An Airport is an Airport.
Hey, welcome back to another issue of The White Bicycle Review.
For this installment I’d thought I’d deal with the fallibility if our heroes. I choose that due to the fact that we are living in an era where statues of supposed heroes are being pulled down, vandalized. So without any delay, enjoy.
An Airport is an Airport.
Heroes are flawed. For every treed cat they rescue there is an unmarked grave in the woods somewhere that contains some sin. Still, we honor them, choosing to either accept or forget the darker aspects. We name buildings, and organizations after them, that is until it’s inconvenient or not correct anymore. And that is how Democrats now feel about John Wayne, and the Orange County, CA, airport that bears his name.
They came to feel that way after a quote that came from a 1971 interview with Playboy Magazine went viral according to a CNN report (https://apple.news). In that interview, John Wayne state’s that “I am a supporter of white supremacy until the blacks become educated enough to be responsible”. In this era of wokeness, in a time where confederate monuments are being torn down - like Saddam Hussein statue during the invasion of Baghdad- the question of a hero’s flawed nobility is being put to the test. So, how should we deal with the reality that the people we admire are blemished, and not pure? And what exactly is it that makes them worthy of that admiration? Before we go any further there is something that I should clarify, that some could say makes me biased. My Grandfather.
See, my grandpop loved Westerns. He loved those old stories of cattle rustlers, gunslingers. The U.S. Cavalry and the Indians. He loved those grand open shots of the plains or the desert; it’s majestic beauty smashing through the screen in a way that only old-school Hollywood could do. His favorite movie was The Searchers. John Wayne was the star of the Western genre. Like top billing.
My grandfather joined the army during the Second World War. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Pacific as a navigator on a bomber. He was shot down during one of his flights. My grandpop was a man’s man, I guess like John Wayne had seemed to be. Well, that is with the exception of one thing, he hated the Duke; and his reason for hating the Duke was simple. In real life, John Wayne hadn’t behaved like a man. How so? Well During WWII many actors actually did their part and served. Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, and many others left Hollywood and served. Many did except for “The Duke”. John Wayne, the man who played Benjamin H. Vandervoort (The Longest Day) and Rooster Cogburn (True Grit) was playing guitar for soldiers' stateside while George Bailey (James Stewart) from It’s a Wonderful Life was running bombing missions. My Grandfather hated him for that; hatedThe Duke for being a fraud.
Now, I’m sure YOU’RE questioning what the hell this has to do with this newly developed issue; simple, it is exactly the same thing. My grandpop loved the man that had come to represent his favorite genre, but more importantly the things he valued the most. That is what is happening here with John Wayne, and to a greater extent, all our heroes.
Over the past several years we have all had to face the reality that those we came to revere are not the heavenly champions we, as a society, had chosen them to represent. It makes me wonder why we even bother having heroes. I mean in some cases it’s a daily thing in the realm of politics. Trump and Biden at this moment in time are both portrayed as great people, the heroes who will get the job done; and in the next breath are torn down. They are torn down by the constant reminder that Trump is a Russian puppet, and Biden a secret racist who tried to prevent The desegregation of schools. This is the case with most people that we honor. The only problem is that at some point the other, A less favorable piece of information becomes known. And we have to deal with that.
Take Martin Luther King, for instance. We all have been taught to see the man as this godly presence of peace, a holy intellect who sacrificed much for equality. That is true, but what we didn’t know about the man is that he was a problem drinker, a chain smoker, and a womanizer ( https://www.washingtonpost.com).We all think of him as this selfless nobleman. In reality, he was also a scholar who had been accused of plagiarism. In fact, on the day he died one of his mistresses was staying in the same motel (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com). We have schools named after him, libraries, and a national holiday. We treat him like he was the civil rights movement’s saving grace, but he was just human.
There are the Kennedy’s, and I’m just gonna put them in a collective for a sec. They are by all rights, or at least were, one of the most ambitious, driven, right-minded families around, with just one exception they were royally, dysfunctionally destructive. John F. Kennedy, he was a veteran, and a president but also a philanderer and a possible amphetamine addict (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com). There is Ted Kennedy, who was a U.S. Senator, who was the second most senior senator when he died and was one of the fourth longest-serving senators. He was a man who had done much good for causes like civil rights, and he also was an addict who got into a car accident and left his passenger for dead (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com). We have numerous things named after them and other Kennedys, but they too were just human? Still, we blow off that knowledge and dedicate things to them until the knowledge of their flaws becomes too much and we have to revolt. Understanding this has to lead me to discover a very simple solution, tell all.
The solution I figured was best which I call ”tell-all” is just that. If we are going to name and dedicate things in honor of people and their selfless greatness then we should just make it simple and list all the shit, good and bad, that the champion has done in their lives. For JFK it could say Welcome to JFK: Veteran, President, speed freak, and the womanizer.
For something named after Reagan, it could say Reagan Library: actor, President, and possible Traitor (https://www.salon.com). I say that we do that so that way it’s completely handled. That way those who do notice, see, and/or care know and make the choice for themselves. It won’t be something that is a smack in the face when a Jewish mother discovers that Roald Dahl, the author of Matilda, was actually A vicious antisemitic and she is reading his book to her children (https://www.bbc.com). That was the
angle that could have been played with John Wayne. If we let people know; then it's up to them to decide. That said, if that still is too baneful then I have one more option, name those things something else. After someone else.
If we as a society are not willing to accept that our heroes are flawed then maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t dedicate things like airports or libraries to people, and instead, just call them what they are: libraries and airports. My flight is leaving from Queens Airport, or pick me up at Chicago Airport instead of O’Hare. The same with John Wayne. It we’re not going to be able to handle it then why give it a human name.
Heroes are flawed, and that is what we have to accept. We also have to accept the higher we hold them up, the farther they fall. John Wayne is an example of that to a degree. Humans are not perfect, and if we are going to worship those who have been selfless in one way then we have to be ready to accept the selfishness too. If not then we should take those names away from those cherished monuments and just call them libraries and airports.
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