Once again the nativity season brings attacks by those offended by ubiquitous displays of Christmas.  This Christmas, I’m drawn to the similar ways some Christians and Republicans create opposition to their beliefs and, like the innkeepers of Bethlehem, provide no shelter for travelers.

Every year brings new incidents of holiday political correctness, from removal of nativity scenes from public places to banning of Christmas references and displays in public schools.  These events do not bother me, and I do not see them as infringements on my Christian beliefs.  I do not need to see Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus welcoming shepherds and magi on the town square to remind me of Christmas and of the reason for the season.  I do not rely on public schools to educate my children on the significance of Christmas or their religion.

As a Christian, I carry Christ in my heart every day (although I do not honor or adore Him as much as I should), and I tried to teach my children about our religion through my daily thoughts, words, and deeds.  This is why I do not have strong feelings either way regarding prayers before public meetings or moments of silence in school. 

Prayers in public settings, in my opinion, are religious displays that underscore one of the central questions of prayer, that is, whose petition does God grant?  When the mayor prays at the start of a city council meeting for God’s guidance and grace, so, too, are the opposing sides in the upcoming debates.  Who does God favor when both football teams and their respective fans pray that their guys beat the bejeezus out of the other guys?

Prayer is a personal thing to me, which is probably why I have problems with in-your-face declarations of any Christian tradition.  It’s why I understand non-Christians, particularly atheists, who seem to lose all reason during Christmas.  Stores now put out Christmas displays before Halloween, which makes it kind of creepy to see costumes of ghouls and politicians next to Santa and the Christ Child.  News outlets devote much time during the days leading up to Thanksgiving to explain the economic importance of Christmas (or holiday) shopping, thereby underscoring the non-Christian argument that Christmas is merely a pagan observance forced upon society.

Christmas also exemplifies the vast differences in the ways Christians observe the holiday and practice their religion.  My conservative, Eastern Orthodox tradition calls for fasting during the 40 days before Christmas.  Other Christians have parties with drinks, meats, and merriment.  And that’s OK, or should be, because I believe each of us practices our faith and traditions differently, not better.

Orthodox tradition sees Mary as a teenager betrothed to the older Joseph, a widower with children.  Others see the Holy Family as a couple of starry-eyed teenagers heading to Bethlehem in compliance of Caesar’s law and the fulfillment of God’s plan.  The end result is the same.

Orthodoxy is not demonstrative and showy in its practices or politics.  One does not find mega churches, televangelists, or political action committees that try to influence public policy with their versions of faith-based politics that alienate other Christians as well as non-believers.

Christianity is a big tent that accepts many traditions.  Some Christians, however, spend considerable time and resources promoting their interpretations of Jesus and Salvation, which many times conflict with other Christians.  Orthodoxy, in a simple form, says there may be many paths to God, but we must concern ourselves with the single path laid out by a tradition that remains unaltered and unbroken since revealed by Jesus through the Apostles.  Other Christian traditions, however, believe it’s their way or no way. 

That thought brings us to the Republican Party of today, which many believe has been hijacked by a narrow brand of conservatives and by fundamentalist Christian beliefs.  The quiet, but growing discourse says this strident political/religious stance not only alienates people with moderate conservative political views, but also people of other faiths, including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Wiccan.  And let’s not leave out agnostics and atheists.  Today’s Republican Party will falter and die unless it removes the walls erected by fundamentalist Christians and dismantles the political barriers that create impassable regional divides.  Doing so will allow welcoming and inclusive spaces within its big tent for diverse personal convictions.

A gun-control advocate should not be ostracized from the party that advocates reduced government control.  An abortion-rights proponent should not feel unwanted in the party that believes in lower taxes.  A supporter of programs that assist children and families in need should not be cast out by those who seek stricter enforcement of immigration laws.

Christmas provides a fundamental lesson for Christians, that Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the first.  He who created all things was born in a shelter alongside the road because all the good rooms were taken.  What would you do if you were an innkeeper and knew what we know today? 

If today’s Republican Party continues catering to the far-right of center and to its fringe elements, it is highly probable its epitaph will read: It provided no crib for a bed.

Barack Obama’s steady decline in the polls this week may mean the American people are tired of the president’s divisive campaign rhetoric after nearly a year into his administration.  The Rasmussen Report’s daily tracking poll shows 53 percent of Americans disapprove of his performance in office.

With an economy shaking, unemployment rising, and two wars draining our nation’s human and financial resources, Mr. Obama prefers to use the divisive language of the campaign trail in hopes of gaining public and political support for economic policies rather than to provide the leadership his supporters sorely hoped he possessed.  He demonstrated this us-versus-them style during his interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes this past Sunday when he used the term “fat cats” to describe banking executives in line for rather substantial, and contractual, year-end bonuses.

