So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word "privilege," in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?

Being a white guy who likes women, here's how I would do it: Dudes. Imagine life here in the US-or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world-is a ma.s.sive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let's call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, "Straight White Male" is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it's easier to get.

Now, once you've selected the "Straight White Male" difficulty setting, you still have to create a character, and how many points you get to start-and how they are apportioned-will make a difference. Initially the computer will tell you how many points you get and how they are divided up. If you start with 25 points, and your dump stat is wealth, well, then you may be kind of screwed. If you start with 250 points and your dump stat is charisma, well, then you're probably fine. Be aware the computer makes it difficult to start with more than 30 points; people on higher difficulty settings generally start with even fewer than that.

As the game progresses, your goal is to gain points, apportion them wisely, and level up. If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you're playing on the "Straight White Male" setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.

Likewise, it's certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and const.i.tution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn't change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.

You can lose playing on the lowest difficulty setting. The lowest difficulty setting is still the easiest setting to win on. The player who plays on the "Gay Minority Female" setting? Hardcore.

And maybe at this point you say, hey, I like a challenge, I want to change my difficulty setting! Well, here's the thing: In The Real World, you don't unlock any rewards or receive any benefit for playing on higher difficulty settings. The game is just harder, and potentially a lot less fun. And you say, okay, but what if I want to replay the game later on a higher difficulty setting, just to see what it's like? Well, here's the other thing about The Real World: You only get to play it once. So why make it more difficult than it has to be? Your goal is to win the game, not make it difficult.

Oh, and one other thing. Remember when I said that you could choose your difficulty setting in The Real World? Well, I lied. In fact, the computer chooses the difficulty setting for you. You don't get a choice; you just get what gets given to you at the start of the game, and then you have to deal with it.

So that's "Straight White Male" for you in The Real World (and also, in the real world): The lowest difficulty setting there is. All things being equal, and even when they are not, if the computer-or life-a.s.signs you the "Straight White Male" difficulty setting, then brother, you've caught a break.

Straight White Male Follow-up: A Child's Treasury of Deletions May

16.

2012.

Yesterday's post garnered 800 comments before I put it to bed and I ended up deleting a record number of comments out of it, largely from presumably straight white men enraged at the idea their life doesn't necessarily suck as much as other folks' and/or because they ate lead paint chips as children and have impulse control issues (plus a couple from other, calmer folks following up on posts I later deleted, so theirs needed to be deleted too). Whatever the reason, I thought it would be fun to post a compendium of Malletings here for your enjoyment.

So without further ado: The Deletions of May 15, 2012!

Warning: Intemperate language follows.

[Deleted because inasmuch as the author of it admits to not reading the entry at all, anything he has to say will be aside the point for the thread-JS]

[Deleted for pointlessness. Did some site with exceptionally stupid readers just link in?-JS]

[Deleted because being a troll isn't merit badge-worthy-JS]

[Deleted for garden variety racism, misogyny and a.s.sholishness-JS]

[Deleted for trollage-JS]

[Deleted because That Guy is a h.o.m.ophobic moron-JS]

[Deleted because Scorpius was already told he was off the thread-JS]

[Aaaand now Scorpius has earned a place in the moderation queue. Enjoy it, Scorpius! You'll come out again when I decide you're not trolling-JS]

[Further deleted because That Guy is nowhere as clever as he seems to believe he is-JS]

[Deleted because That Guy is tiresome-JS]

[Contentless troll deleted-JS]

[People who comment to tell me that they didn't read get deleted! Because they're jacka.s.sed trolls who have nothing to add to the conversation!-JS]

[Deleted for pointlessness-JS]

[Speaking as a white male, I have deleted the comment because of its abject stupidity-JS]

[Deleted for spittle-flinging a.s.sholishness-JS]

[Jacka.s.sed h.o.m.ophobia deleted-JS]

[Deleted for teh stupid-JS]

[Deleted for not being clever-JS]

[Deleted for being wrong-JS]

[Deleted for stupidity. Also, to the idiot white guy who posted this to see whether or not I would delete a comment by "beautiful strong black lesbian," whose previous stupid comment I also deleted, nice try.-JS]

[Deleted because it's responding to a post I deleted. Xopher, dude. Do you really think I was going to let that comment stay up?-JS]

[Name of commenter changed because pointlessly h.o.m.ophobic; comment deleted because 20 years of being a professional writer makes me laugh at this guy-JS]

[Jacka.s.sed a.s.sertion presented without shred of proof deleted-JS]

[pointless nonsense deleted-JS]

[Hey, you know what? Enough people responded to Don's last stupidly s.e.xist post that I didn't want to delete it. But I can delete this stupidly s.e.xist post!-JS]

[Deleted again for ridiculous misogyny. Don, consider a break from the thread, please-JS]

[Don, if you really have to ask how your posts are misogynistic, it's probably for the best I'm deleting them as I go along-JS]

[Wow, I'm really getting tired of deleting misogyny in this thread-JS]

[Racist dips.h.i.ttery deleted-JS]

[Hey, look! I've malleted this a.s.shole twice!-JS]

Yes, yes. A busy day for the Mallet of Loving Correction, indeed.

