The Samaritan

United Flight 414 had just begun to taxi down the runway when the woman in seat 28B threw up. I was in 28C. We were on our way to Newark Airport, five-and-a-half hours across the country. She spoke no English. I do not speak Chinese. This, I thought, is going to be a long trip.

I had a lot of work, and when I had arranged it in the space an economy seat offers, I got up to use the head. When I returned, a man was standing at my seat. He was the woman’s husband, and he sat behind her in 29B. He didn’t speak English either, but he made clear to me that we were to trade places. I looked forlornly at the two large men in 29A and 29C, and as I gathered my stuff, I made it clear how put out I was. People should recognize the sacrifice I was making.

In the Gospel of Luke, a lawyer asks Jesus, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Part of the answer is to love “your neighbor as yourself.” The lawyer naturally presses, “And who is my neighbor?”

The answer turns out to be the Samaritan, who went out of his way to help the man lying half-dead in the road. He did not act begrudgingly, but cared generously for the stranger – whereas my body language had emphasized the extent of my self-sacrifice. My one-percent roots were showing –  I have a right to my privileged place but occasionally make a noble gesture to the less fortunate.

Whipping up the Base

Who says the two parties are polarized? After writing the script for Obamacare when he was governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney is now taking credit for the auto industry bailout. This surprised me, as a couple of days ago a friend of mine – a thoughtful and entrepreneurial businessman – said, “Mitt will have a lot of explaining to do about his position on the bailout.”

Here’s his latest explanation: "I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet. . . . So, I'll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back."

If the outcome had been different, Plan B was ready: "If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday,” he wrote in 2008, “you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.”

Guess which of those statements he made to workers at an Ohio auto-parts manufacturing plant.

No wonder his former Republican opponents are burying their endorsements at the end of speeches and the bottom of emails.

Near the conclusion of his self-important exit announcement, Newt Gingrich said, “I’m asked sometimes, is Mitt Romney conservative enough? Compared to Barack Obama? This is a choice between Mitt Romney and the most radical, leftist president in history.”

And on Monday, Rick Santorum’s website posted his endorsement email without fanfare, in the middle of the night, and in the fourth-to-last paragraph.

Seekers

I spent the last few days at a remote ranch not far above California’s huge Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. Being there made me think about people’s relationship to the land, a subject that was fed by weekend conversations with old friends and reading Wendell Berry’s Jefferson Lecture, “It All Turns on Affection,” and Isabel Wilkerson’s book, The Warmth of Other Suns. Berry is the poet of the simple rural life in which people are connected to the land. He is heir to both Jefferson and Thoreau, and the student of Wallace Stegner, who taught him that Americans can be divided into “boomers,” who “pillage and run,” and “stickers,” who have “such love for a place and its life that they want to preserve it and remain in it.” Wilkerson traces the Great Migration of 1915-1970, when six million people left the Jim Crow South for the urban north – and in so doing, transformed both the landscape and the history of America.

Berry long ago came home to the Kentucky hills – where his family has farmed since before the Civil War – to live the values he espouses. It’s a story I want to embrace – but Wilkerson reminds me that this is the same rural South from which millions of Black sharecroppers fled an unimaginable system of oppression that bound them to the land.

The migrants’ story is unique; their message is  universal. As Berry writes, “land and people have suffered together, as invariably they must.” To me, those courageous enough to leave were neither boomers nor stickers. They were, like so many of us, seekers.

Stumble of the Week

It’s hard not to be tired of tawdriness after a week of such uplifting events as:

• A British Parliamentary panel’s finding that Rupert Murdoch is “not fit” to run a large news company, which is quite a condemnation since Murdoch runs the largest such company in the history of the world. This is the same Murdoch who was Prime Minister David Cameron’s first official overnight guest. That’s the same Cameron who hired Andy Coulson as his communications director while Coulson was still on Murdoch’s payroll. And that Coulson is under arrest.

• The testimony at the trial of John Edwards, a man some once considered fit to be president.

• The abrupt resignation of Ric Grenell, Mitt Romney’s foreign policy expert, because of the outcry against his homosexuality by “pro-family community.”

• The National Football League, which suspended four players for offering “bounties” for maiming opposing quarterbacks and whose former star, Junior Seau, became the second ex-player in two weeks to commit suicide.

