penelope!
posted by steph at
5:16:00 PM
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0 comments
Friday, November 30, 2007
What Do I Do? Depends On What Day Of the Week It Is
believing they are entitled to everything, but unwilling to commit to anything?
Life’s Work
What Do I Do? Depends on What Week It Is
By LISA BELKIN
Published: November 29, 2007
WHEN Sean Aiken was a boy, he thought he might like to be a professional basketball player once he grew up. Now he is 25, and he is decidedly less certain.
In that way he is like so many of his millennial generation — new workers wavering on the threshold of real life, determined to get it right, they say, and fearful that they might get it wrong.
“They’ve grown up in a world where their parents always told them to explore all their options, and they are entering the work force at a time when they can explore and explore and explore,” says Mary Crane, a business consultant whose expertise is bridging the generation gap at Fortune 500 companies. “In addition to that, they see their parents as stuck in thankless jobs, and they don’t want to end up that way.”
Or, as Mr. Aiken puts it: “We have been told our whole life that anything is possible. Well, our parents did a great job, because now we actually believe it.”
In the spirit of his generation — the one that brought us extreme sports, and made a mini celebrity out of a blogger who traded a paper clip for a house, and a mega celebrity out of a socialite who went on reality TV to move from job to job in “The Simple Life” — Mr. Aiken has begun a most unusual search. He will try a different job every week for a year. Depending on your point of view, his extreme job hunt either typifies or parodies his age group.
It all began at the dinner table last year, a few months after Mr. Aiken graduated from Capilano College in North Vancouver, British Columbia, with a degree in business administration. The son was telling the father (who took a job as an accountant 30 years ago in the Aiken family’s hometown of Port Moody, British Columbia) about wanting to find work about which he was passionate. “My father looked at me,” Mr. Aiken recalled, “and said, ‘I’ve been around 60 years and I’ve yet to find something I’m passionate about except your mother.’” Sobered by that thought, Mr. Aiken hatched his plan to work at 52 jobs in a year and to chronicle the search on a Web site, oneweekjob.com. He would take no salary for the work, but would encourage his “employers” to make a donation to charity. He spread the word through a mass e-mail message to friends and family and eventually through word of Web.
When offers came in that were far from home, he found a sponsor(nicejob.ca, a job search Web site) to pay for his travel, and he slept on the couches of “co-workers” and blog readers. As traffic to his Web site increased, he started taking along his best friend, a filmmaker, to create videos for the site.
The 20-somethings who turn to One Week Job find in Mr. Aiken “an ideal of the unstable life,” says Penelope Trunk, the author of “The Brazen Careerist” (Business Plus, 2007), who blogs and lectures on the transformation of the workplace. “He sends the message ‘job-hopping is O.K.,’ ‘moving around is O.K.’”
That is a comforting message, she says, because while Gen Y talks of seeking passion and embracing what is new, that is just brave cover for a less comfortable truth. “The reality is they might prefer one job that would last forever and end with retirement, but that kind of job doesn’t exist anymore,” Ms. Trunk says. “The alternative, the instability, terrifies them. Sean Aiken is an example of how uncertainty and constant change can be O.K.”
Mr. Aiken is on Week 36 of his journey now (he spent it at the studio of a Manhattan filmmaker). Since his first one-week-job, as a bungee-jumping instructor back in March, he has done practically everything, including teaching yoga, exterminating insects, trading stocks and baking apple pies.
He was surprised by how fond he was of some jobs. “The dairy farm was cool,” he says. “It’s all about milking cows, feeding cows, shoveling manure. I really enjoyed it.”
Others were not as fun. “Selling T-shirts at the Toronto film festival, I had three separate bosses,” he says. “I didn’t really know what was expected of me. I was always not doing the right thing for one of them.”
Mr. Aiken’s whirlwind schedule raises the question: can an understanding of real work be had in five-day snapshots? Or is this all just an example of other qualities often attributed to Gen Y — a short attention span and a tendency toward laziness?
Alex Frankel, for one, believes that the essence of a job can be learned in a week. Or three. A freelance business journalist, he is the author of “Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee” (Collins, 2007). Published this month, the book tells of Mr. Frankel’s search through the workplace, one employer at a time, at places like Gap, Enterprise-Rent-a-Car and Apple.
His goal was to learn how corporations create “rah rah” employee cultures, but along the way he discovered much about himself.
“I don’t do well when I have to be part of a team all the time,” he says. “I’m better when I can be out on my own, my own boss of my part of the job.”
For that reason, he says, his work at Starbucks felt confining while his work delivering packages for UPS felt liberating. “There were passing thoughts when I was out in the truck, that I could see doing this full time,” he says. “A few weeks is certainly enough time to get a feel for whether or not a work culture is a good fit.”
Mr. Aiken started out hoping he would have a eureka moment, a cinematic swell of music heralding the epiphany that “this was what I was meant to do.”
But now that he has only 17 weeks left, he has toned down his expectations. “I was looking for the one perfect career that would make me happy,” he says. “Now I am using all the jobs together to see what I need to be happy, what works for me and what doesn’t.”
Like Mr. Frankel, he is realizing that he does not like the regimentation of an office. Also, he says, “I like changing tasks. I enjoy continual change. And it should be something interactive. With people.”
If he had to sign on for any of the positions he has held so far this year, he says, it would be the one raising funds for cancer research or the one in an advertising agency. But talking to him, and scrolling through his Web site, one can’t help but conclude that he has in fact already found his job, one not available to his parents’ generation, but which his will refine and perfect.
Mr. Aiken’s life work might well turn out to be the marketing of Sean Aiken.
As a French psychologist wrote on Mr. Aiken’s blog: “He has in effect created a new business, he is a ‘Sean — the-vocation-searcher.’ It is a job that only one applicant can fit and is made up of all the skills and talents of Sean. The best way to involve all your skills in your job is to create a job made of all your skills — instead of trying to fit in an existing and traditional one. Sean is now the hero of a quest turned into an adventure.”
One can already envision the book. And the reality show. And the Sean Aiken line of luggage.
E-mail: Belkin@nytimes.com
Life’s Work
What Do I Do? Depends on What Week It Is
By LISA BELKIN
Published: November 29, 2007
WHEN Sean Aiken was a boy, he thought he might like to be a professional basketball player once he grew up. Now he is 25, and he is decidedly less certain.
In that way he is like so many of his millennial generation — new workers wavering on the threshold of real life, determined to get it right, they say, and fearful that they might get it wrong.
“They’ve grown up in a world where their parents always told them to explore all their options, and they are entering the work force at a time when they can explore and explore and explore,” says Mary Crane, a business consultant whose expertise is bridging the generation gap at Fortune 500 companies. “In addition to that, they see their parents as stuck in thankless jobs, and they don’t want to end up that way.”
Or, as Mr. Aiken puts it: “We have been told our whole life that anything is possible. Well, our parents did a great job, because now we actually believe it.”
In the spirit of his generation — the one that brought us extreme sports, and made a mini celebrity out of a blogger who traded a paper clip for a house, and a mega celebrity out of a socialite who went on reality TV to move from job to job in “The Simple Life” — Mr. Aiken has begun a most unusual search. He will try a different job every week for a year. Depending on your point of view, his extreme job hunt either typifies or parodies his age group.
It all began at the dinner table last year, a few months after Mr. Aiken graduated from Capilano College in North Vancouver, British Columbia, with a degree in business administration. The son was telling the father (who took a job as an accountant 30 years ago in the Aiken family’s hometown of Port Moody, British Columbia) about wanting to find work about which he was passionate. “My father looked at me,” Mr. Aiken recalled, “and said, ‘I’ve been around 60 years and I’ve yet to find something I’m passionate about except your mother.’” Sobered by that thought, Mr. Aiken hatched his plan to work at 52 jobs in a year and to chronicle the search on a Web site, oneweekjob.com. He would take no salary for the work, but would encourage his “employers” to make a donation to charity. He spread the word through a mass e-mail message to friends and family and eventually through word of Web.
When offers came in that were far from home, he found a sponsor(nicejob.ca, a job search Web site) to pay for his travel, and he slept on the couches of “co-workers” and blog readers. As traffic to his Web site increased, he started taking along his best friend, a filmmaker, to create videos for the site.
The 20-somethings who turn to One Week Job find in Mr. Aiken “an ideal of the unstable life,” says Penelope Trunk, the author of “The Brazen Careerist” (Business Plus, 2007), who blogs and lectures on the transformation of the workplace. “He sends the message ‘job-hopping is O.K.,’ ‘moving around is O.K.’”
That is a comforting message, she says, because while Gen Y talks of seeking passion and embracing what is new, that is just brave cover for a less comfortable truth. “The reality is they might prefer one job that would last forever and end with retirement, but that kind of job doesn’t exist anymore,” Ms. Trunk says. “The alternative, the instability, terrifies them. Sean Aiken is an example of how uncertainty and constant change can be O.K.”
Mr. Aiken is on Week 36 of his journey now (he spent it at the studio of a Manhattan filmmaker). Since his first one-week-job, as a bungee-jumping instructor back in March, he has done practically everything, including teaching yoga, exterminating insects, trading stocks and baking apple pies.
He was surprised by how fond he was of some jobs. “The dairy farm was cool,” he says. “It’s all about milking cows, feeding cows, shoveling manure. I really enjoyed it.”
Others were not as fun. “Selling T-shirts at the Toronto film festival, I had three separate bosses,” he says. “I didn’t really know what was expected of me. I was always not doing the right thing for one of them.”
Mr. Aiken’s whirlwind schedule raises the question: can an understanding of real work be had in five-day snapshots? Or is this all just an example of other qualities often attributed to Gen Y — a short attention span and a tendency toward laziness?
Alex Frankel, for one, believes that the essence of a job can be learned in a week. Or three. A freelance business journalist, he is the author of “Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee” (Collins, 2007). Published this month, the book tells of Mr. Frankel’s search through the workplace, one employer at a time, at places like Gap, Enterprise-Rent-a-Car and Apple.
His goal was to learn how corporations create “rah rah” employee cultures, but along the way he discovered much about himself.
“I don’t do well when I have to be part of a team all the time,” he says. “I’m better when I can be out on my own, my own boss of my part of the job.”
For that reason, he says, his work at Starbucks felt confining while his work delivering packages for UPS felt liberating. “There were passing thoughts when I was out in the truck, that I could see doing this full time,” he says. “A few weeks is certainly enough time to get a feel for whether or not a work culture is a good fit.”
Mr. Aiken started out hoping he would have a eureka moment, a cinematic swell of music heralding the epiphany that “this was what I was meant to do.”
But now that he has only 17 weeks left, he has toned down his expectations. “I was looking for the one perfect career that would make me happy,” he says. “Now I am using all the jobs together to see what I need to be happy, what works for me and what doesn’t.”
Like Mr. Frankel, he is realizing that he does not like the regimentation of an office. Also, he says, “I like changing tasks. I enjoy continual change. And it should be something interactive. With people.”
If he had to sign on for any of the positions he has held so far this year, he says, it would be the one raising funds for cancer research or the one in an advertising agency. But talking to him, and scrolling through his Web site, one can’t help but conclude that he has in fact already found his job, one not available to his parents’ generation, but which his will refine and perfect.
Mr. Aiken’s life work might well turn out to be the marketing of Sean Aiken.
As a French psychologist wrote on Mr. Aiken’s blog: “He has in effect created a new business, he is a ‘Sean — the-vocation-searcher.’ It is a job that only one applicant can fit and is made up of all the skills and talents of Sean. The best way to involve all your skills in your job is to create a job made of all your skills — instead of trying to fit in an existing and traditional one. Sean is now the hero of a quest turned into an adventure.”
One can already envision the book. And the reality show. And the Sean Aiken line of luggage.
E-mail: Belkin@nytimes.com
posted by steph at
2:53:00 PM
|
0 comments
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
ouch.
i think way too much about the things i don't have that i think i need
posted by steph at
12:29:00 AM
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1 comments
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
loyalty is not the same as love
loyalty is not the same as love
loyalty is not the same as love
loyalty is not the same as love
loyalty is not the same as love
posted by steph at
5:53:00 PM
|
0 comments
Monday, November 26, 2007
jon kitna profile
on Kitna: faith, family and football
By LARRY LAGE, AP Sports Writer Thu Nov 22, 11:10 AM ET
NORTHVILLE, Mich. - Jon Kitna was surrounded.
The Detroit Lions quarterback had one person grabbing his neck, another across his shoulders and someone clinging to his legs.
Luckily for Kitna, three of his four young children were piling on him this time and not a 300-pound defensive tackle.
Kitna had been sacked an NFL-high 40 times entering Thursday's game against Green Bay, and that doesn't count the playful hits he takes when his kids treat him like playground equipment in the basement of his mansion.
"The truth comes out about his back," quipped backup quarterback Dan Orlovsky, who recently was a guest because Jennifer Kitna cooked up her signature dish of bow-tie pasta with spicy sausage. "He didn't get hurt playing football."
The 35-year-old Kitna also isn't defined by football.
Perhaps as much as any athlete, Kitna wears his faith on his sleeve — and head.
He has worn baseball caps emblazoned with a cross since 1996, when he signed with the Seattle Seahawks as an undrafted free agent. Several years ago, while playing in Cincinnati, he started ordering 500 at a time to give away.
Kitna gathers his teammates for a prayer circle after every practice and game, and about a dozen of them come over each week with their wives and girlfriends for Bible study.
"We didn't want to have a house this big," Kitna said during a recent interview with The Associated Press inside his 8,000-plus-square-foot home. "But we felt like God told us to buy it because we have 40 people under this roof at any given time because there are a lot more believers here than there were when I played for the Bengals."
Cincinnati quarterback Carson Palmer said Kitna brought teammates closer by sharing his faith.
"He's a guy you want to talk to, you want to be around, you want to listen to, because he's full of knowledge," Palmer said Wednesday. "You know he knows any religious question you can bring to him. A lot of guys have different questions, whether it be about the Bible or about any religion. You feel comfortable going to him because he's not going to give you a one-sided answer. He's going to give you the truth.
"Aside from religious stuff, he's just fun to be around. He's knowledgeable about sports, about books, actors, whatever."
Perhaps surprisingly, Kitna's brick house at the end of a cul-de-sac is not overflowing with religious symbols. A "This is God's House" does hang in the kitchen, though, as does a framed Kitna Family Mission Statement.
After eating chicken nuggets and grapes, the four kids went to play in the basement and listened to a wide array of music, including a song by the 1990s rap group Cypress Hill, while their parents cleaned up and put leftovers in a container for Orlovsky the bachelor to take home.
Even though Kitna is a self-described "Bible-thumper," the subtle signs of his religious beliefs inside his home match up with how he acts around his teammates.
"He's not a prophetizer with his words," Lions president Matt Millen said Tuesday. "Jon offers his life as his testimony. I think he does that because he's been there. The reformed are usually the best examples because they understand."
Kitna acknowledges he was not always so pious.
He had the occasional drink at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Wash., but it was at Central Washington University that Kitna said his partying got out of hand and he was very drunk four nights a week.
He hit rock bottom in October 1993 when his girlfriend, who now is his wife, caught him cheating on her.
"Being young and in love, it was a big blow," Jennifer Kitna said, sitting next to her husband on a living-room couch. "We stayed up late that night and talked. I could tell he was genuinely remorseful because he punched the wall with his throwing hand."
Kitna said he was saved a few months later, dedicating his life to Jesus and helping those interested in their spirituality.
Roy Williams said Kitna changed his life several weeks ago.
"He asked me, `What's holding you back from walking with God?'" the Pro Bowl wide receiver recalled. "It's like an SAT question. I said, `I don't know,' and I changed the subject. Then, I started thinking about it and said, `What is holding me back?'"
Williams, who participates in prayer circles with Kitna but not the Bible studies, said he since has examined his life in a way he hadn't in the past. He tries not to curse anymore or chase women. Williams, who has a child out of wedlock, now wants to get married and start a family. He attributes his new life goals to the guy who throws him the ball.
"That comes from talking to him, watching him and looking at his family," Williams said.
Not everybody in the locker room buys into Kitna's message.
Guard Ed Mulitalo does not get down on a knee to pray after practice, but he respects and admires the way Kitna lives his life and the tolerance he shows with those who don't participate in his faith-related functions.
"He doesn't hold any judgments," Mulitalo said. "If you don't get involved, he doesn't hold it against you."
Alex Lewis, who goes to Kitna's house weekly with his wife, understands why religion is a tricky topic in the workplace and society.
"It should make you feel uncomfortable," the linebacker said. "People like to be comfortable, and truly questioning yourself in terms of how you live your life and what you believe in is not easy.
"It's just too bad stuff like this doesn't get discussed more instead of what Michael Vick or Pacman Jones are doing with their lives."
By LARRY LAGE, AP Sports Writer Thu Nov 22, 11:10 AM ET
NORTHVILLE, Mich. - Jon Kitna was surrounded.
The Detroit Lions quarterback had one person grabbing his neck, another across his shoulders and someone clinging to his legs.
Luckily for Kitna, three of his four young children were piling on him this time and not a 300-pound defensive tackle.
Kitna had been sacked an NFL-high 40 times entering Thursday's game against Green Bay, and that doesn't count the playful hits he takes when his kids treat him like playground equipment in the basement of his mansion.
"The truth comes out about his back," quipped backup quarterback Dan Orlovsky, who recently was a guest because Jennifer Kitna cooked up her signature dish of bow-tie pasta with spicy sausage. "He didn't get hurt playing football."
The 35-year-old Kitna also isn't defined by football.
Perhaps as much as any athlete, Kitna wears his faith on his sleeve — and head.
He has worn baseball caps emblazoned with a cross since 1996, when he signed with the Seattle Seahawks as an undrafted free agent. Several years ago, while playing in Cincinnati, he started ordering 500 at a time to give away.
Kitna gathers his teammates for a prayer circle after every practice and game, and about a dozen of them come over each week with their wives and girlfriends for Bible study.
"We didn't want to have a house this big," Kitna said during a recent interview with The Associated Press inside his 8,000-plus-square-foot home. "But we felt like God told us to buy it because we have 40 people under this roof at any given time because there are a lot more believers here than there were when I played for the Bengals."
Cincinnati quarterback Carson Palmer said Kitna brought teammates closer by sharing his faith.
"He's a guy you want to talk to, you want to be around, you want to listen to, because he's full of knowledge," Palmer said Wednesday. "You know he knows any religious question you can bring to him. A lot of guys have different questions, whether it be about the Bible or about any religion. You feel comfortable going to him because he's not going to give you a one-sided answer. He's going to give you the truth.
"Aside from religious stuff, he's just fun to be around. He's knowledgeable about sports, about books, actors, whatever."
Perhaps surprisingly, Kitna's brick house at the end of a cul-de-sac is not overflowing with religious symbols. A "This is God's House" does hang in the kitchen, though, as does a framed Kitna Family Mission Statement.
After eating chicken nuggets and grapes, the four kids went to play in the basement and listened to a wide array of music, including a song by the 1990s rap group Cypress Hill, while their parents cleaned up and put leftovers in a container for Orlovsky the bachelor to take home.
Even though Kitna is a self-described "Bible-thumper," the subtle signs of his religious beliefs inside his home match up with how he acts around his teammates.
"He's not a prophetizer with his words," Lions president Matt Millen said Tuesday. "Jon offers his life as his testimony. I think he does that because he's been there. The reformed are usually the best examples because they understand."
Kitna acknowledges he was not always so pious.
He had the occasional drink at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Wash., but it was at Central Washington University that Kitna said his partying got out of hand and he was very drunk four nights a week.
He hit rock bottom in October 1993 when his girlfriend, who now is his wife, caught him cheating on her.
"Being young and in love, it was a big blow," Jennifer Kitna said, sitting next to her husband on a living-room couch. "We stayed up late that night and talked. I could tell he was genuinely remorseful because he punched the wall with his throwing hand."
Kitna said he was saved a few months later, dedicating his life to Jesus and helping those interested in their spirituality.
Roy Williams said Kitna changed his life several weeks ago.
"He asked me, `What's holding you back from walking with God?'" the Pro Bowl wide receiver recalled. "It's like an SAT question. I said, `I don't know,' and I changed the subject. Then, I started thinking about it and said, `What is holding me back?'"
Williams, who participates in prayer circles with Kitna but not the Bible studies, said he since has examined his life in a way he hadn't in the past. He tries not to curse anymore or chase women. Williams, who has a child out of wedlock, now wants to get married and start a family. He attributes his new life goals to the guy who throws him the ball.
"That comes from talking to him, watching him and looking at his family," Williams said.
Not everybody in the locker room buys into Kitna's message.
Guard Ed Mulitalo does not get down on a knee to pray after practice, but he respects and admires the way Kitna lives his life and the tolerance he shows with those who don't participate in his faith-related functions.
"He doesn't hold any judgments," Mulitalo said. "If you don't get involved, he doesn't hold it against you."
Alex Lewis, who goes to Kitna's house weekly with his wife, understands why religion is a tricky topic in the workplace and society.
"It should make you feel uncomfortable," the linebacker said. "People like to be comfortable, and truly questioning yourself in terms of how you live your life and what you believe in is not easy.
"It's just too bad stuff like this doesn't get discussed more instead of what Michael Vick or Pacman Jones are doing with their lives."
posted by steph at
11:10:00 PM
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0 comments
love letters to britney
by Elena Garcia
Members of the Kentucky megachurch whose pastor asked them to support Britney Spears “the way Jesus loves her” are sending out the first few batches of letters carrying messages of love and encouragement.
Southland Christian Church has made contact with someone in Spears’ organization to make sure she would see the messages, according to church spokeswoman Cindy Willison in a report by the Herald-Leader.
Church officials haven’t counted the exact number of letters but are sending them out in batches, said Willison.
Two months ago, Southland pastor Jon Weece asked his congregation of 8,000 to "take a few minutes and write a note to Britney Spears. No preaching. No criticizing. Just love."
Willison said the report was picked up by publications across the country and resulted in as many as 100 positive responses with many asking if they could also join in the Southland mailing to Spears.
One Louisiana resident said that she is sending written prayers and letters from her children to the church in hopes they will reach Spears.
"I think it's fabulous. I believe they are doing exactly what Jesus would do," said Tammy Harlan. "I wish more churches would reach out."
Critics say the church is trying to get publicity through the outreach and should focus more on taking care of people in the local area.
Willison defended Southland’s position, saying, “This is just one example of what we do all the time.”
She noted that the church provides clothing and furniture weekly and offers programs for people struggling with addictions.
Members of the Kentucky megachurch whose pastor asked them to support Britney Spears “the way Jesus loves her” are sending out the first few batches of letters carrying messages of love and encouragement.
Southland Christian Church has made contact with someone in Spears’ organization to make sure she would see the messages, according to church spokeswoman Cindy Willison in a report by the Herald-Leader.
Church officials haven’t counted the exact number of letters but are sending them out in batches, said Willison.
Two months ago, Southland pastor Jon Weece asked his congregation of 8,000 to "take a few minutes and write a note to Britney Spears. No preaching. No criticizing. Just love."
Willison said the report was picked up by publications across the country and resulted in as many as 100 positive responses with many asking if they could also join in the Southland mailing to Spears.
