John Lewis Should Be Even More Missed

John Lewis passing on happened the same day I was told that my last friend who had vivid memories of before the Great Depression had died.   It never seems to become routine, to suddenly have a world with people whose lives we are used to expecting be entirely missing them.   Waking up this morning to a world in which I know that my friend and I will never talk together again was like waking up into a much different world. We seldom let a week go by without talking to each other in person and on the phone for almost half of my life. Now that's not going to happen anymore.

And that thought led to thinking that the same is true in a world without someone like John Lewis. 

John Lewis was and is someone who should have been even more mourned because he should have been a far more familiar figure to far more people.  Instead he was semi-disappeared by the white-operated media in plain sight.

That kind of human moral witness  and courage and persistence in the face of setbacks that John Lewis not only showed but lived has not been in abundant supply in those put on TV chat shows.   I would guess that John Lewis was not called upon even one in a hundred times to go on the Sunday morning talk shows as compared to Lindsay Graham, Susan Collins or others whose lives were dedicated to the opposite of what John Lewis's live was given to.   I will guarantee you that people and shows that will lavish temporary praise on the memory of John Lewis had his absolute opposite,Donald Trump on far more often to spew his vulgar, racist mendacity than they ever had the great example of morality with the slight speech impediment on. I mention that as an example of the things that disqualify even the most important voices from being heard, especially when it's someone like John Lewis.  I would bet that most of the more active racists like Jeff Sessions got more invitations to spout their poison on the very same shows that will, today, maybe tomorrow recite hypocritical pieties on his name. In life the American media is in the habit of shutting down such voices just like Mitch McConnell shut down Elizabeth Warren reading the words of Coretta Scott King.  I don't think that American TV will ever be much more than a venue that does that,  not while it's a business.  

I don't doubt that there are those like John Lewis in the Black Lives Matter protests, the anti-fascist protests, the protests against police crime but I doubt we're going to be made aware of them and so they will not have the same impact that John Lewis did.   If the talk shows this morning and the next few days wanted to back up their empty praise for him, they would have those people on to do it by renewal of the campaign for what he spent his life doing.  Anything else is just talk. Cheap talk.