Dan Riley's Blog, page 37

Benefit of the Doubt

Although I do not consider myself "retired," since I'm still doing essentially what I've been doing since I was 13, that is writing for public consumption, it has been just about exactly a year since I stopped going into an office as a writer on someone else's payroll. People ask what's it like, and I answer that it's been a very reflective time...which is a bit redundant with my pre-retirement life because even when I was working for a salary I never felt squeezed for reflective time...but NOW! I feel like a Tibetan monk sometimes, I'm so deep into my own meditations. It's a wonder I'm not bored to death with my thoughts given how much time I spend with them. It puts me in mind (no pun intended) of my favorite Springsteen line: ...but it's a sad man, my friend, who's livin' in his own skin/and can't stand the company.
Thankfully that's not me...for now anyway. Retirement would be impossible otherwise…nay, life would be impossible. I'm back to walking the hills most every day now that my torn Achilles has recovered, and the walks are time for acute reflection as I'm not as much a student of the flora and fauna as I would like to be...or should be. I simply try to get up and at 'em between the time the coyotes tuck in for the day after their all night carousing and when the rattlers slither off to the office for a day of filling hikers with high anxiety while low baking in the sun. On one most recent walk, I found myself, quite by accident, indulging in an act of reflection I'd never engaged in before as I recounted the many outstanding bad encounters I'd ever had in my life. In each recollection I gave the person on the other side of our dispute the benefit of the doubt. In other words, it was an exercise in seeing what life would feel like if I was always wrong and everyone else was always right. It's a real boundary-busting experience where the boundary is I and thou, but I'm here to tell you that it didn't feel all that good.
Physically it actually weighted down my steps, raised my heartbeat, and significantly increased my sweat sop. Emotionally it made the great outdoors scarily claustrophobic the deeper I got into it, even though I had miles of mountain and desert to my back and an endless stretch of the Pacific out in front of me. So I wouldn't recommend it to anybody without this warning. And I can't promise...or even claim...that it's one of those gain from pain experiences. I didn't come out of it like John Cusack's character in the terrific film High Fidelity with a mission to go hunt down everyone I ever wronged to apologize. All I can really say is that for one morning of my life I gave everyone I ever had an issue with the benefit of the doubt. 
This experience of mine transpired two days before Robin Williams committed suicide, and his death caused me to consider how lucky I was to drift into such a state of mind willingly...and then to emerge from it free and clear at the end of my walk. I felt fortunate not to be a prisoner of my mind…trapped in my own skin. Yet my man Norman O. Brown suggests there's an excruciating paradox at play here...that those who are unable to erect false boundaries between themselves and the world at large may be living closer to the truth of our existence than those of us safely hiding behind the gates of reality. Writes Nobby:

It is not schizophrenia but normality that is split minded...Schizophreniacs are suffering from the truth…The schizophrenic world is one of mystical participation, an "indescribable extension of inner self"; "uncanny feelings of reference"; occult psychosomatic influences and powers; currents of electricity…Definitions are boundaries; schizophrenics pass beyond the reality-principle into a world of symbolic connections: "all things lost their definite boundaries, became iridescent with many-colored significances"….The mad truth: the boundary between sanity and insanity is a false one.

In the wake of Robin Williams's death there has been a great deal of discussion about depression. It seems to me--though I'm no shrink--that depression was merely the epilog. Schizophrenia was the prolog…for both better and worse. What happened in between was the iridescent, many-colored significances he gifted us with. 

Hey, Laaaaaadddy!

Unlike Stephen Colbert (the second greatest living American) whose comedy can sometimes be so sublime as to defy gravity, Bill Maher's comedy can often be as subtle as a 12-year old juggling scissors. Maher is like a kid who just learned about the First Amendment at school and comes home and tells his mom's bridge club to "Fuck off.” Then he runs off to his room, yelling, “Free speech…free speech!" Still, the percent of the time Maher gets it right, he's positively exhilarating...as he was on last week's Real Time when he called out political correctness run amuck on the Internet:

I was railing against political correctness and I feel like the Internet has just made that all so much worse because people just sit there and lay in wait for somebody to say something politically incorrect and then pat themselves on the back because, I'm the good person and I'm going to go after this person who's a bad person because he said this thing that's wrong and this thing that's wrong, like it's Galileo against the Church or something. And my question is, has the social media made us bigger assholes or were we always bigger assholes and the social media just exposed us?

I know first hand whereof Maher speaks, having been called out a few weeks ago in an Internet (ahem) discussion for referring to women as ladies, as in this exact sentence: 

I am not your enemy, ladies, and if you think I'm your enemy, you're making unnecessary problems for yourselves.

Some women in numbers too big to ignore roared that my use of the word lady in that context was "hate speech" and further suggested that my reference to “making unnecessary problems for yourselves” could be taken as a threat in light of the killing rampage of Elliot Roger in Santa Barbara a few weeks earlier. 

Sigh. To quote the great Leonard Cohen, "...it's come to this/Yes it's come to this/And wasn't it a long way down/And isn't it a strange way down?"I have a rather vivid memory of my first use of the word lady. I was 4-years old when a gypsy (which is possibly another non-PC term) came to our house trying to sell my mom on buying a bit of fortunetelling. For a tease, the rather exotic woman looked down on poor poor pitiful me and said, “Oh, this one’s going to a be a lady killer (sic).” To which I immediately cried, “I’m not going into churches and killing ladies.” In later years, there was The Lady or the Tiger, the first short story I remember reading in school. Then there was ever sweet Lady and the Tramp. And then at a college film series there was The Lady from Shanghai with the lustrous Rita Hayworth. So I grew up with a distinctly positive understanding of the word lady, and that understanding was reinforced over and over again throughout my life until…BAM! In the autumn of my years, I arrive on a website to learn that--in some minds at least--lady has suddenly been turned into a slur.
Context is everything, of course, and I’d really like to reproduce my sentence in the context in which I wrote it, but here’s the thing, the website where my alleged offense occurred…a (ho-ho) progressive website I might add…censored me according to the following: "A comment you made was hidden by the community for being outside of site rules."
Since the Web moderator refused to respond to my inquiry as to what rule my comment broke, I was forced to conclude that, like lady, the word community had undergone a perversion of meaning without my knowing about it. The phrase “hidden by the community” appears to be one of those euphemisms, like “friendly fire,” designed to conceal something much darker. In his excellent New York Times article on Internet rage, Teddy Wayne writes:

Though we are quick to condemn callousness and prejudice as a form of bullying, we less readily interrogate our own participation, even as bystanders, in the widespread attack of a single person, which is a classic example of bullying. We may justify our reaction as appropriate remediation for whatever crime has been perpetrated, but fighting fire with fire rarely elevates the discourse.