Teabaggers and Puppetmasters Apr

21.

2009.

(Note: This article written before Tea Party folks figured out what "teabagging" meant in a slangy sense, and therefore were still calling themselves "teabaggers." Yes, I found it amusing-JS) In e-mail today, which I suspect is tongue-in-cheek, but which actually is worth making a point about: Why do the teabaggers and their puppetmasters hate America so much?

Well, in terms of the teabaggers, of course, they don't hate America. They love America, and no, I'm not being arch and sarcastic. They do. Deal with it. The problem is that as much as they love America, they love an alternate history version of America more, the one in which someone other than Barack Obama won the presidency, the Republicans aren't the minority in Congress, and where they can not worry overly much about the excesses of big government because at least it's their big government.

They love it so much that they are having a hard time grasping that it is an alternate history version of America, partly because where they live, it doesn't seem like alternate history. Dayton, Ohio had one of the largest teabagger turnouts in the nation, and if you look the county election map for 2008, it's easy to see why: Because Dayton's Montgomery county is an island of blue surrounded by a sea of red, including my own county, Darke, which is incidentally represented by the GOP's top congressman, John Boehner. When you live in counties that went 60% or more for McCain (Darke was at 68%), you have a hard time believing your vision of the US is the alternate one.

If you don't want to believe this, I ask you to cast your mind back to, oh, say, November 3, 2004 and check in with how liberals and Democrats were feeling that day, and indeed additionally for much of the time between then and November 4, 2008. Well, you say, at least we never threatened to secede. To which I say: Oh, I don't know about that. Granted, it wasn't the governor of one of those blue states getting himself all hopped up on secession fumes and blurting stupidities on national television. But this is neither here nor there regarding a chunk of the electorate being in shock and denial about how another, larger portion of the electorate voted.

So that's the teabaggers. What about their puppetmasters-most specifically Rupert Murdoch and his minions at Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the various other contributors to the whipping up of these alternate America lovers? You know, the ones that the teabaggers are adamant aren't their puppetmasters, because no one tells their gra.s.sroots movement what to do?

Well. Rupert Murdoch doesn't actually give a s.h.i.t about the teabaggers one way or another, save retaining them as eyeb.a.l.l.s for his advertisers. Murdoch understands the dynamics of American political opinion, and that outside the sixty percent of the US electorate that const.i.tutes the fuzzy, unpredictable political middle, there's a hard-edged twenty percent on either side that is reliable, predictable and loyal to its politics, and to those who support them. Murdoch long ago staked out one of those twenty percent for his own benefit and enrichment, and now maintains it a.s.siduously. Done and done.

Limbaugh's the same, although I suspect he's less dispa.s.sionate about it than Murdoch; he's enjoying the fact that for now, fortune has crowned him the right's unofficial policymaker. Between Limbaugh and Murdoch and the teabagging rabble is a middle cla.s.s of opinionators and politicians who may believe what they expound to a greater or lesser degree but who equally see themselves as chessplayers, moving the teabagging public into position for the next game, i.e., 2010.

Will any of it work? Doubt it in the short run; President Obama is being tricky by not actually playing their game and instead focusing on his own plans, carving out a const.i.tuency in the middle of the road and generally being successful at it, leaving the teabagging right, which will never support him regardless of what he does, to spin in tight, isolated circles and do its own thing-except when from time to time he reaches out to them. Which they reject, which allows him to say "well, I tried," and then do what he was going to do anyway, with the added benefit of making the right look petulant and insular. He's already done this a time or two, with excellent effect, politically speaking. This is not to suggest Obama is an Ultimate Political Jedi Master. He screws up enough. But at the moment he is better at politics than his opponents, which is sufficient for his purposes.

Also, I doubt any of it will work in the long run, either. Not because conservativism is doomed-it's not. But the current iteration of it-the socially fundmentalist, expansive government, rights grabbing, it's-right-if-we-say-it's-right-because-we're-right version-almost certainly is. The smart conservatives (and the younger ones, not necessarily always the same) have already started to separate themselves from this dried-up conservatism, particularly its social fundamentalism: Note the recent appearance of Steve Schmidt and Meghan McCain at the Log Cabin Republicans convention, banging on the old guard for being clueless (or as McCain noted, for being "scared s.h.i.tless"). These folks aren't living in an alternate America, the one that denies that it's lost the argument; they know the score well enough. They're living for an alternate America, one in which they win because they have a better argument.

