Tired of Tu Quoque

If you want Black people to trust the vaccine,
don't blame them for distrusting it.

— Dr. Rueben Warren

I'm as empathetic as the next guy, but I'm tired of tu quoque. 

A logical fallacy, tu quoque (Latin for "you, too") turns a criticism back on the critic, instead of addressing it.

Example:

   Climate change threatens our species. We must end deforestation. 

   Sure, and you drive a car.

Tu quoque—also known as the "appeal to hypocrisy" or "whataboutism"—is a red herring used to take the heat off. 

As a reply to a criticism, it's weak, illogical, and blatantly self-serving. 

It lets you off the hook for anything and everything.

And it drives me bonkers.

Right now, tu quoque is being used by apologists to excuse Blacks from getting vaccinated (according to the CDC, as little as 15% of the Black population has received the vaccine).

Public health officials want everyone vaccinated. 

Unless they are, officials warn, Covid-19 will continue to kill. Over 500 Americans die every day from it.

If you criticize Blacks' vaccine-resistance—no matter your own color—you're immediately reminded of Tuskegee.

But in fact most Blacks have never heard of Tuskegee, you answer.

So you're reminded of things like poverty, pharmacy deserts, 1619 and systemic racism.

Tu quoque. Criticize my foolishness, I'll criticize yours. Never mind the substance of your criticism. 

Never mind the fact that spreading the virus encourages mutations. 

Never mind the fact that the virus can cause life-long medical problems. 

Never mind the fact that over 800 unvaccinated Americans die from the virus every day.

   You tell me I should get vaccinated. 

   Well, you're a racist.

That's tu quoque. 

I'm tired of it.

NOTE: Without doubt, White, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian vaccine-resistors are just as illogical as Black resistors, if not more so. Fallacy is an EOE employer.

A 2,000-Year-Old Industry That's Overdue for Disruption (and It isn't Prostitution)

This is the age of disruption.

— Sebastian Thrun

Q: How many industries have remained the same for 2,000 years?

A: Two. 

The first is the "oldest profession," prostitution; the second, the trade-show industry.

That's rather remarkable when you consider the Product Lifecyle Theory.

The theory assumes obsolescence and disruption are baked in, and that only continuity in consumer tastes can forestall a product's inevitable decline.

We know the tastes matched by prostitution haven't changed much—if at all—since Caligula's time. They continue unabated.

Perhaps the same can be said of trade shows. 

As the Ancient Romans did, people still want to meet "face to face" to swap stories and do business, pandemic or no.

The question isn't whether they'll want to continue to do so, but how much? How much will they want to meet face to face—and at what cost and inconvenience?

Show organizers are counting on the answer being a lot.

But their confidence may be based on a pre-virus worldview.

Businesspeople post-virus are favoring smaller, state and regional shows to get their "face-to-face fix," shunning large confabs and southern hot spots.

The days of large national and international shows may at long last be numbered—and their audiences easy pickings for some disruptor waiting in the wings.

I'm hardly the first industry-watcher to say tradeshow organizers' business model is overdue for disruption, and won't be the last.

But 2,000 years is a hell of a long time to grow without innovation.

The Cats of War

Any citizen should be willing to give all that
he has to give in times of crisis.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

We spoil our kitties today. 

Spoil them rotten.

We spend $34 billion a year on their food alone—most of that wet food.

We serve our kitties beef, chicken, duck, turkey, rabbit, and fish. 

We serve them pâtés, chunks, chunks with gravy, chunks with broth, flaked, sliced, shredded, ground, semi-moist, dehydrated, raw, boiled, lightly boiled, steamed, lightly steamed, healthy, organic, natural, locally grown, gluten-free, grain-finished, cage-free, grass-fed, free-range, sustainably caught, non-allergenic, prescription-only, adult, lean, and vegan.

Our kitties are pussies.

The kitties of World War II were sterner stuff, the sort of tough felines you'd want around during a cat-astrophe.

They accepted sacrifice for a noble cause, and did so willingly.

Canned cat food had only just come onto the pet-food market when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

FDR (a dog owner) didn't pussyfoot around. He immediately mandated rationing, deeming cans "essential" and cat food "non-essential."

And so America's cats were dealt a double-blow.

Besides table scraps and mice, canned food was all they had known. 

Ron in 2021: What, me sacrifice? 

Now, the Axis was denying them that necessity.

But did cats complain about rationing? 

No! Like all good citizens, these purry patriots threw themselves, head to tail, into the US war effort.

The munched on mice and tables scraps for the duration—never protesting, never complaining, never losing the courage to go on.

Now that's pawsative thinking.

We could use more of it.

Grandsplaining

I'm often accused—unfairly—of mansplaining. 

While eager to explain why those accusations are unfair, I'd rather examine a more urgent topic: grandsplaining.

With two bright, inquisitive grandchildren, I often worry that I'll turn into one of those elders who "grandsplains." Or, worse, that I already have.

Grandsplaining needs no explanation.

"You should never cross your eyes, because one time they'll stay stuck that way."

"Don't swallow the seeds or they'll grow in your stomach."

"Ronald Reagan doesn't deserve statues because his tax policies destroyed this country."

