Tuesday October 21 2003

A customer of Paul’s at the Circle K yesterday mentioned a dishwashing vacancy at a nearby restaurant, so I’ll be walking over there to check that out today, while Paul walks in the opposite direction to pay our water bill (well, $40 worth of it) in the center of town. Yay.

Increasingly yay-worthy, a quick check of my bank balance online (something I’ve been dreading and therefore not done for a while) shows me back in the hole by nearly $40, a consequence of an automatic $10 transfer from my checking to my savings account that caused a check card transaction for $7 or so to take me negative, incurring a $30 fee.

Fines like this (and I know I’m hardly the first to make this observation) are one of the reasons I’ve always largely preferred to simply deal with cash when I can, since once you incur one of these, if you have any kind of active checking account, it just starts to snowball, as more checks and/or check card transactions begin to bounce, and these hefty $30 bitch slaps start to add up. Between this latest one and the one I had last month under exactly these same circumstances, this checking account has now cost me $60… an amount that, on my current reduced circumstances, seems like a veritable fortune.

It’s enough to, once more, make me vow to avoid banks who extort the poor in this manner, but our society makes that extremely difficult. A development I’ve found infuriating over the past ten years is the fees that all banks now commonly charge to cash checks for non-account holders… I’m not talking about checks not drawn on the bank; if you don’t have an account there with enough money to cover the check in it, banks simply won’t do that, regardless of how quickly they can electronically verify the check’s validity nowadays.

No, I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about and probably find it aggravating yourself: the fact that if your employer or a personal friend issues you a check drawn on, say, the First Bank of West Fargo, and you don’t have an account there, the First Bank of West Fargo will now hit you for anything from a buck to $6 as a fee for cashing that check.

Obviously this is ridiculous and immoral; the money is in that bank, and a check is basically an official piece of paper written by the person who owns that money that says ‘give it up to this person’. For banks to charge an individual for performing a transaction essential to their function is… well, I fall back on ‘infuriating’. More infuriating is the fact that no level of government I’m aware of has stepped up to put a stop to this larcenous process.

Well, bitching about banks isn’t going to accomplish anything. I can’t even beat my chest and say I won’t do business with Bank of America any more, because my PayPal account is tied to that particular bank account, and honestly, none of the other large corporate banks are any better… they all clip you for shit like this, they all charge roughly the same fees. And it’s ludicrous to expect our government, which makes laws only that directly benefit the wealthy who contribute to our lawmaker’s election campaigns, will step up to the plate and actually do something to protect the poor from these sorts of arrogantly immoral financial transactions.

So, let’s move on…

Knock Furious, Agent of S.H.E.E.S.H.

My first thought on a caption was “Mr. Furious”, which would be more appropriate, but also, as a pop culture reference, more obvious (lots and lots of people, and pretty much every geek, would immediately ‘get’ it).

Anyway, recent entries, and comments on my blog, and recent emails to me, and my response to them, has caused me to do some thinking lately on the subject of exactly what it is appropriate to be offended by, and exactly when it is appropriate to demonstrate such offense to the person performing the offending action. And, beyond all that, there’s the whole thing about exactly what, once we have chosen to take offense (and it’s always a choice) and chosen to respond to that offense, what exactly is an appropriate response.

So, let’s see. I’m going to start out by listing some of the events/actions/behaviors/occurrences/stimuli I’m aware of that seem to commonly offend people (not necessarily me, but things that offend me will be on this list, certainly) to establish a sort of database of obnoxiousness. After that, I’ll take a look at what I think are the base criteria for both taking offense and registering that offense with the offender, and after that I may look at appropriate manners of letting someone know that their behavior has offended you (here’s a hint: personal abuse, especially profanity laden personal abuse screamed at the top of one’s lungs, however cathartic, is rarely appropriate, and violence as a response to offensive but otherwise non-violent behavior is, I’m going to say right now, NEVER appropriate).

Okay. Potentially offensive things, reaped from my own personal experience as well as extensive perusal of the media. And as you read these, think about how you would feel in each situation, and what you’d choose to do about it:

***You’re a member of a religion that forbids men to cut their beards or women to go out in public with their hair uncovered. Naturally, as you’re on your way over to the store this morning to pick up a newspaper and a carton of OJ, you pass several clean shaven infidel men and heathen harlots with their hair hanging out in all its forbidden glory.