So it is nice to note that one of the most heartwarming stories also came out of the NFL, when Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie coach, Greg Schiano, signed his former Rutgers player, Eric LeGrand, a defensive lineman who was paralyzed from the neck in his junior year. It was a gesture, to be sure, as LeGrand is in a wheelchair – although he has made more progress than his doctors ever thought possible. But Schiano’s act reminds us that it isn’t only in fiction that a coach can love his players.

Murdoch

Here’s a man-bites-dog news flash, Rupert Murdoch is “not a fit person” to run a big international media company.

Who knew?

The discovery was made by a tri-partisan panel of Conservative, Labor and Liberal members of the British Parliament and issued yesterday in a 121-page report.

For those who have not followed the scandal that brought down Britain’s largest newspaper and threatens Conservative David Cameron’s Parliamentary leadership, it began with the discovery of telephone hacking at the now-defunct News of the World, and has since led to several arrests, the resignation of top editors and allegations of bribing Scotland Yard.

A majority of the Parliamentary panel accused Murdoch of “willful blindness” to the activities of his employees and therefore unfit to run the company. (Interestingly, the panel’s Conservatives, who supported the rest of the report, broke ranks on the fitness issue, which goes to the heart of the shameful relationship between the Murdoch empire and the Conservative Party.)

The report’s conclusion misses the point. Murdoch is not unfit to run a media business because he was oblivious his underlings’ activities. He was oblivious to their activities because he is unfit to run a media business.

The distinction is critical. Over his long – and financially successful – career, Rupert Murdoch has trashed every ethical principle on which the credibility of the media depends. He has used his properties to further his political agenda. He has cheapened the definition of news. He has valued titillation over information. He has traded his support for politicians for their support of his business ventures.

There are many reasons the newspaper business is in trouble these days, from the economy to the Internet. But none of them has done more damage than Rupert Murdoch.

Strangers’ Gate, Children’s Glade

Strangers’ Gate, one of 20 named entrances into New York’s Central Park, stands near the park’s northwest corner under the shadow of the Great Hill. No one seems to know how the gate got its name, which is chiseled into the entry wall, so I like to think it is there to welcome strangers to this quiet oasis in the midst of a city that can wear you out. If you climb the 77 stone steps to the top of the Great Hill, you come at once on a small stone that marks the Peter Jay Sharp Children’s Glade. This is an urban playground unlike any I have ever seen. It has no swings or slides, no sandboxes or ball fields. It has only some large rocks set about an open lawn, trunk-sized logs on which to climb or sit (and one in which to hide), trees and flowers now coming into bloom, and paths that give the place a sense of unthreatening mystery and quiet adventure.

  Is a playground for the imagination, a place of quiet contemplation that beckons children with its simple beauty. It seems a novel concept in a world of computers, organized sports and flat-screened TVs. But it is what educators such as Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods and David Orr in Earth in Mind have been trying to tell us we are losing as we become strangers to the world of nature from which we spring.

Ghen Guangcheng

It’s a story that makes you want to stand up and cheer. A blind civil-rights dissident escapes from heavily guarded house arrest in a remote Chinese village and somehow makes it 370 miles to Beijing, where he seeks refuge at the American embassy. Or so we think. The techno savvy Chinese government has banned all references to Ghen Guangcheng – including any Internet references to ”Shawshank Redemption,” whose recent showing on state-run TV Ghen’s sympathasizers view as an underground tribute to his escape.

Our government is being almost as tight-lipped, refusing to disclose Ghen’s whereabouts or other details – although it’s clear we know where he is and are enabling him to be there. This is hardly the first time that our professed commitment to human rights has come in conflict with our desire to improve relations with a strategically important nation.

Witness our tap dances with Saudi Arabia and Russia – and historically with Pinochet’s Chile, apartheid South Africa, the now-toppled Arab regimes. The issue is posed as one between “realpolitik” and idealism, but it’s amazing how often the realists end up on the wrong side of history.

In the past we have talked of finding leaders we can “work with.” But might we not be better off in the long run – and more at peace with ourselves – if we looked harder for dissidents we can support – those with staying power, personal humility, true courage and a dedication to peace?

Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama are rare in history, but because they embody the aspirations of their people, they endure.

Stumble of the Week

Political consensus allegedly took another hit last week, as two moderate Democratic Congressmen lost to more liberal opponents in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primaries. Reporters attributed the defeat of incumbents Jason Altmire and Tim Holden to their votes against the Obama health care plan and their opposition to global warming legislation – yet more evidence, they said, of the polarization of America’s two major parties. This raises an interesting question: why is it polarizing for Democratic candidates to support (1) the health care law that is the signature legislative achievement of their party’s president and (2) climate legislation, when the scientific debate on the issue has long been settled and the imperative to act is recognized by virtually everyone this side of Rick Santorum? To be considered a moderate, must you vote for the policies of the other party? When King Solomon threatened to cut the disputed baby in half, did he seriously believe that half a baby for each mother was a reasonable outcome?

In a recent documentary on New Jersey’s Raritan River, then-Governor Christy Whitman said, as she signed a Brownfields bill into law: “The fact that you have people on either side of the spectrum who are not 100% happy tells you that you probably struck a pretty good bargain right in the middle.”

But is the measure of moderation our willingness to sacrifice our beliefs to a more politically palatable consensus? What happened to the idea of standing up for them?

The public discourse in this country has turned ugly, I think, not because of the strength of our own beliefs so much as our refusal to respect those who disagree.

Grant's Tomb

When I taught middle-school history, one question on my Christmas quiz was “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” Almost everybody got it right. Ulysses S. Grant’s Tomb sits on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River a few blocks from where I write. Tomorrow is the 190^th anniversary of his birth.

Grant is one of three men to have been both commander of all U.S. armed forces and president of the United States. While we remember George Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower as beacons of personal rectitude and public benevolence, Grant has fared far worse – recalled for heavy drinking, the scandalous behavior of his appointees, and the ruthlessness with which he pursued the Civil War. Robert E. Lee, Grant's adversary, has become a more sympathetic figure in history.

But Lee was as hard on his troops as Grant. After the disaster of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, Lee told Pickett to reform his division for a second suicidal attack. “General Lee,” replied Pickett “I have no division."

We revere our Revolution and talk of World War II as “the good war” – despite the 60+ million people who died. The Civil War is more problematic because it pitted “brother against brother” on American soil.

It also ended slavery in this country; and as president Grant enforced civil rights laws and backed African Americans’ constitutional rights.

All that changed after Grant’s presidency, when Klan violence brought racist retrenchment and the Jim Crow caste system – buttressed by a nostalgic view of the South right out of “Gone With the Wind” and “The Birth of a Nation.”

That revisionism made its way into generations of American history textbooks, and after that, Grant’s reputation never had a chance.

Oh, Fence, D-Fence

A report released yesterday by the Pew Research Center, which found that net migration from Mexico has dropped to zero – and may even have reversed itself – has roiled international relations and national politics. Speaking in his native Spanish, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon called on President Obama to hurry up and finish the border fence. “We have enough problems without having to deal with hordes of gringos flooding across the Rio Grande,” he said. “It’s already hard to get our people to go up there” now that the Minuteman Project calls itself "a citizens' Neighborhood Watch on our border."

“This is just one more example of a failed Obama presidency,” said Mitt Romney. “This administration can't even provide jobs for illegal immigrants who will work for practically nothing.”

Asked if he now favored discontinuing the fence, whose cost is estimated at up to $10 million a mile, Romney responded: “I support the efforts of Gov. Jan Brewer, Sheriff Arpaio and others to secure our border.

“But,” he chuckled, “Ann and I have lost good yard boys in three states.”

The campaign quickly clarified that Romney meant to say “maintenance staff” and noted “the Romneys paid all appropriate taxes.”

Convinced he had finally found a winning issue, Newt Gingrich traveled to Arizona, where he accused Obama of maintaining the fence to keep Democratic voters from leaving.

“Mr. Obama,” he said. “Tear down this fence.”

Today the Supreme Court hears testimony on Arizona’s immigration law (SB 1070) aimed at protecting us from “the invasion of illegal aliens we face today.”

