Voyeur Nation

We’ve become a nation of voyeurs. Between post-your-own video sites like YouTube, the increasingly tabloid-like slant that so-called reputable news agencies have adopted, and “reality” television, it seems like our sense of propriety – and our personal boundaries – are eroding at an alarming rate.

I bring to your attention Exhibit A: Michael Jackson’s death. The ensuing feeding frenzy of exposés, interviews with medical experts who are basically speculating aloud as to what actually happened, not to mention the three-ring-circus that passed for a funeral service, took what was a very sad occurrence and turned it into entertainment. The poor man is dead. Let him rest in peace!

And for Exhibit B I submit to you the Gosselins. Thanks to their Jon and Kate Plus Eight reality show, all of America basically got a ringside seat to the dissolution of a family. Let me repeat that: a family fell apart, right before our eyes. Eight children are having to deal not only with their parents’ separation and divorce, but must now also endure seeing their parents’ faces on supermarket tabloids.

What is wrong with us as a society, that we think it’s appropriate to tune in every week to watch as a situation like this grows more and more unpleasant? When we don’t stop to consider that human beings’ lives are involved here?

Have we really reached that point? Do we really not see how completely inappropriate and disrespectful it is to take someone’s personal life and turn it into just so much fodder for gossip?

Apparently quite a few of us don’t.

Real-Life Superheroes – For Real?

What makes a hero a hero? Usually people who are called heroes have put themselves at risk for a worthy cause. Often this risk is physical. Sometimes it’s financial. And sometimes it involves challenging conventional thought.

We can all come up with real-life examples of heroism in action. Firefighters spend their lives risking their lives for complete strangers. Members of the French Resistance and the Underground Railroad put themselves on the line to put an end to heinous abuses of power. Every day there are accounts of good Samaritans rescuing people from submerged cars or oncoming trains.

Bona fide heroes walk among us. Some of them are recognized for their efforts; others go unacknowledged. On the other hand, some folks who put themselves at risk for other people are branded as fools. The question is, what separates heroism from foolishness?

I read a recent CNN.com article about a growing sub-culture of self-proclaimed superheroes. I’ve been pondering this “foolishness or heroism” question ever since.

Just to be clear: I’m not talking about the sort of fantasy role-playing that happens at events like Comic-Con. I’m talking about real-life people who disguise themselves in home-made costumes and roam the streets of their respective communities, fighting crime and generally trying to help people.

There’s even a World Superhero Registry where these people can go for advice on everything from making costumes to legal issues like how to conduct a citizen’s arrest.

If this superhero movement is a hoax, it’s a particularly elaborate one that’s being perpetrated for no apparent reason. If it’s real, then a number of grown men (and women) have decided for whatever reason to deliberately put themselves at risk for strangers.

Which brings me back to my question. Is this heroism, foolishness, or a little of both? What makes their efforts so different from the random acts of bravery that happen every day? Is it the costumes, which suggest that these people are unable to separate fantasy from reality; that all of this is just play-acting taken too far? What if the costumes were taken out of the mix? Would it still be foolishness if these people were in street clothes, rather than elaborate get-ups?

Organizations like the Guardian Angels serve pretty much the same function; they just don’t call themselves superheroes. Instead, they call themselves a “volunteer organization of unarmed citizen crime patrollers”. Sounds an awful lot like what these real-life superheroes are doing, doesn’t it?

As I’ve been mulling it over, I find myself vacillating between two thoughts:

• These people are well-meaning nuts who’ll get themselves or someone else killed.
  There’s a reason why police officers undergo such rigorous training; it’s so they’ll have the skills, tools, and knowledge necessary to serve and protect the general public. And even with all that training, police officers still die in the line of duty. How much better will a costumed do-gooder fare – and without backup or legal authority, might I add?
• Since when is helping strangers foolish?
  If someone’s in danger, and I’m in a position to help them, I’d like to think that I’d have the courage and moral fiber to do it. Laying down your life for a fellow human being is something to be admired, not mocked. Should what one wears while doing it make it any less admirable?

