Readers!
Last week, a source insulted me. Thank goodness it was over the phone and not video, because they’d have seen how my face dropped and then turned beet red.
This isn’t the first time it’s happened, and it won’t be the last. Here’s what I’ve done to handle this nonsense before.
If they realize they just insulted me. I don’t interrupt them. I just let them talk. I let silences hang too, make it a little uncomfortable, because then they will rush in to fill in the gap and maybe say something they wouldn’t have said otherwise when they realize “oh shit I just stepped in it.” This is useful if I’m doing what I call a hostile interview, where I’m talking with someone who is either opposed to me on a topic, or doesn’t really want to talk to me but has to give some kind of statement because they know a “no comment” will look bad. While I don’t do too many of those these days, on the rare occasions I do, silence is golden.
If they don’t. As your standard issue white lady, people think that I agree with their beliefs and values just by existing. This happens to me all the time when I’m traveling, but also during interviews. When it happens with work, I will usually — gently — correct them. If they say something negative about single and child free women in their 40s, I’m going to tell them I’m a single and child free woman in my 40s. Or if they make a joke about Italian Americans, I’m also going to tell them I am one. If someone is truly offensive, though, I will delete them from my story, put them on my “do not call list,” and, if they had one, tell their PR person what they did and why I’ll never speak to them again. As for handling this in real life, I’ll often tell someone who mistakes me for also being a horrible person to shut the fuck up and/or stop slurping up Fox News slop, but I make a judgement call based on if I feel safe in that situation.
If it’s just flat out hostility. A few years ago, I was doing what seemed like a banal interview for a science publication, when the source suddenly stopped talking about his research and told me all journalists are liars. I was shocked enough that, at first, I didn’t know what to say, so he rambled on about how no one with my job could be trusted, I’d probably put lies into the story, and he didn’t know why he talking to me me. I said “OK, have a day” (not a nice day, just a day) and hung up. This was risky because the science publication requested I speak to him. It wasn’t my idea, and I couldn’t just substitute someone in, but I wasn’t going to tolerate that kind of treatment. I immediately emailed my editor and told them what happened. They were appalled, apologized profusely, paid me a full fee for the story, said they weren’t going to feature him at all — ever again — and then assigned me another one to take its place. They paid me the full fee for that one too.
Also for the PR people reading this (I know you’re out there), prep your clients better please. I know they don’t always listen, but the thing said to me last week should have been one of those basic things no one would say to a writer. Ever. And no I’ll never use that person again.
What I’m Reading
- Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, read by the author and a full cast. Let’s read the most banned book in American for Pride, shall we? I could instantly see why the worst people in the country hate it: it’s a memoir about queerness, about acceptance of queerness, and about a person whose path to happiness ran through GASP the library. I know this is a comic, but it also worked really well as an audiobook.
- Return to Cassino: A Memoir of the Fight For Rome by Harold L. Bond. Bond was an lieutenant with the 36th Infantry Division in the U.S. Army during World War II and fought in the four-month-long Battle of Monte Cassino battle that, when finally won, allowed the Allies to capture Rome. The battle resulted in the bombing of the Abbey of Monte Cassino because the allies thought the Germans were posted there. They were not. I knew about this from The Monuments Men and The Rape of Europa, but I didn’t know much about the actual campaign. I didn’t even get that connection until after I’d checked this book, which was published in 1964 and is long out of print, from the Paul Robeson Library at Rutgers University-Camden. It’s is a short book — about 200 pages — but direct and to the point memoir about war, but also looking back on it after becoming an English professor at Dartmouth University, and bringing his wife and children to Rome with him to revisit the location of what had been a pivotal moment in his life. One passage, after a long cold winter of fighting: “Yet there was cruelty in this spring, for in its luxuriance, bursting with new sap and life, it stirred up memories of the men at the Rapido, as Cassino, and at Anzio, who could not stay alive to see it, but who lay like the empty husks of winter, discarded on the many slopes where they fell.” After reading this, I emailed the librarians at Dartmouth for more info on Bond, since I couldn’t’ find much. Turns out he also played a role in capturing Hermann Goering. I am once again so thankful for libraries, and the people who work in them. I enjoyed it enough I found a copy on ebay.
What I’m Watching
- Deli Boys (season 2). I zipped through the second season of this show about a bunch of dummies trying to be cocaine kings in Philadelphia, of all places. It’s bloody and absurd but kind of annoying that they filmed it in Chicago, and show one of the delis selling beer, which is not allowed in Philly. But since the season opens with a joke about a TikTok trend of kids doing “jawnies” i.e. cocaine and Rita’s Water Ice, I’ll forgive them.
- The American Revolution. I was looking at my National Park Passport and figuring out if I could drive anywhere I hadn’t been before. When looking at North and South Carolina, I assumed the battlefields were from the Civil War. Nope, American Revolution! I felt like a dummy and instead of being mad about it, watched this excellent six-part Ken Burns documentary to fill in the gaps. And those gaps were not just about the war in the south, but the war for Native Americans and enslaved people. When people say “this isn’t our country,” sorry, folks, it is. And in so many ways, we are still paying for not riding ourselves, at the dawn of this country, about our original sin. On a completely different note: this was also a reminder that, being in the Philadelphia region, I live where a lot of this happened. That might sound like a bizarre thing to think, but it’s just where I live. I don’t think it’s weird that I went to high school in a town with a road called King’s Highway, or I used to pass Independence Mall and the Liberty Bell on my way from the PATCO train to South Street. I watched the episode about how many people were sick and dying at Valley Forge and thought “I run there!” Living in history is weird like that (and also why I’m getting out of dodge for the Fourth of July).
Nail Polish of the Week
Surf Naked by OPI. Sure why not. To the shimmery turquoise, NOT WHAT THE NAME SAYS TO DO.
Until next time!
Jen A. Miller (she/her)
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