The Mallet of Loving Correction Part 2

Not in a calculated way, to be sure; I think she felt bad for Swift and genuinely wanted to give her the moment that was taken from her. But it's also true Beyonce's actions at the moment were far more memorable than either the award she won or any acceptance speech she could have made. For Beyonce, being seen as gracious and giving is in fact the actual prize for her. She's smart to recognize the fact.

Bill James' Pop Fly Apr

3.

2011.

Baseball a.n.a.lyst Bill James asks over at Slate: Why is America better at producing athletes than writers? His argument is that as a society the United States does a much better job of identifying and encouraging athletic talent than it does, say, writing talent; as an opening argument in this he notes: The population of Topeka, Kan., today is roughly the same as the population of London in the time of Shakespeare, and the population of Kansas now is not that much lower than the population of England at that time. London at the time of Shakespeare had not only Shakespeare-whoever he was-but also Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, and various other men of letters who are still read today. I doubt that Topeka today has quite the same collection of distinguished writers.

Well, come on, Bill James. I know you're smarter than that. The only thing London of the late 16th Century and Topeka of the early 21st have in common is population. One was the impressively growing capital of an emerging world power, to which men of intellect were migrating (including Shakespeare and Marlowe, born as they were in Stratford and Cambridge, respectively), while the other is a state capital whose population has expanded roughly two percent in forty years, and whose potentially great writers are likely to migrate to centers of employment for writing-New York and Los Angeles, primarily-for the same reason Shakespeare and Marlowe found it congenial to hie to London for their work: Because that's where the action is. In all, this is a spectacularly c.r.a.p comparison.

The rest of James' article isn't much better, because it proceeds on a thesis that is shaky to begin with, i.e., that America's better at developing athletes than it is writers. My first question here is: by what metric? Are we talking about people working professionally in both fields? Because you know what, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that as of May 2009, we've got 43,390 professional writers in the United States-"writers" in this case being those who "originate and prepare written material, such as scripts, stories, advertis.e.m.e.nts, and other material" and excluding those writers primarily working in public relations (of which there are 242,670) and technical writing (of which there are 46,270).

Meanwhile, also according to the BLS, as of 2008, there were about 16,500 professional athletes in the United States. So one could say that the United States develops two and a half times more professional writers than it does professional athletes. And while those pro athletes get paid more ($79,500 on average, compared to a mean of $64,500 for pro writers), it's not that much more, and writers on average can do their jobs at a professional level longer than pro athletes. Yes, the top athletes can earn a tremendous amount of money, but then, so can the top writers.

James also flubs the argument in other ways. For example, this bit: The average city the size of Topeka produces a major league player every 10 or 15 years. If we did the same things for young writers, every city would produce a Shakespeare or a d.i.c.kens or at least a Graham Greene every 10 or 15 years.

To which I respond: Really, Bill James? Any major league baseball player is equivalent to Shakespeare, d.i.c.kens, or Graham Greene? We're seriously arguing that, say, Pedro Feliz is of the same existential value to our culture as the fellow who wrote The Third Man, The Quiet American and The End of the Affair, much less the fellows who wrote Hamlet or Great Expectations? I'm going to go ahead and express doubt at that contention.

What I expect would be rather more accurate to say is that if a city the size of Topeka produces a major league player every 10 or 15 years, it should also produce an author whose work is picked up by a major publis.h.i.+ng house; let's say one of the "big six". Is that possible? Sure it is. You don't even have to get up to the size of Topeka. Claremont, California has a population of about 35,000; it's the place I generally give as my hometown because I went to high school there. So did Mark McGwire, although not at the same school. He and I are six years apart in age. My first book with a major publisher was in 2000 (Rough Guides is part of Penguin); his last game was in 2001.

