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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday November 12, 2001 Volume III Number 46 |
FOCUS - The Bishop of Digne
Paradigm shift is sometimes the result of a shocking and fundamental blow to normality as we know it. We’ve been hearing lately that “this changes everything.” “We live in a whole new world.” “Nothing is the same anymore.” We no longer think of 911 as the number you dial in an emergency. It is, rather, a date that will live in infamy, September 11, 2001. Nine eleven. Nine-one-one. A watershed moment in the history of civilization.
Futurists of all sorts will call it a paradigm shift. A paradigm is a model which explains or illustrates the big picture. A paradigm might represent anything from a theory of communication or a style of business leadership to a way of looking at the world itself… a world-view. A paradigm shifts when something comes along to challenge the accepted model, suggesting that it is fundamentally flawed and in need of radical re-definition.
Sometimes paradigm shift happens subtly. Appearances remain the same. But something basic and profound and primal is introduced, it’s barely noticeable from the outside, but your world goes topsy-turvy.
Paradigm shift can be both overt and covert. It strikes outwardly for all the world to see. Or it strikes secretly, privately, somewhere beneath the surface. Either way, it makes for a wholesale transformation; the old is gone. The new has come.
The general pace of change has accelerated to the point where “paradigm shifts” occur so often that we can become numb to their effect. If someone proposes a paradigm that makes sense, that seems to answer the questions and satisfy our curiosity, we will nod our approval and express our appreciation… but we know this expanded awareness and moment of comprehension is only temporary… and that something else will come along and cause us to dispose of the old view and adopt yet another new one. It’s more than relativism any more. It’s paradigm shift upon paradigm shift, and it leaves us longing for some sense of permanence. Some level of predictability.
Like them or not, we seem to have little control over their arrival. And once the genie is out of the bottle, stuffing him back in, as though it never happened, becomes one of those endless exercises in futility.
We can’t go back.
* * * * * * *
I’m no “Dittohead.”
I never did like the nickname, though there are some, I suppose, who have earned the label well. A dittohead is a proud devotee of the “Most Listened to Talk Show Host in America,” Rush Limbaugh.
When Rush first hit the scene, he was numbered among a new generation of “shock-jocks,” they called them. Another newcomer in the New York market was a showman named Howard Stern. AM radio stations, still reeling from the overpowering assault of FM, a much more pleasant way to listen to radio, dramatically lost market share. FM offered stereo. A clearer channel. A cleaner signal. The old AM stations tried music formats and all-news-all-the-time, but station owners watched their influence shrink, and their net worth along with it.
Broadcasting over public airways has been, from the beginning, considered a privilege and a trust. In exchange for the right to put programming on the air, station owners and managers and producers agree to an overall ethical standard. The basic good and wellbeing of society would be the overarching value shared by broadcasters… and I’m old enough to remember a strict adherence an ethical code of conduct. Violations of that code were considered a violation of the public trust. Those who crossed the line would often be called to account. The use of profanity or suggestive talk or inappropriate behavior while on the air would be dealt with in deliberate haste.
But in these days of moral fuzziness, balancing the rights guaranteed by the Constitution gets complicated. For some time now, we’ve been lambasted by the assault on common decency via the airwaves, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a cry for reform. “You can turn the channel, or tune in another station,” we are told. Or “You can turn it off.” That seems to be enough for most of us.
As AM Radio diminished, dethroned by a combination of FM Stereo and the Compact Cassette and then later the Compact Disk, a new generation of Radio Hosts entered the scene, eliminating Commercial Music from the programming day and replacing it with Talk. Much of the talk was shocking, way over the line formed as a boundary by the former broadcast code. Enforcement actions relaxed. In a new era of free and abundant speech, the voices got the ratings and the advertising revenues soared. So much for the restrictive code of ethics.
This new generation of talk show hosts was dubbed “shock-jocks.” AM ratings and revenues started climbing again.
Out of Sacramento came a local disk jockey, the son of a Southern Attorney, making waves as a conservative. His on-the-air antics and parodies on the liberal establishment made him a fresh voice on the American scene. His favorite targets: a whole host of politicians and special interest groups he considered to have far too much influence and control over government and academic institutions. Rush took them on. He was brash and hard headed. He had an inflated view of his own capabilities. He poked fun at the sacred cows of enlightened society. He gave nasty nicknames to movements born out of the Sixties who according to Rush exercised some sort of divine right over public policy. His favorite target: the media, who, he believed, had become a primary mouthpiece of the liberal agenda.
