The survey says....Happy New Year!

I'm sure it hasn't escaped the attention of regular readers this past week that I've been conducting a little poll about the perceived utility of self-help: "I think mainstream self-help products are....", and then a choice of four replies. It was hardly scientific, and the sampling (29 votes) turned out to be smaller than I'd hoped, but the final tally was 2 for "usually helpful," 12 for "sometimes helpful," 10 for "seldom helpful," and 5 for "never helpful." (Looking back, I guess I just couldn't bring myself to include the option, "always helpful.") I'm almost surely inferring more than is warranted by the cold inert numbers, but inasmuch as the middle two categories garnered 22 of the 29 votes, and were within a vote of being evenly divided, I strongly suspect that what determined which way those people went—"sometimes helpful" or "seldom helpful"—had more to do with their own respective mental outlooks than anything else: that is, whether they're folks who generally see the glass as half-full or half-empty. The positive thinkers chose "sometimes." The negative thinkers chose "seldom." For all I know, they could've had exactly the same scenario in mind but interpreted it differently. For example, a positive thinker might say, "Well, I do know that Ted bought a self-help book and he said it helped him, so I'll say sometimes." A cynic might say, "Well, the only person I know who says he was helped by a self-help book is Ted, so I'll say seldom." Anyway, such things interest me. (Which goes a long way toward explaining, perhaps, why I don't have actual friends.)

I want to thank all those who voted. I'll be running more of these polls as we move through 2008. I started off with a relatively bland and obvious question, but the poll topics may become nichier and more targeted as we go along; and if these polls catch on, I may someday use the results—again, unscientific though they be—as "anecdotal evidence" or "armchair comment" in something else I publish.

Also after the New Year, we'll pick up our discussion of juveniles and sentencing. And on that forward-looking note: Happy 2008 to all. May you attract* only good things (which is to say, no fires or hurricanes) in the coming year.

* And by the way, if you haven't yet watched the comedic video linked here, with its devastatingly funny riff on the law of attraction...trust me, you owe it to yourself to watch it. Right now! Before next year....

No, it only seems like I'm making this up.

Pakistani officials have announced that, contrary to original reports, former prime minister and current opposition leader Benazir Bhutto actually died when her head hit the sunroof of her car.

In related news, two surviving members of the Warren Commission have announced that JFK actually died from the explosion of a faulty airbag prototype installed on his limo; and the FBI has announced that Robert Kennedy was killed when an angry chef in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel made a wild gesture at a junior employee, accidentally flinging a salad fork at high velocity into the back of the senator's head....

Babies and bath water. Part 1.

Was reading this column by James J. Kilpatrick, a syndicated columnist who, through the years, has carved out an interesting niche: Almost exclusively, Kilpatrick writes on the Supreme Court and its rulings. His subject this day is a young man who, during his early college years, was involved in the use and local distribution of ecstasy. But then the young man "self-rehabilitated"—now that's real self-help—got his degree and went on to lead a productive life. That is, till the Feds came a-knocking and sought to prosecute him under letter-of-the-law "sentencing guidelines" for drug offenses. The case ultimately went to the Supreme Court. You can read the column and draw your own conclusions, but to this observer, the story once again (as we saw when we discussed background checks) raises many provocative issues having to do with crime, punishment, redemption, forgiveness and the like. Seems to me that in recent decades*, America has focused increasingly on the first two—the crime and the punishment—while losing touch with the rest of it.

Anyway, for some reason having to do with free-association and the synaptic wiring in my head, Kilpatrick's column got me thinking about the case of Lionel Tate, who in 2001 was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole (LWOP) for a homicide he committed in 1999, at age 12. Tate's victim was 6.

On a whim I did a Google news search on the terms "14" and "tried as an adult." I was rewarded—if that's the word—with a half-dozen very recent cases involving 14-year-olds whose crimes are being adjudicated in adult courts. Do the search without limiting the yield to "news" and the return is that much larger. You'll find that the number of hits also swells each time you up the age by a year—15-year-olds, then 16-year-olds, etc.

I find all of this disturbing in the sort of uncomplicated, unequivocal way that I find very few things disturbing.

All evidence indicates steady growth in the number of juvenile cases transferred into adult court (or "waived," in judicial parlance). The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) did a comprehensive then-and-now analysis in 1996, and though one could critique that study as "obsolete," the data remain telling. That year, almost two-thirds of state juvenile courts reported banishing at least one juvenile into adult court. Collectively, the nation's prosecutors waived some 10,000 such cases in 1996, up from 7,200 in the BJS' benchmark year from the previous decade. Maybe that doesn't sound like a colossal growth curve, but consider too that states increasingly permit prosecutors to "direct file" adult charges against juveniles without first getting the nod from a juvenile judge. In fact, and somewhat bizarrely (to me at least), more and more states now make the decision about whether an offender is a juvenile entirely irrespective of age; by statute, the sole determining factor is the severity of the crime. In a hypothetical (but hardly improbable) case, this means that if some 13-year-old throws a punch at some other teen at a party and causes a bloody nose, he's still a juvenile. But if the punch lands more squarely, such that the victim falls down and suffers a serious injury...welcome to the world of instant adulthood!

Overall, Amnesty International has estimated that each year, at least 200,000 people under age 18 end up having their cases heard in adult courts. Congress continues to mull legislation (like the provocatively named Violent Youth Predator Act, later renamed the Violent Youth Crime Act), that provides financial incentives to states that enforce sterner punishment of juveniles. To warehouse the expected influx of rosy-cheeked offenders, governors nationwide have fast-tracked the construction of so-called "punk prisons," which have themselves come under attack for a variety of abuses.

Amnesty International also reports that there are at least 2,225 inmates serving LWOP for offenses committed before age 18; an estimated 59 percent of them received that extreme sentence for their first-ever criminal conviction. Sixteen percent were between 13 and 15 when they committed their crimes. Of the 44 states that permit kids to receive LWOP, 13 states have no minimum age for such unforgiving sentences; one state helpfully sets the minimum age at 8. I guess they didn't want to get carried away...

