May 16, 2020 Issue, Page 4 of 10

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Page 4 The Elk City News, Elk City, Oklahoma Saturday, May16, 2020 Opinion Page Our society isn’t built to do lockdowns “ElkCituNews By Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune profitable businesses main- agreed upon moment of for all colleges to close for a year rather than offer dimin- tain. Up until March, most safety (even after a vaccine) Serving Western Oklahoma since 1901 people thought that a hotel One truth is irrefutable, ished experiences on Zoom? and to assume that one is Why don’t restaurants just coming our way is naive. chain could mothball itself Graduation amid all the fevered and absurdly polarized debate take a year off rather than for six months, keep most How we proceed from here about lockdowns and returns keep making and scrapping of its employees and be fine. will be determinant on our Not true. A few months of to normalcy, the social me- plans for restarting with individual tolerance for risk no revenue and you disap- ceremony to dia shaming, the absurd as- and our decision on how to plastic barriers between ta- pear. To close, even for a weigh our own fate in con- sumption that you have to bles? Why all of this effort few months, means to risk pick a side between public to get Major League Base- cert with the impact of our destruction. health policy and individual ball back up and running, And that’s why this mo- actions on others. be a first Enough with the media- liberty and then defend it not even without the presence ment is not marked by an induced shocks and binaries. with nuance but to the death. of the very fans who are the increased feeling of togeth- With a perfect, exception- reason for its existence? erness but howling, polar- Where are the speeches from ized dissent. People scream smart folks on these tough By Don Munsch, Editor free lockdown and all hu- You know the answer. and paradoxical topics? We I've attended and covered many high school graduations mans isolated from each America is just not set up at each other about mask over the years. other, the scourge of CO- to go dark, even for a while. wearing without understand- need ethicists as badly as we Some were memorable, including when my brother VID-19 would be wiped ing that neither side is really need epidemiologists right Universities need tuition or admitting the real problem. now. graduated in 1984 and one of his classmates moonwalked from the globe in a few short their campuses fall apart. One side argues for extend- Anyone paying attention on the stage after his name was called. weeks, We then could open Businesses need revenue or is rapidly becoming aware Around 10 years later, I covered a graduation in which our doors and go about our they go bankrupt. Planes are ing lockdowns without fully that the great story of CO- the audience made an inordinate amount of noise. You built to stay in the air non- comprehending the level of business as usual. VID-19 most likely won’t would have thought you were at a concert or game rather destruction that creates; the Such a lockdown, of stop, otherwise they run into than a commencement. Some decorum that was. other side argues for jump- be the time of human reflec- course, is beyond our capa- maintenance trouble. Broad- My nephew graduated in 2010 at a concert venue. My bility. If there’s one thing way needs eight shows a ing back into life while inev- tion, heroism and idealism it high school graduation, thirty-something years ago, was week or the industry is dead itably downplaying the risk might have been, especially we all have learned these last held at a convention center. No one moonwalked at my to human life and infuriating had the government been few weeks, it is that we can’t in the water. Kaput. Our eco- commencement. stop doing what we do. Giv- nomic models all are based their fellow Americans. We helping individuals more And the last few years, before coming to Elk City, I cov- en how we have designed all stop talking about death than institutions. on nonstop action. rates when our mother is at ered graduations held at a church and a Division I basket- Instead, it will be a scram- our society, it is impossible The economics of the ball arena. Last year, I covered the Elk City High School to pause. cruise industry requires tisk. bling of the existing power graduation in the gym at the Pioneer Center. Sure, we can and do stop What’s needed here is structure that will create its This year’s venue for the Elk City High commencement ships to dock and set sail good old critical thinking, individually. We go away, again in a matter of hours. own winners and losers. And will be, shall we say, unusual. And a first for me as a re- weighing and balancing. We that means you can’t even porter. reflect, plan, spend time with That’s why Carnival or Nor- need values-driven debate family, chill out, deepen, wegian desperately want to stop individually, lest you Because of the pandemic, the graduation, held Sunday, and we need it fast. Along think, plan for the rest of our