Mission: Forgotten.

Mr. Philbin inquired whether I was intending to comment on last week’s failed attempt to murder the former president. I believe everyone on the planet has already done so, and as more information comes out and the Secret Service looks worse and worse, more will comment again (and ought to). Feet must be held to fires; swords must be fallen upon. Justice demands it.

And yet, I suppose we’ve come to expect that justice’s claims will go unanswered. As is typical now. The government is loaded with people who not only don’t accept the buck when passed, they also use buck-repellent on their gold-plated rears to prevent the buck ever arriving—however properly it should. Harry Truman is long absent. 

It’s of a piece with a blog entry I posted earlier this month about our supposed elites and their stupidity. As has been pointed out with appropriate vigor in many quarters, the Secret Service has opted to show its stupidity by forgetting its mission and picking up lesser missions instead. Instead of protecting the presidents and other key figures, they seek to indulge in social justice and social engineering, hiring candidates based on their potential to be girlboss action figures rather than their capacity to do the job. We have seen some results of this mission misdirection.

A similar situation has been going on in reverse in women’s competitions, where men dressed as women are pulverizing girls at sports and even winning beauty competitions. The mission—giving women an arena in which they can achieve greatness—has been thrown aside for silly concerns.

This has been going on in fire departments for decades. It became more important to get women in the firehouse than to have firefighters who could handle the often extreme physical challenges of the job. To enable social change, physical requirements had to be lowered. 

I asked a buddy who retired from a Manhattan NYFD firehouse if one of the highly touted female recruits had ever wound up in his unit. He said they were never assigned any, but he worked with some when he was on temporary loan to other houses. And no, they couldn’t do the job—they were just not strong enough, however fit. So the department would shuffle them into desk jobs. They will get the same cushy pension and Cadillac health plans as guys who'd spent 30 years dragging adults out of burning buildings. The situation is worse now under Mayor Eric Adams’s highly politicized fire chief, but that’s a long story.

It seems like way too many people believe the fish-out-of-water stories in which totally unqualified persons are put in difficult positions or authority, but succeed because they are clever and mean well. This assumes no job requires any knowledge or expertise. Anyone can do it with the right attitude, so why give it to some old white dude who’s spent his life in the field? The mission will be accomplished. And if not, we tried real hard!

I'm not just blaming the women involved, mind you -- I'm blaming everyone for forgetting the purpose of the job. And having an all-men squad is definitely no guarantee of getting these jobs done. It was only in 2012 that Secret Service agents were found to be spending more time getting loaded and banging prostitutes overseas than focusing on their duties (“Wheels up, rings off”). And again, that’s forgetting the mission, just for different priorities. 

This is where we are in America right now: Everyone wants to do everything but the damn job that he's supposed to be doing. You'd think that wouldn't be too much to ask for any job, let alone one that prides itself on duty and honor, but apparently we're choosing to be too stupid -- not to mention too selfish -- to live. 

Honesty vs. manners.

When I returned to work after my mother's death, a kindly coworker -- the first I saw that morning -- asked how I was doing.

"Lousy," I snapped. 

That was a long time ago, and I've regretted my honesty at that moment ever since.

We have an authenticity issue in our culture, but this is nothing new. As long as people have realized they could make stuff up and mask their thoughts we have known that people can lie. Even the animal kingdom is full of lies, camouflage, and duplicity. Toddlers come up with whoppers. All part of the human condition. 

But in the postwar years we got sick of politeness and manners that masked bad intent. That's fine with me; we would like our villains to be obvious and clear even though we don't wish to be ourselves. In the rush, though, to clear off phoniness, generations of Holden Caulfields wanted to throw out politeness entirely, to erase manners, to get through to the truth.   

To rip off the mask.

This has not worked well.

First of all, it is never a good idea to lose manners. Second, we don't really want as much honesty as we think we do. Finally, getting rid of good manners, we discover, does not even really lead to authenticity after all.

For a long time manners have been seen as foolish and artificial. Ron Barrett's comic strip Politenessman spent years showing manners as the enemy of intelligence -- although my experience and probably yours do not tell us that the stupider people are the more polite they are. Comedies of manners have a long history in our culture, making a lot of hay out of the artifice of manners. But if manners are unnatural, it is in the same way that steel and farms and music and performing arts are unnatural -- they don't exist in nature but we need them for civilization.

I think most of us with a little perspective see the value of manners. As Dave Foley's character Troy said in Blast from the Past, "[G]ood manners are just a way of showing other people we have respect for them. See, I didn't know that. I thought it was just a way of acting all superior." Manners have been taken for snobbery, for hiding ill will, for a means of lying, and indeed can be used for these things. But what they are mostly is the sign of respect we owe one another, which functions as the oil in the social machine. Maybe you'll get more honesty with no manners, but the respect wears away quickly and the machine breaks down anyhow.

As for the next issue -- how much honesty do we want? When someone asks you how you are doing, do you or this other person really want to talk about your bunions, your hemorrhoids, your large electric bill, your kid's shoplifting, your other kid's drinking, your shoddy brake pads, your sinus infection, your anxiety over the side effects of Cialis? I'm thinking probably not. Manners give us pleasant, general answers that can be used to indicate that things are not 100% swell but are okay. Which is also important, because the embarrassing examples I give are pretty common, but if they happened to me, I could not consider them proof that I had the worst life of anyone in the world. Manners can give us perspective and allow for gratitude.

