Issue of
June 17, 1998
 
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Koppel: 'Aspire to
decency; practice civility'
This is
the text of Ted Koppel's commencement address on June 14.
I think it
was back in early March that President Casper called to
invite me here today, and there were two things about the
conversation that stuck with me after we hung up. When I
pointed out that I had been the commencement speaker here
at Stanford once before and would that be an obstacle, I
was actually fishing for an exuberant endorsement along
the lines of "Yes, I know, and we never even
considered inviting anybody else back." But instead,
while it was clear that Gerhard knew I'd done this before
indeed, I had the distinct impression that he had not
only read, but corrected, my earlier speech the tone
of his voice suggested that this invitation might be in
spite of my first commencement address and not because of
it. And then I recalled that the last time Stanford
invited me was only because Mikhail Gorbachev turned you
down at the last minute. And then the phrase "that
mess in Washington" began to resonate. I recall
Gerhard suggesting a general topic for my speech, and it
had something to do with "that mess in
Washington."
Related
Information:
Now, I'm a great believer
in word association as a memory enhancer, but the system
is anything but infallible. Two of your more venerable
professors were chatting about it only last night. One of
them was bemoaning his inability to remember names, and
the other said that he had been working with a memory
expert who relied heavily on word association.
"Really," said the one professor, "I'd
love to consult with her. What's her name?"
"Bush," said the first professor. "Bush,
bush, bush, rosebush, rose bush. Rosebush. Rose. Rose,
Rose, what the hell is the name of that doctor you sent
me to?"
Anyway, that's what I was
left with, after my first conversation with Gerhard
Casper: The distinct impression that I was being given
another chance, and that I had been commissioned to
deliver something profound on events surrounding
"the mess in Washington." Which, while helpful
in the arena of word association seemed, nevertheless,
fraught with peril. So, I
asked Gerhard to write me a letter, spelling out exactly what he had
in mind. And he did. A long, thoughtful, provocative
letter, reflecting his profound concerns over the erosion
of any distinction in America today between what is
public and private; and the attendant evolution of law
enforcement, not only as the primary vehicle for
"getting at sin," but also as a main source of
entertainment in our society. It truly is a fine letter;
and if, for any reason, you decide to print the text of
my speech, I would suggest that you also print a copy of
the antecedent. It deserves to be read to you in its
entirety; but, always sensitive to a commencement
speaker's first obligation to "keep it short,"
I'm going to limit myself to reading an excerpt:
"Can a society,"
President Casper asks, "that essentially obliterates
all distinction between the public and the private realm
be a free and civilized one in the long run? The fact
that there is much sin does not necessarily mean that we
can afford to eradicate all of it without turning society
into something both oppressive and trivial." Then,
after quoting from a friend's book, which focuses on a
disturbing collection of dreams engendered by the
complete absence of privacy in Nazi Germany, Dr. Casper
goes on to write: "I am obviously not suggesting
that we are becoming like the Third Reich. Still, it
behooves us to make sure that even segments of our social
and political life do not resemble some aspects of life
under totalitarian rule."
Now there's a provocative
starting point. If, after all, the eradication of all sin
requires the effective elimination of all privacy, and if
that, in turn, leads to the establishment of a trivial,
oppressive, perhaps even totalitarian society, then it
surely follows that a substantive and free society must
be prepared to tolerate at least some sin. And that leads
us, quite naturally, to the devices that tolerant
societies employ to handle an acceptable level of sin:
hypocrisy and privacy. They are fragile and ambiguous
devices, to be sure. At which point, after all, does the
tolerable sin metastasize into an unacceptable one? The
standard has shifted over the years. Only a generation or
two ago, for example, most cases of spousal or child
abuse were protected by society's rigid distinction
between what properly belongs in the public realm and
what should remain private. Other implied rights of
privacy clearly helped perpetuate any number of evils;
among them, bigotry and racism. They permitted country
clubs, universities, entire neighborhoods to engage in
patterns of religious and racial exclusion. What, after
all, were we about when we created our private clubs and
private schools? If, as my friend Gerhard suggests, the
elimination of all privacy is the goal of a totalitarian
state; then, surely, a tolerance of too much privacy
would seem to lead, initially, to simple permissiveness;
and ultimately to a form of moral chaos. The proper goal
of a free society has to be a finely calibrated balance
between tolerance and moral rectitude. Whereas what we
have in America today approaches a caricature of that;
virtually a negative image. We are at least teetering on
the brink of tolerating the unacceptable and focusing the
full force of our moral outrage on the trivial. We live
in a society that not only tolerates but rewards Jerry
Springer and Larry Flynt, while simultaneously removing Huckleberry
Finn and Shakespeare from the curricula of some of
our schools and universities, lest they offend. We permit
the archdeacons of political correctness to twist our
language and behavior into parodies of sensitivity, while
simultaneously, the language at large, our entertainment
and our general behavior have become cruder, coarser and
less sensitive than at any time in my memory.
