And Steve writes a self-help book. Chapter 1.

In anticipation of the arrival of 2010, I've been thinking a lot about life. In particular I've been thinking about my relationships with other people (that is, back when I actually used to have them). Based on that introspection, it occurs to me that the most destructive character trait known to man (or woman) is passive/aggressiveness. This is true no matter the bond between the parties: whether it's parent and child, coworker and boss, friend and friend, lover and lover. Further, passive/aggressiveness is unsatisfying to both perpetrator and recipient. To the recipient, p/a comes across as whiny and childish. Half the time you don't even know what you did "wrong," and before too long you find yourself responding in kind, still not quite sure why you're doing it. (In the world of NLP, this dynamic is referred to as a "calibrated loop," or at least strikes me as a form of one. In the Flatbush of my boyhood, it was known as dinnertime.) Meanwhile, for the perpetrator, though there may be some temporary joy in getting your "digs" in, ultimately one cannot escape the frustration of having had to drive your real emotions underground, limiting their expression to a processed, "socially acceptable" format. Because let's face it, what the passive/aggressive individual really wants to be is plain old aggressive.

I suppose it would be better for humankind if we all could learn to be passive—just let most of life, certainly all slights and other minor annoyances, roll off our backs. Learn to ignore the various slings and arrows that come your way during the course of an average day at work, at home, at play, in bed, whatever. Shrug it all off. Trouble is, I don't think that's realistic for most of us. We're not wired that way, and the culture doesn't reinforce such an approach. If we tried to affect passivity, we'd merely end up driving those natural destructive emotions even deeper underground, thus risking (a) a catastrophic explosion one of these days and/or (b) an utter descent into depression and self-loathing.

That's why I recommend that people who know they have a tendency to be passive/aggressive instead do exactly what I hinted at in that last sentence of my opening graph: BE AGGRESSIVE.

To be clear: I'm not suggesting that we go around dismembering the folks who upset us (though if that's really what you think needs doing, hey, who am I to judge?) I do think we need to be more direct, more often. If someone says or does something that hurts or angers you, don't simply pretend to be "OK with it," then spend the balance of the day (1) making an elaborate show of moping or snubbing that person, (2) saying obliquely nasty things and/or (3) devising pathetic little ways of pissing that person off. That just drives everyone up the wall and, as noted, leaves you feeling like something of a pussy anyway. Rather, say you're hurt or angry and demand an explanation (because sometimes, once you hear the explanation you realize that you had no reason to feel hurt or angry in the first place; many longstanding familial feuds are outgrowths of simple misunderstandings). Worst-case, do what you think you need to do to get redress, and do it right then and there. If you truly feel it's warranted, double-down on the pain factor, exacting your revenge in no uncertain terms. I have to feel it works out better that way in the end. At least both people know where they stand right away. And at least one person, the aggressor, goes home feeling good and vital and strong. He may go home with a pink slip, but he goes home feeling good and vital and strong.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. BUT...

...DISCLAIMER: This advice comes from a man who has no friends and cannot function in a 9-to-5 environment, and whose close personal relationships throughout adulthood have been almost uniformly disastrous.... So maybe just forget the whole thing, then.

P.S. Just heard an inspired line in a TV movie that's on in the background. Girlfriend A asks Girlfriend B, "What's wrong? You sound great..." Classic. Reminds me of the canny Gene Hackman line from The Firm: The trouble with his marriage, he tells the Tom Cruise character, is that "my wife understands me."

'And the terrorists get the ball on the 20...' Or, the media and the meta?

Anchors and reporters at my local ABC affiliate, WPVI-6, were uniformly giddy yesterday because the Eagles pulled out Sunday's football game in the final seconds, thus remaining positioned to finish the season next week atop the standings in their respective NFL division. The coverage on all of my local stations is, of course, unabashedly favorable to the Eagles and their star players (just as the coverage on your local station is unabashedly favorable to your team and star players). The stations cover tailgate parties as straight news and later file post-game reports from neighborhood bars where obviously hammered fans are given precious air time to slur and stammer their appreciation for the Birds. If it's an away game, grinning correspondents are there to greet the bus or plane upon the team's return; if it was a win (which has mostly been the case, this season), top performers are greeted as authentic conquering heroes.

This, of course, is a far cry from honest journalism...but it is sports, after all. We understand this. And it's hometown sports, which means we wouldn't have it any other way. Fans expect this kind of fawning coverage (yes, even in notoriously ornery, front-running Philly), and a station that took a more objective approach to local teams would quickly lose market share to other stations that don't. Hell, you'd have picketing outside the studio, and sports jocks hung in effigy at the top of the museum steps that Rocky so famously ascended. But like I say...this is sports.

It shouldn't be that way in coverage of world affairs.

This occurs to me as I watch the continuing media hand-wringing over the would-be plane bomber, Abdullahmatoullahballoulah, or whatever the hell his name is. You or I might scream at the set, Hang the SOB! You or I might think that what he tried to do on that plane is unconscionable, and there's simply no room for argument. Of course the episode should be reported cynically. The bastard was trying to kill us!

That's OK because we're private citizens voicing individual views. The media, on the other hand, should not cover the story that way. The media shouldn't have a home team or a "house view." The media are required to seek the "meta view." No matter where they live or draw their paychecks.

To their credit, and with the notable exception of FOX and MSNBC, which do not report the news, the other major media outlets are gravitating towards a more nonpartisan, CNN-style lens on world events (i.e. the sort of multinational coverage that used to get people so up in arms over the likes of Peter Arnett and Christiane Amanpour). But when there's a crisis, or even a perceived crisis, journalists unfailingly close ranks around Old Glory. They cover the story as if there's only one "right" way of reporting it or even seeing it, especially if American lives are lost or were merely put at risk. In my view, that's just wrong. Terribly wrong. And it's wrong in this case even if people picket the station and hang studio executives in effigy. Fairness and honesty must trump ratings. This bomber thinks he has a legitimate gripe against us; he was willing to give up his life to prove it. Al Qaeda members think they have a legitimate gripe against us. The state of Iran thinks it has a legitimate gripe. North Korea has any number of gripes. Others in the Muslim world, even in so-called friendly states like Pakistan (and, as we recently saw, Norway), think the U.S. could use a good slap upside the head, though they may feel the need to be more circumspect in saying so. It's not up to the media to decide who's right and who's wrong.