As a victim of the tanking economy, one would think I would be the first to shake my fist at another’s paycheck and bonus.  I worked for the last ten years for a state university system, the last two years assigned to a division that receives the bulk of its funding from investments.  University administrators instituted a series of reductions in force that eliminated my position, which effectively put me on the streets at the start of the Christmas season with salary and benefits to expire in a few weeks.  Administrators cited my salary as the reason for their decision.  My experience, institutional memory, and contributions to the university had no value to the administration.

Ken Feinberg is the Obama Administration’s special master for executive compensation.  He distributed $200 million to Vietnam vets suffering from Agent Orange, and most recently he administered the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund by putting a price tag on the lives of those who died.

“Dollars are a surrogate for worth,” he told Time Magazine.  “When you start talking about dollars, what people hear is a ruling on their overall integrity and value to society.  It gets difficult.”  Indeed, especially if value to society is a key factor in compensation calculations. 

The people who collect your trash every week don’t make enough money to take European vacations, but their value to society rises rather rapidly when they don’t pick up the trash for several weeks. 

How much value do you give a person who operates on your heart or cuts into your brain?  Just before you go under the knife, ask if your surgeon makes $40 million an hour.  That was the pay rate for Floyd Mayweather, Jr. in his welterweight title defense two years ago.  His take was $20 million for a 10-round fight.

Tiger Woods, whose value to society is free-falling these days, made $110 million just from selling his name last year.  And Ricky Gervais, creator of “The Office” franchise, gets $50,000 every time the U.S. version of the show airs.

Mack Brown, head coach of the University of Texas football team, will get $5 million next year.  Someone asked me if that were fair.  He should be paid what the market allows, I answered.  The UT football program is one of the few in the nation that pays for itself.  It provides incalculable public relations and marketing for which UT doesn’t shell out a dime.  In fact, UT gets paid every time they’re on television.  And what’s the value of three hours of national television exposure?

Thanks to changes in federal compensation guidelines, approved by Congress, the number of federal employees earning more than $100,000 annually, increased from 14 percent to 19 percent during the first 18 months of the recession, according to a USA Today study of the federal salary data base.  And that’s before overtime and bonuses (by the way, I’ve never figured out why public employees get bonuses for doing the public’s work).

And speaking of bonuses, the president forgot his Wall Street executives kept their bonuses when they joined the administration in January.  The Wall Street Journal reported in March that the White House merely “encouraged” them to “review” their compensation packages.  A Citigroup executive took his bonus, but donated it to charity and, one assumes, wrote off the contribution.

Watching the president Sunday brought to mind Winston Churchill as he prepared his country for the possible German invasion of the island after the fall of France.  “The massacre on both sides would have been grim and great,” he noted in his memoirs.  “I intended to use the slogan, ‘You can always take one with you,’” he wrote.  He realized, though, the British people needed strong, positive rhetoric, and leadership, and not cheap slogans and weak performances from His Majesty’s government.

Barack Obama is not a Winston Churchill, but current and coming battles demand more than empty and divisive rhetoric from the chief executive.

Now that the ruckus has subsided over the Nobel Prize for Peace to Barack Obama, the time has come to examine an issue largely overlooked in recent years. Here is the question:  Does the prize hold any relevance, or is it nothing more than a popularity contest judged by a handful of Norwegians with a distorted world vision?

The Peace Prize, according to the Nobel Foundation, should go to a person who, during the preceding year, did the most “for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”  The Norwegian Nobel Committee, however, the small panel that decides who receives what used to be one of the world’s most prestigious honors, added to the criteria the protection of the world’s climate, thus allowing Al Gore and the International Panel on Climate Change to share the prize in 2007.

So, who received the award last year?  That was Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president and, according to the Nobel Committee, a “citizen of the world” who, in 2005, became the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General to come up with a plan for the future of Kosovo.  The Ahtisaari Plan of 2007 promoted Albanian independence for the Christian heart of Serbia.  The plan drew harsh and immediate criticism from the Serbian government, particularly in light of Muslim-backed terrorism against the Christian population of Kosovo that resulted in the damage or outright destruction of approximately 150 Christian sites between 1999 and 2004.

The awards to Obama and Ahtisaari were not the first to be greeted with bewilderment.  The Gore award in 2007 and Jimmy Carter’s in 2002 were among the other curious selections of recent decades.  Remember the 1973 award shared by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho?  Kissinger was one of the architects of the Cambodian expansion of the Vietnam War.  Le Duc Tho declined the award, knowing he and his country were drawing up less-than-peaceful plans for South Vietnam at the time.

Rigoberta Menchu got her 1992 award “in recognition of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples."  The Nobel Foundation let her keep it, even after learning she lied about her life and family.  One might call it a disingenuous indigenous story.

Mikhail Gorbachev received the 1990 award for his part in ending the Cold War, which he could not have accomplished without the politics and policies of President Ronald Reagan, whom the Norwegians believed was unworthy of a share in the prize.

Yasser Arafat, an avowed terrorist widely considered someone who enjoyed the company of young boys, and who once packed heat when addressing the UN General Assembly, shared the prize in 1994.

