what does love have to do with it
When one divorces his first wife the altar sheds tears" (Talmud Gittin 90b).
My first reaction to the Gore's separation was sadness. I did not think. I just felt. I was embarrassed about my sadness though. I do not know the Gores and it really does not make much difference to me or to others what they do. So why be sad?
And yet this evening, it seems among the pollsters and pundits the feeling of sadness is quite common. Perhaps being the famous couple that they were, and symbolic of a generation that came of age in the 60s, there is a latent but powerful hope that they could live out a script. This script would entail caring for each other into the darkness and being a loving presence for their grandchildren.
Maybe the subconscious scenario of a long, loving marriage comforts us with the idea that we could be bad -- all of us -- and still things could come out good. Baby boomers and the subsequent generations might have the freedom to make mistakes, -- big mistakes and yet still have a home to come to.
I heard Rebecca Traister of Salon.com offer another idea: that the sadness many people feel about the Gores is a displacement. Americans feel adrift at sea. The oil well in the Gulf cannot be plugged and the waters of the middle east conflict cannot be calmed. We want to feel bad over something, so this "nothing" event is a screen for things we really feel sad about,
Perhaps that is so, but I think the sadness fault line is a little more direct. We long, in times like these, for a strong parent, one who can get passionately angry, but our thought-out, calm, cool and collected president won't play that role. He does not come across as the angry, protective father every child needs once in a while. (James Carville: BP, I am your daddy) No outrage over the oil spill, no outrage over Iran, no passion over the underwear bomber.
Gore too is disappointing as anger-giver. And there is nothing more cruel than a man who withholds his anger. Paradoxically, one is even likely to feel scared around people who show no anger. Many might not see it this way, but it is good for children to see their father legitimately and passionately (but not destructively) angry, A child feels connected to (and protected by) a father who is connected to his passionate feelings.
While the price of destructive expressions of anger is well-known, the cost of avoiding anger is equally steep. That price to be paid is almost always emotional distance. Even couples may become strangers to each other ("We grew apart") and children and parents who withhold anger from each other will become frozen in both feeling and time.
There is a story that when FDR died, a man threw himself down in front of the funeral procession on Pennsylvania Avenue. He wept with such emotion that bystanders sought to console him. "Did you know the President?" they asked him. "No." he said, "but he knew me." People felt that FDR, the warrior abroad and the tender of the fireside chats at home, knew who they were, their struggles and how they lived.
The real fear, even panic here is that we are growing distant from the one President who has the potential to understand us and he, by distancing himself from his own anger is now leaving us.
The breakup feels both wooden and tragic.
www.facebook,com/ncaps2
