Back to School... for Writers

[Here's a post I wrote for amwriting.com, republished here with permission.]

Over the next few weeks, across the country, students (and teachers) will be going back to school. Writers, in contrast, never stop writing, so the event has no bearing on our writing life whatsoever… except that maybe it does. Maybe, if we’re really honest, we admit that we don’t always follow Stephen King’s writing regimen perfectly. We take breaks. Sometimes those breaks are longer than they should be. Or maybe we’ve been pounding out our daily wordcount, but we need to be reinvigorated. Remembering how to “go back to school” can inform our practice as writers.

Summer Break

Hopefully the cause for our hiatus from our writing regimen isn’t seasonal. As a teacher, I’m struggling not to launch into one of my rants about how summer vacation is a throwback to an agrarian economy, how summer breaks don’t prepare students for a working world where no adults get them (not even teachers), and about how it’s amazing that our schools measure up as well as they do when compared to the schools in countries where students go to school for eleven months a year, six days a week. I won’t go into that. Except to say that it is analogous to taking a long hiatus from writing in that both are terrible ideas. Try to avoid taking long breaks from your writing. Get back to work. If that means ditching that novel which seems to be set in the nation of Writer’s-block-istan and tells the story of Prince Spamlet who is dithering about whether to choose chocolate or vanilla ice cream, drop that project and write a short story about someone in a more interesting place who actually does something that has real consequences. Or go outside and write some Haikus. It doesn’t matter. Just tell yourself, “Break’s over. Time to go back to school.”

Back to School Shopping

Students waste exorbitant amounts of their parents’ money when they beg for trendy, gaudy clothing to wear the first day of school, especially when you consider that the only thing changing faster than fashion is the size of clothes those kids fit into. Then they turn around and forget to buy paper and pencils to put in their flashy new backpacks. Some writers make the same mistake, in a way. We worry about what kinds of novels are selling and try to write the next Harry PotterHarry Potter Paperback Box Set (Books 1-7) or TwilightThe Twilight Saga Collection or The HelpThe Help (Movie Tie-In) instead of worrying about the way we’ll actually do our work. Stephen King, in On WritingOn Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft, tells the story of his uncle’s toolbox, and uses it as a metaphor for the collection of skills we acquire as writers. A student’s backpack will serve the same function. Those flashy sets of 300 colored pens of all shades; that’s an overly flowery vocabulary. The student doesn’t need all those pens, and you don’t need to use a thesaurus to find words your reader won’t know. Something drawn with a simple dollar-store box of crayons can be beautiful, and something drawn with nothing but black ink on paper can be powerful. Save those weird words for Scrabble. They don’t belong in your writer’s backpack.

Proper grammar and mechanics, on the other hand, are your notebook paper, the means to pass your work to someone else in a way that’s intelligible. If you’re really good (and sure you’re not going to create a cultural caricature or simply look like a fool) you can get away with fancy notebook paper, like writing in dialect or a character’s voice which breaks the rules. But even then, you need to know them. You can’t go to school without paper.

Make sure you have an eraser, too. The tiny little multi-colored erasers on your pencils are garbage. Get a big, fat pink eraser. You will need to edit brutally, bravely, and with some elbow grease, so make sure you’ve got an eraser that shows your commitment to that part of the process. In fact, buy more than one.

You also need to be willing to refine your skills. That’s your pencil sharpener. You don’t need a five pound electronic device that plugs into the wall. Getting better, as a writer, takes time and effort. Get a tiny little sharpener and work that pencil to a sharp point. Those little ones really work. Read some Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, or Voltaire. Those guy’s pencils were lethal. Grab some Cormac McCarthy. He’s ground his pencil down to a tiny little nub of metal and graphite. There’s barely any cheap pine left when he goes to work. Be inspired by that, and sharpen your own tools until your words cut the paper to shreds.

Don’t worry too much about what you’ll write about. Textbooks might not even be distributed until the second week. The ideas will come. When you’re shopping for your writing skills, focus on being prepared so you can do excellent work when your muse finally gives you that big assignment.

First Day Jitters

After a break of any length, you’ll come back to writing with a mixture of anxiety and excitement. The writer’s vocation is not mandatory, so if you weren’t somewhat eager, you would just watch daytime TV all year. You’ve come to this because some part of you loves it, but you also know that it will entail some struggle and possibly some heartbreak. That’s okay. Just be grateful that you attend an academic establishment with a student body of one. The teachers are not identifying the behavioral issues. The mean girls aren’t sizing up the threats to their popularity. The bullies aren’t figuring out who is skinny enough to fit in a locker and who is fat enough to create suction when tossed in a trash can. You can come back to school, write something more embarrassing than that nightmare where you forgot to wear pants one day, and no one will ever know. Rejoice in the privacy of the writer’s life.

But save everything. Your draft might be a pimple-faced kid with no pants on, but later you could put some leather pants on those scrawny legs and he’ll be a rock star.

Reconnecting with Old Friends and Making New Ones

Your summer break may have been caused by a story that was a dud. It happens. But you may also find that you and your characters just needed some time apart. Going back to school provides an opportunity to reevaluate those relationships. Sometimes, when students come back to school, they find that their inner circle is changing shape as people grow apart. This doesn’t have to mean that your characters were worthless. It just might mean that some of your acquaintances could turn out to be better friends than last year’s BFFs. Try identifying that interesting ancillary character who was more fun to write about than your protagonist. Maybe, now that you’re back in school, it’s a good time to take a whack at telling her story, or telling the same story from her point of view. Even if you maintain the same relationships you had back in the spring of your writing life, this fall provides an opportunity to get to know those characters better. As a writing exercise, imagine how they spent their summer vacations. What kinds of things did they do to fill those long, hot months? How were their family relationships? What kind of trouble were they most tempted to get into, and did they avoid that temptation, succumb to it reluctantly, or revel in it? What did they learn about themselves (or choose not to learn about themselves)? Maybe this exercise will drive you back into the story. Maybe it will drive you out, and you’ll realize you need an all-new circle of friends for the upcoming school year. That’s okay. It can be hard to make new friends and hard to say goodbye to old ones as you grow apart, but take comfort in the fact that the same thing is happening to millions of kids all over the country. They’ll get through it, and so will you.

Hitting the Books

Despite what some of my students might tell you, school isn’t just about your social life. Now that you’re back, there’s work to be done. Just in case you’re still stuck, in the vein of our return from summer vacation, allow me to give you a writing prompt to begin the school year. Consider this your “back to school” countdown:

“Nothing forced him to return. He could have hidden forever. But he made the four step voyage across the porch. Three months was too long to run away from life, from love, from consequences. He took two long, careful breaths, ran his fingers through his hair just once, and knocked…”

Hopefully that will get you going. Welcome back!

Killing the Pain of Rejection: A Writer’s Failed Experiment

Today I shot my rejection letters. It didn’t make me feel better.

Sharing this story may be a mistake. It’s very bad form to whine about rejection letters. For one thing, it is whining, and that’s bad enough. No one likes whiners. But it’s even worse when it seems that a writer is slagging on an agent, so let me be very up-front about this: I am not angry with the two agents who rejected my most recent novel this week.

I have a great deal of respect for literary agents. This isn’t some form of brown-nosing because I want one of them to accept my work. I respect them because I understand what they do. Even this knowledge has been gleaned thanks to the generosity of agents; I’ve never been an agent nor do I know any personally beyond a few evenings’ conversation, but some agents keep great blogs about their work, and these give insights into why agents do what they do. First of all, agents love books, love writers, and love connecting writers with readers. They’re our advocates. They’re on our side. The trick is getting a generic someone who is generally on the side of writers to become a very specific someone who is advocating for you, personally. That’s arduous, to say the least. But I believe it’s worthwhile, and not just because of the dollars and cents (though I’ll be the first to argue that taking 15% off of something is better than keeping 100% of nothing). But agents also make our work better, and not just once we’ve acquired one. Trying to please these gatekeepers forces us to ask important questions as we write. “Who will the agent sell this to?” forces us to think about audience. “Will this grab an agent on page 1?” forces us to write a first page that will also hold a reader. “Can I pitch this to an agent in under thirty seconds?” forces us to think about theme and character in a way that can increase the coherence of a novel. Agents serve us before they ever hear from us.

And then, when they do hear from us, they try to do right by us. If they love our work and believe they can sell it, “doing right” involves signing us, helping us edit the manuscript again, and pitching it to publishers. But when they have to reject us (and they do), they really are concerned about our feelings. I’ve never met or read about an agent who took that duty lightly.

