Well, now, Bob...

Pain English

2009-12-11T14:59:00.000-08:00

I suspect the reason business people so often resort to gobbledygook in their writings is not just laziness or habit, but that they're afraid specific language is too confining and restrictive. Ambiguity seems more inclusive. It relies on the reader to fill in the blanks of meaning. These would-be communicators fear that explicit, precise, and detailed writing might not tweak every reader's interest or encompass every possible interpretation.

Problem is, it doesn't say anything either.

You don't have to look hard for examples. As I started to write this, IBM spammed me with an email they hope will draw my attention to an article in their newsletter. They say the piece is about how that company helps "organizations make strategic decisions that enhance competitive advantages, create new sources of value, improve revenue growth and develop the change programs necessary to meet business or mission objectives."

Well, who wouldn't be interested in all—or at least some part of—that? Aren't those things that all businesses want to do? But the email doesn't give me a clue what IBM's consultants really offer, or how they deliver it, or what they've done for somebody else.

On the contrary, the message I get—loud and clear—from their spamMail is that IBM doesn't know a thing about my business or me. They think of Bob Kalsey and Bravura Films as just another organization with problems and issues no different from those faced by any other. By trying to offer everything, they offer nothing at all. That's the ROI for ambiguity: nothing.

These thoughts are inspired by a question today on LinkedIn, where I occasionally try to contribute to the conversation. Loren Hicks referred there to a help-wanted ad that includes the phrases “The role will leverage all aspects of the offer matrix” and “ … will include presenting and evangelizing xxx’s offering …”

Loren asks how people respond to such a thing and whether they'd apply for the job—whatever it is.

My response was:

I would be pleased to apply for a role that leverages all aspects of the offer matrix and proud to present and evangelize the company's offerings, especially if the aspects are of the unique, cost-effective and robust next-generation aspect type.

At the end of the day, though, the matrix would have to be flexible, scalable and optimized in terms of metrics that deliver value added outcomes, and the offerings would, hopefully, be easy to use, world-class and unique—as well as focused on high performance innovations from a leading provider of new and improved feature sets. Heck, the bottom line is, I'd give 110 percent commitment—or more—to such a win-win partnership of all stakeholders. Wouldn't you?

I have to give credit for many of the buzzwords I used to David Meerman Scott and Dow Jones, who created and provide (under Creative Commons) a list of the things. Just in case you've forgotten some of them and don't want to leave any out of your next spam.

Scott is as ferocious about blather and baloney as I am, and you might want to read his Gobbledygook Manifesto, in which he points out another reason business writers default to those words: they don't really understand their products, or how customers use them.

Shame on them.

The Business of Music

2009-11-18T14:59:00.000-08:00

The music industry is in crisis. The fundamental cause is the unbundling of creative content from physical media: the same phenomenon that is behind the troubles of the newspaper publishing business.

At one time, music was not bound to physical media at all but was part of the oral/performance tradition. Artists supported themselves through patronage and direct payments by their listeners.

Musical notation was the first technology to change the music business. It arose not as a means of publication and distribution, but for the preservation of music and the convenience of its performers—and music became fixable, in some respects, to a physical medium. Various musicologists improved and standardized notational methods through the 16th century, concurrent with the printing press boom, and music publishing became a viable business.

Music flourished as an industry due to the entrepreneur's ability to produce and sell copies of sheet music and collections—to fasten creative content to salable, durable physical products. "Pirating," though, was a commonly accepted business practice in the United States, until Congress extended copyright protection to music in 1831.

Before the publishing revolution, music was not so much a business as an art, and musicians were independent of commercial specialists: lawyers, agents, publishers, printers and resellers. They were beholden only to the makers of instruments, their fellow artists, and the gratitude and generosity of their admirers. That changed when composers made a Faustian bargain with publishers. It seemed like a good idea at the time and, for centuries, it was.

After 1878, with the perfection of the first practical sound recording and reproduction systems, recorded music followed the same strategy as music publishing. Not just notations, but actual musical performances could be fixed to mass-reproducible physical media. The advent of the phonograph brought a crisis to the music publishing industry's reliance on sheet music sales, but publishers (and the composers they represented) adapted their revenue model to draw income in the form of royalties, on the strength of copyright protection.

Radio broadcasting was initially seen as a threat to the recording industry because it made music "free" to the consumer—first with the support of the radio set manufacturing industry and, eventually, of advertisers. The music industry demanded—and received—compensation through broadcast performance licensing, but its income from that source paled in comparison to that from record sales. Eventually it became clear that radio broadcasting was an effective music-marketing tool because of its reach and influence. Radio was not an on-demand medium, so consumers who wished to hear a particular performance at a particular time still needed to purchase it in its physical form.

Digital technology changed everything, and that is where we are today. Music and its performance are no longer bound to salable physical media. Individual consumers are able to cheaply copy, store, and distribute music. Whether those practices are legal or not is almost irrelevant, because in practical terms the laws and patents that protect the rights of creators, performers, and their licensees are unenforceable.

The business models are broken. The industry faces the prospect of a return to its roots: the support of musicians through patronage and the gratitude and generosity of their admirers.

The good news is that digital technologies are available to musicians, as well as to their audiences. Composers, arrangers, and musicians can create, perform, distribute, and monetize their products with as much independence from the traditional middlemen and facilitators as they are willing and able to claim. If one wants to go that way, one can. But the upside potential for the independent artist is limited; the rewards are different, and of a smaller scale, than those possible for musicians who choose the traditional route to success.

The music industry has long offered the alluring potential of quick and possibly obscene profit. That is not and has never been the principal motivation for every musician or music business person, to be sure, but it has always lurked in the wings behind the dream of artistic acceptance: the hot score, the hit single, the platinum album, the world tour, the merchandise, and the star on the walk of fame. If not the goal, that elusive dream has always been the ultimate verification of one's value. But to be honest, achieving that dream was never the pay-off for talent alone, or talent and hard work. It was the product of a machine, and artists never ran that machine.

Those at its controls are struggling today with the new digital reality. They are re-jiggering the machine, changing its components, re-tooling to maximize and maintain the profitability that fuels it. Music served on a platter is no longer the product, but the music and those who make it are—once again.

In a way, the machine too is returning to music's roots—to the song, the personalities, and the performance, rather than the page, the disk, or the cassette. It returns with the benefits of the contraption it has evolved to become: its profit motive, its managerial skills, its media reach and influence, its marketing power, its packaging abilities, its synergistic properties and its business relationships. Of course, it also arrives with the burdens of its artistic timidity, its pandering to public preferences, and its reputation for greed intact. You can learn everything you need to know about the machine from "American Idol."

Musicians, since their Faustian bargain with the Mephistophelean machine, have always been only a part of the system, and they are finding that their relationships—and their place in the revenue stream—are changing. Ironically, as the performers and their performances are increasingly the salable product, their share of the revenue will decline. There is no other way to feed the beast.

Musicians have two choices, and every imaginable opportunity in between: to go it alone, or to ride with the machine. Either way, the future is uncertain. But the future always is.

That Nobel Prize

2009-10-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

Peace is more than a state of warlessness—a state, it should be noted, the world has never known. It is, as importantly, a process and an attitude.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has conferred the Peace Prize on 97 individuals and 20 organizations. In only three instances was it awarded to individuals who were actually involved in the direct brokering of peace accords between nations.

Theodore Roosevelt won in 1906 for his successful mediation of an end to the Russo-Japanese war and other contributions. Henry Kissinger was honored in 1973 for his work on the Paris agreement that led to the final cease-fire in Vietnam and the withdrawal of American forces. And Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin shared the prize in 1978 for the Camp David Agreement, which led to a negotiated peace between Egypt and Israel. (Despite the persistence of animosity, hostility, and bloodshed between Israel and its neighbors, that country and Egypt remain—after a fashion—at peace with one another.)

Some winners have helped to reduce tensions and bloodshed within their nations. The Committee honored Nelson Mandela and Frederick Willem de Clerk in 1993 for terminating the apartheid regime in South Africa, and John Hume and David Trimble for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland.

But, mostly, the prize has historically been awarded to people and institutions who have worked toward the process of conflict resolution and aided or inspired humanitarian efforts. The International Committee of the Red Cross has won three times, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, twice.

Of all the Nobel prizes, the Peace Prize is generally the most controversial. Were there, in each year, an individual or organization conspicuously responsible for bringing peace to some corner of the world, there would likely be no controversy; the Prize would be a slam-dunk. Sadly, that has seldom happened, but happily there are always folks grinding away at the process, forcing attitudes and postures to change, making contributions. They might work for decades, on their own initiative, with little recognition. Others might just be at the right place when history comes to call. In every case, though, they are—more than anything—an inspiration to others.

Geir Lundestad, the Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, has said that President Barack Obama will receive the honor this year for his creation of a new climate in international politics. The cable tv political bloviators—and the Chairman of the Republican Party—think the prize is pretty much a joke; that Obama is undeserving, the prize diminished by his selection, and the award no more than a slap at former President Bush and evidence of an international socialist conspiracy at work.

President Obama richly deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Even before taking office, he revived the world’s long-dormant sense of hope for peace and positive change. People around the globe see him as a transformative figure and are inspired by his message of optimism, his call for mutual respect, and his promise of progress. They wear Obama t-shirts in Udaipur these days, and gave this American visitor high-fives in Delhi last December as they grinned and shouted, “Obama! Obama!”

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama convinced the majority of American voters to choose peace and to reject the previous administration’s policies of hostility and confrontation; to vote for rationality and against rigidity and blind ideology; to support a foreign policy based on respect, rather than arrogance; and to believe, once again, that it’s okay to look after one another--here at home and around the world.

None of the above, none of the genuine feelings of so many citizens of the world, is welcome news to those who reflexively oppose the President no matter what he does or tries to do or what honors or endorsements he receives. Nothing in the revitalized aspirations of many millions around the world will reverse the hostility of those who hope and pray for our President to fail (as though his failures would not be our own), who are irreversibly angry about his election victory, and who still can’t believe that most American voters don’t agree with them.

Those Americans should get over it, and get with the program—or get out of the way.

Rachel Maddow concluded an excellent MSNBC broadcast on the matter saying, “The American president just won the Nobel Peace Prize—by any reasonable measure, all Americans should be proud.”

Indeed.

Social Networking

2009-09-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

Names are kind of funny. We like to name things, because it gives us the illusion of understanding them and the hope we will ultimately control them. When we name a disease, for example, we begin to think that one cure – if we're lucky or smart enough to find it – will remedy all instances of the malady. Unfortunately we often mistake symptoms for diseases and forget that a symptom may have many causes. Cancer comes to mind. Or the common cold. We forget, too, that the disease might be entirely imaginary – caused by mass hallucination or hysteria.

