Dr. Ben Carson is all the rage among folks who admire him not only for his undeniable brilliance as a neurosurgeon, but also because they are swept away by his high-mindedness–his good, Christian morals and values.
But here’s one thing, among many things about Dr. Carson, that I can’t get past.
A strange portrait from Dr. Carson’s home: two happy guys who got together.
He claims in an anecdote, which rings with about as much truth as his bizarro Pyramids theory, that he was almost robbed at gunpoint at a fast-food joint near prestigious Johns Hospkins.
He claims he told a guy who had the power to blow him Home to God, “You got the wrong guy; you want him.”
With that, Dr. Carson coolly and calmly directed the bad guy to go threaten the poor dude drawing minimum wage by cashing out chicken pieces.
Thank God the bad guy didn’t walk over and shoot down the cashier in cold blood. With that ugly scenario the story wouldn’t have been useful to building The Legend of Billy Jack Carson.
I suppose the story is meant to illustrate the good doctor’s Hemingwayesque “grace under pressure.” Whatever else he would do or not do, a Hemingway character, with Hemingway’s own famous death wish, would not freak out.
He’d probably even light a Cuban cigar and then pistol-whip the robber. It’s the stuff of a good, fictitious yarn.
But seriously, people of God–where is God’s grace in Dr. Carson’s reaction to the robber? He seems to take utter delight in the admiring grins and laughs the story gets at the expense of the cashier and other victims.
What doesn’t get told in the anecdote is the reaction of the minimum-wage working slug, who supposedly ended up facing a robber with a deadly weapon re-directed over at him, thanks to the good doctor.
Honest to God–if you had coolly directed an armed robber over to me in a Popeye’s Fried Chicken, I’d probably be severely pissed off at you for being a jerk.
And that’s what I can’t get past, that he was thinking of only himself with scant regard for the other guy, who was probably too dry in the mouth to order him back to the doctor.
What about his story–the cashier and the other people who were victimized by an armed robber?
Such yarns of Dr. Carson’s always leave a lot to the imagination, but what’s always missing is his concern and response to the others.
I suppose we’re left to imagine that the doctor, being the compassionate physician as well as the swaggering John Wayne that he so wants us to see him as, immediately went to the aid of the cashier and all the others in that fried-chicken joint.
Think about it: they probably needed a doctor’s presence after being traumatized by the gunman who gave the fearless and invincible Dr. Ben Carson a pass.
Armed robbery is an act of terror, every time, which you wouldn’t sense from this yarn of Dr. Ben’s, all wrapped up as it is in pleasantry like a good campfire yarn.
Maybe we’re not supposed to think about “the rest of the story” at all–we’re only supposed to think up to a point.
In politics–and Ben Carson is proving to be a shrewd politician–too much thinking can put a strain on the brain. You go for the little brain teasers, and verification of facts and truths be damned.
I’ll give Dr. Carson his due as a neurosurgeon, but as hard as I’ve tried to like and respect the whole man for his integrity, I’m having a real hard time with him. Even though, as a lifelong political observer, I know that he’s eventually going to fade away like that whopping political sensation Sarah Palin anyway.
But this is what’s bothersome: it seems it’s become too much to ask for us as Americans to admire any kind of man who knows who he is and what he is–a man who can accept the limits of his mind and manhood without being like the guy who walks through the dark valleys of life fearing no evil because he’s the toughest S.O.B. in the valley.
It’s not enough to be a Dr. Albert Schweizer, a gentle man and a good doctor (and ordained preacher) who gave up the good life to go to Africa and save scores upon scores of lives and doubled as a peace advocate who won the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Real men don’t fake it.
Paul, there is something about Carson that is creepy and I cannot quite figure it out! One thing I think I have figured out is he was at one time a ‘stutterer.’ The slow speech and closing of eyes is frequently a cover and I know this because I stuttered as a child.
He’s a strange man. Who but him would have a portrait of such a happy Jesus–God’s “suffering servant”–wrapped in a bath robe.