The Outrageous Crime of Not Being a Grifter
by Gore Vidal
"It is a truth universally acknowledged—at least by those of us who have observed the peculiar rituals of American public life from the better vantage points—that whenever a person of talent devotes themselves to something other than the naked pursuit of profit, the dull-witted will arrive, torches in hand, to declare it a fraud. This, of course, says far less about the supposed villain than it does about the accusers, whose imaginations remain hopelessly confined to the squalid boundaries of their own limited ambitions.
I was reminded of this rather tedious cycle of American suspicion—what I have elsewhere called our national obsession with tearing down anyone who dares to rise—when I encountered the latest carnival of accusation against David and Megan Roche, two promising professionals who committed what is, in our peculiar republic, the greatest of sins: they walked away.
Jack—President Kennedy to you, but Jack to me—once told me that the hardest thing for Americans to understand is why anyone would exchange power for principle. He had seen it himself, among the idealists who, unlike him, were unwilling to make the necessary accommodations.
Of course, Jack had the misfortune of being born into a family for whom the accumulation of power was a generational sport, whereas the Roches had the luxury of choosing their own course. They could have remained in medicine and law, industries where ambition is rewarded with wealth and prestige. Instead, they committed an error so grievous, so unfathomable to the small-minded, that it has inspired nothing less than a whisper campaign: they chose to coach.
That they have, by all available evidence, done so with success—hundreds of athletes who speak of them in tones of admiration, a community built not on transaction but on something perilously close to idealism—only deepens the offense.
Had they followed the familiar route—had they instead chosen to extract small fortunes from the sick or the guilty—these critics would have no complaints. But to take a different path, to forge a life governed by principle rather than profit—this is intolerable. And so, their motives must be questioned, their work must be reduced to mere calculation, their every decision must be cast in the ugliest possible light.
I have seen this before, many times. Jack saw it too. It is the price one pays in America for stepping outside the accepted bounds of ambition. But as Jack once told me, better to do what you believe in, and let the jackals howl.
And howl they will. Meanwhile, the Roches will coach, their athletes will run, and the critics will, as ever, remain where they are—seated, anonymous, and entirely beside the point."