If You Can't Say Anything Nice (Come Over Here and Sit by Me)

I saw that phrase in needlepoint on a pillow once.  I laughed because well, I did find it apt and funny.

Now along comes Gawker with a great (and very long article) by Tom Scocca called "On Smarm."  Boy, does it hit a lot of high points with me.

"Haters", snark, and smarm - he covers them all.  (And he uses Thumper - the rabbit from Bambi who famously said, "If you don't have anything nice to say about anyone, don't say anything at all." )

I've come to understand that people make statements at this blog for ALL kinds of reasons that may have nothing to do with the topic at hand or me.  Me, Charlie, the blog - we're just a convenient target.
Of course, we are also something of a problem for some because we are fighting some very big ideas and some very wealthy and powerful people.

But back to this article.   Given how many of the defensive remarks that come out seem to all have the same theme, it almost seems that it is not critics but publicists in charge.

From the article:

What is this defining feature of our times? What is snark reacting to? It is reacting to smarm.

What is smarm, exactly? Smarm is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. Smarm is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. Smarm disapproves.

Smarm would rather talk about anything other than smarm. Why, smarm asks, can't everyone just be nicer?

(Insert eye roll.)  Yes, why can't everyone be nicer?  Okay, that's a fair question.  Here's another one:

Why can't people tell the WHOLE story and not the one that will suit their agenda/purposes?  

That's why I'm not "nice."


More from the article (Scocca is talking about author Dave Eggers who has said some pretty silly things about criticism but it's valid for the discussion here) :

A pause, now, for some inevitable responses:

- What did Dave Eggers ever do to you?

- Surprise, a Gawker blogger who's never accomplished anything is jealous of Dave Eggers.

- Dave Eggers has inspired more people and done more good than you could possibly dream of.




Yes, I've heard all these before.   If I wanted to be rich and famous, writing a public education blog wouldn't be what I would be doing.  And, it's not personal. 

That's it. You're getting it. That's smarm.

But let's get at the deeper substance. What defines smarm, as it functions in our culture? "Smarm" and "smarmy" go back to the older "smalm," meaning to smooth something down with grease—and by extension to be unctuous or flattering, or smug. Smarm aspires to smother opposition or criticism, to cover everything over with an artificial, oily gloss.

Falsity and hypocrisy are important to this, but they are pieces of something larger. Consider the phenomenon that the philosopher Harry Frankfurt identified, in his 1986 essay and 2005 book* On Bullshit, as bullshit.

From Frankfurt's book:

The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides...is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it.

The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.

Again from the article:

The evasion of disputes is a defining tactic of smarm. Smarm, whether political or literary, insists that the audience accept the priors it has been given. Debate begins where the important parts of the debate have ended. 

An entire political agenda—privatization of government services, aggressive policing, charter schooling, cuts in Social Security—has been packaged as apolitical, a reasonable consensus about necessity. Those who oppose the agenda are "interest groups," whose selfish greed makes them unable to see reason, or "ideologues." Those who promote it are disinterested and nonideological. There is no reason for the latter to even engage the former. In smarm is power.

I absolutely want dialog on public education and I understand from some of you that you feel "tone" is a big issue.  It is quite true especially when you are not face-to-face and the words we use in our comments become so important.  

But that sentence above - "Debate begins where the important parts of the debate have ended." rings very true to me.  No one likes to be patronized.  Adults do not like to feel that other adults have decided for them.  No parent like to be made to wonder if they should be part of the entire discussion and not a pre-selected portion.

We need to keep the public in public education.  That has always been my goal especially for our district.  This district and all of public education belong to every taxpayer in this state and especially the parents who entrust their children to that system. 

What's funny to me is I think most parents DON'T want to have to pay this much attention.  But as one wise commenter said here recently (and I'm paraphrasing) - Eternal vigilance is the price to pay for being a parent in Seattle Schools.   And that's because between the lack of clear communications and transparency of our district and the machinations of those who believe they alone have all the answers for public education, who can safely look away?