Interviewed by Tom Mangan
Gary Baum, high school journalist.
His Web site is here.
AUTHORS
Michael Fuchs
Elizabeth Hilts
Paul Riddell
Gary Rivlin
Jim Motavalli
Barbara Shafferman
Jules Siegel
Keith Snyder
ARTISTS/POETS/
PHILOSOPHERS
Jon C. Allen
Will Baker
Mike Leung
Jon Sarkin
COOL SITE KEEPERS
Mike Cash
Scott O'Neal Colf
Godfrey Daniels
Cliff Davis, DDS
Tammy Hocking
Wes Modes
Frank Rogan
DIARISTS
Ralph Becker
J. D. Bruns
Linda DeVault
Mike Reed
Moira Richardson
Jessamyn West
FILMMAKERS
JOURNALISTS
Bernie
Mary Cooley-Jones
Lindsay Crysler
Jamie Dupree
M.O.A.T.M.A.I.
David Moll
Robert Niles
John Orr
Steven Ovadia
Pierce Presley
Mack Reed
Rip Rense
Curtis Ross
Neal Ross
John Scalzi
Catherine Seipp
David Sheets
Dwight Silverman
Matt Welch
MOVIE MAVENS
HUMORISTS
Debbie Farmer
Mike Jasper
Madeleine Begun Kane
Patrick Keller
Bob Sassone
Valerie Sprague
Ken Swarmer
Ian Wolff
SOLDIERS
TEACHERS
TECHIES
Chris Adamson
Mike Gunderloy
Michael Ivey
Greg Knauss
Floyd Maxwell
Ellen McDonough
Mike Pingleton
Wayne Thume
John Worth
TEENS
UNDECLARED
WEBLOGGERS
How does the popularity of gangsta rap seem to manifest itself in daily life at your high school?
My school has about 1,600 white students and probably about ten blacks, so it’s interesting to see how thoroughly black culture pervades my high school.
Clothing brands that have a sort of hip-hop credibility, like Fubu, Tommy Hilfiger and Nautica, wouldn’t be worn by the “wiggers” at my school if African American celebrities -- or even just black teens in general -- had not made them “cool.”
In other words, the WASPy brands had to be appropriated by blacks in order for white teens (the brands’ target audience in the first place) to believe that they are “hip.”
I’ve often asked some of my “wigger” friends why they’re so enamored of black culture. For the most part I get two answers. Either they just enjoy the music (which is fair enough an answer for me) or they like the rallying cry against injustice characterized by much contemporary African American music.
I remember reading an article in a 1998 issue of Spin by a white black music fan, Charles Aaron, a senior editor at the magazine. I think it was titled something like “What The White Boy Means When He Says 'Yo.’ ” Anyway, he pointed out that most of the lyrics of African American musicians during the '90s reflect how blacks are still struggling to become successful even during the nation's current economic boom.
White teens (like those at my school), on the other hand, have for the most part lived stable lives in the past decade and have grown up without anything to fight for. They know that their parents had something to complain about in the '60s but, for the most part, things are going very well today.
So they use the black “lifestyle,” the music and the clothing, to have something to believe in. The theory plays out whenever I see a group of white guys from my school driving around in a fancy pickup truck that their parents bought them (replete with fancy rims and lights) at the local mall.
They find a way to believe the music's lyrics have meaning to them. How these white guys can take lyrics describing whores and crack houses and find any meaning in their mundane lives, I haven't figured out just yet.
As far as I'm concerned, listening to Puff Daddy is not the same thing as reading the “Invisible Man” or writings by Booker T. Washington and Dr. King. I mean, a small number of blacks at my school last year organized to create the African Awareness club. As far as I know there haven't been any of the so-called “wiggers” attending the meetings, where they can spend their lunches reading pamphlets from the Tuskegee Institute and discussing the merits of kente cloth.
