May 15, 2004
PAT TILLMAN IN PERSPECTIVE
Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has an interesting post on Pat Tillman, the National Football League player turned Army Ranger who died a few weeks ago in a firefight about 40 klicks southwest of Khowst in Afghanistan. Brayton writes:
I haven't paid much attention to the Pat Tillman situation. The pious invocations of heroism in the media have been met with sarcastic derision from some, while the casual dismissal of his sacrifice by the likes of Ted Rall have provoked cries of moral outrage from those who like their heroes unsullied by humanity. As is usual in such circumstances, both extremes amount to emotional, visceral responses that leave me bored. Neither side puts much thought into it, and neither hagiography nor demonization appeals to me because people are a mixture of saint and sinner and painting with that wide a brush almost always leaves one with a skewed image of reality. In America, hagiography (the making of saints) is an art form. We romanticize and mythologize everyone from George Washington to Michael Jackson (though that last has had his pedestal yanked out from under him recently) to our own parents. We've done it most obviously with the founding fathers, all of whom have been transformed into plaster saints by the visionless hacks of academic history, whose pallette contains only black and white and they aren't even clever enough to mix the two when they set brush to canvas. The reality of those men is, to a person of intelligence, far more interesting than the "I cannot tell a lie" variety. As it turns out - as it always turns out - Pat Tillman is much the same way.
Gwen Knapp has a report on the memorial service held for Tillman yesterday that shows a much more interesting, multidimensional person than the media has presented on either side. To begin with, how about this shocking statement from a funeral:
Tillman's youngest brother, Rich, wore a rumpled white T-shirt, no jacket, no tie, no collar, and immediately swore into the microphone. He hadn't written anything, he said, and with the starkest honesty, he asked mourners to hold their spiritual bromides.
"Pat isn't with God,'' he said. "He's f -- ing dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's f -- ing dead.''
What? This didn't happen for God, as well as country? A professional athlete turned soldier, and we're supposed to believe that he'd have no use for piety? Robbed of a cliche, where does that leave us?
We are so accustomed to the pairing of God and country that it just seems like one long word to us now, but Tillman apparently bucked that trend, as he bucked many others. Can you imagine the reaction of those who are so eager to make Tillman into the poster boy for godandcountry patriotism hearing that line? Or how about this tidbit:
His brother-in-law and close friend, Alex Garwood, described how Tillman handled his duties when he became godfather to Garwood's son. He came to the ceremony dressed as a woman. Not as a religious commentary. He was doing a balancing act.
"We had two godfathers, no godmother,'' Garwood explained. And what NFL player turned Army Ranger wouldn't don drag to make that math work?
A pro football player, the essence of male machismo in this nation, in a dress? You gotta love that.
Ms. Knapp asks, "Who the hell was this guy?"
From the sound of what his friends and family said, he seems like a guy I really would have enjoyed knowing. A fascinating blend of the intellectual and the physical. A guy who could stay up all night talking about the world's religions with you one night, then get up the next morning and play a game of barely controlled physical violence. Call it a contradiction if you want, that's okay. He was human. And for the first time, I find myself actually paying attention to him and caring that he died. Because being human, in the end, is a lot more interesting than being a plastic, one dimensional hero.
Well said, Ed; well said!
Posted by Mikal at May 15, 2004 2:03 PM
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