If you aren't a vocal musician from the 1990s, you may not remember the unexpected popularity of a cappella groups from that time. After Bobby McFerrin's hit with Don't Worry Be Happy, and the success of Spike Lee's Do It Acapelladocumentary, we seemed to have an explosion of vocal groups take to the airwaves with varying degrees of success.
My personal favorites were a six-part group called Take 6, who took home Grammy awards for their 1988 self-titled debut album. Here's my favorite track from that record:
Take 6 were very definitely a gospel sextet. The opening track of their first album, a song called Gold Mine, is every inch a love song sung to God; they include traditional spirituals If We Ever, and Mary (as in "O, Mary don't you weep"), and Get Away, Jordan; they also turned in gorgeous arrangements of contemplative hymns such as A Quiet Place and He Never Sleeps. (which, honestly, deserves a minor cover by Disturbed so you can feel as creeped out by the lyrics as I do! But I digress...) They even do a sassy take on the story of David and Goliath.
But Spread Love is the only song on the album that doesn't quite cross the line into being a "religious" song. It goes right up to that line, but then it does something that I, as a humanist, really appreciate. See if you spot it:
Seems like everything we hear is just a tale
But I've got something that will never, ever fail
(It's called love)
Spread love, instead of spreading lies
Spread love, the truth needs no disguise
I've often said love could open any door
Oh, but I wish we had much more
More love is what we need
Christian theology is, at its core, supposed to be about love. A recurring theme in song and sermon is to equate God and love. It's such a deeply ingrained notion that when I was 17 and listening to this album, it never occurred to me that this song wasn't overtly omitting any mention of God or Jesus. But look again - where the "something" that will never, ever fail is implied to be Jesus, just because of the context of who the group is and their expected audience, the words only talk about love!
Adult Atheist me, looking back across not-quite-thirty years, can really appreciate a song like this that I can sing without internally editing in a footnote*. To me, as a humanist, these lyrics are exactly right: lies are hateful, and we are all better off with the truth. If you love the truth, you'd better be spreading love.
You don't have to be into the spiritual or supernatural to buy into the idea that boasting, gossiping, and wallowing in trash culture is a harmful waste of time. You don't have to be religious to value honesty and desire the real answers to our toughest questions. In fact, most of the atheist thinkers I follow - people like Libby Anne and Dan Fincke among others - found that abandoning their childhood faith in the supernatural did not mean abandoning morals altogether.
Of course, I see plenty of people spreading the lie that because people like me don't believe there is some mystical, supernatural force about, we are without morals. Or worse, that we are moral relativists (talk about the Pope calling the kettle black). But the truth is that there is a lot of moral common ground between the core teachings of many faiths and the personal morals of non-believers.
So, I'll ask you to do me a favor - and don't spread that lie.
Not that you won't find just as many frustrating examples of non-believers behaving badly as I find of Christians (and Muslims, and Jews, and any number of other types of religious followers), but the point is to address the specific behavior, and not waste time reinforcing the stereotypes of the tribe.
And that's hard for me, too.
* Like, "Okay, the words say 'Yay, God' here, so I feel like an idiot because I don't think there is any such being...but whatever, I'm alone in the car with the windows rolled up."
Back when I was an evangelical kid growing up in the 1980s, there was a general reaction among evangelicals against modern rock music - in particular "heavy metal," and bands that played up their anti-establishment, anti-Christian identities. After the drug- and sex-fueled hedonism of the 1970s, and bitter losses in the culture wars, our evangelical communities considered the descent into chaos to be self-evident.
But they believed they did have ample evidence.
Ozzy Osbourne's 1980 solo record, The Blizzard of Ozz, was an easy target for those looking to find evil in the culture of rock. Give a listen to his hit Crazy Train, and see how many elements of evil you can spot in it:
Since we didn't have music video culture quite yet, the only visual we would have had to go by would have been the album cover, seen above. Ozzy, holding a crucifix, and surrounded by smoke, a skull, and crawling towards the camera. We had all heard about his antics as a member of Black Sabbath - an evil sounding band if ever there was one - and about his gruesome adventures on stage. (Like much of the stuff we were told during the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s, we would have done well to have had Snopes to clear up those rumors!)
And since Ozzy is notorious for being incomprehensible, we can probably forgive the upright fathers of the elder councils for not looking too deeply into the words of his songs - just listen to the evil on display in the music. The menacing bass; the creepy guitar glissando at the beginning; and the wailing vocals - those can't be wholesome!
Then there is the prominent bit of understandable vocal from the second verse:
I've listened to preachers I've listened to fools I've watched all the dropouts Who make their own rules
That first couplet sounds insulting enough, perhaps we can render a verdict. Of course, if one approached the lyrics without the baggage of Ozzy and the motivated reasoning required to interpret this song as "evil," one could quite reasonably arrive at a different conclusion.
Crazy But that's how it goes Millions of people Living as foes Maybe It's not too late To learn how to love And forget how to hate
A deep analysis is not required to see that this song has little or nothing to do with the supernatural, or with Satan, or any of the things typically associated with heavy metal tropes. It's really an anti-war song inspired by the growing realization that human being were pointing enough atomic weaponry at each other to destroy the planet several times over.
And while I know better - having lived through this period - it should be easy to connect the plea for sanity and peace in Crazy Train to the same sentiment that many of us who were being told to fear this music felt. Instead, we chose to pretend that Ozzy was celebrating insanity and exhorting us to go off the rails.
We have seen that same cycle play out several times, now. The shock rock of the 1980s gave way to punk, and saw a resurgence in the 1990s with bands like Marilyn Manson. There is always someone out there hoping to provoke a backlash, and ride to success on the Streisand Effect. And there is always someone out there looking for a reason to be afraid of them.
It usually pays to look at what they're saying before you judge them, rather than how they are saying it.
I know what today is, and that's why I picked this song.
In 1989, I was just stepping out of my sheltered Southern Baptist upbringing and beginning to explore pop culture and pop radio. My girl friends were still listening almost exclusively to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack; the Beach Boys "Kokomo" was everywhere; and a song called "Veronica" by some odd Englishman named Elvis made such an impression on me that I was willing to leave my radio tuned to our local Top 40 station, which insisted on playing such awful fare as "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and "Sweet Child o' Mine," in hopes that I could hear it again.
Then out of nowhere, a relatively unknown a cappella genius released a joyful, silly ditty that conquered the world for a few weeks.
(Lyrics are here - but you probably know them note for note.)
By itself, this song probably wouldn't count as being religious in nature, but Bobby McFerrin has always been associated in my mind with faith. He made a few casual references to "the Good Book," in his music and in interviews; he composed and performed Psalm 23 on his 1990 album Medicine Music; and his most recent album, 2013's Spirityouall consisted of arrangements of spirituals and traditional Americana, as well as "original songs which explore Bobby’s everyday search for grace, wisdom, and freedom."
McFerrin's spiritual character would have been important to me in 1989, because I was in the process of figuring out which secular pop culture phenomena were "acceptable" and which were not. I couldn't find anything particularly objectionable about Don't Worry Be Happy, even using the hyper-critical standards for judging pop culture I learned from my pastors and grandfather. I ended up buying Simple Pleasures and carried it around for years, playing it in my car or putting it on when I went to sleep.