So here’s what I came up with. Is dressing up in costume and deliberately seeking out dangerous situations foolish? I’d have to say yes. It’s one thing for a trained professional who has the gear and skills necessary to do the job as safely as possible. It’s quite another for some random person wearing a goofy outfit to challenge a would-be mugger.

Is helping people, even if it involves putting oneself at risk, heroic? Again, yes. That’s why we revere those who’ve sacrificed themselves in the name of the greater good. You need look no further than the 911 rescue workers who died while attempting to save as many people as possible from the wreckage of the Twin Towers. We call them heroes, even though ultimately, and through no fault of their own, they failed in their attempts. Their courage and selflessness goes to the very heart of heroism, and we rightfully honor their memory.

One might even call them superheroes. Without costumes.

Where’s King Solomon When You Need Him?

As a lifelong resident of Minnesota, I’ve rarely had occasion to feel embarrassed of my home state. Even Jesse “The Governor” Ventura had his good points. Jesse made his plans very clear during his campaign: “If you elect me, here’s what I’ll do.” He was elected. He did what he said he would. Jesse was our WYSIWYG governor; I can deal with that.

But with the debacle involving the (still-unresolved!) 2008 election for U.S. Senator, I’m not only embarrassed, but fed up with both of the candidates. They’ve not only allowed this whole thing to drag on, but are largely responsible for the dragging. In the words of my grandfather, at this point I wouldn’t give a plug nickel for either of them.

Here’s the deal. One candidate is a career politician who claims to be a true-blue Minnesotan, but sounds a lot more like the Brooklyn boy he really is.  The man was born and raised on the East Coast and moved to Minnesota as an adult to establish his eligibility to run for public office in this state. His political commercials were all about establishing him as a dedicated man of the people; as Minnesotan as lutefisk and lefse. “Hi, I’m Nawn CWOL-mun.” Yah, shur. You’re Minnesotan. You betcha, Nawm.

You’re about as believable a Minnesotan as Walter Matthau was in Grumpy Old Men. Believe it or not, we can tell the difference between an aspiring politician who makes a strategic move to establish residency in a state where he’s more likely to get elected to public office and someone who really has the best interest of his consituents at heart.

The other candidate is SNL alum turned political pundit (just what job qualifications are there for that particular job, anyway?) Al Franken. To give him credit, Al really did grow up in Minnesota. For what it’s worth, I believe that he decided to run for office out of a desire to effect positive change. On the other hand, he’s being just as big a butthead about this election as his rival.

This recount nonsense has dragged on for more than six months, and it’s not over yet. The case is now going to the U.S. Supreme Court because neither candidate is willing to concede. In the meantime, Minnesota has only one U.S. Senator in the Senate. We’re under-represented because neither of these two stubborn, ambitious fools seems to have his constituents’ best interests at heart.

Mr. Franken? Mr. Coleman? It seems to me that if either of you truly cared about the people of Minnesota, you’d be willing to step aside and let the other guy take office for this term – if for no other reason than to end this thing. Surely you realize that at this point you both have a serious credibility problem. Every appeal that you file sends the clear message that you’re more concerned about advancing your own career than in actually serving the people of this state.

Seriously.  I think that conceding this race would be a far more effective way to send the message that you really want what’s best for the people who actually live, work, and pay taxes in Minnesota. It might mean that you don’t get to be in the Senate this time around, but it would also be a shrewd way to position yourself before the next election as someone who wants to serve his people. Take a short-term loss for a long-term gain.

How about it? Can either of you find the moral fiber to let go of his ambition long enough to actually help us?

Can Slacktivism Fix the New! IMPROVED!! Facebook?

Cause + computer - effort = slacktivism.

Since the New! IMPROVED!! Facebook was unveiled a few weeks ago,  the folks who run that social networking service have been getting a lot of negative feedback from their user base.

