Stupid Me
November 20, 2001
7:05 a.m.
Hang with me. This really does get around to writing ... somewhere down there.   Those who know me understand that, even ignoring the whole Monica thing, I am not a big Bill Clinton fan. But I just read his speech to Georgetown University, and am pretty upset at the raw deal he's gotten from the press, and as a result, some people of America on the "We Deserved It," junk. In this speech, Clinton talked about the world, and about his support for what the US was doing, and about how we ought move forward across the globe. The one thing he most definitely did not say, though, was that the US deserved this attack. What he did imply was that aggression in any form creates resentment, and that collections of people can hold onto grudges for centuries. He also suggested that we, as the most culturally diverse country in the world, should be able to understand that. And he's right. This pairing of perceived aggression (in some form) leading to resentment is seen quite easily, for instance, at the root of most if not all of our greatest sports rivalries and moments. Think US and Russian hockey. Think Army/Navy football. Think about the college football coaches who talk about "remembering" how Steve Spurrier's Florida Gators rolled up the points against their teams in 72-7 losses. Think of the common Bostonians, who are still talking about the curse the greedy Red Sox management is under for selling Babe Ruth to the shyster Yanks for a measly 100 grand in cold cash. And, of course, all the best rivalries, from the Hatfields and the McCoy's to the Louisville Cardinals and the Kentucky Wildcats, are handed down through the hereditary cycle. Need a little proof? Here's a headline on my news wire last week: Bitter Memories Fuel Illinois-Ohio State Matchup. The story is about how Illinois players and coaches remember a particularly vicious late hit by an Ohio State defensive player during last year's game. Here's a quote from an Illinois player: "That was kind of a bad thing to see, what he did to Kurt. Most people will remember that. That will probably give us a spark, will probably give us a little edge.'' All rivalries are based at their roots on issues that are important to individual people. For example, the Louisville/Kentucky thing carries at its core the heavy social ballast of the struggle for respect and power. To really understand it, you have to be from the area. You have to know that for many years, U of L was a small, private school that struggled for funding and visibility while UK was the big state school. Both schools understood how much money and visibility sports brings with it, and for many years UK administrators refused to even compete against U of L teams, thereby simply cutting them off from whatever limelight might shine on the pairing. At least, that's what U of L followers felt. Can you see how deeply this affects the culture around Louisville? Can you see how it might affect the way people think. Can you see how understanding this might help you handle a situation between a person from Louisville and Lexington--or maybe Illinois and Ohio State? Some rivalries can be softened, of course, and some resentment healed. For example, most football coaches now understand the need to pile up some points these days, even if they would still give a healthy chunk of their paychecks to see Steve Spurrier get beat by 85. Louisville and Kentucky fans join together to sing "My Old Kentucky Home" before their games. And heck, I just saw that Germany is debating whether to commit troops to the war on terrorism on the side of the "traditional" allies fer crying out loud. Anyway ... The emotion Clinton was talking about in his speech before Georgetown University had nothing to do with whether the country "deserved" this attack. The speech was, instead, about Steven Covey's approach of "seek first to understand, then be understood." But the press, in what has become a fairly intriguing change of pace, reported it very much out of context. Not that the press getting something out of context is the change of pace, but ... well ... I'm getting ahead of myself. The problem here is that Clinton's speech is a cohesive collection of interwoven thoughts. It is built such that each layer expounds upon the others. It is very hard to cut something like this into sound bites--and since journalists know that sound bites sell news, they work hard to cut everything into diced-up little packages that are designed to arouse an emotional interest in the public. In practice, I think most journalists have come to rely almost totally on their ability to develop the sound bite. This sucks. I don't know how to put it any clearer than that. This is worse than merely poor journalism--this is, instead, similar to what I was talking about a few days ago when I said I was beginning to realize I had fallen back on what I already knew about writing rather than working hard enough to improve my work. This is poor craftsmanship at its heart. It is important that a writer of fiction understand what a story is really about. This is one of the things I'm discovering more and more about these days. Yes, I've been working in the field for several years now--so I've heard all the words of wisdom and gotten all the stock advice. I've even used them to publish some pretty fair work. But these chipper phrases of advice are to a new writer what a sound bite is to a journalist. They give you a handle to hold