Whether elevating the discourse is an actual goal, however, remains to be seen. Oftentimes it seems the goal is more to score political points…and not that there's anything wrong with that. Once upon a time, I blogged about how I was able to overcome embarrassment at my father’s mispronunciation of the letter “h” as “haitch” when I learned that the Irish deliberately pronounced it that way to mock the English and their precious mother tongue. Examples of subcultures using language to annoy and alienate a dominant culture are abundant. Often it is a natural process and just evolves organically for defense or identity formation. But sometimes it’s calculated and the result of a good deal of thought and effort on the part of opportunists within a subculture to make their own personal mark. Academic careers can be built on papers putting forth the case for a new label for a group or condemning a label already in place…or “reappropriating” a label, as they say. I’m fascinated by the metamorphosis of the word queer for instance…a word along with colored, Negro, chick, and girl that became more politically incorrect over the latter half of the 20th century. But queer is suddenly in fashion and permissible within the gay community, as its counterpart nigger is within the black community. It has special cache among the LGBT elite, with queer theory now a serious academic discipline throughout the country.  So Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, who is under severe fire for refusing to change the name of his team, may be missing an opportunity here. The best way for him to win his case might be to endow a chair at some university to be filled with a Native American scholar who would in turn write a paper claiming that Native Americans should embrace the name Redskins…own it…reappropriate it. On the flip side, I suspect that somewhere in the land is a clever and ambitious feminist scholar (a wannabe Camilla Paglia perhaps) contemplating a Ph.D. thesis that argues that the words women and female should be shirked due to their dependence on the syllables "men" and "male" in order to be functional.
While the name game may be a reliable way to advance individual careers, and in process turn our colleges into Ministries of Silly Talk, they don’t seem to be doing much for elevating the discourse or much advancing the causes of groups striving for equal treatment. At this juncture in our protracted era of political correctness, I think it’s accurate to say that our national discourse has become coarser, not fairer. And though some of that could certainly be laid at the door of old fashioned bigotry and ignorance, I don't think it's either bigoted or ignorant to suggest that a lot of it is due to people's natural rebellious streak. A dude who calls a woman a chick, a girl or--god forbid--a lady may be operating out of the same instinct as an Irishman who chooses to assault the ears of a Brit with "haitch." 

Bill Maher's obsession with the First Amendment is sometimes the equal of those Second Amendment yahoos who feel they have to open carry assault rifles into shopping malls to assert their rights, but Maher's decades-long battle against political correctness is both noble and worthwhile. Dialog which holds as its first priority exchanging a list of words that one party can’t use so as not to give offense to the other party is like starting peace talks arguing over the size and shape of the negotiating table. Actually it’s worse, because we know that any such list of offensive words could change on a whim…or the lure of an academic grant. 

Respect: What's on the Ballot

…a Fox News reporter had ignited a social-media furor by mocking...“Beyoncé voters” — for the entertainer’s hit song “Single Ladies” — who depend on the government since they lack husbands.

The above is one of many rich quotes from a Jackie Calmes article in The New York Times I referenced a few weeks ago and haven’t been able to shake since. The article deftly details both the opportunity and challenge facing our American democracy this November, and it has been reinforced by other reports. The bottom line is that the voters needed to start turning around the awful politics that have befallen the nation in the past number of years are not waiting to be born….they exist; the problem is that those voters, largely single women, are least likely to vote. There is a common belief that you get the democracy you deserve, and if vulnerable voters don’t vote, they have no one to blame for the consequences but themselves. But like so many other tropes, this one doesn’t hold up so well if you subject it to some critical thinking. It doesn’t even have to be very deep critical thinking; it can just be the application of some common sense, as expressed in this further passage from the NYT article:

Among those ground troops is Emma Akpan, an unmarried 28-year-old graduate of Duke Divinity School, who works to register voters but said she understood why so many single women are hard to reach. In an election without presidential candidates and the news media attention they draw, Ms. Akpan said, many women busy with jobs and perhaps children see no point in voting. “If I wasn’t doing this work,” she conceded, “I probably wouldn’t pay attention either.”

There are lots of reasons certain people don’t vote in mid-term elections. Just one of them is that they’re too busy living their lives to pay attention to what might be described as small bore (pun intended) politics.  There are others:10 Reasons People Don’t Vote in Mid-Term ElectionsThey hate politicsThey don’t trust politiciansThey don’t see the connection of voting to their daily livesThey don’t see the buzzThey don’t feel the urgencyThey feel powerlessThey don’t fully appreciate democracyThe issues are too complicatedElections are boorrrrinnngThey have better things to do10 Arguments Against those 10 ReasonsHard to argue against how hateful politics can be, except to say it’s about like plumbing. Unless you’re getting paid $125 an hour to be a plumber, plumbing is no more lovable than politics. But it’s no less necessary, and keeping it running free and clear is far preferable to the alternative. And the alternative to free and clear is likely if you ignore your plumbing. There are many things in life…taking out the garbage, getting a colonoscopy, checking the kids’ homework…that we may not much like, but we do them anyway out of respect for our sense of duty. The best way to punish a lying politician is the same way you punish a lying retailer or lying boyfriend—take your business elsewhere. You don’t give up shopping or having relationships; you find more respectful people.It’s simple really…you and your child’s education, health, safety and financial security are largely in the hands of government. There is no escaping that reality, and unless you’re participating in the process and making your influence felt on your government, you are giving up control to others…and not just any others, but others who do not respect you at all.Yes, it’s easier to get excited about voting and making a choice about who to vote for when it all comes down to just two candidates and both the news media and the pop culture are focused on that choice…like it's the Super Bowl. And there’s no argument that the winner between two presidential candidates can have a powerful impact on your life for years. But as we can now clearly see throughout our current history, more and more state and congressional legislators are involving themselves directly in our private lives without any respect for either our privacy or independence.Urgency, unfortunately (though a great motivator) usually only occurs when we let things go too long and don’t address them until tragedy strikes. By every measurable objective, our national infrastructure--roads and bridges--are in terrible disrepair. Waiting until one or the other collapses and sends a school bus full of children into a raging river shows a blatant disrespect for human life.How can we honor and be moved by brave but solitary stands against overwhelming odds by heroines from Erin Brockovichto Malala while shrinking from the small, safe act of registering to vote and voting? To whine about your powerlessness is to advertise a lack of self-respect.People gave their lives for our right to vote; people in countries all over the world are dying today to get that right for themselves. It is disrespectful of all of them to waste that right once it's yours.The issues are complicated…and confusing. Fortunately there are good fellow citizens who are organized, trustful and willing to provide simple guidance through the complexity…for free! Respect their efforts and your intelligence enough to reach out for help.  If elections are really so boring, why are so many other people so worked up about them? Why are so many millions of dollars spent on winning them? Why are so much media devoted to them? Why does the whole outside world watch our elections so closely? What do they all know that you don’t know? You don’t have to enjoy the process; all you have to do is respect it.If you really have better things to do, there are plenty of people busy at work trying to assure that you never have to vote again. R-E-S-P-E-C-T…they don't have it for you and they don't have it for democracy unless you make it so.I'm guessing The Nobby Works doesn't have many single women readers who don't plan to vote this November. But I'm also guessing that every single Nobby Works reader knows at least one such woman. If so, feel free to share. 