It's true he started working in MLB before I started being an author, but this isn't entirely surprising, and looking at the contracted and proposed work I have in front of me, it seems entirely possible my career with major publishers will last as long as his did with the MLB. My career accomplishments to date are not as impressive as his, to be sure; but then I didn't take any steroids, either. But whether his career and mine are directly equivalent isn't the point; what is the point is that both he and I have played in our respective field's equivalent of "The Show." It's a simple game: You write the book, you print the book, you sell the book. I'm just here to help the publis.h.i.+ng house, and G.o.d willing, everything will work out.

That's one concrete yet anecdotal example, but it can be repeated over and over. There are a lot of writers who get published by major publishers; there are lots of others who are published by small presses (to continue the (inexact) metaphor, they're minor league but still pro) and still others who write professionally but work in other fields entirely (they're playing football or hockey). We don't lack for writers writing on an equivalent level to playing in a major league sport. They're not all superstars, but they're not all superstars in the major leagues, either. Both fields have a lot of journeymen. There are worse things to be.

James makes another error in his next sentence: Instead, we tell the young writers that they should work on their craft for 20 or 25 years, get to be really, really good-among the best in the world-and then we'll give them a little bit of recognition.

We don't tell writers to work on their craft for a long time because only then will we give them recognition; we tell them to work on their craft for a long time because generally speaking it takes a long time to "compete" at a pro level when it comes to writing, and particularly in fiction. Writing is not like athletics; there's not an inherent compet.i.tive premium on youth. There are brilliant and/or financially successful novelists and storytellers under the age of 25, to be sure; they are as rare, however, as the major league player who is still at the top of the game in his or her 40s. Currently the top ten novels in the US (according to Bookscan) are written by people whose ages range from 39 to 83. It's both an older and wider range of ages than you'd see for the top level of success in athletics.

The irony here is that James' larger point-let's celebrate and cultivate writing and writers in our culture like we celebrate and cultivate athletes-is not one I am in disagreement with in the slightest. I would love for schools and universities and our culture to make a fuss over and invest resources in their budding writers as they do with their athletes. I'd like for them to do the same with their budding actors, musicians, scientists and artists, too, while we're at it. Where James and I disagree-ironically-is in how James jiggles his stats here to make his point. James is stacking his deck to raise the stakes, and in doing so he undercuts his actual argument. He's not doing his Topeka Shakespeare any favors.

A Bitter November Nov

29.

2010.

Me (going into the kitchen and finding someone going through the fridge): Who's there?

Strange Yet Oddly Familiar Person: It's me, you idiot.

Me (peering to get a better look):...November? Is that you? What are you doing here?

November: Eating some of your leftovers. (Holds up Tupperware) Mind if I finish off your cranberry sauce?

Me: No, that's fine. What I meant to say is that I thought you had already left.

November: What's the date?

Me: Uh...November 29.

November: Right. I still have today and tomorrow, you know.

Me: I suppose you do.

November: d.a.m.n right I do. I have thirty days. Every year. It's not like I'm February. (Sits, sullenly, to eat his leftovers.) Me: I know. It's just that after Thanksgiving, it feels like November should be over, you know?

November (bitterly): You think I don't know that? You think I don't know that as soon as people wrap foil over the turkey pickings and shove them in the ice box, they start looking at me like I missed some sort of important social clue? They start looking at the closet my jacket is in and then down at their wrists as if to say, whoa, look at the time.

Me: I'm sure they don't mean anything by it.

November: And n.o.body actually wears wrist.w.a.tches anymore! They all get their time from their cell phones. That's what makes it extra demeaning.

Me: I don't think everyone wants you out the door on Thursday evening. There's Black Friday, after all.

November (rolls eyes): Oh, right. The "traditional start of holiday retail." Holiday retail, dude. "Holiday" is just code, you know. For December.

Me: Code?

November: Friggin' December, man. He was always pushy, you know. Always so ent.i.tled. Mr. "Oh, I have two major religious holidays every year." Yeah, well, you know what? This year, I had Diwali. Okay? That's a festival of lights, too. A billion people celebrate it. And that's just the Hindus! I'm not even counting the Jains or the Sihks!

Me: I think that those cranberries might have fermented on you.