restart cruises before most find yourself on a furlough will be a parade down the streets of Elk City. It’s the best with the civic reopening choice district officials could make in light of the pandem- lives. People have health cri- of us would be comfortable plans and charts created by that nent. turns out to be perma- ic. ses and need to convalesce; going on one. They want to management consultants, we It will make for a memorable way for families, friends the privileged take vacations survive. That is the only way need open conversation. We For most people, the need and residents to salute the seniors of the class of 2020. or sabbaticals or take a year they know how. Shaming must be willing to talk about to keep churning out product cruise lines (and a lot of peo- is turning into a kind of 21st off to backpack around the the paradox of a country This past weekend in Elk City, I caught up with a couple world. We can stop for a ple are shaming cruise lines) century tyranny. Or maybe built on the glorious concept of my former newspaper colleagues. We worked together while by ourselves, especial- merely misunderstands that of individual freedoms and this is just the latest messy in Amarillo many years ago. One of them lives in the Okla- ly when young. they are in an existential cri- the pursuit of happiness try- crucible for the all-Ameri- homa City area now — she worked for The Oklahoman for sis and, like you, disinclined ing to weigh what that means can brilliance at crisis-based But we cannot pause col- anumber of years - and the other lives in the Amarillo area. to lay down and die. Which when we’re confronted with reinvention. lectively, even though this So Elk City was a halfway point for us. does not make them good for a highly infectious disease Either way, it’s the world It was great to see what was happening in their lives, and crisis actually would have our collective health. that strikes at that core like a we have made for ourselves. the conversation went a number of directions, as talks are been solved by figuring out If you did not know about venomous viper. Check your wont to do when you haven’t visited in a long while. At how to stop together even our inability to take a break favorite news source or so- That doesn’t seem to be one point, one of them mentioned a story she had read in for a few weeks (This just before, you do now. cial-media feed. Few people changing. The Atlantic magazine a few months ago. in: We failed). We are all getting a diz are dealing with that; they’re Chris Jones is chief the- In “The Miseducation of the American Boy,” Peggy This inability flies in the zying crash course in just just boosting one side or the ater critic and culture col- Orenstein explores how many young men still cling to cer- face of evolved common how small are the cash re- other. umnist for the Chicago Tri- tain [read: outdated] ideas of masculinity — and are often sense. Would it not be better serves that even the most Yet there will not be an bune. none the better for it. She spent two years interviewing males between 16 and 21, in college or college bound, and asked them about their ideas about what it means to be male these days and also inquired about other topics, such Janitors at church schools aren’t ‘ministers,’ as sex, love and relationships. She sought college or col- lege males because, she said, they are most likely to set but what about math teachers? Coaches? cultural norms. What stood out about the article was how the boys and By Michael McGough, over his dismissal because asked him about a nurse at a ment. In balancing those young men tended to not have any or enough emotional Los Angeles Times he led the team in a prayer? Catholic hospital who prays interests, the court can and support from other males in their lives — neither from their Eight years ago, the Su- What about a math teacher with sick patients. He said should define more clearly fathers nor males in their peer group. They tend to seek preme Court ruled that reli- at a Jewish school who takes that “may well fall within who is and who is not cov- females to be their confidants. gious organizations enjoy a 20 seconds at the beginning the exception.” And, in re- ered by the ministerial ex- An illustration of this condition: One of Orenstein’s sub- “ministerial exception” from of class to lead the students sponse to a question from jects was a college student who had broken up with his ception. laws against employment in saying the Shema (“Hear, Justice Ruth Bader Gins- Kagan drew this formula girlfriend months ago but was still hung up on her. Normal discrimination, meaning that O Israel: The Lord our God, burg, he said that whether a stuff, sure. from the court’s 2012 de- But the young man couldn’t talk to his friends about his they may not be sued by em- the Lord is one”)? coach would be covered by cision: The mi isterial_ex- feelings about the ex, because he said they would have been ployees or former employ- But nothing in these hair- the exception would depend splitting scenarios prevents ception applies to “people