Despite my not really thinking much of Gerry Spence’s blogging efforts, it’s hard to ignore probably the most significant American lawyer alive today when he’s got something to say.  Much of it makes me cringe, as I tend to find the mystical, metaphysical or overly emotional remarkably unpersuasive.  That’s just my bias toward logic and reason.

Over an  extended  period, Spence has  offered posts that simultaneously paint him as the poor, despised, undeserving outsider, while embracing his victimhood as the catapult to his making him the advocate for the downtrodden that he is today.

So, poor me, I was rejected as a kid when I wanted so desperately to belong to a fraternity.  I was rejected from the legal fraternity when I failed the bar.  How about when I ran for Congress, and after that, when I tried to get a job as a law professor, and later, when I wanted to become a judge and was rejected for both of these positions by the structure in power?

I have never thought about this in this way before – but all of these were, in fact, clubs:  the fraternity, a club to be sure, the congressional and academic brotherhoods, and the political club that governs the judiciary.  You did not belong to the club, Mr. Spence.  You were an outsider.  You were not to be trusted, because you did not belong and we will not have you.

I almost cried as I read this, until I remembered that he’s got an awfully nice ranch in Wyoming for someone who has suffered so.  It might have had something to do with the number of shoes that poor, downtrodden Imelda Marcos had in her closet.  I bet Geoffrey Fieger didn’t have as many shoes.

Having told the story of his suffering, Spence reaches the punchline:

Rejection has been the greatest of all gifts I have received.  The power structure has it own wisdom.  I would not have been a good club member.

On the other hand, the power structure freed me to take them on.  Had I been a member of the club I would never have been free to fight for certain of the causes that have defined me. 

This is Gerry Spence’s gift, the ability to craft a story that weighs on our hearts in such a way as to make us ignore the logical leap to its point.  Rejection is a gift?  What the heck is he talking about?  We are the composite of our life’s experiences, both happy and sad.  Some days we get rejected. Some days we don’t.  Big deal.

Not just a gift, but “the greatest gift.”  Assuming he’s caught us feeling for him in the first place, the use of rampant hyperbole deepens our feelings toward him, overlooking the silly exaggeration because we forgive him his excesses.  After all, he’s a poor outsider, despised for this failure to meet the expectations of the evil power structure and relegated to being the loser, then fighting for the losers.  How could you blame him for a bit of exaggeration?

Remarkably, one should be left with the clear belief that Gerry Spence is a hero, having faced terrible rejection (the greatest gift), and yet growing stronger because of it, capable of facing the evil power structure on behalf of us, also the poor and downtrodden just like him.  Even if we don’t have a ranch.

As a mechanism to show others how to spin a yarn to take advantage of emotion in place of reason, it’s not a bad effort.  Mind you, there are some major factual gaps that one has to overcome to feel sympathy for Spence, as Fieger wasn’t exactly a pro bono defense.  But I suspect that most people will take this series of posts more literally.  That’s a problem.

To say that he’s gained from rejection, or that he’s somehow ended up in the place he belongs despite his attempted forays into the club would be fine.  Not terribly emotional or exciting, but accurate.  To say, on the other hand, that rejection is a gift, no, the greatest gift, is to suggest that we should invite and welcome rejection.  We should embrace it. That’s absurd.

There’s no glory in losing.  It happens, despite our efforts to win.  It’s not any more of a “gift” than anything else that makes you who you are.  It’s but one factor in a life. Do not believe that rejection somehow wraps you in some greater metaphysical worth than winning, or coming in somewhere in the middle.  They are all just parts of a whole that ended up making you who you are.

Whether Gerry Spence will end up as the most distinguished lawyer of our age is a matter for history.  He may well be.  But even the great lawyers tell stories that sometimes fall flat, or worse yet, are more directed at maintaining their mythos at the expense of conveying a lesson for others to follow. 

Certainly, the rejection series makes one feel empathy for the plight of Gerry Spence, and builds his character as the defender of outsiders, just like him.  Crafting stories that are carefully designed to aggrandize through self-deprecation seems to be a specialty of some TLC trainees.  But for those who read the words of the Great One and take them to heart, the net result is that you’ve been played. 

If you’re seeking uplifting stories, the ones that tell you that your failures in life shouldn’t keep you down, because you too can rise up like David to slay Goliath, you may find some comfort in Spence’s tale of rejection.  But chances are good that Goliath is going to beat you to a pulp, because you aren’t Gerry Spence, you don’t have his skills at hand and can’t reasonably expect the rejection in your life to turn you into the next Gerry Spence. 

There is a lesson to be learned from Spence’s posts, mostly about the use of story telling to manipulate those who think with their heart instead of their mind.  It’s a pretty good lesson, and it comes from one of the masters, even if this wasn’t one of his best stories.  But you will only learn the lesson if you look through the story and realize what Spence is doing, tugging on heart strings with a line of pap that would make Imelda Marcos blush. 

If you can’t tell the difference between a nonsense story and an emotional conclusion that requires a leap across the logical gap, then you won’t likely need to seek out rejection as your greatest gift.  Rejection will find you no matter what you do.