Hold My Feet to the Fire!

Two great scandals have beset our nation this month and two otherwise very intelligent and respected men have a little egg on their faces because of it.  First, Barack Obama comes out and supports a Harvard professor who accuses a police officer of being racist.  Then David Beckham antagonizes his own team’s fans by inciting one of them down onto the pitch.  The common thread is the utter lack of discretion by both men, who each have thrown gasoline onto the flames merely because they couldn’t stay silent.

Mea Culpa

Since his now notorious comments President Obama has backpeddalled furiously, inviting both men to the White House for a beer and has tried to diffuse the issue.  The college professor he professed to support, however, has been eagerly soaking up the limelight, appearing on talk shows and taking full advantage the publicity.  The President’s detractors have watched him squirm with great gusto.  The issue here is not whether the officer or the professor is in the right, the issue is that the President showed incredibly poor judgement weighing in at all.  The issue was not nationally significant, was not an area of government that was under the President’s purlieu, and its only importance was the hype that was generated by the media.  President Obama may as well have come out and weighed in on the true cause of Michael Jackson’s death, an issue one can imagine he was equally well informed of.  Even the great Bill “Heathcliffe Huxtable” Cosby came out and said “If I’m president of the United States . . . I’m keeping my mouth shut.”

Take that, Riot Squad!

Mr. Beckham’s guffaw is, if anything, even more understandable than Mr. Obama’s because at least he didn’t have plenty of time to deliberate his discourse.  For those of you who are not soccer fans, Mr. Beckham, an English soccer player who has been the darling of American media since his arrival in the States two years ago, decided last winter he didn’t want to play for his American team anymore and headed over to play in Milan, Italy.  After some discussion and hyperbole in the media, he was coaxed back to play the second half of the season.  Shockingly, the fans of Mr. Beckham’s team were not exactly supportive of him on his first match back.  Some fans sang songs and hung banners calling Mr. Beckham a traitor.  If you have watched any international soccer you would know that this is pretty tame stuff, no one insulted Mr. Beckham’s race, religion, nationality or family.  Yet he still felt compelled to go over to the sidelines after the first half and exchange insults with the fan’s and, according to them, invite them down on the field to settle it man to man.  One drunken fan idiotically jumped down and was immediately overwhelmed by security.

Again, the point here has nothing to do with whether the fans were wrong to insult a player who we can all assume was trying to win a match for their team.  The point has everything to do with Mr. Beckham’s total lack of discretion, after all, the fans are paying his enormous salary!  A wise player would have gone out to play well and then hoped to eventually win the fans over by showing results.  Now he has burned an important bridge and brought national attention on himself for the wrong reason.  As a further point, if his intention was to silence the fans the exact opposite is the most likely result.  The good news it that it should add a little spice to the next match.

The moral of the story, when in doubt don’t let it out, guard your tongue, and think twice before you speak.  The judgement and popularity of both men have suffered because they spoke irresponsibly or in anger over issues that were best left untouched.  I would caution anyone to, before speaking, ask themselves “what do I hope to gain by speaking out.”  Too often all of us react in anger or out of habit in manners and thus end up hurting ourselves without helping the underlying situation at all.  Mr. Obama and Mr. Beckham could have much more deftly handled their situations by exercising their right to remain silent and letting things blow over.