games in December. Such a route is precisely how one can avoid the thorniness of a playoff yet enhance the value of the regular season and promote an ACTUAL "national" champion (as opposed to a merely regional one).

Is this idea new? Not if you've read the Weekly Affirmation at College Football News.

Sherman, the Wayback Machine, please...

 Week Ten: November 5, 2007


Short-Form Weekly Affirmation: Fast Track Gold Club
We begin this week's column with a creative idea that, due to its eminently sensible nature, won't ever be adopted by the powers that be in college football. Nevertheless, it's worth considering.

At a time in our sport's evolution when arguments (BCS or no BCS? Plus-one or playoff system? Four, eight, or 16 teams in a playoff?) are becoming calcified and stale, we need to inject some fresh thinking into the discussion. After spending the past few seasons without an original thought on this subject--due to the need to bash the BCS into the ground--I've emerged from something of a cave and can offer a new proposal that should satisfy college football's various warring factions.

Let's call this the "College Football Flex Plan."

If you follow pro football, you almost surely know that last year witnessed the beginning of the NFL's thoughtful and market-friendly decision to provide a "flex plan" in terms of Sunday Night game selection for NBC's season-long package. The concept is simple and smart: if a given matchup is a stinker, relegate it from Sunday night to Sunday afternoon, where FOX or CBS can pick up the game and assign it to the No. 5 broadcast crew. Since NBC pays big bucks for its primetime-only package, the Peacock is able to select a showcase game for late-season inclusion into its broadcast schedule. This kind of creative and nimble thinking illustrates why the NFL can be so incredibly profitable even while possessing a generally unwatchable product. (Side note: have you ever stopped to consider why an early November regular-season game, Patriots-Colts, was so thoroughly hyped? Could it be because every other NFL team suffers so substantially by comparison?) College football--in terms of satisfying its fans while also adding more integrity to the (still-mythical) national championship selection process--should learn from the NFL and adopt its own kind of flex plan.

Instead of explaining the plan and then laying it out, let's just describe the plan and then explain it.

The "College Football Flex Plan" (CFFP) would involve the playing of ten regular-season games from Labor Day weekend through the second weekend of November, with one bye included for every team. Conference games and established non-conference rivalries would comprise these ten contests. On the third weekend of November, everyone would get a week off. On the fourth weekend of November--usually Thanksgiving weekend--the teams in conferences that play a championship game (ACC, Big XII, SEC) could play their eleventh game. On the first weekend of December, the Big Ten, Big East, and Pac-10 could play their eleventh game, while the SEC, ACC and Big XII stage their title tilts.

Why the vague, cryptic and murky reference to the "eleventh game"? Glad you asked. The eleventh game forms the core of the CFFP, and it addresses the kinds of tensions that are emerging in the 2007 college football season (not to mention most seasons).

If you're a college football fan, you obviously want the two best teams to play for the national title. But in order to get to that point, you also want the deadwood to be cleared away first. You want the best teams in each conference to knock heads before the bowl selection show (or perhaps, in future years, a Final Four and/or plus one system). In other words, you would love for Kansas to play Oregon. You would love for Connecticut to play Oklahoma. The bowl games usually provide the sexy matchups, but in order to determine college football's best teams, you first need to identify--and, if at all possible, succeed in creating--the not-so-sexy matchups that emerge in a given season. The rise of previously unheralded schools such as Kansas, UConn, Virginia, Arizona State, Illinois, Kentucky, Boston College, Hawaii and Missouri (last year, the list included Rutgers, Wake Forest, Arkansas and BYU, but not as many upper-tier schools as is the case in 2007) demands that these teams play each other to separate the pretenders from the contenders. More specifically, these teams need to meet late in the season, when identities have been formed and early-season rust (think of Appalachian State over Michigan, South Florida over Auburn, and Washington over Boise State) is not an issue.

