If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them: The Lessons We Learn From Newspaper Delivery

I did something this morning that I rarely do: I complained about a service. At school, I almost never complain when someone in a staff or administrative position drops the ball. I am far more likely to go straight to them, if the thing was important, and say "Hey, what can I do differently next time to make sure this doesn't happen again in this way?" Such an encounter sometimes results in useful information about what I can do differently; other times it results in the person apologizing for whatever didn't get done and taking note of it for the future.

The least productive thing to do is to keep things to myself and fume, doing things I shouldn't have to do to make sure they happen, harboring a grievance, feeling hard done by, and coming to believe that I am ill-served and underprivileged. My experience is that this usually ends with me having a fit about something that might have been easily resolved, an unpleasant encounter to which the person delivering the service I require cannot possibly respond. And yet, minus the unreasonable fit, this is exactly what I have done in relationship to my newspaper delivery, causing myself great misery in the process.

As readers of this blog know, The New York Times is very dear to me. In part that is because local newspapers, with a few exceptions, have been bought up and gutted by national chains. Stripped of reporting staff, managed from afar, and bleeding red ink from the collapse of advertising revenue, newspapers in places like Shoreline and Zenith are so dreadful and understaffed that they don't even report local news anymore, much less connect the local to the national or the international. In fact, since the 1970s, when I went to high school in the Philadelphia suburbs and read The Philadelphia Inquirer every day, I have not had access to a really good local newspaper. Hence, I became a devotee of the Gray Lady, and came to see it as a daily link to a national conversation. When I went to college in Shoreline I acquired my own subscription, delivered to the door by another student; when I lived in New York I picked it up from a newsstand as soon as I left the house because it was my local newspaper; when I got my first academic job in Philadelphia I snubbed the Inquirer because I now considered myself a New Yorker.

When I went to work at Zenith back in 1991, I still considered myself a New Yorker: after all, my partner worked there and we maintained a lovely New York apartment. However I soon realized, to my horror, that you could not have the Times delivered in the town of Zenith. Color me silly, but this flaw -- and the university's unwillingness to push the Times to establish a delivery route around the campus for the 14 years that I lived there -- was a major symbolic force in persuading me that I could no longer live in Zenith. If the New York Times was not delivered there, I felt, much as I liked my house and my short commute to work, the town of Zenith was a backwater where I was sure to become obscure and forgotten, where Life would soon cease to be Worth Living, and I would spend the rest of my days as a character in a Mary McCarthy novel.

Reader, I moved.

So now I live in Shoreline and subscribe to the Times, although as I understand it, publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., has now admitted the dreadful truth: that in order to continue to publish at the level its readers expect, the Times will eventually have to become web-only. I'm not surprised. At a conference I attended early in the summer, a newspaper editor who was part of a panel of journalism scholars, unveiled the astonishing fact that around 80% of a newspaper's operating budget involves generating and transporting the object itself.

This brings me back to my complaint: for the past six months or so, my newspaper has arrived far too late in the day for me to know I will have time to read it, something that I feel seriously impairs my ability to do my job as a teacher-scholar, much less a blogger. Anyone outside my door in the morning might observe the venetian blinds being cracked open every fifteen minutes or so by a hand surrounded in terry cloth, an unblinking eyeball appearing at the hole provided, and the blinds snapping shut with disgust. Some days, I go out and peer under the bushes and the porch, usually to no avail. On mornings that I teach at 9:00, as I leave the house to go to school, I often toss the paper through the door in disgust, knowing it will go unread (at least by me) that day, and that its only destiny is the recycling bin. Today, a Sunday, the paper arrived at 8:15, when I had been up for about 90 minutes and was already fully engaged in other tasks.

So finally I called The New York Times to complain, something I have put off doing because I know that people who deliver newspapers for a living are probably working a second or third job, and I keep hoping that this situation will change without me asserting my class privilege as a person who works one, fairly well-paid, job. And yet, I say to myself, Why am I paying $40.00 a month for a paper I cannot read most of the time -- or cannot read in time to be an informed person which, as a history professor, I should be? Should I not do something about this before I get some terrible auto-immune disease that has been caused by my suppressed anger at not receiving the newspaper? Or come to regard the New York Times as a charity I support rather than a pleasure?

