Justify or Die: How O.J. Simpson Lives with Himself
If the glove doesn't fit...
Humans are possibly the only animals on the planet who have to live with themselves. That is, deal with guilt, shame, embarrassment, and self-loathing for their unsavory actions. You don’t see dogs writhing in mortification after passing gas in the living room. You don’t see tigers agonizing remorsefully after mauling their trainers. Rather, they seem insouciant, guiltless, on to the next thing as if nothing happened.
We, however, aren’t so devoid of conscience. Things tend to bug the hell out of us. (Case in point, Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov, who didn’t think murdering an old lady would get under his skin. Wrong.) So we devise mechanisms to cope with the awful stuff we do, or fail to do, or countenance. In fact, evolution has endowed us with an arsenal of tricks for brushing off the misdeeds of ourselves and others.
One is simply to ignore them. Like not caring to know how our meat gets to our plate. (Read the book Eating Animals about the atrocities of factory farming.) It’s like the adage: you can wake up a person who’s sleeping, but you can’t wake up someone who’s pretending to sleep.
Another ethical avoidance tactic is to shift blame. (“She was dressed provocatively. She was asking for it.”) Then there’s “Everybodyism.” Everybodyism is the belief that if pretty much everybody is doing something, it must be okay. This false notion of acceptability spreads responsibility around so thinly, it leads us to condone some god-awful things in the world. Example: basically good people who work for bad companies that polute, make unsafe products or cheat people. (More about Everybodyism in a future post.)
Another convenient dodge is to invoke the passive voice: “Mistakes were made.” Or, “Could things have been done differently? Yes.” The passive voice has taken the rap for many a political crook and incompetent official.
Sometimes we shift the guilt to inanimate objects: “The gun discharged.” The fact that your finger was on the trigger is only coincidental. Jean Harris, convicted killer of Scarsdale Diet author Dr. Herman Tarnower, tried that one. Sorry, Jean.
But the mother of all ways to live with our transgressions is simply to justify them. Humans have an extraordinary capacity to justify just about anything. It’s how top executives at major corporations award themselves tens of millions of dollars in salaries and bonuses while workers are laid off and their companies drown in red ink. (“I put my heart and soul into this place. Sniff. I deserve every penny.”) It’s how we bomb the crap out of other countries, civilian casualties notwithstanding, in the name of national security, when it’s really the oil we’re after.
Justifications allow us to nudge aside nagging guilt and plow on, else we’d all be curled up under rocks, inconsolable wrecks. No deed seems too horrible to be minimalized a by a little creative rationalization. Which may explain how people like O.J. Simpson live with themselves. He must really have to reach to come up with a self-accepting rationale. But evidently he does. (Man, you know, hey, I just kind of snapped. It wasn’t me that night, it was some kind of devil got hold of me.)
Not unlike the tiger who takes a claw to his handler.
Where’s a Crotchety Old Librarian When You Need One?
No one dares to speak in her library.
Libraries are places to read. Work. Do research. And keep your mouth shut. Or, if you’re compelled to open it, speak in a whisper. That’s what I was taught. And got a sharp rebuke if I didn’t abide by it.
Today, entitled mothers and their entitled children evidently aren’t subject to such strictures. For them, libraries (and I’m not talking about separate children’s sections) are yet another public playspace to run, shout, shriek, whine, and otherwise terrorize shared reading areas.
As one who escapes to such ostensibly quiet venues to write, I’m flabbergasted how loudly many parents, kids and even some librarians talk, laugh and carry on extended conversations, oblivious to people trying to concentrate on their work or reading materials. (Maybe I didn’t get the memo that declared the library will no longer be a sanctuary of respectful silence.)
Lest I sound like a curmudgeon, let me assure you, I am not alone in shaking my head and rolling my eyes in disbelief. The boisterous behavior of a few can disrupt the peace and focus of entire rooms of library patrons. Largely, it’s the parents who deserve the blame. There is often zero awareness that the ruckus their offspring are creating might actually be disturbing to others. No appeals to “talk in our library voices”. No speaking sotto voce to set an example. No attempt to turn an unruly outburst into a teachable moment. (“See those nice people reading over there? Keep it up and they’re going to boot your obnoxious little butt out of here.”) I can only believe a generation of spoiled kids has grown up and is now passing the torch of inconsiderateness on to the next.