The complaints aren’t particularly unreasonable. Most of them focus on usability and privacy issues. And for what it’s worth, I agree with these observations. But to me these issues are minor irritations; I don’t like them, but I can put up with them. Other Facebook members are far more upset.

An online petition is being circulated on Facebook, describing a series of changes that the signers would like to see. This is a textbook case of slacktivism; folks embracing a cause while using the least amount of effort possible to carry out their protests. The thing is, I’m not sure slacktivism is the best approach for bringing about change.

It seems to me that the less effort someone appears to be putting into a cause, the less serious about that cause the person appears to be. I personally think the slacktivist approach to swaying the Facebook Powers That Be will be ineffective.

Arguing that a tool is unworkable while demonstrating that the tool can, in fact, still be used doesn’t exactly build a case for the argument. It would be much more effective for people who want to register their displeasure with the New! IMPROVED!! Facebook to let their feet do the talking and leave Facebook.

I doubt the Facebook Powers That Be will take this petition seriously unless and until they actually see a negative impact as a direct result of the new interface. From what I can tell, the folks who’ve signed this petition are still using Facebook. If that’s the case, from Facebook’s perspective, where’s the motivation to change things back? They’ve lost nothing; their users are still using it.

If the folks who support this petition want to express unhappiness with Facebook’s new interface, they should prove just how unhappy with it they are and quit Facebook – then encourage the members of their network(s) to do the same and switch to an alternate social networking service.

Get Facebook’s attention. Do more than just continue to use Facebook while complaining on Facebook about Facebook. Take your business elsewhere.

The Teenification of the Web

In the 20-something years since the first ISPs brought Internet to the masses, online behavior has shifted. Originally, people used the Internet for research, communication, and information sharing. They still do that, but as the process of creating and adding content has become easier, things have grown considerably less formal – and, I fear, more adolescent in the process.

That last thing disturbs me, because it points to the growing teenification of the Web. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not talking about teen as in the number of years someone’s been alive. I’ve met hundreds of kind, responsible people between the ages of 12 and 19 who are often more mature than a number of so-called adults I know.

I’m talking about the people who post pictures, videos, blog entries, and comments, apparently without giving thought to what the consequences will be or who may be hurt as a result. Or worse, posting something specifically to hurt someone else. These users are indulging in the sort of impulsive behavior which is usually associated with people who are no longer children, but have not yet reached an adult level of maturity. If it gives the person doing the posting a few minutes of satisfaction, or the chance to get even with someone, he/she will do it. Spread gossip. Start rumors. Post that video.

For lack of a better term to describe this behavior, teenager will have to do.

Teenagers tend to rationalize bad behavior.
After all, it’s not the poster’s fault that someone else believed the rumors or was caught on camera behaving badly. Sure, everyone acts like a jerk once in a while. Okay, maybe the person doing the posting does some things he/she really wouldn’t want anyone else to know about. That’s so not the point, because the person being posted about shouldn’t have been acting that way in the first place, right? Besides, sharing it with the rest of the world is okay if it’s true, right?

Teenagers tend to seek permanent solutions to temporary problems.
Angry because someone treated you badly? Get even by going online and talking trash about that person. Post unflattering pictures. Paint that person in the worst possible light. That’ll show ‘em. Never mind that once something’s posted online, it’s out there forever and there’s no way to take it back.

Teenagers tend to act without considering the consequences of their actions.
You have a video of  your best friend getting so drunk he/she can’t even stand up? Or  a picture of your super-hot girlfriend naked? Post it! Someone’s parents, teachers, friends, future employers, or even future in-laws might stumble across the posting later on, but why should that be a problem now?

Teenagers tend to react in ways that are disproportionate to the situation.
Did a girl insult you at school? Then by all means, go online and talk smack about her. Malign her character. Hurt feelings versus public humiliation and permanent damage to someone’s reputation. Yup; that’s balanced.