***You’re a member of an ethnic subculture who feels that your ancestors were historically oppressed by a no longer existent nation-state known as the Kingdom of Markovia. You live in the geographical area where Markovia once existed, and there are many descendents of old line Markovian families around, as well as newcomers sympathetic to the cultural traditions of lost Markovia. As gestures of defiance, these folks often choose to proudly display the emblem of Markovia in prominent public places, on their persons or in areas of their private property where the public cannot avoid seeing them. Today on your way to work, as always, you pass a prominently displayed Markovian flag in front of a private home, you drive by a dozen or so vehicles with Markovian flag bumper stickers, and when you get to work and sign on to your phone, you realize your supervisor Al is cheerfully walking around the floor backslapping his cronies while wearing a baseball cap whose color scheme is unmistakably patterned after the emblem of Markovia.

***You’re a very attractive person. There is a specific person in your workplace that you encounter every day that you find very desirable and want to attract the attention of. You know what looks good on you, and you know what members of this person’s gender and culture tend to find attractive in terms of fashion, so you dress that way every day in hopes of getting them to notice you. The problem is, this tends to attract others whom you have no interest in whatsoever, and today, as every day, you notice several of these undesirable and completely unsuitable sorts staring at you for lengthy periods with expressions of undeniable interest (even carnal lust) very evident on their faces, and even engaging in various annoying attention getting displays obviously aimed at you.

I like this one, and I’ll throw in for extra credit: Does the equation change depending on gender? I.E., if it’s an attractive woman being stared at by undesirable male nerds, is that different from the same situation with an attractive man being stared at longingly by overweight or middle aged women? Does the situation further change if some of the sexually charged glances are from members of the attractive person’s own gender, and if so, if it’s a bi or gay guy staring at a straight guy, is that different from a bi or gay woman staring at a straight woman? ***You’re an artist and you’ve done quite a lot of artwork, some intended to be taken seriously, others obviously cartoons intended to be humorous. You’ve had quite a large body of your work published, and today you receive a fairly long letter of comment on many different pieces of your art. Most of the letter is complimentary, but at one point, the correspondent takes you to task for some of the sexual content of a few of your humorous cartoons, scolding you for your obvious immorality.

***You’re reading the morning newspaper. A regular columnist has shot off his or her keyboard about a movie you are very familiar, and his vociferously stated, rather extreme opinion completely disagrees with yours.

***You’re on the Internet. You’re looking at someone’s webpage. This person is an artist, and you generally find their work interesting and aesthetically pleasing, and some of their cartoons are very funny. However, other cartoons s seem to get their humor from observations about the behavior of certain colorful minorities, which troubles you, or speculations regarding sexual practices you yourself find disturbing or objectionable.

***You’re a person who doesn’t receive very much positive social attention. Several of your co-workers are extremely attractive, and every day they come to work dressed provocatively. You know they have no interest in you, but you figure the view is free and if all you’re ever going to get to do is look, then at least you should get to do that. Today you come to work and your boss calls you in and dresses you down, telling you he’s received numerous complaints from your attractive co-workers about your ‘staring’ and he needs you to cut it out. And we’ll throw in to the equation that your work hasn’t suffered and in fact, at your review last month you got a glowing evaluation and a big raise.

***You host weekly talk sessions in your living room for various friends and acquaintances who like to come over and discuss various topics. In one particular session, one of the group’s regulars, normally a painfully circumspect person, tells an anecdote regarding his own personal behavior in a situation in the past similar to one you’ve just brought up. Obviously he thinks this anecdote agrees with and supports your own observations and intends it to be a positive contribution, but you, for whatever reasons, find the behavior he has described, and is obviously still proud of and in fact regards as humorous, to have been completely unacceptable.

***There’s been an empty cubie next to yours at work for several weeks. Today you come in and find that apparently someone has been hired, as the cubie is now lavishly decorated in a manner you find completely obnoxious… there are pictures of scantily clad women pinned up to its walls, or its bedecked with religious symbolism, or its festooned with extremist political material, whatever.

***You’re a member of a particular ethnicity. You find someone rather desirable and ask them out, only to discover that they never date members of your ethnicity. Later on, just to add a little more to the mix, you overhear a conversation in which it’s made clear that this person does indeed find you attractive, but for their own reasons, they simply never go out with, well, people of your ethnic persuasion.

