They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening.  By lack of understanding they remained sane.  They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

Orwell, 1984

In a letter to his mistress Louise Colet, the novelist Gustave Flaubert remarked that “to be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness.”  He then added, “though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”

In all seriousness, a friend reminds me that, once all “this” is sort of over, one way of reconciling oneself to the fact that seventy-seven million people voted for Trump in 2024, after everything that had happened over the previous eight years, is that a very large percentage of those people are idiots, and consequently have never achieved the level of mens rea, as lawyers would say, to merit the consignment to a fiery pit that a more knowledgeable choice would require.

The post Glass half full appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

You’ve Always Been This Way is a column written by Taylor Harris, a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman and 1980s preschool dropout, who identifies every moment from her past that filled her with shame, and mutters, “Yep, that tracks. I see it all now.”

Toni Morrison famously said, “If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Well, I wrote the book. And now, for the lady, perhaps a writing endeavor that does not cost three-fourths of her soul? Enter: A free online quiz—the first of its kind—to tell you if your neuros are normal or if they diverge.

It’s simple. Just circle every answer that resonates with you, and count the number you circled, out of sixty, at the end.

I’ve done the hard work for you, sifting through every memory and carefully selecting the most diverge-y ones. Remember to follow your gut and be creative. Maybe you didn’t perform Shakespeare in sixth grade, but did you audition for Dorothy and get the part of a yellow brick?

Maybe you’re not in perimenopause yet, but one time a rat bit your face, so same.

(Fine print: This is not medical advice, but I can guarantee 100 percent accuracy based on a sample size of one. Look for it in the DSM-6.)

If you grew up taking magazine quizzes on Friday nights in Stacey’s den—or alone, pretending you were scoring Stacey’s and Becky’s answers while they grabbed you a Diet Coke, when really they were across town prank calling your landline to order Schweddy balls—this is your chance to get back at them with deep knowledge… via an autism assessment.

Don’t think too long or hard; just select the responses that speak to you. But if they speak while chewing their food, you have every right to scream at them and leave the dinner table.

1. When separated from your primary caretakers as a baby, you…
A. Screamed until they returned from work or an outing.
B. Initiated full-scale shutdown of your bodily systems and required hospitalization for dehydration in the children’s hospital.
C. Found other human beings to be delightful and trustworthy.

2. When you auditioned for the role of Juliet in the sixth-grade Shakespeare production, the director said…
A. “I think we’ve found our first ethnic Juliet!”
B. “Your face is giving ghoul. Can you show the class how to be a witch for Macbeth?”
C. “You are curiously limber and can skip in a line. How about a court jester?”

3. When you tried out to be a tour guide at the University of Virginia, you…
A. Memorized all the historic information just in the nick of time.
B. Decided to bring props for a historical re-enactment at the Rotunda, including a plastic gun that pumped out balls.
C. Were shocked you didn’t make it past the first round.

4. When you tried out to be a summer orientation leader at the University of Virginia, you…
A. Thought you nailed it.
B. Answered the mock question about the quality of dining halls with, “You’ll probably want to order delivery from Yuan Ho.”
C. Were shocked you didn’t make it past the first round.

5. In first grade, when your buddy brought ranch dressing in her lunch, you…
A. Gagged in your shirt when she opened the lid.
B. Raised your hand and whispered your first public words to the teacher on duty: “Not all violence is physical in nature.”
C. Asked your mom to pick up some Hidden Valley from the store. Really, it’s the origin story of your love for condiments.

6. When introduced to Purity Culture in college, you thought…
A. Not only will I avoid doing the sex, but I will top it off with no tongue kissing or heavy petting!
B. Maybe Ginuwine was just talking about a carousel.
C. What if Jesus comes back before I level up to intercourse? Is there a rebate?

7. For high school senior superlatives, you were voted…
A. Most Likely to Succeed. Sorry, all votes are final.
B. Most Likely to Run for President. You ran so Obama could ball out.
C. Most Likely to Raise Your Kids in the Same Town so you could see everyone you knew every day.

