Davestuff

Some of my friends have been on a campaign to unfriend the many closet racists who have popped up in the last few months. I've had the urge myself and was just about to start when I had a kind of revelation: It's exactly the wrong thing to do. It is by now obvious to all of us that many Americans live entirely in environments of like-minded people, so compartmentalized and isolated from other people's problems that it can seem as though they don't exist. It is devastatingly easy to surround yourself in a cocoon of talk radio and Fox news and never be exposed to any experience outside that. But this is a two-way street. It is equally easy to spend your time reading The Atlantic and reading Bernie Sanders quotes and dismissing what Ted Cruz is saying. The Liberal way isn't any less blind and rigid than the Conservative. Unfriending people contributes to that. You, the unfriender, are closing your eyes to something that angers and hurts you. But that doesn't ...

Dear Jim, For the eight years I worked at Hemmings, you made it painfully obvious that if I wasn't sitting at my desk with a Word document open, you didn't think I was working. You and Rich Lentinello showed me over and over and again that you felt any time spent out of the office was too long, that a full day was too much time for a feature photo shoot three hours away; and you repeatedly publicly belittled those of us who sometimes "only" worked 8-5. The ludicrous, if informal, "three stories/day" rule for travel served only to generate a great number of truly terrible stories, none of which were ever rejected. Since quitting, I've written just as much as I did while working full time. But with the luxury of being able to do some actual research, the quality of my work has improved. And when I don't have anything pressing, I'll stop and read a book, or go for a walk, or play a game, or watch a movie, or just stay home. Because writing isn't...