Faux Toes

Because people keep asking me to do this...

Rattlesnake Poetry

A Blog about Blogging

*Clears throat*...

Recently, someone posted an online op-ed piece (read: blog - call it what the fuck it is, people) on her experiences at the university in what is technically my hometown. It looked like this. The responses were so numerous and vitriolic that, were it not accompanied by a picture of the author, I would almost suspect the article was secretly written by Rush Limbaugh as a way to get hated by even more people. ("What demographic haven't I pissed off yet...? I know - I'll pose as a self-righteous young whipper-snapper publicly denigrating a small city that nobody's ever heard of!")

This was my original response as it appeared on that site:

American journalists are a pretty low form of life, and the lowest of them are doe-eyed op-ed newspaper bloggers. I didn't encounter any Noble Truths in this article, just a short series of criticisms by someone who wants to sound clever. Still, the grammar wasn't horrific and I did enjoy the "partying heart beating furiously at its center" metaphor - if only for the irony of trying to imagine a partying heart. But then that's modern hipster poetry-prose in sum. Overall I give it a C. 

Having said that: what exactly did she expect? When did Binghamton become anything more than a dreary semi-no-mans-land, and how does anyone with more than a kindergarten education not know that already? The "famous" bars of Binghamton? Yes, I suppose that's true, if you move there from Harpursville or Elmira or Mogadishu; otherwise they're standard dives for a dying city with one university and too much rain, Seattle's grumpy little sister who never learned to play nice but still looks kind of sexy on her motorcycle. I moved out west 10 years ago and, whenever people ask where I'm from, I recommend they watch a few episodes of The Twilight Zone. But then I know that. Everyone knows that, including the people who still live there and love it. Anyone who expects differently deserves what (in this case: she) gets.

This is what I'd like to add now:

That article has been viewed tens of thousands of times, at this point, which means it's been seen by more people than have read my books, published and unpublished articles, and Cracked contributions combined. It also generated something approaching a million lines of text in response (one woman wrote a diatribe in the Comments section that was actually longer than the article itself). To which I must humbly say: bravo.

I didn't like the article very much, although I didn't exactly hate it either. I've always dogged on my hometown because it's grey and dreary and full of racists and other ne'er-do-wells, but that's always been in the tone of good-natured ribbing rather than outright hatred. I lived in New Orleans for five years after leaving Binghamton and, let me tell you, for greyness AND dreariness AND dangerous criminals you really cannot beat New Orleans. But I still love the place. I love both of them. I just love them the way you love a parent who drinks too much; a sort of "Oh you" hands-on-hips/shaking-head *sigh* kind of love, like I wish it had done more with its life. But then that's probably what inspired me to do so much more with my own life. How many people grow up in Beverly Hills and decide, as an act of defiance, to go out and become a professional archaeologist, author, adventurer, research biologist, behavioral ecologist, teacher, artist, medical activist... Probably close to zero. Life is just too good in Beverly Hills, and when it's not good you can always snort coke and mooch off the "goodness" of your neighbors. Not so in Binghamton (at least not the second one).

I also think she leaned too heavily on Harry Potter references. Four years of writing instruction should have taught her to either be more subtle in her allusions or, at the very least, not direct them all at one source. And I don't count the "Noble Truths" bit as a reference to Buddhism because the article didn't use Gautama's fourfold prescriptive philosophical structure - it just spouted a bunch of opinions, roughly (but not actually) adding up to about four.

But, and here is the bravo point, this is the direction in which I like to see the world going. I don't want to repeat myself too much, so let me just reiterate a point I make very often about music, movies, and the academic and medical industries: the days of the Big Dogs spoon-feeding us whatever the fuck they feel like are numbered. For most of the history of Western civilization things like knowledge, entertainment, medicine, and the news were in the hands of people who knew damned good and well that the commonweal had to swallow what they were handed because nobody had any other choice. Not so anymore. You can now go online and cherry-pick good songs from albums without having to taste any of the filler, access databases and libraries around the world and conduct your own research, find medicines and medical practitioners galore that efficaciously outdistance most of the white-coated retards at the local clinic, and so on. And the same is true for what we generously call the news. Think Fox is too slanted? Think CNN is too dog-and-pony-show? Think the local news focuses too much on "it will kill your children" hooks and puff pieces? Think NPR is just too.... NPR? Go online. See what the people on the ground are reporting. Scroll down to the Comments and see what other people think about what they're reporting. Leave some comments yourself. In other words: let the Big Dogs know that we don't have to put up with their acrimonious bullshit anymore. We have alternatives now, more than ever before. Their reign of tyranny is at an end.

You may not agree with the author of the Binghamton-slamming blog. Or you may agree with her article and think its droves of critics are just childishly chanting "I know you are but what am I!" (Or, for that matter, you might not read the thing at all - that's a freedom you have too, after all.) But it's no worse than anything I've ever heard on Fox or CNN or MSNBC and it's better than anything Limbaugh ever squatted and shat out. So I'm closing this with a reference of my own, a little older and more threadbare than JK Rowling but also a bit more poignant:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." ~ Evelyn Beatrice Hall