A Modest Apology

Three suggestions for kinder, gentler, more accurate social media posts

Wise words from a man who never said them.

Did you know James Franco is dead? Or that Idaho Governor Butch Otter thinks poor people are genetically inferior? Or that British author Jonathan Swift thinks the solution to world hunger is to eat babies? None of these stories is true, but the first two fake articles from a satirical content producer called City World News made the Internet rounds in the past few weeks and baited more than a few readers. I was one of them. I made the very public and easily avoidable mistake of believing (and worse, tweeting) the story about Governor Otter.

Satire has a long and colorful history, one that has been particularly prominent in the discussion of the tragic terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo. While hardly anyone would defend shooting cartoonists, for a surprising number of people, the answer to the question, “Can’t you take a joke?” seems to be “no.” In the case of Governor Otter, I didn’t see the satire, perhaps because I spend a significant portion of my time trying to defend the rights of people that society just doesn’t care about. Many of the real news stories that cross my Twitter feed every day—people with mental illness shot and killed by police, or dying in solitary confinement, or being refused treatment in emergency rooms, or facing the death penalty for actions that were a result of their illness—are true.

Anyway, I screwed up. It was mea culpa, and a few of my friends very kindly pointed out my mistake. But one friend was a little less kind. She wrote: “People who blindly promote satire as truth risk diminishing their own validity.” 

At first, I thought her comment was a little harsh. I mean, I work full time, take care of four kids, and in my so-called “spare” time, I’m buried in dissertation research. You know, too busy to check my sources, right?

Wrong. My friend was right. And the thing is, validity and credibility really matter to me. So here are three suggestions I’ve come up with for myself to ensure that going forward, I tweet more responsibly.

1. Don’t send late night tweets. When I read the Otter story, it was at the end of a long day. Work was intense. The kids were fun—but exhausting. It’s entirely possible that I was unwinding with a glass of cabernet when I read the outrageous “article” I retweeted without checking my source. I should have turned the phone off when I got home and enjoyed a good book instead. Lesson learned: No more late night tweets.
2. Always check your sources. As Abraham Lincoln famously did not say, “The problem with Internet quotes is that you can’t always depend on their accuracy.” www.snopes.com is my favorite source for fact-checking urban legends. Lesson learned: It takes ten seconds to check a story on Snopes. But if you tweet something that isn’t true, you may look like a fool on the Internet forever.
3. Be charitable in correcting people who tweet inaccurate information. The challenge with information these days is that it’s moving so fast. My friend’s comment struck me as harsh—but it reminded me that I’ve made similar “You really should have checked your sources” comments in the past on other friends’ posts.  Lesson learned: You don’t always have to be right. Sometimes it’s okay to be kind—to yourself and to others.

We all make mistakes. And though I regret my inaccurate tweet, I don’t regret standing up for the rights of people who are treated unfairly. I’ll continue to tweet about social justice, while following my own advice about slowing down and checking my sources—and hopefully my followers will not feel that my validity and credibility are too tarnished by one mistake. 

(And with respect to Governor Otter and City World News, props to the person who got me to tweet a false story that points at a larger uglier truth! Jonathan Swift would be proud!).

The Answer

What do you get when you multiply six times nine?

May 11, 2001, the day Douglas Adams died

When I was 12 years old, a Mormon missionary gave me a book that would change my life forever. No, I’m not talking about The Book of Mormon; I’m talking about Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Thanks to this book, I always travel with a towel. I generally don’t panic. And I know that it’s okay that I can never quite get the hang of Thursdays (I really can’t).

I just turned 42 (thank you for asking!), and already I have a feeling it’s going to be a bang-up year. For those of you who haven’t read Adams’s four-book trilogy, 42 is The Answer to the Ultimate Question, the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. This is my year to be the Answer.

Only it turns out that no one really knows what that pesky question is.

And that’s okay. I don’t know what the question is either, and I don’t want to know. Who am I, why am I here, and where am I going? Not particularly interesting to me anymore. More interesting: where shall we hike? What shall we drink? And where shall we go for lunch?

The day after my birthday, The New Yorker published Andrew Solomon’s intense, compassionate interview with Peter Lanza, Adam Lanza’s father. In light of my viral December 14, 2012 blog post, Time.com asked me to write a response. It seemed like all the major news outlets focused on a few sensational quotes (shocking!), which I feel were taken out of context. Take Yahoo News, for example: "Conn. shooter's dad: 'You can't get any more evil." 

