My Afternoon at the Mall

I was at the mall the other day to take my computer to the Apple Store. My Macbook has been having problems, and I figured it was time to let the Geniuses handle it. I'm not being snide, here; that's what the employees at the Apple Store are called: geniuses. I had an appointment, and I was about twenty minutes early.

I parked as close as I could, which — as usual — was at the Belk store closest to the Apple Store. I successfully threaded the competing displays of Halloween and Christmas (Honestly, does this not make anyone else sick?) and made my way upstairs so I could go directly from the Belk just around the corner to the Apple Store.

As I walked through the mall, I noticed a big crowd of people downstairs from me. There was a lot of murmuring, squealing, and flash bulbs. But I didn't have time to loiter.

I made it to the Apple Store just in time for my appointment. I gave The Shiny (my MacBook) to the nice, bearded young man (Is there some rule that male Apple Geniuses all have to have beards?) named Paul. I explained what was going on with the computer and he said he would plug the diagnostic tool into it and let me know if it was something easy, like the graphics card or a bad USB port. Something fixable.

The Apple store was crawling alive with people. Must be something about the end of the month or back to school or something. He told me it would take about an hour if I wanted to wait. Well, of course I want to wait. I can't leave The Shiny overnight.

The withdrawal would be unbearable. :)

I couldn't stand being in the Apple store with all those people, so I wandered back down toward where there are some couches to sit and read on my phone.

I heard that crowd down below again, and figured, "Eh, what the hell. I have time to at least take a look."

There was a large crowd of mostly adults, but some older kids, and frequent flashes from cameras and squeals of delight. "Gotta be puppies or kittens or something," I murmured. "Maybe the ASPCA is sponsoring adoptions."

Then I saw the bright pink sign. A big cartoon close-up of a smiling, toothless baby, its blue eyes practically luminous. Underneath, it said, "PHOTOGRAPH WITH A BABY - $15"

"What the . . . ?" I edged a little closer to see what was going on.

There was a large, fenced-off enclosure. Inside there was a floor that looked like Pergo or linoleum of some kind. The floor was scattered with assorted toys, all brightly colored. Also inside the cage were a bunch of babies.

Yes. Naked babies of all races and both genders. They all looked to be of crawling age, although quite a few of them weren't crawling. Some of them were piled together, dozing, in a big pile of stuffed animals. Others were crawling lazily around on the floor. Adults wearing pink shirts were on their knees cooing to the babies, shaking toys at them and trying to attract their attention.

Dumbfounded, I pushed in a little closer, and got called a very unpleasant name by an older lady whom I apparently offended. I was just in time to see a woman with a couple of older teenagers point at a little Asian baby girl hesitantly crawling away from one of the pink-shirted adults with toys toward the pile of dozing babies.

A man standing in the gate gestured to the baby the woman had pointed at and raised his eyebrows. "That one?"

"Yes!" the woman exclaimed, bouncing on her toes. The man turned away and I heard her say to her two children, "Oh, isn't she just the most adorable little thing?" The boy rolled his eyes.

The man went over to the baby girl and unceremoniously picked her up. She started crying, but the guy held her under her arms, bouncing her up and down, and blowing in her face until she grimaced toothlessly.

"I don't want that one if she's going to be crying," said the woman with the two kids. She was frowning and both of her kids were starting to complain.

"Mom, what if she spits up?" one of them asked.

"Hush," she said. "These people know what they're doing, honey."

The man inside the cage must have overheard her. He smiled. "Don't worry, ma'am. I'm resetting her, now. She'll be ready for your picture."

I looked at the baby girl more closely. I could see her ribs, and it was clear from her pallor that she wasn't healthy. Snot ran out of her nose, and from the look of it, she was either drugged or so sleepy that her eyes were barely open, and her head lolled.

Meanwhile, other people were pointing at other babies. Some of them were waked from a sound sleep and, if they cried, given the same treatment as the little Asian girl. A couple were slapped on their bare buttocks or on the face to wake them up.

At one end of the cage was a mock-up of an idealized nursery. Rocking chair, toys, building blocks — it looked like a perfect baby's perfect room, right out of a movie set.

The woman and her two teenagers were led into that end of the cage and the teenage girl sat in the rocking chair, first.

"How do you want her?" asked the man, still holding the feebly protesting baby girl.

"Ew. I don't want her all naked. Can you put a dress on her, maybe? Or a bonnet? Her hair is ugly."

Her hair was, indeed, ugly. Matted to her skin and patchy.

I watched while the man expertly draped a too-large "dickie" of a bright pink, frilly dress around the squirming baby, and then tied a bonnet over her hair. It looked to me like he tied it too tight.

He roughly wiped the snot from the baby's face with a towel of questionable cleanliness and handed the baby to the girl, who held her awkwardly under the arms with both hands, a look of terror in her eyes.

The man stepped up and said, "No, like this." And he showed her how to hold the baby on her lap so that her face was toward the camera. "Do you want a bottle, or just go like this?"

"Like this," the girl said firmly.

The baby's head lolled and I could tell even from where I was that she was sleepy. The man grabbed her roughly and bounced her until she opened her eyes and blearily looked back at him. He then handed her back to the girl, arranged the dress and bonnet, and quickly stepped back to operate the camera.

Just a second before he snapped the photo, the teenager shrieked. "Ew! Oh, my God, mom! She peed on me!" The girl shoved the now-dripping baby away from her at arm's length.

The man sighed and came and took the crying baby. "Do you want me to get another one?" he asked.

The mother looked ready to spit nails. "No, we do not want another one!" She grabbed her daughter's hand and said, "Come on, Chelsea. Let's go get you cleaned up." She practically dragged the girl from the cage, followed by her younger brother.