Back to Brock

In earlier posts, I wrote about Woody Brock’s book American Gridlock – his characterization of the current political debate as a “dialogue of the deaf,” his thoughts on the deficit, and his solution to the entitlements problem. In my ongoing discussion of the book, which I urge you to read, I will look for stories that demonstrate one of the issues Brock raises: (1) the public economic crisis that threatens to make this a “lost decade;” (2) the entitlements crisis; (3) preventing perfect financial storms; (4) China and bargaining theory; and (5) distributive justice.

This morning’s news is dominated by the catastrophe hovering over Europe. This is hardly a new story, as we have been reading for months about the potential collapse of Greece, the recession in Spain, the Irish debt, Italy’s financial crisis, etc. While the doctrine of austerity may seem a rational intellectual solution to these problems in national treasury offices and newspaper editorial pages, it doesn’t work so well when people are injected into the equation.

Brock’s distinction between sound public investment in a nation’s infrastructure as opposed to deficit spending for short-term stimulation offers a way forward. A sound investment creates things we need – new bridges, better education systems, public transportation – and guarantees a return. It’s not easy to implement – “shovel ready,” for example, is not the right criterion – but it is the only way to get beyond the current impasse. It will put people to work building things we desperately need that will pay for themselves over time. And it will require people to work together, which is the antidote to the hardening economic and ethnic divisions that are Europe’s biggest threat.

Earth Day

Yesterday was Earth Day, and the world hardly noticed. In these times when economics trumps the environment at every turn, we need not just to celebrate the earth but to rescue its future from those who seek only to exploit it.

Although Earth Day seemed to come out of nowhere 42 years ago, it was very much a part of the ferment of the 1960s – an era that shook American society to its roots – and its organizers drew on the non-violent tactics of other protest movements. Yet elected officials, who believed their role was to galvanize public opinion around critical issues, played a leading role from the outset. The most important of these was Senator Gaylord Nelson, Democrat of Wisconsin, who had the idea of a national day of environmental “teach-ins.” Convinced that it must be a bipartisan effort, Nelson asked Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey to be co-chair. (McCloskey was the kind of Republican who hardly exists any more. In fact, he became a Democrat in 2007.)

On the first Earth Day, 20 million people gathered at teach-ins and celebrations across the country. The combination of grass-roots demonstrations and bipartisan political leadership led almost immediately to real change: the Clean Air Act was significantly broadened in 1970; the Clean Water Act became law in 1972; and the Endangered Species Act was passed a year later.

Every one of those laws, enacted with broad bipartisan support, has made a real difference, and every one of them is under siege in the current Congress.

Stumble of the Week

The uproar over the recent dust-up in Cartagena, Colombia, has already cost a couple of secret service administrators their jobs, and the investigations continue. Media reports paint a picture of a wild night of heavy drinking and prostitution – one that potentially put the president at risk. That’s one side of the story.

Unmentioned have been the almost heroic efforts of federal agencies to rein in expenses and cut costs. In fact, the entire matter would never have seen the light of day, had not one overly zealous agent balked at the excessive price his companion demanded for her services the next morning. When it came time for her to leave (hotel rules stipulate that prostitutes must vacate before 7 a.m.), the woman asked for $1.4 million pesos. That’s a lot of money ($800 at the current exchange rate), and far more than new agency guidelines permit.

The agent countered with $30, which makes you wonder when he last used an escort service at public expense.

What spilled out into the corridor of the fancy resort hotel was a brouhaha that resembled a Keystone Kops routine. As the two principals continued to argue over the price, they were joined by another prostitute. Soon Colombian police officers showed up to back the woman’s claims (even they pay more than $30), as US federal agents tried in vain to hush everyone up.

The rest, as they say, has gone viral.

It makes me nostalgic for the days of Eliot Spitzer.

Warsaw

There is a small and quiet square in New York’s Riverside Park overlooking the Hudson River. The trees and flowers are now coming into full bloom, and the place evokes a sense of peace and contemplation. It is the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Plaza, and in its middle is a simple stone plaque that commemorates “the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto battle, April-May 1943, and the six million Jews of Europe martyred in the cause of liberty.” Buried beneath are two boxes of soil from the Terezin and Scred concentration camps in Czechoslovakia and a scroll commemorating the uprising that erupted 63 years ago today. According to a description at the site, the Nazis forced the city's 400,000 Jews into the ghetto, which they sealed off from the rest of the city with a 10-foot wall. The living conditions were horrendous and as many as 6,000 people died of starvation each month. In 1942 the Nazis deported 300,000 residents to Treblinka and prepared to liquidate the ghetto entirely. The remaining Jews resisted, and on April 19, 1943, German troops entered the ghetto. The rebels held out until May 16, when the ghetto was burned to the ground. Fifteen thousand Jews died in the uprising, and the rest were transported to Treblinka where most of them died in the gas chambers.