To the people who think this way, I have one thing to say: grow up. That’s the thinking of a child. If you’re old enough to be posting content that could harm someone else, then you’re also old enough to know that’s not how people should treat one another. We can choose not to deliberately cause someone else harm.

Does this mean the person being posted about shouldn’t be held accountable for his/her actions? Of course not. But no one does the right thing all the time. I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t want to be treated with compassion when they stumble. That’s compassion, as in being kind to fellow humans. As in, being aware of the pain that could result from a certain course of action – and choosing not to take it. In other words, it involves being willing not to rub someone’s face in his/her mistakes, because one day the shoe may be on the other foot.

Hold Me Closer, Scary Dancer?

Silly Things That Scare Me a Bit.

Giant flailing balloon people I know rationally they’re inanimate objects. They’re made of fabric. Their spastic motions are due to air currents, not malicious intent. Giant balloon people are not on the verge of attack. But somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind a tiny voice keeps insisting that a large figure plus erratic movements equals Danger, Will Robinson!	Seriously - this doesn't freak you out just the tiniest bit?
Flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz These blue meanies pick on kids and dogs. They even hang out with an evil WITCH, for cryin’ out loud! Plus, no matter what’s happening, they hop about with these weird smiles frozen on their faces. And they’re dressed like bellhops. Bellhops. It’s just not right, I tell you!	Winged monkeys should NOT dress like bellhops!
Trees filled with birds Thank you so much, Alfred Hitchcock. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about with the giant balloon people and flying monkeys, I also feel an urge to avoid anyplace where a large number of birds have congregated. Why, you ask? Because you never can tell if this is the day avians around the world decide to launch a coordinated attack.	Being dive-bombed by crows CAN'T be fun.
Underground tunnels Especially dimly-lit ones, because a giant lizard monster that’s missing some of its eggs just might be lying in wait to exact revenge. Not that I’d steal giant lizard eggs, mind you, but a subterranian creature lurking in the darkness might not know that. I blame Kolchak: The Night Stalker. What were my parents thinking, letting an 8-year-old watch late night reruns during summer vacation?!	Can't be too careful underground.
Being attacked by lake sharks DAA-dum. DAA-dum. DUNdunDUNdunDUNdunDUNdun…	It always happens when you least expect it...

Third Time’s a Spanking: Of Horses and Baggies

Recently I was watching one of those “50 Best (fill in the blank) of All Time” shows. The topic du jour was comedies.

You know how these shows work: the list is done in countdown format. The announcer recaps the movie, then two or three celebrities (or in this case, people who appeared in one or two movies 20 years ago) go on camera and explain why they think the movie is funny.

But dude? If you have to explain a joke, it didn’t work.

The show never really explained who came up with the list, what qualified a movie as one of the 50 funniest of all time, or how the ranking worked. But seeing how Dumb and Dumber was ranked higher than Young Frankenstein, I kinda suspect it was a group of buddies in their early- to mid-20s who concocted the list after ingesting a fair amount of beer. Or maybe tequila.

I have a theory about comedies. Well, not so much a theory as a description of a particular type of comedy which I only find amusing in small doses. I call it the horse-and-baggie approach.

See, it’s one thing to beat a dead horse. It’s another to beat a dead horse, then cut it into little pieces, then put each piece in a separate baggie and bury each baggie in a separate back yard.

Horse and baggie comedy seems to be based on the fervent belief that if a gag was funny once, it’ll be just as funny if you keep doing it. Repeatedly. In the same frickin’ scene.

I have a somewhat different point of view.

Do the joke, people either get it or don’t, and the scene moves on. Funny gags will wear out, and unfunny gags don’t get any more amusing through repetition. What they get is annoying.

As my dad was fond of saying, “Once is funny. Twice is too much. Third time’s a spanking.”

