Imagine someone proposing to put up a statue today of Benedict Arnold with a simple plaque that said ONLY “Benedict Arnold, Commander of the American Legion in the Revolutionary War, placed in command of the fort of West Point by President George Washington himself”, depicting Arnold nobly riding into the Battle of Groton Heights, sword in hand, steely look on his face, on his way to slaughter American troops.

Now imagine that the statue was proposed and paid for by “Sons of the British Empire”, a group of people who supported the British side of the war, wanted America to lose, and wanted to commemorate Arnold’s brave defection and support of the British army.

Imagine that the statue was to be placed on public lands and maintained with public funds, taxpayer money, in New London, Connecticut, on the site Arnold had burned to the ground and where he ordered surrendering American forces to be slaughtered. The group wants the statue placed specifically over the exact location where an unnamed, surrendering American soldier was killed by British troops.

Would you go along with the idea that this statue was necessary in order “remind people” of this part of history? Do you feel that a statue done in this way achieves the correct goal? Do you go along with the rhetoric of the organization that if we don’t put up this statue we are “erasing history”?

You say we should “never tear down memorials”, and yet you seem oblivious or uncaring about what these things are a memorial TO. Never tear down memorials to human decency, to hope, to fighting against Nazis, sure. Instead you are defending memorials that are put up to celebrate rape, murder, lynching, slavery and owning other human beings.

The Auschwitz memorial doesn’t do that.

But the memorials celebrating Confederate “heroes” do, and were put up by people who supported what they did, to glorify their actions.

Take them down and, at most if they MUST be kept, put them in a museum, where the stories of the slavery they were fighting for can be put into context as the horrible events they were, rather than whitewashed (pun absolutely intended) out of history. Replace them with statues of those who defeated the Confederacy, and those who suffered under it.

It’s precisely because we remember history that these statues are unnecessary and offensive.

It would be impossible to pass a no-smoking law for bars and restaurants today. The moment you tried there would be a thousand idiots in front of state capitols, smoking up a cancerous storm cloud with signs reading “MY LUNGS MY CHOICE” and various creative interpretations on how to write the word “Constitutional”.

You would have people on Twitter posting videos of being thrown out of private bars and restaurants with clearly-marked “No Smoking” signs, yelling about their freedoms and demanding boycotts.

There would be reports of violence across the country as smokers went up to non-smokers and blew smoke and ash into their faces, calling them “snowflakes”.

There would be people posting graphics to social media showing that *only* 0.8% of the US population dies every year from lung cancer, with poorly-formatted memes of Winston Churchill smoking a cigar and saying “I like those odds” (incidentally implying that those who oppose smoking are Nazis).

There would be re-posts of sketchy studies done by one non-oncologist plastic surgeon in Orange County, CA on populations from two restaurants, “proving” that if one person smoked in that restaurant, the chances of that one person directly and singularly causing lung cancer in any other person in the other establishment would be infinitesimal. Real oncologists would roll their eyes and not even deign to respond to such obvious statistical nonsense, and as a result the studies would be passed around as uncontested gospel by those who were asleep during math class.

The President would be photographed visiting Stage IV lung cancer wards, proudly smoking a cigar in spite of the clear and logical signs and restrictions against doing so, both because of the patients and because of the immediate danger of open flame to the hissing oxygen tanks that allow them to breathe. Idiots on social media would cheer him for being so brave. He would call the thousands of reports linking smoking to lung cancer “fake news”. He would declare lung cancer “contained”, and state that it would go away by March. Discussions of bills in Congress to give tax breaks to tobacco companies would be conducted in a smoky haze, produced by the GOP legislators smoking stogies as vice-signaling to their leader.

And finally, there would be the discussion of “free choice”, which would go something like this: “As a smoker, I take personal responsibility for the risks I am taking. I know I might get cancer, but that is MY choice to make and no one should be able to tell me when or where I have the right to smoke. If YOU are worried about cancer, if you have respiratory issues, if you have asthma or COPD or simply dislike the smell of tobacco smoke, YOU also have a choice, which is to stay at home and never eat at a restaurant or drink at a bar again.”

See? Everyone gets a choice, and everyone else should respect that choice.

The NYT would publish the names of 100,000 non-smoking bar and restaurant workers who died of lung cancer that year, and idiots would point out that some of them were old, or had high blood pressure, or COPD, or diabetes, or asthma, so it wasn’t *really* the lung cancer that killed them.

