Dear Jack,
Hey. I'm now past the halfway point of the Virtuous Reality book tour. I'm home for a couple of days trying to get some sleep, spend time with my family, and catch up with my email. I thought it would be only decent to drop you a note to let you know how things are going, since you've been following my career.
First off, you'll be glad to know I've blasted out of the basement, with a vengeance. So far, I've been to New Haven, Boston, Cambridge, Washington, DC (twice), New York (five or six times), Chicago, San Francisco/Berkeley/Marin County, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, and Toronto. It looks like I may get to Atlanta and Austin, Texas, as well. I've done a dozen print interviews, and I've been on more than a hundred radio and TV programs around the country and in Canada including at least 30 drive-time radio broadcasts, nearly a score of online chats and interviews, a dozen NPR affiliates, several CNN shows, Fox News, and ABC's World News Tonight.
Jack, I know you had some quibbles with my work and the book. The title of your increasingly famous piece was "Katz On The Cross: The Martyrdom of St. Jon of Cyberspace." You compared me to Milton Berle and the Unabomber and called me the leader of a degenerate nation of self-indulgent brats. You said my adopted constituency here on the Web included Web surfers, hackers, violent-film buffs, Super Mario 64 champions, Web-porn peddlers, and TV-talk show fans, people you referred to as the "Katz Corps." You said I was quick to "flame" enemies. (Jack, let's reboot here. You are obviously not a regular HotWired reader. I hate flaming, and have written many columns saying so).
Was this all true?, an incredulous Canadian reporter asked, citing your column about me. Is that what HotWired's readers are like? I have to be honest, I felt a bit Dennis Hopperish. For a guy who drives a minivan around New Jersey, this was heady stuff.
I tried to explain to the reporter that in the strange American media world we both inhabit, this kind of stuff doesn't always hurt, though it's sometimes intended to. Sometimes it works in just the opposite way. Depending on what they say and how they're delivered, some attacks work better than praise. If you'd written a nice review praising my thoughtful and perceptive observations on media and culture, a lot of media people wouldn't have wanted me on their shows.
I like to think the book is provocative in itself, but I would be dishonest if I didn't acknowledge that you helped get it off the ground. Within days of publication, it wasn't just a book about media and culture, it was the "controversial" new book about media and culture. "You'll want to hear this guy," shouted one radio jock, "he's been compared to the Unabomber!" Reporters do love a brawl.
Hence that startling subtitle: How America surrendered discussion of moral values to opportunists, nitwits and blockheads like William Bennett. I worried a bit about it, but my editor (who loved it) was right: Controversy does attract attention. I can't tell you how many producers, reporters, anchors and radio hosts said they booked me on their programs because of that subtitle. "I figured this has to be a great book," was a common refrain.
I've learned this lesson the hard way, Jack, believe me. I've taken the other path. I've written five novels and spent lots of time by myself in these very same cities I've just been limo'd around in, hoping that relatives or friends would show up at readings so I wouldn't have to read to the embarrassed bookstore staff.
Fact is, you helped elevate me, especially to journalists offline - and gave me a status I didn't really have and still don't. Reporters find the kind of constituency you described exotic and interesting. "What are Web-porn peddlers like?" asked a reporter in Los Angeles. That there's little truth to it (I've never come across a Web-porn peddler, to be honest) doesn't seem to bother anybody much.
But we don't need to rehash all that. The bottom line is that your review lit up the Web and for a few days sent my email levels way up. Probably didn't do Slate any harm either. As we both can see, a good dust-up never hurt any Web site. The good news is that I can tell you that even if Slate isn't being read by paying subscribers, it is being read by media types, curious to see what you, Michael et al., are up to.
Curiously, one question I was often asked is whether you and I had crossed paths during my long march through print and broadcast journalism. Your review sounded like a sort of payback. Was it because I had doubted the success of Slate on the Web and jeered at Michael Kinsley's assurance that he was going to civilize the online world? I assured them the answer was no. Your review wasn't personal; you just didn't like my book.
You really didn't like my book. And you were not alone.
But Virtuous Reality didn't bomb, at least not yet. Fortunately for me, lots of people did like it. Several newspapers excerpted it. Others praised it.
And say what you want about the degenerates on HotWired, they turned out to be loyal little suckers. Numerous readers emailed me that after your piece, they rushed out to get my book, partly out of curiosity, partly in protest against being labeled indulgent and degenerate scum.
The tour has been interesting and revealing. I talked to Mormons, webheads, geeks, Silicon Valley execs, Christian fundamentalists, teachers, and plenty of concerned parents. On both coasts, the notion that culture and media aren't the primary causes of violence wasn't particularly controversial. There was skepticism about my arguments, but as much for politicians who spout moral values. In between, I mostly heard from parents struggling to make sense of the information revolution and the Net, and trying to figure out just how to live rationally in the digital age.
My best conversations were often on late-night talk-radio broadcasts, where we had some time, and where sincere and open-minded callers were trying hard to figure out a moral place to land amid all this hype and hysteria. People don't, I realize, really want William Bennett or Bill Clinton or V-Chips or CyberNanny to act in loco parentis when it comes to teaching values to their children.
They want to do it themselves. They are just struggling to figure out how. Politicians of both parties have been busy exploiting parents' fears of pornography and other dangers for years, but they may be missing the boat. All across the country - and in Canada and in several conversations with listeners overseas - I heard a different undercurrent. It's one political leaders might do well to consider when the country finally grasps that pornography isn't our worst or most dangerous social problem.
"I'm not afraid for my children morally," said Harry, a father calling from suburban Chicago. "It's my job and my wife's to take care of them and supervise them and mostly, we do well. What I'm afraid of is that my kids are going to be left out. I'm a blue-collar worker. I don't understand this new technology. I don't really care if my boy sees dirty pictures. But I'm scared to death he won't know enough about this new stuff to get a good job when he grows up. And his teacher doesn't know any more about it than I do." This man didn't need Bennett, Clinton, or Dole to advise him on what TV shows or movies his kids should see; he needed them to put more computers into his kids' school.
I may be kidding myself, but I think the Harrys of the world are beginning to figure out what they are getting their pockets picked by guys like Bennett, who has made millions from his goofy fairy tales, as well as by V-Chip proponents and software makers. Their quick fixes don't work; they just cost more money. They don't help needy kids. Harry is starting to understand that the real outrage isn't that his kids are subjected to too much of this stuff, but to too little.
When that message dawns on American parents, it will be a defining moment - and if I helped spread the word, I'll have had at least one good reason to have walked the earth.
I also had a great time shocking people (isn't this sad?) by arguing that kids weren't dumb, that they had rock-solid values, for the most part.
I hate to turn on my own kind, Jack, but we boomers do prove that old adage that sooner or later, we all become our parents.
Anyway, I'm heading for Princeton University.
The Random House publicist says - I should be up front about this - that there's lots of media interest coming from Seattle. Hmm. If I get there, we ought to meet. We have our differences, I guess, but we do have lots in common: We are both critics, when all is said and done, two middle-aged media pilgrims trying to make our way in the new world.
Let's do lunch.