Like most absurdly popular one-hit acts, Don't Worry Be Happy hit a saturation point, and became a joke for the hipper members of the cognoscenti. It became an easy punchline for late night hosts, and a cultural reference which, with an eyeroll, could show how sophisticated the speaker was. A lot of people "got over it" and McFerrin's career might have been declared "over" as well. Except that it wasn't. He kept making music, taking on interesting projects with jazz and classical greats, and he built a reputation among musicians as a true genius with a childlike sense of wonder to match his impressive vocal range and control.
As an adult, and as a young parent, I sometimes found it difficult to share music and stories from my childhood with my little children. Like I discussed last week, the hymns I grew up with seemed too wrapped up with ideas that I had not only rejected, but which seemed loaded with awful baggage. I didn't want my children to have their earliest memories tied to ideas that I felt I had outgrown and regretted.
I also had difficulty relating to the new choices welling up from the children's entertainment industry - I loathed Barney and the Wiggles, I was uneasy with the acid trip that was Teletubbies, and I struggled to find much depth in the songs that they were learning in school. I made my own "mixed tape" CDs for the car, and combined songs the kids liked with some of my own favorites - songs like Don't Worry Be Happy - which seemed to go over pretty well. We all survived our long car trips to and from our home base when we were stationed in the UK, at least.
The September 11 attacks on America affected my family deeply, though thankfully, indirectly (described in The Impact on My Faith). It was that period of my life, in the years after 9/11, that I really started thinking about the songs and tradition I had grown up in, and applying some critical thought to what I had been taught to believe from birth. As I did, many of the old hymns and songs I had loved growing up became problematic for me, because the things they say have been exposed as ugly and corrosive. But one of the earliest songs in my memory that had no baggage and still held up as an unabashed statement of joy in the face of adversity was... Don't Worry Be Happy.
I was somewhat embarrassed by this. I didn't want to be the guy telling 9/11 victims, "Hey, in every life we have some trouble... but when you worry, you make it double!" I didn't want to admit that my philosophical answer to It Is Well With My Soul has a music video featuring three clowns hopping around acting silly. But when things get dark, I have to admit that humming to-koo-koo, to-koo-koo and tapping out a rhythm on my sternum brings in a welcome bit of light.
When my son began to struggle in school, and we began to suspect that he was on the autism spectrum, we looked for ways to reach him and help him deal with the frustration and anger that was building up. He was too young to have a logical, rational discussion. We couldn't just talk him through his troubles. This was doubly difficult for me, because I try to confront problems rationally and head on, and because he had already formed a barrier against me - for some reason, he had decided to focus his rage on me, so I couldn't even get near him when he was in trouble.
We needed to draw him out of himself and make him care about something, so we got him a hermit crab. We knew he loved animals, and that he found it easier to relate to them than to people. Our hope was that if something depended on him, he would take care of it, and this would help him see his own worth and teach him to be responsible for something outside of himself.
He loved that crab. He named it Dedrick, and he kept Dedrick's terrarium spotlessly clean and well stocked with water and food. It wasn't a magic wand that suddenly made everything better, but he did start to make progress and he came out of the dark place he had been making for himself. He even grudgingly started sharing more time with me, proudly showing off the new shell he had picked out for his crab or talking about research he had done online.
I still couldn't relate to him the way I could to my other kids. He wasn't openly hostile any more, but he was still guarded. I sometimes felt like he would never let me in, and I would never be able to repair whatever was wrong. I felt like I had nothing to offer him. But one day, my wife came and got me. She excitedly took my hand, and indicated I should be quiet. She took me to where the boy and his crab were sitting in a sunny corner of the living room. Dedrick was exploring a freshly cleaned cage, and my son - the boy who didn't even like to talk around me - was singing.
For long time readers of this blog, or fans of the book, you might recognize this song from my post, Going to Pet the Rabbits. (A much better, edited version appears in my book, which you can find on Amazon.)
To quote myself:
Being a memorial service...Amazing Grace and It Is Well With My Soul were featured. The first verse of the latter one is particularly appropriate, and I was struck today by how Zen it is:
When peace like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul.
- by Horatio Spafford
That part, at least, is a universal comfort; attaining peace in the tempest is a skill that everyone should learn - and the elemental imagery of the water here is striking. As I listened, I thought about how important that Idea was to me growing up, and how I've held onto it. That, at least, was something good and honest that could help my friend grieve, I thought.
But there is a lot more going on in this song than the first verse. Here's a modern version of the full song you might enjoy (with some historical background included):
As a kid, I thought this song was beautiful, and because I was a music nerd who spent most of his time by himself, the chorus is one that I would hum to myself on a continuous loop, putting a swell into the harmony parts, or improvising alternate melodies to complement the one composed by Philip Bliss. The music captured my mind, and the words of the chorus made it a song that I could still treasure after I stopped being a Christian, because they were and are comforting:
It is well, (it is well) With my soul, (with my soul) It is well, it is well, with my soul
Psychologically, the first verse and chorus use a combination of stirring imagery and call-and-response repetition to create a calming effect. And if, like me, you don't believe in the mystical idea of a soul, you can certainly appreciate the poetic sense of self here. The sentiment is a common one in human tradition; the ladies in my church would often say, "Let go, and let God," and as I noted in my introduction, there is resonance here with the Zen tradition of letting go of concerns about the physical world.
Of course, the other verses of this song are very clearly rooted in Christian theology - and those roots are more disturbing to me now that I am an adult. They say, "Though Satan should buffet..." you'll be okay because "Christ has regarded my helpless estate/And hath shed His own blood for my soul" - a common theme based in the ancient concept of ritual sacrifice. In the same vein (pun intended), "My sin, not in part but the whole/Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more" - again, building on the idea that because Jesus was tortured to death to "pay for" your sins, you won't have to suffer a worse fate later.
There is a lot to unpack in there.
Being a kid raised in a Christian tradition, most of these concepts were taught to me from the earliest moments of my life. Songs, including this one, are tied into my first memories, so that even though as a toddler I certainly had no grasp of what "sin" was supposed to mean, I remember the hearing the songs and the music drags what I know now about the words into the memories and impressions I have of my earliest days. This has the effect of making things I was taught feel like they were always part of my make-up.
This is not magic; neurologists are continually adding to what we know about how the brain works, and studying the way our memories are constantly recreated and overwritten. (This RadioLab episode on Memory and Forgetting talks a lot about the science behind that.) Using that mechanism of re-writing memories, music acts as a vehicle for carrying ideas "back in time" so to speak, so that even ideas that I learned about later (probably as I approached double digits, and became self-aware and self-conscious) my brain naturally recalled the music and retroactively tied the words to that memory.
Knowing this about how the mind works means that things placed into my earliest memories are things that I find disturbing now. Take sin just as a general concept. The Christian ideas about sin are not uniform. No matter how I define the term here in this tiny blog post, I won't be using "the" definition of it that all Christians use. In fact, one of the main reasons that there are so many different kinds of Christian is that they each have a unique set of ideas about what sin is, and what one must do about their sins.
The simplified version of the concept that I was raised to believe was that sin is what occurs when you "miss the mark" - you, as an individual, must make moral decisions all the time, and when you make the wrong decision, that is a sin. Building off of that idea, you, as an individual, will make a lot of poor choices in your life. Every poor choice you make adds to your suffering and the suffering of others. (Don't call that karma, though, because we don't go for that mystical Eastern stuff!) So, once you reach an age where you become aware of all of the countless mistakes you've made, how do you fix them?