"Social networking" has a lot in common with diseases in those respects. It isn't a single thing, nor is there a single way to deal with its many instances. Giving it a serious-sounding and techno-babbly kind of name may make us feel as though it's one thing and that we understand it, but those impressions are false. It might even be imaginary, brought on by exposure to the radiation of computer monitors and Blackberry LCD screens.

We like to categorize things, too: also so we can understand and control them. Ever since Linnaeus we've tried to categorize the flora and fauna of the Earth, for instance. But we've embarrassed ourselves many times because the categories we've invented have sometimes turned out to be meaningless and those in which we've chosen to place a thing have not always been the most appropriate.

"Social networking" is a whole jungle of creatures and they don't all belong in the same part of the zoo. Facebook and Flickr, YouTube and Twitter may be cousins, branches on the Internet family tree, but should they be in the same cage and fed the same diet? Maybe they're all in the kingdom "Digital," the phylum "Internet," and the class "Social," but are they all in the order "Advertising Medium?"

Marketers are some of the most dedicated namers of things. One of them came up with a condition known as "halitosis" in order to sell an elixir for bad breath. Many folks who sell advertising and technology consulting services have latched onto "social networking" as a way to foment a profitable combination of greed and fear, dread and avarice in the marketplace for their wares. It helps that nobody really knows what "social networking" is (it can mean anything you want it to mean), but everybody wants to turn it to his own advantage or save himself from its potential ravages.

We sure do like to try to turn everything we encounter to our advantage, and that can bring good results or otherwise. Thankfully some guy long ago saw a spiny lobster crawling around and said "I don't care what it looks like, I'm gonna eat the thing." But it's not a good idea to leave infants unattended around cans of paint thinner.

Many thirsty folks these days are thinking seriously about swallowing the social networking Kool-Aid. I guess we'll find out how that turns out.

Senator Kennedy

2009-08-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare observed remorsefully, "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones" Tragic but true, it speaks of our pettiness that we are so often blinded and imprisoned by our hostility.

Certainly Edward Kennedy was merely a man and had his faults as all men do. Many disagreed with his politics and with his beliefs about what makes for a civil society. But we needn't foam at the mouth at the mere mention of his name. To do so is unseemly, unfair, unhealthy, and makes us unworthy.

I, for one, will remember him as he remembered his brother Robert – as "a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it." And as a man who both respected and served humankind with a sincerity, grace and eloquence rarely seen these days.

Adam Clymer, former Washington correspondent for The New York Times and author of "Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography," is answering questions about Senator Kennedy today on The Times' Politics and Government blog. He writes, in part:

"If you voted at 18 or were served Meals on Wheels or took advantage of a Medicare drug benefit, he helped get you there. Cheap college loans, children’s health insurance, aid to the disabled and a variety of civil rights measures are also to his credit. I don’t adore him, but I respect that record. He achieved it by working across party lines, remarkable in a day when bitter partisanship seems to trump most issues in Washington."

A View of Mt. Twitter

2009-08-21T17:25:00.001-07:00

Doc Searls is a most interesting fellow and he has a wonderful sense of metaphor. The other day he wrote that tweets have "the impact of snow on water" while "blogging is geology."

Tweets, as you know unless you've been comatose for a while, are those usually trivial and often incomprehensible mini-messages that some folks like to send out into cyberspace from their phones or computers in hopes of relieving their feelings of inadequacy and/or irrelevance.

Some folks in Iran did a lot of tweeting after the recent elections there, you may recall, and there were important social and political reasons to demonstrate their relevance. Their tweeting served the common good, to be sure, which shows that twittering offers real and potential benefits. Still, so much drivel, so much snow on water.

Not that there's anything wrong with drivel. It serves a purpose. It's part of the glue that holds people together, and there's value in that.

Twittering is sort of like the "Active SETI" project that attempts to send messages to intelligent aliens (should there be any) elsewhere in the universe. Both twitterers and the Active SETI people assume somebody may be out there listening for signs of intelligent life, though tweet-makers sometimes seem to be less concerned about the intelligent part. In the case of SETI, the subtext behind the messages is "You are not alone," while for tweeters it's often "I am here."

Doc's point, if I may be so bold to hazard an interpretation, is that tweets are ephemeral – part of the babble of the human brook flowing by. Blogs, on the other hand, become part of the record of human experience, just as sediments become a record of biological and geophysical events.

No doubt part of the appeal of Twitter is that it's so darned hip. But another part is that it IS ephemeral, which makes it a low-risk form of communication. Tweets aren't as likely as blog or Facebook postings to come back and haunt us someday. They go away pretty quickly, almost as fast as the remarks we make in conversation, so we can be spontaneous and frivolous and not fear that others may use our words to our detriment in the future – to make us seem supercilious or trivial or careless or worse.

I think Twitter may be changing blogging, making its recording function more significant and its reporting function less so. People use Twitter now to point others to things they find interesting or provocative and to publish trifles – things they might have formerly done with weblogs. Blogs are, I think and hope, becoming a medium for more carefully considered and painstakingly prepared messages. Blogs may become more worthy of the preservation that is part of their nature. They may become more interesting. They may even remain interesting to the cultural archaeologists who will dig around in them in the future to find out what people were like back in the early part of the 21st century.

It's a commonplace that each new medium adopts some of the characteristics of those that preceded it. Television, before it found itself, was a lot like radio – but with pictures. It's also true, though, that new media change those that are already in use. Radio became something different when TV came along. Twitter is a new medium that has taken to itself some of what was once the purview of the blogosphere, and I expect that blogging will change, now that the "frivolous" stuff we can't stop ourselves from producing finally has another place to go.

Of course, all this presumes that Twitter will persist long enough to make an impact beyond the few million digitally devout souls who use it now. Or that something else will take over its niche. It seems important enough to survive, but I wonder if its importance might be an illusion.

Seems like Twitter may seem important mostly because people talk about it. When people talk a lot about something, marketers perk their ears up, wonder if they can use it to sell stuff, and start sniffing around like dogs around a sandwich bush. When people with money in their pockets start sniffing like that, the cadre of consultants sees an opportunity to transfer some of that cash into their own pockets. Those consultants join the crowd of talkers. And pretty soon you've got a phenomenon on your hands, and pretty soon after that it becomes a mania.

There is a marketing principle that says the best way to success is to stake a claim on top of some mountain, where the mountain is an idea or a proposition or a gizmo or what marketers call a "category." Stake a claim at the top where you can be most visible. Many companies and would-be gurus are battling for control of and visibility atop Mt. Twitter – which seems to be about the highest peak on the horizon these days. I wonder, though, if Mt. Twitter is a real mountain or just another hill piled so high with curious marketers and hungry consultants that it has the look of an actual mountain without the granitic core to hold its own against the forces of erosion.

Time will tell. It always does.

The Future of the Newspaper

2009-07-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

Certainly technology will bring profound changes to newspapers and to the ways in which people experience news and information. But whether newspapers survive in their present physical form or some other, I expect them to evolve in significant ways if current trends continue. Their evolution, I believe, will take inspiration from the media with which they compete.

People often decry the bias of news sources, yet the most biased commentators are often the most popular. What we publicly decry may be exactly what we privately crave. We are naturally predisposed to accept and agree with interpretations of facts that support our preconceptions and, similarly, to distrust and differ with those that conflict with them. A trend in information media, facilitated by a greatly expanding number of media outlets, is toward increasing segmentation along socio-political lines.

It's a disturbing development, rooted in the profit motive that is essential to the current model of commercial information providers. Communication was once called "the glue that holds society together." It has become, instead, an adhesive that more tightly bonds individuals of particular socio-political leanings to one another, rather than a unifier of human society as a whole. Success in mass media once required providers to appeal to a broad audience but now it is possible to thrive in a niche.

I expect that xenophobia will spread from talk radio and cable punditry to newspapers. A 2004 study of young adult readers by Readership Institute found, not surprisingly, that "people want to read about people like themselves in their local daily newspaper," and "There is less interest (in) coverage of groups to which one does not belong." Perhaps newspapers will become more overtly opinionated in their coverage, cater more to the xenophobic tendencies of their readers, and position themselves more as the voices of specific identity groups. Already we are seeing more opinion, gossip, and biased analysis creeping from the op-ed pages into formerly hard news sections; more column inches throughout local papers topped with the photos and by-lines of their own celebrity pundits.

Another trend, although it has always been prevalent, is information as entertainment. By far the most popular newspaper features are the comics and sports pages. In advertising and news content, readers under 35 prefer information about "things to do," such as recreation and local activities, and "ways to get more out of one's life," such as health and fitness features. Reports of events from around the world are instantly available on the Internet, through Twitter, and on radio and television. Newspapers are unable to compete with the immediacy and pungency of these other media, so we can expect their focus to shift away from event reporting in favor of lifestyle features, amusement, and the narcissistic concerns of their audience.

A third trend I will call "informer-as-celebrity." I think that in a strange way Walter Cronkite is to blame – not personally, but because of the value he brought as an individual to the CBS television network. The other networks competed against Cronkite's highly successful "that's the way it is" reporting not by doing a better job of authoritative, credible coverage, but by emphasizing the personalities of their own anchors. They fought substance with style, and it proved to be a successful strategy.

NBC created "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" to succeed its "Camel News Caravan," tellingly replacing the name of the program sponsor with the names of its anchors. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were superb newsmen, but their network traded on their personalities rather than their journalistic acumen. National and local news outlets followed suit and polyester-haired anchormen (and later, women), along with clownish weather and sports reporters filled the airwaves with happy-talk news programs. The spokespersons became the medium and largely the message of broadcast information.

The spawn of the ménage à trois of these trends – socio-political segmentation, information-as-entertainment, and informer-as-celebrity – is hostility-as-entertainment. What appeals to a large audience about cable television's motley crew of bloviators is the anger and rage they express and the gleeful pleasure they take in bitterness, insult, derision, and obstinacy. "Yellow" journalism – sensationalism, scandal-mongering, and unprofessional practices – has a long tradition; it's nothing new, and it's always masqueraded as "real" news. In the past, it has been part of a newspaper's overall brand and only occasionally identified with a specific reporter or columnist. We may well see more – and more outrageous – sensationalism as newspapers experiment with ways to emulate the appeal of their broadcast competitors. And I expect that a breed of bullying celebrity journalist "stars" will become more important to each newspaper's brand.

One can expect other trends as newspapers cater to their perceptions of audience demands.

