Everybody knew the Babe's shortcomings, his expansive and insatiable appetites for women, booze and food. But more important to the fans of the man was that unifying mythology he nurtured in making Americans feel safe at home. Such reflections were spurred by a film documentary of the Babe shown on HBO in the days after seven young Christians were killed by a madman in a Baptist church in Fort Worth. Americans can no longer feel safe at home, neither in their house nor in G-d's house. The roster of terrifying events lengthens with the shootings at schools in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Colorado, in a prayer meeting in Kentucky, a preschool nursery, in a synagogue in Los Angeles, at a workplace in Atlanta.
Unifying mythologies are hard to come by.
They are quickly deconstructed by inexplicable violence. A New York Times reporter sat outside a blood bank in Fort Worth where men and women sat around seeking meaning in the senseless deaths as they waited to do the one thing they could do to help the surviving victims in the hospital. Giving blood gave them an opportunity to show generosity, the random act of kindness. What was startling in their conversations was the lack of mindless glibness in describing easy scapegoats. No one blamed guns, not in Texas.