The quality of empathy
A SUNY Stony Brook news literacy course starts with an assignment to spend 48 hours in a news blackout, without reading newspapers, looking at TV, listening to the radio or reading Internet headlines. Imagine if any of us had done that during the last couple of days!
We have had the news of the first African-American presidential nominee of a major political party, of the first female Republican vice-presidential candidate, and one of the nation’s biggest and best organized evacuations in the face of Hurricane Gustav.
Living on Long Island, a coastal area with few escape routes, we can imagine only too well what it is like to be in the shoes of those in the storm’s path. Many Long Islanders went down to help after Katrina and even before Gustav. That quality of empathy, being able to identify with the feelings of others, that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama described so movingly in his acceptance speech last week, is what makes Democrats and Republicans Americans first in the face of a national crisis. Both presidential candidates have called for volunteers and donations to the American Red Cross. Both turned to prayer.
This week, despite a shortened schedule due to the hurricane, we expect to learn more about Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Is the story of her daughter’s teen pregnancy what people call a teaching moment, a chance to realize that we are all family?
Next week is the anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Again, here on Long Island everyone knows someone who died in that tragedy, and everyone has been affected in some way.
We will never forget.