Young people think newspapers are too big; they prefer concise, bite-size news. According to the 2004 Readership Institute survey, this group tends to agree that: “I wish this newspaper had fewer pages,” “It has too many special sections,” “It tries to cover too much,” “Too many of the articles are too long.” The same organization's study of a broader reader group similarly concludes that people who feel overwhelmed by news, tend to read newspapers less.

Motivated to expand – or maintain – their readership, newspapers seem to believe that their regular, devoted readers can be counted on to continue their newspaper habit, so they are catering more to "lighter readers" – ironically by providing less: fewer pages, shorter articles, and more limited coverage.

Younger readers also say that they highly value "dynamic visual treatment," and newspapers are certainly trying to cater to this with their colorful eye-candy designs – just as cable news relies heavily on high-tech graphics and the endless repetition of dramatic imagery.

Whatever physical form the newspaper takes in the future, we can expect news delivery media to: target segmented audiences; appeal to narcissism, xenophobia, and the thrill of sensationalism; rely on celebrity pundits; deliver less news more concisely; and do it all with dazzling graphics.

Sorry, news fans, but "that's the way it is."

Bloggers and Barkeeps

2009-04-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

Someone left a copy of the Wall Street Journal on a stool down at the Bar and Grille yesterday and as I had arrived before the regulars and Manny the bartender was busy with something or other in the back, I scanned through the paper in hopes of gaining some insight into where my money had gone to.

There were articles about this company lowering its expectations for the next quarter and that one doing a little better in the last one than it had any reason to. There was a story about how all that money the government gave to the banks was either still there, at the banks, or had vanished without a trace into whatever void money goes when you take your eyes off it. And there was an analysis of the previous day's stock exchange decline, which attributed the loss to an announcement that a big company was making more money than people had expected it would. Somehow, that was bad for stocks in general. The day before I'd heard that stock values had gone up for a similar excuse.

Economics and finance are too complicated. That's what got us into the pickle we're in right now, and I said so to Manny when he came back to the bar to pour my drink. "I don't get this when they say one day some piece of good news made the market go up and the next day they say the same kind of news made it go down. What do you make of that, Manny?"

"Well, now, Bob," he said, "Maybe there's subtleties to it that us normal folks just don't comprehend. More likely, it seems to me, these newspaper writers don't have a clue themselves so they just latch onto some bit of news to blame for whatever happened in the market. The less sense it makes to you and me, the smarter they look for figuring it out. Me, I can't relate to any of it."

I turned to the next page of the paper and saw an article I thought Manny might relate to pretty well. Seems somebody figured out that almost a whole percent of Americans are getting paid as bloggers and their number now exceeds the total of professional bartenders.

Now I thought bloggers were mostly people who have the writing bug but, being unable to think up anything worthwhile to write about, tell their few readers what somebody else wrote about somewhere, adding a little, "this is cool," or "so-and-so had an interesting remark about such-and-such." And the rest of them are just self-absorbed people who think somebody else might be interested in what they had for breakfast, and none of them is paid a dime for their contributions to the American conversation. Seems I was wrong once again.

According to "The Journal" (which is how people who want you to know they read The Wall Street Journal refer to that periodical), more people make their actual living sticking their opinions on the Internet than do so by programming computers, or fighting fires, or practicing law.

"So, Manny," I said, "says here you bartenders are out-numbered by professional bloggers."

Manny observed that spouting off opinions is a growth industry while reporting actual news is on the way out, and he wondered what the world is going to be like when there isn't any news to complain about. "I guess those bloggers will be talking about themselves and sniping at each other even more than they are already. But you know, Bob, that's how it's going anyway. Why, even the regular news these days is mostly all about the news business itself and how it's going to hell in a hand basket."

I tapped my glass and Manny reached down to the well for the scotch bottle. As he poured, I suggested maybe he ought to think about taking up blogging himself. "Why, you are one of the most opinionated people I know, Manny. Seems like you could do pretty well at that. Don't take more than a few bucks to get started; eighty dollars, it says here, and you could make a hundred thou' or more if the breaks go your way."

"Well, Bob, there's something to be said for working at home, unshaved and in your jammies, but I kind of like to put a tie on and come down here to the bar. I get to talk to people. I hear things. Some of the things I hear are even true. Sitting by myself in front of a darned computer all day? Trying to stir up some hullabaloo to entertain other people who are doing the same thing? That doesn't appeal to me, and there's something almost unethical about it."

Manny took a load of glassware out of the dishwasher and stood back as steam rose into the air. "I don't mean any offense, Bob, because I know you write one of those blogs yourself. I read it once, and it was ... entertaining."

I thanked him for the compliment and said I'd often wondered who it was that read my blog that one time. "I guess it's a good thing you don't want to be a blogger, Manny. I'd rather come down here and trade insults with you in person than read your opinions on a computer screen."

"Aw, Bob. You know you just come down here because I pour you one on the house now and then."

"Well, there's some truth to that, Manny."

"Not today," he said, "but now and then."

"Better be good to me, Manny," I said, "This article says that 'If journalists were the Fourth Estate, bloggers are becoming the Fifth Estate.'" I showed him my empty glass. "So don't be so stingy with a jigger of that cheap booze, or the full weight of the Fifth Estate might bring you down. We bloggers are getting to be a powerful force in American culture. It says so right here in The Wall Street Journal."

"And would that be the same Wall Street Journal that says the stock market went down because some company made a lot of money?"

Manny isn't cut out to be a blogger; too much common sense.

To Be: A Noun

2009-04-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

Over on LinkedIn the other day, leadership trainer and founder of Leaders and Thinkers , Benjamin Anyacho, asked, "What do you want to be remembered for as a leader?" He referred to Methuselah, Noah's granddaddy, who lived for nearly a thousand years, yet his legacy was written in two sentences. "In fact," Benjamin noted, "there was nothing to be remembered about Methuselah except that he was the oldest person that ever lived, and he had sons and daughters," and he added, "it's not how long we lived but how well."

I replied that I would not be so quick to disparage Methuselah. His achievement was so profound, so unique, and so well known, that the old fellow has become a noun.

There is something to be said for becoming a noun. James Watt became a noun, representing power even to this day. Adolf Hitler became a noun, it is true, but his name is a pejorative. We honor Napoleon with a couple of nouns, one a pejorative, the other a pastry.

Few people in history are sufficiently notable or notorious to even reach the lesser status of adjective. A candy retailer named Morris Michtom honored Teddy Roosevelt by naming a stuffed animal after him. Michtom founded the Ideal Toy Company on the strength of public response to the Teddy Bear, but the toy's association with Roosevelt's name was so tenuous that it is now all but forgotten; few writers these days even bother to capitalize the "teddy" part.

The adjective taken from Charles Ponzi's family name is much in the news these days, but his unfortunate survivors may have difficulty passing checks imprinted with their names. Franz Kafka became the root of an adjective – although his name requires an added "-esque" to serve that purpose. Almost anybody can be an –esque. Even the pop bubblegum music supergroup ABBA, whose name is an acronym for its members, has lent its moniker to an adjective of the -esque form – though not one that is entirely complimentary.

One's legacy may also become a verb. Folks caution White House interns these days not to Lewinsky. Good advice, but in another generation it won't be understood – and probably won't be followed anyway.

Victor Hugo said, "The word is the Verb, and the Verb is God." Buckminster Fuller expressed that line as "God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper." Some say that Fuller declared that he, himself, was a verb – which with some logical manipulation might be taken to equate himself with God. I'm not so sure he actually ever claimed to be a verb and I'm pretty sure he never claimed divinity. I am fairly certain, though, that Ulysses S. Grant, shortly before he died, believed himself to be a verb instead of a personal pronoun. Possibly just wishful thinking on the General's part.

I could accept a legacy as a verb, so long as it is an energetic one.

I would also be satisfied were my legacy an adjective, but more delighted to survive as a noun. What, exactly, would a Kalsey be? That remains to see. Something admired, or respected, or striven for, I hope. Any good thing will do.

One thing I do not look forward to being is a past participle, mostly because few people know what those are.

Of Mice and Heirs

2009-02-27T16:35:00.001-08:00

I read of bloggers and hear about conservative yakshow bloviators proclaiming that they are sick and tired of hearing President Obama say, "I inherited this, and I inherited that," as though Obama takes every opportunity to deflect responsibility.

The criticism of Obama's language is unwarranted. It is a fact that his administration inherited an enormous debt and the most serious economic crisis of our lives. The very vocal minority of people who still hold George W. Bush in high regard – or who oppose Obama for whatever reasons -- bristle to hear the new President remind the nation of that fact. But they seem to have propagated the "I inherited" phrase in their own minds and (dis)credited the President for saying it more than he actually has done.

Near as I can tell, Obama has used the phrase "I inherited" on only one public occasion: his press conference of February 9th. In his prepared remarks, he said, "My administration inherited a deficit of over $1 trillion, but because we also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression...." Note, please, that he did not say "I," but "My administration" and "we."

He said "I inherited" only once at the press conference, responding to a question. He replied in part that some opponents of his economic stimulus package complained about wasteful spending but had presided over a doubling of the national debt themselves. He asked that those who would engage in some revisionist history remember that, "I inherited the deficit that we have right now, and the economic crisis that we have right now."

In his speech to Congress, Obama used "inherited" three times:

1) ...not because I believe in bigger government -- I don't -- not because I'm not mindful of the massive debt we've inherited -- I am.

2) It reflects the stark reality of what we've inherited: a trillion-dollar deficit, a financial crisis, and a costly recession.

3) With the deficit we inherited, the cost...the cost of the crisis we face...

Note that once again, Obama reminded us that "we" inherited the debt, the deficit, the crisis, and the recession. Not him, not his administration, but the current government: executive and legislative branches included.

In his inaugural speech, Obama spoke about the crisis but never uttered "inherited." On other occasions when he has used the word he has employed the collective pronoun "we." In a speech in Elkhart, Indiana, for example, he used the same language as he did the same day at the press conference: "We inherited a deficit of over $1 trillion, but because we also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression..."

It seems to me that Obama is trying to avoid blaming the current Congress for our woes and focus instead on the fact that the collective "we" now have the responsibility to do something about the crisis. He is trying to shift the discussion from who's to blame to who's responsible for getting it fixed – and how to go about it.

We are paying today for the errors and apathy of the past, but Obama does not lay blame; he does not proclaim that the failed policies of the Bush administration – and the misguided ideologies behind them -- have brought us to our economic knees, though they surely have. He only says that the government, as now constituted, has been stuck with this mess and needs to deal with it. Perhaps absolving the current Congress and the new executive branch of blame will help all of government to think less about history and more about the future and to work together more constructively. (I'm not holding my breath.)