8. When your first crush called and asked you to “go out” with him, you said…
A. “Yes, because I like the way you say ‘gila monster.’”
B. “No, but I like your bowl cut and the way you say ‘gila monster.’”
C. “My parents won’t let me, but can we still be friends?”

9. During your first winter break from college, all you wanted for Christmas was…
A. A cache of toys, including laser tag.
B. A particular pizza sub from a particular pizza shop, before they replaced the sesame seed bun for that doughy white garbage.
C. Time to catch up with high school friends.

10. When people asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, you…
A. Named any career your older siblings had mentioned.
B. Felt like Jonas in The Giver, knowing inside no “normal” job fit, and perhaps you’d been overlooked or condemned.
C. Said “undertaker” with a raised eyebrow and walked away.

11. When Colson Whitehead said in a public radio interview that, as a kid, he believed the Underground Railroad was a literal, underground track, you…
A. Thought, Bruh, where you from? Never say that out loud again.
B. Started singing “There’s a place for us” as you drove your minivan to the Lego store.
C. Added him to your neuro family tree, on the branch next to your godparents, Chris Rock and Daryl Hannah.

12. Within thirty seconds of meeting someone, you know, with 98 percent accuracy, if…
A. You don’t like them.
B. You want to marry them.
C. You don’t like them at all.

13. Perimenopause feels like…
A. Puberty, only with friends and funny tits.
B. Punishment for all that “heavy petting” and tongue kissing.
C. Ordering nachos with a blonde co-worker who says “chile con carrrrrne” and offers her Spanish name, “POW-LA,” without being asked.

14. When packing your hospital bag for the maternity ward, you included…
A. Nothing. You opted for a natural home birth. Breast is best, and it’s time for new bedsheets anyway.
B. A birth plan, laminated by your partner with real, live executive functioning.
C. A copy of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, in case labor went long.

15. The philosophy “experiences over things” is…
A. Garbage.
B. True, when the experience is a dark cave with books and an underground café run by Colson Whitehead.
C. Something you’ve felt deep in your bones and just needed influencers to put into words.

16. You most relate to the following fictional character…
A. Daria Morgendorffer.
B. Quinn Morgendorffer.
C. The squirrel with a snake bite from The Oregon Trail.

17. When you travel, you feel…
A. Fully alive to the world.
B. Homesick for about a day but slowly recalibrate.
C. Like Typhoid in The Oregon Trail.

18. Every morning you wake up thinking about…
A. Coffee.
B. The meaning of life.
C. How you’re gonna grab the bull by the horns.

19. If someone recommends a book or movie, you respond with…
A. “OMG, totally!” and put the title in your Notes app.
B. “OMG, totally!” and never think about it again.
C. “OMG, totally!” and sit on the recommendation until the appointed time, when the moon is a waxing gibbous, and the rooster crows six times to the tune of Sean Paul’s “Temperature.”

20. When something happens that you saw coming a mile away, you…
A. Stay quiet and humble. We all need grace.
B. Turn your back on the situation, like Jordan Lucas does on his opponents after a kill.
C. Stay mad because no one ever listens to you unless they think you can get them a book deal because you once had a book deal and now those publishing vultures in New York can’t find their own bestsellers and keep circling your intellectual block, so to speak, looking for good bones.

RESULTS
(By celebrity artist profile)

0-25 points: Justin Timberlake
Your neuros don’t diverge as much as we’d hoped, but you can still be popular and wear denim. Maybe you have nice teeth too. Want to talk about the weather on an elevator? Tell Jess and the kids we said hi.

26-40 points: RAYE
You’ve been called an old soul and are no stranger to anxiety and dark nights. You’re the kind of person everyone assumed was happy, and whether you have a formal diagnosis or not, you’re so full of empathy, spark, and genuine love that neurodivergents will ride with you forever.

41-60 points: SZA
You’ve been that girl. You’ve been telling people. You make art that sounds magnificently discordant on purpose and sells, but you’ll never exchange authenticity for numbers. Doing it your way is the only way worth doing it, and just because you’re quiet or quirky doesn’t mean you’re not clocking every person’s move. Oh, you wanna do a movie with Keke? You’ll nail that too. And keep your Doechiis close. They give you a chance to unmask and connect.

How do I like a profile?
Please highlight what you like and add a query.

