Learning from the pros on Anderson Cooper’s “Guns under Fire”
It’s a standing joke among my friends: before my
blog post about my mentally ill son went viral, I did not know who Anderson
Cooper was.
Let me explain this grave lapse of cultural literacy.
After September 11, 2001, I sat in front of our television in slack-jawed
horror, watching the towers fall over and over, for weeks. Then one day, I
looked away from the TV and saw my four year-old son building a tower out of
blocks and crashing his toy airplane into it.
So I gave up television. I didn’t actually mean to
give it up completely—I’ve always been an early adopter and figured we would
have the content on demand by 2003. My timeline was a few years premature. And
by the time technology caught up, I was no longer interested in TV.
Now I get all my news from Facebook. It’s the
perfect mix of local (kids, pets, vacations) and national, and since my friends
are so clever, I trust them to pick the New
York Times and Wall Street Journal
and HuffPost articles I should read. In that respect, Facebook has been a real
timesaver for me. Okay, I’m not kidding anyone here. Facebook is a complete
waste of time. But since I’m not watching “Jersey Shore” or “American Idol” or “Downton
Abbey,” I feel okay about it.
Still, it’s become apparent that my Facebook friends
aren’t quite clever enough. Because if they were, they would have been as agog
over Anderson Cooper as the blurred-face woman in the picture above (she looked
like a four year old girl about to meet a Disney Princess).
Cooper is the real deal—whip smart, funny,
compassionate, able to shovel through the bullhorn bullshit that passes as
public discourse these days and emerge with a squeaky clean smile.
When Anderson Cooper 360 decided to do a town hall
meeting on guns, the producer, Kerry Rubin, called and asked me to talk about
my experiences as a parent of a mentally ill son.
I couldn’t say no. And it was one of the most
amazing and humbling experiences of my life.
I got to meet Amardeep Kaleka, a gun owner whose father was killed in a rampage
at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Sarah McKinley, who made headlines when she
defended her home and her baby against intruders. Tio Hardiman, who works with Chicago’s
youth to try to change potentially destructive behaviors and save lives. And
Veronique Pozner, who lost her sweet young son in the tragic Sandy Hook
shootings.
Their stories all give nuance and complexity to a debate that too often
looks like something drawn by toddlers with crude, bold crayons.
I also met Joshua
Boston, the former Marine
whose letter to Senator Diane Feinstein about her proposal to ban assault weapons
also went viral. Josh is a passionate and articulate spokesperson for gun
owners.
I shared a car on the
way to the Town Hall with the inimitable Gayle Trotter, an activist, attorney, and mother of six who testified before the Senate Judiciary
Committee about how guns actually make women safer. Gayle is as powerful an
advocate for her Second Amendment rights as the Brady Campaign’s president Dan
Gross (one of my oldest son’s heroes) is for gun control.
(In case you missed it,
I’m not an anarchist—I’m a Libertarian. Not a big fan of laws, generally
speaking. But also not a big fan of gun violence and school shootings.)
And I’m not a big fan of former NRA president Sandy
Froman’s repeated use of the word “insane” on the program (at least she avoided
“deranged” and “evil”). Every time she said it, I winced. Still, thanks to the
First Amendment, Froman has every right to use that word, and while I wish she
wouldn’t, I am not going to engage in ad hominem attacks (Dan
Gross, on the other hand, was consistently respectful to people who suffer from
mental disorders).
Highlights of the afternoon included meeting Cooper,
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Jeffrey Toobin, and watching Kerry Rubin in action—she’s like
a conductor who takes raw notes on a score and turns them into a full
orchestral suite.
In my own moment on camera, I got one good line in—“Why
can’t we use our resources to make people less dangerous?” I don’t really
remember the rest of what I said, just that Anderson Cooper’s eyes are really that
blue.
In the end, Cooper couldn’t solve the gun problem in
one town hall meeting. But he gave a hint at how to solve it when asked which
team he favored in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Cooper responded with a grin, “Beyoncé.”
Sometimes when we can’t agree on something important
(Ravens or 49’ers, for example), we have to look for something we can agree on.
I am grateful to Anderson Cooper and his entire team for an impartial and thoughtful
contribution to a vital conversation about guns and mental health, and for
including me in that conversation.
It’s not easy to be an advocate, but sometimes
our causes find us, even when we don’t expect them. I’m grateful for the
opportunity to change a national conversation. Maybe it’s not about guns: maybe
it’s about mental health.