What I learned from the nice man who answered at 1-800-NYTIMES was this: my complaint about late newspapers during the week was justified, as delivery is guaranteed by 6:30; and my complaint about late newspapers on the weekend is not justified, as delivery is only guaranteed by 8:30. I pointed out, calmly, to the man receiving my complaint, that 8:30 was awfully late for those of us who think that a day should begin with the newspaper, and who rise far earlier. He pointed out that this might be so and made a little moue of sympathy, but said with regret that the guarantee was company policy, so there you go. There you go, I agreed. And there we were. He said he would get on it about the weekday newspaper; I agreed, with regret, to suck it up about the weekend newspaper.

In fact, walking the dog around 8:45, I noted numerous bagged newspapers waiting on other people's doorsteps, and one sleepy man in PJ's picking up his. I may, in fact, be almost the only customer in the neighborhood who rarely sleeps past 6:15. If there is anything I have learned through a lifetime of being one of the very few queer people in my workplace it is this: you may want people to take your minority interests into account, but the truth is that they won't, mostly. The majority not only rules, but they rule so completely that you can drive yourself crazy trying to get people to accommodate what seems like a simple request, or even trying to get them to recognize that you have a legitimate point of view. Developing a talent for compromise is not only wise, it is a necessary survival strategy, unless you like being unfairly regarded as a fussy, unreasonable eccentric.

As I saw the untouched newspapers up and down the street, and on the porches that surround our neighborhood green (one porch had four bagged papers, representing at least four sleepyhead intellectuals) I began having that feeling of dread that I used to have in Zenith that signifies impending Social Death. Once again, I thought, I have ended up in a backwater and will have to sell my house, quit my job and move back to New York to have the Life Worth Living. Or I will have to compromise. But how?

Then I was struck by a brighter thought. At a certain point you have to stop running from a problem, and do the sensible thing: throw money at it. So off to the iPad store I go.

One of the threads I will be developing in this blog in the coming weeks is the changing shape of intellectual culture in a publishing and curatorial environment that is becoming less friendly to the printed object. For an urgent call to action about the demise of the book, see Jeffrey Hamburger and Anthony Grafton in this month's New York Review of Books on the threat to the University of London's Warburg Library.

What's Wrong With Journalism: Your Radical Reporter In Afghanistan

Many things are wrong with journalism, and not just reporting on Afghanistan. But what has obliged me to speak today is this report posted on line by the Associated Press and appearing as a headline story on my Yahoo email account. As if endless advertisements for Acai products (accompanied by distorted, pulsating pictures of doughy female flesh that are supposed to make me hate myself) are not enough, today I was greeted by this headline: "Afghanistan tones down contentious marriage law."

You remember that contentious law -- the one applying to Shiite women that made it legal for their husbands to rape them? The one signed by our democratic ally Hamid Karzai? "The new version," you will be glad to hear, "no longer requires a woman submit to sex with her husband, only that she do certain housework." The housework will be agreed to at the time of the marriage, and please be assured that women who were until today legally rapable will be allowed to refuse any jobs they think are unfair or degrading, or that they think their husbands ought to do for themselves.

Yeah sure. Although there is still no guaranteed right for girls to attend school, according to today's revision Shiite women in Afghanistan can now leave the house without their husbands' permission, and they may keep their own property. That is, if they are not concerned about being beat down by a group of family members who think they have crossed the line. Or a husband who has had a bad day.

Nowhere does the story mention that rape, while codified as a crime against humanity according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998 is, appallingly enough, not a stand-alone crime in international law. However, some of the international criteria listed in the Rome Statute might characterize some marriages, in Afghanistan and elsewhere. How about: imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; torture; rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity; other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

In fact, if we were to acknowledge that there is a war on women in parts of the world not necessarily defined by national boundaries, ethnicity or religion, could we be getting somewhere with this problem?

But let me just say, Mr. AP Editor: the Afghan marriage law wasn't a "contentious" marriage law, and it wasn't a bad law just because a bunch of feminists got their knickers in a twist over it. It was a criminal marriage law.

Otherwise known as a crime.

Will Barack's Little Dog Bo Be Next? Annals of Tearoom Journalism

I was going to write about something completely different today. Then, when pulling together my URL's for that post, I ran into this commentary at Gawker headlined: "Bill O'Reilly Wonders Why Gay New York Times Reporter Acts So Gay."