The guy inside the cage ripped the dress dickie off the baby, pulled off the bonnet, and tossed the sodden pair into a bin. He handed the now wailing baby to another man, who held her up by one arm and sprayed her with a hose. I could smell the disinfectant from all the way across the cage. The baby was now wailing and crying loudly. I guess the water was cold.

I felt faint and ill. What the hell was going on, here? Was this even legal?

I elbowed my way back out of the crowd and worked my way around to the side where another employee of whatever this place was stood. He was wearing a pink shirt like all the others, complete with a grinning baby-head logo on the pocket.

"Excuse me," I said.

"You'll have to go to the end of the line, like everyone else, sir," he said without even looking up.

"No, I'm not in line. I just have a question."

He looked up at me, annoyance clear on his face. "Yeah?"

"Where are these children's mothers? I mean, are they — ?"

"It's all in the brochure." He shoved a glossy brochure at me. I backed out of the crowd and went to stand a few feet away near a support column and took a look at it.

"VAN DUREN FOSTER HOME" was emblazoned across the top in neon blue lettering. I quickly thumbed through it. Pictures of happy, grinning, fat babies being held and fed by what looked like older teens. Nothing like what was going on scant feet from me.

I started reading. They claimed to rescue homeless teens. They provide them sanctuary — a safe place to live, medical care, room, board, and clothing. Help them kick drug habits. Educate them. And any children born to them during their stay are taken to foster care, and also "displayed for public education and entertainment."

What?

So that's what this was. I wondered if the parents of these babies even knew what was happening to their children. I felt sick to my stomach. I ripped the brochure in two and looked for a trash can. How on earth can they legally keep this up? Why aren't there laws?

"Sir?" I turned around to face the voice as someone tapped me on the shoulder. An older woman smiled at me, crows feet around kind, brown eyes. "You look like you could use this." She held out a cup of water.

I took it. My hand was shaking. "Thanks," I said, then took a sip.

She held out a hand and I took it. "My name is Tricia Phillips. We're here protesting." We shook hands and she gestured toward a small group of about seven people standing over to one side, carrying signs. And being ignored.

She led me over to her group. They all welcomed me warmly, then showed me pictures they had of the Van Duren foster home. Teenagers living in barbaric conditions, not much better than packing crates. Barely big enough to move around in. No heat or air conditioning. Mud everywhere. Open latrines swarming with buzzing flies. It looked like a third-world refugee camp. No trees or any kind of shade. The teens' eyes looked dull and lifeless in the photos. Haunted.

"Those were taken about a week ago," Ms. Phillips explained. "A couple of former employees of Van Duren smuggled the pictures out to us."

As I flipped through the pictures, I noticed that most of the girls were pregnant. I commented on it.

"Yes, well . . . where do you think these babies come from?"

I felt sick again. "They're breeding them?"

She nodded, compassion in her eyes. "Some of these poor children are related, but Van Duren doesn't even care. They encourage them do whatever they want. We suspect they're drugged most of the time and aren't even aware of what they're doing."

"Holy shit," I said. "Isn't this illegal?"

She smiled sadly. "Well, of course it is. There are all kinds of laws, but they're seldom enforced."

I couldn't take my eyes off the pictures of the pregnant teenagers. So young. "What happens when, when . . . ?" I choked on the bile in my throat.

"Turned back out onto the streets. The infants used in these awful mall things end up in foster homes or wards of the state or worse. There are child pornography rings that pay good money for children as young as eighteen months."

---

I'm going to stop here. At what point did you figure out I was writing fiction? Are you appalled? Disgusted? Infuriated? Do you want to call me terrible things for being sick enough to come up with something this disgusting?

Because guess what? Take out the human babies and the homeless teens being raised as breeding stock and substitute tigers, and it's all true.

You read that right. All true.

There are places that set up in malls that allow the public to pay to have pictures taken with tiger cubs. Cubs that are very young and need proper nutrition, enough sleep, and whose immune systems aren't strong, yet.

These poor, innocent creatures are bred ruthlessly by people who claim to be "rescues" who operate "sanctuaries" for big cats. They claim to be working with conservation efforts, and that the only way to raise money for their good work is to take these cubs around for public display.

They claim that the cubs enjoy it. That blowing in their face calms them down. That holding them dangling from under their front arms and bouncing them up and down "resets" them. (What does that even mean?) That constantly being poked, prodded, handled, and grabbed by dozens of people, day in and day out for weeks at a time isn't harmful to them. That bright lights and flash bulbs aren't harmful to their sensitive eyes. They claim that they're well fed. That's it's 100% safe for humans and the cubs.

That the exhibitor is doing this to "teach people" not to have exotic animals as pets.

And they tell people that the cats will go to good homes when they get too big for petting.

Lies.

The reality is very different. They're kept in tiny cages, forced to breed constantly, and since white tigers are popular, they inbreed their stock to produce more of them. When they get too old, the cubs end up in roadside "zoos" where they are forced to lie on hot concrete in direct sun year round in a cage barely big enough to stand up or turn around in. Fed insufficiently and incorrectly. Given no shelter.

Often, they are killed for their fur and the body is cut up and sold illegally. There is good money to be made on the black market selling tiger parts, where they are prized for their supposedly magical properties. There are still countries in which the fur trade has no limits to the types of animals that can be used.

These cubs are torn from their mothers too early, causing distress to both the cubs and their mothers. They're not allowed to imprint naturally on their mothers, but instead imprint on their human captors. Babies of any species need lots of sleep, but these are not allowed to get enough. They are constantly poked and prodded to be kept awake. Tiger cubs want to explore instinctively. But when they try, they're restrained. They spend hours in small cages inside trucks being carted from place to place so people can have their pictures taken while petting or feeding them.