November: Don't patronize me, buddy. All I'm saying is December is not all that. I've got election day. I've got Veteran's Day. I've got Thanksgiving. I'm the All-American month.

Me (as my cell phone buzzes): Hold on, I'm getting a text.

November: Who is it?

Me: It's July. The text says, "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if November was whining about something and was suddenly silenced BY AMERICA'S BIRTHDAY."

November (holds up hands): You see? You see what I have to put up with?

(DOOR OPENS. DECEMBER bustles through, carrying packages) December: Oh, man! You wouldn't believe what kind of madness is out there in the stores these days. People are really getting into the holiday-Oh. November. Sorry, I didn't see you there.

November: Of course you didn't. G.o.d forbid you should acknowledge my existence, December.

December (to me): Did I come at a bad time?

Me: We're having a bit of a moment, yes.

December: I can come back.

November: Yeah, in three days, you usurping b.a.s.t.a.r.d!

December: I'll just go now. (December leaves) November: That's right! Go! And take your c.r.a.ppy Christmas carols with you! (Breaks down weeping) Me: Aw, come on, November. Don't be like that.

November: I just want people to appreciate me, okay? For my entire stay. Is that too much to ask?

Me: No, I suppose it isn't. I'm sorry, November. It was wrong of me.

November (sniffling): It's all right. I know you weren't trying to offend me. Anyway. I'll just be going now. (Gets up) Me: No, November. Sit down. Please. You can stay if you want.

November: Yeah? Really?

Me: Of course you can. You can even help me with some stuff around the house, if you want.

November (narrows eyes): You're about to put up Christmas decorations, aren't you.

Me (guiltily): Of course not.

A Boy's Own Genre, or Not Oct

13.

2009.

Another thing for people to please stop sending to me: a recent and fairly random blog post in a purported online magazine, the premise of which essentially boils down to: "Science Fiction is by boys and for boys and now girls are ruining it for anyone with t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, except the gays, who are just like girls anyway (and whose t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es frighten me)." I'm not going to link to it, as abject misogynist stupidity should not be rewarded with links. You can track it down on your own if you like.

Nevertheless, two general points to make here.

1. Verily I say unto thee that thanks to Mary Wollstonecraft Sh.e.l.ley, mother of Frankenstein, science fiction is founded on girl cooties, so anyone dumb enough to whine about those awful women ruining SF for boys really does need to STFU and take his ignorant a.s.s back to his snug little w.a.n.k hole; 2. What? An insecure male nerd threatened by the idea that women exist for reasons other than the dispensing of sandwiches and topical applications of b.o.o.bilies, mewling on the Internet about how girls are icky? That's unpossible!

At this late date, when one of these quailing wonders appears, stuttering petulantly that women are unfit to touch the genre he's already claimed with his smudgy, sticky fingerprints, the thing to do is not to solemnly intone about how far science fiction has yet to go. Science fiction does have a distance to go, but these fellows aren't interested in taking the journey, and I don't want to have to rideshare with them anyway. So the thing to do is to point and laugh.

Well, actually, the thing to do is trap such creatures in a dork snare (cunningly baited with Cool Ranch Doritos, Diet Ultra Violet Mountain Dew and a dual monitor rig open to Drunken Stepfather on one screen and Duke Nukem 3D on the other), and then cart them to a special preserve somewhere in Idaho for such as their kind. We'll tell them it's a "freehold"-they'll like that-and that they will be with others of a like mind, and there they will live as men, free from the horrible feminizing effects of women and their gonad shriveling girl rays. And then we'll tag them with GPS and if they ever try to leave the freehold, we'll have them hunted down by roller derby teams with spears. That's really the optimal solution.

But since we can't do that, then pointing and laughing will suffice. So, yes: let's all point and laugh at these funny little terrified stupid men, and then ignore them. Because that's what they rate.

Chief Justice Roberts and Political Orthodoxy Jul

3.

2012.

