After last week’s column, which was widely heralded as my first coherent column in nearly 20 years, there is nowhere to go but in the direction of complete quantum collapse.
Speaking of quantum collapse, how about the demise of Google Glass? And I was so hoping to get one of those and wear it around the office to annoy co-workers. Now I have nothing but the Groucho glasses and the Harpo horn to fall back on.
I am building up to flinging out my contribution to the Charlie Hebdo discussion. I am trying to ease into it gently.
My first observation is, and don’t all hate me for this at the same time, doesn’t the anger and vitriol about Google Glass look pitifully petty now in comparison? But, yet, it was righteous, wasn’t it? And, by golly, the right side won, didn’t it?
My second thought, still trying to find my bearings here, looking for any possible way to avoid the minefield of seriousness that’s waiting for me as soon as I step deep into it, is wow, how many people did not know that “Hebdo” means weekly. Hello? Real Change is hebdo. TGIF is hebdo. I’ve been meaning to mention this for several years now.
I’m sorry I took so long to bring it up, but they have free dictionaries online now, including multilingual dictionaries. And kittens. And quotes that Einstein never said, but you’ll swear it sounds just exactly like something he’d say.
Another thing that you can find on the Internet is a lot of things to be offended by.
I myself have been known in my time to say some wrong things and/or put out very ill-considered messages on the Interwebs. I’m pretty good at not being offensive here, partly because I try harder, and partly because my editors have always made me be good, but when I have got loose on the Internet I have occasionally been a bad boy.
For example, it is not right — and I know this now and don’t need to be reminded over and over — to post my seminal poem “Ode to My [private body-part word]” in the graphically laid out version to a writers’ list-service.
It turns out that isn’t the kind of writing that all self-described writers are prepared to see when they open their email at work. I learned that lesson back when all we had were text browsers and there were no kitty videos.
I would never say or post anything bad about anyone’s religious founder or prophet, I think. At least, I don’t remember having done so.
Still, you know, it’s way wronger to kill people who do things like that. It’s wronger on so many levels I can’t list them all. I wouldn’t have room on this page to list all the ways it is more wrong to kill offensive cartoonists than to be one.
Fortunately for me, I don’t have to list them all because 4,000 news outlets and 10,000 editorialists have stepped up to the plate while I was dragging my feet and listed all the ways for me, including some that don’t make sense.
Which means that I can focus in on one particular complaint I have about the terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo that’s not getting as much attention as it deserves. Namely that the terrorists did it to get attention, and I don’t want to give them any, because they stink.
I have not even bothered to learn any of the names of the terrorists who did this. I listen to news about the massacre the way I listen to ads for cereal and cars. I can watch a 60-second ad for a car and immediately afterward not be able to tell you what company was advertising.
Before this happened we were having a national discussion about police violence and racial profiling. The New York Police Department was on strike and proving itself to be mostly useless.
Remember the innocents. Forget the killers.