Both Oars In Down the rabbit hole

Jun 24, 2011

Returning to the United States with my family for a summer break from Haiti’s improving, but still challenging, post-earthquake conditions, I naively hoped that being back in the United States would provide some welcome relief from the chaos of the past many months. Not so much.

At least, not with the ridiculous Wiener Scandal dominating CNN and the myopic madness of the NBA blasting out of every bar TV in the Miami airport—my usually immediately comfortable second home. In retrospect, Haiti was a refuge of sanity. 

Turning to the Wall Street Journal in search of a bit of bland respite, I was treated to a front page story about a tax deduction victory for caretakers of stray animals. Evidently, the IRS, on behalf of the taxpayer, recently lost a case against a lady who took over $12,000 in deductions in 2004 for taking care of stray cats. Unsurprisingly, she represented herself because she could not afford a lawyer in the protracted multi-year case. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I head a non-profit. I obviously support philanthropic donations being tax deductible. But, having just left a country where millions of humans lack adequate food and shelter, I would have preferred to hear the judge say something like, “While technically your support qualifies for a tax deduction, I think the public good would have been better served by putting the cats to sleep.” Instead, amazingly, he wrote a 42 page decision that generally agreed with a woman who keeps 70 cats in her house.

Now, you might think that I am piling it on a bit—or, at least, stringing a lot of unrelated things together for satirical effect. Admittedly, as is clear from the title, I am channeling Lewis Carol here. But, I am also just being honest. Coming in from the outside, the U.S. looks a bit crazy right now.

In Haiti, a really hardworking young person still only has a 3 percent chance of graduating from high school and a 1 percent chance of graduating from university. The likelihood is beyond remote that the vast majority of Haitians would have access to the opportunities enjoyed by Mr. Wiener. This makes his hubristic, gross screw up all the more absurd to me. Clearly, this man’s most oversized attributes are his huge ego and Achilles’ heel, both of which were likely enlarged by his being handed too much on a platter—at least in politics.

I also found the importance given to the recent NBA finals equally unsettling. Our sports-crazed nation has lost any sense of decency and proportion. One would think that LeBron James had run over a cat given the loads of bad press that he received for failing in the last quarter of an otherwise successful and very long season.

Added to this lunatic distortion was the misdirected and unmerited attention given to Mark Cuban, the billionaire loudmouth owner of the Mavericks, whose pre-championship claim to fame was being the most fined NBA owner in history. He earned several of those fines for making denigrating comments to players on other teams—one to an opposing player’s mother.  It gave me the willies to watch Cuban hoist a trophy won for him by players he pays well, but whose colleagues he seems to treat rather negatively and objectively. Mark Cuban gives the title owner a regressively bad ring. 
 
I remain proud of my first nation; however, I cannot hide the fact that I am concerned about our great society’s trend toward various manias of late typified by the above. Some claim it was the lead in the pipes that caused the Romans to lose their great republic. But, I think it was more likely that they were poisoned by their success which brought on the gladiators and the Circus.

Success eliminates struggle, which can lead to having too much free time on one’s hands—free time to pursue crazy distractions like inappropriate tweets, excessive cats and gold trophies won on the backs of others. This may explain why Haiti, where struggle is all too present, is nonetheless a saner place than the U.S.