In the social sciences, and even real life, unintended consequences are outcomes that are not the ones foreseen and intended by a purposeful action. There are three outcomes associated with this intractable law:
1. Unexpected benefit: A positive unexpected benefit (also referred to as luck, kismet and “it’s a damn miracle!”)
Example: You meet a roguish sort at a bar. He appears penniless, extremely charming and slightly underfed. When he empties his pockets in an attempt to gather enough moola to pay for a beer, you spot a guitar pick amongst the loose change. You are at once smitten. In spite of the alarms going off in your head you embark on a relationship with Never Gonna Be John Mayer.
The anticipated, or fully expected consequence of your action is that you will spend six months sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a damp, grungy craphole in a sketch neighborhood, eating ramen noodles at your age, and will “donate” all your earnings to the guitar player’s “career,” which you take waaaay more seriously than he does as is evidenced by the fact that you come home early one afternoon with a nice big bag of groceries and find your “project” not rehearsing or practicing his “craft,” but in bed with a stripper named Jocelyn. #Charlottemoment
An unintended benefit of your action (luck, kismet and damn miracle) would be if after six months of proving yourself to the pauper of the pick-up, the man tells you he is actually heir to a green energy fortune and now that he knows you’re not just about the money, he wishes to whisk you off to his Wyoming wind farm, nestled picturesquely in the Tetons, where you will have a horse named Rocket.
*Note: in the law of the unintended consequence, unexpected benefit has never been scientifically documented ever in the history of the world, not even once.
2. Unexpected drawback: An unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy.
Example: Monsanto develops genetically engineered corn that grows faster and bigger than real corn, and is impervious to pests. The farmers who grow the Hulk corn are delighted because their yield is humongous. Monsanto is delighted because they’re making bank selling this stuff, which is the desired effect of the policy. What could go wrong?
Since 1996 we have lost more than 90% of the Monarch butterflies on the planet thanks to Monsanto’s GMO corn and Monsanto’s other genius creation, Round-Up weed killer, which kills off milkweed, the Monarch’s main source of sustenance. Think butterflies are for the birds? The Monarch, known as the king of butterflies, is responsible for pollinating vast amounts of our plant-based foods, i.e. should this particular butterfly go permanently belly up, we will not have most veggies, fruit or soy. Think you can live on meat? Guess what your meat eats? Piggies, cattle, sheep and chickens all eat a plant-based diet.
Some might argue that the whole Monarch/milkweed/destruction of the human race was not an “unexpected drawback,” but rather the predictable result of science and nature colliding with greed and avarice. Not everyone will concede this point as many people believe science is the same as voodoo, only less credible.
An example of an unexpected drawback for those people: throwing gasoline on the Weber to get ‘er going. It’ll spark up the grill, no sweat, but adding a highly flammable petroleum product directly to a pile of charcoal and then igniting it is also an efficient way to denude one’s upper personage of hair.
Again, one might surmise that the result should not have been unexpected if only a person gave it the slightest iota of thought, but if that were really the case why would dozens of people lose eyebrows and bangs each year in gasoline-related grill mishaps? To those folks it is an unexpected drawback, usually punctuated by the words, “Oh, shit,” “I did not see that coming” and “someone call 911.”
3. Perverse result: A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution backfires). This is sometimes referred to as “being bitten on the ass.”
Example: any day now you expect your boyfriend to come clean with the Wyoming wind farm deets, but instead he informs you he is taking someone else to the social event of the summer—the marriage of his cousin to a guy who once opened for Green Day before they became famous. There will be an open bar and lobster, you’ve heard. Enraged, you go to the Tipsy Cow with your bestie and plan to drown your sorrows.
Three hours later you notice a hot guy at the end of the bar staring at you. He’s shirtless and shredded. His jeans are perfectly worn in. He has sun-kissed long blonde hair, like Brad Pitt in Troy
He buys you a drink and when things are going really well he says he has to take off—he’s got a wedding in the morning. You think, could it be? Yup. He’s related on the groom’s side to the guy who once opened for Green Day. You tell him nothing gets you out of your jeans faster than a good Wisconsin wedding. Score! You’ve got a 10AM wedding date. By 10:15 your boyfriend should be Green Day with envy. (Having regained your dignity you will then dump him.)
At ten o’clock on Saturday morning you stand on your porch in the sexiest dress you own, wearing the highest heels on earth. In the distance you hear what sounds like a Singer sewing machine chugging your way, which is immediately explained as a rusty dented maroon 1990 Chevy APV rounds the corner, belching exhaust as it comes to a stop in front of your house.
The driver does not resemble the guy you met last night. His beautiful body is now swathed in a poop brown shiny polyester double-breasted suit with melty burn marks on the lapels. His long tresses have been pulled into a double man bun that looks like something Hattie McCoy wore when the wagons rolled West and women feared bats would nest in their hair. He wears smudged glasses, cockeyed. One stem is missing.
You could run back inside and lock yourself in, but, like the gentleman he is, he has already reached over from the driver’s seat and kicked open the passenger door for you.
At the wedding, when you get out of the dust buster-shaped vehicle, which your date has parked beside the bridal party’s limo, you realize you do not know your date’s name, and he is 5′ 4″–facts you overlooked the night before because your ass never left the barstool and you had no frame of reference as to scale, plus frankly you were mesmerized by his tanned, chiseled chest. At 6’4″ in stilettos, you are in a perfect position to view the top of his man bun while he is eye-level with your breast area. None of this is lost on the boyfriend, whose date is Scarlett Johansson’s prettier twin.
You are seated at the children’s table. There is no lobster. The drinks are not free. You are humiliated and embarrassed at every turn.
Maybe you shouldn’t have elected someone, I mean elected to date someone, out of anger and frustration. The Law of Unintended Consequences will bite you on the ass every time.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately, and what lessons might be learned from the passing of a loved one. I try to remember all the advice my mom gave me over the years—some spoken and a lot that I picked up by observing her. She left enough good lessons to fill a book, which I mentioned to a friend the other day. Imagine my shock upon hearing she was reading a book called The Top Ten Things Dead People Want to Tell YOU.