Now, I suppose we could say, Let's make it simple: We'll take an enlightened, Gandhi-esque approach and demand that our media come out staunchly in favor of life. This would, by its very nature, justify the negative media coverage of all the Abdullahmatoullahballoulahs of the world, who are trying to kill people. So far so good.

Except...such an approach has implications.

A firm and unwavering stance that upholds the sanctity of human life would require the news media to officially condemn capital punishment, because once you start parsing categories of "just" and "unjust" killing, you run into all sorts of problems. (Not the least of which is, who gets to make those calls?) Similarly, though there are lingering issues having to do with the moment when life begins, the media would almost surely have to oppose abortion in concept. And the media would absolutely have to oppose wars, all wars, even the ones we're fighting and winning. There would be no triumphant footage of troops taking Baghdad or vanquishing fortified Taliban operatives. Journalists couldn't make exceptions for self-defense, either, because once you open the door to killing in self-defense, you in essence have justified 9/11: Terrorists would argue that their actions are in reprisal for many years of U.S. tyranny; they're defending themselves, their homelands and their religions. This would also mean that journalists could make no distinctions between cops who kill killers and killers who kill cops, between husbands who beat their wives to death and wives who finally take a meat cleaver to their abusive husbands.

See, it's not that easy. You start making exceptions, qualifying things, and pretty soon you've got the kind of journalism we get from FOX and MSNBC.

International affairs isn't a football game. There's no home team. And there shouldn't be.

P.S., 8:39 p.m. Tuesday. The vanity piece ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today. Nice presentation.

An improbable Yuletide message from your host.

It may shock many of you to hear this, but I have always loved Christmas. Sure, some of the attendant chores can be a pain: It's no fun stringing lights in a 16-degree wind chill and then discovering that the strand that worked perfectly when you tested it indoors no longer works when you finally get it tacked onto the fence around the deck. But even in that instance, once you get all the bugs out, and you're sipping hot chocolate as dusk arrives and you plug everything in and your little white lights instantly come alive, peeking through the accompanying pine boughs into the gathering indigo sky, and you're able to get the full effect of your handiwork for the first time... It's a great feeling. It is—dare I say it?—a joyous feeling.

I have always loved lots of things about life. And in my personal approach to daily living—that is, the little dialogue that occurs between me and me—I am upbeat and positive, expecting good things and generally seeing the glass as three-quarters full. What ticks me off is the commercialization of positivity, with the concomitant insincerity of the notion that if you pay me $9695—as James Ray's marks, uh, clients paid him—I can teach you how to apply a positive attitude to yourself as easily if you were putting on lipstick. Then there's the equally pervasive notion that by allowing you to hang with me—one thinks of Joe Vitale's obnoxious Phantom meetings—I enable you to absorb my own positivity in some osmotic way, such that my success will rub off on you. First of all, there's no evidence for the belief that Person A's path to greatness will also lead Person B to the same destination. (As I said in a recent TV interview, if it were that easy, we'd all drop out of college and become billionaires. After all, it worked for Bill Gates.) But you already know chapter and verse about that, and this started out as a Christmas post, so let's return to that theme, shall we?

In the course of my 59 years I have met so many people who trudge through life expecting nothing special. They have lost their reverence for life's grand and romantic traditions, for the things and times that are supposed to uplift us, energize us. We get jaded, cynical. "Scrooge-ified." We "outgrow" the childish enthusiasm that made certain events so magical. I'm not just talking here about formal occasions like Christmas and Easter and our birthdays, but also milestones like our first car or our first kiss or the first time we made love and really meant it. Even if those things are landmark moments, they shouldn't lose their meaning. There should be an echo of the same joy in every kiss, every time you make love, every time you look at a sunset. I think I've said this before but when I first moved to California, I lived in an area that was nestled in a valley between two minor mountain ranges. It was a gorgeous tableau—it was gorgeous each and every day—and yet I noticed that when my neighbors walked to their cars to get to work in the morning, few of them bothered to glance up. And no one ever actually paused to take it in. They didn't even look up on the cooler winter mornings when those encircling hills were likely to be capped with snow. For my neighbors, most of whom were lifelong residents, the whole panorama had become a Given, an amorphous, characterless backdrop. Those snow-capped mountains? They might as well have not even been there.

And I asked myself: How does your heart ever get that old and tired?

That's why I address this last part to the curmudgeons among us: those of you who long ago lost the joy of the season. It's been said before, but I recommend that each of you spend some time watching a child, preferably a group of children, experience Christmas. Look for the light in their eyes; drink in the giggles, the unending smiles. And now I'm going to close by getting really over-the-top syrupy, so those of you with no stomach for it may want to look away: I'm going to go Polar Express on you. Because I'm betting that somewhere deep inside, no matter how much time and distance and garbage and disappointment and sheer life has come between you and the wide-eyed child you were once, that bell is still faintly ringing. Where's the harm in trying to listen for it?

Is this tongue-in-cheek? Or just plain cheek?

Every now and then we're presented with a crystal-clear lesson in just how out of touch with Main Street America people in some walks of life truly are. That hit home for me again this morning when I saw a blurb about this piece in the January 2010 Vogue, which gives us the tragic tale of model Lara Stone: She is, you see, an elephantine size-4, complete with curves and actual "boobs" (to use the magazine's own terminology), so naturally she's having trouble navigating the fashionista world of living (for the time being) stick-figures. In the course of its sympathetic lament, the Vogue profile includes such memorable lines as "It's not easy being a four in a land of zeros" and "She has tried to lose weight with diet and exercise, but nothing worked." (I shit you not.) The article even chronicles Stone's descent into the bottle (!), where the overfed model sought refuge from her lingering body-image problems.

Fortunately for us all, there's a warm redemptive ending, as we learn that Lara has come to terms with her personal cross. "People still tell me I'm fat," she says, "but when I look in the mirror, that's not what I see."

Well bully for you, Lara. Gee, I'm sure that the millions of size-14-and-beyond women all over America are choking back the tears, maybe even thinking about staging a benefit on your behalf.... And remember, gals, this is your media [sic] at work. This is the industry that was supposed to empower you, speak for you, make you feel good about yourself. Make you feel comfortable in your own skin.