These kinds of games--a college football equivalent of college basketball's "Bracket Buster Saturday"--would occur in late November and early December under the CFFP. The mechanism used to decide the home team in these games could be arrived at in a number of different ways. Perhaps there would be an open drawing; perhaps certain conference matchups would be decided in advance; perhaps TV would carry most of the weight in creating these matchups. At any rate, you'd have late-season matchups involving teams coming off bye weeks. You'd have non-conference games that would be part of the 11-game regular season, but they'd acquire a playoff-like feel. The arrangement would be friendly to television, but it would also be friendly to the fans of the participating schools because they wouldn't be staged at neutral locations. All in all, the CFFP would settle a whole round of arguments at the end of the regular season, which would then make the conference title games and bowl games that much more interesting as well. Moreover, the CFFP--by providing relevant, freshly-arranged matchups at the end of the regular season, would almost certainly create a scenario in which remaining unbeatens would either fall or rise to the top. With this kind of a plan in place, the bowl system could be retained but still produce a more deserving national champion if a plus-one was inserted.

Let's summarize the "College Football Flex Plan" in a simple way: the CFFP shortens the regular season but adds playoff-style excitement; it provides compelling non-conference matchups, but within the regular season and, moreover, at the season's end; it's friendly to TV and fans; it enables teams to compete after a bye week, but not with a ridiculously long (51-day, Ohio State-style) layoff; it keeps the bowl system in place, but it also requires a plus one at the end. All in all, the CFFP provides something for everyone. It's worth looking at... even if the workings of the world suggest that sensible things just don't happen very often in life.

Somber Is The Price We Pay: Christianity, Ethics, And The Response To All Things Bin Laden

The first thing that must be said in this essay is simple: I'm a coward.


I'm a coward because I don't have the guts to be as good as Jesus of Nazareth. I'm a coward because I don't have the moral courage of Martin Luther King, Gandhi, or Dorothy Day, my main role models as a person of faith and as someone who knows that human beings are not meant to kill each other. I'm a coward for not going as far as the best souls who have ever guided us when they were robed in human flesh and feelings.



I'm a coward. Let that reality - and it is a reality - frame the rest of this essay and how it is processed on moral and ethical levels.



It's been quite a week for Americans, as we wrestle with the reality and aftermath of Osama Bin Laden's death. Everything about this seminal moment in world history - and it is a seminal moment, even if you believe that Bin Laden was no longer the same threat he was in 2001 - has generated necessary discussions about the human condition.


Questions of how we conduct policy, how we deal with mass-murderers, how we treat inconvenient kinds of lives in manifestly threatening situations are daunting enough. The Bin Laden death has forced us to go even deeper, though: How should we react to the death of a person who committed supremely evil and vile acts? How should we speak of a person who didn't just end roughly 3,000 lives in horrifying fashion, but shattered the hundreds of thousands of lives connected to the unfortunate souls who worked in the upper reaches of the Twin Towers on that September 11 morning?


Nearly 10 full years after 9/11, how should we react - it's a necessary question because it's a matter of heart and soul, the stuff of life at its deepest, truest core, the stuff by which people of faith align their lives and - for the nonbeliever - the internal energy that shapes the society we live in. Maybe the first 24 hours after Osama's death painted a picture in which emotions were too raw and the catharsis was too fresh. Now, though, a full four days after Sunday's "where-were-you-when-you-heard?" moment, we should be able to wrestle with these tensions in earnest so that we can be our best selves and show as much to the world when our inner fiber is tested on a grand scale.



The most basic thing to say about the nation's response to Bin Laden's death - and your own response, whatever it was - is that we all draw a line somewhere. As we swim through life, millions of little experiences over many decades come together to form a larger moral canvas, a fully-laid-out, whole-cloth expression of everything we believe to be good, true, necessary, and paramount in our lives. Decades of encounters, perceived in our own unique way and weighed against the stories we hear from others around us, create a larger flow of life and frame the way we've come to understand the great truths of existence.


There is a finite point I wish to make about all of this, but before getting to that point, one must ask questions on the path to deeper understanding of oneself as a person. We all draw lines in different places, but before talking about those lines, let's at least make sure we're considering all the angles when we start drawing:



Where do you draw the line on war, on special ops, on drones, and on aiding rebel groups or ruling governments in foreign countries? What are the criteria that should (or do, or must) guide these actions?


