Sunday, June 19, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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Happy Father’s Day.
This is the day I try to share a message about what it means to be a father. It’s a tradition my father started when we were just little kids. He would write about us and, somehow, everyone in Las Vegas saw their own children, their own issues, their own hopes and dreams, through his writing.
This week, I was going to share some thoughts about being a father and a grandfather, trying to deal — once again — with a massacre of little children. I was going to write about the wanton murders in Uvalde, Texas, but Matthew McConaughey beat me to it.
McConaughey is an Academy Award-winning actor whose roles in movies like “Dallas Buyers Club,” “The Lincoln Lawyer,” “Magic Mike” and so many others have ingrained his talent in the minds of the movie-going public.
After his visit to the White House and his expressions of fear, concern, compassion and hope that he imparted to the American people when he talked about the little kids and their teachers who were murdered in Uvalde, I can add another description to his many talents: miracle worker.
We all know about miracles, whether or not we believe in them. Suffice it to say that a huge part of humanity around the world believes that “miracles, they do happen.”
McConaughey was born and grew up in Uvalde. His mom taught school not far from the Robb Elementary School where last month, 19 children were blown away by a man with an AR-15 assault rifle. They never stood a chance even, it appears, as trained police officers (not like the cops I know who always run toward danger to save innocents) stood outside the classroom frozen into inaction for some reason not yet sufficiently explained.
What happened in Uvalde was personal to McConaughey . That it happened in a school where little children and their teachers were gunned down should make it personal to all of us.
A very large part of humanity — the Christian part — believes in the miracle of resurrection, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. They don’t make miracles much bigger than that.
What I witnessed from McConaughey was a similar miracle in that Matthew brought those dead children back to life, if only for the briefest of moments. Of course, it isn’t in the same league as the Big One, but it could well have been inspired by Jesus, because putting lives back into the young children so the American public could know their dreams, know their goodness and act in a good and loving way going forward, sounds like it could be part of a much bigger plan.
I believe every parent should watch McConaughey at the White House. Yes, he is an actor, but this was no act. This was pure humanity.
What remains an act — and not a very good one in light of the murders that just don’t stop — is the reaction most Republicans in the U.S. Senate and some (a minority but a vocal one) other Americans around the country portray as they staunchly defend a Second Amendment that needs no defense.
It is the gun manufacturers who need defending from the American people who are finally demanding responsibility equal to the right of gun ownership. It is the vast majority of voters who are fed up with the idea that assault weapons were meant to be protected by the Founding Fathers when they wrote the Second Amendment.
Logic, sanity and reason would suggest that if the Founders even conceived of such a weapon, they would have meant it to be locked up in an armory somewhere just in case an American enemy made it to our shores and into our cities and towns. Then a well-regulated militia made up of patriots could be given those killing machines to repel the invaders.
Until then, sporting weapons and handguns for personal and home protection would have to sate America’s love affair with guns. And the mentally ill and the cold-blooded killers in society would have to do their worst the old-fashioned way — only one child or other innocent person at a time.
By telling those dead school children’s story — bringing them back to life, if you will — McConaughey gave every parent the ability to see the world through their own family’s hopes and dreams for their children, nieces, nephews and grandchildren.
Especially for the fathers in America whose day this is and whose responsibility it still is for the safety of their families. Yes, I know that is a shared responsibility, but in almost all cases, the mothers in society bear that burden well. It is the men who fall far short.
The recently announced compromise for something to be done about guns is a good albeit weak start. But a start, nonetheless.
That small step toward sanity aside, it is the men (and a woman or two) on the Republican side of the aisle in the U.S. Senate who continue to fail American families.
McConaughey showed us —for the briefest of moments — how bringing life back to a dead child’s memory can inspire us to act in a Godly and goodly way.
On this Father’s Day, we all know what Jesus would do. Let us resolve — right now — to finish the work yet to be done.
Enough of the carnage.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.