The cubs are constantly sick and often have diarrhea, which goes untreated, so the cubs are irritable and in pain from the constant wiping by their human captors. Those cute little "roars" are screams of pain.

I get apoplectic with rage over this. I've been trying to come up with a way to show how awful it is, and I finally came up with this. I hope it makes you think, next time you hear of one of these events. If you've ever been to one, stop. If you know people who do, show them this post. If a mall near you advertises such an event, contact the owners. Let them know what is really going on. Encourage them to pass.

And hopefully, everyone who reads this will follow this link to an article entitled "The Truth About Tiger Cub Petting Displays in Malls" from Big Cat Rescue, which is where I got most of the details for my little story above. No infringement is intended. Any mistakes in facts are mine, not theirs.

I'm not affiliated with BCR in any way other than that I contribute to them, and try to spread the word like I'm doing right now. I love big cats, and it makes me furious to hear how they're being mistreated. They're such beautiful, powerful, amazing animals, and yet . . . we treat them like garbage. But I believe it's mostly out of ignorance that we still permit this kind of thing to occur. We still want to believe the best of people, and when we're told that it's safe for the animals and that they're being taken care of, and all the money is for research and conservation, we want to believe it.

There is actually one part of the fictitious tale of human baby petting zoos that is complete fiction and is not based on the plight of these tiger cubs. There are few laws against this, or very few. There are laws, for instance, that regulate the ages at which these creatures can be exploited: 8 weeks to 12 weeks. Yet it is commonplace for these tiger petting zoos to ignore the regulations, because resources for enforcement are limited.

But there are bills in Congress to prevent any private ownership of several species of big cats. You can help get these laws passed. Contact your congressperson and representative.

Thank you for indulging me this far, and I do hope you'll keep this in mind for the future.

Thank you for reading.

Disclaimer: All names used are fictitious and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is unintentional. The names Belk^® and Apple^® are used to set up the framing story and are in no way affiliated or associated in any way with the kind of practice portrayed herein. As far as I know, there is no such place as Van Duren Foster Home, and the fictitious name was picked at random. If any such place exists, I apologize and will change the name. Big Cat Rescue does exist, and as stated, I am not affiliated with them in any way whatsoever. They had no prior knowledge of this post and were not consulted before publishing.

Facts

  by  Krista76 

I heard something disturbing on my way in to work this morning.

I listen to a podcast called A Way With Words. The hosts talk about language and take calls from listeners (it's also a weekly, syndicated radio show). One caller had a question regarding something the teacher taught his daughter.

He was taking his 8-year-old daughter to school, and she was reading the packaging of some product or other. She was going down the "page" saying "Fact. Fact. Fact. Fact."

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Practicing identifying facts."

"What do you mean?"

She replied that the teacher had shown them how to identify facts. And then she explained that the teacher had told her that "facts" are statements that could either be proven true or false. (They're doing a section in her third-grade class on fact vs. opinion.)

"Whoa!" he thought. "That isn't correct. Maybe she just misunderstood."

So he spoke with the teacher about it. The daughter hadn't misheard or misremembered. This public school teacher told this concerned father that the word 'fact' has changed its meaning so that it now means . . . a statement. Or perhaps an assertion. That could either be true or false. That the entire requirement of truth and provability is moot. The hosts disagreed, and so do I.

Every dictionary the hosts checked—and that I've checked—disagrees with this . . . monument to everything wrong with our education system. A "fact" must be true/exist. That's in the definition. If this idiot is teaching kids that a "fact" can be wrong, that explains so many, many things. (The media springs to mind.)

Has anyone else encountered this? Please say it's isolated . . .

Word Choices

I have this friend I'll call Jack. I've known Jack for more than twenty years. We're diametrically opposed on many topics. Over the years, we have developed a shorthand way of having entire hours of arguments—or "discussions," as we prefer to call them—without having to rehash the entire subject from beginning to end. We often know what the other is going to say before he says it.

It's a pretty comfortable place to be when you have a friend you can disagree with and have it not end the friendship, but actually make it stronger.

But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about one of Jack's favorite laments.

Jack is—or used to be—a bit of a news junkie. A Republican who has morphed into a Libertarian over the years I've known him. For the entire time I've known him, no matter his political affiliation, he's complained about how liberally slanted the news media is.

Now, I tend to disagree with him, but that's because I'm in many ways a bleeding heart liberal with some Libertarian overlays. I have often quipped that it's funny how reality is usually described by non-liberals as liberally slanted.

Oh, the humor.

Jack laments the lack of truly objective reporting. Unbiased, just-the-facts-ma'am, bare truth.

I've pointed out many times how this is simply not going to happen. We can't help but inject our writing and speech with words possessing connotations that indicate how we think about something.¹

Connotations

Many (most?) words have one or more denotative meanings. These are the dictionary meanings of the words, themselves. But a lot of words also carry connotative meanings, as well. These are meanings that aren't stated, but are implied by the words, usually in context.²

It's not just our opinions that come through in our word choices. Words carry other connoted meanings, as well. To give an easy example, let's say there was a fire in an apartment building in a certain part of town and you're listening to a local newscaster tell about it.

"Today, a fire broke out in an apartment building in—"

The next words he speaks to describe the part of town the apartment building was in are going to convey not only the strictly informational geographic area of town in which the fire happened, but it will carry with it a blortload of connotations. Everything has connotations.

Let's say the next words were "Little Five Points." Here in Atlanta, that will immediately conjure up an image of the "type of people"³ the listener would expect to be in an apartment building in that section of town. We would see their wardrobe, their living spaces, the types of cars they drive, and could make assumptions about their lifestyles . . . it's all there encapsulated in the phrase "Little Five Points."

