What The Rich Are Really Like

To the Republicans, the rich are basically superheroes: having been endowed with a superhuman work ethic and the smarts to run the world, the wealthy do nothing but good in this world by creating jobs for slovenly poor people everywhere!  Having clawed their way to the top, fighting for every dollar, don’t the rich deserve a break from the predations of those awful people who would yank the money from their well-manicured hands?  Haven’t the rich proven their worth already by being smart and cunning and persistent enough to amass all that wealth?  Haven’t the rich proven their worth already by, well, being fucking rich?
I might even believe that, had I not grown up in Connecticut.
I grew up in Fairfield County, one of the 40 wealthiest counties in all of America.   Paul Newman and Martha Stewart lived there.  Not everyone in Fairfield was rich, but it was impossible to grow up there without bumping into the wealthy on a regular basis – they bought their coffee with you, their kids went to activities with you, they went to the same movies.
Now, it’s important to notice that these folks usually weren’t the super-rich, the people even rich people envied.  They had a mansion, and maybe a yacht for a hobby if they were particularly well-off, but most of them didn’t own their own private jets.  They didn’t have a chauffeur, because it was usually easier and cheaper to drive your own car, and they’d take the train to New York where they often worked.  Their kids went to public school because the public school system in Fairfield is pretty top-notch, as you’d expect from the income level, but when it came time for college you bet your ass that Yale or Harvard were getting mentioned.
They were the 1%, which in today’s day and age means they had about $300,000 a year on their hands.  They didn’t have to worry.
And here’s the thing: their kids were often douches.
As a teenager, you could tell a rich kid not because of his clothes, but because of a certain recklessness that emanated from them.  They didn’t really understand consequences all that well, because whatever they did, it would get cleaned up.  If a rich kid’s grades were bad, they got tutors, the teachers got spoken to about helping poor Jack to his potential, there was much moaning about the need for Jack to do better, and the parents would ride saddle on Jack until he did his fucking homework.  If a rich kid drank too much, well, that wasn’t a problem – the cops overlooked the rich kid drunk teenagers, letting them have their places where people didn’t go much, and if you were dressed right they’d usually just tell you to move elsewhere.  (I once witnessed a millionaire heiress wave off a cop in her local town by telling him, “Do you know who I am?”  He did.  He knew who donated to the policeman’s ball, and moved on.)  And if a rich kid did get into trouble with the cops, usually via fighting, well, he’d be bailed out and the parents would have a talking to him, but mostly the emphasis was “You’re screwing up your future potential!  How do you expect to get into college with this record?” and not “You could go to jail.”
They lived in a different world.  If you got on drugs, well, you had a problem.  If they got caught with cocaine repeatedly, we all knew about the local detox centers they got sent to.  They’d talk about these places like it was such a burden to have to go. I remember being in more than one conversation where two rich kids commiserated about the terrible food at these places, and how you couldn’t even call any of your friends, it was so lonely there.
Here’s the thing: none of these kids had really done a damn thing to earn all of this wealth and privilege.  They just sort of had it.  And it oozed out of them, a slacker mentality that things would be all right, and they could keep fucking up until things worked out, because hey, no pressure, we’ve got the time.