More on this next time. (And yes, I know that Lionel Tate was later released on appeal and then rearrested on another charge. We'll get to that, too.)

* and notwithstanding a spate of enlightened rulings and legislative initiatives dealing with capital punishment.

If a tree falls in the forest, and you decorate it....

Whatever one's feelings about the religious underpinnings of the occasion—and even if by now most of us are more than a tad burned-out by the conspicuous consumption of the season—the day itself, to me, has always been a time of surrendering to the same childlike wonder I see in the eyes of my grandkids.

Personally, I must say, it's also the one day when I find myself focusing my thoughts and emotions on the single pivotal issue left unaddressed by the impeccable logic (and dismissive smugness) of books like The God Delusion: How did something come from nothing? I understand, I guess, how we got from amoebas to A-Rod, from paramecia to Paris Hilton (though some might say the latter isn't much of an evolution). But how did we get from a perfect void to amoebas? And please, oh please, don't bring up string theory or unified fields. Not on Christmas...

Seems to me that the only thing that could have always "been there"—the only thing that requires no explanation or further regression of cause—is nothingness.* There couldn't, in the beginning, have been something, because it's reasonable to ask where the "something" came from. If mass can neither be created nor destroyed, and the laws of logic and physics (as we understand them) apply to the circumstances of creation, then how did even the tiniest flyspeck of cosmic matter suddenly appear in the midst of nothingness?

Again, seems to me that if you can't explain that transition, you have no Big Bang Theory, because you have no raw material for the Bang. There should still be nothingness today. And there isn't, because I see a fair amount of stuff right under my Christmas tree....

* You don't have to ask where nothing came from. Nothing is nothing.

"Hey! How 'bout we stream the birth—live and tight-focus!"

Aaannnnnd...they're off! The race begins! The race, that is, to make maximum jack off Jamie Lynn Spears' not-so-blessed event while at the same time seeming oh-so-concerned and socially responsible. Nickelodeon, which airs Jamie Lynn's show, Zoey 101, is brainstorming a new special that will help teens and preteens plumb the deeper social meaning of the 16-year-old's gestational dilemma.* The show would likely be anchored by journalist and Nick News host Linda Ellerbee. "Whenever an issue becomes so prevalent that it's inescapable," Nickelodeon spokesman Dan Martinsen told reporters, "[Ellerbee's] show is where we turn to help kids navigate and interpret and understand it."

You don't have to be a puritan to realize that any such show is apt to have an untoward effect on Nickelodeon's impressionable viewers. (Zoey's core demographic consists of kids ages "9 to 14," says Martinsen.) And I feel even more secure in that realization after hearing Martinsen's delicate talk of "navigating" and "understanding." There will be no scarlet letters here—no stigmatizing judgments over the fact that Ms. Spears, who plays the virginal Zoey, is, ipso facto, sexually active; that will be framed as "contemporary reality," just "the way things are these days." There will be no long harangues over Jamie Lynn's manifest stupidity and/or negligence in matters of birth control and STDs. Thus—even giving Nickelodeon the benefit of the doubt—the show by default will end up vindicating the network's (factually) budding star by reducing her pregnancy to a question of "mature choices." The message will be that what happened to Jamie Lynn is "part of life" and, at the last, is "OK." Pretty much like everything that comes out of Hollywood these days: It's all "OK." (As long as you're talking about pet left-wing agenda items. More conservative themes aren't quite as "OK.")

And let's be real here, how else could Nickelodeon possibly play it? Are they gonna make one of their marquee properties look like an IMBECILIC WHORE?**

(But you do have to wonder: How will Nickelodeon react if the presumptive daddy, Casey Aldridge, gets busted for statutory rape or even a violation of the Mann Act, which is a Federal beef. That would kind of make the issue a bit more awkward to "navigate" now, wouldn't it? Then again, maybe it would actually help, by turning Spears into more of a victim. Here's an interesting perspective on some of the legal angles in the case.)

To be fair, all of this is nothing new. The feigning of social responsibility for commercial purposes is a staple tactic in today's broadcast journalism. And, really, no one ever did it better than the immortal, much-awarded Ted Koppel. Koppel and his Nightline producers couldn't quite bring themselves to dive unabashedly into the gutter, so they'd find a way of covering those same stories once-removed—filming that gutter through a gauzy veil of intellectual pretense. Instead of, say, covering terrorist decapitation videos per se, Koppel might do a show that weighed the pros and cons of media coverage of decapitation videos. The genius of such a strategy was that, deftly handled (and explained in the eloquent copy for which Nightline became famous), it would allow Ted to descend even deeper into the muck than many of the thou he was holier than; he could out-tacky the tackiest tabloid shows and still respect himself in the morning. ("Is there too much graphic violence in TV news? Judge for yourself. We're about to show you an unedited clip of a shotgun suicide. Be warned, this is graphic footage, folks, and not for the faint of heart...")

I'm sure that if Koppel were still doing Nightline today, his segment on Jamie Lynn would be spun in terms of, say, "the role-model debate." And those of us who fancy ourselves above it all—who can't even stand the theme song to Entertainment Tonight—would watch Nightline's coverage and congratulate ourselves on our excellent taste in broadcasting.

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AND, finally, a REVISED short holiday message to the SHAMblog community: Those of you who, for whatever reasons having to do with your own mental health, were reading SHAMblog in the wee hours of Saturday morning and thought you saw a p.s. about how I intend to enforce a zero-tolerance policy on ad hominem attacks... No, you weren't imagining it. It was there. It was a declaration I made after a very long, draining day, under some duress and with some misgivings, for I knew that such a policy inevitably would burden me with an awful lot of editing and purging (kind of like the blogger's counterpart to bulimia). That has already come to pass. This morning I had to reject 3 of 6 new comments that came through—tellingly including one that praised me for the new policy. That contributor wrote, in part, "Unlike some people on this blog, I try to keep an open mind and consider actual evidence in the stands I take." The context of the comment later makes clear who that "some people" is. That's ad hominem, folks, and a comment I probably should've killed even under the existing criteria. By implication at least, that contributor is calling another contributor not just close-minded but stupid (i.e. for taking stands without "actual evidence"). The bottom line is, I'm just going to keep doing the best job I can on a case-by-case basis, giving people a bit more leash where I feel it's appropriate and/or justified by the context and/or the flow of the thread. In my mind, I was already policing the more inflammatory attacks on the blog, editing or rejecting as needed (though I know I left something to be desired in the minds of a few of our regulars). I hope all of you will accompany me on that journey.