Kofi Annan and the United Nations sharing the prize in 2001 may be the most outlandish decision in the controversial history of the prize, one akin to holding up Adolph Hitler as a champion of peace.  Although Annan took the money and a bow, he admitted three years later he did nothing to stop the slaughter of nearly one million Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994.  “The international community failed Rwanda and that must leave us always with a sense of bitter regret,” he said.

Sports analogies have a way of keeping controversial decisions from becoming slam dunks.  Several stories about Obama’s prize pointed out that winning Rookie of the Year does not qualify one for the Hall of Fame, or sentiments along that line. 

A recent statement regarding this year’s Heisman Trophy brought to mind its relationship to the Nobel Peace Prize selection.  Here’s what happened.  A college football announcer stated there’s talk that University of Houston quarterback Case Keenum is a serious candidate for the Heisman Trophy, given each year to the person selected as the nation’s best collegiate football player.  The color guy quickly stomped on that comment by saying Keenum doesn’t belong in the conversation. 

He could have said Keenum is one of several good players in the running this year.  He could have said there’s a lot of football to be played, but Keenum certainly deserves consideration.  He could have said Keenum has given some strong performances this season and that he hopes Kennum continues to have a good year.  But he didn’t.  Instead, he scoffed at the player who leads the nation in total offense with 2,501 passing yards, 76 rushing yards, and 19 touchdowns.

One can only assume “the other guy in the booth” based his snobby snubbing on the fact that Keenum does not play in a conference that gets an automatic Bowl Championship Series berth.  In other words, he’s not a member of the self-ascribed elite and doesn’t deserve even the utterance of his name in conversation.

How like the peace prize selection process this sounds:  A small group of individuals of dubious importance deciding who deserves the highest accolade they have to offer, regardless of talent, accomplishments, or other tangible measures of success. 

And the world buys into it each year.

Mundus vult decipi

The hot and miserable August weather has moved indoors in cities and towns across our land. Moved indoors and taken the form of recriminating rhetoric as neighbors square off in shout fests billed as informational town hall meetings about health care.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) enjoys using the term “evil mongers’ to describe American citizens expressing their anxieties and frustrations, many times with verbal vigor and abuse, over healthcare proposals they fear will adversely affect their lives and the lives of their children and of their parents.

Reid, along with many supporters of the various healthcare bills floating around Capitol Hill, says Republican special interest groups have organized the protests. That is the case to some degree. But to say individual Americans who cut across generational, social, and economic lines cannot think for themselves and cannot decide on their own to attend these meetings is simply absurd and borders on the disingenuous.

These town hall demonstrators, many of them children of the Summer of Love, have taken a page out of the liberal playbook to create our current Summer of Dissonance. Obstructive behavior to silence opposing views is not uncommon, particularly on college campuses, and the targets are usually conservative speakers.

In October 2006, someone pulled a fire alarm at Georgetown University to stop a speech by Minuteman co-founder Chris Simcox. A few weeks later, Columbia University students stormed a stage where Jim Gilchrist, the other Minuteman co-founder, was speaking.

In October 2007, members of Amnesty International, Veterans for Peace, and Students for Justice in Palestine, among others, disrupted a lecture by David Horowitz at Emory University, a common occurrence for Horowitz.

In April 2008, dozens of lesbians at Smith College climbed through windows and stormed the podium to stop a speech by Ryan Sorba, author of The Born Gay Hoax.

And last April, University of North Carolina police arrested six people who disrupted a speech by Virgil Goode, a former congressman from Virginia, who was speaking against affirmative action and illegal immigration. A week earlier, UNC police used pepper spray on students who disrupted a speech by Tom Tancredo, a former congressman from Colorado, who was talking about his opposition to in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants.

Back when I handled communications for a university president, I crafted the school’s position regarding controversial speech on campus. The result was a statement that said universities, by their very nature, are forums for the free expression, discussion, and debate of all views, including those that may be unpopular or even repugnant to some members of the university community or to the public. I went on to point out that we should encourage these exchanges as long as they remain within the boundaries of the law, which is an idea essential to a thriving and open democracy and, if followed, would temper today’s tempestuous town hall meetings.

I have come to believe over the years that some people on the left of the political spectrum interpret the First Amendment to mean this: “You can say what you like as long as I like what you say.” This is why they meet challenges to their political agenda with hateful words and ham-handed techniques. These attempts to stifle questions and concerns end up frustrating citizens not used to civil disobedience and unruly demonstrations.

They learn fast, however, these so-called special-interest puppets and evil mongers. They learn fast and respond to attempted censorship with shouts and jeers, chants and slogans. They quickly become that which they do not like and do not respect.

And this why we need Atticus Finch, the quiet and reasoning father in Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird. We need to sit on the porch and listen to Atticus explain how we confuse issues and drown discourse with raised voices and angry fists.

He would begin by telling us to hold our heads high and keep our fists down. “No matter what anyone says to you, don't let 'em get your goat,” he would say, adding, “Try fighting with your head for a change.”