Now, not all rich kids were like this.  Some of them were razor-sharp, the kind the Republicans are proud to talk about.  They studied hard, they got good grades, because they had a future they were determined to be prepared for, and they did all of the extra-curricular stuff because they already had their favorite college targeted.  You often couldn’t tell those kids from the poor kids, because they didn’t mention their wealth.  I envied and feared those kids, because I wasn’t able to be them on any level, and yet I couldn’t really bitch about them, either.
But the other rich kids, the drifters who roamed through Westport in their preppie outfits?  Well, they had a lot of money, and a lot of potential, and didn’t do shit with it.  And some of them are still rich, just because of an accident of wealth.
Some of them are me.  Hell, I drifted through college for nine years, attending endless semesters of college that I dropped out or flunked out from – and who do you think paid the bill?  Hint, dear readers: it wasn’t me.  I turned out all right, because after a decade’s worth of slacking I finally got my shit together… but I’m excruciatingly aware every day that I had the luxury to find myself.  And it was a luxury.  My parents bailed me out, and now I’m not rich, but I’m way better off than I would be if I’d had to start working at the grocery store to pay my rent.
Which is not to say that there aren’t good rich people.  My boss used to sleep in the back seat of a car, driving from town to town to sell comics out of his trunk because there was a buck in it.  He never sleeps.  His relentless work ethic has created a good company that I am proud to work for, and he’s the kind of wealthy I’d like to reward in America: a guy who, with nothing more than dedication and cunning and an insane work ethic, has built his own wealth. And created jobs for people like me.
But the Republicans’ repeated fellating of the rich, as if “being rich” was automatically the same as “being super-hard working” or “being smart,” just doesn’t add up if you knew enough rich folks.  Sure, the rich will tell you that, but why not?  It’s in their best interests to create their own monolith story, the same way that poets turnthe reclusive and horrid-paying world of poetry into a romantic, mysterious world of adventure.
Yet I think that the poor buy into it because it seems right.  I mean, if someone’s that much better off than you, then they must have done something spectacular to deserve it, right?  They can’t be that wealthy just at random.  But a significant portion are – hell, the Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican bill is – and a lot of the things people have done, nobly enough, to protect their children means that a lot of the kids who have tons of money are just as stupid and slothful and ignorant as the worst of the welfare mothers, except they’re rich enough to bail themselves out. In some cases, that richness is big enough that it’s self-perpetuating, which is to say that as long as these dimwits hire the right accountants and don’t buy a life-sized gold Ronald Reagan statue every week, they’ll be dumb and rich forever.
Yet this illusion permeates the debate in America.  The poor all see themselves as, as Steinbeck famously said, “temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”  And they think that if they just did the right things, they’d all be rich themselves.
Except it’s not simple.  Some people do all the right things to get out of poverty, and can’t manage it anyway.  Some people do all the wrong things, but wind up okay because they’re wealthy.  Life is messy, and full of should’ves and shouldn’t’ofs, and any philosophy that claims a 100% correlation between an activity and a success is selling you something fetid.  And rich, I hate to say, are like us – some of them smart, some dumb, and the only difference is all that lucre they’re floating on.
When you talk about taxing the rich, realize that they’re not all superheroes.  Not all of them necessarily deserve that cash.  And maybe you should think about ways to tax to encourage the kind of wealth you want to see in the world.

