Penny Wiseacre

Things I have learned in a month of writing So What, Who Cares?

As I've alluded to before, email newsletters are my day job. I believe in email as an editorial format*. There are ways to do it well. I wanted to do some after-hours experimentation with the medium and the format, both for personal and professional gratification. And that's how I ended up launching So What, Who Cares?

I've got a month's experience under my belt. I thought I'd share what I've learned here with you, who have patiently tuned in on other experiments I've done in the ongoing quest to Do Things Better.

There's something about this paragraph ...

[Bill] Simmons grew so big that ESPN was willing to fund an entirely separate site -- Grantland -- as a way to make him happy and keep him tied to their larger brand.  His quasi-departure from the company that had "made" him presaged other moves like it. Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg broke from the Wall Street Journal to start Re/code, a tech site. David Pogue, a popular tech columnist at the New York Times, left to start a larger brand of his own under the Yahoo umbrella. Ezra Klein, a star policy writer here at WaPo, left to run a broader site for Vox Media. And Nate Silver, who made his name as an election modeler for the Times, jumped to ESPN -- drawn by the model Simmons had created with Grantland.

-- "What Bill Simmons' Suspension Tells Us About the Changing World of Journalism," WaPo, Sept 25, 14

I realize the takeaway here is supposed to be that "Individual Content Creators Who Just Say Things Are Now Bigger Than The Institutions That Launched Them," but here is my takeaway ...

That's a whole lotta dudes who turn into brands.

And the one woman, Kara Swisher, is mentioned in conjunction with her co-founder dude.

It's worth digging in to: Are there "star" reporters capable of launching their own brands who happen to also be women? More TK.

Would you all like to be lab rats?

I don't talk much about my day job on my personal blog for many reasons, some of which may actually demonstrate mature good judgment.

But one of the ongoing tasks I have is to assess email as an effective form of editorial content. I spend a lot of time thinking about email newsletters -- what makes the good ones good, why they work in this age of social media and texting, how to make them work better, how much effort it takes to produce something of value to the readers.

It's one thing to think big thoughts on the job. I'm also doing some private experimenting so I can bring real-world experience to bear on anything I say on the job.

My new experiment: I've launched a semi-daily newsletter of my own through Tiny Letter. It's called So What, Who Cares, and you can subscribe here.

So What, Who Cares is published every Monday-Thursday night. I point out three to five things that you might like to know, explaining why they matter (So what?) and who they affect (Who cares?). It's a news digest with context -- and the odd bit of pop culture gushing when I read or see something worth my time.

Because I am commiting to my professional experiment for a few months, long-form blogging here will be infrequent at best. But I hope to see you all via Twitter, or via subscription to So What, Who Cares. (You can read the archive here.)

And if you all have ideas on how to continue conversations based on what I'm covering in So What, Who Cares ... I'm all ears. Facebook? Twitter? Open posts here? Tell me.

In defense of the explicitly awful (or why I'm glad I wasn't warned)

I read Luke Malone's well-researched, nuanced and thorough piece at Medium yesterday, You’re 16. You’re a Pedophile. You Don’t Want to Hurt Anyone. What Do You Do Now?

The opening is raw, because it describes a specific, recorded act of abuse against a physically restrained 18-month-old child, detailing both the sights and sounds that the story's subject (and, presumably, the reporter) saw in the footage.

(I am not linking the piece, but I will note that a slightly less stomach-dropping iteration of it aired on This American Life in April.)

I nearly tweeted something all outrage-y at Medium to ask why they didn't include a trigger warning or any indication that the story leads with disturbing, explicit content. Today, 24 hours later, I think I can understand why there wasn't any trigger warning.

(The Awl's interview with Luke Malone is both enlightening and problematic; I urge you all to check it out for a behind-the-scenes look at how he reported the story.)

First off -- it's a story about people who want to have sex with very small children. That alone should tip you off to the nature of the subject matter.

Second  -- It's one thing to talk about children's sexual abuse in the removed language of social policy, all, "Well, child sexual abuse is defined by a power differential, a knowledge differential and a gratification differential." It is another to see all three of those things as they appear in real life. The explicit example helps define the scope of the evil perpetrated.

