Art Garfunkel on CNN is one of those moments that justifies cable news.
5 minutes, maybe. Nothing earth-shattering or inflammatory. No unnecessary drama. Nice human stories. Etc.
That was a wonderful interview. He feels no compulsion to overdo it and pander. That was the key for me. Pandering means dishonest. It means you don't care whether you tell the truth or not. You only care about the immediate gratification of pretending like you agree with someone when you do not.
Along those lines, it's fun watching nice people deal with awkward moments. Like when the host said his friend only remembered about 30 minutes of the iconic New York concert. Art felt no need to pretend like he wanted to go down that road of promoting drug use. If you can not do that, if you can not say no in an awkward moment, even by simply staying silent, you are drastically limiting your ability to be a good person.
Learning to say no (literally or figuratively) is the very first step in being a good person.
As the Pope says, a priest's first job is not to preach but to pray. What might that require? Saying no to too many demands on one's time. What would happen otherwise? The ability to empathize and be present would be reduced.
Ok we've gone far afield at this point (and in so doing, probably revealing the deeper, essentially self-serving reasons why I particularly enjoyed that segment).
Point is, thank you Art for taking a moment to talk about what may prove to be a meaningful political statement, which consisted of to little more than finding the right moment to say "Yes."
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