Louis R. Avallone

Category: American Values

  • Denial

    Denial

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    You heard about that didn’t you? Oprah Winfrey commented last week that the critics of the President should show “a certain level of respect” to him? After all, she said, “…everybody has a learning curve, and I feel that the reason why I was willing to step out for him was because I believed in his integrity and I believed in his heart.”

    Really? Well, her “stepping out for him” during the 2008 campaign is an understatement. In fact, The New York Times referred to Oprah’s 2008 campaign rally in Des Moines as “the largest spectacle of the campaign cycle.” In fact, she then believed in Obama’s heart so deeply that she said, “For the very first time in my life, I feel compelled to stand up and to speak out for the man who I believe has a new vision for America.” She even called him, “the one.”

    So, what’s really going on here? You see, Oprah sees how Obama’s “heart” has pushed through a $1 billion “stimulus” spending bill and yet the economy has still shed more than two million jobs since doing so. She reads that unemployment has risen to 9.8%, and that it doesn’t even include those discouraged workers who have given up looking entirely, not to mention the 60.8 million Americans still dependent on the government for their daily housing, food, and health care. She hears the reports of one million home foreclosures in just 2010, even as sales of new homes hit a 47-year low.

    She sees how Obama’s “heart” proposed a 2012 budget that reduces community development funding and home assistance programs, affecting mostly minorities, who are twice as likely to live in poverty as the rest of the population. She sees how Obama’s “heart” also now proposes almost $1 trillion in new taxes, over the course of the next 10 years, most of which are tax increases on individuals, while still adding over $26 trillion in new debt in the long run.

    Oprah watches as Obama’s “heart” bows to President Hu Jintau of China and nearly genuflects at the feet of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. She hears when his “heart” also led him to apologize for our country, to the European countries, by saying that “there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive,” despite the countless American lives sacrificed, so that others might live free, and without persecution.

    So when Oprah tells us to essentially give a break to “the one,” she may just be in denial. And she is not alone. You see, denial is a defense mechanism, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, despite the overwhelming evidence.

    From her recent comments, she is using many of the mechanisms of denial. Like so many supporters of the President, she minimizes the reality of the facts, but more importantly, she rationalizes it all away by explaining that “…everyone has a learning curve.” And because she may actually be experiencing feelings of embarrassment, remorse, and guilt from her “over-the-top” campaign endorsement, considering the direction of our country, she seems to minimize much of any responsibility simply by explaining she believed in his “heart”; everything else, she seems to say, she never bargained for.

    But perhaps more than anyone, Oprah knows that it takes more than “heart” or “wishful thinking” to be successful.

    After all, Oprah is the embodiment of the American dream, and her success is the result of hard work, dedication, and an unbridled entrepreneurial spirit to overcome whatever obstacles may lie ahead. Born to a pair of impoverished teenage parents in the South, and later raised in an inner city Milwaukee neighborhood, Oprah landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Later, she would be told by an assistant news director in New York City that her “hair’s too thick, nose is too wide, and chin’s too big.” Still, she went on to syndicate the Oprah Winfrey Show, the highest-rated program of its kind in history, has been ranked as the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and became the richest African American of the 20th century.

    Oprah knows that “respect” is earned and that success is more than “wishful thinking” or puling on one’s “heart” strings. She’s just in denial. And in the words of Mark Twain, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”

  • Shielding From Folly

    January 26, 2011

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    As humans, we have a natural tendency to want to create order from chaos, buy perhaps sometimes, there’s no neat truth to be had. Nineteen people were shot, six of them fatally, during an open meeting U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was holding with members of her constituency in a supermarket parking lot Jan. 8 in Tucson, Ariz. The shooter was a 22-year-old student.

    In 1999, it was at Columbine High School where two senior students opened ␣re on their classmates, killing 12 students and one teacher, injuring 21 others. Then there was the killing spree at Virginia Tech in 2007 in which a student killed 32 people, making it the deadliest college shooting attack in our nation’s history. And just last September, a student fired several shots from an AK-47 assault rifle inside a library at the University of Texas and then killed himself.

    And while violence is not limited to a particular demographic and the impact of mental illness in our society must not be minimized, all of these terrible events were committed by people in their teens or early twenties whose desperation and hopelessness seemed palpable. These are folks who considered themselves victims and felt helpless and hopeless amidst a world that seems filled with setbacks, bad breaks and mean-spirited behavior from others.

    It doesn’t have to be that way, though, and that’s the message to be had here. The irony is that without those setbacks, bad breaks and mean-spirited behavior from others, it’s difficult to acquire the mature coping skills necessary to empower one’s self and be filled with hopefulness, not despair.