Today I simply ask that we remember the evil that humans have inflicted on each other and, more importantly, the heroism to which we can rise in the face of that evil.

Mea Culpa

My feeling about shareholder proxy statements had long been: why bother? The small print, massive word count and abstruse language seemed meant to sow confusion and the deck was completely stacked. Just vote against management, lose in a landslide and get on with life. Irresponsible advice, cynical perhaps, and, it turns out, wrong. For yesterday the shareholders of Citigroup voted down the $15-million pay package for the bank’s chief executive officer in perhaps the first time stockholders have so defied the management of a giant corporation.

It’s about time. Citigroup has delivered little but heartache for its shareholders. Five years ago, in the heyday of Ponzi schemes and self-dealing collateralized debt obligations, the company’s shares were worth over $500 apiece and paid a dividend of $5.40. Today, after being pulled from the edge of bankruptcy by a huge federal bailout, the stock sells for $35; its quarterly dividend is one cent. According to one analyst, “Citigroup has had the worst stock price performance among large banks over the last decade but ranked among the highest in terms of compensation for top executives.”

I have no illusion that small shareholders swayed the nonbinding vote. Big institutions such as Calpers, the California pension fund, voted its 9.7 million shares against the proposal, and ISS Proxy Advisory Services recommended a no vote. Still, the outrage at corporate malfeasance and offensive pay packages clearly is having an impact.

When the modern corporation emerged a little over a century ago, many hailed it as the democratization of capitalism in a world of monopolies. It hasn’t worked out that way recently, but this is a good step.

Paying Attention

It’s exciting to engage in the big issues and philosophical debates of the day. But it’s also important to pay attention to the details where those matters work themselves out. On the surface, the General Services Administration’s $822,000 party in Las Vegas, the prostitution solicitation scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, and the Taliban’s coordinated attacks in Afghanistan don’t have much in common. They happened thousands of miles apart and have vastly different consequences. But in each instance, people who should have been paying attention were not.

Perhaps because the GSA’s party was the most frivolous, its images of people in hot tubs and tidbits of outrageous spending have gotten the most attention. Jeffrey Neely, the event’s organizer, pled the Fifth Amendment before Congress, even to the question of his job title, which will presumably soon be changing anyway. His rationale, I suppose, was “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."

A couple of dozen members of the military and the Secret Service undoubtedly feel the same way about Cartagena, where they spent the night carousing with prostitutes in preparation for the president’s arrival.

Lastly, while the Afghan military responded to the Taliban raids better than had been expected, the attacks caught U.S. personnel by complete surprise – what one western official called an “intelligence failure for us, and especially NATO.”

The federal government is the nation’s biggest employer, with almost 3 million full- and part-time civilian employees alone. Things slip through the cracks. But perhaps because it's the time when we pay the bill, it seems important to remember that all the details do add up.

Meet Your Lobbyist

The newest lobbyist on Capitol Hill is 55-year-old John Bowles, who registered last week on behalf of the American Nazi Party. The Nazis have never had a lobbyist before, and Bowles told ABC News he was going to “try out for the first time and see if it flies.”

And what will the Nazis lobby for? On his registration form Bowles cited “political rights and ballot access laws.” But not to worry, he told ABC, “I’m not going to go in and shove a swastika in their face.”

This is not Bowles’ first experience with national politics. In 2008 he ran for president as “The White People’s Candidate,” proclaiming that “White Americans need to start voting as a bloc . . . if they are to have an effective voice in government or America will turn into a third world country.”

Capitol Hill seems a good place to start, as white people have established something of a beachhead there – holding 96 of the 100 seats in the Senate and 83 percent of the House. As a bloc, these guys could really do something.