And, again, for extra credit, if you’re white and the person you asked out is black or Hispanic, is that different than if you’re black or Hispanic and the person you asked out is white? Would it be further different if you were either white, black, or Hispanic, and so was the person you found attractive, and you discovered that they as a matter of principle never dated within their own ethnicity? Or that they simply, for whatever reasons they may have, only ever date people of a very specific ethnicity that excludes you?

Okay, I think that’s enough for us to see a fairly broad spectrum of behavior that probably anyone out there reading this will find something at least potentially offensive in. So: when is it appropriate to show that offense? And what are appropriate manners to register that offense in?

Breaking this down a little, what I find is that there are certain common elements to all this. At absolute base, it seems that all offensive or potentially offensive behavior basically in some way denies us/you/me something we not only very much want, but that in some way, we feel we are naturally entitled to.

This means that the first thing we should do, if we want to determine whether or not it is appropriate for us to be offended by something, is to determine exactly what area of our own sense of entitlement this behavior or action transgresses against. If the behavior interferes with or intrudes on something that we do indeed legitimately have a right to expect while interacting with other people in a particular environment, then, yes, we may have a ‘right’ to be offended.

The next question is whether or not we then have a ‘right’ to, or to put it another way, may appropriately, register our offense with the person we have taken it from. But before we get there, let’s take a look back at that whole ‘sense of entitlement’ thing:

I’m not sure anyone is ‘entitled’, by the universe, to anything at all. When various of my fellow liberals talk about ‘natural rights’ not specifically delineated in the Constitution, I get very very wary. I like the idea of ‘natural’ rights, but I’m aware that the world doesn’t care if I have a ‘right’ to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that won’t stop a meteor from coming through the ceiling and turning me into 240 pounds of geek jelly.

However, we’re not talking about the universe here. Sane people generally are not offended by natural acts. We get offended by the behavior of our fellow human beings towards us, and, yes, I would acknowledge that there are certain social covenants that lie as fundamental bases for any civil culture, and that if others transgress against these, one has a legitimate grievance. So let’s look at that:

***I think we have a fundamental right to privacy, which I will further define, in a colloquial fashion, as a right to simply be left alone to go about our legitimate business that doesn’t effect or impact anyone else.

***I think we have a right to interact with others in an appropriate manner.

Both these ‘social rights’ are loaded with weasel words, of course, which leads to complexity of application, and furthermore, both of them interact in extremely complex ways. When does one person’s ‘right’ to interact with another person ‘appropriately’ necessarily have to give way to another person’s ‘right’ to be left alone?

I would say, in general, that the first right… the right to privacy… is more important, and more essential, and more fundamental, than the second, the right to interact with someone else appropriately. (And, again, bear in mind, the universe recognizes no such ‘rights’. I’m merely talking about fundamental social covenants necessary to any kind of civil, functional society.)

However, the right to privacy is only ‘whole’ when one is, well, in private. If you’re in your home, in your space, I believe (and I think we’d all agree, when it’s us, anyway) that we have an absolute right to hang up a DO NOT DISTURB sign and expect the rest of the world to honor it. There is nothing more obnoxious than someone who intrudes on us when we simply want to be by ourselves for a while, or when we simply want to spend time with a very specific person or small group of people. Examples of grievous offenders against this right are endless… telemarketers, busybody neighbors or relatives minding our business and not theirs, beloved relatives who insist on bringing obnoxious strangers to the family Christmas dinner… and, well, we would all agree that this is obnoxious and offensive and unacceptable… except, of course, when we’re the ones supporting our family by making unsolicited sales calls, or checking up on our parents/children/siblings/cousins for their own good, or bringing our new significant other around to meet the family at Christmas. Then, of course, it’s okay; in fact, in my above context, everyone from a telemarketer to an obnoxious neighbor would argue that their ‘right to appropriate interaction’, in that particular case, supercedes someone else’s ‘right to privacy’.

And so it goes.

But we’re talking about offensive behavior: what it is, and when it is appropriate for us to both feel offense and to show that we’ve been offended. So for what it’s worth, I’m going to lay out some guidelines for recognizing behavior that it is ALWAYS appropriate to take offense at:

(a) the behavior is directed specifically at you (i.e., this person wants to get your attention)

(b) the behavior is obviously intended to annoy or infuriate you (i.e., the person who wants your attention is deliberately attempting to offend you in order to get it).