Where I'll Be At WorldCon

If you’re going to be in Chicago come the end of the month – and why not? it’s a great town – then you should probably show up at WorldCon, which is a fun convention where I will be with Gini and my friends the Substelnys.  It’s one of the largest sci-fi cons, with tons of good writers, and I’m pleased to be in their company.
Where can I be found at WorldCon?
Doing A Reading. 
This is the big one for me – I’m always paranoid that I’ll do a reading and no one will show up.  (Which has happened; it’s always embarrassing reading to three people, two of whom you’re dating.)  So if you’d like to hear me read one of my stories, and I’m told I perform well, I’ll be reading “Shoebox Heaven” at 5:30 on Friday evening.
“Shoebox Heaven” starts thusly:

Andy found Oscar, his fur clotted with lint balls, behind the dryer.  Oscar’s body was still warm because he had curled up underneath the exhaust vent, but Momma told Andy that Oscar had been dead for hours — it was just old age, was all.  Andy wanted to pet Oscar, because Oscar’s head was still tucked underneath his paws.  It was like his cat was playing a game of hide and go seek.
Andy couldn’t understand why Momma was crying.  “Let’s go to the airport,” he said, “And fly to heaven, and get Oscar.”
So they did.

It’ll make for a good performance, with lots of emotion and a dash of crazed humor, so I think if you show up you’ll be rewarded.  At least with hugs from me.
Dissecting Ideas.
At Saturday at noon, I’ll be talking about where writers get their ideas.  This should be an interesting exercise, because the panel will devise an idea and we’ll each discuss how we’d flesh that out into a short story.  I may write and plot something entirely on the fly!  And you’ll get to see how others shape a plot from a plot-bunny! This should be entertaining.
Discussing Short Stories. 
At 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, I’ll be on a panel discussing whether authors can still break in with short stories.  I’m not sure what “breaking in” means – I mean, I’ve got a number of published short stories, and am not a household name – but I’ll be on the panel with my old Clarion classmate Gra Linnaea, who literally helped me write the most useful entry I’ve ever written on how to submit short stories.  This ought to have a lot of useful info.
Feeling Intimidated By Series.
I’m not entirely sure why I’m on this panel, as it features Eric Flint (1632) and Jack McDevitt (who’s written two Nebula-nominated series), but I’ll be discussing how to keep series writing fresh.  I must have been feeling adventurous when listing panels I felt I could talk about, and they foolishly took me at my word.  But here I will be, and probably too stupid to keep my trap shut!
 

The Wild, Wild New York

One of the books that changed my life was a pop history tome called “The Good Old Days… They Were Terrible!”  In little, bite-sized chunks, it discussed how awful it was to live in 19th century New York – being amazed at how much higher the crime rates were back then, how filthy the streets were, how likely you were to die of disease.
That, in turn, led to me discovering Luc Sante’s “Low Life,” which delved deeper into what it was like, living in old times, and from there I’ve read probably fifteen different books on New York in the 1860s-1890s.  They all tell the same stories: gangs pretty much dominated the streets, rarely killing but beating people up at a moment’s notice, causing riots on a regular basis, tearing life apart.  The politicians paid lip service to fixing the problems but were really terrified of the gangs, and when they were serious about it on occasion, their solutions tended towards “Jail them all and make them miserable,” overlooking the fact that they were pretty miserable to begin with – that’s why they turned to crime.  Sans education or any opportunities to better yourself, mugging and crime was at least an option to feed yourself.
But people who I’ve told these stories to always wondered: “How did people put up with this shit?”  I mean, you’d think people would wake up and say, “Holy crap, the continual terror of living on unsafe streets, the worry of being assaulted by some maniac for your wallet – that seems like the kind of thing folks would eventually rebel against!”
But no.  If anything, history shows us that when violence happens, we just get used to it.  We say, “Well, that wasn’t me” and we cluck our tongues and go, “That’s horrible” and our shoulders hunch in a shrug of, “Well, what can we do?” And the people with simple, satisfying solutions ram them through and they don’t do anything to fix it at all, and the real solutions – which are complex and not very satisfying or popular – take years to get enacted, if they do at all.
And all the while, we start to take it for granted.  This is what happens.  It’s just the way things are.  The horror fades and we start to just accept it all as a cost of life here.
I bring this up because for the third time in a month, there’s been a public shooting.  And the Onion gets it right: “Sadly, Nation Knows Exactly How Colorado Shooting’s Aftermath Will Play Out.”
We do.  Over, and over, and over again.

Here You Go / Way Too Fast / Don't Slow Down / You're Gonna Crash

Heya, folks –
I have a lot to say (and do!), but right now I’m suffering from a sort of chronic exhaustion.  Well, that’s not correct – I can still do things – but it emerges as a titanic swell of “Don’t wanna,” followed by slacking.  I still have to finish off the Clarion Blog-A-Thon, and write a couple of entries I’ve been meaning to get around to on my uncle’s car key and followups to earlier posts on Tosh.0, but I look at the screen and all I want to do is play Duels of the Planeswalkers on my iPad.
So I’ll be back, but right now I’m kind of reclusive, like Howard Hughes.  But uglier.  And poorer.  And in a better bathrobe.  And with fewer jars of urine stored about the house.
In the meantime, I’ll leave this entry free to one of those happy memes that used to permeate LiveJournal, but looser.  Is there anything you’ve wanted to say to me?  Anything you wanted to ask?  You know, just because I don’t feel like writing doesn’t mean like I don’t feel like interacting, so hey, you wanna drop me a line, go ahead.  I’m open to exchanges of whatevs.
Slacker Ferrett rules the day.

