Let's talk about Bob Dole

Let's talk about Bob Dole. I don't want to talk about Bob Dole's record in the Senate, or Bob Dole's tax cut proposal, or Bob Dole's policies concerning the redemption of the ailing Social Security and Medicare systems, or Bob Dole's ability to lead America into the new millennium. I want to talk about the awful face Bob Dole makes when Bob Dole falls backwards onto the ground. I want to talk about how helpless Bob Dole looks as the limb he damaged irreparably while serving his country in World War II wriggles helplessly against his side. I want to talk about how pathetic Bob Dole looks as he struggles in vain to right himself again like some sort of overturned beetle.

At least, that's what everybody else seems to want to talk about since Dole's accident on the campaign trail in California earlier this week: the photographers who surrounded the presidential hopeful after a railing gave way and sent him tumbling to the floor were so busy happily taking pictures of his embarrassing misfortune that at first they didn't even bother to help him up. The press had a field day with the footage. It was, of course, the most humiliating snapshot of all--showing Dole with a terrible grimace on his face as he writhed on his back--that made the lead page of Newsweek's National Affairs section. Even my friends were thrilled--they crowded around the Newsweek in question as if it were the Jenny McCarthy issue of Playboy.

I guess I'm wondering if I'm the only one who finds something about all of this gleeful gossiping disturbingly skewed. Surely, there must have been something else Bob Dole did that day which would have been more appropriate for news coverage, either before or after his Chevy Chase impression on the stairway. Heck, I trip all the time but it's never shown up on the late edition. Poor Bob Dole. In his bid for presidential dignity, he's lost his God-given right to fall on his ass.

And we wonder why we can no longer find respected, inspiring leaders behind whom to rally as they steer our nation's vessel through increasingly turbid waters. The answer is simple: in a climate where Bob Dole's tumble is the week's top story, the respectable can no longer be respected and the inspiring lose their ability to inspire.

It wasn't always this way. During FDR's four terms, millions of Americans were never even aware that their president was confined to a wheelchair until the polio-stricken statesman became so sick after Yalta that he was forced to deliver his final address before Congress sitting down. Certainly, the public never ogled candid shots of the sickly Roosevelt in the more awkward moments of his condition as we do today with the hapless Bob Dole.

JFK, perhaps our last truly celebrated president, womanized to extremes that make Bill Clinton's extramarital escapades look about as spicy as Sesame Street. The press knew about the naked women running amok in the Kennedy White House; they just didn't cover it. Uninterested in needlessly deprecating their nation's most critical representative, they stuck to reporting the more legitimate if less racy issues directly concerning the country's welfare.

Today, however, issues devoid of scandal are almost considered too banal to cover in a world where dignity and common courtesy mean nothing in the face of a good hearty chuckle at someone else's expense. I'm sure JFK and George Bush both blew chunks while they were in office (as certainly most of us have in any given four-year period), but only Bush garnered the dubious honor of having his projectile-vomiting televised. Is it any wonder which of the two commanders-in-chief made it onto the 50-cent piece?

Somewhere along the way, the media has abandoned its assumed role of protector of our national leaders' dignities to become their greatest detractor. Yet who is responsible for this pendulum swing? The press delivers only what its audience demands.

I have neither the knowledge nor the space here to discuss what this sea change in attitude towards our public officials signifies about the kind of America we live in today. But I assert that as we continually lament for the days when we had revered leaders instead of the so-called nincompoops constantly derided today, perhaps we should consider the notion that our predicament has less to do with the people who happen to hold public office at the moment and more to do with the rest of us.