First, to be pedantic, an ad hominem argument is different than a personal attack. Here"s a personal attack: "You"re a worm." Here"s an ad hominem argument: "You"re a worm, therefore your opinion on the Republican primaries is worthless." You may or may not be a worm of a person, but it does not follow that because you"re a worm, your opinion on the GOP primaries is invalid; it may be that you"re extraordinarily versed on the Republican candidates, their positions and their relative strengths in each primary, and that, independently, you have worm-like personal qualities that mean you"re not worth spending time with on a regular basis. It"s also the case that not every ad hominem argument is a poor one, to wit: "You"re appallingly ignorant, therefore your opinion on the Republican primaries is worthless." If one is indeed appallingly ignorant, particularly on political matters, it may put one in a poor position to have a worthwhile opinion on the GOP primaries. That said, most people don"t employ ad hominem arguments in this fashion.
Pedantry aside, I think what"s being asked here is how do I keep a written piece involving a person from crossing over from legitimate criticism to simple (and mere) insult. I don"t have an actual checklist for these things, but when I"m writing an entry, here are some of the things I think about.
1. Public or private figure: I"m more likely to be more free with my snark if the person at whom it is aimed is a public figure-a politician, celebrity, writer, etc-than I am if it"s just some person. This is partly years of working as a professional journalist inculcating the practical aspects of New York Times v. Sullivan into my brain, and partly a recognition that I natively have tens of thousands of daily readers and can on occasion, with the right topic, produce an exponentially larger number of readers through links, reposting, and media coverage, thus making it easy for me to really mess up someone"s day. So I do choose my targets.
For example, when Kirk Cameron shows up on Piers Morgan"s talk show and expounds on his views regarding h.o.m.os.e.xuality, he"s doing so in his capacity as a public figure: he was on the show promoting his latest work, he"s a person who actively courts the public eye to express his religious and social views and the show is broadcast to a national audience. An example of the opposite end of things: A teenage girl writing in her blog criticizing something I wrote, which I felt could use a response. This was a private individual expressing her view on a blog which while ostensibly public was not at all well-trafficked and for which there was no expectation that the opinion would circulate beyond her own personal circle of friends and readers.
Do I treat both equally? Of course not. Kirk Cameron is an adult and a public figure and however much he whines about how it"s unfair that people are mean to him, is eminently capable of handling criticism of any sort. The teenage girl was not courting the public with her commentary, and would likely have been embarra.s.sed by an influx of visitors to her site wanting to engage her on the topic. So Kirk Cameron I feel fine unloading on; the girl I was careful not to, up to and including not linking to her site (or quoting her directly, which would have made it easy for the ambitious to find her).
Mr. Cameron"s indubitably a public figure, and the anonymous teenage girl is indubitably a private figure, but what about, say, Lori Jareo, who several years ago tried to sell her Star Wars fanfic on Amazon? Or Judith Griggs, former editor of Cooks Source? A not unreasonable number of people who I comment on fall somewhere in the middle of the line and my choice to comment on them or not-or to publicly identify and link to a comment-really is a judgment call. Whether I make that call correctly in every case is open to question.
2. On point vs. pointless: Let"s go back to Kirk Cameron, as I have discussed him most recently, when he described h.o.m.os.e.xuality as "unnatural" and detrimental to civilization. Quiz for you: Which of the following do you think I think is legitimate to call him, and which do you think is less so?
a) "Ignorant bigot"
b) "Pestilent toad"
The answer: a). It"s legitimate to suggest Mr. Cameron"s an ignorant bigot because one, he doesn"t appear to know that h.o.m.os.e.xuality is in fact totally natural and well-doc.u.mented as occurring in the natural world (thus, "ignorant"), and two, he believes that h.o.m.os.e.xuality is detrimental to civilization, and also that "unnatural" is a negative thing in his a.s.sessment (thus "bigot"). And call Mr. Cameron an "ignorant bigot" I did.