Discovered by a conservative Washington insider, Rush moved to New York City to broaden his appeal. Investors anteed up and funded an aggressive expansion plan for the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. His audience exploded. Ratings soared.
The enemies of Limbaugh have contributed, in a way, to his success. Their attacks solidified Limbaugh’s base of support, and only made his loyalists more loyal. In the late eighties, CBS, recognizing the popularity of the New York talk show host from Sacramento, offered him a late night spot on national television. Gay activists infiltrated the live audience and caused such mayhem that they managed to silence the star of the show the night of his debut. The inaugural broadcast was the only broadcast. CBS cancelled Rush after a single outing.
All of this only endeared Rush to his followers. In the meantime, he produced a relatively short-lived television version of his talk show that was reasonably successful. He published several books that remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for record setting periods. And over a ten year span, build a broadcasting empire. His radio audience, now international, hits twenty million listeners every day for three hours – far and away the largest AM audience in history. Many credit him with the survival of AM radio itself. Not just the survival… but the sweet smell of success. He took up golf and fine cigars and hob-knobbed with his pals in the Republican Party, crisscrossing the nation in the gleaming corporate jet Rush calls EIB1.
One e-mail got his attention. It came from an aerobics instructor… single, like Rush. Rush only recently learned the art of on-line chatting. Not long afterward, he ended a long commitment to bachelorhood. He seems about as happily married as a man can be. Her name is Marty.
When Rush first hit the LA market on the most powerful AM radio station in Southern California, I found him entertaining, clever, articulate and bold. His parodies were outrageously funny, and I guess that in itself betrays something of my own political point of view. I soon learned, however, that not everyone shared my affection for this new voice on the American scene. I was in sales, for crying out loud. You don’t want to do anything that might offend a potential customer. So I kept it quiet… and on those mornings I was in the car, cruising across town, in the traffic or down the Freeway, I’d tune in and get Rush’s take on the day’s events.
When he appeared at the University of California campus in Irvine over a dozen years ago, I got tickets with a buddy of mine to check him out. He called it the “Rush to Excellence Tour.” Concerned about being recognized, and perhaps identified with this Dittohead Cult, I remember we both wore overcoats and shades, collars turned up, thinking it may prevent us from being noticed. There were about five thousand in the audience that night. I had never seen a picture of the man, or watched a video. I had only heard his voice. I learned that your mind creates a face when you hear a voice via audio… and the real Rush Limbaugh looked nothing like the character created in my head. He was considerably overweight. In the early stages of baldness. And had a round face that hardly matched my expectations. But in an hour’s time, in a monologue without notes that never once slowed down, this bona fide entertainer had the crowd in the palm of his hand.
To this day, he likes to call himself “the most dangerous man in America.” “With talent on loan from God.”
And as of this writing, he has no hearing.
He is stone cold deaf.
* * * * * * *
Last week, I laughed and wept my way through Les Miserables at the Civic one more time. I am a hard core Les Miz fan.
If I have one adult fantasy, it would be someday to play the role of Jean Valjean on stage and in full voice sing those magnificent songs and make the whole audience laugh and cry with me. It is a production full of passion and loyalty and love and grace. Javert, Jean Valjean's nemesis, is the perfect villain. So self-righteous. So obsessed with a pitiful sense of justice. So confused about the meaning of life. So dangerous with the power of the badge pinned to his lapel.
The opening scene sets the stage for Victor Hugo’s classic novel. Jean Valjean is a broken man after nineteen years suffering the indignity of a Parisian prison house at hard labor. He is a convicted criminal. Branded for life. Numbered. His crime: stealing a loaf of bread. He and the people he loved were starving. Caught and convicted, he paid a terrible price. Hardened and bitter, angry and a fugitive in a hostile world, he is finally released to no home, no family, no friends, with no money.