* though there are reports of rumblings of discontent from Zoey-land; it's a safe bet that many high-level meetings are being had, and Nickelodeon brass aren't exactly going into Christmas feeling giddy. At some point the channel will have to decide whether to batten down the hatches and air 2008's episodes—which are already in the can—or pull the plug on the show if pressure gets too intense. It also appears that Jamie Lynn may lose a certain amount of exposure, at least until everything settles down/sorts out. At least one major magazine, CosmoGirl!, has ditched its pre-pregnancy plans to feature Jamie Lynn on its cover. Editor-in-chief Susan Schulz told Us magazine, "I don't feel like I can put her on the cover right now because, as you can imagine, girls are disappointed in Jamie Lynn."
** Relax, people. I'm not saying that's what she is. I'm just saying, in any case, the network is certainly not going to leave viewers with that impression of her!

Eat your heart out, Rhonda.

It behooves me to note that as I write this, SHAM is either No. 1 or No. 2 in three different Amazon categories. Granted, they're piddling little esoteric categories like "stress management" or "health, mind and body books on cassette" or "hypnosis" (and lord knows why a hypnosis-minded individual would want to buy my book, unless he's planning to wave the glaring red-lettered cover in front of people's eyes until they zone out....) But I'm not complaining. Every little bit helps.

Gee...if only I could get something in The Wall Street Journal every day....

Sweet (statutory?) 16.

Devoted SHAMbloggers know that I try not to wade too far into the muck of celebrity gossip. But there are moments when celebrity gossip takes on added weight. This is such a moment.

[NOTE: I'm a bit late to this party. I started putting together this item when the news first broke, and many, many people have weighed in since then. Nonetheless, I'm going with what I'd written. It remains apt.]

It's hard to know how to react to the news that Jamie Lynn Spears, 16, is expecting. (Which means, I guess, that the "added weight" mentioned above is literal—yuk, yuk.) Jamie Lynn, of course, is the younger sibling of Britney, whose own magnificent job of parenting no doubt inspired her sister to procreate. (Photo, left, shows them in happier, zygote-free days.) The proud papa, reportedly, is Jamie Lynn's boyfriend, Casey Aldridge; he is all of 19. Or maybe he's 17, if you go by the info posted on what appears to be Casey's own MySpace page. And maybe he's not so proud, either: There is speculation that they've already gone splitsville, a theory that Casey fuels on that same MySpace page.* Personally, I'd hoped that the loving couple would do at least as well together as Big Sis and Kevin Federline.

I was struck by the tone of the early reporting here, which ran somewhere between neutral and cautiously giddy. (It seemed as if the assembled media, and the fanzines in particular, were waiting to see how the news was received before they decided what their official take should be.) The reports I've seen noted in passing, with nary a whit of judgment or irony, that Jamie Lynn has been "dating" Aldridge since she began high school. That's how it is now: We have kids when we're "dating." Several stories made a point of reassuring readers that the pregnancy "won't affect [Jamie Lynn's] Nickelodeon series, Zoey 101." And thank God for that! Now we can sleep at night. Left unexamined, at least at first, was whether a pregnant and unmarried 16-year-old should have a Nickelodeon series. Zoey 101, by the way, depicts the inspirational exploits of a headstrong female student (Jamie Lynn) at a formerly all-male school; in 2005 the show received an Emmy nomination for "outstanding children's program." A spokesman for Viacom, which distributes Zoey, noted that "fresh episodes will air through 2008." You wonder how he's sleeping.

This is not a stand I take based on moral superiority. God no! And as long as we brought God into it, I should mention that He knows I've done any number of things in my life that I'm not proud of. But that's the point: I'm not proud. I would not make smiling announcements that I then expect to generate fawning/celebratory press coverage. I would not, as Jamie Lynn does, gush about how "excited" I am at the prospect of becoming a mother. (Part of her excitement may have to do with the fact that, in addition to a baby, Jamie Lynn is expecting a nice payday. TMZ reports that the magazine that broke the story has agreed to pay $1 million for the first photos of the child. It would've been a lot more, the story notes somewhat apologetically, but Jamie Lynn is not considered a star of international magnitude.) Instead, were I Jamie Lynn Spears, I might worry about the impact I'm likely to have on the adolescent girls who faithfully watch me being headstrong and inspirational on Zoey 101.

A further point, apropos of the headline I chose for this item: Jamie Lynn is 16, having reached that tender milestone on April 4, 2007. Thing is, she's a legal resident of Louisiana, where current law specifies the "age of consent" as 17**. Not to sound hopelessly old and "uncool," but it does seem reasonable to ask: Is there a felony amid all this? Does anyone care?

The most stinging critique I've seen—a full-frontal assault against Lynne Spears, nominal mother to this wayward brood—comes from Bonnie Fuller, blogging in the Huffington Post. But this is itself ironic, since it was Fuller who elevated the pursuit of casual-if-not-anonymous sex to a female birthright during her years as chief editorial steward of Cosmo. (Memorable and typically sly cover line from the Fuller era: "He wants to put his what, where?")

And there is even a final, superseding irony: Lynne Spears is writing a parenting book. Oh yes. Now, it's not specifically bracketed as advice—no publisher is quite that stupid—but certainly it's intended to be in the category of an "uplifting memoir." It is hard to imagine what the matron of the Spears clan could possibly tell us about raising daughters, except perhaps how not to go about it. That said, if Lynne Spears can write a book that touches on any aspect of parenting, and if people actually buy it—which I'm sure some will, if only as a goof—then I suggest the following books as well:

Be At Peace With Who You Are by Michael Jackson.
The Employee Comes First! by Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling.
The Natural Path to Excellence by Barry Bonds.
The Art of Emergency Water Rescue by Ted Kennedy.
The 7 Keys to Self-Control by Bill Clinton.
What We Can Learn From Man's Best Friend by Michael Vick.
Just Say No! by Robert Downey Jr.