To paraphrase the line from former New York mayor Ed Koch, "So how are they doing?"

=========================

To continue what some perceive as my ongoing "defense" of sexual predators, this man, 25-year-old Shaun P. Austin, was sentenced to "72 to 192 years" in prison on Tuesday. That is, of course, the equivalent of a life sentence. Austin's crime consisted of having 100 images of child pornography on his home computer. That is it; that is the totality of his offense against society in this case. To be fair, this is no model citizen we're talking about. Austin, who is HIV-positive, also is accused in a separate case of having unprotected sex with underage girls. If he's convicted, and if that judge decides that the public interest is best served by locking this man up and throwing away the key for having committed that crime—a patent and despicable act of violence against another person—it'd be hard to argue. Especially given the psychiatric profiles of Austin, which are not encouraging. But life in prison for surfing child porn? I ask you to put aside your gut reactions and tell me how you can justify such extreme punishment for what is, in effect, a thought crime: a guy looking at something on a screen in the privacy of his own home. To my knowledge, even the lowlifes who produce child porn don't get those kinds of sentences, at least not the first time out.

Do you know that your fellow Americans are being questioned and (on admittedly rare occasion) arrested for frequenting other types of sites as well? Like, sites that teach you how to build bombs or wage a successful jihad? Apparently curiosity, in the form of a desire for certain types of knowledge, is illegal these days. Do you realize that spending a lot of time searching out and perusing sites put up by terrorist sympathizers may land you on a watch list, and your activities may be "tracked" thereafter? Do you know that if your school-age children talk too much about how angry they are, how they sometimes think of doing terrible things to their classmates, they may be charged with "making terroristic threats"? I've said this before, but when I was a kid in Brooklyn, we would've all been locked up; we made terrorist threats on a weekly basis. We threatened to beat the crap out of each other (and yes, sometimes acted on it), and now and then you'd open your locker and find a charming little note that said something like, "YOU'RE DEAD MEAT, SALERNO." To me, that's all part of growing up, of venting normal pubescent anger. I can't prove this, but I think that such bluster, if anything, often helps defuse situations, rather than inflaming them. It's when you don't let people vent, when you force the emotions underground, that you have the problems. But again, that's just my theory.

Regardless, this is your America, folks. Let's all sit around the Christmas tree and drink sparkling wine as it slips away.

P.S. Thursday morning, Dec. 24. The examples I could cite in support of the foregoing are legion, but I happened to notice this story in today's paper. A guy was sentenced to 60 years for killing his friend's wife. So on the one hand we have a man who kills someone and gets 60 years (with a possibility of release after 28). On the other hand we have a guy who looks at kiddie porn on his own computer and gets a minimum of 72 years. Once again, I would like this explained to me.

Jimmy's on crack, and I don't care.

Whence this practice of sending "holiday newsletters"? In fairness, I'm sure it all began some time ago, back in the era before people were in constant touch via Nextel or Twitter, when the arrival of the current newsletter each December represented a welcome way of catching up with important developments of the past year throughout the family and extended family. That said, I also sense that the practice has accelerated in recent times; certainly in this family, it has. And I have to see this as yet another outgrowth of the fulminating narcissism and "I celebrate myself!" movement that has hijacked American culture in recent decades. These things read like the self-congratulatory mini-memoirs teachers would encourage kids to write in the earliest days of self-esteem-based education. ("10 Reasons Why it's Great to be Me!") It's just that some kids never outgrew it, even now that they're in their mid-30s and have kids of their own.

One caveat, here. If you can write a comedy masterpiece, that's another story (bearing in mind that most folks who think they "write funny," well, don't. Corny is more like it.) My mother-in-law, who lives with us, has a cousin who sends just such a missive each Christmas, and we look forward to it. The woman is savvy and sly, and has perfect comedic timing, which is not easy to have in print. Above all, and this may be the key, she is self-deprecatory. In fact, the sarcastic genius of her presentation of legitimate news makes her newsletters read like parodies of the other kind, which only serves to amplify the humor.

Ahh yes, that "other kind." They are, in a word, insufferable. I ask the authors of such tedious documents why they think it's necessary for me to know that little Tommy passed his first fully formed stool, or that Debbie started school "and now eats green beans, and seems to really enjoy them! We're so excited!" Look, if something spectacular happened to you and/or yours—and I didn't already hear about it—by all means send a little note. But please, spare me the news about how happy you (still) are at the job you've had for two decades, or that you survived another year of marriage, or that you're enrolled in a spinning class or—God help us all—you've taken up scrapbooking.

So let me put this in the form of an official request. Unless your newsletter reads something like so...

The parole hearing is next month, and we're optimistic this time; two of Bob's three victims mysteriously died, so there are fewer people to speak for the other side.... Little Lucy has graduated—from percodan to fentanyl... MaryAnne finally succeeded at fulfilling one of her life's goals. (She got a very nice thank-you note from the Birmingham football team, too.)... Meanwhile, the cops found one of the animals' heads, so Ted is going to have to be more careful about disposal...

...feel free to save a stamp and a tree by omitting me from your list. Merry Christmas and HO-HO-HO!

========================

Alert readers will notice that an item has been deleted from the blog. I have my reasons, and they're good ones. To those of you who took the trouble to comment in response to that item, I apologize, and I urge you to resist feeling that those efforts were wasted. We'll come back to it again when the time is right.

Give my egads to Broadway. Plus: Chuck's plane speaking.

Barring further logistical fallout from yesterday's Great Blizzard of 2009, I will be venturing into the city tomorrow (here in the Northeast, "the city" can refer to just one destination) in connection with that Potentially Very Exciting Opportunity I mentioned in passing some time back. And if I'm not as specific as I might be, or as some of you would like me to be, it's because I don't want to jinx it. Yes, it's true: I'm trying to be a positive thinker, foreclosing the prospect of a negative outcome simply by not talking about it. We all have these little superstitious bargains we make.

Each time I journey to the city, which isn't often nowadays since I spend most of my time holed up in my aforementioned basement, which is really where I ought to be for the mutual benefit of me and mankind, I find that I end up thinking about Broadway shows.

I think about how much I hate them.