That's where the idea of Christ's sacrifice enters the picture. Building on those ancient traditions of ritual sacrifice, and playing to the very common human desire to restore "balance" to things, the story about Jesus being crucified is meant to give everyone a way to restore that balance. Again, every different kind of Christian will have a different explanation for how that is supposed to work. But thanks to the magic of poetry, every one of them can project their explanation onto a song.
If you watched the video, you have already read the story behind the writing of "It Is Well With My Soul," but if you skipped the video, here is the gist: Horatio Spafford was a prominent Chicago lawyer with a large family. He and his wife were close friends of the evangelist Dwight L. Moody. The Spaffords lost most of their wealth in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, lost their son to scarlet fever, and then in 1873, lost their four daughters at sea when the ship they were on collided with another ship.
Spafford wrote this song as his own ship passed the spot in the ocean where his daughters died, on his way to England to retrieve his wife.
His story reminds me of another story. The Story of Job, in which Satan wagers that a man named Job will stay loyal to God even if God allows Satan to kill his family, destroy his wealth, and ruin his health. (Spoiler Alert: Job fails, because he yells at God. This is his only sin, at least in the version of the story I was taught.)
Spafford would have been well familiar with the story of Job. There's a pretty good chance that he was thinking about that story when he decided to pen this song. I don't know what Spafford's sins might have been - he was a lawyer, so that's one, amirite? - but the beauty of a concept as loosely defined as sin is that it applies to any mistake you make. So he was certainly contemplating all of the reasons why God might have decided to take away everything he had while he was on that ship and in that place. If I had been in his place, the song I might have been composing might have been a bit angrier, especially if I thought that the only reason I was suffering was because a sadistic God had placed a wager on me, to see how I would hold up.
But Spafford penned a song of praise, instead.
If you're a believer, and you want to be inspired by that, then by all means, please stop reading and go about your day. But if you are like me, you may recognize something else in Spafford's decision, and you won't find this inspiring at all.
Because Spafford's reaction strikes me as being identical to the reaction of an abuse victim. When an abuser victimizes a spouse or a child, they do a number of things. They convince the victim that they deserve the punishment they are receiving. They convince the victim that the only way to prevent further abuse is to appease the abuser. They convince the victim that only the abuser can make them better. And even if an outside observer can get to the victim and try to convince them to leave, they rarely do, because they've bought into that narrative built by the abuser.
I went forward in my church at age 11, and followed the Southern Baptist pathway to salvation. I was convinced that all of my sins were piling up already, and I had been told from birth that they were all my fault. I deserved to suffer for them; and the only way to escape my punishment would be to be Saved.
My Christian friends and family not only believe this, but they find it beautiful. They don't see the abusive nature of the relationship they imagine they have with their god, and they are convinced that without him, they are worthless (at best), and capable of the most hideous sins imaginable.
For the five or six years after I was saved, I lived that life. But at some point, something broke the cycle of abuse, and I started on my path to where I am now. Along the way, I had to learn to let go of a lot of baggage, and at some points along my journey, this song soothed me, with its apparent message that it's okay to let go. If there were a God, and I was given a brain and a conscience, I would have those things even if I walked away from the abuser and the threats. And as it turned out, I was okay.
Now, to my Atheist Ear, this song sounds very different than it did when I was younger. It's a dark reminder that life is hard enough without punishing ourselves for the sake of an imaginary abuser. Sometimes, we have to ride out rough times. Sometimes, we suffer consequences for things we weren't responsible for. We certainly miss the mark when it comes to making choices - and we should own our mistakes - but we make good decisions, too, and most of us don't deserve to be punished.
I was not a "child of the '60's" by any stretch of the imagination.
My exposure to the 1960s was solely through the filter of my very straight-laced parents and their record collection: Dean Martin, The Monkees, Glen Campbell, Cher, Peter, Paul and Mary, and... Leonard Nimoy. Yes. THAT Leonard Nimoy. The Way I Feel (you should find the LP some time and check it out). We had a couple of Beatles records, but as I later discovered, they fell out of favor after John Lennon's remark about being "bigger than Jesus" - and that copy of Rubber Soul was as close as I got to "counter-culture" until high school. Thinking positivity If you wanna be with me I'll take you to the promised land Come on baby take my hand Stop Draggin AroundOf course, I did grow up in the 1980s, and nostalgia for "flower power" was all the rage. I missed a lot of that because our family lived out in the sticks, and we didn't have a VCR until 1989 - so while my friends were into the Vietnam-era war pics and Cheech & Chong, I was mostly sitting home, not a part of the whole scene.
Not that I wanted any part of it - that silly hippy-dippy drug culture stuff was for sinners. I was deep into my church and considered myself above all of that nonsense. I saw myself as above it all, and I resisted "temptation" like a good boy. I've been lost in the name of love And we kill our brothers daily in the name of god We'd better chill before we take on some tribulation And if we realized Then we'd make a little love now sing What The Fuck Are We SayingPuberty changes things. That is an intentional understatement.
It was easy to dismiss the New Age philosophy and all of the political talk of the 1960s with the benefit of hindsight (and lots of coaching from Grandpa and my church family), but hormones bring home a truth that is hard to ignore. Feeling my body take over my mind in so many ways made me understand that "control" is not simply a matter of following rules. I began to recognize that the things people feel are real to them - and unless you've felt what they feel, you can't judge them. My mama said That it's good to be fruitful But my mama said Don't take more than a mouthful And my mama said That it's good to be natural And my mama said That it's good to be factual Always On The RunAfter I started questioning my principles, I was freed to explore things that I had always disdained. Music was the most exciting area to explore, because it felt both defiant and safe; I could try out crazy ideas without necessarily DOING crazy things. I could listen to stories and feelings and see places and pieces of history that had passed me by while I was trying to fit the world inside my Bible.
Some things are easier to get into than others, though, and a lot of the really revolutionary, underground, and radical stuff from the Summer of Love and the early 1970s still shocked my sensibilities. I couldn't get into Lennon's politically charged anthems, I couldn't grasp Jimi's wild guitar work, and I really had no idea what to make of Zeppelin. There were singles that I liked, but there was so much out there - and much of it was so FAR out there - that I couldn't figure out where to start.
And there was another wrinkle to this musical blockage.
A white Southern Baptist kid never feels comfortable with certain things. What it is they are uncomfortable with will vary, but for me, it is Soul music. It's not that I don't like it, but rather that I become self-conciously hyper-aware while I am listening to it that I am an awkward white kid, and that something deeply sexual is happening that I should probably not be exposed to. Much of the Sixties vibe revolves around an exploration of Soul. Sometimes it's more Blues, sometimes it's covered up by the bombast of Rock; but underneath it all is the sexually charged subtext of black people and their freedom from the Puritanical roots that my ancestors instilled in their descendants. So many tears I've cried So much pain inside Baby it ain't over 'til it's over So many years we've tried And kept our love alive 'Cause Baby it ain't over 'til it's over It Ain't Over Til It's OverAll of which brings me to my point: why Mama Said is such an important album to me. With all of these many paragraphs of prologue, you might be expecting something deep, but like the counter-culture, and hippies, and free love and drugs, there's really not much beneath the surface.
There is an important thing inside all of us that sets limits. For people like me, those limits can sometimes be deeply ingrained, almost like a moat, and it takes something special to bridge the gap to the other side. Lenny's sophomore album made these things safe for me.