(I"ll note here that in the comments thread to the piece, some folks offered a number of defenses for use of the word "unnatural," among them theological and philosophical concepts reaching back to Aquinas. In my opinion that gives Mr. Cameron, champion of the Crocoduck, rather a lot of unearned credit, but even if it"s true what it essentially means is that Cameron"s using "unnatural" in the sense of "opposed to a philosophical construct of the concept of "natural" which in itself has no rigorous scientific relationship to what occurs in the natural world." Which to my mind does not improve things dramatically for him.) It"s rather less legitimate to label Mr. Cameron a "pestilent toad," because, well. He seems pretty clean. But more to the point, calling him a pestilent toad doesn"t really do much other than call him a name. One may argue that he spreads the pestilence of intolerance and that his antipathy toward gays is positively amphibian, but you have to explain it and it seems the long way around, sort of like suggesting how "unnatural" really refers to philosophical concepts pioneered by Aquinas. It might be better to keep things simple, or if not simple, then immediately relatable to the subject on hand.
Now, ironically, should Mr. Cameron ever attempt to sue me for libel, my defense would be marginally better if I did refer to him as a pestilent toad rather than an ignorant bigot, because I could claim "pestilent toad" as an example of hyperbole, since I don"t really believe he"s an actual pestilent toad, whereas I suspect he may be an actual ignorant bigot. But this goes back to the whole "public figure" thing.
3. The whole "there"s a person there" thing: Public figure or not, Mr. Cameron"s a human being and I suspect on a day-to-day basis he"s perfectly nice to his wife, family members, etc, as are other people who have particular opinions or actions I might disagree with or oppose (Note: this is not your cue to haul out stories of Mr. Cameron being a terrible person from his Growing Pains days, or to remind me that Hitler surely loved his dogs). And while the Internet does make it easy to forget that you"re responding to or about an actual human being rather than a bunch of words on a screen, that"s all the more reason to remember there"s a person there. So I do operate on the principle of not saying about others that which I would not have said about me. This fact must necessarily be tempered with the understanding that I am someone who gleefully collects one-star reviews and sends back hate mail for being insufficiently creative, with the demand that the writer revise and do it better.
Even so, it makes me less inclined to go head-hunting just for the thrill of head-hunting. That was fun once, but now I"m in my forties and the thrill of pounding on someone just to pound on them has lessened considerably. I do try to have a point to it.
Which brings us to the final point: 4. Having a point: When I bang on someone, it"s usually not just to bang on them for existing but to talk about something they said/did/believe. Also, when I bring them up, generally I"m not talking to that person specifically; I"m talking to the people who are reading here. And while I know everyone loves watching me get my snark on, I flatter myself-and my readers-in supposing they are not just here to watch me explode; they want a cogent point in there somewhere. That being the case, there"s a point at which any snark aimed at the person stops being a persuasive part of the argument and starts being its own thing to the detraction of the larger argument. The trick is staying on the right side of that. The three points above help me make that determination, but it"s also the experience of writing this sort of way that helps me know where that line is.
And, you know, sometimes I don"t know-sometimes I screw up and make an a.s.s of myself unintentionally. Sometimes I might decide I don"t want to be constructive and just want to vent, in which case I may make an a.s.s out of myself intentionally. Sometimes I"ll think I"ve toed the line perfectly but any one of you (or more) will decide that I"ve gone too far-this is often but not always correlative with whether the person or subject I"m going off on is one you"re pa.s.sionate about. Toeing the line isn"t an exact science. Fortunately, I don"t have problems apologizing when it"s obvious that"s what needs to be done.
Which is another topic entirely, so let"s end this piece here.
Sociopathic Corporations Mar
17.
2011.
Arrow Quivershaft asks: How can we justify treating multinational corporations as people, despite the fact that most of them act like clinical sociopaths in general action?
Well, the FCC v. AT&T ruling suggests that in fact there"s a very long way to go before we do in fact treat them as people, so I"m not in agreement with the a.s.sertion that we do. That corporate "personhood" exists is non-controversial, but their "personhood" is not of a manner that tracks precisely with being a real, human person. This being the case I don"t think it"s accurate or useful to describe their behavior with reference to the behavior of real live individual humans.
