Despicable Tweets

Here's a story from my past. After college, I was dating a nouveau riche girl, and one time we were at the mall, and she went into Louis Vuitton in hopes of conspicuously consuming.  I'm, of course, out of place and just wandering around looking at purses whose price tags could heat a school for the winter, bored and rapidly becoming depressed.

One of the guys working there asks if I need help with anything, and we end up striking up a conversation.  Turns out we went to college in the same area, so we're talking about that and how we've each ended up on the other side of the country.  Maybe five minutes go by, and my girlfriend tells me she's done, we can go.  I thank the guy for the conversation and we leave.

Once outside, my girlfriend begins berating me for talking to the sales guy. "He just works there," she tells me, "he's not there to be talked to."

Yes, that would be nice.

Gosh, beats me, but I think that's pretty cool.  I'm really interested in this sort of point, of the blanks we (usually subconsciously) fill in when we have imperfect information about someone.

I know I have a tendency to assume that whoever I'm reading is the same as me, and will feel a note of surprise when I suddenly read "Growing up in X..." or "As a mom..." or whatever.  But for me, that's  in part because most of the obvious ways I can be classified tend to be the stereotypes (at least until the last couple decades) of writers, and especially journalists.

I've never liked kids; even when I was a kid, I preferred the company of adults. I don't know what to talk to them about, I'm not interested in their stories, etc., and as a result, I think I seem uncomfortable around them. Yet when I'm stuck watching kids or playing with them or whatever, people tend to tell me afterward how good I was with them, and how I'd make a great dad. (My worst nightmare.)

I'm behind on bringing this up, but John McCain, senator and one-time presidential candidate, made this tweet, implying that the President of Iran is a monkey.  After some agitated feedback, he responded by pointing out that it was a joke.  Well, duh.

The problem isn't that McCain's made a joke -- although I do think it a bit impolitic for a senior senator to openly belittle a sitting head of state, even if that head of state totally sucks.  The problem is the joke's content and the history it interacts with.  Hocine Dimerdji explained the point well:

I don't personally think that McCain tweeted this maliciously, unlike many of the people who pop up on this blog.  But he illustrates an important point: it is easy to be racist (or any other kind of offensive) without realizing it. And when that happens, it isn't enough to just say that it wasn't offensive; if someone finds something offensive, it is, regardless of intent.

Well, that's settled.