The cruelty and lack of empathy would be the point.

I’m reviving this dead blog because people asked me to share this, so I will.  If you read this, please consider paying your barista/pilates instructor/cleaning person/yoga guru/tattoo artist/service person their regular fees this week, even if you don’t use them.  They will need it.

Hey folks who are new to working from home! I’ve been doing it for 15 years now, and I HAVE OPINIONS. This is obviously slanted towards those who work in areas similar to mine.

• In the morning, follow your normal routines. Take a shower. Shave as appropriate. Eat breakfast. Get dressed as if you are going to the office. No sweatpants/t-shirts (unless that’s what you usually wear, in which case I should tell you the Unix server needs rebooting). PRETEND YOU ARE GOING TO THE OFFICE. Creating a “normal” routine is CRITICALLY IMPORTANT in the MORNING, because it sets up the rest of the day.
  
  DO NOT WORK IN YOUR PJs. It’s hard to express how important this is. Your brain needs triggers to signal that it’s work time, because the normal ones won’t be there. PJs tell your brain it is NOT work time.
  
• You know what really helps? An actual physical break between work and home. After you’ve finished “getting ready for work”, go take a 10 minute walk outside, then come in and get into office mode right away. Psychological “tricks” are actually critical in moments like these: they help you get in the right frame of mind when your brain is saying “this isn’t my normal routine”.
  
• Try as best you can to follow the normal times, too. Usually get into the office at 8? Start work at 8. Usually leave by 5:30? Shut the computer down at 5:30. Pretend you are going to the office and then pretend you are going home.
  
• Make a space your “official” work space as much as possible. It’s for a short period of time, so sacrificing your D&D campaign setup table might be necessary. But don’t work in twenty different places around your house, and don’t have your “official” work space the same place where regular home activities happen. Your brain needs alignment.
  
• Coffee. If you normally get it at work/Starbucks. you’ll be getting it at home. Don’t forget it because you’ll get a headache, and don’t overdo it: remember your home cup may have more caffeine than the office cup. Too much coffee becomes anxiety, and that’s not what we want right now.
  
• Get up and walk around between meetings and calls, or at least once an hour. Sitting for too long is bad for a lot of reasons, and it’s worse if you’re not used to it. You’ll be sitting more than usual. Use a timer on your phone, your watch, or a website to remind yourself to move.
  
• On conference calls, MUTE YOUR PHONE WHEN YOU ARE NOT TALKING. ALWAYS. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAAAAAAAAYS. That way the sound of you masticating potato chips, your keyboard typing or your kids barking or the dogs shouting or the toilet flushing or your child yelling “DAD I POOPED IN THE POTTY” don’t become part of your office lore.
  
  Also, don’t go to the bathroom while you are on a conference call. You think you will remember to mute. One very memorable day you will NOT.
  
• This is a tough one, as it has been key for me while working at home for this long, but these are extenuating circumstances so caveats apply: as much as possible, separate work and home. Yes, if you have children home from school this is hard, but try to distance the two a little. This means that if you aren’t usually available at home during the week to change a lightbulb, then you aren’t “at home” now. A physical boundary (e.g. a door that can be closed) helps.
  
• However, BE REASONABLE. That rule above is really for me because normally I get into work “flows” or grooves that are hard to get into and easy to break, so the less interruption, the better. BUT THESE ARE NOT NORMAL TIMES. Your co-parent/spouse/partner is probably also under a lot of stress, and flexibility is key. If they need a break or some help or to vent, be there for them. You are dealing with this AS A FAMILY FIRST, as an employee second.
  
• A good idea for your family, especially with younger kids, is a stoplight system: it can be just three colored pieces of paper you can stick on your door or the back of your laptop: red, yellow, green. Red just means “Kinda busy, only available for emergencies”.
  
• Hydrate. Just, in general. When you’re not getting up and walking around between meetings, it’s easy to forget you haven’t had anything to drink since those three cups of coffee this morning.
  
• Make yourself available (Slack, IM, phone, video) to your teammates to a similar degree you would usually be in the office, and probably a little more. BUT GIVE YOURSELF DOWNTIME to work on the things that need focus, just as you would in the office. Put some time on your schedule to focus without interruption.
  