Some opponents of the stimulus package repeat ad nauseum the claim that the thing includes $33 Million to save the salt marsh harvest mouse in San Francisco. Well that's simply not true. First off, the mouse in question does not reside in the City by the bay, there being no salt marshes in the County. Calling it "Pelosi's San Francisco mouse," though, presses at least three conservative hot-buttons, so the truth be damned.

Second, the package contains no earmarks for mouse habitat protection in San Francisco, in California, or any place else. It simply provides funds to Federal agencies to restore wetlands – anywhere they decide to undertake that activity. Now it happens that the California Coastal Conservancy has requested 30 million bucks to pay for a 4,000 acre restoration project in the Bay Area, which would benefit salmon, steelhead, trout, ducks, egrets and any other thing that lives in the marshes here.

It will also improve flood protection of homes and businesses in the area, and provide about a hundred jobs, so count humans among the beneficiaries. It might be one of the many projects that ultimately receives Federal funds. But there's nothing about it in the bill.

The Frisco Rodent story is a complete fabrication, designed only to stir up opposition to the stimulus package and throw some mud at the Democratic Speaker of the House. Yet it has been repeated on Fox "news," the Washington Times, and in blog-after-conservative-blog as though it were a true and horrifying example of political maneuvering and government waste.

Once these stories of mice and men-who-inherit-stuff get started, there's no stopping them. Believers believe what they want to believe.

We ought to get over our partisan bickering. It surely doesn't help matters to pick at -- and disingenuously misquote and misinterpret -- the President's words and intent. To misconstrue the good works that are included in the stimulus package is downright dishonest. We ought to stop looking for faults in others and making them up if they don't exist. (I'm not holding my breath about that, either.)

***
By the way, if you can find a transcript of President Obama saying "I inherited..." any other time than during his February 9th press conference, do let me know.

This Just In...

2009-02-25T13:14:00.000-08:00

A headline today, from the Associated Press:

"Study of fossils shows prehistoric fish had sex"

No, I did not participate in the study.

Rhymes and Reasons

2009-01-28T16:42:00.000-08:00

The poet Elizabeth Alexander met Barack Obama when both taught at the University of Chicago. Her family has a political history, her father having been Chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission and her brother, Mark, an Obama advisor during the presidential campaign and transition. Though not widely known (what poets are, these days?), Alexander is highly respected in poetry circles and has received numerous awards for her work. Not surprising, then, that Obama invited her to write and deliver a poem at his inauguration.

Alexander is a scholar of African American culture and literature, currently a professor of African American Studies at Yale University. Her inauguration poem -- which can be found here -- takes its title "Praise Song for the Day" from an ancient African tradition, the praise song -- a lively form by which the lives of individuals are celebrated. She chose in this instance, though, to celebrate not Mr. Obama but the everyday American.

There's been much talk about "Praise Song" and its delivery, with The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and most critics panning the work as too prose-like and the delivery not up to snuff.

Writing for The Guardian, Carol Rumens – a poet herself – declares "Even when writing for a public occasion and a vast audience, the poet should be able to renew language by being precise, surprising, unhackneyed. Otherwise, what is the point of such a commission? Alexander is a true people's poet, but she has written better poems for the people than this one."

A little kinder was Eli Lehrer, a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who wrote for The Weekly Standard that it "doesn't qualify as a great poem, but it might emerge as an important one. As a celebration of the commonplace and an exaltation of the personal over the political, the poem offers a distinctly American take on the concept of occasional poetry." He decides that, "Yes, it's self-centered. Yes, the poem doesn't really have much logic. But it works."

"Praise Song" was not helped by Ms. Alexander's recitation of it at the inauguration, but it seems to me her words themselves were, while clumsy in part, appropriate for the day.

It was an occasion of plain speaking and common language. Mr. Obama's widely anticipated speech was itself not one of rhetorical delights and poetic flourishes; no lines he spoke are destined to be carved in granite on a monument or cast in bronze for the ages. But if they were to be, they would be set in bland Helvetica, the font chosen by those of whom it has been said, "they want to fit in and look normal. They use Helvetica because they want to be a member of the efficiency club."

What Obama said, beyond the words he spoke, was "See? I'm no elitist after all." That was something that needed saying to move the conversation from personality and ideological rhetoric to the hard work that needs doing and the hard choices we collectively face.

Also straight-talking at the ceremony was preacher and civil rights leader, Joseph Lowery, who brought some of his customary plain and common touch to the benediction. Dr. Lowery closed with his own bit of poetry derived from a refrain used by African American performers including the Almanac Singers of the 1940s and bluesman Big Bill Broonzy. One version of the much-borrowed rhyme goes like this:

If you're white, you're right.
If you're yellow, you're mellow.
If you're brown, stick around
But if you're black, stay back.

Dr. Lowery's take was a lot more hopeful: "help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right." After all the solemn talk of hard times behind us and ahead, Lowery's gentle and effervescent humor was much appreciated. He made the occasion no less serious, but a lot more human.

Perhaps by prearrangement, Alexander's poem seemed designed to keep with the tone of the moment. Its most telling phrase was "Say it plain." And that she did. And that may be part of the reason for disappointment among those of us who found "Praise Song" wanting as a work of poetry -- why Carol Rumens felt it failed to "renew language."

More at issue for me, though, was her delivery which, owing to its pomposity and self-importance, undermined her message of respect, esteem, and appreciation for the everyday experiences of common folk. She placed an artificial emphasis on words and phrases, making cumbersome what might have been elegant. She imposed white space around those words, seemingly to give them exaggerated weight. She made precious the little things she meant to declare only noteworthy. Perhaps she felt too much the historic significance of the day or worried that her words might seem, were they left unadorned by affectation, trivial.

I don't think she listened well to what her words had to say. Her expressions hadn't the brawn and sinew of Sandberg, yet she tried to stretch them tight and bulk them up with muscle they were far too frail to carry. They were as simple, though not as effortless, as the American colloquialism of Frost, but her plodding reading gave their realism a resonance of insincerity.

Poets ought never read aloud their own work – they've too much invested in it.

I nearly fell out of my chair on hearing Alexander orate so solemnly: "Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself, / Others by first, do no harm or take no more / than you need." All I could think of was the cheesy sign at the King's Table Smorgasbord all-you-can-eat joint I frequented in college: "Take all you want, but eat all you take." That level, the ham-fisted inelegance of a cheap eatery's admonition against wasting its money, was unfortunately the low plane of much of "Praise Song for the Day."

I recall Robert Frost's reading at JFK's 1961 inauguration. Blinded by the glare of the sun and TelePrompTers not available, he could not read the poem ("Dedication") that he had written for the event, but recited his "The Gift Outright" from memory instead. It is a short poem, less than a third the length of Alexander's. It speaks about surrendering ourselves to the country, "Such as she was, such as she would become." It was a moving moment: an elderly, world-renowned and well-loved literary figure honoring a young man of "a new generation" who offered the nation new hope and vigor. Frost honored the nation, too, with humility and humanness and honesty.

Frost's "Dedication" has been called "dreadful" as poetry. But nonetheless it, or something like it, might have been a good choice for Obama's inauguration. In it, he speaks of "A turning point in modern history," and concludes declaring the start of "A golden age of poetry and power/Of which this noonday's the beginning hour."

Yeah; it even rhymed.

Avast, ye swabs!

2008-11-20T10:38:00.001-08:00

Piracy is a terrific little business. Not the stealing music kind of piracy, but the hijacking of ships on the high seas kind. According to an AP article today:

"Somalia's increasingly brazen pirates are building sprawling stone houses, cruising in luxury cars, marrying beautiful women - even hiring caterers to prepare Western-style food for their hostages."

The pirates even use money-counting machines to verify their ransoms. Just like they do in the casinos -- another bastion of piracy.

The article goes on to report how this business has benefited the local economy. Lots of fans of piracy in little impoverished villages such as Harardhere.

Makes you think about joining up, eh? Maybe hanging around in Mogadishu and hoping to get shanghaied. Or is that "Mogadishu-hied?"

Elsewhere in the world there are pirates who are a lot less refined than those from Somalia; they tend to kill people as a standard operating procedure. It's in their business plans and employee handbooks.

So I guess the Somali pirates are "nicer" than others, even if they're not as cute as Johnny Depp. Still, they present a problem. Actually, they REpresent a problem: poverty, desperation, non-existent government. At minimum, Somalia ought to regulate these guys -- or tax their profits. But neither of those is going to happen.

This situation is rather like a war, it seems to me. And there ought to be some organization (the United Nations?) mounting protective measures and going on the offense against the pirates.

The British Parliament passed "The Piracy Act 1698" in, well, 1698 -- declaring that piracy was a crime against their nation and punishable by death. The Brits changed the law several times, eventually deciding that death was too harsh unless the crime involved violence.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982), defines piracy. All nations are required to prosecute piracy according to their internal laws. The Royal Navy, though was notified by the Foreign Office not to capture pirates from Somalia because to do so would "breach their human rights." That's because the penalty for piracy under sharia law in Somalia is beheading and whacking off of arms and legs and such. And if the pirates are captured and brought to Old Bailey they would be able to apply for asylum in Britain. And then you'd have even more pirates in Canary Wharf than work there now for various financial institutions. Not good.

I think it's kind of chicken of the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy not to go after these guys and put them in jail. But that would require some revisions to the civil rights and asylum laws of those nations. So first, let's get that done. Then let's get some war ships to patrol those waters. Then let's send a couple cruise missiles or those fancy drones they use in Iraq to take out the fancy new houses of the pirates there in Harardhere; they should be easy to identify among the mud huts.

Or we could do something about the roots of the problem: extreme poverty and no functioning government in Somalia.

Beam Me Up, Wolf

2008-11-12T15:39:00.000-08:00

November 4th, 2008. On a night that sizzled with genuine dramatic imagery, from scenes of hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Chicago's Grant Park to feeds of election-watch parties around the world, CNN premiered one of the silliest and most gratuitous uses of artificial computer generated graphics ever to spring from the minds of geek-dom.

Wolf Blitzer is a remarkably talented journalist. He has a B.A. in history, received an M.A. in international relations from Johns Hopkins, worked for Reuters and the Jerusalem Post, has written two books, and looks good on TV. He's been with CNN since 1990 and won an Emmy Award for his coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing. These days, though, he hosts a pathetic show with the authoritative name "The Situation Room," which views like an "Entertainment Tonight" for pop-news/celebrity-scandal/breaking-tragedy junkies. For three hours every weeknight, Blitzer delivers the news with a bit too much energy and a lot too much volume as he stands before a huge video wall that's covered with graphics and bigger-than-life talking heads and live or taped "You Are There" scenes of the disasters and human interest stories that the network offers up for its viewers' titillation.

