Dissection and Introspection

'We do not need to tell you what happened 10 years ago today. You know.'

2011-09-13T16:19:00.000-04:00

The Star-Ledger has my favorite Sept. 11 anniversary cover, partly because it is just words. In this day, when text always has to submit to the power of images, they're making a very powerful statement by not including a photograph -- or a drawing, or a compilation.

They also included a reprint of the Sept. 12, 2001 issue in Sunday's paper. I still get goosebumps reading it all.

I still dislike the idea that we have to live each day as if it's our last, but that's another story. Beautiful cover.

A Message Board Devotee No Longer

2011-07-11T14:58:00.002-04:00

I used to be an avid message board user.

I was never a prolific poster, though – I preferred to lurk, as was the parlance, reading others’ posts and occasionally chiming in. The problem with television shows, though, was that if you didn’t post quick enough, a lot of what you’d say was repetitive. Also, writing posts was very time-consuming, at least to me – everything had to be structured, checked over, formatted.

I also found that I had a limit, in terms of how many pages I was willing to read. Being active in a forum is very time-consuming. Checking every topic of interest, reading up on the threads of note – hours, hours, hours.

And so, I moved away.

I am prompted to write about this now after reading Virginia Heffernan’s ode to message boards in her online column for NYTimes.com. She write about the fertility boards she visited in 2004, and how they’ve declined over the past half-decade as social networking grew more popular – places where you connected with friends, people with real names, rather than just avatars and handles. The trajectory of the boards and their users mirrors my own behavior – something I’ve noticed with many other internet behavior shifts.

My family first signed up for the internet in 2000, and I spent the first few months wading through the a/s/l of AOL chat forums, a creepy place that always left me sick to my stomach. I bookmarked everything. Eventually I waded into the EW.com forums, where I got through Sept. 11 (I was worried about one of the regulars), before Time Warner closed them up and moved to a version of their current commenting section. Everyone flew to the People.com boards, but I didn’t stay long.

It was on the sites that I first heard of Mighty Big TV, which shortly after I joined it in October 2001 became Television Without Pity, a name it still retains after it was bought by Bravo Networks in 2007. There, I found a like-minded and passionate community around television. It was a big site, but it wasn’t overwhelming, and I spent many a day in school thinking about what I would post online about various episodes, and about the people behind the posts.

I spent so much time on the site, however, that I eventually began to police myself. I refused to post for an entire summer. In hindsight, that was the beginning of the end. I entered college, and I found that no longer was my loneliness placated by visiting the site. Watching television and spending hours analyzing it was no longer as fun when there were interesting people around to spend time with instead.

With television, like many other topics, time changes things. Once a show begins to show age, fans fly the coop. It becomes unbearable to spend a significant amount of time on a show if it’s no longer enjoyable, when most of the posts are merely complaints or nostalgia. While some shows have overlapping fans, eventually a show ends and fans move on, and the community disperses. What’s also significant in this world is the rise in other technologies. DVR and Netflix, to me, have killed many of these communities. Television, for most of its history, relied on the time factor – a new episode weekly, for a period of months, with fallow periods in between. But with a DVR, if you watch a show a few days later, or months later, the discussion isn’t the same. People who watch shows online, or watch a few episodes in a row – all common behaviors – also changes the nature of anticipation and speculation. Netflix enables viewers to watch whole series in a manner of weeks, so the long discussions on character behavior, motivations, and plot outlines disappear.

Topics devoted to media speculation, finding actors in small spots in movies and other shows, and well as press coverage also have changed in the last decade, now that gossip sites and most mainstream media also devote a large section of coverage to entertainment. Although IMDB has been around for a while, it’s fairly easy to find out that a favorite character actor guested in a blockbuster several years ago. It’s a different world.

I’ve waded occasionally into Television Without Pity, but the old communities are gone. Screen names I knew a decade ago no longer exist. People have moved on. There are new shows, most of which I don’t watch. I’ve found that I prefer to spend my time differently. Do I miss it? I do. I miss that side of myself – the television-loving, analyzing-everything, upfront-reading self. I assume at some point, parts of it will resurface. I have that capacity within myself.

Like Heffernan, I am part of the problem. I haven’t posted in ages, and the few times I have in the past four or five years have been one-offs. No one remembers my handle, except one friend – she was the first person I ever met who had ever heard of the site. And even now, I’m not sure if she goes on.

Like many things of early internet, I don’t think forums will ever go away. They have a purpose, but it a short-lived one. As people move throughout their lives, interests and priorities change, and that includes habits.

What's Missing in the Jared Loughner Narrative

2011-01-16T18:33:00.004-05:00

I've been following the Giffords shooting, as I've done for most of the other major massacres the past several years.

But one thing, despite all the Times stories on Loughner, remains missing, and that is Loughner’s parent's reaction to him getting kicked out of school in September and what happened in the months after, between when he bought the gun in November and when the actual shooting occurred.

The officers drove to Loughner’s house to deliver his suspension letter from Pima Community College, reading the entire letter to him and making him repeat it so he understood exactly what and why it was happening. But then what? By all accounts he was devastated about leaving school, probably a stabilizing force for him, and the letter clearly stated that he would only be allowed back if he received an ok from a mental health professional.

So did he ever see a mental health professional? Was there discussion among him, his family, his acquaintances about trying to get him help? It’s also been generally acknowledged that Loughner was getting crazier and crazier, and many of those who interacted with him felt that something was off. But why didn’t he see someone? Was he opposed? Did he fight it? Was it ever an option? Could he – or his family – not afford it? None of these things has ever been addressed.

I understand that Loughner is an adult, and as such, as far as I know, could not be forced into therapy or an evaluation. But it’s clear that one was warranted. Why didn’t anyone – his family, for one – say, hey, this might be a good idea? Because you have an erratic history and your behavior is suspicious and your life is not going well?

We know that he had a fractious relationship with his father, and for all we know this might have been (one of many, I’m sure) a wedge issue. But to not have this mentioned at all is a huge omission is a story that, as much as it is about gun rights, is really about mental illness and how a troubled young man really needed to get help, even if he was unable to understand or articulate that.

What's the biggest story out of the Rally? Maybe that your mom attended, too

2010-11-20T10:01:00.004-05:00

I attended the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. I was not pleased with the media coverage of the event (that I saw/read). It didn’t capture the spirit at all, what it really felt like to be there. The rally was a genial affair, generally fun, full of good spirit and intent. What surprised me the most, though, was the age factor. And I was not the only one. I didn’t expect to see kids, because, well, I didn’t expect to see parents. Or at least lots of them.

But then again, I fell under the trap of thinking that the rally was pretty much for us twenty- and thirtysomethings. As a professor of mine put it, “It’s being billed as the rally for your generation,” which seemed excessive to me, but ok. And so I was puzzled that none of the guests really fit into our demographic. Singers from the ‘70s? Tony Bennett? (Hell, one of my friends made a joke about him appearing, to prove he’d be too old for the crowd, and then he did.) Acts I’ve never heard? When the hippest performers are Kid Rock and John Legend, you know you need to readjust your perceptions.

So was that the big story of the rally? Did the media miss it? I didn’t think the rally would influence the election (c’mon, no one who attended was going to vote for the tea partiers anyway, and they won), and the rally was held in Washington, DC, too far away for Prop 19. And Stewart’s big speech was about the media anyway.

As Kelli Marshall of the University of Toledo asserts, it’s time for everyone to wakeup and realize that these shows, for all their leftist leanings, actually have fan bases that aren’t young:

But as the world now knows, Millennials are clearly not the only demographic that watches, embraces, and relishes in the smart satire of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Of course, those of us who’ve researched the two programs have been aware of this for years. For instance, we knew that in 2006, the average age of viewers was 35, their average income was $67,000, and they were 78% more likely than the average adult to have four or more years of college education. What’s more, we now know that the shows’ viewing age is steadily rising, for according to Nielsen ratings and a Forbes report, the median age of Stewart’s viewers is currently 41.4, and Colbert’s has risen from 33 to 38. I can only imagine that as the hosts and their audiences age, the figures will continue to increase. But so what? If the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear is any indication of what that future will look like, why that’s not bad at all.

Something I have to tell the diehard eightysomething grandma I know.

Chelsea Clinton's Getting Married. Let's Talk About It.

2010-07-29T16:56:00.004-04:00

I don't read Rebecca Traister enough. I don't blog enough, either. But right now, I am rectifying this, by doing one of my favorite things: killing two birds with one stone.

As most of the world knows, Chelsea Clinton is getting married. Like many others, I am intrigued by Ms. Clinton--part of that is her reticence, part of it her background (hedge fund manager to MA candidate in public health!), and part of it her unique place in the world--but I really don't care about her wedding. Or really anyone's, for that matter.

What has always bothered me about weddings, about being paired off, is that it implies that you are desirable, a desirable person, in all senses of the word, and that, on the flip side, that if you are not paired off you aren't desirable. And being married is a validation of who you are:

That Chelsea has grown up gorgeous seems to have relieved a lot of people (though it's difficult not to wonder: What if she hadn't?). That she evidently has grown up stable has satisfied others. And I'm willing to believe that those who are now getting all het up about her wedding want the best for her. What bothers me is the barely veiled attitude that it is the fact of her upcoming wedding -- and that alone -- that somehow demonstrates to them that Chelsea is pretty and that everything has turned out all right for her.

There are a lot of people who don't get married. There are a lot of people who can't get married. If Chelsea Clinton, by chance or design, had fallen into one of these two categories, would it mean that her parents had not done what they were supposed to do, that they would feel less pride in her, that her life would lack its most important moment? I wonder if those focusing so hard on her wedding would think it meant she was any less well-adjusted, or any less beautiful.

The fevered fetishization of the marital day is not just irritating, it's destructive. It reproduces attitudes about personal -- and especially female -- achievement that are far past their sell date: that marrying is the goal toward which all of us strive, that our weddings are somehow the most exalted expressions of our accomplishments and of ourselves. That they are proof, validation, some sure sign that we turned out OK.

Chelsea Clinton, at 30, also falls into that "acceptable range" for a first-time marriage, the one thing that Traister does not mention. She's at that threshold where her crazy twenties are over, she has the starting jobs and degrees behind her, that she knows what she wants, but she hasn't fallen into too-old or biological clock times, so no one can cluck their tongue and say disparaging, questioning remarks--why she's waiting too long, that she's too picky, etc. etc. For an elite East Coaster, like someone with her background, she is getting married at the perfect time, the sweet spot of her life. How this number has come to represent so much is beyond me; maybe it is all the hysteria about reproduction, or our current climate that makes the twenties such a time of arrested development.

I'm sure Chelsea will have a beautiful wedding, despite the media crunch. I hope for her sake that she doesn't start popping babies soon, because then we'd have to go through the whole thing again. I'd probably write about it, though.

Maureen Dowd Gets It Right

2010-05-19T14:19:00.002-04:00

For once.

Taken from today's column on Elena Kagan:

When does a woman go from being single to unmarried?

Single carries a connotation of eligibility and possibility, while unmarried has that dreaded over-the-hill, out-of-luck, you-are-finished, no-chance implication. An aroma of mothballs and perpetual aunt.

White House officials were so eager to squash any speculation that Elena Kagan was gay that they have ended up in a pre-feminist fugue, going with sad unmarried rather than fun single, spinning that she’s a spinster.

You’d think that they could come up with a more inspiring narrative than old maid for a woman who may become the youngest Supreme Court justice on the bench.

Kagan has told a friend in the West Wing that she is not gay, just lonely. Even so, that doesn’t mean her sherpas in the White House, in their frantic drive to dismiss the gay rumors, should be spinning a narrative around that most hoary of stereotypes: a smart, ambitious woman who threw herself into her work, couldn’t find a guy, threw up her hands, and threw herself further into her work — and in the process went from single to unmarried.

I've heard this many times before. If you're single for too long, that's a problem. It must mean you are a lesbian. Of course!

Any way this narrative is spun, it is depressing and insulting. We haven't heard Kagan speak, but it's embarrassing that she'd have to address the rumors, because nothing will be acceptable; she'll be pitied, cast as pathetic in one way or another.

How do you address the questions? Is the truth (whatever that is) even good enough? Why is the dominant answer the same old stereotype—did nothing else make sense? Why did the Obama Administration feel they needed to weigh in on this topic, instead of just staying tight-lipped?

Dowd asks the same questions, offering her own spin:

Why is there this underlying assumption that Kagan has missed the boat? Why couldn’t she be eager to come to Washington to check out the Obama-era geek-chic bachelors, maybe get set up on a date by Michelle Obama, maybe host some single ladies fiestas with Sonia Sotomayor, maybe even sign up for JDate with a new and improved job status?

The sad thing is that Kagan practically has to answer these questions, to defend her choices in her private life, whatever they may be. They will come up at some point. But that seems to be true no matter how old you are—if you’re single, especially after a certain age, you have to explain it.

Abortion and Universal Healthcare

2010-05-16T21:22:00.005-04:00

On why Britain's abortion rate is much lower than the US's:

[O]ne important explanation was Britain's universal health-care system. "If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it's needed," Hume explained, "she's more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn't it obvious?"

A young woman I knew in Britain added another explanation. "If you're [sexually] active," she said, "the way to avoid abortion is to avoid pregnancy. Most of us do that with an IUD or a diaphragm. It means going to the doctor. But that's easy here, because anybody can go to the doctor free."
For various reasons, then, expanding health-care coverage reduces the rate of abortion. All the other industrialized democracies figured that out years ago. The failure to recognize this plain statistical truth may explain why American churches have played such a small role in our national debate on health care. Searching for ways to limit abortions, our faith leaders have managed to overlook a proven approach that's on offer now: expanding health-care coverage.

When I studied health-care systems overseas in research for a book, I asked health ministers, doctors, economists and others in all the rich countries why their nations decided to provide health care for everybody. The answers were medical (universal care saves lives), economic (universal care is cheaper), political (the voters like it), religious (it's what Christ commanded) and moral (it's the right thing to do). And in every country, people told me that universal health-care coverage is desirable because it reduces the rate of abortion.

More on the Ridiculousness of Facebook's Privacy Settings

2010-05-13T00:13:00.002-04:00

NYT Graph:

Mark Zuckerburg Likes Settlers of Catan...And Other Ridiculous Things from the World of Facebook

2010-05-12T16:27:00.006-04:00

The New York Times posted Facebook's answers regarding a set of questions users submitted last week. And surprise! The answers provided are a TOTAL cop-out.

To wit:

It used to be that I could limit what strangers saw about me to almost nothing. I could not show my profile picture, not allow them to “poke” or message me, certainly not allow them to view my profile page. Now, even my interests have to be public information. Why can’t I control my own information anymore? –sxchen, New York
Joining Facebook is a conscious choice by vast numbers of people who have stepped forward deliberately and intentionally to connect and share. We study user activity. We’ve found that a few fields of information need to be shared to facilitate the kind of experience people come to Facebook to have. That’s why we require the following fields to be public: name, profile photo (if people choose to have one), gender, connections (again, if people choose to make them), and user ID number. Facebook provides a less satisfying experience for people who choose not to post a photo or make connections with friends or interests. But, other than name and gender, nothing requires them to complete these fields or share information they do not want to share. If you’re not comfortable sharing, don’t.

And:

Why not simply set everything up for opt-in rather than opt-out? Facebook seems to assume that users generally want all the details of their private lives made public. – abycats, New York

Everything is opt-in on Facebook. Participating in the service is a choice. We want people to continue to choose Facebook every day. Adding information — uploading photos or posting status updates or “like” a Page — are also all opt-in. Please don’t share if you’re not comfortable. That said, we certainly will continue to work to improve the ease and access of controls to make more people more comfortable. Your assumption about our assumption is simply incorrect. We don’t believe that. We’re happy to make the record on that clear.

On the latest fiasco:

Why must I link to a page for my school, job, or interests and make them public, or delete the information entirely? — Absolutely Not, Chicago

It turns out that less than 20 percent of users had filled out the text fields of this information. By contrast, more than 70 percent of users have ‘liked’ Pages to be connected to these kinds of ideas, experiences and organizations. That is the primary reason we offered the transition — because it reflects the way people are using our service already. While we see tremendous benefit to connecting to interests, we recognize that certain people may still want to share information about themselves through static text. That’s why we continue to provide a number of places for doing this, including the Bio section of the profile. In these places, just as when you share a piece of content like a photo or status update, we give you complete control over the privacy of the information and exactly who can see it. However, we know we could have done a better job explaining all of this and you can expect to see new materials on the site soon. I’m sorry we didn’t do a better job.

Stop being conciliatory and DO A BETTER JOB. No excuses. Be realistic.

But the best part was discovering that Mark Zuckerburg has a very open profile. VERY open. As does his girlfriend. Ridiculous!

Update: Facebook has called an agency-wide meeting tomorrow to discuss their terrible image. Hopefully some major changes will be made.

In Defense of Privacy Or, Why My Sex Life Is None of Your Business

2010-05-09T20:24:00.002-04:00

Oddly, over the past couple of years, I have become a person that will answer pretty much anything. I’m not sure how this happened—maybe it’s just being asked interesting, provocative questions, questions I never thought about. Maybe it was the environment I was in. Maybe it’s just my personality. But everyone has their limits. And I’ve learned that many people don’t respect these limits, especially if they deal with sex.

Thanks to the exploits of tons of reality TV stars, it has now become commonplace to know the details of someone’s sexual and romantic history. There are shows devoted to sex rehab! And so, there are some males who feel the need to question me about this aspect of my life. These questions are confrontational and accusatory, as if I’m hiding my adventures from them, even though they are asking for details—inappropriate, lurid, puerile details—that don’t concern them in the least. And when I balk, because I have a right to my privacy, I am met with a torrent of insults.

Listening to these men, it is my duty to go whore myself out, and then report back. I fit the “profile”, based on what I presume to be youth and attractiveness. These men assume that I am hit on constantly and that I am just flat out rejecting all these advances, for reasons that mystify them. And I am mystified that they hold this belief so firmly, when it is so very, very wrong.

Apparently I am not the only one who has wondered where this attitude among men has come from. Does it stem from rejection?

Leah, who has also noticed these assumptions, thinks so. The men are angry and upset because they can’t get laid, and so blame the girls instead. Emily and Petpluto have also written about a version of this (termed The Nice Guy Syndrome, where men feel they own women’s sexuality). I’ve gotten these questions out of sheer curiosity, sure, but also as a way of trying to illuminate The Female Experience for these male friends of mine, even if my experience doesn’t jibe with their experience regarding girls, or what they think is the definitive version of being Young and Female in America Today.

Jezebel also addressed the ostensibly male assumption that women can get laid whenever they want, noting that men view anything less as being overly picky. Prompted by a book review in The Smart Set, Jezebel points out that there are a good many women who are deemed by the culture at large as “unfuckable”. They can fit into a number of categories: old, poor, have weight, genetic, or disability issues, or maybe are just not pretty or conform to a certain beauty standard. Many women fall into this group at a certain point in their life. But they are largely forgotten, ridiculed, always, in popular culture and in real life. For what worth is a women if she is not desirable?

One of the most interesting comments posted to the piece said that men are jealous of women’s sexual power; they are the ones constantly putting themselves on the line:

"a woman can get laid whenever she wants" is an expression of male frustration at female sexual power.

This is not to say that female sexual power is uniformly distributed. Not to say that the world doesn't suck if you've been dealt a poor hand (genetic, medical, social).

Please think for a moment about the male side of this equation. If you're a guy, you don't get hit on. Such an occurance is a memorable life event, not a daily happening. If you're "wing man" to an attractive/sociable/sexually successful guy, then you never EVER get hit on. And you're trying to attract/hit on/get rejected by gals your buddy isn't even looking at. And you adopt this socially demeaning and rejection-filled roll because it marginally increases your odds of some level of sexual success over "going solo".

And in that context, it sucks to be a guy. If the supposedly 'unfuckable' 'hags' in the audience demeaned, debased, and put themselves at the same degree of emotional risk as every guy at the bar, lowered their standards, donned their beer goggles, and shelled out for a few drinks and meals, I'd be willing to bet their "hit rate" would be dramatically higher than for any guy. any. guy.

So yeah, men are envious of womens' sexual power. and being guys, they sum it up (insensitively and coarsely) as, "a woman can get laid whenever she wants".

He’s right that if the game was reversed, the women would do pretty well, but that’s the just the nature of the sexes. But the image that women hold all the power is grossly ill-informed, and by placing the blame onto women, the men just make it worse for themselves.

The statement that all women can get laid easily is also a complete, unjust lie. Undesirable women do feel shame and embarrassment, and no such counseling like “reshape your attitude!” is really going to help; it’s just going to make things worse. Life isn’t a fairytale where a makeover changes everything.

As Leah noted, it’s impossible to live up to whatever the standard is. And being forced to conform to whatever is deemed acceptable is damaging and hurtful. One’s sexual life is only one aspect of a person, and it is mutable.

But the other issue I have with these questions is the appalling assumption that I’m expected to answer such personal and intimate questions, especially in some cases with people I barely know. Why is this acceptable? I consider myself a somewhat private person, in that I believe in privacy and I believe that not everything in my life is up for public consumption, and that attitude, increasingly, some find offensive. There are some things that are none of your business, and no matter how nosy you are, you have to accept that. It’s not impolite or out of hand to say “no.”

So what gives?

It goes back to our increasing TMI culture, and the murky notions of privacy that are constantly being redefined. Facebook has become the very public face of this privacy problem, especially as it has been playing out on the web:

Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg seem to assume that once something is public, it’s public. They confused sharing with publishing. They conflate the public sphere with the making of a public. That is, when I blog something, I am publishing it to the world for anyone and everyone to see: the more the better, is the assumption. But when I put something on Facebook my assumption had been that I was sharing it just with the public I created and control there. That public is private. Therein lies the confusion. Making that public public is what disturbs people. It robs them of their sense of control—and their actual control—of what they were sharing and with whom (no matter how many preferences we can set). On top of that, collecting our actions elsewhere on the net—our browsing and our likes—and making that public, too, through Facebook, disturbed people even more. Where does it end?

--Jeff Jarvis

Where does it? Technologies increasingly are able to monitor every little thing we do. From security cameras in Times Square to GPS locators on our phones to cookies on web pages, there are very little areas or transactions today that are not monitored somewhere, by somebody. We’re so used to this that we accept that mundane calls to customer service lines are recorded, or, if we turn our settings a certain way, we can be tracked by virtually anyone who wants to find us. We do a lot of this out of convenience and novelty; that’s why we save passwords on our computer, that’s why we enable our tweets to be geographically placed.

We like keeping track of our things digitally. That’s why online banking is a hit, and why we like to see the status of a package on Amazon or FedEx. And as long as only we have access to this information, we’re fine. But this information is protected, by passwords and codes and encryption. The debate has turned to less tangible items—memories and statements, ideas and personalities. It’s this violation of truly personal things that has caused this newest uproar.

A theory floating around is as society has become more permissible, old notions of impropriety will disappear, and future generations will have no need for privacy. This is hogwash. I disagree with Penelope Trunk (and others) who say privacy is basically a way of hiding things that don’t need hiding. Really? So everyone—my mother, my colleagues, my boss, my neighbor, the stranger I spoke to last night at a party—is entitled to know everything about me? And I’m supposed to be fine with knowing everything about everyone I know? Sure, maybe that movie you watched last night isn’t super-secret news, but it doesn’t mean that everyone has to know about it, just like everyone doesn’t need to know every detail of what you did over the weekend. The notion that privacy just equals secrecy is damaging and erroneous. I am all for transparency, especially in companies, but confusing transparency with a lack of privacy, especially for individuals, is dangerous. Everyone should be able to control what information they tell to specific people; there’s a reason we have “work selves” and “friend selves”, why there are some things you shouldn’t say to your mother but will say to your best friend. Penelope Trunk basically acts like things in our private lives won’t get us into trouble in the workforce, but that’s completely untrue. Sure, standards have relaxed, but that doesn’t mean that showcasing your exploits and your baser aspects of yourself won’t cause some problems. Think of it this way: Would you really want to hear about some borderline criminal activity a coworker or neighbor was doing? Would you want to be responsible for knowing every dirty little secret of everyone you know?

Surprises can be good things. It’s an icky feeling to know things about people before you meet them, because you Googled them. Now you’re an expert on their life. But by having everything up already to be viewed by a public, whether Facebook posts or Flickr albums, the element of surprise, of learning about someone through natural, organic discourse is lost. What’s left to tell? What’s left to discover? If everything about you is already up on the web—reduced to mere anecdote, a selection of tidbits that are “you”, no matter how misleading, embarrassing, or untrue—then why should I bother to try to get to know you anyway, when I already know everything there is to know?