They know what most of the teabaggers don't (and what their puppetmasters don't seem to care about): No amount of hopping up and down about taxes or secession or same-s.e.x marriage or whatever will mean anything if the majority of Americans have already rejected your message and see you as embarra.s.singly clueless about not getting the memo. So, no. The teabaggers don't hate America. They love America. It'd be nice if they started living in the real one.

Tax Frenzies and How to Hose Them Down Sep

26.

2010.

Aquestion in e-mail based on all the recent "rich people feeling not rich" nonsense, and the a.s.sociated commentary online: Why is it that the people freaking out the most about taxes on the rich are the ones who don't seem to know how the tax code works?

The answer is in the question: Because they don't know how the tax code works. The major failing seems to be an incomprehension regarding marginal tax rates, but people also seem to fall down on the matter of taxable income vs. gross income (i.e. how deductions can work for you!), how to apply tax credits, and other various and fairly basic aspects of the tax code here in the US.

If you don't know that stuff-if you basically wander through your life thinking the government taxes all of your income based on the highest possible percentage-then I suppose it's no wonder you freak out. But it also kind of makes you the financial equivalent of the people who think that Darwin said we are all descended from monkeys, or that the Bible says "G.o.d helps those who help themselves." In short, it means you're a bit ignorant. You should stop being that. It's easily correctable. In any event, at some point in time, real live grown-ups should understand the concept of marginal rates. It's not that difficult to grasp.

There is another answer as well, which can be paired with the above or stand on its own, and it's that there's a certain sort of person who believes that all taxation (or all taxation outside of one or two very specific things of which they approve) is theft. Naturally that sort of person will fly to the defense of any who bleat about their taxes being too high, even if in point of fact, the wealthy in the US are currently being taxed at historically low rates ("but they're still too high!").

I really don't know what you do about the "taxes are theft" crowd, except possibly enter a gambling pool regarding just how long after their no-tax utopia comes true that their generally white, generally ent.i.tled, generally soft and pudgy a.s.ses are turned into thin strips of Objectivist Jerky by the sort of pitiless sociopath who is actually prepped and ready to live in the world that logically follows these people's fondest desires. Sorry, guys. I know you all thought you were going to be one of those paying a nickel for your cigarettes in Galt Gulch. That'll be a fine last thought for you as the starving remnants of the society of takers closes in with their flensing tools.

Getting back to the real word for a bit, I'll be the first to admit that while understanding the basics of the US tax code is useful for not irrationally freaking out when there is talk of raising the marginal rates of the top few percent of income earners in the United States, in point of fact, unless all one is doing is filling in a 1040 A or EZ form, on a practical level the US Tax Code quickly becomes too complicated for most people to deal with, especially when the only time they deal with it is between April 10 and April 15 every year. This is why probably the single most important thing you can do for yourself financially, the moment your tax profile outgrows the 1040 A or EZ, is to get yourself an accountant. Because it's the accountant's job to know the tax code-not just a half a week a year but all year long.

In the now-long-gone blog entry of Professor Todd Henderson's that started off this entire recent round of income-related nonsensery, the one thing in it that actually gave me pause-and which convinced me the man was something of a fiscal naif-was when he revealed that a) he didn't have an accountant and b) that he was still using TurboTax for his taxes. And I was all, like, what? Dude, you can pay for a gardener but then cry that paying for an accountant is too dear? No wonder you're all worked up.

I very specifically don't want to start another round of Henderson-whacking-the man's been whacked enough-but I will say that after a certain level rather below Professor Henderson's income and taxation situation, you should recognize that what you don't know about the US tax code is probably making you pay more than you have to and/or making you miss something you shouldn't. Which will come back to bite you in the a.s.s in the form of an audit, followed by late payment penalties and fees.

My own moment of clarity on this score came in 2001, when we moved to Ohio; we became landlords and I also started my own company. Both of these things, and other financial events, caused me to look at my tax profile and go, oh, man, I am so very over my head right now. Bear in mind that I said this when I had written a book on finance, and when I was currently writing a finance newsletter for AOL, and also working as a consultant for a number of financial services companies. I was not exactly innumerate. But then maybe that was the thing: I knew enough to know I didn't know nearly enough. So we got ourselves an accountant, and she was (and is) very good at what she does, and her competence at her job means our tax situation is both well-managed and never a surprise.

