As I was making my daily internet rounds this morning, I came across an especially delightful essay in the New York Times by Leslie Kaufman. Titled “My Sons, the Sous-Chefs” it chronicles her recent decision to get her sons—one 14, one 10—to be responsible for cooking some of the family meals, and if I were teaching a writing seminar, I’d use it as an example of how to turn a personal experience into masterful prose.

Kaufman’s craft starts shining in the fourth paragraph. After opening with a standard “mystery/revelation” construction—in which she creates the “mystery” of a sophisticated diner praising a subpar meal, then “reveals” that the chef is her teenage son—she lays out her thesis like this:

I cannot remember exactly when it occurred to me that my children should be cooking dinner for me instead of the other way around.

It almost certainly came at the end of a typical long workday: I rush home from the office, start hustling in the kitchen even before my coat is off and then, maybe 15 minutes later, a child stumbles downstairs from playing a video game. He peers into a bubbling pot and moans, “Not pasta again,” or “Don’t you know I hate tomatoes?”

It would be easy for her to cast her cooking lessons as feminist actions on behalf of her male children, and really, I guess they are. But rather than banging that drum, Kaufman makes the point gently. She introduces herself as a harried character who cooks pasta, which is pretty standard fare, especially considering that her son was introduced as making seared duck breast. Then she describes her son’s typical teenage behavior but has the grace not to comment on it. She just lets the details create a picture of him (and her.) If we want to read feminist (or other) themes into the work, then we can, but we have to do it ourselves.

Even better, she keeps describing her family’s “flaws” throughout the story, never once reducing herself to grand moral statements or easy conclusions. “I made it clear that they could cook only when an adult was in shouting distance,” she writes. “But the goal was to have them plan and execute the meal on their own while I commuted home or ran errands — or drank a glass of wine on the couch.” That’s right, sister! She can be a good mom who creates boundaries and rules, but she can still have the self-interested desire to drink wine. She makes herself human.

Further down, Kaufman also admits that she makes mistakes in how she responds to her sons’ efforts, describing a scene where she tosses some undercooked meat back into boiling water. Her son freaks, she freaks, doors are slammed. “Sam stormed upstairs in a fury and despite my apology missed what turned out to be a very delicious meal,” she writes. “Later, he said he would have preferred serving the dish the way the recipe said to. If the meat wasn’t cooked enough, he would have put the bowls in the microwave. It’s not what I would have done, but it was his meal, and I should have let him make his own mistakes, too.”

And again, for me, these details make Kaufman and her family seem like flawed, loving people who care and screw up and try to grow. It sounds pretty sentimental when I put it that way, but the story itself never uses this language. It lets the reader come to these conclusions privately, which is incredibly flattering.

The story ends with a glorious triumph for her oldest boy, which just clarifies that what Kaufman’s really doing here is writing a short story disguised as a food column. I don’t know if all of it’s true or if some of it has been exaggerated, but who cares? The essay creates a sharp portrait of a family at work and offers some deeper things to ponder. I can’t ask for more from this kind of thing.

On today’s installment of the Extra Hot Great podcast, I recount how an episode of Roseanne sparked one of the most embarrassing things that has ever happened to me.

Along with the rest of the team, I also discuss Joyful Noise, Mark Wahlberg, and several other high-octane topics.

Do go listen… and enjoy my shame!

It’s not just that I’m a Wikipedia junkie. It’s more than that.

Although I am a Wikipedia junkie. At 12:07 this morning, I reflexively went to the site to look up some random bit of trivia—the chart peak of a Sting single, to be exact, even though I have a book with the same information in it—and was confronted with the site’s day-long blackout. Along with many other sites (Google, Wired, etc.), the English-language version of Wikipedia is shutting down to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, the House and Senate bills, respectively, that are being forwarded as a way to protect media companies from piracy. Many people in the web community are fearful that these bills will curtail all sorts of free information that has become commonplace online. With the weight of a federal law behind it, for instance, a record company could easily shut down YouTube for allowing members to upload songs.