Others?

* Let us not forget that it's very easy to set up MySpace accounts, even in someone else's name, and hoaxes are rampant.
** The precise status of the law is controversial at this writing; it has been appealed several times, and is listed on at least one survey site as "invalidated." I am awaiting a return call from Bill Bryant of the office of the attorney general of Louisiana. When I hear, you'll hear.

Journalistic elbow-rubbing.

The second-most-enjoyable* aspect of writing freelance commentary for The Wall Street Journal is opening the paper on the morning of publication to see with whom you share the page. Bear in mind, it's not that I believe in status-by-association. In fact, I'm not even sure I believe in status. (Who's to say that any one person is any more worthwhile than any other person, regardless of his or her standing in life? A lot of life, if not all of it, is just a cosmic accident.) But it's always fun, often in a strange-bedfellows way, to learn who your page-mates are. Today, for example, it's me and Karl Rove, the man people love to hate—just a coupla white guys sittin' around talkin'. Previously I've shared column-inches with irascible-but-beloved theater critic John Simon and supply-side-economist-to-the-stars Arthur Laffer. December 18, 1996 was quite a day: It was me, publisher and presidential candidate Steve Forbes, and CBS legend Mike Wallace, plus a sidebar from Wallace's long-time producer at 60 Minutes, Don Hewitt. What made that especially odd was that earlier that year, I had gotten Messrs. Wallace and Hewitt very, very angry by writing a long Journal critique of some of the reportorial tactics pioneered at 60 Minutes. (And by the way, though it may not sound like it here, yes, the Journal does run stuff written by females.)

One glorious time—January 18, 1994—I had almost the entire page to myself. That was for a piece on HMOs, "The High Price of Managed Care," that became something of a touchstone in the emerging debate over the business side of health care.

Anyway, my piece, today, is sure to certify my standing as the antichrist among folks who've always attacked me as a gloom-and-doomer. Be sure to let me know what you think, if you care to read the piece and can open the page without registering for the site (which requires payment). That's easier if you try to reach it through Google news, which is where the above URL takes you.

Also today, I'm told, NPR will be uploading a story on life coaching to which I contributed. Just FYI.

* The first-most-enjoyable is the pay: Among newspapers, the Journal pays the highest rates in the known world for opinion writing.

Another illustrious moment in Sportsthink history.

I'd meant to comment on this yesterday, but I got sidetracked. I don't know how many of you watched Monday night's unwatchable contest between the Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears, who were presented to us as a pair of professional football teams; I'm reserving judgment. This is especially true of the Bears, who'd gone to their third different quarterback, Kyle Orton, in an effort to revitalize their prevent-offense. (Word is, next week they're starting the towel boy.) Though Minnesota's QB, Tavaris Jackson, can't really run a team, either, he's an improvement over Orton, because he is much better at running away from people before throwing a terrible pass to a receiver he shouldn't have thrown to in the first place.

But I digress. Early in the third quarter of a game that had been less entertaining than catching an occasional glimpse of fans in their Viking get-ups, Minnesota scored on a never-any-doubt goal-line run by their sensational rookie, Adrian Peterson (not to be confused with Chicago's running back, Adrian Peterson*); the run followed an exciting 71-yard pass play that finally gave the hometown crowd a reason to peer out from under those asinine helmets. The Bears then got the ball and couldn't do a thing; the Vikings' defense swarmed all over them. At this point, of course, the dutifully sportsthinking ESPN broadcast crew began to rhapsodize about Minnesota's sudden "energy," and how "momentum" was clearly on the Vikings' side. The Bears were forced to punt. Everybody in the booth expected the Vikes to seize control of the game and never look back.

And then, on the very first play from scrimmage after getting the ball again, Minnesota's Jackson performed his specialty: throwing another terrible pass to a receiver he shouldn't have thrown to in the first place. It got intercepted.

And I thought: Huh...I wonder where all that momentum and energy went, so suddenly....

* For those who don't follow football, that's not a joke or a misprint. Each team has a running back named Adrian Peterson. Minnesota's got the good one.

SecretRon.

In honor of the fast-approaching Iowa Caucus, representing the official kick-off to the 2008 presidential season*, I thought I'd make note of an interesting column that touts a bold new approach to securing the presidency for under-underdog Ron Paul. Despite his unelectability, the Texas congressman is the "chic pick" among more independent-minded GOP partisans; in fact, Paul collected $6 million in online contributions just this past Sunday, an unprecedented one-day total. His candidacy/public face is an offbeat amalgam of platform planks: He's an anti-war Republican who takes a dim view of much of Washington's official response to 9/11, in particular the Patriot Act. He's also a pro-life former OB/GYN (he claims to have delivered 4000 babies) who supports vigorous enforcement of national borders and opposes most public services for illegal aliens; and, he opposes the current, sweeping impetus for a national health-care system, a topic that has been such a rhetorical minefield for his fellow candidates. The guy is outspoken, meaning not merely that he raises his voice or shakes his fist in the air while delivering the usual Beltway clichés, but that he actually says unconventional/unpopular things—hence his unelectability. Well, there's that, and there's his dweebish mien; sometimes I have to remind myself that it's not just ol' Pat Paulsen all over again. But Paul's general position on most issues is that Washington should just butt out—hence his appeal for libertarians like columnist Walt Thiessen.

In his column, Thiessen suggests a "thought experiment" wherein Paul supporters diligently try to "attract" their guy into the White House. Thiessen even invokes our old friends Rhonda Byrne, Bob (I Will Never Die**) Proctor and Joe Vitale, drawing generously from The Secret in making his case. He asks his readers to marshal their "inner powers" on Paul's behalf, and even suggests that this strategy—though never formally articulated or organized before now—"explains quite clearly why the Ron Paul revolution is happening. Thousands of people from around the country and around the world are finding each other, predominantly through the Internet, because they chose to focus their thoughts on achieving freedom right now."