50 Shades of Nuance

In digging into LeBron James’s Akron roots for last week’s blog post, I realized he was only the second most famous person to come out of that city. The first is Miss Chrissie Hynde, one of the foremost female rock ‘n rollers of all time. Oh, the hell with that…one of the foremost rock ‘n rollers of all time. Chrissie once wrote a hit song about Akron, My City Was Gone:

I went back to Ohio 
But my city was gone 
There was no train station 
There was no downtown 
South Howard had disappeared 
All my favorite places 
My city had been pulled down 
Reduced to parking spaces 


I knew the song, of course, but I did not know that it was the theme song for the toxic radio show of the second worst man in America. Nor did I know about the negotiation that went on between Chrissie and the second worst man in America over his use of the song. Limbaugh chose it as his theme song because, as he explained, “…it was [written by] an environmentalist, animal rights wacko and was an anti-conservative song. It is anti-development, anti-capitalist and here I am going to take a liberal song and make fun of [liberals] at the same time."

Chrissie’s music company issued a cease and desist order to Limbaugh over the song’s use, but then she got clever (which is the more effective opposite of earnest) and told The Great Pustulate that he could use the song if he paid the royalties directly to PETA, one of her pet causes (no pun intended). Generally I applaud whenever a musician slaps down some conservative mook over misappropriation of creative effort far beyond the conservative ability to produce same. I know one of the things that drives American Rightists nuts (or, rather, more nuts) is that they feel an ineluctable alienation from popular culture…and any act that relieves their sense of permanent exile in Squaresville, I disapprove. But I think Chrissie made a sly deal here. The Nob is all for political jujitsu…and, hey, who knows how many dittoheads-in-training may have been drawn by that theme song to seek out more of her music, and thus greater enlightenment? 

Though in these times it’s hard to tell what some aspiring young misogynist might make of Chrissie’s Night in My Veins.

I see him standing silhouetted 
in the lamplight,I cross the street 
and I quicken my pace, 
He cups his hands and he 
lights a cigarette I find myself in the bones of his faceIt's just the night in my veins 
Oh, 
making me crawl in the dust again 
It's just the night 
under my skin 
slipping it in
He's got his hands in my hair 
and his lips everywhere 
Oh yeah, 
it feels good, 
it's alright 
Even if it's just 
the night in my veinsHe's got me up against the back of a 
pick-up truck 
Out of sight of the neon and glare 
We might as well be on a beach 
under the moonlight, 
Love's language reads the same 
anywhere, yeahIt's just the night in my veins 
Oh, 
making me crawl in the dust again 
It's just the night 
under my skin 
slipping it in
He's got his chest on my back 
across a new Cadillac, 
oh yeah, 
It feels good, 
it's alright, 
even if it's just 
the night in my veins, 
Even if it's just the night in my veinsI've got my head on the 
curb and I can't produce 
a word, 
oh yeah, 
It feels good, 
it's alright, 
even if it's just 
the night in my veinsIt feels good, 
it's alright, 
even if it's just 
the night in my veins Even if it's just 
the night in my veins 
it feels good 
it's alright 

One can imagine a band of embittered warriors sitting around a Men’s Rights sweat lodge listening to that song on their iPods and proclaiming, “Hear that, right there…they like it like that.” What they don’t hear of course is the consensual nature of the song, which is where a lot of the confusion comes for many young men, especially it seems on our college campuses. They don’t fully understand what consensual means, and I’m afraid that “No means no” (like its antecedent, “Just say no to drugs”) doesn’t cut it as an explanation. The learning curve for some men who still take their mating cues from their Neanderthal forebears is long and steep. And it’s not at all helped by the fact that we live in a society where the virtual motto is Everything’s negotiable…where “no” very often just means “not right now,” or something equally ambiguous and equivocating, whether the thing being profferred is another helping of dessert or an extended warranty.
As to the other side of the gender divide on the issue of transgressive sex, I’ve found myself doing a great deal more reading on feminism in recent weeks than I ever intended. What my research has revealed thus far is that although there is definitely a stereotype of what feminism is, feminism itself is hardly monolithic. I’ve encountered feminists who measure the progress of women strictly in terms of corporate hierarchies (How many executives are women? How many board members are women?). I’ve encountered feminists who measure the progress of women strictly in terms of academia (How empowered are the coeds? How much gender diversity in various course syllabi?). I’ve encountered feminists who measure the progress of women in terms of the popular culture (How many women writers on Saturday Night Live? How many pro athletes getting away with brutalizing their spouses?).
I’ve even encountered feminists who are openly and keenly at odds with other feminists. One of the most compelling pieces I’ve read in my inquiry is by Jessa Crispin, who reviewed two recent books about the reaction to the mega bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey in the Los Angeles Review of Books. She wrote, in introduction:

Shouldn't we all feel a little embarrassed about the fuss we made over 50 Shades of Grey? I don’t mean the book’s fans. I mean…the book’s critics; all of us who committed time and energy to blog posts and commentary and long essays attacking E. L. James’s novel. The focus and outrage we brought to the 50 Shades backlash was remarkable, as though we were not so much critiquing a bad book as fighting a war (sic). The situation seemed so grave. If millions and millions of women were getting off on the idea of being sexually subjugated; if the secret fantasy buried in us all is that we meet a very rich man who’ll spank us — is this the end of feminism?

