Proceed with...a Grain of Salt

The other day Jon Carroll had a satirical piece on the blurring lines between celebrities and their admirers, in which he invented himself as a clue-free stalker:

When we meet outside his house, I say "How's it hangin'?" and he often makes a joke, like "didn't you receive that restraining order?" The "restraining orders" are sort of a private joke between us; he goes to a great deal of trouble to put them together, and believe me, they are hilarious. He's a jokester, everyone knows that, although he is very serious about his work. I would never interfere with his process; I'm there for the other times, the relaxing times.

Today he had a followup piece which addresses all the people who didn't get the grain-of-salt nature of the first one.

The whole first-name thing is a conscious decision by the editors of these magazines to create an aura of intimacy. The editors pretend to know Jessica on a first-name basis, and therefore you the reader can also pretend to know her on a first-name basis, which is more fun than knowing, say, the check-out guy on a first-name basis. And because people right now get a little nuts about fame, some of them lose their grip on the "pretend" part and have opinions about a human being who, although he or she may have fame-based avatars with defined cosmological roles, are so well guarded and well promoted and well spun that very few people know who they "really" are. Sometimes they themselves do not know who they really are.

I was thinking about these readers' inability to read critically enough to get the point, as I went about my morning routine, particularly in light of a discussion in janni's LJ about what we encourage kids to read. Because I can't help feeling that one of the benefits of reading--of reading anything--is that the more you read, the more likely you are realize that what is written has been written by human beings, all of whom are fallible and all of whom have their own take on the world. The narrator might be unreliable. The narrator might be putting you on. The narrator certainly has his own view of how the world works, who the good guys are, and that may inform, or confront, your view. Some people never get to be as cynical as I am; some people aren't by nature clue-seekers. Still, everything you read can potentially expand your ability to judge everything else you read. Last word to Jon Carroll:

context, people, context. Read critically. Look for clues. Triangulate with other evidence. And don't believe everything you read.

Not Surprising

via coffeeem

You Belong in London

You belong in London, but you belong in many cities... Hong Kong, San Francisco, Sidney. You fit in almost anywhere. And London is diverse and international enough to satisfy many of your tastes. From curry to Shakespeare, London (almost) has it all!

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