What is a reasonable cost of war or select missions to take out specific individuals such as Osama Bin Laden? What's the cost in lives that's reasonable? The cost in money? The cost in emotional strain, the divorces of military families, the mental health of soldiers, the spiritual consequence of being given a professional/military assignment to kill another human being?


These questions are not asked in a partisan manner, but in a coldly dispassionate and analytical way. Costs are not just monetary; some things in life ARE worth the great holistic cost. The point is to make sure that we account for the full cost of actions; that's the only way in which we can confidently say that some things are worth doing in any circumstance.



Continuing the questions that must be asked this week: How many other people are there like Bin Laden who should be taken out? What guides that specific kind of decision?



Should these kinds of missions ever be undertaken at all (i.e., should we consider pacifism or not)?



Can torture or extreme methods of attempted coercion (i.e., waterboarding) ever be condoned in an attempt to gain information?



When something like the killing of Osama Bin Laden is successfully carried out, how should it then be seen - as an achievement, a grim but necessary duty, a satisfying triumph over evil, or as another distinct reality not expressed in the three previous options?


Should photos of the dead person (Bin Laden) be posted? What criteria should guide the posting of the photos? How should we view the photos themselves and the decision of whether to post them or not?


These questions are not meant to steer you to one way of being or one course of action, but to merely get all of us to make sure that we all draw our own lines based on highly-developed and fully fleshed-out criteria.


Whether you're a liberal or a conservative or a libertarian; an anti-war advocate or a strong believer in the need for an interventionist foreign policy; a supporter of soft power or hard power; or, lastly, a supporter of defense spending or defense cuts, these are the kinds of questions that have to be wrestled with. Human beings can, do and always will possess different ways of viewing a given issue, but what's unallowable is to arrive at views without a clear, coherent and layered ethical architecture, a finely-developed framework created by decades of living, decades of wrestling with life's most difficult challenges on a soul level or - for the nonbeliever - a deeply internal level of heart and mind. Arriving at a viewpoint through careful work doesn't guarantee correctness or accuracy, but views gained without much forethought do indeed guarantee chaos before too long.


It should be clear that the process of asking so many questions (and they're just a few of the many queries that could be presented to anyone grappling with the moral and ethical dilemmas posed by "Osama Week") is designed to achieve one simple thing: The formation of well-developed criteria for the moral and ethical lines we draw in our lives, lines that - when taken to the policy level and adopted by leaders - form the stance of the United States Government in front of its people and the larger world beyond its borders.


With that having been established, this essay now moves to the person whose life and teachings are supposed to hold primacy for a great many Americans: Jesus of Nazareth.


Cast aside the longstanding debates about whether America is a “Christian nation” by charter and, in a different vein, if America is Christian or secular on a cultural level. What is still beyond dispute is that of religious adherents in America, most profess to be Christian by a wide margin. Moreover, it’s also beyond dispute that some general adherence to Christian religious faith is seen as a general asset in presidential and national American politics. Of course, Jeremiah Wright proved to be thorny for Barack Obama, but that drama from the 2008 campaign was more a matter of casting a cloud over the perceived legitimacy of Obama’s Christianity. It was not an instance in which perceived authentic Christianity was suddenly a weakness.


The point is plain: Being Christian is seen as important in America’s political arena, even though there are large blocks of voters on the Left who are passionately, enduringly atheist, agnostic, secularist, or a combination thereof. Because Christian identity owns such centrality and primacy in our nation’s national life (not necessarily its culture at large, but certainly in politics writ large), it is therefore relevant and necessary to constantly keep the life, example and teachings of Jesus in prominent public view.


Theology is its own sticky wicket, and there are many debates about the divinity of Jesus that will never die (the word choice is not intentional, by the way). However, what’s great about the life of Jesus is that – while immensely layered, paradoxical and mysterious on some levels – he left behind some decidedly unambiguous statements and examples on matters of life and death.

“Those who live by the sword shall also perish by it” – this, mind you, just hours before he would die at the hands of Roman imperial power.