That was all I needed. You say you can't trust me Have you tried? You say you don't love me That's a lie There are so many so many rainbows That we were to climb But baby baby why can't we survive? We've got to get our heads untangled And free our state of mind The Difference Is WhyLenny's music is not deep - the lyrics border on vapid, and the rhymes are sometimes forced to the point of ridiculousness. The music has been widely criticized as being derivative of Hendrix and Zeppelin, and there's no doubt that this is true.
But.
For a white suburban Southern Baptist kid intimidated by his sexuality and the wide world he was facing, Mama Said gave me a place to relate and unwind. It didn't matter that this guy was singing - in falsetto! - about sex, because it was relatively harmless. (At least compared to Prince.) And it didn't matter that the guitars were only a little loud (courtesy of Slash), because these songs rocked! It felt to me like what it was for Lenny: a celebration of a lot of really good things.
The trouble with hippies is that they tend to be shallow and frivolous. But somehow, the magic of this album was that it didn't have to be deep or important. It wanders through Fields of Joy, and if you learn to relax, you will find that the limits you set for yourself don't have to be shattered to be softened. You don't have to destroy yourself to grow. You can just take it as it comes.
And there's really nothing wrong with that at all.
I have no doubt that the city of New York has changed considerably in the nearly 25 years since Lou Reed recorded his album of songs about it - but I would be willing to bet that these songs still describe it pretty well. It's hard to know how well without going, but I do live in Baltimore, and it isn't hard to imagine some of these dark snapshots being taken on the streets here.
Because even though they grow up, die off, move away, or find Jesus in the course of a quarter century, people don't really change.
The man if he marries will batter his child and have endless excuses The woman sadly will do much the same thinking that it's right and it's proper Better than their mommy or their daddy did Better than the childhood they suffered The truth is they're happier when they're in pain In fact, that's why they got married. - Endless CycleAt the top of the liner notes, it says "This album was recorded and mixed at Media Sound, Studio B, N.Y.C., in essentially the order you have here. It's meant to be listened to in on 58 minute (14 songs!) sitting as though it were a book or a movie." That's not a bad description at all.
The scenes alternate between angry rockers and bitter down-tempo scenes of life in the Big City. He kicks off with his starker, more realistic take on West Side Story, and then goes to a Halloween Parade - first retelling the Shakespeare story with hoods and thugs, then listing the colorful & wild characters he has watched drop dead of AIDS. As he alternates through each scene, Lou describes the familiar, banal, and frustrating humanity crammed together into any large urban environment - complete with the glimmers of hope.
But they're only glimmers. Manhattan's sinking like a rock, into the filthy Hudson what a shock They wrote a book about it, they said it was like ancient Rome The perfume burned his eyes, holding tightly to her thighs And something flickered for a minute and then it vanished and was gone. -Romeo Had JuliettePeople don't change. The names do, the faces do, and sometimes their stories play out in a place that has been cleaned up, rebuilt, or improved. We tell ourselves that things can get better - and we try to make it better - but people don't change. They act selfishly, and almost universally put their short term pleasure ahead of any long term benefits they might get out of life. They sacrifice their health in favor of distraction, and they complain about the surroundings they create. There's no such thing as human rights When you walk the N.Y. streets A cop was shot in the head by a 10 year old kid named Buddah in Central Park last week The fathers and daughters are lined up by The coffins by the Statue of Bigotry You better hold on something's happening here. -Hold OnThat's not good news, in itself. But the idea is that as shocking and horrible, and full of irony as that song is, it still feels familiar and immediate. Things don't change much in 25 years because there really is only so far down you can go. I always hear people talking about how we going to hell in a handbasket as if these kinds of things are new. They aren't. They've always happened. You can't depend on no miracle You can't depend on the air You can't depend on a wise man You can't find them because they're not there You can depend on cruelty Crudity of thought and sound You can depend on the worst always happening You need a Busload of Faith to get by -Busload of FaithBad things will always happen, because People don't change. But we keep trusting that someone will save us. We keep thinking it could get better if the right leader or the right team would come along and show all those bad guys a thing or two.
And while you may not get the references made in some of these songs to events and people from 1989 - Oliver North, Kurt Waldheim, Jesse Jackson and even Rudy Giuliani- Lou's name-checking still holds its weight as he describes the world they helped shape.
It's a world you live in.
Well Americans don't care for much of anything Land and water the least And animal life is low on the totem pole With human life not worth more than infected yeast Americans don't care too much for beauty They'll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream They'll watch dead rats wash up on the beach And complain if they can't swim -Last Great American WhaleThis is an ugly album, and an angry one - it's a photograph of each of us, living in a rundown world we inherited from people who wanted to think they were giving us something better. It's disappointment and disgust, a stark look at ourselves, whether we live in cities or not. But in the middle of it all there is a persistent, defiant hope. He never quite comes out and says it, but you can tell Lou thinks that he is better than this rat-infested garbage pit he sees all around him.
Maybe it wouldn't be so disappointing if we all weren't capable of better. Romeo Rodriquez and Juliette Bell didn't have to make the choices they made, after all, and neither do you.
It might be fun to have a kid I could pass something on to Something better than rage, pain, anger and hurt I hope it's true what my wife said to me She says Lou, it's the Beginning of a Great Adventure -Beginning of a Great AdventureThe truth is that's how we make it better. People don't change, so it's up to us to make them better from the Beginning.
Maybe following that glimmer will lead us out of the trash.
I have four (4) children. They range in age from 8 to 14. That means that for the last 8 years I have had four (4) people in my home between the ages of 0 and 14. I am well aware that this number is far too small to represent any kind of statistical sample of the general population - but despite that fact, I feel safe in drawing some conclusions about children.
Observation A - A child has an object - such as a toy, a cup full of milk, or socks (on their feet). Later, the child is unable to locate said object, even if it is pointed out to them.
Conclusion 1: When something a child has in their possession loses contact with that child, it ceases to exist.
This object or possession effectively disappears when the child lets go of it. You or I may see the object fall from the child's hand and fall for a very long time and shatter in a spectacular display of destruction and disorder, and the child WILL NOT NOTICE. And when you call attention to said object, they will be surprised to discover it there in a pool of its own constituent elements.
Observation B - The child pours a cup of milk. The adult, witnessing this, cautions the child not to leave the milk on the table (where it will inevitably cease to exist - and also become cheese). Despite this helpful warning (see Conclusion 3), the child will later deny leaving the cup of very new cheese on the table in the sun.
Conclusion 2: The history of a given object has no bearing on its current condition.
This idea manifests itself in a variety of ways. In the previous example, the child will deny breaking the object - regardless of their shared history with that object. Even if they have carried that cherished possession with them for an entire day, singing songs about it and professing their love for it, when they become angered and hurl it away, Conclusion #1 takes effect, and Conclusion #2 allows them to say - with all true honesty and belief, "I didn't do that!"
Observation C - Child sitting on the couch, pulling socks off of their feet, is warned that socks do not belong stuffed behind the cushions, and nods violently with understanding (while craning to see the TV). Later, when confronted with the 5 socks discovered in the cushions behind the spot where they were sitting, they deny loudly and sincerely having ever placed any sock anywhere. The adult will insist on the child removing the socks to their laundry basket. This is declared to be completely unfair.
Conclusion 3: Cause and Effect are not related.
Observation D - You observe a child armed with a dark crayon traversing a room. No other children are home. Upon entering that room a few minutes later, you discover a new work of art not in the Sotheby's catalog, but sure to be worth $24.95 (for the jug of caustic chemicals which will be required to remove it, and the paint to patch the marred spot on the wall). When asked, the child will nod sagely, and cluck with false sympathy that it must have been Sibling A or B - who have both been at school for 4 hours.
