Dear Facebook Friends: Drop the Rock

A 2013 Blogpost, Revised Today, Including "the Rush Rules"

Last week in the class I teach at St. John's University called The Journalist as Critic, the discussion turned to social media, whether on blogs, Twitter or Facebook. My message to the students was to choose their words and express their opinions as carefully as if they were writing for the New York Times.

The reason for choosing this discussion is my recent chagrin at the declining level of civility, courtesy, and discipline among my own cohort of Facebook "friends." Most of them are journalists, music critics, public relations folks or entertainment and publishing industry professionals, the kind of people one collects over the course of a lifetime. Few of them are close friends. In fact, my "real life" relationships tend to be exclusive of Facebook. But it is one of the sweeter qualities of Facebook that one can resume or continue acquaintance with people who have passed through our lives in a favorable or collegial way.

But a few recent postings and threads have been irritating and at times offensive to read. They all begin with someone I thought I knew and respect writing bilious, sometimes obscene screeds about musical artists who have established themselves with permanence over the last few years. The artists are Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), Paul Simon, Patti Smith, and the band Rush. The posters are musicians and writers who I have had some exposure to over the years, whom I used to like and in most ways respected. Their postings lead me to question that respect.

The CCR posting was especially bewildering, since it seemed based on nothing but long suppressed fury. It was a simple statement of "fact," according to the Facebook post, that CCR was... a sequential series of violent vulgarity and excretory excess, in that writer's opinion.

I like Creedence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty. Many people who enjoy rock music also like CCR, to a greater or lesser degree. What I found so peculiar about the posting was the intensity of the hateful language, the degree of disturbance expressed by a person with whom I am familiar.

So I wrote the person a private message and asked if everything in his life was going OK, maybe he needed someone to talk to, or to vent with. He replied everything was fine...his marriage was on the rocks, but really, everything was same old, same old. He just really didn't like the music, and repeated some of the abusive verbiage. He appreciated my friendly concern.

Then he sent me a message reassuring me that this over-the-top cursing and citations about CCRs music related to the bowel movements of canines was really an "act," the words of a character he created, using his real name, on Facebook. That really rattled me: If you are going to create a "persona" to share with (his) thousands of Facebook friends, why use your real name and make that persona a raving asshole? I decided to block updates from him, but accidentally deleted him as a friend. My bad.

There was a similar attack from the same source on Paul Simon. Apparently, this person had once had an interaction with Paul Simon, thought the anecdote portraying Simon in a negative light was amusing, and in some way purposeful. Fair enough, I guess. Most people like to hear real life celebrity stories. What was troublesome was the dozens of subsequent thread comments piling on Simon, decades old anecdotes, rumors and tales assaulting Simon's honor, dignity, ethics, morals and humanity. Some members of this virtual mob had the idiotic insolence to suggest Simon's "real" behavior was the result of his being short.

I have met Paul Simon numerous times. He is not Mr. Warmth. But he has always been a cooperative interview subject. It is true that having done a series of interviews with him over the span of a few short years during the late 1980s/early 1990s for New York Newsday, that Simon did not seem to remember me from the last get together. I took no offense.

The Emotional Intelligence of Keith

In that respect, he is no Keith Richards, whom I interviewed, drank bourbon with, even played air guitar with, in a series of four interviews in consecutive years from 1987-1991. In the first encounter, in which we hung out for hours drinking Maker's Mark in his Manhattan office, I mentioned that I was a kind of single dad, sharing custody with a six year old daughter, it I was stressed about it sometimes.

A year later, flying to Los Angeles and bringing him a bottle of Rebel Yell bourbon (once said to be his favorite), Keith Richards greeted me and said, "how's our daughter doing?" Now that is not a rock star, people: That is a mensch, a kind and caring person.

I have come to understand that in addition to talent and luck, the way one reaches the pinnacle of pop music, or any profession, is a single-minded focus that sometimes strikes others as excessively self-absorbed. I doubt if Paul Simon has spent five minutes of the last 60 years thinking, "you know, if I wasn't so short, I might have really accomplished something in my life." Yeah, that's what's been holding him back.