“Turn the other cheek” – no, not a statement of completely passive submission to violence at the hands of another person, but a very intentional and genuinely nonviolent way of aggressively resisting oppression and mistreatment.


“Love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you” – this is Jesus’s most difficult teaching by far, but it is a core part of the human Jesus’s message and therefore something every Christian person has to grapple with. It certainly can’t be exempted from the Christian call.

To be clear, “loving one’s enemies” does not mean approving of their actions. Similarly, forgiveness does not mean immediately, reflexively extending absolution or consolation to an evildoer. The repentance of the evildoer and a mutual acknowledgment of the hurt caused by one party to the other are parts of necessary forgiveness. Nevertheless, the call does remain to love the other person, no matter how unattractive or evil that person might in fact be. Jesus sets the bar very high; it’s why he’s Jesus, the only sinless person who ever lived, despite inhabiting the same human flesh and the same biological impulses all of us have.


Realizing the clarity and completeness of Jesus’s identity as an exemplar of vigorous and aggressive nonviolent resistance to the oppression he endured on Good Friday, we – especially those of us who claim the mantle of Christian faith but also those who view Jesus as a great teacher or role model on a solely human level – must at least attempt to square our lives with the life of Jesus. This is when an event such as the killing of Osama Bin Laden brings us in touch with very difficult and messy realities of human life in a context of mass civilization, not the primitive hunter-gatherer societies of prehistoric times when finely-crafted systems of governance had not yet emerged.


Once human beings developed and grew to their present levels of cognitive and moral awareness, we – as a species - generated moral codes, laws, and various standards for the regulation of peaceable behavior on a massive scale. What Jesus did and taught offers an imposing challenge to the fragile balance of human life in cities and clustered communities. What is under discussion in “Osama Week” is nothing less than a revisiting of all that it means to exist as a global community of almost (now) seven billion persons, on our way to 8, 9, and 10 billion in the very near future. Just how are we to act – and think, and feel, and outwardly emote – on a planet with multiple hundreds of countries, dozens of different races, and an accordingly vast range of languages and lifestyles? This is what it means to be human, and on these bewildering questions, Jesus established his own clear standard.


Because Jesus sets the bar so high, we must then realize – and this is part of why I am indeed a profound moral coward – that almost all of us fall short when comparing ourselves to the carpenter’s son from Nazareth.


The difficult thing to realize about the Jesus Standard and the human standard – including Matt Zemek’s standard – is that on a planet with billions of people and many bad actors, the ideal of complete nonviolence is almost impossible to realistically uphold. Let’s play along with this hypothetical: If an attacker broke into Jesus’s home today, Jesus would aggressively pursue active nonviolent resistance. He would project complete serenity in bearing and appearance but demonstrate moral authority and emotional control of the entire situation. He would express empathy with his attacker yet shed light on the smallness and weakness of what the attacker was doing. The man who exposed Pontius Pilate’s doublespeak and moral cowardice while not insulting the Roman governor would take a similar tack with a would-be assailant. The exact words would be unique to the situation, but the fundamental approach would not waver… not from the one who was supremely righteous (righteous in a human sense; believers would add a divine layer of spiritual truth to Jesus, but again, even for the nonbeliever, Jesus offers the ultimate standard of human conduct) but yet did not resist his death with a show of physical force.


In response to the example and teachings of Jesus, I can only say that I fall short of them. I can only say that any attempt to do violence against another human being falls short of the Jesus Standard. Yet, I do intellectually embrace a way of being that falls short of the Jesus Standard; it’s the gap between pure teaching and realpolitik, between the vision Jesus had for humanity and the realism of living in the midst of a complicated world.


I cannot deny or run away from this: When defending oneself in a house or defending one’s country against a mass-murderer who constantly loomed as a terrorist threat, I can’t say that I’m a full-on pacifist. I can’t. That’s what makes me a moral coward. It’s where I choose to draw the line in my outlook on the world and how to conduct myself as an individual citizen. It’s also where I draw the line in my view of what the United States can and can’t do. Nevertheless, it puts me below the Jesus Standard; it leaves me short of Jesus’s teachings in full.