People are not just the sum of their experiences, nor are they defined by particular things. Sure, when we describe ourselves, we do so in this language, often because it is the easiest. But people change, interests and experiences and opinions change. People don’t want to be known by something in their past, especially if they’ve moved past it, or if it’s not accurate. Privacy is important because it gives a sense of control, a sense that you are defining who you are and what’s important to you. Others should not be defining who you are or what you can say; you make that determination.

"What Might We Be Accomplishing If We Weren't Tethered to the Net?"

2010-05-08T00:37:00.004-04:00

Writing a book, maybe? Watching television? Cleaning? Exercising? Not being a total loser?

Everyone loves the Internet, but I'm convinced some people love it more than others (I firmly belong in the latter category). And there are many of us in said category that wonder what we would do with all that extra time if we didn't spend it conversing with others, looking up random shit, or watching YouTube videos. The Internet is one of the greatest timesucks ever invented, and all those other things fall into it: chat services, Twitter, Facebook, email, RSS feeds....

To quote technologist Nicholas Carr:

[T]he Web is also an enormous global timesink, sucking up massive amounts of time that might have gone into more productive, thoughtful, and fulfilling activities. It's difficult to measure the cost of this wasted time, because it's impossible to know what people might have done if they weren't surfing and tweeting and youtubing and huluing and foursquaring and emailing and IMing and googling and etc. The Web often gives us the illusion of having an incredibly diverse set of pursuits when it's really narrowing the scope of our thoughts and activities. There is still a whole lot more that people can do offline than online - something that's easy to forget as we peer into our screens all day. (my emphasis)

That's seen in the discussion of the polarization of our country and our media, how everyone is worried that we siphon ourselves off into our own bubbles. StumbleUpon can tell us our interests, further refined on sites like Amazon and Pandora, all with the universal "like" button. The Internet is, like so many things, a blessing and a curse, a way to connect and a way to disconnect. It's up to the user to define the experience.

Facebook, Stop Sucking Ass

2010-05-08T00:09:00.006-04:00

As pretty much anyone who uses Facebook semi-regularly knows, the site keeps changing its privacy rules. Not only is this confusing and downright maddening, but it's pissing off a helluva lot of people. I track Facebook's moves somewhat closely, and I've been fed up with them for a while. And I'm a very heavy user. I know the ins and outs better than most, and I've been having trouble wading through this recent mess.

I want better ways to complain, I want to be able to have choices, to control what I want, and I want some of the old features back (I won't list them all). Mark Zuckerburg went from being this wunderkind to this reviled, amoral overlord. Facebook is too wound up in my daily existence, my way of life, for me to just zap it out completely--like destroying the Internet!--but Zuckerburg's vision of the future is not compatible with how users want it to be, and he no longer cares about the vast network he's built. He's transforming the Internet with his conceptions of privacy and openness, not understanding that everyone needs and has the right to privacy. Hell, even when Gawker exposed him, he quickly took control and put his stuff behind privacy walls!

So I am very glad that, among many other website, the Times is on this and has compiled a list of questions they will present to Zuckerburg and Facebook to answer. A response should be up in a few days; I eagerly await it. In the meantime, check out this timeline of privacy changes to the site, and please, check and update your privacy controls! Too many people stay ignorant and they ruin it for the rest of us.

Update: Here's an interactive pie chart, using the same data as the EFF.

Tracking Yourself

2010-05-07T22:57:00.005-04:00

Of course I have to mention the Times Magazine's cover story on self-trackers. I am very much into the idea of tracking everything, as I love the idea of quantifiable data and how I can use it to improve my life. The biggest downside is the vast amount of time it takes to do this, and it quickly becomes, like anything else, another chore. And there are so many already!

I was surprised they didn't mention Feltron, a guy who's tracked his music, the restaurants he visits, the cities he flies to, and a number of other things over the past several years. I blogged about this before, and I am again in awe of this idea. Self-absorbed? Maybe. I've taken a different approach to self-absorption and narcissism in this age--it's about how you relate to people. If all you talk about is yourself, then yes, you are self-absorbed and boring. But this idea, of tracking yourself in order to change your life, to conduct experiments? Awesome.

But Jonah Lehrer (who looks like an older Michael Cera here) takes issue with this:

One of the main problems facing self-experimenters is the powerful role of expectations in shaping performance. If we think something is going to work, then it probably will work, at least for a little while.

Studies like this demonstrate the necessity of blind controls. The brain is a gullible machine, which is why the very act of believing that tryptophan might work makes it much more likely to have an effect, at least at first. ... That's why I'm a teeny bit suspicious of clear-cut results that come from tested hypotheses, especially when the results contradict the scientific literature. The very act of speculating about a causal relationship - say, for instance, the link between a pill and the ability to concentrate - warps the data, biasing our mind in a million little ways.

His discussion on wine and beer is quite interesting--and I do buy the idea that mood and other factors do shape our opinions and reactions. A bad day may make us eat more or work harder--or just be lazier, if we stopped giving a shit.

I love the tools, the apps, that make it easier to track things. I think it could help me with productivity and other time/organization issues. I somehow imagined the afterlife as being a repository of facts; you could look up anything related to you and your life, and it would be there. How much time, over the course of your life, you spent in the bathroom. Or on the internet. Or talking with a specific person. Or anything. How scary and awesome that would be.

On Laura Bush

2010-05-05T23:55:00.005-04:00

I am a fan of Curtis Sittenfeld. I have read all her books, and I think she does an excellent job of describing women as they are, what they go through, often in ways that aren't usually expressed. I think of her second novel, The Man of My Dreams, occasionally, because it's a book that doesn't do any sort of typical romance or romantic trajectory, and is completely heartbreaking is so many ways that feel so true to life. I agree with Katie's review in that I immediately liked it just because the protagonist wasn't experienced, and not in the totally fake way that Charlotte Simmons is. But her standout is most definitely American Wife, her novelization of Laura Bush. When I reviewed it in 2008, I said it didn't compare to her previous works, but I don't agree with that assertion any more; I think it is quite distinct on its own.

I bring this up because Laura Bush has released her own memoir, and I agree with Jessica Grose in that reading American Wife completely changed how I viewed Mrs. Bush. She still seems so reserved and matronly, but with American Wife in my head, even a year and a half later, I am intrigued by Mrs. Bush's story. It just proves how damn good Curtis Sittenfeld is.

This Should Be My Bible

2010-05-05T23:49:00.004-04:00

Katie from Boston at Struggling Single Twentysomething linked to me. Yay! And she led me to an excellent site: Smart, Pretty and Awkward.

Change is one day at a time, right?

Really? Glamour?

2010-04-25T23:54:00.009-04:00

Glamour was recently named magazine of the year.

I'm not quite sure why.

I've subscribed to Glamour for the last year. I only did so because of their 75th anniversary promotion, where I could get a year's worth for 75 cents. Yep, 12 issues for less than a dollar. What the hell? As far as women's magazines go, I actually like Glamour, detesting their nearest rival, Cosmopolitan. Glamour was more real, and I liked that they incorporated recipes and real advice, at least in the back. They had the obligatory "serious story", addiction or do-gooders, now with Katie Couric interviewing some notable female. All well and good.

But after a few months, it was wearying. The topics were the same, of course: men, relationships, food, eating, exercise, fashion, beauty. I wondered how those working at the magazine didn't get bored of the repetition. The advice was usually sound, but repetitive, and occasionally contradictory. I waded through the "girl with the belly bulge" and the Crystal Renn spreads; meh. Crystal Renn is beautiful and not plus sized in the least, as I've noted before. I no longer felt that the magazine was the exception to others in its category; maybe I just got used to it, maybe the novelty wore off. But I also wasn't looking at other young-women magazines, either, so it became just another Glamour. I knew I wasn't going to renew my subscription when I subscribed, but now I didn't care.

But besides the sameness, I was saddened to see that women's magazines "cleaned up" certain celebrities:

Lady Gaga and Rihanna are known for dressing explicitly, in wild getups, but they are stripped of their individuality; whitewashed, you could say. There's no crazy makeup, no funky fashion choices, nothing that should be exposed covered up and nothing covered up that should be exposed. They're not even in fun colors: Lady Gaga is uncharacteristically in all white, or off-white, as if to appear pure, but she looks out of place and strangely bland, since she blends in with the background. It's the text that speaks, not her. Rihanna at least looks happy, if girlish, a woman full of spunk and personality. This might be to offset the serious interview inside, promoting her album Rated R, both which explore her dark and volatile year. But her hair is gelled back; we are not to notice her funky, unconventional style choices, just like we aren't meant to view Lady Gaga as she wants to be seen. Maybe that explains her detached look.

I see this as suppressing both women's natural personalities and style to favor a more acceptable form of female expression, both in beauty and personality. I can understand why a cover picture of Lady Gaga wouldn't have her face covered, but I don't see why she has to appear in such an awful getup, one she would never wear anywhere else. I don't see how prettifying Rihanna makes her ordeal any better, except take away her right to express herself as she chooses.

So Glamour, magazine of the year? You might talk the talk of inclusion of expression, proudly showing off your Crystal Renn glamour shots, but until you really show how real women are, capturing their life as they live it (not as you wish them to see it), you don't deserve this title.

Cross-posted on Notes on Popular Culture.

RIP: The AIM Away Message

2010-04-25T23:50:00.002-04:00

A blogger I follow, Katie from Boston, recently wrote an ode to AIM away messages. Both of us spent overlapping years at college, in that space where social media was growing, but hadn’t hit the wider world yet. Status messages were only in the province of AIM, and the unique college environment meant that everyone was on all the time, through one medium. We all had angsty things to say, and we did so by the most elegant and articulate way we could—song lyrics:

One thing that’s been lost in the translation from away messages to Facebook statuses and Twitter, though, is the art of the song lyric message. Most song lyrics are too long to sum up our deepest feelings in 140 characters, but that wasn’t a problem with the AIM away message! No, we didn’t have to come right out and say what we were feeling because an artist we liked had done it for us, leaving us with cryptic lyrics to provide our friends, hoping that they’d decipher our mood. And there were truly lyrics for every emotion.

I too have lamented this loss. Song lyrics just don’t work on Facebook, just another post on a feed. With AIM, we got the added bonus of fonts and colors, all designs to prove how precious or earnest we were through what we listened to.

Katie nails down many of the categories the songs fell in, although her personal references do not mesh with mine (or my friends), since that is based partly upon taste. But no one who went to college in 2004 will forget the ubiquity of Garden State (I’m pretty sure everyone on my buddy list used “There’s beauty in the breakdown” from “Let Go”). She misses the overused “We’re so in love” lyrics from “Such Great Heights”—to this day I groan when seeing “I am thinking it's a sign that the freckles/In our eyes are mirror images and when/We kiss they're perfectly aligned”. It’s not original or cute anymore, it’s hackneyed and trite.

Away messages were a code. Not always, and obviously, sometimes they were perfectly explicit, even when in song lyrics. I knew what certain lyrics “meant”: trouble, or heartbreak, even if I didn’t know specifics or if the specifics didn’t line up exactly with the song. I just knew it was bad news.

Of course, away messages were also misinterpreted, sometimes causing lots of offense and drama. That was all part of college, as was the timing of certain remarks (whether intentional or not), or the inability to update the away messages either out of sheer laziness or because people were plumb not there to do so.

I suspect AIM is not held in the same regard now among this demographic, not with Twitter and Facebook and cell phones and text messaging all overtaking the importance of the away message. Plus everything can be integrated, so there really is no excuse for not updating. But I do miss crafting my away messages, thinking of the audience to read them. Now, out of college, most of my buddies have gravitated away, and like most social services, the fun is in who you know and how many people in your network are in, so the reason for going on has diminished, and with that the motivation to put up an away message. Now, the same people are on, usually at the same time—the evening.

Instant Messages have gravitated toward the workplace, as a way of connecting to far-flung colleagues, or to those in a big organization where picking up the phone is pure avoidance or laziness. Katie does nail some of the problems inherent with talking via this means: the inability to detect tone (sarcasm often falls flat), causing confusion; and how to squeeze in this activity while doing other things (also a mainstay in college). It always seemed dishonest to ghost in order to talk to only one or two people, or to put up an away message in order to avoid those you don’t want to talk to while engaging others. AIM also foreshadowed the “digital autism” of today, the inability to have a conversation or pay attention to those you’re physically with, preferring to spend energy through technological means.

I still go on AIM, but it’s a different experience; it’s to talk to specific people. I rarely have away messages up now—what’s the point? Who’s going to see? And with all the new features, it’s no longer the service of yore, but an entirely new beast, one that’s trying to still be as old-school but playing catch-up with the new kids on the block. AIM’s heyday was rooted very much in its time, a benefit of a confluence of factors that was victim to technology and time: growing up.

How I Became Who I Am: My Most Influential Reading List

2010-03-26T11:18:00.004-04:00

The blogosphere has been playing another one of those memes that hit every so often, and this time it’s My Most Influential books. These things are hard to quantify, of course, and I may very well change my thinking in the future. Like Ezra, I feel that many of the things I’ve read that’s influenced me the most have been non-books, especially in the past several years. My friends and their writing has influenced me greatly; I see vocabulary words and think of them, because those are words they use; I hear arguments, I think of them; I have adopted their thinking patterns because of them. But publications I have read for years, continuously, have also shaped my worldview: RollingStone (though I’ve gotten away from their political coverage the last several years), The New York Times (I think of high school and cringe), the blogosphere, the many, many, many magazine articles I’ve read.

And yet, if I’m going with my gut, I’m not sure if I can reach ten books.

The first is obviously The Plug-In Drug: Television, Computers, and Family Life. I read it at the end of high school, and its contrarian outlook (especially on violence) and complete focus on media effects steered me into what I wanted to study. It blew my mind.

The Corrections: I want to write like this, a story so stuffed full of everything, with so much to say! These are the kinds of stories I deeply admire, the “social novels” that make me love Jonathan Franzen, for they take the personal and the political, and reflect how a person really is affected by every little thing.

The works of E.L. Konigsburg. Also a writer I very much want(ed?) to emulate. Her books were nothing like the rest of novels I consumed as a kid. There were no romantic hijinks, and the characters were not interested nor happened to fall in love and get significant others. Boys and girls were actually friends! The characters all had interesting lives, all had passions and hobbies they wanted to explore, and had problems that were neither commonplace nor depressing. Konigsburg got her ideas from newspaper features, and created stories from that jumping off point. I thought it was ingenious. She’s so good she’s won the Newbery medal twice, for From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and The View from Saturday.

Bobos in Paradise. I remember seeing the book in the featured section in my library back in 2000, and was very intrigued. I probably took it out a few times, but I didn’t get around to reading it until four years later. My god! So dense yet so wonderful, every chapter just needed to be absorbed.

The works of Malcolm Gladwell (minus Outliers, as I haven’t read it yet): The kind of pop-social commentary I love, one that draws from multiple disciplines. Academically, I am very much an interdisciplinary thinker, and I love how he poses interesting questions and the ways he goes about to find the answers. His technique has been widely copied.

I think back on my childhood and adolescence, where I went through periods of reading authors—Ann Rinaldi, Katharine Patterson, Judy Blume. I read a lot of historical fiction as a kid, a genre I sadly barely touch now. But I know that I like my setting and place to be very specific in my stories, and most of the fiction I’ve attempted to write has always had this quality. I also am a stickler for this, and I find that many people don’t bother to research the “recent past” as much as they should, as in a movie. In watching Julie & Julia, for example, I wanted to see if the computer Julie uses in 2002 was actually available at the time, and disliked how cavalier they were regarding Julia’s timeline.

I had another epiphany fall of my senior year. I was making paper dolls as a project on "As You Like It" for my Shakespeare class, and wandered downstairs to look at my bookshelf, mainly filled with my childhood favorites, for inspiration. The vast majority were about young, smart women who wanted to become writers. Of course! How had I missed this? No wonder I became who I am!

Some Thoughts on Blogging, Technology and Gender, and What We Choose to Reveal About Ourselves

2010-03-13T14:32:00.009-05:00

I had a very bloggy week, between watching Julie & Julia and Monday’s episode of House, which both revolved around women whose blogs got the better of them.

Julie & Julia received a lot of press for its portrayal of supportive husbands, on both women’s side. The Times gleefully wrote of Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci’s portrayal of middle-aged passion, but Julie’s husband was a “saint”, so much so that he objected to the label. Much is made of the Childs’ marriage, how passionate they were, but I found Paul Child to be supportive, but distant; in fact, both husbands in the movie were quite bland. Maybe that’s the point—they both were supportive characters, meant to prop up the leads, so they usually are less developed than the protagonists.

But other than that observation, it was Julie’s bloggy passion that stood out, in comparison to this week’s House episode, concentrated on a blogger who goes a little too personal with her diagnosis. Both women get caught up in blogging about their lives, neglecting their significant others, who come to resent their girlfriend’s hobby. (Tip: Get a boyfriend who blogs, or who at least likes the medium as much as you do.) This is reminiscent of Emily Gould’s fantastic bloggy piece in the New York Times nearly two years ago, where she recounts how blogging about her personal life wrecked her relationship and her life. All three women had successful blogs, the real-life ones turning into successful writers. All three were transformed by their hobby, sharing their love with others and eventually having their own audience. Both Julie and Laura Prepon’s Frankie worry too much about their audience; Julie, about actually having one, and Frankie, about what they think. She uses her blog as a crowdsource of opinion, on both the large and small decisions of her life, including the many major medical ones she faces in the episode. Their blogs become their lives, their reason for getting up in the morning. Julie’s Julia Child obsession is fueled by her blogging, and without it the structure of her project would fall apart, as she is documenting her progress. Frankie, too, is obsessed with documenting her life, and despite protestations from her boyfriend, feels she would be lying if she did not faithfully record or retell everything. Julie does not feel this way, though she does consent to not publicizing a fight she has with her husband (though by it being in the movie we presume that it is retold in her book).

The issue here, of course, becomes privacy. Sure, on the surface, Julie Powell’s project sounds fun, if daunting, and not particularly invasive; she is in charge of how much she chooses to reveal, and on the surface a cooking blog would not be one to draw readers.

But of course, that’s too simplistic. One of the women mentioned in the film who actually makes an appearance is Amanda Hesser, a New York Times food writer who made a name for herself (at least to this writer) by writing a column in the Times Magazine in the early part of the ‘00s, “Cooking for Mr. Latte”, about her meals and dates with a certain Mr. Latte, later revealed to be the New Yorker writer Tad Friend. “Cooking for Mr. Latte”, a kind of Sex and the City meets food, certainly had enough dish and romantic intrigue to make it more than just another food column, and, though it was on paper, had a bloggy feel to it, as it chronicled their burgeoning relationship. (The column also became a book.)

So why are all these bloggers women? Why is it that women feel the need to emotionally reveal themselves online, to chronicle their lives? Men seem to go about it in a much more analytical, data-driven fashion; Nicholas Felton has designed a number of what he calls “Personal Annual Reports”, yearly compilations of the minutia that makes up his life, and it’s fascinating: all the restaurants he ate at, the countries he visited, his most played songs on iTunes. Every year, the charts and graphs, not to mention what he actually records, get increasingly complex. (The MIT Media Lab has done similar projects, recording and analyzing personal, daily data of students.) Sure, I already know all the comments, the criticism: even a friend of mine, when I showed him Feltron, responded, “I know the irony of what I'm about to say as a man that Tweets but that's kind of self absorbed.”

Sure, it’s self-absorbed. But it’s a whole other form of diary, a multimedia one, life writ large. The data aspects makes it so much cooler, because it’s objective, and it’s a form that you can’t argue with; maybe that’s why men like it. There are so many ways to tell a story, and neither is completely right, for each time it’s told, it’s done a little differently, and they all give different sides to the same one.

The Internet, in all its lovely possibilities, has also given us a way to be anonymous and solicit anonymous opinions. That comes across in blogging—again with the choosing to reveal what we want. But there’s also the new ChatRoulette and Formspring.me, services that flip anonymity on its head.

ChatRoulette, memorably introduced to many (including me) via this New York article, is a basic service that automatically turns on a user’s webcam and randomly beams you into someone else’s browser, and they you. The only options are to engage, move on, or turn off. Most outlets have connected it back to the days of the “wild, wild Internet”, before it became safe for minors, where everything and everyone was searchable. Here, it doesn’t matter if your name or your face or your home really belongs to you, as you are only known by your face, and there is no tag—there’s not even a record of who you’ve been connected with. There’s no way to track, no searching, no user names, no login information, no password. Glorious freedom. And yet it’s scary and incredibly intimidating, a party game to play.

Formspring.me is a site, a meme if you like, that lets people ask questions of a particular user. The person can use his or her real name, or a version of it, if the person desires, and those asking the questions can also identify themselves, though they usually stay anonymous. People asking the questions are strangers and friends; maybe you’ll get something good. It’s a version of a Facebook application known as the honesty box, which always got someone in trouble; that’s what honesty tends to do. And yet it’s addicting, in a way, to say too much; God knows in this era of TMI that it’s hard to put a lid on. Lying is contagious too, but it’s confusing as hell; being openly honest, too openly honest, can be about connecting or prolonging the awkward, having something to say, maybe just making a funny.

So we have two sides of a coin here: a site where we are expected to divulge secrets to those asking, and another an interface where we are personally faced with random strangers, no accountability. The first is implicitly about accountability, though we aren’t supposed to be pegged; the second, an escape route if we wish it to be.

But of course, we often occupy on the assumption that more information is better, and that notion led to ChatRoulette map, where users’ IP addresses are tracked to see who is using the service at any time. You do not need to be engaged on ChatRoulette to use ChatRoulette map, as I discovered this afternoon. There’s an option to turn this off, for it ruins the fun for some people. Exposing IP addresses always has a whiff of creepiness, as it feels like Big Brother is coming down to watch.

There are plenty of people who say that both will be a fad, but in Internet world, there are few things that have escaped this designation, one being Facebook. The Internet is both a blessing and a curse, causing us both to escape and feel trapped by our past, and we eagerly take up the call whenever we need to do so.

P.S. I have a formspring.me account. Ask questions, readers!

Also cross-posted on Notes on Popular Culture.

Getting My Geek On

2010-03-05T22:02:00.003-05:00

LOVE this:

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

And what's crazy is that more information than you think is outdated here. Favorite statistic: Facebook needs more than 30,000 servers to run, and they're still growing. Holy shit.

Reviewing Ruth Reichl's Trio of Food Memoirs

2010-02-23T14:08:00.004-05:00

…We all become actors, to some extent, when we go out to eat. Every restaurant is a theater, and the truly great ones allow us to indulge in the fantasy that we are rich and powerful. When restaurants hold up their end of the bargain, they give us the illusion of being surrounded by servants intent on ensuring our happiness and offering extraordinary food.

But even modest restaurants offer the opportunity to become someone else, at least for a little while. Restaurants free us from mundane reality; that is part of their charm. When you walk through the door, you are entering neutral territory where you are free to be whoever you choose for the duration of the meal.

--Ruth Reichl, Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise

Ruth Reichl has made a name for herself reviewing restaurants, most notably as the New York Times’ chief restaurant critic in the ‘90s. While there, she made reviewing a literary art form, weaving stories into her reviews, adding quotes from patrons and staff, incorporating history and sensory fun. Looking back, her reviews do not seem controversial, but she was up against a lot of history, even enduring a smear campaign from her bitter predecessor, Bryan Miller, which ended up on Page Six.

In an job interview with the paper, she condemns their food coverage, telling top editors that their reviews are “useful guides for the people who actually eat in the restaurants you review. You shouldn’t be writing reviews for the people who dine in fancy restaurants, but for all the ones who wish they could.” The Times, for many years, focused only those fancy French restaurants that defined class and culinary sophistication in this country, but these were the types of restaurants, like Lutece, that were patronized by the rich and powerful; most people would rarely, if ever, get the chance to try it. As eating out became more like going to the movies instead of the opera, restaurant criticism should reflect that trend, Reichl notes, and become just as much a democratizing force.

Already well-known in the food world in the early ‘90s, Reichl was warned on a flight to New York City that “Every restaurant in town has your picture pinned to the bulletin board, next to the specials of the day.” Panicked, Reichl realized that there was only one way to do her job: go in disguise. So she became Molly, a retired high school teacher from Birmingham, Michigan. The New York Times’ restaurant critic was the most powerful position in restaurant criticism, and her word could make or break an establishment. Critics were expected to dine out no less than three times, often more, with companions, sampling a range of food at different times, testing for consistency and quality. Being discovered was ruinous, because it often lead to extraordinary service, comped dishes, freebies, and extras, like plumper strawberries.

Reichl’s infamous Le Cirque experience is recounted in the third volume of her memoirs, Garlic and Sapphires. As Molly, she and her middle-aged companion endured rude service, waiting at the bar, watching the waiters hope that they would leave, before being seated in a tight corner in the back of the restaurant, near an alcove where the menus were kept. As herself, she was treated to this gem: “The King of Spain is waiting at the bar, but your table is ready.”

