Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 157
Walker
Continued from A1
let him take his own life. He
might have needed a Dr. Kevorkian.
But the fact remains, the
doc did not do as he encouraged others to do. And this
is a flashing neon sign of the
times, of the “do as I say, not
as I do” world we live in.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
I am the poster boy for this
method of people management, having raised two girls
under the cloud that they had
to be better than I had been.
I mean, only as a parent did I
realize I made all those mistakes so that my kids wouldn’t
have to, right? And, besides, I
will always freely admit I am
full of it. No one would really
expect me to follow my own
recommendations (least of all
me) because, well, that would
just be crazy.
Oh, and in case you are
now going to search my past
columns for advice I have offered that I can’t follow, you
will most certainly be disappointed. Because if being
cranky and critical is the standard to which you will hold
me, well, I’ve got that covered
in my sleep.
However others, who set
themselves up publicly as
conduits of any superior credo, really should live by it –
die by it, in fact. But it seems
those who shout the loudest
these days always turn out to
have the biggest skeletons in
their closets.
And lately, if you pull up
any prominent figure’s pant
legs, you find terracotta tennis shoes.
John Edwards, Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Anthony
Weiner come to mind.
So the question becomes,
is there less moral fiber in today’s diet – or is it merely eas-
ier to find the phonies than in
times past? Maybe it’s just all
those eyes looking up your
skirt, you know. For instance,
if there had been webcams
in Gandhi’s day, maybe he’d
have shown up on YouTube
pulling the wings off flies.
So, just for fun, let’s take
a look at “do as I say, not as I
do” throughout history. Let’s
consider some famous wussouts; people who failed to
hold the line when the heat
was on.
Probably the best known
example of doing the opposite of what you say you will
do would be the apostle Peter. Despite all his bravado
and words to the contrary, he
wussed out and denied Jesus
three times when push came
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