06/11/07
Young people tend to recklessness. They haven't realized their own limits. That's why many do risky things.
As you get older, you are supposed to learn what your limits are. And accept them, or work hard to push them further out.
Trouble is, as you get older, the limits come crashing in. Parts of the body, well, they just start to give out.
Young people find this funny. Old people, well, we — uh, they — don't laugh so much.
But we should take it all in stride. This is life. If all goes according to the ideal stretch, you vigorously climb up the hill of your life, then carefully navigate the downside, knowing that, in the end, you are going to fall.
This ancient truth came to mind while reading about a misstep made by Judge Robert Bork.
You may remember him. He famously failed to enter the Supreme Court after President Reagan nominated him. Always a critic — in his heyday, of monopoly law, now nearly of everything (he's one of those who claim the culture's going to heck in a handbasket of our own making) — he now appears before us as a plaintiff. He's suing Yale Club for more than a million bucks.
It seems that he was invited to give a speech at an event for the New Criterion magazine a year ago. The dais didn't have a rail, or even normal steps. And Bork was in his 80th year of life. He didn't leap up to give his speech in a single bound. Instead, he tried to step onto the dais . . . and fell backwards. The injuries he suffered were serious, say his lawyers, and Bork's own complaint mentions injury to a leg and his head.
Now, normally I'd have sympathy for the man. I mean, I can't say I've been in his predicament, but maybe one day I will. (And hey: I did fall down a flight of steps last year, and my right hand still hurts.) But, this is a man who's been griping about current tort law for years, arguing that the huge figures demanded have no place in a reasonable system of civil law. He talks about irresponsible juries, runaway justice, that sort of thing.
And now he's charging the Yale Club with gross negligence. The club should've provided a handrail. He's asking for punitive damages, of all things. In a case that should be pretty straightforward.
Well, I wasn't at the event. But we know good and well that Bork himself would have pooh-poohed any similar such suit, years ago, had the fall happened to anyone else. His hypocrisy has been widely noted.
The thing is, he saw the dais. He accepted a risk simply by trying. Now, had he acknowledged his own limitations, when it came time to step up he would have looked up and said something like this: You expect me to climb up there, eh? Who do you think I am, Tenzing Norgay?
After a public chuckle, a few younger men would have offered him a hand.
Perhaps pride prevented him from asking for help. Well, we know what pride goeth before.
An idiotic lawsuit.
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