I sympathize with both sides: I understand why artists, especially, wouldn’t want their work disseminated for free when they are trying to make a living from it, but I also understand how deeply the free flow of online information has changed the world.

And that’s why I’m saying today’s blackout isn’t just reminding me that I use Wikipedia all the time. It’s reminding me that I assume information is freely available to me. It’s startling to remember that when I wanted to write papers in middle school and high school, I had to have my parents drive me to a library. We didn’t have encyclopedias, so that was my only option.

In college and graduate school, I still relied on primary source research, because you’d have to be a punk-ass scholar to expect the internet to do all your work for you. There are things you can only find in books,  and there are connections that are just much easier to make when you’ve got a shelf full of contradictory texts in front of you.

But even then, I relied on internet in all sorts of ways. Can’t remember the name of a playwright? Google the title of a play. Trying to recall the 1994-95 season of a theatre you’re analyzing? Internet, baby!

The same holds true for me now that I’m an arts journalist: I do a lot of research and reporting by interviewing and emailing people directly and double-checking facts with publicists and such. But also? I rely on newspaper websites for context and history, and I often use Wikipedia to confirm big things like historical dates. (I would never use it as a primary source, but to say it plays no role in my work wouldn’t be accurate either.)

For better or worse—and I can see both sides of that argument, I assure you—the way I think is now guided by free access to data. I often look things up in the middle of writing an essay, which helps me develop critical thoughts, and because the information is so accessible, I don’t have to slow down my thought process. It’s great.

And if SOPA and PIPA change that… well… that would suck. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, obviously, but it would suck.

That’s about as coherent as my thoughts get at this point. What do you guys think about this?

NOTE: The collage above was copied from the NY Times website. If you follow the link in the first paragraph, you’ll see it in its original context.

This week, two tiny tempests have been created by two holiday carols, and both dustups teach the same lesson.

On Monday, news broke that a music teacher at a Michigan elementary school had stripped the word “gay” from “Deck the Halls.” Instead, she had her students sing “don we now our BRIGHT apparel.” (She apparently made this decision because students kept snickering at the word “gay.”)

By Tuesday,the word was back in, amid frustrations from parents about the “inappropriate” substitution and a reminder from the school’s principal that the school’s anti-discrimination policy includes LGBT protections.

Meanwhile, the blog of the excellent, feminist-leaning magazine Bitch revived the debate about whether “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is “rapey” in its depiction of a man and woman deciding if they’re going to stay in on a cold night and have sex. This debate is new to me, but apparently, it’s been going on for a while, and as writer Kelsey Wallace, points out, it largely centers on the moment when the (traditionally) female singer coos, “Say, what’s in this drink?” For some, this lyric implies that the woman has been drugged so that she can’t possibly leave the man’s house.

The lively discussion on Wallace’s post included a link to a 2010 blog post for Persephone Magazine that rebukes the “rapey” reading of that line. The author writes, “‘Say, what’s in this drink’ is a well-used phrase that was common in movies of the time period and isn’t really used in the same manner any longer. The phrase generally referred to someone saying or doing something they thought they wouldn’t in normal circumstances; it’s a nod to the idea that alcohol is ‘making’ them do something unusual. But the joke is almost always that there is nothing in the drink. The drink is the excuse.”

And that’s where the two stories overlap. In both cases, a 2011 sensibility is being used to understand work from a different cultural era. Little kids are laughing at the implied homosexuality of “gay apparel,” and critics are saying there are roofies in the drink.

What’s more, people in both cases are suggesting that the best way to deal with these cultural disconnections is to eliminate the offending phrases. The teacher cut the word “gay” from “Deck the Halls”. Kelsey Wallace ends her post by saying shopping malls should stop playing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” altogether.

