#1214 4-Give 4-Get

There’s an old saying, “what you give is what you get’” and I sometimes wonder if that’s the origin of for-giving and for-getting. Because it sure seems that when we forgive someone for something, we hasten the process of forgetting what they did.
And it seems like it’s about four times faster than otherwise.
I reflected on this because the other day I was talking with someone about a local politician who had suffered some legal and personal embarrassment. The first day the story broke it was the juiciest gossip nugget on the plate of the local media. But gradually, as the weekly news cycle has turned over, people aren’t as scandalized anymore. The person in question is working his way through the legal system and slowly returning to relative anonymity.
Which is to say the only newspaper camped on his front porch comes in a sheer plastic wrapper.
The 4-Give and 4-Get thing nagged me even further not long ago when I listened to Letterman’s Top Ten List on the radio. The list was delivered by none other than Illinois’ favorite helmet-head, Rod Blagojevich. And the subject was why he was worried about appearing on Donald Trump’s TV Show, Celebrity Apprentice.
When you think about it, this is an amazing confluence of American forgetfulness. Letterman, recently bathed in the scandal of infidelity and intern inappropriateness, Blagojevich, last year’s pariah, booted from his governorship for trying to trade a Senate seat for big bucks, and Donald Trump, amazing cult personality phoenix who continues to rise again and again from the ashes of his real estate investment scandals.
What is it that allows the public to repeatedly overlook and minimize their transgressions? It can’t just be their bad hair.
Ollie North, former felon and illegal arms dealer, had great hair. And Gordon Liddy, burglar, perjurer, and conceited and convicted criminal, didn’t have any hair at all.
Maybe it has less to do with hair than hats. As in the Mad Hatter. It’s not about higher morality at all. We don’t really forgive and forget, we just move on.
“Clean plates, clean plates!” we shout, and move down the table—to the next even juicier scandal.
America, ya gotta love it.