There was also the person who posted a photo of Patti Smith with a broad smile and happily wrinkled nose, shaking hands with Pope Francis during a public meeting in St. Peter's Square. The haters were ready. There were those who thought it a contradiction that the woman who nearly 40 years ago sang, "Jesus died for someone's sins but not mine," that it was a kind of betrayal of punk rock orthodoxy. Or that Smith was somehow giving aid and comfort to an institution enmeshed for decades in a heinous sexual abuse scandal. Few seemed to imagine the profound affinity one who pursues a spiritual path, such as Smith, must feel when meeting one further along on that path. I think of a talk given by the spiritual seeker Sandy Beach of Tampa, Florida, upon simply seeing the Dalai Lama. In essence, Sandy said, you don't need to be Buddhist to discern that there is something very special, some powerful, benign spiritual vibe, an aura you can almost touch—that makes the Dalai Lama an exceptional human being.

Besides, Patti Smith's spiritual beliefs are none of your, or my, business.

The Rush Rules

Finally, there is the old and tired "Rush sucks" card, played by an old friend when he posted on Facebook his impressions of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame initiation ceremony he attended in Los Angeles. He began his short appraisal with the phrase, and then ended the posting with the words, "did I mention that Rush sucks?" Cute if you're a six year old; pushing 60, not so cute.

"Rush sucks" was the concise opinion of many of my colleagues in the 1970s and 1980s. It was an opinion I shared until I realized I had never listened to enough Rush to form an independent opinion. Being fortunate enough to be required to cover a wide range of music for Newsday for 20 years, I had numerous opportunities to review Rush concerts. The first one I hated, but I realized I wasn't familiar enough with the music to even distinguish the songs in the hockey arena in which they played, except for "Tom Sawyer." I wrote a superficial review, shallow and negative, and I got a lot of nasty letters from readers. Some of them were crude; some of them were right.

So the next time they were coming to town, I took a few days to listen to their catalog, get to know the songs, tried to understand why millions of people liked their concerts and albums, and why so many critics disliked them. It's not that they're bad musicians; they are excellent musicians. Geddy Lee's high-pitched vocals are an acquired taste that most critics don't acquire. They'll never be my favorite band; I didn't rush to my Rush albums when I bought an excellent new turntable a few years ago.

But I was able to write a well-informed review, leaning favorable. What I didn't care for, I was able to specify in detail. I got no reader complaints. I have also written highly negative, but copiously detailed, reviews of concerts. I did one about a favorite Philly soul group in concert in the 1980s. I was having a bad night, but so were they. The review was so nasty I was a little ashamed. A few days later I got a letter from that long-lasting, chart-topping act. They didn't disagree with me: They thought I was right ("if you're going to do a Louis Armstrong tribute, don't do 'Hello Dolly,' do 'Muskrat Ramble' or something from his earliest days, when he changed the way people listened to music.'" They agreed that doing "Dolly" was a totally cornball move, and they were dropping it from the act. In fact, the whole act was stale; they were divided about it, but my review persuaded the others that it was time to revise the stage show from top to bottom.

But some people like Rush, some people don't. My Twitter acquaintance, Dave Aronberg, is that State Attorney of Palm Beach County in Florida. He is a Rush fan. He now appears almost  daily on CNN and MSNBC. Years ago, when New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was arrested in Palm Beach County at a cheesy sex shop massage spa, it was Aronberg who had to give the details to the voracious press wanting all the sleazy details. (Note to Robert Kraft: Being a billionaire, why not rent a fine hotel suite at The Breakers in Palm Beach, hire an expensive, gorgeous, discreet escort, and have a few enjoyable hours, instead of a handjob in a strip (no pun intended) mall?

I had sent Aronberg a letter back then as a journalism teacher, admiring the way he handled himself and the sensitive questions regarding a very wealthy man caught in a very cheap situaiton. Aronberg gave the press what they needed, not the sensationalism they wanted. He respected the presumed innocence of Kraft, and also honored the public's right to know. He was not defensive or impatient: He told it like it was, explained everything the law allowed him to say, and why the law prevented him from answering other questions. It was a bravura performer, and I told him he should run for governor. I still think he should run for governor of Florida.

More recently, I promised him on Twitter that I would explain to him what I call "the Rush rules" about being a critic, and the requirement to be fair, even to music that one might not like.

That person who had been a reputable critic, writer, and historian to spout "Rush sucks" nonsense seemed cheap and undignified; it was exposing a degree of snobbery and condescension that was unpalatable in 1988, and is just sort of sad all these years later. Forget the biases of youth. Let's move on to discuss, with civility and humility, the problems that daunt us today. And fellow critics: There's nothing more bracing or refreshing than looking at our youthful biases, and daring to change our minds.

So many of us enter the glass house that is Facebook, fists clenched and a rock in each hand. My suggestion: it is probably time to drop the rock.