Dead Faithful

The woman I love wants me to be dead faithful. That's right, I'm faithful to her or I'm dead meat.

Jessamyn West, who wrote the book The Friendly Persuasion that became the movie "Friendly Persuasion" with Gary Cooper and Dorothy Jeakins, has a line in her "book about the book that became the movie" called To See The Dream. She writes, all the way back in the mid-1950's, "If it(the movie version)can be good and faithful (to the book version) fine, but if it has to choose fidelity which is less than goodness...." For Jessamyn, and the character "Jess" in the movie, goodness is an internal condition or disposition whereas fidelity is an external manifestation that may or may not correspond to what's really the case.

In other words, what one says or does can be less than who one is. If you need to "picture" it, think of the commercial where the man is speaking with the used car salesman who is praising the condition of the car to be bought. Luckily, there's someone from the cyber company alerting the customer that the car may look and even sound good, but it has had major repairs from an accident the salesman won't mention.

This makes me wonder how many seemingly virtuous presentations of self are, or should be, less commendable than "advertised."

Where is that FOX when someone (a candidate perhaps) is "marketed" as honest, faithful, patriotic and even religious? Is the FOX telling us that the honest one is always truthful and transparent in dealings;that the faithful one, whose spouse stands alongside in public, practices equality at home;that the patriotic one is able to point out the beloved country's hypocrisy; and that the religious one is deferential toward all religions? Ms. West would remind us that the presentation of self should be less, rather than more, than the condition of the person. She would suggest, however, that sometimes people act virtuously out of the most cowardly or selfish motive.

Confession, for example, is good for the soul, but not necessarily a forced confession or one that puts forward original sin as an excuse. So what is an "updated" friendly persuasion for the fabricated, media-generated and even digitized personality showcased as virtuous these days? Well, let's start with the word "dead" and move on from there.

Far greater a thing to accept one's inherent mortality, at least at the hands of one's spouse, than to parade one's presentable virtues. Then, things like honesty, fidelity, patriotism and religion become a matter of their life or your death.