• You will miss the spontaneity of meeting people in the hallways and break rooms. That’s just natural, because you are human. There’s not much we can do about that right now other than reach out to people randomly just to say hi (see Slack, IM, phone, video), which isn’t great, but it does help. Interact with other humans, just at a distance.
  
• Just because you have Netflix at home, doesn’t mean you can watch it. Keep work/home systems separate as much as possible. Just because your work laptop is in the room where you usually watch Hulu and check FB doesn’t mean you can watch Hulu and check FB on your work laptop. The temptation is strong. Don’t check social media all day if that’s not something you do at work. If it IS what you do at work, are you hiring?
  
• Computer chargers/cables! Phone chargers/cables! USB cables! Where are they all? Do you have them?
  
• The chair and desk you are working from at home was probably not built for long-term office use. Stand up and get out of it, move around and exercise your wrists, they aren’t used to being in this position for extended periods of time.
  
• Get out of the house if the weather is nice. Don’t go to the mall, just go for a walk or a bike ride. I used to grab my laptop and go work at a coffeeshop when I got cabin fever: now that’s not really an option. But you can maintain pretty good social distancing by walking in the park.
  
• Wash your hands. You may be working from home: the rest of your family may not be.
  
• Be careful with those leftovers that have been sitting in the fridge for a week. Remember we are practicing social isolation NOT just to avoid COVID-19, but to avoid catching anything else that might send us to the hospital and put more strain on the system. Don’t get food poisoning and end up in an ER waiting room with 15 people who all have a fever and cough.
  
• STAY OUT OF THE KITCHEN. The temptation to graze and stress eat is HUGE when I work from home. Eat at normal times. You will get hungry at 10:30am for no reason. STAY AWAY FROM THE SNACKS.
  
• Do you have noise-cancelling headphones? They are awesome. Use them. You have background noise at the office that provides a hum your brain is used to, and now what you have are home noises (the laundry, the boiler, your family). They are different noises, and this will distract you. Headphones plus music can help, but try to figure out what kind of music gets you into your groove, and what kind distracts you. For some reason, old-school heavy metal helps me focus because I know the songs so well they are predictable and don’t distract me, but anything new keeps asking for my attention. Classical music just makes me drift.
  
• TAKE BREAKS. You do this at work even if you don’t notice them (get up to go to the break room for coffee, go to the bathroom, check mail, you do that all day and stop and talk to people along the way). Keeping your sanity is going to be very important in the next few weeks.

• Your “productivity periods” are going to be weird. The times you get stuff done at the office and the times you hit your stride at home will be different. Let it happen, figure it out and use it to your advantage.
  
• If you have a work VPN but can do most of your work WITHOUT the VPN, do so. Leave the capacity for those who need it. I can do email, Slack, IM, BlueJeans, etc. without using VPN capacity, so I do. If I need to connect to a database, I then launch the VPN. There are lots more people stressing out the remote connection systems than usual, do what you can to reduce the load.
  
• Take sick days if you need them. The temptation is strong to just stay at home and work if you’re not feeling great, especially if you are bored. But you need sick days to get better faster. Take them and REST. This one is a huge problem for me: I have taken maybe two sick days in the past five years because I just work through them, and I shouldn’t. Even though I can’t infect anyone else on a conference call, I still need recovery time. THIS IS ALL SELF-CARE, PEOPLE.
  
• Don’t be too hard on yourself. Your attention will drift. You will find yourself checking social media too often. Some of your social media usage is replacing what you used to do at the office, so it’s OK. You will snap at someone. It’s OK. Take a break, forgive yourself and move on.
  
• Be PATIENT and KIND above all else. You know that saying “Be good to other people: you don’t know what they are going through”? Well today we do know at least one thing they are going through, and it’s stressful and uncertain and has everyone pushed three inches to the left and their brains are struggling to reconcile the differences. Give people the space and time and love and patience they need now more than ever.

I’ll add more as I think of them.

David Bowie. Prince. George Michael. All gone in 2016.

Completely aside from their musical contributions, I don’t think it’s possible to overestimate the impact all three of them had on society’s definition of what it means to be male. Especially for those of us who grew up with very traditional, narrowly-defined representations of masculinity as the only available role models. ESPECIALLY for those of us who group up with normalized homophobia as the norm, and struggled to understand anyone who would voluntarily choose to live outside those narrow lines.