onto, but are not complete enough to help understand real truth, and so neither are they complete enough to create consistently good work. Seeing what has happened to Clinton here makes me realize that there is actually a strong affinity between good fiction and good non-fiction. Writers of good non-fiction (which probably should go without saying, is journalism's primary goal) should know what it's about, too. There should be integrity to it. By that, I mean that readers of fiction and non-fiction should both be able to say what the story was about, and what it meant. They should be able to say unambiguously recount what happened, and should be able to characterize people and events in their minds to where they come away understanding something that is truth. The difference here is that non-fiction's integrity--journalism's in particular--is directly linked to its veracity. In other words, us fiction writers get to make everything up. Journalists don't. Here's an interesting thought along this line: Can bad journalism be defined as non-fiction that has degraded into some form of fiction? I think it can. This degradation can happen as an outright lie, or as an accidental omission, or because the reporter was rushing to hit a deadline, or didn't understand something important, or because the reporter has a political agenda themselves, or ... well, any of a thousand other becauses. But there can be little argument that a journalist who mischaracterizes a situation is, essentially, writing fiction. The danger here is that writers make contracts with readers--we cannot ignore the integrity thing. When I read a book by Kim Stanley Robinson, I know the characters don't actually exist, so I'm not too personally offended when one of them says or does something I'm not for. In fact, I find those things interesting--they make me want to read on. In fact, I've basically contracted with KSR for these things. I expect him to make up things that make me see perspectives that maybe I hadn't seen before. But I expect him to do that by showing me the true person behind his characters. When I pick up a newspaper or watch a broadcast, I have a similar contract. I expect the reporter to show me the true person by what he reports. I also have a bit more personal stake in the matter. Like any other human being, the closer something gets to affecting my person, the deeper my emotions run. If KSR breaks his contract with me, I'll maybe get upset at him. Or maybe I'll just quietly put the book down and not finish it. Or maybe I'll go so far as to stop reading his material in the future. But that's about it. No big shakes in the global village, right? But journalism affects everyone it touches in some way or another, so it sucks when a journalist gets it wrong. To make it worse, things like the twisting of Clinton's words, or the consistently biased reporting (either way) of the never-ending Florida re-re-re-recount prove again and again that the world of journalism has broken its contract with us. Journalism today is about reporting what people say, rather than what people do. It is about guessing what might happen, or trying to paraphrase what someone thinks. As a result, it is no longer even slightly reliable. What it boils down to is that we, the modern, everyday person, have a challenge that is unique in history (every generation has at least one, I suppose). We are like social air-traffic controllers in the sense that we have to learn to deal with a thousand different pieces of often-conflicting data from a thousand different directions. We have to deal with data that is incomplete and still make something relevant to our lives out of it. In other words, we have to figure out the truth all by ourselves. We have to read. We have to listen. We have to, as Clinton was trying to say (unless, of course, that transcript was inaccurately published), seek first to understand. And if we are to understand, we need to be able to put ourselves directly in the other person's shoes. We have to be able to see the world as they see it. This may mean seeing ourselves as less than golden--not that their perspective is right or wrong. This is a hard process. It requires us to fight our biases, to hit our "pause" button as Covey says. It is neither a democratic nor a republican suggestion. It is, instead, a natural, humanistic law of how we best interrelate. Try it sometime. If you are a writer, put yourself in the shoes of an editor. If you are a husband, put yourself in the shoes of your wife. If you are a journalist, put yourself in the shoes of your subjects. Whichever of these you do, look for the truth. The real truth. Live like them for ten minutes. Breathe like them. Think like them. Try to actually feel what it is that they feel and think the way they think. Only then can all that intellectual power really be brought into play to figure out how to fix things. Just remember, though. The right question for this exercise is not "How would I think and feel in your position?" The right question are "What is your true position, and how do you think and feel in it?" What bothers me the most about this incident is that I had fallen for it. Being a non-Clinton fan, I heard the reports that Clinton said we deserved what we got, and didn't question it at all. "Well, duh," I thought. Stupid me. I want to be better than that. Don't you?  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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