CNN is not content to deliver news unadorned, to let the story speak with its own inherent drama and energy. Everything is goosed up, scored with dramatic music, wrapped in slick 3D graphics, set in busy screens filled with scrolling text bars and titles with moving decorations. Talking heads and continuously looping B-Roll are framed in PhotoShop-ped virtual borders that are animated with dizzying movement -- as though the images themselves are inadequate to engage a viewer's brain.

Little wonder then that on election night Wolf roamed the stage at CNN's studio in the Time Warner Center in New York and used its outsized billboard video wall and slick graphics to dramatize what was, already, a pretty dramatic story. And then it went from gratuitous to excessive, from silly to preposterous.

Following some scenes of the enormous crowd that was gathering strength at Grant Park, including an appearance by reporter Jessica Yellin on location, Blitzer spoke to the television audience. "I want you to watch what we're about to do," he said, "because you've never seen anything like this on television."

Then CNN "beamed" Ms. Yellin into Election Center as a snatch of pretentious martial music played in the background. It was the global premiere of what CNN dubbed, erroneously, its "hologram" technology. And it was pretty lame.

The reporter appeared to be standing in a spotlight a dozen feet or so away from Blitzer, looking as though she'd just been teleported by the "matter-energy transport" that always beamed Captain Kirk back to the Starship Enterprise just in time to avoid some alien menace. CNN's engineers are not as adept as Star Trek's Scotty, though, for Ms. Yellin was outlined in the purple fringe that's typical of a bad chromakey effect. Still, as the studio cameras moved--ever so slightly--on the stage (apparently CNN does not believe in stationary cameras), Ms. Blitzer's "hologram" remained in proper position and perspective.

Ms. Yellin spoke: "Hi, Wolf."

And Blitzer, beside himself with awe at the magic wrought by CNN's engineers, continued. "All right, a big round of applause. We did it. There she is, Jessica Yellin. I know you're in Chicago, but we've done something, a hologram. We beamed you in. We beamed you in here into the CNN Election Center. I want to talk to you as I would normally be talking to you if you were really face to face with me. I know you're a few -- at least a thousand miles away, but it looks like you're right here."

What most thrilled Wolf, it seems, was that the television audience could now see Jessica without distracting stuff behind her on the screen; stuff like the enthusiastic crowd in Chicago; stuff like the story she was covering; stuff like real life.

"You know," he said, "what I like about this hologram and you're a hologram now, Jessica. Instead of having thousands of people behind you screaming and shouting, you know what, we can have a little bit more of an intimate conversation and our viewers can enjoy that as well. How excited are you, Jessica, that this is -- you're the first one that we've beamed into the CNN Election Center?"

Yellin could not resist the comparison to Star Wars. "I know," she remarked, "It's like I follow in the tradition of Princess Leah. It's something else. It's the first time it's been live on television and it's a remarkable setup, if I could tell you about it for a moment. I'm inside a tent in Chicago that's been built -- engineers spent about three weeks doing it."

THREE WEEKS! they spent, setting up 35 high definition cameras in a circle in the bluescreen tent, getting them to communicate with the cameras in New York, and testing and tweaking. All so Jessica Yellin could spend a minute or so "in the studio" with Wolf Blitzer. It is interesting that they did not set up a matching rig in Arizona, where the supporters of John McCain had gathered. Seems like fairness would have called for that. But I digress.

Blitzer closed out the virtual reality segment saying, "All right, Jessica. You were a terrific hologram. Thanks very much. Jessica Yellin is in Chicago. She's not here in New York with us at the CNN Election Center, but you know what. It looked like she was right here. It's pretty amazing technology."

Later, introducing contributor Roland Martin, Blitzer noted, "OK, the real Roland is here, not a hologram." And then he issued what seemed a threat, "All right, but maybe one of these days, Roland, we'll bring you in. We'll beam you in to the CNN Election Center."

Oh, please. Let's hope not.

The amazing television first did not go unnoticed by the press. Here is what a few people had to say about it:

"That is the creepiest thing I have ever seen," wrote Brooke Cain on The Raleigh News & Observer's blog.

"Not only does this technology seem completely creepy, but it's without a doubt one of the most useless and unnecessary pieces of phantasmagoric TV ever enacted," said engadget.com blogger Joshua Topolsky.

"I thought the whole thing was a bit silly and sort of annoying," CNet's Marguerite Reardon observed.

Anna Pickard reported on the "gimmick" for The Guardian: "Why? Because we can. We COULD have a correspondent that could say what she says perfectly well in 2D on a normal screen. But why should we, when we can have a hologram?"

On his Washington Post blog, Style columnist Tom Shales wrote: "It was a cute trick, but how did it substantially contribute to the coverage? No one seemed to know."

CNN was not the only network to embellish the story with over-the-top graphics. MSNBC made a 3D virtual U.S. Capitol Building appear atop a table on its set, surmounted by an equally 3D rainbow representation of the Senate seating chart. This was to illustrate the Democrat's progress in picking up seats in the real institution up there in Washington DC, and it, too, was introduced with a bit of verbal fanfare and oohs and ahhs from the network's reporters. But at least the MSNBC graphic served a purpose.

To my mind the real story of this momentous evening was told in the telephoto close-ups of a teary Oprah Winfrey standing in the crowd at Grant's Park and the likewise teary face of Jesse Jackson, also there, whose generation of angry confrontational politics may finally be at an end, and in the chorus of boos that followed Senator McCain's heartfelt congratulations to his opponent, and in the respectful silence of the awestruck crowd in Chicago as the President-Elect put the election and the challenges ahead in an historical perspective.

Perhaps the XBox generation has a new and different visual aesthetic--some kind of post-modern reality-is-manufactured sensibility--and television producers are smart to cater to it. Or maybe those producers underestimate the powerful effect that genuine raw images can have, even on young people raised on video games. But I'm with The Guardian's Anna Pickard on this one; CNN did it because they could. It's the same misguided enthusiasm for technology that's brought us cell phones with features we can't figure out how to use and never will and never wanted in the first place.

Seems like "Yes we can" is the mantra of the day -- in more ways than one.

###

OH, YES:
You can see the CNN hologram incident on their website.

(You might have to watch a soap commercial before you see the video.)

Mark Twain Doesn't Live Here

2008-11-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

Well now it's curious so many folks have come to this humble blog in search of information about the saying, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble..."

The website statistics tell me that just yesterday Google sent ten people here (darned near a single-day record), who had typed one variation of that saying or another into the search field. (Yahoo sent a total of none, which may indicate why that company is on the skids.)

I typed the first part of the phrase into Google myself, just now, and this blog came up third on the results page. Kind of gratifying, I guess. Another blogger over at the Humanities Division at Northwest College has put a link to my "It ain't..." post on their website, and that seems to have brought some folks here, too. (To return the favor: it's here.)

I don't know what it is that fascinates so many people about a thing that Mark Twain may have -- or may not have -- said. But people in California, Illinois, British Columbia, our Nation's Capitol, England, Texas and even Vietnam demonstrated on the same day this week some curiosity about my favorite aphorism.

I've written in this space about John McCain and why the McCainines lost the election. Real important and insightful stuff, I thought. But nobody seems curious about that.

I've posted some stories that I've passed off as humor, and few people seem to give a hoot.

Somebody checked in from Durham, North Carolina, didn't see what they were looking for, and bounced away in under a second, while a devoted fan in San Francisco visited three times yesterday, looked at three pages each time, and spent all of eight minutes here -- probably looking for the exit.

One individual dropped by to find out something about Arthur C. Clarke, who I happened to mention in one post, and stuck around for 17 minutes to peruse 6 pages. This is an example of how the Internet can get you off track. Whoever that was got distracted by other things and totally forgot why he or she came into the room. I sometimes do that myself, so I understand the feeling.

If there were some way to make a buck off people's curiosity about "It ain't what you know..." I would sure like to know what it is. More than that, though, I'd like to find out why people in so many places in the world are so darned interested in it. Must be important enough to them that they spend their valuable time on Google tracking down the phrase.

Google Analytics doesn't let me know who you are, but it shows me a little bit about how visitors got here and where they hail from and even what browser they use. I wish it would give me some insight into what the heck they're doing here, what they were thinking.

So, do this for me if you'd be so kind: Leave a comment and let me know why you dropped by. What were you looking for that you did or didn't find? I won't be offended if you got here by mistake; most of my visitors probably did.

How John McCain Lost

2008-11-05T15:32:00.000-08:00

I think Senator McCain's biggest mistake--the reason he lost the election--was the way he positioned himself. (And by "he" in the following I refer not only to the man but to his campaign organization.)

Perhaps the biggest no-no in a political campaign is to allow oneself to be defined by the opposition. That didn't happen to McCain; he did it to himself.

Seems to me that many people are more influenced by the persona a candidate projects than by the candidate's stands on specific issues or his professed beliefs and values. Even specific deeds, such as McCain's ill-advised selection of his running mate, are more viewed (at least subconsciously) in the larger context of what they reveal about the general character of the man, his overall essence, and less as insights into his decision-making abilities or other specific attributes.

McCain identified himself, repeatedly and with uninhibited relish, as the underdog. I don't think he could have prevented himself from doing so. It's his nature. (Surely some psychoanalyst is working on a book about McCain's psyche and its roots, so I'll leave the scrutiny of his id and ego to the shrinks. They can speculate about the "victim syndrome" and how it relates to his ancestry, his family's early disappointment with him, his imprisonment, and all that other psychobabble rubbish.)

While "everybody loves an underdog" and we may root for them at times, most of us don't really believe that an underdog is the right choice for the "top dog." I think that view is programmed in our genes. (More cud there, with my compliments, for the shrinks to chew on.)

In what ways did he act the underdog?

-- He viciously and unfairly attacked his opponent when he might have stood proudly on his own achievements. He snarled about irrelevancies and yapped at Obama's heels--while the latter stood firm and resolute, composed and presidential.

-- He emphasized trivial, inconsequential chinks in his opponent's armor.

-- He partnered with an insubstantial running mate of trifling accomplishment and minimal intellect, who likewise yipped about petty matters--another underdog who proudly self-identified as something akin to a "pit bull."

-- He introduced us to his friends and most ardent supporters, Joe the Plumber and a mangy gang of rabid hounds, and together they gave the impression of a pack of growling mongrel misfits more suited to a kennel than the White House.