I know, this seems pretty obvious. If someone is setting out specifically to offend you, well, of course it’s appropriate to feel offended. Yet I think its’ worth articulating this point, and not simply as a baseline from which to explore other types of potentially offensive behavior not quite so egregious. It’s also worth setting this down simply because there are a great many people in the world (and I used to be one of them, back when I was in my teens) who simply do not understand that when they behave in a deliberately offensive manner towards people, those people will be offended.

Or, to put it another way, it is not an adequate defense or rationalization to say, after you have deliberately said something obnoxious to someone, or deliberately behaved in an annoying manner towards them, “Hey, I was only kidding, lighten up”. There are a very few circumstances where this may be appropriate (you are with trusted intimate friends/family members, or you find yourself in a situation where someone else has initiated a rude interaction with you and you are simply responding) but even there it’s touchy, and even there, I would say that if you are deliberately behaving towards someone else in a manner you KNOW is offensive, you must understand that you are always assuming the risk of offending them. You may have a very close Hispanic friend that you have occasionally exchanged joking racial epithets with on prior occasions; nonetheless, if you call this guy a spic, especially in front of other people, you had best be aware that you are risking him taking offense. And so on.

I cannot tell you how many people do not seem to understand this. I can tell you that I find it somewhat puzzling that many professional entertainers seem to feel that there is a ‘just kidding’ dispensation specifically for people in their line of work, simply because audiences tend to find offensive behavior funny as long as it’s not at their expense… but I don’t personally believe any such professional dispensation exists. If Howard Stern says something offensive on his show, well, it’s still offensive; it doesn’t matter if he’s ‘just kidding’.

All right. So, if someone is directing behavior specifically at you, and they obviously intend that behavior to be obnoxious, you may, if you wish, take offense. (You can also NOT take offense; taking offense is always a choice, albeit one we often make so quickly it seems involuntary. It never IS involuntary, though; such responses simply mean we need to control our tempers better.)

However, this is all about exploring when it is appropriate… which is to say, socially acceptable… to take offense at some sort of behavior. So, having established a baseline, let’s look at behavior that doesn’t meet the above two criteria (which a lot of my examples, listed above, you will note, do not:)

Wearing a Confederate flag on your chest (sharp readers will doubtless have seen through my ‘Kingdom of Markovia’ ploy above, so I’ll abandon it) is not behavior that is deliberately aimed at anyone in particular. And, arguably, it is not behavior that is specifically intended to offend anyone, although that last is debatable (and I personally think most rednecks who wear a Confederate symbol openly and proudly do it in hopes of provoking a confrontation, rednecks are like that). So if you’re offended by the Confederate symbol (which I am, but only mildly, for various reasons of my own personal background I just don’t take the Confederate flag as seriously as I would, say, a similarly displayed swastika), and you care about appropriate behavior, it behooves you to consider whether or not, first, the display was aimed at you in specific (in most cases, it probably wasn’t) and second, whether or not it was intended as an aggressive and belligerent act (which, as I note, I tend to think it usually always is, given the character and nature of those who choose to display it).

I can’t tell you where to come down on it, of course, but it seems to me… and I say this grudgingly… that in general, while one can certainly choose to be offended by the display of such a symbol on another person’s, well, person, unless you’re sure they wore that t-shirt or hat just to bug you in specific, you should most likely keep your offense to yourself. Bear in mind the offending person’s right to privacy supersedes your right to appropriate interaction except in the most extreme cases, grit your teeth, and move on.

So we have behavior that is always, legitimately, offensive (aimed specifically at an individual, and intended to specifically offend an individual). If both these factors are present, feel free to be offended. (It’s more enlightened not to be, but I ain’t there yet; I don’t expect any of y’all to be either.) If one or the other factor is present, well… be thoughtful and reflective. Consider the context and what you perceive to be the facts of the case. In general, however, I will say that I think that behavior that is deliberately intended to be annoying or obnoxious is, again, offensive, and one may feel free to be offended by it whether it was aimed specifically at you or not. On the other hand, obviously, not all behavior specifically targeted at an individual is offensive; that always depends on the behavior and the behaver, as it were… and whether or not it is obvious that the person receiving the behavior wants to be social or solitary at that moment.