Garlic and Sapphires traces her years at the New York Times, where she subjects herself to a number of wigs and odd outfits, transforming herself into all sorts of women, all with backstories and unique personalities. Unlike her two previous memoirs, Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me With Apples, this one is focused exclusively on restaurants and her career. Columns from her tenure are reprinted here—most are just labeled “Restaurants”, a little too simple; not all have titles. She inherited a star system that is no longer in place, and readers relive many of the meals behind the review.

Reading through the books, you really get a sense of how much the world has changed in the last fifty years. In Tender at the Bone, all the included recipes seem very unhealthy. There’s lots of eggs and butter and cream, and the recipes, many complicated, use lots of hard-to-find ingredients. They also scream French and fatty; lots of meat and dessert. The recipes in Garlic and Sapphires are familiar, easy, and as such, much likelier to be made (I tried the first one, New York Style Cheesecake, as a birthday gift).

What Americans actually ate has also changed considerably. Reichl was lucky to grow up in New York City, with Jewish roots, and so was exposed to a lot of food that didn’t become mainstream until decades later. Outside of such cities, Americans ate a lot of steak, a lot of bland, nutritionally-deficient food. The horrors of midcentury Midwestern cooking—chicken, steak, Rice-a-Roni—are reinforced when she meets her future husband’s parents for the first time. They cook her a “fancy” meal: cottage cheese-filled canned peaches on iceberg lettuce, and “chow mein”: canned beans sprouts, canned mushrooms, bouillon cubes, and molasses. Ugh.

But her life, too, encapsulates this change: brought up in Greenwich Village in the ‘50s, she was surrounded by butchers, bakeries, and other “specialty” shops; many of those have disappeared by the time she returns thirty years later. Her mother, educated in Europe, ships her off to a Montreal boarding school to learn French when she is a preteen, and she spends her high school years in Connecticut, skipping class, drinking and cooking while her parents stay in New York. Rebelling, she goes to school in Michigan, where she becomes a hippie, majoring in sociology and attending sit-ins and teach-ins, learning about Moroccan and Guyanese cooking. Upon graduating, with nothing else to do, she gets a master’s degree in art history at the same university. Who does that now without a lot of foresight and planning?

But these are only some of the ways in which we see how far the world has changed. Nowadays food is its own genre, and there are millions of foodies, professional and amateur, who follow the field. With movies like Food, Inc, what we eat has become politicized. “Food porn” is its own subgenre, and pictures both disgusting and beautiful can be found anywhere on the web. Chefs are superstars, and professional eating is a job, one that can lead to fame. The Food Network and the Travel Channel bring cuisines, styles, and food as entertainment to the masses. Midwestern suburbia has access to heretofore ethnic and specialty ingredients. No longer is eating out a province of the rich. Even the act of reviewing restaurants, thanks to the Internet, has changed, since it’s virtually impossible to stay incognito, as Columbia Journalism Review’s recent history on food writing recounts.

Ruth Reichl is incredibly blessed. Her story reads like nothing more than that she happened to be the recipient of a lot of luck—she was always at the right place at the right time. As one friend puts it, she was born to be a restaurant critic, and that is certainly evident in her background. She was cooking at an early age, more as self-preservation than anything else. Her mother, Miriam, quite a character, is “taste-blind and unafraid of rot” and Ruth grew up warning all guests—and there were a lot—which food was unsafe to eat. Her mother, in a story memorable recounted in Tender at the Bone and in the recent published Not Becoming My Mother, poisoned twenty-six people at an engagement party she threw for her son (which she also turned into a benefit for Unicef.) She would buy anything exotic, throw random stuff together, and call it a meal. It didn’t matter if the sour cream was green.

Reichl spent a summer as a camp counselor in a small island off the coast of France. Unlike American health camps, which are highly structured and are strongly linked to losing weight, French camps had few rules, among them that campers would shower once a week and that everyone had to eat everything on the plate. Campers were expected to gain weight. Reichl was free to explore the island.

She meets her first husband living in Ann Arbor when he comes looking for her friend, the previous occupant. They move in the next day, marry young, and after a short stint in New York City, they move to Berkeley, where they are part of the burgeoning local and organic food movement. There they live in a commune with ten other people for ten years, their bedroom smaller than most dorm rooms. They stick out because they are married, but they live the life of a poor hippie. They have no credit cards, very little to their name, and they disdain bourgeois trappings like dishwashers (energy inefficient) and meat (too high on the food chain and “an egregious example of the vertical integration of agribusiness”). They dumpster dive and recycle fanatically, living on grain, millet and bland vegan products. She moves up the ranks, working in a number of restaurants, notably The Swallow, before becoming a food critic for New West (later renamed California) magazine, then moving to the Los Angeles Times. In Berkeley, San Francisco and Los Angeles, she meets and becomes friends with some big names: Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck.

Her second memoir, Comfort Me with Apples, describes her “tumultuous years” in California, the dissolution of her first marriage, and her subsequent affairs and battle with infertility. Here is where most of her traveling is done: whenever her life is a mess, she takes a trip, and so readers are exposed to a storybook affair in Paris, feastiaries in Thailand, and an international mystery in China. In Tender, it’s a whirlwind honeymoon in Europe, with an extended lag in Crete; a Tunisian tour with local men before jet-setting to Algiers; and of course, Paris. Obviously, the books are filled with long ago beautiful meals, lovely wine, and interesting concoctions.

One criticism of the books, especially in the first two, is that Reichl is not very specific with time. I consistently overestimate her age, partly because milestones in her life happen earlier than expected (she is finished with her undergrad degree by the time she is twenty, for example). It is hard, at times, to figure out if it’s the late ‘60s or early ‘70s in her book, how long she has been in a particular setting or situation. This matters less in Garlic and Sapphires, mostly because her life is settled then, and the entirety of that book revolves around one job and setting. Many readers might not care about the specificity of dates; indeed, Reichl comes from a long line of embellishers, and her books, being memoirs, are not factual recitations of events.

At times Reichl can be amazingly open—as when she reveals that she took a pay cut to work at the New York Times, starting out at $82,000, in Garlic and Sapphires, or when describing her sex life in Comfort Me With Apples. Her parents figure prominently in the first two, but her son, Nick, now twenty-one, appears often in the last. He is sweet, and adores his mom. It is her family that prompts her decision to leave the New York Times for Gourmet magazine, which she helmed until the magazine’s departure a few months ago.

What’s also fun, besides the meals and her amazing experiences, is seeing how the Times ran, especially in the ‘90s, where it was considered a snake pit, a completely different and unfriendly beast to the Los Angeles Times, where Reichl worked for nine years in the eighties. I was delighted to discover that Reichl dislikes Tavern on the Green (which recently closed) as much as I do, even though we ate there a good thirteen years apart.

Reichl has her own website, Twitter feed, and currently works on Gourmet’s television show. Her books are fun and tasty, and the recipes certainly are mouth-watering. I still have no idea what foie gras is, though.

New York Times to Charge for Web Access

2010-01-20T14:50:00.005-05:00

This was bound to happen--it was only a matter of time. Details on the exact plan are scarce, but expect a lot of changes in the coming year, with lots of chatter from media outlets.

It's gonna be hard to go from free to a pay wall, but it might be a good deal to pay a flat yearly fee for access if it's necessary. I know a lot of people will try to bypass the site--hey, it's aggregated everywhere! Who needs it, when you've got Google--but the Times will make sure that they aren't hijacked by other outlets.

They'll make some money, as agencies and organizations will pay for access, and some people might splurge for a print subscription, which guarantees a free web site.

There are only a few newspaper websites that charge for access, a few of them local dailies. The Wall Street Journal has a pay wall, also bypassed with a print subscription, but that works because that paper primarily serves a business audience, and readers tend to have access through their jobs. The New York Times is the most visited newspaper site in the country, with over 17 million viewers a month, according to Nielsen online. This approach, compared to sites like the Journal, is meant to keep much of their audience and ad revenue. The fear is that those who receive links to the site will now stop, or spend less time on the site, because of the pay wall. Although the newspaper has said they do not want to lose the prestige that goes along with such high numbers, it was a move they had to take.

In "No Kidding" News

2010-01-12T22:18:00.003-05:00

From the Los Angeles Times:

As the number of sources for news proliferates on digital platforms, most original reporting still comes from newspapers, television and radio.

A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that surveyed news gathering in Baltimore as an example of nationwide trends found that 95% of stories with fresh information came from "old media," and the vast majority of that from newspapers.

"The expanding universe of new media, including blogs, Twitter and local websites -- at least in Baltimore -- played only a limited role: mainly an alert system and a way to disseminate stories from other places," the study's authors write.

As much as the Internet and social media have been revolutionary, it's been catastrophic for the news model. We've got to find a way so that real reporting--and journalism as a whole--is rewarded and funded, a workable business. It's only going to get worse, and anyone who ever reads or watches the news on a fairly regular basis--no matter the outlet--quickly realizes that the sources, the original reporting, comes from a handful of big guns. Even the local news is usually done by the big paper in town, the one with the resources. Because money and manpower means that the story has a chance of being told.

Women's Bodies

2010-01-10T16:37:00.005-05:00

Last night, after reading Emily’s post, I looked through the February issue of Glamour, which had arrived the day before. For the first time, I actually thought the models looked familiar, and no wonder: one of them was the infamous Crystal Renn, now the #1 “plus sized” model in the business.

Plus size my ass. Of course, in the modeling world, plus size is a size 6—whatever the hell that means, since that’s actually smaller than average and sizes are not standard in the US. Take a look at these photos from Glamour:

To me, she looks just like any other beautiful woman in a magazine spread. Katy Perry is on the cover, and both share similar body shapes. But looking through the pages, no matter whether it is the ads or the features, I don’t notice anything that’s radically different. There’s one “regular”, skinny model, Nina Van Bree, who’s done other work for Glamour, but I also see Sarah Jessica Parker, Kate Moss (not looking super-skinny, but she’s wearing a thick pencil skirt), Faith Hill, the women from Big Love, four Olympic athletes, and a number of other unknown women, some of whom are only shot from the chest, shoulder, or neck up. All of them are slender. All of them fit within the standard slim aesthetic of a woman. None of them have any proportions out of the ordinary—nothing too small, too big, too muscular, too short, too long, too wide, too narrow, too bloated, or too bony.

Now, I was never one to bitch loudly about magazine models, because I rarely paid attention and I just don’t care. But what does bother me is the attitude they promote, and while many people have lauded the supposed shift from “skinny is wonderful” to “celebrate your curves”, I’ve always bristled at the curves part, because they’re often intended to be opposites. You can’t be both thin and curvy, and curvy was used to represent every shape and size under the sun. I disliked it when men used, I disliked it when women used it. And this excerpt from Victoria at Feminazery is why:

First off, this new culture of curves is NOT about celebrating fuller figures, it is about denigrating slender women. How many more screaming "So Skinny She Looks Like She'll Break!!!" headlines on the frontpage of Heat Magazine, how many more paparazzi shots of "Worryingly thin Lindsay" in the Dail Fail, how many more scare-mongering ITV documentaries on the "dangers of size zero" before people realise that there is no new culture? The culture is exactly the same, it's just that the target has changed. We've swopped fat-bashing for skinny-bashing and exchanging one prejudice for another isn't an advancement in women's rights, it's a step sideways.

Secondly, to the "more attainable, more womanly" part. Who is to say what is "womanly"? Women come in all different shapes and sizes and only a fool would try to attribute a higher level of feminity to one over the other. Really this argument belongs to the first point I made - it's not about celebrating so-called "womanly" figures, it's about taking a dig at slimmer women, saying they're "manly", less "real". Who cares which women we're picking on, as long as we can still pick on women, hey?

As for "more attainable", let's investigate this, shall we? In the last week two websites; MSN Lifestyle and the Daily Fail have run articles on the "most desirable" body shapes, with an emphasis on "curvy" woman such as Kate Winslet, Halle Berry and eponymous Kelly Brook. The Fail, in particular claims this as a great victory for women, because such figures are supposedly more realistic a goal for the average woman. Really? Neither Winslet, Berry nor Brook can be more than a size 10 at most, and with the average dress size in the UK now up to a 16, that's quite a gap. More pertinently though, "curves" of the type that these women have are not something you can ever achieve. They have big breasts, and wide-set hips, set off by tiny waists. No matter how much you diet you can't change the width of your pelvis, you can't grow your breasts without implants - you're either born an hourglass shape or you're not. Don't get me wrong, I think Winslet, Brook et al have fantastic figures (as do Kate Moss, Cheryl Cole and Victoria Beckham) but promoting them as "better" role models than your average supermodel because their figures are "more attainable" is ludicrious because a girl with a straight-up-and-down body type has as much chance as naturally growing a second head as she has of ever looking like Kelly Brook.

I went to high school with a girl who was tall and flat as a board all over. There were rumblings about her being anorexic, partly because of her shape but also partly because she always talked of losing weight, trying to be thinner. She couldn’t get much thinner without becoming seriously ill, but one day I heard her moan about what was really bothering her: her hips. She thought they were too wide, and she wanted to narrow them down. That’s ridiculous, I remember telling someone. Unless she wanted saw off inches on both sides of her body, what she wanted was impossible. Yet somehow she equated narrower hips with being thinner, and hence, more attractive.

It’s so ridiculous, reading these women’s magazines, how often copy is focused on “love your body”, and all the related affirmations. You’d think we’d have gotten the message by now. But there’s always someone out there with a nicer shape, and we can’t help but wonder…even if there’s no way that body is ever attainable.

Amen

2010-01-10T01:44:00.004-05:00

From Elizabeth Nolan Brown:

But every time I read these sorts of things—this, or Tsing Loh’s last Atlantic article, about her affair and divorce; Elizabeth Weil’s New York Times Magazine article about working on her marriage, and all the bloggy disccusions around it; books like Against Love and A Vindication of Love, both railing against modern “companionate” marriages in their own way; all these late-boomer and Gen X women at once enchanted and neurotic and furious with our current exemplars of marriage or motherhood or monogamy—I am left wondering (and depressed) about what fights we Gen Y (and beyond) women will face in this realm. So much of the current angst seems to be a reaction to the 1970s woman’s reaction to the 1950s woman’s lifestyle/dilemna/ideal … it frustrates me. I’m tired of those battles; they seem silly and cliched and obvious.

But our battles are going to have to be a reaction to these. Or a backlash. And what will that look like? All I know, when I read these things, is that I don’t want to be any of the women in these essays. I don’t want their problems, don’t want their lives. I wonder how they possibly got there, and then can see myself getting there. I think the avoidance of all that will all be so simple, but then they, as women in the 70s and 80s, probably thought the same thing about that 1950s woman.

I’ve tried to avoid Tsing Loh’s articles just because they are so damn depressing. Weil’s piece was fascinating in that trainwreck way, when people air their dirty laundry, and there’s nothing dirtier than sex and love. (Everything else flows from there.) But Tsing Loh’s piece that’s the subject of Brown’s post suffers from the fact that it’s ALL ABOUT HER—a problem with lots of opinion “journalism” today, falling into bloggy traps. She has some good criticism, some interesting larger points (sussed out by Brown), but most of it is long and way too self-involved for a feature in the Atlantic. And it’s supposed to be a review! Please.

But Brown’s got the real point, something that I think of whenever I read an article of that type: I sure as hell don’t want to be any of those women…but I could so very easily fall into that trap, as could many of my friends. Ugh.

But quote of the day goes to Tsing Loh for this:

To be a mother—even simply to be a woman—in today’s world is to be made exhausted and resentful by a role or set of roles that we don’t recall deliberately choosing.

Somehow we always end up falling into something. Sometimes our situations demand that we fulfill some role or archetype that we don’t want. We don’t rebel enough.

Linkey-Links

2010-01-07T22:48:00.005-05:00

Articles that deserve further commentary from me, but due to my lack of focus will just be getting the props.

As a follow-up to my teacher post a few weeks ago, this top-emailed article on teaching as a second career for those in midlife (something I might do myself in thirty years) brings me back to wondering how plentiful these teaching jobs are. In theory, programs like this are great. But is there competition between new young teachers and new older teachers? Do the programs stack up? With so many different routes to becoming a teacher, what's the best way? Can these things even be quantified? Malcolm Gladwell argued for a whole new way to evaluate teachers in a well-known piece in the New Yorker, a contradictory argument that seems very difficult to put into practice. I'm still just as lost about teacher trouble as I ever was, but teaching seems a great second or third career, and I am all for good programs that can provide this service.

CareerCast listed its top jobs for 2010, ranking them on salary, stress, work environment, and job outlook. Media jobs uniformly did poorly, though there were a lot of questionable top choices: historian? philosopher? Anthropology did well, though I have a sneaking suspicion that those who hold that degree don’t feel so secure. A lot of jobs seemed to be low-level, ones that may not require a college diploma, like cosmetologist, waiter, and typist. (Who the hell is a typist now? It’s administrative assistant, though that category is filled by “receptionist.”) There wasn’t a lot of amorphous jobs, those tricky titles or stuff like “venture capitalist” or “hedge fund manager”, where you really wonder what the person does, or jobs where you wonder what a MS in environmental engineering will do. I was very amused by PR executives having the seventh most stressful job out of the ones listed (#193 out of 200).

Must-read on how writers are losing their monetary value. Very sad and scary, like a lot of other stories about the profession:

What's sailing away, a decade into the 21st century, is the common conception that writing is a profession -- or at least a skilled craft that should come not only with psychic rewards but with something resembling a living wage.

[...]

The crumbling pay scales have not only hollowed out household budgets but accompanied a pervasive shift in journalism toward shorter stories, frothier subjects and an increasing emphasis on fast, rather than thorough.

The rank of stories unwritten -- like most errors of omission -- is hard to conceive. Even those inside journalism can only guess at what stories they might have paid for, if they had more money.

Media analyst and former newspaper editor Alan Mutter worried last month about the ongoing "journicide" -- the loss of much of a generation of professional journalists who turn to other professions.

Writers say they see stories getting shorter and the reporting that goes into some of them getting thinner.

A former staff writer for a national magazine told me that she has been disturbed not only by low fees (one site offered her $100 for an 800-word essay) but by the way some website editors accept "reporting" that really amounts to reworking previously published material. That's known in the trade as a "clip job" and on the Web as a "write around."

"The definition of reportage has become really loose," said the writer, also a book author, who didn't want to be named for fear of alienating employers. "In this economy, everyone is afraid to turn down any work and it has created this march to the bottom."

I try not to patronize websites that are purveyors of what I call the "rewrite." There's a difference between commentary (Gawker) and straight-up rehash of news, and I want the real stuff. But I wonder about all the many young people who can't get into journalism now, as they are picked up by related professions, the social media world, or the great swath of unemployment. You can't have more and more PR professionals and fewer and fewer journalists; who will report the news?

On media predictions in 2010: Besides that Apple Tablet that’s taking up far too much speculation, there’s the sense that a lot of news outlets will start charging. As a Times print subscriber, I might be safe for that dear site, but this will mean big changes to anyone who consumes news on a regular basis, and don’t think you can circumvent it with Google News. It might even mean the end of such necessities as Hulu, too.

How the other half lives: I would only ever watch these programs out of sheer curiosity. Excellent moneymaker, just not my cup o' tea.

Peggy Noonan’s excellent column from December, on the cultural split she terms “The Adam Lambert Problem”:

America is good at making practical compromises, and one of the compromises we've made in the area of arts and entertainment is captured in the words "We don't care what you do in New York." That was said to me years ago by a social conservative who was explaining that he and his friends don't wish to impose their cultural sensibilities on a city that is uninterested in them, and that the city, in turn, shouldn't impose its cultural sensibilities on them. He was speaking metaphorically; "New York" meant "wherever the cultural left happily lives."

For years now, without anyone declaring it or even noticing it, we've had a compromise on television. Do you want, or will you allow into your home, dramas and comedies that, however good or bad, are graphically violent, highly sexualized, or reflective of cultural messages that you believe may be destructive? Fine, get cable. Pay for it. Buy your premium package, it's your money, spend it as you like.

But increasingly people feel at the mercy of the Adam Lamberts, who of course view themselves, when criticized, as victims of prudery and closed-mindedness. America is not prudish or closed-minded, it is exhausted. It cannot be exaggerated, how much Americans feel besieged by the culture of their own country, and to what lengths they have to go to protect their children from it.

It's things like this, every bit as much as taxes and spending, that leave people feeling jarred and dismayed, and worried about the future of their country.

All these things—plus Wall Street and Washington and the general sense that most of our great institutions have forgotten their essential mission—add up and produce a fear that the biggest deterioration in America isn't economic but something else, something more characterological.

And finally, the XX Factor’s take on this New York Observer article on American women dating Canadian and European guys:

But contrary to the "Own me! Own me!" view of commitment, all of the New York women I know lingering in lasting long-term but nonconjugal unions are doing so because they're not ready to get married, not because they're anxiously biding time until their boyfriends decide to pop the question.

It'd be nice to see an article that depicts women as the well-rounded, rational beings that they are. You know, people who have multidimensional thoughts about marriage and don't morph into rom-com cliches the minute the word is dangled before their faces. I'm not the only one who finds the prospect of marrying someone you've known for three months, let alone someone you met at a bus depot, totally terrifying. So why am I always reading about it like it's some sort of female fantasy come true? Besides, most of the ladies interviewed for this article are only 25, 26, 27 years old. How much terrible dating could they have endured?

The key difference seems to be rooted in economics:

When we talk about dating or the possibility of having family, with a man or on our own or with—gasp!—a coven of like-minded women (why not?), the conversation is framed entirely by the fact that we can count on our native countries to look after us should we—for whatever reason—not be able to make ends meet stateside. Now, we should be able to secure decent futures for ourselves, with or without male partners…

[…]

The calculus of long-term committment [sic] is just different when your country guarantees the basic necessities of an advanced civilization. When your government provides you, as they do in Canada and in Europe, with health care that is unlinked to a job or "productivity," subsidized prescription drugs, child care, free education through graduate school, and, finally, old-age pensions with visiting nurses if you need them to retain your health and a modicum of dignity. Marriage, ultimately, is about family, however you shape it. I sometimes don't blame men here for being lame or commitment-phobic. They're probably terrified of failing as providers or co-providers.

My biggest peeve with the first criticism is that the New York Observer piece is ostensibly about New York men. Like Sex and the City, they are dealing with a very specific demographic, one that might get overblown. New York men are known to be a different breed than men from the rest of the country, and they get married later than their peers from outside the area, just like the women. Sure, plenty of women complain about commitment-phobic men, but you can make the same case that there are plenty of women who feel the same. After all, I’ve known a few couples where it was the men who wanted to settle down first, but it was the women who felt that marrying young would hold them back. Now that we have longer lives and a life that is fundamentally, on all levels, less secure, why should we make major decisions that can lock us in for what seems like eternity?

Single-Minded

2009-12-24T23:46:00.004-05:00

Double X recently posted an article about a study that compared psychological well-being among singletons and those already married, and found that contrary to stereotype, most singles are just as happy and resilient as their married peers. The study, which profiled heterosexuals 40-74, left out those who were divorced or widowed, normally skewering the results of “single”. The article has some problems, however:

“When single people feel control over their lives and can rely on themselves, they can have especially high levels of happiness,” explains Jamila Bookwala, lead author and associate professor of psychology at Lafayette. She adds that the married people in her study who reported being highly self-sufficient weren’t happy about it, whereas single people on average felt relatively good about carrying their own weight.

Interesting how self-sufficiency is viewed in these two categories. I suspect that it is a point of pride for many singletons to be as self-sufficient as possible, but also in that they have to, or want to, rely on themselves for many things; that’s how the cookie crumbles, it’s just easier to do. But, when married, there is someone there to rely on, and you often just naturally fall into that pattern of needing that person to do things, expecting that person to provide something, and when that person falls short, disappointment arises. Those who are married are self-sufficient because they’ve found that they can’t rely on their spouse, and that causes unhappiness.

But of course, single is never an easy word to define:

It’s also not clear from the November study which single respondents had satisfying love lives but simply didn’t believe in marriage and which people preferred flying solo.

Neither of these designations is clear. What if you are single, have a satisfying love life, but do believe in marriage, and are just not ready for it? That seems like a hell of a lot of people to me. And while “prefer flying solo” is just a phrase, it’s too simplistic. Are these people who don’t want a relationship? Is this incompatible with having a satisfying love life?

The DoubleX piece links to a cover story from 2006 from Psychology Today on the growing shift and reduced stigma towards singles, and one psychologist actually links the current marriage craze (matrimania) to the rise of the singles. With a greater percentage of households not being filled by married couples, and with people marrying later, she posits that there are those who are insecure about the state of the union (and she doesn’t even mention the increased prominence of homosexual marriage).