I could make a snide remark here, along the lines of how "thousands" ain't gonna cut it, but I think the same point is better made by observing that a corresponding movement has been afoot for some time now from within the Obama camp. Several months back on Obama's discussion forum, one ardent supporter called for all spiritual types to try to attract the presidency to him. And of course, with Secret-loving Oprah squarely in Obama's corner, his campaign was sure to be infused with all sorts of buzzwords signaling an "empowered" view of his presidential chances.

This raises an intriguing metaphysical question: All things being equal (which they're not here, but humor me), if one group of people tries to attract the presidency to Paul, and another group tries to attract the presidency to Obama...does Hillary still win?***

* though it seems like Campaign 2008 has been underway since Campaign 2004 gave us George W. Bush's illustrious second term.
** Click through, scroll down to Proctor's name for an explanation of the phrase in parens.
*** Sure, I could be wrong. And right now it does look like (almost) anyone's race. It's just that I can't picture any candidate out-maneuvering the Clintons in the final, cutthroat stages of a down-and-dirty campaign. Can you?
_________________________________

NOTE: In the spirit of giving credit where it's due—a holiday requirement, of course—I should point out that Secretron is Cosmic Connie's apt label for fanatical followers of Byrne's Boondoggle.

The next Dr. Laura. Just with worse teeth, maybe.

Comes news from across the pond that Libby Rees, age 12, is about to publish her second self-help book. That's Libby at left with her first book—Help, Hope & Happiness—which she wrote at age 9. And there she is again, below right, all growed up. (One supposes Libby waited till 9 to start writing self-help because to do so before that would've been, well, presumptuous.)

"Like my first book, I wrote it from my own experiences because I was moving from primary to secondary," says Libby, demonstrating that an author can capably mangle a modifying clause at any age. "Changing schools is a really big event. I went from a class of 20 to one of 30, which was daunting." Her press release points out that this forthcoming work is "part of a three-book deal" she signed with her U.K. publisher.

A three-book deal. A three-book deal.

(Readers who have any level of involvement with the writing arts will understand why I give the phrase special emphasis.)

I don't want to be accused of reverse-ageism here—and yes, I do recognize that Ms. Rees is aiming at an audience of youthful peers, so maybe it's unfair to evaluate her based on standards set for much older people. But in a way, that's the point: I'm not sure the standards are any different for adults writing self-help. Libby Rees and her three-book deal symbolize so many of the flaws of the genre. First of all, why should anyone, even another child, regard the wisdom of any one random preteen as more valuable or "inspirational" than the wisdom of the many child psychologists and other accomplished professionals who rigorously study the domain (and who also, now, write books aimed specifically at kids)?

But really, the bottom line is this: When people at age 12 are already writing their second book about life and living... Does that not tell you just a little something about the entry requirements for this particular line of work?

Maybe we need to check this?

Apropos of my recent application for federal employment, as well as my debate on the topic with one of our regulars the other night, I find myself thinking a lot about background checks. Such checks are, of course, SOP for all federal jobs nowadays. But they're increasingly a factor in non-federal hiring as well. Indeed, amid the talk of Before and After—that is, before and after 9/11—America's seeming faith in salvation-via-background checks may be the most tangible of the Afters.

In the immediate wake of 9/11, Dean Suposs, a top executive with ADP Screening and Selection Services, the nation's largest pre-employment investigator, described a tremendous growth in demand for his firm's services. The trend continued even after the initial shockwaves from 9/11 had abated: ADP did almost 4.9 million background checks in 2005, a 12 percent increase over the prior year. In a 2004 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 80 percent of corporate respondents said they now routinely screen all job candidates for criminal histories. Some employers have become pathologically picky not just about whom they hire, but whom they keep. At pharmo-giant Eli Lilly in 2002, this ex post facto screening led to a purge of more than 100 contract workers. Among them was a woman who'd once bounced a $60 check for a refrigerator rental.

On the surface, it's hard to fault any tactic that lowers the odds of, say, an airline filling its baggage-handling vacancies from the ranks of Al Qaeda sleeper cells. And of course, that's how the subject of background checks is invariably framed: striking a blow for peace, justice, and the ongoing right to consume obscene quantities of hot wings and beer. All of which might make perfect sense, if the background-check juggernaut weren't logically suspect, ethically dubious, and as useful for ensuring domestic tranquility as the color-coded threat-level scheme that tells us how paranoid to feel on any given day. Worse, as a cornerstone of today's simplistic backlash against E-ville (as Hedley Lamarr from Blazing Saddles would pronounce it), the nation's unswerving reliance on background checks signals an abandonment of time-honored notions of forgiveness and punitive restraint.

As the breadth of the phenomenon expands, you see, so does its depth. You might not know this, but bankruptcies and even less dire financial problems may render you unsuitable for positions involving money in even the most peripheral sense. (About one-third of all prospective employers now run credit checks on applicants. The more responsible the job, the greater the likelihood of a such a check.) A spotty driving history can preclude employment in any capacity that puts you behind the wheel on company time; some companies even worry about what you do during your commuting time, which of course means they look at the driving records of all prospective employees. HR directors, meanwhile, like to learn what they can about the marital histories and romantic habits of managerial candidates, hoping to avoid messy, Clintonesque scandals.

The inquisition also has spread beyond the 9-to-5 world. Ever-mindful of today's rash of school shootings, and especially on the heels of Virginia Tech, a growing number of colleges deny campus housing to would-be students with any kind of criminal record; click here for a look at the convoluted policy statement of one such college. Mortgage lenders increasingly order more intrusive investigations along with the usual credit profiles. So do many dating services. (Hence, that new ad for Chemistry.com that zeroes in on how selective eHarmony can be in welcoming people into its virtual singles community.)