Laying aside such complicated constitutional issues as racial purity, tribal homelands and the Aryan Republic of Idaho, they could focus on more immediate matters they have in common. A universal health-care system, for example, modeled on the one they all enjoy at public expense. Or getting serious about the national debt, which they all insist they want to do.

Bowles has his work cut out for him, though, because thousands of other lobbyists are already working the halls to make sure these things don’t happen.

Stumble of the Week

Mitt Dumps Newt 

Withdraws Treasury Offer in Wake of Bounced Check

Amid the continuing fall-out over the return of the Gingrich campaign’s $500 check for insufficient funds, Mitt Romney has dropped Newt Gingrich from consideration as Secretary of the Treasury in his administration. The money was the filing fee for Utah’s presidential primary.

“After watching his handling of Callista’s Tiffany bills,” said a Romney spokesperson, “we were impressed with the Speaker’s nimbleness with large deficits. Unfortunately, the situation has called that into question, and Governor Romney will go in a different direction.”

Asked if the Koch brothers were now under consideration for the cabinet post, she declined comment.

Calling the matter “one of those goofy things,” Gingrich said he expected to be competitive in Utah now that Jon Huntsman is out of the race.

“Five hundred dollars!” Romney later told a convention of restaurant chain owners, “I wouldn’t leave that little as a tip.”

“Unless,” he chuckled, “the service was really bad.”

In other stumbles:

• North Korea’s ballyhooed launch of its $450-million satellite lasted about a minute, at which point the Kwangmyongsong, or “Bright Shinning Star,” disintegrated and fell into the Yellow Sea.

• Hilary Rosen apologized to Ann Romney in the so-called Mommy Flap, which is indicative of how irrelevant so much of this campaign is to most people’s lives.

• France’s Beaujolais wine producers issued a statement denying any link to China’s disgraced former future leader, Bo Xilai.

Trayvon

George Zimmerman is in custody in Seminole County Jail, charged with second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin on February 26^th in Sanford, Florida. If convicted, he faces a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Zimmerman’s arrest is long overdue. So why am I uneasy?

Because, in a world in which a bag of Skittles has become the icon of youthful innocence and a hoodie the symbol of ghetto behavior, almost everything about this case has become a dangerous cliché.

Because Zimmerman needs to be tried by a jury of his peers, not by an inflammatory press or an inflamed public.

Because the outcome we seek should be justice, not vengeance or justification.

We are in danger of losing sight of both the big picture and the small one. The small one is the human one: Trayvon Martin, a young man, is dead. President Obama struck the right chord when he said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Without mentioning the matter of race, he called attention to the killing of a young black man, and he simultaneously urged us to transcend race by mourning the death of a son.

The big picture is the Florida law that encourages shooting first and explaining it later – a law that is the product of this country’s relentless gun lobby, which continues to insist that we are all safer when we are all armed, and that the horrendous noise of gunfire is just the sound of freedom.

Two Suspensions

There were two suspensions yesterday in two of America’s favorite pastimes: baseball and politics. The Miami Marlins suspended manager Ozzie Guillen for five games for praising Fidel Castro. The Venezuelan-born Guillen infuriated the Cuban-American community that his team had spent hundreds of millions trying to woo with a new $634-million stadium (built of course with taxpayers’ money), new uniforms and the most famous Latino manager in baseball.

Then Guillen said he “loves” Fidel Castro, continuing, "I respect Fidel Castro. . . .A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that (expletive) is still there." That didn’t sit well with the fan base, and ownership forced Guillen to publicly repudiate his comments, which he called “the biggest mistake I’ve made in my life so far.” His abject apology may not save his job.

Meanwhile, Rick Santorum, who has made comments far more egregious than those of Ozzie Guillen, “suspended” his presidential campaign. And while, mercifully, he will not be a candidate for president in 2012, he actually enhanced his standing in the party and his prospects for the future. Mitt Romney and the Republican establishment are grateful he is out of their way; his ultra-right-wing base is delighted to see him elevated to the status of national spokesperson; and he has been spared the need to submit his ideas to a national plebiscite.

So, a man involved in a boys’ game may lose his career for an offhand remark (which Joshua Keating pointed out was “as undeniably true as [it] was undeniably insensitive to Castro’s victims”), while a man seeking the presidency is being praised for the courage of his candor.