Atticus would then raise his chin and look out over those assembled around his porch, the very ones who had been hurling invectives at each other and getting no closer to resolving the issues. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” he would say, “until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Finally, he would place his hands on his knees, slowly stand, then look down upon the upturned faces. He would watch the thoughtful in the crowd nod their heads and walk away into the night. Then he would imperceptibly shake his head as he looked at the remaining angry faces, and, in a quiet voice, almost as if speaking to himself, he would say, “I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley’s stayed shut up in the house all this time.”

We frequently use fear as a motivator, sometimes with good intentions. The fear of blindness temporarily stayed many a boy from personal exploration. On the other hand, some people play into deep-seated fears of social exclusion, racism, or terrorism to gain some level of control over individuals, whole classes of people, or nations.

One can make an argument that the United States government overreacted in some of its anti-terrorism laws and measures following the Sept. 11 attacks. We and our leaders responded in good faith to the fear that additional terrorists were poised to kill more Americans using airplanes and other weapons. The seduction of fear led to National Guardsmen patrolling airport terminals, armed with weapons that had no bullets. We continue debating the necessity of the past administration’s efforts to protect our nation, which included water boarding, wire tapping, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano this week said she disagrees with Bush Administration measures that fed into fears and did not include the participation of the American people in improving the country’s resilience against attacks. “The consequences of living in a state of fear, rather than a state of preparedness, are enormous,” she said.

Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology at the University of Kent, contends the seduction of fear feeds into the Precautionary Principle, which is designed to eliminate the risk of harm. Furedi says people no longer believe in acts of God or naturally occurring events. For example, accidents are preventable injuries, and we need to fix the causes. If a teenager dies in a car wreck, the family blames missing guardrails or poor road maintenance, and demands laws that keep teenagers from driving at night.

He also believes society no longer expects individuals to rise above adversity. Society, instead, treats people as victims scarred for life. Enter the poverty pimps and community organizers who convince people that racists, bigots, and the wealthy will never let them succeed because of their race, their gender, or their economic status. Only they, the poverty pimps and community organizers, can affect justice for the oppressed.

Individual responsibility does not exist in a precautionary culture, according to Furedi. Thoughtless people, greedy corporations, and incompetent government watchdogs cause a plethora of societal woes. So, we divide the citizenry into vulnerable or at-risk groups that need government protection from a government we do not trust, and we roll over to the seduction of fear by allowing that government to throw money and regulations at circumstances within our control.

If we believe the national news media and Washington fear mongers, each one of us is in danger of losing our home to foreclosure or seeing our home’s value plummet unless Uncle Sam steps in with mountains of cash. People across the country bought into that fear, causing the value of homes in unaffected areas to fall. The government, meantime, pumped billions of dollars into the system to save troubled mortgages given to individuals who could not and cannot afford them.

Buried in a wire-service story this week was a statement from the chief economist of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation who estimates the number of home foreclosures could reach 5 million by 2011. That’s a big number, especially if you are one of the 5 million, but it represents just over 6 percent of all homes in the country. In other words, 94 percent of home mortgages are safe and have been.

Another example is the current healthcare debate. Eighty-nine percent of respondents to the latest Time magazine poll said they have some form of healthcare coverage, and 86 percent of that group said they are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their plans. A Gallup poll last November found that 83 percent of Americans said the quality of their health care is excellent or good.

Proponents of sweeping changes in healthcare coverage and healthcare delivery use the seduction of fear to make their case rather than rely on reasonable examinations of the underlying causes and effective cures.

The seduction of fear only leads to the reduction of reason, which comes with a price tag no one can afford.

Mundus vult decipi

Regular readers of this column know that, at times, we look at the ways Muslim countries, those nations where Islam is the national religion and the foundation for their laws, are not like us (if you’ll excuse the grammar).  Egypt and Turkey are two examples.  Both have been in the news recently for their unabashed persecution of their Christian populations.

An official policy of the Obama administration is to keep happy our pigs and those who raise them by avoiding the term “swine flu” when describing the influenza virus that jumped from pigs to people.  It is not the swine flu, but rather the H1N1 virus, they tell us. 

The Egyptian government, however, uses swine flu as an excuse to launch another round of persecution against its minority Christian population.  Even though the World Health Organization reports no swine flu in any African nation as of this writing, the Egyptian government ordered the destruction of the entire pig population in a nation where only Christians raise pigs because Muslims consider pork unclean.

Earlier this week, according to various news organizations, about 1,000 Christian pig farmers armed with stones and bottles faced off against about 200 police officers armed with tear gas and accompanied by armored vehicles.  The Christians lost. 

Now, Egyptian health officials say the pig slaughter is part of a campaign against unsanitary conditions on pig farms, especially in Cairo slums where garbage collectors live.  And since all pig-raising garbage collectors are Christians, some observers believe this is another way to harm Christians in a nation where the law strongly discourages conversion to Christianity.