Where do I draw the line on the questions raised above? Jesus would want me to view every single killing of another person as deficient; at least, that’s true if I take the passion and crucifixion narratives at face value (which, as a Christian, I darn well should). However, I fall short of the Jesus Standard when I say that there are a few people who should be killed. Hitler was one, Bin Laden another, Joe Stalin another, Saddam Hussein another, Pol Pot another. Unrepentant mass murderers who – moreover – are not likely to be replaced by anything or anyone worse than them are the people on this planet (there are only a select few of them) whose deaths would generally benefit their local populations and/or people in other lands who live under the threat of terrorism or death by violent means.


On a matter that’s somewhat (but not completely) related to the killing of terrorists, I oppose the death penalty but believe, as an example, that Jeffery Dahmer was an exception, a person who – without repentance – needed to be put to death because of his…. uhhh… his choice in meats. I hold that there are a few occasions in which it is necessary to do something that fails to meet the Jesus Standard of moral and ethical conduct. These kinds of actions – and the realities attached to them – are called “necessary evils.” They are, in short, the kinds of actions that reflect the gap between the ideal Jesus Standard and, on the other hand, Life In A Complicated, Messy, Violent And Difficult Mass Society On Planet Earth. A helpful way of illustrating this concept is that conservatives are much more pronounced in making divisions between the Jesus Standard and Life In A Complicated World – that’s not wrong or immoral or unethical or anything of the sort; I’m merely saying that’s where conservatives generally draw their lines. My line – like the lines of other generally antiwar liberals – is drawn with a much greater internal insistence on the primacy of nonviolence, even if I know that 100 percent nonviolence is not quite attainable.


I realize there are many other questions and standards to be raised on these issues: For instance, just how does one assess a “mass murderer unlikely to be replaced by anyone worse?” Does the number of people murdered matter, or does the savagery of the deaths caused hold a greater degree of primacy? How does one determine that a person is “unlikely to be replaced by anyone worse?” That’s the detail work we all must do in surveying various situations and making tough ethical and moral choices. The point is that we should wrestle with these things far more deeply than we do; another core point is that Jesus, fully human (whether or not you believe that he is divine), has left us with his own clear way of handling these kinds of problems.


We now arrive at the final portion of this essay, in which – having presented the questions we must wrestle with and then laying down the Jesus Standard – I will attempt to establish the one point I want all of you to retain in some form or fashion: When necessary evils are involved – and Osama Week is nothing if not an extended drama in which we are all forced to confront necessary evils – what we feel is as important as what we do (and what we approve of doing).


Here’s the basic explanation/unpacking of that statement:


When choosing between a clear moral good and a clear moral evil, it is only the act that matters, at least in an immediate sense. Jesus, in fact, taught the Apostles about the person who said he would not do the right thing but then went out and did it, balanced against the person who said he would do the right thing but then failed to actually do it. When a given moral or ethical choice is clear and not that difficult, we can feel torn-up and conflicted inside, battered and buffeted by desires to have an affair or punch an irritating stranger in the face. We can feel hurt, horny or restless. That’s okay, because on that level, feelings are undeniable and unavoidable. We all feel the surge of blood in our veins at times, the desire to gain revenge or satisfy a bodily craving. As long as we don’t act on those urges, we’re morally and ethically fine.


When necessary evils enter the picture, that’s when things get very complicated very quickly.


When killing someone with a weapon… or having an abortion for anything less than the threat to your own life as a biological mother… or divorcing a spouse… or telling a bald-faced lie on a matter of appreciable significance, or something of like nature, one is participating in a necessary evil. The person doing so is not evil as a result, but the person is part of a larger reality of evil. It’s not an evil act for a scared young woman to have an abortion out of fear that she can’t support her child (conservatives might disagree, and I would understand why; however, that’s another discussion for another day…), but the reality of a nascent womb-held life being ended? That’s an evil reality. (Would that we could distinguish between evilness inside human persons and evil realities; evil is a reality or condition more than a characteristic of individuals. People who sincerely try to do good often contribute to evil; this doesn’t make the person evil, but it magnifies the presence of evil in the world.)