With the serendipitous nature of blogging, I not only realized the relevance of Crispin’s piece to my own earlier blog, but more importantly to Chrissie Hynde’s Night in My Veins…because what is Night in my Veins, after all, than a musical, lower-class version of Fifty Shades of Grey? Crispin’s defense of E.L. James’s work against a feminist critique can just as well apply to Chrissie Hynde’s song. Crispin writes:

The writers of [Fifty Shades of] Feminism respond to the variety within women’s desires with indifference at best, and condescension at worst. Here, they say: unless you are a deluded old cow, this is what you should want, this is what will make you happy. Think this, do this, believe this, use these words and not these others…The argument presented is this: your action is feminist because you are choosing for yourself. The result is a “feminism” that’s not only depoliticized but also desocialized: “feminism” becomes a word to slap onto a choice after the fact, as a way to protect a decision from any criticism.Unless, of course, you, the reader, choose differently than the writers in the book, and then the condemnation comes down hard. Pornography, high heels, and bikini waxes, prostitution and other forms of sex work, refusing to label yourself as a feminist, plastic surgery, sexual submission, and reading 50 Shades of Grey: all these are listed as crimes against humanity, betrayals against the sisterhood.

Underpinning all of The Nobby Works is the writing of Norman O. Brown, especially his Love’s Body where we learn that the body, not the soul, is the governing agent of our existence. The body is the truth teller and holds the trump impulses. So when sensuality comes up against ideology, the smart bet is on sensuality. What that means for men and women when the night gets in their veins is to realize that if it doesn’t feel good and alright to both of them, then it’s not. 
  

Noblesse Oblige? Merci Beaucoup!

It’s appropriate, I guess, that the expression noblesse oblige should be resurrected in my mind by a man immodestly known as King James. When I read basketball star LeBron James’s statement as to why he was returning home from the winning, sexy environment of the Miami Heat to the rebuilding, blue-collar environment of the Cleveland Cavaliers, I was struck, as were many others, by this:

I feel my calling here goes above basketball. I have a responsibility to lead, in more ways than one, and I take that very seriously. My presence can make a difference in Miami, but I think it can mean more where I’m from. I want kids in Northeast Ohio, like the hundreds of Akron third-graders I sponsor through my foundation, to realize that there’s no better place to grow up. Maybe some of them will come home after college and start a family or open a business. That would make me smile. Our community, which has struggled so much, needs all the talent it can get.

That’s about as clear a statement as a 21stcentury urban black man can make on the 19th century French aristocratic concept that the higher and more privileged your station in life the greater your responsibility to those less fortunate. In its early version, it was an essential part of the upbringing and training of the upper classes…too, often, alas, to be abandoned or ignored in adulthood. But it did take hold in many notable instances, and Western countries, at least, abound in institutions of art, health, education and science that are the direct product of the largesse of the wealthy.
This sense of patrician duty has not just found expression materially, but symbolically as well. The Romney and Rockefeller families, among the wealthiest of Americans, stood publicly with blacks in the 1960s in their struggle to gain basic civil rights. But somewhere--right about the time of the civil rights marches in fact--the whole notion of noblesse oblige began to attract carping. I recall a liberal mentor of mine at the time calling into question Bob Dylan’s dedication to the movement (and yes, just about everything with me somehow gets around to Dylan…). “Sure,” my mentor groused, commenting on Dylan’s appearance at the 1963 March on Washington, “he flies in on his private jet, sings a few songs then gets back on his jet and goes home.”
I was just coming into my own as a Dylan disciple, so the dismissal was unsettling, especially coming from someone who had so influenced my political development. Had I been on a more equal footing with the man and had my powers of critical thinking been more fully developed, I may have reacted to his charge more vocally, as in, “What the hell are you talking about? What do you expect him to do? Unwrap  a bedroll in front of the Washington Monument? Move to Alabama? Besides, he doesn’t even own a jet plane!”
Skepticism about the best intentions of the privileged classes seemed to accelerate through the 60s and into the 70s. Beau geste came to smell more and more like beau shit, as people were increasingly inclined to bury rather than praise noble acts. Donations to needy causes were denigrated for their tax benefits. Volunteering for worthy causes was scrutinized for its PR benefits. Advocacy of good causes was held suspect to ulterior motivation. Careers (notably devoid of charitable effort) were built on debunking the good works of the elite.
And then came the 80s, and whatever benefit of the doubt the privileged had coming to them went blowing to the four winds. With fictional Gordon Gekko’s proclamation that “Greed is good,” reinforced by actual government policy called trickle down economics, the privileged appeared to abandon all pretense at noblesse oblige. In fact, to fully and wholly flaunt your wealth became de rigueur (and for those scoring at home that is the fourth French idiom I’ve employed so far…sacré bleu!). What ended up trickling down was the selfishness which manifests itself today in a segment of the populace gathering on street corners and shamelessly screaming, “Not our children, not our problem!”
In some quarters LeBron James’s explanation that his recent move back to Ohio is “for the children” has fallen under our general suspicion of noblesse oblige. Practically every 20-year old athlete who turns pro has one of those foundations established by “his people” when he signs his first big contract. It’s usually for both tax purposes and PR…so no one is much impressed with the fact that LeBron has a foundation for kids. Some critics also question why Ohio’s children weren’t important enough to LeBron four years ago when he left them literally in tears to go to Miami. Others wonder how big a sacrifice this really is and how big a deal should we be making of a guy earning more than 20 million dollars a year wherever he chooses to bring his talents. Fair enough questions…in a democracy no one should be above question, especially those who loom above the rest of us in status and wealth. If anything, our society errs too much on the side of giving the privileged a freer ride than others.
But privilege is relative…and the price of eternal vigilance as to the motives of the privileged is ultimately corrosive…as is any relationship based on continued mistrust. I had my own run-in with such corrosiveness when I posted my most controversial blog to date The War on Straight White Men. I already addressed my role in making that post unnecessarily inflammatory here. But some readers brought their own fuel to their reading of the post…which rather led to a bonfire of misunderstanding. Here are some examples of the feedback that post elicited:

I hope you don't speakfor all straight white men.  I'd hate to think they are all so coddled and self-absorbed that they petulantly expect a pat on the back merely for displaying basic human empathy and regard, and then whine when they aren't made the star of everyone else's dramas.Yes, because . . . the first concern of people who wish to confront codified discrimination should be, "Let's make sure that we won't make any straight white guys uncomfortable."I think that sadly there is still this belief that without a white guy fronting the effort and "opening doors," etc, there will be no credibility and therefore no success.  The gatekeepers do not want to give up the power of the stamp of approval.Po, po, pitiful me The Persecution of the Privileged. It's so hard to watch.Well, if I understood the garbleStraight white men are...I dunno, picked on? But why stop there?  Why not rich, able-bodied and young straight white men?  I mean, there (sic) lives aren't perfect, so that means they're picked on too. Shorter Version 'black man isn't sufficiently begging me to be a martyr to his cause'