-- He appealed to the insecurities of factions of the electorate: people who feel like underdogs themselves and thought McCain's mongrels were "just like us."

-- He whined about being treated unfairly--a common tactic of frail children who are incapable of defending themselves.

-- He repeatedly raised the specter of the usual bogeymen: higher taxes, socialism, terrorism--rather like a hound barking at the wind in the trees.

-- He charged his opponent with the crime of celebrity--implying that he himself was the antithesis of a superstar, the runt of the litter.

-- He self-consciously lowered himself to a more humble plane than he deserves by constantly addressing the public as "my friends." I don't know whether he did this because of an irritating rhetorical tic or as a desperate ploy to gain acceptance, but either way the habit made him seem pathetic.

But to appear pathetic ("provoking feelings of pity") and feeble was apparently his goal. For he actually TOLD us--on many occasions and most frequently as the contest came down to the final days--that he WAS an underdog, and proud to be one.

And we listened, and we believed him, and we followed the bigger and better-bred dog.

Intelligent Selection

2008-10-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

So I dropped into the Bar and Grille a bit ago to have a pop with the guys and the place was pretty full so I had to take a stool right next to Handel Miller. Now Handle used to clerk down at Standard Plumbing and Hardware until it closed because the new U-Do-It supermart opened up and took away all their business. Handel might have gone to work there but chose instead to retire and now he spends his days at the O.K. Barber Shop talking philosophy and politics with the boys until five o-clock when he moves over to the Bar and Grille to do the same thing.

As I climbed onto a stool I raised a finger to Manny behind the bar and he nodded and picked up a glass for my drink.

"Well, Bob, how you doin'?" asked Handel.

"Well, okay I guess, Handel and how be you?"

He thought for a while and then put his hand on my knee and leaned in real close. "I figured out you was right, Bob."

I raised a skeptical eye and waited for the next shoe to drop as Manny put a cocktail napkin on the bar in front of me and sat my scotch down. "Cheers, man," he said in kind of an ironic "good luck with Handel, there, pal," kind of way.

"But," said Handel, "You was only half-right." Clunk went the shoe.

"Well, now, Handel, I am mighty glad to be batting .500 in your book, but do tell me just what it is I was right about and why only half way?"

"That E-vilution thing we was talkin' about. Remember?"

I did. Handel had said Darwin was full of it and evolution was only a theory and a bad one at that. And I had made some irreverent remarks about the flaws in the notion of intelligent design. These are things one doesn't talk about, surely not with Handel, unless one has been at the Bar and Grille for a while and had their drinks refreshed by Manny more than a couple of times. I remembered the discussion and calculated that I'd had about three, maybe four, drinks by the time Handel had got me trying to reason with him about what science is and what religion isn't and whether intelligent design was just a crock. And now Handel was back on the subject again and I was insufficiently fortified as yet to get engaged in a conversation about it. But I had no choice.

"See, what you was right about, Bob, is mutilation could of made us go from bein' monkeys to bein' men over a long lot of years."

"Mutation," I said. "Genetic mutation."

"Right. I get that. I see your point."

"Well, now that's one for me, Handel. And I believe I'll have another. Manny?"

"So I get that everything was the same itty bitty creature way back then and the genetics got all mutilated and some of them mutilations survived and they got mutilated a little bit more. And so on. And so on. All down through the vast recipes of time."

"Yeah, that's about it in a nutshell," I replied.

"So that's why it is there's you an' me sittin' here at this bar instead of us bein' a couple monkeys up a tree."

"One way to put it," I said.

"So there ain't no supreme intelligent designer workin' it all out in advance."

"Yeah. So you agree with that," I said, "But where is it I got it only half right?"

"Now, Bob, where you are wrong is that you say it was all accidental like."

It sounded to me like Handel hadn't quite got the point, but I urged him on as Manny swapped out my empty glass for a full one. "Why's that, Handel?"

"Well, you called it 'natural selection,' right?"

I nodded.

"Well that can't be no accident, see?"

I did not see.

"Look," he explained, "I pick me my five numbers and one mega number twice a week now for, what, 10 or 15 years? I make a selection, right?"

I nodded again.

"And not once -- not ONCE in all that time did I ever pick the right ones an' win the jackpot. And it ain't just me. Why all across this great State of ours there's millions of people picking their numbers twice a week. An' sometimes, like right now, weeks and weeks'll go by and not one of those millions picks the right numbers."

"Well, Handel," I said with growing patience, "the odds are against you. I've told you that more than once."

"Exactly! So if all of us, who aren't exactly dumb as doornails can't pick the right selection, then what does it take to do that?"

He waited quite some time for an answer, but I offered none.

"A super intelligent selector, that's what."

Handel drained his drink. "See, there's this supreme being -- now I ain't sayin' it's 'God' or anythin', call it what you want -- but there's this supreme being that is an intelligent selector. An' He goes, 'Well, now, I will select this here critter because it will survive and all them others won't.' See? He knows! Nine times outa ten He is right, by golly."

He turned to squint at the teevee above the bar, seeming at once very satisfied with his logic but still intently working on the problem; you could tell he was thinking pretty hard by the way he squinted. The teevee played the Manchester Dog Show because there weren't any other sports on at the time.

Then, all of a sudden, Handel had one of those Eureka! moments and his eyes bugged out and a grin came to his face. "In fact!" he said, "He is never wrong."

I took a sip and was about to say something, but Handel slipped off his stool and stood unsteadily, preparing to leave. "You show me one critter, just one, or one single vegetable on this here Earth today that did not survive." He paused and swayed and tried to keep his balance. "Can't do it, can you?"

"Well..."

"Intelligent selection." Handle cackled a little bit and began to totter toward the door. I said, "Well, now, Handel if you want to see a whole quarter acre of plants that aren't surviving, you just come on over to my back yard."

He weaved his way toward the exit and turned back in my direction. "Well, Bob, that's because you spend too much time sprayin' and not enough prayin'." And he let out a little "Hah!" as he stumbled out the door.

It's a Debate, Wink, Wink

2008-10-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

During a post-debate program on KQED's Forum last week, a caller questioned one conservative pundit's comment that Governor Sarah Palin had "expertly" avoided answering moderator Gwen Ifill's questions. "When I was on the high school debating team, if you avoided answering the question," I paraphrase the listener, "that was a negative and you would lose points! So, how-come-is-it you give her credit for 'expertly' avoiding the questions?"

What the listener failed to understand is that political "debates" are hardly the same as the kind you might have engaged in when you were in high school. They are theatrical performances in which one's ability to convey predetermined messages--irrespective of the topic at hand--is greatly prized and highly rewarded. Avoiding-the-question is an important skill for politicians and diplomats--they do it all the time. While I am no fan of Ms. Palin I give her some credit for her ability in that regard, although her execution remains a bit clumsy.

In a preview of the debate for the San Francisco Chronicle, staff writer Joe Garofoli described the techniques of Bridging, Hedging, Hooking and Flagging -- all designed "to maximize performance." None of these tactics will win points for your debating team, but they're the stuff that political jousting is made of. "Bridging," says Garofoli is "Used to avoid answering directly and pivot to one's main messages. Example: 'I understand your point. The more important issue is ... (insert key message)' or 'No. I'd like to explain ... (insert key message).'"

I doubt Palin read Garofoli's unsolicited advice ("If you're stumped, don't be obvious about steering the questions back to a safe knowledge harbor"), but she did just that several times. Natural talent, I presume.

Another thing that counts on the stump but not so much in high school debates is body language. Gestures, tics and physical appearance can win or lose points with the electorate. Nixon perspired: bad. Gore scoffed and snorted: bad. George H.W. Bush checked his watch: bad.

Both Palin and Joe Biden used gestures well last week; she with her wagging head and hypnotic eye-contact, he by cupping his hand to his ear to visualize that "I haven't heard" the difference between McCain and Bush, pounding the lectern to underscore his side's determination to end the war, and pointing a finger for emphasis each time he said, "Let me say that again..."

I have to give the advantage to Biden, though -- and not only because I find Palin frightening. Her gestures underscored her positioning as "just plain folk," which I take to mean "inadequate for the job," while his helped to articulate his commitment, sincerity and strength. Her smiles were broad, but seemed disingenuous.

And her winks! My God, those WINKS!

For a commentary on those, please see "Sarah Palin, all-American cheerleader" by Tim Kingston and Lisa Moore from this morning's Chronicle on sfgate.com. I'm not sure Sarah's eye-squinches represent "the promise of power in exchange for sex," but they sure seem manipulative to those of us who don't consider the moose-hunter from Wasilla to be a hottie.

Palin?

2008-10-03T04:38:00.000-07:00

The List

2008-09-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

I must have been quite a sight when I hobbled into the Bar and Grille the other night all scrunched over from an aching back. “Well, now, Bob,” said Pat McGinty from his perch at the end of the bar, “Aren’t you a sight, all bent over like that.”

I gave a thumbs-up to Manny behind the bar and he began to fix my drink.

“So what’s the problem with you? Got an achy back or some such?” asked Pat.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, “Damned back. I’ve been in pain all day and it’s killing me.”

“You take anything for it?” he asked.

I told him I had some pills at home and I planned to take one as soon as I got there and maybe that would do the trick. I said I thought maybe an ice pack would help.

Manny put my drink down on the bar and I took a sip as Pat frowned and shook his head. “These pills,” he said, “pretty strong, are they?”

Well they are pretty strong. I got them from a doctor in Mexico last time I was there and had a similar backache. This doctor specialized in treating everything from acne to broken bones with a laser. He offered me the option of three laser treatments at forty dollars American each or a bottle of pills at thirty for the lot. I had opted for the pills and not just because I’m so cheap. Pills I can understand, but a machine that shines invisible light to perform a miraculous cure was a bit beyond my skeptical nature.

“Pretty strong stuff,” I said, “They’ve done the job before.”

Pat shook his head again and advised me to have a bite to eat before taking a strong pill like that. “I’ve taken many a pill,” he said, “what with all the aches and pains I get on the job. And just about every one they say you got to have it with a meal. So I think you ought to have a little supper before you swallow one of those things.”

He was right, of course, and I remembered those were the Mexican doctor’s instructions, too. “I’ll do that, Dr. Pat,” I said, “Maybe I’ll drop by your wife’s café on my way home and get a sandwich to go.”

Pat thought a sandwich would be well advised, but in his opinion the right thing to eat would be the chicken tetrazzini that his wife had on special that day. “That’s a better meal for supper than a sandwich,” he said, “Not that her sandwiches aren’t good, but for supper I’d sure recommend the chicken.” He took a swallow of his beer and went on, “It’s only eight or nine bucks, so for a couple dollars more than a sandwich you get a regular meal. And it comes with French bread.”

