Tall Tale? No, All Too True

It’s no secret that we oppose secrecy. It’s no secret because of the regular spectacle of some government agency, official body or private institution--a church, for instance--hiding embarrassing information behind a curtain of secrecy.

Now comes a most amazing example, one that could top a news parody show--except that it’s true. Get a tissue before reading; one way or another, you’ll need it.

The National Zoo refuses to release medical records for Ryma, a beloved but departed giraffe. We had to read that twice too. It’s true. Zoo Director Lucy Spelman says releasing medical information on the dead animal would violate the animal’s privacy rights, especially the client-patient relationship between caretakers and care receiver. Uh-huh. Anyway, she adds, regular people wouldn’t comprehend records written by professional vets.

Thank goodness we have real professionals to protect the privacy of dead giraffes who spent their lives on public display, while saving ignorant citizens from potentially confusing medical information. Let’s say someone misdiagnosed a giraffe’s disease and the animal died. Want to explain that at a zoo fund-raiser? That scenario may or may not be true. Because it’s a secret, no one can say. That’s the problem with secrecy in a democracy.

Maybe hyenas whisper behind our backs, but it’s certainly a human trait to whisper secrets to one another. Secrecy seems to elevate those in the know. It creates exclusive bands of “ins” who know and “outs” who don’t. That’s fine for, say, missile launch codes. But elsewhere, secrecy corrodes a free society. If doors to two teenagers’ rooms are open and a third is closed, what does any parent want to do? And that’s but one family.

Now the National Zoo, part of the revered Smithsonian Institution, has a closed door. Such secrecy is worse among officials, allowing those with public duties, paid with public funds, to exclude others whose acceptance of authority is required for the democracy to function. Time after time in our history, a police board, county commission, vice president or zookeeper has forgotten this.

The National Zoo has accidentally created a wondrous exhibit of silliness. A quick question: If zoo animals are so interested in their landlord’s professed privacy precepts, why do they perform in public the most basic private acts of living creatures? Maybe they dislike secrecy too.