Fabrication as Flattery
Sunday, February 18th, 2007
This week’s question:
Some say smear campaigns are just proof Obama’s a contender. What’s the most patently untrue thing ever said about you?
Next week’s question:
Maybe the House doesn’t pass resolutions formally repudiating your decisions, but what’s the last thing you did against the better judgment of everyone you know?
Send your answer here: Rachel [at] smithmag [dot] net (in 100 words or less, please). We’ll post our favorites on the front page of SMITH.
When you spend your life online, especially if you write anything about motherhood, the general assumption is that you’re a cross between Comic Book Guy and a dowdy hausfrau. But the feedback that stung most came in the very early days of Salon, when we were small enough to have illustrator Zach Trenholm do caricatures of the whole staff. Note word “caricature.” Mine captured my wavy hair and my oversized eyeglasses. From then on, and for years and years to come, it was taken as gospel among the populace that the host of Table Talk was a dead ringer for Joyce Carol Oates. My vanity has never recovered.
In my first full-time writing job, for The St. Louis Business Journal, I broke a story about a real estate land grab. My source for the piece, who I quoted in the story, got into serious trouble with his boss, and decided to extricate himself from any blame by denying he had ever talked to me at all. In a letter he sent to the paper he wrote that I must be Mr. Spock, inasmuch as I used as Vulcan mind meld to channel his thoughts. Well, I can assure that you that I was born on earth, have lovely oval ears and look nothing like Leonard Nimoy. I can’t even do that weird Vulcan split-fingered hand thing—which, by the way, Nimoy learned as a kid during synogogue services; it’s the sign that Jewish priests make when blessing congregants. The more you know…
I get called a girly-girl every so often, and I don’t see myself that way, although I wear makeup to go to the deli and spend the equivalent of a condo down-payment on ablutions and bath products every year. In my mind’s eye I’m an androgynous flannel-wearing feminist. A few years ago, this blogger guy said I had saggy tits! And the bastard never even met me! I may be over forty, but my tits do not sag. I have the tits of a flat-chested twenty year old! I was outraged, and embarrassed that I cared enough to defend myself.
As the only Jewish family in the Southern town where I grew up, we were a bit of an anomaly. It led to some pretty great questions from my peers: “Is it true you’re Hanukkan (derived from Christian –> Christmas, I can only assume)?” “Did you kill Jesus?” etc. But the best was when the poor souls got confused by the -ish at the end and for weeks I had to keep telling my classmates that, no, I’m not BRITish.
According to a Google search, a Basque blogger said that not only am I anti-Basque, but I must be on the payroll of an anti-Basque politician who paid me to mention Eta in an article about the Madrid train bombings. The closest I’ve been to Spain was some stomach-turning paella in Paris, and a couple delicioso tapas plates in Chicago and Washington–hardly enough cause to have political leanings either way. But if I was on the payroll, would I still need to eat pb&j until I get paid again?