I think that the media's portrayal of a small segment of African American life, the part that emphasizes guns and drugs, is really the only part that the “wiggers” at my school see. I mean, the MTV news briefs about Puff Daddy's weapons charges completely distort the whole black experience. The truth is that for most white teenagers that listen to black music, including the majority at my school, the African American lifestyle means Bad Boy Records and not much else.
Your generation has grown up in an avalanche of advertising messages and the marketers get more and more clever by the day, yet they seem to know you're pretty damn jaded after seeing this stuff essentially since birth. Can you share an example of an ad that got through to you and actually influenced a buying decision?
I don't think any ad that I have seen recently influenced me one way or another. I mean, my friends and I shop smart. We check prices, numbers and everything else on our own via the Internet or the companies themselves.
And I always take anything that an ad has to say with a few grains of salt anyway. Advertising has obviously changed over the years from trying to portray a need for a specific product (Alka Seltzer in the '50s) to trying to make you believe that your life will somehow be so much better if you buy it (Abercrombie & Fitch in the '90s).
But more than anything, advertising nowadays is about getting the consumer to think that your entire brand is cool. And the main way they do this is by trying to entertain the consumer. The whole thing reminds me of high school.
The popular companies, like the jocks and the cheerleaders, are those that are somehow perceived as “cool” and “funny” by the rest of us.
However, I think that entertaining anyone with an advertisement, especially members of the so-called “Generation Y,” is getting harder and harder because most of the original marketing concepts have been recycled so many times.
Also, I don't want to become some kind of Jedediah Purdy-booster, but I think that irony has been pretty much beaten into the ground, at least in regards to advertising. All of those ultra-ironic, self-aware, hipper-than-thou advertisements that seemed to hook Generation X just don't cut it for me or anyone else I know my age. Someone once said that profanity is a privilege because if it is used too often it becomes irrelevant. Well, the same goes with irony. It is completely over-exposed.
Anyway, I think my favorite set of recent ads come from the completely earnest Pets.com campaign. Basically, it features this sock puppet dog that talks in an overly-excited canine voice (think Astro from the Jetsons). Now, Pets.com is not trying ridiculously hard to be edgy (does anyone remember those elliptical and completely pointless Levi's commercials from a while back?). They are trying to make people happy with this incredibly goofy-looking “spokesdog.”
I just completely fall for the fact that the sock puppet is totally aware that he is in reality attached to a hand (its collar is the person's watch). But he doesn't even really seem to care that he isn't a real dog! That gets me every time. Really, it does. I mean, if I could be one-tenth as happy as that dog I would log onto Pets.com and buy some kitty litter. It really is a perfect ad. There are no special effects. No pretty faces. Just a sock puppet. And it works so well!
Now, I don't even own a pet, and if I did I would probably go over to the neighborhood pet shop to buy whatever it needs. But I certainly think that Pets.com is “cool” and "funny" for, well, not trying so damn hard to be “cool” and “funny.”
How has the atmosphere at your school changed since the recent spate of school shootings?
On April 27, at the height of the Columbine hysteria, a rumor circulated at my high school that a sniper would go on a rampage the following day during a planned emergency evacuation fire/earthquake drill.
It would have been on Hitler's death day.
During the drill the entire student body piles onto the football field. Now, my school is located in the Santa Monica mountains to one side of the San Fernando Valley, so it was thought that the shooter would perch in the hills surrounding the field, where 1,600 people would be sitting ducks.
So the next day only half the students showed up at school and the drill did not take place. Police cars, helicopters and bike cops spent that Friday traversing the school grounds and flashing their weapons. Luckily, nothing happened and everything went back to normal. Or so it seemed.
What I noticed developing from the day of Columbine until school ended in the middle of June was a sort of school shooter “scare” that created a kind of student McCarthyism to find out just who could be the possible psycho in our midst.
A “Guess Who Could Be The Next Mass Murderer” game began to be played all around campus, in which people who were different were ridiculed even more than usual.
Basically, the two key clues to finding a possible mass murderer were being low on the social ladder and high on the eccentricity scale.