Granted, the teacher put the word back in the song and plenty of the blog’s commenters defended “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Given the context of both the phrases, I’d say that’s the right call. Rather than rewriting a standard carol, teachers can tell their students that “gay” means more than one thing. Rather than banning a chestnut, critics can dig deeply into the context of the line that bothers them. If they still object to the song, then so be it, but at least they can ground their opinion in a larger understanding of how the tune was intended. (This is essentially what Wallace does in the comments section beneath her post.)

But for me, this entire situation is a reminder that when you’re having a knee-jerk reaction to something that offends or frustrates you, looking for context is very hard. It’s much easier to just go ahead and follow your first instinct. It’s much easier to justify banning the thing that bothers you than to really explore it.

As someone with a left-leaning bias, I often see misogynist and/or racist and/or homophobic subtexts in things. I typically stand by of those readings, but as the 2011 Carol Wars demonstrate, it’s never bad to step back, take a breath, and investigate the things that irk or offend. There might be calmer, gentler, or more-informed perspectives just waiting to be discovered. Those perspectives don’t have to sabotage our critical responses to culture. They can simply make them more nuanced and satisfying.

Recently, my mom mailed me some odds and ends from my childhood—old photos, favorite books, bits of writing, etc.

Imagine my amazement when I uncovered “Cinderella in ’88,” a story I wrote in 1988 that is remarkably prescient about the person I would become. Apparently, my core interests and my love of camp were already cemented when I was nine years old.

After the jump, I am happy to present this story in full. If you are a television or film executive, please email me to discuss development deals.

Note: Punctuation and phrasing are recreated exactly as they appear on the print-out my mom saved.

Cinderella in ’88

by Mark Blankenship (age 9)

One day in 1988 there was a maid. She had to clean all day. She had two wicked stepsisters and an awful father. She wanted to listen to Bon Jovi instead of clean, but all she had were some old Linda Ronstadt records.

One day a letter came. It was from Michael Jackson, inviting them to a concert.

“You can’t go!” said her stepsisters. “You have to paint our faces to glow in the dark. You’ve got to get hot pink socks for us to wear.”

Later that night a porsche drove up.

“We’ve got to go,” said the sisters.

“What about Father?” asked Cinderella.

“It’s my bowling night,” he replied.

“Oh.”

So Cinderella decided to watch some old westerns.

Suddenly a young man appeared!

He said, “I’m your wizard stepfather. Let’s go to the concert!”

“Dressed like this?” she asked doubtfully.

“They told me you would be picky in wizard school,” he grumbled.

“I thought you were supposed to make me the greatest one at the concert — turn a potato into a porsche and all that other neat stuff!”

“Now I remember,” he exclaimed.

“What’s my curfew?”

“Seven o’clock.”

“Seven o’clock?”

“Yes, Michael [Jackson's] bedtime.”

“Oh.”

She was the hottest thing at the concert. Once Michael asked her to dance. She said, “Bug off, bozo.”

Then she met a guy she really liked. They started seeing each other a lot. They got married. She got a singing contract. Now they are known as:

Sean Penn

and

Madonna

Moral: Success can come to those who are patient and clever

My NPR week continues with this analysis of 7 Minutes in Heaven, the ridiculously funny web series hosted by SNL writer Mike O’Brien. If you haven’t watched these delicious clips, then you really must put down your dinner or your child or whatever and enjoy them right now.

Over at NPR’s Monkey See blog, I’m thinking about Your Man Reminder, a new app that uses sexy men to raise awareness about breast cancer

I’m pretty ambivalent about the whole exercise. Women taking care of themselves? Yes. Breast cancer exams treated like a bachelorette party? Hmm.

Take a look and tell me what you think about this whole, hunky affair.

And in case you’re on the fence about the Fox sitcom Raising Hope, then let me persuade you to watch. I recently wrote about the series (and why I love it) for NPR’s Monkey See blog.