How do I dislike a profile?
Please use track changes.

What if I disliked a profile by accident?
Write “stet.”

Are you hiring freelancers?
No.

Can I end my “About me” section with a preposition?
Doing so will make you someone out with whom dates will not go.

What are some good date ideas for copy editors?
For clarity, we recommend MM/DD/YYYY.

What does the AP Stylebook say about sex on the first date?
Sex on the first date should not be capitalized, unless it comes as a huge surprise, in which case it should read as “SEX ON THE FIRST DATE??”

Do I need a hyphen in “sex-pest”?
You should not be using that word in your profile.

Are you hiring freelancers now?
We will never hire you.

How do I know if I contracted an STD?
STD is an initialism, not a contraction.

What if more people have been on dates than I have?
Rephrase?

Can I use British spellings?
It’s not our favourite.

I just wanted to offer my freelance services for a small fee.
That’s not a question.

Can you check my colon usage?
We’re not doctors.

How can I know if I got my date pregnant?
Proofread their messages carefully. Did they miss a period?

My date told me they’re disinterested. Should I assume they’re also uninterested?
You’re just showing off now.

Will I ever find love?
Yes. Our style guide is organized alphabetically, so “love” can be found between “louche” and “lowbrow.” Unfortunately, our algorithms indicate you will die alone.

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

EXTREME HEAT ALERT

///BULLETIN BEGINS///

… ALERT… ALERT… ALERT…

… BE ADVISED: EXTREME HEAT AND HUMIDITY POSE SEVERE RISKS TO HEALTH AND CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ACROSS THE REGION FOR THE NEXT 48 TO 72 HOURS…

… SAFETY GUIDANCE: CITIZENS ARE ADVISED TO EXERCISE CAUTION AND KEEP WELL-HYDRAT-…

… ARE CITIZENS LISTENING?…

… THIS IS SERIOUS… BACK SWEAT WILL BE THE LEAST OF CITIZENS’ CONCERNS… THESE HEAT INDEXES WILL KILL CITIZENS’ ASSES DEAD…

… MORE THAN 40 DEGREES CELSIUS CAN CAUSE RIOTS… MELT RUNWAYS… DISABLE NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS…

… PLUS, IT WILL GET PRETTY STICKY AND SMELLY… NOT GREAT FOR CITIZENS’ SENSORY ISSUES…

… YES, 104 IN “REGULAR DEGREES”…

… CITIZENS ARE RIGHT, IT’S NOT A HURRICANE… IT’S ACTUALLY WAY WORSE THAN A HURRICANE… HEAT KILLS HALF A MILLION PEOPLE ANNUALLY… MORE PEOPLE THAN ALL OTHER CLIMATE DISASTERS COMBINED…

… NOT THAT YOU HEAR THAT FROM JAKE HAWKINS, METRO POST STORM TEAM… THAT NEPO BABY WITH HIS LEATHER JACKET AND HIS DOPPLER RADAR…

… SAFETY GUIDANCE: CITIZENS SHOULD REMAIN INSIDE IN AIR CONDITIONING… REMEMBER WHEN CITIZENS STAYED IN THEIR APARTMENT FOR 41 STRAIGHT HOURS IN 2018?… AND THAT WAS JUST TO BINGE BETTER CALL SAUL…

… OKAY… CITIZENS WERE ALSO PRETTY DEPRESSED…

… PLEASE TELL ME THOSE AREN’T RUNNING CLOTHES… NOW SUDDENLY CITIZENS ARE FITNESS JUNKIES?… CITIZENS BETTER HAVE A TREADMILL SOMEWHERE BACK THERE…

… OKAY… SORRY FOR OVERREACTING… YES, ATHLEISURE IS COMFY WHEN THE HOUSE GETS HOT… BUT THE POINT STANDS…

… ANYWAY… IT’S NOT CITIZENS’ FAULT… EVERY GOVERNMENT, CORPORATION, AND MEDIA OUTLET IS COOKING CITIZENS ALIVE AND SAYING IT’S TIME FOR A FRO-YO PARTY…