One Louisiana resident said that she is sending written prayers and letters from her children to the church in hopes they will reach Spears.
"I think it's fabulous. I believe they are doing exactly what Jesus would do," said Tammy Harlan. "I wish more churches would reach out."
Critics say the church is trying to get publicity through the outreach and should focus more on taking care of people in the local area.
Willison defended Southland’s position, saying, “This is just one example of what we do all the time.”
She noted that the church provides clothing and furniture weekly and offers programs for people struggling with addictions.
posted by steph at
1:06:00 PM
|
0 comments
Sunday, November 25, 2007
cooking with passion !
KTSF Presents Spectacular Asian Fusion Cooking Competition
San Francisco - October 5, 2006 - On Sunday, November 19th, KTSF presents Cooking With Passion, Powered By Chefs, a one-of-a-kind cooking competition where twelve amateur cooks will be paired up with twelve executive chefs from the Bay Area's finest restaurants, to compete in a spectacular Asian-fusion culinary event. The event is sponsored by the all new 2007 Ford Edge.
Held at San Francisco's stunning new Moscone West convention center and hosted by KTSF-TV anchor, Pei-Chun Liao, the competition will give the estimated 2,500 cooking enthusiasts in attendance the chance to learn the culinary secrets of both the professional chefs as well as their fellow amateur cooks.
KTSF, the nation's leading Asian language broadcaster, will also televise the event in a three-part television special in January 2007. The TV special, broadcast in Mandarin and Cantonese (with Chinese subtitles used when English is spoken), will feature profiles of the amateur contestants and the chefs, detailed demonstrations of the making of each dish and the final competition.
"Our Asian-American viewers have always shown a penchant for both cooking and fine food," said KTSF General Manager, Michael Sherman." Cooking With Passion combines this love of good food with the skills and showmanship of the Bay Area's finest chefs in a unique cooking event."
Participating executive chefs include: Arnold Eric Wong of Bacar and EOS Restaurants, Bruce Hill of Bix and Picco, Robert Lam of Butterfly Restaurant, Belinda Leong of Restaurant Gary Danko, Ken Tominaga of Hana Japanese Restaurant, Bridget Batson of Hawthorne Lane, Ronald Lee of Hong Kong East Ocean Restaurant, So Ting Chiu of Hong Kong Flower Lounge, Lee Kwong Chung of Joy Luck Place (Cupertino), Leung Kam Chiu of Koi Palace, Randy Lewis of Mecca, and Scott Howard of Scott Howard Restaurant.
Beginning August 2006, KTSF solicited entries via on-air promos for amateur cooks to compete in the Cooking With Passion event. Viewers were asked to submit a recipe, along with a photograph of the completed dish and a photograph of themselves. A panel of KTSF executives and professional chefs chose 12 finalists to compete in the event.
Each contestant was then paired with a professional chef, who would act as his or her "mentor" prior to and during the competition. The team of amateur cook and chef will compete in only one of three cooking categories: Asian, non-Asian, and Dessert. One grand prizewinner will be chosen from each cooking category by a panel of 4 highly qualified judges. The grand prize, valued at $9,000, includes $5,000 in professional grade appliances and/or cookware from Pacific Zephyr, $2,000 in gift certificates from participating Cooking With Passion chefs' restaurants and a fine gift, valued at $2,000, from Chong Hing Jewelers.
A stellar line-up of qualified judges include: Roland Passot, Chef and owner of La Folie in San Francisco, Joanne Weir, Chef and television personality, Murat Eskicioglu, General Manager for Catering SMG Moscone Center, and Ronald Mar, Food and Wine Columnist for The Asian Gourmet magazine.
Companies such as Ford Motor Company, 99 Ranch Market, Pacific Zephyr, Amstel Light, CornerStone Home Design, and Lee Kum Kee have already signed on as event sponsors.
Media sponsors include: KPIX, Comcast, The San Francisco Examiner, KQED, Sing Tao Daily, Ming Pao Daily, New Asian Cuisine, and AsianWeek.
Cooking With Passion, Powered By Chefs takes place on Sunday, November 19, 2006 from 3:00pm-6:00pm. Ticket prices are $75 for VIP seating and $20 for general admission. Included in the price of the VIP ticket is admittance to the exclusive "Tasting Reception" following the competition from 6:00pm-7:00pm, where appetizers provided by the Cooking With Passion chefs will be served along with fine wine and beer.
Tickets are available through City Box Office (415) 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com and www.tickets.com.
CONTACTS:
Lisa Yokota (lyokota@ktsftv.com)
Michael Sherman (msherman@ktsftv.com)
(415) 468-2626
www.ktsf.com
San Francisco - October 5, 2006 - On Sunday, November 19th, KTSF presents Cooking With Passion, Powered By Chefs, a one-of-a-kind cooking competition where twelve amateur cooks will be paired up with twelve executive chefs from the Bay Area's finest restaurants, to compete in a spectacular Asian-fusion culinary event. The event is sponsored by the all new 2007 Ford Edge.
Held at San Francisco's stunning new Moscone West convention center and hosted by KTSF-TV anchor, Pei-Chun Liao, the competition will give the estimated 2,500 cooking enthusiasts in attendance the chance to learn the culinary secrets of both the professional chefs as well as their fellow amateur cooks.
KTSF, the nation's leading Asian language broadcaster, will also televise the event in a three-part television special in January 2007. The TV special, broadcast in Mandarin and Cantonese (with Chinese subtitles used when English is spoken), will feature profiles of the amateur contestants and the chefs, detailed demonstrations of the making of each dish and the final competition.
"Our Asian-American viewers have always shown a penchant for both cooking and fine food," said KTSF General Manager, Michael Sherman." Cooking With Passion combines this love of good food with the skills and showmanship of the Bay Area's finest chefs in a unique cooking event."
Participating executive chefs include: Arnold Eric Wong of Bacar and EOS Restaurants, Bruce Hill of Bix and Picco, Robert Lam of Butterfly Restaurant, Belinda Leong of Restaurant Gary Danko, Ken Tominaga of Hana Japanese Restaurant, Bridget Batson of Hawthorne Lane, Ronald Lee of Hong Kong East Ocean Restaurant, So Ting Chiu of Hong Kong Flower Lounge, Lee Kwong Chung of Joy Luck Place (Cupertino), Leung Kam Chiu of Koi Palace, Randy Lewis of Mecca, and Scott Howard of Scott Howard Restaurant.
Beginning August 2006, KTSF solicited entries via on-air promos for amateur cooks to compete in the Cooking With Passion event. Viewers were asked to submit a recipe, along with a photograph of the completed dish and a photograph of themselves. A panel of KTSF executives and professional chefs chose 12 finalists to compete in the event.
Each contestant was then paired with a professional chef, who would act as his or her "mentor" prior to and during the competition. The team of amateur cook and chef will compete in only one of three cooking categories: Asian, non-Asian, and Dessert. One grand prizewinner will be chosen from each cooking category by a panel of 4 highly qualified judges. The grand prize, valued at $9,000, includes $5,000 in professional grade appliances and/or cookware from Pacific Zephyr, $2,000 in gift certificates from participating Cooking With Passion chefs' restaurants and a fine gift, valued at $2,000, from Chong Hing Jewelers.
A stellar line-up of qualified judges include: Roland Passot, Chef and owner of La Folie in San Francisco, Joanne Weir, Chef and television personality, Murat Eskicioglu, General Manager for Catering SMG Moscone Center, and Ronald Mar, Food and Wine Columnist for The Asian Gourmet magazine.
Companies such as Ford Motor Company, 99 Ranch Market, Pacific Zephyr, Amstel Light, CornerStone Home Design, and Lee Kum Kee have already signed on as event sponsors.
Media sponsors include: KPIX, Comcast, The San Francisco Examiner, KQED, Sing Tao Daily, Ming Pao Daily, New Asian Cuisine, and AsianWeek.
Cooking With Passion, Powered By Chefs takes place on Sunday, November 19, 2006 from 3:00pm-6:00pm. Ticket prices are $75 for VIP seating and $20 for general admission. Included in the price of the VIP ticket is admittance to the exclusive "Tasting Reception" following the competition from 6:00pm-7:00pm, where appetizers provided by the Cooking With Passion chefs will be served along with fine wine and beer.
Tickets are available through City Box Office (415) 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com and www.tickets.com.
CONTACTS:
Lisa Yokota (lyokota@ktsftv.com)
Michael Sherman (msherman@ktsftv.com)
(415) 468-2626
www.ktsf.com
posted by steph at
10:25:00 PM
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0 comments
Thursday, November 22, 2007
uc tries to better understand asian students!Q
The University of California is expanding the categories undergraduate applicants use to self-report their ethnicity as part of an effort to collect and better report the “complexities” of its Asian American and Pacific Islander students. It will become the first public institution of higher education in California to collect and report data specifically on Hmong, Filipino and other Asian subgroups.
“The data UC collects are a reflection of how well we are serving the diverse people of California,” said Dr. Judy Sakaki, UC’s vice president for student affairs. “My goal is for improved data reporting to spur greater accountability regarding overlooked populations in our student body.”
Next year’s undergraduate application will include 23 Asian American and Pacific Islander categories, up from the eight that are currently recorded.
The “Count Me In” campaign, a student-led crusade to get the University of California system and the state to disaggregate data so that the needs and challenges of the various Asian subgroups aren’t overlooked, played a role in UC’s decision as did calls from UC faculty for richer research data and state legislative interest.
Through aggregated data, Asians are often portrayed as academically, socially and economically successful. But in a report released last summer, the federal Government Accountability Office warned that the “Asian” umbrella masks the underperformance of some Asian subgroups, like Vietnamese and Native Hawaiians. As UC noted in its announcement Friday, a closer look at the Hmong community in California shows that 66 percent have less than a high school degree, compared to 23 percent of all California adults.
“The prevalent model minority myth can make many disadvanteged members of our community invisible to policymakers,” said Candice Shikai, a UCLA student and director of the Asian Pacific Coalition, which initiated the “Count Me In” campaign.
“Collecting data on more Asian American and Pacific Islander groups will result in a more accurate picture of how students are doing,” she added.
The ethnic data collected by UC is used in evaluating graduation and retention rates. Next year’s applications for admissions will include separate categories for Chinese, Taiwanese, Asian Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan and “other” Asian.
The GAO recommended institutions share information about strategies to recruit, retain and increase graduation rates of all Asian students in an effort that would be facilitated by the U.S. Department of Education.
--Diverse staff
“The data UC collects are a reflection of how well we are serving the diverse people of California,” said Dr. Judy Sakaki, UC’s vice president for student affairs. “My goal is for improved data reporting to spur greater accountability regarding overlooked populations in our student body.”
Next year’s undergraduate application will include 23 Asian American and Pacific Islander categories, up from the eight that are currently recorded.
The “Count Me In” campaign, a student-led crusade to get the University of California system and the state to disaggregate data so that the needs and challenges of the various Asian subgroups aren’t overlooked, played a role in UC’s decision as did calls from UC faculty for richer research data and state legislative interest.
Through aggregated data, Asians are often portrayed as academically, socially and economically successful. But in a report released last summer, the federal Government Accountability Office warned that the “Asian” umbrella masks the underperformance of some Asian subgroups, like Vietnamese and Native Hawaiians. As UC noted in its announcement Friday, a closer look at the Hmong community in California shows that 66 percent have less than a high school degree, compared to 23 percent of all California adults.
“The prevalent model minority myth can make many disadvanteged members of our community invisible to policymakers,” said Candice Shikai, a UCLA student and director of the Asian Pacific Coalition, which initiated the “Count Me In” campaign.
“Collecting data on more Asian American and Pacific Islander groups will result in a more accurate picture of how students are doing,” she added.
The ethnic data collected by UC is used in evaluating graduation and retention rates. Next year’s applications for admissions will include separate categories for Chinese, Taiwanese, Asian Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan and “other” Asian.
The GAO recommended institutions share information about strategies to recruit, retain and increase graduation rates of all Asian students in an effort that would be facilitated by the U.S. Department of Education.
--Diverse staff
posted by steph at
11:25:00 PM
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2 comments
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
bonds article - overblown in some places, dead on in others
The Essence of Bonds
BY D.K. Wilson
There is something inherently wrong with the federal government and its four-year investigation and now prosecution of Barry Bonds. Something is wrong about spending millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer money - and there is no law mandating that we even pay taxes - to chase evidence to prove that Bonds lied to a grand jury. There is something wrong with a society in which individuals within that society would, en masse, express a hatred toward a man they no nothing about rather than demand that the monies they have been illegally taxed be returned to them. The mass - the ruling mob - seems to be saying that they will pay money to watch the government chase down Barry Bonds, find enough evidence to get him into a court room, and then put him on trial. Perhaps they think it's somehow the "cool" thing to do to pay for this sadistic act of watching another man's misery; again, a man none of the mob knows.
Jeff Idelson of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum spoke for the mob when he agreed to take Barry Bonds' #756 home run baseball. He agreed to accept an artifact that no proper curator would accept: "Sir, would you accept the Mona Lisa? It has on her cheek the Ralph Lauren polo pony and rider trademark image, but that is representative of the sentiment of the people who have viewed other paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci." A museum curator might be angry enough to have the perpetrator bodily removed.
But not Idelson. He said:
"Our preference was to have the ball donated unscathed. In this instance, we were looking past that because of its historical significance. It's an important piece of baseball in American culture."
"American culture," as Idelson says, is in this case either the corporate America of which the Bonds baseball owner - Marc Ecko - is a part; or the mob - which Ecko is also a part of (he dabbles in "the jungle" that is black urban America) - that pays good money in the way of taxes to have its pseudo-sadomasochistic fetishes fulfilled.
The part of the mob that is the press corps - most of this mob is male - is so happy Bonds had an indictment dropped on his head that they can barely contain their glee. In every corner of the country someone has written or is writing a story about how happy they are at the prospect that the Black Scourge that is Barry Bonds by any other name, might be headed to a federal prison.
I have heard enough about Bonds from journalists who have covered him to understand that he is the most complex athlete in the history of sports - not just baseball, all of sports. This is a man with a yet-to-be-unearthed past beyond that which we think we know. Sure, we know he is the son of deceased former big leaguer, Bobby Bonds; and Bonds, the elder, was said to have more talent than Willie Mays. But Bobby Bonds was, like his son, a complex man. He felt the racism around him like an empath - and it helped kill him. He played hurt but rarely let it be known just how hurt he was. He turned to alcohol and was said to be a mean drunk; you can be sure that teammates and baseball writers alike have private horror stories about this side of Bonds.
And then there was Bobby Bonds, father of a wunderkind named Barry. As a father, surely Bobby saw the talent of his son long before anyone else, but knew the talent was there and was more abundant than his own ample native abilities. Barry was forever around the clubhouse watching his dad, taking in the pain of the injuries - both physical and psychic. Since alcohol was his father's painkiller, you can be sure Barry witnessed the worst from this man he loved like nothing else. We will probably never know the degree of closeness to Bobby's alcohol-induced anger Barry endured - but it had to be, even if only once, too close for a child, any child.
At the same time Barry Bonds was privy to his father's private hell, he was privy to the inner sanctum that was and is the baseball clubhouse. Just think of the word; it is not a room where lockers for possessions are stored and where clothing is changed. Barry Bonds grew up in the place where only members were allowed. It was and is not a room, but a domicile away from the traditional domicile. It is a place where, for well over a century, men have banded together and shared the secret of their love for what they do. The word is only used in two other contexts - outside of the three major sports - and that is the country club, and a place where little boys go when they want to be far from everyone but each other.
Clubhouse. The sanctuary, the inner chamber, the ------------------ home.
It cannot be only the abstract of anger that drives Barry Bonds today to want, nearing 45 years of age, to continue to play. The clubhouse, perhaps more so than for any other baseball player in the history of the game - even Billy and Cal Ripken, even Ken Griffey, Jr. - is the only place he knows. More importantly, the clubhouse is the only place that knows him. There in the clubhouse, Barry Bonds is untouchable. Even when surrounded by the press, that part of the mob so eager to impugn him, he holds court. If he deems it, you will not get near him. If he deems it, you can be graced by his smile. If he deems it, he will regale you with introspective nuggets, or shame you to the point where you question why you do what you do.
The clubhouse is Bonds' familiar, and leaving it opens him to the world that killed his father, the world that never allowed him to endorse products for the mob, or celebrate his entrance at an awards show, or allowed him to be a gentleman for even a quarter.
And away from the clubhouse is exactly the place the mob wants Bonds. John Feinstein of the Washington Post will tell you:
When a federal grand jury indicted Barry Bonds, baseball's all-time home run leader, on Thursday on charges that he lied to a federal grand jury about his use of performance-enhancing steroids, there were cries across the land from baseball people that this was a dark day for the game.
In fact, it was a day of emancipation for all those who love baseball. Bonds has held the sport hostage for years. This summer he broke Henry Aaron's record of 755 career home runs, all the while belligerently denying charges that he is one of baseball's many steroid users.
Feinstein knows there are those who read his mob words who do not believe in his rule, so he resorts to what so many of the mob do, tell the lie - or half-truth - repeated to the point it is held by the mob to be true:
There's proof now and more coming. Sure, an indictment isn't a conviction, but those still in the "no one has proved Bonds guilty yet" camp might check the record of federal prosecutors when they bring indictments: 95 percent of those indicted are convicted.
The reality of the conviction rate, though, is much different than the mob-told story:
Currently federal prosecutors tout above a 95% conviction rate. This is primarily due to the fact that most cases never make it to trial. Most defendants end up taking a plea bargain rather then risk a potentially much greater prison sentence which could be dealt them if they actual went to trial and lost. Another factor is the empowerment and impunity given to both investigating authorities and prosecutors, along with an interesting trial maneuver called "Jury Instructions". Jury instructions are basically parameters that the judge provides the jury which can greatly affect the outcome of a verdict. [Emphasis mine]
Lets say you where being charged with a federal crime which could send you to prison for 10 years if you lost at trial, and you are being offered a 3 year prison sentence if you accept a plea bargain. If you believed you we're innocent would you still take your case to trial knowing that if by chance you lose, you may have to serve a 10 year prison sentence? Currently within the Federal prison system, you will serve at least 85% of that time.
Even within those parameters, the 95% conviction rate is suspect:
A few years ago I noticed in the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics that federal defendants who stand trial are much more likely to be acquitted in a bench trial than by a jury. This seemed odd to me - I had always assumed the opposite was true. So I studied government records for federal trials between 1989 and 2002 and found a number of surprising things.
First, I found that the gap between bench acquittal rates and jury acquittal rates was quite large: over the 14 years I studied, the average conviction rate in jury cases was 84%, while judges convicted slightly more than 50% of the time. Second (using other data), I found that this gap was a recent phenomenon. Between the early 1960s and late 1980s, the conviction rates for judge and jury was roughly the same; the 20 years before that, judges actually convicted much more often than juries. [Emphasis mine]
Feinstein, who is allegedly one of the very best in his business, proves anything will be said to separate Bonds from his house.
This type of obfuscation - or laziness if he failed to fact-check at all - should be beneath a noted author such as Feinstein, or the copy editors of the Washington Post. Sadly, it is not. And Howard Bryant, who just happens to be another one-time Washington Post writer, you are wrong. This is about Barry Bonds and Barry Bonds, only. Then there's Jeff Pearlman of ESPN.com puling about how he's a baseball purist and how he has to use Barry Bonds as this shining example of a cheater to his young daughter. And there's Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
A marvelously gifted talent who has tarnished his career by showing contempt for teammates, media, the game's integrity and the truth now stands formally accused.
Thursday's federal indictment will cause Bonds' supporters to trot out well-worn excuses, mail-order legal degrees and a race-based defense of a man who has never embraced anything other than himself…
Where are the critics who derided the meticulous investigative book "Game of Shadows" as nothing more than a money grab by two San Francisco reporters, themselves once prosecuted for protecting their outstanding sources?
The much-anticipated and much-dreaded Mitchell Report is expected to come out within the next month, and every franchise trembles at what it might present. Bonds' apologists hoped Sen. George Mitchell's report would come out before any additional revelations surfaced against their hero. In that climate, Bonds would only seem the biggest drop within an ocean of cheats. Not now. Whatever follows serves as mere breakers. Bonds is the tsunami.
BB is subject to far worse than MLB's wrist slap for first-time offenders. He stands to do serious time like his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who was released Thursday after twice being incarcerated for remaining silent about his former client's training habits.
The investigation already has ensnared New York Yankees slugger Jason Giambi. Giambi had enough common sense not to lie. He took a public flogging, admitted his mistake, was called before the Mitchell committee and has partially rehabilitated his reputation.
All of you - shut up. Feinstein and your half-truths - shut up. Bryant, who wrote a miserably ill-informed, biased treatment of steroids - shut up. Pearlman, who wrote a mean piece of tripe of a book about Bonds, who injects other side of the coin, liberal whining in his work - shut up.
Joe Strauss - Barry Lamar Bonds might be a self-centered asshole who doesn't give a damn about you, me, or anything other than the clubhouse, but don't use how you despise Bonds to say that race is not involved in this case; race is involved in everything in this white, male dominated society. Everything. And Strauss, no one accused Fainaru-Wada and Williams of a money grab. Everyone in the business knows how hard it is to hit the motherload from writing a book.
Theirs was a glory grab. The attempt to forever set the language of how Barry Bonds is discussed is ultimately much more valuable than hoping to generate millions from a book. Also Strauss, Greg Anderson was kept in prison because of the federal prosecution's lie that his testimony was invaluable to them. Now they openly say they had everything they needed a year ago, at least. So why was Anderson imprisoned, again? Oh, that's right, liars are lauded - when they are the government. Finally, Giambi admitted to steroid use to the grand jury (I hope), but has never, ever publicly uttered the word steroid with, "I used..." and has been ensnared in exactly nothing. So Joe, shut the hell up.
All of the above and many of their peers turn a blind eye to the fact that their entire careers have largely been built off the backs of black people - the athletes and anyone close to them. Can they comprehend that statement? It is they who act as enablers for the slave trade that is major professional sports - MLB, NFL, and NBA. These journalists who participate in the ruse protect the leagues and management at the expense of the players, protect the surly, mobbish fans at the expense of the players. They despise the fact that players are placed above them to the point where they are willing to sell their souls to the omniscient camera that is named ESPN just to be seen, just to put themselves in a position for celebrity.
See, all of them know that very little said on television is more than a soundbyte. They will rarely be allowed the time to make a profound statement on that medium, and so anything meaningful said acts as nothing more than a blip on the radar. But these writers still sell their journalistic souls to the cheapest prostitute in the land - television, the ever-for-sale whore. And those who purport to "investigate" a subject would put their mamas on trial if they thought it would bring them more notoriety.
Which one of you will stand apart from the mob? Which one of you would dare build on the nugget Mitch Albom dropped on the Sports Reporters and let it be known that the government could have brought this case to the fore a year ago but were loathe to lose the case and act as the agency who kept Barry Bonds from breaking Hank Aaron's home run record?
The answer is --------- none of you.
