On Seltzer--Again

According to Inga Muscio, a friend of Margaret Seltzer’s (and who only discovered Seltzer’s deception when ‘phoned by an agent, Faye Bender, who worked for both Muscio and Seltzer), Seltzer has collected government cheques on the basis of her Native American “ancestry.”

Seltzer managed a long-term masquerade, and she took numerous people in. Among them, Ms. Muscio, Ms. Bender, and Seltzer’s ethnic studies professor. Are these people somehow at fault for believing what appears to have been a well-researched, well-presented character role? No. Ms. Muscio and Ms. Bender have resisted defending Seltzer’s actions, but the good professor’s apologia, however sympathetic and well-intended, backfires in several ways. In my estimation, the most significant is the patronizing element in excusing a white woman’s “giving voice” to a community that Seltzer (and the professor) characterize as “silenced.”

The professor is a kind and generous person. I’m unsurprised that he lent support to a former student undergoing so public an excoriation; however, I am surprised at his means of offering said support.

"Plagiarizing Other People's Trauma" ?

A middle class white female, Margaret Seltzer (a.k.a. Margaret B. Jones), was raised in a California suburb. She attended an Episcopalian school, and went on to spend some time at the University of Oregon. At some point, she decided to assume a new identity. She claimed Native American ancestry, that she grew up in South Central L. A., that she was passed from foster family to foster family, that she was a drug-runner for a notorious gang, and so on. Then Seltzer publishes her “experiences” as Love and Consequences.

This last week, Seltzer’s sister revealed that the story is fraudulent. Seltzer concocted everything she related as lived experience; she even made up an anti-gang foundation that she claims to be associated with (and publicized on the book’s jacket). And no, she did not graduate from the University of Oregon with a degree in Ethnic Studies.

People are outraged--but for differing reasons. I offer two opinion pieces of the work (there are hundreds available, of course--see Google--but I found these intriguing):

“Stolen Suffering," by Daniel Mendelsohn at The New York Times, argues that Seltzer has appropriated people’s pain for psychological and financial benefit (this blog post's title comes from Mendelsohn's article).

“Fine Line Separates Memoir, Novel” by Gordon Sayre, at The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), argues that what matters is whether the work is well-researched, that Selzter communicates on behalf of excluded voices, and that we might consider why we want to read about other people’s pain.

So then, is it only a matter of marketing here? Or has Seltzer done more than misfire in presenting Love and Consequences as an autobiography? Has she committed some great intellectual, social, or cultural sin? Is authenticity important?
More on this later.

On the Sunday Times, Obama, and Middle Names

After a long day reviewing student projects, I’m itching for a lovely bit of Glenmorangie; however, considering that I have, as they say, “gone on the wagon,” I’ve settled for a some black tea and political news instead.

On Sunday, The New York Times began running a series of stories on the presidential candidates. They kicked off with a front-page story on Obama’s Senate history. The story painted Obama as an eager-to-please, but rather ineffectual, neophyte who, the story implied, had already begun eyeing a presidential campaign when he first entered the U. S. Senate. In effect, the man’s a celebrity but little else. The "empty suit" analysis (as a news story rather than as an op-ed piece) prompts me to recall that the Times endorsed Rodham Clinton some time ago.

Ah, “Rodham Clinton” reminds me of something that's been grating for a while ( bear with me here): on Barack Hussein Obama’s middle name: deal with it. It is the man’s name, and it’s not something for him to hide. What is arguable--risible--is the context and tone in which his name is used--as when certain blowhards from the left or the right refer to “Hussein” as some juvenile shorthand for “closet terrorist.” The whining defense of such inflections tend to fall along the lines of “So? If he's ashamed of his name, why didn’t Obama change it? I didn't name him 'Barack Hussein Obama.'")” Aside: I can nearly hear Uriah Heep simper these lines while wringing his hands, eyes downcast. That’s my bias speaking there. The other defense is “Well, Hillary Rodham Clinton--she uses her middle name.” Well, no. She doesn’t. Clinton’s middle name is “Diane.” “Rodham” is her maiden name; “Rodham Clinton” is her surname.

Rather than drawing awareness to possible hidden allegiances, attention to such trivialities as a person’s name points only to the increasingly petty, childish tenor of American politics. And yes, I'm playing along by blogging about it.

I'd like to note that the Times also ran a sympathetic story on John McCain's cancer history. I didn’t know this, but the puffiness of his left cheek is due to surgery that removed a lesion and lymph nodes in his neck when he’d been diagnosed with melanoma. Crikey. McCain’s a seven year cancer survivor, and he’s going strong (bless 'im), so there's some positive news to share.