I have to tell you, heartless bastard that I am, that my first response to President Obama’s emotional display during his introduction of yet another circumvention of our representative democracy was to envision Tom Hanks reprising his Jimmy Dugan role from A League of Their Own: “Are you crying! Are You crying? There’s no crying! There’s no crying in the White House!” At least I believed his tears to be sincere. The more cynical gen x’ers I was watching with insisted the tears were faked, with one questioning whether he had used a tear pack, and another quoting the scene from “The Man Who Knew Too Little” where Bill Murray is impressed by a woman he supposes to be an actress and her ability to spontaneously summon tears, “How do you do that… are you thinking right now, ‘My dog is dead’ ?”.
I won’t return again to the to the whole pointlessness of imposing regulations that would not have stopped any of the catastrophes he was responding to. I won’t re-argue the gun-control debate, as that is a debate that has already been repeatedly decided, hence the tears. To borrow a line from the progressive playbook, the science is settled. No, all those points have been covered ad nauseam, and the only deviation from the boring predictability of the President’s agenda was the novel directions his twisted logic took in justifying the restriction of innocent people’s rights by claiming to be protecting other innocent people’s rights. By that construction Obama’s words could be used to justify Trump’s muslim embargo, or the Japanese internment during WW II for that matter.
Tears are powerful things. Women have understood this for centuries, but men are only beginning to understand that they too can employ this secret weapon. Remember Seinfeld’s George Costanza, dreading his fiance’s tears when he wanted to postpone their marriage, finding himself in tears while talking to her. To George’s astonishment, her response was the only one men have been able to come up with for ages, consoling and acquiescence. The only problem with tears, is that while they may be a sign of passion, they are seldom a sign of strength or confidence. When everybody cries, you’re probably at a funeral, and that’s a reasonable place to cry; but when there’s trouble someone needs to stand strong, someone needs to be there to lean on. When solutions need to be found someone needs to be confident and comforting, solid and reliable, equal to the challenge. Traditionally, that used to be the man, and to some extent that is changing; but changing gender roles don’t change political realities. While I am not one who insists that real men don’t cry, I have found from experience that the wisdom of Ecclesiastes is timeless, “For everything there is a season…”. I don’t begrudge the President his tears, tears of joy at his inauguration, tears of pride for his daughters, private tears for private pains… but in times of trial when the nation is in tears he needs to be our confident leader, our rock, our brave face to the rest of the world. Think of our enemies around the world; Iran, North Korea, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Putin, China… which of these are moved by a President who weeps? There will be little consolation from our enemies as they read such outbursts as proof for what they already suspect, our leader is weak.
IMHO: No, I am not yet so jaded that I would accuse the President of fake emotions or crocodile tears, but I am also aware that everything the President does has a political calculation. Because of social expectations and bullying middle schoolers, men from our generation have long practice in restraining our tears. While the President may not have chosen to cry in the way that a Hollywood actor could, he did choose not to withhold his tears, as would generally be expected for Presidents, and that probably because he saw a political expediency to them. The minor actions he is pushing through, though clearly unconstitutional, are at best simply a foot in the door, and more likely intended to create a wedge issue designed to make Republicans seem unreasonable in opposing them. Oh, I’m sure he scored some points with a few weak-kneed progressive women who swoon at the idea of a strong man being passionate enough to weep (unless it’s their husbands or John Boehner), but the Achilles heel of tears is that they generally only work on the opposite sex… maybe Angela Merkel was impressed. So while Putin is planning his next move, and Xi Jinping patiently pursues his goals; while North Korea explodes a hydrogen bomb, ISIS beheads another Christian, and the next lunatic plots the next mass killing; we can all take comfort that we are led by a tyrant sensitive enough to cry.
