Older and Weiser

It was a call from my friend Michael Gould about three years ago that first alerted me to a book called The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.  It was, he said, a love story about football.

Blind Side tells the true story of Michael Oher, a giant fifteen year old (six foot five, three hundred and fifty pounds) from the slums of Memphis, Tennessee and the wealthy family who takes him off the street and away from his crack addicted mother, educates him, nourishes him, and ultimately adopts him.

In particular, it is the story of Oher’s relationship with Leigh Anne Tuohy, his adopted mother and fiercest advocate. Leigh Anne commits herself to filling the monumental education gap that years of neglect produced and helps Oher realize his potential as an offensive left tackle (LT) in football. The left tackle position is responsible for protecting a right-handed quarterback’s “blind” side. After a star-career with the University of Mississippi Rebels, Oher went on to be drafted by the Baltimore Ravens.

Two weekends ago, Blind Side debuted as a major motion picture, starring Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne. It has grossed over one hundred million dollars at the domestic box office and has a 73% “fresh” rating from Rotten Tomatoes. The movie is funny, touching and worth seeing, but no substitute for reading the excellent book.

Two years ago, I had the chance to meet Blind Side’s author, Michael Lewis, who also wrote the runaway bestsellers Liar’s Poker and Moneyball. I had encouraged a client to book him for their annual conference and I was able to spend a morning chatting with Mr. Lewis.

I discovered that day that Lewis was more than just a great storyteller. When I asked him about how Michael Oher was doing at the University of Mississippi, he didn’t address Oher’s football exploits or his stats as an NFL draft prospect. He told me about the person he himself had come to love.

“Michael,” he said with pride, “is on the Dean’s List at Ole Miss.”

Blog Editor

Here is an interview with the remarkable Leigh Anne Tuohy who briefly discusses the role faith plays in her life and how it influenced their family’s decision to take in Michael Oher.

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Here is an op-ed piece written by Michael Weiser. In it he discusses the disturbing findings from the Illinois Civic Health Index — a study that tracks civic participation in his native state — which was released last week.

Older and Weiser readers may remember one of our recent posts—“Study Shows Civic Participation Declining in Recession” — about a study of Florida’s civic culture which showed similarly dismal results.

In the following post, Michael suggests that it’s not just the adverse economic circumstances contributing to civic apathy but also widespread cynicism and generational mistrust of government caused by a series of political scandals there.

Your comments are encouraged.

Blog Editor

Have you heard the one about the President, the Pope and the Mayor of Chicago alone on a boat in Lake Michigan?  Well, the boat begins to sink and the three argue over which of them will get the only life jacket aboard.  After much debate, the President suggests that the democratic thing to do is to vote on who gets it.  And, so they do.  The Mayor of Chicago wins 17-2.

Vote-buying, ballot-box-stuffing and a pay-to-play culture of political corruption long have been the city and state’s gift to comedians everywhere.  But, as this week’s release of the first-ever Illinois Civic Health Index demonstrates, the power of corruption to corrode our trust in government and erode our civic life is no joke.

The Illinois index is a collaboration of the McCormick Foundation, the McCormick Freedom Project and the National Conference on Citizenship, which I chair.  NCoC is the only entity chartered by Congress with the mission to encourage Americans to become more active and engaged citizens.  It found that Illinois ranked 40th among the states in the quality of its civic life and there’s much to suggest that the cynicism bred by a long string of political scandals is to blame.

For example, just a couple of years ago residents of this state were more likely to volunteer their time than other Americans.  Now, they are less likely to volunteer.  While the nation as a whole has been volunteering at a higher rate in the past three years, Illinoisans have cut back sharply on volunteering (29.9 percent to 24.9 percent) since 2006.  It’s easy to blame a difficult economy but recession has reduced the time and energy that all Americans spend on their communities.  Something else is at play.

According to the index, just 15 percent of Illinois residents said they believed state government “did the right thing” most of the time, compared to 27% of all Americans.  Moreover, our confidence in the state’s civic traditions was among the lowest of all states.  That’s especially damning of a state that supposedly prides itself in being the “Land of Lincoln.”
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Here is a recent comment we received from an Older and Weiser reader. Resolved: “mistakes were made.”
-Blog Editor

In times of crisis, acting dumb or sneaky is a risky strategy

Mistakes were made. Maybe you heard about it. The phrase has been a particular favorite – especially among politicians – for some time now.

President Richard Nixon used it several times in explaining events that took place during his administration; President Ronald Reagan also used it, referring to the Iran-Contra situation; President Bill Clinton said it in January of 1997 when discussing Democratic Party fund-raising scandals; and the former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (who would never be elected president because he is short; and apparently has a bad memory for dates and things that happened in his life; and possibly a couple of other reasons) offered the line as an explanation for the apparently illegal firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. But it’s not necessary to be a head of state or a cabinet member to wrap one’s self in the dubious implied nobility of such an admission.

Hey, stuff happens. Nobody’s perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. There’s plenty of blame to go around. Let’s not start playing “the blame game.” People really don’t worry about such things. We have larger, more important things to deal with. Just imagine if a [insert here the name of anyone you believe is regularly treated better than you, such as a Democrat, a Republican, a minority, someone very rich, the president’s dog, etc.] had been accused of doing this! The media would look the other way.

Finding someone who admits to being responsible or accountable for the mistakes that were made can be quite a lengthy search.

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At the urging of a dear friend, Joel Sneider, Julie and I went to see the latest offering from the Coen Brothers, A Serious Man.

I had heard a lot about the film as a parable of the biblical Book of Job and its depiction of 1960s Jewish life in America. At the very least, the film should be seen by anyone who attended Hebrew school during those years or was forced to look into the then-terrifying abyss of a Bar Mitzvah. The film’s caricature of the rabbis of that era was alone worth the $12 ticket.

Someone who agrees with that last assessment is Rabbi Terry Bookman of Temple Beth-Am in Miami.  In addition to his pastoral excellence (Terry was recognized by Newsweek as one of the 25 most influential pulpit rabbis in the US), he is the author of two books, the co-composer of three music CDs, and an unerringly astute watcher of cinema. So, when his comments about A Serious Man showed up in my inbox, they had my attention.

With Terry’s permission, I share them with you:

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With the wedding of our own son still fresh in our minds, Julie and I were touched by the following article that appeared in the “Sunday Styles” section of this week’s New York Times. Written by the father of the groom, it is the story of a young couple serving in Afghanistan who come home to be married on their leave and then must return to duty in the Middle East. Here is a link to the article.

From the piece:

“In the world of the enlisted men and women, however, a premium is placed on loyalty and steadfast support, and this translates into a high rate of marriage, even among young people who are only in their late teens and early 20s. Every day, from basic training to daily missions, where they depend on one another for survival and success, what really matters are loyalty and people who can be counted on. And so it was for Ian and Brandi.”

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