“Well, Pat,” I said, taking out my scratch pad, “I’ll make a note of that, ‘chicken tetrazzini.’”

“Then take your pill, not before,” said Pat, draining his beer.

For his free medical advice I bought Pat another beer and told Manny I’d go again myself, not wanting the Irishman to have to drink alone. “Then I’ll put on an ice pack after the pill,” I said, “That sometimes gives me a little relief.”

We clicked our glasses and sipped our drinks. “You know,” I said, “sometimes a soak in the hot tub works, too.”

“Well,” said Pat, “I’d do the hot tub before the ice pack. Then I’d go to bed and by morning, why, you’ll probably feel just fine.”

I sure hoped so. With the wife gone for a few days I had a lot of chores to do around the house, plus my regular work. When I thought about all that, I remembered I had to feed the dog when I got home and we were a little low on kibble. “Geez,” I said, “I have to go by the market and pick up some dog food on the way home.”

“Seems like you have quite a full night ahead of you, Bob,” said Pat.

Now I am well known around my house for the lists I make of things to do. In fact it is a matter of some amusement for my wife. Every Saturday morning I jot down a list of chores for the weekend, just so I remember what has to be done. When I head to the market or the hardware store I make a list of everything I need to buy. If it isn’t on the list, it doesn’t get done or it doesn’t get bought. There’s a better chance it will if it’s on the list. Not a one hundred percent chance, mind you, but better than even.

“You’ve got that right, Pat,” I said. “Maybe I ought to write this stuff down.”

“In order,” said Pat.

“In order to what?” I asked.

“I mean, you ought to write it down in the order you need to do it. Otherwise you could take your pill before you eat or put the ice pack on before you get in the hot tub.”

He sure had a point. My list for the night was already started with the words “chicken tetrazzini” so I picked up there and added the next item: “dog food.” Then I wrote on separate lines, “eat supper, pill, hot tub, ice.”

“Now, Bob,” said Pat as he looked at my list, “you’re not going to forget to go to bed if it isn’t on your list, are you?”

I laughed as though Pat were pulling my leg, and I wrote “bed” at the bottom of the list.

“Good,” he said. “And I believe I’m ready for another beer and it’s my turn to buy so drink up.”

Manny brought us two more and asked, “What is it you two are working on over here?”

Pat explained that I had a big night ahead of me with a lot of things to do and I was making a list just so I would not forget anything.

“Good idea,” said Manny. “I see it says ‘chicken tetrazzini’ here at number one. So what is it about chicken tetrazzini?”

Well, Manny had a good point; the noun was missing a verb. “I’m going to pick some up at that Chat ‘N Chew on the way home,” I explained.

“Oh. Gotcha.” said Manny. “I just didn’t know. Kind of unclear, if you ask me. But, hey, it’s your list.”

So I squeezed in the words “pick up” before “chicken tetrazzini.”

Pat was impressed by Manny’s contribution to the effort and looked hard at the list for other possible improvements. “Dog food,” he said. “So what about the dog food? You gonna buy it, or you gonna give it to the dog?”

“Now, Pat,” I said, “That seems pretty clear; I got no dog food so I am gonna have to buy it, now aren’t I.”

“Well,” he said, “Long as you know what it means. It ain’t my list, it’s yours.” He took a long draw on his beer. “But if it was me, I’d say, ‘buy dog food.’ Just to be for sure.”

So I wrote “buy” ahead of dog food. “Is ‘eat supper’ clear enough for you fellows?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s pretty straightforward,” said Pat.

“Some of your best writing,” said Manny, “but what is this ‘pill’ thing?”

I told Manny about my bad back and how I was going to take a pill and he offered his sympathy and his opinion that, if I planned to take a pill I ought to write down ‘take’ or there might be some confusion as to whether this was something else I was supposed to buy or an instruction to myself to swallow some medicine.

“Take” went in ahead of pill.

“If you need ice, “ said Manny, “you can take that off your list here because I can give you a bag here from behind the bar.”

I told him I had plenty of ice at home and knew the recipe to make some if I should run short. “I’m going to put an ice pack on my back,” I said. “That’s what ‘ice’ is for.”

“Could a’ had me fooled,” said Manny. “But, you know, it’s your list. It’s just that…”

“Okay, Manny. You are the editor of this piece here, you and Pat, so if you say I ought to write down ‘put ice pack on back,’ then that’s what I will do.” I made the correction as suggested, but it was kind of difficult to write the words small enough to fit in, yet large enough to be legible.

Pat took some offense to my tone. “Well, Bob, we’re not tryin’ to be littie-airy critics, here, we just want to be sure you can make sense of this here list of yours when you get yourself home after a few pops here at the Bar and Grille. Just tryin’ to be helpful, you know.”

“My bad,” I said, “No offense taken and just to prove it, this one’s on me and Manny you have yourself one of those Patron’s you like.”

None of us said much for the next few minutes as Pat and I sucked on our drinks and Manny shot down his jigger of Patron and went to the other end of the bar to greet a new customer. When he came back, Manny noticed Pat’s wrinkled brow and asked what he was thinking.

“Well, you know boys,” he said, “I think we’ve got Bob here a fine list now with not too many ambiguities that could lead to major disaster.”

I was relieved, but he went on, “Not too many,” he said. “Except for this item of ‘hot tub.’”

Manny and I both leaned over the list to see what Pat was talking about.

“You see,” said Pat, “here we got another of those noun things without it’s got a verb. Is that what you call it, Bob, a ‘verb’?”

Now that Pat had pointed it out, the oversight was terribly obvious. There sat the phrase “hot tub” without the company of a single other word or phrase expressing action, existence, or occurrence. Unlike the other items on the list that had been carefully revised for clarity, ‘hot tub’ was completely without predicate.

“This will not do,” said Manny. “What is it that you’re trying to say here about the hot tub? You need to think about that, Bob, it seems to me.”

“Well, I’m going to sit in it, you crazy bastards. What do you think I’m going to do with it?”

“If that’s what you mean, Bob,” said Pat, “then why don’t you say so? You need to articulate these things. As it stands, the phrase is vague. It’s a veritable swamp of vagueness.”

I suggested that two words do not a swamp make, but Manny offered the opinion, “only as an amateur at these kinds of things, but an avid reader,” that “hot tub” by itself lacked energy and could use some “goosing-up.”

By this time I needed to go to the men’s room, so I handed my pen to Pat and said he and Manny should just have at it while I relieved myself and I’d see what they came up with.

When I came back into the bar they had moved to a table and had called some of the other expert regulars in to offer opinions on diction, syntax, and subject-predicate agreement. Dolores was fussing with her hair and defending her opinion that the passive voice was not in all cases impermissible, while Reverend Mike argued the virtues of parallel construction.

Before I reached the table I realized that my back felt much better; I was no longer hunched over and felt only a minor discomfort – not the intense pain I’d experienced all day. I put a twenty and a ten on the bar, drained my drink, crunched an ice cube, and walked happily out the door.

I never got to read the final draft of my to do list, but I’ve heard that Manny has it pinned to the wall behind the bar, and I’ll have to drop by there in the next day or two to see how the thing came out.

But first I really do have to pick up some kibble for the dog.

The Honoree

2008-08-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

So I am sitting in my office this afternoon waiting for an important phone call regarding the possibility of maybe actually getting some paying work, when the phone rings and I pick it up and this voice says, "Well, now, Mr. Kasaley..."

And of course I know that when they say "Mister" it is probably not a call I want to take and when they mispronounce my name so badly I know it is a call I will want to end as quickly as possible. But I nevertheless admitted, "Yes?"

"Mr. Kasaley," this woman says, "I am calling on behalf of Congressman So-and-So..." And I think, "Oh, boy, here it comes. How much do they want?"

"I am delighted to let you know..." And now I am very sure I want to end the call right now. "I am delighted to let you know that you have just been nominated..." Oh boy.

"...You have just been nominated by the Congressman on behalf of the Republican Party..." So I figure maybe they want to draft me up again and shoot me off to Iraq or something, but no.

"...on behalf of the Republican Party to be named as a member of the True and Solid Patriotic American Honorary Council of Honorees."

And I said, "The what?"

And she continued, "I am sure you must be thrilled and delighted with this great honor which you will be receiving in gratitude for all your many years of support of the United States of America as a true and solidly patriotic American Citizen of the private type. Right?"

"Well, now," I replied, "I am not quite sure exactly what it is you are talking about here, Missy."

And she responded with, "Well, Mr. uhhh... Kaliseyaly, you are in luck because I have here this recorded message from the Congressman which I would like to play for you and which will only take a moment of your valuable time. And then we can talk about you getting this great honor and all."

And I said, "Well, now, did the Congressman make this tape there in the prison, or did he make it before they threw him in the clink, or is he (I shudder at the thought) out on parole already?"

And she said, "Ummm.... What was that?"

And I said, "Well, never mind. But the fact is I really don't care to hear from the Congressman just now -- or ever, if you really want to know."

And she said, "Well, now Mr. uhhh... Kasiliylaly, why is that if I may ask?"

And I said, "That is because I am an anarchist."

There was a pause and I could hear some pages being flipped over on her end of the line, and then she said, "You are a what? What is that?"

I repeated that I was an anarchist and I asked her if she knew what a liberal was. She allowed as she did know what a liberal was, so what did that have to do with it? So I informed her that an anarchist is somebody who is very much more liberal than a liberal.

"So... you are a Democrat?"

"No, I am an anarchist. You see," I went on, "We anarchists don't believe in any kind of government at all. And furthermore we believe that all the Congressmen and -women that are not currently residing in a Federal Penitentiary ought to be put in one right away unless the laws of their State permit them to be shot on sight instead."

She thought about that a little while and then she said, "Well if you do not care to listen to this very nice tape recorded message I am sure the Congressman will be mighty disappointed, but perhaps we can just talk about this honor you will be getting as a nominee."

I said, "Well, now, Missy, I am not exactly experienced so much at getting any kind of honor and I don't recall ever being a nominee, so I would like to know something about what this entails. And I do have a specific question for you."

"Well, now, Mr. Klazkey, what would that question be?"

And I said, "Does this mean I have to go hunting with the Vice President?"

She said she didn't think that was a requirement. But I told her I'd appreciate it if she'd hang up and ask her supervisor -- just to be sure -- and call me back once she found out.