Hate 'em. Two or even three hours of grotesque overacting sans nuance or subtlety, brimming with forced, cloying sentiment and/or—if it's a so-called musical—punctuated by regular outbreaks of spontaneous singing, often with marginal relevance to the action at the time, and perpetrated by individuals who, in most cases (though admittedly not all), don't so much sing as shout in a passably melodious timbre. (In my mind's eye, I see American Idol's Randy Jackson grimacing and saying, "It's pitchy, dog, a little pitchy...") I've been to a half-dozen shows in my lifetime, mostly when I was younger, and always because I felt it was "required"* or because I was discharging some romantic debt. Couldn't wait for it all to end. The one semi-exception is West Side Story, and that's only because I love the ensemble dancing in the garage scene ("Cool"). You can keep the rest of it. I actually laughed out-loud when Tony got stabbed, the whole thing was so over-staged and affected. I would've stabbed the entire cast long before that.

I don't understand the attraction. (You may have gotten that idea by now?) I think of myself as a reasonably open-minded guy, and I can at least see the appeal for others of many of the things I personally dislike, but not in this case. My inability to relate to theato-philia is so profound that I find myself thinking that Broadway, like certain other aspects of Manhattan life, is so closely identified with New York and such an embodiment of local pride that Manhattanites almost feel they have to like it, or pretend to like it, or at least defend it, lest their subscription to The New Yorker will be revoked.

=============================

While we're on the subject of things I don't understand, we can add the recent dust-up involving Rep. Chuck Schumer, which some have framed as a symbolic mile marker in the gender wars, i.e. one that reveals the misogyny that still lingers in the soul of even the most (outwardly) enlightened male. See, our man Chuck called a female flight attendant a bitch (and not even to her face. He says, and a witness agrees, that he uttered the word under his breath as the flight attendant was walking way. Trouble is, he was overheard). Not a nice thing to do, Chuck; your mama would be very unhappy with you. However, why is this being hyperbolized and interpreted as the token of simmering gender unrest that some, like this essayist, would have you believe it is?

What's Schumer supposed to call a woman he's displeased with? (And I can think of a far worse word. I'm sure you can, too.) A prick?

I use that last word pointedly, because it's not a term anyone would ever apply to a woman—"That Nancy, she's such a prick!"—and yet it's a word you often hear women (and men) use to describe a guy with whom they're displeased. The fact that certain words of displeasure are gender-specific doesn't imply that the use of that word represents a putdown of an entire class of people. I suspect that there might even have been a few times since the dawn of humanity when a woman referred to another woman as a bitch. Even the aforementioned essayist concedes that much.

Anyway, I suggest that from now on, whenever we want to denounce someone, we make sure to use gender-neutral terms. I recommend asshole. As that crass old bit of conventional wisdom puts it, everyone has one....

* There are some shows you sort of "have" to see to be considered socially au courant. E.g Phantom or Rent or, some years back, Les Miserables, which the theater crowd began calling "Lay Miz," and I would gag every time.

Alone together.

I was intrigued by today's Quote of the Day, from Robert Louis Stephenson:

"Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a poor substitute for life."

Right on, Bob. And I think the line applies in spades to today's Digital Generation. Facebooking, tweeting and the rest of it may be excellent adjuncts to daily life (or respites from it), when they're regarded as tools. But when they become daily life, or even a significant part of it—when your social network* is your only network—I find that worrisome. And kind of tragic.

This, not incidentally, constitutes no small part of my objection to the SHAMsphere as well. If you haven't read the final passage of SHAM, I commend it to you now. It concerns a woman I know who uses self-help as a fantasy life, forever immersing herself in grandiose plans of what she's going to do, the life she's going to lead. Meanwhile, nothing in her real life ever changes.

* using the phrase in its more current cyber-meaning.

I'm stewed, she's screwed...and the logic is skewed?

My wife has a saying: "There's should be and there's is." Her meaning is simple: There are numerous aspects of life and/or human nature that don't make sense, that seem unfair or unfortunate, that put all the burdens on all the wrong people. And that's just how it goes; no sense arguing the point. Or so she says.

The classic example that comes up all the time with us involves adults and kids, specifically, the mingling of the former with the latter when there's no preexisting relationship between the two. I'm one of those super-grandparenty types who loves playing with kids, or just engaging them in conversation wherever I may encounter them. (By the way, that's your unshaven, unkempt-looking host being mauled by granddaughter Ava this past Thanksgiving.) I always hope to put a smile on their faces—is there ever such thing as a child smiling too much?—and to hear the sorts of wacky things they'll say to total strangers. If I'm in a supermarket and I see a couple of adorable kids a few aisles away, I'll mosey on over and begin interacting with them. If Kathy's around and she sees me doing this, she'll drop what she's doing and trail right behind me so that the parents don't see a man alone cozying up to their kids. But sometimes even that doesn't help: The parents get paranoid anyway and quickly pull their children off in another direction, giving me suspicious looks all the while.

This drives me nuts, pisses me off mightily, and it's not just that I hate being treated as if I'm a pedophile. It's that I worry about the world-view that such parents are inculcating in their young. "They're making the outside world seem like such a scary place," I lament to Kathy.

To which she'll reply, "You watch the news every night. How can you even say that with a straight face?"

"But that has nothing to do with me. I'm innocent till proven guilty. It shouldn't have to be this way. I should be able to play with those kids if I want to. It would do them good, too."

Which is when I get the inevitable lecture about the difference between should be and is.

I think of this apropos of the growing controversy over that recent piece by noted advice columnist "Ask Amy" Dickinson, in which she blamed a rape victim for putting herself in the kind of precarious situation that's likely to end in, well, rape. My wife agrees with the columnist. (For the record, my wife is also pretty hard on Beth Holloway, mother of Natalee, as well as the teachers and supposed chaperones who were along on that ill-fated trip to Aruba. "They should've known better. Who lets a young girl go off on an unsupervised trip like that in a foreign country? For God's sake, that girl spent the whole day drinking the day she disappeared!" Kathy is very consistent in this approach to life: PRUDENCE FIRST. Don't put yourself in harm's way and then cry victim later. My wife also thinks that rescue parties should not be sent out after climbers who get themselves in a pickle while scaling some remote peak. "If they're dumb enough to do that," she says, "then they shouldn't expect other people to clean up their mess.")

