Over the past few weeks, I've posted several Facebook updates on Jordan Romero's ascent of Mount Everest from the Tibetan side. Jordan is the 13-year-old kid from Big Bear, California, who vowed, at the age of 9, to climb the highest peak on each continent, after he saw a mural in his school hallway showing the seven peaks. As most the world now knows, he successfully climbed Everest yesterday, together with his father, his father's fiancée and a couple of sherpas. His mother has fully supported him in his climbs.
Jordan began his quest by climbing Kilimanjaro in Africa at the age of 10, and lacks only the summit of Mount Vinson in Antarctica to fulfill his ambitious goal. The Antarctic climb is scheduled for December.
First of all, my congratulations to Jordan and his parents. At an age when most of us were riding bikes for excitement, he has reached the highest summit on earth. He seems unusually mature, thoughtful and focused for his age, traits that should help him immensely throughout his life.
My purpose in writing this post, however, is to note and express concern regarding the huge number of ugly, mean-spirited comments to the news story that have popped up on several news websites. Some of these comments have attacked both Jordan and his family for being rich and spoiled. Others attack the parents for either forcing their son, or permitting their son, to engage in such a risky climb. Some of these comments resemble in tone similar comments found all over YouTube, criticizing the parents of any talented child who presents a brilliant musical or dance performance -- asserting that the kids are being deprived of their childhoods in order to satisfy parental egos.
Some adverse comments, admittedly, express concerns regarding the physical abilities and judgment of any young adolescent, and the possible effects of strenous effort at exteme altitude on a teenager's growing body and brain. These are legitimate concerns, although Jordan's training and conditioning obviously have been superb, and he has been accompanied on every step of the climb by his father.
But the more hostile comments appear to be simple expressions of misplaced class envy, defensiveness regarding the writers' own lack of accomplishment in life as well, probably, as that of their own children, and -- really -- just a hatred of anyone who accomplishes anything by his own sustained effort. The comment that he's had his Everest climb "handed to him on a silver platter," because his family has money -- as if money carried him to the top -- appears frequently. As do sarcastic anti-Mexican remarks in reaction to his Hispanic surname.
One commentator outdid many of his peers by pointing out that Jordan might still fall on the way down, and could then have the distinction of also being the youngest climber to die on Everest.
I have some reasonable conjectures regarding the probable personalities of the writers who make these really offensive and whiny comments -- comments that often convey the same hatred and suspicion of any form of individual excellence that many on-line political comments have been revealing in recent years (one "birther" strongly doubted that Jordan was really 13 years old!) -- but discussion of these conjectures would necessarily exceed in length the size of post that would fit comfortably into my blog format. Maybe I'll tackle the subject of anonymous on-line "comments" from another angle in some future posting.
Meanwhile, my heartiest congratulations to Jordan Romero and his family. The more kids like you this country produces, the less concerned I am with our future as a nation.
-----------------------(5-25-10) "In the last decade, the Internet has turned us all into players in the game of Simon [Cowell] says. We're in a scurrilous race—who can be the meanest of them all? It's all so easy because it's anonymous, and we're no longer accountable for any of it." -- Ramin Setoodeh, Newsweek Web (5-24-10)
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