Originally written and posted on April 16th, 2006
It's been a bizarre weekend. I'm sitting here trying to think of some profound phrase to encapsulate it, and that's the best I've got.
I guess I'll just talk to you, and see what happens. First, a few observations and responses to issues raised both in email and discussions on various blogs:
The only factually incorrect thing in the Washington Post story about me was the description of my husband Adam's job; he works as a grip in film and television, not a lighting technician. A more appropriate way to describe it is "film technician," because Adam doesn't work with the lights, per se -- he sets them up, but he doesn't choose them or turn them on. He was quite peeved that Finkel and I made the mistake, and for that I apologise. "Grip" would have necessitated an explanation for which Finkel did not have the page space.
Everything else, from quotes to descriptions, was factually correct. What Finkel didn't quite capture was some of the context, and I'm fine with that. My son isn't scared of me; in fact, we usually recite that Howard Beale speech together. His backing away was more about the presence of a stranger and his unwillingness to be my trained monkey than about being "startled" or afraid. Of course, Finkel couldn't know that, and I am not upset about it. It bothers me somewhat that some people think I'm a bad mother -- but among the hate emails I've received, many express the sentiment that I'm sending my child to hell for being a liberal and instilling him with liberal values, so I guess an accurate context of our Howard Beale routine wouldn't exactly mitigate my image in the eyes of that type of audience, anyway...
I am a smoker. I quit every few months, with varied lengths of success. I do not enjoy smoking, I do not like cigarettes and I consider my continued failure to quit and stay quit one of the biggest problems in my life. I do NOT need anyone to tell me how harmful it is, how unattractive or how much longer I will live if I quit now.
I do not drink. I do, however, have a number of silly affectations, one of which is drinking Diet Coke in a wine glass. I drink non-alcoholic beer, and there is .05% alcohol in it -- I am aware of this and I choose to drink non-alcoholic beer AND non-alcoholic wine anyway. If some people consider this an inappropriate choice for a recovered alcoholic, it is their right to believe so. It is also their right to mention it. Once having received my validation of their opinion and heard my decision to disagree, it is then incumbent on them to shut the fuck up about it. The same should be assumed about the smoking thing.
I do not consider, nor have I ever promoted myself as the Spokesperson for the Angry Left. The fact that I have been designated or implied as such by two members of the corporate media is beyond my control; I deny such a claim, I repeat that I speak only for myself, and that is the best I can do. To those who would advise me that I should eschew the media altogether, I can only reply that it is an absurd suggestion. I blog because I want to be heard; when offered the opportunity to be heard by increasingly large numbers, I accept it. If anyone is offended by the very idea of my speaking my opinions into a larger megaphone than theirs, they are free to say so, but it is not for them to tell me what I may and may not do. To suggest, as someone actually did, that I ought to have asked permission of the left blogosphere to go on television and be profiled in a newspaper as a liberal blogger, is the height of surreal arrogance.
I chose to allow a reporter into my home to observe and listen to me, and to report what he heard and saw in a major newspaper. I was under no illusion that I might be portrayed flatteringly or maliciously. I believed he would report the truth, and that, he did. Whether anyone feels it was flattering or malicious is irrelevant; we see what we choose to see, more often than not, and objectivity is an illusive and often impossible goal. Every word of the story was factual and true and real. If that offends people, so be it. If it encourages people, so be it.
I never once considered "stage managing" this event. I did not alter my behaviour, my speech or my appearance in any way for the benefit of the media or the audience. Nor was I naive in choosing this approach; I was and am fully aware of my flaws and foibles, and how I might be seen by many to be a crude caricature of the Liberal Boogeyman. Certainly, the picture chosen by the editor to accompany the story did nothing to dissuade that impression. But, while I am aghast to be seen at such an unflattering angle, it, too, is real.
My anger is also real. It is, to be sure, only one facet of my existence, but to demur from having my anger presented as the catalyst for my blogging would be risibly dishonest. I write about politics and social issues because I am angry; because I care deeply and I see wrong in the world, it angers me. I AM the Angry Left, though I do not speak for it. I speak for myself as a member of the Angry Left. I am American, but I do not speak for all Americans. I am alcoholic, but I do not speak for all alcoholics. I am a mother, but I do not speak for all mothers. I am a woman, but I do not speak for all women.
I am an American woman who is an Angry Liberal, a recovered alcoholic and a mother. Each of these subsets of humanity to which I belong has, at varying intervals, experienced a demonisation in the lexicon of humanity. Mothers are blamed for the wrongs and ills of their children; Americans are blamed for the wrongs of their governments; alcoholics are blamed for their lack of willpower and enslavement to alcohol; women are blamed for too many things to mention; and liberals are blamed for being too extreme, for being unrealistic, for not "going along to get along," for being uncompromising, for being "crazy" and for being the source of all evil in the world.
Anyone who places wholesale blame on any group for a particular ill in this world is delusional. I do not make it my mission to convert the delusional. Neither do I believe the onus is on me, in any medium, to represent to the moderates and fence-sitters of this country a palatable and appealing portrait of the Angry Left. I believe the onus is on me to speak the truth as I see it, to make my case as best I can, and let the events which unfold thereafter determine my next decision.
I appear on radio and television and in newspapers because I want to be heard, not because I want to win hearts and minds, not because I want to convert the undecided -- and not because I think I'm the best person to represent people who feel as I do and think as I do. I don't think I'm the best person. I do, however, think it would be ridiculous to suggest that I ought to decline the opportunities I've been given, or to shut up or censor myself or stage-manage my appearances for the benefit of everyone on the liberal end of the political spectrum. I got these opportunities because of who I am and how I behave and that, as they say, is that.