I volunteer as the president of a small fine art photography organization, so I have living breathing board members, regular members and people who think someday, if I do A, B and C, they might then become members telling me stuff all day long. (Weekends and nights included.) Add to that my dad, who is the leading authority on most stuff as he reminds me constantly that he is very old and therefore very wise, various family members possessing various degrees of perspicacity, tons of friends, business associates, editors, readers, a massage therapist, medical professionals, my mom’s friends, strangers on Facebook and a waitress at our local fish fry joint who all want to tell me what to do, how to do it, why I need to do it, where to do it, with whom I should do it and what will happen if I don’t do it. And now I should add dead people to the list of folks who have something to tell me.
In a super condensed nutshell, here’s a sampling of Mike Dooley’s top ten list of items the dearly departed wish to tell us:
My eyes are rolling so far back in my head I can see the guy at the table behind me pretending to write a script at Starbucks, and all I can think is why the hell didn’t I come up with this first? (The same thought I had upon glancing for the first time at the cover of Chicken Soup for the Soul, a favorite of my dear Aunt Grace who also collected Wizard of Oz Franklin Mint plates and Shirley Temple memorabilia.)
I don’t know if dead people really want to tell us our pets are as crazy “there” as they were here, but it’s a lovely thought—Delgado and Thelma stealing hamburgers and ripping skunks in two. I’m just not 100% convinced the deceased are dying to tell us anything now that they’re gone. Given my experience, people are plenty happy to do it while they’re alive and can literally text, yell, email or phone in their advice, critiques, comments, arguments, opinions and #fakenews. Sure, you can’t talk back to someone who’s met her maker, but the dead also can’t keep arguing with you until you bang your head on the table and ask the waiter for an order of cyanide pancakes so you can be dead and not have to be told anything further by anyone, including other dead people.
Nah, I don’t think the dead have a big long list of stuff they want to tell us, unless it’s the combination to a safe that contains a few million in unmarked Benjamins, or that there was a large insurance policy they never told you about, naming you beneficiary, or most importantly, that I am actually an aristocrat with a title and land holdings in Worchesterchestshiresham. You’d hope, if they were able, that the people who precede us in death would make a sincere effort to communicate important information such as I just mentioned. Otherwise, I’m not feeling it from them.
Living people, however, sometimes have good suggestions. Here are a few I’ve collected:
1. Park inside the lines.
It is perfectly acceptable to color outside the lines, but just because you’ve got a shiny F150, or a Maserati, does not make it cool to park on an angle, taking two spots, because you don’t want your doors dinged. Even though a dead person allegedly said there is no devil or hell, I promise you there is a special place for people who take two parking spots, and it is completely uninhabitable like the Gobi desert or Flint, Michigan.
2. Go easy on the perfume and cologne.
I recently got into an empty elevator, well not exactly empty—it was filled with sweet, sweet baby Jesus oh-so-sweet Giorgio perfume. It’s eau d’ offensive when you’re not even there and I end up smelling like you for the rest of the day.
Men, same goes for you. I used to work with a man who wore a copious amount of Brut aftershave. If you used the telephone on his desk for any reason, or he used yours, the fulminating power of Brut clung to the handset like the specter of death itself, making it impossible to make a call or answer one without gacking.
3. You never need to buy paperclips.
I shouldn’t share this one with you because once you start taking my advice I will be screwed. The deal is, look down, look around, sweep up all the loose paperclips. They are everywhere. I use many paperclips daily and haven’t bought one since 1988.
4. Trust your instincts.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Go with your gut. Do not second guess yourself. I should have listened to the voice in my head when it said “don’t marry that one, for sure don’t marry that one, the mussels do smell funny, buy Apple, and go to Froedtert Hospital; they’ll know what to do.”
The voice in my head has never been wrong. The part of my brain that thinks it’s smarter than the voice in my head has rarely been right (and has been divorced twice).
We’ve been developing and sharpening our instincts in constant human evolution. Google sense and thinking “what would a Kardashian do” are relatively new tools in our quest to thrive and remain alive, and may not be as rock solid as a skill set nature itself has been honing on our behalf for the past two million years. Seriously, trust your gut.
5. Wear purple.
My mom kept this poem on the fridge for as long as I can remember.
“When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple” by Jenny Joseph
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
There will be a celebration of my mom’s life—a long life well lived, on Saturday January 14, 2017. From 2 – 4pm at the Elm Grove Women’s Club. 13885 Watertown Plank Rd, Elm Grove, WI 53122
Donations suggested to Age Related Macular Degeneration Research at the Froedtert and Medical College Eye Institute, 8701 Watertown Plank Rd, Milwaukee WI 53226
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Many of us have lost Facebook friends, real life friends, relatives and the respect of total strangers over our and/or their political beliefs. Either they’re liberals who’ve put something that is supposed to be good for us in our drinking water, or they’re conservatives who have put very bad things in the water because something has caused people to lose their damn minds. Political debate has gone from the exchange of words and ideas to nuclear fission.
People are saying stuff that is so incendiary that I go off the deep end every time my ears are open. (If you see me out somewhere and I do not respond to shouts of “PAM!” or “ANGELINA!” (seriously, I get that a lot) then tap me on the shoulder, for in all likelihood I have Beats buried deeply in my cochlea so as to prevent the mention of politics from poking the cornered wolverine in my cerebellum.
As rabidly as I believe what I believe, I realize someone with an opposing view believes what she believes just as vehemently. Nothing she tells me will change my opinion because I will not believe a word out of her mouth, and she no doubt feels exactly the same way. I say with complete candor, however, she could believe me because I get my information from a variety of credible news sources.
“How do I know if it’s fake news or real news?” you may ask. (I used to think the ultimate litmus test of B.S. was whether something I’d heard made my hair burst into flames. This no longer applies. Pretty much any day of the week you could roast marshmallows over my roots.)
If you believe American journalism and the media as a whole are corrupt, I can’t help you. I can tell you where to find the best deal on a ton of beef jerky and extra batteries for the waffle iron in your bunker. That aside, we used to be able to live by Edgar Allen Poe’s brilliant advice, “believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear,” but I don’t feel confident about those numbers at all anymore. There’s a lot of illusion going on these days. You can’t take anyone’s word for anything.
So how do we find the truth in the media? Let’s throw out the networks at the far ends of the spectrum. Don’t put all your chips on MSNBC or Fox News. Everything in between, assuming there is an actual network icon somewhere on the screen, is giving you actual news. News forgers have taken to Facebook and the internet with professional looking newsrooms and anchors who have perfect hair. They look so real! But beware. If it’s got a weird name, like One America, American News, News Today, All the Factual News You Need, TASS or al-Naba, immediately suspect everything and believe none of it.