So why do rejection letters seem so curt and even callous? There are a few good reasons, none of which make a lie of the agents’ concern for the writers they deal with. First of all, if agents wrote lengthy, detailed rejection letters, they’d be wasting the time they owe to the writers they’ve already signed. An agent who writes you a five page rejection letter is an agent you wouldn’t want signing you, because she would then spend her time writing five page rejection letters to everybody else in her slush pile instead of selling your work. Besides the time management issue, agents don’t write long letters because they are making a clean break with you. Think of that horrible ex-boyfriend your friend was dating. Instead of breaking off the relationship, he acted like a jerk until she finally did it. He was a coward, and it hurt her more than if he’d come clean when he didn’t want to be in the relationship. Agents don’t want to send the false impression that they might say yes if you tweak this or that part of the manuscript. When they write “It isn’t right for me,” by “it” they mean the whole thing. That doesn’t mean they hate you or that the book is garbage. They mean they can’t enter into a relationship with that book, even if it stops leaving the toilet seat up or does the dishes more often.

I was lucky. I’d met both of the agents who rejected me at last week’s Willamette Writers Conference. They were kind and encouraging in person and followed up with supportive letters that were much longer than necessary. I would have understood if they’d sent me a one line reply, but one of them gave me two paragraphs. Both of them are on my short-list for future novels if this one doesn’t pan out. I sent them short thank you notes in which I said I was genuinely grateful for their time and consideration, and guess what? I was being genuinely genuine.

And there’s the rub. Rejection hurts. Some writers hide from that pain by blaming the agent. “She didn’t recognize my genius!” they seem to say. Bull. First of all, appreciation for any given novel is subjective. What one person my find brilliant, another may find tiresome or confusing or in need of major revision. That’s not the agent’s fault. Criticizing her for that is like saying she has the wrong favorite color. Also, agents are working, not just reading for pleasure. Maybe she enjoyed your book but didn’t think any publisher would buy it. More specifically, maybe she didn’t think any editor would buy it from her, in which case she’s done you a favor by directing you to find someone who thinks she can sell it.

Some writers blame the whole industry. I think this inclines some people to look to e-publishing, indie-publishing, or vanity publishing (not the same things, mind you). That decision should be based on other factors, like platform and audience, rather than on a knee-jerk reaction to rejection. The great thing about the self-publishing world is that there are no gatekeepers. Consequently, some readers who wouldn’t have been served by the traditional market are being connected with some writers who would have been barred by that system. But those readers have to wade through a sea of mediocrity and worse to get there, and that sea just gets more polluted when writers who fear rejection throw their muck into it without concern for who their audience might be and why the traditional publishing industry isn’t snapping them up.

Some writers turn that rejection inward. “She’s saying I’m a worthless human being.” Again, writing is subjective. Plus, she’s not saying anything at all about you. She’s saying something about your manuscript. It’s not personal. Of course it feels personal to us, because we poured our soul into that book, but, at this stage, it’s important to remember that we’re more than one novel. Faced with the choice between blaming the agent and blaming myself, I think it’s healthier and more honest to take responsibility, as long as it motivates me to write a better book next time, but not if it makes me want to reach for the bottle of vodka in the back of the cupboard.

But the pain is still there. I can’t let it consume me, and I can’t direct it at the agent who sent me the letter. So what am I to do with this feeling?

I had an idea. I decided to try to externalize it and attack the feeling directly. I printed out the rejection letters, then added a digital “REJECTED” stamp and crosshairs. They looked like this:

Even before I shot at them, I suspected it wouldn’t work. For one thing, I don’t go target shooting out of anger. I’ve only recently become a gun-owner, and I bought them for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I want to be prepared should I ever need them to feed or protect my family. Second, firearms are an interesting subject to learn about, and I’m only now realizing how completely ignorant I’ve been regarding this vast area of study I’ve completely neglected. Third, I’d like to come across as at least somewhat believable when I write about people using guns in my fiction. Finally, I admit, it’s a lot of fun. None of these reasons inclines me toward any kind of hostility involving firearms. They were the wrong tool for my purposes. I’d brought a gun to a feeling fight.

But I tried. I shot the ever-loving s--- out of those rejection letters.

As I’d expected, the exercise did little for my emotional well-being. It got a few chuckles out of some friends and family when I explained my plans. But once I was shooting, the pleasure of the experience came from trying to hit the target. I completely forgot about the abstract emotional goal. I could have been doing any other fun, competitive task. I might as well have been practicing my free throws or trying to learn a musical instrument. It had no effect on my feelings about rejection in general, or the specific disappointment those letters produced.

That shouldn’t surprise me. I’m sure there are more emotionally evolved people who can export specific feelings, physicalize them, and confront them. They’re probably mostly Buddhists, and they are unlikely to project those emotional constructs into paper targets and shoot at them.

I’m not a Buddhist. I’m just a writer. I shape feelings into letters and words and sentences. Then I hope that someone is willing to read those sentences. A reader’s empathy provides the comfort that small, singed holes in paper never can.

That’s the moral of the story: To confront rejection, put the gun away and get back to work.

"Writers Create Worlds" Poster

Inspired by an excellent speech by author Chris Humphreys, which included a delivery of one of Theseus' monologues from A Midsummer Night's Dream, I thought I'd make a poster for my classroom. Teachers (and writers), let me know what you think and feel free to steal the image if you'd like it.

Can hostage-takers blame a hostage situation on the President?

Yesterday I received an email, one of those supposedly "funny" forwards that are sent on by well-meaning family, which quoted an anonymous stock broker blaming the current state of the economy on "this administration." The email went on to encourage me to see if my broker agreed.

Let's ignore, for a moment, the tone-deafness of a plea to the general public encouraging us to talk to the stock brokers most of us don't have. Blaming this administration for all our economic woes is not only ignorant, but it's insulting in that it's part of a transparent agenda that depends on our stupidity.

But it takes two to tango, right? Obama can certainly be blamed for not making a case clearly to the American people. I can't argue with that. He's done a terrible job of framing the issues. Too many Americans thought the debt ceiling was about increasing the size of government, rather than paying the bills we'd already incurred, mostly under Republicans. It's worth wondering what compulsion drives him to such weak negotiating positions. Is it cowardice? Is it an obsessive desire for bipartisanship? Is he too in bed with Wall Street to call them on their role in the economic downturn, and too dependent on wealthy donors to ask them to pay their fair share? Is it a hyper-focus on the independent voter and on re-election? If so, he may very well be doomed to fail in the next election precisely because he sought to placate the middle and thus compromised his way to their right, demotivating enough of the left to erode his own base.

But blaming this economy on the ineptitude of the administration's negotiating abilities ignores something that deserves more of our attention. If we're in the state we're in because Obama can't properly negotiate with Republicans, why should we possibly consider turning the keys to the car over to the people who pulled us into a ditch because they really wanted to drive us off a cliff? Bi-partisan compromise deserves bi-partisan blame. If we acknowledge that Obama got rolled, then the bulk of the blame needs to be with the side that pulled him so far away from what he wanted.

It takes two to tango, but hostage-takers are not dance partners. Saying the Republicans are hostage-takers is not liberal propaganda. Mitch McConnell, the most moderate of the Republicans involved in leading these debt negotiations, admitted to the strategy. “I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting,” he said. “Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.” In essence, "most" didn't want to bankrupt the country by refusing to pay our bills, but they knew Democrats cared more about preserving the economy than they did, and would be willing to give in to their demands. It's smart strategy. It's also shocking he would be so honest about it. But then, this is the same moderate Republican who admitted “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Not jobs. Not the security of the country. Undermining the President is the number one goal.

McConnell's honesty is refreshing, but it makes the email I received all the more infuriating. Imagine if someone walked up to you and said, is the clearest possible terms, "I'm going to punch you in the face. After I do, I want you to blame that guy over there for any pain you feel."

Wham! Stars.

As you reel back, would you ignore the man standing right in front of you with your blood on his fist and say, "What just happened? I don't understand what is causing this pain, but I seem to remember something about that guy across the room. He must have done this to me!"

Obama is certainly to blame for not confronting far-right Tea Party rhetoric more directly. He should have crossed the room and defended the American middle class from the guy threatening to punch us in the face. If we decide we need someone else to protect us because of his failure, that's sensible. We're bleeding, after all. But if we choose to look for protection from the very people who bloodied our collective nose just because they point at the President, we are responsible for the pummeling we're gonna' get.