Keeping the peace in a library shouldn’t require an armored division. One cantankerous old-school librarian who’s a stickler for rules is all it would take. Yet this apparently is not in the cards according to a pleasant but permissive young librarian I spoke with. “Today, we try to be service oriented and not offend anyone. You never know if the person is a library donor.” Hey, what about me? I’m a library donor. I don’t like being offended either.
While we don’t need more dictators in the world, we do need more dictatorial librarians. Those who don’t quail before self-absorbed moms who believe their children are beyond reproach. Those who don’t fear a lawsuit for simply admonishing another’s child. Those who assert their authority to maintain order. And those who at least make an attempt to instruct parents that a library is a bastion of quietude and should not be treated as yet another annex of Disney World.
Is it true blondes have more anchor jobs?
Megyn Kelly of Fox News
Seems like it. If you do a cursory scan of FOX (no pun intended) News, CNN and MSNBC, you might notice a lot of flaxen heads staring back at you. Blonde female anchors, analysts and reporters appear to be proliferating. And, far as I can tell, no one’s complaining. Certainly not me. These are intellgent, articulate and confident women. Who also happen to be beautiful. How does the deck get so stacked in one person’s favor? Do they also run the hundred in under twelve seconds? (All genes are not created equal.)
Probably the goddess of all womanly reportage is FOX anchor Megyn Kelly. She’s every guy’s dream college girlfriend: so wholesomely stunning, at times she can take your breath away quicker than a breaking news story. Male counterparts must rue her rapturous appeal. (I can just see Chris Wallace pursing his lips in disdain.) But mesmerized as I am by her looks, her smile, her batting and flirtatious lashes, I don’t find myself tuning in just to see her. Or any of her towheaded colleagues. I only catch snippets of them when channel jumping to get different idealogical takes on news stories.
But obviously some viewers are more smitten than I, else why would news producers be weighting their staff with platinum members of the distaff? (Even though, if you get to the root of the matter, the color of their tresses is sometimes not their God-given one.).
The question is, are they the best people for the job they perform? Or merely the best attractive people? That may be answered when age fades their luster and the lines of maturity set in. Which ones will hang on to become the seasoned and respected Andrea Mitchell, Candy Crowley or Katie Couric of tomorrow? I think the fair-haired Dana Bash of CNN, a damn good reporter, has a decent shot.
Meantime, we’ll just have to settle for taking our news in goggle-eyed admiration of the messenger.
Why is this picture of Mick Jagger here?
Mick Jagger at Altamont from the movie "Gimme Shelter"
The short answer is, it attracts hits. Not a lot of hits. But a few. And every hit counts when trying to amass an audience.
You see, in a former iteration of this blog I wrote a piece on Iraq that used Mick Jagger’s famous quote from the Stones’ Altamont concert depicted in the movie Gimme Shelter: “Who’s fighting and what for?” (Can’t you just hear him saying it in his cockney patois?) And I included with the post this picture. Well, due to the quirkiness of search engines, when people queried an image of Mick Jagger (whom my mother-in-law unwittingly used to refer to as Mick Jaguar) a link to this site often came up. Maybe it will again.
So if that’s how you arrived here, welcome. Hope this was the picture you were seeking. And that you’ll come back and visit from time to time for some insights into the more head-scratching aspects of human nature. (You can subscribe by clicking that big chicklet-like button above.)
And remember, it’s only rock ‘n roll.
Huh?
Our default expression?
Exactly my sentiment. If you often find the world difficult to fathom, you’re not alone. And it’s not the physical stuff—the blizzards, earthquakes, tsunamis, glacial melt, projected asteroid hits—that have us so flummoxed (although they contribute their fair share of angst). Nor is it the animals or plants, whose behavior, while sometimes unpredictable, is at least manageable.
It’s us. We the people. Human nature trumps Mother Nature for incredulity any day. Who can explain our insatiable appetite for accumulating money at the expense of personal relationships, knowing we’re going to die anyway? Why do “Ice” signs always depict icicles on them, like we don’t get it? And what makes us put sports and entertainment icons on pedestals, only to gleefully knock them off the moment they falter?
That’s what this blog is about. First to point out these bizarre traits of our species, which can be both fascinating and amusing. Then try to make some freaking sense out of them. All while being as honest as, well, humanly possible. That’s it. (Isn’t that enough?)
When I was younger, I would read novels for the thrills, adventure and suspense as an escape from the dullness of real life. Now I read them to bring some calm and order after listening to the latest newscast. The earth is in a flux. This is your guide.