Conclusion 4: The existence of Other Children absolves every child of all blame for everything - ever.
If you have an Only Child, you may not have noticed this phenomenon; that is assuming that you also have no pets, cousins, local playmates, convenient adults (like Dad), or imaginary friends for the Child to blame. They don't have to live with you in order to take the rap.
I do hold out hope that these phenomena are limited to the larval stage of human... despite the existence of Doomsday Believers, Global Warming Deniers, and Supply-Side Economists.
NOTE: This is about me and my discovery of something about myself. It is not intended to be an attack on anyone or their faith. If you read this and choose to be offended, I'm not going to take responsibility for your choice.
I sat in a church this morning for the first time in many years.
It was a memorial service for the little daughter of a friend - a girl who had a degenerative condition which was expected to take her by age two. She made it almost to seven.
I can't imagine the kind of strength it must take to care for someone with a condition like that. I've known a number of people who have carried that burden, including my friend Karen, who didn't develop her condition until she was in her twenties; her mother had to watch her decline from a healthy young woman until she passed away last February. When I think about it all, it hurts; and I'm weak, so I don't often think about it. But my friends who are in that situation don't have the luxury of simply turning away and going back to a life like mine - they need to be strong and face it every minute... and they need to draw that strength from somewhere.
So I sat in a church this morning for the first time in many years, listening to my friend's pastor.
Being a memorial service, it was all about the family's comfort. The songs they used happened to be mostly familiar to me, because I grew up with them; "Amazing Grace" and "It Is Well With My Soul" were featured. The first verse of the latter one is particularly appropriate, and I was struck today by how Zen it is:
When peace like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul. by Horatio Spafford
That part, at least, is a universal comfort; attaining peace in the tempest is a skill that everyone should learn - and the elemental imagery of the water here is striking. As I listened, I thought about how important that Idea was to me growing up, and how I've held onto it. That, at least, was something good and honest that could help my friend grieve, I thought.
But I sat in a church this morning for the first time in many years, listening to my friend's pastor talk about Heaven.
And I started to feel angry and creeped out. Because listening to him speak, and toss out all of those Great Truths that pastors must keep in their repertoire, I bristled at the undercurrent of what he was saying.
It wasn't just that he kept referring to God and Heaven as if they are real things - like I said, I grew up with that stuff, and came to terms with it long ago. I think of it as the poetic license that grief and comfort require of religion. It was something else. Two things, actually.
First, I felt like this service was being used against me. My very presence was being co-opted by this man to accuse me - not personally, but as part of the group. He took the liberty of declaring that "we are all here to affirm what we know to be true - that there is a God and He is in control" - things that I don't know to be true, and do not affirm. This was a lie, and what's more, his body language and use of repetition and verbal sleight of hand showed me that he knew it was a lie.
This pastor didn't know me or what I believe. His descriptions of Heaven, and his logic for "proving" its existence, while being tolerable in the context of comforting the family, were cheapened by his assertions. His repetition of that idea, and his flowery and alluring descriptions of the things that the little girl would now be doing in Heaven - that all rang even more hollow.
It reminded me of Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" - the pastor was George, spinning the fantastic story of a promised ranch full of puppies and bunnies, and I felt like Lenny. If you take a moment to review the plot summary, I'm sure you'll understand why I say I felt creeped out.
As for the second thing, the thing that made me angry, well that's more complicated... and it has more to do with my "atheist conversion experience."
Remember, I already expressed immense respect for the strength required of people who have to deal with something as painful as what my friend has dealt with. Raising ANY child is a challenge and a non-stop roller-coaster of fear, risk, and heartbreak - interspersed with just enough joy to make it worthwhile. But for these parents, that joy can be bitter and elusive - and even a victory can be tragic.
To do what they do - to survive and thrive as my friend has done - is a pure triumph. We cheapen these things in our culture with our perpetual tabloid stories and Lifetime or Hallmark "disease of the week" movies - but these are quiet, epic heroes who are doing the impossible. I don't blame any of them for leaning on something that I don't believe in. In the past I've made the mistake of referring to their faith as "a crutch," but it really isn't that. A better analogy would be to compare it to weight training or long-distance running; rather than a prop to support them, it is conditioning for facing reality in the long term instead of the short, escapist bursts the rest of us can get away with.
Look again at the first verse of "It Is Well With My Soul" and tell me which is easier - to look objectively at yourself from the middle of your pain and simply "decide" to accept it, or to tell yourself something comforting and poetic that helps you move past it? Most healthy and otherwise happy people I know can't face the prospect of a vast, cold, empty Universe that doesn't care about them; how do you expect people under tremendous pressure to cope without giving that Universe a name (God) and convincing themselves that despite all evidence to the contrary, there is hope and love and joy in it?
There is - but it's hard to see unless you work at it.
So, no - I don't balk at all when people need to draw strength from these ideas, and I don't think it would be helpful or kind to "correct" them when they tell me (and affirm to themselves) that it came from Jesus or God - or the Magic Feather they clutch in their trunk. The truth is that wherever they think they're getting that strength, it's coming from within themselves - and being humans, it is an amazingly deep well. (Doctor Who says so all the time!) So why am I angry at the pastor for playing into this helpful world of hopeful poetry?
My own break with Faith came when I realized what a logical cheat God was. Well, not God, but those speaking on His behalf. (Poetic construct that I believe Him to be, none of my anger is really ever directed at "Him" anyway.) Those pastors love to tell us that everything good comes from Him, and is solely to His credit. Without Him, we are not capable of anything at all. And what about all of our failures and sins etc.? That's all on us. Me, specifically. Or you.
(Today, I heard the pastor lay blame for the tornados and flooding going on in the Midwest on our wicked ways. Very comforting, indeed.)
The important idea here is, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try - or even if you don't try at all - God gets all the credit for your "goodness" and you get credit for the bad stuff... right down to horrific weather phenomena. It's a logical trap designed to prey on those who need to tell themselves that there is a source of strength outside themselves. To defy the pastor is to put the source of their strength at risk; to question his logic is to risk their faith in themselves. So the pastor tells them their own strength is an unreliable and dangerous flaw, and that they should trust in God - and someday, we'll have a ranch where we can pet the rabbits. Just like Lenny.
As I grew up, and realized that maintaining my faith meant I was expected to surrender to this double whammy of self-denial, I balked. Obviously, I assumed at first that it was just my sinful pride talking, right? Except... I came to understand that the source of my "slackerdom" stemmed from distancing of responsibility from myself, and placing it in this God who seemed not to take care of my homework or my auto maintenance and bills without a heck of a lot of assistance from me.
But I don't mean to trivialize this concept. I watch people suffer through these awful things in life all the time. They call on their God all the time, and sometimes, when they stop crying and dig down deep, they find something inside themselves that gets them through. Sometimes it's just a matter of letting go - of becoming the water, if you will - and they can cope. Then they thank God for it.
You can believe that is God, if you want to, and if it helps you get through whatever you're facing, who am I to rip that away from you? But it still bothers me because denying our successes and only claiming our failures robs us of something vital. It denies that we have that strength in the first place, and by taking away that faith in ourselves, we are weakened.
So I sat in a church this morning for the first time in many years, listening to my friend's pastor talk about God, and about her strength, and I realized that I, as a non-believer could see something in her that no Believer really sees. They pay lip service to her, but then steal her credit and attribute it to God - a construct meant to put a happy face on a cold, brutal Universe.
