When you’re blog is called “Just Thinking”, you would hope
that your thinking is at the very least “in the ballpark.” Otherwise, your blog is substantially,
“Just Thinking…Wrong.”
I have to be careful here not appear martyr-like or
righteously indignant, because, in reality, I feel neither of those ways.
Everyone’s entitled to their opinion.
(I once fantasized asking MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that if that were, in fact, the case, and that
all opinions therefore were equal at least in their right to be voiced, why then
was his opinion was worth millions of
dollars and my opinion worth nothing?)
Well, not always
nothing. For example, when I worked on
my last job in television, as a script consultant on According To Jim, I was hired by the series’ show runners to apply
my expertise towards making the scripts clearer, more focused, internally
consistent and maximally persuasive in their storytelling, all of which, I
believe, either directly or indirectly,
made the episodes I was contributing to funnier. (The Truer Version Of That Story: According
To Jim’s show runners were clients of my agent, and he insisted that they
hire me. Thank you, Elliot Webb.)
It was nice to be seen to have an expert opinion. (In contrast with Chris Matthews’ political
arena, where, in my view, your “insider” experience doesn’t make your opinions
“expert”, it simply makes them the opinions of an “insider.”)
It was once confided to me that, in the course of
“Production Week” after I was gone (I only worked on first day of “Production Week”,
when the scripts were originally read and rewritten), According To Jim’s Writers’ Assistants (aspiring sitcom writers holding
entry-level positions) would confer with each other during breaks in runthroughs
and the subsequent rewrites on the issue of whether my proposed script
suggestions were of value. This conversation,
I was told, was labeled,
“Was Earl Right?”
A participating Writers’ Assistant told me that, considerably
more often than not, they decided that I was.
This reaction contrasted with that of the higher-ups on the writing
staff. At a later date when I was no
longer working on the show, my candid-to-a-fault agent related that it had been
reported to him that, quite often, when
I made my suggestions, well, his exact words were,
“People rolled their eyes.”
(Thank you, Elliot Webb.)
You never get used to people rolling their eyes when you say
things. I suppose it’s the price of
expressing provocative opinions. Though
this specific response would
generally mean that, to the eye rollers at least, your provocative opinions are
stupid.
For me, this unfortunate reaction occurs not just in show business (where I
purportedly know something.) I have been
told, by someone close to well actually involved in my marriage, that, not
infrequently, when I express my opinions on certain issues of the day, people, albeit
politely behind my back, would also – and here it comes again – “roll their
eyes.”
(In My Defense:
These people, primarily of the liberal persuasion, appear impatient with
the suggestion that conservatives’ perspectives on issues are not entirely and unilaterally
insane.)
I guess it’s human nature, but inevitably, as the target of
continual eye-rolling, a worrisome thought works its way into your brain, that
thought being,
“Maybe I am (eye-rollingly) off the mark.”
On virtually everything.
Hmph. Could that really be
possible? I suppose it could.
Fortunately, before my faith in my – what the Blossom theme song used to call – “opinionation”, completely disappeared, I was
bolstered by articles in our local newspaper, echoing a number of my not always
enthusiastically received points of view.
Veteran sports
columnist Bill Dwyre wrote how the recent revelations concerning the pervasive,
catastrophic head injuries in the NFL
(and the NFL’s, until recently,
soft-pedaling the risks) has led him to a serious proposal for the abolition of
football.
(I wrote that a
couple of weeks ago.)
Esteemed op-ed specialist Meghan Daum wrote about the
current perception, encouraged by the entertainment media, that “adulthood does
not exist, or at least should be avoided at all costs.”
(I once wrote about how photographs from the forties and fifties
display children dressed up like mini-adults, while today, adults deck
themselves out in t-shirts, jeans and sneakers and baseball caps, presenting
themselves demonstrably like children.)
There isn’t a week, it seems, that the paper doesn’t publish
an article about medical over-testing, over-diagnosing and over-treatment, a
procedure that turns us all into “patients.”
(I not long ago wrote a (subsequently published) “Letter to
the Editor”, responding to one of these articles by saying,
“Though helpful and
illuminating, Dr. Welch {the article’s writer} omitted
an important objection to over-testing:
It scares the patients.”
More superficially, I once watched Jerry Seinfeld deliver a
speech at an Emmy Awards ceremony that
precisely mirrored what I had written myself (concerning how the year before,
Jerry had been nominated for Seinfeld
as “Best Actor in a Comedy” but he had not
been nominated this year, clearly
suggesting that he had somehow forgotten how to play himself.)
Rather than feeling upset, my sincere response to such
situations – and there have been more than a few of them – is invariably the
same:
“I guess I was on the right track.”
I felt the same way about those articles. They provided me with a timely and
much-needed reassurance, reinvigorating my faith in my intellectual
impulses.
I am not entirely an idiot. Respected people are writing the same thing in
the newspaper.
Which impels me to ask for an armistice.
Come on, fellas.
I mean I am (obviously) not right about everything.
But ya duzzn’t has ta roll your eyes.
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