If after spending a solid hour trying to verify something that has been presented as a fact (and you’ve managed to extinguish your hair), but you cannot find one single credible news story verifying the thing, IT IS NOT REAL. It doesn’t matter how many people have quoted it, who they are or how badly you wish for it to be true, IT IS NOT REAL. Again, bunker peeps, if you think your “news item” can’t be found because someone is editing what you can and cannot see on the internet, you’re not getting enough oxygen.
Know how they edit internet content in communist countries? They don’t allow the internet. There is no way to stop the flow of ideas, information, reality and lies available on the internet. It’s up to the individual to divine between facts, drunk uncle and wishful thinking.
There is no hope that real information, i.e. the truth, will persuade someone who opposes your ideology to come around to your way of seeing things, so if that’s the only reason you’re looking stuff up you’re wasting your time. The key benefit to knowing what’s what in this political climate is simply to reduce the amount of anxiety and fear that bubbles to the surface and threatens to bury us when someone spouts something wholly untrue, but frighteningly possible (because, you know, it’s now).
I do think people should be called on their B.S., but it would be unrealistic to think information will change opinions or behavior. When I hear there’s secret footage “they don’t want us to see” of Senator Capuchin throwing his own poop at Senator Copperhead, I think, A) well, that is odd, and B) I’m looking that shit up. Since you can’t prove a negative (such as secret footage of feces flecking does not exist), it is contingent upon the person who says the footage does exist, to prove it. Fuzzy footage that could be Nessie or Yeti does not count.
I’ve heard people spew statistics in an effort to prove the veracity of their statements. Since 9 out of 10 people make shit up on the spot, it proves nothing. All you can do is research for your own edification and sleep well because you’re basing your beliefs, to the very best of your ability, on actuality. Then sign petitions, contact your representatives or better yet, volunteer for public service yourself.
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My mom died last week. It was saddest day of my life. My mom was my rock, my best friend, a mirror into which I gazed upon my past, the person I am today, and with any luck, who I just might become.
At 4AM on October 18 my mom took her last breath in my arms. I would have expected the sky to split and time to stand still with a deafening roar. Instead, it was very quiet and small.
My cousins called my mom “tut,” short for tete, which is Czech for Aunt. My cousin Colleen arrived just a moment after my mom passed. She pressed her face to my mom’s and closed her eyes. “Oh Tut, you’ve flown away,” she said, and I have never found such solace in words before in my life. I like the idea that my mom, the essence of that great, great lady, just flew away into a perennial blue sky on a soft warm breeze.
Two days after my mom passed we learned my dad needed triple bypass heart surgery…immediately. There was no time to worry—much—and even less time to grieve my mom. Memorial services were postponed as we rallied around my dad. Although I am an only child, I say “we” because as long as I’ve been back in Wisconsin I have not been alone. My cousins excel at circling the wagons.
I was warned that open-heart surgery at his age, 88, was not a slam-dunk by any stretch. I should prepare for the worst. I could hardly breathe. This couldn’t be happening. Mom passed away Tuesday and now I was potentially looking down the barrel of a double memorial. No no no no no.
Pops went into surgery at 8:30AM and was in the ICU by noon. I was allowed to see him at 1PM. My tough old pops had a huge tube coming out of his mouth, which had been taped shut around the tube. His hands were tethered so that he wouldn’t inadvertently try to yank out the breathing tube. “Hi pops,” I said and his eyelids fluttered open. He blinked a couple of times as if to say hello.
A nurse came in and told me my dad was doing incredibly well. He was still groggy from the anesthesia and until he could stay awake and breathe on his own they needed to leave the breathing tube in. Dad shook his head back and forth, lobbying for the removal of the tube. “Not until you can stay awake and breathe on your own,” the nurse repeated before walking out. Pops immediately went back to sleep. What the heck, I figured. Let him sleep.
By 6 PM they really wanted my dad to stay awake and start breathing on his own. A nurse leaned over my dad and said loudly, directly into his ear, “We need you to stay awake for 45 minutes, Tom. Then we can pull the breathing tube.”
He blinked—they were annoyed looking blinks. “Some people like music to keep them awake. Would you like some music to keep you awake?” He nodded, and I swear I saw him roll his eyes. He glanced at me and wagged his index finger. Pops was in the house.
“Good,” the nurse chirped. “What kind of music does your dad like?”
“Oh, he LOVES Bruce Springsteen!” I told her. “Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce!” Pops began violently shaking his head from side to side. The nurse switched on a Christian rock station and set the speaker by my dad’s head. He appeared to have a mini seizure.
“Not a fan of Christian rock?” the nurse asked, crestfallen.
“He likes Sinatra,” I told her.
She found a Swing and Big Band station and walked out of the room. The Benny Goodman song that had been playing ended, and a program of Billy Holiday classics began. Pops has never been a fan of Lady Day, but I didn’t expect him to go berserk. He started to shake, his hands flapping at his sides.
“What is it, dad? Are you in pain?” he shook his head no, and then made crazy rotations with his hands, index fingers pointing out. One finger had a blood oxygen monitor attached to it, which must have signaled danger to the nurse as dad was whipping it around, because she flew into the room and straight to my dad’s side.
“What is it, Mr. Ferderbar? Are you in pain?”
“I already asked him that,” I said. Pops began breathing fast, his eyes darting from me to the nurse to the TV screen, which told us we were being treated to an hour of Billie Holiday. He flapped his hands.
“Are you having trouble breathing?” I asked. The nurse told him to calm down, that the breathing tube is uncomfortable, but you can’t choke to death. Pops rolled his eyes then began motioning with his right hand, as if he were writing.
“Get him a pen!” I shouted. The nurse handed my dad a pen and pad of paper, but with the monitor on his right index finger, and considering he was tethered at the wrists, all he could do was make swirlies and gibberish, doing most of the writing in thin air.
“Do you need to use the bathroom?” the nurse asked him, and my dad looked at me imploringly…but what was he asking?
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “Thirsty?”
“He can’t eat or drink until the breathing tube comes out,” the nurse reminded us.
“Maybe he wants to be turned,” I offered, and my dad made little fists, which he shook at me as best he could considering he couldn’t move his arms. He flung the pen across the room with a flick of his wrist, and then he began “writing” on the bed sheet with his index finger. He wrote deliberately, emphatically, precisely and…angrily?