Let's say the next word had been "Dunwoody." This would conjure up a completely different image of a completely different "type of people" one would expect to be involved. With a whole different set of wardrobe, car, lifestyle, and living space assumptions.

If you talk to an Atlantan for any length of time, you'll likely hear the phrases "inside the perimeter" or "outside the perimeter." Interstate 285 completely encircles the city of Atlanta and effectively separates "metro" Atlanta from "the suburbs." Inside versus outside. But there are other connotations of the words "inside" and "outside," aren't there? I'm an insider if I live inside. I'm in the real Atlanta. But outside, I'm just a suburbanite. I don't live in Atlanta. I live in one of those lesser places that only touch Atlanta proper. OR . . . Certain types of people live inside, and they can have it. I live outside where a better class of people lives. (Disclaimer: I am neither espousing nor endorsing either of these opinions, but pointing out that they exist, although not for everyone in either location.)

Think about your own city. What parts of town would conjure up similar images for you? What's your "artsy/bohemian" district? Where do your "rich people" congregate? What's considered "downtown" and where do the "suburbs" start? Do you have suburbs with nicknames that immediately colors what people think of it? We have Chamblee which some people call Chambodia because of the high concentration of Asians that live there. The nickname "Chambodia" carries a plethora of connotations. (Not to mention being pretty insensitive and racist. I use it to illustrate my point.)

So, right away, anything that comes after the phrase above would have connotations. We cannot escape it unless we are new to the area and don't know what is implied. But that's temporary at best.

Word Choices

One of my favorite "jokes" I've heard over the years was, I believe, from Saturday Night Live back in its heyday. You know, when it was funny.⁴ The fake newscast had a fake story that went like this.

Today in Singapore, two loaded 747s collided in midair, killing 573 people. But that's okay, because there were no Americans aboard.

They were lampooning a particular style of story I used to hear a lot, but can't say I've seen recently. News anchors would always have a story of a plane crash—or volcano eruption, train derailment, bus going over an embankment, earthquake, tsunami, etc.—and they would say something like, "two hundred seven people were killed. Eight of them were American citizens." The implication was that the only eight people who mattered were the eight Americans. In that case, it wasn't a connotation but a denotation: they came right out and just said it. Is that what they meant? Probably not. But it certainly stuck in my head, and it was prevalent enough that SNL lampooned it. And they stopped doing it, as far as I can tell.

But what about subtle word choices? That one had all the subtlety of . . . well, two planes colliding.

Bare facts: John Smith was found guilty of the rapes and murders of 17 young women over the course of 5 years, although he pleaded not-guilty during his trial. He is currently serving a life sentence, but his parole hearing is about to come up.

Reporter 1: "Some of you may remember this man, John Smith, who twelve years ago began a five-year reign of terror over the Atlanta community with the brutal rapes and murders of seventeen innocent victims, all young women. Channel 21 has an exclusive interview with him on the eve of his potential release onto an unsuspecting Atlanta."

Reporter 2: "Coming up, Channel 17 has an exclusive interview with this man, John Smith, who is currently serving a life sentence for the alleged rapes and murders of seventeen young women over a five-year period. His parole hearings are tomorrow, and we wanted to get his thoughts."

Each version gives the facts, but you may have noticed an ever-so-slight </sarcasm> bias in the first one. The reporter interjects opinion using words like 'reign of terror,' 'brutal,' and 'unsuspecting.' Also, by bringing up the word 'innocent' in relation to the victims, the implication of 'guilty' is laid out there for Mr. Smith. This reporter also does this by directly stating that he committed the acts, when in reality, he was only found guilty of having done so, but maintained his innocence. Those are the only "charged" phrases, but what phrases! With just a few well-placed phrases, the reporter has told us what we are supposed to think about this story. You would likely be more inclined to think John Smith guilty and hate him after listening to the first reporter. The second reporter doesn't do that, so we are free to think what we want to think. (Or are we?)

The first reporter also does something subtle with the opening statement, "Some of you may remember . . .". By saying that, the reporter is gently chastising anyone who could possibly forget what this man did to all those victims. S/he is also subtly giving you a pat on the back if you are one of the smart ones who remember. "Oh, yes, I do remember that despicable, low-life murderer!"

A lot of pundits and talking heads use these tactics. Watch Nancy Grace, Rachel Maddow, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, or Keith Olbermann for any length of time, and you'll see them manipulating how you think about the facts they're presenting using words both subtle and blatant. Hell, Limbaugh (and others) invents words. "Feminazis," anyone?

Okay, so those still weren't terribly subtle. How about something more subtle?

Here's a random headline I took straight from a news website on the day I happened to be typing this particular paragraph. Well, not really random. I carefully chose it from dozens because it can be used to illustrate my point. :) But by telling you it was random, I was leading you to believe that there might have been dozens to choose from, when in reality, I had to search very hard to find one I could play with.⁵

Dr. Oz Slammed by the FDA Over Apple Juice Arsenic Investigation

Now, let's rewrite that a few times to change your reaction without changing the information.

Dr. Oz Criticized by the FDA Over Apple Juice Arsenic Findings
Dr. Oz Chastised by the FDA Over Apple Juice Arsenic Allegations
Dr. Oz Scolded by the FDA Over Apple Juice Arsenic Claims

They all say basically the same thing, right? But each change in the two words I altered changes the tone of the headline. "Slammed" implies a hard punch to the face, whereas "Scolded" suggests them holding up one finger and shaking it while saying "Naughty, naughty!" In the same way, "Investigations" implies that there was foul play, whereas "claims" suggests that the whole thing was of no importance. To me, the "criticized" and "findings" one is the most neutral. What do you think?

