Author / Edward Champion

Posts by Edward Champion

Edward Champion is the Managing Editor of Reluctant Habits.
by Edward Champion

Leigh Robbins — The Racist Exemplar

Leigh Robbins, a 35-year-old housewife, genuinely believes that she was fulfilling her maternal duties. The truly sickening aspect of her story, which delayed a flight for more than twelve hours, isn’t so much her fear of brown-skinned people, which is quite evident in Robbins’s attempt to get her sons off a plane that, lo and behold, happened to have seven Iraqis on board. It was the way in which Robbins justified her racism with these quotes:

“How can you overreact when it’s your children?”

“I’m very sorry, but I’d do anything to protect my kids.”

Robbins’s excuses are very much grounded in the hermetic seal of the nuclear family archetype. The horror from six years ago has so successfully indoctrinated its way into public consciousness that it is no longer a matter of remembering (“Never forget!” read many of the signs here in New York), but a matter of fulfilling one’s basic domestic duties.

9/11 is no longer the smoking gun. Hollywood is — to some extent. It is no longer a matter of accessing one’s general sense of reality. It is, as Robbins observed, a matter of comparative metaphor. “It was very frightening, like something out of a movie,” said Robbins.

There are important questions here which must be asked: Why didn’t the plane’s passengers stick up for the Iraqi men? They were questioned by American Airlines, as if they were the villains. Why was Robbins’s ostensible safety valued over that of the Iraqi men? Does Robbins truly comprehend the callous fury she has unearthed?

Never mind their ethnicity. Why in America were seven men — who served their country — considered lesser than one racist homemaker, who served nothing more than graham crackers and juice?

by Edward Champion

When Lounge, Lip Syncing, Smoking, and Bad Dancing Collide

[UPDATE: How dare Madison Avenue steal the absolutely kickass bass line from Pino d’Angio! This is a terrible musical crime, and I sincerely hope that Pino gets his justice! (Of course, it’s also possible that Pino lifted it from Risco Connection’s “Ain’t No Stopping Us.” Understand: the objection to Madison Avenue isn’t so much that they ripped Pino (and possibly Risco) off, but that they did so without the cheesy gravitas of the original tune!]

by Edward Champion

SFWA Enacts McCarthyism Revival

Cory Doctorow: “SFWA’s copyright campaigns have been increasingly troublesome. In recent years, they’ve created a snitch line where they encourage sf lovers to fink on each other for copying books, created a loyalty oath for members in the guise of a ‘code of conduct’ in which we are supposed to pledge to ‘not plagiarize, pirate, or otherwise infringe intellectual property rights (copyright, patent, and trademark) or encourage others to do so.’ What business SFWA has in telling its members how to think about, say, pharmaceutical patents, database copyrights, or trademark reform is beyond me. In 2005, SFWA sent out a push-poll to its members trying to scare members off of giving permission to Amazon to make the full text of their books searchable online.”

by Edward Champion

You Don’t Want to Be My Friend

You don’t want to be my friend because I am possessed of two diametrically opposing qualities: a deeply visceral empathy and a concern for the logical, sometimes both at the same time, sometimes both canceling out. You don’t want to be my friend because, if you are a true friend, you have my incredible loyalty and this, I realize, can be overwhelming. You don’t want to be my friend because I am true to who I am and, while I try to be nice, I am not always nice. You don’t want to be my friend because I am committed to honesty, even when it hurts. And this mostly hurts me. You don’t want to be my friend because while I am good at elucidating at length and intelligence upon certain subjects, I am often not good at explaining my own feelings, assuming that I am not reluctant to do so — ergo, the title of this blog — because one has the obligation of showing up or being kind or responding to the munificence of other people. You don’t want to be my friend because I am very happy not knowing. You don’t want to be my friend because it takes me too long to reveal what others can tell you about themselves so easily. You don’t want to be my friend because I am often stopped in my tracks by a moment of cruelty or injustice and cannot let certain things slide and must rally against it, even though I hope that I will use my powers for good. You don’t want to be my friend because I don’t want anyone to hurt you and will remember those who do. You don’t want to be my friend because I am sometimes an introvert who masquerades as an extrovert, and am perhaps something of a social fraud because of this. You don’t want to be my friend because while I am confident about who I am, I am not sure if the scars have completely healed. You don’t want to be my friend because my face is terribly expressive. You don’t want to be my friend because I very frequently don’t want to ask for anything. You don’t want to be my friend because I want to bear burdens silently.

You don’t.

Want to be.

My friend.

Last night, I had a horrible nightmare in which I learned that my own mother had been responsible for My Lai. I woke up shaking, sweating, my huge heart thumping loud within my chest. I also had a wonderful dream in which several kind jazz musicians allowed me to sing with them on stage after it was demonstrated that I couldn’t play any of their instruments.

You see, there are also good things that come from all these emotional realities. And the shame in typing a phrase like “you don’t want to be my friend” makes me wonder if I am again being too hard on myself, if I am again feeling guilt for not being perfect, if I am momentarily advocating Donne’s dangerous maxim, if I am otherwise grappling with the burdens of being human.

But I do want to be your friend. And I’ll understand if you don’t want me to be your friend. But it goes without saying that we’re all in this together and life is too short not to try.