And while they were doing that to her, I realized that as a non-believer, I can see what is really divine.
Well, I thought about the Army, Dad said, "Son, you're fucking high..." - ArmyMore than 10 years ago, I was a U.S. servicemember stationed in England. I stood a rotation of 12-hour shifts, and had a house full of small children and a pregnant wife. Our unit was remotely deployed, so we frequently had to drive 2 hours to get to our home base - where we had our medical appointments, Air Force admin stuff, shopping for U.S. foods (that we could afford), and what not. Life consisted of long, boring stretches interspersed with ennui and tension, depending on the whims of our leaders.
But we had friends, and we tried to keep each others' spirits up. One of them gave me a pirated cassette tape of a new album he had been digging. He knew I liked Ben Folds Five, and I was happy to give this new album a listen, even with the long, odd title: The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner.
I should warn you, I go to sleep. - NarcolepsyThat first line in that first song spoke volumes. God, I knew exactly what this guy was singing about - feeling disengaged from everyone and dropping out, while at the same time feeling turmoil and passion within that you couldn't get out - because it made you shut down.
I remember trips down to base where I put this increasingly battered cassette into the player, and sang at the top of my lungs, tears spurting out of my eyes, fist pounding the left hand piano part on the dashboard. "I know it seems that I don't care/But something in me does, I swear!" That catharsis kept me awake - and probably alive, since Narcoleptic adventures on the roads of England are not conducive to survival.
No, I don't believe in God, So I can't be saved. - MessEach track revealed a different piece of my own back story. I was still new to being a father and husband, and being a selfish college prick was still fresh in my mind. The wreckage of relationships, the bemusement of dealing with drama that others felt and I didn't, or the simple honest truths about myself that I was learning to come to terms with - like my skeptical non-theism - had now found a soundtrack.
Everyone knows that music can do this; it's not unusual to find songs that capture some vital thing about you and help you remember it or relive it. But it's rare that you find a whole album that does it. This is music that helps you understand and embrace the things about yourself that you were avoiding. The things that you would be embarrassed to admit were causing you pain, because that sounds like something one of those self-absorbed hipsters would say.
And no one wants to be seen as a self-absorbed hipster, right?
If you're afraid they might discover Your redneck past There are a hundred ways to cover your redneck past They'll never send you home - Your Redneck PastEveryone has something they think they need to hide. Isn't it wonderful to find that the best way to keep it all hidden is to put it out there where everyone can see it?
These songs were never about me, of course. They aren't necessarily about Ben Folds, either, but they are revealing. The appeal for me has always been the way he is so open, honest and deep in his writing. But at the same time, these songs were funny and self-deprecating. You don't write about what a fool you think you are unless you've accepted that about yourself, and learned to enjoy it.
And that's where this album took me. Through the agony and the irony, it gave me something to relate to, and then held up a mirror so I could laugh at the Mess I was in, and appreciate the good things I had.
And how we just made fun Of those who had the guts to try and fail - RegretsAt the end of the day, I realized I was trying. I wasn't doing a great job of avoiding failure, but I was trying. You can always do better - that's the point. You will always have failures, big and small.
And for me, having a biography in song helps get through all of that. That's why I've bought this album several times - making up for that pirated copy that sits in a box in my basement, now.
Sweet dreams, Reinhold Messner, whoever you are!
Just the three of us took flight that night Uncle Richard, me and James Earl Jones
And the pilot he gave me a blanket And the tall dark man sang to me in deep Rich tones...
Goodnight, goodnight sweet baby The world has more for you Than it seems Goodnight, goodnight Let the moonlight take the lid off your dreams -Lullaby
Despite all of the hair pulling over "job-killing legislation" and blame-throwing about sending jobs overseas in our national discourse lately, you'll notice that no one has any real plan for getting people back to work. I suspect the reason for this is that unemployment these days has less to do with tax codes or trade agreements than it does with something we tend to like - Innovation.
The thing about innovation is that it is driven by a desire on the part of the innovator to Do Less Work. To be fair, it is also driven by a desire to improve safety and efficiency, but the pressure to come up with new ways to do more with less is ancient. Whoever built the first water-driven mill wanted to save time and strength previously devoted to grinding grain by hand, feed more people, and make more money. It worked. Mills grew into elaborate (and often dangerous) enterprises used in all kinds of manufacturing during the Age of Industrialization, and pressures from labor costs and safety measures drive the need to replace human workers with machinery. That pressure has increasingly driven the story of the past century or two, and isn't going away any time soon.
I'm not here to tell you that the continued and accelerating mechanization and automation of our world is "good" or "bad" - just that it's inevitable. And these are just a few of the obvious ways it's going to change in the next decade or two:
Truck Driving - I've talked with my friends about the Google Car, and how I think that within 5 years of hitting the open market, it will become unreasonably expensive for a human to afford the insurance needed to operate their own vehicle. Many people are skeptical that these self-driving cars are even possible, or that independence-minded Americans would "go for that" - but the technology has been growing up around us for at least a decade (sponsored by DARPA) and Americans have proven time and again that they'll buy anything if you convince them it's "safer" than what they have.
And while driving jobs won't go away overnight (there are nearly 1.5 million Teamsters Union members who will fight it), when it comes down to time, safety, and fuel costs, they won't be able to compete with the progeny of a Roomba and a TomTom in a Peterbilt. My guess is that long-haul cargo trucks will go automatic first, and local Fed-Ex or UPS delivery folks will hold out longest. And somewhere in there Zipcar will launch the first Johnny Cab.
Manufacturing - We've already gotten used to the idea of factory jobs disappearing; it's cheaper to pay a machine that doesn't worry about health insurance and retirement benefits to make stuff, after all. But a relatively simple innovation in 3D Printing is set to take even that away - or decentralize it and put manufacturing into every home. I guess it depends on your point of view.
This is one of those ideas that no one seems to see coming. Applications in food design and medical techniques have begun to creep into the public eye, first; and since plastic is already pretty easy to work with, it's likely that the marketing angle that hooks most of us is that you'll never need to run out to the dollar store to pick up little plastic doodads - just download them on the web, and print them out here. There's even a Makerbot on the market already.
Soldiering Surely this is a profession that will ALWAYS need people, right? Or have you been paying attention? Surely, you don't think the "future" isn't already here?
Just don't tell the U.S. military in Iraq... or the mercenary manufacturers. If that doesn't make you feel safe and secure, remember that they'll always need pilots to remotely guide these robots in the battlefield... oh, wait. Forgot about the Google Car.
Sales - Yeah, you might tell me that the ship has sailed on this one. The whole "Internet will replace stores" thing was debunked in a 1995 Newsweek article, wasn't it? (So, Mr. Stoll, what do you say these days about Amazon, eBay, and PayPal?)
But buying is just the end point of sales; won't we always need people to explain products to people and convince them to buy? Probably not. If anything, the runaway success that Google and Facebook have had in just the last five years ought to make you reconsider that career in retail. Some will still be able to make a living scripting and filming the adverts, but the sales floor will be your house, and when you click the PayPal button your new product will either print out on your 3D printer, or catch the next Johnny Cab to your door.
So what will we be able to do? Are there any jobs left? Are we going to let the robots take over? What will we do?
Small-scale, specialty farming is already a hobby in many places - perhaps more people will do things like this Garden Pool in their yard? Energy generation will likely continue to be profitable; getting decentralized, small-scale solar, wind, and geo-thermal will not only run your fridge and game systems, but provide you with income. Of course, maintaining those things is work, and it wouldn't surprise me to find that most people would rather leave that to machines, too, eventually.