The nurse grabbed the pen and pad and told my dad to spell out what he wanted one letter at a time. He looked relieved. The fists relaxed. He slowly drew a letter, as if we were halfwits and it was the first day of Halfwit School.
“A W, hmmm,” said the nurse, like we were playing charades. “Are you…wet?”
Dad narrowed his eye to slits, which I knew was his way of saying something very very bad, but which the nurse misinterpreted. “Warm!” she cried out, possibly expecting a prize. “You’re too warm!”
Dad went crazy. His whole body shook, his eyes rolled back in head, then he made fists that he shook in the nurse’s general direction. He drew the same letter over and over and over, as emphatically as possible. W. W. W. W. W.
“What else starts with W,” I asked aloud and red laser beams shot out of my dad’s eyes and straight into my face.
Another nurse walked in and asked whether everything was all right. All of pop’s monitors were beeping and alarms were going off left and right. He asked the other nurse how long pops had been awake. We looked at the clock. It had been 45 minutes.
Well, let’s get this breathing tube out,” he said, and then asked me to leave the room for a moment. When I was summoned to return pops was sitting up in bed.
“Oh, you look so much better,” I said. “You really scared me there.”
“It was an M,” my dad said. “For music. As in ‘change the music.’ The music that was supposed to keep me awake was putting me in a coma!”
“It looked like you were drawing a W,” I said weakly.
“It was an M!”
Pops comes home tomorrow. We’ll grieve, and laugh and share memories of my mom—a lot of good stuff that begins with the letter M.
In case you didn’t know my mom, her obituary offers a glimpse into a life very well lived. Memorials suggested to Age Related Macular Degeneration Research at the Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin Eye Institute, 8701 Watertown Plank Rd., Milwaukee, 53226
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My family has been going through a medical crisis of late and it has become impossible to find a good stretch of uninterrupted time in which to write, not to mention things don’t seem particularly funny right now. Oh, there are moments, such as when the nurse at the hospital suggested my mom watch the “relaxation channel” in her room in an effort to distract her from her pain.
The allegedly soothing station features time-lapse footage of Vancouver street scenes—we are in Milwaukee, so in and of itself this is odd—scenes so frenzied that I feel like I’m an hour late for a job interview and my armpits are on fire. The zoomy footage is intercut with shots of hammerhead sharks—hundreds of them—finning around in darkish, murky water, and multiple horrific angles of glaciers calving, no doubt thanks to global warming and the impending doom of our planet. The accompanying music is a cross between dribbling piano such as you’d find at a weirdly upbeat funeral and Guns n Roses covers performed on a harp. Ten minutes of this “relaxation” and I chewed a hole inside my cheek and my mom broke the red emergency button on the nurse-call clicker thingie as she bashed it on her tray table trying to shut off the TV.
I’m an NBW—natural born worrier. When it comes to fretting, procrastination is not in my wheelhouse. I like to avoid the rush and worry, obsess and torment myself right now. “One step at a time,” friends and family tell me. “One foot in front of the other.” When randomness strikes and I flap about in utter chaos, my inclination to plan ahead days, weeks and years is of no benefit. I make myself crazy thinking about every contingency even though there is literally no way to know what’s going to happen in an hour much less a day, week or year.
When I need to get outside my own head, oddly enough I turn to Facebook. In small digestible bites, it is mercifully distracting. Sure, I’ve had to block, unfriend and stop following countless people because of godawful political posts, but I’ve also made some lovely discoveries.
Facebook friends are banding together to find homes for animals and raise money for their care and rescue. Mahatma Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” This may be the creepiest most icky election cycle in the history of our nation, but the compassionate Americans on Facebook give me hope. I am rejuvenated by the women and men who go into high kill shelters and liberate dogs slated for euthanasia, then find foster families for them. I’m inspired by the folks who start petitions to save lions, tigers and bears, and who raise awareness so there is less suffering in the world. I applaud the efforts of the hundreds of thousands of compassionate animal lovers who seek justice for those who have no voice.
I don’t know most of the “friends” who do all this or who post about it, but I genuinely love them.
While losing myself in Facebook animal posts today I stumbled upon a poem that changed my life. The lush quality of these simple words, strung together in elegant and simply beautiful form, has altered the way I look at the future—be it immediate, or days, weeks and years out.
This poem brings me peace of mind. Should you be in need, I hope it does the same for you. Rest well, dear friends. (And rescue a dog or cat.)
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Speaking of poetry…my heartfelt congratulations to the poet laureate, the voice of a generation, the troubadour’s troubadour, Mr. Bob Dylan for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. Nice going, Zimmy!
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I’d like to know who added me to the email list for the defeated. Last week I was given reasons I must try online dating now and this week I was asked, “How low is your self esteem?” It isn’t whether I suffer from a lack of self-esteem, oh no. This survey assumes my self-esteem festers in a subterranean viper den of self-loathing. The question is how deep is my snake pit. Here is a smattering of the questions:
1. How much do you dislike yourself?
It’s hard to be objective in this situation, so I find it helpful to step back and try to see me through someone else’s eyes, preferably George Clooney’s. On a good day, if I were a recently widowed Mr. Clooney with cataracts and a sinus infection, I’d squint at me and think she’s not half bad. With a good personality and the right accessories on her arm (such as myself, George Clooney) she’d be okay.
I could live with that.
Another way to gain perspective while I’m trying to calculate how much I dislike myself is to think about those I really dislike, like Pablo Escobar, Joseph Kony and Heather Bresch, the Mylan CEO who jacked the price of the EpiPen and gave herself a gazillion dollar raise. Compared to the animus I have for those creatures, I dislike myself almost not at all, except for when I eat too many potato chips and yell at Aaron Rogers on TV.
2. How inadequate do you feel compared with others?
Which others—the people in Denmark who are thought to be the happiest folks on earth? Compared with them I don’t feel inadequate so much as aggressive. I’m competitive by nature, so the Danes just make me want to work less, play more and binge watch The Vikings. That’ll show ’em.
Who are the others then, to whom I should compare myself—celebrities who “have it all” or millions of Sub-Saharan refugees without food or clean water? I suppose I could keep it close to home and stack myself up against my next-door neighbor, but how do I know she isn’t battling mental disease, a broken heart or cancer? She may have won the lottery, bought a yacht and written this decade’s Harry Potter, but I sometimes laugh so hard tears roll down my face, and I’ve never seen her do that.