Willamette Writers Conference

Here's why I'm not going to be blogging just yet about the Willamette Writers Conference: I'm an idiot. I forgot the power cord to my laptop at home, so when the battery runs out in a moment, I'll be limited to my phone. Suffice it to say that the experience has been wonderful already. We're only through the first day, and I've already exceeded my personal goals here. It's all gravy from now on. When I get home and can plug in, I'll scream to the digital heavens about how great Willamette Writers is (are?). Until then, keep your fingers crossed for me that it just keeps getting better.

Short Story: "Painless Separation"

[This story was the Featured Friday Fiction on amwriting.org. With Johanna Harness' permission, I thought I'd put it up here, too. Thanks to @johannaharness for giving me this chance!]

Painless Separation

A few weeks ago, our relationship started to get rocky. No, not rocky. It got wiggly. Anyway, I knew a break-up was inevitable.

Noah and I had been together for over six years. I wasn’t his first (I was his third), but we were both so young when we got together, we basically grew up at the same time.

I remember when Noah introduced me to his parents. They loved me immediately. They coo-ed over me. “So cute!” they told him. That felt good. I’ll miss them, too.

Mostly, our relationship was… well, you know how, when people ask about a how things are going and you say, “Great,” but you don’t really mean exceptional? You just mean that there’s nothing wrong. Noah was very stable; considerate but not particularly affectionate, dependable but not passionate.

I mean, I had my little issues. His diet, for one thing. Noah loves candy. That always bothered me. He wasn’t heavy. In fact, Noah’s a skinny guy. But he was always looking for the next gummy bear the way a less moral man might keep an eye out for floozies. It irritated me. It wasn’t a serious threat to the health of the relationship or anything. But it was the one way Noah was inconsiderate, and because his sensitivity was my favorite of his qualities, that unwillingness to think about my needs bothered me just a bit.

Still, over-all, Noah was great to me. He was protective, but not in some annoying, macho way. And tender. I liked that a lot. I guess I’d always known we wouldn’t go the distance. Relationships that start when you’re so young almost never do. But I fell into a rhythm, I got comfortable, and I guess I let myself be lulled into a false sense of security.

Then, a few weeks ago, I could tell he was just not holding on to me quite so tightly. I thought about it a lot, of course. I suspected there was someone else. I wondered if I was being pushed out. But there didn’t seem to be any evidence. I just started feeling like I was …I don’t know, dangling there, somehow.

And the more I thought about it, the worse it got. Pretty soon I was hanging by a thread. His parents, who’d been so supportive at first, turned on me so quickly it shocked me.

“I think it’s time,” they’d tell him. I was right there!

His dad was the worst. Noah’s mom would just leave the room whenever the topic of our relationship came up. Like she wanted to wash her hands of the whole thing. That stung. But his dad was really in his face, actively trying to pull us apart. I don’t think I’ll ever fully forgive his dad. And the way Noah just let his dad talk to him like that, and never stood up for me… I thought I’d never be able to forgive him, either. But then…

See, it all came to a head the earlier tonight when his dad was getting in his face again.

“But it hurts!” Noah said. See? That was the kind of sensitivity I depended on. But now it had all turned to selfishness. No concern for me whatsoever.

“We won’t do it if it hurts. It can wait a little while. Maybe tomorrow night.” His dad said this in a completely calm voice. Like postponing a breakup for a single day was some great mercy.

“Okay,” Noah said. I was in agony. He was just accepting this one day delay without a word of protest? I couldn’t believe it!

I should have been outraged. Such an obvious attack on my pride should have motivated me to break it off first. I know that now. But it just made me more desperate, more clingy. Pathetic, I know.

Then his dad said, “Oh, I have an idea!”

My hopes fell. Brainstorming about our break-up and he’d had a eureka moment. How could it get any worse?

“What?” Noah asked his dad. And there was an eagerness in his voice that shook me to the core.

“Hold on,” his dad said, and ran out of the room.

He came back a moment later holding an ice cube. Both of us were confused.

“Lean your head back,” his dad told him. Then he used the ice to numb Noah.

It’s strange, because the cold didn’t just prepare him for the breakup. It calmed me down, too. This was happening, I told myself, happening right now, but somehow it didn’t bother me as much anymore.

Then his dad took a piece of string and looped it next to me, then around behind me, and then back around to the front. He gently moved the string back and forth until it slid up above me. Maybe it was just because of the ice, but this reminded me of the tenderness his dad had shown back when I first appeared on the scene. Despite all his calls for our separation, his dad was acting like he cared again. I couldn’t feel much, but it felt good, in its own strange way. In fact, it almost tickled.
Then his dad twisted the string in front of Noah’s face and pulled the ends in opposite directions, first very gently to get his hands a few inches apart, then one quick tug.

And, just like that, we were through. There may have been a sound, but I was so surprised I honestly can’t remember if it was a pop or a bam or a squelching or just silence.

Next thing you know, I was in free fall. There’s always that moment, right after a breakup, when you’re just untethered, spinning and bewildered. For me, it was very brief.

I hit bottom fast. But, to my surprise, I felt whole. I was different, but the same. Complete, but separate. We had ended. I persisted. Frankly, I still can’t wrap my mind around it. Maybe I’m still grieving. I don’t know. But that wasn’t the end of the breakup.

His dad picked me up and set me down on the bathroom counter, right in front of Noah. It gave me a whole new perspective on him. Noah wasn’t sad, and that should have hurt me. A lot. But he looked shocked, and I could identify with that.

Then Noah smiled and examined the new gap between his teeth where I’d been just seconds before. His smile grew a little, and his eyes, already wide from the speed of the breakup, warmed up as though someone had stuck needles in them and injected them with pure joy.

“Oh my gosh!” he shouted, his voice cracking on the “oh,” with the “gosh” bursting out like an untied balloon filled with awe.

And he was so happy, so overjoyed, so beautiful that I couldn’t hold a grudge. I forgave him. I forgive him and I love him.

When the tooth fairy slips me out from under Noah’s pillow and flies me off to whatever’s next, I’ll go away happy.

GOP's Debt Ceiling Platform: "Screw Everybody"

I've been watching the debt ceiling debates with growing horror. A few months back, John Dickerson, senior political correspondent for Slate Magazine, laid out the narrative he expected we'd see in this debate. First, he predicted, thing would look tense. Then, both sides would say they'd reached an impasse. Then the President would sit both sides down and cajole them to hammer out a deal. Then they'd storm out and say the two sides had never been further apart. They'd continue this act in public while the real negotiations went on in private in order to strengthen their hands, and at the last minute we'd have a deal.

That's the way it went down with the last budget negotiations, and it seemed like this political kabuki would play out that way this time, as well.

And it still could...

...except that something feels very different this time. Republicans were scared of taking the blame for a government shutdown. They were still haunted by the ghosts of Gingrich past. This time, it seems the only ghost that bothers them is the ghost of Obama future. Mitch McConnel, the Senate Minority Leader, said, "My first priority is the defeat of President Obama." He's the one who seems to be the most reasonable Republican at the table. John Boehner, Speaker of the House, looks like he's going to deal one minute, then looks like he's going to get neutered by his caucus, then turns around and says he won't budge. Eric Cantor, House Majority Whip, seems like he's either focused on causing a government default, or on taking John Boehner's job, and, luckily for him, those might come about simultaneously.

Now, I'm no economist, so I won't weigh in on just how bad it might be if we default. There's a range of predictions by the experts. When there is a range (as with Global Warming), skeptics say, "See, there's no perfect consensus, so let's not worry about it." These folks do not seem swayed by the fact that all the predictions are bad. I haven't come across a single economist who says, "Let's default. It'll be grand!"

Many Americans (a minority, but a sizable one), favor defaulting. They think this is some kind of principled stand. I'm staling a metaphor from Emily Bazelon, but this is not a fiscally responsible, fiscally conservative, or even moral principled stand. These people are not saying, "Let's spend less." We've gone out and run up the credit card bill already. Now, when the bill comes due and the only alternatives are to make that call and ask for a higher credit limit or to declare bankruptcy, they are saying, "Let's rip up that credit card bill! That'll show 'em!" I don't know what moral universe those people were raised in, but I was taught that not paying your bills was at the very least an irresponsible act, and not doing it when you have the money is outright immoral.

And we do have the money! No one can dispute that we are capable of paying these bills. The debt is growing, but that means we need to re-examine two things: Money in, and money out. That's a worthwhile conversation to have. But we do have the money. So refusing to pay our bills should not be an option.

