Hard News: Just shoot me
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evidence based policies
they've got what? bomb them!
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The tradition of parent-child feuds in literary circles dates back to Chaucer, who dubbed his son Ian 'a nancie boye both faire and true, who taketh it up the ers for a groat or twoe'.
Genius. Plus everyone knows that Chaucer has been writing that anonymous blog about a call girl, you know, that one with Billie Piper in it... wife-of-bath.blogspot.com.
It did occur to me last night that if our big issue with this whole thing is that Myerson is seeking to turn a profit on her family's misery, then the solution lies in our own hands.
a) don't buy the book (and really how many people would have, without the attendant publicity?) and
b) don't click on any of the articles about it.Bugger.
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Since you've read the damn thing (and I've absolutely no interest), I'd appreciate your opinion Ethan. If this was on the news pages, and Myerson was making allegations of "vicious -- semi-criminal even" conduct against a third party, do you think her "exaggerations" would have made it to print?
Ah, but it wasn't on the news pages and that was surely the point. The semi-anonymous anecdotal form occupies a different place in the world of the paper - the Mere Male/Over the Teacups/Bridget Jones's Diary/Letters to Penthouse section, where a degree of self-dramatisation and fictionalising is not just allowed, but expected. See also David Sedaris, whom I doubt is fact-checked on as rigorous a basis as other contributors to the New Yorker.
But I remain convinced that much of the vitriol being hurled at Myerson -- why her, why now? -- is gender-based and culture-specific and that it's to do with a sickening sensation about tabloid-reality-ickiness, exemplified by the public demise of Jade Goody. There hasn't been the same degree of outrage directed at, say, David Sheff, although Debra Gwartney is getting a fair amount of stick for her book right now.
Is there some notion about good mummies at the heart of this? That good mothers, like good wives (flashback to Emma's great thread) don't talk about what goes on behind closed doors? Is she being punished in part because she stopped joking about what was going on - can we only handle Domestic Confidential when it's funny? (See Shirley Jackson, whose dark personal and home life led to some of the funniest writing you'll read on the subject of life with small children, at great expense to her family - but perhaps they would have been miserable anyway. See also Jean Kerr and Erma Bombeck, who kind of got away with it).
Of course Myerson was out of line - but that far out of line? Or just a convenient person to play the "pale" beyond-which-we-do-not-go?
Or both. I can hold both stories in my head - that she's done a foolish thing and compromised her child's right to privacy (excellent summary up there, Ethan), and that our disproportionate outrage says more about us than it does about her - because they both seem simultaneously true to me.
And because I'm fascinated by cultural pile-ons in general, especially in who winds up as the consensus-based Bad Guy in any given cultural fable. Once upon a time, Jake would have been the villain of the piece (Go Ask Alice, if you don't believe me, although I seem to remember a neglectful mother in that story too).
It's just there's so much flippin' archetype at play in this narrative: Bad Mother-Writer, Ineffectual Intellectual Husband, not to mention Romantic Broody Intoxicated Youth, all Chattertonesque and Keatsy. Waugh would have had a field day with this material. Oh wait - he did, A Handful of Dust comes close. I submit there are more complex reasons we're interested in this one, other than a simple question of parent-child power relations.
(Which is also incredibly interesting and important).
I do run on. Maybe I should get a blog.
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You guys have all over-reacted. The kid is fine. Mum has written a book. Gimme something to work with here or you're all a bunch of pansies :|
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Since you've read the damn thing (and I've absolutely no interest), I'd appreciate your opinion Ethan. If this was on the news pages, and Myerson was making allegations of "vicious -- semi-criminal even" conduct against a third party, do you think her "exaggerations" would have made it to print?
One story she told was about one of her teens returning from a very late night out, covered in a messy substance that turned out to be anti-climb paint (which never dries, so it leaves ugly stains on your baggy jeans and Bench hoodie if you brush against it whilst climbing in a nefarious fashion). The teen refused to reveal why he'd been climbing a wall, and the column ended in a note of parental paranoia - what has my child been up to? - but also frustration and worry, because she couldn't extract any information from her child and therefore started fearing the worst.
Accusations made about an unrelated member of the public would not have been noteworthy; the veneer of anonymity made the column acceptable and readable. In the last months there were a series of tales that built on the theme running through the column, that modern parents felt besieged by stroppy and ungovernable teenagers. (I don't know if Myerson examined the possibility that she and her husband had contributed to this in their parenting).
I suppose the only reason I was reading these stories was because they had the tang of realism, and presumably the Guardian published the columns because they fitted the profile of its Saturday magazine, which seems to be aimed at lifestyle readers in their 30s and 40s, many of whom will have school-age children.
(There's still good writing there, of course. Current Guardian Saturday Magazine columnist Tim Dowling does much the same thing as Myerson did in his family sketch-pieces, but with a lighter and more self-deprecating touch, and under his own name; Lucy Mangan pours forth with witty columns too, despite being housebound with husband Toryboy's progeny).
