In 1989, I think it was, the theater I ran here in Boulder was rented for Kris Kristofferson and his band to shoot a video which was to be a monetary and emotional support for the Sandinistas.  It was called Third World Warrior, and the CD has just been re-released.

 

The Sandinistas were the communist/populist revolutionaries of Nicaragua, who had driven out and eventually killed the obese dictator Somoza but, as could have been expected given the history of communism in power – especially communism grafted on to centuries’ old battles between families of power in Hispanic nations – the Sandinistas became thuggish and greedy.  A short time after the two nights of recorded concerts, the Sandinistas were voted out of power, and Kristofferson’s project vanished from memory and history.  Well.  Until recently, anyway. 

 

It would, I think, be interesting to query Kristofferson, one of our great songwriters and a good actor, about this, and how deeply committed he was to the Sandinos.  As art, however, I thought the songs he had written for this event were awful even for the political Yee-Ha!’s in Spanish they were.  Suspecting this, there were some staged set pieces.  After one of the closing anthems, KK, while the band rocked out, would move around the stage and periodically lean over and give the arm wrestle handshake to myriad young men and women – a grasp of solidarity – and purse his lips in determination as the cameras swung into action around him. 

 

Then, there were the lighters.  Bics, mostly.

 

When the setup began, I noticed two large cardboard boxes of multicolored, identical lighters.  I was afraid to ask what they were for, since we didn’t allow smoking.  The promoters knew that.  It was to be for a spontaneous display of reverence by the crowd at a key moment, and everyone would do a silent Emma Lazarus with their modest torch for Peace and Brotherhood and Love Across the Land.  Just like all those live concert album covers of the previous decades.  Or something. 

 

I cannot say I recall the lighters were a huge success, since they were more reflective of the early to mid-seventies than the contemporary eighties, when Peace and Brotherhood and Love Across the Land were passé and boring and Boulder didn’t yet do much crack then, just sniffed cocaine up.  But they are back, punctuating the call and response of Rap concerts and underlining Shout Outs and being a caricature of what they once were: handy tools for the absolutely stoned to show appreciation on a higher level than applause that fell within the limits of their current motor skills.

 

Still, there was and is something so incredibly insulting to me about that: providing lighters for everyone just in case they feel the need to show their appreciation for the cameras.  That what was once a sloppy and melodramatic sentiment, usually heart felt and genuine, could become a gesture so empty that it reminded of nothing, offended me.  And I speak as one not given to Hippy displays or generally valuing their emotional honesty.  A modest piece of actual mass performance art became …..well, what all performance art became.  An innocent display claiming no import to itself was now a rote performance piece like the mandatory figures in figure skating.  It has moved beyond parody of itself into a demanded show of love, which isn’t love at all any more then a mandated oath is an actual oath and reflective of actually held opinions and values.

 

There are variations of this theme. 

 

Probably no pop item of the last fifty years has become so iconic and so malleable and divorced from its original intent than a 1970’s pop tune, Tony Orlando and Dawn’s rendition of Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree.

 

This rather treackly number is about a man returning from prison after three years, by bus (it’s a country song of sorts; we’re grateful there is no train, and the driver is sober…), and who has asked his girl friend by letter to tie a yellow ribbon around the tree by the bus stop if she still wants him.  If no ribbon, he’ll continue and forget about it and accept all the blame.  Of course, after telling the entire bus in conversation with the driver, he shields his eyes as the tree approaches.  The bus breaks into applause, the tree is garnished with ribbons, and the couple is reunited.  Fine.  Dandy.

 

It was a big hit, but because it was thirty years in the past, far fewer people knew convicts then than they do now, and the opportunity to utilize this theatrical set piece - to re-enact it as if it were about…..about us, really, honey, isn’t it? - proved frustrating.  And there are many who waited to act it out.

 

And yet, there were all these handy soldiers returning from Vietnam, during the war and after.  Sometimes long after, if they had been prisoners in the North.  It wasn’t exact, and there was the unpleasant attribution of criminal activity to the soldiers, but hey.  There were some that felt that we had been rather criminal like.  And in any case, continuing with another new phrase soon to be overused as well, it was a time to heal.   So Tie a Yellow Ribbon became an anthem of all-purpose return. 

 

Then, the ribbons didn’t just go up when people returned.  Eventually, they went up at the leaving.  Or as soon as the announcement of being missing in action was given.  The bright yellow was lantern like and perpetually lit on trees across the nation.  And hey, making our nation a warmly lit back porch for the approach of loved ones long gone is a pleasant and lovely thought, then and now.  But…… 

 

Then, the ribbons went up for kidnapped children.  Missing children.  Missing wives.

 

Murdered wives. 

 

Not to drop kick this inoffensive canary into next week, but let’s recall the change here: ribbons that once fictionally went up previous to an announced and expected return to assure a (we’ll assume) former criminal that his spouse had waited for him for three years now go up in reality in order to….do what?  Assure someone who cannot see them that they are still wanted and missed?  Okay.  More likely, it’s to assure those who place the ribbons that they’ve done something constructive out of frustration at the waiting.  And done so by following an approved template.