5 Things I’ve Learned

In an earlier post I wrote that I’ve learned it’s more important to be kind than clever. Here are a few other things I’ve (finally!) managed to figure out.

The world doesn’t owe you squat.
I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among 20-somethings who are just joining the job market. A lot of them seem to think they should be able to jump past entry-level positions in cube farms and go straight into an executive suite, get executive pay, and enjoy executive perks.

Listen up, kids. If other people in your office are driving nicer cars and bringing home more money, maybe it’s because those other people have been with the company longer, have more experience, and, just possibly, are better qualified than someone fresh out of college.

At your age, the people in their 40s who have the nice perks and good pay were right where you are now. They worked crappy jobs for next to nothing. They had to work for better pay and perks. So do you.

Being grown up isn’t always fun.
When I was a kid I assumed that once I reached adulthood I’d be able to do pretty much whatever I liked as long as I obeyed the law. I could stay up as late as I wanted. Eat ice cream for breakfast. That kind of thing. But now that I can do those things, I don’t really want to anymore.

I also failed to take into account how much of being a responsible adult involves doing things I don’t particularly like to do. Cleaning toilets isn’t fun. Neither are paying bills, cleaning out rain gutters, or spending a glorious summer day doing chores. But since no one’s volunteered to step forward and do all this stuff for me, I’m pretty much stuck with it.

Adults don’t know everything.
On some level I really thought being grown-up meant knowing what to do at all times. It slowly dawned on me there was no Knowledge Fairy to wave a magic wand and – voila! – I’d have instant wisdom. Instead I fumble my way along and hope things turn out okay. And that maybe I can leave the world a little better off than it was when I got here.

I’m not nearly as smart as I thought I was.
When I was in college I believed I knew all the answers. I had life allll figured out. Then I spent the next 10 years learning just how wrong I was. By the time I was 30 I’d caught on that not only did I not know the answers; I hadn’t even figured out most of the questions yet.

Plans can only get you so far.
Career counselors tell people to figure out where they want to be in 20 years and create a strategic plan for achieving that goal. Being a fairly goal-oriented person myself, I can certainly respect that approach. The problem is, even the most carefully-crafted plan can’t compensate for the curveballs life tends to throw at us.

When that happens, sometimes we can deal with the detour and eventually work our way back to the plan. And sometimes we can’t. My life isn’t at all what I thought it would be when I was a kid. An informal poll of several of my friends revealed their lives hadn’t gone as expected, either.

This doesn’t mean our lives are bad; they’re just not what we thought they’d be. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. If our lives all turned out the way we planned them as children, we’d be a world filled with nothing but cowboys, firemen, astronauts, and ballerinas.

Casserole != Hot Dish

As a lifelong Minnesotan I feel it’s my duty to clear up a misconception that’s plagued Minnesota-speak for decades. To wit: the term “hot dish” is usually defined as a quaint regional synonym for casserole.

That’s not entirely accurate.

Oh, hot dish can be a type of casserole. But as you can see from the highly-scientific diagram below, not every casserole qualifies as hot dish. For example, that Thanksgiving favorite, green bean casserole, is most definitely not a hot dish.

And while I suppose lasagna could be classified as a casserole or a hot dish, I’ve never heard anyone call it anything other than lasagna. Try it sometime. People will just look at you funny.

But I digress.

So what exactly is hot dish, anyway?

I’m so glad you asked.

Although there are dozens of hot dishes gracing any number of church basement potlucks on any given weekend throughout the Gopher State, they all possess some similar traits:

• They contain canned cream of something soup. This is usually cream of mushroom, but cream of celery (or even cream of chicken!) will do in a pinch.
• They contain canned or frozen vegetables. Most people use peas, carrots, or corn; however, any canned vegetable (with the possible exceptions of spinach, brussels sprouts, and beets) would work.
• They contain some kind of starch. This acts as a kind of suspension for the other ingredients. Rice, pasta, or even potatoes can be used.
• They contain inexpensive meat or canned fish. By far the champion hot dish meat is hamburger. Tuna and hot dogs are also used. I hear tell some folks use SPAM, although I’ve personally never done that.
• Hot dish isn’t always baked. Sometimes it’s simmered all day in a crock pot. Hot dish can also be put together in a good-sized cooking pot.