One senior, named David, epitomized both. David did not have many friends but did have a weird black hairdo and a penchant for keeping his fingernails ridiculously long. To top it all off he had committed the horrible sin of somehow learning the Latin names of every possible insect in the school's decrepit horticultural area.
So everyone eyed him for a few days when he walked and he just smirked, knowing how stupid the whole thing was. Of course, his insidious grin was deemed a psycho smile by everyone else and he was reported to the administration soon afterward.
Scenes like this occurred on a regular basis and the administration was vigilant about not becoming the next Columbine. However, the truth of the matter is that it can and will happen again. And -- I know this is going to sound really bad -- there is nothing we can do about it. Really, there isn't.
The media, the schools, and local law enforcement all try to allay fears by having massive safety demonstration workshops and other such stupidity, but it’s all just for show. We can do nothing to stop the shootings. All we can do is just hope that they don't happen to us.
One thing that really gets to me about the aftermath of these school shootings is how the various news magazine shows like “Dateline” and “20/20” bring on these psychologists and other adolescent-behavior specialists to help parents identify their kid as a killer before it is too late. Well, that isn't really what bothers me. Actually, what pisses me off is how they try to accomplish this identification with these completely ridiculous “warning sign” checklists.
I mean, they are truly unbelievable. These talking heads warn parents to watch if their kid to see if he or she is changing cliques often, spending a lot of time alone in their room, or exhibiting sudden mood swings. Now, come on ... has any teenager you have ever known not had at least one of those warning signs apply to them?
Anyway, this year the “scare” has died down. However, I am just waiting for the next shooting. It is definitely not a matter of an “if,” but a “when.” And, of course, a “where.” The whole thing is a kind of Russian roulette, with the nation's high schools each trying in their own way to dodge the shooter's bullets.
Give an example of how your parents and/or teachers seem to think they're treating you like an adult but really are treating you like a child.
Every day my teachers at school tell me and my fellow classmates to be independent, critical thinkers and to engage in open, thoughtful discussions concerning various topics.
And then, practically in the same breath, they make us get permission to use the bathroom and wait to be called upon to speak.
I never worked on a high school paper but throughout my career in the news biz I've constantly heard tales of high school journalists clashing with their administrators over controversial stories. Can you share any examples of a story you did that got you in trouble with the school honchos?
I’m lucky to work on a California high school newspaper because, due to some court case a while back, we are completely independent from our school administration. In other words, they cannot censor us. That is a rarity among student publications across the country.
Despite our freedom, the administration and the student press still clash over controversial stories. One specific example of controversy concerned a story that was published in last Friday's issue of the paper.
Well, actually, it wasn't even the story itself that got so much attention. It was the title. I am the news editor at the paper and two of my staff writers had just turned in a story on the cancellation of the yearly girls' flag football game. Basically, it was canceled because the girls started cussing and fighting with each other last year to the point where it became an embarrassment to the school administration.
So this year they ended it. And I decided to title the piece "Catfight Canceled!" The administration and faculty did not take too kindly to the word “catfight” used in what they considered a derogatory sense. But the staff and the rest of the students at the school seemed to like it.
All we hear about these days is that nobody reads anymore and your generation in particular has spent most of its time in front of the TV, so I'm wondering: where does your urge to write come from?
I honestly have no clue. It is just there. All of my ideas -- my though processes -- lend themselves to the idea of communication, and specifically the written word. And that is interesting when I consider the fact that I am a highly visual learner and thinker and have grown up, as you said, spending a large amount of time in front of the television set or computer screen.
I can't explain why I will wake up in the middle of the night with an idea for a story, turn on my bedroom light, scribble it down on a Post-It note, and then toss in bed all night thinking about it. It's like I can't help it...I just have to do it.
Also, I think that no matter when I could have been born (now or a hundred years ago, prior to all of this media infiltration into our lives) I would have still had the urge to become a communicator. That is just part of who I am.
Tell us something you see kids doing that suggests they've been playing too many vidoegames.
Nursing sore thumbs.
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