Finally, I argue that trying to express your real, possibly miserable self also may lead to just more phoniness. Why? I know people who enjoy -- and I do mean enjoy -- a reputation for being grumpy or mean. (I was like that in college, for a while.) What do guys like that do when they're having a good day? Ruin the reputation? No, they hide their happiness under grouchiness, they act mean even when their hearts aren't in it. The "truth" has just become another mask.

So, by throwing away good manners we gain very little and we lose social cohesion. We can probably all agree that there's very little social cohesion about these days, and little to find good about that. Letting our terrible selfish insides out has not turned out to be the truth that sets us free, but rather just makes us enemies of one another some more.

I am at least trying to ask for the salt rather than grabbing for it. You have to start somewhere.

Good Scout.

[NB: Another Fred "Classic" from the old blog, but updated. --FK]

I was a Webelo until the pack dissolved.

I liked Cub Scouts. It was fun, and parents were directly involved, so kids were better behaved than at school. Plus, as we all know, chicks dig a man in uniform. With my blue cap and outfit and yellow scarf, I was a third-grade hottie. It was a little tough to be called a "We-Blow" by some jackasses in my city school, but I have no regrets.

Okay, well, I regret that we didn't sell these.

Anyway, the pack didn't survive being kicked out of the school--long story, not our fault, I swear!--and so I never made Boy Scout. Still, I always try to Be Prepared, following the Scouting motto. Moreover, even as a Cub Scout I considered myself bound by the Scout Oath and the Scout Law:

Scout Oath
On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

Scout Law
A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.

So I thought it was time I had a look at myself to see how I was doing on these things. Five-arrow scale.

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country

Actually better at these things than I was when I was a kid. Regular church monkey, I am now, but not then. When I was a li'l Bobcat, enthusiasm for America was low everywhere. What the hell did I know? Now I would say that I have to do my duty even if my mood about it is low. That's very tough for a kid. My rating: ↗↗↗↗

and to obey the Scout Law;

We'll get to that.

To help other people at all times;

Hmm... Does that mean every moment I can, or just when they ask? And I guess that wouldn't include cursing people out behind the wheel and stuff, would it? Oy. ↗↗

To keep myself physically strong,

I don't want to talk about it. ↗

mentally awake,

Zzzz... Huh? You say something? ↗↗

and morally straight.

Uhh-- Guilty with an explanation? I mean, I'm better now, but a couple of decades back-- Never mind. I'll go by now. There are advantages to getting old and feeble. ↗↗↗

Now the law exam:

A Scout is trustworthy, ↗↗↗↗
loyal, ↗↗↗↗
helpful, ↗↗↗
friendly, ↗↗
courteous, [except when driving] ↗↗↗ 
kind, ↗↗↗↗
obedient, ↗↗
cheerful, ↗↗↗↗
thrifty, 
brave, ↗
clean, [hygiene good; house less so] ↗↗
and reverent. ↗↗↗↗

Oh, boy. Not a single 5-pointer among them. I'm glad my scoutmaster is not alive to see this. I'd be drummed out for sure.

[More on Girl Scout cookies tomorrow. Those Girl Scouts get all the good stuff.]

Parrrty!

When watching as much of the Parade of Nations as I could on Friday---I was up early, so I could barely make it to Estonia---I couldn't help but smile at the sheer joy displayed by many of the athletes, so thrilled to be in Rio, on a worldwide stage.

You didn't see it on all of the athletes' faces, of course. Some faces you couldn't see, because their cellphones were blocking their faces entirely as they took selfies, turning the Opening Ceremony into an Opening Selfimony. Others were very serious-minded, and were already scoping out the competition. Since the China team has to stand around about twenty minutes longer than we do, that may lead to Wan Li losing about .0128 of a second on the relay next Monday.

I think about the guys from small countries, countries whose entire population could be dropped into Brooklyn without making a noticeable change in population density*, and how they managed to make it into the Games. You'll see a team of three with maybe a wrestler, a pole vaulter, and a tennis player. Why not a weightlifter? Someone in the country had to be the nation's best weightlifter. Did they only have enough dough for three plane tickets?

I'm sure many of them compete very hard, as hard as they can, even if they know they have no chance of getting on the podium. Some of them, though, you have to think, knowing that they're outclassed, just wangle a trip to the Olympics as a means to hang out and whoop it up with other young, physically attractive people. So, a couple of false starts on the 200 m, a pretend-throw on the javelin or shot put, and it's caipirinha time!

At least, I think that's something I would have considered as a callow youth in that situation. Only as I got older, much too old for athletic competition (assuming I was ever athletic), did I come to believe in the importance of personal and national honor, qualities that would have forced me to do my best even though I was hopelessly outmatched,

I used to give up a lot. Back then my idea of personal honor was just not to embarrass myself too much. Guess what? I didn't succeed in that, either.

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*37,137 people per square mile