Does that go back to the idea that being single is seen as a threat to those in relationships? The idea seems laughable, but somehow it always come roaring back. There are also still so many (namely lumped into the category of “relatives”) that find it strange when you don’t bring a love interest to the Christmas party every year. But I do wonder where this marriage glamour comes from. It’s become a topic of conversation among my friends, as we see so many acquaintances pair off and announce their engagement. For many, it is a confused surprise—why settle down so early? What’s the rush? I don’t know if that’s where the mocking originates, the idea to bum rush a David’s Bridal and try on a bunch of dresses for giggles. Why not? It’s an excuse to play dress up and not have to pony up the cash, to worry about the real things marriage signifies. But is it? I play along, because apparently once you hit your mid-20s, marriage is supposed to float into your head, and now we’re being forced to think about it. Dating for a number of years? Be prepared for the questions, the assumptions, the expectations.

Of course, when thinking about “singles”, that iconic show of single women, Sex and the City, comes up. The show itself did a lot to change perceptions, but it also married off three of the four women. I’m reminded of a season six episode, “A Woman’s Right to Shoes”, which explores how society does or does not celebrate or accept a person’s personal choices:

Carrie: You know what? I am Santa. I did a little mental addition and over the years I have bought Kyra an engagement gift, a wedding gift, then there was the trip to Maine for the wedding- three baby gifts...in total I have spent over $2300.00 celebrating her life choices and she is shaming me for spending a lousy $485.00 bucks on myself? Yes, I did the math.

Charlotte: Yes, but those were gifts. And if you got married or had a baby, she would spend the same on you.

Carrie: And if I don't ever get married or have a baby, what? I get bubkiss? Think about it. If you are single, after graduation, there isn't one occasion where people celebrate you.

Charlotte: Oh! We have birthdays!

Carrie: Oh, no no no no- we all have birthdays, that's a wash. I am thinking about the single gal. Hallmark doesn't make a "congratulations you didn't marry the wrong guy" card. And where's the flatware for going on vacation alone?

Exactly. Plenty of people experience major milestones that don’t fall under these traditional rubrics, but they can’t throw multiple parties every step of the way and expect gifts. Announcing a marriage can have engagement, shower, and wedding gifts, and that’s not including all the ancillary expenses! Many people also agree that we have an obligation to make ourselves happy, and that includes a lot of “selfish” decisions, ones that can be judged harshly by outsiders:

Even as singlehood is becoming the de facto norm, people who choose to go through life solo are deliberately kept in a state of confusion about their own motives by a culture that clings to the marriage standard. Typically, says DePaulo, singles are told that they are selfish for pursuing their own life goals. If you're single and you have a great job to which you devote energy, you're typically told your job won't love you back. Of course, singles are always suspect as tragic losers in the game of love. But most of all they are told through commercials, images and endless articles that they will never be truly happy and deeply fulfilled unless they are married.

"The battlefield is now psychological," says DePaulo. Single women today have work opportunities, economic independence and reproductive freedom. "The things that can be legislated are all done," she notes. "The last great way to keep women in their place is to remind them that they are incomplete. Even if you think you're happy, the messages go, you don't know real happiness." There's a hunger out there for a new view of singles.

Notice, of course, that the article goes from all singles to just female singles, again focusing on the women. Because it’s women who want to be married, right? There the ones we have to worry about. As friends of mine commented a few months ago, it’s assumed that men will marry, but for women, you never know…the men might be a little off, but the women will be downright strange!

But for many people, being single is both a choice and not a choice. It’s a choice in that a person can decide whether or not to pursue something, to set up an online profile, to ask out every person seen at a bar. But it’s also not a choice in that you don’t always get what you want, the person you want may be unavailable for a variety of factors, and sometimes, there just isn’t a suitable person available.

The Psychology Today article has some noteworthy stuff, although I don’t agree with it completely. But neither do I with another singles “movement”: Quirkyalone. The premise is basically that it’s better to be without a relationship than to settle, a feeling that many people agree with in theory. It’s meant to battle the relationship stigma, all those people who hop from one person to another. But many of these people, just like many of the people in relationships, do really believe that they don’t “need” someone. Quirkyalone is a mindset, as Sasha Cagen repeatedly declares. I understand where she’s coming from. I just do not like the label. Singlehood as a movement seems a bit silly to me, though I understand the points of privilege single bloggers point out, like tax code rates, hotel rates and whatnot.

A lot of the advice Psychology Today points to is rather obvious, at least to those of us who know the world. It might not always be feasible or easy to follow, but it makes sense. It’s what people do, it’s the natural evolution. It always seemed sad to me that when people coupled up, their social circle often narrowed, instead of expanded. This isn’t always the case, but especially with marriage, circles get smaller, because the available time one has now must be appropriately divided, and a smaller portion goes to friends. It’s part of the soulmate culture, another dangerous idea: one person can change your life, but it can’t fulfill you always and forever:

The soulmate culture insists that one person can satisfy all your emotional needs, says DePaulo. "But that's like putting all of your money in one stock and hoping it's not Enron." Marriage today forces many people to put their friendships on the back burner. Singles, on the other hand, are free to develop deeper relationships with their friends without fear that they are betraying closeness. The flip side is that singles have to be more proactive about building their social lives; it takes an effort.

"Single people are more likely to have a good relationship investment strategy. They tend to have a diversified portfolio of relationships—friends, siblings, colleagues—and to value a number of them," says DePaulo. "They have not invested their entire emotional capital in one person." Having a broad social network is physiologically as well as emotionally protective, although society perceives singles as psychologically vulnerable precisely because they lack the built-in support system of a spouse.

As I said, lots of these things just naturally happen, and they should, whether a person is single (whatever that means) or not. As more people stay unmarried, and the psychology of happiness continues to grow, there will be more studies…probably proving that what single people hate most is forcing them to answer questions about coupling up.

Are There Any Teaching Jobs Left?

2009-12-24T22:53:00.005-05:00

I know plenty of people who have received or are in the process of obtaining teaching certificates, and while I have been told for forever that teachers are virtually guaranteed a job, it seems that is not the case now:

Since last fall, school systems, state education agencies, technical schools and colleges have shed about 125,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At the same time, many teachers who had planned to retire or switch jobs are staying on because of the recession, and many people who have been laid off in other fields are trying to carve out second careers as teachers or applying to work as substitutes to make ends meet.

[...]

Just a few years ago, before the recession hit, several reports had projected a big shortage of teachers across a wide range of subjects over the next several years as baby boomers retired from the classroom and the strong economy lured college graduates into fields other than education.

But the nationwide demand for teachers in 60 out of 61 subjects has declined from a year earlier, according to an annual report issued this week by the American Association for Employment in Education. Only one subject — math — was listed as having an extreme shortage of teachers. In recent years, more than a dozen subjects had extreme shortages.

Plenty of these wannabe teachers cannot find jobs, and I really wonder how easy it is to find positions, no matter if you do alternative route or get a master's degree, or one of the many other ways to enter the field. Special education is practically the only way left, as University of Kansas Dean of Education Rick Ginsberg explains in the article (disclosure: he's my father's friend), but not every teacher is made to work with special education students.

Will this reverse in a few years, if the recession dies down and people retire? Is it only true in some areas? Rural North Dakota, for all I know, still needs teachers. But that doesn't do much good if you live on the East Coast...state requirements vary tremendously.

I suspect that there are job opportunities for those with teaching degrees, even advanced ones, at educational institutions or tutoring centers. Directors, instructors, etc...they may not be straight teaching jobs, but they are in the educational field.

WaPo Fail

2009-12-24T11:18:00.002-05:00

There was a little incident in Washington recently. An impromptu snowball fight caused a police officer to take out his gun. This turned into a big deal. It became an even bigger deal when the story was inaccurately covered by the Washington Post; their account was contradicted by other outlets and notably a YouTube video of the event.

The whole story is a fascinating example of the power of social networks, ingenuity, and journalism.

The Washington Post did write the "real" story a few days later, but by then they had been widely criticized for their erroneous coverage and for not having the balls to fess up for their wrongdoing, correcting their record properly. Their piece is pretty good, but it got lost in the shuffle between other snowstorm-related stories (especially in the print edition) and the cacophony of criticism, most notably from their main competitor, the Washington City Paper:

Yet the reason why the Post screwed this up is that they all have linkophobia. If you link to an outlet---such as, God forbid, the Washington City Paper---you've lost. You got scooped and all your colleagues are going to look down on you. Linking is a huge sign of weakness---you just can't do it. Far better to, like, call a top police official, buy his version of events, and just place it in a post, regardless of the contradicting evidence that's already posted elsewhere.

Take a close look at that 10:20 update on the maybe-gun-pulling cop: "The plainclothes D.C. police detective may have unholstered his pistol during the confrontation with participants in the huge snowball fight, based on video and photos posted on the Internet."

Bold and italics are mine. They're mine because this is the most cowardly, selfish, arrogant news conduct out there today. What the fuck is "video and photos posted on the Internet"? How does that help readers? It's as if I can go to www.internet.com, and there, on the first screen, will be the video and photos of the snowball fight and the maybe-gun-wielding cop. "Posted on the Internet" would be acceptable if this were 1997.

The reporters used this hazy phrasing because they were too chicken-shit to do something that we all have learned to do over the past, say, decade or more. And that's to link to competitors and acknowledge their contributions to stories.

The tone is harsh, but it’s a blog, much like Gawker serves to rip apart the New York Times. The truth is, Erik Wemple is right. How can you ignore the rest of the world? I assumed that it was common practice now to link to other outlets and acknowledge the competition when necessary in covering stories. The idea, as the Times has written, is that you want to be as accurate as possible, and if that means getting scooped, then so be it. You want to have all the facts, and the reporting should be stronger and as fleshed out as possible. By not acknowledging other outlets, you make yourself look stupid at best, lose credibility at worst, as seen here.

Are Computing Jobs the Future?

2009-12-22T23:35:00.001-05:00

This article is quite deceptive.

Sure, it focuses on the young--teenagers, to be exact. I love the idea of new jobs in computing, just like I love the idea of new jobs in relation to the environment, or in government. But how can I get involved? I love computers and technology, though I am far from savvy and quite behind the curve in a lot of areas, but I'd love to learn. My high school did not have even close to a fraction of the opportunities listed here, and well, my problem is I never know what to do. What do I do? How can I get one of these hybrid careers:

Hybrid careers like Dr. Halamka’s that combine computing with other fields will increasingly be the new American jobs of the future, labor experts say. In other words, the nation’s economy is going to need more cool nerds. But not enough young people are embracing computing — often because they are leery of being branded nerds.

Educators and technologists say two things need to change: the image of computing work, and computer science education in high schools.

Is computing really considered too nerdy? I’ve argued before that nerd isn’t the stigma it used to be—not with Hollywood glamourizing the term, between Spider-man and Sheldon. Sure, most of us are more socially adept than these two characters, but neither of them embody computing. What does need to change is the notion that computer science is too hard, too male, and dreadfully dull. Tales of it being mundane code that will cause most normal people to go off the rails before hitting 35 are the norm, and that doesn’t bode well for recruitment.

I am all for hybrid careers. I want one. I want to be one of those hyphen people, described as writer/activist/etc/etc/etc, juggling many things and moving fluidly between interests and skills, belonging in several different environments. There are plenty of people who fit this mode, why can’t I?

This article using computing as a jumping off point for those interested in a varied career path, and uses examples of people who have untraditional background but have a “computing” job:

One goal, Ms. Cuny and others say, is to explain the steady march and broad reach of computing across the sciences, industries, culture and society. Yes, they say, the computing tools young people see and use every day — e-mail, text-messaging and Facebook — are part of the story. But so are the advances in field after field that are made possible by computing, like gene-sequencing that unlocks the mysteries of life and simulations that model climate change.

It’s seeing these simulations that really make computing cool, the data sequenced and mapped out. Museums are great for this; I recommend the MIT Museum in Boston, especially the section from their Media Lab (I was practically drooling). You need a computer science background to enter the school, something that bummed me out quite a bit when I found out in high school. Data collection is so cool, especially when sequenced and compared, trying to explain and extrapolate from the responses. It’s really unbelievable how they make even the most mundane fascinating.

But it’s hard to get there:

Today, introductory courses in computer science are too often focused merely on teaching students to use software like word processing and spreadsheet programs, said Janice C. Cuny, a program director at the National Science Foundation.

Introductory programs? I’m not sure if she’s talking about Computer Science 101 in college or the local community college’s Introduction to Computers, which is meant for grandma. I believe a lot of people just need time and practice with programs in order to use them well; sometimes that necessitates a course, other times a job or project. But a lot of people don’t get that chance, or they don’t know they have that chance and it passes them by.

I’ve always liked that the Obama administration created a Chief Technology Officer position in addition to having a Chief Information Officer, showing his commitment to technology, an area that the previous president was not into. Nowadays, technology is so incredibly important that not having the government play a part is an egregious mistake. Having support in this area—including advocating electronic health records—ensures that our citizens will be able to prepare for the future, and enhances our standing in the world.

Double X is Done!

2009-11-19T00:03:00.006-05:00

My new favorite site is folding back into Slate. Tears:

After some deliberation, we have decided to fold DoubleX back into Slate. The site will now become its own section, with our XX Factor blog, articles, and special projects already in the works. Our aim is to create a more intimate version of the community we have built, with many of the same voices and passions.

For many of you, this won't much change your experience of reading us. We will have many of the same bloggers and writers, and Hanna and Emily will continue to run the project. The decision is being made for business reasons rather than as an editorial judgment. In fact, it's the editorial quality of the site, and the way in which it so perfectly embodies the Slate DNA, that makes this a natural next step. This is a new phase, not an ending—since we came out of Slate, where we started XX Factor, it's a return to our roots.

While I have been lax in keeping up with the original XX Factor blog since I've made an effort to check the site regularly, I do really enjoy the core group of writers, and I love their focus on friendship--from the advice column to "Your Comeback" to their takes on everything from the health care bill to their own personal projects. Occasionally I wondered if they would ever have days where they would seem to run out of content, but on greater thought, that's silly--there is always news to decipher, situations to parse. And men's sites recycle far more than Double X will ever.

Double X wasn't a "feminist" site, as the editors of Bitch lamented this week on their podcast, but it was a woman's space--and not harsh, or overly cutesy, or any other affected attitude. They were real, but not in the "in your face real" that real usually means. They were friends, they were fun, they were smart, they were critical, and they were awesome.

I want to be Hanna Rosin or Emily Bazelon when I grow up.

P.S. Their Gabfest is also by far the best Slate podcast out there.

David Brooks on Government

2009-11-11T14:42:00.003-05:00

If I were a politician trying to win back independents, I’d say something like this: When I was a kid, I had a jigsaw puzzle of the U.S. Each state was a piece, and on it there was a drawing showing what people made there. California might have movies; Washington State, apples; New York, fashion or publishing. That puzzle represented an economy that was diverse and deeply rooted.

We’ve lost that. First Wall Street got disproportionately big, then Washington. It’s time to return to fundamentals. No short-term fixes. Government should do what it’s supposed to do: schools, roads, basic research. It should not be picking C.E.O.’s or setting pay or fizzing up the economy with more debt. It should give people the tools to compete, not rig the competition. Lines of restraint have dissolved, and they need to be restored.

Independents support the party that seems most likely to establish a frame of stability and order, within which they can lead their lives. They can’t always articulate what they want, but they withdraw from any party that threatens turmoil and risk. As always, they’re looking for a safe pair of hands.
"What Independents Want"

His other recent columns have been thought-provoking, too, garnering acclaim for his take on how we frame narratives and widespread criticism for his musings on romance and modern-day technology. Don't miss his conversation with Gail Collins on last week's election, either.

“Calories should take work to access”

2009-11-09T22:39:00.001-05:00

Ezra Klein offers another way to think about how we eat:

I'm convinced that how you lay out your kitchen changes both how you eat and how you cook. For now, I've got two main principles. First, you don't eat what you can't see, both for good and for bad. Second, calories should take work to access.

A year or so back, I was reporting out a story on the behavioral economics papers influencing the Obama administration. One of the sources for that story offhandedly mentioned a study that showed men eat far more fruits and vegetables if they're stored on the same shelf as the beer. Similarly, I've come across studies showing that storing fruits and vegetables at eye-level does more to increase consumption than subsidizing them. The irony of the crisper drawer at the base of the fridge is that it keeps produce fresh for longer, but since you also forget that the produce exists, it makes it more likely that it goes bad altogether. I've lost more produce that way than I'd like to admit. Good produce. In my fridge, fruits and vegetables go on the top drawers. The crisper area is going to get sauce overflow, or maybe bread.

Similarly, I like to snack. And I don't have much self-control, or really any self-control, when I'm around snack food. Worse, in my new place, I'll be a whole lot nearer to the fridge than I was in the large, rambling group house I previously inhabited. To keep myself from gaining a gut, I'm trying avoid storing much food that can be instantly eaten. Aside from fruits and vegetables, I'm trying to make the calories in my kitchen difficult to access: That means storing food I have to cook before it becomes edible. In my experience, the desire to not boil water is stronger than the desire to snack. That means crackers, chocolate chips, granola, and cereals are out.

In the last place, my pantry was a mess. I stored dried foods on three shelves of a fairly high, fairly deep, cabinet. Cleaning it out was a sad reminder of how much good food had disappeared beneath other foods, left to grow stiff, stale, and inedible. It was a good learning experience, though. In the new place, I had to choose between a standalone pantry or some sort of cabinet for dishes and cups. I went with a standalone pantry, as it meant I could leave it open. This one, in fact. The fact that visitors will see it ensure I'll keep it neat. The fact that I'll see it ensures I'll know what's there. At least that's the hope, anyway.

There's More to Life Than Marriage

2009-10-27T23:22:00.004-04:00

I was very disappointed in the coverage of The Shriver Report, Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress’ massive investigation in the status of women today. Despite having a cover in Time and a daily segment all last week on the NBC Nightly News, not to mention all the other reports, I didn’t find anything said to be remotely unexpected or even all that interesting (though the charts in Time were cool). Most of it was known, if you looked. I was more intrigued by the reports, both recently and in the spring, on women’s happiness; that was where the real issues came to light, in trying to theorize and explain the results.

Today, I watched a segment from Good Morning America featuring Meghan McCain and Maria Shriver discussing the Women’s Conference and by extension, the report. Normally I would not bother, since I tend to dislike daytime television in general, and despite the banner for the GMA website proclaiming the show has won the Daytime Emmy for Best Morning Broadcast three years in a row, I was not convinced that I was going to be seeing anything that spectacular. But I was mildly interested, mainly because I like both Meghan McCain and Maria Shriver.

Both women were as expected, Meghan earnest and excited, the First Lady of California very professional, but the piece was unremarkable. Until Diane Sawyer (future World News anchor!) had to ask the dumbest question of all, following Maria Shriver’s comments on choices:

Can you have a completely fulfilled life without marrying, just as a career woman?

She then points out Meghan’s age, 25, and then says the average age of marriage (first time, for women) is 25-26, implicitly implying that Meghan, who as far as the public knows is not heading down the aisle any time soon, is facing that possibility.

What an incredibly stupid and insulting question.

Of course the answer is of course, which is what Meghan gave—and to her credit, answered it directly, though with a stone face.

Why is this question still being asked? Why is it only asked of women? I have never once heard someone ask this question to a male. We ask, “Do you think you’ll get married?”, or “Would you like to get married someday?”, or “When do you think you’ll get married?”, always implying there’s an option. But for women, it is an either/or question. Why is the assumption made that all women want marriage, that it’s a good thing for a particular individual, that that is the only right choice—and that “career woman”, that 1950s term, is the only alternative? Or that you can’t be both? The whole point that Maria Shriver made 15 seconds before was that women can make different choices and that they should not be demonized for their decisions!

Some marriages are terrible. Some people don’t want to get married. Some people shouldn’t get married. People can live their lives the way they want to, and they shouldn’t be forced to conform to a set of outdated standards that supposedly promise fulfillment. Asking this question, no matter how it is answered, only reaffirms the outdated thinking behind it. If the whole point of A Woman’s Nation was to spotlight how women actually think, what they want and how they live, they can start by asking some new ones.

"The Response Has Been a Collective Shrug"

2009-10-27T22:25:00.003-04:00

David Brooks and Bob Herbert’s recent conversation is on the war in Afghanistan, and they argue that in order for Americans to really feel they have a tangible stake in this war, there needs to be sacrifice.

President Obama has said the war in Afghanistan is a war of necessity, essential to the security of Americans here at home. If that’s the case, then I think an awful lot of us should be doing an awful lot more.

In the Second World War, those who did not serve in uniform nevertheless endured shortages of fuel, certain types of food and material goods. The nation took great collective pride in the fight against the Nazis and the Japanese. Major industries were converted to war production. Bonds were sold. Taxes were raised. There was very much a sense that “we’re in this together.”

I have always said that this needs to be true for a vast majority of Americans to really care about the war. Like what Brooks says, everyone supports the troops—and that’s all well and fine and good, but unless you are truly touched, feel that you are actively doing something on a sustained basis for those overseas and have a real stake in the outcome, then it’s really hard to feel invested in what’s happening.

Without a reason or an innate interest, people don’t care. That’s true of a lot of things, including politics. Healthcare reform is getting traction because it’s become such a big thing, affecting everyone’s wallets and choices, and those who aren’t paying attention are the ones asleep at the wheel. Why do people suddenly become invested in a subject? Often because it now has directly affected them. That’s why people suddenly start supporting disease research they previously were unaware of before their friend got sick, try to quit smoking when a family member is diagnosed with lung cancer, pay attention to school board elections when their child starts kindergarten.

Brooks offers some suggestions, one of which he calls a “civilian nation-building academy”, which would train people in the various ways they could help rebuild countries. It sounds like something out of the nonprofit sector. While there has been a resurgence of coverage on community service and volunteering (with cover stories in Time, national volunteer week, high-profile broadcast campaigns), that’s not the same as having a mobilized country or workforce. With high unemployment, volunteer numbers are u p, but that doesn’t mean that it’s so easy to find a spot helping out for a few hours. And avenues like the Peace Corps and Americorps aren’t for everyone, and they only impact a relatively small amount of people.

But without sacrifice, a large mobilized movement with tangible consequences that affects a great number of people, this collective shrug won’t turn into a fiery stance. We’ve seen how healthcare reform has mobilized people, gotten them to talk and to serious think about the issue, we just need that to happen to the war.

Why are there not more female pundits?

2009-10-24T18:38:00.005-04:00

I've never thought of this before, at least in a conscious way.

My new favorite blogger, Brooklyn-based and Midwestern-transplant-by-way-of-DC Elizabeth Nolan Brown, tackles the question.

1) Being a political journalist/columnist, or a serious national affairs/sociocultural-type reporter/freelancer, has got to be hard (both in terms of skill level and opportunities to break in). Very hard, regardless of gender. It’s not something any writer/reporter can just do. But women, I think, have a lot more options when it comes to the range of topics, in general, they can write about and still be “journalists.” There are many, many more (paying) outlets for fashion/beauty/entertainment/sex/relationship writing than political writing. In my own fantasies of the joys/horrors of ever trying to strike it as a freelance writer, I’ve browsed through all the how-to-query sheets on media bistro, and sometimes wondered why the heck I wasn’t trying to write the fluff stuff seriously.

So for the kind of person who starts out with mild pretensions of being a serious journalist, or even just a daily news reporter, or a mildly authentic storyteller, and finds it daunting/hard/unrenumerative, etc., there’s a lot easier ‘out,’ I think, for women than for men, who, for the most part, don’t have the option of writing about healthy/beauty/fashion/etc. It’s kind of the same psychology that I think is often under-valued when explaining why women ‘opt out’ of the workplace—work can suck! It’s sometimes hard, and sometimes boring, and for people who don’t find themselves in a perfect situation, staying home with the kids full-time can seem like a socially acceptable way to ‘fail,’ to give up—one that more men would avail themselves of, too, if they could as easily.

2) Another thing is that there are very few separate “men’s issues” in politics, or media, but there are separate “women’s issues”—things like reproductive rights, gender discrimination, the politics of motherhood, media sexism, etc., just to name a few. While these should *theoretically* be things of concern to both genders, they’re not, and I can’t entirely blame men for not taking them as seriously (while I pay attention to, say, race issues, it’s not—for better or worse—something I tend to spend much time exploring in depth or writing about or anything like that; also, why would a male writer want to carve out a niche in writing about sexism, or gender discrimination, or reproductive rights? There’s always going to be a woman writer who can claim more authenticity, and some who even feel offended by a male writing about these things, so there’s totally a disincentive for them to even consider doing so).