A better question than ‘how inadequate do you feel compared with others’ is ‘why the f*ck are you comparing yourself to anyone else, snowflake?’ Knock it off already.
3. How difficult is it for you to express yourself in company?
Like where, in an Apple Store overrun with customers, when I yell “ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?!” as the clipboard guy tells me I am 87th in line for an appointment with a genius, it’s 9:03 in the morning and the store’s only been open for three minutes?
Or does the question refer to something less shrieky, such as making a suggestion in a business meeting, drawing personal boundaries when someone steps on my rights, or sticking up for myself when people are rude and inappropriate?
Like a lot of you, I always have the absolutely perfect comment, comeback, retort and clever bon mot for every awkward situation—an hour after it would have been perfect to say it—usually while I’m driving home with the radio on.
The rest of the time I use little tricks to overcome fear, uneasiness and anxiety when I need to express myself in front of others:
*I think ahead thirty years and ask myself whether I will even remember this moment, and if I do, which will I regret more, having stood up for myself or having remained silent?
*I consider the worst that is likely to happen. It is rare for anyone to jump up, point at a person and say, “That is the stupidest idea ever!” What do we fear then? We are afraid of what people will think. Holy smokes, there is no way to control that, and better yet, there is no way to really know what another human has rattling around in his brain.
Example: Kreckel in HR may look like he wants to throw personnel files at you for suggesting Casual Fridays and flex-hours, when in reality he is wondering whether the people at One-Hour Martinizing think it’s weird he has a human-sized squirrel costume dry cleaned twice a week.
*I picture Kreckel in a squirrel suit.
4. How much do other people tend to dislike you?
Shit tons, of course. You can’t go around exuding self-confidence in your car on the way home from a sales meeting or boast to your cat you have just made a perfect grilled cheese sandwich and not expect there are going be haters.
The thing to remember is that it really has nothing to do with you or me, and everything to do with them. Why on earth would the Swedes despise the Danes when the Danish are the chillest people on the globe? One’s got killer meatballs and massages while the other does world-class pastry. They’re all beautiful, speak at least five languages and excel at math, so what’s the beef? The Danes are too quiet on public transport. Seriously. It’s a real thing.
If people can boo an entire nation for not being rambunctious dolts on a train, what chance do you and I have? Unless we are flaming a-holes who go around smacking people with trout, stealing their lunch money and financially raping Americans who are deadly allergic to bee stings and peanuts, chances are there is nothing we can do to alter whether, or how much, anyone dislikes us.
5. If you do badly at something, do you believe it’s all your fault?
Who should I blame if I can’t parallel park for shit, sink a 40-foot putt to save my soul or style my hair to look like it does when the hair stylist does it? Is Ford at fault when I roll up onto the curb? Are the folks at Titleist responsible for every six-putt? Does David at Hive Salon intentionally arrange my tresses to look like a million bucks knowing full well I will never as long as I live be able to replicate it? (Yeah, he does. I am so onto you, David.)
The question itself mitigates personal responsibility, and suggests instead that we are all just perfect and wonderful, and if we fail at something it cannot possibly be our own fault. But if that were true, then who’s to blame for failure? It doesn’t just happen, like shit, or jowls.
Several years ago when I was a freelance producer for an ad agency in Los Angeles, a young account executive screwed up a massive list of telephone numbers that were supposed to match 100 commercials I was editing. When I caught the mistake and realized it was going to put the agency tens of thousands over budget, my first thought was to devise a plan whereby we could work into the wee hours and over the weekend, something, anything, to make up for the mistake and not cost the company additional money. The account executive had another idea.
“Who can I blame?” she asked as innocently as a newborn lamb that can talk.
Self-esteem? It’s a soul-killer. Give me integrity any day, snowflake.
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An article entitled 8 Reasons to Try Online Dating Now appeared in my inbox today. If you’ve known me for ten minutes, or at any time during the 20 years I lived in Los Angeles, you squeal with sick delight at the thought of Pam Ferderbar + online dating.
I know dozens of you have met your soul mate online, and I salute you. I am not salute-worthy. Following are the alleged reasons I should try online dating now, and my first hand justifications for rejecting those reasons.
1. Expand your circles.
The assumption the authors make is that without online dating we would be stuck associating only with coworkers, friends, family and people we meet at a bar.
My coworkers, friends, family and even the pirates I meet at bars do not come close to the level of quirkiness (i.e. mental illness) that I have “enjoyed” in my online dating forays.
EX: A man who described himself as being “tanned and athletic” showed up for our brunch date the human equivalent of a raison; wearing cut off short shorts, flip-flops and half his teeth. He hadn’t mentioned an eating disorder in his online profile, so I was unprepared for the surgical precision with which he cut an omelet and toast into perfectly rectangular “soldiers”—his word, stacked them and then placed a napkin over his head, behind which he consumed the “soldiers.”
When the check arrived it was revealed that he had left his wallet in his other Daisy Dukes, and also did not consider a 20% tip to be adequate.
As I excused myself to go to the ladies room, where I assured him there was an ATM from which I could extract additional tip funds, he asked if after breakfast I’d like to go to the King’s Road Park in West Hollywood to make out, assuring me, “It has lots of secluded areas.”
I suggested he wait five minutes and then get the shovel, duct tape and latex gloves out of his trunk and wait for me in the parking lot. When he covered his face with his napkin so as to resume brunch, I fled through the kitchen.
2. Practice the art of the first date.
The authors remind us that we should have a practice job interview before the real deal, so why not hit the ol’ batting cage of dating, as well? For starters, potential employers have something I potentially want, namely—a job.
Oh, I might be interested to learn my online date considers a parole officer his best friend, has a very nice collection of human femurs and was once mistaken for Danny Trejo, but I don’t think my social skills in these situations require any extra sharpening. A cockeyed smile accompanied by the hair on the back of my neck standing on end happens instinctively when any person holds forth on the hobby of human trophy collecting.
3. Learn more about yourself.
The article says online dating helps us define what we’re looking for in a partner. If by that they mean online dating helps to illustrate in the most concrete way possible what I do not want in a partner, then right on. Woot!—online dating.