Which brings us to behavior that would normally be innocuous, and is certainly not intended to offend, but that becomes offensive simply because the person that behavior is specifically directed towards would prefer to invoke their right of privacy at that moment.

Obviously, ‘privacy’ is complex in any social situation. One question to consider is, can a right to privacy be directed simply at one person (as Jess did, for example, when she tossed me out of her life over a year ago), or simply at a specific group of people (as in the attractive person who dresses provocatively yet who resents provoking the attention of the unsuitable), or must it be directed entirely outward… in other words, we only have a right to be alone, and we lose that right if we want company or attention?

I don’t know. At base, I know that the kind of behavior we generally typify as ‘obnoxious’ is, simply, attention getting behavior we do not, at that moment, want to respond to, or, other people ignoring our own attention getting behavior at times we want them to respond to us, or, them responding to our attention getting behavior in a manner we do not want them to.

But ‘obnoxious’ behavior is not necessarily legitimately ‘offensive’ behavior, which is what this whole article is about, so, again… when can we legitimately and appropriately take offense at behavior we find obnoxious? When can we legitimately and appropriately state to others, or even to ourselves, that someone else’s behavior was unacceptable and we are justified in feeling affronted and perhaps even in addressing their behavior and making it clear to them that we found it inappropriate and in our eyes it requires correction?

I don’t know, but looking ahead, it’s starting to seem as if I’ve maybe been a great big baby about this whole Jess thing, and if I follow my tentative hypothesis through to their logical conclusions, it may well be I will be forced to accept that Jess actually did nothing to me that I can legitimately and appropriately take offense from. I hate that notion, but… ::sigh:: The truth is out there, and I want to believe. So let us continue:

We have established that one may always choose to be offended by behavior that is directed specifically at us and that is obviously intended to be offensive. We have further discussed the fact that even in the absence of individual attention, behavior that is intended to be GENERALLY offensive may still, most likely, be legitimately considered ‘offensive’ and responded to as such. We’ve also said, reluctantly, that if you’re not sure whether the non-specifically directed behavior was intended to be offensive, you should probably suck it up and let it go, under the label of ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘tolerance’.

But now, what about behavior that is not specifically aimed at us, and that sincerely was not meant to offend us, but that we nonetheless find obnoxious and annoying, even hurtful?

I don’t know. A lot of that depends on circumstance. In general, I want to say that if the behavior isn’t aimed towards us, and is not intended to be offensive, it is not only inappropriate to register offense in any way, but we should probably examine ourselves closely and strive for greater enlightenment if we find ourselves offended by it. But there’s a lot of behavior out there that I personally find annoying, like, as Mike Sawin notes, people who jump on bandwagons as soon as a cause gets a lot of media attention, simply because they’re popular. However, such behavior in this instance, while I find it irksome, is not in any way aimed at me (I assume, unless the world really is a vast conspiracy to keep me distracted from my godlike duties) and is certainly not intended to offend me, or even to be offensive. So I would say in this case that it’s probably small minded of me to find it annoying, but I’ll live with being small minded. It would, however, be inappropriate for me to seek out those people whose behavior I find irksome, and express to them my disapproval of their behavior, even if I did it in a civil fashion. (Doing it rudely and with deliberate attempt to be insulting would be stunningly inappropriate, but I think that’s obvious. Well, I hope it is.)

There is, however, one more factor that I think should be added in to the recipe for what we can, with validity, find to be offensive behavior: stuff that has to do with us in some way.

This is a really vague category, and if you expand it far enough, virtually everything has to do with us to some extent. For that reason, I tend to think we should restrict it to, well, things that have to do with us specifically as individuals. It is, I think, sometimes valid to be offended by people behaving in a manner not specifically aimed at us, and not specifically meant to be offensive, when their behavior is, nonetheless, specifically about us, and we find it annoying.