"Hip hop never had a Lennon-McCartney to elevate it above noise."

That's grandsplaining.

But how do you avoid it?

The short answer is: you don't. 

You can only strive to avoid it, through constant vigilance and self-examination.

Whenever the need to grandsplain arises, take time out to ask yourself these six key questions:

1. Does my grandchild appear interested in hearing from me? If not, smile and shut up.

2. Did my grandchild say something demonstrably false? If not, let go of your inner pedant's urge.

3. Do I simply wish to appear old and wise? If so, just remember you once owned a plaid leisure suit.

4. Do I always assume the child knows less than I do? Guess what. You're wrong!

5. Did the parents ask me to instruct my grandchild in a scholastic subject? If so, it's probably okay to grandpslain—but you'd better know what you're talking about.

6. For just this once, can I resist the urge to grandsplain? If not, then at least keep it brief. There's no need to trace why a woodpecker pecks wood from Darwin's On the Origin of the Species back to Aristotle's Historia Animalium.

That's it. Asking yourself these six simple questions will reduce or eliminate the painful urge to grandsplain.

Try them!

Postscript: In my next post, I'll explain how you can also apply my self-questioning technique to combat mansplaining.

Above: Outward Bound by Norman Rockwell.

Sleaze Merchants

Once a decision is made to be tasteful and risk-free,
sleaze goes right out the window.

— Cintra Wilson

Cover by Al Rossi

My first exposure to sleaze—I was age eight—was the paperback tower at the front of our corner drug store.

 

It was six or seven feet tall—dwarfing me—and pentagonal and would rotate unsteadily on a hidden axle when you gave it a whirl. 

Top heavy from its burden of potboilers, the tower always threatened to fall on me when I spun it. At the very first squeak, my inattentive mother would glance up from her shopping and siss at me, "Robert, leave that alone."

The book tower's presence in the drug store suggested to my eight-year-old mind that its weird offerings must somehow relate to grownups' healthcare (although I would soon discover a comparable rack of sulfurous paperbacks in the confectioner's store down the street—where absolutely nothing healthy was sold).

Although I had no clue at the time, three of the artists who created the covers for many of the books on display were among the finest illustrators of the day, rivals of the famous Norman Rockwell.

They were Norman Rockwell's lurid twins.

Al Rossi was a prolific magazine illustrator and a masterful merchant of paperback sleaze. He was the original cover artist for Junkie, a 1953 novel by beat writer William Burroughs (published under the pen name William Lee). The Bronx-born Rossi was a prominent supplier to Balcourt, a New York-based stock house that provided cover art to paperback publishers in the 1950s and '60s. A professional jazz musician until World War II, when he served with the Army in Europe, Rossi was compelled after the war to try his hand at illustration to make ends meet, attending Pratt and the Arts Student League to learn the craft. Before associating with Balcourt, he worked for several publishers of pulp magazines, the forerunners to paperback books. Rossi liked to use his male neighbors and their wives as his models.

Cover by Ben Stahl

Ben Stahl was exposed to fine art in the seventh grade, thanks to a scholarship he received to attend Saturday morning lectures at the Chicago Art Institute. After high school, he landed a job at a commercial art studio in Chicago that provided illustrations almost exclusively to The Saturday Evening Post. His success as a studio artist prompted Stahl to move to New York and go freelance. There, he began illustrating paperback book covers, as well as continuing to supply artwork to The Post (he illustrated more than 750 stories for the magazine during his career). Stahl soon earned a reputation as a serious fine artist and, along with Norman Rockwell and Connecticut illustrator Albert Dorne, co-founded the Famous Artists School, a mail-order course whose graduates include Pat Boone, Tony Curtis and Charlton Heston. In 1965, as his career was reaching its zenith, Stahl painted 15 life-size pictures of the stations of the cross and opened his own museum in Sarasota, Florida, to house them. But the paintings were stolen four years later and never recovered. Stahl was left nearly penniless due to the theft.

Cover by Paul Rader

Paul Rader, at age 16, was one of the youngest artists ever to have an art museum exhibit his paintings. His early mastery of portrait painting earned him awards throughout the '20s and '30s and brought him commissions to paint wealthy judges, lawyers, and businessmen in his hometown of Detroit. Rader switched to illustrating pulp magazines after World War II, finding the work more lucrative, and moved to New York, where he became another leading supplier to Balfour. When painting paperback book covers, Rader liked using professional models and actors, supplied to him by talent agencies. One of his favorite male models, Guy Williams, went on in the mid-1960s to play Dr. John Robinson in the TV show Lost in Space. 

Whether Rossi, Stahl and Rader set the floor of our society's sleaze index, I don't know; but I do know their art depicted truths—truths most Americans, Puritans at heart, wished to deny in the 1950s.

The risks they took in defying mores and good taste and giving free reign to sleaze may not have contributed to the world's trove of art, but these three artists helped millions of Americans remain literate members of the book-buying public, which is a lot more than you can say about today's media consumers.

Above: Cover illustration for The Bump and Grind Murders by Al Rossi. Cover illustration for The Creepers also by Al Rossi.