Needless to say, I clicked, since it is part of my DNA to click on all things that promise gayness.

Apparently Jeff Zeleny, a New York Times reporter who is, in fact, gay, asked Barack Obama what has most "enchanted" him about being President in the first 100 days (along with what has surprised and humbled him.) Media Matters was the first to report what millions of Fox News viewers saw shortly afterwards, which was an exchange between Bill O'Reilly and Bernard Goldberg that you can view for yourself here, along with Zeleny's original remarks:



Goldberg went on at length about the lack of masculinity displayed by the reporter as O'Reilly chuckled in a particularly manly fashion. Goldberg then asserted that no one would have asked "John Wayne presidents like FDR, Truman or Eisenhower if they were 'enchanted.'"

I do beg to differ.

FDR's upper class manners were not infrequently perceived as and mocked for being effeminate, and in retrospect, the Fala speech, given in the midst of the 1944 campaign, is pretty camp by modern standards. "These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons," Roosevelt lamented on his weekly radio broadcast with deadpan humour:

No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. [laughter] Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks — but Fala does resent them. [laughter] You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I'd left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him — at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or 20 million dollars — his Scotch soul was furious. [laughter] He has not been the same dog since. [laughter] I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself — such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog [laughter].

We also know that Alice Roosevelt, a right-wing Republican, America Firster and a daughter of the vigorous Oyster Bay branch (from whom O'Reilly and Goldberg can claim direct ideological descent) used to refer to her Hyde Park cousin as "Feather Duster Roosevelt." It couldn't have been clearer what she meant by that, particularly since she knew what the general public did not: that FDR could only use his legs and lower body for balance. Since Alice Blue Eyes also undoubtedly knew that Eleanor Roosevelt traveled in lesbian company, she may have suspected that her presidential cousin was sexually impaired as well. How better to communicate this in an era when one did not discuss sex in public than to refer to him disparagingly as the soft household equivalent of a feather boa?

But let's leave behind the manipulation of the historical record and return to contemporary homophobia. If you watched the video you know that eventually Goldberg noted that if he, Goldberg, asked O'Reilly if he were enchanted, O'Reilly would probably "punch me in the head;" O'Reilly's corresponding chuckle affirmed that yes, he probably would. Imagine the brawl between these he-men if Goldberg tapped his toe when O'Reilly was in the next stall. I'm fwightened.

But you kept watching I hope. Because although Gawker goes on at length about the offense to Zeleny, if you listen a little more closely the real target is Obama's masculinity and heterosexuality, not Zeleny's. The central question, and the focus of the subsequent discussion, is: what kind of a President would invite, and receive (we shudder at what that means, Mary) an effeminate question from a gay reporter? Indeed, this allegation about Obama was raised as early as February, 2008, accoriding to the Huffington Post, by none other than the Republican National Committee. "An unnamed Republican spokesperson, while making no value judgments on the homosexual lifestyle," HuffPost reported, "other than it being an abomination against God, implied that the photo certainly raised doubts about the Senator's image as a loving husband, as well as his overall honesty." If you click on the link, you will be disappointed: methinks it is Obama, after a meeting with John Edwards (I recognize the hair), and they are embracing, not making out. Charges that President Obama has a gay past have been printed in the National Enquirer and elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong: I'm always happy to find out that anyone is gay (and I tend to be magnanomous and treat everyone I like as though they are my equal in this regard) but let's be clear that these attacks are not about facts or actual gayness. What is going on is an attempt to derail the Obama administration and plan for what promises to be an ugly 2010 election cycle by deploying a familiar political strategy: implying that one's political opposition is not sexually normal. As Andrea Friedman has noted in her prize-winning article, 'The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Cold War Politics" (American Quarterly, December 2005) homophobic invective charges of effeminacy are common methods of undermining the legitimacy of political figures. I make a related argument in my own prize-winning article,"Queer Hoover: Sex, Lies and Political History" (Journal of the History of Sexuality July 2006) in which I cite Friedman's work. I mention the prizes to suggest to an audience broader than academic historians that these are not fringe arguments, but mainstream approaches to thinking about goon squads made up of the likes of O'Reilly and Goldberg.

Cross posted at Cliopatria.