…CITIZENS COULD CONSULT THE NEWS FOR UPDATED HEAT WAVE COVERAGE… BUT THE PHOTOS ARE ALL BIKINI BABES HAVING WATER BALLOON FIGHTS…

…THE IMAGERY SHOULD BE HALF-INCINERATED GRANDMAS… BUT NEWSPAPERS ARE ALL OWNED BY COWARDS, GHOULS, AND PERVERTS…

… SAFETY GUIDANCE: CITIZENS ARE ADVISED TO GOOGLE “METRO POST OWNER RICHARD HAWKINS YACHT ORGY EXXON SPONSORED CONTENT”…

… ANYWAY… BE ADVISED OR WHATEVER: THOSE AT HIGH RISK INCLUDE OUTDOOR WORKERS, THE DISABLED, PREGNANT PEOPLE, OLD PEOPLE, YOUNG PEOPLE, ANYONE WITH CARDIOVASCULAR CONDITIONS, ANYONE ON MEDICATION, ANYONE IN DENSE URBAN AREAS, ANYONE WHO IS POOR, PETS…

… BASICALLY EVERYONE BUT MARK ZUCKERBERG…

… ONE WOULD HOPE EVEN MARK CARES WHETHER HIS PUPPY COMBUSTS… BUT INSTAGRAM JUST SERVED CITIZENS AN AI WEATHERMAN SAYING HEAT WAVES ARE CAUSED BY TRANSGENDER SOLAR FLARES… SO DON’T GET CITIZENS’ HOPES…

…

…

…

… SORRY… ZONED OUT THERE… EXTREME HEAT CAN UNDERMINE COGNITION, CAUSE BURSTS OF RAGE, AND EVEN UNDERMINE COGNITION…

… CITIZENS ARE ADVISED TO CALL THEIR SENATORS…

… CITIZENS ARE ADVISED TO GOOGLE “CARBON FOOTPRINT BY WEALTH”…

… CITIZENS ARE ADVISED TO RISE UP AND FREE THEMSELVES FROM THE SUICIDE PACT OF FOSSIL CAPITAL!…

… SAFETY GUIDANCE: DONATE CITIZENS’ 401(K) TO THE SUNRISE MOVEMENT…

… SLASH THE TIRES ON A CHEVY TAHOE…

… SABOTAGE THE WHITE HOUSE AIR CONDITIONING…

… USE A BURNER PHONE TO GOOGLE “MARK ZUCKERBERG HOME ADDRESS”…

… ORGANIZE CITIZENS’ FRIENDS INTO COMPARTMENTED CELLS FOR OPERATIONAL SECURITY…

… BRING ME THE HEAD OF METRO POST OWNER RICHARD HAWKINS…

… BE ADVISED: SIMPLE EXPLOSIVES CAN BE MADE BY MIXING THE FOLLOWING HOUSEHOLD INGREDIENTS: ONE PART HYDROG-…

///BULLETIN ENDS///

This is the grave of John Howard Griffin.

Born in 1920 in Dallas, Texas, Griffin grew up in the liberal white southern relatively well off class of the time. His mother was a concert pianist. He was a good student who spoke good French and he won a scholarship to go to college at the University of Poitiers in France. He studied language and literature there and then moved to the École de Médecine to study, well, medicine. But as you can see, this would have put Griffin there when the Germans invaded France in 1940. Griffin did not immediately go home. Instead, he fought the Nazis as part of the French Resistance, which had about 1,000 times as many claim they were involved in 1946 than actually were involved in 1941. Specifically, Griffin was involved in helping Jews escape. There was a group of Austrian Jews who had made it to Saint Nazaire, where he was working on the docks as a medic. He helped smuggle them aboard a ship and get them to safety.

Speaking of safety, Griffin returned to the U.S., where joining the actual military to fight Nazis was a lot safer than working in the Resistance, though that’s not why he returned home. He joined the Army Air Forces upon his return and was stationed in the South Pacific. He also was the lone soldier stationed on the small island of Nuni in the Solomons, where he engaged in an early anthropological study of the people to pass the time. He was a long ways from the front lines here, but hey, he was assigned there and he was doing his job. He also had problems with one of the biggest killer of American soldiers in the Pacific. No, I’m not talking about war here, I’m talking about malaria. He had a bout of malaria that set in his spine and he couldn’t walk for awhile. Yikes. Oh, also, while he was there, he married a Polynesian woman who he left when he got to go back to the U.S. Now that’s a classic imperialist move right there.