Yeah, I know this seems bewildering, but actually it has a very common application that we’ve all experienced: you accidentally overhear someone say something uncomplimentary about you in an inadvertent social situation. Now, if you were deliberately eavesdropping, well, I think you’re like the buff guy or the hot chick who shows a lot of skin and then gets annoyed when people whom you don’t find attractive leer at you… too damn bad for you, you specifically invited attention and you need to get over it. However, if I honestly simply overhear someone telling someone else “You know, that guy Darren is a real asshole”, I think I can, legitimately, be offended. No, they didn’t direct the comment at me, and no, they didn’t intend it to be offensive (since they don’t know I’m listening). Nonetheless, they’re talking ABOUT me and I’m entitled to take offense.

Whether or not it’s appropriate for me to confront this person at some point, I would think again depends largely on context… if they went on to explain they think I’m a real asshole because of something they’re obviously making up in order to damage me in the eyes of whoever they are talking to, yeah, it’s probably appropriate for me to denounce them as a lying sack of shit. On the other hand, if they explain that I’m a total jerk because I really like Buffy and they saw me reading comic books once during my lunch break, well… yeah, I suppose it’s appropriate… or acceptable, at least… for me to take them aside and tell them they’re an intolerant idiot, but it would be equally appropriate for me to simply mentally note them down on my “asshole” list (assuming they’re not there already) and move on.

And, on the further hand, if they explain that I’m an asshole because, well, I’m not doing my job right and that creates more work for them, or because they found out I constantly bitch about them on my weblog while acting really sweet to their face at work, well… ::sigh:: I have no legitimate grievance, because obviously, they would be correct in their assessment of me, and it’s simply never appropriate to be offended by the truth. (I think Heinlein once commented that a wise man cannot be insulted, because the truth can’t be insulting and a lie isn’t worth bothering with. I think that’s oversimplified; there is behavior which is neither a lie nor the truth, but is, nonetheless, insulting and/or offensive. Still, as a general principle it’s a good one, and recalls to me, once more, that one need never take offense, and when one does, it is always a voluntary and conscious choice.)

Now, having said all of this, I think it’s also useful to note here that a great many of us make the common mistake of thinking we live in a society in which our government and our system of laws is supposed to outlaw and ameliorate offensive behavior. This isn’t true. And while I’ve tried to establish here certain guidelines for recognizing behavior that we can legitimately take offense at if we so choose, and even show our offense, again, if we so choose, I’m not in any way saying that these guidelines should be implemented as actual laws. As one of my email correspondents recently pointed out to me, a belief in freedom of speech and freedom of expression must necessarily accept that certain forms of speech and expression will be onerous, aggravating, annoying, and, yes, offensive. We deal with that because we believe that a free society is a better one to live in than a repressive one, and in a free society, the government can only legitimately intervene to moderate, ameliorate, or even bluntly prohibit clearly dangerous forms of speech and expression. (Which raises the question of whether ‘speech’ can be dangerous, but that’s a whole ‘nother debate.)

On the other hand, when the government starts making laws regarding offensive speech or expression, we are no longer living in a free society… even if the government follows such reasonable and enlightened guidelines as I have outlined here.

So we’re not talking about legalisms, here, or anything with the weight of actual authority behind it. We’re simply talking about courtesy and politeness… which is to say, acceptable and appropriate social behavior. And, to recap:

***If it’s aimed specifically at you and it obviously intends to be offensive, it’s offensive. Feel free to be offended. (Or to ignore it.)
***If it’s not aimed specifically at you but it’s still obviously intended to be offensive, it’s offensive. See above.
***If it’s not directed at you and not intended to offend you, but it’s still about you, and you find it obnoxious or annoying, it may or may not be appropriate to take offense. Reflect on the specifics carefully before charging in.
***If it IS aimed specifically at you, clearly not intended to offend you, but nonetheless you find it obnoxious or otherwise annoying, well… again… consider carefully. If the context specifically invites your response (as in correspondence, or some sort other form of message exchange) it is most likely appropriate to not necessarily take offense, but at least, explain explicitly that you found the communication offensive, and why. This comes under the heading of ‘if people don’t want my opinion on something, they shouldn’t write me an email about it or post it on my weblog’.

Last but not least, if a particular behavior violates either or both of your two social ‘rights’… the right to be left alone, and/or the right to interact appropriately with others… you may have legitimate cause to take offense. This is, again, an unfortunately complex situation. As a general rule, one individual’s right to privacy is paramount over another individual’s right to socialize with them… it has to be, or civilized society simply becomes intolerable. All sane people need company from time to time, but we all need solitude occasionally as well, and whereas the ‘right’ to socialize necessarily requires the presence and willing compliance of others, the right to be alone simply requires our own conscious decision that that’s what we need at the moment. Therefore, the right to privacy has to take precedence over the right to intrude on someone’s privacy.