A majority of Americans believe this. But that might not matter. In this game of chicken, it looks increasingly like Republicans are more than willing to accelerate into a head-on collision. The polite explanation for this is that they are too dogmatic. That might not seem polite, but that's what's been coming from conservative pundits. They point out that the GOP is too wedded to anti-tax dogma, too hemmed in by Grover Norquists' pledge, too beholden to the Tea Party wing, to consider revenue increases of any kind. That not coming from liberals like me. That's coming from conservatives like Ben Stein, David Brooks, and even Norquist himself, who went out of his way to try to give Republicans some cover by letting them know that closing tax loopholes wouldn't violate his pledge. Many conservatives (who aren't elected officials) are just as worried about the GOP politicians' intransigence as I am.

I took that as a good sign. See, I was under the cynical misconception that money ruled Washington. I thought, as we came down to the wire, wealthy GOP donors would get on the phone and say, "Look, Representative X, I appreciate that you're trying to protect that windfall I get from the Bush tax cuts. And I really love what the low corporate tax rate does for my company's bottom line. I have a good laugh every time you smile at the camera and call me a 'job creator' while I send American jobs overseas. You and I, we're on the same page. But Mr. Congressman, you have to understand, I have a lot of money in the stock market. A lot. Stocks and Bonds. I don't want to pay higher taxes any more than anybody else does, but I stand to lose a lot more from a government default that tanks the bond market, then the stock market, than I do from a tax increase. I didn't get to where I am without being able to do simple math. So say that you won't bend and screw as many poor people as you can, but, in the end, make sure the government doesn't default, or I won't be able to throw that fundraiser for you in September."

Every time a conservative pundit came out in favor of a deal, I assumed these calls were being made. And maybe they are. And maybe, after Obama and the Democrats give up on everything their party holds dear, that will happen.

But I'm starting to doubt it. Maybe the kabuki is really good. But we've entered into the danger zone. If a plan were to come out right now, it still might be too late to get it through both houses of Congress and onto the President's desk in time to calm the markets. Which means those wealthy donors aren't swaying their representatives fast enough. This makes me even more cynical. Because if money doesn't move Washington, what does? Oh yeah. Maybe it's the thing that can't be reported politely by conservative pundits.

I don't think anti-tax dogma tells the whole story. I don't think loyalty to the Tea Party does, either. I'm staring to think it's all about power. The Republicans were canny to recognize that they had the President over a barrel. He can't afford a default on his watch. Unemployment is the best chance their weak field of presidential candidates have. So they knew they could bleed all kinds of concessions before striking a deal. President Obama told Eric Cantor, "Don't call my bluff, Eric." Now, maybe this was simply the weakest, lamest thing a president has ever said. Maybe a man as smart and educated as President Obama doesn't know that you shouldn't announce when you're bluffing, but he is and he did and he'll get called. Social programs will be slashed. The economy will take a hit. The poor will suffer. The middle class will shrink. But the debt ceiling will be raised, the Republicans will call it a win, and Obama will live to fight another day.

Or maybe there is a bill he would veto. Maybe he's not really bluffing. And now, the only way for Republicans to find out is to push through some truly draconian bill like Cut, Cap, and Balance (the exact same Republicans who, under Bush, never cut, never capped, and never balanced) and see if he blinks. Maybe this isn't kabuki after all. Maybe this is theater of a more realist variety. Chekov once told Shchukin, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it must absolutely go off." Perhaps the rifle is not the default, but the bluff. Now it is loaded and hanging on the wall, and by August 2nd it must be discharged in someone's face.

And this is what scares me. Because if it's not about money, if it really is about power, then all the donors can make all the phone calls and it won't matter as long as GOP politicians adhere to McConnel's number one priority. Maybe they really do want to test Obama's willingness to be a one-term president by giving him an impossible choice: Either betray everything you believe in to get the ceiling raised, or let the country default. Maybe they've done the math as well, and have calculated that even if the country defaults, they will come out slightly ahead in the lose-lose. Sure, our economy will crater, and even their supporters will be angry with them, but as long as they'll be more angry with the President, it's worth it. If that's the case, if they are really willing to rip up the credit card bill and declare bankruptcy just to win the next election, we are all in big trouble.

Because it's not just a lose-lose for Obama. It's not just a lose-lose for the people counting on a Social Security check, or the people who depend on the programs Obama will be forced to cut to satisfy GOP demands. If Republican officials are willing to enter into a lose-lose that includes the wealthy, they're really saying "Screw America. We just want the White House and both houses of Congress." And those are the last people we should want there.

Anonymous Wins an Award!

Remember when I blogged about how one of my students got a poem published anonymously? (here) Well guess what! She entered the Kay Snow Writing Contest... and won! 1st Place! She said I could brag about her again. Who has two thumbs and is the proudest teacher on the internets tonight? This guy!

Parenting, Halo: Reach, and Philosophy

Today I posted this picture of Noah and I on Facebook with the caption: My favorite video game buddy.

One of my favorite former students asked, "Is getting your Halo kill ratio up really exposing your son to the kind of philosophical depth that he'll need to think deeply and appreciate the finer aspects of life?"

I explained that, though it might not have a lot of philosophical depth, it will teach him a lot about how to behave in a philosophical debate. What philosophers should learn from Halo: Reach:

-If possible, go for the (figurative) backstab.

-If they see your argument coming, go for the (figurative) headshot.

-If those don't work, throw (rhetorical) grenades and hope to take the other guy down with you.

Noah will be fully prepared to major in philosophy like his parents. But we hope he majors in engineering or chemistry because, let's face it, we were philosophy majors and are counting on him for a comfortable retirement.

What does he want to do when he grows up? Wait for it... Wait for it... Design video games.

Fun with Words from Twitter, Part II

A couple weeks ago (wow, has it been that long?) I posted an idea I thought I might use in the poetry class I'm teaching. I made lists of the nouns and verbs I found on my Twitter news feed with the intention of making a found-poem out of them, then had the students do the same with their Twitter/Facebook/Myspace (okay, not even the kids use Myspace anymore. Google Plus? Too soon). I wrote mine while the students worked on theirs. The lesson was a hit. Here's what I came up with:

8 Hours of Twitter

In my Newsfeed
Butterflies sing commandments.
Cyberpunks apply for immigration,
And farts retweet pain.

Accountants weigh corruption.
Insects transform islands.
Families prolong their vacations in sandboxes,
While cookies threaten leadership.

Photos forget portraits.
Music gropes for affairs.
Paper-dolls tote cancer.
And sluts prefer reading.

All the babble googles gibberish,
While dementors smooch sleep.

Fun with Words from Twitter

When I sat down to do some writing tonight, I thought I'd get a little help from the various folks tweeting using the #amwriting hashtag. I asked for each person to give me their favorite verb, or the first one to come to mind. Only one generous soul offered; she gave me "Smooch." I was going to follow up by asking for a list of nouns, but one fellow had already tweeted "#amwriting shit" and "#amwriting gibberish," so I decided he was offering those before I'd even requested them. It seems the folks on #amwriting today are actually, well, writing, so I didn't get any other replies (yet). Instead, I scrolled through my own newsfeed and copied down two lists, the verbs and nouns that jumped out at me from each tweet. I avoided proper nouns, generally, but somehow two slipped through: "Starbucks" and "Shaq." If someone has a theory about why these two words seemed like common nouns, I'd love to hear it.

These lists turned out to be really fun to play with. As you scroll through them, you'll notice that a huge percentage of the words from either list can serve as both nouns or verbs. I placed them in the lists as they were used over the last few hours. Two words that made both lists ("Retweet" and "Google") were used both ways. Two others ("Fart" and "Sleep") were used once, but in such a way that I couldn't tell if they were being used as nouns or verbs. It's great English-teacher-geek-fun to plug each word into this formula and see how many work: A _______/ To ___________.

Also, as you read through the lists, your brain will naturally want to connect the words and make a story out of them. On the one hand, this is a marvelous demonstration of just how creative the human brain is. On the other hand, it illustrates the way we can deceive ourselves because we're compelled to create a narrative where none exists. These were all from different tweets, and even when two are connected, a reader couldn't possibly imagine how without context. For example, the noun "Dementor" is included because I follow a very funny person who tweets as though he is Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter series. (Or maybe he really is. Who am I to judge?) But could you guess which of these words went with his tweet mentioning Dementors? Try to guess. Similarly, One of my verbs is "shampoo." Not only does it meet the aforementioned noun/verb test, but it was connected to a word on the noun list. Can you guess which one? I'll put the answers at the bottom.