When it Goes Awry

It used to amuse me greatly when I'd peruse⁶ my friends page on LiveJournal the day after a political speech aired the previous night. I would often read three posts back-to-back from different friends with different political affiliations. One would be praising what the politician said, another would be blasting the same speech, and a third would be somewhere in between. The funny thing to me was that each one would use the same quotes; they'd just interpret them through a different set of filters to glean completely different meanings. Words occasionally mean different things to different people, and there's not a thing you can do about it other than trying to explain your meaning, which can get tedious.

Of course, I had to mention my amusement on my own journal. It was just before the 2004 elections, and I opened this way.

I haven't watched any of the debates. I'll just get that out of the way up front. I'm not interested in blah-blah about how horrible a person this makes me, so keep it to yourselves.

That having been said, I've found it amusing to read other peoples' critiques of what went on during the debates. You know, who won them, how well each candidate came across, etc.

This angered one of my friends who read my tone as mocking. Which it may have been, at some level, but I certainly didn't consciously attempt to mock him or anyone else. It really did just amuse me that three people could hear the same speeches and get such different things from them. He reacted to my (perceived) snarky tone rather than the point I was trying to make. I communicated badly, because I allowed something else to show through (I'll explain what shortly). Here's what my friend said in response.

Ya know what?

No, you dont get to scold people who watched the debates, and pontificate about how stupid we all are, when you have no interest in the process. At least, not without some mention of how absurd this position is, in itself. How incredibly arrogant to pass judgement on people trying to see some good in the world, trying make the process work and talk about it.

I'll defend your right to say whatever you like, that's American, but that doesnt mean I agree with it. And I dont. They're completely different scenarios on dozens of points.

Laugh at someone else—someone who doesnt actually give a damn.

Did he have a point? Eh, I don't know. I can see a little 'you humans amuse me so very much' in my tone, but . . . well, humans do amuse me! I wasn't intentionally calling anyone stupid (I in fact never used the word 'stupid' at all). But he read something into my words. I was a little defensive with the 'I'm not interested in blah-blah' comment. (And if you read my first comment, you'll see the fledgling beginnings of this very post. :)

And looking back on the incident from 7 years later, I think that was partially because of Jack. :) Jack has been on me for decades because I have a high apathy quotient toward politics in general and elections in particular. I guess I just view the world more cynically than he does, but he berates me about not caring about the future of America, baseball, mom, apple pie, and Chevrolet (you should imagine Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" playing under this; I always do). I do care, of course. But it was the frustration of the argument I imagined in my head that Jack and I would have when we talked that I was responding to when I penned the "blah-blah" part. My friend who responded up there titled his reply "Blah-blah?" It was that choice of words that apparently got under his skin. My dismissal of his entire opinion summed up in only eight letters and a punctuation mark.⁷

The first time my friend Jack and I got into a discussion about anything remotely political, we'd been friends for . . . maybe a year or two. He called me one night and had me turn on the TV to see something he was watching. (This was in the days before IM. We used to have these things in our homes called "telephones" that were actually wired into the wall and you had to stay in one place while talking to someone. Some of you may have seen them in museums or perhaps on reruns of ancient television shows on Nickelodeon.)

Now, I stress here that he didn't give me any cues as to whether I was supposed to be amused, appalled, angered, or whatever by what I was about to see. Had I been in the same room with him, I might have been able to use his facial expression or body posture to figure it out, but with just the neutral words, I didn't know how he wanted me to take it. So, without any cues, I had only my own background as a filter.

It was Rush Limbaugh's show, back before he let his own unfiltered speech get him in trouble several times. This particular night, he was comparing some politician—I neither remember who nor do I care—to a gorilla. The gorilla clips were displayed in kind of a picture-in-picture manner that he used to use a lot. The gorilla clips were obnoxious. Aggressive, teeth bared, roaring, staring . . . the very epitome of a raving beast who is about to rip your head off.

Which is not what gorillas typically are. I responded in instant anger. "That idiot! Gorillas are nothing like that! He's portraying them as savage beasts when in reality they're gentle vegetarians!" (I probably didn't say it all grammatically correct like that, but dis my blog; I get to look better than I was. :)

I didn't care a whit what Limbaugh was saying about whomever he was lambasting at the moment. What disgusted me was his blatant, manipulative use of the images of gorillas behaving aggressively—which they only do when threatened or when trying to intimidate a rival male gorilla—and—I thought at the time—implying that all gorillas are like this all the time. Misleading his audience deliberately to make whatever point he was attempting to make.

I have hated Limbaugh's guts out since then, even though I occasionally find myself agreeing with certain of his opinions from time to time.⁸ And certainly not solely because of the gorilla incident. I find him reprehensible. But it occurs to me only now as I type this that Limbaugh was probably using the gorilla footage purposefully to mock the empty posturing of the politician he was making fun of. Gorillas tend to look big, threatening, and scary, but they often rush at an opponent as a feint, then stop and back off to do it all again. It's all intimidation and . . . well, posturing. (Probably) Exactly like the politician in question. And it was, in fact, probably a valid point. Hmm.

Anyway . . .

Jack didn't get my furious reaction. I honestly thought he'd be as appalled as I was. (Another post idea I've been playing with is how we all project ourselves onto others.) But he thought it was funny how Limbaugh was making fun of whatever Democrat he was making fun of that night. He wanted to share the amusement with me. My extremely angry reaction surprised him.

This small incident colored my view of Jack for a while. He (unwittingly) had to overcome my initial political impression of him that was formed in the 30-second clip he had me watch. Without even realizing I was doing it, every time I heard Jack express his political opinions, I'd push back against whatever Jack said, even if I sort of agreed with him. I called it "playing devil's advocate" for a long time.

