PLEASE DON'T SAY SHUT THE FUCK UP

I’ve spent an unholy amount of time in Facebook posting groups lately. 

I’m not inclined today to get into a lot of specific detail about what happens in these groups, because I’m not trying to shame them. But let me provide an overview. 

  Many groups operate within a robust and complicated set of rules. A common phrase you see in what might be generically described as the “safe space” world is “don’t be an asshole.” 

  This, of course, sounds entirely reasonable. How could anyone have a problem with that dictum, unless they’re an asshole? 

  “Being an asshole” is generally shorthand for using traditional bullying techniques such as name calling, resorting to crass ad hominem arguments, and the like. In short, attacking another group member in a personal way rather than discussing their position or statements on the merits. So far, I’m on board. 

  As with all utopias, though, there’s the danger of being distracted by your own Shangri-La righteousness. I’ve seen people gang up on rule-breakers, group-shaming them, and while it may feel like justice to the folks doing the ganging, to an outsider it looks ugly. I’ve never seen anyone banned from a group or even questioned for talking to a rule breaker this way. It amounts to a rule that you can break the rules, as long as your target is a rule breaker. 

  I’ve seen a group ban the use of the term “politically correct,” following an odd period where an argument about opera turned nasty. I should clarify that it was nasty in a genteel manner, which means the name calling was more Sesame Street than 42nd Street, and the aggrieved tone indignant, in the manner of wealthy philanthropists, or society grande dames in a Three Stooges short.

TEACHABLE MOMENT

This dialogue should be considered verbatim, although I don’t have a recording to back it up.


Son: At indoor recess, we were playing "Silent Speedball." I told the ref that (name withheld) cheated by using two hands. So, then I was out.
Dad. For talking?
Son: Yes.
Dad. What did you learn from this?
Son: People are idiots.

HAPPY ENDING

I know how much you all enjoy kerfuffles, fooferaws, and imbroglios. Or is it imbroglia? 

  Here’s a report from the front, in the aftermath of a recent fracas I attended. (So recent, in fact, that my ears are still ringing and my hand stamp hasn’t worn off yet.) 

  After joining a lot of what are called “Leftbook” groups, which are groups where the rules for posting are longer than the Apple agreements we all sign without reading, and choked with baffling jargon that everyone else but me seems to speak fluently, I figured I’d join some fun ones. 

  With a breezy optimism worthy of General Custer, I joined a few classical music groups. “This will be a nice respite from my normal life, where I’m reluctant to even mention my affection for Schoenberg, Cage, and other composers. I can’t wait to dive into the sophisticated threads that await me, in the magical land where philistines and provincials don’t care to go.” I actually said these things out loud, my eyes wet with unshed tears. Of joy. In case that wasn’t clear. 

  It went south almost immediately. A professor of philosophy, or physics, or one of the other academic areas that qualify you to lecture musicians, was gettin’ biz-zay explaining to the mob how science had proven that atonal music is bad. 

  I gave him my two cents (and when I say two cents, I’m thinking of the coins of ancient Sparta, which weighed so much that even the burliest citizens were unable to lift them. This was a culture where tipping was often deadly, and scratch-off lottery tickets were a three-man operation). He didn’t respond, and I moved on in search of additional jollity.  

  Things seemed to die down, after that, as they did for Captain Ahab between Moby Dick sightings. 

HOT PLATE! SWEEPS WEEK EPISODE-- DEATH STAR DAYCARE, FUZZTONE, TONTO-CON, THE TOT SPOT, AND MEMORIES OF HIGH SCHOOL IN THE REAGAN ERA

ATTENTION SLOW READERS-- STAR WARS CONTENT INCLUDED! 

After a long hiatus (a word that always makes me think of hernias), Hot Plate! The 120 Minute Radio Hour is back with its best episode yet. 

  The Sweeps Week Episode is packed with blue ribbon content, which will lay waste to the previously high standard we’ve established while previously high. 

  The centerpiece of the episode, functioning in the manner of a giant ice sculpture at a gathering of poobahs and muck-a-mucks, is my special guest Yael Ksander. Yael is known for her years as a host and interviewer on above ground radio, where her combination of erudition and effervescence (I think those are the words she insisted I use) has been a feather in the cap of one of the few states whose name begins with the letter I. 

  A little-known curriculum vitum of hers (I suspect she doesn’t even put it on her resume) is that she and I were classmates when we were young. We talked about many disparate things in our rambling discussion, but the excerpts of that talk the Hot Plate team culled for Sweeps Week mostly deal with our recollections of high school during the Reagan era. Our tete-a-tete covering many touchstones of a quainter far-off time turned into an impressionistic meditation on the mystery of human memory. (I say that to distinguish it from canine memory, fish memory, and so forth.) 

  Travel with us back through the mists to a world of overhead projectors and ditto machines, a world where students were distracted by handwritten notes rather than consumer electronics, and presidential prevarication was genteel and involved complete sentences.