Third -- Understanding exactly what is out there -- and understanding your own reaction to it -- cracks open the rest of the piece: The terror of realizing that you need help and everyone you ask is going to recoil, doubled by the terror that you'll become the monster in the footage.

My heart goes out to the young man who is at the heart of the article's piece: He did not ask for the sexual makeup he has. This piece is ultimately about how poorly we as a society provide preventive measures for at-risk populations. Prevention is a vital component in providing protection to our most vulnerable fellow humans.

The article would have been diminished if we did not understand exactly how high the stakes are -- both for the young man who needs help to avoid becoming a monster, and for the people who would cross his path if he didn't get that help.

When you say it out loud, it sounds amazing

The potato vines spilling over the top of our potato bag had gone brown and dead about two weeks ago, so we figured it was time to harvest the potatoes. By "harvest," I mean, "dump the bag in a bare patch of the yard, then use a pink Disney Princess trowel to sift through for potatoes."

We got a decent amount of baby yukon potatoes from the three or four we originally put in the potato bag. Trix and I would rake and dig -- naturally, the Disney Princess trowel comes with a Disney Princess hand rake -- and after a while, Trix asked, "How did the plant make more potatoes?"

"The plant turned dirt and water into potatoes," I said. "That's the miracle of plants. They turn dirt and water into food."

I did not think it was entirely necessary to talk about the mechanics. There will be time to talk about how a plant's root system selectively absorbs nutrients, then pushes the ions into the sap that the xylem (i.e. one of a plant's vascular networks) will then distribute through the plant. We'll probably end up making a poster about photosynthesis at some point in her school career.

For now, it's amazing to have proof that plants can turn dirt and water into food. And it's even more amazing that we live in a world where people have been able to ask and answer the question, "But how does that plant do that?"

Liberals do THIS and conservatives do THAT

Here are recent developments that all go together ...

1. Conservatives want big houses & liberals want walkable communities. A recent poll showed that, when given a choice between "The houses are smaller and closer to each other, but schools,  stores and restaurants are within walking distance" vs. "The houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away," 77% of consistently-liberal people chose the former while 75% of consistently-conservative people chose the latter.

2. Liberals eat here, conservatives eat there. The methodology: Researchers went into the chains and asked people for their political leanings. And now, they say, the presence of a specific chain can tell you whether a suburb is shifting toward a more liberal bent.

(How to tell your exeurb is becoming infested with liberals? Ethnic food. Or its nonunion equivalent, i.e. P.F. Chang or Chipotle. I question labeling Chipotle as a liberal brand, since I keep running across "lifestyle bloggers" who skew rightward and gush about that place only slightly less than they do about pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks. But I suppose some folks have the ability to embrace the lifestyle cachet of fresh, local food or decent wages while completely ignoring the larger policy issues that make these things possible or not.)

3. Why the Democrats are focused on inequality: Liberal metros face the worst of it. The increasing economic divide between labor and white-collar knowledge workers is more prevalent in left-leaning cities. I look forward to seeing how this is reconciled with studies that show how the best cities in the U.S. for income mobility -- San Francisco, Seattle & Washington, D.C. -- are also among the most left-leaning in the U.S.

4. "'Ideological silos' are now common on the right and, to a lesser extent, on the left." A little more than six out of every ten consistently conservative people (63%) enjoy a homogeneity of opinion and values among their friends, while nearly five in ten consistently liberal people (49%) have a similarly homogenous bubble. (Also of note: conservative people seem to really loathe their liberal counterparts at a much higher percentage than vice-versa. I wonder why?)

... and none of this is really surprising if you've read Colin Woodard's American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. He identifies the cultural gulfs that exist between different regions of the country, so once you've accepted the idea that your conception of this country is going to be different from someone raised in a completely different region, the notion that folks in walkable neighborhoods are going to have different values from the folks sitting in 3000-square-foot houses 90 minutes away isn't really that hard to swallow, is it?

