Media `pigs' wallow in mud, meanness

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

The reason that pigs wallow in mud is because their skin is fair and thin and the hair covering their bodies is sparse and offers little protection from the sun. During the day, pigs burrow in the ground to keep cool. At night they find a stream or a puddle and clean themselves. There is a purpose for what they do.

What, I wonder, is our purpose?

After a two-week vacation, full of incidents in which strangers went out of their way to be kind, I come home, turn on TV, read the papers, listen to the radio and am instantly up to my neck in muck and dirt. But it doesn't cool, doesn't alleviate the sting. It exists only to poison and to give pain.

First step into the mire: I read the August issue of Boston magazine. Boston names as the worst columnist in the city the husband of the woman whom they name as best columnist.

Why does this bother me? Why should I care?

I care because there is absolutely no purpose for this deliberate meanness except to inflict pain. Sure, the couple will try to brush it off, take it for what it is - worthless drivel. But the words will linger, embedded not just in their minds, but in the minds of their readers. It will be a wedge between them. Sure, they'll say it isn't. They'll deny they're hurt at all.

Pigs take to the mud to keep cool. People sling it to smear others in an effort to make themselves look grand.

Next step into the mud: I watch President Bush being attacked on "Dateline NBC." Bush is not my favorite politician. But he is the president and deserves respect.

Now, I don't know the man at all. I know just what I read about him, what I'm allowed to witness in edited news clips. The media molds my perceptions. I see what I am supposed to see. Bush is patrician, private school, pro-life, a bit of a prig. He thinks he is better than we are. Therefore, I am not supposed to like him.

How easy to destroy him by attacking his morality. This man who touts "family values," who believes that abortion is murder and same-sex relationships are an aberration and marriage equals commitment, holds himself a little too above the crowd. He is a sitting duck.

And so come the questions.

"Have you ever had an affair, Mr. President?" a smooth faced reporter asks on a nationally broadcast television show. "What would you do if your daughter had an abortion?"

I feel as if I'm watching a "Saturday Night Live" parody.

But this is for real.

Prime-time TV interviews are peep shows these days. Turn on TV and watch the sleaze. That's the way it is, I guess. The other morning on Kiss 108-FM some dee-jay asked a female caller, "So what's the radio station that makes you wet?" And she replied without pause and with a giggle, "Kiss 108." Sex is everywhere.

Nothing is sacred.

But some things should be.

President Bush wasn't demeaned by the questions he was asked Tuesday night. But the country was.

Look at these small-minded Americans. Look at what worries them, the world must think.

There's a war going on in Bosnia, a famine in Africa, anarchy in Haiti. The U.S. is plagued with record homelessness, crime, prison overcrowding, bankrupt businesses, home foreclosures, failing schools, nuclear waste. Millions have no jobs, no health insurance and no hope of getting either.

Cities are hell holes, AIDS and cancer are epidemics, pollution is the norm and here's a big shot reporter with a chance to confront the president about any one of these issues and what does he do? He picks up dirt and throws it. He takes the cheap shot and cheats us all.

But he assuages us, too. That's what meanness does. It makes us feel good when we can feel better - or at least not any worse - than the person in the spotlight. It levels the playing field when no one is above anyone else.

It makes us feel good when we can feel better - or at least not any worse - than the person in the spotlight.

But is this what we really want? Must we constantly build up only to tear down? President Bush is a man of principle.

His beliefs aren't easy to live by. His beliefs may not be yours or mine.

But at least he has beliefs and at least he strives.

"If one aims one's arrows at the sky, it will at least get to the top of the trees," a wise person once said.

It seems to me we have a choice in this country: we can continue to live our lives pointing to the sky and snickering when some public figure allegedly misses the mark. We can go on throwing mud.

Or we can praise the effort, applaud the attempt and cast off the meanness that destroys and distorts.