Women have had to carve out their own spaces in the blogosphere—places like Broadsheet, Feministe, Feministing, XX Factor, Jezebel, (Ladyblog!)—to discuss these issues, separate from the “real” political issues, like military endeavors, campaigns, taxes, etc. Again, this is understandable; there are a few Big General Political Issues, the sorts that get talked about at the major political blogs and magazines, the hard news stuff, and then all sorts of non-gendered softer stuff – education, race issues, food politics – have to carve out their own separate spaces as well. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of this. It’s just that … well, a lot of very smart, very political women writers/bloggers/pundits are naturally going to be attracted to reading about issues that directly affect them. Which means less time keeping up with the Big General Political Issues. There are only so many hours that can be devoted to keeping up with blog conversations per day, and every minute spent reading Shakesville or the Independent Women’s Forum blog means less time that can be devoted to, say, Andrew Sullivan or Matthew Iglesias. It’s impossible to keep up with it all.

I’m not someone who’s ever had any aspirations to being a Serious Political Blogger (clearly), but as someone who does want to participate in whatever small way in the conversation, who lives in DC, who hangs out with a lot of journalists and writers, and who just generally wants to be well-informed about what’s going on … even I find it daunting. So I think, yeah, this is certainly a disadvantage for women writers/bloggers who do aspire to really be out there—either you’ve got to just do the women’s stuff, or just do the Big Political Issues, and that’s got to be a hard call to have to make. [And, again, the socialization thing, but I think women who show an interest in political/sociology/media etc. are still often encouraged more to focus on social issues than on horserace politics, economics, or foreign affairs).

3) A lot of who-writes-for-where-and-about-what is driven by editors. And if an editor has two people, a man and a woman, who can write about some economic issue, but only the woman can credibly write an article about, say,the 'opt out revolution,' they're going to assign the either/or story to the guy so they can assign the women's-only story to the girl. That's certainly not sexist. But it does work against more women writing about the Serious General Political Issues.

Taken as a whole, I think women actually have many more opportunities than men to make a career out of being writers/jouranlists/bloggers. Just not necessarily writing about the kinds of things they may want to write about, or the kinds of things on which we place a premium as Serious Issues.

A couple of comments:

Yes, men can and do write about non-political matters: the mastheads of Esquire, Details, and Men's Fitness are made up of men. Granted, these positions are few and far between, but it's not totally out of the question. Entertainment journalism has plenty of men, too.

I especially second the point about why women opt out. Besides the fact that it's more socially acceptable for a mother to quit her job to care for children, if women have the means to do so, if work isn't that important to them, then why not? Depending upon the woman, this may not be an agonizing decision to make, but an easy one.

But overall, very astute analysis. The blogosphere has changed things somewhat--and I still believe things will change in the future. But even up-and-comers like Dana Goldstein still mix in social issues and psychology; they just aren't the "true" pundits. Personally, I like my commentators to be as well-rounded as possible, I like them to comment on social issues, mix in a popular song or two, discuss the cultural significance (or not) of The Good Wife. And that's done by men, too.

(Hat tip Conor Friedersdorf)

On Feminism

2009-10-18T13:36:00.003-04:00

I just have to spotlight this wonderfully funny, very well-written piece on how Spanx illustrates the physical illusions women go through to look attractive.

But the truth is that I love glamour. I love coquettish lingerie. I also love Häagen-Dazs, and making out, and that red polka-dot swing dress I can't quite fit into right now, and comfort, and male attention, and sometimes I think the real trick of womanhood (of adulthood, probably) is toggling back and forth between those desires without losing yourself in any one. Of course I would love to be the woman who slips on that dress and looks fabulous without ancillary assistance, but let me tell you I did give that a whirl, and I looked possibly pregnant. And while the gentleman caller may or may not have cared, I know that I cared, desperately, that I would spend the whole evening at an otherwise enjoyable get-together tugging and twisting and turning at improbable angles. And so the Spanx gave me a jolt of confidence, a license to swing my hips lustily and allow strangers' eyes to linger over my body without fidgeting and land surprise make-outs with gentleman callers, and that is a pretty smashing bargain for $10 at Target. (emphasis mine)

And that's how I've come to view feminism. The more I read--through all the critiques and criticisms, the hand-wringing and the angst--it seems to come down to balancing as best as possible your own beliefs, the necessary compromises. Because feminism alone, as a theory, isn't practical, isn't sustainable in the day-t0-day, and there always is a tension between say, wanting men's attention and not wanting to want men's attention. Or in popular parlance, the Madonna-whore dichotomy. Women are largely both, just in different spheres, at different times.

"If I want to walk into my editor’s office and tell him I think he’s a bozo, I can.”

2009-09-17T16:50:00.002-04:00

David Carr on journalism:

Journalists, for all their self-importance, are often a little naïve about the way the real world works. Sure, being a newsie is a grind, the hours are not great and the public holds us in lower esteem than the women who work the poles at Satin Dolls down the road from the Tick Tock in Lodi, but it beats working by a mile. Every day is a caper, and most reporters are attention-deprived adrenaline junkies who care only for the next story. Journalists are like cops, hugging the job close and savoring the rest of their life as they can.

The skills of finding out what is not known and rendering it in comprehensible ways has practical value in other parts of the economy, but the thrill of this thing of ours is not a moveable feast. The difference between a reporting job and other jobs is the difference between working for The Man and being The Man, a legend, at least, in your own mind.

"Wave of Incivility"

2009-09-16T10:51:00.005-04:00

From the Washington Post's "On Faith" blog, connecting the outbursts from Kanye West, Representative Joe Wilson, and Serena Williams (emphasis mine):

All of these stories are rooted in the same basic fact: speakers who think it's all about them. And if it isn't about them, they seem to think it must be about some other individual who is even more important than they are. Apparently though, it's beyond any of the offenders' ability to appreciate that civility is about all of us.

Civility is about creating a culture of mutual respect, not simply making sure that the biggest celebrity in the room has their moment. But Serena doesn't get that, and neither do Kanye or Joe. And that's why they can not or will not offer meaningful apologies for their bad behavior.

[...]

Wilson sees the president like West sees Taylor Swift i.e. another star whose moment he stole. It's a personal thing, Wilson seems to think, so why bother apologize to his colleagues? Were this attitude not so pervasive in our culture it would be hard to believe that one could so misunderstand the moment as Rep. Wilson does.

He just doesn't get it. Wilson doesn't appreciate that House rules which ban screaming out things like, "You lie!" are not simply about protecting the man at the mic, they are about creating a culture which encourages the free exchange of ideas. When that culture goes off the rails we all suffer and that's why Joe Wilson owes his colleagues and the nation an apology.

This is just another example of how narcissistic our culture has become. Apologies have become de rigur for any sort of gaffe, but they're usually meaningless. The offenders do it because they have to, rarely contrite. Kanye's outburst was stupid, and his point--that award shows should be based on real merit--was lost. All three were disrespectful, but we are used to saying what we want in whatever forum, since we gotta express ourselves. That's our excuse; we don't mean to personally offend, you see, but we need to be heard.

Seriously

2009-09-15T22:29:00.003-04:00

How is "this guy I know from Facebook" a credible source? How the hell did this get published on MSNBC???

I didn't even finish reading the article, I was so shocked.

The Power of Technology

2009-09-04T16:46:00.002-04:00

And the New York Times reports that iPhones are clogging up the airwaves. Damn you, Apple.

How Can We Reform America to Make It Healthier?

2009-07-30T23:38:00.004-04:00

With a new health care policy in the news, and the usual track of obesity declared as the nation’s number one threat, I wonder, as I drive home after another day sitting at my desk, how we can actually change American society so that we are healthier.

Aside from the constant stream of new drugs on the market, and the new movement for locally grown food, how can many Americans—sitting in front of screens all day and all night—actually change their habits? It’s one thing to constantly carp on “calories in, calories out”, that you need to eat less and exercise more, but that’s a simple statement for a complicated problem. How can American society truly change? How can we structure work, our way of life, so that this is feasible?

I’m not talking about better health insurance, less availability of junk food, even funky workplace amenities like gyms and treadmill stations, although those things will help. But how do Americans, with their time-strapped, hectic lives, actually go about to make changes?

Many workplaces now offer incentives, or wellness initiatives, to get their employees healthy. And that’s a start. But so many people get up, drive to work to sit at a desk for too many hours, then drive home and watch TV, because that’s what they need to relax. Fitting in even a 30 minute workout (it’s never just 30 minutes), is tough when you don’t have the space, it’s cold, rainy and dark outside, and you have to make dinner and take care of the kids.

Working out during the day isn’t often feasible either, and while riding bikes to work is the hip green thing to do, it’s largely impractical for a huge number of people. There is, simply, usually too much work to do to tear yourself away from the computer for a large enough amount of time, and then we add in our own leisure reading of the news, checking emails, and doing our banking that brings us in front of the computer for more time.

People talk about changing corporate culture, but that is often very difficult to do and based on a lot of factors outside of a person’s control, especially if they are a junior employee. If everyone eats at their desk, and you don’t, it can look like you’re slacking, even if they are just checking Facebook.

A lot of the initiatives to change Americans' working habits will take a lot of time, especially if that includes redesigning the country’s transportation system. And while I am all for a reorganization of the country’s priorities regarding food subsidies, that doesn’t necessarily mean that things will change all that much (especially as fruit spoils in a vending machine). But how do we put in place things that make it easier for people to move more during the day?

The key is to make it natural, not forced, and not mandatory, because people should feel free to eat a hamburger, smoke, or sit in front of screens all day long if that is what they want. But institutional, societal changes are what needs to happen, and often in America, it is policy that pushes the rest of the country in a direction.

Even if, over time, better quality food is more equitably distributed and the country becomes less dependent on cars as a main form of transportation, we will still be captive to the screens. And yes, of course there are plenty of people who do not have to sit at a desk all day to work—teachers, construction, retail and restaurant workers, to name a few—but more and more of our jobs are sedentary, physically rote. What will happen in the future? How can we stem this tide? How can we change our environment?

I had these questions in mind when I read Megan McArdle’s interview with Paul Campos, the author of The Obesity Myth. He argues that much of what is perceived as current wisdom on obesity as the country’s leading healthcare crisis is wrong, and that the focus on obesity is harmful and ill-effective when it comes to reforming care. McArdle’s interview is partly prompted by a recent study in Health Affairs (of which I am familiar) that says that a growing number of our costs is due to obesity; prevention is understood to be by a lot of leaders one of the ways in which healthcare costs can be reduced.

At first read, a lot of what Campos says sounds blasphemous. Of course there is an obesity epidemic! How can you argue that? Just look around! Costs have soared, the rates of people on chronic medications have gone up, there's an ongoing debate about making airplane seats bigger...every day there's new evidence of how heavy and unhealthy America is.

One of his major issues is the destructive mistake people make between failing to distinguish being healthy and being thin. Despite the perception that getting thinner is being healthier, that is not the cause, and often is a form of disordered or disruptive eating, merely a symptom of a real problem and not a (truly) desired result, and that that being healthy or thin has morphed into a true moral panic.

I wonder when this started. There’s long been a historical association, at least within Western Europe, regarding body type and the availability of food, as it is with cultural perceptions of beauty—when food was scarce, being plump and voluptuous was the height of fashion (as was being pale, since it showed that you did not have to physically toil for your livelihood), whereas now not being thin is a measurement of self-control and class. “Thin” all too often equates to healthy, but many people (especially young people) have no conception that this will not last forever, and that they will eventually pay for it.

Campos is right that BMI is a flawed system, a fact that has not infiltrated the popular consciousness yet. Just like the old food pyramid, it is a distortion that is widely accepted and can actually be harmful.

Too much media coverage focuses on fitness and being healthy as losing weight, and it infiltrates down to become fact. Everyone is under constant assault about the nature of their bodies. Why are you eating that? Why are you doing this? It’s not enough/it’s too much/you’re too thin/you’re too fat/and on and on and on.

As we get older, our bodies change—as a result of age, pregnancy, stress, the environment, hormones, medication, lifestyle—and there’s only so much we can do to prevent it. It’s silly for the media to point to celebrities or athletes, because they have the resources—time and money—to afford the best care, the personal attention, the babysitter, chef, housekeeper, trainer, assistant. We can’t be Madonna, and honestly, most of us wouldn’t want to be, because we don’t want to be a slave to some figure that’s close to impossible to attain (and maintain). Even shows like "The Biggest Loser" don’t return to the contestants afterward, because it’s exceedingly difficult to go back to a normal life and sustain a major change without the help afforded to them on the show from trainers and chefs, without the unlimited time to only focus on their body and their health.

But I do question Campos on one thing about this obesity myth: What about the soaring rates of diseases like diabetes? That’s not the result of a newfangled calculation or the overprescribing of medications, and this is serious. We can argue about whether or not all those statin drugs are necessary, but I know that I do not want to be on these thirty years from now.

Public health remedies have focused on incentives to get people to adopt healthier behaviors, and that is where the idea to tax junk food and unhealthy substances like tobacco took root. But while this may work in theory, it seems counterintuitive for those windfalls to go back to merely preaching and prescribing the proper healthy behaviors, constantly reinforcing the cycle. Some smokers in particular find this galling, targeted as a result of behaviors they engage in; others welcome it as a deterrent. But as the population of smokers dwindles, it seems like a good bargain to the rest of us, because it doesn’t affect us. But widespread taxes will.

Campos returns several times to the point that the culture, with the government behind them, demonizes fat people, that the government is “abusive” when it puts these conditions in place. But we, as a society, demonize all weights. How do we stop doing that? It’s an essential part of human nature: we criticize, we gawk, we comment.

Likewise, he also makes excellent points on physical activity as it’s tied to weight. While it’s true that most publicized success stories do feature lines about feeling healthier, stronger and energized, it’s usually accompanied by other major (physical) changes. A success story that didn’t involve much, if any, weight loss isn’t interesting, because the change wasn’t physical.

McArdle does point out that no one encourages Americans to get married, get religion or move to the country, though that’s not true; it's just on a small scale, and nowhere near as pervasive as the confluences of weight, body image, and health.

It’s sadly true that fatness has become associated with “poverty and lack of self-control”, even though we are all powerless when it comes to certain foods. But self-control is too prized, and too tied with restrictive eating, so that it becomes less about discipline than deprivation.

And that’s where food porn comes in.

As I finished reading Megan McArdle’s post, I was lured into the living room where my father and brother were watching “Best Places to Pig Out” on the Travel Channel. They were calling for me, but since I heard “New Brunswick” and “food”, I was already on my way. The segment was on Rutgers University’s famous grease trucks. These sandwiches (which I’ve never had the opportunity to taste) are monstrous concoctions of fried foods stuffed in a sub: chicken fingers, eggs, bacon, burgers, gyro meat, mozzarella sticks, and of course, French fries. They are meant to give you indigestion, and are only supremely palatable to college students, who do not have to fear an upset stomach, which my father was getting just by watching. This was followed by The Heart Attack Grill, where burgers are named after coronary procedures and the waitresses are hot “nurses” who will wheel you out if you finish a triple or a quadruple. If you weigh over 350 lbs., your meal is free. (They have a scale.)

The restaurant was actually started by a nutritionist. But while the amount of lard used horrified me (I ate half a potato chip fried in lard last week and it tasted like an industrial metal), I was more annoyed with the senior patrons, who commented on their meal by merely announcing they will take an extra cholesterol pill that night, as if these pills would neutralize the effect a 1600 calorie lunch will have on their arteries.

These meals are ok once in a while, but these giant-sized gastro gymnastics are a reaction to what’s seen as a cracking down on pleasurable eating (despite the many such outlets for anyone who’s interested in food). But to say that Americans are getting healthier when a lot of evidence points to the contrary is misleading. Americans might have more pressure, more awareness of what they should do to be healthy than ever before, but they are also thwarted by both human nature and their own environment to be in optimum shape.

The "Neg"

2009-07-23T16:10:00.002-04:00

I’ve been reading a bunch of Conor Friedersdorf, who blogs over at True/Slant and is one of the staffers filling in for Andrew Sullivan on vacation. His post today, called out on The Daily Dish, is about the pick-up artist scene, and the very controversial “neg”, a negative statement used to pick on the girl in question as a way to lower her defenses. Conor spotlights a blog a week, and he is fascinated by one Sebastian Flyte, a 23 year-old Libra who blogged regularly about his escapades picking up women.

I am familiar enough with the popularity of this scene, partly because my brother is somewhat of a disciple. I have flipped through Neil Strauss’ The Game (known as “The Bible” to some, and it could pass for it, bound in black leather), read (and loved) I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and have had a few conversations on the topic. I’ve also been on the receiving end of quite a few negative statements.

Most people hearing about the technique for the first time are appalled. Of course it’s horrible! Any sort of dating trick—and the use of deception, which we all use, whether we characterize it that way or not—can be seen as terrible, immoral even. If dating is a game and everyone wants to play, of course you are out to win! Conor understands this:

I suspect that often our judgments about kosher behavior depends as much on who is involved as the specific scenario in question. A friend comes to us for advice about how to handle an awkward situation wherein she's inadvertently scheduled two dates for the same day -- and knowing she is generally an upstanding person, we laugh, sympathize, and help her formulate a solution, whereas if we were on a date with a women who deceived us about having another date immediately following ours -- or even worse, a guy our sister was dating pulled the same stunt -- the whole moral situation would seem to us entirely different.

People tend not to flip circumstances and examine their behavior if things were different. That’s because a lot of times it forces black-and-white situations into a gray zone, or merely reduces the justifications for your own behavior, because you wouldn’t want to deal with this crap if it was fostered on you. But people react out of anger, spite, and selfishness, so that’s why many so rarely seek to look at other angles.

But, I can sort of see why the neg works. Sometimes. People, when faced with a criticism, will often try to change it (if it can be changed), in order to prevent the issue from occurring, even if they do not like the person making the comment. The negative statement will reverberate back, insidiously creeping into our consciousness at random times. It doesn’t necessarily matter how true the comment is, or even if we disregard the statement—sometimes it comes back. If we are told we look angry, we will immediately try to soften our look, to prove the other person wrong.

I Wish I Could Write as Well as Emily Gould

2009-07-20T21:28:00.002-04:00

"Vision of Love": If only I could write about my thoughts and experiences that sound quietly revelatory, as they do here; "Why I Write For Free" on analyzing and critiquing a situation and an essay.

When parsing advertorials, I wonder: Do those writers feel their souls are dying, slowly? Or they just hurry it along, just another paycheck, gotta get it done? Do they even care? Some people like writing press releases and advertising copy; it can be fun, if you make it. I often tried making games out of silly assignments just to amuse myself.

Back In the Saddle Again

2009-07-14T16:53:00.004-04:00

It is quite embarrassing that I haven’t posted anything in over two months. It seems, just looking at my output, that my enthusiasm has waned in 2009. This isn’t the case—I am a person whose thoughts on a given subject far outpace any action related to it—and it is something I am always trying to rectify.

Those I know personally who read this blog know that I suffered from overwork, exhaustion, and pains in my hands and arms that essentially forced me to stop blogging for the sake of my health. I was no real writer, as I did not sacrifice my precious down time to spend it on the computer.

But I was also deeply embarrassed by my previous comments on Twitter.

I didn’t even want to write again about Twitter, having another post tagged under it. But I feel I need to redress previous comments made. Over the past two months, I grew to hate the service. It overtook my life. Companies demand to know how many tweets on a given topic are said on a particular day, and to compile these numbers is overwhelming, in a nutshell. I’ve read all the positive press, from Steven Berlin Johnson’s cover in Time (which I would have known in advance had I not been so ridiculously busy June 4, as I follow him), to well, pretty much any mainstream story on it that appeared on Google News. And I am just so fucking sick of fucking Twitter.

I tried it out. It’s too short for my liking, too much information too fast, and not a reliable way to filter through. Unlike checking email and blogs and Facebook and all our other online “chores”, I didn’t want to invest the time in it, and so I didn’t. It’s like a pet—if you love animals and reap real benefit, great. But if you have no desire to spend your time and resources on it, then don’t.

I’ve also grown to dislike the way certain industries tout its service, and how it’s become a necessity for interaction, a requirement. I want to opt out! I don’t want to be forced to take part!
I had a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago about Twitter (this was before I had grown to full-on hate it, when I was still in ambivalent mode), and we both found blogging to be far more useful. Twitter is too maniacal for her, an assault of nonsensical, mundane thoughts strewn with links. Blogs were thoughtful, occasionally insightful and filled with information and humor.

Of course, in the interim between this post and my last post, there have been plenty of stories written about this, how many bloggers have moved on to other mediums, who can't find the time, and yet, in every conceivable publication imaginable, how beneficial the service is and why you need to have one.

People use the service for different reasons—for youngsters as a way to have private conversations online, when Facebook becomes too crowded, or to find jobs, or sources of stories—but I find it an inept social tool, and I vastly prefer forms that let me wax on, connect, and share without limits or distractions. Unfortunately, as much as I want Twitter to die a quick death, it probably won’t happen. I can hope that it becomes MySpace—passé, off-putting, occasionally worth a peek for its public properties, but otherwise an ailing media property that has cash-flow problems and is too loud for most people.

***

So what else could have been blog-worthy?

I found out about Michael Jackson’s death relatively early—a coworker blasted through, announcing it. I went on Google News immediately, found nothing but cardiac arrest, and demanded proof. “TMZ! TMZ! Check it!” Still very skeptical, I did—and was met with a three-sentence item followed by “more to come.”

So the most interesting thing throughout the entire excess coverage of this exceedingly bizarre person for me was the timing and accuracy of the information, that for many people, myself included, we didn’t believe the story until it was confirmed by more traditional outlets. As the Los Angeles Times put it,

“Few people expect TMZ or Drudge or the National Enquirer to get things right or to report on issues of substance. When they do, at least so far, it’s a bit of an anomaly. So the consequences for getting it wrong among such sites do not seem terribly high. If CNN, Fox … got such things wrong, the consequences would likely be higher.

As much as people love to glee over the death of the mainstream media, we still rely on them heavily for trusted information, for confirmation and access, no matter the story. Yes, our trust in them has eroded over the decades, each successive scandal further lowering the scale, but online hoaxes are quick, and Twitter and its ilk are just as much about hype, rumor and misinformation as the high school prom. But, as much as I dislike TMZ and the ever-larger paparazzi mill, they are becoming a trusted source in their field.

Effin’ Twitter, or The Personal Revolution

2009-05-03T23:09:00.008-04:00

This is the second of two entries on Twitter.

“Since when has Twitter become the big thing?” my brother asked me the other week, in reference to the Ashton Kutcher/CNN “battle” that came to a head two Thursdays ago. Twitter, which has been around for a few years, was having its Best Week Ever.

I have been debating whether to join Twitter for months, even before Clive Thompson’s fantastic article last summer, which definitely put me in the “no way” camp. I have enough technology ruling my life, and I am always struck by the difference between the rat race of the internet and the slowed pace of those who just don’t give a damn. But in the last couple of months, it seemed inevitable that I would join.

I already read certain people’s Twitter feeds. It was interesting to see their thoughts on a topic, however brief, and some people were genuinely interesting. It also offered an unfiltered look, much realer than any documentary could show, at certain stars and their lives, just because they were the ones speaking, instead of through publicists or agents and interviewers. Many people, from Julia Allison to Emily Gould to Ashton Kutcher himself (5:00) have commented on this, the ability to write your own story, create your old world, a historical record if you will, without others defining you. That is a real draw, to have an authentic self out there.

But in this day and age, with “authentic” and “brand” nearly always in the same sentence, one has to practically be a brand to get any traction. Job seekers are told they have to market themselves, to think of themselves as a product or service that someone needs, and that they stand for something. Twitter takes this further: each person’s tweets, an extension of themselves, make up their essence, and that essence has to be sold. Britney Spears has an account, but it is not just her, it is the Britney brand. John Mayer is John Mayer, and while some could argue he is a brand, he’s just doing his thing. Having a Twitter, like having one’s own webpage, is considered by many to be an essential part of one’s brand.

But we all don’t need to be brands, and this segues into the way consumerism has infiltrated every part of our lives. Brands can evolve, but they really don’t. People are constantly in flux, unformed. There is much said about the constraints of growing up online, and we are seeing all the time how someone needs to take back something said or an image presented in the past, just because it doesn’t fit them anymore. Seeing discarded or old identities online is funny yet sad, a nostalgia instantly available. I wonder about all the digital graves I will leave in my life—email addresses and webpages discarded after they are no longer useful, friends and relationships that no longer have the glue they once did, but merely a thumbnail reminder that you do, in fact, know them, that you were once someone else. I think about the future of social networks (Twitter is included in the definition) all the time: Will we, as a generation, get tired of Facebook and its ilk as we grow older, finding it too time consuming? Will we get tired of being constantly connected and a new movement to go off the grid start? Will it merely be just another aspect of the web that everyone has, like email, or will it grow into its own subculture, just another thing that some people do but that others don’t?