But the funny thing is, I agree with the columnist, too, and logically I shouldn't, given what I said above about me and kids. I agree with Dickinson (and my wife) that while in theory a girl should be able to go anywhere she wants to go at any time of day or night, in practice it's foolish to approach life that way, so she probably shouldn't start blaming others when something goes awry. And while I also agree with feminists that a woman should have the right to say "no" at any point during sex, it's pretty dumb (and—dare I even say it?—damn inconsiderate) to use that as a rule of thumb, as it were, in your sex life. And so once again, you must at least share the blame when such an MO ends badly. I've written before that in light of the risks to young women, the he said/she said nature of date rape, and the consequences for all concerned when such accusations are made dishonestly, there should be policies in place that outline the circumstances under which a woman can make such a charge. For example, I have questioned whether a college woman who voluntarily accompanies a male student back to his dorm room should be legally allowed to allege later that she was raped. (Or, we can turn it around, if you prefer: A male student who takes a woman back to his room is relinquishing his right to a defense if he's later charged with rape. It sure would introduce a much-needed extra half-second of forethought into hook-up culture, wouldn't it?) If you don't want to have sex, don't go back to his room, or don't invite him back to yours. What's the problem? Who's being singled out? Hell, there are diners and coffee shops open 24 hours a day if all you want to do is talk.*

It's funny because there are some positions I take on this blog mostly for reasons of devil's advocacy. That's not the case today. I really believe in all the arguments that I've presented here, yet they're logically incongruous.... Hey, I never promised you a prose garden.

(Let the collective groaning begin!)

* I'm being a bit glib and simplistic here, but if that were indeed the law, certainly there could be accommodations made throughout society for young men and women who want to have some level of privacy without a woman feeling totally isolated and at the man's mercy.

I think this whole line of thought is artificial. Naturally.

I have several relatives who, for some years now, have been on a "natural" kick. They scrupulously monitor everything that comes into their homes—certainly everything that goes into their mouths—for its content, and if anything on the list of ingredients even remotely sounds like a man-made chemical, they will not eat it, wear it, whatever. Their overall MO is simple: It's organic or it's out the door.

I have a feeling I know what you're expecting at this point, and you're wrong. This is not going to be some politicized Limbaugh-esque rant about why "there's really nothing wrong with artificial substances at all, and while I'm at it, industrial pollutants are an excellent addition to the ecosystem, thank you." This is an argument for why the subject should not be viewed in simplistic terms. Natural is not in every case better than artificial, or even synonymous with "good." And artificial is hardly a synonym for bad for you.

First of all, there are lots of natural things that you wouldn't even want to be in the same room with, let alone eat. Plutonium-238 comes to mind, as do grizzly bears. Even on a less whimsical plane, Nature also gives us many poisonous plants (e.g. oleander) and dangerous bugs. Recklessly mega-dose yourself (or especially your kids) with certain vitamins or other nutrients and you can cause serious health problems. Conversely, there are thousands if not millions of altogether unnatural (i.e. artificial) things that we now depend on to sustain life. This includes, most obviously, many medicines.

On a more philosophical plane: What really determines whether or not something is "natural"? My dictionary defines natural as "existing in or formed by Nature." This means, of course, that people are products of Nature. And so it follows that the things that people produce are also products of Nature. Doesn't that make everything, including the laptop on which I'm typing this, a product of Nature? On the other hand, if you're going to argue that in order to be considered a product of Nature, something must be found in Nature in its original, unmodified state... Well, wouldn't that rule out, say, tangelos? As well as species of dogs that were cross-bred (e.g. cockapoos/labradoodles) or even just purposely bred away from their natural natures, as it were?

It is also true that lots of natural things can be used in unnatural ways for the benefit of mankind. F'rinstance, there's an entire class of blood pressure medications known as ACE* inhibitors that are derived from the venom of a South American viper. If you came by that venom the natural way—which is to say, by meeting the viper in person—you would not be that happy with the outcome. Yet processed through the unnatural ways of modern medicine, the venom is a godsend for millions of Americans. Including, recently, this one.

While I understand that we want to exercise care in what we eat (and perhaps even what we wear), I really think the whole Natural craze is about snobbery. Maybe not the usual brand of snobbery, which is rooted in money and status per se, but more an intellectual/social snobbery: We're the people who 'get it.' We're plugged-in. Such thinking seems especially prevalent among New Age types, and proceeds from a form of animism that imbues natural things with all sorts of spiritual attributes that I seriously doubt are there.

I'd stay longer but I'm off to make myself a nice bologna sandwich on enriched white bread.

* You can look up the acronym for yourself. It's really not material here.

Let them eat derivatives.

Ever since the GOP seized upon the S word and the R word during Campaign 2008—that's socialism and redistribution (as in, "...of wealth")—we've tended as a culture to flinch away from all notions that capitalism is anything but the best economic system for the good old USofA. And that may still be true. But people who get all warm and fuzzy about capitalism, and who consider it a sacrosanct part of Americana since Plymouth Rock, tend to forget that capitalism then was very different from capitalism now. So much about the American free market has changed—just as the entire social context for the 2nd Amendment has changed (even if it did once mean what the NRA says it means, which I personally don't buy). After all, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788, which I think was even before iPhones, cable and Lady Gaga.

Capitalism was a marvelous system for an emerging, industrializing nation, a nation whose economic growth was inexorably tied to the production of actual things—cars, homes, tractors, bullets, sinks, Louisville Sluggers. More growth entailed more labor. To get bigger you had to build factories. Those factories required the employment of people, who could then take their earnings and go out and buy still more products, thus fueling new demand and theoretically keeping the cycle humming along in perpetuity. That model changed in recent decades as the locus/focus of American growth (or at least activity) shifted to derivatives and elements of intellectual property; these often involved far fewer if any added workers, or even any added work. A good layman's example of this—i.e. without getting into the stock market and the arcane financial instruments that helped sunder AIG and many banks—is the so-called "personal seat license" or PSL, now commonly sold by many sports teams, particularly when they're about to unveil hot new stadiums. You're not actually buying season tickets...you're buying an option on season tickets, the right to buy those tickets at some point down the road. Thus the demand for a season ticket has itself been commodified, adding another layer of financial participation to the merchandise. The PSL itself does nothing. It creates nothing. It's a simple form of derivative.