Some things I do not want, that I never would have imagined were even a thing, were it not for online dating, include but are not limited to:
- human trophy collecting
- men who require their food be pre-chewed
- men whose first words upon meeting me are “you do not have a submissive bone in your body”
- men who are lesbians (Not LGBTQ people, I’m talking about men who have no desire to be a woman in any regard whatsoever except for the part about having sex with women, and feel the need to come up with a clever way to tell me that because, who knew?)
- Italian billionaires who need to borrow $1000
4. Take control of the dating process.
The advisors assert online dating gives people a leg up in terms of who, how, when and where we date. My dating process begins with a phone tree.
- I text my friend Sheryl with the date’s coordinates and ETA half an hour before the date. Sheryl will then apprise whichever friend lives closest to the target location and that person shifts into standby mode.
- When my date pulls up I snap a pic of his license plate and text to Sheryl, who then relays the info to Beverly, a veteran law enforcement figure who subsequently runs the plates.
- Once inside the restaurant or coffee place I ask my online date to hold the day’s newspaper with the date visible, stand beside a door (to indicate relative height), and smile for the camera. I then have fifteen minutes to text the pic to Sheryl. If possible I am to include a snapshot of the guy’s driver license.
- If I miss any deadlines the ladies launch the phone tree action plan, deploying someone to my last known location. Mina puts on a pot of coffee and bakes a nice coffee cake while Susan commences printing flyers. Sheryl heads over to my house to let the dogs out then they convene at Minas because that is where the food is.
Assuming I haven’t been murdered or bored to death, I join the girls as soon as my date mentions “hard time,” “mistaken identity” or that he is the Fruit of the Loom leaf.
5. Don’t break the bank.
The folks with “8 reasons” asked me to think of all the nights I was at the bar buying drinks and hoping to meet the right person, then went on to assert I could go online for a fraction of the cost. Ha.
If I sense a diversion will be necessary so that I can run out a back door while my date is distracted by a small fire or celebrity sighting (“Hey, is that Danny Trejo?!”), I insist upon buying the coffee, lunch or dinner.
One time, at Peet’s Coffee and Tea, as I reached for my bag, my date became incensed that “a lady” would dream of paying for her own coffee on a first date. (I was absolutely positive there would not be a second date when he mentioned his mad taxidermy skills as we waited to order.)
We drank our coffee and he asked when he could see me again. Rather than my usual m.o., which would be to say, “Just call me,” and then never answer the phone or return his calls, I decided to put on my big girl pants.
I began, “You are a very nice animal stuffer, but I don’t think we have any chemistry and we should probably just…” He cut me off and berated me. “You’re nothing special! You shouldn’t have let me pay for your meal! You’re one of those meal bandits!”
I have heard of them—women who use first dates as their personal meal plans, but I hardly think an iced latte places me in their dubious company. Given the brow beating, I wish I’d ordered a scone and a pound of coffee to take home.
6. Screen for what you’re looking for.
The article’s authors tell us we can screen for religious preferences, politics, height and even eye color.
Yeah, sure, I can check the boxes for a 6’2” Scandahoovian Lutefisk chef with blue eyes, blonde hair and a job with Greenpeace, but apparently there are invisible boxes I’m also checking. Boxes such as multiple personality disorder, fondness for stretchy, revealing pants along with an aversion to underpants, women hater, and dude who keeps his dead mother in the basement.
7. Have fun!
The writers tell us dating doesn’t have to be a drag. It can be fun looking at profiles and entertaining the possibility of meeting someone wonderful. Know what else is fun? Looking at villas for sale in the south of France, or an entire cook book dedicated to savory soufflés.
I can entertain the possibility that I will one day be queen of the Cote d’ Azur and bake the world’s fluffiest egg dish wearing a bikini and tiara, but I’m frankly better off going to Mina’s for coffee cake in my sweats.
8. Why not?
(See numbers one through seven.)
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Marta and Helen.
My Aunt Marta, my mom’s beloved sister and the mother of my four incredible cousins, passed away yesterday. She was 87 and had suffered with late stage Alzheimer’s for a couple of years. Even so, she was always sweet, smiling, loving and gentle.
My cousin Kyle looked after Marta for many years, but was 110% attentive these past two, while the disease robbed her of so much. He never complained. He regarded it as an honor and a gift to do so. They were lucky to have had each other. Dying is an intimate sacrament, whether it takes place quickly or over the course of years.
Looking back at my childhood relationship with Marta, I recall how much fun she was. No matter what was happening in her life, which we learned later as adults wasn’t always rainbows and moon beams, she was joyful around the children—her four and me. I cannot remember young Marta, model-beautiful like Grace Kelly, without a broad smile across her lovely face.
We sat around at my cousin Melanie’s last night, reminiscing, crying, laughing and sharing. We’re all adults, some with children, one with a grandchild, and we’ve been through the wars—bloodied, battered and resilient. We’ve cried on each other’s shoulders and been there to listen when life steamrolled a dream or destroyed what we’d planned.
Last night each of us recalled a time, or many times, we’d given in to our worries, unsure of how to proceed, unsure we’d even survive. When I turned to Marta for advice or just an ear, she would give me a big hug and say, “It’ll all work out, Pammer.” And it always did.
I wonder now whether Marta had some preternatural ability to see the future, or if it was just strong conviction, like, if I believe hard enough that things will be okay for Pam, then things will be okay for Pam. I wish I had that gift/magic/virtue. It would be a very good thing to be able to tell someone who was hurting, afraid, lonely or desperate, with a conviction so strong as to make it believable and real, “Hey, it’s gonna work out just fine.”
Of her many virtues, one especially near and dear to my heart was Marta’s innermost desire to see other people happy. First and foremost came her children, after that it was the rest of the world, from family and friends to total strangers. Marta felt things deeply, and wherever it is that joy, happiness and zen come from, Marta possessed an endless font and was willing to share it every chance she got.
People have been writing and calling my cousins to say what a tremendous impact Marta had on their lives. Some say she was more “mom” than their own mothers. She was my second mom—the person I could trust with my secrets when I couldn’t talk to my own mother. She never let me down. She never judged. She never ratted me out. “It’ll all work out, Pammer.” And it always did.
Marta and my mom grew up very poor, the children of a Czech immigrant whose husband died when the girls were very small. Grandma worked several jobs to make ends meet, so it was literally the girls against the world. They leaned on each other, carried each other and supported each other without question for 87 years. My mom feels like she’s lost a part of herself—knowing Marta and their relationship, she likely feels it was the best part. Marta was like that.