In particular, I disagree with the notion that most of them act like clinical sociopaths. Rather, I think the majority of corporations act logically and rationally and in a manner consistent with the general reason for their existence. And the reason most corporations exist-and most large multinational corporations in particular-is simple: To maximize shareholder value. There is also a general need to do so on a regular schedule; the one that is most familiar is a quarterly one, consistent with the SEC requirement that publicly-held corporations must file 10-Q forms. There may be other goals or aspirations a publicly-held corporation might have, but when it comes down to it, those are the two that count.
If you acknowledge that in the final a.n.a.lysis the purpose of a corporation is to maximize value to the shareholders, and make sure that each quarterly report shows such value maximization as its trend line, then their actions make perfect, reasonable sense-and might even if you employed them on a human scale. Why do corporations avoid paying corporate taxes whenever possible? Because that maximizes shareholder value-and don"t you take every possible tax deduction you can? Why do corporations lay off workers in the US and hire them in cheaper countries? Because that maximizes shareholder value-and might not you switch from a more expensive name brand to a store brand to save a little money? Why do corporations lobby governments for tax breaks and credits-and bail-outs, when it comes to that? Because that maximizes shareholder value-and don"t you vote your self-interest and ask the government for help when you"re in trouble? And so on.
But, you may say, there"s a difference between when I buy a store brand, and when a corporation lays off thousands of workers. Well, yes. Corporations aren"t people. As I was saying earlier. But just as your buying a store brand is not evidence of sociopathic behavior, neither is a corporation laying off thousands and hiring cheaper labor elsewhere. You"re both staying consistent to ground level economic imperatives, but your ground level economic imperatives are different, because you are fundamentally different ent.i.ties.
But! You say! Like Soylent Green, corporations are made of people! If they are made of people, should they not then at least keep the interests of people at heart? Well, you tell me: When you pay a CEO $80 million (or whatever) and tell him his single job is to maximize shareholder value, where do his interests lie? People, bless our black little hearts, are selfish and self-justifying primates, and we can excuse-nay, justify-nay, celebrate!-a lot of behavior in ourselves if the compensation is high enough. If a CEO needs to cut $80 million from his company to increase shareholder value, he"s going to figure it"ll be more useful to slice off a thousand workers than to fire himself. He may not even be wrong, since the next CEO they hire will cost just as much, whereas the work those 1,000 workers did can be dumped on their colleagues who were happy to have survived the axe.
Here"s the deal: In order to change corporate behavior, you have to change the underlying goals of the corporation. If for example the reason for the existence of the corporation was not to maximize shareholder value but instead to offer steady, well-compensated employment to its workers here in the US, would that have a significant impact on how the corporation acted? It might, although from the outside it might be difficult to see (it would still likely try to avoid taxes, lobby governments, etc). But in a general sense, if you change why the corporation exists, it"s possible you"ll see a change in what it defines as logical and rational behavior.
Short of that you have to make sure that corporations are subject to laws and limits on their behavior-and of course they"ll fight that every step of the way because it impedes their goal of maximizing shareholder value. But the magic of corporations, if you want to call it that, is that regardless of the economic or social milieu you put them in, they will do what they do-maximize shareholder value!-as well as they can possibly do it. US corporations did fine in eras where their taxes were higher than they are now, so the various hand-wringing about the onus those taxes place on corporations doesn"t particularly move me, I have to say.
I don"t think you have to change the fundamental nature of corporations, personally, even if I think they"re stupid to think in quarterly terms rather than focus on longer-term strategy. What I do think you need to do is let their single-minded focus on maximizing shareholder value work for the overall benefit of the country. How you do this is of course a matter of some debate, and where I am fairly sure I fall out with conservatives on strategy, since among other things I wouldn"t be at all opposed to hiking (or closing loopholes in) both corporate and capital gains taxes in a manner that protected the rather meager middle-cla.s.s investment in both. I understand these days that a belief in the value of a progressive taxation schedule makes me a dirty communist fit only to be set on fire, but you know what, you go ahead and bring that gasoline. Speaking of sociopaths.
The Sort of c.r.a.p I Don"t Get Aug
31.