Well, here I invite my more astute readers to go back to the original post and see if any of that is even implied in it, let alone stated outright. Also, to consider if such knee-jerk hostility may be a contributing factor in what I described as an uninviting atmosphere for the enlistment of straight white men in just causes. The intent of the post was to lament the fact that straight white men seem marginal figures in current struggles for human rights across the board. I asked…and ask again…did nobility of purpose get bred out of these young men? Are they now more inspired to troll shopping malls with assault weapons than take up arms against injustice? Has the what can my country do for me call to greed killed any what can you do for your country idealism they may ever have felt?
Although there is growing scientific evidence that we are, as a species, biologically inclined to value equality over inequality, it might also be asked if we are doing all we can as a society to nurture our better angels. Having reactions against most any and all acts of noblesse oblige ranging from skeptical to rabid does not seem the best way to reinforce that inclination–whether we’re talking about straight young white men or rich young black men. And yes, even the privileged need a pat on the back occasionally for doing the right thing. They are--despite the privilege--still only human after all. George Romney showing more character in a single afternoon than son Mitt has
in an entire career. (Baby, baby, baby where has our noblesse oblige gone?)

Noblesse Oblige? Merci, Beaucoup!

It’s appropriate, I guess, that the expression noblesse oblige should be resurrected in my mind by a man immodestly known as King James. When I read basketball star LeBron James’s statement as to why he was returning home from the winning, sexy environment of the Miami Heat to the rebuilding, blue-collar environment of the Cleveland Cavaliers, I was struck, as were many others, by this:

I feel my calling here goes above basketball. I have a responsibility to lead, in more ways than one, and I take that very seriously. My presence can make a difference in Miami, but I think it can mean more where I’m from. I want kids in Northeast Ohio, like the hundreds of Akron third-graders I sponsor through my foundation, to realize that there’s no better place to grow up. Maybe some of them will come home after college and start a family or open a business. That would make me smile. Our community, which has struggled so much, needs all the talent it can get.

That’s about as clear a statement as a 21stcentury urban black man can make on the 19th century French aristocratic concept that the higher and more privileged your station in life the greater your responsibility to those less fortunate. In its early version, it was an essential part of the upbringing and training of the upper classes…too, often, alas, to be abandoned or ignored in adulthood. But it did take hold in many notable instances, and Western countries, at least, abound in institutions of art, health, education and science that are the direct product of the largesse of the wealthy.
This sense of patrician duty has not just found expression materially, but symbolically as well. The Romney and Rockefeller families, among the wealthiest of Americans, stood publicly with blacks in the 1960s in their struggle to gain basic civil rights. But somewhere--right about the time of the civil rights marches in fact--the whole notion of noblesse oblige began to attract carping. I recall a liberal mentor of mine at the time calling into question Bob Dylan’s dedication to the movement (and yes, just about everything with me somehow gets around to Dylan…). “Sure,” my mentor groused, commenting on Dylan’s appearance at the 1963 March on Washington, “he flies in on his private jet, sings a few songs then gets back on his jet and goes home.”
I was just coming into my own as a Dylan disciple, so the dismissal was unsettling, especially coming from someone who had so influenced my political development. Had I been on a more equal footing with the man and had my powers of critical thinking been more fully developed, I may have reacted to his charge more vocally, as in, “What the hell are you talking about? What do you expect him to do? Unwrap  a bedroll in front of the Washington Monument? Move to Alabama? Besides, he doesn’t even own a jet plane!”
Skepticism about the best intentions of the privileged classes seemed to accelerate through the 60s and into the 70s. Beau geste came to smell more and more like beau shit, as people were increasingly inclined to bury rather than praise noble acts. Donations to needy causes were denigrated for their tax benefits. Volunteering for worthy causes was scrutinized for its PR benefits. Advocacy of good causes was held suspect to ulterior motivation. Careers (notably devoid of charitable effort) were built on debunking the good works of the elite.
And then came the 80s, and whatever benefit of the doubt the privileged had coming to them went blowing to the four winds. With fictional Gordon Gekko’s proclamation that “Greed is good,” reinforced by actual government policy called trickle down economics, the privileged appeared to abandon all pretense at noblesse oblige. In fact, to fully and wholly flaunt your wealth became de rigueur (and for those scoring at home that is the fourth French idiom I’ve employed so far…sacré bleu!). What ended up trickling down was the selfishness which manifests itself today in a segment of the populace gathering on street corners and shamelessly screaming, “Not our children, not our problem!”
In some quarters LeBron James’s explanation that his recent move back to Ohio is “for the children” has fallen under our general suspicion of noblesse oblige. Practically every 20-year old athlete who turns pro has one of those foundations established by “his people” when he signs his first big contract. It’s usually for both tax purposes and PR…so no one is much impressed with the fact that LeBron has a foundation for kids. Some critics also question why Ohio’s children weren’t important enough to LeBron four years ago when he left them literally in tears to go to Miami. Others wonder how big a sacrifice this really is and how big a deal should we be making of a guy making more than 20 million dollars a year wherever he chooses to bring his talents. Fair enough questions…in a democracy no one should be above question, especially those who loom above the rest of us in status and wealth. If anything, our society errs too much on the side of giving the privileged a freer ride than others.
But privilege is relative…and the price of eternal vigilance as to the motives of the privileged is ultimately corrosive…as is any relationship based on continued mistrust. I had my own run-in with such corrosiveness when I posted my most controversial blog to date The War on Straight White Men. I already addressed my role in making that post unnecessarily inflammatory here. But some readers brought their own fuel to their reading of the post…which rather led to a misreading bonfire. Here are some examples of the feedback that post elicited:

I hope you don't speakfor all straight white men.  I'd hate to think they are all so coddled and self-absorbed that they petulantly expect a pat on the back merely for displaying basic human empathy and regard, and then whine when they aren't made the star of everyone else's dramas.Yes, because . . . the first concern of people who wish to confront codified discrimination should be, "Let's make sure that we won't make any straight white guys uncomfortable."I think that sadly there is still this belief that without a white guy fronting the effort and "opening doors," etc, there will be no credibility and therefore no success.  The gatekeepers do not want to give up the power of the stamp of approval.Po, po, pitiful me The Persecution of the Privileged. It's so hard to watch.Well, if I understood the garbleStraight white men are...I dunno, picked on? But why stop there?  Why not rich, able-bodied and young straight white men?  I mean, there (sic) lives aren't perfect, so that means they're picked on too. Shorter Version 'black man isn't sufficiently begging me to be a martyr to his cause'