Here’s a mental exercise: try to ignore everything that has happened in the news this week and answer this hypothetical.

List your top 20 situations that might justify a police officer yanking a teenage girl out of her desk, slamming her to the floor and dragging her across her classroom.

I’m sure you could easily think of 20. Maybe she’s pointing a weapon at the officer. Maybe she’s physically threatening a classmate. Maybe the officer noticed she is trying to destroy evidence and has to be stopped. Maybe she’s punching another student.

But I can GUARANTEE that “being disrespectful and disruptive” wouldn’t be in your Top Twenty. In fact, I’ll go further: prior to this week, if someone had suggested this as a potential situation, your response would have been “no, absolutely not, no fucking way does that action warrant that kind of treatment”.

Let’s up the hypothetical ante: the principal at your school is calling you at work to tell you that a police officer just yanked your teenage daughter out of her desk, slammed her to the floor and dragged her across her classroom, and she might have a broken arm. Because she was being disrespectful and disruptive, and wouldn’t put her phone away.

Would your first thought be “Boy, that sounds perfectly reasonable and appropriate”?

Of course not.

But this week we have seen people falling over themselves to justify exactly those actions AFTER they happened.

In my opinion, it’s because we have a cognitive bias towards justifying actions that have already happened, EVEN IF we would not be able to justify them before they happened. So we go from “there’s no situation in which that would be the right thing to do” to “well, it happened, so there HAS to be a justification for why it did”, purely because we need to create a narrative in which that makes sense. We don’t like living in an irrational world where violence is unjustified: our brains are extremely uncomfortable with that reality, so our brains struggle to find the bits of the story that could allow that worldview to survive. Our brains love to tell stories that make sense, and are REALLY uncomfortable when they don’t.

In this case, the brain immediately tries to put together a coherent narrative of cause and effect: Y happened, therefore the X actions that justify Y MUST have occurred immediately before, and our brains will go into overdrive to fit the facts into that narrative, no matter how much it has to distort the facts to do so.

What happened before? The student was disrespectful and uncooperative.

A ha! the brain says, slotting that fact into the “cause” box in the cause and effect flowchart. There is now something in the box, and your brain is taken out of its discomfort zone. The story now makes sense as a flowchart. Even though the fact you found doesn’t fit neatly and seems to be rather much smaller than the box you put it in, there is at least something in the box.

That is, if you don’t analyze it too much and ignore the poor fit. Because if you did, you’d realize it’s not a good cause for the resulting observed effect, and then your brain would be thrown into discomfort again as its worldview is challenged. And our brains HATE that. Our brains like stories, and like cause and effect, and like coherence.  The brain has its story, move on, nothing more to see.

This bias is so strong that if a person who has crafted this narrative is challenged on whether it makes sense and is justifiable, they go on the defensive quickly and strongly, because it feels like their entire worldview of cause and effect is being challenged. “I have a story!” says the brain, “and I have things in the boxes! Leave them be!”

And the way this works out in the conversation is that Person A questions whether Y is an appropriate outcome for action X. Person B perceives this as an attack on their worldview, and feels that criticism about placing the “disruptive, uncooperative teenager” fact in the “cause” box is a defense of the teen being disruptive and uncooperative.  It’s not, but the alternative is to take the fact back out of the box.

“Oh, so you think the teen wasn’t being disruptive?  Even the teachers and the other students agreed she was!”

“Oh, so you think that we shouldn’t take any action against teenagers being disruptive and disrespectful?”

“Oh, so you think that the teenager was within her rights to do what she did before the officer showed up?”

Notice that none of those are really responses to the criticism that Y (being physically attacked and thrown to the floor) is not an appropriate response to X (being disrespectful and disruptive).  They are responses to a perceived defense of X, as if the other side were defending the students actions as appropriate and above reproach or response.  They are not, and no one has said they were.  But it’s easier to counter that perceived attack than respond to the real criticism, which means shaking up the boxes and putting the brain back in its discomfort zone.

And our brains hate that.  Hate it so much that they will reroute attacks away from the uncomfortable facts and towards unrelated targets that are easier to defend.

(#notallmen

#alllivesmatter

I had a tough life, therefore there’s no such thing as #whiteprivilege

Notice a pattern?)