In this respect the Barry Bonds case crosses generations. Young mob members and old-time mobsters alike hate what Bonds stands for. Across age lines and races there is a, "let's get this guy who got us for so long," attitude that is so destructive, so mal that it borders on collusion. That all of you invested so much time in your hate for Bonds that you failed to examine the complex nature of the most riveting figure in the history of sports means you have effectively wiped history from the big book, Every Event in Our Existence. Your hate for Bonds stole any meaningful discussion of the man from the public forum.
And you will vilify him further when he turns his back forever.
To be sure, the producers of the shows that constitute the Greatest Whore on Earth that is television can surely be assigned blame in this hate game. The editors who secretly wish they had your writing talents, who enable your hate, are to blame in this hate game. And the corporate entities that run this country - Benito would only have to venture into Wal-Mart and then watch Fox News and ESPN (the Television Show) to know that this is the form of government he once dreamed for his Italy.
It is unconscionable for these people on whom the public relies to be so misinformed, so lazy, so biased as to allow the excuse for other baseball players that because they are returning from injury, or because they received growth hormone from a dentist, or because Major League Baseball had not yet banned growth hormone use that they can be pardoned and exempt from punishment.
It is equally unconscionable for Bud Selig to say, 'we'll call them into our offices' - and then release these players without even a slap on their wrists.
And excoriate Barry Bonds.
You see, Bud Selig holds a dirty secret: Steroids were banned from the game in 1991. Did you know that John Feinstein? How about you, Howard Bryant? Jeff Pearlman, Joe Strauss, did either of you know? Do any baseball writers know? Buster Olney? Peter Gammons? Any of you? You must know this:
In 1991, Faye Vincent, commissioner of baseball at the time, issued a policy that labeled steroids illegal when taken for the purpose of enhancing performance. However, no major league testing of steroids was established, so players continued to use and reap the benefits.
If not, you couldn't have talked with ESPN.com's Tom Farrey and found this out:
In truth, steroids have been banned in baseball since 1991 -- in a policy baseball officials made little effort to publicize. A source provided a copy of the seven-page document to ESPN The Magazine on the condition of anonymity. Titled "Baseball's Drug Policy and Prevention Program," the memo was sent to all major-league clubs on June 7 of that year by then-commissioner Fay Vincent. He spelled out components of the program, and ordered, "This prohibition applies to all illegal drugs and controlled substances, including steroids."
How about you, Bud Selig?
Selig exonerated all the recent names from the Signature Pharmacy scandal; you know, guys like Rick Ankiel, Jay Gibbons, Scott Schoeneweis, and Troy Glaus (no one asks Glaus to give up his World Series MVP award) because baseball now says it "formally" banned all performance-enhancing drugs on January 13, 2005. But there is this little tidbit from Farrey about Selig and PEDs:
On May 15, 1997, acting commissioner Bud Selig distributed a nearly identical version of the drug memo, again citing steroids and directing clubs to post the policy in clubhouses and distribute copies to players. Selig's memo also went largely ignored. "I don't remember anything being posted in the locker room on drugs, like we did with gambling," said Bob Gebhard, then the Rockies' GM. In fact, baseball's gambling policy is still prominently displayed, and it must be read annually to each player by a club employee.
Players then sign a statement affirming that they understand the rule. Does such awareness make a difference? Hard to know, but the last gambling scandal was Pete Rose in 1989. ESPN spoke to five GMs from 1997, three of whom (from the Royals, Dodgers and Rockies) couldn't recall that a steroids policy even existed -- not that it would have mattered. "I hate to say this, but it didn't do a whole lot of good to know the policy," says Herk Robinson, the Royals' GM during 1990-2000. "You weren't going [to] solve anything. You couldn't test. You couldn't walk up to a guy and say, 'What are you taking?'" That sense of futility, brought on by the union's refusal to allow drug testing, descended from Vincent, who concedes he made no effort to enforce the league's first drug rules. "We could have done a lot more lecturing, lobbying and educating," he says. "But I didn't know anything about steroids." He says steroids were included in the 1991 memo because of rumors involving one player, Jose Canseco.
The beautiful game is not the football of Europe, but the game of pass the blame. Fay Vincent did it and claimed ignorance of steroids. Vincent sounds like Donald Fehr held him and his game of baseball hostage. Fehr obviously held much of the press mob hostage, because criticisms of Vincent were few, as were the criticisms of Fehr, or the players who were widely rumored to be using steroids. Most people remember Canseco, but there wasn't a Bash Brother, there were Bash Brothers. When their forearms met at home plate, Mark McGwire's forearms were as big as Jose's.
For his part, Bud Selig continues to play the pass the blame game, though he instructed teams to post the steroid policy mandate in every clubhouse.
That's your policy, Bud. Yours.
However, if you followed the mandate set forth by Fay Vincent in 1991 you would never have had to listen to Jose Canseco light up you and your league by divulging the names of many, many of your players. But then again, there would have been no Mark McGwire chasing the home run record, no Lenny "Nails" Dykstra, no Brady Anderson or Ken Caminiti. BALCO would not have produced Jason Giambi, or T.J. Quinn and Michael O'Keefe, or Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Howard Bryant or Jeff Pearlman books.
And there would have been no Barry Bonds as we now know him.
But of course, everyone knows this. That Vincent set policy is public knowledge, yet nearly everyone brushes this policy-setting mandate aside like it was nothing more than an internal memo suggesting policy be set. Selig's 1997 re-release of Vincent's mandate - plus the fact that Selig demanded the mandate be posted in all MLB clubhouses - is illustrative of it as a reality for every MLB player, and every writer in and around the game of baseball. So if you were a baseball writer and you weren't sure of the validity of Vincent's mandate, you knew Selig was on the road to meaning business in 1997.
There is a saying that may be applied to this collective turning away from the truth to allow a lie to continue unabated: in business as well as politics, there are no accidents.
Consider this statement by Jose Canseco:
"If Major League Baseball wanted in the past to completely just sever steroids from Major League Baseball, they would have done it. Obviously, there was so much money to be made.
"And I truly believe that players' agents are involved -- definitely trainers, coaches, general managers, up to owners. They all know and they knew exactly what was going on."
Canseco should have added the federal government to his list of enablers.
Operation Equine was a steroids investigation in the early 1990s that resulted in some 70 convictions. BALCO, on the other hand, has resulted in five indictments. Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco were just two of the athletes mentioned prominently by people deemed as reliable informants in the Equine investigation. Why were they not pursued, set up, arrested, and convicted like the common criminals they were?
"In hindsight, we could have gotten the big names - (Michigan State lineman) Tony Mandarich, Canseco - the problem is, where do you draw the line?" says Bill Randall, who was the FBI undercover agent during Operation Equine. "You have to remember, there was no benchmark, nothing for us to model the investigation on. We wanted to get to the root of the problem, that's all we were after. We could have hammered Canseco, but again, that wasn't the thrust. And if we had started going after Major League Baseball players, we'd never get up to these big-time dealers."
Randall's statement, though superficially admirable, has been proven not to be the "normal" method the government uses to pursue large-scale cases. Our nearly 40-year "drug war" and the overwhelming portion of the prison population that can be attributed to it is ample evidence of the manner in which the government attacks its illicit drug problem. In other words, the "little guys" - the users, street dealers, and middlemen - are those most scooped up and imprisoned, while the cartel heads walk freely, ensuring that tens of thousands of tons of illicit drugs are bought and sold in the United States each year.
What Randall is really saying is that there was no side benefit for the federal government at that time to pursue the athletes involved in steroids. In fact, arresting names like McGwire and Canseco, and NFL offensive lineman Tony Mandarich would have drawn the ire of a nation that, at the time, had little want for government interference in peoples' lives. The best way for Operation Equine to unfold was for the feds to do their jobs as quietly as possible, end the operation, and hope it melted away into the nation's collective memory hole.
Now, it is a shadow beacon for what we see today. Equine is either what BALCO should have been - the arrest of Victor Conte and his chemists only - or an example of yet another botched, incomplete, and ultimately unsuccessful government investigation.
Today, amidst a war gone awry, an economy teetering precariously on the verge of complete collapse, an education system that fails its children, and parents realizing they are working three times harder than their parents for ever-fewer benefits, our government needs every distraction it can muster. Rafael Palmiero's beautifully slick, uber-caucasian appearance and finger-pointing perjury rendered only Congressional head shaking, empty threat of federal charges - but, but we can't prove he was dirty when he was dirty, after all - some, "he's just a singles hitter" huff and puff by the press, and a talking to by Selig. And the false specter-scare of steroids and PEDs and Bonds is grand theater. We are sucked in like the puppet-audience in an original Mesmer show, simultaneously hypnotized and never sated, always yearning for the whip to crack again, again.
And that is the reason for an offseason of discomfort with NFL players, starring Ricky Williams, Adam "Pacman" Jones, Terry "Tank" Johnson, and the Cincinnati Bengals; followed by the morbid fascination of what will come first, Bonds breaking Aaron's record or an indictment; followed by a baseball season and postseason of PED folly; followed by ------- The Indictment.
And though this is not at all meant to be a political statement, it is foolish to omit the fact that the politics of the government's political machine are inextricably tied to the phenomenon that is Barry Bonds and the case built to kill him.
With all of this in play, the strategy is coalescing hundreds of people in disparate locales with different places of employment and different jobs, making them move in a single direction for a single purpose against a single man. It all seems so haphazard and accidental; and in a way, it is.
Yet, in another very real way, the treatment of Barry Bonds features an extreme focus so intense that it is purposeful - even if this is just a synchronistic expression of something collectively inside us seeking to scream to the heavens to hear. But if you take it all apart and examine each aspect of this - this "thing" on its own - and then piece it back together carefully, you will see the fallacy of it all.
And for those who will watch the Bonds proceedings, looking, hoping for some sense of satisfaction you will never attain, these lines are for you:
Acting stupid is contagious,
Here we are now,
Entertain us.
BY D.K. Wilson
There is something inherently wrong with the federal government and its four-year investigation and now prosecution of Barry Bonds. Something is wrong about spending millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer money - and there is no law mandating that we even pay taxes - to chase evidence to prove that Bonds lied to a grand jury. There is something wrong with a society in which individuals within that society would, en masse, express a hatred toward a man they no nothing about rather than demand that the monies they have been illegally taxed be returned to them. The mass - the ruling mob - seems to be saying that they will pay money to watch the government chase down Barry Bonds, find enough evidence to get him into a court room, and then put him on trial. Perhaps they think it's somehow the "cool" thing to do to pay for this sadistic act of watching another man's misery; again, a man none of the mob knows.
Jeff Idelson of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum spoke for the mob when he agreed to take Barry Bonds' #756 home run baseball. He agreed to accept an artifact that no proper curator would accept: "Sir, would you accept the Mona Lisa? It has on her cheek the Ralph Lauren polo pony and rider trademark image, but that is representative of the sentiment of the people who have viewed other paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci." A museum curator might be angry enough to have the perpetrator bodily removed.
But not Idelson. He said:
"Our preference was to have the ball donated unscathed. In this instance, we were looking past that because of its historical significance. It's an important piece of baseball in American culture."
"American culture," as Idelson says, is in this case either the corporate America of which the Bonds baseball owner - Marc Ecko - is a part; or the mob - which Ecko is also a part of (he dabbles in "the jungle" that is black urban America) - that pays good money in the way of taxes to have its pseudo-sadomasochistic fetishes fulfilled.
The part of the mob that is the press corps - most of this mob is male - is so happy Bonds had an indictment dropped on his head that they can barely contain their glee. In every corner of the country someone has written or is writing a story about how happy they are at the prospect that the Black Scourge that is Barry Bonds by any other name, might be headed to a federal prison.
I have heard enough about Bonds from journalists who have covered him to understand that he is the most complex athlete in the history of sports - not just baseball, all of sports. This is a man with a yet-to-be-unearthed past beyond that which we think we know. Sure, we know he is the son of deceased former big leaguer, Bobby Bonds; and Bonds, the elder, was said to have more talent than Willie Mays. But Bobby Bonds was, like his son, a complex man. He felt the racism around him like an empath - and it helped kill him. He played hurt but rarely let it be known just how hurt he was. He turned to alcohol and was said to be a mean drunk; you can be sure that teammates and baseball writers alike have private horror stories about this side of Bonds.
And then there was Bobby Bonds, father of a wunderkind named Barry. As a father, surely Bobby saw the talent of his son long before anyone else, but knew the talent was there and was more abundant than his own ample native abilities. Barry was forever around the clubhouse watching his dad, taking in the pain of the injuries - both physical and psychic. Since alcohol was his father's painkiller, you can be sure Barry witnessed the worst from this man he loved like nothing else. We will probably never know the degree of closeness to Bobby's alcohol-induced anger Barry endured - but it had to be, even if only once, too close for a child, any child.
At the same time Barry Bonds was privy to his father's private hell, he was privy to the inner sanctum that was and is the baseball clubhouse. Just think of the word; it is not a room where lockers for possessions are stored and where clothing is changed. Barry Bonds grew up in the place where only members were allowed. It was and is not a room, but a domicile away from the traditional domicile. It is a place where, for well over a century, men have banded together and shared the secret of their love for what they do. The word is only used in two other contexts - outside of the three major sports - and that is the country club, and a place where little boys go when they want to be far from everyone but each other.
Clubhouse. The sanctuary, the inner chamber, the ------------------ home.
It cannot be only the abstract of anger that drives Barry Bonds today to want, nearing 45 years of age, to continue to play. The clubhouse, perhaps more so than for any other baseball player in the history of the game - even Billy and Cal Ripken, even Ken Griffey, Jr. - is the only place he knows. More importantly, the clubhouse is the only place that knows him. There in the clubhouse, Barry Bonds is untouchable. Even when surrounded by the press, that part of the mob so eager to impugn him, he holds court. If he deems it, you will not get near him. If he deems it, you can be graced by his smile. If he deems it, he will regale you with introspective nuggets, or shame you to the point where you question why you do what you do.
The clubhouse is Bonds' familiar, and leaving it opens him to the world that killed his father, the world that never allowed him to endorse products for the mob, or celebrate his entrance at an awards show, or allowed him to be a gentleman for even a quarter.
And away from the clubhouse is exactly the place the mob wants Bonds. John Feinstein of the Washington Post will tell you:
When a federal grand jury indicted Barry Bonds, baseball's all-time home run leader, on Thursday on charges that he lied to a federal grand jury about his use of performance-enhancing steroids, there were cries across the land from baseball people that this was a dark day for the game.
In fact, it was a day of emancipation for all those who love baseball. Bonds has held the sport hostage for years. This summer he broke Henry Aaron's record of 755 career home runs, all the while belligerently denying charges that he is one of baseball's many steroid users.
Feinstein knows there are those who read his mob words who do not believe in his rule, so he resorts to what so many of the mob do, tell the lie - or half-truth - repeated to the point it is held by the mob to be true:
There's proof now and more coming. Sure, an indictment isn't a conviction, but those still in the "no one has proved Bonds guilty yet" camp might check the record of federal prosecutors when they bring indictments: 95 percent of those indicted are convicted.
The reality of the conviction rate, though, is much different than the mob-told story:
Currently federal prosecutors tout above a 95% conviction rate. This is primarily due to the fact that most cases never make it to trial. Most defendants end up taking a plea bargain rather then risk a potentially much greater prison sentence which could be dealt them if they actual went to trial and lost. Another factor is the empowerment and impunity given to both investigating authorities and prosecutors, along with an interesting trial maneuver called "Jury Instructions". Jury instructions are basically parameters that the judge provides the jury which can greatly affect the outcome of a verdict. [Emphasis mine]
Lets say you where being charged with a federal crime which could send you to prison for 10 years if you lost at trial, and you are being offered a 3 year prison sentence if you accept a plea bargain. If you believed you we're innocent would you still take your case to trial knowing that if by chance you lose, you may have to serve a 10 year prison sentence? Currently within the Federal prison system, you will serve at least 85% of that time.
Even within those parameters, the 95% conviction rate is suspect:
A few years ago I noticed in the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics that federal defendants who stand trial are much more likely to be acquitted in a bench trial than by a jury. This seemed odd to me - I had always assumed the opposite was true. So I studied government records for federal trials between 1989 and 2002 and found a number of surprising things.
First, I found that the gap between bench acquittal rates and jury acquittal rates was quite large: over the 14 years I studied, the average conviction rate in jury cases was 84%, while judges convicted slightly more than 50% of the time. Second (using other data), I found that this gap was a recent phenomenon. Between the early 1960s and late 1980s, the conviction rates for judge and jury was roughly the same; the 20 years before that, judges actually convicted much more often than juries. [Emphasis mine]
Feinstein, who is allegedly one of the very best in his business, proves anything will be said to separate Bonds from his house.
This type of obfuscation - or laziness if he failed to fact-check at all - should be beneath a noted author such as Feinstein, or the copy editors of the Washington Post. Sadly, it is not. And Howard Bryant, who just happens to be another one-time Washington Post writer, you are wrong. This is about Barry Bonds and Barry Bonds, only. Then there's Jeff Pearlman of ESPN.com puling about how he's a baseball purist and how he has to use Barry Bonds as this shining example of a cheater to his young daughter. And there's Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
A marvelously gifted talent who has tarnished his career by showing contempt for teammates, media, the game's integrity and the truth now stands formally accused.
Thursday's federal indictment will cause Bonds' supporters to trot out well-worn excuses, mail-order legal degrees and a race-based defense of a man who has never embraced anything other than himself…
Where are the critics who derided the meticulous investigative book "Game of Shadows" as nothing more than a money grab by two San Francisco reporters, themselves once prosecuted for protecting their outstanding sources?
The much-anticipated and much-dreaded Mitchell Report is expected to come out within the next month, and every franchise trembles at what it might present. Bonds' apologists hoped Sen. George Mitchell's report would come out before any additional revelations surfaced against their hero. In that climate, Bonds would only seem the biggest drop within an ocean of cheats. Not now. Whatever follows serves as mere breakers. Bonds is the tsunami.
BB is subject to far worse than MLB's wrist slap for first-time offenders. He stands to do serious time like his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who was released Thursday after twice being incarcerated for remaining silent about his former client's training habits.
The investigation already has ensnared New York Yankees slugger Jason Giambi. Giambi had enough common sense not to lie. He took a public flogging, admitted his mistake, was called before the Mitchell committee and has partially rehabilitated his reputation.
All of you - shut up. Feinstein and your half-truths - shut up. Bryant, who wrote a miserably ill-informed, biased treatment of steroids - shut up. Pearlman, who wrote a mean piece of tripe of a book about Bonds, who injects other side of the coin, liberal whining in his work - shut up.
Joe Strauss - Barry Lamar Bonds might be a self-centered asshole who doesn't give a damn about you, me, or anything other than the clubhouse, but don't use how you despise Bonds to say that race is not involved in this case; race is involved in everything in this white, male dominated society. Everything. And Strauss, no one accused Fainaru-Wada and Williams of a money grab. Everyone in the business knows how hard it is to hit the motherload from writing a book.
Theirs was a glory grab. The attempt to forever set the language of how Barry Bonds is discussed is ultimately much more valuable than hoping to generate millions from a book. Also Strauss, Greg Anderson was kept in prison because of the federal prosecution's lie that his testimony was invaluable to them. Now they openly say they had everything they needed a year ago, at least. So why was Anderson imprisoned, again? Oh, that's right, liars are lauded - when they are the government. Finally, Giambi admitted to steroid use to the grand jury (I hope), but has never, ever publicly uttered the word steroid with, "I used..." and has been ensnared in exactly nothing. So Joe, shut the hell up.
All of the above and many of their peers turn a blind eye to the fact that their entire careers have largely been built off the backs of black people - the athletes and anyone close to them. Can they comprehend that statement? It is they who act as enablers for the slave trade that is major professional sports - MLB, NFL, and NBA. These journalists who participate in the ruse protect the leagues and management at the expense of the players, protect the surly, mobbish fans at the expense of the players. They despise the fact that players are placed above them to the point where they are willing to sell their souls to the omniscient camera that is named ESPN just to be seen, just to put themselves in a position for celebrity.
See, all of them know that very little said on television is more than a soundbyte. They will rarely be allowed the time to make a profound statement on that medium, and so anything meaningful said acts as nothing more than a blip on the radar. But these writers still sell their journalistic souls to the cheapest prostitute in the land - television, the ever-for-sale whore. And those who purport to "investigate" a subject would put their mamas on trial if they thought it would bring them more notoriety.
Which one of you will stand apart from the mob? Which one of you would dare build on the nugget Mitch Albom dropped on the Sports Reporters and let it be known that the government could have brought this case to the fore a year ago but were loathe to lose the case and act as the agency who kept Barry Bonds from breaking Hank Aaron's home run record?
The answer is --------- none of you.
In this respect the Barry Bonds case crosses generations. Young mob members and old-time mobsters alike hate what Bonds stands for. Across age lines and races there is a, "let's get this guy who got us for so long," attitude that is so destructive, so mal that it borders on collusion. That all of you invested so much time in your hate for Bonds that you failed to examine the complex nature of the most riveting figure in the history of sports means you have effectively wiped history from the big book, Every Event in Our Existence. Your hate for Bonds stole any meaningful discussion of the man from the public forum.
And you will vilify him further when he turns his back forever.
To be sure, the producers of the shows that constitute the Greatest Whore on Earth that is television can surely be assigned blame in this hate game. The editors who secretly wish they had your writing talents, who enable your hate, are to blame in this hate game. And the corporate entities that run this country - Benito would only have to venture into Wal-Mart and then watch Fox News and ESPN (the Television Show) to know that this is the form of government he once dreamed for his Italy.
It is unconscionable for these people on whom the public relies to be so misinformed, so lazy, so biased as to allow the excuse for other baseball players that because they are returning from injury, or because they received growth hormone from a dentist, or because Major League Baseball had not yet banned growth hormone use that they can be pardoned and exempt from punishment.
It is equally unconscionable for Bud Selig to say, 'we'll call them into our offices' - and then release these players without even a slap on their wrists.
And excoriate Barry Bonds.
You see, Bud Selig holds a dirty secret: Steroids were banned from the game in 1991. Did you know that John Feinstein? How about you, Howard Bryant? Jeff Pearlman, Joe Strauss, did either of you know? Do any baseball writers know? Buster Olney? Peter Gammons? Any of you? You must know this:
In 1991, Faye Vincent, commissioner of baseball at the time, issued a policy that labeled steroids illegal when taken for the purpose of enhancing performance. However, no major league testing of steroids was established, so players continued to use and reap the benefits.
If not, you couldn't have talked with ESPN.com's Tom Farrey and found this out:
In truth, steroids have been banned in baseball since 1991 -- in a policy baseball officials made little effort to publicize. A source provided a copy of the seven-page document to ESPN The Magazine on the condition of anonymity. Titled "Baseball's Drug Policy and Prevention Program," the memo was sent to all major-league clubs on June 7 of that year by then-commissioner Fay Vincent. He spelled out components of the program, and ordered, "This prohibition applies to all illegal drugs and controlled substances, including steroids."
How about you, Bud Selig?