Now, in 1946, Griffin lost his sight. Probably. He was blind until 1957. This was from the long-term effects of being near a Japanese bomb. However, some 2024 studies in French of this incident suggest that he might have faked the blindness. I don’t read French, so I can’t evaluate the claim. But people have questioned this for a long time. The main reason–why did he suddenly regain his sight in 1957 without any explanation? And it’s not like he just could see some light again or shadowy figures, he could see like anyone else. So this is a really weird situation.

Griffin was certainly an unusual person, no question about that. The blindness, whatever that meant here, did not stop him from living a successful life. After leaving his Polynesian wife behind so he could look back on his exotic sex fondly while not being hemmed in by what it would mean to bring a woman from the Solomon Islands back to Texas as his wife, Griffin married a good white woman and had a couple of kids with her. She was also a student of his, because of course she was. He started writing as well, beginning with a 1952 novel called The Devil Rides Outside, about a composer who goes to a French monastery to study Gregorian chants. He had spent enough time in France that this probably was something he could reasonably pull off. He wrote a lot about his blindness. Then he wrote a novel about a man lost in the Solomon Islands for a year, something he did know. He also became a professional photographer.

Griffin’s interest in amateur anthropology influenced what we know him for today–and if you don’t know the name, you definitely remember his famous 1961 book Black Like Me. I read this in school–5th grade? Maybe? As an aside, I am always amazed and maybe a little skeptical by people’s claims that they remember learning this or that in high school or even younger. Why would you remember this, outside of something being super memorable? I certainly don’t remember much in ways of specifics from my school days. But I do remember Black Like Me, although that guess about 5th grade could be off by 3 or 4 years for all I remember. It does seem more appropriate for something like 8th or 9th grade. Anyway, whatever about remembering stuff like this, who really cares when you read or learned something.

Black Like Me is such a strange project to me. For a white man to decided to “become black” and then walk around asking questions in 1959 in the American South is a choice that feels more suicidal than anything else to me. When I visited this grave–and I had not thought about Griffin for years before this–my first question was, how did he pull this off? Turns out he saw a dermatologist in New Orleans who was intrigued by the idea and given methoxsalen while tanning all day, which darkened his skin a bit. He then used makeup so, yeah, there was some blackface involved. I wonder how many people he was really fooling here. However, given America’s weird one-drop rule of racial characteristics, plenty of very light-skinned people were considered black and subject to the laws of segregation. So he pulled it off.

Griffin then spent six weeks traveling around the South as a black man, accompanied by a photographer. Black Like Me was a big hit when it came out. For a certain kind of white, hearing about race from another white just meant more than what black people were saying all the time. These were mostly liberals, since race haters didn’t care what he had to say. One of the things that he couldn’t believe and neither could his white readers is how many whites approached him to ask about sexual life. I’m not sure why this would have been surprising except for this one thing–whites, even liberal ones, simply didn’t ask a lot of questions about what race relations were really like. It’s like walking around today knowing ICE is bad but we mostly don’t ask too many questions and just go along our way. That’s not true of all of course, but most people would rather just not know, even if they hate ICE.

Griffin’s book led him to be super hated by southern whites. In fact, he took his family to Mexico for several months. He was hanged in effigy in his hometown of Mansfield, Texas. In 1964, KKK members caught up to him and beat him. He spent his later years in Fort Worth, where he lectured about race relations sometimes. He had become friends with Thomas Merton in 1962 so he started a project writing about the famed Trappist monk. But he didn’t finish it. Griffin developed Type 2 Diabetes. Treatments weren’t great at this time. So it killed him in 1980. He was 60. His friends finished the Merton book for him and that got published in 1983.

John Howard Griffin is buried in Mansfield Cemetery, Mansfield, Texas.

If you would like this series to visit other authors about race in American life, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Alex Haley is in Henning, Tennessee and Harper Lee is in Monroeville, Alabama. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.

The post Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,210 appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.