The Raven

Friday, January 3, 2003

Night Patrol

Over at Scott Rosenberg's page today there's a link to an Arts & Letters Daily article by Philip Pullman on the subject of writing and responsibility and a couple of passages were exceptionally noteworthy.

There's fast-food language, and there's caviar language; one of the things adults need to do for children is to introduce them to the pleasures of the subtle and...let them see us enjoying it, and then forbid them to touch it, on the grounds that their minds aren't ready to cope with it, it's too strong, it'll drive them mad with strange and uncontrollable desires.

Now that shows an excellent grasp of juvenile psychology, doesn't it. When I was growing up, our home was filled with books, hundreds of hardbacks with dust jackets, leatherbound tomes inscribed in colored relief, and hundreds more in paperback. I'm not sure if I ever thanked my parents for constructing such a magnificent library and if I haven't, then I do now. Unlike Pullman's suggestion, however, they never blocked my access to anything I pulled off a shelf, nor did they express approval for my reading what I'd selected. That's what I'd like to add here: It may also be effective to be somewhat distant about reading, demonstrating to children that accessing literature is as natural and unexceptional as having dinner.

It seems as if we've come to regard serious reading as a remarkable skill, like rock-climbing, that should be rewarded with a standing ovation: "Thank God you're reading and not watching television!" That message is likely to have the wrong effect.

Here's another observation that gave me pause:

It feels as if the story, before it's even taken the form of words, before it has any characters or any incidents clearly revealed, when it's just a thought, just the most evanescent little wisp of a thing—as if it's come to us and knocked at our door, or just been left on our doorstep. Of course we have to look after it. What else could we do?

Perhaps this is why I tend to become unbearably snappish when I'm writing. I'm trying to catch a nuance, the vaguest suggestion of an idea, and if can just find the right words to capture it I can bring it to life. That's when the telemarketer calls, or the spouse pops in with a question about vacation plans, and it's all I can do not to rip my hair screaming, "You killed it! You bloody well killed the damned thing!"

A Word from Our Sponsors

I'd like to take a moment and thank all the wonderful writers with wit and verve who've given us inspiration and whose work we read daily. They're those folks over on the right.

Life on Earth - Giles is the best of us. Warning: avoid holding hot drinks while reading unless you like cleaning your keyboard with Q-tips.

Tenorman - This guy goes places. Deep places. He's also a Salonblogs Founding Father. All bow.

Prentiss Riddle - It's a blog for people who like language. He won't blogroll me because I'm not academic enough. I'll get the cheap bastard someday, and when the quiet dogs come for you, Prentiss, it'll be too late. Run, boy. Run!

Rayne Today - She's a Renaissance woman, and I pity the fool who makes the mistake of underestimating her. Oh, and did I mention she's a force of nature?

Andrew Bayer - Good when he's not on basketball. Has a sharp eye for the breaking stuff.

Gentleman George - Destined to win the National Book Award. Pure brilliance. Worth studying if you want to improve your work.

Ken Dow - Posts infrequently, but always interestingly. Eh?

Daniel Dolinov - Wordsmith, language maven, philospher. "Reflections" is one of those blogs that you can read in the morning and then think about all day.

Secular Blasphemy - Jan Da Man. Hard to scoop him.

Virtual Occoquan - All editors are born. And Mark's a writer, too. Life is so strange.

No Code - Always gripping reading, and totally unpredictable. He's driving a literary ambulance with the lights and siren on.

Emphasis Added - For the smart set.

Kriselda Jarnsaxa - If you like the Raven, you'll like Kriselda.

Amanda Brightwell - Sassy.

The Barbaric Yawp - Pro writer. 'Nuff said.

Paul Hinrichs - I like his work, but I can't figure it out. He's...growing a cult of mushrooms and acting as their God while he...crafts exquisite cuisine and engages in witty punditry. Maybe.

The Raving Independent - Our newest entry, Catnmus is one of those political blogs with one important difference: It's interesting.

