It boils down to “say what you mean, mean what you say,”
doesn’t it? On O’Reilly’s show, the Factor, upon delivering the “news”
of Robin William’s death, O’Reilly prefaced his remarks by saying “We won’t
speculate at this point upon the circumstances of William’s death.” But not
five minutes later, O’Reilly couldn’t help himself and muttered “When I first
heard of it I immediately thought ‘overdose or suicide.’” The spin didn’t stop
there, Bill. But I’m not here to bury O’Reilly, I like him and think he’s an
overall fair and square celebrity talking head. I’m here to pray and praise the
Fisher King. (I knew if I titled this “For the Fisher King,” I’d lose any
readership from the start.)
“The Fisher King” was one of Robin William’s finest films,
if also one of the strangest.
Directed by the eccentric American/British artist,
Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python fame), it tells of the clash of cultures in the
late last century represented by the downfall of two high achieving careerists.
The primary character, played by the equally genius Jeff Bridges is a shock
jock in the mold of Howard Stern who inadvertently compels one of his legion of
unstable listeners to “act out” his rage against the machine by shooting up
yuppies in a fashionable Manhattan restaurant. One of those killed is the wife
of the loving literature college professor, played by Robin Williams. When the
media makes the connection, the raging shock jock’s character and career, which
was about to go national on TV, careens into despair and degradation. Hitting rock
bottom, the shock jock goes to the harbor intending to commit suicide,
whereupon he’s set upon by a couple of young, rich punks whose entertainment is
setting fire to vagrant homeless people. But Bridges is saved by a band of
homeless, crazed Merry Men warriors led by Parry, Robin William’s alter ego from
post-traumatic event syndrome mode after his wife’s senseless murder.
Suddenly Bridges is confronted, face-down in the big muddy so to speak, with
the sort of people he really hated more than the pretentious yuppies he mocked
on his show. He is nursed and comforted by the obviously deranged Parry, learns
of Parry’s heroic quest to find the Fisher King of medieval yore. The Fisher
King’s destiny is to recover the Holy Grail used at the Last Supper, and Parry’s
convinced it is housed in a modern castle on Fifth Avenue. I have to leave the
rest of this most redemptive, if quirky and certainly emotionally and
intellectually compelling story for you to rent or view for yourself.
Bill O’Reilly’s first thought of William’s death, “overdose
or suicide,” was not my first thought. My first thought, no less or more
important than O’Reilly’s, was “As sad as this is, the news cycle covering
Williams will displace that which ever so briefly and finally got the world’s
attention on the genocide of Christians and other non-Muslims in Iraq, Somalia,
Nigeria when the media was forced to look upon thousands of refugees on a
barren, rocky plateau in Kurdistan called Mount Sinjar. Who will mourn with the
fathers holding the bodies of their children beheaded by the corporate evil
that tramples thousands of souls into desert ditches?
The intersection at which these thoughts collide is that
alone we cannot exorcize all the demonic forces that affect us as individuals,
communities, societies, nations and as the only species endowed with the
foreknowledge of our own impending deaths. We have to cope with that reality,
if only at the moment it is imminent and unavoidable.
The loss of life of most people, none of them sinless if you
are of a Judeo-Christian persuasion, is
not an occasion for rejoicing or mirth, glee or self-righteous gloating (“At
least I’m not like that guy, Williams, roasting in hell in Dante’s suicide
suite.”) Neither is it an occasion for excruciating, relentless despair that
wails “Woe is me, all is lost.” What folks like O’Reilly and Williams and
countless other celebrities of good will remind us is that redemption will
always remain an option for any of us who have fallen. And who hasn’t fallen?
Redemption is not a state of being for religious believers only. Redemption
befalls both the beggar about to take his last breath in a gutter in Calcutta,
and Blessed Mother Theresa who stopped and realized all she could do for the
beggar was to be with him in that last moment. And then our souls move on, hopefully
in a more resolved and purposeful direction to “make someone happy, make just
one someone happy.”
The poet Emerson’s famed homily, “to know that one person
has breathed easier because you lived” is only one of hundreds of such truthful
admonitions. But the one I like is “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know!”
This is what I know- the quest for whatever amounts to each of our Holy Grails
cannot and will not ever be a journey of solitude or individual perseverance.
The cup of living life must be shared in order that its destiny is fulfilled.
Even if Stephen Hawking, whose story and life is a testament to perseverance through
monumental adversity, goes to his grave without having “found” his grail of the
unified field theory in physics; even if the grail of a lasting and true peace
in the Holy Land and all over the globe remains ever at bay, even if you give
up hope, love, prayers and support for both your beloved and your “enemies” because
you alone despair that grail is
unattainable, remember that Robin
Williams, whether as the deranged errant knight Parry, or Mrs. Doubtfire, as
the hapless banker in “The Best of Times” or the simple standup comedian whose
picture is next to the term ROTFLMAO in the modern lexicon, lived life as fully
as he could, and gave much more value to humanity than politicians, church
folk, and certainly merchants of death like ISIS and other evil forces
masquerading as true believers and God’s chosen people. Williams said what he
meant, meant what he said. You can quote me on that.