It Ain't What You Don't Know"

2008-07-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

I have this signature line that is appended to my posts on a writer's forum that I frequent, and it goes like this: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." That just about sums up my most important philosophy. Now, when you quote somebody it's just polite to give the author some credit. So here is the credit line that I use for that quote: "lots of people."

This afternoon a helpful member of that forum dropped me a line to point out that Mark Twain was the actual author of the aphorism I have been using in place of my own wit. But I'm not too sure my correspondent is correct.

My research has shown conclusively that Mark Twain said just about everything that has ever been said. He must have said so much that his acquaintances frequently had to ask him to "just shut up, Mark; just shut the f*** up!" I surmise that he was very boring at parties, always yammering on with some kind of folksy wisdom or other and never giving a fig for what anybody else had to say. (I am very sorry if you are a big Mark Twain fan or something, but the truth is the truth -- as Mark Twain said.)

You can be pretty sure that Samuel Clemens once said, "Pass the gravy." But that doesn't mean he was the original author of that phrase, either, under his own name or his assumed one. That's why I don't give him credit in my signature: that he deserves that credit is something (one of many things) I don't know for sure.

You will read that Twain said, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." But you won't find those words or any like them in anything he ever wrote. A friend of his, Charles Dudley Warner, an editorial writer for the Hartford, Connecticut Courant newspaper, wrote that "A well known American writer once said..." the remark. But he did not name the well-known writer so we have no idea who he was talking about and everybody just ASSUMED that Mark Twain MUST have been the guy because he was, well, a well-known author and he was known to be clever and it sure sounded like something that the guy who wrote about celebrated jumping frogs might say. And there's no proof either that Twain remarked that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer day here in My City of San Francisco.

You will also find references to Twain writing that, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." He did write that, but he was quoting the British statesman Benjamin Disraeli and took no credit for the witticism (or is it "criticism?").

Now, most folks will swear that Mark Twain is indeed the author of the line about what you know that ain't so, but I suspect none of them have taken the words to heart in the very matter of who said the thing or who deserves the credit for the saying of it.

See, Mark Twain was a writer (and a very good and very prolific one). But if you have a look at all 20,400 citations that Google will dish up for you, not a single one of them tells you WHERE or WHEN Twain uttered, wrote, or thought up this little tidbit. And that's the sort of thing that makes me just a bit suspicious about his authorship. You'd think if Twain wrote it down -- or if somebody heard him say it and reported it somewhere -- somebody would have by now gone to the trouble to find out just when and where and by what motivation he made the remark.

I am the proud owner of an entire fleet of respected scholarly books of quotations, from which I borrow ideas often and without shame. I have looked through every one of those books and, not very much to my amazement, the "what you don't know" quote appears nowhere in any of them. I must assume that the reason the editors of these weighty tomes have ignored one of the best-known witticisms of America's most renowned humorists is that they're not too sure themselves that he actually said it. They are completely mum on the matter, not even printing the saying with the note: "apocryphal."

Perhaps Twain did say or write the words, or something like them. Closest I can find is in Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar: "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." But that's not quite the same thing, is it?

In any event the sentiment of the aphorism we are talking about is certainly not original to Mark Twain. A few other people have been credited with the observation that there is more danger in our holding beliefs that aren't true than there is in outright ignorance. Better to be dumb than wrong.

No less a philosopher than Satchel Paige is said to have observed: It's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you know that just ain't so that gets you into trouble." Too many "troubles" in that version to make for a good aphorism, so Satchel Paige strikes-out once again.

And speaking of baseball, Yogi Berra has also been credited with the remark. He's one of those people that it's easy to pin weird sayings on; you can credit him with some dumb remark and folks will go, "Yeah, that sounds like ol' Yogi, alright."

As far as INTENTIONALLY funny people (that is, not Yogi Berra), the "cowboy philosopher" Will Rogers is another reputed speaker of the line that got this started but, once again, nobody's been able to find the saying in any of his works.

A lesser-known humorist and semi-contemporary of Twain named Josh Billings (whose real name was Henry Wheeler Shaw, (what is it about humorists that makes 'em want to write under assumed names?)), is credited with saying "It's not ignorance does so much damage; it's knowin' so derned much that ain't so." Now EXACTLY those words have not been found in any of Billing's/Shaw's writings but similar ideas are in his 1874 book Everybody's Friend, or Josh Billling's Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, to whit: "I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so." So... did one of them-Twain or Billings-borrow the idea from the other? Did they come up with it independently? Did each of 'em overhear it somewhere separately? Did they use the same joke book? I suppose we'll never know. And that's my point.

Maybe we'd be better off following the wisdom of Confucious: "To know is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge." Or, before him, of Socrates: "True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing." What kind of world is this when even famous dead philosophers crib stuff from one another?

Somebody once said, "Good lines become great ones when presented as the utterances of those whom we already hold in high esteem for their wit." That somebody was Barbara Mikkelson, writing recently for Snopes.com. That I know. But I don't know where she got it.

***
UPDATE: Please see this more recent post.

Too Much Sex

2008-06-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

So the other day Lizzy sees on a teevee entertainment show called "Good Morning America" that there's a whole lot of kids coming up in the latest generation that are not going around having sex and that don't intend to have sex until they are incarcerated behind the bars of marriage.

According to Lizzy, the teevee personality who talked about this bit of shocking information said some social pseudo-scientists had cleverly dubbed this cohort "Generation Pure."

I guess that's a play on the designation "Generation X" which was given to the gang of youths who were becoming socially active in the 1960s and who, according to a 1964 British study, "sleep together before they are married, don't believe in God, dislike the Queen and don't respect parents." Sounds about right, as I remember those days.

Many of my peers back then didn't believe in God, and while quite a few might have had some respect for their own parents not many thought much of parents as a species. As for the Queen of England, I suspect that was more a concern in the British Isles, but on the sleeping-together-out-of-wedlock thing, most of us, both here and abroad, did not feel it happened quite often enough.

Anyway, Lizzy's report of the teevee's report of the pseudo-scientists' report got folks down at the Bar & Grille talking about this whole sex thing and some of the patrons offered up some doubt that very many young folks had been bit by the purity bug and further surmised that the whole thing was just a bit of teevee sin-sationalism. Then one of them went so far as to raise the contrary proposition that there was just too much sex going on these days so any movement toward purity, any movement at all, was a good sign.

Kenny's big head wobbled around a bit and his walrus body slumped back with a thud against the brass rail that demarked the never-used cocktail waitress station and when everybody looked over in his direction he plopped his shot glass down, slapped his other hand on the bar and bellowed, "Too much sex!" And waited for a response.

Everybody got real quiet and checked around to see what might stand between themselves and the door, then scanned one another's faces for advice on whether this might not be a good time to go home for dinner. After a moment or two I raised my glass to Kenny and offered a loud toast, "You are right there, Kenny, boy. Here's a toast: To Much Sex!"

After a few "here-here's," the night's stool-side seminar drew to a close with some rude comments whose purpose was to prove the commentators' virility, and ultimately ended with the general agreement that teevee was mostly horse-leavings anyway but there wasn't much harm in people thinking that folks were having too much sex these days.

Well since that night I have given some thought to what little I remember of that conversation down at the Bar and Grille and, while I sure don't want to cross Kenny or any other large and inebriated people who might agree with him, I have come to the conclusion that most people don't have sex often enough.

I think whenever they are moved by the impulse people ought to just go right ahead and have some. The more the better. Just so long as they don't do it in such a place or such a manner as might bring embarrassment to observers who are not in a position to derive benefit from the act themselves. (I do make another exception regarding people who are not sufficiently mature to understand and handle the emotional consequences of their activities, but only in the case of performances involving more than one person.)

For those who don't get moved by the impulse often enough (say, less than a few times a day), there are cures for that and I believe people ought to be encouraged to seek them, use them, and get on with the getting on of it.

I've found that sex is the sort of thing that improves dramatically with practice and with a modicum of dedication to its perfection. I have read professional opinions in ladies magazines and elsewhere that support that finding. So folks should know that the doing of it can lead, with not a great deal of effort or inconvenience, to the greater enjoyment of it and, thence, to the doing of even more of it. And I think that's a very excellent idea and the perfect outcome.

Of course there are natural limits arising from conflicting human needs for sleep and food and from social and economic necessities, but heck, not many people are going to exceed those limits to the point of fornicating to death.

So just let 'em be. Let 'em at it. Far better to be giving and/or deriving physical pleasure than to be inflicting pain and suffering on others. If all those I-raqy terrorists and Palestinian suicide bombers would spend more time with their pants down maybe there wouldn't be enough hours in the day to strap on a vest-full of explosives. Or maybe they would be grinnin' so much they would not feel the kind of free-floating animosity that brings one to that kind of act. Or maybe if they had enough virgins (or otherwise) in the here and now they wouldn't consider the rumored (and most likely fictitious) rewards of martyrdom to be so darned attractive.

I say we should all go for it as much as possible and without the slightest tickle of guilt. The world would be a much better place and folks would be more relaxed and the only ones to suffer might be the pharmaceutical companies that make anti-depressants and sleeping pills. And even those outfits could just switch over to cures for erectile dysfunction so that virile men could do something more than fling footballs through tire-swings, or cures for whatever the female equivalent is. Or—during the transitional period—smelling salts for the suffering religious fundamentalists who probably get laid plenty at home or the office or behind the pulpit but faint dead away when they hear about consenting unmarried adults doing whatever it is they might do in the privacy of their own homes, cars, or recreational vehicles. Big money potential in that last one.

Just Do It! That's what I say. Do it PLENTY, and encourage all your friends to do the same, with or without your generous assistance. But if they need help, why, step up and volunteer like a real friend. Give 'em a hand, if that's the part they want. Help folks out, because believe me people just don't get enough sex and they ought to have a great deal more of it.

Now, on the other hand, what people have too much of is babies.

"Fact" Finding

2008-05-16T16:34:00.000-07:00

Here is an example of how you can find support on the Internet for virtually any belief you may hold. After an argument with my brother-in-law, with whom I share a residence, I found several articles on the important topic of our discussion: the proper way to install a roll of toilet paper.

Most of the Web "experts" declared that the proper way is the "over the top" method, supporting the B-I-L's stance on the subject. My preference though, due to years of habit, is the "under" method—the way my Mama taught me.

Undaunted, I continued researching until I landed on an article by Brian Mathis on his blog. I now consider Brian, who writes about technology, to be a renowned authority on this vital subject. And I consider myself fully vindicated, even though one site I viewed had surveyed its users and reported they preferred the "over" method by about 10:1.

Litter-ature #1

2008-05-08T14:26:00.001-07:00