Accordingly, when pondering what to do – and what official U.S. Government policy should be – on the matters of extrajudicial killings, torture (waterboarding in particular), the waging of war, and the posting of photos (among many other things), we need to realize that one of our core responsibilities is to make sure that while participating in a necessarily evil reality, we do not become the evil we claim to oppose and despise. Osama Bin Laden was an evil man, not just a person who sincerely tried to do good but wound up adding to the evil of (and in) the world as it is. That’s precisely why I felt he needed to be killed. However, the fact that I supported his killing puts a profound moral weight at my feet, and this is what connects feelings with actions.


Why does it matter how we Americans felt – and how we emoted – in the aftermath of the announcement of Osama’s death? It matters because we participated in a necessary evil. We, the United States, participated in an act that would be unquestionably immoral if done to a 9-year-old girl on a street corner, but which attained a certain measure of morality because the person was instead Osama Bin Laden, mastermind/funder of the 9/11 attacks. That mixture of situational morality and underlying immorality (at least relative to the Jesus Standard) defines a classically necessary evil.


Tough stuff, yes? Here’s the kicker: Because it’s difficult, and because it falls short of the Jesus Standard, such an action needs to complemented by a very specific emotional and spiritual response in order for its most moral dimensions to be magnified while allowing its least moral dimensions to recede in size and influence.


To illustrate this point, I bring you Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As you might know, Bonhoeffer was a Christian minister who actively resisted Hitler. There is still debate about the specific details of his involvements in anti-Hitler activity, but Bonhoeffer’s words – presented here – illustrate the proper, honorable, noble, moral, and ethical way to handle the realm of necessary evils, actions that are deemed to be necessary for the planet while falling short of the Jesus Standard. Read the above link for a fuller unpacking of Bonhoeffer’s views, but they boil down to this: When performing or participating in a necessary evil, one should not be exultant or regard one’s actions as the height of morality. The words of the just-beatified Pope John Paul II give ballast to Bonhoeffer’s position and stance: “War is always a defeat for humanity.”



War might be necessary – it helped Karol Wojtyla’s native Poland for a time, and World War II, though not supported by everyone (Dorothy Day, one of my spiritual heroes, protested it), did stop the spread of Nazism. However, war's death-bearing reality in itself is never a positive for humanity. World War II’s undeniable success on a fundamental level does not obscure - and must not be allowed to obscure - the fact that a broken world is what gave rise to it. The failure for humanity is not that a bloody war stopped Hitler; it’s that Hitler was able to gain enough of a global foothold in 1938 and 1939 that he and Mussolini (and Hirohito) became such large-scale threats to other nations and continents.


The point is plain: War, even when necessary, is part of the evil of reality. Participating in war or doing war-like things is not the summit of Christian virtue – Jesus submitted to death rather than lash out at his oppressors with physical force and violence. Therefore, when Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked about killing Hitler, he did not ascribe supreme morality to his intentions. We might not match the Jesus Standard, so the price we pay – the price which Bonhoeffer insisted on paying – was, at the very least, not being joyful in the process of participating in a necessary evil.


We don’t get to gloat. We don’t get to cheer. Not when falling short of the Jesus Standard as we make the necessary calculation that We Live In A Complicated, Messy And Broken World.


We can kill a select few people, yes, but we don’t get to regard such actions as the height of morality or virtue. Not when a necessary evil is involved.


We can say that Osama Bin Laden’s death is a net-plus for the planet, as President Barack Obama basically did in his Sunday night address, but no, we don’t get to regard the event as an achievement, a sign of something to be PROUD of, as Obama then did with these words:


Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.


The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to.


Those words strongly suggest – if not outrightly indicate - the kind of occasion that is worth celebrating, like a space shuttle launch or the attainment of some new frontier, some higher vista, of human accomplishment. No, when one participates in a necessary evil, that kind of language is not allowed. Falling short of the Jesus Standard – in the best of the moral tradition affirmed by Bonhoeffer – can be viewed as necessary when life becomes wrenchingly complicated and messy, but it cannot be viewed as party-time or an occasion for joy.



