I obtain most of my information from reading newspapers, books, and articles on the Internet. While this is also true for my wife, she is partial to the evening news on NBC. A few years ago, the NBC Evening News began to close the broadcast with a final segment being a “feel good” piece. I suspect that that was in response to many people saying “Is there anything good happening in the world?”

So, last week I came upon the ultimate “feel good” story.

In 2018 there was a Special Olympics event in Seattle for mentally and physically challenged youngsters. One of the events was a sprint. Nine kids lined up to run the race. When the gun went off, eight started on their way but the ninth was a boy who stumbled and fell on the ground and began crying. The other eight then stopped. One girl with Downs Syndrome went back to the crying boy, gave him a kiss and said that that would make him feel better. All the “sprinters” then gathered around the boy and together they walked to the finish line to the thunderous applause of the spectators.

“Gilding The Lily” is a phrase which is really a misquote from one of Shakespeare’s once very popular, but now forgotten, plays, King John (“to gild refined gold, to paint the lily….is wasteful and ridiculous excess). However, the meaning is the same: there is no need to embellish things which are already beautiful in themselves.

Now, back to our story. Unfortunately, according to The Special Olympics Washington office (snopes.com) it is not accurate. There is a kernel of truth in it, but additional details have, as the phrase goes, gilded the lily.

The event did not occur in Seattle in 2018 but in Spokane, Washington in 1976.

The boy did stumble and two of the sprinters went back to help and together the three of them went to the finish line together. The other sprinters continued on their way, having trained to win the race.

There was no report of a “kiss” for the stumbled runner.

The Special Olympics oath is:  “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.” The Special Olympics is not a social gathering for disabled people but an actual sporting event where the contestants have trained for a long time to compete and to win.

So, is this “fake news?” Not really since something like this did happen even if it happened almost 50 years ago and not in 2018. In fact, the real story is as compelling as the one that made the rounds on the Internet. Two kids did help the fallen runner and those three did finish together while the others did what they were supposed to do: try to win the race.

Who knows whether the other runners even knew that the boy had fallen? Their goal was to win the race, and no runner would pull up because one of the other runners had to stop because of an injury. We don’t expect that in a normal Olympic race nor should we expect that in a Special Olympics race.

So, kudos to the “helpers” who showed great compassion and kudos as well to the sprinters who were just trying to win the race.

But let’s take a poll.  How many of you like the original story better than the actual story? Raise  your hands.  It appears that 9 out of 10 prefer the original story.  Why is that? To me, the answer is fairly simple.  With all the news of war, famine, murder and political chicanery, we really desire stories of compassion. We need to hold onto the notion that people are good and caring.  Not a bad notion, if you ask me.

Postscript to my latest blog entitled “Gone But Not Forgotten.”Readers of this blog know that I have absolute contempt for Trump. It didn’t start with his presidency.  It started long before that.

In the late 1980s he single-handedly blew up the United States Football League (Spring football). He convinced other USFL team owners to file a completely ill-advised antitrust lawsuit against the NFL arguing that it effectively monopolized Fall football where the money was. The jury ruled in favor of the USFL and awarded damages in the amount of $1. Damages in an antitrust case are trebled and, for many years, a copy of the check for $3 was proudly displayed in the lobby of the NFL offices even though it had “lost” the case. The USFL then folded.

And then came the Central Park Five where he took out full page ads in the New York papers, proposing the death penalty for the accused Black youngsters.  Ultimately, the real rapist and killer of the white jogger was found and the five were exonerated. Trump’s response: well, the prosecutor (his friend) thought they were guilty. Apparently, he did not think to check with the defense lawyers for the five.

Having said this, there is always a “but.”

As expected, Donald Trump did not win the Nobel Peace Prize. The White House reaction was to lambast the Norwegian committee. Bullying tactics may work with American corporations and universities, but I don’t think the Norwegians give a hot damn and will probably remember this in the future. 

But he still has a chance to win the Prize next year if he can pull off the successful resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian war in Gaza. That would be no mean feat. As Thomas Freidman of the New York Times has observed, bringing peace to the region is like trying to concentrate on solving a Rubik’s Cube while being shot at from all sides.

Indeed, this was the easy part since Hamas had to see the writing on the wall as Israel proceeded to level its stronghold Gaza City and Trump had made clear that if the hostages weren’t released, Israel had his full backing. So, Hamas played its last and only card:  you get the hostages, we get a cease fire and we get a lot of our people back.

But he has started the process.  He has now taken his well-deserved victory laps for securing the release of the hostages which was an excellent result but probably not enough to merit the Nobel prize. Finding a pathway for a reasonable solution for the Palestinians is the sticky wicket. Having Arab countries supervise Gaza, getting rid of Hamas, and reforming the Palestinian authority is the hard part. I don’t think Trump has the focus or the capacity to accomplish this.

But, if he comes close, give him the Prize.