Osler's Razor

A few years ago, Dr. Joanne Braxton gave me the book "A Lesson Before Dying," by Ernest Gaines. The book captivated me, and I couldn't put it down.

As I have mentioned here before, one line in the book struck me hard. A young black man is being led to the execution chamber, circa 1948:

And my mind went back to that cell uptown, then to another cell, somewhere in Florida.  After reading about the execution there, I had dreamed about it over and over and over.  As vividly as if I were there, I had seen that cell, heard that boy crying while being dragged to that chair, "Please, Joe Louis, help me.  Please help me.  Help me."  And after he had been strapped in the chair, the man who wrote the story could still hear him cry "Mr. Joe Louis help me, Mr. Joe Louis help me."

At the time I read it, I felt hit by the odd plea to someone wholly unable to help-- and I felt too much like that helpless person called out to. Of course, I'm no Joe Louis.

But is Kim Kardashian the Joe Louis of our time? I know that she is inundated with pleas for help right now, and that many people in prison are convinced that she holds the keys, based on her success with Alice Johnson (who is between us in the picture above). And, I suspect that she is feeling some of the same emotions that I do-- that sense of being overwhelmed in the face of great need and a flood of mail. I'll defend her against any critic who claims she should not be joining this fight, just as I defend the work of my other allies who come from a remarkably broad stratum of our society. Our coalition has something to offend everyone. That's our strength.

This past Sunday, the Star-Tribune columnist Jennifer Brooks wrote a great piece about the work of my clinic (you can read it here). I really appreciate the article, but it is hard for me to read-- I know it sets out an expectation that is hard to meet right now (and, pretty much, always). We are a society that too often prefers finality and forgetting, even when changeable, redeemable human lives are at stake. Once you glimpse the wrong in that, it is hard to look away. But like many worthwhile things, what you are looking  at beneath that compelling image is a hard, uphill path.

I know what that has been like for me. What will it be like for Kim Kardashian?