The 140 character limit, and the loss of grammar and complete thought, is another criticism of Twitter. It is hard to write compelling in such a short space, and indeed I have had to, wincingly, used abbreviations and netspeak that I normally avoid. But like anything else, Twitter is what you make of it. I see Twitter as a place to share information. It’s different from a Facebook status update in that it isn’t some musing blasted out to 200 of your friends, but to a group of people you may not necessarily know, and that can be tracked and categorized so that strangers can read what you’re thinking. Companies, including Twitter’s founders, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, are working on monetizing this, since some companies like Dunkin Donuts and JetBlue have become success stories using the service, showing marketing and business people how to interact with their customers and drive brand loyalty. I personally do not care about such things—even links of coupons will just ennoble me to spend money on things I don’t need or want, and to get caught up in unnecessary chatter.

“Unnecessary chatter” is how those who denigrate the service would describe it. It is very true. Everyone wants to be listened to, but no one has the patience to listen to others. Following hundreds or thousands of people is time-consuming, sure, and the importance of the information received varies, yet we all want others to take us seriously, even if it’s just in jest. I often wonder, since I follow a lot of journalists, how the hell they manage to get any work done. I know I don’t, and I’ve been on the service for only a short time.

The hype has made a whole bunch of folks rush out and create an account, trying to see if they can figure out the service and maybe garner some love. Yet at times it’s ridiculous, as Brian Williams points out on The Daily Show a few weeks ago:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Brian Williams

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

First 100 Days

How did John McCain go from being technologically illiterate to a functional Twitterer? How in the world did congressmen not realize that snarking on the president when he’s about to give an important speech would be seen as a stupid thing? Dude, I’m already conscious that I can be found on Twitter and that if I say something wrong, it will get back to me, and I’m not a chosen representative. But I made that choice, the choice to promote myself (it is very much a marketing and promotional tool), and decided after much handwringing, to say fuck it and do it.

I agree with many, many of the arguments against Twitter, and Samantha Bee and The Daily Show, as usual, summed it up perfectly:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Twitter Frenzy

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

First 100 Days

Media frenzies, especially when you are somewhat involved, even peripherally, are hard to escape. But I’ve noticed that my enthusiasm has waned. It would never occur to me to list my boring activities for the day; those are better meant for people for whom it interests. It is very much a broadcasting service, but it’s not the fashion reserved for that witty away message that so dominates college life. Not enough people try to be witty on Twitter, and in some ways it’s a great stalking tool, since people you don’t know will reference who they are hanging out with and where.

Numbers-wise, Twitter isn’t anything like Facebook, especially in terms of early adopters. Young people aren’t flocking to Twitter; they may be wetting their feet now, but it was mostly business and tech people who called it home for the most part at first, since they were the ones to grab onto it as a marketing platform back when we were all figuring out what the heck a newsfeed was. Young people are getting credited, but the teenagers aren’t helping us out, since they’re still on Facebook and MySpace. But it’s a given that a technological fad would be started by those young, tech-savvy people, since those two adjectives are now best friends.

There was the little blip on the radar that Oprah now Twitters, though she made quite a faux paus on her first day (calling the twitterati “Twitters” instead of “Twitterers” and posting in all caps, the latter inexcusable), which was a giant groan to the rest of the world who know that Oprah = massive mainstream takeover. All the mothers who don’t already blog will now be running on Twitter, the thinking goes. But it turns out that large numbers of people abandon the service within a month, and Twitter has what many see as a shockingly low retention rate of 40%. Twitter does take getting used to, and it does have a bit of a bad rap; in addition, its web site sucks, and while the idea behind Twitter is simple, mastering the language and the apps and the whole culture is confusing as hell. (Hashtags, anyone?)

While it’s great for passing information, sometimes getting too much credit as a form of new journalism, it is also ripe for misinformation. Twitter can be just another RSS feed (or a series of them), or it can be a note-taking device, a sort of journal of your world, a incredibly long, incredibly complex system of notes on your life, a version of what went down when and where, what you were willing to expose and to who, what anguished you and enraged you and filled you with joy, hope, and laughter. What you loved and lost, cried over and found. Who you were, at any given moment in time.

If it is possible to encapsulate your life from every bit of online activity recorded, all the reminders, questions and problems would add up to another sort of log. This scares a lot of people and excites others; it’s all about who controls the information, and the limits of the controls that are placed on the user. We look back at the past from letters and photographs, but now we can add status and away messages to the litany of LiveJournal-like musings that take up any one of our days.

But the personal revolution of information is not just based on observations and randomness—two words that can describe the web—but on how we shape what we want to know. Facebook has predicated many of its recent redesigns on this premise, so that we get updated news reports on the Mets next to photo albums of our friends. Twitter takes this to the next level, with us following people who hand off information that we’re interested in. We’re our own personal wire service, disseminating information strictly related and of importance to ourselves. The personal revolution.

This, of course, has wide-ranging implications in all sorts of industries, from watching the ascent of iTunes singles to newspapers going the way of our own personal online mashup of news. Of course, it is not necessary to embrace the entire spectrum of the personal revolution; clearly, those that mock Twitter endlessly do not see it in the same continuum as picking and choosing what news sources and stories to follow. Twitter is merely another tool in today’s information-gathering box.

***

As my thoughts on Twitter evolved over the past couple of months and weeks, I saw its real value shift from being about promotion to one about conversation. I could follow people all I want, read their tweets without having an account. But responding, and hoping that maybe someone you think is really cool will respond to you and maybe follow you too, is the way to engage. It sounds so incredibly cliché, and it is, but it’s about choosing to “participat[e] in a large public square...to be part of a broad dialogue,” as danah boyd points out. So yeah, maybe I did want a larger audience to be subjected to my incredibly witty observations, but I also wanted to talk to and engage with those who I thought were cool for one reason or another, to see what would happen, to have my voice heard, if only by a few people on the larger issues of the day.

So to those haters, of which I was once a part: Yes, Twitter is dumb. Yes, it is information overload. But while you acknowledge that Twitter does have some real uses and has spawned real knowledge and awareness, you can’t only laud the service when it fits that purpose. Meaning, you cannot have it be a source for youth protests without having many of the same users use it to chatter about how hot or cold the weather is. People tend to talk about Twitter in its extreme forms—either as a watercooler news source for stories that are just breaking, or as a way for the bored and lonely to pretend that the people really care about what they are eating for breakfast. Yes, those examples exist, but the vast majority of tweets fall in between, and people are genuinely trying to connect to someone, even if it is under the auspicious reasoning of broadcasting to the world that you loved last night’s episode of House.

This is why we should have diversity on the court

2009-04-28T23:47:00.005-04:00

The only sane voice, according to Dahlia Lithwick, is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not coincidentally the only woman on the court:

Nobody but Ginsburg seems to comprehend that the only locker rooms in which teenage girls strut around, bored but fabulous in their underwear, are to be found in porno movies. For the rest of us, the middle-school locker room was a place for hastily removing our bras without taking off our T-shirts.

I was horrified and outraged when reading this piece, seeing how completely the judges just were in their lack of empathy. The administrators went on rumor, didn't think it worthy enough to call the parents before embarking on the humilating enterprise, and all for something that's not worth it in the least. Zero-tolerance policies--which got its root in the Columbine school shootings a decade ago last week--were always an overreaction to anything bad a kid did, and this case just brings to light how insane and inappropriate the policy has become. Many articles discussing Savana Redding's story point out the discrepancy between the laws on the books, that teenagers who willingly send provocative photos of themselves to others can be prosecuted under child pornography laws yet it's perfectly legal for them to be forcibly strip searched in front of strange adults for nebulous reasons, a point that is hampered on again and again because it's just so out of whack. Both situations cause emotional turmoil, but it is the school's responsibility that they don't sanction humilation and emotional strife at the hands of its employees.

Twitter, Celebrity, and Being Ambiently Aware

2009-04-28T14:05:00.006-04:00

The genesis of this post is from the New York Times Magazine story on Twitter that ran in September. Most of it, including everything on Julia Allison, was written following its publication. This is part one out of a two-parter on Twitter; I felt that the second entry was incomplete without this one. I have tried to keep the spirit of my thoughts from several months ago intact, and tried not to reference anything that has since taken place.

A few weeks ago, I contemplated joining Twitter. I liked the idea of posing a question and getting responses, and it’s supposed to be great for business. But then I read “I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You”, and said absolutely no way.

Although I’ve previously disparaged the service—a cross between Facebook status updates and AIM away messages—as being a little too connected, a little too much work for me, I toyed with the idea. It’s great for soliciting opinions, finding information, and a lot of businesses are using it this way. In certain industries, often involving the media (marketing, PR, advertising, journalism), it’s touted as a way for journalists to get a feel for what’s out there. Of course, at this point, I know one person on Twitter, and it’s an outgrowth of her job. It’s one of those things that people will join if others are on it. But I still cranked, sounding like a crotchety old fogey, “Why would anyone want to constantly update their profiles every five minutes with what they’re thinking or doing? Who has that kind of time?” It would also take stalking to a whole new level.

But Thompson’s piece, which discusses how social networking sites, specifically Twitter, are creating a whole new type of intimacy, made me think of the status message in a whole new way.

At the basic level, it’s is a version of intimacy—a version that often feels so real it’s hard to remember that’s it’s not true intimacy. Who doesn’t wish for some updated profile, an away message, something, to tide you over when you want to talk to a specific person and they aren’t there?

The overarching point isn’t new; most people find social sites to be a way to keep in touch with friends far easier, a way of keeping everyone up-to-date. They’re also great for networking, for keeping “weak ties”—those people you had class with, long-ago coworkers and neighbors—within reach.

I know for me, online contact has made my relationships richer. In addition to blogs, texting, phone calls and face time, I’ve been able to see what my friends have been thinking. This sounds like I always know everything, but this is far from the case, as very few of these channels are used frequently by any one of my friends and they rarely overlap.

Social networking sites have been a godsend to me. As a kid, I was terrible about keeping in touch—I thought about my friends, I wanted to talk to them, but translating that to action, to write a letter or to call a home line and go through parents, was the hard part. It shouldn’t be, but the privacy of the technological revolution, of everyone having their own email address, Facebook profile, and mobile line, also made it easier to have a private conversation.

Yet the biggest question of all is the future, how our generation (and future ones) will react to having most or all of their life documented. How do you erase those memories when they are up for everyone to see? Before the pictures would be stashed in drawers or albums, if not thrown away—only looked at when stumbled upon, or necessitating a move or some cathartic curiosity. Can you ever get over anyone if you are in constant touch, if their picture or profile is so readily available? Thompson touches on this, using a very common example of a break-up.

I once remember a friend of mine officially announcing her relationship on Facebook. I woke up one Sunday morning, logged onto Facebook, and saw the news. It was inevitable, both the fact they made it official and that one day I would receive major news via Facebook first, but I was disappointed that I hadn’t been told in person before it was online for the world to see. I still feel this way, but I’ve realized that finding out personally first is a rarity now; the first thing most people do when they have major news (especially of a romantic variety) is to broadcast it on Facebook. After all, we realized that they put up this notice immediately after they had the conversation. It’s the easiest way; it saves time, rather than telling all your close friends personally and then letting the news filter through, this way everyone knows at more or less the same time.

But cutting off ties online isn’t so easy, as you cannot erase or force information about other people to disappear just because you are angry, unlike the age-old image of ripping up an old photo. People grow and change, move on and move away…yet you are still connected, still able to follow along the rough outlines of their life regardless of them knowing.

Sociologists call this “ambient awareness”, being aware through constant contact, but in a sort of passive way. We don’t have to actually see people in person, talk to them on the phone; we can just read their updates and “know” them. But we don’t really know them at all; even online contact with good friends is a poor substitute for real contact, as anyone who’s misunderstood an AIM message can attest.

But online interactions open one up to the world. Feeling bored, lonely, left out? Join an online community—there are millions, at least one guaranteed to find something that piques your interest. Seriously. Sounds like a kind of heaven, doesn’t it? People who are willing to talk to you about anything, anytime, sometimes even in real time!

People suddenly seem to have more friends. Quantifying relationships would be a depressing and frustrating exercise—who goes into what category?—but luckily, social networking sites do the heavy lifting for you. The biggest benefit to all of these new relationships is that you suddenly realize that you “know” a lot of people.

Twitter uses followers, not friends, delineating that even those these people are interested in what you say, they don’t know you; you follow information about them, like a favorite star, because they are funny, but you don’t know them personally. It’s just on an incredibly micro level.

But this constant self-disclosure, the openness into the mundanity of life, can define you. Twitter, as much as any other social-networking tool, can be used to foster your identity, to essentially, create yourself as you want others to see you, in all its trite detail.

This brings me to Julia Allison.

I first heard of Julia Allison when she made the cover of Time Out New York’s Valentine’s Day issue. She’s holding up a paper that says “Call me!” and the phone number underneath is her actual number. This fact alone got a lot of press, though apparently she was already somewhat well-known to a type of New York media/tech/web/gossip follower.

Some have called Allison the real-life, Gen-Y version of Carrie Bradshaw, others a type of Paris Hilton, since she’s essentially famous for no reason.

Allison is both fascinating and repulsive at the same time, because she exhibits the type of exhibition and narcissism that is a hallmark of our generation and of the underbelly of our current culture. Her genius, as explored in the August issue of Wired, is that she marketed herself. She wanted to be famous—excuse me, “cult figure”—so she used the tools at her disposal—mainly the web—to get it. Although she has written for AM New York, Time Out New York and is some sort of consultant for Star magazine, these are merely footnotes in her biography. What’s greater is the relationships she’s exploited to become famous. She’s dated a lot of powerful media and tech types, and has written about this in detail in the way that is compulsively horrifying, then adding commentary upon commentary upon other’s criticism of her relationships. It gets very meta, very confusing in the way that is so wonderful and awful about the Internet.

As writer Jason Tanz put it, “Allison’s greatest accomplishment isn’t the volume of content she creates; it’s that she gets anyone to care about it. Her trick, she says, is to think of herself as the subject of a magazine profile, with every post or update adding dimensions to her as a character.”

Wired’s piece, in addition to another fantastic New York Times Magazine feature, this time by Emily Gould, discuss how the Internet blurs reality—how you can get so caught up with going online that your real life outside of the computer no longer feels real. It, essentially, takes over your life. The computer becomes a compulsion, a poor substitute for real human contact. It has saved and helped numerous people immeasurable, but it has also been used for much harm and pain, and we often do it to ourselves. Our little corner can get bigger and bigger, until it engulfs us, and we feel it’s the entire world, and that it’s the only thing that matters.

Internet hype, internet celebrity, does that. At the end of every season, it feels like, to turn on the TV or open a paper, that American Idol is the only thing going on, yet in a few weeks the names will have faded, and in a few years those same names will be reduced to trivia answers. Parlaying internet notoriety is a hell of a lot harder than it sometimes seems, because the nature of the beast is that information moves fast, too fast for most people to play.

But that is the way of the world today, and like they said in the ‘60s, you can “turn on, tune in, or drop out.” Dropping out never seems to last for long, as both Gould and Allison can attest, as they are suckered back in after vowing to keep their lives private. But this break should be more accurately called a respite, since that’s what it is; they never fully extricate themselves from the past they have written, and even if they did, their past is still there for anyone to find.

Social Media Evolution

2009-04-20T00:48:00.001-04:00

OpenDiary-->LiveJournal-->MySpace-->Facebook-->LinkedIn-->Twitter

Journalism School Now??

2009-04-09T10:30:00.004-04:00

I know people do crazy things in a recession, but taking out a student loan for a degree that won’t give an edge in a wheezing industry actually makes getting
an MBA look smart.

Exactly.

Forbes reported that enrollment at journalism schools is soaring. Huh? Media jobs are hard enough for undergrads to get, so why they hell are you going to pay $40,000+ a year, incurring millions of dollars in debt to become poor? And these kids aren't going to want to be working for a PR or marketing agency after a stint at J-school.

Forbes also lists that there will be a tiny increase for entry-level reporters and news anchors by 2016, and positions for experienced writers and editors will grow by 10%, which I find hard to believe, even if they are for trade publications, freelancers and digital media. Maybe it's just the cost-cutting going on now, or the fact that there's an excess of writers and editors without a large enough, supportable structure in place.

The Forbes piece, much to my disappointment, doesn't really go into the detail I'd have liked. I've read many times before that the only benefit to J-school is the connections, but nowadays I feel that's crap--follow enough people on Twitter, read enough blogs, put real effort into this kind of networking (and create your own stuff), and you too, can make it. Julia Allison is the master at it. I admire many New York writers--there's no reason I can't meet some of them someday, I reason; I don't live far, I'm familiar with their work, I just need to be at the right place at the right time.

I'm sure J-school does have a purpose, real training for real journalism, and the kinds of opportunities that aren't available for those cub reporters that can no longer be because every day a new publication bites the dust. They're an in.

This reminds me of a teleseminar I attended recently at work, where one of the editors of Good Housekeeping (or similar magazine) had a MA in journalism from a top-notch school. And you're working here?, I thought. What a waste. And then I felt bad--what if she couldn't get anything better? But writing fluff copy for midwestern moms pays a living.

April Fool's Joke of the Day

2009-04-01T16:54:00.005-04:00

From The Guardian:

Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication.

[...]

A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper's archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already
completed include "1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!"; "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more"; and "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

Entry on Twitter forthcoming...

Interesting Fact of the Day

2009-03-12T10:21:00.003-04:00

Did you know that gay men cannot donate blood?

The FDA put a lifetime ban on blood donations by gay and bisexual men in 1983, because most HIV cases are spread by homosexual men, and fears of AIDS were rampant.

The FDA also prohibits people who have taken steroids, born or lived in certain countries, or who have had a blood transfusion in Britain or France. There's a whole list here.

Spotlight on Children and Healthy Eating

2009-02-24T18:06:00.005-05:00

I read the Well blog frequently; I have to for work, but I read most of it because I’m genuinely interested in its content. In the past few days, Tara Parker-Pope has written two entries that deal with children and food, one of her many pet topics.

Friday’s “Slowing Down School Lunch” featured a short interview with Dr. Arthur Agatston, a cardiologist who has done studies on elementary schools and children’s eating, seeing how the shortened school lunch period negatively affects students’ eating habits. “Children in America today are often overfed and undernourished,” he said, and cites the positive turnaround that antismoking campaigns have done for children’s health, hoping that a similar initiative can be put in place to foster healthy eating.

I spent every day in middle school bitching about how short my lunch period was. The time did not change in high school, but by then I was used to it and resigned to the fact that there was nothing I could do. Lunch was twenty minutes, which included time from the bell to get out of the previous class to the bell that announced the next class begin, and in that time you had to fit in walking to and from your locker, exchanging books, walking to the cafeteria, possibly buying lunch (something I did approximately once a week), and using the bathroom. I also tried to squeeze in some homework or socializing in addition to eating my lunch.

That’s not enough time. I’m a slow eater—always have been, always will be—regardless if I’m doing anything other than eating. I just am. Inhaling my food has always been problematic, and I spent many lunch periods still choking down food as everyone exited, packing up my books with a banana in my mouth.

What Parker-Pope discusses goes hand in hand with the post from the previous day, how you can teach your child to eat healthy. Having quick meals encourages fast food of all stripes—frozen dinners, breakfast bars, a bag of chips. Eating an apple takes time, especially when your mouth and hands are small. And shorter lunch times, especially when faced with a ridiculous long line, bullies, and a Spanish test to study for guarantee that a trade-off is made, and that trade-off is usually to disregard lunch. And with meal times so out of whack (10:30 am, anyone, when school starts at 8), it’s often hard to eat too, especially if your body is severely sleep-deprived.

I am a big believer that children need to be exposed to lots of different things, and that includes food. They may not appreciate some of it until they are older, but sometimes children are more willing to try things than adults are, and they at least have the knowledge to recognize that they don’t like something for a concrete reason that’s not “because it’s green”.

Too many kid-centric entertainments consider children’s food the lowest common denominator, and as such perpetuate the horrible nutritional value and bad reputation of food that children like. There are children who like vegetables and healthy meals, and they don’t all live in San Francisco. Going to a McDonald’s party (do they still do those?), a Chuckie Cheese, or a movie theater is a recipe for a toothache and a stomachache, and really poor quality of pizza. It’s distressing to see children—even adults—who are reduced to chicken fingers and French fries, and their version of a salad is the basic “chicken ceasar”, nothing but some iceberg lettuce, cheese, three croutons, and creamy dressing. Gross. It also fosters children to be very narrow-minded food consumers as adults, and will balk when presented with anything different or fancy—even if a common dish’s preparation is altered. This viewpoint leads to finicky, picky people who often have poor habits and an even poorer diet, which can lead to problems down the road…which leads to higher health expenses, less mobility, less options, and a crappier quality of life. Sold?

I’m getting ahead of myself. My original intention was to highlight part of Parker-Pope’s interview with Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Top Chef. He discusses how hard it is to teach children good healthy habits in regard to food, and his experience with his son. I agree with a lot he says, and love that he points out the positive feedback his show has gotten. Food and cooking shows can be great family entertainment, and it’s encouraging to hear that Top Chef has changed viewers’ habits positively.

Does having a father who is a chef make a difference in your son’s eating habits?

I don’t think having a father as a chef makes you any more or less susceptible to eating unhealthy food. If he’s out with his friends he’s going to do what his friends are doing. He’s like most kids. He’s not a chicken finger kid, and we’re not big fast food eaters. But it’s still a struggle to get him to eat healthy food. He’d rather grab a Sprite. But he enjoys good food. His idea of a great meal is seafood.

What do you think is the most important thing you’ve done to shape his eating habits?

We’re eating healthier food at home, so he’s eating what we’re eating. For us the challenge is he likes soda and he likes sweets, so we have to limit that. I think the patterns are set very early when the kids are young. But at the same time, there are some flavors kids just don’t like. For him, he’ll eat peas, but he doesn’t like broccoli. Green was always an issue. For a while he wouldn’t eat anything with chopped parsley. He still doesn’t eat raw tomatoes, it’s the goop inside. I had the same issue when I was a kid. But there are also things he loves that he probably wouldn’t if he hadn’t been exposed to them. For instance, he loves caviar.

Do you talk to him about healthy eating?

Giving him a choice between something that is unhealthy and something healthy, that’s not the choice. It’s between good and bad, well prepared and poorly prepared. He used to complain that the school cafeteria food was so bad he wouldn’t eat it. He used to like boxed mac and cheese, but once he got the real stuff, he said he didn’t want the boxed stuff anymore.

Does it surprise you how popular your show is with kids?

I travel around and hear from so many kids. Their parents say they were always very picky but they watch the show and they want to try stuff. The show is entertainment, but I think it has done so much for the public perception of what food can be.

Should restaurants be doing more to promote healthful eating?

What chefs can do when it comes to getting the word out is have people understand food differently. If food is well sourced and well prepared, I don’t think the word healthy needs to be brought into it. It’s healthy because it’s wholesome. That’s what we should focus on. You can buy a box of low-fat macaroni and cheese made with powdered nonsense. I’m not worried if I’m using four different cheeses and it’s high in fat. It’s real food. That’s what’s more important.

What do you say to parents who work all day and rely on packaged foods for convenience?

I want to feed my kid something that is real and not processed. It’s hard to do. People are working and busy. The question is: Is it worth it? Is it worth stopping at the farm stand or supermarket to buy fresh ingredients? Even just choosing whether to buy a head of lettuce. Do you buy fresh or the prewashed lettuce in a bag with the nutrients leached out of it? That’s what’s more important to me.

Abortion: Sometimes It's Really Not That Big a Deal

2009-02-21T01:40:00.003-05:00

A really great essay on abortion, and not feeling guilt, but relief:

But with the recent popularity of slapstick pregnancy comedies like Knocked Up and Juno, you'd be surprised at how randomly "So have you ever been pregnant?" or "What would you do?" can invade a light conversation. And where anti-choice activists believe "confession" is a necessary step to absolve yourself of the "crime," and Christian sites like Care Net are full of essays about regretful women weeping about the mistakes of their youth to disapproving, divinely forgiving husbands, the pro-choice side isn't offering up any nifty guides titled So You're Eating a Cheeseburger With Your Man and Abortion Comes Up. That, at least for me, would've been more handy than all the safe-sex pamphlets stuffed in my hand when I exited the clinic. Between my desire to be honest and my fear of that honesty's ramifications, managing and packaging my abortion became more difficult than the act itself.

One of the problems is that Hollywood is too afraid to actual show abortions--not to protagonists, not to sympathetic characters. They always, in the end, decide to have the baby.