2011.
Over at Twitter, author Adrienne Martini asks me if I get the sort of jacka.s.sed comments and e-mails that Shawna James Ahern, a female food blogger, talks about in a recent post, and wonders if it"s a gender-related thing.
The short answer: No I don"t get those, and yes, I think it"s substantially gender-related.
The longer answer: I do of course get hate mail and obnoxious comments. The hate mail gave me a t.i.tle for a book, after all, and the obnoxious comments on the site are just part of doing business as a Public Internet Figure. This is why I have a robust commenting policy and am not afraid to follow up on it. Whenever jackholes pop up, I mallet them down, and that"s the way it should be.
What I don"t have, however, is the sort of chronic and habitual stream of abuse this blogger describes. There are constantly people annoyed with me (go search "Scalzi" on Twitter today and you"ll see some fellows mewling plaintively about me, for example; it"s darling), but it doesn"t appear anyone makes a hobby out of it. It"s all situational, in that I"ll write something that annoys someone, they"ll be annoyed and write about it, and then it all goes away. There are additionally and quite naturally people who seem to have a default dislike of me. So perhaps they are more inclined to be annoyed with me and they"ll become so quicker than the average person might, and thus be publicly annoyed with me at a higher frequency.
But again, they don"t do it all the time; they"re not making it their mission in life to ride me. And to be clear, people are annoyed with me, or may mock me, or may even call me names. But these people are not fundamentally (or, generally speaking, not even slightly) hateful or hurtful people and it would be wrong to characterize them as such. What I don"t receive, other than exceptionally rarely, is what I consider to be actual abusive commenting, where the intent is to hurt me, from people who are genuinely hateful.
What follows is my own anecdotal experience, but it"s also the anecdotal experience of someone blogging for 13 years and having been engaged in the online world for almost 20, i.e., decently knowledgeable. In my experience, talking to women bloggers and writers, they are quite likely to get abusive comments and e-mail, and receive more of it not only than what I get personally (which isn"t difficult) but more than what men bloggers and writers typically get. I think bloggers who focus on certain subjects (politics, s.e.xuality, etc) will get more abusive responses than ones who write primarily on other topics, but even in those fields, women seem more of a target for abusive people than the men are. And even women writing on non-controversial topics get smacked with this c.r.a.p. I know knitting bloggers who have some amazingly hateful comments directed at them. They"re blogging about knitting, for Christ"s sake.
Why do women bloggers get more abuse than male bloggers? Oh, I think for all the stereotypical reasons, up to and including the fact that for a certain sort of pa.s.sive-aggressive internet jacka.s.s, it"s just psychologically easier to erupt at a woman than a man because even online, there"s the cultural subtext that a guy will be confrontational and in your face, while a woman will just take it (and if she doesn"t, why, then she"s just a b.i.t.c.h and deserves even more abuse). Cowards pick what they consider soft targets and use anonymity and/or the distancing effect of the Internet to avoid the actual and humiliating judgment of real live humans that they"d have to receive out in the world.
There"s also the fact that culturally speaking, women are burdened with a larger number of things they are made to feel bad about, things that men don"t have to bother with. Notes Ms. Ahern, about a recent trip to New Orleans: From those brief 25 hours, I received emails that said, "Don"t you know that processed food is killing Americans? How could you have posted a photo with Velveeta cheese?" or "What kind of a mother are you, leaving your child for another trip? Selfish b.i.t.c.h." or "Sausage? Andouille sausage? You don"t think you"re fat enough already, you have to stuff more sausage in your mouth?" There were complaints about where I ate, how much I ate, how happy I was to be with the people I sat with, that I was bragging by listing the people with whom I had dinner. There were comments about my weight, comments about my parenting, comments about the way I spend money, comments about the farce of gluten-free, comments about my photographic skills, and comments about how often I posted on Twitter (for some, that answer was: too much). Nothing goes undiscussed as being disgusted in my online world.