Or, someone serving at the wedding of a Muslim who converted to Christianity.  Father Mattaos Wahba received a five-year prison sentence last October after his conviction on charges he helped a Muslim woman obtain an ID card that falsely listed her religion as Christian.  The woman obtained the ID of a deceased Christian woman of about her age two years before she met her future husband, according to the organization Christian Copts of California.  The priest, according to the group, had no knowledge of the woman’s fake ID.  He, instead, is a victim of Egypt’s open violation of religious and human rights.  At least in the way we understand them. 

Even the U.S. State Department describes the Egyptian government as applying discriminatory religious laws and practices, and effectively shutting out Christians from senior positions in the government, military, and education.  And forget about building or repairing churches.  An 1856 law says non-Muslims must obtain a presidential decree to build or repair a place of worship.  A church in a Cairo suburb has been waiting for a construction permit for the past 50 years, according to the State Department. 

Turkey doesn’t need a swine-flu ruse to persecute its Christians.  That government is open in its de jure and de facto forms of discrimination, including the systematic removal of Eastern Orthodoxy from within its borders.  Turkey does not recognize the ecumenical role of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the world’s 200 million Eastern Orthodox Christians, whose patriarchate dates back to the fourth century. 

At one time, the patriarchate possessed holdings on par with those of the Vatican, but it is now a small, beleaguered enclave with most of its property seized by the government and its priests and patriarch victims of constant physical and political attacks.  For instance, the government must approve a new patriarch who must be a native Turk.  The government also closed all Christian schools and the Halki Seminary that trained Turkey’s priests and patriarchs. 

In 2007, the late Congressman Tom Lantos joined 50 members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which he chaired, in sending a letter to Turkey’s prime minister urging an end to all restrictions on the religious freedom of the patriarch.  President Obama made a similar statement in his April 6 remarks to Turkey’s parliament.

Mr. Obama, however, did not mention a case under deliberation by a Turkish judge.  The monks of the fourth-century Syriac Orthodox monastery of Mor Gabriel want the court to stop a group of state land surveyors and Muslim villagers from taking about sixty percent of its property.  The monks believe the taking of their land is another way to force non-Muslims to leave.

The case of Mor Gabriel may have profound political ramifications for Turkey, as pointed out by the Assyrian International News Agency.  Turkey wants to become a member of the European Union, and protection of minority and religious rights are conditions for entry.  But, history often shows us that political expediency often trumps religious rights, particularly when the religion is Christianity in a Muslim state.

President Barack Obama’s performance on “The Tonight Show” last week prompted various friends and colleagues to discuss the question of leadership. No one came up with a definition suitable for nailing to the wall or turning into a message to scroll across the computer screen. I suggested it may be one of those things we know when we don’t see it. Kinda the reverse of former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s description of hard-core pornography. He knew it when he saw it.

And that’s the curious, if not tortured, parallel between lack of leadership and porn: with both, someone’s gonna get (fill in the appropriate verb).

I used to work closely with the CEO of a billion-dollar research and education organization with thousands of employees spread out over several locations. Looking back over his tenure, I can break down his leadership style into four principles: 1) don’t make me make a decision, 2) give folks what they want, 3) make people feel good, and 4) make them laugh. I guess you could combine the third and fourth tenets to shorten the list.

Early on, the CEO told his vice presidents not to bring him any problems. “I expect you to work them out,” he said. “If you come to me for a solution, I figure the best minds here couldn’t come up with an answer, so you’ll be stuck with whatever I come up with.” 

Shortly after that, a group of downstream managers asked permission and funding to continue an annual management conference. “I had the same sort of request at my last place,” he told me. “I always let them do it, because it takes them about a year to organize one of these things, and that keeps them away from me for a year.”

He never spoke in depth on any subject, because, as I discovered, he didn’t possess any depth of knowledge or experience. But he was awfully good with smoke and mirrors. “I don’t use prepared speeches,” he told me. “I got about six or seven basic speeches I like to use, and I use a little of one here and a little of another there, to come up with something to say. I usually don’t know what I’m going to say until I get up there.  But it’s important to know that people don’t want to think hard about things and they don’t want to hear bad news. You want to give them just a few statistics to keep the subject fresh, and tell them a little history to give them some perspective on what you’re talking about.”

And then came his request of me. “I need you to find me some new jokes,” he said. “I spend about half my time finding jokes. So, you could do me a big favor by finding some new jokes for me.”

President Obama’s appearance with Leno made me look back over the past year and at the parallels with the aforementioned CEO. Let’s start with decisions. We’ll have to give the president the benefit of the doubt here and assume someone else is making the big decisions, like naming tax cheats to his cabinet, or picking a treasury secretary who was butt deep into the AIG bonus fiasco from the git-go. Those must have been examples of “If you come to me for a nominee, I figure the best minds here couldn’t come up with a good choice, so you’ll be stuck with the person I choose.” 