Well, here I invite my more astute readers to go back to the original post and see if any of that is even implied in it, let alone stated outright. Also, to consider if such knee-jerk hostility may be a contributing factor in what I described as an uninviting atmosphere for straight white men to enlist in just causes. The intent of the post was to lament the fact that straight white men seem marginal figures in current struggles for human rights across the board. I asked…and ask again…did nobility of purpose get bred out of these young men? Are they now more inspired to troll shopping malls with assault weapons than take up arms against injustice? Has the what can my country do for me call to greed killed any what can you do for your country idealism they may ever have felt?
Although there is growing scientific evidence that we are, as a species, biologically inclined to value equality over inequality, it might also be asked if we are doing all we can as a society to nurture our better angels. Having reactions against any and all acts of noblesse oblige that range from skeptical to rabid does not seem the best way to reinforce that inclination–whether we’re talking about straight young white men or rich young black men. And yes, even the privileged need a pat on the back occasionally for doing the right thing. They are--despite the privilege--still only human, not before but after all. George Romney showing more character in a single afternoon than son Mitt has
in an entire career. (Baby, baby, baby where has our noblesse oblige gone?)

A Straight White Man's Mea Culpa

Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab…hoisted on his own petard.

I spent much of my youth reciting this prayer on a fairly regular basis:

I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters,* that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

I have not been in a Catholic Church as other than a tourist since my father died in 1988. But strangely I found myself drawn back to this prayer after my post last week, The War on Straight White Men, blew up terribly in my face. The wrath the post provoked was...well, it was Biblical. The most acute reaction was from a very old and valued friend who has been a loyal supporter of both me and my writing for many years. Her silence on the piece was the loudest condemnation of all.

I want to apologize to everyone I offended. But that is actually the easy part. The hard part is apologizing without making excuses for myself. It is tempting sometimes to turn apology into a Trojan horse. You offer it as a gift to those you have offended, but pack it full of alibis, justifications, and qualifiers that sneak out in the dead of night and kill all your best intentions in their sleep.

To avoid this trap, I will stick to the specifics of what I'm apologizing for...and avoid the why of how I got myself into this position in the first place.

To begin with, I apologize for claiming there was "no war in women." Whatever rhetorical or pedantic point I was trying to make was completely out of time and place in the week of the Hobby Lobby decision when American women with any self respect and determination whatsoever had every reason to feel they were under attack…whether it be a war, a battle, a skirmish, whatever...the semantics are monumentally immaterial. The fact is that something insidious and vicious is going on in our country on a systematic basis, and as much as it may harm the population as a whole, it is quite relentlessly and ruthlessly aimed at women.

This leads to the next station of my apology. The mere fact that I was...in the light of that hideous court decision...willing and able to raise an intellectual question about the efficacy of "the war on women" meme shows exactly how my status as a white straight man provides me with the privilege of being able to discuss the issue with a lavish display of detachment. As much as I may believe that the burden of so many of these misogynistic actions at the state and federal level affect all concerned citizens, they fall heaviest on women. To borrow from the war metaphor...I and my fellow fellows are back at headquarters; it is women who are on the front lines fighting for their dignity…and absorbing the most casualties.

Finally, I want to apologize for reacting to the tweets of two feminists in such a way as to cause so much anger and hurt among feminists in particular and women in general (not to mention a distracting divide in progressive ranks). In a week when the most powerful court in the land...in the vanity-besotted judgment of its five most morally defunct members--came down with Enola Gay-like ferocity on their sister citizens, my objections to those tweets was obtuse in the extreme.

I am sorry. 


* The version of the prayer in my youth substituted Father for brothers and sisters; brothers and sisters is better

The War Against Straight White Men

Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird
Before I find myself having to clean the spittle of outrage off The Nobby Works, let me quickly say that I use the expression “war on straight white men” mockingly. There is no war on straight white men…just as there is no “war on women.” And, seriously, is there not a female with a marketing degree in the entire woman’s movement who could’ve warned them off the “war on women” branding? Declaring war on anything…poverty, drugs, terror, obesity, Christmas, gluten…it’s all become a humiliating act of national self-parody in the US. It seems we don't believe our fellow Americans can take anything seriously unless we declare war on it. But like the boy who cried wolf, we’ve done it to death and nobody’s buying it anymore. Plus everybody outside the psychotic circle of Cheney family and friends is quite sick of wars. (Maybe dial it down a bit and just try selling people on the objective reality that they’re systematically being made the objects of insult and disrespect?)
This is no mere semantic problem. In the last week or so we’ve seen a convergence of three events, which underscores why this “war on” meme creates strategic, tactical and most importantly civic problems. The first event was the 50th anniversary of the murders of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, three young civil rights volunteers working to register black voters in deeply segregated Mississippi. The second was the debut of the HBO documentary The Case Against 8 about the legal battle to overturn California’s Proposition 8, which made same sex marriage illegal. The third was the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision granting corporations the right to be exempt from laws on religious grounds. The unifying theme in each of them--at least for the purposes of this post--is the role played by straight white men.
In the first, Schwerner and Goodman were straight white men, who gave their lives trying to help people of different color obtain a basic right to vote in a democracy. In the second, David Boies and Ted Olson are two straight white men trying to help people of a different sexual preference obtain a basic human right to marry who they love. In the third…well, here’s a partial list of the straight white men who voted to give women the reproductive rights that the Hobby Lobby case sought to overturn—Senators John Kerry, Bob Casey, Chuck Schumer, Mark Pryor, Joe Lieberman, Al Franken, Chris Dodd, Arlen Specter, John Tester; and in the House of Representatives, notably among many others, ardent pro-life advocate, Bart Stupak.
Yet, within minutes of the Supreme Court’s ruling to limit that access, the Internet was overrun with angry feminists brandishing rhetorical torches and figurative pruning shears in the hunt for the FIVE MEN who were responsible. (Sometimes the villains were grouped as FIVE WHITE MEN, meaning Clarence Thomas had achieved his lifelong dream…but not before putting an end to one of the heavier burdens placed on his original race…no longer could it be said that in order to succeed in a white man’s world the black man must be better than the rest. Thomas easily put that to rest. In his tenure, he managed to turn the Thurgood Marshall seat on the Supreme Court into the Clarence Marshmallow seat.)
One of the typical responses was from feminist Elizabeth Plank who tweeted: “All of the people who voted in favour of #Hobby Lobby have one thing in common and it's not a vagina.“
Whoa, girl! No love for the more than 200 penises that helped pass the law in the first place? Of course not…not when there’s outrage to be stoked. And not when logic would interfere: replace those five penises with, say, these five vaginas: Phyllis, Schafly, Laura Ingraham, Marsha Blackburn, Sarah Palin, and Mrs. Clarence Thomas, and then tell us how that would change the Hobby Lobby vote. (And lest they forget-- though it seems they already have--Roe v. Wade, the Frodo’s ring of Supreme Court decisions for feminists, was decided by 7 penises.)
Plank later retweeted this photo of some guerrilla action at a Hobby Lobby from her sister-in-arms, Julianne Ross:

Shortly thereafter she sent this: 

“Even more amazing!” A dude who believes women are entitled to birth control! Oh, ladies, hear me roar: of all he genders on this planet, which one literally has the balls to go into a Hobby Lobby and pull a stunt like that? (And remember, pulling stunts like that is how we get to become dudes.)
Amazing times we live in (next we may be hearing about Africans who can sing opera and homosexuals who can play middle linebacker). Also AMAZING is that seemingly intelligent women can hold such narrow and condescending ideas like this in their heads. It makes one wonder what the men in their lives are like…and wonder, too, where are their research skills. I’ve been a supporter of Planned Parenthood for decades, and I’ll bet that a call to Planned Parenthood would reveal that I am not the only straight white guy on its membership rolls.
This myopia is not limited to our friends the feminists. Just about the time feminists were being shocked into realizing that not every straight white guy is out to get them with a gun, certain members of the gay community with a proprietary claim on the gay rights struggle were going after David Boies and Ted Olson.  On his blog, renowned gay rights advocate Andrew Sullivan commented bitterly on a new book about Boies and Olson’s work on behalf of marriage equality:

It took two straight guys to whip it into shape and a straight woman to explain how they did it … and then the world changed overnight. None of this is true; and no one with any understanding of the movement would even think it, let alone put it in a book. But this Big Lie is central to Olson and Boies’ book.

It’s as if Peyton Manning and Tom Brady just helped the Jets win the Super Bowl, and some burly, slow-footed tight-end kvetches, “Yeah, but where were they when we sucked?”
The idea of exclusive purchase on various human rights struggles is a hot button here at The Nobby Works. As I wrote earlier, the “use by” date on interest group politics expired long ago. If you want to achieve a political goal in a democracy you do it by inclusion, not exclusion. There’s a critical election coming up this November. The math is actually on the side of progressive politics if progressives can deliver the votes. Here’s the rub according to the New York Times:

But the challenge for Democrats is that many single women do not vote, especially in nonpresidential election years like this one. While voting declines across all groups in midterm contests for Congress and lower offices, the drop-off is steepest for minorities and unmarried women.

And that’s not because straight white men are successfully suppressing the vote, as much as some of them may try. It’s because the vote is suppressing itself. More from the Times:

… Emma Akpan, an unmarried 28-year-old graduate of Duke Divinity School, …works to register voters but said she understood why so many single women are hard to reach. In an election without presidential candidates and the news media attention they draw, Ms. Akpan said, many women busy with jobs and perhaps children see no point in voting. “If I wasn’t doing this work,” she conceded, “I probably wouldn’t pay attention either.”

Emma Akpan and all those NAACP volunteers trying to register black voters in the South today need all the help they can get. In 1964, help would have been coming their way from college campuses all over the country…and from all people of noble heart. The saddest part about the anniversary of the Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman murders is that nowadays you would be unlikely to find two straight white guys among the martyrs to a black cause, not because nobility has been bred out of straight white guys, but because the movements have become virtually uninviting to them.The Progressive movement in the US is fragmented because for too long various interest groups put their emphasis on building identity, fostering group esteem, and--not incidentally—protecting mailing lists of donors who respond more readily when their hot buttons are pushed. These are people who roll out of bed on a war footing, so war metaphors work just fine for them. But I’m guessing that replacing the hyperbole of that metaphor with an appeal to higher purpose would work even better in building a broader, more interdependent progressive movement inclusive of all genders, races, and sexual preferences.
Atticus Finch is a modern American mythical character. The myth is that a straight white man of relative privilege in our society would take up common cause with people more vulnerable than he is. Myths are important because they reveal a culture’s ideal vision of itself. We demean and dismiss such myths at the cost of achieving a more perfect union.  

True 2 U, 24/7

As unpleasant as he may be--and he’s very unpleasant--Llewyn Davis has instantly become one of my all-time favorite movie characters. Llewyn is the talented but immensely frustrated folk singer at the center of the latest Coen Brothers’ film, Inside Llewyn Davis. He’s abusive, exploitive, careless, self-centered, and demanding of himself and those around him. In this regard he is like so many of the main characters in those tales of gifted but difficult narcissists we’ve come to recognize over the years, except in one very significant way. In most of those other films—from Van Gogh in Lust for Life through Mozart in Amadeus to Steven Jobs in Jobs-–the frustrations, failures, and friggin’ self-immolating personality—are redeemed by ultimate success…even if that success comes, as in Van Gogh’s case, posthumously. We always come away with confirmation of the myth that it pays to do it your way…to march to the sound of your own drum. It is vital to keep this myth alive because so many who undertake challenging careers--especially in the creative arts--often run up against naysayers, skeptics and buffoons who present considerable obstacles to their success. So they have to be reassured that others who went before them ran up against the same kinds of discouragement and prevailed.
But the opposite is also true…perhaps more true—that many aspiring artists, entrepreneurs, inventors--people attempting to live the impossible dream--don’t always succeed. They get nowhere. And even though another myth of our culture is that talent will out--that the marketplace will eventually reward all who are worthy of reward--the truth is that sometimes talent is not enough. I once heard from an insider that in casting for Star Wars, George Lucas had two sets of actors for the roles of Luke and Han Solo. One pairing was a blonde Luke and a dark-haired Solo, and the other was for a dark-haired Luke and a blond Solo. In the end, as the fickle hand of fate would have it, Lucas went blond Luke, dark-haired Han, and thus the difference between being Harrison Ford collecting 20 million-dollar paydays while the other guy plays Biff Loman in summer stock for actor’s equity turns on hair color, not talent.
Sometimes it’s a matter of making your own breaks. Llewyn Davies tries mightily to make a break for himself, embarking midway through the film on an arduous journey to get himself in front of someone who might be able to help him, but in the end to no avail. No one could have worked harder than Darlene Love to put herself in a position to succeed, yet as the Oscar-winning documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom painfully reveals that did not save her from having to make a living cleaning houses years after her voice had sold enough records to set her up for life, but didn’t.
Sometimes it’s a matter of not taking advantage of the breaks that do come your way. Inside Llewyn Davisends on just such a tantalizing note, as Llewyn’s arrogance leads him to walk away from an opportunity that another artist is able to fully exploit. The irony is that the other artist in this fictional account is supposed to be Bob Dylan, never known as much of a charmer himself. Despite a reputation for finger-pointing songs like "Positively 4th Street," however, Dylan was far more judicious about burning bridges than the Coens’ Llewyn Davis is. People driven like Llewyn Davis don’t ever want to have to utter those immortal words, "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers." But in more cases than not, they must.
The myth of “I did it my way” is as enticing as it is enduring. What egoist wouldn’t want to stand on stage near the end of a career and brashly sing:

For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!