I have to admit that this self-selection for homogeneity makes me nervous. I've been nervous about it for nearly ten years, ever since I read "The Urban Archipelago." 

And here is my own admission of bubble residence: If there is an equal and opposite manifesto urging readers to abandon the cities and all who live there, to turn their backs on the "blue" states and their works? I can't recall what it is.

Let's all start the weekend by pondering the inexorable passage of time!

On the mornings I don’t swim, Trix pads into our room and stands by my side of the bed, whispering, “I’m awake.”

“Would you like to come into the bed?” I ask. We both know this is a formality.

“Yes!” she says, and stretches out her arms so I can roll over and pick her up, then roll back, dragging her across me until she’s snuggled in the middle of the bed.

What is the age when your children stop automatically lifting their arms to you? I want to know, so that last time it happens doesn’t slide by without my noticing it.

*

When to nurse a grievance

Summer vacation season is looming, which means that we're about to enter the point in the yearly journalism cycle where someone, somewhere, becomes a "lactivist" because they were asked to cover up while nursing at an airport/on an airplane/at the pool/at the Starbucks/at Disney/at a local park/at a big-box store [1], and their outrage, it must be shared with all of us.

I don't doubt that these incidents still happen, even in 2014, even with the reliable spate of TV news coverage about nurse-ins, even with angry blog posts circulated among like-minded fellows on Facebook, even with hashtags on Twitter.

I don't doubt it's distressing when it happens to you. It is always distressing when some presumptuous stranger swoops into a situation sans context and presumes to say, "Parenting: You're doing it wrong!"

But I really can't get worked up about it. Why? Because breastfeeding in the U.S.A. is a privilege indicator, and I have yet to see anyone who is dealing with the "Please cover up" gaffe admit that, then springboard into saying, "I admit it's a privilege. Let's make it an uncontested right."

And yes, breastfeeding in the U.S.A. is a privilege.

Putting aside the financial investment in what lots of people call the low-cost way to feed your baby -- I'm talking about lactation consultants, breast pump rentals, breast pump purchases, the nursing bras and/or clothes you wear to accommodate nursing or pumping, the pads, the cream, etc. -- putting aside the lucrative breastfeeding customer, let's examine exactly what it takes to make nursing work.

It takes time.

More specifically, it takes having a measure of control over your time. In the U.S., being able to exert some autonomy over your schedule is a side effect of economic and/or professional privilege.

Support for nursing starts with the ability to take paid family leave. (One bit of data to support this: In California, the median duration of breastfeeding doubled once paid family leave was introduced as state policy.) Mothers who return to work before six weeks postpartum are three times more likely to stop breastfeeding. In the U.S., 70% of pregnant women are working, and half of them will be back on the job five weeks after they give birth.

On a national level, if you are in the bottom quartile (25%) of wage-earners, you have a 5% chance of having paid family leave and only a 30% of having paid sick leave. Your good news? You have a 78% chance of being allowed unpaid parental leave. Good luck saving up the cash to take it on your $378/week salary.

We live in one of THREE countries in the entire world without mandatory paid parental leave policy on a national level. We make it harder for lower-income mothers to feed their babies cheaply, i.e. on breastmilk, which is yet another staggering example of how freakin' expensive it is to be poor. Save The Children agrees: In 2012, the U.S. ranked last on the breastfeeding policy scorecard.

So if we're going to get worked up over nursing in America, get worked up over the fact that we've turned something that could benefit all children into a deeply privileged class signifier. Women who nurse for more than a few weeks do so because they can afford to and because they have social and professional capital. They aren't harassed at work when insisting that their employer comply with legal requirements for pumping.

THIS is what I would like to see covered in the news. This is what I want to see people who say they support nursing to get fired up about. Protest because employers are screwing over non-white-collar women who happen to know their rights. Protest to strike the "public indecency" that don't specifically exempt breastfeeding in public from enforcement. Protest because our national policymakers don't give a shit about giving working-class families the same strong start that professional ones enjoy [2].

But if it's mostly complaining at a company because one or more of their employees isn't up on company policy? Eh. Good for you for making companies accountable to their customers. Now let's work on making society accountable to the people who take care of its smallest, most vulnerable members.

