She Who Must Be Obeyed

Miss Tara: "I definitely watch many people around me run away from themselves constantly, justifying it with ‘business’ and replacing deeper connections with internet ‘friends’. I’m pretty guilty of it myself, although I’ve made a special effort lately to, as one person put it, "Stop all that fucking Twittering and get your ass into therapy."

And did you? I think we know the answer to the first. Good lord, girl. Must you be so damn spurned ... online?

Where is our dignity, after all. As women.

Not to worry. You're not the first woman to learn the virtue (and strength) of true humility via the tacky road of self-humiliation.

I'd say more, but there might be a Man reading ...

So ... do carry on with that second part. You know my motto: the kid comes first.

signed, 

    She who shall remain nameless.

Horses, Pigs, Cows And Danger

Tara Hunt posted a while back something that has stuck with me:

... nobody has come forward to show me where it is unsafe for a woman to expose her life to a wide audience. I’ve only experienced personal and professional gain ...

The ACTUAL danger here is not the danger, itself, but the danger of silencing the myriad of voices through the threat of danger. And you know, I’m going to be the ballsy (dangerous) broad I am and continue to challenge every single person who even hints towards the theory that women are less safe than men online. Because, truly, I would rather die for my convictions than live in fear any day.

I don't know what it is that bothers me about this. Or rather, I find it difficult, morally sorting out all the bothersome things. The irritations from the deeper issues, the offenses from the common moral good.

Nor is it clear why Miss Hunt makes such a good Good Example. Perhaps because her heart is, of all hearts, so plainly, even sweetly in the right place. The sort of person who moves one, whose fallings short of the mark shows us something deeply human about our own. Of course, Tara Hunt may have quite other feelings about me, but hey. The writers' life.

For it's writers, don't you know, who see through walls, and let nothing alone. The unseen and the unspoken are what sets us to thinking, and that is our work and our pleasure. To think through the ghastly spell that grips American life, to illuminate something of the non-suffering world beyond.

And I don't mean the endless-drivel aspect of the web. It's the blog entries of people who have neither inclination nor, perhaps, that awful wherewithal to do the hard, often painful work to Think. (cf. Hannah Arendt.) Who churn out i the semi-truthful posts, drawing commenters happy to live in a semi-truthful world. Is everybody comfy?

I certainly hope not.

Big Stink In Little China

Yesterday (Tuesday, now that I post this) was kind of a gaggy day, in this little corner of the web. And it is little. I'm not sure some of the well-known bloggers involved really comprehend that. Least of all, the perps of Tuesday's big stink.

I'm not even going to bother to preface this with all the "I identify with you as a woman" crap, because that should be a given. Not that there were many givens—which are, after all, the product of trust—around yesterday.

What showed up instead, en masse, was a lot of ego-underbelly. The dark side of narcissism. Disowned, projected content, with that fabulous mob-mentality willingness to point the finger.

Finger, what am I saying. They named names, numbers, URLs. People, read my lips: this is something healthy adults do not do.

And you could count them on one hand, the adults.

As to the many "friends" who rushed to defend Kathy ... WTF were you thinking? Are people so bloody eager to belong, so profoundly immature ... it disheartens me. That's not support, it's not friendship, and certainly not what a person in trauma needs. Idjits! Get a clue, read a book, something!

Apparently, we must also review basic civil rights: No one is free to accuse a suspected other in public this way, name names, organize vendettas or any other similar damn thing ... unless, of course, you believe in vigilante justice. So crude, so not nice.

No matter how very special you are. No matter, even, if disgusting things have been posted about your wife—outrage, yes. Posses, no. Let me see, also bandied about by some leading lights were: vilification,isolation, shunning ... prison, FCS. Them's some mighty big underbellies. Some mighty brave pajama people.

Now we come to the nub of things. Miss Tara Rogue Hunt's blog, where I had wandered onto the comment thread that fateful afternoon.

"If you are part of the swarm of mean kids that come around to just be disruptive without making a point, you will be deleted. Say what you came to say … you aren’t clever. You are mean."