Or it's also like the SHAMsphere (as well as most multilevel marketing): If my program for teaching you how to get rich consists of teaching you how to teach other people how to get rich, and so on and so forth, there's nothing really going on there but a concept. There is no product beyond illusion and imagination; it's a financial hall of mirrors. Once again, I have commodified hope and greed, neither of which, in its pure state, requires factories; neither of which is labor-intensive. I have found a way to create wealth (mine) without infrastructure. There is little or no new economic activity set in motion in such a paradigm; there is only the money extracted from those who currently have it. The income stream changes direction: from trickle-down to pour-up.

This new model of capitalism allows for the accrual of enormous sums of money without the commensurate broad-scale socioeconomic growth that supplied the (supposed) benefits even as recently as, say, Reaganomics. The added revenue no longer must be shared or passed along, translated into the development of factories and warehouses and offices and retail stores. Whatever profit is created stays at the top, or damn close.

I'm leaving out a few steps here, but the bottom line is that this newer model of "growth" is unsustainable. You cannot have an entire, vibrant, well-rounded economic system that exists to serve the upper class: a boats-and-Botox economy. In a nation of 300 million people, you cannot simply have rich folks selling to other rich folks (while also continuing to siphon off money from the not-so-rich folks below). After a while there isn't enough traditional commerce going on in the overall to provide bloodflow to the American body as a whole. After a while the tax base will consist chiefly of whatever incremental sums we can squeeze out of that top 10 or 20 percent, which funds must be used more and more to help out the other 80 or 90 percent who've been disinvited from the party. That is where we're headed.

We'd do well to keep in mind that when a parasite finally sucks all of the blood out of a host...both die.

I guess they expected Barack magic.

UPDATE, Saturday, December 12. I invite all those who peevishly blame the president for what's been happening (or not happening) in Washington to take a look at this poll, just out on PollingReport.com. You will recall that Obama, throughout his campaign, advocated a so-called "public option" as part of healthcare reform, and he has continued to fight for it during the tumult of the past several months. The poll linked above shows that just under 60 percent of Americans, overall, favor a public option. Among Democrats—whose elected officials theoretically control the White House as well as both houses of Congress—the figure is 80 percent. Even a full one-third of Republicans favor the plan. And yet we can't seem to get it done in the obstructivist, gamesmanship-dominated, lobbyist-inflected climate within today's Beltway.

=================================

While we're on the subject of politics, major governmental initiatives, political biases and all that, I must say I am astounded, absolutely astounded, by what's been happening to Obama's approval numbers. Understand, I'm not so much astounded by the fact that it's happening. Nothing surprises me anymore, certainly not in politics or government. I'm astounded by what the decline tells me, again, about my fellow Americans, who not only want everything, but apparently want it done yesterday.

I can see how Obama's policies (and, maybe more so, his populist views) wouldn't have won him any converts among the GOP. Fair enough. GOP loyalists are going to hate him a little bit more for every new policy he enacts. But the precipitous decline in the approval ratings—to the point where he could easily slip quite soon to a position where a plurality (if not a majority) of Americans disapprove—says clearly that a fair number of those who voted for the man have jumped ship. Already. Whether you supported him to begin with, as I did, or not, let's review what Barack Obama was up against. No sooner did he take the oath of office than he had to figure out:

• what to do about Iraq and the war on terror as a whole
  
• what to do about entire industries on the verge of collapse
• what do do about a wider economy and job market that were in free fall
• how to prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes
• how to unstick a credit market that had slowed to nothing
• how to go about ensuring healthcare coverage for all Americans, and
• how to restore confidence in the stock market

Those are just the major issues, and I'm pretty sure I must have forgotten at least one or two others. Today, though the economy is hardly humming along, and healthcare remains a partisan (and even internecine) hornet's nest, most of the above-listed problems are no longer at crisis stage.

So do these latest approval numbers really say that at least some of the voters who supported Obama expected him to fix all these problems, once and for all, in 10 months or less? Amid the highly polarized, obstructionist climate that is Washington, D.C.?

I can only shake my head.

=========================

And, for our daily moment of hilarity... As I write this I'm listening to a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, Jenice Armstrong, explain why so many black women are especially upset with Tiger Woods. Is it because he's a lying no-good pig? No. Is it because he's reinforcing the negative stereotype of black men that already exists in some precincts? No. Is it because he's a black dude who "made it out," made it big, yet all that success still wasn't enough for him? No.

It's because he picks white women to cheat with.

That's right. Black women are upset, says Armstrong, because Tiger doesn't like to dishonor his marriage with them. Once more I can only fall back on the words of the immortal Dave Barry: I swear, I am not making this up.

Controlling the debate on climate control?

With the Obama administration taking a tough new stance on greenhouse gases, and history's largest-ever convention on climate change getting under way in Copenhagen, I find myself rattled—and more than a little bit angry—over those emails that point to a conspiracy to control the debate, and even the mere flow of information, on global warming. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, here's a decent summary and timeline from my local paper, the Morning Call. And here's a column from the Wall Street Journal that I think is worth reading.

Like many concerned citizens, I've gradually come to accept the reality of global warming and the dangers it poses to mankind. As I am not a meteorologist, climatologist, geologist or the like, I came to this position based on three factors: my faith in the growing consensus among mainstream scientists; the mainstream media's relentless hard sell; and yes, the simple elegance of Al Gore's pleas. I've seen opponents of the global-warming model marginalized; I've heard the rhetorical venom that's spat at naysayers like Rush Limbaugh, who are characterized as cold-hearted sybarites and flat-earthers. So I figured the whole thing had to be true.

And now I find out, or at least it begins to appear, that global-warming activists may themselves be guilty of putting agenda before science: that they may have orchestrated a massive, coordinated disinformation campaign that pointedly and systematically excluded not just opposing viewpoints but opposing data. You can read about the latter aspect of it all in the articles linked above, but to me, one of the most telling instances of this backstage maneuvering involves a leading industry journal, Climate Research. After the journal had the audacity to publish a paper skeptical of some of the numbers the global-warming community cites in making its case, these leading scientists—it is alleged—struck a schoolyard bully's pose, recommending a boycott of the journal by the wider scientific community. "I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal,'' wrote one scientist in one of the controversial emails. ''Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.''