Next is give folks what they want. People wanted change going into the November elections. Every national poll last summer showed nine out of ten Americans did not like Congress’ performance, while eight out of ten didn’t like the president’s performance. The voters wanted change, and that was the mantra repeated by candidate Obama at every stop. It didn’t matter if the change were cosmetic and easily reversed when needed, like with John McCain’s assertion that the fundamentals of the economy are sound, a position derided by candidate Obama as a statement by someone out of touch with the realities of the American people. Then a few days ago, a bright light shone from the heavens and suddenly the fundamentals of the economy are sound. Praise the Lord and pass the ipecac.

Then came the I’m-just-one-of-you evenings with Leno, with Mr. Obama as the sole guest on a night that could have included an enhanced starlet, a stoned rocker, or a kid who whistles Chopin through his nose. No, we didn’t have one of those. Pity. I’m not sure even the most vapid of entertainers would have made fun of the Special Olympics just so folks could feel good and laugh.

Memo to President Obama: Laughter is no substitute for leadership.

A friendly conversation the other night about politics and the economy underscored the great gulf between perception and reality. The old saying is true that perception is reality, but, in reality, only if one doesn’t delve deeply into the subject in question.

Here’s what happened. The after-dinner conversation turned to those Detroit CEOs who flew on corporate jets to tell a congressional committee they need taxpayer money to survive. Our guest was incensed at the audacity of these automotive swells, the personifications of corporate greed.

I agreed their choice of transportation was boneheaded at best, and another reason why folks living at the C-level should listen to their public relations people whose job is to keep well-paid fat out of the fire. This also was a fine example of how public perception can eclipse economic reality.

Many of us who qualify as pedestrian in our jobs and lifestyle look with more than a tad of resentment upon executive transportation, whether it is a car and driver, an express elevator to the corporate suite, or a company jet. We work long hours to make our bosses look good, yet we drive ourselves to the next meeting or to the airport where we jostle our way through the lines only to wait for a flight that’s delayed. What a waste of time, we say to ourselves as we anxiously watch for the next flight update.

And that’s the point. If standing around in airports is a waste of our time, just think of the waste of company time and money for those highly paid C-suite suits. Convert your pay and their pay to hourly rates and determine the most efficient use of investor or taxpayer money.

I used to write speeches for university presidents. Every now and then someone would ask why my boss would have a full-time speechwriter. My answer was simple. It takes about an hour to write each minute of a speech. As a taxpayer, who would you prefer to spend 40 to 50 hours a week researching and writing speeches?

Then, there’s the economic stimulus argument for corporate jets. First, let’s establish the premise that the creation of jobs is one of the top reasons for the federal bailout money. If so, then why eliminate jobs simply because of envy?

“Excuse me, but your corporation gets economic stimulus money, so you’re gonna have to jettison your jet, which means you’ll have to fire the pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics, and cancel your contracts with fuel suppliers and the fixed base operator, who, in turn, will make personnel adjustments based on lost revenue. There, I feel better, because your CEO now has to ride a mule to his next meeting.”

President Obama continued this Us-versus-Them attitude in his this-is-not-a-State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress this week. He told the giddy crowd he will hold banks fully accountable for their bailout money. “This time, CEOs won’t be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet,” he said, adding, “Those days are over.” I guess that means you folks who sell fancy drapes and design and sew fancy drapes and supply raw materials that make up fancy drapes can start looking for other work, because fancy drapes, along with private jets, are no longer allowed.

Same is true for those bacchanalian conventions and conferences hosted and attended by companies and organizations across the land. Mr. Obama doesn’t like them. He said so in Elkhart, Ind. Companies can’t go to Las Vegas or to the Super Bowl “on the taxpayer’s dime,” he said.

In the last several weeks, Las Vegas hotels saw the cancellation of 30,000 hotel room nights at an estimated loss to the city of $20 million, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Goldman Sachs, which took $10 billion in bailout money, cancelled its technology conference and State Farm dropped its October convention expected to have 17,000 attendees.

But why stop at Las Vegas? Who needs conferences and conventions anyway? Not businesses looking for clients, or managers looking for better ways to do business, or city leaders who keep telling us convention business is essential to their economic development.

By the way, Goldman Sachs said it was leaving Las Vegas because of the company’s “best efforts to operate according to the requirements of the new landscape of our industry.” It didn’t mention, however, the $600,000 cancellation fee to the hotel or the other costs associated with moving a big event at the last minute.

Some may think the move was to control public perception. And it was, because it had nothing to do with economic reality. Mundus vult decipi

Here’s the question: When does theft become an unfortunate mistake, or asset liberation, or a temporary change of possession, or an alternate utilization of private property, or wealth sharing, or nothing more than an act of a modern Robin Hood?

That’s a question faced by University of South Florida administrators and lawyers in the local state attorney’s office over the past several days as they looked into the strange case of Abdul Rao, soon-to-be former senior associate vice president for research at the USF College of Medicine. Here’s what happened. Last week, according to published reports, Rao drove his minivan to the loading dock of USF’s  Johnnie B. Byrd Sr. Alzheimer's Center and Research Institute and helped his yardman help himself to a graduate student’s unsecured bike. Rao says the guy needed the bike so he could ride to the Department of Motor Vehicles office to replace a lost state ID and to go to a work site.