There is no such thing as an unbiased story, be it fiction or nonfiction. Our subtle word choices—or not so subtle—betray our opinions no matter how hard we might try not to. And sometimes, when those words are not there, you're not giving your reader/listener enough information to get more than just the bare facts, if you want to communicate more.

Convincing Speech

A couple of years ago, Bad Astronomer Dr. Phil Plait was the keynote speaker at The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. His speech caused quite a stir. It was entitled, "Don't Be a Dick."

His message was simple: if you want to convince people that they are wrong and you are right—or at least have a reasonable position—the way to do that should never include calling them stupid or belittling their intelligence.

Yes, that simple. But it caused a splash in the skeptical community. Plait called out several big-name skeptics by name. Dawkins, Myers, Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. Their styles are/were in-your-face and confrontational. Dawkins has publicly stated that he considers bringing a child up in the religion of the parents a form of child abuse. They call a spade a spade—or perhaps it's better to say that they call a perceived idiot an idiot—when they see one.

How many times in your life has someone gotten in your face and yelled at you that you're an idiot and changed your opinion? Go on, try to remember. Every day, right?

Conclusion

I started writing this post back in May of 2011. It has taken me the better part of nine months to get it to the point where I will consider posting it. Why? Because I kept thinking of one more point. I kept finding places where I either unwittingly used a loaded word or phrase or could purposefully use one to illustrate a point.

Is this post perfect? No. Bias abounds. Because I believe it is very nearly impossible to write without bias and still have what you're writing mean anything to anyone.

And I'm still likely to piss someone off with something I've said. Both Jack and the friend who took me to task over my "blah-blah" wording are friends of mine on Facebook, where this post will show up. Will they see it and recognize themselves? Probably. I can only hope they realize I'm not trying to belittle or scold them with this post, but to point out my own mistakes. In Jack's case, he was also the inspiration to write this rant. :)

My hope in posting this—for the few people who will read a 4100-word rant—is that you—and I—will think about our word choices more when we’re trying to write something persuasive. Or critical. And when reading other people’s opinions, try to overlook the manipulative language that they either accidentally let creep in or purposefully chose and think about our responses. Are they emotional or intellectual? Are we basing our response on the facts or the wording used to convey them? Are our words going to be received the way we intend for them to? Will the way we word our message obscure or overshadow our intended message?

---

1. Exercise: How did my use of the word 'simply' affect how you feel about what I said? What if I'd said "likely" or "probably"? Or how about "demonstrably" or left it out altogether? I said that I've pointed out "many times," which probably made what I said have a kind of eye-rolling sound, as though it's something I wish we could move past. What if I'd chosen to say that I've pointed it out "over and over and over" or just left it out? What impression would you get from the same basic sentence, imparting the same information, but with slightly different word choices with slightly different connotations? Speaking of connotations . . .
2. Or sometimes by the means in which the words are delivered. Exercise: When you're reading a blog post, do you remember that the presence of the post on someone's blog connotes that everything said is in that blogger's opinion? I think sometimes—all too often, perhaps—we all forget this, including those of us who write the blogs. :)
3. Why did I put that in quotes?
4. How many of you think I'm talking about the 70s? 80s? 90s? I thought I was conveying a specific time period; you may have thought the same thing, but we could be thinking of completely different decades. Have we communicated, even though I gave you just the facts as I see them?
5. Now that you know it wasn't random, how did your feelings toward the headline I'm about to present change, even before you see it?
6. Exercise: What does 'peruse' imply for you? If you're a native speaker of American English, probably something the word doesn't mean. I chose it on purpose to convey both meanings: the connotative one and the denotative one. "Peruse" means to examine or consider with attention and in detail, but in everyday usage, it has come to imply something much more casual, like "scan" or "skim." So I've just told everyone reading this the same exact thing, but a percentage of you interpreted it denotatively and a percentage went with the connotative meaning. And they're polar opposites. Which did I really mean? Have we communicated effectively?
7. Exercise: Do you see that word 'just' in the third sentence in this paragraph? "Just" used in this manner trivializes—with one word—someone else's opinion. "Oh, he's just a liberal. [unspoken but implied: . . . therefore, his opinion doesn't matter.]" We hear it all the time in software development: "Can you just add another button to the app that [does x]?" "Just" belittles the amount of work it takes to do that. I happened to notice my use of it in one of the dozens of times I edited this post before posting it . . . and thought I'd leave it there to make a point. And while I'm making that point, the word 'berates' is a little belittling, too, now that I think about it.
8. Sheesh. Did you see how I used the words "occasionally" and "find myself" and "certain" and "from time to time" to push myself as far back as humanly possible from a position of actually agreeing with Limbaugh? And then I used "actually" the second time to further distance myself. Clearly, I don't like Limbaugh, and it is distasteful for me to "be forced to" agree with him. Did you get that loud and clear, or should I state it more openly? :)

NO! I DON'T LIKE IT!

"Sparkling" © 2011 by Jason A. Samfield

I saw a comment somewhere--maybe it was on Twitter or maybe it was on Facebook; I honestly don't remember--that said, essentially, this: I don't have to actually read Twilight to know how stupid and bad it is, all I have to do is read all the stuff on the Internet about how stupid and bad it is to know that it's stupid and bad. And the commenter then went on to call the non-teenage, adult women who read and enjoy the Twilight books names, insult their intelligence, and make rude assumptions about their hygiene, living conditions, etc.

And I thought, "Why are people so vitriolic over a silly book?"

Seriously, folks. Why? Don't get me wrong: I live for the day when people all over the Internet so love/hate something I wrote that they're willing to yell and scream and call total strangers names. I'd eat that with a spoon.