I'm teaching a class on poetry a couple days a week for the Upward Bound Program, and I think I'll have them do an exercise with these lists. Feel free to use them, or the same activity, as you see fit. After all, these words aren't mine. Enjoy!

Verbs:

Encroach
Subjugate
Smooch
Lock
Gather
Meet
Survive
Evacuate
Hate
Threaten
Prefer
Veto
Retweet
Run
Tote
Sing
Strike
Swoon
Prolong
Fart
Sleep
Transform
Accuse
Squish
Hold
Apply
Google
Storm
Propose
License
Argue
Cancel
Fool
Assure
Send
Throw
Yell
Spoof
Teach
Model
Fear
Weigh
Balance
Thank
Show
Shampoo
Save
Forget
Grope
Still
Listen



Nouns:

Dryer
Shit
Gibberish
Whiskey
Expectations
Security
Retweet
Debt
Cheese
Cookies
Family
Starbucks
Gun
Cyberpunk
Karma
Ass
Defense
Fart
Sleep
Patience
Accountant
Butterflies
Portrait
Affair
Flake
Immigration
Law
Google
Shaq
Photo
Horror
Compilation
Summer
Reading
Lithium
Reason
Dosage
Concerns
Sandbox
Paper-doll
Noise
Community
Corruption
Work
Island
Commandment
Lyrics
Babble
Mug
Vacation
Cancer
Bid
Pain
Leadership
Metaphor
Crotch
Insect
Slut
Dementor
Music
Service





Answers: "Dementor" went with "Sluts", and "Shampoo" went with "Crotch".

@Lord_Voldemort7 tweeted:
"Dear Sluts, Nobody wants to see your public groping. The only way I'll support your PDA is if you're french kissing a dementor."

@iimaniDavid tweeted:
"'People who speak in mixed metaphors should shampoo my crotch' -- Jack Nicholson in the film As Good As It Gets"

Learning to Read Like a Writer

[I've been given a opportunity to write a piece for amwriting.org, a blog for and by writers who follow the #amwriting hash-tag on Twitter. My piece will appear on the 30th. Since it's a bit of advice for writers, I should also take some other advice I give students: Whenever possible, get some fresh eyes on your work. So, here's the piece I plan to submit. Please let me know about anything I should fix, cut, or improve before this hits a site with a broader readership while bearing my name under the title. Even if it's just a little typo, let me know in the comments section below. This is the second draft, after some great help from a couple of writer friends. There's still time for more tweaks, though, so keep 'em coming!]

Here’s a secret writers need to learn in order to master their craft: Writers need to learn to read. They don’t need to consume all the books on the New York Times best sellers list just to see which kind of monster is producing the most sales. Writers need to learn to read differently from readers. Writers need to understand that reading is part of practicing.

Part of my job as a high school English teacher consists of teaching students to become better readers by teaching them to identify the purpose of their reading. Are they reading for pleasure? Are they seeking information? Are they analyzing an argument in order to be persuaded or to refute the author’s position? Good readers can do these things. And that’s enough.

But it’s not enough for writers. Writers are artists, and artists need to be able to examine the works of their peers and betters in a different way.

Consider, as an analogy, film. When one of my sixteen-year-old students goes to see the newest big Hollywood blockbuster at the Cineplex this summer, he is satisfied by the experience. As a viewer, he was looking for entertainment, and the movie delivered. Done and done. Now, the cinephile goes to the movie theater and watches the same film (not anything high-brow, but something competently-made) and is also entertained. But she thinks about the structure of the story, the characters, the setting, the themes: She is, in short, a reader of film as text, and because she can do all the things we try to teach good readers to do when they pick up a novel, she gets a lot more out of the movie. She does not, however, come out of the theater talking about the tracking and handy-cam shots, diegetic and non-diegetic sound, side lighting and back lighting, fast cuts and slow fades. These were the techniques that gave the movie its punch and made it satisfying, but they aren’t her business.

They are the business of the movie critic. The critic studied film back in college. She can not only tell you that The Conversation is her favorite Francis Ford Coppola movie, but she can explain why in great detail. She watches movies for a purpose, but it’s not to be entertained or to be informed or to be persuaded. At least, those aren’t enough. She watches movies because it’s her business, her livelihood, to evaluate them based on her vast knowledge of the way they are made, as well as what they make her think and how they make her feel.

And then there’s the film director. He watches movies differently than the casual viewer, the cinephile, and the critic. He watches to learn. For him, watching movies is part of his artistic education. It’s practice.

Writers need to do the same thing. When we pick up a novel, we can remember why we fell in love with books when we were young. We can enjoy being transported to new places, getting to know new people, and absorbing new ideas. We can even evaluate the works in the same way critics do. But we cannot afford to stop there. We need to read differently. For us, every choice of simple or complex vocabulary, every choice about following the basic rules or breaking them, every choice about revealing the minutia about a character or hiding it serves as a lesson which will make us better writers. This is because we recognize all these things for what they are: Choices. Choices made by writers. Writers just like us, only better. Admitting that last part is absolutely essential to becoming better writers ourselves. As long as we hold fast to the same choices we’ve always made, believing we are God’s gift to our readers, then not only is our writing a waste of time, but our reading is, too. Arrogant writers aren’t just obnoxious; they’re missing out on vital time to practice.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, talks about a group of psychologists who studied violin students in Germany. They divided the students up into three groups based on ability as determined by their teachers, then tried to figure out what made the great ones great, and the mediocre ones mediocre. What they found was that the great ones practiced more. Not just a little bit. A lot more. In fact, they found a magic number necessary to become a virtuoso: 10,000 hours of practice. At a good clip, that takes ten years. They also didn’t find too much deviation from that. None of the virtuosos got by with very little practice, and none of the mediocre violinists practiced for 10,000 hours and remained mediocre.

Then, the psychologist began looking into other fields, and they found that the same magic number held up in every endeavor they examined. 10,000 hours. Athletes. Computer programmers. Ballerinas. Composers. And yes, writers.

The quality of those hours matters as much as the quantity, and that’s why writers need to change the way they read; it’s the difference between 10,000 hours of entertainment versus 10,000 hours of practice. One of Gladwell’s examples of 10,000 hours is the early Beatles before the British Invasion, when they were just a struggling rock band trying to find gigs. They worked in strip clubs in Hamburg, Germany and would often play for eight hours straight to non-English speaking audiences and compete for attention with the strippers. Not only did this give them a chance to compose songs that are probably on your ipod right now, but they also had to learn dozens, probably hundreds of covers, and not just of rock and roll songs but of Jazz standards and other genres. What Gladwell doesn’t discuss is the influence of the music Lennon and McCartney were listening to, both before the Beatles formed and during this time. I would bet good money that these guys were not only reading the crowds to see what was working, but they were also listening carefully to the music on the radio and on the albums they bought, and listening in a different way than you or I. They were reading the music to become better musicians.

My preferred example (as a die-hard NBA fan), would be a basketball player. If a basketball player practices his shot for 10,000 hours, he will get to the point where he can sink his free-throws a very high percentage of the time, he’ll know where he can hit the highest percentage of three-pointers, and he’ll make some very tricky moves under the hoop on a drive. And he will lose. Why? Because he didn’t spend some of that time reading the scouting report about, and watching tape of, his prospective opponents. His 10,000 hours were spent becoming an oddity, a guy who could mop the floor with you at HORSE, and in its own way that is becoming a virtuoso. But he won’t be a great basketball player, because he didn’t learn to read his opponents.

Sure, the analogy is imperfect. Writing is at once less collaborative (despite great writing communities like #amwriting, we do our work in isolation), and less competitive (we don’t go head-to head with another author or team of authors. It’s not a zero sum game. More good books can generate more readers.) Maybe we’re less like players watching tapes of their opponents to learn to beat them and more like players watching the greats to learn from them.

So pick up a copy of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games and learn from her choice to write the book not only in first person, but in the present tense. Crack open Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and learn from his choice to eschew dialogue tags and conventional punctuation, then follow up with All the Pretty Horses or No Country for Old Men to reassure yourself that it’s not a fluke that just happens to work brilliantly but a conscious and careful choice he’s not always bound by. Read Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and learn how a premise that seems doomed to be saccharine and trite becomes beautiful and powerful because of careful choices of characterization and intentional withholding.

Then go grab that guilty pleasure book on your nightstand. You know you have one. This is the huge hit by that debut novelist that fills you with rage when you read about the sales figures, and you grouse about it so publicly and with such vehemence that you can’t possibly admit how much you enjoyed the book yourself. Now, when you are flying through that weak prose, that thin characterization, or that awful adverb-filled dialogue attribution that makes you want to throw the book at the wall, stop and figure out why you don’t. Sure, it’s fine to identify the things you don’t like about the book. Note those choices so you will make different ones. But also acknowledge that there’s a reason that book is in your hands, and other copies are in a lot of other hands at the same time.

