TV values

Yesterday I had on PBS and then the Korean station while I was packing boxes. I learned more than I ever expected to about Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra - and it was actually really interesting. About Sinatra, especially, his values were interesting and respectable. I'd always heard the murmurings of mafia connections but didn't give them much credence - Italian-American stereotypes are often not true. But why don't people talk about what Sinatra did for racial relations - such as the stand he took for Sammy Davis, Jr. and others, as well as the non-famous - or about his loyalty? That loyalty in particular is very appealing. I think I really learned that from my students, especially the last year of teaching at Sierra. I can't imagine using people for my own gains, or forgetting them when it's inconvenient, or any of that. I'm not always pleasant to those who do not please me, and I'm not always sunshiny-happy about even those I'm close to, but I understand better now that loyalty is a fundamental value I hold dear. But I have to make a distinction - I've had certain supervisors (ah-hem) upset that I wasn't more loyal to them - but if I have no respect and no trust developed, just their position does not elicit my loyalty. Friendship does. Which is why I feel betrayed by disloyal friends and rarely forgive.

Then came on my favorite - "The Immortal Yi Soon-Shin" (and I'm not the only one to think it's brilliant) but I had to turn it off because I was so disturbed. Yi-Soon Shin - saving Korea from Japanese invasion - sent a general with reinforcements for an on-land battle, but when they got there the Japanese were arriving from the other direction and the people they were there to reinforce didn't let them in the gates. To watch their expression when realizing they had been betrayed and would be slaughtered without any hope - it was heart-wrenching. OK, maybe I'm a sucker to be so upset by it (and still haunted) - but it's historically accurate ... and such treachery happens regularly in our world.

OK, so maybe they're not the TV values I'd get from watching "The Surreal Life" or "Charmed." And they provoke too much thought. I better get cable.