And now if you'll excuse me, it's time to change into Scotchman!

10:09:06 PM

Information Is Power: Part Two

Concluding this morning's eye-beam are a few more stories on the same theme of data over and under the waterline. The first one, by far, is the most troubling.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

What makes a nice Calypso song doesn't add up to good government. We're not exactly sure why the Bush administration has quietly killed off a Labor Department program that dished up stats on mass corporate lay-offs, but the hard-hit folks over at the Bureau of Labor Statistics have a hunch that it had something to do with the fact that the data were not looking good. So the White House shut off the program's funding.

No doubt as intended, the announcement slipped by virtually unnoticed. Even state officials were surprised to learn of the demise of what they called an important, if downbeat, barometer of the nation's economy.

The message going out to government agencies that report on economic indicators is now "If you've got news, better make it good news."

According to the bureau's final monthly report, U.S. employers initiated 2,150 mass layoffs in November, affecting 240,028 workers. A mass layoff is defined as any firing involving at least 50 people.

How'd we do in December, you ask? They've decided that you don't need to know that.

Sweating the Small Stuff

Scaling down a bit, we notice that sometimes it's the little details that'll getcha. In this story, titled "Plumber may face charges in death," it appears that a Detroit man ran over a a Sterling Heights woman on Christmas Eve with his cargo van, killing her. Although this was purely an accident, we're talking manslaughter charges because the driver's vision was obscured by a "Scooby-Doo head, pine-tree air freshener, and a large wool hat on the van's dashboard."

We'd like to take this moment to remind America's drivers that a windshield should not look like the back of a teenager's closet. You start piling stuff up there—yes you with the fuzzy dice, mardi gras beads, Burger King cups, bobble-head dolls, parking passes, stickers, decals—somebody could get hurt.

Sixes and Sevins

In Pontiac City, Michigan, a new nightclub has been ordered by city officials to change its name. Turns out the town fathers weren't all that happy to have a gentlemen's entertainment joint named "Sin" in their downtown district, and requested Sin's management team to come up with something else. They've compromised with "Sevin," which is supposed to stand for the Seven Deadly Sins.

James Maceroni, a manager at the club, said the owners were surprised and disappointed by the request but "we decided to work with the city instead of fighting over the name...We thought it was a neat name for a nightclub. We didn't mean it in a negative sense."

No, they didn't mean "Sin" in the bad way, they meant it in the...OK, somebody help me out here. The club is all set to offer fetish shows, bikini showers, overpriced drinks, and doesn't sound sinful at all. Stupid, maybe.

More Stuff to Worry About

You never go wrong being suspicious about who has your information, but generally speaking you trust your accountant. Oops—that was a mistake if you used the White Plains branch of H&R Block. Customers thought they were getting their taxes prepared, and wound up being victims of identity theft. Here's postal inspector William Kezer:

Mr. Kezer said the four suspects used customers' personal information to obtain credit cards and then make purchases and withdrawals from A.T.M.'s with them.

He went on to note the severity of this fraud, since the victims in question weren't being careless or falling prey to a scam—they were simply trusting H&R Block to do its business with them. Moral of the story: Go back to being suspicious of everybody.

I went to them a few years ago when my taxes were starting to get complicated, and wasn't very impressed. They got all these posters hanging up with smiling people sitting on beach chairs, sipping long drinks and grinning, "Thanks, H&R Block!" I was expecting some kind of anal-retentive accountant who was going to fight and get me a refund or something. Instead, I got a temp-worker running a copy of Turbo Tax who told me I owe Uncle Sam three large, and that'll be $250 thankyouverymuch. But that's a rant for another day.

3:16:25 PM

Information Is Power

That's our recurring thread through this morning's lineup of stories. In some cases, people want data. In others, they'd prefer to hide it from you—let's find out why.