    Maybe there’s not a neat truth to be had here, but society seemingly has established a standard where it is more important to make children (and adults alike) feel good about themselves than to teach self-discipline, self-control, perseverance and dedication. While important, self-esteem alone does not lead to success in life.

    Instead, we seemingly encourage children to believe the accolades for those who only try should be equal to those who actually achieve.

    But that’s just not real.

    Pressure and competition cannot be wished away. And the longer that it is, the more unprepared we all are for whatever challenges that are ahead. It is often said, “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.”

    For example, without diminishing their academic accomplishment, how many valedictorians does it take to be No. 1? At Jesuit High School in New Orleans, there were 10 valedictorians recognized at graduation last year. At Avoyelles High School in Moreauville, there were four valedictorians saluted. At Stratford High School just outside of Houston, there were 30 valedictorians. In fact, the dean of admission at Harvard University recently revealed he had heard of high schools with more than 100 valedictorians. Now, many schools are abandoning the recognition of valedictorian altogether because of how it makes the other students feel.

    Many schools also won’t even post the honor roll any longer because of how it makes those students feel who do not qualify to be on the honor roll. In fact, some schools now have created the “effort honor roll.” This is the honor roll for students who want feel good about not making the honor roll. Of course, how about field day at your school? Everyone gets a ribbon, just for participating, right? And every child participating on a sports team seems to get a trophy, merely for participating. Yes, providing young children with rewards for participation is needed, but the trophies themselves should be saved for actual achievement, shouldn’t they?

    This all leads us back to the desperation and hopelessness so many seem to feel in our society. If we shield our children from competition of life, how can they possibly best learn coping skills? How can we teach the concept of improving their performance, if they are shielded from the realities of their efforts?

    There is no benefit to preparing any generation of Americans without the experience or lessons learned from competition. It does not minimize anyone’s humanity to suggest some folks work harder than others or that some are smarter than others. Some people are talented in math and sciences, while others are successfully athletic or social. We are all different with various gifts and abilities, and we have and will develop them at different paces.

    But when everyone can jointly claim first place, the honor becomes meaningless. Perhaps it is this sense of meaninglessness, that is so pervasive in our society, that helps foster the desperation and hopelessness that may sometimes lead to acts of violence or more often abandoning great dreams yet unfulfilled.

    Remember, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena … who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

  • Merry Christmas

    Merry Christmas

    December 1, 2010

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    Good Grief, Charlie Brown

    In December 1965, nearly 15 million viewers, or one-half of the television viewing audience, tuned in to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas. It has become the longest-running cartoon special in history, but it almost was cancelled before it ever was aired. You see, the CBS network executives were less than impressed. Aside from the technical criticisms, resulting from a rushed production schedule, the executives did not want Linus reciting the story of the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke. It was thought that viewers would not want to be preached upon by an animated cartoon, especially from Biblical passages. Obviously, after almost 45 years of airing every Christmas, receiving an Emmy and a Peabody award, those CBS executives got it wrong.

    “There will always be an audience for innocence in this country,” said Charlie Brown’s creator, Charles Schulz. Nonetheless, the religious celebration of Christmas continues to face trivialization. Last year at this time, even the White House was not planning to display the Nativity scene, which has been a longtime East Room tradition. Instead, according to the White House’s former social secretary Desiree Rogers, the “Obamas were planning a nonreligious Christmas.” Great. Whatever that means.

    The commercialization of Christmas, however, continues to increase in prominence, not to mention that the “shopping season” begins earlier and earlier every year. Actually, the commercialization began as early as 1851. But it was FDR, in 1939, who may have inadvertently most influenced our modern day, obsessive and compulsive preoccupation with spending at Christmas; he moved the date of Thanksgiving back to the third Thursday of November to expand the Christmas shopping season. And today, Americans spend over $450 billion annually on Christmas.

    But it was the character of Linus, in A Charlie Brown Christmas, that may have been the first television appearance bemoaning the commercialization of Christmas and the 1960s-style “modern” aluminum Christmas trees. And speaking of trees, did you know that the commonly known “Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree” was officially named “The Tree at Rockefeller Center” last year? Seriously. But the times must be changing. This year, it is, once again, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.”

    In fact, it seems that “Christmas” may be mounting a comeback.

    Last Christmas marked a dramatic return for retailers who put “Christ” back into “Christmas,” after an experimental hiatus where retailers instead emphasized “Happy This” or “Happy That,” instead of simply, “Merry Christmas.”

    The percentage of retailers recognizing Christmas in their advertising has risen from 20% to 80% in recent years. What a remarkable turnaround! In years past, retailers, such as Lowe’s, were like Santa following behind his reindeer with a pooper-scooper: They were scrambling to clean up their own seasonal mess.