I can contrast this with how people approach me on similar topics. When I post photos of processed cheese, I don"t get abused about how bad it is and how bad I am for posting about it. People don"t abuse me over my weight, even when I talk explicitly about it. I go away from my family for weeks at a time and never get c.r.a.p about what a bad father that makes me, even though I have always been the stay-at-home parent. Now, it"s true in every case that if I did get c.r.a.p, I would deal with it harshly, either by going after the commenter or by simply malleting their jacka.s.sery into oblivion. But the point is I don"t have to. I"m a man and I largely get a pa.s.s on weight, on parenting and (apparently) on exhibition and ingestion of processed cheese products. Or at the very least if someone thinks I"m a bad person for any of these, they keep it to themselves. They do the same for any number of other topics they might feel free to lecture or abuse women over.
It"s this sort of thing that reminds me that the Internet is not the same experience for me as it is for some of my women friends, and why I"ve spent a substantial amount of time drilling into Athena"s head that the Internet is full of a.s.sholes who like to void themselves all over the women they find. I"m sad this is still the case. But being sad about it isn"t going to keep me from trying to build those defenses into her, so that when inevitably she runs up against these people, she can deal with them properly, with a sound that approximates that of a flushing toilet.
That this will outrage them and make them more inclined to rail at her doesn"t negate the necessity. It makes it more of a necessity, alas.
Speech and Kirk Cameron Mar
7.
2012.
Kirk Cameron, former child star and current subscriber to an apparently particularly uneducated brand of evangelical Christianity, is shocked and appalled that when he makes public statements on a nationally-televised talk show about h.o.m.os.e.xuality (and thus, the people who are h.o.m.os.e.xual) being "unnatural" and detrimental to civilization, there are a large number of people who will react to such a public statement by taking it upon themselves to mock him for it. He says: I should be able to express moral views on social issues, especially those that have been the underpinning of Western civilization for 2,000 years-without being slandered, accused of hate speech, and told from those who preach "tolerance" that I need to either bend my beliefs to their moral standards or be silent when I"m in the public square.
Well, Kirk Cameron, here"s the thing. You are correct when you say you should be able to express your moral views on social issues, and as a staunch defender of the First Amendment, I will defend to the death your right to say whatever ridiculous, ignorant and bigoted thing that has been fermenting in that cracked clay pot you call a brain pan. But the First Amendment also means that when you say such things, other people have the a right to mock you and the silly, stupid words that have dribbled out of your skull through that word hole above your chin. If you call someone "unnatural," they might call you an "a.s.shole." That"s the deal.
To put it another way: The First Amendment guarantees a right to speech. It does not guarantee a right to respect. As I am fond of saying, if you want people to respect your ideas, get better ideas. Likewise, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. If you"re going to parade around on television engaging in hateful b.a.s.t.a.r.dry, then, strangely enough, people will often call you out on it. They may also call you out on the hypocrisy of maintaining that when you say that the way someone else lives is unnatural and detrimental to civilization, you mean it with love, but when they call your words bigoted trollspeak, they"re crossing a line or engaging in slander-the legal concept of which, incidentally, you don"t appear to understand very well, nor libel, which generally speaking is probably more applicable in this case, you crazy public figure, you.
(You"re also wrong about h.o.m.os.e.xuality being unnatural-birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it!-not to mention, of course, that the imputation that "unnatural" means "wrong" is one of those stupid things people say when they haven"t thought through the implications of the a.s.sertion. I mean, you"re aware television is "unnatural," right? So are pants. So are eyegla.s.ses, cell phones, indoor plumbing, the Growing Pains complete second season on DVD, and just about any weapon more complicated than a rock. The rule I would like to apply moving forward is that anyone using "unnatural" as an intrinsic reason for something being bad or wrong must commit to a life of Rousseauean simplicity in a location untrammeled by the unnatural accoutrements of human civilization. I recommend the forests of Papua New Guinea or any place in Siberia, so long as it is above the Arctic Circle.) Kirk Cameron, I fully support your right to speak your mind about moral views. I also fully support the rights of other people to criticize you and those views, and also their right to be mean to you while doing so, and not just because, in my opinion, it"s mean and not in the least bit loving to suggest gays are detrimental and destructive, simply by existing and loving who they choose to love and refusing to accept your desire for them not to be who they are. You"re ent.i.tled to your stupid, petty, awful, hateful bigoted opinion. Everyone else is ent.i.tled to call it exactly what it is.
