Losing Moses on the Freeway by Chris Hedges

Author:Chris Hedges
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2005-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

I sat down in the chair behind the podium. I opened a small plastic bottle of water. The awarding of the diplomas began. A heavy-set man who identified himself as the head of campus security asked me to climb off the stage and follow him. I was put in a car and driven to my hotel. I packed my bags, was handed the coat I had left in the president’s office and put on a bus to Chicago.

The event spawned a feeding frenzy among conservative commentators from Rush Limbaugh to his well-groomed counterparts on Fox News. The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial denouncing the talk. The local paper, The Rockford Register Star, reported the event with the headline S PEAKER DISRUPTS RC G RADUATION.

I gave few interviews. I refused the invitations to go on television talk shows. I did not want to toss little bits of red meat into the public arena to keep the story alive.

The New York Times, my employer, sent me a letter of reprimand, saying I had made “public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper’s impartiality.” I was called into the office. It was an unpleasant moment. We all fear losing our job. We all fear insecurity. We dislike angering those above us. I am no different. But I knew what I was called to do. I had seen the cost.

To be silent would be to betray my father, to turn my back on what he stood for, to deny his life, to dishonor his memory, to dishonor my own memory. The physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead is not the only story of resurrection in the Gospels. A few weeks after the crucifixion in Acts, two disciples, who had fled Jesus on the night of the arrest, were hauled before the authorities for preaching. This time they refused to betray Jesus. This refusal was a physical manifestation of the resurrection, of new life.

I am not sure my father, as a distinct individual, exists in death, although I dream of him frequently. I am not sure he knows what has happened to his son. I doubt he can hear my voice, but then he does not need to. It is his own. I am my father’s son. This is my inheritance. I will not squander it.

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