I'm Mad as Hell...

“I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Gonna Take It Anymore.” Many of us are old enough to remember the iconic movie, “Network” from 1976. Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), the news anchor for a fictional news network, finally has enough and ventilates in a now famous on-air tirade that ends with these words. I don’t know about you, but I’m almost there!

Sometimes things come at me in clusters. In the last six months I have read “The Divide”, a book that describes the increasing wealth gap and how our justice system prosecutes—beyond belief—the small-time offender and rarely indicts individuals in large financial firms responsible for massive fraud costing individuals and nations billions of dollars; “The New Jim Crow”, a book that chronicles the mass incarceration of thousands of people, disproportionately people of color, that began with the war on drugs, and the life-long tragedy this brings individuals through our dysfunctional criminal justice system; “Just Mercy”, a book about the plight of death row inmates who have received incompetent legal representation and been the victims of vindictive and dishonest officials; saw the movie “Selma” about the civil rights movement in the 1960’s and the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama and the brutal, vicious treatment of the unarmed marchers by local law officers and citizens.

And then I watched (and listened) to President Obama’s State of the Union address to congress and the nation. By this time I was already ruminating about the injustice in parts of my culture: the oppression and suffering of thousands of my brothers and sisters because of their color, sexual orientation, religious tradition or economic status. As I reflected on the president’s speech and the images of the body language of many of my elected officials (this is a problem with live television), I couldn’t decide whether to be angry or laugh hysterically. I chose the latter! Think about it, the majority of officials in attendance were older, white men dressed in dark suits, starched white shirts and boring neck ties; it looked a little like penguins in their nesting grounds—talk about lack of imagination, creativity and independent thinking. Just so you know, I too am an older, white man; hopefully with a bit more imagination than what I saw that night. To make it worse, when the president made statements that should get everyone on their feet like, “women should receive equal pay for equal work” or “Every American should have access to post-secondary education and therefore we should make attendance at a community college available at no cost” or unemployment is down or thousands of people without access to good healthcare now have insurance—the penguins sat stone-faced. No applause—expressions of contempt on many faces. What’s the message? Women are not entitled to equal pay! Everyone who can pay is entitled to higher education! Or maybe, NOTHING this president can say will get my support or respect.

So, my laughter has ended and now my challenge is to be more than a silent cynic. Maybe I’m already “Mad as Hell and I’m not Gonna Take it Anymore.”—Stay tuned.