In her eyes, her children could do no wrong, yet they all worked hard to please her because “mom’s smile” was a reminder of all they did right. What a gift to your children—unconditional love and acceptance, but it didn’t end there. It extended to anyone who knew Marta. Being a light, she only saw the light in people. Being love—that’s what she beheld.
I’d like to be that way; uncritical, nonjudgmental, radiating light without cynicism or question. How would that make people feel, not so much about me, but about themselves? I know I felt wrapped in approval—a state of grace that made me want to do better/be better—when Marta talked with me about deep things, important things, silly things and things I can’t even remember any more.
When I am gone, will I have left a mark as indelible and holy as Marta has left on the people who remain behind? It is the most divine, uncorrupt ambition I can imagine—to open my eyes and heart to the light inside of people, to refuse to lose focus in their darkness. I don’t think it was an effort for Marta. It seemed to just be there, natural—always on the surface. But it’s worth emulating because she made people happy, and at the end of the day what could be better than that?
We are grieving, sorrowful and slightly lost right now; a rudder gone missing with the wind coming up. “It’ll all work out, Pammer.” Not today it won’t.
Please support the Alzheimer’s Association.
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Seriously. I am getting so old (or the news is getting so bad) that the mere act of reading the newspaper causes me to hear my blood pressure. Literally. The other day I was reading about EpiPen and it sounded like the Quicksilver Big Wave Invitational in my head.
Proxy filings, which are the papers submitted to shareholders before an annual stockholder meeting, show that from 2007 to 2015, Mylan (manufacturers of EpiPen) CEO Heather Bresch’s annual pay went from $2,453,456 to $18,931,068. Let me do the math for you. That’s a 671% increase. During that same time the company raised the price of an EpiPen from about $55 to $320, a 461% bump.
Apparently, more and more people require the life saving medication in the EpiPen, so really, what better time to jack the price than when more and more people on the very verge of death need your product, and your CEO can’t make ends meet on $2.5 million a year? Does it sound like the breakers at Waimea between your ears? It should.
I haven’t forgotten that derpy piece of doo Martin Schkreli and I hope you haven’t either. When he bought the license for Daraprim in 2015, an antiparasitic medication that allows millions of people with compromised immune systems not to die from certain common infections, the parasite CEO jacked the price 5,556% (from $13.50 per tablet to $750.00).
What I don’t remember from the media explosion surrounding the Daraprim price hike was that in 2014—just one year earlier—Schkreli’s company acquired the rights to the drug Thiola, which is used to treat the rare disease cystinuria. Before we tell ourselves, so what? Rare disease = who cares, consider this:
Schkreli raised the price of a single pill from $1.50 to $30. Are you sitting? Patients must take 10 to 15 pills per day. Because cystinuria is rare and relatively unknown, nobody paid much attention to what Schkreli was up to, except of course people whose daily meds went from $22.50 a day, or $657 per month, to $450 per day, which is $13,500 a month or $162,000 per year. (Bear in mind this genetic disease produces “stones” in the bladder, urethra and kidneys, which any medical professional will tell you is ten times more painful than childbirth. Thiola prevents the stones from forming.)
Schkreli should have been dragged into the spotlight then and publically flogged and smeared with poop like he was over the $750 Daraprim pill, but we let him and thousands of similar reprobate CEOs slither into the one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent in the conscience-free zone known as corporate profits.
When we talk about numbers so high they cause altitude sickness, it occurs to me that the scum perpetrating these price ‘improvements’ on behalf of the shareholders are still people…ish. I suppose it is possible that Schkreli was born without a mother—a slimy embryo festering beneath a rock, which then crawled out under the cover of night and hatched in a boardroom full of vultures who crowned him King A-hole.
Unconscionable greed has become all too common. Like quietly gaining an ounce here and there until you wake up one day and can’t get your ass into your jeans, as long as corporate gluttony doesn’t personally cost us a new pair of True Religions, we let it slide. But we all know someone with an allergy so devastating they need to carry an EpiPen, and now we’re all lit up over a lil 461% price hike.
I have a theory. Shocker alert, I know.
Normal humans experience a harsh, unfavorable reaction to greed at an early age, which colors the way in which we behave toward our fellow man and the world in general. Or maybe we are just born with a conscience. Either way, the following story illustrates a life lesson I learned at the age of 8, about gluttony, greed and guilt.
When I was little we lived with my grandma. Grandma Rose came from Czechoslovakia, where they apparently lived on wild mushrooms and butter cookies. Grandma’s sister Josie sent wild mushrooms from the old country disguised as gaily-wrapped gifts to circumvent the scrutiny of U.S. Customs, which drove my dad insane.
“You have to tell her to stop sending that crap! Who knows what’s in those mushrooms?! She could be sending a bug that wipes out the nation’s entire food source!” My pops is prone to wild hyperbole, but I didn’t know it at the time. I just used it as an excuse not to eat the sautéed shrooms that Grams cooked up right after the “birthday presents” arrived in the mail.
Gram’s butter cookies were another story. I would have crawled over my dead grandma to get at those tender morsels. I suspect now she incorporated some form of Czech crack cocaine into her recipe. They were irresistible to me, so much so, in fact, that they had to be hidden. But I was no ordinary child. I was a super sleuth when it came to those addictive delicacies.
One day, walking home from school, when I was maybe five or six blocks away, I smelled butter cookies. I’m sure I was quite the vision, bloobing down the street (I wasn’t, uh, slender) with drool spattering off my face like a Basset hound.
When I got home my mom and grandma were in the back yard hanging laundry, and the house was mine to turn upside down.
Grandma lived upstairs in a converted attic apartment, and that is where the baking and subsequent hiding had usually been done. I excavated the usual spots—under the bed, beneath the linens in the linen closet and behind the sofa—nada.
Taking a great breath, I stood before the door to the furnace room. As the apartment was a converted attic, rooms in the four corners had sloping ceilings where the roof met the floor. The furnace room was one such claustrophobic place. In addition, having come from the old country where apparently people had use at some point in their lives for balls of twine, scraps of soap, piles of newspapers and heaps of “recksis,” which is what Grams called rags, the furnace room was a tidy but formidable collection of all things horrifying.