“I made an unfortunate mistake,” Rao explained in a written statement to colleagues after a surveillance video caught him boosting the bike. “I acted out of compassion for this nearly homeless man; but I failed to consider that the bicycle belonged to someone on our Alzheimer’s team. The bicycle was reported stolen. It has, however, since then been returned to its owner.”

Rao euphemized his action as a “failure in judgment.” The bike’s owner called it theft. Indeed.

Reports identify the other man as Vernon Waiters, whose extensive rap sheet includes several drug charges.

The video, posted on YouTube, shows what appears to be a deliberate shopping trip by the university researcher and the nearly homeless, but (as described by Rao) trustworthy and extremely hardworking co-conspirator. The video starts with someone riding a bike onto the loading dock. Next we see the two asset liberators drive up and check out the bikes parked off camera. Mr. Trustworthy chooses a bike, gives it a test ride, but returns it, only to come back on camera riding the larger mountain bike that the purloining pair put into the minivan before driving away.

The bike’s owner, a doctoral student, isn’t buying Rao’s belief that the campus VIP never meant to “bring harm, alarm, or disruption to anyone.” The student says it’s obvious what happened, and he wants Rao charged.

Rao plans to step down from his post at the end of this week, giving up his positions as senior associate veep for research, associate veep for USF Health, professor of surgery and molecular medicine, and medical director of clinical research for Tampa General Hospital.

Rao’s resignation denies the public the opportunity to see university administrators ponder a couple of points in their decision whether to slap Rao’s wrist or boot his thieving butt.

First, Rao makes a base salary of nearly $270,000 a year, which goes up to as much as $384,000 with administrative stipends. W hat would administrators do if, say, a housekeeper, making less than a tenth of Rao’s base take, took home Rao’s laptop, without permission, to apply online for a coupon for a digital TV converter, and returned the computer a few days later, undamaged and dusted?

Second is USF’s reputation within its external community. It’s a safe bet few community partners will accept errors in judgment by a medical researcher, not to mention a medical researcher who’s a bicycle thief in the eyes of his doctoral-student victim and possibly a host of other folks?

Of course, some members of the academy and the community may not have a problem with Rao’s twisted logic. They’re OK with asset liberation and wealth sharing, because they see the big picture small minds can’t grasp. They see the good in the end result. 

Breaking into your neighbor’s home to borrow some china for your weekend party is not a crime, because you broke back in and returned the plates, all clean and shiny. Taking your colleague’s car from the parking lot without permission so you can go to the bank and to the grocery story is OK, because you brought it back unscathed. Choosing not to pay your income taxes until you’re tapped to be the head taxman should not be held against you, because you paid the taxes and penalties when you were caught. And sneaking into this country is not really a crime, because you’re honest, hardworking, and ready to get your slice of the American pie.

I’m just being snarky, you may say. Indubitably. But Rao’s resignation deprives USF administrators the opportunity to place upon Rao a condition of employment that provides for a daily period of pillory on the campus quad where any and all may be snarky toward him to their hearts’ content.

My birthday is Jan. 20.  Every four years, the nation stops its normal course of events and holds a parade and celebration.  The quadrennial festivities began, by coincidence, at the moment Dwight Eisenhower became the 34th president of the United States of America back in 1953.  Truly, a moment in history.  But, was either event an historic moment?  After 56 years of thoughtful consideration, I vote in the affirmative to both.

History, by its very definition, is in the past; therefore, an event of historic significance, be it my birth or the inauguration of a president, does not become a momentous occasion until after it occurs.  We can anticipate with great expectation the significance of a future event, but to do more is to wallow in the shallow pit of hyperbole.

And, the wallowing over the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the nation’s 44th chief executive has taken away some of the “historic” joy for me.  Here’s why I say this.  Three months before the Democratic National Convention, wide-eyed journalists gushed with school-girl giddiness over the fact that Mr. Obama would accept his party’s nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.  Yes, this would be a significant event in the histories of presidential politics and civil rights (USA Today termed it “serendipitous timing”), and the angle freshened an overly long story.  But, when journalists declared Obama the nominee (not “the presumptive nominee”), and brought to our attention the convergence of these two events, they smothered us with their unfettered excitement.  No fewer than 900 references to the serendipitous timing, but not with that wonderful phrase, turn up in a Google search for June 3-4.  Hundreds more show up in the days that followed.

Thank you for pointing it out, but stop beating me with it.

The same sentiment holds for the inauguration.  Today, just a few hours before the event, the forced creation of history by journalists and regular folks alike is making me want to turn away.  It’s like when your mother arranges a blind date with the daughter, or son, of a friend of a friend.  The build up rarely lives up to reality.

