Beyond the Paywall (4)

 

["Beyond the Palewall" is the title of this series because "Beyond the Paywall" is taken. Information for which you are not willing to pay, along with information you may not wish to know, is presented in abbreviated form without charge. What has caught my eye may sometimes feel like a poke in yours and, in that sense, be beyond the pale for you. Items will appear weekly, or perhaps monthly, or maybe semi-annually, if I can get started and the weather is bleak.]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 
   The name above is found on the list of those running for President of the United States. As the title of the article I will now point you to indicates, his politics are rather complex so I will simply offer you the inside information about the state of his Toyota minivan. I mainly know of him as the guy who was doing good work trying to keep the rivers clean. Apparently he doesn't care so much about the condition of his van and is now more worried about various conspiracies.
   After arriving at his mansion in Brentwood, which sounds exquisite and in which he lives with his actress wife, the reporter of this article is taken for a van ride which is described quite well: "The Mind-Bending Politics of RFK Jr.'s Spoiler Campaign: He's a Conservative. He's a Liberal. And He Could Turn the Presidential Race Upside Down," Olivia Nuzzi, New York Magazine, in the "Intelligencer", Nov. 22, 2023.

   "Bobby, as he’s known to friends, walked through the French doors dressed for his morning hike in blue jeans, a black hoodie, Keens, and an unfriendly expression. He said little as he led his three enormous canines to the van, though I don’t know what he could have said that would have prepared me for the sight of the thing. That the dog car survived a nuclear war maybe, or, even more frightening, the chicken-pox vaccine.

   Rearview mirror smashed to bits, seat belts chewed off, cushions gnawed open, filth and dog hair covering every surface. The death machine smells so bad I thought I might pass out after about 15 seconds riding shotgun, and that was before the candidate hung a sharp left and sped off toward the trailhead, the dogs barking and toppling over in the area of the car that theoretically should contain back seats but instead holds a wooden bench. “Shut up, you idiots!” he told the dogs. At least I think he was talking to them. He swung the vehicle around to park on the side of the road, released the hounds, and started his ascent."

Why I Don't Get Anything Done

   From the article I also learned about Amaryllis Fox Kennedy who is his campaign manager and daughter-in-law. Of course I had to remind myself of what 'amaryllis" means and will save you the trouble: "In the Victorian language of flowers, amaryllis means "love, beauty, and determination", and can also represent hope and achievement." (Among botanists there is some confusion about the Amaryllis and it is perhaps fortunate for Mrs. Kennedy that she was not named Hippeastrum.)

   Naturally, I then needed to know more about the bearer of that name who was born as Amaryllis Damerell Thornber and learned that she is a former CIA officer and author as well. Her mother's also intriguing name is Lafarge Damerell and she is a retired English actress. I was about to look her up, but instead noticed the name of her billionaire husband. He is Steven Rales, who among other activities, produces films such as Wes Anderson's, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Fortunately I was able to exercise a bit of discipline and not investigate further, either the flowers or the people mentioned above. 

Sensitivity Readers
   By now you are used to being warned before watching or reading just about anything. I warned you about all of this in a post with the title, "Warning" and my coverage of this subject is bordering on the tiresome. Still, the following example serves to illustrate how silly this sensitivity stuff now is. "Sensitivity Readers", for those of you who do not do any reading, are those people who are hired by publishers to make sure you don't read anything offensive. As an aside, one has to wonder about such employees, many of whom must already be on long term disability. 
   Behind a paywall one finds this article: "Slouching Toward Sensitivity: Content Warning: This Essay Contains Obscenities, Slurs, Sex, Bullying, Child Abuse, Alcoholism, Pregnancy, Addiction, Murder, Suicide, Religion, Culture, Opinions, Politics, Language and Academe," Janet Burroway, Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 28, 2023.
   The author of the article is also the author of a textbook intended for university students, a book which she has successfully revised a few times over the last decade. I can't say I know the author, but I can say that it is highly unlikely that you will meet anyone more agreeable. Over the years she has acquiesced to many editorial suggestions and accepted advice to include examples that are sufficiently representative of diverse views coming from all sorts of people. Just getting all of that into one sentence, illustrates how difficult sensitivity editing can be. Since she writes about writing, it is best to have her tell you about the process.

"Unusually, this time around my publisher asked for no refreshing of my ideas, no major swaths of rewriting, only that I conform to the new sensibility. I was asked to change the binary “he/she,” for example, and to substitute they as a neutral nonbinary, or to refashion the sentence so that the plural made sense. The latter was often easy. The former not so much.

   My instructions suggested that even if I was positing a hypothetical stage scene, I should not designate an actor as male or female. I was asked not to say “pregnant woman” since trans men can sometimes give birth. I was asked to substitute “home” where I had said “house,” on the grounds that some people don’t have houses. (What of those who have a house but no home?) I was to add “or caregiver” to every mention of mother, father, or parents. “Heroine” and “hero” are out. “God” should not be referenced, since different people have different gods, or none. Likewise, “Him” should not be capitalized. Noah’s Ark should not be mentioned, since non-Bible-savvy students might not know the story. “First year” must be used instead of the sexist “freshman.” “Foreign” and “foreigners” are offensive in any context. “Nerd,” “tribal,” “naïve,” “’hood,” “ugliness,” and “race” should not be said. Don’t mention shame, straitjacket, suicide, Donald Trump, or Kevin Spacey!"

  I said she was agreeable and acquiescent and she was: "To virtually all of these admonitions, even when I thought them misguided or silly, I agreed. My own prose was not after all sacred. But when it came to the imaginative prose of other writers, trouble began."

   To provide examples of good and probably bad prose she did due diligence to make sure to fulfill the diversity quotient, but that wasn't enough since the examples chosen could not get by the sensitivity readers. She explains it:

   "The problems began with a short paragraph — one that had already been in the book for a couple of editions — from, as it happened, a white male author. Scott Russell Sanders, in a lovely memoir piece about his boyhood, “Coming from the Country,” records how his family moved north from Tennessee when he was “not quite six” and “still a two-legged smudge.”

  “The kids in Ohio took one listen to my Tennessee accent and decided I was a hick. … hillbilly, ridge runner, clodhopper, and hayseed.”

   This passage was flagged by the “development editor” (read: sensitivity reader) with the admonition that “these are derogatory terms Southern readers may feel strongly about.”

  “Yes,” I said; that was the point: “The terms are ugly and unfair, and no matter where we actually come from, we identify with the boy from Tennessee. No reader could miss this.”

  The sensitivity reader did. As I indicated, Ms. Burroway is generally sympathetic with many of the 'liberal' goals of the new censors, but even she has to conclude that while, "The strictures of the left are more tentative and more benign. They are strictures, nevertheless."