Hard to believe the star Steelers wide receiver is Jewish, but then...
Waitaminute, you mean we profiled the other Mike Wallace? Well that makes a heck of a lot more sense.
Mike Wallace was suggested by Daniel from North Carolina and Penny from New York. You did mean the 60 Minutes journalist, right?
He was my commencement speaker at the University of Michigan in 1987. Believe it or not, he was genuinely inspiring in what I guess I'd characterize as a Jewish way. He talked about how you have to decide you're going to make a difference in a specific and practical way, and he cautioned that sometimes when you make a choice you have to compromise elsewhere. he talked about what he called a necessary "moral hardening of the arteries" as you decide, for instance, that you'll fight for social justice even if it means you'll tolerate inequities in the workplace.
ReplyDeleteThat may not sound like much, but it strikes me as "Jewish" in its contrast to the standard issue evangelical implication of your generic commencement speech. Wallace implied that, a la Hillel, it's our job to start out trying to fix everything but that we'll find we can never truly finish the job. It's not perfection we're after, it's only a kind of repair or healing.
Anyway, that afternoon made me a real admirer, even more than 65 or 70 years of Sixty Minutes, however long it's been.
Nice choice for a profile.