 

Or, maybe, to assure one’s neighbors that those are the feelings held, whether by a hysterical mother dealing with a child’s kidnapping by rapist or former spouse, or by a husband with a missing wife and a series of restraining orders and a disturbed section of ground in the back yard, outbuilding, or basement - or memory of a properly weighted body that couldn’t possibly float.  In short, an alteration from a fictional welcome home sign to an overused and watered down cliché for people who can’t see it themselves, unless their actual captors allow them to watch television.

 

Would they feel depressed if they see Mom and Dad hadn’t festooned lawn and shrubbery with canary wrap?  It’s actually gotten to the point that a family with a missing member who doesn’t put up the damned ribbons is somewhat under suspicion over and above the fact that – say - they talked loudly through the promised time of a ransom call for their little girl. 

 

It’s as clear a sign of denoting grief for a loved one in this country as our flag clearly identifies real patriots.  Just as contrived, false, and misleading and bordering on the maudlin.  It is as if the return of the loved one is no longer the goal, but the shared wonderfulness of those who mourn together, correctly in approved manner.  As failure or disappointment can be viewed as opportunity, a kidnapping is merely a cue to grieve together, now for the cameras and concerned media and neighbors, all of whom struggle to understand (ban that phrase and watch local news come to a halt) what has happened and why by rules of evolving but accepted social behavior.  This has precedent.

 

At the end of the nineteenth century, a disfigurement fad was a very big deal with the men and women of Germany and Austria.  They sought out, by any means, the decoration of the dueling scar.   The men to receive it, the women to have it appended to the cheek of their husband, father, or brother.

 

In the old days - and even then there were the old days - there had been actual duels, where men settled their differences with physical combat that could easily end in death, generally starting an unending series of revenge challenges from friends and family of the newest corpse.  People who fought duels – at least with swords - often received wounds, but the cuts across the cheek, which were always thereafter visible, offered a clue to a number of things about the bearer.

 

For one, he’d not lost the duel, probably.  He was alive and there.  This demanded a certain level of physical ability.  Second, he was of a certain social class, perhaps a Duke or a Baron, who was somewhat above the law and could participate in this function without much fear of punishment beyond what the opponent could deal out.  Therefore, being of this class, he would have a certain amount of money.  Ergo, he’d be a good catch for a husband.

 

In perhaps typical German fashion, these duels were fought with heavy swords, and eventually some sort of padding and masks, and then included helmets.  During the duels, one swordsman might just periodically and briefly stand and absorb the blows on padding, defiantly glaring at his opponent.  It ended up that the idea of a duel was not to kill your opponent, originally a sign of God’s preference for you, but to endure what pathetic blows he could deliver.  Scarring was a personal demonstration of one’s endurance and bravery for the rest of your life.  Who’d recall if you’d killed him?  Might as well use pistols.

 

Eventually, the dueling masks became targets, often carefully constructed where the only part of the body that was exposed would allow an opponent’s sword to make a good looking, vicious scar in a desirable area of a chosen cheek.  The point of the duel became, in a way, to lose it, or at least endure more than your opponent had, or at least get more torn up.

 

As life in general improved on the continent, the recreation, social, and entertainment value of dueling became rather ‘last century,’ and the term ‘honor’ came to have a comic element – never suggested, but there none the less – and it became noted that dueling scars had benefits that ought not to be risked along with your life over some ridiculous insult to one’s dignity or sister. It got to the point where they didn’t even have to duel to obtain one; they could cut themselves decorously and peel back the scars and get the grotty, rather revolting disfigurement that was the goal.  

 

The point and sense of dueling had gone from removing a dishonor and possibly a rival or irritant from one’s life to obtaining the physical deformity that would suggest one had indeed engaged in such an endeavor.  Rather than the real thing, a dueling scar became a tattoo signifying, in actuality, nothing whatsoever beyond physical masochism.

 

During the weeks after 9-11-2001, the dignitaries of New York, including Mayor Giuliani, were worn out attending funeral after funeral of public safety officers: police, firemen, transit officers.  It seemed never ending.   They must have all run together in everyone’s mind. 

But really, they do anyway.  Public police funerals are just about always the same.

 

In American police forces, there is the formal police funeral, which at one time was a show of dignified honor for someone dying in the line of duty.  Now, however, it is a scripted photo op, with a sameness and depressing forced emotionalism that rather has the opposite effect on observers, now generally on television, as well as on some participants.  The floral wreaths, the parade, the salutes, the rendition of “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes.   The officer could have been named Arnold Cohen and deceased in Denver, but he’ll be laid to rest in the tradition of what, actually, were originally Irish Catholic cops on the East Coast, or as close to it as the family will allow or wish.

 

Have we gone overboard on worshipping grief?  Have we even actually admitted this is what we do?  That the process of grieving and the public expressions of such are so fulfilling to those not actually connected to the deceased that we rather long for it, for any excuse to put out the best china for a wake.  That we love ourselves being sentimental and even falsely so.  But there are other issues – hypocrisies, let’s call them – that need to be answered first.  For example….