So. If you're freaked out about taxes, please make sure you actually know what you're talking about when it comes to taxes. If you are a high-income earner and/or have a complicated tax profile, invest in an accountant. Either or both should help to calm your tax frenzy a bit. And if they don't, accept that the reason you're in a frenzy is probably because you want to be, rather than because the situation genuinely warrants it.

That Obama Speech, or, Expunging the Stupid Use of Words Sep

9.

2009.

Wow, that was sure some socialist speech Obama gave yesterday to those schoolkids, huh? I went to pick up Athena from school, and all the kids marched out of building, singing "The Internationale" and clutching copies of the children's ill.u.s.trated edition of Das Kapital, distributed by smiling members of Young People's Socialist League. Truly, it's a new day in America, comrades!

Alternately, Obama gave a pleasant, plat.i.tudinous and largely bland speech exhorting the kids to, you know, stay in school and study hard and respect their teachers, and everyone who got all wound up that the President of the United States would have the gall to address the nation's school children when he's a socialist now looks like a complete jacka.s.s.

To be sure, they looked like complete jacka.s.ses before the speech, but now that the man's actually done the deed, people feel more comfortable saying so. One wonders why they felt they had to wait; perhaps they were expecting this least spontaneous of all recent presidents to have the head of Eugene Debs erupt from his collarbone, take control of his body, and s.n.a.t.c.h and bloodily consume members of the audience while howling about the Pullman Strike. It did not happen, unless the live television cameras of the liberal media were somehow able to mask the gory sight of Obama Possessed By Undead Eugene Debs feasting on the tender young bodies of our nation's youth. WHICH THEY MIGHT HAVE.

Seriously now, how much longer do any of us have to pretend that the sort of people bleating about Our Socialist President aren't, in fact, ignorant as chicken, or mad as hatters, or as madly ignorant as chicken hatters? I've already noted that we're well past the point where anyone still barfing up the "Obama is a Socialist" meme deserves a "tool" sign over their head; I propose we go further and call them morons. Because, at this point, if you're still calling the man a "socialist," that's what you are. Want to call Obama a Democrat? Well, that's what he is. Want to call him a liberal? It's not out of line to do so, although I suspect he's closer to what we'd call moderate these days. Want to call him a progressive? Actual progressives will argue the point with you, but if you're on the right, anything left of John McCain counts as progessive, so, fine.

Call Obama a socialist? You're a f.u.c.king moron.

You know who don't think Obama is a socialist? Socialists, that's who. "We know, of course, that Obama is not a socialist, and that he is not a radical," wrote Dave McReynolds, in the pages of The Socialist, which, if you don't know, is the magazine of the Socialist Party USA, and McReynolds a two-time presidential candidate for that party. Yes, I know, it's wacky to rely in this matter on the a.s.sessment of someone who is both a socialist and a Socialist, rather than, say, someone belonging to a tribe of political thinkers whose understanding of socialism is so screwed up that many of them apparently can't tell the difference between socialism and fascism. But you know what, I think I'm going to do that anyway. Words actually mean things, and despite persistent attempts by many on the right to make it so, "socialism" does not mean either "any government activity that is not a tax cut or an attempt to kill swarthy people with weapons" or "whatever it is Obama happens to be doing at the moment."

Now, I may not be able to do anything about anyone else tolerating the "Obama is a socialist" canard elsewhere, but I can do something about it here. So: Henceforth, anyone who comes around here blathering about how Obama is a socialist (or any of its various cognates) is signaling to me that they're either ignorant or a troll. If it's the former, I may give them a small bit of leeway to learn their terms; if it's the latter, however, well then. They run the risk of what I do to trolls, which is that I delete them for trolling, and make fun of them while I do it.

This is not to say that one is no longer allowed to criticize Obama or his policies here-really, please do. Nor is it to say one can't speak of (or criticize) socialism here. But playing the "Obama = socialist" card is your sign to me that in fact, you're not serious, nor are you interested in the exchange of ideas-what you're interested in doing is c.r.a.pping out an idiotic talking point that has no basis in reality, because someone who is either ignorant or deceiving told you so, and you feel you must further spread the ignorance. And you know what? I don't have time for that right now.

So, Obama opponents, either find a better and more accurate way here to voice your opposition to the president and his policies than diving for the "socialist" b.u.t.ton, or run the risk of being expunged for being a moron, and having me laugh at you while I do it. I'm tired of it, here and everywhere else, but especially here. Please, Obama opponents, be smarter. The nation, its president, its people and its discourse, deserve better.

These Things I Believe Jun