See, to me, this goes back to that whole discussion we were having the other day about journalism. I find it tragic that so many people today—instead of consuming all the news there is to consume, and from the most reliable and impartial sources they can find—not only refuse to read dissenting opinions but will even dismiss opposing evidence out of hand. Why? Why do leftists listen only to MSNBC and right-wingers watch only FOX? News consumption should not be about getting your ego stroked or your prejudices confirmed. So explain to me why intelligent people insist on hearing only one side of a story—clearly spun to conform to an existing bias—from a news organization that long ago abandoned the practice of journalism and now dedicates itself to the dissemination of propaganda. If nothing else, why not watch both MSNBC and FOX, and then "you decide."

Alas, you find very few people who do that, who studiously toggle back and forth between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann, keeping an open mind throughout. Viewers don't even want to be exposed to the other side. God forbid they might hear something provable (or at least credible) that runs counter to their carefully honed world-view.

I honestly don't understand this. If you're a thinking human being, don't you want the facts? All of the facts? Is your ego so tied up in the positions you embrace that you can't bear the thought of being revealed as even a tiny bit wrong? We've seen this in recent years with, among other things, the controversies over whether breast implants cause systemic disease and whether childhood vaccinations cause autism. In the beginning it was understandable that people (especially those with a vested interest) might divide themselves evenly at both poles of the discussion: We'll call them poles A and Z. But after the facts began pouring in supporting pole A and making pole Z seem increasingly indefensible and out of touch, why would people at pole Z continue to cling to their position, throwing every kind of barb they could at the mounting piles of evidence? Why would Jenny McCarthy, a long-time foe of childhood vaccinations, blurt things like, "I don't even listen to what they say anymore"?

Huh? So you like sounding ignorant?

Thankfully, there is no X on Amanda's forehead.

This is apropos of nothing, but you must watch it. Just not right after eating. And you have to stick with it till at least the 1-minute point.

================================

It's hard to know what to make of the Amanda Knox verdict.

Twenty-five years of writing, encompassing a number of sensational crime stories, has taught me a simple truth: One can never know what secrets and demons hide in the heart of a given human being. Living in San Diego, I covered the case of CHP Officer Craig Peyer, whom coworkers and neighbors described as just the nicest guy in the world, a guy who'd do anything for you, a guy who went out of his way to help the media get the word out regarding the safety of young people, particularly young women, traveling alone at night. Two nights after Christmas 1986, for reasons that remain murky, Officer Peyer pulled one such young woman, Cara Knott, off the freeway into the dark, where he apparently beat her over the head with his massive CHP flashlight, strangled her and threw her off an overpass. She landed on a rocky ravine below, and when the police found her the next day (after an all-night search by her own parents, sisters and fiance)...well, one of the earliest cops on the scene described her body to me thusly: "She looked like what happens when you take a Milky Way out of the freezer and slam it on the counter." Craig Peyer became the first member of the illustrious California Highway Patrol to be convicted of committing a homicide while on duty. (In an eerie and tragic footnote, Cara's father, Sam, later died while sprucing up the memorial that had been built in his daughter's memory at the site where her broken body was found.)

That said, I must also say that on the surface of things, there's seldom been a case where someone struck me as a less likely murder suspect than Amanda Knox—especially given the grisly nature of the murder at hand. Throughout the story and the trial she seemed much younger than her 22 years, almost like a giddy teenager. During breaks in the proceedings, she mugged and grinned as if she were really backstage at a high school performance of To Kill a Mockingbird (and maybe looking forward to prom night, tomorrow).

But then after a while, you start to think about that on another level. You start to think about how bizarre it is for someone to be acting that way while she's being held without bail in a foreign country, on trial for murder. This is, by all accounts, a highly intelligent girl. She knew full well what was going on over there, and what was at stake. Why the hell is she laughing and winking all the time? This is also the same girl who did cartwheels and splits (!) in the police station while waiting to be interviewed shortly after the murder. Knox's lawyer says Amanda was just working off nervous energy. OK, but come on. Even if the girl never imagined she'd be a prime suspect in the case, her friend had just been butchered in the apartment they shared. Meredith Kercher's throat was sliced open; she died choking on her own blood. And you're doing cartwheels in the police station?

I'm not saying I think the girl did it after all. I'm pretty certain that here in the U.S., with any jury except perhaps the type of jury that sprung O.J., Knox would've been acquitted. You can't really consider the inappropriate behaviors, the laughing and the cartwheels (or the panty-shopping with her boyfriend* the day after the murder)—that's not evidence, in my view—and what evidence there was is simply too thin and ambiguous, based on everything I've seen and heard. No question, I would've voted "not guilty."

I'm just saying that I wonder if there may be something slightly amiss with Miss Knox, regardless of her guilt or innocence in this case. Sometimes when the camera catches her just a certain way, she has the oddest cast in her eye. Of course I'm having that reaction, at least in part, because I already know that this girl has been arrested (and now convicted) in a homicide case; I'm contextualizing her.

Whatever the reason, at those moments, to tell you the honest truth, my mind flashes back four decades and I sort of see one of the Manson girls.

* also tried and convicted.

Sign of the Times. (And Newsweek. And Playboy. And...)

First off, it's good to see more and more people outing the sleazeballs in the SHAMsphere, as Mitch Lipka does here with our old friend, Kevin Trudeau. Perhaps if this continues, it will start to "take," and not everything these jokers churn out will become an instant goldmine (for them).

==============================

I've whined before about the obstacles facing those of us who seek gainful employment in academia despite the lack of a "terminal degree." Gainful employment is defined as something above "would you like fries with that?" wages. I'm not being entirely jocular in saying that. At many colleges, an adjunct-level lecturer earns maybe $3000-$4000 per course taught, per semester. You can adjunct at two or three different colleges, as many will, and take home less than $20,000 a year for your efforts. But what's just as depressing as the money lately... Well, let me back up.