[1] I nursed in public -- including on airplanes -- and I never, ever heard a peep out of anyone. To this day, I am surprised nobody gave me a hard time. I have the exact opposite of Resting Bitchface -- really, I'm the human equivalent of a dolphin -- and total strangers often confuse my normal expression for an open invitation to them reading, "Please, open your mouth and monologue at me without preamble or courtesy."

[2] If you're ready to fight for universal paid family leave in the U.S., Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (FAMILY Act). It's not likely to pass in the current House and Senate, but it doesn't hurt to put pressure on your congressperson to vote for it -- or to explain to you why he or she won't. Also, feel free to support Family Values @ Work, which is hoping to fight for paid leave on a city-by-city and state-by-state basis, pending the day Congress gets its head out of its collective ass.

New York's Hottest Nightclub Is ...

A friend of mine linked to this piece by James St. James today, "Dear Michael Alig ...," which can be read in two ways:

1. As a critique of how swiftly consumer technology can alter social mores and change the definition of everyday tasks.

2. As a wink-and-a-nod parody to the superficiality of club- and "celebrity" culture and what the people involed in it presumably care about.

When I read it, what it reminded me most of was Josh Kilmer-Purcell's book, I Am Not Myself These Days, which details the year of his life in which he divided his time between working as a drag performer named Aqua and being helplessly in love with an escort-cum-crack-addict. At the end of the book, Kilmer-Purcell concludes:

While most of the things we are told may be true, it is not until we have tested them, taunted them, flaunted them, that we truly know they are right. Or wrong. Or true. Or false. Or somewhere in-the-fucking-between. And I think I know now a little better which is which. And I also know I’ll never quit testing this world. I’ll never rely on common knowledge. Or common denominators. Or even common sense, for that matter. To do so would be too, well, common.

So. I’ll keep dancing in my costumes. Day and night. And I won’t sleep as much as I should. And I will drink more than I should. And maybe, as I’m twirling and glittering, playing a retarded game of hide and seek in the middle of an open field, maybe, just maybe, whatever happens next will be bigger, and I will forget that which seems so huge to me right now.

This heedless rush away from your feelings and toward the bliss of the next big thing -- which will, when spoken aloud, be utterly tiny -- is what I think St. James was reaching for as he wrote "to" the man who killed their friend.

But there's also an echo of a sadder cultural complaint in the link. Because the party kids were folded into the same commodification of outsiderdom that Thomas Frank has been writing about since the club kids first hit daytime television. The end result?

Stefon.

The ostensible joke in each sketch is that a witless club kid works for a city tourism bureau and makes terribly inappropriate suggestions, but I think the larger joke is that you can actually buy the counterculture that you want. You can have the comfort of existing within the consumerist mindset of American culture while believing that you're somehow too special for it.

(Buying your way into an alternacutlure is a logical extension of celebrity as "the sum of their consumption patterns," to quote Anne Helen Peterson's analysis in the Believer. When the bar for getting attention is so low, we can all buy our way to notoriety for a second.)

The St. James piece ends with a chilling line about krokodil, a drug that's currently enjoying its moment as the panic object of straight culture. I love it. It's an elegant twist of the hairpin, a tiny vicious stab reminding the new guard that consumerist conventions may have moved forward but some truths about cultural commodification seemingly spring eternal.

The recipes for all the lives I'm never going to lead

One of my daughter's closest friends is severely allergic to eggs, milk and nuts. Another one is allergic to milk and eggs. The kids' preschool is nut-free at this point, and the teachers have done a wonderful job of teaching the children not to share food at school. "We could make our friends very sick," Trix will intone gravely, italics audible. "So we don't do it!"

Still, one of the fundamental joys of childhood is being able to bring in treats on your birthday, and another one is being able to share your snacks. So I asked the moms whose kids do have these allergies: "Do you have any recipes you like, or cookbooks to recommend?"

The surprising answer: Once you ignore any recipe that has nuts in it, a vegan cookbook is a handy resource.