Selig exonerated all the recent names from the Signature Pharmacy scandal; you know, guys like Rick Ankiel, Jay Gibbons, Scott Schoeneweis, and Troy Glaus (no one asks Glaus to give up his World Series MVP award) because baseball now says it "formally" banned all performance-enhancing drugs on January 13, 2005. But there is this little tidbit from Farrey about Selig and PEDs:
On May 15, 1997, acting commissioner Bud Selig distributed a nearly identical version of the drug memo, again citing steroids and directing clubs to post the policy in clubhouses and distribute copies to players. Selig's memo also went largely ignored. "I don't remember anything being posted in the locker room on drugs, like we did with gambling," said Bob Gebhard, then the Rockies' GM. In fact, baseball's gambling policy is still prominently displayed, and it must be read annually to each player by a club employee.
Players then sign a statement affirming that they understand the rule. Does such awareness make a difference? Hard to know, but the last gambling scandal was Pete Rose in 1989. ESPN spoke to five GMs from 1997, three of whom (from the Royals, Dodgers and Rockies) couldn't recall that a steroids policy even existed -- not that it would have mattered. "I hate to say this, but it didn't do a whole lot of good to know the policy," says Herk Robinson, the Royals' GM during 1990-2000. "You weren't going [to] solve anything. You couldn't test. You couldn't walk up to a guy and say, 'What are you taking?'" That sense of futility, brought on by the union's refusal to allow drug testing, descended from Vincent, who concedes he made no effort to enforce the league's first drug rules. "We could have done a lot more lecturing, lobbying and educating," he says. "But I didn't know anything about steroids." He says steroids were included in the 1991 memo because of rumors involving one player, Jose Canseco.
The beautiful game is not the football of Europe, but the game of pass the blame. Fay Vincent did it and claimed ignorance of steroids. Vincent sounds like Donald Fehr held him and his game of baseball hostage. Fehr obviously held much of the press mob hostage, because criticisms of Vincent were few, as were the criticisms of Fehr, or the players who were widely rumored to be using steroids. Most people remember Canseco, but there wasn't a Bash Brother, there were Bash Brothers. When their forearms met at home plate, Mark McGwire's forearms were as big as Jose's.
For his part, Bud Selig continues to play the pass the blame game, though he instructed teams to post the steroid policy mandate in every clubhouse.
That's your policy, Bud. Yours.
However, if you followed the mandate set forth by Fay Vincent in 1991 you would never have had to listen to Jose Canseco light up you and your league by divulging the names of many, many of your players. But then again, there would have been no Mark McGwire chasing the home run record, no Lenny "Nails" Dykstra, no Brady Anderson or Ken Caminiti. BALCO would not have produced Jason Giambi, or T.J. Quinn and Michael O'Keefe, or Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Howard Bryant or Jeff Pearlman books.
And there would have been no Barry Bonds as we now know him.
But of course, everyone knows this. That Vincent set policy is public knowledge, yet nearly everyone brushes this policy-setting mandate aside like it was nothing more than an internal memo suggesting policy be set. Selig's 1997 re-release of Vincent's mandate - plus the fact that Selig demanded the mandate be posted in all MLB clubhouses - is illustrative of it as a reality for every MLB player, and every writer in and around the game of baseball. So if you were a baseball writer and you weren't sure of the validity of Vincent's mandate, you knew Selig was on the road to meaning business in 1997.
There is a saying that may be applied to this collective turning away from the truth to allow a lie to continue unabated: in business as well as politics, there are no accidents.
Consider this statement by Jose Canseco:
"If Major League Baseball wanted in the past to completely just sever steroids from Major League Baseball, they would have done it. Obviously, there was so much money to be made.
"And I truly believe that players' agents are involved -- definitely trainers, coaches, general managers, up to owners. They all know and they knew exactly what was going on."
Canseco should have added the federal government to his list of enablers.
Operation Equine was a steroids investigation in the early 1990s that resulted in some 70 convictions. BALCO, on the other hand, has resulted in five indictments. Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco were just two of the athletes mentioned prominently by people deemed as reliable informants in the Equine investigation. Why were they not pursued, set up, arrested, and convicted like the common criminals they were?
"In hindsight, we could have gotten the big names - (Michigan State lineman) Tony Mandarich, Canseco - the problem is, where do you draw the line?" says Bill Randall, who was the FBI undercover agent during Operation Equine. "You have to remember, there was no benchmark, nothing for us to model the investigation on. We wanted to get to the root of the problem, that's all we were after. We could have hammered Canseco, but again, that wasn't the thrust. And if we had started going after Major League Baseball players, we'd never get up to these big-time dealers."
Randall's statement, though superficially admirable, has been proven not to be the "normal" method the government uses to pursue large-scale cases. Our nearly 40-year "drug war" and the overwhelming portion of the prison population that can be attributed to it is ample evidence of the manner in which the government attacks its illicit drug problem. In other words, the "little guys" - the users, street dealers, and middlemen - are those most scooped up and imprisoned, while the cartel heads walk freely, ensuring that tens of thousands of tons of illicit drugs are bought and sold in the United States each year.
What Randall is really saying is that there was no side benefit for the federal government at that time to pursue the athletes involved in steroids. In fact, arresting names like McGwire and Canseco, and NFL offensive lineman Tony Mandarich would have drawn the ire of a nation that, at the time, had little want for government interference in peoples' lives. The best way for Operation Equine to unfold was for the feds to do their jobs as quietly as possible, end the operation, and hope it melted away into the nation's collective memory hole.
Now, it is a shadow beacon for what we see today. Equine is either what BALCO should have been - the arrest of Victor Conte and his chemists only - or an example of yet another botched, incomplete, and ultimately unsuccessful government investigation.
Today, amidst a war gone awry, an economy teetering precariously on the verge of complete collapse, an education system that fails its children, and parents realizing they are working three times harder than their parents for ever-fewer benefits, our government needs every distraction it can muster. Rafael Palmiero's beautifully slick, uber-caucasian appearance and finger-pointing perjury rendered only Congressional head shaking, empty threat of federal charges - but, but we can't prove he was dirty when he was dirty, after all - some, "he's just a singles hitter" huff and puff by the press, and a talking to by Selig. And the false specter-scare of steroids and PEDs and Bonds is grand theater. We are sucked in like the puppet-audience in an original Mesmer show, simultaneously hypnotized and never sated, always yearning for the whip to crack again, again.
And that is the reason for an offseason of discomfort with NFL players, starring Ricky Williams, Adam "Pacman" Jones, Terry "Tank" Johnson, and the Cincinnati Bengals; followed by the morbid fascination of what will come first, Bonds breaking Aaron's record or an indictment; followed by a baseball season and postseason of PED folly; followed by ------- The Indictment.
And though this is not at all meant to be a political statement, it is foolish to omit the fact that the politics of the government's political machine are inextricably tied to the phenomenon that is Barry Bonds and the case built to kill him.
With all of this in play, the strategy is coalescing hundreds of people in disparate locales with different places of employment and different jobs, making them move in a single direction for a single purpose against a single man. It all seems so haphazard and accidental; and in a way, it is.
Yet, in another very real way, the treatment of Barry Bonds features an extreme focus so intense that it is purposeful - even if this is just a synchronistic expression of something collectively inside us seeking to scream to the heavens to hear. But if you take it all apart and examine each aspect of this - this "thing" on its own - and then piece it back together carefully, you will see the fallacy of it all.
And for those who will watch the Bonds proceedings, looking, hoping for some sense of satisfaction you will never attain, these lines are for you:
Acting stupid is contagious,
Here we are now,
Entertain us.
posted by steph at
10:15:00 PM
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Henri Nouwen - "The Spirituality of Fundraising"
Unedited transcription from a talk given by Henri Nouwen to the Marguerite Bourgeoys Family Service Foundation
September 16, 1992
(Reprinted with the generous permission of L’Arche Canada Foundation)
SPIRITUALITY OF FUND RAISING
A CONVERSATION WITH HENRI NOUWEN
I must say at the outset that fund raising is a subject I seldom speak about. But I was invited to say a few words about it to the Directors and some of the Board members of L’Arche, and that is how I came to talk to you about it.
In a way the whole subject came up in our community because quite often, fund raising is something that happens as a response to a crisis – you don’t have enough money – you’re in trouble somewhere, and so you say, “We need some money, how are we going to get it, we have to start asking for it”. And suddenly you realize that you aren’t used to doing this, and you feel awkward about it, and you feel a little embarrassed about it. So you start thinking: “Gosh, how do you do that?” It’s interesting that most people I have spoken to about fund raising feel somewhat uneasy with the idea that they have to go out and ask for money.
By way of introduction, I want to say that fund raising, if you think about it from the perspective of the Gospel, is not a response to a crisis. Fund raising is first of all, a form of ministry. It is a way of announcing your vision, and inviting other people into your vision with the resources that are available to them.
-- FUND RAISING IS NOT A RESPONSE TO CRISIS. IT IS A FORM OF MINISTRY --
Fund raising is proclaiming what you believe in and proclaiming it in such a way that you offer the other person an opportunity to participate in your vision. So it is precisely the opposite of begging. It’s not saying, “Please we have a problem could you help us out because lately it’s been hard.” It is saying, “We have a vision that is so exciting that we are giving you the opportunity to participate in that vision with the resources that God has given you.
-- YOU WON’T BECOME POORER, YOU’LL BECOME RICHER BY GIVING --
And, further, since it is a ministry, it is always a call to conversion. That is, to say to people, “I invite you to a new way of relating to your resources. So that making your resources available to us is good for you”. If it is good only for us who receive; it is not fund raising in the spiritual sense of the word. Fund raising from the point of view of the gospel, is saying to people: “I will take your money only if it is good for your spiritual journey – if it s good for your health.” In other words, you won’t become poorer – but you will become richer by giving. Otherwise you are saying, , “I’m here, you’re there, and you’re giving some a little bit,” and then suddenly, you are begging again, and you are not standing up for your vision.
Certainly, fund raising, from a spiritual point of view, is a very concrete way to help the Kingdom come about. What is the Kingdom? It is the creation of a community of love in their world – and beyond this world – because wherever love is create, it is stronger than death. So when we build the Kingdom here on earth, it is a Kingdom that will reach out beyond our own chronological existence, and if you raise funds for the creation of a community of love, you are building the Kingdom. You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to do as Christians.
If you say that your work is to offer a holistic, ecological approach to the question of fertility, and personal health care – if that’s what you are about – then you are about the Kingdom. You are about creating a community of love. Because that’s what the holistic approach to fertility is; a holistic call to be fruitful as Jesus calls us to be fruitful. And this is something about which you are not supposed to be begging.
You don’t say, “Please we have a nice little project going here, and wouldn’t you like to help us out a bit”. No! You say, “Aren’t you glad that we, who give our time and our lives to a holistic, ecologic fertility and health care, invite you in and aren’t you delighted that you are allowed to make your resources available for this great work?” You see? You’re now longer begging. But this is not exactly what we’re talking about. I want you to sense – right here – that what we’re talking about involves a real turnabout, a real conversion.
And interestingly enough, in this sense, the people of the world are often wiser than the people of the Kingdom because the world – the people who do big business – know that you never get much money if you beg for it.
I once went to see a big fund raiser in Texas, and I remember walking into his office and seeing a beautiful mahogany desk, wonderful paintings hanging on the wall, and a magnificent marble sculpture. And I said, “How do you dare to ask for money in this office?” He replied, “this is precisely why I have such a good-looking office because people, seeing it, will say that I know how to work with money – how to make it grow. They don’t like to invest money in people who say, “I don’t have anything.” And if people do give them money, they are out begging again next week.
In any case, what this man was saying spiritually to me was, “I ask for money standing up, not bowing down, because I believe in what I am about. I believe that I have something important to offer.” And he invites people to be a part of this.
I want to speak, now, about three things:
1. Your security base.
2. People who are rich
3. Asking
First of all, I want to speak very concretely about you and me, who ask for money. And I want to talk about this because it is a very important question. What is your security base? That is the question: God or Mammon? That is what Jesus would say. What is your security base? Where do you find your security? So I’m going to start talking about you and me who ask for money. Not talking about how to get money. I’m just asking about your relationship to money.
I’m going to play a little game with you. I am going to ask you a lot of questions, you don’t have to answer any of them, but I ask you to think about them as I raise them. The general question is: What is the place of money in your life? You will never be able to ask for money if you don’t know what your own relationship to money is.
Do you know how much money your father earns, or has, at this moment? Do you talk to him about money? “Dad, how much money do you earn?” And, “How much do you have in the bank?” Does your mom or your dad talk to you about this? Did they talk to you about it when you were a child? Was it a subject of your table discussions at all, ever?
Do you talk with your own children about your money? Tell them how you earn it and how you use it?
If you have money, how do you spend it? Are you inclined to cling to it because of possible emergencies? You know: “Something might happen, and I better have it there in case somebody gets sick.”
Do you like to give your money to friends or institutions? You know: “Say I have a friend who is in need. He really needs a thousand, so let me give him a thousand.” Or do you say “I really have compassion for the children in Somalia, I’m really so terribly frustrated, that’s where I want to give a significant part of my money.” Where are you, in fact, giving it?
Are you concerned as to whether or not your gift is tax deductible? Or does that even occur to you?
How do you feel when people use the money that you gave them in ways different from those for which you had given it? How do you feel about that? You give a thousand dollars to somebody who asked you because you wanted to help the children and you find out that he used it for a trip to the Caribbean. Do you get angry? Once I had a seminary president who said to me, “If you never want to be fooled, you will never give money.”
How does having or not having money, affect your self-esteem? Your sense of value? Do you feel good when you have a lot – or do you think it doesn’t matter at all? Or do you say, “I’m getting very nervous because maybe I’m not as good as I think I am because I don’t really have any money.”
Do you ever use money to control people or events? “I am a power, and if I put this money there, this is going to happen; or if I put it there, then that is going to happen.” In other words, do you use your money to make things happen, as you want them to happen? Do you ever use money simply to give others the freedom to do what they want to do? I don’t care how you spend it, I just want you to have it.”
Instead of saying, “Do you have some money?” people say to me, “I know you have some money, I know you have different ways of spending; I want you to give me a thousand dollars. I’m going to ask a few more people, and so you have the first chance to give it to me . . . for this book.” The question here is not how you ask for money, but how do you feel when people ask you for money?
I’m asking all these questions simply to get you in touch with the question: Where is your security base? Is it in God or is it in money? It’s very interesting and it’s very important to realize that money is one of the greatest taboos around. Greater than sex, greater than religion. A lot of people say, “Don’t talk about religion, that’s my private business. Don’t talk about sex.” But talking about money is even harder.
Money is one of the greatest taboos. And you notice this immediately when you come to fund raise . . . you don’t feel that it is an easy thing, something about which you can be very “up front”.
And the reason for the taboo is that money obviously has something to do with that intimate little place in your heart where you need security, and you don’t want to give that away. As long as I have some money in the bank, nothing can really happen. War might come; somebody in my family might die. My father always said, “Henri, be sure you don’t become dependent on anybody. Be sure that you do not have to beg. Be sure you have enough money, in case something happens, so that you don’t end up in a nursing home where you don’t want to be, or in a convent, where you don’t want to be; be sure that you always have enough money yourself so you can have your own house and your own things, and have your own people to help you.
Jesus, however, says something very radical. He says that you cannot put your security in God and money. You have to make a choice. And all those questions I asked you were simply to ask yourself whether you are somewhere, perhaps; still putting your security in money because Jesus says put your security in God. You have to make a choice – where you want to belong, to the world or to God. Your trust, your basic trust, Jesus says, has to be in God. And as long as your trust is in money, you cannot be a true member of the Kingdom.
Now, the statement I want to make here is very simple. If you totally put your security in God, you can ask for as much money as your want. If your security is in God, then you are free to ask for money. When you are free from money, you can ask for it. The reason that we have such a hard time asking for money is precisely because it is a taboo subject. And it is a taboo subject because our own little securities are connected with it, and so we are not free. But if, on the other hand, I am absolutely sure that my whole trust is in God, and absolutely sure that I am concerned only for the Kingdom, then I will have no trouble at all in asking you for a million dollars. All you can say is “no,” and I can reply, “Fine, you missed your chance,” and I can go on about my business. Do you see the connection here? It’s very important, especially insofar as I address you as fund raisers – that you be free from money in terms of your security base. Now, let me tell you a little story.
I know a person, who is very very rich. And I say to him, “Hey do you have a lot of money?” What is going on when people make a remark like that? Or, “did you get something from that rich guy?” What is happening here? First of all, I think that it is sometimes just plain jealousy: “these rich people.” Or sometime it’s anger. How did they make all that money? “I’m not so sure that they made it in an honest way”.
When we make remarks such as these, we get in touch with our own unresolved relationship with money. When rich people make us jealous or angry, we simply show that we are not free, and therefore, in a strange way, not ready to ask.
I am profoundly concerned about this for me and for the people with whom I live – that we do not ask out of anger. “You are so filthy rich; you shouldn’t have all that money, and I’m going to get it from you.” Now, that is not giving the person the means to become a brother; he or she realized immediately, that there is some kind of competition going on and that you are not free. The offer is no longer for the Kingdom; it no longer speaks in the name of God in whom your security is based.
Now, I want to deal with a second subject, people who are rich – I’ve met a number of them since coming to l’Arche. We, in l’Arche are fond of saying that God has made a preferential option for the poor. God loves the poor, and so it is with our community; our community is really committed to the poor. But sometimes we also have a prejudice against the rich, that they are not as good as the poor. They have more money than they deserve. I wonder how they got it. I wish we were as lucky as they. We make little jokes, but these jokes sometimes reveal that we might not love the rich as much as the poor. And nobody says we should love the rich less. And the rich will know it right away. And my personal experience is more and more, that rich people are also very poor – in many other ways.
Many rich people are very lonely. Many rich people suffer a lot from feelings of rejection or of being used, or of depression. And they all need a lot of attention and a lot of care. Just like the poor. Because they are as poor as the poor. And I want you to hear this, because so often I have come in touch with people who are totally in the prison of thinking “The only thing people see in me is money. So wherever I go, I am the rich aunt or the rich friend or the rich person, and I have these houses and these horses and these properties, and so I stay in my little circle, because as soon as I get out of it, people are there and say, He’s rich!”
I once met a woman who had come to Daybreak; she was very wealthy, and she was very depressed and went from one psychiatrist to another, and paid them huge fees, and my feeling was a little bit that the psychiatrist was very reluctant to heal her. And she said, “You know, Henri, everybody is after my money. That’s how I was born, and that is how my family is.” She went on, “Wherever I go, I never feel that people love me for who I really am. And I am so afraid that I am loved only because of my money.
I relate another story that happened to me. It was just about six years ago; someone had read a lot of my books, and called my assistant at the university; I wasn’t there, I was a away for a few months; and he said, “I’m reading Henri Nouwen’s books and I wonder, does he need any money because I really want him to write more and it is expensive to write books these days.” So my assistant called me and said that we had this banker who wants to help you with money. I didn’t know what to do, so I said, “Well, go and have dinner with him.” So the two went out for dinner; I stayed away for about four months, but they continued to have dinner every week – talking about all sorts of things. Finally, I came back; the two had become good friends – even though my assistant was about 25 years old, and the banker was about 50. I was invited to join my assistant to meet this banker. The man would say, “Henri, I know you don’t know one thing about money”. I said, “How do you know?” He answered, “I know people like writers don’t know a thing about money.” So I said, “Well, maybe that’s true, if you want to help me with some money, that’s okay.” What was really going on, however, was “What you’re writing about, is something I want to speak about on a more personal level, and the only way I can get into your life is through my strength which is being a banker.” Ultimately, what this man was saying was; “I’m weak, and I really would like to get to know you.” I replied, “Let’s not talk about money right now, and let’s just talk about you.”
Over time, we became close friends, and we entered into a relationship, which was very, very radical – in the spiritual sense. He gave me a little money – a few thousand dollars – this happened year after year. I needed it, but I never had to ask for it. He simply gave it to me; I used it well and told him what I had done with it. But interestingly enough, if was not a relationship of begging; it was more a sharing of who he was.
When he died, his family said to me, “We as a family would like to continue supporting you because of the love that you had for my husband and my father. We find it so normal that you always feel that there are people who will support you because we love you, as our father loved you”.
I’m telling you this because it shows so well that it was only through the poverty of the rich man that something very much of the Kingdom developed. And the money became real – it was there – but it wasn’t I felt really impressed by it; we both had resources, I had spiritual and they material. What was impressive was that, together, we both wanted to work for the Kingdom, to let something happen that was greater than us. You must minister to the rich from your place of wealth – spiritual wealth – you must have the courage to go to them and say, “I love you, and it is not because of your money, but because of who you are.” Go to this person, not in anger – because you are just as poor and in need of love as I am; can I discover the poor in that person? Because that’s where the person’s blessing is. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor.” The rich are also very, very poor, because they have money; nobody reaches out to that place in them. If you ask money from people who have money, you have to love them deeply and when you ask for the money, don’t worry about the money, worry as to whether that person has become closer to God.
Third point, this one is about asking. Once you have placed your security base in God, and once you have learned to love the rich, and once you believe that you have something of great value to give, then you can ask whatever you want and you will get it. That’s what the Gospel says: “Ask, and it will be given to you; knock and the door will be opened”. Let me recall what I said earlier; asking people for money is giving them the opportunity of putting their resources at the disposal of the Kingdom, it is giving other people the chance of offering their resources for the work of God. Secondly, asking people for money is inviting them into a new communion. This is very important; asking for money is inviting people into your vision” We want you to get to know us. We want you to enter into communion with us.” What you must always offer is communion, friendship and community.
If it is true that this world is full of lonely people, isolated people, then fund raising has to be community building. People have such a need for friendship and for community, and you have to believe that you have that to offer. Community is one of the greatest gifts we have to offer. Loneliness, isolation and separation are everywhere and if you ask for money, it means that you offer a new fellowship, a new brotherhood, a new sisterhood, a new way of belonging.
The money is the least interesting thing. I know people in our community who live just from the friendship with our community; they come and visit, and it is there that they find nurture and support. If these people have money, they will give it, but that is not the point. Every time these people are asked for money, you must be sure that they are invited to something; invited into this ideal that you have of health care and fruitfulness. And asking doesn’t just mean inviting them to get to know some people, but to get to know a vision. You want them to see what God means when he says, “be fruitful.” We want you to have an idea about the fruitfulness in the whole rich vision, which is much more important than successfulness or productivity. You’ve got to have a spirituality of fruitfulness that affects not only childbearing, but also life itself. We invite people into this vision, and we have a meeting, and we reflect upon our vision, and invite you to tell use what you think about. We have a vision and we think about it and write about it, and it is good to have your aboard. We are not hiding it; this is open to you.
And thirdly, asking has to be good for you, for the one who gives, and for the Kingdom.
If you come back from asking and you feel awful, there is something wrong. You have to love fund raising as a form of ministry. So you have to do it, and don’t be tricked into thinking that fund raising is a sort of secular thing. Fund raising is as spiritual as giving a sermon – if you believe in the Kingdom. So it has to be good for you, for your conversion too, because you have to get in touch with your own hang-ups about money, you have to get in touch with who you are, and suddenly you say, “I’m afraid to ask for money, I’m afraid to say to this man, give us a thousand dollars.” What are you so afraid of? Is he going to kill you? “No, I’m just afraid.” Well, are you willing to be converted so that you are no longer afraid? Are you willing to find a little piece of freedom in yourself?