Every few months I scan the sites that advertise open faculty positions in journalism. Just to see what's out there. I guess I keep thinking—hoping? dreaming? fantasizing?—that one of these days I'm going to stumble on a niche like I had at Indiana University for three charmed years in the late 1990s. There, as a visiting professor in magazine journalism, I was paid full faculty wages for visiting campus two, maybe three days a week. I was also the happiest I've ever been, professionally; I was given free rein in the classroom to teach basically whatever I wanted to teach about writing, however I wanted to teach it, and the modest time commitment left me plenty of hours to do writing of my own in between. I'd gotten that job only because I "knew someone," though that didn't occur to me at the time. It was my first foray into college-level employment and I figured, "Hell, if they're paying me that kind of money in Indiana for part-time work, I bet the schools on either coast will pay me well into six figures." I was right, too. I just didn't realize where the decimal point would go.

Which brings us back to that damn terminal degree. The fact that I offer nothing beyond a lowly BA—seen in academic circles as the rough equivalent of a GED—is well-known by now to the SHAMblog faithful, or to anyone who's clicked on my resume (or "CV" in academic parlance. Incidentally, that's one of the ways academics can tell whether you're really "one of them," right off the bat: If you call it a resume, you're not). Apparently, except for the few schools that maintain "professional-in-residence" tracks—and even more of those are demanding at least an MA—none of my real-world experience counts: not my 25 years of writing for the creme-de-la-creme in American media, not my books, not my movie deals*, not my stints on the other side of the desk as an editorial higher-up at The American Legion Magazine and Men's Health Books. Not even my three years at IU, where students consistently rated me among the top profs in the program and where, my dean told me, I once received a few votes from my faculty colleagues for Teacher of the Year. Nope. None of it matters.

As bad as all that is, what bothers me even more of late is that I see myself being increasingly marginalized in terms of the nature of my expertise. So many of the jobs these days—almost all of them on this site, which I check every few weeks—seek expertise in "digital media" or "multimedia journalism" or "convergence journalism" or "interactive journalism," which I'm not even sure exists, except as a handy oxymoron. More on this in a moment.

I could spend hundreds if not thousands of words making the connection that I'm about to make, but I'm pressed for time today so I'm simply going to stipulate it: The core problem here is that kids don't read. If they do read, it's online. But mostly they just don't read, period. Oh, they might tell you they read, but chances are what they call "reading" is really Facebooking, tweeting, blogging, checking out the latest on TMZ, etc—the interactive stuff where they're not merely consuming someone else's thoughts but constantly adding their own two cents as well. Or they'll read books that maintain ginormous online forums where readers are stopping every few pages to communicate with fellow readers. (Harry Potter and all those silly vampire novels come to mind.) Thus, to them, "reading" is just another form of social networking. Teens in particular have neither the patience nor interest to shut off the iPod/iPhone, put the computer on "sleep," then sit there and devote hours to digesting someone else's ideas...and they're too narcissistic to be emotionally equipped to do so without having the right to tell everybody what they think about it whenever the mood strikes them. Everything today has to have this interactive component...has to be participatory in some way. (How do you think Guitar Hero got to be the cultural bellwether it is?) If they have the choice, today's young adults would no more go to an old-style lecture—where you just sit quietly and take in what somebody else thinks—than spay or neuter themselves, sans painkillers.

The world of print may not be dead, but much of it is on life support, and that includes all of the iconic brands in my headline. The New York Times is barely solvent. Playboy, like its founder, struggles to stay upright. The newsweeklies have been limping along for years. All this, surely in large part, because fewer and fewer people are willing to just sit down, shut up and read.**

It's like blogging. The true test of a blog is whether people would continue to read it if they couldn't comment. Look, I love our contributors, and I've made that clear many times; I think the discussion unfolds on about as high a plane as you're apt to find on any mainstream blog, yet without being stuffy or offputting. That's quite a balancing act, and it's no mean feat—and it has absolutely nothing to do with me. The whole phenomenon is contributor-driven. That said, I have no illusions about the fact that readership of SHAMblog would drop by half (conservatively) if tomorrow I implemented a "no comments" policy. Everyone wants in. Everyone also wants to see what everyone else is thinking and how everyone else is reacting as the discussion evolves. People want to see where the thread goes. In today's world, people also want that sense of community, and sometimes (ironically) cyberspace is the only place they can find it, or feel comfortable with it. I'm not saying that's such a bad thing in and of itself. Selfishly, as the proprietor of this blog, I'm grateful for it.

It's just that this whole idea of universal access to media is a bad omen for journalism, which—as I've also said before—isn't something anyone can do on a whim. It requires formal training and a certain amount of discretion and responsibility. It has rules and procedures and ethical standards. (To make a very, very small point: Do you have any idea how much of the material posted online is libelous, by traditional definitions? If it weren't for the Supreme Court decision that generally protects a blogger like me from the indiscretions of the people who post/comment, the medium would either be awash in lawsuits or would be shut down overnight.) As mentioned before, I'm reading Markos Moulitsas' book, and very early on it becomes clear that the Daily Kos founder confuses journalism and reporting with activism and spin. The thousands of political bloggers now plying their trade with varying degrees of success are not journalists. What they do is really the antithesis of journalism.*** (Kos is also big on the word gatekeepers, which he likes to use in the same approximate way that Republicans use the word socialism. Yes, editors at networks and major publications are gatekeepers. So are medical licensing boards. Would we really want to do away with them?) Kos and others popularize a view of journalism that, in my view, is counterproductive, even dangerous. This idea that he keeps celebrating throughout his book—that the blogosphere has democratized media, giving everyone a voice—may be another one of those concepts, like self-esteem, that sounds great but has any number of serious side effects that lay just beneath the surface.

* There were two such deals, but only one film actually got made.
** Playboy may be a special case. Many argue that the magazine, which has suffered such serious readership attrition in recent decades, is being undone by the cheap availability of online porn: No one needs to go out and buy a magazine anymore to see naked women. If you're in college, as a fair chunk of Playboy's readers historically have been, you can see 'em pretty much anytime you want. But I don't think it's quite that simple. There was a time when people actually did "read Playboy for the articles," articles that were brilliant and engaging, and written by some of the top names in American journalism and letters. That time is no more. Not because Playboy stopped publishing them. More because people stopped caring.
*** And for the record, no, SHAMblog is not journalism, either. Not for the most part. And since I usually spend no time making distinctions between that "most part" and the other parts, I don't think it's fair to hold the entire blog up as a beacon of journalism.