Will Twilight Out-Endure Harry Potter?

“Publishers can find books that are popular and resonate with a shit-ton of people, like Twilight, but do I think Twilight’s going to pass the generation test? Probably not.” – Spookykat

In the category of “things I don’t like to think too hard about,” I’m going to disagree with Spooky and say that I think Twilight will be more popular than Harry Potter… at least for the next couple of waves of kids.
Now, let me hedge by saying that it’s damn hard to predict which books/songs/movies will become immortal and which will fade away.  If you had asked me twenty years back to name the one contemporary song that every college student would be able to sing word-for-word two decades after it had been released, I would never in a million years have named “Baby Got Back.”  Yet there it is, popular as hell.  So what do I know?  Still, it’s fun to speculate.
And on the “Harry vs.  Twilight” front, I will go on record as saying Harry Potter is a far superior series of books.  It’s a complex kids’ tale about morality, and the need to do the right thing, and loyalty.  There are gray bits and good plotting and excellent characterization and real human heroism.
Twilight’s rooted straight to the groin.
For all of the discussions about women not having the same sexual urges as men, I think when you put “nobility” up against “your one and only true boyfriend who will love you forever,” that sexual urge is going to clobber Harry.
As I’ve said before, Twilight has a lot of flaws, but the one thing it gets perfectly, 100%, spot-on correct is that elated feeling of “We’re in love and it’s perfect and it’s going to be forever.”  And that’s the kind of thing that gets a lot of traction among young girls, in the same way they fall in love with Justin Bieber and go nuts because this is their way of figuring out what it’s like to be dating someone – a thing they endure a crush-ton of pressure over, since it’s hard-wired into almost every narrative that they will have to fall in love, and if so then what’s it going to be like?  And any book that tells them, “You can find an immortal vampire who’s been around for a hundred years and has never ever liked a girl before, yet when he sees you he’ll fall so madly in love with you that he’ll abandon everything he’s ever known to be your eternal protector and the most loyal boy ever and a great kisser, too,” then we’re dealing with fantasies that spike straight through the center of sexuality.
That shit gets handed around.  I’d bet dimes to dollars that for future generations, Harry Potter will be given to them by their parents.  Twilight will be handed to them by their girlfriends.  And which do you think they’re more likely to read? Especially now that there’s the even crazier 50 Shades of Gray to graduate to, which everyone knows is Twilight fanfiction plus?
I mean, it’s not like any teacher ever sat down with their thirteen-year-old student and said, “Here, read Flowers in this Attic.”  But man, somehow every teenaged girl I knew growing up had gotten their hands on that sucker.  Because it was hot and sexy and yet somehow safe – not like the writings of the Marquis de Sade or Lolita, which had weird overtones they found repellent.
(And don’t ask me what the dividing line is between Flowers, which sounds horrendous from the plot synopses, and De Sade – if I knew, I’d be writing bestsellers.  I just know from talking to women who read those books that one made them squirm in pleasant ways and the other didn’t.)
The good news is, I don’t think this will endure forever.  Like teen pop stars, the “sexy teenaged book” will eventually be replaced.  Like all teenagers, teenaged girls have little sense of loyalty and desire something unique to their own generation.  Eventually, another big sexy book will crop up, and they will see that as their generational anthem even as they’ll never really claim it as such, and then we’ll see how Harry Potter fares to eternity.
As for Twilight, I’m reasonably sure it’ll have a higher arc initially, and then plunge into an interesting footnote for the 2000s.   On the scrap heap of history.  So it goes.