I've been known to jump on the "VAMPIRES DO NOT SPARKLE!" bandwagon more than once, and frankly without ever having stopped to consider why it matters whether vampires--a mythical creature--do or don't sparkle in sunlight, or burst into flames (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Let the Right One In, others). Or disintegrate (Fright Night, 'Salem's Lot, others). Or cause all the "younger" vampires they "turned" to spontaneously combust (Queen of the Damned). (Question: When Anne Rice wrote this in Queen of the Damned, did people vilify her like they are vilifying Stephanie Myer?)

I think we need to take a moment. Sit back. Chill. Take a deeeeeep breath.

Back in middle school, a new girl joined my class. I'll call her Mary. She was that most dreaded of all things in the history of teenage ever: The Outsider. She hadn't grown up with the rest of us. She hadn't been there. She didn't know us. She didn't act right. I remember hearing two other girls talking one day and the conversation went something like this:

Susan: Ugh! Did you see Mary in the bathroom?

Jessica: No, why?

Susan: She's in there, sitting on the toilet, and eating an apple.

Jessica: Gross!

Susan: I know! I could never do something like that. That's just disgusting!

I have no idea why the conversation (the actual words faded, but the gist of it stayed with me) has stuck with me for so long other than that it illustrates something that I keep coming back to over and over and over again: people expect other people to think exactly like they think. And if they don't, it's inconceivable that there might be a reason for it, or that they might just have a different way of looking at things. It's just one of those little things everyone does, and maybe never thinks about.

Example: how many times have you heard a devoutly religious person say, "I don't see how people can be atheists! What's to stop them from just going out and raping and murdering and stealing? They can't be moral!"

It's the apple argument all over again. "If I could never conceive of doing something, clearly anyone who can conceive of doing it--much less actually do it--must be just wrong on some fundamental level." (One does wonder sometimes if the people saying these things ever stop to think what it says about what they, themselves, would do given the opportunity.)

I admit to the same degree of this as each of you reading it. I look at people with piercings through parts of their body that I don't even want to think about being near sharp objects, and people are getting them pierced and tattooed and scarred... And I admit, a too-great portion of me tends to hold onto the "there's something wrong with someone who would do that" mentality. Sorry, friends of mine who are tattooed and/or pierced in "those places," but there it is. :)

There are some scathing reviews of Twilight out there on the Internet. One has only to search Google to find more words about the book than there are words in the book.

It seems like an inordinate number of them are negative, and written by people who proudly boast that they've never read the book. Never want to read it. Because it's so obviously awful and bad and bad and wrong and wrong and ick-ick-ptui!

But I wonder why. Why do people expend so much energy actively hating something that they admit they're never going to read?

I'm reminded of numerous toddlers I've observed over the years. Picture it: A family sitting in a restaurant, trying to have an enjoyable night out. They have, of course, brought their toddler with them because babysitters went extinct sometime in the mid-80s. (Oh, do not even get me started.)

The waiter comes and the parents order for themselves and their child. Flash forward 20 minutes. The food arrives. The food is placed before the toddler and s/he screams (at the top of its considerable lungs) "NO! I DON'T LIKE IT!"

And what do parents literally around the whole damned world say at this point, in whatever language they speak? That's right: "How do you know you don't like it if you never tried it?"

How, indeed?

I have a housemate, now. A long-time friend who is getting a divorce (amicable) and needed a place to stay while she rebuilds her life in a new city. She's getting a place to stay, and I'm getting someone to talk to and she happens to be a very good cook. I've lost 25 lbs since she moved in. Because I eat at home and I eat less. But I digress.

This friend whom I'll call Velda (because that's one of her online aliases) is very into the Twilight saga. Writes and reads fanfic, has all the books, has seen all the movies, etc.

I never realized just how pervasive the "Twilight hate" is out there until I became aware of it through her. I'd go with her to friends' houses and the topic would come up and literally everyone in the room—none of whom have read a single word of the book—would start trashing it and all people who read it. I introduced her into one of my writing groups, and basically the same thing happened.

I immediately rethought all the times I've said "VAMPIRES DO NOT SPARKLE!" and made derisive remarks about the books, having never read a single word, myself.

So I asked Velda to loan me the first book, Twilight. I started reading it, expecting to just hate it.

Do I love it? No. Am I going to become a total Stephanie Myer fanboy? No. I'm about ten chapters in, and although it is definitely not my style (I've never been a girl, and while I have been a teenager, I was not a teenage girl, :), it does draw you in. It does read a bit like a Mary Sue. But if you just read for enjoyment and not to analyze, I can understand why so many people are so drawn to the books. The main character thinks she's ugly and clumsy, but apparently she has something that makes five very different boys fall head over heels for her, two of whom are a vampire and a werewolf. And who doesn't want to imagine desirable members of their preferred gender falling all over themselves to impress you? (People who read Playboy/Playgirl for the articles, I'm sure.)

And there are certain problems with the narration as well that I won't go into. Suffice to say that while I don't hate the book, I don't love it, either. I am finding it entertaining. I do intend to read it all the way through if for no other reason than to have a common ground to at least discuss the book's strong points and shortcomings with others who have read it.

So how 'bout we make a deal? Instead of saying, "That sucks!" if you haven't ever tried it, why not try it first? Then, if it doesn't appeal to you, you can at least say, "Yeah, I read that, but it wasn't to my taste. To each their own," instead of looking like a toddler yelling, "NO! I DON'T LIKE IT!"

Vaccines and Autism: A Rational Discussion

As a non-parent, I can't say that I know the helpless feeling of watching a child suffer with some horrible disease like measels or polio or rotavirus. Nor do I know the anguish of having a child with autism. My heart goes out to those families.