    For example, in Lowe’s Holiday 2007 catalog, the pages were adorned with beautifully decorated Christmas trees. However, Lowe’s decided to advertise these as “Family Trees.” According to the American Family Association, “Lowe’s evidently did not want to offend any non-Christians, therefore they replaced “Christmas Tree” with “Family Tree.” Lowe’s quickly responded the following year with an apology saying that it was merely a proofreading error and, according to their spokesman, they are redoubling their efforts “to proofread those catalogs in the future.”

    There’s a lot of “proofreading” going on it seems nowadays. In 2008, The Home Depot notified the American Family Association that Christmas would also be returning to their promotional advertising, in store banners and displays, and just last year The Gap did the same.

    Compare that to the folks at Barnes & Noble, CVS Pharmacy, Radio Shack, and Victoria’s Secret. These companies simply refer to Christmas, if at all, as nothing more than a tradition. According to the National Retailers Federation, 91% of consumers plan to celebrate Christmas, compared with 5% for Hanukkah and 2% for Kwanzaa. And according to the polling firm Zogby, 95% of Americans are NOT offended when they hear “Merry Christmas,” but almost half (46%) are “bothered” by the greeting “Happy Holidays.”

    There are a lot of folks who are fed up with the crowd who repeatedly use politically correct “white out” to edit the “Christ” out of “Christmas.” In fact, for several years now, the American Family Association (http://action.afa.net/) has maintained a “Naughty & Nice List” for consumers. According to the group’s founder, “Retailers which seek to profit from Christmas while pretending it does not exist should realize they have offended the vast majority of Americans who enjoy Christmas.”

    I guess these retailers expect you to leave the “Christ” part in the parking lot. And no, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all is good with the world just because a store says “Merry Christmas,” instead of “Happy This” or Happy That.” The true Christmas spirit still comes from within.

    Charles Schulz was right, though, “There will always be an audience for innocence in this country.” And that’s just what we could use more of, isn’t it? Merry Christmas.

  • Numbing Down

    Numbing Down

    August 25, 2010

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    Kim Kardashian “Totally Fine” On Her Own
    Nation Breathes Sigh of Relief as Vienna Girardi Starts Dating Again

    Okay. I admit it. I did not already know that Snooki had recently been arrested for disorderly conduct in New Jersey last month. Or that Vienna Girardi, from “The Bachelor” was already dating again, after her very public break-up with Jake in June. Nor did I know just how devastated Heidi Montag was by the news of her plastic surgeon’s recent passing. Nor did I know that Kim Kardashian said that she is “totally fine” now on her own. And that fed-up flight attendant that took the “slip-n-slide” exit off of that JetBlue flight earlier this month? He’s a huge Barry Manilow fan. Who would have known?

    Maybe you didn’t know all of this either. And maybe it’s because you and I are just too serious about things. Or maybe not.

    Did you know that only two in 10 Americans know that there are 100 Senators in the U.S. Senate? Or only four in 10 know there are three branches of government (and also can name each of them)? Or that 53% of Americans don’t know who is the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court or, for that matter, even name a single member of the highest court in the land? Or that a National Geographic poll revealed that six in 10 people, aged 18 to 24, could not find Iraq on a map?

    As we rapidly approach this year’s election season, is there really any big surprise why voter turn-out continues to be so low in our nation? After all, with so many diversions to captivate our attention and occupy our minds, often with nonsense, it’s difficult to come home, pause, and give thoughtful consideration to nuclear proliferation. Or to the national security threat from our nation’s open borders. Or to the terminal consequences of increasing the national debt. In fact, as I write this, the top five trending/search topics on Yahoo’s Internet search engine are Natalie Portman, Zombie Ants, Tila Tequila, Erykah Badu, and Jay-Z. You familiar with all of these?

    Admittedly, when you are working longer hours to make ends meet; it’s hard to become interested in the significance of Russia loading uranium-packed fuel rods into an Iranian nuclear power station this week. It’s just not a priority when the children have their homework to finish, baths to take, and you have to balance the checkbook. And because we’re so tired, as a nation, we just want to relax and be entertained…not solve the world’s problems, right?

    Still, it’s not so much the “dumbing down” of America as it is the “numbing down” that is responsible for the continued low voter turnout facing our nation. To prove that point, you should know that 85% of adult Americans have at least a high school degree today, up from just 25% in 1940. Similarly, 28% have a college degree, which is five times the level in 1940. Today’s U.S. workforce is arguably the most educated in the world and the present 18- to 29-year-old generation will likely be the most educated in American history.