I focused instead on Peter Lanza’s inability to find answers, on how a “normal weird kid” who was loved by both parents became a killer. Because that’s what life is like when you have a child with mental illness. There are no easy answers.

This is the year I’m finally starting to feel comfortable with my ambiguities, in my 15-pounds-too-heavy body. My children aren’t little anymore. We’ve left Thomas the Tank Engine and Dora the Explorer behind, trading them for Sherlock, Dr. Who, and Battlestar Galactica. We still like the Lego movie, but in that “ironic/cool we are way too old for it” sort of way.

This is the year I’m finally not afraid to say what I think. Guns on Idaho college campuses? It’s an expensive, moronic example of unwarranted government intrusion. Gay marriage? Though I pride myself on trying to see all sides of an issue, I really cannot understand a single argument against it. Mental illness? Sometimes we have to talk about violence, even when we don’t want to.

Douglas Adams died in 2001 at the age of 49 while working out in a Santa Barbara gym. The day he died, I took my two boys, then ages two and four, to the Santa Barbara zoo where I took the picture above.  That picture, my boy and a gorilla, still brings me to tears. I don’t know what it means, or what questions it answers. But I do know that I never want to feel like Peter Lanza did. I never want to wish my children had never been born. I never want these pictures to disappear, or this narrative we've shared so far to lose its meaning.

For a writer, 42 is young. When I was 22, I thought I was a great writer, but what can a 22 year old know? The truth is that I know so much less now, but I am so much more compassionate and accepting. So if you need a towel, let me know. Mine’s big enough for two.

Lent by Proxy

What if I want to give up everybody else’s annoying habits for Lent?

‘Tis the season when I start thinking about what Father Len likes to call “weeding the garden.” Yes, it’s officially the Lenten Season, and as a relatively new Catholic, I still look forward to these 40 days of fish on Fridays, culminating in a glorious celebration of renewal and rebirth that is Easter. Like a lot of my Facebook friends, I’ve spent the past few weeks thinking about what to give up for Lent, with the full knowledge that whatever I choose may end up leaving my life permanently, and that might be a good thing.

Some of my friends are giving up Facebook. Not me. I don’t need that kind of personal growth (though I think I should negotiate full credit with God for all 40 days if I agree to give up my smartphone for a weekend).  

There’s the obvious stuff: sugar/wine/coffee/refined carbohydrates or whatever else is keeping a few extra pounds on my waistline while also greasing the wheels of my incredibly “intense” (my fiance’s carefully thought out word choice, not mine) lifestyle.  If I take the results of this Buzzfeed quiz as valid, I should give up caffeine. Really? I’m a mother of four children, in graduate school, working full time, and on the planning committee for Idaho’s Children’s Mental Health Week in May. I think there’s a scripture somewhere, probably the Book of Esther, that says, “Thou shalt not give up caffeine for Lent, lest thou drive thy coworkers crazy.”

In fact, I’m going with Father Len on this one. In one of my favorite homilies of all time, he said not to give up chocolate or wine or things that make you happy, because that’s not what Lent is about. Lent is actually a celebration. We are celebrating the death of our sins, the weeding of the soul’s garden, a new simplicity in our relationship with ourselves and with God.

When my kids asked me about what I planned to give up for Lent, I said, “I’m giving up your Xbox. I’ve decided on Lent by proxy.” Hey, I was raised as a Mormon, and we used to baptize people who were dead—why not outsource Lent?

This year, I can think of plenty of things other people ought to give up, starting with fear, hate, and bigotry that has characterized this year’s session of the Idaho Legislature.

But that’s not the point. Neither is telling everybody what you’re giving up. The point is the journey. The point is simplicity, reflexivity, self-awareness.

In that spirit, I recall some of the more meaningful Lenten journeys I have taken. One year I decided to give up dating, after a string of unhappy and unfulfilling relationships with men who could definitely be described as invasive species. Three years later, I looked at a kind, joy-filled friend and realized I was hopefully (not hopelessly) in love. And now we are planning a wedding. If by planning, you mean, which lake should we hike into?

I will freely admit that I am kind of God-challenged, meaning I just can’t quite buy in to the idea of a big man in the sky telling me what to do. But I can totally understand the statement, “God is love.” If God is love, then Lent is an act of love, of self-abnegation, not glorification. I’m not going to give up caffeine. I’m not going to give up my kids’ Xbox. I’m going to pull some weeds, to work on things I need to work on. And what those things are is none of your business. In the words of Voltaire, "Let us cultivate our gardens."