McCain Doesn’t Rock

The McCain-Palin campaign is having a hard time getting its groove on.

For politicians, every public event features a soundtrack of popular music, selected by the campaign staff as anthemic of the message du jour. Bill Clinton used Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow until we all ripped the Stevie Nicks posters from our bedroom walls in violent fits of overload. Hillary Clinton held an internet-based, you-select-my-theme-song contest which, after more than 200,000 electronic votes, somehow chose Canadian schlock diva Celine Dion’s You and I. PUMA must stand for Positively Unlistenable Musical Aesthetics.

But seemingly each time McCain and Palin put the needle to vinyl, they receive a cease-and-desist demand from the recording artists.

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Edmund Hillary

The passing of Edmond Hillary makes us pause to consider what it means to live a great and worthy life.

The deed for which he became famous is the apotheosis of personal achievement. The first ascent of the world’s highest peak – with his partner Tenzing Norgay, for whom my nephew is named – demonstrated courage, intelligence, technical skill, physical endurance, mental discipline, boldness, creativity, teamwork, and the joy of adventure. If Everest is a universal metaphor, so too was its conquest.

And yet, the magic of Edmund Hillary was not his great ascent; it was that he understood that his climb to the summit of Everest was an event, but that his life was an enduring process. It was a life given to the service of others. It was a life of simplicity and modesty almost inconceivable in an age where men and women climb mountains, real and metaphorical, to wrap themselves in glory society so eagerly accords.

I loved Edmund Hillary as much as a person could possibly love someone they’d never met. I am sad that we have lost such a fine teacher.