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Posted by Victoria Anisman-Reiner Jul 18, 2007 |
Along with apple pie and patriotism, loyalty to a cause, loved one, family, party, group, or country seems like it should always be a good thing.
But doesn't it depend on what someone is loyal to?
Background
In the recent television debate between filmmaker Michael Moore and CNN on air medical commentator and physician, Sanjay Gupta, Moore has been portrayed in the press as somehow disloyal to the gentlemanly code of journalism. That’s why in a CNN segment that first aired on Anderson Cooper 360, Gupta made the claim to “keep them (in this case, Moore) honest” by debunking Moore’s statistics. However, in a subsequent series of broadcasts, first with Wolf Blitzer on the Situation Room and next in a face to face debate with Gupta on Larry King Moore turned the tables on Gupta, asserting that Gupta’s data was old, that Gupta’s producer failed to use substantiated data provided by Moore, and that the only person interviewed for the Gupta segment had unreported industry ties coloring his views.
In the end, Moore turned the table and showed that it was actually the hyphenate doctor-journalist who got the facts wrong.
But looking through the collective lens reveals that it’s not just about Gupta's wrong numbers -- it's about why he got them wrong.
During the initial exchange between Michael Moore and Blitzer on the Situation Room, Blitzer kept asserting the veracity of Gupta's reporting by repeating: He's a journalist and a surgeon. He's a journalist and a surgeon.
While Gupta’s credentials are impressive, the very fact that he’s a hyphenate hints that he's at increased risk for divided loyalties. Can he serve both the medical establishment and the fourth estate? His Sicko coverage reveals that it’s hard to be accurate as a journalist when you have a stake in the medical establishment.
The real concern is not about Gupta or any other single individual, it’s about systems where endemic divided loyalties prevent people from doing their jobs and serving the highest good.
As a journalist myself, (I’ve been in the media for well over twenty years), I’ve seen that the press has a real role to play in the dialogue and information that support democratic institutions.
Acknowledging that dilemma might lead journalists (and in this case) Dr. Gupta to recuse themselves or admit their divided loyalties. But instead, as commonly happens, Gupta used his journalistic calling card to serve his higher loyalty.
CNN's has declared that it occupies the journalistic high ground through the series it airs called "keeping them honest." But for many observers, that high ground has now been ceded to Moore who kept CNN honest.
What is this thing called loyalty?
The eighty-two year old German psychologist and philosopher, Bert Hellinger probed into loyalty to understand the psychosocial mechanisms underlying the Nazi experience and its aftermath. Hellinger points out that loyalty to one group automatically excludes anyone outside of that circle of loyalty, dividing people and creating in-groups and out groups.
When people stand at the margins between two groups they have to decide: whom do they serve? Tough call.
Divided loyalty can drive public servants (or the press) to abdicate (or substantively compromise) their responsibility to the greater good, instead acting in a narrow loyalty to special interests.
Loyalty can keep people bound to groups, be it family, companies, parties, or relationships that harm and undermine them.
Misguided loyalty can drive people to act (and the political system) vote against their own self-interest.
When Michael Moore first appeared on the Larry King show, a sixty-year old man without health insurance called in. I was surprised to hear that he was totally unconcerned about whatever illness or financial loss might ensue from his lack of coverage. No his only preoccupation was:
Did proposing a shift in health options somehow imply a criticism of our country?
Because if it did, he dare not consider it.
This is a clear example of misguided loyalty. Somewhere along the line, this man had been taught and had believed that being a good American meant that it was wrong and disloyal to critique or change anything about this country.
How ironic-- since many regard discourse and debate as essential to democracy. Indeed the founders of our country who wrote the Constitution made certain that those values were deeply structured into the Constitution to assure democracy.
Obviously, it's much simpler to skirt the head scratching considerations (necessary to restructure our health care system) and instead act on a misguided sense of loyalty. Particularly when you have repeatedly been urged to do that by leaders who play the loyalty card.
The Loyalty Card
One of Sicko's most telling sequences captures the lobbying campaign mounted for the Medicare Prescription Drug bill. Though promoted as a boon to seniors it raised drug prices to benefit drug companies, according to Public Citizen. In one telling moment, Moore showed multiple clips of the Congressional spearhead, one time Congressman (R-LA) W.J. "Billy" Tauzin who aggressively promoted the bill, by shifting the discussion away from the real merits and beneficiaries of the bill to, of all people, his mother.
What does she have to do with it, you might wonder.
Well Moore expertly edits together scene after scene which show Tauzin selling the bill because "I love my mother." In an act of marketing genius, playing the loyalty card (“it’s all about Mom”) totally obscured the relevant issues.
But as Moore wryly observes, the real question wasn't whether or not Tauzin and his camp cared for their own mothers, but whether as legislators they were loyal to their obligation to serve our mothers, fathers, grandparents, elderly relatives and senior selves.
No doubt Tauzin's Mom felt proud that her son got a hefty paycheck when he left Congress to head up to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which the L.A. Times called "one of the biggest beneficiaries of the bill Tauzin helped write."
But unfortunately his swift departure leaves us and our mothers to recognize that under the guise of mother love, Tauzin and other legislators' highest loyalty was to the lobbyists, financial backers, and future employers, not to us.
The fundamental question is whether anyone (government officials, legislators, health care systems, or media) can act in the public interest when they are beholden and loyal to their paymasters, their industry, their advertisers, or dancing back and forth between government and corporate bosses? We know that current government standards, which have been changed over the last few years permit people with vested interests in industry to enter government and write the very laws that regulated their industry. Then, they leave and go back to their old companies.
But many in the public haven’t caught up with this fact. They believe that in government, the health care industry, the press, and elsewhere that the public interest is being served. So that ironically, people are loyal to systems whose loyalty to the public good has been tainted.
Serving a more inclusive higher good, which is a public official's mandated duty, may require sacrificing personal loyalty to immediate family, inner circle, friends in industry, key staff people, advertisers or political party, not to mention passing on financial opportunities. Yet in both action and ethic, this requirement is honored in the breach.
Can we afford this? Which arenas are so essential to human life, to democracy, and to the earth that we cannot permit them to be subverted by people with divided loyalties to special interests?
"Those who accept and love the earth as it is can't remain with the confines of a single group," points out Bert Hellinger. "They go beyond the limits of their particular group and embrace the wholeness of the world... (This has a different quality) from the belief that fears and hates and divides."
In a future Realm-zine, I’ll explore further how loyalty operates in families and groups. And I also invite you to share your thoughts with me and check out my workshops. Please feel free to pass this Realm-zine along to others who might be interested. (You can see and write in to the original Huffington blog and comments online at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-rose-levy/michael-moore-trumps-the-_b_56004.html
Alison Rose Levy, MA, health journalist, bestselling writer, and facilitator of Family Healing publishes this monthly ezine on collective healing. Sign up at: www.collectiverealm.com to first heal your family, then heal your world.
You can also access our workshops, reports, coaching, and other supports for collective wisdom at www.collectiverealm.com. For current workshop signups go to: http://www.eventbrite.com/org/34806955?s=869739
Copyright © 2007 Alison Rose Levy. All rights reserved.