As the reporting of poor behaviour increased, I started to wonder if the column was becoming rather too voyeuristic for my own tastes: feeding off the problems of a troubled family. But the distance that anonymity provided mitigated my admittedly mild concerns. After all, I was primarily reading it for the jokes and the sometimes outrageous revelations. (So, yes, I'm complicit too).
Ah, but it wasn't on the news pages and that was surely the point. The semi-anonymous anecdotal form occupies a different place in the world of the paper - the Mere Male/Over the Teacups/Bridget Jones's Diary/Letters to Penthouse section, where a degree of self-dramatisation and fictionalising is not just allowed, but expected. See also David Sedaris, whom I doubt is fact-checked on as rigorous a basis as other contributors to the New Yorker
There's so many of these columnists in the British press, and I definitely agree that their role is to entertain first and be accurate second. Myerson has set an example of succeeding through opening up her family to public scrutiny, and - if some critics of her new book are to be believed - augmenting a novel of middling quality with tell-tale stories from her own family experience.
You're right when you point out that this story has received so much attention because of the ever-increasing salacious clamour for conflict and notoriety in the British media. And in interviewing Jake, the Mail (or was it the Mirror?), will doubtless go all out to uncover a 'political correctness gone mad' angle here. That's their meat and drink.
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wouldnt be surprised if mum and the kid have a mutual agreement involving $$$ to disagree in public.
Beat up what would otherwise be just another fluffy story about the evils of marijuana and shit parenting...
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Dubmugga brings it! Genuinely new material and a perfect conspiracy theory. Well done.
And Ethan, your analysis is very astute. Those Guardian columns are disturbing for all sorts of reasons, not least the fact that their content struck a chord with many readers.
A note: apparently "Jack" in the columns was not Jake (aka "Eddie"), but his younger brother. The one whose burgeoning pubic hair was (shudder) discussed in the newspaper and among his schoolmates without his knowledge.
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Of course Myerson was out of line - but that far out of line? Or just a convenient person to play the "pale" beyond-which-we-do-not-go?
I don't envy her the tabloid odium -- no one deserves that -- although it hasn't quite been comprehensive: quite a few of the Daily Mail readers seem to be behind the tough love.
And I couldn't really condemn Myersons' actions as parents if they felt their other children were in danger, although calling in the American "tough love" experts was probably a bad idea and Jake's version of events occasionally rings more true than theirs. It must have been dreadful.
But in most other respects, the Myersons seem like baby boomer idiots who have trouble taking responsibility.
By the Myersons' own account, they decided that it was Jake's fault her novel was ailing, and that therefore he should be co-opted in to fix the narrative -- kicking, screaming and consulting lawyers if necessary. I think she quite clearly lied about the degree of consent obtained.
And her subsequent fretting about getting into a "war of words" -- after writing the book and then outing her son in her first publicity interview -- seems bizarre.
As if it were all her son's fault or something ...
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Well, I take your point as far as it goes. But I'd add that there was a serious question about why a fuck-wit like Ross had just received an 18 million pound contract from a public broadcaster that was in the process of laying off two or three thousand staff (after a similarly deep round of staff cuts two years before). And it's not as if Ross didn't have form for on-air outbursts that sounded like they'd come straight from a circle-jerk in a public school changing shed.
I am largely indifferent to Ross, Brand and any of the other overpaid self-obsessed fools like Frank Skinner who clutter up the UK airwaves.
My point was more how stuff like this - tasteless, ill-thought out, crass, etc - seems to generate a highly disproportionate response. I'm not saying it shouldn't be criticised, but the response does seem to be insanely out of proportion to the 'crime'. I used a UK example (Ross/Brand) because the story we are discussing is from the UK. I could have used the superbowl wardrobe malfunction for a US example.
A whole bunch of reasons have been offered as to why this 'rush to judgement' happens (celebrity obsessed culture, culture wars, rise of the fundy right, a media that has dropped hard reporting in favour of trivia and naval gazing, and so on). But to me, none of these offered reasons seem to quite be a perfect fit.
The phenomenon itself is what I find interesting, not the incidents themselves.
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I'm not saying it shouldn't be criticised, but the response does seem to be insanely out of proportion to the 'crime'.
News must be slow. In the US, this kind of stuff has a much better place on pantomime stages like Jerry Springer.
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It's just there's so much flippin' archetype at play in this narrative: Bad Mother-Writer, Ineffectual Intellectual Husband, not to mention Romantic Broody Intoxicated Youth, all Chattertonesque and Keatsy. Waugh would have had a field day with this material. Oh wait - he did, A Handful of Dust comes close.
Perhaps you were thinking of Scoop -- where truth isn't a virtue, but a professional disability whether you're running a newspaper or a whorehouse.
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Perhaps you were thinking of Scoop -- where truth isn't a virtue, but a professional disability whether you're running a newspaper or a whorehouse.
This comment really confused me until I checked Wiki for the Evelyn Waugh novel, rather than thinking of the (fairly) virtuous local news site we all know and love...