It's not an exaggeration to suggest that the Supreme Court holding that the ACA is in fact const.i.tutional (albeit on novel and narrow grounds that no one expected to be used, i.e., the Congress' power to levy taxes) represents the biggest political blow to the current distillation of right-wing ideology that it's had in some time and possibly ever. The blow was made even more psychologically damaging by the fact that it came at the hands of the previously doctrinally reliable Chief Justice John Roberts, who penned the opinion upholding the law, on which he was accompanied by the court's four more left-leaning judges and none of the four right-leaning ones. Roberts, formerly one of the golden boys of the right-wing orthodoxy, has been pushed out of that position with all the force and rage that comes from, well, not being the performing monkey that the current crop of right-wing ideologues thought that they had installed into the Chief Justice position. Roberts, in short, went rogue, and that is unforgivable.

Let's make no mistake about this: the reason that the ACA was driven to the Supreme Court with the alacrity that it was by the right wing was because at the end of the day it fully expected the court to strike it down. As much as right wing politicians like to mewl about activist, unelected judges when they don't get their doctrinal way, they've also spent the last couple of decades doing everything they can to get as many of their doctrinal bedfellows into the judiciary as possible. Nowhere has this been more the case than the current Supreme Court, which some observers judge the most conservative Court since the 1930s.

But more than conservative, the Court is supposed to be reliable-that is, adhering to current right-wing orthodoxy regardless of that orthodoxy's relation to cla.s.sical conservative principles. When the ACA was marched into the Supreme Court, from the right wing point of view it was there to be killed; the legal reasoning of the killing was less important than the 5-4 vote the right wing fully expected it had to exercise its will.

Well, it got a 5-4 vote, all right. It even received what I would consider a cla.s.sically conservative ruling-is there really an argument that the Congress does not have enumerated in its Const.i.tutional rights and duties the ability to levy taxes? What it doesn't have is a victory. And ultimately the reason that it does not have a victory is because the right wing forgot what many orthodoxies forget: That in the end, people aren't machines that do what you want them do when you press the right b.u.t.ton. They are human beings, and human beings have (or at the very least have the potential for) agency, i.e., they have their own brains, have their own agendas and can make up their own minds. Which in the end is what Roberts did.

And which, it should be noted, he is supposed to do, Const.i.tutionally speaking. The Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, gave federal judges life tenure. One reason for that was to insulate these judges from the current fas.h.i.+ons and pa.s.sions of the political fray and to give them their own heads about things. Judges are not immune to politics, of course, especially if they want to move up and dream of a Senate confirmation hearing sometime in their future. But it's also equally true that once you've had the confirmation hearing and pa.s.sed it, you're gone as far as you're going to go. John Roberts is the Chief Justice of the United States. It's a terminal position, employment-wise-which means there's no one who has any lever they can wedge in to get him to move the way they want to. He's on his own recognizance. He has his own head.

Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen recently kvetched in the Was.h.i.+ngton Post, wondering why it is that Republicans are "so bad" at picking Supreme Court justices, i.e., why they drift from their expected positions and start voting in ways that are not doctrinally reliable. Leaving aside the fact that the right wing of the US has s.h.i.+fted itself politically to such an extent that even Ronald Reagan (the real one, not the icon) couldn't pa.s.s its current sniff test, the answer is more correctly, why is Thiessen so oblivious that he doesn't understand that the power of political orthodoxy is its ability to force its members to comply-and that the Supreme Court is designed to sever its members from such threats of force? That's why they drift. And the more strait-jacketed your orthodoxy, the greater the chance of drift. There's no doubt that currently the right wing is about as orthodoxically strait-jacketed as they come.

I don't think there's any question that Roberts is a conservative judge; a look at his track record and even at his ACA write-up makes this abundantly clear. I don't think there's any question that Roberts will continue to be a conservative judge. What the ACA ruling serves notice for, perhaps, is that Roberts is following his own conscience and reasoning regarding what it means to be conservative, rather than taking his cues from the the current right-wing orthodoxy. Ultimately, that's what sending the right wing into their rage about Roberts: That now it's possible he's his own man, not theirs.

Children and Faith Mar

14.

2011.