We follow the evolution of
"that mess in Washington" with a sense of
discomfort that is eased only by a reliance on precisely
the two devices that society employs when logic fails. We
mix ourselves a toxic little cocktail of privacy and
hypocrisy: "I don't care what he does in his private
life," we tell one another with a nudge and a wink.
"The economy's doing great." Which poses at
least one potentially troubling question: If the economy
collapses, does a focus on the president's character then
become more appropriate?
What we have done in
America today is to turn ethics into a commodity. Virtue
may still be its own reward, but we lose touch with its
meaning when we allow it to be defined by the standards
of the marketplace or the political arena. The equation
really couldn't be much simpler: When people, in large
numbers, consistently reward bad behavior, then,
inevitably, we perpetuate that sort of behavior. To
suggest that a vibrant economy somehow renders questions
of morality irrelevant reduces ethics to a business
proposition; one set to be applied when things are going
well, another when the economy is in trouble. But that is
surely not the message that my generation wants to pass
on to yours. We can't synchronize our moral values with
each surge or decline in the market. I doubt that there
is a parent here today who wants his son or daughter to
believe that what is unacceptable in bad times is
tolerable when things are going well. Which brings me to
President Casper's concern about our reliance on law
enforcement these days as the primary vehicle for
"getting at sin," and law enforcement as our
main source of entertainment.
I believe and perhaps,
Gerhard, this is where you were leading me I believe
that, ultimately, questions of what is right and wrong
require the individual to measure himself against
absolute standards of ethics and responsibility. Not that
any one of us ever completely measures up to those
standards; but you can't set your compass, moral or
otherwise, by a shifting North Star. Our generation has
become so comfortable watching itself being defined
according to polls and ratings and surveys, in the Dow or
on the NASDAQ, in the outcome of elections or in public
propositions or referenda, that we have sunk into a sort
of general relativism, in which all issues are determined
by majority vote or a public display of the lowest common
denominator: We learn, according to the syndicated lesson
taught by Jerry Springer, that while all of us are
flawed, we who are watching are not nearly as flawed as
the poor souls he parades in front of us. Which may, if
the lesson is repeated often enough, teach us that,
rather than struggling toward an ideal of perfect
behavior, we can always console ourselves with the
examples of those even weaker than we are.
By our failure to judge or
act decisively on moral issues as individuals, we
contribute to a collective caricature of tolerance; a
universal lack of discrimination (in the qualitative
sense of the word), in which almost everything is reduced
to a form of entertainment: murder, suicide, theft,
adultery, corruption, perjury, bigotry; and, of course,
the efforts of law enforcement to bring the perpetrators
to justice. Those constitute one half of our
entertainment diet, while watching prosecutors and
defense lawyers battle it out in the courtroom coliseum,
that makes up the other half.
And it hardly seems to
make much difference any more whether the chase is real
or fictional, or whether the courtroom drama was created
by a playwright or a legal "dream team." Those
parodies of justice, in which race, money and
superstardom are used to undermine our jury system, are
not merely distractions; they overwhelm our ability to
focus on reality. We have, on a per capita basis, more
people in prison than any other industrial country in the
world. And all too many, if not most of those prisoners,
are there as the result of a 10-minute plea-bargaining
session in some courtroom corridor. The O.J. Simpson
trial had nothing to do with the way that most Americans
experience our legal system. It was a show, a display of
legal narcissism.
So, what then do we make
of "the mess in Washington"? The battle between
an independent counsel, armed with an inexhaustible
budget and calendar, on the one side and the awesome
power of the White House, on the other. Buried within
that struggle are some actual issues that cry out for
resolution; and all these months of political spinning,
on all sides, require so much unraveling that I confess,
even while attempting it, that it may be beyond me.