Still, the closer you look, the less convincing are the stipulated goals and probable efficacy of all this snooping. I ask you: What background check protects society against the individual whose first offense consists of strapping a bomb to himself and walking into an Amtrak terminal? A colleague of mine quips archly that all such screening does is "prevent someone who has carried out a suicide mission from ever doing it again." In any case, the bridge between past crime and present catastrophe seems tenuous at best. I have seen no credible evidence that a convicted shoplifter is more likely than anyone else to fly jets into buildings or smuggle an Uzi into the lunchroom at work. (Would you really feel that skittish about having Winona Ryder on your flight?) In fact, some studies suggest that so-called rage killers—those who stab someone 146 times, or take out a room full of coworkers in a horrific orgy of violence—tend to be individuals who, prior to the apocalyptic event, impressed acquaintances as quiet and nonconfrontational. ("He always seemed like such nice, well-mannered guy...") Psychologists theorize that people in this category repress their anger until it boils to a point that compels them to "act out." So maybe the folks we really need to worry about are the overly agreeable, submissive types.

Moreover, this is a topic that focuses one's thoughts on the very nature of crime and criminality. There are valid questions, I think, about whether what we define as "crime" is always worse than some other behaviors that, while legal, nevertheless constitute grave offenses against the social contract. For purposes of predicting which candidate would make a better employee, is a single nonviolent felony really more troubling than a lifelong pattern of using and manipulating others? Which is worse: a boss who once made unwelcome advances to his secretary and got his hand slapped for it? Or some gruff SOB "with issues" who treats everyone like garbage? Which is riskier: having a fellow in shipping-and-receiving who once filched a six-pack and drove his car into a tree? Or having an over-the-top hedonist in the executive office? Clearly background checks would not have saved Enron from the misdeeds of its corporate brass, who arguably did more damage to America than any act of violence except 9/11 itself. (Put aside your preconceptions and ask yourself this: If we're going strictly on the basis of the scope of damage done—which seems like a reasonable way of judging the severity of a crime—why would Scott Peterson get the death penalty before Jeffrey Skilling or Ken Lay?*) Finally, we should not lose sight of the fact that background checks, much like credit files, can include erroneous information that unfairly stigmatizes job candidates.

Even if backgrounds checks can make life more harmonious within any given company, society is left with a serious pragmatic concern: What do we do about the estimated 25 million** Americans (and counting) who fall short of our newfound standards? Explain to me how America as a whole is made safer by denying its most marginal citizens work, housing, credit, education, even mates.

The U.S. prison population set an all-time record in 2006, with some 7 million adults under lock and key. An additional 5 million Americans, give or take, are either on parole or on probation. Justice Department figures tell us that one in 20 Americans will spend some portion of their lifetime behind bars. For males, that probability approaches one in 10. For minority males, one in five.

That's an awful lot of us who may end up serving the equivalent of a life sentence for things like bouncing a $60 check.

* I need to be clear here: One of the few issues in life about which I am vehement is my opposition to capital punishment. (I go with Mario Cuomo on this one: Government should not be in the business of elevating mankind's most base impulses to the status of law.) I'm just making a point. Again, looking at things strictly in terms of the scope of the damage to society, I think there are many crimes (even many nonviolent ones) that are "worse" than a single episode of homicide.
** That figure counts only those who've been physically incarcerated. According to one 2004 Wall Street Journal article, there are at least 46 million Americans with criminal records, including those who copped pleas or otherwise did not do actual jail time.

When it comes to this stuff, I think my parameters have been exceeded.

So I'm watching this Lifetime* movie on Friday, Eye of the Stalker, wherein a coed is being harassed by a professor. The girl complains to her mother, who happens to be a judge. And the mother sits the girl down at a table, stares her straight in the eye and tells her, "You need to establish parameters and empower yourself."

With luck, I may stop laughing any day now.

The more serious point here is that we're rapidly devolving into a culture of jargon. SHAM and its wider social consequences are seldom mentioned in lamentations on political correctness, speech codes and the like, but the movement bears no small part of the blame. I refer you to Chapter 1 of my book for a discussion of self-help's formative role in a brand of sanitized, "enlightened" speaking that—it was hoped—would empower everyone and offend no one. It was SHAM that really brought to full flower the maddening linguistic trends that former newsman Edwin Newman wrote about with devastating hilarity in such latter-day classics as Strictly Speaking, A Civil Tongue and I Must Say. Notwithstanding the title of that last book, Newman's basic argument was that nobody just says anything anymore: First we have to process it, mill it, refine it and, ultimately, denature it. In the end, though the micromanaged language we like to use masquerades as conveying great meaning and even profundity, in many cases it actually says and means nothing. Nothing of any consequence, anyway. Like the quote from Friday's movie.

Today, I guess, everybody is either empowered or en route there. If you've caught news coverage of Oprah's appearances on behalf of Sen. Obama—another topic I plan to revisit soon—you've heard the E word mentioned, or the concept alluded to, literally dozens of times.

Understand that these catch-phrases do not really represent a change of heart or that vaunted "new attitude" Dr. Laura forever touts in her radio theme; they're just meant to mimic one. We like to pretend (some may even believe) that learning to speak in this new voice in itself transforms us into a new person, with new traits and abilities that leave us vastly improved over what we were before. (And wouldn't that be nice? No further need for therapists, Lexapro or any of it! No need for prisons, either! Just declare yourself "changed" and empowered! Then begin talking like Oprah!) This is the great appeal of so much of self-help, and is in fact the explicit pitch of Tony Robbins and his proprietary twist on neurolinguistic programming (NLP): Changing the way you think and express yourself supposedly changes the way in which you live your life and the success you'll enjoy at same. As it happens, there is some truth to that, in some settings, so we don't want to overstate in our skepticism. But it's hardly a push-button thing or the blanket prescription for success its apostles would have you believe. For one thing, there are so many variables that are beyond our control (no matter what Rhonda or Joe tell you). As one of our regulars mentioned to me over the weekend in an off-blog conversation, "If Tony Robbins was at Pearl Harbor back in 1941, it wouldn't matter if he found a better way of describing the experience. There would still be bombs falling and people being blown apart all around him."

Still, the fight may have already been lost. The "jargon thing" has become a secret handshake in all walks of life: We trust people who talk back to us in the same authorized lingo we use. That shows that they've been properly schooled and conditioned, that the individuality and rebellion have been bleached (or beaten) out of them by total immersion in The System.

