HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Apr 20, 2004 If it's monday morning, don't pull that trigger. It’s the fifth anniversary of the Columbine Shootings and the impacted families are still questioning whether someone, somewhere couldn’t have done something to prevent the situation. The 9/11 Commission wants to know if Clinton, Bush, the CIA and the FBI could have done more to prevent the tragedy. A cop in Denver knocks on the door of a 911 call. A teenager charges at him with a knife and is shot. Now everyone’s looking for some other way the police could have responded that wouldn’t have resulted in the teen’s death. What do these three issues have in common? They all reflect a growing trend for the media and public to play Monday Morning Quarterback. You know, that game where we look back with perfect hindsight and proclaim how easy it would have been for us to do it differently – to do it right! Mind, I’m not talking about gross misconduct or the intentional choice to do wrong. Such individuals deserve to be removed and hounded. I’m talking about professionals who try the best they can but aren’t allowed the occasional mistake without the media and public coming down on them hard. The doctor, the guard, the fireman doing his best, just not being perfect. The scrutiny these people are subjected to is a terrible trend! Why? Because each time we engage in second guessing, we are subtly encouraged to expect perfection from those decision makers. It’s suddenly so easy to see the correct course, to give the right answer after the fact. So we forget all the uncertainty, the changing variables, the prior conditioning that affected the initial decision. Why didn’t the cop back away from the door as it opened? Why didn’t we screen all passengers boarding the plane? Why didn’t the police check out Klebold and Harris’ garage? Yet as we raise our standards, fewer sane, stable people will attempt to meet the challenge. The game becomes one strike and your out! I’m reminded of the story of Perseus and Andromeda. No one could court Andromeda without first answering a riddle. The catch? If the answer was wrong, the suitor was put to death! After the first couple victims, guess how many suitors were willing to try? Yet we blithely apply Andromeda’s riddle to any action the media questions. Then consider the rich owner who was tempted to fire an employee who had made a mistake estimating a job for the owner’s company. The error eventually cost $20,000, even though the contrite employee cut every legitimate corner, trying to offset the error. When the employer announced he would keep the errant employee, he was asked, “Why?” He replied that now having invested $20,000 in this man’s training, tight fiscal management and motivation, why would he give that to another business? But that’s often what we do to the politician, the policeman, the city official – we clamor for their removal about the time they’ve started learning from experience. Then we wonder why educated, virtuous, stable people don’t want to be firemen, doctors, police or politicians! It’s because the expectation we place on them is perfection - each time and every time. Imagine it’s you standing on a dimly lit porch, a cold night, knocking on the door. All you know is there’s been a call that someone is threatening violence inside. The door swings open, a figure is silhouetted there. You start to speak when the figure screams and charges. Really charges. (By the time you read the second use of “charges” you’ve had to decide what you will do. No pondering the issue. You either have a knife in your chest or you’ve shot the youth, yet every person out there with a grudge against a cop will now second guess you.) You’re an overworked investigator, you get 50 phone calls a day to check out, and someone has called complaining about a couple of teens bothering their son. Records show this has been an ongoing issue. You have a choice to call the parents or go out. Your really busy, but you go out. You talk to the parents and they reassure you they will handle the affair. You talk to the young Mr. Klebold, warning him to cool it. As you get back in your car, behind on your paperwork, you don’t realize your already condemned because you didn’t get a strange impulse to ask to see the garage! Now you’re President! From 6 in the morning to 10 at night your day is scheduled and people climb over each other to gain your ear. Dozens of memos and reports hit your desk daily, you advisers constantly update you and reassure you they are on top of their areas. The media’s trashing your wife and children, security men confer over the latest death threat you’ve received and opponents examine every detail of your general past and finances looking for blood. You pick up a memo that mentions Terrorists want to attack America. So what’s new? You check for specifics - when, where, how? All you find is a past history and a couple of ideas. Still, you decide to talk to your security advisor - get the scoop just incase. They reassure you the plane-threat is for hijacking hostages to trade and has been covered. The phone rings with your next appointment on poor housing issues and you have a dinner with an ambassador tonight. But you don’t realize you’re already condemned because a month later – after someone’s committed suicide by flying planes into skyscrapers – people can second guess any decision you’ve made. They can decide, with hindsight, that even if they didn’t know planes could be missiles, you should have. Welcome to Monday morning! ------------ About the author: Brad is a journalist want-a-be, hoping to bring people back to moral reality. Email: bleach@ncwcd.org Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
