Earning It

A story about perspective...

Today is Memorial Day and June 6^th—D-day—is coming up next week, both of which made me think about my son Paul’s podcast about movies because not long ago he reviewed Band of Brothers which was an HBO TV series, but Paul argued – when binge-watched – it’s actually a 10-hour movie.

And a great one.

Just in case you don’t already know, Band of Brothers tells the story of Easy Company, 506^th Regiment of the 101^st Airborne and it’s a great story because they parachuted in behind the German lines on D-day, fought in Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge and eventually wound up taking Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s mountaintop hideaway in the Bavarian resort of Berchtesgaden.

(Jesus, getting a pizza delivered must have been impossible.)

During his podcast Paul talked about the perspective living through D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge must give you, so I called Paul to tell him a story about my first Kansas City Star editor and the guy who hired me, the late, great Jim Scott.

Jim Scott was a veteran of World War II and according to the State Historical Society of Missouri (I looked it up on the internet) served in the 16^th Armored Division in France, Germany and Czechoslovakia.

OK, so there’s the background and the story kicks off with me drawing a controversial cartoon and some pissed-off readers calling the Kansas City Star.

Now Here’s the Deal On Pissed-Off Readers

When you draw a cartoon people like (and generally speaking, peoples’ appreciation or disapproval of a political cartoon is based on how close it comes to reflecting their personal opinions) they call the cartoonist to express their approval.

When people don’t like a cartoon, they call the cartoonist’s editor to complain because most people are chickenshits and don’t want to confront the person they’re complaining about.

BTW: I have spent my entire life reading newspapers and have seen thousands and thousands of things I disagreed with and it never once occurred to me to call and complain about any of them and if you think about it – and I just did – how could newspapers possibly avoid upsetting people unless they called every subscriber and told them this is what we’re about to publish; are you OK with that?

And once you called every subscriber to get their list of personal objections the only thing you’d have left to publish might be the TV listings unless one of your readers was a Luddite and then you couldn’t publish those either.

In any case…

My controversial cartoon (absolutely no memory of what it was, but I had a lot to choose from) had people calling Jim Scott to complain about something I did, so I went to his office to say “sorry about that.”

Because the last place I worked – The San Diego Union – the editors were scared to death of controversy and two phone calls on the same cartoon was a crisis that required a meeting that might result in the offending cartoonist being sent to anger-management classes and if that didn’t work, maybe an exorcism, after which the cartoonist had to promise to never ever never do anything controversial or interesting again.

All because someone might call to complain about it.

Another One of My Digressions

For years and years the Kansas City Star published a daily Bible verse and someone sane finally said why are we doing that and they stopped publishing the daily Bible verse and some readers got extremely upset and complained, which made me wonder why people who wanted to read a daily Bible verse didn’t go to the source and read the Bible.

I’ve read most of the Bible (it lost me around Revelations because it seemed eerily similar to Happy Days running out of plot lines and having Fonzie jump over a shark on water skis, which is where the term “jump the shark” comes from and indicates something that has gone on too long and starts getting ridiculous) and I can report without fear of contradiction that the Bible is absolutely filled with Bible verses.

As you may have already concluded, people are fucking nuts.

And Now Back to the San Diego Union

In their never-ending quest to avoid controversy and never doing anything interesting, when I worked at the San Diego Union I was encouraged to avoid expressing opinions on:

1. Abortion

2. Gun control

3. And the death penalty

Because when it comes to those issues no matter which side you’re on, you’re pissing somebody off so I was a lot safer if I drew cartoons about the weather or inflation instead, which I didn’t do and helps explain why I eventually got fired. So with that experience as my guide I go to Jim’s office to say I’m sorry about all the phone calls you’re getting and Jim says:

“Y’know, Lee, once you’ve had Germans try to machine gun you, nothing else seems all that bad.”

Now that’s perspective.

Once you’ve had people actually try to kill you and you lived outdoors for months at a time while they tried to do it and hot meals and showers and a bed to sleep in at night are unimaginable luxuries, what’s six phone calls from pissed-off assholes?

Or traffic on the way to work or bad service at a restaurant or a lousy movie or any of the other million and one things we find to complain about.

How good is your life going when you can’t find anything more significant to bitch about than someone leaving a light on or failing to close the garage door or the amount of time your significant other spends watching TV?

My best friend’s a doctor and his dad was a tank commander during the Battle of the Bulge and he says his dad had the same attitude as Jim Scott; every day since then was a gift. My doctor friend also says WW2 vets were his easiest patients; no whining, no complaining, no “Why me?” and one of them said he was doing OK because he never expected to live past 19.

If a bunch of your friends didn’t live past 19, I’m guessing that gives you some perspective and you’re not going to spend all that much time whining about creaky knees or an arthritic shoulder or having dry skin in your eighties.

Learn a Lesson

So Paul and I talked about those WW2 guys and how surviving something like the Battle of the Bulge would make you emotionally bulletproof – “You didn’t like a cartoon? Who gives a flying fuck?” – and I said even though we didn’t go through all that we could still learn from those guys:

“Today I was warm and had a hot meal and nobody tried to kill me or my friends, so it was pretty great day.”

At the end of Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks tells Matt Damon: “Earn it.”

Meaning: a bunch of guys died to save you, so now go live a meaningful life and I’m guessing Tom Hanks didn’t think getting on social media to complain about a meal or being “snarky” about professional athletes or (fill-in-the-blank with some of the petty complaints we put on social media) was “earning it.”

And now that I’ve complained on social media about other people complaining on social media, I’m going to try to spend at least part of the day appreciating what my father’s generation did for the rest of us.

It’s Memorial Day—you might want to spend a few minutes thinking about that, too.