The creepiest thing was the furnace itself. It looked like the kind of contraption you’d be asked to crawl inside by a witch, and then cooked. It was a sick green, all big clanky metal parts, and it seemed to breathe and have eyes. But there were butter cookies in there. I could feel it.
I gripped the doorknob and went in. I pulled the string for the light bulb, tried not to look into the jaws of the green demon in the middle of the room, and I engaged my highly developed sense of smell. I couldn’t tell—the rags, soap, newspapers and furnace oil confused my olfactory function. This mission was going to be strictly visual ops.
There was nothing under the newspapers or rags. I took a deep breath and looked under the furnace—nothing. I will say it was spotless in there; not a dust bunny or speck of lint. Then I saw it—a cookie tin wedged waaaaaaaaaay in the corner, where the roof met the floor.
I dropped to my belly and crawled forth like a soldier making her way under barbed wire. Trouble was, I wasn’t svelte like most soldiers, and my belly prevented me, by about five inches, from reaching the damn thing. Grams was skinny like an Eastern European beanpole, so stashing something back there wouldn’t have been a challenge for her.
I used my toes to propel me forward, burrowing and scratching like a truffle-hunting swine until inch by excruciating inch I finally was able to snatch the shiny metal box. In a reverse thrust sort of maneuver I used my tippy toes to de-wedgify myself enough to sit upright and rip the blessed lid off. I was drooling and could almost taste the first cookie when an insect the size of pterodactyl flew out. The box was filled with Czechoslovakian forest mushrooms.
The things was so frickin’ huge it created a draft as it swooped past me.
“RAAAAWWWWHHH!” it screeched as I grabbed a broom with which I had hoped to kill it, but it flew out the door to the airing porch, and was gone. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t swallow. There would be no crops. We would have no food. I had just unleashed Armageddon on West Allis, Wisconsin and possibly all of North America.
That night at dinner I was unable to eat. Having never missed a meal in my entire life, my folks noticed the untouched food on my plate. I’d also never been speechless and was usually a chatty Cathy. Not this night. I stared dumbly at my smoked pork butt with burnt lima beans, a staple in our house, and I envisioned a world without lima beans. One would think that might have brightened my outlook, but when you ain’t got lima beans, you ain’t got any beans. Armageddon.
Did you find the butter cookies?” my mom asked, her voice oozing suspicion. I looked at her with great cow eyes and shook my head. “Then why aren’t you eating your dinner?”
My great cow eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t keep the horrible secret another second. “Daddy! We’re all going to starve! I opened a box in the furnace room and it was full of mushrooms and a huge bug flew out and got away. Call the police. I am ready to die for my crime!”
My parents were silent. Then my dad burst out laughing. It had been a sham, his predictions about pestilence and the demise of our crops. My dad is a law-abiding citizen and it drove him crazy that no one was doing the “right” thing by declaring those packages of mushrooms to U.S. Customs. There was no Armageddon. The police weren’t going to haul us to jail. My pops had made it all up. It was bullshit.
I learned two things that night. #1, Gluttony and greed are bad and should be avoided at all times. And #2, All warnings to the contrary, drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll were going to be very, very good.
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I recently wrote about the misappropriation of the term “passionate about” and how it makes my head spin. Today I’m losing my marbles over the use of “authentic.” Not as in “authentic Latvian folk music” or “authentic Louis Vuitton at discount prices.” No, this authentic refers to a human being’s persona, as in “the candidate is not authentic.” Naturally, I have a theory.
I just saw an ad for an “authentic birth center” in Milwaukee. I believe politicians come into this world across town at a “counterfeit birth center” where they pop out of the cabbage patch as soulless photo ops with teleprompters and pricy hair cuts.
Authentic is an adjective meaning “of undisputed origin; genuine, real, true, veritable, legitimate, lawful, legal, valid.” Unless a human being is a hologram, or from Denmark, how is he or she not authentic? (Seriously. Every study shows Danes are the happiest people on earth. They’re all 6’ 4″, blonde and gorgeous. They live on pastry. Human? Hardly.)
While I could easily rattle off a few dozen people whom I would describe as fakes, I must play by my own rules and should instead say that their breasts, hair, lips, suntans and personalities are artificial, but they are most likely people. (One could argue that if a certain percentage of the body is composed of or covered in petroleum products then said subject is not in fact “real,” but are mannequins with gallbladders and endoskeletons.)
In this election cycle we hear a lot from all camps about the “authenticity” issue. Why can’t we say what it really is—believability (or lack thereof)? When we say a candidate is not authentic we are really saying he or she has not convinced us that what he or she is spouting is in fact what he or she truly believes.
I firmly believe we will never know what politicians really believe because they regurgitate information fed to them by mannequins with endoskeletons called pollsters, who have collected data about what we believe…or do we? I don’t know about you, but I take great joy in answering political questionnaires with my own brand of “authenticity.”
EX: Do you think we should build a big wall between Mexico and the United States?
My answer: Peas!
If enough of us did this, then one day during a debate when Megan Kelly asked the candidates their position on immigration, one of them would launch into a blustery harangue on the need for Americans, real Americans, to keep American peas in American pods before our taco salads turn Asian. Then the other candidate would read a wonderfully inclusive recipe that calls for not only American peas and Chinese pea pods but also snow peas, split peas, chickpeas and dude peas—all the peas Wall Street can buy. Then Bernie Sanders would remind us that many Americans can’t afford peas at all.
The other day a certain “news” person (an otherwise unemployable car show model) said of one candidate, “He is so authentic.” In other words, really real. Really? And he went on to say the candidate had also found a way of remaining relevant, like a Buick.
Politicians (and sometimes even people) practice relevant authenticity—an act of “keeping’ it real” when it is advantageous or fitting to do so, i.e. when others are watching. Their actual personalities and beliefs are completely unknown, like the shape of the universe, or why chocolate and wine makes women less likely than men to start a war.
Want to be relevant (appropriate to the purpose) and authentic (genuine)? Stop using the words relevant and authentic to describe yourselves. You’re like a bank robber with a pair of L’eggs over his head concealing his true identity.
I might buy a Buick. And I might even vote for a person who said, “You’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you, but…”
I would be thrilled if people stopped hijacking perfectly good adjectives and turning them into pantyhose used in the commission of a criminal enterprise—*politics.
*’cept for Bernie. Dude is both relevant and authentic as hell.
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