The ad is ostensibly about a black woman’s refusal to accept that white jeans go out of season. “I’ll rock white jeans whenever I want,” she declares, rising from a park bench to emphasize her point.

But think about it: She’s saying she’ll wear whiteness. “Not ‘whitish,’ not eggshell, not ecru.” White.

In other words, she will assume a white identity at her leisure. She’ll rock white genes whenever she wants.

For me, “wearing whiteness” means mastering the codes of white culture and performing them in order to access “white privilege.” To prove that privilege can be hers, the woman ends the commercial by saying the word “white” with exaggerated emphasis, hitting the “t” like a professional boxer. It’s like she’s conjuring whiteness, calling it forth from the ether.

And after she says “white,” the woman’s voice changes. Her final line—”That’s my Tide, what’s yours?”—has the chipper affect of a perky Greenwich wife, making her sound so stereotypically white that she could pass for Tipper Gore. In a subtly rebellious touch, she uses the “white voice” to deliver the brand’s tagline.

By flipping on whiteness like a switch, the woman says, “Be careful, white America. Equality’s on the way. The minorities in this country have learned your language and your ways, and we can infiltrate your ranks in ways you’ll never  notice.”

I mean… right? That has to be what Tide intended. Otherwise, this commercial would just be reductive and offensive, and no major brand would release an ad like that.

In last week’s New York Times magazine, Carina Chocano made a convincing argument that tabloid fixtures like Lindsay Lohan are the heroines of a new Gothic literature. Her arguments sparked two thoughts:

(1) Breaking Bad often resembles Gothic fiction, complete with a naif who’s trapped in a wicked world (Jesse Pinkman), a Dr Jekyll/Mr. Hyde-type who masks his capacity for evil beneath several disguises (Walter White), and a subterranean lair where horrible deeds are performed (the lab in the laundry facility.)

However, I’m not ready to talk about that. I just finished Season 3 over the weekend and am getting ready to start Season 4, so for all I know, everything has changed this year. By now, the show could be a Romantic epic or a farce. (Please don’t tell me anything about Season 4. I want to be surprised.)

—

(2) If tabloid stories are the new Gothic literature, then what does that mean about the new Gothic audience? When readers shudder with delight over “The Cask of Amontillado” or Wuthering Heights, they are ingesting pure fiction. It may be fiction that reflects the social and political climate of its day, but it’s fiction nonetheless. When readers savor the latest celebrity meltdown on TMZ, they are ingesting something real.

And yes, I know that large swaths of tabloid stories are constructed, either by editors in search of a headline or by the subjects themselves, who willingly create scandals and personae for public consumption. Yet no matter how theatrical these stories become, they are not entirely fictive. They still feature real people with real lives, and when we salivate over their shenanigans, we are cheering the destruction of a fellow human being.

Modern audiences may be getting the same catharsis from Tabloid Gothic that 19th century audiences got from Gothic, but getting a catharsis from a Poe story doesn’t require one’s tacit approval as a real person is destroyed. Releasing the sociological tension of a culture beset by uncertainty and fear is decidedly more benign when the only heroine who’s suffering (or surviving) is trapped inside a book. It’s more troubling when an actual person has to become our sacrificial lamb, our sin eater.

It’s horrifying, really. As a culture, we lose both our empathy and our moral authority when we allow another person’s collapse to become our entertainment.

I know that Tabloid Gothic didn’t invent this impulse. True crime stories have been turning real life into salacious entertainment for centuries. However, the speed and pervasiveness of internet gossip us a sickening power to watch every moment of an imploding life, and a starlet’s willingness to play along doesn’t excuse our willingness to watch.

As I write this, I’m having flashes of articles and books that investigate this topic, and a search of the phrase “morality reality TV” brings back thousands of results. But for me, Chocano’s article made this concept feel newly urgent.

What do y’all think about this? And can anyone recommend a book or article that explores this subject with depth and insight?