Goodness gracious

I think I know how some of you might be feeling these days.

I still recall something that happened—golly, I must have been very young, perhaps as young as four or five—I’m fairly certain that I hadn’t started school yet. My mom had brought me with her to visit a friend who had two kids of her own. While they sat and talked, we played and watched TV—and got into a little disagreement about what TV show should be on.

“Now, now, Skippy,” my mom counseled. (Yeah, I was “Skippy” back then.) “It’s their TV—let them watch what they want to watch.” Well, that made perfect sense to me at the moment, as it happened, so I relented.

A couple of weeks later, my mom’s friend came to our house, kids in tow. “Great!” I thought. “This time, I’ll get to call the shots. They’re in my domain now.” Sure enough, it wasn’t long before we got into a dispute about the TV. Confidently, I went to Mom for adjudication, knowing that truth and justice would clearly be on my side—after all, I had a precedent to point to.

“Now, now, Skippy,” she said, “they’re the guests—let them watch what they want to watch.”

As you can tell by the fact that I am still thinking about this after nearly 50 years, this was a deeply traumatic moment. I was flabbergasted. Gobstoppered. Aghast. My mother, of course, was trying her best to teach me about being both a gracious guest and a gracious host—but I, of course, was having none of it. Where was the fairness? Where was the karmic balance, the equitable application of a commonly accepted legal principle?

When, in short, would I get my revenge?

I am reminded of that frustrating moment when I contemplate the ease with which George Bush and Dick Cheney slipped nonchalantly out of the limelight on January 20, and the seeming impossibility of ever getting anyone in power to commit to holding those two snollygosters and their minions responsible for their actions.

The case couldn’t be more clear cut, after all—a Federal judge has declared that detainees were indeed tortured by U.S. personnel, and under binding treaty provisions we are obligated to investigate. (For more on this, see the interview with Scott Horton and Michael Ratner on the February 5 edition of Democracy Now! at www.democracynow.org.)

Or should we be gracious? “Look forward, not backward,” as Obama says?

There might be a time for graciousness, sure, but that will be later, when the facts are all out, and there’s some remorse, and some repentance shown. But for now, there’s a very simple principle in play—and folks who like simple principles should have no trouble understanding it:

When it was your house, George, we had to play by your rules. Now you’re in ours. Do you have anything you’d like to tell us? We’re looking forward to hearing it.

P.S. I had to get the word “snollygoster” in there somewhere—after all, I’ve adopted the cute little thing. Take a look at savethewords.org and choose your favorite.

- Skip Mendler