    Still, in 2008, about 100 million folks never voted. This means that the United States elected its President in 2008 with the votes from only about 25% of the voting-age population. This was true in 2004, as well as in 2000. However, in 1992 and 1996, this percentage was even lower…only 23% of the voting-age population, in those elections, voted for Bill Clinton.

    But why the low turn-out? Sure, you can blame television for the precipitous decline in voter turnout. After all, television became the predominant form of entertainment in the 1960s and, as television’s popularity grew, the importance of traditional, face-to-face social gatherings in the community declined. “Television is chewing gum for the brain,” said the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. The same can be said today for Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels.

    Maybe folks are also fed up with the longer, seemingly unending campaign seasons, filled with mud-slinging; where candidates are more interested in energizing their “base,” instead of demonstrating leadership to solve our nation’s challenges through our democratic processes.

    Low voter turnout may also be a product of decades of American contentment. Perhaps our country’s past prosperity has diminished the perceived significance of participating in our democratic process.

    Then again, part of it is our sense of helplessness. Many may feel that they have no influence on what happens, so why bother? Unfortunately, the “why bother” is pretty widespread. In fact, the United States ranks 139th out of 172 countries in voter participation.

    Regardless of the reasons, and whatever your politics this election year, just vote. Register to vote, if you are not already. And engage the privilege that is our democratic process, so that we might all preserve the promise of the American dream for future generations.

    Because, very plainly, between declining voter interest and the continued erosion of accountability in government, in the words of Yogi Berra, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

  • Be Vigilant

    Be Vigilant

    July 8, 2009

    By Louis Avallone
    –
    When is saying “no,” really “yes”? Let me explain. If you are like me, you probably find yourself saying “no” more often these days than usual. “No” to continued deficit spending by the federal government, “no” to government-run health care, “no” to higher and higher taxes, “no” to the redistribution of wealth by the government…the list seemingly goes on and on.

    But we are positive-thinking people, you may say. For us, the glass may always be half-full. Every day may not be good, but there’s something good in every day. Every cloud has a silver lining. Our attitude determines our altitude. We turn lemons into lemonade, and when one door closes, another one opens. If we can dream it, by golly, we can do it. A positive anything is better than negative nothing.

    So you understand, then, how weary it is for us, you and me, as well as millions of our fellow Americans to wake-up each day, and make a difference, in the direction our country is traveling, in a world that seemingly is spinning in the opposite direction. There’s just too many opportunities, these days, for common-sense thinking folks, where saying “no” seems the only rational response to the constant barrage of policy initiatives from this administration, even from millions of Americans who ordinarily believe the sun will come out tomorrow. What we are really saying is that we are “for” a better way…a better day.

    The chorus of “no” to the policy initiatives from this administration has become so routine that Democrat talking points now repeatedly characterize the Republican Party as the “Party of No.” But that’s just not true. Is the absence of debate, or opposing viewpoint, now the standard by which we measure our love of country or the wisdom of our ideas? How can this be? After all, in the words of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”

    And that’s the truth. Consider parenting, for example. We tell our children, as our parents told us, the wisdom of what they should not do. That they should not stay up until midnight on a school night. They should not eat a candy bar before dinner, or talk with their mouth full. That if they cannot say anything nice about someone, then they should not say anything at all. That they should not put all their eggs in one basket. Sure, it may not have made as much sense to us as children, but for most of us, it made much better sense to us all grown up. Mark Twain said it best: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

    For those whose ideology is different than the current administration’s tendencies of socialism, the road ahead is a long one and you may already have grown tired of saying “no.” But as a child, what if your parents had given up on saying “no” to you? What if they had given into silence about the things that matter? Grown weary of the debates and disciplining that shaped who you are today? Frankly, as a child, being told “no” taught us responsibility, honesty, and manners. It taught us that we have choices in life and that there was a difference between what we may have wanted…and what we may have needed.

    You see, the way I figure it, saying “no” is about defending our country against the policy initiatives, from the left side of the aisle to the other side of the globe, that seek to destroy our American free market system, dismantle private health insurance, redistribute wealth, increase taxes, reward irresponsibility, and redefine the American dream.

    If Republicans are relegated as belonging to the party of “no,” then count me in. Historically, honest discourse and opposition, by Republicans, to ill-conceived or unattractive Democratic policies resounds with voters. It led to Republican landslides in 1938, 1946, 1966, 1980, and 1994.

    When you grow weary of saying “no,” or uncomfortable expressing your opinion on this matter or that, from the barber shop to the coffee shop, remember the words of James Madison when he said, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” When the road seems long and your eyes have grown tired, remember the words of Thomas Jefferson when said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Be vigilant. Stay informed. Your country needs you now…perhaps more than it ever did.