Alphager asks: As far as I understand from your lent-related post, you are an atheist/agnostic and encourage your daughter to take an interest in religions in general and the christian faiths in particular. Can you explain how that came to be and by which principles (e.g. will you go to church with her? Are you open about your beliefs?) you teach her about religion?

I ask because me and my girlfriend are on the verge of marriage and have been talking a lot about religion and atheism; I'm an atheist and she is the daughter of a protestant pastor. She fears that the question of religious education (or lack thereof) of our (as of yet potential) children could be a major source of conflict.

Well, the reason I encourage her to learn about religion, and Christian faiths in particular, is because the large majority of people on this planet follow a religion of some sort, and here in the United States, the large majority of those who are religious are Christians of one sort or another. I'm an agnostic of the non-wishy-washy sort (i.e., I don't believe in a G.o.d nor believe one is required to explain the universe, but I acknowledge I can't prove one doesn't or never did exist) and always have been for as long as I can remember thinking about these things. I don't see being an agnostic meaning one has to be willfully ignorant about religion, nor do I see my role as an agnostic parent being one where I s.h.i.+eld my daughter from the reality that she lives in a religious society.

Where my daughter is on her own journey of discovery regarding faith is not for me to discuss publicly, but I can say that I believe more information is almost always better. So when she wants to know about a particular religion or explore some aspect of faith, I encourage her to do so; when she comes to me with questions about religion, I either answer her questions (being that I know a fair amount about most major religions) or help her find answers. Athena is well aware that I am an agnostic, and what that means, and we've explored that aspect of faith (or lack thereof) as well. I won't tell you what questions she asks about religion, faith, agnosticism and all of that, but I will tell you that she asks good questions, and for my part I answer them as truthfully and as fairly as I can.

There are a number of people who have come to agnosticism or atheism because of conflicts with or disillusionment about religion, and in particular a religion they were born into and grew up in, and others who are agnostic or atheist who feel that religion and the religious impulse must be challenged wherever they find it. For these reasons among others I think people a.s.sume those people who aren't religious are naturally antagonistic, to a greater or lesser degree, to those who are. But speaking personally, I don't feel that sort of antagonism; I don't look at those who believe as defective or damaged or somehow lacking. Faith can be a comfort and a place of strength and an impetus for justice in this world, and I'm not sure why in those cases I, as a person without faith, would need to p.i.s.s all over that.

There are those, of course, who believe their faith (and here in the US, their Christian faith primarily) excuses being bigoted, or cruel, or ignorant, or petty or pitiless, or who use their faith (or the faith of others) to do terrible things and/or to impose their worldly will on others. In my experience, this is less about the teachings of Christ than it is about people being bigoted, cruel, ignorant a.s.sholes and then saying Jesus told them to be that way. Well, no, he didn't. These folks are simply looking for an external excuse for their own bad behavior. It's the spiritual equivalent of the dude who goes out on Sat.u.r.day night, acts like a jacka.s.s, gets into a fight or two and wakes up the next morning in a ditch without his pants and then blames it on the Pabst Blue Ribbon. It ain't the beer that's the problem, it's the man behind the can. Likewise, Jesus and his unambiguous message of love and charity toward even the least of us is not responsible for the lout who wraps himself in a cross and preaches a message neatly opposite to Jesus' own. I don't have any problems opposing these people, and letting them know just what bad Christians I think they are. I've don't have any problems pointing out these people to my child, either.

But again, that's not about me as an agnostic opposing those who have faith. It's me as a person who knows the message of Christ pointing out a hypocrite, and me as a person with my own moral, social and political standards countering one whose standards differ. As it happens, I know a reasonable number of people of faith who feel the same way I do, and have many of the same moral, social and political standards as I have. Do I fear them? Discount them? Think them defective? No; I say "I'm glad to know you." We believe many of the same things; that some of their belief comes from the teachings of Jesus, or from Allah by way of Muhammad, or from Buddha, to name just three examples, does not trouble me. Whatever steps we took to get there, we're walking the same path.