Why Joseph Pulitzer Still Matters--Part One of a Two Part Series.

This is Joseph Pulitzer. 

Of all my heroes—many of whom appear on the banner across the top of this blog—Joseph Pulitzer is the top of the pops. I’ve published one article about him in the journal of the Missouri Historical Society, and I’m writing a full length historical novel about him. In a subsequent post, I’ll explain why I love the man. But in this one, I’ll explain why he still matters. Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911, but he’s more relevant now than ever.

The recent revelations of phone-hacking, police corruption, and intimidation by that venomous old reptile Rupert Murdoch come as no surprise. His career—that trail of fecal slime smeared across two centuries and four continents—made abundantly clear his callous and utter disregard for truth, accuracy, journalistic ethics, and the responsibility of the press in a free society. So it shouldn’t be shocking that he—and the equally amoral minions who flocked to his employ like flies to filth—had a similar disregard for the rights of individuals, basic human decency, and finally, the law.

This is a venomous old reptile. 

A lot of fatuous comparisons have been made between Murdoch and Pulitzer, some in as enlightened a publication as the New Yorker. And there are some superficial similarities. Both had an uncanny ability to appeal to the common man and a mastery of sensationalistic journalism which them financial success and political influence. But philosophically, Pulitzer and Murdoch couldn’t further apart. The damning coziness between the Murdoch’s News Corp. and the governments of both Great Britain and the United States stand in stark contrast to Joseph Pulitzer, the relentless opponent of both corporate and federal power.    

His newspapers’ independence was sacrosanct to Pulitzer. He was almost paranoiacally scrupulous about avoiding any entanglements—personal, financial, or political—which could have compromised his ability to report the news. He didn’t even trust himself with safeguarding his newspapers’ independence. He once told an editor, “Boy, as you know, I am a large owner of stocks. If ever I order you to write a piece favoring one of those companies, or kill a piece which might damage one, you are to disregard those orders and remind me of this conversation.”

But instead of Pulitzer’s independent and vigilant press, we have today an unholy collusion between media and government. Our government relies upon a media increasingly controlled by a tiny cadre of corporate conglomerates—only 16  corporations now control 95% of the world’s media—to get elected. And our press now relies completely upon the government for its information.

During the Valerie Plame affair, the New York Times went to great—some would say heroic—lengths (even to the extent of letting reporter Judith Miller go to jail) to, as publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger II piously declared, “protect our friends in government.” Which, while sounding noble, ignores Pulitzer’s dictum that “a newspaper should have no friends.” And he was right. Once you become dependent upon sources within the government for your information, you have, ipso facto, ceded control of the flow of information to that very entity.

Which uncomfortable fact the Times learned to its chagrin when it published a false story that Dick Cheney’s office “leaked” about weapons of mass destruction buildup in Iraq. And the exact day that story appeared on the front page, Cheney himself appeared on “Meet the Press,” citing that selfsame story—which his office had planted—as justification for our government’s horrendous and lethal actions in Iraq. Cheney and company played the Good Gray Lady like a fiddle. This would not have happened on a Pulitzer paper. And that’s why we need a man like him today.

Pulitzer’s detractors—and there were, and are, many—would disagree. They look at his rabid partisanship and no-holds-barred sensationalism and say good riddance to bad rubbish. But they were wrong then, and they’re wrong now.

Pure objectivity is an impossible standard. All our information is twice filtered through our own preconceptions—when we receive it, and when we dispense it. So long as humans remain human, we can’t be objective or dispassionate, and we shouldn’t try. Journalism is, by its very existence, activist—journalists make a value judgment simply by deciding what to write about. Their objectivity disappears as soon as their fingertips touch the keyboard. So let’s dispense with attempting the impossible.

As for sensationalism—screaming headlines, lurid copy, shocking pictures, and all the rest of the practices that separate the tabloids from the respectable press—what’s the matter with it?

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with sensationalism as a style of journalism. It’s neither inherently trivial nor inherently dishonest. Sobriety and respectability are no guarantee of truth or accuracy as the Jayson Blair/New York Times and Janet Cooke/Washington Post debacles so clearly illustrate. For all his sensationalism, Pulitzer was obsessive about accuracy. Moreover, it served a very practical purpose.