And… sigh… yes, it doesn’t look good for me nursing a grudge against dear old Jess, does it? Let’s take a look at how these principles hold up to someone simply deciding they don’t want to hang around with someone else any more and breaking a lunch date via a hurtful but still reasonably civil and considerately worded email three hours before hand:

Well, the behavior was directed at me, but on the other hand, certainly wasn’t intended to be offensive. In fact, the note went out of its way to be as diplomatic as is possible in such situations. I would regard that the very action itself was hurtful, but I acknowledge that was unavoidable and certainly not voluntary on her part. In fact, it had far more to do with my feelings for her than it did with her own actions, although for the most part my feelings were also involuntary.

Now, there is a specific case I’ve outlined above where something that offends me unintentionally, that is directed specifically at me, can be found offensive. However, in this case it doesn’t apply. Jess didn’t decide, out of the clear blue sky, to send me an email bitching at me about my morality. She agreed to a lunch date and then changed her mind. She was, pretty much, obligated to make that known to me before I showed up and found her absent, and she did, and she took great pains to hurt me as little as she possibly could while she was doing it.

Furthermore, she was, at base, simply exerting her right to privacy, specifically, her right to be left alone by me or by any other individual whom she did not desire social interaction with. That right always supercedes my (or anyone else’s) right to appropriately interact with her. Furthermore, by her note, she redefined what was appropriate interaction between her and me, which is to say, nothing. Prior to her note certain interactions between us had been understood to be appropriate; she felt those parameters needed to be modified, and she informed me of those modifications through her communication.

Gritting my teeth to the point where they are practically grinding down to their bare enamel, I must admit, although I absolutely loathe doing so, that Jess behaved in an entirely appropriate manner when she blew me off and out of her life, and I have no legitimate grounds to take offense.

Now, being hurt and being angry are involuntary responses, and I’m not going to beat myself up for feeling those things, but I have been acting like a great big baby and a surly creep for the last year about this, and, well, I shouldn’t. That’s inappropriate behavior on my part.

It’s pointless to apologize, since Jess doesn’t want to hear from me, and, well, this is my blog and none of you are required to read it. Still, it’s regrettable it’s taken me this long to realize what a jerk I was being.

Of course, on the lighter side, this entry is so damned long and dry and filled with pedantic language that it’s doubtful anyone out there will ever finish it, so I’m probably safe from anyone getting to the part where I admit what a complete dick I’ve been for the past year or so.

So that’s something, anyway. ;)

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

(a) seem smarter than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(b) be funnier than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(d) be correct when you point out some manner in which the person writing the blog you are posting comments to was wrong, and/or

(e) Upset The Wimmenfolk On The Blog.

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

(a) seem smarter than I am, I like people who are smarter than I am, as long as they’re not jerks about it;

(b) are funnier than I am, then I get to laugh at your witty remarks, and hey, that’s all good;

(c) are a better writer than I am. Although I’m in a peculiar place as regards writing skills; good enough to be better than nearly all the amateurs out there, not good or lucky enough to be a professional at it. So if you are a better writer than I am, you are probably a professional writer and therefore do not have time to post comments on other people’s blogs, so this probably doesn’t matter, as relates to this blog;

(d) correct my mistakes; unlike apparently 95% of the remainder of the human race, I am under no illusions as to my own infallibility and simply don’t care if someone points out that I am wrong about something. Being wrong about things does not strike me as either a character flaw or a shameful embarrassment; we are all wrong about a lot of things every day of our lives, and that’s just how that works;

(e) Upset My Wimmenfolk. Well, actually, I shouldn’t say I don’t care if you upset my wimmenfolk, I do, the very thought deeply offends me. However, it’s just that the wimmenfolk at this point on this blog are my mom, my cuz in law, and my sister in law, and if you do something to upset them, I strongly doubt the authorities finding what’s left of you will be able to identify you without a DNA comparison. My mom, and any woman who marries any of the males in this family and stays married to him for any length of time, are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. So offend them all you want; it’s a self correcting problem.

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.

A Brown Eyed Handsome Man