-- In fund raising we discover that we are all poor and we are all rich --
Fund raising has to be good for you. And sometimes, when you ask, people may say, “Never! You’ll get nothing from me.” What do you do in this situation, get depressed? Jesus says, “You walk into the house and offer peace, if people don’t want it, shake the sand off your shoes and walk on.” Don’t get depressed when someone says, “I’m not going to get involved in your project.”
Asking has to be good for the person from whom you ask money. The person or group from whom you ask money has to feel that they are invited into something new.
And finally, it must be good for the Kingdom. You must be very conscious of our call. The call that you have in your life, and in God’s eye, must be deepened and strengthened in your fund raising. So you must listen to it.
There are quite a few fund raisers who have said to me, “Henri, if we give you money, we want you to be more faithful to your priestly vocation, so that you don’t spend your time running around doing these other things.” You see? I need to be ministered to as well. People say to me, “I will give you money if you stop being so busy; you run around and talk your head off, but you don’t write enough. Our kids need books about marriage and the other sacraments. I’ll give you the money if you take up the challenge to be a better priest, to be more faithful to your vocation, and be more involved in it. And I know that this is difficult for you – to shut the door and sit behind your desk and not speak to anyone.
Fund raising must always create new, lasting relationships. It must keep it’s focus on ministry; we have something to offer – home, friendship, prayer, peace, love, fidelity and affection – and these things are so valuable that people are willing to make their resources available for them.
Fund raising then is a very rich and beautiful activity. It is an integral part of our ministry. In fund raising we discover that we are all poor and that we are all rich, and in ministering to each other – each from the riches that he or she possesses – we work together to build the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of the poor.
“How happy are the poor in spirit; theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.
September 16, 1992
(Reprinted with the generous permission of L’Arche Canada Foundation)
SPIRITUALITY OF FUND RAISING
A CONVERSATION WITH HENRI NOUWEN
I must say at the outset that fund raising is a subject I seldom speak about. But I was invited to say a few words about it to the Directors and some of the Board members of L’Arche, and that is how I came to talk to you about it.
In a way the whole subject came up in our community because quite often, fund raising is something that happens as a response to a crisis – you don’t have enough money – you’re in trouble somewhere, and so you say, “We need some money, how are we going to get it, we have to start asking for it”. And suddenly you realize that you aren’t used to doing this, and you feel awkward about it, and you feel a little embarrassed about it. So you start thinking: “Gosh, how do you do that?” It’s interesting that most people I have spoken to about fund raising feel somewhat uneasy with the idea that they have to go out and ask for money.
By way of introduction, I want to say that fund raising, if you think about it from the perspective of the Gospel, is not a response to a crisis. Fund raising is first of all, a form of ministry. It is a way of announcing your vision, and inviting other people into your vision with the resources that are available to them.
-- FUND RAISING IS NOT A RESPONSE TO CRISIS. IT IS A FORM OF MINISTRY --
Fund raising is proclaiming what you believe in and proclaiming it in such a way that you offer the other person an opportunity to participate in your vision. So it is precisely the opposite of begging. It’s not saying, “Please we have a problem could you help us out because lately it’s been hard.” It is saying, “We have a vision that is so exciting that we are giving you the opportunity to participate in that vision with the resources that God has given you.
-- YOU WON’T BECOME POORER, YOU’LL BECOME RICHER BY GIVING --
And, further, since it is a ministry, it is always a call to conversion. That is, to say to people, “I invite you to a new way of relating to your resources. So that making your resources available to us is good for you”. If it is good only for us who receive; it is not fund raising in the spiritual sense of the word. Fund raising from the point of view of the gospel, is saying to people: “I will take your money only if it is good for your spiritual journey – if it s good for your health.” In other words, you won’t become poorer – but you will become richer by giving. Otherwise you are saying, , “I’m here, you’re there, and you’re giving some a little bit,” and then suddenly, you are begging again, and you are not standing up for your vision.
Certainly, fund raising, from a spiritual point of view, is a very concrete way to help the Kingdom come about. What is the Kingdom? It is the creation of a community of love in their world – and beyond this world – because wherever love is create, it is stronger than death. So when we build the Kingdom here on earth, it is a Kingdom that will reach out beyond our own chronological existence, and if you raise funds for the creation of a community of love, you are building the Kingdom. You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to do as Christians.
If you say that your work is to offer a holistic, ecological approach to the question of fertility, and personal health care – if that’s what you are about – then you are about the Kingdom. You are about creating a community of love. Because that’s what the holistic approach to fertility is; a holistic call to be fruitful as Jesus calls us to be fruitful. And this is something about which you are not supposed to be begging.
You don’t say, “Please we have a nice little project going here, and wouldn’t you like to help us out a bit”. No! You say, “Aren’t you glad that we, who give our time and our lives to a holistic, ecologic fertility and health care, invite you in and aren’t you delighted that you are allowed to make your resources available for this great work?” You see? You’re now longer begging. But this is not exactly what we’re talking about. I want you to sense – right here – that what we’re talking about involves a real turnabout, a real conversion.
And interestingly enough, in this sense, the people of the world are often wiser than the people of the Kingdom because the world – the people who do big business – know that you never get much money if you beg for it.
I once went to see a big fund raiser in Texas, and I remember walking into his office and seeing a beautiful mahogany desk, wonderful paintings hanging on the wall, and a magnificent marble sculpture. And I said, “How do you dare to ask for money in this office?” He replied, “this is precisely why I have such a good-looking office because people, seeing it, will say that I know how to work with money – how to make it grow. They don’t like to invest money in people who say, “I don’t have anything.” And if people do give them money, they are out begging again next week.
In any case, what this man was saying spiritually to me was, “I ask for money standing up, not bowing down, because I believe in what I am about. I believe that I have something important to offer.” And he invites people to be a part of this.
I want to speak, now, about three things:
1. Your security base.
2. People who are rich
3. Asking
First of all, I want to speak very concretely about you and me, who ask for money. And I want to talk about this because it is a very important question. What is your security base? That is the question: God or Mammon? That is what Jesus would say. What is your security base? Where do you find your security? So I’m going to start talking about you and me who ask for money. Not talking about how to get money. I’m just asking about your relationship to money.
I’m going to play a little game with you. I am going to ask you a lot of questions, you don’t have to answer any of them, but I ask you to think about them as I raise them. The general question is: What is the place of money in your life? You will never be able to ask for money if you don’t know what your own relationship to money is.
Do you know how much money your father earns, or has, at this moment? Do you talk to him about money? “Dad, how much money do you earn?” And, “How much do you have in the bank?” Does your mom or your dad talk to you about this? Did they talk to you about it when you were a child? Was it a subject of your table discussions at all, ever?
Do you talk with your own children about your money? Tell them how you earn it and how you use it?
If you have money, how do you spend it? Are you inclined to cling to it because of possible emergencies? You know: “Something might happen, and I better have it there in case somebody gets sick.”
Do you like to give your money to friends or institutions? You know: “Say I have a friend who is in need. He really needs a thousand, so let me give him a thousand.” Or do you say “I really have compassion for the children in Somalia, I’m really so terribly frustrated, that’s where I want to give a significant part of my money.” Where are you, in fact, giving it?
Are you concerned as to whether or not your gift is tax deductible? Or does that even occur to you?
How do you feel when people use the money that you gave them in ways different from those for which you had given it? How do you feel about that? You give a thousand dollars to somebody who asked you because you wanted to help the children and you find out that he used it for a trip to the Caribbean. Do you get angry? Once I had a seminary president who said to me, “If you never want to be fooled, you will never give money.”
How does having or not having money, affect your self-esteem? Your sense of value? Do you feel good when you have a lot – or do you think it doesn’t matter at all? Or do you say, “I’m getting very nervous because maybe I’m not as good as I think I am because I don’t really have any money.”
Do you ever use money to control people or events? “I am a power, and if I put this money there, this is going to happen; or if I put it there, then that is going to happen.” In other words, do you use your money to make things happen, as you want them to happen? Do you ever use money simply to give others the freedom to do what they want to do? I don’t care how you spend it, I just want you to have it.”
Instead of saying, “Do you have some money?” people say to me, “I know you have some money, I know you have different ways of spending; I want you to give me a thousand dollars. I’m going to ask a few more people, and so you have the first chance to give it to me . . . for this book.” The question here is not how you ask for money, but how do you feel when people ask you for money?
I’m asking all these questions simply to get you in touch with the question: Where is your security base? Is it in God or is it in money? It’s very interesting and it’s very important to realize that money is one of the greatest taboos around. Greater than sex, greater than religion. A lot of people say, “Don’t talk about religion, that’s my private business. Don’t talk about sex.” But talking about money is even harder.
Money is one of the greatest taboos. And you notice this immediately when you come to fund raise . . . you don’t feel that it is an easy thing, something about which you can be very “up front”.
And the reason for the taboo is that money obviously has something to do with that intimate little place in your heart where you need security, and you don’t want to give that away. As long as I have some money in the bank, nothing can really happen. War might come; somebody in my family might die. My father always said, “Henri, be sure you don’t become dependent on anybody. Be sure that you do not have to beg. Be sure you have enough money, in case something happens, so that you don’t end up in a nursing home where you don’t want to be, or in a convent, where you don’t want to be; be sure that you always have enough money yourself so you can have your own house and your own things, and have your own people to help you.
Jesus, however, says something very radical. He says that you cannot put your security in God and money. You have to make a choice. And all those questions I asked you were simply to ask yourself whether you are somewhere, perhaps; still putting your security in money because Jesus says put your security in God. You have to make a choice – where you want to belong, to the world or to God. Your trust, your basic trust, Jesus says, has to be in God. And as long as your trust is in money, you cannot be a true member of the Kingdom.
Now, the statement I want to make here is very simple. If you totally put your security in God, you can ask for as much money as your want. If your security is in God, then you are free to ask for money. When you are free from money, you can ask for it. The reason that we have such a hard time asking for money is precisely because it is a taboo subject. And it is a taboo subject because our own little securities are connected with it, and so we are not free. But if, on the other hand, I am absolutely sure that my whole trust is in God, and absolutely sure that I am concerned only for the Kingdom, then I will have no trouble at all in asking you for a million dollars. All you can say is “no,” and I can reply, “Fine, you missed your chance,” and I can go on about my business. Do you see the connection here? It’s very important, especially insofar as I address you as fund raisers – that you be free from money in terms of your security base. Now, let me tell you a little story.
I know a person, who is very very rich. And I say to him, “Hey do you have a lot of money?” What is going on when people make a remark like that? Or, “did you get something from that rich guy?” What is happening here? First of all, I think that it is sometimes just plain jealousy: “these rich people.” Or sometime it’s anger. How did they make all that money? “I’m not so sure that they made it in an honest way”.
When we make remarks such as these, we get in touch with our own unresolved relationship with money. When rich people make us jealous or angry, we simply show that we are not free, and therefore, in a strange way, not ready to ask.
I am profoundly concerned about this for me and for the people with whom I live – that we do not ask out of anger. “You are so filthy rich; you shouldn’t have all that money, and I’m going to get it from you.” Now, that is not giving the person the means to become a brother; he or she realized immediately, that there is some kind of competition going on and that you are not free. The offer is no longer for the Kingdom; it no longer speaks in the name of God in whom your security is based.
Now, I want to deal with a second subject, people who are rich – I’ve met a number of them since coming to l’Arche. We, in l’Arche are fond of saying that God has made a preferential option for the poor. God loves the poor, and so it is with our community; our community is really committed to the poor. But sometimes we also have a prejudice against the rich, that they are not as good as the poor. They have more money than they deserve. I wonder how they got it. I wish we were as lucky as they. We make little jokes, but these jokes sometimes reveal that we might not love the rich as much as the poor. And nobody says we should love the rich less. And the rich will know it right away. And my personal experience is more and more, that rich people are also very poor – in many other ways.
Many rich people are very lonely. Many rich people suffer a lot from feelings of rejection or of being used, or of depression. And they all need a lot of attention and a lot of care. Just like the poor. Because they are as poor as the poor. And I want you to hear this, because so often I have come in touch with people who are totally in the prison of thinking “The only thing people see in me is money. So wherever I go, I am the rich aunt or the rich friend or the rich person, and I have these houses and these horses and these properties, and so I stay in my little circle, because as soon as I get out of it, people are there and say, He’s rich!”
I once met a woman who had come to Daybreak; she was very wealthy, and she was very depressed and went from one psychiatrist to another, and paid them huge fees, and my feeling was a little bit that the psychiatrist was very reluctant to heal her. And she said, “You know, Henri, everybody is after my money. That’s how I was born, and that is how my family is.” She went on, “Wherever I go, I never feel that people love me for who I really am. And I am so afraid that I am loved only because of my money.
I relate another story that happened to me. It was just about six years ago; someone had read a lot of my books, and called my assistant at the university; I wasn’t there, I was a away for a few months; and he said, “I’m reading Henri Nouwen’s books and I wonder, does he need any money because I really want him to write more and it is expensive to write books these days.” So my assistant called me and said that we had this banker who wants to help you with money. I didn’t know what to do, so I said, “Well, go and have dinner with him.” So the two went out for dinner; I stayed away for about four months, but they continued to have dinner every week – talking about all sorts of things. Finally, I came back; the two had become good friends – even though my assistant was about 25 years old, and the banker was about 50. I was invited to join my assistant to meet this banker. The man would say, “Henri, I know you don’t know one thing about money”. I said, “How do you know?” He answered, “I know people like writers don’t know a thing about money.” So I said, “Well, maybe that’s true, if you want to help me with some money, that’s okay.” What was really going on, however, was “What you’re writing about, is something I want to speak about on a more personal level, and the only way I can get into your life is through my strength which is being a banker.” Ultimately, what this man was saying was; “I’m weak, and I really would like to get to know you.” I replied, “Let’s not talk about money right now, and let’s just talk about you.”
Over time, we became close friends, and we entered into a relationship, which was very, very radical – in the spiritual sense. He gave me a little money – a few thousand dollars – this happened year after year. I needed it, but I never had to ask for it. He simply gave it to me; I used it well and told him what I had done with it. But interestingly enough, if was not a relationship of begging; it was more a sharing of who he was.
When he died, his family said to me, “We as a family would like to continue supporting you because of the love that you had for my husband and my father. We find it so normal that you always feel that there are people who will support you because we love you, as our father loved you”.
I’m telling you this because it shows so well that it was only through the poverty of the rich man that something very much of the Kingdom developed. And the money became real – it was there – but it wasn’t I felt really impressed by it; we both had resources, I had spiritual and they material. What was impressive was that, together, we both wanted to work for the Kingdom, to let something happen that was greater than us. You must minister to the rich from your place of wealth – spiritual wealth – you must have the courage to go to them and say, “I love you, and it is not because of your money, but because of who you are.” Go to this person, not in anger – because you are just as poor and in need of love as I am; can I discover the poor in that person? Because that’s where the person’s blessing is. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor.” The rich are also very, very poor, because they have money; nobody reaches out to that place in them. If you ask money from people who have money, you have to love them deeply and when you ask for the money, don’t worry about the money, worry as to whether that person has become closer to God.
Third point, this one is about asking. Once you have placed your security base in God, and once you have learned to love the rich, and once you believe that you have something of great value to give, then you can ask whatever you want and you will get it. That’s what the Gospel says: “Ask, and it will be given to you; knock and the door will be opened”. Let me recall what I said earlier; asking people for money is giving them the opportunity of putting their resources at the disposal of the Kingdom, it is giving other people the chance of offering their resources for the work of God. Secondly, asking people for money is inviting them into a new communion. This is very important; asking for money is inviting people into your vision” We want you to get to know us. We want you to enter into communion with us.” What you must always offer is communion, friendship and community.
If it is true that this world is full of lonely people, isolated people, then fund raising has to be community building. People have such a need for friendship and for community, and you have to believe that you have that to offer. Community is one of the greatest gifts we have to offer. Loneliness, isolation and separation are everywhere and if you ask for money, it means that you offer a new fellowship, a new brotherhood, a new sisterhood, a new way of belonging.
The money is the least interesting thing. I know people in our community who live just from the friendship with our community; they come and visit, and it is there that they find nurture and support. If these people have money, they will give it, but that is not the point. Every time these people are asked for money, you must be sure that they are invited to something; invited into this ideal that you have of health care and fruitfulness. And asking doesn’t just mean inviting them to get to know some people, but to get to know a vision. You want them to see what God means when he says, “be fruitful.” We want you to have an idea about the fruitfulness in the whole rich vision, which is much more important than successfulness or productivity. You’ve got to have a spirituality of fruitfulness that affects not only childbearing, but also life itself. We invite people into this vision, and we have a meeting, and we reflect upon our vision, and invite you to tell use what you think about. We have a vision and we think about it and write about it, and it is good to have your aboard. We are not hiding it; this is open to you.
And thirdly, asking has to be good for you, for the one who gives, and for the Kingdom.
If you come back from asking and you feel awful, there is something wrong. You have to love fund raising as a form of ministry. So you have to do it, and don’t be tricked into thinking that fund raising is a sort of secular thing. Fund raising is as spiritual as giving a sermon – if you believe in the Kingdom. So it has to be good for you, for your conversion too, because you have to get in touch with your own hang-ups about money, you have to get in touch with who you are, and suddenly you say, “I’m afraid to ask for money, I’m afraid to say to this man, give us a thousand dollars.” What are you so afraid of? Is he going to kill you? “No, I’m just afraid.” Well, are you willing to be converted so that you are no longer afraid? Are you willing to find a little piece of freedom in yourself?
-- In fund raising we discover that we are all poor and we are all rich --
Fund raising has to be good for you. And sometimes, when you ask, people may say, “Never! You’ll get nothing from me.” What do you do in this situation, get depressed? Jesus says, “You walk into the house and offer peace, if people don’t want it, shake the sand off your shoes and walk on.” Don’t get depressed when someone says, “I’m not going to get involved in your project.”
Asking has to be good for the person from whom you ask money. The person or group from whom you ask money has to feel that they are invited into something new.
And finally, it must be good for the Kingdom. You must be very conscious of our call. The call that you have in your life, and in God’s eye, must be deepened and strengthened in your fund raising. So you must listen to it.
There are quite a few fund raisers who have said to me, “Henri, if we give you money, we want you to be more faithful to your priestly vocation, so that you don’t spend your time running around doing these other things.” You see? I need to be ministered to as well. People say to me, “I will give you money if you stop being so busy; you run around and talk your head off, but you don’t write enough. Our kids need books about marriage and the other sacraments. I’ll give you the money if you take up the challenge to be a better priest, to be more faithful to your vocation, and be more involved in it. And I know that this is difficult for you – to shut the door and sit behind your desk and not speak to anyone.
Fund raising must always create new, lasting relationships. It must keep it’s focus on ministry; we have something to offer – home, friendship, prayer, peace, love, fidelity and affection – and these things are so valuable that people are willing to make their resources available for them.
Fund raising then is a very rich and beautiful activity. It is an integral part of our ministry. In fund raising we discover that we are all poor and that we are all rich, and in ministering to each other – each from the riches that he or she possesses – we work together to build the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of the poor.
“How happy are the poor in spirit; theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.
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Theodore Dalrymple - "What The New Atheists Don't See"
What the New Atheists Don’t See
To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.
Theodore Dalrymple
Autumn 2007
The British parliament’s first avowedly atheist member, Charles Bradlaugh, would stride into public meetings in the 1880s, take out his pocket watch, and challenge God to strike him dead in 60 seconds. God bided his time, but got Bradlaugh in the end. A slightly later atheist, Bertrand Russell, was once asked what he would do if it proved that he was mistaken and if he met his maker in the hereafter. He would demand to know, Russell replied with all the high-pitched fervor of his pedantry, why God had not made the evidence of his existence plainer and more irrefutable. And Jean-Paul Sartre* came up with a memorable line: “God doesn’t exist—the bastard!”
Sartre’s wonderful outburst of disappointed rage suggests that it is not as easy as one might suppose to rid oneself of the notion of God. (Perhaps this is the time to declare that I am not myself a believer.) At the very least, Sartre’s line implies that God’s existence would solve some kind of problem—actually, a profound one: the transcendent purpose of human existence. Few of us, especially as we grow older, are entirely comfortable with the idea that life is full of sound and fury but signifies nothing. However much philosophers tell us that it is illogical to fear death, and that at worst it is only the process of dying that we should fear, people still fear death as much as ever. In like fashion, however many times philosophers say that it is up to us ourselves, and to no one else, to find the meaning of life, we continue to long for a transcendent purpose immanent in existence itself, independent of our own wills. To tell us that we should not feel this longing is a bit like telling someone in the first flush of love that the object of his affections is not worthy of them. The heart hath its reasons that reason knows not of.
Of course, men—that is to say, some men—have denied this truth ever since the Enlightenment, and have sought to find a way of life based entirely on reason. Far as I am from decrying reason, the attempt leads at best to Gradgrind and at worst to Stalin. Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man’s mental or moral economy.
The search for the pure guiding light of reason, uncontaminated by human passion or metaphysical principles that go beyond all possible evidence, continues, however; and recently, an epidemic rash of books has declared success, at least if success consists of having slain the inveterate enemy of reason, namely religion. The philosophers Daniel Dennett, A. C. Grayling, Michel Onfray, and Sam Harris, biologist Richard Dawkins, and journalist and critic Christopher Hitchens have all written books roundly condemning religion and its works. Evidently, there is a tide in the affairs, if not of men, at least of authors.
The curious thing about these books is that the authors often appear to think that they are saying something new and brave. They imagine themselves to be like the intrepid explorer Sir Richard Burton, who in 1853 disguised himself as a Muslim merchant, went to Mecca, and then wrote a book about his unprecedented feat. The public appears to agree, for the neo-atheist books have sold by the hundred thousand. Yet with the possible exception of Dennett’s, they advance no argument that I, the village atheist, could not have made by the age of 14 (Saint Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence gave me the greatest difficulty, but I had taken Hume to heart on the weakness of the argument from design).
I first doubted God’s existence at about the age of nine. It was at the school assembly that I lost my faith. We had been given to understand that if we opened our eyes during prayers God would depart the assembly hall. I wanted to test this hypothesis. Surely, if I opened my eyes suddenly, I would glimpse the fleeing God? What I saw instead, it turned out, was the headmaster, Mr. Clinton, intoning the prayer with one eye closed and the other open, with which he beadily surveyed the children below for transgressions. I quickly concluded that Mr. Clinton did not believe what he said about the need to keep our eyes shut. And if he did not believe that, why should I believe in his God? In such illogical leaps do our beliefs often originate, to be disciplined later in life (if we receive enough education) by elaborate rationalization.
Dennett’s Breaking the Spell is the least bad-tempered of the new atheist books, but it is deeply condescending to all religious people. Dennett argues that religion is explicable in evolutionary terms—for example, by our inborn human propensity, at one time valuable for our survival on the African savannahs, to attribute animate agency to threatening events.