DWPC

That would be "Driving While Politically Correct." I've discussed racial profiling with so many people over the past couple of years, and the responses I get are uniformly the same: people want cops to catch bad guys, period. There was an interesting version of this in my town, recently, when the chief of police explained a recent drug bust by noting that officers nabbed a white crack-buying punk because, "The only white people in this neighborhood are here to buy drugs."

The watershed case that put profiling on the map took place in Maryland around 10 years ago when a Harvard University-educated public defender "refused to consent to a police search." This one was almost certainly an abuse of police power and the Maryland troopers needed to re-think and revise their procedures. Finally, a partial settlement has been reached as a result of the subsequent litigation. Maryland troopers are now required to compile data on arrest statistics and review them for "red flags," but there's also this:

Particularly vexing is a requirement that the state police prepare a brochure on how to file racial-profiling complaints and make copies available to drivers.

So now, when Officer Friendly hands you a ticket, he's also got to give you a brochure that explains how you can go about busting his chops and getting him fired. Needless to say, the troopers are kinda upset with this part.

Quality of Life

Social learning theory forwards the concept of disinhibition, the idea that if you see someone getting away with something, you figure that you can probably pull it off, too. Rudolph Giuliani worked with that concept when he went on a pogram against "quality of life" crimes. He referred to something called the "broken window effect," but he was really talking about disinhibition. He was so successful in lowering New York's crime rate that other people started taking notice. Washington's Metro cops, for instance.

Litterbugs, rowdy teenagers and fare beaters who try to slip through turnstiles face increased heat on Metro because of a new police squad designed to crack down on "quality of life" violations.

Here's Polly Hanson, the new chief of Metro's Transit Police, explaining the crackdown: "Some of the behavior of juveniles and littering that wouldn't bother you on the street do concern people in an enclosed environment." Although she oversees a special squad of "fewer than a dozen" officers specifically targeting low-level offenses, they study crime stats on a daily basis to figure out where they need to deploy most effectively to prevent "eating, drinking, radio playing, littering and smoking." We're bringing this up because we predict you're going to see a lot—a whole lot—of this sort of thing in your future.

The Pain Game

Here's a weird one from a Washington Post editorial on Israeli exuberance in dealing with Palestinian militants. The commentary notes that whereas the Israelis have traditionally been careful to avoid targeting civilians, they appear to be gradually increasing their overall level of brutality, at least in certain situations:

In Hebron, where Palestinian terrorists ambushed and killed a dozen Israeli soldiers and security guards on Nov. 15, Israeli paramilitary forces have reportedly been operating something they call "the lottery," in which they detain Palestinians and order them to choose from pieces of paper labeled with punishments such as "broken leg" and "smashed head."

Ouch. But we also realize that the Palestians have set up a special lottery for the Israelis, too. It's called, "Don't get on the wrong bus." Let's hope this year sees some kind of peaceful settlement to this conflict.

Why Didn't CNN Catch This?

That was my question when I read over at the New York Daily News that CNN has been engaged in a wholesale sacking of its top anchors and correspondents lately. Among the dead:

Foreign affairs pro Garrick Utley
Washington senior correspondent Brooks Jackson
San Francisco-based anchor James Hattori
CNNfn anchor Bruce Francis
CNN financial news senior correspondent Allan Dodds Frank
Miami-based reporter Mark Potter
CNN national correspondent Bruce Morton
CNN Washington medical correspondent Rea Blakey

What could possibly be going on over there? Why the carnage? Were these guys just getting paid too much? Nope.

The moves are the latest sign of a shift at CNN under chairman Walter Isaacson away from longer think pieces and investigative reporting by veteran broadcasters, toward snappy live reports, marquee-name anchors, and younger reporters, insiders said.

Have you ever made the mistake of tuning into Entertainment Tonight, the fluff show designed for people with 5-second attention spans? Guess what? That's the new shape of broadcast journalism. I hope you like Carrot Top, because he'll be filling you in on developments in Afghanistan later this year.