Gossip, truth, and spin

Yes, I'm supposed to be working this weekend on my book project, but I am so distracted by Sarah Palin that I can't concentrate. Last-ditch attempt to grab female Clinton supporters? Well-timed splash to distract from the fact that McCain just turned 72? Strategic move to suck the momentum away from the DNC and all the speech analysis clogging up the media and internet? But Palin herself is pretty good news fodder, not just because of these political motivations for thrusting her into the spotlight. A young, powerful working mom in line to be one short step from the presidency? Definitely caught my attention.

There's an interesting discussion going on at urbanMamas right now about Palin going back to work three days after delivering her baby. Personally, I didn't have the brain power to go back to work and edit a magazine four months after having a baby, a failing I chalked up to (1) sleep deprivation, (2) lapsing into my default state of perpetual laziness, and (3) Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls marathons on TV. (#3 especially was an IQ suck.) Not to mention, I had no work clothes that fit me postpartum, mainly because I'd trashed or hidden all the maternity clothes I owned and borrowed on one hormone-induced morning about eight weeks in when cabin fever a la Jack Nicholson had set in.

Which brings me to the most gossipy, unfounded, but still intriguing part of the Palin buzz on the internet today: the accusation that Palin did not actually have a fifth child earlier this year, because the child was born to Palin's teenage daughter instead. In the pictures I found online, she does look pretty good at seven months pregnant and again a few days postpartum--no maternity clothes for her to trash and hide!

No reputable news outlet is picking up this story, and ultimately, the truth doesn't matter much because this sort of Puritanical "save the family name" thing happens all the time (in my extended family, even, more than once). But to some people it matters very much because if the rumors are true, she is a liar--but not just any liar: a public liar, and this is a sin for which many others seeking high posts have been punished.

The fact that much of this gossip is going to play out online before being vetted by "reliable" news media again tests the wisdom of the crowds conceit of Web 2.0: Should a bunch of people with perhaps a reasonable level of common sense, average powers of observation, and, most important, access to the Internet have as much sway as traditional "gatekeepers" of information? (Keep in mind that many of these gatekeepers are going through layoffs and buyouts the likes of which we've never seen in the history of journalism.)

In a recent review of the book Reinventing Knowledge on Salon.com, author Laura Miller asks, "Without a doubt, we've entered an era when the official truth is easier to challenge than ever before, but do we really want to live in a world without any established truths at all, or where every fact must be democratically elected by a horde of individuals whose judgment may not be informed or trustworthy?" Not sure I want to live in a world with stone tablets declaring certain truths as established, because even those based in science (putting aside the more humanistic tools of logic and reason) regularly fall. Nor do I want to have to yield to what the majority believes is true: everyone thought those Magic Eye painting from years ago were amazing, and I thought, and still think, they're incredibly stupid. (But I was never successful in seeing a single hidden image, so maybe that's just sour grapes.)

Yes, in the Palin case, someone, at the very least the OB who delivered the child, knows whose uterus he came from; the horde of individuals, even armed with the best photos culled from the best websites on the internet, have no bearing here. But until that person steps forward, it's hard to ignore the larger point: technology has empowered so many of us to be truth seekers (let's not call them conspiracy theorists just yet) rather than passive receptors who wait for information to trickle down to us from on high. For the most part, I think we wear this new role well.

Too many "people like me"

In yesterday's Oregonian, there was an article about how homogenous Portland has become. Based on Bill Bishop's book The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, complete with photos of urban chickens, bike riders, and coffee shops, the article describes how the majority of Portlanders live in a bubble of liberalism that makes it hard for dissenting voices to be heard. Though more of a feature than a hard news story (only one liberal viewpoint and one conservative viewpoint are represented), the story got me thinking about how the comfort of living among like-minded people can actually lead to complacency and, as my friend T. describes it, smugness.

Alex and I talked at lunch about whether it was good to truly have diversity in your daily life, challenging moments where people don't automatically agree with what you say or how you live. I've become a lazy thinker because of living in such a blue city and if forced to defend my political and social beliefs, couldn't argue my way out of a paper bag. Those oral skills are atrophied. And though a source in the article says that people can find lots of dissenting views thanks to easy access to the internet, do I have conservative media pages bookmarked on my computer? Of course not. I can extend the bubble as far and wide as I need to.

And homogeneity can also lead to a kind of cultish mindlessness, too. Among "people like me," it manifests in the whiff of competition, and subsequent defensiveness, around anything having to do with food, child-raising, and transportation. People like me explain the genesis of our food in great detail: whether it came from a CSA or farmers' market, what farm it's from (bonus points if you talked to the farmer), and whether it's organic or local or free-range or--ka-ching!--all three. People like me either stay at home to raise our kids OR research preschools, visit open houses, agonize during the decision-making process, and then feel guilty about sending our kids to preschool. People like me go to events that include, as part of the invitation, encouragement to not drive and instructions about bus lines and bike parking. People like me can be pretty annoying. Sometimes, I hate those people. I don't want to be those people. But here in homogenous Portland, I am.