For Dennett, to prove the biological origin of belief in God is to show its irrationality, to break its spell. But of course it is a necessary part of the argument that all possible human beliefs, including belief in evolution, must be explicable in precisely the same way; or else why single out religion for this treatment? Either we test ideas according to arguments in their favor, independent of their origins, thus making the argument from evolution irrelevant, or all possible beliefs come under the same suspicion of being only evolutionary adaptations—and thus biologically contingent rather than true or false. We find ourselves facing a version of the paradox of the Cretan liar: all beliefs, including this one, are the products of evolution, and all beliefs that are products of evolution cannot be known to be true.
One striking aspect of Dennett’s book is his failure to avoid the language of purpose, intention, and ontological moral evaluation, despite his fierce opposition to teleological views of existence: the coyote’s “methods of locomotion have been ruthlessly optimized for efficiency.” Or: “The stinginess of Nature can be seen everywhere we look.” Or again: “This is a good example of Mother Nature’s stinginess in the final accounting combined with absurd profligacy in the methods.” I could go on, but I hope the point is clear. (And Dennett is not alone in this difficulty: Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto, so rich in errors and inexactitudes that it would take a book as long as his to correct them, says on its second page that religion prevents mankind from facing up to “reality in all its naked cruelty.” But how can reality have any moral quality without having an immanent or transcendent purpose?)
No doubt Dennett would reply that he is writing in metaphors for the layman and that he could translate all his statements into a language without either moral evaluation or purpose included in it. Perhaps he would argue that his language is evidence that the spell still has a hold over even him, the breaker of the spell for the rest of humanity. But I am not sure that this response would be psychologically accurate. I think Dennett’s use of the language of evaluation and purpose is evidence of a deep-seated metaphysical belief (however caused) that Providence exists in the universe, a belief that few people, confronted by the mystery of beauty and of existence itself, escape entirely. At any rate, it ill behooves Dennett to condescend to those poor primitives who still have a religious or providential view of the world: a view that, at base, is no more refutable than Dennett’s metaphysical faith in evolution.
Dennett is not the only new atheist to employ religious language. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins quotes with approval a new set of Ten Commandments for atheists, which he obtained from an atheist website, without considering odd the idea that atheists require commandments at all, let alone precisely ten of them; nor does their metaphysical status seem to worry him. The last of the atheist’s Ten Commandments ends with the following: “Question everything.” Everything? Including the need to question everything, and so on ad infinitum?
Not to belabor the point, but if I questioned whether George Washington died in 1799, I could spend a lifetime trying to prove it and find myself still, at the end of my efforts, having to make a leap, or perhaps several leaps, of faith in order to believe the rather banal fact that I had set out to prove. Metaphysics is like nature: though you throw it out with a pitchfork, yet it always returns. What is confounded here is surely the abstract right to question everything with the actual exercise of that right on all possible occasions. Anyone who did exercise his right on all possible occasions would wind up a short-lived fool.
This sloppiness and lack of intellectual scruple, with the assumption of certainty where there is none, combined with adolescent shrillness and intolerance, reach an apogee in Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith. It is not easy to do justice to the book’s nastiness; it makes Dawkins’s claim that religious education constitutes child abuse look sane and moderate.
Harris tells us, for example, that “we must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. Given the present state of the world, there appears to be no other future worth wanting.” I am glad that I am old enough that I shall not see the future of reason as laid down by Harris; but I am puzzled by the status of the compulsion in the first sentence that I have quoted. Is Harris writing of a historical inevitability? Of a categorical imperative? Or is he merely making a legislative proposal? This is who-will-rid-me-of-this-troublesome-priest language, ambiguous no doubt, but not open to a generous interpretation.
It becomes even more sinister when considered in conjunction with the following sentences, quite possibly the most disgraceful that I have read in a book by a man posing as a rationalist: “The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live.”
Let us leave aside the metaphysical problems that these three sentences raise. For Harris, the most important question about genocide would seem to be: “Who is genociding whom?” To adapt Dostoyevsky slightly, starting from universal reason, I arrive at universal madness.
Lying not far beneath the surface of all the neo-atheist books is the kind of historiography that many of us adopted in our hormone-disturbed adolescence, furious at the discovery that our parents sometimes told lies and violated their own precepts and rules. It can be summed up in Christopher Hitchens’s drumbeat in God Is Not Great: “Religion spoils everything.”
What? The Saint Matthew Passion? The Cathedral of Chartres? The emblematic religious person in these books seems to be a Glasgow Airport bomber—a type unrepresentative of Muslims, let alone communicants of the poor old Church of England. It is surely not news, except to someone so ignorant that he probably wouldn’t be interested in these books in the first place, that religious conflict has often been murderous and that religious people have committed hideous atrocities. But so have secularists and atheists, and though they have had less time to prove their mettle in this area, they have proved it amply. If religious belief is not synonymous with good behavior, neither is absence of belief, to put it mildly.
In fact, one can write the history of anything as a chronicle of crime and folly. Science and technology spoil everything: without trains and IG Farben, no Auschwitz; without transistor radios and mass-produced machetes, no Rwandan genocide. First you decide what you hate, and then you gather evidence for its hatefulness. Since man is a fallen creature (I use the term metaphorically rather than in its religious sense), there is always much to find.
The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core. To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy. And in my own view, the absence of religious faith, provided that such faith is not murderously intolerant, can have a deleterious effect upon human character and personality. If you empty the world of purpose, make it one of brute fact alone, you empty it (for many people, at any rate) of reasons for gratitude, and a sense of gratitude is necessary for both happiness and decency. For what can soon, and all too easily, replace gratitude is a sense of entitlement. Without gratitude, it is hard to appreciate, or be satisfied with, what you have: and life will become an existential shopping spree that no product satisfies.
A few years back, the National Gallery held an exhibition of Spanish still-life paintings. One of these paintings had a physical effect on the people who sauntered in, stopping them in their tracks; some even gasped. I have never seen an image have such an impact on people. The painting, by Juan Sánchez Cotán, now hangs in the San Diego Museum of Art. It showed four fruits and vegetables, two suspended by string, forming a parabola in a gray stone window.
Even if you did not know that Sánchez Cotán was a seventeenth-century Spanish priest, you could know that the painter was religious: for this picture is a visual testimony of gratitude for the beauty of those things that sustain us. Once you have seen it, and concentrated your attention on it, you will never take the existence of the humble cabbage—or of anything else—quite so much for granted, but will see its beauty and be thankful for it. The painting is a permanent call to contemplation of the meaning of human life, and as such it arrested people who ordinarily were not, I suspect, much given to quiet contemplation.
The same holds true with the work of the great Dutch still-life painters. On the neo-atheist view, the religious connection between Catholic Spain and Protestant Holland is one of conflict, war, and massacre only: and certainly one cannot deny this history. And yet something more exists. As with Sánchez Cotán, only a deep reverence, an ability not to take existence for granted, could turn a representation of a herring on a pewter plate into an object of transcendent beauty, worthy of serious reflection.
I recently had occasion to compare the writings of the neo-atheists with those of Anglican divines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I was visiting some friends at their country house in England, which had a library of old volumes; since the family of the previous owners had a churchman in every generation, many of the books were religious. In my own neo-atheist days, I would have scorned these works as pertaining to a nonexistent entity and containing nothing of value. I would have considered the authors deluded men, who probably sought to delude others for reasons that Marx might have enumerated.
But looking, say, into the works of Joseph Hall, D.D., I found myself moved: much more moved, it goes without saying, than by any of the books of the new atheists. Hall was bishop of Exeter and then of Norwich; though a moderate Puritan, he took the Royalist side in the English civil war and lost his see, dying in 1656 while Cromwell was still Lord Protector.
Except by specialists, Hall remains almost entirely forgotten today. I opened one of the volumes at random, his Contemplations Upon the Principal Passages of the Holy Story. Here was the contemplation on the sickness of Hezekiah:
Hezekiah was freed from the siege of the Assyrians, but he is surprised with a disease. He, that delivered him from the hand of his enemies, smites him with sickness. God doth not let us loose from all afflictions, when he redeems us from one.
To think that Hezekiah was either not thankful enough for his deliverance, or too much lifted up with the glory of so miraculous a favour, were an injurious misconstruction of the hand of God, and an uncharitable censure of a holy prince; for, though no flesh and blood can avoid the just desert of bodily punishment, yet God doth not always strike with an intuition of sin: sometimes he regards the benefit of our trial; sometimes, the glory of his mercy in our cure.
Hall surely means us to infer that whatever happens to us, however unpleasant, has a meaning and purpose; and this enables us to bear our sorrows with greater dignity and less suffering. And it is part of the existential reality of human life that we shall always need consolation, no matter what progress we make. Hall continues:
When, as yet, he had not so much as the comfort of a child to succeed him, thy prophet is sent to him, with the heavy message of his death: “Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.” It is no small mercy of God, that he gives us warning of our end. . . . No soul can want important affairs, to be ordered for a final dissolution.
This is the language not of rights and entitlements, but of something much deeper—a universal respect for the condition of being human.
For Hall, life is instinct with meaning: a meaning capable of controlling man’s pride at his good fortune and consoling him for his ill fortune. Here is an extract from Hall’s Characters of Virtues and Vices:
He is an happy man, that hath learned to read himself, more than all books; and hath so taken out this lesson, that he can never forget it: that knows the world, and cares not for it; that, after many traverses of thoughts, is grown to know what he may trust to; and stands now equally armed for all events: that hath got the mastery at home; so as he can cross his will without a mutiny, and so please it that he makes it not a wanton: that, in earthly things, wishes no more than nature; in spiritual, is ever graciously ambitious: that, for his condition, stands on his own feet, not needing to lean upon the great; and can so frame his thoughts to his estate, that when he hath least, he cannot want, because he is as free from desire, as superfluity: that hath seasonably broken the headstrong restiness of prosperity; and can now manage it, at pleasure: upon whom, all smaller crosses light as hailstones upon a roof; and, for the greater calamities, he can take them as tributes of life and tokens of love; and, if his ship be tossed, yet he is sure his anchor is fast. If all the world were his, he could be no other than he is; no whit gladder of himself, no whit higher in his carriage; because he knows, that contentment lies not in the things he hath, but in the mind that values them.
Though eloquent, this appeal to moderation as the key to happiness is not original; but such moderation comes more naturally to the man who believes in something not merely higher than himself, but higher than mankind. After all, the greatest enjoyment of the usages of this world, even to excess, might seem rational when the usages of this world are all that there is.
In his Occasional Meditations, Hall takes perfectly ordinary scenes—ordinary, of course, for his times—and derives meaning from them. Here is his meditation “Upon the Flies Gathering to a Galled Horse”:
How these flies swarm to the galled part of this poor beast; and there sit, feeding upon that worst piece of his flesh, not meddling with the other sound parts of his skin! Even thus do malicious tongues of detractors: if a man have any infirmity in his person or actions, that they will be sure to gather unto, and dwell upon; whereas, his commendable parts and well-deservings are passed by, without mention, without regard. It is an envious self-love and base cruelty, that causeth this ill disposition in men: in the mean time, this only they have gained; it must needs be a filthy creature, that feeds upon nothing but corruption.
Surely Hall is not suggesting (unlike Dennett in his unguarded moments) that the biological purpose of flies is to feed off injured horses, but rather that a sight in nature can be the occasion for us to reflect imaginatively on our morality. He is not raising a biological theory about flies, in contradistinction to the theory of evolution, but thinking morally about human existence. It is true that he would say that everything is part of God’s providence, but, again, this is no more (and no less) a metaphysical belief than the belief in natural selection as an all-explanatory principle.
Let us compare Hall’s meditation “Upon the Sight of a Harlot Carted” with Harris’s statement that some people ought perhaps to be killed for their beliefs:
With what noise, and tumult, and zeal of solemn justice, is this sin punished! The streets are not more full of beholders, than clamours. Every one strives to express his detestation of the fact, by some token of revenge: one casts mire, another water, another rotten eggs, upon the miserable offender. Neither, indeed, is she worthy of less: but, in the mean time, no man looks home to himself. It is no uncharity to say, that too many insult in this just punishment, who have deserved more. . . . Public sins have more shame; private may have more guilt. If the world cannot charge me of those, it is enough, that I can charge my soul of worse. Let others rejoice, in these public executions: let me pity the sins of others, and be humbled under the sense of my own.
Who sounds more charitable, more generous, more just, more profound, more honest, more humane: Sam Harris or Joseph Hall, D.D., late lord bishop of Exeter and of Norwich?
No doubt it helps that Hall lived at a time of sonorous prose, prose that merely because of its sonority resonates in our souls; prose of the kind that none of us, because of the time in which we live, could ever equal. But the style applies to the thought as well as the prose; and I prefer Hall’s charity to Harris’s intolerance.
Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
* This quotation is from Samuel Beckett, not Sartre. We regret the error.
To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.
Theodore Dalrymple
Autumn 2007
The British parliament’s first avowedly atheist member, Charles Bradlaugh, would stride into public meetings in the 1880s, take out his pocket watch, and challenge God to strike him dead in 60 seconds. God bided his time, but got Bradlaugh in the end. A slightly later atheist, Bertrand Russell, was once asked what he would do if it proved that he was mistaken and if he met his maker in the hereafter. He would demand to know, Russell replied with all the high-pitched fervor of his pedantry, why God had not made the evidence of his existence plainer and more irrefutable. And Jean-Paul Sartre* came up with a memorable line: “God doesn’t exist—the bastard!”
Sartre’s wonderful outburst of disappointed rage suggests that it is not as easy as one might suppose to rid oneself of the notion of God. (Perhaps this is the time to declare that I am not myself a believer.) At the very least, Sartre’s line implies that God’s existence would solve some kind of problem—actually, a profound one: the transcendent purpose of human existence. Few of us, especially as we grow older, are entirely comfortable with the idea that life is full of sound and fury but signifies nothing. However much philosophers tell us that it is illogical to fear death, and that at worst it is only the process of dying that we should fear, people still fear death as much as ever. In like fashion, however many times philosophers say that it is up to us ourselves, and to no one else, to find the meaning of life, we continue to long for a transcendent purpose immanent in existence itself, independent of our own wills. To tell us that we should not feel this longing is a bit like telling someone in the first flush of love that the object of his affections is not worthy of them. The heart hath its reasons that reason knows not of.
Of course, men—that is to say, some men—have denied this truth ever since the Enlightenment, and have sought to find a way of life based entirely on reason. Far as I am from decrying reason, the attempt leads at best to Gradgrind and at worst to Stalin. Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man’s mental or moral economy.
The search for the pure guiding light of reason, uncontaminated by human passion or metaphysical principles that go beyond all possible evidence, continues, however; and recently, an epidemic rash of books has declared success, at least if success consists of having slain the inveterate enemy of reason, namely religion. The philosophers Daniel Dennett, A. C. Grayling, Michel Onfray, and Sam Harris, biologist Richard Dawkins, and journalist and critic Christopher Hitchens have all written books roundly condemning religion and its works. Evidently, there is a tide in the affairs, if not of men, at least of authors.
The curious thing about these books is that the authors often appear to think that they are saying something new and brave. They imagine themselves to be like the intrepid explorer Sir Richard Burton, who in 1853 disguised himself as a Muslim merchant, went to Mecca, and then wrote a book about his unprecedented feat. The public appears to agree, for the neo-atheist books have sold by the hundred thousand. Yet with the possible exception of Dennett’s, they advance no argument that I, the village atheist, could not have made by the age of 14 (Saint Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence gave me the greatest difficulty, but I had taken Hume to heart on the weakness of the argument from design).
I first doubted God’s existence at about the age of nine. It was at the school assembly that I lost my faith. We had been given to understand that if we opened our eyes during prayers God would depart the assembly hall. I wanted to test this hypothesis. Surely, if I opened my eyes suddenly, I would glimpse the fleeing God? What I saw instead, it turned out, was the headmaster, Mr. Clinton, intoning the prayer with one eye closed and the other open, with which he beadily surveyed the children below for transgressions. I quickly concluded that Mr. Clinton did not believe what he said about the need to keep our eyes shut. And if he did not believe that, why should I believe in his God? In such illogical leaps do our beliefs often originate, to be disciplined later in life (if we receive enough education) by elaborate rationalization.
Dennett’s Breaking the Spell is the least bad-tempered of the new atheist books, but it is deeply condescending to all religious people. Dennett argues that religion is explicable in evolutionary terms—for example, by our inborn human propensity, at one time valuable for our survival on the African savannahs, to attribute animate agency to threatening events.
For Dennett, to prove the biological origin of belief in God is to show its irrationality, to break its spell. But of course it is a necessary part of the argument that all possible human beliefs, including belief in evolution, must be explicable in precisely the same way; or else why single out religion for this treatment? Either we test ideas according to arguments in their favor, independent of their origins, thus making the argument from evolution irrelevant, or all possible beliefs come under the same suspicion of being only evolutionary adaptations—and thus biologically contingent rather than true or false. We find ourselves facing a version of the paradox of the Cretan liar: all beliefs, including this one, are the products of evolution, and all beliefs that are products of evolution cannot be known to be true.
One striking aspect of Dennett’s book is his failure to avoid the language of purpose, intention, and ontological moral evaluation, despite his fierce opposition to teleological views of existence: the coyote’s “methods of locomotion have been ruthlessly optimized for efficiency.” Or: “The stinginess of Nature can be seen everywhere we look.” Or again: “This is a good example of Mother Nature’s stinginess in the final accounting combined with absurd profligacy in the methods.” I could go on, but I hope the point is clear. (And Dennett is not alone in this difficulty: Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto, so rich in errors and inexactitudes that it would take a book as long as his to correct them, says on its second page that religion prevents mankind from facing up to “reality in all its naked cruelty.” But how can reality have any moral quality without having an immanent or transcendent purpose?)
No doubt Dennett would reply that he is writing in metaphors for the layman and that he could translate all his statements into a language without either moral evaluation or purpose included in it. Perhaps he would argue that his language is evidence that the spell still has a hold over even him, the breaker of the spell for the rest of humanity. But I am not sure that this response would be psychologically accurate. I think Dennett’s use of the language of evaluation and purpose is evidence of a deep-seated metaphysical belief (however caused) that Providence exists in the universe, a belief that few people, confronted by the mystery of beauty and of existence itself, escape entirely. At any rate, it ill behooves Dennett to condescend to those poor primitives who still have a religious or providential view of the world: a view that, at base, is no more refutable than Dennett’s metaphysical faith in evolution.
Dennett is not the only new atheist to employ religious language. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins quotes with approval a new set of Ten Commandments for atheists, which he obtained from an atheist website, without considering odd the idea that atheists require commandments at all, let alone precisely ten of them; nor does their metaphysical status seem to worry him. The last of the atheist’s Ten Commandments ends with the following: “Question everything.” Everything? Including the need to question everything, and so on ad infinitum?
Not to belabor the point, but if I questioned whether George Washington died in 1799, I could spend a lifetime trying to prove it and find myself still, at the end of my efforts, having to make a leap, or perhaps several leaps, of faith in order to believe the rather banal fact that I had set out to prove. Metaphysics is like nature: though you throw it out with a pitchfork, yet it always returns. What is confounded here is surely the abstract right to question everything with the actual exercise of that right on all possible occasions. Anyone who did exercise his right on all possible occasions would wind up a short-lived fool.
This sloppiness and lack of intellectual scruple, with the assumption of certainty where there is none, combined with adolescent shrillness and intolerance, reach an apogee in Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith. It is not easy to do justice to the book’s nastiness; it makes Dawkins’s claim that religious education constitutes child abuse look sane and moderate.
Harris tells us, for example, that “we must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. Given the present state of the world, there appears to be no other future worth wanting.” I am glad that I am old enough that I shall not see the future of reason as laid down by Harris; but I am puzzled by the status of the compulsion in the first sentence that I have quoted. Is Harris writing of a historical inevitability? Of a categorical imperative? Or is he merely making a legislative proposal? This is who-will-rid-me-of-this-troublesome-priest language, ambiguous no doubt, but not open to a generous interpretation.
It becomes even more sinister when considered in conjunction with the following sentences, quite possibly the most disgraceful that I have read in a book by a man posing as a rationalist: “The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live.”
Let us leave aside the metaphysical problems that these three sentences raise. For Harris, the most important question about genocide would seem to be: “Who is genociding whom?” To adapt Dostoyevsky slightly, starting from universal reason, I arrive at universal madness.
Lying not far beneath the surface of all the neo-atheist books is the kind of historiography that many of us adopted in our hormone-disturbed adolescence, furious at the discovery that our parents sometimes told lies and violated their own precepts and rules. It can be summed up in Christopher Hitchens’s drumbeat in God Is Not Great: “Religion spoils everything.”
What? The Saint Matthew Passion? The Cathedral of Chartres? The emblematic religious person in these books seems to be a Glasgow Airport bomber—a type unrepresentative of Muslims, let alone communicants of the poor old Church of England. It is surely not news, except to someone so ignorant that he probably wouldn’t be interested in these books in the first place, that religious conflict has often been murderous and that religious people have committed hideous atrocities. But so have secularists and atheists, and though they have had less time to prove their mettle in this area, they have proved it amply. If religious belief is not synonymous with good behavior, neither is absence of belief, to put it mildly.
In fact, one can write the history of anything as a chronicle of crime and folly. Science and technology spoil everything: without trains and IG Farben, no Auschwitz; without transistor radios and mass-produced machetes, no Rwandan genocide. First you decide what you hate, and then you gather evidence for its hatefulness. Since man is a fallen creature (I use the term metaphorically rather than in its religious sense), there is always much to find.
The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core. To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy. And in my own view, the absence of religious faith, provided that such faith is not murderously intolerant, can have a deleterious effect upon human character and personality. If you empty the world of purpose, make it one of brute fact alone, you empty it (for many people, at any rate) of reasons for gratitude, and a sense of gratitude is necessary for both happiness and decency. For what can soon, and all too easily, replace gratitude is a sense of entitlement. Without gratitude, it is hard to appreciate, or be satisfied with, what you have: and life will become an existential shopping spree that no product satisfies.
A few years back, the National Gallery held an exhibition of Spanish still-life paintings. One of these paintings had a physical effect on the people who sauntered in, stopping them in their tracks; some even gasped. I have never seen an image have such an impact on people. The painting, by Juan Sánchez Cotán, now hangs in the San Diego Museum of Art. It showed four fruits and vegetables, two suspended by string, forming a parabola in a gray stone window.
Even if you did not know that Sánchez Cotán was a seventeenth-century Spanish priest, you could know that the painter was religious: for this picture is a visual testimony of gratitude for the beauty of those things that sustain us. Once you have seen it, and concentrated your attention on it, you will never take the existence of the humble cabbage—or of anything else—quite so much for granted, but will see its beauty and be thankful for it. The painting is a permanent call to contemplation of the meaning of human life, and as such it arrested people who ordinarily were not, I suspect, much given to quiet contemplation.
The same holds true with the work of the great Dutch still-life painters. On the neo-atheist view, the religious connection between Catholic Spain and Protestant Holland is one of conflict, war, and massacre only: and certainly one cannot deny this history. And yet something more exists. As with Sánchez Cotán, only a deep reverence, an ability not to take existence for granted, could turn a representation of a herring on a pewter plate into an object of transcendent beauty, worthy of serious reflection.