 

Are police so much more special than other sorts of victims, like children?  Or any innocent civilian?  Police are volunteers, obviously, and they chose the dangerous profession above all others.  It is not a nine to five, it is a job with guns that sometimes demands that shots be fired and received.  It is a hard life, shifting at a second’s notice, and it’s a scary life for the cop’s family.  And whether or not they are paid enough, they are paid for it.  But children and innocents – like the poor guy shot in his own bed by police thinking he was someone else here in Denver last week – are not granted the same at public expense.  And if they were, sooner than later the police would complain that a chronic crook being shot by mistake for a crime he didn’t do doesn’t justify the public honoring a man who may have committed many crimes.  Or maybe only one.  Or not.  But then, we pay to honor cops killed in the line of duty who sometimes were not good cops, who were on the take, who were not worthy.  So, how come? 

 

When police are killed, even in the more violent areas, it is presented as so totally unexpected as to be beyond comprehension, and people, or rather ‘family, friends, and fellow officers struggle to understand’ how such a thing could happen.  (Me!  Call on Me!  He was a cop shot during a hold up he tried to break up without backup?  I knew it!  You’d just told us that, is why…)  Police from all over the state arrive to form generally out of shape military lines and salute as the casket passes.  Bad poetry is read, often by children, sometimes by peers of the deceased, and it is at the point now that those public officials reading at funerals of police officers killed on the job wear make-up so they look okay on television, for we know surely and without doubt that the local news stations – four for network affiliates – will be there.  You’ve seen a hundred of these things, and can write the anchor’s summation as well as mimic the catch in the throat of many news readers and announcers.   The last line is that an account for the education of the deceased’s children has been set up at the First National Bank.

 

Dignity and actual sentiment, as opposed to false sentiment and contrived moments on the tube, have been wrung out of many of these events as surely as yellow ribbons have faded in the sun as well as melted all the characteristics of individuals into sort of a generic victim of a certain category.

 

It would be too easy and too wrong to suggest that this is merely our longing for heroes and proper ways to honor them.  For there is nothing inherent to many of the deaths we honor that suggests the deceased were heroes at all.

 

The obvious example here is Max Cleland of Georgia, a Vietnam Veteran who lost three limbs while in Vietnam.  On its face, the man is a hero for surviving.  Yet, because the blast that took him apart was a grenade that he’d dropped in zone removed from battle, is he a hero or a schmuck of the first water that got painfully punished?  Better him, after all, then someone else should pay the penalty for his oafishness.  And yet, was it a sloppy mistake, or just a mistake?  It has come down to whether we are Democrats, like Cleland, or Republican like Shelby Chamblis, who questioned Cleland’s dedication to national defense and beat him for Congress.  In typical Republican fashion, Chamblis never served at all.

 

If a soldier with Cleland’s injuries suffered in this Iraq War had returned and, after much struggle, passed away, would he – should he – have been honored as a hero?  He volunteered for the job, did it badly and risked the life of himself and others for some candy ass display, and died.

 

Now, I’m liberal Democrat although, when I took the Red/Blue test in Slate Magazine I was centrist leaning Red, a puzzling result but probably means I just haven’t recalibrated my political world in a while.  That, or Slate is so left, I’m edged right. Let me say, anyone who volunteers for the military is owed respect and our thanks, which ought, among other things, to consist of the world’s best medical care for free, forever, for war injuries.  Best medical care ought to consist of therapy in facilities that do not look like Saruman’s new underground caverns, only painted grey-green.

 

Having issued those caveats, I don’t think this updated hypothetical Max Cleland, absent any other event that propels him above the reputation of others, was a hero or should be honored beyond that of other soldiers.  Nor do I feel that simply being a soldier elevates you to being a hero.   As I understand it, Cleland feels the same way.  For that, he should be honored above others.

 

For proof of this, look at Jessica Lynch, a young woman of no particular distinction who got captured in Iraq while many in her unit were killed.  The press formulated, with strong assists from the military, a six shootin’ heroine unknown since the first wave of Annie Oakley worship more than a century ago.  Wounded, on her back, firing and killing enemy till she was wounded and unconscious.  I’m glad to say I noted this for what it was then, said so in BlogABoulder, and was proven correct when these fabricated templates of silliness fell apart so utterly when the meanest shred of journalistic effort was expended.

 

But it was far worse.   Left in a nearly abandoned hospital, apparently due to the effort of a reluctantly heroic and a reluctantly honored Iraqi doctor, Lynch was ‘rescued’ by great expense and effort sufficient to have taken Baghdad in the war’s first day.  It was covered by the military and the press in such detail that one wonders if mere propaganda value is sufficient to explain it.  It seems to speak to a need for great, epic events in which we conquer.

 

And this melds into the military funeral. Not the ones at gravesite and church, but the public ones on television, with dramatic music and photographs of people we do not know.  We should, of course.  They died for our country, but as in police funerals and all events for which we use yellow ribbons in fact or intent, there is an effort to assuage those left behind.  That makes sense for family and friends, but when did it become necessary to assuage the notional grief of utter strangers who have been trained to express it in bizarre and hypocritical ways? 

 

And why?