NEWTON'S LAW: OPTIMISM TAKES A BACK SEAT WHEN PERCEPTION TAKES LEAD

I like my job. Since that job is to chronicle the sweep of human experience, it is, as you might guess, not always pretty.

During my years in news, I've been to grisly accidents, arrived at a shooting scenes moments after the police did, held vigil at a public building where a man had taken his ex-wife hostage.

Though certainly in the public good, it is paid voyeurism. Mostly, I've been unaffected by these scenes, having insulated myself with detachment that, on good days, stalls short of arrogance. In the curious rationale of this profession, you can put yourself above the suffering of others because, for lack of a better excuse, you are paid to do so.

Ultimately, you learn that humans have a great capacity for doing harm to one another, though not always in the physical sense mentioned before. Sometimes the damage is done in subtle ways, with words well-aimed instead of firearms brandished.

Oddly, these are the encounters that wear on you most. A fatal mishap, while shocking, has few nuances; you can absorb it and move on. Words are more agile in their savagery and you tend to ponder them.

You sit at your desk some days and look for ways to avoid trouble. I was doing this Wednesday when a call came to me that summoned these reflections.

It was a woman conducting a survey for what she said was a company in McLean, Va. While fundraising was its general topic, I quickly became aware that it concerned St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.

What sparked my interest was a question that went something like this: Do you associate fundraising efforts with any specific ethnic group?

Hmmmm.

Another question asked if I was aware of the political allegiances of Marlo Thomas, the daughter of St. Jude founder Danny Thomas. Specifically, the question referred to her work with the pro-choice movement.

Finally, I was asked if I thought Marlo would be an appropriate choice to succeed her father as the fundraising icon for St. Jude.

How do I answer such a thing? I would never sit still for a rerun of "That Girl." On the other hand, she might be perfectly appropriate, the high-profile daughter with a name synonymous with the hospital.

We wound this down and I got the name of the survey company's president. After I got off the phone, I called directory assistance for McLean, Va.: no listing for the company or the president's name.

I then called the public relations office at St. Jude, told them the nature of the survey and asked if they knew who might have commissioned it.

No idea, was the response. The p.r. guy mentioned to me that the hospital is spoken about favorably by a wide variety of people with a wide variety of public identification. If, say, Rush Limbaugh (he brought up the name), mentions the hospital on his radio show, it is not unusual for his detractors to strike back at the hospital.

"How are we supposed to tell him not to talk about (the hospital)?" he asked.

A friend of mine works at St. Jude. I visited her at the hospital this spring and she gave me a tour. It is a glassy and gleaming facility whose looks belie its mission of dealing with critically ill children.

Once you get past the shock of seeing waiting rooms full of hairless children, some of whom are missing limbs, you discover that it is not a grim place at all. No employee I saw there was without a smile, no person I met was without a cheerful greeting.

You got the feeling this was a place where good things were possible, where optimism is the canon.

And behind the scenes of this setting is a struggle for public perception. Not long from now, there will be a survey released that says Marlo Thomas, liberal daughter of the St. Jude founder, is not fit to fill her father's shoes. Bet on it.

It makes a man wonder. And it makes a day dismal.