TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/093091/0930640.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.0 KB | 127 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 84

Men, Women And Tears


By Philip Dunne


    President George Bush, while watching on television his
nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Clarence Thomas, describe
to the Senate Judiciary Committee the lack of indoor plumbing
and other deprivations of his humble childhood, informs us that
he was moved to tears. In his own words: "I choked up on it."

    This is not the first time this year that the Chief
Executive has indulged in a manly effusion of moisture. On June
6 he told a gathering of Southern Baptists that last January,
while praying just before he let slip the dogs of war, "I had
the tears start down the cheeks." There was even a hint of
further tears in his eyes as he made this confession, which,
according to newspaper reports, was rewarded by the crowd with
a prolonged standing ovation.

    Since then there have been a few negative reactions from
critics who seem to consider tears a sign of weakness in the
human male. Unfortunately, it appears that there are still some
among us who refuse to move with the times, and remain captives
of an outworn Victorian ethic.

    The notion that men should not display their emotions in
public, and most specifically that they should never shed tears,
was enshrined during the 19th century in the Spartan code of
English public schools, which popularized the doctrine of the
stiff upper lip, and was articulated by many writers, from early
Victorian Charles Kingsley ("Men must work, and women must
weep") to late Victorian "Mr. Dooley" ("Among men . . . wet eye
manes dhry heart").

    In this more enlightened age we no longer deny the boon of
tears to half our population, nor the joys of honest labor to
the other half. Today, doubly reversing Kingsley, women must
work -- or else -- and men, far from keeping a stiff upper lip,
must "let it all hang out," especially if they hope to get
ahead in politics. There are cogent historical precedents.

    A case in point is the 1952 presidential election, when
vice-presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon averted political
disaster for the ticket of Dwight D. Eisenhower and himself when
he delivered his famous Checkers speech. As California's junior
Senator, he had accepted a regular allowance from a group of
wealthy Los Angeles businessmen, and there appeared to be real
danger that he would be dropped from the ticket. In his speech,
he neglected to answer the charges directly, but informed a
listening electorate, with quavering voice and moistened eye,
that he was a virtual pauper, whose sole assets were a little
dog named Checkers and his wife's cloth coat.

    Nixon's judicious employment of his tear ducts enthralled
the nation and helped propel his ticket to victory over Adlai
E. Stevenson, who even in defeat clung to the discredited
Victorian ethic by quoting Abraham Lincoln's anecdote about a
little boy who stubbed his toe and said that it hurt too much
to laugh but he was too big to cry. Poor Stevenson, a prisoner
of the past, deserved to be a loser. For the more up-to-date
Nixon, the prize was the vice presidency and, 16 years later,
the White House itself.

    All who can remember 1952 experienced a sharp jolt of deja
vu 35 years later during the Iran-contra hearings of 1987. When
the Reagan Administration nominated Lieut. Colonel Oliver North
as its designated fall guy, North's brilliant attorney, Brendan
Sullivan Jr., had his client not only boldly defy Marine Corps
protocol by appearing before the congressional panel in full
uniform with a chestful of decorations but also present his
defense with the same quaver of voice and modicum of manly
moisture in the eye that had served Nixon so well. The result
was a tidal wave of Olliemania that swept the country, made
lying to Congress a paradigm of patriotism, and is still fondly
recalled by those who relish the fine art of political
lachrymosity.

    A little later, in a semipolitical setting, television
evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, confessing to a sin or two here and
there, employed the same strategy but different tactics, opting
for all-out bawling on camera. And, just as it worked for the
fictional Elmer Gantry, so, in a rare case of art imitating art,
it rewarded Elmer's analogue in real life.

    But still, none of these stellar performances can compare
with that of President Bush. Like the old vaudevillian Ted
Healy with his famous triple slap across the faces of the Three
Stooges, the President achieved three objectives with one
stroke: to evoke a nation's sympathy for a brave man's tears,
to present this effusion of salt water in a religious setting,
and to remind us of a Commander in Chief's brilliant military
triumph in the gulf.

    Future Presidents who find themselves faced with the awful
prospect of sending men and women into battle will be comforted
and inspired by his example. It is a pity that such of his
predecessors in the White House as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin
D. Roosevelt, each bearing on his shoulders the burden of a
nation in dire peril, should be forced by the Victorian ethic
to forgo the solace of a good cry. And then there was General
George Washington at Valley Forge, who reportedly cried as
seldom as he lied.

    But it must be admitted that to one entire class of
American citizens, the strictures of an antediluvian past still
seem to apply. Representative Patricia Schroeder, announcing
her withdrawal from the 1988 presidential race for lack of
funds, was greeted by her supporters with such a storm of
affectionate protest that she was moved to tears. For this she
was castigated, not only by supercilious males but also by a
gaggle of superheated feminists, as just another weak woman,
temperamentally unfitted for the presidency.

    If there is a moral to all of this, it could be that in
today's political climate, men may weep, but women must prove
themselves made of sterner stuff.