So what's left? Reading, writing, music, gaming; we seem to have an endless capacity for entertaining ourselves. Will all of this mechanization and free time finally provide for everyone and tame our conflicts? Will we start taking serious steps into space? Or will we devolve into one of the many dystopian possibilities?
I don't know. I hope for the brighter visions. But in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy what I do.
I had a lot going on this week, so I'm finally getting around to digesting the State of the Union. I enjoyed watching the speech; I like President Obama, and I felt like he was able to go back to the themes of bipartisanship that he campaigned on. The last two years were, predictably, about 1) bringing the economic collapse to a screeching halt, and 2) letting the opposition get their "I hope he fails" antics out of their system. Both sides learned a lot - I hope - and since the Tucson shooting coinciding with the beginning of the new Congress, there is a sense that the next two years will be about *actual* cooperation.
We shall see.
But my positive feelings aside, there were some things that I heard in this year's State of the Union that made me sigh. Here's a short list:
1. Bio Fools. I am keenly interested in seeing our energy policy move away from fossil fuels and toward decentralized renewable sources. As a consumer, I don't want to be dependent on a large, expensive infrastructure to deliver the power I need, and I don't want that power to come from sources outside of my control. I am mildly concerned about mankind's impact on the environment, but to be honest, I am more concerned with removing the alleged free market's ability to make decisions for me.
That said, there are energy policy ideas which I do not like that this President seems too willing to support. Bio-fuels, so-called "Clean Coal" and nuclear generation are where I feel he misleads himself. Bio-fuels/ethanol/corn-based alternatives are turning out to be a very poor replacement for petroleum-based fuels, according to environmentalists and scientists, and has an impact on farm subsidies and food supply, as well.
I would personally like to see Nuclear power develop into the cleaner, safer source that the next generation of nuclear generation technologies promises to be, but even more than the still-young solar industry, this is a technology which is "not there yet."
2. Why Speed Trains? I would love to see public transit take off in this country. I would, as a free market consumer, LOVE to have a real choice between car and a system of reliable, timely buses, trains, etc. I pay so much in financing, fuel, maintenance, and insurance, I am certain that a competitive and profitable business of getting people from here to there within any metropolitan area could be built.
Highways are far and away the deadliest way to travel, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Congestion is increasingly costly (see Texas Transportation Institute stats). Compare fuel consumption (and see issue #1), too, while you're at it. It's pretty clear that our "free choice" to drive ourselves everywhere is not only an illusion of choice, but it is also a pretty poor one.
But are high speed trains the place to start building that? How am I supposed to get to one from my house? What about getting to and from the grocery store? Perhaps the self-driving Google car will make this a moot point? If so, then perhaps the President was right to include Google in the company of the Wright Brothers, after all?
3. The Feeble Response. Rep. Paul Ryan's response was a crucial part of the State of the Union. He had an opportunity to really make the GOP case that they have ideas and can compete with the President's agenda. But there was no "there" there. Never mind the factual inaccuracies; all he tried to do was restate the memes of "spending discipline" and "limited government" without explaining in concrete terms what either meme means.
Since the President talked about the debt and spending in some depth, and listed specific ideas for dealing with the issues, the GOP needed to address his ideas with specific ideas of their own. Instead, Rep. Ryan reiterated the tired rhetoric of the last two years - the stimulus failed (which is not necessarily the case), health care reform should be repealed (which is not necessarily a good plan or the right battle), and "unshackling business" will lead to new jobs and growth (for which there is no real evidence).
I would have liked to see Rep. Ryan come out in support of something truly innovative, like the FairTax legislation (now proposed by Sen. Chambliss). Or perhaps he could have talked about ways to make Social Security solvent without leaving those who paid into it their whole lives out in the cold? I don't know - I'm not a Republican, so I don't know what I should expect them to come up with.
At the least, perhaps they could publicly distance themselves from the odious talking heads and pundits lying to America in their name on Fox News and Talk Radio? (Just a thought.)
Making things better is difficult and boring work. Breaking things is easier. The natural tendency to pick the easier path can be called "entropy". Our most important job - assuming we want to live in a safe, beneficial civilization - is to fight that entropy, and that means working on improving ourselves and keeping to the moral codes that society is built on.
We all need to apply this advice to ourselves, and to how we relate to others - whether they are people we know and talk to, or people we watch via the various media.
Assume good intent. It's always easy to find "evidence" to "prove" that someone else wants to take that easy entropic path - and it's impossible to deny that we all feel the urge to break everything down and start from scratch. But it is vital that we not act on that "proof". Act as though everyone really is working toward the same goal - never give them the excuse they need to decide that cooperation is pointless.
Don't settle for shortcuts or shorthand. What do phrases like "special interests" mean? How often are "some people" or "many people" accused of some action? How often are "most people" attributed with certain thoughts or beliefs? We all use these shortcuts because "everyone knows" what we're talking about - but it's too easy to fool ourselves into making assumptions that aren't true.
Don't confuse attitude with substance. The other side will ALWAYS seem smug to you, especially when they are right about something. The attitude of either party about their "correctness" does not affect that "correctness" in any way.
Don't act out of destructive frustration.Calling it "revolution" just jazzes it up. We all need to act out of a sense of constructive cooperation. We all want the same things - freedom, prosperity, happiness - and those are not limited commodities. NOBODY has the whole solution - that's why we form groups and argue. Argument itself, like cultivation or home maintenance, is necessary, difficult, and often messy work.
I hope that I'm helping. I trust that is your intention, too.
When it started, we thought we could help by providing some common sense and facts. We couldn't.
After it caught on and flooded the internet, we thought our friends would at least pay more than lip service to respect and listen to us. Most did, but many didn't.
Now that the initial shock is over, a lot of people are asking, "That's it? What was that all about?" We tried to tell you. The whole TSA Pat Down Conflagration is not worth getting your panties in a bunch.
This was hardest on my lovely TSA bride. This girl is no wilting flower, and she can take a joke. Heck, if you visit her blog, you see that she can dish the satire as well as anyone.
But after the "scope or grope" jokes wore thin, and the exchanges turned mean-spirited, we both got a little angry. One alleged friend exploded his Facebook feed with every scandalous allegation of TSA wrong-doing he could find - repeatedly suggesting that the new screening procedures amounted to government mandated child molestation. When asked to tone it down and look at the facts behind the stream of half-baked conspiracy, he claimed that HE was the one being demonized! He never said that Kate was part of the problem... just anyone working for TSA who followed their new, evil procedures. How dare we question the facts HE was finding, and try to tell him to accept the skewed TSA propaganda!
The good news is that reactions to the media were not all this extreme. We live in a complex world, and people do tend to be nuanced in their behavior, even if it seems they are behaving as a herd. And I'm happy to concede that this is not a simple issue. In fact, that's my main argument in favor of taking a step back and trying a bit harder to avoid oversimplifying it.
You can't blame any one group or organization for the situation we're in - except maybe for the actual terrorists. Since they recruit from all over, you can't profile on race - and even if you did, how would you profile terrorists? Even if you were to only target Muslims, as some have been demanding, how would you identify them visually? Never mind that racial profiling simply won't make you safe.