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See also David Sedaris
Irrelevantly: I could not love him or his sister Amy more. LOVE. That piece of his about being Santa's elf in Macy's... ahhh.
PS Jolisa, thanks for the recommendation (some time back) of The 10PM Question , which is just wonderful.
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See also David Sedaris...
Ah, yes, old David "if it's 97% true, I think that's true enough" Sedaris. Fine, if you're knowingly making shit up you put that little factoid at the front of the book, and don't market it as non-fiction. A quite proportionate response, I think.
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Perhaps you were thinking of Scoop-- where truth isn't a virtue, but a professional disability whether you're running a newspaper or a whorehouse.
True. I guess A Handful of Dust came to mind because it contains yet another Bad Mother whose child falls unheeded by the wayside while she's in pursuit of some kind of social glory (in this case, the hot young feller).
PS Jolisa, thanks for the recommendation (some time back) of The 10PM Question, which is just wonderful.
Isn't it lovely? <self-promotion> I rave about it at length in the upcoming edition of Landfall </self-promotion>.
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Mum writes anonymous feature lightly detailing "Life with Teenagers" - OK.
Anonymity broken & details embarrassing for children, so feature pulled - OK.
Mum writes 'fictional' book detailing family traumas based on recalcitrant son's dabbling with drugs - Still OK with that.
In interview, mum outs own son as protagonist of book with attendant parental angst, publicity and potential negative recriminations for the son - Not OK
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In one of those delicious moments of synchronicity, I've got on the bedside table, two-volume selection of Orwell's essays by New Yorker staff writer George Packer. In the introduction to the volume of 'narrative essays', he asks whether it really matter if the central event of 'Shooting An Elephant' was, not to put too fine a point on it, pure fiction?
Would the essay be any less powerful if Orwell never actually shot an elephant? If you're a literary sophisticate, the correct answer is obvious: of course not. All we have are Orwell's words; they are what they are regardless of his life story, and only a naive reader demands that they reflect factual truth.
[...]
But I think in this case the naive reaction is the right one. Writers always use their imaginations in reconstructing the past, but if central incidents are going to be invented out of nothing, an essayist's authority to say that this is how the world is (and that it's not the way you think) will diminish, perhaps fatally. An Orwell essay -- like all his nonfiction -- establishes a sort of contract with the reader. This is the writer Orwell presents himself to be: I was there -- I saw it -- I know.
I actually think Packer's right -- if you're going to claim authority (whether it's through your persona as a fearless teller of "unpleasant facts" or having your musings printed in a major metropolitan daily) then you don't get to sex your copy up (to coin a phrase).
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""Is there some notion about good mummies at the heart of this? ""
Yes, a reactive notion after being confronted with the tales of "bad
children.""
Can't we accept that modern parenting is still in it's infancy and when confronted by parental idiocy the tribe might want to speak up for the good of the tribe, and of course our fellow non-voting young citizens. Isn't community more important than fretting that it vaguely looks like an attack on mothers (or fathers).We are losing touch with teenagers to frequently, it's just simpilistic
to attribute blame to a child. -
Craig, that's a great example - because even if Orwell did shoot the elephant, he sexes up the essay anyway, by rather improbably claiming his anti-colonial epiphany occurred at the moment of lining up his shot.
Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.
(text from here, italics mine)
The essay was written in 1936, about an event that happened in 1926 - ten years and half a world away. More likely is that he had an inkling of something a bit off at the time, and worked it out for himself much later. But we afford him wiggle-room because of the overall ring of truth (truthiness?) in the description of the event.
And it's something inherent in any act of writing - even an immediate transcription of events. Between the motion and the act falls the shadow, as our other mid-century buddy put it.
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What I want to know is what he did to protect the privacy of the elephant.
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(truthiness?)
Speaking of that, for NZ Colbert fans who may not have noticed: The Colbert Report will be showing on our brand spanking new Comedy Central channel from April 1! Yay.
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It had already destroyed somebody's bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.
I think an elephant that behaves thusly has rather forfeited its right to privacy.
On the other hand, the poor elephant (if it indeed existed) was allegedly in a state of, shall we say, hormonal rage, and was thus not guilty by reason of being completely off its nut. Complicated situation. I'll wait till the Daily Mail gets the elephant's side of things.
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our brand spanking new Comedy Central channel from April 1! Yay.
Where? Where? What? Who? Do I need to upgrade to Sky Digital, then? I was kind of proud of my holdout status. And do you need a special package, like with Disney, or the basic will do?
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Do I need to upgrade to Sky Digital, then?
Oh. :)
I don't think it's a special package - I only have the 'basic' Sky Digital.
Press release here.
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50% of households would suggest the basic Sky Digital package. How they're screwing with us analogue holdouts is by not introducing new channels on our decoders.
I know it's OT, and sorry sorry sorry, but could somebody tell me if the the digital decoder allows you to set a timer for when to change the channel, VCR-style? It's my favourite feature of the ancient analogue box. (And no, I'm not getting mySky).
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