I recently had occasion to compare the writings of the neo-atheists with those of Anglican divines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I was visiting some friends at their country house in England, which had a library of old volumes; since the family of the previous owners had a churchman in every generation, many of the books were religious. In my own neo-atheist days, I would have scorned these works as pertaining to a nonexistent entity and containing nothing of value. I would have considered the authors deluded men, who probably sought to delude others for reasons that Marx might have enumerated.
But looking, say, into the works of Joseph Hall, D.D., I found myself moved: much more moved, it goes without saying, than by any of the books of the new atheists. Hall was bishop of Exeter and then of Norwich; though a moderate Puritan, he took the Royalist side in the English civil war and lost his see, dying in 1656 while Cromwell was still Lord Protector.
Except by specialists, Hall remains almost entirely forgotten today. I opened one of the volumes at random, his Contemplations Upon the Principal Passages of the Holy Story. Here was the contemplation on the sickness of Hezekiah:
Hezekiah was freed from the siege of the Assyrians, but he is surprised with a disease. He, that delivered him from the hand of his enemies, smites him with sickness. God doth not let us loose from all afflictions, when he redeems us from one.
To think that Hezekiah was either not thankful enough for his deliverance, or too much lifted up with the glory of so miraculous a favour, were an injurious misconstruction of the hand of God, and an uncharitable censure of a holy prince; for, though no flesh and blood can avoid the just desert of bodily punishment, yet God doth not always strike with an intuition of sin: sometimes he regards the benefit of our trial; sometimes, the glory of his mercy in our cure.
Hall surely means us to infer that whatever happens to us, however unpleasant, has a meaning and purpose; and this enables us to bear our sorrows with greater dignity and less suffering. And it is part of the existential reality of human life that we shall always need consolation, no matter what progress we make. Hall continues:
When, as yet, he had not so much as the comfort of a child to succeed him, thy prophet is sent to him, with the heavy message of his death: “Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.” It is no small mercy of God, that he gives us warning of our end. . . . No soul can want important affairs, to be ordered for a final dissolution.
This is the language not of rights and entitlements, but of something much deeper—a universal respect for the condition of being human.
For Hall, life is instinct with meaning: a meaning capable of controlling man’s pride at his good fortune and consoling him for his ill fortune. Here is an extract from Hall’s Characters of Virtues and Vices:
He is an happy man, that hath learned to read himself, more than all books; and hath so taken out this lesson, that he can never forget it: that knows the world, and cares not for it; that, after many traverses of thoughts, is grown to know what he may trust to; and stands now equally armed for all events: that hath got the mastery at home; so as he can cross his will without a mutiny, and so please it that he makes it not a wanton: that, in earthly things, wishes no more than nature; in spiritual, is ever graciously ambitious: that, for his condition, stands on his own feet, not needing to lean upon the great; and can so frame his thoughts to his estate, that when he hath least, he cannot want, because he is as free from desire, as superfluity: that hath seasonably broken the headstrong restiness of prosperity; and can now manage it, at pleasure: upon whom, all smaller crosses light as hailstones upon a roof; and, for the greater calamities, he can take them as tributes of life and tokens of love; and, if his ship be tossed, yet he is sure his anchor is fast. If all the world were his, he could be no other than he is; no whit gladder of himself, no whit higher in his carriage; because he knows, that contentment lies not in the things he hath, but in the mind that values them.
Though eloquent, this appeal to moderation as the key to happiness is not original; but such moderation comes more naturally to the man who believes in something not merely higher than himself, but higher than mankind. After all, the greatest enjoyment of the usages of this world, even to excess, might seem rational when the usages of this world are all that there is.
In his Occasional Meditations, Hall takes perfectly ordinary scenes—ordinary, of course, for his times—and derives meaning from them. Here is his meditation “Upon the Flies Gathering to a Galled Horse”:
How these flies swarm to the galled part of this poor beast; and there sit, feeding upon that worst piece of his flesh, not meddling with the other sound parts of his skin! Even thus do malicious tongues of detractors: if a man have any infirmity in his person or actions, that they will be sure to gather unto, and dwell upon; whereas, his commendable parts and well-deservings are passed by, without mention, without regard. It is an envious self-love and base cruelty, that causeth this ill disposition in men: in the mean time, this only they have gained; it must needs be a filthy creature, that feeds upon nothing but corruption.
Surely Hall is not suggesting (unlike Dennett in his unguarded moments) that the biological purpose of flies is to feed off injured horses, but rather that a sight in nature can be the occasion for us to reflect imaginatively on our morality. He is not raising a biological theory about flies, in contradistinction to the theory of evolution, but thinking morally about human existence. It is true that he would say that everything is part of God’s providence, but, again, this is no more (and no less) a metaphysical belief than the belief in natural selection as an all-explanatory principle.
Let us compare Hall’s meditation “Upon the Sight of a Harlot Carted” with Harris’s statement that some people ought perhaps to be killed for their beliefs:
With what noise, and tumult, and zeal of solemn justice, is this sin punished! The streets are not more full of beholders, than clamours. Every one strives to express his detestation of the fact, by some token of revenge: one casts mire, another water, another rotten eggs, upon the miserable offender. Neither, indeed, is she worthy of less: but, in the mean time, no man looks home to himself. It is no uncharity to say, that too many insult in this just punishment, who have deserved more. . . . Public sins have more shame; private may have more guilt. If the world cannot charge me of those, it is enough, that I can charge my soul of worse. Let others rejoice, in these public executions: let me pity the sins of others, and be humbled under the sense of my own.
Who sounds more charitable, more generous, more just, more profound, more honest, more humane: Sam Harris or Joseph Hall, D.D., late lord bishop of Exeter and of Norwich?
No doubt it helps that Hall lived at a time of sonorous prose, prose that merely because of its sonority resonates in our souls; prose of the kind that none of us, because of the time in which we live, could ever equal. But the style applies to the thought as well as the prose; and I prefer Hall’s charity to Harris’s intolerance.
Theodore Dalrymple, a physician, is a contributing editor of City Journal and the Dietrich Weismann Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
* This quotation is from Samuel Beckett, not Sartre. We regret the error.
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A.J. Jacobs (esquire)
I Think You're Fat
This story is about something called Radical Honesty. It may change your life. (But honestly, we don't really care.)
Here's the truth about why I'm writing this article:
I want to fulfill my contract with my boss. I want to avoid getting fired. I want all the attractive women I knew in high school and college to read it. I want them to be amazed and impressed and feel a vague regret over their decision not to have sex with me, and maybe if I get divorced or become a widower, I can have sex with them someday at a reunion. I want Hollywood to buy my article and turn it into a movie, even though they kind of already made the movie ten years ago with Jim Carrey. I want to get congratulatory e-mails and job offers that I can politely decline. Or accept if they're really good. Then get a generous counteroffer from my boss.
To be totally honest, I was sorry I mentioned this idea to my boss about three seconds after I opened my mouth. Because I knew the article would be a pain in the ass to pull off. Dammit. I should have let my colleague Tom Chiarella write it. But I didn't want to seem lazy.
What I mentioned to my boss was this: a movement called Radical Honesty.
The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough -- a world without fibs -- but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you're having fantasies about your wife's sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It's the only path to authentic relationships. It's the only way to smash through modernity's soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.
Yes. I know. One of the most idiotic ideas ever, right up there with Vanilla Coke and giving Phil Spector a gun permit. Deceit makes our world go round. Without lies, marriages would crumble, workers would be fired, egos would be shattered, governments would collapse.
And yet...maybe there's something to it. Especially for me. I have a lying problem. Mine aren't big lies. They aren't lies like "I cannot recall that crucial meeting from two months ago, Senator." Mine are little lies. White lies. Half-truths. The kind we all tell. But I tell dozens of them every day. "Yes, let's definitely get together soon." "I'd love to, but I have a touch of the stomach flu." "No, we can't buy a toy today -- the toy store is closed." It's bad. Maybe a couple of weeks of truth-immersion therapy would do me good.
I e-mail Blanton to ask if I can come down to Virginia and get some pointers before embarking on my Radical Honesty experiment. He writes back: "I appreciate you for apparently having a real interest and hope you're not just doing a cutesy little superficial dipshit job like most journalists."
I'm already nervous. I better start off with a clean slate. I confess I lied to him in my first e-mail -- that I haven't ordered all his books on Amazon yet. I was just trying to impress upon him that I was serious about his work. He writes back: "Thanks for your honesty in attempting to guess what your manipulative and self-protective motive must have been."
Blanton lives in a house he built himself, perched on a hill in the town of Stanley, Virginia, population 1,331. We're sitting on white chairs in a room with enormous windows and a crackling fireplace. He's swirling a glass of Maker's Mark bourbon and water and telling me why it's important to live with no lies.
"You'll have really bad times, you'll have really great times, but you'll contribute to other people because you haven't been dancing on eggshells your whole fucking life. It's a better life."
"Do you think it's ever okay to lie?" I ask.
"I advocate never lying in personal relationships. But if you have Anne Frank in your attic and a Nazi knocks on the door, lie....I lie to any government official." (Blanton's politics are just this side of Noam Chomsky's.) "I lie to the IRS. I always take more deductions than are justified. I lie in golf. And in poker."
Blanton adjusts his crotch. I expected him to be a bully. Or maybe a new-age huckster with a bead necklace who sits cross-legged on the floor. He's neither. He's a former Texan with a big belly and a big laugh and a big voice. He's got a bushy head of gray hair and a twang that makes his bye sound like bah. He calls himself "white trash with a Ph.D." If you mixed DNA from Lyndon Johnson, Ken Kesey, and threw in the nonannoying parts of Dr. Phil, you might get Blanton.
He ran for Congress twice, with the novel promise that he'd be an honest politician. In 2004, he got a surprising 25 percent of the vote in his Virginia district as an independent. In 2006, the Democrats considered endorsing him but got skittish about his weeklong workshops, which involve a day of total nudity. They also weren't crazy that he's been married five times (currently to a Swedish flight attendant twenty-six years his junior). He ran again but withdrew when it became clear he was going to be crushed.
My interview with Blanton is unlike any other I've had in fifteen years as a journalist. Usually, there's a fair amount of ass kissing and diplomacy. You approach the controversial stuff on tippy toes (the way Barbara Walters once asked Richard Gere about that terrible, terrible rumor). With Blanton, I can say anything that pops into my mind. In fact, it would be rude not to say it. I'd be insulting his life's work. It's my first taste of Radical Honesty, and it's liberating, exhilarating.
Esquire Editor-at-Large A.J. Jacobs is the author of A Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. The book, published by Simon & Schuster, will be out this October. You can buy it by clicking here.
When Blanton rambles on about President Bush, I say, "You know, I stopped listening about a minute ago."
"Thanks for telling me," he says.
I tell him, "You look older than you do in the author photo for your book," and when he veers too far into therapyspeak, I say, "That just sounds like gobbledygook."
"Thanks," he replies." Or, "That's fine."
Blanton has a temper -- he threatened to "beat the shit" out of a newspaper editor during the campaign -- but it hasn't flared tonight. The closest he comes to attacking me is when he says I am self-indulgent and Esquire is pretentious. Both true.
Blanton pours himself another bourbon and water. He's got a wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek, and when he spits into the fireplace, the flames crackle louder.
"My boss says you sound like a dick," I say.
"Tell your boss he's a dick," he says.
"I'm glad you picked your nose just now," I say. "Because it was funny and disgusting, and it'll make a good detail for the article."
"That's fine. I'll pick my ass in a minute." Then he unleashes his deep Texan laugh: heh, heh, heh. (He also burps and farts throughout our conversation; he believes the one-cheek sneak is "a little deceitful.")
No topic is off-limits. "I've slept with more than five hundred women and about a half dozen men," he tells me. "I've had a whole bunch of threesomes" -- one of which involved a hermaphrodite prostitute equipped with dual organs.
What about animals?
Blanton thinks for a minute. "I let my dog lick my dick once."
If he hadn't devoted his life to Radical Honesty, I'd say he was, to use his own phrase, as full of shit as a Christmas turkey. But I don't think he is. I believe he's telling the truth. Which is a startling thing for a journalist to confront. Generally, I'm devoting 30 percent of my mental energy to figuring out what a source is lying about or hiding from me. Another 20 percent goes into scheming about how to unearth that buried truth. No need for that today.
"I was disappointed when I visited your office," I tell Blanton. (Earlier he had shown me a small, cluttered single-room office that serves as the Radical Honesty headquarters.) "I'm impressed by exteriors, so I would have been impressed by an office building in some city, not a room in Butt Fuck, Virginia. For my article, I want this to be a legitimate movement, not a fringe movement."
"What about a legitimate fringe movement?" asks Blanton, who has, by this time, had three bourbons.
Blanton's legitimate fringe movement is sizable but not huge. He's sold 175,000 books in eleven languages and has twenty-five trainers assisting in workshops and running practice groups around the country.
Now, my editor thinks I'm overreaching here and trying too hard to justify this article's existence, but I think society is speeding toward its own version of Radical Honesty. The truth of our lives is increasingly being exposed, both voluntarily (MySpace pages, transparent business transactions) and involuntarily. (See Gonzales and Google, or ask Alec Baldwin.) For better or worse, we may all soon be Brad Blantons. I need to be prepared. [Such bullshit. -- Ed.]
I return to New York and immediately set about delaying my experiment. When you're with Blanton, you think, Yes, I can do this! The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. But when I get back to bosses and fragile friendships, I continue my lying ways.
"How's Radical Honesty going?" my boss asks.
"It's okay," I lie. "A little slow."
A couple of weeks later, I finally get some inspiration from my friend's five-year-old daughter, Alison. We are in Central Park for a play date. Out of nowhere, Alison looks at me evenly and says, "Your teeth are yellow because you drink coffee all day."
Damn. Now that's some radical honesty for you. Maybe I should be more like a five-year-old. An hour later, she shows me her new pet bug -- a beetle of some sort that she has in her cupped hands.
"It's napping," she whispers.
I nudge the insect with my finger. It doesn't move. Should I play along? No. I should tell her the truth, like she told me about my teeth.
"It's not napping."
She looks confused.
"It's dead."
Alison runs to her father, dismayed. "Daddy, he just said a bad word."
I feel like an asshole. I frightened a five-year-old, probably out of revenge for an insult about my oral hygiene. I postpone again -- for a few more weeks. And then my boss tells me he needs the article for the July issue.
I start in again at dinner with my friend Brian. We are talking about his new living situation, and I decide to tell him the truth.
"You know, I forget your fiancée's name."
This is highly unacceptable -- they've been together for years; I've met her several times.
"It's Jenny."
In his book, Blanton talks about the thrill of total candor, the Space Mountain-worthy adrenaline rush you get from breaking taboos. As he writes, "You learn to like the excitement of mild, ongoing risk taking." This I felt.
Luckily, Brian doesn't seem too pissed. So I decide to push my luck. "Yes, that's right. Jenny. Well, I resent you for not inviting me to you and Jenny's wedding. I don't want to go, since it's in Vermont, but I wanted to be invited."
"Well, I resent you for not being invited to your wedding."
"You weren't invited? Really? I thought I had."
"Nope."
"Sorry, man. That was a mistake."
A breakthrough! We are communicating! Blanton is right. Brian and I crushed some eggshells. We are not stoic, emotionless men. I'm enjoying this. A little bracing honesty can be a mood booster.
The next day, we get a visit from my wife's dad and stepmom.
"Did you get the birthday gift I sent you?" asks her stepmom.
"Uh-huh," I say.
She sent me a gift certificate to Saks Fifth Avenue.
"And? Did you like it?"
"Not really. I don't like gift certificates. It's like you're giving me an errand to run."
"Well, uh . . ."
Once again, I felt the thrill of inappropriate candor. And I felt something else, too. The paradoxical joy of being free from choice. I had no choice but to tell the truth. I didn't have to rack my brain figuring out how to hedge it, spin it, massage it.
"Just being honest," I shrug. Nice touch, I decide; helps take the edge off. She's got a thick skin. She'll be okay. And I'll tell you this: I'll never get a damn gift certificate from her again.
I still tell plenty of lies every day, but by the end of the week I've slashed the total by at least 40 percent. Still, the giddiness is wearing off. A life of radical honesty is filled with a hundred confrontations every day. Small, but they're relentless.
"Yes, I'll come to your office, but I resent you for making me travel."
"My boss said I should invite you to this meeting, although it wouldn't have occurred to me to do so."
"I have nothing else to say to you. I have run out of conversation."
My wife tells me a story about switching operating systems on her computer. In the middle, I have to go help our son with something, then forget to come back.
"Do you want to hear the end of the story or not?" she asks.
"Well...is there a payoff?"
"Fuck you."
It would have been a lot easier to have kept my mouth closed and listened to her. It reminds me of an issue I raised with Blanton: Why make waves? "Ninety percent of the time I love my wife," I told him. "And 10 percent of the time I hate her. Why should I hurt her feelings that 10 percent of the time? Why not just wait until that phase passes and I return to the true feeling, which is that I love her?"
Blanton's response: "Because you're a manipulative, lying son of a bitch."
Okay, he's right. It's manipulative and patronizing to shut up and listen. But it's exhausting not to.
One other thing is also becoming apparent: There's a fine line between radical honesty and creepiness. Or actually no line at all. It's simple logic: Men think about sex every three minutes, as the scientists at Redbook remind us. If you speak whatever's on your mind, you'll be talking about sex every three minutes.
I have a business breakfast with an editor from Rachael Ray's magazine. As we're sitting together, I tell her that I remember what she wore the first time we met -- a black shirt that revealed her shoulders in a provocative way. I say that I'd try to sleep with her if I were single. I confess to her that I just attempted (unsuccessfully) to look down her shirt during breakfast.
She smiles. Though I do notice she leans back farther in her seat.
The thing is, the separate cubbyholes of my personality are merging. Usually, there's a professional self, a home self, a friend self, a with-the-guys self. Now, it's one big improper mess. This woman and I have either taken a step forward in our relationship, or she'll never return my calls again.
When I get home, I keep the momentum going. I call a friend to say that I fantasize about his wife. (He says he likes my wife, too, and suggests a key party.)
I inform our twenty-seven-year-old nanny that "if my wife left me, I would ask you out on a date, because I think you are stunning."
She laughs. Nervously.
"I think that makes you uncomfortable, so I won't mention it again. It was just on my mind."
Now I've made my own skin crawl. I feel like I should just buy a trench coat and start lurking around subway platforms. Blanton says he doesn't believe sex talk in the workplace counts as sexual harassment -- it's tight-assed society's fault if people can't handle the truth -- but my nanny confession just feels like pure abuse of power.
All this lasciviousness might be more palatable if I were a single man. In fact, I have a theory: I think Blanton devised Radical Honesty partly as a way to pick up women. It's a brilliant strategy. The antithesis of mind games. Transparent mating.
And according to Blanton, it's effective. He tells me about a woman he once met on a Paris subway and asked out for tea. When they sat down, he said, "I didn't really want any tea; I was just trying to figure out a way to delay you so I could talk to you for a while, because I want to go to bed with you." They went to bed together. Or another seduction technique of his: "Wanna fuck?"
"That works?" I asked.
"Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's the creation of possibility."
I lied today. A retired man from New Hampshire -- a friend of a friend -- wrote some poems and sent them to me. His wife just died, and he's taken up poetry. He just wanted someone in publishing to read his work. A professional opinion.
I read them. I didn't like them much, but I wrote to him that I thought they were very good.
So I e-mail Blanton for the first time since our meeting and confess what I did. I write, "His wife just died, he doesn't have friends. He's kind of pathetic. I read his stuff, or skimmed it actually. I didn't like it. I thought it was boring and badly written. So I e-mailed a lie. I said I really like the poems and hope they get published. He wrote me back so excited and how it made his week and how he was about to give up on them but my e-mail gave him the stamina to keep trying."
I ask Blanton whether I made a mistake.
He responds curtly. I need to come to his eight-day workshop to "even begin to get what [Radical Honesty] is about." He says we need to meet in person.
Meet in person? Did he toss down so many bourbons I vanished from his memory? I tell him we did meet.
Blanton writes back testily that he remembers. But I still need to take a workshop (price tag: $2,800). His only advice on my quandary: "Send the man the e-mail you sent me about lying to him and ask him to call you when he gets it...and see what you learn."
Show him the e-mail? Are you kidding? What a hardcore bastard.
In his book, Radical Honesty, Blanton advises us to start sentences with the words "I resent you for" or "I appreciate you for." So I write him back.
"I resent you for being so different in these e-mails than you were when we met. You were friendly and engaging and encouraging when we met. Now you seem to have turned judgmental and tough. I resent you for giving me the advice to break that old man's heart by telling him that his poems suck."
Blanton responds quickly. First, he doesn't like that I expressed my resentment by e-mail. I should have come to see him. "What you don't seem to get yet, A.J., is that the reason for expressing resentment directly and in person is so that you can experience in your body the sensations that occur when you express the resentment, while at the same time being in the presence of the person you resent, and so you can stay with them until the sensations arise and recede and then get back to neutral -- which is what forgiveness is."
Second, he tells me that telling the old man the truth would be compassionate, showing the "authentic caring underneath your usual intellectual bullshit and overvaluing of your critical judgment. Your lie is not useful to him. In fact, it is simply avoiding your responsibility as one human being to another. That's okay. It happens all the time. It is not a mortal sin. But don't bullshit yourself about it being kind."
He ends with this: "I don't want to spend a lot of time explaining things to you for your cute little project of playing with telling the truth if you don't have the balls to try it."
Condescending prick.
I know my e-mail to the old man was wrong. I shouldn't have been so rah-rah effusive. But here, I've hit the outer limit of Radical Honesty, a hard wall. I can't trash the old man.
I try to understand Blanton's point about compassion. To most of us, honesty often means cruelty.
But to Blanton, honesty and compassion are the ones in sync. It's an intriguing way to look at the world, but I just don't buy it in the case of the widower poet. Screw Blanton. (By the way: I broke Radical Honesty and changed the identifying details of the old-man story so as not to humiliate him. Also, I've messed a bit with the timeline of events to simplify things. Sorry.)
To compensate for my wimpiness, I decide to toughen up. Which is probably the exact wrong thing to do. Today, I'm getting a haircut, and my barber is telling me he doesn't want his wife to get pregnant because she'll get too fat (a bit of radical honesty of his own), and I say, "You know, I'm tired. I have a cold. I don't want to talk anymore. I want to read."
"Okay," he says, wielding his scissors, "go ahead and read."
Later, I do the same thing with my in-laws when they're yapping on about preschools. "I'm bored," I announce. "I'll be back later." And with that, I leave the living room.
I tell Blanton, hoping for his approval. Did anything come of it? he asks. Any discussions and insights? Hmmm.
He's right. If you're going to be a schmuck, at least you should find some redeeming quality in it. Blanton's a master of this. One of his tricks is to say things with such glee and enthusiasm, it's hard to get too pissed. "You may be a petty asshole," he says, "but at least you're not a secret petty asshole." Then he'll laugh.
I have yet to learn that trick myself. Consider how I handled this scene at a diner a couple of blocks from my apartment.
