Sunday, June 28, 2009

Quote of the Day (Jackie Gleason, Amateur Theologian, on Sin)


“I have always believed that most sins are committed not because of the inability to control them, but because of the ability to perform them.”—TV comedian Jackie Gleason, quoted by Edith Efron, “Jackie Gleason on Sin, Music, Plato, Pity and Other Subjects,” TV Guide: The First 25 Years, compiled and edited by Jay S. Harris in association with the Editors of TV Guide Magazine (1978)

Yesterday, flipping through this anthology for story ideas, I came across this interview. It fascinates me because of the yawning contradiction between “The Great One’s” lifelong beliefs as a Roman Catholic and his frequently losing battle with just about every form of the Seven Deadly Sins, most notably pride, wrath, avarice, gluttony, and lust.

From time to time, Gleason made attempts at reform, including a reconciliation with his first wife, but these seldom lasted.

Gleason’s heavy drinking—borderline alcoholism, I think—is very much to the point of this quote. Addiction, we have come to believe after years of AA, certainly results from “inability to control” a biochemical mechanism. Yet the comedian seems to be rejecting psychology’s insights into addiction.

It all comes to mind with the story this past week of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Why anyone would go to such lengths—down to South America, no less—to be with a mistress?


Now, I’ve heard all kinds of tales over the years about the sexual escapades of politicians (including a long-ago mayoral hopeful in my hometown who funded his mistress’ massage parlor). But Sanford’s case, like few others, raises the question of sex addiction.

Gleason’s remarkably old-fashioned take—perhaps instilled by the lessons of his impoverished Irish Catholic mom, perhaps by his own hard experience—is that we (very much including Sanford) shape our own destinies.


In this context, Sanford’s affair could take the astonishing turn it did precisely because the governor’s power and opportunities as head of a state seeking foreign investment afforded him numerous possibilities for what the Church (far more than it has been recently) once called “occasion for sins.”

Bill Clinton, guilty of his own variation of Sanford’s madness, explained in four words why he became involved with Monica Lewinsky: “Just because I could.” That’s a pithier seconding of Gleason’s point.

Gleason’s final project, the Garry Marshall-directed dramedy Nothing in Common, might surprise those who fondly remember his Ralph Kramden, Reginald Van Gleason, and even Minnesota Fats, yet I suspect that, filming only a year before his own death, he identified strongly with his part, in much the same way that John Wayne did with his cancer-afflicted gunslinger in The Shootist.

As Tom Hanks’ irascible father, Gleason does nothing to sugarcoat the selfishness and thoughtlessness with which his character has lived his life, particularly concerning his estranged wife. But a life-threatening medical condition brings him face to face with the meaning of his life and work—something that obsessed Gleason in his TV Guide interview, when he talked at length about original sin and living life with purpose.

At the end of Nothing in Common, Gleason’s sour patriarch finds himself saved despite the sum of his many wrong moral choices. He marvels at the mystery of love that has drawn his son closer to him. With time and the same sense of atonement (something sorely missing to date in his self-serving reflections about King David continuing in office), Sanford would be fortunate to experience the same moral awakening.

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