If you’re willing to do that, to learn from your betters (and yes, that hack on the New York Times best sellers list is your better, at least in some way), then reading becomes part of your practice time, part of the 10,000 hours you need to rack up in order to become a true master of the art. Writing is practicing your shot. Reading is watching tape. You must do both to be great.

Why Does the Right Hate Obama So Much? Part 2: Ultra-Nationalism vs. American Exceptionalism

I asked for Conservatives to explain the seeming-hatred directed at President Obama from the Right in this country, and I got some great, detailed, thought-provoking responses. I could quibble about little things (Is it Obama’s fault that Congress choose to pass a law that essentially gives law-making power to the Executive branch? That seems more like a good reason to detest a Congress that has been consistently eroding its own constitutional authority for over a hundred years.) but I think it’s safe to say that the most fundamental objection to Obama stems from the belief that he does not ascribe ardently enough to the notion of American exceptionalism. (Correct me if that’s not the fundamental concern.)

I’m still not aware of any particular policy decisions which definitively prove this theory. Sure, Democrats are always for being multilateralists when they make use of organizations like NATO or the U.N. There’s a pretty distinct double-standard on these groups when it comes to the way they are employed by Presidents of different parties. Beyond those, I’m not sure what Obama has officially done. But I am aware of the things he’s said and written, and I think words matter and should fall into the “actions” category I asked for. These words also relate directly to the question of Obama’s interactions with our allies. One of the charges is that Obama has lowered our standing with them. I tried to find some data to back up this claim. It turns out that our standing, at least as measured by polling, has dramatically improved under Obama, at least in the numbers I could find. In the year he took office, we made dramatic gains. Check out page 5 of this report. A more recent article details the improvement based on polling data throughout the world. Part of this might simply be a reaction to the global antipathy toward Bush, a world-wide sigh of relief. But we should also be willing to consider the possibility that Obama’s speeches made in other countries, and his comments regarding our own which have been broadcast around the world, have increased our soft power, something Conservatives like Donald Rumsfeld reluctantly acknowledged is absolutely essential to defeating terrorism and undermining tyrants around the globe.

Take, for example, the situation between the U.S., Britain, and Argentina regarding the Falklands, pointed out by one of the commenters. Despite the anti-Obama slant to the article, it can’t identify any actual harm done by the Obama administration’s advocacy of diplomatic talks between the British and Argentine government over the islands. Perhaps it will tick off the British, but they remain among our strongest allies in the world and like Obama a lot more than American Conservatives do. But look at the flip side. Chavez is a nutjob. He’s on TV in his country for four hours or more a day, ranting about how the evil imperialists in America only want to destroy Argentina. He gets up at the U.N. and calls Bush names to increase his popularity back home. Now he’s been undermined in the eyes of his people. We’re not crazy. We’re also not capitulating or “tossing our allies under the bus as appeasement.” Chavez didn’t get the Falklands. He didn’t even get a sit-down with the British. He was just made to look foolish.

Or consider the case with our relationship with Israel. Obama has taken a beating for saying that negotiations related to the two-state solution should start with the pre-1967 borders and then be worked out in a series of land swaps. This is exactly what the Bush roadmap said, too. The problem is that the Israelis, though desiring the pre-1967 borders as a starting point and demanding land swaps in order to maintain control over Jerusalem, didn’t want their ultimate bargaining position stated aloud. They wanted to demand more, then work to the place that Obama announced. As someone who’s been involved in formal negotiations (of the contract variety, not the peace-in-the-middle-east kind) I understand not wanting to have your final position made public. I also understand that the President is rightly frustrated with the Israeli government’s continued construction of new settlements which the Israelis know they will just demolish later, and which rile up the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab word. Putting pressure on the Israelis might piss them off, but it won’t really diminish the ultimate settlement because the tough negotiating will be about the land swaps themselves, and they already knew we expected those as part of the Bush roadmap. Obama might have hurt himself with Conservatives, both in Israel and in the U.S., but he didn’t really give anything to the Palestinians and he undermined the Jihadist Imams who want to paint Israel and the U.S. with the same brush when Israel is doing things that the U.S. has long opposed. Creating a little political distance between ourselves and Israel is in our national interest, especially if it can be done so inexpensively; Israel didn’t really lose anything, Palestine didn’t really gain anything. The only losers were terrorists and Obama’s ratings in Florida. I’d call that a gutsy move. The Israeli ambassador might say that our nations’ relationship is in the worst shape it’s been in in 35 years, but at the end of the day Israel is still completely dependent on us for their security (their soldiers might be bad-asses, but they are bad-asses holding American guns) and we will continue to provide them with all the necessary security guarantees. Again, a net increase in America’s soft power.

But did these increases in our soft power need to come at the expense of our projected notion of American exceptionalism? Perhaps. It depends on what we mean by that. I think that might be the crux of the conservative antipathy towards Obama. If I am understanding the conservative definition of American exceptionalism correctly, conservatives would prefer a weaker America as long as it fits into a very specific definition of “American,” to a stronger America which fits the definition of “American” actually held by the majority of its people.

My friend who comments as Green Globule writes that conservatives are “not looking across the ocean for a better model.” This is ironic, since the term “exceptional” was first applied to America by Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman. If he’s not a guy from across the ocean who is responsible for this particular model, then perhaps credit should go to the first people to use the phrase “American exceptionalism.” That would be The American Communist Party of the 1920s, who used it to describe why they thought the Great Leap Forward would take a long time to occur here. Only, their definition isn’t really the modern Conservative variant, because they believed it was our “natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions” that would postpone the working class from rising up and offing the rich. When modern Conservatives talk about American exceptionalism, I don’t think they’re talking about our coal deposits or the fact that we don’t self-identify as working-class and aristocrats. Green Globule points to our freedom of speech and our right to bear arms. On these grounds, I think Obama fares very well. Though he talked about closing background check loopholes to prevent the mentally ill from getting guns in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting (any talk about guns from a Democrat raises red flags with some), he is also the first modern Democratic President, to my knowledge, to acknowledge the second amendment is an individual rather than a corporate right. That is huge, coming from a legal scholar who could tell you every argument from those who say it’s a corporate right based on the placement of a comma, and who often avoids politically impossible questions by laying out both sides, slowly, methodically, until the questioner gives up. Obama went out on a limb to say that, angering some gun control folks on his left, and has expanded the right to carry guns into national parks (a particularly big deal in Alaska, where much of the state is National Parks and where you really want to be armed). So if American exceptionalism is the right to bear arms, Obama should be in pretty good standing with Conservatives.

And what about free speech (my personal favorite of our rights)? I think this, along with the other rights guaranteed in the first amendment, is actually the most important element of what makes America great. I think the FCC should be allowed to regulate frequencies so my remote control car doesn’t show up on my radio and so my radio doesn’t control my remote control car. Beyond that, I’d get rid of it altogether. Want to burn a flag? Fine. It’s a stupid protest. It doesn’t tell me what you’re opposed to, specifically. Do you hate CIA intervention in Pakistan, or hate cotton? Mostly it just tells me you don’t like my country, which makes me less inclined to listen to what you have to say. But I love that we have the right to do it. Want to call the most conservative news network “fair and balanced”? Go right ahead, and if people believe that then maybe they’ll also believe I can bench 500 lbs., I’ve climbed Mt. Everest twice, and I have a credit score that makes me worthy of a loan of ten billion dollars. I love, love, love free speech. As an English teacher, it’s my livelihood. Without it, I’d be a propaganda teacher, and that doesn’t sound nearly as fun as my job. As a novelist, it’s my hobby. As a video game playing, novel reading, internet addicted movie buff, my life is pretty much free speech and sleep. So what has Obama done to diminish free speech? What has he done to diminish the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the freedom of religion? Tonight, at the first Republican debate, the candidates fell all over each other discussing Islam, with one candidate saying no Muslim would serve in his cabinet (at least not the kind of Muslim who would want to kill us) and another comparing Muslims to communists and Nazis. And which party has been at the forefront of the movement to censor the arts? Or to pass laws preventing flag burning (which later had to be overturned by the Supreme Court)? In fact, aside from protecting the rights of corporations to donate anonymously to campaigns (Scalia says Democracy is a full contact sport when it comes to signing petitions, and I agree, but apparently the anonymity of a political donation is part of its “speech”) how have Conservatives protected the freedom of speech better than Liberals? This might be part of a libertarian’s definition of American exceptionalism (and is the place where I’m most on board with libertarianism) but it cannot be the bedrock of modern Conservatives’ definition.