The press is a crucial component of a free society. It’s the watchdog; the oversight branch of government. And in order to play that role, it must be independent of either government or corporate control. But maintaining that independence demands money. That’s where sensationalism comes in. Sensationalism brings readers; readers bring advertisers; advertisers bring money; and money brings independence.

Pulitzer’s papers had what today’s media doesn’t: popular trust. Many of his readers despised him and his politics, but they knew they weren’t being lied to, because they knew that he wasn’t in bed with any political party, company, or industry. Now, precisely one century after his death, we have lost faith in our government to represent our interests. More ominously, the shenanigans of people like Murdoch and his foul ilk have eroded our faith in the media to tell us the truth. And when that happens, you can kiss democracy good-bye. Because once people no longer believe in the system, they will stop participating in it. And that’s the death knell of a democratic society.

Joseph Pulitzer, in 1904, said, “A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself." Tragically, he was as accurate a prophet as he was a journalist. 

Your Great-Grandmother Will Win In The End, So Don't Even Bother Struggling

For some years now, I’ve been in the running for the title of Rudest Man in St. Louis. This isn’t an actual contest, but I wish it was, because it’s one contest I might actually have a chance of winning.

Dispensing with conventions of polite conversation has several advantages. One, it allows me to cut right through the conversational red tape of small talk and start talking about stuff that actually matters. Two, it weeds out the boring types with nothing BUT small talk at their disposal, so that I can move on swiftly. And three, it identifies kindred spirits. If, after the initial bewildered blink, they come back at me with gusto, then I know I’ve got someone I can do business with.

I get away with it because I look slightly goofy, and, thus, harmless. I may be rude, but it’s easier to take it from a smallish, slight, bald nebbish in glasses than from a huge hulking roidasaurus of a guy.

Having established myself as someone who gives a rat’s ass for social niceties, one of the first things I ask people about is their ethnicity. I’ve been known to ask a person of exotic appearance, “So what the hell are you, exactly, anyway?” or someone whose pronunciation differs enough from mine that it’s noticeable, “Where the hell do you pick up an accent like that, anyhow?”

I’m fully aware that it’s none of my business and that many people are sensitive about this. Please believe me when I say that I genuinely do not give a fuck. What I gain from doing it far outweighs the benefits of social convention. I ask because once you know someone's background, you’ve got them half figured.  

Those of a Deconstructionist bent out will disagree with me. Context tells you nothing,” they say. "What counts is what we make of ourselves." They’re wrong. Contextualizing people tells you everything, because there are two perspectives to use when sizing people up:  who they are, and what they are.  

Who we are is comprised of those characteristics that we control—the choices that we consciously make, the characteristics that derive from the picture of ourselves which we choose to present. Things like political opinions, the shows, books, or movies that we like (or say we like—lots of people say they like things that they don’t really like because they think it’ll make them appear to be smarter than they really are. For example, if anyone tells you what a huge fan of jazz they are, grab a blunt object and beat them for being a pretentious fuck), the clothes we wear, the neighborhoods where we choose to live. These are all the characteristics within our control—they reflect who we choose to be.

On the other hand, the characteristics that we cannot control make us what we are. The religion in which we were raised, for example, or the socioeconomic class into which we were born. The city or country where we’re from. Our physiognomy. Our chronology. These are all factors beyond our capacity to decide, and which make us what we are.

There is a significant amount of overlap between them—the choices that we make are frequently determined, sometimes unthinkingly, by what we are. And there are some characteristics that we can, with the right amount of effort, change. But there are many characteristics about which we have no choice. The painter James McNeill Whistler once said he’d been born in St. Petersburg, Russia—a little zingier a spot than his real birthplace of Lowell, Massachusetts. And when called on it, Whistler replied, “I do not choose to be born in Lowell, Massachusetts.” Sorry, James. As Tony Soprano once said, “You are what you are. You’re born to this shit.”

For the last four years, I’ve been working on a historical novel about my hero, Joseph Pulitzer. The point I’m trying to make, should I ever finish it, is that you can’t truly understand who Pulitzer was until you know what he was:  a Hungarian Jew born on the eve of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and none of his biographers have adequately taken that into account. If I ever finish this fucking thing, it’ll change the way we think about a man who changed the way we think. But I digress.

My reference above to Tony Soprano was not made simply because I enjoyed juxtaposing James McNeill Whistler and Tony Soprano. It was also a good segue to my next argument: organized crime.