And what’s a casserole?

Good question. Casserole is much more free-form than hot dish.

• Casserole may or may not be saucy. Casseroles usually contain a sauce of some kind, but that’s not a hard and fast rule.
• Veggies are optional. Many casseroles contain vegetables, but they’re not required. That’s why macaroni and cheese could be classified as a casserole, but not as a hot dish. If you threw in peas and some kind of meat, it would be a different story.
• Meat/fish is optional, too. There are vegan casseroles. But vegan hot dishes? No self-respecting church lady would ever show up with that.
• Casserole is always baked. In a casserole.

So if you ever happen to be in Minnesota and find yourself attending a church basement potluck, take note of the difference and use the terms appropriately.

‘Cause no one wants church basement ladies to look at them funny.

Common Sense, Isn’t

In my 40-odd years on this planet I’ve come to realize a few things. It’s more important to be kind than clever. Always drink your orange juice before you eat your Cap’n Crunch. And common sense is getting less common every day.

If someone claiming to represent your bank showed up on your doorstep and asked you to “confirm” your account number, social security number, password, and so on, you’d tell him to get lost, right? But for some reason, when technology enters the mix, critical thinking goes out the window. Someone who wouldn’t dream of giving personal or financial information to a stranger in person, will think nothing of sharing such details by e-mail or on a Web site.

It amazes me that some people have to be told not to believe everything they read just because it comes from the Internet.

More evidence that common sense has gone the way of the dodo: next time you’re behind the wheel, observe the other cars on the road. Make note of how few drivers seem to realize that the laws of physics are laws, not suggestions. We live every day of our lives with these laws. They apply equally to everyone.

• Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
• Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
• Objects in motion tend to stay in motion (unless acted upon by an outside force).
• Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.

They’re simple concepts. They haven’t changed. But some yahoo always seems to think these rules just don’t apply to him (or her). At some point today someone, somewhere will try to outrun a train. Someone else will hydroplane a car right off the road. Still someone else will ride another driver’s bumper and realize about two seconds too late that the car ahead has slowed down, and will plow right into it.

Want more proof? Check out product packaging these days. Cups warn people that hot coffee is hot. Shouldn’t the steam be an indication? Instructions appear on tubes of toothpaste. Open cap, squeeze toothpaste onto toothbrush; brush teeth. That’s a fairly intuitive process, don’t you think?

My personal favorite are the labels warning consumers that cans of peanuts may contain -gasp – peanuts!

At what point did these things need to be explained to us?

I blame idiot-proofing.

Seriously. Legislators are desperately trying to protect people from their own stupidity. Seatbelt laws. Motorcycle helmet laws. Traffic lights with little arrows to indicate when it’s safe to make a left turn. Warnings not to mix water with electronics. I mean, come on. Is it really necessary to warn people that they shouldn’t make toast underwater?

And by idiot-proofing things, we seem to be accumulating an impressive number of idiots. We’re also bypassing natural selection by not letting people experience the natural consequences of their stupidity. It’s alarming, actually. Folks who would otherwise have removed themselves from the gene pool are now living long enough to reproduce.

We’re dealing with second- and third-generation dunderheads who can’t make change, don’t know who has the right of way, and believe everything they read online because if it’s on the Internet, it must be true. These are the folks who keep Jerry Springer and America’s Funniest Home Videos on the air. Because it’s funny to see someone get hit in the crotch with a baseball bat.

I wonder: if this continues, will we become a society that’s divided not only socially and economically, but intellectually, as well? Are we creating our very own race of Morlocks?

Because if that’s the case, I’d better get started working on my own time machine.