You might think that we should kill even more people than Osama or just a literal handful of people; I can respect that view even though I would disagree with it.



You might think that torture should be allowed if it can deliver high-value targets or information. I understand that view, even though I would even more vigorously disagree with it.



You might – heck, you almost certainly do – draw your line of morality and ethics in a place different from mine. There’s nothing wrong or problematic about that. We’re different, each and every one of us, and while we strive for consistency in the application of our principles, we will always make certain exceptions here and there. The disagreements between conservatives and liberals or (as has been shown during Osama Week on matters of national security) between pro-Obama and anti-Obama factions are nothing other than a product of the fact that people draw lines and locate points of emphasis in different places. That’s fine, and that will always be the case. However, regardless of where you stand on these and any other issues (foreign or domestic) that involve necessary evils, it is incumbent upon you – upon all of us – to realize that we must be somber, sober and distinctly non-celebratory as we participate in, support, or react to such actions.



Somber is the price we pay for doing necessary things that are part of the evil of reality. That’s what it means to be a human person who wrestles with matters of morality and ethics, especially from a Christian standpoint and especially as a citizen who has to think through the implications of his actions, positions, AND personal emotional responses to events. That’s the one thing I want to leave you with.




Now, a brief postscript on the above point as I conclude this essay:

Why does this matter, beyond any reasons that have already been stated?



If a nation – a larger community of people represented by its government and, most centrally, President Obama - is truly sober and somber in response to the killing of Osama Bin Laden or another person with a similarly blood-stained record, the rest of the world takes notice. Not the fervent anti-Americans, but most of the world. That stuff matters in terms of national security and creating a better balance of life on this planet.



It matters for this reason too: If our leaders – who do have to participate in necessary evils – regarded their actions with the moral temperance and seriousness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, they would, first of all, commit far fewer atrocities because of a dogged insistence on not creating any more evil-in-reality than absolutely necessary. If one claims to view war as something that should only be used as a last resort, or if one similarly claims that torture is allowable only in a few select circumstances, one is accordingly forced to create standards for the use of each of those necessary evils and, as a result, ensure that they are viewed as tactics/measures that need to be carefully limited so as to not produce any more evil than necessary.



Therefore, if one displays happiness or overt satisfaction in the aftermath of sanctioning war or torture (which, solely for the sake of argument, MIGHT be deemed acceptable under certain circumstances in the eyes of some persons), one is thereby expressing – not just within one’s being but to the outside world as well – an enjoyment of such actions that is not consistent with a desire to limit their use/frequency/prevalence to the fullest possible extent. There’s a reason we get upset when we see other people in other nations cheering a given death. There’s a reason why select targeted killings aren’t viewed as moral progress by other antiwar advocates: The killings for which the U.S. Government is responsible are more than select; they’re more than just the three or five or seven people (no more than 10 on the planet if we applied a strict standard) who might deserve “mass-murderer-take-him-out-now” status.



If our society – and the leaders our society produces – possessed a Bonhoeffer-based acknowledgment of the impoverished nature of necessary evils in comparison with the Jesus Standard, we would not allow necessary evils to spill into unnecessary (and therefore morally unacceptable) evils. If we, like Bonhoeffer, acknowledged that even necessary actions will fall short of the Jesus Standard and therefore should not be viewed as the summit of virtue, we – as a collective society – could release the photo of a dead Osama Bin Laden knowing that said release was not an act of “spiking the football” or “holding up a trophy” but, in complete contrast, an act of owning our necessary evil and grimly accepting the cost of our action: the killing – necessary, but unfortunate – of another human being.



Somber is the price we pay. Sober is the response to the human cost when necessary evils are involved. No, this is not concern-trollism or thought-policing or emotional nannying. This is the stuff of life at its deepest core, of human grappling at its most complicated spiritual and emotional centers.

As a Christian, I end by wishing that the peace of the Crucified And Nonviolent Christ be with you all.


Sincerely,
Matt Zemek

Verily and Undeniably A Moral Coward Who Falls Short Of The Jesus Standard By Miles