The three ethnic groups most prominent in traditional American organized crime were the Italians, the Jews, and the Irish. More specifically, it was Mezzogiornese , or southern Italians (Sicilians, Neapolitans, Abruzzese); Russian Jews; and southern, Catholic, “shanty” Irish.

The predominance of these three groups led to a lot of nonsensical speculation about certain ethnicities having a genetic predilection for crime and violence, Catholicism and Judaism being religious petri dishes for criminals, and a lot of other horseshit propagated by numbskulls like Cesare Lombroso (the guy who also believed that phrenology was a legitimate science—thus my use of the term numbskull. Wasn’t that clever? Ironically, Lombroso was himself an Italian Jew. Double whammy). But while the early 20^th century criminologists were feeling the bumps on thugs’ skulls—most of which had been placed there by other thugs—and looking for signs of congenital criminality in the shape of the nose and jaw, they overlooked something far more basic: the persistence of cultural patterns.

What these groups had in common was a history of oppression. The English treated the Irish like dogs. The Russians treated the Jews worse than dogs. And the southern Italians suffered a centuries-long parade of oppressors—Normans, Moors, Spaniards, and, most recently, Northern Italians who still despise their southern brethren with a viciousness that wouldn't shame an Alabama Klansman. “The mezzogiorno is more like Africa than it is Italy,” I was once told by a straight-faced Venetian. “They really shouldn’t be considered Italians at all. Just look at them, they even look like blacks.”

Centuries of oppression taught these groups some similar lessons. One, authority isn’t your friend. Two, survival dictates that you HAVE to screw the system.  And three, they’d evolved pretty sophisticated ways of doing it. In the old country, bribery, intimidation, illicit production and smuggling of goods, and hiding your assets weren’t crimes. They were a matter of survival.

Emigration didn’t erase centuries of conditioning. They just carried these same patterns of behavior to Brooklyn, or Chicago, or St. Louis, or Philadelphia, or any other city where organized crime took root.

The fact that the old organized crime syndicates and families are going away has very little to do with law enforcement—it has to do with eventual acculturation and assimilation. But the persistence of the ethnic structure of American organized crime bolsters my contention that ethnicity and nationality has a hell of a lot to do with what we are, and, eventually, what we do. 

In a recent piece in the New Yorker on why Greece is utterly fucked, James Surowiecki points to an ingrained culture of tax evasion among the Greeks (having been married to one for twelve years, I can attest to their being a skeevy, yet lovable, bunch of swarthy little fuckers, God love ‘em). He cites a study by the economist Martin Halla showing that tax morale—our willingness to actually pay our taxes—among second generation American immigrants reflects their country of origin. If you didn’t like paying taxes in the Old Country, you won’t do it over here. Neither will your kids. Or grandkids.

Q.E.D.

We pass things down. We can’t help it. Often, what is transmitted across generations is encoded or encrypted in, or under, or behind, other stuff. It’s unconscious. But it happens. Let me end this post with an anecdote illustrating my point.

My daughter was recently having a disagreement with a little boy at her school. Because I am an enlightened and progressive parent, I discussed the issue with her instead of merely barking, “You’ll behave at that school I pay twelve large a year to send you to or I’ll break your head.” As we spoke, she flipped her hand dismissively—a gesture eerily reminiscent of my grandmother of blessed memory, olov hasholem—and said, “Him I don’t like.”

What struck me was that she’d put the direct object before the subject—a sentence construction that sounds a little weird in English, but would sound totally natural to a Yiddish speaker, in which language it is the norm to put the predicate before the subject: “Good I don’t feel.” “Beautiful her dress was.” “Milk we’re out of and we need to go buy.”

My daughter is precisely one-quarter Jewish and speaks not a word of Yiddish. But she’d used a very Yiddish-sounding grammatical construct. She did this because I do it; I do it because my mother does it; and my mother does it because her mother did it, because her parents were Yiddish speakers. That’s five generations, in case you’re counting.

Imagine what else we pass on to our children without noticing. Imagine what other echoes of the Old Country are encoded in our gestures, our language, our reactions, our values. We are palimpsests, we humans—we’ve been overwritten a thousand times, and yet, as the old Roman poet said, “Scripta manent”—what is written remains. 

Coming Out of the Closet as an Anti-Abortion Type Person

A good friend of mine, who is a school psychologist, recently diagnosed me with something called Oppositional Defiant Disorder. This condition is, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is “an ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile, and defiant behavior toward authority figures which goes beyond the bounds of normal childhood behavior.” Yep, that sounds about right. 