Yesterday I was on a government web site attempting to apply for a job that someone alerted me to; it was a very high-paying job that is, in many senses, ideal for me, not least because it wouldn't even demand my full-time attention. But this is where we come back to the attempting, above. Within 15 minutes of beginning the application procedure I found that I had to get up, throw my hands in the air and primal-scream (it was either that or throw the computer against the wall). I just couldn't stand it anymore. I was that sick of trying to phrase my responses in the Dilbertian gibberish that they clearly wanted from me; it was like some nightmarish, federalized version of Jabberwocky. In particular, I had run up against the government's fondness for so-called "KSAs": reckonings of job-worthiness that call for a candidate to render a highly formatted and hysterically stilted assessment of his "knowledge, skills and abilities" in various areas of job function. Chief among those skills and abilities, evidently, is a knack for expressing yourself like a good little bureaucrat/sheep.

It occurred to me that the KSA process had been designed to help normal people translate ordinary, straightforward English into redundant bureaucratic b.s. that, once again, says nothing and means nothing. "I interacted with peers and supervisors in order to facilitate the effective and efficient formalization of division procedures and protocols…" That is an actual example of a good response supplied on one of the KSA coaching pages, which I can't link here; you have to register for the site and post a resume in order to reach this interior page. The KSA phenomenon is evidence of what happens when you turn over the human-resources system to PhDs and other highly credentialed managerial types** who feel required to justify their existence as well as the string of honorifics that follow their name.

It is not high-level thought to write sentences like "I interacted with peers and supervisors in order to facilitate the effective and efficient formalization of division procedures and protocols …" It is the absence of thought. Yes, even though the government sites have tutorials on "proper" KSA-writing. For the life of me, I can't imagine why people would sit there and willingly learn how to twist their legitimate thoughts into such a bizarre, empty-headed format. Of course, that may be the whole point of the exercise, for all I know: to weed out people of independent mind.

After all, what place would such folks have in government?

* Regulars know that I have an abiding soft spot for Lifetime movies, perhaps because the highlight of my writing career consisted of a TV movie, Bed of Lies, that could easily run on Lifetime (and, in fact, has). It's a perfect fit with the Lifetime genre, which goes basically as follows:
1. Unhappy Woman coming out of Bad Relationship meets Debonair Mr. Wonderful.
2. By the second commercial break, Unhappy Woman begins to notice little indications that Debonair Mr. Wonderful is in reality the kind of guy who pulls the wings off baby birds.
3. Debonair Mr. Wonderful turns up dead, and Unhappy Woman is charged with the crime.
4. Disheveled, Unremarkable-Looking Male Defense Attorney takes her case (pro bono).
5. Unhappy Woman gets acquitted.
6. As they descend the courthouse steps, Disheveled, Unremarkable-Looking Male Defense Attorney asks her out for coffee...they smile...and we...fade out....sigh.
** I.e., paid administrators and HR "specialists" brought in from outside, as opposed to those brought up through the ranks. This is the same reason why major hospital systems, during the 1990s, fell into such disarray and became so widely maligned for their declining levels of TLC: The reins of control were turned over from doctors to MBAs.

We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.

On a whim, I just went to the "comment moderation" page of my Blogger account, where I discovered to my horror that a fairly large number of comments apparently were not being routed to me via email for my consideration. In fact, over the past 10 days, by my count, Blogger has only been notifying me of the arrival of new comments about half the time. (Is anyone else having this problem?) Which is why, today, I found about a dozen comments from that period just sitting there, pending approval.

Those of you who are SHAMblog regulars know how much I value contributions from each and every person who takes time out of his/her busy day to post a comment in response to something I write. I'm going to take this up with the technical people at Blogger. In the meantime, again, I deeply regret the oversight, and I assure you that it wasn't intentional.

Attention Walmart shoppers.

In November 1992 I did a column for the Los Angeles Times Magazine (inset) about a posh San Diego neighborhood reduced to near-civil war by a new business about to move into its midst. (This is another one of those topics where I'm tempted to invoke humorist Dave Barry in shouting, "I swear, I am not making this up.") What was this controversial establishment? A bail bondsman? A drug rehab center? An auto-salvage yard?

No. It was a clothing store. Ross Dress For Less.*

Not a few of the locals were tres upset that this unabashed discounter should have the audacity to sully their neighborhood (specifically their chic little strip mall) with its bargain-basement image. In my original draft of the piece I'd quoted a woman who'd told a newsman covering the melee—understand, people were actually picketing over this—"We don't want to dress for less! We want to look nice!" The quote ended up getting cut from the column for space reasons, which was a shame, because it's the kind of line that puts things into perspective in a way that hundreds of words of embellishment can't. It conjures images of some snobby, well-put-together beeatch with her nose in the air. I saw the interview on which she spoke the line, and believe me, the lady looked the part. What's more, she delivered it with the full fervor of someone who, a generation earlier, might've been protesting Viet Nam or the arrest of the Chicago Seven.... Yeah, you've come a long way, baby.

Lest you think my misogyny is showing, I was reminded of this yesterday when I got a call from a guy I know who lives in Manhattan, and who is himself a walking billboard for vanity run amok. I've found him to be a pretty good source on certain topics over the years, but beyond that, I also find him to be a shallow, self-seeking scumbag, which is why I don't mind saying that if he recognizes himself in this and tells me to go sit and spin, as we used to say in Flatbush, I could care less. The particular subject of his ire yesterday was Walmart,** or more precisely, the people who shop there. In the course of an unprovoked five-minute tirade, he basically portrayed Walmart shoppers as fat, illiterate lowlifes: trailer-trash ignoramuses who despoil the visual landscape by dressing in no-name rags, buy generic everything, divide their weekends between listening to Travis Tritt and watching Nascar, and shoot themselves in the foot election after election by voting Republican, something they do simply because Republicans—I'm quoting him, now—"hate blacks and gays." He concluded his dissertation by observing that the average Walmart shopper "is the kind of person who, if you look on their dresser, every bottle of cologne is called 'If you like...' " And he laughed at that, quite pleased with himself.