The convict is taken in by a gentle priest, the Bishop of Digne, who extends hospitality until now entirely unknown to the outcast. Jean Valjean takes a warm bath. He is given clean clothes. A sumptuous hot meal by candlelight and fine red wine. Between crisp sheets and under a warm blanket on a down pillow and mattress for the first time in nineteen years, Jean is stricken with guilt and anxiety. He is undeserving, he thinks. He can not accept what he has been given. He slips out of the bed in the dead of night, wide awake, stuffing whatever silver he can find on the fireplace mantle and buffet table in the dining room into his cloak, and steals away into the night under a full moon, fulfilling the image he has been conditioned to have of himself. He cannot think of himself in any other way. He is a criminal. A thief. A fugitive. An outcast.
And
once more, just outside of town, he is caught. Apprehended by none other than
Javert, the Local Keeper of the Peace, Officer of the Law. Gendarme.
Javert throws the hardened criminal to the ground at the feet of the good Bishop and with the thief, presents the cleric with hard evidence. The stolen goods. Found on his person. Silver place settings and silver chalice and candle holders.
The Bishop looks first at Javert, scolding him with a piercing look, the presumption of guilt clearly irritating the robed friend of sinners. Then the Bishop looked with compassion at the broken man on the cobblestone street, bruised, empty eyed, haunted with fear. And then he looked at the silver. And back at the Gendarme, Javert.
“He is not a thief. This silver was my gift to him,” explained the Bishop.
Javert’s look, incredulous. Stunned by the Bishop’s claim.
“What have you done, Javert?” And the Bishop shook his head in disgust. He turned, and smiled, and took Jean Valjean by the hand and lifted him to his feet and led him back into the house and taught him the way of mercy and grace and lovingkindess.
For Jean Valjean, a shocking paradigm shift that changed his life.
For good.
He tasted grace.
* * * * * * *
Rush Limbaugh, with talent on loan from God, the most dangerous man in America, is in the vortex of a paradigm shift the likes of which he never imagined.
I first detected a change in Rush’s voice while cruising down the freeway one day this past summer. Something indescribable gave him a different sound, a subtle quality variance, as though he had a cold or a sore throat. The pitch a shade higher. The pace slightly increased, more of a rapid fire delivery. I almost thought I was listening to an impersonator.
I shrugged it off. Until some time later, he complained on the air that his e-mail box was full of inquiries about the status of his voice. Was he OK? What’s up with Rush?
He flatly denied any problem. He tried to make the case that his listeners were conjuring this up retorting that he was perfectly healthy and that his voice was just fine, thank you very much. But it had to be something, I thought.
The human voice is about as amazing as the ability to hear. These miraculous human capacities give us personality. We take them so for granted, and yet they are integral to just about everything we do. We talk about “voice print.” The mere sound of your voice will identify you… unmistakably… to those who know you.
On October 8, 2001 he announced to his listeners, “I can occasionally talk to people in person one on one if their voice frequency happens to fit the range that I can still hear, but I cannot hear radio. I cannot hear television. I cannot hear music. I am, for all practical purposes, deaf - and it's happened in three months.''
Is this the end of the Limbaugh era? No one knows. Today, he can not hear his callers. Someone types the text for Rush and he replies, now with a delay… and sometimes, because he misses the subtle nuances of spoken language, he misses the caller’s point. The quick wit. The penetrating insight. The sense of humor. They are all still there. One must admire the courage of a man who presses on in spite of the enormous challenge presented by the rapid onset of the total loss of one of the primary senses.
Tip of the hat to Maha Rushie.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Perhaps, like Jean Valjean, you’ve been surprised by grace. In the middle of what would ordinarily be a deal killer, a devastating downturn, the collapse of a business plan, the interruption of a costly marketing campaign, something takes you by surprise and reminds you that goodness is real, and right prevails, in spite of your circumstances.
Or maybe like Rush, you are facing the onset of an irreversible condition that threatens life as you’ve always known it. Think about it, Rush has the resources to marshal the best and brightest, the most sophisticated treatment programs known to humankind, and yet the hearing loss has made its relentless march forward, and Rush is stuck. The sounds are gone. His cherished music. The sound of voices in conversation. He’s got nowhere to go. Just like you.
The Bishop of Digne answers with a twist, a most unexpected irony. “It is a gift.”
A gift.
Embrace it.
With tears.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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