I get a huge kick out of this for two reasons:

1. With all due respect to my good friend, I’m a little skeptical about all such disorders. I have a sneaking suspicion that this and many other such “disorders” are what used to be called “traits.” In the old days, the technical term for what I suffer from would have been “being an obstreperous, contrarian prick son of a bitch.” No cure. But I probably think this because not believing in disorders is, most likely, a symptom of my disorder.

2. I absolutely LOVE the acronym.

At any rate, if there is such a syndrome, it’s genetic, because my pater, JP Senior, also suffers from it. “It’s part of the condition of being a P, JP Junior,” he says, in his expansive Indiana good ol’ boy manner. “We’re Democrats in a roomful of Republicans, and Republicans in a roomful of Democrats.”

This is a figure of speech. It would take an awful lot for either of us to self-identify as Republicans. Nonetheless, it is true that we Ps do take a perverse glee in being contrarian. For some reason—probably because we’re ODD—we just like to disagree with people.

Because I am virulently anti-capitalist, I tend to associate with fellow Lefties, but I often find myself simultaneously bored and uneasy in the presence of those who agree with me. So it is always brings me great glee to express my rejection of one of the shibboleths of the American Left. Yessir, I'm pro-life. Or anti-abortion. Or opposed to a woman’s right to choose. Or whatever you want to call it. 

Doubtless because I have ODD, I love watching the horrified expressions creep across their faces when I say this. 

“Are... are you... religious or something?” they frequently stammer. “Hell no!” I like to say. “Let's take a chainsaw to the Bible. Nope, I’m right there with ol' Denis Diderot, him what said, “Mankind will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest!’”

The thing is, though, I’m not just saying it to be contrarian. I genuinely am opposed to abortion. More than that, I believe the pro-life position is more consistent with the political Left than it is with the political Right.

It’s the political Right that likes to pride itself on its pragmatism, its Social Darwinism, and its “get the gub’mint out of my life! Regulations are evil! The stop sign is an encroachment on my civil liberties!” brand of Libertarianism. It’s the Right that fights welfare, universal healthcare, immigration reform, and all other legislative initiatives that have their origin in the idea that it might be a good idea to help people.

It’s the Left which is more closely identified with compassion (there’s a reason liberals are called, dismissively, “bleeding hearts” by those on the Right), civil rights and equality under the law for everyone.

You’d think that, based on these two sets of descriptors, that it’d be those on the Left arguing against abortion, and the Right arguing for it. But it’s just the opposite. The right to an abortion is inextricably tied up with women’s liberation, which is a traditionally Left position. And there’s a mean-spirited, punitive streak in the religious Right’s pro-life rhetoric: “Well, if those broads are going to fuck out of wedlock, then they should damn well have to suffer the consequences of raising a kid!”

But at the end of the day, here’s what it comes down to: a fetus is an innocent human being, and killing innocent human beings is wrong. Period. End of story. Premeditated murder is wrong, war is wrong, and abortion is wrong. It’s just that simple.

Now, I should point out that I’m not completely in bed with the Pope on this one. I was never an altar boy for one thing (HIIIIYYYOOOHHH! Badum bum CHING).  And arguing for abstinence is absolutely ridiculous. People like screwing, and you’re not going to change that. Condoms ought to be standard issue in high school, and their proper use ought to be taught in health class—Christ knows parents aren’t doing it. Same goes for the Morning After Pill. “Welcome to high school. Here’s your locker combination, and here’s a bottle of Morning After Pills. Might want to take one right now!”

Moreover, as the best and wisest friend I have once pointed out, caffeine, as well as about a zillion other chemicals, can induce abortions. What would you do to the woman who doesn’t even know she’s pregnant, drinks too much coffee, and unknowingly aborts her fetus? Of course you wouldn’t imprison her for manslaughter or reckless endangerment—that’d be barbaric. So, in the interest of consistency and common sense, regretfully, I find myself unable to argue against first trimester abortions.

But beyond that, I’m as pro-life as it gets.

I don’t argue for the pro-life position because of my religious convictions. I don’t have any. And it should be patently obvious, even to an imbecile, that the Bible’s authors did not consider the fetus to be a person with any legal standing. Don’t believe me? Fine. Ask the Bible.