And I'm sure it must be powerfully convincing evidence that something must be wrong with vaccinations when these parents take their children to the doctor to be vaccinated, and soon after that, they are diagnosed with autism.

It is entirely rational to look for a link between the two. And it's understandable that parents want something to point to and say "This caused the horrible thing that happened to my child."

However, every study has consistently shown that there is no causal relationship between vaccinations and autism. None. But both sides are yelling and calling the other side stupid and often refusing to sit down and just talk.

Scientists have listened to parents' concerns. In fact, they spent millions of dollars doing study after study after study looking for some causal relationship, just in case there was something there to be found. It's just that scientist-types find it so very difficult to talk to people instead of over their heads, so their calm message of "there's no way vaccines cause autism" fall on deaf ears when emotional parents know what they saw.

Enter Dr. Ginger Campbell. She has a podcast called Books and Ideas. This month's episode features an interview with Dr. Paul A. Offit, author of "Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure." Dr. Campbell interviews him about the issues surrounding this "controversy." You'll learn that eating tuna will put more mercury in your system than a vaccine, even before they removed the thimerosal. You'll learn why mercury-bearing thimerosal was removed from vaccines in the early 2000's, and why it was there in the first place. But mostly, you'll learn how very dangerous it is for children today to remain unvaccinated.

If you have any curiosity about the issue or just wonder what all the brouhaha is about, I urge you to listen to this episode with an open mind.

Please. It's just one hour out of your busy schedule. You'll probably learn something. I know I did.

Just click on the title of this post and it'll take you to the podcast, and you can listen to it right there at the website.

Hard Truths

I had two very uncomfortable conversations today with close friends. On the one hand, it's good to have friends who feel comfortable enough with you that they can look you in the eyes (figuratively) and tell you very uncomfortable truths about yourself. On the other hand, it's more than a little scary.

Last month, I had a job interview. I was under the distinct impression that it went well. They liked me (I was told), I liked them, I had two people at the company pushing for me to get hired, I had an ex employee of the same company also sending emails on my behalf...I was all but a shoe-in. After the interview, I was told that I was the strongest candidate they'd met, that my personality meshed with the team better than anyone they'd met, and that I'd hear from them in a day or two. I took myself out to a nice dinner to celebrate an interview well done.

Except...they apparently didn't like me; they just said that. In actuality, they thought I interviewed badly, was "tentative," and didn't know nearly enough to be considered for the position for which I interviewed. One of the interviewers told one of my friends that he couldn't recommend me because, based on the interview, he couldn't tell how much "hand-holding" I'd need.

They continued to interview, and I was told—again, through these three friends—that there was almost no chance they'd find someone at the level they were looking for, and that I was all but a shoe-in for the "lower" position one step down on the pay scale, for which I was definitely the strongest candidate they'd seen, blah blah blah. They'd open up that position if they didn't find someone that was a very good fit for the other one. The one I interviewed for. I sent them a "Thanks, please keep me in mind" email with a salary requirement that I know for a fact (because of the aforementioned three friends) is near the high end of the salary range for that position, but since I am "the strongest candidate they've seen," I figured it made sense.

Well, it seems they did find someone for the higher position. When I was informed today that they'd offered this other guy the position, I was frustrated and griped to my friends who were online.

Who let me have it between the eyes, figuratively speaking.

It seems that I don't have confidence during an interview. It seems that I'm my own worst enemy. It seems that the only jobs I've gotten since the very first one were because someone at the company already knew me and could get them to see past my horrid interview to the good developer that I am. To "give me a chance," as it were. It seems that the job I had two jobs ago had the exact same reservations this new place does, but my friend—who worked there at the time—had to "lean on them" to get them to hire me over their objections.

So from one friend—and he is a very good friend, indeed—I learned today that I'm basically unhirable because I come across as unskilled and tentative during job interviews, and this causes them to wonder if I actually know what I'm doing. If it hadn't been for him and another friend or two, I would be unemployed and living in my mother's basement, or still working for the soul-sucking void where I worked for nine years.

Swell.

I have a computer science degree and 20 years of experience in programming. Dammit, I know how to program! The language matters not to me; it's all learning syntax at this point. My skills are in problem solving: getting the computer to do what you tell me you want it to do. Let me work out the details.

The guy this company made the offer to has a PhD in Mathematics.

While I know that this doesn't mean he knows nothing about computers and programming, it makes me question why I spent four years in college getting what amounts to a useless degree if basically anyone who just has better interview skills can end up getting jobs I know I'm qualified to do. But apparently can't convince others I'm qualified to do. At least if I'd gotten a degree in something else, I'd have something else to fall back on, n'est-ce pas?

So I'm doing something wrong. But how do you get feedback on something like that? You can't call up an employer with whom you had an interview but didn't get the job and say, "Excuse me, but would you be kind enough to point out some of the mistakes I made during the interview so that I'm better able to convince the next company to hire me?"

It just doesn't work that way.

Except this time, it does. One of my friends inside the company was at my interview, strictly as an observer. She was under direct orders not to say a word because her boss knows we're friends and he didn't want her to influence me in any way.

So as painful as it may be to hear that my last three jobs have all been because I was hired in spite of my interview instead of because of them, at least I can now get some constructive feedback.

But that was only the feedback from one friend. I said there were two.

I was griping about the same thing to the second one and she started asking me questions about why I was angry. I saw immediately what she was doing. I said to her, "I reserve the right to be angry and not have to explain it."

She was leading me down the path to the same conclusion: that if I didn't get the job, it wasn't because of anything they did; it was my own fault.

So, yeah. "Happy Monday! Here's your world, which I've conveniently put into a snowglobe. Now I'll just...flip it upside down a few times so it looks pretty and snows! Hey, why are you pale?"