The way things are going, I may never get a deal to write that book on vanity the way I'd hoped to write it. (And I won't write it unless I'm allowed to write it the way I'd hoped to write it.) Regardless, I do have this little ol' blog, and I'm vowing here and now to take a stand on these matters whenever they come up. And in that spirit, I hereby offer a new affirmation for you smug, sophisticated types to repeat in your mirror each morning: "Yes, it's great to be me! I like to shop amid 'ambience' and therefore pay an outrageous mark-up for everything I buy, including the simplest staples of daily life like bathroom tissue and hand soap! I like to accouter myself in hats and scarves that were made at the very same factory in Indonesia as the ones in discount stores but cost four times as much! It makes me proud to know that I cheerfully pay obscene sums for clothing that advertises someone else's name, or trendy high-tech gadgets that no one needs in the first place, or that I drive a car that set me back six figures but can't corner or even stop as well as my neighbor's 20-year-old Z-car! It soothes me to know that when I check the time, it's on a watch whose value could feed, clothe and house 1,000 kids in Darfur! Or that I'll pony up whatever it costs to douse myself with perfume named after a rock star who can't sing or a socialite whose main claim to fame is that she's good at oral sex, or even a Major League shortstop—a freakin' shortstop! Yes indeed, it's great to be me...!"

* Which often goes nowadays simply by the name "Ross," perhaps because of some of the very issues noted here.
** Yes, I know that some people have other gripes with Walmart, and ironically, in a way, for reasons related to some of those cited here. But that's another column. I'm not "defending" Walmart, per se, so much as I'm attacking the mindset of people like the two individuals quoted here.

A bullet with an unusually long range?

Once you get past the shock and pathos of the crime itself, it's interesting to watch the media exploit the Sportsthinky elements of the Sean Taylor homicide as it relates to the performance of his team, the Washington Redskins.* You can almost see the little wheels a-turning as sportscasters and commentators milk the emotional angles out of the story line, as they did last year with the passing of Tiger Woods' dad and earlier this year with the untimely death of Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock. The media basically do this with any off-field action that they can spin as either (a) an inspirational lift or (b) a "distraction," a word you seem to hear from sports broadcasters these days as often as you hear words like homer or touchdown or steroids.

When it first appeared that the 'Skins were poised to beat the Bills in this past Sunday's game, which was of course the first since Taylor's murder, the media were all revved up to play the heart-tugging victory-in-tribute theme, in the tradition of "win one for the Gipper." They'd been building to this since the news of Taylor's death, prepping themselves to talk and write about how he was the invisible "12th man" on the field that day. Even as the game clock ticked down to the final minute, it was clear that Sports Nation was psyched to glory in the redeeming "inspirational win" that the Redskins had salvaged from this terrible tragedy.

And then—as so often happens in the latter stages of an NFL game—things changed in a flash. A dramatic field goal with just four seconds left handed the Bills a one-point win.

The media scrambled to regroup. Now they had their new story line: how the Redskins, despite their most valiant effort, couldn't quite focus themselves enough to overcome Taylor's loss. It was just too much for them. Their hearts weren't in it. (Read, in particular, MSNBC's take on Redskins coach Joe Gibbs, whose procedural gaffe toward the end positioned the Bills for a much easier field goal than they might've had otherwise.) Today we hear them dusting off the same stale rhetoric in anticipation of this Thursday's game, when the Redskins face the Bears. At the moment the Skins are slight favorites. But for all we know, they might still be too distracted and shaken up to play. I'm sure the media will tell us once they have the minor advantage of seeing what actually transpires in the game.

It’s vital to note that, despite how the Sportsthinkers frame it in their $1,000-a-minute dinner speeches, such outlooks are in no way "tributes" to the "power of the human spirit." They represent, in fact, the polar opposite: a complete negation of conscious human will and even rationality itself. They imply that we’re powerless against the inner forces that preordain the outcome of all we do.** Those forces can even rise up from out of nowhere with just four seconds left in a football game, yank a clear victory from your grasp and, without mercy, toss you and your team into the jaws of defeat. And again, if you believe the lore, there's not a damn thing you can do about it. That's the real message sold by the sportscasters who play the Taylor death as a distraction. They're reasoning backwards from the fact that the 'Skins lost the game in order to postulate—in effect—that there is no way the Redskins were ever really in that game. The same bullet that tore into Taylor's femoral artery also tore his teammates up too much to win. (How do we know? Simple. Because they lost.)

I don't know if such contentions are true or false, because I'm not omniscient. But I do know one thing: They certainly don't represent "empowerment."

* As many readers will know by now, 24-year-old Taylor, the Redskins' Pro Bowl safety, was shot to death in his Florida home during the course of an apparent robbery on November 27. Four suspects have been arrested. You can find more details on the crime by clicking here.
** This actually constitutes an even more austere view of life than the determinism I discuss often on this blog, because it implies that there are no forces external to the person that make a difference—that if you show up "not ready to play," you're simply going to lose, period, no matter what else is going on around you. Even if the ball takes a weird bounce, even if somebody trips on his way to goal line, even if your field goal attempt gets deflected by a sudden gust of wind and hits the upright—it all comes down to "wanting it" enough. As absurd as that sounds, there's really no other way to interpret it.

SHAMblog goes wide(r)-screen.

Faithful readers will notice the new blue banner to the right. (I'd imagine that even some unfaithful readers might notice it, too.) I'm pleased to report that SHAMblog has been accepted for syndication. From now on, Newstex, a major content aggregator, will regularly and automatically be channeling material from this blog to other media outlets and readers who've been identified as having a particular interest in the topics we cover. This means that reader comments will achieve a wider reach. It also means that we should be seeing an influx of new voices on the blog.

Finally, it means that yours truly will have to redouble his efforts to keep the scintillating new content ever in the pipeline. So, to those of who you've been nice enough to contact me off-blog with tips and other ideas...by all means, keep the good stuff coming. And thanks in advance.