Is the president entitled,
first of all, to a presumption of innocence? And, if so,
what right do the media have to recount and analyze all
of the unproven allegations? Well, the presumption of
innocence is a legal right, to be exercised within our
judicial system. The media have no right to presume
guilt, but they have every right to report on unproven
allegations. To do otherwise would mean that no charge or
accusation could ever be reported until after it had been
litigated.
Is even the president of
the United States entitled to a private life? That is
certainly one of the central, if implicit, questions of
Gerhard Casper's letter. And the somewhat unsatisfactory
answer is that it depends. If the president has athlete's
foot, he's entitled to keep that private. If he has a
heart condition, he's not. The standard is whether or not
it will have an impact on the rest of the country.
All right, then, let's
deal with the allegation that has so preoccupied the
media, if not our consumers, these last few months. If,
as alleged, there was a sexual relationship between the
president and the intern, does that meet the test of
having an impact on the rest of the country? Surely,
after all, an affair between two consenting adults, even
if one of them is married, comes close to defining what
is private. But ask yourselves how many middle-aged
university presidents, or corporate vice presidents, or
high school principals or network anchors could
effectively defend themselves against even an unfounded
allegation of this kind simply by insisting that the
matter was private. If competence at one's job that
and a broad sense of public approval were adequate
protection against allegations of a dalliance with a
young intern, then Gerhard and I could engage in that
sort of behavior with impunity. But I wouldn't count on
that, Gerhard. I assure you, I don't. We can choose to
raise or lower our standards for what is generally
acceptable, but those standards must be consistent. And
depending on which course we choose, society at large
will be either consistently better or consistently worse.
What about the years of
inquiry and the 40 million dollars of expenditure to
pursue what, in the final analysis, appears to be just
about sex, and possibly lying about sex? Doesn't the
relative triviality of the crime render both pointless
and wretchedly excessive the enormity of the
investigation?
So it would seem. Whatever
the investigation ultimately succeeds or fails in
proving, it is not just about sex. And at least part of
the reason that it has taken so long and cost so much
money is because the White House and the president's
attorneys have not always been forthcoming. Which is the
way that people with access to money and power and good
legal advice litigate these days. And sometimes justice
weighs more heavily on one side of that equation and
sometimes on the other; but there is nothing unique about
the legal battle between Kenneth Starr and Bill Clinton.
Ten years ago the protagonists were Lawrence Walsh and
Ronald Reagan, and the Republicans were complaining about
the exorbitant waste of time and money. It is the way we
do business, political and commercial, in these United
States, whether the issue is tobacco and health, or
health and silicone breast implants; whether it is the
individual against an automobile company or the Internal
Revenue Service against an individual. Or whether, for
that matter, it is a congressional committee employing
its investigatory powers against a great western
university.
Again and again, we see
the process being used as a device to blunt our attention
or distract our focus from what is really important. It
takes untold time and energy and more resources than
either side should have to expend. And why? Because we
tolerate it. More than that, because we permit the
carnival of process to divert us from the central
questions of what is right and wrong. We have reverted to
some of the darker practices of our ancestors, seeking to
establish truth by ordeal. You are right, Gerhard, in
defining a civil society as one in which there is a
"clear demarcation between public and private."
But there is no set of controls that we can calibrate to
bring our society into balance. The responsibility to
effect change remains, as it always has been, an
individual responsibility. And, if I may, I would like to
address these last few words to those of you who are
graduating or receiving advanced degrees from Stanford
today.
What is great about our
system of law and government is precisely its focus on
the rights and obligations of the individual. There is in
our system a touching faith in the power of one man, one
woman to make a difference, and in each individual's
right to challenge what are, after all, only the symbols
of our greatness. Burn a flag and you've simply destroyed
a piece of paper or cloth that can easily be replaced.
Deny the right to burn that flag and you have destroyed
something irreplaceable.
We will not change what's
wrong with our culture through legislation, or by
choosing up sides on the basis of personal popularity or
party affiliation. We will change it by small acts of
courage and kindness; by recognizing, each of us, his or
her own obligation to set a proper example.
Aspire to decency.
Practice civility toward one another. Admire and emulate
ethical behavior wherever you find it. Apply a rigid
standard of morality to your lives; and if, periodically,
you fail as you surely will adjust your lives, not
the standards.
There's no mystery here.
You know what to do. Now go out and do it!
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