"Everything okay?" asked our server, an Asian man with tattoos.
"Yeah, except for the coffee. I always have to order espresso here, because the espresso tastes like regular coffee. The regular coffee here is terrible. Can't you guys make stronger coffee?"
The waiter said no and walked away. My friend looked at me. "I'm embarrassed for you," he said. "And I'm embarrassed to be around you."
"I know. Me, too." I felt like a Hollywood producer who parks in handicapped spots. I ask Blanton what I should have done.
"You should have said, 'This coffee tastes like shit!' " he says, cackling.
I will say this: One of the best parts of Radical Honesty is that I'm saving a whole lot of time. It's a cut-to-the-chase way to live. At work, I've been waiting for my boss to reply to a memo for ten days. So I write him: "I'm annoyed that you didn't respond to our memo earlier. But at the same time, I'm relieved, because then if we don't nail one of the things you want, we can blame any delays on your lack of response."
Pressing send makes me nervous -- but the e-mail works. My boss responds: "I will endeavor to respond by tomorrow. Been gone from N.Y. for two weeks." It is borderline apologetic. I can push my power with my boss further than I thought.
Later, a friend of a friend wants to meet for a meal. I tell him I don't like leaving my house. "I agree to meet some people for lunch because I fear hurting their feelings if I don't. And in this terrifying age where everyone has a blog, I don't want to offend people, because then they'd write on their blogs what an asshole I am, and it would turn up in every Google search for the rest of my life."
He writes back: "Normally, I don't really like meeting editors anyway. Makes me ill to think about it, because I'm afraid of coming off like the idiot that, deep down, I suspect I am."
That's one thing I've noticed: When I am radically honest, people become radically honest themselves. I feel my resentment fade away. I like this guy. We have a good meeting.
In fact, all my relationships can take a whole lot more truth than I expected. Consider this one: For years, I've had a chronic problem where I refer to my wife, Julie, by my sister's name, Beryl. I always catch myself midway through and pretend it didn't happen. I've never confessed to Julie. Why should I? It either means that I'm sexually attracted to my sister, which is not good. Or that I think of my wife as my sister, also not good.
But today, in the kitchen, when I have my standard mental sister-wife mix-up, I decide to tell Julie about it.
"That's strange," she says.
We talk about it. I feel unburdened, closer to my wife now that we share this quirky, slightly disturbing knowledge. I realize that by keeping it secret, I had given it way too much weight. I hope she feels the same way.
I call up Blanton one last time, to get his honest opinion about how I've done.
"I'm finishing my experiment," I say.
"You going to start lying again?" he asks.
"Hell yeah."
"Oh, shit. It didn't work."
"But I'm going to lie less than I did before."
I tell him about my confession to Julie that I sometimes want to call her Beryl. "No big deal," says Blanton. "People in other cultures have sex with their sisters all the time."
I bring up the episode about telling the editor from Rachael Ray's magazine that I tried to look down her shirt, but he sounds disappointed. "Did you tell your wife?" he asks. "That's the good part."
Finally, I describe to him how I told Julie that I didn't care to hear the end of her story about fixing her computer. Blanton asks how she responded.
"She said, 'Fuck you.' "
"That's good!" Blanton says. "I like that. That's communicating.
This story is about something called Radical Honesty. It may change your life. (But honestly, we don't really care.)
Here's the truth about why I'm writing this article:
I want to fulfill my contract with my boss. I want to avoid getting fired. I want all the attractive women I knew in high school and college to read it. I want them to be amazed and impressed and feel a vague regret over their decision not to have sex with me, and maybe if I get divorced or become a widower, I can have sex with them someday at a reunion. I want Hollywood to buy my article and turn it into a movie, even though they kind of already made the movie ten years ago with Jim Carrey. I want to get congratulatory e-mails and job offers that I can politely decline. Or accept if they're really good. Then get a generous counteroffer from my boss.
To be totally honest, I was sorry I mentioned this idea to my boss about three seconds after I opened my mouth. Because I knew the article would be a pain in the ass to pull off. Dammit. I should have let my colleague Tom Chiarella write it. But I didn't want to seem lazy.
What I mentioned to my boss was this: a movement called Radical Honesty.
The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough -- a world without fibs -- but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you're having fantasies about your wife's sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It's the only path to authentic relationships. It's the only way to smash through modernity's soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.
Yes. I know. One of the most idiotic ideas ever, right up there with Vanilla Coke and giving Phil Spector a gun permit. Deceit makes our world go round. Without lies, marriages would crumble, workers would be fired, egos would be shattered, governments would collapse.
And yet...maybe there's something to it. Especially for me. I have a lying problem. Mine aren't big lies. They aren't lies like "I cannot recall that crucial meeting from two months ago, Senator." Mine are little lies. White lies. Half-truths. The kind we all tell. But I tell dozens of them every day. "Yes, let's definitely get together soon." "I'd love to, but I have a touch of the stomach flu." "No, we can't buy a toy today -- the toy store is closed." It's bad. Maybe a couple of weeks of truth-immersion therapy would do me good.
I e-mail Blanton to ask if I can come down to Virginia and get some pointers before embarking on my Radical Honesty experiment. He writes back: "I appreciate you for apparently having a real interest and hope you're not just doing a cutesy little superficial dipshit job like most journalists."
I'm already nervous. I better start off with a clean slate. I confess I lied to him in my first e-mail -- that I haven't ordered all his books on Amazon yet. I was just trying to impress upon him that I was serious about his work. He writes back: "Thanks for your honesty in attempting to guess what your manipulative and self-protective motive must have been."
Blanton lives in a house he built himself, perched on a hill in the town of Stanley, Virginia, population 1,331. We're sitting on white chairs in a room with enormous windows and a crackling fireplace. He's swirling a glass of Maker's Mark bourbon and water and telling me why it's important to live with no lies.
"You'll have really bad times, you'll have really great times, but you'll contribute to other people because you haven't been dancing on eggshells your whole fucking life. It's a better life."
"Do you think it's ever okay to lie?" I ask.
"I advocate never lying in personal relationships. But if you have Anne Frank in your attic and a Nazi knocks on the door, lie....I lie to any government official." (Blanton's politics are just this side of Noam Chomsky's.) "I lie to the IRS. I always take more deductions than are justified. I lie in golf. And in poker."
Blanton adjusts his crotch. I expected him to be a bully. Or maybe a new-age huckster with a bead necklace who sits cross-legged on the floor. He's neither. He's a former Texan with a big belly and a big laugh and a big voice. He's got a bushy head of gray hair and a twang that makes his bye sound like bah. He calls himself "white trash with a Ph.D." If you mixed DNA from Lyndon Johnson, Ken Kesey, and threw in the nonannoying parts of Dr. Phil, you might get Blanton.
He ran for Congress twice, with the novel promise that he'd be an honest politician. In 2004, he got a surprising 25 percent of the vote in his Virginia district as an independent. In 2006, the Democrats considered endorsing him but got skittish about his weeklong workshops, which involve a day of total nudity. They also weren't crazy that he's been married five times (currently to a Swedish flight attendant twenty-six years his junior). He ran again but withdrew when it became clear he was going to be crushed.
My interview with Blanton is unlike any other I've had in fifteen years as a journalist. Usually, there's a fair amount of ass kissing and diplomacy. You approach the controversial stuff on tippy toes (the way Barbara Walters once asked Richard Gere about that terrible, terrible rumor). With Blanton, I can say anything that pops into my mind. In fact, it would be rude not to say it. I'd be insulting his life's work. It's my first taste of Radical Honesty, and it's liberating, exhilarating.
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When Blanton rambles on about President Bush, I say, "You know, I stopped listening about a minute ago."
"Thanks for telling me," he says.
I tell him, "You look older than you do in the author photo for your book," and when he veers too far into therapyspeak, I say, "That just sounds like gobbledygook."
"Thanks," he replies." Or, "That's fine."
Blanton has a temper -- he threatened to "beat the shit" out of a newspaper editor during the campaign -- but it hasn't flared tonight. The closest he comes to attacking me is when he says I am self-indulgent and Esquire is pretentious. Both true.
Blanton pours himself another bourbon and water. He's got a wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek, and when he spits into the fireplace, the flames crackle louder.
"My boss says you sound like a dick," I say.
"Tell your boss he's a dick," he says.
"I'm glad you picked your nose just now," I say. "Because it was funny and disgusting, and it'll make a good detail for the article."
"That's fine. I'll pick my ass in a minute." Then he unleashes his deep Texan laugh: heh, heh, heh. (He also burps and farts throughout our conversation; he believes the one-cheek sneak is "a little deceitful.")
No topic is off-limits. "I've slept with more than five hundred women and about a half dozen men," he tells me. "I've had a whole bunch of threesomes" -- one of which involved a hermaphrodite prostitute equipped with dual organs.
What about animals?
Blanton thinks for a minute. "I let my dog lick my dick once."
If he hadn't devoted his life to Radical Honesty, I'd say he was, to use his own phrase, as full of shit as a Christmas turkey. But I don't think he is. I believe he's telling the truth. Which is a startling thing for a journalist to confront. Generally, I'm devoting 30 percent of my mental energy to figuring out what a source is lying about or hiding from me. Another 20 percent goes into scheming about how to unearth that buried truth. No need for that today.
"I was disappointed when I visited your office," I tell Blanton. (Earlier he had shown me a small, cluttered single-room office that serves as the Radical Honesty headquarters.) "I'm impressed by exteriors, so I would have been impressed by an office building in some city, not a room in Butt Fuck, Virginia. For my article, I want this to be a legitimate movement, not a fringe movement."
"What about a legitimate fringe movement?" asks Blanton, who has, by this time, had three bourbons.
Blanton's legitimate fringe movement is sizable but not huge. He's sold 175,000 books in eleven languages and has twenty-five trainers assisting in workshops and running practice groups around the country.
Now, my editor thinks I'm overreaching here and trying too hard to justify this article's existence, but I think society is speeding toward its own version of Radical Honesty. The truth of our lives is increasingly being exposed, both voluntarily (MySpace pages, transparent business transactions) and involuntarily. (See Gonzales and Google, or ask Alec Baldwin.) For better or worse, we may all soon be Brad Blantons. I need to be prepared. [Such bullshit. -- Ed.]
I return to New York and immediately set about delaying my experiment. When you're with Blanton, you think, Yes, I can do this! The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. But when I get back to bosses and fragile friendships, I continue my lying ways.
"How's Radical Honesty going?" my boss asks.
"It's okay," I lie. "A little slow."
A couple of weeks later, I finally get some inspiration from my friend's five-year-old daughter, Alison. We are in Central Park for a play date. Out of nowhere, Alison looks at me evenly and says, "Your teeth are yellow because you drink coffee all day."
Damn. Now that's some radical honesty for you. Maybe I should be more like a five-year-old. An hour later, she shows me her new pet bug -- a beetle of some sort that she has in her cupped hands.
"It's napping," she whispers.
I nudge the insect with my finger. It doesn't move. Should I play along? No. I should tell her the truth, like she told me about my teeth.
"It's not napping."
She looks confused.
"It's dead."
Alison runs to her father, dismayed. "Daddy, he just said a bad word."
I feel like an asshole. I frightened a five-year-old, probably out of revenge for an insult about my oral hygiene. I postpone again -- for a few more weeks. And then my boss tells me he needs the article for the July issue.
I start in again at dinner with my friend Brian. We are talking about his new living situation, and I decide to tell him the truth.
"You know, I forget your fiancée's name."
This is highly unacceptable -- they've been together for years; I've met her several times.
"It's Jenny."
In his book, Blanton talks about the thrill of total candor, the Space Mountain-worthy adrenaline rush you get from breaking taboos. As he writes, "You learn to like the excitement of mild, ongoing risk taking." This I felt.
Luckily, Brian doesn't seem too pissed. So I decide to push my luck. "Yes, that's right. Jenny. Well, I resent you for not inviting me to you and Jenny's wedding. I don't want to go, since it's in Vermont, but I wanted to be invited."
"Well, I resent you for not being invited to your wedding."
"You weren't invited? Really? I thought I had."
"Nope."
"Sorry, man. That was a mistake."
A breakthrough! We are communicating! Blanton is right. Brian and I crushed some eggshells. We are not stoic, emotionless men. I'm enjoying this. A little bracing honesty can be a mood booster.
The next day, we get a visit from my wife's dad and stepmom.
"Did you get the birthday gift I sent you?" asks her stepmom.
"Uh-huh," I say.
She sent me a gift certificate to Saks Fifth Avenue.
"And? Did you like it?"
"Not really. I don't like gift certificates. It's like you're giving me an errand to run."
"Well, uh . . ."
Once again, I felt the thrill of inappropriate candor. And I felt something else, too. The paradoxical joy of being free from choice. I had no choice but to tell the truth. I didn't have to rack my brain figuring out how to hedge it, spin it, massage it.
"Just being honest," I shrug. Nice touch, I decide; helps take the edge off. She's got a thick skin. She'll be okay. And I'll tell you this: I'll never get a damn gift certificate from her again.
I still tell plenty of lies every day, but by the end of the week I've slashed the total by at least 40 percent. Still, the giddiness is wearing off. A life of radical honesty is filled with a hundred confrontations every day. Small, but they're relentless.
"Yes, I'll come to your office, but I resent you for making me travel."
"My boss said I should invite you to this meeting, although it wouldn't have occurred to me to do so."
"I have nothing else to say to you. I have run out of conversation."
My wife tells me a story about switching operating systems on her computer. In the middle, I have to go help our son with something, then forget to come back.
"Do you want to hear the end of the story or not?" she asks.
"Well...is there a payoff?"
"Fuck you."
It would have been a lot easier to have kept my mouth closed and listened to her. It reminds me of an issue I raised with Blanton: Why make waves? "Ninety percent of the time I love my wife," I told him. "And 10 percent of the time I hate her. Why should I hurt her feelings that 10 percent of the time? Why not just wait until that phase passes and I return to the true feeling, which is that I love her?"
Blanton's response: "Because you're a manipulative, lying son of a bitch."
Okay, he's right. It's manipulative and patronizing to shut up and listen. But it's exhausting not to.
One other thing is also becoming apparent: There's a fine line between radical honesty and creepiness. Or actually no line at all. It's simple logic: Men think about sex every three minutes, as the scientists at Redbook remind us. If you speak whatever's on your mind, you'll be talking about sex every three minutes.
I have a business breakfast with an editor from Rachael Ray's magazine. As we're sitting together, I tell her that I remember what she wore the first time we met -- a black shirt that revealed her shoulders in a provocative way. I say that I'd try to sleep with her if I were single. I confess to her that I just attempted (unsuccessfully) to look down her shirt during breakfast.
She smiles. Though I do notice she leans back farther in her seat.
The thing is, the separate cubbyholes of my personality are merging. Usually, there's a professional self, a home self, a friend self, a with-the-guys self. Now, it's one big improper mess. This woman and I have either taken a step forward in our relationship, or she'll never return my calls again.
When I get home, I keep the momentum going. I call a friend to say that I fantasize about his wife. (He says he likes my wife, too, and suggests a key party.)
I inform our twenty-seven-year-old nanny that "if my wife left me, I would ask you out on a date, because I think you are stunning."
She laughs. Nervously.
"I think that makes you uncomfortable, so I won't mention it again. It was just on my mind."
Now I've made my own skin crawl. I feel like I should just buy a trench coat and start lurking around subway platforms. Blanton says he doesn't believe sex talk in the workplace counts as sexual harassment -- it's tight-assed society's fault if people can't handle the truth -- but my nanny confession just feels like pure abuse of power.
All this lasciviousness might be more palatable if I were a single man. In fact, I have a theory: I think Blanton devised Radical Honesty partly as a way to pick up women. It's a brilliant strategy. The antithesis of mind games. Transparent mating.
And according to Blanton, it's effective. He tells me about a woman he once met on a Paris subway and asked out for tea. When they sat down, he said, "I didn't really want any tea; I was just trying to figure out a way to delay you so I could talk to you for a while, because I want to go to bed with you." They went to bed together. Or another seduction technique of his: "Wanna fuck?"
"That works?" I asked.
"Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's the creation of possibility."
I lied today. A retired man from New Hampshire -- a friend of a friend -- wrote some poems and sent them to me. His wife just died, and he's taken up poetry. He just wanted someone in publishing to read his work. A professional opinion.
I read them. I didn't like them much, but I wrote to him that I thought they were very good.
So I e-mail Blanton for the first time since our meeting and confess what I did. I write, "His wife just died, he doesn't have friends. He's kind of pathetic. I read his stuff, or skimmed it actually. I didn't like it. I thought it was boring and badly written. So I e-mailed a lie. I said I really like the poems and hope they get published. He wrote me back so excited and how it made his week and how he was about to give up on them but my e-mail gave him the stamina to keep trying."
I ask Blanton whether I made a mistake.
He responds curtly. I need to come to his eight-day workshop to "even begin to get what [Radical Honesty] is about." He says we need to meet in person.
Meet in person? Did he toss down so many bourbons I vanished from his memory? I tell him we did meet.
Blanton writes back testily that he remembers. But I still need to take a workshop (price tag: $2,800). His only advice on my quandary: "Send the man the e-mail you sent me about lying to him and ask him to call you when he gets it...and see what you learn."
Show him the e-mail? Are you kidding? What a hardcore bastard.
In his book, Radical Honesty, Blanton advises us to start sentences with the words "I resent you for" or "I appreciate you for." So I write him back.
"I resent you for being so different in these e-mails than you were when we met. You were friendly and engaging and encouraging when we met. Now you seem to have turned judgmental and tough. I resent you for giving me the advice to break that old man's heart by telling him that his poems suck."
Blanton responds quickly. First, he doesn't like that I expressed my resentment by e-mail. I should have come to see him. "What you don't seem to get yet, A.J., is that the reason for expressing resentment directly and in person is so that you can experience in your body the sensations that occur when you express the resentment, while at the same time being in the presence of the person you resent, and so you can stay with them until the sensations arise and recede and then get back to neutral -- which is what forgiveness is."
Second, he tells me that telling the old man the truth would be compassionate, showing the "authentic caring underneath your usual intellectual bullshit and overvaluing of your critical judgment. Your lie is not useful to him. In fact, it is simply avoiding your responsibility as one human being to another. That's okay. It happens all the time. It is not a mortal sin. But don't bullshit yourself about it being kind."
He ends with this: "I don't want to spend a lot of time explaining things to you for your cute little project of playing with telling the truth if you don't have the balls to try it."
Condescending prick.
I know my e-mail to the old man was wrong. I shouldn't have been so rah-rah effusive. But here, I've hit the outer limit of Radical Honesty, a hard wall. I can't trash the old man.
I try to understand Blanton's point about compassion. To most of us, honesty often means cruelty.
But to Blanton, honesty and compassion are the ones in sync. It's an intriguing way to look at the world, but I just don't buy it in the case of the widower poet. Screw Blanton. (By the way: I broke Radical Honesty and changed the identifying details of the old-man story so as not to humiliate him. Also, I've messed a bit with the timeline of events to simplify things. Sorry.)
To compensate for my wimpiness, I decide to toughen up. Which is probably the exact wrong thing to do. Today, I'm getting a haircut, and my barber is telling me he doesn't want his wife to get pregnant because she'll get too fat (a bit of radical honesty of his own), and I say, "You know, I'm tired. I have a cold. I don't want to talk anymore. I want to read."
"Okay," he says, wielding his scissors, "go ahead and read."
Later, I do the same thing with my in-laws when they're yapping on about preschools. "I'm bored," I announce. "I'll be back later." And with that, I leave the living room.
I tell Blanton, hoping for his approval. Did anything come of it? he asks. Any discussions and insights? Hmmm.
He's right. If you're going to be a schmuck, at least you should find some redeeming quality in it. Blanton's a master of this. One of his tricks is to say things with such glee and enthusiasm, it's hard to get too pissed. "You may be a petty asshole," he says, "but at least you're not a secret petty asshole." Then he'll laugh.
I have yet to learn that trick myself. Consider how I handled this scene at a diner a couple of blocks from my apartment.
"Everything okay?" asked our server, an Asian man with tattoos.
"Yeah, except for the coffee. I always have to order espresso here, because the espresso tastes like regular coffee. The regular coffee here is terrible. Can't you guys make stronger coffee?"
The waiter said no and walked away. My friend looked at me. "I'm embarrassed for you," he said. "And I'm embarrassed to be around you."
"I know. Me, too." I felt like a Hollywood producer who parks in handicapped spots. I ask Blanton what I should have done.
"You should have said, 'This coffee tastes like shit!' " he says, cackling.
I will say this: One of the best parts of Radical Honesty is that I'm saving a whole lot of time. It's a cut-to-the-chase way to live. At work, I've been waiting for my boss to reply to a memo for ten days. So I write him: "I'm annoyed that you didn't respond to our memo earlier. But at the same time, I'm relieved, because then if we don't nail one of the things you want, we can blame any delays on your lack of response."
Pressing send makes me nervous -- but the e-mail works. My boss responds: "I will endeavor to respond by tomorrow. Been gone from N.Y. for two weeks." It is borderline apologetic. I can push my power with my boss further than I thought.
Later, a friend of a friend wants to meet for a meal. I tell him I don't like leaving my house. "I agree to meet some people for lunch because I fear hurting their feelings if I don't. And in this terrifying age where everyone has a blog, I don't want to offend people, because then they'd write on their blogs what an asshole I am, and it would turn up in every Google search for the rest of my life."
He writes back: "Normally, I don't really like meeting editors anyway. Makes me ill to think about it, because I'm afraid of coming off like the idiot that, deep down, I suspect I am."
That's one thing I've noticed: When I am radically honest, people become radically honest themselves. I feel my resentment fade away. I like this guy. We have a good meeting.
In fact, all my relationships can take a whole lot more truth than I expected. Consider this one: For years, I've had a chronic problem where I refer to my wife, Julie, by my sister's name, Beryl. I always catch myself midway through and pretend it didn't happen. I've never confessed to Julie. Why should I? It either means that I'm sexually attracted to my sister, which is not good. Or that I think of my wife as my sister, also not good.
But today, in the kitchen, when I have my standard mental sister-wife mix-up, I decide to tell Julie about it.
"That's strange," she says.
We talk about it. I feel unburdened, closer to my wife now that we share this quirky, slightly disturbing knowledge. I realize that by keeping it secret, I had given it way too much weight. I hope she feels the same way.
I call up Blanton one last time, to get his honest opinion about how I've done.
"I'm finishing my experiment," I say.
"You going to start lying again?" he asks.
"Hell yeah."
"Oh, shit. It didn't work."
"But I'm going to lie less than I did before."
I tell him about my confession to Julie that I sometimes want to call her Beryl. "No big deal," says Blanton. "People in other cultures have sex with their sisters all the time."
I bring up the episode about telling the editor from Rachael Ray's magazine that I tried to look down her shirt, but he sounds disappointed. "Did you tell your wife?" he asks. "That's the good part."
Finally, I describe to him how I told Julie that I didn't care to hear the end of her story about fixing her computer. Blanton asks how she responded.
"She said, 'Fuck you.' "
"That's good!" Blanton says. "I like that. That's communicating.
posted by steph at
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