White gang-banger memoir: [barnyard expletive]

I took gang studies courses at UC Irvine, where I was a Criminology major. There are many well-researched gang scholars in Southern California; if the publisher had simply picked up the phone and given one a call this crude story would have fallen apart a lot sooner. Even if all of her alleged family members were dead or out of contact and could not verify her identity, the story itself is hollow.

The level of cohesiveness she describes is not consistent with case studies. Yes, gangs can act as a surrogate family, but when I read that her "OG" had flown in from LA I was immediately suspicious. First of all, few gangs have an actual single OG considered a leader. Most refer to all gang elders (past or present) as an OG. Secondly, an older gang member who is NOT on parole/probation would be quite a rarity, as would one can afford to (or would want to) fly out to Oregon to see a female peon who left the gang years ago. Women do not have equal stature in gangs, and have more auxiliary and supportive roles than men. One would have to be very important to compel an "OG" to fly out to of state for a visit, and I doubt any female could ever rise to that position.

Her certainty of her own death is rediculous. In South Central many, if not most, gang homocides are random: one gang goes into another's territory and pops the first person who looks like may be a gang banger, typically a black or hispanic male (depending on the neighborhood). A pale white girl, even a half native American girl, really does not have to buy her own burial plot as a teenager.

All the money she made from drugs is also highly suspect. If drug dealers could save up tens of thousands of dollars for burial plots, homs in Oregon and college tuition don't you think a lot more would be rising out of poverty? The sad fact is that while for a lucky few income from pushing drugs might exceed average wages at McDonald's, most have functions too small to go far beyond paying the bills. Again, in this loosely organized hierarchy it is unlikely a woman would rise to earning significant money, and if she did it is highly unlikely she would walk away. It is nearly impossible that an OG would pay his respects to such a thoughtless traitor by visiting her in Oregon. Think, people.

Memoires sell because people get a vicarious thrill out being something they are not. Truth in such matters is pretty irrelevant. And once again the NYT proves that it is somewhat less credible as a news source than The National Enquirer.

In Whit Stillman's great movie THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO, publishing-house drone Alice had the best-seller in her hands that would allow her to make editor -- a memoir by the Dali Lama's elder brother. But the publisher learned, while the first-run was being produced, that the author was a hoax. However, since the dust jackets hadn't been printed, Alice had the book repackaged from Biography to Self-Help, changed the title, got different blurbs, acknowledged the true author and still had her best-seller. At the end of the movie she's treating her ideal man to lunch at New York's swankiest restaurant.

Maybe Margaret Seltzer can take a page from Alice and just repackage her bull***t as first-person imaginative fiction.

Some years back, there was a guy who called himself "Captain Janks," who used to make prank phone calls for the sole purpose of getting himself on Howard Stern's radio show. On a regular basius, after a big news event, he'd call ABC or NBC News, claiming to be an eyewitness or posing as an expert analyst. Then he'd get on the air and let loose with a "Bababooey," a plug for Howard Stern, or a stream of vulgarities.

When someone asked Janks if he ever felt bad about exploiting serious (sometimes tragic stories) for a joke, he said, "No, I don't feel bad. I should have been busted every time. If someone, anyone, had asked just a few simple questions, or pressed me for some kind of identification, I never could have gotten on the air. But no one ever asked. They were always in such a hurry to get a sensational story on the air, they'd swallow my act hook, line and sinker."

Janks would've gotten a kick out of this story, too.

"So this lying thief expects people to feel sorry for her because she meant well?!"

We forgave you and Bush for Iraq because you meant well. We can forgive her too.

Pointing out, even in very strong terms, that she is a fraud hardly constitutes "speaking ill" of her. But, I suppose, Christian charity means we shouldn't kick her gratuitiously when she's down.

***

I remember several years ago a weekly columnist in my home-town newspaper in Ohio, a black woman who frequently wrote about issues affecting blacks and who, in her column, frequently featured black individuals, esp. those who had an inspiring "overcoming adversity" story to tell, wrote a column about the struggles of a young black single mother who had to get up very early every morning to catch a bus to take her to her telemarketing job and who was facing various other struggles as she tried to make a life for herself and her child. The newspaper was contacted with many offers for help, including the offer of a car for the woman.

Well, a couple of the prospective donors did a bit of checking on their own, and, apparently, after just a few phone calls the woman's story fell apart. The columnist's next column was a retraction, of sorts, in which she angrily complained of being lied to and taken advantage of by the young woman. What she didn't do was say, "All this is my fault because I didn't take a few minutes to conduct some elementary journalism and make a few phone calls to check out this woman's story." I'd been reading her column for several years at this point, and it was clear to me that she was so eager to be able to print a story about a young black single mother who was struggling, with some success, to overcome difficult circumstances, that she didn't make a basic effort to check out the story because she didn't *want* to find out that perhaps the story wasn't true.

I suspect that attitude lies behind the failure to uncover many of these frauds: the publishers are so taken by the story and want so badly for it to be true, that they don't take basic Journalism 101 steps to investigate it because they don't want to know that it might not be true.

Yeah, and Vanilla Ice's career collapsed almost two decades ago (deservedly) after it was revealed he pretended to be a gang-banger, too.

Pardon me for being intensely cynical about this stuff.

So the issue here is that you routinely were looking at TBN in order to "hate on them" for their tackiness? How is that particularly different than your routine work on this blog? You routinely scour news and headlines for examples of behavior that you feel is foolish, lowly, base, etc. We can include Sharia-promoting Archbishops, salacious wives-to-be, gay priests, etc. Then you attack those behaviors and people, often using derogatory terms, personal slurs, ad hominem attacks, etc. And you do this habitually, as a matter of profession, day in and day out.

Isn't that really the whole point? Don't you maintain readership by finding inflammatory materials, slapping provocative titles on them, and chucking the meat into the pit for the dog fight to begin? I know when I come here that 8 out of 10 times I'll see outrageous, regressive, and reactionary statements, from the usual suspects. There seems to be great concern from you for the niceties of Christian dogma and legalistic wranglings, and far less concern for the spirit of Christian love, forgiveness, and patience.

But of course, dogma, judgmentalism, and legalistic wrangling sells. Patience, tolerance, forgiveness...not so much. As Jesus himself could have pointed out.

Surely you can recognize that a double-standard is being promoted here?

JPL:

Just be glad Rod hasn't wished you into the cornfield yet for making the same point I have in past threads.

You played D&D, so I'm giving you a pass on this one. :)