"And if men struggle and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."

Exodus 21:22-25

See? If you cause a miscarriage, thereby killing a fetus, you pay a fine. Just like you would if you harmed someone else’s goat, sheep, or cow. But if you kill an out-of-the-womb human, you forfeit your own life. Quite obviously, the Bible is a pro-choice document. It’s also a pro-slavery, pro-genocide, anti-gay, and pro-rape document. Why the hell anyone takes it seriously in this day and age is an utter mystery to me. I wish the religious would chuck it and find a book with a better set of tenets to live one’s life by. I recommend “Tuesdays with Morrie.” But I digress.

But in any case, do we really need an old book--or religion of any kind, really--to tell us that killing a kid is wrong? 

The thing is, no one, unless they’re truly demented, actually likes abortion. I don’t think there’s a sane person out there who thinks abortion is a good thing. I think everyone would consider it a tragedy. Where decent people can disagree is whether it’s

a)      justified,

b)      necessary, and

c)      ethically supportable.

I would argue that it’s none of the above. But I’d argue further that the issue of abortion itself is a red herring.

The real issue, to my way of thinking, is what drives women to have them. Generally, it’s economics, stigma, and convenience. So let’s start thinking about attacking the root causes.

What about a federal subsidy of $10,000 to be spent in education credits to every woman who carries her child to term, but who then gives that child up for adoption? That’d save lives, educate women, and pump more money into the economy, and if we can drop $30 billion a month in two wars we don’t need to be fighting, we can sure as hell spend it on saving lives. What about permanent tax abatement for couples who adopt children? We pay people to be foster parents, essentially subsidizing a completely fucked system. Why not help out couples who want to raise a child?

And, while we’re at it, isn’t it hypocritical as hell to deny women healthcare coverage, but expect them to carry a child to term?

It’s not an easy issue, but, as with so many other issues—in fact, every issue—once you get rid of the shriekers on either side of the issue and apply common sense and common decency—solving the problem, or at least improving it, becomes a hell of a lot easier. 

To see what someone smarter than you--and me--and you and me combined--namely, Noam Chomsky of MIT--has to say about it, watch this video. 

Barbie Must Die: A Primer on Implementing Feminism for Dads of Daughters.

There was a period of my life when I spent a lot of time among the Lubavitcher Hasidim in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Why I was there is a long and difficult story for a different post. For the purposes of this one, all you need to know, if you’re neither Jewish nor from New York, where they are just about ubiquitous, is that the Lubavitchers are a community of ultra-Orthodox Jewish fundamentalists—or, as they are colloquially and somewhat derogatorily known among their less observant coreligionists, the Black Hats.

Because this time of my life coincided with the time of my life when I would have screwed any chick who gave me the time of day, I misguidedly attempted to chat up some of the Lubavitcher girls. This was, to put it mildly, utterly futile. The Lubavitchers, like all the Black Hats, are stringently observant of every jot and tittle of the 613 laws (and you thought there were only ten). They’d as soon have done me as don a bikini to grill shrimp kebabs on the Sabbath. But I did get some interesting conversations out of my attempts.

To my question of, “Do you ever feel resentful that your observance of Judaism forces you to wear long sleeves and long skirts all year round, and doesn’t let you go to college, and basically relegates you to a life of churning out and caring for a damn near constant stream of lil’ Hasidim?” (albeit more tactfully phrased), the answer was, universally, “We hardly think women outside are ‘liberated.’ We consider ourselves liberated from all the expectations that women on the ouside are subjected to.”

On one level, this sounds a lot like those female apologists for Islam who claim that they feel protected by their burqas (and, presumably, don’t miss their clitorises at all, either). But on another level, the Hasidic women did make a powerful argument—one which I didn’t think of at all until I had a daughter.

Since I blog more or less anonymously, I’ll cop to being a closet misogynist in the way that every single man in the world is a closet misogynist. I fully admit to having objectified women, muttered horrible imprecations against all women every time I got shot down by one, and having either stated, or agreed with statements, that they’re just not as smart/organized/logical/practical as men.

But that all changed when the ultrasound technician handed me a slip of paper with the words “Think Pink” written on it. Suddenly, the divide between me and the Fairer Sex—the distance which allowed me to objectify them—disintegrated. Suddenly, there was going to be part of me in a woman, and not in the good way. Suddenly, a woman—a female—was going to share my DNA, my personhood, that ineffable quality that makes me who I am. And in that moment, I ceased to be a pig the way, arguably excusably, all men are pigs, to being the father of a daughter. At which point, being a pig ceases to be excusable.

