What a historic week it was!
No, not the nuclear weapons thing. That was good, too, but the week had been historic even earlier.
Just ask Robert M. Wright. It was historic for him, and his feat should be celebrated by all.
Bob Wright is a friendly 64-year-old fellow who recently retired after a long career with General Dynamics and who lives in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.
From which he embarked on Monday morning last week to fly to Chicago, where he joined his wife (who`d flown on another airline; maximizing frequent- flyer miles, you know), rented a car and drove to Milwaukee. There, he played golf.
A couple of days later the Wrights drove back to O`Hare, from which they flew to New Orleans. There, Bob Wright played golf.
And when he walked off the 18th green at Belle Terre golf course (he shot an 83) he had accomplished a goal. He had played golf in every one of the 50 states.
Alaska was the hard one, he said. He flew up there this past summer to play a public course near Anchorage.
”It was beautiful,” he said. ”Very nice up there.”
Wright said he has played on more than 720 courses, including St. Andrews in Scotland, where the game supposedly began. Now that he`s played in every state, he`d like to get up to 800 courses, maybe even 1,000.
”I just love to play golf,” he said. He likes to play with friends, and he likes to play alone. ”I like being alone on a golf course,” he said.
”It`s a good place to think.”
OK, this will probably not get into the history books. From Bob Wright`s feat no government fell or was formed, no jobs created and no scientific or intellectual breakthrough achieved.
But Wright has nonetheless provided cause for reflection. Ours is an age in which almost everything, even the way people enjoy themselves, seems to be charted and recorded. There are professors of recreation, and if a marketing researcher is not probing what everybody does at every moment, some cultural anthropologist is.
So it`s good to be reminded that their reach does not extend to every corner, that the world is full of interesting individuals with idiosyncratic ambitions known only to their loved ones.
Last week was also historic in the popular-culture world, thanks to the publication of ”Scarlett,” the sequel to ”Gone With the Wind.” The critics excoriated the book. The public bought it.
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This raises three possibilities: (1) the reading public has no taste; (2) the critics are snobs; (3) both.
There is a good deal of evidence to support choice 3. The reading public, for reasons which surpasseth understanding, keeps buying the books of Danielle Steel, despite her chronic inability to construct a clear English sentence. Critics (the movie variety, but they have the same basic mind-set) for equally mysterious reasons gave raves and awards to the stupefyingly boring ”Barton Fink.”
But here is what no one noted about the much-ballyhooed ”Scarlett.”
First, if the book was bad, so was its predecessor. ”Gone With the Wind” was an awful book. It was a great movie. Well, the first part was a great movie, up to the intermission. Except for the last scene, the second part was a sappy soap opera. But the book was a sappy soap opera throughout.
Besides, ”Scarlett” is the wrong title. It should have been called
”Another Day.”
Finally, last week was historic because a member of the United States Senate objected, however mildly, to being told lies. By asserting that Judge Clarence Thomas` testimony had ”raised thoughts of inconsistencies, ambiguities, contradictions,” Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) was saying, courteously, that he didn`t believe the U.S. Supreme Court nominee.
This is significant if you accept the notion that one sign of a decadent civilization is its inability to be outraged, and one sign of that inability is a general refusal to call a lie a lie.
Really, did anyone believe April Glaspie when she told congressional committees that she`d really been tough with Saddam Hussein in her final session with him as our ambassador to Iraq? Or Robert Gates when he said he forgot that an associate told him about the Iran-contra affair? Or Thomas`
insistence that he never discussed the Supreme Court`s abortion decision?
Until last week, though, such incredulity was not expressed, as though lying were less unseemly than protesting it.
Now, it should be added that this is being written in a tone and mood of calm reflection, not outrage. Decadence in a civilization is ubiquitous, enveloping all of us, except perhaps Bob Wright and all the other, unknown, private citizens pursuing their uncharted, honorable lives.