Is a Conservative’s definition of American exceptionalism based on our freedom from government intrusion into our lives? That depends on what you want to be free to do. If Brian wants to marry Larry, even if most Americans want these guys to have this right, even if the state can show no definitive reason why their marriage should be prevented which is not based in a particular religious ideology, even if Brian and Larry live in a different state that wants to give them permission to do so, it’s Conservatives who want the government to step in and tell them they can’t. And if a woman and her doctor decide she needs an abortion, Conservatives want the government to step in and stop that. In fact, when the Supreme Court says the government can’t stop that, Conservatives busy themselves passing state laws that tell the doctor he has to wait a period of time, show her an ultra-sound of the fetus, give her a lecture filled with demonstrably false information about the dangers of the procedure, and then complete the procedure before the delay they caused! Want to buy some marijuana for the pain from your chemotherapy? How about an OD on opiates because you’re in misery from an untreatable illness? No, the Conservative’s definition of American exceptionalism can’t be based strictly on freedom. Just some freedoms. The ones they like.

Maybe it’s based on our wealth. We are the richest nation in the world, in total terms. That means that we’re the richest people, on average. Of course, that is of great consolation to people who don’t know the difference between a median and a mode. But if you try to do anything to help more Americans enjoy that wealth, you are a socialist or a communist, a redistributor of wealth, an oppressor who makes slaves of the poor through the soft bigotry of low expectations. (Modern Conservatives do not like this kind of slavery. They did protect the other kind, though, because, as Green Globule points out, Conservatives “first concern is against new mistakes, especially those at the national level which are hardest to undo.” You know, like the 13 Amendment barring slavery. Somebody had to make sure we didn’t jump to that decision too hastily, right?) But some Conservatives are threatening to refuse to up the debt ceiling (in exchange for concessions to limit a woman’s liberty to get a Pap Smear at a Planned Parenthood, no less) and that is the single quickest way to make sure the U.S. is no longer the wealthiest nation in the world, so this can’t be the foundation for Conservatives’ definition of American exceptionalism, either. Oh, and if our wealth were the measure of American exceptionalism, Conservatives would feel lukewarm about Reagan, the first Bush, and Obama, hate George W. Bush, and their favorite President of the last thirty years would be Bill Clinton.

Or maybe it’s our military might. This strikes me as unlikely, since there’s a great deal of dispute within the Conservative movement about whether we should be isolationists, shoring up our military defenses, or neo-conservatives, flexing our military muscles abroad to protect our global interests. Regardless, Obama seems to have split the difference. He hasn’t over-extended the military the way the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict have, but did double-down on Afghanistan and has shown he’s perfectly willing to use the military in Libya, Yemen, and Pakistan. You can take issue with some of those choices (I certainly do), but I don’t see how he could generate such hatred by splitting the difference in the other side’s internal debate.

So, if it’s not our 1st or 2nd amendment rights, it’s not our freedom from government intrusion into our lives, it’s not our wealth, and it’s not our military might, what is the definition of American exceptionalism which Obama lacks? I have a theory.

I think the Conservative definition of American exceptionalism is tautological. In essence, they believe America is better because it’s America, and Americans are better because they’re American. Only, their definition of American is only the Conservative they see in the mirror. This can be pretty easily demonstrated. Conservatives do not like it when you point out that America has made mistakes. Liberals get pilloried for this. But ask a Conservative if the majority of Americans were right to cast a ballot for Barack Obama, and they’ll tell you it was a mistake, that we are “on the wrong track.” If you talk about how we were wrong when the CIA assassinated Allende, the democratically elected leader of Chile, they’ll call you unpatriotic. But the Bay of Pigs Fiasco? A Democrat’s mistake. The whole Constitution should be read from the floor of Congress because it’s perfect, right? Now, who wants to read that 3/5ths part?

My friend Derek wrote, “Conservatives hold America as a country and an ideal in the absolute highest regard. We do believe America is exceptional. We do believe in a Divine blessing on this nation. Therefore we reject anyone who would do any thing to diminish that exceptionalism as Obama has by apologizing for America…” First of all, even when I was a Christian, I found that notion of a Divine blessing abhorrent. The idea that God prefers Americans not only shows a lazy or willful misreading of scripture, but it’s offensive not just to people outside our borders, but to Christians here, too. It reminds me of those post-game interviews when the reporter stick the microphone in the face of the star of the winning team and he thanks God for the victory. Yeah, because God preferred your team. And you’ll lose next week because God is wishy-washy. If this is the bedrock of the Conservative definition of American exceptionalism, then that God prefers the country where one of the founding principles is that the government of that country shall establish no religion which might acknowledge His preference. That God is either very humble or quite stupid.

As for apologizing for America, Green Globule echoed this sentiment somewhat when he wrote, “When I read Dreams from my Father, the one thing I was looking for above all else was that he loved and respected this country and that he believed in it. I found nothing of the sort, and generally only the opposite.” Here’s the lynchpin of the difference between the Conservative definition of America and the Progressive’s: Obama is considered un-American because he points out that America isn’t perfect. That’s considered “apologizing for America.” I shouldn’t have to write this, but for an African American growing up in the 60s in America, the country wasn’t perfect. Men were being lynched for having skin the same color as his just when he was trying to figure out his racial identity. Acknowledging that doesn’t mean a person hates America, or is apologizing for it. Recognizing that fact, and many other negative facts about American history, is part and parcel of the Progressive’s definition of American exceptionalism: America keeps getting better! We started out with slavery written into our Constitution, but we got better. Women couldn’t vote, but we got better! Children had to work twelve hour shifts, seven days a week, in dangerous conditions, but (thanks to Big Government nanny-state regulations) we got better! Somebody else invented the automobile, but we built it cheaper, faster, and better! Somebody else made it into space first, but we got to the moon! We mistreated lots of different groups of our fellow Americans for a host of deplorable reasons, and we still do, but to diminishing degrees because we keep getting better! Hell, Democracy was invented by other people, and, Green Globule, they lived “across the ocean,” but they are dead and gone and we are still here making it better. And someday we will take gay marriage and some variation on national healthcare and we’ll just keep on getting better.

But…

But it’s not a fait accompli that we’ll just go on making it better. The single biggest threat to what really makes America great is the idea that our greatness is finished, that we don’t need to look across the ocean for new ideas to take and improve because we can just sit on our hands as Americans and God’s divine blessing will keep us on top. This, I think, is really at the heart of the hatred of Obama, and it’s also the origin, at its extreme, of the whole “Birthir” movement. It’s not that Obama was born in Hawaii and spent time overseas. McCain was born in Panama and nobody found that disqualifying. It’s that Obama is willing to look at other models and listen to other ideas. He’s not blinded by the kind of ultra-nationalism that says that everything foreign is inferior and suspect and probably evil. I may disagree with him on the conclusions he comes to about half of those ideas. I may even find some of his policies infuriating. But when I have to choose between Obama and someone who is trying to placate a constituency that sees any recognition of our country’s mistakes as a sign of a lack of patriotism and any idea from any other country as dismissible, I will choose him. Odds are, most Americans will make the same choice.

And maybe that’s a mistake. We do make those.

But I vote that we keep getting better.

Why Does the Right Hate Obama So Much?

I don’t get it. Maybe it’s because I’m one of these wide-eyed, naïve, hopey-changey liberals. Fine. But if we can get past the obligatory name-calling, I really wish someone would explain it to me: Why do conservatives seem to regard the President of the United States with the kind of passionate spite normally reserved for pedophile clergy, genocidal dictators, and malarial mosquitoes?

The other day I got an offer from CafePress offering me free bumper stickers. I like free. With shipping and handling, it’s almost down to my price-range. So I clicked and looked at the “Humor: Political” stickers. What I found would have made a Fox News pundit blush. All the anti-Bush “Somewhere in Texas a Village is Missing its Idiot” stuff paled in comparison. It was like Obama sat in the front row and decided to heckle Don Rickles, with the occasional rebuttal tossed in by Michael Richards on his absolute worst day ever. Some examples: “A Taxpayer Voting for Obama is like a Chicken Voting for Col. Sanders” and “Who Would Have Thought the Biggest Threat to America would Be Our Own President?” Hilarious, right?