As I drove away from the hospital with the words “Think Pink” tolling around in my head like Big Ben, I remembered being in Crown Heights, talking “feminism” and “liberation” with women who had no interest in either. And I found myself torn. Because, while I was repelled by the thought of my daughter in the situation of the Lubavitcher girls—never having the chance to go to college, for example—I was equally repelled by the thought of my daughter suffering all the horrors that our post-70’s world foists upon girls.

The sexual revolution was a good thing. My daughter, thank God, will not be disqualified by her gender from becoming a doctor, an astronaut, an archaeologist, or a zoologist (her current career plan). But she also won’t live in a community whose mores and customs protect her, and the vast majority of whose members will not value her purely for how hard she can make their shmeckels. Women used to be objectified for their dowries and their ability to birth kids. Now they’re objectified in new and, arguably, worse ways. We’ve replaced the tyranny of the patriarchy with the tyranny of pilates, waxing, plucking, hair salons, aerobics, weight obsession, food issues, bulimia, anorexia, and all the other horrendous baggage that goes along with having your self-esteem rely upon your ability to attract attention with your looks.

All of which makes me think that feminism, for all its great strides, has one hell of a fuck of a goddamn of a long way to go.

Granted, I’m not claiming any originality here. This has all been said a zillion and seven times before. But if you’re the father of a daughter, and you aren’t thinking this way, then you don’t deserve to be the father of a daughter.

I really don’t have the answer. I haven’t finished raising the girl whom I hope will be a happy, successful, well-adjusted woman who’s comfortable in her own skin. But I do know that the first step is killing Barbie.

My house has a strict no-Barbies rule. I hate that bitch. I hate her silky blonde hair, I hate her long, perfect legs, I hate her sparkling blue eyes, her wasp waist, her retrousse little nose, and her smooth, hairless plastic body. I hate her because, if genetics are any indication, my kid is not going to look anything like her. My kid is going to be short, hippy, busty, swarthy, hairy, and frizzy-headed. In other words, she’s going to look a lot like her mother, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers on both sides.

In other words, she’s going to be absolutely beautiful.

The Barbie moratorium at chez JP is fanatical, obsessive, and absolute. And I realize that, by enforcing it in clear contravention of my daughter’s expressly stated wishes, I am behaving patriarchally. So sue me. I’m a patriarch.

But, because I do try to teach my children both to challenge, and to demand accountability from, authority, I did sit her down and try to explain why Barbie was persona plastica non grata at stately JP Manor, and this is, essentially, what I told her.

“Kiddo, you’re not going to look like Barbie. And I’m glad, because your mother doesn’t look anything like Barbie, and she’s absolutely beautiful. But more importantly, I don’t want you to think that you have to look like her to be pretty. You don’t.

“We don’t have Barbie in this house because Barbie doesn’t teach the right lessons. Barbie teaches you that you have to look a certain way, and that having  a ton of stuff will make you happy. Barbie teaches you that you need a Dream House and a convertible and a bunch of clothes and jewelry to be happy, but that’s a lie. Happiness doesn’t come from what you have. It comes from what you do.

“You won’t become happy by looking like Barbie. People spend their whole lives trying to look different than they do, because they think it will make them happy. It doesn’t. Happiness is finding people who like the way you look--but more importantly, it comes from finding people who like you for who you are, not how you look or what you have.

"Barbie teaches you that people will give you stuff if you're pretty. Sadly, this is sometimes true. But it's sad. It means that girls who could have been doctors, or scientists, or artists, or businesswomen, never discovered what they could have done, because they spent all their time trying to look pretty to get stuff for themselves. It's sad for all the people they could have helped, and didn't; it's sad for all the cool things they could have done, but didn't; but mostly it's sad for those girls, because they lived an empty life that never made them happy.

“Remember that, babe. Remember that happiness doesn’t come from having stuff, or by looking the way you think other people want you to look. That’s why, every day, I tell you that I love you not because you’re pretty, but because you’re smart, and funny, and compassionate and kind to others. That’s what’s important in life—not being pretty.

“Oh, and incidentally, Ken’s gay.”