Peter Jennings, Shaquille O'Neal, and the sin of omission

Christopher Suleske

About Peter Jennings, I am reminded of a precept I learned in college (not in a class, but from a book read for pleasure): when one is considering opening oneself to being instructed by another, it is imperative to examine the life of that person: his choices, his background, his claims - for consistency and moral clarity. Jennings, in my estimation, did not pass this test, which is largely why I did not watch his newscast (that is, open myself to his instruction). I knew of his educational background – that he had dropped out of high school and never returned – not that this in and of itself would disqualify him as authoritative. What disqualified him was this, coupled with the erudite air he presented, luring an unsuspecting public to believe he was something he was not. If as smart as eulogists are this week lauding him as, Jennings should have known that television conveys a sense of authority – at least it used to in the days of limited access in which Jennings rose to notoriety and authority. Though he did not deny his lack of formal education, his unique position and presentation style demanded the substance of scholarship. His private admissions of embarrassment regarding his education confirm my interpretation of this, but do not seem to have motivated him to do anything about it during his adult life.

Contrast this with the choices of professional basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal. Though he dropped out of Louisiana State University to begin his professional career, he fulfilled a promise to his mother and returned to LSU to finish his undergraduate degree in business. He has since finished an MBA at an online university. O'Neal would seem to be Jennings' opposite in this regard. Whereas few assume the professional athlete to have pursued an advanced degree, he did; whereas many assumed Jennings' to have ample formal education, he did not. Ask an average man, familiar with the public personae of both O'Neal and Jennings, which man represents style and which substance and more times than not, he'd get it dead wrong. It is the sin of omission that often makes the best confidence man.

I can speak to this personally, as for several years I was in a career wherein many of the hundreds of people with whom I interacted believed me to have had an electrical engineering degree. I allowed them to think this. Why not? After all, it made me look better - and apparently it met with their expectations of me. It was a compliment, really - that they thought this of me.

A compliment, except that like Jennings’ admission, it never rested well with my soul. Though my moral sensibilities were quite amorphous at the time, I still knew that I was often lying by omission. The fact I was at the time not degreed did not bother me as much as the fact people assumed me to be - and not nearly as much as the fact I allowed them to think this.

I have since returned to college and finished my undergraduate degree, though in computer science and not engineering. Not that this makes me any better morally than was Jennings, but it does make me defensibly authoritative in my field. More so, it makes the sin of omission much less a possibility these days. And when one day you see me on television, chatting seemingly authoritatively about something, you can trust my authority, so long as that something is computer science.