For X = “a teenage student was being disruptive and disrespectful”, and Y=”a teenage student is body-slammed to the floor by a 250lb+ body-building police officer, possibly breaking her arm and then dragging her across the classroom floor”, my position is that both of those things are TRUE.  She was, by all accounts, being disruptive and disrespectful.  He did slam her to the floor.  Students being disruptive and disrespectful is something that should be addressed, appropriately.  But for me to say that X does not justify Y is not a defense of X: it’s a statement that Y is an appropriate response to a limited amount of actions, and X is most definitely NOT one of them.

But boy, do our brains not like the story we’re left with if we have to face that reality.  And that discomfort is at the root of our current conflicts on race, on gender, on privilege, on sexism, on religious freedom, on social and economic inequality.  It’s our cognitive bias towards stories that don’t disrupt our worldview, that make sense (as long as we don’t think about them too much), that don’t challenge the many other biases we hold.

AND WE ALL DO IT.  In fact, if you’ve reached this far down in this particular story, it’s probably because (a) it helps you put things into the boxes in your brain that make you feel comfortable or (b) you are looking for the nitpicks to tear the argument apart so that you don’t have to shake up your brainboxes.   But if you are in (b), hopefully at least this helps frame the discussion away from the “you’re defending X” position that no one is taking, and towards the “X does not justify Y” discussion we should be having.

[ Interior, office, 2010. BIG BOSS MAN scowls, sitting at the head of the table, chomping on a cigar and staring at his employees. ]

BIG BOSS MAN: OK, we’ve made all the mechanisms work in the exact opposite way of how they do in the rest of the world, and that’s a good start. But it doesn’t feel *perverse* enough. What else have you got?

[ JOHNSON timidly raises his hand ]

JOHNSON: How about if we… if we… <cough>

BBM: SPIT IT OUT, JOHNSON.

JOHNSON: …if we remove all the descriptive labels?

[ Silence. ]

BBM: Johnson?

JOHNSON: ….y-y-yes sir?

BBM: Congratulations, you are our new VP of Design!

[ Cut back to JOHNSON, who suddenly also has a cigar in his mouth. Confetti starts falling from the ceiling as other employees burst into cheers. Champagne, celebration, patting on the back. ]

[ CAMERA PULLS BACK. Company sign on wall becomes visible: it reads “ASSOCIATION OF HILTON HOTEL SHOWER CONTROL DESIGNERS” ]

[ JUMP CUT TO ME, 5 years later, IN SHOWER. After 15 minutes of staring in confusion at a label-free unrecognizably-designed shower control, I tentatively turn it a quarter inch to the left.]

[ Suddenly, BOILING HOT WATER pours out of the shower nozzle for 3 seconds, followed immediately by FREEZING COLD WATER, followed by MILLIONS OF SPIDERS ]

ME: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

[ EXEUNT OMNES, NAKED. END ]

KY county clerk Kim Davis’ lawyers have announced (and the Vatican, when reached for comment, declared they would “neither confirm nor deny”) that Pope Francis met with her to offer her support in her battle against doing her job, thanked her for her courage and told her to “stay strong”.

If true, and considering the Pope also took time in his very short visit to meet with the Little Sisters of the Poor to offer support for their legal fight against the ACA (because they don’t want to allow insurance companies to provide contraception to their employees, even those who don’t share their religion), it certainly casts the “new, progressive, liberal” Pope in an interesting light.

Just finished “The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution” by Jonathan Eig

Summary judgement: a capably-written book, oh so VERY dry and limp, but the subject matter is important as hell and (IMHO) deserving of better.

Just as important to the history of the Pill as the contribution of Sanger, McCormick, Pincus and Rock was, the role of the Catholic Church in opposition to any form of pregnancy prevention whatsoever is crucial to understanding the state of birth control today. Religious objection, back then and now, was and is the ONLY reason birth control is considered in any way controversial, and the only reason this country has any trouble covering what should be standard, freely-available services in its healthcare plans. That, to be completely honest, I find disgusting beyond belief (no pun intended).

Today, September 23rd, is the beginning of the apocalypse (in case you weren’t paying attention), according to some people who are so arrogant that (a) they believe the supreme deity of the universe is speaking in a coded language only they are privileged to understand and (b) they believe themselves so important, there is no possibility the most climactic moment of the history of the universe might happen while they are not around.