Men, the writer of the essay contends, have a hard time dealing with abortion, thinking that it's this gut-wrenching emotional experience, when in fact for many it's just an annoying but necessary medical procedure, like going to the dentist. We're conditioned to think of abortion as this horrible thing--killing babies!--but at such an early point it's nothing, and depending upon one's views and stage of life, it can be hard to attach such emotion to something that merely seems like a crappy outcome.

The New York Times explored these mixed feelings with this cover story. For another type of abortion--one that freaked me out when I first read it--check out this, another cover.

(Original essay link from Slate)

Wishing, Wanting, Hoping

2009-02-05T00:11:00.003-05:00

It always seemed bizarre to me that the book, and now the movie, are marketed as empowering. Since when does inaction make you feel in control? It's ultimately the same philosophy behind The Rules, just covered in a lacquer of sass.

He's Just Not That Into You may be common sense, but it's also based on a woman's (supposed) total powerlessness in starting relationships.

If he's into you, he'll call. Doing anything proactive would be a waste of time, not to mention, pathetic. (As the trailer for next week's film version of He's Just Not That Into You makes abundantly clear, that one extra, unsolicited phone call could be really, really embarrassing.) God forbid, you should pursue some one you truly liked; you might get rejected to your face, which would be so much harder to bear than getting passively rejected by an unanswered voice mail. If the prospect of a real-time dismissal seems worth the risk in certain, obviously rare!, cases, He's Just Not That Into You can't help. Fiona could. Maybe she should write her own book (if she can find time between all the fire fights). It could be called He's Just Not That Into You: Who Cares?

From Slate’s XX Blog

They’re commenting on Burn Notice’s Fiona, how she tries and tries and tries to get her ex-boyfriend, Michael back, yet she’s still totally badass.

I’ve never watched Burn Notice (though I’d like to at some point), so I can’t comment on her. But I will on He’s Just Not That Into You:

I never understood the premise behind The Rules, because I do not believe that love is passive. If I wait and wait and wait for a boy to like me, I will wait forever. You have to be active, you have to let them know—or else they won’t. Hormones will compel you anyway, but there’s no point in hiding behind a mishmash of games. Games will happen even if you’re honest. You have to take the chance.

Maybe what He’s Just Not That Into You is saying is you have the choice of dropping the guy, of saying no, of declaring “I’m not going to put up with this.” Learning they have this option—no matter how obvious it may seem—can be empowering (if not depressing when they see what options they do have).

My mother suggested to me that I’d get a boyfriend if I just wanted one hard enough. Not only did I stifle a brewing argument, I shot down a “So if I just pray really really hard every night, he’ll just come to me—poof!” What kind of agency is that? I already have issues with that whole wanting concept, and I’m clearly not the only one.

Wishing idly does no good. But neither does “just waiting for the right time”, because that time might not come, and waiting and praying for it is a futile, depressing existence.

The New York Times Doesn't Let You Embed Videos!

2009-01-11T22:59:00.003-05:00

Every time I try to talk about this column the entry never comes out right, so I might as well just say READ IT, and WATCH THE VIDEO.

It's just so, so disturbing.

Strangest Cover Stories of the Year

2008-12-28T18:19:00.005-05:00

...that I remember.

For newspapers.

First off, the Star-Ledger ran an analysis of the Sri-Lankan singer MIA's hit "Paper Planes". The article, written by a mommy blogger (as far as I recall, this is the only full-length feature she's published since blogging for nj.com), explores why the song is a hit and why it's caused some controversy--a type of article, minus the local quotes, that would be more at home in a music magazine like Rolling Stone. The song is mostly known for its gunshots and cash register rings in the chorus than for anything else, since practically every word (including the title) is indecipherable.

The New York Times caught a lot of flack for running a front-page story on Angelina Jolie's relationship with the celebrity press, specifically People magazine. It was pretty brash, saying that Ms. Jolie works the press to such an extent that she effectively controls coverage of herself and her family:

When Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt negotiated with People and other celebrity magazines this summer for photos of their newborn twins and an interview, the stars were seeking more than the estimated $14 million they received from the deal. They also wanted a hefty slice of journalistic input — a promise that the winning magazine’s coverage would be positive, not merely in that instance but into the future.

According to the deal offered by Ms. Jolie, the winning magazine was obliged to offer coverage that would not reflect negatively on her or her family, according to two people with knowledge of the bidding who were granted anonymity because the talks were confidential. The deal also asked for an “editorial plan” providing a road map of the layout, these people say.

She's been transformed from freaky sexaholic to humanitarian mother, despite being widely vilified for wrecking Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt's marriage. But while fascinating to those interested in celebrity, journalism, or just plain 'ol gossip, it's one of those articles that sticks out precisely because it's on the front page. Really? you say. It's that slow of a news day?

The Times' public editor points out that the article wasn't as accurate as it could have been, and calls for a correction, which was never given. But he also explains that while many people are angered when the paper covers "less than weighty" subjects in such high-profile detail, it's the newspaper's job to cover "all the news that's fit to print", whether weighty or not. Placement, of course, as well as tone, angle, packaging, etc, are all key components of how a story is accepted (or not), regardless of the facts. Obviously, "strangest cover stories of the year" are almost always never going to be about "weighty" matters, since those are expected to make the front page (and are very troubling when they are not).

Catch-up Time

2008-12-27T00:24:00.009-05:00

Over the next few days, I plan to post on articles and topics that I wanted to call out from the rest of the year, but for one thing or another--lack of time, usually--just never got around to. Some of them were topics I wanted to expand on and the entries just never left the ground (really, the notebook). Most of them will be from the recent months and weeks, as they are fresher in my memory. Here goes:

New York Magazine is just fantastic. They always have really interesting articles featuring really interesting trivia, often about New York. Case in point: One out of every apartment in Manhattan is occupied by only one person; the number is one in three when you add in all the other boroughs. Jennifer Senior's December 1st cover story on loneliness doesn't offer much new insights other than those statistics, but reinforces a lot of existing theories on the nature of community (note: I did a lot of research in college on this topic, especially dealing with community vis a vis the internet, so it wasn't new to me). What I especially loved was that the article reaffirmed a lot of my anecdotal evidence regarding single life:

[Eric] Klineberg, the NYU professor who is writing about living alone, points out that single people are partly responsible for the vibrancy of New York’s public life: “We know form marketing surveys that single people go out more than couples,” he notes. “They’re more likely to go to restaurants, to bars, and to clubs. A lot of people who live alone say it’s very hard to enter their apartments and stare at the walls when there’s so much going on outside.”

Conversely, married people—women especially—have smaller friendship-based social networks than they did as single people, according to [sociologist] Claude Fischer.

The article goes on to say that that the reason why many single people feel lonely is when they are surrounded by other couples--and that family neighborhoods in particular are the places that have the highest rates of social isolation, especially among the elderly. Asynchronous environments breed loneliness; that's why it's better for one's livelihood if they aren't exclusively around others who are in a different stage of life.

Weak ties (acquaintences and people you are one or two degrees separated), the internet, and of course, New York City (and cities in general) get quite the boost here. But that's fine; the overarching idea is that people--connection--are what matters, and that getting out of the house and interacting with others will boost your mood. The internet bridges the public and the private, and often facilitates this.

I look forward to David Carr's column every week, and he rarely disappoints. While he has written many that I could talk about endlessly, his recent entry on how the media essentially created Black Friday opened my eyes to the symbiotic relationship between advertising and the media--something I all too often overlook.

I orginally had not planned to read the Times Magazine's cover story on John McCain the week before the election, citing time constraints and not much interest, but it turned out to be way better than their Obama cover the previous week. "The Making (and Remaking) of John McCain" ended up showing how important public relations and message-managing is--and how the McCain camp's infighting and lack of direction killed their campaign. The death knell is spelled out:

The campaign was in the throes of an identity crisis by June 24, when a number of senior strategists gathered at 9:30 a.m. in a conference room of McCain’s campaign headquarters in Arlington. As one participant said later, the meeting was convened “because we still couldn’t answer the question, ‘Why elect John McCain?’ ” Considering that the election was less than five months away, this was not a good sign.

If the people running John McCain's campaign cannot answer that question, then he is doomed.

Speaking of that long-ago election, remember that Wall Street Journal story on Obama's thinness? Apparently the reporter took some of her quotes from a Yahoo message board. Ouch. Certainly not the only time this year that a reporter got into trouble for going to dubious online outlets for sources.

I wrote a lot about the Journal's coverage of the election, especially how voters decide on a candidate. I had wanted to add another entry to that list, on their September 4th article, "The Biology of Ideology". It's the old nature vs. nurture argument: are even voting patterns predetermined? That's one heck of a scary idea. I was very skeptical of this idea and hated the article back when I first read it. I took a more pragmatic approach, of convince us why you're worthy. Tom Friedman summed it up five days later:

If you as a politician connect with voters on a gut level, they will follow you anywhere and not fret about the details. If you don’t connect with them on a gut level, you can’t show them enough details.

I wondered why it was ok for newspapers to openly assume Obama was going to win the presidency, as many non-opinion pieces used "when", instead of "if", in referring to anything after the election. Guys, that's why people say the media is in the tank for the dude. Lay off. Turned out Clark Hoyt at the Times agreed with me.

I felt though--and vaguely remember coming across something along these lines--that people tend to vote in step with the environment they find themselves in. In my social life, my friends and I (generally) read the same media, or at least the same types, have similar opinions, and come from similar backgrounds, so of course we tend to vote similarly. This is true all over; I wondered how hard it would be to separate from the pack.

Hilarious

2008-12-15T11:37:00.003-05:00

Two very funny stories from the Times:

One, of course on their top emailed list, is the fact that President Bush nearly got hit with a shoe when he was in Iraq this weekend. There's even video!

And two, the Obamas cannot move in early before the Inauguration. Shows that no matter who you are, power and celebrity does have its limits.

"We Are Living In Exponential Times"

2008-12-07T20:34:00.003-05:00

Why it's so exciting and terrifying to live now:

This is what makes me really want to do something with my life.

The song playing is Fatboy Slim's "Right Here, Right Now".

I'm Not Into It

2008-12-07T20:19:00.004-05:00

Some reasons why I don't what to read He's Just Not that Into You:

"I think where a lot of women go wrong is through indulging in denial - denial that he isn’t that into us, but also denial that we are deserving of anything better. But when we decide to refuse to accept anything less than genuine into-ness, I think that we are much happier both in and out of relationships - because whether or not you are coupled up, it is crucial to keep in mind that you are great. Lately, in any case, I have come to realise that if a man behaves in a way towards you with regards to communication or kindness that you would consider to be sub-par in a non-romantic friend, then he is not worth pursuing. Not even if White Noise is his very favourite book."

Jean Hannah Edelstein (via gauntlet)

Jean makes some good points here, but He’s Just Not That Into You still gives me the shits. And like Jennifer Aniston, I still think it’s ultimately disempowering for women.

Here’s why.

1. Like most conventional wisdom, it’s overly simplistic; an “easy” response to something that is usually far more complicated. When most real relationships break down, it’s not as simple as the guy just not liking the girl all that much, but about some problem (or problems) in the dynamic between the two people that both are contributing to.

Often, ironically, the woman’s contribution to this dynamic stems from the insecurities and disempowerment fostered by mainstream women’s/dating culture (of which He’s Just Not That Into You is a part).

2. Call me a control freak, but I like to feel as if I have a say in the route my life takes - and certainly, no one would argue this shouldn’t be the case when it comes to work, friends, or what I decide to do with my Saturday night. This sense of influence over the world around us is also known as “empowerment” - think “we can make things happen” in The Craft - and is proven to be a key source of self-esteem and happiness in both men and women.

He’s Just Not That Into You is the opposite of this. It tells women that things are as they are, that there’s nothing you can do to change it, and that your best bet is to sit around waiting for that Prince who really is into you to come along on his white horse and choose you. The only thing that makes it any different to the more widely maligned (but equally widely cited) The Rules is that it dresses this old fashioned rhetoric up with “you go girl” and “you’re such a fox!”

3. Men, on the other hand, get to do all the choosing. They get to decide whether they like you or not, whether they want to launch a relationship and where they want that relationship to go. Sure, you can decide not to go along with them, but for all your “foxiness”, the book’s lasting message is that not many of the men in your life have really been “that into” you, so when you find one, you sure better hold on to him!

Hate it, hate it, hate it. But I do agree with Jean that no one - male or female (‘cos I know plenty of guys who let the girls they love treat them like crap) - should accept anything less than “genuine into-ness”* (and that often we accept subpar treatment from people because we hope we can change them).

* Which, by the by, means love, kindness and appreciation - not picking up the dinner cheque ever time, dropping everything at your whim, or buying you five designer dresses for Christmas.

Emphasis mine. Beside, I generally know when people are into me and when they're not. (Cue the loud guffaws. But I mean it.)

Jennifer Aniston made a similar point in Vogue. I wonder why she chose to do this movie, especially considering her dislike of "the kind of thing where women only feel empowered once they find the Man".

This Is How It Goes

2008-12-07T20:02:00.011-05:00

http://xkcd.com/513/

A Tortious Act

2008-12-07T14:20:00.005-05:00

Last week, Lori Drew was acquitted on three felony counts of unauthorized use of MySpace and one count of conspiracy, though she was convicted of a misdemeanor on the former. Members of the jury, according to forewoman Valentina Kunasz, wanted to convict her but the prosecution did not give them enough evidence under the statute:

"We felt that ... knowing that she's got mental stuff going on, was enough to turn what normally wouldn’t be tortious into tortious or malicious," Kunasz said. "And the fact that this 47-year-old woman is participating -- whether it be physically or just egging them on verbally -- to me something was very off. What they were trying to do as a whole in the long-run was humiliate this girl, make her feel like a piece of [dirt], and make her feel sad.... They were intentionally trying to hurt her."
But four jurors felt that because Megan and Sarah Drew had a opened a MySpace account months earlier to meet boys, that Megan was emotionally functional and should have known what she was getting herself into by communicating with "Josh." She should have been prepared to be rejected by "Josh."

But these two things can exist simultaneously. Megan could still be aware of what she was involved in and yet still be completely blindsided by what actually occurred. There’s rejection, and then there’s harassment.

The trial was plagued with a number of problems, including conflicting testimony, and the fact that Megan’s suicide was not suppose to factor into the decision. It’s practically impossible to leave Megan’s suicide out of the investigation, because no matter which way you spin it, the distress of the attacks on her through MySpace caused her to kill herself. She was especially vulnerable due to her past problems, and the fact that Lori knew about this only damns the woman more.

One of the issues in this case—and the reason it is held in Los Angeles, where MySpace’s servers are based—is that it’s supposed to be a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was previously used for hacking. Indeed, the fraud protection of the law can liberally be applied to this trial, even though emotional distress isn’t listed as a reason. The jury had to decide if Lori Drew obtained unauthorized access to MySpace’s computers with the intention of inflicting emotional distress on Megan Meir and a conspiracy to do the same thing.

This case has been closely watched by a number of people, partly because it is considered the first cyber-bullying case and could set precedents in the future.

Links to pdfs of the indictment and jury instructions, both before and during the trial, can be found, along with the complete story, at the Threat Level blog from Wired. Here's a related piece on vigilante justice and the role the Internet played with exposing the story.

"It Ought to Be a Law to Start Christmas Before December"

2008-11-27T23:08:00.004-05:00

Watch CBS Videos Online

I am very much a traditionalist--I like my holidays to have the same foods and rituals as they always have, with no interlopers, no drastic alterations. But recently I've wondered why the meanings surrounding these holidays have increasingly meant little to me.

I cannot remember the last time I had real holiday spirit. I try to get into it every year, and occasionally there's a glimpse, but I feel it's been sucked out of me just by the relentless commercialism. Like Easter in March, I find Christmas before December--even early December--distasteful. It's just too soon. Christmas becomes all about presents--what do you want? What does everyone else what? When will you have time to get it? Is it too much? Ahh! Enough with the hassle! Rarely does anything seem worth it; even with the best of intentions it's just another check on a list. I tend to think of the best gifts in March for people who have birthdays in October, and of course I have no clue by the time December rolls around. I should just get gifts whenever I think of them.

Presents, like many of the things surrounding Christmas, have become oppressive. The saccharine, omnipresent music that only passes muster because of the season, the constant wonderings of what to buy, what to wear, what to give obscure nearly any meaning attached to what makes the holidays special and just makes it a month to get through.

Dragging out Christmas only intensifies the antipathy. Instead of eager anticipation, the days become merely rote, banal—plain ol’ January, February or March, another dark winter day with tacky decorations and music. Thanksgiving is a holiday that gets bypassed between Halloween and Thanksgiving, lumped in as another food-heavy day that dieters should be careful of. The decorations are warmer, the break a respite. Christmas is all-empowering, suffocation.

I hate being asked what I want for Christmas. I hate not being surprised, and going, “Yep, that’s exactly what I said,” because I rarely truly, truly want something, and even then it’s usually not material goods. I want people, as silly and unrealistic as it sounds, to just know that I like something and get it for me, because they know I’d never buy it for myself. I want Christmas to feel special again, to make it really exciting and worth looking forward to, instead of just another chore.

Quote of the Day

2008-11-24T13:51:00.002-05:00

“What Valerie developed is the art of telling people to go to hell and making them look forward to the trip,” said Mr. Jordan, who advised his wife’s cousin throughout the campaign.

Television and Happiness

2008-11-21T00:34:00.002-05:00

I miss television.

And yet, I don’t.

I miss the passion of watching television, of interacting in a community that cares and loves its television.

I hear all the time that I care too much about “stupid” stuff—the stuff no one else thinks about. But I seriously doubt that most people I come in contact with spend their days thinking about ways to reverse the economic crisis, how to eradicate poverty or to lessen our grip on gasoline on any wide-ranging scale. They worry about their own petty concerns, about boyfriends and girlfriends and their annoying neighbor or boss.

And then they come home and pass out in front of the television.

A study came out in Social Indicators Research that happy people tend to not watch a lot of TV. They’re too busy socializing to watch television.

Now, socializing and television go together like milk and cookies: they complement each other nicely, but one is not necessary for the other to be enjoyed. Truth is, often when socializing with television the television eventually fades into the background, overtaken by thoughts of the show or just general topics.

There was a recent study that purported that churchgoers tend to be happier than atheists or agnostics, and a lot of that is based around the church community. Church communities are powerful forces, and a comparable network for those who are not into religion doesn’t really exist. Many people hide their true religious feelings to be part of the fold of a church community.

Happiness, for many people, also derives from a passion, a purpose to life, also filled with good friends (and I’d add, good books and good food). A church community often has these things in abundance (well, minus the good food).

So why do unhappy people watch more TV? A few theories:

1) TV is easy. Socializing with others takes effort, time and work. Sometimes, it’s just hard to schedule it in. Sometimes people, even your friends, are annoying. But television is always there, waiting for you to pick up the remote. It’s the path of least resistance. TV can be on in the background while cleaning, getting dressed, or eating.

2) Because it lends itself so easily to these properties, unhappy people can easily drown out their unhappiness by lounging in front of the TV, absorbed in a story or documentary. There’s always something on, even if it’s not remotely interesting.

3) It’s a cycle. Watch a lot of television, eat a lot, gain weight, feel like crap = not seeing friends because you feel like crap, so stay in and watch more television.

4) When there are other options, TV usually loses. Especially now that we can catch many things online, if we have the opportunity to go to a bar with friends, go to the gym, or just hang out with others, sitting alone in your room watching TV just doesn’t seem that much fun. You can catch up on it later.

I’ve always been of the mind that if you watch too much TV, you have too much time on your hands. (Yet, curiously, I have never applied that same logic to the Internet/computers. Probably because you can do so much more online.) It's far too easy in this world to be insular, especially now that we can conceivably meet all our needs without ever leaving the house (as was showcased in a recent episode of House). We need connection to live. That's something that television tells us far too often; we're just usually not paying attention.

Watch Now

2008-11-20T00:42:00.003-05:00

Even I think they're adorable:

Watch CBS Videos Online

Please don't miss Andy Rooney's segment at the end on the death of newspapers. It's why I've always vastly preferred print journalism to any of the schlock of TV news.

We could have elected a pin-up model...

2008-11-09T21:32:00.001-05:00

My favorite fact on this list: He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.

Ha!

Rejoice!

2008-11-06T12:23:00.009-05:00

Obama was very good for the media.

Many newspapers sold out yesterday. My parents emailed me late in the afternoon asking if I could get a copy of the Times, since my dad was unable to find any in Manhattan. It never even occurred to me that this would happen, though it seems so obvious.

Though I knew it was a long shot, I drove around my neighborhood for an hour, stopping in several convenience stores, delis, drugstores, even a Shop-Rite and a Starbucks. A few Daily Newses and Records, but picked clean. I was told that by early morning everything was gone. Felled by fatigue and hunger, I returned home with the Record

and the Daily News
in hand.

I get chided for keeping so many newspapers and magazines, but they really are great (and cheap) mementos. Most of the keepsakes from my trip to Europe this summer were publications in other languages. Why buy an overpriced shot glass that was made in China anyway when you can get an authentic piece of the moment? I looked at all the magazines strewn on my floor before I went to bed Tuesday night, knowing Obama won, and I knew they were history now--all the speculation, all the wonder, it was answered affirmatively. They were no longer current.

Here's the Times' simple cover:

(The Newseum's site has images of practically every newspaper in the world.)

Another One Bites the Dust

2008-10-28T15:38:00.004-04:00

Print media is going up in flames this week.

First came the news Friday that my beloved Radar—the only magazine I’ve ever subscribed to—has folded. Then the Star-Ledger, which has been having massive problems the past few months and is on the brink of extinction, despite being New Jersey’s largest newspaper and the 15th highest-circulation in the country, will cut almost 40% of its workforce by the end of the year.

And today, the Christian Science Monitor will cease publishing the actual physical newspaper during the week and become online-only in April.

My heart bleeds for the rapid demise of this once vibrant sector. It’s not that no one wants to read a newspapers, it’s just they’re expensive (I love my Times, but I debate every week if it’s worth the cost), and it’s easier to read things online. But subscription services may not be the way to go, either—TimesSelect was notoriously unpopular, fettering access to some of the best parts of the paper, the opinion section—since many people won’t bother to pay for it.

While they are many things I’d rather read hard copies of—Time, Newsweek, RollingStone, long magazine articles found in the Times Magazine—it often seems superfluous for me to pay money for content I can get for free, through other means. Indeed, if I didn’t have an outlet for getting my hands on so many different magazines, I would probably be broke buying everything I want to read. But truthfully, I like hard copies. A lot. I can go over the same passages, make notes if I so desire, carry the information with me, take in the whole thing as part of a package. But I understand very well why many people—especially young people—have no interest in print. It’s money, money that can be spent elsewhere. A lot of information can be found online or on television. Paper is a valuable resource, and then there’s the space and time it takes up. Recycling is no match for the environmental ease of emailing. Online offers links within the articles, easily accessible sources and support, which just aren’t there in print. A sidebar is not the same thing.

Yet I want to support the newspaper industry as much as possible. Besides, a printout of the article isn’t the same as the actual article, with graphics and fancy fonts and nice paper. The former may get yellowed, but it becomes a treasure, while a printout is just a copy, likely to get thrown out.

Radar collapsed not for lack of trying—it was on its third incarnation—but because it was a print publication doing what blogs like Gawker and Daily Intel do on a daily basis. Gawker itself summed up why it has finally ceased publication: basically, it suffered from bad timing. Although Radar’s blog, Fresh Intelligence, managed to grab scoops, it treaded on territory already run into the ground—snarky, funny takes on anything to do with entertainment. And in this media landscape, “Pop. Politics. Scandal. Style.” was covered everywhere else. In fact, entertainment coverage is dominated by what seems to be a singular voice: snarky.

Radar was never derivative. It was often hilariously, laugh-out-loud funny, and they dared to mock established magazine covers, including Vanity Fair’s infamous Tom Ford cover.

Radar followed the pedigree of Spy and Talk, two magazines that also ultimately folded because they couldn’t build up enough capital. Radar, in fact, is from the hallowed halls of Tina Brown’s Talk; Maer Roshan, Radar’s editor-in-chief, worked for Talk, New York, and a host of other cool magazines.

I still have all my back issues of Radar from the last year. I never got around to finishing most of them (that’s the problem when I buy, not borrow). There was a time, in high school and on the first incarnation of Radar, where I briefly dreamed of writing for the magazine. Now I can’t even dream of writing for their blog.

Continuing coverage of this story is best found on Gawker. And just for the record, I’ve always disliked American Media--the company who bought out Radar's excellent website—whose clout came largely from Bonnie Fuller, who I hold responsible for practically everything wrong in America.

Endorsements

2008-10-24T10:23:00.006-04:00

I expected the New York Times to endorse Obama, but I didn't expect them (or other newspapers) to do it so soon. I figured it would come the Sunday before election day.

