Thomas A. Shakely

Kitty Kelley, the investigative journalist, super-best seller, and unauthorized “poison pen” biographer, has written a biography of Oprah. ABC is boycotting her, and Kelley is being shunned by everyone from Larry King to Charlie Rose.

Why? “[T]hey didn’t want to offend Oprah“:

Kelley is generally thought of as an “Uh-oh” writer. That is, when she announces she is writing a book about X, the response is “Uh-oh,” usually on the part of the subject. For the rest of us, the “Uh-oh” signifies: “This is gonna be good. It may be down and dirty, but it will be true, and it will be good.” If there is hidden history to be gotten, Kelley will get it. Some people belittle her work as muckraking that is perhaps fanciful, if not far-fetched, but that is because they can’t believe that there are facts about a famous person which have heretofore not been known. Let’s put it this way: Frank Sinatra, when she was writing her book on him, was so, um … displeased that he threatened to have her killed. And she’s never been sued successfully. For her biography about Oprah, she did 850 interviews. Eight hundred and fifty! (In my news days if I contacted four people I thought I had really worked my tail off.) Her work is that of a hybrid researcher/historian, and whatever she writes you can take to the bank. She is in no way an academic, which is probably the reason her books sell in the millions.

The myth of the old boys network was that its obsession with privilege and prestige could be broken if its sexism and bias could be neutralized. So long as there is power to be had, there will always be an “old boys network” (even if it’s dead-set on protecting a girl).

From Mark Bauerlein last year in the Wall Street Journal on “Why Gen-Y Johnny Can’t Read Nonverbal Cues:”

We live in a culture where young people—outfitted with iPhone and laptop and devoting hours every evening from age 10 onward to messaging of one kind and another—are ever less likely to develop the “silent fluency” that comes from face-to-face interaction. It is a skill that we all must learn, in actual social settings, from people (often older) who are adept in the idiom. As text-centered messaging increases, such occasions diminish. The digital natives improve their adroitness at the keyboard, but when it comes to their capacity to “read” the behavior of others, they are all thumbs.

Nobody knows the extent of the problem. It is too early to assess the effect of digital habits, and the tools change so quickly that research can’t keep up with them. By the time investigators design a study, secure funding, collect results and publish them, the technology has changed and the study is outdated.

Still, we might reasonably pose questions about silent-language acquisition in a digital environment. Lots of folks grumble about the diffidence, self-absorption and general uncommunicativeness of Generation Y. The next time they face a twenty-something who doesn’t look them in the eye, who slouches and sighs for no apparent reason, who seems distracted and unaware of the rising frustration of the other people in the room, and who turns aside to answer a text message with glee and facility, they shouldn’t think, “What a rude kid.” Instead, they should show a little compassion and, perhaps, seize on a teachable moment. “Ah,” they might think instead, “another texter who doesn’t realize that he is communicating, right now, with every glance and movement—and that we’re reading him all too well.”

Bauerlein’s point is that technological innovation often (or perhaps, necessarily) involves trade-offs. in this case, with greater digital dependence comes fewer opportunities for mastering the hurdles of face-to-face human experience.

Key point too seldom stressed: Digital culture is useful insofar as it helps develop and grow those senses, skills and social graces (perceptivity, gratitude) in human interaction. It’s a Goldilocks scenario, a trick of getting it “just right” – not too digitally dependent, not too Luddite-prone.

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Related Thinking: Of those social faux pas that stand out in daily life, one of the most annoying is when one in your company stops talking mid-conversation to check on a buzzing cell phone. Worse is when you’re the one speaking, and the cell phone is brought out to respond to a text or e-mail.

Tibetans, for instance, believe that to return a gift represents an unforgivable act. If companionship is properly seen as the giving of oneself and one’s time to a friend or peer, to “return the gift,” as it were, by such an overt signal of distraction or relative indifference to the importance of one physically present is perhaps not unforgivable, but probably lese majeste.

If you absolutely feel the need to respond to a call, text, or e-mail, excuse yourself (even, or especially, when among friends), and address that demand on your time, but it’s probably best not to multitask physical and digital concerns simultaneously unless a situation is truly dire, or unless a certain social understanding exists.

Relationships are hard. The act of giving ourselves so wholely to another demands an emotional and mental investment rivaled by nothing else on earth. Similar to the way the ancient Greeks viewed the meaning of education — the act of giving oneself wholly to another in learning — so too do we give of ourselves to our lovers as we learn to trust, to learn, to live.

And when relationships fail, when trusts are betrayed, when feelings of love turn to hate, it’s easy to let animosity and rage rule our hearts as we seek to avoid the pitfalls of a post-relationship period. It’s a strange thing that happens: the person you loved and would have given your life for just last week becomes, as the esteemed Keith Olbermann might say, “the worst person in the world!”

“Kate? Oh, she’s dead to me.” said Jack.

“But you were ready to marry her before your last fight!” Robert retorts.

That post-relationship meanspiritedness takes over, shades, and distorts our memory of a former lover, in the same way a time later celebrated often seems to forget to include the bad times along with the good in the recounting.

This meanspiritedness is coarse and unsettling in the sense that it’s counter-factual to a shared experience (at least at the time) that was evidently loving or at least marginally meaningful.

Barring infidelity, many happy relationships that, for whatever set of reasons, come to a close, seem to be readily put aside with one partner being labeled at fault, the bitch, the jackass, etc.

This seems like an odd way to regard one you professed to at one point to love. Poor treatment at one point or another in a relationship would seem an inadequate reason to retroactively disparage the entire relationship a waste, or vilify the woman you once whispered sweetly to in quiet evening hours.

In the end, perhaps we need that lashing out period (with hope that it’s merely a passing attitude); perhaps such nastiness exists precisely to be overcome, as one side of the affection/animosity coin of human relations.