dismissive. And from the way the young man describes his ees who acted as “ministers” on “whether that particular his father, it does not sound like he would have been a of the faith. the court from coming to a person is performing (an) whose job it is to teach re- good source of reassurance or be a sounding board, as this That case involved a commonsense conclusion. important religious func- ligion and to basically bring was someone who would just advise his son to “man up.” teacher fired by a Lutheran In an editorial about these tion.” up the next generation in “The only person with whom he had been able to drop school that had classified her cases, the Los Angeles Times Justice Neil M. Gorsuch important understandings of his guard was his girlfriend, but that was no longer an op- as a “commissioned minis- argued that “the court needs worried about courts decid- religious doctrine and prac- tion,” Orenstein writes. Orenstein said her conversations with the boys and ter.” The ruling was unani- to insist that the ministerial ing which religious activities tice.” young men revealed how they won’t discuss their personal mous, uniting liberals and exception doesn’t prohibit would put an employee into That would seem to ex- problems with others because they thought would lose re- conservatives. anti-discrimination lawsuits the “ministerial” category. clude from the ministerial spect from their peers for doing so. Based on Monday’s ar- by employees of religious He noted that the court had exception the math teacher “Boys routinely confided that they felt denied - by male guments in two follow- schools who aren’t respon- been wary of “entangle- or coach who leads a brief peers, girlfriends, the media, teachers, coaches and espe- up cases - both involving sible for imparting the faith ment” by the courts in reli- prayer, but doesn’t teach cially their fathers — the full spectrum of human expres- teachers who lost their jobs - teachers who engage in no gious judgments. sion,” Orenstein reports. at Catholic schools in Los religious duties whatsoever But as long as the First religion, regularly lead stu- This article’s findings may not be earth-shattering for Angeles - the consensus is as well as such employees Amendment’s religion dents in worship or instruct some, but they will hit home for others. The topic espe- about to fracture. But it’s as janitors, secretaries and clauses remain in the Con- students in the faith. (Ev- cially seems timely, as I have thought about it in the con- text of the toll the coronavirus could eventually have on the less important that the court food-service workers.” stitution, courts will have to eryone seems to agree that be unanimous than that it At Monday’s argument, draw lines and make distinc- it would exclude the bus nation’s psyche. There’s a lot we don’t know yet about the full damage the pandemic will inflict on the country, but it enunciate a clear statement Eric C. Rassbach, the lawyer tions. The Supreme Court’s driver or janitor at a church seems like a guarantee the virus is going to wreak havoc on of when courts should shield for the schools, conceded school.) goal in these cases should not just those who have lost loved ones or seen loved ones religious schools from em- that some religious activity be not only to resolve the No Supreme Court deci- suffer fighting the illness. The virus also will likely affect ployment discrimination by an employee might be disputes before it but to also sion can anticipate every the mental health of many of those who will lose homes, lawsuits. “de minimis” _ legal Latin provide guidance for lower dispute that might arise in jobs and businesses. If you listened to Mon- for “not a big deal.” He was courts about how to handle And many of them will sorely need emotional support to the future. But in these cases day’s oral arguments, you responding to a question by similar conflicts, making fu- the court should endeavor to get through grief and or the chore of rebuilding their lives. might despair of the court ar- Justice Elena Kagan about ture “do-overs” unnecessary establish a clear rule about riving at such a test. The jus- the math teacher. He had the or at least infrequent. Have something a dizzying variety of hypo- same answer when Kagan when the “ministerial excep- tices and lawyers explored These cases involve a ten- tion” applies, even if clarity asked him about an employ- sion between two important to share? testing which employees ee of a soup kitchen who interests: religious freedom thetical situations aimed at distributes religious litera- - particularly the right of comes at the cost of unanim- ity. Send your editorial to would qualify for the min- ture and leads grace before religious organizations to Los Angeles Times’ senior isterial exception: Would a meals. choose their leaders - and the Michael McGough is the [email protected] coach at a religious school be prevented from suing But Rassbach had a dif- ferent answer when Kagan enforcement of laws against discrimination in emplov- editorial writer, Washington. D.C. based in