by Edward Champion

The “Save Gary Coleman” Petition!

Even though I have yet to hear back from Marcus Brauchli concerning the future of the Washington Post‘s book coverage, and not a single journalist or NBCC board member has confirmed a specific decision, I believe that the time has come to blame what nobody really knows on actor Gary Coleman.

Coleman, who once ran for California governor and is therefore thoroughly qualified to know about the Washington Post‘s internal decisions, needs to be saved. The information needs to be extracted from Coleman’s seerlike skull. And the action needs to happen now. Before Friday, January 23rd. By email. Because we all know how email gets lost and caught in spam filters. But a campaign like this sure beats sitting around and speculating. One suspects that Coleman can handle the pressure. And besides, everybody needs a scapegoat. And perhaps Coleman knows something that not even Marcus Brauchli knows. Let us always consider our strangest hunches.

Here is the plea to Gary Coleman and his editors:

“As chronic speculators and worrywarts, we write to implore you to go to Washington, DC, and kick a few asses. There are bloggers writing in Terre Haute basements who actually love what they do, and they are apparently being read and hired by some newspapers. The only solution is to beat a few people around and prevent these upstart bloggers from having the same prestige and influence of newspapers. As book critics, we have earned the right to write reviews that we believe enriches culture. Yes, it may read like the equivalent of castor oil sometimes. But it is our God-given right to pollute books section with bland and humorless drivel.

“We believe that you have important information about the newspaper business contained within your head, and that you have been rather selfish about sharing your vital data with the elitist book critics. We therefore wish to save you, so that we can save ourselves. The anemic discussion of books is vital to an elitist society. ‘James Wood defected to the New Yorker! What the fuck are we going to do?’ wrote an editor of The New Republic last year. And it is safe to say that since we do not know what the fuck we are going to do, then you will likely be in a better position to do something about it. We checked in our spines with our coats at last night’s book party.

“We call on you to preserve the Washington Post‘s books coverage, and to give it all to the dullest critics now working in America. We also call on you to ensure that not a single idiosyncratic voice or blogger will ever write for its pages again.”

(Photo: Eek! Online. For more petitions of the “Eek!” variety, go here.)

by Edward Champion

Episode XLIV: A New Hope

obamapresToday is the beginning of a new epoch. The slate is clean, the road ahead is paved with shrapnel, and the body language between the Obamas and the Bushes just before their preinaugural coffee is wonderfully comical. While I retain my hearty skepticism about politics, I can say, without reservation, that I am very proud to be an American right now. The last eight years nearly destroyed my faith in government, transformed me into something of a fiery curmudgeon in matters pertaining to politics, and made me wonder if we could ever set this country straight. But this morning, upon seeing Obama walk into the White House, there was one overwhelming and seemingly inconceivable thought: My god, this man will be our President.

Let us hope that he will not blow it. Let us also hope that the American people will live up to the tenets of the Constitution and consider every decision made by President Obama, who possesses every sign that he will be a first-class communicator. I believe that President Obama will be transparent about his actions and atone for the last guy, who was secretive and uncooperative and will almost certainly have a lonely existence for the rest of his days. It is a faith that I place today and that may be discarded tomorrow, for I will be watching the new guy like a hawk. Nevertheless, I can’t even begin to describe what the climate shift means. We have moved from an obdurate-minded autocrat to a man who may have ushered in a new political era of national concert and civil disagreement.

My nation has snapped out of an eight-year nightmare. Let us hope that this will translate into a new age of maturity and civilization. Let us learn from our mistakes and emerge stronger than we were before.

by Edward Champion

I’m Feeling Lucky About My Google Job

From a fascinating collection of emails from former Google employees:

In one TGIF in Kirkland, an employee informed Eric Schmidt that Microsoft’s benefits package was richer. He announced himself
genuinely surprised, which genuinely surprised me. Schmidt, in the presence of witnesses, promised to bring the benefits to a par. He consulted HR, and HR informed him that it’d cost Google 22 million a year to do that. So he abandoned the promise and fell back on his tired, familiar standby (”People don’t work at Google for the money. They work at Google because they want to change the world!”). A statement that always seemed to me a little Louis XIV coming from a billionaire.

A company that generates several billions of dollars a year in profit — that reported revenues of $5.54 billion during the third quarter of 2008 — is, from the perspective of CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt, a man who earns a $1 annual salary but who owns more than 10.7 million shares of Google, considered a place where people work simply because they “want to change the world.”

From Emerson’s “Compensation”:

Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing, than the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. There is always some levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others.