Now, people can slap whatever they want on their cars. You want to put a confederate flag on your bumper? Hey, they’re your slashed tires, buddy. Besides the free speech argument, I don’t expect bumper stickers to make nuanced policy arguments. If the colonists had only had a 3 by 8 inch sticker that had to be read by the guy on the horse behind them, the Declaration of Independence would have said, “Hey George! Next time we shove the tea up your ass!” But those colonists did have specific, clear, and demonstrable grievances. Those grievances related directly to the way the behavior of the British affected their daily lives. They didn’t just shout ad hominem attacks across the Atlantic.

So here’s my genuine question: Conservatives, what’s your beef? What has President Obama done to threaten America? What has he done that makes him as lethal to you as Col. Sanders is to chickens?

Please don’t tell me what you think Obama is. I am a firm believer that we are what we do. What has Obama actually done that inspires such hatred?

Some more ground-rules: I don’t believe conservatives are racists. Don’t prove me wrong.

Try and avoid knee-jerk ad hominem attacks. I enjoy some good smarm, but since I’m genuinely trying to understand, try to be factual with me.

Liberals, feel free to fact-check any claims made here, but let’s allow some conservatives to make a case. That’s the point after all.

And nobody mention Kool-Aid. It’s irritating. And don’t call Obama the messiah and think it’s sarcastic and clever. Only conservatives call him that. Liberals have plenty of disagreements with Obama’s policies. I could give you a pretty long list. But my quibbles are because he’s too centrist and too willing to compromise with a political Right.

I believe the Right hates him irrationally. Convince me I’m wrong about that. Tell me what he has done to you to earn your hatred. Help me understand.

James Henry

I just heard the news that my friend, James Henry, passed away.

I met James at last summer's Oregon Writing Project at Willamette University. James was an amazing man in many ways. He was remarkably social, engaging everyone immediately with his warmth. He was so open that his humility took you by surprise; just when you felt you were starting to get to know this unassuming, kind man, he surprised you with the kind of detail most people would lead with, like the fact that he'd won a silver medal at the Paralympic Games in Barcelona. Walking down the streets of Salem on some of our writing field trips, Jim would run into a stunning number of friends. It seemed everyone knew him, and for good reason; James could make a friend in an instant, and then would maintain that friendship. He continued to correspond with me after the OWP, sending me some of his writing and critiquing mine. James was hit by a car while riding his bike some weeks ago, and suffered sever injuries. He was in a medically-induced coma, but, last I heard, it seemed like he was going to pull through, and I looked forward to many more years of friendship. I'm shaken by this sudden loss and surprised by how much Jim came to mean to me in such a short time. Here's a poem Jim read last summer at the OWP. I liked it so much that I had him email it to me, and now I'm so glad I did, so I can share this little treasure he gave me:

Disarmament

Because I have one arm, people stare.
Because people stare, they remember me.

Because I have one arm, swimming is difficult.
Through difficulty I’ve learned the patience of fish.

Because I have one arm, strangers ask how.
Because they ask, I turn strangers to friends.

Because I have one arm, people judge.
Because people judge, I don’t judge people.

Because I have one arm, some things are impossible.
Rather than quit, I master the possible.

Without my left arm, my body has limits.
My body has limits, not I.

--James Henry

Dirkus Circus, Love Children, Right-Wing Social Engineering, and Ska2oosh!

kaytiethelion called me out in the comments to my last post for not posting frequently enough. First of all, that's the kind of complaint I love to hear. It's so much better than "Quit your bloggin', you loser!" Second, she’s right. I should be more regular in my posts. I could post the kinds of detritus that ends up in my tweets or Facebook status updates, but that’s not really the style I want to use in this space. Twitter is for microblogging. I want this site to be for longer pieces. Sometimes they’re too long, I admit. I call that “macroblogging.” The problem is that I'm trapped in a kind of choice paralysis; what to rant about this week? There are so many great topics.

For one thing, when is it okay to root for an unstoppable German machine vs. a group of united allies? When that machine is Dirk Nowitzki, and those allies include a guy with his initials tattooed on his arms and the phrase "Chosen One" on his back.

As I told my uncle, a Dallas resident, I usually don't root for teams from Texas (the state that gave us both Dubya and Dr. Phil), but I can't help but admire the Dirkus Circus, and you've gotta' love Jose Barea, the five-foot tall Puerto Rican who is tearing up guys twice his size on both ends of the court. I rooted for Miami the last time these two met in the NBA finals, because D-wade was only in his third year in the league and was already a joy to watch. Now I'm old and I want Jason Kidd (who is about to start collecting Medicare and is blocking shots and hitting 3s better than ever) to make being old and bald halfway respectable again. Oh, and as much as Dirk is putting on a clinic on the court, he's also schooling everybody inside and outside of the NBA on humility, something that's in short supply when too much talent crowds it out in South Beach. Go Mavs!

But I'm not going to blog about that.

Not when there's an absolute rash of political sex scandal bursting out everywhere. DSK (nicknamed "The Great Seducer" in France, a country that really should know a thing or two about that) has shown that his seduction techniques leave a bit to be desired. Maria Shriver has learned that standing by your man when serious allegations come out about his sexual behavior can sure come back to haunt you when that kid at your son's birthday party has an Austrian accent. And John Edwards is learning that cheating on your wife while she has cancer might be a bigger political no-no for Democrats than Republicans (right, Newt?) but using campaign funds to pay to keep it a secret is a bi-partisan violation of the law. Oh, and we're all learning to KEEP IT IN YOUR TROUSERS! It does beg the serious question, though. Does the need for ego gratification that drives these guys into politics compel them to reach out and touch someone just because one wife seems a bit bland compared to crowds of adoring fans chanting your name, or is it the kind of narcissism that leads them to believe they can do a good job telling lots of people what to do that also makes them think they can get away with any behavior, not matter how unethical and illegal?

But I'm not going to blog about that.

Why not? Because the tabloid spectacle of love children is a distraction from the election that is starting to cohere on the Republican side of the fence, and there are some genuine policy issues that are rising to the surface there which may change the political landscape for years to come. Way back in 2010, the Republicans made great hay about the fact that Obamacare would make changes to Medicare. This freaked-out Tea-Partiers who were concerned that having a socialist in the White House might threaten their government-run defined benefit insurance plan. Enter Paul Ryan, who proposed a plan that would flip the defined benefit plan into a defined contribution plan, and one that would not keep pace with medical inflation. Oops. Well, 2010 was a long time ago, so maybe they forgot how much mileage they got out of that attack. Surprise: The Democrats didn't. When they saw that a question about how a candidate WOULD HAVE voted on the Ryan Plan sunk her in a New York congressional election, they quickly put the Ryan Plan to a floor vote in the Senate so that every Republican has had to take a stand on the plan. Oh, and the Republicans can't just run away from it. Newt Gingrich generously demonstrated why not by calling the plan "right-wing social engineering." This is what we call a Kinsley gaffe; the accidental utterance of a politically unpopular truth. The beating Gingrich took probably pushed Republicans to vote for the plan, and the beating they'll take for that will be even more unpleasant. The lesson both sides are learning: Don't mess with Medicare. Even if it's unsustainable and will bankrupt us all, you let it slide. Heaven help us.

But I'm not going to blog about that.

Not when Sarah Palin may re-enter the race. Can you imagine the possibility that someone who doesn't really have a handle on the issues but loves attention would tease the country with the prospect of running, eat up tons of airtime, then pull out at the last minute and reap huge financial rewards via all that attention for not really doing anything at all? Well, Donald Trump may be out of the race, but Sarah Palin seems like she might be in. She's moving closer to her daughter, but that means she's also moving closer to an airport, which, of course, means she's going to run for president. It's hard to predict which Republican nominee will lose to Obama in 2012, but a Palin entry would sure make the nearly inevitable defeat a lot more entertaining to watch than a contest between Pawlenty and Romney or that other guy or that other guy, so political reporters are drooling. Me, I'm waiting to see just how long she can go before talking to a reporter, live and on camera, who does not work for Fox News. Furthermore, how long will it take before people start to get suspicious about a candidate who believes she's capable of being President but is too afraid to talk to people armed with nothing but microphones and tough questions? And will any of her primary opponents point that out in order to save their own necks when things get desperate for them, or could she make it all the way to the general before Bidden or some other not-the-candidate calls her out for hiding from reality in Reality TV?

But I'm not going to blog about that, either.

Why not? I'm going to bed, because I'm taking my son to see Kung Fu Panda 2 tomorrow, and that promises a level of awesomeness none of these things can hope to compete with.