And, the sad thing is that the desire to be a part of any history is so strong with some people that they fail to see the irony in their words and actions.  Take this email describing the events at one Inauguration Day gathering in Houston: 

“The general plan is to commemorate the day with an ocular demonstration of ‘The Evolution of a Dream:  Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’ by simulcasting the swearing in of the 44th President who is a person of color.”  The follow-up email arrived a few days later with a flyer containing the Obama quote:  “This is not a White America.  This is not a Black America.  This is not a Latino America.  This is not an Asian America.  This is the United States of America.”

The new generation of journalists long for their own presidential Camelot.  Another Google search for the terms Obama and Camelot returns nearly a thousand hits.  The truth is that Camelot did not exist as a descriptive term for the shortened Kennedy administration until after the president’s assassination.  Also, keep in mind this bit of political irony purveyors of the New Camelot keep quiet:  Kennedy won the 1960 election thanks to some old-fashion Chicago vote-counting chicanery.

That historians will view my birthday this year as a significant day in the history of our nation is not totally a function of my being or of Mr. Obama’s racial mix.  The inauguration of the 44th president would have historic significance regardless of who won the election.  We could have had as president the first former prisoner of war, the first female, the first Mormon, the first Libertarian, the first former First Lady, the first cross-dressing former mayor, the first former preacher from Arkansas, the first former actor from Tennessee, the first Hispanic, the first president with hair plugs, the first . . . well, you get the idea.

My birthday and the national event that accompanies it this year are heady times, no doubt about it.  That’s why there’s something unseemly about all of the pre-birthday/inauguration hype.  Let the day be what it is to each person according to what’s important to that person.  It may be a day to celebrate the start of another year.  For some, the day may carry great ideological significance or racial pride.  And pride for others may be found in the peaceful transition of power that begins another chapter in our nation’s history. 

I intend to spend the day celebrating my birthday, celebrating a new president, and letting history sort out the significance of both.

The first comment I received from someone not on my television screen regarding the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States came via email early the day after the election. It asked simply, “Now what?” Those two words coalesced the questions facing not only our new president, but also the people of our nation, regardless of ideology or political affiliation.

Now we wait, I replied, and guard the house, and protect the chickens, and peer deep into the night and listen.

It occurred to me that my reply may sound skeptical, indeed fearful, of Mr. Obama. Quite the contrary. I meant to point out folks should react cautiously, but not anxiously.

Those who did not vote for him have no need to grab their rifles, run out into their yards with hair aflame, and fire blindly at imagined intruders. Those who voted for the current Mr. Bush the first time must remember their outrage when supporters of Al Gore derided the nation’s new leader before he could prove himself one way or the other.

Yes, there was much anger and even considerable suspicion regarding the election, bad feelings that remain to this day. But it’s different this time. The outcome is clear. No chads hanging the election in the balance. Back then, in 2000, Mr. Gore received half a million more votes than Mr. Bush. This week, Mr. Obama outpolled Mr. McCain by more than seven million votes. Even though he did not win, Mr. McCain received more votes than Messrs. Bush and Gore and even Ronald Reagan in either of his landslide elections.

Mr. Obama will become president of a nation divided strongly along many lines. Nearly 56 million of his fellow citizens preferred another candidate, another set of ideas, another plan for change. He will learn on the job, as did every other president before him, the best way to lead his nation in the direction he believes best. In the process, he will lose many of his followers, people who want to take their leader to places he does not, or cannot, go. He will find, as did every other president before him, that the Oval Office is a lonely and confining place.

That’s why we the people need to cut him some slack and resist the temptation to nitpick, to continue the mean-spiritedness that has infected our nation and has made a sport out of making sport of someone we don’t particularly like. The level of political intolerance and nasty rhetoric seems to have increased considerably during the last couple of years. Were the commentators and comedians to blame or did the campaigns set the tone that others mimicked? It doesn’t matter today. The election is over and both candidates, in their respective concession and acceptance speeches, achieved the level of eloquence we should see during a campaign, not just at the end.

Mr. McCain began his speech by asking the crowd to stop booing at the name of Barack Obama. And then he urged his supporters to join him in congratulating the next president and in offering Mr. Obama “our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromise to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited. Whatever our differences,” he continued, “we are fellow Americans.”

It is natural, he said, to feel disappointment. “But tomorrow, we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again.”

Mr. Obama echoed in his acceptance speech that call for national unity. He told the world that the citizens of our nation “have never been a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and always will be, the United States of America.”

And then, on a night filled with history, he called forward the memory of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican from Illinois, who was the first to carry his party’s banner to the White House. “As Lincoln said to a nation more divided than ours,” he said, “we are not enemies, but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.”

That statement answers the second email I received the morning after the election, sent by a person who wrote, “He will never be MY president.” Our political system, the envy of the world, allows us to embrace fully the victor while guarding the house and peering deep into the night and listening. Then, if we find ourselves at odds with what comes to our front door, we can take up our ballot, not our rifle, and change our leadership again.