I have not decided whether Final Days Forum will participate in the mass of punditry online, so this is not a politically driven post. But the so-called emotional moment by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton yesterday, and her defense of it today on CNN, made me reflect.
Clinton says she was moved Monday by an apparent supporter who asked her how she was doing. Of course, tearing up publicly is not new. President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton and late President Ronald Reagan did it. Public expressions of emotion can be healing, when those expressions are honest and not manipulative.
More heartfelt moments like those displayed in rich films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington would be a welcome elixir right about now. Although the film's director, Frank Kapra, had his cheesy moments (as the trailer from The Internet Movie Database shows), a bit of Kapra might do America good.
A more passionately civil and less calculatedly partisan discourse would be a balm for the republic.
The church could check its emotion-meter, too. The world has seen much of our tough-love politics, fierce denunciation of sexual sins and righteous grip on the literal message of the Bible. But when was the last time we made mega-headlines for publicly weeping over the poor, the homeless, the jobless, the uninsured, the chronically ill, the illiterate and the crime-ridden?
Tears may cleanse us of our cynicism.
