THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510210091
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Legend has it that Diogenes once walked the streets of Athens in the daylight with a lantern in his hand, looking for an honest man.
Apparently there were no follows - as we say in the newspaper biz - to confirm whether or not he ever found one, which would leave us modern folk to believe that he did not.
But we are basically a cynical lot these days. We tend to question the sincerity of most people - especially politicians - choosing to believe that most of them are venal and selfish and blowhards as well.
Diogenes was a Cynic, which explains why he was looking for an honest man. He was a follower of the Cynic school of philosophy, one of the many that flourished during his heyday in Greece almost 2,400 years ago.
Cynics in those days held that virtue was the only good and that independence from worldly goods and pleasures was the only way to go. This path certainly would exclude a bunch of us nowadays from membership in the club, including a lot of high profile religious leaders.
But Diogenes practiced what he preached. He walked the streets in rags, ate coarse food and slept in a bathtub. This may explain why he apparently didn't have much of a following.
While you have to admire the guy for sticking to his beliefs, it must have been difficult for close associates - if he had any - to be around him long enough to hear what he had to say. For, as I said before, there is no existing documentation that he used that tub for bathing.
So, it's probably a good bet that Diogenes drew more flies than listeners when he stepped up to the stoa to exhort Athenians to live simple, humble and good lives.
If Diogenes were tromping around modern day America, he would wear his arm out and that lantern would be burning some serious oil - especially if he happened to be in search of a politician who shuns self-gratification and obfuscation.
He would have a field day ridiculing Republicans and Democrats who are bickering over how best to cure the nation's ills by tinkering with Medicaid and Medicare, balancing the budget, giving citizens a token tax cut and doing away with a kazillion government programs, some of which help feed poor kids in public schools.
Locally, Diogenes would have worn the treads off his sandals trying to determine the truth in the Nauticus bailout saga in Norfolk or the school budget deficit debacle in Virginia Beach.
While Norfolk politicos proclaim their waterfront museum is a great and wondrous boon to downtown prosperity, attendance figures have shown that - unlike Diogenes - it can't draw flies. This is the main reason Norfolk taxpayers will have to dig deeper into their wallets to come up with the $1 million a year - in addition to what they're already shelling out - to prop up the joint.
In Virginia Beach, meanwhile, taxpayers may have to dig into their wallets to cover a $7.4 million shortage in last year's school budget and a $6.6 million shortage projected for the present year of operation. While bean counters try to find out why this happened, the big question remains: Who was responsible?
Everybody in the school system connected with the fiasco, including the lately departed superintendent, is busy trying to put the blame on someone else.
Where's Diogenes when you need him? by CNB