I know, I know, I refused to mourn him which got some Jackson fans upset, then compared him to neophyte degenerate Jessica Massey in this post which also seemed to upset some people. So I decided to give a little and post this belated tribute to the king of pop, courtesy Mediocrefilms:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQC8QuR7gzw[/youtube]

You’re Welcome.

I subscribe to the Leah Remini blog, a fact that I expect most people to judge me for rather harshly. Deservedly so, because frankly I have no real interest in Remini (although I do think she was the high point of King of Queens) aside from the idle curiosity of how famous and semi-famous people run their blogs. For the most part Remini’s blog posts are a series of one line responses to emails from fans which are surprisingly fascinating to read. Or maybe you should be surprised by how fascinating I find the Zen like monotony of blog posts that look like this:

Carrie ~ I am not doing a movie, but good luck on yours!

Jen ~ Thanks hon

Rochelle ~ The diet is called Dr. Cohen’s 1st personal diet. It is in the weight loss story on my Blog

Glenn ~ Thank you so much and I love the idea of Rico having his own show… very good idea

David ~ Thank you so much for the book and yes, I did get the book and I so appreciate it. Thank you.

Michelle ~ I do not know honey about the clothes I wore. As for your other question, when we film in bowling alleys and stuff, most of the time, it is just a fake set on the sound stage, but sometimes it will actually be at a local bowling alley. As far as paint and all that, it is just a mixture usually of water, food coloring etc. It is not actually paint.

Why can I waste a good half an hour reading that? You be the judge.

And I mean that literally.

Feel free to psychoanalyze me from your Internet armchair. Maybe it’s because most of my emails are hate filled invective bordering on death threats so I’m envious of Remini’s dry and mild interactions with her fans. Maybe I’m waiting to see how long it is before she says something rude, sub-consciously expecting her to be similar to the character she played so well. Or maybe I’m just a procrastinator.

But whatever theory you come up with concerning my embarrassing taste in web fare I can assure you of two things. First, while I may disagree and argue with you about it I’ll never put forward the idea that you have no right to make judgments about me based on information or actions I make public. The second is I won’t really care unless you actually libel me (Michael James Gregg I’m looking at you) so while I enjoy both robust debate with thoughtful commenters and making trolls cry with some keen insight into their “lives” the fact is if it weren’t for the WordPress dashboard indicating when new comments come in I’d forget all about “controversial” stands I’ve taken like the fact I won’t be mourning Michael Jackson or that calling women whores is wrong. In both those posts I argued extensively in the comments with various people, and in both cases really could not have cared less what those people thought of me personally.

I am, perhaps, in the minority. In the Michael Jackson piece I referenced above one of the main criticisms of my position was that I had no “right” to judge Jackson based on his behavior. On the web you run into this sort of specious and ham handed nonsense in a variety of guises, from the families of criminals who tell you that since you “weren’t there” you shouldn’t judge their son/boyfriend/distant cousin/favorite serial killer to the sanctimonious newly pious who tell you that “only God” can judge a person. By these standards we would be unable to comment on Ted Bundy unless we were there when he murdered women, and we would have to empty the prisons unless someone can find a way to prove God thought a person was guilty.

Perhaps trial by fire? Or dunking?

It’s a modern conceit, this desire to not be judged, and one which has stealthily crept into the modern mind until it is just accepted by many that you have no right to make judgments about them based on their public actions or statements. I contend that this is an underlying cause in many societal ills, from crime to drug abuse. This idea that you should be well thought of no matter what you do, that you are above criticism, is a dangerous devolution from adulthood into perpetual adolescence.

Which brings me in a round about way to my guilty pleasure, Leah Remini’s blog. A few days she wrote a piece entitled The Rachel Ray Piece/ Please Shut Up Already About It. She includes a smiley face emoticon to lessen the punch. As far as I can tell it was in response to an old controversy (from the Summer of ’08) in which Remini and family were mulling over doing a reality show, tested the waters with a Rachael Ray appearance and were promptly called bad parents because their child was having a rough time getting off the bottle.

“Aha!” I said while sipping my coffee. “Another example of the Internet chateratti overstepping their bounds and delving into near misogyny!” I could already see the long tirade I’d write in defense of this poor mother in my head, when I came across a few factoids that were going around. Long story short, what people were reacting to was the fact Remini’s child was four years old and still on the bottle (which is bad for the child’s teeth, but actually not so rare) and may have still been in diapers.

Having worked with kids and even with toddlers in Head Start programs I’ve actually seen similar situations. Since I didn’t see the show I’ll reserve final judgment, but frankly when children are four and still in diapers it’s usually because the parents are finding it easier to deal with that than go through the pain of potty training. It is similar with bottle feeding.

Unfortunately it limits the child if not taken care of. A Head Start I worked at had a 5-year-old who was still in diapers who was not allowed to start school because of it. It’ll surprise no one who worked in Head Starts that the mother was less than motivated.

Wind out of my sails I moved on, but was struck by how Remini ended her blog post, with that familiar sentiment:

I hope that some of you count your blessings and maybe return to the decent people I know you can be. Maybe spend less time judging people and more time on being compassionate about other peoples “shortcomings”.

Just because we can say anything about anyone on the internet doesn’t mean we should.

Which on the surface I would agree with but Leah Remini is the person who invited discussion and criticism of her parenting in the first place. I frankly feel, after cursory reading of the whole kerfuffle, that Remini and her husband are probably decent enough parents who, like many post-modern couples, have no idea how to instill the discipline needed to easily wean their child. They have weaned her, and I’m personally not invested in caring how long it takes to wean children as long as the parents don’t stick diapered 5-year-olds in a program I’m working, but why are we expected to not judge people who are in the public eye?

There was very little anger from Remini when the positive judgments we make about her are to her benefit. When we say she’s an attractive woman there’s no blog post shot off to demand we look beyond her physical assets. And please don’t misunderstand my point to mean that she should either simply accept criticism graciously (she shouldn’t) or that the way people did criticize her on the gossip blogs was acceptable. She has every right to be part of the debate she herself initiated, and should stand up for herself especially when it comes to the Internet gossip sites who insult rather than criticize. Remini also has a right to expect, and demand, that criticism of her not be vulgar, demeaning or false although she technically only has the legal right to the last. But she’d be right to take the overblown hyperbole (She’s not a fit mother!!!) to task.

But if she’s asking people to simply leave their judgment at the door when seeing her, then she is infantilizing herself as well as her child.

For some reason, perhaps the “self-esteem” movement that started when I was young, Americans feel that their personal behavior is beyond reproach. I have seen it argued many times that there is a literal right to not being criticized, that people should never be made to defend themselves or their actions. In this route lies madness. People are not made of glass, though we have created generation upon generation of people with egos so fragile that you’d think the merest whiff of disapproval shatters their psyches irreparably and leaves us with a skinny-jean wearing vegetable forever muttering “Don’t judge me!” while being fed soup by a nurse with a Doctorate in Emotional Socio-cognitive Therapy she got from The University of Phoenix.

Why are we so delicate? Since when have we lost our ability to meet the challenge of criticism head on? More and more I have found that someone will leave a comment here calling me some horrible name or insinuating something unseemly and when I respond in kind (though admittedly not kindly) I then usually get some response that boils down to the same person asking why I’m being mean to them. We have reached a level in society where even trolls who leave racist/sexist/vulgar comments on blogs feel that they are being slighted when someone turns the tables on them and makes them feel bad. See the comments in this post for an example of what I mean.

Making judgments is the most basic responsibility to ourselves and our society that we have. It’s time we start teaching people that simple lesson again.