Talk about riveting. Instantly, the discussion became like one of those accident scenes where everything unfolds in slow-motion, with sirens and flashing lights just around the corner.

And Miss Tara Rogue soon got down to her nub.

"I don't want to sound like Oprah or any of these really slimy things the "guffaw brigade" is indicating below (they remind me of the mean kids in high school who used to draw pictures of me with zits all over and laugh at my expense) ... I guess I want us to get real and human."

A many-headed nub, as nubs so often are, and we ought not to be surprised. That is compassion, not the rush to fawn, but letting people speak for themselves—and listening. Carefully.

Tuesday night's Dan Fost Tech Chronicles column: (revised, small mercies, for Wednesday's paper)

"Tara Hunt, of San Francisco, who had been the original target of Locke's 'Mean Kids' site (she had coined the term after getting flamed for suggesting that companies need to find a 'higher purpose') ..."

Which isn't quite true. Is it. Clearly that's how you felt; the astonishing thing (do I need to say this?) is the latitude you cut for yourself as a result.

"'Chris Locke is a sad soul who blames the world for his lack of success,' Hunt said when I reached her on the phone today. 'He's constantly broke and angry. He calls himself rageboy. All that anger makes him very hard to work with.'"

Without condescension, Tara Rogue, but because this is somewhat within my purview, I offer you one thought: Stop all that fucking Twittering and get your ass into therapy.

No one acts out that dramatically and harmfully to another who has integrated their dark side ... and the dark side is what this is really all about.

N.B. This post actually follows upon this one, unbeknownst at the time.

Where Do They All Come From

Sometimes the best stuff goes on at someone else's blog. You know, kind of like the way some couples fight at other people's houses.

Like this poor guy, making his helpful little Liberal remarks. I can pick a fight with anybody. Particularly the well-meaning, whose very springboard is All Wrong. Bamboo slivers neath the nails. Bring 'em on.

Comment by Robert Franklin

“BTW, we have just finished up a round of interviews with teens for the website I will be launching FamilyThrive and one thing that was really clear to me was that even though teens push back about spending time with their parents to their parents. When we conducted our interviews they all shared how much they truly cherish spending time with their parents and want to spend more. Ironic.”

Thread hijacking? I don't think so. Or let me put it another way: this hi- wanted so bad to be -jacked, people were making fools of themself every whichway, using their best stuff to honk off in all wrong directions. Mean kids, the blog owner called us.

Comment by Zo

“Actually, this comment has steam coming out of *both* ears. If it is in truth a SURPRISE to anyone that parents are NOT to look to their teenagers for signs of approval of their parenting … but to BE the goddamn parent … step over to my blog, I want to have a word with you.

You had to “conduct interviews” to learn this?

Where, oh where, did we go wrong. In the Sixties. Are you young enough to be my child? My kids are not clueless parents.

But wait—I was one of the few hippie moms who actually behaved as a parent. An “old-fashioned” parent, it was called. Hell-o? It was clear to me who the children were, and who were the (stoned, drug-addled) grown-ups. It was very fashionable to let your kids Do Anything. Tres cool.

Like most such trends of cool, this made life easier for said grown-ups. They didn’t have to be Adults. You know, like doing the right thing, making unpopular decisions and such work, all by your lonely self.”

Comment by Robert Franklin

“Zo,

Seems like what I meant was not able to make it thru the steam. What I was trying to convey is that even when our teens are pushing us away they really want us to hug them tighter.”

Except there, right after the word “steam,” was a Smiley Face. A service to the reader you will never find here. Ever.

“May seem obvious to some, but it bears repeating, especially during the tough times with our children.”

I did not take time to count the ways R. Franklin still hung up on reaction/acceptance. Hell, my daughter couldn't stand the sight of me til she was seventeen and one half, at which time she promptly returned to her sweet normal self, and I says to myself, Job well done.

Once in a huge and serious pillow fight—when she was thirteen and I a mere lass of thirty-four—she belted me a good one and hollered, (bless her heart, I'll never forget it) “You old sow!” I dunno, I wouldn't let her date somebody who worked at the gas station. Point being? Point being, “All the insecure people.” As the Beatles almost wrote.