Unfortunately, you can't just swear off flying - our so-called free market doesn't have any reasonable choices (of trains, buses, or cars) available to allow that. The trains don't go all the way, the buses are crowded with people you don't want to travel with, and the cars don't drive themselves (at least not yet).
What DO I suggest? Before you fly - before you buy your ticket - visit www.TSA.gov and look at what the actual regulations are. Look at the list of prohibited items, and DON'T BRING THEM. You don't need knives, shampoo, chainsaws, or gallon jugs of cologne in the cabin of an aircraft, so put those things in your checked bags. Trying to save money on luggage charges? Mail those things to yourself in advance, or break down and buy them at WalMart when you arrive at your destination.
These are not "intrusive government mandates" - these are common sense tips that would be true regardless of security procedure.
And what about the "naughty pictures" and the sexual harassment allegations? Those things are ALREADY against the rules. TSA officers ought to know better, and if you see any of that going on, or if it happens to you, report it.
My challenge for you: look behind the stories that you see. Follow up for yourself on the "Don't Touch My Junk" guy (John Tyner) in San Diego, and answer this question: did anyone involved, whether Tyner or the TSA, *actually* get into trouble? Was anyone convicted of a crime or served a reprimand of any kind? What about all of the child molestation allegations? Did anyone get charged with anything? If no, then is there anything happening that you should be upset about, and if yes, then isn't justice being served?
You're right to be on your toes. Stay vigilant. Watch your children closely, especially in any public place. And when there is any kind of authority figure involved, remember to be respectful, listen to and follow reasonable directions, and most importantly - STAY CALM.
Because when you let the hype send you in looking for a fight, you're more likely to cause one.
Meanwhile, how did the big travel week turn out? There was supposed to be a big "Opt Out Day" protest; my lovely bride was braced for a lot of smug jerks to come through and drop their trousers, trying to get on TV. Instead, the passengers were better prepared, more polite, and easier to deal with than usual. Many came through and thanked the TSA officers for the job they do. Some asked, "Is that the pat down I've been hearing about on TV? What's the big deal?"
For all of the muckraking, shouting, and yellow journalism, the public actually came through. And there is a lesson there, too, I think.
I did a "good dad thing" the other day, and let my 8-year-old daughter put eyeliner and lip gloss on my face while I pretended to sleep. She thought it was a hoot, and then I "woke up" and chased her and her brothers around the house planting big, watermelon-scented Dad lips on their cheeks and foreheads.
Therapy is expensive, and this is my way of making sure it will be fun.
After the running around and laughing was over, and I had washed my face, the little girl asked me if I had ever worn makeup before, and I told her about being in theater in high school. I don't know how much got across from 38-year-old mouth to 8-year-old ear, but I told her a little about the science behind makeup; how the bright lights of the stage wash out your features, and how the makeup emphasizes them so the audience can see your face.
It wasn't a long conversation, or a deep one, but it got me thinking about how much I hated wearing makeup on the stage, and how ironic it is that so many people use it in everyday life to "enhance" their image. There is a puzzling dance around the issue of what is real and what is fake when you use something artificial to emphasize only your best features; is it honest to cover up your faults that way, or is it necessary to counteract the effects of too much scrutiny?
Anyway, I was still thinking about the theater later when Flamingo and I sat down to watch some TV. We watch a lot of shows together, but rarely on the actual broadcast television - we prefer to catch up later on DVD or streaming Netflix (how's that for product placement?). This night was different because of Twitter.
I can't explain why, but I use Twitter quite a lot. (If you're reading this on my Blogger site, you can see my feed up to the left.) Even though I tweet and follow lots of friends, political figures, and sci-fi-related actors and actresses, I really can't tell you what value it brings to my life or what I have to offer in return. It has just become Part of My World. (Please, Disney, don't sue me.)
A lot of the stuff I follow on Twitter makes me laugh. Case in point: Wil Wheaton, whom you might remember from Star Trek: Next Generation, Stand By Me, or more recently, Big Bang Theory, where he plays an Evil version of himself. He was on Big Bang Theory that night, and had been twittering all day about it in a fit of shameless self-promotion - which we forgave because we actually wanted to see the show, and because we needed the reminders. We are out of the habit of being tied to the network's schedule.
We enjoyed the show, and later @wilw's meta-tweets (where the real Wil Wheaton actually tweeted here and here what the Evil Wil Wheaton tweeted in the show).
As fate would have it, the show that follow Big Bang Theory happens to come from Twitter, too. I have followed Shit My Dad Says for a while, now, and I knew they were making a TV series out of it, but I didn't see how they could do it justice. For one thing, it's NBC, so instead of the actual name of the Twitter feed, they have to print "$#!# My Dad Says" and call it "Bleep My Dad Says" - all of which is incredibly lame and violates the fundamental beauty of having a title based on profanity in the first place. (If you haven't already read my piece in defense of profanity, I have it right here.)
I won't lie: I hated the show. As much as I enjoy William Shatner (where do you think the nickname "Flamingo" comes from?), and as much as I appreciate Josh Halpern's story as a Geek WIN, the episode we watched embodied everything that is sad, old, and irrelevant about network television. Here they had an opportunity to tap into a built-in audience that has been steadily abandoning their medium, and they've blown it by serving up the kind of warm BLEEP that drove us away in the first place.
What would I have done differently?
Well, for one thing, I would have built the series around the central character of that twenty-something guy forced to move back in with his dad, and made it into a one-camera exploration of his life. Show the guy struggling with his problems and using Twitter as an outlet. Show the family reacting and trying to understand what the buzz is all about. Show the ways this unexpected fame changes his world.
There is a lot of risk in making a half-hour comedy like that, but it has been done well before. This show could have been Arrested Development - instead, it was Silver Spoons. I can't explain Twitter, but I can tell you that it has become popular because we-the-people are intensely interested in ourselves. Shitmydadsays became viral and popular because we are intensely amused by profanity and self-effacement. If you're going to take on the risk of buying a show built on the word "Shit", you should be willing to take on the risk of letting it be good by building on those things that made it strong in the first place.
But I realize it's hard to do that. When you're sitting in the makeup chair, you don't know what your face is going to look like to those in the audience. How much "realism" can you get away with? What should you emphasize, what should you hide? On television, all of that is decided for us, taking the point and the relevance away from us. On the internet, we decide what we want to show and what we want to see - not to mention when we want to see it.
And that is the difference between Bleep and Shit.
So, the Republicans made historic gains (as was more or less predicted four and two years ago, respectively) and the pendulum swings back to the so-called "right"... like clockwork. And yet, there is still hope in the world. What makes me say that? A few encouraging signs:
There are certainly a lot of things we're all going to differ over, but I'm looking forward to having a Speaker of the House who uses Twitter effectively.
And while the Republicans have vowed to waste everyone's time trying to repeal the Health Care Reform bill, I think the fact that so few of the Tea Party candidates got in (and those who did, like Rand Paul, seem to already be co-opted by the Establishment) that there won't be as much danger of that actually happening. In fact, the impression I have from the news I have not been able to avoid is that the nation didn't get yanked as far to the so-called "right" as we were led to believe it would be. It might just be the case that enough of these new Republican representatives will turn out to be ... drum roll... pragmatic moderates who want to get things done! Maybe even some of these things:
And since it wouldn't be right to let this go unsaid: which do you think is money spent more wisely? A failed campaign for Governor of California, or the entire budget of the National Endowment for the Arts. (I can tell you which one will last longer.)
Maybe we'll even start to figure out that money isn't the solution to every problem; work, thought, and practical effort are.