It’s pure bunk of course, especially in regards to the so-called Chairman of the Board:

The released FBI files reveal some tantalizing insights into Sinatra's lifetime consistency in pursuing and embracing seemingly conflicting affiliations. But Sinatra's alliances had a practical aspect. They were adaptive mechanisms for behavior motivated by self-interest and inner anxieties. In September 1950 Sinatra felt particularly vulnerable. He was in a panic over his moribund career and haunted by the continual speculations and innuendos in circulation regarding his draft status in World War II. Sinatra "was scared, his career had sprung a leak." In a letter dated September 17, 1950, to Clyde Tolson Deputy FBI Director, Sinatra offered to be of service to the FBI as an informer. An excerpted passage from a memo in FBI files states that Sinatra "feels he can be of help as a result of going anywhere the Bureau desires and contacting any people from whom he might be able to obtain information. Sinatra feels as a result of his publicity he can operate without suspicion ... he is willing to go the whole way."

What’s so bracing and memorable about the Llewyn Davis character is that it exposes in excruciating detail what happens to someone who really does do it his way…abusing the kindness of strangers and refusing to compromise. It’s a timely cautionary tale...especially as Internet distance and anonymity encourage more and more ordinary people to take on airs of the artist and grab for the cheap catharsis of shouting, “Fuck you!” at the world.

The Surprises of Our Lives

John Hurt meets Alien
I’m chin deep in nostalgia because this week marked the 50thanniversary of my high school graduation. From what I hear, I’m one of the odd ones because my high school memories are overwhelmingly positive, despite a few run-ins with the authorities. I had mostly good relations with my teachers, significant academic success, and the respect of my peers—I was elected both junior and senior class president. Most importantly, I was never wanting for girlfriends.
There are a number of reasons all that came to be—good genes, good parenting, good luck…and as I’m always compelled to confess, good religion. As destructive…and downright criminal…as the Catholic Church has historically been for the well being of young boys, I must admit it served me well, providing me with a sense of self-discipline I probably wouldn’t have gotten if left exclusively to the more loving upbringing of my home.
My Church and my hometown, which transmitted its values to us through our high school, combined to create a seemingly cohesive culture for us to grow and develop our identities. There were degrees of difference. There were Italian Catholics and Polish Catholics and even some Protestants. There were college-track students and business-track students and what were called vocational-track students. There were jocks and nerds, preppies, cheerleaders, greasers, and the like. But the tribal markings were faint, and under the right circumstances—a football rally, a class trip--there could be a blending of types.  There certainly were no gangs. We all pretty much fit into an informal cohort of kids born into a particular time and place and easily identifiable as such.
Although I had an aspiring young politician’s sixth sense for maintaining relations with all the different types at my school, there was one group that became a more prominent part of my identity.  We spent most of our social time together…parties, movies, beach outings. There was always an unspoken understanding that we would all be at any given event regardless of who else was there. There was expectation of that and there was comfort in it. The males in the group had the same taste in clothes, music, movies and girls. We reinforced each other in the soundness of our choices. Everyone had a veto over anyone else who suggested some sort of wild thing. Most memorably for me was the day I suggested we all go see this guy who had written Blowin’ in the Wind and was appearing in concert in Springfield 10 minutes up the road. One of the others was quick with the thumbs down. “Have you ever heard him sing?” he asked. “He’s awful.” So we didn't go. The other side of comfort is conformity.
As I’ve reflected on those days this week, it’s been remarkable to consider what happened to the lives of that group of guys since graduation. Even before our 5th high school reunion, one had committed suicide and one had been arrested for B&E to support a drug habit (the last time I saw him he was in a halfway house). Another moved to Vermont and built a totally self-sustaining existence on 30 acres of mountaintop (home-grown veggies and chickens pretty much guarantee he will be the last one of us standing when the apocalypse comes). One moved to Kentucky to run a farm for rescuing thoroughbreds from the slaughterhouse after their racing days are over. Another--an opponent in one of my campaigns for class president actually--finally realized his political ambitions by being elected mayor of a good-sized Connecticut town. In true American political tradition, he eventually got entangled in a scheme to commit fraud and will be spending our 50threunion behind bars. And at the last, like the little piggies, one of us stayed home. 
A very hot book in our senior year was Mary McCarthy’s The Group. It was about the diverse turns of life taken by a formerly kindred group of women after college. Even though it was about Vassar girls from the 40s, the overarching theme parallels the story of my group in that the group cohesion is largely mythical. For a time in our youth we are bound by our likes and our need to have others like the things that we like. But when the superficiality of the group is exposed by something as banal as a graduation and we go our separate ways, individuality emerges in ways that not only surprise those who thought they knew us, but ourselves as well. It's like those epilogs we come to expect and love from nostalgia-bait movies like American Graffiti and and Animal House.  Toad went MIA in Vietnam? Blutarsky became a US Senator? Of course. Kids who only wanted to own the next Beatles album and make-out with the cutest girls grow up to become suicides, frauds, saviors of horses…bloggers, what have you. No telling, really.    
Some months ago PBS’s Frontline did an excellent report on the generation currently approaching its high school graduation. Frontline called it Generation Like for its obsession with gathering “likes” for their postings on Facebook. Because of the incredibly wide reach of today’s social media, their groups can number in the hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even be perpetuated long after any graduation or other rite of passage.
I could say that’s sad because an everlasting cohort like that could prevent you from ever stepping out on your own (out on your own like a rolling stone to hear the guy who wrote Blowin’ in the Wind no matter how much your friends may not likehim). On the other hand, I could say that it’s a good thing because whatever loneliness that’s out there waiting to turn the suddenly alienated into a suicide, a crook…or a killer…might be forestalled by having a support group in tact. I might say that, but today’s headlines convince me that’s a crock. Social media is not a cure for anti-social behavior.


What I can say with confidence is that I’m glad I had the group I had in high school--despite the unfortunate turns in some of their lives--because when I think of who they all were 50 years ago and what happened to them over the next 50 years, I realize that surprise...for better or worse...is the stuff of life. If you haven’t been surprised along the way, you haven’t been paying attention.