Spoiler Statute of Limitations Mar
6.
2009.
Last night I decided to annoy some geeks, so I wrote on Twitter: "Note to Watchmen fans: THERE IS NO CONSPIRACY. THE COMEDIAN JUMPED." Which immediately returned a series of death threats and furious rebukes, so, you know, mission accomplished (note: no, I don"t think any of those people were actually upset). But along with those were a couple of people who twittered back, "Uh, dude? Did you just, like, do a spoiler? "Cause that"s not cool."
It"s not a spoiler, since, among other things, within the first three pages of the comic it becomes evident that jumping is not precisely what the Comedian did. Also, given the placement of the Comedian"s death in the novel (i.e., right at the beginning), and its being highlighted in the various movie trailers, discussing it is no more spoiling Watchmen than noting that, say, Marley was dead, to begin with-or, alternately saying that Marley wasn"t dead to begin with, he just moved to Jamaica and picked up the guitar.
That said, even if it were a spoiler, the thing is: Look, Watchmen is twenty-three years old. Surely the statute of limitations on spoiling the book has run out by now. SPOILER ALERTS should not be in effect forever. Yes, they have their place: If I had run out of The Crying Game screaming "The chick"s a dude!" as people were waiting to see it for the first time, it would be a case of justifiable homicide. But now, in 2009? Sorry, man. You missed your window to be outraged.
(Funny story about that particular movie is that I actually first saw it at home: I was a movie critic and Miramax sent me a screener on tape. I remember getting to that part and going "wait, what?" and actually rewinding. And then I remember writing a very careful review.) If there is, in fact, a spoiler statute of limitations, the question then becomes, well, how long is it? I throw that question open to the crowd, but here are my suggestions: Television: One week (because it"s generally episodic, and that"s how long you have until the next episode) Movies: One year (time enough for everyone to see it in the theaters, on DVD and on cable) Books: Five years (because books don"t reach nearly as many people at one time) So, for example, the big spoiler in Old Man"s War (gung Wnar Fntna vf Wbua Creel"f qrnq jvsr"f pybar!-that"s ROT-13 encoding, by the way, if you"re inclined to decode it) should probably remain a spoiler until next January, the five-year anniversary of OMW. But the big spoiler of M. Night Shyamalan"s The Sixth Sense (Oehpr Jvyyvf vf gbgnyyl qrnq!) expired on August 6, 2000, and the big spoiler of the same director"s The Happening (Z. Avtug Fulnznyna"f fugvpx unf orra fhpxrq qevre guna n urzbcuvyvnp ng n inzcver pbairagvba!) runs out next June 13, although in that case, it won"t be that much of a surprise to anyone.
Status Check, Re: USA Jul
4.
2010.
The 234th birthday of the United States of America is a fine time to check in with one"s self about how one feels about being a citizen of this country, so today"s question: Am I proud to be an American?
I am. The United States, like so many things, is better as an idealized concept than it is as an actual ent.i.ty, on account that the nation is made up of people, and while most people mean well, in a day-to-day sense they struggle with their ideals, which are often so inconvenient to their desires. And so, like a married family-values politician with a Craigslist personal ad, or a vegan Febreezing the apartment so no one will catch the smell of bacon, America often finds itself failing its own expectations for itself and others.
In times like this what I remember is that while people (and countries) fail their expectations and ideals, those expectations remain, and even when failing them, people and countries find those expectations and ideals to be powerfully attractive. Despite sidesteps, backtracks and inactions, over time-over the long haul-we move toward our ideals. Martin Luther King famously noted that the arc of history is long but bends toward justice. He was correct, but only to the extent that justice is in itself genuinely held as a goal.