Actually, I'm more interested in the breakdown of the news that the New York City Council voted to approve the change in term limits, essentially creating a third term for Bloomberg. The Post and the Daily News both published their support of the extension in term limits today; the Times did so two days ago.

USA Today has a small list of newspapers and their endorsements (of course being as bland and middle-of-the-road as possible), as do several other outlets. I assumed that a majority would endorse Obama; anyone paying attention at all would realize this.

Facebook Parodies Will Never Get Old

2008-10-11T23:15:00.003-04:00

Ever.

I hope "World News Feed" is a regular occurrence.

(Sorry for the small size--I'd mess with the HTML, but it probably wouldn't be worth it. Click on the link for best results.)

Who Wants to Be a First Lady?

2008-10-10T12:27:00.004-04:00

Two weeks ago, I read American Wife--Curtis Sittenfeld's bildunsroman on a fictional Laura Bush. I'm a fan of Sittenfeld's, but this book is not like her previous ones, Prep and The Man of My Dreams. American Wife does not uncomfortably magnify those insecure feelings we’d rather keep hidden. That is both a credit and a demerit to the book—it’s far easier to read, less fraught with personal revelation, but perhaps not as memorable as her earlier works.

American Wife follows Alice Lindgren, a typical middle-class only child in a small town in Wisconsin, who eventually becomes Alice Blackwell, married to Charlie Blackwell, the 43rd President of the United States. It’s unmistakable that Alice and Charlie Blackwell are the alter egos of Laura and George Bush: they are the same age (although their individual birthdays are different), their courtship patterns follow the same course, she is a children’s librarian, he’s a rich playboy bopping around when they meet at a BBQ…I found the parallels between the characters and their real-life counterparts fun. If you know current events, the last chapter alone is very illuminating. But it’s also exciting to realize you spot Karl Rove’s alter ego before he’s Karl Rove, chuckle that Charlie ran as a “tolerant traditionalist” in 2000, that that election hinged on Florida.

American Wife has received a lot of press—there are spoilers out there too—and while the first 150 pages or so are fantastic, the story loses urgency once Alice marries Charlie. She is longer the passionate librarian, but a woman caught up in country clubs and that world is one that I was very eager to leave. But the book, especially the last section which focuses on the years Charlie is president, serves as a great understanding of the psychology behind the First Couple, why the administration has enacted the policies they have, how the history of the United States has unfolded under its current president. There is no need to know the details of the current administration, but a sense of history enhances the enjoyment.

Sittenfeld’s love of first ladies is evident in a 2003 Salon article she wrote, reviewing a biography of Laura Bush, and in her recent piece in Time, on Michelle Obama. I see in Michelle a type of woman who will be first ladies in the future—not what Laura Bush or Cindy McCain are, women of privilege. At least, I hope the country moves in that direction.

Full review on WitWar.

I need to start reading New York magazine more

2008-10-08T23:04:00.005-04:00

G.G.: Yeah, to me there's a disconnect in McCain's approach to tech. He's obviously smarter about it than he seems (given his time on the issues in the Senate), but the fact that during the last decade he never sat down on a Saturday afternoon and said, “I'm going to teach myself how to use the Web and send e-mail,” is troubling. It just feeds the out-of-touch-ness. Obama on the BlackBerry himself is a powerful image.

M.Y.: It really does make you wonder what he was basing his policy decisions on. You'd think he'd be curious, right? He's voting on these bills, and his office has computers in it. Still, to me the most remarkable thing isn't about McCain personally but how slowly our definition of the "important issues" shifts — the whole idea of the information economy still isn't much more than a throwaway line as far as political campaigns are concerned.

A really interesting discussion between Matt Yglesias (his Atlantic connection makes him automatically rule) and Garrett M. Graff, editor of the Washingtonian and the first blogger to get credentialed by the White House. Just by the looks of his resume, he seems pretty awesome, too. I just plucked out the section on McCain and technology--they make a really good point on how it's not brought up in this campaign, though it should be, as technological progress has been and will continue to define the future of the country.

Later, there is talk of making Americans sacrifice, criticizing President Bush for encouraging Americans to shop as a response to September 11 than to do anything. I've always agreed with that statement--as a kid I always was swept up when hearing historical narratives that dealt with sacrifice in terms of war, be it WWII, the Civil War, or the Revolution. It seemed so exciting, working for your country, doing good! Shopping is frivolous, nothing like planting a victory garden, and I've been eagerly wanting to do something.

Such a great idea

2008-10-08T00:16:00.004-04:00

I'm usually not a fan of Sarah Silverman, except when it comes to her online videos:
She even won an Emmy for her last one, "I'm Fucking Matt Damon".

That's a real organization she's shilling for. I love the line "and they both have a lot of friends who are dying".

I really think when Obama wins one of the reasons will be not only how he harnessed technology but how his supporters did, too. Without all these viral videos--starting from "I Got a Crush On Obama"--he just wouldn't have had the same impact. I think the numbers will bear this out.

Addendum

2008-10-07T23:58:00.001-04:00

That chart below also applies to McCain at tonight's debate.

Hahaha

2008-10-07T10:01:00.003-04:00

My mom sent me this, and it's really quite funny and accurate:

(From ph33r and loathing)

Don't Mess with the Media

2008-09-28T22:42:00.004-04:00

I’ve read a lot about Sarah Palin. I find her interesting. I don’t hate her with the force of a thousand suns like a lot of my friends do, but I do believe she is completely over her head and is in no way ready for the national stage, and I think she’d be disastrous if given the opportunity to exercise her values legislatively.

Her beliefs are polarizing, to say the least. She has a way of creating enemies, and governs in a very personal manner. I think part of her charm is that she is cute and pretty, and leads what many consider to be an incredible life. I think many women wish they could pull off something like that; they ignore the warning signs, they ignore the pregnancy, her spurious background. She’s approachable, and that feeling wins out.

Luckily, her utter unpreparedness for a national campaign is finally becoming clear, and it’s become increasingly apparent that John McCain has made a terrible mistake by selecting her as his running mate, exacerbating the decision by following it up with the genius idea of shielding her from the press.

The media likes access; the media likes answers. They do not like rebuffs, refusals, or rejections. The media’s job is to get stories out to the public, and when people make their jobs difficult, they are not happy. The media can be your friend, and they are big on relationships—they can make or break you, so treat them well. Sarah Palin was a public figure before she became a vice-presidential candidate; she’s had experience interacting with the media, just on a smaller scale. For god’s sake, her degree is in journalism!

There’s a difference between demurring for privacy’s sake and outright refusing to answer questions because you have no answers. The only reason not to let the press talk to her was because they were hiding something—which is so completely obvious that it’s totally backfiring on the campaign.

But I just want to point out an interesting example of how media partnerships work, why it’s so important to cultivate positive relationships with them. From Vanity Fair, via Andrew Sullivan:

Obama, on the other hand, was snubbing Murdoch. Every time he reached out (Murdoch executives tried to get the Kennedys to help smooth the way to an introduction), nothing. The Fox stain was on Murdoch.

It wasn’t until early in the summer that Obama relented and a secret courtesy meeting was arranged. The meeting began with Murdoch sitting down, knee to knee with Obama, at the Waldorf-Astoria. The younger man was deferential—and interested in his story. Obama pursued: What was Murdoch’s relationship with his father? How had he gotten from Adelaide to the top of the world?

Murdoch, for his part, had a simple thought to share with Obama. He had known possibly as many heads of state as anyone living today—had met every American president from Harry Truman on—and this is what he understood: nobody got much time to make an impression. Leadership was about what you did in the first six months.

Then, after he said his piece, Murdoch switched places and let his special guest, Roger Ailes, sit knee to knee with Obama.

Obama lit into Ailes. He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome—just short of a terrorist.

Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand.

A tentative truce, which may or may not have vast historical significance, was at that moment agreed upon.

On Soft Power vs. Hard Power

2008-09-28T19:43:00.004-04:00

Although I have two blogs, I sometimes have a hard time deciding where a particular essay fits, because they meld both traditional pop culture topics but usually dissect the media or another area of American culture. Sometimes the line is blurry, like what I recently wrote about teen sex. James Poniewozik's "Tuned In" column in Time this week is the perfect example of how the soft media, the celebrity media, "women's" media, are really having an impact on the presidential election:

When The View gives an increasingly press-shy candidate his toughest interview in a while, when it and David Letterman prod the scars of the Democratic primary in interviews with Clinton, when pundits debate the fairness of Us Weekly covers and when Saturday Night Live crystallizes the discussion of sexism and vice-presidential choices, what's so soft about them?

I've long suspected that many people pay more attention to soft media, because it's easily digestible in a way that traditional hard news isn't, and permeates the national consciousness in a way that is palatable to people who don't care for "real" news. This campaign is giving those who reside in the soft news section of the media to shine.

Should the media be obligated to cover September 11?

2008-09-11T23:39:00.009-04:00

Today, as I flipped on the radio, I came across a very serious morning show. Unlike other stations, discussing the usual gossip, the crew were talking about September 11. Today.

I was well aware what today was; I noted it when I was alerted to the date a few days ago. But today, this station was angrily reporting that there wasn't enough coverage. They sadly noted that the New York Times had nothing relating to September 11 on their cover (though they ran a very affecting story yesterday on the forgotten injured victims);
neither did the New York Post. "They usually do the right thing," the DJ lamented, and mentioned other papers: The Los Angeles Times had articles on terror, the Daily News went all out. The Star-Ledger, the Washington Post, Newsday all had it on their front covers, even the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. How could the big papers for the area that was affected the most not cover it?

Earlier in the broadcast, before I tuned in, there were indignant callers pleading for people to "move on". Then came the swarms of tearful people lashing out at those who couldn't understand that moving on was impossible. How dare they! It was all very riveting. Throughout the day, the only mention of the historic nature of the date was on this station; as the morning team had pointed out, even other stations weren't giving the day its due. Yes, it was seven years later, but never forget. It was the stories of hearing children--who were mere babies if they were born in 2001--not understanding the tragedy that got to me. I remember, even years ago, a young girl at the camp I worked with who knew of the day but didn't really get it. This was only a few years later, but it only underscored for me how quickly time passes.

I understand both sides. I understand the fatigue--do we really have to go through with this again? If there's more pressing news (which there wasn't; the Post's cover was especially malevolent on this day), I get not putting it as front and center. But so many issues dealing with September 11 aren't close to being solved, let alone the giant hole at Ground Zero, and now's the time to bring those issues to light. It is important to remember, especially as our entire world has changed since then. So much of what's defined America this century so far--and what continues to be the biggest issues in our future--is because of what happened on that gorgeous Tuesday seven years ago. We cannot forget that.

Interesting...

2008-09-10T15:33:00.003-04:00

This week, both Time and Newsweek lead with Sarah Palin on the cover.

US News & World Report, however, goes with sex. Specifically, "The New Sexual Revolution."

Quiz Time

2008-09-07T14:45:00.003-04:00

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

I scored 75. It's a mix of history, economics, and political theory. It's 60 questions, so give yourself ten minutes, and you have to answer all the questions. (Nuts.)

A lot of this stuff isn't taught in high school, and depending upon what classes you take in college, it might be unfamiliar as well.

Some of my feelings on feminism

2008-09-07T14:08:00.002-04:00

Taken from Megan McArdle:

Which brings us to feminism. I view myself as feminist(ish) because I believe the following:
1) Society is set up in ways that limit women's choices and opportunities--men's too (it's awful hard to make the choice to stay home with kids, or become a nurse), but women more. Men are not, for example, socially punished for monogamy the way that women are socially punished for promiscuity.

2) Privilege exists, and is in many unfortunate ways invisible to those who possess it.

3) We should try to change those things.
But the basic thing, to me, is that I endorse the project of changing social values to increase the scope of human possibility.
Personally, I'd like to see feminism take on as expansionist a definition as possible without rendering the concept meaningless--something closer to my list than whatever, exactly in the head of people who label me an "antifeminist". Not because it particularly matters whether I get to wear the proud Scarlet F, but because bringing more people into the tent would make feminism less of a dirty word in many quarters. It would give what I view as the movement's most important work--that of exposing and trying to change the structural problems in society that limit women's choices--more reach, albeit at the expense of driving many radical solutions to those problems.

Sexism and Sarah Palin

2008-09-07T00:36:00.003-04:00

I do not understand the argument that Bristol Palin’s pregnancy makes Sarah Palin “more real”. I know teenage pregnancies happen. I’ve witnessed them, though only through the gossip factor, not personally. That’s probably why I think this argument is bull. From Maureen Dowd:

As more and more titillating details spill out about the Palins, Republicans riposte by simply arguing that things like Todd’s old D.U.I. arrest or Sarah’s messy family vengeance story will just let them relate better to average Americans — unlike the lofty Obamas.

“If this doesn’t resonate with every woman in America, I’ll eat my hat,” Bill Noll, an Alaska delegate whose daughter got pregnant at a young age and kept the baby, told The Times’s Ashley Parker.

The DUI is old news and doesn’t matter. Even when Bush’s DUI came out five days before the 2000 election it didn’t matter. But Bill Noll’s comment is ridiculous. Bristol Palin’s pregnancy doesn’t resonate with me. Planned Parenthood exists for a reason, people! There are tons of contraception methods available. I know there are complications in getting contraception, but there are many ways around this problem.

Honestly, there are very few stories that are going to resonate with any woman, and the idea that I should relate to this is ridiculous. The closest I worried about pregnancy when I was a teenager extended to the fictional characters I watched on television, and even then I disapproved. It’s a well-known fact that pregnancy ruins shows. Yes, it’s a crappy situation, but for many people—for many females!—it’s just simply not something that is a concern, for a variety of reasons.

But I’m sure I’ll just be called another East Coast Blue Stater who doesn’t know anything about Family Values.

Speaking of Family Values, the way the Republicans are spinning this story—which had to have elicited tons of “holy shit” when the news broke—is amusing. While others have harped on the “choice” aspect (it had to be Bristol’s, because if she actually went to have an abortion the news might not be as big if it broke at all—though it would certainly counter her mother’s political and moral stances), I’m amazed that this is so hailed as a positive thing. Having a child out of wedlock is considered bad enough in Republican circles, but a teenage girl pregnant, who isn’t even supposed to know about sex from her abstinence-only education and churchgoing family! I’m baffled by conservatives championing her when her personal life, by this fact, contradicts what she believes in. I know there is quite a debate going on about what constitutes appropriate criticism…and everything seems to go back to, is it ok to say this…because she’s a woman?

The concerns facing Palin—everything from her experience to her family life—are completely valid. I don’t think it’s sexist to wonder about her caring for a disabled newborn and providing for her oldest daughter’s child, even though many presume that her husband will do most of this type of work. Even moving her large family halfway across the world to Washington is something to note. I would like to hear the tale many women crave: How She Does It. Nannies, messy house, older children babysitting…THAT’S what makes her “real”.

The fact is, most of the childrearing and other domestic duties still overwhelming fall to the woman in the household, no matter how busy she is and no matter how much the husband helps out, so it’s not (so) sexist to wonder why McCain would pick a woman like her, why should would accept, and how she would be able to juggle the role. To quote Dowd again (who I agree here with):

Hillary cried sexism to cover up her incompetent management of her campaign, and now Republicans have picked up that trick. But when you use sexism as an across-the-board shield for any legitimate question, you only hurt women. And that’s just another splash of reality.

Yes, it’s unfair that no one would criticize a man in her position, but these are realistic concerns. While there are many reasons for McCain not to nominate her and for Palin to not accept the job, I do not blame them. It’s a tremendous opportunity, and even if she’s not elected she can still change things.

Sexism is one of the insults in this campaign that basically can be applied to anything, and oftentimes I hear a line it’s attributed to and think it’s nonsense. Racism is sometimes substituted as well. I wish it wasn’t so, that if Barack Obama had a disabled child we would wonder how he would care for him. And it might come up, but not to the extent that it does with a woman.

I’m actually surprised that I haven’t heard (much) criticism of her parenting skills. That would seem to be a focal point. What is also so strange is that Sarah Palin announced her daughter’s pregnancy as a rebuttal to rumors that her 5 month-old Down’s Syndrome-afflicted baby was her daughter’s child, not hers. There are many people who don’t believe this, citing Bristol’s mysterious disappearance from school earlier this year, her mother’s late announcement and lack of showing. I don’t understand why she would hide this information, other than it makes her daughter look bad and her not so great either, but it’s not any more damaging than the original pregnancy is. Truthfully, Bristol Palin didn’t even look pregnant when she stood (with her boyfriend holding her hand on the platform, joining the rest of the family) at the RNC. But then, in my infinitely great punditry skills, when I first heard that the vice-presidential candidate had a teen daughter who was pregnant, I predicted that the Republicans’ run for president would be done. How in the world would that be acceptable? But hey, people want Mama, not Obama, now.

**Hey John, part of this is the second half of that "vicious and haphazard" post.

Why I Like Sarah Palin; or, Oh, the Cult of Personality

2008-09-05T00:14:00.008-04:00

I know the few people who read this blog are wondering why I like Sarah Palin, especially as her stances on many issues I disagree with.

In order to understand, you need to watch her speech last night:

She delivered a great speech, plain and simple. The speech was well-written, and accomplished what was needed: introducing herself to the world, attacking her opponent, bolstering her running mate, laying out her accomplishments and to a degree, what she--and McCain--stand for. Like all political women must do in these types of speeches, she brought up her family in detail, and mentioned her role as a mom, but the beginning was actually the best part of her speech. I even enjoyed the many Democratic disses, and she had many good lines. She integrated personal experiences with campaign promises, and injected favorable historical comparisons.

The truth is though, besides all that, I was taken in by her charm. She was funny, forceful, ironic, and she delivered that speech. I loved her facial expressions. She never came across staged, but genuine and natural. I just flat-out loved her, and wanted to vote for her at times, just her, issues be dammed.

The crowd at the RNC loved her too, and like watching Obama last week, just added to the intensity, the feeling of being swept away by collective passion. They chanted so long even before she spoke a single word--other than "thank you"--that you'd have been mistaken for thinking she was running for president, not a woman nobody knew from Tina Fey a week ago.

She handled everything beautifully. Contrasting last night's atmosphere when she spoke to when both Cindy and John McCain sputtered through their speeches tonight only emphasized what an electric presence she has.

But this is the problem, though. I disagree with her on a lot of things--and as other issues come to light, like when she "rhetorically" asked the Wasilla town librarian about how to go about banning books, and the fact that when politicians disagree with her she tends to view it as a personal attack--these things should serve as warning signs that This Isn't the Candidate For Me. But I find her interesting, and she seems like someone who gets stuff done, who actually works hard and cares. Those pesky personal qualities I admire about her--her amusement at the people and process around her, her charm, her ironic expressions, even the way she dresses--are not reasons I should support her. I like the fact that she started in PTA and wound up somewhere else entirely, even that she's so very Alaskan. How cool.

Thinking that Sarah Palin is a cool person, disregarding what she stands for, is the type of thinking that's gotten us into trouble before. It's true, I shouldn't vote for someone that I think I can relate to, or be friends with, because I won't have the opportunity to test that theory out and it's pretty pointless, but it's potent. After all, even David Brooks said that McCain picked her because he felt she was like him--against common sense.

That the Palins are pretty should not matter, but pretty people always win. Pretty people with fun slogans like "Hottest Governor in Coldest State" also push buttons. These things all draw attention, and the RNC needed it. Frankly, Sarah Palin was all I cared about for this convention, and hers is the story I'm interested in. I'm still very much drawn to her; I want to support her, because I like her, if not what she stands for. But I can still respect her very much and resist voting for her, based on my convictions. Isn't that what all the presidential candidates have been saying this entire election anyway?

The Thin Line of Celebrity

2008-09-04T23:06:00.005-04:00

I tend to write a lot of my posts late at night, when I'm somewhat tired, pushing myself to post something. It's not the best system, but I find it hard to do it any other way. This results in rushed pieces, distractions, and laziness, all terrible habits. It also is why I don't post more often. Here's some stuff I wrote last night--and I'm amazed at the tone of it. Man, was I fired up.

*************************************************************************************

Those who read People and US Weekly and watch Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood are generally thought of as people who don’t care about politics. They are middle America; their news filters through them. They are the girls on the beach in bikinis, lounging around getting a tan and getting trash, but trash usually what they read. At least, this is how I categorize these people.

But a funny thing has happened the past few months. All of a sudden, the presidential candidates are considered actual celebrities, worthy of a People cover or an exclusive interview on a syndicated entertainment show. Granted, these are soft interviews, meant to show how normal, yet beautiful and caring, the candidates and their families are. While this isn’t totally new—newsworthy, non-celebrity events have made the cover of People before, from September 11 to previous presidential issues—it has certainly racheted up.

It’s funny that McCain was the one to deride his opponent as being the “celebrity”, but it’s his campaign that has been thrust into the tabloid trail, and not because everyone's all so enamored of his wife. Sarah Palin’s background, fueled by the explosive news that her 17 year-old daughter is pregnant (with rumors circulating that Palin’s 5 month-old disabled boy is actually hers), has caused a feeding frenzy, with ET actually camped out the St. Paul convention headquarters, eagerly awaiting the latest news.

A casual viewer, changing channels, would wonder why on Earth Entertainment Tonight actually cares about the convention. Isn’t that the province of actual journalists, not entertainment ones? And why would a regular viewer of these types of shows actually care? Sure, it’s fun to speculate about a pregnancy—way more than trying to decipher who said what about earmarks—but nobody knew who Bristol Palin was Saturday, and she has nothing to do with anything, except being related to the new nominee. Her boyfriend’s MySpace is just another unfortunate example of a private citizen’s “public” property suddenly thrust into the spotlight because of tangential relations. Now, he’s a dumb teenager who allegedly hadn’t updated the site in over a year (shame on him—delete or update!), but he presents himself as a guy that’s not going to win too many friends, bringing down Alaskan boys to boot. Guys, learn to be smart. There’s always a chance your blog/MySpace/Facebook will be publicized if you somehow find yourself in the news, and knowingly dating the daughter of the governor who then finds herself picked as the Vice Presidential nominee should be a sign that you should clean up your act, but hey, maybe I'm just too cautious. (I’m guessing the Palins, especially Bristol, don’t have accounts, because I haven’t heard of them yet, though I also haven’t looked.)

Very few mainstream media outlets, to my knowledge, have picked up this story, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal and noted in the bottom of this Time article, itself a fluff piece. But it’s perceptions that often matter more than the issues (Sarah Palin being this year’s Case Study); after all, it’s widely believed that Gore’s characterization on Saturday Night Live undermined his candidacy.

The blurring of pop and politics, of the trivial and the important, is only going to continue, as media outlets need all the angles they can get to feed a ravishing public. It’s a requisite now that everyone needs to reveal as much as possible to the public; we demand it. Soft news sells the soft vote—you never know if a People spread is going to add another check mark next to a name on the ballot.

The WSJ points it out the best:

The most popular celebrity newsmagazines on TV reach between two million and six million viewers a night. People and US Weekly reach 29.5 million and 8.2 million women, respectively, every week, according to Mediamark Research & Intelligence Inc. Those figures include "pass-along" readers who don't buy the magazines but take a look at someone else's copy.

These magazines strive to bring celebrities down to earth so readers can relate to them, and this is fast becoming a political preoccupation. President Bush successfully cast Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election as an elitist. "So much came down to, 'Who would you rather have a beer with?'" says US Weekly editor Janice Min.

[…]

Ms. Min says most of the candidates have thrown open the doors to her reporters. "In working with Barack and Hillary [Clinton], their press people put no restrictions on us," Ms. Min said. Their handlers were more accommodating than "even publicists for D-list actors," she added.

US Weekly's June 30 issue, which featured Barack and Michelle Obama on the cover with the heading "Michelle Obama: Why Barack Loves Her," sold over 886,000 copies on the newsstand, an increase of 18% over the previous three issues, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Cover stories on noncelebrities also have the effect of gathering attention from people who don’t traditionally read the magazines.

Note: As further proof of the mixing of news today, look at who runs the Pop and Politics blog: students at the well-known Annenberg Center at USC, one of the top communications programs in the country.

Sarah Palin

2008-09-03T23:40:00.000-04:00

Sarah Palin is incredible.

I saw her speech and I was definitely impressed. In a certain light, she reminds me of Tina Fey. It’s a shame that I disagree with her politically on a lot of issues, and there’s all that dirty laundry coming out of the woodwork, because listening to her I just wanted to vote for her, just her.

Most people talk of how incredible it is that she made the leap to Vice Presidential nominee, but I think the bigger leap is the one from mayor to governor. As governor, she’s already high profile, but she was mayor of a tiny suburb, smaller than my town (and I live in smalltown Jersey). Granted, it’s Alaska, and Alaska is small by population standards…but a run for governor requires assets, money, clout…which you usually don’t have to that degree to run for an office that big.

More to come.