"They are using you," is a frequent plaint emanating throughout the blogosphere at present. A self-evident statement if ever there was one; of course they're using me. If anyone ever tells you that radio, television and newsprint journalism are only out to report the news, you're being lied to. They're out to make money. They report what they report the way they report it with the intention of capturing the largest share of the paying audience they can possibly attract. So they choose people like me because it attracts an audience. If you think I've been blithely unaware of that fact, you're woefully ignorant of my intellectual capacity.
I am using them, too. And so far, the benefits have far outweighed the costs. Both personally and politically, I have been enriched by my experiences in the corporate media (though not, as yet, financially -- but that is a topic for another day). The motivation that originally inspired me to blog, the desire to be heard, listened to... that motivation still exists in me, as it exists in anyone who has ever commented on a blog or written on a blog. For reasons that should be obvious by now, I have fallen into a glitch in reality that allows me to be heard by even more people than I have been on blogs heretofore. Just as I am, without benefit of public relations representatives or agents or career advisors or handlers, I have reached this point. The only help I had was a wide audience on someone else's blog and the generosity of that person in allowing me to speak to that audience. And... I had myself. For better or worse, warts and all, I found my voice and it attracted listeners.
So when someone says to me, "Yes, but now you're in the media, you have to tone it down, you have to think of your image as representative of a greater whole, you have to consider the audience, stop using all those swear words, you'll turn off too many people, stop being so self-promoting, don't be so vain, so profane, so emotional, so hyperbolic, so... so... YOU," forgive me if my response is a curt and cutting, "Fuck off." SO far, I've been doing fine just as I am, and my goals and aspirations, dreams and desires, have been served quite well by my insistence on doing it my way. The paternalistic tone of those whose "helpful suggestions" and "constructive criticisms" amount to nothing more than a demand that I change to suit their needs is grotesquely insulting and arrogant in the extreme, and I get more than a little peeved when someone tells me I'm being used, as if it's news to me, as if I'm not fully aware of the realities of circumstances as they unfold.
I'm not saying I don't welcome criticism; sure, I don't welcome it happily, no more than I welcome dental checkups and pelvic exams happily. But I do believe in the need for constant dialogue and self-examination, an impossible experience to replicate in solitude. I'm not communicating all this shit for plaudits and praise and lockstep agreement; if I've taken a wrong turn when it comes to social issues or political incidents, if I'm misinformed about a particular fact or argument I've asserted, by all means, let the corrections begin.
But when it comes to my actions, I no more welcome dictates from strangers as to what I should do and say in the media than I do demands from vegetarians that I stop eating meat. Criticise my actions, dissect and analyse and eviscerate them at will. Make your suggestions aloud, share your ideas about alternate courses of action you think anyone in your liberal sphere should be taking and avoiding, to be sure. But avoid strident demands for explanations and altered behaviour from me, please. I am not your representative, and as such I do not accept your dictum as to how I ought to behave in my personal choices. And they are personal choices, ladies and gentlemen. I am voicing my opinions about issues that concern me; I just happen to be doing it in a vastly larger arena than I once was. I am not on anyone's payroll. I am not running for office and I am not selling a Party and I am not pushing legislation.
I'll close with this: yesterday two people asked me what I had hoped to achieve by allowing a major newspaper to profile me and my life and my beliefs on its front page. They were sincere, confused and polite in their requests for an answer, and so I choose to answer them:
Among the hundreds of emails I received yesterday (the good outnumbering the bad by a large ratio) was a short note from a 76 year old woman in Virginia. I could almost see her hands shaking as she typed her missive to a complete stranger she'd just read about in her morning paper. She explained that she had only ever used the computer her children got for her to send and receive emails. But she read the story about me in the Post and was almost overwhelmed with gratitude and relief. She lives alone. She doesn't talk much to her children anymore, and she watches a lot of television.
Over the past 5 years, she has turned into an angry, despairing woman whose sense of powerlessness over the state of the world has almost overtaken her sensibilities. She got on the computer and found my blog, the one she read about in the Washington Post; as she read the diaries and front page stories and comments, she was alternately amazed and overjoyed to have found a community of people who thought and felt as she did. Her email to me was not just to thank me and tell me her story; she wanted me to help her to register, as none of the instructions made much sense to her.
I responded to this woman, whom I cannot help imagining as a classic, archetypal Little Old Lady, because her emails sound so much like the archetype; I gave her detailed instructions about links and mouse clicking and scrolling. I registered her and told her how to change her password. She is now a member of My Left Wing, a liberal community comprised of people just like her: left wing, liberal, progressive, religious, irreligious, profane, politically aware, interpersonally connected, loving and supportive people who gather at the same website to discuss whatever they're thinking about at any given moment.
It is my privilege to be the titular head of such a community, though, as I said to someone earlier today, it is much more like a commune, a collective, than any other arrangement to which I can think to compare it. For whatever reason, I seem to have attracted to the community of My Left Wing a wide assortment of intelligent, compassionate, savvy, hilarious, generous and supportive people who can write beautifully, succinctly, audaciously and exquisitely about an infinite number of subjects. If being myself has brought me to this place, if my flawed, infuriating, eccentric, pathetic and bathetic personality is in any measure responsible for the existence of this community, then I have achieved far more than I ever imagined possible.
One little old lady sitting at her kitchen table alone in Virginia stopped feeling so alone yesterday because of something I did; that is enough.
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