FRIDAY SURPRISE: "I want to win, but I don't want to see the b***tards go down, either"

Friday, June 20, 2008 Filed in: Friday Surprise!, Completely irrelevant, History

That's a quote from one of my favorite photographers, Life magazine's fantastically great Ralph Morse, about his rivals at Newsweek. Ralph, it was said, was of the "old school" - a term once used to describe a code of behavior, before the "hip hop" generation co-opted it to describe MTV's previous seasons.

It's ironic that Ralph's words came on the eve of his coverage of the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981, because it was this article on Soviet cosmonaut deaths which brought them back to me. The combination caused me to think not only about the attitude of the gracious winner, but of the trials and tribulations of the losers in all high-stakes games.

While I'm proud of U.S. achievements in space (I am a child of the Sputnik Era, after all), I'm simultaneously saddened at the loss of life experienced by our (former) enemies. I'm not talking about the maudlin, paralyzing, "new age sensitive man who cries at the drop of a hat" kind of sadness, but rather a genuine empathy for those who attempt something great and leave the world poorer by their absence.

Like our astronauts, the cosmonauts were proud of their homeland. They were willing to put their lives on the line to advance not only their nationalistic pride, but something more. There was an altruistic component to their flights, which they seemed to know were advancing science and technology to benefit all those who were firmly anchored to terra firma. Even as we celebrate our own successes we need to be reminded that we are as much in their debt as they are in ours.

We see where we are today only because we stand on the shoulders of all those who came before us.

(Thanks to Tam, who found the article.)

-=[ Grant ]=-

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