As Americans, we do hold it so: It"s right there in the preamble of the Const.i.tution of the United States, along with other laudable goals. And I do believe that despite whatever day-to-day failings our nation has, however we are on this particular day struggling to live up to our ideal of ourselves, nevertheless over the arc of history we are bending toward justice, and are forming that more perfect union we imagined ourselves having more than two centuries ago. It is this commitment to justice and a more perfect union, written into our country"s genetic code, that makes me proud to be an American, and inspired to make sure that I do my part to get us there.
Will we get there? Not in my lifetime, and perhaps not in any lifetime; people stubbornly remain people, and heir to weakness, desire, self-absorption and stupidity. The Founding Fathers were wise to note we were working on a "more perfect" union, not a "perfect" one, because perfection is hard with actual humans involved. But I believe we can get closer to perfect, and then closer than that, and then closer still. It"s like approaching the speed of light: the closer you want to get to it, the more energy you have to put in to get to it. You"ll never get all the way to it. But you can get close enough to get to where you want to go, in time, with effort.
So happy birthday to the United States of America. I"m glad to be a part of it, and glad to be working on it.
Steve Jobs and Me Oct
5.
2011.
The Macintosh was not the very first computer I remember working and playing on-that honor would go to the Radio Shack TRS-80-but I wrote my very first story ever on a Macintosh. In fact, I wrote it on the very first generation of the Macintosh. My friend Ezra Chowaiki had one when we were in high school, and as a result, I think I spent more of my freshman year in high school in his room than I spent in my own, banging out stories (in eight-page chunks, as that was the file size limit at the time) and playing with the paint program. Occasionally I would have to borrow someone else"s computer (I didn"t have my own), and then I would end up being confused and frustrated that whatever PC I was on was not nearly as simple to write on. I was spoiled by the Macintosh at the very beginning of my writing career; simply put, it was the way writing was supposed to have been. It would be wrong to say I would not be a writer if the Macintosh did not exist; it is accurate to say that the Macintosh made it so much easier for me to be a writer that I never seriously entertained being anything else.
I didn"t own a computer of my own until just before my senior year of college, when I bought a surplus Macintosh SE from my college newspaper. It was with this computer that I first went online outside of a business setting-I got myself a modem and a disc with the Prodigy online service and I was off to the races. With my next computer-a Mac Quadra-I logged onto the Internet proper, got myself Mosaic, went to Yahoo, hit its "random site" b.u.t.ton and kept hitting it for just about 72 hours straight. Very shortly thereafter my I coded my very first personal Web Site on a local internet provider. The very first iteration of my Web presence was made on a Mac.
Which is not to say I am a card-carrying member of the Cult of Apple; indeed, there is some evidence to the contrary. But I am an admirer of technology that gets it right, and say what you will about Apple as a corporate ent.i.ty and Apple products as fetish objects, the fact is the company makes some really excellent things. I"ve owned non-Apple mp3 players and I"ve owned iPods; iPods have generally been better. I"ve owned tablet computers and an iPad; the iPad is better. I"ve owned several laptops; the Mac Air I"m writing this on is hands down the best laptop I"ve ever owned. To admire the technology is to in some way admire the ethos behind it, which is even more indirectly to admire the man who inspired the ethos.
Which brings us to Steve Jobs, who I am sure almost all of you know pa.s.sed away earlier today. Jobs was the man behind the Mac, the computer which made it easy for me to be a writer and to find my way online, two things which have shaped my life so significantly that I would literally be a different person without them. The Mac works the way it does because Jobs made it his business to make it work like that. For that, I owe him a rather large debt of grat.i.tude. The iPods and iPads and ginchy thin laptops are all just icing on that substantial slice of cake.
I cannot of course speak of Jobs as a human; I didn"t know him, never interacted with him, and most of what I knew of him came through the technology press, with which he seemed to have contentious relationship at best. All that I can speak about is how what he did affected me. Simply put, it affected me by helping me to become me-to express myself easily, fluidly and to people all over the world, and in doing so, end up as the person I am today. This is important. I won"t forget it.
For it, and for everything that"s come because of it, I say: Thanks, Steve. You will be missed.
Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is May
15.
2012.
I"ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word "privilege," to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It"s not that the word "privilege" is incorrect, it"s that it"s not their word. When confronted with "privilege," they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.