Opinion: The meaning of John Boehner’s tears
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
John Boehner obviously hasn’t seen publicist Kelly Cutrone’s book about succeeding in the workplace, ‘If You Have To Cry, Go Outside.’ The incoming House speaker has cried in front of an audience on two recent occasions -- election night in November and during his interview with ’60 Minutes,’ which aired Sunday. We’re all for getting in touch with your emotions, but on a public stage such an emotional display can be misinterpreted for weakness and vulnerability -- hardly the image Boehner should be putting forward right now. In an Op-Ed from Wednesday (A crying shame: Incoming House Speaker John Boehner weeps for our schoolchildren even as he works to take away their dreams), UC Riverside professor Tom Lutz analyzed Boehner’s tears:
‘Boehner’s tears aren’t hard to read. After analyzing hundreds of psychological experiments and sociological studies of weeping, hundreds of accounts of crying in different cultures and different historical periods, thousands of tearful moments in film and fiction and art, I have come to see that, like the mother of the bride, many of us weep because we are overwhelmed by contradictions.’
Our readers also joined in.
The discussion continues here.
-- Alexandra Le Tellier