On a good day, I bite my tongue when a friend talks about making asparagus for dinner in the middle of August, let my daughter play with a Bratz paper doll at a wedding reception but later embargo it and claim that it must have gotten lost on the plane, and merely give my husband a look rather than scold him when he chooses to drive rather than ride his bike to the hardware store seven blocks away to buy lumber. I won't flatter myself and pretend that these reactions and behaviors have much to do with altruism; they stem, instead, from those old feelings of guilt and insecurity. I look around and see the chicken coops and Priuses and grain mills that litter this fair city and realize that I haven't been working hard enough to be the best enviro-green-socially conscious Portlander that I can be!

If I'm right and my motivation is, at best, equal parts concern for the future of the planet and a need to belong, this supports my theory that we never completely shake off the social experiment/trial by fire that is high school. Am I still Molly Ringwald, wanting to hang out with Andrew McCarthy and the other cool kids?

But, just like in high school, this sort of cliqueishness also triggers the rebel in me--the side that doesn't want to be one of a faceless mass of people, no matter how right (or righteous) and cool they are. My friend T. and I joked by email about our imaginary next get together: "Let’s be sure to drive wherever we’re going and eat out-of-season food and maybe let our kids play with plastic toy guns, okay?" I wrote. "Sounds like a plan," he responded. "I’ll bring some cold cuts and frozen burger patties from Safeway."

But now, we're feeling smug about not being smug Portlanders, which I mostly am. Just scratch the surface of my tough talk and petulant demeanor and you'll find a neo-hippie do-gooder who feels guilty about not composting, who's worried she's not going to be able to put up enough peaches and blueberries for winter, and who's excited about getting an Xtracycle free radical kit for her bike so she doesn't have to lug her 40-pound daughter to the library in a Burley. In Portland, it's a John Hughes film all over again and nobody wants to be freaky Ally Sheedy, sitting at the corner desk, glowering and dressed in black.

Koyaanisqatsi: when trashy magazines make you think

I don't know if it was the bliss of being on vacation--the blinding white sandy shores of Lake Take beaches, the lack of concern about time of day or day of week, the endless array of high calorie foods at my fingertips--but the trashy magazines I read last week were particularly good. Okay, so InStyle and Glamour were as mindlessly entertaining as usual, but I dogeared several pages of Domino (homemade tortillas! assembling a low-key picnic basket! exposed plywood and Formica countertops!) and got completely engrossed in Esquire's "Portrait of a School Shooter as a Young Man" and Stephen Marche's "A Thousand Words About Our Culture" column in which he posits that violence is innate to human existence and that "purification through violence" is a "necessary inheritance, perhaps, of a revolutionary nation's birth in blood."

Not exactly beach reading, nor was it very surprising that Esquire would publish such good stuff since the magazine's been eminently readable and thoughtful for years--especially if you skip the sillier bits about the world record for kicking oneself in the head (FYI: 77 times in one minute). So, instead, the award for most surprisingly satisfying beach reading goes to ... the August issue of Cookie magazine.

The thing is I started getting a free subscription to Cookie as a thank you gift for something that I don't even remember right now. And I've always treated the magazine like InStyle or my public broadcasting member's magazine: something to flip through while waiting for the dentist or as something to look at while eating breakfast at the kitchen counter. So I was surprised to find the magazine addressing the following "hot" topics in the parenting world:

1. No gift parties ("Party Police"): SB has had three birthday parties and all of them have been "no gifts, please" events. Though part of my motivation was so our friends wouldn't feel pressured to run out and buy a gift but could just come and celebrate with us, I sheepishly have to admit that writer Sally Schultheiss called a spade a spade when she writes that these parties are really "control masquerading as consideration." Personally, I love attending no gift parties because I am one of the most disorganized and indecisive moms on the planet. But on the birthday home front, would I mind so much if SB received only books and cute clothes made by indie designers? Of course, not. But I also get that the jig (i.e., controlling every aspect of my kid's life) will soon be up. The girl's getting savvy to the ways of the world, including the tradition of receiving loot wrapped in shiny paper a couple of times a year.

2. Gender disappointment ("Girl Crazy"): Okay, this piece about a woman who wanted a daughter but got sons wasn't particularly fresh or revelatory, but it made me wonder if it's not merely the fact of having children that changes people--what changes us most profoundly is that we have the children that we have.

When I was twenty weeks pregnant, Alex and I stood beside our car in the parking lot of my doctor's office discussing whether we should find out our baby's sex. We both felt sure it would be a boy and were stunned to hear an hour later that we were wrong. There was no lasting disappointment, but in that moment, I felt my imagined future shift along assumed gender lines: instead of having a son who would adore and champion me for all time, I'd have a daughter who would hate me in fourteen years but, if I was lucky, would then find her way back to me in twenty years. I became a mother of a daughter that day--my posture more protective and watchful, my efforts geared toward preparing her for future challenges. I don't think that I would have been more carefree as the mother of a son, but because parent-child relationships are intuitive and responsive--not only to children as people but also to the way they are positioned in the world--I'm certain that I would be a different person today in ways that I can't fully imagine.

3. How many children to have ("More or Less"): Four writers explain the number of children that they have. This one resonates with me on so many levels, so much so that I have to save it for another post. . . .