I’ve never heard a prophet make a Rapture/Apocalypse prediction that doesn’t fall squarely within their lifetime. Ever wonder why that is? Ever thought how egocentric that is? And doesn’t that explain a lot?

Anyhoo… if anyone has seen a plague of locusts on the horizon or a river of blood replacing the otherwise normally hemoglobin-deficient Mississippi, let me know. Send me a message if half the cattle in Egypt suddenly breaks out in boils. And if anyone hears an apology from the erstwhile prophets of the end times for causing unnecessary panic, then DEFINITELY let me know ASAP: having any of those people actually admit they were wrong would be a surer sign of the apocalypse than anything they could have predicted by reading entrails.

Instead, MY prediction is this: over the next few days we’ll hear multiple explanations about why the prophets weren’t really wrong. Most failed prophets of the end times resort to a few tried and true tropes: the end times did actually happen, but they were metaphorical or “spiritual” (see Harold Camping), the end times were averted thanks to their prayers and intercession (YOU’RE WELCOME, SINNERS), or they start stretching the definition of common words to accommodate their prediction. For the latter, see the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their definition of end times, which started after multiple failed predictions by saying that the end of the world would definitely occur in 1914, then changed to saying that the end times would BEGIN in 1914, then changed to saying that the end times would begin within a generation of 1914, then that it would happen at some point during the entire lifetime of people who were born in or before 1914, and these days (as those people are dying) off it’s changed to “anyone who understands what happened in 1914″. In a hundred years they’ll still believe it, but it will be “in the lifetime of anyone who has a 1, 9, or 4 in their birth year.” And so on forever, until the Sun explodes in 5 billion years and someone can finally say “SEE!? I WARNED YOU!” as they evaporate.

But I think the excuse we see will be the typical one: we predicted that the End Times would happen, and they actually HAVE started (can’t you SEE all the SIGNS?) but everyone is too blind to see it yet. I remember that argument from when I first started getting interested in religion over 30 years ago, and I can guarantee that the people who used it fervently back then have an excuse for why nothing has happened YET, but definitely WILL ANY DAY NOW. Because there was an EARTHQUAKE and a METEOR and there are WARS AND FAMINE and there is TURMOIL and THOSE THINGS HAVE NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE IN HISTORY.

Live for today and stop worrying about the End Times, folks. If they come, it will be because we brought them about ourselves, because we were fighting about whose interpretation of the supreme command to love each other is correct. And if there’s one thing I won’t abide, it’s an ironic death.

I have been very uncomfortable with the speed at which some of my otherwise progressive and open-minded friends on FB, G+ or other social media have jumped into mocking Rowan County clerk Kim Davis for her looks, or engaging in slut-shaming her for her marriage history.

I think calling out her previous marriages is definitely relevant to the discussion, but not because it means she’s a “slut” or a “whore” (as some of the posted photo memes have said: I’m not even going to link to them), but rather because it shows that she has been willing in the past to take advantage of the religious freedom guaranteed to her by the Constitution, as well as her Christian privilege, in order to obtain a marriage license in spite of the fact that many other people have religious objections to her getting one. But now, when she is in a position of authority to make a similar decision for other people, she is not willing to extend that same freedom and privilege to others. She has the right to not approve on a personal level, but the problem here is using her position of government power to deny the license (and also forbid her employees from granting it).

THAT’S the hypocrisy involved and why her multiple marriages are relevant to the conversation; that does not and MUST not (if we don’t want to be hypocrites ourselves) translate into slut-shaming. We don’t know why she got divorced; would you feel good about yourself making fun of her multiple divorces if you found out they ended because she was being abused?

Whatever the reason for her divorces, she was able to get divorced PRECISELY because laws are secular in nature and should never be subservient to religion or the religious conscience of the person in government with the authority to enforce them. That she is not willing to extend that same right to others is the hypocrisy in this case: we would not call a person showing up at her office to get their fourth same-sex marriage license a slut or a whore, and we should show her the same respect.

As to how she looks: you may or may not find her attractive, but that is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Let’s have some empathy though, and realize that non of us are supermodels: if you were in the news tomorrow because of a civil rights issue you felt passionately about, would you want people on Facebook discussing the merits of your issue and the arguments you’ve made, or the size of your gut?

Let’s be better than those we criticize. Let’s be better than previous versions of ourselves.